CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTEEN - UNENDING UNENDURABLE

...was...

Was she alive?

Hard to tell. Couldn't feel anything. By all rights... by all rights she should be dead.

Sleep consumed her. No feeling throughout her body. Just blackness and a vague warmth. Thoughts slowed. Priorities invented themselves out of the gloom, presenting themselves when reality faded. She... had assignments for Sister Halima that she had to do. No, no, she had to proof-read a document for a colleague she owed a favour to. Not sure which colleague, but she had to do it. No, no, no, there was... dry cleaning, and cooking, and purchasing supplies, and all the normal routines of life. She had socks to buy, for crying out loud. Even asleep, Tanner couldn't quite get away from herself.

There was a distinct unreality to-

Hold on.

Hold. On.

The buzzing was gone.

Her eyes remained closed. For a few moments she was just... in silence, in senseless darkness. Womb-state. Pain seemed absent from her body. Weariness, too. All priorities disintegrated in a state like this. The desire to rest... made irrelevant by the fact that she wasn't exerting herself, and could rest whenever she liked. The desire to eat... irrelevant when she couldn't feel anything, when the future might as well not exist, when everything was just... even thirst was beyond her. Maybe she'd mutated enough. Started to forget her old priorities and hungers. Learning of the one thing that would sustain her. But... no buzzing. Not a scrap of it.

For a long few moments, Tanner was alone with her thoughts. Her memories.

A judge sent here without a single complaint because she was told to.

A governor locked up in conspiracies he'd long-since lost track or control of.

A cartel leader bound by priorities no-one else shared and age that limited all other options.

An Erlize officer stuck on a path leading to self-murder by allegiances he couldn't break and obligations he couldn't betray.

A nobility lashed to their old ways, crushing under their weight, driven until nothing remained but dying gloriously.

A military officer grown strong on nepotism... and ruined by it. By the same tool given both his position, and then compelled to betray it.

A mutant intelligence, a synapse, marching off to a war it didn't want to wage, because... it had no other ideas.

No-one in Rekida had ever been in control, had they? Everyone bound up by systems they likely would be happier escaping. Like they were... like the landscape was a stage. A huge white stage, filled with the props of old productions, and once you entered it, all eyes were on you. Your role became your personality. You became nothing but an engine executing line after line, precisely as your character ought to. And eventually, your character was driven to a conclusion written out before the cast had ever been assembled. Hamartias worsening to tragedies. Foibles escalating to flaws. Tensions winding up and up until they exploded in the most dramatic fashion. Sersa Bayai... he could've just been found burning a file for his uncle, or spying on another officer. Instead he'd murdered a man because his uncle told him to. Murdered him during the apex of a siege. That was his conclusion. That was where his character had hauled itself.

She...

Chose to stop breathing.

Just for a bit. It... took a while. But in the silence... there was nothing but her heart beating. Simple exercise, to close her throat. To wait until the silence began to turn sharp, until impulses started to run through her, demanding it open. A burning rising in her chest, in her empty, empty lungs... a pressure from within, an urge to breathe out, more than anything else... she refused. Let the pressure build. Let the emptiness swell. Could feel her heart beating faster and faster, though still locked into slumbering, sluggish thumps... could feel her face warming, numbing... waited. Kept holding her breath. She was choosing to do this. This was her choice. She could keep holding her breath, right? Overpower her instincts. Overpower it all, and force herself to be breathless. Electricity tingled over her skin, all over her body, long strands of the stuff as her body ran through everything it could, pushed every button. It was panicking. It knew something was wrong. It knew she wasn't doing what she was meant to - she was a bad engine, she was doing the one thing engines shouldn't - fail. Choose to fail when no other fault was apparent. Her limbs were here. Her mind was here. And she was choosing to shut down the functions one by one.

The airlessness would kill her extremities first. Purple them. Blacken them. Shrink inwards and abandon the frontiers. She was a kingdom, and right now she'd appointed a mad eremitic queen to rule over it all. A blistering incompetent who surrendered territory, finger by finger, toe by toe. She'd turn the colour of the meat-landscape. And this would march on. Up her arms. Up her legs. Towards her waist, her torso, her trunk. Organs would fail. One by one. The brain would fail, and maybe in her unconsciousness she'd breathe, the body taking back over and forcing resumption. But that wasn't sustainable. It couldn't live like that. It couldn't force her to abdicate, only to temporarily surrender power.

It would always, always return to her. If the body wanted to keep on going.

Tanner Magg held Tanner Magg hostage. She did this because she wanted to.

She did this because she needed to.

No more tomorrows.

No more future.

No more dark shadows on the landscape that wore her face. No more terrible bright calm that made her think of the reactor-drones and blue-burning abdomens the synapse had forced her to see, forced her by making her brain produce fluidic memories, imitating its own rancid neurotransmitter, the last memories of a dead animal cycling over and over and over again. She was dying in this... bed, maybe, because she wanted to. This was her choice.

This...

...was petty.

Her breath slipped past her lips like an old friend. Eager to see her. And keenly aware of all her failings. The same happy-reluctant slide down her throat, reanimating the numbness. In a second, she was back to normal. Not even a wobble in the engine.

...the path was already here. All she had was the path she took. She could sway to one side of the path, or the other. She could stay in place. But leaving the path, reversing the path... none of that was really possible. The path vanished behind her. And ultimately, any choice she made was petty. Maybe everyone was in the same position. All the revolutions and personalities, all the individual variation she was barely able to comprehend in the first place, all of it was just... ephemera. Foam on the wave of history. The cold dictated the culture of the Rekidans and the Nalseri, shaped the dynamics of the siege, allowed for the concealment of the theurgists. The underground river and the foundation stone had attracted settlement in the first place, all those endless years ago, then attracted the mutants which ripped that settlement apart. Fidelizh's colonial policy was an extension of its own dynamics and history, all of which were beyond everyone who lived there today. To them, it was just... and the judges. The Golden Door. If they'd emerged in the north, how different would they have been? Would they rule, or would they serve, or would they be long-gone, or so different as to be unrecognisable? Important or irrelevant? None of that had been controlled by herself. And even if she dedicated her life to ruining the judges, none of it would mean anything unless the current of time was on her side, the unconscious movements of millions and millions over countless generations flowing in her favour.

There was no such thing as progress.

Just jumping up and down on a path which only extended in one direction. Progress was impossible. Only progression.

Her breathing was back to normal. Her body would rip control away from her if she strained it too much, threatened the overall purpose. She wasn't the sovereign of her body. Just a constituent. Just as she was a constituent of Rekida, of Fidelizh, of Mahar Jovan, of the world.

In the passage of humanity, she was a minority of one. A single lamb surrounded by an electorate of a million million wolves. Some living. Most dead.

Her eyes opened.

Blank grey ceiling.

Bunker.

Body was numb.

She was silent for a long few moments. Listening to her own heartbeat, that she couldn't stop. Her breathing, which would resume against her will. Feeling the prickle of air over the few living parts of her skin, feelings that were relayed to her by her nerves, that had to be filtered before they entered her consciousness.

Oh, well.

Moping was a bad habit.

She... hm. She could think to herself 'yes, Tanner, get up and confront the reality of your actions.'

That was an option.

...no. No, now she just didn't want to get up.

Alright. 'Come on, Tanner Magg, get up, get up now, you have to make sure your socks are still in good order, you spent good money on your socks and stocking, and losing them would be deeply inconvenient. Come on, the snow ruins good socks. Make sure your stockings are in good condition.'

That was working.

She sat up sharply. Socks. Stockings. Bad stockings made the entire world more miserable. Good stockings improved it immeasurably. Holes in her stockings made her despair. Dampness in her stockings made her feel like the entire day was going to turn out terribly. Stockings. Socks. Focus on those. And now she was moving. Pettiness was freedom. If you couldn't be petty, you couldn't be anything. Pettiness was extracting the last notions of choice from lives that were ultimately constrained. The Rekidans with their endless obsessions with control - in the cold, they had no control, they lived as the snows told them to, they moved as the cold dictated, so they became intense on the topic of control. This wasn't foolishness. This was pettiness. This was taking whatever they could. A scream against the narrowness of their path.

She screamed. Mentally. Audible screaming would be uncouth.

She sat up. And yearned for socks.

...she hadn't said a word in days that hadn't been directly related to her fight for survival. Nothing but a solitary few jokes she'd barely been aware she was making.

So very easy to turn Tanner Magg into a machine. So very easy to turn her into an automaton who executed the same basic commands, over and over and over. Maybe that applied to all humans. More likely it was a unique failing. A single tug at the tapestry of her heart, and she became a soldier, a general, a queen, a madwoman strutting the battlefield and-

...she couldn't feel anything.

Why couldn't she feel anything?

Her thoughts stilled. All her prevarications about how her impulses were shaping her, the demands o her body, and... and now she couldn't feel anything, all she felt was panic. Dulled, unearthly panic. Dull panic born of senselessness.

Where was the pain?

She ought to feel pain. She'd... felt that horn exploding. Her weapon. An unstable theurgic engine that focused its instabilities in one productive direction. Until even that direction expired, like a vein bursting under the pressure of the narcotics pulsing through it, the heat too much for any flesh to bear. She'd felt... even then, she hadn't felt explosions of pain run through her. Everything in those last moments had been numbness. Maybe too far gone. Maybe-

She was covered in ants.

That wasn't a maybe.

Tanner Magg was covered in ants. Crawling all over her. Black, bloated ants, many of them with more limbs than they reasonably needed. Her face went flat. This was... bizarrely, it was almost appropriate. She'd fought a giant synapse of the Great War, she'd bathed in the gaseous neurotransmitter that it exhaled, she'd been mutated, if at any point in her life she ought to be covered with ants, it was probably now. Didn't panic. Just watched them blandly as...

As they nibbled at her bare flesh.

Oh gods.

She was indecent. She...

She saw a familiar face.

All-Name was slumped across from her. Only now did she really realise that she was lying on a cot... well, a frame of repurposed wood with a heavy canvas slung over it. No bed her size, no normal cot that could take her weight. A flush of embarrassment that she immediately clung to, held tightly, used it like a burning coal. The young man was slumped against a grey stone wall, the same stone used to make all the bunkers. Eyes were closed. Looked wan. Strained. Grimy bandages binding up most of his limbs, hiding his injuries from sight. His breathing came lightly and irregularly. His red hair was stark against his pale, scarred skin, and... Tanner Magg was looking at the last Rekidan. The very last to hold by their old ways. The others had abandoned them, or were dead. She looked on the very last of a culture, the last scion of dozens of noble houses, the last human noble of Rekida, and... no. No, Rekida had been dead a long time ago. His rank, all the names that made up All-Name, was born of the fact that Rekida was dead, and needed an undertaker.

Both of them grown up from necessity. Tanner becoming whatever she'd become. All-Name becoming All-Name. The land had craved something - a watcher or undertaker, and a sacrifice. The sacrifice, the sacrificial knife, the sacrificial altar, and the hand which did the deed, all bundled up around her heart.

His shifted. She saw a little blood running from a bandage.

Her movement was immediate.

She disturbed most of the ants crawling over her skin as she rose from her bed, bare feet slapping against the stone as she made for the young man. Hunched over him, ignoring her own thin clothing, ignoring whatever condition her body was in. Something for later. Something for future Tanner. Now... now there was someone who needed help.

In silence, she examined the bandages. Sloppily done. Most applied by himself, obviously. If she was going to guess... quarantined. They'd been quarantined, for fear of contaminating others. And that meant he had to tend to himself.

Shameful.

...she could tell them to treat him. She could just... command them.

She'd already commanded more. Commanded people to fight, to lay down their lives, to forsake old loyalties.

Gritted her teeth. Got to work.

But precedent murmured in her ears. Whispered poisonous authority.

Come on.

She didn't know much about bandaging. Well. Lie. She wasn't formally trained, but she'd worked as a fish gutter for years as a youth, you didn't work with that many knives for that length of time without learning how to deal with some nasty, nasty cuts. Knew how to change bandages, secure them properly, tight enough to be effective without cutting off circulation, and... the wounds beneath were ugly. Chasms, pits, he looked like a map of a mining colony. Looked like he'd been struck by mutants, needed to cauterise the wounds to stop contamination. Could feel ants crawling back onto her, clambering over her ankles, up her legs, towards her torso. Didn't respond. She'd been in the middle of a swarm of much nastier insects, she could handle a few ants.

All-Name's eyes snapped open.

Tanner blinked.

...uh.

Ah.

She... she'd only yelled orders for days. Only talked about warfare. Not really... sure what to say. Maybe nothing?

Maybe-

"The ants need to stay on you, judge."

Tanner blinked again.

"Ah."

A pause.

"Alright."

Ah. Alright. Tanner Magg's first words after (maybe) saving the colonial expedition to Rekida.

Fitting.

"Need to... clean godsblood off. Rekidan method. General taught me."

Right. Right. That made sense. They'd said the Rekidans had ways of keeping mutants stable for long periods. Only reason the General had stayed sane. Right up until he'd crushed Captain Kralana to death and she had to smash his head to paste. Oh, gods, she...

She was still numb. Still very, very numb.

Just focus. Just... focus on basic realities. Keep changing his bandages. Keep cleaning the wounds as best she could. Small stone bottle of alcohol nearby, use that for disinfectant, both for the wounds and for her hands. As she worked, she spoke quietly.

"I see. Anything else you're doing?"

"You were... swollen with godsblood. Few things. Needles in neck, keeps it from getting to your skull. Mutated ants to eat off anything external. Pills to clear innards. Usual stuff. Once you get the rot in you, only thing is to keep it away from the skull. Can't get rid of it anymore. Actually gave you more godsblood, injected it into your leg. Just needed to keep you from going all lopsided. Give the godsblood a plan, and it will follow it. Convince it the plan is you being sane and strong. That all the mutation needs to happen in the body. Not the brain."

A shiver. Triage, then. She was a mutant. Tanner Magg was now a mutant. All she could do was minimise the impact.

"Needles. Is that... making me feel numb?"

"Can do that. Sure."

"And your wounds?"

"...fine. I'll be fine."

A pause. They worked onwards. All-Name leant forwards a little, started to work on... ah. Needles. Yes. Around her neck. Invisible from her perspective, but... she could feel them shifting around in her skin. Numbing her. Keeping her body and her mind safely divorced. A push, and her hand stopped obeying any commands. A pull, and she felt a tingle of sensation creep over her flesh. And she worked on All-Name, clenching her jaw a little to keep herself anchored. Tanner Magg was now a medic. She wasn't a judge, or a governor, or a warlord, or anything. She was a medic. And... she could invent a life history for Tanner the medic. Tanner the medic was born in Mahar Jovan, and went into a line of work she could be proud of. Not enough money to go to a proper medical college, but she could be a nurse. Maybe she signed on with a colonial expedition, and went out as a medic, rather than a soldier. Bandaging people up. Drinking at the end of each day, a little beer to wash down the dry rations. She wore a long green military coat with white armbands that proclaimed her as a medic. Stumped about in huge boots. Learned to sit with her legs spread wide, how to fill up a room with personality alone, how to chat about nothing for hours on end. Broken like an unruly mule into becoming pliable and personable. Tanned her skin to the brown of conkers under unyielding sun. Saw horrible things. Had nightmares. Developed a bit of an issue with alcohol, but was so large that it was hard to procure necessary quantities. Learned to be unashamed of her appearance as she accumulated more scars.

Tanner the medic seemed happy.

Could almost feel that person settling around her...

But then she looked at her own body.

Her jaw clenched harder.

Under the ants. She could see... see that she was taller. Sure. That her hair had grown thicker and wilder. Almost had the consistency of rope. And was streaked with long strands of red. Inherited from the girl. From all the Rekidans. Her eyes felt sharper. Her muscles had an oily density to them, a feeling like they were made of leather, or something not quite human. Her hands were coated in thick tissue the colour of bark, her nails were almost metallic. And her heart felt... felt smaller. Smaller and hotter. Pumping with more ease than ever before, doing its job with effortless efficiency. Everything about her innards felt wrong. Like everything was swimming in undifferentiated liquid. Her skin was marked with long leathery stripes, something like scars, something like the pads of an animal's paws, something like sunburned flesh. She felt lethal. She felt like... like if she moved, she'd move quickly and easily.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

She felt strong. None of the wheezing sickness she expected.

Gritted her teeth (which felt like grinding pieces of granite against each other). Focused.

"...how did... what happened after the end?"

All-Name let out a long, shuddering breath as she tightened a bandage around his leg.

"The meat changed. Stopped... co-ordinating. Started to just... do what mutants do. Eat each other. Run away from each other. Big clumps of them still, but not smart. Not clever enough to run away from us when we come. Some learned enough to flee. Most didn't. Still burning them."

"And the synapse?"

A confused blink.

"The... creature. What happened to it?"

"There was an explosion. The creature soaked it all up. You... it shielded you. Not deliberately. I think. But it was in the way of the explosion. And you were just tossed away. Fire everywhere. The creature didn't die. Not quite. Soldiers had to tear it apart. Gouge it to pieces with bayonets. Burn each one of them. Smelled like liquorice when they did it. Dozen pyres, all over the city. It wasn't dead. Nothing could kill it except for cutting it apart, over and over, then just... burning. Took hours. You were unconscious."

"...and I was uninjured."

"No. You were..."

A pause.

"It's been a few days. You were tough. But you were injured, judge. Badly. Godsblood repaired you, best it could."

Her eerily liquid insides. The feeling of being somehow... oilier.

She'd been pulverised. The explosion had run through her like a herd of wild horses, trampled over her organs, shredded what it didn't pound to a pulp. And then contamination had put her back together. Kept her brain. And... didn't heal her organs. Just made them more adapted to their current situation. If she died, they might find nothing but a skeleton, a skin, and a pile of blackened sludge. Even now, she found it hard to remember the explosion of the engine. The horn singing a final tune. The rush of pressure through her body, the heat, the heat which went deeper than flesh should allow...

"...I see."

Nothing more to be said.

After all, Tanner wasn't really here. Not in this room. She was just acting a part right now. She'd stop, sooner or later. Before she left and confronted the world again. The world was for another Tanner - and to her, Tanner surrendered all planning and considering. In this room, Tanner Magg didn't exist. Could be anything. Anyone.

Focus on that.

Tanner had died in the explosion, even. Had gone mad with mutation, needed to be put down.

The flesh she was feeling now was... well, it could belong to anyone. Delusion was a powerful thing. She was just a mutant dreaming of being Tanner, in a mad sort of way.

Simple.

"What else... happened, exactly?"

Stay clinical. Stay precise. Stay normal.

"...you got dragged out of the ruin. I mean, you were... when the explosion happened, you were buried under that thing, judge. Buried. Needed to... well... I mean, we thought you were dead. Had people weeping. Then this... your friend, the older woman with the red face and the swollen nose. She ran into the fire. Pulled you out."

Tanner froze.

"Marana?"

"...perhaps. I do not know her name. If it is Marana, then it is Marana."

"Marana saved me."

"She pulled you from the fire."

"Is she alive?"

"Mostly. She had her equipment half-on. Kept going, even when she was partially on fire. I believe she received a nasty gash from the shrapnel around you."

"...oh."

Another long pause.

Marana had saved her life. Even with the mutation, even with her size, even with all things acting in her favour, she'd almost died. And Marana, that drunken regretful surrealist, had run in and hauled her out. Hard to even imagine the amount of effort, hauling an armoured giantess out from that thing's bulk. She... she barely knew Marana. She could barely say she understood Marana. Could theorise, but nothing would ever be confirmed. The idea of her running out to save her, it... just didn't quite factor into her mental image. Not because she thought of the woman as a coward. Just...

Not sure why.

Not sure why someone would risk so much to save her.

Needed to find her. Say thank you. She redoubled her focus on the bandages, suddenly resolved to get it over with quickly. Had business to do. Socks to pick up. Oh, and she wanted some bread and tea. That was it. Tanner Magg had socks to get, bread to eat, tea to drink, and a friend to express gratitude towards. Normal list of things. Beyond this list, nothing existed. The world had expanded around her, just a little. Just enough to factor in these additional priorities.

But Tanner Magg was still dead, and this was just a play-acting experience. None of it was actually happening.

A thought.

Just a hypothetical.

"Where is Yan-Lam?"

Silence.

A grim silence.

Tanner felt a chill run up her spine. She stood suddenly, leaving All-Name to attend to the last of his wounds. Began to move for the door, shedding ants as she went, the mutants squirming messily in black clumps as they devoured whatever they'd peeled from her newly changed skin. Grabbed... oh. Ah. Her buffalo cloak wasn't here. And she was a little indecent, in her chemise and little else, she... right, right, could see...

...a red cloak.

"May-"

"Take it."

She swept the red Rekidan cloak around her shoulders, then wound it over her front until she had a rudimentary dress. Marched for the door. Swept through on limbs that felt far too strong. And-

Soldiers.

Soldiers all around her. Still streaked with blood and gore and soot and ash and shards of mutant bone.

Her priesthood.

And one by one, they stood at attention, clicked their heels, thrust out their bare chins that glistened with compacted sweat and unshaven stubble. Their eyes had a burning zealotry in them. Tanner stared at them, unsure of what to do, disliking this sudden expansion of her world. One of them spoke. A man. Must be nearly twice her age. And his voice was low, low, and terrifyingly reverential.

"...honoured judge, are you... sure you should be up? It's-"

"I'm fine. Thank you."

A murmur started up. Quiet. Awed. It wasn't impressive, she was mutated, of course she recovered quickly. She didn't heal back to a status quo, she just adjusted what her status quo was until she qualified as healthy. That was all. Contamination didn't improve you, didn't heal you, just lowered your standards. It wasn't something to praise her over.

It was starting again.

The horror of the colony was pressing back in.

She moved. The soldiers parted. Realised, dimly, that they'd appointed themselves as her guards. She heard murmurs as she went. Murmurs of reverent rumours.

Got tended to by the last of those Rekidans. Witchy stuff.

Healed up in days, days, after getting caught in that blaze.

Got some old souse to drag her out of the fire. Got an old souse to be a martyr. Mad.

Wish we had her type in the Great War. Would've won it in days.

Wonder if you could start acting like her. Take her onto your back. Like you do back home.

She tightened her jaw and kept moving, terror percolating through her system.

Yan-Lam. Where was she.

Was she hurt?

She marched through the bunker. Soldiers all around. Civilians were absent. Must be relocated, she imagined. This had become a command bunker, devoid of the lighter touches of lives less accustomed to violence. Soldiers sprawled on every surface that could take them. No Rekidans in sight. Just hard-face Fidelizhi troops, and... and cartel members. She knew those faces, knew the bouncers. They were dressed in scrap uniforms, anything they could cobble together. Long green coats. Unshaven faces. Nervous glances. Less willing to sprawl than their comrades, more tight, more cautious. Their guns were always close at hand, though they handled the heavy mutant-killing rifles uncertainly. Still disbelieving that they owned these, and wouldn't be shot on sight for stealing military property.

They'd joined up. The cartel had joined.

She felt too many eyes. Too many eyes. Run.

She trotted rapidly to... to...

There. Looked more senior.

"I'm looking for a maid. My maid. Her name-"

The man dipped his head loyally.

"Honoured judge. Wonderful to see you doing well."

Too clean. Too professional. He'd been inside during the chaos. He'd been safe. Somehow, she loathed and loved him, and he'd only said eight words. Loved him because he wasn't like the others, wasn't mad, wasn't delusional. Hated him because he hadn't been there. He'd been comfortably safe, and had come through with his mind in a good enough condition to shave regularly, based on the cleanliness of his cheeks and neck. Loved him for his normality. Loathed him for his comfort.

"The girl... ah."

A pause. An uncomfortable one. His eyes glanced over, involuntarily, towards the...

The cells.

"...we thought you might want to look her over yourself."

Tanner moved without thinking.

The cells. The small concrete pockets where... where Tom-Tom had been locked up. Tom-Tom. And the mutant. The girl. No strange sounds from her. Free of the controlling intelligence. Unlinked. She'd experienced being a single extension of a great mind, had drowned in neurotransmitter, and... and she'd been smarter than she'd ever been, and might ever be. Now she was back to being an animalistic idiot. Tanner barely glanced at the shuttered grate to her cell, rushing for the one which was locked.

Just one other.

Not two.

Where...

She slipped back the cover over the grate.

Stared in.

Yan-Lam stared back. Seated on a coat. Curled up, slightly. Looked like a monkey, a shrivelled, emaciated monkey. Something animal and solemn lurking in her eyes. Her hair trailed messily around her face, and her dress was marked with dust and grime. Otherwise, she looked healthy.

But she was in a cell.

Tanner didn't say anything. Just waited. Yan-Lam stared back with her curiously ape-like eyes. Breathing softly through slightly parted lips. Clenching and unclenching her fists over her knees.

"I had to."

Her voice was small and hollow.

Tanner was silent.

"I had to do it."

Tanner licked her lips.

"What did you do, Yan-Lam?"

A flinch at the use of her name. She turned away, staring at an arbitrary point in the cell, and doing so with a lazy intensity. Unblinking, but unfocused. Intense, but unseeing.

"...she was... there."

A second of silence.

"I found out. I found out about her. The case files made it all easy. You showed me how to read them properly. You had me copy so much. Then Lyur talked to me. I'm sorry for going behind your back. But... she never apologised. She never felt guilt. She just sat there. Happy. Fat. In her cell. Waiting for everyone else to solve things. She kept asking to be let out. But she just wanted to make herself feel better. Knew what she did, knew what she did, and I was right in front of her, and she didn't say anything. There wasn't..."

She swallowed. Gulping down feelings before they emerged into her flat, toneless voice.

"She killed father. She killed him. Lied until he was dead. Mother died because of pox. Can't do anything about that. But she was sitting there. Getting brought food. Getting brought fuel for her stove. She was able to be warm and happy and alone. And she never felt guilt."

Looked down at her knees.

"I had to do it. You might've been dead. If you were dead, there was no-one left to judge her. And she needed to be judged. You said so. Miss."

Tanner had some idea of what she'd done. Didn't want to say it. If she did, it would become real.

Should've seen the signs. The ink-stained fingers, the confession that she was reading case files, the conversation with Lyur. She had all the steps arranged for her - and Yan-Lam wasn't an idiot. She'd know to follow them to their logical conclusion.

She'd probably used a revolver. There'd been piles of weaponry just lying around, the soldiers had long-since stopped practising proper care for where their firearms were. When the enemy were a bunch of slavering beasts who despised all humans equally, it hardly mattered if you left a few guns lying around. Tanner felt an unpleasant calm settle back over her. Bayai had done this. Tom-Tom had done this. She'd been surrounded by iron-breathed murderers from the day she arrived, people already gestating the concept of murder, growing more comfortable with it. Bayai. Lyur. Tom-Tom. Canima. The Governor. The General. All-Name. Vyuli. All the other bouncers. All the other soldiers. In each of them had lurked this... basic acceptance.

Thought Yan-Lam had been unaffected.

"I'm sorry."

Her own mouth had moved. Her own voice had emerged. Yan-Lam turned her head slightly, staring blindly.

"Why?"

Why was she sorry?

Did she feel responsible? Bringing Tom-Tom here, bringing Yan-Lam here, leaving the two together. Failing to properly secure Tom-Tom's safety. Failing to execute righteous justice swiftly. Her hands had killed several people now. Lyur. The General. Brutalised both of their skulls into paste. And the faces of the human-mutants, the shambling diseased... they might have had no scrap of humanity left in them, but they still wore human faces, still moved human bodies. Were still human, in all the ways that her gut felt mattered. She'd killed so many, but Tom-Tom had been an exception. Not because she liked her. Nor even because she liked to think she understood her. Just... because she was strangely innocent. She was from before the webs of conspiracy had meshed around everything, complicated all priorities.

Tom-Tom, for a brief period, had been a woman asking Tanner for help. And in her heart of hearts, Tanner found it difficult to unstick that memory, that impression, that splinter of doubt worming underneath her nails.

Tanner sighed.

Too tired to think. Too tired to mourn.

Her voice fell into the positions precedent said it should. Into habits that she was already engraving into her bones. As smooth and casual as a pianoforte player positioning his hands over the keys.

"It's forgiven."

Yan-Lam blinked.

"What?"

"Forgiven. Pardoned. I don't know. It's done. You're right. She committed multiple crimes. Some very serious. Didn't feel regret for the acts, just that she'd been caught doing them. You're a child committing a murder of passion under exceptional circumstances. Worse has been forgiven."

"...I did it deliberately. I'm not mad, miss. I did it because I wanted her to stop being warm and comfortable and happy. I wanted her dead. So I killed her. That was it."

"Still pardoned."

"I don't want to be pardoned. I want-"

Tanner's voice had a steely edge, now.

"That's enough. You can stay in there if you like. But I'm unlocking the door."

Yan-Lam looked at her with wide, slightly-more-human eyes. Tanner was acting governor. Honorary Erlize agent. She'd earned this authority - authority beyond anything a judge should take. The law did what she said, because if she hadn't taken control, everyone here would be dead. If she hadn't driven the colony onwards, it would've collapsed. Mutants would be reprocessing their corpses down into mulch, would wear their bones as armour on their next pointless conquest. The law did what Tanner wanted it to do. Because if she'd just been a good, loyal judge, everyone would be dead.

So here she was.

Unlocking the door with calm, smooth motions. Her eyes slid over to the shuttered door containing the mutant.

"Miss..."

The door swung open. Yan-Lam was still staring. Gods, she looked thin. Like killing Tom-Tom had ripped some crucial element of herself out. She was staring at Tanner's redder hair. Her mottled skin. Her lithe strength. Tanner suddenly found herself missing her axe - she was getting the urge to knead her skirt, or whatever passed for one at the moment. Needed something to fill her hands before she made a fool of herself. She didn't even feel her normal nervousness and paranoia. Just... too tired for that. Something torn out of her, too. At this point, she was just moving on instinct.

"And get something to eat. You look thin."

Yan-Lam blinked.

Nodded.

Remained where she was.

And Tanner attended to the other cell. Slipped open the grate. Stared at the thing within.

Dead animal eyes glared back at her.

The mutant was still alive. Just the same as she'd been left. And now... now there was something new in her dead, ruptured eyes. Something savage. She saw Tanner as something more than a meal ticket. She saw her as a competitor. Another mutant in the great game of kill-or-be-killed. Backed up across the floor, pressed her back against the wall, moved her eerily fluid limbs until they were primed to pounce. Ready to fight like a devil to escape Tanner if she came inside. No grasp of the fact that Tanner was intelligent. Just that she was a mutant.

And all mutants hungered for other mutants.

Slowly, the girl realised Tanner wasn't entering.

Started to move. Bunched her limbs around her torso. Sat hunched and ape-like.

Staring.

Just as she'd done with the other mutants in the snow. Staring, as still and impassive as a primitive idol.

Tanner slid the grate closed. Left her to her solitudes.

Come on.

Had more business.

Bayai was in another bunker. And she didn't want to see him. He'd sipped of the same poisoned cup as Canima, the Governor, Vyuli, the General. Tainted, now. Part of the rotten colony that had almost destroyed itself before the mutants even got a chance. Part of the same self-destructive system that had proven woefully inept at readying itself for war. Every last one of the people she'd named was now dead. The Governor, killed by the General. The General, killed by her axe. Canima, killed by his own hand. Vyuli, killed by Bayai as a proxy for Canima. Bayai... alive. His reputation stained in the eyes of Tanner and his men. His career, as it had been, completely over so long as she had a say. Once he'd sinned, there was no real going back to a position of trust. Just... degrees of distrust. Maybe she'd let him wander around. Maybe she'd give him comfort. Maybe she'd even assign low-level duties. But there'd be no conversations. And no command.

Wouldn't even trust him to be a footsoldier.

Bayai was already dealt with.

Marana remained. Marana, and...

...there weren't many of them left, now. No-one to report to. Just herself. Even the General was gone. As she emerged from the cells, she was met by her new priesthood. Blood-streaked bodyguards, wearing their gore like medals. Proof they'd been there at the end. Around their necks were strings of malformed teeth. Around their belts were strips of mottled, scaled skin. Crude drawings and words were scrawled into their armour and weapons by the digestive acids of uncounted mutants, from stomachs extracted and milked dry. Some were just symbols. Others were scrimshaw-esque drawings of monsters and statues.

And everywhere was the image of the axe.

They were silent. Didn't cluster around her. Just waited for her to move... then followed behind, at a respectful distance, their stained weaponry held up as if they expected an ambush in the heart of the bunker. A cloying loyalty in their eyes, a mad love for her, for what she represented to them. Realised some had tassels pinned beside the stripes which signified their ranks. Tassels she'd never seen before. Locks of black buffalo fur, pinned there by little pieces of bone. Maybe from her cape. Maybe not. But they were just more marks of ownership and devotion. If she told them to butcher everyone in this bunker, to execute Yan-Lam, to... she knew they'd do it. No matter what. Few orders were beyond them at this point.

She'd broken them down, and rebuilt them. Hadn't even realised she was doing it.

"Where's Marana."

Her voice was low and still. Too tired to be panicked. The soldiers immediately went ahead, forming a wall of stinking armour and putrid guns and dead, dead eyes. Marched ahead, leading her through the winding passages, towards a kind of infirmary. She saw the remnants of the war all around her. Scarred troops. Blood-stained bandages heaped up for burning. A soldier with his face covered completely in white strips of cloth, brown stains clawing at the edges. A sealed room, where she could barely see through a narrow grille a pile of armour. Leather coats that were slowly animating with slow, hungry life. Helmets crushed to the point of uselessness. Boots upon boots upon boots, gnawed at by the hungry earth of the last days. All of it stained with silver dust from the seal. Equipment too dangerous to wear. Too contaminated.

Marana lay on a stretcher.

Quietly reading a small book of poetry. Eyes sliding over the words like she wasn't actually processing any of them. Just distracting herself from the wounded on either side. To the left, a man wheezing through a gaping hole in his cheek, while his hands shook uncontrollably. To the right, another man with a hollow look about him, and a leg that stopped just above the knee. Both of them looked at Tanner as she approached with her entourage... and made a point of neatening themselves up. Smoothing their beds. Brushing down their fronts. Snapping off weary, feverish salutes.

Marana was silent. Too out of it to react. Bandages where she'd been burned getting Tanner out.

Tanner crouched down beside the bed.

Stared blankly.

Slowly, Marana's eyes slid over. Cloudy with exhaustion.

Her hair was a tangled mess, stained with sweat and dust, that clung around her face in helmet-crumpled waves. Her face was blotchy. Her nose was swollen. Her skin had the sickly brightness of the unwell, where it wasn't burgundy-red from alcohol. When she breathed, she did so through her mouth, through chapped lips that were very slightly parted.

"Hello, Marana."

Tanner spoke simply. Unsure of what to say.

"Afternoon, darling."

A pause.

"You look a little different."

"So do you."

Another pause. The soldiers were watching her intently. Tanner reached out, placed one enormous hand over Marana's feeble limb. Could feel how thin her bones were. How delicate her musculature was.

"Thank you."

Marana coughed, getting a bit of fire back into her spirit, a bit of life into her voice.

"Oh, think nothing of it. Felt like such a dead weight, you know. Sitting around, plump and plum-drunk, doing nothing of any value to anyone or anything. Just had to get in a uniform and try something. Think nothing of it."

She was shivering. Tanner had been immersed in the madness for days. She'd seen how bad it could get. The dead eyes of the soldiers around her was testament to what that scarlet world could do. Marana had gone from grey sterility to that without any build-up, any warnings, any time to acclimatise. Emerged at the worst possible moment, too. Witnessing the thing that had helped wage the Great War.

A synapse of the great mind.

Had... hold on. Had something. In her lap.

A lump of emerald matter. Burned and deadened until it seemed like nothing more than a smooth, contoured rock.

Tanner knew what it was, though. She knew that colour. Knew that shape. Marana glanced down.

"Oh. This thing. It was..."

A pause.

"Oh, it was quite a creature. Wasn't it? I mean. You destroyed it. I barely saw it. Just... startling, to witness. Almost makes my painting feel a little pointless. What with... things like that existing."

Her thin hands stroked it slightly, playing over the odd curves and corners.

"...and there you were. Burning in the middle. It was... twisting. The limbs were gone. It knew it was dying, I think. It was just... vomiting this liquid, thicker than blood, thicker than oil, clung to everything it touched. Burning all the while. The body was reshaping, sometimes a liquid, sometimes a solid... unfolding and refolding until you couldn't even remember what it looked like originally. No bones inside. No bones, no brain, no cells... it might've just been a rock. If it wasn't burning like candle wax. Huge droplets falling away, spraying this liquid... when the liquid burned, it stank-"

"Of liquorice. All-Name told me."

"Burned purple. Like nothing I've ever seen."

Her voice was far-away. Lost.

She knew what the liquid had been. The orders. The plans it had been embedded with. The creature had stopped being a living being a long, long time ago. Just a gland that regurgitated orders over and over again, spread them in the air, dug them into spines and nervous systems, catalysed and reproduced them... every mutant spreading the orders further, the orders ceasing once the reproductions became imperfect. Better to receive no orders than to receive bad orders. For the Great War's duration, a red mist must've blanketed the whole north. Burning with signals. A chain of connections leading back to...

To a brass city beside a lake of oil.

To a place where sewer-throats sang hymns to the burning sky.

Where the sea washed into great pulsing snail-structures, huge shells which drank the water and boiled it with the thrumming bodies of reactor-bees, turned it into howling steam that raced through the shell, spinning great membrane-wings that leaked fat blue sparks. Until they could feed the filament-vultures that soared nearby, heads replaced with tangles of cables, ready to convey power to the whirring factories beyond. Ready to-

"Cover it up."

Marana's hands immediately twitched, hiding it from Tanner's sight.

Didn't want to think about what she'd seen. Still barely understood it.

She'd seen all she could never know. Knowledge she could never share. Could never verify.

"...you're... well, then? You're not too injured?"

"You first, if you wouldn't mind."

Marana smiled faintly.

"Burns, they're saying. Painful. But I'm coping. Some abrasions, some lacerations... really, I've just been bumped about a little. But at my age, in my condition, one finds that bumps of any kind are just ... well, rather trying. You look positively peachy, though, my deliriously lovely goose."

Tanner didn't respond to that for a little while. Piecing together her thoughts.

"I'm fine. I'm... alive."

"All we can ask for at this point."

Her eyes sharpened.

"And the girl-"

"Pardoned. Dealt with. I'll want to see the body."

Marana grimaced.

"No such luck, I'm afraid. They cremated it immediately. Unsanitary to have a body lying around. Sorry I... couldn't stop her. I was just... the first thing I knew, there was a crash, and then everyone was running around like headless chickens, and Yan-Lam was standing in the prison block unlocking a door for herself, dropping a smoking revolver outside as she entered. Locked herself up and said she was going to wait for a judge. Tom-Tom was burned immediately afterwards."

Had she been drunk?

Had she been on some vile drug at the time?

Had she just not noticed, or had she been so blissed out on narcotics that she couldn't recognise when a child was preparing to steal to a gun and kill a prisoner? Tanner felt... oh, gods, what was she feeling? She was guilty to even think about this sort of thing. Yan-Lam had been on a direct course for Tom-Tom, she would've been careful, she would've been stealthy. Marana might not've been drunk out of her mind at the time. Marana had also saved her life... no, no, she'd saved her life after Yan-Lam had killed Tom-Tom. Old judging instincts were rising up. The timeline had formed. Yan-Lam had killed Tom-Tom. Afterwards, Marana suited up and ran into the madness to do whatever she could. Rescuing Tanner in the process. If... oh, gods, if Yan-Lam hadn't become a murderer, if Tom-Tom hadn't been involved in her father's death, Tanner would be dead. She'd have burned in the pyre of the synapse. Even if she hadn't died then, the injuries would demand more mutations, more changes. Years upon years of possible sanity and normality had been bought with the blood of a stupid, stupid criminal, killed by the hand of a child.

Sacrifice was all there was out in the north.

Giving things up to the hungry earth and hoping it vomited blessings in return. Had to chain it down to get it to do anything - and all the chains were gone. All they had left was bribery and hope. Her fists clenched around an imaginary axe. Her red-tinged hair fell in front of her face in long, tangled forelocks.

She couldn't ask Marana if she'd been drunk. Because it wouldn't be right. Because it didn't need to be asked. Because it wouldn't matter. The land had been offered another sacrifice, and she'd been spared from martyrdom.

Marana had bought her more life. Yan-Lam had bought her more years.

The loving eyes of the soldiers were all around her. They'd bought her more of this.

She smiled faintly.

"Thank you for saving me. Rest up."

"...what now?"

Tanner blinked.

"What now?"

Marana leaned forwards, eyes sparking with renewed energy. A need to talk, even as her hands shook with the effort of staying upright.

"What. Now. It's over, isn't it? The soldiers tell me it's over. The mutants are dead. All of them. Whatever was keeping them from killing each other is gone. The city's been saved. Hasn't it? So..."

Tanner was silent for a second. Putting together a diplomatic phrasing.

"All the other leaders of the colony are dead. When spring arrives, we can get back in contact with Fidelizh, and they can send another governor."

"Until then?"

Tanner didn't reply. She knew what Tanner had to do. Already she could feel her muscles (unnaturally fluid as they were) tightening, locking herself into place. Maybe she wouldn't need to sleep as much, now. That would be nice. Marana stared with wide eyes.

"...you can stop."

Tanner didn't say anything.

"You can stop. It's done. There are other people. Sersa Bayai, what about him? You like him, don't you? He can take over most things, and-"

She saw the venom in the eyes of the soldiers. Spiking through the dead layers that were occluding everything else about them. A flash of caution, and old fear. A flinch she might not have felt in years. Tanner gritted her teeth. Justifications were already on her tongue. This was necessary. The mutants were the largest test, yes, but there were still tensions to keep suppressed, still problems that needed to be faced. The winter had set in now, and for good. The snows that had fallen during the final battle wouldn't melt for months and months. The food would be strained. Their medical supplies would be depleted. Their fuel, needed to keep them alive in the shivering dark, would be pushed to the brink after so much was used to purge the mutants. Contamination would need to be survived, even as it clawed through the filters they set up to clear it. And people trapped in bunkers for months wouldn't be idle, they'd be downright active. How long until the first complaints? How long until the first questionings? Things could easily get incredibly ugly, she knew this was the case, and once the ugliness began, it wouldn't stop until either everyone was dead, the colony was in ruins, or she put an end to it all. Bayai couldn't do it. None of the other Sersas could. And that was it. No other grand authorities existed that people could place any trust in. What, would she sign things over to the traders and the factory owners? They'd been defanged for years, they could only make jabs at significance from time to time. Not ready for running anything larger than their pre-appointed kingdoms.

She had to remain in charge. The men were loyal to her. The colony feared her. There was no-one else.

This was what she'd been doing in the run-up to the mutants. This was her life now.

And maybe she wouldn't even be cursed by the need to sleep. Maybe she could remain awake until spring thawed them out. And then...

She'd reckon with the consequences then. But the notion of being alone in the dark for months, pondering on her own weakness, working through everything that had happened, it...

No.

Never.

It was the only thing she could do. Nothing else remained beyond it. Didn't she understand that there was no more choice in the matter? Her men wouldn't let her step down. They wouldn't accept anyone else. All the other alternatives were dead or useless. If she stepped down and surrendered power, she'd be surrendering it to committees, to the mob, and then she'd be forced to watch as it all went to hell, and she was forced to come back. She was just sparing everyone unnecessary pain.

There was no choice. She wished there was. But there wasn't.

Tanner Magg had to remain acting governor.

She opened her mouth-

Marana spoke first.

"If you must."

Her voice was quiet. Exhausted. Too tired to be either despairing or dramatic. Not even any poetry or pretentiousness. She was just... empty. Tanner's words died on her lips. So. That was it. That was the sole challenge she had to overcome. The sole opposition to her authority that might've meant a damn.

Question her.

Accuse her.

Tell her she was a tyrannical idiot who had no idea what she was doing. Tell her she'd bought loyalty through desperation. Once people had choice, they'd run away from her. Tell her that she should stop. But Marana was poring over her stone again. And Tanner honestly thought that even if Marana had opposed her more vocally... it wouldn't have mattered. Already her resolve had crystallised again. Back to normal. Tanner Magg had been acting governor since she'd taken power from Canima. Precedent was on her side. By all rights, she should be in charge. The war had rushed into and around her, had changed her irrevocably, had erased all true opposition. No-one had come out of that madness intact. She'd ruled once. She could keep going. When the battle came to an end, she'd been the last one standing.

By right of survival, she was in charge.

Her smile died. Her face was utterly flat.

Maybe she embraced the woman. Maybe she didn't, just confined herself to a squeeze of the hand. Maybe she didn't even manage that much.

But she left.

With each step, becoming more and more of a general, a governor, a captain. Stiffening her shoulders. Speaking quiet, gentle orders to those around her, orders responded to with snapped salutes and eager scurrying. Armour would be a wreck, but she wanted a dress. Some boots. Her axe. Life continued. The colony endured. The battle had ended, and she'd lived through it all. Lived to see the other side. There could've been a colony run by a bureaucratic old man, a brutal cartel-lord, a General living his last glories... a place run by military officers, criminals, factory owners, or simply whoever was strongest at the time. All these alternatives had flowered during the last battle. For a time, each and every last one had been plausible. Even likely. If a small girl hadn't murdered an older woman for an unpunished crime, and a middle-aged souse hadn't been deeply affected by her failure to stop this, then this alternative would've fallen with all the others. But it didn't.

There were countless paths to take. This was the one where she lived. And unless she wanted to find a bathroom and a razor blade, she had to keep going.

It was what was expected of her, a shadowy presence whispered over her shoulder. Not even sure what it was. Precedent, warm and reassuring. Momentum, inexorable and inevitable. Memory and Reputation, sitting like twin gargoyles on her shoulders, speaking of all she would be remembered for in the minds of others. Maybe even herself. Tanner Magg as a Fidelizhi goddess, riding on her own back and murmuring of what she should be, because this was what she was. A self-repeating circle of meaningless axioms that resolved into the command: keep going.

Her axe found her hand.

Heavy. Stripped of lacquer where contamination had seeped. Blade mottled and warped by intense heat, scarred with the remnants of blue flames. Seemed warm to the touch. And the loving gaze of Ms. Blue told her exactly why.

Guarded closer than the vein in her neck. And just as warm.

Tanner wandered off.

A great pale creature surrounded by adulatory blood-soaked priests.

And through a cloudy window... she could see nothing but a red, red sky.

Back to work.