How fine a Reaper Skinner would have been if he hadn't have let his addictions ruin things. He'd managed in this one night to break into the hidden den of a secret organization of Camshire's most elite and dangerous, scaling walls and sneaking into windows and stalking on quiet feet. He had taken one of their costumes as a disguise and infiltrated their party and now he mingled with the other anonymous guests like a master spy. But his body was entering a new stage in smite's cycle. He was no longer a god. Just a man. Fearful. Masked. His muscles trembled, his vision blurred. Skinner hadn't planned on the night's strange turn. He should have brought more smite with him. He needed the boost.

The intruder tried to focus his attentions. Analyze and observe. There were perhaps a dozen attendees in total. Skinner noticed one of them had a limp and a cane and tiny scars on his neck. It was Church behind that mask, he guessed. Warden Hotch himself was nowhere to be seen—unless he'd smartly changed costume at some point to further obfuscate his identity.

In light of the Sinners' Club's reputation, Skinner had expected to see the most heinous acts transpiring in these rooms and halls but so far all that had occurred here had been idle chatter. Talk of educated people on escalating war and high taxes and Diluvian rule and rising crime. Perhaps the Sinners' Club was ironically so-named and it was truly only a game of fantasy for bored aristocrats. A way to play-act as monsters. Or whatever they had gathered for was a singular event that had not yet come to fruition. The night was relatively young and had the color of dark tidings.

A bell rang and all talk ceased. A figure walked through the parting throng. She was a bare-breasted woman in bladed costume. Her mirrored mask was half anguish and half glee (and Skinner could not decide which was more alluring or more hideous a visage). People began to follow the enigmatic siren in silence and Skinner casually joined in the procession. They moved in the wake of the spike-bodied temptress and her etched bell and came to a stairwell that plunged into the manor house's basement level. The passage was sheathed in arcane runes and Skinner's heart sank. What if they were sorcerous wards and these people had keys that allowed them to pass beneath them unharmed? Might the glyphs strike Skinner dead as he walked by? But there was no choice other than to go on.

He followed the others and clenched his muscles and braced himself to receive some fatal shock or burst into flame but no harm came to him. Perhaps the markings were simply meant to deter intruders but had no true power. The Diluvians and the superstitious mobs ensured no sorcery was practiced in the Nation and even these thrilldrunk deviants likely had enough sense to avoid the attentions of those unmerciful martinets and lynchers.

Skinner went with the others into a large subterranean room. At its center was a long table set for a formal dinner. The guests each found a chair and stood behind it. At one head of the table sat a woman in a mask made to resemble some great jungle cat. At the other stood Warden Hotch, still in his goblin mask.

"Fellow Sinners, welcome," Hotch said, raising a glass of red. "Bathaa similicus."

"Bathaa similicus," said the others. Skinner joined in late with a catch-up mumble but the slip went unnoticed. All the guests put their glasses to their lips as did the repeater. Now Skinner could see why all their masks left the lower half of their faces uncovered. They were here to drink. And eat. The nearby kitchen's smell was sublime. Skinner hadn't realized how hungry he had gone all these years until that sweet and intoxicating scent hit his nostrils. He suddenly felt much better. The smite-crash waned as the servants laid unidentifiable appetizers out on the table and the masked guests seated themselves.

"No point in wasting sand," Hotch said. "Let me present you with a quick novelty before we delve into the main course for the evening, if you'll indulge me." He rang a small bell that sat on the table before him. Servants came forward from the kitchen with hooded dishes in their hands. With a flourish they pulled the veils away to reveal that each of them held a small cage holding a colorful and exotic bird.

"These are the exquisitely rare uppulu," said the Warden as the servants placed a cage in front of each guest. "In fact, these specimens in our possession are the only ones known to exist. They were smuggled in by djinn from the coasts of remote Srarfa."

Skinner's cage was set before him. Inside it was the strangest little creature. The intensity of the macaw's colors and epileptic striations enraptured his attentions despite his dangerous predicament. His eyes explored the odd arrangement of beak and feathers and eyes and talons. His part of Camshire held no beauty such as this. The other guests were similarly enchanted. So was this all these silverspoons were up to, then? Feasts and novelty pets? Skinner expected something far more sinister. But the night was not yet done.

"Go ahead, take yours out," said Hotch. "They are quite docile." The guests began to unlatch their cages and laugh with delight as the birds crawled onto their hands. One masked Sinner squealed as her new avian friend crawled up her shoulder and flapped its wings. Hotch laughed. "They have no predators on the island they hail from. And thus no sense of fear."

Skinner wished he could say the same. His heart was a jackrabbit. To keep up appearances he unlatched his cage and removed his bird. It was beautiful, a soft and snowy white with streaks of violet and red. The servants cleared the cages away from the table.

"Tonight," said Hotch, "as our first indulgence, we will collectively have the unique honor and pleasure of personally making extinct an entire species. My gift to you." There were gasps throughout the room. These were not exclamations of horror but of delight. Skinner's stomach flipped. He did not share the other guests' lust for taboo experiences. And he was an intruder. If he was caught, what would these psychopaths do to him? He dare not imagine.

Hotch stroked the radiant feathers of his own bird. It was a living flower, the colors of blood and sunrise. "Please, do it however you like. I thought I'd just, well—" The Warden wrapped one hand around the poor creature's fragile neck and cruelly twisted it. Though he still wore a mask that covered the upper half of his face it was clear Hotch took great pleasure in that moment of inhumanity and enjoyed his power over the defenseless thing's life.

Skinner heard another soft snap to his side and a mortified but titillated squeal. Then another. The guests were each doing their part in bringing the population of this delicate species to zero in the span of seconds. Other Sinners were more monstrous in the execution of their feathered gift. One crudely beheaded his bird with a butter knife. Another opted for a fork through the breast. This was the Sinners' Club that Skinner had heard tell of. His heart broke again and again each time one of those birds met its grisly and squawking end. Reptiles, thought Skinner. Degenerate rich fucking scum. They all deserved the same fate as these poor creatures brought here to be forever stripped from the world. The bungled and botched under Beggar Bridge had understandable excuses for their wretchedness and sick excess. But these privileged ones? Had they not taken enough?

The room grew quiet. Skinner realized all eyes were now on him. His was the only bird left alive. Here in his hand was the very last of its species. He risked being singled out further and ultimately exposed if he did not act. Following that surely would be a creative death. There was no choice. It was him or the bird. Skinner had killed men and rats and roaches time and again but never had any of those murders felt so crushing as the moment he snapped that poor creature's neck. He made it as quick and painless as he could. Skinner took some tiny degree of comfort that since it really took two to keep a species going, he supposed it had been the Sinner just before him that truly drove the nail int0 the coffin on the uppulu bird bloodline forever. The Warden applauded and the other Sinners followed suit. Skinner gently set the bird back in the cage.

"On to the main course," said Hotch as the servants cleared the table. "Sadly, tonight marks the final occasion for this upcoming particular indulgence for a while to come. Thanks to unwanted attention from the law, we've been forced to change our provider to a location outside the city's confines, far from the noses of Strotham Yard."

A back door opened and the servers brought in three large dishes covered in silver domes. Hotch went on as these were laid out on the table: "And it may be some time before we reconvene again for this unrivaled pleasure. So, please, enjoy this special evening." He waved his hand and the servants removed the silver lids from the plates to reveal the quartered remains of three young children.

Skinner's heart clambered into his throat at the awful sight. He nearly blacked out when the next revelation struck his skull like a ram. These were probably the last three children to be stolen from the streets, Jarid and Georgene and Soren. The very trio whose vanishings he had been tasked to solve. After all that time identifying with those missing younglings he could not bear the thought of this diabolical fate now confirmed.

"Tonight we feast on the innocent and pure," said the masked Warden. "May each bite be better than the last."

Skinner felt the blood rush to his face and he fought the urge to take his knife to Hotch's throat. Damn the consequences. As long as he could take out the Warden he would be fine if he were the next to go.

But Hotch wasn't the only monster here. Skinner was surrounded by his fellow fiends. He scanned the masked faces of the others. A gang of costumed trolls and harpies and wolves. Again the comedown from smite began to manifest itself in a fresh wave of nausea. Skinner's temples throbbed. His vision squirmed. When his aching eyes landed on the tiger-faced matron at the end of the table opposite the Warden he realized the woman was staring intently at him. Through him. He could not tell if those eyes belonged to her or the mask. They looked like a cat's, emerald green and vertically slitted. Skinner's head swam. Was he hallucinating? Strangely the scar on his palm throbbed in concert with his stomach and head. The servants went round the table serving each guest the cannibalistic meal. One came to Skinner and asked his preference. He couldn't summon forth an answer. How in the name of the stars had he found himself in this situation? Better that hole in Fettersone than this living nightmare.

"Perhaps something from the hindquarters?" suggested the servant.

Skinner numbly nodded his head and he was served. He looked away as the waiter cut from the seared remains and placed the meat on his plate. Skinner's eyes went back to Hotch who was happily sawing at a hunk of pink childflesh with his fork and knife, as did the others around him. Utensils scraped against plates and jaws chewed. The masticating Sinners commented on the quality of their heinous meal.

"So tender," said one.

"And moist," remarked another.

"A hint of garlic and rosemary."

"Regards to the chef."

"But perhaps next time we should try sampling a child of wealth," said another socialite. "Their flesh might be more tender and full of butters and sweets than that of urchins and scrags."

"These little ones are well-fattened after their capture, I assure you," said the head cook, who had just emerged from the kitchen to watch the guests enjoy his work.

Skinner took note of the man's maskless face. He looked to be a foreigner, perhaps from the islands. The repeater's eyes went back to the other end of the table. The tiger-woman was still watching him and only him, her own meat untouched before her. Skinner looked down at his plate and realized that if he did not eat soon he would stand out as an impostor, particularly after the episode with the now-extinct birds. It took sheer will to keep from spewing bile across the table. He began to shiver.

"Have you lost your appetite?" asked the woman in the feline garb. Her voice was singsong and seductive and her mask seemed to move as if it were her true face. Smite's aftermath dragged Skinner down like a weighted net. The world spun.

"I've been ill of late," Skinner said as he picked up his silverware and tried to hide his revulsion as he pierced the tender flesh with his fork. With a trembling hand he brought the morsel to his face. There it wavered. He couldn't do it.

But he must. Now, or the ruse was over. Skinner opened his mouth and put the meat in and was horrified to find it succulent and divine in taste. These sensations however were not enough to override his humanity and horror. Skinner spit the stuff back out onto his plate and his stomach began to heave. A stream of stinging bile shot up his throat and into his mouth. Many of the guests rose from their chairs at the sight of him spewing onto the table.

Hotch was also now at his feet, sword drawn from its sheath. "I think we have an uninvited guest!"

Still holding his fork and knife, Skinner broke for the kitchen. He slammed a shoulder into one servant and plunged his fork into the neck of another, losing the utensil. Skinner threw the men behind himself and into his pursuers and stumbled through the curtained doorway with his knife still in his hand.

"Catch the impostor!" yelled the Warden.

There were two stunned cooks in the kitchen. Pots and pans, a fire and spit. Another door. This Skinner entered and slammed behind him. A look around. He was in a storage room. He shoved a shelf against the door and began to pile that with sacks of flour and grain. The Sinners were now at the door, slamming and shouting. It was thick and now fortified but would not last forever. Skinner's eyes adjusted to the dark and he looked around and he saw it. A barred cellar door. Providence.

He grunted as he lifted the bar and threw it to the floor and shoved open the doors. The cold night air on his cheeks. The fresh breeze gave him one last dash of renewed energy. Still holding that knife and with the mask atop his head, Skinner raced to the rear gate and climbed its ironwork. Only then did the Sinners begin to emerge from the manor, too late to stop his escape. Skinner leapt over the gate and into the street. He raced between the old crumbling manor houses and small castles of Old Sablewood until he could run no longer. On the verge of collapse he stopped in an alley to allow time to recover his breath. He heard no pursuers. He had lost them. Once again Skinner had cheated doom. It was said cats and Reapers had nine lives. Perhaps he was Reaper material after all.

— • —

With one of the last two blood-orchid petals in a pocket near his breast (Aoh kept the other) and his bag of oddities collected from the wastes for further study, Tusk set out on a cold evening colored in the eerie hues of the underworld itself. The sandskiff was ready, fitted and checked by the Kashto craftsmen who helped build it. Enough provisions had been stashed in the vessel to last a direct journey across the great body of silt, but any delay and he would be in peril of death. The tribesmen warned the Reaper to keep his eye on the horizons for approaching walls of dust. A windstorm could kick up towering waves of sand and if those did not kill him the winds might still take him far from his course.

Tusk's destination was directly west, across the Dry Sea, to the blasted foothills of Thanatoa. Fort Never, like her sister Fort Nothing, was not an official Nation base and was known only to a pruned few. As a Reaper Tusk was sometimes privy to secret knowledge—but only as was deemed necessary by his superiors. The confirmed existence of Never was no such fact, but Tusk had come to learn there was often as much truth as fiction in such tales. He'd seen Fort Nothing with his own eyes. If Nothing was true, perhaps so too was Never. He found poetry in the thought. Perhaps some details about Fort Never were gossip's lies, of course; because it was said to be the most remote of established Nation wayposts, and due to its iron curtain of secrecy, a halo of mystery surrounded the place. Tales of horrid experiments of body and mind, of forbidden sorcerous studies and men who flew on runed disks, of Never's soldiers eternally battling things of cackling fire that crawled from Mount Thanatoa's furnace crown. Why else, the theorists reasoned, would the Nation put a military base in so precarious a place, if not for such purposes? Of course, maintaining a bastion in the far northern border between realms of gob and ylf would had its strategic benefits alone.

Even if Fort Never was true as the tides and he could survive the trip there, Tusk knew not what to expect upon his arrival. His desire was simply to seek out someone operating outside the base who could alert the local officials of his presence and need. Tusk would tell his story of Thajh and the 'Painworks' and await instruction—and in the meanwhile, fill his belly with the best their mess hall had to offer and get in as much bunk-time as possible after this grueling trek took its toll.

Tusk wanted to be a Reaper no more but the world saw fit to keep him one. He had no choice but to act—the Kashto would be destroyed or enslaved by the Zhjaki imperialists if the Nation did not come to their aid. And there was benefit to the Nation for doing so. The Kashto and their kin could help keep the war far away from Nation borders, saving human lives and resources. Tusk did not favor this sort of war by proxy or such an unequal view of life but saw little choice now. Perhaps he could convince the commanders to take the women and children in as refugees and only arm and train the men. But a fight was coming, whether they wanted it or not.

Tusk pushed off with the pole the Kashto had provided him and the sail billowed out like the chest of a proud admiral. The wind ferried the Reaper away from the shore's edge as Aoh and her people watched him slip into the night. Tusk raised his hand to his mouth and Aoh did the same. She could still hear the beating of his heart alongside her own and feel his stirrings at the journey to come and the grief of having to leave her side. No amount of time serving in the Painworks or any dosage of samkra could have prepared Aoh for the deep pang of agony she felt as she watched her lover shrink to nothingness and merge with the gleaming horizon.