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“There was a tree here…”

Ozgard comes to my side and squints at the obelisk. It is a fractured piece of a throne. A broken wing is all that remains of one of the armrests.

“This was the throne of Alia,” Ozgard whispers. “Sefi’s mother.”

He leans to pick something from it. Several dark stones roll in his palm. They are shaped like humans, but wrong. Their phalluses are engorged, their craniums far too large and studded with spikes.

“Ozgard, don’t react. We got company.” I motion down with my eyes.

In a silvery pool of crushed nightgaze blossoms lies a single bootprint. Next to it my boot looks no larger than a Red child’s.

Ozgard drops the dark stones.

I lift my hand as if to scratch my head, brushing off my pistol’s safety and activating my ear com. Static washes. We’re being jammed. The wind whispers through the dead city. Someone is o

ut there. “Ozgard, I want you to stay on my six. When I give the word, we go as fast as we can back to the ship. Stick together.” He nods. “Now.”

Fear claws into my chest as we sprint back the way we came. It is unexplainable, total, like the shrieking of cat claws on a windowpane.

We race under the looming towers. Silver pollen sprays around us as our boots turn nightgaze petals to pulp. Then Ozgard stops. I wheel around, hissing at him to keep running. Coated in silver pollen, he looks like a skeleton made of mercury as he stares at something. I rush back to him and find him looking through the open face of a fallen tower. Inside, illuminated by the phosphorescent flowers, a body pierced by three huge arrows hangs off the ground like a fish on a line. A rusted iron hook punctures the neck, loops through the jaw, and protrudes out between shattered teeth. As the body sways on the chain, its face turns to us, lower jaw hanging broken and unhinged.

It is Freihild.

Then I smell the stink of breath, feel heat on the back of my neck. I stick my gun under my left armpit and pull the trigger. The gun explodes in my hand as the barrel is crumpled shut by a huge hand. My index finger twists like kindling as I try to tear it free of the mangled gun.

“Ozgard! Run!”

I try to follow my own advice, but three dark shapes fall to block my path. I fall to a knee in case they fire, then strip a thermal flare from my belt and toss it, hoping they’re wearing optics. I roll right, turn a corner, the thermal ignites. A rippling tide of inky black rolls through the nightgaze veins as the delicate petals are exposed to the high-frequency light waves. I turn into a dead end of rubble. There’s a soft thump behind me. I turn around and find myself staring eye to eye with two pits of darkness. They are set within the giant head of a pale nightmare, and it is crouching.

When the nightmare uncoils from its crouch, my eyes are no higher than the melted face of an old tattoo obscured behind its white chest hair. The Obsidian is big. Bigger than Valdir. Bigger than any man I have ever seen. Metal mingles with the pale flesh of his arms and pectorals, and ribs his trachea. His huge mouth is a blood-smeared maw. And the language that seeps sluggishly from it is alien to my ears.

“Ginjik kheljheenii nokhoinuud kjhichneen jijig ve.”

I try to step back.

A hand as large as my head seizes me and strokes my cheek with its thumb. A metal nail sharp enough to fillet bone traces paths along my cheek, gently, almost affectionately. “Shhhhh.” The thermal flare goes out. Darkness again. The giant forces my right hand open and puts something heavy and hot in it. Warm fluid drips between my fingers. The iron smell of raw meat. “Stay.”

The giant flows past me to stand in front of a witless Ozgard, who has been dragged to us by several tall shadows.

“We have heard your prophecy, shaman.” The giant laughs at Ozgard’s wilted arm. “Who is a mongrel to speak for the god? The Allfather speaks one truth, and that is might.”

Ozgard comes alive and with a wild screech jerks his knife toward the giant’s ribs. The giant catches the hand and squeezes it against the knife hilt until Ozgard shrieks and there’s a wet crumpling sound.

“You like prophecies, shaman. Here is my prophecy.” The giant presses a metal-nailed thumb into Ozgard’s right eye and submerges it to the knuckle. Screams bubble out of Ozgard’s mouth as his eyeball collapses and dark fluid leaks down his face. “When next you behold me, you will take the other.” The pale giant laughs. “Only blinded do liars finally see.”

He tosses Ozgard to the ground as a spoiled child discards an old toy. My friend paws at his mangled eye with his broken hand. My own shake around the warm mass they hold. I’ve seen war, but never felt this afraid. The Obsidian gestures to my hands as ship lights carve the darkness. It is a heart that has been gnawed upon. Freihild’s heart. I feel the bile rising.

“The skuggi was worthy.” The giant bares a narrow scratch on his neck. “I have honored her strength. It is a part of me now. Gift her heart to your Liar Queen. Tell her I have heard in the Ink she is Queen of All Volk. I have come to contest her claim. Tell her: she is now prey.”

The ship lights silhouette the monster. The shape of a man barbed with metal eclipses me. “Who are you?” I call after him as he walks to his ship.

Laughter corrupts the darkness around us. The giant smiles as the darkness answers for him with a long groan made of a single, distended syllable. “Fáaaaaa.”

THE ASCOMANNI ARE REAL. And so is their king. It’s all I can think about as a whirlpool of carrion eaters churns over the body of Freihild. On the shoulder of the very mountain where she was born, the host of Obsidians watches in silence. Only the light of braziers holds back the winter night. When the last bit of flesh has been stripped away, the great host melts into the gloom back to their ships. They are solemn. Freihild was much loved, and this was a bad death. One by one, the skuggi drop strands of hair onto her bones and whisper something to her they never said to her in life. They invite me to do the same. When it is my turn, I look at the grisly remains and see Volga. I cannot shake the feeling this is my fault instead of that of barbarians from deep space. How ridiculous that sounds. Only hours ago, Freihild was so full of life. So in love with her tribe, her Queen, Valdir. How can I keep Volga from this fate, when horror seems to follow me everywhere I go?

“I wish I could have seen you grow old,” I say, and sprinkle several hairs over her bones. “You would have been a sight.”

My chest tightens as I leave her to her last mourner. Sefi watches from the distance as Valdir collects her bones to sew them together with the hair given by her mourners. Afterward he will hide her bones away in the high mountain tombs of her kin. The bones clack like wet wood behind me. Then an inhuman shriek comes from the man. I glance back to see his great shoulders convulsing as he saws off his hair, the great valor tail that no Gold could shear, and with it ties together the bones of his lover.