Janna Fangfingers

Book excerpt: Contagion Collectors aimed to destroy the Inner Earth's Shining Ones, their devil-gods, by killing off those who would worship them - virtually everyone alive beneath the Cathonic Dome that enclosed the Hidden Continent of Sedon's Head. Thrygragos Everyman and his firstborn Unities thought them sorted when they stormed the Hoodoo Hamlet in 5476 as the four fearsome Horsemen of the Apocalypse. And so they had ... except, it wasn't just the bringers who needed sorting. It was the poxes and plagues they brought. The Hidden Headworld needed purging. There could be no doubt of that. Yet the Moloch Sedon had disappeared from the night's sky years earlier and evinced no signs of returning. Everyone knew what needed to be done yet no one, especially not Thrygragos Everyman, the Lord Laziest of Great Gods, was willing to command the purge begun. Then someone, ostensibly in the name of love, played a Trigregos Gambit. The Head lost its Balance, capitalized and female. Her brother Unities, Order and Chaos, regarded each other balefully. No longer restrained, a continental catastrophe of unprecedented proportions ensued. With calamitous rapidity, nearly 500 years of Panharmonium gave way to seemingly endless despair. The Inner Earth's populace lost faith in its devil-gods as by far the mightiest of them went at each other unrelentingly, unmindful of those they trampled beneath their gargantuan feet. The Dead didn't stay dead, though. They rose, disbelievers no longer. They battled on, their newly puissant goddess to exalt the higher. Came All-Death Day there were more Dead Things marching than Living Beings breathing. Fecundity no longer, the Vampire Queen of the Dead looked to rule the world - both sides of it!