Kva's distinctive footsteps came to the Great Wolfs side. The reflection of his face appeared next to Russ'. He wore no helm or mask, showing his wasted features as openly as he did his Rune Priest's fetishes.

'My father wanted to bring the glories of the Oververse to everyone,' said Russ. 'I am watching how that turned out.' The barques withdrew at speed, scattering in insect clouds.

'Now see,' Russ said.

A yellow cross of molten metal flared into life across the vastness of the plate in fusion-born crucifixion. Tug engines fired. With the patience of glaciers, they drew the sectioned plate apart. Flecks and fragments spun away from the divides, tumbling into Terra's gravity well, filling the atmosphere with campfire sparks. Anti-aircraft fire rose up to destroy the most dangerous.

'I cannot disagree with this demolition,' said the Wolf quietly. 'Many times I have seen such artificial satellites plunge into the worlds they orbited. The impact upon the surface is more devastating than any bomb. It is the Oververse crashing down at the fall of the gods, the death of all things. The ending of times. I see this, and know the dream is over. A dream of paradise tom from the sky.'

'It is not the Oververse,' said Kva. 'The afterlife cannot be remade in the here and now.'

Russ gave Kva a killing look, his lip curled over pointed teeth. 'Don't be so bloody literal. It doesn't suit you. I am in a poetic mood, He-Who-is-Divided,' said Russ, his words grumbling in his chest as deep as any predator's growl. 'Permit me that before I leave my father's world forever.'

The barques returned. Their prior organisation seemed gone. They attacked the plate's quadrants in a feeding frenzy.

'Mussveli feasting on a hrossvalur's wave-washed corpse-bloat,' said Russ, slipping into the skjald's meter, 'turn the sea-road bloody, and draw feller things to the flesh-feast.'

'Worse monsters come already,' said Kva.

Russ and Kva watched the barques shred Lemurya to pieces and carry off morsels of metal to feed to the salvator arcs that commanded them. Such ships were the ravens of the star-sea, harbingers of doom, battlefield scavengers of the void. They were many. They worked fast, but the plate was huge, wide as a moon. They were gnats attempting to drain the sea in sips.

'This will take weeks,' murmured Russ. 'They do not have enough time. Dorn fortified the system years ago. Why did he leave this until now?'

'It is something to do,' said Kva. 'Your brother needs occupation.' Russ shrugged. 'Maybe.'