Shroomer helped Dimia into her covered stagecoach and handed over her old bag and new cat. The Reaper turned to a pair of soldiers who had been charged with protecting the caravan during its journey toward the coast. "If this girl is not delivered to the authorities in Camshire intact and unharmed, I will hold you men responsible."

"She's in good gauntlets, sir," said one whose face had been dented in battle. This fighter had a scurrilous look that Shroomer did not trust. The medic gave a stare that said as much. Shroomer rubbed the heads of Dimia and Scratch and wished them luck. The woebeasts kicked up mud and the wagon jolted into motion and then the girl and animal were on their way to the Nation's great and unknowable capital. Dimia warily eyed her armed escorts as they set out. Imagined their sordid and bloody pasts. She could trust no one. Certainly not warriors who killed for coin or flag. But what of the Reapers, then? Were they not of the same stripe as these soldiers, only perhaps more proficient at their gruesome work? There were at least a couple who visited that church in Marrow who were callous and unkind. Yet she had seen a true and rare goodness in Halo. As Dimia traveled while surrounded by these men of uncertain character, he would serve as her beacon of light.

— • —

Dream subsumed reality. Halo was a haunted man. The Hermit of the Shell continued to chastise him as he trekked deeper into the wastes. But in time the slain recluse's disembodied complaints faded into the background and joined the babble of other souls imprisoned in the glyphed sword. Perhaps the imperial hobgoblin lich Rattanak could navigate the wilderness of dead minds housed by the weapon and pluck from those consciousnesses the fruits of knowledge he sought, but Halo was cursed to only hear constant and chaotic turmoil in the back of his skull. At times he caught the voice of old Narder who'd been cut down by the Justicar's sword in that Marrow church. Halo was surprised to hear the disembodied voice of the bitter elder who still yearned for liquor even in death. This settled the matter of how the hobgoblins knew the Reapers had passed through that doomed town and ultimately tracked them to Fort Nothing. They had indeed followed Team 3 there.

The emperor would not allow Halo to remove the sword from his grip and so the Reaper's exhausted and scarred arm now dragged the weapon in the ground as he walked. Its tip traced a line into the dusty earth behind them. Halo found the sword itself breathtaking in its beauty and evil in its design. He often caught himself watching it gleam in the light borne from fire and moon and star. Its mercurial curves and wicked edges and blood grooves and hypnotic gems. The fine detail of its hilt. Perhaps today the hobgoblins had fallen to building from the bones and leavings of beasts and the silks of insects—but in their glorious past the sandmen had been quite the artisans indeed. The wasters had within them as much ability to design and craft and refine as any human. A shame they no longer embraced that way of life. Or perhaps it was a blessing. Those ancient goblins would have made for mighty adversaries indeed if they still were capable of forging weapons like this.

Halo had long ago run out of water and food. Now he consumed only what he could catch in the wild and felt tainted by it. The Reaper ate and drank of the land, and it of him. He was chapped by the wind, tormented by dust. More fresh runes were carved into his flesh, working up his arm and over his back and chest and neck like sorcerous gangrene. The Reaper knew he should be dead and suspected the only thing that kept him suspended over the void was Rattanak himself, feeding stolen life energies into Halo's own being. He could feel those greedy souls fighting to claim his body for themselves, kept at bay only by the combined will of Emperor and Reaper. If, that was, Halo could still call himself a Reaper. He had deserted his men. And his family. His mind went to them and then immediately it was clouded by his astral jailer.

Halo also caught other voices he dimly recognized in the cacophony, of men from the Reaper training camp who had met their deaths on the road in the hobgoblin ambush and Halo had only known in passing. How strange to listen in on their slain souls now, to hear them chastise themselves with regrets and sorrows. Also counted among the ethereal choir's ghosts were the two river-trappers Team 3 had met along the way to Marrow (and from whom they first heard tell of its horrible pigmen). These people too had seen their untimely demise at the hands of the Justicar and his nefarious blade. There were also ancient voices that spoke in tongues Halo could not comprehend, souls that were perhaps stolen by the August Emperor centuries before Halo had ever entered the world. Most sounded like hobgoblins and others like things unknown. There had to be thousands of dead minds lurking in that boundless space.

There was one voice among the imprisoned souls that Halo knew very, very well for he'd heard it often in his life as a Reaper. It belonged to a man so enamored with words and languages and the sound of his own voice it had earned him his codename, Mouth. Halo watched him die at the Justicar's hands in the Battle of Fort Nothing, his head cleaved from his body. Halo called out to Mouth with his own mind, tried to connect with his dead friend, but every attempt was cut short by some ominous presence thick with malice.

"Here," the emperor said in Halo's numbing mind as they rose a desert bluff that revealed a great ziggurat beyond. The terraced pyramid was surrounded by a throng of tents that crawled with robed hobgoblins. "Our first aim. This is a place of pilgrimage for my people. Many devout walk for many turns of the sun to arrive in Qulpopis and wait their turn to meet with the Templar who sits atop that great dais to receive his wisdom and holy bite. It is that scion we seek. Izmaalb knows much."

"And you think he will speak with me?" Halo asked without voicing a word.

"We are here to kill him," said the Emperor. "I will drink of his soul, and then he will speak to me... All he knows, I will know."

— • —

"Piss-drinkers done it, be my guess," Thirteen said. He and Vulture had returned to Team 3's campsite to report they found a farmhouse with a slaughtered family inside. "Nice beds, though. Food."

"Let's go have a look," Nail said.

Blacwin smelled death and sex on the men. As the Reapers broke camp he noticed the freshly washed stains on Thirteen's leather and pointed this out. "You've got blood on you."

"Checked the bodies to see if any was still livin'," Thirteen explained. "They wasn't."

"Still freshly kilt, though," said Vulture. He reeked the most of fornication and hormones to the half-ylf's sensitive nose. Blacwin had his doubts about these men and their story. He had seen what they were capable of. Watched them rape enemy captives with their bayonets. Slit the throats of begging men as if they were mere lambs. Spooned out the eyes of victims while still they could see. Blacwin would put nothing past their depravity. They were as monstrous as any sandman or wight.

The Reapers stopped at the farmhouse and inspected the bloody site. When Blacwin looked upon the slaughtered family members he was reminded of his own crimes that had ended with scenes much like this. Blacwin's mood further darkened. He wanted to avenge these butchered people. He'd been raised to murder by Grendyll and would be forever cursed by his cold touch. Now a strong urge stirred within the half-ylf to atone for those old crimes. He saw an echo of his cutthroat master in these men, Thirteen and Vulture. And on them his keen eye would remain. Even if those bloodthirsty Reapers had not slain this poor family, they were already in need of adjustment. And if Blacwin did not correct their savage impulses, then who? Nail didn't seem to give a damn. The Reapers took what was of use and moved on. More earth under their feet was more important to their leader and the mission than soft beds or the avenging of dead settlers.

— • —

Tusk spotted two raptors circling the skies and worried that they might be enemy familiars. He and Aoh found a fissure in the earth in which they could hide from their hunters and the broiling sun. There they stripped their clothes away and spent the day together softly talking in the cool shadows with Aoh in Tusk's arms. After the long and tough journey through the desert and the hunger and the pain of torture, Tusk had forgotten the simple pleasure of a body next to his own. He could sense she too felt comfort in this. It felt natural to them both no matter the bloodshed between their races. Tusk gently stroked Aoh's neck and every time he touched her he experienced phantasmal feedback from the enchanted twinning runes. It was at first unnerving but then became sublime. Aoh shuddered and Tusk felt her excitement, too, an invisible caress on his own flesh to match what she was feeling.

Aoh's fingers explored Tusk's body in return, running her nails along the length of his arm, down his chest, over a litany of scars, many of which she had herself wrought. She explored his face, his lips, his hands. The two drove one another to ecstasy as the sun drew down and the shadows bled thicker around them. And yet Aoh's eyes, set against her porcelain skin, were somehow still deeper than that blackness. Hypnotic, celestial.

"Beautiful." Tusk never thought he would find that word fit for her kind. He stroked Aoh's back and instinctively withdrew his hand. He had felt a small protrusion from her spine.

"In time it will grow," said Aoh, self-consciously touching the mutation with her own hand. "I will change... transmorph... as all my kind do. I could spawn tusks, horns, more teeth as I age. Will you still think me beautiful then?"

In answer Tusk leaned forward and put his lips to hers. Aoh's eyes closed as she felt the raw emotion fill Tusk's heart for she of course felt it too. They kissed, each knowing the passion of the other. Caught in a mutual and glorious spell, they allowed themselves to forget the harsh world if only for that fleeting time, and two became one.

— • —

Skinner splurged on a taxi-coach for the ride to his next destination. The vessel he caught was a strange example, all done up with skulls and stained satins and odd gothic touches. Bone-chimes jangled inside. The repeater found their hollow knocking hypnotic. The coachman wore a top hat that leaned and rocked like a drunkard as they rode and he had a pair of smoky spectacles. Skinner paid the grim oddster and went to the coffinsmith's shop where one of the missing minnows had been employed before the vanishing.

The coffinmaker himself was senile, ready soon to occupy a casket himself. The man knew nothing of use. Skinner wondered if the craftsman had already fashioned and set aside his own container for the inevitable day to come. The repeater shuddered at the thought of himself in one of those boxes cold and dead. After a fruitless look around the shop and the nearby alleys of Gruel Row, Skinner went on his way with nothing of value learned. The felon moved on through the drizzling city, his enthusiasm sinking with each step. As he passed the corpse of a dog being dismantled by a writhing knot of spindle-rats Skinner sensed he was being followed. This was confirmed when at one point the figure made himself deliberately seen, looking the repeater straight in the eye from across a bustling avenue. The intrigant was broad-shouldered and hatted and Skinner guessed it might be the same man who had knocked on his tavern door prior to the sit-down with Church.

Skinner began to walk toward the stalker and the other simply shook his head 'no' in a way that stopped the budding sleuth in his tracks. The shadower then turned and walked away, his point well-made: 'We are watching.'