"Ha. You would want to? He didn't deserve it. I remember that much."

Aleks feels very much like an intruder here, this is awkward as helllllllll but it's fine. Castoff business. He'll lend moral support.

He is kind of, in an abstract sense, sorry for Matkina. But on the other hand she is an active threat right now and has not exactly done anything to earn his good graces so he thinks he will continue caring about exactly one (01) person, thanks.

"It's not really about whether he deserves it or not. It's about me erring. Anyway, uh. Do I need to do anything in particular, to. Use it?"

"No. Yes, but. It'll be obvious. Just follow where it leads. We call them the Tides for a reason. They have a tendency to just... sweep you away." She sounds so distant. So sad. It's pathetic and she wants to stop.

She slaps the device into her sister's hand, looking elsewhere and stepping away from her before she can change her mind. Please work, please work, please. She doesn't know what else she'll do, the holes are getting bigger.

It does turn out to be sufficiently obvious. There's a thing here, and it's calling to her, and. And all she has to do is just let it take her away.

She doesn't even register when she crumples to the ground as her mind leaves her body. Again.

Castoff fall counter: 03.

It's a pattern now.

Everything is wrong.

Tash's body—hers, now—clings like a wet cloak. The world is too bright for nighttime; everything is too clear, distances too close, edges too sharp. The memories fly and buzz past her head, too fast to be caught. A new body, a new mind, a whole new person—

She's gone too long without rest, she knows. And there's Matkina, as she was so many decades ago—as she is now—why did the castoff think of this as the past? This is how Matkina has always looked.

On the wastes, the light of campfires. And in the humble village before her, a bigger, brighter fire burns. A pyre. Inside, a body that's too large burns too slowly, greasy smoke snaking into the night. Villagers circle the bonfire, wailing and shaking.

"From exile, you are released," says the headman, throwing a handful of powder into the fire that puffs up as gold, green, purple embers into the sky.

("You are released," some mourners echo.)

She's... here but she's not. She's thinking but she's... not. She's floating, and she's somebody else, but she's not. It's incredibly surreal. It doesn't make sense. She's so very confused. Matkina looks so young, though. Not really physically, physically she's precisely the same, but her mannerisms are different. She acts so young.

Right. Observe. Observe things more relevant than just 'Wow Matkina looks way less paranoid and sad and crazy.' What is this? Can she figure it out? ... It looks like a funeral. She doesn't think Tash knew the deceased, but. It's hard to know anything, really.

"They're almost done," murmurs the younger Matkina, beside Tash. "This will go a lot better if we don't interrupt."

She—he—the castoff nods, and doesn't interrupt. There's no need. Matkina is right.

As the body burns and the mourners chant, they wait in the shadows at the edge of the village. After enough time, the corpse is consumed, and the headman gives a final cry: "To the distant dark, you are released." The villagers drift away, then, leaving him alone beside the smoldering pyre.

And with that, the funeral is over.

Matkina gestures to Tash, and then leads the way to speak to the elder.

"Neng," she says, softly. Smiling just a little. It's good to see him.

The man—his eyes are large and milky, blind—sniffs the air at the sound of her approach, and smiles broadly. "Kina!" he calls, putting hands on her shoulders. "You return in unpleasant times."

"I return because the times are unpleasant," she corrects, gently. "Come on. Let's talk."

She motions to Neng's humble home.

    Tash follows them, opting to let Matkina talk. She knows this place, these people, after all.

Neng's home is small, hardly furnished and entirely undecorated. He lowers himself onto a hassock and gestures towards similar cushions for the two castoffs, but begins without preamble: "They hung him from a tree. Old Gareb. Took their daggers to him." It started calm enough, placid enough, the sentence, but his face shows more of the hurt and anger with each word. "Called it 'pruning'," he nearly spits, before grunting and trying to calm down. "They sent him home by skimmer, along with the compact they'd made to the plains-people." He gestures at a crumpled sheet of paper on the floor. "Tik read it to me.

"They've promised to put an end to our menace, Kina." He shakes his head. "Why? We've always paid the blood price, for whatever harm we've done. You know that. They know that."

"Yes. But the Sand Knights won't take shins, Neng. You know that. They see you as monsters, and they're wrong but we can't make them unsee it. Not without blood. And it shouldn't be yours. Your peoples'."

She reaches forward to take his hand. "The Militia is here to help, Neng. You are who we stand for—the small, the threatened, the hunted. That's who we are. We want to protect you, but we can't do it here. Come away with us. If you tell the Knights you're going, if we're here to defend you, they won't force a fight. They have bigger battles ahead of them, believe me."

He turns to look at his hand in hers, unseeing, and murmurs, "This is our place Kina."

"I know. But Paj Rekken will give you a home. Trust her. Please. She's set aside land for you, deep inside our territory. You'll be safe."

Tash watches this all impassively—or, no, more like he's bored. Waiting. Watching.

    "It's not so simple," replies Neng, oblivious to Tash. "Not so easy. Plains-people cannot understand." ...and she is a plains-person, too, isn't she? Matkina may think herself close to them, but she is still not of them. Neng isn't saying that, except by the way he is very definitely leaving it unsaid.

"If you're too stubborn to take the Militia's gift," sighs Tash, "you deserve the ropes and daggers the Sand Knights are bringing instead."

Neng sucks in a breath at Tash's voice—he'd almost managed to convince himself he'd imagine the other castoff, that it was just him and Matkina—something breaks in him, at that. At the cold, stark reminder that his choice is not just about what he's comfortable with, about his pride and culture, about what's easy. This choice is about his people, it's about their lives. It's this, or... or...

    "You're right," murmurs Neng, eventually, after far too long and no time at all. "But... we can't go without the jahk."

"The... what?"

"Up the hill," says Neng, "behind the gate. The cave's been sealed for generations. Inside is the jahk. It's what helps us keep our worst instincts inside. If we leave its song..." He gestures, blindly, in the direction of the heat, of the pyre outside. But then he leans in, close to Matkina, to whisper into her ear. "And you alone out of the plains-people know how to open it."

"Okay. Thank you. We'll get it. Try to convince everyone else that this is the right move, we don't have much time."

She clasps Neng's hand a final time, and then turns to lead Tash away, up the hills.

"We'll have to hurry," she says to Tash, as they climb. "I see the Sand Knights are riding towards the village already. You said Paj is on her way?"

Tash looks at her and—

—remembers—

—not Tash. She—the castoff—she remembers. Why she's here. Why he's here.

Not human, none of them, none of these villagers. Teratomorphs is the technical term, though they don't use it. And sometimes they change, go wild, become... monstrous. It happens to the young, or the old. And it usually passes. It passes, and they change back... unless they don't. Unless they leave the village, never turn back. Lose control.

He's not here to help save Kholn Village. Paj Rekken, the First Castoff's lieutenant, the leader of the Militia, is coming here to destroy the village. And she knew everything. She knew the villagers' secret, she knew about the jahk, she knew the Sand Knights would come, she knew about their compact.

Paj Rekken knew it all, and orchestrated it that way. The plan was not, has never been, to fulfill Matkina's promise. The plan is to ensure the battle happens. When the Knights arrive, Paj will destroy the jahk, forcing the "hill-people" into their feral state, unleashing them upon the Knights. Weakening them. They have ever been one of the Militia's foes.

Paj Rekken is coming in person to see that all goes right. That all goes according to plan. That the villagers are slaughtered, just to hurt the Sand Knights.

Used as pawns, and discarded just as easily.

"Yes," says Tash.

Wh....at?

But.

But!

"Good. Okay."

Matkina, with absolutely no idea of the treachery that is about to befall her, leads Tash to where the jahk is being kept. It's easy to retrieve, if one just knows how, and she's quick and clever and was told how to get it. Because she is trusted by these people. The jahk is simple, and looks like some kind of reed flute. Music plays endlessly from it, almost too soft to hear and too haunting to bear.

"I think it calms them," she murmurs, reverently, "helps them keep control of their... less than savory urges."

And it's about to be destroyed so that the people of the village are unleashed upon the Militia's enemies. She can see the cold logic in it.

NO, she wants to scream, but she can't—do anything—at all.