As such, the Continuity Schism tended to appeal to thinkers who were not inclined towards divine interpretations of catastrophe, while the opposite was true of the Discontinuity Schism. But the Continuity Schism did have its share of fanatics.

The Psychomatics, for example, were prepared to take extreme measures in order to emphasise the legitimacy of their position. They were the militant wing of the Continuity Schism who sought an active involvement in the way of the world as they defined it. In other words, they liked destroying things or, more to the point, they liked destroying people. Which is why they had developed a formidable range of expertise in various means of sabotage and assassination.

It had taken the Gutter a lot of effort to find this out and a lot of gutting. He had first been alerted to the Psychomatics when he was doing some reconnaissance work on a Meta-Warrior called Hecticon who was posing as a linear usurper in the disputed northern province of Uin. As luck would not not have it, the Psychomatics had tried to assassinate Hecticon while the Gutter was trying to figure out a way to do the same. When their attempt had failed, Hecticon stepped up his security measures which made him temporarily unavailable for an appointment with the Gutting Knife. So the Gutter decided to do some reconnaissance work on the Psychomatics instead. The fact that they'd targeted a Meta-Warrior like Hecticon had led him to suspect that they might have been acting under the influence of a non-linear element. have it, the Psychomatics had tried to assassinate Hecticon while the Gutter was trying to figure out a way to do the same. When their attempt had failed, Hecticon stepped up his security measures which made him temporarily unavailable for an appointment with the Gutting Knife. So the Gutter decided to do some reconnaissance work on the Psychomatics instead. The fact that they'd targeted a Meta-Warrior like Hecticon had led him to suspect that they might have been acting under the influence of a non-linear element.

Which, as it happens, is perfectly true.

There was a bee wrestling with a bud on the ground that had fallen off the broken stalk of a wilting flower that was growing from a crack in the ruptured brickwork.

The Light That Never Shines reflected on the fact that she had seen linear men and women work with the same mindless vigour, and with the same failure to comprehend the underlying motivations of their most rudimentary tasks.

"Are you any different?

"Of course," she replied. "My automatic functions are distinguishable for their emphasis on the wilful elimination, rather than preservation, of my species. To this extent, it is not a question of performing rudimentary tasks in order to survive, but a question of killing or being killed."

"Is there a difference?

"Yes, there is. It depends on the amount of risk you are exposed to. I am exposed to an extreme measure of danger in performing my routine tasks; a common bee is exposed to much less; while a linear human (except in cases of disease, famine or war) is exposed to almost none at all."

At the same time, the Light That Never Shines had been careful to take advantage of occasional individuals who surfaced from the linear tide with an almost Meta-Warrioristic compulsion to commit themselves to a cause. a cause.

"But who's to say they're right to do so?'

That's obvious, thought The Light That Never Shines.

She was.

The Light That Never Shines arose from her basic element wearing a singularity of dark matter that had no basis in was a precursor of the totality of form.

Emerging from her non-awareness, and having only been able to register her existence through emotions, she was formulaically integrated into a linear means of physicality.

The Light That Never Shines had known the primordial absence of herself without ever knowing that she had existed.

Until that time.

"Existence can only be measured by the fact that it must come to an end," she told herself. "Is this what it means to say, I live? I live? Which is only another way of saying that Which is only another way of saying that I must die?" I must die?"

The Light That Never Shines had harvested a multitude of skins in order to saturate herself in the depths of personality that she was lacking until, finally, she consisted of more expressions of herself than she could account for. The intellectual capacities of her various aspects are boundless to the point that, mathematically, she is devastating and, poetically, she is the purveyor of many fine examples of genius.

"But are you afraid?" she asked an emerging version of herself.

"No," she replied but, in actual fact, she was.

There was a bad rain blowing in the faces of the Sisters of No Mercy. Their vision was blurred. Their long hair swept dark and lank across their faces. The Wilden Howe was a dismal place. But the Sisters didn't mind. It was an ideal place for killing an enemy, which is why they were there.

The Wilden Howe was a small peninsula that jutted into the Sea of Absences off the headland of Noth. It was a barren shaft of land that degenerated into cliffs along its coasts, with occasional lagoons and shingle beaches offering treacherous points of access from the broiling sea.

The currents around the Wilden Howe were a distortion of the Laws of Nature. On the northeast side, a gigantic maelstrom presented a terrifying hazard to ships and skiffs, many of which had been swallowed up in its liquid maw.

The Howe itself was a harsh domain of haggard grasses and windswept moss, with stagnant pools and peat-bogs in the lower reaches, and broad summits of granite that rose like warped skulls through skins of vegetation.

It was a perfect place for smuggling cartels to ply their trade, which is why Whorefrost was there. Whorefrost was posing as a Harbour Lord from the Isle of Balloch who specialised in trafficking sex slaves from the mainland to a wide variety of island groups. It was a position that afforded him a reasonable degree of power and influence, which he was able to use for the more pressing business of destroying his foes.

"Not a bad racket," admitted Little Sister, as if being forced to swallow a live insect.

"No," said Big Sister, "not bad at all."

"But not," said Little Sister, watching the lone figure of Whorefrost approaching through the mist, "that "that good." good."

"No," agreed Big Sister, "not fucking good at all."

Whorefrost was up against a dangerous adversary. Perhaps it was the extent of their erotic appeal that was making him lose his concentration. But Whorefrost knew that he didn't require any concentration when it came to a fight.

The smooth strokes of his baton were deftly applied but, oddly enough for a weapon forged in the shape of a penis, lacking penetration. His every move was blocked, his every subtlety anticipated.

The Sisters were good too fucking good. too fucking good.

As his frustration increased, he began to lose his balance; and, finally, he overreached with a blow that was aimed at the little one's head. She whirled her body out of his range while the other, the big one, swung her sword upwards in a gentle arc.

In a sense, he was lucky that it struck him directly on the point of his elbow, or else it might have lopped off his lower arm. The pain, however, was outrageous. But what alarmed him most was the sight of his baton flying out of his hand and landing well beyond his immediate reach.

In the meantime, the little one had recovered her poise. She smacked him across the back of his head with the flat of her blade and sent him sprawling forward onto the wet grass, face-first.

And vulnerable.

"Well, fuck me," said the little one behind him. "I bet you were thinking you were lucky you didn't lose your lower arm."

Fuck her, she was right.

The next thing he knew there was a muffled thud that sounded like a spade being driven into wet soil. It wasn't. It was Little Sister's long sword hacking into his lower arm which, this time, was removed within two or three fleeting strokes.

Everything after that was a blur.

First: the big one started to hack off his other arm so that he was left completely helpless. But alive.

Second: the little one was doing something he couldn't work out, untying his pantaloons and dragging them down around his ankles, but leaving them there so his legs were tied.

Third: the big one sat down on his chest, pinning him to the ground (as if he was capable of doing anything anyway).

And it was then that the real pain started.

Little Sister liked to keep her blade raw and jagged so that, when she cut somebody, it was going to hurt, which is exactly what she was intending now. She took a grip of Whorefrost's penis and started sawing through it with a lazy vigour, and the screams of Whorefrost confirmed the fact that her intentions were being well met.

Whorefrost may have been bleeding to death already, due to the gushing stumps of his missing arms, but he was going to die by choking on his own cock. Little Sister made sure of that when she rammed it down his throat; and, to this extent, no one could fault her for not remaining true to her word.

The removal of Whorefrost's cock had been a piece of butcher's work, deliberately undertaken with a fastidious lack of care. The removal of his testicles, however, was a different affair, whereby Little Sister demonstrated an expertise and slight of hand that was worthy of a master surgeon. She sliced open his egg-sac and eased the testicles into an alchemical container that would keep them nice and fresh for whatever purposes they had in mind.

Which is why the Sisters of No Mercy were already making their way south, to the City of Thrills, to rendezvous with their linear informers the Covenant of Ichor.

Things were things happening in the City of Thrills. Things were always happening in the City of Thrills.

But not like today.

Up until now, the City of Thrills was a vacuum of architectures avoiding collapse. Now, however, it seemed like the collapse was inevitable.

But it wouldn't be the buildings. No. The feeling of collapse was wholly concentrated on the people not the people people, but the other other people. people.

Some of them were here.

The Light That Never Shines could feel it, as surely as she would feel a knife in the guts.

Guts? Why was she thinking Guts? Guts?

In spite of the prodigious range of her mathematical genius, the Light That Never Shines had only a vague presentiment of why she was feeling the way she was now. But she was seldom wrong, so it seemed right that she should expose her feeling to the failsafe scrutiny of a few calculations.

She stopped to take a seat outside a winery where some poets and philosophers were sitting on stools arranged around half a dozen massive barrels. She bought herself a skin of wine and proceeded to knock it back like there was no tomorrow.

Maybe there wouldn't be.

When she had reduced herself to a suitable level of artificial calm, she wrangled through the various permutations and, within an hour or so, had come to a conclusion.

Some of them were here. But the odds, she reckoned, were in her favour.

She gazed into her tumbler and began to brood. Then one of the poets from an adjacent barrel took notice of her (you could tell he was a poet because of his wide-brimmed hat). He rose and took a seat beside her, the way that linear people sometimes do.

"Are you lonely, friend?" he asked, setting a fresh-filled skin of wine on the barrel before them. "Are you a poetess? Is that what ails you? I can well understand the burden of fashioning words into things of beauty. It is my trade, too."

She looked at him as placidly as her anxious mood would allow.

"No, she said. "I'm."

The poet frowned. "What, my friend?"

"A mathematician."

"Oh," said the poet, "I see."

But the Light That Never Shines could see he couldn't see anything. "And what can your mathematics tell us of our world?" he asked. "Can it tell us as much as poetry?" "It can tell us that we're doomed."

"Well," he laughed, "if that's the case, then so can poetry." "But mathematics can tell us when." when." The poet stared. The poet stared.

"Lady Mathematician," he said, "I wonder if you are not a poetess, after all."

"No," she said. "But if you come with me I'll show you what I am." She adjusted her skin to make herself more alluring. The poet gasped. Even if I cannot show you why. Even if I cannot show you why.

The Light That Never Shines walked anonymously through the dimming streets. It was nearing twilight, her favourite time of day. She had adjusted her skin-tone to suit the occasion. People passing by her may have registered her presence in some subliminal way that their awareness, however, couldn't account for. She was seen and, yet, she remained unnoticed.

She had taken the poet into a backstreet with promises of sexual gratification, but the pleasure had been entirely hers. She had peeled him like a piece of fruit, absorbing his skin with an orgasmic thrill that had restored her to her uttermost vitality. And now it was time for her to act.

Time for her to summon the Psychomatics.

The Gutter stood out like a moth among butterflies. He didn't try to hide the fact. Instead, he was a gaunt-looking fucker with sleepy eyelids that hooded his eyes and made him look like he was capable of doing very bad things.

He was.

He eyeballed people as he walked passed them: they didn't hold his gaze. They looked away like he'd sent an electric shock through their line of vision. This was typical of the Gutter, who was careful to exert his influence over people.

He had found the Salon of Catastrophists on a street called Patron's Way. Patron's Way divided the Cymbeline and Cerebral Districts and was one of the city's liveliest thoroughfares. This explained the heavy presence of City Arbiters idling among the gregarious hordes, with studded coshes dangling from their wrists.

Which, of course, presented certain difficulties when it came to organising an open confrontation with the Psychomatics.

Which is why the Gutter had developed a plan.

The Covenant of Ichor led them to the door of the stairwell for the office of the Information Syndicate.

"I warn you, Sisters, it's an ugly sight." The leader of the local order smiled faintly. "Men are rarely beautiful, especially when they're mutilated. The sight of them may please you nevertheless."