“They did not fight the world,” Sharskin told us simply. “Seeing the forces arrayed against them, the toxins, the beasts, a world inimical to them, they chose to change, not the world, but their own children. They cast their own kin out of this House and into the world, remade so they could partake of its poison bounty and forget the struggle for mastery that was their birthright. More, because they feared their ignorant children would know hardship, they gave them bitter gifts so that they would not even have to think.” “The ghosts,” I guessed and he nodded angrily. “The ghosts, the hives.”
