Mulia watched through the curtain of her rented coach at a city transformed by catastrophe. Though her journey skirted the worst of the damage, the effects of the rupture were widespread. Fires raged for blocks. Nayte had protested her decision to strike out for Mother Blacklove orphanage at this dangerous hour. Let the chaos pass, he urged. But curiosity and a desire for closure eclipsed Mulia's fear. Now in the midst of the storm she began to question her wisdom. Looters crisscrossed the avenues. Fights randomly broke out in the streets. Hooligans rocked her own carriage as the coachman swatted at them with his whip. Mulia feared they would topple the vehicle until a Diluvian patrol chased off the aggressors. As draconian as the Diluvians could be, she was thankful for the armed policemen in this time of need.

Finally they reached the orphanage and went through its gnarled metal gates. Mulia had never visited before but was aware of the place. It was perhaps the city's largest such home and rumored to be haunted by Mother Blacklove herself who took possession of the nuns within to personally administer harsh penances.

As Mulia waited in the lobby she looked over the damaged building. Though some of the destruction predated the recent blast, it was clear the orphanage had not gone unscathed. The entire city seemed to be falling to ruin, her own manor included. Mulia was soon greeted by the stern old prioress who had penned the letter, Sister Chalice. This woman took her to see the wayward girl that she had written about. They sat in Chalice's sober office as Dimia told the story of Marrow and Halo's heroism. Mulia was astonished the youngling had not been more traumatized by her experiences there and since. She expected the child to be withdrawn, insane, paranoid. But this one was strong-hearted.

"Halo and his Reapers stopped Skelen and ended the curse of Marrow," said Dimia. "And though I escaped before he could return, I am sure he did come back for me."

"And that was the last you saw of my husband?" asked Mulia.

Dimia nodded. She told of her capture and of meeting Shroomer in Fort Stowerling's infirmary. "He got me passage to Camshire, and asked that I bring you this." Dimia held out the locket Mulia had sent to Fort Nothing so that Donric would have it to remember his family by. Tears brimmed in Mulia's eyes as she took it and opened it and looked at herself and her daughters frozen in time by the painter's brush. The heirloom had gone full circle now, first sent to Fort Nothing by Mulia to remind Donric of his loved ones back home while he fought monsters out in that wilderness to keep the rest of the Nation safe. And now here the locket was, back in her hands. And Donric back in the hands of the wild gods. The portraits within reminded Mulia of better times. If Donric was still alive out there, how his wife wished he could still have this locket in his hands to keep close to his heart and admire under the moons that shone on them both no matter where in the world they were. Mulia held back a sob as she closed the locket. Sister Chalice held out a handkerchief which Mulia took and used to wipe away the teardrops. Chalice sent Dimia outside the office so the adults might decide her fate in her absence.

"There is the matter of the girl's future," said Sister Chalice. "More orphans pour in by the day, their parents lost to war. We have already run out of beds and now some of the poor minnows must sleep on the floors. Soon we will have to turn children away—those with truly no other place to go."

"I'm sorry," said Mulia, sensing where this was heading. "I'm in debt, our finances are already so strained. I can't—"

"You live in Sablewood, do you not?" said Chalice. "I assure you, if you can maintain a home in that rich district, feeding one small girl will not empty your coffers."

Mulia looked down and turned the locket over in her hands as she thought. How would Astrid and Amelie respond to the new addition to their home? Halo would want her to look after this girl, wouldn't he? After all he gone through in Marrow to save her? And what did it say of Mulia's own humanity if she turned Dimia away? But she was not sure she could handle the new and unexpected responsibility. Leofrick would surely not approve if she brought the girl in. And that decided it.

"Fine," Mulia said. "I'll take her."

— • —

After the formalities they informed Dimia of the news. She instantly brightened and threw her arms around her new custodian Mulia with a squeal. The exhausted girl was grateful to be done with this place and go on to live in a beautiful house in the higher wards of Camshire. To be part of a family again. Dimia's spirits then mellowed as a complication struck her. "My cat. Can I take him with me?"

Mulia looked to Sister Chalice, who frowned in ignorance. Dimia led them to the attic where she kept Scratch hidden. The matron was displeased at the discovery. "That girl needs to atone for this infraction," Chalice insisted. "Hiding this animal under our noses like this!"

"She is under my charge now," said Mulia. "I will see to her punishment when we return to my home." That was of course a lie.

— • —

Cat in her arms, Dimia went into Mulia's wagon and entered yet another chapter of her wayward life. The orphan looked out the windows in unending awe at the magnitude of Camshire's juxtaposed squalor and beauty. She once dreamed of exploring the untamed world, perhaps even as a Reaper, but Dimia now realized that even this singular city she now called home was itself worthy of a lifetime of exploration. Camshire was itself a wilderness crawling with rat and man and other. No one individual could possibly comprehend every ward and district of this sprawling, evershifting metropolis. No map or travelogue could fully capture the layout and character and happenings of the winding streets and alleys of even one city block. Many of the thoroughfares and neighborhoods were as grand and spacious as a canyon while others were as chaotic and filthy as the spilled guts of a hog.

As she thought of Marrow's unfortunate butchered hogs Dimia thought herself hallucinating when she saw now with unbelieving eyes the pig-headed rotters in the very streets through which they now traversed. A throng of men and women lurched through along the thoroughfare their carriage plied. They had the faces of swine, just as Dimia's friends and family wore after Skelen's awful and bloody visitation. More hog-skulls rose above the crowd at the ends of bloody pikes. Dimia had trouble making out the words the pig-folk chanted. With a squeal not unlike a pig's, Dimia drew away from the coach's window and let the curtain fall. Mulia dared a look outside. "Rest easy, minnow," Mulia said once she understood the meaning of the marching demonstrators who carried the head of pigs aloft and wore their likenesses as masks. "They are just people, responding to the horrors you witnessed firsthand."

"What are they shouting?" asked Dimia as she took another glance. Calm returned to her nerves as the girl saw Mulia spoke true. These were not corpses with pigheads stitched to their reanimated frames—they were living souls, citizens of Camshire, who carried banners inscribed with the same words they chanted as a reminder of sorcery's hellish toll. Mulia spoke in answer to Dimia's question, echoing the message of this doomsaying horde: "They are saying: 'Remember Marrow.'"

— • —

Mulia brought Dimia home to her crumbling manor house and introduced the girl to her daughters Astrid and Amelie. She asked her children to welcome their guest as if she were family and left them to draw pictures together in the main room with chalk and slateboards as she went into the kitchen to prepare sandwiches for the younglings.

Dimia sat with the girls and tried to fit in. Let them pet Scratch and told them abridged versions of her experiences. Each twin constantly complimented the other's beauty—and in so doing, her own. They groomed one another like thronkels and brushed and braided each other's hair. It was clear to Dimia that they had led a sheltered life. Protected by the many walls between their house and the nearest thing that could be called a slum. Shielded by the omnipresent shadows of Mulia and her help.

As Mulia cut vegetables with her knife she thought of Dimia's sad tale. She would allow the girl to stay as long as she liked. They certainly had the room. And perhaps it would help stop her own daughters from their ceaseless spatting. Further, Mulia felt some inexplicable responsibility toward the minnow she had just taken in. There were of course many orphans in Blacklove and throughout the city that could use her help. But Mulia felt to aid Dimia was to somehow honor Donric, or 'Halo' as his comrades knew him. Rooster had told Mulia of Donric's grief over his inability to save the children of Marrow that he had been forced to leave behind. The Reaper had never come to know that one child had survived the hobgoblin mankillers before he vanished from Fort Nothing's infirmary. As far as Halo knew, Dimia had died along with all those other children. Perhaps some day Donric would be found alive in some hobgoblin prison camp or scraping out his survival in the wilderness and brought back here where all these disparate souls could be reconnected and together healed. Poor Dimia. Mulia could not imagine the horrible things that young girl had seen. The murder of virtually everyone she had ever known at the hands of some mad sorcerer bent on revenge against an entire town was enough to shatter anyone's psyche.

Mulia brought the sandwiches out and stopped in her tracks with a gasp. She set the plates down with jittery hands.

"What's wrong, mommy?" asked Amelie.

Mulia knelt and frantically gathered the drawing tools. Dimia pulled back, startled. "What are you doing?"

Mulia frantically wiped the slate clean of the shapes Dimia had been sketching that looked too much like runes. "Where did you learn to draw these?"

"From Bramble."

Dimia had told Mulia about the bizarre monster and its skin of runes at Blacklove. Mulia hadn't known whether to believe the stories were truth or fantasy. These drawings were evidence that it had been the former. While Astrid and Amelie were sketching pictures of their father fighting winged monsters, Dimia was drawing forbidden geometry.

Mulia wiped away every trace of Dimia's work. "Don't let me ever catch you doing this again. It's dangerous."

"They were all wrong anyway," Dimia said. "I think they have to be perfect and exact for anything to really happen."

"What if you accidentally draw the wrong line and turn us all into roaches?" said Amelie. Astrid cried at the thought.

"That's ridiculous," said Dimia. "Don't be stupid."

"Do not call people stupid," said Mulia. "The Diluvians catch you drawing those diagrams and they will take you away and you will never be seen or heard from again. And they have eyes everywhere. If you want to learn anything else... history, language, culture, math—fine. I will get you a tutor. But not this. Never this."

Dimia nodded. Halo had married this woman. She had to respect her. And perhaps the noblewoman was right. Look at what sorcery had done to the people of Marrow. Perhaps it was best left unexplored. But when Mulia showed Dimia to her bedroom upstairs and left her to be alone the little girl could not resist humming to herself the sorcerous music she had learned from the patterns in the golem's runes. She lifted the top piece of bread on her sandwich. The meat was some sort of fowl, it seemed. Not pork, thank the stars. Though she did miss the taste of pig, loathe as she was to acknowledge it. Marrow's aromas, too, bad and good. This was a good home, she knew, but it was not her home. Dimia looked out to the walled courtyard below and imagined Halo coming through its opened gates and running to her arms even before those of his own wife and daughters.

— • —

Halo's steps carried him through the arid nothings. After defeating the sand-taming monk he had taken the ancient's twin staves and these were now strapped to his sunbaked back. He also had in his possession the other artifacts stolen from the old masters he and the sword had jointly assassinated thus far in their blood-drenched odyssey. A runed horn stolen from an elderly beastmaster dangled from Halo's belt. A medallion in the shape of a fanged scarab hung from his neck. On his head was a spidery bone crown taken from a necromancer whose bodyguard of rickety mummies were easily dispatched by flame. The sword had done the rest. Most of these hermetic scholars had grown careless in the banality of their daily lives with their noses in dusty tomes or their minds lost in cycles of arcane thought. Most had little fear of assassination in their remote lairs and so were often caught unguarded. Even if their domains were trapped and runed with wards the sages eventually emerged for some need or the other and were then struck down.

Halo often awakened to find more freshly cut runes on his body. The emperor within the haunted sword possessed the exhausted Reaper while he tried to catch shuteye after days and days of travel through the wastes. Halo hardly ever felt rested when he woke for the next long journey from site to site in the emperor's murder spree. This was not helped by the pain of his new runery upon rising. With each new scar Halo was more fully under Rattanak's spell.

The soul-twinning also gave Halo a deeper glimpse into the mind of the emperor himself. Halo saw in his inner eye brief flashes from the August One's life. Glorious rallies millions strong in an immense plaza of pyramids and obelisks. Brutal sacrifices and drug rituals. Wars of ancient horror. A harem of a hundred and one astonishingly beautiful hobgoblin women with great black eyes and supple white bodies and long black hair and floral perfumes. The entire race appeared different in those long gone times. Rattanak had witnessed a great decline of his people over the centuries. Halo now knew it was the emperor's goal to restore his kind to those times when they had been so strong and powerful.

Rattanak was targeting and killing sorcerers and scholars in order to add their minds to his crowding menagerie and their precious knowledge to his extraplanar library. Even after the victims' bodies were dead there was always a new battle over the murdered magi's soul within the abyssal inner dimensions accessed by the sword. Each time Rattanak emerged from these psychic dogfights as the victor but further drained and weakened for it. The price, in the emperor's calculus, was worth it. With each new soul he claimed in one instant the knowledge of an entire lifetime dedicated to its accumulation. Was there a way to revert the hobgoblin people back to their more glorious selves and rid them of their ancient curse? Rattanak sought this answer in the memories of the greatest hobgoblins who still lived.

The emperor himself had been unwittingly made a slave once he was rendered immortal by being locked within this weapon. Halo could see visions of the rituals that took place to bind the dying king to the sword. The pain of having his soul fused to its central gem that already had been fed the spirits of a thousand slaughtered slaves—including all the poor members of that harem, whose voices Halo never heard but he sensed they still lurked deep below. Rattanak considered this a prison, a curse. For a few decades he was still worshipped and ruled to some degree through his bearers and vassals. But in time Rattanak had been made to serve his own descendants rather than the opposite. Each new custodian that inherited the sword had been runed to resist Rattanak's influence and trained to gain control of the disembodied king. Halo caught fleeting images of this, too, a long line of young Justicars that had each been instructed from their earliest days in how to wrangle the emperor and master the runes that locked him within that astral prison. The last of this unbroken chain, Yanhamu, had been killed by Halo himself. The Reaper was glad he did not use this weapon to do it with. That would have meant the dead hobgoblin's voice also in his ear to add to the horrific cacophony. He did have new respect for the Justicar, if he was able to control this ancient lord that had so easily subdued Halo to do his bidding. Of course, the Reaper did not have the runes to protect him as Yanhamu had. Now he had the runes to only make it that much easier for the lich to play him like a flute and make him dance like a marionette.

— • —