The tiny feathered thing danced just above the nocked arrow and beneath the rising sun of a new day. It was a curious creature: built like a bird but with the head of a small feline (perhaps a cat, judging by its penchant for licking its paws and brushing its ears). The desert winds that wound their way through the tremendous grey trees of the Iron Forest howled in her face as Rain-Born drew the arrow back further and felt the tension in her right arm. She closed her eyes, breathed, and loosed the shaft.

Squawk!

The tiny creature took flight as the arrow slammed itself against the cylindrical structure it was perched on. Rain-Bow opened her eyes to behold failure and pain as her shoulder ached with the effort of her fruitless archery practice. She would undoubtedly feel the curse of The Chainman's bullet for a long time. Her aim was no longer true.

She shuffled back through the dunes that lay like a blanket of warm sleet upon the floor of the Iron Forest, surrounded by what Rain-Born was convinced were not trees at all but caskets. Inside some of them, they had found the skeletal or charred remains of those of the Old World who had burned with the rest of their civilization. They had constructed these great columns to challenge the sun itself in their hubris, and now they served as nothing more than their tombs.

Stepping through the smashed ground-floor window of one of these buildings, she entered the place where they had made camp. She had noticed that the darkened interior of these buildings was never of uniform design like the houses in the suburb. This one heralded a long table with several broken rectangular machines similar to the "TV" that Jespar had shown her but smaller and arranged along many small cubicles at regular intervals. Some of these desks still had their occupants sitting, hunched over these devices, their bony fingers ready to press the strange keys attached to the technological marvels they had toiled away on for most of their numb, dreary lives. Their hollowed-out eyes, bashed skulls, and decayed, jawless mouths seemed to Rain-Born to be a fitting destiny for those who had tried to understand everything until nothing was left to understand.

Jespar sat pensively under one cubicle. He had been quiet for quite some time and mainly engaged himself with pawing at the keys under each monitor he could find, trying desperately to find one that functioned. He had given up, just like she had.

"My aim falters, Jespar," she said as she sat beside him. "It will be some time before I can hunt again."

He yawned as though still in mid-sleep. "Practice makes perfect."

She wiped the sweat that had begun to gather from her forehead and cast it away onto the cold iron floor. It did not feel natural to sit within these old withered monuments. She thought they might come crashing down upon her at any moment.

"We should continue before darkness falls," she said.

"Yeah," was all he replied. "What's the final destination, again?"

She pointed out the window in the general direction of her target, its silvery form shimmering in the baking sun of the afternoon. It would have been the same height as the other buildings of the forest were it not for its long antenna that pierced the heavens – like the feelers of a Canyon Stalker.

"The tallest tower of the Iron Forest," she said. "There, it is said Callisto waits."

He raised an eyebrow unbeknownst to her. "Correct," he whispered.

"What was that, Jespar?"

"Nothing, gal, nothin'," he yawned, and rolled over to get back on his feet, shaking the dust of the building off his fur.

But how do you know? Who told you?

He walked out into the open and felt the blazing fireball of The Deadlands bare down on him again. He briefly regarded the shimmering TV tower at the furthest end of the Dead City she had pointed to. He was actually here, and the shit he'd gone through to get here was worse than he could have imagined. But it was almost over. It was within a paw's reach.

She followed him outside, full of wonder and trepidation both. This fortress of the Old Ones held too much danger she couldn't perceive. Eyes probably watched them from inside those towers, and out here, they were totally exposed, each quivering step they took on the dunes another impediment to their progress.

As they left the abandoned office building, neither noticed the pair of amber eyes that had perceived them from within the shadowed corner of the room. They blinked once, and a charcoal black iris followed the forms of these two creatures as they moved outside to the world beyond. A lithe tongue licked dry, reptilian lips.

...

"Why did your people build these things?"

"First of all: I'd appreciate it if you'd stop calling them "my people." Second: most humans are idiots, Rain-Born. That's never changed. I don't know why the hell they built these places."

She was attempting to fill the void of silence that had descended on them ever since they had made it here. They had come to a particular stretch of sand – one colossal dune that stretched before them flanked by the great iron trees that stood on its perimeter and odd, spiked pieces of rusted chrome that jutted out from the earth. Wading through dunes and constantly scanning the skies was hardly entertainment, and aside from the few odd sights she saw – fragments of roads, street lights, the metal husks of more debased vehicles like those back in the Changeling's tunnel – there was nothing with which she could occupy her mind. She needed his words, however strange they may be.

"I want you to know that I trust you," she suddenly said, her voice echoing through the ruined streets.

He scoffed and looked at her. "What brought that on?"

She kept wading, focused on her feet lest they should slip and bury her beneath with the other dead souls of this place. "You hold many secrets from me, Jespar. Perhaps in your heart, you do not trust one such as me. I do not blame you. But I will make you a promise as a Hanakh hunter: when this journey is over, and I return to my people, I shall reward you for your companionship. You may ask a boon of me, and if it is within my abilities, I shall grant it to you."

He chuckled like he usually did when something tickled him. But Rain-Born noted that it was tinged with sadness. This was the same melancholy that had befallen him ever since she had mentioned Callisto – that elusive thing she had been searching for all this time.

"Within your abilities? Christ, Chief. I could ask you to lasso the sun up there, and you could manage it."

She knew he knew what it was. How she wished she could simply ask him. But then his words that reverberated in her mind answered her:

Sorry, Chief, that would be too personal.

Would he ever open his mind to hers? She did not know how to coax secrets from another. She had never been trained in the art of manipulation or deceit. She had no vantage point from which to observe his habits and come to a conclusion about his motivations. But one thing she knew was that he was not a creature of evil. This, she was sure of.

He trudged through the sands beside her, his every step a labor of effort against the heat that blasted this giant graveyard.

Suddenly, Rain-Born felt a change in the wind. As they clambered over the wreckage of another dismembered vehicle, she noted that a breeze rolled through this part of the city. It was as though they had entered another pocket of reality altogether, and suddenly Rain-Born found herself shielding her eyes from dust particles that threw themselves at her face in unified clumps.

"Look, Chief," Jespar said from behind her. "I've told you; you'd be smarter not to trust me."

She started to slow her steps as she perceived something unusual: typically, birds had circled above them in the clear skies of the Forest. But here, they were entirely absent in this section of the place. As she scanned the towers stretched above, she noticed them perched in decimated windows as though they waited for something.

"Because I'll tell you who I don't trust," Jespar was going on.

She couldn't stop noticing the oddities of this particular dune. The buildings surrounding them seemed far more wretched than those she had seen. Their metal innards and rails were exposed as though chunks had been torn out of them. They appeared on the verge of collapsing.

"It's all of you," Jespar said, oblivious to these details. "Humans. Homo-Sapiens. See, I'm more like you than you think. I think they fucked up the world too. I'm a certified misanthrope, through and through. And I don't think humans messing with shit they don't understand will improve the world."

"Jespar..." Rain-Born muttered, having stopped in her tracks.

Her eyes had lighted on the spiked pieces of chrome that lined the dune's edges.

She felt the sand beneath her feet begin to shift.

"I know what you're gonna say," the dog continued. "I should have faith. I shouldn't judge the many by the actions of the few. Blah, blah, blah. But I've heard it all before, Chief. I've heard it from some of the smartest people left in this world."

"Jespar," she said again, as her eyes darted from one edge of the dune to the other to see that the perimeter was shifting too. The entire precipice was rising, a wall of sand slowly forming around them and trapping them in the center. Then she saw the sand scrape away from the thing hidden behind them – a division of red, undulating gums. And the spikes that had once poked out from the sand so innocently stood at the apex of the wall- jutting along its surface.

They weren't spikes of chrome at all.

They were teeth.

"After a while, you all get greedy. You all think you're in the right. You say you've got good intentions, but you're all talk. So many people just talk, talk, talk, and then when the shit hits the fan, they bounce. I decided it was time to put a stop to it all. I'm here to –"

"JESPAR!"

"WHAT?"

They looked at each other and from each other at the towering organic mass that had slowly enveloped them. They were beginning to block out the vision of the towers and the birds that perched upon them, watching the scene unfold with uncaring eyes. A shadow fell across the dune as both huntress and dog felt their feet sink slowly into the sand beneath them and felt the hot breath of the being that had appraised them as fresh prey rise from below. Both of them tried making a dash for the edge of the great wall of pulsing red gums writhing with anticipation at a new meal, having wandered so willingly into the mouth they belonged to. As they ran, wading through increasingly shifting sand, Jespar cast some of his ancient curses to build up a barrier of protection around them:

SHIT! FUCK! HOLY FUCKING SHIT!

Rain-Born had not heard this spell before, but the way he chanted it repeatedly, his voice a bellow of fear and sudden shock, made it clear that its purpose must be to dispel the danger or perhaps conjure a wind to speed them on their path, for his pace seemed to quicken with every new word he added to his mantra.

She became more aware of the hopelessness of escape with each passing moment that the shadow of the great being's maw eclipsed the sun above.

She saw the teeth now. Chunks of metal ripped from the bark of the Iron Forest's trees dripped from them like saliva into the blanket of sand that concealed the creature's immense throat. Row upon row of serrated fangs glinted in the increasingly darkening world as the mouth of the beast began to close, and the final grains of sand drained away under their feet.

She had just enough time to grab onto the side of one smaller tooth and hug herself close to it, feeling its sharp edges begin to dig into the soft flesh of her chest. She grimaced but bore the pain.

"Chief!"

Looking back, she saw Jespar had entirely sunk beneath the quicksand, his gasping mouth the only thing still visible as the last ray of sunlight vanished overhead.

She kicked her leg towards him, and the small leather boot that protected her foot dangled before his gradually sinking face.

"Bite on!"

Coughing up sand, he sputtered, "You sure?"

"Unless you think you'd make a good meal!" she shouted over a roar from below, deafening them both. Jespar may have said something, but she caught none of it. The next thing she felt was his teeth sinking into her leg. She let out a yell she knew he wouldn't hear. Even through the leather protector, she could feel his piercing fangs. She could tell he had tried to be gentle, but as the final blanket of sand was swept away into the monster's maw, her grip started to loosen. She couldn't sustain it and the dangling dog's weight on her leg.

She looked down and beheld the cylindrical, gesticulating throat they had both fallen into. Below them, it stretched out for what must have been miles, concealed underground for who knows how long. The creature had waited as a most patient hunter would, and all around them, she could see evidence of its strategy having paid off – skeletal remains of humans and animal carcasses were wedged in between its great white teeth or impaled on the tips of its razor-sharp canines.

They felt a gust of wind push them from somewhere, now surrounded in almost total darkness but for the slight rays of light that penetrated the slits between the great front teeth that lined the opening of the beast's mouth. A roar emerged from the abyssal gulf at the bottom of the thing's throat – the rage of a starving predator. Rain-Born knew the sound. The Canyon Stalkers shared the same intense, thunderous vocalization.

Not on this scale, perhaps, but the same sound nonetheless.

It began to shake them, trying to dislodge them from its grappled tooth and force them into its waiting innards. She could smell the bile and mucus that coated its gums and began to creep onto her hands. She felt them slip.

"Aeny brih ideashs?" Jespar sputtered from her dangling leg.

One hand fell from the top of the tooth. She and Jespar now dangled precariously as the roar increased in intensity, and Rain-Born realized that the wind did not come from above but below. It was sucking them in.

Her eyes darted from tooth to tooth, seeing only the remains of those already claimed by the creature surrounding them. The black sockets of their skulls stared back at her with the same deep dark concealed within them that awaited in the depths of the creature's gullet.

But then, in pure desperation, she saw something glinting in among two tangled incisors, particularly a few feet below them. The meager light from above revealed a round metal drum with a peculiar symbol stamped upon its surface.

Her eyes widened as she recognized the symbol.

She remembered it from the Changeling's Tunnel. The same symbol had been emblazoned on a much larger metal barrel near some destroyed vehicles. She had made to light a campfire near it when Jespar had snatched her flint from her with sudden surprise and spat it as far away as possible.

At her look of confusion, he explained to her what the object was. And what the flame-shaped symbol etched upon its surface meant.

"Jespar!" she shouted, trying to overcome the din of the thunderous roar reverberating off the living walls around them. "Do you trust me?"

He responded with a gargled "Wha?"

"I promised you I would listen to you from now on!" she yelled as her thumb slipped off the mucus-coated tooth. "I have an idea, but it could kill us both. I ask you: do you trust me?"

The wind came again, and Jespar dropped from her leg and fell to a small tooth below, slipping and only managed to grab the fang"s edge with his paws.

"For fuck"s sake Chief!" he yelled back. "Whatever you're gonna do, just do it!"

"I want your word, Jespar!" she shouted as the creature bashed itself, she was sure, against one of the city buildings outside. She felt two more fingers slip from the tooth.

She looked down at him, slowly skidding off the edge of his platform, staring back at her with maddened eyes.

"I know you do not trust humans," she said. "But do you trust me?"

And even as the roar of the creature rose from the blackened pit below again, she heard him curse and say the words:

"I trust you!"

"Then let go!" she shouted and immediately let herself fall, quickly shoving her fist into her pack mid-descent.

She heard Jespar yell one last curse into the air before he did the same, and together they tumbled into the darkness below.

Then, in the world of thunder and living shadow, a light illuminated the throat of the great sandworm of the Iron Forest. It felt a flame spark into life within its parched innards as Rain-Born struck the fragment of Guthra firestone she had left. It felt it, but before it could react, she had tossed the flame at the pesky gas canister stuck in its teeth since it had first feasted on the debris of the Old World.

And the explosion that resulted tore a hole clean through the side of its throat.

Jespar swore with greater volume than he ever knew his lungs could as the deluge of heat washed over him and swept him away with the torrent of fire and smoke expelled out the sandworm's side. He felt an arm wrap itself tightly around his body, and for a moment, he was sure it was her: Nicole had finally come to take him with her to the world beyond. He had failed in his mission. But at least he could be with her again.

Then as he felt himself flying out of the shadow of the great worm"s throat, he looked up to see Rain-Born, holding her breath and gliding with him through the air on wings of smoke. She shielded his head as they landed on top of one skyscraper that the sandworm had been nearby.

As they hit the concrete, they rolled and exchanged a look of utter disbelief. They watched the roaring sandworm – its bulbous form seemingly composed of chitinous flesh with one smoking perforation that they had emerged from near the top of its mouth. It shrieked in pain and anguish before retreating into the ground with an earth-shattering thud. It would lick its wound and hunt again. Or choke on the very sand it had used as its trap.

Jespar, as usual, was the first to speak.

"What the hell just happened?" he gasped.

Rain-Born's breath came in rapid, short bursts before she responded.

"Shit impacted the fan, Jespar," she said. "And we bounced."

For a solid minute, neither of them said anything. A chill wind rustled the hair and fur of the huntress and dog.

"Did...did you just make a joke?" Jespar finally asked.

She smiled a toothy smile at him, coughing up smoke.

He gave precisely one nervous, wide-eyed laugh and then fainted.