The blindfolded vodyanoi had almost undone the leather connections that locked him to the woman-handlinger, whose mind the slake-moth held. But as the vodyanoi-dextrier was about to undo the last fastening and peel away into the sky, the slake-moth moved in to feed.

It wrapped its insectile arms around its prey, clasping it tight. It pulled the woman to it, as it pushed its questing tongue into her mouth and began to drink the handlinger’s dreams. The slake-moth sucked eagerly.

It was a rich brew. The residue of the human host’s thoughts eddied like silt or coffee grounds through the handlinger’s mind. The slake-moth reached around the woman’s body and hugged her to it, puncturing the flabby vodyanoi flesh attached to her back with its bone-hard limbs. The dextrier screamed in fear and sudden pain, and the moth could taste the terror in the air. It was confused for a moment, unsure of this other mind that sprouted so close to its meal. But it recovered, gripped tighter, determined to sup again when it had licked this first treat dry.

The vodyanoi-body was trapped as its sinistral passenger was drained. It struggled and cried out, but it could not escape.

A little way away in the air, behind its feeding sibling, the slake-moth which had snared the Weaver whipped its stinging tentacular tail through various dimensions. The vast spider flickered in and out of the sky with a frantic speed. Whenever it appeared the Weaver began to fall: gravity entangled it remorselessly. It would blink out to some other aspect, dragging the jagged harpoon-tip of the tentacle with it, embedded in its flesh. In that other aspect it would scamper and shake to throw off its attacker, before reappearing in the mundane plane, using its weight and leverage, then disappearing again.

The slake-moth was tenacious, somersaulting around its prey, refusing to let it escape.

The handlinger clerk kept up a frenzied, fearful monologue. It sought its fellow sinistral, in the body of the younger, muscled man.

dead all dead our fellows, it screamed. Some of what it had seen, some of its emotion, flowed back down the channel into the head of its dextrier. The old woman’s body yawed uneasily.

The other sinistral tried to remain calm. It moved its head from side to side, trying to exude authority. stop, it commanded peremptorily. It gazed through its mirrors at the three moths behind it: the wounded, limping through the air, down towards its hidden nest; the hungry, lunching from the minds of the trapped handlingers; and the fighting, still thrashing like a shark, trying to tear the head from the Weaver.

The sinistral pushed its dextrier a little closer. take them now, it thought, and sent to its fellow, spitsear hard, take two. chase the wounded. Then it flicked its head from side to side suddenly, and an anguished thought escaped it. where’s the other? it cried.