High Priest Charn, Beloved of Vernith who ruled the underworld and judged each soul’s final fate, was sweating and cursing. Of course, one as exalted as he did no physical labor; the sweat that coated his heavy body in most unseemly fashion came from running about making sure that each preparation, both mundane and spiritual, was being done properly and in timely fashion. He did not trust subordinates, and whether the emperor – may he reign a thousand years – believed funerary preparations were important or not, Charn very much did. Eternity was nothing to treat lightly. Nor were the decrees of the gods.

As an example, Vernith’s Book of the Dead stated very plainly that for a person of the Concubine’s station, her tomb should contain one pithos of the finest rice, and two amphorae of the finest wheat. What Charn was looking at was three amphorae of rice that decidedly was not of the finest quality. Yes, the three amphorae equaled the volume of the larger pithos, and yes, they would be easier to transport to the Tomb, but Charn was not willing to gamble that Grim Vernith would accept alterations to her decrees. She certainly accepted no substitutions.

Charn raised his mahogany and iron staff of office and, with surprising strength and fierceness, smashed the offending amphorae with it. Then he addressed the foreman of slaves, who lay prostrate on the floor, grains of rice spilling out beside and over him.

“A pithos, fool. A pithos, not the volume of one. And the finest rice, not this cattle feed. Or I will have you whipped bloody.”

“Yes, great lord. Sorry-”

“Shut your mouth. I have no time for blather.”

He was not exaggerating. All these mundane tasks should have fallen to the emperor’s vizier and his staff, who would have been able to make the preparations far more efficiently. But Irobus had laid all responsibility for the Concubine’s interment at Charn’s feet. Even down to rice and wheat, and ensuring that the two amphorae of olive oil were of the first pressing, and that the chest full of unleavened loaves had had the seed of the poppy sprinkled upon each. Wheels of cheese – goat, cow and water buffalo - must be wrapped in the correct weight of linen, and the knots tied in proper fashion. Papyrus cut to the correct size, three colors of ink in the approved pots sealed with wax, quills trimmed correctly, and taken from the lesser heron, not the greater - gods above and below, so many details!

He should have been officiating at the ceremonies taking place at the Monument. Under the shade of an awning. With slaves to fan him. But the priesthood did not lack for bodies who could perform rites and ceremonies. Sadly, it did lack minds that could properly organize the Concubine’s removal from the capital, her transport upriver, and her final interment.

From the imperial warehouses abutting the river, Charn rushed back to the palace to ensure the correct quantities and varieties of jewelry had been assembled. He shuddered to think what might happen if the stipulated items of the Concubine’s treasure store were missing, or worse, not of sufficient quality. Vernith was very particular about the accoutrements of nobility. Charn shuddered to think what might happen if the required cat’s eye earrings were composed of the more common apatite instead of chrysoberyl, for example.

Gods below and above, there was so much to do. Charn almost regretted opening his mouth in the audience chamber. Almost.

But beyond his duty as Vernith’s high priest to see the Concubine interred properly, fear also drove him. Irobus had already eschewed too many of Vernith’s directives when constructing the Tomb. He had altered the traditional adornments of a tomb in favor of images of things that the Concubine found pleasing in life. There had been great consternation amongst the priesthood at that, and not only Vernith’s - but who could gainsay the emperor in his grief? Who could gainsay the emperor at all?

Charn shook his head at the memory of the emperor’s announcement years before, and beads of sweat flew from his oiled, ringleted hair. What there was of it, at least. No. The emperor had already crossed the will of the gods once. Charn was determined that no further transgressions would occur, not even to the smallest degree.

For when the gods punished an emperor, his entire empire was likely to suffer alongside him.

Puffing and out of shape, Charn hastened his pace.

~ ~ ~

From a creature no bigger than a man’s smallest fingernail, Anomus had altered and enlarged one of the boyne beetles to the point that the highest point of its shell would have reached the same man’s knee. So much he could do by forcing mana into the creature, before the cost in mana became prohibitive. It was a miraculous achievement, of course, but it was nothing close to what he wanted to achieve. He had wanted something as massive as a water horse. He had gotten a lapdog. Or a lap beetle, he supposed.

He was not unduly irritated. Anomus believed he knew how to solve the issue. The only concern he had was that he could not forecast how long his solution might take.

His answer lay in the moss that was the beetle’s prime source of food. Rather than forcing growth upon the beetles beyond what was efficient, he set about altering the moss that sustained it, changing its code of life, which was much less complex than altering an invertebrate’s.

Anomus coaxed the samples of moss that the beetles had born down into the undertomb towards growth – explosive growth. He altered them so that they fed upon – and stored – ambient mana instead of sunlight and water, by applying his newfound knowledge of manipulating the spirit tendrils. All his work on the skeleton had not been for nothing, at least. He could do many things with the stuff of the spirit tendrils that he could not have, before. And the Faceless One’s instruction concerning the creation of mana stones had given him further insight as well.

The moss could and did store a small amount of ambient mana, but most of the mana went to spurring its own growth. It was no substitute for a mana stone. He calculated that, were he to fill the entire volume of the Tomb with moss, it would only be able to store enough energy to power a skeleton for a few seconds. It was a rough estimate, but enough to discourage him from wasting time pursuing it further. The spirit tendrils he had already attached to the experimental skeleton were more efficient at converting ambient mana to motive force. He doubted he could further alter the moss enough to make it worth the effort.

Anomus set the altered moss to growing in the caverns he had created for the beetles. It did not race across the stone like wildfire, but it grew at a blistering pace – for a moss. Its growth would have been visible and noticeable to a mortal eye. When Anomus was satisfied that the moss would populate throughout the beetles’ cavern before the next nightfall, he then altered the remaining beetles, enlarging them as much as was feasible in order to give them a head start. At least the beetles would eat – and thus grow – both by night and by day, free of the constraints Anomus himself labored under.

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Most satisfying of all, he was able to greatly harden their shells by infusing them with stone. He had to do it directly, but he believed that in time he could alter the creatures in such a way that they could ingest quantities of powdered stone, and let their internal functions automatically augment their shells with it. Anomus was mindful of increasing the strength of their legs so that they could support the additional weight.

As always, it wasn’t his ability that worried him, it was time. He felt it trickling away like sand through an hourglass. Everything he did – nearly everything, at least – had the promise of fulfilling his needs, given enough time. He was an architect. He had always been able to see a barren patch of ground and imagine what would occupy it. And as he had studied and worked, as his knowledge and experience improved to match his natural talent, so his ability to see and shape increasingly complex structures starting from nothing had only grown.

The Tomb, its inhabitants, his plan for retribution – none of it was terribly different from that. But while he had labored under deadlines before, he had always been able to bargain, cajole, or simply put his foot down with a patron and explain in no uncertain terms what was possible and what was merely extremely difficult or expensive.

Now, he had no such power. Either his preparations would be enough when the emperor arrived, or they would not. He had no way to move back the date, to gain himself more time.

And he could not formulate a precise plan in any case. He did not know where the emperor would step, who would be attending him, what they might be capable of. If an imperial sorcerer attended him, could the sorcerer sense Anomus’s existence, and warn his lord before he entered the tomb? Could one of the priests do so?

Anomus did not know. He did not know which of his preparations might succeed, and which had no chance from the outset. That was why he worked so determinedly to arm himself with as many weapons of war as he could. Only when the day of Irobus’s arrival was upon him could he formulate a precise plan. Until then, he could only labor in a general way towards his destruction.

So he built a framework of death, and was forced to wait before adding the fine details and flourishes. Such was not his nature. He was used to knowing every detail of a structure before the first stone was laid. If he had constructed anything beyond the most modest of houses in the way that he was now attempting to kill an emperor, he would have called it shoddy workmanship. But what choice did he have?

The ghoul’s return was a welcome reprieve from his dour thoughts.

~ ~ ~

Krrsh did not want to wake. His burrow was cool and quiet, his belly full – well, as full as any ghoul’s could ever be – and after days and nights of hunger and danger, of injury and fear and triumph, Krrsh wanted to sleep. And then sleep more.

But he could feel Mother Moon climbing the sky above. She was near to fully pregnant, and her call was strong. When she was at her biggest, two more nights away, she would call all ghoul-kind to run with her, to chase her across the sands, for no other reason than she could, and they could. It was a ghoul-thing.

It was the closest thing ghouls had to a holy day. Or rather, holy night. After that night, Mother moon would grow older, weaker. Her shout would fade to a whisper. And then disappear – or nearly so. And then she would wax again, starting the cycle all over. Such was Mother Moon’s nature.

Krrsh loved Mother Moon, but he did not want to heed her call. He wanted to sleep. And he definitely did not want to run with her, to race her across the sands. The Ironclaws would, and so he would not. Too dangerous.

But it was hard to ignore Mother Moon when she was big with child. Her voice, was loud then, yes.

Too loud to let Krrsh sleep.

He let out a whuff and rose from his burrow, shaking off the sand and stretching. He could eat more. He could always eat more. But Krrsh had nearly cleared all the space in the place of no bones that he could safely reach with his Man tool. It was a problem. But Krrsh was clever. He would think of something. After he ate.

Krrsh entered the tunnel with such thoughts occupying his mind. He was cautious – always, he was cautious – but still he did not notice the new thing until he was far too close to it.

As soon as he realized there was something in the tunnel that had not been there when he had last been there, he froze. His hands tightened on the handle of the Man tool. Though he was many feet away, his keen eyes could see in the very low light that the thing was long. Longer than he was tall, and thin for most of its length. He sniffed, and above the smell of food he scented wood, and iron. Just like the man tool he held in his hands. He smelled no new thing other than that, and Krrsh was sure that if a ghoul or Man had passed this way during the day, he would still be able to tell.

No. The new thing had not been there, and now it was. And no one had put it or left it there.

Well, someone had. Because such things did not suddenly… become. It made Krrsh’s head hurt. He did not understand, for all that he was very clever. Ghouls did not have a word for ‘impossible’ in their tongue. The closest they had was the idea of ‘cannot.’

The new man tool could not be. But it was. So it could. But no one had put it there, so it could not…

Krrsh uttered a subvocal growl and made his thoughts stop chasing their tails. He had to decided what to do.

He could run away. Very ghoul thing to do. Ngrum would run away, yes. Any ghoul would run away from a cannot that was, somehow, not a cannot.

Oh, his head was starting to hurt. His thoughts were like cubs squabbling over scraps of meat. He beat at his temples until they subsided. Then stared up at the tunnel’s roof, and gave Mother Moon an admonishing look for waking him to… this. Never mind that she could not see it.

Krrsh could run away. Yes. But in a few claws of days at the most he would only have to return, when hunger started to bite once more. So… run away for what?

Krrsh was strong, fierce, clever and lucky. So Krrsh did not run away. But as he approached the new thing, he was very, very careful, constantly sniffing the air and scanning both ends of the tunnel, wary of sudden danger.

Nothing. Nothing new, at least. Just the distant sense of some powerful thing, the same that he had sensed from the beginning.

And then Krrsh was standing next to the new thing.

It was another Man tool, like and not like the one he had taken in his raid. It was longer, though, much longer. He saw at once that if he used it to get meat, he could reach much farther into the place with no bones. And instead of a wide, flat claw that bent down at the end, it had two long, sharp fangs.

Krrsh saw how he could use the Man tool to spear meat, or pull meat towards himself. He saw and understood that for what he needed, it was much, much better than the Man tool he had risked his life taking from the Ironclaws.

If Krrsh had still been wrestling with hunger, he would have taken up the tool immediately and begun to use it. But Krrsh had eaten well the night before. His hunger was a little thing, nibbling at him out of habit more than anything else. So Krrsh did not grab the new Man tool. He stared at it and tried to understand why.

Krrsh was clever, yes. But clever could not make a Man tool be where it was not before. Krrsh was strong, and fierce, but that was not related to the situation he now faced. Krrsh was lucky, it was true. But he could not imagine luck making Man tools.

This new thing did not come from anything Krrsh was or had done. So it must have come from another, scent or no scent. And there was only one other in the place with no bones, the thing he sensed but didn’t smell. The Bone Taker.

Krrsh had a sudden epiphany that froze him, rooted him to the tunnel’s floor. The thing he could sense but not smell had been watching him the night before. Had seen him taking meat. Had seen him struggling with the Man tool. And had left him a different, better tool.

It had been watching him. And in that instant of realization, Krrsh was not strong or fierce or anything except terrified.

Ears flat, Krrsh fled the tunnel.