"What do I do?" he called. Chainer was lighter and quicker through the thick brush, and Kamahl was falling behind.

"Just back me up," Chainer called. He slowed his pace. "I'll try to… do my thing. You make sure nothing sneaks up behind me. If I freeze up, snap me out of it. If the thing takes a bite out of me, kill it."

Kamahl nodded. They came to the edge of a clearing, and he drew his sword. Chainer was already down on one knee, peering out into the sheltered glade. A huge, elephantine creature rumbled along, seemingly lost and out of its element. When it came upon a large enough tree, it reared up and came down hard with all of its weight, snapping the tree off at the base and crushing the loose trunk into a mass of dirt and splinters.

"It's a gargadon," Chainer whispered. "A young male."

Kamahl shook his head. "It can't be a gargadon this close to the edge of the woods. They need more open space and a different kind of tree to eat."

"All I know is," Chainer said, "I'm getting a gargadon." He unhooked the censer from his vest.

"Tell me you aren't going to use that thing out here."

"Shhhh. It's important." As he spoke, he loaded and lit the censer. "Just back me up, okay? You ready?"

"Always."

Chainer stepped out into the glade. The gargadon was thirty yards upwind with its back to Chainer, so he was able to get close before it smelled his smoke.

When it turned and trumpeted, Chainer finally realized how truly big it was. A single leg was taller and wider than Chainer's whole body. It pawed the ground with one of those legs and trumpeted again, and the ground shook. It wasn't afraid of Chainer in the least, but it was going to warn him to keep clear.

This was the moment that Chainer had been dreading. He knew that he was supposed to master the creature, but it was too big for him to fight, and he knew he wasn't supposed to create any help. Kamahl might be able to blow a hole in its head with one of his axes, but that did nothing for Chainer's shikar.

He had brought his own dementia monsters to heel with a tight collar and a magical slap on the nose. How was he supposed to collar and slap something that could crush him and not notice? Chainer needed an answer soon because the gargadon was clearly not happy to share its space.

"What's wrong?" Kamahl called. "Why aren't you zapping it?

Chainer continued to spin his censer and stare directly into the gargadon's huge eyes. "Zapping it with what?"

"I don't know. It's your ritual."

"I'm getting an idea now. Just shut up and support me." The gargadon pawed the ground again and stomped gently with both front feet. Chainer was shaken almost to his knees, but he thought he might have the answer.

His dementia monsters were only alive in his mind, and Chainer's mind was his place of power. As long as he controlled his fear, he was the ultimate lord and master of his own dementia space. The gargadon had its own life outside of Chainer's, however, and it didn't know that he was its master. It needed to be shown that fact, it needed to be taught. The best way for Chainer to teach that lesson and gain the kind of control he needed was to take the gargadon out of this world and transplant it into his own.

The gargadon was preparing to charge. "Kamahl," Chainer said. "I need a big explosion, behind the gargadon. Drive it toward me."

"Say when."

Chainer felt a shudder start in the base of his spine and work all the way up to his skull. When his vision cleared, he was standing on a field of black sand under a hole in the sky, facing the exact same gargadon he was facing in Krosan. It had become so easy to take that first step, and Chainer silently cursed the fact that Skel-lum was not beside him to see this.

"When," he said. Kamahl let the axe fly, and the lowest-hanging branches of the tree behind the gargadon erupted into flames and thunder. The massive creature was far too heavy to spring, but it reared and charged. It bore down on Chainer, who continued to spin his censer in its widest arc yet, his eyes focused beyond the canopy overhead.

The gargadon charged into range of Chainer's censer. On its next revolution the smoking cage made contact with the gargadon's massive head, and there was a flash of black light and an implosion so strong it sucked the leaves off the trees nearby.

"Fiers's teeth!" Kamahl ran to Chainer's side. "What just happened? That thing was going to crush you like a bug, but it… ran into you."

Chainer kept his back to Kamahl and stared at his own smoking hands. The censer lay in the tall grass, the stalks around it smoldering. "If it ran into me, I'd be a smear." Chainer's voice sounded odd to his own ears, deeper and more hollow, as if he were speaking through a tube.

"No," Kamahl said. "I mean it ran into you, like a sword goes into a scabbard. It was bigger than you, but then you were bigger than it, and… Fiers's teeth."

Chainer had turned in the middle of Kamahl's sentence, and his friend immediately stopped talking. "What's wrong?" Chainer asked in his hollow voice.

"Your eyes," Kamahl said. "They're black." "Everybody's eyes are black, you-"

Kamahl held his sword horizontally in front of Chainer's face, so Chainer could see his own eyes reflected in the flat of the blade. "Your eyes are black, Chainer. Empty holes." Chainer stared at his reflection while he ran a finger around his eyebrows and cheekbones. His eyes were deep, solid black, like the void of a bottomless pit. Chainer laughed, and the sound was more pleasant arid musical than he had ever noticed before.

"I just swallowed a gargadon whole." Chainer tore his gaze away from the blade and looked at Kamahl. "It could take a while to digest."

Kamahl sheathed his sword. "I don't like it. Is this going to happen every time you catch something?"

Chainer held his metal hand in front of his face, concentrated, and slowly curled the hand into a fist. When he looked up again, his eyes were normal.

"Not if I learn to control it." Chainer lowered his hand and looked around the empty glen, breathing deeply and evenly. Kamahl nudged him.

"You okay?"

"I feel great." Chainer took one last deep breath, then nudged Kamahl back. "Come on. If there's gargadons here, imagine what we're going to find in the really deep woods."

"I can't," Kamahl said. "That's sort of what worries me."

The second day of hunting started with scorpions in their bedrolls. Chainer took his into dementia space, and Kamahl crushed his beneath a heavy boot. The further they went into the Krosan forest, the more creatures they encountered. The more creatures they encountered, the more they captured.

Chainer picked up a coal-bellied razorback near a rocky ridge, and then killed a second for its meat. Kamahl cooked his share immediately. In a marshy riverbed, Chainer took on a huge snapping turtle, a small, blue, poisonous frog, and a six-foot freshwater alligator. A deadfall yielded a sharp-clawed badger, a three-foot beetle that emitted clouds of choking spray, and a two-hundred-pound wildcat. But it was the snakes that interested Chainer most.

This section of Otaria was thick with both venom hunters and constrictors-from the small but lethal jade adder to the medium-sized razorback rattler to the enormous rock python that could swallow a man whole. Chainer's face lit up every time he saw one, and he abandoned less interesting prey the moment he spotted a forked tongue. When Kamahl asked him about it, Chainer said he admired their speed and their grace, their aim and their muscular control. He felt some kind of kinship for the sleek reptiles, and Kamahl had seen Chainer fight often enough to know that it wasn't just a flight of fancy. Like the snakes, Chainer often waited until his prey was within range, then struck so quickly that the contest was over before his victim realized it had begun.