Aj moved precisely.

  Awakening first in those verses

  where few lived to interfere.

  Yet even while focused purely on its task,

  even alone in an entire verse,

  killing gods took time.

  As did awakening,

  its strange kin

  elsewhere

  among the billions of verses

  where its form

  could not exist.

  Aj ran a calculus,

  weighed the demon's words

  as Aj awoke

  and hunted,

  awoke

  and hunted.

  Would it be fast enough?

  Had it started too late?

  Would there be anything left

  when it finished?

  Adonissian walked a world strange and familiar. A world flickering with each thudding heartbeat. A world where he watched himself, screaming yet silent and powerless to change anything.

  A young Adonissian sprawled beaten in a gutter, a crumpled flower ground into the cobblestones beyond his broken fingers. He awoke in bed, the first woman he'd seduced facing him. Startled, he awoke again to find the first man. Again he awoke, this time to a woman hanging from a rafter by a bed sheet noose. The first of the suicides he'd left in his wake.

  "I'm sorry," he cried as they faded.

  Somewhere, the child wailed. Scream after scream pierced his head, kept him from sleeping. Why didn't someone shut the kid up?

  Adonissian's eyes cracked open to find he'd fallen from his bed again and lay on the filthy floor of whatever and wherever place this was. Vague memories of stumbling inside. He and Kass sick, Avani crying. Beams of light pierced the gloom from a cracked shutter. Enough to see Kass writhing on a dirty cot across the room. The room stank of piss, vomit, and smoke.

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  "Kass, I need water," he croaked.

  Everything fell away again.

  In his dream, a crowd arrayed before him, their backs turned. Hassani stood at their front holding an otherworldly sword in her hand. Denault stood at her side naked and full of arrows. Both thrust accusing fingers his direction. The crowd turned in eerie synchrony. He knew every face for they plagued his other dreams. They all spoke at once yet he heard every word. Every accusation. Everything he'd done to them. Their marriages. Their families. Their lives. Every hand raised, pointing at him.

  He opened his mouth to speak, but choked as Avani's 'pillar crawled out of his mouth. Gagging, he yanked it out and threw it to the ground, stomping on it as the crowd began to speak. He wronged them. Made them suffer. Ruined their lives. A hundred voices spoke at once. He understood every one.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he cried over and over. Bowing his head he saw pale little Avani kneeling before him, crying over the smashed body of her pet.

  "I'm sorry." He reached a hand helplessly towards her. She looked at him with huge sad eyes and thrust a knife into his belly.

  The blade twisted as he awoke, tearing him apart from the inside. He threw up a tiny dribble, dry heaved until everything hurt. He crawled towards his cot, every movement shooting spears of agony up his shattered arm. Only when he crawled onto the cot and lay heaving for breath did he sense someone moving. The pain piercing his head hammered deeper with each creaking step they took towards him.

  "Water," he rasped, devolving into a fit of wet coughing. He gasped for air, drowning on land.

  A wooden cup pressed roughly against his lips. A liquid prayer trickled down his parched throat. He gulped desperately, clung weakly to the hand that held the cup. It pulled away mid-swallow. Water splashed down his chin.

  "More," he croaked. "Please."

  "Talk first." A female voice, cold as iron.

  "Hassani." Too tired to be afraid. "I'm sorry."

  "I don't care. Tell me where my daughter is." Hassani moved into the fractured beam of light, one hard eye, brow, and a bit of cheek appearing.

  "She's here." He gestured feebly about the room.

  "She's not."

  "She was."

  "She isn't. Where'd she go?"

  "I don't know." Adonissian's teeth chattered. He wrapped his arms about himself. "It's cold. Someone took my blanket."

  "It's on the floor. Help me and I'll help you."

  "Please, so cold."

  "My daughter's out there somewhere in the damned Book and you want me to care?"

  "Ask Kass." He nodded towards the other cot. "She may know."

  A pause. "She's not moving. I think she's dead."

  "Can't be dead." He squinted in the darkness. "Woman's like a cockroach."

  "Doesn't matter. It's you I'm after." Through his haze of cold and suffering he heard the iron in her voice shift to weariness edged with sorrow. "The shopkeeper across the way said the owner of this room joined a gang hunting Wretches. Denault was right. It's all coming apart and my little girl's lost out there in it."

  "I'm sorry. I had no choice-"

  The slap almost knocked him off his cot. Pain worse than any in a lifetime of beatings.

  "You bastard," she hissed, her face suddenly close. "You broke my life in half, stole my child, savaged my husband so badly I don't know if he's even alive, and in spite of all that my body's screaming to climb into that cot with you."

  "I didn't know it would be like this," Adonissian whispered. "I was tired of the abuse. My father. My brothers. The girls I wanted. The gang that harassed me. When I saw my Master in the square offering a way out, I had to take it or die."

  "You chose wrong." Hassani pulled away, the weary emptiness in her voice worse than her scorn.

  "If I could bring your daughter back, I would. If I could tell you where she is or who took her I would." He realized he was crying, barely able to talk as he choked on twenty years of tears he'd never let fall. "I'm so sorry. I was good at it so I did it. It was wrong, I see that now. You're right. I should have killed myself back then like I was going to. Everything's worse for what I've done."

  The strength of his sobs curled his body, his lungs rasping and straining with the effort. After a coughing fit left his hand smeared with red froth, he peered into the darkness for any sign of Hassani.

  "End this. Please. I beg you."

  Shivers shook him. He looked about for the cup, thirst and cold and pain competing to dominate his suffering.

  "Please. Kill me," he whispered. The sinking certainty that she'd already left him pressed down on him.

  "That's too quick an end for you," she said from the darkness. "Suffer and die."

  As her footsteps retreated, his sobs returned, more feeble this time.

  After a moment, he pried his eyes back open, squinting towards the dim outline of Kass's cot. "Kass? You there? Please. Water. I'm so cold."

  Out of desperation, he sang a child's prayer to the Ascendant, surprised he remembered the words after all this time. The prayer squeaked out, broken when his shivers grew too violent, punctuated with wet coughs or gasps of pain when he moved his arm.

  "Ascendant dwelling high... above... find this little... child below. Heal him of his pain... and woe. Warm him with your... light and sow. Some... little love and though... he mighn't deserve it, mercy and..."

  "Dammit." Footsteps. The precious weight of a blanket fell over him. He clutched it desperately close. Wood pressed roughly against his lips and delicious wetness spattered down his throat. After some fumbling, a cool cloth fell on his brow.

  As her hand retreated, he snatched it and clung, holding it tight to steal from her one last bit of human warmth and touch. She fought for a moment, then relaxed. They sat in silence.

  "I remember now,” Adonissian rasped. “Thought it was a dream. Before we got too sick. A slaver asked me how much for her. Said Pale ones... fetched a fortune. Told him to go... fuck a Wretch."

  "Where?" Hassani said intently.

  "Said was heading... Fleshmarkets of Berujat."

  Hassani's arm slipped from his grasp as she rose.

  "Hassani!"

  Footfalls stopped.

  "Rega runs Ancients. She sent me... after you. Send Ghulen next. Monster. She wants it all... use Inro rogue... excuse to get it." He gasped for breath, trying to calm his panic as air barely wheezed into his lungs. "I sent message. What I heard. What you said. I told them all I heard... told... Earth too."

  More steps. The door creaked. "I understand, I think."

  "Hassani... last thing."

  A pause.

  "Thank you. Didn't deserve. But thank you."

  "You're right. You didn't deserve it."

  She was gone.

  Huddled in his blanket, he sang the song again and again until he grew too weak. Every breath became a struggle until the effort grew too great and he gave up trying.

  Next chapter: Aida visits a Wicker Way and gets some (more) bad news.

  Characters and terms

  Characters (alphabetical)

  Aida: MC. Mother of Exiles. "Ender of Verses?" "Savior of Dynasties?"

  Aj: a long-slumbering, powerful being which annihilated Inro's Sunset Legions. Also "almost destroyed the Dynasty single-handedly six-and-some centuries ago"

  Aliasara: servant at Ocyl's villa who befriends Aida

  Arca: chief of the tribe that "adopted" Inro

  Avani: Hassani's daughter, an albino

  Broadaxe: large, axe-and-shield-wielding Feral protecting Aida

  Cairin: Arca's sister

  Deai: Hassani's swordmaster, renowned for killing a Paragon

  Denault: Hassani's husband. Shipwright, Kin.

  Eth: a young Imminent

  Ghillie: a 3rd Feral who wears a primitive Ghillie suit. Carries cross between kunai and acupuncture needles

  Ghulen: Rega's "pet monster", an Inviolate

  Goboro: a fat, amiable scribe friend of Hassani's in Libriam

  Goldilocks: twitchy, spear-and-javelin carrying Feral guarding Aida

  Fallon: Aida's Seneschal

  Fetriene: Ocyl's soresearer

  Hassani: Inviolate agent of the Black Court, sent by Fractious Fraction

  Huspara: minor bureaucrat in Libriam

  Inro: Dynast formerly ruling Sunset

  Izbali: a silent tribal shaman

  Janali: Ocyl's elegant Seneschal

  Jaxe: Dynast of Stacks. "Young" (Secounds), wealthy. Also has "the Pale" (an Albino). Ancient.

  Kass/Kassenia: mercenary attached to Adonissian. Died of Wretch Plague?

  Maxem: High Parser from Ink, ambassador to Jadeye

  Ocyl: Dynast of Heaven's Tread, powerful and unpredictable

  Parathas: Aida's skinscribe. Also a mountaineer.

  "Professor, The": leader of Aida's Wretches

  Rega: Inro's sister, Dynast of Monopolis

  Rustrovan/"Rusty": Eth's old, gap-toothed skinscribe

  Ryk: "the most beautiful man Aida had ever seen", a Paragon

  Sava: Dynast of Libriam

  Semon "Goldtongue": white-haired, one-eyed master of cults. First Disciple of the Mother.

  Stiller: serving boy at Ocyl's estate

  Venner: Grandmaster of Optimimes in Jadeye, "best in the entire Book"

  Wake: Dynast of Graves, marries even though they all die. Quintus. Isolate.

  The Fallen

  Adonissian: a Phero who poses as a traveling musician. Died of the Wretch Plague in Heaven's Tread.

  "Braid"; a thug who accosted Aida in Jadeye. His face gifted to Aida by Ocyl.

  Feral: a bone-masked woman of violence (Feral) in Aida's service. Knife wielder. Killed by Ghillie in Jadeye.

  Reck: Dynast of Chalk, "not witty enough to be clever and takes himself too seriously to be ironic". Paranoid, Fractious Fraction. Tertius. Died to a mob of menials in Jadeye.

  Riccaro: majordomo of Ocyl's estate. Hung by a looting mob in Heaven's Tread.

  "Toothy": leader of a group of thugs who accosted Aida in Heaven's Tread. Killed by Feral in Jadeye

  Valeer: a mentally challenged, unkempt individual able to manipulate Thorns. Died in Jadeye to "Braid".

  Vanyen: A crippled young woman who created the Cult of the Mother. Martyred Prophet of the Mother. Murdered by Semon Dynastic Assassins.

  White Spiral: an older Feral in Aida's service. Archer. Died protecting Aida in Jadeye

  Terms (alphabetical)

  Adventures of Bubo, The: popular kids story

  All, The: ?

  Ancients: a major Dynastic Chapter, an "elite number", "own Ziggurat" and "run the great bank that is Monopolis"

  Anchorites: individuals capable of creating anchor points affixed to nothing.

  Annalis compound: sprawling complex in Libriam, heart of The Book's bureaucracy. Arrivals 'Dirt' home to new dispatches, Archives 'Dust' storage for old material. Paths and Ways storage for 'nails.

  Anticore: Sect creature which "wears convincing human skins" with "swarming insects... beneath the skin"

  Arborian: gardeners from Groves?

  Ascen, The/The Ascendant: divinities "watching over every verse"?

  Assessor: census-taker

  Audits/"Diggers": Libriam internal affairs

  Aze: swordmaker?

  Berujat: "fleshmarkets"; primary seat of slave trade and home of most Lineage Masters, owned by Fraction.

  Black Court: a realm of pure darkness. Also, those who rule there. Where Partaking happens.

  Black Court Tribunal: localized Black Court authority?

  Blood, The: imbibed at Partaking, transforms one into a Dynast if they survive

  Book of Verses, The: the 1,000 verses ruled by the Dynasty. "The Kiloverse"

  Broadcliff, Tallmarket: cities in Stacks

  Century Thread: additional threads appearing elsewhere on the body every century a Dynast lives

  Cerebrist: creator of slavants

  Chalk/"Vistas": verse entirely made of chalky cliff, belongs to Reck

  Chant, The/Sacrosanct Chant: some sort of law in the Dynasty?

  Chant of Inoculation: chant supposed to protect against disease, "Mudra of Cleansing"

  Chapters: power groupings among the Dynasts of the Book: predominantly The Ancients, the Fractious Fraction, and Isolates.

  Circular Sea: an ocean abutting the Jadeye segment of Heaven's Tread

  Clock Priest: priests from Gears who track and tell time religiously

  ConMach: convoy? courier? "ConMach drains the very life from the Directory's verses". Supply "ConMach machines"

  Crowmen: buy corpses to return them to life and service as rotters

  Cupola Thorn: the main Thorn in the city Jadeye in Heaven's Tread, a stone dome built over it

  Currence: something valuable inside old coins? "harder than currence"? "Solid current forms currence." Currence melts to watter.

  Currency: money, gold coins once held currence inside to give value, now debased

  Current: some form of energy that powers "artifices"? "Solid current forms currence."

  Donative, The: Black Court taxes, taken by Legion if not offered. Don't pay, no Partaking every century.

  Dusa: people with manipulable hair of silver wire, from Gears

  Dynast: individual given rule of a verse if they survive Partaking. Ageless and hard to kill. Regenerative. Sustained by "the Blood"; no food or water necessary.

  Dynasty: the Dynasts who rule the Book

  Ebon: founder of the Dynasty and Black Court

  Ebonese: the language of the Book

  Echoseer shells: devices to allow one to "see" in the Black Court

  El: semi-insubstantial snake/remora-like creatures that follow gods (and sometimes Dynasts) around

  "Emperor of Everything": popular kids story about Inro turning down becoming emperor, then crushing those who elevated a different Dynast

  Feral: bone-masked bodyguards who require the essence of their master to survive. "Damned to Ferals" as a form of capital punishment. "the damned", "damned to a Feral"

  Fetalist: Imminent faction who believe the future is unchangeable

  First Thread/Primus: a fresh Dynast/the first luminescent silver thread etched into their foreheads.

  Fractious Fraction/"DissatisFaction"/"The Renewal": a major Dynastic Chapter who "hate everyone including each other", "entice every freemancer and Lineage Master" ... "to Berujat". For those with "verses deficient in maor ways."

  Gates, The: ?

  God, A: unique, "undying" creatures of immense size, The First Ones

  God's Rote: child's first memorization, what gods are

  God-dwellers: "monks" who live on a god

  God-touched: those who have physically touched a god (and lived)

  Gonist: organ dealers and traders

  Gons: self-sustaining organs capable of living outside a host

  Graves: a verse "Made of the dead by the dead for the dead".

  Groves: a forest verse

  Heaven's Tread: a verse "inside a hollow rolling pin", host to Jadeye, the largest city in the Book

  High Parser: officials from Ink

  Imminent: seers?

  Imminent Prophecy: something about a barbarian Dynast, Ender of Verses and/or Savior of Dynasties?

  Inevitables; faction of Imminent who believe it is their sacred duty to ensure the future comes to pass as seen

  Ink: home verse of the Skeinry, Keens, Directory, and "the Faded People"

  Innoculist: doctors who teach chants "brought from Logos" to cure disease

  Inviolate: agents of the black court who "serve the Black Court, protect the Dynasty, uphold the Chant, root out corruption" with "unlimited, undisclosed, and untraceable budgets"

  Inviolate Vial: carried by Inviolates as badge of office

  Iode: substance that ignites when crushed

  Iris: the giant portals leading between one cylinder of Heaven's Tread to the next

  Isolates: a major Dynastic Chapter with a "unified stand for independence", "cheat the Donative, stockpil[e] currence and watter" "hire Keen mercenaries" "raise own private Legions in secret"

  Jade Eye, The: the "giant emerald" at the middle of Ocyl's Spire in Jadeye

  Jadeye: the largest city in the Book and major trade hub, in Heaven's Trade

  Jaxeday: holiday in Stacks with boat carvings, feasts, games of Fishhead, dances, and storytelling

  Jaxestack: a whitewashed stack on Stacks home to Jaxekin

  Jutland Reach: a verse with guns?

  Keen: Ink warriors wearing impossibly-heavy iron armor whose power source drains color from the area about it. "Tank knights"

  Kin: descendants of a Dynast, most desperately trying to reach 100 so they can Partake

  Kiss, The: disease that wiped out "hundreds of verses", also name for the time period when Aj became active last and destroyed 100s of verses before halting in Sunset

  Lambent ram: animal whose wool glows?

  Letch: sect bred leech-like creature designed to stop bleeding on wounds

  Libriam: a swampy verse home to the Annalis, heart of The Book's bureaucracy

  Libwe: tribe possessing the "holy" Limn clay bed.

  Limn: "infused clay" bearing some sort of internal power, used by Ebon to found the Dynasty

  Lineage: a line of Mancers taught by a Master

  Linemen: workers on the Stacks trolleys who pull the cars along the lines

  Logos: "the thought realm"

  Machine Curse: something that stops machines from working between verses?

  Mancers: "no mancers arc (could) affect it", people with abilities beyond human normal, usually trained/implanted by a Master.

  Menial: common folk

  Molt: person able to shed skins (see skins)

  Mon, The: "the Outsiders". "exist only to destroy the Book" with their "demonic and monstrous children" from "the Hells beyond"

  Monopolis: the "City of Currency", bank verse ruled by Rega

  Mourne, The: something dangerous that lurks in the Vale, "the why we do not tarry"

  Mune: someone from the Collective on Dost?

  Nameday: when children are named

  Ocyl's Preserve: a garden "beyond the Circular Sea" in Heaven's Tread?

  Ocyl's Spire: the tower home to the court of Ocyl, Dyanst of Heaven's Tread

  One-Eighth Shithole: Aida's verse. Unfortunately. A desolate place home to volcanoes and a giant dead turtle

  Optomime: gadgeteer

  Pale, The: light-skinned people, conquered by Ebon during the founding of the Dynasty. Alternately, albinism

  Paragon: warrior who can see the future

  Partaking: the ritual that creates Dynasts (or kills those who try). Performed by some unknown, large creature in the Black Court.

  Phero: Lineage whose scent creates overwhelming attraction

  'pillar: fuzzy Sect-bred giant caterpillar pet

  Porcelain Guard: Ocyl's white-masked Ferals

  Pure Priest of the Ascen/Blind Priests: priests praising the Ascen and back the Black Court

  Reachers: massive, Sect-bred creatures that direct traffic and rescue unfortunates in the Sighted Path in Jadeye

  Reconquest: time four-hundred years ago when Inro "drove [tribals] back into civilization's fold at spear point"

  Rotters: sack-clothed, crudely-masked 'zombies' uses as pack-beasts and simple laborers. Created/sold by Crowmen.

  Royal Strider: giant striders which carry carriages of the wealthy slung underneath them

  Sect, The: breeders of useful insectoid- and/or sauroid-like creatures

  Seericide: seers capable of Knowing everything as they die

  Seneschal: chief servant of a Dynast, bear permanent strings allowing them to speak and understand any language

  Shale: a verse famous for its expensive stone

  Shrineway: religious section of Jadeye "brailled prayers along the walls ... [and] cobblestones"

  Sighted Path: the zero-g road down the center of Heaven's Tread

  Sixth Tier Rebellion: last major uprising, in Ziggurat a century ago when "half the legions rose up"

  Skeinry: iron-plated communication centers where Skeiners translate vibrations sent by wyre from other verses

  Skin/Hollow: animate skin of a molt able to move, talk, and share snatches of its experience with its molt

  Skinlife: living tattoos

  Skinscribe: individuals brailled with lore, walking libraries

  Slavant: an individual who "loses much" to be implanted with an ability

  Soresearer: individuals capable of "healing" by cauterizing wounds with their hands

  Stacks: An ocean verse comprised of tall pillars jutting up from the seas. Trolleys run on long ropes between them "affixed by Anchorites to airy nothing"

  Striders: "stilt-legged gray-skinned insect-lizard"s used as fast mounts, large enough to carry several riders

  Strings: worn or implanted wire devices that translate speech

  Subterrane, The: travel route accessed by Ebon via Limn?

  Sunset: the verse where Aj was 'contained', formerly protected by Dynast Inro. The "Prison of Prisons" holds mad Dynasts, monsters and demons... vaults of dangerous relics.

  Sunset Legions/Vault Legions: Inro's Legions, wiped out by Aj in Sunset

  Surgon: person able to remove organs

  Syphon: machine ConMach uses to "drain the very life" and color from a verse to "fuel... machinery"

  Terminus:a verse?

  Thorn: huge, curling thorns which Valeers can use as gateways to the Vale, doorways between verses. Grow into verses over centuries

  Thrum: guide in the Black Court

  Twine: "one soul threaded through two bodies"

  Unkillable Swordsman: a Paragon killed by Deia long ago

  Vale: "The Place Between". A realm of high-contrast black and white full of thorns and Thorns.

  Vale Walkers: discoverers of verses

  Valeer: people capable of activating Thorns, barely functional of anything else

  Valeer's 'nail: crystals containing wafers that allow travel within the Vale to specific verses without a Valeer

  Venger: muscle man?

  Verse: a pocket universe or world

  Verser Lord/Lady: agents of an individual Dynast who rule part of a verse at the whim of their Dynast

  Vibrant: color-changing individuals from Ink?

  Watter: an energetic liquid. "Currence melts to watter. Watter's current dissipates over time, leaving water."

  Weeping Falls: Jadeye Iris flowing with waterfalls

  Wicker Way: towers of stone, wood, and rope that connect opposite far sides of Jadeye

  Wiz of Berujat: multi-minded?

  World Spear: an immense stack on Stacks

  Wretch: untouchables forced to walk on all fours, "the human refuse that cleans up the literal waste piles"

  Wretch Plague: the flu. A horrific disease spread by Wretches.

  Wyres: lines run through the Vale between verses that allow communication between

  Ziggurat: the verse basing the Legions