Noah looked over his new capabilities one more time, the six Branches of his Tree and the walls turning around his body and the dark new Branch where Ammit's hunger now lived, and then he closed his eyes and went looking for Diomande. He did not need Eckert's borrowed eyes for it anymore.
The Ashfall Reaches were full of his existence now, black-gold soil spread across the broken slopes and the Fallow's grey light sunk deep into the ash, and through all of it he could see the bottom of the crater as clearly as his own field.
Diomande sat cross-legged on the stones at the center of the crater, his four hands resting on his knees and his great elephant head bowed. The surviving cultists sat in rings around him by their rank, the Established farthest out and the Unfathomables closest in, every one of them with their palms turned upward toward him and their eyes lowered, and none of them lifted their gaze higher than the tips of his tusks.
