On this rather decisive note, Mercy brings “The Trail To Scarmen’s Burn” to an end. At a rather sprawling 27 pages, I was treating this story as something of my “western” bounty hunter epic and I enjoyed exploring the rough textures of the lands beyond New Gelaph’s walls. Even more, I enjoyed depicting Mercy’s toughness and tenacity in pursuing her quarry through it all.

Tomorrow we begin “The Rules of the Game”, which finds Mercy back on the more faniliar yet just as deadly streets of New Gelaph, where she will cross paths for the first time with another trekker and have to negotiate the tricky ground between competitor and collaborator. Especially tricky grounds when the two players don’t necessarily follow the same “rules of the game”!