CYCLE 12866 // MONTH THREE // DAY SIXTY-SEVEN // REIGN OF BLESSED EMPEROR VOLSIF XCVI
SIX YEARS PRIOR
He looks not unlike an upturned beetle as he scrambles back, eyes wide with fear. His are the short, sharp breaths of a wounded animal. Of prey. His jacket is damp with a wild spray of crimson - little of it his own - and before him there lays a bloodied knife, tantalizing yet oh-so-far out of reach.
His eyes flick to the knife - then, slowly, they rise to meet the barrel of the gun. To look upon the face of Abel Diesch, owner and proprietor of the Winking Egret. It's a fine little watering hole, and one the man has visited several times before. Diesch's face is one the man had known to be perpetually alight with good cheer and an easy smile - but now the bartender's expression is almost preternaturally calm.
The man is trembling. Diesch is not.
"Why?" the man blurts out. Amidst the heavy silence of the darkened warehouse interior, he nearly flinches at the sudden volume of his own voice. Diesch's expression changes not one iota as he replies:
"August Gadon," Diesch says, flatly. His words are droll and lifeless and chillingly precise.
"Who?"
"Murdered, by you," Diesch answers. "Him, and all the others - all those years. That's why."
"I don't..." the man shakes his head in panicked disbelief. "Man, I don't even know you!"
"I know you," Diesch replies. The man's pulse quickens. He sees Diesch's finger tighten ever-so-slightly around the trigger, and suddenly fear and panic give way to a defiant surge of rage.
"They were nobodies!" the man shouts, throwing up his bloodied hands in exasperation. "No friends, no relatives. Their corpses barely made the news! So who the hell are you to-I mean, who the hell even cares?" the man demands. He is panting heavily, now, and in his mind's eye he sees a vision of himself leaping forward, grabbing the barrel of the gun and wrenching it to the side. Diesch is steady, yes, but he's slow, and the man is far faster than his stocky frame suggests. His muscles coil, tense. His pulse begins to slow. He knows with certainty now what will happen next.
"Nobody even gave a shit," the man scoffs, and in the next instant he will leap forward and choke the life from this dull-eyed bastard.
Diesch stares down at him, and the disappointment in his face is so crushing, so utterly total that the man hesitates, if only for a moment.
"I did," Diesch replies.
The man moves - and Diesch, without blinking, shoots him square in the forehead.
Time passes. Diesch stares at the body - at the wide eyes, at the mouth gaped open in perpetual surprise. It is the first time he has ever taken a human life, and a small part of him knows that he should weep at the snuffing-out of a human soul.
Instead, he simply turns and walks away.
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CYCLE 12873 // MONTH TWELVE // DAY FORTY-FOUR // REIGN OF BLESSED EMPEROR VOLSIF XCVII
PRESENT DAY
It is a cold, bitter day on Proxima.
Diesch takes a drag from his cigarette and watches in silence as they disembark.
They make for an incongruous pair, the two of them. At the front, a lanky, red-haired young man with sunken eyes glittering like diamonds. An intelligent and perceptive creature, to be sure. His steps are stiff and robotic, and Diesch is certain that he walks with the aid of well-disguised prosthetics. Shadowing him closely is a tall, broad-shouldered woman in an immaculate grey-and-red uniform, a black-brimmed military cap pulled down tight over her skull. Her rigid posture conveys nothing short of utterly unshakeable discipline, and her skins bears the scars and weathering of a hard life now long past.
Beside Diesch, Duke Almae Ten Tesos Sorrel - the Master of Proxima - clears his throat and steps forward. A warm, easy smile spreads across the old man's face. It is a smile every citizen of Proxima knows well.
"Presenting," the scarred, heavily-armored man to Sorrel's right thunders, "his holiness, the Deiform Ascendant 97th Imperial Duke of Eighth-Blessed Noble Proxima, he of fair winds and of the warm return - Almae Ten Tesos Sorrel."
"Presenting," the stocky woman barks in reply. Her voice is cracked and rough. "The Deiform Ascendant Heavenly 43rd Imperial Marquess of the Most-Hallowed Thrice-Honored 257th Dukedom of Sixth-Blessed Callisto - Jaheed Kesol Gragnad Demnod Vell."
The words are unfamiliar in her throat, Diesch notes. She's new to this.
The Duke and the Marquess - two of the most powerful human beings in the entire Domain - lock eyes, for a moment, and then with a warm chuckle Sorrel steps forward and clasps Jaheed firmly on the arm.
"Jaheed," he says, pulling the young man into a tight hug. "It's been too long."
"I suppose it has," Jaheed smiles wryly, once the Duke has finally released him from his clutches. "Though I'm afraid I was far too young to remember anything of your last visit, noble Duke."
"Oh, please," Sorrel scoffs, waving a hand. "You are my honored guest! Let's dispense with the titles - I'm Sorrel, and you're Jaheed, if that's alright with you."
"That serves me just fine," Jaheed agrees, inclining his head. "You'll come to find I've little regard for the old traditions."
"Do you now?" Sorrel chuckles again, patting Jaheed on the back and turning to guide him back towards the waiting palace. "In that case, my boy, I predict you and I will get along famously." Though Sorrel does not see it, Diesch watches carefully as the Marquess's bodyguard surges to shadow him, her stocky frame cutting off line of sight for both Sorrel's guards. Interesting. She's inexperienced, yes - but she's fluid and intuitive and she clearly has all the right instincts.
"Come!" Sorrel was saying. "We can discuss business later. For tonight, I wish only for you to catch even a glimpse of the hospitality Proxima's famous hospitality."
"By all means," Jaheed replied graciously, allowing the Duke to lead him down the runway. "It's been a long journey here, and your words are but wondrous music to my ears."
The woman's eyes flick back, then - and they lock onto Diesch's for just a moment, just a single infinitesimal second before turning away. And it is then that Diesch decides it is her he will watch the closest. He will scrutinize her every word, her every action, her every detail until finally he finds the lies.
There is no question in his mind as to whether or not he will find what he seeks. There are always lies - and always, the task falls to Abel Diesch, Chief Inspector of Proxima, to find them.
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CYCLE 12873 // MONTH TWELVE // DAY THIRTY-SEVEN // REIGN OF BLESSED EMPEROR VOLSIF XCVII
ONE WEEK PRIOR
"Our first test," Jaheed said, a thin glass of sparkling drink in his hand, "is one of subterfuge."
At the former Marquess' use of our, Kore arched an eyebrow, though nevertheless she motioned for Jaheed to continue speaking.
The two of them sit on the cramped bridge of the Hawk's Eye, an angular diplomatic shuttle nearly ten years out of date provided, reluctantly, by the Emperor's leering Scion Ket Sal. Jaheed reclined in the captain's seat, a strand of umber hair falling lazily between his eyes, while Kore sat upright and rigid, her hands clasped across her chest. Behind them, iridescent streaks of starlight race across the viewport, their blinding motion in stark contrast to a cabin that felt, to its occupants, perfectly and solidly still.
The pilot - a stern woman named Sen Tarsus - had retired for the night, and thus Jaheed and Kore sat alone, a bottle of some exotic liquor and a pair of glasses between them.
"As you know," Jaheed was saying, "the Emperor wants a clean slate. He wants nearly half the Dukes in all the Great Domain deposed as part of what he calls the Grand Undoing. And, as you also know, to remove a Duke from power he needs to present to the Concord what's called a Crux - an extensive document of irrefutable proof that the noble in question has violated the sanctity of his sacred duties. Only then can the Liquidators raze his or her palace and the Se-dai take his or her head."
If essentially recounting the events that led to the demise of his family bothered Jaheed, Kore couldn't tell. She didn't know what to think of the young highborn's flippant demeanor, truly. Had he compartmentalized his grief, pushing it so far down that it could hardly even be said to exist? Or had he merely been forced to adapt or die, as Kore had so many times in the past?
Again, Kore motioned for him to continue. She was not one to voice her opinion before hearing every one of the prospective facts. It was a quality of which she knew her liege tacitly approved.
"Now, the Emperor's spies are all but certain that Duke Sorrel consorts with the hated Emir much as my father did - but they have been unable to attain any sort of hard physical evidence. And that, Kore, is where we come in." He leaned forward now, and the excitement in his eyes was unmistakable.
"Sorrel is an old friend of my father, and the Emperor's forces have kept all transmissions to Proxima heavily restricted, though enough have been let through that the denizens do not yet suspect. As far as anyone on Proxima knows, my father is still alive, and I am still but a loyal son of Vell." A sly grin crept across his face. "I shall speak with the voice of my dead father, luring Sorrel into false camaraderie - into believing that he can confide in me as a fellow devotee of the Crimson Emir. And once I have the proof? Once he says the words?"
He leaned back, took a sip from his glass. "We shall return to the Sol system with the Emperor's blessings upon us."
Silence passed between them. Kore's brain puzzled over the proposal - puzzled over every detail, every knot. Then, finally, it snagged on something.
"The Emperor's spies," she said. "You're telling me that Sorrel managed to stop every one of them from obtaining - or delivering - physical proof? Even though they got close enough to know he was a traitor in the first place?"
"Ah," Jaheed said, setting the glass down. His smile faded. "That." He leaned forward now, fingers interlacing.
"That is a work of a man called Abel Diesch," Jaheed said. "His is an odd position, somewhere between spymaster and security chief. Little is known about him outside of Proxima, but what is known is that his very presence spells obliteration to any and all spies. He ferrets them out with efficiency and inevitability that some have dubbed preternatural."
"And that's just we are - a pair of spies. Splendid."
"Indeed," Jaheed nodded, a hand on his chin now. "Make no mistake. Sorrel will be my target, Kore - but Diesch will be yours."
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CYCLE 12873 // MONTH TWELVE // DAY FORTY-FOUR // REIGN OF BLESSED EMPEROR VOLSIF XCVII
PRESENT DAY
With the briefest of glances, Kore takes his measure.
Diesch is a lean, hunched figure, his face creased with weary lines and dotted with black-and-grey stubble. Though he is clad in little more than a muted sweater and a long, tan overcoat, his casual proximity to Sorel makes immediately clear his status as a member of the Duke's inner circle - as does the seven-chambered revolver openly displayed on his hip. Between the metal fingers of a cheap, spindly prosthetic, a cigarette hangs, smoke drifting lazily across the frigid winter sky as he meets Kore's gaze with eyes that she knows at once see far, far too much.
Ultimately, Jaheed's warning had been a pointless one. Kore could have identified this man as a threat from a mile away.
"Oh, where are my manners?" Sorrel said, as the hangar doors hissed shut behind them. The air shifted at once from frigid cold to warm and enveloping. "Allow me to introduce those of my inner circle. This is my attaché and majordomo, Dnass Tseron."
A pale, bespectacled man in a tight-pressed suit inclined his head. Kore saw at once the unending calculations flying behind those twitchy, neurotic eyes, and understood that if Diesch was a man who saw too much then this was a man who knew too much.
"My master of arms, Kensos Errok."
The armored man let out a grunt. Kore had seen a thousand of his ilk before, and thus she did not spare him a second glance. He was a hard, uncompromising figure with rigid adherence to protocol and procedure - a dime a dozen.
"And finally, Proxima's Chief Inspector - Abel Diesch."
At the sound of that name, Jaheed cocked his head to the side. Kore knew it to be a calculated, artificial gesture.
"Chief Inspector?" the former Marquess asked, his eyes flicking to the one-armed man. "I've never heard of such a position."
"Ah," Sorrel sighed, putting an arm around Diesch. The other man did not flinch. "Diesch here is, how shall we say, something of a detective - and an invaluable asset to the citizenry of Proxima. His keen instincts have saved my life a dozen times over." He squeezed Diesch's shoulder, and this time the Chief Inspector tensed ever-so-slightly. "Please, don't be put off by his constant staring. It's all part of his job, you see - and Diesch here does his job extraordinarily well."
Diesch didn't reply - he just took a long, long drag of his cigarette. Then, finally, he spoke.
"Marquess Vell," he said, his voice a flat monotone. "Blessings upon your house. It's an honor to stand before you."
"It's an honor for me, as well," Jaheed smiled lightly, "to stand before the man some call the Black Hound."
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Diesch scoffed quietly, but did not reply. A moment passed - and then the party was on the move once more, Sorrel and Jaheed chatting animatedly amongst themselves as Kore, Diesch, Tseron, and Errok followed in a cluster close behind.
"Ah, if I may," Tseron asked quietly, and Kore turned to regard the slender attaché. "What was your name, miss? I believe a proper introduction may have slipped the young Marquess' mind."
Carefully, Kore did not react to the slight against her charge - but it did leave her puzzled. Was Tseron trying to test her? To provoke her? She had expected to remain silent and unnoticed and now here she was, put on the spot right before Diesch's watchful gaze. Diesch, that keen-eyed bastard, from whom no errant detail escaped.
She considered her options, for a moment, then decided to give him nothing.
"I am Kore," she said, bowing at the waist. "Chief of Security for Marquess Vell."
"Charmed," Tseron replied, forcing a thin smile. The expression looked uncomfortable and out-of-place on the old man's countenance, and it was soon wiped away as quickly as it had come.
"Have you been doing this long?" Errok rumbled, from her other side. This time, Kore was only barely able to mask her confusion - why were these people talking to her? Surely, this must be a test. Had they already identified her as a weak point, as something to press in search of a break?
Well. Kore was many things, but she was no weak point. She was an edifice of smooth and solid rock upon which all three of these prying men will find no purchase.
"No," she answered smoothly. "I was a miner for many years, before taking up arms in service of the blessed Vell Dynasty. It was from those ranks that I was selected to serve as Marquess Vell's protector."
"Interesting," a voice rang out - and Kore could not help but turn back to see Diesch looking up at her with the cigarette clenched between his teeth.
"I don't particularly think so," Kore said after a moment, shrugging her shoulders. "It's not exactly an uncommon story. I am but an agent of Vells, as are you all agents of Sorrel. They use me as they best see fit, same as you."
"Indeed," Diesch muttered, and finally he glanced away. "Indeed."
Kore had no idea what had just transpired between them - but as the party made its way up a lavish set of carpeted stairs in uncomfortable silence, she was certain that it was anything but good.
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Two-hundred-and-twenty four miles from Proxima's capitol city, Tarkus, nestled between a trio of red-dusted mountains, there lies a ramshackle excuse for a town within which huts and shacks grow upon the sides of the cliffs like barnacles along some great ship. It is a dusty, dying place - established in decades past to support a gem-mining trade that has long since died out. Now, it is a haven for pirates, mercenaries, and any who deal in violent and bloody business, unseen by the eyes of the Sorrel Dynasty. It is well and truly one of the universe's dead-ends.
The door to a bar with no name swings open.
Inside, it is a dark, cramped, sweaty place, packed to the brim with as many weapons as there are egos, and the air is thick with the unspoken promise of violence. It is nothing short of a true viper's pit that the woman now steps into.
She weaves her way through the crowd with ease, somehow avoiding even the slightest brushing of shoulders as she navigates the hazy sea of human flesh. Amidst the overwhelming din of it all, a man screams. A woman laughs. Glasses clink together. Music sounds, emanating from some form of multi-stringed instrument.
The bartender - a man called Davian Grescht, from whose back sprouted no less than a dozen wiry mechanical arms - looked up and found himself staring into the cold grey eyes of a blonde, shaggy-haired woman whose face and arms were replete with all manner of savage, criss-crossing scars. Most prominent was the veritable knot of dead tissue along the side of her forehead, the wound partly obscured by her unkempt bangs but still visible enough to catch one's eye - and to unsettle.
She carried no weapons, and she wore only a pair of baggy pants and a sleeveless white tank-top. And although she did sport some degree of muscle, her frame was lean and slight. Davian Grescht took one look at her and knew with the certainty of a lifetime spent in this wretched little town that this woman would be dead by nightfall.
"Afternoon," he grunted, meeting the unremarkable woman's eyes. "What'll it be?"
"Hmmm," the woman mused, putting a hand to her chin. Her movements were odd - so smooth as to be almost unnatural. Despite himself, Grescht found himself ever-so-slightly unsettled by her presence, though he could not possibly explain why, and with mild irritation he squashed that irrational fear at once.
"I don't know," the woman said, finally. Her voice, too, was strange - lilting and rasping and smooth and deep all at once. "What do you recommend?"
Grescht furrowed his brow - but the woman just stared at him blankly, awaiting his reply. Finally, after a moment, he sighed and gestured behind him.
"You want something cheap, or something good?" he asked. He intended to pour her the same drink either way.
"Money doesn't mean shit to me," the woman replied, and Grescht watched as a strange facsimile of a smile tugged its way across her scarred lips. "Might as well give me the best you've got."
"Sure thing," Grescht grunted, turning to pour her a glass of cheap Dilavian rum - cheap rum for which he intended to charge her double, just for wasting his time. After a moment, he turned back, sliding the glass across the counter, and the woman's hand shot out shockingly fast to snatch it up into the air.
"So..." Grescht drawled, as the woman downed the liquor in a single gulp. She swallowed, blinked - then merely nodded her head.
"So that's what alcohol tastes like," she mused. "Disgusting. Well - I guess I can see the appeal."
"What brings you 'round here?" Grescht continued, engaging in small-talk entirely by mechanical and unconscious routine. "Work? Resupply?"
"Work?" the woman asked, cocking an eyebrow. Then, his meaning dawned, and she shook her head. "Nah. I don't intend to ever work another day in my life." With that, she slammed the glass down, and as her eyes rose to meet Grescht's own once again a slow smile began to spread across her face. Lips parted. Teeth were displayed. The hair on the old bartender's arm began to stand on end and suddenly, for void-knows whatever reason, something old and instinctual and primordial was telling him to get as far away from this woman as fast as he possibly could.
"I'm here," the woman continued, her finger tracing lazy circles across the countertop, "because I'm looking for a fight."
"A fight...?" Grescht managed to choke out. Never in twenty-seven years of serving Proxima's most ruthless and hardened criminals had he felt such raw fear as this. The old bartender could not even begin to explain the terror that gripped him now.
"That's right," the woman nodded. "And now that I've had my drink, well. Let's get to it!"
She turned to the man beside her - a gargantuan hulk covered from head to toe in tattoos marking him as a headcutter of the infamous Bleeding Suns gang - raised her fist, and slammed it down upon the back of the man's hand.
The result was immediate and devastating. With a sickening crunch and pop of bone, the man's hand all but inverted, and the countertop splintered beneath the incredible force of the impact. In an instant, he was leaping back, roaring with pain and fury and surprise as he cradled a ruined hand from which broken shards of bone now protruded.
The music came to an abrupt halt, as did all conversation. It was as still and silent as the grave, now, and the woman stared blankly up at the wounded, towering man.
"You-what-" the headcutter sputtered, overwhelmed in equal parts by agony and confusion alike. "Who the fuck are you?!"
The woman smiled again - and this time, there was an unmistakable predatory hunger in that grin as she reached her arms back behind her head and stretched.
"Me?" she asked, innocently. One shoulder popped, then the other. "I'm Sekhmet." She dropped her arms, now, and began cracking her knuckles one by one.
"Is that supposed to mean something to me?!" the headcutter demanded. Already, pain were beginning to give way to earthshaking, all-encompassing rage, and his remaining hand was drifting now to the oversized carving knife on his thigh.
"You asked," Sekhmet shrugged. Finished with her stretches, she straightened her back and shook her head not unlike a wet dog. "Anyway, I'm here looking for a good fight. Anybody interested?"
Silence reigned. The headcutter's fingers wrapped tight around the handle of his blade.
"For what it's worth, I won't kill anybody," Sekhmet offered. "Though I don't assume you'll abide by the same-"
The headcutter let out a ear-splitting roar and charged forward, the carving knife held in a backwards grip by knuckles tattooed with the four symbols of Katan, the profane and hateful God worshipped cutthroats and assassins.
Sekhmet let the weapon get close - less than a millimeter away from the scarred flesh of her throat - before she responded.
Her leg snapped up, faster than anyone could see and certainly faster than anyone could process, and the blade embedded itself in the ceiling as the headcutter staggered back, his wrist snapped quite neatly in two. And in the span of an instant Sekhmet had stepped behind him, grabbed the back of his skull, and slammed him face-first into the countertop with such incredible force that the floor itself buckled beneath their feet.
The headcutter slumped like a puppet with cut strings, his face a bloodied and unrecognizable mess, and Sekhmet turned to the crowd of onlookers with a mocking smile.
"Well?" she beckoned.
The room exploded into motion at once - two dozen hardened killers surging towards their mysterious opponent with las-pistols and irradiated slug-throwers and devastator flails and heat-knives and static whips and clubs and blades and axes and empty beer-glasses and all the while Sekhmet was a blur, a whirlwind of punches and kicks that left one assailant after another broken and bleeding. She moved with impossible speed and struck with boundless strength, a dynamo of motion and death quite literally untouchable and she was grinning all the while, her eyes wide and manic and lost in the sheer thrill of that terrible, terrible violence.
Sekhmet sent a woman crashing straight through the wall with an open-palm strike to the chest - and then found herself under the gun of the last man standing, a one-eyed individual in a dark coat whom Grescht knew to be an infamous sharpshooter by pseudonym of Odin.
The bartender, for his part, had remained crouched behind the countertop, only occasionally daring to peek over the edge - but now he was staring openly, too terrified to dare look away.
Yet perhaps he need not be afraid. Odin, he knew, was nothing short of an absolutely uncanny shot, and the gunslinger had Sekhmet at a distance of nearly ten feet. Even a monster such as she could not possibly hope to close such a distance in time, Grescht thought to himself, nor could she possibly evade every one of Odin's shots. The bartender should have been fully confident that whomever this inhuman creature was, she was about to meet her end here - in a battle entirely of her own provocation.
And yet still, somehow, he truly did not believe it.
"The way you move," Odin said cooly, keeping the long barrel of his plasma-thrower carefully trained upon his shifting opponent. "You're not human, are you?"
"You're half-right," Sekhmet admitted, casual even when held at gunpoint. "I must confess that this was all somewhat akin to picking a fight with a band of toddlers. But I thought, I dunno, maybe you guys having better numbers would make things at least a little bit closer." She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh well. This has been fun, for what it's worth."
"That's good," Odin replied. There was a true, heavy finality to his words. "I think I had fun, too. But now, whatever you are, you'll meet your end as so many others have - by the hand of Unerring Odin."
"Will I?" Sekhmet asked, and that insatiable grin was back on her face. "Prove it."
It is only upon later recollection that Grescht was able to properly piece together what happened next. Just before Odin fired, Sekhmet flipped up a discarded glass with the toe of her boot, then flicked it forwards with a single finger, sending the cup rocketing forward like an oversized bullet. Odin squeezed the trigger, the bolt hit the glass dead-on - and molten shards of glass went flying right into the marksman's face.
And so, as Odin fell, screaming and thrashing, Sekhmet stalked up and silenced him a simple balled fist to the back of the skull.
The bottles stacked behind Grescht all rattled at the force of the blow.
The old bartender dared not utter even a sound, watching as still as a statue while Sekhmet's expression dropped - and she let out a yawn, crouching down to rifle through Odin's pockets.
"Boring," she muttered to herself, pocketing a handful of multicolored credit-notes.
This continued for some time - Sekhmet picking through the unconscious and the wounded alike, taking any money on their person as well as anything else she deemed valuable. Unarmed as she was, Grescht could not help but notice that she refrained entirely from collecting any of the myriad weapons on display.
Finally, her eyes caught on something of actual interest - and she rose to her feet, throwing a weathered denim jacket over her shoulders as she did so.
"Hm," she grunted, a seemingly positive affirmation. "Not bad." Her eyes flicked back to the bartender, and he leapt back, pressing himself flat against the wall.
"What do you think?" she asked, striding over to the bar behind which Grescht was cowering. "How's it look?"
"I-I-I-" Grescht stammered. His mouth simply would not produce the words - any words.
"Not good?" Sekhmet pouted, disappointed - though her expression smoothed over at once. "Ah, well. I bet you'd say it looks fantastic if you weren't too terrified to speak." She reached into her pocket, fished out a dozen credits, and laid them flat against the countertop.
"Here," she said, her tone some approximation of gregarious. "That's what, ten times the cost of my drink, probably? Should help with the damages." Then, she furrowed her brow. "Question for you, friend." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "Which way to the Imperial Palace?"
"The pa..." Grescht trailed off, uncomprehending. Yet slowly, surely, he turned to point with a trembling hand.
"East," he managed, finally. "The capitol city, Tarkus. It's e-east."
"Appreciate it, friend," Sekhmet smiled, rapping her knuckles twice upon the surface of the countertop.
With that, she turned sharply on her heel, disappearing from sight, and as she stepped away Grescht was struck, suddenly, by the realization that her footsteps were truly and utterly silent.
Grescht dared to peek over the counter - but by then, the doors had already swung shut, and the one-woman hurricane that had swept through his bar was gone.
Grescht sat there, unmoving, for a very long time. And then, finally, as some of the wounded began to stir, he mustered the courage to rise to his feet and stumble over to his comm device.
And then Davian Grescht did something he had not done in over two decades. He called the police.
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It had been a long, drawn-out night, and finally Jaheed and Sorrel were ready to retire. Kore had stood as a perfect, unmoving sentinel for hours upon hours as the two highborn jawed off, their conversations at once deeply intricate and utterly banal. Jaheed was sprawled out on a long couch, by all appearances utterly at home as he subtly poked and prodded at the master of Proxima. Sorrel sat in a similar fashion, reclined far back in a luxurious armchair as he spoke with a cigar clenched between his teeth. And overtop the Duke, Diesch stood, a perfect mirror to Kore's own stony exterior as the two studied their charges - and their opposites - with watchful, perceptive eyes.
But now, at long last, Sorrel was rising to his feet, saying something about being and old man and needing his rest as Jaheed offered a polite - and somewhere inebriated - chuckle. Soon, Kore and her liege were out the door, and not long after they were being escorted by Diesch down a long and winding hallway to their respective quarters.
Finally, they came to a stop outside a brilliantly furnished pair of metal doors.
"The master bedroom," Diesch said flatly, gesturing to the door on the left with what might well have been his twentieth cigarette of the night. "And a chamber for your bodyguard, on the right."
"Diesch, my man," Jaheed smiled drunkenly, clasping the Inspector on the shoulder. "Thank you." The older man looked down at the Marquess with mild, muted disgust. Despite herself, Kore had to fight back a smile at the look on the Inspector's face.
"Kore," Jaheed said, turning to face his stoic bodyguard and offering a sloppy two-fingered salute. "Take the night off."
"Are you certain, my liege?" Kore asked, arching an eyebrow. She was well aware that Jaheed was playing up his drunkenness for disarming effect - but this new directive came entirely unplanned. Leaving him alone, deep in the heart of uncertain territory? Perhaps he really was drunk.
"Yeah, yeah," Jaheed slurred, waving a hand, and Kore couldn't help feel that he was somewhat overacting. "You work hard, Kore. Relax for a bit. I'm being kept safe-" he had a thumb against his chest, "-by the watchful eye of the legendary Black Hound. Isn't that right?"
"Yes, Lord Marquess," Diesch replied, giving a tight-lipped nod. His eyes had narrowed ever-so-slightly at Jaheed's casual usage of that informal moniker. "This palace is the safest place on all of Proxima. No harm will come to you here."
Unless it comes from me, hung the unspoken threat.
"See?" Jaheed asked, turning back to Kore. "No problem. Have a good night, Chief."
Kore swallowed her reservations and bowed at the waist.
"And you as well, my liege," she intoned, catching his eye. Understanding passed between them. And then, mere moments, later Jaheed was gone and the two of them stood in the hallway alone. Kore reached for the handle - then paused, at the clearing of Diesch's throat.
"So," he said, eyes flicking to the side. "You're off-duty. So am I. You wanna grab a drink?"
Ah, Kore thought to herself. That explained it. Jaheed, she knew, was a confident study of human behavior, and no doubt he had picked up on some infinitesimal signifier that Diesch would extend such an invitation.
She pretended to think about it, for a moment.
"Ah, what the hell," she said, intentionally adopting a laid-back tone. "Why not."
And thus, the two of them set off. This, Kore knew, would be no social gathering. This would be the true test - herself, alone, a specimen on a slide beneath Diesch's exacting microscope.
A test, yes. But also a fatal mistake - for now, Kore had finally been presented with an opportunity to grow closer to the Duke's watchful hound. All-seeing, they called him?
Kore would put that to the test.