Fog of Death

Back in Wyndham, Ganishka hurries toward a lower chamber of a temple with Daiba begging him to stop. The emperor refuses, insisting there is no other course, and grips his face as the fresh scar there vents thick jets of steam. As he runs he relives his degrading meeting with Griffith, whose apostle instincts had told him the man stood on an entirely different plane, untouchable by Ganishka or any number of Kushan troops.

Ganishka enters the Daka-creation room, home to the great mass of apostles sewn together into one body. He means to feed himself into the machine in hopes of becoming a transcendent apostle. When Daiba arrives, he finds the emperor already mounted on the hook normally used to lower women into the churning flesh. Ganishka commands the hook lowered, and his final thought before the machine's effects overtake him takes shape as a challenge hurled at Griffith.

Fog spreads out from the temple. Wyndham's residents stay safe indoors while the pishacha and Kushan soldiers roam the streets, and any who touch the fog dissolve on contact. Among the handful of survivors is Daiba, who wards it off with magic. The mass of flesh sprouts numerous openings that draw the fog back into itself, and Daiba grasps that the machine is devouring the life force of everyone the fog kills, functioning now like a Beherit as the apostle Ganishka undergoes a fresh ritual to become an apostle once more. The outcome is that Ganishka draws power from one of the deepest strata of the Astral world.

Humiliated by his encounter with Griffith, Ganishka returns to Wyndham determined to become a transcendent apostle. Ignoring Daiba's pleas, he casts himself into the flesh-machine in the Daka-creation room, hurling a final challenge at Griffith. A killing fog spreads from the temple, dissolving every Kushan soldier and possessed animal it touches, with Daiba surviving through magic. The machine absorbs the life force of the dead like a Beherit, granting Ganishka power drawn from the deepest layers of the Astral world.

This twenty-one-page chapter of the Millennium Falcon Arc was published in Young Animal issue twenty-three on November 23, 2007. Griffith appears only in flashback. The chapter marks the start of Ganishka's monstrous second transformation, sacrificing his own army to fuel it.