Far-Seer

Yenalb stood on his hind legs atop the spikefrill, dewlap puffed into a giant ruby ball—

Cadool was sickened. To be stimulated in that way by this… Chest heaving, vision blurring, Cadool had one last clear thought before he gave himself over to the madness: Yenalb was his.

Afsan knew there was nothing he could do, but he tried anyway. The cries of wingfingers, the thunderous calls of shovelmouths, the pounding of feet all drowned his words.

“Stop!” he shouted in the loudest volume his raw throat could manage. “Stop!”

But it would not—could not—stop.

Suddenly Afsan felt the shovelmouth he was standing on buck wildly in panic. Afsan shared the beast’s emotion as he found himself catapulted through the air. In his perpetual darkness, he had no idea where he was going to land. Air whipping about him, he quickly rolled into a ball, tucking his muzzle into his chest, wrapping his arms over his head, retracting his legs as much as possible, and folding his tail up and around.

Screams…

His own…

And then he hit—

Cadool slid down the rump of the boss-nosed beast, lashed out with his claws to stop a toppled loyalist who tried to intercept him, and made a dead run for the high priest.

Det-Yenalb had been shouting orders through his speaking cone, but each successive proclamation became less recognizable speech and more animalistic hiss and growl. His spikefrill had tipped its head low and was using a stubby forefoot to pull what was left of Pahs-Drawo off its nasal horn.

Suddenly Yenalb became aware of the charging Cadool. He yanked on the two largest of the giant spikes that protruded from his mount’s neck frill, as if to get the beast’s attention. It looked up, Drawo now discarded, just in time to try to intercept the butcher. The spikefrill’s beak snapped viciously at Cadool, but Cadool danced and weaved to stay out of its way.

The square was too crowded. The spikefrill couldn’t turn enough to get at him. Cadool leapt again, this time grabbing two of the spikes coming out of the crest of bone around the beast’s neck. He used these as handholds, pulling himself up onto the creature’s back. Yenalb tried to push him off, but the priest was no match for the butcher, none at all… Cadool opened his jaws wide, let out a primal roar, and—

This is for Pahs-Drawo!—

Snapped his mouth shut on Yenalb’s dewlap, ripping it open, air hissing out—

—And this is for Afsan!—

Taking a second, deeper bite into the priest’s meaty throat, serrated teeth ripping through muscle and cartilage and tendons, a semi-ten of Cadool’s fangs popping free as his jaws banged closed against Yenalb’s cervical vertebrae—

And this is for the truth!—

But suddenly the animal beneath him was shaking— —the whole square was shaking— Through the haze of instinct, Cadool thought some great monster—a thunderbeast giant, like the one Afsan had felled on his first hunt—had made it into the city, the guards having left their stations to be here.

But, no, the rumbling continued, the shaking growing more pronounced, the horizon jumping wildly—

Afsan was sure he had lost consciousness upon hitting the ground, but for an instant or for many daytenths, he couldn’t tell.

He heard the crowd rioting around him, screams of Quintaglios pushed into fighting rapture.

Afsan’s left side hurt badly. He knew he’d cracked some of the ribs that were attached to his backbone, as well as some of the free-floating ones that normally lay across the belly. He’d also knocked out a few teeth…

And then, suddenly the ground began to shake. I’m to die here, he thought, crushed under some giant beast, in the same square I thought I was going to die in all those days ago.

But the shaking wasn’t because of footfalls, wasn’t because of stampeding reptiles.

The ground shook—

—and shook—

Animals screamed.

Landquake.

Cadool listened to terrified roars of the animals, then stole a glance at the cobblestones below. Pebbles and dirt jumped.

Fear washed through him. In an instant, his fury was forgotten. He looked at the corpse of Yenalb, flopped on the back of the spikefrill, twin geysers of blood shooting from where the nearly severed head still joined the chest. Cadool pushed the body from the spikefrill’s back, letting it fall to the heaving ground. The head twisted around as it landed, facing backwards. The beast next to the spikefrill—an armorback whose old rider was cowering in fear—panicked as the land continued to quake. It moved backwards, trampling what was left of the high priest.

Throughout the square, Cadool could see statues tottering on their pedestals. As he watched, Pador’s great marble rendition of the Prophet Larsk wobbled back and forth a few times, then toppled to the stones, crushing a hapless hunter beneath it.