‘The fabric is thin. My presence weakens it more—this pleases me.’

‘Why such hatred for humans, Kilmandaros?’

Her brows rose. ‘Errastas, really. Who among all the races is quickest to claim the right to judgement? Over everyone and everything? Who holds that such right belongs to them and them alone? A woodcutter walks deep into the forest, where he is attacked and eaten by a striped cat—what do his fellows say? They say: “The cat is evil and must be punished. The cat must answer for its crime, and it and all its kind must answer to our hate.” Before too long, there are no cats left in that forest. And humans consider that just. Righteous. Could I, Errastas, I would gather all the humans of the world, and I would gift them with my justice—and that justice is here, in these two fists.’

Errastas reached up to probe his eye socket, and he managed a faint smile. ‘Well answered, Kilmandaros.’ He turned to Sechul Lath. ‘Arm yourself, friend. The Holds have grown feral.’

‘Which one will you seek first?’

‘The one under a Jaghut stone, of course.’

She watched as blurry darkness swallowed them. With the Errant’s departure, the ephemeral fragility of the ancient shrine slowly dissolved, revealing the stolid ruins of its abandonment. A slew of toppled, shattered stones, pecked facings hacked and chipped—the images obliterated. She walked closer to the altar stone. It had been deliberately chiselled, cut in two. Harsh breaths and sweat-slick muscles, a serious determination to despoil this place.

She knew all about desecration. It was her hobby, after all, an obsessive lure that tugged her again and again, with all the senseless power of a lodestone.

A few thousand years ago, people had gathered to build their shrine. Someone had achieved the glorious rank of tyrant, able to threaten life and soul, and so was able to compel hundreds to his or her bidding. To quarry enormous stones, drag them to this place, tilt them upright like so many damned penises. And who among those followers truly believed that tyrant’s calling? Voice of the gods in the sky, the groaning bitches in the earth, the horses of the heavens racing the seasons, the mythologies of identity—all those conceits, all those delusions. People of ancient times were no more fools than those of the present, and ignorance was never a comfortable state of being.

So they had built this temple, work-gangs of clear-eyed cynics sacrificing their labour to the glory of the gods but it wasn’t gods basking in that glory—it was the damned tyrant, who needed to show off his power to coerce, who sought to symbolize his power for all eternity.

Kilmandaros could comprehend the collective rage that had destroyed this place. Every tyrant reaches the same cliff-edge, aged into infirmity, or eyeing the strutting of heirs and recognizing the hungry looks in their regard. That edge was death, and with it all glory fell to dust. Even stone cannot withstand the fury of mortals when fuelled by abnegation.