CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED - VULTURE-GAZER'S WALL

The moment of sacrifice had arrived.

There was an austerity to the day, as it began. Tanner didn't sleep, of course. Just watched as the iron-coloured sun rose slowly and ponderously over the horizon, crawling across the sky and giving it the deathly pale illumination she'd come to be excessively familiar with. There'd been more snowfall in the night, and Tanner began to wonder if the snow would ever stop, if the ground could ever thaw. The frozen eyes of statues glared down at her, and she lifted herself slowly from her sofa, hunching over for a second as if in prayer. Seemed like the entire landscape was preparing itself for the sacrifice, turning the most flawless shade of white it could possibly muster, to more... properly highlight what she was about to do. Her eyes slowly slid over the ground, not quite seeing the matter before her. What was stone or wood or carpet when she could cease someone's entire existence with the swing of an axe - and within a few hours, would. She could destroy an entire world, really. Each person was a unique perspective on the world, and birthed a kind of... shivering aura of perception around themselves. Constructing a whole system to operate within, overlaying their beliefs, their priorities, their memories... to the Rekidans, the entire world was overlaid with such meanings, given life that, to Tanner, simply didn't exist. This life-of-the-world existed entirely in their minds, and each person incarnated it in a subtly different fashion.

When you killed someone, she thought, you killed the entire world as they saw it. And if the world existed solely through perception, you might as well have killed a whole world with a single blow. You broke their system, and no amount of psychology could bring it back. More than that - killing someone was publishing them. The final edition of their existence, no more amendments by the author, no more revisions, the only additions being added by later editors. And all the shadowy versions of themself that they'd created over the years... they became the only thing left, and began to live a life all of their own. Lyur would die by the end of today. And all that would remain would be a shadowy impression - terror, fear, hatred, curiosity, sombre recollection... she was killing Lyur, and in a way, she was expanding him. She was scattering these shadows over the whole world, and if people kept passing them along, kept remembering him and communicating those memories, he might live for... untold centuries longer than any human should be capable of. And in a way, she didn't think he'd mind that this was his final draft - if he was allowed to live longer, he'd just do exactly what he was already doing. The basic model was there, all that remained was to repeat it until... something like this happened.

Her eyes slid over towards the desk.

A long sheet of paper was there. Decorated with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny symbols scratched by her automatic quill. The device itself seemed... unpleasantly insect-like, perched as it was atop the smooth white surface of the execution order. She had laid out her findings. Most of them were true. She had confessions and testimony, she had references to other documents, and now... now, if she released this document, she had a time limit. Once the Rekidans were dead or insane, the game was over, and she'd won. Lyur's existence would be condensed down to the personal experience of those who'd known him, and the great sheaves of paper she'd put together to establish his guilt. Only one group of people could counter her. And most of them would be insane within... a few years, maybe. If not sooner. Thus were the rules of the game, and the players were herself, the Rekidans, and any future investigators. She lost if she confessed, the Rekidans lost if they confessed, both of them lost if either confessed, and the investigators won when someone else spilled the beans. No other paper trail existed that suggested he'd not been responsible, nothing save for the autopsy report, and that... that was vague, and easily compromised. Indeed, she already had a file of reports where the mortuary assistant had done a poor, incomplete, or simply inaccurate job, which she could use to discredit anyone who tried to bring up the governor's peculiar wounds. With a grimace, she reached to her side, and plucked up her axe...

With a handle wrapped over and over with the governor's finest scarf.

In a few days of constant work, it'd be unrecognisable. So tainted by contact and labour that... no-one would ever connect it to the governor's wardrobe. Another piece of evidence calmly extinguished. There were no leads left. None. The scarf suggested he'd been moved. Canima would never confess his own role, because it would invite destruction by the theurgists and their allies, it would ruin the governor's legacy - the one thing he had left to be truly loyal to. The autopsy report was easily discredited. Nothing else remained.

The game started when she planted this axe into Lyur, and the clock began. The game ended when both her and the Rekidans were dead, or incapable of speaking.

...right.

Alright.

She stood up, using the axe to support herself a little. The day had a glaring purity to it - no shadows in sight, not beneath the unyielding sun. No eating, obviously. Eating felt... impure, somehow. Most activities felt impure, simply because they were mundane - and by associating them with the sacrifice, she just... tainted both. The sacrifice became too ordinary, and the mundane became too murderous. The more she separated today from every other day, the more she could quarantine it. Same way that... soldiers wore uniforms and adopted new modes of speech and action during wartime. Became monstrous, then slipped back to normality once wartime had concluded. She'd heard of soldiers taking skulls from their enemies, making necklaces from teeth and belts studded with severed, dried ears. Judges had been called in to adjudicate, to figure out why it happened, and what punishment it warranted. Sister Halima had shown her the case file, once. An... indication of where things got complicated. What had been...

She could almost see Sister Halima standing before her now. No, she could. She could see her, real as anyone else, real as her axe. Staring down at her with placid acknowledgement - not acceptance, nor rejection, nor love, nor hate. Just... observed her.

And spoke in a voice that reminded her of the lapping of the tide against smooth stones.

The issue is one of cauterising. When you tell someone they can kill, you tell someone that humans have entered the category of animals. You kill animals, but the mind immediately revolts against killing humans. Now, under the Golden Law there ought to be no warfare at all, but in the meantime, our duty is to reckon up the numbers of the dead, the crimes committed during the conflict, the material expended and the material plundered... the grand tally which we preserve, deep in our archives. We only burn those notes when a state ceases to exist, and there's no-one left to punish. It's difficult work. No-one likes it when we do it, not when we tally up their crimes too. But one issue is - soldiers occupy a strange mental space when they kill others. They need to dehumanise the enemy, because otherwise they became either broken by the stress of war, or they become completely insane. You need them to slip from one mental state to another, from civilian to military, then back again. We used to be more strict with our conceptions of war crimes - but soldiers... they had difficulties with our notions.

You couldn't apply a civilian understanding to a military situation. You'd run out of paper describing all the crimes, after a while.

I've read of soldiers taking scalps. Teeth. Ears. Skulls. Fingers. Ribs. Scraps of uniforms and weaponry. All manner of souvenirs. We used to reckon this as a serious crime - desecration of the dead. But... they were operating to a different moral standard, Tanner. Very different. The enemy had to become an animal, because if they didn't, they were a human, and would you want someone like that to come home? Someone content with killing other, intelligent humans? Each scalp they took purified them, in a way. It was a coping mechanism. Turned them from soldiers into... war tourists collecting souvenirs. Turned them from serial killers into hunters, butchers, dispassionate and disconnected. And then, when you go back home... sometimes they'd experience tremendous shame at keeping such things. The mask was back on - they were civilised, and the illusion had snapped. But in the battlefield, it made the enemy easier to kill, easier to oppose. It estranged them, producing a category of people who could be fought without any moral qualms.

We... are more forgiving, these days. We understand that in wartime, things change.

Maybe you should take something from him. Make him an animal. Make yourself... just like you were in the fishery.

Absolve yourself of murder, by absolving him of humanity.

She already had a shrivelled black heart. She stared at the little thing, nestled in the palm of her hand. First-fruit, evidence of a kind of mastery. Lyur definitely thought of the person he'd taken this from... no, no, he hadn't thought of them as an animal. He'd known full well they were human. She was in the middle of a crisis, the coping mechanism was lying right in front of her. He was a rabid dog, barely human, she had to put him down like she would any slobbering, bloodshot animal. Could kill him without... no, no. That was a hideous way of thinking. Hideous. He was a human, just a monstrous one. She was a human, and she wasn't sure if the guilt she felt made her a better or worse person - she was going to do this anyway. Another mechanism emerged before her eyes. Sacrifice as a religious ritual. Conceive of it as... truly sating the thirst of the earth, feeding this cannibal country and cooling the fury which dwelled in it. That put reality, cruel and unforgiving, at a distance - swaddled it in layers of symbolism where the normal rules didn't apply. But... her mind, strange as it was becoming, couldn't quite accept that. She'd never been faithful enough to truly bind reality under layers of symbol, belief, rite... lodge hadn't managed to drill that into her, nor had anyone else.

Even the law had fractured. Her faith in it was basically gone, and with all of that banished...

All she had was herself. Lyur. The world, in all its blank strangeness.

She stood, the image of Halima gone. Leaving her to... dress, slowly and carefully, moving with stilted, excessively precise motions. Paying attention to each and every button. Making the world as strange as possible. Wouldn't make Lyur an animal, wouldn't make this an honorary act for a god, or the hungry soil... but she could at least make it distant. She splashed water over her face, let the droplets slowly trickle downwards, purifying her somewhat...

Then the buffalo pelt. Worn like armour.

The axe, hefted easily over her shoulder.

Sharp enough to do the job.

The automatic quill make an insectile clicking as she signed the writ of execution. The logic of the law flowed impeccably over the page, everything coming to a singular conclusion. Written according to the template she'd committed to memory a long, long time ago. She calmly folded it up, and placed it within a broader bundle, sealed between two layers of plain brown leather to shield it from the cold and the damp. Tied with a ceremonially dictated black ribbon. Ought to have a wax seal for it, but... she'd not brought one. Never expected to need it.

The redhead mutant padded down from her perch on an empty bookshelf, ruptured eyes staring up, reading Tanner's face for any sign of what was going to happen today.

"Sorry. Just humans today. No meal."

Not yet, the ruptured eyes seemed to say.

Fair enough.

Yan-Lam was at the door, waiting for her attentively, dressed in her best clothes. Her face twitched between eagerness and hesitation. Tanner didn't smile, just walked past. There were soldiers downstairs, who nodded to her coolly. Tanner raised an eyebrow at them - and they nodded again. He was ready. Ready for extraction from the cell, and removal to a public place. The colony had been told during the evening, the news had been leaked the usual way - soldiers talking in inns, innkeepers spreading the gossip to other patrons, the cartel spreading the news amongst themselves and outwards... at no point had she posted a single notice, yet the entire colony doubtless knew. Bayai strode out of a nearby room, his uniform a little neater than usual. Well, 'usual' meaning 'the last few days'. Beforehand he'd been rather tidy, so... return to form, more or less.

"Good morning, honoured judge."

He stepped a little closer, and Tanner stared at him dispassionately. All her feelings felt... slightly distant. Hard to even be awkward or nervous, just... all of that felt small.

"Feeling... alright?"

She shrugged vaguely.

"Let's get it over with."

Marana came downstairs in silence, dressed in a fairly neat fashion - goodness, everyone was trying to look their best. Lyur might be the worst-dressed person at his own execution. She nodded at Tanner, but said nothing, even as her eyes continually failed to meet Tanner's for longer than a second. They were doing the same as her. Separating this from normal life by any means necessary - be neat, be formal, be silent, be exquisite and deliberate. At no stage be normal, because that would just... well, you knew the world was breaking down when these sorts of standards slipped. When kings were put into power with a vague shrug of ambivalence, when politicians were sworn in in a matter of moments, when rites were conducted in a rushed fashion while no-one wore the right outfit, when executions happened quietly and without any preamble. The soldiers vanished from sight, leaving Bayai, Tanner, the mutant, Yan-Lam and Marana alone. Going for the cells. Tanner spoke quietly.

"Where are the others?"

"...Mr. Canima is already at the site. I believe the cartel will be assembling there as well. The... Kal you associate with, who made your protective equipment, she spent the night digging a grave. It's covered with a tarpaulin. You just need to execute him, tip him sideways, the tarp wraps around him, and we'll get to burying him. Keep things neat."

"The Rekidans?"

"They manage themselves, I doubt they'd listen if we handed them a schedule."

"Right. Right."

"...still certain you want to follow through?"

Tanner tapped the writ of execution tucked under her arm.

"Already signed it. Has to happen."

"Does the writ specify it's you doing the job?"

"No. But I'm still doing it."

For political reasons. For... personal reasons.

She'd already gone through the motions. The momentum at her back drove her onwards at this point - there was no stopping it, no turning back time to the second she'd decided to... to grasp the wheel of the colony and take control. Even if she could, she'd make the same decision. A series of reasonable choices leading here. She had to avoid war with the Rekidans, so she had to bring them into the fold, give them promises, give them a chance for one last burst of glory. To maximise their chances, she had to bring the theurgists in as well. For that, she had to seize control of the colony, because Canima would never provoke the theurgists so openly. And ultimately, she had to cover up the Rekidans' crime, while exerting her authority, while bringing together cartel, colonist, garrison and nobility into a single united force. For that, she needed to execute Lyur, and add one lie to a long list of his very real crimes.

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Reasonable choices at every stage.

And the weight of those reasonable choices propelled her towards the door... where the soldiers (wearing gas-masks, like some sort of ancient priesthood) were emerging, a prisoner held between them. Gagged. Watching her with quiet amusement.

Tanner didn't say anything.

Just kept walking out into the glare. All her companions around her.

Ms. Blue came trotting up loyally, saluting and clicking her heels sharply. Looked like she'd frozen half to death last night - and had enjoyed every last moment of digging that grave nonetheless. Tanner nodded to her, and kept walking. She'd come up and down this hill... a lot, really. Plenty of times. Sometimes she was terrified of the governor, or terrified of the colony, or just... terrified of her own position in the world. Now... now she saw the colony, and it seemed so terribly small. She still remembered walking away from the mansion while blearily worrying over how she'd go about getting complaints from various colonists, all that time ago. Now she was walking out as acting governor, with a buffalo-skin cape, an enormous axe, a mutant loping beside her heels, a soldier who adored her for reasons Tanner failed to fathom, a commander who obeyed her, a woman who'd perhaps started her down this road to begin with, a girl who was far too eager for revenge... and a man she was about to kill.

If the momentum behind her wasn't so constant, she might've dropped her axe and run off into the snow in a desperate bid for the riverside settlement. Grabbed Tom-Tom and contented herself with being one of a pair of cowards. Misery in company, and whatnot.

Anyway.

The Rekidans lined the sides of the road. Not organised militarily - just watching, usually from a safe distance, their malformed features hidden behind gas masks and other bits of gear worn to protect others from their influence. All-Name was the closest, and he waited beside... a tarp. And all around him were colonists, bouncers, Vyuli, Canima, soldiers, all dressed up, all waiting in silence. She saw innkeepers she recognised, saw the bruised faces of bouncers she'd brutalised, saw Dyen flinching from her gaze. Saw Tal-Sar, murmuring silently to himself. Saw Beldol, pale and nervous, yet strangely ravenous. Saw Mr. Supple, consciously avoiding looking at an increasingly amused Lyur. Saw the old man who guarded the cold-house and couldn't stop squinting. Saw the theurgists in their iron masks, Mr. Mask standing at their head with his eyes... strangely demure, as if the weight of the sacrifice was compelling obedience from him, too. And the General lurked atop a roof, staring down - positioned in such a way that the snow-filled eyes of a wall-statue were on either side, like moons orbiting the great deformity of his skull.

Marana behind her. Yan-Lam near her. Bayai. Ms. Blue. The mutant. Lyur.

Stage fright threatened to overpower her, just for a second.

Too many eyes.

Far too many eyes.

Canima and Vyuli stood at opposite poles of the circle which had formed. Neither even glanced at one another. Vyuli watched with a profound lack of passion, flinching under the glare of the sun after so long underground. Canima watched with dead, dead eyes. The General watched dimly from above, his red hair blowing like a war-banner.

Not sure if this resembled a mystery play, a collective ritual, a funeral, a political rally, a treaty signing...

She steeled herself. The tarpaulin in the centre resembled nothing more than a great prayer mat, some sort of old sacrificial platform. Separated from the ordinary world, to make the process of killing somehow meaningful.

The soldiers hauled Lyur forwards, and he moved in silence. A strange vitality seemed to charge his skin - the attention fuelled him, the deed emboldened him. The crowd seemed tense, packing themselves tightly into layers of formality, and all the excess energy flowed into Lyur. There was no death he'd prefer more than this. Centre of attention, killed by someone he'd... he'd planted poison inside. She still had the shrivelled black heart in her pocket, wrapped in cloth. Seemed to pulse softly in harmony with the breathing of the crowd. He was a mosquito, a tick, a bloating leech. Little pinpricks of red appeared in his cheeks, smarting in the cold, but it seemed like the blood was staring to exceed the capacity of his veins to contain, and soon he'd start to expand, to swell... his dark hair darkened yet further, his muscles seemed to strain at the contours of his clothes, and the gag seemed more necessary than ever - she didn't want to imagine how powerful his voice might have become. He knelt placidly on the tarpaulin, resting easily, and without discomfort. Looked like he was at prayer, or meditating, or somehow communing with something greater. An idol to an unknown god. And his eyes...

His eyes were dark pools of oil.

No humanity in them.

Yet a boundless age and depth which denied understanding or challenge.

Tanner stepped forwards, and licked her lips.

"Mr. Lyur, no last name recorded. For the deaths of Mr. Lam, Mr. Tyer. Kal Nayol of the colonial garrison, and the rightful governor, alongside the attempted murder of a judge on two separate occasions, resisting arrest, inciting the committing of further crimes by others, and numerous counts of assault, you are sentenced to death."

A pause. She could stop there.

No. No, keep going.

"The manner of death has been decided as execution via axe, according to the old traditions of Rekida. The judgement is witnessed by the greater population of the colonyMr. Canima of the Erlize, Sersa Bayai of the colonial garrison, representatives of the theurgists' guild, and All-Name of the Rekidan aristocracy, alongside the secondary victims of several of your crimes, Ms. Yan-Lam and Ms. Beldol."

No mention of Vyuli. He had no title she'd be willing to use here. And he was content with being ignored, almost vanishing completely into the crowd as they shuffled a little, keeping their legs warm. Tanner braced herself.

"Do you have any final words?"

And she quietly removed the gag. Because... no, letting him die in silence, it... it wasn't lawful, all criminals got last words, and... and if she wasn't going to be a stickler for doctrine, then she was just killing someone in the snow.

Lyur stared at her.

Licked his lips faintly.

And murmured, in a voice just soft enough for only her to hear...

"You look tired."

Tanner gritted her teeth.

She knew she was tired. But she didn't show it. That was what being a professional meant.

"Noted."

Lyur closed his mouth, and said no more.

Tanner braced her axe.

The eyes of the crowd were on her.

The edge of the axe was too... it was a ceremonial object, at its heart. Designed for the destruction of mutants - where too much blood was a very, very poor decision. Sharp enough to do a number of jobs, but... if she went for the neck, she knew what would happen. She'd get through most of it, but it might stick, and then she'd have to do it again, while Lyur went through a whole suite of death throes, spraying blood across the snow... satisfying the Rekidans, no doubt. But there was something unforgivably savage about that vision. Something which went a little beyond the pale. She reached out suddenly, and raised the gag over Lyur's eyes. A small, genuinely amused laugh passed his lips - surprised at the act of mercy, when he neither needed nor expected it. But it felt right. And she didn't want to stare into those dark pools.

She looked around, quickly.

A tiny part of her was screaming.

Someone, help me.

Someone, stop this from happening.

Someone.

Nothing.

She'd walked here. She'd demanded to be here. The momentum at her back was inexorable, it flowed through her muscles and coiled around her bones, it was precedent so powerful and so absolute that it practically became the future of its own accord, the weight of the past impressing itself on the present, launching itself into the future. The General nodded gravely, no smile on his face. All-Name had his eyes down on the ground, murmuring a small prayer to the earth, to the furious world that demanded sating. Tal-Sar's murmurs blended with his own, the syntax a little more simple, the pronunciation subtly different. A slave's prayer, and a noble's prayer, merging into an intoxicating fugue. The colonists seemed to fade into a vague mist of coats and scarves, like strange cloth-clad cairns amidst the wastes. The mutants set up a low thump-thump of their fists against the ground, pounding out a primal rhythm. Canima's eyes flashed with naked fury, glaring down at Lyur. Vyuli was impassive. The theurgists bowed their heads and averted their eyes.

Marana was watching her.

Help me.

Tanner's face was utterly flat with panic. It communicated nothing. Just as it always had. And Marana stared back, something between shame and terror on her face.

Yan-Lam was almost drooling with anticipation, clutching her skirts and kneading them ferociously, a tiny parody of Tanner's own actions. Beldol's face was streaked with sweat, glittering like crystals as they froze on her face. Ms. Blue was fighting back a loyal smile. The mutant was simply waiting, watching with bored detachment, seeing nothing that wasn't akin to what she saw every day. Bayai... Bayai passed a hand over his forehead, and refused to look away. The soldiers were bristling, Tanner could almost imagine them starting to shed bullets from their pores, to leak gunpowder between their teeth, to boil from the inside out with martial fury. The bouncers began to let their guard down, removing their tribal loyalty to one another, replaced by... by old grudges, which spilled around her like the black web of witchcraft the lodge had always taught her to fear. They hated Lyur. Hard to imagine anyone liking him.

He was surrounded by enemies, yet his placid calm endured.

The land was hungry. The snowy ground was eager to be fed.

Her axe braced. Her muscles flexed.

Lyur smiled.

He wanted this.

Her mind screamed again.

Help me.

But precedent was already moving her.

The axe swung.

Tanner refused to blink.

The force behind the blow... there was no way he could survive. He was dead the moment her swing stopped. The blade had struck him in the forehead. A great metal comet plunging into the smooth white flesh of his brow. The only response from Lyur was a clench in his fists... and a shudder of bloody breath from his lips. Tanner stared. She'd sliced through it all. The blade was too large - it had gone through the front of his skull, sliced through his brain, cleaved through most of the rest, even managed to bisect his lips and create a bloody cleft in his chin. His face was grey immediately after impact, blood flowing too freely. She'd... crushed his teeth, she'd split his nose, she'd divided his face nearly perfectly in two. Could see the grey-pink hemispheres of his brain, steaming in the intense cold. His eyes were hidden, strange dignity afforded to the scene by it - no rolling back, no bulging in terror, no squinting in pain. He seemed to die expressionless. Tanner stared. Gods. The chasm went almost to the back of the skull itself, and if she pushed a little further, she could unfold it all like a book. Blood began to flow from either side of the canyon she'd made, easing down the elaborate carvings of the axe. She could hear the General leaning forwards in interest, watching as the earth was fed. Two long, thick ropes of dark blood poured from either side, easing down his face like trails of tears, heading for the ground... where they steamed in the snow and threw up a great scent of copper and warmth, like they were standing by a great furnace.

Tanner's hands were too tense to shake. That was the only reason she still held the axe.

His tongue slipped from the ruined mass of his lips. Purple and swollen, barely hanging together, almost leering at her from the mass of teeth, meat, bone... could swear she heard connective tissue snapping like violin strings, the whole delicate arrangement of the human body coming apart. His heart was beating sluggishly, not quite aware that the brain was dead, moving on instinct. Sluggish pulses of blood moving to the surface. She tried to move the axe...

Could feel metal grinding against bone. Could feel the hollow space of the throat. Could feel the patterns of the vertebrae, the coiling cables of the spinal column. The spongy masses of fat around the jowls that gleamed yellow-white in the iron-light of the sun. The thin trails of hair that drooped around him, framing his face and sending more tiny, finger-like trails of blood down the sides of the cheeks.

The crowd was silent.

With a yank, she removed it, suppressing the spasms in her stomach.

The body fell sideways.

Caught the tarpaulin.

Fell into the grave, wrapping itself up as it went with its own momentum. Creating a funeral shroud for itself.

A thump of meat hitting frozen earth, solid as stone, unyielding as diamond.

Bayai moved forwards immediately, shovel in hand. And spoke to the crowd, voice shaking ever-so-slightly.

"It's done."

The crowd seemed unable to quite believe it.

They stared at Tanner. There was something in their expressions. Hatred? Fear?

Something else? Ms. Blue looked as nakedly adoring as ever, Yan-Lam was staring insatiably at the body in the pit, her face utterly drained of colour and standing out sharply against her red hair. Canima stalked forwards, a shovel in his hand. Vyuli approached from the opposite direction, joints cracking in the cold. The General hopped lazily down. All the great forces, ready to bury a symbol of their compact. Vengeance for the governor. Absolution for the cartel. Concealment for the Rekidans. In that grave lay every reason to cooperate.

She felt her skin crawling, as she rested on the axe. The blood flowed down the head, spread over the ground like a stylised star, and she stared at it, faintly hypnotised for a second.

The crowd was still watching in silence. Applause wouldn't be appropriate, not at all. But... there was something... something reverent in how they stared.

Like they were reassessing her. Placing her into a new rank in the hierarchy of beings.

Tanner's vision swam.

And she could swear... she could swear the sun had turned... turned a shade of blood red.

Looming over the horizon and staining the sky with long, flowing, spectral tendrils, like the wafting edge of an aurora. Yet the snow remained flawlessly pale, and devoid of all shadows. Only the sky was stained. Despite the early hour, she could see stars - burning like candles, burning orange and red and yellow, moving faster than they should. She glanced around. The crowd was pale-faced. Their eyes seemed drained of colour. Their clothes seemed to drift from her perception, turning into only vague hints of colour, smears around alabaster forms. Pale bodies. Pale snow. A blood-red sky full of blood-red stars, and a tiny pattern of blood lingering where her axe now rested.

The mutant didn't even sniff at Lyur.

So utterly human that she had no interest in his flesh, nor his blood.

A long, shuddering breath left her lips...

And, as the rites demanded, she reached into her pocket and retrieved a tiny, dusty box. One that she'd brought all the way from Fidelizh, and had never yet used. Nothing had been solved, after all. Nothing had demanded its use until today.

It was a box of ceremonial sweets. Tacky to the touch, swirls of red and white that glistened with sugar, nestled in tiny compartments. They were designed to be chewed and mulled over, complimented with the same phrases each and every time. It... diffused the grudge of a trial. By consuming it, the plaintiff and the defendant agreed that all was settled, the judgement was accepted, and all business was concluded. They may go forth in peace, content with whatever had been allocated to them, be it punishment or reward. But for executions...

She tossed one of the sweets into the grave, alongside the first hails of earth.

Passed out the others. The General swallowed his without a word, unfamiliar with her traditions.

Canima chewed it, and muttered:

"The taste is pleasing, the texture is delicate."

Vyuli chewed his own, croaking out around the pants of exertion from filling in the grave.

"The colour is most appealing, the flavour is refined."

Bayai chewed, and spoke softly, moving with grace and ease only surpassed by the General's mutated form.

"The packaging is tasteful, the pattern is harmonious."

And Tanner chewed.

Spoke quietly, beneath a blood-red sky only she could see.

"The matter is ended."

There were no more sweets left. Or she'd have given them to Beldol. To Yan-Lam. To all others wronged. Not enough. Something portentous in that - this was it. This was the last peace she could formally declare, the last judgement she could, with all the necessary rites, issue to the world. The black roll of papers was still under her arm, containing the writ. All-Name abruptly appeared at her side, removing a rag from his pocket, before bending to clean the axe blade of blood and... matter. Tiny splinters of bone, hair-thin whispers of muscle fibre, anonymous chunks of something or another that was never meant to see the light of day. The sacrifice was done.

Oh, gods...

The momentum had propelled her right over the edge. Nothing lay in front of her that she could predict. All that lay behind her only served to drive her onwards, faster, faster, faster.

Towards what?

...maybe towards nothing.

But... nothing could be the same after this. She'd changed. No blood on her hands, but she felt it staining her nonetheless. She stepped away from the grave and allowed it to be filled, resting all the while on the axe, not sure if she could stand up if she let it go. Her face was absolutely flat. Her eyes were completely still. Her breathing was regular, and her muscles were tensed until they couldn't shiver against the cold. The black buffalo cloak waved loosely around her shoulders.

The mutant girl sniffed at the air, and shifted uncomfortably, looking towards the walls of the city...

They were close.

The mutants were close indeed.

No more preparations remained. The sacrifice had occurred. The defences were ready. The bunkers had been stocked. And she'd made her plans with the theurgists, arranged everything to the best of her ability. The people of the colony were staring at her with a type of reverence she... never wanted to see. And shovel by shovel, they erased Lyur from the face of the earth. Fed him to the hungry grave-mouth of the land, to satisfy its hunger and... presumably do something. The mutants were coming, maybe they were riding over the horizon even now. The sky, no matter how often she blinked, refused to turn back to the pale grey of the last few days - it remained red, and the sun remained vast and hazy, surrounded by a great aurora of red and orange. Larana was staring at Tanner, and it seemed like she was the only one not looking on with reverence.

She just looked... like she'd seen this all before.

And hoped she'd never see it again.

Tanner let out another sigh, and her breath fogged up in front of her face, mingling with the last of the steam from Lyur's dying body.

He was right. She was tired.

...not sure how long she had before something snapped for good. Something more than a restraint. Her voice emerged, but it didn't seem quite her own, seemed to echo from a great distance.

"Come on. Once the body's buried, we're starting the evacuation proper. Soldiers, you move the last prisoner into the city. Theurgists, once everything's primed, you can evacuate. Mr. Vyuli, take your men and deploy the last few explosives in the tunnels, don't give them a route inside. Mr. Canima, I suggest you evacuate with the others - head to the same bunker as me. General, I'll keep All-Name with me, in case I need to communicate with you - translate that for me, incidentally. Everyone else, follow the lead of the garrison, proceed in a calm and orderly fashion to your assigned bunkers, bringing only what you truly cannot do without. There's enough food for everyone. Sersa?"

The man nodded quickly.

"Understood, honoured judge. Right away."

Didn't like the look of obedience in his eyes. Didn't like it one little bit.

"You, over here."

Tanner gestured vaguely at Ms. Blue, and stalked off. The woman practically vibrated out of her skin from enthusiasm, and trotted after her. The mutant was close behind. Yan-Lam followed without question, her eyes gleaming with strange lights. Larana hesitantly accompanied the group, shivering without any sign of ceasing. All-Name communicated with his general, and slipped off after the group, head held high and face only slightly paler than usual, still shining with uncounted scars. As she walked, she talked, moving quickly to force her muscles to rely on their instincts, rather than conscious thought.

"Kal, I need you to do two things. First, retrieve my protective gear - if any is still functional. Second, have you got the list?"

"Right here. All the traitors who were going to work with the business owners."

"Marana, take the list you made, go and tell the owners to meet me in the city. Take that list to Bayai - get him to reassign units. All but... five on that list, they're guarding the bunker I'm in, along with the rest of the factory owners."

"Why those five, ma'am?"

"Not hogging more than we need. That should fill out the complement we were meant to receive."

"...they're traitors, ma'am."

"They're afraid. And if they're going to stay afraid, then I want them nearby, where I can keep an eye on them."

Weaponise the reverence in their eyes. Use it to bind them all into general compliance. If she had time, she might do something more cunning, but... this worked. In the end, they weren't running from the colony, they weren't actively betraying anyone, just needed... reinforcement. She paused suddenly, and sagged against the wall of one of the houses. Ms. Blue was immediately at her side, leaning in, eyes wide with concern.

Tanner shook her head, shooing her away.

Not sure if she was going to vomit because of the violence, or because of the decontamination working through her system. Wouldn't know until she saw the colour. Ms. Blue hesitated... but another curt gesture sent her scurrying away, glancing over her shoulder as she went, still worried for... no idea what place Tanner had in her life, but it was clearly a large one. Marana patted her back gently, the touch barely detectable through the layers of fur.

Tanner swallowed.

...still not sure.

Right. Come on. Stomach had settled enough.

Off to the city.

Off to the bunkers.

Marching beneath a red, red sun.