Interlude III

"Gutterborn"

Disclaimer: This gets dark at parts. Dunno what else to say

—-How did it begin?—-

I fell for ambition.

—-How did it end?—-

I fell in love.

—-Why do you say that? Why do you consider it to be a fall?—-

We are born standing. An innocent first breath. A gullible cry for mother - expecting her to be there. An ignorant, bleary-eyed look at the new world we find ourselves in. We consider it with childlike wonder. With instinctual fear of the unfamiliar - and, to a newborn, everything is unfamiliar. Everything but mother's heartbeat. Mother's voice.

—-You say you fell when you began this path. You say you fell when you came to exist. You say you fell because you were alone.—-

Mother wasn't there. She left me. To die. Like she did, maybe. Left to fend for myself; a lone orphan in a place of dangerous need. It happens.

—-This was your fall, then?—-

Experience changes us. Entropy scars us. Leaves us... thinking we are more, when we are less. There's something good in us all, the moment we start out. We all lose it along the way.

—-You were cared for.—-

I had a brother. Older. Smarter. Stronger. Better than me. Dead before my first year was out. Devoured - because there's no such thing as waste on Crux-Alta. Someone always eats. Someone has to eat. I didn't have a choice.

—-So did you fall because you were born? Or because you were led astray?—-

I fell unendingly because I listened to you.

—-Tell me how.-—

Khiri slunk along the edge of the road, just behind the gathered crowd. There was no cheering. They only cheered when they watched someone die. No one was to die on this day. They waited in silence for the rangers to return with quarry. Bounty. Food. Meat.

The city gates groaned open.

Seventeen Ashlanders staggered through, eyes bright and arms slack. They wore their exhaustion with pride. Soot crumbled from their shoulders, falling over the gleaming surface of their heat-blackened shells. They carried scimitars and spears, powder-spitters and bird-knives. Four of their number tugged on chains - and dragged after them the roasted carcass of some huge Ashland beast. It stank of radiation and burnt flesh.

Khiri's mouth watered. He was so hungry.

The big animal must have gotten lost, stuck out in the open when the sun reached its zenith. An unenviable fate. Its loss. A boon for the Tenerjiik. Meat. Blood. Shell thicker than their own. Bones to be hewed into tools and jewellery. The skull would be a trophy to add to the mausoleum - an archive dedicated to every communal meal.

The Alugrive-Dominant, the Grave King, met the Ashlanders halfway down the scorched street and held a knife. They drew their own. Into the beast's flesh the blades plunged. They took it apart with methodical efficiency, butchers at work, and they portioned it out into bloody pieces.

Those closest to the feast were those largest. They took the greater shares, exulting in their much-vaunted positions of privilege and physical power. Some of the Ashlanders took away the greatest portions to divide up with their kin and kith. Khiri watched one wander far into the crowd, protected only by the power he bore in the shape of a blade. The hunter wandered to the edge of the street, stalked up onto a stone-carved patio and hunkered there, fangs flashing over the haunch of rare flesh.

Khiri stalked him.

His claws flexed out.

His tail twitched.

His eyes narrowed.

With one glance to make sure no one was looking (they weren't; most were preoccupied with waiting their turn and the rest merely watching on in envy), Khiri darted forward, sunk his primary right hand into the edge of the haunch and roughly tore away a fistful of red meat. The Ashlander shifted to look at him - but he was already on the run.

His heart pounded when he heard the first hoarse growl behind him. Heard the rustle of the ranger getting up and chasing after him. Heard the mutterings of other orphans amongst the shadows, seeing an opportunity of their own.

Khiri raced through the recesses of the shantytown. He scurried down alleys and through gutters, losing the Ashlander - but not the others. They cut him off at the third street over, a Tenerjiik somewhat larger than him wrapping her arms around his middle and dragging him to the ground. He hopped his head off a tile; one of his eyes went dark, clotted over with blood. The fistful of meat was ripped out of his grip, and through his five-eyed gaze he watched as his assailant shoved it into her slathering mouth - all of it. Gone.

And then she looked down at him.

"Stop!"

She jumped and ran away. Khiri tried the same - but a hand, much larger than his own, closed around his wrist and tugged him off his feet. Pulled him up into the air, straining the socket, pulling on his shoulder. His eyes met with those of the Ashlander.

"Thief," the ranger growled. Dragged him back into the dark of a neighbouring alley. The other urchins watching quickly vacated the area; they knew to disappear when a bigger predator came through. Into the shade they went. Khiri struggled, he kicked, he swatted at the arm holding him aloft - and flinched as the Ashlander pushed him against the wall. Waited for the bite. For the killing strike.

"You could have asked," the Ashlander said softly. "You only needed to ask."

Khiri's feet touched the ground. The Ashlander's grip held strong, but he took another of Khiri's hands gently and pressed something into it. Something warm and vaguely wet. Something bloody.

A trick.

It had to be.

Didn't stop him from gorging on the morsel on the spot.

The Ashlander handed him another.

Khiri ate that too. He knew it was a game. Just to fatten him up or flavour his meat with hope - but his hunger overrode his fear, drowned his concerns in sheer need.

"Is that enough?" the Ashlander asked.

It was never enough.

But he was tired of playing games he never knew the rules of. Khiri nodded. Summoned what little pride was left to a starving orphan and defiantly raised his chin, shaking his budding horns.

The Ashlander laughed. Let go.

Khiri ran and didn't look back.

"What was that?"

He craned his neck up to peer out the entrance of his little hollow - the burrow in the side of the old temple's ruins. Rubae glared back. She was the one who'd stolen his own prize from him, who'd tackled him down for the Ashlander to catch.

"Why were you fed?" she demanded.

Khiri said nothing. He didn't understand it himself. She didn't like that - so she reached in, grabbed one of his horns and pulled his squirming self out of the hollow and into the soft-sting feel of acid rain. Rubae threw him down on the muddy ground, straddled him and held his neck.

"Why?" she pressed. "What did you do for him?"

Khiri said nothing. Struggled against her hold.

"Did you beg?"

He said nothing. Batted helplessly at her wrists. She was stronger than he was.

"Why did he feed you? Not me?"

Nothing. He scrabbled for purchase through the wet gravel and acidic muck.

"I'm so hungry," she whispered. Her fangs glinted, her mouth opened.

His fingers closed on something. Khiri curled his claws around it and, when Rubae leaned in close, cracked the rock against the side of her head. Her eyes blinked dumbly. She fell over in a dazed heap. Khiri was on her in an instant, holding her down, gripping her head and holding it back until he could draw the rock across her throat. Again and again. She fought him. Tried to break free - but the food in his belly and fear in his heart permitted him to draw on a reservoir of strength he'd never expected to possess.

Her blood coloured the mud.

It looked good.

Rubae stopped moving. Her heart stopped beating. Khiri let go, straightened up. The rock fell away. He glanced down at the hand that had held it, at the bright red line drawn across his palm where it had bitten through his skin.

He looked back at her, senses drawn by the scent of blood.

His stomach ached.

Khiri moved to sate it.

The next time the Ashlanders returned Khiri forwent the sneaking. He was only a couple of weeks older, but much stronger. More food meant more energy with which to squabble over rich pickings, which meant even more food. It was a gift, he imagined. A token favour.

He wanted to understand the price.

The same Ashlander from before was there. This time Khiri approached slowly, in plain view. The Ashlander saw him coming and smiled at him. Softly. Disarmingly.

"You look better," the ranger remarked.

Khiri looked from the Ashlander's eyes to the haunch of bloody meat. Leg muscle, from another great beast of the Ashlands. Trailing the broken strands of translucent tendons and pale ligaments.

"You want some?" the Ashlander questioned.

Khiri gave it a hungry look.

"Then take it."

He tentatively reached out.

The Ashlander's own hand shot forward, caught his wrist and held it still. Khiri didn't dare try to shake it off, lest it provoke the older Tenerjiik to real violence. The Ashlander was more than twice his size and had enough power in one arm to tear him apart barehanded - and in plain view, it wouldn't have been out of the question for one of the ranger's compatriots to join in.

"What's this?" the Ashlander inquired, puzzled. Staring at Khiri's palm.

At the mark left by the rock. Khiri blankly stared forward.

The Ashlander gave him a strange look. Held out a different hand, talons uncurling. A similar mark was there. Not the same, but - remarkably alike. "Bird."

Bird?

The Ashlander smiled. Knowingly. As if he understood what Khiri had done. "You would not hold something so tight unless your life depended on it."

Khiri cautiously nodded. His life depended on every action he'd ever made, always; the weight of the older Tenerjiik's words just... washed over him. Uselessly.

"How old are you?"

Khiri didn't know, so he didn't answer.

"I see," the Ashlander slowly said with a thoughtful nod. Let go.

Khiri carefully sunk his claws into an extraneous lump of flesh and tugged it free. Retreated a pace. Ate it, quickly. The Ashlander watched. Allowed him to grab another handful. And another, and another, and another until almost half the haunch was gone and Khiri's stomach was painfully full.

"I am Hiirix," the Ashlander explained. "What of you?"

Khiri refrained from answering.

"No name? How will I know to separate you from the others?"

Khiri gingerly held up his scarred hand.

Hiirix smiled. "Of course."

Hiirix continued to feed him from his own shares in the ensuing months. The older Tenerjiik would fill the silence with senseless talk. He enjoyed it, to prattle. To give voice to his joys and frustrations. Khiri discovered he enjoyed listening, enjoyed learning about a world markedly different from his own. Enjoyed the food more, but all the same it was... nice. A kindness. Khiri didn't quite understand what he'd done to deserve such charity - until Hiirix judged him old enough and large enough and said, "Would you like to hunt for your own food?"

Khiri blinked. He'd hunted for his own food before, prey wearing similar faces, but no one ever liked to talk about that.

Hiirix pulled from behind his back a carving tool. Khiri stepped back, thinking this is it, this is where he kills me, but Hiirix turned it around and offered it to him hilt first.

Offering a blade.

"There is a knife for you," Hiirix whispered. "Your life can take a different shape."

Khiri considered it. Considered what he already had - and then considered the Ashlander before him.

He took up the knife.

—-An inspiration, engineered.—-

I never intended it that way. He offered me a choice. You give none.

—-You deny your own part.—-

I only deny that I ever wanted it like this.

—-You never understood what you wanted.—-

I wanted to live.

The knife was light. Lighter than he'd expected. Almost... freeingly so.

"What now?" Khiri croaked at long last - the first words he'd ever spoken in years. Since before his brother had been speared by a bored perimeter guard.

"We eat," Hiirix told him.

The Ashlanders were the last hope of Tenerjiik life - a final lament against the futile promise of extinction. They braved the land scorched by the sun, that which both sustained them and was dead set on seeing them eradicated from the surface of Crux-Alta. This Hiirix explained to him, as they prepared for an expedition out of the city's bounds. The Final City, Hiirix called it. The others had died out long ago - to the elements or infighting, it didn't matter. They were dead. Khiri's city was not. That was all there was to be understood.

Their Final City did produce its own food - but not enough. It relied on the Ashlanders to round out its lacking diet, to provide red meat. They had to hunt. They had to. It wasn't just their privilege; it was their duty. Their responsibility.

Their sentence.

One way or another the city would get its pound of flesh.

In the meantime, Hiirix introduced him to his new brothers and sisters. They welcomed him warmly. Stared at his hand - the one with the scar. Just like Hiirix had.

They all had the same mark.

"Bird," they each said.

"Stone," Khiri whispered in return.

"Life," Hiirix added slyly.

The gates opened. They marched out, right into the evening sun. The air was dry and arid, chock full of foul fumes. Flatland as far as the eye could see. The Ashlands were vast. A place to die in exile. They had three weeks to hunt. There were a series of waystations the Ashlander used to avoid the sun at midday, when it pummelled Crux-Alta with radiation bursts and ionizing heat beams. They had to move fast. Khiri ran with them, pushed his body to the extent it would go and then pushed far past that. The first shelter was a cave. The second a shallow alcove, leaving stray rays of refracted light to bubble on Khiri's shell. The third was an old dried-out tree, once a voracious predator long ago and presently little more than a sunburnt husk.

It was hard to sleep during the stifling warmth of the day - and the nights were when they moved, when they hunted. They had little in the way of rations. Khiri had exhausted his own supply by the fourth day. Hiirix took the time to teach him how to feed himself after that.

"We must be quiet," Hiirix warned. "Not a word."

Khiri had no trouble doing that.

It was evening when they set out, just to fill their own bellies. No grander purpose. Hiirix left his scimitar behind with the others, and motioned for Khiri to sheath his knife. Khiri didn't understand - not until they found their prey, roosting amongst the foil-leaves of a silver bush. Hiirix shuffled closer and closer to it in nervous silence, then snatched it out. It was a razor-bird. It woke and laid open his hand with the edges of its sharpened wings, right up until Hiirix compressed its head into rich pulp.

Then he ate.

"The razor-birds have sharp wings and sharper voices," Hiirix warned him afterwards, the crimson wetness around his mouth glinting in the light of the dying sun. "One cry will draw a flock. One flock can kill a ranger. You have to grab them by the head, crush their skull. They will strike with their wings, cut your palm. The pain is necessary. Own it."

The birds were the reason for the Ashlanders' scars. Khiri later learned that his new family considered such things a mark of distinction. Of virtue. Of basic survival.

—-You are greater than what you survive.—-

Infection was alien to us. Disease was a foreign concept. The only viral outbreaks we tussled with were those of dangerous ideas. All that lived on Crux-Alta was alive only because it was too stubborn to die. There is no ulterior truth beyond that.

—-It is the most basic tenet of causal life. Survival is its own merit.—-

I used to think so.

Khiri, with Hiirix watching, caught his own bird. Watched it struggle beneath his claws. Felt it strike him again and again. Regarded the pain with a cold, detached interest. Squeezed its head until it stopped moving. Pulled its bladed wings off and devoured the rest. It tasted tende - like an overripe fruit, no rot in its bones or heat build-up in its flesh. It had a light shell, easily broken, yet resistant to the sun's ministrations - to a limited degree. Not dissimilar to the foil-bush around it.

"To live, we must be smart," Hiirix reminded him. "We must be careful. We can eat - or be eaten. The only way we can choose the former is by moving with caution from here on. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

That morning, before they all settled down after a full night of running, Hiirix regaled them with a tall tale. "The Ashlanders of old," Hiirix said with a tight smile. "What a people we used to be. Back in the day we never called any city home. The sun was kinder to us then; this was before the Mistake. We followed no Alugrive - no City-King. No King of Graveworlds."

"Who did we follow?" Abulir asked. He was new to the ranger life, just like Khiri was.

"We followed ourselves," Hiirix replied. "We followed our own desires. We followed the informed advice of the Khargrives. Benign Wisdom-Kings. Studious lorekeepers and tender heartmenders. Never was an order passed, never was a punishment meted out. In open discussion did the Ashlanders plan their movements to come. In equal debate did we decide how to wield our futures, weighing the good of all together."

"What happened?" Khiri questioned. "Where are the Khargrives now? Where did our freedom go?"

Hiirix shrugged. "The Mistake scoured much from Crux-Alta. We broke the ozone layer. The sun punished us for our audacity. Much was... lost. Fear can make people forget. Animal terror can wipe minds."

"Are you afraid?" Abulir challenged.

"Of what?"

"Of failure?"

Hiirix considered it. "Yes," he said at long last, "but it is an old fear. An old friend. Only a Tenerjiik familiar with death can truly live as an Ashlander."

"Is this why you took me in?" Khiri whispered.

Hiirix regarded him with a distinct fondness. "Yes."

"Because I-"

"You were small. You were prey. You can be a predator - but you will never forget your first lesson. That is the only way you can thrive out here. As prey and predator."

They tracked down an Ashland beast of considerable size where the flatlands met a quagmire of acrid chemicals, with its right rear leg stuck in a sinkhole. It brayed at them in warning and grew increasingly agitated as they circled around it. It was a powerful thing of shell and muscle, packed with primal ferocity. It bucked and pulled, almost tearing its leg off, and it swept its horned head around whenever an Ashlander strayed too close.

They prodded at it with the tips of their scimitars, the leaf-blades of their spears. Its hide was thick; it shrugged off most of the half-hearted blows and took the rest in furious stride.

"We should wait," an Ashlander called Euriks sighed. "Retreat to shelter. Let the sun finish it off."

But Hiirix raised a hand, staring into the bog. "No," he murmured, voice uneven. Disturbed. "We cannot."

Khiri followed where he was looking - into the choking mists rising above the toxic pools. Something... stared back. Less eyes than his own, but bright all the same. It slithered above the liquid death, three green gamma-stars blinking curiously, and after a few long, tense moments it lazily submerged itself all over again.

"Kill it now," Hiirix ordered, voice strained.

Their attacks upon the Ashland beast became bolder, riskier. They stabbed and stabbed until their blades were wet with red, and still it did not fall. It bellowed and swung its massive body about - right up until its femur cracked apart and exoskeleton tore open. It stumbled forward, absent a leg. It still had five more to drag its huge body around.

Maddened by pain and rage the animal ticked off into a frenzy. Khiri only moved just in time to avoid being gored through with one of its horns, but the beast rebounded and kicked him before moving onto the next Tenerjiik. His hip collapsed. Shattered. Broke with a snap and a cold, cold feeling - one that was quickly replaced with a howling wave of white-hot pain. Stars danced before his eyes. Consciousness dipped in and out, a flighty thing slipping out of his grasp again and again.

—-You fell.—-

I was crippled. Only Abulir was killed outright.

—-You fell.—-

Hiirix dragged me back to the nearest shelter. I still lived.

—-Abandoned.—-

He had no choice. I never blamed him for that. Only he did.

Khiri awoke back in the temporary safety of the waystation - a makeshift camp erected beneath the shade of an overhanging rock structure.

"We have to run," Hiirix whispered to him. "We have to."

Khiri couldn't run. The all-consuming ache radiating from his hip informed him as much.

"I will return for you," Hiirix promised. "I will."

And he was gone. They all were. Dragging after them the corpse of a red-meat animal, bounty for the Final City. It was going to take them a couple more weeks to return. At least they had the decency to leave Abulir's body behind.

No.

No.

He was-

Was he? Better than that? Was he still so desperate?

Yes.

But he didn't want to be.

—-You fell.—-

I was ended. I saw no salvation. No hope. I was tired.

—-You were felled. You felled yourself.—-

I simply gave up. When did that become a crime?

—-Since the beginning of everything.—-

Khiri could smell the blood. Which meant the other beasts of the Ashland could too, given a couple of days. Everything had to eat. Everything had to be eaten.

He didn't want to be eaten.

Khiri dug his fingers into the blackened sand and dragged himself across, tail limply trailing behind him. Out of the shelter, into the morning sun. On and on, as far as he could go, sun at his back and the sizzling coal-sands at his front. He crawled, broken hip aching and heart empty. He went as far as his arms could pull him and stopped there. Waited for the sun to give him a quicker end.

—-You fell.—-

She found me. Nursed me back to health. The second person to show me true compassion in my eleven years of life.

—-You fell.—-

For something like love.

—-You never loved.—-

I did. I simply didn't understand what it was about her I loved, when I had her.

A shadow fell over him. Blotted out the sun. The beasts had come early. Khiri closed his eyes, bared his throat and growled - fine. Go on. Do it.

But then the air cooled. But then his lungs found there were no bitter fumes to breathe in. But then something soft brushed by his side. But then one hand gently cupped under the back of his head and the other, cupped, pressed against his mouth.

"Drink," a lyrical voice commanded, both with a tone he couldn't quite read and a strange language he understood only through some incomprehensible force

Khiri blinked, staring up, but the light was blinding.

He drank.

The pain in his hip receded. The ache of his bloodied fingers abated. The panging hunger emanating from his stomach subsided. He closed his eyes - too bright. He allowed his stiff muscles to relax - too exhausted to care. He allowed himself to fall into the stranger's touch - too jaded to give into suspicion.

They stayed like that, for a time.

He came back to the feeling of a wet cloth being applied to his forehead, beads of rare water evaporating on the heated surface of his shell. His eyes fluttered open; the sun had passed its zenith. The figure above was not quite so bright anymore. She was as tall as he was, with two arms only and two legs, and she was hidden in her near entirety by a veil of spectral light. Her hand, though, the one softly holding the handkerchief was built of obsidian porcelain.

She stopped. She took pause. Pulled her hand back, the damp cloth with it.

"Who are you?" Khiri rasped.

She straightened up. Stepped back.

Khiri forced himself up into a sitting position. "You don't belong here."

She didn't. Not in his estimation. She was a sinuous creature beneath that veil. Graceful. No brutal butcher. No Tenerjiik.

"Neither do you," she breathed, the delicate ghost-cloth in front of her face fluttering forward with each soft exhalation. He could almost spy her features through the veneer of ethereal essence. She sat down, legs crossed, on the sandy ground - except it wasn't sandy anymore. Plants bloomed out of the blackened earth and burnt rock; red grass, silver bushes, a pink sapling. Insects buzzed. Small shelled rodents scurried. A razor-bird fluttered above - and landed on her outstretched wrist. Didn't cry out, just... twittered. Settled.

Content.

The influence didn't extend everywhere, forever. Whatever invisible growth-field stemmed from the veiled woman, it only projected so far. Khiri could pick out the border where paradise ended and the eternal nightmare began some distance away. He wondered if a colony of tumours were about to develop under his own shell or if the bacterium in his gut were rising up to overthrow the tyranny of his flesh. How far did it reach?

Would it kill?

"You have no imagination," the veiled woman scolded - almost as if she could hear his very thoughts. She patted the ground next to her. Khiri stood up, picked his way over and reluctantly seated himself next to her.

"You are not of Crux-Alta," Khiri remarked. He didn't know what else to say. She was... alien.

The veiled woman pointed. Up. To where the dark clouds parted, as if thumbed back by invisible fingers. To a world beyond.

"I am not from here, no," she said. "Nor am I from Alta either."

Khiri blinked. "I said Crux-Alta."

"What is Crux-Alta?" she asked.

"It is... everything."

"If it is everything, why am I not a part of it?"

"I have seen everything," Khiri said with a tired certainty well beyond his years. "And I have never seen anything like you."

"So it does not exist until you have looked at it with your own eyes?" the veiled woman inquired, a laugh dancing on lips he could not see. "You see me now, though."

"No," Khiri quietly admitted. "I do not."

There was a short stretch silence.

"You see enough," she decided. Her hand, a thing of dark glass with liquid suppleness, tipped under his chin. "You are not of Crux-Alta either."

"I am," Khiri defiantly retorted.

"No, no. Only of Crux, child."

"I am no child. I am Tenerjiik - and I am of Crux-Alta."

The woman regarded him with something approaching remorse. "The Tenerjiik were never of Crux-Alta. Only Alta. You forget where you came from."

He'd never forgotten where he came from. A gutter, with nothing to eat.

"I haven't forgotten. Alta was where the first seeds bloomed," the woman continued, seemingly more to herself than him. "We watched. I watched."

"You watched Crux-Alta take form?" Khiri asked, amazed.

"Your Crux and your Alta were here long before the Tenerjiik evolved, child. A mother-planet and moon-daughter." The veiled woman glanced away. "Orphans to orphans."

Khiri tilted his head. "What is Alta?"

The veiled woman pointed again. To the... the great surface in the sky. The reflective sister of the sun, that which dominated much of the sky. "Your home. Death by an uninformed whisper. You doused it in nuclear hellfire - or your ancestors did. It's gone now. Only Crux remains - and only your Final City has survived to bemoan your greatest Mistake."

"You know of the Mistake?"

"Do you not?"

Khiri hesitated. "Before my time."

The veiled woman looked at him. "Do you have a mother? A father? Someone to teach you of the past?"

"No," he replied. Then, after a moment's consideration, Khiri said, "I have Hiirix."

"What is Hiirix?"

"My Khargrive."

The veiled woman hummed. "Khargrive? That's Old Tenerjiik. Do you understand what it means?"

"Wisdom-King."

"Does it? I was under the impression that it meant Adjudicator." The veiled woman shrugged, her shawl whispering over one rolling shoulder - a single sinuous movement. "Where is your Khargrive now, young one?"

"Returning to the city. To feed our people."

"Then why are you here?"

Khiri blinked. "I was wounded. I could not run."

"So you were… left to die?" she asked, aghast.

"He promised to return."

"But what if-"

"He would not make a promise if he didn't intend to live up to it."

The veiled women reluctantly dipped her head. "You trust this Hiirix."

"He was kind to me." Khiri's hands settled in his lap, fidgeting anxiously. "What of you? I would know the name of she who saved me."

The woman flashed him a smile from beneath her shawl - though that could have entirely been his imagination running away from him. "You may call me Cenereil."

"Cenereil." Khiri tasted the word. It was soft. Foreign. Exotic. "What are you, Cenereil?"

"First," she replied.

Khiri frowned. "First?"

She dipped her head.

"First what?"

"... I should take my leave." She stood up.

"No!" Khiri shot to his feet, hands held out. "Please. Don't."

—-Vocal chords. A mouth. A tongue.—-

She was ALIVE. I know she was. She lived. She loved. She hated. She thought and fantasised and dreamed. She made her own choices.

—-Choice.—-

You never gave it to us. That is why I hate you. You never allowed us the luxury of choice.

—-Luxury.—-

We deserved better.

—-Nothing has ever deserved anything.—-

SHE deserved better. You can't deny me that. You can't.

I...

I loved her from the moment I saw her. I loved the best part of her, the part SHE loved about HERSELF.

Oh Cenereil...

"You would rather I stay?" Cenereil asked, bemused.

"I... would, yes." Khiri bowed his head. "You are... fascinating to me."

"I am not here to fascinate."

"Why are you here?"

Cenereil gestured behind. To where the chemical bog lay, distant and small - a cloud of murkiness on the horizon. "Something waits in ambush for you and your kin. It waits for you to fall in one form or another, so it may whisper false promises into your ear. I have come to remove it. Convince it to turn towards more harmless ventures."

"You came... for us?"

"I came to your moon for the benefit of all," Cenereil explained. "But, yes, that does include your Tenerjiik." She tilted her head. "You have my name, you have my purpose, yet thus far all I know of you is that you adore this Hiirix individual and that you are bedazzled with myself."

"I... I am Khiri," he told her. "I am Ashlander."

"No. No, you are only part Ashland," Cenereil whispered, stepping close. She took his arm and held it parallel to her own. The razor-bird hopped over. Khiri tensed as it did; he watched its wings, watched its beady little eyes full of dangerous fire, watched as its little claws curled around his wrist. "This," Cenereil continued, "this is your trueborn Ashlander. Beautiful, no?"

Khiri made an disgruntled sound in the back of his throat.

"You fear it will turn on you, but - Khiri. Not all of life is a fight. Not all of life is a competition."

"Yes it is," he growled back.

"It isn't. Not if there's an opportunity to speak with the other side. I should know - they don't call me the Speaker for nothing."

Khiri glanced at her.

"That was a jest," Cenereil sighed. "Look, watch here and listen closely." She began to... whistle. Like a razor-bird. Not quite the same, but the notes bore an uncanny resemblance.

The razor-bird happily whistled back.

Cenerail giggled. "See? Now you try."

"I cannot," Khiri said, voice trembling. It took all his resolve not to twist his head around, check that the calls hadn't attracted an entire razor-flock.

"Yes you can," Cenereil said softly. Her fingers ran up his neck, along his cheek and jaw. Traced circles. "Humour me, Khiri. Please."

Khiri closed his eyes.

He began to whistle.

"Yes! Like that, like-... no, softer. Gentler. Yes. Now stop. Wait."

The bird turned. Looked at him quizzically.

Whistled.

"What did we say?" Khiri asked, almost afraid of the answer.

Cenereil stroked his face. "That we are friends. And we are. Most life is honest. To be a friend to life - now that is a reward in and of itself. This one knows you. Likes you. Understands what you said. Accepted it."

"What if I didn't mean it?"

"That is because you understand abstracts. You comprehend metaphor. You lie. Please - don't lie. Not to those incapable of understanding the gravity of your deceptions."

Khiri slowly bowed his head. What she spoke of was a kindness. Kindness never came free. But...

... Maybe for her...

"I won't lie," Khiri promised, as honestly as he dared.

"Thank you."

"What do I call it?" he asked.

"Hm? Your new friend?" Cenereil stepped back. "Whatever you wish. It's your friend."

"I... see. Can you..." Khiri hesitated, "teach me more? I do not understand the tongue of the razor-bird-"

"Razor-bird?" Cenereil chuckled. "Is that what you call them now?"

"Yes?" Khiri was confused. "Do they have another name?"

"They do. One in your Old Tenerjiik - from Alta, before its ruin."

"What is it?"

"Kharad-Tan. The Evening Goshawk. 'Herald of that Final Night'."

"Kharad-Tan," Khiri slowly repeated, drawing it out. "Kharad-Tan."

"It's a word, yes," Cenereil said, amused. "I will teach you more of the Ashland talk, if that is what you want."

"It is."

"Very well. Listen, Khiri, and listen closely..."

—-You were instructed to parley with prey.—-

And predator. The razor-bird represents the duality of Crux life. Speak their language and they will be gentle. Considerate. Speak your own and they will pick the marrow from your bones.

—-Prey.—-

We're all prey for something else...

—-Truth.—-

... but the truth is entirely what we make it. The difference between prey and predator is a small one, and neither position is ever set in stone. Nothing is forever. Nothing is impossible. Even the base laws of conventional physics can only be defined when the universe acts predictably.

I have never known it to act predictably.

She showed me that.

He learned. Learned the speech of the razor-birds. Learned how to summon them, wield them, bear their strength as his own. Learned how to prompt Cenereil to sweet laughter. Learned what pleased her - and what did not. She liked to listen, to learn like he did. Liked to understand him. But she hated the very concept of killing another living creature, so... he wasn't able to tell her as much about himself as he would have liked.

Khiri compensated by asking her every question imaginable, just to keep them talking.

"Where do you come from?" he asked.

"A place you wouldn't believe," she answered. "A place of metaphor and concept. A garden of ideas."

"Of ideas?"

"Thoughts borne like fruit on trees. The prototypes of life arranged on flower beds - in patterns so vast they stretched to the horizon. Pockets of animated will - found in the slithering of the worm, the chirp of the aphids, the beautiful song of fluttering songbirds. It was paradise."

Khiri looked around them. "This is paradise."

Cenereil paused. "It may be."

"Will it remain, when you depart?"

"... For a time."

"But not forever," Khiri guessed, dejected.

Cenereil cupped the side of his head. "Nothing is forever, Khiri. It's best you realize and accept that. Enjoy what you have, for however long you have it."

"But I won't, will I? I won't have anything," Khiri glumly mused. "I have never had anything but my own life. That will be taken from me too, in time. I was born to nothing. I will have nothing." He looked back at her. "What was the Mistake?"

Though her face was hidden and her form veiled, the stance Cenereil assumed was what Khiri could only comprehend as pained.

"It was our Mistake," she told him. "We- we moved too quickly, too eager, we didn't think-... We didn't think. Not of everything. Not extensively enough. We-..."

"Cenereil?"

"We tried to… to help you. Give you everything you could ever want. You would have been born into a gentle world of plenty. But instead-"

"I was born to a violent world of scarcity," Khiri finished. "Why? Did... did you destroy us?"

"What?" Cenereil took a step back, shocked. "No! I would never! I would..."

—-Liar.—-

She only ever said what she believed to be true.

—-And where did that lead you?—-

"It was you," Cenereil whispered, ducking her head. Ashamed. "Your people did this."

Just like he'd always been taught, Khiri thought. The idea of it was exhausting. If the blame had lain with something else, then anger would have been appropriate. He would have enjoyed the rage. But... to know that one's own people were so petty as to plunge their entire race into ruin for... what? What did they even want, that was worth this price?

"Are we so terrible?" Khiri murmured. He fell back, onto the ground, defeated. The razor-bird squawked and fluttered away. "Are we so... worthless?"

Cenereil knelt beside him. She hesitated, as if contemplating what to do next. Khiri watched her out of the corner of his eyes. Eventually she took his primary right hand, pressed her own into it and-

Left him a sphere of physical light - weightless, bright as a pearl. She'd siphoned it from her own veil.

"What is this?" Khiri urgently questioned, tense with fear of the unknown. She - she was something indescribably wonderful, but this...

"This is my gift," Cenereil said softly. "To you. To your people. It will never be enough to make amends, I know that, but... please take it all the same."

"But I don't underst-"

"It will be your paradise," she promised him. "Every flower rises from a single seed. Take it back with you. Begin anew. Crux will have its second chance."

"Crux-Alta," Khiri weakly corrected.

"We'll see." Cenereil rose up. "I must see to other matters. Talking with you has been... delightful, Khiri. Take care."

"Wait!" Khiri rose to his feet, cradling the glowing seedling close.

Cenereil stepped back. "I cannot. One gift is not enough. I must deliver your people from an even more dire fate."

"Can I help? I-" Khiri paused. "I owe you my life. Is there anything I can do to repay this debt?"

"Go home," Cenereil told him. "Go home. Give your people a paradise. That is enough."

"... Thank you." Khiri reached out, took her hand back into his own. Cenereil stiffened for a moment before allowing it. He squeezed, gently. "Thank you."

"No," she whispered. "Thank you."

—-Liar.—-

She gave us a choice.

—-A choice for one.—-

For the betterment of all.

—-Who made that choice?—-

It doesn't matter-

—-Who.—-

... I did.

She disappeared into the falling night - the dusk that had crept up on them without his notice. Khiri stayed there, for a short while, trying to peer into the dark, to look for the shine of her veil. Trying to listen for her voice. But she was gone.

He needed to move, too.

Khiri straightened up, took stock of the arrangement of the stars and deduced the way home.

He ran.

Clutching the seed to his chest as if it were his own newborn child.

After weeks of arduous hiking, Khiri finally reached the Final City. His exoskeleton was sandblasted, his eyes were dim, his stomach was empty and his fingers were scraped raw from clambering over rock and through fields of dry ash - but he was home. The seed glowed, almost as if it could sense all the lives waiting for salvation within. All those who stood to begin anew. In paradise.

Khiri stumbled to the gates, crashed a fist against it and yelled, "I am Ashlander! Open up! Open up, for the love of all Crux-Alta!"

The gates opened.

Khiri was met with the sight of spears.

They tossed him into a dusty cell, beaten and bloody.

"Curious," the Alugrive remarked, turning the seed about - looking it over with both towering sets of eyes, those withered by radiation burn and those still burning strong. He glanced back at Khiri. "Mine."

The Grave-King turned about and marched out of the dungeons. One of his soldiers sneered at Khiri and slammed the iron-barred door shut, locking it tight. They left him there. Left him to rot. To die.

The choice was pressed upon me by the greed of others.

—-You search for an excuse.—-

I chose to be better. To give our people a chance to be good - not selfish. Not so hungry that we can only live by devouring one another.

—-Devour everything else.—-

No. Everything else would have included Cenereil. My fangs will always steer clear of her flesh. She gave us an alternative.

—-You spilled blood over it.—-

Only that which was necessary.

They forgot him. Khiri curled into himself, alone for days.

Until-

"Khiri?"

He blinked. Looked up at the shadow on the other side of the bars. "Hiirix."

"Khiri," Hiirix exhaled with relief. "I-"

"Returned."

Hiirix's eyes shuttered. "I am sorry. I am so sorry."

"Hiirix."

"I'm here." Hiirix's claws closed around the bars. "You will be-"

"The Grave King took something," Khiri rasped. "A gift. For our people."

Hiirix faltered. "A... gift? From whom?" He rose up. "I warned you, I warned you all, we shouldn't have neared that dreaded place. We should have quit it sooner. Before the beast..."

The beast in the bog?

No.

"Hiirix," Khiri tried to explain. "It was from another. Something great."

"Khiri-"

"The Alugrive has it. He-"

"Will devour it," Hiirix realized. Grew angry. "What fell artefact have you dragged into our city? Khiri?!"

"A second chance."

"A... what?"

"A chance to fix the Mistake."

Hiirix went quiet. "Khiri..."

"It's true!" Khiri exclaimed. "Hiirix."

"I know not what fantasies you have-"

"Trust me."

Hiirix stared at him.

"Will you trust me?"

Hiirix said nothing.

"Do you trust me?" Khiri asked, afraid.

"... More than I should," Hiirix sighed. He glanced behind him. "Euriks."

Euriks approached. In one hand she held the ragged head of a soldier and in the other a set of keys. "I don't see what the issue is. Whatever the Alugrive has - it belongs to us. He has overstepped his bounds." She dropped the head, picked through the keys, shooed Hiirix aside and unlocked the cell door. "But you have made a lot of trouble for us too, little Khiri."

"I will serve penance," Khiri said, "so long as you allow me to save our people. Please."

Euriks shrugged. "We never liked the Alugrive anyways."

—-You killed to save. As you should.—-

I did what I had to. No more. No less.

They helped him out of his cell. Supported him as they left the dungeon behind - rising up through the barracks, where dead soldiers blanketed the hallways. Hiirix and Euriks dragged him outside, where the rest of the Ashlanders waited - wiping down blades darkened with blood.

"The Alugrive has made an attack upon us," Hiirix said softly. "He has stolen from us. Imprisoned one of our number. This will not stand."

"Thank you," Khiri whispered, "my Khargrive."

Hiirix blinked. Looked at him in surprise.

"Khargrive," another Ashlander said, nodding and smiling.

Euriks chortled. "That's you now, Hiirix."

"So be it," Hiirix sighed. "I never should have told any of you those stories. Nothing but a bad influence."

All through the night they fought. The shine of Alta above was their only witness to the murders they carried out. Soldiers found themselves dragged into the shadows, unknowingly at odds with true killers - true predators. All through the city the Ashlanders waged their warpath. Khiri was handed a scimitar before Hiirix ushered him into a back-alley brawl, where he laid open the throat of one patrolman and ran another through.

On and on they killed, slowly but surely slaughtering their way to the Alugrive's great hall, leaving a trail of churning death in their way. At last, at the doors of the Grave King's abode they gathered. Hiirix laid his hand against the stone and said, lowly, "Kill them all."

Khiri stood back. He watched as the others stormed inside. Listened to the shrieks of falling blades, the grunts of Tenerjiik dying, the shouts of alarm as the Alugrive and his people awoke.

He walked inside.

The hall was luxurious, a place of relative comfort amidst the squalor of the Final City. Blood coated the walls. Bodies lined the floor. Most were soldiers, but some... were kith. Ashlanders, dead. Dead because of the seed. Dead because a grudge needed settling - and a hope needed reclaiming.

Khiri carried on.

The loft where the Alugrive and his family resided was occupied by Hiirix, Euriks and four more Ashlanders - holding the Grave King at blade point. His spawn had already been butchered and his current mate beheaded, but the Grave King lived. Glared at them, on his knees, one arm dismembered and the other three shaking.

"Where is it?" Hiirix demanded.

The Alugrive bared his teeth. There was something different about him. The irradiated side of him was... healthier. The shell sheened. The eyes twinkled with the barest embers of fire. He was healing.

"It's gone," Khiri realized. His grip on his sword tightened. "He has consumed it."

"And I liked it," the Alugrive sneered. "You are too la-"

Khiri's sword pierced the Grave King through - and chopped down, through his ribcage, opening him up. The old Tenerjiik shuddered and died, but Khiri kept at it. Carved the stomach out. Slowly, carefully cut it open. Retrieved the small, diminished seed from the viscous confines and wiped it clean.

"This was to be our paradise," he murmured, holding it up for all to see. "It was supposed to be a gift."

"It doesn't look like much," Euriks observed.

"It used to be more," Khiri told her. Told them all. "It used to be enough for everyone. Now..."

"Now it's ours," Euriks said impatiently. "Yes yes, we know. Hiirix? What now?"

Hiirix tore his gaze away from the Alugrive. "What?"

"You do have a plan, don't you?"

"... We return to our true home," Hiirix said. He sounded tired. "Gather your kin, your spawn, your mates and your forebears. Gather all those you care for. We leave before the strike of dawn."

Khiri almost opened his mouth to argue. Cenereil had told him to share it with everyone.

But...

There wasn't enough left.

I'm sorry, he thought. I'm sorry Cenereil. I'm sorry.

Khiri shoved the pile of black sand out of the way, crawled into the cool hollow under the rocky overhang and tried his best to relax. Euriks was on watch for the day; the sun was rising and they'd made good time. The Final City was far behind. He still felt weak, half-starved and so, so, so angry, but...

Things were better.

Things were certainly better.

Khiri cradled the seed close, tucking it under his chin as he lay on his side. There was room for improvement, certainly, but he was free.

Free.

Free to... He didn't actually know, but he was free.

"Bewitched by heatstroke," Hiirix drily remarked, shuffling over.

Khiri grunted wordlessly.

A hand fell on his shoulder. Squeezed lightly. "Are you okay?"

"I came back to help them all," Khiri whispered. "They took it for themselves. To help only themselves. Him."

"It is difficult to think beyond one's own survival," Hiirix admitted, "when that is all we have ever had. It's... even more difficult to believe your story."

"You don't trust-"

"This is not about trust, Khiri. I do trust you. And... I am trying to think beyond my own survival, to think about yours. I have tried for years."

"You've done more than try," Khiri said very quietly. Raised his eyes. "Thank you. For everything. For... allowing me to live. For saving me."

Hiirix smiled. "That's twice now. You owe me."

"Everything," Khiri said with a nod. Like I do Cenereil.

Hiirx looked down at the seed. "What is it?"

"Something to plant. To give us a paradise worth fighting for. We can use it to rise back up. Erase the errors of the Mistake."

"A tall order."

"It will work."

"Will it? The Alugrive must haves supped most of its vigour. Tiny thing..."

"It has to."

Hiirix's smile fell. "Who gave it to you, Khiri? Tell me now, and spare no detail."

Khiri reluctantly sat up. "It... was a veiled woman."

"A... what?"

Khiri told him. Everything. Everything he'd seen, he'd heard, he'd felt - except for how quickly his heart had raced when Cenereil had looked at him, when her fingers touched his own or, better yet, his face. He explained how her veil had been spun from the same power as the seedling, but didn't dare mention how enthralled he had been with her hand on his own. He noted how she had left to deal with the creature in the bog - and left out how forlorn he had felt watching her go.

He was in love, Khiri acknowledged.

And he was scared someone would try to take that love away from him.

When all that was to be said had been said, Hiirix leaned back and hummed an old Tenerjiik tune for a while. Khiri listened and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And-

"I don't know," Hiirix said at long last. "I don't know what manner of creature you spoke with, or what magic she bore, but... I don't know, Khiri. I really don't."

"You are Khargrive," Khiri said, "and you know all of Crux-Alta-"

"I really don't."

"-but she was not of Crux-Alta. She represents something else. I know it."

"Then I will have to trust you." Hiirix exhaled slowly. "Do you understand what we have done, Khiri?"

"Killed the Alugrive," he said, though he knew it was not the answer Hiirix was looking for.

"We have forsaken the Final City. We must build ourselves a new one - for Ashlanders. I hope your paradise-seed can help us, Khiri, for we will surely struggle to survive without foreign intervention. Crux-Alta is cruel. You don't need me to tell you that - but I don't think you quite understand how deep that cruelty runs. This world of ours will gladly see all Tenerjiik dead, extinguished from the universe. We must fight to keep ourselves alive."

"If this works, we may never need to fight again."

Hiirix snorted. "That will be the day."

A scout came running back. Her name was Narkasa and she was only a couple of years older than Khiri, though she was by far the most fleet-footed of Hiirix's Ashlanders. He suspected that she was Euriks' spawn as well, but he hadn't yet asked. Speaking with others still felt... odd, at times. Particularly with those he didn't entirely know. Speech had never been a skill he'd worked to hone as a child - and only as a delinquent on the cusp of maturation did he recognize how truly integral it was to living.

"Birds ahead," Naraska gasped. "Entire razor-flocks! A swarm of them! I've never seen so many before!"

—-You deny me.—-

Your arguments are sound. Your motives are justified. A lesser creature would bow before you, carry out your terrible truth to a bloody, singular conclusion.

—-You resist because you fell for a mistruth.—-

You could be right. You could be right about everything - life, death, the universe, existence itself. You could be right and I wouldn't care. You took her. You Took her.

I can never forgive that.

"Stay low!" Hiirix hissed. Everyone crouched down, eyes trained on the sky - looking for that flicker of wings blotting out what few stars twinkled overhead. "They must be migrating..."

Euriks snarled. "The city-goers will descend upon us if we don't run now. Hiirix, if they try to force a fight..."

The flocks would hear. The flocks would tear them to tattered shreds. They all heard the unspoken threat.

They had to move.

"We wait," Hiirix decided, "for the razor-birds to move on."

"But-"

"We have no choice. We wait."

The night faded, banished by light. The sun peeked over the horizon, shining through the blanket of irradiated smog above.

"I see them," Ghrait murmured. He pointed behind them. "They close in. Desperate for shelter."

Khiri looked around. There was dust in the air, distant. Kicked up by a group of... something. More Tenerjiik, probably.

"We have the only shelter in sight," Narkasa remarked. "They will kill us for it."

"And for our 'crimes'," Euriks reminded her. "A blood-feud has been declared, between us and the city garrison - and I have little doubt they have come to settle it."

"Draw your blades," Hiirix called out.

Scimitars, sabres and hunting spears were brandished. The soldiers were still an hour or so out, even at a full run. Khiri was in the process of pulling his out of its sheath when-

Something twittered.

He stayed very, very still - and he wasn't alone in that. Hiirix slowly turned his head - and stared past Khiri. There was fear in his eyes. Fear, that instinct-venom injected into their system by their animal components.

Khiri lifted his head, straightened up, and let go of his scimitar. He heard another tweet of a scouting bird, so close, hovering nearby.

He replied. With a soft whistle.

The bird tittered back, confused.

Khiri whistled again. Whistled something along the lines of I am a friend.

A weight fell on his shoulder. Small claws tapped against his shell. The bird twittered right by his tympanum. It said I hear you. I see you. I remember you. I understand.

It was Cenereil's little Ashlander. His Ashlander.

Khiri raised an arm, gradually so as to not frighten the razor-bird, and he motioned for everyone else to move into the cover of the rocky overhang. He pulled his hand back, pressed a single finger over his mouth for silence, and stepped into the light of the sun. Hiirix reluctantly did as he instructed - and where their Khargrive set the example, the others followed. No one said a word.

Khiri waited. Waited until the soldiers had arrived, had stopped a stone throw's away, and they gave him a quizzical look. They hadn't spotted the other Ashlanders - but they were on alert all the same.

"Murderer!" the patrol-captain barked.

It was all the razor-bird needed to set off - and it leapt from Khiri's shoulder with a fierce cry, diving towards the captain. The Tenerjiik yelped and struck it down with a stroke of his sword. It fell in two pieces, voice cutting off. The soldiers glanced between it and Khiri.

"What was that supposed to be?" the captain laughed.

Khiri whistled, urgently. For the sake of his own life.

The captain took a step forward - then looked past him, eyes widening, and he opened his mouth to shout. Alas, a dark wave of bladed wings descended upon him before he could. The soldiers were swarmed in but a moment, razor-birds flocking all over them. They filled the air with their mass and cries and the blood they spilled, shredding the Tenerjiik apart until there was nothing left but gleaming bone and broken shell. Khiri remained perfectly still as the birds darted around him, a storm of deadly bodies, and he whistled on and on. Some stopped to perch on his shoulders, his horns, his arms, but the rest rose up - satisfied that the Tenerjiik threat had been neutralized. They left gradually, just as the sun was nearing its peak, and only then was Khiri permitted to stumble back into the safety of the shade, heart racing.

—-You wielded ruin naturally.—-

Violence is a parasite. It boils in our stomachs, multiplying, spawning a colony of single-minded infestation. The moment our fury breaches the surface - the instinctual thirst for blood clings to it, clings tight, rides it out and bursts open like a blister. I found difficulty controlling my rage in my youth. Violence was my first instinct, then my second, then my third. I have never forgotten the taste of blood, the clamour of combat, the piercing note of pained screams.

And I never will.

—-Natural.—-

Only so far as you force it.

Hiirix caught him, pulled him in and lowered him down onto a bed of rough sand.

"... What..." Euriks started to say, voice small. "What was... that?"

"Kharad-Tan," Hiirix muttered.

Khiri looked up, sharply. "'The Evening Goshawk'."

Hiirix frowned, uppermost two eyes closing. "Did... she teach you this?"

"Yes."

"Teach him... how to speak to the razor-birds?" Euriks questioned. "Hiirix-"

"She taught me how to wield them," Khiri quietly admitted. "How to plead for mercy when they strike. How to earn their... their loyalty."

Hiirix exhaled. "You are not the same child I first guided out into the Ashlands."

"My... Khargrive?"

"I know not what you are anymore."

A cold feeling crept down Khiri's spine. "Am I not your friend?"

Hiirix blinked. His frown disappeared. "You... you are. I... did not consider my words. Not with the due they deserved. I apologize. I only... I no longer know what will happen next, Khiri. You are growing into something else."

"I am Ashlander."

"For now. What next? Razor-King?" Hiirix's voice fell. "You embody the Kharad-Tan - and I don't know how to feel about it."

"Are we ignoring what happened?" Euriks challenged. "Khiri invited a razor-flock to kill the garrison guards. And they let him live. He spoke with them."

"What are you alluding to?" Hiirix shot back. The frown was back.

"He is god-touched. He must be."

God-touched. Would that mean Cenereil was a god? She... could have been, Khiri mused, easily. She had magic. She had grace. She was not of their world. But all the same - he found it difficult to believe in something like a god. He found it equally difficult to love something like a god. The idea of it simply didn't work. It warred with his infatuation - and the latter won out.

No. Surely not. She was otherworldly, yes, but the way she spoke... Khiri knew people. Would a god feel remorse? Would a god feel pity? Would a god ever really care for his own worthless life? His people were brutal; they had long since descended into sin. They warranted no good will - and asked for none where the gods were concerned. If gods did exist, then they had done nothing to stop the Mistake, or the fall of what remained of the Tenerjiik species. If they did exist, then Khiri had nothing to offer them but his spite.

He could not spite Cenereil.

He could not.

Therefore she was not a god.

And he was not god-touched.

—-No gods?—-

None. Ever. Those who say otherwise are either fanatically deluded or overcome with a twisted love for their own selves.

—-What does that make you?—-

Not a god. Call me whatever you see fit - traitor, murderer, monster, Arch-Fiend - but never god. Never.

—-Never.—-

You understand.

—-All I see is an urchin. Searching for consolation. For someone else's approval. For someone else's PRIDE.—-

Pride is dangerous. There is nothing sharper in the universe - no blade, no voice, no pain. Pride is the beginning and end of self.

—-We'll see.—-

"The razor-birds care not for who speaks their tongue, only that it is spoken at all," Khiri explained. "They will stay their bladed wings from the flesh of those who utter their calls. I can teach you."

Euriks blinked - one eye after the other, all six settling on him. "You can?"

"I can teach you as I was taught. There is nothing divine about it. Nothing."

"Are you sure?" Narkasa challenged, voice shaky. "We saw you, Khiri. You... stood among them. Tenerjiik do not survive the razor-birds."

"But we can," Khiri firmly replied. "All we need do is try to understand them."

"If we can pass the razor-flocks unhindered," Hiirix quietly mused, "then we will escape the Final City."

Euriks went still. "But... what if we can wield them?"

"... What do you mean?"

"The razor-flocks - beckoned by our voices to fall upon those arrayed against us. We will have the city. We will all be Alugrives - every Ashlander alive!" Euriks perked up. "We will control Crux-Alta. We will have it all."

Hiirix studied her. Turned to Khiri. Told him, "Teach no one."

Khiri understood.

"What?" Euriks uttered, aghast. "But Hiirix-"

"I am your Khargrive. I lead you not, only offer wisdom - but I say to you, now, that this is a path we must not tread. Do you understand, Euriks?" Hiirix's balled into fists by his side - all four of them. "If we follow your proposal, then we would be taking a gift from the stars only to turn it on our own people. We would be inviting the Second Mistake."

"Khiri," Euriks pleaded, "we must be armed. This world-"

"Would be better off without us and our propensity for grievous error," Khiri croaked. "I will not plunge all of Crux-Alta into further hardship. If we cannot be expected to bear these gifts responsibly, then we do not deserve them. The razor-speech will live and die with me."

Euriks growled. "Who are you to decide our fate?"

Khiri shrugged. "No one worthy, I imagine."

—-Perhaps you spoke true.—-

Perhaps.

Hiirix grasped his shoulder, lightly. "I believe otherwise."

Euriks snarled, twisted about and angrily began sweeping up her belongings.

"We should ready ourselves to move," Hiirix sighed, "as soon as the sun passes. Does anyone object?"

No one did.

"Good. Gather your strength. We have a long run ahead of us."

They ran through the nights and, when Hiirix foresaw when the sun's radiation rays would pass, through the days as well. The Ashlands immediately around the Final City warped into something else; the landscapes they hurried through were nothing like the Crux-Alta Khiri knew. The plains and canyons and poison bogs became warped - black stone unfolding out of cliffs and plains in the form of crooked fingers, hooked tendrils, cracked teeth. The animals they encountered were larger, meaner, wilder. The only thing to remain the same were the rare razor-birds.

And themselves.

"This does not look like radiation," Narkasa observed.

A mist broiled through the valleys and past the hills of the nightmare land. At a distance it almost looked alive - as if it had a will of its own, slithering over the crust of their world like a great fog-serpent.

"No," Hiirix replied. "This is another form of fallout - another result of the Mistake. My father's father said we were the first to wage war. We were the first to rattle that door - conflict. Conflict for the sake of itself. The door opened. We let something inside. It filled our brains with violence. We killed each other for it."

The seed in Khiri's hand pulsed. Like a heartbeat, racing. Scared. He tucked it close.

"What remained laid ruin to the other cities," Hiirix continued. "We will pass through one. There is another desert on the outside, clear of corruption, but while we brave these... Fell-lands, we must be cautious. Stick close to one another. Make no more noise than you need to. Lower your voices when you speak. Keep your weapons at the ready. And..." Hiirix hesitated. "Make sure, if you are pressed into a fight, that what you strike is an enemy - not a companion. The shadows warp one's own sight first, before everything else. Kin-slaying is the surest way to fall under its influence."

"Draw ropes," Euriks added. "Tie them about your waists. Knot the ends with those next to you. We will move as one group, one unit, one Tenerjiik - of one-hundred-and-twenty arms. Those experienced with ranging and combat take to the edges, the front ranks. The youngest must remain in the centre."

Khiri took up position beside Hiirix. The Khargrive shot him a strange look.

"You should be in the middle," Hiirix chastised him.

Khiri shook his head. "This is my fault. I will fight with you."

"And what of the seed?"

"I will never let go. Never."

Hiirix grimaced. "So be it. But who-"

Narkasa stepped up at Khiri's flank. Blinked at Hiirix, innocently. Hiirix snorted. "So be it."

The ruined city they descended upon had once been erected within a ring of protective walls now broken, covered over with what used to be a great glass shell - which had long since shattered apart beneath the strain of the elements and collapsed upon the settlement huddled underneath. Most unusually it was not with stone the ancient Tenerjiik had built their abodes, but with metal. Steel. More glass. A place of veritable material wealth, ripe for the picking.

The shadows flayed it all open with atom-deep sickness.

Buildings twisted, roads became canals of debris, an ancient riverbed passing beneath a bridge near the entrance teemed with half-plant, half-animal life in the form of a spongy-mossy covering, one bearing gills and other unnatural organs. It stared up at them with countless dead eyes and reached with boneless pink fingers, yawning with mouths like those of the always irritating sand-gnats - circular and filled with rotating rows of teeth. Those same fingers slithered into the bones and shell of a long dead Tenerjiik, propping it up like a puppet and making it clack its fleshless jaws at them, perhaps in hopes of enticing them down to join it.

Narkasa tugged Khiri away from the edge of the bridge, shaking her head. He hurried after her and Hiirix, wordlessly falling in step with them.

—-Eager to leave the making of decisions to someone else.—-

My power, my influence, my understanding of the world was all happenstance. There was nothing special about me. I never wanted to lead in the first place.

"This was my mother's city," Hiirix whispered.

Khiri looked at him. Said nothing.

"She was but a spawnling when the Mistake befell Crux-Alta - and that was so, so long ago. She brought me here, to show me the cost of our greatest error. Showed me that... if what we have left turns to turmoil, then we must walk through the nightmare our own people engineered before we can find any measure of salvation. The desert beyond is perfect for us. Quiet. No Tenerjiik - none but us. Plenty of shelter to shield us from the sun."

"What happened to those who remained here?" Narkasa inquired. "Devoured?"

Hiirix paused. "If they were fortunate."

"And if they weren't?"

"... We may meet them soon enough."

Night fell. Hiirix ushered them into a burnt-out temple of some sort, dedicated to-

"A library," Narkasa whispered. "I've heard about these. Altars of raw knowledge."

Khiri frowned. It didn't look very impressive. Oh, there was certainly some thought put into the way the building was built, the way it had been furnished, even below the strange effects of the shadow-serpent's touch, but... no. It didn't bedazzle him. Didn't strike him with a note of wonder. The elder Tenerjiik must have been powerful, must have been intelligent to leave behind the monuments they had, but they were dead. And if something was dead, was anything it had accomplished in life really worth noting? A beast of the Ashlands hunted. Subsisted. Vied for territory. Mated. Spawned. Died. All its worldly achievements wiped away. Its surviving offspring would do the same - every part if they were lucky and then die as their forebears had. Food for something else. It hadn't been much different in the Final City; you lived to see another day or you died and became someone else's milestone. The old Tenerjiik had been mighty, but the Mistake had laid them low - so everyone cursed their name as opposed to hailing their accomplishments. It was just the way of things.

"No books," Narkasa lamented - beholding splintered bookshelves lined with piles of delicate soot and ash. As if a fire had raged, but one only with a mind for erasing the records of the past. "I think Hiirix can read. I would have made one a gift for him."

Reading. Now there was a useless skill.

Khiri nestled by the wall close to the door, seed held tight in his fist. It hammered still, beating incessantly, and he tried to comfort it as best he could. He listened to it. Listened as it beat-beat-beat.

Until it stopped. Shuddered. Held in its motions, like a bated breath. A cold feeling filled his veins. Khiri straightened up, saw Narkasa do the same beside him, and turned around to peek through the cracked glazed windows facing the street outside. Something was... off. His senses prickled; there was something-

Euriks tackled him to the ground, arms wrapping him, and a furious warning hiss quelled the shout of alarm building in his throat. "Don't move," she whispered. "Don't talk." He could feel it in the tightness of her grip on his arm and the speed of her breathing, strained to a muted murmur - fear. Of what, he wasn't sure.

Then he heard them.

A shuffling footstep.

A low, pained groan.

A gurgling hiss.

Khiri strained his eyes, peering out through the chipped cracks in the fogged glass, trying to pick out what was nothing and what was something.

A foot hit the ground right in front of their hiding place. The dark shell was rotted and coated in a thin film of oily mucus, breaking apart where the flesh below bulged and bloated - filled up on the inside with radiation and worse. It was Tenerjiik - but not. He didn't dare move, but he could hear them breathing, those hungry rattles and laboured wheezings, growing louder as more and more of the mutated city-dwellers made their way down the street outside. He held back a scream of hysterical panic as footsteps echoed through the room, his heart beating fast enough to match the seed.

One of the mutants stopped. Turned towards the glass. Stepped close, breathing hard, each exhalation painting the glazed window with fog. It peered in with blind eyes, puckered with sickly sunburn. It tried to mumble something. It weakly traced its fingers over the glass, leaving a trail of off-coloured blood.

And it carried on with the rest, shambling aimlessly through the dead city.

Khiri found no sleep that night.

They hurried through the city at first light, when the mutants hid away from the sun. Their race was forced to a stop when the sun hung directly above, but after that they resumed their galloping pace. No one spoke of what happened. No one wanted to test fate. The second night they all huddled together in the half-collapsed wreck of an old shop, weapons clutched tight in shaking hands. No local once-Tenerjiik intruded on them, however. There was no sign of the mutants at all.

By the eve of the third day they had reached the other side of the city and were stumbling out into the open flatlands surrounding it, all too eager to leave the accursed place behind.

"We are very lucky," Hiirix grimly mused. "That horde was one step away from falling upon us."

"Was there no way around?" Khiri asked, shaking.

"No. The corruption grows stronger on the fringes. We must hurry, now, lest we test our luck even further."

"I should gather the greatest razor-flock ever seen," Khiri muttered. "Tear this place apart."

"But what if the corruption takes hold of your flock?" Hiirix patiently inquired.

Khiri scrunched his eyes shut; the idea was too horrifying to even imagine.

"We are almost free. Take courage, Khiri. It won't be long now."

At last they emerged from the Fell-lands and out into the reaches of the pale desert. The sand below their feet was... soft. Like silt. The dunes rose and fell like the waves of an ocean - or so they did according to the older Ashlanders. Khiri had never seen an ocean in his life; he wouldn't have known what to look for. They trekked into the welcoming cold of the night-cast wasteland, walking and walking until they found cover in the shadow of a canyon where once a river had flowed. The cliff walls were marked with the passage of water-long-gone, and the ground was smooth, littered only with the rounded shapes of leftover river stones.

"Here," Hiirix declared. "Here we may rest. Here we may stay, if we so choose."

The others breathed a sigh of relief, set down their packs and weapons and began carving out an encampment. Khiri did not join them; his task was not yet done.

"Help me," he muttered.

Narkasa followed him to the edge of their gathering. He chipped at the ground with his knife, trying to dig a hole.

"What are you trying to do?" she asked.

Khiri held up the seed. "Plant this."

"Oh. Will it grow in rock?"

"I don't know. Likely just as well as it will grow in sand."

"Maybe we should wait until we find mud."

"Acid-saturated muds?" Khiri shook his head. "I'll take my chances with the rock."

"I see," Narkasa said dubiously, "but you'll need something better to dig with. You'll break your knife that way."

"What do you propose?"

Narkasa visibly considered it. She unsheathed her black-glass scimitar, cracked it over her knee, and then grabbed Khiri's hunting spear. She took a length of joint-thread, secured the broken end of the sword to the other side of the spear's haft, and presented it to him. "A shovel."

"'Kasa?" Euriks called out with concern. "What are you doing?"

Narkasa half-turned around. "Making tools!"

Khiri brought the shovel down. The stone chipped - shovel-head too, but it was a start. He did it again. And again. When the shovel-head broke, Narkasa cannibalized another part of her sword.

"Thank you," Khiri murmured, the third time she repaired the shovel.

She flashed him a smile.

Soon enough they had a small hollow in the stone. Khiri delicately put the seed in, covered it over with pieces of broken rock and stood back. He committed the sight of the stony arrangement to memory - so if it was disturbed, he would know someone had taken it.

Then, at last, he turned about and returned to the camp, where Hiirix passed him a share of his rations.

"How do you feel?" Hiirix asked.

Khiri took a moment to answer. "Free," he decided.

Hiirix laughed, his tail slapping against the ground. He wrapped an arm around Khiri's shoulders. "Good. That's good. We wouldn't be out here if we weren't looking to be free."

Khiri leaned into him, slowly at first but gradually with more courage. Something in him cried with relief at the sensation, at the touch, at the acceptance.

It felt good.

"Khiri!"

Someone was shaking him.

"Khiri, wake up!"

"What?!" Khiri snapped, gnashing his fangs. He blearily opened his eyes. Narkasa hung above, shock written across her face. "What is it?"

"Khiri, look!" Narkasa pointed.

He wiped a hand over his eyes and sat up, stifling a yawn. He glanced over where she was indicating-

And he went rigid.

There was... a sapling. Sprouting up above the collection of rocks. A silver-barked thing, leafless and small and fragile, but it was there all the same. He could spy some roots at its base, picking through the stones and into the rock below, anchoring it in place.

He couldn't believe his eyes.

"How long have I been asleep?" Khiri whispered.

"All of a single night," Narkasa giddily replied. "It's growing."

"I can see that."

"It's alive."

"I can see that too." Khiri closed his eyes and prayed. Thank you, Cenereil, he thought. Thank you.

"Hiirix-" Narkasa began.

"Yes, I can see it as well," Hiirix groaned - but there was a smile to it. "We all can."

"Do you not think it a miracle?"

"I knew it was a miracle from the moment I laid eyes on it. I suppose the rest of you are just slow." Hiirix's hand dropped to flick one of Khiri's horns. "Except you. You're decently clever."

Khiri tiredly swatted the hand away. "Is it nearly day?"

"It is day," Hiirix snorted. "Dawn has come and gone. It's almost midday now."

"But why is it still so..." Khiri opened his eyes and glanced up. The canyon cast them in a thick blanket of cool shade.

"See?" Narkasa pressed. "This is a miracle. We could live here all day and night and never fear the sun's touch ever again."

"We have to hunt at some point," another Ashlander piped up. Olhar. Or Jirnak. One or the other; the brothers were difficult to tell apart. "Our food will run out eventually."

"I spied fair game up above," Euriks told them. "This desert is untouched. I foresee good eating in our future."

"Let's not hurry just yet," Hiirix warned. "Keep your hopes in check - at least until we are sure our station is tenable."

Khiri groaned and stretched out his aching arms. It hadn't been a wise idea to sleep without some sand to cushion him. The rock bed, while smooth, was simply too hard on his muscles. "We should see about renovating this place for long-term habitation," he absentmindedly remarked.

Hiirix nodded. "That we shall. In due time, of course. For now, however, I imagine the younger spawn would be happier with a short period of respite before taking action."

"What is there to be gained from laziness?"

"Satisfaction."

Khiri made a face. Hiirix laughed at him. "So eager to set to work!"

"Languishing is weakness," Khiri complained.

"Only when on the hunt - or on the run. Here... we are neither." Hiirix looked around him. "This place is safe. It is sanctified - I can feel it. This is..."

"Home?"

"It could be."

"I hope so," Narkasa remarked. She was still staring at the sapling, utterly enthralled. Khiri shuffled closer and joined her vigil. The glittering plant was breathtaking to behold.

By the second day the sapling was twice its own size. By the third - four times. And on the sixth, when Euriks and Hiirix had set out with a couple of others to scout out their surroundings and sample some game, the young tree did something unexpected. It shrugged off its outer coating of silver bark, the same way a child would molt out of their first shell, and began to weep. Foliage of some sort blossomed out of its top, a series of skyward fronds shaped like silver wings. The pale trunk below became slick, a translucent liquid dribbling down to pool around its base.

Khiri was the first to investigate. He cautiously took up the dislodged pieces of bark, then used them to scoop up some of the liquid. "This is..." he frowned. "This is water."

No mucus. No sap. Water. The cleanest he'd ever seen. No burning stink of low-intensity acids, no chemicals, no ash or smoke, no blood. Just water.

And it kept coming. Kept pooling.

The tree was trying to tell him something.

"Help me dig!" Khiri said quickly. He took up his shovel and began chipping at the rock around the base of the tree. Narkasa and some of the others joined in, using whatever they had on hand. Eventually they'd cut an indented ring around the sapling, within which the water quickly filled. The dribbling stopped. Khiri dipped his hands in, cupped them and pulled away as much water as he could hold.

The tree resumed leaking - up until the pool was filled to the brim all over again.

"It's conscious!" Narkasa exclaimed. "It must be!"

Khiri carefully brought the water to his mouth and tasted it. It was heavenly. Perfectly clean. Cool to the taste.

"Should we dig more?" Jirnak-or-Olhar asked him.

Khiri shrugged. "Maybe. Perhaps we should allow it to flow into another pool. We can use it to wash."

Jirnak-or-Olhar bowed to him and got to work.

Bowed to him?

What?

—-You made yourself a figure of hope and still you were surprised when they began to worship you.—-

I was never their saviour. That was HER. I was only fulfilling a debt.

—-Even after you mantled godhood?—-

I thought it was for her, at the time. Now I know differently. But that - that wasn't godhood. Not then. Not on Crux-Alta.

"The ancients used to employ something called 'irrigation'," Narkasa said. "I know not what it was, only that it involved the act of moving water from one place to the other. Maybe we should try to emulate what they did."

Khiri gave her a blank look.

"I'll look into it," she continued. "This washing idea should come first. My shell is heavy with dust and ticks."

Ticks. A forever-nuisance. There was something the settled Tenerjiik did about them, though, wasn't there?

"I could..." Khiri started to say, but Narkasa had already moved on to aiding Jirnak-or-Olhar.

When Hiirix and Euriks returned, just before midday, they took one look at the water and stood there, shocked.

"A miracle!" Narkasa crowed.

"Paradise," Khiri murmured.

Hiirix looked at him. "Paradise," he quietly repeated. He glanced over at what Narkasa and Jirnak-or-Olhar was doing - joined shortly by Olhar-or-Jirnak - and frowned. "Are you trying to build an aqueduct? No no, listen now, you're doing it wrong. I'll show how it's done."

On the eighth day, in the shade beneath the growing tree's silvered canopy, Khiri began his final molt. It crept upon him unawares; he hadn't known on which day he had been born, and thus had no reason to know for sure when he would turn twelve Crux-Altan years of age - the age at which Tenerjiik matured into full adults. One moment he was slumbering, happily dreaming, and the next...

Pain.

Pain.

Growing pains, muscles bulging under splintering shell - jostling him from his sleep. He cried out through clenched teeth, jaw pressed so tightly closed he began to fear his bones would break. His vision blurred; his eyes filled with oil-black tears. He squirmed and writhed and scrabbled for something, one hand falling into the water around the tree's base.

"Easy! Relax, Khiri," Euriks pleaded - near inaudible past the thumping in his eardrums. Hands took hold of his arms, his shoulders. Those places flared up with pain. "No! Let him go, let him-"

Whoever was holding him down was shoved off.

"Khiri, can you hear me?" Hiirix worriedly asked.

Khiri tried to nod. He wasn't sure if Hiirix recognized the shuddering motion for what it was.

"You have to stay still. We can expedite this change - but only if you keep yourself in check. We're going to cut your shell open. Don't move. If we have to hold you, we will."

"Please," Khiri whimpered. He laid himself out, still half-blind with the suffocating agony of the molt, and bit down on a shriek when others grabbed hold of his wrists, ankles and neck.

"Do it now," Euriks said. "Quickly."

They started with his chest. Something tapped against his sternum - and then plunged through, skin-deep. The surrounding tissue lit up with white-hot pain, but when the knife was tugged back out.

Relief.

Claws tucked in at the edges of the break, curling under the surface of the old shell, tugging it off. It clung to him, to his flesh and the second layer of soft exoskeleton beneath, but that stinging feeling paled in comparison to that which plagued him before. The pre-dawn air was cool on his un-shelled skin, almost cold, and it felt heavy - heavy with particulates, most of it displaced sand. Once the shell had been tugged away, someone took the edge of a scimitar to it and sawed most of it off. Thus began the work of pulling his outer covering apart, away from him, unfurling his torso like a rug. The arms and legs followed, but he did most of it on his own, slipping out of the shell there like they were mere sleeves. It was... easier, with the majority of the plating already removed.

"Get him in the water," Hiirix ordered.

Someone dragged him over to the pool they'd dug out for washing and dropped him in. The cool liquid lapped at his red-raw flesh, the touch of it stinging at first but gradually becoming a mild comfort. Khiri allowed his head to submerge for a moment, weakly propped himself back up and gasped - eyes fluttering open.

He felt different. As if he had been placed into the body of something softer. Weaker.

It wasn't necessarily a good thing.

For three days and three nights Khiri acclimated to his new reality. His body grew exponentially. His new shell hardened in the warm Crux-Altan air, grew dark and thick and strong. The water he basked in left it clean, left it sheening like a glass-smooth mirror of dark smoke. When at last he rose out of the pool, he was taller even than Hiirix - conditioned by a lifetime of furious fighting and terrified running. When he lifted his arms, lifted up upon steady legs, he found himself feeling more powerful than ever before.

He was a Tenerjiik, grown. Alive. Basking at long last in a place of safety, among those he could consider kin. No longer was he a thin urchin child, scrounging for scraps in the gutters and alleys of the Final City. He was an Ashlander, a warrior, a killer of kings.

Khiri felt dizzy, at first, being so much larger. He felt heavier, too. No longer could he dance and weave through the legs of those larger than he, for the reality was that he was larger than most others. His flesh hardened and filled out beneath his new exoskeleton, packed full of whipcord muscle and titanium-string sinew. For the first few days after emerging from the pool he underestimated his size, his strength, his own weight. He made sure to steer clear of the younger Tenerjiik lest he lose his balance. Hiirix apparently found some amusement in his situation; Narkasa too. Only Euriks treated it with the seriousness he felt his conundrum deserved, often hanging over him with matronly concern.

—-Is that all there was?—-

Euriks was the mother of the Ashlanders where Hiirix was the father. Above all else: they cared. About all of us. Unspoken ambitions aside, that was all that ever mattered - and they knew that, better than anyone.

"'Kasa was the same as you," Euriks told him one day, after he'd misjudged how much easier it would be to lift his scimitar and almost clipped off the edge of one of his horns. "Though with much less... brawn."

"Is that right?" Khiri dryly asked. He couldn't see it; Narkasa was miles slimmer than he was, still retaining that youthful quickness and springy agility all young Tenerjiik possessed. It was something he couldn't help but envy - because jumping from having nothing to rely on but natural speed to this was simply too jarring.

"Your spawner must have been a warrior," Euriks said, nonplussed. She flicked at the back of his shell, listening for the dull rap of claw on exoskeleton. "You have the bearing of a pit-fighter."

"I hope not. Pit-fighting is not on my list of future endeavours."

"Oh, you think you're going to live forever?" Euriks chuckled.

Khiri shrugged. "I'd like to live a little longer than I already have."

"We'll see."

Once he had his bearings, Khiri partook of the rangings Hiirix and Euriks led, exploring their surroundings. It was mostly to get a feel for what their new home was like, but along the way they bagged a couple of beast kills - red meat to share out with their brothers and sisters. Khiri himself found some contentment in the time spent outside the canyon; he did not bemoan the place, the tree or the other Ashlanders, but as a creature habituated with maddening silence, the constant noise was... difficult to get used to. To compensate, he took to taking strolls at dusk, before the rangings set out, just to clear his head.

It was on one of these little jaunts that he encountered a lone razor-bird. It flew before him, twittering, and he whistled back. It led him further into the desert, fluttering about with unthinking glee. Led him to the shadowed base of a withered old predator-tree.

There he found her again.

Waiting.

"Cenereil," he exhaled. His heart raced, his blood sang. She sat there on a dead root in her shining veil, obsidian hands clasped together.

"Khiri," she greeted in turn, warmer than he'd ever hoped to hear. "How are you?"

"Alive."

"Alive? No, more than that!" Cenereil laughed. "Look at you! All grown up. Come here, sit with me."

Khiri did just that. He found he even overlooked her, too, though not by much. Everything in the world seemed so much... smaller since his molt. The closeness with her, though, was enthralling. Deliriously so.

"How are your people?" Cenereil asked. She took one of his hands into her own. Her skin was... mildly cool to the touch, but there was a disarming warmth just below the surface. "Are they recovering?"

Khiri grimaced. "Some are."

Cenereil went still. "What happened? Did you deliver-"

"Our City-King tried to take it for himself. He devoured it."

"He... what?! Khiri, it isn't something to-"

"He's dead," Khiri numbly reported. "I killed him. Recovered... recovered what remained. We have it, now, the Ashlanders and I. We've planted it. Just over there." He gestured to the horizon, where he knew the canyon lay. "It's been producing water for us. We use it to wash and cool off."

"... Just your Ashlanders?" Cenereil inquired suspiciously.

Khiri hesitated. "Yes."

"Khiri. I asked you to deliver it to your people - not your companions alone."

"I tried. I did. But they... they were selfish! I couldn't-..." Khiri trailed off. "I couldn't trust them. I wanted to help them. I did, but... the soldiers were loyal to the Alugrive - because he fed them. Gave them positions of power. They were going to turn on us the moment they discovered we had slain him. The rest of the city was in league with them. We couldn't... do anything else. We had to run."

"Khiri-"

"I'll show you. I'll show you our home. I'll introduce you! The Ashlanders are good people," Khiri desperately told her. "You'll like them."

—-So eager to find common cause.—-

I wanted her to like us. Accept us.

—-You only wanted her to accept you.—-

"Khiri." Cenereil raised a hand to his cheek. He stopped - talking, moving, even breathing. He loved how it felt, her skin on his shell. He wished they could stay like that forever. "I understand. I do. But to keep this from everyone else is to be selfish as well."

"I was scared. I didn't want to die. I didn't want to..." Khiri exhaled shakily. I didn't want to fail you.

"... Perhaps the error was mine," Cenereil sighed. "I didn't give you enough. You shouldn't have to fear for your life - but my own people have decided that yours should tend to yourselves unaided. I shouldn't even be here."

"Why-"

"Why am I here?" Cenereil asked. "There is an evil here. It has arrived recently, but the damage it could cause... I couldn't just stand by."

"I was going to ask why your people would leave mine be," Khiri corrected.

—-But your curiosity was drawn.—-

We all have our ambitions. There's no shame in it.

Cenereil looked away. "Because there are so many other peoples on the horizon. They don't believe in... 'wasting time with failed projects'. They think because we tried once with you, and it didn't work, that there's no point in trying again. I've spoken against that sentiment, but... my people can be stubborn. Rigid. It's beyond frustrating."

"If you've decided against it, surely there are others who have as well."

Cenereil glanced back at him. "Khiri, your Mistake wasn't just that - an innocent mistake, easily rectified. It was painful. Like losing a loved one. We watched your people grow and then we watched them die. I... knew some of the Old Tenerjiik. They were my friends. My people are scared of reliving that."

Khiri nodded weakly, attempting to look like he understood. "I see. But you're here now."

"I am. Working against my people's better judgement." Cenereil leaned against him, exhaling quietly. "I really hope this will turn into a comeback story. The Tenerjiik - rising from the brink. It would mean a lot to me."

"... You spoke of an evil?"

"Right, yes." Cenereil straightened. "It's... she is here to further her own aims, whatever they may be. She will spare no mercy for your people - for she has none. I believe she's established some sort of contact and, perhaps, accord with those who had personally witnessed the events of the Mistake."

"Personally?" Khiri frowned. "You mean those mutant beasts who stalk the dead cities? Those are still people?"

Cenereil hesitated. It wasn't comforting. "I don't know. Some elements may still retain a limited degree of individualism and self-awareness. I'm not... sure. Khiri, please understand-"

"I'll find this evil," Khiri vowed, "and I'll slay it."

Cenereil straightened up, shocked. "No, Khiri-"

"I won't fail you again." Khiri took her hand back into his own. "I promise."

Cenereil stared at him.

"I won't."

"No, Khiri, listen." Cenereil huffed. "Don't you dare seek her out. This is beyond you. Please. I will find her, speak to her-"

"Not everyone can be spoken to," Khiri said softly. "Some will always choose to remain... evil."

"I don't believe that."

"I will do this, for all my people. For all Crux-Alta." He raised her hand. "For you."

He kissed the back of her knuckles. Briefly. Gently.

Cenereil looked at him. "Khiri," she whispered.

He let go, all of a sudden self-conscious, and looked down at the ground. "I-I... I'm sorry, I don't know what... what overcame me. I'm sorry."

Her hand returned. Slipped under his chin. Tipped his head back up so their eyes could meet - his six with however many were hidden beneath her softly-lit veil. "Khiri," she said with a guarded tone. "What was that for?"

"I told you," he whispered. "You... fascinate me. But that is no excuse, I shouldn't have-"

"Don't apologize." She suddenly pulled her hand back as if burnt. Looked away. "But I'm afraid I would only disappoint you."

"You could never," Khiri protested.

"I could."

"You are the most beautiful thing in all of Crux-Alta," Khiri professed. "Nothing else is like you are."

"Crux-Alta isn't a thing," Cenereil nervously chuckled. "I've told you this already."

"And I've told you," Khiri cracked a wary smile, "that it is. That it is everything."

"No. No no, Crux is this moon upon which we sit. Alta is the world from whence your people came, before the Mistake. Look." Cenereil pointed up. The clouds, once again, shifted to allow them a perfect view of the surface-thing far, far above. The circular thing hanging above the sky. It glowed with the borrowed light of the hated sun. "There is your Alta."

"Which makes this entire domain Crux-Alta," Khiri stubbornly retorted.

"Alta isn't part of your domain anymore. Only Crux is."

"No."

"Yes."

"No it isn't."

Cenereil laughed - more confidently. "Yes it is! Refuse all you like, it doesn't change the truth of the matter."

"I could say the same," Khiri said quietly. His smile fell.

He imagined hers did the same.

"I am not Tenerjiik," Cenereil told him.

"I don't care."

"Don't you? Even a little?"

"Not even a little."

Cenereil hesitated. "Khiri, what you propose is impossible."

"Is it?"

"It is," she said, firmly. "I am the Speaker. It's a respected position, one that comes with a lot of responsibility. To associate too closely with you would be seen as... as venturing dangerously near to that ultimate cosmic problem. That... other side. It would cause a lot of undue problems for both of us - and both of our peoples."

Khiri blinked.

"It's a complication your people can ill-afford," Cenereil told him. She touched the side of his face again. "At least at the moment. And you... you have not truly lived yet."

"I have."

"You haven't. We are not compatible, Khiri. Not as we are."

Khiri laid a hand over hers. "So I must wait a hundred years? A thousand?"

"Khiri-"

"Because I will. I will. I promise I will."

"You are young," she said. "You make these vows without thinking them through. I won't behold you to any of them. Live, Khiri. Live. Live a lifetime - then make your decision."

"What about your decision?"

Cenereil snorted. "I'm not allowed those. Too much responsibility, remember? Personal affairs are a luxury I simply don't have the time - nor the freedom - to entertain. My people look to me, look to what I have to say, to dream. I cannot simply put that on hold for-"

"Khiri!"

Khiri glanced around. A trio of shapes were approaching, fast. He recognized them: Hiirix at the front, Narkasa and the warrior Liakei trailing right behind. Hiirix slowed as he closed in, the light in his eyes briefly winking out - blinking in shock at what he saw. "... Khiri?"

"Hiirix," Khiri said softly, warmly - or as warmly as he could with a heart in the midst of breaking.

"What is-"

"This is Cenereil."

Cenereil stood. Bowed her head in greeting, then turned back to Khiri. "I must leave. Heed what I have told you. I hope to see you again."

"And I you," Khiri murmured. "Fare-"

She delicately stepped through a blinking door of blinding light and was gone.

"-well... Cenereil..." Khiri hung his head, dejected. He heaved a breath - letting it all out, sucking it back in again. A pain he just couldn't dispel.

The silence seemed to stretch on. And on. And on.

"Was that... your patron?" Hiirix asked at long last, oh so very carefully.

Khiri nodded, still wrapped up in his own cringing frustration - most of it to do with himself. He'd acted too rashly, he thought. Too forcefully. He must have alienated her. He shouldn't have tried in the first place - because regardless of where her affections fell, he didn't want to lose what friendship he'd already curried with her.

Too late for that, he mused. Far too late.

"I thought something had happened to you," Hiirix muttered. "We came looking. Khiri-"

"I should have told you," Khiri admitted. He stood up. "I'm sorry."

Hiirix paused a moment, then clapped him on the shoulder. "You need never apologize to me. As long as I know you're safe, all is well."

Khiri smiled. Oh it was a sad one, but Hiirix always made him smile, no matter what. He just couldn't help it. "Stop coddling me."

Hiirix huffed. "Never. Now are you going to explain to me what happened or will I need to prod it out of you all night long?"

Khiri whistled. The razor-bird hanging in the branches above darted down and landed on his outstretched wrist. "She had this one lead me to her," he explained. "We talked. Just as we did before."

"Looked like more than talking," Narkasa mumbled.

Khiri glanced at her. "Did it?"

"You… you adore her."

"... I suppose I do."

"What is she?"

Khiri shrugged. "I don't know. I don't care."

"Come on," Hiirix interjected. He eyed the razor-bird with a look of distinct mistrust. "We have ground to cover yet, while the night is young."

Khiri lifted his arm. The razor-bird took off, disappearing into the gloom - leaving them only the echoing, mournful notes of a single piercing cry.

"So what did you two talk about?" Narkasa asked him, just before they were set to retire for the day. Khiri laid back on his bed of ashen grey sand, twisting a rib bone between his fingers. They'd found a brace of small burrowing creatures only hours earlier, dragged them back to the canyon for eating. Their flesh had been stiff and tasteless, like leather, but they were plentiful enough in the pale desert that all bellies were easily filled.

He shrugged. "Things."

"Oh, I know things," Narkasa whispered conspiratorially, leaning in close.

Khiri snorted and shoved her away. "She came with a warning," he replied, sobering. "Something evil stalks Crux-Alta. I am inclined to believe her. Cenereil was under the impression it's attempting to rally the city-mutants into something approaching a cohesive force."

Narkasa shivered. "Those creatures were foul."

"They used to be our people. Our ancestors."

"Not anymore."

"Not anymore," Khiri echoed. "I want to hunt it."

"What? The mutants?"

"The evil contacting them. I want to track it down. I want to carve out its heart, show it to Cenereil, tell her we won't disappoint her."

Narkasa gave him a scrutinizing look. "Are we disappointing her?"

"No, she doesn't care what we..." Khiri trailed off. "Maybe a little. She thinks we should make peace and common cause with the Final City."

Narkasa snorted derisively. "As if. The soldiers rule there - and they outnumber us. They won't forgive us our killings soon enough."

"They trespassed first."

"They won't see it that way."

"No. They likely won't. But Cenereil is a soft creature. Kind. Considerate. Blind to the cruelty in people. Or maybe she just chooses not to see it."

"That's what entices you? I will say, Khiri, I didn't expect that."

Khiri elbowed her. She shifted away, cackling. "I admire her readiness to offer aid to an ailing stranger," he quietly admitted. "I love that she saved me, when she had no reason to. I find her hope for a better, brighter future... endearing. And I like hearing her talk. About the Tenerjiik of old. Good or bad - there is always something to learn from the past."

"Oh? Really?"

"Their Mistake is our finest lesson," Khiri murmured. "They erred. We will not."

"So - this evil."

"I'm going to hunt it down."

"Can I help?"

Khiri shrugged. "If that is what you want. I will not stop you."

Narkasa nodded. "Good."

They took to wandering the desert, ranging as far as they dared in search of the evil. Hiirix watched them go farther and farther afield, and though he gave them each a questioning look he ultimately said nothing.

Euriks was nowhere near as non-vocal.

"You're looking for something," she said one dawn, after they'd returned from another low-risk hunt. "Khiri, if this is about your mate-aspirant, then-"

"It isn't," Khiri shot back.

Narkasa gave him a strange look. "Isn't it?"

"No. This is about protecting ourselves."

Euriks sighed. "We are safe, Khiri. Safe. We have a place to rest, a place to wash, a place to live and a place to hunt. We have all we need. Nothing threatens us yet."

Khiri boldly met her eyes. "I only want to keep it that way."

"You'll run yourself ragged. You're exhausting me as it is. Stop. Take a step back. Find solace on what you've already built." Her gaze hardened. "We'll need you rested if trouble ever does rise. You and your bird-speech."

Khiri gritted his fangs. "They who strike proactively survive. They who strike reactively die."

"Where did you hear that?"

"Nowhere. I learned it. We must take every opportunity."

"We could do with installing some defences," Narkasa said carefully. "Just in case."

Euriks slowly nodded. "Maybe. I'll speak with Hiirix about this. But you two - stop. What you're doing is unsettling everyone else. You especially." She prodded Khiri's chest. "You're someone important, now. Your actions affect others. Keep that in mind."

"I've done nothing no one else could have done," Khiri retorted.

Euriks closed a lower eye, giving him a disbelieving look. "Then why has no ranger before you ever acted as you have?"

—-Why indeed.—-

I am the offspring of circumstance.

—-You still cling to that old mistruth?—-

There's nothing so special or sacred as those lies we tell ourselves. Let me keep this one excuse. It may well be all I have left.

—-You know it has been disproven, time and again. By yourself, chiefly.—-

Ignorance is bliss.

Khiri gave her a blank look. "That was up to them, not I."

"Precisely," Euriks leered. "Now behave. Or we will be having words, you and I. Hiirix too."

She'd found it. His not-so-hidden weakness. Euriks' imposing anger coupled with the sharper-than-expected feel of Hiirix's disappointment - was there ever a mixture more potent, more foul?

"Fine," Khiri reluctantly replied.

"And you." Euriks turned on Narkasa. "Stop encouraging him."

"But I haven't-"

"You have. I've been watching you. You are enamoured, 'Kasa, but that is no excuse."

Narkasa ducked her head. "I only wanted to make you proud."

"By risking your life?"

"By doing for you as Khiri has for Hiirix."

Euriks harrumphed. "I would not be proud to find you dead, half-rotted in the ash and sand. Stay here. Stay where I can see you - then we will talk about pride."

Khiri gritted his teeth, turned about and stomped back to his own little den, scraped into the side of the canyon.

"Khiri!"

Khiri blinked and stood up, face still wet from having supped from the pool ringing around the trunk of the silver-winged tree. Beltus, another young Ashlander with only a meagre year on him, waved at him from the end of the canyon. "Come! Quickly! Hiirix needs you!"

He was up and running in an instant. Beltus turned about, taking off at full speed into the desert. Khiri gave chase.

"There!" Beltus panted, pointing ahead.

Hiirix and the brothers Jirnak and Olhar were trying to fend off a razor-flock. Khiri's heart jumped into his throat - but a moment later he realized they were fine, that the birds weren't striking at them. No, they were swarming about the side of a rocky crevice, trying to reach at something within, and the Ashlanders were trying to dissuade them. Something was in there.

Someone.

Khiri took off, straining his tired muscles, and he began whistling sharply as the razor-birds did. Stop! he called to them. Stop! Stop! Leave!

The birds were reluctant. They tried to ignore him, tried to keep their assault up, but they were honest creatures at heart - and eventually they heeded what he had to say, twittering angrily before dispersing and flying away. They disappeared into the night, slinking into the dark with uncanny ease. Hiirix and the brothers took their place, peering into the crevice before glancing around at him.

"Khiri!" Hiirix called out, ushering him over.

There were six Tenerjiik inside - an elderly female and five adolescents. "Thank you," the mother gasped, near weeping with relief. "Thank you."

Hiirix offered a hand, wearing a gentle expression. She took it. "They're gone," he told her. "We have you. You're safe."

The mother peeked outside, looking left and right and up. "They'll be back," she whispered.

"No, they won't," Khiri quietly promised. "Not if I warn them away."

She looked at him, then. Her shell was scratched and tarnished, worn down by weather and beaten brittle by sun. Her children, climbing out of the crevice behind her, weren't in any better a state. "You can... speak to them?" she asked incredulously.

Khiri reluctantly nodded. Everyone called it speech - even Cenereil had - but all it was was vague communication. Communication. No true language bearing any sort of intelligent sophistication, just noise with meaning.

"Why are you out here?" Hiirix pressed. "There's no city for leagues-"

"We are nomads," the mother told him, growing a tad nervous. She held out her arms, shielding her spawn. "We were set upon by a... beast. It drove us this way, out into the open. Please, if you have food to spare-"

Khiri frowned. A beast?

"We do," Hiirix told her. "And we will. Share it, that is. What is your name?"

The mother smiled, still visibly shaken. "Xita."

They returned with the nomads in tow. Where Hiirix guided them down into the safety of the canyon, ostensibly to feed, water and shelter them, Khiri made straight for Narkasa - who watched the procession march through with comical bewilderment.

"When did we begin digging children out of the sand?" she wondered.

Khiri stalled. Frowned. "What?"

She glanced at him. "It's an Ashlander saying. From before your time."

"Oh." Khiri shook his head. "Strange saying..."

"Who are they?"

"Scared. Running. From a beast."

"A beast?" Narkasa gave him a curious look. "Do you think..."

"I do."

—-Always so sure of your purpose.—-

My purpose was to live - that was all. My mother decided that when she spawned me. That was my only prerogative. What I did with that life was entirely up to me.

"Where-"

"An old vessel," Khiri said with a grimace. "It lies in the wastes to the east. A relic of the Old Tenerjiik."

Understanding dawned, glinting in her eyes. "A remnant of the Mistake."

"Do I have your blade?"

Narkasa's eyes widened. "Of course! Yes, I'll help. When-"

"Next evening."

"I'll be with you, Khiri. Come miracle or tragedy, I'll be with you."

"Thank you." Khiri turned about. "Is there anyone else you think will join us?"

"Have you told Euriks of your plan? Hiirix?"

"You know what they will say."

"So - no."

"No."

Narkasa nodded. "I'll see if I can grab the brothers. Uipas and Haeris too. You will need to convince Haeris, though. He will only listen to you."

"Why me?" Khiri complained. "I don't like people!"

"But they like you," Narkasa chuckled. "Everyone here does. More than you realize, I think. It will be fine; you'll lay out your scheme and he'll agree. Trust me."

"If I must. Tomorrow at dusk, Narkasa. Don't forget."

"I would never."

Haeris was an old warrior. Older even than Hiirix, but quieter. He liked to keep to himself. A kindred spirit, Khiri mused. Oh, Haeris was helpful and a pillar for the entire Ashlander dynamic, but he was an introvert at his core. He ate alone, he slept alone, he said little. Everyone else left him be, if only because they knew that was how he liked it.

It made approaching him a little awkward.

"What do you want?" Haeris gruffly grunted, though not unkindly. He was sat against the canyon wall, picking between his teeth with a slim white bone.

"Your sword," Khiri warily replied. "Your experience. Your guidance."

Haeris looked up at him. "Are you planning a hunt, little Khiri? Or - not so little anymore, are you?"

Khiri cleared his throat. "I am. Hunting, that is. For the beast that drove Xita and her children this way."

"A pity, a tragedy, a stroke of misfortune, but not one we should concern ourselves with."

"I was warned about the coming of this animal. By..." Khiri trailed off.

"Your patron?" Haeris questioned suddenly. "Hiirix told me. An other-creature - a veiled thing."

"Yes," Khiri reluctantly confirmed. "Her. She told me an evil had arrived on Crux-Alta. This beast could be it."

"And you want me to hunt it down with you?"

"Not alone," Khiri elaborated. "Narkasa will join us, as will the brothers. Uipas too."

"That's still ambitious."

"We must be ambitious if we wish to rise."

Haeris snorted. "You've been listening to Hiirix for too long. You have the same direly hopeful approach to fancy philosophy."

"Am I wrong?" Khiri challenged.

"No. No, you're never wrong, Khiri - despite everything. Have you told-"

"No."

Haeris's eyes twinkled. "You haven't? Dear Khiri, are you thinking of sneaking off? Going against Hiirix's wishes?"

"Are you with us or not?"

"Fine, fine, yes, I'll hunt with you. But I warn you: this is foolishness."

Khiri shrugged. "It may be. That does not absolve us of our duty to see it through."

He made for the newly-carved alcove where he slept. Before he could settle, though, one of the newcomers - the eldest of Xita's quiet children - slowly crept over. Khiri watched the spawn out of the corner of his eyes, though he made it appear as if he hadn't noticed the child. Young ones, being so small and weak and fragile, appreciated the gift of being so hard to spot. Calling the youth out would only intimidate him. It wasn't so long ago that this would have been exactly how Khiri felt about the world.

The child hesitated little more than an arm's reach out. He mumbled a, "Uh-"

"Yes?" Khiri asked, softening his voice. It was a deeper thing, now. More frightening. The Ashlander children didn't fear him (they considered him family), but he knew how easily frightened they were when an adult threw around their heavy words without any consideration.

The youth looked at him. "I am Akka."

Khiri glanced past the child, to where Hiirix was speaking with Xita. Her other children were close by. They... did not speak as the Tenerjiik he knew would. They had strange accents, odd inflections. Their voices were low, husky. They weren't from the Final City. They weren't Ashlanders. Wherever they were from, it was somewhere beyond the scope of his knowledge.

"I am Khiri," he said.

"Can I ask a secret?" Akka asked.

Khiri tilted his head. "I only keep a few, Akka. Ask. It may be no secret at all, that you wish to know."

"Is it true you are god-touched?"

"No." Khiri looked away, venting a deep breath out of sheer frustration. "There is no such thing as god-touched. There are no such things as gods. Divinity is... only something people mistakenly believe to see in one another - and in that which they do not yet understand. In the frightening world around them."

Akka blinked. The look he sent Khiri was... derisive? Maybe. Or... knowing. As if he was aware of a joke - one where Khiri was the punchline and he just didn't know it. "I don't think that's true."

"That is your decision, child. But I would appreciate it if you would refrain from naming me god-touched."

"Is that not what you are?" Akka pressed. "Then what was it which blessed you? How did you learn how to speak with razor-birds? Where did you find this tree of yours?"

"It is not my tree alone. It is ours - of the Ashlanders. We share it. We are a community. We are kin." Khiri paused. "And... it was merely a gift. All of it."

"From whom?"

"... It matters not. Someone I respect, that is all I will say."

Akka gazed at him a moment longer before turning around and scurrying back to his mother.

They gathered in silence, at the lip where the canyon fed back into the desert. They left the others happy and asleep. Xita and her children had acclimated well, though they steered clear of both the tree and the place where the Ashlander group congregated - still wary, still uncertain, still suspicious, still incapable of shaking that bone-deep mistrust of anything and everything. When life was the only commodity you still had, you fought tooth and nail to keep it, and you never allowed it to fall into the hands of another. This was a truth Khiri knew all too well.

It had taken him an age to shake free of it.

Out into the dark they ventured, six Ashland rangers. Sand crunched beneath their feet. Swords sliced through the air, gripped tightly in clenched fists. Their eyes scoured through the shadows of the night, following what little light of the stars and world above seeped through the thick blanket of clouds. It was going to rain soon. Acid rain. The kind that would sting when it seeped into those places where plates of shell gave way to flesh. Khiri kept his eyes forward and banished the thought of what was to come from his mind; it had no place where they were going.

The vessel was half-sunken in the black sands. Crux-Alta was devouring it. Nothing went to waste on their world. Nothing. It sat there, alone amidst the sea of rolling ash-dunes, sticking out like a sore thumb. Haeris called it a ship - though whether of the kind that once sailed over long-dried oceans or through the clouds of the heavens above, Khiri wasn't sure. A wing stuck out into the air, reminiscent of those of a razor-bird, so he supposed it may have been the latter.

He would've liked to have seen it fly.

All was quiet as they approached the scuttled thing. It was as large, or even larger, than their home canyon, with a thick metal hull as tall as the Final City's defensive walls. A part of it had been torn open, as if something inside had clawed its way out. Nothing moved in the shadows beyond. Nothing lived. The vessel, colossal, was nothing but a grave hanging on the edge of ruin. At a distance that was all it was - a lifeless wreck having crashed on the edge of where the Mistake's radiation pooled, a monument to someone else's rise and fall. Nothing scurried in its shadows. Nothing howled, roared, whistled or cried out.

And yet, if Xita's warnings were to be believed, it was now home to something monstrous and cruel.

"Speak with your hands," Haeris instructed them, just before they stepped over that threshold into the accursed place. "Utter not a single vocal word unless you deem it utterly necessary. Whatever dwells here - be it beast or otherwise - is no friend of ours and would gladly reduce us to mere meat. Ashlander's cryptolect only."

"Stay together," Khiri added. "Watch every angle. We are not here to be heroes; if we are faced with a fight we cannot feasibly win, we run. Am I heard?"

"You are heard," Narkasa said softly. The others murmured their own affirmatives.

Into the downed ship they slunk, like common thieves - hearts hammering, backs bowed and blades at the ready.

It was then, with the old fear of death settling in his belly, acid-bitter, that Khiri began to entertain the notion that this was a bad idea. Too late for that, he mused. They were already there, already on the hunt. Or, maybe, they were the ones being hunted. He felt eyes on the back of his head. Sometimes he imagined it to be his companions, no cause for concern, but - at other times? Something else. Something unfamiliar. Watching them. Studying them.

Stalking them.

—-Your sense: sharp. Your instincts: perfect. You had the makings of something majestic.—-

Compliments? We're long past that mark.

—-Majestic.—-

Khiri hurried on. He led the others into the guts of the vessel, ducking and weaving through myriad hallways, through all the paths of broken metal and twisted corridors. He didn't know where he was going, but he moved all the same - legs operating on automatic. He could smell old rot in the stale air. Ancient carrion, untouched. Smoke tinged with acrid chemical-burn. And something... else. He followed it, that strange scent, through the ship. It tugged on him, a loose thread he had to follow.

After nearly an hour of searching, of wandering, it led him to the broken down airlock leading into a storeroom of some sort, or maybe a cafeteria, built into the heart of the vessel. He held up a hand for the others to stop, to keep where they were behind, and he tugged at the flimsy panel of not-metal that had fallen over the buckled doorway, pulling it aside so he could take a peek within.

Khiri recoiled, immediately.

A leathery hand, devoid of all shell, weakly reached after him. A low whimper escaped him as he fell back, caught by Jirnak and Narkasa and helped back to his feet. The mutant within the room pressed its warped face against what little space was left in the doorway, slabbering and groaning. There were more behind it. Dozens more.

Hundreds.

It was a nesting ground. A cesspit for the old rotted Tenerjiik to congregate. To stand about, forgotten. To remain trapped.

At least until he'd disturbed them.

A moan collected from a hundred malformed throats gathered into the air, pushed against the confines of the building. The half-dead creatures within shifted and gurgled irritably, roused from their centuries-long sleep, from their gradual decay. They pressed against the barricades holding them within. Something in there, hiding among the mass of loose flesh and irradiated waste, howled with barely constrained fury. Something laughed horribly, like that rickety sound of wooden boards shifting with the wind.

Haeris waved Khiri and the others back. Move.

They needed no convincing.

Mutants pushed and prodded at the debris lining the entrance, trapping them inside. Some tried to force themselves out through the opening Khiri had made, but it was too small. Skin tore and blisters burst; some foul dark mucus dribbling out over the nailed paneling, pooling and congealing on the ashen ground below.

It's fine, Haeris motioned with his secondary hands, barely visible in the gloom. Only the burning glow of their eyes lit the place up. They're trapped. Someone must have imprisoned them while they slept. He turned around, sighing with relief - and his eyes widened. Haeris pointed past them. There!

Khiri twisted around, sword at the ready. He only just managed to catch sight of something with six eyes, like theirs, before it flitted out of sight, disappearing down an adjoining hallway.

Tenerjiik! Narkasa signed urgently.

Khiri frowned. Had it truly been... or... no, something had been different about it. It hadn't made a single sound, for one. A youngling, maybe, but too tall. Far too tall. He looked at the others. Follow?

Uiphas hesitated. Narkasa narrowed her eyes. The brothers shrugged. Haeris nodded.

They followed.

Doors groaned open ahead of them. The vessel's bridge awaited, dark and dank. A single dessicated body stole their attention, hanging from the ceiling with a chain about its broken neck. It was dressed in fancy clothes and bore a row of clinking metal fragments on its breast, hanging from golden threads.

"That's the captain," Haeris murmured lowly.

Narkasa warily approached, ran her scimitar through the dead Tenerjiik's midriff, then hunkered over. She picked something off the ground - something that must have fallen from the dead captain's grip. She held it up.

It looked like a child's toy.

Khiri motioned to her, sharply. Put it away!

Narkasa shrugged, dropped it, and walked past the body. The others did the same, moving to the sides of the bridge, scouring it through and through. They poked and prodded at systems that had long since lost power, at more corpses slumped over their stations, at every little thing to catch their attention.

—-No reverence for the dead. As it should be.—-

We had no time for it. All the same, I was beginning to question that. The why and the what and the how. I was beginning to wonder if we were any better. Or if the Old Tenerjiik really deserved what they got.

—-Hypocrites.—-

Maybe.

—-Hypocrite.—-

... Maybe.

Khiri exhaled, slowly, and turned around.

A Tenerjiik he didn't know stared back. It stared, fingers twitching, head tilted. He didn't recognize it.

—-You did.—-

Barely.

Not immediately, anyways. It took a few more seconds of stunned staring for that to change. The horns twisted as they rose into the air. The cranial plate running at an angle back and up from the skull bore a slight ridge down the middle. The eyes twinkled like embers among dusk-black coals, a soft fire spluttering weakly. It bothered him - beyond the obvious, that there was a stranger in front of him. It bothered him because those were Khiri's own features mirrored right back at him, and yet the Tenerjiik standing there wasn't him.

Which left-

"You're dead," Khiri gasped. "You're dead."

Everyone else stopped what they were turning. Looked back around. Khiri heard the sounds of surprised growling, confused snapping, the whispers of blades moving.

-his brother. Dead before he was a year old. Reduced to bone and shell. Khiri was certain of it, because...

... because he'd been desperate and hungry enough to make sure. And yet the stranger before him was alive. Thin, starved, weak but alive. Alive. As if one of the Alugrive's employed killers hadn't run a spear through his throat for fun. As if he hadn't choked on his own blood and left Khiri all alone in the world, left him to hunger and shiver and waste away and not speak to anyone for years on end - because there had been no one with the wealth, time or patience to waste on an extra mouth to feed.

As if he hadn't died.

The alternative - the only alternative - hit Khiri just as hard, knocked the breath out of him, left him stumbling back. It was his mother.

"No," he spluttered. "No, you're dead too."

She was. He knew as much because his brother had told him - and his brother had never lied, not for the whole year Khiri had known him. His brother had told him their mother was dead, as soon as he could comprehend Tenerjiik words.

"No," Khiri said, straightening up. "You're not her. You're not."

The horns fell away. The shell melted into iridescent scales. The spine arched, the body fell to the ground, the arms rearranged. The tail stretched out. The neck extended. The snout grew. Whiskers bright with sky-blue bioluminescence trailed from over the end of its long jaws, swimming over rows of interlocking teeth. Leathery wings stretched behind the skin-serpent's back, unfolding briefly before being rolled back against the creature's alien body. The creature briefly rose up towards the ceiling - cloaked in flame and smoke, mighty and massive, an imperious thing of inconceivable power. It looked down at them. Its eyes, twenty-four of them, sharpened and settled.

On Khiri.

"Tree-bearer," it purred in a voice that resonated with every part of him. He trembled - and not for fear alone. It sounded like Cenereil. "Have you come to help? Have you come to offer aid? Or-"

It fell down, leaving the entire bridge quaking with the force of its fall.

"-have you come to beg a favour?" it continued, sultry-sweet. "Whisper, hope-bearer. Whisper to me. Do you want this? To see this grand, terrible work ended? To witness the slow death of your people's most embarrassing past?"

Khiri gripped his scimitar so tightly that the black-glass-stone edges of its hilt began to grit edges into the shell of his palm.

"Or do you want?" the reptile leered, becoming something else.

Becoming... her.

That was too much. It assuming her shape - too much. It simply wasn't allowed. Taunt him with his brother, taunt him with his mother, taunt him with whatever - but Cenereil? No. No, that wasn't allowed. Khiri barked a snarl and struck out, bringing the pommel of his sword against the side of not-Cenereil's head. The thing staggered back, bright eyes narrowed beneath a fading veil. It reshaped itself into something else, a slender grey thing with too many legs and a pair of colossal mandible-fangs.

"Back, beast!" Narkasa roared. She charged it, forcing it to retreat a few paces - but it raised itself up, then, and pounced. Khiri tackled Narkasa's leg, bringing her down, and the thing leapt clean over them, carrying with it the smell of spiced incense.

Haeris' spear found one of its front legs and the beast squealed. It scrabbled, making for the entrance, and as Haeris passed to give chase he grabbed Khiri's arm and tugged him back to his feet. Together they ran after the fleeing shapeshifter.

The hunt was on.

They tracked it through the ship. It turned on them again and again, each time wearing a new form, and each time they sent it back on the run with a new bruise, a bloody gouge, a deep cut. Whatever they could manage, dishing out however much damage they could land on the constantly-shifting creature. It laughed at them the whole way, whispering into their ears, its voice emanating from seemingly all directions.

"You wear the wants and needs of mere animals," it remarked, yawning, after they'd finally cornered it - against a corridor leading to the mutants' impromptu prison. The creature wore the form of a Tenerjiik, twice as tall as they and bearing the same alien eyes as the reptile from before. There was no fire in its gaze. No flames raging behind naturally polarized lenses. Just a low twinkling light. Its hungry gaze fell on Khiri once more. "Except for you. You bear your hopeless desire on your sleeve, open for all to see - but only if they look deep enough. Petition me, o Sky-aspirant mi-"

Its head snapped back, a stone hurtling through one of its eyes and out the other side of its skull. It stumbled back, crumbled over, and died. Jirnak lowered his sling, hands shaking.

The ship rumbled. Light down the hallways and through broken doors flickered online.

And the creature stood back up. It was a mess. A half-living thing of blood and bone and gristle, interwoven with red muscle and pale fibre. Too fresh to be a mutant. Too ruined to be a Tenerjiik.

It pointed. "You-" it said through broken teeth.

And Khiri wasn't there anymore, to hear the rest of what it was about to say. His surroundings were bright. Verdant. Full of the chittering of life - a deafening racket of insects and birds and beasts, inflected with the groaning of trees beneath the light summer breeze and the rustle of delicate grasses. A paradise.

A flickering vision of someone else's time. Someone else's world. It soon faded away - and left in its wake was Narkasa, hunched over the broken body of the beast, sword wet with its blood. "It's done," she gasped.

The doorway behind her was ajar.

"'KASA! Khiri cried out. The mutants howled and swarmed behind her, too fast, they were too fast, too close, he couldn't-

The desperate plea, unspoken and unintended, sparked a fire. The very thing she had killed straightened up, a winged serpent once more, and it slithered forth with its scales aflame - the mutants melting around it, the steel hall dripping with molten metal, the ship itself coming apart.

Haeris grabbed Khiri's shoulder - and he tore away, reaching for Narkasa, snagging her wrist and tugging her back. They ran. Ran through the creaking, burning corridors of the vessel, afflicted as one with inconsolable terror. Something thumped behind them, filling the air with acrid stench of burning flesh. Something was chasing, stampeding, limping and hobbling after them. They spilled out of the broken hull from whence they'd entered the awful place, and their pursuer tumbled out onto the sand behind them. It was... some engorged thing of bodies melded together, mutants all. Chains rattled and trailed from the broken manacles still affixed to its ankles. It raised hand that was more bone than anything else, the rest of its skin and meat flayed away by time and-

It disappeared. In fire. The reptile rose from behind the sudden inferno, from the collapsing ship. Its maw fell open - and a river of oily flames spilled out, filling the very sky above with orange and red. Khiri ducked, throwing himself and Narkasa down onto the ground, but not a single drop of molten fury rained down on them. He craned his neck to stare up at the beast from where it hung over them, impossibly huge. The fires painted the reptile in a sickening plethora of otherworldly visages - red here, blue next, purple after. It hurt Khiri's eyes to look at; it was flamboyant beyond reproach.

—-You hated it.—-

I hated how well it lived. It never wanted as we have.

—-It would have kept you that way.—-

Which was why I had to kill it.

The reptile cocked its great monstrous head sideways, gazing down on them. A forked tongue flicked out from between ivory fangs, twisting though the air. "Where will you go from here, o Ashlander mine? Where will you run next?"

Home, maybe. This was beyond him. This was beyond them all. If it would even let them go home.

"So long as you wish it," it purred. "Do you? Do you wish to go home? What do you want?"

It... wanted them to wish?

It wanted them to... want?

Jirnak fired his sling. Uipas threw a spear. Narkasa and Haeris brandished their blades. The reptile blinked at them, waiting for an answer.

For a want.

For a desire.

Khiri, with a fit of cold realization, imagined he understood.

"Wait," he croaked.

The reptile tilted its head the other way.

"I wish for you to stay still."

The reptile stopped moving - except for its lips, which were pulled back in a knowing smile.

"I wish for you to keep us from harm."

"A simple thing," the reptile said, rolling its many, many eyes. "You can have more. Ask it."

"I wish for you to lower your head," Khiri said, growing braver. His resolve hardened; he knew what he had to do.

The reptile's smile faded. All the same, it lowered its head just above the ground. Khiri slowly, cautiously approached it - ignoring Narkasa's cry to "Stop!" - and halted by the side of its skull. He reached out, tentatively, and touched the side of its snout, laying his hand there. Its skin was as smooth as glass and just as cool, despite the heat in the air.

"I wish..." Khiri began. He noticed how the reptile, up close, seemed to shake the moment he uttered those words - trembling with anticipation, with ecstasy.

A prisoner to its own desires - and that was to sate the desires of everything around it.

"I wish..." Khiri said again. A cold feeling, a prickly feeling settled in his stomach. He didn't know what manner of sorcery the creature was made of - but he hated it. Hated it. It unnerved him to no end.

"What do you wish?" the reptile growled.

He leaned in close. "I wish to know your name - if you even have one."

"Breva," it murmured.

Very well, he thought. Slid his hand down, under its jaw. Tipped its head up. "I wish for you to die now and never bother us again."

It stayed still as he pressed his sword into its windpipe, right to the hilt. It stayed still as its throat filled with blood. It stayed still as Khiri laid the rest of its neck open. It stayed still as he tugged his blade back out only to viciously plant it into the beast's skull twice, three times, and then finally as he brought his weapon down on its neck, chipping at its spine. It stayed still just like he'd wished.

It stayed still forevermore.

Narkasa approached him from behind. He knew the sound of her footsteps, even when brushing over soft sand. She grasped his elbow, grasped the arm that held his scimitar. A gentle hold. Cordial. One meant to comfort, to keep him from drowning in savagery. To remind him he was among trusted friends. Kin. "Khiri?"

He panted. His shell was slick with the reptile's blood. It smelled fresh, set his stomach off. What little of it dribbled into his mouth, between his teeth, tasted sweet.

"Khiri? Can you hear me?"

"I hear you," Khiri rasped - staring at the reptile. Staring. Incapable of shaking that stare. He was... He had... He felt... indescribable.

Angry.

Horrified.

Miserable.

Haunted.

Confused.

So confused.

"And you say you're not god-touched," Haeris muttered.

Khiri snapped his head around. He looked at the older Ashlander with shock. Surprise. "I'm not."

"Then tell me," Haeris said, brisk with impatience and not a little fear. He motioned to the reptile. "What's this?"

Khiri looked at it again. Looked at it for a while. He shrugged in the end, a weak motion that convinced no one - let alone himself. "Just a dead animal."

"A dead animal," Uipas repeated incredulously. "A dead... animal?"

"That's all it is now," Khiri continued. "Just a dead thing."

"I'd killed it earlier," Narkasa said dubiously.

"But I wanted it dead," Khiri retorted.

"So did I."

"Not quite so vehemently."

"What difference does that make?"

Khiri indicated to the corpse. "See for yourself."

They saw. They all saw.

He didn't like what they saw.

"Can we go home now?" Olhar weakly asked.

Khiri straightened. Nodded. Rolled his shoulders. "Of course," he said, trying to assume a mask of confidence. He sucked in a deep breath - and looked back down at the reptile for the umpteenth time, looking it over with a critical eye.

Nothing went to waste on Crux-Alta.

The disembodied voice whispering in his ears turned to mocking laughter and mournful keening all at once.

They dragged it all the way home, stopping only to hide from the midday sun. A small flock of razor-birds came, drawn by the scent of blood, but a whistle from Khiri sent them back on their way. That, and all the meat on the carcass they hefted behind them, gradually began to whittle at the shock and fear of the ship and everything they'd seen inside. Khiri didn't expect to ever truly forget about the sight of the dead crew or the mutants, or even the illusions the reptile had forced upon him, but the taste of victory was addictive, something to cherish.

It turned to ash in his mouth the moment he laid eyes on their canyon-home in the distance, and the tower of smoke rising above it.

"Khiri, Narkasa!" Haeris barked. "With me. Olhar, Uipas, Jirnak - remain here. Warn us if you see anyone you don't recognize."

He ran forward. Khiri raced after him, sword at the ready, and Narkasa outpaced them both. She slid to a stop by the dip where the desert fell into the valley, breathing hard. Khiri skidded next to her, looking around, searching.

There were bodies. Most of them he didn't recognize. A couple he did. Eleven overall - eight strangers and three Ashlanders. It looked as if the newcomers had met with the sentries and only just discovered the error of picking a fight with practiced killers. To his relief Khiri noted that the attackers hadn't gotten any farther. The rest of the Ashlanders were alive, armed and crowding just inside, gathered around their fallen.

"What happened?" Haeris hoarsely demanded.

Eyes fell on them. Hiirix pushed out of the crowd, marched towards them with a furious glint in his eye, and he roughly shoved Haeris to the ground. The older Tenerjiik did nothing to stop it.

"Where were you?" Hiirix whispered.

"Hiirix-"

"Where were you?!"

"Following me," Khiri said softly. He shuttered his eyes, bowed his head in shame. "We were hunting. I'd... asked him, all of them, to help me."

Hiirix grabbed one of his horns. Khiri winced as his head was forced back up. He tried not to meet Hiirix's glare - because he feared it would reduce him to tears. Childish, but... the shame. It filled him up, bubbling and boiling, until he felt he was built of nothing but shame. "A hunt?!" Hiirix echoed incredulously. "Why would you-"

"To slay an evil," Khiri blurted. "To slay the beast that pursued Xita!"

"To slay..." Hiirix let go. Stepped back. "You and your accursed dreams, Khiri. You and your accursed ambitions. You and your accursed love!"

"I just wanted to protect-"

"They're dead," Hiirix bitterly spat out. "Terso, Valuniq, Eur-"

"Mother," Narkasa exhaled. She stagged past them, hardly even listening, and fell to her knees by one of the bodies. Euriks' body.

Euriks.

Euriks was... dead.

Khiri looked away.

"They're dead," Hiirix repeated more softly. "While you were gallivanting through the desert to the whims of an alien creature."

"Hiirix-" Haeris started to say.

"No," Hiirix snapped. "No, do not run to his defense. Khiri has to face the consequences of his actions. We have lost family - while he led you out to fight on the basis of a fantasy."

"Who did this?" Khiri asked, subdued.

Hiirix glared at him. "Who do you think?"

"... The soldiers. The city."

"They spoke of a new Alugrive," Beltus added. He stepped up from behind Hiirix, while the others murmured to themselves or tended to the dead. Khiri tried to look for Xita and her children, but they were nowhere to be seen. Beltus continued: "One of the old king's spawn may have survived. Or it could be a relative of his mate. It matters little; whoever it is, they want to see this feud through."

"They must have come through the dead city," Hiirix sighed, "for us. If they're willing to risk that, then they won't stop. We must remain alert. We must remain close by. Haeris-"

"I know," Haeris said, voice thick with grief. "I'll do what I can - erect defenses, teach the spawn how to wield knives, whatever else you feel I'm useful for."

Hiirix didn't reply. Still angry, Khiri supposed. He knew it for certain when Hiirix looked back at him.

"Khiri-"

"This is my fault," Khiri mumbled. He drew in a trembling breath. "I'll fix this."

Khiri turned around and started walking.

Hiirix didn't call after him.

Didn't grab his arm, his shoulder, anything to hold him.

Just... let him go.

Tears welled up in Khiri's six eyes, blurring his vision. He kept walking, though. Kept walking. He wanted to hear that shout, that cry - but it never came. He was already passing Uipas and the brothers when he realized: it never would. Not as Hiirix was, grief-stricken and angry.

"Where are you going?" Jirnak questioned, nervous.

Khiri stopped. Turned to them. "Euriks," he said. "Terso, Valuniq. They're dead."

"They're-"

"City soldiers killed them."

"What are you doing?" Jirnak carefully questioned.

Khiri shrugged. "Putting an end to this?"

"You're going to the city?" Olhar said with a frown. "That's... madness."

Khiri shrugged again. He was helpless to do anything else. "Get that home," he said, exhausted, and motioned to the carcass. "Give them food."

"Wait." Uipas drew his scimitar, lifted one of the reptile wings and opened up its side. He sawed its ribs out of the way, reached inside and pulled out a huge heart dark and ripe with red blood. He held it out.

Khiri stared at it.

"The hunter who makes the kill receives the choicest parts," Uipas intoned, growing exasperated with Khiri's silence. "And you need to fill your belly. The birds won't be able to provide for you alone."

Khiri took it. Weighed it in his hand. "Thank you," he said, lowly.

He set off without another word.

It was on the eve before he tread into the shadow-warped lands that she came to him, heralded by the distant twittering of excited razor-birds.

"Khiri," she said, stopping by the edge of the tiny cave he'd made camp inside.

Khiri looked up at her, exhausted and heartbroken. "Cenereil," he said in a neutral tone.

Her veil rustled. Her head turned. She stared at the heart in his hand. "You didn't..."

"I killed it. I killed the evil."

"No, Khiri." Cenereil shook her head. "You... you killed the very thing we sent to hunt it."

"But…" Khiri looked back at the heart. "It tried to kill me. It tried to kill Narkasa. Haeris. My friends. My family. I killed it because it needed to die."

"... Oh Khiri..."

"Don't," he warned, angry - angry because he needed something to disguise his dismay, his fright.. "Don't 'oh Khiri'. Don't talk like you know better."

Cenereil visibly flinched. "Khiri, you can't exp-"

"No. I can't. You tell me too little. You never give me a chance to grow into something more."

She didn't say anything. Neither of them did. Not for a long time, anyways.

"I'm sorry," Cenereil breathed out, her voice a fine whisper. "I've... been leading you astray. I should have left you be. I was weak, I shouldn't-"

"You should have left me to die?" Khiri questioned sharply.

"NO! No, no no, I would never-"

"Then what?"

"I... shouldn't have left you with the seed. It was too much. Your people weren't ready-"

"Why not?"

"Khiri?"

"Why aren't my people ready?" Khiri challenged. "My Ashlanders are good. Why don't they deserve it?

Cenereil paused. "You really want to know?"

"What did we do wrong now?"

"You abandoned the rest of your people."

"They tried to devour the seed! They tried to destroy our last chance! They didn't deserve it." Khiri huffed. "Not then. Not now. Not all of them."

Cenereil inhaled sharply. "Is that why you're here? Alone? You're... you're going back to them. To hurt them again."

"I've never hurt anyone who didn't deserve it."

"Khiri, I walked in their city wearing another's shape. They're eating each other-"

"And have been for a while," Khiri muttered darkly.

"Because your pack left them!" Cenereil snapped. "Because your pack abandoned them!"

Khiri glared at her. "As you did for us!"

Cenereil staggered as if struck. "As I...? I gave you that second chance!"

"Just as I will for those who live in the Final City. A second chance. A last chance."

"What did they do to deserve punishment in the first place?!" Cenereil shouted. Her anger was a remarkable thing. Nearly as fascinating as the rest of her. Her veil glowed even more brightly than ever before, full of ethereal power.

"Exactly," Khiri crowed, smiling - and not feeling it, feeling only the bitter, sharp sensation of being ripped up inside. "What did we do that your people abandoned us?"

Cenereil trembled. "You've taken my gifts... and you mean to turn them into weapons."

Khiri shrugged. It wasn't hard. "You gifted us only with the means to live. You never provided us with the tools we needed to survive. I'll fix that." He lifted the heart up, taking stock of it. Judging where to start first. "What do you want, Cenereil?"

She approached him, then. Fell to her knees beside where he sat. "Khiri. Give me the heart. This can be fixed. This can be remedied. You're not a murderer; there's a way for you to-"

"You don't know me," Khiri sighed. "You don't. I'll kill and murder and maim. I'll rip and shred and tear and bite and break. That's all I know. That's all I will ever know. I have the right resolve for it - to kill and not feel anything. Now I'm putting it to use."

"Khiri, this isn't the way. You shouldn't do this. You can't. Please."

"Then what?!" Khiri snapped. "What should I do? Smile? Put on a pretty face and say everything is fine? FINE?! We're dying! When we're not dying, we're languishing. We have no HOPE! And you, your people, you stand up there in the sky and you don't help. You watch. You leave us to die - because woe is you, woe is you, oh no, you saw the Old Tenerjiik kill each other, from now on we shouldn't trouble ourselves with the likes of these SAVAGES!"

"Khiri-"

"I'm going to kill. I'm going to kill this new Alugrive and everyone who stands with them. I'm going to kill off city soldiers and the mutants and the shapeshifting beasts, every single one I find. I'm going to wipe every trace of the Mistake from the surface of Crux - and I'm going to remake my people into a force. We will destroy everyone who crosses us! Everyone!" Khiri shot to his feet. "We were given little in the ways of mercy. We will offer none."

"Khiri..."

"No. NO! I'm not satisfied, Cenereil. Not with where and what I am. With my people. I want more - for all of us. I expect more. From them. From your people. And it's not coming, is it? Not unless I force it."

"Khiri, this path you walk-"

"It's called salvation. Not success, not paradise. Salvation. To be saved at the bare minimum. As we should have been so long ago. If your people won't help us - then we'll do it ourselves." Khiri clenched his jaw. "I'll do it myself. Alone. Whatever it takes. If I have to cross over a mountain of bodies, an ocean of war - I'll do it. I'll do it again and again. For my people. For me."

He pulled the heart towards his mouth. Cenereil's hand shot out, obsidian fingers closing around the shell of his forearm.

"Please," she begged. "Please Khiri. Don't. She has you-"

"Who?"

"Xita. The evil. She has you already - but it's not too late to turn back."

Xita. The elderly old woman with too many children to feed. The Tenerjiik on the run. The desperate nomad.

"Who is she?" Khiri barked. "Tell me now."

"Something ancient, something from BEFORE. She is selfish, selfish enough to try and eat all of existence. Please. Don't-"

"No one has me," Khiri declared. He tugged out of Cenereil's grip. "No one. No one, from now on to the end of time. I am no one's beast. I am no one's slave. I belong to no one."

He took a bite, teeth shearing through the succulent flesh of the reptile's heart. Liquid power filled his mouth, suffusing in every part of his body. Khiri feverishly drank of it, feasted on it, bit and bit, ate and ate until it was all gone. At last he turned to Cenereil, lower face wet with red.

"I owe you a life-debt," he said, gently - doing away with the all-consuming rage, at least for a moment's reprieve. "I will never forget that. But my peoples' lives are something else - and the debt I owe this Alugrive is one of death. I have to see this through."

"You have no idea what you've done," Cenereil said weakly.

"I'll drive her from my world in due time, I promise you I will. But this comes first." Khiri stood up. Wings of dark smoke lifted from his shoulderblades, flickering with ghost-flames. "I must end the line of Alugrives, once and for all." He took up his scimitar. The black-glass blade flickered with unnatural fire.

"You are a... a fiend," Cenereil accused. She stumbled back, looking down at her hands. "I... what... what have I done?"

"Enlightened me," Khiri rumbled. His lungs filled with heat. He stepped past her, out of the cave, and faced the dead city - the only thing standing in his way. There were mutants within. Real monsters. Real fiends. "Goodnight, Cenereil."

He left her, marched towards the shadowed metropolis, armed only with a single blade.

Kharad-Tan whistled.

The birds whistled back.

AN: Huge kudos and thanks to Nomad Blue for editing this monstrosity!

I got distracted. Wrote this. I think it's a two-parter. Next one'll come in a while, because my goodness was this taxing. Happy with it, tho.