The border of Terendum had always been half dead. Had always been. Tall grasses died in soil too wet, swamp reeds where soil was too dry. The water too unclean for use by Messus, too crisp and clear for the uses of Terendum’s locals. Animals rarely crossed the border, lest they find predators they were unaware of.
In life, Nightshade had loved Messus and Terendum in equal measure.
That had of course, been in life.


Now… now the water between the zones was undrinkable. The grasses and reeds black and rotten where they grew at all. Corpses littered the earth around the waters, and it carried the stench of death.
Few would visit this place.

Nightshade didn’t mind. After all, if his masters had decided to use venom as a fertilizer that was hardly his business.What he minded, of course… was that he’d done nothing to deserve the soil cradling his soul. It didn’t matter now, that his self permeated the trees. The grass. The death.
What mattered was that he shouldn’t be here at all. What had he done to deserve this? His masters had cast him out and--

A ripple skipped across his awareness.
“This is the place, ma’am.” a ketucari’s voice. Nightshade twisted, peered through the eyes of a particularly determined crowned stalker at the edge of the bog that housed him. There near the edge of his boundary were a pair of ketucari. One, blue-and-black-and white, shorter, featherless. Finned. A ringed horn over the dome of their skull, wreathed in water. Beside them, a fantailed kadin, a dull brown with dark swirls, and a vivid face and tail, a sweep of crown horns jutting back from her head. Her ears pricked at the wind through Nightshade’s dead trees, and grey eyes swept over the bog. Over black soil, over trees that stood by sheer power of spite. Nodding, she stepped towards a particular corpse--a ketucari, stone fur dark, almost black with the damp air. Their frill wrapped in silvers, dapples shifting in the wet light. Their throat had been torn, and their intestines spilled into the water for good measure. The one visible pink eye stared ahead into nothing.

“Thank you, Cape.” the brown hummed. “Do you know their name?”

The blue shook their head. “Sorry. I just saw the fight--a big skinny fantail with a frill like fire. Charcoal, I think. Smelled like medicine.”

_The one that uses my earth as a dumping ground._ Nightshade mused. His bird pecked the earth, pulled a fat purple worm from the bog. He almost missed the way the kadin’s ears twitched. She stood, swirled her tail through rotten mud and murk. The blue, Cape?, tilted their head, tried to look towards whatever had caught the kadin’s eye, brows furrowed in confusion.

“Prosecutor?” he asked, while she stared at one of the few living plants; a pitcherplant currently stuffed full of a lythersnitch chick.

“We’re being watched.” She answered, no concern in her voice. The rotten water rippled, dead grasses and reeds stirred. Nightshade’s stalker lifted its head and called out, waded into deeper poison. The kadin’s eyes fixed on it. Her ears fixed on the breeze. She stepped lightly over the stone-furred corpse, into the waters behind them.
If Nightshade still had a heart, it would be pounding.

Cape twisted and turned. “You… sure, ma’am? This place is uh. _Dead_. Barely even any plants. Hey why’d you want to know the dead guy’s name, anyways?”

The Prosecutor did not answer, she waded into deeper waters. When she spoke again, her voice was firm. “_Who_ uses _you_ as a dumping ground?”

“Uhm. _What_?” Cape smiled. “I never--”

Nightshade’s leaves rustled. His waters stirred and bubbled. _You Hear me?_ he couldn’t believe it--
A snare coiled around his throat and _yanked_. The soil Shifted, pulled by whatever force had a hold of him. _Release me!_ he hissed, longing for talons and claws. His poison bubbled uselessly against the kadin’s skin.

“Spirit, I hear you.” Her voice firm and gentle, like a sunbeam through storm clouds. The entire bog rustled, this dead place tight with anxiety as the creature pulled him closer, Closer. “You witnessed these events. The murder of that stone-coated stranger.”

Another YANK on his throat and… For the first time in… decades? Centuries? Millennia? How long had he been cursing this land? He was pulled from the soil. His shape different now, flailing and awkward, twisting through air in the shape of a ketucari. No more solid than the wind. Cape stared at the kadin, tried to look at Nightshade--their gaze passed right through. Invisible?

“Miss… Yamanashi?” Cape stepped closer, uncertain.

“I suggest you leave, Cape. We are not alone.” Yamanashi’s eyes, unlike Cape’s, were fixed on Nightshade. He twisted, all limbs and spine and tail, to right himself. “And our watcher may not be friendly. This is Your bog, is it not?”

_You can See me?_ he asked, newfound face tight. He had a Form again. Not just rustling leaves and water… a real shape. Like his own, but Different. Ketucari.

“That does not answer my question.” The kadin answered with the most pleasant of smiles. The unspoken Threat coiled like that snare around his throat. “This is your bog, is it not?”

“Miss Yamanashi who are you _talking_ to?” Cape inched closer. Nightshade floated above his waters, limbs trembling. He reached for the kadin, and passed through her own throat harmlessly, his form breaking into a fine mist.

_This… is my bog._ he answered, feeling cold settle in his new chest. The kadin’s smile softened.

“Thank you. You saw the murder?” she pressed, sitting back, _into_ his poison, and tilted her head almost playfully. Cape inched in behind her, squinting as if it would make Nightshade appear to him.

_Charcoal toa. Black belly. Fire in his neck and tail. Eyes like acid. He comes often to borrow my poison. I don’t know his name._ he shook his head. _Who are you? How have you called me like this?_

Yamanashi only smiled. “Thank you for your cooperation. How often would you say he comes?” a flick of that golden tail. She would have been pretty, were Nightshade not an incorporeal mass.

As it was, he hissed. _I haven’t the faintest idea. I measure by the trees. The dead birds and rotten fish. Time has no meaning beyond the passage of seasons. Often. Whenever he has a body to feed me. He does not worship. Only feeds._
For a long moment the kadin considered this. And then she nodded, stood, and shook the poison from her fur.

“Thank you. That was very helpful. I will return if I have further questions. Cape? I recommend you avoid further corpses. And if you see that fantail again, run as fast as you can away from him.”

Without another word, she left the bog, back towards Messus City, with a bewildered finned ketucari at her tail. Nightshade floated after them--curious and eager to escape his grim surroundings--only for that snare to yank Tight on his throat the moment he reached the edge of the bog. …Free of the earth, but still not free of the prison he had been trapped in.
He growled, low and bitter.
Whatever had he done, what disloyalty had he shown… to deserve This?

It could not possibly have been wretched enough.