Good enough.

He clenched, clawed, heard her gurgle as her blood seeped out over his palms, blending with his own. He refused to release her as she groped at him with one hand, dropped her massive, suddenly unwieldy weapon to punch at him with the other. Blows rained upon his head, one after the other. He felt the agony, felt his skull want to crack, but refused to succumb to either.

Instead, he swung his body to the side and she followed, like a purple boulder. Releasing, he sent her crashing into the ridge. The earth cracked before she did, but she stood there, bleeding from nose and neck, murder flashing in her eyes, breath coming hot and hateful from between jagged teeth.

‘That’s it,’ she snarled, ‘that’s it. This is how it’s going to happen. This is how it hasto happen. From nothing, to nothing.’

‘And no one will remember you,’ he uttered. ‘I won’t leave enough of you for it.’

‘Fine, that’s just fine,’ she gasped. Her hand slipped behind her belt. ‘Good to know you’ve got a plan. Thinking ahead, grabbing your pieces of dirt …’ Her hand whipped out, sent the green vial spinning toward him. ‘ STUPID!’

He had smelled it before she pulled it out, recognised it. Poison, the same that had felled Abysmyths, ate their flesh like fire ate paper. He wasn’t sure if it worked similarly on things not demonic, but he was hardly willing to see for curiosity’s sake.

He darted aside; the vial smashed against the rock and he felt a few sputtering instances of pain as droplets spat out and licked his back. His flesh burned; the scent of it sizzling filled his nostrils. It hurt, he admitted as he clenched his teeth, a lot.

‘ QAI ZHOTH!’

So did the spinning blade that followed Dech’s screech. He remembered this weapon, the curved knife with its cruel, jagged edge. And it certainly remembered him, it seemed, as it sank into his shoulder and bit deeply, metal prongs slaking themselves on his blood. Pain racked him, coursing through his body in such excessive quantity that it screamed to be shared.

‘Gnaw, bite, gnash,’ Dech snarled as she took off charging toward him. ‘ AKH ZEKH LAKH!’

He met her, muscle for muscle, fury for fury. They gripped each other about each other’s throats, turning, twisting, staggering as they fought for control for their respective tracheas. Gariath slipped his hands up, releasing her throat, seizing her by the temples. Her smile was momentary, lasting only as long as it took him to slip his clawed thumbs into her eyes and push.

He had heard her scream in fury and hatred, but the sound of her pain was enough to make him step away momentarily. It lasted only as long as it took her to lash out blindly, searching for him, snarling for him. He roared in reply, seizing her by the wrist, spinning her about and twisting it behind her back. His limbs worked in furious conjunction, his spare hand grabbing her by her hair, his free foot slamming onto her back, driving her to her knees, then her belly.

There his foot remained, wedged firmly between her shoulder blades as he narrowed his eyes, tightened his grip on her wild white spikes of hair and pulled.

Stubborn as the rest of her, it came slowly, hair clinging to her with such vindictiveness that scarcely any came off in his hand. But he did not stop pulling, as her neck craned. He did not stop pulling, as she screamed in panic and beat at his ankle in bloody blindness. He did not stop pulling, as he heard her flesh begin to rip.

By the time he stared down at a glistening red pate, a mop of crimson and white clenched in his claw, it seemed pointless to keep going.

He tossed it aside, taking only enough time to see that she had stopped moving, before turning away and looking back over the cliff. The other side wasn’t too far, he saw, and the scent of the creatures, their dead leaves and dry rivers, was still there, despite the blood seeping into his nostrils. He could keep going downriver, find a fallen tree or a narrow gap, and from there he could-

‘ QAI ZHOTH!’

She struck him from behind, wrapping arms about his torso. Blind and scalped, nothing remained of her save arms and feet, the latter of which pumped furiously, edging him towards the cliff.

‘Nothing else, nothing else,’ she babbled behind him as he lashed out, seeking to dislodge her with an elbow, ‘there is nothing else but this.’

They staggered toward the edge, the riverbed and its sharp rocks waiting just below a surface of deceptively pristine blue. Gariath had no fear for that, no mind to think of anything but his enemy, thick in his nostrils, heavy on his back. He reached behind him as they tumbled over, seizing her blood-slick pate and twisting, tail lashing, wings flapping.

They plummeted, a brief struggle in the air, her shrieking, him roaring, until they finally righted themselves. She, the heavier in her iron skin. He, on top of her like a red anvil, hands wrapped about her face.

They hit the water in an eruption of red and white froth. Gariath, too, was plunged into blindness like his foe. But the battle was his, he knew, as she lay unmoving beneath him.

When the water settled and she lay beneath the water, skull neatly bisected like a rock, it was unnecessary to do more than rise, snort and stagger away.

‘Any happier now, Wisest?’ The grandfather was there, seated on the rocks jutting from the river. ‘Find a good reason to keep going?’

‘No thanks to you,’ Gariath snorted. ‘You didn’t tell me about them.’

‘Who?’

‘The creatures, the green things. They called me Rhega.’

‘You have not been called that before?’

‘Not by anything that looks like me.’

‘You said they were green, not red.’

‘Closer than pink,’ he growled. ‘Tell me, then, Grandfather, who are they?’

‘They are … lost, Wisest,’ Grandfather replied. ‘They will lead you to nothing.’

Gariath regarded the spirit for a moment. His eyes narrowed as he saw something in him. No, Gariath thought, it was at this moment that he saw throughhim. The spirit waxed, his shape trembling, becoming hazy as the sunlight poured through him. In this light, there was nothing to Grandfather, nothing hard, nothing blooded, nothing fleshy.

And Gariath turned his back to the spirit, stalking down the river.

‘Where do you go, Wisest?’ Grandfather called after him.

‘To nothing,’ he replied.

‘If he asks for water, don’t give him any,’ the young man posing as a guard said, waving his key ring like a symbol of authority. ‘And I wouldn’t look at him directly, if I were you.’ He sneered. ‘It’s a mess.’

Bralston nodded briefly as the young man cracked open the reinforced door to the converted warehouse room that served as a prison. It opened into shadow, which Bralston stepped into.

The door swung shut behind him, the cramped quarters swallowing the echo. He turned on his heel and walked deeper, taking a moment to scratch the corner of his eye as he removed his hat. The room had likely been storage for the least important objects, possibly the least important members of society, if the smell was any suggestion. The walls were as tall and wide as two men, the only source of light a dim beam seeping in from a grated hole above. Dust swirled within it, flakes clawing over each other in a futile bid to escape.

Against the pervasive despair, the figure huddled pitifully against the wall was scarcely noticeable.

Bralston said nothing, at first, content only to observe. Taking the man in — at least, he had been toldit was a man — was difficult, for the sheer commitment with which he pressed himself against the wall.

The Librarian could make out his features: scraggly beard that had once been kempt, a broad frame used to standing tall now railing against its owner’s determination to hunch, a single, gleaming eye cast down at the floor, heavy-lidded, unblinking.