It's big. Unedited, it's almost 7300 words. The first ("primary") edits will probably add another two or three hundred to it. It took me almost two months to write.

It's set at the mouth of the Vire River, which is located on the Fronterum Spur of the Wolfsnake. You can find both by looking at the map below. The Vire River is just to the right of the northernmost Sister along the Eternitam. Right-click the image and open it in a new tab to get a full-sized view.


The working title of it at this point is "Cancer On the Vire." We catch up to Dohbdy from Book Two. She hasn't heard from Anurag de Bouchard in almost five weeks. She's desperate to, because the Imperials, never seen so far north, have landed.

He had received his orders, which were to go to the ImumuthIslands. They were south of the Wolfsnake (she’d heard of them), in the middle of the Verisimilius. He had received a promotion and now led almost six thousand warriors.
   He and his warriors sailed to the Islands and sank the sparse Imperial navy stationed there, had killed the Perversions and liberated the people.
   That’s where he was still, as far as she knew. She hadn’t heard from him in almost five weeks.
   At first she thought it was because the ueto, which had merged with another since he left, had moved, as they always did this time of year. They were almost three thousand misons west of the little cove where she had rescued him. They had packed and boarded the Talahs and crossed Dhyonard’s Bay, had slept on icebergs and made snow huts, had begun crossing the BigIsland in the bay’s middle, had made new Talahs there, and had finally crossed its barren western tundra and the rest of the bay for the looming Fronterum Spur.
   Here were mountains of such imposing majesty that they seemed, like the Sisters, to pierce the vault of Heaven itself. Blanketed in snow, even in the late summer, they presented a mortal warning to all who would dare cross them.
   But Poets had learned thousands of years ago where the hidden valleys through them were, and had learned of the tremendous bounties of food, pure, chill water, and potent medicines hidden in their shadows.
   There were terrifying predators in those valleys, yes. And many Poets had lost their lives in the raging rivers and sudden gorges that dropped thousands of fa’n, and avalanches that occasionally buried everything in sight.
   But they learned from the land, and had tried to be worthy of it, and so, over the Ages, the land rewarded them by allowing them to cross it fully. Here, at the mouth of the VireRiver, at the Spur’s western edge, was the end of their yearly journey. Not long from now they would make their way back. They would watch the leaves turn and feel the air grow frigid. They would travel through snow before it became the constant blizzard it did during the late fall and winter, and re-cross the bay, which would be much with all the new sea ice. They’d replace more Talahs and journey on, reaching the tamer peaks of the Southern Spur of the Wolfsnake just as winter began in earnest.
   It was the Poet’s yearly migration, so ingrained in them that it had long since become second nature. It was part of their souls.
   They were going to stay two more months—eighty days—and then begin the trip back.