Ain't nothing quite like a fever and good old-fashioned hurt to humble a man. Even when the changin’ was done, and I could move again, it was chewin’ gravel through and through. I was stiff and broken in a dozen different ways, and the new limbs were more of a burden than a boon.

  Each of the seeking limbs seemed to have a little mind of its own. Something as simple as pushing myself up to stand took effort and concentration. I had to master each little tendril and bring them to heel, and they fought me the whole way.

  Some wanted to cooperate, to be part of the whole. Others desired nothing more than to dig into the sandy loam beneath me, and slither away.

  Bastards.

  My head was pounding like a church bell, and I thought that was bad enough. Penance enough for ambition and greed. But it wasn't, of course. Never is.

  Saw things now.

  Shapes and forms that drifted in the shadows and light. Leaking tendrils of rich and ugly blue that bleed everything around.

  Saw spirits and mana now, and each of them sung and whispered. Each called out to me and begged for my attention. A constant buzz in my ears and in the back of my mind. It only seemed to grow as the morning dragged on, as if the world was awakening from slumber and calling out to the only one that could hear it.

  And it was driving me fuckin' insane.

  I grit my teeth and scarcely resisted the urge to shove my knife into each ear, to cut and dig out whatever it was that now occupied the socket of my right.

  Knew it wasn't right. That what was growing there was stranger than the godsdamned tentacles I had for arms...

  And that was saying something.

  There was a good chance I would've mutilated myself. Cut all the bits that hurt, and then curled up and died.

  I was close to it.

  But then, that'd been easy, too easy for a fool like me.

  My new eye rolled in its socket, forcing me to look through the misshapen hand of woven meat that covered it, ignoring the limitations of wriggling flesh and skin.

  It saw something.

  Peered hard at a shape moving amongst the ghosts that clung thick to the looming jungle trees. It locked onto an island of gold in that sea of green and blue.

  Someone stepped closer, unhurried and careful.

  A shape, a person. I could see something like a halo around her.

  “…found you.” Came a breathy whisper.

  But that light, it wasn't divine or malign, or anything that made sense to me. It just was, like weight, like memory.

  “You truly were taken with the gods," came a gentle voice. Like cool rain after a long summer working a dusty field, "poor boy, lost in madness of his own make..." it felt like a whisper but dug into me like a knife.

  "Who," I chocked on a dry and dusty tongue, "who's there? What do you want from me?"

  Somethin’ cold slithered in my guts, and then coiled heavy in the core of me.

  Fear.

  Blind, though I could see. Deaf, though I heard everything. Too much to feel at all.

  "A wretched creature you have made yourself," the figure- the woman said.

  I could see her now.

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  Hollow-eyed, face worn gaunt. Auburn hair, greasy and salt-thick. A smile on thin, bleeding lips.

  "You're that Mother..." I croaked.

  That voice in the dark. A shepherd to we wretched men.

  She had kept most of us something like sane in the belly of that tin beast. Kept our minds from the hunger and death as we were brought from our homes across a seemingly endless sea.

  "I am," she spoke, and the world went quiet. The spirits still whispered, but her voice made them hush. It was like they couldn't ignore her, but they had to bow to that voice of hers, "you saved us. Broke locks that bound and braved the wake. So long ago now… That was kindness, Lorcan. And it begets kindness in turn."

  "How do you know my name?"

  I had never said it once. Never spoke aloud that gift my mama and daddy had given me.

  Didn't want it sullied with the breath of men and beasts in that wicked hole.

  I felt a gentle touch on the ragged wound I’d made of my face, and it soothed the hurt just a little..

  Her fingers drew down, down, and traced away the pain.

  She was healing me.

  "You whispered it in my dreams," the Mother said, "you and the others, you who were lost and I sought. I can always hear the meek, hear their pleas for more. Sadly, precious few survived the night. I saw the two you killed..."

  A pause.

  A terrible, awful moment of quiet. I felt a chill, a fear run down to my gut.

  Would she kill me for that? Was she so good that she would soothe my pain only to put it to a permanent end?

  She was a mage of some sort. She was a priestess of the Wyld, or maybe one of the Old Gods. It was impossible to say for sure, but powerful, she was most definitely that. And her kind, the truly strong, they did not easily suffer the weak in my experience. Nor much else besides them that could stand as tall as they.

  "I mourn them. But they had done more than you could know. You snuffed two dying lights, and I will not hate you for it. You are a killer, a man driven by wickedness and want. A predator that will always find prey, yet… But there is something in you, Lorcan of the Broken Coast, something that I admire. Something I came here to find."

  Her hand met the mess of mine, fingers woven into the mutated ruin I'd created from honest flesh.

  Then she drew me up, close to her strange light. An embrace both warm and tight.

  Smelled salt and funeral ash. Blood covered up by herbs and sweet honey.

  "Look on me," she said, "see me as I am."

  Couldn't refuse. I had to see.

  So I did.

  And you know what?

  Really wish I hadn't.

  I finally saw that weight and memory. In a single glance I saw a lifetime of hurt and pain. Lifetimes of pain. All lived on a Path I would not have chosen, and would not have had the strength to survive.

  Tears ran down my cheek, stinging the closing sores and burning in my ritual's wound. And then they froze and I knew a truth I didn't want to bear.

  This was a Saint.

  This woman was a fuckin' Saint. She had walked the Path to the mountaintop, come close enough to the heavens to grasp Divinity, and she had instead chosen to walk her thorny way amongst us all instead.

  If there was one damn soul that truly did not belong on that prison barge, one innocent in that hold of human filth, it was this woman.

  No… Well, not innocent. Not that at all. But good, by any measure.

  "We are going to walk this path together, Lorcan. It will be good. I am Temperance. You are Strength. I am Shepherd, you are Flock."

  That wasn't just her name. That wasn't just some title. It was her Crown. Her place on a Path I couldn't even comprehend.

  Mama always did say my way would one day put me on a thorny path. Wonder what she’d say if she got a true look at poor Tempy here.

  Nothin’ fit for a woman of her bearin’ that was for sure.

  "Gather your senses. Nourish your body. There is work that must be done, Lorcan. Much was paid to see you here again. You have a debt to pay, my child."

  "Okay," I said, and the word was small and lost, swallowed by the sound of the sea and the spirits that swirled in the sea of mana we all were in. How had I not known any of that before? How was it I had been so blind to so much?

  Near Temperance, that tide receded. Her being just calmed that roilin’ storm, and I found myself again.

  I needed to stay on this woman's good side. Or at least-

  I needed to keep the hell out of her way.

  Trouble was, I already knew I couldn’t. Something was pullin’ strings, maybe for a long time too. Something had made sure I survived that terrible wreck. Made sure I found a matrix just, just in the sand. And now it had made sure, rather bleedin’ to death thanks to my own fool ambition, I had crossed paths with genuine Saint.

  There were what? A hundred in the whole world? Most of them lost to time or far, far worse.

  Somehow I’d gone and stuck my dick in one big cosmic beehive, and there was no pullin’ out.

  I just had to hope-

  To pray, I didn’t hang myself by my strings and survive all them nasty stings.

  Hope you enjoy the show motherfuckers, while it lasts.

  While you’re the ones laughin’…