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“Think about it, okay? We won’t have another chance to talk until we get home.”

Home. Gwen may call Sanctuary home, yet what awaited him was a prison. Orpheus shivered again, watching Gwen join the rest of the white cloaks in their preparations. They did not idle in the shadow of the boulder long. Three of the horses were refitted with collars for hauling while Vera’s food crates were transferred from the rickety wooden cart they’d stolen from the fairgrounds. Into the remaining wagon Gwen and the horseless riders climbed, Atticus hovering close as if in guard, pale eyes glancing off Orpheus between each command.

Like a horse himself, Duluth took up Orpheus’ wagon, then, one by one, Atticus and his riders donned their cloaks. Farris’ ghosts, he thought again, regret a heavy weight, imagining how Farris had felt when they’d all laughed.

East painted a scar across the distant horizon, and it was towards that they headed, Atticus taking position at their head while the remaining riders swept up their tracks from behind.

It was fine. It didn’t matter. Fenrir didn’t need clear tracks to find him. He’d hunted that dragon to the Keep just fine without them, hadn’t he? But the urge to dig his fingernails into his wrist still surged, and all Orpheus could do was chew at his bit and wonder what would happen if Fenrir couldn’t find his way across the Rim. Before him, the horizon sprawled, gray shale stretching end to limitless end while what lay beyond was a world far larger than that the Empire encompassed. A whole planet they’d been sealed away from, with miles of unexplored landscape anyone—even Fenrir Rawkner—could get lost in.

If that were the case—and he wasn’t admitting it was—he needed a plan. Either to buy time or get himself out of this mess.

You have to play along with Atticus.

And the only way to do that was to teach Gwen. But when his presumed ability to cast was all that was keeping him alive, it’d be stupid to render himself irrelevant by instructing someone else to do what he couldn’t. Gwen knew his secret. All she had to do was tell Atticus and his ruse was up.

It was a balance of power currently evenly distributed: Orpheus with the knowledge Gwen needed—Gwen with the power to protect him and his secret. But once he started handing over all he knew, Atticus wouldn’t need him anymore, and neither would Gwen.

But how else was he supposed to get close enough to her to—to—

Take it back. Take it for yourself.

Take Gwen’s magic.

Hours whittled away in the passage of the Rim beyond his cage’s bars, memories of what existed before leveled into a muted echo. Gone were the hell beasts who would have crawled from the cracked-open earth. Smothered was the Netherflame that would have frothed over the edges of fractured plates. Nothing but ash and dust existed now, death’s graveyard sprawling as far as he could see, an irony not lost on him.

Something familiar passed close beside the wagon, its dull carapace empty of the flame that should have kindled it, tiny legs clicking in the wind with a false skittering that had once led it to a curious mage who had Netherflame in his veins.

Orpheus stared at the dead Incendiary beetle, waiting for a spark of life that would never return. Maybe that was why he didn’t notice it at first: the corpse that emerged from the ash-choked wind.

All hells—could that be real?

Dark and looming, like the titans of lore, a carcass re-shaped the horizon. Orpheus didn’t have a name for what it was, a creature from Hell so enormous it should have never walked the Earth at all—only had, because here at the heart of the chasm, there had been enough Netherflame to sustain something of its size. And when Orpheus had sealed up Hell, he’d trapped it here. To starve. To die. To become yet another casualty to a devastation that refused to fucking end.

“Confirmed dead, Sir!” Serval’s voice bled out of the thick haze. The pounding of hooves heralded his arrival, the trail of dust following him sparkling in the strangely bent light. It clung to his shoulders where his cloak had fallen back, hood loose to the wind.

“Serval, your cloak,” Atticus snapped.

“Why so worried, boss? There’s nothing left out there. It’s all dead.”

All hells. To think these people had traveled across the Rim while those monsters were alive? Orpheus huddled into his corner, halfway grateful for his cage, and tried not to think of how excited Fenrir would be to fight a monster of such monolithic magnitude.

“It’s not just your own life you risk making that assumption.” Atticus circled Serval then grabbed his hood, nearly tipping him off his horse when he jerked it up. “Comfort breeds indolence, indolence leads to death. This is the rule of the Deadlands, Serval. I didn’t think I’d have to remind you, of all people.”

Serval’s face became a shadowed mask, eyes staring into the middle distance while Atticus secured the hood to his head with his leather goggles.

“Nothing is comin’ for us, boss. We’re hauling more than enough bait for something hungry and there hasn’t been so much as a peep. It’s safe. For once we’re fuckin’ safe.”

Orpheus didn’t have time to examine what exactly that meant. As if summoned by Serval himself, the whole of the world began to tremble. It came from deep below, a rumble that vibrated through the iron of Orpheus’ wagon to rattle his teeth. Dust roiled up in the not-so-far distance, bubbling like soup left too long on the stove, a thick dense cloud that lent a dreamlike quality to the horizon’s mountain range.

No—not dreamlike. This was...it was a nightmare. Orpheus shoved into the corner of his cage when the carcass along the horizon began to move.

“Safe,” Atticus spat like poison. “Riders, mask up!” Atticus pulled his cowl over his mouth and nose just as a wave of dust swallowed the caravan whole.

Dust flooded his cage and Orpheus hacked into his sleeve, squinting into the dense cloud. Little light broke through the debris raining down on them, but the wagon moving with a halted jerk, dust parting while Duluth circled them through the mess to drop him close enough to Gwen’s wagon that he saw her face through the bars.

Fear, whole and horrific, clawed the color from her cheeks and left them gray as the shale.

The whole world shook as the creature ascended to its full height; Orpheus choked on a scream.