White sand and palm trees attract a certain kind of person. Soft and luscious, used to easy living and copious partying. Hildegarde was not used to such a layabout lifestyle, which would explain why the Valkyrie awoke well before any of the other hedonists on the beach. The feeling of last night clung to her, a haze of beer and love and cries of admiration, enough of a trigger to prod her fully clothed self off the neatly laid bedroll and into action. She came here for a reason beyond mere pleas

Round the corner from the train station, two blocks ahead, and here he is. Quiet and inconspicuous in zoris and the shorts-and-blue-Hawaiian look so common in his hometown, the scrawny lizard hustles from mass transit and onto the little avenue he's yearned to visit for over a week. One of the premier predators in the district is celebrating her 30th birthday, the tip told him, and she's celebrating with an unqualified two-week-long binge. After paying the insurance for his last five failed inte

Racks of catalogued trophies gathered dust in their shelves as the mistress of the house woke from her content slumber. The female slowly opened one eye, prodded her stomach with one paw to judge how much it shrank overnight, and muzzily rolled off of the pelt-lined flatbed truck that served as her bed. Six paws landed on the floor with a heavy thud. She shook off some more fatigue and headed down a rusted steel corridor to her pantry, belly swaying beneath her, stepping into the glare of her sa

Prologue:
The stars are right
Sometimes, the reformation process went awry. It was already flawed enough, working only on those who died when completely encased in another's living flesh, but like a magnetic disk each resurrection left a faint glitch behind. Only the most devoted of meals, one who died tens of thousands of times, could ever notice how the flaws accumulate and build on each other. Knowledgeable mages, scientists and natural philosophers could see these tears in reality rip larger

An unspecified date, an unspecified time, an open stretch of the illimitable Pacific.
An albatross examines the waters below from a comfortable altitude of fifty meters, fluctuating as it lets thermals carry it along and gravity bring it down. It is more studious than usual, because it has been enlarged to an unusual size even for its kind, greatly increasing its possible range of prey as well as its appetite. The bird does not know how this happened, but it is aware of being a different size th