The surviving dog took to barking and growling but did not get within the devourer's reach. The soul of the trapped man writhed, veins of green energy pulsing from it to feed the devourer.

Black energy swirled from the devourer's form. Green light flared in its abdomen, and the tiny effigy of the man imprisoned there squirmed, shrinking ever smaller as the devourer consumed him for power. As the effigy shrank, the burns Zeeahd had inflicted on the flesh of the devourer healed, the flesh knitting closed.

A coughing fit seized Zeeahd and he bent double, slipped in the wet, and fell to the grass on all fours. His form twisted under his clothing, getting taller, thinner. Sayeed started to help him up-feeling his brother's bones twisting-but Zeeahd pushed him away.

"Go!" he said, and coughed. "That's all I can do for now."

Sayeed stood, drew his blade, and readied his shield.

Zeeahd's hand reached up and closed on his wrist. His brother's hand was feverishly hot, although he still kept his visage hidden within the cowl.

"That creature cannot give you peace, Sayeed. Your soul and mind would live on in its form, regenerating constantly, forever sating its appetite. You would suffer eternally." Another cough, then, "The Lord of the Eighth has promised me a cure. Promised us a cure. Only through him will we find an end to this. He has already gifted me with hellfire. You saw, Saied. You saw."

The devourer shrieked again and padded across the grass toward them, stepping heedlessly on the corpses of those it had slain, driving the bodies deeper into the mud.

"I saw," Sayeed said to his brother. He didn't trust Zeeahd-he hated Zeeahd-but what choice did he have?

The devourer broke into a loping run.

Sayeed didn't wait for it. He roared and ran down the rise, his armor clanging, meeting the creature's charge head on. The thrill of battle filled him, the only thing he felt with clarity anymore.

They closed in five strides. The devourer slashed with one of its huge claws, but Sayeed deflected it with his shield and did not slow, instead slamming his body into the devourer's larger form while he drove his blade into the creature's abdomen, through the effigy, and up through the neck. The enchanted blade vibrated gleefully in his hands as it found purchase in flesh, and the movement made the already deep wound jagged, more painful.

The devourer and the effigy both keened with pain. Dark energy swirled around them, a black fog that pulled at whatever withered bits of Sayeed's soul remained. The stink of the creature, like a charnel house, filled Sayeed's nostrils. The devourer shoved him away, nearly causing him to slip on the wet earth, and bounded after him, claws slashing. Sayeed parried with his shield and ducked under another blow, but the creature pressed, heedless of Sayeed's blade.

Sayeed slashed the creature's arms, leg, but the devourer grabbed his face with an enormous clawed hand and squeezed, the nails piercing Sayeed's cheeks, penetrating gums, and scraping teeth. Blood poured into Sayeed's mouth. He felt no pain but nearly vomited at the taste of the creature's foul digits in his mouth.

With preternatural strength, the devourer lifted Sayeed by his head and cast him five paces away. Sayeed hit the ground in a clatter of metal, rolled with the momentum, and bounced to his feet. Already the flesh of his face was knitting closed. He spat out the taste of the devourer's fingers and a mouthful of blood.

The devourer cocked its head and licked its fangs with the rope of its tongue, perhaps puzzled that Sayeed had not remained prone.

Sayeed's weapon shook in his hands, hungry for more violence. Sayeed, eager to feed it and high on the rush of battle, roared and charged anew. He blocked an overhead claw strike with his shield and cleaved the creature at the knee. His blade bit through flesh and sheared bone, severing the leg.

As the devourer fell, it lashed out with its other claw, catching Sayeed on the shoulder, ripping through mail and flesh, and spinning him around with the impact. A blast of dark energy from the devourer engulfed him, cooled his body, and once more pulled at his soul.

His rage proved the hotter and he resisted the dark magic. He spun and drove his blade downward into the prone creature's chest. He left it there, pinioning the creature to the ground, while the devourer tore at his legs and abdomen. Black energy from the devourer churned around him, a seething cloud of unholy power. Sayeed felt the blood running warm from his body, but ignored it. Straddling the creature, he took his shield by the sides, lifted it high, and slammed the sharpened edge of its bottom into the devourer's neck. The slab of enchanted metal severed the devourer's head, ending its shrieking, extinguishing the green light in its eyes. The dark energy around Sayeed subsided as the head fell away from the body, tongue still dangling from its mouth like some grotesque pennon.

Sayeed stood over the corpse while the rain fell, while his body healed its wounds. With battle over, the rush left him, and he once more returned to his usual emptiness.

The devourer's corpse began to leak shadows, the stink of them like rotting meat. Its flesh fell away from bones that began to crumble. The trapped soul in its abdomen, like a malformed fetus, was the last to go, screaming as it dissolved into putrescence.

As Sayeed watched the rain wash the stain of the creature from the plains, he recognized that he was no more human than it had been. He should have felt fatigue, soreness, pain, but he did not. He occupied flesh, he moved, but he felt nothing, not unless he was killing something.

Standing there, he realized there was nothing left in him but hate, for himself, for his brother, for the world. The Spellplague had done more than transform his body. It had transformed his soul, robbed him of hope. He'd once tried to kill himself, slitting his own throat with a dagger. For a brief, glorious moment, his vision had blurred and sleep and death had seemed within reach. But his flesh had healed far more quickly than he could bleed out.

He wanted to die but the world would not let him.

Hearing his brother shambling near, he recovered himself, his blade, his shield. He used the grass to wipe the ichor from both. His brother was grunting like a beast. Sayeed tried to block out the sound, tried to quell the impulse to drive his blade into Zeeahd's guts, expose whatever foulness polluted his brother's flesh.

The surviving dog hovered at a distance, whimpering, unwilling to approach. Sayeed sheathed his blade and turned to the dog.

"Here, boy! Come!"

The mastiff bared its fangs, turned a circle, whined, and did not come any closer.

Animals always saw them for what they were, he and his brother.

Zeeahd lumbered among the carnage, gasping, awkward with the bulges and swells forming under his robes. The cats followed, their eyes glowing red in the dim light.

"Are none alive? Sayeed, are none alive?"

Zeeahd sounded as if he might weep.

Sayeed felt nothing for him.

"Sayeed!"

Sayeed sighed, sheathed his weapon, and slung his shield. He went to the women, the younger and the older, and kneeled beside them, found them both dead. The men and all the children were dead, too, all except one.

"The girl is alive," he said, and gently rolled her over onto her back. She looked pale, her dark hair pulled back and tied with a leather tie. Her breast rose and fell with her shallow breaths. She might have been fifteen winters old.

The dog whined. The cats hissed at it, eyed it hungrily.

"Excellent! Excellent!" Zeeahd said, and waddled over. His voice was wet, as if he had a mouthful of liquid. "Leave her to me. Leave her, Sayeed."

Sayeed stood, backed away a few steps. He made another attempt to win over the dog-he didn't know why-but the mastiff would have none of it.

Zeeahd kneeled at the girl's side, cradled her in his arms, and spoke words of healing. They came awkwardly to his brother's lips, accustomed as they were to uttering arcane words that harmed.

The girl moaned and her eyes fluttered opened. Sayeed saw the panic form in them.

"Let me go! Let me go!"

"Be at ease, girl," Zeeahd said, his words sloppy, wet with drool. "You're safe now."

Sayeed realized that his mouth was dry and that he still had the taste of the devourer in his mouth. Odd that he could barely taste even the finest food, but the foulness of a devourer lingered. He drank from his waterskin, swished, spit.

Thunder boomed.

The cats ringed Zeeahd and the girl, although they stared out at the growling dog with unmistakable hunger in their eyes.

"What happened?" the girl asked. "Who're you? Where're mama and papa?"

Zeeahd used his roiling girth to shield the girl from the sight of the corpses. "You were attacked. You were with your family?"

She craned her neck and looked around Zeeahd at the carnage.

Sayeed saw her expression fall, saw the light fade from her eyes. She had just died, although her body still lived. In that moment, she had become him.

"Not my mum and dad. Oh, no. Oh, no." Tears leaked from her eyes, snot from her nose.

Zeeahd daubed at both, as gentle as a wet nurse, and wrapped the distraught girl in his overlong arms, enveloping her in his cloak. His body pulsed and seethed under the sodden cloth.

"There, there, my girl," he said, his voice the gentle roll of thunder before the lightning. "It's all over now."

Sobs shook the girl's small frame. The cats milled in a circle around them, their meows like a question. Zeeahd tried to shoo them while tending the girl. His hand poked from his cloak and Sayeed saw its malformation, the claws, the leathery skin, the fingers almost twice the length they should have been.

"That creature!" the girl said through her sobs. "It was awful. Oh, father!"

"There now," Zeeahd said. "The creature is no more and that's all that matters. What's your name?"

"Lahni," the girl said, her voice muffled by Zeeahd's cloak. "Lahni Rabb."

"That's a beautiful name," Zeeahd said, and stroked her hair.

Sayeed took another drink from his waterskin. He wished it was wine; he wished he could drink himself into unawareness. But even drunkenness was denied him. He toyed with the idea of decapitating Zeeahd, an idle thought that made him smile.

The mastiff whined, barked uncertainly, sniffed the air, hackles raised.

"The dog won't come," Sayeed said, because he had nothing else to say and the silence was awful.

The dog turned a circle, agitated. Spit frothed on its muzzle. It began to shiver, as if in fear, but did not abandon the girl.

"That's our dog," said Lahni. "Papa's dog."

"What's its name?" Zeeahd asked.

"King," she said.

"King," Zeeahd said. "That's a fine name. We'll see to the dog."

He waved an arm in the direction of the dog and the cats tore off past Sayeed toward King. The guttural sounds that emerged from their mouths were nothing Sayeed had ever heard from cats. The dog barked once in alarm, wheeled around, and fled, the cats in pursuit.

"What is this?" Zeeahd asked, his malformed fingers closing on a charm the girl wore on a leather thong around her neck. "Is it amber?"

"Mum gave it to me for my fifteenth lifeday."

"It's beautiful," Zeeahd said. His clumsy fingers nearly dropped the amber charm.

"Oh, mum!" the girl said, and melted into Zeeahd's grasp, sobbing.

Zeeahd stroked the girl's hair, harder, harder.

"That hurts," she said.

"I know," Zeeahd said. "I know."

"Stop," she said, fear creeping into her voice. "You're hurting me." "I can't stop," Zeeahd said, his voice guttural.

"Please. . . "

"I'm sorry," Zeeahd said, his voice little more than grunts.

The girl pulled back, looked up into his cowl, and her eyes widened. "What's wrong with your face? Oh, gods! Help! Help!"

Sayeed had braced himself, but the girl's screams still hit him like a knife stab. He wanted to turn away but his feet seemed rooted in place, stuck in the mud, stuck in the horror of his life with his brother.

Zeeahd held the struggling, screaming girl in his hands, his form roiling, and half turned to Sayeed, his face thankfully lost in the shadow of his cowl. "Stop looking at me, Sayeed!"

The words freed Sayeed to move. He turned away, bile in the back of his throat, acrid, harsh.

Lahni screamed, a pitiful, terrified shriek.

"One kiss for your savior," Zeeahd grunted in the voice of a beast. He began to cough, to heave. "Just one."

"Help! Help!"

The girl's pleading stopped, replaced by muffled sounds of terror, a wet gurgling.

Sayeed tried not to hear his brother's retches, the girl's abortive wails, the final, violent wet heave followed by blissful silence.

Sayeed stared off at the plains, at the darkness, at the rain, and tried to make his mind as blank as his emotions.

"It's done," Zeeahd said at last.

Sayeed steeled himself and turned.

His brother, his form more normal than it had been in a tenday, stood over the limp, prone form of the girl. She looked tiny on the ground, her arms thrown out, her head thrown back, like a broken flower. Open eyes stared up into the rain. A rivulet of black phlegm hung from the corner of her mouth. The tendril of black mucous wriggled like a living thing and disappeared into her mouth.

"She was a girl," Sayeed said. "Just a girl."

"I know that!" Zeeahd said, wincing. "Do you think I don't know that? This is the price I must pay to keep the curse at bay. He holds me between worlds to ensure I do his work and find the son."

"Mephistopheles?"

Thunder rumbled and the darkness seemed to deepen.

"Do not say his name!" Zeeahd said in a hiss. He looked about, eyes wide with fear.

Somewhere, out in the plains, the dog, King, yelped with pain.

"We can't continue like this," Sayeed said dully. "I can't."

"We'll have release," Zeeahd said. "We need only find the son. Bear with it a while longer."

In the years they'd sought Cale's son, Zeeahd's divinations had revealed nothing; consultations with seers and prophets had not availed them. It was as if the son had fallen out of the multiverse. But recently, Zeeahd's divinations had pointed them to the legendary Oracle of the Abbey of the Rose.

"The Oracle will know how to find him," Zeeahd said.