In short, her beauty was confounding, yet undeniable.

As dusk slipped into full night she undertook a profane ritual.

On the altar before her, alongside the gutted bodies, lay the five instrumentalities stolen from the Wolverines, and which the warband had coined stars. They were small spheres, each of a different colour: sandy, green, dark blue, grey and red. All sprouted radiating spikes of varying numbers and lengths. For the sandy sphere they numbered seven; the dark blue had four, the green five, the grey two, and the red nine.

The instrumentalities were made from an unknown material — unknown to all but a sorcerer elite, that is — and the Wolverines had found them indestructible.

Next to the instrumentalities stood a small, unembellished silver casket, with its lid open. It contained a quantity of material that was, impossibly, both organic and inert. The substance's texture was part waxy, part old leather, part lichen. It was unpleasant to the touch, but had a sweet aroma. In the parlance of wizards it was known as Receptive Matter. Sorcerers using it for benign purposes sometimes called it Friendly. But never Safe.

The sorceress recited invocations of tongue-tying complexity, and performed certain other rites both intricate and dreadful. Beads of sweat stood out on her brow. She briefly wondered if such a spell might be too taxing even for her.

Then, at the ritual's climax, she thought she heard the instrumentalities sing.

She had a moment of fusion with them. There was a kind of symbiotic connection, a melding, and brushed by their energy she glimpsed a fragment of their power. What she felt, and saw, was terrifying. Or would have been to any except those who lived by terror. She found it heady.