She hammered down on her wandering thoughts, the constant allure of how brutal and horrific, and yet also strange and fabulous, the world could be. Don’t get distracted. Eyes on the dirt from which danger erupts without warning.

Her boots were her best possession. Steel-reinforced toes pointed south where she stood at the center of the crossed rib cages, the holy heart of its cruciform, its shadows curling over her body. Had she made the second loop or just the first one? She remembered walking the first loop, which included a little wooden bridge of three steps set over a protruding bone. A perusal of scuff marks didn’t tell her for sure if she’d walked the second looped path yet. Nor could she recall if she’d examined the tuft of sedge that grew by a scatter of moss-covered stones.

She paced carefully along the second loop, angry that she’d lost focus so badly. Something was wrong. A taste in the air, a sense of disorder, a throbbing in her arm. No birds feeding. No insects a-wing or crawling along the ground. Too quiet. A prickle of instinct crawled up her back as she reached the scatter of stones.

The sedge’s spiky white flowers caught her eye. It should not be blooming this late in the season.

Elen’s chest tightened with apprehension as her attention sharpened. She knelt an arm’s length from the tuft. A scent like rose oil drifted from the conical flowers.

She heard a faint scrabbling noise. She turned her head slowly, careful not to move any other part of her. A mouse—the same mouse?—sniffed closer along the scuffed track. The mouse was so intent on the attractive smell that it seemed not to notice her. She scraped her boot against the ground to scare it away. The mouse froze, then darted sideways behind one of the stones. Best to make haste before more wild creatures nosed too close, drawn by the scent.

With her left arm she prodded with the obsidian knife at the nearest blooming stalk. The flower recoiled from the blade, dissolving into a mist-like wisp with a snarling face.

All the flowers shuddered as in sympathy. Their cones began to flow sluggishly downward, becoming vapory threads that wound around the stalks and toward the ground.

Spore!

Another deputy courier would have run for their life, back to the Halt to give an urgent report so a surveyor could be sent out. But catching an early irruption still grounded in a plant was the easiest time to eradicate it, although potentially deadly. She scooted back an arm’s length to give herself time to track the threads to their source. Spore had to be killed at the source.