Who Crossed the Gorge of Bones

18.

The journal picks up on a quiet street. At the top of the page are three names: Dineen, Larryx and Wells. He doesn't say who they are. Then he told the story to someone called Waneda, and she made a report.

Who told what he had seen, and saw it written down.

— the Long Names, Zigu, 9

The page doesn't say how they came from the flesh factory to this street. I won't guess.

19.

Waneda had a suspect. Xurantha Morathant was a known sympathizer of something the journal calls the Marrow Blight. She lived out in the wilds, and she liked her flesh raw. Waneda printed a map to her home. It was about two hours away.

All mass bends toward what is near.

— the Cycle, III.1

20.

A new day, and thin, poisoned air. Then the journal goes straight to fighting before it says where they are or what they face. His light went out and found nothing. It went out again. He fought on with his light ungathered, then gathered it. Beside it is one word, Nihilis, and nothing to explain it.

Before the light, the gathering. Before the gathering, the cold.

— the Cycle, I.1

I think this is the fight at the hut, written down before the road that led there. I can't be sure. He may have fought twice.

21.

Buy a shield!! A Knight Shield, a tactical field shield, at eight thousand credits. In 12 I said Qwitch did this! was the only emphasis on its page. This page has two marks, both for a shield.

The anchored stone is the still center of its storm.

— the Cycle, III.6

He was a guardian. What would he want more than something to stand behind? Surely he had reason.

22.

The road crossed wasteland: acid pools, black and gray ground, a fog with green in it. He wrote super depressing, which is as close as the journal comes to complaint. After two hours they came to a gorge built of piled bones, its walls fifty or sixty feet high.

Where nothing gives light, carry it.

— the Cycle, I.4

23.

Beyond the gorge, the land flattened into blasted fields. In the middle of them someone kept a garden with great care. There stood the hut, made of bones and roofed in skin stretched and cured. He felt the ground shake.

Who crossed the gorge of bones, and came to the house of skin.

— the Long Names, Zigu, 10

24.

It came around the hut and ran at them: an ellicoth, a beast of Eox, horned and two-trunked, as tall as a tower on six thin legs. Its hide is all spikes and blisters from the radiation it lives in.

Set the feet wider than the shoulders.
Lower the center. Keep the weight over the back foot.
Do not step back to strike.
Let the attacker close the distance.
Hold until the line breaks or you do.

— the Forms, Form 7

25.

His first blow glanced off its hide. His second found its way through. He gathered his light into a corona and then rushed in. One stroke went deep, deeper than any other on these pages. With his light spent, he let what was left burst outward from him.

Burn, and do not ask the dark for thanks.

— the Cycle, II.2

Who stood before the beast of Eox, and struck.

— the Long Names, Zigu, 11

The light comes in the same order as in 20: gathered, rushing, then spent. That makes me surer it was one fight, told twice.

26.

In the middle of the fight he wrote down what they knew of the beast. No known weakness. It senses without seeing and sees in little light. It reaches twenty feet. It would rather gore. It is alive, it carries the memory of its kind in its blood, and radiation burns around it. Then the microbots were up, Grek was moving next, and the journal stops.

Learn the beast before it reaches you.
Know whether it sees without eyes.
Know the length of its reach, and what it would rather strike with.
Know whether it lives, and what burns around it.
(Zigu, from his journal.)

— the Forms, Form 31, later additions