‘Grandfather,’ Gariath asked, barely louder than a whisper, ‘how long have you been awake?’

‘For … quite some … no! No!You won’t send me away like that!’

This time, when Gariath noticed the elder beside him again, he was defined, flesh full and red, eyes hard and black. The elder gestured farther down the river with his chin.

‘Up ahead.’

‘What?’

Gariath glanced up, saw nothing through the beams of light. When he looked back to his side, the water stirred with a ripple and nothing more. The grandfather was up ahead, trudging through the river, vanishing behind each beam of light.

‘ What’s ahead?’

‘A reason, Wisest, if you would follow … and see.’

Gariath followed, without particularly knowing why, save for the urge to keep the elder in sight, to keep him from fading behind the walls of sun. With each step he took, his nostrils filled with strange scents, not unfamiliar to him. The chalky odour of bone was prevalent, though that didn’t tell Gariath much; he doubted that he could go anywhere on the island without that particular stink.

Thus, he was not particularly surprised when he spied the skeleton, its great white foot looming out of sunlight. It was titanic, the river humbly winding its way beneath the dead creature, flowing with such a soft trickle to suggest it was afraid the bleached behemoth might stir and rise at any moment.

Gariath found that not particularly hard to believe as he stalked alongside it, ducking beneath its massive splayed leg, winding between its shattered ribs, approaching the great, fishlike skull.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the massive hole punched through its head, a jagged rent far wider than the smooth round sockets that had been the creature’s eyes. Its bones bore similar injuries: cracks in the ribs, gashes in the femur, the left forearm bent backward behind a spine that crested to challenge the height of the ravine as the right one reached forward.

Towards what, though?

The great dead thing, when it had been slightly greater and not so dead, had stopped with its arm extended, skeletal fingers withered in such a way to suggest that it had reached for something and failed to seize it.

He stared back down the ravine, noting the cut of the rock: too rough to be wrought by careful tools and delicate chiselling, too smooth to have been made by any natural spirit. Rather, it was haphazardly hewn, as if by accident, as though some great thing had fallen …

And was dragged, he thought, looking back to the cracked skull, or dragged itself through until …

‘This land is not our land. Not anymore.’

Gariath looked up and saw the elder crouched upon the fishlike skull, staring at the rent in the bone intently.

‘This island is a cairn.’

‘Those dark stains upon the rock,’ Gariath said. ‘They are-’

‘Blood,’ the elder answered. ‘Flesh, spilling out, sloughing off, tainting the earth as this thing’s screams tainted the air when it dragged itself away from the weapons that had shattered its legs and broken its back.’

Gariath looked to the gaping jaws, the rows upon rows of serrated teeth, the shadows cast in the expanse of its fleshless maw.

‘What did it scream?’

‘Same thing all children scream for … its mother and father.’

He did not ask if they had come to save their titanic offspring, did not even want to think what kind of creatures could have sired something akin to this tremendous demon. He knew he should have looked away, then, away from the mouth that was suddenly so pitiably silent, away from the eyes that he could see vast, empty and straining to find the liquid to brim with tears. He tried to look away, forced his stare to the earth.

But it was impossible. Impossible not to hear the cries of two voices moaning for their mother. Impossible not to wonder if they had died screaming for their father. Impossible not to see their eyes, so wide, so vacant, their breath vanished in the rain. Impossible not to-

‘ No.’

His fist followed his snarl, striking against the skull and finding an unyielding, merciful pain that ripped through his mind, bathing vision and voice in endless ringing red.

‘Why this, Grandfather?’ he asked. ‘Why show me?’

‘I have heard it said,’ the elder replied coldly, ‘that all life is connected.’ His laugh was short, unpleasant. ‘Stupidity. From mouths that repeated it over and over so that no one may speak long enough to point out their stupidity.’ He crawled across the skull, staring down into the skull. ‘It’s deathsthat are connected, Wisest. Never forget that. One life taken is another one fading, one life gone and another one vanishes because of its absence. Each one more horrible, more senseless than the last.’

‘I don’t understand, Grandfather.’

‘You do, you’re just too stupid to realise it, too scared to remember it.’ He stared down at the dragonman, eyes hard, voice harder. ‘Your sons, Wisest.’

Gariath’s eyes went wide, his hands clenched into fists.

‘Don’t.’

‘They died, horribly.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Senselessly.’

‘ Grandfather …’

‘And you would so willingly follow them. A senseless, pointless, worthlessdeath.’

No reply came this time but a roar incomprehensible of everything but the anger and pain melded together behind it. Gariath flung himself at the skeleton, scaling up the ribs, pulling himself onto the spine and leaping, vertebra over giant vertebra, toward the skull.

The grandfather regarded him quietly before he tilted just slightly to his left and collapsed into the rent, disappearing into shadow.

‘You brought me here to mock me? Them?’ Gariath roared, approaching the cavernous hole. ‘To show me this monument of death?’

‘A monument, yes,’ the grandfather’s voice echoed from inside, ‘of death, yes … but whose, Wisest?’

‘Yours …’ Gariath snarled, leaning over and into the hole. ‘ AGAIN!’

The elder gave no reply and Gariath did not demand one, did not have the sense to as he was struck suddenly, by the faintest, lingering memory of a scent, but recoiled as though struck by a fist. He reeled back, blinking wildly, before thrusting his face back down below and inhaling deeply, choking back the foul staleness within to filter and find that scent, that odiferous candle that refused to extinguish itself in the dark.

‘Rivers …’ he whispered.

‘Rocks …’ the elder replied.

‘A Rhegadied here,’ he gasped.

He felt the rent beneath his grip, felt the roughness of it. This was no clean blow, no gentle tap that had caved in the beast’s skull. The gash was brutal, messy, cracked unevenly and laden with jagged ridges and deep, furrowed marks.

Claw marks, he recognised. Bite marks.

‘A Rhegafought here.’ He stared into the blackness. ‘Who, Grandfather? Who was it?’

‘Connected,’ the elder murmured back, ‘all connected.’

‘Grandfather, tell me!’

‘You will know, Wisest … I tried so hard that you wouldn’t, but … you will …’

A sigh rose up from the darkness, the elder’s voice growing softer upon it.

‘And the answer won’t make you happy …’

‘Grandfather.’

‘Because at the end of a Rhega’s life … there is nothing.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘All you are missing, Wisest … is darkness and quiet.’

‘Grandfather.’

Silence.

‘ GRANDFATHER!’

Darkness.

His own echo returned to him, ringing out through the skull and reverberating into the forest. It seemed to take the scent with it, the smell dissipating in his nostrils as the sound faded, dying with every whispered repetition as it slipped into trees that had suddenly gone quiet, leaving him alone.

Again.

That thought became an echo of its own, spiralling inward and growing heavier on his heart with every repetition.