Nomi shifted left to right as far as she could, testing her bonds. There was very little give. She had pissed herself again, but there was no pride left to lose. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, craving sleep to take her away once more.

“They'll be here soon,” a voice said from behind her, and her first thought was, Ramus! But this time she did not speak his name. And when she heard the hoarseness of that voice she was glad.

“Come to tease me again?” she asked.

“Tease?” He sounded genuinely shocked. She heard the tap tap of his walking stick as he came around in front of the frame, and when he looked at her, Sordon Perlenni's face was aghast. “I don't tease. I would never tease. I'm talking to you, that's all, and I thought you wanted to know.”

Nomi began to laugh. It felt good. She let the laughter overrun her, then after a few beats it faded as quickly as it had come. “What possible good can it do me?” she said. “I'm stuck up here and they're going to kill me, eventually, so why the fuck do you think I really want to know anything?”

Sordon smiled. “Well, I said you weren't the learning type. Even when I was starting my exploring, there were others around me whose interests were personal gain. Not knowledge. Not discovery.”

“You expect me to give a piss now?” Nomi said.

“Yes.” The word was quiet, but Sordon gave it such weight.

Nomi blinked and looked away toward the sunrise. Ramus could be out there somewhere, she thought. I hope he is. And I hope he finds what he's looking for.

“So tell me,” she said. And curse him, the old man was right. There was so much she still wanted to know, despite the fate that awaited her.

“Where shall I begin?” He sat in the grass before her, groaning as his old bones creaked and ground.

“What do you mean by ‘They'll be here soon’?”

“You'll die if you keep hanging there. The Sentinels will come and take you somewhere safer.”

“Where?”

Sordon shrugged. “I don't know. Perhaps where they keep the Sentinel women when they fall pregnant.”

“They do this to themselves?”

Sordon sighed. “Only since I arrived. As I told you, the focus of their worship passed across me for a while, but they found me wanting. The Sentinels were blessed by the Sleeping Gods, made pure, and my own impurities corrupted them. Such corruption sent them into a spiral that ended where you see them now. They returned to their one constant—the Fallen God, the doom hanging over them, which they called the Great Unborn. But their perception had been tainted. So now, in their eyes, if something is born, it becomes unclean and corrupt, and that's why there are no young Sentinels anymore. They're wiping themselves out.”