"It has come to the Blind Prophet's attention that you have Reaper captives in these halls."

Tecneli knew the speaker well. It was Phus, who had also been present at the attack on the human fort but had departed before the Reapers retook the garrison. The only survivor, as far as Tecneli knew. The emissary wore black robes and had the look of a towering skeleton, with his nose shorn from his tusked skull and not a shred of fat on his bones. Speaking to Tecneli and the other administrators of the Painworks from the center of a domed room, Phus went on with his case: "It was not with pleasure that I traversed the great sands to come here and speak on this matter. I had important duties in the campaign against mankind but upon the news that Reaper captives had been brought to this place, the Prophet asked that I change course and come to Thajh in haste. I am to take these human aggressors off your hands and put them to justice as decreed by Xul."

Set-Satemi sat highest in the chamber. This official was the main architect of the Painworks and oversaw all that occurred in its diabolical halls. His title could be translated into Man as 'The Soother'—a moniker clearly borne from irony. He was gaunt and cold and far from soothing. His charcoal eyes burned with fierce intelligence. Large needles jutted from set-Satemi's bare skull and his neck had been elongated by many rings. He wore needles of bone on his fingertips with which to cut and peel and pry at delicate nerves and tissues. The chief painsmith's station among his people could be compared to mankind's greatest surgeons. "Only one Reaper remains alive and we cannot part with him," the Soother said to Phus. "He is integral to our research. We have plenty other humans in our stables, but few have the value of this one. Our superiors mandate that enemy captives, particularly officers and those called Reapers, are to be interrogated until they have divulged all they hold in their skulls—and we are certain this man has locked away many secrets not yet pried from his mind. Thus far all we have been capable of getting from him are jokes and insults. There is much work yet to be done before the man will break. Prophet Ixhalal is pious and revered by us all, but he does not decide our policy. Be patient, Phus. When we are done with the Reaper and have milked him of his memories, perhaps then we can relinquish him to your control."

Phus narrowed his black eyes. "These are not only orders from the Blind Prophet. Xul himself spoke to the scion in holy communion. This is our god's wish by his very mouth. It is unwise to deny your maker."

"We have heard your plea," said set-Satemi with a note of finality. "We will convene later with our final verdict." He bit his wrist to signal an end to the session and the others followed suit.

Phus stood and gathered his robes and stormed out of the room. As he was escorted back to his incommodious chambers he began to plot his actions should he be denied his request to have the Reaper handed over to him. Of course the Blind Prophet had not sent him here for the Prophet was already dead at the hands of the humans. Phus had concealed this knowledge so that he might exploit Ixhalal's name and influence for his own ends. There was a chance the captive Reaper was aware of the Prophet's demise and so he had to be silenced. Phus briefly met with the Reaper captives before the Battle of Fort Nothing and participated in their interrogation about the enemy bastion. But it wasn't until after the Blind Prophet's severed head was later discovered that Phus realized the prisoners might know the truth about his death. He then decided he must follow Tecneli's caravan, which had by then already departed, to Thajh to find out for sure. Phus had taken a risk coming here. It seemed the captive had said nothing and perhaps he truly knew nothing—but Phus could not take that chance. The matter was clear: the Reaper must die, and soon.

— • —

Tusk was a living study in how much a man could be pushed and not die. The sandmen hung him on hooked chains and injected him with venoms and carved and needled him with all manner of wicked tools. He had been driven by their ministrations to a certain kind of numbness and this did not please his keepers for it meant their efforts were diminishing. The nerves had their limits and at a point the pain became something else. At the heights of torture a man's mind could turn in on itself and the body suffered less somehow.

He could have died dozens of deaths already were it not for the bloodnurse that tended to his wounds, the one whom he now shared his blood with. All Tusk felt, this woman felt, and the reverse was also true. The matching runery etched into their skin allowed the sorceress to serve as a conscious gauge for the Reaper's torment so her masters could better study and customize the pain they exacted on him. When she was away conducting whatever meager life she led beyond these walls Tusk could still feel an echo of her sensations and always they evoked some degree of suffering. He could faintly taste the foods she ate and the diet her kind took in was engineered to taste as foul as possible, bitter or bland on the one end and overwhelmingly spicy or pungent on the other. They ate cactus whole so that the spines would abrade their mouths and throats and innards. The lifespan of a hobgoblin was believed to be half that of a man's due to the abuse they heaped on themselves, as well as a natural pruning perhaps owed to whatever corruption in these wastes twisted their physical forms.

Tusk was strapped to that table of uneven stone. Its ridges bit into his back. The bloodnurse appeared at his side and began to mend the wounds that Tecneli and the other painsmiths had levied on him. She ironically had been trained to heal, but only so that the ghastly experiments could begin anew. She rubbed restorative oils over his skin and hummed soft incantations. As with human sorcery, the sandwoman used a combination of runery and sounds and materials to conduct her craft. It was working. The animalist finally began to recover from his torment. The bloodnurse saw this and to Tusk's amazement, his healer spoke.

"Tell another joke," she said in her own tongue.

"I tell you joke," said Tusk, struggling with the grammar, "and stories, too. More of world. But first I want you to say me something. What is your name?"

She paused before making it known. "Aoh."

"Aoh," Tusk repeated. A soft word, lacking in consonants. An easy breath of a name. The ranger looked up into the twin black wells of Aoh's eyes. Similar ones had haunted Tusk in his dreams ever since the massacre at the hobgoblin camp of Edsohonet, but in hers he saw some kind of beauty, the pristine cold darkness of a moonless night. He wanted to fall into those pools and vanish from life. This bloodnurse Aoh had been spared the mutations that made so many of her kind hideous and misshapen. All her teeth were blessedly inside her mouth and she had no horns or tusks. As she worked indoors and was not exposed to the elements, her skin was smooth and fair. Untouched by the entropic wastes. The fingers that worked Tusk's body were as delicate and practiced as those of a musician or seamstress. Though she was thin as a whip and her ears were lobeless holes, Aoh could almost pass for a human woman, even a comely one. Tusk sensed her mood subtly shift as these ruminations flooded his own mind and he suspected that although she could not read his actual thoughts she could still feel the raw emotions that coursed through him. They had become caught in a feedback loop of pain and appetite and awkwardness and unexpected empathy.

"Big world outside..." Tusk stumbled through the hobgoblin tongue. "And you never see. Ever hear music? Taste good food? Sleep under cool sheet?"

"It is forbidden," she said.

"Or...?" But Tusk did not know their word for love. Perhaps they had none. Regardless, he felt Aoh's pulse quicken in his own heart and veins and knew she understood him on some level. "Your life," he said, "built around pain. Not your fault." He had not the words in her language to tell her she was simply a slave to a flawed system of thought, that there were other ways to live. It pained him to be so unable to express himself as he wanted. He would have to try harder to learn the tongue. At the very least, it would kill time until he himself was killed. Perhaps he could convince Aoh to teach him. Voices carried from outside the door. Passing painsmiths conversing in the hall.

"Be quiet now," Aoh said. "We should not speak."

"Sorry," Tusk whispered once the voices had passed. "I tell joke now. A faerie and a troll—"

"Quiet." Aoh's hand went again to the man's genitals. "We've already said too much." Though her gesture was meant to threaten Tusk with pain as she had done before, he could feel her stirring emotions too and he knew then that she did not want to harm him any further. Aoh's hand lingered there and Tusk's manhood came alive and shifted against his leg. It was the first movement he had felt in that region since before his capture. He'd almost forgotten he even had a cock. Aoh recoiled with a gasp and backed away toward the door.

Tusk wanted to tell her it was out of his own control. That it was in fact a compliment to her. But all he could muster was: "Wait!"

Aoh left the room without a word. Thanks to the twinning of their souls Tusk knew there was shame in her heart and much of it. But there were also other things. Curiosity and passion ran strong in her. The longing Tusk felt was not his alone.

— • —

The strongmen of Hwren dragged Dimia out of the gaol and loaded her into a wagon that would carry her to Fort Stowerling. As they departed the jailhouse she saw that a large crowd had gathered at the town's square. She smelled a burning, not unlike the smoky aromas of Marrow's fabled pig roasts. Perhaps this was some similar festival. How she missed those gatherings in which she and her friends and sisters would gambol across the grounds and play games of chase. The wagon took another turn for the burg's gates and Dimia realized she was in fact witnessing the fate she had herself just escaped. A young couple were tied facing away from each other to a single stake before a throng of jeering commoners. Both of the condemned were handsome people with long dark hair and fine features. The lower halves of their bodies were already wreathed in flame. Witch and warlock, consigned to burn by those same men that had judged in Dimia's favor. The oldsters had correctly discerned that Dimia was not a threat. Perhaps they were right about these two as well. Perhaps they were a pair of 'Skelens' and their deaths were right and necessary for a better world.

"Those tricksters played forbidden songs," the portly coachman said when Dimia asked him about the beautiful sufferers. "Preyed on simple folk across the countryside. Charmed the unsuspecting out of their worldly possessions. Tempted the weak into sin with their sorcery, so the Inquisitors say."

The doomed pair appeared to be in a shared trance as they burned. Stared into the beyond and took their horrid deaths with silence. Perhaps their tongues had already been taken from them, thought Dimia. The flames grew higher, licking their jawbones and nipping at their ears. Then the gates closed behind the wagon and Dimia's eyes were spared further horror.

— • —