Late that evening, when Kit slipped into his tent, he told her what he’d done. She kissed him and called him brilliant before she went for his trousers again. After an enthusiastic interval, she fell asleep by his side, nestled in the crook of his arm. She looked younger when she was sleeping, without the swagger and the cocky smile, pale skin smooth and broken by a dozen small scars, body lithe and muscled, with only the barest hint of breasts and curves. He worked his fingers into her short blue hair, and she grumbled and shifted in her sleep.

The kind of partners who spend time naked together. Gyre smiled at her description. Is that what we are?

Eventually, he fell asleep. In the morning, Naumoriel led them past the junction of the nameless river with another, and they clambered over a field of rocks to enter a valley, now moving upstream. Not long after, it became clear to Gyre that their real journey had only just started.

*

“Duck!” Kit shouted.

Gyre threw himself flat. A blaster bolt crackled overhead, detonating against a looming plaguespawn the size of a bear. The explosion tore off a long limb, halfway between an arm and a tentacle, which held one of the soldier-constructs in a death grip. Another pair of constructs hacked at the thing from behind, severing enough of its many legs that it toppled sideways with a wet-sounding bellow.

One down. There had been two of the giants in the horde of bone-and-muscle monstrosities, standing out among their smaller brethren like boulders in a sea of pebbles. Gyre had never seen a plaguespawn that large, nor had he ever heard of the things attacking in vast packs. Since they’d passed into the hidden valley, all the usual rules had apparently gone out the window.

This stretch of riverbank was a mass of struggling constructs and plaguespawn, two sets of inhuman creatures animated by dhaka striving to tear each other to pieces. The constructs were bigger and stronger, with stone-and-metal plating covered in spikes and blades, and individually they were more than a match for the haphazard monsters. But there were so many plaguespawn, dozens of smaller creatures backed up by a few of the larger varieties, including these latest monsters taller than Gyre. Four times so far the wave of fleshy things had descended on them, and four times they’d fought their way free, but the constructs were falling one by one, pulled down like lions fighting packs of dogs.

This fifth attack was the worst yet. At first, Gyre had barely had to draw his sword. Now he and Kit fought for their lives alongside Naumoriel and his inhuman creations.

Naumoriel himself, in his enormous war-construct, grappled with the second giant plaguespawn. One of his claw-arms had sliced deep into its body, but the thing had thrown several other limbs around it, and the ghoul couldn’t get free. His other claw snapped and dodged, keeping back a dozen reaching tendrils trying to pry open his canopy.