Hazahnahkah found himself once again suppressing questions. Bankanzaku led him to the other side of the cave, towards where a perfectly flat cliff fell into a chasm. They weren’t just high up. They were above everything. They were on the monolith.

  Many chasms surrounded it, cascading into the distance like stone steps towards and away from the grey sun. The realm felt so different from high up. One could drink the air. One could also drown in it.

  “Why did you take us back towards Knife?” Hazahnahkah asked. “I cannot fight her as I am.”

  “Knife wouldn’t dare attack us on the monolith. Especially with Yurreth so close by.”

  “How do you know?”

  “She was traveling with you… and I smell her… countless smells in human shape… countless humans inside one. I am disappointed in you, Sword.”

  “Yurreth was not traveling with us. I don’t even know what she looks like.”

  Bankanzaku stopped, turned, and furrowed his tiger eyes. “Get on my back, now.”

  “Nonsense—”

  Before Hazahnahkah could resist, the tiger bowed his head and scooped him onto his back. The world whirled. Old structures raced around them: statues, gates, fountains, bridges, gazebos. This wasn’t a monolith. This was a garden. It didn’t seem like a particularly dangerous place to the Sword.

  “Why are you so scared?”

  “Yurreth was traveling with you.”

  “Even if she was, why does that matter now?”

  “Because that means she wants something. She tricked me into this place the same way. I thought she was a normal woman, another fool, seeking marriage for all the wrong reasons—now I am her prisoner. I have been trying to escape for three years.”

  Hazahnahkah couldn’t say he didn’t deserve that. “And she seeks to do the same to me?”

  “I’m sure she already has... Black hair, brimming skin, a heartbeat like ceaseless rain.”

  But that was…

  Before Hazahnahkah could even shout at Bankanzaku to turn back, Nazaki stepped in their way. He was holding Knife. Bankanzaku raked his talons against the earth and swerved narrowly out of the way. Nazaki kicked him. The crunching of ribs was an unmistakable sound. The tiger cried as he was found against a garden wall. The boy was clearly not himself. Long dark lines bled from his eyes and down his pulsing skin, they, like the sable walls of the monolith, sucked up the light perfectly—a reflection of the world in pitch black.

  Knife’s voice then came through him.

  “Third Terror.”

  Bankanzaku was teleported to the boy’s feet. He grabbed Lahahm and tried to wretch the spear free from the beast. He grunted, and failed. There was a momentary vibrational response from Lahahm, but Bankanzaku’s flesh smothered anything sensical out of it.

  “Fucking halberd,” Knife said.

  Hazahnahkah had rolled into a dry fountain. He lurched up and threw his blade straight through Nazaki. “KNIFE!”

  Bankanzaku whipped around, his tail bludgeoning the side of Nazaki’s head like a flail to wood. Flesh and bone spilled into the air. The boy stumbled forward, but did not react. Knife truly was in possession of him—in possession of Hazahnahkah’s First Terror—probably all of them. It was unbelievable. A Ramble that could steal other Rambles. Everything that happened during the Seasonal until now made sense.

  In a pathetic display, Bankanzaku tried, and failed, to run up a wall. Nazaki grabbed him by the tail and hurled him through Hazahnahkah. It took everything the Sword had to prevent Hwayoung’s bones from being broken. Without his Terrors, he had to wait this out and stay safe. This wasn’t his body he was fighting with. Hazahnahkah tumbled free of the tiger, and ran into the darkness of the garden’s tunnels. He sprinted down the hall, the steps, and a crossway of bridges, he took a random left. Anything to throw off Knife. Even if she had his Third Terror and could teleport, she needed to know where they were.

  Nazaki’s voice echoed after them, although it spoke chillingly, like Knife’s.

  “Hwayoung, don’t you want to go home together?”

  “I do!”

  Hazahnahkah covered his mouth. That was Hwayoung’s voice that slipped out of him, and she had given away their location. He dashed back, hoping the rebounding echo made them seem farther than they were. Maybe he could fake Knife out, make her second guess their location, at least long enough for Bankanzaku to come. Hazahnahkah’s mind raced. The blade, his body, now seemed so frail and broken. Nazaki leapt down the stairs, but somehow didn’t see them. But that was enough to stall Hwayoung's steps. She was resisting Hazahnahkah, fighting him. She was trying to speak in his name.

  Or maybe it was Hazahnahkah who had been trying to speak in hers.

  This was all his fault. His First Terror. He should have never used it. Not when he was with Ysan, and not when he was here. He had no right to, and perhaps this would be his punishment, but the world had no right to punish Hwayoung with him.

  “Soon Yurreth will be here, and then there will be no hope. We all have a mission, and if we can fulfill it, Osayn will be safe. Make Hazahnahkah open the gates to Black Garden, then we will be free.”

  Black Garden? Hwayoung tried to ask, although Hazahnahkah suppressed her, running the opposite way. Hazahnahkah smacked into a wall, his brain rocked, and when he opened his eyes, nothing was there. He put his hands up against the hallway, feeling his way across a maze upon a maze. There’s nothing here. It was as if false hallways had been painted upon actual walls. Reality was indistinguishable from unreality. Although he could see, he was blind, wandering against force fields at best. The garden was not like this before. This was something Knife was doing.

  Hwayoung should have known better than to talk to Knife right now, and for all they knew, Yurreth was also being manipulated by her dreams. For all they knew, anyone they didn’t know personally had been slandered so badly by Knife that they weren’t even real. Maybe that was what happened to Hazahnahkah, and his blood seethed at the thought. He boiled all over, he almost turned back towards Knife, teeth clenched like a bear trap.

  Then, it opened.

  “What’s Black Garden?” Hwayoung asked.

  Black onyx flashed, then sharp stabbing, white hot pain. Hazahnahkah instinctively reached for his eye as fluid released from its socket. Nerves misfired. Half the room seemed darker. Hwayoung seemed to take over her own body from the sheer force of agony, and Hazahnahkah against his current instinct, bound Nazaki’s arms with his own. It was Hwayoung’s two arms against Nazaki’s one. They struggled for a moment, but there was no match between them. Even without using a Ramble, Nazaki was naturally far stronger.

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  Knife’s voice returned.

  “Libel.”

  Reality melted around them in blurry colored curtains…. Some kind… of illusion… a lie… they were in the garden… but not where Hazahnahkah had thought. The walls, the hallways, the desiccated fountains. Suddenly, they were somewhere else. This wasn’t teleportation. Hazahnahkah knew at once Knife had quite literally painted over reality. He evaluated why she would terminate her hallucinatory spell now.

  The chamber was circular—vast—ringed by broken colonnades and blind archways. At its center was a slot. An opening.

  Perfect for a sword.

  And then it all clicked. Knife needed Hazahnahkah alive. She didn’t care about Hwayoung. Everything about this “One True Hazahnahkah” may have been quite real, and all the gorges outside? They were Knife’s poor attempts at trying to scrape over this place, to peel off this garden—this tower—like a poorly clotted scab upon the continent. Knife wanted whatever was beyond this garden, and if she would accept that as reparation for what little harm Hazahnahkah had caused her… then so be it.

  In one swift final breath, Hazahnahkah pushed himself away and threw his body, his blade, into the opening before Knife could take Hwayoung’s other eye.

  Take anything, take my Terrors, take my name, take anything but the rest of this girl’s sight.

  The center of the chamber transformed before them. Its four quadrants melted away, leaving a gate with a cross-shaped entryway where Hazahnahkah sat. So the rumors were true to some degree. He was a key after all. But to what?

  Knife was still staring at Hazahnahkah through Nazaki’s eyes. Black lines along his skin fled back into her blade like little worms. “You’re pathetic, disgusting, you have no pride as an Incarnate.”

  Hazahnahkah gasped, unsure of what more he could possibly do. “What?”

  “You give up so easily so long as it’s in everyone’s benefit. It makes me sick. You have no spine. You’re soft.”

  “What more do you want from me?”

  “To feel what I feel! To fight back!” Knife snapped, a flash of her expression then bursting from Nazaki’s face, filled with deep grief, and an even deeper hatred, as the onyx black blade gleamed against the garden light. “Fighting shows me you care! So fight, weak sword!”

  A bolt hissed by Nazaki’s ear, then he sidestepped the swing of a hammer. Dalagun elbowed the boy on the side of his missing arm, cracking against his skull. This was not enough to faze Nazaki. He hamstrung the man and caught a second bolt. Knife whispered through him.

  “Maim.”

  A man burst into flames. It was Zalaster. His screams filled the chamber as his charred body fell to the cold stone floor in moments. It melted in its awful silence… into several gallons of water and a completely separate set of soaked clothes.

  The clone seemed to be the combination of several Rambles, including Zalaster’s. His Ramble to create space that masked noise had distorted Hazahnahkah’s perception of the copy. When this change happened wasn’t clear—the sword hadn’t been paying close attention to him and he must have slipped off with the help of whoever had aided in this effort with their Rambles… it was a cheap trick however, and Hazahnahkah doubted it would fool him—or Knife—again.

  “That was sloppy, Vrast,” Zalaster’s voice resounded. “I expected better.”

  A quick shot zipped around the corner—a line of light—then another—and another. They came with daunting speed, zooming in on Nazaki like burning wasps… but they all sparkled uselessly. Knife’s usage of Hazahnahkah’s Third Terror returned all of them to dust. She tried to track him, but couldn’t. They made no sound, and they came from every direction.

  Nazaki began thrusting Knife at random, and scarlet bursts rippled across the chamber—to no avail. It was a massive place, and none of Hazahnahkah’s Terrors were good at picking people out without destroying everything in the process. Knife wasn’t good at it either, it seemed. Her “maiming” of the place was rather ineffective at making insects scuttle out, much less the young Patriarch. Considering all the chasms, gorges, and ravines the Rapscallion had raped the land surrounding the monolith with, she had no way to destroy whatever formed these walls.

  Zalaster was a genius!

  Nazaki in one swift motion crippled Dalagun, breaking through the marble shield of his Ramble as he hissed aimlessly towards the ceiling. It was Knife’s words but his voice. “Back off or I neuter him.”

  Zalaster scoffed. “They say that extends the life of a man… He killed me once anyway.”

  “Inbred scum!” Dalagun wailed. “I should have killed you again!”

  Nazaki jerked Knife, Dalagun resisted. Dalagun’s carrying bag shifted behind them. Large enough for a newborn horse, and twice as large for a human. Galfarys! The man crept out, and grabbed Hazahnahkah from his slot, and the rest of his movement was as fluid as seven dancers on a stage. He culled through Nazaki’s lowered defenses, taking the boy by surprise as he skillfully nipped a nerve. Nazaki’s arm locked up, his fingers unlatched like a clam, and the onyx pearl, Knife, flew free across the floor. She screamed in hideous rage. It was like a crying infant. Nothing she said made any sense. And she seemed to have zero intention of making any of it easier to understand. Without a wielder, she seemed rather useless. Hazahnahkah heard his name many times, and understood only that.

  Nazaki made a pathetic scramble for her, even after everything she had done, and Glafarys barred the boy with his blade. “No more.”

  They had done it.

  They won.

  “That’s right,” Maria said. “No more.” She looked at the woman beside her. “Excellent work Ysan, thank you for leading me here.”

  Ysan nodded. Freyja Altabella led squads and hordes of footsoldiers behind her. There were at least several different national gonfalons.

  How long had Yurreth’s nations been waiting there?

  Suddenly, there was this putrid stench. It was a city public toilet soup of piss and onion, congealing on the tongue. Hazahnahkah’s face folded into itself. He was sensitive to smells as a sword, but never like this. Maria reeked. And it was sweet. Sickeningly sweet. Like a field of flowers growing off an even larger field of corpses. Why did she smell like this now? Hazahnahkah knew a possible answer, but still could not come to terms with it.

  Almost as if trying to convince him one last time, Bankanzaku lurched out from the shadow, his jaws snapping an inch away from the woman’s face, just as they had the first time they had been attacked by the white tiger. It had been him before, and it was him now. That’s why he had attacked them to begin with. He had never been trying to kill them, he had been trying to kill Yurreth.

  The tiger was speared with a long thin ivory body part that had jutted out suddenly from Yurreth’s neck. A bone. The very same kind of bones, and fluid, and body parts they found littering the cesspool aftermath they had followed to Placenta. She had gone back to find them, she had been with them the whole time. The woman smashed Bankanzaku through a wall with horrendous strength, then lifted her hand. It cracked, pus leaked out, and fungus bubbled up from every crevice in the room. Death encircled them.

  They were in great danger, and Ysan had doomed them all.

  Health (source of vitality and abilities): 400,000,000,000

  Energy (source of stamina and abilities): 600,000,000,000

  Agility (speed of actions): 210,000

  Regeneration (rate of recovery per hour for Health and Energy): 800,000,000,000

  Tenacity (resistance to unwanted effects): 100,000,000

  Strength (physical or mental reality manipulation potency): 800,000,000

  Fleshwielding Ramble: Yurreth can manipulate her own flesh.

  Biochemical Revelation: Yurreth can perfectly and physically manipulate anything stored within her.

  Hand of Pleasure: Yurreth can reverse any injury to a willing biological organism at the cost of the target’s own Energy.

  Hand of Pain: Yurreth can sacrifice her own Health to deal an equal amount of damage to anything within 50 feet of her.

  Subsume: Yurreth absorbs a target organism or object into herself, making them [Subsumed]. Yurreth gains the Health, Energy, Regeneration, Tenacity, and Strength of those she has killed through [Hormone Amplification]. If she does not kill them, she can revive them at the cost of her own Health. Some organisms are immune to [Subsume].

  Yurrethflesh: Damage dealt to Yurreth scatters her flesh. Eating this flesh makes one afflicted with [Subsumed].

  Bloodbeast: Health stolen from Yurreth deals additional damage instead. Yurreth can create objects from her blood or those afflicted with [Subsumed].

  Woman Painted White: Those attracted to females deal -50% damage to Yurreth. Those attracted to males take +50% damage from Yurreth. Those who are not attracted to either are immune from this ability. Those who are [Subsumed] are not affected by this ability.

  Plaguebringer: Yurreth can create any kind of disease from anyone who is [Subsumed].

  Contagion Source: Immune to ailments or conditions that Yurreth understands. Anything she has [Subsumed] is immediately understood by her.

  Flesh Exchange: Upon death, Yurreth may trade the life of anyone she has [Subsumed] to save her own. Furthermore, she may use the abilities and flesh of anyone who is afflicted with [Subsumed] and within a hundred mile radius of her.

  Hormone Amplification: Yurreth is currently pooling 400,000,000,000 Health, Energy, Regeneration, Tenacity, and Strength from an unknown amount of total Attributes granted by [Biochemical Revelation].