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Therko strips off the tatters of his robes and sits with his intricate woad-like tattoos exposed to the silvery light of the False Icon above. Lean and powerfully built, his face again has the expression of a Byzantine clerk whose job just got replaced by a mechanical adding machine. He touches his unmarked face. Lost and obviously frightened on more than a physical level, he says nothing as you try to engage him in further conversation, though he seems reassured just to hear you address him.

No one speaks on the first day. On the second, conversations are quick and to the point, concerning rations, medicine for the injured, the state of equipment. Stralchus's boat disappears for several hours around midday. When Vecla notices, some of the warriors call a halt until he drifts back into view, but the mystic refuses to explain himself.

By midmorning on the third day, Vecla pipes up: where are the villages you had passed on your journey to the Apostolic Mound? Though mostly hidden by thick forest, signs of settlements were visible during your journey upriver. Even Stralchus sits up, recognizing the truth of her words.

The controllers guide the boats close to a familiar-looking bank in the river and, between the shaggy trees, you see the dead. The villagers have been massacred. The next village is much the same: dead men and women, looted supplies. Therko slips into the forest to investigate. The feathered apes? But Therko returns with a word on his lips you've heard before but don't yet fully understand: "ophidians."

These massacres are the work of the ophidians, the snake people of the high mountains. Hidden for generations, Therko says, they have returned.

"Lies," Stralchus says in Koiné, rubbing his hands together. He keeps muttering the word—about everything now, it seems.

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