The sand was soft and cool on Krrsh’s paws, and Mother Moon bathed the desert in silvery light, blunting its harshness into something less severe, more promising. He ran, swift and strong. Part of him was joyous to do so, to run when Mother Moon was so close to her term. The arms and leg part, the lungs and chest part. The blood and bone part. The ghoul part.

But another part of him was still in the place with no bones, listening to Builder.

Krrsh’s people understood the concept of hope. The hope that they would find food; the hope that Men would not find them. The hope that another ghoul wanted to mate, and would not instead let their claws say no. These were all very big hopes, to a ghoul. But now Krrsh was beginning to realize that they were, in truth, very small hopes. Hopes that lived in a burrow, and never saw the sky.

Builder had scraped away the sand and shown him the sky. It was full of stars, and Mother Moon was always big with child in that sky. That sky that had looked down on ghouls before the curse, before the Law. It was a big sky. It was a big hope.

Krrsh had never suspected that hopes could get so big.

As he ran, Krrsh tried to imagine what life might be like for him, for ghouls, if they no longer had to follow the Law. If they no longer carried the curse. It was… difficult at first. The difference between what was and what might be – it was too big. The idea that they would no longer have to scavenge to survive…. That they could hunt, as most other animals did, as Men did.

That they could keep animals for food, as Men did. If they could learn how.

That they could kill and eat animals, and not die. Yes. Then there would be no need to roam across the desert, searching for carrion. They could stay in one place… if the place was safe.

If they could find or make a safe place. Yes.

That they could survive on lesser carrion, no, lesser meat alone, and not have hunger take away their thoughts.

Krrsh shook his head. It could not happen. But many things that could not happen, happened in the place with no bones. Yes. Maybe Builder was not clever, not like Krrsh. Builder didn’t even know the Law before Krrsh told him. But Ngrum was also not clever, and Ngrum had pissed on Krrsh and made Krrsh Outcast.

Clever had not made Krrsh powerful. He did not know what made Builder powerful, but Builder was powerful.

Maybe Builder would fail. Maybe Krrsh would die. Krrsh did not want to die. Krrsh had tried very hard not to die, all of his life. But maybe Krrsh had not… had not really lived, in all his life.

It was a hard thought, a not-ghoul thought. It made him feel strange, and uncomfortable. But in the end, it was that though which decided him. He would let Builder try to take away the curse, yes, so that he would not have to follow the Law anymore. Maybe Builder would fail. Maybe Krrsh would die. Maybe.

But maybe Krrsh could be… more.

And if Krrsh could be more, then all ghouls could be more. Yes.

Maybe ghouls could make a new Law.

It was worth the risk.

So resolved, the ghoul turned and began to run back towards the place with no bones. Mother Moon shone down upon him, invigorating him. He felt stronger and more fierce than he ever had in his life.

He was nearly at the tunnel’s entrance when Ngrum burst from the sand in front of him, and pierced Krrsh’s belly with his iron-hard claws.

Krrsh howled in surprise and agony, and slashed instinctively at the pack leader, scoring lines of blood across the older, heaver ghoul’s muzzle. But Ngrum merely grunted and drove his claws deeper into Krrsh’s abdomen, toppling the lighter ghoul backwards onto the sand.

“Take your carcass back to pack,” Ngrum growled. “Piss on it again.”

Krrsh snarled. The agony was unlike anything he had ever experienced. But he remembered the mistake he had made the last time he had fought Ngrum, and turned the pack leader’s cunning trick against him. Krrsh scooped up sand and flung it into the older ghoul’s eyes.

Ngrum gave a short bark of surprise and stumbled back from Krrsh in a crouch, rubbing at his eyes with the backs of his bloody hands.

Instinct told Krrsh to flee while he had the chance. He was badly injured. But Krrsh attacked instead, letting his hate for Ngrum give him the strength to ignore instinct, to ignore agony. He leapt at the temporarily blinded ghoul, driving his own claws into Ngrum’s upper arms and clamping his jaws on Ngrum’s throat. It was no bite of submission. Krrsh meant to tear the other ghoul’s throat out, if he could. They landed on the sand once more, this time with Ngrum on his back and Krrsh on top.

The claws on a ghoul’s paws were shorter and less keen than the claws on its hands, but they were just as hard, and driven by powerful legs, they could do awful damage. As Krrsh bit into his former leader’s throat and blood filled his mouth, Ngrum in turn further savaged Krrsh’s abdomen and upper thighs with his lower claws. Krrsh knew that he would not survive with his belly open. No. But Ngrum would die first.

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With a final, savage burst of fury, Krrsh bit down furiously on Ngrum’s throat, and ripped out the lump of cartilage that was the larynx.

Krrsh rolled off Ngrum and spat out his prize. Ngrum, dying, twitched and shivered beside him as his life’s blood was soaked up by the greedy sands. Krrsh panted. He lifted his head and saw his intestines slipping out from his belly. There was so much blood. He looked up at Mother Moon and smiled a bloody-toothed smile.

“Krrsh is strong and fierce, Mother. Krrsh always said so. But now, now Krrsh will die.”

He lay quiet as the rage subsided and the pain raced in. After a few more heartbeats, Ngrum was still forever.

Krrsh wondered what death would be like. Ghouls spent so much time trying to avoid death that they did not often consider what lay beyond it. As the cold began to creep into his limbs, Krrsh thought about the afterlife for the first time.

Maybe ghouls did not get. Maybe bad leader did not want them. Krrsh decided that if he saw the bad leader, he would like to do to her what he had done to Ngrum. Maybe he would try. But now he was tired. Would he be this tired after he died? Krrsh did not know.

If only he had made it back to Builder. Maybe he would have died then, also. Dying now was not bad; he had sent Ngrum ahead of him. But dying trying to lift the curse, dying trying to walk in green fields and forests… that would have been better. Yes.

Almost, he had made it. He had been so close to the place with no bones when Ngrum had surprised him.

So close.

He… he was still close. Krrsh turned his head. He could see the tunnel entrance. Or rather the pit in which it was located. Very close, for a ghoul who did not have his guts falling out, yes. For one who did?

“Let’s see how close, Mother,” Krrsh growled softly, and tried to stand.

He could not. So, with one hand trying and mostly failing to hold in his intestines, Krrsh crawled across the sands.

Because maybe Builder could save him, put his guts back where they should go. Maybe.

But Krrsh had learned how to hope big hopes.

~ ~ ~

Once the ghoul had left to talk to the moon, whatever that might entail, Anomus turned his thoughts toward an idea that had occurred to him while he had been investigating the creature’s physiognomy. It hadn’t been pertinent at the time, and so he had pushed it aside for later consideration. But since the ghoul apparently had familial obligations to attend to – he had called the moon his mother, after all – Anomus took the time to consider his idea in greater detail.

One of the things he had noticed about the ghoul was its surprisingly robust ability to resist disease. He supposed it made sense for scavengers to be immune to some of the ills that plagued humankind, but the discovery had put Anomus on the track of considering diseases – and whether it would be possible to use them as a weapon.

So little was known about them. Most often they were attributed to the will of the gods, or a curse, or an evil wind, or some vague imbalance inside a living thing. But Anomus, in his new incarnation, had quickly realized that they were in the main just another, much smaller form of life. And they were myriad.

The undertomb was full of disease, of these tiny carriers of potential death. His insect minions were almost wholly immune to them, but humans? No. There was plentiful sickness and potential death in the rotting flesh that swamped the undertomb. And he was sure that, given time, he could increase the potency of many of the different varieties he sensed. But only if he could find a way to harness it, to… weaponize it.

Some would only multiply if they were transmitted directly to the bloodstream, which meant that he would need a way to cut a victim. It wasn’t optimal, in his opinion – venom was already a much better way to kill than a blood infection.

Beyond blood-borne diseases, the two other means of propagation seemed to be through ingestion, and by breathing the disease in. Both had potential, in his estimation. Assuming he could find or fashion an effective carrier – and he believed he could.

Anomus had concerns, however. Every weapon in his arsenal, few though they might be, could be controlled by him directly. They would attempt to kill - or wholly ignore - anyone entering the Tomb, at his command. But disease… disease was not controllable, at least not to that extent. Not even by him. If he chose to pursue disease as a weapon, he could easily imagine ways in which it might escape the tomb, and kill those he had no quarrel with. He could see no way to make such simple creatures discriminate between those who were his foes, and those who were not.

It would be a terrible weapon indeed, disease. It amounted to invisible death, indiscriminate and implacable, as close to evil as he could imagine himself ever venturing. But following his failure with the skeletons, he felt compelled to pursue it. He resolved, however, to consider the use of it only if he could control the spread of whatever illness he harnessed.

Or, he admitted to himself, as a last resort to secure his retribution. If his only chance to kill Irobus was to unleash a plague upon the empire, he could not say with certainty that he would not do it, not if the emperor was certain to die because of it.

At the same time, he had not forgotten that his wife and a daughter still lived, still breathed as far as he knew. How could he do anything that might conceivably sicken them, kill them? Not for the first time, he railed against his inability to control, or even influence events that happened outside the Tomb.

No. He could not brew up sickness and death, not if it had the slightest chance of escaping the confines of the Tomb. Not even if it meant the difference between Irobus living and dying. He might no longer be human, but he had not completely lost his humanity. If his situation had been other than it was, he might have turned his thoughts and startling powers towards creating cures for the plagues that ailed the world – but that was not what he had given up his afterlife for. Nor was it what the Reaper had transformed him to do.

Well. At least he had determined the broad parameters of what he would work towards. He hated to limit himself, but dismissed his dissatisfaction. Dwelling on it would do him no good.

Just as Anomus decided as much, he felt the ghoul return.

He knew at once that it was gravely injured. Loops of its intestines, sand-coated and lacerated, dragged across the tunnel floor as it crawled inside.

Later, when his flies returned bearing their memories of what they had seen in the outside world, Anomus would piece together what had happened. But at that moment, He did not know whether the ghoul’s attacker was following him, and so Anomus erected a barrier of stone across the tunnel’s entrance, despite the cost to him in mana.

As the stone began to slowly coalesce, the ghoul spoke.

“Builder. Krrsh die. Builder save or not?”

That was the question. Anomus had altered many organisms. But he had never tried to heal anything. His ability to do so was purely theoretical – and Anomus felt instinctually that it was not a specific skill granted to him by his transformation. The Faceless One was a god of death, not healing. But Anomus was not the Faceless One’s creature. All this he thought in a moment.

“I will try,” was all he told the ghoul.

“Try is good,” the ghoul panted. “Do is better, yes? Yes.” And then the ghoul collapsed into unconsciousness.

Anomus got to work.