One-two-three-four.

The herb bag has been overtaken by weaponry. It's an unorthodox arrangement we've got going on here, but it works out. You can fit everything into one bag if you're packing for one.

I miss my roundgard. It was an instrument of deadly precision, and I loved it nearly as much as I love myself. Click the thing into your mouth and your face is protected, and you've got arguably the most precision of any non-Canis instrument.

Of course, I'll pick up anything now. I haven't found a roundgard since, which is ridiculous, since they're very standard-issue, but I don't need it. When you can swing around a big enough club, precision isn't important anymore. Maybe this is why the Canis are such snide, snot-mouthed shits. They got the best power from the beginning. They can afford to play both sides of the coin. It only dawned on me recently how useful telekinesis is. You can build things that the rest of us could never create. You can write far more easily than our stupid proto-digits or Verhamera forbid our mouths will ever allow. You can lift trees and swing them into each other. You can work small-scale and, if you were talented enough to penetrate their magical fields, who says you couldn't tear up your opponent's organs? What would they do about it?

Space is yours.

Space is mine.

One-two-three-four.

The Sorrows are still there. I can feel them against my flanks, and each jostle cements them as part of my own body in my mind. Four more spirits to add to the number of ghosts haunting me. Someday, if this goes on, this is how they'll define a pack: a Sentient and their dead. You'll carry whole legions behind you, willing or unwilling, and when Sentients meet each other, they will do so as armies, not entities.

The bushes part at my entrance. Nature knows how to give me space, which is touching. My paws ache from the brambles that have found their way into and out of my pads, and my sides are similarly thorn-scraped. There've been a few encounters, too, but Cas usually takes over when we need to fight someone. There's no rules for him, and if I can't stop him, well, there's nothing in the Code that says anything about being a bystander.

"Where are we?" I ask Cas.

There's no response.

Altair has the map.

Do you want to do something good, Hawk?

"That's a funny question, considering who's talking," I say.

I didn't ask for your sass. I asked for your answer.

My fur bristles. I've never been a good tracker, but even I can smell the reek of something on the air.

"I don't have anything better to do," I tell Cas.

We navigate through the darkness, and when the night settles on the land, I sense Cassiver's excitement as the first guard rounds on us. Useless, of course, save for the jewelry, but I have my knives on the bones before he can so much as breathe, leaving him defenseless before me. The wave of darkness draws close to me, but Cassiver only wants to speak with him. "If you know what's best," he says, "you'll not be returning to your den tonight. Find somewhere pleasant to hide and stay there, because if I see you again, it'll be a far less pleasant experience for both of us."

Not a bluff. His voice never shakes. Why would it? He doesn't get to talk much, so when he speaks, it had better be deliberate.

"They're all down there," says the cowering Canira before us. "in the valley. It's death on outsiders. They'll kill you for your bones and prolly eat your heart, just 'cause there's no one left around to trade our goods with for food."

"They'd have to find it first," I say. "In all seriousness, though, I think you have better things to do with your time than worry about me. I might recommend running, for one thing."

The Canira obliges.

We put the knives away. I stalk further through the forest. "So we're going to go find Andulas, then?" I ask Cassiver.

Quiet again.

"You can talk to me. I already agreed to the deal regardless of circumstance, so it's a waste of time for you to pretend you're being discreet."

Still quiet.

The land slopes downwards, as promised, and I recognize the area from some of my dreams. The dirt beneath me gives at every step, so it's hard going, and the plants in the area are parched. The grass has withered down to gold needles, which look like a poorly-groomed pelt in the tepid, blurred night. I taste the sky again and sense a familiarity, not with Cassiver's past, but with Weltva. It does, in a way, remind me of my first trip there, even though we're currently nowhere near Weltva. On our first trip to the mother country, now burned to the ground, Altair was scared out of his mind, but the two of us needed something for a trade that was less than legal. I believe it had been a sterile dragon egg? Altair had been nervous, muttering about code violations, but nothing living was ever going to come from that egg.

A series of dark tents arise from the bottom of the hill, many of them ragged. A few are patched over with what appears to be pelts, and I guarantee they aren't kaanin. This would be the town. I use the term town loosely, because it's actually a thieves den, but aren't they all? I've heard merchants call their squalid hiding places towns as well. It certainly feels like an organized establishment, doesn't it, even though the legislation is a code of formalities that barely muzzle the bastards you've made your companions? Anyone can call a house a home. No one can prove you're being dishonest when you talk about the way things feel.

Of course, there are guards everywhere, dozens of Sentients rimming the perimeter, and cracks thrum through the air like lightning. Weapons being forged in the tents. Ants crawl between the tents, heads down, covered in bones. They must never sleep, not entirely. I wonder if Vade's down there. I'd like to figure that he died in the battle they were planning with Valora, but even imagining his son gazing, disappointed, over his body, makes me feel sick.

I'm hesitating. "You have a plan?"

No answer.

Ears definitely perking down below. I scour the hill for bones and find a few teeth, which I thread through a piece of spare string I draw out of the bag's weaving. It's so simple with telekinesis. This would have taken me hours otherwise. I bend space around me to muffle out sound and sight both, so that the air around me is a still, thick, brick of nothingness, and carry on as a phantom. The illusion is difficult, but I respect Cassiver's ingenuity. Guess mine had to come from somewhere, didn't it? I can hear the mutters of a half-living thing in the bone, resonating with those of the Sorrows in my bag, and I string on a full leg bone. I levitate several weapons, adorning them, too, and scuff up my fur with the dirt. I can not see myself, but I can smell death on me, which should be enough for a fair ruse. Dropping the walls, I enter the town. The guards bring their spears up to my neck.

"I have half a mind to gut you with my knives," I warn them, "For your insolence."

"We had half a mind to gut you, too," the first guard growls. He's decked to the point where you can hardly see the Sentient peeking out around the bones. "Would you mind giving us a single reason that that would be a bad idea?"

"I'm your superior," I purr, with Cassiver's voice.

"With a ring of bones like that?" asks the second. "You're kidding me. You must have the magical prowess of a Moonwalker pup--"

I hold up a knife with telekinesis and make a quick cut across both the wooden handles of the spears. The Sentients recoil as their weapons tumble to the ground like the toys of pups. "I don't need the bones," I warn them.

"Canis magic," whispers the first, "at night."

"I've razed four," Cassiver says, his influence pressing against mine. "Don't make me increase that number tonight."

"Cities," the second tells the first, as if I had said the words instead of implied them. "Alone."

I didn't hear the remark, so I don't need to correct him. Instead, I pass by and wander the labyrinth to the center of town. I can't tell if it's Cassiver's fear or mine that heightens our adrenaline. The clang of metal sounds around us as hammers come down on new tools, and whole bodies, some with bones, some without, lie slumped on display. The living stand with the dead, all of them stuck in a place worse than death, and the bugs are indiscriminate. I can feel them biting my flanks, but Cassiver, with the last of his influence, knocks them off our sides. I'm alone when I come to the central tent, which is draped in black velvet. Dozens of crystals line the fabric, perhaps to warn off intruders, and a flame lingers dangerously close to the exterior.

I open the bag. It's mainly herbs, but dragon's tongues are known for being combustible. That's how they get the magic going. Sort of. There's a few more sleeping herbs. They'll all die in their sleep, and I'll... the fire will do its worst. I won't do anything.

It's a good thing.

I'm doing a good thing.

I count down. I open the tent on one, two, three, four... I take the packet and open the door, catching a glint from the interior. My breath catches as darkness falls and my brain processes, in frantic moments, that it's merely a rusted coin clenched in Andulas's teeth. She hasn't forgotten us.

The powder bag slips. If we turn our head away, now, we'll get a mouthful of it. Yet he's hesitating.

I certainly wasn't. I have no reason whatsoever to hesitate.

"Yes, you do," I say, moving the bag closed with my paw. I have it on me now. That was definitely not part of the plan, and I can feel my paw go numb from the stuff. I guess it's not inhalation only, then. Good to know. "If you could, say, show them the Sorrows, you could prove that you were useful to them. Around my companions, that would be a risky gamble, one that could get you trapped out of this body forever, but I'm alone now. If I exhausted myself, magically, as the Sorrows could cause me to do, I could... well, I might never... wake up again. As myself."

Cassiver twitches deep in my ribcage.

A glint of light shines in the tent. "Ah," Andulas says. "Dinner delivers itself."

"Right to your paws," I say. "Thought I'd save you the difficulty. Do you remember a certain Canis mage? He wanted to speak with you again."

"You're Cassiver. I'll admit I'm finally surprised," she says, then rounds on me, tail swishing. A golden talisman glimmers by her paws, and she swings the amplifier upwards. "Two problems downed with a single burst of the Wail."

The other two rise. Reynard, Andulas, and Dominic all encroach on me, and I hear the Wail warming up. Of course, if it's interdimensional, that would mean... no night limits, either, since it's not in flux with the rest of the magical ecosystem.

"You're serious?" Cassiver asks. "I have seeds from the village where we last met that could give the lot of you incredible power. I could be useful to you. Killing me here is a gross misjudgement--"

"Oh, I know about the seeds. Those will kill you, Cassiver. In case you haven't noticed, I don't really want to die," Andulas says. She shakes her head. "I thought you'd feel the same way, yet you would have done better to kick your own head in than to come back here."

I can't use magic. As the Wail warms up, I take a spear and knock Andulas's amplifier upwards. The song of the Wail raises skywards, the ghostly noise echoing over the village, and I feel something shake, deep in my bones, even though I myself am practically unaffected. In the heartbeat of distraction, I dash out, grabbing the Sorrows in my mouth from their pocket and throwing the rest of my weapons and herbs into the fire.

It takes a second for the fire to get to the dragon's tongues, but when it gets there, nothing else has ever burned so beautifully. I am up the hill, then into the dark, smoke in my nose and distant voices in my ears.

If I stop running, I will die. I know this as I retrace my steps, bound through rivers, and let a waterfall take me over the edge. Water fills my mouth, then my throat, then my stomach, and I wash up at the bottom, where I pull myself into a cave beneath the waterfall, barely large enough to hold me. With my teeth, I sever the bones from my neck, dropping them around my paws. If I could blast them into oblivion right now, I would, but I don't even know if that would free the Sentients trapped inside. My heart pulses when I realize what else I'm missing. I stare out across the waters and find the Sorrows bag bobbing downstream, and I draw it close to me with telekinesis, tapping the seeds with my paw. One-two-three-four. We're fine.

Cassiver's essence comes to the fore and then bobs back.

"Nothing to say?" I ask.

Why are you running? They'll catch you eventually. They must be overhead right now, circling, prepared to kill you.

I fall to my paws, curling around myself until I'm small as a seed. "I just don't want to die."

Don't say anything. They're looking for you. They'll have your teeth around their necks soon, and their teeth around your neck, and there'll be nothing that you can do, say, or promise to get yourself out of that. I breathe harder, trying to force life through my lungs. It's so dark and cold and every muscle in my body burns like it was lit on fire. I don't deserve to live much longer. Yet somehow, I can't let myself go.

What has your life been worth, really, Hawk?

My heart thrums in my chest. "I would make really excellent fuel for someone's fire," I mutter, and my eyes widen. "I can think of one Sentient." Now, as a con, it seems so obvious what I should have done from the beginning. I pull myself back onto my paws and look across the starlit waters. The river is little more than a stream here, but given where we are in relation to the mountains, I believe I know where it leads.

Where are you going? We're as good as dead.

One-two-three-four.

I'm evening scales.