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Chapter One

To the Grave

In the distance, through the haze of the desert, a shape began to appear.

At first, Isaac thought it was a sandwyrm surfacing through the dunes. He started to panic again. His mind grasped for his books, all the bestiaries lying heavily in his pack, trying to remember every detail he had ever learned about the eyeless dragons. They were colossal, easily the size of a city road. They were territorial. They were vicious when disturbed. Their glass-like scales were impervious to arrows and blades. Most importantly, if Isaac could see the wyrm now, it had already long ago sensed his presence, and it was only breaching the earth to close in for the kill.

He stopped, feeling the heat of the sand through the thin soles of his boots. Out in the distance, the shape only grew larger. For the life of him, Isaac could not spot the vestigial wings, the glittering hide of scales, or any other key identifying anatomy. The lessons from his textbooks slipped from his mind like mist.

He blinked, standing tall at the peak of a dune. Down below, in a valley of sand, the shape crawled through a shimmering haze of heat.

It was not a mirage. Something massive was there.

He licked his lips.

When he tried to focus his eyes, the sand and sky began to swirl around him, like a rug pulled beneath his feet. He lost his balance, stumbling briefly, cursing himself for making even more vibrations for the creature to sense.

He was dizzy.

He was utterly, desperately thirsty.

He was growing certain that he was going to die.

He knew he shouldn’t have been out during the day. While pressing the scrolls and phylacteries into his pack, his uncle had instructed him to travel by night, emphasizing that Isaac should never, under any circumstances, choose to brave the sun’s light, as this was the time when the wyrms would vent their sediments into the alluvial waters beneath the earth, which brought them dangerously near to the surface.

Of course, the heat was also a concern.

He licked his lips again.

For a time, Isaac had followed his uncle’s advice, making camp inside dry gulches during the day and travelling around the deeper pockets of sand during the night. Unfortunately, by his fourth day in the desert, he had exhausted his waterskins, and he had been forced to scavenge in the morning light for what little vegetation existed in this desolate area of the world, ripping the plants from the scraggly dirt and sucking the moisture from their roots. His rations of salt meat and hardtack had only worsened his thirst. Now, on the dawn of the sixth day, he was stumbling through a valley of dunes, searching for an oasis his map told him was only a half-day’s journey away. He knew that, if he didn’t reach it soon, he would certainly die.

His mission was in grave danger.

He was thirsty.

Gods above, he was thirsty.

Right now, all he could see was a large shape heading in his direction. Isaac was no longer certain it was not a mirage. It seemed to float on the edge of the sand like a blade of grass on still water, curling within the hazes of heat.

Isaac attempted to steel himself.

He wiped the sweat from his brow and reached down into the quiver at his hip, pulling out a rolled sheet of vellum, which began to glow upon contact with his skin. He unfurled the page and held the faintly limned sigil in the direction of the approaching shape. With his other hand, he performed the necessary mnemonics, the motions that would bring about the magical transmutation of energy. A familiar draining sensation sucked through his inner being, channeling into the scroll. Isaac had to force himself not to stumble again.

For all their might and ferocity, the sandwyrms were not mindless creatures. A single warning was capable of scaring them away. The spell would be exhausting to perform, in a time where he needed to conserve all the strength he had left—at the same time, anything less than a catalyzed blast would not intimidate the beast. He had to seem like a threat.

Isaac aimed. His breath steadied.

In the distance, the shape seemed to become—

A fireball erupted from the scroll, arcing across the dunes like a second sun blazing through the sky. Isaac wobbled on his feet, the sudden transfer of energy nearly buckling his legs. He watched with dizzied eyes as the fireball completed its downward trajectory, exploding into a nearby dune, searing the sand into glass, the edges of the flames raining across the body of the wyrm. Isaac expected the beast to quickly flee into the clay and rock below the dunes. He had encountered more than a dozen wyrms in his trek across the desert, and all of them had decided to retreat rather than risk a determined battle.

Instead, as he watched, the shape began to change.

Suddenly, Isaac could make out more details. He saw the angled spire of a prow. He saw a top deck festooned with lines of netting and rope. He saw cannon portholes stitched in rows across a wooden broadside. Finally, he saw twin masts sporting a single large sail, which glowed with the large, circular sigil of wind propulsion magic.

The shape had not been a sandwyrm.

It was a sandship.

A skimmer.

People.

He had just attacked people.

“Shit,” Isaac said.

A sharp semicircle of sand kicked up into the air as the ship pulled a hard turn across the face of a dune, trying to dodge the rains of fire. Seeing clearly now, Isaac was able to discern multiple sailors rushing along the deck. Their forms were large and varied, covered in wayward patches of leather armor, mixed with tails and animal heads and the brief impression of swords.

All at once, the magical sigil on the ship’s sail began to glow brighter. Members of the crew were pouring fire directly onto the fabric, which was absorbed like water and transformed directly into momentum. The ship was accelerating. It was still turning in Isaac’s direction. As the vessel completed its hard shift to port, a black standard unfurled itself along the foremast, showing a canine skull perched over crossbones.

They were pirates.

He had attacked a pirate ship.

For a moment, Isaac could only stare in awe. He had read about the pirates of this desert, how their ships travelled across sand and gravel as easily as water, using the magical technology to plunder any caravans that dared to cross the wastes. They were zoanthropes near exclusively, foxes and hyenas and lions, forming a cadre of predator species that were highly adapted to life in the desert. He had only seen a few of the human-like beasts in his life, though he had read many tales, and the important facts were salient enough. Most of them stood a head or two taller than humans. Most could kill him with a single swipe of their claws. Right now, all of them were yelling and snarling in his direction, raking the air with the edge of their sabers.

“Fuck,” Isaac said.

Their first cannon salvo knocked him out of his shock. Plumes of smoke burst from the broadside of the ship, and the ground before him erupted in a rushing line. Isaac dove away, feeling the wind of an iron ball screaming past the spot where his torso had been a second earlier. He scrambled to his feet, spitting out sand. The ship had completed its turn, gaining speed as it sailed down a valley of dunes, and it was now bearing down square in his direction, the black pirate standard fluttering in the desert breeze as the crew poured more fire on the sail.

Isaac ran for his life.

He sprinted to the edge of his dune and jumped off the side, sliding down the slope in a naked, desperate tumble. His worn and dirty clothes were destroyed even further by the rushing sand, flaying the skin on his hands and legs. Once he reached the bottom, he rolled head over heels, barely managing to regain his balance before he was running again.

There was nowhere to go. The only thing around him was sand, sloping off in gentle waves as far as he could see. His feet sank into it with every step, and he quickly lost any sense of bearing from his map. There was only panic and fear.

He heard the cannon shots just in time. He dove again, and twin explosions of sand launched themselves into the air, mere yards away. Crawling along the sand on his hands and knees, Isaac looked back to see the skimmer crest over the dune like a normal ship would cross a wave, its bow pitching and yawing over the peak of the sand until the whole vessel was sailing clear down the other side, a few wisps of smoke still trailing from the forward cannons. By now, most of the crew were manning their battle positions, pointing their sabers at him with a furious, animal snarl.

Isaac knew he couldn’t run. The ship was much faster.

He had to fight.

He dumped his quiver of scrolls onto the sand and grabbed the first one he saw. By pure chance, it happened to be the elemental catalyst for fire, the same one he had used only a minute ago. Stumbling back to his feet, one arm performing the casting mnemonics, Isaac began to aim the scroll at the ship as it finished descending the dune, bearing down on him faster than any wyrm had managed before.

There was another salvo, another belch from the forward cannons. Iron balls screamed above his head. The vessel yawed and pitched. As the ship grew closer, the pirates on the prow began to aim their crossbows, each of them cursing in a feral language.

Isaac gritted his teeth, concentrating on the flow of energy.

All at once, the scroll crossed its catalytic threshold, leaping to life in Isaac’s hand. A comet-sized fireball blew out from his hand and smashed directly into the stern of the ship, wrapping half of the top deck in flame and drenching the rest of the vessel with rains of fire. Shouts of rage turned into screams of fear. The zoanthropes flailed. Above the deck, foxes scrambled up the rigging, trying to escape the tendrils of fire, while lions seized pails of water and flung them at the flames. Many burned and fell.

Through it all, the ship kept moving, slicing a wide river across the sand. Even if the wheel and navigator were now burning to ash, the vessel would still carry its momentum.

It was heading right for him.

Before he could fully regain his strength, Isaac grabbed another scroll and attempted to run laterally, hoping to escape the vessel’s path. The pirates on the bow began to loose their crossbows. Isaac felt a dozen bolts whistle past his head as he kicked his way through the loose sand, creating a graveyard of buried shafts. One missile nearly took him in the shoulder, and he dove to the sand, the bare skin of his hands scorching upon contact. He scrambled by the sleeves of his robes, barely dodging several more bolts.

As the broadside of the ship presented itself, Isaac got back to his feet, unfurling the last scroll in his possession.

Wind.

This was the same sigil that powered their ship. It was much simpler to cast. He felt years of his uncle’s lessons came back to him at once, all the careful study and painful instruction.

He had trained his entire life for this moment.

Isaac pulled out the last dregs of his energy. In one smooth motion, he cocked his arm, bent his fingers, adopted the proper sigil, and flung himself forward, spewing a massive hurricane from the palm of his hand. An instant later, the left broadside of the pirate vessel exploded in a shower of splinters, rope, and blood. Planks and bodies rained across the sand. The bilge of the ship immediately shattered open, sinking below the sand. All the magical momentum was arrested in seconds. As the front buried itself deeper, the flaming stern leaped into the air, nearly three tons of wood and sail rising like a bucking horse, the entire vessel ripping in half from the shearing force of its own weight and speed. In seconds, the skimmer was reduced to pieces, several flaming decks tumbling across the sand like the chunks of a bee’s hive, nearly a dozen zoanthrope bodies twisting between nets, broken planks, and the tumbling blocks of cargo.

As the ship blew apart, Isaac collapsed into the sand, breathing desperately hard. Blackness creeped at the edge of his vision. He had cast several powerful spells in short succession, and now all he could do was gasp for air and watch the pieces of the ship roll across the sand. Somewhere, he was amazed that he was still alive.

For a minute, the pirate vessel settled into the sands, burning and splintered. On the fallen sail, the magical sigil for wind continued to glow and flutter in the breeze. Isaac felt a moment of relief.

Slowly, the pirates began to emerge.

A sizable fraction of the crew were now clawing their way from the burning wreckage—lions slithering from the broken decks, foxes stomping through the rigging and sails, even a few hyenas scrambling over the spire of the upturned prow. A few of the zoanthropes had previously leaped from the ship as it was set to flame, and now they were making their way along the deep sand, hissing at the heat on their shoeless paws.

As he watched, a legion of activity began to emerge around the fallen ship. Isaac kept his body prone in the sand, despite the burns on his skin. Many of the surviving pirates were injured, but the vast majority were still armed, and he did not fancy his chances trying to outrun them through the sand. His best hope now would be to slink away unnoticed.

“There he is!”

Isaac cursed.

Suddenly, several of the walking beasts pointed in his direction. A lioness kicked some burning debris out of her way, snarling at him, raising a cutlass into the light of the sun. A male fox used his halberd to steady his balance as he limped across the sand. Two hyenas jumped down from the half-buried deck of the ship, baring their teeth and maces.

Isaac tried to get back to his feet, tried to ready himself for battle, but his strength was nearly gone. He had poured too much energy into his magic. All he could do was weakly pull himself along the sand, trying to crawl away.

“Gut him!” the lioness shouted. “Cock to throat!”

“Watch the arms!” the male hyena yelled. “Don’t let him cast!”

Isaac continued to crawl, sand leaking between his fingers. He never imagined he would die this way. He had spent his life preparing for this mission. He had suffered for years beneath his uncle’s lessons, mastering the arts of magic and alchemy. All this time, he had hoped to die in battle against a fellow mage, not be tortured and cut apart by a band of common pirates before he had even reached the grave at all.

There would be no one to rescue his father now. It was all for nothing.

His entire life had been wasted.

They were close. He felt the growl of a lion, the hissing of a fox. With his hands burning in the sand, Isaac stopped crawling, gathered the last of his strength, and flipped himself over.

At the very least, they would not stab him in the back.

By now, a male hyena stood above him, blood leaking down from his furry fingers onto the haft of his mace. Sharp, half-rotted teeth flashed in his snout. He was large enough to block out the morning sun, providing the first bit of shade Isaac had felt in hours. The mace he wielded was covered in ornamental flanges and jeweled knobs. It looked ridiculously gaudy in the zoanthrope’s hands, which Isaac could only guess meant that the hyena had robbed it from an equally gaudy knight.

It seemed like such a stupid way to die.

Was this really it?

Isaac had studied battle injuries. He knew how easy it was to crush a human skull. In the hands of a strong warrior, a mace could be swung with great force. As the zoanthrope raised the weapon high, Isaac found himself remembering a lesson on medicine taught by his uncle, identifying the various bones of the skull. He saw his mentor’s face reflected in the candlelight.

He closed his eyes.

There was a crash behind them. Wood splintered and flew. The male hyena stopped, his mace drifting down. In the wreckage, flaming debris began to churn behind sections of the hull.

Suddenly, another hyena smashed through the flaming wood. Her clothes were in tatters, forming a loose collection of fabric and leather that only barely concealed her fur. Her long mohawk of hair was coated in shining blood. In her hands, she held a poleaxe, the steel also stained a colorful red, and on her wrists there was a broken set of manacles, the chains dangling down like a pair of snakes.

“She escaped!” the lioness shouted.

“Get the prisoner!” a fox yelled.

“Kill her!”

The hyena roared and charged, hefting her poleaxe high. Most of the pirates turned to face her. She swung down at the closest opponent with such vicious force that it shattered the haft of his halberd, nearly cleaving the fox in half down through the groin. She kicked a foot into his chest as the zoanthrope’s legs buckled, yanking her axe blade free with a sliding of entrails. Two lions moved in to engage with short swords and cutlasses, and she met their challenge with a screaming sweep of steel.

The hyena above Isaac hesitated. His mace fell further. For a moment, he could only stare in horror at the rampaging prisoner.

Isaac seized the chance.

He pulled a phylactery from his pack and threw it at the pirate. The glass vial shattered across his chest. Immediately, the leather armor began to deform and twist, erupting with a hissing smoke, and the hyena’s confusion turned to panic as the acid ate down into his flesh. He flailed, dropping his mace, snarling in pain, desperately trying to untie the straps of his armor. While he was distracted, Isaac dove forward, grabbing the mace from the sand.

He struck the hyena’s knee, feeling a sharp crunch through the haft. The hyena screamed as he fell into the sand, twisting in agony. Isaac stumbled over to him, barely able to stand, and lifted the mace above his head. The first blow crushed the zoanthrope’s snout, spraying teeth and blood. The second caved in his skull. Despite this, the pirate continued to gurgle and twitch. Isaac struck a third time, and the movement finally stopped.

A short distance away, a lioness pulled her attention away from the escaped hyena to see Isaac standing over her fallen comrade. She roared at him, loud enough for him to feel it in his chest, rushing with a curved sword. Isaac had no proficiency in martial weapons, so he immediately dropped the mace and cast a spell.

The pirate reached him just as bolts of ice flew from the tips of his fingers. With his hand shaking in exhaustion, two of the bolts sailed wide, but the other three managed to catch the lioness squarely in the chest, piercing through the leather breastplate and shattering into shards. She gasped, feline eyes going wide. The pull of her lungs only stabbed the ice deeper. She stumbled, still lurching ahead, and, for just a moment, Isaac feared she would manage to gut him with her sword—instead, she tried to lift the blade, coughed up blood, and collapsed into the sand, groaning and choking.

Isaac fell beside her. His body was completely spent, and he hovered on the edge of oblivion. For a while, all he could feel was the sand on his face and the heat of the sun on his back.

Slowly, he became aware that the sounds of fighting had stopped.

He lifted his head. The female hyena—the escaped prisoner—stood alone amongst a pool of bodies, leaning her poleaxe into the sand as she fought for breath. Her spotted fur was covered in blood. After a few heaves of her chest, she stood up to her full height, wiping her face with a leather pauldron, her muscular form outlined by the fires of the broken ship. A moment later, she raised her arm and began to bite at the shackle still clasped around her wrist, teasing and nipping at the metal like a wild animal gnawing at carrion.

Isaac watched her work at her former restraints, his body half-buried in the sand. Once again, he tried to keep as still as possible. This beastwoman had almost singlehandedly killed the rest of the pirates, and he did not want to become part of her rampage. She bit and tore at her wrist, furiously working the metal, her lip curling with every snap of her snout. Isaac attempted to reach into his pack.

The movement caught her eye.

All at once, she turned, looking directly at him. Isaac met her gaze. She lowered her jaws from her manacles, studying him. He watched her back, unable to do much else. For a long moment, the only sound was the roar of a dozen burning fires.

She hefted her poleaxe and began to walk his way.

Isaac tried to stand. His legs were completely limp. It felt like manipulating a puppet. The massive hyena never changed her pace as he desperately struggled back to his feet.

“Human!”

Isaac managed to reach his knees.

“Yield!” she called out. “I’ll show mercy!”

Isaac grabbed the mace from the sand. It was enormously heavy, far heavier than his books had ever implied. He could hardly keep it steady in his hands.

The hyena flashed a hint of teeth. It might have been a smile. “Come now. You can barely stand.”

Isaac could barely grip the mace’s haft through the sweat and grit in his hands. The heat of the sand had blistered much of his skin. As the zoanthrope drew closer, he began to realize that she had at least two heads of height above his own, along with the musculature and stamina endemic to her breed of people. She could likely gut him with the tipped spear of her poleaxe before he even thought of lifting his mace.

She slowed her walk, stopping just out of reach. Her brown, slitted eyes seemed to regard the weapon in his hand. Her teeth flashed again, and he was now sure that it was, indeed, a smile.

“You ever held one of those before?” she asked, amused.

Isaac could only breathe, trying not to collapse.

Her amusement faded. “Don’t throw your life away, human. That mace ain’t your cock. Don’t swing it where it don’t belong.”

Isaac blew hair from his eye.

“Yield,” she said.

“No,” Isaac replied. “Never.”

She blew a breath through her nose, the fires of her former ship burning behind her. Embers drifted down past her bloodied mohawk, reflecting in her eyes. With a quiet sigh, she shifted her axe, stepping forward. 

Isaac swung the mace. It clashed off the haft of her weapon, splintering the wood. She heaved her poleaxe, shunting it up, ending the cross with a burst of strength. Isaac stumbled back, nearly twisting his ankle in the sand, desperately trying to renew his stance. The last thing he saw was the haft of her polearm flying towards his face.

Chapter Two
Vulture

He woke with the sun beating on his brow.

Vision came. The colors of sand and sky condensed into detail. As Isaac took a few aching blinks of his eye, he saw his own pack lying a short distance from his feet. The linen flap was flung open, and the contents were scattered across the sand—phials and phylacteries, maps etched with charcoal, language ciphers, empty waterskins, and the last remnants of his meager rations. He had not been carrying much, and whoever had gone through his supplies hadn’t seemed interested in what he did possess.

Gradually, he became aware that he was lying in a sitting position amongst the smoldering wreckage of the pirate ship. In front of him, there was a small river of shifted sand, which he guessed was where his body had been dragged. He felt rope cutting into his wrists, and he came to the immediate realization that his arms had been tied through a cannon hole along the broken edge of the hull. His wrists were bound together with what appeared to be the rigging of the ship.

He pulled again. The rope was rough and gnarled, chafing his skin. His hands and legs were blistered from the sand. His head throbbed with a latent concussion. Most of all, he was thirsty. He was completely, utterly thirsty. When he tried to swallow, his throat began to split and bleed.

He kept yanking on his restraints. They did not give way. Isaac gritted his teeth, almost snarling through the pain.

“Well, well!” a voice called. “My hero awakes!”

Above him, at the edge of the burned top deck, the same hyena that had slaughtered a dozen pirates was now peering down at him. He was only barely able to twist enough to see her. After a moment of silence, she tossed two packs down into the sand. Isaac had time to note that one of the packs was smaller than the other before the hyena jumped into the sand herself, landing with a heavy thump that he felt through his legs.

She turned to him, her mohawk of hair fluttering gently in the breeze.

Sitting down as he was, Isaac thought she was impossibly tall. He doubted his head would even reach her shoulder. Currently, she had traded the tattered rags of a prisoner for the sleeveless vest and knee-length trousers of a pirate’s garments, which had likely been all she could scavenge from the ship. There was a motley assortment of leather armor scattered across her form, consisting of a leather plackart, a single pauldron, a set of vambraces, a poleyn on the knee, and a belt slung heavily with pouches.

Despite now being dressed far more like a human, her hands and digitigrade feet were visibly tipped with claws, each of them wrapped in overlapping lines of cloth. There was still blood on her fur.

“So,” she said, walking toward him, “how we feeling, then?”

Isaac swallowed what little saliva he had left.

The hyena stopped at the edge of his boots and squatted herself down to his level, which left her still more than a head above him. At this distance, he could see a deep scar running up the tip of her black nose, along with a more jagged line etched beside her eye.

“How’s it feel,” she asked, “smashing the finest pirate ship of the desert?”

Isaac did not answer.

She gestured out to the burnt pieces of hull, most of which were sinking into the sand. “Terror of the dunes, the scourge of every merchant, the bane of many lords. Oh, she thought herself the tooth biting at the teat of all civilized society, and you just bloody well snuffed her with a flick of your wrist. Like some candle on a cake.”

Isaac blinked.

“I ain’t mad,” the hyena said, casually wiping blood off her thigh, like some food had spilled at dinner. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Isaac attempted to speak. His throat was very raw, and the words pained him as they emerged. “It—was not my—intention.”

Her ears perked up. “That so?”

He shook his head.

“From what I heard,” she continued, “you fired first. My jailers were quite surprised.”

“I thought—your ship was a wyrm.”

She straightened. “The giant sand dragons? Them that fly from the ground in a flurry of teeth and scales? You thought one of them was on the prowl, and your first thought was to lob a ball of fire in its direction?”

“Yes,” Isaac said.

“Truly?” the hyena asked.

He nodded.

“And you would consider this a wise decision?”

He shrugged against the rope.

The hyena sat back on her animal-like feet, staring at him. All at once, she laughed, exposing the teeth along her snout. “You just got that right blend of naïve and foolhardy about you, huh?” She leaned in again. “What’s your name, love?”

“. . . Isaac.”

She placed a hand to her chest, resting it on a patch of fur above her breasts. “Zaria. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Isaac stared at her.

“Might be you want to say that back,” Zaria said. “Bein’ polite and all.”

“I’m not a very good liar.”

She snorted. “Are we to be enemies, then?”

Isaac yanked on his restraints. “You’ve tied me to a boat. What else should we be?”

“Well,” Zaria said, “I suppose I could be grateful to you for rescuing me from certain torture and death, even if you did so by flipping the gods-damned ship I was chained against.”

For a moment, Isaac considered telling her about his mission.

“Of course,” she continued, eyes roaming over him, “even then, one has to wonder how thankful they should be to someone who didn’t even mean to help them. One has to wonder if, given the opportunity, they’d just turn around and burn her alive, like everyone else.”

Isaac decided not to tell her. In fact, he resolved himself to keep his mission a secret. Nothing good would come from telling a cutthroat his plans.

“One could have a sense of honor,” he replied, regaining some of his voice.

She grinned at him, like he had told a dirty joke. “Honor supposed to replace common sense, is it? Suppose I feel so good about letting you go that I don’t even notice you tossin’ another fireball my way?” She shook her head, eyes never leaving his face. “No. What one really has to wonder is—what’s some well-to-do mage like yourself, armed with vials and book-learning, doing all the way out here, in the wasted sands?”

Isaac did not reply.

Zaria stood up to her full height. She towered far above him. “Feeling thirsty, Isaac?”

“What?”

The hyena gestured towards his own pack, which had been upturned and ransacked near his feet. “Couldn’t help but notice you got empty skins in your pack. Nothing but salt meat and chemicals for nourishment, neither.”

Isaac felt incensed. “Did you steal from me?”

“Oh, I would have, but I can’t rightly eat your parchment, can I?”

His maps and ciphers gently fluttered in the desert breeze. Isaac wondered, fearfully, if she had managed to read them.

“You really are a special fool,” she said. “The sun out here kills men nearly as fast as the wyrms. I’ve seen people go mad from thirst inside a day. And you’re marching along on foot with barely a few cock squirts of liquid, merry as you like.”

He felt the urge to lick his lips. They were horribly chapped, and a white scum was beginning to form at the corners of his mouth.

Zaria watched him carefully.

“There’s an oasis,” Isaac said, shrugging his shoulder to what he thought was the northwest. “According to my map, it’s only a few miles away.”

She chuckled. “Oh, aye, there was a spring there once, true enough. It’s been dry a few odd years now. Safe to say, if we hadn’t stumbled across each other, you’d be gasping your last.”

Isaac tried to swallow. He had no saliva left.

“I’ll ask again. You thirsty, Isaac?”

He looked up at her. “Yes.”

“Want me to give you some water?”

He did not respond.

“Come now,” Zaria said. “It’s freely offered. Quite refreshing. A human like you might get the shits, but, you know, that’s the risk we take.”

“Yes,” Isaac said, gasping out the word. “Yes, I would like some water.”

She wagged a clawed finger. “Now, now, young sir, that was not very lordly of you. Mind your manners.”

“What?” Isaac thrashed in his restraints. “What is your game, beastwoman? Let me go!”

“You get that line from a book, Isaac? Read it in one of your adventure tales?” She regarded him with amusement. “Magic-wielder like yourself must come from the nobility. Educated in proper etiquette and such. So why don’t you say please?”

Isaac stared back at her.

“Come now,” she said. “Simple word, isn’t it?”

His throat was raw. His muscles were pained. His mind was growing dizzier by the second. When his last waterskin had emptied, and his urine had been darker than sandstone, Isaac had decided to brave the dunes with the sole intention of quenching his thirst. Now, it seemed his only option to save himself from dehydration was the hyena in front of him.

Even still, he was well aware that she was toying with him, leveraging the complete control she had over his life. Isaac had not become a journeyman in magical transmutation just to be bested and mocked by some common pirate.

But, at the moment, there really was nothing for it. He would have to swallow his pride before the water.

“Please,” he said, gazing up at her.

A grin emerged along her snout. “Knew you had it in you.”

She turned and sauntered over to the two packs she had tossed from the deck. In her temporary absence, Isaac ran his rope bindings along the edge of the cannon hole, hoping to find a sharp edge to cut them on. He found nothing but smooth brass, which made him quietly snarl. Isaac knew over two dozen spells, most of which could easily reduce the hyena to cinders, chunks, ribbons, and droplets—of course, with his wrists bound in place, casting a single one would be impossible. The mnemonic incantations required the full use of his arms. Without it, he was helpless.

As Isaac pulled on his restraints again, he noticed the body of a pirate, lying a modest distance away. It was the lioness he had killed with bolts of frost, who had died with a look of shock and agony on her face. Her glassy feline eyes seemed to reflect his stare.

Isaac felt a twist in his gut, turning his head away.

By now, Zaria was standing over him again, her tall figure blocking away the sun. She held a waterskin in her hand. “Open wide.”

Isaac opened his mouth.

She squatted down and began to pour. At first, Isaac drank greedily, the sensation of cool water on his tongue almost indescribable in its pleasure, but Zaria never slowed her pouring, and he couldn’t swallow fast enough. Soon, he was nearly choking on the water, some of it spilling on his face and chest. She continued to pour even when he bent over to cough and gasp. By the time the skin was empty, more of it had landed on his robes than his mouth, and the amount he had swallowed only managed to blunt his thirst.

Zaria tossed the empty skin over her shoulder. “Well, now. I hope we’re bathed and happy. If that’s all, let’s return to business.”

Isaac coughed, trying to lick more droplets from his scraggly beard.

Zaria held out a piece of paper. “What does this say?”

It was the letter his uncle had written him just before the start of his journey. He had not been able to send Isaac off personally, having to attend to urgent business elsewhere, but the letter was there to wish him well and grant him safe passage with the special design of its wax seal. It contained references to his mission, where he came from, and the places he was to go. Over the days of travel, Isaac had read it many times.

He kept his expression calm. “It’s written in the common language.”

The hyena moved the paper closer to his face. “I understand that, love. What does it say?”

He stared back at her for a moment, trying to understand the problem, before it suddenly dawned on him. “Oh. You’re illiterate.” He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself. “Of course you are. I don’t know why I expected—”

Her jaw flashed toward his throat. Isaac squirmed against the cannon hole, feeling an entire maw’s worth of teeth wrapping around his neck, like scissors to paper. His heart pounded against her canines and incisors. For a moment, her jaw seemed to tense, holding a fearsome pressure on his skin, only for the rest of her head to pull slightly away, leaving her nose below his chin and her breath caressing the front of his jugular, like a gentle promise.

This close to him, he could smell a distinctive musk, one that suggested she had not bathed for several days. It worsened the dizziness in his head.

“Don’t make this hard,” she said. “I’d hate to leave you for the birds.”

Above the furry ears tickling at his nose, Isaac could see buzzards already circling the air, high above the wreckage. He knew, from his reading, that vultures tended to eat the eyes of the dead first, or otherwise tear their way through the soft lining of the anus. He had studied enough diagrams to know their beaks were very sharp.

Sometimes, the birds did not bother to wait until their meal was dead.

“I’ll spin you a yarn,” Zaria said, her hot breath on his skin, “and tell me if I’m wrong.” She cleared her throat. “That gaudy little seal comes from the desk of some equally gaudy mage, probably robed and such, granting the bearer diplomatic passage. The curly-cues and fancy letterin’ tell me that this mage is probably so wizened that he jerks himself to sigils in his spare time. Most of all, the sweaty fingerprints on the margin suggest you’ve pawed over this parchment like a special letter from your missus.”

Isaac watched the buzzards circle overhead, trying not to breathe.

Something hot and wet touched his throat. He realized, all at once, that Zaria was dragging her tongue across his neck. Like many predators, she had meat-stripping barbs on her tongue, which were now roughly scarping over his skin. The feeling was painful, wet, and oddly tingling. He kicked his legs through the sand, trying to strike her away, but he was pressed into the section of hull by the bulk of her body, which gave him no leverage to spare.

Slowly, she pulled away, taking her time of things. A clawed hand gripped his shoulder. A pair of brown, slitted eyes met his own. He could see now, more than ever, that the scar on her nose was deep, old, and wicked.

“Am I hittin’ the mark, Isaac?”

Isaac tried to catch his breath, feeling that the heat on his face was not solely due to burns.

“I’ll ask you again,” she said, holding up his uncle’s letter. “And I promise, this is the last time I’ll use my words. Do we understand each other?”

Isaac nodded, gathering himself.

“What does this say?”

Isaac looked at the letter, back at her, and said: “Fuck off.”

She didn’t react. For a long moment, she kept looking into his eyes, searching for any hint of weakness. Isaac gathered the last of his strength and defiantly met her gaze, knowing that the slightest falter would be his last. All at once, she began to snigger. The laughter continued building in strength until she was bent over, leaning a hand on his thigh, cackling with her entire body. It was loud and whooping and completely like an animal.

Isaac took a deep breath, his throat still noticeably wet. He tried to think of his father.

“Can I tell you something, Isaac?” Zaria asked, pulling herself straight. Her snout quirked with a repressed grin. “I think we’ll make a fine team, you and I.”

“Excuse me?”

She stood up, pacing over to his upturned pack. “Well, I may not have had the good fortune of education, but I do know a good fortune when I see one.” She picked up a parchment lying on the ground, shaking the sand off.

A chill went down Isaac’s spine when he recognized his own map, complete with all his markings and notes and gathered thoughts. Zaria parsed over the symbols like she was perfectly capable of taking their measure. It occurred to him that a pirate would have a very good cause for learning how to navigate by chart.

It was already over. She knew where he was going.

Zaria strolled back to him, squatting down till she was only slightly above him. “What’s this, Isaac?”

“I do believe that’s a piece of paper.”

“Funny. I think it’s a treasure map. See?” She pointed at the large X that denoted his destination. “X marks the spot. Classic cartography. Even mages with silver spoons up their arse like that one, apparently.” She paused. “No offense.”

“Much taken,” Isaac said.

“Well, it just so happens I know this place. Most pirates do.” She adopted a creeping, gravelly voice. “The lair of an ancient sorceress, carved into the earth from the buried corpse of a giant, the smell of death so pungent it touches the fabric of your soul. They say that anyone who ventures into the mouth of this tomb has their essence consumed by demons, their spirit twisted into madness by eternal torture.” She glanced down at the map, then back at him. When she spoke again, her voice was at a regular alto pitch. “You believe in them old myths, Isaac?”

Isaac grimaced. “Not all of them are wives’ tales.”

“Ah,” she answered. “Well, they also say that old sorceress left behind treasures not seen by any species for thousands of years. Gems and goblets of gold, all glitterin’ in the dark, more than ten skimmers could carry. You believe that old myth, too?”

He swallowed.

Zaria pressed a claw into the X. “Let me spin another yarn. See, I think you were sent out by some mage academy or what have you to claim that treasure, and maybe discover a few evil magics along the way, or whatever nasty business the lords of the land are brewin’ up for their schemes. A group of bandits may stand no chance against the horrors that lurk in them halls, but a mage like you? Someone who’s quite obviously read his weight in ancient books?” She looked him up and down. “I bet you could take me right down to that horde of gold.”

“No,” Isaac said, quietly.

“No, you can’t? Or, no, you won’t?”

“No. I—” He sighed. “I’m trying to rescue my father.”

She tilted her head. “Is he some aspiring weapon of destruction, like yourself?”

“He was part of the Diet of Nine. One of the strongest transmutation experts on the continent. He went out to the tomb before I was born to make contact with that very same sorceress, who, I assure you, is very real. The Diet had reason to believe she was still alive, sustaining herself by the power of necromancy.”

“Ain’t that death magic illegal?”

“It’s . . . a complex discipline. There are practical applications, if you follow the Diet’s mandate, but stealing soul energy from the dead, corrupting the very essence of a person? That is a capital crime. My father had orders to kill the sorceress if her presence there was confirmed.” Isaac looked away. “He never returned. Something trapped him down in the tomb of the colossus. The only reason we know he’s not dead was a divination of his soul energy, using advanced machines.”

“Soul magic’s just a thing you can do, is it?”

“It’s highly experimental. Look, I have spent my life training with my uncle—my father’s brother—in order to rescue him from that tomb. Ever since I was able to speak, that has been my purpose. That is why I’m walking across this wasteland of a desert, risking death by wyrms and pirates. I want to save my father from whatever evil thing is holding him down there.”

Zaria blinked. She almost spoke, then seemed to think better of it. For a small span of time, she sat on her haunches, watching him carefully.

Isaac shrugged through his restraints. “Was that a good enough reason for you?”

“As far as they go, sure.” She was looking at him differently now. “Still haven’t answered my question about the treasure.”

“I doubt it’s quite as big as you’ve heard, but . . . yes. It’s real.”

She leaned in. “It’s real? Truly?”

“The Diet of Nine thinks it is.”

“Free to claim, then?”

“I suppose so. I doubt anyone else is coming.”

Zaria sat back on her toes. She ran her fingers through the sand, letting the sediment drip across her claws, before glancing around the wreckage. There were bodies of pirates, shattered planks, smoldering cinders. The hot desert wind whistled gently through it all.

“Tell you what, Isaac,” she said. “Since you’ve done me several favors already, I’ll do some for you.”

Isaac glanced at the dead lioness again. “Do you consider killing your friends a favor?”

The lips of her snout curled. “They weren’t my mates. Fact is, an hour ago, I was expecting them to give me a painful death. Now, I’m free as the wind, they’re all dead, and I’ve got an opportunity to be richer than the feline queen herself. You could say I’m feeling pretty chipper about things.”

“I just thought you were always like this.”

“Here’s the deal,” she said. “I’ll aid you in rescuing your father. Maybe I’ll vanquish some ancient evils along the way, if it catches my fancy. After that, you and I are going to split that treasure. It might be your father grants me some titles and land, too, but we can discuss that later.”

Isaac had several responses ready at once. Most of them were impolite, so he said: “Did none of that talk of ancient necromancers scare you away?”

“Why should it? I’ve got this strapping young mage ready to act as my squire boy. Clearly, he knows what for. He’s got naught but his cock in his hands, and he’s ready to march into blackness like a brave little lad.” She patted the haft of the poleaxe hanging on her back. “I’d dare say he’s almost a damsel in need of a knight.”

Something snapped in him.

“First,” Isaac said, “I am not a squire boy. I am a journeyman of magical transmutation, trained by a nation-renowned expert in necromancy and elemental magic. I have been certified by the Diet of Nine as proficient in the banishment of undead life, the destruction of hexes, and the counteraction of necrotic spells. I have been fully prepared to arrest or slay a sorceress powerful enough to rival armies.”

Zaria grinned. “You rattle off them titles to all the lasses, Isaac?”

“Secondly, I will not have my mission sullied by some greedy pirate looking for treasure! You will only get in my way! I will not put my father’s life at risk for some uneducated beastwoman who thinks she can do my job by swinging some steel on a stick!”

The hyena stared at him for a moment, slowly nodding her head, before rising to her feet. “Fine, then. Have fun with the buzzards.”

Isaac hesitated. “W-what?”

“Maybe they’ll gorge themselves on the easier meat, lying around here.” She gestured at the corpses. “Might give you some time to loose yourself.”

“Hey, no!” He struggled against the rope. “Let me free!”

“Why should I?” she said. “Clearly, you’re as fearsome as they come. You can handle a few birds.”

“I—well—”

“Oh, can you not cast them spells while tied like that?” She pretended to hum in thought. “That’s a shame. Rather puts you at my mercy, doesn’t it?”

By the edges of the wreckage, the first vultures were beginning to descend. They stayed on the periphery, watching the two living people with obvious caution, but their eyes were drifting hungrily toward the dead bodies, and they were growing bolder by the minute. Their dark forms shuddered across the sand.

Isaac heard the squawks overhead like the ringing of a church’s bell.

“Which do you think’ll come first?” Zaria asked. “Sunstroke or thirst? Lying out here, all on your lonesome. It’ll get you quick, believe me. The only hope you’ll have is the buzzards trying to nip your flesh while it’s ripe to eat, but that won’t be too merciful of them, either. They’ll start at the soft bits. Eyes and lips. You name it, they’ll get it. They’re very patient.”

Isaac tried to control his breathing. He knew she was trying to intimidate him again, and he attempted to respond in kind. “You will never see a single coin of that gold without me.”

She squatted down again, meeting his eye with an expression that was not entirely cruel. “I’m well aware. That’s why the deal’s being offered. I help you get your father, you help get me rich. Otherwise, we go our separate ways, here and now.”

“That’s not much of a choice.”

“Course it’s not. That’s why I’ve already packed your bag.” She gestured to the two packs she’d dropped down from the ship. “Your brave new knight has pilfered enough skins and rations from the cargo to last us the whole adventure, looks like. It’ll be freely offered, on condition of agreement.”

He looked at his upturned pack, seeing nothing but glass phylacteries and strips of old vellum parchment. He would never be able to reach his father on such meager supplies, let alone the journey back. Even after wetting his throat, he was still desperately thirsty. He would give anything for another supp of water.

He took a small breath.

“Smaller one’s yours, naturally,” Zaria said. “Can’t have my squire growing weak at the knees.”

Isaac glanced at the vultures again.

“Whatcha say then, Isaac? Comrades in arms?” She spread her arms in a hopeful embrace. “Soldiers for a cause?”

He glared up at her. “Just untie me, you mangy cutthroat.”

“Yes?” the hyena asked.

“Untie me.”

“Was that a yes, then?”

“Untie me!”

“I’m gonna need a yes there, squire.”

“Yes! For fuck’s sake, yes! Untie me!”

Zaria hummed to herself. “Oh, aye. Right. ‘Bout that. Those arms of yours—them magic cannons, I mean—those are going to stay nice and bound until the coin’s in our pockets. I ain’t riskin’ a spell from a mage of your caliber. You understand.”

He stared at her, long enough to hear the vultures begin to squabble over the lioness. Slowly, Isaac leaned forward, raising his tied wrists through the porthole of a cannon.

She grinned, pulling out a dagger. “Oh, just you wait, Isaac. We’ll be thick as thieves. You ain’t never had a better companion.”

Chapter Three

Cargo

The sun seared itself across the sky.

For the most part, Isaac had never ventured out during the day. Every night, he had stopped his march hours before dawn, taking shelter within rocky grottos, the nooks of slot canyons, and the last vestiges of chaparral forest, hoping to wait out the malevolence of the light. His uncle had insisted he not take unnecessary risks. Rescuing his father was all well and good, but the man had been trapped for decades, and he could wait a few weeks longer than planned, if only to make sure his one begotten son would not perish beneath the sun.

But even in the shade of a slot canyon, the heat remained miserable. It never truly abated—only fell and rose in intensity, like waves in a tide. It was a constant muddiness, a weight on his steps, a simmering cauldron for his thoughts. By the time he entered the dunes, dried sweat had collected in every crack of his skin, and no amount of water ever seemed to slake him of thirst. Even the sandwyrms and their vortex of teeth hadn’t made him panic like the thought of being caught by the sun’s light without shelter.

Isaac sighed.

Right now, he judged the sun to be just past its zenith. It pulsed in the firmament like a throbbing, angry hole, turning the sky from blue to a pale shade of red.

He tugged on the rope binding his hands, glaring at Zaria.

It was the peak of day. There was no shade or cover. All around him, there was an endless quantity of sand. The hills were sand. The valleys and slopes were sand. Sand flew in the wind, catching in his mouth and eyes. The sand was so hot beneath his boots that every step into the mire felt like stuffing his foot into a blacksmith’s forge. Before long, his shins were covered in burns, his ankles ached from twisting, and the folds of his skin were completely crusted with sediment.

When he reached a clearing in the dunes, he looked over the yawning seas of sand, seeing little else to focus the eye. Hazes of heat shimmered through the valleys. It reminded him of glass.

He tugged on his restraints again.

“We should have stayed with the ship,” Isaac said.

Zaria was several strides ahead, expertly working her way up a dune. She had wrapped herself in a loose-fitting shawl, the white fabric forming into a makeshift set of billowing robes that were not quite dissimilar from the journeyman’s robes Isaac himself wore. He noted, carefully, that she was not wearing any boots. The pads of her digitigrade feet seemed to barely break the sand.

“Them buzzards would’ve given us away,” she replied. “They’ll circle for hours. Like a beacon for whatever nasty sort wants easy pickings. Best we get some distance.”

“Even during the day?”

“No choice, love. There’s nothin’ for it. We gotta scamper.”

Isaac shook his head. “You have to scamper. You’re the one they want.”

“Oh, what,” Zaria said, taking a loping step up the sand, “you think my old mates would treat you like royalty? All crumpets and tea? Some human mage like yourself, bounding across the desert with more potions than sense—odds are they’d rob you on principle alone. I sure would.” She glanced back at him. “That’s if they don’t yank your guts for scuttling a whole bloody skimmer.”

Isaac glanced off into a neighboring valley of sand, saying nothing. When he looked back, Zaria had stopped halfway up the dune, her brown animal eyes watching him beneath the white hood of her shawl.

“You going to cover yourself?” she asked.

Because his hands were tied, he had to raise both of them to wipe the sweat from his brow. He gestured at the sun. “Why would I want more clothing?”

The hyena snorted.

“What?” Isaac asked, incensed.

“Far be it from me,” she said, “to separate a fool from his consequence, but I suppose you are my ward now, for better or worse.”

Isaac glared up at her.

She opened her arms, allowing the loose sleeves of her shawl to dangle and blow with the wind. “It’s basic survival. Cover yourself, nice and loose. It’ll keep the heat from your skin. It’ll keep your furless hide from sunburn, too.”

He gestured at his own brown robes. “Is this not enough?”

“You tell me, squire.”

“I am not your squire, or your ward, or a member of your unwashed pirate band, or whatever other epithet you care to insult me with. My name is Isaac. I am a journeyman from the college of Khador. I have titles and prestige.”

“That’s cute of you to say, squire.”

Isaac frowned. “What am I supposed to use for this shawl, exactly?”

“I put a blanket in your pack.”

Isaac had noticed the robes she had stuffed into his pack. At the time, he’d thought little of them, becoming much more concerned with how heavily laden it was with water and rations. He didn’t want to admit any ground to her, so he raised his tied hands into the light, saying: “I can’t exactly dress myself, can I?”

This gave her pause. “Hm. Suppose not.”

“Yes, well, thank you for all the instruction, despite its condescension, but I suppose I’ll do without.”

“Nah,” Zaria said. “I’ll do it for you.”

“W-what?”

She came down towards him, sliding down through the sand with practiced balance. He hardly had time to blink before she was towering above him again. His head barely reached the top of her breasts, and she had a presence of muscle and speed that seemed to trigger something primitive in Isaac. His heart raced whenever she was near.

“Raise your arms,” she said, reaching over his shoulder. “Far be it for a knight to let her squire go underdressed.”

“I am not your squire.”

She yanked the bundled robes from his pack and forced his arms over his head. He stood there, baking in the sun and no less embarrassed, letting the zoanthrope wrap a sprawl of white fabric around his body. With her standing so close, he caught another waft of her unwashed body. The smell was thick and strong. Isaac grimaced as she secured the makeshift shawl in place with several belts. He felt like a baby wrapped in blankets.

Zaria stepped back, looking him up and down. She grinned with a row of yellow teeth. “Quite a fearsome sight.”

Isaac grimaced at his new clothes.

“Try not to strike terror in the meek and innocent.”

“You are not funny.”

A hot gust of wind blew at him, carrying more of her scent. Isaac coughed and moved around her, continuing up the dune.

“Something wrong, squire?” Zaria asked, easily keeping pace with him.

“You have quite an odor on you.”

“Oh, thank you, love. Made it myself.”

“That is the problem.”

She glanced down at him. “Whose problem, exactly?”

“Anyone downwind.”

She chuckled. “Spoken like a lad who’s never lacked for soap and bathwater. You don’t smell like a wee cherub yourself.”

He tried to climb the dune faster, his feet sinking into the loose sand. “You know nothing of my upbringing. It wasn’t all honeyed tarts and ballroom dances.”

“Oh, truly?” She caught up to him again. “All cloistered in your wizard tower, with three hot meals, a fire in the hearth, and a bed of feathers to rest your head. Quite the image of suffering.”

“How do you sleep, then? Are you warm and snug with all the treasures you’ve robbed?”

Zaria blew a raspberry. “I’m supposed to feel bad for pinching fancy baubles? What good does a silver necklace do anyone ‘cept look real pretty? At least I turn it into food and ale.”

“You’re a pirate,” Isaac said. “I doubt you stop there.”

“Just admit you know nothing of the world, Isaac. Save us all the trouble.”

He reached the top of the dune and turned to face her. “Do you know how many travelers you’ve killed as a cutthroat? Do you even bother to count?”

She stopped just before him, further down the slope. “I never killed a soul that didn’t have it coming.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“That’s ‘cause you don’t know better. Your idea of banditry is all from books. Just so you’re aware, killing your mark’s the worst thing you can do.” She waved off to the horizon. “You rob a family in a carriage, and no one looks twice. Should’ve hired protection, they’ll be told. You slaughter that family down to the last, and you’ll have the entire town guard up your arse before you break camp. Don’t need to be morals involved. It’s just bein’ sensible with your craft.”

Isaac shook his head, continuing on. “I still don’t believe you.”

“Look,” she said, still following beside him, “it’s all about fear, right? You brandish your steel, you bare your teeth, you get the lads all laughing mean like you’re excited to gut something for a change, and you’ll have the usual wayfarers begging your mercy, throwing their purses without you ripping ‘em yourself. You do the show right, you convince the would-be heroes not to try nothing, and you skulk away without spillin’ a drop of blood.” She shrugged. “Little bit of coin’s not worth anyone’s life.”

“Oh, terrific,” Isaac replied, still trying to put distance between them. “I’ve seen it all now. A philanthropist pirate, trying to help the common folk while she robs them blind.”

Ahead of them, the dunes stretched off into the horizon. There was not a single color other than brown to focus the eye.

“Never claimed my hands weren’t bloody,” Zaria said, her voice gaining an edge. “Killed a couple score, at least. Town guards, rival pirates. Some nameless sorts on the street. Ain’t proud of it, but that’s life for you.”

Isaac snorted. “Like you had no choice.”

“Got a right to defend me and mine, don’t I?”

“No one forced you to turn to piracy.” He stomped into the sand, feeling the kicked-up sediment burning against his ankle. “You chose that path of your own free will.”

Suddenly, he heard a growl behind him. When he turned, he saw Zaria’s teeth emerge from beneath a curling lip. “Look here, you foppy little shit, I won’t be lectured by some spoiled cunt who’s lived naught but a bleeding life of luxury compared to mine.”

His heart raced. He stopped in the sand. The heat swirled around his head. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

“No.” She stepped forward, poking a claw down into his chest. “You tell me, Isaac. You ever gone a day in your life without food in your belly?”

Isaac stared back at her.

Her claw pressed deeper. “You stand on a street corner, and you watch some fat pig nobleman saunter by with fresh bread in his hooves, and you listen to the little pup next to you crying from hunger, and you tell me you wouldn’t snatch that loaf without a second thought.”

The air was hot and swirling.

“Maybe I would,” Isaac said. “Even still, I wouldn’t pretend to be better than I am.”

Her ears flattened. The poleaxe on her back glinted in the sun. Carefully, she leaned over him, speaking in a low growl. “How about you keep your focus on tombs and mages and absent fathers? Clearly, it’s all you intend to know.”

She shouldered past him, knocking him to the side with a brush of her leather vambrace. Isaac caught his balance in the sand. He tried to steady his breath.

Eventually, he followed her.

They continued on. The distance across the dunes was slowly scraped away, like sand brushing grooves into rock. With a shawl tied around his torso, Isaac felt some measure of relief from the heat, though it ended up being little comfort in the end. His legs ached. Each step through the sand was more exhausting than the last. Retrieving a waterskin from his pack was difficult with his hands tied in front of him, and the water itself was invariably hot.

A short distance ahead, Zaria kept a steady marching pace. Her tail flowed through a hole in her knee-length trousers, shifting with each of her steps. The wild mohawk of hair on her head and neck flowed down her upper back, brushing up through the white fabric of her shawl. Below her shoulders, her vest was beginning to tinge with spots of fresh red. She must have wounds on her back, ones that still wept with blood.

He hadn’t seen her receive any injuries during their escape, though she had been a prisoner of the pirates for some time before.

Had they tortured her?

Were those old wounds reopening again?

Further down, at the base of her tail, the curve of her ass—

Isaac blinked, looking away. He tried to recall his map. Zaria had taken possession of it, but he knew the gravesite was fairly close. If they kept travelling at their current pace, they would reach the tomb of the necromancer before noon tomorrow.

He felt a quiver in his chest.

He almost couldn’t believe it. All his life, he had imagined how the unplundered capital of the ancient necromancers would appear. A tomb built around the colossal skeleton of some ancient giant, sinking deep into the earth, its corridors built under the arches of ribs and petrified muscle. How dusty were its halls? What kind of engravings would line the burial chambers? Where would his father lie amongst all that ancient ruin?

In less than a day, he would finally know. It almost didn’t seem real.

He glanced at Zaria again.

He couldn’t fail his father now.

“So,” Isaac called out, his voice rusty from exertion. “What did you do to anger your friends? Why did they imprison you?”

Zaria’s tail immediately stiffened. “I’d cease my gab if I were you, Isaac.”

“You were giving plenty of it before.”

“At your expense. Not mine.”

He quickened his pace, closing the gap between them. “Was it just between you and your shipmates?”

She kept walking ahead of him.

“Zaria,” he called again, “I need to know if the other pirates are going to search for you.”

She looked up at the sky. Sand fluttered from her mohawk. “Aye, they will. That’s why we need the distance. All we can do is hope the wind covers our tracks.”

“Oh,” Isaac said. “That is terrific. Truly. Not only have you kidnapped me for coin, but you’ve also sicced a band of cutthroats after me. Is there anything else you care to hamper my mission with? Perhaps an assassin? A court jester, to complete the farce?”

“Tell you what, squire,” she replied. “If you continue to slow us down, I’ll be sure to tell them who blew up one of their prized magic ships.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Don’t you start thinking you’ll get off better than me.”

“Hey,” Isaac said. “What did you do?”

She shifted her white shawl, scratching the fur of her neck.

“At this point, I have a right to know.”

Her ears fell.

“Week or so back,” the hyena said, staring off into the middle distance, “we got a contract for moving cargo from one of the Diet kingdoms, some royal shipping company or other that wanted their goods delivered to an outpost deep in the shrubland. I forget the name. Should’ve paid attention.”

“A king hired pirates to move his supplies?”

“Sure. Best insurance one can buy. Who’s going to steal from a pirate ship?”

“The pirates themselves, I imagine.”

She gave a small snort. “I believe the ledger keepers call it loss reduction. Skimming from the top is better than stealing wholesale.” She waved a hand. “Anyway, we get the merchandise, we set sail, everything’s to order. We pass up more than one caravan since the contractor made such a fuss about fast delivery.

“Night three or four, I’m posting watch, and I hear a cry from the cargo deck. I check it out, as you do, but there’s no one below. Still hear the crying. Sounds real pitiful like. Finally tracked it down to one of the crates.” Her fist balled at her side. “Crack it open and there’s three tiger kittens staring up at me. Starved and covered in their own filth. Next crate I check has two young horses, and one’s clearly been dead a while. Third has humans. Fourth was boars. You get the idea.”

Isaac almost spoke. He decided to wait.

“By then,” Zaria said, “my shipmates come down as well, because I’m making a ruckus, and the kits are cryin’ loud. First one brave enough to approach asks what the hell I’m doing. I ask him if he knew we were transporting slaves. Children, at that. He tells me no, but why should he care? Job paid too well to ask questions. Hopefully, they hire us again. Then he kicks the crate and screams at the kittens to stop crying so much.

“Before I know it, I’ve split his head open. Next two shipmates liked me some so they try calming me. I tell them clear as I can that the next person who gets near these kits is dead. By then, more are coming down.” She gazed off towards the horizon. “I’m so beside myself that I kill nine others before a different plan strikes me. Managed to push them out and barricade the stairs long enough to rig a satchel of black powder next to the hull. Blew a hole in the ship, resealed the crates, and started dumping them out the side.”

She shrugged.

“We were close enough to a border town for the garrison to hear the noise. I dumped a third of the cargo before the crew broke through and pinned me down. From there, the skimmer broke hard to avoid pursuit, so I know they never picked what I tossed. That’s something.”

She spent the next few moments walking in silence.

“They tortured me a couple days. Tied right to the mast, no food or water. Everyone who lost a mate got a turn.”

She fingered one of the bleeding wounds on her back.

“Captain kept them in line, for the most part. Traitors like me get reserved for special treatment. She wanted to haul me back to Crookspur, way deep in the canyonlands, and spill my guts for the other crews to see.” Zaria gave a rough, humorless snort. “See, though, that’s the thing. She had live cargo. If she makes the journey to Crookspur, it’ll spoil on her. And she has a reputation of keeping her word.”

Isaac kept walking behind her.

“So,” Zaria continued, “she’s forced to hail down another ship, and she tosses me on board, and she promises to chew my guts like straw, and then she fucks off to sell children like cattle, as she promised. I was on that second skimmer for a couple hours. Then, of course, you came along, and you burned it down. And now we’re here.”

The hyena glanced at him.

“Just so we’re clear,” she said. “I ain’t goin’ back. Not for you, and neither for fear of what’s in that tomb up ahead. Not for nothin’.”

“I understand,” Isaac replied.

“Do you?”

“. . . I think so.”

She made a noise in her throat, turning back. “Good.”

Isaac watched her carefully. “There weren’t any slaves on that ship, right? The one I found you on? The one I. . . .”

“The one you burnt to cinders?”

“I mean, yes, if that skimmer wasn’t your original vessel, then there wasn’t anyone else imprisoned there, correct? There weren’t any . . . bystanders?”

She glanced back at him. “Is my squire suggesting he would have stopped his holy mission to rescue a couple kittens?”

“Yes! Of course I would!” He felt startled by the question. “What kind of person do you take me for? I would’ve helped.”

She grunted, still watching him.

Isaac looked away.

“Something else on your mind?” Zaria asked.

“Well. . . .” He thought about her story, picking through the details. “How many other ships are loaded with slaves? Who’s paying for all this?”

“You know,” she said. “I’ve been wondering that, myself.”

“Which Diet kingdom gave you the cargo?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does! Slavery is expressly forbidden under the mandate of the nine kingdoms. This king is breaking several treaties. He should be brought to justice.”

Zaria snorted, as if that was funny.

“I. . . .” Isaac fiddled with his hands, working against the rope. The wind was very quiet. “I don’t know.”

“Aye. Me neither.”

He gazed off into the distance, over the wrinkled hills of sand, looking for the rising spiral of smoke or the glowing sails of a skimmer. He saw nothing but sand and sky.

“That satisfy your curiosity, Isaac?”

“In some ways, sure.”

“Good. If we’re done gabbing, then, we should hurry the pace. The more distance we get, the better.”

He looked down at his feet. “Lead the way.” “Oh,” she said, looking at the horizon, “that I do intend.”

Chapter Four

Heat

Toward the end of the day, after Isaac’s mind had long grown numb with exhaustion, Zaria suggested they take cover in the shade of a dune.

He turned in her direction and slid down the sand as carefully as he could, managing to get only a modest amount stuck in his boots. By now, his makeshift shawl was soaking with sweat, most of the skin beneath burned a bright, painful red. The shade here was only slightly cooler than the scorching heat of the sun, but any amount of coolness was more than welcome.

Once he had fully slid to the bottom, Isaac ripped off his pack as fast as his tied hands could manage, digging through and tossing out everything in the way. He wanted his rations. The pirate grub. It was the same sort of nuts and dried meat and hardtack that he had been subsisting on for most of his journey, but it was now present in much higher quantities, and he was eager to indulge. He clawed his hands around a hunk of meat and gnawed it with his teeth— it was pork, probably, and it tasted about as good as his boots, but he continued to gnash at the colorless flesh until it was soggy and torn enough to swallow.

“Xotra’s cunt,” Zaria said, sliding down next to him. “Never thought I’d beat a lord for table manner.”

“Hungry,” Isaac managed to say.

“I gathered that, love.”

Isaac licked his lips, scooping up the obscene amounts of salt, and began to smash a piece of hardtack with his fist. “Calories. A calorie is a unit of energy, given by food. Magic requires energy. I casted spells without catalysts. It depleted me.”

Zaria looked between him and the brick-like cracking of the hardtack.

“You don’t know what those words mean,” he said.

“I mean, I got most of ‘em.”

Isaac felt a chunk of hardtack break between his teeth. “A catalyst is a facilitator of energy transfer. It allows for exceptional efficiency in spellcasting. Otherwise, I’m forced to use more of my own bodily energy for less return, and the mnemonics can easily diminish my core reserves, leading to respiratory spasms and the failure of organs.”

“Right,” Zaria said.

He looked at her. “You still don’t understand.”

“Well, don’t stop on my account.”

“It’s very simple,” he said, starting to work on the nuts. “The scrolls I use—”

He stopped, feeling a surge of realization.

His scrolls.

During the battle with the pirate skimmer, he had dumped all the scrolls in the sand, purely as an act of desperation. The ship had burned, and he had fought through the rest of the pirates, and he had been completely distracted by Zaria and her interrogations from then until now. When they had left the ship behind. . . .

“Ivtarr preserve,” Isaac said, lurching to his feet. Several nuts fell to the sand. “My scrolls.”

“What’s that, now?” Zaria asked.

“I left my scrolls at the ship.”

She tilted her head.

“You don’t understand,” Isaac said, beginning to trudge through the sand. “I need those catalysts. Without the enhancement of my anti-necrotic—”

A furry hand grabbed his wrist.

“I understand plenty,” Zaria said. “Sit down.”

“Without those scrolls—”

“You gonna walk all the way back? Now? In the dark?” She gave a hard tug on his arm. “When I told you several times there’s pirates lookin’ for us?”

Isaac blinked. “I—”

“Sit the fuck down.”

She pulled, and Isaac was flung back into the sand, landing with a cough of sediment. He realized, all at once, that he had managed to forget how strong she truly was. When she released his arm, he was only able to blink up at the reddening sky.

“Sorry,” Zaria said. “But you shoulda told me so. We ain’t gonna spend two full days walkin’ there and back. You’ll do without.”

Isaac grimaced, wanting to say more.

“Eat your food, squire.”

With a sigh, he returned to his rations, still ravenously hungry. Beside him, Zaria unsheathed her poleaxe, shoving the spear tip deep into the slope of sand. When it was firmly buried, she leaned back against the haft and wiped her mohawk away from her eyes. Isaac focused on chewing another strip of salt meat, washing it down with a gulp of hot water.

He could manage without the scrolls. It would not be easy, of course, but, at the same time, he had already exhausted most of his supply, anyway. The wyrms had seen to that. For now, he would have to hope that he had enough rations to make up for the added exertion.

He would just have to be careful.

As he continued to eat, he could feel Zaria watching him from the side. He almost didn’t care. In fact, as he chewed through another strip of meat, Isaac’s thoughts drifted away from his present circumstances entirely. He thought of food. Namely, he thought of the food he no longer had. He remembered meals taken in the library. He pictured warm bread, hearty stews, chicken and fish, garlic and cloves and butter. He remembered how, sometimes, his uncle would join him in breaking his fast, bringing fresh milk and eggs from the college larder. It was one of the few times Isaac had ever felt like a nephew, rather than a disciple.

He stopped his chewing when he noticed movement.

Zaria was unwrapping her shawl, pulling it straight over her head. For a moment, her face was obscured, and he could see her chest. Her sleeveless vest was crossed by the few straps of her leather armor. Her spotted fur poked up through the collar’s laces. Her arms were corded with muscle. She filled out the undershirt with a widely curving back, likely attained from a life spent swabbing decks, slinging rope, and hauling crates.

There was blood on her chest. It was fresh. He could track the spots where they had tortured her, just by the weeping. They must be painful.

As he looked, he saw plenty of scars.

Her breasts—

“Does my squire wish something of his knight?”

Isaac jerked his head, like he was dodging a cane.

Slowly, Zaria adjusted the piece of torn cloth acting as her brassiere, her eyes never leaving him. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed your peeks, young lad.”

“Just . . . curious about your scars.”

“Got a funny way of showin’ it.”

“I don’t mean to pry.”

She leaned back against her poleaxe. “I’m an open book, Isaac. Don’t you like to read?”

He ignored the remark. “How long should we rest?”

There was a pause behind him. He kept his gaze averted. He wasn’t entirely sure how much of the heat on his face was blush or sunburn.

“Actually,” she said, “I think we should make camp.” The area around them was a roughly square courtyard of dunes, like a natural caldera of sand. The walls were high and tall. “We’re fairly sheltered. I reckon it’s close enough to the tomb to scare any but the bravest sort from pursuit, and that’s if they find our tracks at all.” There was another pause, as if the idea was gaining traction. “It’s like to be twilight soon. What do you say we slumber now, awake before dawn, and march to danger and fortune by moonlight?”

Isaac made himself look at her. “Are you actually asking my opinion?”

“If it agrees with mine, sure.”

“Well, it does. But I’ll try not to do it again.”

With his hunger mostly sated, Isaac reached into his pack and pulled out a few phylacteries, along with a mortar and pestle. He mixed a few ingredients—chamomile, rosehips, yarrow—and ground them together until the poultice was a pale, even yellow. After adding a tiny amount of water, he allowed the liniment to settle, and shortly after began to rub the solution onto his burns and scrapes.

Through it all, he could feel Zaria watching him. She had started on her own rations, which involved loudly ripping into a hunk of salt meat. The sound was very distracting. As Isaac nursed his reddened skin, facts from his encyclopedias rose into his mind. Hyenas had one of the strongest bites of all zoanthropes. They could easily shatter bone. The large carnassials at the back of their jaw provided leverage, while the front canines both gored and crushed. Most of all, he could remember the killing power he had felt as they clamped around his throat—

“Squire,” Zaria said.

Isaac nearly dropped his mortar.

“Entertain your knight. She grows weary from travel.”

Isaac continued to rub his burns, focusing on the welt above his brow. “Well, if she’s feeling troubled, maybe she should change her direction? Perhaps she should turn away? March from the tomb? Seek lighter burdens?”

She continued to chew her meat. “Is that cowardice I’m hearing?”

“Clearly, it’s only concern for you.”

“Well,” Zaria said, “don’t you fret about me, good lad. I’ve won more battles than a dwarf climbing stairs. I’ll keep my squire safe.”

“Of course,” Isaac said. “Surely that’s the way it’ll work.”

He sealed the remains of his poultice in an empty phial and stuffed it in his pack. He doubted that he could assemble his tent on the loose sand, so he leaned back into the slope of the dune, sinking in just enough to be comfortable, and closed his eyes. For a moment, all he heard was a gentle desert breeze. His aching muscles began to rest.

“Squire.”

His eyes shot open. “I am not your squire!”

She grinned around a pull of her waterskin. “You going to list your titles again? Best fire-blowin’ wizard this side of the continent?”

“Untie me, and I’ll give you a demonstration.”

“Oh, I bet you would.” She tossed the empty skin over her shoulder. “Tell me about yourself, Isaac. Consider me curious.”

He wished greatly for sleep. “Why?”

“Well, maybe I consider fireballs flying from your hand to be an interesting topic of discussion.” He heard the folding of her leather armor, as if she were shifting position. It sounded as if she had moved closer. “And you like to bluster much, even when tied and helpless, but I know there’s a certain—what’s the word—timidness about you, which belies a lack of experience. Like you’ve been shut up in a mage tower all your life, mistaking book-learning for true knowledge.”

Isaac stared up at the sky, watching the sky grow so red it was nearly black.

“You certainly peek at me like a shopboy.”

He clenched his jaw. “I suppose you won’t let me sleep if I remain quiet.”

“Just so.” She shifted again. She was definitely moving closer. “Please, if you would, enlighten me as to how baby Isaac became a man.”

Isaac spoke wearily. “I was raised by my uncle. I lived in the tower granted to him by the local college of elements. I was educated in elemental casting and necrotic counteraction, just like my father before me. This is the first time I’ve ever travelled from my home.”

He listened to the whisper of the wind, remembering how it sounded through his high bedroom window.

Zaria snorted. “You’re not gonna make me prompt every word, are you?”

“I just might.”

“Oh, come now, squire. Don’t be a tease.”

“My day always started at dawn,” Isaac said. “If I was not bathed and dressed before then, I was caned. Mornings were dedicated to mnemonic practice. If I forgot a motion in all the complicated sequences, I was caned. If repeatedly casting the spells left me too weak to stand, I was caned. In the afternoon, I studied by candlelight in the cellar of the tower, reading endless biographies of centuries-old sorcerers and their contribution to magical knowledge. If I could not name one of these sorcerers and their treatises upon demand, I was caned. Evenings were spent doing chores—copying manuscripts, preparing lab equipment. I rarely spent any nights not nursing both welts and fatigue.”

He licked a trace of salt from his lips.

“The only people I ever talked to, beside my uncle, were experts he would bring to expand my curriculum. Without fail, they would mention my father. They would say they’re sorry. He was a good man, and it’s a shame what happened, and what a proper boy I was growing to be. They’d tell me stories of the sorcerer he was. He had done many favors for all of them. Again, without fail, they would tell me how closely I resembled him. The spitting image.” Isaac paused. “One time, I told my hex instructor that, if he was so dismayed about my father’s capture, he should aid in his rescue. The second he left, my uncle caned me until I couldn’t walk.”

He watched a cloud grow red at the edges.

“Where was your mother in all this?” Zaria asked.

“She died giving birth to me.”

The wind sprayed sand across his boots.

“Anyway,” Isaac said, “you were right. I never lacked for hot meals. We had multiple servants. I was always warm. I always had a bed. That’s more than many.”

“Is that all normal? The caning and such?”

“It’s not abnormal. Magic is complex. It’s very difficult to learn. It requires strict discipline and years of practice.”

Zaria blew a raspberry. “There’s a difference between tough love and mean spirit. Your uncle sounds like the latter.”

“Oh,” Isaac said, “he very much resented being my caretaker. He would often tell me so. According to him, I was ungrateful for all the sacrifices he made for me, all the work put into my lessons, the costs of food, whatever he could name. He’d tell me the only reason my insolence hadn’t gotten me kicked to the gutter was because of his debt to my father.” He was silent for a moment. “I wouldn’t say he was evil. Sometimes, he would dine with me, and I’d see a different side of him. He would joke. He told me bits of gossip from the college and the wider Diet office. After my chores, I could read whatever books I wished. When I earned my journeyman title, I remember looking into the crowd and seeing him smile.”

For a moment, Isaac was lost in memory.

“You know that letter I have? The one with the seal?”

“Aye,” Zaria said.

“It was written by him. Mostly, it’s just a reminder of my mission, a means of granting safe passage. But there’s this—” Isaac couldn’t get the words out. “He wrote a line, towards the end. ‘Your father will be proud of you.’”

He had read that line many, many times.

“Isaac,” Zaria said, and there was something different in her voice. “I don’t mean this . . . ungently, but I’ve seen that sort before. Pirates, mercenaries, soldiers—any band of rough men that’ll pick along kids as it roams through the land. It’s abuse. You smack the lad often, insult every effort he makes, but throw in a reward now and then, and he’ll love you. He’ll try desperately to win your approval. He’ll think all the horror you put him through is for a purpose, rather than just bein’ mean.”

“I don’t care for your opinion on my family,” Isaac said. “You asked, and I answered. That’s all.”

There was a silence.

“So be it. Your business, in the end.” He heard her start to chew on more meat. “If we’re changing the subject, then I feel obligated to inquire something.”

“Yes?”

“You ever laid with a woman before?”

Isaac turned onto his side, facing away. “I’m going to sleep now.”

“Hold a moment. I’m getting the little itchy notion that you’ve not spoken the truth.”

“You think I’m lying?”

“No,” Zaria said. “I think someone’s lyin’ to you.”

He frowned. Slowly, he rolled back over. “How do you mean?”

She unfolded his map from a pocket and shifted over until she was sitting next to him. She held the map out, and Isaac noted, disdainfully, that it had acquired her musk. “You came up from the south, correct? This way here?”

He studied the map. “More or less.”

“You say that like it don’t mean nothing.”

“Should it?”

She snorted in disbelief. “Where do you hail from, Isaac? Be specific.”

He looked up at her. The scar across her nose was the same dull pink as the sunset above, and her eyes were already reflecting the light in the coming gloom.

“At this point,” she said, “do you think it’ll hurt to tell?”

Isaac rolled his eyes. “The outskirts of Khador, close to this river here.”

“That’s to the east. Quite far, actually.”

“I hope you’re getting to a point.”

“Isaac, why were you coming up from the south if your home lies to the east?”

“My uncle told me to venture around the eastern portion of the desert. He said there were vicious pirates around the alluvial washes.” He looked at her. “Clearly, he was right.”

“You have no idea what lies to the south, do you?”

“I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

She jabbed a claw into the map. “These are spawning grounds for the wyrms. Largest nursery this side of the continent. And, right now, you’re telling me you strolled right through their fuck nest because you thought it was the safest bloody option.”

He blinked, reexamining his path from home to present. “That can’t be right—”

“Isaac, I don’t think you fully grasp things here. You are the first person who has ever entered those dunes and not come out the other side as a pile of shite. You did so on foot, no less. If word of this feat ever hits the masses, your name will be remembered for centuries. I mean, they’ll write songs about you.”

Isaac stared at his map, feeling suddenly numb.

“Did you not suspect nothing?” Zaria asked. “Did none of them fearsome creatures give you pause?”

“I—” He looked at his map markers again, as if seeing them for the first time. “I was prepared for adversity. The sorceress in the tomb could’ve been controlling the beasts, all through some arcane talents. I wasn’t entirely sure she wasn’t sending them after me.” He let his head fall back into the sand. “It wasn’t heroic. I was terrified. Nearly swallowed a dozen times over. I had to use most of my scrolls just to keep them at bay.”

Zaria hummed. “Guess that explains why you were so eager to spurt your load at any ship passin’ over yonder. I’d be twitchin’ mad, too.”

“I’m sure you’re very grateful for my intervention.”

“Oh, dearly indebted, love. But here’s the rub—your uncle told you to walk through that nest, didn’t he? Showed you exactly where to go?”

“I mean . . . yes, but—”

“He also the one that packed your bag?”

Isaac almost reached for his pack. “Yes, he was.”

“So he’s the reason you were wandering around the desert with barely any water, then? Told you to supp from a spring that had dried up years prior, didn’t he?”

Isaac gazed up at the wine-dark sky, his mind racing.

“Here’s the thing, love,” Zaria said. “This may come as a shock, but many pirates are freeloaders. Idle sinners.”

“Don’t break my heart like that.”

“Oh, yes—with great pain, I speak true. You got your lads whose only interest in life is their next drink, their next fight, and their next fuck, and usually in that order. Their patrols are sloppy, they’ll break the face of the first bloke that looks at them funny, and they’re even more like to kill innocent folk that don’t need killing. Dangerous to be around, as I’m sure you’d agree. But as it happens, the code of conduct prevents a simple throat-slittin’ from solving the dilemma. You know what the solution is?”

“Enlighten me.”

“You send them on an errand they won’t come back from. A scouting mission when the town guard’s all riled, or a rearguard they got no hope of holdin’. It’s something—what’s the word—deniable. You know my meaning. If you ever get questioned by their mates, you can say you did your best. Makes it look tragic rather than planned.”

A tense feeling crept into his chest.

“From all I’ve heard,” Zaria said, “I’m thinking your uncle did that to you. Problem is, you managed to survive it.”

“No,” Isaac replied.

“Course, I ain’t ever met the man, but I would think, surely, that a wizard such as him would know how to plan a proper march, especially if this mission of yours was so important. And yet—”

“No,” Isaac said, more firmly. “My uncle did no such thing.”

“I understand these accusations might—”

“You understand nothing!” Isaac shot back up to sitting, dragging a cloud of sand. “My uncle is a high-ranking member of the Diet of Nine. He is a tenured instructor at the college of Khador. He is petitioning for entrance into the Council of Heavens and well expected to receive it. He is not some—some—some cutthroat stabbing a lazy thug in the back! I am his kin!”

Zaria flicked an ear. “It’s like you said. He never wanted you, resented the time and coin you stole, and his only obligation to your livelihood was the debt of his brother.”

“He raised me! He took me off my mother’s corpse! He was there for me when no one else in the world would bother!”

“To me, it sounds like he beat you hand and foot.”

“The trials and lessons he put me through were for a purpose! I wasn’t just some hostage for him to vent his anger!” Isaac attempted to breathe. “Why would he spend decades raising me as a mage if he just wanted to kill me without question?”

“Dunno,” Zaria said, shrugging. “But how do you explain the wyrms and the water?”

With his hands tied, Isaac clenched one fist inside the other. “I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

She held out a palm. “Easy, Isaac. I may not know your business, but I know mine, and I know a setup when I see one. It looks wrong, is all. Might be you’d consider that, if you weren’t so desperate for his approval.”

He noted the poleaxe at her back and the dagger at her hip. Some reason returned to him, and he sat back. “Of course you’d think that way. Some common pirate like you would assume the worst of everyone. We’re all just trying to take advantage of each other, aren’t we?”

“Suppose you aim to prove me wrong.”

“No. Why should I? It’s exactly what you did. You dug through my belongings and saw my map, thought you’d have a chance to get rich, and threatened to leave me for dead if I didn’t lead you down to buried treasure. You’re threatening my life’s mission just to line your own pockets. I’d say you’re a perfect example of cutthroats the world over.”

Her ears flattened against her skull. “I don’t have a choice. Some of us don’t got the luxury for morals.”

“You could walk away with your life at any time. You are choosing to do this.”

“I betrayed my crew! Do you know what pirates do to traitors? They’ll flay my hide, and spill my guts, and tell all the onlookers exactly what happens to them that kill their mates! Right now, half the gods-damned ships in the region are combing the desert for yours truly, and if they find me, they’ll end up throwing what’s left to the dogs!”

“Hide in a town, then. Try an honest profession.”

“You mean the towns that all got wanted posters with my furry visage? All that waits for me in civilized society is a cot and piss bucket in a dungeon. That’s what being an outlaw means, in case you weren’t aware. It means if I got an army of thugs wants to kill me, then I have no recourse but death, on their side or mine.”

Isaac shook his head. “None of that requires you to pillage a tomb full of necromancy. You have no idea of the dangers that lurk in those halls. It’s a fool’s errand, and you’re a fool for dreaming of it.”

“That make you a fool, too?”

“The difference is that I was trained for it. You were not.”

She breathed out through her teeth. “That gold ain’t just a dream of mine. That gold is power. It’s peace of mind. It’s the only bloody chance I got left to buy some measure of safety. It’s bribing a magistrate for asylum, paying a smuggler to ship me off to sea, or just plain hiring enough protection that I don’t got to look over my shoulder the rest of my life. If I don’t find that treasure—if you don’t help me get it—then I’m dead. No question, no chance.”

Isaac stared back at her, meeting a gaze that was lined with teeth, scars, and fury.

“Now you listen to me, Isaac, and you listen well.”

“I will not submit—”

“Shut your fuckin’ mouth.”

The way she said it startled him. All at once, her voice was rough and low, her teeth peeling into view, her eyes gleaming like coins. Her hand settled on the pommel of her dagger.

Isaac tried not to panic.

“I’m sorry for doing this to you,” Zaria said. “Truly. If I weren’t so desperate, then I’d have sent you on your way with no harm or malice. For the record, I think highly of your mission. Despite your efforts, I’m startin’ to think highly of you, too. And if my word means anything at all, then I promise to honor our deal. I help you rescue your father, we split the treasure, and say goodbye. I got no intentions, otherwise.”

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees.

“Here’s how this will play out. Your hands will remain bound until I can trust that you won’t blow me to cinders while my back is turned. If a situation arises where your hands need to be unbound, then they will be so with a dagger at your back, lest you try something stupid. I will be watching sharp for any indication of treachery. And if I find any inclination of such—”

Before he could blink, she drew her dagger and pressed it to his throat.

“I will not hesitate to end your life.”

Above, the sky had turned the color of blood.

“Do we understand each other?”

Isaac felt the edge of the blade as he swallowed. “I suppose so.”

“Good.” Without removing her dagger, she reached into her pack and pulled out a wheel of rope, tossing it into his lap. “Tie your ankles to your wrists.”

“Why?”

“So you can’t slit my throat while I slumber.”

Isaac glanced down at the rope, rubbing it through his fingers. “I, uh. . . .”

“What is it?”

“I. . . .”

“Spit it out,” she said, pressing the dagger close.

“I don’t know how to tie a knot.”

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

All at once, Zaria burst into laughter, letting her dagger arm fall to the sand. She tried to speak, managed a few breathless words, and fell to cackling again. It echoed loudly across the dunes. “Of course you don’t,” she said, still snickering. Her canines pressed against her snout in a toothy grin. “I mean, why should you? Probably wipe your arse with magic instead of leaves.”

Isaac couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or relieved.

“Scoot your legs out. I’ll do it.”

She returned the dagger to her hip and began to tie several knots into the rope, fast as a sailor. She formed two loops, fastening them around his ankles. By the end, his legs were as bound as his arms, and both were connected together by a single line of rope that ran along his torso. It wasn’t tight enough to force him to bend, but he would certainly have trouble doing anything other than flopping on his belly.

Zaria returned to her position on the slope. “Why do you have to make me say things like that, Isaac? I was enjoying our talk.”

He tested the new range of his limbs. It was not very far. “This is my fault, is it?”

“Oh, quite so, squire. Just so things are clear—if I weren’t growing fond of you, I’d have you hogtied and spittled.”

“Ah,” Isaac said, calm as he could. “Well, then. I will certainly . . . continue my charm.”

She gave him a smile that wasn’t entirely false. “I hope so.” She nestled herself into the sand, folding her arms and closing her eyes. “Well, good night. Don’t let the sandwyrms bite.”

Isaac watched her for several moments. “Is . . . that it?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, not opening her eyes.

“You just threatened me with a knife, and now you’re going to sleep?”

“Sure.”

“. . . really?”

“Isaac,” she said. “For you, that might’ve been the first time someone’s imperiled your life. For me, that was a standard greeting.”

He blinked a few times. He tested his restraints again. He watched her chest rise and fall.

“Stop staring at my tits, by the way.”

He quickly lay down in the sand, trying to pull his sweat-soaked shawl into a blanket. “Right, yes. So . . . goodnight?”

“Sweet dreams,” she replied.

Isaac felt his body sink into a shallow depression. By now, the sand was pleasantly warm. The liniment had soothed his burns. For the first time in nearly a week, he had slaked his thirst and calmed his hunger. Around him, the dying light crawled its way up the dunes in rich shades of pink and orange. He watched the sky until the stars appeared. After a while, Zaria began to snore. A short time later, exhaustion finally took hold, and he fell into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter Five

Fun & Games

Isaac awoke to a bright, starry sky. A hand covered his mouth.

“Be still,” Zaria whispered. “They’re coming.”

He looked, eyes wide.

Around him, the night was dark and cloudless. A thin crescent of orange was the only indication of Reinga, the sister moon. Solnova, the yellow patriarch, was just below the horizon. Ulderon was in the shadow of his father. Usually, if all three moons were visible, the night was nearly as bright as day.

Isaac shook away his lessons of astronomy.

Right now, all he could see of the desert was varying shades of black. The dunes were covered in such shadow that the stars were often the only sign of where the land ended and the sky began. There was no movement, save for a small spout of sand still twisting in the wind.

Slowly, the sandship emerged.

It crested the peak of a dune, cutting sideways across the tall rims of sand that surrounded their shelter, like a finger circling a cup. Lanterns dangled across the edges of the top deck, illuminating the magically treated wood of the hull. A sigil of wind magic burned across the twin-masted sail. As he watched, Isaac began to see the outlines of lions and hyenas at watch positions, peering into the night with a predator’s vision.

“Ain’t likely to spot us,” Zaria said. “I’d still rather scamper, if you’re of the mind.”

Isaac nodded, tugging on his restraints. He could smell the dirt and animal musk in her hand. Fur tickled his nose.

“Gonna let you breathe. Don’t scream like a maiden.”

He looked at her indignantly.

She released his face from her grip, and the glint of her dagger reached down toward his midsection. There was an audible series of cuts. Severed rope fell past his ankles. His hands were still tied. He did not complain.

Using as little movement as possible, the two hefted their packs and began to climb up the dune on hands and feet, clinging to the thin shadow across its face. Isaac was very careful not to slip through the loose sediment. When they reached the top, the ship was still sailing east at a watchful pace. Its black pirate standard fluttered in the night breeze, and the brass lips of the cannon holes glinted beneath the light of the lanterns.

“Xotra’s cunt,” Zaria said. “Check the broadside.”

If Isaac squinted, he could just barely make out a circle of pale wood against the hull’s darker brown. At this distance, it was about the size of a coin. To his untrained eye, it looked like an emergency repair on the middeck hull.

“That’s my old ship,” Zaria said. “The Silent Saber. Thought she’d head for port after I blew a hole in her side.” She stared a moment. “Didn’t think she’d range this far to the tomb, neither.”

“I thought you said pirates were superstitious.”

“Worse than a crone, believe me.”

The longer he watched the skimmer, the more he caught glimpses of various species holding positions along the rim of the vessel. Many were slung across the rigging. Further above, human-shaped animals watched from the gunner’s perch, visible only by the reflected light in their eye. It seemed that half the crew was currently on watch.

“They must really want you dead,” Isaac said.

“Aye. That they do.”

The Saber dipped down the face of a small dune. For a moment, only her glowing sail remained visible, like the fin of a shark skulking through water.

“We should go,” Isaac said. “They could see our outline from here.”

The hyena continued to watch the skimmer, her mohawk swaying with the breeze. The fur on her neck was standing on end.

“Zaria.”

“Aye,” she said, snapping herself around. “Right. Onwards.”

She dashed down the opposite side of their dune, moving with more speed than care. Isaac followed behind. With their packs hastily slung over shoulder, they threshed their way across the valley floor, the sand glimmering orange beneath Reinga’s crescent light.The Silent Saber disappeared into the night, never once betraying a sound.

It was two hours into the march before Zaria stopped peering over her shoulder, though she continued to insist on an abundance of caution. Neither of them was allowed to travel over the tops of the dunes—instead, they had to walk in the deep depressions between the flowing hills of sand, which quickly forced them to diverge from their main route whenever an easy path did not present itself. They used the constellations overhead to navigate by the cardinal directions, always pressing close to the thin shadows and gentle slopes.

The journey continued for hours. The glow of Solnova disappeared below the horizon, dragging the rest of his tortured children along, and Isaac never again managed to spot the glowing sail of a skimmer, though a few shooting stars gave him false starts. As the time dragged away, he found the desert night to be quiet and pleasantly cool.

Eventually, the sky brightened, and the sun began to return. When the light touched him directly, his reddened skin began to burn.

He braced himself for another miserable day.

“What’ll you do with your half of the treasure?”

At the moment, Isaac was trudging his way through an open plain of sand, furrowing his brow against the morning light and the specks of sediment blowing in the wind. He barely paid the question any attention.

“Isaac?”

“What?” he asked.

Zaria had been walking ahead of him. Her stride was longer, and her digitigrade feet had an easier time negotiating the sand. She always took the lead. Now, with a glance backward, she slowed her pace enough to walk at his side. The zoanthrope peered at him beneath the hood of her shawl.

He tried not to sigh.

“Got any dreams for our coin?” she asked. “Any debaucherous intent?”

“Our coin,” he repeated, deadpan.

“We’re splittin’ it, ain’t we?”

He shook his head, looking away. “I have no plans.”

“Not a clue?” she asked, the morning sun illuminating half her face. “None whatsoever?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“You wanna tell me you been worked like an ox all your life, just for this, and the thought of bein’ filthy rich never tickled you a bit?”

“Why would it?” Isaac replied. “I’ve barely even seen money before. I only understand the concept academically. I wouldn’t . . . I mean, I wouldn’t know what to do with any amount of coin, let alone a fortune. It’s almost meaningless to me.”

She hummed to herself. “Are you taking suggestions?”

“No.”

“I’m a bit more worldly than you, Isaac. Might be you catch some wisdom.”

“Do we have to do this?”

“Do what?”

“Do we,” Isaac said, “have to have this sort of talk again?”

He could tell, by her voice, that she was getting amused. “This sorta talk?”

“This sort of talk where you prod me like a circus horse, waiting until I lose my temper or say something foolish.” He fluffed the collar of his shawl, trying to cover his face. “I don’t appreciate these games.”

The hyena snickered. “I just wanna gab, love. You’re the bein’ sour.”

He did not respond. His boots stomped and twisted through the sand. The day was already growing hot.

“Well?” Zaria asked.

“Well, what?”

“Would you care to hear my suggestion, for how the young squire should spend his freedom and fortune?”

He restrained a sigh. “I suppose you’ll give it to me, regardless.”

“Well,” she said. “Considering a mage like yourself is probably chaster than a nun, I recommend you indulge in drink and whores till your cock’s as wet as your gullet. Healthier than a thousand books, in your case.”

“Oh, yes,” Isaac replied. “Drinks and whores. What a profound suggestion. Your insight is truly unparalleled.” He stumbled slightly through the sand. “Also, for future reference, the correct phrasing is more chaste, not chaster. Please conjugate properly.”

“See, now, that’s exactly my point. That tongue’d be put to better use licking cunts, not teaching vocabulary.”

Isaac shook his head, pacing slightly ahead of her.

“Oh?” she said, a smile in her voice. “Does mention of them bits and bobs make you squeamish, Isaac?”

“I’m just wondering why you insist on chatting with me, like I’m not your hostage.”

She blew a raspberry. “Oh, come now. Are you still on this?”

“Still on this?” he asked, incredulous.

“Is all this bondage of yours really gonna get in the way of us bein’ mates?”

“Yes!” he shouted, finally losing his temper. “Yes, it will! It’s not just the ropes! You threatened to have me devoured by birds! You’ve beaten me unconscious! Last night, you pressed a knife to my neck!”

“Didn’t mean nothing special,” Zaria replied, her voice as breezy as the wind. “I’m a pirate, love. That’s the craft. Anyway, I said I was sorry for it.”

“I don’t care how sorry you are! You’re still doing it! You’re still holding me prisoner! I expect you’ll end up threatening me upon entrance to the tomb, when our lives are actually in danger!” He ripped at his restraints again, just to feel how they dug through his wrists. “Your apologies will mean nothing to me until you actually correct your behavior. Gods above, you mock me for my parents, but I have to wonder what yours ever did for you.”

There was a silence. When Isaac glanced at Zaria, she was staring ahead, her shawl flapping in the breeze, her gaze lingering somewhere on the nebulous line where the dunes met the sky. The scar on her nose twitched.

For a moment, the only sound was the whistle of a sandy wind.

“Fine,” she said. “I take your point. Suppose we need a more calmin’ topic for discussion.”

Isaac tore his gaze from her. “I think silence will heal our wounds.”

“Ain’t how it works, squire. You and I are gabbin’ this out.” She turned to watch a dust spout circling over a distant hill. “In my world, you fight with a crewmate, you don’t just let it lie, cause that way the meanness festers, and you’ll hate each other all the worse. You force a talk. You keep on with the sod until you have their respect, if not their liking.”

Isaac met her gaze, briefly, before looking away.

Their feet shuffled through sand.

“Tell me about your father,” Zaria said.

He gazed up at the sky, searching for clouds. He couldn’t find a single one. Eventually, he said: “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you care to say.”

“As I told you, I’ve never met the man. That is rather why I’m here.”

“Aye, no, but you did say that all your teachers used to harp about his virtues. You must’ve heard tales and such.”

Isaac peeled a flap of skin from the back of his thumb. “More than I wanted to hear.”

“Oh?” Zaria asked, perking an ear.

“Well, I mean—” He realized what he had said. He also realized that talking with Zaria had made him bolder than he had ever been at home. Certainly, he had never dared to argue against his uncle like he had with her. “It’s only that . . . they would tell me these stories like I was destined to become my father, like I would invariably end up following his footsteps and sharing his thoughts and earning his achievements. My uncle once said we were already two souls sharing a body. He didn’t seem happy about the thought.”

Zaria nodded along. “Is he a good man, your father?”

“From what I’ve heard,” Isaac replied. “Yes.”

“But he ain’t you.”

“Well—”

“You wanna be like him?”

Isaac took a moment to speak. “It wouldn’t be a poor choice.”

“People gotta make their own way in the world, love.”

“That’s not how it works,” he said, frowning at the sun. The light was burning his face, and he was already sick of it. “I’ve inherited his magics, his propensities. The baseline potential of someone’s magic is governed by their heritage. I have good heritage. Thus, I have his potential. And his expectation.”

“How good’s this heritage?”

“My mother was an enchanter, which wasn’t extraordinary. My father was close to becoming a master in both elemental transmutation and necrotic counteraction, which marked him as proficient in two separate schools, which was extraordinary.” He paused. “Is still extraordinary, I should say.”

Zaria nodded, walking beside him.

“It was discovered,” he continued, “that I responded very well to my uncle’s training. Through him, I’ve managed to become proficient in both elements and necrotics, just like my father.” He peeled another flap of skin. “Though, of course, I’m still only a journeyman. I have much more to learn.”

She hummed to herself. “How old are you, exactly?”

“Old enough.”

“Oh, aye. Big strappin’ lad, you are. ‘Scuse my asking.”

“How old are you?”

“Now, now.” She wagged a clawed finger. “That ain’t a question to ask a woman, squire.”

“I don’t think you qualify as a woman.”

She gave a rough chuckle, muzzle opening wide beneath the shawl. Her teeth were yellow and sharp.

“Anyway—” Isaac began.

“You know,” Zaria said, “I keep seein’ you peek at my lady bits, young sir.”

“Anyway—”

“If it settles the matter, I’ll drop my skivvies—”

“Anyway,” Isaac continued, loudly. “My father.”

“Aye. Your father.”

“I’ve heard,” Isaac said, “from others that he was very generous. He would do any favor anyone ever asked of him. He was—he was kind, and sensitive, and he never let his prowess turn into arrogance. This sort of attitude never got him far in the Diet, but it earned him many friends. I’ve hardly met anyone who didn’t have a good impression.”

Zaria did not respond immediately. He had a feeling she was watching his reaction, perhaps still thinking about his comment about her, as a woman, a creature of the opposite sex. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the sashay of her thighs as she walked beside him, each of which was about the size of his torso. They suggested a great deal of strength. She could easily run him down if he ever tried to flee.

He tried to find the moons in the sky, forcing his mind onto matters of astronomical orbit. When was the next phase of the lunar eclipse?

“Sure,” the hyena said, eventually. “I imagine so. I also imagine it’s why your uncle never got on with the man, being all miserly and such.”

Isaac shook his head. “Very much so.”

“I imagine he had some choice words about your father’s capture.”

“Oh, you can’t imagine.” He started counting with his fingers. “He said it was entirely his fault. He called him a fool for thinking himself special. He told me how my father always used to rush through their lessons. He would tell me stories about his brother sticking his hand into hexes and beehives and other women and never thinking about the consequences.”

“Other women?” Zaria asked. “Ain’t he married? Is this one of them lichen things?”

“Lichen things?”

“Well, like.” She scratched her long neck. “Lichen-ess? Something?”

“Oh.” He gave her a suffering look. “Licentious. Not like that, no. This was before my mother. There was no infidelity.”

“Aw. Shame.”

“Does everything have to be about sex with you?”

“When it makes you blush, sure.”

Isaac frowned, but said nothing.

“Well,” Zaria said, “I can’t say I know much about wizard politics, but I ain’t surprised to hear a good soul like your father never made it too far. From my experience, the Diet’s more greedy than a dock bird at tide.”

For the first time in a while, Isaac glanced at her. “What, pray tell, would you know about the Diet of Nine?”

She shrugged. “I know they take bribes.”

“What?”

“I know they—”

“What do you mean,” Isaac said, interrupting, “they take bribes?”

“Just what it sounds like.”

Isaac blinked at her, momentarily ignoring the sun. “Who is taking these bribes?”

“I told you.”

“No, no, you—” The more he thought about it, the more upset he became. “Who, exactly, is taking these bribes? Was it a customs agent? A border patrol? A judiciary?”

“All of ‘em, really.”

“I highly doubt it’s all of them.”

“Well,” Zaria said, “no, but it’s enough that it makes no matter. I’ve been around most of the Nine, and it’s the same most place you go. Coins make for passage. Even for pirates. Problem is, the Diet always made us pay out the arse if we didn’t open cargo. Something about ‘peace of the land’ and such.”

“Yes,” Isaac said, still frankly bewildered. “It is for the peace of the land. The Diet of Nine regulates all magic in the region, from artifacts to people. They’re supposed to be very strict about what passes for trade.”

The hyena blew a raspberry. “Buncha rubbish, you ask me. They’d take our gold, same as any other. In fact, I’d see ‘em rob folk worse than we did, half the time. They’d throw a man in irons just for lookin’ funny, and they’d rush to strip his carriage down to the plank.”

“It’s for a reason.”

“What reason’s that, exactly?”

“Could you imagine,” Isaac said, “what would happen if I had free passage into any of the Nine? You saw how easily I destroyed your ship. I could do the same anywhere. To anyone.”

“That weren’t my ship.”

“Even so.”

She glanced at him. “You plannin’ on acting the dragon? Swooping down and breathing fire?”

“No,” Isaac said. “That’s not my point. The point is that I could. Anyone could. A single elemental mage, set loose upon a kingdom, could cause mass amounts of destruction. The same is true for enchantments, and hexes, and ancient artifacts, and any number of technologies currently under development. It needs to be regulated. Otherwise, you get The Scorch again.”

Zaria grunted.

“You’ve heard of that, I assume?” Isaac asked.

“Better than you, probably.”

“Well, in that case, I wouldn’t need to tell you it’s the reason the Diet of Nine exists at all. There are entire forests so overrun with enchantment that a single sneeze would turn you to stone. It formed glaciers. It fissured mountains apart. There’s still wizards alive who fought in those wars, and they have every interest in not repeating the same mistakes. Hence, the Diet of Nine. The Assembly of Nine. The Meeting of Minds. And so on. It’s a collaboration between kingdoms, a supranational body of government. Frankly, it’s a miracle of diplomacy.”

Zaria nodded, as if she were thinking. Isaac hoped he’d gotten through to her.

“Still a buncha greedy cunts,” she said.

He sighed.

“I mean,” Zaria said, “Vekra’s tits, I’ve gone a good ways around the Nine, I’ve stolen some odd-looking baubles from magical sorts, and the most consequence I ever had was payin’ hand to fist. They knew I had what ain’t mine. They didn’t care. They just wanted their cut of the fat.”

“Well,” Isaac said. “The Diet is very large. It can’t control everyone. There will always be bad actors. It doesn’t mean the alternative would be better.”

“You say that, but you’re the one livin’ rich.”

“Well, yes.”

“And the mages are the ones now in power, after they wreaked terror on the common folk.”

“I wouldn’t describe—”

“Funny how the ones with power always end up gettin’ rich. Ain’t it?”

He did not answer.

The conversation trickled away. A gust of wind sheared across the top of a dune, raining a sprinkle of sand into Isaac’s messy hair. He shook his head, forcing himself to raise his eyes toward the sun, trying to squint through the glare. It was growing close to midmorning, and, if his recollections of the map were still accurate, they must be getting very near to the entrance of the old necromancer capital.

He might be able to spot it now.

He wrinkled his gaze, furrowing his brow, doing his best to ignore the stabbing aches that shot through his eye. He wanted, more than anything, to finally see the tomb.

The colossus.

He had journeyed for so long. He was tired. He was covered in scrapes and pain. He was sure that, once he spied the jutting skull, and the strange contours of its crown, it would all feel like a worthwhile—

“There,” Zaria said.

He was startled. “What?”

“There you go,” she said. “Look at that. We were just talkin’ a while.”

Isaac twisted his wrists beneath the rope, trying to take a breath. Whatever focus he had was gone.

“Seems you and I can jaw together,” Zaria continued. “Wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes, well, I. . . .”

He paused. A hiss of falling sand spread around them.

“Aye?” Zaria asked, curious.

“Nothing. Never mind.”

He had almost told her that he’d never spoken at such a length before. His hired instructors would only stay for morning lessons, the servants of his tower were instructed not to look him in the eye, and his uncle was often away for days at a time, lecturing at colleges or petitioning for membership to various councils. Even when he was around others, Isaac was always expected to listen more than he was expected to talk. It was no exaggeration to say that his time with Zaria might genuinely be the longest singular time he had ever spoken with anyone.

But, of course, he didn’t say that. He was growing wise to the fact that she would use such an admission against him. The teasing would never stop.

And she was still his enemy.

He couldn’t forget that.

He tugged on his restraints again, trying to harden himself.

“Oh, come on,” Zaria said. “Say it.”

“No.”

“I wanna hear it, squire.”

“I’m not your squire.”

There was another silence. The sound of their shuffling footsteps filled the valley of dunes. Just when Isaac was about to concentrate on the horizon again, he heard a change in Zaria’s step. Before he could react, she clapped him on the back with a furry hand, squeezing deep into his shoulder. He nearly lost his balance.

“Alright,” Zaria said. “I understand the problem.”

Isaac attempted to wriggle from her grasp, filled with annoyance and some other very unidentifiable feeling. Her grip was strong. She was tall enough that he could stand completely in her shadow.

“You know,” she continued, “I was thinkin’ we’d be all the better for airing our tensions, as it were. Squabbling’s a good way to know where things stand, even if one of us pulls a knife.”

“One of us?” Isaac asked.

“It don’t matter who.”

“Oh, it very much matters who that was.”

“Look,” she said, shaking him by the shoulder. He teetered and wobbled through his step. “I’m wise to your perspective. There is a great—how’d you say—imbalance to our grievances, against one another. I aim to rectify it.”

He looked up, meeting her eye over the length of her snout. “Does that mean you’ll untie me?”

“Don’t be daft.”

He looked away, grimacing. He tried to walk ahead of her, making for a small mountain of dunes. Her hand pulled him back.

“However,” Zaria said, “I realize that you require catharsis. You’re coiled like a duck’s cock. You need to let it out. All of it. Your thoughts, your woes. Release the frustration.”

Isaac was not sure where this was going. “Let what out?”

“Everything.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“Squire,” she said, very seriously. “I want you to insult me.”

He was flummoxed. “What?”

“You heard me.”

He looked up at her, confused.

“Go on, then,” she said, shrugging off the hood of her shawl. Her ears perked up into the morning air, and the dark line of her snout curled with a smile. “Do your worst.”

He kept walking through the sand, twisting to the side, stumbling, blinking, his hair falling loose to his face, feeling dwarfed in her shadow. It was the same feeling of being barked a question and not knowing the answer.

“Come on,” Zaria said, grinning. “I’m an easy target.”

He blinked again. He saw the scar on her nose. He saw the poleaxe rising behind her back, held diagonal in its sheath. He noted the injuries still weeping beneath her vest, the pieces of scavenged leather, the belts crossing her figure. He saw her breasts bouncing beneath a thin strip of cloth.

“Lookin’ at something?”

He turned away, sharply. “No. I refuse.”

“What’d you mean, refuse?”

“I mean,” Isaac said, shrugging away her hand and stepping to the side, “that I won’t play your game. I won’t insult you. Clearly, you’re trying to bait me again.”

“Squire, I assure you—”

“I’m not your squire!”

Zaria looked down at him, her smile creeping wider.

“Don’t laugh at me,” he said.

She broke into a snicker.

“Your games are childish,” Isaac said. “Completely undignified. I’d expect more graceful conversation from the mouth of a privy.”

“Was that an insult?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“You compared me to a toilet.”

“Yes, but—”

She mimed the sound of a fart.

“Shut up!”

The hyena reared her head back, cracking up into open laughter. The dunes echoed with her voice. It was deep and rough and lilting.

“Zaria,” Isaac said.

She continued to laugh.

“Zaria!”

She shook her head, trying to clamp it down. “Yes, squire?”

“Fine!” Isaac shouted, much louder than he expected. “Fine! You know what? I will insult you! I do have grievances to air! Gods, do I ever!”

She tried to fight her grin.

“First of all, and this is no small matter, but you have an utterly boorish snore! It sounds like a sawmill! It’s worse than my uncle, and I used to hear him from the top of the tower! Gods above, I thought the wyrms would find it a mating call!”

Zaria scratched the ridge of her snout. “Sorry, love. Broke my nose a year back. Never healed proper.”

“And by the grace of Ivtarr,” Isaac continued, “you smell! You have an utterly egregious odor! It’s on every breeze I feel, every breath I take! I would rather bathe in sewage and entrails than rub against you again!”

Her tail began to wag.

“And do you know what I honestly despise the most? What I can’t find it in me to forgive, above all else?”

“Oh, I’m all ears.”

“Grammar!” he yelled. “Your grasp of sentence structure is atrocious! You slaughter intransitive verbs like a scythe through a field! Every word you speak is an affront to language itself! If my hands were not tied, I would beat you over the head with grammar books until a proper dialect was caved into your fucking skull!”

Zaria reared her head to the sky, breaking into open, cackling laughter. There were whoops and chitters and loud animal snorts. The dunes seemed to shimmer with the noise. Isaac walked beside her, growling, his fists clenched beneath the rope, wanting to feel like something more than a barking dog on a leash.

By now, they were marching up a gentle slope of sand, nestled in the wide valley between two enormous dunes. There was no cover for hundreds of feet in any direction. Zaria didn’t seem to notice the exposure, laughing as she was.

“On my word, Isaac,” she said, clapping him on the back again, “I’ll make a proper man of you yet.”

“I am quite fine how I am.”

The morning sun began to catch her face as they ascended the slope. “You know, might be, when our adventure is over, I’ll show you some fine taverns near the shrubland.”

“Thank you,” Isaac said, “but no.”

“Oh, it’d be my pleasure to ply you with drink.”

“I’m quite sure it would, you mangy beast.” He frowned. “You common brute.”

She slapped a hand to her chest, as if his words had pierced her heart.

“That’s not funny!” he yelled, getting mad again. “You are not funny! None of this, in any way, is supposed to be—”

They both stopped.

In the distance, a colossal skull rose from the sand. It was so spectacularly massive, so gargantuan in comparison to the empty land around it, that the dunes seemed to become the size of wrinkled skin. The fleshless skull tilted up towards the sky like a man drowning in water, its animal maw half-submerged in the sand. Isaac could only imagine how far the rest of the skeleton had sunk below the earth. Various holes and gaps ran along its snout and cranial plate, and he wasn’t sure which of the openings were eyes, nasal cavities, or simply damage brought by centuries of time. Whatever they were, the gaps in the skull were all cavernous in size, and the bone itself had been bleached a chalky white by the desert sun.

“Well,” Zaria said. “Fuck me, that’s ominous.”

Isaac didn’t move. He almost couldn’t breathe.

This was it. The tomb.

He was really here.

Somewhere, deep in the earth, perhaps right where he was standing, his father lay trapped, clutched in the grasp of an ancient necromancer. He wanted to believe he could feel the man’s presence, as if he could sense the last of his family through the stone and sand, the last bits of distance that remained between them. It wouldn’t be true. All he could feel was the wind and the sun and a sense of awe.

Zaria snorted. “Now I understand why my fellows always stood clear of this place. It spooks the fur, I’ll admit.” She glanced at him. “You ready?”

He nodded, silent.

For a moment, she seemed ready to continue their jest, to keep up the game between them, but he turned his head to look at her, and the expression on his face stopped her cold. She grew sober in an instant. The hyena blinked, closed her mouth, and straightened her back, her poleaxe glinting in the sun.

Isaac took a deep breath, making his way down the dune. In the distance, the skull of a colossus leered toward the sky, as if begging to scream.

Chapter Six

Eyes & Teeth

It took nearly an hour to close the distance to the skull.

The longer Isaac stared at the colossus, the more its massive size seemed to distort all sense of perspective. At a distance, its head nearly resembled a cliff. Halfway through their approach, the contour of the teeth and plates started to give the impression of a military fortress, the same sort of leering threat as palisades and ramparts. By the time they stood in the shadow of the fallen titan, the ancient skull resembled nothing less than a glacier, the bone bleached as white as snow, the sockets and joints curving out like the peaks of mountains. This creature was large enough to change the landscape. It was a landscape, unto itself. Even now, its corpse was cratering the sand.

Isaac had read about the glaciers formed in the Scorch, when elemental wizards had sought to block the mountain passes between the nine kingdoms. Entire topographies had changed. Rivers had flown. Stone eroded. Forests bloomed.

Before now, he had not truly understood the size of such a creation.

His neck ached from craning his head.

At the moment, he could see cracks and divots working through the creature’s snout, pieces of the outer shell which had chipped away over the centuries. Flocks of birds circled the cavern of an eye. Around the cranial plate, colonies of vines hung limply from sockets in the bone, giving the appearance of scraggly hair. At its open mouth, the teeth of its lower jaw jutted from the sand like giant calvary spikes.

“Incredible,” Isaac said, gazing up in wonder.

Zaria gave a wordless grunt.

“I think it’s a reptile.” He pointed with both his hands. “The jaw is clearly made of several bones. There’s the dentary—the teeth—there’s the angular, the surangular, maybe even the splenial plate. You see how they articulate together?”

Zaria hummed, glancing around the dunes.

“I can’t tell,” Isaac said, “if it’s a diapsid or synapsid. You see the fenestrae?”

“The what?”

“The holes.”

“I see a lotta fuckin’ holes.”

Isaac squinted his eyes at the postorbital bones, trying to see if any of them were fused. A dry layer of bird droppings caked the ridges and sockets. “I want to say it’s a diapsid.”

Zaria grunted again.

“Though,” he said, “I’m not sure if that’s a second temporal gap or a breaking of the postorbital. It’s hard to tell. I can’t imagine how long this creature has been exposed—”

“Isaac, shut a moment.”

He turned. Zaria was still scanning the horizon, her ears cocked, her short whiskers dancing with the sniff of her nose. Isaac noted an agitated whip of her tail.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Wind’s stopped.”

“Has it? I hadn’t. . . .”

He paused. She was right—the wind had stopped. Just like the heat of the sun, the wind was always a constant presence in the dunes, either by forming spouts, shimmering the sand, or actively shaving through the slopes. Throughout his journey, Isaac had never once felt it stop.

Right now, the air was as still as a corpse.

“Isaac,” Zaria said. “Can one of them necromancers control the weather?”

He stared up at the colossus, blinking. The vines on its head were not swaying. The sand around it was covered in a graveyard of bone chips and osseous fibers, which the centuries had utterly failed to scatter. Even the sand itself had failed to bury the skull. If it had truly lain here for millennia, the sand should have consumed the titan beneath its shifting mounds, never to be seen again.

But it hadn’t.

The colossus remained, like a stain upon the land.

“Isaac!” she hissed.

“Yes!” Isaac replied, trying not to stammer. “Y-yes, a powerful one, yes. All magic requires energy. Necromancy involves . . . . taking. Taking energy. Taking life.”

“Well, fuck me,” Zaria said. “I nearly took a shit.”

“You’ll steal anything, I suppose.”

She glanced around, ears and tail swishing. “I’m really knowin’ why my fellows steered clear of this place.”

“They should,” Isaac said, regaining himself. “Necromancy involves destruction. It has to feast on life. A person’s soul, a copse of trees, the very essence of the soil. There are sections of land so desolate that no life can ever take root again. These dunes are the same. They did not exist before the necromancers.”

Zaria craned her neck, staring up at the skull.

“Do you know,” Isaac continued, “what scholars of the Diet now call these dunes, after discovering all the many tombs and cities within its depths?” He paused for effect. “The Charnel Waste.”

She grunted.

“Your friends,” Isaac said, “had the right idea, avoiding this place. The legacy of the necromancers still seeps into the land.”

“They ain’t my friends,” Zaria replied, still peering up.

“You should avoid it, too.”

She lowered her gaze to him.

“Zaria,” Isaac began. “Please, listen to me—”

She curled her lip, yanking her poleaxe from the sheath on her back. The wooden haft whispered against the leather. Steel reflected the dunes.

“Zaria,” he said.

“Ain’t hearing it,” she said, marching through the sand. “On we go, squire. Time to meet the black.”

“Zaria!” Isaac shouted, loud enough for his voice to echo through the skull. Birds erupted from the titan’s eye. “Don’t go in there. I’m begging you.”

“Isaac—”

“No. Listen to me.” He stepped in front of her, pointing north. “Walk away.”

She did not answer.

“Walk away,” he repeated. “Forget about the treasure. Take your chances elsewhere. Escape to the hinterlands, sail the ocean, ask a bailiff for clemency. Whatever it is you need to do to protect yourself, please, do it somewhere else.”

She peered down at him. There was rage, irritation, the determination of a soldier charging into battle. He became very aware of her height and strength.

“I’m prepared to die for my mission,” he said. “I’m willing to give my life. This sorceress is older than the land she destroyed. She has survived the fall of an empire. I don’t think I need to tell you that the odds of survival are slim. If we fail, she will yank our souls from their tether and grind them down to fuel.”

She gazed up at the skull. From their perspective, it nearly eclipsed the sky.

“When we met,” he continued, “you told me not to throw away my life. I’m telling you not to do the same.”

She looked at him. Her scars were long and cruel.

“Walk away. Please.”

She blinked, breathing slowly through her nose. For a moment, a hint of grim resignation crossed her face. When it was gone, the anger remained, and she pressed the haft of her poleaxe into his chest, pushing him toward the skull.

Isaac kicked up sand as he fought for balance. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Aye,” Zaria replied. “I hear ya.”

“Clearly, you don’t understand—”

“No, Isaac, it’s you who ain’t gettin’ me.” She closed the gap between them, standing so tall he had to crane his neck to meet her eye. “I told you, once before. I ain’t goin’ back.”

“Yes, but—”

She jabbed a finger into his chest. Her breath was hot and sharp. “I ain’t goin’ back.”

He said nothing.

The finger in his chest turned into a hand, pushing him ahead. When he caught his balance, her poleaxe was lowered in front of him, the spear tip jutting toward his belly. “On you go, squire.”

Isaac pulled himself straight. He looked at the weapon raised against him. After a moment, he turned, reluctantly, to march the last remaining distance into the skull. The walk was silent. No breeze crossed their path. With his hands still tied in front of him, and the hyena prowling closely behind, he felt like a prisoner being led to execution.

Fine, he thought.

I gave you a chance.

If you won’t listen to reason. . . .

Ahead, the mouth of the skull was shaded and dark. Vines dangled from notches above the teeth, their bodies dry and desiccated. Sand piled against the U-shaped line of the creature’s jaw. Considering how widely the creature’s mouth remained open, Isaac was sure there was some internal support system keeping the top of the snout from shutting against the teeth, though he couldn’t see well enough into the mouth to identify whatever it was.

He imagined, once again, that the creature was trying to scream.

He shook his head.

“Look there,” Zaria said, pointing.

Toward the back of the skull, right at the hinge of the jaw, there was a small gap leading into the creature’s mouth, free of the teeth that spired out from the mounds of sand. The entrance was so narrow and smooth that it almost resembled a doorway.

“Don’t,” Isaac said. “It’s trapped.”

“What?” She peered again, confused. “How’d you know?”

“It’s the path they’d want you to take.”

The hyena blew a raspberry. “Oh, don’t you start with this babble of demons and monsters and soul spewin’ cocks or whatever the fuck. You ain’t scarin’ me off.”

Isaac stepped forward, gave her a side eye, and roamed through a small debris field of fallen bone chips, trying to find a suitable candidate. Most of the pieces were large enough to roof a house. Eventually, he decided to kick one of the fallen chips with the heel of his boot. The ancient, brittle bone immediately snapped into chunks.

He grabbed a panel of bone, took a running step, and heaved it toward the entrance.

A twisted sigil of light appeared at the edge of the jaw. It was attached to nothing, floating in the air, burning a bright, sickly green. Once the chip of bone touched the barrier, it burst into flames, distorting, twisting, buckling like a piece of chewed leather, disintegrating into a meager puff of ash. Nothing landed on the floor. The sigil glowed a moment longer, thrumming with malevolent energy, before vanishing from sight.

A silence filled the air.

“That was a hex,” Isaac said, dusting his hands.

Zaria blinked, staring wide-eyed at the shadowy mouth. Smoke drifted from the creature’s jaw.

“As the empire fell,” Isaac continued, kicking another chip of bone, “the last necromancers took steps to protect their cities. They casted hexes, constructed traps, animated their machines, all in service of killing the would-be graverobbers that would come to rob them of their riches.”

“Well,” Zaria said. “Fuck.”

“I agree.”

She took a hand from her poleaxe, waving away the smoke.

“As it happens,” Isaac said, “I could dispel this hex quite easily. It’s an old design. I have memorized several incantations, just for the purpose.”

Zaria took a sweeping glance around the skull, searching for another entrance.

“You would just have to untie me.”

“Nah,” she said, waving a hand. “We’re goin’ this way. Come on.”

She roamed toward the front of the skull. As he followed, Isaac spared a glance at the entryway. A dim green sigil seemed to linger in the shadows, throbbing like sunlight on a wind-blown pond. The smell of sublimated bone wafted across the sand. He had read about certain necrotic spells, the ones that had sucked so much life and energy from the air that they remained, indefinitely, as a permanent scar upon the world.

How many other traps had the necromancers devised?

How many souls had fed their machines?

He shook his head, trying to catch up with Zaria. She was walking along the slopes of sand piled below the titan’s jaw, eyeing the cracks and divots like a vulture trying to break through a rib cage. Her gaze settled on a missing tooth toward the front of the snout. A few vines dangled from the edge.

“I’m thinkin’ this way,” she said, barely out of breath. “You see any of them soul suckers, by the tooth there?”

Isaac struggled up the steep slopes of sand. He couldn’t believe how easily she had made the climb. When he reached the top, he wiped sweat onto the sleeve of his robes, already wanting to rest for the day.

“Squire?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Best you be sure.”

“It’s not likely. The missing tooth is recent, and this sand we’re on has only piled up over the centuries. I doubt they’d think to trap it.”

“Good,” she said. “I was figurin’ the same.” She judged the distance from their perch of sand to the bottom lip of the creature’s jaw. After a moment, she grabbed one of the vines, tugging hard. “Thank you kindly, by the by.”

“For what? It’s a simple deduction.”

She raised a brow. Her gaze flickered over to the hinge of the creature’s jaw, where she had nearly walked straight into a necrotic hex. She made a popping noise with her lip.

“Oh,” Isaac said, suddenly blushing. “Yes. I suppose I did . . . save your life.” He cleared his throat. “Well, you’re welcome, but please be more mindful. In the future. These ruins will be very dangerous.”

She continued to stare. He fidgeted. After a moment, she laughed, sheathing her polearm.

“What?” he asked, defensive. “What’s funny?”

She shook her head, focusing on the vines. “Gonna climb up. Once I’m on the ledge, I’ll pull you along. In the meantime, don’t stare at my arse.”

“Did you have one? I hadn’t noticed.”

She kicked sand at him.

“Hey!”

Zaria leaped into the air, gripping a tangle of vines with the wrapped cloth of her hands. The vines held. After pressing her feet into a dentary fissure, she began to climb. He could see the muscles working on her arms and shoulders. Her leather plackart flexed with effort. Soon, he received an all-encompassing view of her ass, which swayed with the pumping of her legs. Her knee-length trousers left little to the imagination. If he looked carefully between her thighs. . . .

He tore his gaze away.

Out in the desert, the sand was smooth and flowing. The only sign of activity was the two sets of footprints cutting a path to the skull, which the wind was already steadily erasing outside the dead zone of the colossus. If Zaria’s captain decided to investigate, it would be very obvious where they had gone.

Zaria.

He realized, suddenly, that he had indeed saved her life. He had stopped her from walking straight into a hex. If not for him, she would have been ash. She would have been dead and gone and no longer a threat to his mission.

He could have said nothing. He could have let her die.

Why hadn’t he?

A whistle caught his attention. Zaria was lying flat on the chipped remnant of the titan’s tooth, holding out a paw between the threads of vine. “Up and at ‘em, love. Catch my hand.”

He frowned. “You want me to jump?”

“If it wouldn’t tax the young lord.”

He sighed, bracing himself. With a brief muster of strength, he tried leaping into the air, missing her hand by more than a foot. He tried again, getting closer. She scooted further over the edge. On the third attempt, his finger brushed her palm, and she latched onto his wrist with an iron grip, pulling him into the mouth of the colossus like a fisherman dredging up a net. He collapsed onto the circle of a broken tooth.

“Need to eat more,” she said, patting his back. “All skin and bone.”

He rose to standing. The bone beneath his feet was brittle and aged, the fibers flexing like rotten wood. Around him, the mouth of the skull was a gloomy basin, edged with a forest of teeth.

“Well,” Zaria said, her voice echoing. “Lovely place. Smells like bird shit and death. I suppose there’s no accountin’ for—”

She paused. Her words withered in the gloom.

“Zaria?” he asked.

“Xotra’s cunt.”

“What?”

She pointed deeper into the skull, her eyes widening enough that he saw the whites. When Isaac tried to look, he saw nothing but a faint glinting light, poking out from the dark of the throat. The shadows were thick and jagged.

“I can’t see,” he said, squinting.

“You don’t spy that?” she asked, pointing at the light. “All the grisliness?”

“The sun’s too bright. My eyes need to adjust.”

She made a humorless snort. “Humans.” She stepped forward, keeping a wary eye on whatever was glinting further beyond, and looked over the edge of their perch. “Sand’s piled here, too. We can jump.”

“Should we?” he asked.

She glanced over his head, spying the tracks they had left in the sand. Her face hardened. “Aye. No going back.”

She jumped. An instant later, there was a dull thump, followed by a gentle hissing of sediment. When Isaac peered over the edge, Zaria was only a short distance below, carefully sliding her way down a virgin embankment of sand. He sat on the edge of the tooth, dangled his legs, slipped into the void, and tumbled heavily into the sand, which resulted in an equally graceless slide down the embankment. By now, Zaria was standing guard at a level clearing in the center of the mouth, where the titan’s tongue once connected. When he stumbled over to her side, she stopped him with a hand.

“Hold a moment,” she said. “You tell me what the fuck that thing is.”

He squinted again. The glint of light seemed slightly brighter. He realized, slowly, there were multiple points of light, arranged like a constellation of stars. It seemed to form a pyramid.

“I still can’t see,” Isaac said, quietly. “Is that glass?”

“Eyes,” Zaria replied.

“Eyes?”

“It’s watchin’ me.”

He peered again. Around him, the sun was gridded against the cell bars of the titan’s teeth, providing a band of illumination. Dust trickled from the nasal cavity. Somewhere, a bird flapped its wings.

Soon, he saw the bodies.

It was a scene of carnage. The ground was littered with the dead. With his unadjusted eyes, all he could see were hills and mounds, vague shapes, slumped figures, some of it occasionally solidifying into slivers of bone and pieces of cloth and a litany of rusted steel. Most of the corpses seemed to be concentrated toward the back half of the mouth, as if ready to be swallowed. A few were clustered in groups. Many sagged against the teeth.

Isaac felt, for a moment, as if he’d stumbled upon the site of an ancient battlefield. The air smelled of dust and decay.

At the back of the mouth, a wall of granite had been erected around the ring of the throat, the edges smoothed into a seamless connection with the flowing of bone. By now, the granite was porous and rough, cracked through with the roots of vines. Reliefs were carved into the stone. With his eyes slowly adapting to the dark, he saw figures and battles and what seemed like deities falling from the sky. The details were hard to discern.

Between it all, a passage lay open in the stone, which seemed to lead into a stairway. The stairs descended into the earth, ribbed with the colossal vertebrae of the creature’s spine. Perched above this doorway, on a raised dais of slate and bronze, a four-legged statue sat on its haunches, like a dog standing guard.

There were human faces on the head of this creature. They were fusing together. There was a single mouth between them. There was a vortex of teeth. There was a shared look of agony.

Six eyes glinted from the dark.

“Isaac,” Zaria said, quietly.

He had to force himself to remain calm. He recognized the statue. It was a shibboleth, a stone automaton that was often used by the necromancers to guard places of importance—palaces, ziggurats, the catacombs of the nobility. With little exception, the statues were designed to fend off both invaders and grave robbers alike. They were nearly always imbued with powerful magics.

Isaac had read stories of archaeologists stumbling across these machines during an expedition into a necromancer tomb. The encounter often came without warning. There were reports of flaming lances, comets of raw entropy, fogs made of caustic acid, the sound of stone limbs grinding together as the statue returned to life and hunted the intruders through darkened halls. There was even, in one case, claims of banishment to alternate planes of reality.

The number of bodies at the feet of this statue suggested it had stopped many explorers before. The glinting of its eyes suggested that it could still do so now.

They would have to tread very carefully.

“I don’t like that thing,” Zaria said.

“Good,” Isaac replied, keeping his voice calm. “You shouldn’t like it. You should, also, have told me what it was.”

“How the fuck am I to know what nightmare’s starin’ back at me? It’s a meat pie, looks like. Like a bucket of skulls sucked down a drain.”

The three human faces were arrayed in a triangle, with one at the apex and the two at bottom corners. Their eyes were made of glass. Their cheeks were riddled through with arcane symbols, like tattoos branded into skin. Each of them seemed desperate to scream. The stonework was so intimately detailed that he could track the deforming of their jaws as it spiraled into a vortex of teeth, right in the center of the triangle. He studied the imitation sludge of their meat as it sloughed onto the body of a dog, like the dripping of a candle’s wax.

Isaac shuddered.

Zaria made a grunt. “Reminds me of a cougar’s den, when they’ve chomped all the meat and left the bits in a pile. Like, why’s it got four legs? And the faces, for that matter. Why’s it all twisted together?”

“Every society uses resources,” Isaac said. “Necromancies use both the dead and the living. People are their resource, like clay. And what do you do with clay?” He gestured. “You shape it with your hands.”

There was a pause.

“Why not make it real, though?”

“It’s art, Zaria, for fuck’s sake.”

He tried to take stock of the situation. All the bodies were clustered around the shibboleth, their positions suggesting they had been struck down where they stood. His eyes could now make out scorch marks on the skeletal remains, which suggested the statue used fire as its weapon. At the same time, the positions of the dead also suggested that the sphinx had a limited range. It couldn’t reach very far.

Isaac stared at the entrance to the tomb. It was right below the statue. Between the plates of the skull and the cracking granite walls, there was no other way to enter the body of the colossus. They would have to pass below the shibboleth.

He had a solution to this dilemma. His uncle had prepared him for just this sort of obstacle. The letter he received was supposed to grant him passage.

At the same time, something was catching his eye, in the open patch of ground just before the start of the corpses. It was smooth. It was far too flat to account for the natural accumulation of sand. There were faint traces of black ichor leaking from the bodies, and, when they reached this area of the skull, the remnants of liquid seemed to form—

Zaria gripped his shoulder. “Isaac. What’s the plan?”

He concentrated. The trails of ichor ended at the smooth patch of ground. They all ended in a perfectly straight line. . . .

A trapdoor.

He blinked in surprise.

The blood and rot from the ancient corpses had flown between the hinges, disappearing into the depths of an earthen shaft. It made perfect sense. The energy of the shibboleth was not infinite. It needed to conserve its magic whenever possible. Because of this, the necromancers had supplemented the entrance with mechanical traps. It was very likely that the trapdoor led to a simple pit with metal bars wrapped around the bedrock. There was likely a network of these pits running below the ground, built between the mandible bones of the jaw, where the last necromancers could wait and rob the dead once they had succumbed to thirst. He could imagine even more bodies littering the dusty holes.

“Isaac,” Zaria whispered, right above his ear. “Feel free to explain the corpses at your leisure.”

He felt a bevy of thoughts racing through his mind.

He was not willing to enter the tomb with his hands tied as they were. He couldn’t reasonably face the sorceress as the prisoner of a pirate. He didn’t want the hyena accompanying him at all. She hadn’t listened to his pleas. She had proven stubbornly willing to get in his way. And he wouldn’t take this kind of chance with her when his father’s life was held in the balance.

He had to escape. At the same time, he had no hope of overpowering her. He couldn’t run away. She had proven his physical superior in every way that mattered. To free himself, he would have to rely on his cunning.

He made a split-second decision.

“The statue is an automaton,” Isaac said. “It—”

“A what now?”

“An, uh, automated device.”

“Dove ice? Like, some kinda bird?”

“No, it’s a de-vice, as in,” he waved his tied hands, “a lifeless receptacle, something animated with magic.”

“Still lost me there.”

“Fuck me,” Isaac hissed, “it’s a statue that shoots fire!”

“Right,” Zaria said, keeping her poleaxe pointed in its direction. “There a way to stop it?”

“No need. It’s lost power.”

She looked at him, then back at the shibboleth. Its six eyes continued to glint in the shade. “You keen on testin’ that?”

“If it hadn’t,” Isaac lied, “we would already be dead.” As casually as he could, he slipped his pack off his shoulders and began to dig inside. “It’s called a shibboleth. There is some fascinating history behind the name. Scholars believe it means corn, or crops, or a wealth of grains, which offers a lot of suggestion as to how the necromancers viewed their vassals. What’s more, the construction of the statue is exceedingly intricate. Inside those three heads, there’s a very fine network of vents and valves, shunting all of the—”

“Isaac,” she said. “From now on, consider my interest to be practical. As in, shut your mouth.”

During his long rambling, he had grabbed his uncle’s letter, folded open the wax seal on the parchment, and slipped it down his sleeve. He stood up, pretending he had just been grabbing a waterskin. Zaria hadn’t looked his way. She was staring down the statue like the three-headed dog might leap for her at any moment.

His ruse had worked.

“If you insist,” Isaac said, shouldering his pack and sipping from his skin. “Well, lead the way, madam knight. Your treasure awaits.”

She turned her head, animal eyes reflecting the light. He could see the slits of her pupils as they trained on him. “I think my squire deserves the honor.”

Had she seen the trapdoor?

“Oh,” he said, “surely I’m only fit to polish your steel and give girlish screams.”

“I appreciate you learning your place, love, but you’re still going first.”

He glanced at the shibboleth. “Why? Does it matter?”

“Said it was fine, didn’t you? If there’s no danger, what’s the problem?”

Isaac wasn’t sure if her mistrust was aimed at him or the statue. It seemed to be a little of both. She wouldn’t insist on keeping his hands tied if she had much faith in him, and the idea of walking past a fire-breathing statue was probably not a reassuring task, either. The corpses were there for a reason.

It didn’t matter. In fact, it worked in his favor.

He began to walk across the titan’s mouth, making sure to keep his back to Zaria. In the shade of the throat, the shibboleth’s eyes glittered like a pyramid of pale sapphire. He received the distinct impression of being watched. As he walked, his hands twisted as much as they could through the restraints, working his uncle’s letter out from below his sleeve. He held it out like a protective ward.

His uncle had signed the letter with a symbol dipped in wax. The symbol was arcane. No one was quite sure why it pacified the automatons. There was little detail of its purpose in the archeological record, although some evidence suggested that ancient cultures worshipped the symbol as a sort of emblem for their gods. Some historians had pointed to the possible existence of an empire that predated even the oldest known civilizations. Either way, the symbol itself was not all that remarkable, consisting of an ordered collection of stars that bordered a series of alternating stripes. Isaac had never been very impressed with the iconography.

Whatever the origin, the symbol always offered passage through the automatons of the necromancers. His uncle had placed particular emphasis on keeping the wax stamping in good condition. If the symbol melted, the protection would be useless.

Isaac stepped onto the trapdoor.

With a startling swiftness, the shibboleth jerked its head, lowering the vortex of its mouth like the bore of a cannon. All six eyes centered on him. Teeth swirled in the mouth, each of the rows shuddering like a circular saw, rolling, spinning, grinding out dust and sand like the slabber of a beast, the sound like bones breaking beneath a heel. Slowly, a lick of fire began to boil from its mouth.

Steeling himself, Isaac clutched the parchment and took another step forward.

The fire receded. The teeth whirred to a stop, the sound of grinding fading to an echo. The trapdoor stayed shut. The six glittering eyes of the shibboleth watched him for an impossibly long moment before the heads rose together as one, returning to their original position of stoic agony. Dust fell across the entryway.

Isaac continued to take calm steps forward, as if his heart wasn’t pounding in his throat. When he reached the pool of bodies, he slipped his uncle’s letter back up his sleeve and turned to face Zaria. He displayed his empty palms.

“See?” he said. “There’s no danger.”

“That bloody thing’s got fire in its belly!” Zaria yelled. “Gods, the noise it made!”

“Sure,” he admitted, “but it’s not enough to cast anything. Without a catalyst, it can’t reach transmutation potential.”

“Don’t use them made-up words on me, squire! Speak plain!”

“It’s fine.” He gestured to the corpses at his feet. “It didn’t kill me. It’s not going to kill you, either. It’s trying to scare you away.”

Her poleaxe was still hefted toward the statue, as if fending off a charge of cavalry. The fur on her neck was needle straight. All at once, Isaac realized she was afraid. Not only was she now facing a giant skull and a sea of bodies and a fire-breathing statue, but she was still desperate to flee from her former shipmates, who had every reason to give her a vicious, tortured death, and her only hope of survival lay in the hands of a mage, someone who could also kill her with an equal amount of certainty. She had feigned a lot of confidence while he was tied and helpless. Now, the reality of her situation was becoming obvious.

She did not understand magic. To survive, she would have to trust his word.

But who was he to her?

An enemy?

A powerful, arrogant mage?

He imagined it might feel like a sailor standing on the deck of a burning ship, getting ready to jump into the waters of an open ocean. She knew she couldn’t swim, but, at the same time, staying with the fire was certain death. Leaping into the waves was the only choice available. This did not make it easy.

He realized all of this in a moment, watching her stand there, alone and afraid.

It almost made him feel guilty.

“Zaria,” he said. “Those eyes are a weak spot. Break them and you’ll break the circuit, keep it from firing.”

“What, I’m supposed to toss my polearm like a javelin?”

“Just, you know—trying to help.”

“You do it, then!”

He held up his tied hands. “What do you expect me to do?”

She shuffled back and forth on her feet, fingers curling around the haft of her weapon. Her tail tucked between her legs.

“Hey,” Isaac said. “It’s alright. You’ll be fine. I promise.”

She stared at the statue. She looked at the tomb entrance just below it. She glanced behind her, where the morning sunlight illuminated the colossal teeth and rising dunes. Finally, she looked at him. He nodded, careful to manage his expression.

She walked forward with the pace and stance of someone ready to leap away at a moment’s notice, following the same path Isaac had taken. It led right over the trapdoor. He fingered the letter in his sleeve. He hoped the statue would follow its programming. If not, he would rush in to help.

He didn’t want her to burn alive.

Zaria stepped on the trapdoor. The heads of the shibboleth snapped down to her, its teeth swirling, a roar of fire cocked in the depths of its throat. She almost jumped away, breathing hard. She looked to him again. Isaac swallowed, a bead of sweat rolling down his face, and beckoned her forward.

She took another step.

The floor gave way. She had no time to yell. There was a spurt of dust, a vicious shunt of mechanism. Moments later, a loud thud echoed from below. There were a few gasps for air, punctuated with coughing and groans.

Isaac loosed a sigh of relief. Behind him, the shibboleth had already returned to its eternal vigil over the mouth of the skull. Trying not to think about the ancient corpses, or how close he might’ve been to joining them, Isaac paced over to the trapdoor, squatting down at the edge.

A thick cloud of dust drifted up from the open hole, scattering from the fall. He batted it away until he could see further in. The pit beneath the trap door went twenty or thirty feet down to a bed of rock. Rusted metal bars lined one wall of the pit bottom. He could see, dimly, that parts of the gate had bent inwards from a previous cave-in, the pieces of rock just barely held in place. The complex of pits between the jawbones had likely collapsed sometime in the previous centuries.

Zaria struggled back to her feet, coughing through the dust. Her mohawk was coated in dirt.

“You alright?” Isaac shouted down.

She wiped her face with an arm, peering up towards the light. “What happened?”

“I let you fall into a grave robber’s pit.”

Her tail flexed upward.

Isaac took his uncle’s letter from his sleeve. “You should’ve held on to this. I told you it would grant me safe passage.”

She breathed out, swirling the dust. “Isaac, you best believe—”

“No, Zaria, listen to me—”

“Get me outta here, you sodding ape!”

He took a slow breath. “I’m sorry. For what it’s worth, I only did this because I knew the fall wouldn’t kill you.”

“No!” she shouted back. “It didn’t kill me! And you’ll be right sorry for it if you don’t free me this instant!”

“I’d advise you not to threaten me.”

She stood straight, fists clenched, breathing slow and hard.

“Look,” he said, shrugging his pack off, “I’m going to give you this.” He dug around in his phylactery pouch, pulling out a glass vial full of green liquid. He let the vial fall, and she caught it in her hand, twisting the capsule as she peered inside.

“What’s this?” she called back. “Some poison to end my life, so I don’t die of thirst? You call that mercy?”

“It’s corrosive acid. You’re in a grave robber’s cell. It’s held with metal bars. You can figure out the rest.”

She glanced over to the cell bars. A flow of rock was bulging the door inwards, the rusted metal barely holding to its foundation.

“Of course,” Isaac said, “it seems there was a cave-in. The tunnels are likely gone. It’ll take you a while to dig your way to the exit. But, of course, you’re a hardy pirate with more kills than bathing sessions. I’m sure you can handle it.”

She clenched the vial in her fist. “So help you and your furless neck, once I’m clear from this—”

“You’re not going to follow me,” Isaac said. “I’m going to enter the tomb now, and the shibboleth will end your life if you try.”

The dust had mostly settled again, and Isaac could finally make out her eyes. She was glaring up at him, her hackles raised and her lip curled to a snarl, revealing a pair of wicked yellow fangs. He was very glad there was a twenty-foot drop between them.

“By the way,” he said. “Do you still have my map?”

“That I do,” she replied. “Want to come down for it?”

“No, actually. I want you to keep it. In fact, check the markings for me.”

She continued to watch him.

“Go on. I can wait.”

With reluctance, she slung her pack from her shoulder, nudged her poleaxe along the floor, and took the rolled map from a side pocket.

“Check the south-eastern edge of the Charnel Waste,” Isaac said. “I’ve marked a star on a little fishing hamlet, close to the flood plains. You see it?”

“Aye. There’s a—” She squinted at it. “What’s these letters say?”

“It’s the name of the Diet contact we have in the region. He goes by the alias of Sparrow. The rest of that writing is the code phrase he’ll expect you to recite. ‘The snake flies alone.’ Can you remember that?”

“Oh, aye,” Zaria said, “the snake flies alone, just like you and your cock, never tasting a woman’s clunge.”

“There’s no need to be rude.”

“Fuck yourself, squire. This is the dumbest cloak-and-dagger shite I’ve heard in my life. Vekra’s tits, you’d be laughed outta every port in the Nine, if you tried spoutin’ this nonsense.”

“The important thing,” Isaac said, “is that Sparrow operates a safehouse for mages working on Diet business. He owns the tavern in the middle of town, third building to the right of the well. He knows how to ward off assassins. He is free of foreign scrutiny. Go to him and say that phrase. He’ll look at you funny, but he won’t ask questions. You’ll be safe.”

“What game are you playing? You trick me into a trap, and expect me to blunder into another?”

“I’m offering you protection from the band of pirates trying to kill you. This is assuming, of course, you can get there in the first place. There’s not much I can do about that, but, again, you’re pretty resourceful. I’m sure you’ll manage.”

She looked at him, silent.

“Go to Sparrow,” Isaac said, as if reciting a lesson, “say the phrase, and wait for me in the tavern. Do you understand? I’m going to return there on my way back to Khador, and, when I do, I’ll have a provisional survey ready for you to sign.”

“Whatever that is,” she said, “you can stuff it up your arse.”

“It will be a legal claim to the treasure of the necromancers. All of it. The entire wealth of nations.”

For a moment, they blinked at each other.

“What?” Zaria asked, nonplussed.

“There will be some taxes,” Isaac continued, “but the fortune will be yours, fair and legal. You can pay off any bounties you might have. Start your life again. Maybe you could buy your own fleet of ships and sail beneath a royal flag. The kingdoms don’t tend to be scrupulous, according to you.”

She leaned back to peer at him, mohawk flowing above her eyes. “Oh, what, I’m supposed to believe that? You’d give up all this wealth to some cutthroat you barely know?”

“I don’t care about the treasure. I just want my father back.”

She scoffed.

“I want to say this again.” He leaned over the edge of the hole. “I’m sorry, Zaria. I’m sorry for doing this to you. I’m sorry you’re being punished for doing something good.” He glanced down at the rope around his wrists. “You did a brave thing, trying to help those children. And I think you deserve a reward for it. There’s no trick. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”

He stood up straight. Outside, the desert sun creeped in through the gaps of giant teeth.

“I’m trying to save your life,” Isaac said. “I hope you realize that.”

“Isaac.”

“Goodbye. Hopefully, we’ll see each other again.”

“Isaac,” she said, voice rising.

He walked away from the open trapdoor, eyes set on the tomb entrance.

“Isaac! Isaac!”

First, he needed to cut off his restraints.

The shibboleth did not accost him as he passed back within its range. Feeling bold, Isaac made his way over to the pool of bodies spread below its feet. His goal was to find a weapon. It was likely he wouldn’t find anything that hadn’t turned into a rusty hunk of iron, but even the poorest implement would have to suffice.

He bent down, pilfering through rotted bone and tattered garments. He vaguely recognized the age of some of the bodies just by the clothes on their back—there were turbans and robes, a doublet that hadn’t been fashionable for centuries, old chainmail, boiled leather. Most of it had decayed to scraps and shards.

At the trapdoor, Zaria stopped shouting. A silence fell over the skull.

Isaac found a bronze sword underneath the body of what was likely a cleric. The human had been clutching it in their hands when they died—her hands, he thought, the shape of the pelvis was feminine—and her forearm detached from the skeleton when Isaac relieved the weapon from her grasp. The blade was in remarkably good condition, though it had turned entirely blue and was chipped through in places. As Isaac sat on the sandy floor of the titan’s mouth, trying to angle the weapon between his wrists, he thought of afternoons in his uncle’s library, studying metal alloys and the economics of smithing.

He began to saw the blade. Progress was slow. Even if bronze did not rust like steel, it could still become dull. The way his wrists were tied prevented him from gaining much leverage. Still, he could feel the blade gradually work through the rope. He would be free in minutes.

Something caught his eye.

There was a frock of hair poking out from a set of robes. The color is what caught his attention. It was the same shade of dirty blond as Isaac’s own. He bent over, ignoring the metal groans coming from the trapdoor behind him.

There was a human corpse slumped between a pile of turbaned bodies. It was very, very recent. The skin was still intact. There were no visible maggots. The man was lying on his side, facing away, and the sickly purple blotches of lividity were beginning to pool on his head and neck. Isaac gripped his shoulder, finding the muscle stiff and uncompliant. He remembered anatomy lessons on the decomposition process as he flipped the body onto its back. It was no more than a day old.

The face was young, the boy’s eyes open and blue. His throat had been slit, and his head listed slightly back as Isaac studied the injury, like the hinge of an opening door. He did not look shocked or angry or afraid. He had no expression whatsoever.

That was not what caught Isaac’s attention.

A sigil had been carved into his forehead. By the jagged lines and clear markers of infection, the symbol had been cut into the boy with something no more sophisticated than a knife. Isaac recognized it immediately, and a chill went up his spine.

Parasite magic.

In some schools of thought, it was often referred to as a charm enchantment, though this ignored the true relationship the spellcaster had with the victim. The sigil turned the bearer into an unwitting thrall, their higher functioning overridden, their body’s energy leeched directly into the caster. Often, this would continue until the victim was withered into little more than a husk. In the Scorching, several armies had used captured soldiers in this manner, forcing their body and soul into the equivalent of ammunition for a wizard’s spells. From then on, the Diet of Nine had declared parasitism to be very, very illegal.

Isaac gazed towards the tomb entrance. The tunnel was dark, a bed of stairs barely visible as they led deep into the earth. As he looked back, he examined the body of the young man further, discovering that he had also twisted his ankle.

Isaac imagined a sequence of events. A sorcerer had been leading a thralled entourage into the mouth of the skull. From the lack of other bodies, they must have gained safe passage from the shibboleth. One of the thralls had tripped over a skeleton because he lacked the sense to watch his step. The young man had twisted his ankle. The sorcerer, considering the matter no more deeply than a horse with a broken leg, ordered his thrall to be executed. And now here the body lay—a young human, presumably one with family and friends, lying dead in the sand for a mistake he did not have the presence of mind to avoid.

The boy had not died more than a day ago. Whoever had carved the sigil into his head could not have been far. This deep into the Charnel Waste, there was only one place the puppeteer could have gone.

Isaac looked at the tomb again.

Had another sorcerer arrived before him?

Was the necromancer in this tomb capable of enslaving those on the surface?

Neither of these options was good. Furthermore, they did not explain the lack of tracks outside the skull. There was no wind. If an army of thralls had marched into the skull, they should have left a very wide trail. Could someone have cast the wind themselves?

Isaac watched the shadowy tomb a moment longer. Slowly, he reached over and closed the young man’s eyes. He sighed, looking away.

A loud crash echoed behind him.

When he looked, he saw the ground before the trapdoor begin to splinter and shake. Underneath a cacophony of falling earth, he heard a barbaric groan of effort.

He dropped the bronze sword, running fast. Down in the grave robber’s pit, Zaria had started to yank the metal bars free with her bare hands, and the cave-in was now spilling into her cell. With her foot braced and her teeth gritted, she ripped another pair of bars directly from their rusty foundations. Beneath him, the ground continued to tremble as the long-dormant cave-in was now free to continue spilling, triggering cascades of load-bearing failures.

She looked up at him. With a snarl, she wrenched a boulder free from the growing stack of rock, accelerating the collapse.

The ground beneath Isaac gave a sickening lurch. He tried to run.

Moments later, a semi-circle of earth collapsed beneath him, and he didn’t quite make the jump. His chest slammed into the edge of solid ground, his body draped along a new slope of cracked rock and dry, spilling sand. Clouds of dust kicked fiercely into the air. Isaac fought for purchase, his feet kicking uselessly beneath him, trying to pull his way to safety.

“Isaac!”

Zaria climbed from the wreckage of spilled earth. Her mohawk was wild, there was blood leaking down her face, and her poleaxe was clenched viciously in hand, held out to a killing point. She climbed free of the boulders and sprinted up the collapsed bed of rock. Isaac scrambled back to solid ground, crawling desperately on his hands and knees. He fell nearly face-first into the ancient skeletons, gripping rotted cloth for purchase as he struggled back to his feet.

Zaria emerged from the crater of the cave-in, animal eyes focused and sharp.

“Stop!” Isaac shouted. “Stop!”

She stood in place, breathing heavily. Above, he heard the shibboleth shunt its heads to her. There was a grinding saw of stone. Magical fire illuminated the dark.

“Don’t come any closer,” Isaac said, holding out his still-tied hands. He really wished he had focused on cutting them first. “The shibboleth will kill you.”

Her pink tongue threaded over teeth.

“Please,” Isaac said. “Listen. Listen to me. This is foolish. You need to think about this—”

She took one hand off her poleaxe and tossed it upwards, catching it in an overhand grip. With a cock of her arm, she twisted her body back and shot it forward with a shot-putter’s grace, throwing her entire weight behind the swing. Her polearm flew like a javelin.

Isaac heard the crunch of magically-treated glass a moment before the shards rained down over his shoulder. The top head of the shibboleth had been pierced clean through with the spear tip of her poleaxe, cleaving the brittle face in twain. The statue reeled back, the old stone of its dog body cracking apart, spewing a wreath of fire from the open stump. After a moment, the heads tilted forward, still swirled together as a neckless sludge. They tumbled to the ground, shattering to pieces. A circular band of teeth rolled like a wagon’s wheel across the floor. Fire flickered and died.

Zaria clenched her fists. A growl echoed amongst the bone and sand. “Oh, fuck,” Isaac said, and ran into the tomb.

Chapter Seven

A Life Restrained

“Isaac!”

He sprinted down the stairs, feeling like he wasn’t touching them at all. He dodged through a gauntlet of crumbled stone, dusty cobwebs, and scattered human skulls. Above, the ceiling of the stairwell was the segmented vertebrae of the giant, unknown creature, each arc of bone like a moon crashing from the sky.

“Isaac!”

Soon, he couldn’t see the stairs. The darkness had grown thick with frightening speed. He could only feel his gasps for air, his pounding footsteps, his body’s instinctive sense of where the next perch would lie. Each step into the black was a leap and a prayer.

He should’ve untied himself.

He should’ve immediately fled for the tomb.

He should’ve never cast a fireball at a fucking pirate ship.

The stairs ended without warning, startling him, the transition to flat ground sending him sprawling across a floor of smooth tiles. Isaac barely felt the impact. He scrambled, running again, having no idea where he was going. Down below the earth, in the heavy silence brought by rock and sand, every sound echoed like a clarion.

The loudest sound was footsteps. They were coming from behind. They were moving at a very fast pace.

Louder, faster, closer.

With a deep animal panic, Isaac noticed he was in a corridor, and there was some kind of green light ahead, flickering like fire. Suddenly, he spotted the outlines of pews and carpets, each of them assembled in rows. When he dashed into the room, the ceiling widened up into a cavernous vault, with a segment of the titan’s vertebrae acting as the apex. Below, surrounding him, there were pillars of stone connected by curving arches.

Arcaded piers, Isaac thought.

Lessons of architecture wormed through his mind. He noticed the reliefs carved across the trestles, the subtle corrugation of the piers. A nave was the center aisle of a church. The wings were called transepts. The space behind the altar was the apse.

This was a chapel for the dead.

Footsteps behind him.

Louder.

Faster.

Closer.

The light he had seen was a ring of green fire surrounding the piers, each of them torches burning inside a wall-mounted sconce. Ahead, at the foot of the altar, an onyx statue stood beneath the vaulted ceiling, depicting two figures together. One was human, kneeling with clasped hands, and the other was a zoanthrope whose species he had never seen before. The standing beast held a clenched fist to the air. At its feet, the human was withering into bone.

Isaac felt a snarl behind his back.

Rotted carpet bunched at his feet. He reached the stairs before the altar. He felt the rushing wind behind him. In a single moment of clarity, he saw the stripes and stars symbol patched on the human figure of the statue.

Zaria tackled him with the gracefulness of a carriage, sending both of them sprawling across the floor in a vicious tangle of limbs. Isaac cracked his head against the carved reliefs of the altar. Dazed, breathless, he felt a clawed hand gripping his shoulder. He struggled, flinched, gasped.

A dagger pressed into his throat.

“You furless weasel!” Zaria snarled in his face, her teeth yellow, her wild eyes reflecting fire. “You sodding ape!”

Isaac squirmed beneath her, pushing and kicking. The blade of the dagger wedged deeper into his neck.

“Give me a reason!” she yelled.

His neck bulged against the blade with every panicked breath. “I—you—”

“I’ll fuckin’ do it! You think I haven’t? You think you’ll be special?” Her hand squeezed his shoulder. “We all bleed the same, young lord! I promise you!”

“I tried to save you!” Isaac barked.

“You buried me! Tried to leave me for dead!”

The edge went deeper. His hands sank into the fur of her chest, unable to push. All he could do was twist and gasp.

“Beg!” she yelled. “Beg for mercy!”

Blood trickled down his neck.

“I swear,” Zaria growled, “if I don’t hear some real, honest pleas.”

“Fuck you,” Isaac hissed.

“Isaac—”

“No! Fuck you! I’m sick of your threats! I’m sick of enduring your chatter! Most of all, I’m sick of you getting in my way!”

The blade trembled at his throat. Her mohawk spilled across her face, glowing green with fire.

“Do it,” he said.

“Don’t test me, squire.”

“I’m not,” Isaac said, “your fucking squire.”

He looked her right in the eye. Neither of them blinked. Dust spilled from the spine of a titan, sprinkling across the tiles.

“I’m calling your bluff,” he said. “You need me. You’re scared.”

She huffed in his face.

“You won’t kill me.”

Her black snout curled. The blade twitched, and her grip on his shoulder tightened. Their eyes never left each other. He didn’t think about the history of this chapel—its purpose and architecture and all the exalted corpses which might have passed through its halls. For once, his life of study and research faded from his mind.

There was only him and her and a dagger at his throat.

A long moment passed.

She yanked the dagger away. Isaac tried not to gasp in relief. After stabbing her weapon back into its sheath, she gripped his shoulder with her other hand, leaving him completely pinned to the floor. Her hands were so big they could meet at his spine. He knew, very consciously, that she could pull him apart, like the leg of a cooked chicken.

Isaac swallowed.

“Just seemed like the right thing to do,” she hissed, mimicking his voice. “Where’d you get that idea, Isaac? Huh? You read that in a book somewhere, sippin’ on your wine?”

He took a few ragged breaths, wincing at every stretch of his throat.

“What was I to do,” Zaria asked, “if I couldn’t dig my way out, huh? Was I supposed to starve in that hole while you traipsed off to glory?”

“I gave you—”

“You gave me nothing!” she yelled, in his face. “No rope, no prybar, nothing! I would’ve died down there if rust and rock hadn’t worked in my favor!” She clamped down on a snarl. “Thought you were being heroic, did you? Thought giving me the choice of starvation or capture was some noble fuckin’ mercy?”

“I did my best!” he yelled back. “I could’ve just let the shibboleth kill you! I could’ve said nothing while you blundered into a hex! Maybe that would’ve been smart!”

Her snout curled. The scar on her nose looked jagged and cruel.

“Listen,” he said, trying to collect himself. “I gave you privileged information. Sensitive Diet contacts. Do you understand, in the slightest, how dangerous it was to share that information?”

“Aye, I do. And I don’t give a rat-tailed fuck, ‘cause it wouldn’t a done me no good at all.” She pointed to the dark corridor at the end of the chapel. “You saw my ship skulking nearby. If I leave this giant corpse, it’ll be as a lamb to slaughter. I’d never make the trip outta this scorch. The second I step away, I’ll be dead by dusk, if I’m lucky.”

“If you don’t leave this skeleton,” Isaac said, “it’ll be worse, I promise you. Do you know what necrotic magic does to skin and bone? Do you know how easily a sorcerer could wrench your soul from its tether?”

She took a breath, looked at him a moment longer, and pushed herself up to a full sitting position, trailing a hand over the leather plackart circling her belly. “Take another gander at these scars, Isaac. I know you like to look.”

He glanced away, trying to spy the onyx statue on the altar. Green firelight danced across the pews and piers.

“Look at me, you little shit.”

He looked at her, grimacing with discomfort.

She guided his gaze across her torso, pointing out the blood stains on her vest, a welt on her shoulder, the scabbed-over cuts on her arms, even a purple bruise on the thin region of fur beside her breast. When she was sure she had his attention, she undid one of the straps tying her leather plackart together, peeling the stiff material from her waist.

He saw, quite plainly, that her entire left side was coated in blood, from the bottom of her ribs to the top of her pelvis. The scarlet was fresh. It matted to her fur like porridge on a carpet, drowning the brown spots and hints of abdominal muscle. He could not see exactly what the injury was, but the amount of blood left no question as to its severity.

“Gods,” Isaac said, startled.

“Yeah,” Zaria replied. “Thought so.”

“Have you just been . . . walking around like this? The whole time?”

“Ain’t had a choice, squire.” She looked down, prodding a finger at the worst of the blood. Her snout curled with a hiss. “It needs stitchin’, and I ain’t got the tools.”

Isaac watched her retie the strap of her armor. He gave a small tug against the rope on his wrists. He had managed to cut through some of the hemp, but not enough to pull it apart on his own.

“You gonna listen now?” Zaria asked.

Isaac let his hands fall, watching her.

“For my one good deed,” Zaria continued, “I got the pleasure of being whipping post for a ship of angry pirates. I got tied to a mast, denied food and drink, and I got cut by every sharp object the imagination allowed. Only reason I’m still drawing breath is ‘cause the captain of the Saber wanted me subject to treason.”

She leaned in, and the smell of her unwashed animal musk fell over him like a blanket. He wanted to cringe away, but there was nowhere to go.

“You ever had someone explain how they’re going to torture you to death?” She traced a claw around the edge of his ear. “They say it real slow like, relishin’ every word. Knowin’ you can’t do nothin’ to help yourself.”

Isaac remembered the lashing of the cane.

He did not answer.

“My captain,” Zaria said, “was soaking her britches, just from the thought of pulling my entrails out with hot pincers, smashing bone, ripping flesh, wringing every ounce of pain to the drop. Now, after that, you think I’m eager to see her face chasing me down a dune?”

Isaac gave a noncommittal response.

“I’ll assume,” the hyena said, “you don’t know who she is. Black Eye Soren, captain of the Silent Saber. One of the few pirates with a reputation for meanness that ain’t tall tales and exaggeration. She relishes putting down rowdy sailors. Any skimmer she graces better not have a single unbent knee on its planks, or it’ll be drenched in blood before half the hold’s been taken. She’s not crazy. She ain’t reckless. And she ain’t a bad captain, neither. Generous with her grog.” Zaria fingered a spot on her waist, grimacing. “She just waits for an excuse. Once she’s got it, you’ll wish you were never born.”

He lay back on the stone tiles, watching her.

“I’m not risking that again,” Zaria said. “I ain’t goin’ back. I’ll take any bloody chance other than seeing her standard come my way.”

“How, exactly,” Isaac asked, “is this treasure supposed to stop her? A wealth of gold sitting at the bottom of a tomb won’t do you much good. It might as well just be some shiny pebbles.”

“A vain hope is better than none.”

She looked away, blinking at the fires, as if she were only noticing them for the first time. The chapel was silent and gloomy. A vaulted ceiling perched beneath a spine.

“Fine,” Isaac said, holding up his hands. “If you’re so eager for survival, untie me.”

She snorted, sitting back fully on his groin. Her usual mirth returned. “Oh, what, I’m supposed to trust you after you stabbed my back, first chance you got?”

“It’s better you do it now, before it’s too late.”

“How ‘bout you be happy you got all your breathing tubes intact?”

“How about you repay me for rescuing you?”

She clicked her tongue. “Accidental rescue, love. Them don’t count.”

“Those don’t count!”

“Ah, right, words. Your favorite.”

Isaac thrashed his legs. Her weight had him pinned down. “Listen—”

“No.”

“Zaria!”

She leaned forward, draping herself over him. “My squire stays tied, and he best be happy to serve his knight.”

“This is more important than you! This is my life’s only purpose!”

“And I’m still aiding that purpose, despite your efforts.”

“You’re endangering this purpose! I won’t let you risk my father’s life!”

“Who said you’re letting anything anymore?”

“You’re going to get us killed!”

“Hold your tongue, sir mage, before it’s relieved from you.”

“No! I will not, you filthy pirate! You furry mongrel! You stupid cunt!”

Her response was halfway between a snort and a growl. “Fine. You know what? I’ve been too lenient on ya. If you’ll choose not to obey, then I’ll just start—” She stopped, stiffening. Her eyes widened slightly. Shifting up at the waist, she looked down at the connecting point between them. Between her legs, clear as day, illuminated by magical green fire, Isaac’s pants had pitched upwards at the groin. He had an erection, and it had poked her in the groin.

Silence filled the chapel.

Isaac looked dumbly at his own arousal, shocked at himself. Perched above him, Zaria glanced between his lower half and his face, momentarily at a loss for words.

“What in Xotra’s name—”

Isaac scrambled, trying to wriggle away. He grabbed the edge of the altar, but Zaria sat back down on top of him, her heavy hips pinning his body to the floor, crushing his erection against his groin. He kept trying to pull himself toward the altar. She pressed her hands to his shoulder. When he was completely trapped beneath her, she started to laugh. Slowly, with all the pleasure of someone completely in command, her chuckles went from surprise to disbelief all the way to naked amusement.

“What’s this, Isaac? You got a weapon I’m not aware of?”

He tried to push her off, but she grabbed both his wrists in one hand and forced them down over his head. All he could do was kick his legs.

“Does my squire want something of his knight?”

He couldn’t look at her. He turned his head away. Shame burned across his face. When she spoke again, her weight shifted down, and her rough voice was soft in his ear.

“Do you want to fuck me, Isaac?”

He shook his head vigorously.

“No?” she asked.

“It’s—it’s—it’s—” He swallowed, overcome. “It’s a physical response, it’s not like that, it happens, I don’t touch others often, and it’s happened before, it’s—it’s nothing. I can’t control it. It doesn’t mean—”

“Doesn’t mean what?”

“It doesn’t mean anything! I don’t—I don’t touch people! It happens! My uncle told me—”

“Oh, your uncle, huh?”

He focused on the church architecture, feeling like any word he spoke would only betray him further. He strained for any perch to rest his thoughts.

Apses.

Arcaded piers.

Studded reliefs and curving pews.

The purpose of a mortuary chapel was to prepare and anoint the dead—

She thrusted herself across his groin, like she was trying to scrub through a stain. He could feel her lips slide across his length through the layers of fabric. It seemed to grip—

Anatomy lessons.

Beasts.

Sandwyrms. Vestigial wings. Composition of scales.

Labia, vulva—

“Gotta be honest,” she said, breath hot and close. “I’m not usually this chatty with a hostage. Like to think I’m a professional, most times.”

He wanted to thrust. He wanted to grab. He wanted to run and hide and never be seen by anyone ever again.

“I’ll admit,” Zaria said, “I am grateful to you, for savin’ my life. At the same time, you got a petulance about you that just begs for teasing. It’s like you’re askin’ me for it.” She bucked her hips particularly hard, and his leg kicked out against smooth tile. “Maybe, in the end, I’m just weak for the cute and helpless.”

His father.

Think about his father.

Her teeth nibbled at his ear.

“Maybe, also, I want you to stop lying to yourself.”

Weight. Pressure. Sliding.

“Whatever the case, whatever it means, I gotta say.” She breathed out, slow and hot. “You’ve been drivin’ me mad, Isaac. Last night, I woulda fucked you right in the sand.”

He closed his eyes.

“But I didn’t,” she said, “because I got some decency. Not much, but enough to matter.”

He felt her face begin to rise. When he took a frightened peek, she was hovering close above, their noses inches apart. Several emotions crossed her face.

Anger.

Calculation.

Amusement.

Lust.

“Now,” she said. “You went and fucked me first. And that settles it, for me.”

His face was burning. Their breaths were hot. There was a tight, screaming furnace at his waist.

She lifted her rear off his groin, letting his erection spring back to position. With a slight shifting of legs, her hand managed to reach down between them, probing and shifting. “Here’s the deal, love.” She looked him right in the eye. “You can stop this anytime. Say the word and it’s over. Pirate’s honor.”

Her hand wrapped around the hem of his lower robes, cocked and waiting.

“If you don’t want this, say so. Right now.”

Her breasts pressed into his chest. Her thighs wrapped around his waist. His cock strained like a bolt notched in a crossbow.

She was waiting, watching him with gleaming eyes. It wasn’t a ploy. He could tell, right then, that she really would stop if he said so. Nothing further would happen. He had the choice, and that was the point. That was the humiliation she was inflicting. That was what made it so much worse.

There would be no violation. There would be no shame. All he had to do was speak. Say the word.

Stop.

She had left a faint dampness on his robe. A residual heat. It was all he could focus on. There was so much warmth and wetness and pressure and guilt and fear. The smell of her musk seemed to bury him alive.

“Speak up,” Zaria said.

Isaac gazed past her, towards the high-vaulted ceiling, where giant vertebrae stitched themselves across the sky. He gave one last bit of defiance against himself.

“Come on. Prove me wrong.”

He tilted his head back across the tiled floor, looking up at the ornate carvings of the ceremonial altar. Slowly, he nodded.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Y-yes.”

“You want it?”

He nodded again. He did not see the expression she made, but he still felt it, all the same.

“That’s a good boy.”

She pulled down his robes, and his erection was freed. Her fingers wrapped around his shaft, stroking up and down, making him twist and clench. Her hands were a combination of rough, leather pads and tufts of golden fur, all of which quickly grew lubricated with his leaking arousal. The sensation was a chaos of friction. She kept pistoning at a measured pace, and Isaac kept his face turned up and away, knowing she was waiting for a reaction.

Slowly, never slowing her strokes, she raised herself above his chest, taking her other hand away from his wrists, as if testing his resistance. When he did not struggle, she lifted herself higher, her strokes slightly changing angle, and the gentle motion of her thighs made him realize that she was undoing her own clothes.

Lowering, letting free.

He had seen the way her breasts—

Think of the altar. Think of the statue above their heads, the man with the necromancer symbol kneeling before a god. This god was made in the likeness of an animal.

Think of the history that could be—

A drop of liquid fell on the head of his cock. It was warm, viscous, almost like saliva. Before he could stop himself, he opened his eyes and saw her loins glistening openly in the green firelight, drooling strands of her excitement down the length of her inner thighs. Around the wet fur, there lay a subtle play of creases and folds, a pinkness that seemed to emit almost a hot breath of fog against his skin.

“Ready to ride, squire?”

She was grinning down at him with a mixture of amusement and cruelty. He turned his head away, embarrassed at being caught, but the hand not currently gripping his cock came to his face, forcing his gaze back on her.

“No,” she said. “Look at me while I fuck you.”

She tilted his cock until his head ran over her lips, slowly sliding through until he was poised at her opening. He felt heat and wetness and desperately sensitive skin.

He could stop this. He just had to say the word.

It was right there on his tongue.

She paused again, like an executioner holding their axe high. She gazed straight through him. With her hand gripping his chin, Isaac met her eyes, opened his mouth, tried to force something out, and only managed a shaking, needful breath.

She dropped down on him with no easing or mercy, letting her heavy weight drive his erection deep inside her. The blow to his pelvis nearly knocked the wind from his lungs. She rose back up, leaving only his head inside, and slammed down again, forcing a gasp from his throat. His vision swam, green torchlight blurring around him. He was smothered by sensation. There was an immense heat, a wetness, a slick friction, a tightening clench, all of it sliding around him so fast and strong that he almost didn’t notice her grinning at his expressions.

And, then, he was back in his bedroom, in the roof of his uncle’s tower.

When he was barely more than a boy, he had peered through his window on a silent night, watching students his age stumble down the street, their voices and cheers echoing through the village. He had seen a girl. He was not sure of her species, but her legs had been long, and her body had curved so beautifully, and he had been pleasuring himself in the dark, consumed with questions, wondering her name, wondering why he couldn’t be down there with her, wondering—

Zaria smashed down, hilting him with such force that his back arched off the floor. She ground herself against him, back and forth, smearing and combining their fluids. With a brief shift for leverage, she began to rise and fall at a savage pace, like a blacksmith’s anvil pounding against the hammer. The clap of striking flesh echoed across the chapel walls.

It was obscene. It was enchanting.

It was wet and loud.

It was almost like—

The cane flew, and white hot lines of pain seared across his back.

His muscles ached, he could barely stand, he had cast the purifying evocation for hours, and still it was not enough. His uncle struck again, splitting the skin, shouting instructions, belittling his efforts, insulting everything he ever did, and still he tried, despite his anger, despite his wants, he continued to try, and the cane continued to strike—

And she lowered herself over him, almost eclipsing the light, a breathing blanket of muscle and leather and fur. She licked him across the face. He barely felt the bristling fibers on her tongue because she was still spearing herself onto him, practically beating his pelvis into the tiled floor.

She raised her head, giving a drunken sigh of pleasure. When she bent down to lick him again, Isaac took the opportunity to bite her tongue.

She flinched away. He spat in her face.

Zaria howled with laughter.

Half-growling, her teeth glistening green in the light, she snapped her jaw toward his throat, wrapping his neck in a gauntlet of teeth. The impacts of her drops and thrusts were hard enough to continually bounce his neck against the sharpened end of her canines—on a particularly vicious plunge, he felt his skin begin to puncture. More blood joined the dagger wound on his neck.

But she was licking again, running the wet muscle over his blood and sweat and dirt, and it was almost soothing, and the pressure on his throat—

And he couldn’t stop the tears from falling.

There was a sharp knot in his throat, and he couldn’t wipe the wetness from the old parchment, the dim candlelight flickering as he heaved and gasped as loudly as he dared. He cried from shame, from all the feelings and dreams he could not purge from himself, all his hopes and wants cause for punishment and blame, but he couldn’t stop, he always wanted, he always imagined, it was a burning need inside of him, a bright light shining through his prison bars, and now he was weeping over his studies, trying—

Her face leered above, full of breath and scars.

With a wicked grin, she intensified the pounding, raising the strength, doubling the frequency, every angle driving him deeper, her insides like a hundred gripping tongues, a dull pain blurring into ecstasy with every strike of flesh. She wanted his reaction, and he almost lost composure. After sensing his weakness, she slowed the frequency but struck even harder, each thrust as deliberate and vicious as the killing blow of a sword, and the moan escaped his lips before he could stop it. The sound piqued her ears. She began to laugh, saying—

And he lay in bed, stroking himself, imagining a woman, someone he didn’t know, picturing the flirtations between them like characters speaking on a page, using their example to build his own dream because he had no other reference, no real experience of soft skin and hungry eyes.

He did not know better. No one had taught him.

He would have no chance to ever experience—

In a flash, he saw Zaria in a way he hadn’t seen anyone before. He saw the curve of her breasts. He saw her nipples bouncing in ragged circles. He saw the wetness between her legs, and the wounds on her arms, and the dirt on her fur, and the clench of muscles beneath her leather armor. Most of all, he could smell her. The animal musk on her body had grown so thick in the air that he could almost taste it, and it felt utterly intoxicating now, burning something basic and primal inside him.

As the pleasure of an orgasm began to build, Isaac realized he had stopped thinking about his mission entirely.

He was going to release. It was going to be more intense than any he had ever given himself before. Zaria saw the dawning in his eye. Immediately, she intensified her efforts, like an orchestra reaching crescendo, her thighs closing, her mouth nibbling his neck, her body pounding him even harder than he had thought possible, as if she’d been saving her true strength for when he was helpless and writhing and beyond the point of no return. The pain and pleasure and soreness and ecstasy all swirled together, rushing with speed.

“I’m sorry!” he yelled.

He came inside her with such raw intensity that his soul seemed to leave his body. He almost went blind. Zaria pressed herself down on his battered pelvis, grinding him deeper, and his cock spasmed and lurched like a bucking horse, all his muscles contracting as he rode an overwhelming wave of euphoria, spraying rope upon rope of cum until it felt as if every drop of liquid had been utterly wrung from his flesh. When it was over, Isaac melted into the tiles beneath him, his skin tingling, his chest heaving with exhaustion and pain.

She waited above him, hands leaning on his shoulders, until he could focus on her face again. When eye contact was made, she grinned, raised herself up his length, and slammed her weight back down.

Isaac nearly shrieked. His cock was unbearably sensitive, almost to the point of agony, and he tried resisting for the first time since they started. In response, she grabbed him by the shoulder, lifted his entire torso from the floor, and shoved his face between her breasts. Her chest fur was soft and fluffy. His world became nothing but her.

“Almost there, love.”

She alternated between pounding and grinding, using him purely for her own sake. The sensitivity was excruciating, and Isaac would have yelled if his face wasn’t muffled by the valley of her breasts. When he tried to pull away, she wrapped her arms around him, hugging him tight, stopping him from squirming, her claws digging into his back as her thrusts became more erratic and needful. Finally, without a word of warning, her breath hitched, her body shook, and she squeezed him so tightly that the breath fled from his lungs. Her insides clenched and rolled. Her cry echoed over the chapel walls. With a carpet of fur in his face, and all her muscles flexing around him, he could only groan into her chest as she rode through her pleasure.

Gradually, with a dying of sound and motion, she relaxed, her grip on his shoulder loosening more and more until he was dropped back to the floor like a heavy sack of grain. After a few stupefied blinks, she looked down at him, giving a sharp sigh of satisfaction. He looked away. She bent down, gripped his head, and held his face perfectly still while she dragged her tongue laboriously across his cheek, as if painting him for ownership.

“You know,” she whispered. “I like the way you moan, squire.”

Isaac could only breathe and watch the ceiling.

Without ceremony, she lifted herself off his cock and climbed back to her feet. “All the fight pounded out of you, then?”

He made a ragged sound.

She glanced back towards the darkened stairway leading out of the chapel. After sparing him another glance, she began to walk down the aisle of pews with casual confidence, her ass still exposed, her thighs glistening wet, her tail perked and wagging.

“Don’t go nowhere!” she called, disappearing up the stairs.

Isaac didn’t get up off the floor. He didn’t feel capable of moving at all. The ache in his pelvis was growing in intensity, and he felt as if he’d attempted to sprint across a mile of sand. There was no part of his body that was not covered in some combination of sweat, blood, saliva, and both of their emissions.

Instead, as his body convalesced, his mind drifted away. He felt his thoughts drifting away from the tomb, away from the desert, as if he could suddenly see through the rock and sand and bone. He had never felt so clear of mind.

He imagined fields of wheat shining in the sun. He imagined towns of stone and brick, towers and castles, palaces and temples. He imagined uncharted jungles teeming with life and danger. He imagined frigates sailing through storms, horsemen galloping through mountain passes, airborne machines flying through the heavens with magic and metal.

He imagined meeting friends at a tavern. He imagined fighting duels with bandits, their swords clashing in mud and rain. He imagined meeting grand sorcerers so wizened and old they marked generations of people as most do the seasons. He imagined holding audience with the kings and queens of the realm, leading to a fight against fabled knights on the pitched field of battle. Most of all, he imagined bedding many women, of all shapes and species, showing them the wonders he had just experienced.

The old shame burned on his face. These were his usual dreams. They had been a comfort to him all his life. Every night, he had lain in bed, tired and wounded, imagining the things he might accomplish. But he would always tell himself, bitterly, that these were only fantasies, something he would be punished for if he ever spoke them aloud. Year by year, he would sleep and wake and study, and the dreams had receded from his mind.

Only his father mattered. Only his training mattered. That was his purpose. That was his duty.

That was why he was born.

But now, lying before the altar of a mortuary chapel, staring up into a ceiling buttressed with giant vertebrae, Isaac dreamed his old dreams. They were just as rich and strong and vivid as they had been when he was a boy.

On the edge of tears, he finally allowed himself to want.

Footsteps echoed through the chapel. Zaria emerged from the darkness with her poleaxe in hand, which was still impaled into the screaming face of the shibboleth. She was trying to yank the axe blade free. After a few more attempts, she struck the human head into the floor, braced her foot against it, and yanked the blade from its face.

“Come now,” she called, strolling between the pews, her sex and thighs still exposed. “Up you go. Quit lyin’ about.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t feel ready to stand. She continued to saunter across the chapel, pausing only to grab at the carpet lying in the aisle. She wiped the ancient fabric between her legs. Cum streaked the fabric.

Isaac grimaced at the sight.

“What?” she asked. “Think the sorceress’ll be mad?”

He leaned his head back against the floor, returning his focus to the present.

She came over and stood above him, the green firelight shining on her leather armor. “Sheathe yourself, at the very least.”

He pulled his robes back to their proper position. She held down an open hand, flicking her head upwards. He shoved it away and climbed back to his feet, wincing at the pain in his groin. He would be amazed if his pelvis wasn’t cracked. He was certainly amazed she hadn’t bitten through the arteries in his neck. Frankly, he was amazed that he had survived the experience at all.

“Oh, come on,” Zaria said. “Don’t look so mallow. I’m clean. Won’t be no pus out your piss hole.”

He shook his head and looked away.

“Hey,” she said, clamping an arm on his shoulder. “You fucked me first, and I had to even things. It’s standard business.” She paused. “Well, mostly.”

He rubbed his bloody throat, unwilling to meet her gaze. He tried to move away, towards the transept and the hidden stairway that must lead further down, but she held firm to his shoulder.

“Isaac.”

He looked down at his sweaty and ragged clothes. He could smell her scent on them.

“Hey. Look at me.”

He met her gaze, and he found the whites of her eyes starting to show. It took her a moment to speak.

“Was that . . . really your first time?”

Isaac didn’t answer. He couldn’t stop blushing. He could not stop imagining how disheveled and pitiful he must’ve looked.

She blinked, as if certain thoughts were only now occurring to her, and released her grip from his shoulder. She stepped back out of arm’s reach, holding up her hands. “You know I’m just teasing you, right?”

He wiped blood from his neck.

“Look,” she began to say, but stopped. She sighed and cleared her throat. “I’m aware this wasn’t the best—”

An explosion shook the room.

It was felt more than heard. A wave of pressure slapped through the chapel, shaking pews and quivering the organs. Above, the ceiling quaked, old tiles of stone sliding loose and crumbling to the ground. A segment of the vertebrae cracked open, and the weight of the ceiling began to snap the fissure wider and wider, splintering the bone like wood.

“What in the fuck—” Zaria began.

Another explosion tore through the building, this one a cacophony of smaller bombs all erupting together. There was a great rumbling above, carrying the sounds of deep thuds, cracking bone, and the collapse of giant structures. One series of thuds, in particular, seemed to increase in intensity. It was bouncing fast and hard.

“Get down!”

Zaria pulled him to the floor just as something rushed from the darkness. He only caught a brief glimpse of a splintering pew before a sharp wind gusted at his face, and the altar behind him shattered to pieces. When he looked, he saw the crude, dull iron of a cannonball sticking out of the carved reliefs. In the green light of a dozen burning fires, it almost didn’t seem real.

He blinked, and the cannonball remained. It was black and round and heavy enough to sunder a hull.

Or destroy a tomb entrance.

“Oh, no,” Zaria said. “No.”

Another cannon salvo began, and this time it was louder, as if much of the structures between it and them had already collapsed. More thuds echoed out. Stone shattered. A series of bouncing crashes came rushing down the stairwell, almost too fast to react. Zaria forced him down again, and Isaac clung to the floor, only able to brace and close his eyes and listen to screaming balls of metal smash their way through ancient architecture, thinking of geometry and angles of impulse and what direct hits did to soft targets.

When he looked again, the entrance to the chapel was little more than piles of shards and dust. Multiple arcaded piers had been hit directly, leaving shattered stubs that resembled the molars of teeth. Small streams of light shone down from the stairway. If they could see sunlight all the way down here, in the depths of the church, the destruction must have been immense.

“They weren’t supposed to—” Zaria nearly gaped. “They never come near this place. It’s cursed. It’s the blackest sorta evil. I thought they wouldn’t—”

There was another explosion. A wooden pew was smashed to pieces by a crumbling boulder. With his ears ringing, and his mind working furiously across his studies, Isaac decided that the explosions sounded like barrels of black powder, likely placed at the back of the skull. The pirates must be using an ear-splitting amount of explosives to feel it this deep within the earth.

Isaac tried to get up, but Zaria was still holding him down, her body frozen in place. She watched the chapel entrance with wide eyes and panting breath.

“We need to go,” he said. “Now.”

“Fuck me. Soren’s here. The Black Eye, the Saber, all of her—”

“Get off me!”

And, above, echoing down the crumbled passage of the stairwell, voices began to be heard. It was a multitude, a braying mob, an overlapping tumble of shouts and cheers and roars. Some of them were singing shanties. He imagined an entire crew of pirates gathering in the mouth of the skull, cutlasses and daggers held beneath a snarling of teeth.

Then, all at once, they stopped. An eerie silence descended through the wreckage.

“Zaria!”

It was a small voice, distant and singular. The hyena immediately tensed.

“I know you’re down there! Don’t bother stayin’ silent!”

Isaac could not identify the species. Whatever Soren was, she was too far away, her voice too obstructed by sand and stone. Even still, the silence around her words made them echo through all the clearer. She spoke like someone who expected others to listen.

“Were you not satisfied with the lives of my crew?” Soren yelled. “Huh? Was it purpose or vengeance that drove you to sunder a ship of the fleet? Did you really think I wouldn’t purse you, now, to the ends of the waste?”

Zaria did not respond.

“You put thirty men to the groundwater, ya fuckin’ bilge rat! That makes forty souls crossed by your hand! The entire fleet o’ Crookspur’s now wise to your blackened crime! All her skimmers are bearin’ course to this place of death! And when the Crook commands, you will fuckin’ answer!”

A few pirates shouted in agreement. Isaac cleared his throat, feeling guilty.

“Listen here!” Soren called down. “I want no more pirate blood on your hands! You come out with whatever hostage you’re dragging in tow, and we fight proper! Dueling blades! Otherwise, I’m bringing this titan down on your head!”

“There’s no way out,” Zaria whispered, almost to herself. “No door down here. I can’t go up there. She’ll slaughter me. She’ll make it slow. She’ll—”

“Zaria—” Isaac began.

“You got one minute!” Soren yelled. “One minute to bare your furry visage, traitor!”

“This is a mortuary chapel,” Isaac said. “There are hidden doors. It’s supposed to fool grave robbers. She’ll never know where we went.”

Zaria looked at him, terrified.

“Do you want to die?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Get the fuck off me, then.”

They stood up from the floor, shaking off bits of stone and dust, and Isaac guided her to a transept over to the side. In the little alcove, there were rows of friezes and cornices on the back wall, smooth lines of stone rising and falling in subtle patterns. Isaac trailed his hand down over the decorative grooves, searching for the hidden trigger. It would be a pressure plate, something nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the architecture.

“Best not be craven!” Soren yelled, clearly losing patience. “I got enough boomin’ powder to split a palace!”

He found the spot. He pressed with his fists, and a small rectangle of stone sank into the recesses of the wall, triggering a shudder of mechanisms. The sound faded. No hint of a doorway emerged from the wall. It remained as smooth and seamless as any other wall.

Zaria nudged him. “Hurry this along now.”

“It should’ve worked.” He pressed the square again. “Something’s wrong.”

“Time’s up! Light the fuse!”

He bashed his shoulder into the wall and felt the slightest bit of give. A fine crack of darkness emerged in a vertical line. “It’s stuck. Help me push.”

They braced against the door, digging their feet into smooth tile. The crack of darkness slowly grew into a thick line, and Isaac could feel some bit of ancient and broken machinery audibly straining against their efforts. It was taking all their strength just to budge it inch by inch.

Another explosion ripped through the chapel. The shockwave pulsed through his guts, nearly knocking him to the floor. Around them, stone and masonry crumbled. Two gigantic chunks of vertebrae snapped off the spine and crushed an entire column of pews, including the statues standing upon the altar. Isaac noted, almost absently, that he’d never studied the figures, or the engravings on the altar itself. He had completely missed their significance.

The crumbling increased, forming a quake of earth and stone that was growing louder and louder, rapidly building upon itself. By now, the crack in the doorway was almost as wide as a bookshelf. Zaria squeezed through first, scrapping the cavalry hook of her poleaxe across the wall. She disappeared into blackness. For a moment, Isaac was left alone with a growing avalanche of stone. Then, like a corpse rising from a grave, her arm reached out from the dark, grabbed his elbow, and yanked him bodily through the gap.

He collapsed onto a floor of dirt just as the roof of the chapel split apart with another explosion. Large chunks of ceiling piled up at the open doorway. The crashing shook his bones. In seconds, only a few slivers of green light entered through the rubble. As the destruction of the chapel continued, and more wreckage flooded to the floor, the door cracked almost halfway open, but did not budge a single inch further. This time, it was stuck for good.

Eventually, the rumbling ceased, and his ears stopped ringing, and all he could hear was the gentle fall of dirt and dust, settling into the cracks of wreckage.

His heart pounded in his throat.

Without warning, an orange fire blazed through the dark. Zaria had lit a torch. She stuffed the flint into the pocket of her trousers, handing him the flame. With his wrists still tied, he had to grasp it with a doubled fist, fingers pressing awkwardly against each other. The hyena unsheathed her poleaxe and turned away from the door.

Ahead of them was a dirt-floored hall that continued far past the end of the torchlight. The walls were lined with horizontal niches like the holes of a beehive—loculi, Isaac remembered. They were inlets built to hold the bodies of the dead. They rose in sequence towards the ceiling, stacking over each other. If the hall continued for long enough, there would be enough loculi to store hundreds of bodies.

Catacombs.

The tomb of an ancient necromancer.

“Nothing for it now,” Zaria said, holding her weapon tight.

There was no light ahead. The hall was blacker than night. Isaac took a deep breath, feeling a sudden chill in the air.

They ventured into the dark.

Chapter Eight

In the Face of Evil

The darkness was too thick to be natural.

Right now, the torchlight in his hands felt like a bubble of air at the crushing depths of an ocean floor. Blackness held at every angle, heavy and dense, seeming to claw in at the edges. When he waved the flame across a random loculi, the shadows of a cobweb seemed to leap like a knife. He quickened his pace toward Zaria, only to feel a piercing gaze on the back of his skull. When he waved the torch behind him, there was nothing there but dust.

The darkness seemed to swirl.

He turned forward, failing to control his breath.

It was known, of course, that necromancy was capable of sucking all life from an area, even to the point where no life could ever form there again, as Isaac had seen with the windless shell of air surrounding the skull of the colossus, but recent experiments by the Diet had confirmed that this lifeless scar even extended to the presence of light itself, where a sufficiently powerful casting of necromantic suction had left an area permanently sheathed in darkness. All the souls who entered this darkness demonstrated symptoms of unease, dread, palpitations, nightmarish visions, and inevitable spells of fainting.

Was he experiencing these symptoms now?

Was he merely afraid?

The ancient literature also suggested that the worst of the necromancers, the ones who had drunk the souls of innumerable victims, were so attuned to the presence of life that they could smell a breathing person at a distance of miles, like a shark sensing blood in the vastness of an ocean. Down here, in the dark, not even the spiders would survive the hunger of the sorceress.

Isaac forced himself to calm.

He found that, as his eyes struggled to pierce the dark, his other senses became highly sensitive. He could hear every scuff of dirt beneath his boots and every poorly controlled breath at his lips. He could faintly smell the bodies that used to be in the walls. He could feel the stiff and cool air on his sunburned skin, seeming to wrap around him like a mist.

“You need to untie me,” Isaac said.

Zaria was leading the way, spear tip jutting into darkness, her every step as smooth and silent as a predator stalking through brush. Her ears swiveled at the slightest sound.

“Zaria. Untie me.”

“Not treadin’ there again, Isaac. Torch up, mouth shut.”

He clenched his jaw and raised the torch overhead, holding it awkwardly in two overlapping hands. His pelvis ached with every step he took.

They came into a rectangular room that was large enough to fit four coffins, laid end to end across the center. Isaac took a moment to identify it as a hypogeum, an underground burial chamber for the dead. The coffins were blocks of stone with a shallow inlay for the corpse to rest. Loculi lined the walls like the sockets of teeth.

Zaria brushed dust from one of the coffin inlays. “You got a layout for these catacombs?”

“No.”

“You know which way to go?”

“Down.”

She snorted. “Terrific. Expert robber of graves, my squire.”

“You signed up for this.”

“Aye. Suppose I did.”

She glanced at the cobwebbed loculi around the walls, and Isaac used the opportunity to move in front of her, blocking the exit across the room. “We need to follow the vertebrae. The base of the tomb is at the feet of this creature, and we’ve barely reached the neck. The bone is our path.”

She looked up at the dirt-packed ceiling. “Don’t see no bones, now.”

“We should go find them, then, shouldn’t we?”

“Your genius is stunning, love.” She made to move past him. “Try not to hurt me with it.”

He stepped in front of her. “Have you not noticed anything?”

“You mean, besides the smell of us fuckin’?”

He waved around the empty room. “We have not seen a single skeleton in those combs. It’s just been empty walls and empty graves.”

“So?”

“So what do you think happened to them? What do you think I’ve been trying to warn you about?”

“Speak plain, then. Enlighten me of my peril.”

He held up his wrists, the torch blazing overhead. “You need to untie me. We’re in the sorceress’ lair now. Her domain. You need my abilities.”

She stepped forward, towering over him. “You had your chance to earn my trust. You squandered it, and it’s a testament to my good mercy that you still got your lifeblood about you.”

“Zaria—”

“No, Isaac. You got destruction at your fingertip. You’d end my existence with a flick of your wrist. I ain’t risking that at my back.” She shoved him with the haft of her poleaxe. “You lead the way, you call out the threats, and I decide whether they warrant your freedom, not you.”

He exited the room with the torch held close to his chest, trying to wriggle out of his restraints. The torch would be capable of burning them off, but that would likely destroy his hands in the process, and he couldn’t risk losing his spellcasting ability. He rubbed the well-worn cuts on his wrists and continued through the darkened hall.

They ventured through corridors and burial chambers, following a series of curving paths that seemed to twist and bend without any warning or reason. The ancient culture that built these catacombs deliberately made them like a maze, which included dead-ends, looping hallways, and an endless series of turns. Isaac was growing increasingly certain that they’d passed the same sepulchral chamber multiple times. Everything looked the same. It was impossible to develop a layout in the mind’s eye. There was only darkness and dust and vacant stone.

He could not get over the feeling of being watched. There seemed to be an unnatural stillness to the air. Every sound they made was swallowed in an instant.

He kept his eyes peeled for traps, remembering the necrotic hex on the surface. He thought of sigils carved into dirt and stone, ready to unleash a raw bolt of entropy. He imagined hexes on the walls, deadfalls in the floor, a lurch of animated machinery, a shunt of shooting spikes, a belt of swinging axes. He even thought, perhaps, that they would see the necromancer herself, a cocoon of darkness surrounding her, waiting patiently for the moment to strike.

“Stop,” Zaria hissed.

Isaac froze, nearly fumbling the torch. “What?”

“Something up ahead.”

She nudged him forward. Isaac raised the torch high, steeled himself, and continued down the hall.

He saw the blood first. Its redness was vibrant compared to the ancient stone around them, pooling in the shallow grooves of the dirt. Next, the torchlight peeled open the image of boots, tattered cloth, and the vague suggestion of legs and arms. It was another fresh body, half fallen into a loculus. It was very similar to the one Isaac had spied on the surface.

Zaria stepped forward, maneuvering her bulk awkwardly through the tightened hall. She poked the foot of the body with her spear tip. It sank through the flesh. When she pulled it out, there was not a single speck of blood.

“Drier than straw,” she said. “Odd.”

Isaac paced over, squatting down and balancing the torch on the edge of a loculus. He grabbed the shoulder of the corpse and found the flesh just as stiff and uncompliant as the body before it, which only suggested to him that they’d been killed at similar times.

He flipped the corpse onto its back. A screaming skull stared back at him.

“Fuck!” he yelled, falling so far back in surprise that he ended up wrapping himself around the fur of Zaria’s knee.

“Now, now,” she said. “Mother’s here.”

“Shut up!”

He stood to his feet and examined the corpse from a distance, his heart pounding. It had a human face, with the same sigil of parasitic control carved into its forehead—unlike the corpse above, this thrall’s life force had been sucked clean to the marrow. All his muscles and organs had deflated down to a set of wrinkled folds, and the skin around his bones gave the eerier impression of fabric stretched over furniture. It was impossible to determine any sort of identity.

What was possible to discern, however, was the last expression on the man’s face, which was locked into a rictus of terror. His eyes were shriveled and wide, his lipless mouth opened like a hollow in a tree. Isaac thought, briefly, that if he had managed to make that expression, the sigil controlling his brain had failed just as the necromantic magic sucked away his essence. He had woken only a moment before death.

“We’re not alone down here,” Isaac said.

“Healthier looking, though.”

“No.” He pointed at the parasite sigil. “There’s another sorcerer who entered this tomb before us. I found a body like this at the surface. They have multiple human thralls under their command.”

“You only mentioning this now?”

“I’ve been distracted.”

Zaria glanced behind her. “What happened to him?”

“Necromancy. The sorceress attacked whoever controlled this man. Clearly, she emptied one of his thralls like a skin of wine.”

“Lovely.”

“We’ll meet the same fate, if we’re careless.”

She grunted.

“I don’t know,” Isaac said, almost to himself. “This is very surprising. No one should’ve come here but me. It’s a strict Diet mandate. Although, considering the use of parasitism, I can’t imagine this sorcerer cares for the morality of—”

“Quiet.”

Her ears swiveled back and forth. Slowly, beginning to feel a chill on his skin, Isaac grabbed the torch back into hand.

It began as a soft chittering sound.

For a moment, Isaac thought he was hearing a swarming cloud of insects, rustling their way through grass. It seemed to bleed from the walls, coming from every direction at once. Slowly, the noise shifted, the quiet shuffling growing sharper with its susurration, sounding now like the clattering of chimes.

“Untie me,” Isaac said, fighting down panic. “Untie me right now.”

A moan trembled out from the darkness, rasping and thin. Behind it, the chittering grew louder, building up into a wave of shuffling cracks, like dry reeds scraping across stone.

“Zaria!”

She placed a hand on his chest, nudging him behind her. “Keep the torch steady.”

The pirate stepped forward, poleaxe grazing the edge of the darkness. The growing cacophony reacted, churning around them like a shifting swarm of flies. A rattling gasp echoed down the halls.

Zaria growled from deep in her chest.

All at once, a skeletal arm emerged from the darkness, missing most of its fingers. Soon, another arm joined it, far above at the ceiling, angled down, lurching unsteadily. A third arm came above the first, pointed the wrong way, the ball of its elbow rolling toward the wrist. From there, several more limbs came through in rapid succession, each of their bones sliding unobstructed between the other, and now there were dozens of arms, grasping and bending and waving like the limbs of a centipede.

Below the arms, a writhing mass of bone shuffled into the torchlight, blocking the narrow hall. There were rib bones connected to femurs, arms jutting from pelvises, skulls braced into knees, vertebrae studding the rims of shoulder blades, and all of it was encased in a porcupine shell of arms, all the bones sliding and crackling against each other, as if seeking some undefined structure. He saw human bones, canine bones, feline and bird and reptile, binding together with no more thought of unity than one would chop down a forest, saw the different trees into planks, and use them to build a house.

Atop this swirling mound of bodies, there sat a skull, the head of a rhino with two overlapping jaws, one inside the other, moaning with a chorus of voices.

Zaria raised her weapon overhead, scraping the spear tip along the ceiling, and smashed the axe blade down into the rhino skull. It split in half, the two jaws still biting as they separated from their joints, and the mass below surged forward in two parallel waves, forming a pseudopod of bones. She stepped back, tried to swing, clanged her axeblade against the tight stone walls, took another frightened step, and decided to stab with the spear again, reaching right for the belly. The impact scattered arms and ribs like leaves from a tree. She yanked the blade back, the cavalry hook ripping out an entire skeleton’s worth of bones, and began an awkward series of chops, half of her swings abated by the confines of the hall.

When nothing was standing higher than her ankles, she stopped, leaning on her weapon and breathing heavily. At her feet, the bones were still moving, still shuffling and sliding, already forming connections again. Around them, the sounds of chittering only grew louder.

Something fell on Isaac’s shoulder. When he looked, he saw a human finger wriggling like a maggot. He jerked back into the wall of loculi, flailing it off, and the rapid wave of his torch illuminated the area behind him. A sea of bones now crawled in his direction, scapulas and jaws and kneecaps scuttling along dirt and stone, covering every surface like writhing films of moss. They rained from the ceiling and leaped at him from the floor, flinging themselves in bouncing arcs. He stumbled back, shielding himself with his arms, feeling sharpened bone slice through his skin.

“Run!” he shouted.

They sprinted ahead, leaping over the rattling pool of bone already reforming itself into knots and limbs. Another conjoined mass of skeletons leered at them from the darkness, but Zaria lowered her polearm forward, spearing the tangle of bone through its center frame and dragging it along as she ran. More piles of bodies came, wriggling and jerking. Bone splintered into chunks as the hyena kept charging. Soon, the bones formed a quivering mass on the steel of her weapon, like the burnt head of a match, and the smaller bones began to snake their way up the wooden haft, squirming towards her hands. With a snarl, she smacked the weapon into the wall, like she was ridding a broom of dust.

“Isaac, what the fuck—”

“Keep running!”

They sprinted through corridors and burial chambers, dodging pockets of bone, leaping over swarms, the masses sloughing into each other like droplets of water. There was no way to see ahead. The torchlight did not go far. All they could do was run forward into darkness, reacting to whatever came ahead, whether it was a curve in the hall or a shambling ball of corpses.

All at once, he saw the giant vertebrae. It continued on through an intersecting corridor, the great sockets of bone sagging down like a pale nimbus of cloud, and the sight came so suddenly that Isaac almost ran straight through the intersection without spotting it. He stopped, stumbled, grabbed Zaria by the tail, eliciting from her a girlish shriek of surprise, and yelled: “This way!”

Now, following the bone, the tilt of the floor was obvious. They had been descending the entire time, feeding themselves deeper and deeper into the earth, and the corridor they found themselves in now was almost a ramp leading into an open pit of darkness, mimicking the bend of the titan’s spine. His momentum built to an almost uncontrollable pace. Zaria stayed in the front, swatting away clusters of bone whenever possible, ignoring the fingers and toes that leaped like bugs.

He swatted away a leering arm, dodged around the blade of a shoulder, keeping his torch waving squarely at the shadows behind them, only to bring it out forward and suddenly see a churning wall of bone in front of him, so thickly woven it might’ve been a quarry of stone. With his downward momentum, he couldn’t stop in time. Zaria braced her shoulder and smashed through the thick layer of slithering remains. Isaac barely missed the wide gap she made, slamming half his body into the broken membrane of arms and legs.

He dropped the torch and stumbled to the floor. A giant slug-like mass of skeletons fell from the ceiling, crushing him into the dirt.

“Isaac!”

Zaria tried to turn, but an avalanche of bone poured from the loculi around her. Masses shambled in from the dark, full of bending ribs and chattering skulls. She swung, bashed, and stomped, lost in a swirling shower of bone.

On the floor, Isaac wrenched his arms and legs, trying to break free, but the bones were a sliding cocoon around him, squeezing tighter and tighter. They pressed into his skin like beds of needles. All his training failed him, and he flailed desperately, overwhelmed with terror. When he managed to free his arms, he flung them overhead. They got stuck.

He looked up.

Just above his head, there was an old, rusted sconce. It held no torch in its base. The centuries of darkness had reduced it to little more than a rusty blade of metal. When Isaac tugged, his restraints began to tear on the jagged edge.

Screaming, he pulled his arms with all his strength, sawing through the tangle of ropes on his wrist. The mass of bones continued to stab and constrict around him, slithering up towards his neck. For a horrible moment, the sconce seemed ready to break from the wall, and the bones were nearly at his mouth, rattling against each other in an overwhelming crescendo.

An instant later, his bindings tore through, and his hands were freed.

Quickly, with the ease and grace of training, he performed the mnemonics for wind, balling two hurricanes into the palms of his hands. He slapped his right hand into the ground, bouncing the wind off the floor, creating an upward geyser that broke the cocoon around him. When a constellation of bone appeared above, he used his left hand to slash a lance of wind in a sweeping arc, flinging the swarm of bone like a volley of arrows.

He jumped to his feet, already casting another spell. Ahead, Zaria caught her balance on the edge of a loculi. She looked at him, surprised, and an expression of fear crawled across her face. She watched with wide eyes as a churning ball of fire grew between his hands. She took a step back, trying to speak. Her whisper was lost beneath the crackling flame.

“Get down!”

She dropped to the floor, and Isaac shot the fireball over her head. It roared down the narrow hall, shadows racing across stone, twirling masses of bone flailing like the collapse of a bonfire. Moments later, the fireball ended in a dying light, swallowed by the darkness beyond. Flames sputtered on marrowless bone. Things slid together. Slowly, a new mass undulated in their direction, its limbs and faces smoldering with ember.

At his back, the chittering became overwhelming, and Isaac turned to see a triangular wall of bone lurch towards him like a wave in the ocean, buoyed by a river of arms and legs. He stumbled back, trying to create space, but the tide of bodies gushed forward like a liquid, surging over the torch he had dropped. The flame was sucked away.

Suddenly, there was no light.

Darkness reigned.

There was only the chittering of bone, the sliding of corpses, the rasping cries and hissing screams, the overwhelming rush of limbs and heads and bodies.

Isaac felt something massive looming above him.

Mnemonics.

Now.

Now.

Now—

He wrenched his arm, and white light burned from his hand. The tide of bones above him lurched back, screaming in rage and fear. A hissing jet of steam erupted from its dozen-skulled face, the old bone melting on its frame, dripping away like pus. Isaac poured more energy into the casting, intensifying the anti-necrotic spell until it was blazing as bright as a lighthouse in the palm of his hand. When he stepped forward, the wave fell apart around him, the tide of bone scurrying away like a swarm of insects, all the pieces bubbling and steaming and bursting into flame.

“Get behind me!” Isaac yelled.

Zaria stepped around him as he marched on. Ahead, the wriggling slugs of bodies slithered away, their cries of fear echoing down the long, empty tunnels, and those who could not squirm fast enough were burned to ash under his white light, all the acrid smoke rising in wisps and clouds. Another wall of bone presented itself at a junction of corridors, forming a pulsing orifice of limbs, and, without breaking his light, Isaac balled another hurricane into the palm of his hand, smashing it like a bird’s nest. Splinters of bone flew past him from behind, and Zaria’s groans of effort told him there was still a tide at their back, only barely held at bay.

He took a turn into an intersecting hall, still following the vertebrae. A few steps in, he stumbled, having to lean his shoulder into stone. When he pressed a hand to his chest, it came away shining red. The cocoon of bones had stabbed him all over his body. He wasn’t sure which would weaken him faster—the magic light burning from his hand, or the blood leaking from his body.

He had no scrolls left. He could not defeat them all by hand. Even now, he could hear the dead of an entire city slithering through the halls.

They were going to die.

Zaria pushed him from behind. “No slacking, squire!”

He stumbled forward, a ragged gasp escaping his lips, continuing ahead with brilliant light shining high above his head. Her presence, despite everything, gave him some comfort. They marched together as one.

By now, the vertebrae in the ceiling were a straight, curving line, but the paths that followed them were circuitous and long, bending and turning, leading them through burial chambers, mausoleums, endless sockets of loculi. The spinal column frequently disappeared from sight. Every turn was a guess, every room a hope, every vanishing a fear.

“Isaac! Behind!”

He turned, and a vaguely humanoid shape sprinted at them from the darkness, fast and large and spiked with sharpened arms. He smashed it down to chunks with a blast of wind, and the separating bones boiled beneath his light.

The masses were growing bolder, fiercer. He saw them try to angle themselves into ambushes, twisting into deadlier shapes, ones that could leap and slash and skewer. They were still circling the edge of his light, like wild animals around a raging fire. These creatures were intelligent. They were the extended will of a sorceress who had survived the fall of empire. All it would take was one gap for them to exploit, a single slip of weakness.

But, of course, their ferocity could mean something else. It could mean they were getting close to the exit.

They had to push deeper.

He reached a four-way intersection of halls. Each of them looked the same—narrow walls, stone loculi, a ceiling of dirt and stone. Bones hissed in all.

Zaria bumped into him from behind. “Which way?”

“Any way!” Isaac hissed.

“Pick a good one!”

“I can’t see—”

The bones sprung their trap.

From each of the four halls, shapes and masses flooded from the darkness. They were coordinated, their limbs sprinting, their bodies leaping and churning. He could not pick a direction to cast.

“Zaria!”

A bulbous mass of skulls leaped at him, but the hyena smashed it down from overhead, scattering the screaming faces across the floor. Isaac pressed himself into her back, seeing a torrential rain of bone flying sideways down an adjacent corridor, and he just barely managed to encase the pathway with a solid wall of ice, trapping the body parts like flies in amber. In another corridor, cylinders of arms and legs spun across the ceiling, screeching and flailing, and Zaria managed to angle a vicious slash of her axe, cleaving through a knot of femurs. Isaac incinerated the uncoiling limbs as they detached, watching the scattered pieces of bone burn to ash.

He picked a random direction, continuing on.

He stumbled.

He gasped for air.

He gritted his teeth, continuing again.

He couldn’t sustain this pace for much longer. The arm holding up the light was beginning to shrivel, all the energy visibly sucking from the muscle. His legs were unsteady, and his vision was blurring. His body was draining so quickly of lifeforce that it was becoming a conscious effort to draw breath.

He pressed a hand to his chest, and it came back dripping with blood.

And he was back in the yard again, the morning sun shining on his face. He had attempted to cast the warding light dozens of times, and he was now only managing sparks. He panted, leaned on his knees, and told his uncle that he could do no more. If he tried again, he was sure he would faint.

And just when he expected the cane, his uncle had pursed his lip, and nodded, and kneeled beside him, and told him that he must try again, he must push himself beyond his limits, because the time would come when he would be in great need of this spell, and it would not be a time when he could falter. He was only challenging his nephew so harshly now because he needed to be ready for the task ahead.

Did he understand?

Isaac had looked at him, wanting all of it to be over. Instead, he had nodded.

His uncle had smiled.

Now, the light in Isaac’s hand began to flicker and fade. He no longer had the strength to hold his arm above his head. Immediately, the swarms of bone seized in, braying at the edges of the light, hissing and screeching.

Something with seven legs and three skulls leaped like a frog. With a roar, Isaac straightened his arm, concentrated the light, and shot it from his hand like a ballista of energy. It skewered clean through the flying mass, sending it flailing to the floor, its bones burned and flaked to ash. Isaac turned and shot the light again, aiming at the crawling legions behind them, focusing the beam into a lance of shining brilliance. The corridor was scoured. Bodies and creatures screamed as they burst aflame, the writhing layers of bone scattering into swarms.

He swept his arm across the intersecting halls, listening to the screech of dying bone. He waited for a new opponent. None dared.

“Come on!” he yelled.

His voice echoed down the dusty corridors, his words carrying through a legion of festering graves. None made answer.

He challenged the darkness to fight, and he found the darkness afraid.

He continued on, bathed in radiant light, marching past empty tombs and silent coffins. Ahead, a crawling layer of bone retreated into the dark like the white foam of a wave. Twitching masses flung themselves to the ground as he approached, falling over into their base components. Shrieks echoed from the halls. Any shifting mass that did not retreat was burned to ash and smashed to pieces with the heavy blade of a poleaxe.

Above their heads, the vertebrae changed. They were no longer cervical—instead, the blocks of bone began to sport the articulation joints of thoracic vertebrae, each protrusion larger than the blade of a windmill. Gradually, the corridors widened further and further until the walls disappeared from the edge of his light.

The catacombs had ended.

They had made it through the neck. They were almost at the torso.

Almost to the necropolis.

Almost to safety.

He stumbled through a wide entryway. A large stone door stood at the end of a circular chamber, carved into the bulge of a massive sternum, which Isaac could only compare in size to the gate of a high-walled castle. Vertebrae acted as the central pillar of the chamber, the floor around it carved with religious reliefs and mythological figures. Giant clavicles curved away from the sternum into adjacent corridors, the shoulders somewhere far off in the darkness.

Zaria ran across the chamber, pieces of splintered bone falling from her leather armor. She bashed into the massive stone door as if she meant to knock it over. All she received in response was a puffing cloud of dust.

“What stupid idiot made a door out of stone?”

Isaac had only barely reached the vertebrae in the center of the room. He had to lean on it for support.

“Isaac! Work your book-learnin’!”

He pushed himself off the vertebrae and made to speak. An instant later, he was face-down on the floor, and the light was gone. A frantic heartbeat rang in his ear. He tried to cast the spell again, but his arms were stiff and empty, and he had to work the incantation like a wet campfire. When he got the light shining from his hand again, Zaria was leaning over him, pulling him up to standing.

“Fuck me, love, you’re bleedin’ bad.”

He couldn’t feel the punctures anymore. He knew that was a very bad sign.

She leaned him against herself as they walked, their difference in height bringing his head parallel with a breast. “Exit, right? Door leads to safety?”

Isaac managed to nod.

“Well, come on, open sesame and all that.”

He flopped his arm towards the side of the door. “Lever.”

“That easy, is it?”

He grunted into her fur.

She moved across the rest of the chamber, gently lowering him into a sitting position at the front of the door. “Stay awake. Hey!” She snapped her fingers. “Breathe. In out, in out.”

“Hurry up—cutthroat.”

Zaria raced over to the lever. It was located in the range of his light, but he could not see very far. His vision was growing narrow and dim. Back the way they came, the chittering continued to churn. It seemed to be growing louder.

He heard some wrenching sounds off to the side, followed by a snarl. “Is any blasted bit of metal gonna work right?”

He could hear the bones coming again. The sound was heavy, full of cracks and scrapes, punctuated with raspy screams and grinding roars. The chamber they were in held many doors along the opposite end of the sternum. There were many mouths of darkness. Every one of them seemed to twist and boil.

Zaria was next to him again. “It’s not budging.”

He concentrated on breathing.

“Isaac! It’s stuck!”

“I don’t—” He swallowed some saliva. “I don’t know. Do something.”

Zaria stared back up at the massive stone door.

“Do something,” he said. “I’ll cover you.”

“You couldn’t cover piss in a blanket.”

He grabbed the belt of her leather pauldron and pulled himself to standing. His fists clenched, and the white light grew brighter. “I will cover you.”

She studied the door, apprehensive. “I suppose I am the brute, between us.”

“If we’re to die,” Isaac said, “I want you to know.”

She looked at him.

“I hate your snoring.”

She snorted.

“Yes, like that,” he said. “Fuck off.”

With a toss of her poleaxe, Zaria walked up to the door, cracked her neck, braced against the stone, and began to push with all her strength. Dust rained from above. The sternum itself seemed to shake. Slowly, the door began to scrape along its ancient path, moving inwards at a glacial pace.

A roar came from the darkness. More joined it, warbling and torn, and the chittering rushed into a frenzy of movement, like a thousand crackling fires combining into an inferno. The roars became a chorus, a synchronized cry of battle.

Isaac performed a new spell.

They came through the entryways like a horde of beasts, sprinting from all directions. He pointed his finger at the largest mass of bones he could see. A gust of energy snapped through his arm, and the mass exploded in a burst of raw sound. The noise was deafening, slapping his eardrums, and the shockwave blasted through the nearest beasts like a blackpowder bomb. The shrapnel of bone hit the back ranks, shredding many to their base components.

He pointed again, shooting the raw sound at points of maximum effect, tearing apart entire lines of galloping masses. Shattered bone flew through the air in streams. But they were coming from every side, pouring out of every chamber entrance in gushing tides, and they had staggered their lines, coordinated their charges. He couldn’t cast fast enough. There were too many to kill. They closed the distance at rapid speed.

He performed new mnemonics, losing even more ground in the casting time, and slammed two balls of hurricane into the floor. A tidal wave of wind erupted from the ground, knocking back the edges of the horde like a solid wall of force. The masses of bone were slapped into showers of arms and legs. For a moment, their advance was halted. But the front lines were replaced with new bone immediately, the new corpses almost stumbling over each other in their rabid fervor. Isaac cast the wind again, sending constellations of bone spinning through the air, but the lines only grew thicker with the sprinting dead. It felt like beating the ocean with a broom.

Behind him, Zaria had managed to push open a crack in the doorway. Yellow light trickled through the gap.

Isaac fell back, increasing the strength of his own light. The first swarm of beasts immediately burst into flame, melting into puddles and ash at his feet. A restless mob of skulls and fingers and limbs grew at the edge of the spell, hissing and screeching. They swiped into his aura, bit at it with teethless jaws, each thrust into the light boiling the skin of their bones.

The light began to dim. He had reached the ends of his strength. As the casting radius shrank around him, the horde closed in. He could see vacant skulls and sharp ribs and twisted legs, piles of bodies squirming like slugs, entire waves of bone splashing at the backs of creatures only vaguely shaped like living beings. They came in, closer and closer. Dozens of arms grasped for his flesh.

Zaria had widened the crack in the doorway to a small gap. He saw glimpses of statues, buildings, roads.

They were almost at him. The light was nearly gone. Each swipe of claws barely missed his chest. The horde was frenzied, smelling blood and life.

And, all at once, Isaac felt a sense of calm. There was a feeling of rightness, a sense that he had achieved his place and purpose. Everything he had ever known had built up to his moment. As he pulled the last bit of lifeforce from his body, a single sentence flared in his mind.

His father would have been proud.

The light in his hand grew from a dim flicker back to a blaze, and the horde scrambled as they fell and burned. The blaze grew into a shining beacon, and the screams of the dead echoed down the chamber walls. The beacon erupted into a second sun of light, far brighter than he had ever cast before. Every shadow in the room was erased, every flicker of darkness destroyed, every line of color fading into pure, radiant white. For a long moment, he felt like a star shining in the night.

Then his energy was gone.

The spell ended. His light died like a flame. As it went, he caught a brief glimpse of the chamber, and he saw only clouds of ash. The room was empty of bone.

His heart skipped in his chest. His legs buckled.

He collapsed.

Stone on his face.

Movement. Distant voice.

The world flipped. He bounced, held off the floor. A yellow light.

Running and running. The world went black.

Chapter Nine

Unrealized

He woke in pain.

The first thing Isaac saw, as he blinked himself to awareness, was a rib cage of colossal proportion. The ribs spread across the night sky like comet trails, curving and falling, and the cartilage studded along the sternum was glowing a faint yellow, the same color as pyrite. Slowly, still blinking, he realized that he wasn’t looking at the night sky at all, but the roof of a gigantic cavern hanging above the rib cage itself, the incredible weight of rock and stone held aloft by the bones of the titan’s body. The cartilage cast only a dim light, leaving the space between the ribs hanging in a starless black.

He was lying on stone. The white fabric they’d used for shawls had been laid out beneath him, like a blanket. He was shirtless, and his torso was wrapped in bandages.

He tried not to groan.

His body was deflated. His face felt like a skull wearing a thin human mask. He attempted to move, and his entire body screamed in response. There were so many punctures in his skin that he might’ve appeared a victim of an iron maiden.

He noted, dryly, that his pelvis was also continuing to ache.

He turned his head. Next to him, Zaria was slumped against a battlement made of brick and mortar, her chin on her knee, the haft of her poleaxe resting on her shoulder. She was watching an open hole in the floor, where the rungs of a ladder curved down from one end. The sluggish blink in her eye suggested she’d been keeping this watch for some time.

Isaac coughed.

She nearly shrieked in surprise, jumping to her feet, weapon shaking as it raised. Her wide eyes reflected the gloom of cartilage.

“Hello,” Isaac said.

She lowered the axe, breathing. “Xotra’s cunt.”

“Sorry.”

After heaving another breath, she rested her weapon on the battlement, walked over, and bent a knee at his side. “So, uh. . . .”

She looked at him. He looked at her.

“How we feelin’?” she asked.

His body was experiencing a number of problems. He had to pick which one to solve first. He leaned back, licked his lips, and said: “Water.”

She tilted her head. The cartilage light framed her face in a pale yellow.

“Water,” he repeated.

“Now, now. Mind your manners.”

He looked up at her with as much indignation as he could manage.

She shrugged. “You know me. Stickler for rules.”

“Please.”

She reached beneath his head to rummage through his pack, which he only now realized was serving as his pillow, and pulled out a waterskin. He tried to sit up off the floor, but he lacked the energy to work through the pain—instead, she reached down and gently lifted his head, bringing the waterskin to his lips. She poured slowly, pausing to let him swallow and breathe. The fur of her hand was very soft.

“Does my squire need further aid?” she asked, tossing the skin over a battlement.

“Rations. Please.”

She dug into her own pack and tossed him a few cuts of salted meat, including a bag of walnuts and several dried apples. He attacked them like a starving animal.

“Gods,” she said, sitting back. “You make a pig seem miserly.”

He gnawed furiously at the meat, only barely chewing it enough to swallow. He had never been so ravenous in his entire life. Even the worst of his uncle’s training sessions hadn’t left his body quite so desperate for nourishment. It was only when he started on the third apple that he noticed what should have been obvious.

His hands were freed.

He looked down at them, surprised. He felt as if he’d never had the privilege of locomotion before. He flexed his fingers, twisted his wrists, and went through a few mnemonic movements. The more he ate, the more a languid feeling of power returned to him, deep in the fabric of his muscle.

It felt good.

It made him feel strong.

“I can lift heavy,” Zaria said, suddenly. Her eyes focused on his hands. “I mean—what I’m sayin’—all the broken machines, right? Stone doors and whatnot. You need some gallant knight for the heavy lifting, frail human that you are.”

He stopped chewing.

For a moment, they watched each other.

“And your casting,” Zaria added, nervously. “It’s quite fancy—lifts the skirt rather well—but in the heat of battle, the point where every moment counts, you need some solid steel at your back. Simple and true, that is.”

He nodded, licking salt off his lips.

“And—and you barely know how to lace your boots.” She patted her chest. “Me, myself, I can tie rope, I can dress wounds. I know plenty on tactics. I should be the one leading this expedition, really.”

He feigned the casting motion of a spell. She flinched away.

“Mutual dependency,” she said, her hand wrapping around her axe. “That’s all I’m saying. Trapped this far in the earth, harried by monsters and thralls . . . well, there’s nothing for it now, between us, but cooperation. Right?”

“It would be smart,” Isaac said, his hands still raised.

“Aye. Brilliant, actually.”

“I agree.”

Her hand was still on her weapon. “Do you?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Great.”

“Thanks for saving my life, by the way.”

“Oh, think nothing of it.”

Neither of them moved. Around them, the city was deathly still.

“Zaria,” Isaac said. “I do agree with you. I need your help. I wouldn’t have made it through the catacombs without you. There is a place for dumb, brute strength.”

“No need to qualify my talents as such, love.”

“It’s accurate, isn’t it?”

“To a point, I’d like to think.”

“Look,” he said, lowering his hands. “You can trust me. You can do so because I have told you, repeatedly, that you can.”

She shrugged, as if helpless.

“Look,” he repeated. “I have no intention of revenge. For both our peace of mind, I’ll just ask one favor of you, and then we can bury the hatchet. Okay?”

She nodded. “Sure. Gladly.”

“Come closer.”

She looked at him, unsure.

“Closer,” he said.

She hesitated, almost said something, and decided to approach. When she was on her hands and knees above him, he grabbed the strap of her one leather pauldron, trying to yank her down. She hardly budged. It felt like bending a tree.

“Let me pull you,” he said, irritated.

Zaria rolled her eyes. When he yanked again, she pretended to collapse over him, as if he had caught her by surprise. Her snout hovered above his nose.

“I told you so,” he said.

She made a face. “That all?”

“Yes,” he said, releasing his grip on her armor. “That’s all. Consider the matter resolved.”

She stayed above him. Her eyes roamed. When he met her gaze again, her ears were twitching beneath the pale yellow light. A moment passed. He forced himself not to shy away. Eventually, she cleared her throat, sat up, and leaned back against the battlement, adjusting the strap of her pauldron.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ll listen, now on.”

He did not answer.

Minutes passed. Zaria continued to hold watch over the ladder. For a time, Isaac’s only concern was tearing through the rations.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“A watchtower, looks like. It’s got high cover, one way in or out.”

Isaac looked down at the open hole in the tower floor. She must’ve climbed up the entire ladder with his limp body hanging on her shoulder.

“It’s a city out there,” she said, gesturing.

He pulled himself up between two battlements, gazing out.

Buildings stretched down the body cavity of the giant corpse, their rooftops covered in shadow from the distant, hanging lights. It was a much bigger city than the one he had grown up next to. In the distant past, it might’ve held a population in the tens of thousands. From where he was, he could see streets and shops, the occasional pillar of watchtowers, water mills and granaries, signs written in a language that hadn’t been spoken in millennia.

From what he could see, all the buildings were made of stone. Most were still in remarkably good condition. There was no sunlight to beat on their roofs, no rain to erode their walls, and not a single footprint in the dust that covered the streets. It was all so well preserved that he imagined he could stroll into a house and still see the mummified remnants of food on the table, though he already had a sobering idea of what the necromancers usually ate.

“It’s a necropolis,” Isaac said. “A city for the dead.”

“Ain’t that just a big graveyard?”

“No. This was an actual city meant to house the dead. This empire practiced necromancy as commonly as agriculture. They conquered many nations, transformed them into vassals, and demanded a regular tribute of bodies and prisoners, which they’d use to sustain their unnatural lives. The bodies would be processed deeper in the city. If some of the bones were not used, they would be dumped into the catacombs to act as a sort of kennel.” He shrugged. “Or a granary.”

Zaria tossed a loose brick over the edge of the tower. “Glad they’re gone.”

“They’re not all gone. There’s still one left.”

“I’d be glad to fix that.”

“So would I.”

For the first time, he became aware of the silence around him. It wasn’t just a lack of sound, like he’d experienced in the desert. The silence had a weight to it. It felt full and heavy. He scanned the streets for signs of movement. He saw nothing.

The silence remained.

“Well,” Zaria said. “I travelled a good way through this place, and I saw nary a soul. Wherever she is, she hasn’t been up here for centuries, at the least.”

“We’re probably safe,” Isaac replied, agreeing. “She’ll need time to consolidate her forces again, especially with the other sorcerer already ahead of us.” Gingerly, he returned to his blanket, stretching out his limbs. “Give me a moment, and I’ll cast a warding spell on the floor. It will keep anyone from climbing up.”

“You can do that sorta thing?”

“I can do a lot of things, if I’m given the chance.”

She hesitated, closed her mouth, and went digging into her pack for a waterskin. He went for a third round of food. They lay next to each other in silence, sating their various needs.

When his stomach felt fit to burst, Isaac slowed his attempts at eating. He took stock of his injury. The bulk of his wounds seemed concentrated around his chest. Fortunately, none of the punctures were very deep, and Zaria had done an excellent job staunching the blood with a layer of bandage. His range of motion was not overly affected. With a good night’s rest, he should recover swiftly.

He realized, absently, that it was likely night on the surface. Only a little more than a day had passed since he had slept in the open sand. In that time, they had evaded a skulking ship, travelled to the tomb, dealt with the shibboleth, certain other things had occurred, and then they’d fought through an army of bones.

He was exhausted. Sleep called to him.

But when he closed his eyes, nestling his head against the canvas of his pack, his focus drifted to the wounds on his neck. The slit left by Zaria’s dagger gave him a slight discomfort every time he swallowed. Teeth marks ached on his neck. Lying on the floor as he was, he also began to notice a tinge of her musk on his skin, which had apparently seeped in through their repeated contact. He grabbed his robe, took a tentative sniff, and grimaced at the fierceness of the odor.

A snort came from his side. When he looked, the hyena was grinning down at him, her teeth peeking out. “Thinkin’ of fond memories?”

Was that a joke?

Was she really going to play it off?

“I’m going to burn my clothes,” he said, seriously.

“Uh-huh. Betcha five silver you’ll pop a stiffy every time you catch the scent.”

He tossed his robe away, grimacing.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“I just wish, for once, we could have a normal conversation.”

“Are we normal people, all of a sudden?”

“I just want to state, for the record, that it would be nice.”

She folded her arms, sliding down the battlement. “You wish to speak serious about our fucking, then?”

Isaac glared up at the rib cage.

“Didn’t mean much by it,” she said. “Didn’t cross my mind you’d think different, neither. Fucking’s as basic as breathin’ to me. Everyone does it. Everyone wants to.” She paused. “You seemed like you did.”

Isaac got back to his feet, fast enough that his legs wobbled beneath him. He went through the mnemonics of his warding spell, gathered a purple light in his hands, and spread it over the open ladder. It remained as a solid film. He could have cast the spell over the entire perimeter of their tower, but that would’ve been far too taxing for his current state. The most obvious ingress would have to suffice.

He stayed where he was, looking through the membrane of his spell. He realized he was waiting. He was waiting with fear and expectation.

Waiting for what?

“Seems you took it different than I intended,” Zaria continued, her voice almost probing. “Seemed half a world away, afterward.”

His breath caught.

Isaac stood and walked to the opposite end of the watchtower. He gazed out over the city. It stretched far past what he could see with the faint cartilage light. All the streets were paved, all the buildings close and ordered. It was quite an efficient design. Isaac could easily grasp the layout of several districts, just at a glance. He imagined that space was a limited commodity, here in the chest of a dead colossus. If he had to say one thing for a slaving empire, it was that their zoning laws were worthy of praise.

Further ahead, he could see the suggestion of skulls, rising above the roofs and towers. They were utterly massive, stacking one atop the other. Each of them gazed to the sky.

Those were not the necromancer’s thralls.

Was that a building?

“Isaac?” Zaria asked.

He flinched.

“If you want to speak your piece, now’s the time.”

He gripped the battlement.

“It weren’t my intention to hurt you,” she said. “Not permanent-like, anyway. If I did so . . . I’m sorry.”

He turned, ready to say something rash. He stopped. For the first time, he noticed she was injured. He hadn’t seen it very well from the side, but a long gash had been torn through the thigh of her trousers, and the blood was drenching the spotted fur of her thigh. Various lacerations adorned her right arm, which was unarmored compared to the left. When she shifted position, the way she moved suggested painful bruises.

He had known she was hurt. She had told him as much. She had shown him the tortures she’d sustained as a prisoner. Even still, the thought hadn’t crossed his mind. . . .

“Ahem,” Zaria said.

Isaac blinked.

“Typically,” she said, “young sir, when you want a second round, you use your words.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. His chest was fluttery with nerves, and he could not figure out why. “You’re still bleeding. Why didn’t you bandage yourself?”

“Used ‘em on you, love.”

He ran a hand down the white fabric wrapped around his chest. She’d had to use most of the roll just to apply the barest layer.

“Thanks,” he said, quietly.

“Nothing to it. You had the greater need. Just . . . triaging. That’s the word, right?”

“Yes. That’s—” He looked at her wounds again, both the new ones and the spots where he knew the old ones lay. He made a decision. “I can make you a poultice. Soldier’s Rest. It’ll ease the pain, accelerate the healing.”

She blinked. “You can do that?”

He went for his pack, already measuring the herbs in his mind. “Like I said, I can do many things. Some would say useful things.”

“No, Isaac,” Zaria said. “What I mean is—I told you of the torture and horror I went through before we met.”

“You did, yes.”

“You could see evidence of this plight splayed across my body.”

“Of course.”

“And you knew enough pharmacy to see that these wounds were causing me great sufferin’.”

“Definitely.”

“And you did nothing for this.”

“No,” he said.

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because I thought you deserved it.”

She blinked up at him with a mixture of surprise and anger.

He opened his palms. “I’m sorry, but it didn’t seem smart to aid my enemies.”

“Didn’t seem smart to admit that, neither.”

“Look, do you want to die of infection or not?”

She waved a hand, lying back fully on the floor. “Aye, aye. Better late than never.”

He pulled out the alchemical supplies from his pack, carefully laying out a mortar, pestle, and various phials of herbs. The Soldier’s Rest would be difficult to craft with his travel kit, as the recipe called for a very precise measurement of ingredients. In fact, with his dwindling supplies, crafting enough of the poultice to heal Zaria would likely exhaust many of his vital reagents.

He would need potions in the battle ahead.

Did he want to take the chance?

He glanced back at her. She was lying on the floor with her eyes closed, taking shallow breaths. It seemed like she could do little else.

Isaac crafted the poultice gingerly, storing the excess reagents and tossing used vials over the watchtower edge. By the time all the components were applied, the solution had thickened to a dark green emulsion, still boiling upon itself. As he waited for the liquid to evaporate, he gazed out over the necropolis, thinking of crafting elixirs in his uncle’s laboratory. Without warning, he found himself aching for the sound of clinking beakers, the pour of distilled liquid, the heat of the flames. He had always thought he hated working in the lab. Always, it had been a chore, a series of repetitive tasks to brew non-essential potions, which his uncle sold for profit.

He missed it terribly, all of a sudden. He missed the certainty of each reaction.

He felt very far from home.

The poultice was ready. A coagulation of Soldier’s Rest sat in the bottom of his mortar, still steaming hot. After repacking his phials, he crawled over to Zaria and tried to determine the worst of her injuries.

It was difficult. There was a lot of fur, and a lot of blood.

“Which one hurts the most?” he asked.

In response, she rolled onto her front. Across the canvas of her back, a long, diagonal slash went from her shoulder blade to the opposite hip, cleaving straight through the vest and the backing of her leather plackart. Chips of bone poked from the skin.

“Gods,” Isaac said, startled.

“It’s a bit of an ache,” Zaria mumbled.

“Yes, clearly.”

After picking out the splintered bone, he took a pinch of poultice and applied it to the laceration, packing the wad as tightly as possible. The reaction was immediate. Flesh steamed and spasmed. Zaria gasped in surprise.

“Fuckin’ cunt!”

“Let it work,” Isaac said.

The reaction slowed. A pale green seeped into the surrounding tissue. When the restorative had fully entered her blood, Zaria released a long, cooing sigh.

“Oh, gods. Oh, there’s this—this rushing coolness.”

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” Isaac asked.

“It’s fuckin’ divine, Isaac.” She raised her head, sighing, as he applied another wad. “Ohhhhhhhhhh, fuck. Right there. Keep doin’ that.”

He kept applying the mixture along the length of her wound. Each pinch of the poultice left a similar spasm and suction. By the time he’d packed most of the laceration, Zaria’s exhalations were fluttery and weak.

“You know,” Isaac said, making sure the Rest was evenly spread, “you could’ve said something. You never gave any indication these were bothering you so much.”

“Would you have aided me if I’d bent your ear about it?”

He thought about it. He didn’t answer.

“Exactly,” she said. “Not that I blame you. Just how it is. You show weakness to someone, and they take advantage.” She gave another cooing breath as he moved on to a puncture at her hip. “You hole up in the sick ward while underway, and someone will pilfer your bunk. You do sloppy deck work ‘cause you got burns and bruises, and the first hand’ll just call you idle. Might be another crewman that’s got your number decides it’s their time to strike.”

He helped her undo the leather plackart, peeling open the stiff material as widely as possible. After scraping through the dry blood on her side, he found signs of pus. He grabbed his essence of peppermint.

“Never a good idea to show pain to anyone,” she said. “Only ever gets you trouble. Always gotta be fierce.”

“That’s a hard way to live.”

“I suppose. Don’t know any better.”

Isaac thought of his uncle and the cane. There had been several times where he had crumpled under the force of a blow, crying and begging for mercy, and the next strike had only come harder in response.

“Hey,” he said. “Do you . . . regret what you did? On the Saber?”

“What’s this?” she responded. “Do my ears deceive me?”

“What?”

“Is my squire leading the conversation for a change?”

He grimaced. “It already feels like a mistake.”

She chuckled into the crook of her arm. “You take yourself too serious, love.” She lay in silence while he continued to dress her wounds, long enough that he began to think she wasn’t going to answer. Eventually, she heaved a sigh, saying: “No. I don’t. Not for a second.”

“It’s caused a lot of grief and pain.”

“Are you suggesting I should’ve turned a blind eye?”

“I was just curious.”

She opened her eyes, staring into brick and mortar. “My one regret is that I didn’t do more. Still a lotta faces in them crates.”

“I’m merely—” He chose his words. “The way you told the story, it seemed you were exceptionally furious about the slaves being children.”

“As anyone should be.”

“I think you know what I’m getting at.”

“Aye. I do.” She sighed again. Isaac became aware that she was just as beaten and exhausted as he was. “When I saw them staring up at me, I thought of my father. Hadn’t done that in years.”

“Your father?”

“Long story.”

“I’m listening.”

She gave him a side glance, her eye slitted and bright. He pretended to inspect a bruise.

There was a silence.

“Right,” Zaria said. “Well, he owned a tinker shop back in the home country, Valrynn. It was a squat little hovel on the edge of the docks that always smelled like fish and guts. He were a handyman sort. Could fix anything you put in his paws. Made a living patching carts, shoring up buildings, fixin’ toys. I was one of nine other siblings, one of the few that was his only real kin—the rest were urchins he’d let in off the streets. He never could say no.” She seemed to drift away for a moment. “Got the picture?”

“Consider it painted.”

“Well, he was always pinching coppers. Refused to charge full price. Said he’d feel too bad taking half a farmer’s coin just for patching a wagon. Of course, he was a father himself—he needed bread on the table. So he dabbled in fencing. Middleman sort. He took stolen goods, he fixed them up, and he sent them off. We kids, we were the soldiers. His pinching army. We scoured the districts for any pocket swinging with coin. Never the merchants, never the craftsmen. That was his one rule. Never steal from those in need.”

She grunted.

“I was always his best. Quickest finger in the crew. I ran the shop while he was out, kept the youngest safe and managed. He’d never say so, always go on about doing hard things for survival, but I could tell, one way or another, he had pride for me.”

She stared at the bricks, her eyes slightly distant.

“Well, you know about the Scorch. Valrynn got the brunt end. When the farms were cursed, prices soared. After the docks were frozen, there weren’t a single crumb of work. Everyone tightened their belts. His real business ran dry, and even the fencing took a hit when the smugglers got hung. I’d hear him crying, sometimes, going mad from the stress. We starved. Two of the youngest died of illness. He cried even more.”

She paused for several moments.

“One day, I come home, same as always, and he’s staring out the window, watching the frozen sea. He looks at me like I’m the most horrible thing that’s ever graced his shop. I try to walk passed, thinking he’s just embarrassed to be crying again, but he stops me, and he looks me in the eye, and he gives me the tightest hug of my life, and tells me he loves me. I nod along, say something stupid about keeping strong, and he looks at me with pain in his face, and goes back to staring out the window. I leave him be.

“That night, I’m headin’ home along my same route, avoiding the patrols, and four men came out the shadows. Daggers and claws. They’d waited for me. I stand no chance. I’m dragged off through the alleys, and I’m fightin’ back, but it’s useless. I’m weak and hungry. They’re not. It’s over ‘fore it started.

“I’m led to a warehouse. I’m tossed into a room full of other kids. We’re all filthy and scared. There’s crates off in the corner, and I don’t need to know what the label says to figure things out. We’re being bought and sold. After a scuffle, we’re all loaded into the crates and sealed in tight. I thrash until I got splinters in every knuckle. Nothing works. I settle for my fate.”

She stared at the brick again.

“Just as I hear the order to load, there’s a commotion. Eventually, I hear the voice of my father screaming himself hoarse. I yell back, and he comes and breaks the lid off and he makes just an awful sound when he sees me. Scoops me in his arms and says he’s sorry, over and over, until it’s not even a word, just moans and tears.

“An arrow hits his back. I’m ripped from his arms. The same thugs descend on him, and he hardly has a chance to swing his sword before he’s cut to pieces. As he’s dying on the floor, the meanest one spits on him, tells him all sales are final, and shoves me back in the crate. Last thing I hear is him choking my name.”

Isaac noticed that he’d stopped treating her wounds.

“I don’t get sent to a plantation,” Zaria said. “I’m unboxed on a pirate ship and told to get to work. I learn how to sail at the edge of a dagger. Life goes on. I apply myself to the task until they don’t keep a watch on me. Before I know it, I’m just like all the rest. Just another pirate.”

She glanced over her shoulder. He applied more poultice.

“For years,” she said, “I hated him. Cursed his name. After a while, I just decided to never think of him again. Never gave consideration. But the years kept coming, and I kept thinkin’, and I started to understand. I started thinkin’ how desperate he must’ve been. It was a simple choice—sacrifice one, or starve the rest. It might’ve meant survival. That was our creed. Survival. He always told me the risks.”

She shook her head.

“In the end, he . . . tried to make it right. And that weren’t enough, but it was honest, and I try to love him for it. So, when I saw the same thing, I followed his example. I don’t regret that.”

Isaac considered his response. “Would you say he was a good man?”

“Aye. I would now.”

“Do you know what happened to your siblings, after he was gone?”

“I can guess.”

He nodded, even though she wasn’t looking. “I, uh . . . I’m done on this side. Could you roll over?”

She flipped onto her back. The cuts and shanks on her abdomen were not quite as bad, though there were more signs of infection. He bent over to the side, realized he was running low on Soldier’s Rest, and decided to grind an extra liniment with his pestle.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to talk your ear off.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Thank you.”

“Thank me?”

“I mean, thank you for telling me.”

“Oh, aye. Sure.”

There was a silence. He rolled the liniment across his palm and began to apply it across a pair of bruises, just at the side of her breast. He kept his eyes firmly glued to the task.

“You know,” Zaria said, stretching herself like a cat, “I gotta say, Isaac, your massage is lovely. You got me babblin’ like a drunk to a whore.”

“Am I the whore, then?”

She winked.

Isaac plucked a bone chip from deep in her armpit. “I could still kill you, you know.”

She broke into laughter. It quickly rose to a whooping cackle, something so rough and unrestrained that it echoed down the streets and avenues below.

“I’m going to take that,” Isaac said, “as confidence in my good nature.”

“Sure, love. Whatever you wish.”

“I could’ve mixed poison into this poultice, for all you know.”

“Oh, such a marvelous killer, my squire.”

Isaac gave a small roll of his eyes, bending down to hunt for more chips of bone. “Well, I’m . . . sorry that happened to you.”

“Yeah, well, so’s everyone I tell the story to. Doesn’t change nothing.”

“No, but, regardless, I’m sorry.”

For a moment, the furred edge of her tail brushed against his leg, as if giving thanks. It brought the same fluttery feeling back to his chest. Isaac found himself simultaneously hating and hungering for the sensation. He rushed his way through the rest of the treatment, hoping that she didn’t notice the shaking in his hand.

They spent the next few minutes in silence, which was broken only by her sighs of relief.

“Right,” he said, sitting up. He focused on repacking his alchemy kit. “I’ve done the best I can, given the circumstance. Don’t fall on a sword and you’ll probably avoid death.”

He made to stand. She grabbed his arm.

The fluttering exploded.

“Isaac,” she said, sitting up herself. “I’m sorry for fucking you.”

He blinked several times, completely startled.

“I am,” Zaria said, insisting. “I can’t help but joke around it, but I am. I am sorry. I wanna make that clear.”

“It’s—it’s fine.”

“Don’t you be polite on me. It ain’t fine. I took advantage, and I’m sorry.” She cleared her throat. “Your first time—you know, with a woman—it should’ve been something nice, and I’m sorry for taking that from you.”

A warm blush spread across his face. “You gave me a choice. I didn’t say no.”

“Well, you got the grace of a saint, then. I was mean about it. I wanted you to squirm. Got that in spades, was really cute, but still—”

“Zaria,” he said, more firmly. “It wasn’t bad. In fact, it was—” He paused, searched his feelings, and the words came out before he could stop them. “It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

She blinked, startled.

“I’m not trying to be flattering,” he added. “Just painfully honest.”

She continued to stare. It occurred to him, suddenly, that she was looking at him as if he’d said something strange, something beyond the pale of normal interaction, and he had a panicked thought that he was being wrong again.

He knew what happened when he was wrong.

“I mean, I’ve always known that I was horribly ignorant,” Isaac said, feeling a very sudden rush in his chest, as if something had finally uncorked and was now flooding through his mouth, unable to be stopped. “I’ve never had much common experience. Books have always been my only reference for much of anything that people take as fundamental. I thought I could be satisfied with my training, my duty, and—and—and I convinced myself that my father’s life was worth the discipline and pain and restraint and seclusion. It was all I could do because my life has never been my choice to live. But I never—it never occurred—”

He fumbled his words, feeling her gaze on him.

“I never truly understood the profundity of my ignorance until . . . what happened in the chapel.” He got mad at himself. “Sex. It was sex. The sex changed my perspective. It was like—like gaining a new sense of reality. It was like becoming truly aware of myself. Like every moment before then was just shadow, and having sex was my first time seeing color.”

His words came faster.

“I feel aware now. Truly aware. I want to experience more. More of everything. More life. I want to travel the world, I want to laugh, I want to cry, I want to speak to so many people, I want to accomplish all the dreams I’ve always had, I want to not feel punished for having dreams at all, I want to do what I want, I—I—I—” He couldn’t get the words out strong enough. “I want everything. You know? I want.”

“Isaac,” Zaria said, her grip soft on his arm.

He flinched, realizing how long he’d been talking, the volume of his voice, how poorly he must appear. Suddenly, all his words seemed painfully wrong. “Sorry, sorry, forget I—”

“Isaac,” she said. “Are you sayin’ I fucked you so hard it made you rethink your entire life?”

“Yes, actually.”

She blinked a few times, her expression slowly changing.

“Sorry,” he said, feeling horribly seen and vulnerable. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—forget I said anything, I don’t—”

She tugged him a little closer. “No one’s ever been nice to you before, have they?”

He tried to answer. The words did not come.

“Not properly, I mean. No love or care.” She searched his face. “Nothing but a cane.”

A knot was rising in his throat. He knew the pain was coming. That’s all that ever happened. Any time he spoke of himself, any time he ever hoped. . . .

“You ever had someone tell you you’re good enough?”

He looked down. His face was burning.

She leaned in close. “Have you had a hard life, Isaac?”

The tears came before he could stop them. He tried to pull away, tried to run and hide, but she came forward, and her arms wrapped around him, and she pressed him to herself, her fur warm and soft, her chin resting on his head, and she held him gently and completely.

It was the first time anyone had hugged him before.

“Sorry,” he said, feeling small and afraid. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—please don’t—I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be sorry,” she said.

And he wept on her shoulder, hugging her back with all his strength, crying louder than he had ever dared before, crying with such a sense of freedom that it only caused him to cry all the harder, her presence of safety and warmth making him despair at all that he had never known, all that had been denied him, and his tears came in such a flood that it felt like he had saved them his entire life.

Far below the earth, in a lost city of the dead, he hugged her, and she hugged him back, and for a time he did not worry of punishment.

He was not sure when he stopped crying. Time did not seem to matter. The pale light did not shift. Nothing moved in the city. When he became aware of himself, he rested his head against the crook of her neck, letting the tears dry on his face.

“I’m so sorry, love,” she whispered in his ear. “I was wrapped in my own concern. I lost my temper. I never meant to hurt you.”

He pulled back enough to meet her gaze. “It’s fine. Really. Don’t—”

“Isaac, for fuck’s sake, stop apologizing. Stick up for yourself.” She gave him a few slaps on the cheek, her paw pads like worn leather. “Call me names. Spit in my face. You’ve been doin’ that well enough.”

He wiped his face, taking a deep breath through a raw throat. “I meant what I said. What happened in the chapel—it was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It made me aware of all that I never knew, and all that I want. You know, I—I liked it. I liked it a lot. I’m glad it happened.”

She gazed into his eye, unsure of what to say.

“Of course,” he said, “you should’ve fucking untied me.”

She began to laugh.

“Truly,” he continued, “now that we’re on the subject, have I heard any appreciation, for anything? ‘Oh, Isaac, thanks for rescuing me. Thanks for giving me all the treasure. Thanks for protecting me from a necromancer’s thralls.’ No, nothing. You—you—” He looked at her. “You fucking pirate.”

She released her grip on him. “Okay, love. Point taken.”

“No,” he said, “you stupid bandit, I’ve risked my life several times over for you, and I will hear some gods-damned thankfulness.”

She gave a small bow. “My brave squire. Couldn’t ask for better.”

He retreated to his knees. “No. You know what? I care nothing for the opinions of common thugs. I am beyond such concerns.”

“Oh, aye. Clearly. Made for better things.”

“Yes. Better things! Warlock at Arms! Chancellor of the Spheres! Oh, the nations of the Diet will have no choice but to name me Archon, mark me clearly!”

“Head so up your arse,” Zaria said, “you’ll taste your breakfast.”

He got back to his feet, feigning a prideful look. “Keep to your corner tonight, pirate. I expect no funny business.”

She returned a salute. “Oh, aye there, captain. You know me. Prim and proper, as always.”

He met her gaze, and, for just a moment, he thought he would find something hidden under the surface. He imagined some mockery held behind the eye. He looked for a grimace on the edge of her snout. He waited for the slightest hint of rejection, something that would betray her true inner feeling, the reality that he was a wretched creature that could only be tolerated, never enjoyed.

But he saw nothing. Zaria was looking at him with her usual cocky expression. She flicked her head over to his blanket across the watchtower. He looked away, felt himself smile, and moved back to his resting spot.

He lay down on the blanket and looked up at the glowing rib cage. He felt the heavy silence of the dead city around him. He imagined the ancient sorceress further down the cavity of the giant corpse, raising more thralls and abominations in response to their intrusion. He thought of his father trapped somewhere in her lair. He wondered if he would still resemble all the portraits he had seen of him.

“We’re not normal people, are we?” Isaac asked, suddenly. “You said so, earlier.”

Zaria snorted. “Is that what you’ve always wanted?”

“Yes,” he said. “Always.”

She leaned onto her side, cheek in a palm. “Isaac, be honest—would you have been happy shoveling shit and tilling fields? Would you want to spend all your life on the same few acres of farm, hoping not to get blight on your crops?”

He thought about it. “Probably not, no.”

“You think other people like being normal? You don’t think they imagine knights and royalty and magic, too?”

“What do knights and royalty imagine, then?”

She shrugged. “Probably the deeds of some better knight. They probably think how much more gold that king over yonder has in his palace. If they’re real out of touch, they probably think that growing crops is some noble callin’, much the same as you. People just want what they don’t have.”

He scratched at his bandages. “Is it ever possible to stop wanting?”

“Why would you want to?”

“Because wanting just leads to suffering.”

“If you don’t want,” Zaria said, “then you’re not living, far as I’m concerned. Life’s got too much to offer for you to spend it feeling sorry about what’s gone or what never was.”

“It’s not that easy to let things go.”

“Oh, course not, love, but life wouldn’t be worth living if that were so. Pleasure would mean nothing if you’d never known pain.” There was a pause. “Truth is, I like being alive. Suffering and all. Won’t die with no regrets, but I’m starting to think no one ever does.”

They lay in silence for a while.

“Isaac,” she said. “Thanks for mixing your herbs. I feel better now than I have in days. Weeks, really.”

He had used many of his most important reagents. It was likely that he would be unable to craft any other potions, should the need arise.

“Sure,” he said. “Happy to help.”

They lay in silence again. Isaac tried to calculate the dimensions of each of the giant ribs. A single one could’ve walled a village. He tried to imagine what was causing the cartilage to glow as it was. He wanted to climb up to the top of the body cavity and walk along the ribs and gaze down at the necropolis and see it as no one had seen it before.

“Hey,” he said. “What’re you going to do with your half of the treasure?”

“Ain’t you worried I’ll stab you for it?”

“I just assumed the stabbing would be for some other reason.”

“Wise of you.” There was a pause. “I’m gonna learn to read.”

He glanced over at her. “Really?”

“First thing on the docket, once I’m outta the waste.”

“Any reason why?”

She blew a raspberry. “Oh, none at all. Proud of my ignorance, really. I love having to ask direction while standing next to a sign. Warms my heart when I’m cheated for not reading a contract.” Her face was held in profile, staring up at the cartilage light. “My father always promised that’s what he’d do for me, the second he was able. Every time I handed him a bag of coin, he’d go off about me attending some academy in the upper districts so I wouldn’t have to pinch off the streets. Make something better of myself. Always wondered what might’ve happened, if things had been different. Who I could’ve been.”

“Are you doing it for him?”

“In some way, sure. Not all of it. It’s like—” She waved a hand in the air. “It’s like you said, actually. I don’t know what I don’t know. My ignorance is such that I don’t even have a true notion of it. Right? That’s what you said?”

“More or less.”

“How can I be better if I don’t know better? How can I be something other than a pirate if I don’t have no other talents? My lack of letters has restricted me my whole life. Even now, it’s a struggle to fix my words to my feelings ‘cause I don’t have the words themselves.” She paused. “You tell me, Isaac. Is there a word for something . . . not becoming? Something that never got the chance to exist?”

“Unrealized,” Isaac said.

“Could you . . . write that down for me?”

He ripped off part of his bandages, grabbed some charcoal from his pack, wrote the word as legibly as he could, and handed it to her. She looked down at the torn bandage, blinking.

“That’s it, then,” she said. “I want to learn my letters because I don’t want to be ‘unrealized’. I want to have potential. I want to steer the course of my life clear as I can. I want the tools to figure out what I want in the first place. You get my meaning?”

“Yes,” he said. “I know exactly what you mean. I feel the same way.”

“Never wanted to be a pirate, myself. Did you want to be a mage?”

“I wasn’t given the choice.”

“And you never understood what you were missing, did you?”

“Not really, no.”

“Do you know better now?”

“Maybe. I’m starting to think I won’t ever know enough.”

“Will that stop you from trying to change?”

“No,” Isaac said. “It won’t.”

“I think we’re kindred souls, then.”

He didn’t answer. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her stare at the bandage again, trying to mouth out the syllables to the word, connecting sound to letters. After a minute, she folded the bandage and tucked it into a pocket at her waist.

“Gonna turn in now. You certain that spell will keep the monsters out?”

“We’ll be fine. We don’t need to post watch.”

She paused. “You sure?”

“I promise.”

There was another pause.

“As you say, then. I’ll trust your judgement.” Zaria wrapped the white blanket around her chest, closing her eyes. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he replied.

He lay there on the stone, staring up at the giant rib cage. After a while, Zaria began to snore. He listened to it for a time. It no longer annoyed him. In fact, it was a constant reminder that she was there, beside him. Some time later, he closed his eyes, and he fell asleep at once. His dreams were vivid and wild.

Chapter Ten

Fool’s Gold

The city of the dead had well and truly died.

Every street and building was bathed in an eternal twilight. Not even the shadows moved. In the semi-darkness, each of the houses leered from their ordered perch like skeletons peeking from the holes of an ossuary, their architecture always giving worship to the curve and socket of bone. He saw nostril-shaped doors, eye socket windows. As he strolled through a commercial boulevard, there was a market of shoulder blades, femur signposts, spinal column towers, water mills that once scooped water with the wings of a pelvis. When Isaac studied the paving beneath his feet, he realized he had been walking on a road made of knuckles.

It was all imitation. All of it was stone, given shape through a mason’s hand. Above their heads, the skull of the colossus had been a brittle, overgrown shell, constantly aged by the sun and sand. These buildings were too perfect to be real.

Real bone, that is.

It was not real.

Even still, the impression was grotesque. The architecture gave Isaac such a feeling of uneasiness that he kept glancing over his shoulder, worried he’d seen one of the shadows move, one of the collarbones trestling a walkway suddenly detaching and slithering along the knuckled road, like a stalking serpent.

It was all imagination, he thought.

Nothing moved.

The dirt did not tremble. The air was just as lifeless as the masonry around it. They had been making their way through the city for at least an hour, and there had been no sign that anything had walked these streets for centuries. Everywhere Isaac looked, he received the impression of piles of bone, all covered in dust or specks of dirt, bathed in the pale yellow light of the glowing cartilage above. He thought of giants who had perished within sight of a glimmering golden horde.

To ease his nerves, Isaac made an effort to study the murals and reliefs stamped onto the walls of various buildings, all of which depicted mythologies, gods, gesturing figures, supplicating worship, the clouds parting in the sky, the creation and destruction of flying vehicles. He was beginning to discern the story of a creation myth, one that lay at the heart of necromancer society. He made an effort to study each of the murals as they continued on, trying to use his ciphers to decode the language.

It was fascinating.

It was exciting.

He might be the first ever person—

“Sure wish I’d known my cunt had magic properties,” Zaria said, her voice echoing down the streets. “Could’ve been a bloody saint by now, if I’d had a notion of its power.”

Isaac had to cross out some of his notes.

“Imagine, squire. I got you rethinkin’ your life. I left you raptured with a lick and a pound. Clearly, I have the power of gods betwixt my legs. What other souls could I save, with a clamp of my healing clunge?”

He attempted, pointedly, to study the symbol of the stripes and stars, noting the frequency with which it now appeared in the reliefs, especially when the necromancers depicted their gods. It was obviously a religious symbol. It signified some degree of authority.

But what, exactly?

“Imagine me,” Zaria said, “smashing my way to some king’s bedchambers, aye? Some tyrant or other that’s actin’ like a spoiled brat, running his fiefdom like a personal toy. He gets his cockle croaked, like I done to you, and, real sudden-like, there’s no more persecution. Peace everlasting. I could save the world just by parting my legs.”

“I regret sharing my feelings with you,” Isaac said.

“Oh, you’re right, love. I gotta think smaller. Perhaps I could travel the Nine, aiding the sickened folk by charging for licks. Maybe, with some industry, I could bottle my juices as life-saving elixirs.”

He stopped walking, pausing at a particularly large relief. There seemed to be a deity figure, its head shadowed within a sphere of glass, resurrecting different species from oddly shaped coffins. Isaac gathered his tablet and charcoal.

“Come one, come all!” Zaria proclaimed, her voice carrying through the empty street. “Meet the nethers that makes you better! They’ll cure your woes! Absolve your sins! Oh, good people, I promise—if you supp of my water, you shall never thirst again!”

Isaac brushed away some etchings with his sleeve, hefting his sketch pad to a one-handed position at his waist. The vellum was scratchy. He should have scraped it better before departing.

Oh, well.

At least his uncle hadn’t noticed.

As he drew a quick sketch, he felt Zaria standing behind him, looming like a statue. He pointedly ignored her presence. Eventually, the shadow behind him moved, and he felt her rough, street urchin voice whispering in his ear.

“You can tell me to stop,” she said.

He began to draw. “You’ve never needed my permission to blather.”

“I just want to respect our new boundaries.”

“Our new—” Isaac once again lost his place, having to scrub an errant stroke of charcoal with the sleeve of his robe. “Respect? Our new boundaries?”

“Just so. I’m committed to change.”

“Are you? Are you respecting my boundaries? Are you sure that’s what you’re doing?”

“Well,” she said, “I’m givin’ you the option, at least. Wouldn’t want my squire to blush too fiercely. As his knight, I have to care for him.”

Isaac shook his head.

“So?” she asked. “You’re not offended?”

“On the contrary,” he said, “I find your utter barbarity amusing, in much the same way that a king will laugh at a jester.”

She snorted, loudly. It made him flinch again. A streak of charcoal went skittering across the parchment. As he furiously attempted to save the sketch, he felt her muzzle drawing so close to his ear that her whiskers tickled the lobe.

“In that case,” she whispered, “what did you like about me fucking you?”

He did not answer.

“Huh?” Zaria said, insisting. “Come on, now. Which part blew your mind out through your cock? Was it my teeth on your throat? Was it me pounding you down to a moanin’ puddle of meat?” She blew some hot breath in his ear. “Do you like knowing everyone’s gonna smell my scent on you, like you’re my favored bouncing rod?”

“You realize,” Isaac said, “that we’re in a long-lost city of necromancers?”

She straightened. “Oh, sure. Bone houses and such.”

“No one’s been down here for centuries.”

“Looks that way.”

“There’s an untold amount of history here. Rich architecture. Magical technology lost to the ages.”

“Surely so.”

“And you just want to talk about your genitals.”

Her laugh echoed through the plaza. “‘Genitals?’ That the book term for a twat?”

Isaac glanced up from his sketchbook, aghast. “Have you really never heard the word ‘genitals’? I mean, gods. The propriety.”

“Squire, listen,” Zaria said. “I’m attempting to break you from your shell. Free your mind from study. Stop you being so squeamish whenever someone mentions their leaky bits. Talk of my nethers is for your own good, really.”

“Oh. Of course. You’re trying to help me. Why did I think otherwise?”

“Isaac, I command you to start cussin’ like a proper lad. None of this ‘genitals’ nonsense, you hear? It’s a cunt. Say it.”

“Absolutely not.”

She leaned down to his ear. “Cunt. Twat. Minge. Clunge. Snatch. Cock trap. Tinder box. Axe wound. Winking—”   

“Listen to me,” he said. “I’m taking notes that will spur millions of gold in expedition funds. Hundreds of people will be combing this city because of my scribblings. They’ll write treatises about this discovery for centuries to come. So, if you’d be so kind, would you please—please—just let me concentrate, for a moment.”

“Fine, fine.”

Isaac began to redraw the relief on his tablet. Zaria glanced around the desolate intersection, taking note of the knuckled plaza, the skull-shaped houses, the courtyard fences that jutted and curved like ribs. The cartilage light was coloring her fur the same gold as the rest of the stones, and the lights themselves hung in the sky like a dozen dimming suns.

“Probably shouldn’t stand in the open like this,” she said, after a minute. “Best stick to the alleys.”

“It really doesn’t matter.”

“Isaac, I won’t question your book learning so long as you don’t question me on thievin’ craft. Heed my advice.”

He continued to stencil the figure of a glass-domed man. “We’re in the sorceress’s domain now, which is the same domain that sucked the wind from the desert, as well as the life from all these bones. She can sense our breath like a torch in the dark. She’ll always know where we are, no matter what. She might even hear our conversation.”

“Oh,” Zaria said. “Fuck me, then.”

It was hard to draw. The cartilage light was dim, and it was tinged just the right color for his stencil markings to fade into the parchment. He kept trying. His uncle had insisted on acquiring as many samples as possible, both for the sake of history and his own posterity. Isaac couldn’t disagree.

“So,” Zaria said, after another short minute, “what’s all these carvings supposed to mean, anyway?”

“I’m trying to figure that out,” Isaac said.

“Well, let’s talk it through, maybe. Share ideas.”

“I’d rather you just be quiet.”

The hyena blew a raspberry, kicking her foot at a broken knuckle in the road.

“Fine,” Isaac said, irritated. He took a moment to calm himself, because he knew she only wanted to talk. “I’m reasonably certain this is a creation myth. How the society was founded, its origins and heritage, that sort of thing. This one is about livestock.”

“Livestock?”

“Sure. You’re aware of the Human Paradox?”

He did not see her reaction, but he felt the confusion behind him. “Human pair of ox? Like, someone shaggin’ their plow steed?”

Isaac restrained a sigh. “No.”

“A little bit?”

“No!” He gestured in the air, trying to fan out the words. “It’s the term that refers to the question of zoanthrope origin. Namely, it’s the observation that all beastpeoples have a wide variety of superficial animal characteristics, with an accompanying difference in strength, stature, stamina, and so on, but they all, to a species, share the same underlying body plan as a human. All people like you are essentially human, in the ways that really matter. The question is: why?”

“Well, why not?” Zaria asked. “Always seemed to me that us folk work the fields while you lot spin your magic. It’s the natural inclination. People work according to their ability.”

“That’s the socioeconomic picture,” Isaac corrected. “What I’m discussing is ecological. As in, why do these differences exist at all? Why is everyone not merely human? How did people like you or I come to be in the first place? Naturalists are beginning to understand how species propagate across the environment, and the discoveries they’ve made have raised some very fundamental questions.” He glanced at her. “For example, who came first? Humans or zoanthropes?”

Zaria shrugged.

“The Human Paradox,” Isaac said, “would suggest that humans came first, and all zoanthropes evolved afterward, as this fits our observation of shared anatomy. Clearly, that’s the common mold. The fact that the average zoanthrope is physically superior to humans also suggests an improvement in the base structure. But where did humans come from? We know now that we must have been born of the natural world, rather than created by the gods, but we haven’t found a single precursor species that would point to the origin. Furthermore, how did zoanthropes multiply into such a diverse collection of species? Why did it matter that one person be a hyena and one person be a cat, or a pig, or any other animal? What pressure was causing this?”

Zaria scratched the fur behind her ear.

“I’m losing you,” Isaac said. “Sorry. The point I was trying to make,” he gestured at the relief, “is that the necromancers tried to answer this question, too. You see the different species rising from the coffins?”

“Aye.”

“I’m beginning to suspect that the necromancers created the zoanthrope races.” He gestured at the rest of the artwork, pointing out the helmeted gods and the parting sky above. “Clearly, this is a religious allegory, but the necromancers did possess some extraordinary technology. There has been growing evidence that they molded flesh as easily as bone.”

Zaria made a noise in her throat. “That three-headed dog did paint a picture.”

“Oh, it did.”

“I imagine them bonesuckers had a nasty purpose in mind, same way a farmer might breed a sow for meat. They’d make us strong just to work us harder.”

“That seems the idea. I imagine they made you in the likeness of animals to enforce the idea of slavery. In other words, of being lesser than them.”

She blew a raspberry, looking away. “I ain’t a slave.”

“No one should be.”

She grunted.

“I should stress,” Isaac said, “that I’m not an archaeologist, or a historian, or even a linguist. This is just my interpretation.” He brushed the excess charcoal from the vellum, carefully sealing the tablet inside his pack. As he stood up, he noted that the god in the mural had the stripes and stars symbol patched on his shoulder, like a battle standard. “Let’s keep moving.”

They continued on through the street. Above, the giant rib cage continued to spread out above a black ceiling of dirt. Isaac had been using the colossal bones to track their progress through the necropolis. Building a city in the likeness of human bones was certainly an inspired architectural direction, but it did make everything look the same. It felt like he was passing the same pelvis-shaped apothecary over and over.

“Squire,” Zaria said, poleaxe held loose in hand. “Question for you.”

“A question on ecology?”

“Personal one.”

Isaac kept his focus on a perpendicular street, thinking he spied a statue in a distant plaza. The form was human, but stretched. The posture was agonized. “If you must.”

“You thought more about what you’ll do with your half of the treasure?”

“I have, actually.”

“Oh? Truly?”

“A little.”

“Well, come now. Don’t leave me in suspense.”

“I want to travel the world,” Isaac said, blurting it out. It had taken conscious effort to talk about his own interests, and it felt even more strange to continue speaking after answering the question. “I’ll use the treasure to pay for passage on a ship, and the chartering of caravans, and the help of local guides, and food, and rooms, and wine, and whatever else. I’ll just . . . keep going until the coin runs out. Eventually, I’ll settle somewhere exotic, ply my trade as a journeyman, and move on again.”

Zaria gave an amused, wordless hum. Once again, she was slowing her long gait to walk beside him. “Somewhere specific catch your interest?”

He almost spoke. Instead, he glanced away.

“Oh, I know that look,” she said. “You’re sharing this.”

“I, uh—” He scratched his neck. “I don’t have anywhere specific in mind. There are plenty of places to scratch off a list, but the idea—well, my idea was that I would just stuff coin and supplies in my pack, choose a random direction, and start walking towards the horizon. I would go where the wind took me, more or less.” He shrugged, still looking away. “I don’t know. It’s just a fantasy of mine. I’ve probably read too many adventure novels.”

“It is rather like begging to be robbed,” she said. “Nonetheless, it’s got a charming whimsy to it. Almost romantic, even.”

“Well, I am a very romantic person.”

She snorted. “Are you now?”

“I’ve never had the chance to be one before. Not openly, at least. I’m probably not very good at it yet.” He managed to glance at her. “And maybe you should’ve asked.”

“Maybe I will.”

Slowly, the streets seemed to shift around them. They were entering the deeper reaches of the city, towards the midsection of the torso, and this seemed to be the district for craftsmen and life-extending casters. He was beginning to see more mortuaries, higher-class homes that could afford to look like mausoleums, smaller catacombs next to hospitals where citizens could go to replenish their stolen energy of souls.

“Squire,” Zaria said. “Another question for you.”

“I suppose,” Isaac said, “that we can’t just contemplate the fall of civilization.”

“Actually, I got several questions, to tell the truth. Serious ones. I’m starting to suspect it’s critical I ask them.”

He gestured for her to continue, glancing at the faded paint of a mural.

“First off,” she said, “I notice you no longer bristle when I call you squire.”

“I’m just picking my battles.”

“I don’t see much fightin’ back.”

“Maybe I don’t need to prove myself to you.”

She laughed. “Sure, squire. As you say.”

He made another gesture for her to continue, looking over his shoulder at the retreating mural.

“Firstly,” she said, “a day ago, you said some jumble about there being these fancy machines that can locate soul energy, right?”

“Yes,” he said. “They’re prototypes, currently, but developing rapidly. That’s how we know my father is still alive, at the bottom of this tomb.”

“Right, so, if that’s the case—” She gestured vaguely, searching for the words. “If they can locate souls real precise-like, can they do nothing else? Tell you what state he’s in?”

“It can’t detect the body. Only the soul. We don’t know the condition of his health, though we can still talk to him.”

“Talk—” She glanced at him in surprise. “Talk to him?”

“Sure. The soul is the essence of a person. It’s instant communication, as well. You can talk to a person thousands of miles away, as if they were right at your table. The Diet has largely only been able to function due to these diplomatic channels.”

There was a silence. When Isaac glanced up, Zaria was visibly struggling to overcome her surprise. “Fuck my first question, then. Does that mean you’ve actually spoken to your father?”

“No,” Isaac said. “Of course not.”

Zaria was now utterly baffled. “What’s that mean, course not? He’s your bleeding sire, and you’re risking life and limb to rescue him.”

“It’s not that simple. It’s like—” It was his turn to gesture vaguely. “It’s like telescopes. Something you use to study the heavens.”

“Like a sextant?”

“More like a spyglass. Imagine if you built this machine to study the stars, which was one of the few of its kind in existence. Imagine if it was difficult to actually use this machine, because the stars are so vast, and the machine itself is very complex in operation. Now imagine there’s a long list of people who also want to use this machine, enough that the formal appointments can take years to arrive. That’s how it is with soul capture, more or less.”

“Right,” she said, not at all mollified. “Still, he’s your father. You never asked?”

“I asked plenty of times,” he replied. “The answer was always no.”

“Should’ve asked harder, then.”

“Zaria, if you were a child, and you were struck every time you spoke without permission, how long would you keep asking questions?”

“Fair point.” She looked down at him. “Still, it raises another question. Your uncle’s high ranking in the mage world, isn’t he? Has he spoken to your father?”

Isaac grimaced. “Yes. Twice, actually. When I was first placed in his care, and not too long before I left on this journey.”

“And that seemed fair to you? You being denied words with your sole parent, all your life? The man you’d been conscripted to save?”

“Like I said, speaking up was never good for my health.”

She nodded, glancing down a softly shadowed alley. “Second question, then. Do all mages go through such strict training as you?”

“I was always told this journey was my sole purpose in life,” Isaac said. “My training needed to be extremely strict to meet the task. Magic is difficult to learn under normal circumstances, but I was being trained to face an ancient sorceress who could rival armies. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I am much more powerful than another transmutation student would be at my age.”

“I’ll take that as no—what you went through ain’t normal.”

He looked down at his feet, watching his boots tread across the knuckled road. “You have to understand that I had no reference for much of anything. I never once left my uncle’s tower, with the only exception being my training in the yard. My only understanding of the world came from books. As an example, I used to think horses were blue because a textbook I read had a translation error. When my flame instructor arrived on horseback for a lesson, I asked her if she wouldn’t prefer a turquoise stallion instead.”

She snorted. He glared at her. She cleared her throat, gesturing him on.

“I did eventually,” Isaac said, “realize my experience wasn’t normal. My bedroom was at the top of the tower, and I could see Khador’s elemental college in the distance. Often, there would be students returning from classes, talking and laughing. I’d watch from the window and . . . make up stories, in my head, about their lives. I’d always wonder why I couldn’t go to the college, like them.” He cleared his throat. “I was very lonely.”

“I know, love. It’s alright.”

He said nothing.

Zaria nodded, like certain pieces were fitting together. “Third question. Sorcerers have specialties, aye? Not everyone can throw a fireball, cast bone-melting light, so on, so forth?”

“Yes. You have to specialize if you want to be respected in any one discipline. That’s another reason why I had to train so fiercely—I’m proficient in both elements and anti-necrotics, which is very rare. I’ve told you this before.”

“What’s your uncle’s discipline, then?”

“Necromancy.”

It took her a moment to respond. “Like the ancient bitch we’re questing after? Same type of evil magic?”

“Not exactly,” Isaac said. “Necromancy isn’t all evil. It’s controversial, definitely, but it has many practical applications, and it’s allowed to be practiced in certain guilds as long as there’s strict Diet oversight.”

“Still—”

“My uncle’s specialty is anti-necromancy, to be precise. He’s written treatises on expunging necrotic traps, subduing undead thralls, things of that nature. He’s also received no little renown for hunting and arresting rogue necromancers who’ve broken the mandates of the Diet. His colleagues refer to him as ‘the Bone Hunter’.”

“Bone Hunter, huh? That’s a name like a dread pirate, if I ever heard it.”

“If you met him, you’d say it’s accurate.”

“I think I’d just call him a cunt.”

Isaac gave a soft laugh. Zaria clapped him on the back, shaking him as they walked, and Isaac felt his smile stretching wider as the idea took root in his mind. He could already imagine the face his uncle would make, seeing Zaria stroll into the well-ordered foyer of his sorcerer tower. He saw the red in his uncle’s cheeks as she disrespected his accomplishments, his titles, his parenthood, and Isaac could well picture the bulging vein on his uncle’s forehead as he screamed back in rage. The idea of someone disrespecting him so openly seemed almost sacrilegious.

It was a fantasy, of course, but it was a good one.

“What’s his name?” Zaria asked. “Your uncle?”

“Berith.”

“Berith, huh? Berith the Bone Hunter?” The hyena nodded, letting her hand free of his shoulder. “I’ll remember that.”

Isaac felt his chest get fluttery again.

“So,” Zaria said, regaining a serious voice, “you’re saying he has experience crawling through ruins and fighting horrible monsters? He’s been all over the Nine, fighting evils blacker than night?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Right, well, I got a new question, then. Why the fuck ain’t he here with you? Sounds perfect for the task. Hardly a better choice.”

“He’s tenured now,” Isaac replied. “He teaches at college, assists Diet agents with their expeditions, performs alchemical research. He’s a very busy sorcerer.”

“He’s too busy to rescue his brother?”

“They, um. . . .” Isaac cleared his throat. “They never liked each other. Listen to my uncle, and he’d tell you my father was a glory hound with no respect for procedure. Apparently, my father has ruined several expeditions by contaminating the samples. He’d touch any mysterious object without a second thought. My uncle said he had no respect for anyone’s safety, and that always infuriated him the most. My uncle—Berith—is very particular in his ways.” Isaac glanced at a shadowy library glowing faintly like gold. “I’ve always thought it’s why he hated having to raise me.”

There was no response. When Isaac glanced at her, she was watching him with a careful expression.

“Does that satisfy your curiosity?”

“Not yet,” she said. “That was all in service of my final question.”

He gestured for her to continue while looking at another mural. This one, like the others, seemed to depict a necrotic god giving benediction to his worshippers. Somehow, this one involved summoning swarms of very small flies, which burrowed into the skin of the supplicant. The man was taken with rapture.

Isaac decided to move on.

“Why you?” Zaria asked. “Why was the burden of rescuing your father placed only on your shoulders?”

He sighed, rubbing his face. “It was politics, mostly.”

“You’ll have to explain a bit.”

“The Diet of Nine likes to appear as a monolithic force, but there’s an embarrassing amount of internal strife. All the nine kingdoms have their own concerns, their own petty rivalries that still exist between each other, and they all refuse to secede any real amount of governing power, which has led to factions, blackmail, malicious bureaucracy, even assassinations. There’s a reason I had to use a safehouse while traveling.” He waved a hand. “It’s a slow, petty machine. My uncle was right—my father made many enemies with his lack of patience. Every time a proposal was made to assemble a rescue party, it would be voted down in committee. Many times, the motion would be killed before even getting that far.”

He shrugged.

“You also have to consider that this tomb is at the edge of the map, in the middle of an empty desert, surrounded by pirates and sandwyrms. Risking that many lives just for my father was never seen as . . . politically expedient.”

“That’s all well and good,” Zaria said, “but it ain’t what I asked. I asked why you were made to do all this. Rather sounds like it got forced on you by someone else.”

Isaac didn’t respond. He gazed up at the giant rib cage.

“Forced on you by your uncle, actually.”

“I suppose—”

She grabbed him by the shoulder, not ungently, and forced him to stop walking. “Isaac, I’m gonna say my piece now, and I’d appreciate it dearly if you’d let me speak it out.”

He blinked up at her, silent.

“Here’s how I understand this,” Zaria said. “Your father comes down to this dead city and gets captured. That seems fair enough—evil sorceress and all—but you’re still growing in your mother’s belly when he does. Your mom then dies giving birth to you. Also fair. Happens to many. Once she’s gone, though, you’re tossed off to your uncle, who by no means wants a sniveling reminder of his brother to care for, except he has a very secret soul chat with your father himself, which somehow sways his opinion. You spend your entire life training in magic, treated like a caged bird, thinking it’s your responsibility to rescue your parent when your uncle is perfect for the task. Then, when you’ve come of age, your uncle speaks to your father again just before you leave on this quest. As you’re out the door, your uncle sabotages the mission—”

“He did not sabotage—”

“Yes, he did. He told you to walk through a nest of sandwyrms, and, for good measure, gave you bad directions for water. That’s fact, ain’t it?”

“It’s not that—”

“Isaac,” Zaria said. “That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

He gazed into the mouth of a skull, thinking.

“Now,” the hyena said, “you’ve told me that some other sorcerer arrived here before you did. Using spells to turn people into puppets. Wielding illegal magic, to be specific-like.”

“Yes.”

“Right. Now, you’re a smart lad. These corpses we’ve been seeing in the tomb—how old were they?”

“About a day or so.”

She nodded, like the final piece had slid together. “Final question. Did your uncle send you off on your journey? Hug you tightly, wish you luck?”

“No. He—” Isaac shook his head. “He had some urgent business come up before I left. Something about taming loose thralls that were attacking a village.”

“Be specific, now. When was the last time you saw him?”

He blinked. The air of the dead city seemed to rub against him.

“About a day before you left, wasn’t it?”

“No,” Isaac said. “No, no, he wouldn’t—”

“Isaac—”

“No! Parasite magic was not his specialty! It’s a different sorcerer!”

“Aha,” Zaria said, like she’d caught him in a blunder, “but as I recall you sayin’, magical talent is all passed by blood. Your father knew two types. So do you. It’s all in the family.”

She looked at him, expectantly. He did not answer.

“Does your uncle know two types?” Zaria asked.

“No,” Isaac replied. “He only . . . studied necromancy. He did not divest his training.”

“Could he, though?”

“I suppose.”

“Would he?”

“I don’t know! Look, he left the tower frequently. It was not unusual for him to be called away. He—he wouldn’t—”

“Called away for what?” Zaria asked. “Training? In some different blood magic, like he’s already got? He’s a student of the dark arts, like you said. How hard could it be to learn another?”

“That is an outrageous accusation.”

“Listen, love—”

“No!” His shout echoed down the empty streets. “My uncle would not do such things! He wouldn’t try to kill me! He wouldn’t—there’s no way he could’ve gone ahead of me. He wouldn’t do that. He cared about me. I know he did! It wasn’t constant—” Isaac forced himself to breathe. “He would chat with me, tell jokes, give me books, he tried very hard to play the stern instructor, but I could always tell he cared, he wouldn’t have bothered with me if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have spent so many years giving me mnemonics training, he wouldn’t—”

Her hand squeezed his shoulder. Isaac fell silent, expecting an instructive lesson, a reprimand for raising his voice.

“Listen,” Zaria said, softly.

He looked up at her.

“To be fair,” she said, “this is all above me. I won’t pretend to know the faintest twit about mage politics, nor your mentor himself. If you say he wouldn’t be nefarious, then I’ll have to take your word.” She squeezed again. “But I know my business, love. All my life, I’ve had to watch for those who’d take advantage, those who’d cheat me of coin, giving me a sweet smile so I don’t see them robbing me blind. I know how to spot when people lie. Because of that, I’m now positive that someone’s been lying to you. How or why, I don’t know, but that’s my conclusion, all the same.”

Isaac’s mind raced in his head. Every thought made his heart flutter and twist.

“Whatever deal is being arranged here,” Zaria said, “you’re getting the raw end of it. That’s the only way I can make sense of this.”

He gazed out over the empty street, past murals of mythology and long vacant homes, losing himself in memory.

The cane.

The shouting.

The books and gifts and lessons.

The warm meals shared, the promises of a future.

“Isaac,” she said. “I trust you won’t get offended by this, but you don’t know how the world works. If you want to live your fantasy of wanders and travel, then you need to be mindful of those who’ll wish you harm. There’s bad sorts out there, and they won’t always look that way on first glance. Everyone’s got motives and meanness to them—it’s just a matter of whether they’re showing it to you.” She took her hand off his shoulder. “Consider what I’ve said. That’s all I’m asking.”

“It’s not—” Isaac took a deep breath. “This isn’t something I haven’t thought of before. It’s not as if I could ask any of these things, but . . . I’ve always suspected, in some way—”

An explosion ripped through the street.

The shockwave slapped him so hard, so suddenly, that he felt several punctures reopen on his chest. Dust spurted in grid-like gusts from the knuckled pavement. They both stumbled back, ears ringing and organs quivering, barely hearing the sound as it echoed and slammed further along the city.

“Oh, fuck,” Zaria said. “Not again.”

Another explosion came. He saw a brief sliver of fire and smoke over the roofs of several mausoleums before the next shockwave bowled him over, knocking him off-balance. It felt like half his intestines had switched position. Next to them, a library, buttressed with ulnas and radii, began to rock as several of its support beams snapped at once, the ancient building quickly crumbling into several skeletons of stone.

Isaac leaned on his knees, rubbing a hand across his bearded jaw. His teeth ached. Had he clenched them too hard? Through ringing ears, he heard the shockwave of the explosion bouncing rapidly off the walls of the titan’s body cavity, growing more chaotic with every reverberation. He felt nauseous and dizzy.

Zaria slapped him roughly on the back, seeming barely affected.

“That’s black powder,” she said. “Soren’s down here.”

Once the echoes stopped bouncing through the necropolis, he began to hear the sounds of fighting. There were screams and shouts, a crackling fire, a dry tumble of stone. He heard the dull thump of a grenade. Dirt rained from the ceiling.

“Sounds like a full charge,” Zaria said, clutching her poleaxe. “What in the name of peace and fuck does she think she’s doing?”

“That’s not the worst thing,” Isaac said.

“How’s that?”

“What could she be fighting down here?”

Zaria looked at him, the dust of an ancient city coating her mohawk. The sounds of battle grew louder. Buildings rattled with noise. He nodded.

They ran through the street, toward the sound of war.

Chapter Eleven

The Black Eye

It did not take long to find the signs of conflict.

As Isaac ran through the streets of a dead city, he saw footsteps caked through the dust and dirt, each of them depicting the paw print of a different zoanthrope species. Soon after, he saw signs of tampering in the surrounding architecture—a broken door of a mausoleum, a shattered, eye-like window, market stalls tipped over, apothecaries burst open, a few scattered jewels vomiting from the mouth of a skull-shaped house. Someone had been attempting to pilfer through the ancient buildings.

Isaac was so focused on the vandalism of the pirates that he almost slipped on a sudden streak of ice, feeling his boots lose traction with the knuckled pavement. Zaria managed to catch him by the arm. When he regained his balance, he noticed the ice was shaped like a cone. It was not a natural accumulation. It had burst from a central point. He looked further on, and there was a body of a pirate lying in the street, most of his fur burned into a blackened char. Flames licked across the leather armor.

Elemental magic.

There was another mage here.

In a way, this was good, because it meant the pirates were not fighting the necromancer. They were not yet incurring the wrath of the ancient woman who still claimed this city as her dominion. In another way, this was very bad, because it suggested the puppeteer sorcerer had managed to enslave a bevy of fellow mages, which would allow them to wield the magic of their thralls as if it were their own.

There could be an army of magic wielders ahead of them. How many would control the elements? What of enchanters? Illusionists?

Another explosion rang through the city, shuddering the old bones. There was a dull thump of cannon fire.

Isaac paused, biting his lip.

“No slacking, squire!”

Zaria ran ahead, slapping his back as she went. Isaac was forced to follow. As they turned the corner into an adjacent boulevard, he saw a grisly collection of bodies, all of them pirates, all of them killed through elemental destruction, their faces crusted over with ice or the burning remnants of their fur. Beside them, a few human bodies lay dead in their own blood. The humans were wearing black robes. Their faces were empty. One had been chopped through with a cutlass, from shoulder to sternum, without making a single wince of pain. Another had four quarrels sticking from his chest.

A parasite sigil was carved in each of their heads.

“Fuck!” Zaria cried. “They got Hopkin!”

“Who?”

“My crew!” She stopped, looking at the pirates. A growl escaped her. “Soren, you cunt!”

“Did you like them?” Isaac asked, confused.

“Some of them!”

The hyena tapped the black tip of her nose, mouthing a prayer. When it was done, she went sprinting up the street, no longer slowing her pace. Isaac was soon left behind. He almost shouted for them to remain together, but ended up following in silence.

His mind raced with the sight of the dead mages.

The puppeteer sorcerer, who had arrived nearly a day ahead of them, clearly possessed a very large legion of thralls. This would make them extremely dangerous. Because the thralls were trained in magic, the sorcerer could selectively imbue them with energy stolen from the others, increasing the strength of specific thralls until they were capable of nearly unlimited casting, like an arquebus which required no time to reload.

It appeared that all the mages were elementals. Isaac was only prepared for necrotics.

This would not be easy.

He raced through the streets of bone, his feet slapping over brick and twisted bodies alike. Rivers of blood flowed over a pavement bathed in the soft color of gold. Eventually, the rows of houses and shops ended in a wide open plaza, the ground paved and studded with the metatarsals of a human foot. Ahead, the open space ended with the high-walled courtyard of a palace. Over the wall, the palace itself looked like an overflowing mound of skulls, each of the individual heads the size of a building.

He remembered glimpsing this pyramid from the watchtower. Isaac guessed, purely on instinct, that it had once served as the center of government for the necropolis.

By now, a new regime had taken hold.

A ring of fortifications had been built around the palace walls, which largely consisted of makeshift ramparts, slapped together with whatever odd bits of wood could be scavenged and nailed into place. The rib-shaped bars of the gates had been barricaded with stolen furniture. In the center of the courtyard wall, someone had draped a black pirate standard across the pelvis-shaped parapets. Isaac could barely discern the crumpled symbol of a canine skull over crossbones.

The fighting was taking place just on the other side of the courtyard. He could not see it from here, but he could hear the sounds of crackling ice, see the orange blooming of fire, feel the punch of explosions and screams. After a moment, he noticed Zaria slinking beside the outer wall, her shadow occasionally lengthening beneath the streams of fire.

There was an automaton ahead of her, standing guard outside the courtyard wall. It appeared like a suit of armor. It was three times the height of a man. Its shape was vaguely malevolent.

“Zaria!” Isaac shouted.

She did not hear him.

He cursed to himself, adopting a crouched run as he attempted to clear the distance across the surrounding plaza. When he was halfway through, the roaring thump of a cannon came from the palace, and a portion of the courtyard rampart exploded outward, split apart with a ball of chain-shot, which swung wildly into the city beyond. Moments later, the legless torso of a human splattered on the pavement.

“Gods!” Isaac said.

He gave up the low crouch, now sprinting openly across the plaza. By the time he reached Zaria, she had climbed halfway up the leg of the automaton, finding purchase on the intricate carving of runes across its stonework exterior. The golem stood like a slashing of shadow, its form unmoved by the chaos. He saw a protuberance on its face, like the mouth of a mosquito. He saw a lipless mouth rising vertically along its chest.

“Zaria!” Isaac hissed. “Get down!”

“Need some vantage,” she replied, grabbing the rim of the golem’s hip. “Need a good look on Soren. Can’t just go strollin’ through.”

“That’s a golem of the necromancers! It’s supposed to guard the palace!”

“It’s dead, I think.”

“That doesn’t matter! Get down!”

She pulled herself to the hip, pushed up until her elbows were straight, and reached out to grasp the mouth on the golem’s chest. It yawned at her touch. Suddenly, a vomit of skulls erupted from its belly, spilling over the pavement. All of them shattered like pottery.

“Xotra’s cunt,” Zaria said, wobbling for balance, bracing against the stream of rotten bone.

“What have I been telling you?” Isaac yelled.

She waited until the skulls stopped pouring and grabbed at the golem again, this time catching her paw on the edge of a lower rib, which appeared to be spiking out from the side. Isaac now noticed that a dozen ribs were poking through the creature’s torso, like someone had gone through and individually wrenched the cage, working until the bones represented the legs of a centipede. He did not want to imagine if the necromancers had ever done this to actual, living people.

“Come on,” Zaria said, beckoning with a hand. “Let’s get a look.”

Isaac was dismayed. “You want me to climb that thing?”

“If it wouldn’t tax the young lord.”

He made a face. After a moment, he glared up at the extruding shadow of the golem’s skull, as if warning it to comply. The golem did not stir. Slowly, Isaac grabbed at the runes curving along the stonework, doing his best to climb. He made an awkward, halting job of things. By the time he reached the hip of the golem, Zaria was already at the shoulder, dangling herself along the automaton’s chest like a cat clinging to its owner’s shirt.

“Please help me,” Isaac asked, straining.

Zaria reached down, grabbed him by the arm, and yanked him bodily onto the opposite shoulder of the golem, where he floundered for a grip. The tall automaton creaked with their shifting weights, and Isaac heard the distinctive sound of crunching bone. When he looked, he saw that the protuberance on the golem’s face was actually the mouth of a smooth-bore cannon. Its entire skull had been shaped into a gun.

He remembered the skulls in its belly. He guessed there was a loading mechanism, somewhere within the tortured chest.

Isaac shuddered in disgust.

“Ain’t lookin’ good,” Zaria said, pointing over the golem’s shoulder.

They now had an excellent vantage over the battle. Below, over the walls, the palace courtyard was a scene of carnage. It seemed as if the sorcerer’s thralls had mounted a full assault. Robed human figures were slowly advancing across the open space of the interior plaza, shooting spears of ice and flame. At the palace itself, crouched between the jaws of several massive skulls, the pirates were returning fire with crossbows, occasionally flinging grenades of black powder. None of the human thralls attempted to seek cover—they kept marching forward, heedless of the bolts and explosives.

As it stood, the pirates were losing ground. They were receiving an overwhelming amount of fire, much of which was literally fire, and the amount of elemental discharge was quickly eroding anything they could use as protection. From his vantage point, Isaac could see that many of the pirates were beginning to panic, watching the jaws of the skull catch into flame. A fox screamed as her fur came alight.

Across the courtyard, the thralls continued to advance in a single line, showing no signs of fear.

The puppeteer was winning.

“Fuck me,” Zaria said. “It really is Soren. I knew she had a cactus up her cunt about me, but she’s plain gone mad if she thinks she can hold up down here.”

Isaac scanned the firing line of the pirates. “Where is she? I don’t see her.”

“Check the side. She’s doing a pincer.”

He had been so dazzled by the elemental barrage of the thralls that he hadn’t noticed the entirety of the battle. Streams of pirates ran low behind the walls of their makeshift barricades, circling the line of thralls. Isaac squinted through the dim golden light, unable to identify the pirates by anything other than general species. He saw lions and hyenas and foxes, glints of steel and fur.

“I still don’t see her.”

“Humans are just worthless in the dark.” Zaria pointed. “She’s on the left, leading the charge.”

On the left, the pirates were massing, readying their weapons, waiting for the thralls to advance. Once they passed a certain point, the zoanthropes could rush from cover and envelop the enemy from all sides. Isaac studied the shadowy figures, trying to determine who could be the captain.

When he spotted her, Isaac blinked in surprise.

Captain Black Eye Soren stood two heads shorter than the brawny hyenas and lions around her. She had white fur, stubby whiskers, and tall, pink ears. Her outfit was a patchy collection of dark leather and loose fabric that was tangled beneath several bandoliers of knives and grenades, which she had stockpiled so heavily across her bodice that the weaponry was nearly a second set of armor. As Isaac squinted through the gloom, he noticed a furless patch of skin around her eye.

He stared for a time.

“That’s Soren?” Isaac asked. “The Black Eye, captain of the Silent Saber?”

“One and only,” Zaria replied. “I’m spyin’ several more of my mates decorating the floor. That’s going on her conscience.”

“Zaria, she’s a bunny.”

“Aye. Fiercest of the waste.”

He looked at Soren again, just to make sure his eyes were not deceiving him. “She’s a bunny. She’s half your height! That’s the woman you’ve been terrified of?”

“Just watch. You’ll see.”

The thralls had arrived at the palace steps, still launching a fusillade of ice and fire. Soren put two fingers through the side of her snout. A whistle sounded.

All at once, the pirates struck.

From the palace, a salvo of quarrels erupted like a swarm of birds. Soren raced out from the furniture barricade with a horde of pirates behind her, flinging a knife from the bandolier on her chest. One thrall keeled over to the side, the handle of a knife jutting from deep in his ear, and the next thrall barely had time to turn before the bunny was impaling him at a sprint, both of their bodies sailing across the pavement. With a graceful twist, Soren used the dying human as a springboard to launch herself into the air, her powerful bunny legs letting her reach a wide falling arc onto the next thrall. She smashed the human into the ground, visibly denting the skull with a kick of her bootless paw.

The thralls did not panic. They began flinging elemental spells at their flankers, turning as rigidly as a statue on a pedestal. The rest of her pirate crew began to hack at the ends of the thrall’s offensive line—meanwhile, Soren dashed straight into the center, dodging several lances of ice. She chopped off the arm of a thrall with a single strike, kicking him into another caster. Isaac struggled to follow her speed. In seconds, her white fur was soaked a shining red, her tall ears flailing, the bodies falling around her like wheat on a harvest.

A few steps away, the last remaining thrall was in the middle of performing a mnemonic gesture when her body seized, her skin shriveled away, and her limbs went limp beneath her. The puppeteer had chosen to suck the slave’s energy into themselves.

They were admitting defeat.

Soaked in blood, outlined by the flaming skulls behind her, Soren strolled up to the shriveled husk, her white-furred paws leaving red streaks on the pavement. The human girl was still twitching on the pavement. They were alive. The sigil on their head was dark. Weakly, the girl attempted to raise a hand, as if begging for mercy.

Soren gave a single slash of her sword.

A head rolled away.

Suddenly, the palace courtyard was silent. The only sounds were the faint crackle of the barricaded furniture, which had been set alight with magical flame, mixed with the groans and pains of the injured. A lion whimpered at his frost-bitten arm.

Ahead, the palace of skulls burned silently, their eyeless sockets staring raptured at the sky.

“Tend the wounded!” Soren yelled, her voice echoing down the necropolis. She strolled around the pool of fallen humans, impaling each at a time. “Man the perimeter! I want double watches! Blackpowder rigged at every entrance! If a single human gets through them walls again, you’ll be sucking maggots for grub!”

“Aye, capt!” several shouted, racing to the ends of the courtyard.

“Larkin, fix the blasted cannon!”

“Capt!”

A male hyena went sprinting over to a mound of ice, which Isaac only now realized had encased a wheel-mounted cannon, along with a gathered pile of chain-shot. The pirate stared for a moment, clearly unsure what to do, before deciding to chop with a hatchet.

“She’s fucking down here, lads!” Soren yelled, reaching the end of the human thralls. With a casual stroke, she spilled the guts of a young mage, slicing him like the skin of a sausage. The human twitched and grasped. “I promise you! You keep your mettle, you’ll find your vengeance! Glory don’t come without cost!”

“Aye, capt!” all the pirates shouted.

For a moment, the bunny studied the dying human at her feet, as if something about his feeble gasps was catching her interest. Isaac leaned up on the shoulder of the golem. Soren jerked her head, catching the movement. She looked right at his position.

He saw, for the first time, that one of her eyes was completely black.

Isaac ducked behind the golem, terrified.

“You little shit!” Zaria hissed.

“Sorry!”

Both of them remained still, their bodies dangling against the mouthed open torso of the automaton. Isaac studied the runes on its stonework exterior as his breath caught in his chest. Eventually, after what seemed an hour, Zaria pulled herself back up the shoulder, taking a slight peek. A moment later, she motioned him to do the same.

“We’re clear. She didn’t see us.”

Isaac struggled back up, pushing his boot against the wrenched open ribs across the golem’s side. His arms were aching from the constant strain of holding himself aloft. When he looked, Soren was marching across the courtyard, supervising the surgeon as he applied salves to the worst of the burned. A pirate called to her, and she kneeled at his side, listening close.

“Okay,” Isaac said. “Fuck.”

“I told ya so,” Zaria said.

“Yes, yes, you did. Gods above. She’s horrifying.”

“That she are.” Zaria watched the pirates begin to drag the dead humans away, leaving long red trails in the knuckled pavement. “How the fuck’d she even get down here, anyway? She buried the only entrance.”

Isaac was about to respond when movement caught his eye.

A short distance away, the fire on the pyramid of skulls was beginning to lose vigor, the flames finding no purchase in the lifeless bone, though it was burning hotly enough to illuminate the city beyond. Using this light, Isaac glimpsed figures on the other side of the palace. The most prominent were another pair of golems, their bodies twice as tall as the courtyard wall, their gun-barrel faces maintaining an eternal vigil over the city beyond.

Beneath the golems, a black army marched deeper into the necropolis.

Thralls.

There were dozens. All of them wore black robes. There were so many bodies, moving at such a distance, marching in such a swift, flowing chaos, that the darkness appeared to fester like a thousand maggots birthing from a corpse, the veil of shadows broken only by the glowing sigils carved on each of their heads.

In the middle, one person stood supreme. Their hood was shadowed. Their body was formless beneath the billow of their robes. There was no brand of magic upon their head, and no one among them who could resist their command. For a moment, all Isaac could see of the puppeteer sorcerer was a pair of glowing eyes, gazing in the direction of the palace.

A moment later, the sorcerer was gone, fleeing deeper into the city. Isaac felt a chill crawl up his spine, deeper than he expected.

“Isaac?”

He blinked, coming out of himself. “What, yes? Sorry?”

“I said,” Zaria said, “how in the flying cock did my captain get down here?”

He cleared his throat, spying on the pirates once more. “Well, if I had to guess, she likely dug through the rubble above to make sure you were dead. When she didn’t find your body, she ventured through the open door to the catacombs. The necromancer could not resist her because we’d already destroyed most of her bones. And now she’s here.” He paused. “And it’s a problem.”

“It’s a big fuckin’ problem, Isaac.”

“Well, I’m sorry for heroically destroying my enemies. I’ll try not to do it again.”

“Get your rest!” Soren yelled, strutting her feet over rivers of blood. Her voice carried over the courtyard with practiced ease. “Get your grog! Tomorrow, we hunt a traitor! I promise half the treasure to whoever brings her alive!”

The automaton shook beneath them. It was a tremor in the earth, feeling immediately familiar. As Isaac gripped himself to the golem’s shoulder, feeling the ancient machine swaying upon its perch, he saw boulders of dirt breaking off from the walls of the body cavity, all of which were big enough to smash through several houses. Destruction rumbled through the city.

More tremors bled below their feet. There was a rhythm being established. Soon, the effect was like listening to a massive, beating heart. For a moment, it felt as if the colossus was returning back to life.

Zaria’s ears flattened. “You feel that?”

“Yes,” Isaac said, wearily. “That’s a sandwyrm.” Another tremor came, rumbling through his body. “It likely heard those explosions from miles away.”

Isaac could picture the sight rather well. The creature would be circling below the chest of the colossus, a massive limbless dragon bristling with teeth and scales, tearing its way through an underground passage. Without a doubt, it knew there were people above it. It could sense the tiniest vibration through miles of sand. The only question was whether it felt territorial.

The rumbling began to quicken.

Isaac sighed.

“She’s gone mad.” Zaria gripped the ablative edge of the golem’s shoulder, nearly wrenching off the ancient stone plate. “Just throwin’ away lives in pursuit of vengeance. Thought she was decent before. Now, I’m not so sure.”

“Well,” Isaac said, “you did kill ten of her crew, and then blow up a ship.”

“That last bit’s my doing now, is it?”

“That’s what they think.”

She gave a huff. “What the hell’s this necromancer waiting for? Soren’s down there blowing up all her baubles, and she ain’t lifted a finger to stop it.”

“This is once again a guess,” Isaac said, “but I would bet she’s wise enough to let the intruders kill each other.”

He watched the pirates for a time. Larkin—the male hyena—had managed to chip away most of the ice on the cannon and was now wheeling it toward the pyramid of skulls, where it would gain a better vantage on anyone entering the courtyard. Two foxes hauled the chain-shot. There were many rounds.

“On the other hand,” Isaac continued, “the sorceress is likely also terrified that your old captain will summon a horde of wyrms to her domain. If she attacks the pirates now, they will trigger more explosives, and it might destroy what’s left of her home.” He watched the pirates begin to establish patrols on the ramparts. Torches blazed through the dark. “We’ll have to deal with this ourselves.”

She looked at him. “You’re not seriously suggesting—”

“I am,” Isaac replied. “We should attack now, before they have a chance to organize.”

“That’s hardly an option, squire.”

“You heard Soren. Within a day, she’ll start hunting us. We need to go on the offensive. We can’t let our enemy dictate the terms of engagement.”

“Are you giving me tactical advice?”

“I think I’ve read more books on the subject.”

She scoffed, looking back at the fortified courtyard. “They’re dug in tight. They got ramparts, crossbows, a wide open field, and nearly a dozen times our number. It’s suicide.”

“Maybe for you. I’ve got something better than a poleaxe.” He spun through some quick mnemonics, holding a small ball of fire in his hands. “She won’t stand a chance against me. None of them will.”

Zaria gave him a raised brow.

“What?” he asked.

“Isaac,” she said, diplomatically. “I’m liking this new boldness on you. It’s rather handsome. In this case, though, you need to temper it. Assaulting them head-on is madness. We should skirt around, let the sorceress clear her own bloody house.”

He looked at her for a moment. “Is that cowardice I’m hearing?”

“You wanna get smacked upside the head?”

“No.”

“Then shut your gob.” She went back to watching Soren, who was now supervising the barricade repairs. “This is my world, right here. I know how to handle it.”

“Tell me,” Isaac said. “Pirates have the right of parley, don’t they? If we ask for it, she has to hear us out. She’ll have to grant us protection.”

Zaria took a breath, her patience visibly waning. “That’s a tale more than a truth. Pirates are practical, as a rule. They’ll never let honor put them at a slight. You try that now, they’ll just use the chance to flank.”

“But not Soren. Right? You’ve said it before. She likes to make a spectacle. She didn’t kill you on the Saber because she wanted to haul you back to Crookspur, or whatever your pirate republic is called. She even challenged you to a duel, back in the chapel, when she could have immediately buried us in rubble.”

Zaria opened a palm, as if conceding the point.

“So it would work?” Isaac asked.

“It might. I’d still have the problem of killin’ her, which ain’t a small thing. She can cut a man to ribbons, just at a blink.”

“That won’t be a problem, either.”

“How’s that, then?”

“Because I’ll stand in your place.”

Zaria stared at him.

Isaac placed a hand on his chest, feigning a confident smile. He wasn’t used to smiling, and it took some effort. “I believe you’ve found your champion.”

“You? My champion?”

“That is what I said. Thank you for listening.”

“Oh, I heard you. I’m just giving you a chance to think better.”

“Who said I was going to fight fair?”

He conjured another ball of fire. She watched the flame spin above his palm, the light reflecting in her eye. She opened her mouth to speak. She closed it. Her eyes remained locked on his magic.

Slowly, her expression grew thoughtful.

Down in the palace courtyard, Soren was strolling through the middle of the open space, still leaving bloody prints with the paws of her feet. Her eyes were locked on the bodies of the thralls which had not yet been dragged away. Around her, the air was filled with motion and shouts.

With an idle sweep, she leaned over, drew her cutlass, and decapitated one of the bodies.

As the head rolled across the pavement, she grabbed it by the hair and lifted it close, her sword dripping blood at her side. She rubbed the carved sigil on its forehead, as if digging into the mottled scar. Her expression seemed curious. She clearly did not understand what magic was at play. After a moment, she dipped a finger through the neck hole and tasted the blood. She spat on the pavement. With a grunt, she tossed the head into the air and kicked it like a child’s ball. It went sailing off into the city beyond.

More rumbling shook the ground. Beneath the quakes, there was a deeper, more melodious voice. It was the warning call of a sandwyrm. Isaac had heard it many times on his trek across the desert. It seemed that the creature had mistaken Soren’s bombs for the approach of a rival.

It was going to be territorial.

Even now, a single vibration would likely spell its attack.

Zaria turned her attention back to the palace. She wasn’t looking at Soren—instead, she was tracking the crew as they raced across the courtyard, taking note of the souls repairing the walls, treating the wounded, rationing out portions of meat and rum. She would know their names. She would also know the ones now lying dead on the pavement. Over the years, they might’ve worked as deckhands, sharing meals, sharing bunks, sharing the same hauls of treasure.

It must have taken a lot for her to kill the ones she had.

Her silence was heavy.

“Hey,” Isaac said. “Do you think Soren’s crew wants to be stuck down here, in this tomb?”

The hyena snorted. “Pirates are worse than crones. Anything and everything is a curse. Most of ‘em would be swimming in piss if Soren weren’t barking orders.”

“So, if we kill Soren, and we only kill Soren, they will probably run away. Right?”

Zaria looked back at him.

“In that case,” Isaac said, “you could argue that we would be saving their lives. It seems the right thing to do. Kill the person who wants you dead, and spare the crew who are having second thoughts.”

She did not answer.

“Right?” he asked.

“Isaac,” she said. “I won’t ask you to do this. This is my business. My concern. You got your mission to worry about—don’t start feeling obligated for me.”

“I am worried about my mission. Soren is getting in the way of it. In terms of my duty to the Diet, I’d say I’m compelled to end her life.” He shrugged. “It could just be that I want to defeat a murderous pirate, as well. That would be a good deed for the world. You know, help a few people.”

She gave him an expression somewhere between shock and laughter. “You realize they outnumber us ten to one?”

“Sure.”

“She has crossbows. Explosives. She brought a whole fuckin’ cannon. None the least, all the crew at her back are veteran hands. They’re all risking blackness and evil to have a chance at my head.”

“That seems accurate.”

“And, now, you’re asking me to just stroll up to her fortress, ask for parley, and anoint you as my champion, all so you can fight a duel with the worst dread pirate this side of the waste?”

“Essentially.”

There was a pause. The golem croaked, like a mouth chewing through bone.

“You know how foolhardy this whole plan is, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Isaac said. “I think that’s why I like it.”

Zaria laughed. It seemed like she could do little else. As the mirth leaked out of her, she looked him up and down, her ears twitching with vigor. “I gotta tell ya, Isaac. I feel I’ve been a bad influence, in your regard.”

“Don’t worry. I’ve always been this way. I just feel ready to express it now.”

He looked down at the palace courtyard, marking the defenses, counting the number of able-bodied pirates. Soren resumed her march through the bustling crowd. Her leather armor was covered in blood and knives. In that moment, Isaac felt fear, though it was not the fear he always felt around his uncle.

This fear made him feel alive.

“Are you with me?”

For a final time, Zaria glanced down at her old captain and crew. He could imagine that she was remembering names, faces, voices, all the times they’d spent together, all the years of work and grog and plunder. She fingered her leather plackart. There was a torture wound there, still healing from Isaac’s treatment. When she pressed on the injury, her snout curled in a growl.

Off in the distance, through the earth and rock, a sandwyrm bellowed its rage.

“Fuck it,” Zaria said. “Let’s slag the cunt.”

Chapter Twelve

Parley

“We’re gonna die,” Zaria said.

The ground continued to rumble. For the past few minutes, it had not stopped. The sandwyrm was agitated. Every minute, it was tunneling closer to the rib cage of the colossus, making a deliberate quake of its passage. It was a display of threats, though it was not yet an attack. The dragons were blind. Likely, it could only sense the shape of the colossus, rather than the city within its ribs. The wyrm was only an animal, and animals were intimidated by size.

Of course, once the dragon realized the colossus was dead. . . .

For a moment, Isaac imagined a circular maelstrom of teeth, a jagged maw capable of swallowing ten men whole. He imagined the roars. He imagined the scales that had shrugged off all but his most powerful scrolls. Most of all, he imagined the quickening, the sudden increase in vibration that served as the only signal before the killing began.

He flexed his hands, drawing on the magic within.

Ahead, at the palace walls, the pirates had severed the heads of the sorcerer’s thralls and erected them on their ramparts, capping off their black pirate standard. Armed patrols walked the makeshift scaffold. They had rigged black powder bombs at all the gates. If they exploded now, the sandwyrm would certainly attack. Isaac wasn’t sure if they were unaware of this, or deliberately threatening to do it.

Beyond the walls, a shouting voice echoed down the dead city streets.

Captain Black Eye Soren.

“We got the element of surprise,” Zaria said, “and fuck all else. If she don’t accept the parley, we’re dead. If she don’t accept the duel, we’re dead. If she finds it insulting that I’d appoint a human as my champion, then we’ll be wishing we’re dead, I promise you. She will make it slow.”

“Calm yourself,” Isaac said. “Deep breaths.”

There was a sound of breathing, which quickly devolved into a low, throaty whoop.

“Better?” he asked.

“No!”

Isaac sighed, turning away from the corner of a skull-shaped house. He faced Zaria, who was pacing rapidly across the street, her tail bristling like a broom. He began counting on his fingers. “She wants to take you alive. That’s one. She wants to make an example of you. That’s two. She wanted to fight a duel with you earlier. She won’t know I’m a mage, so she won’t know how easily I can blast her away. That’s three and four. Finally, she will take any chance to raise the morale of her crew, because she knows they’ll flee if things get too dire.”

Zaria did not answer. She kept pacing across the knuckled pavement, kicking up small spurts of dust. Her hands clenched the air, and she was making the odd whooping noise again, as if her instincts couldn’t be helped.

“Yes?” Isaac asked. “Is that not correct?”

“Fuck yourself, squire.”

“What am I doing?”

She stopped, made an angry exhalation, and marched over to his position, standing tall and stern above him. Her fur turned to gold beneath the hanging cartilage light.

“Don’t get cocky,” she said.

“I won’t,” Isaac replied.

“If she closes the distance, you’re dead, and it won’t be a pleasant departure, neither.”

“I’m well aware, believe me.”

“Oh, are you? What a brave lad.” She gave him a light slap above the groin. “Try not to trip over your cock, young lord. Seems it’s swingin’ low.”

“Zaria,” he said. “I’m aware this is risky. You don’t need to tell me that. Honestly, I think you’ve spent too long seeing me tied and helpless. She’s the one who needs to be afraid.”

For a moment, the rumbling intensified, as if the sandwyrm had closed in for a pass. Beyond the palace walls, the few shouts of merriment ceased immediately. The patrols on the ramparts clutched their crossbows to their chest.

They were scared.

They had good reason to be.

“Let me do the talking.” She went to pace, decided against it, and came to him again, squeezing his shoulder with a meaty paw. “No matter what, follow my lead. Beck and call at all times. Got it?”

He bowed. “As you say, madam knight.”

She cocked her head, surprised. For a moment, her usual mirth returned. “Well, now. Truly?”

“For this one time, yes.”

“Don’t give me leeway, squire. I could get used to them words.”

“Those words.”

“Oh, whatever.”

“Grammar is important, you stupid brute.”

She almost grinned. Another shout rang from the palace, and the expression fled from her face. Her hackles rose until they were needle straight. She took a deep inhalation, eyes closed, trying not to whoop.

“Hey,” Isaac said. “I’ve got your back.”

She nodded, as if she hadn’t really heard him. At the palace, Soren’s voice echoed through the city.

“Can you trust me?” he asked.

She looked at him. He opened his palms, letting the sleeves of his robes billow away. In the distance, a building collapsed from the constant quakes.

“Aye,” she said. “I think so.”

“Good. That’s all we need.”

She nodded. She looked at him again. She opened her snout, took a final breath, flexed the fingers on each of her hands, and began to peel back her lip, exposing the yellow fangs beneath. “Right.” She slapped herself on the cheek, briefly jogging in place. “Right.”

“Right,” Isaac said.

“Right!” Zaria said, punching the air. “That’s right!”

“Oh, it’s very right.”

“You’re fuckin’ right it is!”

“Let’s go.”

“Let’s fucking go!”

There was a pause.

“Zaria,” he said.

“Fuck!”

Zaria emerged around the corner of a skull-shaped house, her back straight, her fists clenched, her poleaxe tall and sharp. She marched headlong towards the palace. Isaac followed right behind her.

The guards on the rampart did not notice them immediately. The dim glow of the cartilage held the plaza in a soft twilight, bathing their entrance in shadow. At the same time, the rumbling of the wyrm seemed to be traveling in a circle around the palace, growing tighter and tighter. Both guards were following the sound.

They were scared.

They had good reason to be.

“Parley!” Zaria shouted. “Parley!”

The two zoanthropes—both male hyenas—flinched in surprise. They took up shooting positions, one of them almost tumbling from the shoddy perch.

“Soren!” Zaria called, cupping her snout. “Soren! I’ve come to parley, you fuzzy cunt!”

On the other side of the wall, all sound ceased at once. For a moment, the rumbling of the wyrm faded as well, and only the dead silence of the necropolis remained. Then, all at once, there was a rush of stomping feet.

“H-hold right there!” one of the male hyenas yelled, his crossbow trained. “Zaria, don’t—I mean, stop. Don’t come any—”

“Is that you up there, Emmet?” Zaria asked.

“Yes! I mean, no! I mean, shut up!”

Zaria barked out a laugh. “What bleedin’ moron trusted you with a weapon?”

“I mean it! Stop! D-don’t come any—”

Emmet stepped forward. The rampart cracked beneath him, shifting his weight. There was a snap of string, and the bolt of his crossbow shot straight into the ground. Emmet stumbled, lost his grip, and dropped the weapon entirely, letting it fall down the wrong side of the wall.

“Emmet!” the other hyena barked.

“Sorry!”

Zaria scooped the broken bolt from the pavement. “Did you just loose at me, you sniveling cuntsucker?”

“I’m sorry!” Emmet cried, overwhelmed.

“You open that gate,” Zaria said, “or I’m shoving this bolt through your pisshole!”

Emmit yipped in fright. “Open—o-open the—”

“Open the gate!” Soren yelled. “Let her through!”

By now, a mass of pirates had swarmed around the rib-shaped grills of the palace gate. They were large, they were fuzzy, they were scarred and armed, and they all snarled like they did so for a living. Like Zaria, most of them held two heads of height above Isaac. All of them seemed able to wrench him limb from limb, if given the chance. As they worked to disarm the blackpowder satchels currently rigged to the wall, Isaac began to doubt the wisdom of their plan.

Below, the sandwyrm’s rumbling faded down to a hum.

Distant.

Listening.

The gates opened. The crowd of pirates barely parted enough for them to pass, forcing them to walk through a tight tunnel of bodies. Isaac followed behind Zaria’s downturned tail as they entered the palace courtyard, never more than spitting distance from at least five different sabers and maces. The pirates growled heavily in his face.

“Kaiser!” Zaria shouted, warmly. “Still pissing blood, are we?”

A male lion snarled at her.

“I told you not to shag that wench, ya daft bastard!”

Isaac studiously avoided eye contact.

Ahead, Captain Soren, otherwise known as The Black Eye, stood in the center of the courtyard. Human blood shone on her leather armor, glistening on the sheaths of a dozen waiting knives. Now that he was close, Isaac could appreciate how the pirate had earned her name—the left side of her face had been scarred by a vicious flame, leaving the flesh mottled and furless. Now, her left eye was made of glass, and there had been no attempt to make it look natural. It was completely black, reflecting everything it saw, like moonlight shining on dark water.

When the bunny looked his way, Isaac was not sure if he should look at the solid black of her fake eye, or the wicked blue of the real. Behind her, the palace of the dead city was a spilling heap of skulls, their eyeless faces gazing in wonder towards the rib cage sky. It was hard to imagine that such a pile of bone had ever been used as a building.

Were those structures made of stone, as well? At this distance, Isaac couldn’t tell.

Was it bone?

Could the necromancer. . . .

Soren made a grunt. She pressed the flat of her cutlass against her leather pauldron, wiping off the blood in one long stroke. “You truly are desperate, aren’t you?”

“Nah,” Zaria said, marching forward. “Tell the truth, I’ve never been better.”

Isaac could feel the pirates walking behind him, beginning to fan out to either side. Like Zaria said, they were taking the opportunity to flank.

His heart pounded in his chest.

“That so?” Soren sheathed her sword. “Let me see, now. You betrayed your worldly friends. You’re hunted like a dog. Now, your only shelter is a tomb soaked full of madness and evil. The only thing I’ll say in your favor is you haven’t begged my mercy.”

Zaria stopped, keeping herself at least two body lengths from the bunny. Isaac came out by her side, trying to keep his body language as calm and neutral as possible. He wanted to look unassuming, someone so lacking in threat that the pirates would grow careless. All the while, he kept flexing his fingers.

When Zaria didn’t reply, Soren turned her head, regarding him. Once again, he struggled to decide which eye to meet. “Who the bloody cunt is this?” the bunny asked. “He the one that left them second set of tracks? You find some human wandering the wasteland above?”

“Sure did.” Zaria slapped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him to her side. “Rather felt sorry for him, matter of fact. Now he’s my squire.”

The pirates around them snorted and laughed.

Isaac’s composure began to crack.

“Oi, human,” Soren said. “What’s your name, then? Who the fuck are ya?”

“You don’t need to know,” Isaac replied.

The bunny snorted. “Oh, maybe. Maybe not.” Her blue eye roamed over him. “Either way, I’ll make sure you’re called my cabin boy, and nothing more. Unless, of course, you wish to die with your shining knight.”

Zaria squeezed his shoulder.

Soren grinned. With the blood flecked across her fur, her mouth appeared like an open wound. “Whatcha say, handsome? I’d keep you nice and pampered.”

Isaac scoffed. “I wouldn’t fuck you with someone else’s cock.”

There was a silence. A moment later, Soren and her crew burst into laughter, the sound echoing across the open courtyard. Even Zaria gave him a sideways glance. He wasn’t sure if they thought what he said was funny, or if they were laughing at the fact that someone like him had said it. Either way, he was satisfied, because, as a child, he had once read that line in a book, and he had waited half his life for the chance to use it.

Below, the ground continued to rumble in a rhythmic wave, like the snoring of a giant.

“Just playin’, love,” Soren said, still chuckling. “I can smell her on you from here. Could probably count her teeth on your neck.” Her pink nose wrinkled. “You enjoying your life as a fugitive, Zaria?”

Zaria tightened her grip on Isaac. “You know how it is. Have to claim what’s yours.”

“Not so,” Soren replied. “The rule is—if you’re dead on the ground, then he’s mine, and whatever ransom you’re hoping to collect will be mine as well.” Her black eye reflected the rows of pirates behind them. “Got that ‘nobleman’s son’ look to him. Think I’ll call him Coin Purse, once he’s good and broken.”

Zaria let him go, stepping forward. “Have them pointy ears gone deaf, Soren? I’m offering parley, not tribute.”

The bunny drew her cutlass, slicing it through the air. It made an audible sound. “Only thing you got to offer is your life, traitor. I’d drag you back to Crookspur so I could break you proper, right on the wheel, but last time I let you from my sight, you managed to sunder a whole bloody ship. You’re dyin’ here, down in this bony city, and I’m damn sure gonna bleed you like you bled ten of my crew.”

Zaria took another step. By now, the point of her captain’s sword was inches from her chest.

Isaac tensed.

“You’re gonna lose the rest of them,” the hyena said, “if you stay down here. This place is evil, capt. The stories are true. I’ve seen it myself, and it’s only thanks to this human behind me that I’m living to tell the tale.”

For a moment, Soren kept the sword raised, the point aimed directly at Zaria’s heart. All it would take was a single thrust.

They watched each other.

The bunny snorted, lowering the blade. “Oh, what? You concerned for us now? Where was that concern a week ago? Did you blow a hole through my ship ‘cause you loved us so much?”

“How many men you lost already?” Zaria turned, facing the crowd of pirates. “How many of your mates won’t ever be leaving this place?”

The pirates glanced at each other. Behind them, they had laid the bodies of their crew in one long row, shoulder to shoulder, their animal faces marred with jagged ice and blackened burns.

“Go on,” Zaria said. “Tell me so. You think some treasure and vengeance is worth your lives?”

Soren’s whiskers curled back. “There ain’t a man on the Saber that didn’t lose someone to your rampage. Don’t even got a proper roster for all the souls you left burned to cinders, neither. Whatever pirate blood you think’s on my hands ain’t nothing compared to yours.”

More than a few voices rose in agreement.

“I forced no man down into the black,” Soren said. “All hands came of their own free will. Equal risk, equal shares. Aye, lads?”

Even more voices shouted back.

“Oh, truly, then?” Zaria asked. “Does all this brotherhood nonsense extend to the transport of slaves? Children? You all singing merry ‘round the rigging while some babes cry for their parents below deck? You gonna spend your blood wage on drink and whores without a second thought?”

“Shut your mouth,” Soren hissed. “Job specified no tampering with the cargo. I followed that directive.”

“You musta known.”

“No, Zaria. I had not the faintest.”

“Don’t lie.”

“Watch your fuckin’ tongue.”

A silence fell. Isaac realized he had not breathed in several moments. Behind them all, the palace of skulls seemed to moan wordlessly, gazing up at the ribs.

“I promise,” Soren said, “on my word, I had no idea what the cargo were. My disgust is the same as yours. In fact, I’m planning on carving that disgust into the fat-purse cunts that offered the contract. No one slights me and lives to tell about it.” The bunny twirled her cutlass. “The difference being that I’m honorable enough to keep my word, and not nearly so low that I’d slaughter my mates for righteousness.”

“There’s honor in aiding evil now, is there?” Zaria replied. “You still completed that contract, didn’t you?”

“Much as I could,” Soren admitted. “Accountin’ for the cargo you tossed.”

“Cargo, huh? You keep sayin’ that. That your word for innocent lives?”

“Them’s the terms of contract. Not my place to debate.” Her sword glinted as it spun. “My word’s gotta mean something. I have to show I’m principled. No ship would surrender her hold if I were known for breaking promises. My reputation protects my crew, and I have to protect it in kind, whether that be honoring my signature on a line, or hunting down a traitor.”

Zaria turned to the gathered crowd of pirates. “I want to hear you all say it. Say you’re fine dipping toes in the slavin’ business. Say you’re fine earning wages off the blood of children. Just admit, right now, that you’re no better than some bandits slitting throats on a highway.”

She looked around, receiving only stares in reply.

“Tell me you’re still feeling brave. Tell me you aren’t having second thoughts, confronting all these curses and magic.”

Most of the pirates were silent. Some were looking around the dead city, staring with wide eyes at the palace of skulls or the giant rib cage above their heads. Some were glancing at the floor, the sandwyrm rumbling and circling beneath, close enough to rattle the barricades and crates of rations. Others were looking at the bodies of their friends.

“Leave,” Zaria said. “Call it a withdrawal, if you want some dignity about it. Everyone of you that stays down here is gonna die.”

Soren looked over the uneasy gathering of her crew, their faces reflected in her black eye. Her half-burned muzzle twisted into a snarl. “I was fair to you, Zaria, wasn’t I?”

“Aside from torturing me for several days, you mean?”

“Fair penance for a gutless crime.”

“Well, then. Right you are, capt. No complaints from me. Good shares, good grog.”

“Damn good hand you were,” Soren said, her voice grinding and low. “Worked more than half these sods combined. Absolutely fearsome with an axe.”

“Oh, none compare to the Black Eye. That’s for fact.”

They looked at each other. Soren gripped her sword. Zaria folded her arms.

Isaac waited.

“Matter of fact,” Soren said. “I’ll just tell ya, since it don’t matter. Vossler’s stepping down as third mate. I planned to promote you to it.”

Zaria blinked. “Truly?” She seemed to consider this, acting genuinely surprised. “Never thought I’d hack it as an officer, tell you the truth. Leading men, the whole bit.”

“You would have. I see it in you. Might’ve made it to captain faster than I did, even.”

“Appreciate you saying so.”

“Call it a parting gift.”

Zaria made a noise in her throat. “Funny how that works.”

“No,” the Black Eye replied. “It ain’t.”

The silence settled again.

“Had to stick to my principles, Soren.”

“As do I, Zaria.”

“No chance I’m talking you out of this, then?”

Soren narrowed her eye, the burnt flesh tightening down. “You know better.”

“Aye. Suppose I do.”

Hyena and bunny stared at each other, heedless of the other eyes around them. Below, the sandwyrm’s angry patrols continued to rumble through the earth. The palace of skulls glowed in the cartilage light, like a bulbous pile of gold.

“That’s enough,” Soren said. “We’re dueling, here and now. Toss your polearm and grab a short blade.”

“Got a better idea, capt.” Zaria stepped back to Isaac’s side. “He’s gonna be my champion.”

For a moment, the palace courtyard was stilled of motion. Even the sandwyrm seemed to pause. Then, slowly, a few chuckles spurted out from the crowd, quickly building into a chorus of hoots and shouts. The air of the dead city filled with taunts. Isaac could feel the pirates jeering at him, rattling their weapons and barking out laughter.

Only Soren stayed quiet. She watched Isaac with a silent fury. He met her one-eyed gaze, his arms ready to cast.

“Shut up!” Soren yelled. “Shut up!”

The laughter died. The bunny stared him down. He could see his face reflected in her black eye. His dirty blond hair had grown long and wild. He was filthy, sunburned, unshaved, and just as gaunt and thin as a starving prisoner.

He knew he looked pathetic.

Hopefully, he would not be pathetic, when it mattered.

“It’s your right,” Soren said, “to request a champion, unconventional they may be.” Slowly, she lifted her cutlass, aiming the point at Isaac’s chest. “You want to fight me, love? Is that bravery or ignorance?”

“Neither,” Isaac replied. “You’re barely worth my time.”

“Tough words.”

“I’ve earned them.”

Soren’s black eye gleamed in the twilight. “Oh, I see it now. I see that fire in your eyes. You got some venom in your blood, don’t you, human?”

Isaac didn’t answer.

She scraped the tip of her cutlass across the knuckled courtyard pavement. “Knew there was something off about you. The way you look—either you’re horribly lost, or you’re the meanest cunt standing here.”

He still did not answer.

Soren snorted. “What is it then, Zaria? Is he some monk from a monastery, cracking stone with his fist? Got some magic tucked up his arse, does he?” She turned her gaze to the hyena. “You willing to trust your life in his hands?”

“Wouldn’t be standing here if I wasn’t,” Zaria said.

“How about I just sic my crew on you both and save us all the trouble?”

“We’ll take half your crew with us if you try.” Zaria turned back to the pirates. “I’m a fair sort. If my champion loses, I’ll submit. But the first lad who violates my rights is gettin’ his teeth carved out through his cock. That’s a promise.”

None of the pirates answered. Some were angry. Many were glancing nervously at each other. A few were already stepping away.

“Enough,” Soren said. “Human. Do you pledge yourself in service of your knight here?”

“I do,” Isaac said.

“Do you understand that if you lose this duel, either by yield or death, then her life is forfeit?”

Next to him, Zaria shifted slightly.

“I do,” Isaac said.

“Fine, then. You lot—scatter.”

The pirates stepped back, creating a circle around them. Zaria did so as well, pausing to give him one final squeeze of the shoulder. Soren never took her gaze off him.

“Jarrett,” she called. “Search him. Make sure he’s got nothing tucked away.”

A male fox stepped forward, approaching Isaac like one might approach a bomb. He patted him down, running over his legs and arms, pulling off his pack and dumping the contents on the ground. All his alchemical equipment rolled across the knuckled pavement. Soren eyed the vials and ciphers, her black eye churning with reflections.

“He’s clean, capt,” the fox said. “Nothing on ‘em.”

The bunny’s ears flicked. “Give him your saber.”

“I don’t need it,” Isaac said.

“You sure about that?”

He flexed his fingers. “Very.”

Jarrett looked to his captain. She flicked her head. He scampered away.

They stood around two body lengths from each other. Soren was only barely tall enough to come up to Isaac’s shoulder. The blade of her cutlass caught the golden light as she twirled it in her hand. Her burns seemed to extend down to the muscle. When she furrowed her brow, the mottled skin could only twitch and pull.

He had seen how fast she was. She could close the distance between them in a blink—even now, her bare feet were shifting on the knuckled pavement, tensing and rolling, begging to be loosed. He brought his arms out in front of him. He chose to use wind. It had the fastest casting time, and, at the beginning of the first mnemonic position, it did not look dissimilar from the stance of a martial art. A strong enough gust would shred Soren’s lungs from acute air pressure, and the sight of their captain drowning in her own blood would scare the pirates quite well.

Hopefully.

He was making a lot of assumptions.

“Oi, pointy!” Zaria called. “Toss your knives! We’re fighting fair, aren’t we?”

Soren ran a hand over the sheaths of throwing knives on her chest, still watching Isaac.

Without warning, the sandwyrm made a close pass below, the ground almost bulging against its weight. A melodic call coiled through the earth. It sounded angry. The more it displayed its threats, the sooner it would realize the colossus was not alive, and the sooner it would attempt to eviscerate the rival it assumed was encroaching on its territory. Refraining from an explosion might no longer save them.

In the distance, the heaping palace seemed to shake exceptionally hard, like the skulls were shifting in place.

Soren did not flinch at the quakes. Her body was as tense as a wire. “Claxton, Heywood. Notch your crossbows. Flank the human. Both shoulders.”

“Capt?” a lioness asked.

“Do it.” She pointed her cutlass at Isaac. “If this sodding ape tries to cheat, kill him. Better yet, tag him in the belly. Make it slow. Gut him in front of his knight.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the lioness hesitate, looking back to her fellows. None of the pirates moved.

“Do it!” Soren yelled. “Have to ensure our honor, don’t we? Have to make sure there’s no craven intentions among us, aye?” Her pink nose wrinkled at him. “I’m still smelling the stench of a traitor on you, human. Best we set that straight, right now.”

Slowly, Isaac shifted his arms to the second mnemonic position. Below them, the sandwyrm roared through tons of earth and rock, a colossal howl that seemed to shake the very foundations of the city. Moments later, he heard the creak of two drawstrings, pulling slowly back. In the surrounding circle of pirates, many hands went to their scabbards.

Soren twirled her cutlass. “You’re looking real out of place there, love. Tattered robes. Thin as a bilge rat. Carrying naught but parchment and vials. Now you’re refusin’ a weapon. And how’d you get past all these bones and magic, anyway? Don’t tell me Zaria’s taking on the blackest of evils all by her lonesome. That was your doing.” Her burned flesh twisted. “Who the fuck are you?”

All at once, the palace of skulls began to move. The heads shook, flexing their jaws, rolling like distended marbles, coalescing into some new ordered shape. As they slid into position, the skulls tilted their eyeless faces towards the rib cage sky.

Slowly, they began to sing.

“You’re a mage, aren’t you?” Soren fingered a throwing knife. “You’re the one that sundered the ship. Now you’re gonna spit hellfire my way. That’s your trick, you craven cunt. I’ll fucking skewer—”

“Captain!” one of the pirates yelled.

Soren turned, looking at the palace. The skulls had arranged themselves into a flat-topped pyramid, and they were all bellowing towards the blackened sky, their skinless faces wrapped in horror and worship, like the summoning of an eldritch god. Together, their chorus of voices built into the melodic pitch of a sandwyrm’s battle cry.

It was exactly what the real wyrm had been waiting to hear.

The earth shuddered. The ceiling of the body cavity began to crumble. Around the city, entire streets and buildings fell through the earth as the ground collapsed beneath them, the recently carved tunnels below finally giving way as the sandwyrm lurched through rock and dirt, quickening into a frenzy. It thundered back a furious response to the skulls, shaking Isaac to the core.

He realized, all at once, that the sorceress could indeed control the skulls. She had not stayed her forces against Soren because she wanted Isaac to kill the pirate. She had merely been waiting, waiting for her chance to kill both of them, at the same time. To do so, she was willing to sacrifice her entire city.

The pyramid of skulls stretched their jaws in an ecstasy of worship, their lungless chorus so loud it almost drowned the coming strike.

“Run!” Isaac shouted. “Run!” The skulls erupted into the air.

Chapter Thirteen

Meat & Bone

A colossal form spewed from the earth.

It had rows of sandy scales, rushing and glittering in the cartilage light. It had a row of mandibles around a circular mouth. Its teeth were shaped like the hooks of a lamprey. When it coiled into the chest of the dead colossus, it roared a song so loud, so utterly deafening, that Isaac was forced to cover his ears, feeling the vibration deep within his flesh. He watched in horror as the wyrm spit a volley of earth and stone at the rib cage above, chipping away at the titanic streaks of bone.

Around the wyrm, giant skulls joined its melodic voice, singing in rapture as they flipped and spun through the air. The wyrm smashed blindly at the falling skulls, its segmented body bulging at the seams. It attacked with violent rage.

Jaws splintered.

Teeth flew like shrapnel.

The lungless voices fell into silence.

For a moment, Isaac watched the wyrm thrash and contort above him, mesmerized by the display. He only realized he was in danger when Soren began to sprint.

“Fall back!” the bunny shouted. “Fall—”

A skull crashed to the floor, landing so heavily that the entire world seemed to lurch. Soren darted away. Several more skulls collided with the ground, spraying splinters of bone. As the avalanche increased, the wyrm lurched again, and another skull came tumbling across the palace courtyard, its cranium shattered, its motion wild and skittering, forcing Isaac to stumble away. Even though the skull missed him by several feet, the air pressure struck him like a wall, and he went careening to the floor, rolling head over heels.

Dazed.

Blinking.

He gasped for air.

A shower of dirt poured on his face. He stared at the rib cage above. He spat and twitched. He heard the voices of pirates, screaming in terror.

“Isaac!”

There was a hand. The world spun. Seconds later, he was face deep in the fur of Zaria’s chest, reeling for balance.

“Move!”

Just ahead, the sandwyrm had extended half its body out through the earth, coiling into the space beneath the glowing rib cage. Its bulging segments bristled with the starry glint of sand-woven scales. Slowly, its vestigial wings began to wriggle outward, unfurling from the carapace, displaying the old skin and sinew that had once allowed the creatures to fly. By now, it was only a display of size, a symbol of prowess for mates and rivals.

For a moment, its circular mouth twitched with a dozen hooking mandibles, as if tasting the air. It listened through the silence of dirt and broken stone.

It was trying to find new prey.

Zaria was tugging him. The rest of the pirates were sprinting back into the necropolis, leaving every man for themselves. He had no idea where Soren had gone. Now that the wyrm was here, all bets were off, and all who were wise would flee.

Isaac gathered his courage.

“Hey!” he shouted, breaking through Zaria’s grip. “Over here!”

“Isaac!” Zaria hissed.

The dragon twisted, jerking its head in his direction. It had no eyes. Around the circumference of its latching mouth, there was only a remnant of orbital depression, a shallow grave where once had been sight. All the same, Isaac felt a titanic gaze land upon him.

“Yes, you!” he shouted, sprinting around a shattered skull. “You there! With the teeth!”

The wyrm rumbled.

“Over here!”

It straightened, displaying its wings.

“Look at me!” He emerged into an open space of the courtyard, surrounded by broken skulls and crumbled boulders. “Look at me!”

The wyrm bent itself down, its ring of mandibles beginning to writhe, its bed of teeth undulating around a flexing tongue. Noxious breath struck him like a storm. Isaac knew, from his studies, that the wyrm possessed a network of fine hairs between the scales of its carapace, all of which functioned as a shell of transmitters. To the sandwyrm, his shouting was like a blaze of light in the darkness, something it felt across its entire body. He hoped it would be enough to drown the stampede of fleeing pirates.

“Come on! I’ve faced bigger than you!”

The wyrm chuffed, like a clap of thunder. Another breath roared across the courtyard, blowing his robes, watering his eyes. With an alarming amount of dexterity, the creature reared back, tensing itself for a strike.

Isaac rushed through the mnemonics.

Just as it widened its mouth, he pointed his finger, firing a burst of sound directly down its throat. A shower of blood erupted from the maw. The sandwyrm reeled back, spraying an arc of green viscera across the rib cage above. The ground trembled and broke as the dragon flailed, blinded by the noise. When it screamed, the buildings of the necropolis trembled and shook.

Zaria was grabbing him again. “Isaac, you fucking twit!”

“What?”

“Run!”

“You were supposed to run!”

“Why the fuck—”

The wyrm roared again.

By now, it had caught itself, its senses returning, like a man momentarily blinded by the sun. More of the segmented body slithered from the earth. It reared its mouth again, its snarl dripping with blood and teeth.

“Shit,” Isaac said.

All the other times Isaac had faced a sandwyrm, he had managed to scare them away. All animals avoided risk, where possible. Most predators would not injure themselves to secure a tiny meal. But, of course, this was different now, because the singing skulls had convinced the dragon that a rival was encroaching on its territory. It was not peckish.

It was angry.

It was willing to fight.

The sandwyrm tensed, unleashed a colossal roar, and shot itself forward.

For such a massive creature, it struck with incredible speed. Isaac fired another burst of sound, his aim panicked. It struck the wyrm on the roof of its skull, the sandy carapace cracking like glass, and the creature flinched away, diverting its path, smashing through the debris field of skulls and dirt like a log rolling through a garden. Destruction rained out on the city beyond.

Seconds later, it roared, launching another attack.

Isaac fired again.

He missed.

“Fuck!”

The wyrm flooded across the stone, moving with a terrifying swiftness, and the only thing that saved Isaac’s life was Zaria yanking him bodily off his feet, throwing him like a heavy doll. He crashed to the floor. The wyrm thundered ahead, rushing like a snake, its teeth gnashing the air, its massive size leaving a furrow in the ground large enough to moat a castle. Wind screamed where it passed.

Zaria fell down, knocked over by the pressure.

A second later, the wyrm coiled up, even more of its body gorging out from the earth, trailing its segments across the ground like a messy spool of rope. It was walling their escape. It was sensing their true position.

Slabber fell from its jaw.

When Zaria moaned, it locked its sightless eye on her.

“Hey!” Isaac shouted.

The wyrm struck. Isaac ran ahead, casting wind, locking the gust into a concentrated tunnel. The sudden hurricane caught the wyrm in its outstretched mouth, splitting the wounded flesh even wider, though the beast was barely slowed—by now, it was bracing through the pain, every injury only driving it further into rage. Its body slammed into the ground. The writhing mouth continued ahead, slithering over stone like a skimmer over sand. The force of his hurricane was only slowing it down.

He put all his energy into the wind, splitting the dragon’s maw wide, the sharp screams of the gales almost louder than the furious bellowing of the dragon.

It kept coming, sundering all the pavement in its path.

A tongue leaped from its mouth.

Isaac braced.

And just when the long, slimy appendage was about to reach him, Zaria leaped out from behind, spearing the dragon’s tongue with her poleaxe. It flinched, jerked its head in pain, and Isaac was struck with a speeding wall of mandibles, sending him tumbling across the pavement. He crashed into a stack of ration crates, gasping and reeling, struggling back to his feet as blood leaked into his eyes.

A short distance away, the sandwyrm had flattened its body across the remnants of the palace courtyard. Its mandibles flexed and jerked, its closed mouth snapping from side to side. Finally, its head shot back, its maw opened, and Zaria was flung into the air, flipping and spinning.

Isaac watched in horror.

The hyena was coated in green blood and saliva, her poleaxe still speared onto a severed chunk of dragon tongue, turning the weapon into a giant, fleshy hammer. Below, the sandwyrm snarled, rising to catch her in its mouth. She completed her arc into the air, catching herself just enough that, when the creature struck, it found her screaming and twisting and striking her poleaxe down with all her strength.

The wyrm swallowed her whole.

“Hey!” Isaac shouted.

As it coiled back to the earth, it flinched again, snapping back and forth in pain, as if Zaria were still fighting within the depths of its teeth. Soon, its maw closed, its ring of mandibles tightened down, and the ends of its body began to slither away, spooling into its giant burrow within the earth.

It was retreating.

“Hey!”

Isaac ran forward. The sandwyrm continued to snake into the shattered ground. Without slowing, he shot multiple salvos of sound. Each impact on its body cracked its glittering scales, and the beast spasmed in pain, overwhelmed with noise and sensation. The assault only made it struggle faster. Isaac kept firing, aiming for the mouth, hoping to disgorge Zaria from its grasp, but the wyrm’s scaly hide was too tough for his uncatalyzed spells, and its head soon vanished back into the tunnels below, leaving nothing but a scarred hole in the earth. The last thing Isaac heard was a falling bellow of pain.

And, suddenly, he was alone.

The palace grounds were destroyed. The pirates had fled. Soren was gone. Only the silence of the dead city remained.

He stood at the edge of the giant crater, staring down the empty tunnel.

“Zaria!”

The earth was silent. Only his voice echoed back.

All at once, he heard a new sound.

It was coming from behind. It was the same dry scraping he had heard in the catacombs. He turned, and an overwhelming ocean of bone surged towards him.

He paled in terror.

The sea of sliding body parts emerged from the depths of the necropolis, surging toward the palace. The waves were taller than him, composed of an incomprehensible amount of corpses, all mangled and blended together, gushing in streams and currents. It closed upon his position with all the monstrous weight of a tsunami, smashing through what remained of the palace walls, leaping forward in a raging shower of bone.

He had failed. He had walked right into the sorceress’s trap. All along, she had just been waiting for the right time to strike. Now, it was here.

He was alone. He had no chance.

He had failed his father.

He turned his body towards the flood of bone. He kept his stance firm on the ground, just as he had been taught. He performed the mnemonics for his anti-necrotic light, building it into a solid dome of light around him.

Isaac put all his energy into the spell, bracing for death.

A moment later, he noticed a shift in the tide of bones. It was splitting at the crest, forming a gap, parting as neatly as a fork in a river. Once the wave of corpses rushed upon him, he found himself perfectly encased by two walls of bone, streaming by with such weight and force that he was battered by the overwhelming sound of scraping bodies. Only a few bones grazed the edge of his light.

Instead, the bulk of the flood rushed into the tunnel the sandwyrm had left behind, creating swirls of limbs and skulls and spines. The ocean of bodies disappeared through the ground, as if sucked away by some malevolent force. Soon, it was gone.

Not a single bone had touched him.

He blinked, once again alone in the shattered palace grounds. He should’ve been dead. A flood of such proportions could’ve easily pierced through his light, shattering it with no more effort than a cup made of glass—instead, it had deliberately avoided his presence. In fact, it had gone very far out of its way to avoid hurting him. A great deal of focus and control would’ve been required for such a feat.

The sorceress had just spared his life.

He blinked, stupefied.

Soon, the ground began to shake again. The buildings of the dead city crumbled and fell as more chunks of earth gave way. Isaac wobbled on his feet as the vibrations turned into shuddering quakes, building into a flood of motion.

Moments later, in a distant part of the city, the sandwyrm erupted from the ground, impaling itself through the roof of a college. Instead of reaching high into the body cavity, it beached itself across the ancient streets, smashing through houses with an unstoppable momentum, squirming and writhing violently as it slid back towards the palace. Isaac ran to the side, suddenly faced with an incoming creature that thrashed with the size and weight of a castle wall. He dove over a giant, shattered skull, narrowly avoiding the impact of the sandwyrm’s mouth.

The dragon was completely covered in bone. Each of the thousands of body parts wriggled into its skin like maggots through a corpse, burrowing into the open cracks Isaac had carved in its scales. Green blood oozed from the flesh, thick as slime. The wyrm flailed along the courtyard, rolling itself over and over on the pavement, trying to rub the bones away, but its mad efforts only stabbed the corpses deeper, flagellating the flesh with spines and arms and ribs.

Its wings spasmed. Its glittering scales broke like glass. With another heave, the beast roared in pain and fear.

Something flew from its mouth.

A glob of blood and saliva splattered on the pavement, rolling with the viscosity of mucus. Once it rested, the pile of fluids began to twitch. Isaac recognized the shape.

“Zaria!”

He ran to her, through fields of shattered skulls and the falling showers of blood. As he rushed, he saw she was wrapped in a shell of green, viscous liquid, something close to the texture of a rotted yolk of egg. Zaria struggled upward, stabbing her poleaxe through the broken pavement, gripping the haft for support. Isaac ran straight into the disgusting miasma, covering himself in the sandwyrm’s fluids as he helped her back to her feet.

“Are you alright?” he asked, trying to check her for wounds. “Do you need aid?”

Zaria wiped a sheet of dragon blood from her face. Slowly, she bared her teeth. With a vicious growl, she yanked her polearm from the ground, pointed it at the flailing wyrm, and shouted: “You’re fucking mine!”

She charged at the massive beast, axe blade held high, completely covered in blood, screaming a war cry at the top of her lungs.

“Oh,” Isaac said.

By now, the wyrm was thrashing recklessly, shaking off rainstorms of bone with every thrust of its segments. The air was thick with blood, flying limbs, and slivers of scale. Despite its efforts, Isaac could still see an army of corpses digging through the hide and muscle, burrowing through the meat like a pestilence of bugs.

When the dragon bellowed, it opened its maw wide, and Zaria sprinted towards it again, holding her weapon in a spearing thrust. She slammed into the roof of the creature’s mouth with all her weight, the spear and axe disappearing so deeply into the flesh that half her polearm became buried inside. The beast gurgled, its tongue a jagged hunk of meat. With desperation, it tried to crush her with its undulating rows of teeth, but Isaac had followed behind, and he cast a gust of wind so sharp that it physically parted the dragon’s jaw. He intensified the gale, flaying flesh, severing mandibles, catching the beast in a stalemate of force as it struggled to close its mouth. Meanwhile, Zaria had yanked her poleaxe back from the bleeding maw, bathing herself in a shower of blood, thrusting again, harder, deeper, stabbing over and over, like a blacksmith attempting to pull a tooth.

The sandwyrm rolled onto its back, the roof of its mouth now pointing down. Zaria did not waste the leverage. She climbed up, stood tall on the dragon’s mouth, and impaled her polearm deep into its head.

The wyrm’s roars ceased immediately.

For a moment, its segmented body flexed, the wings going stiff, a deep gurgle sounding across the barren streets of the necropolis. Another moment passed, and its jagged tongue flopped onto the rim of its mouth, a horde of breath wheezing out in a final sigh. The only part that still moved was the rivers of blood flowing from its body.

It was dead.

They had killed a wyrm.

Zaria ripped her poleaxe from the dragon’s mouth. A slime of brain remained on the spear. Soon after, her legs buckled, and she collapsed onto the pavement.

Isaac ran over, trying to help her stand. It was a difficult process. She was heavy, he was winded from casting spells, and every attempt to sink his hands through the noxious shell of dragon blood felt like digging through a swamp. Eventually, he managed to lean her weight against him, smearing all the horrible fluids across his robes. Together, they struggled back to their feet.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or smack you,” Isaac said.

Zaria lifted her head, eyes wide.

“What do you think—”

“Isaac.”

“You charged at a wyrm. I was trying to distract it! That was the entire purpose—”

“Isaac!”

He turned and looked.

The sea of bones was coalescing again. A flood of corpses tumbled over the shattered pavement, sockets and joints connecting together, all the pieces building themselves into nests and masses, mashing into swarms, layers upon layers compacting together, growing taller, churning higher and higher, consolidating into a solid, writhing wall of death. The bones encircled them completely. They could no longer see the necropolis.

There was only bone.

Death.

Decay.

The eyeless gaze of a sorcerer’s slave.

With Zaria’s arm draping over his shoulder, Isaac cast his anti-necrotic light, burning it into a thick shell around them. The circling tide of bones flinched back as they singed themselves on the edges, the entire ocean shifting like an uncoiling snake. They were restraining themselves. With this kind of necrotic mass, the sorceress could have easily overwhelmed his spell, crushing them beneath the weight of her power.

They were at her mercy.

But she was staying her hand again.

In front of them, the swirling bones shifted. Something bulbous popped out of the stream, held at the top of an elongated pole of vertebrae and fingers, which began to uncannily resemble the stem and thorns of a rose. At the head of the flower was a human skull, leering in their direction, rising like a lighthouse above a stormy sea. It stopped growing just at the edge of the light. The empty sockets seemed to gaze.

For a moment, its lower jaw rattled back and forth.

“Isaac,” the skull said.

The voice was thin and hissing, struggling with the word. It sounded only barely like the modern, common language.

“Isssssaaaaaaaccc.”

“Isaac,” Zaria said, gripping her weapon. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please remember your fucking books now, love.”

“I don’t know!”

“Isa—Ic—aaaaa—Isaaaaac.”

The skull attempted to come closer, the squirming stem growing taller. Isaac intensified his light, expanding the dome outwards. It slapped the skinless face, forcing the entire stalk of bones to flinch away, curling like a dandelion in the breeze. When it came back down, the skull had partially melted, a trail of liquified bone oozing from its cheek.

“What do you want, necromancer?” Isaac asked.

Around them, the bone wall slithered back, the streams inside boiling faster. There was a hiss of attempted words.

“Have you been listening to our conversations? Is that how you know my name?”

A dozen sighs bled from the swirling wall.

“I offer no quarter!” Isaac yelled. “You imprisoned my father! You have sustained your unnatural life upon thousands of bodies! The Diet of Nine commands your death!”

Zaria gripped his shoulder, leaning more weight against him.

“I—I—Issssaa—aaaaaacccc—”

More stalks grew from the bones, budding outwards like the sprouts of fungi. They were all capped with skulls, and the faces began to chatter around them, growling and snarling, fighting their own anatomy. Words were coming from the hissing voices, somewhere just beyond the point of understanding. The sorceress was attempting to speak, but the bones did not comply, and the language seemed as fleshless as the dead.

“What game are you playing?” he asked. “Just kill us, if you’re going to.”

Zaria gripped him very tightly.

The skull stalks bent back, like they had been taken by surprise.

“I will not be intimidated,” Isaac said. “You’ll have to do better than a wyrm if you wish to scare me. I’ve fought many to get here, and I’ll fight whatever else you may throw at me, as well.”

As if in response, the bone wall slithered back.

Was she retreating?

Was she scared?

Isaac stepped forward into the gap, dragging Zaria with him. “What do you want? There must be some reason you’re sparing us.”

“Isaac,” the skull stalks replied, swaying like a meadow of flowers.

“Do you want my aid?” Isaac asked. “Is that why you’re sparing us? Did you summon the wyrm just so we could help you slay the beast?”

The skull stalks twisted and bent, tangling their vertebrae stems.

“That’s it, isn’t it? You wanted our help.” He burned his light a little brighter. “The sandwyrm was already going to attack. You just centered it on where we were. And if it didn’t kill us, then you’d have our help killing it. Isn’t that right?”

The ocean of bones flexed around them, like the pull and expansion of a diaphragm.

“And, now,” Isaac continued, “you’re not killing us because you still want our help.” He glared at the skulls. “Let me guess. It’s the other sorcerer. The puppeteer.”

The skulls gasped.

“You’re scared of this sorcerer. Scared enough to ask us for aid. That must mean you’re desperate. You are, aren’t you?”

All around him, the skulls began to nod, wobbling on their vertebrae stems.

“Who is this sorcerer, then?” Isaac asked. “What do they want? How many thralls do they have under their command?”

The melted skull, the one Isaac had initially burned, leaned forward again, its voice gurgling and raspy. All the other faces clattered around it, and he could see dozens of others inside the ocean, briefly visible as they spun and tumbled, each of them mouthing at a word. Isaac began to feel, very strongly, that the sorceress was trying to communicate, but the anatomy of her structure was preventing any speech, and she was unable to bridge the gap.

It was odd.

What was the point of all this?

“Simple questions,” Zaria said, spitting blood from her mouth. “Just yes or no.”

“Are you going to kill us?” Isaac asked.

The stalks of heads shook from side to side.

“If we find the other sorcerer, will they try to kill us?”

The stalks nodded.

“Is this your way of asking for an alliance?”

The stalks hesitated. After a moment, they nodded again.

Isaac clenched his jaw, staring into the rows of skulls. “Is my father still alive? Have you tortured him all these years?”

The stalks flexed toward the rib cage sky, as if begging it for strength.

“Answer me!”

The skulls looked down, shifting their stalks along the ocean of bones until they were held in a tight circle above. He received the distinct impression of a singular intelligence staring back at him, its gaze distributed across many faces.

She did not answer.

A feeling of unease spread across his skin.

“Fine!” Isaac shouted. He ended the light from his hand, using the now freed arm to continue supporting Zaria. “You’ll have a truce! But it only lasts until the other sorcerer is dead! Once that happens, you will be next! Do we understand each other?”

For a moment, the stalks did not move. Then, slowly, almost barely enough to notice, they nodded.

“Good! Now get out of my way!”

The sea of bones began to part, cleaving a path down into itself. By the end, there was a hallway extending through the corpses. Isaac reaffirmed his grip on Zaria and walked through the parted wall. He felt the skulls watch him intently as he passed. Soon, they slithered back into the central mass.

The two of them held onto each other as they walked, roaming through the field of debris left in the wake of the sandwyrm’s wrath. Beyond the shattered courtyard, a huge swath of the necropolis lay in ruin. Isaac stared for a brief moment, dwelling on all the history that might’ve been lost, before orienting himself by the rig cage of the colossus. Somewhere down past the edges of the city, the glowing cartilage ended, and the abdomen began.

This was where they had to go.

Somewhere by the feet of the giant creature, the necromancer would be waiting upon her throne, sheltered with darkness and treasure.

Somewhere closer, the other sorcerer marched his army ahead.

In that moment, Isaac could almost feel the presence of his father, as if he were closer than ever before. Behind him, he heard the sea of bones scattering into swarms and slugs, tumbling their way through the field of debris. Soon, they were gone.

Only the silence of the city remained.

“Are you okay?” Isaac asked, stumbling along.

Zaria spat on the ground. “Nothing worse than what I had before.”

“You’re lucky to be alive.”

She spat again.

“What happened to the pirates?” he asked.

“Ran clear off.”

“Good for them.”

“Oh, maybe not. Can smell their piss from here.”

Isaac had to catch his breath for a moment, both out of exhaustion and his own surprise. “So . . . the plan worked?”

Zaria gave a weak chuckle.

He looked behind them. The pirates were gone, their supplies and fortifications smashed beyond repair. Nothing remained in the palace grounds but shattered skulls and the beached segmentation of a dead wyrm.

It seemed like nothing could’ve walked away from such a calamity.

He took another breath.

“We were lucky,” Isaac said. “Very lucky.”

She blew a raspberry.

“What?” he asked. “We were.”

“Nah,” she said, leaning her snout toward his ear. “Weren’t my luck at all. Had my squire right here, all along. He’s the lucky charm.”

He shook his head.

“Oh, what a brave lad he is. Dashin’ right to a dragon’s maw, pecker all aflame. I dare say, he’d chisel a mountain on my order. Arrest the heavens in their path.”

“I will toss you off me.”

“Gimme a kiss.”

She leaned in, her face covered in green sludge. He craned his neck away, struggling to throw her bulk from his shoulder. Both of their feet squished through the trails of blood and viscera.

“Please stop,” Isaac said.

“Oh, what a brave lad, my squire.”

“Zaria.”

“Gimme a kiss.”

“I—you just—” He struggled over himself. “Gods, you were just eaten! Alive! Are you alright? Are you injured?”

“I just wanna celebrate.”

“I think you need medicine.”

“They say love’s the best medicine.”

“Gods above, fuck off!”

He gave up on pushing her away. Instead, he squirmed out from beneath her arm, using the dragon blood as lubricant. She wobbled on her own, wet and lurching.

“Squire!” Zaria whined, reaching for him.

“You’re fine, clearly.”

“Squiiiiirrrre!”

“Gods, stop shouting!”

“Sssssquuuiiiirrrreeeee—”

She grabbed for him, he dodged away, and a struggle immediately ensued, full of reaching and moans and curses, and, even though the gore made it an utterly revolting experience, Isaac was struggling not to smile. He wanted to smile because whatever game this was between them was very dumb, and childish, and inappropriate, and it made him feel good.

It made him feel alive.

“C’mere, you little shit,” Zaria said.

“Go away.”

“I’m gonna fuckin’—”

“You can’t touch me!”

He feinted to the side, dodging the other way when Zaria took the bluff. In response, she scooped an oozing wad of blood from her chest, so thick it hung like jelly from her hand. She flung it at his face. He tried to duck out of the way, but a strand struck his mouth, feeling much like the tentacle of an octopus, and he nearly gagged from the taste. Zaria gave a snickering laugh when he returned fire with his own scooping of gore. They traded several volleys together. And, despite the circumstances, despite all the dangers he’d just faced, despite the perils he knew were still to come, Isaac found himself laughing just as loud as her.

He laughed because she was laughing.

He laughed until he was choking for breath, and he laughed when she slung herself on his shoulder again, and he kept chuckling as he was burdened with her weight, because it all seemed so simple and pure.

He had never felt more happy to be alive. As their laughter echoed through the ruins, Isaac noticed a human skull sitting on the last of the courtyard walls, watching them as they passed.

Chapter Fourteen
Water & Flame

The rest of the necropolis passed uneventfully.

Somewhere around the abdomen, the great cavity of space began to end, narrowing down into a network of tunnels and corridors. Despite being underground for the better part of a day, Isaac had grown accustomed to the wide open space afforded by the city of the dead—in fact, he had even found a certain pleasure in walking across the avenues and boulevards, because, to him, it was a completely novel experience. He had never once been inside a city of this grandeur and scale. In that regard, he had felt satisfied, even if the shadow of the necromancers still hung deeply in the corners.

Because of this, the sudden narrowing of their path felt all the more like an abrupt departure. It was a reminder that they were, indeed, venturing deeper and deeper into the earth. The good times were ending.

Isaac paused at the thought.

Were they good times?

Was that how he would look back on this day?

Isaac eyed Zaria, noting the sag in her shoulders, the exhaustion behind her gaze. He studied the entrance to the tunnels, wondering if the puppeteer had laid an ambush. He remembered the way the necromancer had watched him leave.

He sighed.

Eventually, they were more than an hour into the tunnels beneath the necropolis, worming their way through the roughly hewn corridors, much like food passing through the intestine of the colossus. Isaac could only guess that there had been an extensive series of aqueducts running along the district—many of the homes, most of them carved from the natural granite, had completely flooded with groundwater. There were entire rivers now flowing through the streets, the natural process of erosion slowly dissolving all of the carefully sculpted architecture. In a few places, it was still obvious that, once, there had been fountains, and baths, and sewage lines, totaling a sanitation system more intricate than many cities enjoyed today, but, most of the time, it hardly seemed different than an ocean cove. Within a few more centuries, Isaac thought, all traces of culture and art would be gone.

They made their way through the tunnels and caves, leaping over canyons carved by the groundwater, squeezing their bodies through the teeth of growing stalagmites. Some streets were still illuminated with bulbous cartilage posts, but many had fallen into darkness, and Isaac was forced to use several of their torches, which cast long shadows on the jutting stone. His worry about the puppeteer only grew worse.

After what seemed like hours, they happened to spy a vast, open chamber with a jagged lake in the center. As they approached, Isaac noted the remnants of ancient pillars, as well as some mosaics barely clinging to legibility on the floor, which were illuminated by a few bulbous posts of cartilage. On the walls, there were arched holes carved into a craggy wall, which he initially mistook for arrow slits.

“Oh, shite my shingle,” Zaria said, looking around. “This here’s a bathhouse.”

“Is it?”

“Aye, look there.”

She pointed at the slits, which now appeared to resemble ventilation shafts, where steam from a broiler would pass into the open chamber. This had, indeed, once been a sauna. Now, it didn’t seem much different than a cave. After so many years, there was more craggy rock than gentle stone.

“Finally,” Zaria said, throwing her pack from her shoulder. “I’ve been itchin’ for a bath. Got a lotta gunk ‘tween the legs.”

“I didn’t need to hear that.”

“Be a good lad and seal the entrance, would you?”

After shrugging off his own pack, he cast a ward into his palm, spreading the thin film of purple light around the mouth of the cave entrance. He doubted it would do them any good. If the necromancer was determined enough, she could breach it easily, and the other sorcerer would just command their thralls to blast it down.

Still, it was better than nothing.

By the lip of the pool, Zaria was hastily shrugging off her clothes. Most of her fur was caked in green blood, but the few unsullied hairs, which were all along her torso, appeared golden when they caught the light. He could see the muscles of her back flexing as she unclasped the leather plackart, the shadow of her tail moving over the curve of her rear, the briefest glimpse of her breasts—

“Isaac.”

He nearly tripped on the roughly worn stone.

She turned to him, completely naked, still smeared in blood. “You got some purifying nonsense in that pack of yours? The water’s rather brackish.”

He fought a very hard battle, keeping his eyes on her face. “Are you—I mean—can there be some modesty, please?”

“What for? We’ve already fucked, haven’t we?”

“That’s, uh—”

“Isaac,” she said. “I have tits. Got a cunt betwixt my legs. I trust you were aware of this.”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, I do know some—uh, some purifying. . . .” He moved quickly towards the pool. “Evocations. One moment.”

He crouched down at the edge of the pool, trying very hard to force the blush from his face. True to her word, the ancient water had congealed into something brown and full of sediment, with a film of pond scum floating in a rotten heap. After a few careful mnemonics, soft beams of light shone from his palms, which dissolved the dead plants as easily as fire through straw. Over the course of a minute, the light crawled across the entire length of the pool, leaving the water almost pristinely clear.

Zaria slapped his back. “Gods, I woulda loved havin’ you at some of them water holes, up in the waste. The number of times I shat some foulness back into the sand.”

“I really did not need to hear that.”

“Thanks a bunch, love.”

Isaac cleared his throat, trying not to imagine her standing behind him, naked, her breasts bouncing level with his head.

A moment passed.

“I might,” Isaac said, his voice catching, “start charging you for this.”

“Oh? Truly?”

“I don’t work for free.”

In the water, he saw her shadow move. She had leaned down to his level. When she spoke, her voice was right in his ear. “What’s the price gonna be?”

He didn’t answer.

After a long moment, she stood up, slapped his ass, positioned her feet at the edge of the pool, and dove headfirst into the water, before he could retaliate. Her body twisted nimbly beneath the surface. Through the dim light, he could see her doing flips and somersaults, the thicker tufts of her fur waving with the motion. Her hips seemed to curve in such a way—

He stood up, almost went to eat some rations, remembered he was covered in dragon blood, and made his way over to the opposite end of the pool. Gingerly, he removed his own clothes, wading into the shallows. The water was freezing cold. A film of green blood spread around him as he ventured up to his chest. He scrubbed his skin with his bare hands, scraping through a heavy layer of grime, fluid, and sweat. It felt, for a moment, like he was rubbing off the collective weight of his journey.

He realized, suddenly, how far he had truly come.

Weeks ago, he had ventured from the only home he had ever known. He had travelled a great distance, through plains and forest and desert and sand. In every encounter, he had survived against seemingly impossible odds, from pirates to wyrms to wielders of ancient magic. But, now, instead of feeling hopeful at the closeness of his destination, instead of imagining the face of his father, he could only think of the sorceress and her oceans of bone.

She was manipulating them. Her machinations were not even particularly subtle. Summoning the sandwyrm during the parlay with Soren had been a particularly ingenious maneuver—the dragon had already been agitated enough that its attack couldn’t be avoided, so she had merely focused its strike on the intruders in her tomb, which would direct the beast to kill her opponents, or otherwise force her opponents into killing the beast. Either way, she would gain some advantage.

The necromancer was crafty, to be sure. Isaac would give her that.

Now, she had spared their lives in the hopes that they would help her defeat the puppeteer. Once again, Isaac could not help but play into her hand—parasite magic was incredibly powerful, the puppeteer had clearly amassed a sizable army, and they would almost certainly be hostile to a member of the Diet, such as himself. Whoever this interloper was, they posed just as much of a threat as his father’s captor herself.

Still, he thought, it didn’t make the sorceress’s attempt to divide her opponents any easier to swallow.

For now, they were safe in this bathhouse. But, come tomorrow, they would likely have to face off against the puppeteer, and Isaac was all too aware that his alliance with the necromancer was little more than a reprieve. Once the puppeteer was dead, the conflict would resume. Her betrayal would come without question.

He would have to do the same.

“Isaac!” Zaria called, head bobbing on the other end of the pool. “Come on over! Water’s lovely!”

He blushed again. He was beginning to hate how easily he did so. “I’m fine.”

“That weren’t a request, squire! Get over here!”

“I don’t—” He looked into the deep water. “I don’t know how to swim.”

She stopped paddling. “Truly?”

“Why is that surprising? I’ve told you. . . .”

“I mean, didn’t you say your tower was next to a river?”

“Yes,” he said. “I saw it every day. I’d fall asleep to the babble. I’d bathe in the water frequently. But I never—” He rubbed some crusted blood from his chest. “No one would ever teach me, and I was always too scared to wade further in. I kept imagining the current dragging me under, and I’d just . . . get discouraged.”

She stroked closer to him. “I could show you some lessons now, if you wish.”

He paused, looking at her only by the reflection in the water.

“Isaac?” she asked.

He grimaced.

“Come on,” Zaria said, giving a splash with her hand. “It’ll be fun. Promise.”

Fun, he thought.

What would I know about fun?

“It ain’t that hard, love.”

“No, no, please, no, I—” He gestured to a broken section of the stone wall. “I noticed some, uh, lichen growing on the rocks. It’s a species with very fibrous shoots. We could make a fire of it.”

She looked at him over the water, her mohawk trailing over an eye.

“I’ll go do that,” he said, wading away.

He exited the pool, shivering and naked. He collected her dagger, went over to the small cave-in, used the blade to scrape off as much lichen as he could, and brought the ball of leafy fungi over to their packs. After using some scattered rocks to build a base, he lit the lichen with a small casting of flame. The fire took hold, spreading along the mycelia. Bulbs popped and cracked.

Behind him, Zaria continued to swim around the pool, performing lazy, wandering strokes. From the edge, Isaac washed his filthy robes as much as he could. He laid them out by the fire to dry. He sat down on the craggy floor and stared into the flames, still shivering with cold.

The longer he stared into the fire, the more frustrated he felt.

He hated the fear inside him, whenever he approached the water. As a boy, after his training and studies, he had frequently walked to the edge of the river by his tower. Every time, he had promised himself that he would take the plunge. He would jump into the water, past the point where his feet touched the bottom, and he would teach himself to swim. But every time the water rose to his chest, he would stare into the dark, murky currents, and the fear would overcome him, which included not only the fear of death, but the fear that his uncle would spot him shirking his duties. Every time, he had cowered away.

He still couldn’t do it. He was still afraid.

He had faced dragons, pirates, and the army of a necromancer, but this one basic task still eluded him. Others knew how to swim. They did not consider it something to fear. The sound of Zaria splashing behind him only made his fists clench tighter.

Why couldn’t he do this?

Why was it so daunting in his mind?

Would he feel this fear when doing any other basic task? Would he be afraid to order a drink at a tavern? Would he be afraid to ride a horse?

Would he ever be able to live a normal life?

A gush of water came behind him. Zaria had climbed out of the pool, water streaming down her spotted fur. She sauntered over to a stone bench next to the fire and squatted down at the edge, holding her hands to the flames.

“Toss me some rations, would you, love?”

He reached over to his pack and flung a few cuts of salt meat her way. He began to pound his fist into a brick of hardtack. For a time, the only sounds in the bathhouse were the crackling flames and their own labored chewing.

Isaac kept stealing glances at her.

They were both naked. Of course, they had to be. Their clothes were filthy and wet. They had just taken a bath. Both of them needed to rest and recuperate.

Their state of undress should not be odd to him.

And, yet, he was afraid again. He felt vulnerable, exposed. He kept glancing in Zaria’s direction, but, in truth, he was terrified to meet her gaze. She had been right—they’d already had sex. They had fucked. It had been an enlightening experience, but still one that was ultimately common. What had happened was natural, in a way.

So, then, why was he so nervous? What cause did he have to feel this way? Why was his heart pounding so—

“You got a serious look about you,” Zaria said.

He glanced at her, briefly. “I’m fine.”

“Thinking of your father?”

He blinked, caught off guard. “No.”

“No?”

“Not at all, actually.”

She ripped off a hunk of meat with her teeth. The sound made Isaac flinch. “Why not? We’re close now. Gotta be. Might be time to rehearse a speech.”

“I’ve . . . never actually thought about what I’ll do when I reach him.”

That wasn’t quite true. He had thought of it, occasionally. Mostly, the thoughts had made him afraid, and he had never figured out why.

He was getting angry at himself.

“The focus was always the journey,” he said. “The dangers I’d face. How much harder I had to train to face them. It just never seemed . . . appropriate to fantasize, overmuch.”

“I expect you’d also dread the idea of him turning out worse than your uncle.”

He didn’t answer.

“Well,” she said, scooting forward on the bench, “after being imprisoned so long, I’d guess he’s thought much about it, to say the least. Probably cry his eyes out at the sight of you.”

Isaac tossed another wad of lichen into the fire. “He feels like a stranger to me. You know, he’s just . . . an idea. I’ve never seen his face. I’ve never heard his voice. All I know about him is what others have told me. He feels as real to me as all the figures of history.”

Something occurred to him.

“I’ve really just been thinking,” he said, “about all the things I’ll do after I rescue him, all the places I want to travel, and . . . he’s not in any of them. I’ve never included him in my fantasies. I . . . I don’t want to. I don’t really want him to be in my life.”

The fire gave a sharp crack.

“I mean,” Isaac said, speaking quickly, “of course, I would be happy to speak with him, before then. I’m sure he could tell me of my mother. I wouldn’t . . . disregard who he represents. That would be cruel.”

“Don’t gotta explain yourself to me, love. I’ve been there.” She crossed her legs, her eyes bright with fire. “You never met the man. You’ve lived all your life without him. To say the least, your experience with mentors also weren’t the best. I wouldn’t harm yourself for feelin’ as you do. In fact, if I was you, I’d flip them both the finger and head out the door.”

He did not answer.

“All the same,” she said. “You’ll get to know your father. Once you talk, you might find a difference, in how you feel. Maybe things’ll change.”

He broke off more chunks of hardtack, just to do something. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“We’re close to the treasure, as well. Does that make you happy?”

“Some, I suppose. Can’t say the idea of being rich don’t tickle me a bit, but. . . .” She shrugged, ripping through another hunk of meat. “Not thinking about it neither, actually. More happy that my old crew aren’t hanging above me, like a specter. You should’ve seen the way they fled from us.” She laughed. “Never seen Soren turn craven like that. Think I’d give all the gold in the world just to see the back of her ears flop away again.”

“Some of us should’ve been running with her.”

“Oh, don’t you start that shite again. I saved your life, young sir. I am indispensable to your need. Just say the word, in fact, and I’ll happily accept some land, as due payment.”

He rolled his eyes.

A silence fell.

“Well,” she said. “Thank you for helping me, in any case.”

“Sure,” he said, still gazing into the fire.

“Isaac.”

He looked over to her. She was sitting up straight, her rear on the bench, her hands on her knees, her elbows pushing her breasts together, her wet fur hanging like blades of grass across her body.

“Thanks for helping me,” she said. “I know you went out your way to do so.”

He shrugged, with what he hoped was nonchalance. “I was just doing my duty. Someone had to stop her from tossing bombs. I mean, think of the archaeology. All the history we lost.”

“Weren’t nothing else to it, was there?”

“Not particularly.”

“You don’t care that it did me a good turn?”

“I would never aid the cutthroat who took me hostage.”

She broke into a sly grin, her teeth catching the firelight. “Oh, aye. Course not. Just spill your want inside her.”

He tucked his legs against himself, suddenly aware of his nakedness.

She stood up from the bench. “Xotra’s spewin’ cunt, would you stop bein’ so sullen, already? We’re close now. We fought our way through more shite than anyone could’ve expected us to. We’re alive. Fuck me, we should be celebrating.”

“We still have to kill the necromancer,” Isaac said. “And even she seems afraid of the puppeteer. That means we should be afraid of them, too.”

“Shut your mouth.”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“I mean—what?”

“Isaac!”

He flinched.

“Gods above,” Zaria said. “You’re even bringin’ me down, and I’ve gotta temperament like farts in a tub.”

“Well . . . sorry.”

“What do I gotta do to cheer you up, Isaac? Just tell me.”

He looked over to her, ready to say something.

The words stopped in his throat.

She was standing next to the fire, and the shadows of the flames danced across her body. The light illuminated the curve of her breasts, the fur of her neck, the taut muscle of her abdomen, the trail of spots on her hips and thighs. Between her legs, cast in deep shadow, he could faintly see the folds of her sex. It was a thin hint of pink. It sent his mind racing.

Like a flood, he remembered the chapel.

Heat. Wetness. Pressure.

Sliding.

Pounding.

Exploding—

“Have I caught your attention, squire?”

He almost looked away, wanting to change the subject, wanting to let the shame win because it would be familiar and safe and easy. But, in that moment, something stopped him. He kept his gaze centered on her breasts.

Certainty pierced through the fear.

“Yes,” Isaac said. “It has.”

She hummed from her throat. “Truly, now? Feel free to be specific.”

The way her fur had been soft and warm in his face. The way her flesh had bounced against him. The hard muscle, the soft fat, the tightness, the weight, the curves.

The heat.

The smell.

The sounds.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he said.

She cocked her hip, shadows rolling across her chest. “Am I making you lose your words, Isaac?”

He exhaled. “Yes.”

“Have you been thinking about me since the chapel?”

He was on his feet. “Yes.”

“Do you wanna fuck me?”

He moved toward her like a runaway carriage.

Just before impact, she pushed him away, holding him out by the length of her arm. He pressed his shoulder deep into the pads of her hand, remembering the way they had gripped him in the chapel.

“Isaac,” she said. “You sure you want this, now?”

“More than anything else in my life.”

She blinked down at him.

“Was that too honest?” he asked.

“Look,” she said, taking his other shoulder in hand. “There’s no pressure on you. I’m just bein’ a tease, cause it’s how I am. Don’t want you feeling obligated to this. There’s no . . . expecting of me, to you, to be a certain way. You know my meaning?”

“Zaria,” he said.

“Aye?”

“I don’t think you understood me before. I liked what happened, between us. I liked it so much that it made me rethink everything I ever knew about life.” The words came rushing out of him. “I want to fuck you.”

For a moment, she looked at him carefully, her slitted eyes searching through his expression. He did not look away. Beside them, the fire crackled and rose.

“Alright,” she said, not letting him go. “If you’re sure.”

“I am sure.”

“I see that.”

“Do you want to fuck?”

“Oh, if your father could see you now.”

“I’m sure he’d approve. If not, he can fuck himself.”

Zaria cracked into a grin.

“Well?” Isaac asked.

“Well, alright.” The hands on his shoulders pulled him close. “But only cause you’re cute.”

She paced backwards towards the stone bench, dragging him along. With a gentle release, she sat down on the edge of the ancient furniture, rolling her shoulders back. Her breasts swayed in the light. Her nipples were very pink. When she parted her thighs, a strand of fluid lolled from her sex.

“Go on, then,” she said. “I can’t deny my squire the best medicine he’s ever tasted.”

He looked at her, and his lust turned to panic.

Inexperience struck him like a wall. He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know the proper pace of things. His life had always been a strict routine, a listed delineation of steps and procedures. He had always been told exactly how to conduct himself. One look at Zaria, and an ocean of possibility spread before him.

It was terrifying.

But just as the hesitation struck him cold, a waft of her musk carried across the air, catching him like a slap across the face. It was no longer just the unwashed stink of her fur, but a thick, heady aroma, one that seemed distinctly her in a way he couldn’t properly qualify. It seemed to unlock something primal in his mind.

It was her smell.

It smelled like her.

Instinct took over. The last word she had said.

Tasted.

He dove between her legs, like a bloodhound sprinting for a scent. His knees hit the craggy floor, and his hands gripped at her thighs, pressing them apart, fingers sinking into meat and fur. Once the valley was open, the heat from her loins exhaled into his face. He saw her cunt clearly, through the fur and flesh. He drew close. He took a long inhale, and the smell was as thick as a fog. When he released his breath, the air brushed against her glistening sex. A shiver spread through the fur.

“Hold a moment,” Zaria said.

From above, she wrapped a loose hand around his cheek, fingers raising his chin to meet her gaze.

“You realize,” she said, “that the boney queen is watching us, however she does?”

“Good,” he replied. “I hope she can hear us, too.”

A laugh tumbled from Zaria’s throat. “Be honest.” Her hips twitched forward, like they wanted to thrust. “How often’d you jerk yourself, up in that tower?”

“I could’ve been a carpenter, if my only job was painting walls.”

He rushed ahead, pressing his lips to hers. Her laughter turned to a shuddering sigh. His tongue traced across her creases, dug through her folds, only barely keeping pace with his desire. The hand on his face shifted around to the back of his head, and her thighs closed toward his ears, eclipsing the room from sight.

“By the cunt of—” She took a ragged breath. “Gods clear me out, I’d heard humans had smooth tongues, but I never—”

He gave a hard, dragging lick, and her words disappeared into a hiss. Already, her emissions were coating his face, soaking into his scraggly beard. The taste was metallic, sour, the texture coating his tongue. Every time he drew back for a breath, a spider web of strands still clung to his mouth, still connecting his lips to hers, and the sight only made him dive in deeper, mouthing and kissing and licking. While his face was occupied, his arms roamed around her thighs, looking for something to grab.

“Forget it,” she said, her hand still clutching his head. “Forget everything I said about you being my squire.” She drew a breath. “Oh, this is your new calling, love. We’re gonna do this every fuckin’ day, now on.”

He pressed his face deeper, rubbing his nose through her lips as his tongue circled her opening.

“Oh, did you like me saying that?”

His hands took a meaty grip of her thigh. At the same time, her clawed fingers began to stroke through his hair.

“I think you did,” she said.

He squeezed again.

“In that case,” Zaria continued, “I’ll have you on your knees whenever the feeling strikes me. Any time, any place.”

Her thighs pressed around his head.

“I’ll have you drinking my juices for thirst.”

Her hips slid forward along the bench, grinding against his face.

“I’ll treat you like the most handsome prince of the land, so long as you keep that tongue between my legs.”

The blush on his face was almost as hot as the feverish pulse coming from her loins. His sensations were all a blur of liquids, some heady concoction of her wetness, his saliva, and the water from the pool. Losing all his fear, he drew shapes with his tongue, roaming in circles, side to side, squeezing his muscle down to a needle to dig through her folds and pushing it out flat to drag across her lips, and he knew he was doing right because she reacted to every one of his touches, her fingers massaging his hair, her thighs shivering in and flexing out, her breath stopping at a gasp. Every little nudge confirmed the rightness of his efforts, which only sent him further into lust and frenzy.

He found, in himself, a great satisfaction in making her squirm. Maybe it was revenge. More likely, it was pride.

He liked being proud.

“Higher,” Zaria panted, tugging him with her thighs. “Isaac. Higher—the fucking—higher—”

He moved upwards, his ears rubbing through the embrace of her legs, and began to mouth at the hood of her sex. Almost immediately, she bucked herself against him, her legs entirely leaving the floor as they draped across his back. He enclosed his mouth around his new target, beginning to suck in earnest.

“Xotra’s—”

A gasp echoed across the ancient bathhouse. Her tail whacked against his chest, wagging furiously, and she bent one of her legs over the other, her knee locking behind his head like the buckle of a belt, squeezing him deeper. He was now completely trapped against her sex by the vice-like grip of her thighs, his every breath smothered in a sopping carpet of fur.

“Don’t stop,” she growled.

He had no intention of doing so—in fact, the roughness of her embrace made him work even harder. He dug with his tongue, gently licking the nub of flesh while his lips provided suction and pressure, hoping to overwhelm her senses. At the same time, he was personally growing dizzy, her feminine musk flooding through his nostrils, boiling his brain, drenching every breath in her taste.

He could not have imagined a more delightful prison. He could not have imagined anything close to the reality.

He could not have imagined how he had lived his life without this.

“Squire—I’m—”

Her legs locked him tighter, and she began to outright fuck his face, her pace erratic and needful, wringing him for all he was worth. Isaac held on by the meat of her thighs, continuing to lick as best he could while she bucked and shifted and grinded. He felt her growl vibrate down her body. In one final effort, he gave a soft, jerking suck of her clitoris.

Her climax announced itself with a flood of emissions, her muscles flexing, her moan trembling out, her hand and thighs gripping his head, her fluffy tail whapping against his chest, his face locked tightly in place as she rode through a gushing note of ecstasy. He held his breath as best as he was able. After what seemed nearly a minute, she began to relax, slowly releasing him from her sopping wet embrace.

When he sat back on his heels, Zaria was almost helplessly splayed across the bench, her legs out, her head tilted back, her breath panting and hard.

“Gods,” she said.

Isaac took a moment to breathe.

“Gods,” she repeated.

“You know,” he said, swallowing her viscous cum. “I like the way you moan, madam knight.”

As if waking from a stupor, she rose to an elbow, her thighs parting around his head. She tried to speak. Nothing intelligible was heard. After a moment, she grinned, all her teeth glinting orange in the firelight. She fell backwards onto the stone furniture, gazing up at the bathhouse ceiling, releasing a long, happy sigh.

Isaac rose to his feet. His tongue felt numb and slimy. His beard was dripping wet with her juices, and he looked over to the pool, considering the idea of washing himself again. He decided against it. He liked the idea of her fluids drying on his face.

A moment later, Zaria began to sing.

“By the burning sands, by the spouting sinks

He found his want, he found his drinks.

With a thirsting hand, all atop the sand

He licked her cunt, and called her grand.

Hey, hey! Away!”

Isaac blushed, his skin feverish with embarrassment. Zaria lay on the bench, completely sprawled, her loins still dripping wet, her voice bellowing the shanty with a weak pitch and a moaning rhythm.

“Hey, hey! Away!

Gnashed her gash till she dripped and splashed.

Hey, hey! Away!

Sucked her muck till she tossed and bucked.

Hey, hey! Away!”

Deciding to keep himself busy, Isaac tossed more lichen into the fire and rummaged through her pack for a waterskin. He took out two, drinking greedily from the first. He knew the value of keeping hydrated during exertion.

Zaria began to clap to her song.

“O, he noshed it once, and he noshed it twice

Clap

He drank her straight, like the sweetest spice

Clap

He drank her fast, and he drank her slow

Clap

And he damn near got her guts in tow

Clap

Hey, hey! Away!”

“Catch!” Isaac shouted.

Zaria blinked from her reverie, just in time to see a waterskin flying at her face. She caught the pouch offhand, still giggling to herself, her eyes reflecting the firelight.

“Get your strength back,” he said. “We’re going again.”

She snorted. “Oh, are we?”

Isaac angled his body close to the fire. Hanging above the flames, his cock stood hard and eagerly erect. Without taking his gaze away from her, he wiped her cum from his face and used it as lubricant to wet his member, stroking up and down with a firm grip. He pointed his finger at her, then down at his cock.

Zaria was so shocked she nearly sputtered. For a while, her response alternated between laughter, attempts to catch her breath, and a quick guzzling of the skin. When she spoke, it was only to say: “What happened to my squire?”

He approached her again, moving slow.

This time, she did not rise to greet him—instead, lying on her back, she opened her legs and spread her lips with a hand, her pink walls still glistening with his saliva.

For a moment, practicality pierced through his lust. Isaac began to worry of mechanics. The bench she was lying on was about as tall as his knees, and his cock was perched at a rather strict angle. After half-crouching between her thighs, he tried to force his member into a better position, because, surely, it couldn’t enter her while pointing at his belly, but that quickly proved the wrong angle for penetration, and he sat back, staring at her sex like an engineer working a trebuchet.

Panic rose up inside him.

His body knew exactly what it wanted to do, but his conscious mind was betraying him, making him question every decision. The more he did nothing, the harder it felt to start.

“Isaac.”

He looked up at her, like he was committing a heinous crime.

Zaria had risen onto her elbows, her snout curling into deep, gouging lines. “You made a promise. You better keep it.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, I just—”

“Either you fuck me, or I’m getting up and I’m fucking you.”

He blinked.

“Make a choice,” she said.

And, suddenly, things were simple again.

It was like battle, like fighting the necromancer. Either he killed her, or she killed him. Just like the life and death struggle of combat, there was no time to hesitate.

Hesitation was defeat.

He would not lose to the necromancer, and he would not lose to her.

Without another word, he gripped her thighs, aligned his cock with her slit, and speared himself inside.

The sensations struck him in a blur, like a sword piercing his gut. She was tight, slick, roaring hot. Her cunt gripped him like a fist. He burrowed himself through until his thighs slapped against the meat of her ass, making a dull thump of flesh, and the sheer marvel of him actually having sex immediately compelled him to stop, remaining stationary and hilted into her, struggling to regain his focus.

He heard a growl.

Suddenly, Zaria ripped her thighs from his grip. They wrapped around his hips, tight and coiling. She squeezed him deeper, like she meant to break him in half. Her face had the appearance of someone ready to fight to the death.

“No slacking, squire.”

Isaac growled back, surprising himself more than her, and he bucked his hips against the grip of her legs, managing a shallow thrust. He tried again, pushing harder. He was allowed some leverage and immediately bucked for more, breaking open the belt of her legs. Leaning his hands against her abdomen, he thrusted with a surging need, harder than he thought either of them could handle. Through it all, she was hotter than a furnace, she was softer than silk, she was wet and tight and perfect, she was better than he could have ever dreamed, and he wanted to fuck her so hard she’d never walk again.

They fell into a savage rhythm. Her flesh rippled with every thrust, his body making the most obscene sounds when it crashed into hers. As he worked himself inside, she began to knead at her breasts, panting loud.

“Harder!” she yelled.

Isaac increased his pace, toiling at himself. The mechanics were starting to falter. The bench was not at the right height, his positioning was awkward, his feet were slipping on the floor, and even his rigorous mnemonics training could not prevent his muscles from straining at the effort. He’d had no idea that sex could be so exhausting.

“Harder!”

He needed to improvise.

This time, when he hilted himself inside her, he rubbed his pelvis against her clitoris, remembering the way she had done so before, in the chapel. He continued this for a moment, hoping for a reaction. Zaria gripped her breasts, a snarl flaring from her teeth. Isaac thought of an explorer approaching the den of some vicious beast, hearing the growl of a predator, one that told the ignorant traveler that they would surely die if they proceeded any further.

“Deeper!”

He gave it his all. He held no strength in reserve. He struck so hard and fast that his testicles began to ache.

Finally, Zaria rose from her prone position, her arms reaching towards him. She hugged him tight enough to force the air from his lungs, and she flung him down on top of her, rolling her hips in time with the flip to keep him embedded inside. He fell face-first into the valley of her breasts, the soft globes pooling over his shoulders, his entire body resting on top of her, his feet barely able to reach the floor.

“Deeper!”

Suddenly, he could thrust deeper. The angle had changed, the pressure had shifted, their anatomies were more properly aligned. His hips bucked again, and he thrusted so deeply into her that he feared his cock might rearrange her intestines. By now, there was no part of his body that was not compressed against her—her arms hugged his back, her legs wrapped around his waist, and her chest smothered his face in a luscious carpet of fur. He rubbed his cheek against it, relishing the texture, burying his nose in the hairs and breathing deeply of her scent.

“Squire! Suck on my tits!”

Isaac complied without the slightest hesitation. She relaxed the grip of her arms just enough for him to scoop one of her breasts towards his face, and he sucked on her areola in much the same way he’d done to her nethers, sealing his lips around the nipple, gently tugging and licking as it tried to bounce with his thrusts. Her response was somewhere between a growl and a shudder, the claws of her hands digging at his back.

On the craggy stone wall next to them, the shadows of their bodies were mashed into one giant form. It didn’t look much different than the necromancer’s mass of bones, creating a seemingly horrible configuration of gyrating shapes and grasping limbs, all of it undulating upon itself.

Her nipple fled from his mouth as he laughed.

“What’s this?” Zaria shouted. “You think this is fun and games?”

He laughed even harder.

Suddenly, in the middle of one of his thrusts, her tail brushed up between his legs. The sensation was so unexpected, so penetrating in its position, that he nearly leaped off her body. Her grin widened as she kept batting her tail beneath his groin, thumping it like a dust feather, forcing him to brush against the fluffy appendage with every buck of his hips. He discovered, rather forcefully, that he was ticklish.

“Stop it!”

“Make me!”

Feeling that he was losing the tactical advantage, Isaac lay his body flat against hers, freeing the use of his hands. He cast a thin layer of frost across his palm and pressed the icy surface deep below her armpits, where the fur was very thin. Zaria gave a girlish scream.

“That’s cheating, Isaac!”

“Yes, it is!”

She pried his arms off her flanks, growling and panting. Her legs strangled down on his hips, all but sealing him against her, and he dipped down to suck at her breasts again, almost working her like an opponent in a duel. He wasn’t exactly sure who was fucking who anymore. She was stronger, she was far more experienced, and he was quickly losing ground.

He could feel the pressure building inside him again. From the sound of her breathing, the same was happening to her. Suddenly, he saw his chance at victory. He used the last of his strength to unleash a full-frontal assault, pounding and sucking and gripping and lashing and using all the leverage there was to offer. Their breaths grew erratic. Striking flesh echoed over the pool. Very quickly, their movements became desperate and needful and wanting.

She would orgasm first. He could feel it on every writhing inch of her body.

He was going to win.

But just as he was about to cross the precipice, she bent her head towards him, rubbing her snout against his ear. In a quiet, cooing voice, she whispered only a single word.

“Squire.”

Isaac’s orgasm exploded through him, eclipsing all his senses. Zaria came a distinctive second later. They tightened their grip on each other, as if they might get swept away, and he seemed to pump every single drop of cum he had into her, her walls contracting and trembling around him, her claws scratching across his back, her legs pressing him as deep as he could possibly go, sharpening every note of ecstasy. When the waves of pleasure finally receded, and all their muscles fell limp around them, it felt like waking from a dream.

His mind reeled.

His entire body tingled in pleasure.

With a sigh, he buried his face in the fur of her chest, rubbing his cheeks through the fluffy hair. He could not believe how soft she was, beneath the armor and steel. The interplay of muscle and fat was endlessly fascinating. It seemed almost impossible that someone like her could feel so luxurious, so pleasant, so rich in delicacy.

He took a deep breath.

It occurred to him that, in some way, he was starting to deeply enjoy the way she smelled. Now that she had washed herself, it was a subtle and layered aroma, bathed in the natural complexions of her body. He could study it like he studied her fur.

But, instead, as he often did, he became aware that her hands were on his back, mindlessly scratching at the skin. Their presence sent worry piercing through his thoughts.

Had he done well?

Had he gone hard enough for her?

Had there been some technique he could’ve employed to improve the experience?

Worst of all, the idea occurred to him that she had, indeed, fucked someone else before, and that sent him careening over a cliff of comparisons, worrying about his performance, worrying about an unknown rival, worrying. . . .

“Isaac.”

Her fingers burrowed beneath his chin, lifting his head up towards hers. He did not feel ready to face her. Just when Isaac was about to apologize, just when he thought he needed to explain his failures, she kissed him.

He froze in surprise as her tongue moved past his lips, slithering passed his teeth, coiling around his own muscle, seeking and batting. On complete instinct, he closed his eyes, pressing his lips against her muzzle, pushing his tongue back against hers. They flexed together, curling and probing, wrapping and sliding. He could feel the slight barbs on her tongue, the ones that were used to strip meat from bone, and he was very aware that she was only flicking him with their points, trying her best not to hurt him. In the end, the experience was awkward, their anatomies clearly mismatched, but there was a tenderness to it all, and that seemed to matter the most.

Just when he was starting to run out of air, she pulled back, still holding his chin. Her brown eyes opened slowly, meeting his own with a smoldering gaze. They looked at each other, silent.

She must’ve felt how violently his heart was pounding.

Did she know?

Did she feel him being afraid?

“That was great,” Zaria said, grinning.

Isaac fumbled for a response.

Suddenly, she sat up from the bench, moving so swiftly into an upright position that he was nearly flung from her chest, like a stone from a catapult. Her hands gripped his ass, keeping him in place. With a grunt, the hyena lifted Isaac by the rear, flinging him bodily over her shoulder.

“Hey!”

“Quiet,” she said.

“Let me go!”

Zaria stood up from the bench, shifting him like a heavy sack of grain.

“I will not be treated like this!”

She moved over to the fire. The world was upside down. As she moved, his head bounced against her back, barely avoiding the scythe of her wagging tail. She bent to a knee, seemingly digging through their packs. By the way her shoulder flexed, he could only guess that she was smoothing some piece of fabric.

Isaac cast a small flame into his palm, holding it out backwards for her to see.

“I dare you to,” she replied.

He ended the cast, letting his limbs hang listlessly. In a dying fit of rebellion, he grabbed a handful of her ass.

“Don’t be cheeky, squire.”

He slapped her ass.

Without warning, the world flipped, and he landed hard on his back. She had created a bed out of their sleeping rolls and blankets, layering the fabrics so deeply that it was actually somewhat comfortable to lie on. The lichen fire was warm at his side, and the shadows danced across the calm surface of the pool. He felt ready to fall asleep at once.

Zaria pounced on him.

The impact knocked the breath from his chest, and she used the opportunity to pin him against the pile of bedding, enveloping him in a mountain of fur. She scoured his face with licks. Wherever she licked, she also rubbed, kneading her furry cheeks against his skin, grinding her scent deep inside. At times, the cold tip of her nose pressed into his neck. She inhaled greedily, a pleased growl rumbling from her chest.

Isaac lay still, letting her do as she pleased. He imagined a wildebeest being eaten alive on a prairie.

Finally, she stopped, rose above him, let her tongue hang low, and dragged it along his face, wide and heavy and hot. She was forced to pin him down halfway through. By the end, there was a gash of wet, hot skin running diagonally along his head. A hundred baths might not have cleansed him of the experience. With her mission complete, she shifted her body down, her head resting against his chest, her arms wrapping around his back, adjusting the angle of his body like one might fluff a pillow. Slowly, she relaxed against him. With the nearby fire, and the layers of bedding beneath, he felt surprisingly snug.

Even still, Zaria was very heavy. Isaac was able to breathe beneath her, but it was a trying experience, and he was reluctant to expand his chest while she was using it as a pillow. He remembered reading about executions where the victim was pressed between two heavy boulders of stone, and he began to feel immeasurable sympathy.

Not for the first time, Isaac wondered what he’d gotten himself into.

“Are we not going to clean up?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“I like to let it marinate.”

He made a disgusted sound. She snorted. For a time, Isaac gazed up into the eroded stone ceiling, listening to the lichen fire pop and sizzle. He closed his eyes and opened them again.

“Zaria?”

“Hm?”

“I think you’ve ruined my sexual tastes forever.”

She melted into giggles. “Oh, ‘twas always my plan.”

Her cheek nuzzled into his chest. Her breathing slowed. He could feel their heartbeats mingling through the flesh, almost syncing into rhythm.

Sleep called to him. The day had been long, and he couldn’t say that this was not the most comfortable he’d felt since the start of his journey. But, through the haze of their coupling, he felt his uncertainties rise again.

The necromancer. His father.

What they had just done.

What it meant. What he was doing.

The future.

Her ear twitched. “What’s the matter?”

“What?”

“Heart’s beatin’ fast.”

“What do you like about me?” he asked, suddenly.

She shifted her head, as if opening her eyes. His heartbeat only went faster.

“Won’t answer that.”

“Why not?”

“Isaac, my intention toward you ain’t really subtle. Don’t think too hard.”

“I know that—”

“Are you not enjoying this?”

He was covered in saliva, sweat, half a carpet’s worth of her rubbed off fur, and several drying smears of cum, donated by both their bodies. Her own body was soft, warm, and crushing.

“I am,” he said.

“Then why are you thinking your way out of it?”

“I—I can’t help it. I’ve always had to. . . .”

He’d always been struck for wrong behavior.

He had to know.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll indulge you, just the once. I expect no more of this in the future. It’s not healthy thinkin’, and I won’t abide it.”

“Sorry.”

“Shut up. How’re we gonna split the treasure?”

“What?” The question completely surprised him. “Evenly, I thought.”

“I’m talking mechanics. You know, physical split. We gonna count it by hand? Draw straws for the goblets and such?”

“Oh. Um . . . no. I’ll do a survey, and I’ll bring it back with my main report to the Diet collegium. When they send an expedition team, they’ll bring minting officials to appraise the horde, carry it back to civilization, convert it to modern currency, and hold it in trust for us, like a bank.”

“Sounds perfect,” she said.

“It is a well-regulated process.”

“I don’t mean that in a good way, love. To me, perfect is suspicious.”

“Suspicious?”

“Aye,” she said. “For example, your robed ledger keepers’ll just give it all to an outlaw, like myself? Won’t pull some wordy legal nonsense to steal it, will they?”

“It’s rightful discovery. Anyway, I’ll make sure to—”

“I suppose,” she continued, interrupting, “you’ll have me sign a bunch of contracts, which I can’t read, to get the coin back, won’t I?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“No chance all your magic men just burn me to cinders, neither?”

“Hey, no—”

“You realize,” Zaria said, “that we still gotta get back to your wizarding world, in the first place. Soren weren’t the end of my pursuit. Half the ships of the desert will be combin’ for me. The second I walk from this place, I’m a target again.”

“I have to walk back, too,” Isaac said. “We can go together. I can . . . protect you, with my magic. You’ve seen how I handled—”

“And you’ll still honor our deal, despite you already gettin’ your father out of it?”

“Well . . . yes?”

“You think he will honor our deal?”

“. . . why wouldn’t he?”

“Isaac,” Zaria said, “I’ve been cheated all my life. Had my father sell me for coin. Had my pirate mates taking everything I couldn’t steal myself. Had more cunts than I can count betray a deal just ‘cause it was cheaper to do so.” Her cold nose rested on his pectoral. “Suffice to say that I wouldn’t trust an innkeep to toss me an ale that wasn’t watered down, and, now, here you are, telling me that you’re gonna go out your way to split an ancient treasure, barely a day after I was threatening your life for it.”

In the silence, a fire crackled and danced.

“I’m not sure,” Isaac said, “how I can convince you otherwise.”

“Don’t have to,” Zaria replied. “Not a doubt in my mind that you don’t mean what you’re saying.”

“. . . really?”

“Aye. I hear it in your voice. The fact that you clearly hadn’t considered any of this just seals it further. And that’s the first thing I like, because I don’t trust many others, as you’ve seen.”

He didn’t answer.

“Speaking of threatening your life,” she continued. “First time I saw you, you were dying of thirst, barely able to stand. You had no chance against me, and you still went down swinging. In the chapel, with my dagger at your neck, you had this fire of defiance in your eye. I’ve had a blade to my throat more than once, and I was never that strong about it. I mean, fuck me, we just had a dragon come screaming out the earth in front of us, and your first instinct was to run forward and scream right back.”

“It’s what I was trained for.”

“Oh, aye, speaking of that, too—you’ve got a rather cutting edge to your words, sir mage. Some half-decent wit, if I can be the judge.”

“I use it to hide my massive cock.”

“Fuck off,” she said. “How’s it work, exactly? Someone who’s been smacked like a dog all his life, grows up so quarrelsome? Thought your uncle would’ve beaten that out of you.”

“He tried,” Isaac said. “But he could only punish my words, not my thoughts. No matter what he did, I always had my mind. That was my refuge. I promised myself that my mind would always be free and wild.” He paused. “It’s not as rebellious as I’m making it sound.”

“Not at all. To me, sounds like you kept your principles, despite everything you’d ever known trying to rob them away.”

“Essentially.”

“I think we’re very alike in that regard.”

He listened to the fire crack and sizzle.

“Also,” Zaria said, “your tongue’s just perfect for licking cunts.”

“Alright, that’s enough.”

“I’m being serious, now. You feel free to do so again.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You don’t gotta ask, even. Just the sight of you on your knees will send my heart aflutter.”

“I’m quite sure of that.”

“Think of how mad the sorceress’ll get. Think of all the fury she’ll spit from her grave, knowin’ that no one’s suckin’ her clunge like you are me. It’ll drive her reckless. She’ll make a blunder in her rage. Really, in the end, you licking me is a tactical decision.”

“Well,” he said, pretending to be impressed by her logic. “I suppose I have to, then. If it’s for the mission.”

“Aye. Dutiful, you are. Couldn’t ask for better.”

He stared up into the craggy ceiling. He had a certain feeling in his chest, separate from the strain of her crushing weight. He could not identify what it was.

It was not unpleasant.

“That good enough for you?” she asked.

“Yes. I—um—” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank a lass after fucking her, Isaac.”

“N-no, I mean—thank you for . . . I’ve never had . . . m-my uncle would always—”

“I know what you mean. Just teasing.”

“Right,” he said, blushing.

“Oh, you’re cute.”

“Shut up.”

She settled her head against his chest. As the conversation drifted away, he became aware of the thicker tufts of fur brushing against his stomach. Her legs mingled with his own. With his eyes, he traced the mohawk running down her neck and upper back, noting the difference in texture with the surrounding fur.

He wanted to stroke it.

His fingers curled on the rough stone, daring to lift.

He thought of her rejecting his touch. He thought of her shoving him off. He thought of her standing up, moving away, and never looking at him again.

But he wanted to, and he dared to try. He settled his hands on her upper back—with one, he stroked through the long hairs on her neck, and with the other, he scratched around the fading wounds on her upper back, through the divots and trenches of muscle. Her response was a quiet note of surprise. She shifted herself, leaning into his touch. He kept his efforts gentle enough that they might aid her in sleep.

After a moment, she gave a long,   blowing sigh, as if it was the first time she had relaxed in quite a long time.

“Isaac?”

“Hm?”

“I’m glad it was you that blew up my ship.”

There was a pause.

“I could’ve met a worse pirate,” he said.

Her breathing slowed and lengthened. He never stopped scratching. Eventually, she began to snore. He fell asleep with a smile still on his face.

Chapter Fifteen

Harbinger

Slowly, the murals and myths turned to laboratories.

Cages were the first sign of experimentation. Many of the testing areas seemed indistinguishable from a dungeon, their rows littered with the husks of metal bars and rotten straw beds. Occasionally, there were small rooms with drains in the floor, whose only purpose seemed to be the washing and processing of bodies, the same way that a farmer might groom their cattle before the slaughter. By now, centuries of neglect had melted through the prison, leaving the horrors as nothing more than a shadow on the stone—still, if he tried, Isaac could faintly see the foundations of manacles in each of the forlorn cells, including the claw marks raked into the walls.

He imagined, for a moment, what the experience might’ve entailed.

These prisoners would likely have been slaves, a tribute of sacrifices offered from a vassal of the necromancer empire. They would be shackled, herded together, transported down through the catacombs, and paraded across the bony pavements of the necropolis. If they were lucky, their fate would be met at a life extension center, their souls sucked through their flesh and ground away into medicine. If they were unlucky, they would be transported all the way to the pelvis of the colossus, where they would be subjected to batteries of necrotic experiments, continually killed and resurrected until only wisps remained of their essence.

He was very glad this empire had died.

The flooded ruins had ended somewhere around the lower abdomen. By now, the two of them were making their way through testing grounds and research stations. Many of the larger rooms were dominated by sets of alchemical equipment, mixed with a few apparatuses that Isaac could only guess aided the transfer of transmutational energy. In contrast, some of the areas had an obvious martial nature. Zaria was quick to point out the positions of rusty weapon stands, reinforced doors, chokepoints in the hall. To his credit, Isaac also noticed a few sets of metallic coils embedded into the ceiling, which were the equivalent of catalysts for a necrotic hex. A few of the sigils had left a faint scar in the masonry. If they were still active, they would manage such a snarling of entropy that any person who stepped within their field would be vaporized in the blink of an eye. Fortunately, all of them were dead.

Isaac still watched them carefully.

The longer they went on, the more it became obvious that the testing chambers had been funded by the city’s government. In his estimation, they had been designed both as a place to further the study of necromancy, and to serve as a last bastion for the ruling class, should some invasion or rebellion cripple the city. For an empire that sustained itself on the lives of its vassals, this was not an unreasonable concern.

Of course, Isaac saw no signs of conflict now. The laboratories were buried in dust rather than rubble. There was no indication of violence, civil unrest, famine, some type of plague, or any other calamity that had killed countless civilizations before.

He had to wonder—how exactly had this city died?

“Squire. Observe.”

Isaac stopped reading a rotten notebook. He turned to see Zaria juggling several glass flasks, the flared bases and thin heads spinning unpredictably through the air.

“Stop!” he yelled, aghast.

“No, no, trust me, I can do this.”

With a flourish, she tossed one flask into the air while catching the rest in her palms. As the flask completed its arc, she craned her head forward, trying to angle the flat of her skull beneath. The flask landed right-side, exactly between her ears, staying perched only a moment before sliding through the fur. She tried to catch it, lost her grip on the other two flasks, and three pieces of glassware ended up shattering on the floor.

“Ah,” she said. “Shite. That usually works with tankards.”

“Could you not destroy ancient relics of the past?”

She brushed some of the shards with her foot. “Were you impressed, though?”

“Incredibly. Now stop touching things.”

He began to make notes of the chemical reagents lining the walls. Zaria retrieved her poleaxe from its resting position against a prisoner’s cell. She stopped suddenly, head swiveling back to the entrance. Her ears went tall.

Isaac paused. “Did you hear something?”

She didn’t respond. The laboratory ceiling hung low, the tremendous weight of rock and earth seeming to bulge above their heads. Every sound felt ready to be crushed.

“Thought I heard some scuffle,” she said, after a moment. “Might just be nerves. Unsettlin’ ain’t even close to describing all this.”

Isaac grunted in agreement, continuing to write. Around them, the laboratory glassware was filled with skulls preserved in jars, cross-sectioned femurs still lying under primitive microscopes. A few sections of the wall were wrapped in the vine-like tangle of ossein, the matrix of fibers that made up all skeletal bones. A brush of his hand confirmed that the fibers were composed of actual bone. He wasn’t sure if the ossein had been planted there for decoration, or if it had grown by some unspeakable festering process. The way it spawned across the walls suggested the latter, which only made Isaac question if the necromancers had discovered a way to grow bone from a controlled medium, like others grew wheat.

Was it still growing now, like a plague, deep in the heart of the earth?

He decided to leave that question for later.

A short distance away, Zaria examined the scratch marks carved into the metal of a particularly large cell. “Got a question for you, love.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t.”

“How did—” She paused. “What’s that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“You calling me stupid?”

“Not at all,” Isaac said. “I’d characterize it as a vast inexperience in the matters of academic pursuit.”

“Talking like a book will get you pressed like one.”

“Ask your question, please.”

She gestured at the cages. “So, these cannibal wizards—they sucked the souls from the prisoners and ate them, right?”

“I wouldn’t use those words, but yes. That was their practice.”

Zaria prodded a rusty bar. The metal flaked with a touch of her naked toe. “They could just . . . suck your soul, right away? I mean, right outta you?”

“Yes.”

“Would you . . . be aware? Of it happening, I mean?”

“Yes,” Isaac said.

“You would be?”

“Oh, yes. You would be aware of your fate, until the soul itself was destroyed.”

“And you know that, for a fact?”

“Some experiments were done before the Scorch. They produced some . . . immoral results.” He read the label on a vial of moldering acid. “Once the Diet was formed, it heavily regulated the field, to ensure ethical development.”

Zaria grunted, kicking the cage again. The rusty bar snapped and tumbled away. “Could they do it the other way ‘round?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could they put their own souls in someone else’s body?”

“The goal,” Isaac said, “was to replenish their own soul energy, to extend the length of their life. Putting a soul in a new body wouldn’t fix that. There’s no energy being added to the equation.” He continued to write. “They weren’t just consuming the souls, either. The corpses had a purpose in fighting for their armies. They made furniture of them. They had uses for the bone.”

“Furniture,” Zaria said. “Outta people.”

“You’re wearing leather armor, aren’t you? What do you think leather is made of?”

“Cows?”

“Livestock.”

“Aye, well—” She adjusted the strap of her pauldron, looking disgusted at the material. “Vekra’s tits.”

Isaac continued to write.

“What I’m getting at,” Zaria said, “is that you said they were warring, constantly, to get these bodies. War brings injury. Soldiers would come back without a limb, with burns, broken teeth, arrows they couldn’t dig out. Always a lotta cripples, coming outta war. These bone cunts must’ve had broken bodies. So why did they never put their own souls into other people?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Isaac said. “It’s called core rejection. A soul can’t be implanted into a body that doesn’t ‘fit’, for lack of a better word.”

Zaria trailed her hand along a hanging chain.

“It depends,” Isaac continued, stuffing his tablet into his pack, “on the composition of the original body, and how it compares to the new. Putting the soul of one species into another is near-immediately fatal. Even a same-species transfer—human to human, for instance—can cause a very deleterious effect. The new body can’t bend its limbs. It can hardly draw breath. The organs starve from lack of nourishment. And the brain itself—the organ which shares reasoning with the soul—almost always drives the new soul insane, from what we assume are the incompatibilities of personality. The old person lingers in the flesh. They infect the new, leeching memory and habits and thoughts. The results are . . . disquieting.”

Zaria looked down the line of cages. It stretched to the end of the room. “Stuffing new souls into old bodies doesn’t work at all, then?”

“It only works with family,” he said. “Close blood relations, like father to son, where the inheritance is strong. Even then, it’s tricky. The Diet of Nine hasn’t developed the proper technology to do the procedure without great risk. To date, few have survived the operation.” He flipped a page on his sketchpad, continuing to jot down notes. “That was one of the reasons my father was sent to this tomb. These necromancers excelled in manipulating souls, and the Diet hoped they might find some clues or machines that could improve the discipline.”

“I don’t like that,” Zaria said. “Some things should stay buried.”

“Magic can be made ethical. That is why the Diet exists.”

“Ain’t a diet about eating things?”

Isaac did not answer.

The laboratory filled with silence. Around them, osseous fibers snarled across the wall, growing like fungus on a corpse.

“This sorceress,” Zaria said. “She’s the lone survivor, of all this?”

“The only one.”

“Is that the kind of murderous cunt we’re making alliances with now?”

Isaac pursed his lips, staring up at the apparatus of an energy converter. “It’s going to be very temporary.”

“I think so—check ahead.”

He looked over the metal cage. On the stone floor of the laboratory, stamped through the layers of dust, there were many footprints, all walking in proximity. For a moment, Isaac thought of soldiers filed strictly for a march.

“They’re recent,” Zaria said. She sniffed the air, her black nose twitching. “I can smell ‘em through the rot. Lots of humans.”

“Thralls.”

“Aye.”

Isaac moved to approach.

He knew, for a fact, that the necromancer wouldn’t have asked for their aid against the puppeteer if the two of them weren’t in a position to help—namely, if Isaac and Zaria weren’t getting close to their mutual enemy. Whoever this interloper was, they were standing between them, the necromancer, and his father. After following a trail of bodies for several days, the two of them were finally closing in.

A confrontation was coming.

Slowly, Isaac limbered himself, working through some of the pre-mnemonic positions. “Be on your guard.”

Zaria nodded, keeping the spear tip of her polearm pointed at the laboratory exit. He paced around her, noting with some disquiet just how many sets of footprints were stamped through the dust. He poked his head through the door. The corridor beyond was empty, ribbed with the bulbous lamps of cartilage light. Above, the giant vertebrae running through the vaulted ceiling had stopped taking the appearance of lumbar sockets—now, they were beginning to fan out into a sacral appendage, which would form the wall of bone that, in humans, connected the spine to the pelvis. They were reaching the groin of the colossus.

From the pelvis, they would have to descend the legs. At the feet of the giant corpse, the necromancer would be waiting.

So would his father.

“The puppeteer’s thralls are magically capable,” Isaac said. “Each one of them is deadly. Ambushes and stealth are going to be our best chance.”

“In that case, take this.”

She held out her dagger, which was still wrapped in the leather sheath. The hilt alone was massive. It was designed for zoanthrope hands, and Isaac would have to wield it more like a sword.

“Last resort,” Zaria said. “I’ve seen how winded you get when the fighting’s thick. Might be vital in a pinch.”

“Are you sure? You could use it, yourself.”

“I’ll manage. Any human who tries to attack me in close quarter is a foolhardy sort.” She gave him a look. “As you know.”

He took the sheathed blade, stuffing it into a hip pocket. “Thanks, Z.”

“Huh?”

“I said thank you.”

“You said something else, too.”

“I don’t—no, I didn’t.”

“Oh, yes you did.”

Isaac had prepared himself to speak with confidence. Instead, now that the moment had actually come, he was blushing terribly. “I, um—you know—you keep, uh. . . .”

She waited, grinning. Her hyena complexion was surrounded by glassware and rotted bellows. He had to crane his neck to look up at her, which did not help at all.

“Well,” Isaac said, more firmly than he felt, “since you are very persistent in calling me squire, I thought I would give you a nickname, as well. You know—Z. It’s short. Simple. Unlike a squire, it’s not horribly offensive to your talents. It’s a nice, modest diminutive.”

She gave an exaggerated gasp, which echoed down the laboratory. “Are you attemptin’ to give me a cutesy moniker?”

“It’s just for convenience’s sake.”

“Am I your special missus?”

“Don’t take it that far.”

“Shouldn’t I, now? Suppose I take this as a warning sign, for all your boyish desire?”

“By the gods,” Isaac said. “Just forget I said anything.”

“At this rate, I expect you’ll worship at my feet.”

“Zaria—”

“No, no, no. Look at me, squire. This is serious now. You best believe I’ll want you to call me that in front of those grand wizards of yours. Your father, especially.”

Isaac took a deep breath.

“I’ll certainly want you to moan it lovingly, while licking me from cunt to tail.”

“Ivtarr preserve me.”

“But listen here. That’s as far as she goes. I’d be a dry whore’s cunt before I let you ask my hand in marriage. You hear me, squire? I am insulted by the notion. You expectin’ a vicious outlaw to be your wife?”

“Please stop.”

“Imagine me,” she said, gesturing at her leather and fur, “wielding naught but apron and ladle, tending the stew, pining for the moment you grace the door of our wizard tower. Offends the senses, does it not?”

He glared up at the laboratory ceiling.

“Imagine,” Zaria continued, “we make some little children, some half-magic babes, and they go around shitting fire, robbing the peasant folk, bringing a second Scorch with teeth and wands. You want to loose beasts like that upon the world?”

“I want this conversation to be over.”

She grinned.

“Stop it,” he said.

“You’re adorable.”

“I am not adorable. I am a journeyman of magical transmutation, trained to slay an ancient necromancer.”

“You’re adorable, squire.”

He cleared his throat, checking the corridor for threats.

“It’s a fine moniker,” Zaria said, still grinning. “Might be I like it, in fact.”

“So,” he said, loudly, “how about those evil sorcerers? By the gods, we should do something about them. Right?”

“Oh, aye. Hero of ages, we are.”

“We’ll have songs committed to our name.”

“We better get castles, at this rate.”

“Yes,” he said. “Of course. Definitely.”

“Any time you’re ready, then.”

“Yes, yes, onwards.” He rolled his shoulders, limbering his arms. “Stay behind me, Z.”

She nodded and smiled.

They emerged into the corridor, crouched and hugging the wall, following the stampede of human footprints. It was impossible to tell how many thralls the puppeteer had under their command—the dust was so heavily trampled that it often looked similar to the mud of a village street.

Isaac did some mental math.

They had seen two bodies before the necropolis. From there, they had watched Soren defeat a full assault from the puppeteer, which had consisted of at least a dozen thralls. Whoever this person was, they had already lost a sizable contingent of forces, and, yet, it still did not appear as if they were lacking for fodder.

How had they amassed such an army?

More importantly, how did this sorcerer find thralls who were trained in magic?

They must have come from somewhere within the Diet of Nine. The supranational organization held a monopoly on all elemental magic, at least within the nine kingdoms of the region. With a vast desert restricting travel on one side, and a stormy ocean on the other, they effectively had total control of the discipline. There was little other source for such a wealth of magically inclined flesh.

Were these thralls apprentices and journeymen, like Isaac himself? Students of transmutation who had been twisted and enslaved by a rogue sorcerer? None of them had been older than Isaac, and that suggested they had come directly from a college, while they were still in the midst of their studies.

But where?

From which region of the Diet?

More importantly, who would even have access to these students?

Isaac led the way deeper into the government laboratories, tracking the footprints like a hunter, stalking past empty checkpoints and libraries of rotted books.

Of course, he might not need to worry. The vulnerability of every puppeteer was their own singular flesh. They were incredibly powerful, becoming far more capable of withstanding the inherent attrition of magical combat, but, in the end, they were still just a person. People can die very easily. Once the caster was neutralized, the parasite sigils would lose their power, and the thralls would be freed of control.

Possibly.

Hopefully.

Since he was focusing on it, Isaac began to notice something strange happening to the dust in this region. It was extremely fine, almost to the point of being invisible, and it seemed to glint faintly in the cartilage light, like it was made of a precious metal. In some places, it was beginning to clump along the walls, mingling with the osseous fibers already protruding from the stone. It was filling the gaps in the masonry, like mortar between a crack. If he squinted, he could’ve sworn the dust was moving, wriggling and breathing like moss. It almost—

“Isaac,” Zaria whispered.

He looked.

The stampede of footprints curved off suddenly into an adjacent room. It seemed to be a very abrupt detour. All the thralls had followed.

Right now, the door was closed. He heard no sound. Isaac gestured, and they stacked up on opposite sides of the frame. Zaria pressed an ear to the wall, listening. She shook her head. Even still, she began to extend her polearm, ready to stop a charge with the length of the weapon. Isaac balled a tangle of flame into one hand, grabbing the finger-shaped handle with the other.

He looked to her. She nodded.

He opened the door and rushed inside.

A council chamber greeted him. In the middle of the stretching room, there was an open circle of knuckled stone, capped with a dust-covered husk of a lectern. Several fetid skeletons surrounded the standing desk, all of which were displayed like a college lesson. Isaac assumed it was a research presentation. As he made his way further into the room, he saw the faint residue of resurrection on the bones, as well as desks and chairs surrounding the stage, arrayed in rows like pews in a church.

The desks were made of real bone, woven together like a basket.

Isaac grimaced.

“Clear,” Zaria said.

Towards the back of the council chamber, there was an open square of darkness. It took Isaac a moment to recognize it as a hole in the floor. At each corner of the square, thin metal beams rose into the ceiling and deep down into the lightless chamber below. If he had to guess, it looked like an elevator.

The room was empty. There was no sign of the puppeteer or their thralls. Standing by the door, Zaria took a few tentative sniffs of the air, glancing back the way they came.

“Smell something?” Isaac asked.

For a long moment, she glared down the empty corridor, as if daring whatever lurked in the shadows to attack.

“Thought I did,” she said. “Nothin’ now.”

“If you keep hearing things. . . .”

She gestured him on. “I’ll keep watch. Do your thing.”

“My thing?”

“Pulling wonders from the arse of evil. Hurry on, now.”

“Ah, yes,” Isaac said, heading in. “I can see my dissertation now. ‘Archaeological sodomy.’ It defends itself, really.”

He made his way through the rows of desks, heading toward the elevator. From the square hole in the floor, cool air rose to greet him. A faint breeze was blowing from the depths of the earth. He thought of the dynamics of air. For a breeze to arise, the cavern below must be very large, large enough that its size caused an internal system of weather. He couldn’t see the carriage attached to the elevator, and he wasn’t entirely sure it hadn’t long ago snapped off from the rusted support beams. There was nothing but darkness.

He grabbed a chair from a nearby desk and tossed it down the hole. It disappeared without a trace. After listening for half a minute, he heard no sound. The cavern below them was, indeed, very deep. It might go all the way to the bottom of the tomb.

Close to his father. . . .

Only a single set of footprints had been carved into the dust around the elevator. The tracks came to the precipitous edge of the open shaft. From there, they widened into a full-body print on the floor. It looked, rather plainly, like the puppeteer had dropped to their belly and stuck their head through the floor. This confirmed that the rogue sorcerer had a corporeal form, at the very least. It was said that the most powerful wizards could evolve beyond the flesh.

Isaac took a breath.

Gingerly, he dropped down to his stomach, inched his shoulders over the gap, and bent his head down into the chilly air.

There was only darkness. It was a perfect black, like the depths of the catacombs, where no sunlight had ever touched. At the same time, even without a single detail to focus the eye, Isaac could immediately feel the vastness of the space around him, like he had somehow fallen into the night sky, where the three moons were in their darkest penumbra. If he slipped now, he imagined he would fall forever.

He fought through the feeling of vertigo.

Eventually, after some careful shuffling, he saw a crackling pillar of purple light, far away in the distance. It was not quite a solid line—instead, the light was composed of faint purple streaks, seemingly carved at random, like the scratch marks in the prisoner cells. Some were long, some were short, many were jagged and wide, and, together, they all combined to give the faint impression of an obelisk. It was some kind of massive tower. Clearly, it was big enough to run down the full length of the giant skeleton’s legs, right to the bottom of the tomb.

That was it. That was where his father was. Down there, at the bottom of the obelisk.

He strained his eyes against the darkness, trying to scrutinize the structure. His mind raced with possibility.

His father, jailed in the sorceress’s lair.

The necromancer herself, waiting for his arrival, surrounded by oceans of bone, as well as an equally large sea of treasure.

He was close now. His life’s purpose was almost at hand.

The longer he strained himself, the more detail he was able to discern. It appeared that the lines he could see in the pillar were cracks in the structure, the ancient walls having crumbled from millennia of disrepair. The purple color was coming from a very large source of light, shining across the length of the tower. If he squinted right, he almost thought that he could see the purple glow moving and churning, like blood inside an artery.

All at once, he noticed a faint sound in the chilly air. A whispering noise was coming from the obelisk. Considering the distances involved, it must’ve been exceptionally loud.

It sounded like screaming.

“Isaac!” Zaria shouted. “Get your head outta there!”

“I can see the bottom of the tomb!” The cavernous air seemed to absorb his voice. It didn’t even echo back. “It’s an obelisk!”

“A what?”

“A tower! Big pillar! Very massive!”

She took a moment to respond. “We’re near the legs, ain’t we?”

“Yes. I think, if I chart its position properly, I can navigate us through the pelvic—”

“Does that mean it’s a giant cock?”

Isaac pulled his head from the open hole.

Zaria had wandered over to the open presentation circle, grinning beside the skeletons. “Ain’t got my anatomy mixed up, have I?”

“That is the evil lair of a necromancer,” Isaac said, sternly.

“Big tower, you said. Long. Tall. Hard.”

“Please don’t ruin my discovery.”

“Massive length. Piercing the earth. Fucking it, you could say.”

“It is an obelisk. It’s filled with light. I think it might be soul energy, a vast cauldron of whatever souls the necromancers have amassed.”

“This cock’s filled with souls, is it? Aren’t all the others?”

“Zaria!”

She snorted.

“Awful,” he said.

“Oh, come off it, squire.”

Isaac wiped dust off his robe, trying to track where the puppeteer had exited the room. “Look, this is very good for us. We’ve found our way down to the bottom. If we can get to the coccyx, I think the obelisk will connect—”

The door to the room flung open.

Both of them turned, startled. Something was thrown inside. Isaac couldn’t see the object over the rows of bony desks. From the stage, Zaria raised her weapon, took a look, gave a very loud curse, and sprinted toward the back of the chamber, her long digitigrade legs pounding over the floor.

Underneath her steps, he heard the hissing of a fuse.

An explosion ripped through the room. The blast was deafening, the sound bouncing hard, the shockwave slapping him over and upending several desks, the stone-paved floor erupting in a shower of shrapnel and bone. Isaac was scrambling for the cover of a desk when he glimpsed the door opening again. Someone sprinted into the room.

By now, Zaria had reached his position, and she practically threw herself on top of him as another blackpowder bomb exploded, the shockwave slapping through the tender meat between his bones.

For a few moments, he gasped for air, reeling in shock.

After a few moments spent gasping for air, he tried to peek out from the corner of the desk, hoping to get a glimpse of their attacker. Zaria pulled him back. It was almost too late. A throwing knife sliced through the spot where his face had been an instant before. As he cringed back into cover, several more blades embedded themselves through the woven bone of the judiciary desk, the steel splintering through the skeletal remains, emerging like thorns in a bush.

Through the ringing in his ears, he heard a frenzied voice begin to shout.

“Zaria!”

Isaac risked another peak from cover.

Captain Black Eye Soren stood in the center of the council chamber. The burnt flesh on her face was twisted into a snarl. Her leather outfit was tattered and filthy, her cutlass visibly dented, half her grenades missing from the belt. At some point, she had wrapped the exposed fur of her body with pilfered segments of bone, forming a grisly cage of armor.

“Gettin’ real sick of this shite,” Zaria said.

“Zaria!”

Isaac pulled his head back. Another throwing knife speared through the bone-weaved desk, spraying the two of them with splinters.

“Ya bilge rat!” Soren shouted. “Ya sodding codpiece!”

Isaac balled a hurricane into his palm, lifted the hand above the desk, and fired it backwards, hoping to intimidate her.

A snarl came in response.

“Sic your magic fucktoy on me, traitor! I dare you!”

He began to perform more mnemonics. Zaria clamped a hand on his shoulder, shaking her head. When he stopped, she shouted back: “Should’ve turned tail, Soren! I gave you that chance!”

“You think I didn’t try?”

“It don’t look that way! I’d say you’d gone mad!”

“I have gone bloody mad!”

Soren’s voice was rasping and wild. It had been close to a day since their confrontation—if she was still in the tomb, she must have spent most of her time journeying deeper, just as they had been doing. Unlike them, it seemed like she’d spent the entire time fighting for her life, without food or rest or pause. When he had taken a glimpse, her entire body had been covered in bone chips and lacerations.

Zoanthropes did not appreciate the term, but Isaac couldn’t think of a better word to describe the situation.

The bunny was going feral.

“I ain’t foolish!” she yelled. “Fuck this tomb! Fuck the bony cunt runnin’ it! I was happy to flee, because I do got some sense!” Another knife stabbed through the desk. “But you know what? She sicced her beasts on me! It were a whole streamin’ ocean! Oh, but not my crew! They get free passage! They get an escort back to sunshine! Only I’m condemned to death!”

Zaria paused. “All the rest made it out?”

“That better not be relief in your voice, you fuckin’ cunt! You’re the reason they’re here!”

“You’re the reason they’re here!”

Another knife skittered through bone.

Isaac ran a finger along one of the embedded knives, thinking. It was obvious, by now, that the necromancer was listening to their conversations. She could sense their life, and she could smell their breath, and every pulse of their heart would echo in her ears like a church’s bell, and it was only natural that she would spy on her opponents.

But what was she doing, exactly? This information from Soren was inexplicable.

Why spare the pirates?

Why focus all her effort on Soren herself?

If the necromancer had listened to all their thoughts in the necropolis, she would have heard Zaria’s desire to spare the crew, as well as her insistence that Soren was the most dangerous of the lot. This, in turn, would explain how she knew to focus her efforts on the captain, but it would not explain why the sorceress had decided to act this way at all. She had no reason to obey Zaria’s wishes, let alone escort her crew to the surface.

For her, the crew of pirates would have represented a valuable source of energy and nourishment. It was a way to prolong her parasitic life.

Why had she spared them?

“My crew’s abandoned me!” Soren yelled. “All I got is sword and powder! And you know what? I ain’t stupid! I won’t be seeing daylight again!”

“That’s your own fault, capt!” Zaria yelled back. “No one forced you down here!”

“Shut your flappin’ cunt! If my fate is sealed, then I’m taking you with me! You’ll never see that treasure so long as I’m drawing breath!” One more knife slashed through the bones around them. “Face me, you craven whore!”

“Zaria,” Isaac said.

The hyena turned to him.

“Say what you want to your captain.”

She blinked, splintered bone falling from her mohawk.

“Say what you want to your captain,” Isaac said, “before I kill her.”

Zaria gripped her poleaxe. “Soren! Captain! Listen clear, now!”

A rabid snarl echoed across the chamber.

“Join us!” Zaria shouted. She silenced Isaac before he could argue. “That’s your only chance! If you want to live, stop being such a principled cunt and help us fight! Fight the bones, fight the mages! We’ll make it outta here if we just stop fightin’ each other!”

Soren laughed, like a prisoner facing the gallows. “You gonna cut me in on the treasure, are you? You think a hoard of gold’s gonna buy your life from me?”

“Fuck that!” Zaria replied. “You’re lucky I won’t shove a goblet up your arse! You’re getting your life, and nothing more!”

Another knife stabbed into the desk, skittering out through the bone, tumbling over the floor, and skittering down the hole of the elevator. Isaac was beginning to wonder how many she had.

“I won’t be insulted by your mercy!” Soren shouted. “Not after what you’ve done! My last pleasure will be watching the light fade from your eyes!”

Zaria shook her head, taking a deep breath.

“You’ll never last!” the bunny screamed, her voice so hoarse it was like a rasping of bone. “Even if I’m gone, the others will know! Every ship of the fleet will be braying for your blood! That gold down there won’t protect you! You’ll be hunted to the end of your days! You’ll never know a different crew again! Even the sands will flay you for your crime! I promise, on my word, as a creature born of the desert, the stain of your sins will blacken your soul to the last putrid breath, you gutless wastrel!”

There was a pause.

“Isaac,” Zaria said. “Would you kindly kill this cunt for me?”

He nodded. “Cover your ears.”

She pressed her ears down as he cast a spike of ice, the frozen point sticking out of his palm like the tip of a spear. He angled his hand up towards the ceiling, aiming carefully. He loosed, and a thin stream of ice erupted from his arm, fanning out into a flat, thin triangle, which formed a crust of crystal stalactites on the ceiling. He made sure those crystals were large and sharp. When he was done, the entire length of ice hung like a diagonal curtain from desk to roof.

“What’s this?” Soren said, almost laughing. “You trying to scare me, human?”

Isaac did not reply.

“Come on, love. Aim a little better. Poke that head out from cover.” There was a click, a hiss of a burning fuse. “Let’s have that duel.”

Isaac pressed an ear to his shoulder, pointed his finger at the ice, and fired a burst of sound.

On the ceiling, the ice exploded in a shower of glinting shrapnel. Isaac and Zaria braced together as a hail of ice and stone sliced through the room, tearing apart the skeletons on the stage. Underneath the blast of sound, Isaac heard a scream of pain.

Ears ringing, he leaped out from cover, pointing his finger like a cannon.

He found Soren reeling on the circular stage, a hand clutching her face. There was a grenade in her other hand, the fuse lit and shrinking. She flung the bomb awkwardly, stumbling back, blind and deafened. Isaac marched ahead, ignoring the grenade, pointing his finger at the pirate captain. Behind him, Zaria cursed and ran.

He loosed more sound. Soren ducked away, slithering down beneath a desk, recovering with remarkable speed, and Isaac’s salvo of magic blew open a wall of the council chamber, scattering rubble into the adjacent hallway. He could see glimpses of her scrambling along the floor, snaking her way between the desks. She was visible by the tall white of her ears.

He pointed his finger.

Her grenade exploded.

The eruption struck him hard, mere feet from where he was standing. Only the cover of a bony desk saved him from evisceration. Even still, he was slapped like a bottle from a shelf, the breath knocked from him, the mnemonic activation of his magic disappearing as he stumbled and fell to the floor. Dirt and stone rained in his eye.

As he blinked the dust away, Soren leaped into the air. For a moment, with his mind reeling in shock, time seemed to slow.

A flashing sword.

A nimble speed.

A screaming fury.

Isaac regained himself, rolling at the last possible instant. A cutlass scraped over stone, missing flesh. Both of them scrambled. She was faster. Back on her feet, Soren dashed for him, moving like a knife, one of her eyes as black as death.

“Captain!” Zaria yelled.

The bunny paused. An entire desk sailed through the air, tumbling end over end, and Soren stepped easily to the side, letting the furniture crash against the nearby wall. Zaria stood a few rows away, her hands now empty.

“Nice try,” Soren said.

“Same to you!”

The bunny turned, and Isaac blasted her with wind.

Soren was blown off her feet, sailing halfway across the room, bouncing, rolling, smashing through several desks, her white ears tumbling like leaves in a breeze. Isaac picked himself up, threading a path through the chamber. Two hurricanes balled in his hands. By the time Soren managed to stand, he slammed his wind into the floor, creating a surging wall of force, flipping over every desk and chair in its path.

The bunny flew again. When she stood, a sharp blast of wind knocked her down. Isaac did not stop marching. After a breathless snarl, Soren attempted to sluice between the desks, using her short stature to her advantage, dashing low through the chairs and walkways. He lost track of her. He caught a few movements. After a few blind guesses, he approached the sound of a scuffle.

A grenade was on the floor, the fuse burning away.

He flung it forward with a gust of wind, and the bomb exploded in the air, damaging nothing but furniture. Soren dashed from the side. Her ambush had almost worked.

“Fuckin’ die!”

He turned, coiled a gust, and flung her away.

“You first,” he said.

By now, most of the room was a debris field of masonry, spilled rock, jagged metal, and an ocean of splintered bone. Soren went spinning through it all, unslowed by any obstacle. By the time she tumbled to a stop, her body was just at the edge of the elevator. For a moment, she coughed and sputtered, unable to rise.

Zaria stood up from the cover of the desk. Beside her, Isaac came forward, a small tornado of wind cocked in his hand.

The bunny continued to groan, her cutlass still in hand, one of her white paws gripping the edge of the open hole. Now that she was immobile, Isaac could see a field of shrapnel embedded in the burned flesh of her face, all of it made from ice and stone. Blood leaked over her armor of bones.

Slowly, she met his gaze. Her black eye reflected his face, the glass as perfectly dark as the chasm beneath her.

“Least I wasn’t gonna cheat,” she said.

“You should have,” Isaac replied.

He shot the wind from his hand, and Soren tumbled off the edge, disappearing into the massive cavern below. She did not scream. There was no sound of her body bouncing against a support beam, the missing carriage, or any other structure hidden in the dark. She disappeared into the inky black like a sailor lost at sea.

Isaac sat down on the floor, panting. He kept his hand aimed at the dark hole of the elevator, even though his limb felt as heavy as lead. After a few moments, a pair of hands wriggled under his arms, pulling him back to his feet.

“You alright?” Zaria asked.

“Sure. Catch my breath.”

She nodded, walking over to the edge. After a moment, she spat into the darkness.

“Goodbye, captain. ‘Twas a pleasure, for the most part.”

There was a pause. Nothing emerged from the pit. Somewhere behind them, a piece of debris crumbled from a wall.

“Are you alright?” Isaac asked, panting.

She looked at him. He could see that her expression had been solemn. An instant later, it was back to a grin.

“Never better, squire.”

He glanced around the council chamber. Most of it was now lying in pieces, and all the untranslated titles and ornamentation had been lost, along with the research notes on the lectern. It may now be impossible to discover whatever had been presented here.

Isaac didn’t really care. He stood up, took one last heaving breath, made sure the dagger Zaria gave him was still in his pocket, and led the way out of the room.

The hallways continued on, coursing beneath the colossal pelvis above their heads. They passed through military barracks, dust-covered offices, chemical storage closets, vast prisoner complexes. The more the rush of battle faded from his veins, the more Isaac was able to properly navigate the corridors. Things were silent now. They were alone, and they had time to prepare for the next battle.

He left the rumination to Zaria.

At one point, he lost sight of the sacral vertebrae above, and Isaac was forced to venture over to a pair of signposts, using his cipher to translate the ancient language. Many of the destinations had sinister-sounding names.

Office to the Hegemon of Sacrifice.

Department of Levies and Souls.

The Maggot Prince.

Her Holy Radiance of Exalted Death.

Isaac decided that he was really beginning to hate these people.

Once he had properly oriented himself, he was able to deduce the shortest path down to the obelisk below. It would take them through what appeared to be a large complex of rooms, at least according to a local map. A lot of the surrounding architecture seemed to converge around this area. For all its importance, it had a rather plain-sounding name.

Extraction Chamber.

Isaac grimaced. He knew exactly what this meant.

Their path was soon to be grisly.

Oddly enough, as he continued on through the halls, he found himself thinking less of the atrocities committed untold centuries ago, as well as the fight he had just survived with Soren. Instead, his thoughts turned again to the necromancer, the one who had survived the fall of empire.

Something was rubbing him the wrong way.

He could not figure out why she had spared the lives of the pirates. According to Soren, the necromancer had gone very far out of her way to not only isolate the bunny from her crew, but to make personally sure the crew themselves made it to the surface. She had escorted the crew with a fraction of her necrotic mass. In other words, the necromancer had protected them.

Why?

It made no sense at all. Isaac remembered the fight against the wyrm, when the sorceress had parted the sea of bones around him, and he felt a sense of disquiet bubbling up through his belly, because sparing all these lives had merely denied her a form of nourishment, when she likely needed it the most.

What was she doing?

Why, in the world, would she spare all these people?

He tried to tell himself that there might be a reasonable explanation for all this, that the sorceress was trying to intimidate the pirates into fleeing in a panic, that she wanted them to spread the word about her power and myth and curses to the lands above, that what she was really doing was lulling Isaac into a false sense of security while she consolidated the worst of her strength deeper within the tomb, hoping to catch him off-balance after defeating the puppeteer. None of these explanations were obviously wrong, but they all rang hollow. None of them felt like the truth.

Something was happening here, and he did not know what it was.

His sense of disquiet only grew worse.

Slowly, the dust interrupted his thoughts. In the air, surrounding him, the specks were drifting and twisting, as if recently disturbed. When he concentrated, the glinting motes suddenly curled, shifting like sand sinking through the hills of a dune. They formed an arrow. It was an obvious point of direction. It was, quite obviously, a wholly unnatural phenomenon.

The air sparkled, like metal. The more it glinted in the light, the more Isaac was convinced it was not dust at all.

He gazed in the direction it wanted.

Down an adjacent hall, there was a pile of human bodies. Even from a distance, it was obvious they had been perforated with holes, the gaping punctures leaving jagged marks in the flesh. As he focused his attention, bones began to wriggle their way out of the holes, the white stalks squirming through the flesh like maggots, tumbling to the floor, rolling and collecting.

Beyond the massacre, the corridor widened. He could finally see the sacrum, the central plating of the pelvis. It was no longer above his head, but curving down toward the floor, spread out before him like a white, porous cliff, the beginning of the pelvic wings curving like mountain slopes. On either side, he could see the slight ridges and twin rows of holes that signified where the vertebrae had fused together. Each circular vent had been walled with granite and gold, carved intricately with religious iconography.

In the middle of the triangular sacrum, a relatively small set of bronze doors stood closed, surrounded by stalks of glowing cartilage. Here, the walls were covered with even more growths of ossein, like white mold upon rotten food.

The Extraction Chamber.

As the masses of bones slithered from the fallen humans, they congregated around the bronze doors, wriggling into the same undulating shapes they had adopted in the catacombs. The masses shuffled and tossed around the door, agitated and restless, absently absorbing into each other as they passed and strolled. Isaac could see human blood dripping down the stairs before the doors, like gentle red curtains.

“Follow my lead, Z.”

She slapped his back.

He pressed forward, marching fearlessly toward the chamber. Halfway across, he was noticed by the bones. The masses flexed in surprise. At first, they wriggled down into individual bones, smearing blood across the pavement as they slid in his direction. He kicked them away, continuing on. Next, the more mobile masses throbbed into his path, the skulls in their frames attempting to grind out words. Isaac cast a dome of anti-necrotic light around himself, eliciting shrieks of pain and fear as the bodies slithered away. He burned a path through their ranks, like flames through a garden.

By now, the rest of the bones had smeared themselves across the door to the sacrum, creating a pulsing membrane of body parts. They were sealing the entrance shut. When Isaac stepped onto the bloody stairway, the bones did not retreat—in fact, they remained defiant against him, bursting into flame as his light seared through their hollow frame. Even in death, they refused to yield.

All of this, he thought, felt rather desperate on her part.

“Out of my way, necromancer,” Isaac said.

Skull stalks grew from the wall, sprouting like dandelions. The skinless faces chittered at him, swirling into a collection of eyeless stares.

“I—I—Issssa—Isssaaaaaaac.”

He stepped back, just enough that his light was no longer burning the bones. Molten bone flowed like candle wax. “You couldn’t kill Soren, could you? Apparently, you tried very hard.”

The skulls clacked their jaws.

“Or maybe,” Isaac continued, “you left her alive, hoping she would ambush us, like she just tried to do.”

Behind them, the squirming masses congregated together, sealing off any hope of retreat.

“Well,” Isaac said, “thank you for sparing the pirates. I’m glad to see you’re upholding our alliance. Or, rather, I’m glad to see you’re taking my delayed killing of you with such good grace. It’s appreciated.”

“Isaac,” the head stalks replied.

He glanced at the dead humans behind him. Their robes were black, their faces young and vacant. “Is the puppeteer beyond these doors?”

The head stalks nodded.

“Do you want me to kill them?”

On the wall, the crawling bones quickened like blood in an artery. The skulls shook violently from side to side.

Zaria pressed herself to his back, baring her teeth at the bones.

“Why not?” he asked. “Isn’t that why you spared my life?”

The skulls did not move. They only stared at him.

“Is there something in this chamber that you don’t want me to see?”

After a few long moments, the skulls nodded.

“Are you going to attack the puppeteer yourself? Is that why you don’t want me to interfere?”

The bones crawling along the door shuddered, like a bird unfurling its feathers.

“Well,” Isaac said. “Either way, I’m sure this is all very inconvenient for you, but I’ll be entering your torture chamber now, if you don’t mind.”

“Isaac,” the skulls replied, shaking themselves from side to side.

Zaria waved her axe at the surrounding masses of bone, as if daring them to approach.

“What game are you playing, necromancer?” Isaac demanded. “Don’t you want my aid? This puppeteer is too strong for you to handle alone, aren’t they?” He glared at the skinless faces. “They’ll kill you if I don’t interfere.”

Nearly a dozen faces stared back at him. They nodded once. There was a certain finality to the action.

“Then what is this?” Isaac asked. “What do you want from me? Are you simply going to beg me to leave?”

For a long moment, the skulls did not respond. The only sound was the dry scraping of bone over bronze. Eventually, the stalks extended, shunting more vertebrae into their lengths. He thickened his spell, creating a radiant shell of white, and he felt Zaria tense beside him, her poleaxe held firm and ready.

The skulls stood at the edge of the lighted dome, peering into the brightness. Their gaze was silent and still. No facial expressions could be read from the ancient bone. Shadows danced through the empty sockets.

Then, all together, the skulls nodded again, with the same sense of finality.

“I am not leaving,” he said. “I will see my journey through. I’ll rescue my father, and I’ll cleanse your defilement from this place, for the good of all who’ve perished here. However. . . .”

Something made him speak. The way the skulls were looking at him, how the bones scurried to block the doors, even the leering sway of the masses behind him.

It reeked of desperation.

Something was very wrong here.

“If you surrender,” Isaac said, “then I will show mercy. I will take you back to the Diet to face fair judgment. Your crimes are many, but . . . maybe some good can come from the knowledge you possess.”

Her reaction surprised him. The skulls flailed along their stalks, some of the faces snapping from the vertebrae columns entirely. The bones on the wall boiled like insects. Every skull careened from side to side, nearly losing their jaws with the force of motion. It was the most furious head shake he had ever seen.

“Do you have some personal vendetta against the Diet?” Isaac asked.

The skulls nodded briskly.

“The Diet is barely a generation old. You’ve lived for millennia. What quarrel could you possibly. . . .” He trailed off, not finishing the thought. The skull did not answer. All of a sudden, he did not care if it ever did. “Well, regardless, that is your only choice. Death or imprisonment. You can try to stop me, but you will not dissuade me.”

The skulls gathered around each other, chittering and gasping. “Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac.”

“Get out of my way,” Isaac said.

For a long moment, the head stalks swayed above him. The flowing masses of bone leered closer, their bodies crackling with constant motion, their forms growing angled and sharp. Zaria filled the air with a snarl.

Suddenly, the bones shifted away. The bone crawled from the door like a column of ants, severing the stalks as they fled. Bones poured down the bloody stairs, retreating beside his feet, tumbling into rivers and streams. The bones coagulated together. They stood silently behind him, watching.

The doors were clear. All that remained was a lone skull sitting on the top of the stairs, staring up at him. Its eye sockets shone empty in the cartilage light.

“Isaac,” the skull said, quietly. Isaac pushed open the doors.

Chapter Sixteen

Inheritance

Isaac found himself on the outskirts of an industrious facility, one composed of utterly massive proportion. The Extraction Chamber was vast enough to encompass the entire pelvic cavity, each of the wings rising in peaks and troughs, the thick curtains of bone rimming the expansive room like the caldera of a volcano. From the entrance, it was almost impossible to see to the other side.

Isaac blinked through the gloom of cartilage light. For a moment, he could not believe what he was seeing.

This was a factory of death.

It became obvious, almost immediately, that the entire facility had been constructed as an automated apparatus. There was a sorting area shortly in front of him, filled with a rotten pile of jewelry and what had once been clothes. There was a conveyor belt. There were buckets full of teeth. There was another conveyor connecting to the first, stretching up to the ceiling. Above his head, there were endless rows of coffins, hanging like the chrysalis of a caterpillar. Each of these coffins was doored with glass. There were skeletons inside of them, most of their forms broken beyond recognition.

Once above the floor, there were tracks for the coffins to slide. Along these tracks, there were articulating automatons, metal poles composed into the imitation of limbs, forming a snarled webbing of metal and wires and joints. Each of these limbs were tipped with strange devices. There were pincers, scythes, and needles. There were tools for injection, threshing, mastication, filtration, dilution. There were cauldrons for the emulsification of flesh. There were scoops for organs. There was a vat of jellied eyes.

There were many of these patterns, these woven machines. There were other sorting pens, other conveyors, other automations. They filled the room. They webbed the sky. There were so many other sites for the procession of bodies that Isaac struggled to humanize the number, to not lose the arithmetic in all the horror and gore.

The machines repeated, on and on and on.

Slowly, he noticed that every automated line was connected to a complex lattice of pipework, conjoining itself with the tangle of piercing limbs in the same way that nerves, in the flesh, will creep along the pathway of veins. The pipes were not a separate system—instead, they were clearly fed by each step of the extraction process, pumping whatever excretions came from the mutilated bodies down into a snarl of valves, junctions, and shafts. From there, the souls would feed deeper into the earth, irrigating the rock and stone.

Isaac remembered the obelisk, teeming with the light of souls.

He nearly gagged.

Despite its age, the air still reeked of mortality. The death of thousands had left an indelible stain. Blood and viscera caked the metal extractors, like a grisly layer of rock. There were metal drainage gates at regular intervals, their grills stained black with rot and pulp, their shafts littered so heavily with bone that the sewers briefly resembled the straw matting of a barn.

He chose to focus on what was in front of him.

In the outskirts of the extraction chamber, before the sorting of the corpses, a large standard of the stripes and stars hung limply in the cartilage light, displayed above a stage. Below the standard was the puppeteer and his army of thralls.

He was human. He wore flowing black robes, the material so utterly dark that it almost seemed to devour the light, to make him a flowing form, a void between the stars. He was standing in the center of the stage, working at a bank of metallic devices. His back was turned, and wisps of purple light coiled around his body, obscuring his features in haze.

At the sorcerer’s back, a ring of thralls surrounded the stage. Their bodies were still, their expressions limp. In the distance, through the dust and metal, he could see more of the robed thralls moving along the drainage shafts and retention tanks. Zaria’s hand came to Isaac’s shoulder, pushing him down. The entrance to the chamber had a tiny foyer that was shielded from the cartilage light. None of the thralls seemed to notice them. Their attention was plainly focused on the pipes and drains, places where the bones might return to life.

“Isaac,” Zaria whispered, grabbing the flat of her axeblade. It took him a moment to realize she was preventing the steel from glinting. “Do it. Now.”

“What?”

She pointed at his hand, mimed a mnemonic cast, and flung it toward the puppeteer.

The black-robed man had not noticed their entrance. His back remained turned, crawling with purple fog, his attention focused on the metal devices upon the stage. Isaac thought he saw lights blinking over the panels.

“No,” Isaac said. “The thralls are in the way.”

Zaria looked at the ring of humans surrounding the puppeteer. “They’re already dead, aren’t they?”

“No. They’re alive. That’s the point. He uses them as reservoirs for energy.”

“Cuttin’ them down’s a mercy, then.”

“If I can kill the sorcerer,” Isaac said, “they could be saved.”

“Could be?”

“There’s no guarantee.”

Her eyes moved to the patrols roaming through the dust and machinery. “Gotta be prudent, here.”

“Not if I can help it.”

She gave him a stern look. He shook his head.

With a restrained sigh, Zaria examined the room, checking angles and lines of sight. Isaac glanced behind them. The bronze doors had closed. On the other side, he could still hear a tide of scraping bone, like the hissing of innumerable beasts. The necromancer would be spying on their confrontation. Just like the parlay with Soren, she would be waiting for a chance to strike.

Isaac watched the puppeteer, considering his options.

“Right,” Zaria said. “Here’s the plan. I’ll scamper along the side, close to the pipes. On my signal, hit them glass coffins above their head. I want loudness. A spray of glass. I’ll rush in towards the robed cunt there, and—”

The man turned, looking silently at a knot of thralls beside him. The sigils on their heads burned a little brighter, and they marched to the edge of the stage, their brains so numbed with magic that most of them tripped stolidly over the edge, not even bothering to brace for the fall. Once recovered, they fanned out to opposite ends of the sorting area, a ball of flame held in each of their palms.

As the puppeteer returned to his work, Isaac caught a glimpse of the man’s face.

His heart skipped in his chest.

It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He didn’t have the specialty—how had he managed—where had he found—

No.

No.

Zaria squeezed his shoulder. “Hurry now, love, before they’re too entrenched. You gotta—”

Isaac stood up, barely aware of his surroundings. He hardly felt able to breathe.

“Isaac!” Zaria hissed. “Get down! What’re you—”

“Uncle!” Isaac shouted.

Ahead, below the tattered stripes and stars, the puppeteer froze in place. The purple clouds shimmered away, like a dying gasp. Beside him, the other thralls seemed to thaw back to life.

Isaac marched forward. “Uncle!”

The man flinched, as if he’d been struck.

“Berith!”

Slowly, the puppeteer turned to face him.

Berith the Bone Hunter was a tall, imposing man. Even in his stark black robes, he cast a long figure, like a stretching shadow. His shaved head reflected the golden light, the bare skin still pink and peeling from sunburn. His complexion was ruddy, his jaw square, his cheeks flecked with withered skin, places where splashes of necrotic magic had scarred the flesh. He had been handsome, once, before the years had taken a toll.

Right now, Berith’s eyes were open wide. They looked very blue, here in the light of cartilage. Isaac’s eye was the same color. He had always felt, in a way, that when he looked at his uncle, he was looking back at himself, because their blue eyes were something that no other member of their family had shared, including Isaac’s father. When Isaac was a child, his uncle had told him it meant that they, alone, were the only family who saw eye to eye.

When he saw his nephew now, emerging out into the grisly floor of the necromancer factory, Berith’s jaw dropped in horror.

“What are you doing here?” Isaac yelled.

Berith pressed himself into the powered device. All at once, the hanging coffins on the ceiling began to shake. Their glass lids shattered, and bones flew through the air in fits and swarms, wrapping around his sun-eating robes until they formed an armor of limbs and ribs. His uncle adopted a low mnemonic stance, a wreath of sickly green energy pouring from his palm.

Isaac stopped. He became aware of the thralls around his uncle.

His heart was quivering.

“What is this?” he asked. “How are you—you are the parasite? You’ve been here, all this time? Before me? Why didn’t you tell—”

“Silence!” Berith shouted.

Isaac flinched. In an instant, he had resumed the standard posture—his head bowed, his shoulders hunched, his hands open and limp. It came easily.

It was like he had never left.

Berith walked to the edge of the platform. Around him, dozens of thralls returned from their patrols, marching into rigid columns, their sigils bright and alarmed. Amidst the black robes, their hands churned with the preparation of elemental spells.

“Isaac,” Berith said, slowly, his voice thick and heavy. “How did you—” He breathed out, staring down at his nephew. “How did you get here?”

Isaac dared to make eye contact. “What—what do you mean? You taught me—”

“Isaac!”

Berith’s roar echoed down the extraction chamber, over the metal tanks, through the glass coffins, bouncing up and across the wings of colossal bone. The acoustics were just like the tower.

Isaac thought he was about to faint.

“Answer me!” his uncle shouted. “How did you get here?”

“I—I—” He swallowed. “I’m sorry. You said—I just followed—th-the map, the seal on the letter, the—the—”

“Did you not follow my instructions? Did you disobey me again?”

“No! No, no, sorry, no! I don’t—” He knew stammering would only make it worse. He gathered himself, his chest light and fluttery. “I don’t understand. Why are you asking? I did what you specified, I followed all the instructions, I was very diligent. I made it through the Charnel, th-through the eastern cliffs, the dunes. Wasn’t that the purpose? Didn’t you want me here?”

Berith breathed, his nostrils flaring.

A presence came to his shoulder. Zaria stood with her poleaxe held out towards the thralls, glaring up at Berith with a curled lip.

“Zaria,” he said, quietly. “Please don’t—”

“Shut up.”

“Z.”

She began to bare her teeth.

His uncle turned his attention to the hyena, as if only noticing her now. “Who are you?”

“The cunt who figured you out.”

Berith grimaced, twisting the necrotic scars. “Who is this, Isaac?”

“Oi, cockwipe,” Zaria said. “You’ll talk to me, instead.”

“Z!” Isaac hissed.

“Where’s your guts, squire? Ain’t this what you wanted?”

Berith made a noise in his throat. “A pirate, then. I should’ve expected as much, from one of the savage races. You people pollute these sands more than the Diet. I suppose, as well, this explains why a crew of them were blowing up the necropolis.” He turned to his nephew. “Have you made an alliance with this brigand, this—this—” He waved a robed arm. “This wastrel? This common thug? Is this what you do without my supervision?”

Isaac’s gaze stumbled around the room, roaming from his uncle to the thralls to the squamous grates of the floor. “I—I had to. She saved my life, in the Charnel. I’m sorry if she lacks in manners, but I assure you she was—I mean, she has been very . . . understanding to me, of my faults. She’s very nice. Perhaps I was too acquiescent—”

“Isaac,” Zaria said. “Don’t say you’re sorry. You’re not fuckin’ sorry.”

“I have to explain—”

“You don’t gotta explain shit.” She jabbed her polearm. “He does.”

The layers of bone on Berith’s chest began to twist and writhe, forming the crooked paw of a necrotic sigil. “You will address me with respect, pirate.”

“Don’t got any for you.”

“You’ll find that a grievous mistake.”

Zaria spat on the floor.

Around them, the thralls were spreading into a fan, their palms laced with ice and fire. The light of their sigils reflected on the machinery above.

“To answer your query,” Zaria said. “Your nephew, here, did follow your instruction. He went marching straight through the sand, and he charred off a whole hide o’ wyrms on the way into death, as well as a skimmer of throatcuts. He did everything you wanted, except for perishing of thirst. I had to save him from that.”

There was a silence.

“Oh, sure,” Zaria continued. “Don’t trip over yourself, thankin’ me for it.”

Something compelled Isaac to raise his gaze. When he did, he saw a mixture of expressions in his uncle’s face.

Lingering surprise.

Confusion.

Apprehension.

Fear.

His uncle was afraid of him. He had the face of someone caught in the middle of a crime. Berith, the Bone Hunter, a college instructor, a man who had pioneered the reacclimation of undead thralls, the man who had scoured the Diet of rogue necrotics, was watching his own nephew like violence had become inevitable.

Isaac felt a knife piercing through his heart.

“Say it aloud, then,” Zaria said. “You tried to kill your kin. You told him to walk through a pit of dragons, and, for good measure, you gave him bad direction to water, all to make his final days a long, miserable crawl. I’ve seen it done to folk, out here. A marooned pirate begs for the sword. The waste will eat you alive.”

Berith did not reply.

The silence dragged and rolled.

Zaria peeled her lip. “You may have whipped him into thinking better of you, but I had you pegged from the start, you gutless coward.”

Berith clenched his fists. His blue eyes glowed. Below him, in ranks and files, his thralls raised their arms. Thirty spears of ice and fire aimed themselves at Zaria. Above, more of the glass coffins shattered, entire starfields of bone flitting through the air until they were posed motionlessly above him, held in wait like bolts in a crossbow.

“I am talking to my nephew,” Berith said, “not some filthy, delusional marauder who thinks she has any right to lecture me on morality. Speak another word, and it will be your last.”

Isaac stepped in front of Zaria, shielding her with his body.

Berith’s eyes continued to glow. “Get out of the way, Isaac.”

He did not move.

“Get out of the way!”

He remained in place. His heart was pounding, his palms were slick with sweat, and he could already feel the memory of the cane burning across his back.

Berith sneered. “Why are you defending this cutthroat? She’s a murderer! A common thief!”

Isaac did not answer. He knew his voice would crack. It always did, whenever he spoke in defiance. A weak reply was worse than none. Most of all, he did not want Zaria to see it happen.

“What have you been doing behind my back, Isaac? Is this another one of your little rebellions? Another asinine fantasy?”

His hands were shaking. After all he had done, they still shook.

He was still weak.

He thought he had changed.

“Let me guess,” Berith said. “She ambushed you, out in the dunes. Never mind how some illiterate beastwoman managed to get the better of you, but she did, and she stuck a knife in your neck, and she made you spill the Diet’s secrets. You told her what you were doing, and I imagine she stabbed half her friends to death, on the spot, just for the chance to steal the treasure. Am I right?”

“No,” Isaac said. “There was not—it was my fault—”

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

“No!”

“You betrayed your mission! You let these pirates plunder the tomb!”

“No. No! That’s not—”

“How many Diet safehouses are in danger because of you, Isaac? Did you betray the trust of the nine kingdoms just to save your own neck?” The bald necromancer snorted in disbelief. “You had my letter. You stupid boy, they would’ve just taken you hostage. They would have sold you for ransom. You could’ve kept your mouth shut!”

“That’s not how it happened!” Isaac shouted. “She—she saved my life! I would’ve been dead without her! She’s—” He turned his head, just enough to glimpse her from the corner of his vision. It was enough to steady his voice. “She’s helping me. I trust her.”

“Oh, truly?” Berith said. “Have you grown fond of her? Is that it? Forgiven her for sticking a knife to your throat?” His laugh was angry and hollow. “You were always like this. Always fawning over every visitor I brought to the tower. Practically begging all your instructors for attention, like some sniveling dog. It was embarrassing.” The bones above his head shook in the air. “Of course you’ve grown attached to the first mongrel that showed you the slightest kindness. I suppose you’re just too weak to help yourself.”

For a moment, Isaac was so overcome with fear and guilt and rage that he stood quietly, surrounded by the machinery of death, completely unable to offer a retort. The old instincts were worming through his thoughts, the ones that always forced him to nod and agree and admit every accusation, because it would always end the lecture faster.

Zaria nudged him from behind.

His heart quickened.

His fists clenched into balls.

“Is it true?” Isaac asked, stepping forward. It was taking all of his strength not to lose his voice in fear. “Did you trick me into walking through a nest of wyrms?”

Berith’s glowing eyes pierced into him.

Slowly, making the movements deliberate and obvious, Isaac adopted the first mnemonic position for a fireball.

“Watch your hands, boy.”

He did not drop his stance.

His uncle’s eyes never left his face. “Yes. It’s true. I knew your knowledge of geography was lacking. That was by design. You were supposed to die in the desert. You were never meant to make it this far.”

He wanted his next reply to be loud, angry. He wanted his voice to boom in defiance. Instead, it was almost a whisper. “Why?”

Berith stayed silent, the red stripes of the standard billowing behind him.

Isaac adopted the second mnemonic position. Flames began to trickle from his palms, exceeding the weakened fire of every thrall before him.

“Why?” he shouted.

“I could not bear to see your corpse,” Berith said.

Isaac almost lost his stance.

“I could’ve done it a number of ways,” his uncle continued. “I could have sabotaged the wax symbol on the letter, tricking the shibboleth into immolation. I could have poisoned your food. I could have weakened your ropes, filled your vials with explosive reagents. My preferred method, if I had one, would have been to sabotage the sigils on your scrolls, causing the catalyst to backfire. I had many options.”

Isaac felt suddenly, inexplicably, like he was living a nightmare, like he had never woken from his sleep in the bathhouse, and now he was trapped in a false reality, one that was cruel, endless, and singularly malevolent.

“But I couldn’t. . . .”

Berith clenched his fists. The bones in the air shook above his head, like leaves on a tree.

“But I knew I wouldn’t be able to look at your body, when I entered the tomb. It hurt me to think of you, to think of my duty, to imagine you twisted, crumpled, riddled with maggots, consumed by necrotic decay. Every time I pictured it, the image would—” His breath came through gritted teeth. “It would hurt me. It kept hurting me. It nearly broke my resolve.”

Zaria placed a hand on Isaac’s shoulder.

“So,” the Bone Hunter said, “I arranged your death to occur somewhere else, out of sight. I hoped the wyrms would swallow you whole. I hoped the dunes would cover your remains. I hoped that I would never have to see your body, because, truthfully, what I was doing was already the worst regret of my life, and ignorance remained my only shelter from anguish.”

“How long were you planning this?” Isaac asked.

Berith glanced down, looking over the neatly rowed heads of his thralls. “I’ve known I would have to kill you since the day you were placed in my care.”

There was silence in the extraction chamber. The dust seemed to shiver, glinting in the golden light. Somewhere below, further beneath the earth, there seemed to be a subtle rumbling.

A deep thrum of power.

A massive chorus of screams.

“Pirate,” Berith said.

Isaac felt the hand on his shoulder tense.

“Thank you for saving my nephew’s life.”

Zaria scoffed. “Clearly weren’t to your benefit.”

“No,” he said, looking down at Isaac. “It was. Thank you.”

“Get fucked, cuntsucker.”

“Isaac,” Berith said. “Leave the tomb.”

Isaac didn’t feel capable of responding. He was afraid any motion would cause him to faint.

“You’ll have to travel,” his uncle continued, “far outside the Diet’s jurisdiction, where the Nine still have not conquered. If the Archons know you’re alive, they will send assassins.” Berith gestured towards the bronze doors, the bones on his sun-eating robes sliding and dribbling together. “Go. Head through the waste, passed the hinterlands. Live the life I could not give you.”

“The Diet of Nine ordered my death?” Isaac asked.

“I gave you an order, boy. For your own sake, follow it.” The glow in his eyes shone brighter. “I won’t allow you to interfere with my mission.”

“Your mission?”

“Yes,” Berith said. “My mission. Not yours.”

“This is my mission,” he replied.

“It was never yours, Isaac. It was always a lie.”

Isaac glared up at his uncle.

“I know,” Berith said, “you’ve hated this. You’ve always hated your lot. You’ve resented your fate since you were old enough to read. Don’t tell me you’ll defend it now, of all times.”

Isaac had nearly forgotten that he was holding a mnemonic stance for fire. As he straightened his posture, the trickles of flame grew into a large, shooting spout. “Why are you here? Why did the Diet send you in secret? Does the necromancer possess some arcane knowledge, some ancient technology the Diet wants for themselves?”

Berith paused. “The necromancer?”

“Yes! That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’re here to kill her in my stead!”

His uncle took a deep breath. “Isaac. Leave. Now.”

“No!”

“I would spare you from this.”

“No! I have spent my entire life preparing for this moment! I will hear the truth from you!” The fire in his palms licked towards his face, nearly singeing the unshaved beard. “What does the Diet want from the necromancer?”

“There is no necromancer!” Berith shouted. “The sorceress is dead! Your father killed her before you were born!”

The flames began to die. “What? How do you—”

“Isaac!” His uncle’s roar echoed through the extraction chamber, bouncing over rusted metal and rocky blood. “Are you sure you want to know this? Do you truly wish to learn the fate your father inflicted upon us?”

He blinked, his feet rooted to the ground.

“Answer me!”

“Y-yes!”

“Fine!” In the dusty air above Berith’s head, the constellation of bones shifted and swirled. “Then tell me! What is the definition of mnemonics?”

“I—they are—”

A salvo of bone shot into the ground at his feet, showering him in splinters.

“Answer me, boy!”

“Mnemonics!” Isaac said, his posture growing rigid. “A device—a learning technique designed to aid the memory!”

“Adequate! And why are casting incantations called mnemonics?”

“Because—because the energy dynamics require altered pathways in the body! The—the—the brain and the body!”

A screaming arrow of bone flew past his shoulder. The crack it made in the pipework sent shivers down his spine.

The cane.

The cane.

The cane—

“Magic changes the body,” Berith said, pacing back and forth on the raised platform. The cloud of bone followed his every step. “That is why we practice! That is why we train! The simplest spell requires years of effort! Not because the incantations are hard, but because the body and mind must alter themselves! When you exercise, your muscles tear and grow, your nerves endure, your bones grow thick! When you train, you teach the flesh as much as your mind! Right now, your brain and body are forever changed with your powers. It is a physical stamp, right in your very form.”

Zaria let go of his shoulder. He felt her shift behind him. For a moment, he could see the steel of her axe.

“But the soul is distinct from the body,” Berith continued, “is it not? One is the essence, the other is a vessel. They are entwined, but separate. And with effort, they can be separated from each other.”

He had to hide. He knew this tone of voice. The punishment was coming.

The lecture was a prelude to pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain.

Pain—

“Take your father, for example,” Berith said, his bone-armored robes flowing over the heads of his thralls. “When he travelled to this tomb before your birth, he slayed the sorceress, as was his command. But he was arrogant. Foolish. He thought he could excavate this ancient empire without the aid of specialists.” His laugh came with a sneer. “I know my brother—he wanted the sole claim on all its discoveries. These necromancers, these. . . .” He glanced up at the hanging coffins. “These grisly demons were, unfortunately, quite our superior when it came to the technologies of magic. Namely, the process of extracting the soul.”

Zaria came out to his side, shoulder to shoulder.

“He blundered into a trap,” the Bone Hunter said. “Because he was impatient, he had his soul sucked from his body, like the tens of thousands before him. But, of course, he was lucky, because the device that captured him was specially designed by the sorceress herself. It was to be used as an emergency reservoir, in case her life was ever threatened. It gave him control of her forces. He became the new necromancer, in her stead. Now it was his turn to reign over the city of the dead, buried beneath the scoured land.”

Isaac stepped forward. “How does this connect with the mnemonic—”

“Do not interrupt me, boy!”

He flinched.

“His body was destroyed,” his uncle said. “He told me so, himself, when the Diet managed to attune to the energy of his soul. We discussed his condition. He needed a new body to escape, and he would not allow us to enter this tomb without assurances that we would provide him with one. His stolen bones would kill us if we tried.” He shook his head. “He wanted his freedom again. He wanted safety from those who would kill him, just to steal the bounty for themselves. It was not an unreasonable concern, in those days. The Diet was still very young. It had many schemers within its ranks. But, of course, in the end, we could not sacrifice just any person for his livelihood.”

His glowing eyes centered on Isaac.

“Why is that, Isaac? Why can a soul not be implanted into any body we choose?”

He swallowed. “Core rejection.”

“Core rejection,” Berith said. “The soul and vessel must be related. They must be very close, in both body and lineage. Like, say, father and son.”

The dust seemed to swirl around him.

The air reeked of blood.

“Your father was trained in two disciplines, wasn’t he? Elements and anti-necrotics. He was famous for it, in fact.” Berith worked his jaw, his necrotic scars twisting in the light. “Of course, it was only natural that his son should be trained the same way as him. His body had the right heritage. He had the potential. Once he had been trained properly, he would be the spitting image of his father. No one would bat an eye.”

Isaac’s mind raced and raced.

“Did you never think it odd,” Berith said, “that the Diet would send only you to rescue your father?” He gestured down at Isaac, his hand barely visible beneath the cuff of his robe. “You, a single journeyman, a fledgling boy, pitted against the might of an ancient necromancer. It’s absurd! The Archons could’ve sent dozens of sorcerers. They could have beseeched the aid of the deathless wizards, the masters who have ascended beyond the flesh. For Oerin’s sake, the kingdoms of the Diet could drown this tomb in an ocean of soldiers!”

Isaac looked away.

“But, of course, they sent only you.” His uncle grimaced. “The young child. The orphaned boy. The son who never knew his father.”

His uncle stopped. His shadow spread across the hanging standard.

“I did not raise a child,” Berith said. “I raised a vessel. A vessel for your father.”

Somewhere deep below, by the feet of the giant corpse, the earth rumbled and shook. Thousands of voices screamed in agony.

“That was the deal we struck.” His uncle paced across the platform, casting a black shadow. The bank of devices leaked a finger of purple fog. “He would allow us access to this ancient tomb, once his son had been trained in the ways of sorcery. This could not be faked. The transmutation training is a physical mark on your form. The knowledge of your studies has changed the structure of your brain. Only a body similar to the original would allow his soul to survive.”

His uncle glanced downwards, in the direction where the obelisk would lie beneath the floor.

Where his father was.

“Inheritance,” Berith said. “What a chain it is.”

Zaria stepped to the side. Half of the thralls followed her. She raised a hand, and they lifted their arms in response, cocking a salvo of ice and fire.

She was testing their reaction.

Isaac wanted to slap her.

“You should have seen his desperation,” Berith said, returning his gaze. “He begged me to save him. He wouldn’t hear of allowing the Diet access to the tomb. He didn’t trust the Archons—for good reason—and, of course, what little knowledge he had gleaned from the necromancers told him this was the only solution. It was your life or his. And, of course, he was sorry—blubberingly sorry—but he had chosen himself.”

Berith snorted.

“He condemned your life, and, in the same breath, he became adamant that I must not provide him with a weak vessel, in case his enemies in the Diet thought of betrayal. Oh, believe me, Isaac, if it were possible, I would have strangled his soul, right through the machine.”

The thralls kept their hands cocked with ice and fire. Zaria returned to Isaac’s side, keeping her poleaxe low to the floor. He had seen her athleticism, her speed in combat. He knew she could easily barrel through the crowd of humans.

If she could get to the stage. . . .

“Needless to say,” the Bone Hunter said, “this was unprecedented. The Diet of Nine would have fractured, if the news had spread. Your sacrifice would’ve violated every ethical principle the collective was founded to protect. All the dukes and regents that provide our autonomy would’ve demanded censure, imprisonment, execution. More importantly, if what lies in this darkened earth was ever made public, it would destroy the peace our forebears strived so hard to achieve. Every kingdom in the region would fall back to war, and the Scorch that came again would make the fires of hell seem a candle’s flame.”

Isaac’s gaze roamed over the metal extractors.

Glass coffins.

Retention tanks.

“Debate raged for days,” Berith continued. “Stunningly little of it was about you. The Archons were solely concerned with the reports of what your father discovered. The consequences of making it public knowledge.” He glared down at Isaac. “It’s amazing how quickly people murder their fellows, if they stand to gain from it. It happened to your father. It happened to the Archons.”

“Happened to you, too,” Zaria said.

“Not by choice,” Berith replied.

She snorted.

“Thus,” Berith said, “in the end, they agreed. They would meet your father’s demands. Half of the Archons could barely supinate their arms to sign a document, let alone a casting. All of them were riddled with gout, blindness, infirmity. They were political creatures, creatures of habit and want. So, of course, they agreed.”

He folded his hands behind his back, still pacing.

“And, of course, it was not enough. It would’ve never been enough. Before you had even dried from the blood of your mother, some of the Archons approached me with an offer. A conspiracy within a conspiracy. They wanted to claim the prize of this tomb for themselves, and they did not want the rest of the wizards to know they were violating the deal. They wanted to kill your father in secret, to snatch the prize of this tomb before the rest of the Diet would kill it with regulation. And I, alone, was perfect for the task.”

The bones on his robes twisted and crawled. His eyes glowed, and thirty pairs of eyes responded in turn.

“A parasite,” Berith said. “A necromancer. Oh, how the darkness can fester.”

“You specialized in necrotics,” Isaac said, feeling some need to argue. “You’ve . . . that was always your specialty. Does this mean. . . .”

“I have the same inheritance as your father.”

“A dual-specialist.”

“That’s right, Isaac. I could divide my skill, just like you.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Berith echoed. “Why can we train ourselves?”

“Why this?” Isaac asked, gesturing at the thralls. “Why would you choose to dominate the innocent?”

“Because that’s already what I was doing.” He looked at the thralls himself. As he roamed from face to face, there were hints of recognition. “Because I may be one of the most renowned hunters of necromancy this side of the wasteland, but the sheer mass of your father’s necrotics would have posed an insurmountable barrier. It was a question of energy, not skill. The need was for ammunition. I needed an army.”

His gaze lingered on the flowing hair of a human girl, close to Isaac’s age.

His jaw clenched.

“Because I was a college professor,” Berith said, “and these students trusted me. If I led them away from their families, I could claim it was merely an expedition into the Charnel, and no one would bat an eye. Not even if they died.”

He went silent.

“Because if you only care about yourself,” he said, “it’s always easier to seize control, rather than allow the choice.”

Zaria glanced at Isaac, saying nothing.

“The entire thing,” Berith said, “disgusted me beyond expression. The injustice of it all was staggering. They ordered me to kill my own brother. They ordered me to raise his child, solely as livestock. I would be forced to sacrifice dozens of my own students in the pursuit of naked betrayal. The conspirators—on both sides of the equation—threatened me with censure, exile, even death from assassination. That was the only way they could ensure my compliance.”

His uncle continued to watch him. Isaac struggled to return the gaze.

“It was not enough,” Berith said. “When you were born, I demanded your death. I used every favor I had to try and escape this fate. If necessary, I would’ve walked to the river behind my tower and tossed you in the wakes. I spent many nights over your crib, knife in hand. I wanted so dearly to bring it down.”

“You’re fucking scum,” Zaria said.

A trio of femurs screamed past her face. There was a clanging on the door, a reverberation of bronze and steel. It sounded like the necromancer was still coagulating her forces, just on the other side. She had risen in protest.

The necromancer.

His father. . . .

“It would’ve been a kindness,” Berith said. “It would’ve saved you from a life of imprisonment, a life spent in the service of greed and malice. Many times, I was close to doing it. Not once in all your years did I stop considering the option.”

Berith’s gaze peeled away from his nephew. He looked around the room, roaming over coffins, piles of clothes, ancient stains of blood, the massive, curving walls of bone.

His gaze lingered on the bone.

“And then they told me,” he said, “I would have to kill you. Once again, it would have to be me. It was not enough that I must raise you. It was not enough that I must spend hours, every day, teaching you magic, teaching you spells that I knew you would never use. It was not enough that I must lie about the purpose of your entire life.”

Berith clenched his fists.

“No. I had to kill you myself. All to shield the Archons who wanted to betray the deal, in case their plot was ever discovered. All to make sure your father never received his vessel. After everything I had to do for you, after everything. . . .”

The hanging bones shuddered through the dust.

“How could anyone raise a child and not grow fond of them? How could. . . .”

His uncle gazed down at him from the platform.

“How could I ever stand the sight of your body?”

His face softened. Isaac remembered, all at once, all the times his uncle had ever stayed the cane, had ever broken the mold of lecturer and master to sit with his nephew, to chat, to share and smile and laugh. It always seemed like a breaking of his composure.

It always seemed like a moment of weakness.

An allowance.

A betrayal of himself.

“I had to make a choice,” Berith said. “What lies in this tomb is more important than you, or me, or your father, or any other singular life. I had to comply with my orders. But. . . .” He gave another softened look. “But if what lies in this tomb would not change the world, I would’ve forsaken the Diet, the kingdoms, the entire wizarding world . . . just for you.”

For a moment, the only movement in the factory was the feeling of a distant rumbling scream, deep within the earth.

“What were you thinking?” Isaac asked, his voice trembling. “All those times you—”

Berith’s face was highlighted beneath the red stripes of the necromancer flag.

“You brought me books,” Isaac said. “I knew you went out of your way to find them. It—I was so elated, every time you brought one for me. I looked forward to it. It was the only thing I looked forward to. Every time you ate a meal with me, every time you’d joke, every time you’d smile, I thought—”

He swallowed.

“I thought I’d made you proud. I thought I’d finally impressed you. I thought I had earned all the time and effort you spent on me. Even when I hated you, even in the worst of my despair, I still always thought there would be some—some purpose to your cruelty. I thought if I tried hard enough. . . .”

Berith looked up, eyeing the crest of a pelvic wing.

“The letter. The—” He almost reached for his pack. “The letter you wrote me, before I left. I carried it with me the entire way. I read every word, over and over again. You said—” He swallowed the sharp knot in his throat. “You said, ‘your father will be proud of you.’”

Berith did not look at him.

“You always told me,” Isaac said, “that my father and I were ‘two souls sharing a body’.”

Berith’s robes hung loosely on his frame, as black as a necrotic scar.

“Was that a joke to you?”

Berith lowered his gaze, staring into the platform at his feet. His lips pressed together. The bald dome of his head reflected the golden light.

“What were you thinking?” Isaac asked. “Every time you allowed yourself to be nice, what was crossing through your mind? Did you feel sorry for me? Was it pity? Remorse?”

His uncle took a deep breath.

“I had nothing.” Isaac’s vision blurred with tears. “Only you. Nothing else. No friends, no love, no experience. Nothing! Your kindness gave me nothing but hope! It would have been better if you’d killed me from the start!”

Berith shut his eyes.

“You lied to me!” Isaac shouted, his voice hoarse and shaking. “You denied me everything! You robbed me of my life!”

The chamber fell silent. The two mages remained in place, staring at each other across the gloom and rust. Tension hung between them, like the reeking stench of blood.

“Did my mother,” Isaac said, “really die giving birth to me?”

Berith repressed a sigh.

For the first time in his life, Isaac snapped.

“It was the Archons’ order,” Berith said. “She would have interfered—”

Isaac killed his fire, spun through a new set of mnemonics, and loosed a burst of sound directly at his uncle. In the few moments it took to cast, Berith piled all of his collected bones into a solid wall in front of him. When the sound struck, it exploded through the fortress of bone like a hammer through twigs, spraying shrapnel, deafening the room, forcing his uncle back, shredding half a dozen thralls into pulp and blood.

Zaria charged into the fray, barreling toward the stage.

As she ran, Isaac changed his cast again, forming a band of screaming wind. He targeted the elemental students on either side of the stage. Every hurricane was flung like a whip, battering the students, flinging many to the side, their casting of ice and fire flailing uselessly through the air. Between them all, Zaria continued to dash, breaking through the gap in their ranks, the tip of her poleaxe held in a spearing thrust. With a burst of strength, she leaped onto the stage.

Behind the ruins of bone, Berith shot his arm to the sky.

Above his head, the coffins on the ceiling began to rattle and shake. They wrenched themselves along their ancient tracks, the bones inside providing all the thrust. Suddenly, the coffins broke free from the metal, plunging across the room like arrows loosed from a giant’s bow. Zaria kept charging. One missile struck her on the shoulder, and the glass shattered in a spray, tearing into flesh, the metal backing nearly knocking her from the stage.

She snarled, recovering. She kept advancing forward. Her animal legs chewed through the distance.

“Heel!” Berith yelled.

Zaria swung her axe.

Steel chopped. Bone splintered and flew. The sheer force knocked Berith to the floor. As she recovered from the swing, Zaria took another blow from a flying coffin, stumbling back as the ancient glass shattered across her body. She regained her balance, snarling at the pain, raising her axe blade high.

All at once, a swarm of bone flitted through the air, pulled from the grates of a dozen putrid drains. They flew quickly, frenzied and rushed. Zaria hesitated just long enough for the bones to encase her, smothering her limbs, matting her fur, drowning her body in death. No matter how hard she thrashed and kicked and slapped, there was always a hundred more bones rushing from the depths of the factory, thickening the cocoon around her. In moments, she collapsed to the floor, screaming in pain.

Isaac cast his anti-necrotic light, sharpening the spell into a solid, brilliant lance.

“Stop!” Berith yelled.

His uncle struggled to his feet. A shrapnel of bone peeked from his ruddy complexion, already beginning to bleed. The blow of Zaria’s axe seemed to have dislocated his shoulder. On the floor of the stage, the bones began to slither away, retreating just enough to expose Zaria’s head. She gasped desperately for air.

“Cast again,” Berith said, “and the pirate dies.”

Isaac kept the white lance shining in his palm. If he loosed it now, the concentrated energy would slice Berith in half. He had to do it now, before the thralls could shield him.

His arm shook with energy.

Berith’s eyes reflected the light, hard and unblinking.

Slowly, a crown of sharpened bone emerged around Zaria’s neck, like the spiked collar of a dog. With a twitch, each of them could slit her throat. Necrotic tendrils leaked from the tips of the bone, as green as a putrid bog.

Around the stage, the Khador students picked themselves from the ground, their movements languid and unconcerned. Each of their hands churned with elemental magic. Above them all, Berith braced himself against the bank of metal devices. He bashed his shoulder into the metal. The joint reconnected. He flinched back, growling at the pain.

Isaac kept tracking him with the lance, the energy in his palm close to boiling.

Do it.

Do it.

His arm shook.

He could barely see through the tears.

“This is your last warning,” his uncle said, rubbing his shoulder. Blood leaked from the shards of bone in his face. “Leave, and I will not pursue.”

The bones constricted around Zaria, sharp and swirling. Necrotics wafted like smoke. On either side of the stage, the thralls held their spells at the edge of casting.

“If you distract me again,” Berith said, “if you insist on meddling in the affair that has ruined our family, I will kill you. I won’t be a coward, like I was before. If I have ever done anything nice for you, Isaac, this is it. This is my only, actual kindness.”

The lance in Isaac’s hand grew into a bright, shining star.

“Start a new life, Isaac. Live for yourself. This is the only chance you’ll ever have.”

Slowly, Berith paced around the metal device, never taking his gaze from Isaac. He retreated to the edge of the stage. His blue eyes grew brighter, the sigils on the thralls responded, and a dozen young students helped him climb down to the floor, like servants dressing a king. Once secure, the enslaved students gathered around him, shielding him with their bodies. Berith disappeared into a sea of black robes and churning magic.

Above, on the stage, the bones continued to swirl around Zaria, sharpened limbs sliding past her throat. A touch of necrotics had balded the fur on her chin.

The crowd of thralls retreated into the chamber, squeezing between the lines of automation, ignoring the crusted blood, watching for the slightest sign of attack. Isaac never lowered his hand. After a short time, Berith had traveled so far down the pelvic cavity that he and his thralls almost disappeared into the tangle of coffins, tanks, pipework, and dust. The gloom drank their blackened robes.

For just a moment, Isaac saw his uncle again, his eyes glowing bright with parasite magic, his face peeking between the heads of his thralls.

“I consider you my son,” Berith said, voice echoing down the chamber.

Isaac aimed directly between his eyes.

“My brother,” Berith continued, “is not your father. Not anymore. He gave you away before you were even born. For all your life, the burden has belonged to me.”

Isaac imagined his light piercing through Berith’s head, melting the skin, boiling the bone, his inner brain steaming out from the crater of his skull. He imagined the sound of his uncle’s body slumping to the floor. He pictured the look of shock still stamped into his gaze.

He wanted it.

He wanted it very badly.

He wanted to kill his uncle.

For the life of him, he could not stop his hands from shaking.

“I want you to know,” Berith said. “Despite everything . . . I am proud of you.”

Isaac dropped his spell, screaming in rage.

His uncle disappeared into the dust and gloom, dragging the bodies of all his students. The sound of marching footsteps drifted away. All at once, the bones around Zaria died, falling to the floor, the necrotic tendrils rusting the metal of the stage. She gasped, clutching at her neck. In the space above her, the stripes and stars gave a single flutter, as if the old necromancer gods were still watching from the grave.

For a moment, all that remained was the smell of blood.

Chapter Seventeen

Flesh & Blood

He remembered when he was a boy.

He had been reading by his bedroom window, the twilight of the day casting deep hues across the stone. From below, he had heard laughter. A mob of village children were playing in the street. Feeling like a voyeur, he had tracked them through the buildings below, watching the clouds of dust they kicked from the road, the ripples they left in the crowd.

Something had overcome him.

Feeling suddenly brave, Isaac had snuck down his uncle’s tower, climbed through a window, and gone out to join the village children, who, contrary to all his fears, had accepted him without a single word, as if he really did belong. They played through the coming dusk, and the games had been wonderous, the laughter insatiable, and he had marveled at the instinctiveness of it all, how easily he found himself cheering and smiling.

When he came back to himself, night had already fallen.

On the way back to his tower, a boar from the constabulary had grabbed him by the arm, giving a rough snort of displeasure. Upon returning home, he found the captain of the guard giving a stern lecture to his uncle. Berith had barely waited for the door to close before baring the cane, and Isaac had curled into a ball long before the lashes ceased. His welts had wept with every step back up to his room. When he had woken the next morning, a heavy padlock rested on the outside of his bedroom door.

He had been seven years old.

He had never left again.

Now, he was firing wind across the extraction chamber, knocking the coffins from the ceiling. All the broken glass became blizzards in the air. He intensified the gales, concentrated the strikes, blasting the coffins down into chunks and splinters.

The only thing louder than the wind was the sound of his screaming.

And he remembered, when he was twelve, how he had chatted with one of his instructors out in the yard. The man—Janos—had been telling him stories of his father, the expeditions, the wild nights at the taverns, how sorry he was to hear of his capture, and, of course, condolences for the death of his mother, as well. The man had been friendly, jovial. He did not seem like he was talking to Isaac out of pity, like most others had done.

He seemed as if he could be trusted.

In a moment of boldness, Isaac had asked Janos if he could aid him when it was finally time to rescue his father. A look of surprise and guilt had crossed the man’s face. He didn’t remember the rest of the lesson, but Berith had rounded on him the second Janos departed, accusing Isaac of insolence. He had never trusted another person again.

After the coffins were destroyed, Isaac targeted the metal, the extractors, the pipes, the drainage shafts, all the rusted tracks and fetid tanks, loosing a blizzard of icy spears. He did not stop until the metal was as brittle as glass.

And he remembered the days when Berith would leave the tower.

His uncle would assign some menial labor in the laboratory, the work only designed to keep Isaac busy. Usually, his uncle would be gone for days at a time, saying that he needed to attend a college-sponsored excavation, or a research symposium at the capital, or a committee hearing for the taxation of enchanted swords. And every time Berith returned from these long sojourns away, he would always be in a fouler mood than when he had left.

Afterward, Isaac would put more effort into avoiding his uncle, because the man’s temper was always worsened by his presence. Now, of course, he knew that his uncle was training to control the minds of his students.

Parasites.

Berith.

The Diet.

When most of the room had been sundered with ice, Isaac began to fire raw sound, blasting through the rows of machinery, sending clouds of shrapnel screaming through the chamber. Entire sections of the factory fell from the ceiling, all of them split and shredded until the pieces of metal resembled the fallen leaves of a tree. Each eruption of sound stabbed at his ears, and the pain only drove him further, only made him strike harder and faster, every blast of splintered metal only sharpening his need to destroy.

And he remembered all the questions he had ever asked.

Why can I not use the soul-capture to speak with my father? Why did the sorceress capture him at all? What was she doing to him? Was he going to come back and live with us once he was rescued?

The responses were always the same. Very quickly, he learned to stop asking.

Now, here, in the extraction chamber, Isaac’s legs gave out before his arms. He collapsed along a carpet of broken glass and shattered pipes, perched above a drainage tunnel that teemed with piles of bone. He gasped for air, the blood and metal spinning around him. A giant pelvis curved like the rising of a mountain.

Heart pounding.

Sweat dripping.

Body screaming.

And what he remembered most, what he had always remembered most, were the smiles. The first time he had toppled a cup with a gust of wind, he had turned and seen pride in his uncle’s eyes.

Oh, the joy he had felt.

“Isaac!”

The extraction chamber was barely destroyed. The room was incalculably large, and there was so much metal, so many machines, so much crystalized death still clinging to the tanks and scythes, that it would take him days to destroy it all by hand. Beside him, the grated floor was littered with shards of metal, split open tanks, powdered hills of bone.

He remembered the meals shared in the dining hall. Spiced chicken, fresh olives, hot bread. A cider, here and there.

Our little secret, his uncle would say.

“Hey. Hey.”

He couldn’t breathe. His lungs did not have the energy to flex. Isaac gasped, his vision fading, his mind desperate for air.

A hand rested on his back. He flinched, falling to the floor. He tried to curl into a ball, lie on his side, protect his belly and organs.

The cane.

The cane.

The cane—

“Isaac. It’s me.”

His limbs were twitching, his muscles as stiff as the bark of a tree. He had cast too much. His body was spent.

He wanted to lie there and die.

The hand came again, and another followed, and he was lifted back to a sitting position. He felt furry fingers, each of them tipped with a claw. He felt a breath on his neck, a voice in his ear.

“Easy. Easy, now. Come on.”

The hands on his shoulders became arms that wrapped around his chest, gently holding him in place. Breasts pushed into his back. He felt the strap of a leather pauldron, the cloth of a brassiere, a few tufts of fur.

Warmth.

Zaria.

He could smell her again.

He remembered, suddenly, the apprentice tests, the gathered crowd, the spreading news of a journeyman who had grown proficient in two different schools. The news was so extraordinary that even an Archon had come to witness the event. Isaac had shaken the old man’s hand, feeling the cold and wrinkled fingers, studying the braids in the wizard’s whitened beard. The Archon of the Diet had told him that he was the most promising mage in quite some time.

Just like his father.

“Breathe. Breathe.” Zaria’s arms tightened against his chest, moving in slow, rhythmic motions. “In, out. In, out. Come on. Breathe.”

He drew breath as best he could, struggling against the depletion of his muscle. Her hands wrapped around his arms, stroking up and down. On the floor in front of him, their legs pressed together, pushing through broken glass and shards of metal.

“I’m here,” Zaria said, softly. “I’m right here.”

He gripped her arm. He listened to her voice.

He looked above his head. The stripes and stars banner hung limply along its mount, the fabric tattered and ancient. He still didn’t know what it meant. The necromancers seemed to use it as a symbol of their gods. It allowed access to their tomb. It was on every mural and relief, every myth of their society.

Red stripes. Navy blue. Dozens of stars.

Did the stars represent their gods? Were the red stripes a symbol of blood?

He saw now that Zaria’s hands were bloody. There were long lacerations across her arm, some of them already scarring over from the touch of necrotic magic. He turned his head as much as he could, and his nose went tickling through the thick tufts of fur on her neck, finding them wet and red. The bones had nearly slit her throat.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Isaac—”

“I’m sorry. I—”

He would’ve killed her. He would’ve killed all of Berith’s thralls. He had killed a number of them. They were people from his village, all of the same age. They had been students, just like him.

Their bodies. His fault.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“For fuck’s sake.” She hugged him tighter, pressing him to her chest. “Listen to me. It’s not your fault.”

How had he gone so long without noticing?

“It’s not your fault.”

The training. The imprisonment.

“You were a child.”

The shouting, the pain, the resentment.

“You didn’t know better.”

Berith saying he would throw him on the street.

“You couldn’t have known better.”

Berith, in the yard, holding the cane, sneering that his brother deserved his fate.

“You were never given the chance.”

Berith screaming that he was only a burden.

“Gods apart, that was fucking madness,” Zaria said. “I can’t begin to imagine—” He felt her growl. “I’d call your uncle a cunt, but that don’t even breach the surface. He’s lower than shite. The craven rat tried to blame everyone but himself.”

Tears began to well in his eye.

“It’s not your fault,” the hyena said. “Alright? Whatever else there is, it ain’t on you.” She patted his back. “You did the best you could.”

He looked away.

She helped him calm his breath. A few minutes passed. His body recovered enough that he was able to flex his limbs. When he no longer seemed in danger of falling into shock, Zaria asked: “What do we do?”

He didn’t know how to answer.

“I mean,” she continued, “I can’t rightly demand—he’s still your kin. He’ll be watching for us. We can’t beat him head-on. I don’t know if it were a good idea to keep going, here. Not into those depths.”

Out of all the chaotic feelings, out of all the memories surging through his mind, a new sensation rose inside him. It dominated the rest of his emotions, smothering all his thoughts.

Anger.

Fury.

Hatred.

Her hands moved to his armpits, coaxing him to stand. “Fuck it. Slag the whole lot. Let’s just go.”

“No,” Isaac said.

“Come on. Fuck the lot of ‘em. Fuck the treasure.”

He wriggled out of her grasp, kicking aside a shattered pipe as he stood. “I’m not leaving.”

“Your mission weren’t—”

“I am not leaving!” He clenched his fists, broken glass falling from the lining of his robes. “He’s not going to scare me away. Not anymore.”

Zaria stood up beside him. “It ain’t about fear, love. He’s your blood.”

“No,” Isaac replied. “It is about fear. It’s always been about fear.”

She cocked a brow.

“I will not heed,” he continued, “a single one of his demands. This isn’t about my mission, my father, or anything else. This is about me. He wants to be proud of me? He wants to call me his son? Oh, he won’t be proud much longer. Not when I show him exactly what his training lessons have earned him. Not when I—”

He stopped. While talking, he had turned to face her, and now he could see that something moved at the entrance.

A pile of bone was spilling into the extraction chamber. He saw splintered arms, flailing legs, showers of vertebrae, all the loose pieces flailing along the floor, hundreds of bodies scraping and clattering over metal with the viscosity of lava. Some of the cascades thickened into strands. Improvised tentacles dragged the central mass. It slowed and solidified, rising like a wave, smearing itself across the pelvic bone of the colossus, like it was struggling against its own undulating shape.

All this time, the bones of the necromancer had moved sloppily, like the person controlling them did not have proper training.

Why had he never noticed until now?

Isaac pulled away from Zaria, his boots crunching on the glass. He watched the formless ocean of corpses. They seemed to shy from his gaze.

“Oi!” Zaria shouted. “Fuck off!”

The pile of bodies flinched.

She stepped in front of Isaac, brandishing her axe. “Clear out! Make tracks! Beat your bones ‘fore I do it for you!”

The mass quivered, slowly leaking from the pelvis.

Isaac remembered the necropolis, how the ocean of bones had rushed around him. The necromancer had helped kill the wyrm. She had tried to communicate. Outside the doors to this chamber, she had seemed desperate to prevent his entrance.

“Fuck off, kinslayer!”

For a moment, all the bones slowed, leaving the pile of death as inert as a hunter’s trophy. Slowly, with a whispering rasp, the mass churned itself back towards the bronze doors, the same way a slug might crawl through a hole. There was no attempt to speak. None of the skulls looked back at him.

All this time, the only thing the necromancer had been able to say was his name.

“Wait!” Isaac shouted.

The mass froze in place.

He began to approach.

The bones spilled back into the chamber. As he closed the distance, the engulfing mass spread out into a high semicircle against the pelvic wall, all the bones congealing like a slick of oil across a table. When Isaac stopped in front of the wall of bodies, it flexed like a diaphragm. Slowly, a single stalk, topped with a skull, emerged from the churning layer.

“Father?” Isaac asked, raising his hand.

The skull at the head of the stalk pushed its cheek into his palm. The bone was cold, dry, and brittle. It shuddered like a bug in his grasp.

“Isaac.”

The wall of bone closed in around him, reaching out a dozen arms. Bony hands grabbed at his shoulders, rubbed through his hair, felt at his face. He felt swallowed by a grasping forest of limbs. Around him, the sea of bones seemed to shudder and sigh.

He closed his eyes, imagining a hug.

“Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac. Isaac.”

The bones were dry and old. They had no warmth. They were clumsy and smothering and desperate.

“I-I-Issaa—cccc—Issaaaaa—”

“Was what he said true?” Isaac asked.

Around him, the grasping limbs froze in place.

“Did you really mean to kill me? To save yourself?”

The ocean of bones rustled and cracked, like a gust of wind slicing through a bush. The skull stalk looked away, shifting its eyeless sockets to the floor.

“This was all your fault,” Isaac said.

The skull looked up, staring deeply into his face.

Isaac took a step back, brushing his way through the thick nest of hugging arms, and the ocean of bones nearly shrieked in response. Dozens of limbs reached outward, stretching their skeletal fingers, spreading an ocean of ribs and teeth and death.

An axe blade came smashing down, splintering the arms. As Isaac took another step back, Zaria swung her polearm back into the air, cleaving through a tentacle of legs and spines. The entire mass shuddered back, reforming itself into softer shapes. Zaria snarled at the tide of bones. She stepped forward, teeth bared, and the mass squirmed against the pelvis, fleeing up the wall like a swarm of bugs.

“Stop,” Isaac said.

Zaria glanced at him, still snarling.

“Z.”

She narrowed her eyes, gave a reluctant chuff, and lowered her polearm, stepping back to his side. Her weapon remained tightly in hand.

“Is that still your plan?” Isaac asked. “Are you still going to sacrifice me?”

The head stalk had receded down to a few stubs of vertebrae. Slowly, it lengthened itself out of the central mass, just enough for the head to shake from side to side.

“Am I supposed to believe you?”

“Isaac,” the skull said.

He looked away, staring beyond the striped flag, the piles of blood and metal.

All his life, he had heard stories of his father. Every instructor who had graced the tower had known the man, in one way or another. He had been told stories of his father’s bravery, his many expeditions into foreign lands, his humor and cheer, his love for his wife.

How happy he had been to become a father.

And, of course, Isaac couldn’t believe any of those stories anymore, because how would he know they were not a lie? Maybe Berith had asked these people to say what they had. Maybe it was all part of the conspiracy, a carefully crafted narrative whose only purpose was to ensure his obedience. All he had ever known was what he had been told, and what he had been told was now, quite obviously, a far cry from reality. Maybe, in the end, some of the tales about his father were actually true, but, at that point, did it even matter?

Isaac stared off into the extraction chamber, trying not to cry again.

He heard the crack and shuffle of bone. When he looked, his father had shifted the head stalk up through the substrate layer of bone, moving it to a slight distance above Isaac’s head. Below, a gushing of bone began to spill from the central mass, like a mother spider birthing hundreds of children. They scuttled and leaped, snapping together on the floor.

Zaria raised her axe.

“Hold on,” Isaac said.

The bones were not building another monster. Instead, they were linking together at precise angles, forming letters from the connection of knuckles and ribs and toes, all of it spreading flat across the floor. After a minute, the corpses formed a phrase.

I LOVE YOU

Isaac stared at the gathered bones, unblinking. Above, on the substrate layer still clinging to the wall, the skull began to leer from its vertebral stalk.

“Isaac,” the skull rasped.

“Do you?” Isaac asked. “Do you really love me?”

Above the arms, the skull nodded so hard that it broke free of the vertebrae, bouncing and rolling along the metal floor. A new skull grew from the central mass, shunting out from a beetle-like swarm of fingers.

“Charming,” Zaria muttered.

An arm pointed towards the end of the chamber, where his uncle had gone. Next, it pointed back at the central mass. Below, the bones scraped over the floor, forming into a different phrase.

NOT LIKE HIM

“You’re not like your brother,” Isaac said, flatly.

The skull nodded. Three arms emerged from the central mass. Two of them drew a large circle in the air, while the third drew a triangle that pointed out of the circle.

“Gettin’ real sick of this,” Zaria said. “Not sure how a pile of bones can go fuck itself, but I suggest you get tryin’.”

The skull shook from side to side. It repeated the gesture. The two arms drew a large, horizontal circle in the air, while a third drew a triangle pointing up from the circle, like the fin of a shark.

Below, the bones said: TIME

“A sundial?” Isaac asked.

The skull nodded vigorously, as if growing excited.

“Time,” he repeated, thinking of possible synonyms. “What about time? Years? Seasons?”

One of the arms pointed at the central mass.

TIME HERE

ME

“Time here.” Isaac paused. “You’ve spent a lot of time down here.”

The skull nodded again. It bent down, and one of the skeletal arms tapped a bony finger against the side of the skull, where the brain once rested.

“You’ve spent that time thinking.”

More nodding. Below, the bones were scuttling furiously, squirming over each other like maggots in a corpse. It was obvious, just from a glance, that his father had spent a lot of time practicing how to spell the words. Even though many of the words ended up awkward and misshapen, they were always simple to read.

FEAR

MISTAKE

One of the arms pointed at Isaac. To the side, two of the arms gently folded together, as if they were cradling a child.

IMAGINE YOU

BORN

GROWING

The three arms began to move, mimicking the mnemonic gesture of various spells, from the simple motion of wind to the complex supination of sound.

YOUR LEARNING

YOUR STUDIES

One of the arms pointed at Isaac again. To the side, two of the arms pressed their hands together and quickly spread apart, as if demonstrating a fearsome length. Next, the arms bent up at the elbow, forming a ninety-degree angle. They were trying to flex a bicep.

YOU NOW

TALL

STRONG

The arm pointed again, as if emphasizing the point.

YOU

MY SON

Isaac could not even begin to respond. Below, the bones were sliding quickly, trying to form words with a flooding of motion.

REGRET THIS

REGRET YOU

REGRET REGRET REGRET

“Isaac,” the skull rasped.

Isaac had to turn and wipe his eye.

“That’s enough,” Zaria said. “I can’t read whatever the fuck you’re sayin’, but you better tell us, right now—did you sacrifice your son?”

For a long moment, the skull did not move.

“Yes or no?”

Slowly, the skull nodded.

“Did you hold whatever horrors are buried here hostage, just to get that sacrifice?”

It nodded again.

“Did you kill your wife to sell the lie?”

Immediately, the skull shook from side to side.

“Sure,” Zaria said. “Twenty odd years of settin’ this plan in motion, and it’s only now, when you got stabbed in the back, that you’ve come to be sorry.”

The skull looked between them. Two of the arms pressed their hands together, holding the fingers straight and the palms flat. It was a universal sign for begging.

“Oh, fuck off. Isaac, we’re done here. Let’s go.” She stepped over towards the door. “Get outta my face!”

The central mass squirmed away from the doors, all the limbs and pelvises moving like a spilling pile of tinder. The pathway grew clear. Isaac didn’t move. After a few moments of waiting, the stalk of the skull bent into a C as it looked back at him.

“You’ll just let me leave?” Isaac asked.

The skull looked away. A moment later, it nodded.

“You won’t try to stop me?”

It shook from side to side, still avoiding his gaze.

“Squire,” Zaria said, gesturing to the exit with her axe. “Don’t make me drag you.”

He didn’t move. He stared at the skull until it finally looked his way. The bone was hollow and cracked, its nasal cavity shadowed, the teeth squirming against its jaw.

“Why did you attack us in the catacombs?” Isaac asked.

The skull glanced at Zaria, then back at him. One of the arms raised two of its fingers. The skull clacked its jaws together, making a dry, hollow sound.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

The skull hesitated, looking down at its arms. A moment later, the bones on the floor began to squirm.

EXPECTED ONE

NOT TWO

“Expected one,” Isaac repeated. He felt a moment of clarity. “Oh. You expected me to be alone. When you saw Zaria with me. . . .”

The skull nodded.

CONFUSION

ANGER

“Oh, what,” Zaria asked, “it were just ‘cause I was here, gracin’ my furry visage? That ain’t an excuse. You didn’t recognize your son?”

The skull looked at Isaac, shaking its head.

HOW COULD I

“What’s that say?” Zaria asked.

“He asked how he could’ve recognized me.”

Zaria glared at the skull. “I’m gonna fuckin’ smack you, honest to gods.”

The bones moved quickly.

NO RECOGNITION

NO MIRROR

FORGET

TIME

BERITH

YOU

DEAD

“Hold on,” Isaac said. “Slow down. What about Berith? You thought him and I were dead?”

The skull shook its head. Below, bones whirled and flew.

HE TOLD ME YOU WERE DEAD

“He told you?” Isaac asked.

The skull looked at him, nodding. The jaw clattered against the upper palate, as if mimicking speech. Below, the bones were forming words at a more measured pace.

SOUL CAPTURE

WE SPOKE TWICE

“I knew that,” Isaac replied. “The Diet used the soul capture to speak with you, to arrange this deal. It was right before I was born, and right before I left.” When he considered this, he felt a moment of dawning horror. “You couldn’t stop this deal after it was made. They had to contact you first, and they didn’t. There was no way to take it back.”

The skull looked at him, silent.

REGRET

“So,” Isaac said, piecing it together, “when you spoke to your brother the second time, he . . . told you I was dead. He told you he was going to kill me, that the Diet was reneging on the deal. In fact, he had spent all this time preparing to kill you.”

On the pelvic wall, the entire mass of bones began to shudder, like a breath of wind through a tree. The skull seemed to hiss in pain. For a moment, Isaac could only imagine how it must have felt for his father, waiting in the dark, waiting for his son, waiting so long that he’d forgotten the appearance of his former body, only to be told by his own brother that his son was soon to die in the desert, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

The bones on the floor began to squirm.

REGRET REGRET REGRET REGRET REGRET

“I’m sorry,” Isaac said.

“Isaac,” Zaria warned.

“No, Z. I do feel sorry.” He gazed up at the skull. “That must have been . . . shattering, to hear, after all that time. I can’t even imagine the anguish.”

The skull gave a single, trembling nod.

“So,” Isaac said, collecting himself, “you were expecting me to be dead, which is why you attacked us initially. For that, at least, I believe you. I’m assuming, as well, you only recognized me afterward, by listening to our conversations.”

The skull nodded again, managing to raise its eyeless gaze.

“Then what about the wyrm? What were you doing there?”

Below the skull, two of the protruding arms began to whack their forearms against each other, like swords clashing.

“Soren,” Isaac said. “The duel. You were trying to stop it.”

The skull nodded, swaying on the stalk.

“Alright. That’s . . . believable. For now, I can only think of one more question.” He glanced behind him, through the ruined metal of the extraction chamber. “What does the Diet want? Is it the treasure? The technology? The souls?”

The skull shook its head.

“Then what? Berith—uncle—” He released an angry breath. “Your brother said that whatever was in this tomb was more important than a single life.”

The skull gave a deep nod.

“What is it?”

One of the arms shifted up the bone wall, sliding along the nest of connections until it was perched at the summit. It pointed a bony finger towards the wall of the chamber. At first, Isaac thought it was gesturing through the wall, at the complex behind them, where the necromancers had studied and experimented with the depths of magical craft. There were lessons there that should not be repeated.

It took him a moment to realize the truth.

“The giant skeleton?” he asked. “The colossus itself?”

The skull nodded. One of the other arms pointed toward the center of the chamber, at the device Berith had been working on. Isaac remembered, suddenly, that souls had been leaking from the metal. After catching his attention again, a third arm pointed diagonally into the floor, down towards the obelisk, where the souls appeared to consolidate.

He could still feel the rumbling in the floor, the distant sound of screams.

The realization struck him like a bomb.

“He’s going to resurrect the skeleton,” Isaac said. “The Diet doesn’t care about the treasure. It’s the corpse, this giant creature. The one the tomb is built from. This is the largest repository of soul energy in the world, and it’s enough to bring the colossus back to life. That is why the necromancers were sacrificing so many people.”

He couldn’t imagine the scale of such a beast, were it ever to rise again. It had taken him the better part of three days just to travel halfway down its body. It was so spectacularly massive that a city had been built in its chest. It had once been the cradle of an entire empire.

If his uncle succeeded. . . .

Nothing would be able to stop it. The man who controlled such a colossal mountain of bone would be the terror of every army and kingdom in the Nine. The mere shadow of the creature emerging over the horizon would cause entire cities to flee in fear. They could hold every government hostage with only the threat of its deployment. With enough planning, resources, and ambition, they might even deign to conquer the world.

That would certainly be worth a little murder.

“We need to stop him,” Isaac said. “Him and the Archons. No one should have that kind of power.”

The skull gave a firm nod.

“Hold on,” Zaria said, moving back to his side. “You sayin’ that, if your brother wins, this titan’s gonna walk again?”

Another nod from the skull.

Her eyes roamed over the vast curve of the pelvis, as if it was the first time she had truly appreciated its size. It took an entire turn of her body just to follow a single wing. “Fuck me. That’d be the end of the world.”

Isaac and his father nodded together.

“Well,” she said, “my greed’s looking rather paltry now. Gods above.”

Isaac stared into the eye holes of the skull. Behind it, the wall-covering mass expanded outwards, coming forward from the pelvis. The movement was slow and cautious, like the approach of a stray dog.

A silent question hung in the air.

“I trust him,” Isaac said.

“What?” Zaria took a step forward, shifting her axe toward the bone wall. “How the fuck you swinging that?”

“Watch.” He stepped forward. The skull stalk coiled back. “If I don’t interfere, Berith will kill you. He will win. Yes?”

The skull took a moment to nod.

“In that case,” Isaac said, “why did you tell me to leave? You’re going to die without me. You need my help.”

Bones danced across the metal floor.

I LOVE YOU

BE SAFE

ALL I WANT

“You’d seal your own fate,” Isaac said, “let the Diet get their giant monster, just so I’d have the chance to escape?”

The skull gave a single, firm nod.

“There you go,” Isaac said, turning to Zaria. “That’s why.”

“Have you gone daft in the head?” the hyena replied. “All I’m hearin’ from this puppet show is the ways he’s almost killed you.”

“I trust him.”

“Well, I’d sooner suck a wyrm through my cunt. You’re the only noble exception in the whole bloodline, far as I’m concerned.”

He took a deep breath. “Z. The deal’s off.”

She blinked down at him. “What?”

“Listen—”

“You mean the deal ‘tween you and me?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “Shut the fuck up, squire.”

“Neither of us are going to get the treasure,” Isaac said, firmly. “The only way we were ever hauling it out of here was through the help of the Diet, and, clearly, they’re not going to let us have it. They’re going to send assassins after me. I’m going to be a fugitive for the rest of my life. You will be, too, if you stay here with me.”

She glanced back at the shattered machinery, whiskers twitching.

“You should leave,” he said. “Go somewhere else, before it’s too late. Things are going to get very dangerous.”

“Still being hunted, aren’t I?” Zaria blew out a tired breath. “Where am I supposed to go? Nowhere to hide out in them dunes. It’s a death sentence up there as much as here.”

She tilted her axe at him.

“What are you doing, actually? You understand this mission was a fraud, don’t you? You got no obligations to it.” She glared at his father. “It was wrong, what happened to you.”

The skull slithered back, the central mass deflating towards the floor.

“I know,” Isaac said. “This is my decision. I’m not leaving. I’m going to make sure no one ever claims what’s in this tomb. I’ll make sure this skeleton never walks again. And . . . I’ll kill my uncle, if it comes to it.” He glanced at the mass of bones behind him. “I have no idea what I’ll do after that, but I can’t let the indecision stop me from doing what’s right.”

She tried to laugh, but it was hollow, breathless. Her ears were twitching.

“You should leave,” he said. “You already have a target on your back. There’s no reason to paint another.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to be my squire no more?”

“I never was.”

“Oh, aye? What’s next? Gonna tell me rain ain’t wet? That flowers ain’t pretty, and mead ain’t sweet? I’d rather shave myself bald.”

“Zaria—”

“You and I,” she said, jovially. “Squire and knight, fire and fur, robes and steel. Ain’t been a better pairing since cocks and cunts.”

“By the gods,” Isaac said, “you are just exhausting.”

She managed to laugh this time.

“Let me be clear,” he said. “I have not enjoyed your presence. I have been subjected to it.” He began to mimic the rough tilt of her voice. “‘Oh, squire, tell me of your childhood. Squire, fetch my rations. Squire, heal my wounds. Squire! Squire! Squire!’”

She slapped the pommel of her axe to the floor, grinning wide.

“Look,” Isaac said. “I—” He stopped, meeting her gaze. “I’m very glad I met you, and not just because I would’ve died, otherwise. It was, without a doubt, the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He paused. “But I. . . .”

She watched him, silent.

“I want you to stay,” he said. “I would very much like your help. But I won’t ask you to. Leaving is your best choice.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes roamed above his shoulder, over the ruins of the extraction chamber, coasting her vision up and across the wings of the colossal pelvis. She looked forward again, watching the squirming wall of corpses that was his father. Finally, she looked at the open bronze doors.

Her axe glinted in the light.

“Squire,” Zaria said. “Can I be honest with you?”

“You can call me a different name, first.”

“You’ve always reminded me of my little brother. We called him Lem. Little Lem.”

Isaac looked down at his tattered robes. He had lost a considerable amount of weight since the start of his journey. “In a good way?”

She quirked a smile. “He was a feisty little cunt.”

Isaac cleared his throat.

“Not my real brother, mind. Just another urchin my father let in off the street. He was human—like you. Had dartin’ little eyes. Must’ve been sick as a babe ‘cause half his face was yellow and sunken, like a dropped apple. He never spoke a word, and none of us were sure if he even could. Since he wouldn’t give a name, he was Lemon, or Lem, on account of his face. He didn’t like it much.”

She scratched her chin, gazing into the floor.

“I was the oldest, which meant I was in charge of keeping all the young beasts fed and clothed and not pinched by the guard. I’d make rounds, roaming around the usual haunts. Out them all, Lem was the hardest to find. You would not see a hair of him if he didn’t want you to. Sometimes, I’d catch him hiding out in the rafters above the shop, and he’d hardly look different than the rats.

“Anyway, with Lem, you know, it was like feeding a stray dog. He’d look at you real mean-like, nab it from your hands, and scamper back off to the shadows. Always acted like I was about to slit his throat, like he’d got no earthly idea what to make of kindness.”

She looked at Isaac. He felt an urge to glance away.

“Still, rain or shine, I’d track that little shite down and give him some bread. I’d often have to haul him over to a sawbones to fix some scrapes from a fight. Once, I had to pin him and shave his head for the lice, and I’ve never had such a vicious struggle from another creature. Nothing would ever change with him. Neither of us were droppin’ our stubbornness toward each other, and I never once got a word of thanks. But, hey, he stayed alive. That’s what counts.

“Except, one day, no different than the others, I’m walking through a back alley, and I see Lem waitin’ for me. This was my own secret route, so I knew right away he must’ve followed me. The second I lay eyes on him, he rushes forward, thrusts something in my hand, hugs me tight ‘round the waist, and disappears down the alley. Fast as a blink.

“I open my hand, and there was this little flower sitting inside. It was glowing. Real pretty. Some magic plant, probably from a garden in the mage district. Not something he’d come by on accident.”

She opened her hand, staring into the palm.

“Lem was never quite normal, after that, but I’d catch him playing games with the other kids, and he also finally went to chippin’ in for all the taxes, and, god above, that little cunt could earn coin better than the rest of us. He even started comin’ out with me, on the rounds to check the other kids. Once he trusted my intention, he was as bold as you like. He still never talked, but I kept chattin’ with him, all the same.”

She snorted.

“Oh, he hated me teasing him. Course, that just meant I had to keep doing it. Every once in a moon, I’d get him to smile.”

She looked his way for a moment. Her eyes were far away.

“When you live a life like I do, you make a lot of excuses for it. It’s the way of the world. It’s self-defense. You got no choice. And that’s all true, but it never helped me sleep at night. I’d get to thinking about—well, what was I doing being alive? What kind of value was I adding to the world? If I was to die, then and there, could anyone really say it was such a bad thing?”

Her fingers tapped against the haft of her weapon.

“I dunno,” Zaria said. “I lost that flower, when my father sold me away. Still, when I had it, I’d look at it some nights, watching it glow, seein’ the way it never rotted, and I’d get this feeling in my chest, this sorta certainty that, if someone got in my face and called me a thief and asked what good I’d ever done for anybody, I could just point right at that flower. I could say there was this human boy named Lem, and he’d been kicked around all his life, and I was the first person who’d ever made him happy.”

She glanced at his father. The bones had all rested still, like a mass grave hung up on a wall.

“Still don’t know what I want to do with my life, now that I’m not a pirate. But, after thinkin’ on it a while, I do know one thing. I want that feeling back again. I want to have something that I can point to and be proud of. I want some proof my life actually made a good difference in the world.”

Isaac waited for a moment. “So . . . ?”

“So,” Zaria said, hefting her axe, “let’s get going already. Your uncle’s gaining a lead on us.”

Something odd happened to him. He felt his face teem with a blush, which travelled down to his chest and stomach, oscillating between a burning heat and numbing shiver. His knees began to feel weak, and his heart pounded in his chest. It was the first time in his life he had ever felt this way. The longer he watched her, the worse the feeling grew.

Outwardly, he nodded, doing his best to clamp down on his smile. He turned back to the mound of bones. “Father?”

The skull stalk reared back, as if surprised. Many arms pointed to the open bronze doors.

“I’m not leaving,” Isaac said.

The skull bent down close to him, enough that he could see the cracks in its empty orbitals, the subtle calcification of the frontal plate. “Isaac.”

“I’m not leaving.”

His mind was still a chaos of emotion. There was betrayal, there was fear, there were aching wounds and seeded doubts. He knew he would never lose the feelings entirely. They were the kind that would follow him for the rest of his life. But, now, he felt ready to face those emotions, the same way he had faced every single threat that had crossed his path. He glanced back at Zaria, and her response was a single nod. He knew, in his heart, he needed to see nothing else.

He was ready.

“We’re going to stop him,” Isaac said.

The jaw of the skull lowered, as if it would try to speak. After a moment, it closed its skinless mouth, giving only a single nod.

“Right,” he said. “It won’t be easy. Berith is a necromancer, and he’s specialized in parasitics. I’ve counted at least two dozen thralls still under his command. If we can—”

“Hold on,” Zaria said. “Need to clear something.”

The hyena stepped toward the mound of bodies. She reached out a hand, cupped it to Isaac’s chest, and pushed him backwards. She did not start speaking until she was standing squarely between him and his father.

“Listen here, you sack of shite.”

The ocean of bones flinched.

“Your son may be trusting you,” she said, “but I’m keepin’ my eye open. If I smell any hint of treachery, if you so much as part a single hair on his head, then I’ll be sucking the marrow from your bones. Do we understand each other?”

The skull nodded very fast. Below it, several arms held their palms to the ceiling, as if being robbed at knifepoint.

“Good. That being said. . . .” She cleared her throat. “I, uh—I’m sorry for fucking your son. In front of you, I mean.”

“Zaria!”

“What? He’s been watching us since we got here. He’s seen everything we’ve done. Might need to clear our union with your sire, don’t you think?”

On the floor, the bones quickly tumbled into words.

I DID NOT WATCH SEX

“Isaac.”

“He didn’t watch,” he explained.

“Didn’t you?” Zaria asked.

NO

The skull curled up into the air, the vertebral stalk bending like a reed. Isaac could’ve sworn the bones looked offended.

I FOLLOWED

I LISTENED

WHEN HE LICKED I LEFT

“Oh, gods,” Isaac said, blushing terribly.

“Isaac?”

“I’m not reading that!”

“Come on,” Zaria said, snickering.

“No!”

On the walls, several arms rose up to the skull, covering the eye sockets with a palm and shoving spindly fingers into the cavity of the ears. The skull vigorously shook its head.

PRIVACY

I PROMISE

“Mighty kind of you,” Zaria said. “So, you approve of all this, then?”

The skull stalk reared back, like the rising of a wyrm. It nodded deeply.

“That’s a yes?”

A graveyard worth of arms squirmed out of the central mass. They held themselves straight, closed their bony fingers into a fist, and raised a forest of thumbs.

PROUD OF YOU SON

Isaac thought he might die of embarrassment.

“Well,” Zaria said, grinning wide, “best permission to fuck I’ve ever seen. Think he’ll give some bone thralls as a dowry?”

“Ivtarr, gods above, strike me down, please.”

She slapped him on the back. “Three merry band of men, we are. On our way, then. World-ending cunts to kill and all that. Come on, you—” She paused, looking at his father. “Hold on. Never got your name, actually.”

The skull looked to Isaac.

“Caine,” Isaac said. “His name is Caine.”

Zaria bowed. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Fine son you got here.”

Caine gave a firm nod. Somewhere below the earth, in the device that trapped his soul, he imagined his father was smiling.

With a turn of his heel, Isaac began to march through the extraction chamber, heading toward the sound of screams and rumbling. To his left, there was a zoanthrope pirate who had taken him hostage not three days prior. To his right, there crawled a legion of bone that clattered and hissed like an army of death. He felt like nothing could stop him.

Chapter Eighteen

Lamentations

The screams of the dead rose from the blackened earth.

Over the course of his journey, Isaac had heard many cries of pain—pirates burning alive, bones hissing in fear, a massive wyrm beached upon a city. All of them, in a way, had been born from his own hand, and, in that way, they had not driven him to feelings of guilt, because they had come from enemies standing in his path. With the guiding light of his mission, he had been able to harden his soul against the suffering of others.

Nothing could’ve prepared him for the ghostly wails emanating from the obelisk.

The naked souls, severed from their bodies millennia before, screamed into the stone and rock around them. Tens of thousands of howls swirled through the air, echoing through the worn cracks of the obelisk and out into the black cavern beyond. Their voices were ethereal, pure, unlimited by the constraints of flesh. It was impossible to distinguish any individual, impossible to recognize any species—there was only pain, circulating through the ancient walls, so warbling and discordant it seemed to signify the fall of the heavenly spheres.

Isaac passed through the stone archway at the top of the obelisk. Zaria and his father followed behind. For a moment, Isaac stood at the peak of the tower, gazing down into a cauldron of pain and despair. The voices washed upon him, like the wind of a storm. The light of the souls shone in his eye.

The screams were deafening.

He had to make them stop.

Below, down the length of the massive obelisk, a lattice of pipework ran from the walls, where the souls extracted from the factory drained into a storage container. The storage container was an enormous glass pillar hanging in the center of the obelisk, like a bubble of air trapped in a hollow tube. The glass shone a brilliant purple as thousands of beings swirled inside, the vast network of pipes sucking into the structure from various sides, feeding and gorging the prison. There were intake valves, energy threshers, circuits and junctions, wicked devices whose purpose seemed only the further extraction of energy, the optimization of death, the complete digestion of a soul. Through it all, the songs of the dead rang loudly through the machine.

Isaac remembered, as a boy, the first time he had crafted an elixir in his uncle’s laboratory. He had sprinkled the wrong reagent, and the solution had grown acidic, and the steam had fermented into a ghastly purple fog, one that seemed to reach and pull for any expendable material within its grasp, like the souls were doing now. Their limbs were wispy and feeble.

He took a calming breath.

Back then, when his uncle had come to investigate, Isaac had prepared to be struck. After the initial moment of rage, Berith had surveyed the damage to his beakers, and his face had softened, and he had told Isaac that the equipment was trivial to replace, and, in fact, Berith himself had made the same mistake when he was his age, so he was only glad that Isaac had not breathed the caustic fumes. The young boy had been shocked at the kindness. He had been even more surprised when Berith proceeded to spend the rest of the day in the lab, running through different experiments, giving close instruction, showing Isaac the proper way to brew mixtures that glowed and sparkled with magic. They had laughed, and joked, and played.

Now, through the pipework and blinding light, he caught glimpses of movement. Between the machinery, there was the flowing of robes, the shadows of a marching army. There were at least thirty sigils, each of them signifying the control of a puppeteer. More than once, he thought he saw a shaved head over blackened robes, a body so shrouded in darkness it seemed to lack any substance at all.

Isaac listened to the cries of the dead, feeling both pity and rage.

“Right,” Zaria said, peering down next to him. “This looks proper fucked and all, but we’re storming this cock like a gods-damned castle. Aye, lads?”

“It’s an obelisk,” he replied. “There are carvings—”

“Silence, squire. It’s long, hard, ‘tween the legs, and exactly where we’re gonna kick your uncle.” She turned to face them, the soul light illuminating the fur of her neck. “I appreciate you lot got more magic than I do, but I’ve fought a lotta battles. Mud and guts sorta thing. Anyone got objections to me taking command?”

Isaac shook his head. On the wall, Caine pushed out a tentacle of legs, shaking it like a tongue.

Zaria glanced down the length of the obelisk. “We’re treating this like proper soldiers. Ranks and divisions.” She pointed at Caine. “You’re gonna be light infantry. You’ll engage close as you can, keep his slaves occupied, soakin’ up their fire. You got a lotta chaff to lose, so you’ll be best to take the hits.”

Caine twisted his embedded skulls towards Isaac, gasping.

“Berith is a necromancer,” Isaac said. “He has anti-necrotics, and he can take control of the bones themselves. My father won’t be much help against him.”

Caine nodded all his faces.

“Aye,” Zaria said, “not your uncle directly. I’m speaking of his thralls. They only got ice and fire. You don’t stay to get slaughtered—you cleave yourself apart, attack from all sides, rush at them quick and scuttle on back. The goal is to skirmish. Keep them off-balance and distracted. It ain’t a sacrifice.”

Caine raised a skull upon a stalk of vertebrae, gazing down the length of the tower. Its jaw clattered in apprehension.

“Would you rather expose your son?”

The bones flinched, the skull jerking first to Isaac, then Zaria. It swung from side to side.

“So you’ll do it, then?” the hyena asked.

The skull rose the wall, and five different arms emerged from the mass, all of them slapping their fingers against the bony forehead in a chaotic attempt at a salute. Below, two heaps of bone sloughed onto the stairs, quickly twisting into the shape of beasts.

“Squire,” Zaria said, turning, “you’re the artillery. While your father’s drawing their attention, you’ll be picking ‘em off at a distance. Snipe your uncle if you can, but focus on the thralls. If they’re his energy, they’re his ammunition. Take away his ammo, and he’s got naught to fire with.”

Isaac did not particularly like the idea of killing his fellow students of magic, but he could not argue against the necessity. “What will you do?”

“Me?” She hefted her poleaxe into both hands. “I’m your bodyguard. If he tries to come for you, I’ll chop him to bits. My job’s to keep you safe and doing your squirely duties. Sound good?”

He managed a smile. “No other way I’d like it, Z.”

“Right, then.” She raised her axe overhead. “Let’s conquer this cock!”

Caine took the lead, his shuffling creatures leaping and spilling over the pipework, his central mass crawling down the wall of the obelisk, moving like rain on glass. At the side, there was a spiral staircase winding into the earth, the mist of souls slightly obscuring the path. Isaac took the stairs at a marching pace, the feel of Zaria’s heavy footfalls behind giving him strength and courage.

He patted the dagger in his pocket, just to make sure it was there.

As they descended, the screams grew louder. Purple fog seemed to condense in their wake, grasping for them, the shifting haze holding the residual shape of arms and hands. In the central glass pillar, thick clouds of souls collected around their position, following their progress. Isaac had never heard the language of the necromancers spoken aloud, but he imagined he could hear it now, through the ghostly wails and whispering moans. The timbre of the voices began to shift. He did not need a translator to know the souls were begging to be freed.

He could do nothing for them.

Not yet.

Before long, the sounds of combat began to pierce the screams. There was a shattering of ice, the hollow clatter of bone. Through the pipework, Isaac glimpsed movement and light, the shadow of falling bodies. He leaned over the edge of the winding staircase, staring down the length of the obelisk. The mnemonics came easily. Berith had drilled the motions deep into his mind, all with shouts and strikes and pain.

All for a purpose.

The Archons. World domination.

Isaac grew so furious he almost failed the cast.

He pointed his finger down towards the fighting, waiting for a thrall to expose themselves through the glass and pipes. A burst of raw sound would turn his fellow students into mist and paste. If he saw Berith’s shaven head—

“Get down!”

Zaria shoved him forward. A moment later, ice crackled against the wall behind him. Isaac sprawled against the staircase, searching for the enemy. He saw two thralls crouching on the edges of the pipework beside him, their dark robes obscured in the shadow of the machine. Isaac blasted one with a direct hit of sound, and the resulting deluge of gore struck the other mage like a grenade of blood and bone. The thrall, unflinching from the pain, continued to cast her spell, but just as a gout of fire began to leap from her hand, a storm of bone fell from above, the flits of femurs and ribs stabbing down like a flurry of arrows. The flames sputtered and died. The human reeled, slipping stolidly over the edge. Isaac watched her body crash through the pipes until it resembled little more than a towel.

Beside him, several masses of bones crawled along the wall, rushing to reinforce the battle below.

“Thanks, father,” Isaac said.

One of the slugs grew a shell of arms, each giving a thumbs up.

“Fuck me, then,” Zaria said, helping him stand. “He knows to leave a rearguard. Watch for ambush.”

They continued down the stairway, more cautiously than before. Isaac prepared a hurricane in the palms of his hands. He kept his gaze sharp and alert. As the wind seared and screamed in his grip, as the sickly glow of a necromantic cast lit up the masonry below, he realized, suddenly, that he did not feel afraid. He could feel Zaria at his back, and he knew his father was all around him, and the feeling of their presence gave him more confidence than he could remember feeling in his entire life.

It occurred to him, all at once, how much his mind had been crippled by everything Berith had done. All the guilt and loneliness he had ever suffered. . . .

More and more, Isaac simmered with rage.

Below, the battle grew closer. The elemental students had been placed in straight lines along the winding staircase, watching Caine’s corpse-hewn monsters rush down the curve of the obelisk wall. They made no attempt to loose their spells.

As the bones drew close, a sigil grew bright on a single thrall’s head, and Caine’s beasts were flung from the stone, like crumbs brushed from a table’s edge. They hung suspended in the air, beginning to twist and hiss as the connections were ripped away by an invisible hand. The thrall collapsed, her body thin and withered. Along the line of thralls, two more sigils grew bright, and Berith’s spell grew stronger, shredding Caine’s bones all the way down into the individual fibers of ossein.

Seeing an opportunity, Isaac unleashed the hurricanes in his hand. The wind came in a lash, slamming the line of mages into the wall behind them. They bounced and tumbled across the stairs, their bodies falling broken and limp into the pipework below. Even above the screaming souls, he heard a symphony of striking flesh. Moments later, the necrotic force holding his father started to weaken, and the slack in power was just enough for some of the bones to break free, scuttling along the pipes in retreat.

A pair of glowing eyes met his from below, clearly visible through the glass and stone. He could not fail to recognize them. They were the same gentle blue as his own.

Hadn’t his uncle said they always saw eye to eye?

“Face me!” Isaac yelled.

Berith narrowed his gaze.

Three of the surviving students turned rigid. As the humans drained of energy, the obelisk started to rumble, the stone walls belching with dust. The souls began to shriek. Isaac felt the temperature drop around him, which could only signify a casting of necrotics, a swift genocide of warmth and light and life. Below, the students fell from the stairs, their robed bodies toppling like wheat before a scythe.

“I told you to leave!” his uncle shouted.

There was a great sound of clattering, rushing up through the glass and stone, as if a thousand hammers were banging against a drum. Pipes rusted. Darkness splintered the air. He saw a boiling whiteness emerge through the complex network of machines, as if, inexplicably, a flood of milk was filling the tower. The sound grew into a cacophony of snapping twigs. Isaac only realized that Berith was launching a salvo of bone when he saw the sickly green aura of necrotic propulsion, rimming the tidal wave of corpses like the aurora of a sky.

“Fuck!” Zaria yelled.

She tackled him across the stairs, her heavy weight knocking the breath from his lungs. An instant later, the bones erupted through the tower, spurring the souls to scream in mortal fear, so many arms and legs and teeth and jaws flooding through the air that, for a moment, it felt as if an entire graveyard had been loaded into the shot of a cannon. Isaac stared over Zaria’s shoulder, wide-eyed, as the bones splintered against the surrounding machines, leeching so much necrotic energy that the impact melted pipes and boiled glass and chewed viciously through stone, puncturing the cloud of souls like a burning storm of hail.

Screams filled the air.

Fear.

Terror.

Agony.

Moments later, there came a hail of splintered bone, tumbling through the hollow cylinder of the obelisk. The geyser had reached its peak—now, it was beginning to fall. Chips of ossein rained like the smoldering embers of phosphorous, burning everything they touched, smoking and hissing with a malevolent flash of green. Zaria flinched, crying out in pain. Half of a skull had landed on her back. Isaac scrambled out from beneath her, batting away the sickly bone with the sleeve of his robe. The contact withered his garment halfway to the elbow, the material hissing into flakes of ash.

By the time the geyser receded, the machinery of the obelisk had become a slag of metal, so twisted and rent that it was almost unrecognizable as a pneumatic series of pipes. Glass dripped from the pillar, molten and bubbling. Through the hissing smoke, his father slithered up the walls of the obelisk, fleeing in naked fear.

Below the screaming souls, a voice rose from the depths.

“You insolent child!”

Isaac felt a stab of fear.

“You think you can challenge me?” Berith shouted.

Another rumbling shook the obelisk. Inside the glass pillar, the souls quickened into clouds, almost condensing into a solid accretion. Faces gasped through the fog. An instant later, the mashed souls were shot into the surrounding pipes, sucked away like water through a straw, causing the entire obelisk to dance with bright light and racing shadows.

Berith was a necromancer. He could control the souls as much as the bones.

The screams reached a crescendo.

“Get down!” Isaac yelled.

This time, he tackled Zaria, sending them sprawling across the stairway as the network of pipes exploded beside them, all the overloaded pressure of souls erupting in a geyser of valves, junctions, and fittings. Isaac felt a storm of metal screaming around his flesh. A short distance away, the winding stairway crumbled from the blast, a curtain of broken masonry raining down into the depths of the earth.

His ears rang. For a moment, all sound fell away, and Isaac could do little else but cringe flat to the stairs, coughing at the acrid smoke.

Eventually, he raised his head. The path in front of them had been destroyed. There was a fissure in the winding stairway, creating a gap that lasted almost half a revolution around the circumference of the tower. It was far larger than Isaac dared to leap.

There was no way down.

“Isaac!” Berith yelled, his voice distant and small.

Isaac clenched his jaw.

“This was never your mission!”

Isaac rose to his feet, smoldering in rage.

“I gave you a chance, boy! You’ve wasted it! I promise, if you come any closer—”

“Do it!” Isaac yelled. “Kill me!”

He looked down. Once again, he saw Berith’s glowing eyes, looking up through the distant machines. His gaze was locked and steady.

“I’m still alive!” Isaac shouted. “If you want to kill me, you’ll have to do it yourself! No more hiding behind your slaves!”

The eyes glared.

“Face me, uncle!”

The eyes narrowed, then disappeared.

“You coward!” Isaac screamed. “You liar! You are nothing but a puppet of the Diet! Do you hear me? You are as much an instrument as me!”

The only response was a haunting melody of souls, still swirling through the pillar of glass. For a moment, Isaac was so furious, so utterly consumed with rage, that he nearly flung himself down the length of the tower, hoping to land directly on his uncle’s head. The only thing that stopped him was the sound of Zaria groaning in pain.

Reason took hold.

He took a long, simmering breath.

When he felt somewhat collected, he began to examine his situation, like a man standing in the eye of a storm. Peering over the edge of the stairs, the obelisk seemed to extend an incalculable distance below, much further than he could see through the tangle of pipes and souls. It was likely as tall as the legs of the colossus, which would mean certain death if he dared take the plunge.

A short distance ahead, stone continued to tumble from the broken stairway, including several other spots where the necrotic bones had melted through the brick. The air was filled with hissing smoke and the wisps of severed souls. Through the fog, he could see the rest of the stairway spiraling down the tower’s length, the unbroken path beginning somewhere on the other side of the glass pillar. It seemed as if the damage was mostly centered at their location.

If he could get to the other side. . . .

“Xotra’s weeping cunt,” Zaria said, picking herself up. Isaac saw a naked circle of skin on her back, where the skull had landed. She swiped awkwardly at the pinkened flesh. “Did he just spew a volcano of death?”

“Yes,” Isaac said.

Zaria breathed out, her ears flicking with dust.

Isaac pointed. “Look.”

Below, in the destruction left by Berith’s geyser of bone, there were several crumpled humans, their black robes peppered with falling dust and shards of rusted metal. They were so withered and drained their corpses had not even bled.

“He killed nine people to cast that spell,” Isaac said. “Not including the souls.”

Zaria spat.

“It means,” Isaac said, “he can’t do it again. That kind of magical display is unsustainable. He was only trying to intimidate us.”

“I ain’t dandy about callin’ that bluff.”

Isaac leaned over the edge, his mind racing. The revolution of the stairway continued below their feet, but the distance was so large that dropping down would likely break their legs. It was also impossible to leap from one end of the tower to the other, though Zaria could likely use her zoanthrope strength to leap across the broken stairway in front of them, if she wanted to. Caine could crawl across the wall as easily as a beetle.

Isaac needed a path for himself.

If he could just. . . .

He stared down at the tangle of pipework surrounding the glass pillar, knowing that every moment he wasted was more time for Berith to gain a lead. His uncle was heading directly for the bottom of the tomb. Once there. . . .

The air shuddered.

For the first time, Isaac noticed the dust.

It mingled with the wisps of smoke and souls, dancing through the slight currents of his breath. At certain angles, it glinted almost metallically. Slowly, it began to swirl on its own, as if attempting to catch his attention. When Isaac focused, the dust shot itself down through the air like the trail of a comet, pointing towards a bed of pipework below, which hung horizontally across the circular expanse, forming a half-broken net.

Around him, the souls leaking from the cracked pillar were spreading themselves along through the dust, transmitting their energy across its medium, as if they were made of similar substance. The dust sparkled like stars within a nebula.

What was this dust made of?

Had the necromancers bound their souls to solid objects? This dust, this same substance which had repeatedly attempted to guide him through the tomb, clearly possessed some manner of intelligence. Were the extracted souls actually bound to an infinitesimal substrate, something too small for the eye to see? Had the process of time eroded the oldest souls into dust?

Did these people still exist as specks in the air?

Why did it look like metal?

He had no answers. A moment later, his thoughts were interrupted as a clattering of bone sounded above his head. Caine crawled down the obelisk wall, his film of corpses having grown noticeably thin. He now possessed half as many bones as before. Isaac did not need to guess that a sizable fraction of his mass had been destroyed by Berith.

“Well,” Zaria said, joining Isaac at the edge of the stairs. “No way down.”

“Do you see that?”

“What?”

He gestured at the stream of glinting dust, which was still pointing down to the pipework below. Zaria squinted, giving a few cautious sniffs.

“Just dust,” she said.

“No. It can’t be. The pattern is too consistent. They’re trying to tell me something. If only I could. . . .”

His voice trailed away. Zaria glanced at him. After a moment, she turned to Caine. “Oi, bones.”

Caine focused a dozen skulls.

“Can you make a bridge of sorts?” Zaria asked, flicking her head to the broken stairway. “Something sturdy enough to carry us?”

Caine extended a skull stalk, gazed eyelessly down the length of the obelisk. He shook the stalk hard. On the wall, bones snapped into letters.

BRITTLE

YOU HEAVY

“I can’t fuckin’ read.”

The skull shook in place, gasping at her.

Isaac felt Zaria twist and turn behind him, searching for an escape. “Isaac. Pull your ropes. The wall’s cracked open here. Don’t know how sturdy it’ll be, but if I can tie some knots, we’ll dangle the length—”

“I’m going to jump,” Isaac said.

She looked at him, bewildered.

“The souls are telling me to jump.”

“What in the fuck are you babblin’ about?”

The dust swirled faster, urging him ahead. Around the pipework, the souls begged and screamed, their wispy arms rising like steam from a bowl.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, leaping into the air.

He slammed into the pipework after barely a second of flight. The ancient metal heaved. Sharp, jagged edges cut into his skin as the pipework only barely held to its frame. By the end, he was nestled into the apex of an elongated V, staring down the vanishing length of the obelisk. Rusted metal whined in his ear. He scrambled over to a thick junction of pipes, which offered stronger support. The groans fell to a softer volume.

When he looked up, Zaria and Caine were watching from the edge of the stairs. He gave them a thumbs up.

“You stupid bastard!” Zaria shouted.

“Follow me!” he yelled.

With obvious displeasure, Zaria turned to Caine, whispering something. The bones squirmed in reply. After a moment, she sheathed her poleaxe, looked down, and leaped into the air.

Her impact was violent. She was much heavier than Isaac, which was enough to send the metal screaming in protest, her leather armor and spotted fur sinking through the lattice of pipework like a foot stomping through twigs. He grabbed at her flailing arm as the last of the pipes snapped from the frame, sending her tearing straight through the net. Just barely, he managed to catch her by the wrist.

He was wrenched flat. She was too heavy. He struggled, straining to lift her body, his muscles nearly ripping from the ligament. Zaria grabbed at the sleeve of his robes, her legs kicking over naked air.

Her fingers slipped through his palm.

The pipework shuddered.

Just as he was about to lose his grip, the souls broke free from their cage.

All at once, there was an ethereal fog surrounding them, full of fingers and limbs and a soft, lilting voice. The soul entered his skin. Suddenly, Isaac felt a surge of energy, like all the power of his magic had been transfused directly into strength. He pulled Zaria again, and she felt as light as a toddler. When she rose through the broken hole of pipes, a fog of souls surrounded her, lifting her body like a warm thermal of air. As she cleared the edge, and they collapsed back onto the pipes, the souls were already grasping at the broken sections of metal, holding them together with a moaning grip.

The metal stopped bending. All at once, it felt as solid as steel.

They were safe.

It had actually worked.

“Gods above,” Isaac said, watching a fog of souls leak from his skin.

Around them, the mist swirled and danced, streaming with dust. Eventually, a single cloud of light rose to Isaac’s face. He saw the vague suggestion of human features. A mouth formed like a gash. Underneath the moaning of the souls, the face began to speak in the language of the necromancers. Isaac had spent multiple days interpreting their language, which allowed him to guess at the meaning of the words.

“Save us.”

He was stunned. All he could do was nod. The soul dissipated, wafting like smoke in a breeze. The two of them were still surrounded by a purple, grasping crowd, all of them glinting and sparkling with unknown substance. He was convinced, more than ever, that the dust in the air was the true essence of the soul.

The necromancers had trusted him. They were begging him for help. He felt, all at once, as if he had been imbued with a noble purpose.

Zaria slapped him across the face.

“You fucking codpiece!”

“What?” he asked, smarting.

Her teeth glinted purple as she snarled. “You tryin’ to leap to your death?”

“I was following the souls!” He gestured at the surrounding fog, sweeping a hand through the trails of dust. “They told me to. The necromancers. The dust—”

“Some fucking dead people beckoned you into a chasm? Is that your defense?”

“Well, yes.”

She slapped him again.

Around them, Caine rolled a film of bones down the masonry of the tower. He paused at their level, unleashed a crop field of vertebral stalks, and shook the skulls incredibly hard. On the wall, bones festered into words.

BAD

BAD

BAD

“Sorry, father,” Isaac said.

The field of skulls gave him a pointed, eyeless look. Moments later, they bent themselves downward, gazing along the remaining length of the obelisk.

“We’re fine,” Isaac said, gesturing over to the spiral staircase across from them. “Keep harassing Berith. Don’t let him gain a lead.”

The skulls nodded, and the bones split into crawling formations as they raced and spat down the walls of the tower. Slowly, Isaac and Zaria rose to their feet, making sure their stance was steady on the nest of pipes. It was tricky footing. Many of the ducts were thin, brittle, and horribly rent by necrotic scars. Still, despite the obvious damage, the souls managed to hold the metal netting in place. Their wispy limbs drifted toward the opposite stairway, like wind bending the plume of a campfire’s smoke.

Close to them, the glass pillar of souls still teemed with thousands of souls. Isaac felt very certain that he was being watched. Faces blurred into a fog.

He took a moment to flex his arm, the one the souls had entered.

“Did you see that?” he asked.

Zaria stepped carefully over a jagged valve. “Not now, love.”

“The soul entered through my skin, like sand through a sieve. It. . . .” He flexed his limb again. “It gave me a burst of strength. How is that possible?”

“Isaac, quit faffin’ about.”

He flinched. He knew he had to increase his pace. Uneasily, he began to step and lurch across the pipes, sometimes crawling with his hands to ensure a steady balance. As he moved, he suddenly remembered a mural he had seen in the necropolis, where a god bearing the emblem of the stripes and stars had infused his worshippers with a swarm of insects, which had burrowed readily through the skin.

Burrowed through the skin. . . .

The dust.

The dust made of souls.

Isaac looked around him again, startled. The purple fog seemed to linger and twist. The air sparkled like a precious metal.

“Isaac!” Zaria hissed, gripping the vertical shaft of a threshing duct. “Stop grabbin’ ass, I swear to gods!”

There wasn’t time to investigate this discovery. Perhaps, with the danger imposed by the Diet, the pirates of the desert, and the dwindling nature of their supplies, there never would be again. Even still, he became very aware that he had just brushed, unknowingly, against a monumental revelation, one that would change a fundamental understanding of life, if only he possessed the time to study.

Isaac sighed, crawling on his hands and knees.

“Where we goin’, squire?” Zaria asked, waiting at the edge of the pipes. The spiral stairway was only a few feet below. “Need some direction.”

He picked his way carefully over a broken fan. “This is all conjecture, but I imagine there must be some mechanical device, similar to the one we saw in the factory, sitting at the bottom of the tomb, which would act as a control station for the conducting of souls. From there, Berith could direct all the energy directly into the colossus.”

“What happens if he does?”

“It will crush us like ants, and likely the nine kingdoms, and then also the world.”

“Lovely,” Zaria said. “And there was me thinking not all sorcerers were twats.”

“We have a chance,” Isaac replied. “This technology is ancient. It’s unsanctionable. The Diet doesn’t have anything close to it, and they’re too hampered by their constituent kingdoms to get away with open study of the mechanics. They wouldn’t have bothered with this whole conspiracy if they could. If we destroy this hypothetical device, and release all the souls into the aether, they will have nothing to work with.”

“Good. Glad to hear.” She looked down through the pipes. “Gotta get there first.”

“And we have to kill my uncle, too.”

She glanced at him.

“It’s the only way,” Isaac said, standing up beside her.

“Is that your rage speaking for you?”

He didn’t answer.

They were standing by the staircase. Their path was almost returned. Zaria glanced at the gap they would have to leap before dragging her gaze back to him. “Keep your focus. You’re better than he is.”

“Yes, I am.”

“Isaac,” she said. “You’re better than him, aren’t you?”

He looked at her, realizing how hard his fists were clenched. He made his fingers loose and limber again. “Yes. I am. We’re going to smash this tomb to pieces. Nothing can survive. If the Archons and bearded wizards think they can merely scheme their way—”

Something caught his eye. He looked up, peering through the smoke and fog.

Metal glinted in his direction.

The only thing that saved his life was the reflexive flinch of his arm. He cocked it to his chest, like one might recoil from a burning stove, and two out of the three knives stabbed through his arm instead of his chest. Isaac was so shocked at the sudden impalement that he didn’t even feel the initial blow. It was only when he blinked, confused, reeling, looking down at the blades hilted inside his flesh, that the wound became real, and the pain began to start.

It was the worst pain of his life.

He loosed a ragged gasp, falling flat on the pipes. His eyes went wide. He stared at the knives in shock, losing all capacity for speech. Moments later, a figure leaped down from the stairs, landing nimbly on the pipes. She had white fur, tall ears, and a cutlass wrapped tightly in hand.

She charged across the tower, screaming for battle.

“How the fuck—” Zaria began.

Captain Black Eye Soren leaped from the pipes, her dexterous bunny legs carrying her into a rushing arc through the air. Zaria barely managed to unsheathe her polearm, blocking the plunging sword with the haft of her axe. An instant later, the two pirates collided, body to body, the sheer weight of the impact sending them both tumbling from the pipes. They crashed into the winding staircase, spilling down the ancient architecture in a ball of grunts, curses, and fur.

Isaac did not follow the battle. He was still lying on his back, staring in breathless shock. The first knife had skewered through his forearm. The second was sticking from the lateral head of his deltoid, just below the shoulder’s edge. The third blade, the one that had managed to strike his chest, was sticking gruesomely from a spot just beneath his collarbone. He tried to bend the arm, and the pain sent his vision into a nauseous swim.

He couldn’t use the arm.

He could no longer cast a spell.

He wanted to cry like a child.

Distantly, at the stairs, Zaria was pacing backwards, holding the length of her poleaxe in a defensive posture. Soren followed her down, twirling her cutlass with a graceful vengeance. The bunny’s burnt flesh twisted into a snarl.

“Your magic fucktoy can’t help you now, traitor.”

Zaria thrusted her spear tip, but Soren sidestepped it easily, slashing down at the haft. If the hyena hadn’t jerked away, the blow would’ve taken several fingers.

“That’s fine,” Zaria said. “I’ll follow your lead, capt.”

They slashed, trading several blows, their shadows leaping over the wall. Steel met steel in a bone-ringing clang.

Soren snorted. “Sandy graves?”

“Fuckin’ right.”

Zaria slashed with the axe, hitting only stone. Soren drew a knife from her bandolier. Zaria thrusted. The bunny dodged. When Zaria attempted a third swing, Soren threw the knife. Zaria jerked her head. As the hyena clutched her face, stumbling back, Soren jumped over the poleaxe, bounced a foot off the wall, and leaped high into the air, her sword lowered for a plunge.

Isaac lost them through the pipes and souls.

“Zaria!”

There was a scream of pain.

“Z!”

Suddenly, the two pirates appeared again, both of them tumbling out into the nest of pipes and ducts running down the length of the tower. Their bodies bounced and clanged. Zaria left a red smear of blood. Further below, Isaac noticed a growing storm of ice and fire, mixed with the sound of bone clattering against metal. Caine was unleashing the full brunt of his masses. Berith’s thralls were launching a barrage of elements. Whatever was happening between the two brothers, it seemed both desperate and reckless.

He hoped his father was winning.

He knew Zaria was not.

When he tried to stand, the pain made him gasp. He collapsed onto his back, breathing, swimming in agony, feeling his own blood soaking his tattered robes, the sound of spells and steel and bones blurring together into a cacophony of noise, like the swirling voices of the souls.

He was supposed to be aiding his father. He needed to help Zaria.

Get up.

He tried to stand, only to fall back again.

He remembered the days in the yard, when Berith would strike him for failing a cast, or misremembering the mnemonics, or any other reason he could find. Isaac had mastered all of his spells while covered in welts and bruises and tears. He had picked himself up thousands of times before. He could do it now, when it mattered more than any time in his life.

He pictured Berith’s face again, eyes alight with the glow of parasitic magic.

He clenched his fist.

He gained a knee.

He lurched.

He rose.

Isaac stood, wobbling, his teeth clenched in rage and pain.

Through the haze of souls, he saw the two pirates a short distance below. They had fallen onto a gnarled tangle of blast gates and broken residue filters, something that now looked like a forest of jagged metal. Soren clutched her shoulder, squeezing her small body from the depths of a cooling fan. Beside her, Zaria was dangling by the tenuous grip of a pipe, her feet dangling over naked air. The duct was visibly bending beneath her weight, and every swipe of her hand was leaving a visible streak of blood.

Isaac raced down the stairway, drawing the dagger from his pocket.

Zaria tried to pull herself up. Soren sauntered forward. Casually, she kicked the hyena’s poleaxe off the pipework, sending the weapon clattering down the tower. Zaria slipped back down the pipe, dangling on bloody fingers. Soren turned her dislocated shoulder towards a hard junction of valves and bashed it against the metal, snarling as the bone returned to the socket. Finally, with a sneer of burnt flesh, she pointed her cutlass down at Zaria’s struggling face. Isaac only now noticed that a knife was sticking from the hyena’s eye.

“Take it with honor,” Soren said.

“Fuck that!”

Zaria grabbed the bunny’s leg, trying to pull her toward the edge. Soren raised her cutlass.

“Hey!”

The two pirates stopped as Isaac leaped onto the pipework. He almost collapsed, the impact lurching his balance enough that he had to lean against a blast gate for support. His bloody robes smeared over metal. His face sweaty, his blond hair hanging loose above his eye, he raised his head and pointed his dagger directly at Soren.

“I’m still her champion,” he said.

“That so?” the bunny replied.

“You have to go through me.”

Soren barked out a laugh. A grin split through her burns. She kicked Zaria’s hand from her leg, taking a generous step across the metal cage beneath their feet. “Oh, you woulda made a fine cabin boy. All spit and pecker.” She twirled her sword. “I like you, love. Shame it’s gotta be this way.”

Isaac did not reply.

Zaria grunted and hissed, trying desperately not to fall.

“You ever held one of those before?” Soren asked, gesturing to his dagger.

Isaac panted for breath. Every pull of his lungs pressed on the knife in his chest. Below, the battle of bones and fire had fallen silent, the elements disappearing within the distance and gloom. He did not need to look to know his father had lost.

“All yours, then,” Soren said, twirling her sword. “Let’s dance.”

Isaac gritted his teeth.

Suddenly, the screaming of the souls erupted around them. Plumes of energy gushed from the broken power grid, swirling in the air. Soren stepped back, avoiding the grasping fog. Isaac let the souls wash over his body, watching as they wrapped a dozen ethereal hands across his chest and neck and limbs. Purple light drank through his skin.

The pain faded away.

He felt new energy surge inside him. He felt his arms regain their strength. He felt all the confidence of a thousand loving voices.

The souls whispered again.

“Save us.”

He put the dagger back in its sheath and began to cast a spell.

The swirling light reflected from Soren’s black eye. Seeing the danger, her fingers raced across the sheaths of throwing knives. She found them all empty. When her hand fell to her belt, there were no more grenades.

Isaac forced his arms to the second position.

Soren dashed forward, her bare feet pounding across pipes and metal.

Isaac wrenched into the third.

By now, more souls were spewing from the broken machinery, filling the air with a bright, sparkling nebula, and Soren found herself continually blocked by the grasping hands, the moaning voices, the smoky plume of ethereal limbs. She dodged around the worst of the fog, weaving and sprinting, her sword glinting bright.

Isaac achieved the fourth and final position.

When the spell was complete, the flame that came from his hand was no more than a weak sputter, something that would’ve earned a reprimand at any self-respecting Diet college. Here and now, it was still more than enough to burn Soren’s face. She missed her slash, stumbling. Her head became wrapped in fire. She flinched, slapping her cheek, gasping for air, nearly losing her footing on the pipes, beginning to flail wildly as the flame quickly spread to the skin below her fur.

“You cheating cunt!” she yelled.

Slowly, the souls descended upon her. When they touched the flame eating through her face, they turned Isaac’s weak spell into a great spout of fire, their essence fueling the conflagration until the entirety of the captain’s body was subsumed in the blaze, becoming a formless mass of heat and light. The only thing louder than the flame was the sound of Soren’s agonized scream.

She flailed and tossed, slamming into the machinery. She lurched. She fell. She rose again, the flames eating into her muscle. With a final cry, the bunny flung herself forward, blinded by fire, attempting to gut Isaac with a slash of her sword.

He did not move.

The Black Eye missed.

She lurched again, lost her footing, and fell bodily over the edge.

Soren fell to the earth like a comet of fire, her raspy scream echoing the entire way down the obelisk. When the screaming stopped, Isaac could still see a speck of orange at the dark bottom of the obelisk, shining like a star in the sky.

It did not move again.

All at once, the souls receded from his skin, exhaling from his body like mist before the dawn. As they left, the pain returned, and Isaac gasped with its arrival, barely managing not to teeter over the edge. He fell heavily onto his rear.

“Isaac.”

Zaria was dragging herself up the edge of the pipework. He saw, for the first time, that one of her hands had nearly been cleaved apart, the flesh seeming to flex in different directions, like rips in a fabric. He stumbled her way as she managed to fling herself back to safety. When they met, she pushed him roughly to the floor.

“Hold still.”

“Z, are you—”

“Shut up!”

She checked his injuries, prodding at the knives in his arm and chest. Isaac could only stare dumbly at the knife sticking from her eye. He could see vitreous fluid leaking down her furry cheek, mingling with the blood. He had never seen the translucent fluid anywhere but a dissected corpse.

“You coughing blood?” she asked.

“Are you okay?” he replied.

“Isaac! Are you coughing blood?”

“No!” He coughed, just to make sure. “No, I’m not.”

“Good.” She dug through her pack, ripping apart a white shawl with her teeth. “Gotta put a tourniquet on. My hand’s fucked, so you need to hold some parts for me. You’ll need a sling, as well, so you don’t open it no fuckin’ wider.”

“I have to be able to cast—”

“You’re bleedin’ half to death, you stupid cunt!”

It was only now, when the immediate danger had passed, that he noticed how wet and heavy his robes had grown. Blood flowed all the way down his arm, dripping into thick streams at his wrist. As the rush of combat faded away, the pain suddenly rose to new heights, smothering all his thoughts.

Zaria retrieved a torch from her pack, smashing it to splinters on her knee. She stuck the largest piece between her teeth, beginning to wrap the ripped cloth around his upper arm. “Help me tie the knot.”

He did his best to aid her in applying the tourniquet. She slipped the splinter of torch into the cloth, tied the improvised windlass down, warned him that it was going to hurt, and twisted the wood in circles. He yelled until his throat was hoarse. When the tourniquet was viciously tight around his arm, she fashioned a sling from another ripped section of fabric, cradling his arm close to his chest.

“Don’t move it,” she said, “and don’t take the blades out, neither. You’ll be dead in minutes if you do.”

“Are you okay?” he asked again.

She raised her cleaved-open hand. The sight of it seemed to hurt her even more. “Better than most who’ve crossed the Black Eye.” She took a strained breath. “Still, I could dearly use more of that magic poultice. Gonna be laid out, at this rate.”

“I can’t make anymore.”

“What?”

“I used most of my reagents the last time I healed you. I can’t make anymore.”

She let out a sharp breath. “You shoulda said so. I woulda told you not to waste it. If you had kept it, just for this. . . .”

He looked sheepish.

“Godsdamnit, Isaac.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I lost my fucking eye!”

“I just . . . wanted to help.”

Zaria took a deep breath, growled around the pain, and looked down through the pipes, eyeing the small fire still burning at the bottom of the obelisk. “No. Nevermind. I ain’t mad. Your meaning was there. Just . . . gods.”

“I know.”

They spent a few moments hissing in pain.

“I can’t cast anymore,” Isaac said. “You’ll need to lead the way. I think your poleaxe fell to the bottom. If you can—”

“You think I can swing a polearm with my hand like a butcher’s shop?”

She raised her hand. Through the jagged valley of flesh, he could almost see the bones of her palm. He lightly swung his arm, testing the motion of the sling, and received a sharp stab of pain in response.

“What can we do?” he asked.

She looked at him, silent.

Behind them, the glass pillar began to shake. The souls rushed beneath the prison, their screams rising in pitch, the surrounding pipes bending and flexing, the surviving machinery churning and groaning and spinning into motion. All at once, the souls were sucked downward through the glass pillar, rushing by in streams of light and spectral limbs. The entire power grid shook on its frames as it was brought gruesomely back to life, struggling against its age, trying to perform its task thousands of years after its creators had died.

Berith had reached the bottom of the tomb.

He was resurrecting the skeleton.

The souls had been the only source of illumination in the obelisk. Now, as the last of them drained away, a wall of darkness rushed downwards from the top of the tower, like water filling a tunnel. Blackness washed over the stone. By the end, only a few errant souls remained above their heads, glowing like stars in a night sky. The machines fell silent.

All the energy and light had been drained.

The screaming had finally stopped.

“Father!” Isaac shouted. “Father!”

Only his voice returned. The only thing he could see was a faint spot of fire where Soren had fallen, which could only be the bottom of the tower. Isaac knew, in some way, that Caine might’ve still been pursuing Berith, out into the cavern that surrounded the obelisk. There might still be a fight. All the same, there was no sign of it now.

The weight of the earth laid down a heavy silence.

Sparks came out of the darkness. Zaria was striking her flint. Slowly, the sparks caught the torch, and Zaria raised the burgeoning flame above her head. It was pitifully small compared to the darkness around them.

“Isaac,” she said. “We’re fucked now, aren’t we?”

A rumble began to be felt through the stone and metal, coming from somewhere above. Outside, through the cracks in the obelisk, the darkness seemed to churn. There was an unimaginably large cavern surrounding the body of the colossus. Out there, through miles of blackened air, the first twitches would be echoing through the bone. The toes would curl. The knee would flex. Soon, the entire creature would be ready to stand.

If it ever rose to its full height again, its head would pierce the clouds.

“I’ll bandage your hand,” he said, digging some vials from his pack. All that remained was a few tinctures of chamomile and boiled elderberry. They would not do much.

“Hey,” she said.

He looked at her.

She pointed at the powdered plants. “You givin’ me flowers?”

“What?”

“Oh, that’s sweet of you, squire. I go weak for flowers.”

He looked at her in silence, the rumbling growing louder. Finally, he made a sound that might’ve been a laugh.

“There’s a smile,” Zaria said. “I’ll take it.”

“Be honest,” Isaac said, pulling her wounded hand towards him. “Have you annoyed everyone you’ve ever met?”

“If I haven’t, it weren’t through lack of tryin’.”

When he packed the chamomile and elderberry into her wound, she hissed. When he wrapped the bandage, she snarled. When she flexed the hand, the cloth already stained a glistening red, she let out a shuddering breath. Slowly, both of them trembling in pain, they made their way over to the edge of the pipes. The winding staircase barely caught the edge of the torch.

“Can you jump?” she asked.

He shook his head.

For a moment, the rumbling intensified, groaning the metal, cracking the stone walls. There was a deepening thrum of an avalanche.

Zaria bent down, scooped him up, held him like a bundle beneath her arm, and leaped into the darkness. They crashed into the stairs. Slowly, he was let back down to his feet. She handed him the torch. Her arm wrapped around his shoulder, fingers squeezing between the knife in his chest.

“Pressure,” she said.

He nodded. She pushed. It hurt enough to make him gasp. He could not tell if the bleeding had slowed. He hoped it would be enough.

Carefully, never letting go of each other, they descended the stairs of the obelisk, heading into the darkness below. Around them, the earth began to shake and roar.

Chapter Nineteen

Boneyard

There was only blood, bones, and fire.

The blood came from the dozens of students who had fallen down the obelisk, their withered bodies full of empty faces, shattered limbs, the scars of parasitic magic. The bones came from his father’s ancient corpses, the limbs and skulls littering the floor like reeds in a marsh. The fire came from Soren, who had splattered dramatically into the stone, her leather armor still tittering with flame, her black eye staring rimless and dull from the flap of her broken skull.

Isaac’s boots filled with blood as he reached the bottom of the obelisk. Swinging the torch around the blackened room, he found only more signs of carnage, more of the innocent that Berith had sacrificed. He wondered if he had seen any of these students before. He thought, for a moment, that some of them likely lived outside the college dormitories, in the town of Khador itself, where he might have spotted them from the vantage of his bedroom window. He had never known any names, but he had often recognized the faces.

He couldn’t bring himself to look.

Somewhere outside the obelisk, a colossal tremor ripped through the earth. The blood quivered at his feet. There was the sound of collapsing rock, all of it brimming back and forth in intensity, seeming to come from every direction at once. Isaac imagined the colossus flailing as it was forcibly returned to life.

“Gods alive,” Zaria said. The hyena took her arm from his shoulder and trudged her way over to Soren’s body. She bent down, unwrapping the bunny’s fingers from the hilt of her sword. “Sorry, capt. You know the rules.”

Isaac gazed over the blood and bones. “Father?”

“Isaac.”

A human skull lay against the broken arm of a student, its eyeless socket stuck on the open bone. Isaac stumbled over, awkwardly grasping the skull with his slinged arm.

“Is Berith . . . ?”

The skull squirmed in his hand, managing to nod.

A quake surged through the masonry. Outside, there was an overwhelming deluge of rock, rumbling like the stampede of a million horses. Isaac heard the sound of a roaring voice, and it was the worst sound of them all, because the skull of the colossus had been above the surface, and they were now very deep within the earth. Either the colossus could scream so loudly, with such inhuman volume, that its voice could be felt through miles of earth . . . or there was no longer any earth between them at all.

Isaac swayed with the torch, trying to brace through the quaking earth. On the walls, he caught glimpses of ancient reliefs, all of them depicting a bony, bipedal reptile smashing through cities and mountains. The necromancer flag was draped over the dead and conquered. There was worship mixed with fear.

“We got some plan worth sharing?” Zaria asked, now wielding her captain’s sword.

“Isaac,” the skull said.

Isaac lowered the skull back into the blood. When he stood up, his slinged arm shook inside the cloth, scraping the knife against the fabric. He gasped, struggling to keep his balance.

“Isaac,” the skull said. Around it, the other bones began to swim through the blood. Limbs tumbled, pelvises rolled, and all the skulls twisted until their scarlet red faces pointed up at the ceiling. They began to hiss his name.

“Isaac.”

“Isaac.”

“Isaac.”

“Isaac.”

“I’ll see you soon, father,” Isaac said, and made his way to the exit.

The door to the obelisk stood open. It was made of skeletal arms, and the space outside the door was as black as his uncle’s robes. Isaac knew, from the stories told by his instructors, that Berith wore his sun-eating robes so he could blend into the darkness of a tomb, leaving any necromancer struggling to scent his life through the flowing void of energy. In this way, he had killed many rogue sorcerers, all by decree of the Diet of Nine. His colleagues did not refer to him as the Bone Hunter for little reason.

Another roar ruptured the earth. It felt like the planet was being split in twain.

Zaria stopped him as he made his way through the door. “Hate to break it to you, love, but I don’t think this,” she raised the cutlass, “is gonna do much against a giant.”

“We don’t need to kill the giant,” he said. “Just the person controlling it.”

“And how you proposin’ we do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“A lack of good ideas ain’t a cause for choosin’ bad ones.”

“Z,” Isaac said.

She looked at him, the knife in her eye glinting with the torchlight. “Aye. Right. One of us had to say it, I guess.” She flicked her head towards the darkness. “Ready when you are.”

Isaac thought of all the people that been sacrificed. The students of a college, the citizens of the necropolis.

His father.

Himself.

He stepped through the doorway, and Zaria followed behind.

The air of the cavern was cool, dusty, and stale, like it had never tasted a breeze. His torch barely managed to light the ground in front of him. He noticed, immediately, that the floor was made of concrete, the gritty aggregate having grown porous and cracked over the millennia. There were no markings to form a path. He could see nothing through the darkness. The only source of information was sound, and the sound that reached him now spoke of unimaginable weight and purpose, of colossal bones ripping through the earth as easily as a man emerging from a bath.

In the distance, he caught a flickering of purple, the same color that stained the souls of the necromancers. There was a tiny figure standing amongst the light.

Isaac clenched his fists.

The purple light shifted, growing in intensity, like the waving conductor of a symphony. A tremor began to loose from every direction at once. There came a shockwave of rushing air, full of dirt and sand.

All at once, orange light began to pierce the cavern.

Isaac looked up.

The bright rays, colored a hue somewhere between a stale orange and a wine-dark red, stabbed through the cavern ceiling in soft, slanting lines. Isaac squinted, feeling pain behind his eyes. He was so surprised by the sudden illumination that it took him several moments to realize he was seeing natural sunlight, instead of a trap or spell left by the necromancers. As the rumbling continued, the sunlight grew brighter, scouring the massive cavern of shadow. He could see, more and more, that the ceiling of the cavern was being torn apart like a piece of cloth, and the orange rays of sunshine were beaming down with a steady tumble of boulders, a gushing shower of dirt, entire waterfalls of sand.

This was not a natural structure, he realized. The earth and sand above their heads had only been a thin covering spread over the bottom of the tomb, like a lid enclosing a pot. Someone had created this cavern from a crater-like depression.

But why?

For what purpose?

Had the necromancers wanted to bury their work, once the empire collapsed?

Isaac stood on the barren concrete, staring in awe at the avalanches above. His mind was overwhelmed with scale. Slowly, the sunlight illuminated distant structures on the cavern floor. At first, still squinting through the intrusion of light, Isaac thought he was staring out at a bed of white moss, some film of organic mass which clung to the bumps and hills of a tree’s massive roots. It seemed to go on for miles.

When he looked again, he realized it was bone.

A sea of bone.

The white moss was composed entirely of ossein, the same tangle of fibers that composed all skeletal tissue. Instead of being arranged in a solid matrix, the bone had grown for miles, unlimited by the constraints of organic anatomy, festering in much the same way that spindles of mold would grow on a piece of bread. As far as he could see, there were thick fibers of ossein, wrapping into streams, slithering like vines, collecting into knolls and mounds and hillocks, all of it so thick and layered and vast that it might’ve appeared, at first glance, like the head of a forest canopy.

Isaac remembered the pipes, the retention tanks. The extraction chamber had harvested nearly every ounce of their victims, from blood and meat all the way down to the indefinable essence of the soul, sparing nothing but the bones. All of the drains had fed down into the earth. He had assumed, perhaps naively, that these emulsified slurries had been used for the refinement of souls. Now, staring out over the festering ocean of bone, Isaac thought of fertilizers and crops and systems of irrigation.

He remembered the fibers of ossein growing on the walls of a laboratory.

All at once, he felt sick to his stomach.

Meanwhile, around him, the cavern ceiling continued to be smashed with great wounds of sunlight, illuminating more of the vast, empty space. Aside from the overgrown blanket of ossein, and the thin crest of soul light far off in its center, the cavern was devoid of anything but miles of concrete. Its walls were carved from bedrock, rising as high as mountains. It would take days to navigate the area.

“Good gods,” Zaria said, staring at a particular avalanche.

“What?” he shouted, barely hearing her.

“They shoulda fuckin’ left!”

“What?”

She pointed, wide-eyed.

And he saw, suddenly, in the middle of a heaping waterfall of sand, there was a pirate skimmer, which had minutes ago been prowling close to the tomb’s entrance. It was now bowing precipitously toward the edge of the crater, caught in the wakes of destruction. The twin-masted sail was alight with the sigil of wind as the crew desperately threw fire against the fabric, trying to reverse their course. Moments later, another quake rumbled the earth, the sandy waterfall belched, and the pirate ship was flung out into open air, discarded like scraps from a kitchen table. The ship capsized, flipping end over end. Bodies scattered like rain.

Isaac didn’t watch the pirates hit the floor of the cavern. He didn’t even hear the sound of the skimmer’s hull smashing into concrete, smothered as it was beneath a cataclysm of falling rock. Instead, he was staring at the fleet of other pirate ships now visible over the edge of the crater. He saw billowing sails, tangles of rope, draping black standards.

It was a fleet of pirate ships. Even a kingdom of the Nine would balk at meeting such a navy in battle. Had they been waiting at the entrance of the tomb?

“Soren said as much,” Zaria muttered. “Ain’t no escape.”

“What?” Isaac shouted.

She shook her head.

All at once, he saw a colossal leg rushing out from the side, the femur slicing through the rock above like a meteor scouring the sky. A single foot steadied itself on the concrete, surrounded by a shower of spilling earth. Its ankle was digitigrade, the tarsals spiked with three enormous toes. A quake heaved through the earth, splitting the cement in a rushing line.

Zaria craned her head, taking in the full sweep of the leg. “Xotra’s cunt.”

Isaac did not reply. Instead, he took his eyes off the colossus, focusing on the soul light and the figure standing within.

Out there, past the sea of ossein, there was a pyramid, composing the apex of an open-air temple, all of it surrounded by pillars of granite and gold. Even from a distance, it had the appearance of a ceremonial stage. There was a bank of metal devices, crudely connected with pipes and copper and the merging clouds of souls.

He could see his uncle, working at the controls.

“I’ve got a plan,” Isaac said.

“What?” Zaria yelled, still staring at the bony leg.

He pointed toward the pyramid. “I’m going to—”

The rumbling intensified. The ground heaved and roared. Above them, behind the giant pillar of the obelisk, there was an avalanche falling from hundreds of feet in the air, boulders the size of palaces tumbling in a spray of dirt and stone. Isaac could see the remnants of the necropolis inside. There were split-open skulls, broken statues, a pelvic-shaped building, a shower of finger-like pavement, all of it coming down like a deluge of snow.

Beneath it all, the pelvis of the colossus began to rise.

“Run!” Zaria shouted.

They ran, weaving through the fallen rubble and splitting cement. Isaac ran until his torch was dropped, until his wounds were forgotten, until it barely felt like his feet were hitting the ground. He ran until all he could see in front of him was a forest of festering ossein. Halfway to safety, there was a volley of cannons, barely heard. Isaac glimpsed the flash of a mortar. The air was peppered with exploding iron as the Crookspur fleet unleashed a panicked fusillade at the rising colossus, the flare of the volleys so high above it felt like seeing lightning within a cloud. The heavens raged with a screaming of steel.

Isaac used the distraction to run even faster.

Zaria pulled ahead, racing directly for the bones. Without slowing, she sprinted towards a large mound of bony vines, braced her shoulder, and smashed her way into the tangle, disappearing beneath the canopy of fibers. Isaac dashed as fast as he could, but the ground flipped beneath him as something utterly gargantuan slammed into the nearby cliffs, rocketing the ground with such immense strength it felt as if the world had been momentarily yanked away, like a rug beneath his feet.

The pirates had learned why they should fear the tomb.

Shadows filled the sky.

Isaac stumbled, diving headfirst through an open curtain of bone. As he landed, he scraped the knives in his arm against the floor. The world became pain, blood, and gasps. He rolled himself along a thin, corrugated sheet of metal, capable only of incoherent noise. It felt like ages before he was able to breathe.

“On your feet, squire!”

He was yanked back to standing. A thick flail of copper wire was dangling in front of him, dancing with the repeated shockwaves of the colossus assaulting the pirate fleet. Isaac grabbed a fistful of the thin metal lines, wobbling for balance.

He blinked through the shadows.

They had entered what could only be described as a metal tunnel. It was both tight and small, forcing Zaria to stoop her height, and it extended only a short distance ahead before ending in a small, bulging room. Sections of the metal had clearly been disassembled, leaving only a thin, skeletal frame. A few panels remained on the ceiling and walls, and they were all veined with copper strands, much of it welded together with a thick, spongy substance.

Despite the shade, Isaac could see a single word painted on the wall of the bulging room. It was written in the old necromancer language. By now, he had translated enough of their language to immediately recognize the letters.

AIRLOCK

He had no idea what that was supposed to mean.

Outside, there was a roar. The frame groaned its age. Bones splintered and snapped, draping the rays of a pale orange sun. Zaria grabbed his wrist and yanked him deeper into the tunnel, bashing her way through metal sheets and entire bushes of ossein. Around them, the tunnel began to pitch and yaw, threatening to roll. She jumped into the bulging room, stood back to her full height, and kicked the wheel on the circular door. It groaned against its frame, barely opening through the dense layers of ossein, the fibers outside so thickly woven it had almost formed a solid bone.

Zaria kicked the door again.

“Cunt!”

She bashed her shoulder.

“Cunt!”

The tunnel rattled in place, a panel snapping off its frame.

“Fucking cunt!”

She reared back, ready for another charge, and, before she could take another step, the dense accretion of ossein returned to life. The fibers quivered, cracking as they moved. Like the pull of a curtain, the matrix of bone slithered away, pulling back into the larger canopy. Zaria kicked the door again. The metal swung outwards, and the sound of the cracking ossein reminded Isaac of the thralls breaking their limbs.

“Squire,” Zaria said, staring untrustingly at the open door. “Explain.”

“My father? He controls the bones in this tomb.”

“You sure about that?”

Around them, the bristles continued to squirm. Beyond the tunnel, a burrow was forming through the spindles of bone, clearly marking a path. Isaac remembered the souls aiding him in the obelisk. He thought of how many bodies had fed this growth of bone.

Perhaps—

He was yanked again.

They fell into a small undergrowth of bone, barely tall enough for Zaria to stand. Sunlight glimmered through the canopy. Whoever was pulling back the bone was obviously attempting to lead them toward the pyramid, the one Isaac had glimpsed at the center of the osseous forest, but there was a graveyard of metal buried within the white, osseous nest, and the tunnel was often compelled to bend and curve around the ancient debris. As they ventured through, Isaac caught glimpses of rigid metal hulls, hollow cylinders, thick entrails of copper, remnants of machinery still festooned with spikes and pins and poles. Once, he saw a hint of red stripes painted on the metal of a glass-windowed room. The flag of the necromancer gods was chipped and fading away.

Isaac had read about dry docks in the more prosperous kingdoms of the Diet, places where old and damaged ships would be lifted from the sea, or the sand, and laid beached upon the earth. There would be entire fleets lying in piles of wood, iron, and canvas, withering away as the workers butchered them for parts. The ships here seemed gathered for a similar purpose, if in a strange way.

The questions rose. Why was there ossein growing over the metal? How had it formed into a fungus-like fester? Furthermore, why would anyone make ships out of metal? They couldn’t possibly float. The water displacement alone—

The sunlight vanished. There was only shadow.

“Isaac!”

He looked up.

The sky was gone. In its place, a skull was leering down at them, the empty sockets of its eyes loosing an avalanche of dirt. The face of the colossus was bleached a chalky white, the contours smoothed with wind and time, the temporal sockets shuddering out sand and chips of withered bone. Nearly two days ago, Soren had blasted the skull with cannonballs and barrels of black powder, and, now, the teeth within its jaw were cracked like old porcelain, the edges glimmering with the purple light of souls.

Isaac felt his stomach drop.

Seeing the colossus move on its own, seeing the twitch and reaction of a creature whose scale was comparable to mountains, filled him with an indescribable awe, even without the vestiges of flesh and meat and scales. It had been a reptile, long ago, when it drew a natural breath. There were two holes in the side of its skull. Isaac had been right. It was a diapsid.

He did not feel vindicated.

For a long moment, Isaac made eye contact with a creature of unimaginable size, one that an empire of necromancers had worshipped like a god.

Slowly, the titan shifted its head. Sunlight returned, shining through the hinges of its fleshless jaw. The beast was scanning the ground. Isaac realized, with his heart in his throat, that it hadn’t seen them at all. They were shaded beneath a canopy of ossein, and the two of them were small enough to be less than ants for such a titanic monster. The odds of the colossus actually spotting them were slim. For a moment, he felt relieved.

The next moment, a gust of wind slammed into the canopy. Ossein rained like a storm of arrows. The wind had come from above, caused by the shifting air pressure of the beast turning its head. It created a localized squall with every motion of its body. If it did not step carefully, the sweep of its leg would brush away all the metal ships, like the shavings of a saw. Isaac could only imagine the destruction it would sow if it actually wanted to strike.

Being hidden would not save them. Their only chance was to kill its master.

The moment the skull disappeared from the sky, Zaria began to run, ducking quickly through the tunnel of bones. Ossein continued to recede in front of her, pulling back like the white foam of a wave. Isaac followed behind at a stumbling pace, trying to keep pressure on the knife in his chest.

They made their way through the cemetery of ancient ships. Zaria slammed her weight through the curtains of ossein wherever they were thin. When they were thick enough to compose an actual bone, she guided him through the remnants of the necromancer ships, taking him through a blurry series of rooms and compartments and tunnels. Each of the vessels varied wildly in size, and many were obviously the detached sections of even larger vessels, ones that had been cleaved away and butchered into pieces. He passed by dead instrumentation, narrow hallways, crew decks that were still dotted with bunks. Most of the ships were lying buried beneath the festering colony of bone.

He couldn’t imagine all that had been lost.

Eventually, the receding ossein led them towards a particularly large hull, standing like a bulwark against the concrete and bone. The entrance was overflowing with ossein, but the fibers on a nearby wall were already peeling away, and they managed to squeeze through a disassembled gap. Inside, they found something close to a command deck. There was a row of devices along a wall, followed by a collection of metal stations in the center of the room. Isaac wasn’t sure how a captain could command a ship from inside the deck, but he was quickly losing all mood to speculate.

Outside, the titan was still searching. Despite the constant cover of bone and metal, Isaac was always keenly aware of where the beast was looking, which he based solely on the massive shadows cast upon the earth, as well as the gusts of wind that erupted with every one of its motions. At the moment, the quakes in the ground were telling him that the beast had moved its search far to the right. The colossus was shifting its weight. He could imagine it bending down, beginning to search closely.

“You alright, love?”

Isaac collapsed into one of the metal command chairs. He was finding it more and more difficult to breathe, and it wasn’t solely from the knife jutting above his lung. He had cast many spells today, most of them in the last few hours alone. The fatigue was beginning to mount.

Zaria threw the cutlass to the floor, pulling out the last of their blankets and wrapping a section of fabric around the blade. With a grunt, she drew her flint and began to strike them together, creating rapid bursts of sparks.

“What’re you doing?” Isaac asked.

“Cauterizin’.”

The sparks caught. The flames grew tall on the sword. She came over, kneeled in front of him, and gripped the hilt of the knife in his chest. The slight touch made him gasp.

“Gotta come out,” she said. “You’re bleedin’ too much. It’s now or never.”

The ground shook beneath them. He had no time to argue.

She began to pull. If the pain did not strike the breath from his lungs, he would have screamed. When it was out, she retrieved their rations, wiped a thick crust of salt off the meat, and stuffed it in the wound. This time, he managed to scream. After the brief disinfection, she wiped the salt away, grabbed the sword, unwrapped the burning fabric, took him by the shoulder, gave an apologetic look, and pressed the searing hot cutlass to his skin.

He must have fainted, at some point.

The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, and Zaria was groaning as she pulled the knife out of her eye. It came in two ragged jerks. She flung it off into a cluster of ossein, pressing a trembling hand to her face. The noise she made was barely above a sob. Around them, a shockwave ripped through the room, dislodging a flurry of metal sheets. It almost felt like the capsule might lift from the floor.

Still clutching her face, Zaria sank to the floor, breathing raggedly, tearing the last of their blankets into bandages. She whimpered every time she had to move her hand. After a moment, Isaac crawled over to help, ignoring the utterly delirious pain in his chest. He wrapped a section of cloth around her eye, and she managed to loop the rest of the bandage around his shoulder. Both times, the fabric was immediately stained with red.

“Isaac,” she said. “Your uncle’s a cunt. Have I said that before?”

He tried to speak. His voice was weak and trembling. Instead, he pointed at her eye.

“Sure, love,” she replied. “I’m feelin’ grand. Right as rain. All set to join a tourney, as it happens.”

He nodded, beginning to push himself from the floor.

“We can’t do this much longer,” she said.

He gripped the seat in front of him, trying to stand. “I have a plan.”

“Aye. You said that.”

“If we can get close—”

“Isaac!”

The voice came from far away. It echoed across the ancient capsule, bouncing through bone and steel and wires. He recognized it at once. Even now, after all he had learned over his journey, it still made him flinch.

“Come out!” Berith shouted. “I know you’re in there!”

Around them, the earth quivered.

Metal groaned.

Bones shattered.

There came a growl from the sky, echoing like claps of thunder.

“The resurrection is complete!” his uncle shouted. “The colossus is mine! I am now a tyrant of the ancient gods!”

Outside, the wind shrieked in fury.

“There is no need for this! Only the Archons wanted you dead! And with this,” there was a pause, as if Berith were taking a moment to gesture, “this creature of unimaginable strength, this titan of bones and age, they will find my position greatly enhanced! Authority is ultimately derived from violence, is it not?”

A silence came through the air. It was the kind of silence that begged for a reply. Isaac took several breaths, gathering his strength.

“I never wanted this! You know that, don’t you? You know how much I hated our lives! Do you understand, Isaac, that I could have been a better person, in a better world, if only I had been allowed?”

Isaac did not answer.

“Come out!” Berith shouted. “Join me!”

Isaac gripped the armrest of a chair.

“I offer you my mercy! Protection! I will keep you safe at my side! The gods only know I never wanted to hurt you!”

Isaac squeezed the metal until his knuckles were white.

“You can still come home, Isaac! Take revenge with me! Help me teach those old wizards exactly what their conspiracies have earned! You can show your wrath to the people who deserve it!”

Another silence came. Again, it waited for a reply. Zaria was looking at him with something close to apprehension.

He shook his head. She nodded, squeezing his shoulder.

“If you don’t show your face,” Berith yelled, his voice growing hoarse, “then you will be crushed! I won’t risk you rising against me! I’ll sweep this boneyard like a field of chaff! There won’t be enough of you and your pirate to fill a petri dish!”

The earth rumbled. The wind shrieked. Around them, the shade began to thicken, like a blanket falling across the sun.

“You have five minutes! Five minutes to emerge from wherever you’re hiding! From then on, I will consider you my enemy, boy, and I will smite you like the gods!”

His words echoed out through the cavern. Isaac could imagine how it looked—his uncle standing before an ancient altar, surrounded by thralls, a cloud of bone poised like arrows above his head, waiting in the shadow of a colossus with a sneer on his face. His patience was always thin when punishment was due.

“Help me stand,” Isaac said.

Zaria pulled him to his feet. She leaned over, checking the knives still in his arm. Instead of removing them, she tightened the splints and bandages. “Likes to talk, does he? Seems like the sort that’d piss in some wine and expect praise for the vintage.”

“You do get used to the taste.”

She snorted. “Something about a plan, you were saying?”

He thought about distances. Throughout the conversation, he had been tracking the location of Berith’s voice, trying to determine how far they still had left to travel. The fact that he could hear his words at all suggested they were already very close.

“I don’t think you’re going to like it,” he said.

“Oh, aye? Was I supposed to be liking all this?”

“It’s a simple plan, if inelegant. All it requires is that sword in your hand. If I could just—”

Ossein snapped.

Someone had entered the room.

It was a blur, at first. In the shadow of the colossus, the room was dark, leaving only a vague impression of bone and steel. After a moment, Isaac saw blood. There was a glistening curtain of red dripping down a torso, clinging to a motley collection of leather and fur. There was a broken jaw, dangling like a horseshoe. Finally, there was a satchel of black powder, clutched tightly in a white-furred paw. The fuse was small, and the bag was packed to the edge of bursting. It was enough to vaporize the capsule.

Zaria dashed forward, nearly knocking him over. “Oh, look what the cunt pissed out!”

Soren gurgled, lurching forward.

“Afternoon, captain! Bright day, isn’t it?”

Something wet spilled at Soren’s feet. She raised the satchel of powder above her head, attempting to point with her other hand.

“Try it,” Zaria replied, baring her teeth. “Bet I’ll floss your guts ‘fore you spark the flint.”

Soren took another step, her leg limp and dragging. She pointed at the satchel again.

Zaria snarled and charged.

“Stop!” Isaac shouted.

The hyena stopped, if only because Soren took another step forward, and her face entered the light. Her skull was completely split. There was only a ruin where her face had been, a dribble of pinkish brain spilling over the empty socket which had once held her glass eye. Beyond a doubt, the bunny was dead.

With a gurgle, she waved the bomb back and forth, stumbling on unsteady legs.

“I know that’s you, father,” Isaac said.

Soren nodded frantically, her jawbone snapping like a broken door. Zaria released a growling huff, letting her pass. After a drunken limp toward the command chairs, the bunny pointed outside, in the direction that Berith’s voice had echoed. She made a jerking shake of her head.

Isaac leaned on a chair. “I’m not taking his offer.”

Soren nodded, seemingly in relief.

“Well,” Isaac said, “not yet, anyway.”

Zaria stepped to Soren’s side, nearly three heads taller than the bunny. “Come again?”

“That’s my plan.” Isaac glanced in the direction of Berith’s voice. “I go out there and distract him. You run around the side and stab him in the back.”

Both pirates stared at him. For a moment, there was only the distant sound of falling rock.

“It is rather inelegant,” Isaac admitted.

Soren stepped forward, shaking her head so hard her jaw snapped back and forth. She raised the bomb again, gurgling.

“Shut up,” Zaria said, stepping forward. “Isaac, do you see this?” She gestured at the standing, half-headless body of her captain.

“It had caught my attention,” Isaac replied.

“Good.” She pointed at the wet bandages covering her eye. “You see this, as well?”

“You wear red very well, I must say.”

“Eat me, squire.”

He shrugged.

“Do you see the rest of this?” Zaria asked.

She waved at the ancient command room. She waved at the spilling mounds of ossein. She waved in the general direction of the earthquakes and squalls, where the colossus was still roaming, hanging like a comet above the sky.

“Isaac,” Zaria said. “A week ago, I was nicking purses off a frigate, and my only concern was whether my bunkmate was shedding lice again. Now, I’ve just ran through a black ruin of evil, places where bones are growing out the fucking walls, and there’s this giant cunt the size of a mountain sniffing around for me, and I’ve just lost a fucking eye, and it’s all a real fuckin’ terror, as you can imagine.”

“It is for me, too.”

“And, now, after all this shite, after doing all this with the knowledge your arse-wiping wizards are gonna hunt me for it, you’re telling me your plan is to offer yourself, like a lamb, right to the graveyard harlot you call an uncle?”

“. . . yes.”

“No,” Zaria said, towering over him. “You’re not doin’ it.”

“It’s the only way.”

“I don’t care if it’d cure cock rot and famine. It ain’t a good solution.”

“Do you have a solution?”

“No! And I don’t need one to call yours stupid!”

“We need to do something!”

“Something smart! Not what you’re proposin’!”

“I’m going to do it, with or without your help!”

“I forbid you, squire!”

“I’m not your fucking squire!”

Soren stepped between them, waving frantically. After a moment of gurgling, she dropped the bomb to the floor. She formed a heart with her fingers, waving it back and forth.

“Fuck off!” they shouted together.

Soren made the heart again, nodding insistently.

“Look,” Isaac said. “He will hesitate. I know he will. He could’ve just killed me himself, before I’d even left the tower. He had every opportunity, and he could never do it. He had to trick me into being swallowed by dragons. He said he would never be able to stomach the sight of my body.” Isaac took a moment to breathe. “He spared me in the extraction chamber. He’s refused to stand and fight. Now, he’s offering me a chance to live, when the colossus could just sweep us away like dust.”

One of Soren’s teeth clattered to the floor.

“He doesn’t want to kill me.” Isaac grimaced, poking at the curled flesh on his chest. The burn was wicked and black. “At least, he’s too much of a coward to do it himself. He will hesitate. I know he will.”

Zaria was less than mollified. “And what happens if he spots me skirting the sides? What’re you gonna do then?”

Isaac pulled out the dagger she had given him earlier.

Soren shook her head.

“I’ve always been prepared to die for my mission,” Isaac said. “I was ready to fight the sorceress alone. In that regard, nothing has changed.”

Zaria flexed her hand, hissing through the pain.

“If either of you has a better plan,” he said, “I would very much like it hear it.”

Soren crouched down, picked up the bomb, and gestured.

“I will need your help, as well,” Isaac said. “We need to get as close as possible, before I enter his view. A bomb will be very useful in masking our approach.”

Soren hesitated. After a moment, she pointed at a mound of ossein, which had been spilling into the room. The fibers slithered back into the viewport window.

“That was you?” Isaac asked. “Controlling the bones?”

Soren nodded. She pointed at the two of them. She gestured towards Berith. A moment later, she pointed at herself, followed by a direction perpendicular to the one they would take. Wherever she pointed, the osseous fibers began to quiver.

“You can use the ossein to distract the colossus,” Isaac said. “That’s good. The bomb will be an even better diversion.”

Soren shook her head, spraying some of her brain.

“Something else?”

She nodded, pointing at the satchel.

“Is it . . . tangential to the bomb?”

Another nod.

“Bomb,” he said, like reciting a thesaurus. “Powder. Explosive. Heat. Energy—”

Soren nodded at the last word.

“Energy.” He paused, feeling a sudden chill. “You don’t have much energy left.”

There was another nod. With a jerk, Soren pointed at the way they had come, through a cleared open tunnel of metal and bone.

“The obelisk,” Isaac said, piecing things together. “The thousands of souls were the source of your power. It’s how you could manipulate the bones. Without them, you . . . don’t have much left. You won’t have anything to sustain yourself.”

The bunny looked at him, silent.

“How long do you have?” Isaac asked.

The bunny looked to the floor, shrugging.

Isaac felt a rush of emotions, hitting him at once. He was scared, and tired, and pained, and grieving, and it was all happening too quickly, all the revelations striking him one after the other, too rapidly for his mind to fathom, and, now, he had to hear that his father was dying, and it was nearly enough to send him into hysterics. He looked at his father, who was contorting the bones of a recently-dead pirate. There was suddenly so much he wanted to say.

The only thing that saved him from crying was the feeling that his father was looking at him kindly, through blood and meat and bone.

“I need your help, father,” he said. “Can you be our distraction?”

Soren straightened her posture. She looked down at the bomb. She looked back where the obelisk had been. Slowly, she stumbled forward, gazing at Isaac through a cratered face. After a moment, she pulled him into a hug, and her armor was tough, and her skin was burned, and her flesh was already cool, and Isaac returned the hug as best as he was able, because he knew he could not do it again.

They stood together for a moment, surrounded by tremors, bone, and metal.

Soren pulled away. Clumsily, she wrapped a hand around his cheek, using her one blue eye to look into his. Isaac tried to smile, but his lips trembled, and he couldn’t maintain the effort. Soren shook her head. Before he could ask what he meant, the bunny pushed her thumb against the edge of his mouth, completing his failed smile with a flimsy, awkward pressure. She looked at him, raised his smile a little wider, and nodded.

“You want me to smile?” he asked.

The bunny nodded.

“. . . I’ll try.”

The bunny pulled away, nodding. She clapped Isaac on the shoulder. Slowly, Soren lurched through the command capsule, roaming over to the side of the metal bulkhead. She slammed her body into a half-opened latch, fell through a pile of ossein, and vanished into the gloom.

There was a moment of silence.

“Let’s go,” Isaac said.

Zaria waited at an opposite door. When he approached, she smashed an opening into the metal. They squeezed through a tangle of bone, heading back into the pale orange light. A tunnel of ossein had already been dug ahead. Zaria led the way, keeping him close. He kept stumbling, leaving a smear of blood with his boots and hand.

Above, the day was bright and hot. Titanic shadows raced overhead, buffeted with a screaming wind. He could imagine the colossus craning its head back and forth as his father began to quiver the seas of ossein, trying to stir up as much distraction as possible. It seemed to confuse the creature. Concrete trembled as it shifted its weight. Isaac could not tell if the colossus was stooping to investigate, or preparing itself to strike. He did not stop to look.

Ahead, there was an endless tide of butchered ships, full of metal casings, tempered glass, concave dishes, alloys of unknown metallurgy. He saw the flag of the necromancer’s gods emblazoned on many. He barely took notice.

“Isaac!” Berith shouted.

His voice echoed across the boneyard, through the gloom and shadow and ancient, weathered machines. Isaac tried to steel himself.

“Your father’s tricks won’t help you! I know he’s distracting me!” There was a pause, which waited for a reply. His voice grew angry. “Enough of this! Show yourself!”

Isaac continued through the shade of bone and metal.

“Don’t test me, boy! I’ve spent decades preparing for this mission! I will not falter where it matters!”

He gritted his teeth, wincing at the pull of his cauterized wound.

“Do you think you’re being brave?” Berith shouted. “Do you think your father is worth your life, when he tried so hard to spend your own?”

Zaria held up a hand, slowing him to a stop. There was a gap in the canopy overhead. Walking through would expose them to the titan above, though there was no other way ahead. The osseous fibers were no longer slithering out to protect their passage.

He wondered if his father had finally run out of energy.

“Why didn’t you leave, Isaac?” Berith asked. He imagined his uncle pacing back and forth, ready to lecture. “I thought you would, before you entered the desert. I hoped you would run away the moment you tasted freedom. You could have walked into the hinterlands with all your supplies and disappeared, right off the map. I would have been powerless to stop you.”

There was a pause. Isaac thought it was ironic that, now, Berith kept waiting for him to respond, when he had never once done so before. It felt like a poor effort, a token effort at reprieve.

Isaac waited for his father to provide a distraction.

“But you never did,” Berith continued, growing irritated. “Even after you survived the dragons, you refused to stop. You kept marching through the desert. You had no water, no scrolls. No hope at all.”

He remembered the terror, the sand, the thirst, the gnashing maws.

“Why?” Berith yelled. “To rescue a man you’ve never met? To fight a necromancer you had no chance of defeating? I know you, boy. I know what you wanted. I could see it in every idle moment, every training, every book, every chore. There was sullenness. Disobedience! You never wanted this! You only wanted your freedom!”

The sights he had seen. Rivers, hills, towns. Boundless skies.

“What is driving you, Isaac? What could you possibly want now, of all things?”

Father.

Uncle.

A dead mother.

Family.

“I had assassins shadowing my every move!” Berith shouted, his voice drifting, as if he was twirling his head, gazing in every direction over the sea of bone. “Do you understand? I had no choice! There was nothing I could do!”

His voice echoed down the cavern. When it fell, only silence remained.

He was waiting for a reply.

Isaac waited.

“Isaac,” Berith said. His tone had softened. “You can still come home. I promise you. I will make the Archons pay for what they’ve done. You will be safe.”

Isaac had memorized every creak of the stairs. He feared the swing of every door.

He never felt safe.

“Come home, Isaac.”

There was a pause.

“Please.”

An explosion came to his right, the shockwave ripping through the ossein canopy, gushing a cloud of bone and metal into the afternoon sun. Immediately, a colossal shadow passed overhead, swooping to investigate. Zaria pulled him forward. For just a moment, Isaac looked back through the canopy of bone, and he saw a skull the size of a cloud, hissing with a creaked-open jaw.

They moved deeper into the boneyard. By now, the ossein was continuously forming into solid bone in several spots, cracking open the hulls of the butchered ships in much the same way that roots and vines would grow through stone. Zaria didn’t dare cut through the ossein, lest the noise reveal their position, so, instead, the two were forced to crouch and crawl, weaving through the bony brambles and scattered sections of hull.

Another shadow rushed overhead, going from sky to ground. When it landed, the earth seemed to heave, the shock of air pressure nearly slapping the metal ships from their grave. Sunlight hit Isaac’s back, filled with a raining of bone.

“I’m through playing games!” Berith shouted. “If you do not show yourself right now, I will flatten this entire cavern!”

“Here’s good, I think,” Zaria said.

They were in a burrow of bone. To their left, there was a long, thick cylinder that ended in an open pathway of concrete, which slashed perpendicularly to either side. To their right, the ossein narrowed into a flat crevice, one that could only be traversed by crawling.

“So,” she said, facing him, “we feelin’ good about this?”

Isaac didn’t answer. He was watching the hole at the end of the metal cylinder. There was nothing but concrete and open air. Once he emerged, he would be completely exposed.

“I’ll be quick, love,” Zaria said.

“I hope so.”

“Come now.” She put a hand to her chest. “I’m still the dashin’ rogue you’ve fallen madly for.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Oh, you’re not denying it, then?”

“Z,” Isaac said. “I. . . .” He swallowed. His throat was dry. “I’m trusting you.” He looked into her eye. “I’m really trusting you.”

Her grin was smeared with blood. “Have I given you cause for concern before?”

He kept looking at her.

“Right,” Zaria said. “Don’t answer that. Just. . . .” She glanced at the path he would have to take. “You sure about this?”

He could imagine his uncle, out there in the sun. There were bones on his robes. There was parasite magic in his eyes. There was a ring of thralls surrounding him, a cloud of necromancy in the air, and a bank of metal devices at his hands, controlling a titan that rivaled the size of gods.

“I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

His arm remained useless in the sling. Every breath was short and wanting.

“Go,” he said.

Zaria nodded, slapped him on the back, and began to crawl through the tunnel of ossein, holding Soren’s cutlass tightly in hand.

Isaac stooped to a low crouch, slowly walking through the metal cylinder. His boots scraped over the residue of some long-evaporated fluid, as well as a noticeable series of carbon scores. The metal smelled faintly of chemicals. He could not say what it might’ve been.

At the end of the tunnel, the sunlight grew painfully bright. He stood on the edge, trying to adjust his vision.

“Isaac!”

He straightened his back, adjusting his robes, wiping his hair from his eyes. Every morning, he would follow the same routine.

Here, now, there was a quiet in the metal, broken only by the squalls of air overhead. He remembered camping in the shadow of a slot canyon, sometime during his first night in the desert. He had rested in the shade, listening to the wind, imagining all the perils he would face in the tomb.

He had imagined facing an ancient necromancer.

A being of pure evil.

He had been alone, then. Same as he was now. He always knew that he would embark on his journey alone. Now, it seemed as if this was the way it would end. He stepped into the light.

Chapter Twenty

The Cost of Silence, Part One

“Uncle!”

Ahead, through an ocean of bone, there was an altar raised upon a pyramid. Pipes and wires crawled along the masonry, mixed with the rising of granite columns. In the center of the altar, there was a bank of metal devices, thrumming with the power of souls.

“Uncle!”

A strip of shattered concrete led directly to the pyramid. On both sides, there were rows of skeletons, all of which had been crucified against the broken pieces of the ships. The flag of the necromancers was draped around their bodies—with the desert sun shining above, the ancient fabric still contained the hints of red, white, and blue.

“Uncle!”

There was movement at the altar. A cloud of bone flitted through the air. A trio of thralls spread along the edge of the pyramid, their black robes cutting through a fog of souls.

In the center, Berith stood black and tall.

Isaac kept his gaze on his uncle. He did not need to look to see the signs of the colossus. The world was filled with its shadow. A cage of ribs slashed across the ossein. A reptilian skull stamped a gruesome sigil on the cavern wall, the jaw clicking and heaving. In every direction, he could see the contour of a shoulder, the slope of a pelvis, the carnivore bristle of teeth, the spine of a bony tail. Far in the distance, he could see the wreckage of a pirate skimmer, the hull smashed so thoroughly into a bed of concrete that it resembled little more than a swatted fly. He could not tell if the rest of the Crookspur navy had fared the same way.

The world was silent.

Like always, they were alone.

“I told you to leave,” Berith said.

Isaac did not answer.

His uncle walked to the side, trailing a hand along the metal instruments. “What happened to you? Are you hurt?”

Isaac clutched his arm, silent. A shower of dirt fell from the sky.

Berith moved to the edge of the pyramid, his sun-eating robes trailing a black curtain at his feet. “Let me guess. This was your pirate accomplice. She stabbed you in the back, at the first sign of trouble, when her promise of treasure proved untenable.” He made a noise in his throat. “You should have expected as much, though it’s good you took care of her. This conflict should remain within the family.”

Isaac judged the distance between them, counting each of the steps that led to the top of the pyramid. He kept a wary eye on the thralls. Out of the thirty souls he had seen in the necromancer factory, only three remained.

His uncle had sacrificed over two dozen people.

His fellow mages.

His mother.

Blood leaked through his fist.

“Your father is dead,” Berith said. “If he isn’t now, he will be soon. He can no longer feast on the souls of the necromancer. Without a corporeal form, he will wither and dissipate, like a morning fog.” He glanced at the souls leaking through the masonry. “I only wish I could’ve done it sooner.”

A gentle breeze blew through the crucified skeletons, fluttering the ancient flags. Berith watched Isaac, staring down from the top of the pyramid.

“Do you have an answer for me, boy?”

Isaac said nothing.

“Now is the time,” his uncle said, gesturing.

Isaac did not respond.

“I’m beginning to find your silence rather insolent.”

Isaac tried to gather his strength. There was a sizable distance between him and the pyramid. Once he was there, it was sixty-two steps to the top of the structure, each of them tall and thin and crumbling. While he climbed, all three of the remaining thralls would have a perfect vantage to loose their spells, and Berith could just as easily snipe him with one of the dozens of bones hanging above his head.

His legs were beginning to shake. If he did not rest soon, the loss of blood would cause him to faint.

Isaac gritted his teeth.

“I have medical supplies,” Berith said, after a long pause. “Your injuries are serious. If you would just . . . submit, for a moment, I could provide you. . . .”

Isaac began to walk forward.

His uncle tensed. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Isaac stepped over a cracked geyser of concrete, kicking through loose clods of dirt. Around him, the shadow of the colossus spilled across the earth.

“Isaac—” Berith gave a long, withered sigh. He closed his glowing eyes. “This was never your mission. Let it go.”

Isaac growled, stretching the burn on his chest.

“Isn’t this what you wanted?” Berith asked, watching him from above. “A chance to be free from your father? Was this not your wish?” He was silent for a moment, chewing on his thoughts. “I always read through your journal. Whenever you were studying, whenever you were busy with chores, I stole into your room and searched through your writings. It was my duty. I had to gauge your development. I had to make sure you were becoming like your father.” He looked at him, ignoring the curtains of falling sand. “Oh, you were so full of dreams.”

The thralls tracked Isaac’s position, their palms bristling with ice and fire.

“So full of resentment.”

Isaac clenched his fist.

“You’ve always hated this,” Berith said. “I should know. I hated it just as much.”

A gasp escaped Isaac’s throat. Blood leaked down his arm.

“Isaac, stop.”

He kept walking.

“Stop!”

A salvo of bone shot from above, exploding into the ground at his feet.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Berith yelled, his bones quickening along his robes. “Your arm is useless! You can’t cast! What is your plan, Isaac? Tell me!”

Isaac stopped. With his uninjured arm, he pulled Zaria’s dagger from a pocket at his hip. He put the sheath in his mouth, drew the blade, and spat the leather scabbard onto the floor. Steel glinted in the sun.

Berith gave a humorless snort. “Did your pirate give that to you?”

He was halfway to the stairs. The path before him was cracked and brittle, ripped apart by the quakes of the colossus. Around him, crucified skeletons stared eyeless to the sky.

“Do not force my hand,” Berith said. “Put down the knife.”

Isaac began to walk.

“Put the knife down! That’s an order!”

His knuckles were bone-white on the hilt. Around him, the sigils carved into the students began to glow bright, like rings of molten steel.

“Isaac!”

Isaac glared at his uncle.

One of the students shot a lick of flame, like the bolt of a crossbow. It hit Isaac square in the thigh, and he collapsed to the floor, slapping desperately at the leg of his robes. The flesh crackled and split, hissing like meat.

He loosed a scream.

“You always were disobedient,” Berith said.

When Isaac tried to stand, the pain became blinding. He crumbled back down to his belly, breathing desperately.

“This was all your father’s doing. You understand that, don’t you?” Berith paced along the edge of the altar, his black robes like a shadow upon the columns. “If he hadn’t come to this tomb, if he hadn’t blundered his way into a trap, if he hadn’t. . . .” Berith snarled around his breath. “If he had just died, when he should have. If he hadn’t been so desperate to save himself. If he and the Diet hadn’t extorted me into raising you.”

With the dagger still in hand, Isaac pressed his knuckles to the stone, pushing himself up.

“If I hadn’t been forced to kill your mother.”

Isaac got back to his feet, slouching heavily. His walk was limping and slow.

“This was all his fault!” Berith yelled. “Do you think you’re defending him? Do you feel some need to save the man who tried to sacrifice you without a moment’s hesitation?”

He had reached the stairs. There were sixty-two, rising one after the other. Each one of them felt as tall as a mountain.

Isaac snarled through the pain.

“Answer me, boy!”

He took to the stairs, and every step sent agony up his leg, and soon he was crawling, using his hands more than his legs, digging through rifts of fallen sand. His palms left bloody prints upon the stone.

“Stop!”

It was no different than the yard. There was shouting, and there was exhaustion, and there was pain beyond what he thought he could endure, and all he had left to him was the power of his mind, the will within his soul.

How many times had he done this before?

“There is no need for this!” Berith yelled. “We can go home together!”

Elemental spells churned around him. Bones boiled in the air.

“Isaac!”

Isaac reached the top of the pyramid. The students turned, their eyes blank, their casting stance as rigid as the automatons of the necromancer empire. From here, he saw the ice bristling from their palms, like the protruding break of a bone.

He fell to the floor of the altar, gasping from the exertion. None of the thralls restrained him.

“Isaac,” Berith warned, stepping back.

As he struggled up to his feet, the colossus began to stir. The earth trembled, and shadows raced across the pyramid. A squall of wind ripped through the air. The world around them seemed to tense for a strike.

It never came. The beast was too massive. He was too close.

Would his uncle really have done it, if he had the chance?

“Isaac. . . .”

Berith retreated backwards, pressing himself into the bank of metal devices. The bones on his robes slithered into links and chains, racing to protect his vital organs.

“Isaac.”

The haft of the dagger was slick with sweat.

“Isaac!”

Bones rained down around him. A humerus speared next to his chest, and, when he did not stop, there came a grapeshot of fingers, a burst of tarsals and teeth. Soon, there were skulls screaming past his face, a blizzard of vertebrae shattering at his feet. The air became thick with motion and bodies. Isaac limped through it all, never dropping his gaze. Nothing touched him but the splinters.

It was all a show. It was all an empty threat.

“Listen to me,” Berith said.

A human femur came down from above. It held itself straight, like an arrow caught in flight, its blunt spherical head chiseled by age and time. Now, the bone resembled little more than an improvised shiv.

“You can still have a life,” Berith said.

Isaac kept walking. The femur did not retreat.

“I can help you escape. The Diet will never know the truth.”

Only a few paces remained between him and his uncle.

“You’ll never have to see me again.”

Isaac raised the dagger. The femur shot forward, pressing into his neck. It split his breath in half. With the slightest push of force, the sharpened head would puncture the skin, severing his artery.

“Look at me, Isaac.”

Berith’s blue eyes glowed with magic. There were wrinkles in the flesh, where his scowl often rested. Isaac was sure he would never forget the face in all his life.

“You’re my son,” Berith said.

Isaac’s vision began to blur.

“He’s not your father. I am. You’re my son, and I—”

“No!” Isaac screamed.

His voice echoed across dust, stone, and sand, spilling out into a sea of festering bone. Berith flinched in surprise.

“No! I am not your son! I will never be your son!”

The femur trembled at his neck.

“I was your prisoner! You told me I was a waste, a burden! An anchor around your neck! You told me I should have died with my mother!”

“The context—”

“That is what you said!”

Berith swallowed. His hands rested on a bank of metal controls, the knobs and dials alight with unknown power.

“Was I still your son,” Isaac said, “when you sent me off to die?”

His uncle’s fingers roamed towards tiny levers.

“You lied!” Isaac was so furious he could barely speak the words. “You lied about everything! Every spell, every book, every potion! Every day, there was nothing but lies! You knew it was pointless! You knew I was going to die! You could have told me the truth, you could have done anything other than mock and berate me for everything I tried to do, but you didn’t! And you are still trying to tell me it was everyone else’s fault, you are still trying to purge yourself of blame, when it was always you!” He jagged a finger, the dagger glinting with motion. “It was you! No one else! It was always you!”

He slapped the femur away, taking a step forward. The bone shot back into place. Barely an arm’s length remained between them.

“I would rather die than be your son,” Isaac said.

Behind him, the thralls stepped closer, forming a semicircle at his back. A blaze of fire thickened his shadow upon the stone.

“Do it.”

Berith blinked. The bone quivered.

“Do it!” Isaac yelled. “Kill me!”

“Isaac.”

He leaned his neck into the bone. “No more tricks. No more lies.”

“Isaac,” Berith said. “Please.”

Isaac felt tears come down his face, mixing with dirt and blood.

“This doesn’t have to happen,” his uncle said.

Isaac’s hand was shaking. His fingers ached around the dagger’s hilt.

“I can just—we—you and I—”

“Uncle,” Isaac said. “It’s me, or you.”

Berith looked him up and down, as if seeing him for the first time. The air was hot, and the wind was dry. Only their breathing pierced the silence. 

“You’ve always had his face,” Berith said. “Your father. You’ve been told that your entire life, but . . . you do.” He pointed. “Except for the eyes. Your father’s were brown. Yours are blue. Like mine.”

Over his uncle’s shoulder, something glinted in the sun.

“You were less than a year of age,” Berith said. “I had finally worked up the nerve to kill you. Not for the Diet, not for your father. For your sake. To spare you the life I knew would be waiting for you.”

Isaac could feel the thralls standing at his back. To the side, loose bones skittered across the floor, like embers in a breeze.

“I went to your crib, in the dead of night. I had a plan for your disposal, for my own alibi, for an escape from the Nine if I should have to become a fugitive. I thought I had everything settled.”

The femur was tight on his neck, the withered edge bulging down against the skin.

“You were asleep. All day, you had wailed and moaned and tittered, and nothing I could do would make you stop. By dusk, it had driven me to a rage. And though I truly wanted to help you, I could not help but stoke this rage, like a fire.”

Souls leaked from metal and stone.

“I placed the tip of the knife,” Berith said, “to your chest, at an angle, to bypass the sternum. It would be a simple puncture, straight to the heart.”

The femur drifted down from his neck, carving a shallow laceration across his collarbone. It settled on his chest. The angle shifted. If he struck now, the bone would stab straight through the protection of rib and sternum. Isaac felt his heart pounding against the sharpened bone.

Behind his uncle, something moved.

“I was ready to do it,” Berith said. “I would not falter again.”

The tip of the femur pressed down towards his heart, almost breaking the skin.

“But you woke up, and you saw me hovering above you, and when you looked at me. . . .” Berith looked at him now, as if his memory was as clear as the present. “Your eyes were blue, just like mine.”

The femur quivered at his chest.

“And you smiled, and you reached for me, and your little. . . .” His voice cracked. He took a breath. “Your fingers wrapped around mine, around the knife I was placing to your chest, and you looked at me, and you said ‘father’.”

Berith’s eyes stopped glowing. All at once, the students slumped to the floor, their magical elements disappearing like the snuffing of a candle.

“That was your first word. You called me your father.”

For the first time since entering the tomb, his uncle’s eyes were normal again, untinged by any corruptive magic.

“How could I kill my own son?”

At Isaac’s chest, the femur fell away, clattering on the ancient stone.

Nothing separated the two. Berith looked Isaac up and down, taking in the details of his face, his injuries, his tattered robes, the dagger still clutched tightly in his hand. After a moment, he lifted his head, gazing over the expanse of the colossus.

He gave a shuddering sigh.

“I’m sorry, Isaac. What I did to you. . . .”

Berith’s form began to be eclipsed by a larger one, sprinting from behind.

“I was angry. Gods, I was bitter.” He blinked, and his cheeks glistened with tears. “I should’ve never. . . .”

He stopped. Isaac wasn’t sure if he heard the footsteps, or if he saw the expression of guilt and terror on his nephew’s face. Either way, his eyes widened, and he began to turn, his arms spinning through a spell.

Zaria gored Berith with her captain’s sword, impaling him with such charging force that he was lifted clear off his feet. With a snarl, she slowed herself, lifted his entire body by the edge of the blade, and slammed him to the ground, trying to wrench her weapon free. She stomped a foot on his chest, yanking the hilt like a lever, ignoring Berith’s desperate, flailing grabs. After a few wet jerks, the cutlass was sucked from the flesh, shining a bright red in the harsh light of the sun.

Berith remained on the floor, choking and reaching. Zaria raised the sword again, preparing to plunge.

“Stop!” Isaac shouted. “Stop!”

She paused, mostly by surprise. Isaac attempted to run, but he put too much weight on his burned leg, and he collapsed into the sand, gasping in agony, managing only to crawl on his hands and knees. Ahead, Berith clutched at his chest, giving wet and rattling gasps. Bones tumbled from the air. His thralls slumped like discarded dolls.

Isaac fell to his uncle’s side. Berith reached out, gripping his arm. There were desperate, whistling breaths. A gargle of blood.

Anatomy diagrams.

Lungs. Heart.

Trauma.

Zaria had pierced a lung. Berith was going to drown in his own blood, unless the blood could drain from the pleural cavity. How to do it?

Intubation.

Something sharp.

Isaac put pressure on his uncle’s chest. “The sword!”

Zaria looked at the blade in her hand.

“Give me the sword!”

One of his lungs was punctured. He had to drain the blood. If he tore a hole in the pleural cavity,  and flipped him onto his side, the blood would not fill his lung. But there was already an ecstasy of blood sloshing from his throat, and his breaths were rattled with fluid, and Isaac knew the damage was far worse than whatever meager aid he could manage to provide. Still, he had to try.

His uncle was drowning.

The blood was bright red. It must’ve come from an artery, because blood from the veins was a darker hue. If he could pinch the tube. . . .

Aorta. Carotid. Subclavian.

Diagrams.

Diagrams.

Diagrams—

Berith’s grip tightened on his arm.

Isaac tried to flip his uncle onto his side. His arm was weak, and the cauterized skin was a screaming pain, and he was likely screaming himself. “Give me the sword, Zaria!”

Berith’s grip tightened again. His face was as pale as the bones.

“I’m here,” Isaac said, gripping him back. “I’m sorry, I . . . made the plan, I couldn’t stop her. I didn’t think. . . .”

Berith shook his head. For a few sucking moments, he tried to speak.

“You . . . you. . . .”

He gurgled. Blood glistened on blackened robes.

“You deserved. . . .”

Two pairs of blue eyes gazed into each other. After a moment, one of them went glassy and still. Berith’s head fell to the stone, the unspoken words fading like a gentle sigh.

The world seemed to fade away. Suddenly, Isaac felt as if he had never left his home, as if all that he had seen and learned on his journey had been only an illusion, a dream of fantasy and want. As he stared at the body of his uncle, there was only his routine, once again.

“Isaac.”

Training. The morning sun. Grass and sweat and pain. Books lit by candlelight. Warm meals, a clever debate, a sneaking of cider.

A hand on his shoulder. “Isaac.”

The sneer. The shouts echoing through the tower. The lack of satisfaction. The constant demands, the gaze that always seemed to guess his thoughts, but also the books, the jokes, the rare moments of mercy. The small nod whenever mastery was achieved.

The smile.

He could remember every smile.

“Isaac!”

He looked up at Zaria, yanked from memory. She was craning her head to the sky.

The colossus was moving again.

Now that he was free from the tangle of bones and metal ships, he received his first proper look at the gigantic reptile. It stood on two legs, mostly attaining a bipedal gait, though its posture was unusually crooked and bowed. There was a field of spiky protrusions along its tail and vertebrae, like a line of caltrops. Its pelvis was wide and seemingly backwards. Its arms were pathetically small, grasping feebly at the air. Its ribs were so long that they almost curved around to meet each other, like the curling limbs of a spider.

Isaac saw now, more than ever, that the titan was a horrible amalgamation of body parts. Its skull and pelvis were reptilian, or a close facsimile of such, but it had far too many vertebrae, and the rest of its proportions were utterly bizarre. Its neck was almost too long to properly support its head, its chest was grotesquely wide, and its arms were so tiny as to be useless, like they were merely a vestigial trait, a remnant of finer function.

If he had to guess, it was likely the creature had never actually been killed—instead, it had merely succumbed to the inadequacies of its own anatomy.

It did not seem a creature made for this world.

It did not seem a proper creature at all.

Now, the creature reared itself back, its crooked posture rising toward the sky. A thunderous growl pierced the air. Its body heaved and stretched until there were visible gaps between the connection of the bones, held together only by the energy of thousands of souls, like a cartilage that screamed for mercy and death.

The earth rumbled. It seemed to come from everywhere, all at once.

Berith had taught this lesson very well. Killing the master of a thrall did not kill the thrall itself. It would retain all the energy with which it had been infused.

The only thing that would be lost was control.

“Isaac!” Zaria yelled. “Do something!”

The reptile steadied its head, its empty eyes roaming over the rubble of the cavern. The rumbling intensified. From the sides of the pyramid, glittering shapes moved among the sea of ossein, like worms squirming beneath the web of a spider. A few feet from where Isaac stood, the bank of metal devices remained active, their panels alight with flashing letters.

Isaac stumbled into a run. The movement was enough to catch the titan’s attention. He grasped at the bank of machines, gripping through the hanging souls. He had no idea how to work such a device. There were calibration knobs, measuring dials, rusted buttons, levers whose function was only written in an ancient language. His hand roamed over the different control mechanisms, lessons on necrotic resurrection racing through his mind.

He looked up towards the sky, and the sky was gone. There was only a skull peering down at him, like the stark white moon of Solnova was tumbling from its orbit. Isaac made eye contact with the colossus. It felt like staring into the face of a god.

The beast pointed its snout, giving a brief sniff.

The suction of air was monstrous. Clouds of sand whipped into the air. Isaac had to grip the metal device to stay where he was, and Zaria was outright lifted from her feet, nearly flung from the edge of the pyramid. When Isaac regained his balance, he gave up all pretense of a plan, immediately slapping as many of the strange buttons as he could.

The colossus opened its jaws, loosing a flurry of sand. As it braced for a bite, the rumbling reached a crescendo.

Suddenly, a sandwyrm leaped from the sea of ossein, its wings glittering in the sun, its circular maw striking the titan right in the empty socket of its eye. The titan whipped its face to the side, shocked and reeling. Isaac just barely noticed Zaria sprinting in his direction before she tackled him to the ground, saving him from the gusts of wind. For a long few moments, they braced together behind the metal devices, enveloped by a cataclysm of earth and sound.

Isaac risked a peek from cover. Above, the colossus had reared back to its full height, and the limbless dragon was still squirming from the depths of the creature’s eye, like the grotesque birth of a parasite. The colossus squirmed its tiny arms, thrashing its head from side to side. At its feet, more glittering wyrms erupted from the field of concrete, leaping onto shins and knees and toes.

The titan roared. The sound nearly split Isaac in half. With a great heave, it began to kick its legs into the air, flinging the wyrms from its body like one might shake a swarm of leeches. Any of the dragons who did not fly away were, instead, splattered against the ground as the colossus resorted to vicious, bony stomps. In seconds, the sea of ossein was drenched in a splattering storm of blood.

Zaria yanked Isaac to his feet, pointing at the metal devices. “Do something!”

He stared at the instruments, barely able to focus.

“Do something!”

Isaac began to randomly slap buttons.

The titan lurched back, letting the sun return. Its body seemed to spasm. Entire forests of ossein were swept away as it took a stumbling step backwards, its bones trembling like the reeds of a chime. Slowly, the colossus caught its balance, shredding earth and concrete with the flexing of its toes. Isaac was sure he had just interrupted the flow of energy within the creature’s bones, if only for a moment. He would just have to figure out how to do it again.

There was a growl. The colossus snapped its jaw, growing frenzied in rage. The sandwyrm in its eye finally lost attachment, spilling from the socket, its bulging body tumbling end over end as it fell the great distance back to the pavement. Once it struck the floor, the colossus immediately swooped down, crushing the dragon within its mountainous jaws.

“Isaac,” Zaria said.

“I know!”

“Isaac!”

“I know!”

The colossus rose back to a hunched posture, green blood oozing down its chin. Chunks of a freshly-skewered wyrm rained from the sky. For miles, the concrete was bathed in the meat of a dozen shredded dragons, which was far more than any kingdom of the Nine had managed to vanquish in centuries.

Slowly, the colossus returned its attention to the pyramid.

Even without flesh, Isaac could see the anger on its face. Its empty sockets found them again. It snarled, its voice booming like a thousand storms, its jaw slathering with blood as it rushed in for a strike.

In pure desperation, Isaac grabbed a rusted lever, wrenching it all the way down.

There was an apocalypse in the sky. The colossus roared past the pyramid, somewhere between lunging and falling. It looked, for a moment, like all the clouds of the desert had been shot from a cannon. Ossein flew, the earth shuddered in pain, and Isaac fell to the floor of the pyramid, barely noticing the scraping of the knives against the cataclysm at his feet. When he managed to regain his senses, he saw the beast leaning against the opposite wall of the cavern, its body so tall that the massive escarpment only barely reached the center of its chest. It gave a trembling moan of pain.

Below, in a great furrow of concrete, one of the titan’s legs had cleanly detached from the pelvis. Bones lay scattered across the ground, in much the same way that a city might be scattered across a field—there was the cap of a knee, and a river of a thigh, and an avalanche of toes still rolling across the pavement.

The beast roared, trying to hobble towards them, its speed and balance now heavily crippled. Isaac scrambled to his feet and pulled every lever he could see. As the reptile came, entire sections of its body began to twist and fall. There were lances of ribs, meteors of vertebrae, an elbow popping loose, teeth and fingers raining down like the missiles of a trebuchet.

Before the colossus could hop another step, much of its torso was scattered upon the earth, leaving only the barest connection of bone. Purple light faded and popped. When Isaac forced down a particularly important lever, the beast collapsed to its side, erupting a cloud of dust and sand. It moaned again.

Its voice was pleading.

Bones scattered and heaved.

At his hands, Isaac felt the metal device begin to rumble, the ancient plates groaning with a new surge of power. The souls were returning to their source. He looked at the colossus, which was staring back in a heap of its own body, the socket of its eye looking cracked and worn. He became very aware, all of a sudden, that he was killing an animal, as well as a god.

“I’m sorry,” Isaac said, wrenching the final lever.

All at once, the skull of the colossus popped from the top of the vertebrae, rolling forward like the sun would roll across the sky. Its face rested against the growing dunes of sand. It was upside down. Teeth loosed and clattered. The colossus gave one last wrenching gasp, burying its mouth in dirt and sand and bone, as if, in its final moments, it sought the comfort of the earth that caressed its corpse for so many years. A moment later, it returned to death.

For a time, Isaac was only aware of the sun on his back, the falling sand on his face. The death of the colossus seemed to have stilled the world.

Slowly, he realized the device at his hands was still rumbling. The vibrations were growing erratic. Souls erupted from the metal. He stepped back just as the welding began to sunder and break, shaking violently on its frame. He took another step, and his burned leg screamed in pain, sending him collapsing to the floor. Just when he was about to start crawling, Zaria grabbed him from behind.

The metal device exploded. Isaac and Zaria hit the floor, barely dodging a cloud of shrapnel. When he looked again, the bank of devices was gone, leaving only a deep, ruptured hole in the stone, like the caldera of a volcano. A spew of souls erupted from the depths of the pyramid. Thousands of beings gushed from the earth, wreathed with spectral limbs and stretching faces, churning like the stampede of a crowd. Sunlight enveloped their forms, roiling the souls into a radiant mixture of whiffs and tufts and streams. As they rose higher, and spread further apart, the souls became thin and translucent, the limbs and faces drifting apart into wisps and vapor, until all that remained was a faint sheen of dust, sparkling brightly in the light.

They were dissipating, like Berith said. Without a corporeal form. . . .

Through the sound of rumbling stone and groaning metal, Isaac realized he could hear their voices again. It sounded like a gentle, whispering sigh.

The screaming had finally stopped.

This time, for good.

It felt as if the geyser of souls erupted for hours. It was certainly less than a minute. Eventually, the flow began to lessen, the radiant plume relaxing into a minor spout, soon dividing into leaks and dribbles. Eventually, only a few tendrils remained, like the last morning mists fading before the dawn. For a moment, Isaac thought he saw one of the souls turn its face in his direction. It was no more than a suggestion, the vaguest shape of a gaze, a smile, a whispered word of thanks, and before Isaac had truly seen the soul at all, it was gone, spreading into the peace of the breeze. All that remained in the air was loose sand and reddened light.

The air grew quiet. Thin motes of dust fell from the air.

Zaria had him nestled against her chest. After a breath of relief, she ran her hands over his body, checking for injury. “Good?”

He tried to answer. All he could give was a grunt.

“Yes or no, love.”

He felt his lungs seize in his chest.

Zaria released one of her hands. It was dripping with blood. “Oh, fuck me.”

He was dizzy. The world seemed to swim.

“Isaac!”

The knives. The two still in his arm. He only now noticed that the splints had broken. All his falling and exertion had worsened the wounds. Blood flowed so freely he could see it spurt with the beating of his heart.

He couldn’t. . . .

Everything shifted. He was staring at the sun. There was warmth on his face. There was a feeling of ice crawling through his chest.

“Hey, hey.” Zaria’s face, one eye wide. “Stay awake.”

His throat was dry.

“Look at me!”

The sky was blue. There were veins of rock along the escarpment walls, entire geologies of sediment. There was tugging somewhere below. He shifted again, and there was sand and broken metal. He saw a pile of black. There was blood. Limbs. A face.

Uncle.

“Isaac!”

Berith.

Wait.

No.

Uncle.

Had he?

“Isaac!”

Wait.

No.

Wait.

Wait.

Uncle. . . .

He woke to the gentle flapping of cloth, straining against the wind.

For a moment, he thought he was back in the desert. The air was hot, and there was sand on his skin, and sunlight was beating down on the roof of his tent. His muscles ached. His lips were cracked and split.

On this particular day, his eyes had opened to the slanting fabric of his tent, and he had known that he was soon to die of thirst. His thoughts had been muddy and scattered, his muscles uncompliant. He had crawled out into the belly of a dry river gulch, fingers scrabbling through the cracked dirt, realizing his only hope was to head into the dunes and search for the oasis detailed on his map. Instead, he had clashed with a skimmer full of pirates, and he had met Zaria, and she had given him water.

Zaria. The tomb.

His father. . . .

He blinked. He was in his tent again, lying on top of a bedroll. There was stone beneath him, and sand blowing through the holes of the fabric. Beneath the wind, he began to hear voices.

“. . . can’t go together. Too big a target.” He recognized Zaria’s voice, low and rough. “They’ll be rousing the constabulary of every town worth mention.”

“My sister’s still home,” a male voice said, one that Isaac did not recognize. “My aunt. My grandfather. I have to warn them.”

“Wouldn’t try it, personally,” Zaria replied. “Might be you get there before the news spreads. Might just get stopped in the road. Next thing you know, you’re hauling irons for murder and treason. Your kin’ll catch the same charge, if they’re seen with you.”

Somewhere, a woman was sobbing. She sounded as if she had been doing so for quite a while.

There was a tingling sensation running down his arm. Isaac recognized it immediately. Soldier’s Rest. It was the same poultice he had given to Zaria in the necropolis, and the same poultice he had always used for himself, whenever the lashes of the cane had left him too debilitated to study.

Who had made this?

Looking down, he saw sutures and bandages in the place where two knives had previously jutted from his arm. There was a deep bruise where the tourniquet had been. The burn on his leg had been swabbed, cleaned, and packed with poultice. He could still feel the edges of the wound. It was fairly deep. He would have to clean it again, and frequently thereafter.

“We need to go,” a second male said. “We can’t stay here. It won’t be long before they send a search.”

“Ain’t holding you hostage,” Zaria said. “Run along, then.”

The woman continued to sob.

“You should come,” the first male said. “Help us finish the climb. I don’t know how well we can manage on our own, and . . . well, even if the coma subsides—”

“I’m not hearing this again. He’ll pull through.”

“The blood loss—”

“He’s a tough little cunt. I’m sure he could fuck a sunblood and just be wiping his cock afterward.”

There was a pause.

“Right,” said the first voice. “Well, if you’re sure. . . .”

“There’s no doubt for me.” There were footsteps, coming closer. “Do as you wish. I’m not leaving ‘til he’s up.”

The tent shifted. Isaac managed to lift his head. Through the glare of the sun, he could see Zaria’s face poking inside. The cloth she had wrapped around her eye had been replaced with proper bandaging, though her fur was still matted with blood and dust. She looked like a soldier who had narrowly survived a battle.

“Well, now,” she said, breaking into a grin. “Look who’s returned.”

Isaac attempted to rise, but he only managed to climb a few inches before his strength completely waned. He felt as if his body had been filled with lead.

Zaria crawled inside the tent, her considerable frame nearly uprooting the poles. “How’re we feeling, then?”

“Alive.”

“Right you are.” She almost said something else, but seemed to lose the words as she looked down at him. “Wasn’t looking that way, for a good while.”

His throat was painfully dry. “Water.”

She reached over to the side and handed him the same stone bowl he used to prepare his potions. Inside, there was a limpid broth, filled with crushed walnuts and shreds of salted meat. It looked about as appetizing as old bath water, but Isaac drank it greedily, draining the cup, barely chewing the leathery meat.

The tent rustled again. He saw movement at the glare of the entrance.

Three of the Khador students were staring inside. The sigils on their foreheads were jagged and scarred, the flesh blackened along the deep grooves and winding circles. There were two boys and one girl, and they must have been close to Isaac’s age, but, at the moment, their faces were gaunt and worn, and their robes hung like curtains on their bodies. Berith had clearly drained a portion of their energy.

Berith. The blood.

Isaac tried to sit up again, managing to get to his elbows before Zaria pushed a firm hand to his chest.

“You’re takin’ a rest,” she said.

“I need to—”

“Squire, I swear to gods, I’ll tie you up again.”

“How are you feeling?” one of the male apprentices asked.

Isaac swallowed. “Weak. Cold.” He gestured at his sutures. “Did you make the poultice?”

“Yes,” said the other boy. “Professor Berith showed us how.”

The girl peered from behind the two boys, her cheeks red and streaked with tears. She was watching Isaac with a strange familiarity.

Above him, Zaria was already preparing another stew, mixing in cuts of dried apple and chamomile. The way she used her hand suggested it wasn’t paining her, thanks to Soldier’s Rest. “I told them how it happened. Wasn’t a fun telling, but things stayed civil.”

“Thank you,” said the first boy. “Thank you for saving us.”

Isaac took a moment to reply. “There were many others. I’m sorry I couldn’t save them. Were they . . . the rest of your class?”

The girl began to sob again. The second boy wrapped an arm around her shoulder.

“Do you—” The first apprentice hesitated. “Do you need further aid? We were hoping to save what supplies we have.”

“Aye,” Zaria said. “Funny how there’s kindness, now, when you were itching to leave him for dead.”

“T-that wasn’t—we need to preserve—”

“Oh, sure. Ain’t no blame.”

Isaac flexed the fingers on his arm. Blood loss had made them stiff, and it was obvious that his wounds had only been numbed, rather than healed. Still, at the moment, he was feeling remarkably better. “I’m fine.”

“Good. Good.”

The apprentice looked to Zaria.

“Remember the route I marked?” She kept stirring the lukewarm broth. “Which contacts are like to give shelter?”

“Yes. Uh, yes. It’s here.”

“Practice a bit more with the ropes. Make sure you got the knots.”

“Y-yes, I will. We will.”

“Hey,” Zaria said. “Trust me. Send a courier. Tell your kin to meet you somewhere and don’t have them go all together. Got it?”

The boy gave a weak nod, his face pale and drawn. The girl was cradling her head in her hands. The second boy was staring off into the distance, gazing over the cavern walls.

“Right.” She clapped the first boy on the shoulder. “Farewell. Best of luck all around.”

The first male apprentice looked quickly between Isaac and Zaria, opened his mouth, didn’t seem to find the words, and left the tent entrance. The second boy tried to pull the girl away, but she was staring at Isaac again, refusing to move.

“I know you,” she said.

Isaac blinked back at her.

She pointed a finger. “The tower. Berith’s tower. You’re the boy that always stared out the window. You’d watch us every day.”

Isaac didn’t answer.

“You’re Berith’s son.”

“No,” he said. “I’m not.”

She stared back, just on the edge of speaking. Her eyes were green and tinged with red.

“I know you, too,” Isaac said, suddenly remembering. “You lived four houses down from the apothecary. Your chimney was broken. Your father worked as a tanner. You always played with two boys at the herbarium. You’d put flowers in your hair, which, I imagine, was to hide the smell of leather.”

The girl’s mouth became a tight line. Her empty sigil was black and scabbing.

“Did you ever keep the dog?” Isaac asked. “I saw you feeding a stray, one time. It liked to follow you.”

“That was . . . years ago.”

Isaac shrugged.

“No,” she said. “I found it dead one morning. Neighbors butchered it for supper.”

“Oh.”

Sand blew in from beneath the tent. The air was hot and swirling.

“Come on,” said the second boy, tugging her back.

“Why were you in his tower if you weren’t his son?”

Isaac lay back on the bedroll, feeling dizzy.

“That’s enough,” Zaria said. She leaned over, nearly dragging the tent with her. “On you go. If you get stuck on the climb, just sit tight, and we’ll be like to cross paths. Otherwise, this is a farewell.”

The second boy nodded, dragging the girl away. She was beginning to weep again. Slowly, the sound of footsteps faded into the distance. Isaac tried to concentrate on breathing. Despite the heat rubbing against his skin, he felt chilled and feverish. His skin was glossy with sweat.

“Drink up,” Zaria said, handing him another bowl. “Meat and fluid. Suck it down.”

“Can you cook it, at least?”

“Drink the fucking stew.”

He did. He made an effort to swallow three more batches of the thin, salty broth, and every finished bowl seemed to help his mind pierce the dizziness.

Berith. The blood.

He gazed through the entrance of his tent, anxious.

“Right,” Zaria said, feeling his forehead. “Still looking pale. You’re staying on your back until the morrow, at the very least.”

“Z. Where’s my father?”

She looked down at him. Blood caked through her spotted fur.

Isaac tried to sit up, felt the world spin around him, and fell back to the roll. “He said he was running out of energy. Has he . . . ?”

“There’s been no sign.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Couple hours, at least.”

He tried to sit up again. Her hand pushed him down.

“I need to find him.”

“You’re in no condition.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, I fucking do,” Zaria said, “and I’ll give you worse than Soren if you keep acting fierce about it.”

There was nothing else he could think to say. “Please.”

“By Oerin’s cock, you’re just itching to hurt yourself, aren’t you?”

He kept looking at her.

She sighed, stifling a growl. “Fine. But so help your furless arse, if I see a single spell.”

“I’ll be good.”

“Like fuck, you will.”

With a gentle effort, she helped him crawl from the shade of his tent. The sunbaked stone burnt his fingers as he rose to his feet. Now that the day had advanced by several hours, the heat of the desert had settled into the formerly shaded cavern, and the light was now so bright it felt like a physical weight on his skin, if not a couple knives stabbing through his eye.

He stood as straight as he could, leaning against Zaria’s side, blinking through the glare.

To their right, there lay the colossus, its scattered form so utterly massive that Isaac found it difficult to view it as anything other than a collection of bony hills. Rock and sand smothered the rest of the crater basin, piling into dunes and mountains. Above the spot where the obelisk once rested, there was a deep valley wrenched through the high cliff walls, curved like a cage of ribs. Segments of the necropolis were visible amidst the rubble. It must have been the first time the buildings had ever been exposed.

Much of the cavern still lay in shade and darkness. The titan had only sundered a path through the middle of the rocky ceiling, leaving a good portion of the crater in shadow, like a half-blinking eye.

As he looked, he could see the Khador students making their way towards the ruins of the necropolis, their robes almost lost between the concrete, boulders, and sand. The crucified skeletons had been scattered amongst the mounds of ossein, the stars of the necromancer flags flapping in the breeze. Isaac continued to sweep his gaze, taking in the full scale of the destruction.

Eventually, he couldn’t resist any longer, and he gazed at the spot where Berith had died.

His body was still there. In the bright sun, the skin was turning ashen, the spilled blood already thick and brown from the desert heat. Isaac could see lividity marks, sand collecting in the open eyes. He knew that exposure to the sun would accelerate the decomposition. His uncle would start to smell, before long.

The world spun again. Only Zaria’s grip kept him from fainting.

“Isaac,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know that—”

“No.” He swallowed, looking again. He kept his gaze centered on Berith, as if in defiance. “It had to be done.”

Zaria nodded. “Right. Won’t argue otherwise. Just . . . seemed like he was trying to say something, at the end.”

“Whatever he was going to say, it wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“Aye. Too little, too late.”

“Very much so.”

The sun was hot and merciless. The wind was full of sand.

As Isaac gazed over the corpse, watching the robes sway and flutter, he felt a pressure building on his lungs. He tried to breathe, and he nearly vomited on the spot. His knees quickly began to buckle. His anxiety spiked into terror.

Zaria turned him away, resting on a knee. “Right. As you say. There’s nothing over there. Nothing you need to see any longer.”

His body was chilled and heavy. Even the effort of standing was leaving him breathless. As he caught his breath, and the world stopped lurching beneath him, he saw the faintest hint of a building, through the distance and debris. It was fairly small, rectangular in shape, and the walls were nestled right into the bedrock of the cavern wall, such that it almost blended into the dirt and sand. No more detail could be seen through the gloom.

But there it was, all the same.

Unmistakable.

He had imagined this building his whole life. He had been holding it in his mind’s eye as he died of thirst in the desert. He had kept it in his thoughts all the way through the giant skeleton, from mouth, to neck, to chest, abdomen, pelvis, and all the way through the legs. After all the leagues he had travelled, all the tribulations he had suffered, he had come to the end of his journey. There was nowhere else to go.

Zaria seemed to follow his gaze. “That’s it? Over there?”

“Yes.”

“Sure about that?”

“What else is left?”

She glanced back at his tent. “Aye, well, we got two good hands between us, and not much light in the day. Best we get packing.”

He looked up at her. She cast a sharp figure in the sunlight. He looked at the scar on her eye, the gash on her nose, the tawny fur lining her cheeks and ears. He felt both a warm and chilly sensation, deep in his chest, reminding him of how he had felt back in the extraction chamber, when she had refused to leave him behind.

She noticed his gaze, peering down at him with concern, followed by confusion. The feeling of warmth only increased.

“What?” she asked.

“Thanks, Z,” he said, quietly.

“Sure.” She shook him, managing a quick smile. “Glad to aid my squire. He’s certainly done enough for me.”

They set to packing up their supplies, aiding each other whenever their injuries hampered their progress. The sun burned his skin, weighing him down, the light reminding him of blood.

He did not look at Berith again.

They made their way down from the pyramid, through the canyons of ossein and metal ships, over the hills of sand still falling from the land above. He had to lean against her as they walked, and she kept him tucked to her side, holding her captain’s cutlass tightly in hand. From the way she moved, he knew she was just as beaten and exhausted as him. Even still, Isaac never doubted she would help him if he fell. They entered the shade of the cavern, leaving behind a giant skeleton, a field of fibrous bone, and a single, lone body, still wrapped in sun-eating robes.

Chapter Twenty-One

The Cost of Silence, Part Two

It was a squat, ugly thing.

When it came to the central lair of the necromancer, Isaac had always imagined something more grand, more grotesquely opulent. She had reigned upon the ruins of this tomb for millennia, all alone in the fallen bones of empire, and, surely, that had meant there was some extravagant nest waiting for him in the body of the colossus—marble columns, fine carpets, glittering jewels, furs and paintings, braziers alight with necrotic fire, and, of course, the necromancer herself, splayed on a throne of bones, all the gold of her empire’s conquests spilling from wall to wall, each of the coins still stained with blood.

Perhaps he had read too many books.

He could blame Berith for that.

Now, here, in the boneyard of metal ships, all Isaac saw was a flat, rectangular building, nestled snugly against the bedrock of the cavern wall. The walls were made of the same gray concrete that paved the floor. The closer he came, the more he was actually able to find some odd signs of wealth—the windows had glass in their panes, which had been coated in a thick layer of dirt and dust, and there were metal objects on the roof, molded into the same sort of strange shapes he had witnessed inside the disassembled ships. There were concave dishes, long poles, a few bits of scaffolding capped with spheres. It was clearly not meant for decoration, but he could not even begin to speculate on their function.

The walk towards the building had covered more than two miles, winding through the fissures of concrete, shoals of broken ossein, and several sludging rivers of sandwyrm blood. There was still a sizable portion of rock hanging above their head, which the colossus had not destroyed, leaving the barren stretches of concrete shaded against the reddening light of the desert.

He was breathing very hard. His limbs were weak. His mind was dizzy. He felt that, if he stopped to rest now, his loss of blood would cause him to never rise again. Even still, he kept stubbornly limping at Zaria’s side, because it was all right there.

After all this time, after all he had suffered, his destination was finally at hand.

He was about to meet his father.

“Hold,” Zaria said. She stopped walking, and the world seemed to lurch with her. “Park your arse.”

“What—”

Before he knew it, he was sitting on the floor. It took all his concentration to keep himself breathing.

She squatted over him, reaching for his leg. “You’re wheezin’ like a sow, and your burn needs cleaning.”

Isaac didn’t have the strength to argue. Using her wounded hand as little as possible, Zaria slung off her pack and tossed Soren’s cutlass to the floor. Gingerly, she peeled back the bandages on his thigh, exposing the burn Berith had given him. Some of his skin came with the cloth. If it wasn’t for the Soldier’s Rest packed between the mottled grooves of flesh, he would’ve been screaming in pain.

Zaria retrieved some new bandages, wetting them with a waterskin. “Isaac, you sure about this?”

They were less than fifteen paces from the small, concrete building. He listened for any hint of sound. He heard none. The cavern was silent, save for the occasional tumble of rock at the ruins of the necropolis.

“Look,” she said. “Let’s just go.”

“Go?”

“Beat sticks. Haul arse. Fuck on off. Something you should’ve been doin’ from the start.”

“Z, I can’t—”

He hissed. She had started rubbing the cloth through the outer edges of the burn, digging out the sand and grit.

“Gonna hurt,” she said.

He nodded, gripping her one leather pauldron. She kneaded his scabbing flesh. He barely had enough strength to groan.

“He started all this,” Zaria said. “All your wizards, all of them Orchids or whatever they’re called, they all conspired against each other, all forming these clashing deals of offerin’ you up and striking you down, just by reacting to what he done to you.”

Isaac stared up at the rocky ceiling of the cavern. He wasn’t sure what was worse—the screaming pain in his leg, or the breathless feeling in his lungs.

“Can you honestly tell me he’s changed for the better? You certain, beyond doubt, that he’s not got some trap in there, waiting for you?”

“Why would he?” Isaac asked.

“Why wouldn’t he?”

There was a single rusted door leading into the building. He saw only darkness through the holes. Around the sides, the glass windows were thick with dust. It was impossible to see what was inside.

“What’s to say,” Zaria said, “he hasn’t been actin’ nice just to make you drop your guard? Would you really put it past him? After all this?” She retrieved more bandaging. After gently bending his knee, she began to wrap the white fabric around his thigh. “Fuck the treasure. Was always a long shot, for me, and there’s no way we’re pinching more than some handfuls.”

She cut the bandage with a gnash of her teeth and tied it with a knot. She stood up, offered a hand, and lifted him with ease. The effort of standing left him breathless again.

“Let’s go. It’s the least bit of justice to leave him here, I think.”

He watched the rusted door. He hadn’t heard a sound, nor seen the slightest movement. There was not a single sign of life.

He stepped forward, and Zaria blocked his path, holding out a hand.

“Isaac. You’re not thinking of . . . giving him your body, are you?”

“No.”

“It’s the only way he’s gettin’ out of here.”

“I’m well aware of that.”

“Then what are you hoping for, exactly?”

He looked back. In the distance, he could see the scattered bones of the colossus, the ruins of the necropolis, an orgy of spilled rocks, a low, reddening sun. A sea of ossein grew into hills and mounds, like sheets of whitened mold.

“I just want to hear his voice,” Isaac said. “I want to know him, as a person. Something outside of a story.” He took as deep a breath as he could. “I want to say goodbye.”

He tried stepping around Zaria, and she blocked his path again. Most of her leather plackart was in tatters, the belts on her vambraces had snapped, and the cloth winding over her hands was as filthy gray as the concrete beneath her. Sections of fur had burned from the touch of necrotic magic.

“You don’t want that,” she said. “Trust me.”

He looked up at her.

“I wish my father hadn’t tried to save me,” Zaria said. “When I was in the crates, being loaded up, I had no idea what he’d done. Just thought it was wrong place, wrong time. Could’ve gone my whole life thinking that way. Still holding him dear in my heart, thinking he’d be out there and I’d find him some day.”

She paused, looking at him.

“But he did show up, and, even then, I wish he’d been mean. I wish he’d spat in my face, told me he was glad for the coin of my sale. I could’ve hated him, then. Could’ve cursed his name and not thought twice. Even then, that’d have been nicer.”

Her eye drifted to the floor. Her bare, digitigrade feet shuffled over cement.

“But he tried to save me, and he was crying his eyes out, and it was plain to see it was the worst thing he’d ever done, and he was tryin’ so hard to take it back, and, in the end, he couldn’t. And because it’s that way, it weren’t simple. The memory cuts like a knife, and there’s no way to settle it. Not anymore.”

Isaac stared at the building. It was small, plain, and ugly. It could have been a storage room, a substation, a relay for the conduction of souls. He had no idea of the truth.

The redoubt of the necromancer was nothing like he had imagined.

If he was telling the truth, not a single part of his journey had been close to how he’d imagined it, from his departure of Berith’s tower all the way to the bottom of an ancient empire. In some ways, it had been better, and these were largely due to Zaria, but in many other ways the things he had experienced were worse than his expectations, and they had been worse beyond even his most dreaded reckoning, and, now, somehow, this building, without any adornment or regalia, seemed the worst of it all, because it was just so. . . .

Disappointing.

The betrayal hurt. Killing his uncle had nearly torn him apart. But the disappointment only left him empty.

The emptiness began to gnaw.

“It wasn’t what happened to me that hurt the worst,” Zaria said. “It was who did it, and why. Even now, wise as I am, I still wish he hadn’t come around. I wish I didn’t know better. It’s not the kind of knowledge that makes me stronger. It just. . . .” She looked away. “It just hurts. It’s always gonna hurt.”

He was tired. His wounds were aching, his future was lost, and he was tired.

He struggled to breathe.

“Let’s go.” She gestured with the cutlass. “There’s nothing here worth turning over. Never was. It’s best you go on thinking that way.”

He swallowed what little saliva he had, took a deep breath, and looked up at her. “Zaria?”

She perked her ears.

“Fuck off.”

She watched him for a moment, plainly surprised, before erupting into a loud, cackling snort. “Right, then. Perfectly said. ‘Scuse me.” She stepped to the side, beckoning him on. “I’ll still hold your hand through it, if you’re of the mind.”

“Thank you, Z.”

“Anytime, squire.”

Isaac stepped towards the rusty door, straightening his posture as much as he could. His robes were filthy, his beard resembled something pulled from a bathtub drain, and all his spellcasting had left him miserably gaunt, little different than the thralls Berith had left behind. He doubted anyone from his old life would recognize him now.

Zaria gave him one last look. He returned it with something like appreciation. Slowly, he pushed open the rusty door.

His first impression of the room was dust. It was so thick in the air that he might’ve chewed it after a breath, and the swinging of the door quickly disturbed a cloud, forcing him to wince and wave his hand. After coughing, his next impression was fire—small torches of flame, each of them as green as the lights of the mortuary chapel, were ringing the walls, placed in perfect order around the circumference of the room. The green firelight was only barely enough for someone to navigate around the furniture. Isaac imagined, for a moment, that the sorceress would have been sensitive to light.

It was obvious, once his eyes adjusted to the gloom, that the building had been modified from its original purpose. What the original purpose had been, Isaac could not say, but its new purpose was a laboratory. One of the walls was lined with tables, which had all been pilfered from the research stations around the pelvis. There were bones scattered across the stations, each of them dissected and placed in cross-section, as well as petri dishes full of ossein, which had festered similarly to the bones outside. He saw shelves of chemical reagents, skeletons on display, a bellows with old coals, pedals for a centrifuge. Aside from the bones, the laboratory in Berith’s tower had not looked much different.

At one of the research benches, a human skeleton lay slumped across a chair. Judging from the carbon scores on the ribs and vertebrae, it had died from a concentrated lance of fire, launched from an elemental mage. The skull was tilted back, as if locked in a cry of pain.

Isaac strode into the room, bending to examine the pelvis. He determined, after a moment, that the victim had been a woman.

He realized, suddenly, almost shockingly, that this was the body of the necromancer—the sorceress, the last survivor of an ancient empire, so old that her name and title had long succumbed to the endless tide of history. She was so old that she had witnessed the birth of the Charnel dunes, the days when the necromancers had scoured the region of all life and material. Instead of becoming an incorporeal wraith, like other necromancers, instead of ascending beyond the flesh, like some in the Diet were attempting for themselves, she had remained in the body of her original form, as if stubbornly clinging to the past. Isaac struggled to imagine her perspective. She had survived such an inhuman length of time. . . .

This room was her abode. Her final tomb. It did not look ostentatious in the slightest. Aside from the lab equipment, there was no furniture, no decoration, no teeming hordes of wealth. It was obvious that the function of this building had only been practical. It had been a work station, through and through.

But what work had she been doing here?

Why live all this time?

Isaac stared down at the half-charred skeleton, noting the white lab coat still clinging to her shoulder, drawing his gaze over the flag of stripes and stars still stitched to her lapel. The rest of her clothes had rotted to scraps, or been burned by his father. He could not tell, at a glance, who this woman had been.

What purpose had she been trying to achieve in this room? How had she come to be the last of her empire? What difference had it made, in the end?

He saw no signs of a breakthrough, no sign of some miracle that would save her civilization. There was only a small, improvised laboratory, buried beneath tons of rock and sand. He could imagine her toiling away the centuries here, alone in the dark, repeating the same endless experiments. For the first time in his life, he became truly aware that, someday, he would die, and, no matter how famous or loved he had been, there would come a time when no one remembered his name.

He looked at the remains of the enemy he had prepared to face for all his life, and, despite himself, he felt some odd measure of kinship with her.

“Isaac?”

The voice was quiet, thin, and ethereal.

Isaac turned.

On a small dais, over in a dusty corner, next to a pile of discarded machines, there sat a metal device. It was no larger than a cuirass, and a small lattice of pipework, similar to the ones he had seen in the obelisk, had been crudely soldered up through the floor, shunting directly into the metal. There were loose wires, mixed with what appeared to be advanced transmission receivers. At the top of the device, a small purple cloud shone through the dust and gloom, seeming to shimmer inside an invisible barrier.

Isaac stumbled his way through the room, disturbing the torches with his wind. The dais was low enough to the floor that he needed to kneel, bringing himself level with the soul inside. When he did, he felt his skin glowing with the purple light. He could almost make out a face, if he looked hard enough.

“Father?” he asked.

“In the flesh,” said the purple cloud.

Isaac could only stare back.

“Sorry,” Caine said, his wisps shaking as he chuckled. “I’ve been saving that.”

He looked down at the device. There were knobs and dials, some mechanical gauges that signified humidity, barometric pressure, a phrase he could only translate as “containment integrity”. Many of the displays seemed to be indicating a drop in energy. Several needles were slowly deflating to the bottom of the circular gauge, like the shadow on a sundial. In the center of the device, Isaac noted a single, large button. It was painted red, and, though its function was unmarked, its placement and size could only suggest that it held some great importance.

Isaac hesitated, staring at the mechanical screens. Could he do something to arrest the loss of energy?

Should he?

Above the device, Caine shifted himself, drifting like a cloud of smoke. “Zaria, right?”

The hyena had not followed Isaac to his father—instead, she was leaning against one of the research stations on the opposite end of the room. The cutlass was on the bench at her side, still within easy reach. “Just keeping the peace. Don’t mind me.”

“How can I not?” Caine replied. “You’re the reason my son’s not feeding the wyrms.”

Zaria shrugged. “That goes both ways, to be fair.”

“Of course, of course. But, listen—thank you. Truly. I can never repay you enough, for all that you’ve done, though I hope what’s downstairs may serve as a start.”

“Downstairs?”

“You’ll see.”

Zaria nodded, glanced at Isaac, and looked away.

Caine drifted back to the center. “So, Isaac, how did you and the lovely lady meet?”

He blinked, shifting back on his knees. “Uh—”

“You like them large, do you? Big and strong? I mean, I can understand a zoanthrope, they are physically gifted, but a pirate, of all things?”

Isaac stammered.

“Oh, well,” his father said. “I can’t say I haven’t done the same.” A face was almost visible in the cloud, like a suggestion of humanity. “You get sent off to an expedition, you find an inn for the night, you meet some sellsword taking up space at the bar, and if they do have fur or scales or whatever in between, I mean, so what? It’s a Diet rite of passage. Back before all this, more of my scars came from a bed rather than whatever dead we were fighting, much to my brother’s consternation.”

Isaac made a sound that might’ve been a laugh.

“Well,” Caine said, glowing a bit brighter. “Sorry to babble. She seems quite nice, all things considered.”

“Sure. I mean. . . .” He glanced back at Zaria. “Very nice.”

The cloud drifted closer to his face. If Isaac looked closely, he could see some of the dust glinting inside, absorbing and detaching from the gaseous glow.

“Gods,” Caine said, “I still cannot believe how big you are. You’re so tall! The terror of every doorway! How old are you, anyway?”

“I . . . do you not . . . ?”

“Oh, no, unfortunately. It’s quite hard to keep track of time, down here in the dark. The range of this little box is just around the catacombs, so I . . . couldn’t even see the sun. You know?”

He cleared his throat. “I’m twenty two.”

“Twenty-two! By Oerin, you’re still just a babe. Is that beard fake? Are you putting me on?”

Isaac held up his uninjured hand, making an effort to match his father’s humor. “Yes, actually. You’ve seen through me. I’ve never learned a single spell. I’ve just been waving my arms and tossing bombs.”

The purple cloud puffed with laughter. “Actually, you say that, but Sarah and I met that way, as a point of fact. Did Berith ever tell you this?”

Before Isaac could answer, the cloud began to ramble.

“I’d do this trick in the taverns, right, where I’d shoot a bit of flame with those little poppers in my hand. Add a scroll up the sleeve, and it was a shower of fire wherever I pointed.” The cloud rolled and tumbled over itself. “Anyway, one day, Sarah was a scribe on one of the expeditions. She saw my little trick and decided to call me out in front of the crowd. I challenged her to do better, knowing she only had evocations, and what does she do but immediately turn and enchant her ale. It started to talk! Oh, it called me a fool! Of course, I had to knock it over, just to save face, and by then she—”

Caine stopped, condensing back together. Isaac had the feeling that something was showing on his face.

A silence lingered with the dust.

“Oh,” his father said, quietly. “You never met her, did you?”

Isaac shook his head.

“Sarah was. . . .” The wispy mouth twisted. “She was fiery. Diligent. Smart as a crow. Heading right for a director post in the collegium. Sometimes, she’d let me have fun with her.”

He drifted along the edge of the device, rubbing against the barrier.

“She was very excited to have you. Reminding her I was the father just seemed to make her happier, for some odd reason. She picked your name, picked the village where we’d build the tower. The last time I saw her, she was drafting your study lessons while rubbing her belly. She told me not to be long in the desert.” The face inside the cloud seemed to stare at him. “You don’t look much like her. I’d hoped you would. It would help me remember. . . .”

Isaac watched the green fire burn above the dais, hoping his voice would sound steady.

“Sorry,” Caine said. “I don’t mean to go on like this. I had these—well, I had hundreds of speeches. Every possible apology, every answer planned, right down to how I’d stress the syllable. Then, of course, the second you actually walk in, I just. . . .”

For a moment, the cloud grew brighter.

“It’s good to see you, Isaac. You don’t know. It’s been. . . .” The face inside began to solidify. “You’re so big! A man grown already. You couldn’t have saved some of that height for me to see, could you?”

Isaac looked everywhere but the device in front of him—the torches, the dusty windows, the half-finished experiments. There were words fighting to come out of him, words that he had also tentatively planned to say, but none of them felt right, and he wanted things to feel right, because, after all this time and training and effort, things needed to be perfect.

But none of this was perfect.

None of this was right.

“Well,” Caine said. “Let’s . . . move on, for the moment.”

Isaac nodded, unable to look.

“What happened out there?” The cloud seemed to spin, like liquid in a centrifuge. Isaac realized his father was attempting to peek through a dusty window. “I had to sever my senses to conserve energy. It seemed quite . . . apocalyptic, for a time.”

“It’s over,” Isaac said. “The power grid is destroyed, and all the souls are gone. The colossus is in pieces. I’m not sure my anti-necrotics could destroy bones of those size.”

“Berith?”

“He’s dead.”

The cloud shifted to the side, still trying to peer through the dusty windows. The glass was a dull gray, letting in specks of light.

“When he called,” Caine said, “I almost didn’t recognize his voice. He’d aged terribly. Like a bitter old man. Even seeing his face was a shock. Did you see the scars, where the necrotics had splashed?”

“The years took a toll,” Isaac said.

“Oh, I imagine. It’s a shame. He used to be almost as handsome as me, in a brooding sort of way.” The cloud drifted back. “When we talked through the soul capture, he told me exactly what had happened to you, and what he would do to me. The way he talked about your training. . . .”

Isaac didn’t answer.

“Well,” Caine said. There was a shiver through the gas, like a cleared throat. “Smashing the old metal is good enough. The Archons can’t resurrect the colossus without a frankly eye-watering amount of energy, and, even if they try, the Diet regulators will inevitably discover any attempts to mimic this empire’s industrial capacity, or its source of transmutational energy. They will demand the research halted. At least, that is what should happen. I am getting the feeling that, up there, people no longer remember the Scorching as well as they should.”

Isaac’s knees were aching from kneeling at the dais. The pain from his wounds was still clawing at his thoughts, scattering all the words.

“Isaac.”

He watched the soul as it drifted to the front of the device, condensing into a ball.

“See that button down there? The big one?”

Isaac looked at the large red button he had noticed earlier.

“It’s a release catch,” Caine said. “It’ll drop the barrier. That’s the only thing keeping me together. I’ll just . . . drift away. Nothing else.”

The button was a large, chipped circle on the front of the cylinder. Around it, all the gauges were still slowly drifting down. Some of the labels translated to words like pressure, integrity, and reserve.

The loss of power seemed to be accelerating.

“If you want to,” Caine added. “If you want to ask me anything, go ahead. If you want to . . . tell me anything, then feel free. Anything you want.”

“Are you saying I should kill you?”

“I’m only giving you the option.”

Isaac began to gesture, but the sling stopped his arm. “What am I supposed to say?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Are you not even going to apologize?”

“Would it make you feel better?”

Isaac looked away, blinking until his vision was clear.

“If it would,” Caine said, “then I’ll do it until the sun burns dry. I just . . . didn’t think you’d want me to. This isn’t about me.”

“It’s not about you?”

“It’s not about what I want, is what I mean.”

“This is about your wants. That is the entire reason I’m here.”

The cloud rose above the device, the face inside climbing toward his eyes. Dust sparkled through the gas.

“You know,” Isaac said, “I never planned a speech. Mostly, I imagined you would be talking, like you have been now. I never wanted to say anything, really. I just wanted to hear you speak.”

He paused, watching the accretion of dust.

“I was afraid, walking in here. I was afraid that you would be like him. Like Berith. Every time I’ve ever spoken, every time I’ve done anything that wasn’t an order, I have been scared. Even now, you tell me I can say anything, and I still don’t want to, just because I’m scared it’ll be wrong.”

He shifted on his knees, wincing at his burned thigh. The pain made him clench his fists.

“It’s never been about what I want,” Isaac said. “Every moment of my life has been about serving others, through training and chores and just nodding my head to whatever I was told. It’s a foreign concept, even thinking of my own needs. Every instinct screams at me to stop and turn and flee back to the safety of obedience. And now you’re telling me that I’m free to do anything? You’re telling me I can kill you if it’d make me feel better?”

Dust curled in the air, smelling faintly of death.

“Do you know what I want?” Isaac asked.

Caine watched him, flowing and bright.

“I want to leave. I want to turn and walk away and never think about this tomb again. I want to see the places I’ve only known through books. I want to feel the moments I’ve only seen in dreams. I want to wake up and walk outside and watch the sunrise and not be terrified that I’ll be struck for doing so. I want—I want—I—”

His vision blurred, and he lowered his chin to his chest. In the moment, more than anything, he hated that he was embarrassed to cry.

“I don’t want to do this anymore.”

His wounds still ached. His clothes were filthy, and his pack was heavy, and he missed the softness of his bed, the warmth of a cooked meal, the feel of old, musty paper on his fingertips. He missed the things that had always given him comfort.

“Do you know what I’ve wanted, Isaac?”

The soul drifted forward, close to Isaac’s face. The ethereal light left spots in his vision. For the first time, he noticed wisps leaking from the invisible field around the device, as if holes were forming in the barrier.

“I wanted to save myself,” Caine said. “I just pressed a button. I had journeyed for days, I had watched several friends die around me, and I was walking around this little shack, looking at all the trinkets and lab reports, and I pressed that big button down there, just a quick little moment of curiosity, and it destroyed my body. It took a second of carelessness, and I was trapped.”

The soul split and rejoined.

“I panicked. I think anyone would. It was weeks before the Diet tried to contact me. I spent those weeks in the dark, alone and afraid, coming to terms with my only choices. It was you or me. That was it. I had to put my soul in your body. Kill my son to save myself. I was still struggling with it when they called, and when they asked what could be done . . . I made my choice. I thought Sarah might understand. I thought the Diet would acquiesce if I kept the obelisk hostage. I had always drunk life to the lees, and that must have meant that I wanted to live more than anything else.”

The purple cloud began to spread. Light boiled inside.

“But then I was alone, once again. For years, I was alone. It felt an eternity, here in the dark, and I discovered that eternity is . . . quite a long time.

“I practiced with the bones, I learned this city’s language, I explored every inch where I could wriggle a finger.” A tendril of gas blew toward the lab equipment. “I even attempted to replicate some of the sorceress’s experiments, though I hardly understood the science. Whoever she was, she had a mind for machines far exceeding my own. In any case, it still wasn’t enough. There is no way to tell time in the dark. I couldn’t even sleep, Isaac. I have no need for rest. In the end, thinking was the only way in which I could occupy myself. And I did . . . quite a lot of it.”

The cloud raced around its containment, roiling, shifting, stretching the vague tendrils of a face.

“I thought about you. I imagined how much you might resemble me, or, at least, the handsome flesh I used to own. I pictured your first steps, your first spell. I calculated how much training you would have to do before your body could be sent. Most of all, I thought about the Archons, all the ways they would keep this a secret from the supranational regulators, all the ways they could . . . bend and twist the deal, corrupting it for their own ends. Slowly, I realized what I’d done. I realized what they would have to do to Sarah. I realized what they would have to do to you, just so it would all stay a secret. And I realized that my fate was likely sealed, no matter what.”

Below, some of the gauges had reached zero. Lights were beginning to die.

“I wanted to save you,” Caine said. “But there was nothing I could do. The Diet did not contact me again, and the reach of this little box only went so far. As you might imagine, there were few guests to the tomb surrounded by dragons and pirates. My only hope—the only thing that kept me sane through the years—was that, someday, you would arrive here, and I would get the chance to speak with you, and I would tell you to run, to run very far away, to forget all about me and to live your life on your own terms.”

Isaac remembered the grinding voice of the bones, the insistence with which they had spoken his name.

“After an eternity, after all my hope had nearly bled away, I felt a tingle in the tiny corpuscles within my cloud, and I knew I was finally being called again. And when I answered, it was Berith who spoke. And he. . . .”

The cloud shuddered.

“He told me everything. Your entire life. There was not much to tell, from the sound of things. Just training and lessons and the sound of a cracking whip. And after all that time and effort, after he had spent decades of his life meeting my demands . . . he had still decided to kill you. In a few days, he said, you would be swallowed by the desert. You would die of wyrms or thirst. Neither would be pleasant. There was nothing at all I could do to stop it. Berith let his words impale me. As I was numb with shock, he asked if I was proud of myself. He told me just how long he’d been waiting to say that I was no brother of his, any longer. He said I should’ve just accepted my death when it came, instead of forcing him to come and finish the job.”

More wisps leaked from the invisible barrier, twisting in the air, spreading out into dust.

“I lost my mind,” Caine said. “That is really the only way to put it. I snapped my final strand. I gathered every bone I could find and, when he entered the tomb, I lashed at him with everything I had, and it was completely useless, because he was Berith the Bone Hunter, and he had used our family’s talent for cross-specialization to amass an army of thralls, and even though I knew my fate was sealed, the only motivation I had left was spite and a wounded, animal rage, and so rage I did, to the final spitting breath. When you appeared, I thought you were his reinforcements, or some wandering scavengers, and if I hadn’t been concentrating most of my mass on Berith, I would’ve slaughtered you without a second thought. It was only afterward, when I was listening, that I realized. . . .”

A high-pitched whine began to ring from the device. By now, most of the gauges had died. The soul inside was beginning to drift apart, growing thin and transparent.

“Oh,” Caine said, quietly.

Isaac clutched the device, running his hands over the dials and switches. “What’s happening?”

“It’s out of energy. The obelisk. . . .” There came a warbling sigh, thin and whistled. “I think I’m losing the memories.”

“Wait, wait.” Isaac leaned forward, tugging at the pipes below. “Is there another source of energy? Can it transmutate, like a scroll?”

“Gods,” Caine said, “I want to remember her face.”

“Father!”

“Isaac—”

“If I cast some fire, there should be at least a minutiae of transfer—”

“Isaac,” Caine said. “I’ve accepted this. It has been a long time coming.”

The whining grew louder. Pressurized gas hissed from the top of a device, smelling of metal and lightning. Inside, the soul churned like bugs within a jar.

“Tell me what to do,” Isaac said. “You’ve studied this device. You must have some notion of its inner workings, how to spin the metal a little longer. You must know how to save yourself.”

“I have no idea.”

“Why not?” Isaac nearly yelled.

“Because the last time I saved myself, it ruined your life.”

Isaac tried to think, tried to ignore the alarms and hissing gas and the reeling of half a dozen gauges. All his lessons on mechanical instruments fell through his mind, like sand through a clenching fist.

“I want you to forget about me,” Caine said. “I want you to leave this tomb and never return. I want—”

Isaac slapped at the buttons, hoping for some manner of reaction. Most of them were dead or rusted shut. “Why didn’t you warn me? I could’ve tried to save some of the energy. I could’ve done something!”

“Listen. You have to leave. The Diet will send assassins. The treasure is below. Take as much as you can. Use it to start a new life.”

He rattled the metal cylinder back and forth, like rocking a vase. “You could’ve let the Diet in from the start. They could’ve studied this instrument. They could’ve saved you!”

“Isaac, if there was another way, none of this would’ve happened.”

The soul had turned from a gaseous ball into a long, spreading shape, like a cloud drifting through the sky. The air glinted with dust and energy.

“Press the button,” Caine said. “Please. I’m losing it all, and I want to remember. You and her.”

It was a large, red circle in the center of the device. There was a faint oval stamped into the layers of dust, like a fingerprint from decades before. For a moment, Isaac uncurled his fingers, reaching out. He stopped halfway, finding his hand shaking.

The high-pitched whining filled his ears. On the interface below, all the lights had died.

“I heard you talking in the tomb,” Caine said, his voice faint and warbling. “Follow your dreams. Travel the world. Never stop learning.”

Streams of purple light drifted out from the device, spreading through the air in a glittering wave.

“Don’t let any of us keep you waiting. Do it for yourself.”

Isaac laid his finger on the button. It was cold and riddled with dust. He could feel the mechanism already start to give.

“I’m so proud of you, Isaac.”

His vision blurred. His hand trembled.

“Live your life. Be happy.”

“Goodbye, father,” Isaac said, and pressed the button.

There was a mechanical shunt. All at once, the purple cloud came spilling forward, tendrils rubbing against his robes like a fine mist, and, for just a sliver of time, he almost felt wrapped in a hug, each of the arms made of fog and light. An instant later, the contact began to dissipate, breaking apart into streams and wisps, vanishing into the dust. He found himself clutching desperately at the last little strands, failing to grasp a single solid form. In the end, there was only dust, swirling through the eddies of air.

He looked down at his empty hands. His palms were smeared with the blood of his uncle. His strength gave way, and he felt himself falling forward, his head leaning against the cold metal of the necromancer’s device, his injuries screaming, his stomach aching from hunger, and he was filthy and tired and weak, and he cried until all the pains and wants became a single, large, gaping wound.

Zaria came up behind him. Without a word, she kneeled down, wrapped him in her arms, and held him tight.

He cried until the tears were streaming down his face, until he heaved and gasped, until the noises that came from his throat were more guttural and wretched than any he had ever made before. He cried until the pain inside him was flooding out, raw and livid and endless, feeling as if his soul had been ripped from the fibers of his flesh, like the innumerable victims of the necromancer factory.

He took a clutching grip of Zaria’s arms, moaning something inarticulate. She hugged him tighter. He stopped trying to speak.

When he finally regained himself, the green torchlight still burned above the dais. There was still lab equipment on the benches, chemical vials on the shelves, skeletons on the testing rigs. Dust still swirled in the air. The skeleton of the necromancer still reclined in her chair, her skull gaping in shock towards the ceiling, as if she could not believe that her time had truly come.

The only thing that had changed was the necromancer’s device. It was no bigger than a steel cuirass, lying empty and unpowered. With his vision still blurring through tears, he found it incredible that everything around him had remained just as it was, because his entire world had just changed forever, and, yet, almost nothing about the world had changed. It seemed outrageously unfair that everything could continue to exist as it was.

Isaac rested his head in the tufts of fur around Zaria’s collarbone, absently rubbing his fingers along the device. The metal felt very cold.

“He waited for you, love,” Zaria said, loosening her arms. “He waited a very long time. He scoured every chance he had, just to give one to you.”

A sob rocked his chest.

“You bein’ here made him happy, for just a moment. That was enough.”

The dust curled in the air. It seemed to twist with a life of its own. Isaac watched the eddies and curls, remembering the way the necromancer souls had flown through the flakes and specks, as if conducting their energy through the strangely metallic debris. He hoped, very briefly, that his father would still be with him, watching his son through some scattered, intangible means, gazing on through the years, his essence contained forever in the wind and sky and sand.

He looked at the device, and he glanced around the dusty, gloom-filled room, and he hoped just as quickly that his father was truly dead, that the dissipation of the soul brought an oblivion to all awareness, because if it did not, death would only be another cage, another torture of the mind. In this way, he could be glad that his father had died.

The thought gave him a modicum of peace.

“Treasure’s nearby,” Zaria said, beginning to stand. Her large hand squeezed his shoulder. “Gonna look. If you need something, just shout.”

He might have nodded back. She squeezed his shoulder again, heading out through the closest door. Only silence was left behind.

A feeling of weight came from the walls, the heavy pressure of rock and dust and time.

Above everything else in the room, Isaac found himself staring at the corpse of the necromancer. Eventually, he found the strength to limp back to her chair. He ran his fingers along the rotting fabric of her laboratory coat. He scratched a nail at the scorches on her ribs. He peered into her empty eyes, wondering if he could somehow divine her name.

She had been dead all along. He had spent his entire life training to kill someone who had died before he was even born. If he had not been exhausted from the day’s efforts, the irony would have made him sick.

Isaac stared into the necromancer’s face, rubbing the flag of the stripes and stars, his thumb digging at the few fabrics of blue still remaining around the corner. He tried to bring himself to feel some emotion. He looked into the empty sockets of his nemesis, and he felt nothing but a dull ache, deep inside.

“Isaac!” Zaria shouted, her voice far away, echoing out from what appeared to be the depths of a tunnel. “You’ll want to see this!”

He looked over the lab equipment. The sorceress had written a journal, and the relative lack of rot on the paper suggested it had been carefully preserved until just before she died. He carefully flipped through the pages. As near as he could translate, the unknown sorcerer had been expressing regret. Some words roughly translated to gold, pillage, slaughter, and worship. The words for remorse and sacrifice frequently appeared together. Occasionally, the word for gold would be next to another word that he could only translate as lightning or energy.

“Isaac!”

There was a small apparatus hanging above the bench. It took him a moment to recognize it as the model of a star and its planets. He noticed, immediately, that the sun was far larger than it should be, and the number of planets was entirely wrong—for some reason, the sorceress had placed nine around the central star. On the third planet, fingerprints were mingling with the dust, suggesting that she had often palmed the little metal ball, imparting it with some lone, special meaning. Isaac couldn’t imagine why, because his own world was only second from the sun.

She had written a word on the third planet, scratched directly into the metal. It translated to dirt.

Soil?

It was something to that effect.

For a moment, Isaac looked at the small metal ball, feeling strangely wistful. Slowly, with no ceremony, he released his grip on the necromancer and walked toward the sound of Zaria’s voice, leaving a wind of dust in his wake.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Weight of Wealth

The gold stretched away, rising like a tide.

There was no mistaking the distinctive tint, no disguising the truth of the treasure. All the same, as Isaac emerged from the confines of a concrete tunnel, he found himself comparing the gold to every shade of yellow he had ever seen before. The hue was more vibrant than the morning sun. The color was not as pure as the seed of a mustard. Pyrite—fool’s gold—had a much sharper glint when it caught the light. Here, the light reflecting from the metal was soft and seductive, like a piece of lingerie, as if it wanted nothing more than to beckon the eye.

Every comparison fell short. There was no equal.

This was gold.

It was not all in coin, though this made the majority of the plunder. There were golden rings studded with gems. There were gilded breastplates, the lacquered pommels of swords. There were entire piles of jewelry, including necklaces, bracelets, cuff links, brooches, earrings, and medallions. There were golden tiaras, coronets capped with garnets and emeralds, furred coats glimmering with amethyst. There were towering stacks of furniture, thrown messily into a pile, each of the wardrobes and bathtubs and coffers and uprooted thrones shining with the unmistakable tint of golden wealth.

Beside Isaac, Zaria’s eye reflected the golden light. Her tawny fur glowed like wheat upon a field.

“Callin’ it now,” she said. “I’m the best pirate there ever was.”

With his eyes adjusting to the dim torchlight, Isaac was beginning to see the end of the chamber. The room was square, a quarter mile in width and length, and the teeming wealth seemed to cover most of its area. It would’ve taken him weeks to count it by hand. A fleet of skimmers would struggle to stay buoyant with such a bounty in their holds. It was more coinage than all the mints of the region could produce in a decade.

“Isaac.”

On the floor, or what little of it he could see, there were murals adorning the concrete, the colorful paints dull and faded with time. He could see figures hauling coins and jewelry to the feet of colossal figures, giants in bulky suits with striped flags and helmets made of glass. The gods cast a swarm of flies upon the faithful. The tiny motes burrowed beneath the skin, and wings grew from the worshipper’s backs, great plumages made of feathers and wax and gold.

“Isaac. Look here a moment.”

Zaria stepped in front of him, a glimmer of gold outlining her form. The cutlass in her hand shone like the sword of an angel. “Quite a sight, huh?”

“Sure.”

There was a pause.

“Look,” she said. “I know we said all them things about saving the world, and being righteous, and whatnot. I’m glad we did. I like stopping evil cunts from raising giant monsters as much as the next lass.”

He remembered blood flowing over black robes.

“But this. . . .” She waved in both directions. Each time, her hand gestured over a different sea of gold. “This is pretty big, is it not?”

“Sure.”

“Look, love, I know you’ve . . . suffered recently, but where’s all them fancy words of yours? Surely you’ve got one.”

“Repugnant,” Isaac said.

“That don’t sound fun.”

“It means disgusting. Abhorrent. Offensive to the sense.” He kicked a loose coin along the cement. “It means a lot of people died to make this treasure.”

“No different than usual, then.”

He scratched the sutures on his arm.

“Look,” she said. “It’s a crying shame, is what it is. It’s a stupid pile of metal that’s just gonna fall in the hands of your wizard masters. We went through all this trouble, and now we gotta let our payment lie ‘cause it’s too much to haul by hand.”

Isaac let his vision roam over the coins. There were many currencies, each of them adorned with faces and sigils, engravings and flags. He only recognized a few of the mints.

“But,” Zaria said, “here’s the thing. Gold is heavy. It’s heavier than steel is at the same size. It’s got more—what do you call it—thickness to it, I suppose.”

“Density.”

“They’re heavy, love. Speaking from experience here. Coin feels like rocks in your pack. You hear all them pirate tales of men dying in the desert ‘cause they wouldn’t drop their shiny pebbles. That’ll be us, if we try the same.”

“Can you please make your point?”

She gestured out to the hoard. “I’m countin’ a lot of gems out there. Diamonds, sapphires, rubies the size of your cockhead. Some types of crystals I don’t even got names for. Now, gems often got more thickness than gold, but they’re worth more. Value for weight, if you get my meaning.”

Isaac shifted on his feet.

“I’m thinking,” Zaria said, “that we pinch as much of them crystals as possible, till we’re spillin’ rainbows at every step. Then, once we climb from this tomb, and abscond through the wastes, I can ply my trade as a thief, get us in contact with fences and the like. Turn it back into proper richness.”

Isaac made a face.

“We’re gonna need that coin, love. Both of us got manhunts comin’ our way, and the only way we’ll survive them is turning our tails. That costs money, if only for bribes, and not food and passage.” She shrugged. “And don’t tell me it won’t feel a little nice, carving off some of that ill-gotten wealth from the claws of your wizards. They’ll notice what you done, and it’ll just be more piss in their porridge.”

Isaac let his gaze fall on a marble bed frame, its every post glimmering with gems. After a moment, he said: “Sure.”

Zaria leaned down into his vision. “That’s fine, then?”

“I said it was.”

“Well. If you’re sure.”

With a grunt, Isaac shrugged off his pack, holding it out to her.

She didn’t take it. “Not gonna help?”

He raised his other arm, still in the sling.

“Right,” Zaria said. She took his pack. “‘Scuse me. Mighta got . . . carried away, seein’ all this. I promise, I ain’t bein’ cruel, by acting eager.”

Isaac did not answer.

“Course,” Zaria continued, ears flattening. “Never you mind. I’ll pinch the sweetest booty. You just . . . rest a spell.”

He made to leave through the concrete doorway. As he turned, she grabbed his arm.

“Hey.”

Isaac did not look back. His wounds were beginning to ache. The numbness was subsiding. The pain seemed to come from everywhere, all at once.

She squeezed his arm. “You don’t wanna look around a bit?”

“Why would I?” He grunted, shifting his weight. “It’s not like it matters. Most of it will never be ours.”

“Aye, no, but. . . .” When he finally spared a glance, she was gesturing. “This is historical, love. I mean, biggest treasure pile there ever was, and by quite a margin. There’s jewels and swords and thrones and probably everything else you could imagine. I’m liable to try a swim.”

“It’s not a liquid.”

“And that ain’t the point. You and I are never gonna see anything like this again. No one will. It’s once in a lifetime.”

He gazed around the room. The walls often vanished beneath mounds of coin and royal furniture. There was nowhere in the vast chamber that was not tinged with the distinctive luster. Wherever he looked, his vision was swallowed by gold.

“I realize—” She cleared her throat. “I mean, don’t you want to just . . . savor it a bit?”

“No,” Isaac said. “I don’t.”

She looked down at his pack, then back at him.

“I’ll be outside,” he said, and walked through the door.

He climbed back up the stairs, limping at every step. The air was suffocating. The walls were pressing in. He needed to breathe.

As he paused at the top of the stairs, feeling winded from the short climb, he saw the open door of the sorcerer’s chamber at the end of the hall. Beside him, there was another door. It seemed completely plain, though he caught a similar glint of gold through a gap in the hinge.

Breathing hard, feeling the lack of blood in his veins, Isaac pushed open the door.

The room was small and littered with tools. Most of the surrounding shelves were covered in dissected machinery. There was a bench in the center, scarred with lines of solder. On the workbench, there was a thin sheet of metal. It was green and highly corrugated—Isaac had only a basic knowledge of voltaics, but he managed to recognize certain sections of the metal as the gated channels for the flow of lightning, as well as slots and sockets for the addition of modifying devices. Whatever it was, the green metal sheet seemed like some highly advanced device for channeling electricity. He could not say what its purpose had been. At the moment, the study of voltaics was a novelty, more than anything.

After a moment’s examination, he noticed flakes of gold next to the wafer-thin metal. Judging by the welding tools on the wall, and some black residue on the sheet itself, it appeared as if the sorceress had been attempting to inlay the metal with gold. From his studies, he knew that gold held an exceptional affinity for the transfer of power.

Of course, the sorceress was dead, and the tools were rusty, and the room was covered in dust, and there were dozens of other green metal sheets, broken and cracked and tossed into corners, and it did not appear as if anyone had worked here in centuries, even though the sorceress had only died a few decades before. The air smelled of time.

Isaac was growing sick. He needed to leave.

He closed the door, stumbled down the hall, and entered the sorceress’s chamber through a veil of dust. He walked through the laboratory, ignoring the skeleton, ignoring the half-finished experiments, focusing only on the red sunlight filtering through the open door. When he made it to the exit, his urges overcame him, and he glanced over his shoulder, and he saw the empty device again, the place where his father’s soul had rested for all Isaac’s life. No matter how hard he tried, he could not tear his vision away.

It was just an empty cylinder, sitting in a dark and dusty corner. There was no light. There was no longer any power. There was nothing but metal.

He remembered the click of the button.

Light spilling out. Tendrils and dust.

Standing in the doorway, he made a sound that no one heard.

He limped along the side of the building until he was facing the center of the cavern. He pressed his back to the wall, sliding clumsily to the floor. It took him several minutes to feel as if he would not suffocate. Even still, his breath never returned to normal.

The air was motionless. It felt as dead as the bones.

After a blur of time, Zaria emerged from the doorway. She handed him his pack, which was now heavy and bulging. Gems poked against the canvas like the ridges of a cactus.

“Too much?” she asked.

He slung it over his shoulder and began to walk toward the necropolis.

“Isaac.”

He kept walking. After a moment, she followed.

He did not look back again.

The final straw was a clod of dirt.

They had been walking for nearly an hour, or long enough for the sunlight to slant further down the rocky ceiling. The ruins of the necropolis were steadily advancing from the horizon. His mind was filled with the dried blood on his limbs, the bulging gems at his back, the sound of his boots scraping over concrete. For a while, he had managed not to think of anything else.

Suddenly, his boot landed on a nub of dirt, one of the many thousands that had been loosed by the rampage of the colossus, and Isaac slipped when he leaned his weight against it. He fell hard, barely able to brace. His elbows scraped the floor. His leg screamed in pain.

And he felt, immediately, that this was it. He had reached his limit. He had suffered many things today, many humiliations and betrayals and pain, and this was surely the last. He was going to die on this barren stretch of concrete. A single fall had killed him as surely as someone slitting his throat.

Zaria paused, giving him time to stand. When he remained unmoving, nearly facedown on the floor, she spoke in a soft, weary voice.

“Come on, love. Get up.”

He rested his cheek on the cement. His breath blew through sand.

“Get up,” she said. “We’re camping by the wreckage. Still a ways to go.”

“I’m done.”

“Come again?”

He did not answer.

“Isaac.” Her feet crunched the sand as she stood over him. “Get up.”

“No. I’m done.” With great effort, he flipped himself onto his back. Far above his head, the cavern ceiling was tinged with the deep magenta of a coming dusk. “That’s it. I’m done. I’m just. . . .” He swallowed into a dry throat. “I’m done.”

“No, you’re not,” Zaria said. “Get up.”

He didn’t move. Not even the worst of his training sessions had left him this tired. He barely felt able to breathe.

“Squire, I’ll bloody well carry you if I must.”

He did not answer.

“What’s your plan, exactly?” She stood above him, tall as a tower. “You gonna leave yourself here, to die of thirst and sun? Gonna let the jackals gnaw you apart? That ain’t a good way to die.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what?”

He did not answer.

“Isaac, come on. It’s only a little further. It ain’t a big task.”

He gazed up at the remnants of the rocky ceiling. The sun was waning, and the air was growing cold.

“Fine,” she said, slinging off her pack. “We’ll camp here, then.”

“Z. Please. Just go.”

She began digging through her pack, unfurling her bedroll in a few waving shakes.

“Just leave me here,” Isaac said. “You know how to survive. You know the dunes. You can still—”

“Shut up. I’ll allow—”

“I’ll just slow you—”

“I’ll allow,” she said, “that you’re beaten to shite. I am too, as it happens. We’ll camp here, exposure notwithstanding, and you’ll get up come the dawn, and I’ll forgive you for speaking such nonsense.”

He looked at her. She did not look back.

Zaria went through the motions of setting up camp. Time passed. Isaac laid on the concrete, covered in sand and filthy clothes. As he listened to the sound of Zaria’s labor, he felt as if there was a hole in his chest, and the emptiness was gnawing through him, and whatever life he had left was draining away, like blood from an open wound.

“Isaac. Can I show you something?”

He didn’t answer. When she nudged his shoulder, she was sitting beneath a tent, preparing another broth in the bowl of his stone mortar. In addition to the water and salted meat, she was breaking off clods of hardtack with a few strikes of her fist, stirring them into the improvised mixture.

“Have to apologize,” Zaria said. “This whole journey of ours, I’ve been watching you go at the hardtack like a rat chewing through brick. A flat tooth like you would crack his pearls that way.” She kept stirring the soup with a finger. “You gotta let it soak a while. Gets it soggy. Not good, mind, but better than rock.”

Isaac watched the meat and hardtack float in the bowl, like it was something far away and of no concern to him.

“Now, look. It’s already a bit better, isn’t it?”

Pieces of the hardtack were beginning to turn soggy, creating a dull listless texture.

Zaria scooted a little closer. “Ponder that, a moment. You take this nasty stuff—something hard and tough—and you do a little work, make a few changes, and, suddenly, it’s not so bad. Almost good, even.” When he didn’t respond, she added: “It’s like one of them metal forks.”

He blinked. “A what?”

“Metal forks. Like, say, in a book. I know you’re good with those.”

“I’m still not following.”

“A metal fork! You know, like, one of them children’s tales about a dragon eating children and such, when it’s really about the greed of a lord. It says one thing, but means another.”

“Oh,” Isaac said. “Yes. You mean a metaphor.”

“Right. That’s what I said.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is.”

“That is not at all what you said.”

“I’m not seeing the difference.”

“Oh, yes,” Isaac said, rising to an elbow, “what is the difference between a figure of speech and a dining instrument? Surely, it’s a riddle of the ages.”

“Perhaps you’d explain, then.”

“Explain the—gods above, have you even seen a metal fork?”

“Oh, look at the lord,” Zaria drawled. “All fancy silver at the table. I expect you beat your cock to ink and circles, as well.”

“Well,” Isaac replied, sitting up, “maybe you should try beating yourself with a couple tomes, just so the knowledge might get absorbed by sheer osmosis.”

“Now you’re just making up words.”

“Osmosis is the spontaneous diffusion of water. It is exactly why that bread gets soggy, you utterly simple—”

He paused, halfway to his feet. She was failing to hide her grin.

“Oh,” he said.

“Had you going there.”

“Maybe.”

“Quite well, I’d say.”

He sat down, crossing his legs. “You’ll excuse me if your illiteracy sometimes leaves me appalled.”

“You get my meaning, though?” She stirred the broth, bouncing the meat and bread. “Making the best of bad situations?”

“Oh, yes. Your metaphor was quite profound.”

“Glad to hear. A smith of words, I am.”

She handed him the bowl. He stared down at the thin offerings. There was a ravenous hunger inside him, but, at the same time, the feeling was distant and dull, and the thought of eating any more of their dry, flavorless rations made him feel sick.

He missed the meals he would have after the training sessions. There would always be bread, sometimes hot from the oven, and stews made with barley and onion and pork, entire plates full of olives and peas, mashed potatoes thick with butter.

“Isaac.”

He took his gaze off the stew.

“We got some hard climbing ahead,” Zaria said. “Gonna take us a day or two to get out this pit. You’ll need to stuff your gullet.”

The bowl was cold. He knew the meat would be leathery. The bread would still be hard in the center.

He was close to sobbing again.

“Hey.” She leaned in. “Please.”

He looked at her, looked down at the bowl, and slowly began to drink.

Soon, the sun was gone, and they could glimpse the stars through the cracks in the rocky ceiling. At night, the ships inside the ossein canopy took on a sinister appearance, like wild beasts lurking through the gloom of a forest. The air grew rapidly cool. Isaac knew from experience how chilly the desert could be, and he could guess that the depths of the cavern would provide a basin for the falling air, which would only worsen the drop in temperature.

“Best we double up,” Zaria said, beckoning from her tent.

Isaac hadn’t bothered setting his own tent. He hadn’t even cleaned the blood from his hands. He was too weak, and there was no point. Instead, he continued to lie on the concrete, feeling the chill creep in through his tattered robes.

He wished she had left him behind.

“I’m not lettin’ you alone, love. Get over here.”

With a sigh, he shrugged off his pack and crawled into her tent. Her bedroll was only designed for one person, and, though it was designed for zoanthropes specifically, she was more than adequately filling the space, which left him awkwardly contorting his limbs as he attempted to slither into the gap.

“No,” she said, jostling him around. “Like this. Tiniest in front.”

He ended up on his side, facing away from her. His head rested on her bicep, her breasts spilled along his back, her legs weaved between his own, and she rested her snout on the top of his head, letting the fur on her neck and chest cover him like a blanket. There was a clattering of gems as she fluffed her pack like a pillow.

“Good?” she asked, shifting. “Any complaints?”

“You smell like a jockstrap bathed in entrails.”

“What, and you’re all flowers? Some cherub dipped in lavender?” She sniffed the air. “We’re both suffering, believe me.”

As he rested his cheek on her arm, he realized that, despite his constant remarks, he didn’t actually mind her scent any longer. Nothing about it had changed. Despite her previous bath, it was already returning to the same heady musk he had been subjected to before, when he had mostly despised her presence. Now, instead, the smell of her unwashed body made him think of the night they’d shared in the bathhouse. It made him think of her.

He shouldn’t have crawled into her tent. He didn’t know why he was doing this.

“Z. I’m not going.”

He felt her stiffen around him.

“Just leave me here,” Isaac said. “I’m done. You should—” He swallowed a knot in his throat. “You should go. Without me.”

“Shut up. Catch your sleep.”

“You need to go. Our deal is finished.”

She snorted. “Oh, this again? That deal? The one I made with a dagger at your neck?”

“Yes,” Isaac said. “You’ve got your treasure. Isn’t that enough?”

“Fuck yourself, squire. I’ll not take that slight from you.”

“Zaria—”

“Like I’m still some cutpurse sniffin’ for coin. Like I haven’t risked life and limb—” Her breath came as a growl. “Is that still how you see me?”

“No. I mean, no, I just—you have the chance to—”

“Isaac,” she said. “If you’re not going, then I’m not either.”

This hurt him more than he expected. “No, no, please, I’m just. . . .” He struggled to speak. “I’m trying to save you.”

“Save me? How’s that, exactly? Leavin’ me alone, ashamed I left you to die?”

“I—”

“I still need your magic, ya stupid cunt. If I don’t got it, I’ll have my innards pulled for show. That were the entire reason I came down here, if you care to remember.” She huffed, blowing through his hair. “So, if you’re staying, I am as well. We’ll turn dry here together.”

The knot in his throat grew sharper. “Please. I’ve lost too much blood. I can’t make the climb. I’m only going to slow you down.”

“We got plenty of rope. I’ll help, and you’ll manage. By the time we’re clear, you’ll be sneezing fire again, same as always.”

“That is recklessly optimistic.”

“Don’t use them big words on me.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “It’s more than the desert. I don’t know how to live. I couldn’t sell these gems if my life depended on it. I’ve never been to a city, never lived off the land. I’m as helpless as a child.” He looked at the brown spots running along her arm. “I still feel like a child.”

“You’ll figure it out, Isaac. Everyone has to.”

He did not answer.

“Good thing you got me, then,” Zaria added, raising his head with a flex of her bicep. “I’ll keep your head out your arse. Honestly, you’ll like being an outlaw. You’ll get so much adventure you’ll be pickin’ it out your teeth.”

“I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but I can’t. I’m. . . .” He rubbed his cheek against her fur. “I’m scared.”

Her snout shifted through his hair.

“I’m scared. I’ve never known anything but this. It’s all I’ve done. All I was meant for. I—”

“Isaac.”

“I’m really scared.”

“No, I know that, love, but—”

“I can’t,” he said, feeling the blunted pain inside himself suddenly turn to a spike. “I’m stunted. I’m defective. I’m just a burden. I’ve always been a burden. I’ve been trying to be brave this entire journey, because I had to, and there was a purpose, and now I’m . . . just tired of being brave, tired of bringing cost and ruin to others, of pretending my entire life has not been useless.” His voice nearly cracked. “It’d be better if I was dead.”

There was a silence, broken only by a dry breeze of sand.

“Wouldn’t be better for me,” Zaria said, softly.

He looked away.

“You don’t mean that, love. That’s your uncle’s talk, not yours.”

He did not answer.

Slowly, she shifted against the roll, lifted her other arm from behind his back, wrapped it around his side, and tucked him against her chest.

“I was scared, too,” she said. “I was dashing off toward a tomb that I’d always been told was full of blackness and evil, and there were bone monsters, my old crew, an army of magic, a fucking titan rising out the ground, and you know what else? Whole time, the only thing I had by my side was this young stuffy noble, who had all the means and motive to want me dead.”

She trailed a finger down his chest.

“And you had every chance in the world to leave me behind or kill me off or just do anythin’ sensible about the matter, but you never did.” She poked him with a claw. “Except for that one time, but we won’t mention that.”

He stared at the wall of her tent, watching the fabric breathe with the wind.

“Point being,” Zaria said, “I was feeling lost in a place I could never hope to understand, and the only reason I still got my breath about me is ‘cause you decided to help. And don’t you think I’ll forget that.”

Outside, the air had rapidly cooled. The three moons were gone, and the night was dark.

“That favor’ll be returned. One debt to another. And if one good thing’s gonna happen out of all this mess, it’s that you are gonna live a long life, far away from this place.”

Her snout pressed against his ear.

“I’m not letting this tomb be the end of you. Count on that.”

He blinked through the tears. Slowly, taking care not to rip any wounds, he grabbed the hand she had pressed to his chest, giving a firm squeeze. She squeezed back.

“So you’re comin’, then? You’ll head out the pit?”

“Yes,” he said, thickly.

“Alright.” She squeezed his hand again, returning her muzzle to the bush of his hair. “Alright, love. Just one more thing.”

He tilted his head.

“If you need something, I’m right here. You just gotta ask.”

He nodded.

“Alright?”

“Alright,” he said.

“Good.” Her chin burrowed through his hair. “Night.”

He tried to answer, but his voice began to break.

He lay there for a time, watching the stars grow bright. Despite his exhaustion, he found himself unable to sleep, replaying the events of the day over and over in his mind, reliving the voices, the shouting, the pain. Each moment seemed to cut worse than the knives in his flesh.

His thoughts were interrupted when Zaria began to snore, which sounded like a saw chewing through wood. He listened to the echoes it made, feeling her breath as it rose and fell at his back. Every night since their meeting, he had fallen asleep to the sound of her snores. The first night, it had made him angry. The second, he had hardly noticed. In the comfort of the bathhouse, he had managed to find it relaxing.

Now, as the air grew cold, and the ossein canopy glimmered a pale white beneath the stars, he found it comforting, the same way one might find comfort in the crackle of a torch, holding it aloft as it burned through the dark.

He fell into a dreamless sleep, still holding to her hand.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Knights & Squires

“It won’t work,” he said.

“It’s gonna.”

“It hasn’t the last dozen times.”

“Oh, you wanna bet?”

Isaac gazed up at the shattered skull. A day ago, it had been a house. Now, it was a few fragments of stone jutting out from beneath a boulder, close to sixty feet above their heads. One of the white stone slivers was sticking from the edge.

“Come on,” Zaria said, swinging the rope like a lasso. “What’s your wager?”

Isaac rolled his eyes. “Five sapphires.”

“Five? Goin’ cheap on me?”

“I’m helping you be graceful in defeat.”

She swung the lasso high into the air. The loop missed the jutting bone by a couple of feet, landing instead on a loose collection of scree. A shower of rock followed the rope as Zaria tugged it back. She growled, swiped some pebbles from her fur, and began to swing the knot again, glaring at the stone that used to be a house.

They had been climbing for hours, making their way through the jagged, open valley where the colossus had once rested, where a city of necromancers had once conducted the foundation of empire. Isaac judged, as best he could, that they were halfway up the hollowed escarpment. A few waterfalls poured from the rocky cliffs. Beneath the rubble and drifts of wind-blown sand, there were still visible reminders of the unnamed city—shards of furniture, broken walls, signposts and window frames, an entire street’s worth of fingers scattered like gravel. Stone dust was thick in the air, constantly belching from the cracks and gaps as the wreckage continued to settle.

So far, the majority of the climb had required them to scramble over the faces of boulders, leap across slotted canyons, and crawl beneath the gaps of rocks in the places they could not ascend. More than once, they had nearly been swept away by a river of spilling debris. Now, they were faced with a large stack of boulders crushing a residential neighborhood of skulls. There was no other path worth considering.

They had to climb.

“I’m raising the wager,” Zaria said, tightening the bowline knot. “Seven opals, four onyx.”

“This is a pointless game.”

“Play along, squire.”

Isaac sighed. “I’ll raise five citrine.”

“Oh, what? The piss-yellow?”

“The piss yellow, yes.”

She blew a raspberry. “Worthless. I’d rather you piss yourself.”

“I will, if you take any longer.”

She swung the rope again. This time, the loop hit the underside of the slivered bone. It bounced away, spilling flaccidly to the floor. Zaria quickly bundled the rope.

“It’s not going to work,” Isaac said.

She swung once more. Instead of hitting the thin sliver of their target, the rope managed to rest on the jagged suture of a nearby parietal plate, which stuck from the rim of a shattered cranium. When Zaria tugged, the stone came loose, and a massive bony slab came spilling from the rock, spraying sand and rock. The hyena had to throw herself away. When both of them had finished coughing from the dust, Zaria clambered back over to her original position, swinging the lasso in rhythm with her tail.

“It’s not going to work,” Isaac said, sweeping the area with his slinged arm. “We should go back. There was a hillside—”

“That’s all scree, over yonder. It’s too loose.”

She threw the rope, missing again.

Isaac pointed to their left. “We could try to climb along the columns—”

“Ain’t sturdy.”

He pointed to the right. “That boulder—”

“Needs two hands, which neither of us got.” She swung, missed, and growled. “Why am I slingin’ the knot? You’re the one that’s got two bloody eyes.”

“Oh, but my knight is strong and gallant. Surely, she desires the lead.”

She levelled a glare.

“Can I shine your leather?” Isaac offered.

Zaria flashed her teeth, twirling the rope until it blurred. With a great bodily heave, she hurled the loop towards the promontory. It missed. The ruins of the necropolis echoed with a loud “fuck!”

“It’s not going to work,” Isaac said.

She growled as she retied the rope. She flung it hastily. It sailed far off-target.

“Can we take a rest now?”

She whirled around. “Cork it, squire! I’m sick of hearin’ you! Xotra’s cunt, you’re bleating like a babe without a teat!”

Isaac adjusted his seat on the broken house. “Is there any way I can help?”

She looked at him with a curling muzzle. After a moment, she straightened herself, sported an obviously fake grin, and sauntered over, her digitigrade feet nimble on the jagged ground. “Aye. There’s something.”

Isaac scooted back, suddenly nervous.

Zaria stood over him, fondling one of her breasts through the cloth. Her tattered clothing kept her bosom concealed, but only just. “Give us a kiss. For luck, we’ll say.”

“Pardon?”

“You heard me. If you’ll whine like a babe, I’ll treat you as such.” She cupped the breast, pulling it from her chest. “Kiss my tit.”

“I’m not—”

He blinked. He could see her nipple rising beneath the fabric.

“Hm?” Zaria asked, amused.

“I’m not doing that.”

“You seemed rather happy to, when we were ruttin’ at the bath. Sucked my salami like a lid off a pot.”

“Don’t ever call your nipples ‘salami’. Ivtarr preserve.”

“What’s the answer, love?”

It took Isaac a significant effort to meet her eye. “Don’t people kiss on the mouth, usually?”

“Well,” Zaria replied, “my face ain’t flat like yours. Thing is, I do got another set of lips.” She dipped her outstretched breast, pointing toward her legs. “If you’d rather kiss them instead—”

“I’m not kissing you at all!”

She leaned over him, cupping her breast towards his face.

“Zaria!”

“Kiss ‘em, squire. I need some luck.”

“The rope!”

“Hm?”

“The rope! Throw the rope!”

“Oh? That rope there?”

“Yes!”

“You want me to throw that rope?”

“Yes!”

“Want me to toss that rope up to that bony bit, there?”

“Yes! Yes! Please, just—”

He stopped. She leaned back and laughed. His blush warmed the sunburn on his cheek.

“Too easy,” Zaria said, walking away.

“That won’t work forever!”

She picked up the rope, looked back at him, managed to wink with only one eye, and threw it into the air. The loop caught on the broken bone. She tugged the length a few times, testing the strength. Nothing came loose, and the rope held secure.

“Shoulda learned not to doubt me.” She shrugged off her pack, tossing it heavily to his side. “I’ll be taking them gems now.”

Reluctantly, Isaac dug through his own pack, burying a hand through the rainbow of precious stones. Zaria dragged the hanging rope line over to the face of a boulder. With one hand, she placed a foot against the craggy face, lifting herself from the ground. Since one of her hands was nearly split in half, she had improvised a system of climbing one-armed, which mostly involved using her teeth as an improvised clamp. Isaac was sure that, if she didn’t have one of the strongest jaws of all zoanthrope species, it would not work at all.

Even still, it pained him to watch.

“Right,” she said. “Feels sturdy enough. I’ll scamper up and make a winch for you, same as usual.”

“Hey.”

She looked his way.

Isaac was already moving towards her. Before he could lose his nerve, he cupped her breast, found the nipple beneath the fabric, and gave it a gentle kiss. The look of surprise on her face made his blush burn all the hotter.

“I was just pullin’ your tail, love.”

“Please be careful.”

She sported a grin, which was now real. “Nothin’ to it. Count my gems nice and proper, would you?”

Isaac nodded stiffly. She began to climb.

He watched her ascend towards the broken house, using the loose stack of boulders as improvised holds. All her muscles were clearly outlined through the fur, and, though the climb was awkward and perilous, she made rapid progress toward the summit. So far today, her strength had never ceased to impress him.

Isaac looked back at the cavern. Down past the sloping wreckage, the ossein canopy stretched out over a blanket of concrete, studded with boulders, dug through with the furrows of massive reptilian feet. Colossal bones littered the floor like rifts of snow across a mountainside. He could see the pyramid in the center of the destruction. He couldn’t see what remained on top of it, but his mind was filling the gaps.

Rotting.

Baking in the sun.

Loose robes and blood.

He could hear Berith’s voice again. The look in his eyes, when the blade—

“Isaac.”

He tore his gaze away. Zaria was resting her feet on the protruding face of a boulder, leaning her body out over a forty-foot drop. “Keep counting the gems.”

He opened his palm, which was full of citrine, opals, and onyx. “They’re right here.” He let them fall into the open mouth of her pack. “Done.”

“Great. Keep an eye above, then. Let me know if there’s an avalanche again.”

“I can’t exactly catch you if there is.”

“Just give me a warning, would you?”

“I don’t see how—”

“Isaac,” Zaria said, firmly. “Eyes up here. Not down there.”

He blinked several times. “Right. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just do it. Alright?”

He nodded. She resumed the climb.

He kept his gaze focused.

He dangled his feet off the edge, watching the pebbles fall.

The sun was creeping toward the horizon. All day, it had been a constant foe, burning his skin, drying his throat, aching his eyes to the root. There had been little shade to offer, and his robes, already stiff with blood, were growing lines of salt where the sweat had soaked. He was not sorry to see the day end.

Still, the sunset was beautiful. There was a distant storm off to the west, the belly of the clouds shining a wine-dark red, a rainbow stretching between the curtains of rain. By now, they had climbed so far out of the cavern that he was beginning to see the tops of the dunes, which ringed the distant cliffs like the curving crenellations of a castle. From where he was sitting, the distances seemed so vast they inspired a sense of awe. He had never appreciated how large the world truly was.

All the same, he had to keep returning his gaze to the pebbles at his feet, because, if he stilled himself to watch the sunset, he would find himself thinking of all the ones he had seen from his bedroom window, and, like an anchor dragging at his thoughts, his mind would quickly spiral into shouts and pain, the color of blood on a sword.

He kept kicking the pebbles. Like them, his mood felt ready to fall at the slightest push.

After a time, Zaria joined him at the rocky perch. The pads of her uninjured hand were seared with burns, and she had been so sore from the day’s efforts that she had struggled to build the lean-to where they would shelter for the night. Isaac had used the last of his alchemical supplies to craft a liniment for her aching muscles, and, once she sat beside him, he spent a few minutes rubbing the herbal remedies into the skin beneath her fur. From the sounds of her grunts, she was dissatisfied with their healing.

“Runnin’ low on rations,” she said, gnawing on a cut of salt meat. “Gonna be out long before we hit a proper town. We’ll make it, but it’s gonna get lean. Very lean.”

Isaac didn’t answer. He kicked his feet against the pebbles.

“How’s the arm?”

“Fine.”

“Workin’?”

He shrugged. The sling dug into his shoulder.

“Don’t mean to put you out,” she said, “but we’ll need them spells soon enough.”

His wounds were healing at a rapid pace. The application of Soldier’s Rest had already turned the deep punctures into a meager, shallow trench, and the burn on his leg remained a concern only for the possibility of infection. The thing that bothered him most was not the wounds themselves, but the idea that she had shouldered most of the day’s labor in order to quicken his recovery. He would feel guilty if he could not perform.

“I’ll do my best,” he said.

“Good. Good.”

The sun continued to fall. Around them, the shadows stretched like knives.

“How’re you feeling?” Zaria asked.

He tore his gaze off the city wreckage. She was watching him with no particular expression, save for the gentle twitch of an ear.

“It’s hard to describe.”

“Try it.”

He looked out over the tomb. The words had to be extracted.

“I’ve thought of killing my uncle before,” he said. “Many times. It wasn’t always . . . an idle fantasy. I would be lying in bed, nursing the wounds, and I would think of plans, imagine scenarios, try to guess how far I could make it before the Diet or some local soldiers hunted me down.”

He swallowed. She offered a waterskin, which was one of their last. He felt guilty as he took a swig.

“At the same time,” Isaac continued, “I would start thinking about my father, and I’d hate him just as much as my uncle. I would wish he was dead, solely to free myself. In my worst moments, I meant it with all my heart.”

He watched the sun crest through the dunes, bathing the sand a deep magenta.

“I wanted to go back there. To the tower. After the chapel. . . .” He blinked. “After I met you, I thought I’d finally worked up the courage to confront my uncle. I was going to bring my father back to my home, and I would tell Berith that I was leaving for good, and the phrase I had decided to say was that I hoped he would be happy with his brother, because he had certainly never been happy with me.”

He rubbed the sutures on his arm.

“That was before I saw him here. And when I did, it just . . . it happened so fast. There wasn’t time to think, I made a decision, and—” He kicked the pebbles, erupting a shower of scree. “And now that he’s dead, I can’t stop thinking about the things I could’ve said. If I had spoken in a different manner, if I had been a little more grateful, if I—”

“Isaac,” Zaria said. “Stop. You were a child.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t have to do a damn thing. It’s all on him. He’s the one who did this to you, and it ain’t your fault that brought it about.” She squeezed her fist, wincing at the burns. “It was abuse. It was wrong.”

“I know,” Isaac replied, looking at his lap. “I’ve always known. It’s just. . . .”

A silence fell between them.

“Let me ask,” Zaria said. “If you could go back, right now, go back to your home with everything you’ve learned about him, and he was there again, same as always, would you still have a go at his expense?”

The answer came immediately. “Yes. I would.”

“You’d still tell him to eat clay and fuck off?”

His answer was a kick of the pebbles.

“There’s hope in abuse,” Zaria said. “Hope that you’ll see that good part of them again. Hope that you can make it stop if you just act a little better. With people like your uncle, hope gets you nothing but pain. It’s nothing but sand, sinking you down at every step.”

For a moment, thunder peeled from the distance, rolling across the wreckage like a distant, rumbling beast.

“When I lost my father,” she said, “I was a crying mess. Spent days in the crate, all dark and cramped. When I got taken out—well, I’m sure you’ll imagine how a bunch of pirates treated some little girl crying about her da. I got beaten and cut until I learned to shut my mouth. Only cried at night, when the decks were dark, and no one could see.”

“Sounds familiar,” Isaac said.

Zaria leaned back on her hands, tilting her head to spy the moons above. Solnova, the shining patriarch, was a bright yellow sphere. Reinga, the fiery daughter, was directly in front of the larger moon, and her shadow made a dark pupil along the face of her father. For a moment, the two moons seemed to form an eye, watching from above.

Ulderon, the dark son, was lost in the shadow of his father.

A breeze rustled the bandage on Zaria’s eye.

“Only thing that saved me was the work,” she said. “Sailing’s a hard trade. You’re slinging rope, swabbing grit, shoring ballast. Top that with raids, boarding action, just being hungry and scared of your fellows, and I had no time to stand idle and be sad about things. Always busy. Always back to the struggle.”

Her face was outlined in the light of the moons.

“One day,” she said, “I woke up, got to scrubbing all the piss and pus from the sick bay, and, a few hours in, I realized I hadn’t been thinking of my father at all. Not a single thought, all that morning. Longest I’d gone since it happened.” She flicked an ear. “Soon after, I was going whole days. Then it was weeks, sometimes months, and now I just kinda do it here and there, whenever something reminds me.”

In the distance, lightning pierced the rainbow beneath the storm. The clouds were black with rain.

“That’s how it works, I think.” She tilted her head, giving Isaac a sideways glance. “There’s nothing sudden. Nothing that makes the world all farts and laughter again. You just . . . get used to them not being there. You sleep, you rise, you keep living. The faces you think you’ll never forget—well, you do. Time scabs them over. You move on.”

Isaac watched the shadows grow along the shattered buildings, thinking of all the people who used to live between their walls.

“Course,” Zaria said, “it takes a while to get there. Sometimes, you’ll be strong. Other times, it takes all your strength just to flop out your bunk. You’ll be going about your business, and you’ll catch a word or smell that reminds you of home, and it’ll cut right through your armor, and you’ll realize you’re still as raw as the day it happened.”

She rubbed the scar on her muzzle, tracing the line from chin to nose.

“It’s like a tree, right? You swing an axe, just enough to leave a gash. It’ll bleed some sap, its leaves might wither a season, but it’ll survive, and when you come back again, it’ll still have that wound in its side, and now it’s sealed over, and the thing’s still sucking earth and water, and, without looking too hard, it won’t seem no different than the rest of the forest. It’s healthy again, even with the gash. But that wound will never fade. The tree will never forget the axe.”

The sun had drifted below the storm, gleaming red and pale.

“You’ll get through this,” Zaria said. “You’ll move on. You’ll keep living.”

His voice nearly cracked. “It doesn’t feel that way.”

“It never will, love. Not for a long time.”

He looked down, trying to breathe.

She shifted next to him. There was an intake of breath. After a moment, the words became a sigh, and she began to stand. “Sorry. I’ll leave you be.”

“No, please,” he said. “Can you. . . .”

She blinked at him, her face covered in dirt and dust.

“Can you just stay here?” Isaac said. “Like this?”

There was a moment where her face fell, and she looked pained and tired, and Isaac realized that she had likely been eager to rest in their shelter. His improvised liniment had not been enough to soothe her aches. His heart wrenched at the thought that he was bothering her.

“If you’re tired. . . .”

“No,” she said, sitting back at his side. “Sure. I’ll stay.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Already here.”

He hesitated.

“What did I say,” Zaria said, “about thinking too much?”

“Sorry.”

“I’m right here. I mean that.”

“. . . I know.”

They watched the sunset. A deep red crawled through the dunes. Lightning flashed along the distant storm. The cavern below, with all its bone and concrete and rock, had long since fallen to shadow.

The air was growing cold again.

Isaac remembered the day he had left his home. He had walked across Khador’s length, thinking the buildings seemed so much different from the mud of the street itself, rather than the perch of his window. When he had reached the edge of the village, he had looked back, and he had seen Berith’s tower the same way a common man would always see it—a spire of stone and brick, perched over the bank of a river, seeming to impale the foothills beyond. It was large and imposing, like the man himself.

Isaac had turned, and he had gazed along the road, and he had been amazed at the size of the world, amazed at the knowledge that his journey would take him far beyond the horizon. All his life, he had imagined that, when he finally stood at the crossroads, he would gaze long at the tower, wistful and conflicted. He would leave it only with a heavy heart.

Instead, when the moment came, he found himself barely sparing a glance. He had taken eagerly to the road.

Had it been relief in his heart, in that moment?

Had it been spite?

After meeting Zaria, he had imagined that he would return. He imagined that he would throw open the heavy oak of the door, he would greet his former servants, he would run his fingers along the fence of the yard, he would smell the musty parchment of the library, he would go to his bedroom and hear the creak of the rafters, and, in the end, when he had drunk his fill, he would speak his mind to his uncle, he would look him in the eye, and, when he left for the final time, all the memories would be closed in his heart.

He would never come home again.

He cried in her arms until the moons were bright.

The top of the wreckage came faster than expected.

Zaria was scrambling up the sloping face of a boulder, managing to crawl more often than climb. She reached the top, wincing at the rope burn in her palm, and Isaac could suddenly see the morning sunlight on her fur. It startled them both. She turned to look, and her ears rose sharply along her head.

“Xotra’s cunt!”

Isaac wiped sweat from his face. “Already?”

Her cackling laughter was the only response.

She threw the rope down for him. He barely had time to find his footholds while she yanked him up the slope. When he reached her position, the cool shadow of the morning fell away, and the sunlight seared into his pinkened skin. He squinted, looking through the glare.

A few boulders remained in front of them, but all the slabs were nestled so neatly together they could simply be walked and leaped across. Ahead, there was a lip of sand rising from the edge of the cavern wall, leading out into the long, smooth blankets that characterized the dunes of the Charnel Waste. The sand curved like velvet, rising into slopes and hills. It stretched as far as he could see, and the morning sun was already climbing above it all, bathing the sand to a searing heat. The air swirled and danced.

Zaria clapped him on the back. “What’d I tell you?”

“Alright, fine.”

“What’d I fuckin’ tell you?”

She ran and leaped across the boulders. Isaac picked his way carefully. When he reached her, she was kicking up showers of sand, dancing in the pale orange light. Her cheers echoed loudly through the dunes. Despite himself, the corners of his mouth began to twitch into a smile.

All at once, Zaria began to sing.

“O, the winds had died,

the bilge ran low,

and we had naught but sand in tow.

We’d lost our teeth,

we’d burned our eyes,

and we’d seen naught but sand and skies

The hands made cry,

‘the hull is lost!’

And the capt would shout, ‘fuck the cost!’”

Her voice echoed over sand, carried high by the ubiquitous breeze of the desert. In the moment, her pirate shanty seemed to travel across the entire length of the tomb.

“He said, ‘douse the mains,

tilt the prow!

We’ll cut her through like a bleedin’ sow!

The ropes ain’t cut,

the sails ain’t gone

And we need naught but steel and brawn!

And the crew replied,

‘fuck the moors,

and fuck the land!

And fuck them all by the blasted sand!

We need no prize,

we need no shore

And we damn sure got no want for more!’”

Zaria cupped her hands around her muzzle, sharpening the song, skipping over to the edge of the jagged crater. She sang so loudly her voice frayed at the edge.

“Hey, hey! Away!

We beat the sand,

we beat the squall!

And the captain says we’re standing tall!

Hey, hey! Away!”

Isaac cleared his throat.

Zaria remained at the edge of the cavern, watching her words echo down through its length. After a moment, she turned back, wiping sand from her leather plackart. “Sorry. Seemed a decent time.”

“There’s no need to desecrate a grave with your singing.”

She trudged passed him, cupping her eye against the glare of the sun. “So, seems to me there’s no skimmers holdin’ ballast ‘round these parts.”

Isaac remembered the fleet he had glimpsed when the cavern was first exposed. “I would think they’d all fled.”

“As they should.”

“I expect they’ll tell tales of a giant rising from the sand.”

Zaria snickered, grinning at the empty sand. “Oh, all a Crookspur will be shiverin’ on their moors, I tell ya that. They’ll think twice about headin’ here again.”

“That doesn’t mean they aren’t around, or that they won’t look for you again.”

“No, but they ain’t here, and that’s enough for now.”

He nodded. “It is a victory.”

They spent a moment gazing over the sand. There was not a single landmark to focus the eye. If the sun was not still rising in the east, Isaac would have no idea which direction they should turn.

He still did not, really.

“So,” Zaria said, “here’s my thinkin’. We gotta head out through them dunes, right away. Liable to burn ourselves blind in this heat, but there’s nothing for it. We need the distance. We’ll keep some shade in a dune wall when the sun’s at its worst, and we’ll start traveling by night. Should be doable, if we’re smart with the water.”

Isaac looked out over the canyon behind them. Not too long ago, this area had been nothing but a colossal skull sticking from the sand, the bone so suffused with necromancy it had sucked away the wind. Now, it was a great wound in the earth, something that would soon begin to fester with Diet expeditions. Isaac knew, better than most, how the ruins would swarm with archaeologists, historians, and the soldiers of lords. He could only imagine the arbitrations necessary to divide the treasure beneath the sorceress’s abode.

“Let me see your map,” Zaria said.

She took it from his pack without waiting for a response. Isaac continued to watch the empty hole that was now the necromancer tomb.

“Look,” Zaria said, shoving the map into his gaze. “See this here?” She traced a black claw north. “That’s our route, for the time bein’. I know some old contacts up that way. Some of them I didn’t leave on the best of terms, but I got my natural charm, and a fountain of gems besides, so we’ll manage.”

Isaac scratched his unshaven beard, digging out the dirt and sand.

“Come on, then,” the hyena said, rolling up the parchment. “I ain’t takin’ a second look at this place, and you shouldn’t neither.”

“Z,” Isaac said. “What do you think our odds are?”

“Of what? Not dyin’ of thirst?”

He shook his head. “Once we leave the Charnel, once we’re free of the Nine, or, gods forbid, once we leave the continent entirely—what will be our plan?”

“Oh, attached to the hip, are we? Sounds like you’re askin’ marriage again.”

He gave her a serious look.

“Fuck if I know,” she replied. “We’ll get it figured once the time comes. Best we stay focused on getting there at all.”

Isaac nodded, gazing out over the tomb. After a moment, he turned to face her. “I’m serious. What do you think our odds are?”

“Do you want reassurance or honesty?”

He kept watching her.

“Speaking plain,” Zaria said, “the odds are shite. We got pirates and wizards chasin’ us, we’re short on food, we’re real dry on water, we got a long distance to stumble before I’d even think of feeling safe, and it’s all gonna be unfamiliar territory once we’re clear. If I was betting on it, it’d be an easy choice, which way to toss the coin.” She shrugged. “Then again, I’d have said the same about our odds against everything down in that tomb there. And we made it out, didn’t we?”

“Seems that way.”

“Standing pretty tall now, huh?”

“I suppose so.”

“You got any reason to stick around?”

“Not at all.”

“Always wanted to travel the world, haven’t you?”

He nodded, looking into her eye.

“Then what’re we waitin’ for?” Zaria asked. “It’s worth a shot, far as I can tell.”

“It’s worth a shot? Is that it?”

“That’s all we’re getting, love. The outlaw life is not one of safety. Best you get used to it.”

Isaac gazed over the endless waves of sand. He took a breath, feeling the heat already stirring before the day. He realized he had made a decision.

“Alright,” he said.

“Great. Onwards.” She began to turn. “Gotta say, first thing I’m grabbin’ at town is a fat, juicy steak.” She made a low, weary whoop. “Oh, gods, get it made right, with all the trimming—”

He hugged her. He did it so suddenly, so lurchingly hard, that it almost made the zoanthrope stumble. Yesterday, her vest had torn open at the collar, owing to a particularly stubborn summit of rock, and Isaac buried his face directly into the gap of her clothing, feeling soft fur on his cheek, the top of her breast on his chin. Underneath it all, he felt a solid core of muscle.

Zaria gave a soft snort of surprise as she recaught her balance. Her hand hovered awkwardly at his back. “Well, don’t celebrate yet.”

Isaac tightened the hug. He pressed his cheek against her chest, burrowing through the hairs, smelling the animal-like musk he had once despised. In a quiet, whispering voice, he said: “Thank you.”

There was a slight hitch of breath. Some words were almost spoken. After a few moments, Zaria returned the hug, squeezing him against her larger frame, holding him just as tightly as he was holding her. Isaac hoped the moment would never end, he hoped he would never have to let her go, and he marveled at the idea that, in this pirate, the same cutthroat that had taken him hostage not five days prior, he had found more warmth and care and understanding than he had ever known before. Right then, he could not hug her as well as his heart demanded.

Around them, there was nothing but sand and sky. The sun was a searing heat on their backs. Their rations were low, their wounds were aching, they were tired and beaten and had miles upon miles to travel before rest could be found, and their coming life would only be fraught with danger.

There would be fleets of pirate ships scouring the dunes. There would be teams of sorcerers whose sole purpose was to hunt down and assassinate rogue mages, lest they threaten the sovereignty of the Diet of Nine. There would be a constabulary at every town, there would be vicious criminals they would have to call friends, and there was no telling what kinds of lands and peoples they would meet out there, in the world at large, if they managed to escape at all.

Their future was far less than certain.

They were lost.

Abandoned.

But, right then, standing above the ruins of an ancient empire, they had each other. And, despite it all, it didn’t feel as if they needed anything else.

Isaac felt a hitching in Zaria’s breath. When he looked up, she was wiping her one remaining eye, wetting the back of her hand with tears.

“Nothin’,” she said, stepping slightly back. “Don’t mind me.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh, it’s nothin’. Just. . . .” She broke out into a toothy grin. “Just got my Lem again. Just got that pride in me, for the first time.” She tousled the mop of hair on his head, and she kept doing so even after he swiped at her hand. She only stopped after pinching his cheek. “I mean, gods, shame on you. Don’t you know not to consort with a pirate?”

She cleared her throat, looking down.

“I’m just a no-good thief. Never had any prospects other than what I could steal. Never done much good for anyone my whole life. Except for Lem. And now you, too.”

Isaac felt that his mouth was aching from smiling.

“Glad I could be here,” Zaria said, wiping another tear from her eye. “Glad I could do something nice for a change. I’d be glad to keep being nice, if you wouldn’t mind.”

He looked out over the tomb. He could hear the voices again.

His uncle, drowning in blood.

You deserved. . . .

His father, drifting into dust.

Live your life. Be happy.

“Isaac?” He felt her step close. “You’re coming with me, right?”

“Yes,” he said. He tore his vision from the tomb, determined to never see it again. “I’d like that. I want to take the shot. I want. . . .” He felt a smile on his face, one of the few of his life that was entirely natural. “I want to try.”

She slapped his shoulder. “Brilliant. Let’s go, then. Need to find shade before the sun gets too high.”

“Hold on. I just have one condition, first.”

“Oh, we’ve got demands, do we?” She put her hands on her armored waist, her grin wide and cocky. “Fine, then. Suppose I’ll allow it.”

“You,” Isaac said, “are going to stop calling me squire.”

“You’re still on this? What’s the problem, exactly?”

“It’s demeaning,” he said. “A squire is just a servant. A young, clueless boy who polishes armor and feeds the horses. I’m more than that. I could kill you, very easily.”

“You wouldn’t dare, though,” Zaria said.

“No,” Isaac said, “but I could.”

“Aye. Sure.”

“Anytime I wanted to, really.”

“Undoubtedly, squire.”

“So,” he said, “why do you insist on calling me that? Is it still just a joke?”

“Oh, it was, at first. Just a little fun at your expense.” She looked him up and down. “Not anymore, I think. It’s taken a better meaning.”

Isaac raised an unamused brow.

“A squire ain’t just a servant,” Zaria said. “Sure, they do all the minor trifles that a proper knight don’t got time for, but think of it this way. They’re the knight’s protection. When the knight’s out travelling, braving the road, fighting the wickedness of the world, her squire’s the only friend she’s got. Her squire keeps the knives from her back. Her squire keeps her healed and gallant. Oftentimes, her squire’s the only source of comfort she’s got at all. I know all them stories just give glory to the one in plate and mail, but trust me on this—a knight would be nothing without her squire.”

Isaac gave her a measured look.

“Besides,” Zaria said, “squires are just knights in training, are they not? No shame in that. Everyone’s gotta learn somewhere. And while the squire’s aiding the knight, the knight is aiding the squire, teaching them lessons, giving them guidance.” She patted his chest with the back of her hand. “Making sure the young boy turns into the same dashing hero that they serve.”

Isaac rolled his eyes.

“One day,” the hyena said, “this tiny little squire will be strong and wise, and he’ll have his knight to thank for it.”

Isaac shook his head, looking away.

She stepped forward, towering over him, a wall of fur and muscle and leather. “You’re my squire.”

He did not answer.

She pressed a finger to his chest. “You’re my squire.”

He still did not answer.

“We’re not leaving till you say so.”

“I suppose,” Isaac said, reluctantly, “that I don’t hate it so much, when you put it that way. Just . . . please, for the grace of gods, don’t call me that in public.”

“Not a chance, squire.”

He sighed.

She gestured toward the desert. “Are we ready, then?”

“After you, madam knight.”

She grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. They began to walk through the sand, shielding their eyes from the morning sun. He could already feel, from the burning light on his skin, that the day would be miserably hot. There would be no shelter waiting for them. They would sleep in the sand, and they would soon exhaust the last of their water.

He remembered, for a moment, how it had felt stumbling through the dunes, growing dizzy from thirst.

He glanced up at Zaria.

The pirates would be out there, skimming across the dunes. They might have fled from the thrashing of the colossus, but they would return, either for vengeance or plunder, and, soon enough, the Diet would follow in their wake, lured by the promise of the colossus itself.

Here, now, the dunes of sand were clear of all life, but that hardly mattered. Life would fill in the cracks, as it always did. The people would come.

They were heading into certain danger.

But Isaac kept walking, his gaze resting far along the horizon. He kept his thoughts beyond the pirates, beyond the mages, beyond the lands and kingdoms that had banded to form the Diet of Nine. He thought of the world. He thought of continents he had never seen, oceans he had never sailed. He thought of foreign cities, he thought of culture, he thought of languages he had only read in books, he thought of roads and fields and forests and mountains and all the sunsets that he would have the fortune to see again.

Somewhere, they would find shelter. Their wounds would heal, they would have soft beds to rest, and they would have all the hot meals their gems could buy. Once they were free, once they had escaped their fates, they would find a world that was vast and old and full of possibility. Somewhere, they would be safe. Out there, somewhere, they would find the things they had both been wanting. Sometime, somewhere, they would find a place better than the ones they had left behind. Somewhere, a whole new life was waiting for them.

Epilogue

Alone, Together

In the distance, through the spray of the ocean, a shape began to appear.

At first, Isaac thought it was a kraken surfacing through the waves. He started to panic. His mind grasped for his charter, all the expedition logs bundled in his surgeon’s office, trying to remember everything he had read about the tentacled dweller of the depths. Their bodies were flaccid, their mouths capped with a beak of exceptional strength. Their ringed suckers were the size of bathtubs. A fusillade of cannon fire would merely bounce off their barnacled armor. And if Isaac could see the kraken now, it had certainly been following his vessel for quite some time.

He adjusted the focus of the spyglass, fighting for balance on the swaying, salty deck. Out in the distance, the shape only grew larger. For the life of him, he could not identify the conical body, the red slitted pupils, or the bristling colony of parasites growing along its mantle. Its profile was too regular in appearance. There were tentacles rising very high in the air, held in taut and rigid lines. . . .

It was not a kraken.

Isaac sighed with relief.

“Captain!” he shouted. “Privateers! Starboard!”

Behind him, the top deck of the Arms of Horn was in full operation. Deckhands flittered along the planks, racing to stations. The first lieutenant, a taciturn horse by the name of Welton, stood on the gunwale, shouting to be heard above the snap of wave and canvas. Isaac could see seamen rushing through the ventilation grills below, lugging cannonballs across the gun deck. Welton led the drill with a fiery passion, as he did every day at an hour before noon. Above, a collection of young leopard boys were climbing through the rigging, trimming the sails and tossing fire onto the great, glowing sigil of wind. The Arms of Horn drank the magical speed like a drunkard to his wine.

Captain Vance made her way down from the helm, weaving a path through the tide of bodies. The otter was as lithe and tall as an afternoon shadow—when Isaac handed her the spyglass, his head barely reached her elbow. The medals on her navy coat glinted as she made to confirm his sighting.

“Aye,” Vance said, after a moment. “That’s so. Not flyin’ the black yet, but that’s expected.” She turned to her first lieutenant. “Welton!”

Despite his shouting, the horse went quiet at once, tottering along the gunwale. “Capt?”

“Stop the drills!” Vance shouted, pointing at the incoming vessel. “Load the starboard cannons!”

Welton squinted towards the ship on the horizon. “What you mean? What the bloody cunt we got a wizard for, then? Have him blast it off!”

“Why the hell you runnin’ drills, if you’ll just sod off about it?”

The horse took a swig of rum, his hooved feet clattering along the rail. “Oh, I just miss the navy, love. Them were proper times. Now it’s all magic this and spell that and, Ivtarr’s cock, them wizards are just stealing all the—”

“Welton!” Vance replied. “Shut your hole! Load them cannons, ya drunken bastard!”

The horse blew a whinny. “Aye, captain!”

“Presly!” Vance shouted, turning. “Ten degrees to port! Bare it slow!”

Slumped over the helm, an elderly coyote raised a hand of acknowledgement, using his other to dig biscuit crumbs from his chops. Presly turned the large, spoked wheel with all the grace of a man walking in his sleep.

Vance returned the spyglass to Isaac. “Just a warnin’ shot, sir mage. They’re privateers. Would not do good to kill Giovanna’s pardoned pirates, despite the want.”

Isaac made a salute.

Vance frowned. “Don’t do that.”

He saluted again. “Aye, capt!”

The otter snorted, fairly amused. She clapped him on the back as she passed towards the stern, expertly ducking beneath the swinging wall of the foresail.

Isaac raised the spyglass again, trying to judge the distance between the ships. It was obvious, even to an untrained eye, that the privateer vessel was on a hard course of pursuit, banking to intercept them between their stern and broadside, where they couldn’t easily return fire. They might not even bother raising the black flag—currently, they had draped the standard of the feline queen across their foresail, depicting the piercing green eye of her royal majesty Giovanna IX, as well as a pedigree of snarling griffins and tridents of arms. It was the same flag that the Arms of Horn had raised herself. An inattentive observer might assume the interloper only wanted to talk.

Isaac knew better by now. He judged the distance between the two vessels, doing some mental trigonometry.

If he could angle the spell—

“Isaac! Assistance!”

He turned to the sound of Zaria’s voice, just in time to see a rainbow of feathers rush towards his face. The tropical bird—a parrot, as he had heard the name—barely avoided slashing him with its talons as it fluttered and squawked back into the open air, quickly flying up to roost in the lookout post above the back mast. Several leopard boys swung through the rigging, attempting to grab the bird, but it repeatedly flew off to a new perch, refusing to be caged. Isaac was horrified. It had taken him six days of hard bushwacking to collect this specimen, the process of which had cost him untold suffering in sweat, rashes, and bug bites, and he would not see the effort go to waste.

“Grab it!” Isaac shouted to the leopards. “Grab the bird!”

Below, the top deck of the Arms of Horn had become a chaos of fleeing animals, their shapes rushing headlong from the depths of the hold. Fire-breathing rats rushed between the legs of the deckhands, singeing the wet planks as they scattered. A pair of chelicerae appeared from the shadow of the hold as a megaspider peered through the doorway, blinking a dozen glittering eyes. At the helm, the elderly coyote—Presly—was trying to pet a young cockatrice while it nibbled on his coat. He seemed to be succeeding.

Isaac saw more movement from the hold. Something large slammed into the megaspider, nearly cracking its thorax. There was a flurry of fur, spikes, and wings.

“Isaac!”

Zaria emerged onto the top deck while riding on the back of a manticore. Neither of them were enjoying the experience. The human face snarled, the lion body twisted, and the scorpion tail was flailing and stabbing in equal measure, trying to wrest her from its spine. The hyena was wrapped around its neck, trying to wrestle it down, but the chimera charged ahead, slamming through a tangle of deckhands, unfurling a canvas of thorny wings. It was trying to take flight, scattering the fiery rats with the wind of its ascent.

“No!” the manticore screamed, in the pitch-perfect tone of a human woman. “No, please, no!”

Isaac blasted the manticore with a gust of wind. He caught the chimera on one of its wings, and the force of the spell sent it corkscrewing through the air, tilted off-balance. Still wrapped tightly around its neck, Zaria twisted, heaved with all her strength, and slammed it down into the deck. The chimera thrashed, its lion body tearing through the planks. Zaria regained her footing and wrenched its head back as far as it could go, trying to reattach the muzzle to its human face. Its tail reared back for a strike.

“Give me some fuckin’ help, Isaac!”

Isaac decided not to care about the specimen. He sharpened light into his palm and swiped it as a lance, slicing off the chimera’s tail. The manticore screamed in a sickening facsimile of a human voice. In one last burst, the chimera attempted to bolt across the top deck, but Zaria yanked it down by the strap of its leather muzzle. She kicked one of its knees, heaved to the side, and flipped the beast onto its back. Half the hands immediately piled atop it.

After a few frantic screams, the manticore lay still on the wet planks of the top deck, its human voice mewling in fear. Zaria locked an arm around its throat, breathing raggedly. Isaac approached with a beam of light still cocked in his hand.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

“Oh,” she said, managing a smile. “Like a cunt in silk, squire. You know that.”

“No,” the manticore whimpered. “No, please, no.”

At Isaac’s side, Captain Vance approached with a pistol, the smooth bore aimed directly at the chimera’s face. “Step aside, boatswain.”

“Wait,” Isaac said, dropping his spell. “Don’t kill the creature. The company charter—”

“It’s a danger,” the otter said, taking careful aim. “My crew comes first.”

The manticore began to sob, trying to twist its head from Zaria’s grip. Half the deckhands were keeping its body pinned to the planks. The others watched, much of them clutching wounds from the slash of its tail and claw.

“Either it’s our supper,” Vance said, “or it’s going to the fish.”

Isaac looked into the human face. It was still whimpering “no” between every gasp for air. He knew it was only mimicry—the local villagers had made it clear that the chimera hunted by ambush, luring travelers off the trail with a voice that begged for help. The words it spoke now were likely the last ones of its previous victim.

He sighed, taking a step back.

Zaria looked to Vance. The otter nodded. In one quick movement, she fell back, and the captain fired. Blood sprayed across the deck. The manticore’s wings fell as flat as an unrigged sail. Vance blew smoke from the barrel of her pistol, sheathed it back against her chest, and shouted: “Fresh meat, lads!”

The crew cheered. Behind them, the cockatrice poked its head through the crowd, curious about the noise. Presly managed to recapture its attention with the promise of a biscuit.

Zaria rose back to her feet, adjusting her thin boatswain jacket. “Fuckin’ thing chewed through its cage in the night. Would’ve got most the others if I hadn’t caught it.”

Vance surveyed the crew. “All those cut or clawed, to the sick bay. Full rations and two days rest.” She looked down at Isaac, her short fur glistening with the spray of the sea. She was nearly a head taller than Zaria herself, and Isaac felt every inch of this height whenever she was displeased. “You’re on surgeon’s duty.”

Isaac cleared his throat. “Sorry, captain. I’ve prepared a number of salves and liniments during our last shore. They’ll heal.”

“They better,” Vance said. “My naturalist best not let his specimens run loose again, or else they’ll be paddin’ our larder.” She turned to the gathered crowd of hands. “Capture the rest and put them back in the cages! Alive, if you can!”

“Aye, capt!” said the crew, and scattered.

Isaac watched the blood leak from the manticore’s head. The skin around the entry wound had burned black, scored from the burst of shot. Taxidermy would not fix such an obvious imperfection. In all likelihood, he would have to settle for the bones and lion’s pelt, once the butchering was done.

Then again, perhaps the man-eating chimera did not need to be studied, after all.

“Isaac,” Vance said, following his gaze. “Let me be clear again. The Royal Claw may be payin’ our wages, and you might be doin’ good for the sciences, but this is my ship, and my crew, and I’ll not see them harmed. We don’t need to test that sentiment, do we?”

“No, captain. Sorry.”

“Giovanna is an ocean away. I’m the only law you need concern yourself with.”

“Of course, captain.”

“From now on,” the otter said, “I’m holding supreme veto on any beast you decide to bring aboard. Anything I don’t like is only gracing my deck as skin and skeleton. Are we clear on this?”

“Yes, captain.”

Vance’s whiskers dripped with sea spray as she looked down at him. After a moment, she adjusted her tricorn hat. “Right. Good. Enough of that. Back to pressing matters.”

“What?”

“Our pursuers, sir mage.”

Isaac looked over the sea again. The privateer vessel had grown from a distant speck on the waves to a leering tangle of rope and wood, the glowing sigils burning like cattle brands across the sails. Even without his spyglass, he could see crews climbing through the rigging, tossing entire bushels of fire onto the canvas, bringing the ship so quickly to acceleration that her prow was impaling the waves.

At the front, the flag of the feline queen had been lowered. In the place of cat’s eyes and griffins, a black flag rose above the foremast, bearing the deathly gaze of an ursine skull.

“Isaac,” Vance said. “Stop us from being robbed and put to sword, and it might be I like you again. Agreed?”

He saluted.

“Don’t fuckin’ do that!”

Isaac approached the starboard edge of the Arms of Horn. As he began the mnemonics, Zaria leaped onto the gunwale, grabbed a section of rigging, and shouted: “Clear the deck! Wizard firin’ off a starboard!”

Through the ventilation grills below, Welton the horse shouted: “Wizard firing!”

“Wizard firing!” shouted the leopards above. “Clear the deck!”

Isaac went through the casting motions carefully, making sure the draw of power was smooth and efficient. A ball of flame appeared in each of his palms. He pressed his hands together, and, when he drew them back, there was one large conflagration, twisting and hissing with the spray of the sea. He put more energy into the cast, and the flames grew larger, growing from the size of a melon to a cannonball, surging past the point of a trebuchet missile. When it was large enough to constitute a boulder, Isaac had to lean over the gunwale, trying to protect the surrounding ropes.

Ahead, the privateer vessel was beginning to turn, its crew rattling sabers in the air. Their hull was worn, rotting, and studded with the holes of cannons. A distant battle cry erupted from the vessel.

“Fire at will,” Vance said.

Isaac loosed the fireball.

It arced across the waves like a second sun blazing through the sky. Isaac wobbled on his feet, nearly collapsing from the transfer of energy, but Zaria was already rushing to his side, catching him as he fell. They watched the fireball complete its downward trajectory. In a great burst of power, it crashed into the sea, quivering the waves, instantly boiling the water, sending a massive plume of steam exploding up through the air. The geyser was so white and strong and lurching that, for a moment, it burped the privateer ship up from the water itself, like the rise of a bucking horse.

The reaction was immediate. Screams carried over the waves. Privateers fell from the rigging and flailed along the deck, their skin cooked and peeling. Instead of a slow turn, the privateers quickly changed course, pulling hard to starboard, almost cracking their hull with the sudden twist. Through a fog of boiled water, Isaac could see the vessel rushing back into the waves, fleeing like a scolded dog.

All together, the crew of the Arms of Horn began to cheer, laughing and taunting the pirates. Zaria kept a firm hold on Isaac, giving him enough support that he could concentrate on breathing.

“Well,” Vance said, deadpan. “I guess wizards are the new standard, for all good navies. Back before, we made do with spit and iron.” She watched the privateers sail away, her whiskers flicking. “I just wish it weren’t a warning. Traitors deserve worse.”

“They’re pirates, capt,” Zaria said. “Only loyalty they’ve got is to coin.”

“Exactly! Feline queen pardoned them. We’re flying her bloody colors. That should’ve earned some pause, at the very least.” The otter removed her hat and slapped it against her thigh, shaking off the water. “Craven bastards are just using the Royal Claw as a means to pillage. The least they could do is declare themselves.”

Zaria cleared her throat. Isaac could hear the hesitation in her voice. Neither of them had explained who they were upon signing the contract—Zaria had claimed to sail cargo for a merchant company on the edge of the Charnel, while Isaac said he had attended university in the outer kingdom of Urshan. They had not been questioned too severely, and they had taken careful measures to keep their identities consistent while underway. In many ways, Vance was a permissive captain, but she was still an old salt, which made her a veteran of the Scorch, as well as the coastal wars of Giovanna’s expansion. It was clear her service had imbued certain opinions. Walton, her lieutenant, had hated Isaac from the moment he noticed a spell, and a good portion of the crew still refused to supp with him at meals.

Zaria took a moment to speak.

“Think I see some heads, down in the wakes.”

There were, indeed, a few privateers who had fallen into the open sea, either bucked from the deck when the geyser lifted the ship, or reeling over the gunwale as they burned from the steam itself. Some of them were clearly struggling to swim.

“Aye,” Vance said, watching. “Seems the geyser knocked ‘em overboard.”

“You wanna pull for rescue?”

“No. Let ‘em sink.” The otter turned. “Presly! Back to course!”

At the helm, the old coyote nodded, spinning the wheel sharply to port, the escaped cockatrice already making an effort to sleep in his lap. The Arms of Horn groaned as it turned back to the westerly direction. Isaac watched several heads disappear beneath the waves as the ship gained distance.

For a moment, the only sound was the flapping of a canvas sail.

“Aye there, capt,” Zaria said, quietly. “Fair enough.” After a moment of watching the otter, she helped Isaac back to his feet. “Good?”

“Yes,” he said, panting. “Thank you.”

“Sure. My squire’s rather cute when he’s breathless.”

“I believe the word is dashing.”

“Oh, that’s one of them, surely.”

She tousled his hair. He slapped her hand away. She began to grin, but a cleared throat made her stop. Vance was watching the two of them. Zaria adjusted her boatswain coat and stood at attention.

“Isaac,” the otter said. “Come to my cabin for dinner tonight. We need to talk.”

“Captain, I’m sorry about the manticore—”

“Not that. Got a missive from the Royal Claw this morning.” She shivered. “Right in the soul. Odd feeling, that. Anyway, they’re wantin’ me to give a full report on your findings. You done all your sketches and whatnot?”

“Um, yes. Mostly. I’ll finish them by tonight.”

“After you’re through patching my deckhands.”

“Obviously, captain.”

Vance made a noise in her throat. “Boatswain, you’re comin’ as well.”

Zaria blinked. “Me? I just keep the rabble in line.”

“Nonsense. Boatswain’s a hard post, and you’ve taken well to it. I’ve got nothin’ but praise for your efforts.”

Zaria tried not to look pleased.

“Seems also,” Vance added, “that you’ve been helping my naturalist quite a lot, as it happens.”

“I aid him on his journeys landside, aye. You gave me leave to do so.”

“Well, forgive my noticing, but it must be you two are working close. On return, he’s always got your scent.”

“Couldn’t be mine,” Zaria replied, casually. “Must be all them funny creatures he’s rubbing against.”

“Oh, it’s yours. You are quite distinct, in that regard.”

Isaac cleared his throat.

“Well,” Zaria said again, “we bundle a tent, now and again. It’s just prudence. Gotta pack light and such.”

The otter nodded. “He always seems sore, as well.”

“It’s rough out there, capt.”

“Sore in the groin, I mean.”

“He’s just sore from all the hiking.”

“Ah,” Vance said, deadpan. “Well, I’m sure my boatswain knows I keep a strict ban on fraternizing between officers.”

“That only applies while underway, as I understand.”

“Aye. That’s so. Whatever happens off my ship is not my concern, especially when your labor remains impeccable.”

Zaria slid an arm over Isaac’s shoulder, pulling him to her side. “Just so, captain.”

“Right,” Vance said, as if they were discussing the weather. “Then, in that case, let’s all pretend I’m inviting you as my officer, instead of the better half of our mage.”

“Honored to accept, then. What’re we supping on?”

“Fried manticore.”

“Lovely,” Zaria said. “If that’s all, capt, I think we’ve got our tasks to attend.”

“Right you are.” Vance looked down at Isaac. The grip of her pistol was shining as brightly as the medals on her coat. He fought in vain to control his blush. “Good work, sir mage. At ease.”

She nodded at each of them and walked away, maneuvering through the deckhands, most of whom were still fruitlessly attempting to catch the fire-breathing rats. At the helm, Presly and some of the leopards were feeding rats to the cockatrice, who was flashing her scales with affection.

“Well,” Isaac said, still catching his breath. “She was bound to find us out, eventually.”

Zaria’s grip tightened. Before he could react, he had been leaned over the gunwale, and she was kissing him, her snout dipping sideways to bite at his lips. Everything was entirely obvious to the crew. Isaac tried to protest, but the hyena began to dip lower, dragging a heavy tongue along his throat, rubbing the bristles of her muscle against the freshly trimmed hair of his beard.

“She’s always known.” Her breath danced across wet skin. “Them ex-navy types are sharp as arrows. Just gotta follow the rules.”

“And what is this, then?”

“Mutiny.”

She began to gently nibble at the nape of his neck. Isaac found his trousers growing painfully tight.

“Two days till landfall,” she said. “Gonna be paradise, so I’ve heard.”

He struggled to think of his charter. “A tropical island. Uncharted, though I’ve heard of, um,” he shivered at the press of her cold nose, “of natural hot springs, in the land. They have healing properties.”

She hummed. “I could use a bath.”

“All the baths in the world would not save you, I’m afraid.”

“Could use my squire’s tongue, as well.”

“Again?”

“Oh, you’d lick me every day, if I could help it.”

“I don’t know,” Isaac said, growing aware of how many of the crew were watching them. “My cunnilingus seems taken for granted.”

“Oh, a golden tongue, it is. The envy of bards and conmen the world ‘round.”

He pushed her back. Eventually, she allowed him to win. When they separated, her face held a smoldering gaze. She had adorned her left eye with a black patch, which clashed with her tawny fur and pink, weathered scars. All together, she looked right at home among the weather-beaten crew.

In that moment, he found her exceedingly gorgeous.

“Well,” Isaac said. “Maybe I’ll work up an appetite.”

“Maybe I’ll feast on you, as well.”

“Maybe we should swim there, instead. It could be faster.”

“Hmmm.”

She stepped back. The sea spray returned. A few snickers were heard beneath the snap of wave and canvas.

“Two days,” she said. “Be ready.”

He nodded. She turned and strode away, as if they’d never been talking at all. Isaac had to awkwardly adjust the hem of his pants before doing the same. As he descended into the humid depths of the gun deck, he found himself already counting the hours.

“And so now,” Zaria said, spilling some wine as she laughed, “Isaac’s got the bloke staring daggers. I mean, he’s got a real fury in his eyes, but sir mage here is still talkin’ as he was, telling the sod he’s got less letters than a signpost. What’d you call him, again?”

Isaac continued to saw through the manticore steak. “Jobbernowl.”

Vance broke a biscuit, snorting. “Jobbernowl? What’s that mean?”

“It’s from a poem. Jobber, as in blocky, and nowl, as in head.” He blushed at his plate, still working his knife into the meat. “Blockhead. Moron.”

“Jobbernowl!” Zaria said.

“It’s a real word! He had a big, ugly head!”

Isaac demonstrated with his hands. Vance hid her smile behind a sip of wine. At her side, Percival, her jackal first mate, was wiping a ship’s biscuit through the juice of his manticore steak, not hearing much of the conversation. One of his ears was gone, and the other had been burned during the Scorch. The jackal had long ago decided to listen only when things were important.

The captain’s cabin of the Arms of Horn was expansive. It covered the breadth of the stern, and it did not look much different than the study of a noble scholar. Vance had a sizable collection of books, maps, and encyclopedias shelved along the walls. Her king-sized bed made Isaac’s hammock seem like a rolled-up flag, and her dining table was currently adorned with fried cuts of manticore, including the puffy white flesh of its tail, along with biscuits, dried fruit, and no lack of butter and spice.

Vance had provided wine, as well. She had made a point of opening a vintage bottle. Whatever she wanted to discuss, it clearly involved some celebration. Isaac, for his part, had only been drunk a half dozen times in his life, and he had learned not to miss the chance whenever it appeared.

“So,” Zaria said, clawing some gristle from her teeth. “So, the bloke invites Isaac to step outside, real serious-like. Sir mage here goes, ‘nah, arm wrestling, that’s what we’re doin’.’ Everyone watching just about cracks on the spot. The bear’s got hands the size of Isaac’s head, and the latter’s so drunk he can hardly sit on his stool.”

“Do we really need to tell this?” Isaac asked, taking a big gulp of wine.

“No, no,” Vance said. “I spoke of runnin’ my ship aground thrice in a day. It’s only fair.”

“Captain—”

“We’re hearing this. Boatswain, continue.”

“So, they sit, right?” Zaria gestured with the meat on her fork. “And while the bloke’s turned ‘round to laugh with his mates, Isaac’s moving his arms below the table, casting a spell. Nothing seems to happen, though, and he gives me a big ol’ wink while he sets his arm. The bear grabs his hand, and they start wrestlin’. The other man’s clearly not trying at first, thinking it’s already settled. Then, after a moment, his eyes just about pop from his head, and he starts screaming real loud. Isaac slams his knuckles down to the table. The bear rushes from his chair, and his hand’s so burned it’s still hissing, and he’s grabbing every drink he can find to douse the fur.

“Isaac just sits there, laughing about it. The rest of the crew aren’t of the same thought. They step forward, loosin’ their scabbards, and sir mage makes the flame go bright in his hand, and you can see the fire reflecting off the eyes of everyone in the tavern, and he just goes ‘anyone else wanna try?’ No one answers. I figure that’s enough, and I tell them to get their mate to a sawbones, and they do so, huffin’ and spittin’ the whole way. I follow them out to make sure they’re actually leaving. By the time I get back, Isaac’s ordering another drink.”

“Got them free the rest of the night,” Isaac said, finishing his cup in two large gulps.

Percival made an effort to smile, if only because he could tell that the story was over. He quickly returned to sawing at his steak.

“My word,” Vance said, whiskers twitching. “I’ve got quite a delinquent aboard. True terror with a bottle. You sure you can handle that vintage, sir mage?”

“I’m fine.” He began to pour another glass. “I promise that—”

Zaria kicked his shin below the table. She gave him a stern look, using her eye to order the wine bottle down. Ever since the incident she had just described, the hyena had kept a careful watch on his consumption of alcohol, making it very clear when she thought he had imbibed enough.

He ignored her, filling his cup. “I promise not to burn the ship I’m sailing on.”

“Ah,” Vance said, “and what about ashore, then?”

“I prefer homes and orphans, in that case.”

Vance blinked at him. Percival glanced up at Isaac. He remembered, suddenly, that both of them were veterans of the Scorch, who had likely been witness to the armies of mages burning roughshod along the coast. As servants of the Royal Claw, they might have participated in the siege of Valrynn, which had forced the denizens into depraved acts of starvation. It was the same event which had forced Zaria’s father to sell her for coin.

He really had drunk too much.

“Sorry,” Isaac said. “That was poor of me.”

“Well,” Vance replied, her smile gone. “It’s good someone laughs about it.”

“Captain—”

“Leave it, please.” The otter finished her own cup and glanced at Zaria, changing the subject. “Your hand bothering you?”

The hyena tried to smile, cutting apart a dried apple. “Nah, capt. It’s fine.”

“I’ve noticed you favor the off-hand, at times.”

“It’s just an old wound.” Zaria opened her hand, stretching the fingers with a grimace. It had been a small miracle that Zaria had been able to keep the fingers at all, let alone the hand. After Soren’s wound had begun to fester, few surgeons had been willing to do anything but amputate. “Gets a bit stiff. The sea don’t help much.”

Vance made a noise in her throat. “How’d that happen?”

Zaria shrugged, not looking at Isaac. “Pirates. Got stuck in a boardin’ action, once. Cutlass went straight through the hand. Fucked the nerves, as the doctor told me.” She gestured at her patch. “Lost the eye on the second swing.”

“Well,” Vance said. “Them’s cutthroats for you.”

“Aye, capt. Glad they didn’t do worse.”

Vance’s gaze lingered on the hyena for a moment. She noticed Isaac was watching, let her smile return, and turned to her first mate. “Percy.”

The jackal was picking his teeth with a knife, working out a long strand of gristle.

“Oi! Percy!”

Percival flinched, nearly stabbing his gums. Vance flicked her head towards Isaac. The jackal stood up hurriedly, rattling the dinnerware, trying to wriggle a scroll from his inner breast pocket.

“’Bout time we talk business,” Vance said.

The jackal came around to Isaac’s side of the table, flattening the scroll along the cloth. The paper was a maze of titles, paragraphs, and subsections. Just from a glance, Isaac could see that it had been inked sometime today, and in somewhat of a hurry.

“That’s the missive the Royal Claw wanted me to pen for you.” Vance poured another cup of wine. “Some flowery preamble to start, then a new contract.”

“New contract?” Isaac asked.

“Go on. Read it.”

Isaac began to do so, having to use both hands to keep it flat on the table. After a moment, Zaria stood up from her seat, came to his side, and leaned over his shoulder. He heard her begin to mouth the words.

“Oh,” Vance said, a note of surprise in her voice. “Zaria, you can read?”

“I’ve been learnin’. Gotta work it out, still.”

Isaac leaned in, struggling to parse the neat, sharp curves of Vance’s handwriting. He realized that he was, indeed, very drunk. The captain’s wine was much stronger than the swill he had often been served at a tavern. He raised his head for a moment, trying to catch the sea air coming through a portside window, and he saw the captain exchange an uneasy glance with her first mate.

Something about their looks set him on edge.

“Hold on,” Zaria said. She pressed a finger to one of the words. “Ap—ate, um, rem—un—er—” She frowned. “Gods, that’s a mouthful.”

“Remuneration,” Isaac said. “Appropriate remuneration.”

“Why the fuck do words gotta be that long? Who wants to speak like that?”

“It means we’re getting higher wages.”

“Keep reading,” Vance said.

“‘Great excitement,’ Isaac said, squinting at the parchment. “‘Exotic specimens.’ ‘New charter.’ ‘Circumnavigation.’” Isaac paused. “Circumnavigation?”

Vance was holding a quiet smile.

“Wait,” Zaria said. “That means travel around, aye?”

“It does,” Isaac said, shocked.

 “Then . . . travelling all around the world?”

“Yes,” Isaac said. “Circumnavigation.”

Zaria gave a low whistle, glancing happily around the table.

“That’s the new contract,” Vance said, focusing on Isaac. “We’re adding several years to the voyage, if it all goes proper. I spoke to the queen herself, and I don’t got to tell you that’s out the ordinary. Giovanna is highly impressed with all the funny creatures you’ve found, Isaac. She sees the value in all these untapped lands, and she’s giving heaps of coin to aid the effort. That means better pay, better provisions, more cartographers, some hefty escort ships, and whatever else we want, really.”

“Fuck me,” Zaria said. “No one’s crossed the globe before. Half the maps are centuries old.”

“We’ll be inkin’ the new ones.”

Zaria clapped Isaac on the back, struggling to get the laughter out. She was the only one to try. Isaac had kept reading, roaming his gaze down the last paragraph of the missive. A stab of fear went through his gut. When he looked up, both the captain and the first mate were watching him carefully. Outside, the sea lashed angrily at the hull.

The room began to spin faster.

“What?” Zaria said, noticing the silence. “Ain’t this grand? It’s bloody history we’re gonna make.”

Isaac nudged her arm, pointing down at one of the paragraphs.

“Oh, just tell me.”

He had to lean in to read it. The wine felt like it was squeezing his skull. “The fugitive from justice currently aboard, known here as Zaria, is to immediately be taken into custody, whereby she will be returned to the mainland to stand trial for her crimes, listed here as murder, piracy, theft—”

“That’s enough,” Vance said. “Listen—”

“What?” Zaria grabbed the scroll, nearly burning it on a candle as she read. “A fucking warrant, for me?”

Isaac reached for the wine bottle, deciding all at once to abandon propriety.

“Listen,” Vance said, leaning on the table. Her gloved hand was not far from the pistol on her chest. “I am not—”

“Is that it, then? Thanks for the work, now fuck yourself?”

“Zaria—”

She slammed the scroll on the table. Plates fell and rattled. “It’s fucking rubbish! The queen loves pirates when they’re raiding merchant ships, but not on her barnyard boat, is that the way of it?”

Vance sent her chair clattering as she stood. “I’ll not be yelled at in my own cabin. Keep your peace.”

“Oh, is the queen’s dog gonna start barking?”

Percival stepped back from the table, drawing his cutlass from the scabbard.

“Zaria,” Vance said. Her hand was tight on her pistol’s grip. “Calm yourself. We’re just talking, as of now. Nothing more.”

Isaac’s chair scraped along the planks as he stood. “Take your hand off your gun, captain.”

“Not now, sir mage. Not until—”

“Take your hand off your gun!”

No one moved. Candles flickered. Fire reflected off the plates and knives. Isaac was so drunk that he nearly swayed with the ship, though his arms were always firm and steady, held in a pre-mnemonic stance. After a twitch of her whiskers, Vance gave a small nod to Percival. A hand fell from a pistol grip, and a sword returned to its sheath.

“Listen to me, ya stubborn cunts,” the otter said. “If I was meaning to follow that directive, I wouldn’t have warned you of it, would I?”

Zaria stood behind Isaac, her breath blowing through his hair. “Small relief, captain.”

“I had my suspicions of you,” Vance continued. “Navies these days are lousy with pirates, and you just got that bearin’ about you. But, despite my misgiving to your kind, you did some damn fine work, and I’ve not seen any reason to complain. I’d sooner have been ignorant of your crimes, just letting you fuck your wizard at every port we make.”

The tablecloth began to burn from a fallen candle. Percival reached over and beat the flames out, never taking his eyes off Isaac.

“Here’s how it is,” Vance said, collecting her breath. “We’re making landfall in two days. It’s a cove not too distant from a royal post called Dewclaw, a nine-day journey southward. From there, there’s roads leading to native cities, other ports of call, anywhere you want. Zaria, you’ll be given enough provisions to make that journey, plus all your wages, as well as my own written recommendation, in case you wish to grace someone else’s deck. Meanwhile, I’ll tell my superiors that you jumped overboard. They’ll think you’re dead, and things will stay peaceful between us.”

Zaria tried to laugh. “How bloody kind.”

“It is, actually.”

“You’re maroonin’ me!”

“I can’t do otherwise. The Royal Claw wants a clean roster, and they didn’t appreciate you lying about your past, let alone all their ships you’ve plundered to the sand.” Her snout began to curl. “And I’ll not abide some cutthroat serving on my vessel. From the way it’s told, you’ve got quite some blood on your hands, serving the Black Eye. She was worst of the lot.”

“I won’t mince about her,” Zaria replied, “but don’t act like your hands are clean, neither.”

“My blood was spilled for country and valor,” Vance said. “Yours was for greed and malice. If you compare us again, you’ll leave this ship by plank.”

“Oh, you say that like the Scorch was somethin’ to be proud for.”

“Shut your hole, blackguard.”

“I was raised in Valrynn, captain. I lived through most the siege. You know what your nation did to mine?”

Vance glared at her, baleful and tense.

Zaria looked around the cabin, like the books on the shelves had suddenly closed in around her. Her ears were flat. She was failing to control her breath.

“Isaac,” the otter said. “This contract’s for you, and you alone. The feline queen’s become aware of your little bounty with the Diet wizards. Fortunately for you, she don’t give a hair of her cunt what them busybodies want of her. She’s threatening to revoke her membership in the whole affair. And after seeing your work here, she’s willing to offer a pardon. You’ll have royal protection. Sign that contract, and you won’t be hunted no more.”

The wine in their cups swayed with the sea. The air smelled of salt and meat.

“You hearin’ me, sir mage?”

Isaac blinked. “A royal pardon?”

“Aye,” Vance said. “Signed and proper. Not a bearded cunt in your magic towers who’d think of crossing that. That’d mean direct violation of her sovereignty, and you best believe she’d use it as pretext for war, if the worst comes to pass. You can go home again, with nary a target on your back.”

His head was swimming. His mouth was sour with wine.

“Oi,” Vance said. “You gonna put your magic hands down, or you gonna say something?”

“I—” He was drunk. He wished, very strongly, that he could be sober. He lost his balance as the deck swayed, stumbling back into Zaria. He smelled her fur beneath the leather coat, and she steadied him against her chest, grabbing his shoulder in hand. It was enough for his mind to pierce the haze. “Why me? Why not her, too?”

The otter shrugged. “You’re more important. You’re the one naming these creatures. You’re the one blasting ships off our tail.” Vance looked above Isaac’s head, resting her gaze on Zaria. Her expression hardened. “You’re hard to replace. She’s not. I can find a dozen hands on any dock. She’s common, and she’ll just be a stain on this crew, once it’s all history.”

The ocean hissed around them.

“She is not common,” Isaac said.

“Oh, aye, she is. There’s no doubt there.”

“She is not common,” Isaac repeated, seething.

Vance paused, confused by both the remark and his tone. “What you mean? Course she is. She’s as lowborn as they come. Compared to you—”

Isaac leaned hard on the table, rattling the plates. “She is not some—”

“Isaac.” Zaria grabbed his shoulder, pulling him back. “Shut up a moment.”

“You don’t deserve—”

“Shut your fucking gob, Isaac.”

He made to speak. She silenced him with a glare. After a moment, he stepped back, almost losing his balance.

“Captain,” Zaria said, her words coming slow and careful. “Thanks for goin’ out your way for me. It’s—” She cleared her throat, refocused her gaze. “It’s appreciated.”

“Aye,” Vance said. “Least I could do. You’ve served me well, and that deserves payment in kind.” She straightened her coat, looking the hyena up and down. “As of now, you’re relieved of duty. I’m not thinking that confining you is necessary, is it?”

“No, capt. Prim and proper, as always.”

Vance made a noise in her throat. “Talk to Thorne. She’s been ‘round the island before. Can give you some direction. Sure Percy here’s got a map or two of his own. You’ll have enough to get yourself going, that I promise.”

Percival nodded, his hand still at his scabbard.

Zaria leaned over the table, staring into the spreading stain of wine. “Don’t suppose I’m talking you out of this?”

“I got my orders. Nothing’s changin’ that.” Her short fur bristled. “And to tell the truth, I’m of little mind to argue them. I’ve lost too many of my mates to pirates. There’s acres of bone down below the drink—good sailors—all dead ‘cause of your kind. I don’t care if you’ve made amends. I’ll not abide your presence. Not on my ship.”

Zaria straightened herself. She looked back at Isaac. For a long moment, her eye blinked, and her ears bent back, and there was something she was just on the edge of speaking. It never came. She closed her mouth, seemed to steel herself, and said: “Aye, then. Thanks for dinner, capt. I’ll leave you three.”

“No!” Isaac stepped forward. “You’re not going. This is not—”

“She is going,” Vance said. “We still need to discuss your terms.”

“There is nothing to discuss!”

Both captain and first mate flinched at his shout. Their eyes went wide, watching his hands.

“I’m not signing that contract,” Isaac said. “If she doesn’t stay, then you can consider this my resignation.”

Vance’s whiskers curled down.

“I see,” Isaac replied. “It seems we’re finished here.” He grabbed the bottle of wine. “I’ll be taking this, as well. Payment for saving your ship.”

Percival’s hand rested on the hilt of his cutlass.

“Isaac.” Zaria reached for the bottle. “That’s enough. I’m not raisin’ a fuss.”

He pulled the wine away, nearly falling onto the table. “What were you doing, captain? You’ve been sitting there all through the meal, smiling at us, knowing you’re about to rip us apart. Was this your idea of a jest? Did you think I’d be grateful that you’re about to leave her stranded?”

“I was being gracious,” Vance said, her voice measured. “Would you rather I’d hauled her to the brig in front of you?”

Isaac pointed at her. “You’re not half the person she is. She’s worth ten of you combined.”

Percival took a step towards the table, his burned ear flat to his skull.

“Isaac,” Vance said. “I don’t appreciate your tone. I’ll not put up with it much longer.”

“That feeling’s mutual, captain.”

She leaned over the table, candlelight reflecting off her navy coat. “Sleep this off. That’s an order. You’re upset, and three sheets to the wind, besides, so I’ll let you take leave. Push your luck, and I’ll have you caned.”

Isaac felt a moment of utter, raging fury.

Vance pushed the contract across the table. “Read it. Think it over. We’ll be heading back to the mainland after this last mooring, and I’ll take your answer anytime ‘tween now and then.”

“There is nothing to think over,” Isaac said. “The answer is no.”

“Cunts to collars, Isaac, it’s a royal pardon. It’s the queen’s bloody wishes. You’ll never get another chance—”

He picked up the scroll, rolled it together, and stuck the end into the flame of a candle. When the fire had fully caught, he threw the parchment at Vance’s feet.

“Fuck your contract,” Isaac said, “and fuck you, too.”

He made to leave. He tripped on the leg of a chair as he did, nearly throwing the bottle of wine. The cabin door seemed to rush at him. He fell into it without reaching for the knob, and the lock shattered off the wood as he plummeted through the doorway. Outside, the top deck of the Arms of Horn was dark, wet, and wreathed in the light of lanterns. The sigiled sail was bright against the stars, and the cold spray of the sea felt wonderful on his clammy skin. He washed the salty water down with a generous gulp of wine. One of the leopards was standing watch at the back mast, reflective eyes watching him in surprise.

“Wanna drink?” Isaac shouted.

The leopard did not respond. Isaac laughed, took another swig, and stumbled down the deck.

Zaria grabbed him. She was forced to grapple with him to keep the hold. “Quit your fuckin’—”

He yanked on the fore-rigging, reaching up to the sail.

“Isaac!”

The world spun. His stomach heaved. He fell back, looking up to see Zaria’s face,  seeing tawny fur under a black eyepatch, watching her grunt as she suddenly held up his entire body.

“Oh, fuck me,” she said, “you’re legless.”

Being held horizontally did not agree with him. His stomach flexed. He began to gag, her eye went wide, the world spun again, and then he was vomiting off the side of the gunwale, painting the hull of the ship with the fresh chunks of his dinner. He barely had gaps in which to breathe.

When his guts stopped folding themselves, he made out fractions of conversation, somewhere close by.

“—ere’s the wine back—”

“—your quarters—”

“—not like to happen—”

Eventually, Zaria took him again. He was forced to stand and walk. When he did, Vance was watching from outside her cabin, her tall form bathed in the glowing sail light.

“See you on the morrow,” she said, rubbing the broken lock on her door.

Isaac was taken below deck. The process involved more dragging than walking, and every breath Zaria gave seemed to have a curse. All his protests were yanked and hissed into silence. There was a flurry of bulkheads, the ripe smell of the privy, the dull iron of cannonball mounds, crewmen on watch looming from shadow.

He was in a dark room. He was shoved onto a mattress that was as thick as a puddle. After some curses and fumbling, a lantern was lit, its metal casing dripping salt water as it swung with the swaying ship. Beside it, Zaria was hastily shrugging off her uniform, loosening the buttons on her coat, vest, and shirt. She was doing it with such force that they barely survived the process.

“Is this your cabin?” Isaac asked.

He had never seen it before, owing to their need to keep apart while underway. It turned out to be little more than a shed. Her bunk was the only furniture, and it was just long enough that she could lie down without bending her knees. The sea was close, pounding loudly against the planks, creating a constant salty dew on every surface.

Zaria unclasped her brassiere. Isaac blinked at the sight of her breasts.

She shoved a tankard at him. “Drink the water.”

“There they are!”

She slapped his hand away. “Drink the fuckin’ water.”

“There they are!”

She made him drink. Some groping was allowed. He downed enough water to wash the taste of vomit from his mouth, barely managing a few breaths before she was demanding more. By the end, his stomach was full again, and some small clarity had returned.

She grabbed him. He was dragged down to her mattress. The world became a dizzy mixture of fur and motion. All resistance was met with force, and every curse was met with laughter. When things settled again, she was on her back, he was lying on top of her, and his face was buried in the fur of her chest. It was a very pleasant surprise. Everything became second nature—her smell, the heat of her body, the feeling of her hands. . . .

“Fun’s over,” she said. “Lie still.”

He tried to push himself up, but her hands were on his back, keeping him pinned. Down below, the backs of her knees were locked against his legs.

“So help your furless arse,” Zaria said, “you’re sleeping here or the planks. Make a choice.”

He fell back into her fur. His world became scent and fluff. “Is this a bribe?”

“Aye. I’m buyin’ your compliance.”

“You’re a foul temptress.”

“And you best point that thing somewhere else.”

He blinked. After a moment, he lifted his hips, tucking his erection off to the side. “Sorry.”

“He’s a good friend,” Zaria said, “but he’s sleeping indoors tonight.”

“Oh, how he misses his sheath.”

“I’m not your sheath! You’re my rod!”

He snickered. She growled. After further prompting, he relaxed on top of her, burying his cheek into her chest. Hands began to scratch his back. He loosed a contented sigh, blowing it out to the sound of a crashing wave. But, suddenly, everything was spinning again—if he closed his eyes, the bed became a centrifuge, and the nausea grew strong. He opened his eyes, trying to concentrate on her breath blowing through his hair. It kept him centered.

After a while, her hands stopped scratching. There were small intakes of breath, as if she was taking several attempts to speak.

“So,” Zaria said, drawing the word out. “Quite some shouting, there.”

Isaac’s grunt was affirmative.

“Them words all left you now, have they?”

He rubbed his cheek through fur. The grunt was more affirmative.

“Isaac. You shouldn’t have. . . .”

Her sigh blew through his hair. Isaac felt a small stab of clarity.

“Shouldn’t have done that,” Zaria said. “You shoulda signed the contract.”

“I should’ve slapped her.”

“No, love, look—”

“The absolute nerve to think—”

“Isaac,” she said. “On the morrow, I’m going back to her, and I’ll do my damndest to beg for a new document. If she pens it, you’re signing.”

He blew a fat raspberry.

“I’ll puppet your hand, if need be.”

“Can you even spell my name?”

“Isaac,” she said, voice hard and firm. “You need to sign it. She’s right. It’s the only chance you’re ever gonna have to. . . .” There was another sigh. “You gonna throw this away, just like that?”

He burrowed his cheek into her chest. “I’d rather die than go back.”

“Oh, you’d rather be stranded on some foreign island, instead?”

“With you,” he said. “I’m being stranded with you.”

“Do you know the language?” she asked, exasperated. “Do you got any idea of the terrain, the cities, how many bandits line the roads? Do you even know the name of this place?”

“Do you?”

“That ain’t the point.”

“Isn’t it? How’re you gonna survive there?”

“I dunno,” Zaria said. “I’ll figure it out.”

“We’re figuring it out together.”

“No, you stupid cunt. I survived the street. I survived the pirate life. I’ll manage this, like I always have. You—”

“You need my help,” Isaac said. “You need my magic, you need my reading, you need—”

Her hands pressed on his back. “I need you to sign this. All those things you got can be put to better purpose. You realize that? I mean, what do I got to offer? Slinging a rope, swinging a sword? It’s like she said. World’s full of my sort. I ain’t special. You are. You’ve got a chance to be in the history books. They’ll speaking your name for centuries to come.”

Isaac felt sick again. He had to stare at the lantern, watching the droplets fall.

“Circumnavigation,” Zaria said. “First expedition to clear the globe. You’ll be inking the maps, making diplomacy, hauling trade, you’ll be collecting all these monsters and going to all these places and it’s just—it’s right there.” She opened her hands to emphasize the point. “You can have it. You can live all your dreams.”

“I don’t care,” Isaac said. “I’m coming with you.”

“Well, I’ll fucking care, even if you don’t got the bother. I don’t want you wastin’ your life for me. I’m just—” Her breath came through his hair. “I’m just street trash, love. I was never meant for greatness. Never had hope for it. I’m fine this way. It’s expected. I’m not worth . . . all this.”

Isaac slid his hands beneath her back, rubbing the muscle. “Yes, you are.”

“No.” Her chest was hitching. “No, I’m not. Don’t do this. Please. You don’t know what you’re throwing away. You can have more than I’ll ever offer.”

“Z,” he said. “I don’t care.”

“You need to care. This ain’t right. You need to—”

“Z. I don’t care. You know? I’ve always. . . .”

He lay there for a moment, his cheek rising with the breath of her chest. The lantern swayed with the sea. The air was salty, and his mouth was dry.

“I’ve always cared,” Isaac said. “Every decision I’ve ever made. It’s always—what if this is wrong, and what will others think, and I’m just not good enough, and. . . .” He swallowed. “I’m always second-guessing myself. I never feel like I know what the right decision is.”

He took a deep breath.

“I keep worrying that, deep down, my uncle has ruined me. I’ll just be scared the rest of my life, always fretting over everything I do.”

He tightened his arms, pulling himself against her.

“I’m not scared now. You know? I don’t care about the contract, or adventure, or posterity, or whatever else I used to want. If it’s a choice between you and everything else, then I’m picking you. It’s that simple. For the first time in my life, it is exactly that simple.”

A smile emerged, completely on its own.

“I don’t know what I’ll end up doing with myself,” Isaac said, “or even the person I want to become. All I know is that I want you to be there with me. That’s all that matters.”

There was a long pause. It went on so long that Isaac thought she might not answer at all. Suddenly, he felt her breath turn ragged. There was a whine in his ear. When Isaac pushed himself up, he found Zaria struggling not to sob.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

She closed her eye, wincing.

“Z?”

“I thought it was happening,” she said, her voice thick. “I thought you were finally gonna leave me.” She breathed, ears folding flat. “It’s just what happens. People stab your back whenever they can. Everyone does it. They’ll take the chance, if it’s there. For a second, I was certain that you. . . .”

“What?” he replied, shocked. “No! Of course not!”

Her chest hitched.

“I would never,” he said, feeling instantly sober.

Zaria looked up at the cabin ceiling, her face scrunched, her efforts at restraining her sobs meeting with only mild success. Her breaths became quick and jagged.

“Oh,” Isaac said, breaking out into a grin. “Is my knight losing her grace?”

She tried to smile back. The tears kept coming.

“Actually,” he said, poking her chest, “I don’t think you’re my knight at all. She’s always so flippant and strong. Oh, she makes me weak at the knees, just thinking about her heroics, her charm, her eagerness to laugh. I’ve hardly ever seen her cry.”

“Isaac,” Zaria whined.

“Oh, surely you can’t be her. My knight would never lose her composure. Gods, it would wrench my heart to see her sad.”

She tried to turn away, furiously rubbing at her remaining eye. He wrapped a gentle hand around her muzzle, making a point to coax her back.

“Maybe you’re right,” Isaac said. “I should go serve a different knight, instead. Clearly, you’re no longer up to the task.”

“Shut up. Shut your fucking mouth, squire.”

She kissed him. It was barely less than a bite. Fur and teeth assaulted his lips, hot breath filled the air, and her tongue barreled into his mouth, wrestling him down before he could mount a defense. Both of them became desperate for leverage. A hand grabbed his chin, an arm balanced on the mattress, there was a war erupting between their tongues, and he had to use all his strength to keep himself lifted while she pressed the attack.

She dipped down, dragging her tongue along the length of his throat. He took the chance to breathe. When she reached the nape of his neck, the nibbling began, her incisors gently pinching the flesh, and the hand he was rubbing through her mohawk began to go slack. His shuddering breath only encouraged her. There was a flurry of licks, each one longer than the last, and, whenever her tongue moved to a different spot, the thick fur of her neck always followed, rubbing along the slick, steaming skin.

She attacked his clothes. He rose to his hands and knees, trying to gain leverage. Every movement he made forced a loss of contact. Every time, it made her growl. He went from a crawling position to kneeling back on his haunches. As her onslaught continued, he was tilted until he lost his balance completely, falling against the cold, damp wood of her cabin wall. By then, only his undershirt remained, and she was already using the chance to yank the pants from his legs. His belt buckle glinted in the lantern light. It was still glinting when it was thrown against the opposite wall.

Zaria stood off the mattress. Her trousers hit the planks. Right then, she wore nothing but the light of the lantern, and Isaac could not decide where his gaze should settle—the spotted fur, the curve of her hips, the slope of her breasts, the muscles, the scars, the thin hint of pink already glistening between her legs.

“Take it off,” she said.

“You’re beautiful.”

“Take it off.”

He removed the last of his clothes. She rushed for him.

The thin mattress did not cushion the impact—he felt more wood than cloth as she sank her weight atop him, and he felt even more wood when his back was pressed to the wall, nearly crushed beneath her larger frame. She had a plan, clearly, but she spent more time kissing him than following it, and every shift of position only came gradually, reluctantly. They developed a pattern of licking, breathing, moving. There was a kiss, a grab, a turn. By the end, Isaac was sitting cross-legged, Zaria was hovering above him, and she was rubbing the head of his cock through the slick creases of her cunt, trying to reach the appropriate angle. Both of them felt it when she did.

Their foreheads pressed together. She was gazing into his eye as he entered her.

A wave crashed against the hull, burying the sound of their gasping breaths. Her descent came slow enough that Isaac felt every bump and fold of her inner walls. She was slick, tight, burning hot. Every trace of the wine seemed to vanish from his mind. There was nothing but her scent, her breath, her grip tightening on his shoulders, the weight of her fuzzy thighs sinking into his lap.

When he was fully hilted, they kissed again. She shifted her legs, wrapping her calves around the small of his back. Her arms pressed him into a hug. With her breasts on his shoulders, and his face in her chest, it felt as if no part of them was not in contact with the other. Slowly, she began to rock back and forth. The penetration barely changed, the heavy weight of her thighs never quite left his lap, but every motion earned a hitch in his breath and a whine from her chest. She never changed the pace. It remained slow, firm, and steady.

“Do the—”

He pulled back just enough to take her nipple in his mouth. A sharp breath blew through his hair. As he tugged and licked, her hands roamed along his back, seeking a place to grip. She settled on kneading her fingers through his hair. The shift in attention only barely slowed the rocking of her hips, and he felt her walls contract as he worked her breast. Every reaction he sought to earn was received in ample supply.

“My squire.”

She pushed him back. He only had a second to glimpse her face before it was bending down to kiss him. The contact rapidly devolved into licks. He was forced to close his eyes against the long, heavy drags of her tongue. Soon, the wetness on his face was more saliva than sweat, and every attempt he made to pull away only earned a growl and a tighter grip.

“My squire.”

She kept licking. He continued to resist, more playfully than not.

Down below, their point of connection had turned sopping wet. As her fur ran across his thighs, it left streaks of their emissions. Every sensation came together as one—her lips brushing against his groin, her walls gripping him like a fist, all the heat and wetness almost making him forget the growing ache in his legs. She was sitting heavily in his lap, keeping him buried as deep as he could go, and, with her legs and arms wrapped tightly around him, he did not think that he could pull away, even if he wanted to.

A whine came from deep in her chest. When he looked, she was crying again, wiping her face with so much force that the clasp of her eyepatch came undone. Her other eye blinked open, the iris milky white. She blinked it shut, turning her head away as the whine was buried under the crash of a wave.

Isaac reached for her face, taking her cheek in his palm.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Shut up. Stop.”

He used his hand to coax her head down. When it was in reach, he kissed her eye. Slowly, he began to kiss his way around the rest of her facial scars, the ones they had earned together, and the ones she had carried before they met. Her tears broke through again, and she buried her face in the crook of his shoulder.

“Just a thief,” she said. “Just a thief.”

His other hand found its way to hers. “I know. You’ve stolen my heart.”

“That’s awful, Isaac.”

“You deserve worse.”

She laughed, hooking her chin against his shoulder. With their hands still entwined together, she sent their arms on a journey down her body—through the valley of her breasts, the furry grassland of her abdomen, and, finally, the sodden heat of her thighs. She pressed his hand to the hood of her sex, and Isaac did not dally with the task. His fingers rubbed around her nub, kneading her lips in circling motions. The rocking of her hips began to falter. There was a sharp breath, a tightening grip.

“Don’t stop.”

“Is that my knight’s command?”

He felt the growl travel through his body. Her chin left his shoulder, and, as she rose to her full height again, his head was forced between her breasts. There was no effort required to keep him there.

“That’s my squire,” she said, now fucking his hand as much as his cock. “That’s my—”

The ship lurched with a wave, perfectly timed with a stroke. He had never been deeper before.

“My squire.”

His hair was a mess of hot breath and kneading fingers.

“My—oh—”

A wet, burning friction. The rocking came faster.

“Oh, Isaac.”

His arm wrapped around her waist. Her arm wrapped around his shoulders. Their hands were still together, down below.

“Isaac.”

His face buried deep, an entire world of warmth and fur and smell.

“Hey.”

“Z.”

“I’m—”

“Yes.”

“Hm?”

“Hm.”

“Hm!”

It was all she needed to hear. The rocking came even faster. She bent down, hooking her snout against his head. There was a growing pressure. Isaac had been so focused on her that he’d almost forgotten this would happen.

There were hot breaths. Hot skin. A burning heat between them.

Cold, salty air, dripping from wood and lantern.

Hands together, searching for grip.

Fur and scars and warmth.

Her voice. Her smell.

Her.

They came together, every contraction of his cock receiving a similar response in kind, and their bodies were already entwined to the point that, when the waves of pleasure surged through them, they had nothing to do but tighten their grips, breathe as one, gasp and moan and shake until it was hard to tell one voice from another. Isaac felt like he’d spent his soul inside of her. When the sensations began to retreat, they left behind a euphoria that spread through every vein of his body, a feeling of contentment that left all his muscles tingling and warm.

Neither of them moved. The lantern was growing dim, a wave pounded against the hull, and it was immediately obvious that her mattress had been soaked down to the frame. Even still, they held on to each other, breathing deep and long. Nothing but their touch seemed to matter.

Isaac was the first to break the spell. He rubbed his cheek against her chest, relishing the fur, breathing deeply of her scent. In a quiet voice, he said: “I love you.”

She stiffened, pulling slightly away. A stab of fear went through his heart. All the old worries came flooding into his mind.

Was that the right thing to say?

Was it too soon?

All this time, had his feelings not—

Her hands came away, leaving his back and the web of their thighs. When the hands returned, they held his face in their palms, the pads soft, the claws applying gentle pressure. He looked up, and she was already coming down to kiss him. She had no lips, her nose was cold, her snout was long, and one of her hands was still slick with their joining. Right then, he could not have imagined a better kiss in all the world.

When Zaria pulled back, her old grin had already returned. “I love you, too, squire.”