Saketa drew her sword and felt dread grip her. The darkness was here. Not just within, but outside as well, poisoning the air much as it had in the poor district. Except now it was being carried by people.

Chull screamed. It was an inarticulate, raw blast of emotion, let loose in the reception area. Saketa ran in after him, and saw slaughter. The man’s comrades were spread about like debris, most killed with a single slash, but Saketa saw one woman with a familiar charring injury that had eaten away a head-sized hole in her torso.

Chull had thrown his staff away at some point, and now drew his sword. He started shouting words. Saketa didn’t know if they were names, oaths, or calls to whoever was responsible, but he kept up the shouting as he ran further into the building. Saketa shouted after him, but if he could even hear her over himself he wasn’t listening. So she followed.

There was just more slaughter. Only some of them had died with weapons in their hands, and Saketa saw another burned body, slumped down below a burn mark in the wall.

Close to the sparring floor stood Kio. His clothes were smeared with blood, as was the blade on his polearm. He stood at the ready to meet a charge, and Chull immediately went for him.

Saketa shouted again, and now she did launch into a Shift. But it never had a chance. Her aim was completely off, and she emerged on the sparring floor itself.

Kio struck Chull’s attack aside, and the Tanga warrior was thrown completely off balance by the inhuman strength of the blow. Kio then clove straight through his torso.

Saketa ran at the boy, but he turned to face her and readied his weapon again. She stopped, and for a moment they both simply stood and faced one another. The teenager was breathing heavily. There was a mad gleam in his eyes, as if he was close to bursting from the inside.

“You… are the Warden,” he said in heavily-accented Barda.

“I met your mother!” Saketa said with a sneer. “In that shelter.”

His face stiffened, like a shutter coming down over a window. She’d known this meeting would come, and now she found words hard to come by.

Chull’s blood dripped off the blade.

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked stiffly. “You should… talk to her.”

“The past is a land of lies,” Kio replied reflexively.

“Think for yourself!” she shouted. “Look what you’ve done, you filth!”

“The past must die…” Kio chanted at a low volume. “The past must die…”

“Is THIS the life you want for yourself?”

The darkness weighed her down. Here was another scene of carnage. Here he was, another agent of evil. Too much was blasting through her mind for easy processing. Up to the surface of it all bubbled the face of that sad woman in the shelter, and her desperate plea.

“Stand down,” Saketa demanded. “Drop the weapon. So I won’t have to tell Brenna that I killed her son.”

He inhaled sharply, and shifted his stance very slightly. She saw the charge coming, and from the corner of her eye she saw another person emerge from the depths of the Tanga.

Kio came at her; inexperienced, but strong, fast and fearless. She darted to the left, further away from that second disciple. It was a young woman, in makeshift armour made of hard plastics, carrying a big, crude sword. Saketa had just evaded Kio’s second swing when a third person dropped down from the upper landing. It was a boy Kio’s age, with another sword.

Saketa evaded the third swing and feinted at him. He fell for it and she gained a second’s peace to break away and charge at the newcomers. The woman stepped forth to meet her, but another feint did the trick and Saketa closed the distance with the boy. He had speed, but lacked warrior’s instincts. She had both, and her sword went through his skull.

The woman was the first to reach her, and swung with her cleaver-like sword. Saketa parried, got around the guard, and struck back in one continuous motion. Her blade bit into the woman’s shoulder guard, and Saketa had to leave it at that as Kio’s strike came. She hopped back, then again as the woman struck again.

The two of them weren’t coordinating; each one was greedily trying to score the kill and Saketa led them across the fighting floor. The doorway seemed to catch them off guard; the woman was the one to step into it and block Kio for the moment.

She didn’t have room to swing and the weapon was poorly suited for thrusting. Saketa parried again, let her blade slide along the crude chopper, and stabbed the woman in the face.

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Just as she staggered back, vulnerable and open for a killing blow, Kio rumbled like a beast and charged the wall next to the door. It wasn’t all that thick, and he burst through it like a small, angry car. Saketa darted out through the doorway as his axe came at her head. She smashed into the injured woman, knocking her off her feet, and was back out onto the fighting floor.

Kio yanked his axe free from the frame and came at her yet again with a war cry. Saketa parried, and felt the jarring strength that had caught Chull so off guard. He kept up the assault by swinging the other end of the handle up at her, and drove her before him. The injured woman was getting to her feet, with one hand on her ruined face and the other around her weapon.

A heavy sofa flipped through the air. It knocked the woman over and still had plenty of momentum left as it sailed at Kio. He narrowly managed to bat it aside with one hand, sending it flying into a wall with a loud crash. Saketa swung at him, but only managed a shallow gash on his face.

Vanaka stood by the entryway to the training area, right where the sofa had been, and Losan came up behind her. He had snatched up a polearm. The injured woman staggered to her feet, broken but not destroyed, and that was all Saketa could take in as she used footwork to keep Kio in front of her.

The boy fought with a wild desperation, seemingly furious at her continued survival. The gash was bleeding into his left eye, the one surrounded by the birthmark, and he cocked his head to compensate. She attacked his left side, but he saw it coming and their weapons met in a brutal clash.

Their auras met as well, and the opposed energies manifested a burst that lanced out, cracking and tearing the floor and ceiling. They clashed in a momentary stalemate, but all the things that pushed her down pushed at his back, and he flung her away.

She felt the darkness go through him, like water through a funnel, and it burst from his fingertips in visible form. The crude, crackling tendril shot out with a hideous buzzing noise, painting his pained face in purple. Saketa ducked under it, then leapt up in the air as he turned the stream about, as if spraying from a hose.

She spun up in a circle, the tendril missed, and she landed on her feet.

The energy died down, leaving his hand blackened and injured, and the rest of him visibly worn down. Saketa darted at him, and he was just slow enough to take her sword through the dominant arm. Kio hissed, and the polearm handle smacked against her skull.

She saw stars and lost control of her body for a moment, which was all the time gravity needed to pull her down. Kio tried to shift his long weapon into a single-handed grip, but wobbled on his feet and fumbled the act.

A plasma blast hit his torso. There was the usual flash and sparks, but Kio stayed on his feet. A second shot hit him, and now he yelped angrily, but still he didn’t fall.

Saketa got halfway to her feet and took a quick glance around. Fredrak had arrived, and held a strange little pistol in his hand. He shifted his aim, and as she got all the way up the third shot flew right past Kio’s head as the boy broke into a run. Then she was in pursuit, and Fredrak held his fire.

Kio went through that doorway, next to the hole he’d made, and Saketa sensed what he was doing. The boy’s rage and pain fuelled his power, and the purple haze descended over him, bathing him, swallowing him, and he willingly dove in.

The tunnel closed. And with that, Kio was gone.

Saketa stood still and let the sword hang in a loose grip. The Tanga was utterly silent. For a few breaths she simply felt nothing, aside from the pounding pain in her head. Then inner sensation started creeping back in and she turned and walked back the way she’d come.

They were all here: Vanaka, Losan, Fredrak and Ayna. The FedCom agent folded his odd pistol and it took on the appearance of an innocent grooming kit. She walked past them, and the group followed. As Saketa reached the entryway she saw the female disciple she’d stabbed in the face. The woman had received a second head wound, this one fatal. She attributed it to the polearm in Losan’s hand. The normally stoic man looked winded and actually shaken, like he’d just been in the fight of his life. He probably had. His mistress simply looked shaken.

“Eighty seconds, fifty-two warriors,” Fredrak said grimly, the first to speak.

“Wa… what?” Vanaka said.

“Between that bang and the two of them arriving on the scene,” the agent said. “It was about eighty seconds. That’s how long it took those three to kill fifty-two trained warriors with melee weapons.”

“This is awful…” Vanaka said to no-one in particular, and was clearly fighting her emotions.

“Is anyone injured?” Saketa asked stiffly, without turning around.

“No,” Losan said, and cleared his throat in a clear effort to get himself under control. “Everyone: We need to get out of here.”

“We really do,” Ayna replied.

“No argument,” Fredrak said. “But Saketa: How was that man still standing? He wasn’t wearing armour. My shots burned right through his shirt. I saw the skin underneath.”

“Neophyte ability,” she told him absent-mindedly. “Heat… destructive energies… he could absorb those. Just barely. It probably actually helped him make that escape.”

She strode out into the yard. Her agitation needed to go somewhere, and so she slashed at empty air a few times. It did clean her sword up a little, so there was that.

There was a distant din, but it barely registered to her senses. Halfway across the yard she turned to face the others.

“I saw Chull in there…” Vanaka mumbled softly, and still didn’t seem to be talking to anyone in particular. “This…”

She trailed off. Ayna was close enough to reach out and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Losan was looking about, alert for further dangers. And Fredrak was watching Saketa expectantly.

“That’s two of them dead,” she said. “One injured. And a fourth either too injured to fight, or already executed for failure. I have what I need to finish this.”

Her fists clenched.

“In maybe as little as two days.”

She looked each one of them in the eyes.

“Thank you all, for your help. For facing danger alongside me. It was… good to see familiar faces.”

The tone and nature of her speech registered to the four of them, and all save Losan began protests, each in a different tone.

“This is it,” she insisted. “This is a task for me to finish. This is my duty. And I will see it through. Get out of here and be safe.”

“Saketa!”

Vanaka stepped towards her.

Saketa Shifted.