LotS/The Story/Fade to Gold

Intro=
Adrian Zanfran had seen his share of weird and wonderful things. He'd watched fleets of shimmering spaceships arc through the void, carrying passengers across distances their ancestors couldn't even have begun to comprehend. He'd napped beneath the shade of sentient plants, whose humming tunes soothed him like a mother's lullabies. He'd even seen an arm and hand blasted from his own body -- and gazed with horror at the purple tentacles he woke to find in their place.

The galaxy was strange. It was beautiful. And every day, whether he stared down the barrel of his editor's latest doomsday weapon or looked into his wife's loving eyes, Adrian was grateful for the life and job which had allowed him to experience so many of its treasures.

Perhaps the world which now loomed before the Fabled Zebra's flight cabin window wasn't as magnificent, bizarre, or breathtaking as others he'd visited. Yet his eyes gleamed. That familiar thrill darted from spine to stomach, heart to brain, as through preparing flesh and mind for the coming magnitude.

It was a pretty little planet. Blue oceans and trails of cloud formation reminded him of a prized marble he'd owned as a child. An unfaceted sapphire, its azure richness flawed yet sumptuous. But that wasn't what caught Adrian Zanfran's soul or made the tips of his tentacles twitch. History grasped at him, millennia of events which ignited decades of imagination and consumed them as fuel for their conflagration.

This was where everything started. Like a cosmic Helen of Troy, it had launched a million ships and set the galaxy aflame. Sian. Novocastria. Plerna. The floating station worlds of Alpha Centauri. All of them existed because of this blue dot, traversing the darkness. Proud in the golden light of its resplendent sun.

He couldn't bring himself to enter its atmosphere just yet. Instead he directed the Zebra into a winding, encircling path, then sat back in his chair.

"Panoptica," he said.

The vessel's walls vanished. External cameras painted their panorama all around him, blending into the window without a seam, till his comfortable chair seemed to orbit the planet alone. His eyes were wide. Tentacles writhed as he drank it all in.

That big blob of land, an island continent, was Australia. The place tourist manuals (or at least the one produced by the Mighty Rylattu Publishing House of Ultimate Might) referred to as Earth's own little death world. A harsh environment where dingoes ate babies, lurking spiders waited to stick venomous fangs into unwary humans, kangaroos kicked groins, and laser-edged boomerangs whirled through the air to sever the heads of rival gang members.

The planet rolled beneath him, displaying more of its wealth. Constellations of islands flowed into Asia's vastness, anchored by India and the Southeast Asian peninsula. There was China -- ancestor of the Sian Empire, which carried its culture far across the stars. The country where a funeral had once sparked war and genocide.

Adrian flew over the steppes of Russia, across Siberia where generations had endured the bitter cold through toughness of body, hardness of soul, and vodka. He passed Scandinavia's complex coastlines, from whence the Niflungs' forefathers had sailed to raid and pillage, and the Arctic's crisp white crown. The Canadian tundra gave way to immense swaths of wilderness, to forests and mountain ranges older than mankind. Beyond that sweeping land lay networks of colored lines, wide and bright, which carved America's disunited states into their latest political factions. Whilst the Fabled Zebra soared above, a series of pink lines blinked and flickered. They disappeared an instant later. Fresh green lines replaced them within the blink of an eye. Adrian could already imagine senators glugging bourbon and discharging firearms in either celebration or commiseration.

Central and South America passed by in turn, snaking dragons of green and gold. He gazed across the ocean and marveled. Had voyagers from Spain and Portugal really come all that way, battling the waves in simple wooden boats? That thought pulsed in his mind as the Atlantic's pristine glory zipped away, ushering in the grand scale of Africa. Artificial light glittered like diamonds across its length and breadth.

And finally Europe, the disparate land where centuries of war had blended cultures, enmities, friendships, cuisines, and all other measures of civilization. Over Italy's kicking boot and Greece's dreaming islands. Romania's forests and Germany's efficient illumination grids. Belgium's lauded chocolate factories and France's vineyards. Then the final turn, towards his destination.

He closed his eyes. The ride was smooth, as usual. Technology brought comfort and security. But atmospheric entry was always a little perturbing when it was combined with a panoptic view, and hungry flames raged all around you. So Adrian waited for the pleasant bleeping noise before his lids parted and his vision feasted once more.

The British Isles grew larger beneath him. Their illumination more brilliant. London was a bright beacon, as though that sprawling settlement radiated the language which had conquered human space and attained such dominance that some aliens referred to it simply as 'human'. His craft slowed as it descended into its diagonal path across England. Nearness and dissipating speed made the country seem bigger than Russia or Canada, Australia or Africa. It stretched on and on, rising to greet the Fabled Zebra and beckon the ship into its teeming lights.

A merry bleep told him he'd reached the northwestern city which had drawn him across so many star systems. Adrian gazed at its streets and buildings with redoubled interest. Why this settlement, out of the many thousands which dotted the planet? Choosing Earth was one thing. Perhaps he'd been a little surprised when he'd learned the meeting wouldn't occur on Sian. But what more fitting place was there to talk about human history, deeds, and heroes, than this blue world which had given birth to them all? Thus he'd relished both the opportunity and the sense of importance that choice lent to the coming interview. Why Manchester though? Why would the story be told here, of all places?

Adrian's eyes scoured the cityscape in search of epiphany.

There were stadiums. Green spaces embedded in grand luminescent halos, open to the heavens -- offering their spectacles to God and man alike, while worshippers cheered in the stands and sang blasphemous hymns. One was a cricket ground. On a whim he waved a tentacle, and a screen blinked open in the air beside him. Within its zoomed-in view, a Snuuth in white flannels ran with remarkable speed, torqued his body, and bowled a red ball down the pitch. It bounced towards a Vlarg batsman, who stood stalwart before his wicket. The three-eyed alien swung his bat and knocked the ball flying.

No... The person he'd come to speak with wouldn't be a cricket fan. Not this dull old game. Soccer maybe? The Fabled Zebra darted closer to the next stadium, as near as he could approach without its security craft intercepting him. This time his screen showed players in red shirts and shorts, vying with enemies in blue for mastery of the coveted ball. One of them secured it and launched it with his instep. It arced high above the field, and dropped down well beyond the blue warriors with their craned necks -- onto a waiting red chest, which deposited it in front of eager boots. He kicked. The goalkeeper dived, groped, and missed. The net puffed out. Its electric strands glowed and changed color in acceptance. The crowd cheered or groaned.

Adrian frowned. A soccer fan? This too seemed unlikely. But his mouth curved in a wry smile when he glanced at the concrete expanse outside the arena. Here too there were blue and red shirts. But they bulged around pendulous beer bellies, throbbing chem-filled muscles, and assorted cybernetics. Here the two teams weren't fighting for a ball. They were just fighting.

He winced when a metal fist met a jaw, and bloody teeth flew towards him on the screen. Yes... This was more like it. A brawl, where boots and knuckles battered bones, and hooligans crashed against the energy barriers which encaged their riot. Adrian Zanfran sighed. If he had to wade into the middle of that fracas for his meeting, he'd be going home with a few bruises. But his right tentacle invoked a second screen and he exhaled. The location he wanted was elsewhere.

"Panoptica off."

The ship reappeared around him. He tapped the nav console. The autopilot located a public landing area not far from his destination, and he let it take him down into the midst of the assorted vessels which rested on the black surface in colorful rows. Landing gear met the ground with a soft thunk. His communications console flashed at the same moment. A pinkish-red face appeared on the screen, framed by lengths of chunky, similarly colored fleshy tendrils.

"Puny husband!"

"Hi, Kwix."

"Behold, your sniveling young!"

The Rylattu reached beneath the bottom of the screen. Her hands returned a moment later, clutching a diminutive being with a bulbous red head. The child giggled and clapped its tentacular hands together.

"Pu-nee da-dee!"

"Yes, your father is indeed puny!" Kwix said.

"Hi, Adnan!" Adrian waved a purple appendage. The child mimicked the movement. "What did you do today?"

"De-stroy hoo-mans!"

Adrian sighed. When he got home, he'd have to talk to Kwix about the videogames she let Adnan play.

Kwix beamed at the child in her arms. Adrian did the same. Perhaps there wasn't much of his genetic material in the engineered mix, or at least not much of the stuff he'd been born with. But no one would ever mistake the tentacled tot for anyone else's son.

"When will you return, to engage in inferior human lovemaking?"

"I've just arrived in Manchester. Knowing my luck, in about five minutes I'll be running back to the ship with blaster bolts after me."

"Tell your pathetic and worthless interview subject that I'd avenge your death with my superior technology!"

"Will do. I'd better go, Kwix, or I'll be late. Love you. Love you too, Adnan."

"And I love you too, with superior Rylattu love!"

"Love you!" the child said. He clapped his tentacles again.

Adrian Zanfran deactivated the screen, got up from his chair, and made his way to the external door. His smile lingered on his face for some moments. But it began to evaporate when the exit hissed open, letting in the warm air and blended sounds of the city. He'd been joking about the blaster bolts. Then again, when you met dangerous people, and asked them questions, you never knew what might happen.

He locked the ship and walked across the tarmac.

"Oi, mate..."

He turned, wondering if he was about to be mugged. But the dreadlocked woman was wearing a crisp blue uniform and a security guard's badge.

"Are those... tentacles?"

"These?" Adrian glanced down, just to be sure. But his biology didn't appear to have altered itself during the past thirty seconds. "Yes."

"Freaky," she said.

The guard walked past him, whistling as she continued her patrol. Adrian blinked at the green tail that slithered in the air behind her. A forked tongue shivered between the serpentine fangs at its tip.

"Yessss. Freaky!"

"Excuse me," Adrian said.

She stopped and turned side-on, looking back at him. The eyeless snake head twisted round to face him as well.

"Yeah?"

"Yessss?"

"I'm looking for Wilmslow Road," he said.

"The Curry Mile?" she said. "It's just over there."

Her tail hissed and pointed.

"Thanks!"

Adrian Zanfran sauntered past the spaceships until he came to one of the streets bordering the tarmac. And sure enough, a big glowing sign -- which threw the legitimate street name into gloom and shadow -- proclaimed it to be the Curry Mile. Across the road, presumably for the benefit of metrically inclined visitors, its twin read, 'Curry Kilometer'. He doubted either measurement was accurate.

The road stretched off into the distance. On each side, lights painted the buildings in neon hues that reminded him of Blackpool or Drekchester. Big crowds thronged the pavements, either jostling their way down the street or loitering and chatting. There were lovers arm in arm. Families with laughing children. Humans and aliens of every sort. Some wore shalwar kameezes, or other flowing garb. Cars zipped past them all in rapid, screeching streams -- filled with youths who leaned out of the windows, cheering and waving flags.

"Ah," Adrian said.

Of course. Today was Eid ul-Fitr. He sauntered along, basking in the festive cheer, smiling at the youngsters who pointed at his tentacles. A few of the braver ones even gave them a tug -- much to the horror of their apologizing parents.

"Eid Mubarak! But we'll kill you all tomorrow!"

"Khair Mubarak! Not even if the prophet himself comes to help you!"

The two men, one dressed in a black Kebab Chaos uniform, the other in the garb of the Curry Caliphate, laughed and hugged. Around them their fellow employees did the same. Plates of baklava, burfi, and other sticky treats passed around the group, which lounged in front of their neighboring establishments.

Dozens more restaurants and takeaways lined both sides of the road, and Adrian wondered how much curry, shawarma, donner meat, gulab jamun, or fattoush one city could want. A lot, apparently. Everywhere appeared to be doing brisk trade. He could've wandered there for an hour, surrounded by spicy-sweet smells, happy faces, and joyful banter in a dozen languages. But when he glanced up he saw the name he'd been looking for.

Adrian Zanfran passed beneath the blue and yellow awning, pushed the door open, and entered the small lobby beyond. Then he screamed.

The blue and purple tiger which lazed alongside the left wall stopped licking its paw and glanced up at him.

"Roar," the tiger said, in a female voice.

"Roar?"

"Yes, roar. I'm a tiger."

"Oh..."

"Read the sign, and don't say we didn't warn you!"

She tilted her head upwards. Adrian read the illuminated words on the wall above: 'If you dine and dash, so will she!'

"It's not quite true," the tiger continued. "I don't eat people."

"That's... That's good!"

"I rip them open and let them bleed to death in the street. It gets the point across just as well, I think."

She laughed, and both politeness and self-preservation encouraged Adrian to laugh along with her.

"Welcome to The Rylattu Raj, by the way." She turned her head and unleashed a genuine roar, making him jump. "Customer!"

The door opposite the entrance opened. A blue Rylattu emerged, wearing a yellow turban and shalwar.

"Eid Mubarak, stink-beast. Do you have a reservation?"

"I'm meeting someone," he said. "My name's-"

"Ah! The tentacled human. You are expected!"

He stepped aside, leaned against the wall, and gestured at the dining room beyond the doorway. Adrian looked at him for a moment. The Rylattu stared.

"Stop standing there like a pile of waklak feces!"

"Aren't... Aren't you going to take me to our table?"

"You have eyes, wretched stink-beast! Find it yourself!"

The tiger sighed.

"I'll show you," she said.

She got up and padded into the dining room. Thick muscles rippled beneath her fur. Adrian followed her, into a large, grand chamber. Gold and ivory facades decorated the walls, depicting a range of multi-armed beings which all possessed bulging Rylattu heads. Many were using lightning bolts and sundry other celestial powers to obliterate tiny human figures. But if these threats or dreams of genocide bothered the largely human clientele sat at the rectangular tables, they gave no sign. Every mouth seemed to be employed in munching, chattering, or both at the same time. A melange of scents -- ginger, cumin, turmeric, garlic, and countless other herbs and spices -- swirled through this jovial atmosphere, making it rich and exotic.

"Your friend's over here," the tiger said.

She led him to a corner, where a small table waited with one seat occupied and the other vacant. Adrian coughed. Its occupant looked up from the menu.

"I hope I'm not late, captain."

"Captain? I was captain in a thugby team, not the military. Call me that, and I look around expecting to see... Just call me Talia. And sit down."

She reached over and scratched the tiger behind the ear. A purr made the big cat's throat tremble.

"Enjoy your meal," the tiger said, before padding away.

Adrian watched the animal go, but it was fairly clear by this point that she wasn't going to slaughter him. So he met Talia's gaze. And his brow furrowed before he could stop it. Something was... Wrong. Different about her. It took him a moment to realize what it was.

"Th... Thank you for agreeing to the interview," he said. "I've heard you usually shoot people for asking questions about... About what happened."

She shrugged. And that gesture somehow cemented it in his mind. Talia looked older. The last vid he'd seen of her was from a few years ago, but it was more than that. Her eyes. They weren't the carefree, thrill-seeking eyes he'd seen on Sian Dragons shirts or posters. And their unexpected solemnity seemed to add a decade to her face.

"Yeah," she said. "But no one's asked for a while now, and I started thinking. What happens when I'm gone, and everyone else who's kept the secret? It'll be like the galaxy just... forgot. She deserves better than that. And I haven't forgotten what you did. How you helped us. Anyway, some things don't have to be a secret anymore. Not after what Sky Commander Bethany did last week."

"Huh? Everyone's saying the announcement's just a hoax. A way to attract converts."

"They're wrong."

"But... Even if it's true, what's that got to do with..."

Adrian broke off when the waiter appeared at the table.

"Are you ready to have your puny human guts destroyed by our superior gastronomy?"

"Yeah," Talia said. "I'll have the anaconda tikka masala."

"I'll..." Adrian Zanfran's gaze darted to the menu, and he uttered the name of first dish it alighted on. "I'll have the... octopus vindaloo! Oh..."

"Bring us some pilau rice and a garlic naan as well. And some poppadoms while we're waiting."

"And to drink, I recommend our superior Rylattu mango lassi!"

"Fine. But put some vodka in the jug."

The Rylattu took their menus and left.

"The octopus vindaloo?" Talia said. "Isn't that like cannibalism?"

"You are what you eat, I suppose."

Her lips twitched, and her eyes seemed just a little bit younger. Adrian wondered whether he should begin asking questions or keep chatting to build up their rapport. But the waiter was faster. He set down a pile of crispy white poppadoms before slipping away again.

Talia reached out, snapped off a piece and held it up.

"We came here a long time ago. Me, the boys, the captain, and Illaria. While we were eating these, a woman started yelling out in the street. A chem-head was trying to rob her. Ragnar killed the guy with a poppadom."

She sighed, and the years returned.

"But that's not the story you're here for." She crunched the fragment between her teeth. "You want to know about [Player Name] and Noir..." |-|

The Four Kasans=
The Four Kasans

"Who's Erebus the Black?" Telemachus says.

"A dragon," you say.

"Huh?"

The faces around the Silver Shadow's mess room are pretty much as you'd expect. Telemachus stares at you from his perch atop the counter. The prince's eyes widen and dangling legs stop kicking the air when he realizes you're not joking. Ragnar puts down the donner kebab he bludgeoned out of the food printer, ignoring the glistening stream of grease and chili sauce which bleeds across the table's smooth surface. His grunt has a distinctly interrogative note to it. Ali's leaning against a bulkhead some distance from the others. The pyrokineticist mutters something under her breath, which your aural implant translates into an internal monologue about your sanity. Lu Bu's in the middle of the room, upright, shiny, and stalwart, as though awaiting a military inspection. Yet his gleaming metallic visage somehow manages to convey disbelief, along with a vague suggestion that you may've been hitting the whisky too hard. Talia and Screaming Barracuda look up at you. The Piscarian sits back in her chair, booted feet up on the table, and plucks at the guitar resting across her lap. Opposite her, Talia's fiddling with one of her pistols -- perhaps about to shoot in self-defense if Barra starts playing. The two of them already heard a similar explanation during your trip back to the Shadow. But based on their expressions, that forewarning didn't inoculate them against incredulousness.

"In the sense that Talia's a dragon?" the robot says. "He belongs to an organization or species which merely takes their name from-"

"No," you say. "In the sense that he's a big scaly monster with wings."

Your friends look at one another. The wordless dialogue which passes between their gazes makes the blood rush to your cheeks. Ragnar breaks the awkward silence, first with a snort then with his gruff voice.

"This is the guy who kicked you through a window on Blackpool?"

"Yeah."

"The one we saw on the vid?"

"Yeah..."

"He didn't have wings."

"I know, but-"

"And he wasn't that big," Tel says, because this is apparently 'act like [Player's Name]'s a small child or a dangerous lunatic' day.

"He did have scales though," Talia says. "We all saw what he looked like under that mask, on the vids from Wu's trap."

Those images, shot from different angles, replay themselves in your mind. Automated weapons ravage fabric and metal, shredding it with their fire. And all the while Noir stands there unharmed.

"That bint with the funny eyes did say he was Erebus the Black," Barra says. "Me and Talia heard her too. But [Player's Name] here'd just kicked the crap out of her in some kind of brain fight, and then those ninjas-"

"Sian operatives?" you say.

"Whatever... Then those ninjas stuck her full of chems. She was as wrecked as a Drekchester club girl. Surprised she didn't say the wanker was Father bloody Christmas."

"Trust me, if I had a choice, I'd rather pick a fight with Santa instead."

"You're certain she was telling the truth?" Lu Bu says.

"Yes. I was in her head just a moment before. And those chems Zhao Chen's people put in her weren't for fun. They're for extracting info."

"And Wu Tenchu's agents know their craft... Then are you sure this Erebus the Black is a dragon?"

You can't help cracking a smile. What kind of a universe is it where that's one of the things you can cling to with unshakeable faith? But here you are...

"Crazy dragon stuff, remember?" You tap the side of your head. "Erebus was the first dragon my ancestor killed. I know his name as well as I know yours."

Ragnar shrugs. His huge shoulders rise and fall like shifting boulders. He tears a chunk of naan-wrapped meat from his kebab, and masticates it as he speaks.

"That punch of yours... We know you're not psionic. Or you weren't before you... Before. People keep calling it 'chi', but that's just an old Chinese word for 'crap we don't understand'..."

Lu Bu seems to wince. Ali grins, and her tattooed flames bloom like a dozen laughing mouths.

"So if you say it comes from special dragon blood," the Niflung continues, "then sure. We know you're not crazy. Because if you're crazy, what does that make me or Talia?"

The gunslinger glares at him for half a second. Then she smiles.

"He's got a point," she says. "You're the sane one."

"You lot need to meet more people..." Barra says. "Sane one my arse..."

The Niflung picks up his kebab and takes a huge bite. He munches for a few moments, as though waiting for dubious meat, fiery sauce, and pure fat to nourish and lubricate his brain.

"And if you've got a dragon blood punch that kills everyone it hits..." Dark meaty slivers and white chewed up chunks of naan toss around his mouth like wreckage from a downed vessel. "...and Noir just catches it, then maybe he's got dragon stuff inside him too. Just more of it. You don't have scales. And Wu's scans said he was part human, part something else."

He shrugs again, and focuses his attention on the remainder of his meal -- oblivious to the stares and the ensuing silence. Apparently Noir hit you so hard that you've entered an alternate reality where Ragnar's the logical one...

"He... He has a point," Lu Bu says, perhaps pondering much the same thing. "If one accepts certain notions as plausible, the rest does flow from there."

"Regular aliens don't survive gunfire like that," Talia says. "And they sure as hell don't just dust themselves off after getting a nuke to the face. Fine... He's a dragon."

Despite everything that's happened, all the loss and lunacy, your friends' nods and words of acquiescence give you some small measure of satisfaction.

"So how do we kill him?" Ali says. She stares into space the second the words leave her mouth. "You? Don't be stupid! If he can take a nuke, what're you guys gonna... Shut up!"

She coughs, meets your gaze again, and continues.

"Like I was saying... How can we kill him and save Alexa?"

And just like that, the pleasant feeling ebbs away.

"I don't know," you say.

"You said your ancestor eliminated him," Lu Bu says. "How was that achieved?"

"I saw a glimpse of that battle. She and her warriors attacked Erebus outside a walled town. I think they killed him with swords, spears, arrows..."

"A nuclear bomb didn't work," Talia says, "and you want to shoot an arrow at him?"

"In videogames..." Telemachus says.

"Thanks, Tel, but I don't think [Player Name] can beat this guy by leveling up a few times or finding a +5 sword of badassery."

The prince glares.

"In videogames, there's always someone who knows how to kill the monster. Or maybe a book. You just talk to them, or read it, and get the info."

"This Dragon-Rider..." Lu Bu says.

"Wait," Ragnar says, "did she kill dragons or ride them?"

"Both," you say.

"Sounds like a conflict of interests..." Ali says.

Lu Bu makes a noise which sounds very much like a cough, and manages to silence them.

"She may know more about this subject," the robot continues. "Things you weren't able to glean from your dreams... visions..."

"Delusions..." Ali says.

"Can you talk to her?" Tel says.

"I... I don't think so. Last time, I just watched. I saw things happen but I couldn't do anything. Same as watching a holo-vid. But..." Your brow furrows. Your brain tightens, clenching like a fist. "That British pilot... It seemed like he knew I'd touched him. He smiled. I think he sensed something was there. Something on his side. And Medea... The elf with the harp... She saw me. I don't know... Maybe there is a way to talk to the Dragon-Rider?"

Screaming Barracuda beams.

"Let's give it a try!" she says. "And if it doesn't work, at least you'll all get a free gig out of it!"

From the looks on their faces, the others would rather fight the dragon.

"Kalaxia," Emera Tresc said.

"Kalaxia..."

The greeting was softer, more subdued, than the grandmistress had ever heard it. A whisper in the darkened room. Her gaze drifted to the empty space at the table, the void between the holographic heads which floated above every other seat. For years she'd wondered what could be more perturbing than the glare of those cyan gemstone eyes. Now she knew: their absence.

"Brothers and sisters," she said, "you've all heard."

That, at least, was a small mercy. News of this magnitude spread throughout their network like a raging inferno. And thank the wyrm-mother for that. Emera couldn't begin to imagine how she'd have revealed it, beneath Noir's burning azure slits.

"Victoria..." Bonderbrand said. His eyes, normally so kind and avuncular, were hard and bloodshot. She realized with a start that he'd been crying. "A direct descendent of the prophet Judith Ashdown. A woman who spent decades serving Kalaxia, and guided each and every one of us. Our sister... Our mother. Murdered! Murdered in her own home!"

His jowls quivered, like those of bulldog about to growl, bite, and rend.

"Murdered by the traitor's blood!"

His body was invisible, but Emera sensed Bonderbrand's big fist hammering down on his desk. Its impact shuddered through her body.

"[Player Name] must die!" the professor said.

"She must and she will," Noir said. His elegant, well-spoken voice was as composed as ever. The second voice, though... That growl... It chilled her more than Victoria Ashdown's glare ever had. "But for now she hides from me. She fears another confrontation, after our last encounter."

"The damn coward!" Bonderbrand said.

"[Player Name] has friends," Multheru said. The Quiskerian's oral tentacles fluttered in front of his face like the fingers of a clawing hand. "People she loves as we loved Lady Ashdown. And we know how vengeance twists her heart. That's how we'll lure her into the open."

"Yes," Noir said. His azure eyes blazed. "When she emerges from hiding to attack us, we will have our opportunity to destroy her."

"Her allies are powerful," Emera said. "Some of them have fleets and armies at their command. You saw what he brought down on the Centurians. We can't hold off an assault from TALOS, or the Novocastrians..."

"Then we will strip those allies from her..."

The Emergent

"She just sings, and it triggers these... episodes?" Lu Bu said.

"Yeah," [Player's Name] said.

Ali thought it sounded like a load of crap. Psychic music? Trips through time and space? That was the sort of thing she heard from people with more chems than blood in their bodies, right before they jumped off a roof or used a blaster barrel as a lollipop.

We think it sounds smart.

"Oh, well if you think it's 'smart', that changes everything, doesn't it?"

Yes, let's have sarcasm. Because sarcasm's always helpful...

"Shut up!"

All of a sudden, Ali became aware that every eye in the mess room was on her -- and that her words had coincided with the first strum of Screaming Barracuda's guitar. That must be why the Piscarian was glaring bloody murder at her...

"Sorry..."

"Keep playing, Barra," [Player's Name] said.

"Bet that's the first time anyone's ever said that," Ali murmured.

We love her music! It's amazing! Way better than the stuff you sing in the shower.

"You just want me to argue..." She glanced around, making sure no one with an aural implant was watching her whispering lips. "...so they think I'm crazy."

It was worth a try...

"Men of Kruna, stop your drinking,
What the bloody hell're you thinking?
Can't you hear the foemen slinking,
On the battlements?"

Everyone looked from the Piscarian to [Player's Name] and back again. The singer's eyes were closed. Her green face bore a serenity that was almost holy -- the radiant expression of a worshipper uttering a prayer or exalting heaven with her hymns. [Player's Name]'s eyes were open, but glazed over, staring into nothingness. The Sian hero's brow furrowed. Her mouth pursed, forming a hard, straight line that trembled a little at the edges. And because Ali was so busy watching, it was a moment before she noticed that her flames weren't talking anymore. They were... humming?

The tune vibrated through her blood, hot and heavy but not unpleasant.

"You're on fire!" the boy said.

Orange-yellow tongues danced on her shoulders, moving and flickering with the music, as though singing along.

"It's okay," she said. "They... I... It's okay."

This song! We know this song!

"How?" Ali put her hand over her mouth, pretending to stifle a cough. "I've never heard it."

We don't know. But it's old. So old...

She sighed. Just what she needed... More crazy mysteries.

Last time, you let the song guide you. Barra's or Medea's. Perhaps it was both... Drawing you through history, showing you what it wished. That made it easier. Now you're a swimmer fighting against the tide, crashing and splashing through sensory oceans, bombarded by sights, sounds, smells -- in volleys too vast to comprehend.

Have to focus...

The Dragon-Rider... Need to find the Dragon-Rider...

Your brain's on fire, burning with intent. In the distance, worlds away, your muscles tense and tighten like lumps of steel.

Come on, damn it! The Dragon-Rider!

You try to hold her in your mind, latching onto the images you shared beyond the veil. The two of you alone in the darkness.

"Dragon-Rider... Kasan!"

Multicolored waves explode around you, bursting, blooming, and settling. The shapes it forms are blurry, indistinct. A universe seen through the eyes of someone who's glugged all its alcohol. But it's sharpening by the moment.

"Dragon-Rider?"

You yell the name, hoping against hope that someone will hear it. That you'll find the hero amid this psychedelic haze. That she'll cry out to you in turn, voice bright with recognition. That she'll have the answers you crave.

Instead, there's a groan...

"Men of Kruna, grab a bludgeon,
Lest you earn the nobles' dudgeon,
And get thrown in the dungeon,
You bloody drunken sods!"

The plan had sounded just as ridiculous to Talia as it had to everyone else. But now, watching Barra play, seeing [Player's Name]locked in that... trance? Seeing was believing. Whatever was happening in [Player's Name]'s head, behind that twitching face and its glistening beads of sweat, it was something big. Because she knew how strong the captain's mind was, and Durlin looked like she was fighting hard every step of the way.

"Talia!"

"Huh?"

She looked round, at Telemachus. The prince pointed. Talia glanced down.

"Oh! Thanks..."

The gunslinger grabbed her communicator and went out into the corridor. With the music flooding the room, filling it with guitar and voice, and her eyes locked on [Player's Name], she hadn't even heard it ring.

There was no name on the display. Wu Tenchu's agents seldom used them. They had symbols instead, and she recognized this one. She tapped a button, deactivating the device's audio systems, usurping them with her implanted tech.

"Chen?" She spoke sub-vocally, rather than trying to fight against the music.

"Talia, we've broken the encryptions on some of the materials we found in Victoria Ashdown's home. There were layers of neural encoding, so we were forced to... shall we say, perform improvised surgery? I'm transferring everything we've decrypted so far, but-"

He swore in Chinese.

"What's wrong?"

"Another call. It's from Prime Minister Fan. One moment..."

Dark... Everything's dark...

Can't move. Arms, legs... Trapped beneath impossible weight. Muscles weak and useless. Mountains pin them down, grinding and crushing.

Dust... No. Not just dust. Bigger, heavier pieces among the particles. Niggling hardness in eyes, nose, mouth. Mixing with warm, sticky blood. Choking her. Can't lift a hand. Can't wipe it away.

Oh God! Oh God! Buried! Buried alive!

That realization's a lightning bolt, flashing across her brain. She struggles, tugging at powerless limbs. She has to battle her way loose, claw through the dirt, free herself from the grave! Wait... The... grave?

No... No... That doesn't make sense.

Can't panic. The Phaeton Project taught her better than that, damn it.

"Moxie's strength, Professor Helios' flames, Billy Stopless' teleportation..." The Abyss' eyes are pieces of sharp steel, gleaming in the darkness of his hood. "That's not why they win. It's because of their minds. Their willpower. If they panicked, if their mental fortitude crumbled, all their abilities would be as worthless as guns without firing pins."

Desperation's a time for clarity. Because clarity, awareness, cunning... Those keep you alive. So she thrusts everything else aside. The bloody grit in her mouth and in her eyes don't matter. Distractions. Just distractions.

She isn't in a grave... That was just disorientation. Sensations triggering and nourishing imagined fears.

Oh... She remembers...

The insanity of the past three days floods back in an instant. Flashpoints around the globe. International threats, drawing the big-hitters away. Sending the Genesis Squadron to the other side of the world. And then the prison breaks... Dozens of villains, let loose on Culverton. All the work of this mysterious 'Gorgon'.

Three days without sleep. Fighting battle after battle. Smashing scores of Daddy-O's bots, subduing the Emergents he'd turned into puppets with his tech, then taking on the deranged cult leader's massive war machine. Trading blows with the Mad Confectionist, plummeting into the vat of molten caramel that would've drowned an entire block. Trying to stop the Variables from conjuring up the Formula with their sinister mathematics. Trying and failing, then going toe-to-toe with the transdimensional juggernaut himself.

Pain. Exhaustion. And then... Sunder.

The bastard threw a school bus. God! The kids! No... Empty. It'd been empty. And he'd missed. Hit the building instead... Brought it down.

Rubble. That's what it is. Not graveyard dirt. The building's shattered innards, trapping the Emergent's weary, battered body.

She grunts, flexes her muscles.

No... Too weak. Too worn out. Nothing left.

Ugh... Killed by Sunder? The ridiculousness makes her smile through the agony. Of all the villains she's faced, it's that stupid, musclebound moron who'll get credit for the kill.

She begins to sigh. It emerges as a groan.

Death... She isn't afraid of it. The reaper lurks in the shadow of every hero who puts on tights or a mask, just waiting for the day speed, strength, and powers won't be enough to save them from destruction. She wonders if death knows the Abyss. They probably go to the same tailor...

She tries to laugh, but just groans again instead.

The city... Who'll protect the city? All those people...

Something dances across the darkness of her eyelids. Death's come. Well, she'll look the bastard in the face. She fights against her heavy lids, struggling to lift quivering flesh. Dust and dirt sting her eyes.

Nothing. Nothing there...

"Dragon-Rider..."

The words rustle in her ear. Not just words... A name. She's heard it somewhere before, hasn't she? But...

"Dragon-Rider!"

Someone's in here with her! In the rubble!

"Help!" The word comes out as a tiny rasp. It's all she can manage. "Help..."

"Kasan!"

This time the voice is even closer. Inside her head, thundering through her consciousness, drumming against the walls of her skull. A psychic?

"Who's... Who's there?"

It's easier to speak now. Strength flows through her limbs, replenishing empty muscles. Someone's trying to help! It isn't over! Hope pours into a weary mind, washing away despair, fatalism, and surrender.

She isn't going to give up! Not with this stranger watching!

"Kasan!"

"K... Kasan..." the Emergent says. The word's meaningless, perhaps a war cry from a foreign language or exotic martial art. But it's good on her tongue. Deep and powerful.

She growls. Then she roars. Then she rises.

Shattered masonry groans, scrapes, and shifts. Chunks of stone fall and crash. And sunlight blankets her in glorious golden waves.

She steps forward, boots scrabbling on the debris, on the jagged rocks that scatter underfoot, and almost loses her balance. But she stays up. She wipes blood and filth off her face.

"Help!"

"Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!"

Voices cry out, drenched with terror -- as though they've absorbed everything she's just sloughed off.

A man and woman in police uniforms back away from an advancing goliath -- a hulking brute with metal skin. Their guns tremble in their hands. Because both know their bullets will have no effect. As the villain stomps towards them, fists raised to crush their skulls, they know they're doomed.

"Sunder!"

"Huh?"

Tommy Tungsten looks over his shoulder. Behind him, the dusty, disheveled Emergent jumps down from the rubble and grunts. The hero gestures at the devastation, at the crushed and crumpled carcass of the school bus.

"That all you got?" she says.

Then she charges.

Sunder's eyes widen. The villain stumbles round to meet the attack, to face the glowering foe who looks like she's just fought her way out of hell itself.

"Oh, fuc-"

The tackle puts Tommy Tungsten down. Hard. The street cracks, breaking under his bulk. Winded, groaning, he stares up into the hero's eyes. And whatever he sees there makes him scream.

"I surrender! I-"

The first punch shuts him up. It might be the eleventh that knocks him out. The Emergent battering him with fists and elbows doesn't know. She hits him a few dozen times more, just to be sure.

She stands, and gives her unconscious enemy a kick for good measure. That feels good. Victory courses through his body, rich, warm, invigorating. It won't last. Adrenaline and the thrill of battle never do. But for now, in this moment, she feels stronger than she has in days.

The Emergent looks back at the toppled building. At the debris which was almost her tomb. There's no sign of her mysterious savior, the psychic who touched her mind and inspired her to continue. But she'll solve that mystery later.

She nods to the grateful cops, then runs towards the sounds of distant commotion. There are still villains on the loose in Culverton. And Gorgon's out there somewhere, perhaps watching this very minute -- celebrating the atrocities all these machinations have inflicted on the city.

There's more work to be done before the hero can rest.

Her hands clench into fists.

"Prime Minister Fan," Zhao Chen said. "To what does a humble operative owe this honor?"

Zhilan Fan stared at the face on her screen. She was almost certain Chen was being impertinent, but it was impossible to tell. The agent's features were impassive, inscrutable. Just like those of the man who'd trained him. That thought made her glance around the room -- the office which had been Wu Tenchu's sanctum within the imperial palace -- as though she expected to find the mandarin watching her from the shadows. Mocking her with his unfathomable cunning.

"Where are you?" she said.

"Forgive me, but it isn't customary for an agent to reveal such information over this channel, as-"

"I order you to answer me!"

"Very well. My ship is in Novocastrian space."

"I've spoken with the new minster of intelligence, and he authorized no such operation."

"I exercised the level of autonomy which your predecessor granted me, for situations where I deemed it necessary to act swiftly in the empire's interests."

"From this moment forth, you have no such autonomy."

"Master Wu felt-"

"Wu Tenchu's methods led to a nuclear explosion in our capital!"

Not a single muscle moved on Zhao Chen's face, yet Zhilan Fan could have sworn she glimpsed a flash of anger.

"Operative Chen, you will offer no further assistance to Jian [Player's Name]." This time his features did twitch, and Prime Minister Fan allowed herself a smile. Wu's people weren't the only ones with sources and secrets. "If you learn of the Jian acting outside the law, and bringing the Sian Empire into disrepute, you will inform your minister at once. Is that understood?"

"Yes."

"Dismissed."

Zhilan Fan terminated the connection, and opened another. A monstrous reptilian face appeared on the screen. Two cyan eyes glared at her.

"It's done," she said.

"Thank you," a woman's voice said. "You'll find our friendship far more pleasant than Wu Tenchu found our enmity..."

Remembered By The Sea

She heard you! This woman in the superhero costume heard you! That thought reverberates through your mind, echoing with every punch she rains down on her enemy's metal face. You'd suspected that this turning point in human history, an age when superpowered beings battle in the streets, would be a prime place for the Kasan blood to shine. And here's the proof.

This hero.

Your ancestor.

She stands up, leaving her enemy motionless on the ground. Sunder's chest rises and falls. The villain's still alive. Apparently you and this forebear have very different ways of doing things. She believes in the criminal justice system. You prefer to shoot people in the head or punch their organs out.

"Nice work," you say. "My name's [Player's Name]."

She looks around, and for a moment you think she's about to answer. But she just looks at the rubble.

"Dragon-Rider?" you say.

She turns away and runs off.

"Kasan!"

Your shout follows her down the street, but she doesn't look back. If she hears it, she gives no sign. Disappointment niggles at your stomach. Part of you wants to chase after her, yell in her ear, and try to reestablish that severed connection. But other thoughts spiral through your mind. Theories and possibilities.

When the world starts to disintegrate, you don't resist. This isn't where you need to be. It's not the time or place you'll find the answer you seek.

But maybe being here's given you an answer...

"What've you guys got?" Talia said.

"Just a diary," Ragnar said.

"Any diabolical plans?"

"Yeah... But they're from the nineteenth century. Judith Ashdown?"

"Different Ashdown," Talia said. "The one we killed was Victoria. It's her plans we want. How about you, Tel?"

"These ones look important," the prince said. "I'm trying to break them open with that brain scan thing Zhao gave us."

"Get up there and start attacking!
All their skulls need a-cracking!
Spill their guts and crush their nuts,
Let not your violence be lacking!"

Barra's song drifted in through the open doorway, and seemed to hover above the little room where the three friends sat, surrounded by physical and holographic screens. Talia didn't know how many times the Piscarian had sung her way through that thing by now. But she found herself whistling along, and wondered if she'd ever get the tune out of her head.

"She talks about some places here," Talia said. "Maybe a few of the cult's churches... temples... compounds... Whatever cults have."

"Find a good one," the Niflung said, "and I'll go there with my axe. That'll get them to their dragon god faster than praying..."

The gunslinger continued to flick through the pages in front of her, whilst glancing at another display where an AI whizzed through the files in a blur of text and imagery -- stopping now and then to toss something of potential interest her way. She'd rather have had Lu Bu's computerized brain on that task. But when she'd gone back into the mess room after speaking with Chen, the robot had remained still and silent. As entranced as [Player's Name].

Probably analyzing the song, or their friend's vitals, or something. Either way, she hadn't tried to snap him out of it.

"Mycroft!" Tel said.

"Huh?" Talia looked up.

"This one's about Professor Mycroft."

"The bastards want his research?" Ragnar said. "He's got experiments that'd blow up a battleship!"

"No... It's about everything he's done with [Player's Name] and us."

"Oh, hell..." Talia got up. "They're tracking the captain's friends."

"That can't be good..."

"Start making calls. We need to warn people!"

The gunslinger dashed out of the room, into the passage. Towards the music. She needed the rest of those files broken. Right now.

The bracing, briny tang of sea air reaches you first. Next comes the loud, heavy whisper of tides washing against cliffs. Scent and sound paint their picture -- one so crisp and clear that they might be depicting a place you've known since childhood. When the world coalesces in front of your eyes, vision only superimposes itself over what's already there in your mind.

Morning light softens the sky. It brushes the roof and walls of a humble rustic dwelling, strokes the grass stretching across a cliff top, and casts its blanket over the woman who lies near the edge. Dark blood shimmers.

Dead? No. When you crouch at her side, there's life in her eyes. But they're the last lingering threads. Crimson flows from the gaping wound in her torso, carrying the rest of it away.

She blinks. That darkening gaze latches onto you, but there's no hope written in those orbs.

"Kasan," you whisper.

"Yes," she says. Her voice is soundless. Its volume has poured from the wound amidst the blood, spent on the ground. But you hear it anyway -- conveyed through something more potent than your aural implant. It quivers in your soul.

"I know you..."

Images spin through your consciousness. No, not just images. A story. This woman's tale. One that's echoed down the ages, as much a part of your own as the Dragon-Rider's.

She's crossing the sea, voyaging to a country from whence enemies once banished her glorious family. There's a smile on her face and a hero's crest on her shield as she stands at the prow. She's coming to liberate her ancestral homeland. Yes... That's what she believes. She'll save the kingdom and make its grateful populace celebrate her family's deeds once more. So noble, so naive. A master of war and weapons, might and magic, but dreaming like a child.

Fate is on her side at first. Her blade cleaves flesh, and protects innocent lives by the dozen. Does she revel in slaughter a little more than she should? Are her ears too keen to hear people cheer her name? Perhaps. But a bold hero can be forgiven for such things.

Foe after foe falls before her. She battles her way to the frozen north, where she shapes your fate and the fates of all who came before you. She drinks from the goblet, just as Medea revealed. And your power comes from this one moment. When red droplets dye the snow, and the Kasan blood mingles with that of the blue drake.

This hero doesn't stop there. She's inscribed her destiny on the future, on the universe itself, but it isn't enough. She continues her quest, her saga. She triumphs over countless enemies -- among the living and the dead, on Tor'gyyl and even in the depths of hell. A magnificent victory on purple plains marks her zenith. But then...

"You're a murderer," you say. "A liar and a betrayer."

Death, suffering. Crimes beget crimes. Bloodshed begets bloodshed. Fire and slaughter. She's no hero. This woman, whose heritage burns in your veins, is savage, wicked, abhorrent.

"Oh?" Again her voice sounds in your head, though her lips barely tremble. "You judge me? You?"

And then you feel her phantom fingers for the first time, rooting through your memories as you rooted through her.

"You've murdered worlds," she says. "Massacred more innocents in a second than I did in a lifetime. Listen to them! Listen!"

Screams. So many screams... A million. A billion. A trillion. Numbers that crush your soul with their magnitude. Men, women, and children. Shrieking as they die. Shrieking as you kill them.

"You don't understand! They..."

"Hide behind excuses in your own head," she says, "not in mine."

You try to pull away, to break the connection. You have a mission. You're searching for the Dragon-Rider! You can't waste your time here! Can't...

"Look," she says.

And the rest of her tale flows. Beyond the arrogant sneer and murderous blade, and all those baser things that marred her soul. A woman wanders the world. She walks unknown, under a false name. Her shield is blank now, for she doesn't believe herself worthy to wear the dragon and the pitchfork. There's no glory in her heart. No yearning for praise or immortal fame.

All across the kingdom, wherever her weary footsteps take her, people call out for help. Floundering in the ripples of her war. And she helps them. Her strength, her skills, protect the innocent and punish the wicked. Years pass. Years in which she strives and struggles each day for redemption.

But redemption doesn't spare her from justice. Her long-ago crime dogs her steps, and in the end a blade spills her life into the grass.

"I'm sorry," you whisper.

The woman's lips twitch. She manages a faint smile. And then she's gone.

But the screams still echo, long after the land and sea disappear.

"Any statement, Lady Hollister?"

The Novocastrian MP sank into the hover cab's deep back seat. Soft material embraced her, soothing her muscles. Not for the first time, she wondered why a cabbie had more comfortable seating than the grand parliamentary chamber. Probably because his customers paid, instead of being paid, for the privilege.

"Lady Hollister?"

She wallowed in luxury for a moment more, gazing out of the window at the Victorian-esque mansions down below, and composed her thoughts before answering the voice on the phone. When dealing with tabloid journalists, it was best to take a deep breath -- rather than spitting out the stream of profanity which first came to one's tongue.

"Lady Hollister, would you like to comment," the woman's voice said, "on the record?"

"Certainly. Edmund Rochester deserves to be hung, drawn, and quartered for his extortionate expenses claims. And if he gets those just deserts, he'd better hope my party remains in power -- because if his lot get in, and enact their idiotic healthcare reforms, he'll end up with the kind of surgeons who put people back together with hammers and rusty nails."

"Thanks!"

The MP smiled and put her phone away. She was looking forward to hearing Rochester whine about that one in the chamber tomorrow.

"Hey," the Snuuth cab driver said, "you're that politician, aren't you?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Can't you do something about all these bloody immigrants? Coming to our planet, disintegrating our women..."

Lady Hollister sighed, sank further into the seat, and let his babble transform into white noise. It was a trick she'd learned from her predecessor, who'd used it whenever he had to deal with a constituent. She was rather more selective herself -- but employed it here without a qualm. The cabbie would get his xenophobic rant off his flabby chest, she'd get some peace and quiet, and everyone would win.

Thus she sat and smiled until the cab descended, landing in front of her townhouse amidst a gust of swirling leaves.

"...should just blast them all into the sun," the Snuuth said.

"I'll be sure to write a green paper about it."

Lady Hollister swiped her credits, exited the cab, and went up the broad stone steps leading to her front door. She leaned into the facial recognition scanner.

"Welcome home, ma'am!" the automated voice said.

The door opened. She stepped inside, and the entrance sealed itself shut with the comforting click of electronic bolts -- locking out the world. Giving her a little peace and privacy. At least for ten seconds, before her phone rang. The Novocastrian aristocrat rolled her eyes and pulled it out of her pocket.

"Bloody journalists..." She glanced at the screen before putting it to her ear. Her tone and expression changed in an instant. "Prince Telemachus?"

"Lady Hollister!"

"What's wrong?" she shuffled off her heels and walked into the living room. This sounded like the beginning of a conversation which required brandy. "Is [Player's Name] all right?"

"Yeah, but..."

A soft, muffled footstep whispered on the thick carpet behind her. She turned, her butler's name on the tip of her tongue.

"...we think you're in danger!"

"Yes," she said. "I rather think I am..."

Lady Hollister groped for the pistol on top of the liquor cabinet. The flames were faster.

The Dragon-Rider

Flames. An inferno, raging within triangular eyes and the gashed mouth of a horrific visage. Glimpses of hell -- fire and torment blazing behind a face which would become a symbol of festive fun, distorted and diluted by the great collective unconsciousness of racial memory. Pure malevolence masquerading as amusement.

Terrible heat scorched Lu Bu's sensors, threatening to melt his mechanical mind. Cries of anguish swirled among scattered thoughts. The shrieks of long dead people from a long dead world. And through it all, celebrating pain, drinking their fear even as he sowed it, Jack rode across the nocturnal landscape. Green flames streamed behind him, painting the darkness in emerald hues. The fiend's laughter reverberated through the robot's chassis.

"Lu Bu..."

His name... Spoken by that slash of a maw. Impossible. But wasn't this all impossible? These sights and sounds, and-

"Lu Bu!"

Tap* *Tap *Tap*

The universe rippled.

Tap* *Tap* *Tap*

Clouds of haze bloomed from each impact in concentric circles, obscuring the scene and its demonic horseman -- thickening until the image was almost indiscernible.

"Lu Bu!"

The music returned. Screaming Barracuda's words and tune rang through his audio systems. The fog pulsed, dispersed, then gathered -- hardening into a different face and a tapping finger.

"Talia? What's..."

"We need you," the gunslinger said. "Now!"

She tugged his arm. Lu Bu followed her, into the corridor and a nearby room, his mind still sparking and flashing with strange notions. But Telemachus' words dispelled them.

"Talia!" The prince looked up from his screen, with eyes so large they seemed to consume his face. "Something's happened to Lady Hollister!"

"Not just her," Ragnar said. The Niflung growled. "Look..."

He tapped a button, and a new holographic projection -- bigger than the others -- popped up over the table. A feed from an interstellar news channel.

Even Lu Bu's voice joined the profanities which followed.

"My producer's telling me we have an urgent report from Mindy Mazmarth on Novocastria," the smiling anchorman said. His teeth flashed like white neon lights. "If this is about the expenses scandal, Mindy, I think that story's as old and tired as your face is under that megaton of makeup someone must've bombed it with..."

The reporter's video feed popped into existence, annexing the top right quarter of the picture showing the smug presenter in the studio. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes. Maybe the pallor of her face. But the anchor's smile faltered, and the edges of his lips twitched.

"No time for your crap, Roy. See that house?"

The camera pulled back from Mindy, revealing more of the street behind her -- where men and women in shining panoplies stood alongside tanks and personnel carriers, forming a cordon. Further down the road, other armored figures, these ones dressed in red, were directing water cannons' powerful streams through the broken windows of a grey stone building. Tongues of hissing smoke flitted out like exorcised spirits.

"That belongs... belonged... to Lady Hollister, the Novocastrian MP. Official sources haven't confirmed it yet, but we're hearing she was murdered -- burned to death with a flamethrower!"

"Jesus, Mindy! That's rough politics, even by parliamentary standards! Do we know who did it? A disgruntled voter? A member of the opposition?"

"None of the above, Roy! Centi Priders put out a broadcast claiming responsibility. And get this: it looks like they transmitted it while their assassin was murdering her!"

A graphic popped up in the bottom left corner of the screen. There was a black Collective emblem, which flashed and emitted little droplets of blood. Words appeared beside it: 'Centurian Slaughter!: Outrage on Novocastria!'

"Lady Hollister was an outspoken ally of the Centurians," Roy said, "and-"

"Enemy! She was their enemy! Fire that teleprompter guy. Or better still, learn to do your goddamn job!"

The anchor's smile crumbled, but regenerated itself an instant later.

"Of... Of course!" he said. "Who could forget Lady Hollister's passionate speeches in parliament, urging the Novocastrians to aid the Sian Empire?"

"The Prider broadcast blamed her for the genocide of their fellow Centurians, Roy. And they say she'll just be the first. They're threatening bombings, shootings, and..."

"You ask me, Mindy, those Centies are just sore losers! So they got massacred... Big deal! Don't those jerks realize the news cycle's moved on?"

"Roy, we-"

"Now, back to the dancing platypus..."

"If you cut me off, asshole, I'll cut your balls off! Breaking news! We have breaking news!" She tapped her earpiece. "Edmund Rochester's been stabbed! He was at a community meeting in his constituency when word spread about Lady Hollister, and a voter stabbed him!"

"Typical! Someone kills a politician, and suddenly everyone wants their fifteen minutes of murder-fame..."

"We're hearing that the attacker called Rochester a Centi-lover!"

"They have a point, Mindy. According to the tele... From what I recall, Rochester was one of the loudest voices against Novocastria getting involved in the Sian-Centurian War."

"We're already getting word of more attacks! The military's being deployed!"

"Damn. Looks like we won't need that platypus after all!"

A castle looms above you. Towers rise beyond the geometric preciseness of its crenellations, fingertips brushing the black vault. Constellations adorn the deep, dark sky between them -- crisp and clear. Diamonds decorate the heavens. They twinkle upon this grand edifice which is more home than fortress, warm and welcoming despite its sturdy stone.

High overhead, flicking light softens the gloom within one of the windows. And you know, certain and unwavering, that this is your destination. For a second or two you work out how you'd scale the wall, or else enter elsewhere and find that chamber among the halls and corridors. Old habits die hard. Especially ones like corporeality.

Instead, you let your consciousness drift. Or allow the world to reshape itself around you. Whichever happens is of no consequence. What matters is that you find yourself inside the room, beside the heat of a crackling log fire, gazing upon the woman who lies asleep in her bed.

So old, so frail... It's almost inconceivable. The great hero, the mighty warrior whose muscles wielded steel and split scales... But time is no respecter of men. And for those who survive their battles, who escape the thousand violent deaths which try to ensnare them, this is where the road ends. Not amid glorious carnage or tragic sorrow. In beds which hold weakening flesh, where peace and comfort are all you can hope for.

You sigh. And her eyes open. Keen, intelligent eyes. Your relief is warmer than the fire. Her mind is still there. Age and infirmity haven't worn it away.

"Do you remember me?" you say.

"I..."

She frowns, multiplying the grooves and wrinkles on her forehead, and stares at you for some moments.

"We met in the dark, didn't we?"

"Yeah. When we were lost."

"Strange... I'd forgotten. Old age perhaps?"

"I think those were memories we weren't meant to have, from a place we shouldn't have been."

"Have you come to say goodbye, like everyone else?"

"I've come to ask for your help."

"Oh?" She smiles, and coughs. It's a harsh, wheezing sound that shakes her chest. "I'll go get my sword..."

"I have to kill a dragon. One you know."

"All the dragons I know are dead, or my friends."

"It's Erebus."

"Again? He was always a troublesome one..."

"How did you kill him?"

"Mostly with swords, axes, arrows..."

"That's what I thought. But... A friend of mine used a weapon on him. Something more powerful than a million blades or bows. And it didn't even scratch him. I was hoping there was a secret. Something you could tell me."

"I'm sorry... I wish Lucian was still alive. He wrote a whole book on how to kill monsters. Maybe he'd have known how to help you."

"Lucian..."

You see another man, this one dressed in red and green robes as though he were a priest of some kind. Stacks of dusty books surround him, tottering with the weight of ancient scholarship. He smiles in delight as he dashes an inky quill across a piece of parchment, setting down his thoughts for future generations to ignore.

"When and where did he die?"

"Five years ago, in Drunsdorf's cemetery."

"He died in a cemetery?"

"His apprentice said he wanted to be alone there, at the end. There was someone he wanted to see..."

Images float from the Dragon-Rider's mind to yours, clear as a holo-vid. A quiet, somber place full of old gravestones and older crypts.

"I think I can find him," you say. "But I don't know if I can talk to him."

"You're talking to me."

"We share blood. My ancestors can hear me, when they're..."

"When we're near death, and the veil begins to part."

Of course. Just like the woman on the cliff. Seeing into your mind as you see into hers.

"Yeah. But Lucian..."

"Try. My story was bound to him, and he was bound to my story. Maybe he'll hear you."

She glances at the window. And her hearing must be as good as it ever was, because it's a second before you detect the faint sounds of quick, agile hands and feet scrabbling up stone. You glance at the Dragon-Rider, but she doesn't seem alarmed. Not even when a face appears over her window sill. A pale, beautiful face, framed by scarlet hair.

"Your window isn't warded?" Fangs glisten between the woman's lips.

She springs into the room, landing on the thick carpet without a sound.

"No one wants to kill me anymore," the Dragon-Rider says. She sighs, and it became a splutter that makes her chest shudder and the vampiress wince. "I've outlived all my enemies. Most of my allies too. But not all..."

Her hand emerges from under the cover. She glides across the room and takes hold of it.

"It's been a long time, Mina. If I'd known I'd get to see so many old friends again, I'd have gone to my deathbed sooner."

The Dragon-Rider looks at you. Mina follows her gaze, and you wonder what the vampiress, this being who lives beyond life itself, will see. But she stares right through you.

"And some of you came so very far..."

She gives a faint smile, and then the world fades away.

Professor Bonderbrand's gaze swept the grid of projected screens. Each showed a different news channel, and the situation on Novocastria dominated them all. His jowls quivered.

Incitement was so simple it was almost frightening. If you knew where to apply force, news networks, social media channels, and sundry other pulleys allowed you to move star systems. All it had taken was a few crimes, coupled with a handful of threats. Momentum took care of everything from there.

Some Centi Priders had decried the assassination of Lady Hollister. The movement's most notable leaders claimed their people had nothing to do with it. But enough Priders posted gleeful messages, reveling in their enemy's death, to inspire revenge attacks. Retaliation from aggrieved Priders had followed as naturally as day follows night -- but so much faster. Riots grown in the blink of an eye.

The chaos wouldn't last long, of course. Novocastrian troops were already locking down flashpoints on their various worlds. But tensions and fears of further terrorist attacks would simmer long afterwards. They'd keep their troops on high alert. If [Player's Name] reached out to any remaining Novocastrian allies, she'd find precious little help available.

Bonderbrand was satisfied.

And this was just the beginning.

Lucian's Last Lesson

"They've got a file on Kess too," Telemachus said.

"Do they know where she is?" Talia said.

"No. They lost track of her after she left."

"Warn her anyway."

"We should be out there," Ragnar said, "not sitting here!"

His brawny arm slashed through a holo-screen, throwing ripples across a picture of Lady Hollister. The back of the Niflung's fist met the wall with a deep, metallic thud, and left faint imprints in the bulkhead.

"I know!" Talia said. "But what're we going to do? Fly around the galaxy and hope we get lucky? We don't know who they'll hit, or where!"

"Precisely," Lu Bu said. The robot's eyes shone and flickered, rivers of data flowing between his thoughts. "When we locate suitable targets of our own, that will be the time for violence."

Ragnar glared, but he continued with the rest of them -- scanning through the files, placing call after call, like the galaxy's most murderous telemarketer.

"Wilex!" Talia said. She glanced at the communicator's display. "You're on Plerna?"

"Ah, Talia! Yes, I'm here for the twentieth century science-fiction convention. But if you need me, I-"

"Do you have any battle bots with you?"

"No... I don't take them on holiday. Though maybe that would be an interesting psychological experi-"

"You need to get back to Capek."

"What's happened?"

"[Player's Name]'s got these cultists after her, and they're-"

"Do they wear masks with cyan eyes?"

"Yeah..."

"I thought he looked suspicious. I'm being followed."

"Are you still at the convention? With people around?"

"No. I was walking back to the hotel when you called."

"Do you have a weapon?"

"Yes!"

"Good. Then-"

"It's in my luggage."

"What?"

"The rest of us don't shoot people every day, Talia! I only brought it to-"

"Get back there fast, lock the door, and grab the gun. I'll... Hang on. Guys! Do we know anyone who's on Plerna right now? Wilex needs support!"

Telemachus' small hands sliced and swept through a series of screens, sending each one flying into oblivion.

"Got someone!" he said. "It's... Oh..."

The prince groaned.

Whispering winds rustle among the last leaves clinging to the dark branches of autumn trees. A few fall swirling, and join the rich gold carpeting the dirt and grass around the gravestones. It's a serene place. Cold and quiet. Silvered by the moonlight, as it illuminates forgotten names.

Are the words English? That should be impossible. But you can read them, just as you've never failed to understand anyone during these voyages. Most sound German. Hans... Fritz... Astrid... The names of dead men and women, outliving an entire world. That thought only adds to the tranquility which drifts through the cemetery like a gentle mist.

You wander for a few moments before you see him. A man in thick robes and cloak, sat on the ground with his back against the iron door of an impressive granite crypt. He's slumped forward. Long hair, the same color as the moon, falls in front of his face like a veil. You're too late. He's...

"Huh?" The scholar stirs. His nose penetrates the wall of hair first, followed by the rest of his old, wizened face. For a second his dark eyes are young, bright, eager. Then he sighs, and the spark dies away. "Forgive me. I thought you were... I'm waiting for someone."

"You can see me?"

He glances up at you, and his eyes flicker once more.

"Yes... I thought you were a ghost. But you're not, are you?"

"No." You reach towards him, and let your thoughts flow.

"Ah... A traveler from afar." The faintest of smiles creases his face. "I'd have enjoyed meeting you when I was younger. But now... Mysteries and curiosities seem rather inconsequential, when you're about to cross that final threshold."

"You don't seem shocked."

"My friends and I saw so many wonders and horrors. I fear very little would shock me."

"The Dragon-Rider said you could tell me how to kill Erebus."

"Erebus?" His eyebrow twitches. "Then perhaps I was mistaken..."

"You killed dragons with swords, pikes-"

"A cricket bat."

"Yeah... But in my time, he survived being nuked." You focus on a mental image, conjuring up the hellish inferno of atomic fury. "Nothing we have hurts him."

"Fascinating..."

"It's not so 'fascinating' when he's killing your friends."

"Quite... Quite. I was merely thinking about something Roland once said. He believed that a sword, even one without enchantments, could contain what he called 'the magic of its forging'. I mentioned this to a fellow scholar some years later, and she had an interesting theory. She suggested that our world is inherently magical -- that even the things we call mundane contain a sliver of eldritch power. Including our weapons, from a hero's axe to a lowly bandit's dagger. Of course, without conducting research into the matter, I can only speculate. But..."

"Magic?"

"Do they still make magical weapons where you come from?"

"No..."

"Ah..." Lucian darts through your memories, young and quick in that strange place beyond the flesh. "Here's something."

She lifts the chest's lid and throws it back. You both lean forward, to feast your eyes on the object which lies within. It's a sword, its sharp steel edge somehow contriving to gleam even in the gloom. The shape, the design... You've seen this weapon before.

"That sword," you say. "I recognized it."

"One of Roland's old blades. Either Rogar's Dream or the other one. I could never tell them apart."

"The pirate woman... One of my ancestors. She found it."

"Do you know where it is now?"

"No."

"Ah, a pity. But..."

Another image blazes across your shared consciousness.

"What about this one?" Lucian says.

"Yes!" Your laughter rings among the graves. But it dies an instant later. "Erebus... Noir... He's stronger. Faster. A better fighter. Even with that thing, I..."

"You can't defeat him?"

"I... I don't think so. But... Magic..."

"Yes?"

"I have an idea..."

"Whenever the Dragon-Rider said that, someone or something usually died."

"I'm counting on it. Thank you."

"My pleasure. One last lecture."

The scholar smiles, sighs, and exhales. His head slumps. You blink, startled. All that vivacious loquacity of a moment ago, snuffed out like a candle. And Tor'gyyl goes with it. Fading. Disintegrating.

But just before everything vanishes, there's a faint voice. Little more than a whisper on the wind.

"Hello, Nina."

Wilex ran the last block. He sprinted down the street, panting, cursing himself for his lack of exercise or cybernetic lungs. When he arrived at the hotel's glass doors, the remainder of his breath deflated in a relieved gasp.

"Doorman..." he said.

"I have a name, you know," said the burly man in the purple blazer.

The Chief Assembler glanced at his nametag.

"Door-Man?"

"It's pronounced 'Door Hyphen Man'. Makes me sound like a superhero."

He laughed. Wilex glared.

"Just a little joke, sir."

"Listen, someone's after me. If a man with a mask tries to get in, keep him out and call the police. He's trying to kill me!"

The doorman held out his hand. Wilex frowned. But he pulled out a card and swiped it over the man's palm sensor.

"Thank you, sir." He smiled as the tip registered and added itself to the daily tally displayed on his wrist. "I'll make sure you don't get murdered."

"Thanks..."

Wilex went inside. He looked over his shoulder as he crossed the lobby, and his gaze remained fastened on the entrance while he waited for the elevator. But no one came along by the time the doors dinged open. He stepped into the mirror-walled box, pressed the button for the third floor, and reactivated his communicator.

"Wilex? What's happening? Are you okay?"

"I'm safe, Talia. I just couldn't run and talk at the same time."

He gave a start and leapt back when the doors opened, then reddened at the maid's look of surprise, before shuffling past her cart.

"We sent backup," the gunslinger said.

"Oh?" Green light flashed from an ocular scanner. His door opened. He locked it behind him and walked across the small lounge. "I don't think that'll be... necessary..."

The Chief Assembler froze.

The masked man got up from the armchair. Cyan lights blazed.

"Wilex? Wilex!"

Talia's voice came from far, far away. He tried to answer, but his voice was far away too.

"Men of Kruna, with blood splattered,
Leaving corpses dead and battered,
Have all wretched foemen scattered,
Now let's have a drink!

Men of Kruna..."

"It's okay, Barra," you say, as the mess room hardens around you. "I'm back."

The singer blinks, and flames sputter on Ali's shoulders, amid the fading echoes of her last chord.

"Looks like the others pissed off," Barra says.

She stares at an open doorway with narrow eyes. Talia and Telemachus' voices float through it like invading armies, capturing the territory ceded by the vanished song.

"Lucky them," Ali says. "Find what you wanted?"

"Yeah..."

You exit via the opposite door, leaving their questions hanging in the air behind you, and jog down the passage. It becomes a sprint. You race through the ship, descending into its belly. Eagerness propels you between a parting barrier's halves before the gap's wide enough to admit you without banging your shoulder.

There might be enough weapons, armor, and assorted gear in the Silver Shadow's cargo hold to equip a small army. Just glancing around in here is enough to rekindle memories of all the adventures which brought them into your possession. There's the Twisted Steel battlesuit, the armor you and your friends built on Hyperia -- which saw you through those grueling matches in front of screaming crowds. And here's the knightly panoply you wore in the Novocastrian parliament whilst kicking the crap out of their war-shy politicians. The Blue Phoenix Crossbow that brought down the gigantic Crush Colossa. The training rifle Illaria gave you when she broke you out of your cell on the Child of Heaven. Your past, written in metal and fabric.

Sometimes you meditate in here. You sit and let the past wash over you, with all its glory and its pain. Drinking everything in. Remembering. Laughing or blinking away the tears. But not now. This time you head for one of the racks and pick up the object you and Lucian glimpsed together.

The double-bladed sword lay hidden inside the rock of an asteroid, until you battled a Besalaad warrior and excavated it with blaster fire. It's a weapon Wu Tenchu referred to as one of the mysteries he'd never be able to solve. But you've solved it for him. You know where it came from, who once wielded it, and what it can do. You know its name.

Talia was wrong.

You did find a +5 sword of badassery.

A burning cyan ocean crashed down on him. Titanic waves swept him away, chilling his flesh instead of immolating it, drowning and devouring. Sucking him towards a swirling, twisting, rushing whirlpool that could've swallowed a city.

No... Not a whirlpool...

The blazing water came together in an explosion of spray and an immense roar. Came together and rose up, shooting into the sky and giving birth to monstrosity. Chief Assembler Wilex shrieked. The dragon laughed. Then its mouth, a maw bigger than the Milky Way itself, descended to consume him.

"Rautha's here, bitches!"

"What?"

Wilex's mind spun. The world spun too. And it wasn't a world of cyan fire and galactic dragons. It was a hotel room.

The man in the featureless mask was staring at the door. Wilex's head snapped round, following his gaze. The portal was still sealed. But there was shouting and screaming from somewhere beyond it.

"I'm here to save you, Wilex!" a voice said.

"Who the hell's Wilex?" another said. "And get your hands off my girlfriend!"

"Girlfriend? Oh... Wrong room!"

"I'm in here!" the Chief Assembler said. "I'm-"

Agony tore his mind. Cyan flames flooded the universe, destroying stars, planets, and...

"Rautha's here too, bitches!"

This time the hotel room snapped back into focus in a split-second, amidst the groan of buckling metal and smash of splintered wood. The masked man stepped towards the doorway. His eyes flashed. But something else flashed too -- a big green bolt that fizzed past Wilex, bathing him in its heat, and detonated with a whoosh and a wet splat.

The masked man was no longer masked. Or headed, for that matter. Behind the cauterized stump of his neck, roasted brains and fragments of charred skull painted the wall with brand new art. His body crumpled.

"This better be the right room..." A tall, muscular man in a dark blue jumpsuit stood in the doorway -- surrounded by the debris of the last thing to stand there. "Wilex, right?"

"Yes!"

"You okay?"

"I... I think so."

"Then grab your stuff. I'm getting you back to Capek Major."

Multheru's howl pierced the room. The sound was bizarre, high-pitched. No human being would have recognized it as an angry roar. But a psychic would've shuddered, or fallen to their knees.

The appendages above the Quiskerian's mouth writhed and thrashed -- flapping, flailing. His acolyte's death shook inside his skull. But something rattled around beside it. Knowledge. The thing the man had pulled from the Chief Assembler's mind, and cast through the ether before the blast took his head. His final deed. One last act of loyalty.

"Hail Kalaxia..."

His oral tentacles slowed into a series of soft, undulating pulses. His eyes glittered. They had what they needed.

Sapphire

"How old's this thing?" Telemachus says.

He leans over the conference table. Slashes of steel gleam in his eyes, exquisite and potent. Screaming Barracuda does the same. She keeps her guitar braced across her body like a shield, caressing its strings. Even Ali seems impressed. Long tongues of flame curve from the pyrokineticist's shoulders, almost as motionless as she is.

"When these blades were forged," you say, "there was no human life on Earth."

The prince's hand moves towards the weapon. He hesitates, fingers freezing inches away from ancient steel, and waits for you to nod before he touches it.

"I still like my chainsaws better."

"Fair enough."

The doors slide open and the other three join you, fanning out around the table. Talia moves next to Tel. Her hand rests beside his on the sword. Lu Bu's still and stoic, but his eyes seem to shine brighter as he inspects the weapon. Ragnar just grunts. The Niflung's augmented muscles are practically shaking with the urge to unleash violence.

"All done?" you say.

"Yeah," Talia says. "No one else has been hit yet, but everyone's ready for it. I even tried to call Zhilan Fan. Some secretary guy told me she doesn't have time to speak to 'churlish athletes'."

"Hope the Kalaxians get her," Tel says.

"You lot know assassins," Barra says, "superheroes, pro fighters, and a whole lot of tossers with guns..."

"Right," Talia says.

"But if Bob can't stand up to Noir without this thing..." She points her guitar at the sword. "...what'll they do if he's the one who goes after them?"

Your gaze locks with Talia's. That possibility didn't escape you either.

"I called him," the gunslinger says. "He said he'll do it. He's crazier than we are..."

"Maybe. But if he keeps Noir occupied, we can do this."

"Then when do we start killing?" Ragnar says.

"Soon. Lu Bu..."

The robot presses a metal finger against the table. Its surface comes to life, empowered by his touch. A facade of varnished wood melts away -- surrendering to a soft bluish light that spreads until it's consumed everything except a narrow border at its edges. Holographic projections bloom into existence above. Images of planets, people, and buildings swarm in different sizes and levels of clarity.

"I've confirmed several locations," he says. "I believe these are the places most important to the cult."

"Which do we hit first?" Ali says.

"All of them," you say. "You'll carry out a synchronized assault, and take them down before warnings spread and they can clear out."

"You'll carry out? Us? And where'll you be?"

"With the angels."

"What do you think?" Assembler Ytrechi said.

She waved her arm in a dramatic flourish, whilst toggling between her cybernetic eyes' direct view of the people in front of her and the secondary ocular displays which allowed her to view herself from cameras hovering all around the factory. The latter satisfied her. Decorative gears shimmered in gold and silver on the fancy uniform they'd made her wear. Her smile, which she'd practiced in front of the mirror for almost an hour, beamed with an appropriate blend of friendliness and pride.

Caroline Ytrechi would still rather have been in her lab. She'd become an engineer to build robots, not pimp them. But the Grand Fabricator's word was law. Thus she favored the men and women with just the right tooth to lip ratio, and pretended she wasn't intimidated by the varied multitude of medal-festooned military uniforms and dubious stares.

At least they weren't all staring at her anymore. At least half had directed their gazes and dubiousness at the formation of robots assembled between the immense machines behind her.

"They're shiny," a woman in the green of the Sian Empire said, "I'll give you that."

A couple of the others laughed. Engineer Ytrechi forced herself to feign amusement, and broadened her smile instead of flipping the woman off.

"Let's hear it then," a short man in purple said. "What'll these tin soldiers do for us?"

"Ah, yes..." Caroline coughed. "In the past, several of your militaries have expressed their doubts about deploying autonomous robots on the battlefield."

"Damn right we have! This morning I took a crap-"

"Um... Congratulations?"

"...and my smart toilet told me I needed to change my diet! We argued for twenty minutes! Our commanders put up with enough insubordination from flesh and blood troops. They don't need it from machines too!"

"Exactly! That's why the model you see behind you is only quasi-autonomous. They have all the firepower and advanced targeting systems of our regular battle bots, but they'll follow whatever instructions you give them. Just watch..."

She plucked a small cylinder from her belt and tapped it twice. A paper-thin screen slid out and locked in place.

"Unit 94512-A," she said, "dance."

Information flashed across her device in streams of green and white. Some of the generals chuckled. Others stared, confused or bemused. Caroline sighed. She'd specifically told her assistants not to select 'the robot' as their designated dance routine. Yet there the bot was, jerking its limbs in a fashion which made a mockery of its advanced engineering.

"Unit 94513-C, run three laps around the-"

The display flashed red. Caroline Ytrechi had a second to read the words, 'Chief Assembler Override', and another to wonder what the hell was going on. Then the shooting and screaming started.

They didn't last long.

"...at this facility," Lu Bu says.

"Then that's where I'm going," Alison says. Her nostrils flare, and her eyes burn fiercer than the fire framing her face. "I don't care what you think!"

"We... We have no objection. In fact, I was about to suggest that myself."

"I wasn't talking to you." She sighs, and swats at the flame on her right shoulder. It flinches away like a whimpering dog.

"In any event, that..."

Lu Bu pauses, arms frozen in mid gesticulation.

"What's wrong?" you say.

"I just received a message. A recall notice. I'm supposed to return to TALOS space."

"Bet it's just spam," Barra says.

"I don't believe so."

The projections above the table scatter, giving way to a screen marked in one corner with a news station's logo (some kind of walrus, by the look of it). A familiar moustached face glares out at the room.

"Francois Dupont," you say. "This can't be good."

"Damn," Talia says. She points at the word 'LIVE' which hovers in the opposite corner to the corporate emblem. "For a second there, I thought they were going to say the Kalaxians had killed him."

"We're not that lucky."

"The Alliance of Lambda Omicron systems," Dupont says, "claim that the massacre was the result of sabotage. Rest assured, the finest law enforcement agents at the UHW's disposal will investigate, and no guilty party will escape from justice..."

The secretary-general's eyes seem to bore into yours. You feel an intense desire to punch him in the face, but it evaporates when the second image appears alongside him -- footage of battle bots' weapons blazing away inside a factory. Their gunfire doesn't leave corpses; it scatters chunks.

"...But until these investigations are completed, TALOS must withdraw all their battle-capable robots to their own territory, to avoid the risk of further atrocities."

Lu Bu deactivates the feed before a grinning newsman can offer his inane commentary on that pronouncement.

"Kalaxians?" Ragnar says.

"Undoubtedly," the robot says.

"What're you going to do?" Telemachus says.

"Disobey his instructions, of course."

"Well done, Multheru," Emera Tresc said.

"Kalaxia granted us the victory." The Quiskerian's finger-like tentacles stroked his mouth.

This time all the holographic heads at the table wore looks of grim satisfaction. Even Noir's eyes seemed to burn soft with pleasure instead of blazing in eons-old wrath.

"Yes," he said, and Emera wondered if he'd read her thought. But then his head turned, gazing at something beyond the projection's scope. "Bob has already responded. A challenge, scattered across the void. One he must have known would come to my attention. He invokes the name Erebus."

"He knows!" Emera said.

"Good. Then he understands whose hands will destroy him."

Noir's face disappeared, leaving blackness in its wake.

"If Bob's aware of our brother's identity," Bonderbrand said, "he may know other things."

"Yes," Multheru said. "Each of us should prepare for-"

The Quiskerian hissed. His head snapped round, tentacles swinging and grasping.

"Intruders," he said.

Bonderbrand swore.

"Here too," the professor said. "A breach."

"Wyrm-mother watch over us," Emera said. "Kalaxia!"

"Kalaxia!" the others chorused.

Darkness usurped their places one by one, and Emera was left alone at the table. She turned to the woman in the doorway.

"The vault," the grandmistress said. "I have to-"

"Take Kalaxia's treasures and keep them safe," the woman said. She turned away and stepped into the corridor. "Our enemies will burn."

It's wet.

"I know," Ali, said.

We'll take care of that.

"Thanks."

Heat grew in the middle of Alison Haelia's body, turning her abdomen into a fireplace which spread flowing warmth throughout her body.

"Your bike's got heating?" Barra put her face near Ali's ear, yelling the words over the splashing rain and churning wheels. Her arms tightened around the pyrokineticist's waist.

"No! But I do..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Don't roast her."

Of course we won't! We want to hear her play!

Ali grinned. Steam billowed from her skin and swept behind the speeding motorcycle -- phantom flames or a ghostly, tattered battle standard flapping away across the countryside. This was one Screaming Barracuda gig she wouldn't miss for worlds.

"No going nuts when we find Alexa."

But we don't like those things inside her.

"I don't care. If you hurt her..."

Fine! But you'd better let us burn other stuff.

"Yeah..." she said.

A fence appeared on the horizon, high iron railings like a rack of black spears ready to arm a medieval horde. Some distance beyond them, nestled amongst picturesque oaks and firs, was a broad grey building. The rain streamed from it in dozens of miniature waterfalls, making its windows weep.

"...there'll be plenty to burn."

"Are the children safe?"

Emera's mind moved instead of her lips, casting the question through the vault's thick walls.

"Yes, grandmistress." Varner's dark, round face appeared in her consciousness alongside his voice. "We've evacuated the living quarters."

"You should go with them."

"Is that a command, Emera?"

"No, but-"

"Then I'll stand with the others."

Emera Tresc's hand hovered above the panel. Her gaze roamed across the armored display cases -- a geometric forest of glass and steel, precise and stalwart atop every cyan tile of the checkerboard floor except the one at its very center, which contained the terminal. Some of these treasures were prized for their history and antiquity: gold ornaments from ancient Mycenae; a volute krater decorated with red-figure hoplites who knelt before a drake; a Quiskerian idol; a fine silver swordstick, adorned with sapphires and light blue tourmalines. Others held power that pulsed through the glass and made her flesh tingle. Especially that pile of jagged bone fragments, resting on azure silk...

Her duty was clear. The words uttered by her predecessor echoed in her brain. Preserve the artifacts, escape, and assess the situation when she was safe. Those were the protocols.

"Kalaxia," Varner said.

"Kalaxia," a dozen other voices chorused.

"Kalaxia," Emera said. "May the wyrm-mother watch over us all."

She pressed her palm down, and cried out.

Sound... An inconceivable, devastating avalanche. A sonic bludgeon of raw noise... No. Not noise. Music. Music powerful enough to bring down the heavens, split the planet in half, and-

The vault door clunked into place. Silence punched her brain, and it was a second before the shock settled into relief. That song, that terrible song, was gone. The room's physical and psionic shielding had blocked it out.

"Her..." Emera said.

She leaned against the terminal, grasping it with whitening hands. There was nothing she could do. The sequence was already initiated. And though there was no hint of movement in this protected chamber, the grandmistress knew she was already hurtling through the underground passage at immense speed -- towards the hidden launch hatch.

The treasures would survive. She would survive.

Emera Tresc could only pray to Kalaxia that her brothers and sisters would survive too.

"So you noose you're mega, You noose you're some hot drek, You baino into Drekchester looking for some creds."

Yay!

"Really? You like the Drekchester theme song? She only chose it because that thing's practically a weapon already!"

So are we!

"We sure are..."

"Kalaxia!"

The voices from the end of the corridor were louder and clearer than the music, admitted by the aural filters which shielded her from the ultra-amplified guitar and voice. So were the bursts of gunfire. Bullets sprayed in aimless arcs, while the two women in azure and cyan jumpsuits tottered and staggered like slapstick mercenaries.

A torrent of flame engulfed them, silencing their shrieks in the same instant they began. And Ali felt confident the pair preferred immolation to hearing Screaming Barracuda play.

"You noose that we'll all phobe you, You noose that we'll back down, Well, chummer, you'll get rumpled right into the ground!"

It's catchy!

"So's Space Pox. I don't like that either."

She continued down the passage, between walls painted in sumptuous and soothing shades of blue, glancing into each doorway she passed.

Left!

"I know!"

Ali ducked back behind the wall. A burst of luminous plasma fizzed through the entrance and disappeared into the room opposite. Its heat tingled on her cheek.

"I saw him before you did!"

Liar!

"You're mega back where you bio, They noose you're some hot drek, But on our streets you're just a prosser who's going to get wrecked!"

"Just burn him!"

Only if you admit-

"Fire! Burn! Now!"

Okay! Okay! By the way, this wall we're hiding behind doesn't look very...

"Drekchester! Drekchester! We'll rumple you for fun! Drekchester! Drekchester! Then we'll wreck your mum!"

"Yeah..."

Ali dropped low, amid a blast that drowned the music and rained little pieces of debris down on her. The pyrokineticist glanced up at the hole in the wall. She hated it when they were right.

"Barra! Stay back!"

But the Piscarian was still a dozen or so yards behind, gyrating as she played.

"She's dancing. She's actually dancing."

"We'll twock out all your organs, and kauf them in the slums, Kauf them to some street-scavs who need to fill their tums! Then we'll get some chems and snuff them up the schnoz, And leggie how we taught this scav just what mega was!"

We should dance too!

"Kill that guy first!"

Another shot shook the wall, blasting a second gaping hole at chest height. It really didn't seem like a good time to pop up from cover. So Ali clenched and unclenched her left fist.

The jet of fluid arced above, through the room's impromptu windows. Her flames chased it -- whooshing and roaring. She swept the stream back and forth, letting the end of parabola play across the unseen interior. A scream rewarded her. So did the sound of flesh charring to a blackened crisp, and the succulent scent of roasting meat.

"Hark! I hear the foe advancing, Barbed steeds are proudly prancing, Helmets, in the sunbeam glancing, Glitter through the trees. Men of Harlech! Lie ye dreaming? See you not their falchions gleaming, While their pennons, gaily streaming, Flutter to the breeze?"

Hurray! A new song!

"It's the same tune as the one from the ship... And what's that stupid accent?"

Welsh.

"How could you possibly know-"

Ali sighed. She'd argue about that later. The pyrokineticist got up, glanced at the burning wreckage, and rounded the corner.

"From the rocks rebounding, Let the war-cry sounding, Summon all at Cambria's call, The haughty foe-"

"Barra?"

She began to turn, to find out why the Piscarian rocker had stopped playing, but movement drew her eye. Ali pivoted and aimed a flaming hand at the woman striding down the corridor. The breath caught in her throat. At the edge of her vision, she'd just caught the blue jumpsuit and a splash of long red hair. Now... She let out a laugh.

"Alexa!"

Something's wrong!

"Alexa?"

Something's wrong! Something's wrong! Something's wrong! Those things inside her, they're-

"We've... We've come to..."

...different!

"Ali..." Alexa halted a dozen paces away, and her eyes seemed to lose their focus. "Yes. The things inside her... Monsters... They murdered our brothers and sisters!"

"Alexa, what-"

"I like my new name better too..."

Her gaze hardened and sharpened once more, locking onto Alison. Azure flames blazed around her hands.

"Emera calls me Sapphire."

Screaming Barracuda sprawled on her back and groaned. Everything was blurry, apart from the pain throbbing in her jaw. It wasn't the first time she'd been punched whilst playing. Probably not even the seventh. Numerous assailants floated around her swimming brain, shouting abuse and insulting her music. Wankers...

"Piss o-"

The word died on her lips, as two cyan lights burned away the haze. A masked face hovered above her. Fingers grasped her throat -- squeezing, crushing, killing.

She clawed at him with her left hand, grabbing and slapping at the smooth hardness of his mask, trying to gouge those cyan slits. But his face was impenetrable. Strong and invulnerable in the center of her darkening vision. Invincible.

His face was. The rest of him wasn't.

Screaming Barracuda's right hand did a little squeezing and crushing of its own. But not on his neck.

The cultist's groan was higher than hers had been. His grip loosened. She struggled, twisting and slithering her body beneath his, until she could pull one leg free. The Piscarian rocker drove her boot heel into his chest.

He floundered backwards. Barra's hand scrabbled on the floor till it found the neck of her guitar.

The man howled, still falsetto, and lunged.

Wailing Doom cracked him in the side of the head. And despite her detractors' comments to the contrary, her instrument really did hurt much more when applied externally.

Screaming Barracuda kicked the crumpling weight aside, got up, and gawped at the two women who appeared at the end of the passage -- battling in the middle of a two-tone inferno.

Waves of fire crashed together. Blue and yellow met like rival oceans waging war. Long burning streams snaked from the beautiful apocalypse, slashing at both pyrokineticists' faces and outstretched arms. But other flames flashed across their flesh to intercept them. An incendiary aegis blocked each one, roaring defiance. Alexa Haelia's eyes glared from amidst her azure conflagration. Molten murder seethed in their fiery depths.

Those blue things want to kill us! They're... Unicorn!

"What?"

Unicorn!

Ali turned her head. And if they were crazy, so was she. Because a burning blue horn was pointing right at her chest. Her flames rushed around to intercept it. But fire or flesh, real or delusion, the unicorn smashed into her like a speeding truck. Ali flew across the corridor and thudded against the wall.

"Ugh... Show off..."

She lay on the floor, pain echoing through her bones. Alexa... Sapphire...

That's a stupid name! It's a pun! We're not going to be beaten by someone whose name's a pun!

...walked towards her. The woman's eyes glowered hotter and bluer than the serpentine tongues lapping around her body.

"You were right," Sapphire said. "The unicorn worked... But there's something better."

The animal rose up on its hind legs, goring the air with flaming hooves. Its body surged outward, expanded like an inflating balloon. Expanded and shifted -- twisting, changing. Masses of fire lashed out from its back and stretched into a pair of pteropine wings.

A dragon! It's a dragon!

"I know!"

Ali braced one hand against the floor and raised the other. Yellow tongues flickered across her fingers, ready to flare and fly. But Alison Haelia felt like a woman standing on the roof of her house, about to try blowing back a hurricane.

We'll handle this!

"How?"

We have an idea!

"But..."

We saw it in the song!

"I don't... Hey!"

Fire gushed from her fingertips. But not at Sapphire, or her grow-your-own dragon. It stopped in the air between them. Stopped and grew, spreading and shaping. Clay giving birth to a sculptor's dreams. The amorphous mass settled into a humanoid form, fashioning head and limbs. Flames softened into features.

"That's... me?" Ali said.

No. You don't have pointy ears...

The dragon roared. Pyromancer Elyssa smirked, and tossed a fireball at its face.

"Again?" Screaming Barracuda said.

She rolled over, got her hands under her, and pushed herself up -- lifting her bruised face from the floor. Which tosser had punched her this time? Whoever the bastard was, her ears were bloody ringing from the... the... punch.

No, not a punch...

The Piscarian sat back on her legs, trying to shake the cobwebs from her head. Wailing Doom lay beside her. She picked it up and hugged it to her chest. Fingers twanged across its strings.

"So she shot him in the face! Just shot him in the fa-a-a-a-ace! Yeah, she shot him in the face! Oh, oh, oh, in the fa-a-a-a-ace!"

The familiar lyrics and tune wrapped themselves around the universe and crammed it back into order. Barra stood up and stared at the aftermath of Armageddon. The remains of furniture and interior walls lay before her in a melted, mangled mess. Hot, dusty stench filled her nose.

She'd been lucky. The room she'd dived into had been at the edge of the destruction, otherwise her publicist would already be busy setting up the Screaming Barracuda holographic post-death tour.

"Ali..."

Barra glanced at the door to the passage. But at this point entrances were fairly optional. She walked across the room instead, stepping over rubble and subdued patches of fire, and through the next, until she came to the smoking, blackened corridor.

"Yeah..." a voice said. "That... That... worked..."

"Ali? Is that you?"

The musician stood above the supine woman, whose face and charred clothes were almost as dark as the walls.

"Yeah..."

Barra's eyes narrowed.

"How do I know it's really you?" The Piscarian grasped her guitar by the neck and hefted it overhead like a battleaxe. "That other bint looked the bloody same!"

"Short hair! Look!"

"Yeah? Maybe it got burned off!"

"Crethnerith."

"Oh, screw you." Screaming Barracuda lowered her weapon.

"Alexa?"

Barra looked around, turned back to Ali, and grimaced.

"Ali... She's... I'm sorry."

The pyrokineticist said nothing for some moments. She clambered to her feet, wincing as she moved her limbs, and didn't meet Barra's gaze.

"Let's get outside," Ali said at last. "Then I'll burn this place to the ground."

|-|

Game Over=
Game Over

"Want the last piece?" Talia said.

"Yeah!" Adrian said. "What was [Player's Name]'s plan? How did she-"

"I meant the last piece of poppadom."

She nodded at the white shard which rested among the crumbs, sharp and narrow like a blade.

"Oh... No, go ahead."

Talia took it with thumb and forefinger, held it up, and regarded it with a gaze that was almost mournful. She glanced at a nearby table. A young man and woman sat and laughed there, exchanging sweet words and starters. He shoveled his salad onto her plate. She retaliated by depositing a lamb chop on his. The man's hand came to rest on her fingers. Their eyes swam and shone with more than alcohol. Adrian Zanfran smiled.

"And the world goes on," Talia said. "People fall in love. Robots roll off TALOS' production lines. There are wars and peace and everything in-between."

She sighed, and dipped the shard into the little bowl of mango chutney. It came away bloodied with thick orange-gold that slid down the crisp whiteness in a slow, viscous rivulet. Her eye followed it for a long moment before she slipped the blade into her mouth.

Adrian waited while she crunched it between her teeth. And, mostly because he felt awkward just watching her eat, he reached for the jug of mango lassi. His tentacle's suckers latched onto the smooth glass, ignoring the handle. He looked to Talia. She nodded, and he topped her glass up before filling his own for the first time.

The drink was sweet and sugary. Thick, like a good milkshake. He took a long gulp, before the vodka's fire burned at the back of his mouth and made him cough.

"I thought all writers drank hard. That's what Ragnar's friend told me."

"Svana Spunbracher?"

"Yeah."

"I'll work on it." He waited for a second or two, then said: "Lady Hollister's assassination, and the massacre in the robot factory..."

"I already told you about those. If you want me to tell everything twice, it'll be a long meal."

"But... Does anyone else know? That the Kalaxians were responsible?"

"Maybe." She shrugged. "But if they do, we never heard anything about it. Just the official story -- same as everyone else. Centi Priders murdered Hollister, and anti-robot extremists attacked TALOS."

"Can I..."

"If you want to write about it, go ahead. Everyone'll think it's one more conspiracy theory."

"But-"

Adrian paused when the waiter appeared beside them, and murmured his thanks as the Rylattu laid out their main course. The curries steamed in oval dishes -- the masala a rich, bright red like a stop sign; his vindaloo a deep, dark brown, with tiny tentacles poking above the sauce. Spicy scents curled in the air between the diners, ethereal fingers teasing, tantalizing, and beckoning. The bowl of colorful basmati rice lent its own subtler fragrances to the melange. So did the neat triangles of garlic naan.

When the Rylattu was gone, Adrian fiddled with his glass.

"You don't have to wait for me," Talia said. She ladled rice onto her plate. "If I had any table manners left after the military, eating with Ragnar killed them. Every meal was like a massacre."

"I'm just scared of the vindaloo."

She laughed, and it warmed her face.

"It's been a while since I've had an anaconda masala. Every time, I think of that last dinner we had with Illaria."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I want to remember that night, for the rest of my life. We didn't have time for a big meal before we moved against cult. Everyone was too busy getting ready. Kind of a shame, but it wouldn't have been the same anyway. And I think we all said everything that needed to be said..."

"Hey, Tel," you say.

"Hey."

His mech's cockpit canopy flips open, revealing the prince. Lights from the control panels, bright in the gloomy vehicle bay, illuminate his face in shades of green and yellow that remind you of Halloween zombie costumes.

"I was testing the night vision."

"Yeah?" You scale the mech, finding familiar hand and footholds, and sit beside him. "You should be more worried about the psionic dampeners."

"They'll work. And those cult guys can't use their psychic stuff if we're chainsawing them."

"We? Please tell me you didn't..."

"Yeah! My palace guards use laser-edged chainsaws now!"

You grimace. When the Kalaxians established a base on a world near Gallea, they probably didn't think it'd bring a band of chainsaw-wielding lunatics down on their heads. But that's life.

"I told them to hold off," Tel says, "in case the cult's watching my planet. They won't head out till I'm almost there. Then we'll hit them fast, like you said."

"Good thinking."

There's a moment of silence. It isn't uncomfortable -- you know each other far too well for that. But unspoken things hover around you, begging to be said.

"I'm sorry," you say.

"Huh?" He stops fiddling with his controls and looks round. "For what?"

"For not being there, when you needed me. By the time I heard..."

"It's okay. You've been busy, getting kicked through windows and stuff."

"Great... I go through one window, and suddenly that's all anyone wants to talk about."

"Hey, it got more hits on the net than anything else you've done."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Sometimes I think we should just burn the galaxy down and start over..."

"I'll need a bigger mech for that."

"You'll need a bigger one anyway. In a couple of years you'd have to cram yourself into that cockpit."

"Yeah... Guess so."

"It's a shame." You pat the armor plating next to your thigh. "I'll miss this old thing. We've been through a lot together, huh?"

"Us and the mech, or you and me?"

"Both. Maybe the next one can have a crown, and you can take it to your coronation."

He looks away, and his smile fades.

"Tel..." You think of changing the subject, of talking about happier, carefree things. But what kind of friend would you be then? "Talia said your seneschal..."

"Bermund?"

"She said he wants you to take the throne. That there're some things a prince can't do, legally."

"Yeah..."

"If Gallea needs a-"

"My father was a king. He was smart, and..."

"Tel, I've seen you hack systems, repair this mech of yours, and guide a missile to make an impossible hit."

"Yeah, I'm smart at games, and blowing stuff up! Not ruling a planet!"

"But you're young enough to learn, and you have advisors to help you until you do."

"Wu said he'd help teach me."

You laugh before you can help it. He looks at you, lips twitching -- confused but still infected by your merriment.

"Sorry. I was just imagining you dressed in mini Wu robes, stroking a fake moustache while you plan secret deeds. And Wu may be gone, but he left all those writings behind. Besides, he isn't the only leader we know. Just don't take advice from Dupont..."

"My father was a good king, and he died because of me."

"Tel..."

"Don't tell me he didn't. If I hadn't attacked the Centurians, they wouldn't have killed him!"

"If you hadn't attacked the Centurians, they'd have killed me, Illaria, and Talia. And after that? With no one to stop them? The Besalaad might be running human space by now. The decisions we've made, the things we've done, change everything. Good and bad. If you just think about the bad stuff, you're letting the past ruin the present and the future."

He stares at you.

"What?" you say.

"That's the kind of stuff the Princess used to say."

"Yeah?" You smile and let out a soft sigh. "I've been inside my head, and other people's heads, a lot lately. Maybe it's making me think more than I used to. Or maybe I'm just getting philosophical in my old age."

Silence descends once more, soft and warm. Filled with welcome ghosts and memories. Telemachus fiddles with his controls, while you watch him work.

"Think you can beat Noir?" he says, without looking at you.

"Maybe. I have to try. Even if we take out the rest of the cult, Noir's too dangerous to be left out there."

"What if he wins?"

"I don't know, Tel. I don't know..."

"You'd better kick his ass then, huh?"

"Yeah."

Literature and Lacerations

"Did you bring a gun?" Svana Spunbracher said.

"I didn't think that would be appropriate..." Rektor Hrolfsson sighed and looked at her.

The hovercar's autopilot kicked in with a soft beep, seizing control from the distracted driver. It guided the vehicle round the next turn and along a streetlight-splashed road.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. I've got two pistols."

Svana tapped the dashboard. A hatch slid open. The compartment's bright glow bathed her face, almost the same shade of gold as her hair.

"Take this axe," she said. "If they get close, start hacking."

Rektor winced.

"I don't know..." he said.

"Trust me." Svana bit her lip. Her eyes widened. "Grenades! You should have grenades, in case they attack in a horde."

"I'll pick some up on the way."

"Promise? I don't want you going in there without grenades."

"Promise."

"And get someone good to watch your back. Not Greta. She'll start running before the first axe flies. Maybe Donnie. Especially if he has the machinegun with him."

"I will." He smiled at her. "Bet you're glad you don't have to go to these things anymore, huh?"

"No kidding. I always hated parent-teacher night. Ugh... It's like they don't even know how crappy their kids are. You tell them their girl's a screw up who comes to class with chems leaking out of her nose, and they act like you've pissed on an angel."

The car slowed down. It stalked the illuminated store fronts like a jungle cat, creeping past wandering shoppers and slumbering rows of parked vehicles.

"Things aren't so bad now," Rektor said. "Most of the kids are still scared your friend'll come back and rip their legs off."

"Good."

A deep, growling voice sounded from the dashboard.

"You have reached your destination. Get out and pillage!"

The passenger door rose, and a gust of warm city air toyed with Svana's tresses.

"There's still time to blow off parent-teacher night and join me," she said.

"I'd love to. But then I'd go in tomorrow and find Greta's head stuck on a spike."

He leaned over and kissed her.

"Good luck," she said.

"You too."

Svana Spunbracher got out of the car, and watched it pull away. She wondered if she should call Ragnar Ragnarsson. Maybe he could recommend a good death squad, just in case the educator ended up needing a little fire support. But Rektor had survived these things before.

She sighed and turned towards the door. Svana paused there for a moment, inspecting her reflection in its dark glass. Her hair looked pretty. Nice and curly, with good volume. But her expression... She experimented for a few moments, widening and narrowing her eyes, pursing and curving her lips.

The door swung open. Svana's face froze somewhere between somber wisdom and a coquettish smirk. The bald man stared for a long moment, before shuffling around her. He kept his eyes fastened on Svana, perhaps suspecting that she was a madwoman who might eat his kidneys the moment he looked away. She sighed. When the door clicked back into place, she watched her cheeks redden.

Svana adjusted her facial features once more. After a minute or so, she settled on a look of jovial genius which seemed appropriate for an author. Thus armed and armored, she stepped into the bookshop's warmth.

A tall, gorgeous blonde woman in a mail bikini was waiting beyond the doorway. Svana had just enough time to wonder if she'd walked into a strip club by mistake, before the scantily clad female spoke.

"I'm Valkyrie Bloodsword, author of The Saga of Drunken Ragnar! Come here tonight at seven and I'll teach you about the secrets..." The literary valkyrie winked and leaned forward -- contorting her body in a way which indicated that cleavage was more important than spinal health. "...of creative writing."

Svana glared at the hologram.

"It doesn't even look like me!" she murmured.

Svana Spunbracher clenched her fists, and wished her agent was within punching range. But he wasn't. She'd have to pummel him later -- and hope the little pervert didn't enjoy it too much.

"I'm Valkyrie Bloodsword, author of-"

She walked past the image, which thankfully fell silent with no one there to appreciate its unrealistic anatomy. The frown melted off Svana's brow an instant later. It was hard to stay angry in one of her favorite places.

Dark wooden bookcases surrounded her on three sides. Each of them was a work of art; every inch of wood bore sculpted images, depicting longships, sea serpents, geometric patterns, rows of blooming roses, and sundry other designs. Those decorated shelves framed leather-bound volumes in a multitude of sizes and colors. Svana reached for a book at random. Its purple spine slid out from its neighbors' embrace, bearing Alexander Pope's name alongside that of an ancient epic. Svana turned it in her hands, stroking the jagged edges of yellow-brown pages, and brought it near to her nose. It smelled old and ponderous and wonderful. The scent was synthetic. And she knew the pages had come out of the printer that way, simulating books from the days when readers cut knowledge free with a blade. But she loved it all the same.

Thus fortified, and with a smile of genuine contentment in lieu of her practiced expression, Svana returned the tome and walked between the bookcases. The path twisted and turned. A magical labyrinth sprawled around her, mysterious and decadent. Gloriously unintuitive. This wasn't a place for novices. Its paths had to be discovered, its secrets earned. And Svana Spunbracher knew them all.

"There you are!" Milly Tenderbrook's head, framed by a veritable bascinet of ginger hair, popped out from between the cases. "Oh... I thought you'd be wearing the costume. Doesn't matter! Doesn't matter! Come on -- they're all waiting."

She took Svana's arm and dragged her down a short, book-lined passage, towards a wooden relief sculpture of galloping, lance-wielding Arthurian knights. The bookshop owner pushed one of the double doors inwards, bisecting the impressive artwork. Svana followed her (without much choice in the matter, since she wanted to keep that arm) into the room reserved for author nights.

"Here she is, everyone!" Milly continued to yank the captured limb, pulling the writer up onto the stage -- as though she feared Svana might escape if left to her own devices. "Valkyrie Bloodsword!"

Svana Spunbracher found herself behind a lectern, gazing out at dozens of faces which seemed to hover above blurs of clapping hands. She waved. The audience was much as she'd expected. There were nerds sporting a range of amusing or incomprehensible t-shirts, a few people dressed like Ragnar Ragnarsson, a smattering of middle-aged women who looked like they'd just knocked back their seventh or eighth glasses of wine, and a couple of glaring malcontents -- the sort who only came to these things to complain about whichever element of the author's work most offended them. Svana had dealt with their kind before. She tended to take comfort in the fact that her fans would usually beat them up in the parking lot afterwards.

"Thank you, thank you!" Svana said. She waited a moment for the applause to die down. "Sagas! Back on Earth, our ancestors-"

"Die!"

"...believed that stories could... Huh?"

A young man with a freckled face stood up in the middle of the audience. He pulled up his t-shirt (which bore a cartoonish, two-dimensional replica of Ragnar's muscular physique), and reached for the pistol wedged behind his waistband.

"This is for... for... using the passive tense too much!" he said.

"The passive is a voice, not a tense!" Svana said. She shouted the words before she realized that this was perhaps the less important part of the situation at hand.

Everything slowed down. The lunatic's gun slipped out from his pants. His face twitched, and there was a faint flicker that betrayed his holographic disguise. Everyone else flickered too. Within the rapid thoughts bouncing around Svana Spunbracher's head, she wondered if the entire universe was being broadcast on faulty technology. That would explain a lot...

The gun rose.

So did everyone else. The entire audience leapt to their feet, and... expanded? Holograms blinked out of existence. Muscles rippled. Chain armor glinted. Energy pulsed blue, orange, and red along the edges of swords and axes. The eclectic audience sprouted into a host of muscular men and women who encircled the deranged fan. The gunman gawped. The Niflungs roared. Weapons rose and fell.

Blood sprayed. Milly cried out. Chunks of gore flew in all directions.

Something larger hurtled at Svana's face. She caught it between her hands out of instinct, and stared into the deranged fan's eyes. They were surprisingly nonchalant for someone who'd just been decapitated. Then the disguise vanished.

A featureless mask... Just like her omnicidal friend had warned her about. Svana Spunbracher tossed the severed head over her shoulder and gazed at the blood-spattered audience.

"Everyone?" she said. "Really?"

The warriors exchanged sheepish looks.

"Sigurd told us to keep an eye on you," a seven foot tall valkyrie said.

"Death to the Spinebreaker's enemies!" a berserker said.

"Death!" the others chorused.

They began to bustle along the rows of chairs, making for the exit. Svana's eyes narrowed.

"Stop right there! I came here to give a talk about literature, and I'm not giving it to an empty room."

"But..." the towering Valkyrie said.

"Sit down!"

The warriors looked at one another, then at the warlord's glaring daughter, and returned to their seats. Svana Spunbracher gave a little grunt of satisfaction.

"As I was saying... Back on Earth, our ancestors..."

Between a Snuuth and A Hard Place

Arshad Malik's eyes were closed. They had been so for at least an hour, during which he'd slept for perhaps three dispersed minutes and pretended to slumber for the rest. Yet the old woman sitting on his right, whose boney elbow dug into his side like a torturer's tool, was still babbling away. Light from her datapad brightened the darkness behind his lids.

"And this is my other great-grandson, Crispin. He's a chem dealer on Drekchester. Such a nice boy! He sends me some of my favorite pills every Christmas, and prints little angels on them -- just for me. I don't like his husband though, because he's always..."

Malik tried to tune her out and focus his hearing elsewhere. But the alternative wasn't much better. On his left -- within rolls of hot, sweaty flesh that spilled over the armrest and seemed on the verge of entombing him beneath an avalanche of pure fatness -- came a series of popping, churning, burbling noises. They culminated in a breaking of wind which might've heralded judgment day. And the ensuing stench made Malik long for that apocalypse. God... What had the fat bastard been eating? Sewage? The smell was almost physical, smothering his face with thick, fecal warmth...

He turned his head away, opened his eyes, and gasped.

"Window!" he said. "Someone open a window!"

"Sir..." A Piscarian stewardess trotted over. "We're in space. If these windows opened, it'd kill us all."

Her nose twitched. Her smile faltered. She clamped her hand to her mouth, and bright pink flesh bulged on either side of her face.

"I..." She backed away down the narrow aisle. "I'll bring you some smell-canceling nose buds!"

"Hmm?" the Snuuth said. He sniffed the air. "Is there a smell?"

"I can't smell anything these days, dear," the old woman said. "Not since that last operation..."

She leaned over, driving her elbow deeper into Malik's body until he was fairly certain its point scraped his spine, and held her datapad out. The Snuuth's bulk fell upon him as the alien tried to get a better look at the screen. Malik let out a wheeze, while the alien smothered him and old woman ground his organs to mush.

"Look at the mess that surgeon made of my nose! My daughter-in-law's a solicitor..."

"Like a prostitute?" the Snuuth said.

"A little bit. She's a lawyer. She said I could sue that hospital for..."

Malik extracted himself from the alien's flab and slumped over onto the woman, gasping for breath.

"Young man! Young man!" The boney joint thudded into him again and again. "You're taking up too much space! Young man!"

He groaned, and tried shield his bruised ribs.

"Attention!" The perky female voice echoed over the ship's speakers. "We're approaching our destination. Please resume your seats as we prepare for atmospheric entry. Thank you for flying Neo-American Spaceways. Oh... And please be aware that two of our cargo compartments came open during the flight. If your belongings were among those accidentally jettisoned into space, you'll be entitled to claim a free cup of coffee on your next Neo-American Spaceways flight. Thank you."

The Snuuth shifted like a collapsing mountain. Malik exhaled and righted himself. The old woman sniffed, and murmured something about young people.

Sanderson never had to fly interstellar economy class. That thought burned in Malik's brain till it seemed as though his eyes might ignite -- and possibly kill them all in an explosion of detonated methane. The bastard got to take the company ship on his business trips. Well, not after today. When Malik got to that meeting and wowed their clients with the presentation, his bosses would have to take notice. Then Sanderson would be the one taking commercial flights like a bum! Malik tried to comfort himself with this dream as the ship rocked, hurling him into the Snuuth's gut and then onto the woman's elbow.

The cabin shuddered. Metal screeched and whined. A few children screamed. Someone yelled, "Death to Neo-America!" -- though that was fairly standard, in Malik's experience. He'd heard about a nun who became a mass murderer after putting up with one of these trips.

But the ship came to a halt without either bursting into flames or smashing them into the spaceport building. So at least there was that.

"Please leave the cabin as soon as possible," the speaker-voice said, "so we can board our next passengers. If the person in front of you is causing delays, please push them aside."

A surge of people swept Malik along, and spurted him through the exit hatch like the cork from a champagne bottle. He landed on all fours. A woman wearing a stiletto stood on his hand. Someone else kicked him in the butt. He scrambled to his feet, glaring, but the perpetrators were long gone. The tide of human and alien flesh had borne them away.

"Are you okay?" a woman's voice said.

Malik turned around, and a torrent of pent-up abuse rushed up his throat, ready to unleash itself in a cataclysm of bitter sarcasm. But it faltered on his tongue and slid back down again. The woman standing in front of him was beautiful. Hair like ebon silk, mysterious and enticing in its rich blackness, shaped and stroked gentle olive features. Deep purple eyes and soft, shapely lips the exact same color held genuine concern.

"I... Yeah," Malik said.

The lady reached for him, and he almost stepped back or raised his arms out of instinct. She smiled, as though sensing his hesitation, and adjusted his tie.

"There we go. If you're going somewhere you need to wear a tie, you have to look smart."

Arshad Malik beamed. Smugness expanded in his stomach. And Sanderson had said ties were ridiculous, archaic...

"You must be here for something important," she said.

"I'm giving a presentation to some very influential clients."

"Good luck!"

"Thanks! I-"

The lady leaned in and kissed his cheek. She laughed at his surprise.

"I'm staying at the Tritac on Decros Street." She bit her lip, and it made her lovelier. "Maybe after you impress them, we can go for a drink?"

"Uh, yeah! I-"

She giggled again and slipped away with the streaming crowd. Malik stood there for some moments, barely aware of the shoulders bumping into him and the accompanying swearwords. His fingers rested where her lips had been just a moment before. His eyes shone. Things were looking up already!

He laughed, ignoring the blank stares it attracted, and let the flow of people carry him towards the spaceport building on its inexorable currents.

Hot Flash

"You stay out of sight," Rachel Thrane said. "I'll give you a brain prod when I've got him."

"I always have to play back up," Sandeep Singh said. "Just because I'm not psionic..."

"No. It's because you don't look like this."

Rachel performed a slow, elegant pirouette. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the leafy branches and lingered on her curves alongside Sandeep's gaze. The tight purple jumpsuit was more like body paint than a garment.

"And by the way, I can see what you're thinking."

"Oh! I..." Sandeep blushed. "I... I was just..."

"Yeah." Rachel rolled her eyes. "So, one more time..."

"You go to the door. He opens it, and you do psychic stuff."

"Right. If he knows where [Player's Name] is, I get that info -- and the grandmistress will love us forever. After that..." She sighed. "When I said she'd love us, that's not what I meant! Get that out of your head. Now!"

"I can't help it! If I know you're looking in there, I can't help it! I get embarrassed, and then I think of that stuff, and then I get more embarrassed!"

"We're going to have to work on your mental discipline, and... Really? Discipline?"

"Stay out! Just stop looking, okay! For the love of the wyrm-mother, stop!"

"Fine. But seriously, work on that. Now, the rest of the plan..."

"You get what you need out of his brain, then send me the signal. I'll come along and shoot him in the head."

"Just don't come before I tell you. Flashheart's dangerous. If I don't have him locked down..."

"I know. I've got this."

"Good. Let's go."

Rachel stepped out from the little copse of trees and darted across the lawn. Sandeep watched her run, and hoped she wasn't reading his thoughts. He waited a few moments, till she was near the house, then followed. The building they approached was large but otherwise unremarkable and unassuming. He'd somehow expected to find the exterior lit up in the manner of a Cytheran brothel, with naked women lounging around the gardens like weary nymphs. But apparently the microcosmic Sodom and Gomorrah he'd heard about were locked within its walls instead.

Sandeep crouched behind a corner of the house. He drew his pistol and leaned around. Rachel stood at the front door. She looked at him, while her voice whispered in his mind.

"Remember -- wait there."

"Got it." He thought the words instead of speaking them. Then other thoughts intervened. "Oh... Damn it!"

Her sigh echoed in his skull. Sandeep winced. It wasn't his fault! Whenever he knew someone was reading his mind, his asshole subconscious decided to sabotage him by making him think indecent thoughts!

Rachel rang the doorbell. Sandeep leaned back, putting himself out of sight. A few moments later he heard a man's brash voice.

"I'd ask what brings a lovely lady like you to my doorstep, but I think we both know the answer's me! So let's get you inside, peel off that jumpsuit and... Hey! What..."

"[Player's Name]," Rachel said. Her voice was soft and booming at the same time. A sweet avalanche that echoed across the planet and whispered inside Sandeep's mind. "Tell me everything you know about [Player's Name]."

"You're a saucy mare, aren't you? Five seconds after meeting me, and you're already in my deep dark places! Normally it's the other way around!"

"Your bravado won't save you! I can see into your soul! Into your deepest... secret... innermost... Oh, Flashy!"

"Huh?" Sandeep said.

Rachel's voice disappeared from his skull with a soft pop, as though his brain had unfurled to recapture that stolen space. He looked around the corner. And his mouth hung open.

Captain Flashheart's trim, handsome figure stood there, wearing a red jumpsuit and a woman in purple. Rachel's arms and legs were wrapped around him so tight that Sandeep might've thought she was assassinating him with a grappling hold -- except for the face that her tongue was down his throat.

"What the hell?" He got up and ran over. "Rachel? What're you-"

Their mouths parted. Rachel gazed into Flashheart's eyes, and if she'd seen the expression on her own face, she may've recognized it from Sandeep Singh's deepest, most embarrassing fantasies.

"I wasted my life worshipping Kalaxia!" she said.

"Bloody right!" Flashheart said. "If that silly blue cow I saw in your head comes back, she'll be worshipping me!"

"Rachel!" Sandeep said. "You-"

"Oh, shut up, culty!"

The captain drew his pistol, locked lips with her again, and shot Sandeep in the face.

Sports Entertainment

The security line inside the spaceport was long. In fact, it was so long that Malik suspected some of the older passengers might die of old age before they reached the front -- and he'd have to step over their corpses. But that was okay. Today this additional inconvenience of commercial space travel couldn't remove the smile from his face. Even a targeted nuclear strike or extinction-level meteor would've found that difficult.

"Take your shoes off," one of the security people up ahead said.

"I'm a cyborg," the traveler in question said. "Those are my feet."

"Then take your feet off!"

The woman... Malik didn't even know her name, but that didn't matter. What mattered were those amethyst eyes and lips... Her gorgeous face... That lithe but voluptuous figure. And she liked him!

"We're going to have to confiscate those, sir."

"What? Have your brains been melted into slimy filth-goo? If you take my doomsday weapons, how will I destroy stink-beasts with my superior technology?"

"Visit a gun store."

She liked him! Malik jumped up and tried to click his heels together. He missed, and gave himself a hard bang on the calf instead. But that was fine. She liked him!

"And one final question, ma'am. Were you involved in the Centurian genocide?"

"Yeah, I fragged some Centi escape pods. So what?"

"Then thank you for your service, and please accept this complimentary Prince Telemachus badge."

"Cool."

She swam in Malik's mind. Her naked body pinned him down... Those beautiful eyes stared into his, promising him everything the galaxy had ever kept back for men like Sanderson and his piece of crap bosses with their fancy ships and-

"Sir!"

"Huh?" Malik blinked.

"You're next." A Vlarg in an orange jumpsuit stood in front of him. Her three red eyes seemed to stare at different parts of his face. "Get into the chamber."

"Oh. Sure."

Arshad Malik stepped onto the platform, raised his arms, and waited for the lights to play across his body. That one on the right was the same color as her lips... His cheek burned with glorious, radiant warmth. Tomorrow he'd ace his presentation. Then he'd go to her hotel and-

He frowned. Why were all those sirens going off?

Malik looked around, through the chamber's curved, tinted glass walls, and his jaw hung open. Men and women in sealed orange suits were running around out there -- waving wands at everyone, like conjurers performing magic tricks.

"Hey!" he said. He grabbed at the door and tugged it. "What's happening? What's-"

"Sir!" a woman's voice said. It came from beyond a helmet's opaque window. She pressed her gloved hands against his glass prison. "Do not try to leave the chamber! I repeat, do not try to leave that chamber!"

"What's happening? What the-"

"The med teams will be here any minute, and they'll put you in quarantine. Don't resist! Your condition is highly infections. They'll use their chainsaws and take you there in bags if they have to!"

In Malik's mind, purple lips laughed.

"Hey! You can't be here!"

The stocky human in the blue uniform stepped in front of Leilarki and held out his hands to block her. He was shouting, but the horrendous din still almost drowned him out.

"Huh?" the Piscarian said. She leaned towards him, turned her head, and cupped her hand around her green ear.

"I said..."

He took another step closer and pressed something on his belt. A low, electric thrum vibrated in the air around them -- muffling the cacophony from the arena, quietening the crowd's shrieks to a dull murmur.

"...you can't be here! Fans aren't allowed on this level!"

"I wanted a better view," the Piscarian said.

"Yeah? Then buy a front row tick-"

He gurgled and fell backwards. When he hit the ground, the voices of thousands of Twisted Steel fans flooded the corridor once more. Leilarki jerked her left wrist. The bloody blade slid back into its dock beneath her green flesh. There was a mild quiver while its cleaning systems went to work. She crouched down, undid the guard's belt clasp, and pulled it off him.

When it was around her own waist, she turned it back on and let out a sigh. She hadn't expected the losers to be so loud. Rookie mistake. Either way, she needed some aural implants so in future she could adjust the surrounding volume herself. Maybe Kalaxia would provide... After all, Professor Bonderbrand would be grateful for this one.

Leilarki glanced down at the body and shrugged. No one else was scheduled to patrol this part of the stadium for at least fifteen minutes. And if she tried to drag him somewhere, she might miss her window. So the Piscarian walked past his corpse and found the door she was looking for.

She opened it a crack and peered through. But the intel was good. Whatever this little balcony was used for, it was empty. There weren't even any seats. A deactivated terminal was the only furnishing. She stepped inside, closing the door behind her, and went over to the waist-high barrier. Leilarki wasn't prone to vertigo, but the view still made her stomach flutter. The crowd fell away below -- a multicolored landslide of t-shirts and waving signs, cascading towards the ring.

"Perfect," she said.

Her cybernetic leg's compartment opened with a click and a hiss. She pulled out the metal rod and pressed a button on its side. Leilarki smiled when it unfolded. This rifle always reminded her of a toy she'd had as a kid, though that one had deployed itself into a robotic shark.

The Piscarian knelt down and rested the barrel on the balcony's lip.

Exactly four minutes and forty-two seconds later (she'd wasted eighteen more seconds with the guard than she'd anticipated), the crowd got to their feet, waved their arms and signs, and clamored loud enough to be obnoxious even over the noise-dampening field. It was the best signal Leilarki had ever had on a job.

The young man in black and gold business attire strutted down the long aisle which bisected the sea of spectators, swaggering like he owned the place -- which was appropriate, under the circumstances. He stopped to bump fists with one fan, punch another, and kiss a third. Curiously, all three seemed equally delighted in his wake. He sprang up the steps leading to the ring apron and slipped between the ropes.

Leilarki looked through her scope, zooming in on his face. That was him. And if there had been any doubt, it would've vanished when his voice reverberated around the arena -- louder than the crowd's roar.

"I'm Shane Vortex, damn it, and..."

She fired.

"...no piece of crap assassin's going to take me out!"

The Piscarian's eyes widened.

"Hologram!" she said.

"That's right, sweetie," a female voice said.

Leilarki spun round, leveling the rifle. Green metal flashed. Something crashed into her jaw...

"Your main event!" someone said.

The crowd... Shouting... Screaming... Roaring... Thousands and thousands of demonic, bloodthirsty throats all clamoring.

She opened her eyes.

"What..."

Everything was strange. Distorted. Her limbs and face were trapped, enclosed... It was a moment or two before Leilarki realized she was wearing armor. Her mind reeled.

"Shane Vortex..." The words bellowed from the stadium's sound system. "...versus Fried Fish!"

"Fried Fish..." she murmured. "Stupid... Stupid... name."

She stood up and shook the cobwebs from her head. Her vision began to clear, and she gawped at a myriad faces.

"Come on!" Shane Vortex said.

Leilarki whirled round towards the sound of his voice, and stared across the ring at a figure dressed in a black and gold battlesuit.

"These people paid to see slaughter," he said, "and they're going to get it!"

He charged. And then everything got very quick, blurry, and painful for the Piscarian.

Multheru

Telemachus stared out of the shuttle's window, into the void where far-off stars twinkled like errant pixels, and remembered.

"You know why they're called TALOS? It stands for The Alliance of Lambda Omicron Systems. That's what their part of space used to be called. But you know why else they picked that name? Because there used to be this big bronze robot called Talos, back on Earth. That was a long time ago... A hundred years, or something. Maybe two hundred. And TALOS make robots. Did I tell you that TALOS made my mech? I'm going to get them to make me a new one, with rockets and stuff."

The prince grimaced. Had he really been like that? It seemed a lifetime ago. The memories belonged to a foolish little boy, a stranger who didn't know what waited for him out in the galaxy: Horror. Loss. Sorrow. And friends who were worth more than all the mechs there'd ever be.

He thought about opening a com channel. Of reaching out to [Player Name], Lu Bu, Ragnar, and Talia -- who'd all be flying to their targets, just as he was. Hearing their voices, sharing warm words... It would bring a smile to his face. Maybe laughter from his lips. It would banish the quietness, the empty darkness ahead. But he couldn't. Because if he needed that comfort, he'd be that silly little boy again. And that boy wasn't going to win a battle. He was a warrior now. Just like the others. When he saw them again, it'd be with cultists' blood and brains splattered all over his mech. They'd all talk about their share of the fighting. About the big victory they'd won. Maybe he'd even thrash [Player Name] at more videogames to celebrate...

That thought was enough. It brought the smile he needed.

The communication console flashed to life in the same instant, and for a second he expected to see their faces -- Talia's smirk, Ragnar's grin, Lu Bu's impassive but somehow jovial features, and [Player Name]'s look of bemused satisfaction; all of them, sharing his amusement. But Bermund Pelar appeared there instead.

"Your Highness!"

The seneschal's expression wiped away the prince's smile.

"What's wrong?"

"The UHW has Gallea locked down. No one's allowed to leave."

"They can't do that! Call Dupont. Tell him I'll blow his house up!"

"It's an anti-contagion protocol."

"Huh? Disease?"

"Passengers at all our major spaceports have tested positive for a highly infectious-"

"All of them?"

"Yes. Incoming passengers, on every continent. And all of them arrived from different planets or stations."

"It's an attack!"

"That's the only explanation. And the UHW came before we'd even sent out the alert. Someone told them we were infected before it happened!"

"How bad is it?"

"Our medical teams are treating everyone, and Dupont's people are helping. We're lucky. The disease they chose causes more panic than physical harm, and it usually takes a while to become fatal. Only a handful have died so far -- all elderly, or with existing health problems. Sending the UHW here so early saved lives. We'll be okay, but the guards..."

"They're stuck there. That's why the Kalaxians did it this way, so we couldn't send Gallean troops at them."

"I'm sorry, Highness. You'll have to call for support from elsewhere."

Telemachus glanced at the display on one of the monitors.

"There isn't time. I need to attack when the others do. If I don't, they might get away."

"But-"

"Make sure we look after everyone who's ill."

"Your Highness! You can't-"

The prince closed the connection. His young eyes smoldered, and flooded his face with a fury well beyond his years.

Multheru's eyes glittered, penetrating the darkness which had engulfed his chamber. Kalaxia's eyes glittered too. The statue was an ancient relic, the sole survivor of all the idols and ornaments his ancestors had fashioned from this rare stone before Huk-Kral bombs blasted it from existence. That had always seemed so very appropriate. And now, as many times before, the outspread, membranous wings and gleaming cyan eyes sharpened his thoughts with the wyrm-mother's wisdom.

"A dangerous attacker," the statue said.

"Yes." The Quiskerian's oral tentacles caressed her stone face. "Our power supply was well shielded from intrusion."

"Your era relies too much on such things. When your wondrous magic..."

"Technology."

"...fails, your defenses break open. Look. See who comes."

Her eyes flashed. So did Multheru's. His room was gone, and so were his tentacles -- as though merciless blades had hacked away at his face and limbs, sundering flesh, leaving a mutilated mess in their wake. But the horrendous sensation vanished as it always did. It was the price of wandering through one of the doorways which led into a brother or sister's mind.

"Multheru..."

Ljubica Durovic's voice was close. The two of them might've been standing side by side on a spaceship's bridge, gazing through a window instead of her eyes. But the blackness before them in that subterranean chamber was deeper and thicker, unsoftened by the cosmic lamps which studded the void. It thwarted the Quiskerian's borrowed sight.

"What do you sense?" he said.

"Nothing!" she said.

"Shielding... Where's-"

Ljubica's gasp tightened her throat and his own. Brilliant blue light flashed, throwing an electric glow over metal plates. There was a whooshing hiss, a sizzle, and a scream. Then darkness swallowed them all.

"Kalaxia!"

"KALAXIA!"

Her cry rippled against the tentacles in front of Multheru's mouth, and made them dart like striking snakes. The other cultists' shouts echoed around him. More lights flashed and blinked, crisscrossing the blackness. And a hulking metal shape lumbered through the plinking, fizzing shots -- a multicolored monstrosity painted in their glow.

More blue. This time it whirred around the mech's arm in a blinding surge of illumination and grating, churning noise.

"Kalax-"

The blueness slashed. Ljubica screamed. So did the Quiskerian, as oblivion swallowed him.

Multheru staggered. The tentacles writhing around his left hand brushed against something hard and cold. Its familiarity centered him, and deposited him back in his chamber.

The room brightened. His appendages thrashed -- but the sudden illumination wasn't a blazing weapon this time. The lighting had come back to life, bathing everything around him.

"The emergency power systems..."

That thought appeared in his head, uttered by several minds. Then there were screams.

"Stop him!" the statue said.

Its stone was hot under his flesh, and sent waves of warmth undulating through his body.

"Yes..." he said.

Multheru whirled round, tentacles sweeping and slashing. He grabbed the bulbous purple object that rested beside the idol. Another relic. A decrepit, irreplaceable treasure from a lost world, empire, and people.

"You'll have a new empire," the statue said, "if you destroy the betrayer's minions."

Multheru dashed for the exit, his movement halfway between a run and a slither. His hands and the serpentine appendages surrounding them all slotted into the bulky weapon's casing -- finding their individual berths.

"Destroy the betrayer's minions..."

The words echoed in the twitching of his tentacles.

Telemachus' mech stormed through the big vaulted chamber, beneath a smooth rock dome. A dragon glared at him on the right. He almost blasted it before he realized it was just a statue, carved from the same stone as the rest of the sculpted cavern. He fired the shot at a cultist's chest instead. The man's innards drifted from a gaping hole in a puff of red vapor.

"Kalaxia!"

A Snuuth leapt at him, swinging a crackling energy blade. The prince's chainsaw caught it in a blaze of sparks. A second later, the alien fell. In messy halves.

He turned round, looking for fresh worlds to conquer. Or at least fresh enemies whose gore could decorate this world's floor.

Then everything vanished in a magenta explosion.

Multheru tossed the spent weapon aside, and consigned another fragment of his species' legacy to history. It had done its work. Tendrils of violet smoke crept along the stone floor and snaked through the air, around the orange mass of wrecked metal. A shattered cockpit canopy lay atop the heap -- the shell of a broken black egg.

"Ugh..."

The groan came from beyond the mangled corpse. It made the Quiskerian's oral tentacles flutter. His mind reached out, probing.

"There you are..." His words and thoughts insinuated themselves into the boy's head, winding their way among clouds of pain and disorientation. "The silly little prince. Yes, I know of you... A stupid boy who rules a world, but lives life as a game. Who lets his friends drag him into absurd exploits so he can shirk his responsibilities. The galaxy laughs at you, child. They all laugh at the chainsaw-prince who never wants to grow up. And now never will..."

Multheru's mental appendages plunged for the kill.

Telemachus screamed. Agony, unimaginable anguish... A billion barbed blades scouring the surface of his brain... And through it all, amid endless oceans of pain, loomed a squid-like face. Its tentacles undulated with malice and laughter.

He was a fool. A stupid little boy.

"Yes." The alien's bizarre voice slithered and thundered. "A prince who killed his father, and failed an entire planet. Die knowing this, child. And know that your world belongs to Kalaxia."

Die... Yes. He was going to die. Die. Die. Die. Die like his father. Die like Illaria. Die like Wu Tenchu. Die like Talia, and Ragnar, and [Player Name], and-

"Come on, Tel!"

"Huh?"

The voice was soft; almost silent. Just a whisper. But it pierced the pain like a blaster shot.

"Come on, Tel!"

"Talia? Talia! Help! I-"

"Yes," the tentacled face said. "Die crying for friends who aren't here. Die screaming for help that will never come. Beg those phantoms, those memories-"

Memories... Memories! A spark glimmered in the prince's brain.

"Win!"

This was his brain. His mind. And he'd fought for it once before...

The universe shifted.

"Die alone. Die far from..."

Surprise rippled along the alien's tentacles like an electric shock. His body shuddered beneath the fabric of his azure and cyan robes -- twitching tangles of writhing, wriggling serpents. His head snapped one way and then the other. Oral appendages flailed and grasped. He stared at his surroundings and then down at his own hands, eyes widening into big black pools.

"What?" Telemachus said. "Didn't your crappy species ever invent 16-bit graphics?"

"Then your mind isn't so weak..."

"No."

The prince clicked his fingers. A stream of orange pixels descended, and swirled around his body like a swarm of insects. They settled into the shape of a battlesuit. A chainsaw arrived on his right arm with a happy whir.

"I'll enjoy destroying you," the alien said.

His head snapped forward. A row of tentacles shot at the prince, flying across the room -- stretching till each was dozens of feet long.

Telemachus somersaulted high above them. They retracted with a thwarted wet slapping sound.

The Quiskerian looked up at the airborne prince. His appendages lashed out again, soaring upwards to skewer him. But Telemachus dropped down under their attack and landed on his feet. He grinned. Even [Player Name] could've dodged that one...

Tentacles snapped back against the alien's face. He glowered at the prince for a split-second. Then Telemachus launched himself into a flying uppercut.

His chainsaw whirred and grinded. The alien screamed. Red pixels splashed all over the place.

"You win, Tel," Talia's voice said. "Perfect."

The 16-bit world disintegrated, and the real universe's superior graphics rushed in to replace it.

Telemachus grabbed his communicator.

That stupid alien had been right about one thing...

"Bermund?" he said.

"Your Highness, are you-"

"I'm fine. But I need you to do something. After they get rid of that disease, and lift the quarantine, start arranging the coronation. Gallea needs a king."

It was time to stop playing games.

|-|

Guns and Dragons=
Guns and Dragons

Hot tears streamed down Adrian Zanfran's cheeks. Ribbons of glistening snot tricked from open sinuses. He snatched his napkin up and made a clumsy, jerking swipe that smeared them across his face. Talia raised her eyebrow.

"Hey, I love Tel too," she said, "but-"

Adrian gasped. Short, sharp breaths shook his face and chest. He scraped his tongue back and forth against his upper incisors, trying to scour it into blessed oblivion.

"Oh!" Talia said. "Too hot for you?"

"Yes!"

His voice was a groaning warble, and brought fresh trickles from nose and eyes. His entire head was on fire. Heat throbbed on his cheeks, scalp, and damp brow.

"Waiter!" She waved at the Rylattu. "Medic!"

Adrian's tentacle groped for the glass of lassi. It tipped, splashing orange gore on the tablecloth, but his suckers latched on before it could topple.

"I don't think-" Talia said.

He didn't either. He brought it to his face so fast he almost glassed himself, and glugged for his life. For a second there was relief. Blessed, blessed coolness. Then the spice returned, having formed a new alliance with the vodka's fire.

"Here, puny human!" the waiter said.

He leaned forward to set a jug down amongst the dishes. Adrian seized it with both tentacles before it touched the table, and poured creamy, sloshing milk down his throat, chin, and shirt in equal measure.

"Thanks..." he said, after some moments.

He handed the empty jug back to the Rylattu, mopped himself with his napkin, and met Talia's gaze. Adrian winced.

"Sorry!"

"You've got something," Talia said. She tapped her index finger against her philtrum.

Blood rushed to Adrian's cheeks, adding its warmth to the vindaloo's. He found a corner of the napkin that wasn't saturated with milk and used it to blow his nose.

"Sorry!"

Adrian Zanfran tried not to imagine what his mother would've said, if she'd seen him sitting there at the dinner table with a leaking nose -- in flagrant violation of the etiquette she'd instilled in him. For that matter, he didn't want to consider what the woman sitting opposite must think of him. But Talia laughed.

"Don't worry," she said. "That's just weakness leaving the body. Want to swap?"

She gestured at the oval dish in front of her plate.

"If... If you wouldn't mind..."

"Go for it." She took hold of the two dishes and shuffled them around. "You'll like it better."

She ladled vindaloo sauce and floppy tentacles onto her pilau rice. Adrian added thick masala sauce and chunks of anaconda to his own. Talia took a forkful of her new meal, while he did the same.

"Not bad," she said. She spoke from one side of her mouth whilst chewing with the other. "Good amount of spice."

Adrian wondered where in the universe curry sauce hot enough to be used as a Rylattu doomsday weapon qualified as 'good'. But apparently the answer was Manchester. He eyed the brown sauce with suspicion, half expecting it to make another attempt on his life, and tasted the masala.

It was smooth, rich, and creamy.

"Like it?"

He nodded and ate another forkful while Talia drank her lassi.

"Telemachus..." he said, once his mouth was vacant. Adrian clamped his jaws shut to stifle a burp.

"Tel's grown up a lot over the years. Sometimes, I can't even believe he's the same kid who used to stomp around in a mech. Then we play videogames, and it all comes rushing back. He still goes for the chainsaws -- every time."

"He's got the highest approval ratings of any king, emperor, tyrant, or despot in human space. Higher than Xagrak Treel -- and she eats people who give her a 'disapprove' on those surveys."

"We knew he had it in him. They'd all be proud. Wu... Illaria..."

She looked away and sighed.

"So..." Adrian said. He waited for a second or two, unwilling to interrupt her contemplations. But curiosity burned almost as hot as the death-curry. "[Player Name] and Noir..."

Talia turned back to him, with the ghost of a smile on her lips.

"I'm getting to that..."

"Hey, Ragnar..."

You've seen a lot of things explode over the course of your life. In many cases you were even responsible for said detonations, either through the judicious use of small arms or by directing heavier bombardments from a vehicle or turret. On a battlefield you could probably saunter among them quite cheerfully as you carried out your objectives. And in the middle of space combat, you'd wind your way between dying ships without batting an eye. But such heroic nonchalance deserts you for the moment.

When you walk into the Silver Shadow's training room, the ensuing explosion makes you dart backwards, swear, and almost drop the things in your hands.

"Yeah?" the Niflung says.

He stands in the middle of the mats, looking you in the eye. If the broken stump at his boots or the debris now scattered around the room bother him, he gives no sign.

"My Wing Chun dummy..."

Chunks of wood lie between you. Some of them sport cylindrical appendages that lie mournful and useless like the limbs of slaughtered soldiers.

"I hit it."

"It's supposed to be unbreakable."

"I hit it hard."

You smile. There are plenty of Wing Chun dummies in the universe, but there's only one Ragnar. It seems like a fair trade.

"I'd pay to see you punch Noir in the face like that..."

"Heh. I'd pay to do it."

"Catch."

You toss one of the bottles. It arcs upwards, performing a slow backflip like a calm and elegant gymnast. Light gleams on glass and within the dark amber liquid. Ragnar stands there, arms at his side. Only at the last moment, when the bottle's about to smash against his broad, chiseled face, does he snatch it from the air. You'd almost forgotten how fast he is.

The Niflung pulls the stopper out. It surrenders with a festive pop.

"Read the label," you say.

His red eyes meet yours, in a look which seems to suggest that reading takes valuable time away from drinking. But he does as bidden. Then he grins.

"A good year!" he says.

"Maybe for us. Not for everyone you've killed."

"Ah, screw them. If I hadn't killed them, someone else would've done it." He glances at bottle in your left hand. "How about yours?"

"Same deal. From the year I was born. When I saw them, I couldn't resist. Might as well blow your creds on something. You never know when the next window you get kicked through will be your last."

You open the bottle and walk towards him.

"What're we drinking to?" he says.

"How about the craziest, most omnicidal killing machine I've ever had the pleasure to call my friend?"

"Same to you."

Glass meets glass with the centuries-old clink of comradery. Then bottles tilt, scotch flows, and hardened drinkers gulp.

"I was lucky..." he says.

"Huh?"

"On Capek. Lucky you all came along."

"Almost too lucky, huh? I used to think we should hit the casinos. I mean, what're the odds? First we crash-land on Gallea and find a prince with a heavy assault mech to help us out, then we find you."

"Used to?"

"Yeah. I don't think I believe in coincidences anymore. The Dragon-Rider was the same. And some of her descendants. Everywhere they went, they found good friends and powerful allies. The kinds of people who'd have their backs no matter what. I don't know if it's the blood, or whatever watches over it. Heaven, hell, or anything in-between. But when Kasans need help, the universe delivers. And it couldn't have done better."

You take another glug. Ragnar quaffs half the bottle.

"Are you any good with a sword?" you say.

"Huh?" He wipes the back of his broad hand across his mouth.

"I know you like axes better, but..."

He shrugs.

"I beat a guy to death with his own leg. Put something in my hands, and I'll use it. Why?"

"Because if Noir kills me, I'll need a backup plan. And you're the best one I've got."

Ragnar's eyes shine. He opens his mouth, but you hold your hand up to forestall him.

"I know you what you'd want to do. As soon as you got word, you'd want to jump in a ship, track him down, and take your axe to him. Because you're Ragnar Ragnarsson. And if someone hurts your friends, their brains end up on your boots."

"Yeah. I don't care if he's human, alien, or a dragon. I'll kill him."

"If anyone can, it's you. But not without the right weapon."

"That fancy sword of yours?"

"If I go down, Noir gets that. He won't leave that thing lying around."

"Then what?"

"There's another blade. I've seen it in my... I mean, my ancestor's... memories. It used to belong to a hero who fought like a swordmaster and drank like a Niflung. For all I know, it's the only other weapon from Tor'gyyl left in the entire universe."

"You know where it is?"

"Hundreds of years ago, it was on Earth. Sorry -- needles and haystacks."

He grins.

"Hit people hard enough, and they'll give you your needle. If that thing's out there, I'll find it."

"Even if you do, it might not be enough. Noir's strong, fast... Better than me."

"Yeah? Then after I kill him, I'll be the best in the galaxy."

"Damn straight. Bring his head to my grave, pour out a bottle of scotch, and piss on him for me."

"You got it."

Bottles clink, and two friends drink.

The main lights are turned low in the Silver Shadow's flight cabin, yielding to the luminescent strips around the walls, floor, and consoles -- which glow in an array of bright and gaudy colors. Perhaps you're just feeling nostalgic. Succumbing to memory, where outcomes are known and distance brightens joy even as it softens tragedy. But nostalgia or not, the decor reminds you of a dozen places. The Cybertollahs' chamber on Occulus. Drekchester. The Twisted Steel ring. Blackpool. Reminiscences clutter life -- especially one like yours.

Talia spins round in the pilot's seat, glances at the bottle in your hand, and meets your gaze.

"Nice," she says. "The biggest fight of your life, and you're going in drunk."

"I'll pop some sobriety pills before I head out," you say.

"Got enough of those to go around?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Then let's have a drink."

You sit in the co-pilot's chair and hand her the bottle. She pulls the stopper out.

"All set, captain?"

"I have a cool sword and a crazy plan."

"Sounds good enough to me."

Talia takes a swig. She passes the scotch back, and more memories come. A dozen. A hundred. A thousand. How many times have the two of you done this? Just sat there sharing a bottle of hard liquor? You drink and pass, drink and pass, with the casual familiarity that exists between friends... no... family... who've been together through all the gunfire, gore, and glory.

"Remember the first bottle we shared?" she says.

"Yeah... I had to help you walk back to the barracks."

"Nice try. It was the other way around."

"Just a couple of scrubs... And look at us now. You're a war hero and the captain of a thugby team. I was Imperial Jian."

"And soon we might both be getting our asses kicked."

"Yeah... Maybe things aren't so different, huh?"

Gunmaster

Patricia Jyza left the bar's warmth and stepped out beneath a rusty sky. Drizzle dampened her hair. Droplets seeped into her sweater, tainting the wooly fabric with whatever stinking pollutants had rotted the heavens. Water trickled from the corners of her smile.

She turned side-on and slipped between the chem fiends in their puffed-out leather jackets. Blue, red, green, and purple smoke drifted from their crack pipes and hovered above in voluminous tree-shaped clouds. Rain hissed against that rainbow canopy.

"K-crack?" a girl with a pink mohawk said.

She held out her pipe. Patricia shook her head and kept walking till she reached the mouth of the alleyway. She glanced behind her. The only eyes looking in her direction were glazed over -- and probably watching something far more interesting, given the way their owner giggled and touched himself.

The alley was narrow. Fire escapes blocked the space overhead, intercepting the plinking rain and dull daylight. Shadows pooled around the three people crouched behind the dumpster's dark green shell.

"Yeah?" Crendo said. He scratched the straggle of beard on his chin.

"Yeah," Patricia said. "It's her."

"You're sure?" Shrishi said. She leaned forward, her brown face almost black in the gloom.

"Yeah, I... Hey! Ask before you go in my head!" Patricia snorted. "There? See? That's her, isn't it?"

"I think so."

"Show me," Draka said.

Three eyes gleamed in her furry purple face. Patricia looked to Shrishi.

"I can't project images yet," the acolyte said.

"Let me," Shrishi said.

"Show me too!" Crendo said.

The older woman's mental touch was soft. Gentle fingers caressed the surface of Patricia's thoughts, and in the acolyte's psionic sight -- which had always been the strongest of her skills -- she watched thin, glistening streams of liquid pass from her forehead to Shrishi's, then bounce to the others' in languid ricochets. Mystical tendrils linked their minds like the cables of a beautiful and ephemeral machine.

"All you humans look the same..." Draka said.

Then I don't want to be around when you start shooting, Patricia thought. Shrishi stared at her, and the acolyte winced as she sealed her thoughts. The watery trails evaporated in the air between them -- parting into shimmering mist.

"...but I think that was her."

"Looks the same as the pics and vids," Crendo said.

"Did you..." Shrishi said.

"I didn't try a mind probe," Patricia said.

"Good."

It'd been tempting. Just one swift skim, to make sure the woman really was Jessica Atranx. But she'd held back. The reports said Atranx might have anti-psionic training, and Patricia didn't want to be the one to tell Multheru she'd blown their cover and ruined the operation.

Draka opened her jacket. She pulled one half away from her body, holding it out to the side like a bat's wing. A veritable arsenal of pistols and blades nestled in holsters or dangled from fastenings sewn into the garment's lining. The Vlarg reached for a gun.

"Wait," Patricia said. "There are weapon scanners by the inside doors. Everyone has to stick their gear in the lobby drop boxes, and pick it up on the way out."

"Screw them. If they try and take my stuff, I'll-"

"You'd set the alarms off. We might lose her in the chaos."

The Vlarg hissed.

"If everyone hands their guns in," Shrishi said, "that means Atranx isn't armed."

"The bouncer's got a handgun. That's the only shooter I saw."

"Probably chipped," Draka said, "so it doesn't trigger the alarm."

"Even better..." Shrishi said.

"The perimeter guns?" Bonderbrand said.

"Down," Halfec Robtri said. The cyborg's left eye rotated and clicked.

"You said the system was secure!"

"They didn't deactivate them! They blew them up!"

"How many attackers?"

"The guards said... They said it was a Niflung army."

"What!?!"

His jowls quivered. They hadn't anticipated this. If Sigurd Spinebreaker's warriors were in the fight...

"But... One of the drones got a good shot, before it exploded. Thermal imaging. I only saw two attackers."

"Two!" The professor exhaled. "Then we-"

"One of them looked like Ragnar Ragnarsson."

Bonderbrand swore.

"Heavy weapons for everyone who knows how to use them. And send Norka here."

Robtri nodded and ran for the office door. Professor Bonderbrand leaned back in his chair, bracing his large hands on the desk as though in anticipation of an earthquake. He took a deep breath before standing up and walking over to the azure metal panel set into the wall.

"The past and the future," he said. "Hail Kalaxia."

He touched the sensor. The safe's door rattled open with a series of heavy, growling noises.

"Desperate times," he murmured. "Desperate measures..."

"Evening," the bouncer said. Slabs of pectoral muscle undulated under his black shirt, as though echoing the word.

"Evening," Crendo said.

The cultist held his fist out and waited for a bump, which Patricia assumed was his way of blending into the local culture. But the bouncer just stared at it. Crendo coughed and walked past him. She and Draka followed. The Vlarg's shoulders were bare now, and the exposed fur made her seem more dangerous somehow -- a predator stalking its prey. Her three eyes smoldered. It'd taken some persuasion to make her leave her jacket and its portable armory in a bundle underneath the dumpster.

The trio stood between the bouncer and the inner doorway leading to the barroom, doing their best to look like conversing friends instead of co-conspirators, whilst screening the man and their sister.

"Give me your gun," Shrishi said.

"Huh?" the bouncer said.

"Give. Me. Your. Gun."

"Oh... Here."

He pulled the weapon from its holster and handed it to her, then stood there blinking.

"Come on," Shrishi said.

She handed the gun to Draka and hustled the three of them through the doorway. Patricia looked over her shoulder, but the bouncer was still just blinking at the empty air in front of him.

"That booth at the-" Crendo said.

"Don't point!" Draka snatched his arm before it finished rising, and pushed it back down. "I saw it too."

A high back concealed the booth's occupant. Patricia had needed to cross the noisy barroom to get a glimpse of her before. They moved together along the same path, brushing past the drinkers who stood around small, high tables. Draka held the pistol against her leg. Patricia stayed beside the Vlarg to help conceal it.

More of the booth came into sight between the milling bodies. First the corner of a table, followed by two empty tumblers. Then a bottle, standing watch over its smaller brethren -- lording it over them with its rich, dark innards. And then a gloved hand.

Draka hissed when the rest of Jessica Atranx came in sight.

"Move!" she whispered.

Patricia began to shift aside, clearing the shot.

On her left, the men's room door opened. Draka flinched at its sudden movement. She pressed the gun into her thigh and glared at the grey-haired man who emerged. He held a cigar in his hand.

"Any of you got a light?" he said.

"Get lost," Crendo said.

The man raised his eyebrow.

"We... We don't smoke," Patricia said. "Ask the barmaid?"

Draka twitched beside her. And though Patricia's telepathic skills were far from powerful, she felt the anxiety as an almost physical thing seething against her flank. The first shot had to count. Because when they started shooting, pandemonium would break out. And anything could happen then. If they alarmed the old man... If he cried out...

Shrishi must've felt it too.

"The barmaid has a light," she said. Her voice hummed with psionic influence, like a dozen whispering bees. "You should go..."

She gasped. Patricia glanced over.

"You're..." Shrishi's eyes widened.

"Duncan," the man said.

Draka spun towards him and raised her arm. Movement blurred between them. The Vlarg blinked at her empty purple fingers, then at the pistol in the old man's hand. Shrishi's eyes flashed. So did the barrel.

The gun was faster.

Patricia tried to scream, but it was faster than that too.

Jessica Atranx smiled when her father sat down, and pushed a newly filled tumbler towards him.

"You're getting slow in your old age," she said.

Shouts and screams filled the barroom. A rush of bodies surged towards the exit -- leaving the four corpses lying alone and forlorn. Duncan lit his cigar, picked up his glass, and looked over at them.

"Maybe," he said. "But I'm still fast enough."

Six Shooter Special

"Professor?"

Bonderbrand didn't turn around when the Piscarian entered the small, brightly lit room. He continued to fiddle with the transparent cylinder he held in one hand and the twisting cables bunched together in the other.

"I'll require your assistance, Norka."

"But that's-"

"I know what it is. That's why I need your help."

For a moment she was dumbstruck. Norka looked around the room, seeking someone to share her incredulity. But the only eyes there to meet hers were the flashing slices of cyan on Kalaxia's painted faces. Three wyrms stared at her from the walls, and a fourth from the ceiling. None seemed perturbed. She felt her own bewilderment shrinking beneath their somber gazes.

"There isn't enough," she said. "We don't even know if it'll-"

"One of the most dangerous human beings in the galaxy is outside these walls, slaughtering our brothers and sisters."

"I know! But-"

He gave a little cry of triumph, and slotted the cylinder into a depression within the pedestal's metallic surface. Dark tangles hung from it in a shallow parabola -- leading away to devices attached to the padded chair's armrest. Professor Bonderbrand turned to her at last.

"If I'm stronger... faster. Like-"

"It won't make you like him!"

"I know! I just need enough strength and speed to match the Niflung's cybernetics!"

"We don't even know if it'll work. Our experiments haven't-"

Bonderbrand sat in the chair. Clamps clicked into place around his right arm. The limb twitched as needles penetrated flesh.

The Piscarian met his eyes, nodded, and moved to assist him.

"The usual, Marshal?" Grant said.

"Six of the worst," Marshal Roth said.

"You got it."

Grant thought about it very hard, picturing half a dozen glasses of rotgut bourbon -- clustered together like the bullets in a revolver's chambers.

"You've got legs, don't you?" his wife said in his head.

He sighed, and glanced across the room.

"William Cornelius Grant!" This time the telepathic voice made his skull shake. "Don't think I didn't catch that! If you're so mighty eager to take that pretty tourist girl's order..."

"No, dear," he thought. "I was just..."

"Just getting Marshal his drink?"

"Yeah..."

"Good."

Grant sighed, went to the bar, and took a bottle of Grinning Grave off the shelf. He hadn't even pulled the stopper out before the saloon's doors flew open.

The lady who came through them was petite. Her frame might've been a child's instead of a grown woman's, and the brim of her hat looked wider than her shoulders. A pretty little thing...

"William Corne-"

"What? I ain't allowed to think a girl's pretty anymore?"

"Not if you can't keep her clothes on while you're thinkin' it!"

One of the tourists began a wolf whistle. When the newcomer looked around and her duster shifted, when her eyes glinted like the gunmetal at her hip, he sucked it back in and lowered his gaze.

"Ev'nin', Penny," Mary Grant said. "What can I get you?"

"Just Roth," she said.

"I'm here," Marshal said from the corner. "And from that look of yours, you ain't here to share my six-shooter special."

"Some of us were watching the old Hebner farm, like you said. There's folk snooping around out there. Off-worlders, from the look of 'em."

Roth sighed and got up.

"How many?"

"Six," she said.

"My lucky number." He glanced at the Grants and touched his hat. "I'll have to come back for those drinks."

Roth went to the door. Penny turned round, the hem of her duster sweeping like a blade, and moved to follow. He shook his head.

"Way I hear it, bringing impressionable young minds near these folk is asking for trouble. We got a rifle up by the Hebner place?"

"Jade has hers. Watched 'em arrive through the scope."

"Then she can cover me. You sit down and have yourself a drink. Won't be gone long..."

Roth's robotic horse was fast. The last of the dying sun's blood still painted the horizon when a scattering of low buildings came in sight. Fast, and loud. Its hooves pounded, throwing clouds of dust behind.

A woman stood near one of the outbuildings. She looked towards him before turning her head. The inaudible shout was easy enough to imagine, and it did the trick. Her companions tricked out to join her. He counted the entire half dozen. Safety in numbers, but poor tactics. Maybe they were just tourists after all. It wouldn't have been the first time off-worlders traipsed around the old farms and ranches, drinking in a world so different from their cities of gleaming glass and metal. More than a few of the local criminals relied on it for their living. Visitors learned that six-shooters were a lot less romantic when the barrels were pointing their way, underneath grinning faces. Right before they ended up rotting in the corpse pits...

Roth glanced at the hilltop on his left. It looked deserted. Good. Jade was smart enough not to show herself, and cautious enough to hold fire until he gave a sign. Penny... Well, she was a little on the trigger happy side. And he didn't want a tourist going home with a hole in their head because they'd made a sudden movement.

His horse came to a halt faster than a real animal could've. The sudden stop shook him in the saddle. Roth got down, walked a few paces, and touched his hat.

"Marshal Roth," he said.

"You're the law around here, partner?"

The man -- a tall, trim athlete with a vague hint of Japanese heritage around his eyes -- spoke the word in a way that matched his smirk. Roth was used to that sort of thing. Off-worlders...

"You folk just taking in the sights?"

"We're looking for... a friend," a woman said. Her blue eyes held his stare, unflinching but without a hint of challenge. Truth-telling eyes. Roth never trusted those. "Kathy Peralico. She lives here, right?"

Yep. Never trusted them at all...

"Matter of fact, I heard that name from a feller not too long ago. Not the kind of man I'd call a friend... More of an acquaintance. Sad to say, he's a lawbreaker. But that's the galaxy for you."

None of them moved, but eyelids twitched. So did a couple of lips and fingers. Telepaths should play a little poker, he mused, and learn to cover up their tells.

"She around?" the tall man said. "No offence, sheriff, but we're not here for homespun stories."

"Sheriff?"

"Officer... Marshal... Whatever you lawmen call yourselves around here."

"Never said I was the law. Marshal just so happens to be the name my daddy gave me."

More twitches.

"And speaking of names..." Roth said. "This acquaintance told me he put a few of them out there. Names and places. A trail, you might say. Said folk might come around looking. Asking. Searching for a woman who's got herself a new name and doesn't want to be found by folk who knew her by the old one. Guess he was right."

Hands slipped behind backs, or towards deep, bulging pockets.

"Where's Artemis Kess?" the woman with the steady eyes said. Her voice thrummed like a cheap generator. "Tell me."

"Tell us," the tall man said.

Fingers groped inside Roth's brain.

"That's a mighty fine trick. Getting inside my head, making it tough to send a thought to any muscles 'cept the ones I need for talking. Just one problem... See, around here, some stuff becomes so natural there ain't no need to think about it."

His revolvers rose and barked.

The fingers slipped back out of his mind when the tall man and steady-eyed woman's brains splashed out through their brand new head-holes. If the others had any parlor tricks of their own, they didn't try them. They went for their guns instead.

That was just fine with Marshal Roth.

Jade's bullet took one of them. Exploded the lady's head like a melon tossed off a barn roof. His guns snatched the other three before she could fire another.

The smoke was still snaking from Roth's revolvers when he dropped one of the weapons into its holster, took his communicator off his belt, and made a call.

Steel Heart

Lydo Ossydo shuffled off dreams of chems and muscular man-whores, and smiled as she awoke to the real thing. She got up off the floor -- shrugging aside a nice looking boy whose face someone had slashed a couple of times. Probably her. But hey, it wasn't a real party until someone got mutilated.

Her aural implants registered her awakening. They opened up, letting sound pour into Lydo's darkened bedroom -- thumping music and a dozen voices.

"Where's the rum?"

"You're holding it, wanker!"

"Oh, yeah..."

"Plerna Pirates! Woo!"

"We're the best arooooooooooound!"

"Hey, I ordered a hermaphrodite hooker!"

"That's what I am, honey."

"Then where's your sodding afro?"

"Here, where'd Lydo go?"

Lydo Ossydo smirked. The party was still going strong, even after two straight days of enough alcohol, chems, inadvisable sex, and fried food to annihilate half the galaxy. She kicked the door open.

"Here am I, you motherlovin' stick-suckers!"

She strutted into the hideout's big main room, amidst shouts and cheers.

"Lydo! Yeah!"

"We've run out of fried chicken! Let's go rob the nearest Chicken Chavs!"

"Plerna Pirates!"

"Oi! Did you know hermaphrodites don't have afros? False bloody advertising!"

Lydo, glorious leader of this band of assorted miscreants, grinned. She picked her way across broken glass, puddles of vomit, and copulating lovers, snatched a machinegun from a pirate's back, and gazed up at the gold and silver mountain which dominated the middle of the room. Neat piles of hard creds had experienced more than a few avalanches over the course of the celebration. Shining streams flowed down haphazard slopes. But disarray only made it more beautiful. Apparently One-Eyed Rolf and his latest girlfriend agreed, given that they were writhing around on it.

"Lydo! Lydo! Lydo!"

She ascended the mountain in a series of surefooted leaps.

"Lydo! Woo!"

Lydo stood on the summit and basked in their cries. After two days, it was still the sweetest music she'd ever heard.

"Plerna Pirates!" she said. "We're big-time now!"

"Yeah!"

Lydo aimed the machinegun heavenward and opened fire. The heavy roar ripped through the room, adding its voice to theirs. Flame danced around the muzzle. A heady smell of oil mingled with the stink of chemicals, food, and unwashed flesh.

Someone screamed.

She stopped shooting. Silence fell. Everyone gazed up at the perforated ceiling.

"Er... Who's up there?" she said.

"The hostages from last week's raid," One-Eyed Rolf said. "We were gonna ransom them off."

"Screw 'em!" Lydo said. "With hauls like this..."

She lifted her foot and drove her boot heel down into the creds.

"...who cares about that nickel and dime crap?"

She pulled the trigger again. The others joined in, blasting away. Their gunfire and laughter almost drowned out the shrieks.

"Okay!" Lydo said at last.

She waved her gun. The shooting and shouting died down by degrees, and ended with one final handgun discharge.

"Hold it! We still need a roof over our heads!" she said. Lydo tossed the machinegun down to one of her pirates. "And I'm starving! We got any more donners?"

"Yeah, boss," Lurdrux said.

The Snuuth waddled over to a table, picked up a foil-wrapped cylinder, and threw it at her. Lydo caught it. She sat down on the pile, shifting her buttocks until they found comfort, while the others went back to their drinking, snorting, smoking, injecting, fornicating, and other such present participles.

Lydo unwrapped one end, exposing broad, thick ribbons of fatty meat, nestled in a slightly charred naan. The first kebab house they'd visited had only offered pitas. The Plerna Pirates had therefore massacred everyone inside, burned the place to the ground, and taken their business elsewhere. Her first bite justified that decision.

She closed her eyes and sighed. Vast wealth under her ass, donner meat in her mouth, and loyal pirates reveling around her... Life was good. Lydo pulled back more of the foil and took another bite.

Her phone rang while she was still masticating it. She grinned, and a few flecks of saliva, fat, and chili sauce rained from her mouth. Over the past couple of days she'd been getting a lot of calls. After their big score, everyone wanted to either join them or sell them weapons. She put the kebab down and pulled her phone out of her pocket to see which it was this time.

"Yesh?" she said, between chews.

"Is that Liddo Ossiddo?" a woman's voice said.

The pirate gulped, swallowed, and frowned.

"It's Lydo Ossydo. Lie-doh Oss-eye-doh."

"Whatever. This is Yolanda Reuben again, and-"

"Huh? Again?"

The woman sighed, and Lydo had the distinct impression that eyes were rolling on the other end of the line.

"I called last night, and you told me to... *ahem* Go shag a walrus?"

"Hah! I was pretty high. What're you selling? Chems? Guns? Ships?"

"I'm head of public relations for the Plerna Pirates."

"We have a PR department?"

Lydo shrugged. It probably made sense. After all, they were big-time now. Maybe one of the others had run it by her while she was wasted, and made it happen. She liked it when they showed initiative.

"No, the real Plerna Pirates."

"What're you talking about? We are the-"

"The IFL team!" The woman sighed again. "You know -- the Intergalactic Football League?"

"I don't watch sports."

"Yeah? Well our fans and investors watch the news. And when they see your so-called Plerna Pirates looting and murdering, it damages our brand. That's why I called last night. To ask you to change your name."

"Screw you! We're pirates, and we're from Plerna. If you don't like it-"

"I don't. So I made another call, and I tipped someone off about your hideout. Someone who doesn't like pirates. I just called back to gloat."

"Who-"

The music was loud. So were the pirates. But the explosion was louder.

Lydo dropped the phone and swore. It bounced away down the hard cred mountain, which shook and shifted beneath her. She stared at the entrance. Flickering tongues of fire, billowing grey clouds, melted steel, and shattered masonry filled the space where the double doors and surrounding wall had once been. A big lump of metal plodded through the destruction.

"Natalia Keplex!" someone said.

"That is correct," a hollow, computerized voice said.

The mech's arms rose. Missiles flew.

And the last thing Lydo Ossydo ever thought, before one of them turned everything above her waist into a rain of charred gore, was that she wished she'd eaten the rest of her donner first.

Natalia Keplex stomped through the rubble. Her electronic senses swept the ruin and carnage.

"Ugh..."

Her arm pointed towards the groan. A purple blast flashed. The pirate's head melted. Next she directed her attention downwards, where a woman sprawled and stared up at her.

"I... I was just... delivering... pizza?"

"My scans detect no pizza or pizza debris in this building," Natalia said.

"Oh... Yeah..."

Natalia stomped on her head. Brains splashed across the floor. She scanned the room again, but there were no more life signs. So she headed through the smashed wall where the building's original entrance had been, and plodded back across the dusty, arid stretch of wasteland.

Her ship was a pale, scarred bulk in the heat haze. An animal's carcass left to rot in the sun. Its ramp was open -- a dangling, motionless tongue, languishing in the dryness. Her senses flickered as she approached it. Scanners pulsed electrical information through their connections to her organic brain, informing her that they couldn't obtain clear readings. This displeased her. If her systems were malfunctioning, or some local interference was hampering them, the building behind her might still have survivors.

She'd have to bomb the place from the air.

With that resolution made, her metal feet clunked and thudded their way up the ramp, into the dark interior of the ship's cargo hold.

Natalia froze. Something felt... wrong. This strange, niggling sensation troubled her. It was... illogical. A vestige from the days when flesh, blood, and bone had housed her brain, and such inklings had been just another weakness of the human condition. She cast her sensors around her. Electronic eyes, ears, and fingers probed their surroundings.

"Natalia Keplex."

The voice, a man's voice, was wrong too. It didn't come via her audio systems. Instead it... appeared... in her mind. She tried to focus on him. To locate and analyze. But everything flickered -- twisted, distorted -- and blinked out of existence. Blackness surrounded her brain.

"It's okay," the man said. "I've got her locked down."

Hear... She could still hear. She couldn't see anything, but she heard the sound of boots on the metal floor.

"You sure?" a female voice said.

"Yes." The man's face, round and bearded, hovered in front of her. A lone image burning in the darkness. "Natalia... It's time to rest. To sleep."

"No..." Natalia said. It didn't come from her speakers. Nor was it the dull, robotic voice which had echoed in the pirates' base moments before. It was inside her head, just like his. "I..."

"Your existence is a travesty. A parody of life. This metal body is a sarcophagus, holding your remains. There's nothing left for you in this universe. So sleep. Sleep... And be with your family again."

More images... Patches of color blooming in the starless night. Faces. Smiling, happy faces. Her husband... Her children... Yes. There they all were, waiting for her. She'd been a fool. Wandering the galaxy, killing pirates. Seeking revenge which had only delayed this reunion.

"Go to them. Go..."

Faint, distant noises whispered at the edge of her consciousness. Soft and almost inaudible. Footsteps. Murmuring voices. They didn't matter. Only the smiling faces mattered.

"Huh?" the woman's voice said, somewhere across the universe. "What was that?"

"I didn't..." a man said. "Behind those crates!"

Her children were waiting for her. Natalia reached out for them.

"I'll... Hey! It's a girl!"

"Get off me! Help! Nat! Help!"

No... No!

Her family flickered. Their smiles wavered. Natalia Keplex's human face was long gone, but somewhere, deep in her being, among thought and memory, her eyes blazed.

No!

"Nat!"

The cargo hold appeared. The intruders appeared. And so did Miranda, struggling in a woman's grasp. The little girl stared at Natalia with wide, desperate eyes.

"She's moving!" someone said.

"I've lost her!" the bearded man said. "We-"

In Natalia Keplex's display, in her resurrected omnidirectional sight, crosshairs appeared on faces. A weapon barked in a woman's hand. Its blast sparked against Natalia's metal hide. Her own guns answered. Thin, precise beams scattered the shadows. Bodies fell.

"Miranda..."

The girl ran across the hold, averting her watery eyes from the carnage. She threw her arms around the cold metal bulk of Natalia's leg.

"I couldn't stop them getting in! I had to hide!"

"It's okay. Everything's okay..."

At the edge of Natalia Keplex's mind, her family smiled and faded away.

"I'm here now," she said. "I'm here."

Go Dragons!

"I'm Jesse Shark, here with Bob 'Blam' Boser, in Sian's Eternal Dragon Stadium. This is just like a regular thugby broadcast, Bob!"

"Sure, Jesse. Except without the players, fans, or any actual broadcasting."

"That's true, Bob. We can't transmit our thrilling play-by-play and insightful color commentary to the galaxy like we usually do, but at least the arena's loudspeakers are still working!"

"Great. That means anyone within a few hundred feet of the stadium can hear us scream as we die."

"If you're just joining us, let's have a recap of tonight's action. Bob and I were in front of the stadium, recording a commercial for Thug Juice -- the amazing new energy drink that's-"

"Those cameras aren't on us now, Jesse. You don't have to pretend you like that crap."

"Good. Just between you and me, I drank that sample can they sent me, and it burned when I went to the bathroom!"

"It's like Cythera all over again!"

"Anyway, while we were filming, a group of masked men-

"And women, Jesse."

"...and women, opened fire on us -- killing the entire crew and-"

"Are you sure they all got shot? Maybe some of them just drank too much Thug Juice and dropped dead!"

"Maybe. I was too busy running to get a good look. By the way, Bob, good thinking -- heading for the broadcast booth. Even if you did try to slam the door in my face."

"Survival of the fittest, Jesse."

"That door's holding up pretty well."

"They built it to keep out angry thugby players and rioting fans."

"Hey, maybe we'll get out of this alive after all."

"Who are these guys anyway? Reckon some rival commentators want us taken out so they can steal our jobs?"

"Actually, Bob, I may have some inside information. Earlier today, I received a call from Talia Ryx."

"Captain of the Sian Dragons?"

"Yes! Ms. Ryx told me that a cult of dangerous lunatics was hunting down some of her friends and associates."

"Wait, we got shot at because of Talia Ryx? We're not even friends! We just call her matches!"

"It does seem like a tenuous link, Bob."

"Hey, if you guys are listening out there, we don't give a crap about Talia Ryx!"

"Careful! Remember that we're on Sian. If any Dragons fans hear us, we'll have them after us too!"

"Wait a minute, Jesse... The banging and shooting's stopped!"

"Hey, it has! They probably realized they couldn't smash or blast their way through that armored door!"

"This is a great day for thugby!"

"Should we go take a look?"

"Be my guest, Jesse. But I'm staying where it's safe."

"Fair point, Bob. Fair point. So... If we're going to be stuck here for a little while, why don't we tell our listeners a little something about the upcoming match between the Warlords of Mars and... Oh..."

"We've got movement on the field. Maybe those jackasses are going to play a match."

"I don't think they've got sport on their mind, Bob. Look at those crates they're carrying..."

"I bet they aren't full of beer and hotdogs, Jesse."

"No. Actually... Yes, it seems they're assembling some kind of weapon."

"Remember when the Drekchester Megas tried that stunt?"

"I sure do, Bob. But at least that time they were only endangering the other team and the fans. This time, that cannon they're deploying's pointing our way! How tough do you think this glass is?"

"Tough enough to stop a bullet. But that thing? I think the next match we're calling will be heaven versus hell!"

"And who... who do you like in... in that one?"

"Hell, of course! They know how to cheat, and all the best thugby players end up there. They'll have a dream team!"

"I don't want to die, Bob!"

"Me either, Jesse. But... Hey! Look down there, on the pitch!"

"It's... Oh! The Dragons! It's the Sian Dragons!"

"Maybe they're here to help them kill us, Jesse."

"I don't think so, Bob! They're... Wow! Did you see that?"

"That's what I call a tackle! Virgil Jackson put the bastard down hard! And here's 'Great Wall' Guan! If that masked woman knows what's good for her, she'll get out of his-"

"Apparently she didn't! When Guan starts running, smart people stay out of the way. I hope she had a good life insurance policy."

"Hey, did someone toss a thugby ball in the mix?"

"I don't think so, Bob."

"Then what did Kai Wung just kick into the stands?"

"I think that was someone's head! And... Hey, where are you going?"

"I'm going down there to join the fun! You coming, Jesse?"

"Yeah!"

"We'll show those jerks the true meaning of thugby!"

"Teamwork and comradery?"

"No! Stomping on guys until their guts come out!"

Professor Bonderbrand

Bonderbrand clamped his jaws shut to stifle his screams. The professor's burly frame convulsed. Powerful seizures, miniature earthquakes, rattled his bones -- till his body felt like a muddled, gelatinous mess, wrapped in a watery layer of shivering skin. Muscles and organs quivered into liquid oblivion. The chair shuddered underneath him, threatening to tear free from the clamps which held it to the floor; yearning to eject him and bring an end to this abomination that must either splinter his skull and spine or else shatter the entire universe.

"Professor!" Norka said.

"Don't stop!" The words became shrieks, undulating across his jowls. "Don't!"

His teeth smashed together, grating and grinding. The cylinder glowed in the corner of his vision. Inside, dark brown fragments of ancient bone shook in time with his own skeleton. Indiscernible matter squeezed through the tangled cables in pulsating lumps. Bonderbrand's right arm trembled. His skin rose in sudden bursts, bulging outward. Struggling to contain power that yearned to explode from his inadequate body and splash the world with gore.

The Piscarian chanted. Her mind and voice swirled around him in nebulous whirlwinds. He couldn't see her anymore. A cataclysm of color flooded his vision, drowning him beneath inconceivable oceans. He wondered if he was screaming now. He couldn't tell anymore.

"Bonderbrand!"

"Douglas Bonderbrand?"

The young man didn't look up from the collection of datapads and old hardcopy books on the table. His brow knitted. The jowls framing his face quivered like a bulldog's.

"Yes?" he said.

"May I sit down?" the woman said.

"Please find another table, madam. I'm busy with-"

"Kalaxia."

Now he looked at her, through widening eyes. The old woman smiled down at him. It was a warm, indulgent smile. Like a mother's. Bonderbrand glanced around, but the library was empty. The building was a tomb of knowledge during the holidays. Most students shunned it, and he could continue his research in peace.

She sat down on the opposite side of the table.

"Your eyes," he said.

"Ah. You're perceptive. Did they flicker?"

She blinked. The holographic layer vanished, and Bonderbrand gazed into a pair of cyan jewels.

"Who are you?"

"Victoria Ashdown."

"Ashdown!"

"Yes." She reached for one of the books -- an old, worn volume. He almost snatched it away, but held his hand back. "Like Judith. I didn't think there were any more copies of this book left in the galaxy."

Bonderbrand said nothing. He merely stared. The light gleamed on the facets of her gemstone eyes in strange, fascinating patterns.

"You've uncovered a great deal," she said. "Things that stretch back thousands of years."

"To ancient Greece," he said. "Maybe Egypt. I-"

"But this story goes back much further. Eons. Before mankind rose on Earth."

"You have sources?" His eyes shone brighter than hers. "I'll buy them! Copies or originals. I'll-"

"I'm not a merchant. And what I know, what we know, is priceless. I've come here to offer it to you, on one condition. That you abandon this thesis."

"No! This information, my research, must-"

"Must be kept from unworthy eyes. A man of your intelligence, with your scholarly rigor, will find another topic. You'll earn your doctorate and find yourself a position any academic would envy. We have influence, and we'll assist you if you wish. But Kalaxia's name must remain hidden until the right time."

"And if I don't..."

"You'll agree. Not out of fear, or avarice, or a lust for power. You'll agree because we have the things you crave most, Douglas. Knowledge and the truth."

Bonderbrand thrashed in the maelstrom, adrift on a sensory sea. Something glimmered in the distance. A light. A beacon. And it was cyan. It drew him, guiding him through crashing waves; through his father's face and the jasmine scent of his mother's favorite perfume; through the rough, textured paper of the hardcopy Odyssey he'd read as a little boy; through laughter and tears and sorrow and exaltation; through dying worlds that sowed the galaxy with their seeds.

He swam towards it.

"What do you think?" Lady Victoria said.

"It's..." Bonderbrand's gaze swept the tomes in front of him on the azure table, before roaming around the rest of the vast chamber. "...magnificent. These books, they..."

"Lost works. To everyone except the wyrm-mother's children." She favored him with that same indulgent smile. "You want to share it with the universe, don't you? You're thinking about the books you could write, the mysteries you could solve. Of enhancing mankind's store of knowledge."

His jowls wobbled.

"In time, perhaps you will," she said. "When Kalaxia's ready to take her rightful place. For now, enjoy all of this. It's yours. Dive into its depths and see what you can unravel for us."

Eyes glittered in the heavens. Multifaceted jewels, illuminating his path and his destiny, shimmering on the sea -- where the waters parted, and something rose from their primordial melange.

Creation sloughed away in torrents of history, antiquity, and eternity. Visions and vapor rolled off unfurling pteropine wings. A huge reptilian face roared defiance, azure eyes glaring vengeance at the galaxy.

"Gold?" Bonderbrand said.

"Very good," Victoria Ashdown said.

He set the piece of old, fossilized bone back down on the table.

"The imprints of a dragon's soul are strong," she said, "even from so small a fragment."

"Are there more?"

"Yes. Drifting through the cosmos, scattered by Tor'gyyl's destruction. And you'll help us find them."

"Then what?"

"Power, Douglas. Power we can wield in the wyrm-mother's name."

"Sniper," Ragnar said.

Talia aimed one of her pistols and fired. A woman in blue fell off the roof.

"No," the gunslinger said, "there isn't."

Muzzle flashes from the Niflung's machinegun painted his grin. The weapon roared thunder and breathed out bullets, spraying everything with murderous equanimity. Explosive rounds scarred the building's facade -- blasting chunks of imitation stone from the hardened metal beneath. The cultists crouching and shooting from behind the low garden walls fared less well. Heads burst. Torsos erupted. Carnage decorated their comrades' faces and set them shrieking.

"You good here?" Talia said.

"Yeah!"

"I'll loop round and take the side."

The gunslinger sprinted across the lawn, both pistols flashing as she ran. Two masked men fell with matching holes seared into their eye slits. Blaster fire zipped back at her, but their shots were desperate and clumsy. She rolled beneath the only one that came close. Horseshoes and...

Maybe the Vlarg who popped up at one of the windows read that thought, because she clutched a round object in her purple hand.

"Kalaxia!"

Talia shot her wrist, and the throw became a fumble. Then an explosion. Flame and smoke billowed from the wrecked room, along with a scattering of roasted body parts.

"Did it bother you?" [Player Name] said. "How easy it was?"

"Come on," Talia said. She took a drink and passed [him|her] the bottle. "For our first 'boots on the ground' mission? They weren't going to give us anything crazy."

"No..." [He|She] looked away and stared into the darkened glass. The liquor undulated within, thick and black like crude oil. "I mean the killing. It's different in the cockpit, isn't it? When you can't see them..."

Talia waited for [him|her] to drink, accepted the bottle back, and gazed into it in turn -- as though searching for similar wisdom.

"Maybe," she said. "But I'd rather see them die than see them blast me."

That philosophy had stood her in good stead, she mused, as her pistols reaped their harvest.

Ragnar's boots sloshed through blood. A lot of cultists had tried to hold the lobby against him. The Niflung was no psychologist (unless one removed the latter half), but he'd seen enough fighting to know how people thought during combat. They wanted to defend what was theirs. To stop the enemy breaching the door and violating their sanctum. He understood and respected that. But it wasn't smart. It just meant a rake of gunfire and a few swings of his axe had turned the entryway into a crimson paddling pool.

He stormed through the corridors beyond, searching for more enemies. It didn't take long to find them. Two cultists opened fire from a passage, gawped when their bullets rebounded from his augmented flesh, and fled. Ragnar ran after them -- to explain the folly of shooting at things you couldn't kill, through the medium of judicious axe strokes in lieu of words. In his experience, one split skull was worth ten thousand of those.

With that murderous intention in mind, he hurtled down the corridor, bellowing like a ragebeast... And was taken by surprise when something big and heavy flew from a doorway and tackled him.

Ragnar smashed through the wall in his opponent's embrace, scattering bricks and chunks of plaster, whirling among the dust and debris. Desks and chairs flew aside or splintered beneath their combined bulk. Then they crashed down amidst the ruination, with a thud that shook the room.

The Niflung's hands opened and closed. Empty... His weapons had snagged on the masonry, and it'd torn them from his grasp.

Ragnar's eyes gleamed crimson.

He rolled, and rose to his feet in the middle of a devastated classroom. His enemy did the same.

"My name is Bonderbrand," the man said. He was big -- almost as large as the Niflung. Muscles rippled against his blue jumpsuit, stretching its fabric. His eyes were two splashes of an even richer blue. "I'm a professor of ancient history, whose work has helped usher in the coming age."

"Yeah? I'm Ragnar, and I once ate a neuro-fag's brain."

The Niflung lunged and threw an overhand right. It met empty air. A fist ploughed into his ribs, and another smashed him in the side of the head. Ragnar staggered -- reeling as much from surprise as impact.

"Despite what you may believe, Mr. Ragnarsson, violence is merely a means to an end. And I assure you, I'm quite capable of employing it."

Ragnar grunted and squared up to him, hands raised in a guard this time.

"I boxed for my university as an undergraduate..."

A jab snapped into the Niflung's face. Ragnar launched his fist in retaliation, but the punch was lost amid a barrage of crisp, hard shots that thundered on his skull and torso. He backed up, growling.

"Cybernetics?" Ragnar said.

"Something greater."

The Niflung snorted.

"Crazy dragon stuff?"

"Your boorishness offends me, Mr. Ragnarsson. But I've met many men like you. Big, brutish thugs who believe their muscles give them some claim to the universe. I learned how to box so I could thrash those churlish-"

"You don't have scales."

"What?"

"Scales..." Ragnar stepped forward and raised his fists in a pugilist's guard. "You don't have them. You're not like Noir. I can break you."

"Try your best. There's enough of Valanazes' power in my blood and bones to outmatch you, Niflung."

Ragnar's fist shot out like a battering ram. Bonderbrand weaved under the limb, pummeled him with a flurry of body blows, and rose into a left hook that snapped the Niflung's head to the side. Ragnar shuffled backwards.

"I was the university system's heavyweight champion!"

"Yeah? I once beat a guy to death with his own leg!"

The professor smiled, stepped in, and threw another jab. Ragnar grunted and kicked him in the groin.

"Too much boxing," the Niflung said. Bonderbrand doubled over and groaned. "Not enough beating the crap out of people in bars."

He grabbed the professor's head with both hands, and drove his knee into the academic's face. Ragnar kept hold and dragged him to the ground. As he pinned Bonderbrand down on his back, he wondered how many punches it would take to break through the 'crazy dragon stuff' and put knuckles to brain.

As it transpired, it took quite a lot. But that was okay. The Niflung didn't tire easily.

|-|

Black and Gold=
Black and Gold

Adrian Zanfran gazed at Talia over a battlefield of plates and dishes. Scraps of naan and colored grains of rice lay strewn about in bloody curry pools. Rich odors drifted amongst the carnage like cannon smoke, bearing delicious memories of the fallen. The campaign had been fierce. In the end, mankind had triumphed over meat and carbs and sauce and spice. But judging from the expression on Adrian's face, he'd crawled from the fray on his hands and knees, shell-shocked.

"Yeah, I'm pretty," Talia said. "But a married man shouldn't be staring like that. Especially when his wife has doomsday weapons."

"We call them diapers," he said.

The frivolous reply came off his lips before he'd thought about it, and the absurd image of Kwix destroying humans with that particular armament managed to break the spell of incredulity which had held his tongue.

"So... Ragnar kicked him in the groin?"

"Yeah."

"He kicked that dragon guy in the balls?"

"I don't know if I'd really call him a dragon guy, but sure." Talia smiled. "You look disappointed."

"It's just..."

"Hey, that's life. Sometimes you gear up for a big epic battle, and someone just comes along and kicks you in the nuts. If you want to make it sound more exciting when you write about it -- maybe have them thumping each other back and forth like it's some kind of martial arts holo-vid -- go right ahead. I'm just telling you what happened. Ragnar's boot, the professor's groin."

"So what were you doing? While Ragnar was fighting him, I mean."

"Me?" She shrugged. "I was just shooting people. No dramatic face-offs, guys dosed up on dragon stuff, or anything like that. Just a couple of pistols and a bunch of cultists. But hey, if that's too boring, write about how one of them tried to get away in a ship, and I shot it out of the sky."

"Did that really happen?"

"No, but everyone loves explosions. Why'd you think Rex Carnage's last movie was just two hours of him walking away from them?"

"The director's cut was three hours."

"Wish we'd known Rex a bit better. Maybe the cult would've taken him out. Wonder what the universe would be like if he'd never made Zombie Ninjas Vs. Kung Fu Vampires VIII..."

"Probably about the same."

"Yeah..." She glanced over at the lovers, and watched them feed one another forkfuls of curry and rice. "It always is."

Silence hovered between them. Adrian couldn't muster up the will to break it. He nodded to the waiter as the Rylattu cleared their table, and wondered if Talia's story was drifting away with the dissipating aromas.

"Roar."

The voice at his elbow made his tentacles twitch. He looked round, and stared down into the tiger's furry blue face. She grinned. Her purple-striped flanks undulated with deep breaths or inner laughter.

"No screaming this time?" she said.

"He must be a cat person," Talia said. "Come here, Lari."

The tiger walked over and sat on her haunches beside Talia's chair.

"Lari?" Adrian said.

"Oh..." She ruffled the tiger's cheek. "It's short for Illaria. Me and Ragnar named her."

"It's a beautiful name, don't you think?" Lari said. She scrunched up her eyes as she purred, making her face almost meditative.

"Y... Yes," Adrian said.

"They saved me from poachers who wanted my fur."

"She was a cute cub. Had this way of sitting there with her head up high, like she was a little princess."

"How did you end up working here?" Adrian said.

"They offered me all the free curry I could eat. And I like this place. The Curry Mile has... character." She nuzzled Talia's hand away, opened her eyes, and looked from one human to the other. "Did you leave room for dessert?"

Adrian met Talia's gaze. His tentacles tensed. Would she...

"Yeah," she said. "What's good?"

He exhaled.

"Try the mixed mithai platter," Lari said. "It has my special blue and purple burfi in it."

"You make sweets?" Adrian said.

"No, but I get up on my hind legs, lean on the table, and glare menacingly until the chef does them the way I want them."

"Sounds great," Talia said.

"I'll go tell them to make it."

Lari rubbed her cheek against Talia's knee, then padded away.

"Don't worry," Talia said.

"About the mithai?" Adrian said.

"The story. I wasn't going to leave it unfinished..."

"Scotch?" you say.

Lu Bu looks up from the illuminated table and stares at you.

"It's been a while since we last enjoyed one another's company," he says, "so perhaps I should remind you that I'm a robot."

"This..." you say, raising the bottle, "is mine. This is yours."

You place a small green square in front of him. He presses his fingertip down on it.

"It's a sixty-year," you say. "Most drinkers would commit mass murder to get hold of the liquid version."

"An interesting blend of flavors... I wonder how it would taste when mixed with a non-alcoholic beverage."

"Like blasphemy." You glug from your bottle, and let the scotch utter its agreement in your mouth. "Learned anything yet?"

Lu Bu lifts the millennia-old sword from the examination table with both hands, holding it by twin blades and handle -- a warrior offering his weapon to a commander or conqueror.

"The impurities in the steel don't match those of any recorded blades from Earth's history," he says, "and it's in pristine condition despite its supposed age. But beyond that..."

"What? You didn't find any magic?"

"No more than a priest I once spoke with could find his soul."

"Then I guess we'll be relying on faith. Seems appropriate, under the circumstances."

"Perhaps so."

He sets the sword back down and puts his finger on the electro-scotch again. You take another drink.

"Thanks," you say.

"For what? I didn't provide you with any useful information."

"For everything. Storming the Zenith... Helping me build the battlesuit on Hyperia... Playing lawyer on Earth... Fighting our way back to the Thalatta Spaceport... Sian... If it wasn't for you, maybe none of us would even be here."

"No... Thank you. For letting me do all those things at your side, for being my friend, and for making me feel like a man instead of a machine."

You hold out your bottle. He picks up the electro-scotch, and technology clinks against glass.

The Feet In Ancient Times

Flying brought back memories. It reached across immense gulfs of time and space, grasping and rekindling sensations which had outlived the wings that once granted them. Long ago, he'd soared through the skies of Tor'gyyl -- overpowering gravity with his draconic might, gazing down at the weak, pitiful beings who could only wallow in the dirt. That had been his awakening. His epiphany. He and the other dragons were masters. Born to rule and ravage, to destroy and demand worship.

But for all his strength, the black heavens had teased him. Mocked him. Imposed their limit on how high he could soar. They'd glittered with the knowledge that everything which lay beyond his reach was for the so-called gods alone.

Now such limitations had faded away like those divine beings themselves. Their images adorned no temples, and penitents never cried their names. They were gone. Forgotten. While Noir traversed the void in the cockpit of his ship, gazing into the infinite darkness.

Yes... Flying brought back the past. But it also invoked the future.

Had they really fought and bled -- met heroes' swords and spells with claws and burning breath -- for a single planet? One little ball of rock? Stars glimmered all around him, promising a myriad worlds. An entire universe.

All this awaited them. Supreme victory on a scale their ancient enemies could never have imagined -- which would make those foes weep and wail in the underworld. But first... First there was [Player Name].

Noir's hands tightened into fists. Deep in his core, within his melded soul, a dragon roared.

[Player Name]...

That [man|woman]'s very blood was a challenge. It screamed [his|her]her heritage. Two strains bound together, as close as the two voices and essences in Noir's own body. There was the one who slew Erebus near the walls of Fallows. The warrior whom the wyrms' minions came to call Dratherax -- God-Slayer. The Dragon-Rider of Burden's Rest. And there was the traitor. The blue drake whose orange eyes had held treachery. Erebus and Kalaxia's child and adversary. Solus.

[Player Name] embodied it all. Enemies past and present. The culmination of all the Kasans who'd come before, who'd battled the Kalaxians at every turn in a campaign measured over eons. [His|Her] death would be a powerful symbol.

Noir's eyes burned in his mask. Their azure flames lit the darkness of the void.

Flying brings back memories.

Every time you sit in a cockpit or flight cabin and your hands touch the controls, a thousand recollections simmer just beneath layers of instinct and muscle memory. You've flown a lot of spacecraft. Everything from tiny fighters to growling battleships. Their stories hum against your fingers, awakened for better or worse. Dozens of pushed buttons and pulled triggers whisper their tales.

Blasts of weapons fire lancing the void -- a Centurian ship exploding in the darkness, echoing in your aural implant, giving the Collective their justification for war. The craft you flew from the Child of Heaven, carrying you and Illaria beyond chaos and carnage, into a universe of threats and wonders. The ship King Salastro gave you on Gallea to secure his son's safety. And the beautiful, powerful vessel named after the woman it was built to avenge, which brought about such slaughter...

The Silver Shadow teems with its own share of phantoms. Nemo... Your companions... The Emperor... Hundreds of remembered words, looks, and conversations replay themselves.

You glance at Lu Bu, who sits in the co-pilot's seat. He turns to you. And you know the gesture is for your benefit, not his own. His omnidirectional senses render it superfluous. Just one of the countless little ways he's always seemed so much more than a mere machine.

"It isn't too late," you say.

"To devise another plan?" he says.

"For you to hit one of the targets you picked out instead."

"Would you rather have one of the others with you?"

"No, but..."

"Then I'll accompany you."

You fly in silence for some minutes, staring at the stars and holding your tongue. But at last you speak.

"Lu Bu..."

"Yes?"

"I talked to Wilex once, and I asked him about..."

"Me?"

"He said robots with... personalities?"

There's a flicker in his eyes that you swear is a smile.

"I believe I possess one of those, yes."

"He said they get backed up -- so their minds and memories can be recovered, if their bodies are destroyed. But he told me..."

"That I'd refused?"

"Yeah."

"And you'd like to know why." He holds your gaze for a long moment. "It's come to mind because you're considering your own mortality."

"Maybe..."

"Tell me... If it had been possible, would you have allowed Princess Illaria's personality and memories to be placed in a cloned body?"

"No! It... It wouldn't really be her."

"Precisely. Because people are more than those things. Perhaps a robot isn't, and I'm being illogical."

"No... You're not."

"And there's another reason. When I fight alongside you or our friends, I wish to face the same dangers, and experience life as they do. To appreciate its value and fragility. The engineers who built me may call that a malfunction."

"Screw them."

"I don't possess the right attachments."

"Then let's just kill Noir instead."

"Agreed."

Jerusalem Builded Here

The tarmac stretched away -- a dark, unnatural plain, as though the blackness from his ship and garb had bled into the ground and seeped across it in an ebon tide. Men, women, and children, humans and aliens, walked its surface. He imagined them sinking into its depths like beasts floundering in a tar pit.

Pilgrims poured from their vessels, some uttering prayers as they set foot on Jerusalem Maior for the first time. There were many languages. Ancient and modern tongues. Most bore a religious euphoria which amused him. From Tor'gyyl to Earth, to the distant stars, it was always the same. The same pious, pleading tones. Identical expressions of servile awe on their features.

Noir walked among them.

On his left, a girl in flowing robes dropped to her hands and knees, kissing the ground. Nearby, a man with a long white beard was gazing up at the sky -- perhaps expecting to glimpse his deity in the darkening heavens.

"Diablo!"

He stopped and glanced at an old woman, whose skin was dark and mottled like old wood. Her eyes were soft and milky. Blind orbs, denied medicine or augmentation. Yet their blank stare was aimed in his direction. So was her pointing finger.

"Diablo!" Her voice became louder and shriller. A piercing wail. "Diablo!"

A young man ran out of the small, claptrap spacecraft behind her. He tripped down the steps, caught the rail to steady himself, and darted to her side.

"I'm sorry!" he said. "My grandmother's..."

The man tapped the side of his head.

"Diablo!"

"No," Noir said. "I'm something far worse."

He strode away, leaving the woman shrieking and the man gawping. Noir's scaly lips formed a smile beneath his mask. Was that why [Player Name] had chosen Jerusalem Maior for their encounter? Because of newfound superstitions? Had Noir beaten piety and a literal fear of God into [him|her]? The idea was entertaining beyond measure.

The man in black walked the city, whilst daylight yielded to the bright halos of streetlamps. Few people paid him any attention. His garb, even his ebon mask and searing eyes, was no stranger than some of the costumes worn by the pilgrims and tourists around him -- the clothes and coverings they donned at the behest of fashion or scripture. On a world where angels flew on metal wings, the extraordinary was commonplace.

Ornate churches stood among shops and cafes, mingling with those gleaming, younger-looking structures like missionaries ministering to the sinful. Their stonework -- real or fabricated -- was remarkable. Gothic masterpieces swallowed and disgorged rivers of worshippers, beneath the eternal vigilance of their gargoyles. Erebus had once scorned such human endeavor. But through the eyes he wore now, through the filter of his half-human soul, he appreciated their beauty and their worth. In time, such architecture would be dedicated to his kind instead. Millennia of skill, artistry, and ingenuity striving for their glorification. Stone dragons would gaze out across cities and up at the sky, while cavernous naves echoed with hymns to tooth, claw, and wing.

Perhaps he was disappointed when he reached the address encoded within [Player Name]'s challenge. In a city with magnificent cathedrals, edifices where the stink of piety was a thick and almost tangible fog, his enemy had chosen a tall, unremarkable structure. It stood among many near identical siblings, forming a copse of glass and metal trees. Just an office building. Empty, judging by the darkened windows that climbed up its side like a smooth, blue-black skin.

Its door opened to his touch. The lobby beyond was unlit, but his eyes parted the shadows. He passed the unyielding steel of the elevator doors and entered the stairwell. At a whim, he leapt and grasped a bannister, then swung himself up to the next floor and grabbed hold of another.

Noir flew, as he had so long ago. As perhaps he would again. In this age technology made biology as malleable as the molten iron in a West Krunan blacksmith's forge. Yes... Maybe he would have ebon wings mounted on his back. Azure eyes smoldered with the possibilities.

He drew himself up onto the final landing, vaulting the rail. A plated door awaited him. He pushed it open and stepped out onto the roof.

Beneath the night sky, on a cliff overlooking a sea of man-made light, Noir gazed around. But he was alone. Was this another trap? Would there be turrets or explosions, as Wu Tenchu had thrown at him? In truth, the thought of [Player Name] detonating a powerful weapon in the middle of this ecclesiastical city, obliterating thousands of souls in a futile effort to stop him, was thrilling. Murders upon murders. And all to no avail.

But another notion crossed his mind, and his eyes narrowed. Had [Player Name] intended to fight, to duel, only to scurry away when [his|her] courage failed [him|her]? That would be disappointing.

Noir sniffed, tasting the atmosphere. His azure slits gleamed.

He spun round and thrust his leg out.

A black boot met empty air, and the air buckled beneath the blow. There was a grunt. Something fell away and tumbled across the roof.

"Well," a man's voice said, "you can't blame a chap for trying."

Invisibility sloughed away like a shimmering skin, revealing the debonair smile of Arthur Lupin.

Dark Satanic Mills

This entrance to the Grand Temple isn't as imposing as the vast opening which admits pilgrims on the opposite side, but the stonework is no less wondrous. Graven angels frame the double doors, spread across the steps, the pillars, and the curved arch above. Those underneath are at prayer. Some kneel, clasping their hands together in entreaty. Others stand upright, sword blades pressed against their furrowed brows. The ones flanking the doorway rise up from these penitents in great hosts -- winged legions rushing towards the war which consumes the apex. There angels and demons battle with swords, spears, and tridents.

The sculptures are only made more impressive by the flesh and blood angels they encircle. Six warriors in resplendent gold and silver armor stand before you, their wings folded behind them like cloaks. They stare at you over blasters which are currently braced across their chests -- but you have the distinct impression that they're just looking for an excuse to point them your way.

A short woman with a shaved head, whose uniform is even fancier than the others, glares at Lu Bu.

"The sky commander agreed to see you out of gratitude. You and your friends saved a lot of lives here. And you remember that priest you protected in the fighting?"

"Of course."

"He's a friend. So if I can ever stand beside you in battle, I will."

"It was really my pleas-"

"But her?" She diverts her glare to you, and it intensifies in the process. It's like staring into the barrels of blazing machineguns. "This war criminal?"

"My companion was never prosec-"

"If you'd told her she was coming-"

"I had to conceal that information, for security reasons."

"Right..." She snorts. "And because you knew she'd refuse."

"It's imperative that the two of us both speak with her. It's a matter of security, for Jerusalem Maior and perhaps the whole of human space."

"We're responsible for the sky commander's protection. So if you think we're letting that maniac near her-"

"I'm not here to hurt anyone!" you say.

"You're holding a sword."

You glance at the Sword of Conquered Kingdoms. It occurs to you that you should probably have put it in a case or something.

"It's an artifact," Lu Bu says, "which we wish to bring to Sky Commander Bethany's attention."

"If it makes you feel better," you say, "you can carry it yourself."

"Let me see that," the Archangel says. She lowers her blaster and takes a small, rectangular device from her belt. "Hold it out."

You do as instructed and let her run her scans along its length and breadth. After some moments she presumably decides that it's not booby-trapped, because she stows her own weapon on her back and takes the sword from your hand. She stares at the blade -- brows knitted.

"Tell the sky commander that we're here on behalf of Wu Tenchu," Lu Bu says, "and I believe she'll agree to speak with us."

Sky Commander Bethany sat at her desk, staring at the holographic screen. She couldn't be sure, but she was almost certain Lu Bu's eyes were staring straight at her, into the hidden security camera mounted above the entrance. The robot's words seemed to echo in the room.

"Wu..." she said.

Was he lying? Just invoking that name because he knew she wouldn't, couldn't ignore it? Part of her hoped so. But unwelcome presentiments gnawed at her, and the mandarin's message flitted through her thoughts.

"Carlita," she said, "I'll see them. Bring them here."

Bethany closed the connection and murmured a prayer.

Till We Have Built

"Where is [Player Name]?" Noir said.

"No introductions?" Lupin said. "I'm disappointed, dear boy. [He|She] said you had a flair for the dramatic. I'm-"

"I know who you are, thief."

"My reputation does precede me, doesn't it? Makes it rather hard to find new chums. They're always watching their valuables whenever I'm around. But [Player Name]'s more understanding than most."

"Where is [he|she]?"

Noir moved towards him. Lupin slipped away with the same swiftness and grace -- almost a slide instead of a step.

"I can point you in the right direction..." He sprang backwards. His boots touched down on the low barrier which encircled the rooftop. "But first you'll have to catch me."

Lupin crouched, bracing his legs, and launched himself into a reverse somersault. His body soared in a high arc -- carrying him across the alleyway below. He landed on the edge of the next building's roof with his poise and smile unbroken.

Noir leapt after him.

Bethany gestured at her desk. Carlita nodded, crossed the chamber, and set the sword down there. The sky commander looked from her to the five Archangels clustered in the doorway.

"It's okay," she said. "If [Player Name] was here to assassinate me-"

"I'm not," [Player Name] said.

"...Lu Bu wouldn't be with [him|her]."

"I'm flattered by your trust," the robot said.

"It's been earned."

The guards looked at one another, and Carlita seemed on the verge of speaking. But she bit her tongue and led the others away. The door closed behind them. Bethany took a deep breath, and hoped against hope that Wu Tenchu's final words to her weren't about to come true.

"Please," she said.

She indicated the two chairs in front of her desk. [Player Name] and Lu Bu sat down. The human glanced around the room, at the painted frescos. The robot's eyes remained on her -- focused and inscrutable.

"Is this artifact for the temple?" she said.

"In a way..." [Player Name] said.

"We must be frank," Lu Bu said, "since time is of the essence. We have reason to believe that you possess a powerful weapon, in a chamber beneath this building."

"He told you?"

"With his dying breath, as it were." Lu Bu held her gaze. "It was among his final deeds."

"Master Wu thought he knew what it was," [Player Name] said.

"I won't discuss the contents of our vault," she said. "If that's what you came to talk about, I'm afraid you've wasted-"

"We need it. Now."

Bethany felt the blood drain from her face.

"Someone may come to you one day, and request a favor."

"We have to make use of this artifact," Lu Bu said. "I assure you, we have no wish to violate the sanctity of your treasures, but we have no choice."

"I can't-"

"The very notion will shock you. All your training, your beliefs, your instincts, will tell you to refuse."

"There's a man called Noir," [Player Name] said. "If you're like everyone else in this damn galaxy, you've probably watched him kick me through a window. Well... And believe me, I know how this sounds... He's supernatural. Regular weapons, even nuclear explosions, won't stop him. That's why I have that sword. But it might not be enough. We need a contingency plan. And if Master Wu was right, you have something even more powerful."

"But before you do, remember what a dead man once did for you beneath the Grand Temple..."

"Why..." Bethany groped for the words. "Why would I allow-"

"For two reasons." [Player Name] held her gaze now, with eyes even steadier and more unflinching than the robot's. "First of all, if you don't, I'll make sure the whole galaxy knows what you're keeping here."

"They wouldn't believe you."

"Most might not, but enough will. You'd have to build a wall around this planet to keep them all out. And the second reason..."

The sky commander's hands clenched. Nails bit into her palms.

"...that unstoppable killing machine I told you about? He's already here. So either you let us into your vault, or people will die. Because I promise you, he'd kill his way through every angel on Jerusalem."

Arthur Lupin glanced down as he jumped, at the distant street and its miniscule inhabitants. Invisible hands grabbed at him. Gravity was a jealous lady, and never wanted the air to have him for long. She'd rather snatch him down, smash him into a bloody paste, than see him soar.

He hit the next rooftop, rolled, and rose.

"Better luck next time, my dear."

Lupin glanced back. Noir was still after him. That was good, because a chase needed hounds as well as a hare. And [Player Name] was counting on him.

"Should I slow down?" he said.

On the opposite building, azure eyes blazed in that featureless ebon mask. Noir hurled himself into the same jump. Lupin gave a low whistle. That man was good at this game.

But he fancied that no one was quite as good as Arthur Lupin. So he grinned, spun round, and carried on running.

"I won't be part of this!" Bethany says. "It's not a blaster, or a sword... Using it like that... It's blasphemy!"

"Yeah?" you say. "So's Noir. I've seen what his kind did. They wanted to be worshipped, to..."

You shake your head.

"It doesn't even matter." You hold her gaze, and sap the strength from your voice. Because this isn't about rhetoric. "I know what Wu Tenchu did for you, and Noir's the reason he's dead."

"We're not asking you to take part," Lu Bu says. "Just grant us access."

"You don't understand," she says. "This... What we have... It won't just be Noir. When it opens, anyone who's unworthy will..."

"Be destroyed? Then perhaps there's no need for any further debate."

"You'll have to find another-"

"Because if we're unworthy, as you express it, you believe we'll be eliminated. But if this doesn't transpire, surely that means our actions were deemed acceptable."

The silence seems to stretch for centuries.

"If... If I agree," she says, "you'll keep our secret?"

"Our friends know," you say, "but they won't tell anyone else what you have. We give you our word."

"And you promise not to damage or tamper with it?"

"We'll use it exactly how you tell us to, nothing else."

Sky Commander Bethany looks at Lu Bu, then back at you.

"And you really believe you're worthy?"

"Sure," you say.

You keep your eyes fastened on hers. Firm, steady, and sincere. But in the deep and distant parts of your mind, children scream.

Lupin ducked beneath the flailing leg. A flurry of punches chased him, black fists whooshing at his face in swift thunderstorms. He sprang away from the bombardment.

"You will tire, thief," Noir said. "You are only wasting time."

"I believe that's rather the point," Lupin said.

Noir lunged at him. Lupin leapt aside. And the universe serenaded his agility.

"Ah!" the gentleman thief said.

Noir stared, as Lupin pulled a communicator out of his pocket and silenced the melodious Italian love song.

"One moment..." He put it to his ear. "Yes? Certainly! It's for you."

He tossed the device to Noir. The man in black caught it.

"Noir?" [Player Name] said.

"Your ancestor would never have sent others to die in [his|her] stead," Noir said.

"Neither did I. If Lupin doesn't want you to catch him, you won't. But you're here for me."

"Where are you?"

"On-world. The Grand Temple. This communicator will lead you to me."

"Another trap, no doubt?"

"Yes. Me."

The line went dead.

"After I have finished with [Player Name]..." Noir stared into the thief's eyes. "...I will hunt you down."

"If you beat [him|her], old chap, you won't have to. Because I'll come looking for you."

Lupin smiled, bowed, and backflipped off the building.

Noir [III]

Orange light flickers at the edges of your vision. Energy fields pulse and crackle, shielding the vault's countless artworks and treasures. Protecting irreplaceable relics from the battle that'll soon take place among them. You keep your eyes forward, focused on the long passage which trails away from the big doorway like a monster's gullet. You'll have to get used to the barriers' flaring illumination. When the fighting starts, you can't let it distract you.

The sky commander disappears into the elevator at the far end of the corridor. She doesn't look back, and didn't wish you luck. You don't blame her. You forced her hand, blackmailing her into bringing you here. If it wasn't for her loyalty to Wu Tenchu's memory, and her fear of the consequences, maybe she'd have let the traps slaughter you instead of deactivating them.

If you kill Noir, you'll try to make it up to her somehow. And perhaps you'll get a chance to talk about one relic in particular...

"That symbol..." you say.

The device on the heater shield, a blue dragon standing above a pitchfork, is so pristine it might have been painted a day earlier. But you of all people know it wasn't.

"Yes?" Bethany says.

Her hand hovers over it.

"Never mind," you say.

She touches it, and the wall slides away.

Lupin's voice appears in your head, transmitted via your aural implant.

"He's on his way."

"Thanks, Arthur. If I get out of this alive, I owe you one."

"Call me Thomas."

"Thomas..."

"Good luck, my dear."

The connection closes. You open others.

"Barra?" you say.

"We're okay," the Piscarian says. "But Alexa didn't make it."

"Tell Ali I'm sorry."

"I'm good too," Telemachus says. The prince's voice is heavy, weary. But there's elation there as well. "I'm going to be king."

"Good for you, Tel."

"A ton of dead cultists," Talia says, "and not a scratch on me. Kind of in the mood to hit a club after you're done there."

"Drinks are on me."

"Let's get a boar too," Ragnar says. "I killed a dragon guy!"

"Then I'd better kill my one, or I'll never hear the end of it."

"Got the secret weapon?" Talia says.

"I'm standing beside it as we speak," Lu Bu says.

"So what is it?" Ragnar says. "Some kind of cannon?"

"It's more of a box..." you say.

Noir pulled himself onto the balcony rail and perched there like a vulture. He sniffed, drawing in the surrounding scents. [Player Name] had been here. Recently. This time there was no subterfuge.

A jump cleared the balcony, and took him into the doorway of the room beyond.

"You must be Noir."

The woman in the winged panoply stood across the chamber -- taking his measure.

"Sky Commander Bethany, I believe?"

She nodded. His azure gaze roamed around the frescos adorning the walls, and paused on one of them.

"Such magnificence. I especially like this piece."

"Satan," she said.

"Depicted as a dragon," he said. "How very appropriate. Though perhaps I have more in common with your god than his nemesis. We both rose from the dead, destined to rule..."

"[Player Name] was right. The galaxy will be better off without you."

"Then hasten my end. Where is she?"

"Through there."

Bethany pointed at the unsealed entrance that gaped between the frescos.

Noir sensed the tensing of her muscles, the clenching of her fists, when he crossed the room. But she didn't attack. He entered the elevator unopposed, and the scent grew stronger as he descended.

Anticipation flowed beneath his scaly skin.

"It's time," you say.

"Good luck, guys," Talia says.

The others' well wishes and exhortations sound in your ears, as the man in black strides down the long corridor. His burning eyes fill the ensuing silence.

You wait till he's in the room, just yards away, before you pull the sword round from behind your back.

"Intriguing," he says.

"Recognize it?" you say.

"The blades of Carnus the Warwalker. A great butcher of men, just like the one who wields it now. Where did you find it?"

"In an asteroid."

"Tor'gyyl's bones."

"A friend of a friend reckons it can kill you."

"Perhaps. If greater hands than yours wielded it." His head tilts upwards. There's a sniff and a faint growl. "You have brought the robot. Do you believe he can save you?"

"It wouldn't be the first time. If you want to even the odds, go dig up Kalaxia. I'll wait."

He advances instead.

You can do this.

You have a magic sword.

You can do this.

Seriously, an actual magic sword.

You can do this.

You're going to kill a dragon with your enchanted sword, just like in the fairy tales. Because that's how the universe works. The hero wins. The dragon dies.

These thoughts flash through your mind in a split-second. Then a black blur smothers them.

You slice. A quick, diagonal cut. The blade cleaves empty air.

Noir's fist doesn't miss. It crashes on your helmet, and only Sian engineering saves your skull.

You dart backwards before he can close and clinch -- before he can render your weapon useless. The Sword of Conquered Kingdoms weaves a tight, swift web of steel in front of you. A silver sculpture of attack and defense.

It isn't enough.

It'll never be enough.

You fall back, away from ebon kicks and punches. Retreating from two azure flames. Into the small, dark chamber.

Noir's eyes flick to Lu Bu for the barest fraction of a second. Then they're back on you, pressing the assault. Guiding his fast, strong, murderous limbs. He doesn't perceive your friend as a threat. He's focused on the sword. The only thing in the universe he believes has the power to hurt him.

The door closes, drowning you all in shadow. Your helmet adjusts. Blue fire blazes. Blackness rushes for you, to finish you.

"Now!" you say.

Lu Bu opens the box.

Noir falters. His head snaps round to evaluate the new danger. But he's too slow.

Golden light floods the chamber.

The plate of mithai sat between them, a rainbow platter of sugary treats. Rectangular blocks of burfi -- blue and purple, green and pink -- formed a little well around syrup-sticky blobs of gulab jamun. Jalebi lay beside the structure in a pile of intricate, twisting orange patterns.

Talia glanced down, as though noticing the sweetmeats for the first time. She took a piece of burfi between her thumb and first two fingers.

"When Bethany went down there..." Talia gazed at the block, then met Adrian's eyes. "...they were gone."

"Just..."

"Just gone. No trace, of any of them. Noir, Lu Bu, the captain... We thought she was lying. We went over there -- me, Ragnar, and Tel -- ready to tear the whole temple apart. But when we saw her, face to face... She was telling the truth."

Talia sighed and took a tiny bite of her burfi.

"She even took us down into the vault, and showed us the room. Before we got there, Ragnar was all set to break the box open. Like he thought their bodies were crammed inside or something. But in that room... We all felt it."

"Felt what?"

"I don't know... Power maybe? Like there was this... this force there. It's hard to explain. It was hard to be angry there. You'd have felt like a little kid screaming at her parents or something."

"What did you do?"

"For about a year, we kept hoping. If they could vanish, they could reappear, right? I don't think any of us really believed that, but we pretended. Every time there was an anomaly, whenever some crazy nut on the net said they'd seen [Player Name] someplace, we checked it out. In the end we knew it had to stop. So we had a funeral for the captain and Lu Bu. Just us and some friends."

"I'm sorry. I... For what it's worth, I'd hoped the stories were true. The holo-tabloid stuff about [Player Name] being out there, wandering the galaxy..."

They nibbled in silence for perhaps a minute, picking at Indian sweets while the story settled around them like a mantle.

"Whatever happened..." Talia said, "Wherever the captain ended up... At least she has Lu Bu with her..."

Epilogue: The Screams

Shrieking voices, flooding a golden galaxy. They claw at your skull, inside and outside, and ripple across endless aureate oceans.

Where the hell are you? You were fighting... Fighting Noir.

Stunned. Must be stunned. You have to snap out of it! Get up, before he kills you! There's no weight in your hand. The Sword of Conquered Kingdoms... It's gone!

Screams. More screams, tearing through your mind.

You grope for the weapon... But your hands are invisible. Weightless. Intangible.

"[Player Name]."

The sound reverberates, echoing around you. Perhaps one voice, perhaps a chorus.

"You must answer for your deeds."

"Who-" Your tongue's gone, and the word tosses around on golden tides.

"Your crimes. Your sins."

The shrieks grow louder. Louder. Louder. Shuddering through your soul.

"Their screams."

The gold... It's not a sea. It's fire. Flames, burning and searing. Each tongue a screaming voice, a shrieking child. You try to pull away, to escape. But your phantom muscles have no strength.

The fire eats at you, and your cries join theirs.

"Their screams condemn you."

"Stop!"

That voice! Your friend! He's here too! You try to speak, to call to him. But tendrils of flame slither down your throat, charring your innards. Immolating your tongue, throat, and lungs. Burning barbs snag, rip, sear. It's a cruel, sadistic conflagration. A malicious inferno. Agony rages through your being -- enough pain to steal your senses or unhinge your mind. But your thoughts are crisp and clear amid the anguish. Because they want you awake. Conscious. Suffering.

"Silence! Your friend must be judged."

"If there's a judge, [Player Name] needs an advocate! Let me speak for [him|her]!"

"A soulless machine? Never."

"If I don't have a soul, then how am I here?"

The voices whisper. A cataclysmic susurration, louder and more terrible than the devouring flames.

"Very well. You are her advocate. Listen to those who denounce her..."

The screams become words. Billions, trillions of words. Men and women speak. And the children, loudest and fiercest of all. Endless voices shout amongst the fire. They tell the golden universe what you did. Speak of how you murdered them. Of the lives and loves you tore away. Of how you consigned them to inferno, as they've now consigned you.

Hot tears carve searing channels down your nonexistent cheeks.

"What can you set against this?"

"I..."

Lu Bu's hesitation burns hotter and more painful than the fire. Because in your heart and his, you both know -- you've always known -- the magnitude of the evil you inflicted.

"[Player Name] saved countless lives. [He|She] freed billions from the Centurians, and trillions from the Besalaad encroachment [he|she] prevented with [his|her] actions."

"Does that cleanse [his|her] soul?"

"No!" Your own scream rises over theirs, counterpoint to the children's wails. "No! I deserve this!"

"[Player Name]!" Lu Bu says. "Don't-"

"They're right! They're... They're..."

The screams diminish, drifting away on aureate tides.

And the inferno consumes you.

The breeze whispers, sending ribbons of cloud scurrying across the soft blue sky. The surface of the lake, almost a perfect mirror of the heavens in shade and hue, trembles as it catches the words from the air, and passes them along its waters. They play against the side of the little boat, a wet, fluttering caress. The message reaches the Sian cherry blossoms on the distant banks. Their adornments, a resplendent riot of purple, blue, turquoise, and jade, quiver as they gossip over what they've heard.

Your gaze rests on the chattering blossoms, the finery of trees that exist only here in all the impossible vastness of the galaxy. Glories created for the imperial gardens, their beauty a secret kept from all but the Emperor's family and those honored enough to be invited to share in their wonders.

The breeze shifts, twirling like a dancer. The lake murmurs in disapproval at this sudden and unseemly gyration, its waters undulating in quiet outrage. The trees lean in close to each other, the bright blossoms upon their heads mingling in clashing waves of color. It's as though they're coming together in silent congress, plotting the upstart breeze's murder for the shocking breach of decorum. But overhead the clouds show no sign of joining in the general vexation. They're enjoying the dance, sharing in its steps, twisting and turning into new shapes.

"What do you see?" Illaria asks.

"A [man|woman] and a dragon," you say, after a moment's contemplation, "their destinies intertwined."

"Yes..."

Your gaze drifts downwards, meeting hers as it too descends from the heavens. She leans back against the plush cushions at the prow and smiles, the slight movement of her lips completing her beauty like the final stroke of an artist's brush.

"...but there's something else."

"What?"

"Lean in close, and I'll tell you."

Her eyes sparkle with the promise of cosmic knowledge, something she wishes to divulge to you alone. You stand up, eager to share in whatever eldritch secret she possesses.

The boat rocks beneath you, teasing, but it can't upset your balance. You crouch beside her and put your ear close to the warmth of her lips.

She whispers.

You both laugh, and your merriment rustles through the eternal cherry blossoms.

</tabber>

LotS/The Story/Fade to Gold

Navigation menu

Search