Godrich wrapped the discoloured handkerchief around his bloodied palm as he crossed the cobbled bridge of Yu-rann-taa into Testament; the amalgamated city. The patchwork metropolis, fused together by quartz and brick, metal and wood, a conglomeration of the species that have survived and persevered against the creeping black.

A testament. No, a promise. To endure beyond the finite.

Faiths and religions aplenty, here at the end of everything, the multitude gather, beneath cathedrals of frosted glass and towers hewn from bone. Spires of marble and slate tickle the odious clouds of industry.

This night and every night the crowd gather at the base of the Fiz'pah tabernacle, the gleaming needle of light, holding true to the encroaching threat of the deep emptiness. Entropy licks the walls of the world, the stars long since exhausted, the planets and galaxies long since ravaged. Only one remains.

The Construct.

The last diminishing ember in the silent vacuum.

The last stand.

Godrich creeps passed worshippers and zealots and heads down into the Dally, a thoroughfare of market traders and gobshites on the fringe of Brentish.

Here in the Dally anything is for sale! Da'Ka Moths bartering with Sub-Humans over a bag of limes and rainbow fruit, their avaricious tendencies noticeable by the rhythmic beat of their gossamer wings. Angels sell biscotti and hot coffee, their once majestic wings now clipped and strapped by order of the Probability Engine and the Pope of Numbers. There is no call for feudal faiths on the cusp of nothing.

Godrich hears one muttering a convoluted spiel of venom.

'I used to turn cities to salt, now I sell coffee and blueberry muffins.'

Godrich presses on, blood leaking from his palm. He cuts through down into the Galleries, where this stretch of street art will lead him out onto the embankment. Hotch men watch him, lizard fishermen, straddling the walls of the Galleries, smoking bramble weed and eating chips, amphibious tongues licking their lips and noses to the sight of nubile whores loitering for game.

Godrich doesn't even raise their interest, river folk are so seldom interested in the affairs of bleeding humans. Glow lamps beckon him onward, the warm blue light of the network illustrating the way. Iron pipes clad the Galleries, and the pupae and larvae of the Darklands glow worm infest the cat's cradle of degrading metal, biological light; seething and spawning through the confines of the ancient narrows. He takes the steady decline of the Galleries and it opens up onto the embankment and the grey granite cottages that litter its baroque fascia's.

Streaks of green criss-cross across the framework of the houses, sentient lichen, cleansing the walls of all foreign substances: mucus from curious crab-worms, shit from low flying bratternicks. It never tires, phantom brushstrokes eating and absorbing the detritus of everyday waste.

Of course this is only affordable to the minority. This part of the city is affluent, home to bankers and philanthropists, solicitors and architects. They litter the embankment and the cafes, ordering two raeq note frappachinos and rainbow strudels, immersing themselves in laborious ten minute consultations and three hour days. But all is not as it seems, the underside of Brentish reveals an altogether darker side. Here on the edge of Brentish, on the periphery of Eshreet the foundries pound constantly into the night.

Ramshackle flats and grimy tenements snow capped with bratternick excreta and rust rain smother the rooftops. If you were alien to this borough you would be forgiven for thinking this was some artisan bolthole, an Avant Garde statement of contempory art. The hardened shit; wax-like, heaped with the industrial dripping of the foundries.

Here, work never stops, Da'ka Moths selling their woven wares on the fouled street, Sub-Humans and Hotch take the monorail into Katta-mah-geer.

The foundries are flourishing, new colonies acquired in the south mean the export of steel is paramount. Wood, granite and slate, all will be shipped to the new colonies in Salt and Darklands. The arduous thought of long fourteen hour days fill the men with fatigue but money must be earned, quotas must be met.

Promises of a home cooked meal and a warm bed spur them on. The machine demands it.

Godrich reaches the corner of Fropick & Pine and crosses the road to the Lamb & Flag. He's nervous, the faint sheen of sweat on his brow suspect in the cool night air of a Frugalmeyan spring. He casts his eye back to the way he came. Footsteps, but nothing definite. Nothing tangible.

A drunken couple kiss and paw at the entrance to Fellini's across the street, a heady afternoon of drinking taking its toll, their stomachs now yearning for substance, yet they can't manage to take the first initial steps into the restaurant, the only hunger winning that of moist lips and rushing blood.

Godrich pushes the door open and slinks through. It's surprisingly sparse for a Cratchet evening. It's the end of the working week, normally Brentish would be heaving, especially this quarter. Perhaps it was early, or late. He didn't know. He didn't care. He just needed to find Bliss.

Where was she?

He looked to his right and noticed Kiko and Mensch waving from the snug: the Nesscalite twins, brother and sister, holding hands and casually taking a drink out of each other. Vampire siblings forever joined. Godrich noticed the third glass on the table! Bliss was here and had took it upon herself to invite the twins. The blood sucking duo took what time they had, Kiko leaning in to take a bite out of her brother, the secluded dark of the snug shrouding them from the view of the pub.

He leaned on the bar and asked for a pint of Bludgeon, tossing over a two raeq note and telling the bar keep to keep the change. The pint came with a tiny napkin, absorbing what residue decided to escape the glass. Godrich took it and discreetly pulled a shard of glass from his palm. He gritted his teeth and stifled his discomfort. Pulling the pint up to his lips and taking a fair swig.

The door to the toilets opened and Bliss brazenly walked through, shocked to see Godrich looking so disheveled. 'Shit, 'rich. You look like you've been dragged through a hedge . . . twice. You okay?'

He placed his pint down and ushered her back into the toilets in a flurry of panic, the vein in his forehead throbbing. The sweat of his palms off putting. But it was the violence that took her by surprise. Blind undiluted panic and brute force as he pushed her into one of the cubicles.

She slapped him across the face, outraged - fearful. The tears started to well and he clasped her blouse using it to dry his face. 'Rich? What the hell? What . . . what the hell is going on?'

'We've got to leave. We've got to go.'

'Where?'

'Anywhere.'

'What have you done?'

'I've got to get out of here? I'm fucked. Totally fucked.'

Bliss slapped him again and his rant stopped. That wasn't all! It was the eyes. Eyes that could kill. Her heart jumped a beat.

'There . . . there was no need for that, dear.'

'What have you taken? You're back on the Spunk, aren't you?'

The sweat poured. The vein throbbed. His jaw, clenched, grinding teeth into dust.

'You're a fucking mess.'

'I know, Bliss. You don't have to tell me the fucking obvious.'

'Someone does.'

He laughed, repeatedly. Holding her head in his bloodied hands. 'You are so bloody mindless, aren't you? A fucking drone. Like the rest of them. Two dimensional bags of meat.'

'Rest of them?'

His smile fractured her trust, a grimace that showed a shining malice eager to reap.

Her chin was smeared with blood and he wiped it into her pores 'What do you say, Bliss? One last dance?'

He pulled the phial from his jacket. A luminance that beguiled and enticed. 'One last night in the arms of gods.'

'I'm not touching that shit again.'

He slammed her head against the wall and forced her mouth open. 'Drink. Drink you bitch . . . lets fly.'

She pulled her knee up into his abdomen and winded him. Knocking his head against the wood of the cubicle. She stepped over him and then kicked him in the balls.

'Goodbye, Bliss . . . it was fun.'

She stared at him for a moment, lost to his meaning. 'You stay the hell away from me, Godrich Felstrom.'

He laid his head on the cold plastic of the toilet seat and started laughing. 'Oh you won't have to worry about that, sister. Not. Any. More.'

She pulled the door open and ran. Godrich pulled himself up and pulled the cap from the phial and swallowed it whole. 'Lets go out kicking, Godrich.'

He walked back into the bar, almost refreshed. He'd washed his face and hair, the coolness of the water steadying the change in body temperature as his heart rate began to climb.

He walked over to the snug and deposited himself with the vampire twins.

'Godrich? Where's Bliss?' Asked Kiko.

He shrugged his shoulders and took another lengthy swig of his pint.

'Shit, 'rich? You took something?'

Godrich smiled. The cheeks of his face stretching back unnaturally to the point where Kiko and Mensch could see the sinuous workings of his jaw.

'Rich? What the hell?'

Her words tickled the confines of his ear, spiraling down the stem of his spine in a flurry of tactile coaxing. It descended, pleasurably until it nestled on the cusp of his anus, warm; quivering. He giggled like a schoolgirl, blushing, dizzy.

He ignored it at first! He thought it was the Spunk, making all the nerves in his body throb and ebb. It was the most unusual sensation, a faint static exploring the terrain of his gut, and then it tightened. Twisted his stomach inside-out.

Godrich leaned over the table, the horrendous pain galvanising him into shouting for help. None came. His larynx paralysed, a guttural rasping of the throat was all that was audible.

Something moved and turned in the wet sanctum producing a mixture of blood and bile which seeped from his mouth and nose.

All he could hear were the screams of the people in the bar. Nothing else. Well, apart from the turgid sound of something burrowing up from his gut and into his throat. It sounded like old boots walking on freshly laid snow. His gullet expanded and stretched and eventually ruptured.

There was a deep crack. His vertebrae possibly? No, no. It was his jaw snapping. His vision subsided and turned a faint hue of grey.

A bloodied fist emerged among parted lips and teeth, the scarlet hand opened with the beauty and grace of a morning rose, revealing sharp black obsidian nails, reaching out with pianist fingers. It clasped Goodrich's skull and with alien dexterity it squeezed and the head cracked, blood pouring from the rents in the breach.

The misshapen head tilted and swayed, falling in a deluge of mangled brain and suspect matter.