The wall around the Spirine opened with a grinding sound like dynamite ripping open a stone cliff. Caly had her helmet to dampen the sound, but Olm had to cover his ears with both hands. He didn’t know how the human could stand the sound, but Taws just gawped up at the widening gap, letting the rock chips and dust (and more than one fist-sized chunk of stone) fall around him. The clouds that clung to the ramparts swirled as the vacuum pulled them down, and a mist flowed out of the crevice.

The light that poured from the gap darkened to an emerald glow, as if some green sun was trying to burn away the mists.

The smell hit him like a physical force: wet earth and plants. The Mad Queen, it seemed, had a garden. Through the gap in the wall, leaves cut like shadows of fangs through the mist, and ferns overflowed on brick walkways. Flowers and long, alien grasses glistened with dew, and thick vines hung like snakes from the branches.

In that lush slice of mist and color, the silhouette of some creature hobbled toward them. Beneath the immense walls, the creature looked like an upright ant—though in reality it was only a little shorter than Caly. A tan cloak clung to its lumpy body, and it gripped a thick, wooden staff in both hands as it made limping half-steps toward their trio. Its head hung from a crooked neck, and an impatient frown iced its dark lips, as if it resented being made to walk out here.

It hobbled toward them. Not frail, exactly, just unsteady. They waited. Taws coughed, awkwardly.

“You think, uh, you think that’s Queen Yole?”

“No,” Caly said in perfect deadpan, “I don’t think that’s Queen Yole.”

“So you’ve met her then,” Taws said.

“No,” Olm said.

“Seen a picture of her?”

“No,” Caly said.

“Then how do you know that’s not her?”

Both Olm and Caly looked at him. Looked at each other. Looked at the creature.

It did have a rather large staff, polished and regal. And as far as Olm knew, nobody had seen the Mad Queen in years. Now that he thought about it, the bounties never really mentioned what species Yole was…

The creature paused mid-hobble to lean on its staff. Only now did Olm notice the trail of black dust leaking from the butt of the staff, leaving a black stain in the sand in its wake. Not gunpowder, or else Olm would have smelled the sulphur. But the scent was sharp and familiar. It bothered him that he couldn’t immediately say what it was.

A misshapen third arm, with skin the wrong color, reached up from the creature’s shoulder. It seemed this arm’s only purpose was to manipulate the creature’s jaw, holding it steady while it spoke with a glistening, black tongue. “Damn gardens,” it croaked in a voice both wetter and deeper than Olm expected from something so small. “Well, I’m here. And you’re late.”

Slits on its face, six of them, snuffled open and closed as it scented the air. The creature’s eyes were calcified over with shards of black glass, and Olm couldn’t help but think of the xeno pierced to the Blacktree. A few lines of moss clung to its scalp, where the first buds of yellow flowers were starting to unfurl.

“Your Majesty,” Taws fell to a knee and bowed his head. “I’ve come to—”

The creature’s mouth snarled with disgust, “Get up, you buffoon. Do I look like a Queen?”

“Well, I wasn’t raised to judge people based on—”

“Nobody cares. You were supposed to be here three days ago.” It cocked its head, heavy with suspicion. Slits sniffing at the air. “You are here for the contract, aren’t you?”

Taws opened his mouth to speak. Caly slammed the back of her hand into gut, so all he could say was “—oonf!”

“Of course,” Caly said. “The contract. Of course, that’s why we’re here. Heard the Queen was paying well.”

Her helmet’s horns were up, black and silver-laced antlers that arched elegantly over her head. When did she get those out?

“Ahh,” the creature gave an excited gasp (which almost sounded like a belch, but the effect was the same), and directed all his blind attention on Caly, “But you didn’t say! I had doubts. Damn my weakness, of course I did.”

“Didn’t say what?”

“You’re couran. Yes, an honored guest.” And he gave her a sweeping bow, all three arms gesturing grandly before her.

Caly bowed back, saying, “I’m delighted to find, even out here, that someone understands the rules of civilized decorum.”

“Her Majesty is of the highest culture, I assure you. She will be delighted to make your acquaintance. We will dine in your name tonight. A feast fit for such a joyous occasion. A couran. How long it has been. Ah!”

Caly, basking in the attention, had cleared her visor (for whose benefit?) and was all polite smiles and fawning laughs next to this hobbled creature, who himself was a twisted knot of gnarled limbs and curled digits and belching flattery. It made Olm sick.

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The human leaned over to Olm. “Huh. Guess her plan’s working out pretty well already.”

“Yeah,” Olm said. “Too well.”

“I don’t know. Caly seems to like it.”

“Everyone has their weak spots.”

“And this one,” the hobbled creature limped over to the bound-up ogre, who had taken the liberty of wriggling away from their group like a snake, belly-up. He’d gotten a surprising distance away from them, but the hobbled creature stopped him with a poke of his staff. “This one will make a fine gift.”

The ogre growled menacingly. The creature growled back, baring teeth as gnarled as its fingers.

“No,” Taws put out a hand, “That one’s going to the enforcers.”

The creature ignored him. It placed its three hands on the staff, and raised it high. As the butt left the sand, it drew streams of sand up with it, as if there were some magnetic component inside. The creature rammed its staff into the ground, next to the ogre’s head.

The ground collapsed. A hole opened so suddenly, it sucked the ogre down with it.

The human yelped, and flopped down where the ogre had been, shoving his arm into the sand as if he might find the ogre just buried in the shallow dip.

“What did you do?” Taws shouted. “He wasn’t yours to take!”

“All things belong to Her,” the creature said, that third arm quivering as it gripped its own jaw.

Taws’ hand moved faster than Olm could blink. He pulled out that massive handgun and leveled it at the creature’s eyeless face. The gun’s chamber glowed a brilliant blue, and tiny veins of orange lightning shot jagged patterns through the ethereal light. And at the center of the light, there was an unseen core. The opposite of light, Olm thought, though that didn’t make any sense.

“Taws,” Caly whispered. Olm could hear hundreds of errors softly pinging from inside her helmet.

“What’s this?” The creature merely snuffled his slit nostrils again, “What’s this? Such strange gifts you bear Her. So unusual. I am sure she will know what to make of you.”

“You had no right to kill him,” Taws said. Gone was all his blithe joy. Gone, and replaced by something harder than any metal Olm knew.

“Kill? What a wasteful notion. The Queen Who Forever Reigns does not waste.”

“Then what did you do with him?”

“We are always in need of more Hands,” the creature smiled, teeth as twisted as tree roots, “Hands for the garden.”

Taws’ fist clenched his weapon so tightly, his knuckles went pale. Either the creature didn’t sense his anger, or didn’t care.

“Come, honored guest,” the creature swept its staff through the sand, turning its back on Taws and his gun. “Our Queen must see you now.”

The creature waited for Caly, and Caly alone. And when she started walking, it followed her, leaving a trail of rich, black dirt in their wake.

Taws tucked his gun in his holster and brushing the sand (and dirt) off his pants. “Well. Now I have to ask her to give the ogre back, too.”

“Yeah,” Olm said, “Don’t think you’re getting him back.”

“Why not?”

“There are some weird xenos out there, but this one gives me a feeling.”

“It’s the third arm, isn’t it?”

“Well, that. And the eyeballs. Most xenos don’t have glass rocks growing in their eye sockets.”

“Maybe it’s just a body mod.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No.”

“And the staff.”

“There was a lot of dirt coming out of it. Is that unusual?”

“I was talking about how he used it to make the earth swallow the ogre. Look, I don’t know what’s going on in there, but it’s not natural. Least, not like any natural thing I’ve ever seen before.”

The two of them craned their necks up at the enormous, featureless wall waiting before them. Two immense white stones holding up the sky. All that green, heavenly light spilling between them.

“Kinda looks like a tombstone,” Olm said. “Two of them. Side by side.”

“One for me, one for you.”

Olm had to lean back to look at the ramparts. “As far as tombstones go, don’t you think it’s a bit much.”

“Makes it look like we’re overcompensating.”

“I always wanted a funeral pyre, anyway. Burn me, and let the living get back to living.”

“Mighty thoughtful of you.”

Olm shrugged, “Hrutskuld funerals aren’t like other funerals. You usually only go to one.”

“Whose? Your parents?”

“Your own.”

“Ah.”

“The poets say its better to die in battle, or to not die at all.”

“What happens if you have, like, a heart attack in your sleep?”

Olm cringed. “Don’t even say that.”

“It happens, doesn’t it? Not everyone can go out in a blaze of glory.”

“Die fighting, even if you must fight yourself. Yield to Death is to yield to shame. Nobody holds a funeral for the hrutskuld who dies in the comfort of their own bed. It is the hrutskuld way. The poets spoke only of the great warriors and battlepriests, not of the sickly and the old.”

“Is that how it’s always been?”

He wanted to say Yes. He wanted to say that this was what the poets taught, but when he thought about it … Olm frowned and scratched his chin. He’d never actually read them.

“I am not sure,” Olm said slowly. “The Synod keeps the words of the poets.”

“Hm,” Taws said.

“Hm,” Olm said.

The clouds over the ramparts drew down and spun delicate twists into the green-glowing crevice between the walls. Caly was a tiny figure, her suit shining in the light. She beckoned them to follow her.

“She’s got a plan?” Taws asked.

“She always has a plan,” Olm said. “They’re usually pretty good ones, too.”

“Plans are one thing. How’s the execution?”

“Well,” Olm eyed him darkly, “I hope you’re good at winging it.”

“If not?”

“You don’t have to be hrutskuld to go to your own funeral.”