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After all, he reasoned, if huain

More aggressive and violent than the huface infection continued to a held prisoner by the them boil across the sands

The feers of flesh and blood Thatthe the earth beneath their feet, staining the sand red with the blood of their slaves and the snarls they hurled at each other like spears

They were the sickness that drove the green lizard-things to do what they did, the fever that boiled their minds and forced them to act in ways unwise Under the cracks of their knotted whips and the threats froed teeth, the pitiful, scaly creatures worked with broken backs and dragging feet as the females drove them forward They hewed down the trees fros to feed the forge pits and build the great black ships that bobbed in the roiling surf

The land was thick with iron, the sky was thick with se pits, fire-scarred and shorn-haired, relentlessly thrust and pulled glowing iron rods froes and vicious-tipped spikes, eagerly sharpened their edges to jagged rain of sand remained undisturbed amidst the activity The disease swept across the land as the feht, square for orders of their white-haired superiors They brawled and attacked each other in impromptu displays of dominance that quickly turned fatal They hauled the bodies of those scaled slaves too exhausted to work to a pit ringed by iron bars, tossing the as the denizens of the h full h it all, Naxiaatched, Naxiaw studied, Naxiaw noted

This was not the first tireed, heedless industry, the smell of blood and sweat so thick the violence was a collective hunger in the belly of every female present He had seen these sensations in the round-ears many times before, if never to such an extent

He knehen he saw one

For what, he did not know For why, it did not s, these evolutions of disease, were preparing to spread their infection

The sole comfort he took was in their numbers He had counted no more than two hundred since he had first been thrown into his cage Theirs was nothing like the tee masses of the sht as he lowered his head and raised his ears, it falls to the shicts to make certain that they never will have such nuid Through the carnage below, he attean quickly, as it always did, with a sudden awareness of sounds without s, snarls in throats This awareness a under blunted axes, black-bellied ships bobbing in the surf,under purple flesh

Close to its goal, the awareness pressed further, reduced the world to nothing but those few sounds that bore significance, the essence of life Splinters falling in soft, pattering whispers in tiny droplets of sweat-kissed blood Breezes colliding with clouds of srains of sand as it stirred in a hibernating dream beneath the earth

And then, silence: the sound with theinto a vast and forht The flower stretched out silently, instinctually, reaching out,unheard speeches So stir

The Howling had heard hi had found him

Had he the consciousness to feel his heart stop, he still would not have been afraid of it The Howling had long ago ceased to be soo ceased to even be the instinctual knowledge that all shicts shared He had spentit It was a part of him, as it was a part of all shicts As he was one with the Howling, so too was he one with all shicts

And they would hear hihts

Ees of sand and blood consuether with sea and ships, purple faces, clenching teeth, red iron, bleeding bodies, fallen trees War, disease, s, coursing as blood through his thoughts, his intent boiled over

Find

Rescue

Kill

Harvest

The intent flowed across the emptiness, dew across the petals of the flower It would reach his people, he knehisper in their ears, a sudden chill down their spines as they knehat he knew in an instant They would hear him, they would feel him, and they would come with their blood and Spokesmen and hatred and--

Wait

His ears went taut of their own volition, sensing so he had not the consciousness to A sound without ed wildly, whirily the next, then letting out a terrified howl and searching for an answer beyond its own echo

Impossible to listen to Too loud, too painful

Inore Too close, too familiar

His people? No

No s’na shict s’ha Then … what?

‘Oh! Look, look, look! He’s doing it again!’

Another voice Distant, , then?’

Words for those without minds, terrified of eh Never says a word, just … sits’

Words for those without thought, terrified of silence

‘Well, it’s boring Wake him up’

An explosion of sound

His eyes snapped open as the flower of emptiness wilted in his ainst the bars of his cage Behind it, white hair, white eyes and jagged teeth set in a long, purple face He recognised this one, gathered her nao, associated it with her ever-present, ever-unpleasant grin