Rain-Born staggered back as the teeth of the deathspitter ripped through her shoulder. She felt pain shoot up her right side and grimaced as she threw herself up the stairway.

She cursed her stupidity.

Jespar had been faster than she had. Or, her call to him had brought the wrath of the Chainman upon her. Either way, the reality of pain and the distorted world that swam before her began to resolve into a single thought slowly:

I'm hit.

She crawled up the final steps, propelling herself into the bedroom as quickly as possible, for already she could hear the cry of fury that roared from downstairs. She could hear the beast that wore the shape of a woman reload the evil fire that was burning through Rain-Born's shoulder right at this moment.

She had never once felt the burning venom of the deathspitter's kiss. Now she understood it's vile namesake.

Now she understood the evil of the Old World.

She thought of the Guthra's firestone still in her pack. But she decided against it. To strike it here would burn the entire place, killing everyone. She wasn't about to throw all their lives away. But she had to fight in a state weaker than she ever had been before. For never had she felt the touch of a deathspitter pierce her flesh and burrow into her bones.

Footsteps began to resound from downstairs. Bounding like a great demon emerging from below the depths of the dead earth. Rain-Born staggered to her feet and ran to the cover of the bedroom as another shot rang out behind her, tearing through the door frame and barely missing the back of her head. She dropped to the floor of the room and scanned her surroundings. No cave. No huts. No dark corners this time. Not here. Here, she was trapped within the iron walls of this cage.

Here, she was in their world.

...

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

She had turned to fire on the little bastard trying to flank her and just missed his tail, launching a bullet that chewed into the front door instead. Martha's incessant barking wasn't helping.

She sidled up the stairway, keeping one hand on the rifle's trigger and one hand on the railing to steady herself. She grit her teeth in pain, and the world began to spin into a crimson kaleidoscope that shook the room and numbed her senses. Already she could feel the small river of blood that ran down her leg and pooled on each wooden step.

It didn't matter, she thought, and with each new ragged breath, she took another step, now focused on the top of the stairs and the room the girl had fallen into. She'd kill them both, and Martha would get the meal of her life.

She pushed her back against the bedroom wall and steadied the rifle, looking through its shaking iron sights for any hint of movement. The vague form of something bulbous and black lay on the floor. Apart from that, the room looked just as she'd left it. But that shape on the floor, was it the Tribal girl? No, no – it was far too big. Too much meat on those bones. Too much-

And then the realization shook her that it was her son, lying there with his neck broken like some twisted marionette, cast aside.

"You little bitch."

She said it as she felt a single drop of blood hit her brow from above. And she knew the sly piece of filth was up there.

She twisted the gun in the air just in time to see two blood-crazed eyes meet hers.

She fired.

...

Rain-Born felt the bullet whiz by her, tearing through her hair and punching the ceiling above. She bore down on the woman and scattered the vile weapon from her hands. It skidded across the room and stopped next to the bed. She reached for her bone knife to deliver the killing blow, but suddenly pain erupted from her still-bandaged hand as the teeth of the writhing woman beneath her sunk into the wound. She cried out and felt herself thrown to the ground.

Before she could recover, the Chainman had pinned her, her face a vision of spittle and blood-soaked strands of grey hair. She spat the saliva that dripped from her fangs at Rain-Born's eyes as she fumbled with the hand that held the knife. Rain-Born kicked out with all force she could, her foot impacting the slaver's injured leg and dislodging her temporarily. She rolled to the side, and Rain-Born made to twist the knife in her hand and plunge it into the women's screaming face. But the butt of the deathspitter slammed into her forehead and sent the knife flying.

She tried crawling after it, but the blow had left her disoriented. She felt the weight of the woman's foot on her spine as the stock of the weapon beat the back of her head again, and she cried out in pain.

"Wanna crawl, piggy?" a voice slathered in hatred screamed at her from above. "Don't worry; you'll be crawling for me for a long time."

Rain-Born's hand scraped the wooden floorboards as she desperately grasped for the knife that lay just out of reach. Her fingertips could just touch it. All she needed was to reach – just – an inch more –

Instantly her vision was filled with the image of the Chainman's weathered boot crushing her hand. Her eyes flew to the ceiling in agony. And from somewhere in her sphere of dwindling consciousness, she heard the click of the deathspitter's reloading mechanism behind her.

"FUCK!" cried the voice from above.

Rain-Born guessed without looking: the sound of Jespar's growling maw was known to her after all this time. She looked up and saw he had sank his teeth into the woman's arm and was struggling against her frantic thrashing and screaming. Together they rolled back outside and down the stairwell, Rain-Born just managing to stagger after them.

...

At the bottom of the stairs, she kicked the dog square in its face and gave up reloading entirely. She threw what remained of her strength into attacking the thing's head, its agony-filled squeals mixed with Martha's continued barking filling her fading consciousness. She threw it against the wall next to the basement, and it fell limply to the ground with a wet thud. She brought the gun up again.

She realized only now that the fucking Tribal strapped to the chair had been watching all of this. His eyes shot from her form to the dog, to the gun in her hand.

She checked the chamber of the gun.

One bullet left.

God, she wished to just use it on him to take his last hope away. But she consoled herself, standing above the shaking hound, there and then with a single thought: when she died, she could at least take him and the other two with her. And Martha and her puppies could eat them all. They could have the best fucking feast they'd ever had.

That's the way it had to be. That's the way it was when the world became like this. Her husband was the first to go because he was weak. He was weak and couldn't do what he had to when the end came. He wouldn't listen. And as for her daughter...

Her hand started shaking. She remembered her daughter's sad eyes as she plunged the knife into her chest. She couldn't do it. She wasn't made for this world. She was too beautiful. She was too pure. But a mother shouldn't have to watch her baby take their life.

She should have known. The day before she left this world, her daughter had come to her, seeing her mother sprawled on the couch, sweating with fear, with her father's body lying next to her.

"I'm sorry, mama," she'd said with tear-filled eyes. "I'm sorry you're always scared. But I can fix it," she cried. "I can make it so you don't get scared anymore."

And in her hands, she held that damned thing that had killed us all. And before her mother could say something, she used it.

She wasted it on her. A weak, dull, dead woman. That was the trick. It could give you the world. But in the end, it gave you nothing.

She gritted her teeth as she realized that this staggering beast before her must have come from the same primordial, unnatural thing that had made her what she was. She knew it. She didn't quite know how, but she was certain.

And you know it too, she thought as she looked into the eyes of the quivering mongrel. Don't you?

She smiled a red-rimmed smile as she aimed and imagined putting the bullet between this filthy mutt's stupid fucking eyes. She wasn't just killing it; she was striking a blow at the thing that had turned everything into shit.

Callisto.

Then, from behind her, she heard a sudden yelp.

A sound that stopped all time itself.

...

Rain-Born waited for the Chainman to turn. Her hand was still shaking, but her eyes were steady. And her arm was strong against the kicking of the little creature she held.

The woman looked at her with two crazed eyes, blood dripping from her leg wound and bruised forehead.

The Tribal brother was the first thing Rain-Born had seen as she entered the front room. She had seen him even through the increasingly dimming world of darkness that crept in from all sides of her vision. She had seen what this woman had done to him. And when she saw it, she immediately reached for the pug bound to the stair column.

She held it by its throat while her other hand angled her knife directly above its tiny head.

The eyes of the slaver and huntress locked, and for a few seconds, there was nothing but silence.

Then the woman slowly lowered her weapon.

"Don't," she said, her voice quivering. No longer did she scream like a possessed hell-hound, Rain-Born noticed. Now she sounded like she was on the verge of tears.

"Don't," she repeated. "Don't you hurt her."

"Down!" Rain-Born shouted, nodding at the deathspitter, and she realized at this moment that she, too, was trembling. She felt her knees starting to buckle, and the wails of the pug in her arm were almost inaudible. But the image that swam in her head at this moment surpassed even the pain she felt in her still burning shoulder. All she could see was the image of her mutilated brother.

She could never close her eyes again. She could not bear to see what she had seen.

"Hey, look you're –," the woman was saying, edging closer to Rain-Born. "She can't breathe. Please just-"

"Down!" Rain-Born screamed again, and this time she moved the knife closer to the tiny being's skull.

"Okay, okay," the woman said, never once taking her eyes off Rain-born as she slowly placed her vile weapon on the ground and raised her crimson-soaked hands. She kicked the gun toward Rain-Born.

Rain-Born gritted her teeth; she couldn't even look at her shivering brother strapped to that chair. She couldn't do it. Rage fueled her every impulse at this moment. In her berserk fury, she barely even noticed Jespar moving next to her.

"Are you well?" she asked him, sparing a quick look down to see his bloodied face and a torn ear. This did nothing to alleviate her fury.

"Pretty fucking far from well," he panted, similarly facing the woman who only had eyes for the pug clutched in Rain-Born's arm.

"We have medicine," she said, nodding towards her bag beside the chained Tribal. "And there's bandages upstairs in the bathroom. Aspirin. Disinfectant. The works. You can have it."

"Jespar," Rain-Born said, shaking more by the second. "Go and get this medicine."

He looked up at her and saw those eyes were there again – the eyes of the huntress. Cold and detached. He was about to say something, but then he spared a look at the bloodied thing that lay chained on the chair in the middle of the room. And with sad eyes, he sighed and made his way upstairs.

"Look," the woman said, taking a cautious step forward after he left. "Take everything. Take the house if you want. Just – please – don't hurt my Martha."

Rain-Born felt the sweat gathering on her brow.

"You understand, don't you?" the woman continued, taking another step forward. "You have to do what you can to feed your family. You do what you can, even if it hurts. That's all."

From the corner of her eye, Rain-Born saw the Tribal farmer again. Her fingers gripped the knife"s hilt tighter.

"You're young," the woman said. Another step. "Just like my daughter was. I loved her just like you must love your dog. They ain't like other animals. They're loyal. They never betray you."

"Step. Back," Rain-Born whispered, red rage overtaking her.

Again the woman's step came forwards. Rain-Born could smell the filth on her rags. She could see in that face that she knew who this woman once was. There was no mistaking it now: less makeup, perhaps, but the face structure – the wrinkled nose, the bony flesh that clung to her cheeks, and the now broken glasses that perched on her nose – it had to be her. It was the woman with the little girl contained in the pictures upstairs—the woman who had looked so peaceful with her daughter.

"Just let her go," she said. "Please, just let her go."

The knife quivered in Rain-Born's hands. But as she envisioned sinking the blade into the tiny thing and then turning it on the woman before she could react, she heard Jespar's words reverberate from the depths of her conscience:

You're part of your Tribe, sure. But you're also a person. You've got your own desires. You've got your own thoughts. You must because you're human.

Was she genuinely human anymore? Could she really call herself that if this is what she wanted at this moment? To inflict as much pain as she could upon this woman, who had so callously carved into her brother like he was some carrion cow?

Was it what she wanted, or was it what the Huntress wanted? The thing inside her that urged her to kill. The thing that had shown no hesitation upstairs when she had strangled the man by the bed.

"Please," the woman kept saying. "Please..."

Rain-Born let the dog go.

Instantly she felt two strong hands grab her throat, pushing her down with more force than her fading mind could even register.

"I'LL GUT YOU, YOU LITTLE CUNT!"

The woman's tormented wail pierced her ears, and her screams filled what remained of Rain-Born's world as she slowly tumbled into the darkness of what must be death. She tried to call out and strike at the woman with her hands, but her feeble grasps at the face of the demon were futile. She felt her limbs numb and her feet kicked out of their own volition. The screams started to fade. Everything did.

Then – the sensation of metal on the fingers of her left hand. Her eyes flew open as she gripped the machete at the woman's feet and instinctively slashed it across her face, cutting through her cheek and into the soft flesh inside her mouth. She screamed as she fell away, clutching her lolling jaw that spewed fresh vermillion across the floor.

Rain-Born flew at her before she could recover. She brought the machete down again and again, both times embedding the weapon"s blade in the woman's skull and withdrawing a spurting torrent of blood that spewed from each open laceration. The woman collapsed and brought her arms up in an attempt to shield her face as Rain-Born straddled her, gripping the weapon in both hands and forcing it down again, and again, and again, each time hearing it slice into the air and cut through the hands and face of the thing that writhed beneath her legs. As she cut, she did not realize that she had started to scream with every strike she made. She saw nothing but the red haze of mad rage that swam before her vision, compounded by the increasingly bloody, brutalized visage of what was once the woman's face. The Chainman's arms fell to the side, and Rain-Born's relentless assault continued. Even when no flesh remained, and only pulsing blood and muscle were left, Rain-Born still did not stop forcing the blade down. She cut until her arms could no longer bear the effort, then cut more.

"Hey. Hey! Hey!"

As she brought the blade down for her next strike, she heard a voice somewhere call to her, and felt the soft touch of paws against her arm.

"Hey! Look at me! Rain-Born, look at me."

She tried to tear her eyes away from the remains of the woman's face and look at Jespar but could not bear to catch the sight of the tribesman again. She made to embed the machete in what remained of the woman's skull but then felt it drop from her hands entirely.

Her hands – they were covered in blood.

She looked from them to the pug and the puppies in the corner of the room, staring at her. Then she looked to Jespar and saw the same look on his crimson-coated face. Finally, she saw her reflection in the blood pooling beneath the corpse that convulsed underneath her. And in her eyes, the same look was reflected that told of only one emotion: terror.

She could feel the approach of the dark fog that heralded the shutdown of her mind. Before succumbing to its embrace, she slowly rose from the ground and walked, head bowed, towards her trapped brother. She raised the machete only once more to bring it down upon the chains that bound him. She did not look him in the eyes.

"You are free, brother," she said through crimson-stained lips before walking away and slumping against the wall to stare into nothing. She heard only silence. Even when Jespar entered her vision and prodded her, urging her to move, she could command her body to do nothing. Her limbs refused to respond anymore.

She felt darkness creep in from the corners of her eyes and steal all vision from her. She welcomed it, allowing her head to sway gently as she gave up command of her senses to the cold hand of unconsciousness.

The last thing she remembered seeing was the eyes of her mutilated brother staring at her with a different look from the rest before she plunged into the world of darkness and dreams once more.