There was no doubt in her mind that she had stirred up the Astral Gulf. No matter how real the mindscape of her Soul Furnace appeared from her perspective, Krahe had no doubt that the pillar of red-lit smoke that rose from her as a consequence of her work would be visible to anyone with eyes to see. But who would look? Out here, in the middle of nowhere, at the edge of the ruin of ruins.

  She settled back into the world, releasing her leftover Entropy and siphoning as much Isotope into her arm as possible. But as she did this, perhaps as if the world were mocking her, she spotted movement in the pit. Ur-baneworms, dozens of them, scurrying through the streets and jumping between rooftops, fleeing from something. Soon enough it revealed itself, the thing that had terrified those gorilla-armed mutants into running with their tendrilous tails between their nonexistent legs. The enormous silhouette emerged from somewhere out of sight, perhaps a passage in the pit’s walls, and began stomping up the spiral, through the ruined streets, casually clambering over rubble and onto buildings by virtue of prodigious size.

  Employing the Oculae’s zoom function in concert with her own enhanced sight, Krahe took a closer look. There was only one thing it could possibly be — a Zitur’ith. A rare form or Tur’ith ur-baneworm that had retained, or rather reawakened some its non-degenerated cousins’ powers of assimilation. Based on what she’d read, which wasn’t a great deal, these creatures normally assimilated one or two others, finding this sufficient to rule over their kin for the full length of their roughly thirty-year lifespans. Rather than meld with a victim to form a hatching pod that would spawn three or four more of themselves, they would begin a similar process, but instead of the usual reproduction they would simply subsume the victim’s biomass, alongside some of their memories and skills in a similar manner to Gor’un. This meant they required victims of increasing size to keep growing, and that they couldn’t reproduce. Krahe could scarcely imagine the chain of contrivances that led to this specimen’s existence, and she somewhat doubted it hadn’t been fostered by someone intentionally.

  And indeed, as it moved in the shaded street and into the moonlight, she saw the plates of metal bolted to its hide, and the cables trailing from its back, with some having mace-like masses from whatever machine they had been attached to. Its enormous mass neared the size of a small building, resembling multiple layers of ur-baneworm layered atop one another, the lines of layered flesh most distinct on its legs and arms. It moved with alacrity unsuited to its size, stopping to look around every now and then, looking for something — the lift to the surface or rather, the scaffolding of its cabin, which had been reinforced at some point since Krahe’s departure from the pit. It was clear that even if the prospecting town and Sorun’s operation had gone defunct, there were still other forces at play in Jas’raba. When it beheld its goal, the beast looked up the tower, visibly planning out its route, until, having caught Krahe out of the corner of its eye, it snapped to her and stared. There was recognition there, she could feel it. The monstrosity possessed four distinct extra faces down the middle of its chest, and a number of other, vaguely facial formations were embedded in its hide. The second-lowest explained why it recognized her. It was the face of the ur-baneworm Krahe had slain at the base of the lift, manifesting a barrier for the first time during their battle.

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  The creature was still at the bottom. If she were so inclined, she could just leave. If she pushed Rocinante to its full speed, there was a very good chance she would have enough time to raise an alert and elicit an appropriate-scale defensive response from Audunpoint. The beast, if it followed her, would splatter against a force of Mamon Knights and thaumaturges, possibly even get slaughtered singlehandedly by a midranker.

  But what would the point be? It had offered itself up to her, just now, and there was no doubt in her mind that whomever was fostering this uber-Zitur’ith deserved to have their quasi-graftbeast squashed, if for nothing else than for failing to take appropriate precautions. Neither its armor nor the tubes resembled Zaveshian grafting equipment, that was for certain.

  At the end of the day, Krahe simply wasn’t going to let an opportunity to test out her newly-stabilized thaumaturgy go to waste. She’d had her rest, now was as good a time as any to take up the sword once again.

  So, she made Rocinante back away from the pit edge, circling it such that she maintained a sightline to the lift tower, to the Zitur’ith.

  There was something different — there was an absence, an absence of doubt to her thoughts. Looking back, the doubt and uncertainty, the sense of spinning her wheels in the mud, which had driven her to this outing, all seemed patently absurd. There was no doubt in her mind as to the outcome of the coming battle. Ten thousand roads sprawled out before her, and the beast’s corpse laid at the crossroads where they rejoined, briefly, only to split again. As the beast climbed up the tower, its metal creaking in protest beneath the weight, debris tumbling into the abyss, Krahe simply watched. A tension raced up and down the back of her neck, she wanted to set alight the Astral Implosion Furnace, but she held off, breathing through a grin of gritted teeth.

  Krahe had wondered why these creatures never left Jas’raba, let alone spread out of it, why they seemed content or perhaps unable to do more than prey on wayward prospectors, but now she knew. They were quick enough, strong enough, sufficiently able to reproduce by directly subsuming prey, but they simply could not surpass the bare minimum of natural fitness by a large enough factor to escape the pit, stuck in both the physical downward spiral of Jas’raba and the figurative one of population decline. They were also in the unfortunate position of having to contend against the watchful eyes of Audunpoint and its contractors, who knew well the catastrophic potential of an ur-baneworm infestation, but could not eradicate them, and so contained them to their natural habitat.

  And the ur-baneworms stayed there, because they possessed neither the natural faculties for any sort of magic nor the intellect to work together. Only on occasion, when a specimen of prolific size consumed countless others of its own kind, could it ever escape the pit — and meet its ultimate fate of slaughter at the hands of a human wielding one of the Seven Swords of the Wheel. Krahe wasn’t sure what that esoteric term meant, only that she’d overheard it at St. Gauna’s in reference to the System.

  All in all, the ur-baneworms were a ruined and terrible form of life, neither beast nor man nor true baneworm, thus possessing neither the qualifications to benefit from the System, nor the opportunity to become soulbeasts, nor the ability to take over the body and steal the skills of a host.

  And the biggest, most terrible of all baneworms had, by the unfortunate coincidence of a remnant memory, made the choice to climb onto the Atomica’s sacrificial altar, the first wretched thing to be felled by the completed sword of six maxims.

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