Tusk admired the hofru's powerful musculature as it undulated beneath its runed hide, causing the glyphs to writhe and twitch as the animal ate from a low bed of bristly cacti. The beast gorged on the plants with snorting relish and abandon, oblivious to the spines that embedded themselves in its thick snout. The hofru's nose must be nerveless, thought Tusk, negating any pain. It was truly as if every living thing was designed perfectly for the habitat in which it thrived. Or somehow the land shaped the life that dwelled upon it, that their forms emerged from the circumstances of survival and procreation alone. Perhaps both things were true, two hands that guided the shapes and characteristics of life. The hofru pulped the surrounding cacti with its tusks as it rooted and snorted, pulverizing the batch into a mash. Tusk watched the dumb feast with fascination until he heard a subtle gasp to his side. It was Aoh.

The Reaper looked up, hand to dagger. His companion was staring at the base of a small rock formation not far off. Tusk squinted and searched for some threat, a predator perhaps, and saw nothing but a flower. The plant seemed to have drawn and captured his new lover's attention like a spell. The Reaper's heart skipped a beat. There were creatures that could transfix and pacify their prey, why not a flower in these bizarre wastes? It was a lone orchid, long of tongue, feminine, colored a glorious red that sprung like virginal blood from the monochromatic wastescape. Tusk realized then that this was a crimson orchid of the same exquisitely rare species that the Nation had used to label the elusive Blind Prophet, the hobgoblin cleric who figured so prominently in Tusk's mind given the chain of events that had personally affected him and his brothers in the campaign to eliminate him.

Aoh slowly drifted toward the blood orchid in an entranced silence and knelt before it like a worshipper. Tusk kept at the hofru's side with the reins in his grip. Aoh reached down and gently cupped the flower in her hands and sniffed it. Then she plucked it from its stem.

"Should we—" Tusk said, but it was too late. What if it was poisonous to the touch? Or what if this plant was among the very last of its kind, or even the very last? He cherished the diversity of life, even the most cruel sorts, and it grated him to risk driving any species to extinction. All the lives Tusk had taken in the names of knowledge and duty and yet here he was feeling sorry for a plucked flower.

"We must eat it," Aoh said, her voice reverent. "It is the way of my people." She stood and turned and carried it to Tusk. "Those who see the bloodflower must take it within before the next fall of Xul. It is the highest honor one could know. It was fated the moment I saw it. Share this with me. One petal for each of us. We will dry the rest for keeping."

She held the orchid up to Tusk and he had to blink his eyes it was so bright a red. It reminded him of the emblazoned monstrous beaks and vivid plumage he had seen in specimens brought out of the southern jungles for study. "When we are with your people," Tusk said, "we will do it then. It will be an honor, a moment to cherish. But not now with these killers on our tail, out in this wilderness. It's not safe. We must be of sound mind."

"I am the one who first saw the orchid, so you have no such burden. But I must."

"They're rumored to create powerful visions," Tusk said. "Tricks of the mind."

"Not tricks," Aoh said. "Truths, if you wish to know them. I am lost, I was beginning to realize. I have forgotten the way of my people. Perhaps the visions will show us the way." Aoh plucked a petal and placed it in her mouth. Tusk instinctively moved to stop her but knew in his heart he couldn't put a hand to the woman. Aoh looked into his eyes and swallowed it down.

"Do you not realize," Tusk lamented, remembering the twinning runes, "that what you take into yourself, I now also take into me?"

Aoh groaned and her eyelids fell and she collapsed into Tusk's arms. He gently lowered her spellwracked body to the ground and then the rush hit the Reaper too like a chemical wave and swept his mind away to dimensions unknown. He reckoned with all the ugliness he had been made to witness in the course of his onerous existence. Life eating life in the wooded reaches behind his childhood cabin. The murder of his parents for their sheep. The brutal career of a Reaper. The slaughter of Edsohonet. The liquidation of Marrow. The grisly Painworks. And these very wastelands that boasted countless new and undiscovered forms of hungry and selfish life. Tusk noted vestigial hints of oceanic forms in the creatures out there and saw in his mind's eye the few survivors of whatever catastrophe took place ages ago wriggle from the cracks and slowly evolve into new forms more suited to their changed habitats. How many turns of the sun must it have taken for these permutations to occur? And what drove them? Was nature's own cutting edge the responsible engine, callously discerning between fit and unfit for survival? Was this an endless arms race atwixt all fauna and flora in which the losers were dead ends, unable to procreate and pass on their flaws, leaving only the mightiest and most cunning to mate and pass on their heritable traits? Each lifeform grew and changed over its existence, as did all life on the grandest of scales. It was as if life itself had a life all its own. The cascading thoughts ran on as Tusk regarded Aoh's comatose body. Could man and hobgoblin share some common ancestor eons before their environs split them into two species and turned them into what they were today? Did they share the same blood, tied together in some lost primordial echo, a distant knot of mutation?

Tusk suddenly found himself in Aoh's body, watching his own starved and tattooed frame hallucinating in the dirt. He was surprised by what he witnessed. Is that how he really looked? Was he now that haggard and bearded man who resembled some skeleton prodded from the grave like one of Mad Skelen's playthings? The Reaper now saw the common man through hobgoblin eyes. Soft and virginal, untested and weak. This was as real as the hot sun, Tusk felt, his being in Aoh's body. Perhaps the orchid had coupled with the blood attunement they shared and literally switched their consciousnesses between their forms. Could such a thing be possible? Or was this only illusion, a conjuring of his own tortured psyche in an attempt to catalyze some revelation? Regardless, Tusk now knew what it was to be woman, burdened with things he would never know as man. He felt at once strong yet so very fragile. Forever judged, cursed and blessed and burdened and honored to bleed with the cycles of the moons and bear children into the world. But at the same time, he felt no different in her body than he did in his own. We all were the same in the most meaningful ways.

Tusk's reverie was broken by a commotion to his side and he fought his way back out of his thorny mind and found himself returned to his own body. The sun was scorching hot and had traveled far in what seemed like only a few fevered breaths. Aoh was now seated next to him, legs crossed, serene and muttering some archaic prayer. She laughed and Tusk laughed too without quite knowing why. Then he heard the sound again, a pained wail and a ruffling and an awful snapping tear. With what required a great amount of will the Reaper slowly turned his head to see a gigantic two-headed raptor the size of three men perched atop the freshly-slain hofru, tearing pink and gray flesh from knobbed bones with its twin beaks. This was a species of which the animalist had never heard and he watched in transfixed horror as it dined.

The winged abomination raised one of its heads and regarded Tusk with its stunning crystalline eyes. "You are hungry," it said in Aoh's soothing voice. "Come, Simon. Eat."

Tusk pulled himself forward on his elbows and crawled to the hulking cadaver's side. He dug his hands into its flesh and pulled the stringy meat into his mouth and chewed it raw, delighting in the bloody feast. The animalist howled at the sun as a wolf does the moon and crawled deeper into the animal's guts. He thrust his head into the pulpy mess and fought through layers and layers of revolting innards, drawn to a light peeking through the tissues. The Reaper pushed aside the last curtain of viscera and broke on through to the other side.

— • —

Finally the spires and towers of Camshire plunged into view. Dimia's imagination had been no preparation for the sight of the great city. Its walls were tall and formidable and continued to toy with her by giving glimpses of the highest rooftops and balconies beyond. There were throngs of refugees at her gates. Dimia was surprised to see in one fenced and guarded area a detention camp for what she thought might be ylfs. They were very pale of skin and were so thin and frail it was as if their bodies might snap at the slightest wind. Perhaps it was hunger that thinned the woodfolk so. She had certainly seen many humans who met a similar description. But unmistakable in these people were their slitted eyes and narrow ears and strange customs of dress. Dimia couldn't understand what would drive the ylfs to come here so far south where they were so hated and where war was already at the doorstep. How bad could things be in their own mysterious lands? As she watched one of the Nation guardsmen put his whip under the chin of an elderly refugee. The ylf looked down and tried to not further rouse the dragon in her temporary master's breast. The poor geriatric did not need to ask the official why he abused her so. He did it because he could. Dimia saw from a distance two groups of men in separated lines that faced one another. A voice shouted and one of these columns of men raised their weapons and the voice shouted again and the row of unarmed bodies fell. Father Death's work was grim and ever more brisk.

The wagon passed all this and went for miles around the city until it arrived at a gated annex that crawled with Nation soldiers. The transport was let through after a thorough inspection. The grounds were busy with people and coaches and beasts coming and going in pursuit of economy and war. Dimia was allowed to gather her cat and her things and was helped from the vessel by Nolan, one of the shieldsmen who had escorted her. This was the man of dented face Shroomer had not liked the look of, but he'd been a decent fellow after all. Dutiful and kind. Nolan had told Dimia stories of his home on the Bitter Coast to pass the time during the long journey. "Good luck, minnow," he now said. "This is where we part ways. Perhaps we'll get to meet again some other season."

Dimia thanked Nolan and a youngfaced soldier took charge of her and with him she went. Her new custodian led her to a building that lorded over an old cobblestoned square. Whatever statue that once stood at the plaza's center had been toppled and cleared away from its base, leaving just a stone slab. Only the faint outlines of hooves and a plaque remained. Perhaps the sculpture had been in honor of the king driven from his throne and had never been replaced by this more utilitarian regime. Dimia's guide led her through the building's massive doors and into a large room where several other confused children were already gathered. Dimia found a spot in the crowded space and sat and listened to the other kids talk. None knew where they were headed next. Most had been orphaned by the war, their entire families gone.

"I hear the army grinds foundlings like us up," said one dirty-faced boy, "and feeds us to their woebeasts." This made one of the girls cry. Children continued to be added to the collection of lost boys and girls as Dimia waited for what was to come.

Finally a robed woman arrived to collect the abandons. "Quiet, younglings!" she said loudly, silencing the crowd. "My name is Sister Barlow. I am going to take you to a place called Mother Blacklove's Home for Boys and Girls where you will be fed and given a bed."

Some children squealed and complained. It seemed this place had a dark reputation. "Yes, our care is strict. What you children do not yet know is that is exactly what you need. Just be thankful the Nation loves you. You could still be on the outside of Camshire's walls with the truly desperate, or begging for scraps in the streets. How would you like that?"

Barlow heard no more complaints. She led Dimia and the other children into two large coaches that once loaded commenced a wet and eye-opening trek through the city. It seemed to Dimia that Camshire might be more dangerous than the wilderness itself. How could people live like this? There were too many of them. She expected gorgeous manicured gardens and parks and tree-lined avenues from the stories but for most of the muddy ride Dimia saw not one tree or bush. Every corner was thick with beggars and women of the night. Arguments and screams and raucous laughter issued from the houses and taverns they passed. A man was beaten badly by a gaggle of heckling children in an alley. Even the quieter districts had their own miseries. A young couple ran shouting down one thoroughfare, a ghostwhite newborn in the frantic man's arms. The wife called for her doctor and the husband for his god. Scratch was agitated the entire time and Dimia fed the cat little scraps of jerky to keep him calm. She had nothing to quell her own fears. Finally they came to the orphanage's ironwrought gates and went through them. The coaches went round an old and gothic manor that had scowling faces carved above its windows and steep jagged roofs riddled with black chimneys. The building seemed a conscious and evil thing. The wagon doors opened and the children filed out. When Dimia emerged from the rear one of the waiting Sisters stopped her with a staff. This elderly woman had an unsightly wart under her left eye. The growth seemed to have another face all its own, the pinched visage of a tiny and tempestuous baby. "There are no pets allowed here," the matron said. "And Blacklove has more than enough cats already to tend the mice. Too many."

"What am I to do with him?" said Dimia.

"Sister Fane!" shouted the warted one. Another robed nun came forward from the perimeter of the yard. Her shoulders were broad as a bear's. Dimia had never seen a woman so brutish. "Take this animal from our ward, please."

Dimia protested but Sister Fane grabbed her arms with hands like clammy bullfrogs and easily pried them apart. Scratch hissed and scratched the brute's forelimbs and leaped to the ground. His fur puffed and his ears folded back in anger and fear. The hulking Sister Fane hissed back and stomped her foot down and the cat fled into the street. Dimia shouted after Scratch as the feline vanished from sight. Another friend lost. Was she forever to remain alone? The giant nun swept Dimia off her feet and carried her kicking and screaming into that brooding house that was no place to call home.

— • —