The black saturates her brain, a tide of nothing that washes over less than that. A fog of soot smears across thoughts, memories, and personality. A blanket of emptiness.

Corva!

Her eyes roll forward, draped in a lethargic bliss. It takes an epoch to reopen her eyelids and blink without feeling a heaviness pull them shut. She can feel individual granules of dust slide off her face as she stares through the blurry shapes before her.

Corva!

That does it. Consciousness shocks through her like a giant flicking her forehead. The formerly blurry shapes snap into focus. It’s that rat, but it isn’t alone. The solid white rodent is twisting and writhing, trying to get a comparably sized capuchin monkey off it’s back.

“Zeke?”

His face scrunches and his eyebrows knit. Have you been holding conversations with other monkeys?

Apparently this is not the time for stupid questions.

The rat takes Zeke’s distracted moment to arc its head back and snap its jaws. Zeke leans back, dodging easily, but the shift in his center of gravity allows the rat to buck and squirm out from beneath him. Zeke snags the rat’s tail and wrestles it back into the open. Corva squints through the dust at the flurry of paws, teeth, and fur.

Run, Corva! Get Jack.

She scrambles out from under the bridge and hops to her feet. With her gaze fixed in the direction of the bar, she takes a step, but hesitates. The Reaper is there. She glances down at the roiling scuffle at her feet. It appeared so much bigger moments ago when she was still on the ground.

It seems stupid to run away from a fight between two animals no taller than her knee. Especially stupid if she’s running from that right back to the same place she just fled. Right back to Death. And she’d be going without Zeke for help. Again.

Mind made, Corva reaches down and grabs the two fighting animals, one in each hand. A shock bolts through her, making it feel like her skin is vibrating. She knows this feeling. With difficulty, she muscles through the initial impact and accompanying nausea. She looks at the rat in her left hand.

“I know you. You’re with him. With Thegn.” There’s a familiarity with the name as she speaks it, almost tastes it. She looks at Zeke, his face a flurry of emotions. “You two, you and this rat, are the same.”

The rat writhes in her grip, twisting far enough to bite the meaty part of her hand between her thumb and forefinger. She screams and her fingers snap open reflexively, but the rat doesn’t let go. It hangs there with its putrid yellow incisors buried in her palm. Looking close enough, it almost looks like the albino rodent is smiling.

When she opened her fingers, she also released Zeke from her opposite hand. He grabs her wrist and darts up to her shoulder as she reaches with her free hand to pry the rat loose.

Before she can get to it, though, the rat opens its mouth and drops to the ground. Zeke jumps down and gives chase, but loses the rat as it snakes into a small drainpipe.

Corva grabs her hand and winces while inspecting the rip in her palm. It hurts something awful, but the bleeding is pretty light. She clenches her jaw against the pain and uses her good hand to squeeze at the base of her palm. Working her way toward the punctures, she milks the blood from her hand to clean out the wound as best as she can.

Having given up on chasing the rat, Zeke leaps back up to her shoulder. The Reaper is here. Caffiel is never far from him.

“Caffiel? That the rat’s name?” Corva kneels to pack her wound with dust and sand. Its sticks to her hand, hungrily soaking up the blood. “What the hell happened when I touched you two?”

I have much to explain to you, to share. But it seems I’m losing the time to do so. Zeke’s voice continues to reverberate in her mind. Insistent. How is it that you came to know the Reaper’s name? I’ve never shared that with you.

She looks over to the slit-pupiled monkey.

“He introduced himself. Seu caxias. He’s at the bar. Where were you? I needed your help.”

I told you at the stairs that I had to check on something. You were pretty incapacitated, though, so I could see why you—wait. He arcs over so she can see more of his face, which has a mixture of panic and disapproval. You left Jack at the bar? With Thegn?

Corva stares at the monkey. “I couldn’t stay there. He was there for me. Death came to collect. I did what I do best. I ran.” She punches the ground with her injured fist. It stings, but she can handle it. “If you’d been with me, you would’ve seen the thing you were checking on yourself. Maybe I wouldn’t have run.”

He wasn’t what I was checking on. We need to get Jack away from Thegn. Away from this town.

Zeke returns his attention up the alleyway, back toward the bar. Corva stands up and looks in the same direction.

“I can’t go back. He’ll kill me. Again.”

There are worse things than dying, child. Worse things than Death, even. And they’re almost here.