Chapter 89
Second to none in fair nobility
Was Philoctetes, of illustrious race;
Yet here he lies, from every human aid
Far off removed, in dreadful solitude,
And mingles with the wild and savage herd;
With them in famine and in misery
Consumes his days, and weeps their common fate,
Unheeded, save when babbling echo mourns
In bitterest notes responsive to his woe.
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—Sophocles, Philoctetes
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MIKHAIL
I fly ahead, even though it saps my body of what little fluid I have left, because I cannot bear the way my friends cringe every time I make a sudden move. Dehydration, plus my old adversary, the lizard at the door, conspire to taunt me at every turn. It is not Shay'tan I curse now, not She-who-is, not Moloch. I curse myself, because the memories lay so close to the surface I swin
