Exalted: Out Of The Eater

[X] Think on the Outsiders. Creation is a walled garden and they are the beasts that prowl the Wyld without. Creatures of nightmare and insatiable hunger, unquenchable drives. In this Iron Age their raids rarely penetrate past the Empire's borders, but the scars they left during the Invasion run deep.

i'm addicted to raksha

also hey I wrote a bunch of helot-related ghosts because i'm an awful, awful person

Those who walk behind
Lesser Dead
Dead by Forced March

A thousand slaves march in a file, riders at their flanks, whips snapping across their backs. They are not bound by chains, for if they were, they would have to stop every hour, as another falls. The sick. The old. The starving. The young. The weak. They cannot endure another mile, and so they fall. They are left their in the dust to rot, watching the backs of their companions passing them by, one after the other. They don't care. They can't afford to; they would die too. And so these backs are the last sight of the dying, and to that sight their souls cling in fury and betrayal.

Those who walk behind are the ghosts of those who died because they could not keep up with a relentless march and so were abandoned. They manifest in beleaguered legions on the retreat and in caravans of refugees, but even much more commonly, among slaves. These tormented souls latch on to the sight of someone for whom they held feelings of companionship, who 'betrayed' them by walking on, and fester in contact with them, a ghostly, sentient disease.

Those who walk behind have no real body at first, immaterial or otherwise. They exist as a diffuse presence in the vicinity of their victim, and always manifest at their back. They are a whisper in the ear, a face glimpsed in a mirror, footsteps echoing one's own, creaking planks. When the victim turns, there is nothing - nothing but another cold breath on their shoulder. The manifestations increase in frequency and potency over time, putting the victim through increasing stress and unease, as if someone were always watching. They cannot sleep; their door opens in the night; something heavy sits on their chest at night; a voice mockingly tells them of their crime; they are cold even in the noonday sun.

It is possible to reject the influence of those who walk behind by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge their existence, putting oneself in a state of mind in which glimpses and whispers are rejected as mere tricks of the mind. Being in a tight-knit community, distracted by other people, helps. This is why, though these ghosts have a name known to exorcists, most communities deliberately avoid giving them one. Failing this, the fear and unease of the victim acts as worship for the ghost, which feeds on it and grows more bloated, more potent, more real. Eventually, as the victim becomes a shadow of its former self, eyes circled with deep dark rings, only skin on their bones, always shivering, the ghost begins to walk of its own rhythm, no more in lock-step with them. Step by step, it takes shape. Glancing behind one's shoulder reveals a known face - perhaps that of the dead, but perhaps that any of countless others who died on the march, flowing in and out of each other.

In a crowd, the ghost cannot kill, though it might get very close. But it is there, watching. Its face could be that of anyone. Its presence drives the victim to panic, seeking safety alone, in a place where they can see the threat coming and identify it.

And once they are alone, the ghost gently taps their shoulder.

Once a victim of those who walk behind has died of the spiritual infection, their soul is drawn out and consumed by the ghost, fusing with it, giving it more reality but confusing its memories and sense of self. It projects its perceived betrayal on another person to whom the victim was personally close, and the cycle begins again.

Necromancers and Exorcists

Necromancers find those who walk behind to have great potential, but to be difficult to properly use. As spies or assassins, they are incredibly difficult to deter: lacking a proper body, even immaterial, they often elude even the senses of trained spirit-hunters, and cannot be slain with a salt-encrusted sword to the heart (not until the last stages of their manifestation, at any rate). However, they also invariably grow emotionally obsessive over whichever target they were told to shadow, and are not stealthy at all in the conventional sense - the glimpses, whispers, and echoing steps are an unavoidable aspect of their nature. Properly used, the ghosts can wield great benefits, but victims who are not overworked slaves with no recourse have a much easier time dealing with the threat.


Though exorcists are rarely called upon to deal with those who walk behind, the protocols for handling these shades is well-trod, and can even be performed by mere apprentices - it is merely time-consuming. The would-be exorcist must shadow the afflicted exactly as the ghost does, staying at their back and sleeping next to them for three days and nights. On the third night, the ghost will detach itself from the victim and latch onto the exorcist; in that moment, they must close their eyes, turn around, and loudly abjure the ghost with proper prayers and blandishments. A struggle of will must occur, but unless the ghost has been allowed to feast on many souls, training and resolve will see one through the ordeal, and disperse the shade utterly.


The Fox-Breath
Aberration

A hundred men and women, so starved and sickly one cannot differentiate them, huddle together in the cold. When dawn comes, so will the whip. They will be fed, a little, 'enough to keep them going' as it is said, but never enough, always so little a few die each week. Their steaming breaths mingle, filled with craving, with desperation and despair.

Many mortals are born blessed with a strong will, a clever spirit, a yearning soul. Many carry in their blood the echoes of long-ago ancestors of renown, gods or Dragons whose faintest traces still linger. Many are born so, and in such circumstance that this will and this power never amounts to anything more than enduring the whip one more day than they might have otherwise. But their soul still yearns. Their soul still feels the outrage of this suffering.

The Fox-Breath is born of the lungs of those who waste away slowly at the hands of an uncaring world. It is the po, the base soul of hunger, slipping out of its shackles at night. It bubbles out of the mouth with a few drops of blood, draws on night-time shadows and the breaths of others too weak to resist its pull, to form a dark, vulpine shape of air and darkness, slinking along walls and floors and ceilings. Because its master is still alive, it is bound to the higher soul, and cannot manifest in full; but because it is bound, it is smarter than it might otherwise be. This intelligence is its downfall and its tragedy.

The Fox-Breath seeks to feed its mortal self. It sneaks into supply camps, pulling light items of food (it has little strength) to bring them back to its sleeping place. It squeezes itself into canteens, drinks all of their water, and comes back slow and bloated to gently spit the precious liquid back into the sleeping mouth. On occasions it will find soldiers who have harmed its waking self and brand them in their sleep with claw marks and bites. It may even, rarely, steal the keys off a guard's belt and slide them into the master's hand. Then it will find rest in his lungs.

The Fox-Breath almost never helps. The mortal does not remember its actions except as the vaguest of dreams, and cannot wake while it is gone. Often, angry soldiers barge in the slaves' quarters, looking for stolen food, and find it with the poor mortal, who has no idea how he got it. He protests his innocence in vain, and soon protests no more. If he wakes up early enough, he may quickly ingest the stolen contents, and must hope there will be no bread crumbs in his beard for the guards to find. And what to do with keys? Starved, broken by abuse, can he even hope to attempt escape, much less survive?

Most who manifest the Fox-Breath do not live long enough to see it develop further, and their keepers are none the wiser for it. But if the ghost is cunning enough, the waking self stealthy enough, the guards oblivious enough - the body is strengthened over time, and with it the soul. The Fox-Breath is emboldened. More than this, it is angry. Angry that no matter how much it steals, without its efforts everything would return to before, and its true self would die. So the Fox-Breath decides to feed it more.

The intermediate stages of the Fox-Breath's development are not kind to anyone. It drinks the sleeping breath of the mortal's companions, stealing their strength for his sake when they are already weak and ill, often causing their deaths. It finds the most ruthless of guards and slithers down their throat so it can eat their liver and feed the master their blood. It gnaws at chains, bites the whip's rope, haunts the dreams of those too powerful to kill. The mortal grows strong, too strong, too obviously so; black veins spread through their skin, their eyes take on a golden tinge, their teeth sharpen, their backs and shoulders become wide with muscle. These are telltale signs; even the most ignorant slave-mongers usually keep exorcists at hand, and though this ghost is rarer than most, they can pinpoint the symptoms. The poor mortal, who has no choice in this, has no way to hide his condition. The usual prescription is ritual execution in a circle of salt - such an expense typically leads angry masters to ruthless cruelty towards the rest of the slaves once the deed is done.

Very rarely, in camps where enough thousands of slaves are kept in such conditions that the ghost's works goes unnoticed until too late, the Fox-Breath can reach satiation. Having strengthened its mortal self enough, it nudges him awake at night, while it is manifested. In the moment of awakening with half his soul outside his body, the mortal is transformed. He becomes ghost-blooded, with an instinctive awareness and grasp of his own two souls. He is the higher self, cold and thinking and full of memories and care, and can drink breath, slip through the tiniest opening, see clearly in the night, and pierce the shroud of immateriality. The Fox is his lower self, ravenous and ferocious and strong and fluid as shadow, and under his command. He may bid it regurgitate the lower souls of those companions who died to feed the once-man. With shadows answering his will, blood boiling in his presence, wind muffling his footsteps, a pack of hungry ghosts at his heels, the man can escape easily. Or…

The prescribed remedy when a slave camp has been lost to the Fox-Breath is a Wyld Hunt.

Necromancers and Exorcists

Necromancers who hear of the presence of a Fox-Breath manifestation often offer their help for free in ridding the place of the threat, for the ghost is its own reward. A bag made out of the lung of a sheep or swine may confuse the beast; by lying in wait and using the proper scented herbs and beckoning words, a necromancer may lure the ghost into the bag, then plug it with a stopper made of rock salt. This severs the connection of the soul to the body, killing the unfortunate mortal in his sleep; the reward is a sealed hungry ghost which the necromancer may tame, train, or simply bind with magic. The Fox-Breath is very valued; while weaker in battle than most hungry ghosts, it is also smarter, stealthier, and more tame.

Exorcists know of the most simple remedy to the Fox-Breath, and those with good-natured inclinations are often frustrated at its lack of use. Execution in a circle of salt is expensive and cruel, but it is quick and avoids rewarding slaves for what is seen as a curse and likely a manifestation of some sin and vice. In truth, feeding the mortal, healing their body and allowing them plentiful rest will cause the ghost to fuse back with them over time, solving the issue.


The Unmourned
Greater Dead

Drive a thousand slaves to their death for the sake of your grand work. Have their broken bodies fall of the steps of the ziggurat they build. Drag their mangled remains from the firedust mine that cooked them alive. Pick them up in the coca fields where they fell. Tell yourselves they are only slaves, less than you, whether by birth or capture; that this is their lot in life, and that it is just. But in your heart you know they are human, and human souls who died in pain do not rest easily. All, even the least of your kind, deserve at least a proper funeral. So you heap their bodies in a great pile, and set fire to that pile, and tell yourself that it is good, that it is right, that it is enough. Fire cleanses. You would give them nothing more, but you will at least give them this.

Fire does cleanse. Many souls whose lives were too filled with pain find themselves too light to hold on. What is there for them to cling to in this world? They fall to Lethe.

Sometimes, it is not enough.

Fire cleanses and sometimes it cleanses the soul of all that is not its rage, its pain, its sorrow. It cleanses it to lethal purity and hardens it like clay in the kiln. A pyre does not leave enough remains for a hungry ghost to inhabit; it banishes them, but sometimes that is not enough. A thousand souls burn together, melt together, seek to hang on to bones and cracked teeth, their identity seared away. They cannot tell themselves from each other. They merge, fuse. The pyre is a crucible.

In the Underworld, the Unmourned manifests first as a tumorous growth in the dark soil. That cyst has an ashen tone and a flesh-like consistency; if pierced, one may find that it is filled with ashes, charred bones, and black tar. Piercing that cyst early enough can save many lives, but it is rarely done: the Unmourned are born in the mirror-places of slave camps, razed cities, or plague-ravaged lands, anywhere too many bodies were burned together with no more funeral rites than a single torch. Such places tend to be either empty of higher ghosts who could see the threat, or already haunted by mad roaming shades. So the tumor grows.

It takes months, sometimes years, for the Unmourned to metastasize. Over times it bloats to the dimension of tall buildings, and sends out fleshy tendrils across the ground in fractal patterns that are not without beauty; they drain Essence from the soil of the Underworld. The lords of the dead, when they chance upon a grown, but not yet bursting tumor, often set up a careful perimeter and a complex system of taps to control its growth, for the nascent Unmourned acts as a potent Demesne. Inside its shell of meat, the broken souls congeal and fuse over time, bound by the consumed Essence. They share dreams in that state: dreams of their lives of pain, of the agony of their death, of the anger and bitterness to never have received a prayer, a funeral offering.

Their dreams echo in the living world. The area which mirrors that where the tumor grows is slowly tainted. Though not yet a shadowland, the veil between worlds grows thin; the Unmourned's dreams plague the nights of those still living there, their voices sometimes echo on the wind; if there is plant life, its roots and branches may be found to be oddly supple, oddly bulbous, almost like organs. The effects are subtle, and rarely noticed - in no small part because the phenomenon is itself rare.

When the dream ends, the cyst bursts into pyreflame. From its core is born a grotesque giant, made of the remains of the dead, a thing of bone, burned muscle, cracked wood and kindling, hiding its no-face with an animal skull, shrouded in greenish flame. A corpse without a tomb. Its cacophony of minds has grown obsessed with only one thing: the funeral that was denied it. It reaches out into the living world, where it has already carved doors in the dreams of mortals. Every night, it pulls them in. Those living in the affected area find themselves plagued with the most vivid dreams of walking in an endless darkness, to reach a place where sits a corpse-master; and they are bound to honor him. With their bare hands they must break stone and assemble it into a mausoleum. They must find salt and offerings. They must make a funeral place worthy of a thousand kings.

Once victims have been pulled to the Underworld once in their dreams, leaving the tainted grounds will do them no good. The work they do at night denies them rest. They grow sickly, tired, thin as reeds. Much of the food they eat finds no purchase in their stomachs - instead at night they carry it as pristine meals to their new masters. Slaves must work an endless shift, taskmasters find themselves on the wrong hand of a whip, and guards answer to a new lord more terrible than any they've known before. Even as all grow to realize the reality of their plight, they find themselves unable to speak of it while awake, not unless they are asked by someone whose authority they feel is greater than their corpse-master - typically one of the Exalted. They labor in silent agony. When they die of wasting, their souls journey to the mausoleum, where they are to work forever.

Uprooting the infection is both necessary and, while not difficult, extremely expensive. The afflicted carry it wherever they go, and the land slowly grows corrupted. Individual treatment with dream-suppressing drugs over weeks can release one from the pull, but given the status of the victim, is almost never done. The area itself must be ritually purified with salt and prayer at great cost. The most efficient way of dealing with the Unmourned is also the most risky: a group of powerful warriors sleeping in the area until they too are pulled into the Underworld at night, where they may fight and defeat the Unmourned - a reckless endeavour; even a kinship of Dragons will find themselves at a difficulty from the environment alone, to say nothing of the army of slaves.

If nothing is done, the inevitable result is the tearing of the veil and the transformation of the area into a shadowland. The Unmourned's mausoleum manifests as a looming shadow in the day and a true building at night. The Unmourned seeks to expand its dominion and make its endless funeral all the more grandiose: strong slaves and soldiers are made into warriors bearing animal skulls and a pyreflame brand on their bodies, and are given no choice but to hunt down and capture more slaves. A small dominion of the dead arises in Creation and in the Underworld both, bent towards no other purpose but the commemoration of death. A burning corpse sits in its burial chamber, and will find no peace until a nation's worth of people weep for it, tear their hair in grief, sing its songs in tribute, burn the offerings in its name. Perhaps, then, the door of that burial chamber might be closed… But the dead are not known for being easily sated.

The heartlands of the Empire are lush and fertile, tamed forests and irrigated fields bounded by the City's sevenfold walls. The metropolis itself spanning the Yanaze and sprawling for miles in every direction. Surrounding geography riven by a secondary river network; itself the cumulative labor of generations of helots, their bleached white bones buried in the muck at the bottom. You were raised in these provinces, at times close enough to the sixth wall to kiss the sorcerer-sculpted stone. But Lookshy itself was always a shadow against the sky to you. A distant silhouette backlit by the descending sun: something impossibly ancient, something so very rare, and not for you. Never for you.

But the heartlands are ten days gone now and you're here, borne on a convoy crawling its way East. Maybe not at the frontier no but closer to that crumbling edge, that twilight border where the City's control is weaker and so many of the forts stand ungarrisoned. Where the towns and settlements are fewer, thinner, and the empty space between them yawns so very wide. The wind keening and moaning, veiled in skeins of dry, sandy soil, rising up to a scream as it howls through the desolation. Through the nothing.

The mountains to the East glow golden with the last rays of Sol Invictus as he slips down the vault of the sky, plunging towards the Western oceans. The range's snow-shrouded slopes shining, splendid, even as bruised purples and softer indigos collect in their valleys. In the space between peaks where the darkness comes early and lingers long. You don't know their names, you don't even know where you are but you...

Feel a kind of kinship with this place. It's hard and unmerciful, it does not love you but there's an honesty in that. You don't think the steppe loves anyone. A kind of equal, omnipresent disdain for master and slave alike. You can appreciate that.

You pull on your padded jacket, shivering even in the sunlight. Even in the brutal kiln of a Scavenger Lands Summer. You're still soaked to the skin, your tunic and pants damp from the exertion of the march, but you can already feel the warmth being leeched away. The wind started almost the second you left Ivory Bones proper, it hasn't stopped since. At least the coat, coarse and dusty though it is, is dry.

Take the pick in your hands. Swing it, send it biting deep into the parched earth. Work it free in a small cloud of grit and shredded roots. A cascade of dirt streaming down the sides of the steadily widening trench, rocks the size of your thumb bouncing, carried on the current. Jason digs his shovel into the unstable ground, whorn shoe sending the blade deep. Lifting a spadeful of dirt and debris with a grunt and tossing it across the gap on the already ankle-high pile. Rinse. Repeat. The same motions mimicked up and down the lines of workers, mirrored so slightly out of synch; the ripple-walk of a centipedes legs.

A whip cracks, a voice cries out, and you all flinch as one. Eyes down, focus on the task in front of you. Metal strikes rock and chips of porous grey spray out, stinging where they hit. Your forearms ache, the tendons nestled between the bone throbbing. Molten lead slowly drips its way down your back, framing your hips. The curved, crescent scar just below your eye itches and burns. A blow from off to your left, heavy and so horribly loud, the sound of a side of meat falling with a wet smack to the floor. You don't turn to look, you just try to breathe. Every exhale a ragged, shuddering gasp. Every inhale raw and greedy and desperate.

In front of you a girl staggers and stumbles, almost falling beneath her burden. Forcing herself back up to a shambling walk along the slopes, stone the size of a full grown chicken in her arms. Nobody stops to help. Nobody gives her a second look. Just work, it's all you can do. Work until you're done. Work until it's over. Work until you fall.

Strike. Shovel. Rinse. Repeat. The only way out is through.

They don't let you sing, they don't let you talk, and that makes it so, so easy to get lost in your own head. To slip into a kind of trance to the tune of hundreds of men and women digging. Your body just a machine of twisted sinew and striated muscle, stretched on a rack of bone and swathed in skin; running through rote motions. Paying just enough dull attention to keep from hitting anyone. Hurting anyone. It's still hard to think as such: the pain distracts, every impact rattles your head and disorders your thoughts. Your own breath rasps in your ears, a constant, harsh, scrape on already sensitive nerves. But you're experienced enough to let the fog take you without a struggle, to let the half-remembered stories swirl and slosh in your brain.

What was it your mother said? Lookshy is the Empire, Lookshy is the City, Lookshy is the Goddess. Each bears the same name because they are the same and to speak of one is to speak of the three.

Your mother's close to ten years gone now; left behind when they took you for the work crews, for the shackles. When they finished with you and just folded you into the nearest village: half a nation away from your childhood home. Time has taken almost everything you have left of her, your father, your brothers and sisters. But you still have that little red stone around your neck, and you still have her stories.

Lookshy has two heads: one that faces East towards the uncowed Scavenger Lands and river-provinces, the petty kingdoms that will one day bow before her; one that faces West towards the slow-rotting Scarlet, the ancient enemy that she will one day see broken on her shores. She is regal and righteous, she is the spirit of democracy and at her feet kneel all the armies and slaves of the immaculate state. She is dragon and eagle both and her feathers are stained the dark purple of a rich wine; her scales the polished perfection of amethysts. Every claw the faintest, palest shadow of Saturn's scythe. When she appears in the heart of Archontic Conclave she does so dressed in the richest of worm-spun silks and the most ancient of Shogunate armors and all rise to press their hands to their hearts and pay witness to her arrival. Her long, flowing sleeves and the tails of her robe waving in an intangible breeze like the banners and pennants of the themes at muster. The suit she wears over is of the gunzosha, those who give their lives in service of greatness, and is etched with sacred marks and edged in gold. Every ornament on her is like the least spark of the Sun himself.

She is a giant and she carries no sword for the nation is her sword. But the shield she bears in her hand is crystal cut in a flawless mirror, the colors running so deep they could be black. And within its reflection is contained the whole of her realm. Her children are the Porphyra and they are multitudes; when she raises her hand they attend her, ready for battle. Puissant spirits with a raptor's plumage and a serpent's skin.

She is Lookshy and there is only one to whom she bows.

You pause in your labor. Tapping your pick to the lip of the earthworks, you've been boring down steadily. It's already almost waist deep and wagon-wide and runs for hundreds of meters in either direction. The sun is balanced on the horizon, searing face sullen and red. Bisected by the Imperial Mountain, a thread of darkness across the sky. The world beyond the peaks to the East is already swathed in every shade of dusk. Shoulder the pick, swing, try to swallow the muted goan as your right side explodes into pain. Push through.

Conflict is like...the ground beneath your feet, the trees, the breeze, the fire in your small hearth and the water you drink. It's inevitable, ineffable, irresistible. Temples to Mars acknowledge this, accept this, and are severe things; beautiful but harsh and unyielding. Tended in reverence by somber priests in ruby robes. Humbly pledged to her lesser aspects and least agents. You've heard that the floors there are rose marble, that the glass in the great windows is tinted pink and carmine and bloody murals decorate the walls. But there are no grand ceremonies held there and few rites, for what use is there pleading with a Maiden to change her mind? Pay her the fear and awe that are her due but do not ask her to intercede, never rise to such heights of arrogance.

Because the red-handed goddess commands and Lookshy follows.

They light torches and lanterns as night falls. The crack of the whip becomes louder, more frequent and with every strike an itch forms, deepening between your shoulderblades. They keep you out there longer and longer, pushing you harder. The entire line panting, sucking down greedy lungfuls of air like a living thing, run down and brought to bay. Jason's teeth are gritted, the veins in his arms and neck swollen. It isn't until your legs are shaking, your arms trembling, and you're seconds from pitching down onto your knees that the whistle blows, sharp and shrill.

Form up in orderly lines, you the walking dead, the hollow-eyed and the gaunt. Set your tools in a pile while the guards scan the crowd, while they count each and every piece. It's a punchline in search of set up, because what would a half-starved slave do with a pick they couldn't hide, could barely stand to swing? What is a helot going to do with a shovel besides dig their own grave? But you know and everyone knows that if they're missing one they'll keep you out here longer. You know that if they're missing one they'll turn and tear into you, rip into you, and come away with chunks of your flesh between their teeth, with your blood on those leather lashes and your bone exposed to the air. Each and every instrument finds its way back.

There's a sound behind you, you turn your head. Watching as the thaumaturges and their elementals even out the rougher sides and square out the bottom. As they compact the vast mound of loose soil above into a solid rampart. A pause, a single, perfectly drilled motion; the men and women in long coats and chain shirts beckoning as one. With a noise like a sharpening knife razored shards of stone burst out from beneath the grass. Spearing out from the flanks of the channel, a thicket of swords.

One small portion of the vast arc slowly taking shape, curving around the mining town.

They march you back, torch-lit and filthy. Jason slips his arm around your waist and for all that he's a ruin too he's somehow still in better shape. You feel guilty for leaning on him but not that much. You're not that heavy and if you fell you don't think you could get up again. You pass by a second stream, a column of helots heading out in the opposite direction, guided on by another shift of soldiers; the crowd that was penned up in the town square you think. Their faces ashen, pallid and shadowed. You see the eyes of a few flicker towards you, weighing you, gauging you, trying to take in what you've endured, you see their expressions falter and fall as they take in the grime, the black streaks on your cheeks like a mockup of a noblewoman's makeup. Most don't bother and when you get to the square you smell it, you hear it, you see it and you understand.

She made them up to look like battle standards, long lances bearing the weight of helot "heraldry". The bodies stripped, arms outstretched, spearhead and haft piercing their chests from the back. Steel slick, crusted with long dried gore. Flies wreathing the nude corpses like tendrils of fine smoke even as that sickly sweet smell, human waste and human fear and ruptured human viscera, slithers up your nose and squirms down your throat.

"(Come on)," Jason murmurs to you, one hand on the back of your head, fingers in your hair as he gently but firmly turns your face away, "(let's find a place to sleep.)"

In the end it's easier said than done. The barracks sit by the governor's manor, surrounded by broad boulevards, separated by physical space and tangible status. Resting on a small hillock, overlooking the identical row houses for the helotry. The bunks originally made to hold a fraction of the population, each one now packed full to bursting. You can see doors wedged open, people curled up just outside the thresholds, along the foundations, beside the gutters cut in the ground for flash floods. A layer of exhausted men and women, packed in tight.

It takes you a bit but you and he find your way back to that ledge you ate your supper on. It's not much but the lip offers you something like shelter from the prevailing wind and when the two of you huddle in close it's almost, almost comfortable. Your cheek to his chest, his hands on the small of your back.

The twisted faces of the dead, jaws slack and heads lolling, watching you with filmy eyes as you bed down as best you can.

For once your dreams are almost lucid.
[ ] You dream of something between lust and love. Arms around your waist, the hands on your hips changing from one heartbeat to the next; from things of ash and smoldering ember to Jason's, just as calloused and worn as yours.
[ ] You dream of something that could be called "freedom". You've only been swimming a few times in your life but you imagine it's something like that. Floating, drifting weightless. Suspended in the blue above everything else.
[ ] You dream of something furious and forbidden. Armored bodies mounted on polearms, wrists and ankles bound; a Dragonblooded of Sextes Jylis, spitted and still twitching in the very center. Sacred blood slowly dripping down.