Hot Fallieni sun stretched the shadows long as afternoon bled into evening. The mismatched wood-and-stone buildings of the Outlander’s Quarter crouched amidst the array of tents that served as both homes and shops. The scent of sweat and fear dripped off most of the people, whether native or not. The Fallieni folk who lived in the Quarter feared for their lives among outlanders, and the outlanders feared for their lives among the Fallieni.

Joshua “Breaker” Cronen feared no one as he strode confidently through the crowd. He wore only white denim pants and a red cloth belt, knotted at his waist after the fashion of Akashiman martial arts. His tanned skin stretched taught over sleek muscles, scarred somehow elegantly on his back, chest and arms. The dry breeze disturbed his close-cropped brown hair, and swirled a choking cloud of dust up around his youthful, yet somehow wizened features. His black boots crunched over the hard-packed sand street.

Beneath his right arm he carried a bundle wrapped in the hide of a Karuku-tal. The greatcat had attacked him one moonless night while he moved through the dunes, and now its skin served as concealment for the demigod’s possessions. He had looked wide and far for some of the ingredients he needed for the spell, and spent a significant amount of time gathering information on local portal-makers.

The prizefighter shifted the parcel to his other arm and rolled his shoulder. He wondered how the quest he intended to embark upon might influence his relationship with Suravani. The Mistress of the Moon had bade him win many fights in the pits and rings across Fallien, and that path had brought him to Leila Saharia.

The succubus had bedded Breaker one night, and told him an enthralling story; of a demon king and a severed soul. Intrigued and enticed, Josh had offered to help her journey to Haide and reconstruct her ethereal self. He had everything he would need in his catskin bundle. Or so he hoped.

His path took him to the inn where he and Leila had spent the night together, up the familiar stone steps, and through the door into the room where she’d promised to wait for him.

She lay on her side on the bed, dark skin on display. Her lithe naked body invited him, but one shocking thing about her stood out above all else.

“There you are,” she said gently, “I was waiting for the moon to come out so I might bathe my skin in its glow.” She gestured at the retractable canopy that made up the roof.

Breaker set his bundle down carefully and stared. It had been but a month since he last saw her, a single turn of the moon. Her stomach had been smooth and slender then.

Now it displayed a small bump, like the belly of a woman three months with child.