Before anyone could react, the hound grabbed the whip in one of its paws, tensed its thighs and leapt dozens and dozens of feet into the air, like a rocket-powered grasshopper. The hound spread its four wings as it rose, and, beating them, turned midair in a corkscrew maneuver that brought its head and limbs into striking range while flicking off its rider. The silvery currents crackling within the two creatures' bodies merged as the hound plunged its talons and antennae into Commander Brr't't's torso. The Commander's body twitched as the currents left his body and entered the hound's. Part of the current sparked down the hound's limb and leapt into the whip in its paw.

The hound spread its wings fully and glided in a wide-banked turn, swinging the whip in a motion its limb was clearly not built to perform, flicking spiny buds at the foot soldiers down below. Along with Commander Brrt't's corpse, the hound dropped the whip. The latter was likely by accident, but the weapon had already done its job. The scattered buds took root on the three of the foot soldiers, whose companions skittered away as the plants grew and grew, subsuming their hosts' bodies in their expanding tissues.

The footmen twitched like the dying insects they so clearly resembled. The silverlight in their bodies sputtered out, even as bodily fluids continued to drip from Commander Brr't't's corpse.

"Shit!" Dk'brr yelled. "We're under attack!"

Turning, the flying hound descended toward us with its limbs extended, ready to strike.

Spreading his scissorblades to either side, Dk'brr leapt off his mount in a backward somersault. Charge sparked through his arm, feeding the whip as he flicked hungering buds toward the animal. He tossed one of his blades at the Commander's hound mid-air, forcing it to bank out of the way to dodge.

Dk'brr skidded as he landed, leg-claws sending up trails of dust, digging furrows through the earth.

The buds hit the hound, yet for some reason [Maxwell C. Siegel, 3/5/25, 6:17 PM

This is due to the Vvz'zsh having woven fields around their vrr't'k sleeper agents to make them immune to the effects of the hungerlash], they didn't grow.

Dk'brr screamed brightly. "Get away from the Vrr't'k (Vertooka)! They've been soulbroken!"

Instantly, Dk'brr's hound turned to face him, snarling out waves of light.

"Now you die, T'dzd'ch scum!" it said.

It spread its wings and leapt right as Brr't't's mount swooped in and struck.

The mantis dodged, rolling onto his side. Then, skirting along the ground, he grabbed one of his fallen Commander's scissorblades and scraped the sword's tip through the dirt, sparking silverlight that flowed up his arm. Then he spun around and leapt at Brr't't's mount with impossible speed—there one moment, gone the next.

"Move! Move!"

His momentum distorted his word's light, sending off shockwaves in his wake.

The two heavies bellowed. "Yes sir! Yes sir!" They banged their shields together.

At this point, I was in full-on panic mode.

"Somebody help me!" I screamed. "For the love of the Angel, help me!"

I rocked side to side in my thorny cocoon like a tortoise indisposed.

Lark and Nina ran over to help me. Nina grabbed the plant tissue, trying to strip it off, only to stagger back and yelp in pain.

"It stings!"

Lark turned to face one of the groves at the edge of the meadow. "Uh, guys?"

Something rumbled in the grove. A moment later, two massive spikes of light shot up from among the trees, and a massive creature trundled into view. It trampled the silvery, tube-leaf-like trees with its blocky, pachydermic limbs.

The light of its bellow rose up in vast, widening columns, as if to pierce the sky.

One of the robed figures yelled. "Brzht (Berjuut)!"

The brzht stampeded over the robed soldier and his four subordinates, spraying fluids and silverlight like sparks. The creature's footsteps wetted the ground as it charged onward, leaving remains of crushed bodies and armor.

Nina screamed.

The brzht had to be four times our height. It was like an elephant, if an elephant had a head made from a giant horn, like the famous beetles of Mu. Smaller sensory antennae surrounded the horn, which in were in turn surrounded by a broad inflorescence made of two massive, veined petals. The brzht's tail was a bundle of silvery fibers, and it suddenly spread them open, like a peacock fanning his feathers. A pair of giant pitcher-plant lobes dangled from its imposing flanks, flopping around like ears.

If it was even half as indomitable as it looked, there was no way we were getting out of this alive, least of all while I was still bound up and bundled.

The other robed figure glanced at the brzht, then at the other soldiers and yelled. "It's soulbroken!"

"No!" Dk'brr shouted. "N—"

—But then one of the vrr't'k hounds leapt at him. He screamed as they tumbled.

"Rzt'zk (Erzutzook)!" Dk'brr yelled.

Both of the shield dual-wielding heavies bent down and scraped their blades through the dirt in broad circles. Silverlight crackled up their weapons like static sparks, quickly flowing into their bodies. They set off in a run, and they moved with ludicrous speed. Dust and debris got sucked in by the path of little vacuums their movements left in their wake. One ran toward the peacock elephant. The other—Rzt'zk—ran toward us and the subcommander, barking commands.

"Get down!" he yelled. "Out of the way! Out of the way!"

Lark and Nina were happy to oblige. Nina got behind me and pushed, and then Lark ran up alongside her and joined in the effort, rolling me across the ground. But then they slipped and I rolled ahead.

The world spun.

Then there was a thump and a crunch as I tumbled into a shallow ditch and slammed into a rock formation that cracked my plant cocoon open like a broken melon.

For a moment, I was a tumbleweed of limbs before I flopped onto the dirt, arms and legs sprawled around me.

"Dr. Howle!" Nina yelled.

I moaned while Nina and Lark helped me up.

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I was still tired, but at least my legs seemed to work now. The same couldn't be said for the arms on the right side of my body, which were still encased in the spikes, fleshy growth.

A luminous command shot out over the battlefield, making the three of us turn our heads and skitter out of the ditch.

One of the robed soldiers in Dk'brr squadron had sung the message. His words wound around his body in ribbons, and he flicked his torso this way and that, waving his arms through them.

The four soldiers in his care charged at the enemy. They moved like one man.

Rzt'zk the Heavy dove down, skidding up alongside Subcommander Dk'brr, right as the two "soulbroken" hounds pounced on them. The heavy arrived just in time. Pushing up with all four legs, he rammed the two hounds with his shields in an upward counterstrike. One of the hounds managed to jump off the shield, hurtling through the air in a long arc, but the other bore the full force of Rzt'zk counter and was knocked away, landing on its back.

Dk'brr pushed off the ground with his lower arms, and sprung at the supine hound. At the same time, Rzt'zk galloped the other way, toward the hound that had leapt away. A strange vibration surrounded the subcommander's scissorblades as he pulled back and swung.

Nina gasped.

Dk'brr struck with both of his scissorblades, slicing the radio stamens off the hound's head by cutting from the left and the right simultaneously. A spark rippled out from the impact, and then the hound fell limply to the ground—but it wasn't dead. Silver life-current still coursed within it.

"Keep them here!" Dk'brr yelled. "I'll find the savages' bodies!"

He sprinted toward the woods. As he ran, he scraped Brr't't's sword through the dirt, triggering a silver spark that rushed through the weapon and set Dk'brr's body agleam.

His speed more than doubled, limbs flickering like wheel spokes as he leapt into the grove, disappearing among the leaf-shaped trees.

The other hound barked. "No!"

Hopping back, it tensed its thighs and jumped, aiming for Brr't't's whip, but Rzt'zk leapt at it at exactly the same time, slamming into it, shields-first. The hound and the heavy traded blows. The soldier dodged like a blur, scattering dust clouds as he sprang this way and that, blocking off the soulbroken creature's attempts to escape.

Several yards away, the robed soldier's four subordinates scrambled up the brzht's flanks, using its pitcher-ears for purchase. They dug their scissorblades and stinger tails into its hide like climbers' picks. Silver currents sparked from the wounds and flowed up through the soldiers' blades and scorpion tails, into their bodies.

They were draining it just like the vrr't'k had drained Commander Brr't't.

Or like how the whip-bud had drained me.

The other heavy charged forward and leapt at the peacock-elephant's head.

The brzht let out another luminous roar. A wave of motion passed through it, back to front, as it flicked off two of the climbers and then lashed out in a mighty swing of its massive antennae-horn. The horn hit the other heavy like a sledgehammer.

The blow sent him flying.

Compared to it, the armored warrior was little more than a pebble.

Then the brzht turned toward us.

"Fuck!" Lark cursed. "Fuck!"

She ran; Nina and I followed.

We made our way to the tree line. As I was exhausted, it was a miserable experience, made only worse by my supernumerary limbs.

"No!" Rzt'zk screamed. "V'dss't! (Vidust)"

Rzt'zk grasshopper-hound opponent seized the opportunity to leap up and away.

Then, all of sudden, the current flowing out of the elephant reversed direction, sucking energy out of the two remaining clingers-on.

The lights in their bodies dimmed.

"Pull back!" the robed figure yelled. "Pull back!"

But it was too late.

The two that had been thrown off ran toward the robed soldier.

Then, beside us, the hound Dk'brr had paralyzed let out a horrible shriek. The current within it split in two. The second half of it dissipated in moments, and then the first half filled the gap.

Mid-air, the other hound spread its wings and yelled. "T'kss't (Tikusst)! No!"

It turned around and dove toward us and Rzt'zk.

"Don't stop!" the heavy yelled, staring at us.

We started running all over again. The remaining soulbroken hound gave chase, gliding after us from behind.

"Doc!" Lark yelled.

Fudge, I thought.

Now the elephant was barreling toward us, too.

It was a pincer maneuver: hound in back, elephant up ahead.

There was nowhere left to run. I could barely move.

Then, all of a sudden, the elephant's body went limp. It crashed, forelegs folding onto the ground, topping forward, grinding its antenna-horn through the earth, sending up clouds of dust that hurtled toward us.

I lowered my head and dashed out of the way—or tried to, at any rate. I fell to all eights, sliding ungainly across the grainy earth at reckless speed, skidding to a stop right as the dust cloud roared by, missing my flower by a matter of inches.

Dk'brr yelled. "This battle is over!"

Behind me, the hound let out a bright shriek.

A sense of racing continued to throb throughout my body, as if I was a living heart, every part of me tensing and contracting to shunt fluid and energy through my abdomen and limbs.

I was too tired to stand. The best I could manage was to flop myself upright and sit up, holding my back in an upright posture, air rushing in through the spiracles on my abdomen.

The brzht [Maxwell C. Siegel, 7/2/24

The ranger, Dzrtk, is the most skilled of the three Fluvials in this attack. He's actually using full Passage.] had collapsed on the ground like a drag racer crashed and overturned. The silverlight current of the dead behemoth's victims trickled down the elephant-thing's sides, gradually dwindling as they intermingled with the dirt.

A breeze swept over the battlefield, stretching the dust cloud as it pulled it away from the fallen giant. Nina and Lark staggered out from the lengthening plumes.

Seeing them, I slackened with relief. Not far beyond them, the soulbroken hound sat on its haunches, with its slender wings splayed out on the ground behind it.

Dk'brr yelled once again. Waves of light rippled out from one of the groves at the meadow's edge.

"Surrender, Vvz'zsh paynim!"

The subcommander emerged from between the trees—and he wasn't alone.

He held another mantis' flower in his lower pair of arms. The mantis was unconscious, its limbs drooping inertly at its sides. Its abdomen trailed along the ground, between Dk'brr's forelegs.

Clasping his scissorblades in his upper arms, Dk'brr pressed their dual gleaming edges tight against either side of the captive's neck.

"Yes! Yes!" Dk'brr said. "You can feel it, can't you?"

Everyone turned toward him. The cone of light-rings rippling out from the subcommander's flower moved toward their target, leaving no doubt as to who the rider was addressing.

The hound lowered itself to all fours.

"You can feel it, can't you? My blades against your true body's neck?" [Maxwell C. Siegel, 7/2/24, 6:34 PM

Idea: as it currently is understood, everyone is under the impression that anyone doing Passage dies the instant their original body is slain. However, the Fluvials know that this is not the case; they are aware of the distinction between full and partial passage. However, this is their greatest secret. It is what allows them to have operatives living among the dominion's livestock and warbeasts. If the secret got out, the Fluvials would lose their only advantage against the Dominion.

During the second Ammonia chapter, I should have the ranger reveal to Genneth and the others the truth about Full Passage. He uses full passage as they escape, leaving his body behind. (In truth, what he presents as having been his body was in fact someone else's. The Fluvials keep a supply of bodies of fully passaged individuals on hand for someone to inhabit at any time, in case their own body was destroyed or inacessible.]

The hound growled in response. "What do you think, you T'dzd'ch husk?!"

"What happens next is your choice," Dk'brr said.

"Don't you have any honor?" the hound asked. "Or are you just as much of a scoundrel as every other cataphract I've killed? How many of us have you cut down? How many innocents have you murdered!?"

"I admit," Dk'brr replied, "I've tarnished my honor more times than I'd like to admit, but, compared to you, I might as well be a Chanter on a mountaintop. Your life is in my hands, Vvz'zsh!" Dk'brr glanced at the dead elephant. "If you value it, you will do as I say, or you'll go the way of your companions!"

The hound growled at first, but then begrudgingly lowered itself to the ground.

"That's a good boy," Dk'brr said. He turned to face one of his surviving comrades. "Rzt'zk, do you still have the sealing satchel [Maxwell C. Siegel, 7/2/24, 6:58 PM

These are special, null-field enchanted satchels. Once inside, you cannot use magic, and thus, cannot jump bodies. This traps the ranger inside it.]?"

"Yes, sir." The soldier grabbed one of the sacks holstered on his abdomen and pulled it off.

"Pull out the nn'zt (in-zet), won't you?"

The soldier did as he was told. Holding the satchel firmly with his lower arms, he reached in and pulled out the nn'zt, which I recognized as one of the shrimp-snakes we'd seen in the marshy meadow. The creature writhed around his arm.

Dk'brr pointed a scissorblade at the shrimp-snake. "There's your prison, Vvz'zsh. Now, get in and stay there."

The hound glared at the rider one last time, and then its body went limp and fell to the side. The mantis in Dk'brr's grip twitched briefly, while the shrimp-snake in Rzt'zk's grip went perfectly still.

A soft wave of light rippled out from the small creature as it spoke with the voice that had been the hound's only moments before.

"You'll regret this, you T'dzd'ch bastard."

Then Rzt'zk stuffed the animal into the satchel and pulled it shut.

Dk'brr released his hold on the Vvz'zsh's lifeless body, which hit the dirt with a soft crunch. He turned to us.

To me.

"Now," he said, crossing his lower pair of arms, "where were we?"

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