The beast that, moments ago, had been talking to us, now sat on its haunches with its wings folded at its side, its behavior utterly transformed.

Subcommander Dk'brr walked up to the vrr't'k hound cautiously, holding his scissorblades out, in case of attack. The hound made waves of sparks and clicks, looking around in agitation, without any semblance of the intelligence or language it had previously commanded.

There was no doubt about it: whatever had happened to the vrr't'k, it was now an ordinary animal once more.

"Is it going to be okay?" I asked.

Eventually, Dk'brr came up alongside his mount. Sheathing one of his scissorblades with a swipe of a lower arm, he reached out and ran his hand down the creature's back. The vrr't'k got up onto all fours, chittering anxiously, and flitting its wings in tandem.

Subcommander Dk'brr turned back to face us. The potato-net cloak on his back rustled with the movement.

"Yes, ze will," Dk'brr replied. "Though… I will have to soak zyr in the mikvah before returning zyr to the stables." He glanced at the other hound, which lay paralyzed on the ground, bleeding a profoundly blue fluid from its severed antenna cluster. "Rzt'zk," he said, "please put the Commander's vrr't'k out of zyr misery."

The heavy walked up to the paralyzed hound and sliced off its head. Its body twitched one last time, and then went still, fluid seeping into the dirt. The silverlight within the hound's body spilled out into its bodily fluids.

Rzt'zk then bound the other, unconscious mantis—the Vvz'zsh—to the back of Dk'brr's vrr't'k. Using his scissorblade, he cut off one of the dead vrr't'k's wiry limbs and then pried its filaments apart like the veins on a blade of grass and used the filament to bind the Vvz'zsh's flower shut, presumably to muzzle him in case he managed to wake up again. Finally, the heavy picked up the plant-whips and handed them to Dk'brr, who stuck them into the straps on the bands of armor along his abdomen.

"You keep saying zyr," Lark said. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Are the three of you uncharged?" Rzt'zk asked, looking up from the corpse. "I know your friend certainly is," he added, pointing at me. "A tstzt-zk'k (tsootzut-zikka) takes a fair drink of your Charge." He tilted his flower toward the plant-whips.

The robed figure—T'zz (Tuhziz), they'd called him—approached the heavy. His two surviving subordinates followed behind him.

"The vrr't'k is tainted," T'zz said. "It shouldn't be eaten, not even by strangers."

"Charge is charge," Rzt'zk replied.

"Excuse me?" I asked.

I was definitely lost.

Rzt'zk and Subcommander Dk'brr stared at us for a second.

"Stone," Rzt'zk said, apparently cursing, "it's just like the legends."

"Legends?" Lark asked. She crossed her arms. "What legends?"

Dk'brr planted his unsheathed scissorblade's tip into the ground. "You really are Messengers, aren't you?"

"Yes," I said, "but… I have so many questions. I—"

"—Why don't you start by telling us what the fuck just happened," Nina said, stepping forward and cutting me off. She pointed at the bodies.

Many smaller creatures—including some helicoptering electro-potatoes—had already begun to converge on the brzht's steaming corpse. They burrowed out of the dirt, crawled out of the forest, or landed from a flight from a far. They penetrated the dead elephant-thing's flesh with their stingers and claws, apparently feeding off the silver currents in the behemoth's corpse.

"That silverlight…" I asked.

"The what?" Rzt'zk asked.

I pointed at the dead brzht. "The… current flowing out of the berjuut's body. Is that the charge you were talking about?"

Subcommander Dk'brr stared at me in silence. "The Brrk'zk (Buruk-Zek) is gonna love this," he said.

"Songs above," Rzt'zk said, "it's like talking to a hatchling."

"As for your question," T'zz explained, "we were fighting the Vvz'zsh. Those savages cause nothing but trouble, even among their own kind."

"What were you doing before that?" Nina asked. "Before you found us, I mean?"

"Routine patrolling," Dk'brr replied. "Watching for any signs of bandits or Vvz'zsh activity, relieving fort guards on watch duty. We were in the middle of collecting taxes from lightning farms when some locals told us they'd seen a whalefall⁠," Dk'brr said, glancing at the one nearby. He patted his potato net cloak. "We were coming to harvest it, when we ran into the three of you."

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The subcommander took the Vvz'zsh's body and bound it to the saddle and tackle on the vrr't'k's back, and then clambered onto the saddle without the slightest bit of hesitation, as if the creature hadn't even tried to kill us all just a moment ago.

"Come with us," he said. "There's work to be done."

Lark pointed at the hound and asked a very germane question. "How can you trust that thing?" she asked. "It just tried to kill us."

I tried to say that I wanted to know the answer, too, but I groaned as a wave of exhaustion swept through me. My legs buckled underneath me.

Rzt'zk skittered up to me. "We can talk later. Your friend here is drained. Ze needs charge." The heavy helped me to my feet.

"And how do I get that?" I asked.

He looked at me like I was nuts, widening his flower in disbelief. "This day just keeps getting weirder and weirder, doesn't it?" he said, glancing at Dk'brr.

"Just come with us," Dk'brr said.

He flicked the reins and rode toward the whalefall. Everyone else followed, with Rzt'zk kindly helping me limp all the way there, though he stepped away from me once we reached the mound.

One by one, the soldiers removed their potato-net cloaks and set them down on the hillock of flora growing from the sky-whale's corpse.

"What are you doing?" I asked. All four of my legs shuddered as I tried to stand.

"Harvesting," Dk'brr said, with a glance.

The subcommander stabbed his scissorblades into the mound. I noticed that he didn't just stab his swords in, but rather, he did so in a way that ensured the blades went through the open threads at the net's edge. Beautiful filigree patterns on the swords light up as the charges crackling inside the plants and the mound flowed into the weapons, and from there into the nets, which glistened with silverlight, though the light slowly faded as the electro-potatoes drank them up.

The other soldiers followed suit, embedding their swords into the mound.

In a matter of minutes, the electro-potatoes on their nets were shining like Shrovestide candles, in stark contrast to the mound, whose currents had dimmed significantly.

Many of the plants growing on the sky-whale's corpse sagged, their leaves wilting.

"I think we should be able to harvest this whalefall at least two more times before the forest claims it," T'zz said.

Dk'brr glanced at me. "Feel free to dig in." He gestured at the mound.

My flower's petals drooped, slightly wilted, as I looked at the mound.

"Wh-what do I do?"

"If I may," T'zz said. Skittering toward the mound, the robed mantis jabbed his stinger and finger-claws into the plants growing from the sky-whale's corpse. He bobbed his head up and down as charge flowed out of the meaty lobes and up his limbs and tail and settled into his body.

After a little while, Subcommander Dk'brr stepped forward and pulled T'zz away.

"That's enough, hazzan. You've had more than your fair share. We have a guest to feed."

T'zz turned away sharply, flicking the coattails of his robe in irritation with a wiggle of his abdomen. "Says the Brrk'zk's progeny."

The Subcommander flicked an arm out to the side.

Was Dk'brr pulling rank, or something?

"After you," he said, with a bob of his tail.

I walked up to the mound, only to stare at it in apprehension.

Stomping his forelegs on the dirt and rubbing his lower arms against his torso, T'zz stepped forward, grabbed my lower left arm and plunged my fingers into one of the tongue-lobe plants.

I could feel the charge as it flowed out of the plant and into and up my arm. It had no taste, and yet, it still had a kind of flavor to it. It had overtones of seared tilapia, spearmint, and spicy cotton candy tempura.

I immediately inserted my three other arms, and, after two failed attempts, my stinger.

I let out a long, satisfied moan.

"Wh-what are you doing?" T'zz asked.

"It's good," I said. "It's really, really good."

Energy literally surged back into me. Gosh, I felt young again!

I couldn't lie, it felt good, so much so that I yelped "Flibbertigibbet!" as T'zz suddenly and unceremoniously yanked my arm away from the plant.

"Don't hoard," he said.

Dk'brr glanced at Nina and Lark. "The journey back to town isn't the longest, but you should still top yourselves off, regardless."

Nina pointed at herself, and then at the whalefall. "You want me to do… that?"

T'zz grumbled. "Songs, it's like working with nymphs."

Lark and Nina looked at me with what I was pretty sure was apprehension.

"You… you should do it," I told them. "It's… it's definitely weird, but it's not at all bad." I glanced at T'zz. "Quite the contrary…"

"Alright, Dr. Howle," Nina muttered, "but, if I explode or start growing fruit or something, I expect you to fix it."

She walked up to the mound and started to feed.

While Nina and Lark topped themselves up with charge, I turned to Dk'brr.

"Earlier, you said something about legends," I said. "Would you mind telling me what those legends say about the Vyx and their Messengers?"

The subcommander looked up from his work. "I only know what everyone else does." He looked up at the sky. "Long ago, the D'zd (De-Zidd) once lived in the Old World, as we had since time immemorial. Then, one day, the Blight arrived, and all was lost. The Old World was destroyed, but not before the Vyx arrived and came to our rescue. A few of us went to live with our rescuers, but the vast majority of our ancestors we brought here, to the Archive. The Vyx made it for us. It is a recreation of the Old World."

"I see," I said. "And what about the Messengers?"

"If you believe the legends, the Messengers are caretakers the Vyx send to care for us."

"How often do they visit?" I asked.

Dk'brr wiggled his abdomen side to side. "It's been many, many generations since the Vyx last sent Messengers."

"Do you know anything else about them?"

"Well," the subcommander said, "according to the stories I was told as a nymph, supposedly, the Messengers came from afar. Sometimes, they are so totally unlike us, that they have to wear our flesh just to be able to walk among us."

"That's… pretty accurate," I said. I glanced down at myself. "This body of mine—your whole world, even… it's all unlike anything we've ever experienced."

"I can imagine," Rzt'zk said.

"Those Messengers in your legends," Nina asked, having finished her charge-meal, "what did they do?"

"Aside from what I told you, I wouldn't know," Dk'brr replied. "If you want to know more, you'll have to speak to Brrk'zk Szr't't (Jurtut)."

As soon as Lark finished feeding, Dk'brr pulled his sword out of the mound and draped his potato cloak over his back and abdomen. "Alright, everyone, let's move." He clambered onto his mount and glanced at the horizon. "We don't want to be outdoors when it gets dark."

Everyone else did the same, pulling out their swords and donning their nets.

"Why not?"

I asked.

T'zz glared at us. "Do you want to die of exposure?"

No. No I did not.

Then the group set off—us included—with Subcommander Dk'brr leading the way.

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