Bayorn grunted, and the two turned back to him.

“Keep it down, slave, or I’ll take you behind one of those buildings and put you down myself. There’s plenty of your kind to take your place, you know.”

Bayorn bowed his head, and said nothing. How he wanted to reach out and tear the Mendraga’s head from his shoulders.

Suddenly searing pain flashed through Bayorn’s frontal lobe, and he staggered, raising his hands to his head, trying to press them to his temples.

“What’s wrong with him?” Bayorn heard the Mendraga ask, and then the reality in which he existed completely disappeared.

****

He was looking through the eyes of some other Tarsi. Perhaps it was an ancestor, for Bayorn felt a certain sameness in the way the other breathed, moved, in the pattern of his thoughts. Bayorn was privy to the Tarsi’s other senses, too: the smell of the air, the coolness of the laboratory. He tried to move, to speak, but to no avail. He was but an observer of the events that unfolded before him.

It was a Tarsi laboratory, nothing like the sterile boxes that the Eursans worked in. The walls of the room were round and made of some rich wood that seemed to glow from within. The computer panels before him were organic in nature too, a blend of artificial and natural. A Tarsi stood before him, measuring reagents and combining them in a complex array of flasks, tubes, burners, and other trappings of chemistry. Bayorn could feel the Tarsi he currently inhabited grow apprehensive.

“What you are doing is forbidden, Abraxas. You know this,” the Tarsi said.

Abraxas! How handsome he was. He wasn’t a large Tarsi, but his frame was solid and defined. A mane sprang up around his shoulders and head, framing eyes that were large and striking. His face ended in a shapely snout and an expressive mouth.

Abraxas laughed. “The fools on the Council know nothing. So consumed with their Seeder Vessels and their desire to create life on empty planets. What about those of us here? On this planet?”

“The use of Tarsi science to alter our own flesh is wrong.”

“Then why don’t you stop me, Sartruvus? If you are so concerned about the decrees of those old fools.”

“You are my brother, Abraxas. I beseech you, stop what you are doing. It is not too late to turn away from the path you have chosen.”

“But why would I? I have discovered the key to immortality, Sartruvus. No Tarsi ever need know death again.”

“We all must die some day, my brother. It is the way of things. Those who tamper with the great cycle suffer great consequences. Our forefathers discovered that long ago.”

Just then there was a knock at the door.

“Open up!” a voice shouted. Bayorn’s body—Sartruvus’s body—grew cold with fear as Abraxas turned to look at him, his face contorting with rage.

“You have betrayed me! My own brother!”

The door splintered behind them and several armed Tarsi guards rushed into the laboratory. One of them stepped forward and addressed Abraxas.

“Abraxas, you have been summoned to appear before the Council for violating scientific research protocols. You will come with us now, willingly, or by force, if necessary,” the guard said.

Abraxas did not even bother to respond. He merely took a knife from the table before him and plunged it deep into his forearm, drawing a ragged gash down the length of it. Golden blood began to spurt from the gory wound.

“What’s he doing?” one of the guards shouted.

“Abraxas! No!” Sartruvus shouted.

The guards began to move toward Abraxas, who was now reaching for a flask full of viscous black liquid. Before they could reach him, he had poured the liquid into the open wound, and it seemed to pull itself into Abraxas’s flesh, as if acting of its own volition.

Abraxas fell to the floor, convulsing, his body throbbing and contorting as if his inner organs were being violently reorganized. Sartruvus could see panic on his brother’s face.

“What is happening to me?” Abraxas screamed, his legs kicking as if he were trying to run away from the transformation that was now occurring inside his body.

And then he grew still. Sartruvus stepped forward, moving toward his brother’s twisted body.

“Please step away, Sartruvus,” the guard commanded. But Sartruvus did not obey. Bayorn felt all the love Sartruvus possessed for his brother welling within his chest, and he felt the briny wet heat of tears gushing from his eyes, clouding his vision.

Abraxas sprang up from the ground faster than a Tarsi should be able to. He opened his jaws wider than a Tarsi should be able to. And when Sartruvus saw the vile feeding appendage slithering forth from Abraxas’s mouth, he knew that his brother was dead, and something wicked had taken his place.

 

****

The vision was gone, and Bayorn found himself staring down the barrel of an assault rifle. He brought his hands up with a jerk, causing the shackle chain to collide with the bottom of the rifle, simultaneously ripping the rifle from the Mendraga’s hands and breaking the chain. The Mendraga’s mouth gaped, and it was the last expression his face would ever make, for Bayorn immediately hammered the Mendraga on either side of his head with both fists, cracking his skull. Then he opened his hands and placed them on the Mendraga’s head, twisting it until the spine cracked.

“Holy shit!” Saul shouted. “What in the hell just happened?”

“I killed a Mendraga with my bare hands,” Bayorn said.

“I hope that pun was intended,” Saul said.

“What is a pun?”

“Never mind. But that’s not what I was talking about, anyways,” Saul said. “Where did you go? You were talking about someone named Sartruvus, and about Abraxas as well.”

“It is none of your concern,” Bayorn said, eyeing Saul. He did not trust this Eursan, though he did not quite know why. Perhaps it was the way his eyes kept darting around, or the posture of his body. It looked tense, like he was about to break out into a run at any moment. “We should keep moving. Someone will find this Mendraga, and we need to be gone when they arrive.”

“Yeah, great, smart guy, he was the one that was taking us to the slave bear encampment. How do you recommend we get there now?”

“We could follow them,” Bayorn said, pointing at a group of hammerheads. “They seem to know where they’re going.

****

Adum walked down empty streets that were cluttered with trash, far from the pristine grounds that the Fulcrum citizens enjoyed. Behind him, six brutish hammerheads carried the platform through which Representative Ankor Watt had made her presentation to the god-king. Adum hadn’t understood too much of what had been said, but he’d been able to discern that it hadn’t gone the way the representative had wanted.

But this was of little concern to Adum. He was more or less content with his existence. He served his masters, the Corpus Verum, and they were kind to him, providing him with enough food to feed himself, his wife, and his son.

But he did not like the god-king Abraxas. His words filled Adum with distrust, and his soldiers did not treat Adum’s people very well. They often made jokes about them, or tripped them when they were walking by. This made Adum very unhappy. He wished the Corpus Verum would make Abraxas go away, but for some reason it seemed the Corpus Verum needed his help. They had made some sort of bargain with him, and he had twisted it. And now he would not leave.

Adum and the other hammerheads made their way to the street level entrance of the place where the Corpus Verum slept, underneath the great palace where Abraxas held court. As they walked, Adum took note of a man watching them. The man had an unusually large Tarsi in tow, and he seemed to be watching them as well. But Adum did not know what to make of this odd couple, so he pushed them out of his mind and continued with his task.