Chapter One

It happened in the desert. It began there, at least.

Picture an endless expanse of rolling dunes, stretching off into infinity. The sun beats down from a cloudless sky, scorching the earth below, veiling the horizon behind a flickering haze superheated air. Nowhere does even a hint of life impose itself upon the stillness of the scene; all is silence, emptiness, and oppressive heat.

Are you picturing it? Good.

This wasn't that sort of desert. It was a desert not by merit of vast swathes of sand, but merely by way of a lack of rainfall; one good watering, and it could've been a prairie. It was not desolate, it was not empty, it was not lifeless. At best, it managed to be a bit scruffy. It wasn't a desert of the sort that people build pyramids in, but of the sort that they put on postcards.

All of the really impressive deserts have names, but this desert had none. Nobody liked it enough to give it one. The region within which it was situated had been called Nueva California by the Spanish, and later the Mexicans; they had been glad to sell it to the Americans, who'd made it a part of the Territory of New Mexico. It had been known - briefly - as the Confederate Territory of Arizona, and at least part of the name had stuck. An older people had called the land by a different name, but few enough of them were alive to remember it. Nobody, save the truly desperate, called it "home."

This is not to say that the desert was utterly uninhabited. It was filled with the small, furtive sounds of small, furtive creatures eking a modest living out of the arid landscape. It was midafternoon now, and the air was filled with the quiet harmony of their conversations. Insects provided the chorus, their wings trilling as they flitted between the pink blossoms of the tall, flowering cacti. Small, drab brown birds peeped at one another from the branches of pathetically malnourished scrub bushes, pausing only occasionally to eat the insects. From overhead came the cry of a hunting bird, a mere speck in the cloudless sky; this was followed shortly by the tiny scurrying sounds of rodents diving for cover.

There was the sound of reality tearing itself open. This was unusual, the first unusual thing that had happened in the nameless desert since long before human feet had ever trod there. It wasn't the most unusual thing that was going to happen today, and the desert held its breath in anticipation.

There was a popping sound, and a shambling abomination blinked in the sunlight.

The beast looked as if he had been stitched together in a hurry from the leftover parts of other animals; whoever had done the job had clearly gotten carried away. The mind responsible for designing this creature had apparently been fixated on savage talons and slavering jaws, and seemed to have reasoned that more were better; limbs and heads had been stuck on wherever there was room for them, with no apparent regard for grace. He looked like something that was supposed to look very dangerous, but the design couldn't possibly have been practical; at the moment, the creature was having a hard time standing up without eviscerating himself.

The creature finally rose to what must have been an upright position, although his bizarre anatomy made it difficult to be certain. Standing, he dominated the landscape. He towered over the cacti, over the craggy stones, over the tortoise picking his way lazily from one shrub to another. Not having anything more impressive to tower over diminished the beast somewhat, and irritation played its way across each of his faces in turn.

He surveyed the landscape around him, apparently looking for his bearings. Like so many who had come before, he was rather disappointed.

The beast's legs tangled as he turned in a slow, laborious circle, his eyes hopeful; the terrain behind him was no more interesting, and his faces fell. A dry wind kicked up the dust around his collection of feet. The wrens, having recovered from their initial shock, watched him with vague interest.

He tried howling blasphemies from seven mouths, but nobody seemed impressed. After a moment, he sat, lowing disconsolately. A bird perched on him momentarily, and then remembered something that it needed desperately to be doing somewhere else.

The beast sat for a while, apparently lost in bitter reminiscences. An hour or so passed.

Finally, against all odds, the beast spotted something out of the ordinary: a cloud of dust being kicked up on the horizon, a clear sign of human activity. He sprang joyously to his feet, wounding himself only mildly in the process, and loped off towards the disturbance, bouncing like an eager puppy as he went.

A few minutes later he returned to the desert, his coat covered in matted blood, self-satisfied expressions on each of his faces. His collection of limbs, it seemed, were more practical than they appeared.