CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE - STORM-TOSSED ORACLE, BLOOD-CLOAKED GIANT

Once upon a time, there were fissures in the earth where men and women inhaled pungent fumes from the deeper places of the world, the accumulative bedrock that all things sank down to and congealed within, pressing tighter and tighter, closer and closer until the bones of the old become sludge and stone, living things turned to rock, and gases could emerge which had strange properties. People would waste away above them, inhaling until the bones in their noses eroded away, and their throats grew so charred and malformed that they could only write their findings. Tongues like salted leeches. Mouths like tar pits. Eyes swollen with cataracts. The lodge in Jovan said that such beings were mad. Inhaling contamination, and convincing themselves that the vagaries of a decaying, mutating mind were something more meaningful. Telling everyone that the slavering, rabid forms of their older members were... simply the results of too much bountiful knowledge. When the old Jovanites came, armed with spears of bronze mounted on hafts six forearms in length, they threw them into the fissures, sealed them up with bitumen and concrete reinforced with lambs blood. The lodge said that this was why proper attention was horizontal. Look to the sky, see pointless spots of light, see the malign influence of wandering stars. Look to the earth, hear the whisperings of the sinking oracles, slowly swimming down to join the accumulative bedrock of the world, to the source of the underground rivers. Look horizontal, look upon the lodge, look upon its members, look upon the rites and the mystery plays.

And learn that to look elsewhere was to be condemned to either vulture-sky or jackal-stone.

Tanner had been made to act the role of the whispering oracle whenever they did that mystery play. Which meant get poked with an enormous stick until she shambled away gratefully from the raised dais in the lodge-house.

This felt similar. The stage fright. The profound uncertainty. The looming realisation that she had no idea what she was doing, and all she could rely on were expectations she increasingly found hard to rationalise. And, yes, the steam. The lingering air of unreality.

And a shadowy figure staring at her through the haze.

An idle thought occurred to her - that crane. The snow crane which endured here, despite the winter, despite the calls to migrate to warmer places. This steaming fissure... were there others? If there were, did the cranes use them to stay warm? Had some decided to stay here rather than make the dangerous journey south? Maybe. Maybe. Theory for now.

She shivered, and drew herself up to her knees, ignoring the dampness of the grass, the stains from the mud that would take an unreasonable amount of scrubbing to remove from her skirt. Defrosting herself. She was a wreck - her wrists were half-flayed, and bleeding openly now that her body was warming back up. Her arm still had a gash along it, and was completely bare - no idea how much damage had been done. Couldn't stop shivering. Her body was inching its way back to life, but... something had been left behind. She felt hollowed out, a pit in her stomach refused to fill back in. Her skin felt tight, unpleasantly so. She clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering, and... with some difficulty, removed her shoes. Priorities. Priorities. First, save her feet from frostbite. Then, talk to the woman who shouldn't be here. One thing at a time, she was still dealing with the cartel and Lyur, both of whom occupied quite a bit of her mind. Took more time than she wanted to admit to get the boots off, had to basically claw them free, the leather sticking adamantly in place. Could feel melting snow sloshing around inside them, and her fear spiked. Didn't want to lose her toes, didn't... alright, alright, calm down, use her fingers, not her palms like she'd become accustomed to. She had dexterity again, remember that. No matter what the shivering told her, the fast pounding of her heart, the feeling of something being torn out of her... right. Right. Socks. Had to peel them off like a second skin, and she was terrified of tearing her flesh, finding that the two had fused together with the cold... no, no, even the ambient warmth of the vent was enough to prevent that. But even so. Boots off, socks off, bring her feet closer to the vent.

Still numb. But sometimes she felt a twitch of sensation.

The fused-finger woman spoke, her voice strangely contorted.

"Need... to dry them. Wet feet freeze, blood inside freezes. No way to keep it moving."

Tanner flinched from the sound, and... well, she was around steam, not exactly easy to dry things in these conditions. Contented herself with just opening the boots up, getting some air inside, pouring any water free. Socks... socks had to be... wait, if she could just build a fire, maybe she could... no wood, this place was devoid of it, no guarantee it'd be dry, and her matches were all but spent, she had-

"Horn. With you."

Tanner twitched once again, the voice jarring some nerves that had somehow remained unjarred until now. Horn? What did... oh. Oh. There was... she'd heard about this, once. Maybe. In an old book. An old way of keeping fires burning. The fused-finger woman must've brought it along. It was a buffalo horn, large and black as pitch. And inside was a small fire. Ashes first, then coals on top, then more ashes still. Smelled potently of rotten eggs, and trails of ash, like fingers of frost, made their meandering way around the immaculate black surface. She touched it gently... warm. Very warm. But not too warm to touch - the ashes kept the horn from burning, kept air from the coals so they wouldn't burn up. Seemed a good way to keep a mobile source of heat. Right, she remembered where she'd heard about this - Annals of Tenk. That stupid old theatrophone play about the burly man and his unreasonable adventures. Must've been... Tenk and the Lascivious Lizardwomen of the Laklarian Jungle. Mentioned something about carrying fire in a horn. Gods, that... she hadn't listened to that since Fidelizh, which felt like years ago. Either way. Took the horn, and wrapped her socks around it, watching as they slowly steamed.

The fused-finger woman stared at her.

And Tanner, with all other business concluded, had nothing to do but stare back, and wonder how the hell she;d gotten here. It made no sense, she had no reason to be here, she had no way of being here. The mutant-hunters had gone down a different part of the river, they were going further north to burn the mutants by their hundreds, why was she here? And more importantly, how had she survived? The woman grunted.

"Tough bitch, aren't you?"

Tanner didn't reply for a moment. Just stared into the steam, trying to muster the words. Honestly hadn't expected to say another word to another soul once she entered the ice field. Hard to get used to the idea again. To think about her life as something measured in years, rather than hours. No, no, don't be delusionally optimistic. Measure her life in days, that was probably more accurate. Still, that was quite a few hours. Rather a few more than she'd expected to be her allotment.

"How long... out there?"

"I don't know. Few hours. Maybe. Hard to tell."

She took a deep breath - don't be so staccato with her sentences, made her sound like a brute who could barely string a few words together. Like Tenk, and she was not a Tenk. Definitely a Princess Yallerilli, if anything. Well, no, try not to be presumptuous, Yallerilli was a fascinating character with nuance and sophistication and an exceedingly good actress. Very husky voice. For crying out loud, stop thinking about the bloody Annals, think about... conspiracies, mysteries, murders, a knife coming closer to her arm, dark eyes in bone-filled tunnels, the cold, the cold...

She permitted herself to think about Tenk. Just this once.

"All your toes look intact. Good job. Most people would've lost a few."

Tanner smiled very wearily indeed. Hooray.

"Thank you for saving me."

"Hm?"

"You... dragged me here, didn't you? I think I remember-"

"Nah."

Tanner blinked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Fuck are you sorry for, big lady. Snow made you weird. Know that cold makes some people undress? Get naked 'cause they go crazy? Don't be trying that around me. I won't enjoy it. Married woman. Used to be."

A sigh.

"Will be again. Soon."

Right. Right. The ring around her neck. Conscription in the Great War went from young men, to old men, to any man with hands, to the widowed women, to the unmarried women, to any of the women with functional fingers. Managed to win the war before they had to start putting the children into uniforms. Well. In most cities. Doubted Rekida had much choice in the matter, now she came to think about it.

"So... hold on, if you... how did I get here?"

"Smelled ash, was curious. Walked out, found you lying just over that... hill right there. Had a horn in your hand and all."

"It's not yours?"

"Don't need it."

"But-"

"I don't know what happened. If it ain't yours, it ain't mine, then it's someone else's. And I don't know who. You're alive. Be happy about that. Most people wouldn't be so lucky."

She tried... tried to remember. Red, she remembered red, and... scars, maybe? Her mind had been fuzzy, she'd been hallucinating, she... was that shadow real? Something vast and shapeless on the horizon, clawing its way out of the sun like it was a huge, burning birth canal...

Didn't know.

She shivered a little more than she already was, and hesitantly brushed some soaked strands of hair out of her face. The fused-finger woman was still staring at her in silence, waiting for her to speak. Just... set that aside for now. Two mysteries to deal with. The cartel had been involved with Tyer and Lam and the soldier. With Myunhen and Dyen and all the rest. A whole suite of lesser mysteries dealt with. Lyur was a lunatic who'd deliberately botched operations, allowed an incompetent and inexperienced individual to manage them in the worst fashion possible, simply... what, for sport? Another shiver. Didn't understand him, viscerally didn't. Academically, she could place him into the category of 'mentally deranged', but that was just... it was like taking an unknown and incomprehensible species, placing it in a perfectly square box, and saying 'this species is perfectly square, made of wood, and has a latch on the front'. Mentally deranged felt... accurate, but insufficient. It was a box that she understood. But she could hear the real creature rattling around within, slithering and wriggling. Resisting understanding. But... the governor. He hadn't mentioned killing him. The cartel denied responsibility. And now she'd been rescued from certain death by a figure that had... just vanished.

Idly, she imagined Lyur standing over her in the snow, shrugging, going 'well, this would be a disappointing conclusion to this story', and handing her that burning horn. Just so there could be another episode, another encounter.

Renewing the theatrophone play Tanner Magg and the Midwinter Massacre for another series.

Plus the mutants, of course. The mutants huddled in the city, regarding the presence of violent humans as somehow preferable. And now the fused-finger woman, and... oh, for crying out loud, she was freezing, she was tired, she was wounded, she'd almost died, she didn't care.

"What's your name? I never asked."

"...didn't you?"

A pause.

"Hm. Suppose you didn't. Rude. Well, big lady-"

"Tanner."

"Big lady. I'm Lantha."

"...you're not Fidelizhi?"

"Apo. Born and raised."

Tanner almost reached out to shake her hand on instinct, but... hesitated. Just for a second. The fused... Lantha moved suddenly, straightening up, and Tanner blinked in surprise. She was tall. Taller than Tanner remembered. Maybe the steam was exaggerating things, but... again. Hell. She was tired and almost dead. Much of her tact was gone, at least for the next hour or so. After that she'd be forgetting to ask people's names and would be intensely uncomfortable when talking about people's romantic lives, same as usual. Might as well enjoy her hypothermic honeymoon from her habitual... uh... hermit-ness? No, no... damn, couldn't think of something that started with h that meant 'painfully awkward and uncomfortable and just wretched'. No time like the present, in short. She rose uncertainly to her feet, and Lantha actually flinched backwards for a moment.

Tanner stepped forward. Around the fissure, through the thick, warm mud, a burning horn in her hand.

The woman hissed.

"Stay back."

Tanner blinked. Tilted her head to one side.

"Is something wrong?"

"Stay back. Don't look at me."

Tanner paused... and sniffed.

The steam had been obscuring it. The cold that had devoured most of her senses over the last few hours had contributed, too. But now... now she was just a little closer, a few steps, she could catch a hint. Weak. But unmistakeable.

A fizzing in her nose, like sparkling wine. Cloying, like old syrup. Something stirred in her. Something evolutionary.

The smell of contamination tended to provoke that in the uncontaminated.

She retreated immediately, backing around the fissure, pausing only when she felt the biting chill that lay beyond this vaporous shelter. The world beyond this place was still bitterly cold, bitterly cold, cold enough to kill her, and she hadn't even put her boots back on. Her body warred between two instincts. An evolutionary wail to flee. And the hollow pit, the tightening skin, the endless shivering... slowly, she came closer to the fissure, and stood uncertainly on legs that felt almost too weak to hold her up for long, shivering like a leaf, holding her burning horn and... just waiting. Watched as moisture evaporated from her socks, her from her shoes. Once they were dry, maybe she could hazard a journey back. Maybe. If she had a source of constant warmth, she might be able to make it. And the survival instincts lurking inside every one of her organs, every corner of her mind, every chamber of her rapidly beating heart... all of them were demanding for her to take that chance.

Mutant.

Mutant.

"...well, this is why you bring perfume when you go hunting mutants, huh?"

A low, throaty chuckle. Maybe... maybe she was just... back when Tanner had first met her, she'd had half her face wrapped in bandages oozing with antiseptic, probably from where deformations had been amputated to save her from losing her mind to mutation. But her flesh was mottled. Her fingers were fused. Her eyes were on the verge of rupturing. She was a terminal case, given a choice between dying in the field of battle against her old enemy, against those who'd planted fatal poison in her... or dying in an asylum, going slowly mad until they sent in men with gas masks to put a bolt through her head. Burn the body for the safety of others.

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"You think I'm joking. We do that. One of us did. Yeresei, that old sponge... Tuz-Drakkati, lived by the sea, lots of whaling. Had herself enough ambergris to drown in. Kept dousing herself in perfume, stopped her stinking of gunpowder and sweat. Stopped us smelling her when she started to rot, too Didn't even die of mutation. Gangrene, believe it or not. Still. Perfume helped us out. Stopped us wrinkling our noses so much."

A long, rattling series of coughs... and a hack of the throat, like she was coughing up something solid... rapid, unpleasant, bloody coughs. One sign of contamination. The body starts to rationalise itself, purges unneeded matter, forces the body to expel it. Bad sign. Meant there was a plan, the contamination wasn't figuring things out any more, now it was just working towards a goal. Meant protracted, continuous exposure, often from a single source.

Bad, bad, bad...

This entire day was just out of the frying pan, into the fire... into the oven... into the boiling oil... into the detonating theurgic engine...

"...you can sit down. I'm talking, aren't I? Not something proper mutants do."

"But you're-"

"Mutated. Definitely."

Explained how she survived the cold. The journey. Had she...

"Did they kick you off the boat?"

The words exploded from her mouth, and she instinctively wanted to clap a hand over the offending organ. Damn shivers, damn cold, damn terror. Restraint had to be restored, just... just let her inch away from death's door, and she'd be fine. Oh, gods, she'd already planted another bad impression...

"No. Didn't."

The words were curt and snapped. A second passed, filled with nothing but hissing steam and a hacking cough.

"Sit. Making me nervous."

"I'd rather-"

Her knees wobbled alarmingly, and Tanner sat down once more, kneeling and taking deep breaths to steady her mind. Wading through snow, it felt easy at first, but it added up. Just shifting powder, but... more than one generally shifted when they moved. Crystal by crystal, wearing her down, sapping her energy...

"What happened?"

Silence for a long few moments.

"Ms. Lantha?"

"Don't... want to talk much about it."

A pause.

"They're all dead."

Tanner froze.

"Excuse me?"

"They're all dead. All of them. Captain Kralana, all the rest. All my girls."

There was no sob in her voice, nothing but a hollowness. Not a wound - an amputation, scarred over and 'healed'. She wasn't bleeding, but she was lacking. And that lack echoed in the low, solemn tones of her voice. Tanner stared into the steam, at the vague shadow of the woman, as she ran a mangled hand through her hair, slicking it back with the warm moisture issuing perpetually upwards. Wondered what she looked like. How far she'd changed. How much you could change before it seeped into the brain, if it was possible for someone to become truly, unrecognisably monstrous while still having sparks of human intelligence, of a soul buried deep under the layers of deformation...

"Too many of them. Too many. Far too many. Smart. Smarter than..."

She trailed off.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't... no fucking pity, none. Do not pity us."

Her voice descended to a snarl for a moment... then hesitated, coughed up more matter, returned to the earlier volume.

"They're all dead. All of them. We were overrun. You never... the stupid mutants, the slow mutants, we kill them, kill them by the thousand, gut them, hang them up, use them to lure in more, then burn... burns rainbow-like, all shimmering... we turn rivers into arteries. But they... the smart mutants, the clever ones, they don't... they don't charge at you. They don't just move in hordes. Even in the war, didn't... move that way, they come in the night, they come in silence, they never roar, never made a sound..."

Another shuddering breath.

"There's... there's no hope. They kill. They move on. Don't even eat us, can keep the hunger down until they're safe. No distraction works. Pike you in the spine, back of the neck... paralyse you, leave you on the ground, come back later. Always efficient. Always... always... one, one, it looked... like this owl, just like an owl, nothing strange, but then... it's not... if you see an owl, just run from it. Not an owl. Just matter inside bone-feathers. Liquified itself, squeezed through the vents, just this mass of... mass of guts and stomachs and fangs, cutting away through the metal with feathers sharper than knives, and when we found it, when... when we found it, it burned, just... burned, and didn't die, burned with purple fire... too hot to touch, too bright, never made a sound, just ripped through the ship, found the core, burned it, hurt it, mutants never go for the core. Too hot, nothing to eat, but this one didn't care, melted it all, then rebuilt itself, moved... we had to run from the ship, had to run, it was... it would've exploded, had to run..."

She seemed to be rocking back and forth. She'd... she'd seemed almost normal, when Tanner had first woken up. And now... was... Tanner didn't understand, why would they attack? The smart mutants didn't attack the hunters, the captain said as much. They weren't going to waste themselves on a suicide mission, weren't going to risk other mutants exploiting their weaknesses, their wounds. A single injury, and the scent would reach other smart mutants, draw them in for the kill. Why would they suddenly change?

"I need to get to the colony. They w-won't let me inside, not like this, would kill me on s-sight. Take me. Please. Been... waiting, waiting for someone, someone who could take me in, but…"

A shiver.

"They'd kill me. If I go alone, they'll kill me. No-one leaves but soldiers."

"When did you arrive?"

"Don't know. Don't sleep. Days blend together. Heat is... nice, heat helps me remember. I used to need it. I used to need this sort of thing to survive. If I go in the cold, harder to remember, keep... slipping..."

She paused, and let out a long, strangled moan from her throat, and Tanner felt another rush of fear, watched as the dryness was still spreading across her footwear... come on, once it was dry, she had options, she had-

"Why do you want the colony, if they'd..."

Kill you on sight for being a mutant. Because you still had thoughts, they'd shoot you in the head before burning you. Mercy for the mind, none for the body.

"Need to... tell them, tell them what happened, you don't..."

She paused, struggling to put words together.

"You don't... know what's coming."

Tanner felt something start to crawl up her spine.

"What is it? What's coming?"

What more could be sent to this colony, what... no. No.

"They're coming. The... the things that killed us. All of us. They didn't do it for fun. Didn't do it for food. Did it because we could kill him. We were trained to hunt them, butcher them. We had fire, we had guns, we had all the tools... gone. Burned. Detonated. Our ship's gone. Rivers are frozen, no more coming, not till Spring."

A pause.

"You're alone. We're all alone. They're coming for us. Just like in the war."

Tanner's voice was very small indeed.

"How... how many?"

"Don't know. Enough."

"When will-"

"Don't know. Not here yet. Waiting. Planning."

A sudden thought entered Tanner's mind. A sudden... no, no, impossible. But things were clicking. Things she'd overlooked because they were so beyond her current remit, her case, her investigation. The murders seemed unrelated, and all she cared for were the murders. But there'd been signs. Higher-than-usual contamination in the air, as if something was coming, something that breathed contamination, that bled it, wept it, were fuelled by it and lusted for more. Harvesting it to build numbers, maybe. And... and the mutants, the ones in the city, they... were they hiding? Infiltrating? Just... getting a good seat where they could watch the chaos, exploit the chaos, while not participating? No, still ambiguous, and they weren't talking. The cat, that damn cat, the one with human teeth, she'd been curious about it, her curiosity drowned as her research went on and new avenues emerged, but it'd started the landslide. Mutant. A mutant in the colony, before she'd thought that meant anything truly severe. And... oh. Oh. She tried to stretch her mind back, to that awful night with the wolf-thing in the snow... no, beyond that. The coachman said that it was unusual how the human-mutants had left their old hunting grounds, moving quickly away... maybe they were running, running from something, then running back once they realised... what, that there was no escape? The best they could do was hide here, hope the humans took care of everything, because on their own they'd be devoured? Or lured back by the prospect of food, then trapped by the advance of the others? And the wolf-thing... why had it attacked them? That night, she remembered that night with agonising clarity, it was embedded in her memory-room, ground into the floor where she couldn't forget it.

There'd been a moment of silence from the coachman, no sounds of shock or terror or anger, just... silence, then the crash. A strange hissing sound beforehand, like something being shot. The horses had screamed, but the coachman had been silent. And after... the prints of the wolf-thing. Shallow, then very deep, then nothing. Already being taken by the snow. Had it leapt? Had it been thrown? A single wolf barrelling into a carriage, an unstable, insane mutant using tactics like... firing something, like a barb, or... no, it'd not done it again, it didn't have that capability. And then, in the night, a huge shadow in front of them, just for a second. Vanishing later.

Something had tried to deliberately kill them. Used a proxy to make it seem natural, to avoid anyone growing truly worried. Almost succeeded. Were it not for that pack of human-mutants, they'd have died that night. And the postal carriage, wrecked in exactly the same fashion, barely a few hours walk from their own, like a planned ambush being executed again and again and again... all links to the outside world severed, all warnings curtailed. Maybe they couldn't read, but knew what information looked like, the importance of cutting it all off.

Proxies. False trails. 'Accidents'. Captain Kralana, talking about the silent war up here, the war between intelligent mutants. Using lesser mutants as pawns, manipulating them, using them as hammers or anvils...

There'd been signs.

Remembered a dream of a thing in her room, was it a dream, was it something more? Remembered seeing things flickering across the moon, dark shapes, birds, birds in the middle of winter, in the middle of this place, or something larger, something...

"How are you certain they're coming here, miss? Maybe they're-"

"No. Coming here. I know. Need to get to the colony, talk to the governor, tell him-"

"He's dead."

"...shit. Shit. They got him. Already here. Already killing. Making the way ready. Check your gunpowder, make sure it's not soaked..."

"I don't... think they killed him, actually, but... I'll look into it. Promise."

It added up, in a way. But not quite. Little details didn't quite align, though... what better way of explaining his strange wounds than being killed by an abnormal creature? Each mutant would leave unique marks, marks which would never occur in nature... wounds around the front, but not around the back, extensive bruising... like something had picked him up, crushed him?

Maybe it was connected. Maybe. Maybe. But she wasn't sure. She just wasn't. Judges weren't lazy in their conclusions, judges didn't leap from assumption to assumption, they worked on a solid basis of evidence. Ask questions. Interrogate details. Investigate. Oh, gods, she sounded insane, mutants were coming, and... and how did she know, she didn't say, she...

"Please, how do you-"

"Get me to the colony. Won't... please, I don't know how long I've... got before my mind goes."

Tanner almost objected. She could relay a message if the worst came to pass, she could... no. A single judge. A single, half-frozen judge telling a story about mutants that she heard from someone who, in Fidelizh, would at best be confined to an asylum for the rest of her short sanity-blessed life. And out here, would just be burned and/or shot on sight. Likely both. Without a doubt the first. No-one would ever believe her. She shouldn't believe this woman, she really shouldn't, and... and her evidence, her reasons for believing her, the sightings, the irregularities, only some of it was somewhat known. Too many assumptions. Too much personal experience rather than objective evidence she could produce at a moment's notice. Shouldn't believe her. A judge wouldn't.

Rationally, there was no disaster until one was proven. Don't be rash. Don't... start thinking that bad things inevitably had to happen because nothing but bad things had happened thus far.

Maybe that was the crux of it. The logic linking the wolf-thing, the hiding mutants, the shadow in the night, the movements of packs, the anomalous contamination in the air... maybe what linked them was just a simple belief that things would get worse. Maybe she'd asked for this. She'd insisted on living a little longer, so the world curtly went 'oh, well, if you really want to endure for a few more breaths, here you go, have yourself more ordeals. Life and ordeal are one and the same for you, until you have nothing more to give'. Be calm. Calmer. Get back to the colony, let things play out, investigate, investigate... deal with the cartel, deal with Lyur, deal with the corruption that had engulfed the colony from the start, find out if Marana and Yan-Lam were even alive at this point, find out what was happening with this place with its steam coming out of the earth where ice rivers ought to be, confirm or reject Lantha's claims, kill Lantha once she lost her mind and became a threat to everyone around her, find out who killed the governor, find out who'd rescued her out here, if Lantha was correct then talk with people about defences and evacuations and countermeasures and medication and figure out how the cartel and the governor's forces would fit into this and... and...

She sagged forward for a moment, and just inhaled the steam, letting it fill her mouth, her throat, her lungs... warm, cloying, and beyond the haze lay nothing at all, the warm-haze and cold-haze blending together into a shapeless world. If she squinted enough she couldn't even see Lantha's shadow.

She was twenty three, she hadn't even been kissed, romantically speaking. She couldn't... deal with all of this, she needed someone, needed Bayai, Canima, Marana, Yan-Lam, anyone to be there, to receive her thoughts, she wanted Eygi, she needed Eygi, she...

Eygi had gotten married last year and hadn't told Tanner about it, hadn't invited her to the wedding, maybe because she didn't want Tanner to insist on coming along, didn't want her there and didn't want her to feel insulted by being overlooked, shut up, shut up, shut up-

She needed to get back to the colony.

Expectations stirred around her. A shell locking inwards. She had her duty. If she failed in it, then she was a failure. She'd chosen to try and live for a few more days, fought to survive for every hour she could manage, the payment for her survival was the ordeal. Had the governor received extra life? Had Lam, had the unnamed soldier, had Myunhen, had anyone the cartel had killed? Had any of them received the blessing she had, the horn of fire in the middle of the snow plains, the steam vent where she could thaw her bones? No, those people hadn't - not a governor with responsibility or a man supporting his only daughter, none of them, but she got to endure. And the price she paid for that was this. Because if she had no challenges in front of her, she'd scuttle back home, sit in her labyrinth, and do nothing of any consequence for the rest of her life. Maybe once upon a time, that'd be acceptable. But not now. Not after being saved from the snow. If she lived, and they hadn't, then she had to keep going, to push her face into the grinding stone and hope something good came out of it.

Obligation and expectation seemed to ride on her back, two Fidelizhi gods at once, leering and whispering like buried oracles.

Keep going. You lived. They didn't. You wanted to live instead of being sliced up in those tunnels? Instead of being shot? Instead of dying of cold? Instead of killing someone? Coward. You wanted that. So you get this. She was out here, waiting for you, all this time, ready to tell you that the mutants were coming. You could've died before it happened, you could've killed Lyur and been initiated into the life of a violent, powerful individual, a judge and executioner combined, could've killed him and gained the willpower to kill again. Set precedent.

Instead you chose to live as you'd always lived.

So here we go.

Get on with it.

She almost murmured 'alright' under her breath. But... no, no, that would sound completely insane. Lantha shuffled, stirred, rose to her feet... started going for something.

"Give me a moment. I'll just need to dry my socks and shoes, then I can walk to the colony."

A pause.

"...might need to warm myself up fully."

Lantha grunted, and it sounded unpleasantly guttural, closer to a... almost like a boar grunting, more than anything else.

"No food out here, no fire to cook it. Steam... comes, steam goes, sometimes here, sometimes not. Better get moving before you're too hungry to make it the rest of the way."

Should've stolen a bundle of sausages from those tunnels. Oh, it'd have been mad, grabbing chains of meat when she could be running for her life, but boy would she be thanking herself for that madness right about now.

"Right. Understood, miss."

"Need yourself a coat, you will, you'll- don't look at me."

Again the snarl. Enough to send shivers down her spine, make Tanner feel small for one of the rare occasions in her life. The figure shuffled, and she stared into the steam, trying to hold her gaze without blinking, never wavering, don't look at what she might've become since the boat, don't look at how much she'd changed. Always been a bit... further gone than the others. Did she still have hair? Did she have more hair? Did contamination ever consider hair necessary (it was part of the body, after all) or unnecessary (mutants had better ways of staying warm)? Wanted to ask. The gyre of her mind began to widen, poles spinning further and further apart... no idea what shape had emerged.

But it sounded large.

And when the woman breathed, it sounded like a very, very large pair of lungs were operating. Pair of industrial bellows wheezing away.

Tanner gritted her teeth and waited, face flat as could be.

"Can... look."

She glanced. Shrouded under a heavy coat, looked to be made of buffalo hide... torn off like removing a glove, still raw and with strings of muscle attached. Not even a coat, just a shawl, a poncho, something equally shapeless and all-covering. A pair of gleaming eyes stared out of the dark recesses of the hood... and something else glinted too. More eyes, maybe. Flat as stones. Just like the human-things. Inhumanity marching upwards.

"You'll need... one too. I think."

"Most likely, miss. But only if it's not inconvenient. I can-"

She was already leaving. Shambling off into the pale. Looking for... what, exactly? Tanner waited, huddling her knees into her chest like a child, sitting in the steam and waiting for the mutant to return with a coat of some description. Hopefully. If she didn't go mad while she was away, shambled off on all fours to do... everything mutants did. And if she was telling the truth, then apparently that included attacking the colony. But why, why would... the plug. The seal erected in the centre of the city, covering up a deep, deep well, drilled by the mutants while they possessed Rekida. A well leading to an underground river. But... that was drained, or in some way diminished, and apparently it wasn't a problem... she couldn't believe that mutants, no matter how smart, could plan for a long period of time, gather allies, plot an assault, time it perfectly while using multiple groups over a very large distance, it just... mutants were smart, but that was... intelligent. Hard to make the distinction, but it was more than mutants ought to be capable of, far, far more. It couldn't be... even if they weren't coming for the colony, to invade, to take over and, what, start drilling like workers on a site, it was still worrying that they could coordinate enough to take down mutant-hunters. Yes, yes, that was it. Still worrying. Just wait. The worst-case was distinctly unlikely. But the next-worse-case was more so, and still distinctly nasty. And the best-case... well, might as well confirm.

A flare of wings.

Something landed nearby. Basking in the steam.

She glanced over in surprise, surprise that dimmed and died a moment later. A crane, red-faced and with black-and-white wings. One of the cranes she'd seen flying around in the middle of winter. A lonely vagrant, staying to warm itself while its fellows ran away to the south. Did that make it a unique coward, a savant no-one could appreciate? Or just lucky? It tended to its feathers, unheeding of Tanner's presence, even as she stared silently at it. One beady eye glanced at her, then away. No interest whatsoever. Hoped it would survive whatever came. Hoped it wouldn't be mutated. It was just... enjoying the heat, nothing wrong with that. Damn thing was probably more innocent than anyone else here. No hate in it, no lusts, no ambitions. Probably felt satisfied with just spending less effort than it necessarily needed to this year. Happy as a clam. Didn't need a city of its own, or to satisfy some sick desire, or to find revenge, or to enslave, or to govern, or anything.

Wonder how it saw what happened in the colony.

Doubted it even judged the people inside.

...wasn't it sapience that made contamination deadly? The fact that the brain couldn't change correctly, just had to... warp, had to simplify, language capacities dying, desires eroding, unnecessary memories fading... animals, though, for animals it was a flat, unambiguous improvement, if an unpredictable one that could go poorly. As risks went...

She yelped slightly as an enormous, unpleasantly damp chunk of fur was thrown her way. The crane took off silently, not glancing back once. No direction to go but forwards, no purpose but the one dwelling in its every cell. As certain as an eel. Wait. Fur. Fur. Oh... oh gods, oh gods, it was still bloody. A giant shambolic mass of buffalo hide, the warmth of the steam making it almost seem... seem like it was still alive in some sense. Warm. Dripping. Still had chunks of flesh. This wasn't a coat, this was a stew ingredient with tangential hair attached. She shuddered... and fought it all down. No, no, no disgust, none of that, nothing squeamish. All she did was... right, if she peeled off a strip of sinew here, she could almost... yes, yes, use her knife, make holes, tie it shut...

Almost had a cape. A very bloody cape indeed, with a ribbon of sinew holding it in place.

She stood with all the dignity she could manage, slowly putting her boots on, welcoming as much warmth as she possibly could. She'd endured the journey here while panicked, bleeding, and coatless. Now, she was panicked, bleeding slightly less, and had a cape.

Clearly, things were improving.

"Very well. Let's head back to the colony, I'll do my best to... stop them from doing anything. We'll need to go a longer route, though."

"Hm?"

"There might be people on our way who want to kill me. Longer route should take us to some soldiers. They... tend to be less..."

"Someone's been busy, haven't they?"

"Hm."

"Have you been doing investigations?"

"A little."

"Like mysteries. Like mystery plays. Detective always shags like a sewing machine during them. Did you-"

"No."

"Shitty investigation."

Tanner sighed.

"In a sense. Come on."

"After you, honoured-and-sizeable one."

The woman was dying. She got to call Tanner what she liked. Even if it kept making her hackles rise.

And with burning horn in hand...

She set off. Back to the place that had tried, very hard, to kill her and everyone working with her.

Because a judge would still try and save it. A judge wouldn't quit. And a judge wouldn't be feeling sick to her stomach, while her fingers kept shaking, over and over and over, and her mind filled with images of dark, dark eyes, filling the contours of her memory like starlight, like barnacles on the surface of her brain... growing in greater numbers with each step she took.