Kore

Much later that night, after all were asleep and the mess of the dining hall was shrouded in moonlit shadow, Kore's eyes fluttered open. Already, she was forgetting the terrible and vivid dreamscape she had inhabited – already, memory of that otherworldly voice was slipping away. She and Sekhmet were squeezed together on an opulent couch, with a loudly snoring Tarsus passed out on the armchair beside them. In the dark she spotted other slumbering figures as well – Jaheed on the floor, Diesch on a neighboring couch, and Ket Sal no doubt in bed somewhere with Maít.

"Hey," Sekhmet whispered, because if Kore was awake then Sekhmet was wake. Impossibly warm lips brushed against her own. "I'm sorry."

"All you Se-dai ever do is apologize," Kore complained, with a groggy half-smile. She ran her fingers through the rogue's hair, as she so dearly loved to do.

"I hate when I lose control," Sekhmet told her, regardless. "Fighting is just how Se-dai work through their problems, for better or worse. But even then..." She trailed off. "I dunno. I'm jealous of her, sometimes. She's always doing the right thing. Always so disciplined and controlled. Never embarrasses herself."

"She started that fight," Kore reminded her, gently. "And I dunno about-" Abruptly, the Chief of Security fell silent.

"Hey," Sekhmet asked, after a long silence had passed. "You okay?"

"I'm..." Kore trailed off. "I...have this feeling, all of a sudden. Like I lost something, or...or forgot something, maybe. Like I can't figure out what it is, but I feel this, this..." She gestured broadly. "This absence."

"Your knife?" Sekhmet asked, trying to be helpful. "Cigarettes?"

"No, nothing like that," Kore shook her head. "It's just..." She looked right into Sekhmet's eyes, right into the twin silver orbs that she loved so dearly - and then, abruptly, she was on her feet and leveling her pistol.

Kore's heart was a jackhammer in her chest that threatened to burst free, threatened to shake her to bloody pieces. It was pounding so hard and so fast that the entire mansion was pounding with it - the walls and the floor and the ceiling and the furniture and the air, the air was throbbing against her skin and abruptly Kore was unable to breathe.

"This isn't real," Kore gasped, shaking like a frightened animal and struggling to hold the gun steady. "This isn't. Real. It's not."

Sekhmet sat upright, gave Kore a calm look - and then cocked her head to the side in a perfectly unnatural, reptilian fashion. An expression of curiosity and nothing more.

Kore backed all the way up against the nearest wall, gun still raised, as around her things went from pulsing to warping, morphing into strange and congealed shapes and flashing with impossible colors and suddenly, there were smooth pebbles below, all peppered with waist-high fronds of some foreign grass that swayed gently to and fro, in contrast to the spastic and maddened rhythm of Kore's own heart. Above, there hung an open and cloudless sky.

The sky was the wrong color.

Fear split Kore's skull wide open.

----------------------------------------

Kore might've screamed, when she woke up, but what came out instead was a retching full-body cough. It was more convulsion than anything else - wracking shakes that slithered up and down her spine, spreading out across her limbs and leaving her on all fours, staring down at a puddle of her own translucent bile. Her hair was a greasy mop over her eyes, framing the sight like bars in an old cell.

Dimly, the memories were returning to her. Above all else, one image was seared into her mind - one of Sekhmet perched like a vulture atop the hovertruck, bellowing with a split jaw for Kore to be returned. The Se-dai's skull exposed, her body torn to ribbons. No arrogant and dignified warrior but a feral animal, a shell imbued with power and potential beyond belief. Her girlfriend. The love of her life. That was what had been done to her. That was what they had reduced her to.

For all her life, Kore had been quite adept at the delicate art of Receiving Bad News. She adapted to negative situations far faster than was probably healthy; she just accepted matters for what they were, and adjusted her behavior accordingly. Parents gone? Well, there was nothing she could do about that. Forced into miserable, dangerous Cordite Extraction work? Well, it was that or starve. She would simply strive to excel at her assigned task. Tsen betrayed her, made her a murderer for his sake? Side with Jaheed, then. Make a positive impact. Balance the scales.

This was far, far harder. But in the end it was no different. Kore forced herself to sit upright, with great effort and agony both, then scooted back until her head and spine were braced against the wall. Then, she looked down upon herself and took stock.

Her leg was in a makeshift splint. Three of her teeth were missing - she rolled her tongue over the gaps, feeling each absence in turn. One of her eyes was practically swollen shut. Her skull was pounding, which no doubt indicated one of those blows to the head had knocked something loose. And there was, she discovered, a med-patch pasted along the side of her chest. Someone had cut her up and done something to her, clearly. The particular sort of pain she was experiencing now made her think ribs, or perhaps lungs. Or both.

Beyond that, she was currently residing within a cell. It was a humble little thing, really, hewn from some manner of grey rock and dominated at the forefront by a latticework of interlacing steel bars. Through those, she could see...nothing, really. A hallway, perhaps, one of more uneven stone. As for Kore herself, then, she had been stripped down to shorts and a grey undershirt. Her coat, uniform, and naturally all weapons had been removed. Her ocular implant was dead, having somehow been forcibly de-powered.

Kore tried, experimentally, to rise, and was sat down at once by a truly unbelievable pain in her chest and skull. They were a screaming, scalding one-two punch under which even the indomitable Kore could only fold.

This was all far from ideal.

It was right around that time, then, that she heard a door swing open. And so Kore straightened, squared her shoulders, did her best to compose herself - and put on the most stern and uncompromising expression she could muster as the three individuals rounded the corner.

The first was a broad-shouldered man standing at nearly eight feet tall, draped in a crimson cloak and carrying with him a vicious iron pike. A chaotic lattice of scars spiderwebbed across a face replete with nine steel bolts, all of which blinked red at nine different intervals. He looked as though he had been taken apart, then reassembled from memory.

The second was a relatively slim woman, tan-skinned and sporting the standard Heraldry overcoat. On her waist was a straight-edged machete, and slung over her shoulder was a long-barreled devastator rifle. Kore saw hints of circuit-seams at her fingertips and just below her eyes - aim-assistance augments, she knew well.

And the third, of course, was none other than Jiang Tsen. Kore had been somewhat hasty in her first re-impression of the man - in her certainty that he looked all but identical to the man who had recruited her five years ago. There were, in truth, a myriad of little tells here and there that something had gone terribly wrong. Heavy purple bags beneath his eyes. Skin stretched just a bit taut. Six fingers on both hands, the purpose of which Kore couldn't even begin to fathom. The man looked like a corpse, like a shell of his former self, yet still his eyes gleamed with the same razor-sharp hunger that had always driven him. Outside, he had clearly changed. But Kore could see at once that inside, he was the exact same man who had deceived and betrayed her.

This time, Kore didn't give a damn about the one-two punch. She reached up, dug her fingers into a gap in the stone, and heaved, forcing herself upright inch by agonizing inch. Her body screamed as it unfolded, wailing and gnashing teeth and pounding fists against the door. Kore didn't care. Kore didn't even give it the time of day. She would stand upright when she faced this man; that was simply a fact of reality.

And so, finally, she did indeed stand upright. And now her eyes were level with the man she loathed more than anyone in all the Great Domain.

"Kore," Tsen greeted her, cordial enough. "Good to see you're awake. These are my associates - Wren, of the Death Knell, and Sevas Gerr, my second-in-conmand."

Wren was looking at Kore as though he wanted to eat her alive. Sevas looked as though she wanted to slit Kore's throat. Kore preferred both to the look in Tsen's eyes - but she forced herself to hold his stare, all the same. She needed him to see her eyes, needed him to feel her hate.

"Sorry about the, ah, accommodations," Tsen said, after a moment. He sounded sheepish. Apologetic, even. All Kore wanted in that moment was her hands around his neck. "We did what we could to patch you up. But I'm not exactly, uh, playing with a full deck here." He smiled. "No offense, Wren."

"None taken," the Crimson cyborg ground out, in a voice somewhat akin to a roaring motor crossed with an agonized scream.

"You're lucky to even be alive," Sevas added, quite harshly. She stepped forward, jabbed a finger between the bars. Had Kore been in better shape, she could have snatched that finger up and snapped it clean in two. "You killed three of my men and wounded eleven."

"I told you that she would," Tsen chuckled, patting the incensed woman on the shoulder. "Even to this day, she's still the most ferocious fighter I've ever seen. She even makes your people look soft by comparison, Wren - no offense."

The towering cyborg just glared. Kore drew in a breath, forced herself to speak. "When I get out of here-" she started.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Tsen drawled, waving her off. "I know, I know. You work for a powerful man. He's coming to rescue you. When he does, you're both gonna torture me for eight million or something like that. I'm sure young Jaheed has some device that'll flay me like a fish, or rip out my nervous system, or some other unimaginable torment." He yawned. "You take pleasure in that, Kore? You enjoy working for a fucking Highborn?"

"Better than working for the Crimson Emir," Kore spat. At that, there emanated from the back of Wren's throat a low, grinding register. Wordless, yet unmistakably a threat. "Better than slaughtering innocent people."

"That's a laugh," Tsen replied, without humor. "The Jade Emperor's Greencoats have killed millions. Whole cities just vanish from record because they didn't quite confirm to his very particular vision."

"Whole worlds vanish when the Sky-Melters pass by."

"Only to illustrate the hypocrisy of the False Emperor!" Tsen shot back, with surprising vehemence. "He abandons the outer ring to burn!"

"And that's my fault, somehow?" Kore arched an eyebrow.

"You're willingly complicit, yes," Tsen told her. "And Jaheed is more than complicit. You're literally working for the Emperor's lapdog, you know. The Jade Wolf."

"Jaheed is a good man," Kore snarled, almost reflexively. "He's actually trying to fix this fucked-up universe we're all stuck in! And you..." She shook her head, now incandescent with rage. "You made me a murderer, Tsen. I believed in you, and in return you..." She trailed off. "You tainted me. That's a stain I can never, ever wash off. But the very least I can do is balance the scales."

"Can you?" Tsen scoffed.

"That's what Jaheed and I are doing," Kore told him resolutely, folding her arms. "Actually helping people."

"Who?"

And that did, in fact, manage to stop Kore dead in her tracks. Poor, poor Kore, who had governed herself so strictly and who scrutinized herself so closely. Because Tsen's one-word question was scratching at the surface of knowledge that had lain dormant within her for years, unacknowledged at any and all cost. A hidden, slumbering leviathan. Realization that could not under any circumstances be allowed to come to fruition, because if it did...

"What are you talking about?" Kore scoffed, suddenly feeling very defensive indeed.

"Who have you helped, exactly?" Tsen repeated. His eyes were boring holes through the bars of that cell. His focus was overpowering; Kore felt like an ant baking beneath a magnifying glass. The leader of Heraldry was no longer smiling.

"Fuck off," Kore spat, in absence of a wittier retort.

"You've deposed people," Tsen told her, anyway. "Threatened people. Killed people. I know all that; I've done my research. The Jade Wolf, they call him. A vicious, hungry predator."

"You've got no right to judge me."

"Why not?" Tsen cocked his head to the side. "I have an ideology, Kore, and I fight for that ideology. I have a set of strong moral principles that guide my actions. What do you have?" He scoffed. "Just power. Just ambition, and pursuit - and not even yours! His ambitions. Am I wrong?"

"Dead wrong."

"You seem upset. Have I struck a nerve?"

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

"What do you want from me?" Kore demanded, point-blank. Cutting through all the bullshit because she knew she was getting mired in a terrible vortex and she needed very very badly to focus. Tsen was evil incarnate. That was all that mattered. It was the devil himself that stood before her, no matter what he said or what he was making her realize. No matter how hard she was beginning to agree with him. It was black and white. Good and evil. She had to remember that. She had to.

"That's...a long story," Tsen said after a moment. Looked pensive, then, if only briefly. "Are you familiar with the Wayfinders?" He spoke, of course, of the alien seers that had allowed humanity to chart the skeins of voidspace. The creatures that had been interbred with humanity and then exterminated, whose genetic lineage lived only in a select few. They who stood at the helm of gargantuan voidships and dictated course across the universe. Kore was familiar enough.

"Sure," she admitted. "Get to the point."

"The Jade Emperor is a jealous man," Tsen told her. "He hoards the remaining hybrids closely, while the Honored Emir finds himself in need of exactly such individuals as he circumnavigates the Great Domain. His voidships travel slow and inefficient while the Emperor's traverse deep space with ease. Thus it is agents like me who are tasked with identifying and recruiting individuals..." He trailed off. "Well, like you."

Kore blinked.

"Bullshit," she said at once. Even though, with that particular revelation, everything was clicking into place. Tsen's out-of-the-blue recruitment, his fixation upon her, his fury when she jumped ship. She had been a 'special project' of his in more ways than one, she realized. And that meant...

"Sorry," Tsen flashed her an off-kilter little half-smile that vanished as quickly as it came.

"You fucking bastard," Kore swore. Her eyes went wide; her nostrils flared. "You miserable fuck. That's what it was all for?! You-all those people-and void take me, I believed in you, Tsen. I actually believed in you!"

"I had to earn your trust," Tsen explained. "And I did. I turned you into a magnificent soldier, Kore. A thing of beauty and terror both."

"You ruined me," Kore snarled.

At that, there was a long silence. And then, finally, from Tsen: "I take it that any offer of recruitment would be falling on deaf ears."

"Fuck you."

"Fine," Tsen shrugged, seemingly nonplussed. "You have a month to change your mind. That's about how long it'll take that ol' degenerative disease to eat your body alive." And there it was, then. Tsen intended to leave her. To let her rot. For her to experience true terror as her every body faculty shut down, one by one. Until she was but a shell of a woman, unable to see or hear or even move but painfully, agonizingly still able to think. Still able to dream. A thousand times Kore had suffered nightmares of such a fate.

"Fine," Kore agreed, masking her fear behind a brick wall of vitriolic defiance. And with that she stepped back, leaned against the literal wall, and folded her arms. And stared, waiting for Tsen to leave.

He, instead, was scrutinizing her with a decidedly odd expression upon his face.

"You look terrible, by the way," he told her. He traced a finger over his cheek, mirroring her scar. "You never got that regrown?"

"My girlfriend likes it."

"Your girlfriend's dead."

Across the surface of Kore's heart, there appeared a hairline fracture. No great breaking or shattering, not yet. Just a fracture. An etching of sorrow beyond belief, of a loss too big for Kore to possibly wrap her head around. For four years she had been fearing this day; for four years she had been haunted by an ever-present worry that undercut her every interaction with the love of her life. Her moon, her stars, her sun. Her everything. It was a terrible thing, to know they could all be taken away at a moment's notice.

The moment had finally come - and Kore could scarcely bring herself to believe it.

"Liar," she accused, her voice even and calm. "You're just a liar. Always have been."

"It's true," Tsen shrugged his shoulders, innocent as always. "The Mondat reported a total cessation of all brain-function. Took just about every one of 'em to do it, plus most of my own people, but..." He furrowed his brow. "We're talking about the Se-dai, right? That thing was your girlfriend? Oh, man." He let out a low whistle. "How the hell did you manage to pull that?"

Kore just stared. Gave him nothing. Would give him nothing.

"That's on you, by the way." Tsen leaned in close, to the point his nose was almost sticking through the bars. "Her death. That one's all you, Kore, though I'm sure you'll just blame me like always."

Kore didn't say a word.

"That woman ran away from the Empire, and where did you bring her?" Tsen went on. "Right back to the Emperor's lapdog. Hell of a way to repay her."

Kore's eyelid twitched. She remained silent and still.

"Right then," Tsen rapped his knuckles against the bars and stepped back. "I'll be around. I'm not angry at you Kore, I'm really not. And I'm sorry this all had to be so damn messy. But this is the bed you made; now you have to lie in it."

If looks could kill, Tsen would be dead a thousand times over. The very memory of him would have been immolated by the heat of Kore's vision.

"Right then," Tsen said again. And then the three of them were gone, and Kore could hear the stomping footsteps of the Crimson Cyborg long after the door had slammed shut.

Immediately Kore slumped down to the floor, her body spent and wracked with pain. She curled her hands tight into trembling fists and raged through clenched teeth, bellowing like an animal with fury throbbing like a second pulse at the base of her spine. And then, finally, she did cry - bitter, raging, hateful tears at Tsen and the Emperor and Jaheed and most importantly at herself. Emotions and fears that had lain dormant for years now leapt to the forefront of her being, freed at last from their shackles of denial and guilt. And with it all came terrible, terrible understanding.

Why? Why, why, why? For the second time in her life, Kore was staring disaster right in the face. And for the second time, it was entirely her fault.

----------------------------------------

"Hey," Sekhmet whispered, because if Kore was awake then Sekhmet was wake. Impossibly warm lips brushed against her own. "I'm sorry."

"Stop it," Kore snapped, jumping to her feet. Just as before, her heart was pounding like a jackhammer. The Se-dai looked at her curiously as Kore jabbed an accusing finger. "Whoever or whatever you are, just fucking stop!"

"I'm sorry." Sekhmet frowned, looked more confused than hurt. "I thought you would prefer this face."

"I don't ever wanna see that face again," Kore said, with bitter vehemence. The Se-dai cocked her head to the side.

"But you love her."

Kore's breath caught in her throat.

"I did," she admitted, after a long moment. "And now she's dead."

"Oh." The Se-dai blinked. "Right, that makes sense." And then the entire room - the moonlit mansion, the slumbering crew, the furniture and the food and the drink and everything else - all melted away, collapsing in on itself like a cheap theater set. And erected at once in its place was the grand hall of the Callisto royal palace, and sitting before her now was none other than Marquess Jaheed Vell.

"How's this?" the chair-bound Highborn asked. Kore looked down and saw she was dressed in the garb of a servant. And she felt, too, the blade concealed in her left sock. She knew this memory all too well.

"No," Kore shook her head violently. Void, she felt like she was going to have a heart attack. "No. Don't show me him. I don't want-"

"One last try?" Jaheed asked. And Jaheed was gone, and then Kore and Diesch were sitting at a restaurant, beer and cigarettes in hand. It was a noisy, suffocating place - but in a comforting sort of way. This, too, Kore remembered well from the early days on Proxima. A bittersweet memory indeed.

"Who are you?" Kore demanded, with not a hint of preamble. Her patience had been shredded to ribbons, and it was taking every ounce of concentration to stave off her mounting grief. Seeing Sekhmet alive and unharmed certainly hadn't helped.

"I am me," Diesch told her, like it was patently obvious.

Kore narrowed her eyes. "You're...you?"

"No, I'm me." Diesch gave an impatient sigh. "You're you. This is all pretty basic stuff, no?"

"No."

"Okay," Diesch rolled his eyes. "Look, none of this is particularly easy. I have to comb through your memories, take your words and images, and reassemble them into something coherent for you to look at. When I have to describe something you don't already understand, it's...well, it's pretty damn difficult."

Kore just stared, for a while, until the obvious revelation hit. "Are you-" she started.

"That's right," Diesch snapped his fingers. "In your own words, I am the 'genetic lineage' of an ancient Wayfinder. My...let's see, consciousness - sure, good enough - lives on in the remaining slivers of my DNA. I was, uh...dormant, and now I am awake."

"You're an alien."

"An echo of one."

"And you're inside my head."

"Sort of? That's as close as your language is gonna get. There are some things you really just are not built to understand."

"Okay," Kore acknowledged, with remarkable calm. And then: "Please let me sleep."

"I'd ask the same of you." Diesch raised his glass. "Unfortunately, you and I are stuck in the same boat."

"And how is that?"

"You're not supposed to know about me," the Black Hound explained. "And now that you do...well, now I've been yanked right into the spotlight. Worse, you've been off your meds for a solid week. The curtain is being pulled, and I'm being unveiled inch by bloody inch. Which, well. That's far from ideal for either of us, and worst for your physical body above all else."

"Wait-wait-wait-" Kore held up a hand in protest. "You're the reason I'm dying?"

"Sorry," was all Diesch had to offer, to that. Kore found it woefully insufficient. "The machine you stepped into, all those years ago - you don't remember what it was called, by the way, so neither do I - all it did was, uh, activate me. Is that really the best word you have for that? Man. Yeah, it basically woke me up. And then I started, uh, eating you." He paused. "Sorry. Again."

"The dreams," Kore blurted out, partway through what felt like his millionth useless apology. "The voice. That was-"

"That was me trying to communicate, yes," Diesch said. "Showing you a bit too much of my true self, of my memories. It took me a long time to learn how to cloak myself in your thoughts like this. Like throwing a sheet over a ghost, so all you get is the vague outline of the thing. That make any sense? I know it should."

"But you showed me...you showed me her," Kore said slowly. "Her face." She gestured. "Torn off. Screaming my name. I didn't remember until the day it happened, but I know now. I saw it."

"I've been trying to help," Diesch admitted, a little sadly. "What little I can."

"How did you know?" Kore demanded, lurching forwards across the table. She had a sudden and unfulfilled urge to seize the Black Hound by his collar. "How did you know she would...?"

"Alright, here we go," Diesch took a long drag, blew out a cloud of smoke. "Okay, Kore. Basically, you see time as a thing with a beginning and an end, right? It's linear. But for me, it's entirely different. I see it as a...blob?" He wrinkled his nose. "Is that really the best you can come up with? Anyway I've been trying to help you, Kore, because I really do like you. And I think you deserve better. So I show you things, what little I can. But the brain-" he tapped his skull. "It knows what it shouldn't know, surprisingly. So it forgets, to protect itself."

"I wish I hadn't seen her," Kore told him soberly. That was her only reaction, and it came raw and direct from a shattering heart.

"I know."

"I wish, when I had seen her, that I had felt anything other than a sense of fucking déjà vu."

"I know." A pause. "I really am sorry."

They sat in the restaurant, then, for what might have been centuries, or might very well have been just a few seconds. In that time Kore plumbed freely to the depths of her grief and decided that she would either bury it or be consumed by it. Burying emotion, thankfully, was her specialty, and so she did just that.

"Well, now what?" she demanded, gestured broadly at the surrounding patrons, at the restaurant, at the whole false pageantry of it all. "I'm here. I can see you. I can remember. So are you gonna help me or not?"

"That's...easier said than done," Diesch told her, quite reluctantly. At Kore's unimpressed eyebrow-raise: "You have to understand, I can see everything. Just picking you out at all is ridiculously difficult. To actually find something useful..." He trailed off, and was silent for so long that Kore was just about to snap her fingers in front of his face when finally he spoke.

"Okay," he said. "Two things. First of all - when the cold drop of water hits your nose, you need to stand in the back left corner of your cell."

"The hell are you talking about?"

"Second," Diesch continued, ignoring her. "When you see the bolt in his hand, you have to do something about it."

Another pause. And then, again: "What the hell?"

"Look, these are hyperspecific moments in time," Diesch told her, visibly exasperated. "I can't parse the broader context. But I'm certain of both those things - stand in the corner, and do something about the bolt."

"Whose hand is it?"

"No idea."

"What kind of bolt?"

"Beats me."

"Why the corner?"

"Dunno."

"Appreciate the help," Kore deadpanned. And then, unbidden, a thought came to her.

"Ah," Diesch said, because of course he knew her thoughts as well. "The stones, the grass, the sky that's the wrong color. That place that makes you want to claw your eyes out when you see it. Yes, Kore. That was my home."

"You were-" And then, without warning, Kore felt a powerful sense of yearning wash over her - of a hole that could never, ever be filled. Of grief and sorrow that stretched on for generations, growing thinner and thinner and thinner and yet never diluted. Of tragedy that endured, even in but a fraction of the self. "Oh," was all she could say. And then she was sobbing, and she did not entirely understand why.

"It's okay," Diesch told her, as she wept. Kore knew that was a lie. "All that was a long, long time ago."

"They exterminated the Wayfinders," Kore choked out, barely able to speak. Grief that was not her own - or maybe it was, at least a little bit - wracked her body and brain. "And they-and you had to live on, even after your own deaths. As...as ghosts. As echoes."

"Copies of copies," Diesch smiled sadly. "Oh, Kore. You always did feel too much. That's why I like you, and why I always feel so bad for you."

"It's not fair," Kore sobbed.

"Not one bit," Diesch agreed. "Few things are. But what matters right now, in what you call the present, is that you wake up, Kore. Because there's a conversation you need to have, even if you don't want to."

"Wait-" Kore rose sharply to her feet, sending both glasses clattering to the floor. Not one of their fellow patrons took notice. "This isn't fair. You're trapped inside me, you can't rest-"

"I'm already dead, Kore." Diesch gave her a wry little smile. "Just worry about yourself."

Kore's eyes snapped open, and she woke with a wrenching gasp. Her face was stained with dried tears, her eyes crusted nearly shut. She felt as though she had been punched one thousand times in the gut, as though her entire body was but one enormous mass of swollen bruising.

And it was that moment, as she laid there in abject despair, that Kore realized she couldn't feel her fingertips. And she knew then, with impossible certainty, that it had already begun.

She was dying.

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Jiang Tsen

They watched on an old analog viewscreen as Kore writhed in pain.

Beside him, he could feel Sevas' irritation pressing like a knife against his skin. "We should just kill her and be done with it," she told him, not for the first time. "That woman deserves to die."

"It isn't her fault," Tsen explained patiently - also not for the first time. "I made her into this. Hurting and killing are just what she knows to do. It's...vestigial reflex." He gestured. "What happened to your friends wasn't personal."

"My friends. Your men," Sevas hissed. "They were your responsibility too."

"Yes, well," Tsen muttered, his gaze still locked firmly upon that grainy image. Kore was curled up into a ball, hacking and coughing and spitting up phlegm. Behind him, he felt the towering cyborg shift. It was difficult not to feel it, with all the noise that wretched hulk made.

"You are wasting time," Wren told him, in that nightmarish voice of his. "One month is too long. You should extract the material and be done with it." The Death Knell warrior spoke of a surgical procedure wherein the Wayfinder could be forcibly extracted; an invasive process that would invariably prove fatal to the subject. It was so like a disciple of the Crimson Emir, Tsen thought to himself. No subtly, no patience. Just rip the thing out and be done with it.

"Your master disagrees," Tsen said, glancing back at the cyborg and smiling. "Lord-Admiral Typhis personally granted me my six-week request. For seven years now, I've carried water for the Crimson Emir. This is the reward I was promised."

"The Honored Emir is your master, too," Wren reminded him. Tsen just shrugged his shoulders.

"Certainly," he admitted. "But in this place, at this time, on this matter, I have final say. And I say that we will wait, and that in time Kore will come to see the error of her ways."

"I'll never work with her," Sevas vowed.

"You'll do as you're told," Tsen told them both. Now, Wren took a single ponderous step forward and loomed over the Heraldry leader, forcing Tsen to turn fully to face him. He looked up at the warrior with not a trace of fear.

"This place. These people. Your weapons," Wren growled. "All exist only by the grace of the Honored Emir."

"I am well aware"

"Do not forget what you are."

"I won't," Tsen chuckled, even as he felt the old anger flaring up inside him. "Oh, Wren. Do all the Death Knell fret as you do?"

The cyborg just huffed and lumbered away, the conversation apparently having concluded. And Sevas, too, stepped away with not another word. And so it was Tsen and Tsen alone who watched, hands folded and eyes intent, as Kore's body devoured itself.

"You'll come back to me," he whispered, tracing a finger across the screen. And then, all he did was observe - for a long, long time.