The old building complained in the howling wind as Dimia crept through its halls like a Reaper. It did indeed feel like the house itself had a soul. As it were like the golem, with a thinking mind. The Sisters spoke as if Mother Blacklove did. They called the home a 'she.' "She needs a new roof." "My, her halls are drafty today." Dimia had waited till she thought all the other children were sleeping and slipped from her sheets and sneaked past the beds. She tiptoed by the snoring kids and ducked the patrolling Sisters and went into a storage room and up a ladder through a hatch above. The girl climbed through the opening and entered a secret corner of the sprawling house's attic that was itself a cathedral of sloping walls and dust-peppered shafts of dim light through smudged and cracked skylights. Stacks of crates and trunks were scattered among the sheet-draped furniture and random junk that had accumulated over decades and perhaps even longer a time.

This is where Dimia had hidden Scratch away after she had spotted the feline digging around in the kitchen trash behind the building. With great risk, the girl smuggled the cat back inside one quiet night. It took her many trips to first find a suitable place to hide Scratch and to learn the best path through the halls and to test which windows would open and close. Dimia did not know how long the cat would be safe here in the upper reaches of the orphanage before someone discovered the animal—or caught her trespassing in the halls as she went to and fro.

Scratch purred as he lapped up the minced meat Dimia had brought for him. The girl thought of how Bramble the piglet would nudge her with his snout at feeding time and snortle when she tickled his belly. Her mind went again to the friend she had more recently honored with that name. She penned a letter for Mulia and hoped the sisters had sent it to be delivered as they promised. Now all Dimia could do was wait for a reply of some kind.

Scratch's ears perked up and Dimia snapped back to the present. There was a noise at the hatch. Someone began to push it open from the storage room below. Dimia caught her breath and grabbed Scratch and ducked behind an old dusty trunk. She could hear someone huff up the ladder and into the room. A creaking step, then another. Had one of the nuns found her? What punishment would they deliver upon her if she was discovered?

A voice called out. "Hello?" It was a boy. Dimia recognized the speaker as one of her bunkmates Quint. "Dimia, I know you're up here. I watched you. What are you doin'?"

Dimia stepped from the shadows with Scratch still in her arms. "Don't tell the Sisters."

Quint stepped closer and held out his hand to pet Scratch's fur. "I don't know. Now if they find out, I'm all wrapped up in it. I'd have to fib and that could get me the switch. I should probably jus' come clean. A shame for the pussy cat, though. The Sisters'll probably just hang it. Maybe serve it to the foundlings."

Dimia stepped away and held Scratch tighter. "You say anything and I'll even the scales, boy. Watch me."

Quint's eyes narrowed and he took a step closer. He was just a kid, true, but he hailed from Camshire's hard streets. He rolled up a sleeve. Dimia readied herself. Was this really about to come to fists? Should she throw Scratch to the ground and put up her own? Throw the cat at Quint as a living and clawed weapon?

Rather than poise to fight, Quint turned to better reveal a jagged red welt on the skin of his am. "See this? My brother and I was Rune Kings initiates. Had the brand to prove it, but these cunt nuns stripped it right off when I got here. Or how about this?" Quint turned and lifted his shirt. His back and flanks were criss-crossed with ugly scars. "Look like a right gob, eh?" He dropped his shirt and turned back to face her. "I can take what these hags dish, I can take you." Quint let that linger. "You want me to keep my lips stitched... what do I get in return?"

Dimia's mind worked. What did she have to offer? What was Quint insinuating? "I'll say your nightly prayers to the stars," she suggested.

Quint cocked his head. "You'll do what?"

"Say your bedside rites so you don't have to," said Dimia.

"Who the fuck says it works like that?"

"Our town's priest said the stars would still accept the words no matter who spoke them," Dimia answered. "My sisters and I did it all the time in Marrow. In exchange for other small favors. To borrow a dress or a doll. Or to trade chores. "

"Don't sound right," Quint snorted. His face quizzical. "I don't think the Sisters would agree."

"They don't need to know," Dimia said. "It's obvious you hate doing them. You just mumble through the words anyway. I'll do them clear, so the ancients can hear."

Quint sneered, shook his head. "Nah. I want somethin' better."

Dimia was at a loss. A look spread across Quint's face. He had it. "Your bread. Every biscuit at breakfast. Every bun at supper."

Dimia was elated by the request but she tried not to show it. Quint really was just a kid. A hungry kid. Bread was all he wanted after all. "For a week," Dimia bargained.

Quint chewed on a pinkie nail and considered. "And a kiss."

Emotion flushed Dimia's cheeks. This was unexpected. Her first kiss? Now? Here? She struggled to remember whether she had ever been kissed by anyone outside her family. In light of her recent saga it seemed such a trivial thing. Had that rapist butcher ever put his lips to her mouth? That memory was fragile, eclipsed by the horror and helplessness Dimia had felt—and the awful sight burned into her mind of her undead savior dismantling her assaulter before her eyes.

Quint stepped forward again. Eager for that kiss. "So, how about it? A little peck to seal the deal."

"You mean me or the cat?" Dimia asked.

Quint laughed. He was not a handsome boy but Dimia was starting to warm to his audacity. She would much prefer to have this kid as a friend than an enemy. She had accumulated enough of those. Dimia braced as Quint leaned forward and put his lips to hers. The fairer moon Sharil peeked through the window and into the corner of Dimia's eye. The moment crystallized into her mind as one that would be kept there forever. In some way it helped to bury those old hard memories of that butcher and Bramble and Marrow, eclipsing them as the moons sometimes did the sun. She had the sudden sense that life would come in chapters, each its own strange and unexpected tale, and she had unknowingly plunged into a new one by coming to this place. Scratch was pressed between their bodies and he began to purr. Dimia and Quint laughed and pulled away from one another. The young blackmailer went back down that hatch with a last devilish smile and left Dimia there alone in that attic with her cat and her thoughts and the cobwebs.

— • —

Tusk woke to find himself at the base of a dune, his skin scorched by the sun. He could see the frantic tracks where he had stumbled and rolled down the sandy hillside and come to rest at this place. The animalist struggled to his feet, still feeling the waning effects of the hallucinatory plant, and stumbled back up the slope. The hofru was gone, but not killed by some impossible raptor as he had seen in his vision. Instead, the animal's tracks led off into the wastes beyond. Perhaps it had chewed through its own rope and wandered off.

Aoh was seated nearby, still locked in a trance. The skin of her people was better adapted to these climates and she had not suffered as much of Xul's burning. Tusk imagined that the orchid's effects on Aoh were probably even stronger than what he had himself experienced, given that she was the one to have directly eaten of its tender flesh. He then noticed a blade of bone in Aoh's hand. Tusk went to her and pried the knife from her limp fist. He sheathed it in his sash and held Aoh's hand in his and waited for the bloodnurse to come down from her sojourn to those dimensions beyond. When Aoh spoke Tusk gently guided her through the visions, easing her soul, and felt the same effect on himself as well. Together the psychonauts found some secret peace, overcome by a sense of well being they had never before believed possible. Finally, abruptly, Aoh's eyes opened and looked into those of her lover and she smiled. Tusk squeezed her hands and put his lips to hers.

"Welcome back," he said.

"I am... changed," said Aoh.

"That was indescribable," said Tusk. "I was you for a time. And then I was reborn."

Aoh looked into the sun. Tusk held up his hand to shade her eyes. "We lost our hofru," he said.

The bloodnurse looked over at where the animal once stood and blinked, remembering. "I had to free it."

Tusk shook his head. "That's very merciful of you... but we needed that beast for our journey. And the hofru is actually better off with us caring for it than wandering off alone in these wastes."

"No, I did not mean to liberate it," Aoh clarified. "I meant to put distance between it and us." She uneasily got to her feet. "I had an epiphany during those visions as I fell into reading the runes on its back, unlocking new meanings and understanding of their sorcery, and I realized... there was a glyph on it that would lead its master to us."

Tusk's heart skipped a beat, remembering the homing rune on one of Skelen's rotters that had led the Reapers to the necromancer's lair. "Then we should get further away from here. We should have just killed it. I could have made jerky of its meat for our journey and new clothes from its hide."

"I was not thinking well," Aoh said. "The orchid guided my actions. I suppose I thought if the beast were allowed to wander it would buy us more time..."

Tusk shook his head and sighed. Looked along the hofru's tracks until they blended with the distant earth. It would be difficult to travel without that mount. He wished Aoh had waited until they could talk about it before taking action. And could she not simply have deactivated the glyph? Jinx and other rune men could do such things. He took her hand. "The hofru can't have wandered far... come, we'll look."

"Its runework was protected," said Aoh. "I dare not attempt to tamper with it and set off some trap. It could kill me. It's beyond my skill."

Perhaps it wasn't worth the risk then. Tusk let the debate go. "Can you walk?"

Aoh nodded. They collected the essential things they could carry themselves, including a portion of the mashed cacti—which they would be forced to pluck the needles from before they could consume—and the remaining petals of the orchid. Aoh swore that they would wait until they were safe and secure before taking in any more of the powerful stuff. But it had done what she hoped, unlocked the old memories that would lead Aoh and Tusk to the ring of stones where her people would next convene in their endless circuitous pilgrimage. And so toward that sacred site they went, toward the shores of the Dry Sea.

— • —

Along their course they found they'd intersected the hofru's path and its labored tracks led them to where the animal had eventually collapsed in the sands. Two vultures feasted on its twitching body. Tusk was reminded of the two-headed raptor in his visions brought on by the crimson orchid. A third bird then joined the scavengers, shattering the resemblance to the iconography from his waking dream. The Reaper understood then how new religions could spring from such seemingly profound coincidences, given further meaning by an already tinted lens. Or perhaps the oracles were right and signs were simply everywhere and unseen sibylline forces truly did dictate our fate. They left the hofru to the vultures and moved on. After walking for some time they heard a distant blast, a low rumble. A puff of smoke dissipated into the air behind them. One of the birds had likely triggered the hofru's protective rune Aoh had feared was hidden in those codes and surely died in the act along with its beaked brothers.

— • —

The Erumanir warrior Unsani roared and fell to his knees in the desert sands. He shrieked like a human child, his muscles rippling with anguish, his veins pulsing with pitch blood. "What is the matter with him?" Tecneli asked, delighting in Unsani's pained howls but concerned as to their meaning. The painsmith was shocked at the brute's sudden display of weakness. The hofru-rider took indescribable amounts of physical pain without a wince in their nightly rituals as they traveled through the blessed stretches—but whatever afflicted Unsani now had stricken some deeper nerve in the Erumanir's soul.

"His twinned steed," answered Anememba, the tusked sorceress who was mounted at Tecneli's side. She smiled wickedly at the sight of her companion's suffering. "Unsani has sensed its pain. Or its death."

"Death, Xul accept his soul," said the Erumanir after he recovered from the ordeal. In the hofru's destruction, Unsani too had experienced the end. Worse than the brief, fiery moment the animal died was the lingering absence following that flash. The Erumanir had grown accustomed to the steady hum that was the lifeforce and sensations transmitted to his own runes across the aether from his beloved mount. He would never admit this to another soul, but he had cared deeply for his companion beast, as surely all Erumanir secretly did. Unsani had been raised with reliant Mret from the time they were both mere runts. They drank of each others' blood and piss. Man and animal bound by rune and love.

"Hofru have no souls," said Anememba. "Imbecile."

"They do indeed," said Unsani. "But I am happy to send you to the After so that you may see for yourself if you like, manfucking witch."

"This fatuity is unbecoming of Xul's servants," said Hyptu, the Sightless monk who'd been provided by Emissary Phus for this 'mission.' Tecneli admired the cold patience and intellect of that one. The Sightless were said to practice a meditative principle in their martial arts called 'xem.' The discipline was intended to fuse thought and action into one singular moment. To act on impulse alone. So long as his inner desires were righteous (a condition the majority of such wishful ascendants failed to achieve), an acolyte reaching this state was said to have achieved the ultimate closeness to Xul, the nearest any mortal could hope to come to perfection—at which point the ascendant underwent the eye-gouging rituals, as they would never again see anything so beautiful and pure.

Tecneli instructed the bereaved Erumanir to direct the party toward the site of the hofru's death and ordered fiery Anememba—chosen for this quest in part due to her personal familiarity with the bloodnurse Aoh—to send her raptors to scout the scene from on high. Their targets could not be far from the location, unless the escapees had cleverly used the beast as a decoy. Or, worse, they could have set a trap, for they were pursuing a Reaper and a woman who knew her runes. Tecneli would be certain to approach the scene with caution. Thankfully the Sightless could see well in other ways. Read the very air for signs of smell or heat or sorcery or blood.

Regardless of the risks of pursuing such skilled prey, Tecneli would not relent until he had the Reaper and the traitorous bloodnurse killed or captured. The facerobed mankiller would never allow his Dark Reapers to fail this, their inaugural mission. The painsmith would sooner die than disappoint the Blind Prophet, their true savior and master, or his trusted emissary Phus. Perhaps, Xul willing, Tecneli himself could even be made a Templar some glorious day, as his broodmother had been.

The Dark Reapers rode on, Phus' experiment in strategic death. Anememba rode up to Unsani's side. "Are you still crying like an unbroken child over that stinking beast?"

"I will make you suffer for your words." The Erumanir narrowed his eyes. "Rake your skin with my teeth."

The bloodsister smiled a fan of sharp ivories. "Tonight."

— • —