‘What the hell is it?’

‘I have no idea. Why are you asking me?’

‘Cos I don’t know and you’re the closest person.’

‘Oh. Not because you thought I might know?’

‘Well, do you?’

‘I might have.’

‘But … you don’t?’

‘Absolutely no idea, my friend.’

‘Well then.’

‘Hey, just don’t assume I don’t know stuff. I know loads.’

‘Hmm, if you say so.’

‘Sure I do. I just don’t know what the hell that thing is.’

The Migration had stopped.

Breaks were normal; the golems drove them hard, then let them rest and eat at appropriate stops. These stops were spaced out almost mathematically, which was strange in what looked and felt like wilderness, and was a symbol of how many years people had tramped along the route. Sometimes it felt like they’d spent the centuries working out the furthest distance you could push someone before they died of exhaustion.

But here, atop a dry, rocky, alpine ridge, people had stopped. The golems didn’t know what to do; individuals could usually be threatened and beaten into moving on, but now a whole mass of people had stopped, and the trail was getting clogged up with queueing, weary bodies. The golems lurched around, mooing on the Ethe, swinging their clubs here and there … but they couldn’t move the mass of gossiping, chattering people.

Out in the distance was a black blob. Nothing more could be said, because nothing more could be seen at this distance – it was black, and it was coming this way. People may never have given it a further thought; from here, it looked less strange than a lot of things Czioc and Pshappa had seen. (Far less for Pshappa.)

But there was nothing on the Ethe. On the fabric of the Ethe, there was absolutely nothing to represent it, no profile, no electronic tags, no authorisation. And in the physical world, there it was; the black blob clashed with the bright colours of the blue-green fields and the slate-grey rocks. Pshappa and Czioc watched it far away as others scratched their heads and chatted and discussed created unlikely explanations. It was definitely getting closer.

‘It’s a bit worrying, eh? There’s nothing on the Ethe for it.’

‘Mmmm. That’s illegal isn’t it?’

‘Well yeah, although, what if it’s not alive?’

‘It’s moving.’

‘I mean what if it’s like, just an object, and no-one really owns it, it’s just a thing lying around.’

‘Yeah mate but it’s moving.’

‘Oh. Oh yeah. Hmm.’

‘I would’ve thought the golems would have dealt with it by now.’

They peered up at a golem towering over the crowds of chatting, pointing people. It saw them looking up, and looked back down, and made a noise on the Ethe like:

‘Mmmmmrrrrrrrrrrrrrrooooooorrrrrr!!!!’

Pshappa turned to Czioc and mumbled something about “useless meatheads”, when the golem lazily swung its club and knocked Pshappa off his feet, tumbling into Czioc with a cry and taking several people crashing to the ground. Czioc struggled on the rocky ground under Pshappa’s weight and waved his arms (despite Pshappa’s fur being much cleaner after a good wash and several days without alcohol). Pshappa pushed himself up using three arms, making a combination of pained noises and swearwords.

‘Garrrrrrrr it broke my arm!’ Pshappa gripped his left arm and snarled up at the golem, which seemed to snort happily inside its helmet. ‘That’ll take days to heal!’

The golem swung again, another slow lazy arc with a flick of its mammoth wrist – but Pshappa was ready this time, and caught the end of the club with his three good hands, forcing it downwards and holding it there. The golem mooed again in frustration, using increasing power to wrestle it from Pshappa, when…

‘It’s gone.’

‘Where?’

‘Did anyone see it?’

‘It sort of disappeared.’

‘How?’

‘What the hell…?’

Czioc pulled Pshappa by the fur as the crowd began muttering and moving back to the trail. ‘Mate, we better go.’

A quick look out across the landscape showed it had, indeed, gone. A quick look on the Ethe found nothing – but then, it hadn’t before.

From the cliffs, they’d staggered on along a ridge and now walked down a gentle slope, the plains flowing away off the right. Light filtered through the young green leaves of gnarly trees that lined the trail. After days of remorseless trekking, it was almost pleasant.

Of course, it wasn’t really a “slope”, and it didn’t really go “down” – it became flat ground when you walked on it, and the world turned around you. Czioc tilted his head to the right as he hauled one tired leg in front of the other, so that the landscape looked horizontal again. This made the trail indeed look like a slope falling away before him, but the trees now stood at an angle, pointing up to the left. He turned his head back, and everything was normal again, now with the background plains through the trees at an angle instead.

It was one of these everyday things that no-one ever talked about. But there is fascination in the underpinnings of the everyday, and Czioc suspected others found it curious too.

‘So Czioc,’ whispered Pshappa, leaning in as they walked together. ‘This poem thing.’

‘Oh for god’s sake,’ signed Czioc. They both made an effort of studying the trees nonchalantly, picking out the odd squirrel here and there running about the branches. ‘I’m not talking to you about it. Not to you or anyone else.’

‘Yeah I thought you’d say that. But I want to know.’

‘How’s your arm feeling?’

‘Oi you, stop ducking the issue.’

‘No really, you alright?’

‘Well actually it’s doing okay, doesn’t hurt too much now.’

‘Oh that’s good.’

‘Now answer the bloody question.’

Czioc hadn’t turned the whole time, and kept looking ahead. ‘Well what is the question?’

‘Erm,’ started Pshappa, rooting around on the Ethe for the poem he’d earmarked. He re-read it. ‘I just wanted to know why you wrote it.’

‘Because Noksalika was something special. And what we had was something special. What we had was something different.’

‘It’s gibberish.’

‘Well maybe that’s how you feel about meaningful relationships,’ Czioc replied nastily.

‘Whoah whoah whoah, life’s short,’ Pshappa said sharply. ‘Actually, it’s not short for some. Life’s unpredictable. I could die tomorrow. You could die tomorrow. Any particular girl I suddenly grow feelings for, she could die the next day.’

‘Pshappa mate, there’s a saying, “It’s better to ha-”’

‘Heard it mate, heard it, big deal. I’m a realist. Maybe I’m a bit of a coward? I dunno. I don’t want to face that kind of misery having just got something special. That’s my choice. Look at you anyway, your ex-girlfriend’s just died and you’ve fallen to pieces, writing gibberish.’ He glanced back at the poem again. ‘What is a “sky” anyway?’

‘It was one of these words she had,’ said Czioc, loosening a little. ‘She was different back then, she wasn’t the cynical media-savvy bitch you know from all the Ethezines. It was like a, a metaphor.’

‘For what?’

‘For, for something different. It meant a new way of looking at things, or feeling things, or something. I dunno, I can’t quite remember.’

‘So you don’t know? You’ve got no idea. You’re so full of shit sometimes.’

‘Oh just shut up!’ shouted Czioc, in full view other travellers, who all tried to look like they weren’t interested while keeping their ears open. ‘I’m so tired of arguing with you over stuff you really don’t care about, or, or even want to understand.’

‘Oh okay here it comes,’ said Pshappa as they both stopped walking and squared up to each other. ‘Painting me as the useless, simple-minded drunkard again.’

There was a low cracking sound off into the trees somewhere. A tree lurched.

‘No, what I’m saying is you’re always so quick to criticise things you don’t understand, you’re not simple-minded, you’re narrow-minded.’

‘Me?!! Me narrow-minded? Czioc mate, you’re so far up your own arse it’s unbelievable, got your head in the clouds all day long, looking down on anyone who’s not on “your” level!’

Others around them started slowing and looking nervously; a golem began lumbering over.

Through the trees a great bank of earth rose, and an oak made a long low creeeeak. Squirrels and birds scattered through the treetops.

‘Shut up mate, just shut up. You know what, I’m sick of arguing with you full stop-’

Pshappa threw his arms around dramatically, even his broken one. ‘You’re not though! That’s the thing, you’ve always got to have the last word. You’re so weird! You’re so hung up about everything!’

‘You never-’

The ground by the trail erupted in a black shower like a swampy hurricane, pelting everyone with clumps of earth and dark slime. Pshappa clawed the stuff from his face and saw it there, the black dot they’d seen in the distance: a vast monstrosity standing twenty feet or more tall. He gaped. It was a mound of filth, a vast heap of mutated gunk, which merged with the ground and several trees it had pushed aside. Massive tentacles and limbs flailed from its base. A huge low groan filled the air, drilling straight through all ears. And two vast eyes peered down from its peak, huge and unblinking.

People screamed, while Czioc settled for, ‘What the fuck is that?!’

It moved.

Tentacles and hinged limbs lashed out at people, tripping and grabbing at them, and the bulk crawled onto the trail itself. Sticky cracks opened and closed across its body, some as large as Czioc himself. Pshappa grabbed Czioc’s shoulder and stepped back. ‘We sh-’ he managed, before a blackened oily tree root whipped around his ankle and threw him to the ground, dragging him across the ground.

Czioc panicked, his arms shaking uncontrollably. He saw two mantrels trying to hold onto a young blonde girl being sucked into the heart of the abomination, and a screaming female centaur lashing out with half her body swallowed up. The whole thing shifted, and Czioc saw flashes of chains, of dirty rusty metal plates and chains, and all the time those vast eyes staring down...

‘Help!’ called Pshappa, struggling and punching with all six limbs. ‘Czioc! Arrrgh god help!’

Czioc ducked a snaking tentacle and ran towards a golem standing nearby. The golem stared at the monstrosity, the club hanging from its left arm.

Czioc pointed and yelled, ‘Kill it!’

But it didn’t kill it. Czioc leapt back as another oily tentacle lashed out towards him. He caught a glimpse of the golem’s tiny black eyes through the slits in its helmet, wide and not understanding.

‘Kill it you fucking idiot!’ Czioc screamed through the Ethe, and in real air too. Some sort of hooked arm swung through the air, forcing him to duck.

It’s not on the Ethe, he thought, rolling over and staggering upright again. That’s why the stupid bastard doesn’t understand. It can see it but it can’t find it on the Ethe. Czioc could see the gap in the Ethe, but all the golem could see was the maelstrom of chaos surrounding it, the screams and yells and – he shuddered – the pain of burnt flesh. But then Czioc was a real person, not some brainless twelve-foot guard dog.

‘Czioc thanks for dropping by, lovely to see you again old chap,’ warbled Colonel Trimasth over the Ethe.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake!’ he yelled, trying to hide behind the giant golem. ‘I did not drop by one of your fucking meetings!’

The beast was taller than the golem and much wider, and slapped the golem hard with two powerful tentacles – the ground shook as it staggered sideways. The Colonel, meanwhile, was speechless for a second. ‘What the – how dare you?!’

‘I dare sir because sir there’s this massive alien blob sir and because this golem can’t see it’s there sir!’

Czioc dashed away from the blob to the other side of the trail, while the golem slammed its club blindly into the ground, turning its head this way and that. Czioc tried to shut his ears from the shrieks of horror behind him, and tried to not listen over the Ethe as the little blonde girl and the woman centaur were swallowed whole. Across the Ethe you could feel other people’s pain if you wanted. He didn’t want to.

A stick in the leaf litter presented itself. There was nothing else. He swept it up off the ground and threw an instruction through the Ethe: the end shattered and bark scattered, leaving a rough sharp point. He ran back, and already the last onlookers were giving up; they fled in either direction, further up the trail or back down, running, the Migration spilling into the forest on either side.

The monstrosity hauled itself towards the golem, which still stamped and swung its club randomly. The club finally came crashing down on a chunk of twisted black flesh, which brought from the beast a deep, dark roar which made Czioc want to vomit. But the club stuck, and was pulled out of the mighty golem’s hand as giant limbs grabbed at its armour…

Pshappa was crying when he got back. He looked up from struggling against the black tentacles with eyes of desperation. Czioc barely looked down but stabbed the rubbery flesh again and again and again, carefully, next to where it held Pshappa. Tiny mouths opened and hissed, but it did the job – briefly, the grip was loosened and Pshappa crawled away.

The tentacles lashed at Czioc, but they were slow as he deflected and stabbed repeatedly with the sharpened stick. Black ooze splattered onto the floor.

He found himself up against the bulk of the thing, and tried to ignore the visible remains of people just swallowed up under the skin. He drove the stick inches into the flesh and another roar arose; he stabbed again deeper, and this time he really was sick, physically spraying his stomach contents across the floor and the monster’s side. There was a satisfying hissing noise. Czioc was off balance with his hands over his ears, but the thing pulled away and shrank into itself. The bulk of filth and the gunk deflated into the ground, followed by its tentacles and the huge eyes that sat atop its peak.

And all was still.

Everything was silent, except for the mooing on the Ethe of the golem. It thrashed about on the black-stained floor, thick crimson blood flowing from the dissolved stumps of its huge legs.

Czioc dragged Pshappa upright, threw himself under the bear’s good arm, and they limped away down the trail.

The rest of the trek continued without trouble, although considerably quicker than it would have been. Seven had been killed (not including the golem), twenty injured, and millions terrified; the Ethe was a mess, a huge mess of gossip, rumour, panic and fear.

They’d reached Thianwitz, a medium-sized town with dusty grey cobbles above and below the surface. Czioc had, as Colonel Trimasth had predicted, been summoned to a secure facility, which again meant faceless walls and dull furniture. Czioc knew he was meeting high people, tough people, which was good, because he wanted answers. He drummed his fingers on the desk, watched by two chunky golems again, while three minds made connections across the Ethe.

‘Thank you for coming,’ a dry, dark voice said. ‘I am Chief-Lieutenant Naadlamos, Vice-Chair of the Committee for Security and Spiritual Defence. Also present as Sub-Colonel-Elect Ghuhazia and Principal Adviser Ing’lunam, both from the Economic Security and Infrastructure Panel.’

Czioc nodded mentally but didn’t say anything. He carried on drumming his fingers on the desk.

‘We wish to discuss matters relating to Ms. Noksalika Chuunim.’

‘I don’t. What was that thing?’ I was a quite obvious lie, as he did want to talk about Noksalika Chuunim, but he also wanted to know about the monster.

‘We do not wish to discuss matters relating to two days ago.’

‘Well I do. What was it? You must have some idea.’

Instead of arguing or fighting, they simply ignored him. ‘As our junior colleague Colonel Trimasth has informed you,’ began Sub-Colonel-Elect Ghuhazia, ‘we believe Noksalika Chuunim may still be alive. Inconsistencies in her Ethe programming suggest her death may be unverified.’

‘Why?’ Czioc pulled open a drawer in the desk, which revealed stationery and headed paper. He shut it again.

‘I’m afraid we can’t go into any details.’

‘Oh, funny that.’

‘We would like you to find her.’

Czioc looked from one golem to the other, momentarily confused. ‘What?’

‘If Noksalika Chuunim has indeed faked her own death and removed herself from the Ethe, this is a crime against society.’

‘But, but,’ Czioc floundered, flapping his hands, ‘That’s not possible, is it? It’s not possible. You can’t just remove yourself from the Ethe.’

‘Contrary to popular belief,’ drawled Naadlamos, ‘it is extremely difficult but certainly possible. With the right contacts. We are following all possible lines of enquiry regarding corruption and treason in some of the senior Ethe engineers. Right here, right now, we are interested in the criminal herself.’

Czioc shifted in the chair. ‘What if she’s actually dead?’

The figures all shrugged, and waited for each other to say something. ‘If she truly is dead, then there is nothing to worry about. But you, Czioc, will be off the Migration.’

Czioc’s lips moved without making sound. ‘Off … Migration?’

‘Yes, you heard right.’ The voice was brisk. ‘This task, this mission, will not be a walk in the park. Noksalika Chuunim’s last recorded location is several thousand miles away. We are not asking you nicely, but we are not press-ganging you either – you know how important it is for the balance of the Ethe that these things are done in agreement.’

Czioc nodded, finding it hard to concentrate on the words. He snapped back.

‘Why me?’ he stared at them in his mind, these dusty old officials. ‘You must have agents better than me, god, nearer than me to find her?’

‘Tracking down Noksalika Chuunim will take more than golems with clubs, Czioc. It will also take more than our best agents. We require somebody with personal knowledge of her, details of her psyche and her Ethe history that can give a clearer picture than any of our people could. And believe it or not, you were the longest boyfriend she ever had.’

Czioc sat stunned (while a tiny part of the back of his brain said, Ha! In your face Pshappa!).

‘You have twenty-four hours. We expect you’ll probably get extremely drunk during this time. Tomorrow you will be given orders and full instructions. You are off the Migration with immediate effect.’

Czioc’s head swam, giddy with thoughts, before he remembered the ordeal on the trail two days before. ‘But what about-’

‘One last thing, Czioc,’ said Principal Adviser Ing’lunam, ignoring him as the other officials disengaged. ‘As you have found recently, this mission will be dangerous. There are … dark forces amassing in the distance. You will need protection. Take this, and find the best Ethe craftsman before you leave town.’

He was left with glittering code in his mind, with countless Committee seals and authorisations attached – along with a considerable amount of money. Czioc could see the shape of the code, but could barely believe it.

It was a sword.