8th Legion, 3rd Company
4th Squad
Pravalak Rim, corporal
Honey, sapper
Strap Mull, sapper
Shoaly, heavy infantry
Lookback, heavy infantry
5th Squad
Badan Gruk, sergeant
Ruffle, marine
Skim, marine
Nep Furrow, mage
Reliko, heavy infantry
Vastly Blank, heavy infantry
10th Squad
Primly, sergeant
Hunt, corporal
Mulvan Dreader, mage
Neller, sapper
Skulldeath, marine
Drawfirst, heavy infantry
Others
Banaschar, the Last Priest of D’rek
Withal, a Meckros Swordsmith
Sandalath Drukorlat, a Tiste Andii, Withal’s wife
Nimander Golit, a Tiste Andii, offspring of Anomander Rake
Phaed, a Tiste Andii, offspring of Anomander Rake
Curdle, a possessed skeletal reptile
Telorast, a possessed skeletal reptile
Onrack, a T’lan Imass, unbound
Trull Sengar, a Tiste Edur renegade
Ben Adaephon Delat, a wizard
Menandore, a Soletaken (Sister of Dawn)
Sheltatha Lore, a Soletaken (Sister of Dusk)
Sukul Ankhadu, a Soletaken (Sister Dapple)
Kilmandaros, an Elder Goddess
Clip, a Tiste Andii
Cotillion, The Rope, Patron God of Assassins
Emroth, a broken T’lan Imass
Hedge, a ghost
Old Hunch Arbat, Tarthenal
Pithy, an ex-con
Brevity, an ex-con
Pully, a Shake witch
Skwish, a Shake witch
Prologue
In a landscape torn with grief, the carcasses of six dragons lay strewn in a ragged row reaching a thousand or more paces across the plain, flesh split apart, broken bones jutting, jaws gaping and eyes brittle-dry. Where their blood had spilled out onto the ground wraiths had gathered like flies to sap and were now ensnared, the ghosts writhing and voicing hollow cries of despair, as the blood darkened, fusing with the lifeless soil; and, when at last the substance grew indurate, hardening into glassy stone, those ghosts were doomed to an eternity trapped within that murky prison.
The naked creature that traversed the rough path formed by the fallen dragons was a match to their mass, yet bound to the earth, and it walked on two bowed legs, the thighs thick as thousand-year-old trees. The width of its shoulders was equal to the length of a Tartheno Toblakai’s height; from a thick neck hidden beneath a mane of glossy black hair, the frontal portion of the head was thrust forward-brow, cheekbones and jaw, and its deep-set eyes revealing black pupils surrounded in opalescent white. The huge arms were disproportionately long, the enormous hands almost scraping the ground. Its breasts were large, pendulous and pale. As it strode past the battered, rotting carcasses, the motion of its gait was strangely fluid, not at all lumbering, and each limb was revealed to possess extra joints.
Skin the hue of sun-bleached bone, darkening to veined red at the ends of the creature’s arms, bruises surrounding the knuckles, a latticework of cracked flesh exposing the bone here and there. The hands had seen damage, the result of delivering devastating blows.
It paused to tilt its head, upward, and watched as three dragons sailed the air high amidst the roiling clouds, appearing then disappearing in the smoke of the dying realm.
The earthbound creature’s hands twitched, and a low growl emerged from deep in its throat.
After a long moment, it resumed its journey.
Beyond the last of the dead dragons, to a place where rose a ridge of hills, the largest of these cleft through as if a giant claw had gouged out the heart of the rise, and in that crevasse raged a rent, a tear in space that bled power in nacreous streams. The malice of that energy was evident in the manner in which it devoured the sides of the fissure, eating like acid into the rocks and boulders of the ancient berm.
The rent would soon close, and the one who had last passed through had sought to seal the gate behind him. But such healing could never be done in haste, and this wound bled anew.
Ignoring the virulence pouring from the rent, the creature strode closer. At the threshold it paused again and turned to look back the way it had come.
Draconean blood hardening into stone, horizontal sheets of the substance, already beginning to separate from the surrounding earth, to lift up on edge, forming strange, disarticulated walls. Some then began sinking, vanishing
