some demented dream. ‘Am I the only sane one here?’
‘Demons are a threat to everything that breathes,’ Kataria added with a hiss. She drew herself up proudly, her eyes going hard as steel. ‘And it is the duty of a greater race to see them dead.’ She glanced sideways at her companions. ‘Humans can come along, too.’
‘Well, thank Silf the womenfolk are so eager to run off and die.’ He glanced at Dreadaeleon, elbowing the boy. ‘And what about you?’
‘Hm?’ The wizard glanced up with a start, roused from some deep reverie. ‘Oh. Yes, we might as well go.’
‘Oh, come on.’
‘Knowledge is the dominion of the wizards,’ the boy replied sternly. ‘There’s much we could learn from something that is supposedly distilled “evil”, if we ever get hold of a corpse.’
‘It’s not their corpse you’ll be holding.’ Denaos glanced over his shoulder at Gariath. ‘What about you?’
The dragonman merely snorted in reply.
‘Possibly the sanest thing spoken yet,’ Denaos said with a frustrated sigh.
He cast his eyes to the end of the table, where Lenk propped himself on his elbows, staring into nothingness. Such an expression did not go unrecognised.
‘I’m begging you now,’ Denaos urged hotly, ‘as the only other person here who is a man of reason and not a fanatic, pointy-eared, demented or scaly, don’t tell me you’re considering this.’
Lenk spared the briefest of moments for Denaos, taking in his hopeful expression, before turning back to Miron.
‘How do we even know where this . . . Abysmyth is?’
The edge of Miron’s small smile sheared off the last layer of ease from the room.
‘We are about to find out.’ The priest looked to the dark-skinned man at the end of the table. ‘Captain, kindly bring it in.’
Argaol’s face was the colour of a fading bruise when he looked up, a gloomy blend of pale fear and nauseous green. He looked from the door to the priest, seemingly uncertain which made him more nervous.
‘What . . .’ he stammered. ‘Now?’
‘Now,’ Miron replied, nodding.
‘Is it really . . .’ The captain hesitated with a cringe before inhaling sharply. ‘Fine.’ He slipped from the chair to the door, leaning out into the corridor. ‘Sebast! Bring it in!’
The first mate came rushing in like a man pursued, his hands trembling with the weight of the large cylinder in his grasp. A black cloth, scrawled with chalk sigils of Talanas, Zamanthras and other less familiar faiths, was draped about it. He set it down upon the table as though it were a carcass, muttering rapid, indecipherable prayers as he wiped his hands violently on his breeches.
‘So ...’ Denaos hummed as he watched the first mate disappear out of the cabin. ‘This won’t be pleasant, will it?’
‘Where these creatures are concerned, there is no such word.’
Miron reached out and slipped the cloth off with a whisper, followed by a chorus of retching and vomiting barely restrained as all assembled laid eyes upon the contents of the brass cage before them. And, with wide unblinking orbs, what lay within laid eyes upon them.
Lenk wasn’t sure if he recognised the creature as one of the white-feathered chorus from a day earlier, nor was he sure he wanted to. The creature, a strange and curious thing with the body of a portly seagull, was horrific enough from a distance. As it waddled in a slow circle about the cage, sweeping its bulging eyes around the assembly, more than a few gazes were averted.
And yet, it seemed there was no avoiding its stare. The bulbous orbs peered over the hooked nose of an old woman’s face, spotted wrinkles peeled back around its gaping mouth. The teeth within its maw, long yellow needles, chattered wordless curses as it swayed ominously within the cage.
‘What . . . is it?’ The question came from Asper on a bulge of swallowed bile.
‘A parasite,’ Miron answered, regarding the creature without emotion. ‘It heralds the approach of the Abysmyth, gluts itself on the suffering and sinew left behind.’ He leaned closer to the cage, sneering. ‘Their proper name . . . is “Omen”.’
‘Omen . . .’ Lenk repeated, apparently the only other one amongst them not so stricken with revulsion as to be rendered speechless.
‘So named for their precursorship of all things foul. They are the harbingers and the criers of Ulbecetonth, the cherubs that fly about her crown.’ He settled back, steepling his fingers. ‘To see them darkening the sky in such brazen numbers is disturbing.’
‘Yeah,’ Lenk muttered, glaring at the priest. ‘That was only