Four, Gen.

I hear three.

There’s one in the branches.

Shit.

Stalt presses a hand over one eye and uses the other to signal to Bolen, pointing to a robed figure huddling atop a tree. The acolyte dangles what looks like a mace affixed to the end of a belt. He scans the clearing below, where three more acolytes are almost at its center. The device is lit.

Explosive, Gen! Delah may as well be a drill sergeant in his ear. They give the same things to cannoneers of Broadside-class gondolas. No Firestarter strand inside it, though, and barely any gunpowder.

But strong enough for-

Gen!

Stalt ducks as the arrow smacks into the trunk above him, bouncing off and falling to the clearing. At the same time, Bolen sees the assailant drawing back for another shot. Bolen is quicker, loosing his arrow that plants itself in the acolyte’s chest. The man sags, tumbling towards the ground and into the three other acolytes who had readied their weapons too late.

The explosive smashes into the forest floor and detonates. A cloud of flame shoots up, consuming the three acolytes and burning a hole through the cover above. The bodies disintegrate, one skeleton falling over and breaking into a thousand pieces.

Both of you could have been in that, Gen. Next time, you won’t be so lucky.

Distant now, Mona Dortet shrieks. I assure you!

Did you hear that, Deh?

No, but they’re coming, Gen. Go!

Stalt hits the ground, meeting Bolen and scavenging for anything worthwhile among the crisp, but the explosive has left behind nothing but a patch of dirt and charred sticks. He keeps his head down and eyes squinted, but it’s mainly out of instinct, for the Chant still obeys Mona Dortet, that maligned Mind.

The two raw men run, their stamina increasing as their reliance on their bodies drifts. They press on in the nights and the days, pushed forward by the converging acolytes along the cord. Stalt keeps that black line in sight as a guiding path. They avoid the hundreds of support towers dotting the countryside, where the acolytes erect their tents, and their banners emblazoned with the root-limbed figure.

They pluck shriveled fruits and scavenge from wheat fields and casks of preserves from some homes long since abandoned and others still preoccupied, the illegal families inside already turned, but not risking to swat the raw men away.

Stalt pries open a barrel one morning, digging his hands into the grain. Upon holding it against his mouth, he discovers he doesn’t want to eat it, not because the food is repulsive, but because his appetite has withered.

“When’s the last time you shit, Bolen?” Genebrict asks.

“Not since Lamascus.”

They’d been together at the Basket, and now they’re here, knee-deep in it. The distance between their humanities is shrinking, but both are still far from pure. Truly men of the raw ground.

At a musket crack, they barrel out of the shack. The ball shatters the glass. Across the farm, a mass of acolytes chases them; a horde that seems to be a creature itself that could topple the trees, digging trenches in the earth as it runs. The Lone Soldier points its searching light upon the two raw men as they trample through fields, crashing through fences, climbing trees, swimming through rivers, and, sometimes, letting the current take them westwards while keeping their heads underneath, all the while focusing on that distant line that is the ropeway cord to Hyrnlak.

“I couldn’t do that before,” Bolen says ten minutes after emerging from a pond.

“Must be those things on your back.” Stalt prods the early stages of outer lungs the size of his fist, just below the militia captain’s neck.

“Into the shit, indeed.”

They run through the days and nights, one breaking to catch only an ounce of sleep while the other stands guard until the inevitable time comes when they don’t need to rest to gain energy. That moment springs upon them when a stalk bursts from Bolen’s back like a plant emerging from a seed. The militia captain doesn’t notice it for the first hour until he scratches his back and tugs at it. It’s as long as his arm, and at its end lazes a disc the size and shape of a lotus. “How long is that going to be there?”

“Forever,” says the Stalts—both Genebrict in reality and Delah in his mind. His sister may as well be clinging onto his back, as to him, her voice permeates the trees, the rocky crevices, and every bit of nature they tread upon. He could not escape her if he wanted to, and he doesn’t want to anymore. He never wants to.

The Twin Admirals, Delah whispers, as if bridging a gap that spans eons. How does it sound now, Gen?

“Not so bad anymore.” He says it out loud, pushing through a clearing of brambles. “I’m thinking though-”

He stops. Bolen stops, too, at the edge of a sloping gradient that can only be a beach. It veers down at the end of a basin, and it is there that Stalt absorbs the expanse of the land around him. It is immense, almost like a crater, and dotted with lakes the size of ponds this far away. Trees of bony coral jut out from the place, reaching heights rivaling Kaskit’s bullwheel terminals. Creatures, maligned and not, dip their giant heads out of caves. He sees canyons and valleys, mesas and plateaus, formations he would never encounter anywhere else.

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“Holy shit, Gen,” says Bolen. “It’s the Swathe.”

It is the dried-up ocean between them and Hyrnlak. Across from them rests the archipelago. Far off, if Stalt squints, he thinks he can see its outline, like someone waving in the distance.

Not quite, Gen. Keep going. You still have the cord to cross. North now. You’re too far south. North!

Stalt’s about to ask how they’ll cross it when Mona Dortet cries out. He’s there! On the shore! Run ahead of him!

Go, Gen!

Stalt books it, Bolen following, the two raw men skirting the cliff while being careful not to fall over it.

An acolyte springs from the bush; another Ox-infused that towers over even the first one they met before splitting up. He swings a tree stump toward them, swings again, throws it, and nearly hits Bolen in his side. Stalt rushes into the brush just as another acolyte emerges, wielding a butcher’s cleaver. Stalt throws himself onto the man, reaches for his face, and pries his jaw open until something breaks. The acolyte releases his hold on the cleaver, and Stalt grabs it and is about to chop down on the man just as the Ox-infused lifts him…

And takes Bolen’s arrow in the back of the neck. The militia captain withdraws, drives it in again, and pushes the Ox-infused off the cliff. Stalt seizes the lull, grabs the quivering acolyte on the ground, and throws him over.

For a day, they run north, the Twin Pales yielding to their celestial brother, the Lone. When he emerges from the tree line, he is a shining beacon, a lighthouse that illuminates a long stretch of cord beneath the last support tower on Lapasia’s coast. Clinging to it is a troupe of six acolytes racing down the stairs toward the two raw men across the way.

Far off to the east but coming closer, something is affixed to the cord—a gondola.

It’s empty, Delah says. They intend to get inside, but they won’t. You need to go, Gen! Hang on!

The six acolytes are much like the others, but they’ve heard Mona Dortet calling to them, heard the Mind’s orders, and have learned from their fallen comrades. They approach at a slow walk with muskets trained and bayonets fixed at their ends. Stalt and Bolen know they cannot run through it without avoiding a wall of lead.

The acolytes approach without pause and with no intention to take the raw men prisoner.

“This is it, Gen,” whispers Bolen. “Down in the shit, but the shit eats us this time.”

The men approach. The support tower is only a minute’s run away.

“That,” Stalt says, “I’m not so sure of.” He looks to Bolen.

It’s then the Lone’s light itself answers the question for each of them. The two men share a gaze and a thorough inspection, the first chance they’ve had all day. Within it, they understand the effects of their transformations head-on.

Bolen’s muscles bulge, twist like the raw ground, and seem too much for his skin to contain. His eyeballs are enormous—perhaps twice the size they were hours ago. They bleed a dull shade of red in the night.

Stalt has felt himself change, though he can’t even turn his head all the way down to notice. He feels his shoulders and finds huge slabs of flesh in both crooks of his neck. Holes emerge from them, which could contain anything.

Yet there is just enough of them left—ounces of something human. The brain sometimes goes last, Stalt guesses, and maybe he’s only lucky he can still perceive his past and future and where he needs to go.

Truly, Delah adds. But I mean it, Gen. You have to go.

Bolen nods, and so does Stalt, and it is like the Swallow Den, only this time they are both going in.

They split as the first volley cracks, a ball hitting Stalt’s side and ripping through his left outer lung. The pain is immense, but it dissipates, his maligned flesh closing the cracks and stemming the blood loss. Another ball slams into his shoulder and out the other side. It wobbles and rocks him, but he presses ahead, racing towards that support tower.

An acolyte runs in front of him and raises a bayoneted musket. Stalt runs straight into the blade as it impales his neck, catching flesh and a thing that could have once been his jugular but is now something else. Stalt feels an appendage burrow out of his skin in retaliation, gaining a mouth, gaining teeth, and then biting into the man’s shoulder. The extension of Stalt’s self throws the acolyte aside; Stalt not making any conscious effort to direct it. Another acolyte drives a bayonet into his back, forcing him down. His legs bend far past their usual angle, and his knee bones notice, breaking apart to make way for another pair of legs that clamp the ground. The limbs connect in his mind, the perception introducing itself as naturally as seeing rain or thunder for the first time. With his human legs flailing behind him, Stalt grabs the acolyte, throws him, and runs to the tower.

Next to Stalt, Bolen is not Bolen at all. He resembles something closer to an upright bird, with his nose elongated to match a beak’s size. He drags two acolytes along with him, the head of the third one in his hands. His head spins around one hundred and eighty degrees, and he stabs one of the acolytes through the chest, tossing it aside afterward.

A volley of arrows rains down and ricochets off the support tower’s frame as the two raw men climb the steps. Bolen loses his footing and crawls, scraping the railing, thrashing to throw Chant off him. Stalt runs back and pulls him up, Bolen swatting away pursuers with taloned feet.

Eight more Chant acolytes bunch up at the bottom of the steps, abandoning their bows and muskets for axes, blades, and anything to hack these raw men to pieces.

“Gen!” Bolen’s voice cracks, so far from what it was before.

Gen! Delah cries. Get on it!

The gondola closes in. Bolen crawls up the stairs, but he’s not upright yet. His body is a mangled mess of mismatched talons and appendages. Stalt pulls him towards the tower’s dock, but the acolytes keep coming. Bolen launches to his feet but takes an arrow in the back. Stalt yanks it out, and his arm shoots as if launching the arrow from a bow.

The gondola’s door is closed. Locked. It touches down on the terminal dock.

Pry it open, Gen!

With hands that are no longer hands, Stalt rips open the gondola’s door and jumps inside, shattering glass and losing one of his appendages in the process.

“Gen!” Bolen yells and reaches out a snaking limb five feet long.

Stalt grabs it and pulls Bolen closer as the gondola clears the support tower’s dock. The militia captain dangles in Stalt’s grip, the Swathe’s beach below opening up, a horde of acolytes pocking Bolen with arrows, but still, he hangs on when any other man—any human—would have died.

He dangles Bolen there, the raw man who’s been with him since the beginning. He gave Stalt a shit time, but that existence seems to pale what he is now and what’s to come.

Stalt finds the strength and pulls Bolen up, collapsing to the floor of the gondola.

They pant, both a tangled yarn of limbs, feelers, and tentacles that may or may not belong to them. They are two masses of raw men, well into malignment, yet still with a shred of something.

Arrows flick off against the gondola’s shell. Lead cracks the glass. The acolytes shout and chant and pray, but every moment, the clattering and the sounds fade, as well as the first voice in Stalt’s head.

Risen… Mona Dortet utters to Stalt as the gondola creaks onward through the night.