Jaheed

The Brachylogy was already waiting by time the Cloud Gorger arrived; a wafer-thin strip of metal that blended in seamlessly with the rocky surface of that frigid, nameless asteroid. Jaheed and Diesch watched on the primary viewscreen with bated breath as Tarsus guided the Gorger down, deftly navigating blustering winds and chunks of frozen hail.

"Damn." Tarsus let out a low whistle. "That's a brand-new Tero55. How'd she get her hands on that?"

"Stole it, probably," Diesch shrugged—not unkindly. Run-of-the-mill cynicism be damned, there was an almost-palpable sense of excitement and elation amongst the crew as the Cloud Gorger touched down with a shuddering jerk. All three of them were at the cargo bay just a minute later, all bundled up in layered coats as the ramp descended and the freezing artificial air came rushing in.

From atop the Gorger, there emanated a crackling blue beam that rose straight to the heavens, then split out and down, forming an iridescent dome within which the atmosphere and air were perfectly attuned to the needs of a human being. And so, the crew of the Gorger stepped without fear onto the surface of an asteroid with no name, and so in return did the Brachylogy's ramp descended as well.

With hand hidden in his coat-pocket, Jaheed crossed his fingers. And his prayers were answered, just moments later, as a familiar blonde-haired figure stepped out to meet them.

Sekhmet was all cold fury and frightening determination; her expression hard and her eyes narrowed to slits. From behind a messy latticework of unkempt hair, her countenance promised only death and destruction to anyone it might fall upon. All that pageantry and anger lasted roughly seven seconds—and then Tarsus ran forward and wrapped the rogue Se-dai in a hug.

"No fucking way," Diesch complained, stepping forward as well—leaving Jaheed the odd man out—as Sekhmet broke into a sheepish grin. "Void-damnit, I thought you were finally dead!"

"Didn't take," Sekhmet laughed, after a reluctant moment. Her voice was hoarse, and weaker than Jaheed remembered. She sounded all but extraordinarily tired.

"Our loss," Diesch shrugged, with great affection.

"You look like shit," Tarsus chimed in, with much of the same.

"What? You see these clothes?" Sekhmet protested. "On loan from Maít herself! Now that is a woman of high and proper society, something you two would know nothing about."

This relieved, happy, delirious back-and-forth continued for a few minutes more—and then Sekhmet stepped past them both and made her way to Jaheed, who had been watching the entire time with a curiously neutral expression upon his face. He couldn't explain it, exactly, but he had a certain feeling that this was simply not his moment—it was theirs, and to interrupt would be to intrude. To them, Sekhmet was a friend. To him, she was a subordinate, and that was simply the way the lines had been drawn.

"Sekhmet" he greeted her, extending a hand. And then, damn it all, a half-smile spread across his face all the same. "It's good to have you back." Despite everything, he truly did mean that.

"It's good to be back," the Se-dai agreed, shaking his hand in turn. Jaheed felt an odd sting of cold; he glanced down to see skinless metal fingers that were quickly and shamefully withdrawn. A shadow passed over Sekhmet's face, then, a flicker of uncertainty and remorse—and then it vanished as quickly as it came, disappearing behind a mask of hard focus. "What's the situation?" she demanded at once, and just like that she was the fearsome Se-dai rebel once more.

"Last we heard, Kore is still alive," Diesch answered, somberly, from behind. All mirth was gone now; one void had been filled, while another yet remained. Sekhmet might well have been the loudmouthed heart of the crew, but Kore was undoubtedly the anchor—the one who bound them all together, even moreso than Jaheed. Her presence should have been a steady constant. Her absence was a miserable disruption. "We don't know why—if they're still interrogating her, or if she..." He hesitated. "Switched sides."

"Tsen is torturing her," Sekhmet declared matter-of-factly, her tone making it abundantly clear that the second point would be considered no further. "Sale fils de pute. I swear, I'll see him bleed."

"How do they know each other, anyway?" Jaheed cut in, a bit sharper than intended, because his mind was always working and the puzzle of Kore's association with the Heraldry leader was one he still could not piece together, not on his own. "Why has he singled her out like this—what's the connection? Sekhmet, did she ever tell you anything?" But the Se-dai just shook her head and folded her arms.

"Ce n'est pas à moi de le dire," she said firmly. Though Jaheed couldn't parse the meaning, he understood the intent well enough, and yet nevertheless he was just about to press her even further when Tarsus' head snapped abruptly up.

"They're here," she announced, apropos of nothing. "Gorger just picked 'em up."

"They?" Sekhmet repeated, glancing around for some manner of explanation. And now, for the first time in a while, Jaheed was the only one smiling.

"It took quite a bit of doing," was all he said, folding his arms to mirror her stance. "But we're getting Kore back, Sekhmet. Count on it." And that last word was punctuated by a shuddering roar as a pair of ships buzzed overhead—twin onyx trapezoids, each sporting a sharklike nose and a pair of stubby, triangular wings. Amenhotep-Class dropships, two of them, a pair of black coffins that hovered just a moment above the surface of the asteroid before touching down quite violently and kicking up a massive cloud of dust, sending all save for Sekhmet coughing and covering their eyes.

Both ramps slammed to the ground; and for a moment there was nothing visible save for dozens of T-shaped, green-glowing visors. And then they came—eighty black-and-jade commandos in full armored plate, helmeted and identical and each carrying a long disruptor-rifle with a flanged barrel, each marching in perfect lock-step as they presented a solid wall of metal and might. Eighty boots stamped once in unison; eighty of the Emperor's Liquidators—the infamous and elite shock-troops of Holy Mercury—stood at rigid attention as, along their rank, another walked with hands clasped behind his back.

He was a stocky, dark-skinned man with an olive beret and a face like the side of a cliff wall. He opened his mouth, and from within there emerged a thunderous bellow: "Company, halt!"

The company halted. And Sekhmet, to Jaheed's immense satisfaction, whispered out the corner of her mouth: "How the hell did you pull this off?"

"Eyes open and ears to the ground," he told her gleefully, as the lead Liquidator approached. "Everything piece has its use, in time." And then Jaheed stepped forward, extended a hand, and said quite warmly: "Colonel Varras. Right on time."

"Acolyte Jaheed," the man greeted stiffly in return. He shook the proffered hand. Any anger, irritation, or discomfort the man felt over Jaheed's looming blackmail was well-disguised beneath a lifelong veneer of rigid professionalism—or perhaps just dismissed entirely. After all, Colonel Varras was a career soldier above all else, and Jaheed knew that all Liquidators took a great deal of pride in their work. "You wanted the best. You got it." That wasn't exactly an accurate summation of what had occurred, but Jaheed was more than happy to allow it.

"So it seems I have," Jaheed agreed, casting his eyes over the row of elite soldiers. Diesch, Tarsus, and Sekhmet all looked vaguely uncomfortable; Jaheed felt only a surge of pride and satisfaction at that which he had summoned forth. He was still haunted, some nights, by dreams of black-armored figures razing his ancestral home to the ground, erasing names and faces that Jaheed had known since childhood. Scurrying like insects about the wreckage of it all, melting everything beneath purifying green fire. Jaheed was eager, then, to take ownership of that particular trauma—to wield it like a weapon, and to inflict it upon his enemies.

"Eighty veterans of the Forty-Third Imperial Liquidator Company, Twelfth Division," Varras intoned. "Distinguished at the battle of Jerren Five, at the bloody ambush of the Renissen, and at the Siege of Tas-Galar." And then something shifted, and his level stare turned from cold to borderline hostile. "Let me be clear, Jaheed Vell."

"Go on." Jaheed, unfazed, arched an eyebrow.

"After this," Varras hissed, his voice barely a whisper, "you and I are done. I will never see or hear from you again."

"Is that all?" Jaheed scoffed, waving him off. "We've already discussed the deal at length, Colonel. Fulfill your obligations and I will fulfill mine. Now, then," he gestured to the waiting troops and said, with only a faint hint of condescension, "your obligations...?"

Whatever vicious retort Varras had lined up, he swallowed it. Military discipline was a useful thing indeed. Instead, the Colonel turned quite sharply on his heel, and with rigid posture and thunderous register he addressed his troops thus:

"Heraldry!" the Colonel barked, pacing down the line. His soldiers remained perfectly unmoving; the crew of the Gorger simply observed in silence. "A terrorist organization, and known associates of the Crimson Emir. They are, at this moment, huddled up in an asteroid-embedded fortress with all the guns and ammo you could dream of. We will hit them how we always hit them—hard and fast. We will blow past their early-warning systems and crack their precious fortress wide open, both long before they even know to fear us. Two names, all of you: Jiang Tsen, and Kore Vell." He held up a pair of fingers. "Their faces are in your dossiers. They are the only sentient beings within that base; everyone else is just a target. Both individuals are to be taken alive—Kore, gently. Tsen? A fair bit rougher. We clear?"

"Yes sir!" eighty harsh, modulated voices barked in unison.

"Anything to add?" Varras gave Jaheed a sidelong glance, seemed very much as though he loathed the sound of those words in his own mouth.

"Just one." Jaheed stepped forward, hands behind his back in a mimicry of Varras' pose, and now all eyes were on the Acolyte as he spoke thus: "While you all are sieging from the front, my agent-" he gestured to Sekhmet, who gave an even nod, "-will infiltrate the fortress from behind, snatching up Kore before your hammer comes down. You are to consider her one of your own, for the duration, and she is to be afforded the highest respect." That was it—no explanation of who or what she was. None was required. These were soldiers, and they were well accustomed to following orders. Even the Colonel just nodded along, and thus Jaheed's will was made reality.

"Mount up!" Varras barked, gesturing with one hand, and every Liquidator about-faced at once. "We are the Emperor's Fists!" Eight bootsteps thundered out as they marched in perfect single-file. "None survive our passing!"

Jaheed glanced back, met Diesch and Tarsus' eyes in turn. "Sekhmet and I will ride with the Colonel," Jaheed told them, rather than explain any of this. He was quite enjoying the spectacle and confusion of it all, in truth. "I want you to follow behind in the Gorger at a relatively safe distance. When Sekhmet emerges with Kore, I want you to be ready."

"You got it," Tarsus agreed firmly.

"You sure you wanna ride with the fuckin' Liquidators?" Diesch asked, leaning in and glancing back at the looming dropships—which were both now buzzing noisily. "No need for you to be there in person."

"No need, perhaps," Jaheed agreed. "But I want to be there." And that, then, was that. Goodbyes were exchanged—both Diesch and Tarsus telling Sekhmet, somewhat sardonically and somewhat fearfully, to be careful and to Not Die Again, to which the Se-dai just gave a mute nod that said, in no uncertain terms, that she would happily sacrifice her life to save Kore's own. The woman's good humor and high spirits had all but fled; even in her lighter moments, there was now an undercurrent of darkness that was impossible to ignore. Jaheed, perhaps, should have worried for her. He did not.

Minutes later, Jaheed and Sekhmet were shoulder-to-shoulder in a cramped space packed to the brim with armored soldiers.

"Hey," Jaheed said, quietly. He glanced over, saw that Sekhmet's silver eyes were clearly visible, even inthe darkness of that enclosure. "This is gonna work. We're gonna get her back." And he said that, then, because now his elation was fading and for the first time in weeks Jaheed was feeling it—a pang of real fear. The potential for true and permanent loss. The ten thousand myriad ways this could all go terribly, terribly wrong.

The icy resolve in her response, then, was a soothing balm to Jaheed's worry. "Yeah," Sekhmet told him. "I will."

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"We just tripped an early-warning sensor," one of the pilots reported, after two bumpy hours had passed by—and instantly, Varras was on his feet. "Signal's going out the main base—should I cut it off?"

"Nah, let it play," Varras replied, patting the man on the shoulder. And then, in the same booming voice he had used when out-of-doors: "Liquidators!"

"Sir!" On cue, there blasted from hidden speakers then a pounding drum-beat—a frenetic, driving, powerful rhythm, to which every soldier stomped their boots in unison again and again and again. Jaheed had long heard tale that every Liquidator battalion sported its own odd, insular little culture and rituals—isolated as they often were, campaigning as one big traveling quasi-family some thousands of lightyears away. Liquidator's didn't have off-time; to join their ranks was to abandon family and friends, in favor of a new sort of camaraderie entirely. Jaheed, then, was witnessing something few if any outsiders had ever seen before.

"If it bends?" Varras demanded. Gone was the stone-faced Colonel; in his place was an avatar of gleeful destruction.

"We break it!" the men thundered, in perfect rhythm with the drumbeat. Jaheed flinched at the deafening volume of it all.

"If it stands?"

"We burn it!"

"And if it moves?"

"We fucking kill it!"

"That's right!" Varras roared, pounding a fist against his chest. "We are the sons of the Emperor! The fingers of the almighty hand!" As if to punctuate his sentence, the entire dropship was rocked violently from what could only be some manner of artillery blast. Jaheed was pitched clean off his feet—but by ingrained Se-dai instinct, Sekhmet snatched his collar, and effortlessly she hauled the young highborn back to his feet. Dozens of muted retorts followed, all the while, and it was abruptly clear that the dropship was under fire.

"Las-cannons, some accelerator rounds," the pilot reported calmly, as Varras moved to peer over his shoulder. "Nothing our shields can't withstand. ETA thirty seconds."

Jaheed glanced over at Sekhmet. The Se-dai was standing perfectly still and entirely silent; whether this was a trance, battle meditation, or mere stoicism, he couldn't say.

"Onscreen!" came the report. And Jaheed turned to see what could only be the infamous fortress—a half-dozen concrete cubes nested within an outcropping of grey rock, from which countless laser-blasts were spewing forth—and for a moment, Jaheed was like the Ahab of old, gazing now upon the flank of his very own white whale. There it was, framed right in that blurry little monitor screen. The object of his obsession. The thing he had been chasing relentlessly for four weeks, now all but resting within the palm of his hand.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Suddenly, Jaheed was almost giddy with anticipation.

"Let's knock on the door, shall we?" Varras ordered, himself now wearing a sly smile. "See if anyone's home."

"How polite d'you want me to be about it?" the pilot asked, grinning back. Varras' face told Jaheed everything he needed to know.

"As rude as you like," the Colonel told him.

For a moment, the lead dropship just hovered there in empty space, Heraldry's laser-artillery diffusing and deflecting off its rippling shield—and then, with a cough, the nose of the ship disgorged a thousand tiny missiles that descended upon the asteroid like a black cloud, like a swarm of locusts sent by the hand of a vengeful god. There were, perhaps, three additional seconds of stillness—and then the fortress simply vanished beneath a truly gargantuan cloud of ash and dust as concussive charges shook that wretched structure to its very core. It was obliteration writ large; as subtle as a jackhammer to the face and half as pleasant about it.

Vicariously, Jaheed felt a surge of power within his chest as the dust faded to reveal naught but broken devastation. The lasers, of course, had all gone abruptly and forever silent.

"On your feet!" Varras barked. The soldiers complied at once. "Arms!" Rifles were presented. Twin klaxons sounded on either side of a door that let out, now, an ear-piercing hiss of steam.

"By the Emperor's will!" And then the Liquidators were off, storming out with a chorus of roars and shouts, and as they did so Jaheed turned to give Sekhmet one last look—to say goodbye, or good luck, or anything to the woman with whom he was entrusting Kore's life.

But Sekhmet was already gone.

And now—alone, with only Varras and his pilot for company—Jaheed felt a sense of genuine dread wash over him. Because none of this was in his hands, not anymore. All he could do now was sit down and wait.

And watch.

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Sekhmet

The concrete rumbled beneath her feet.

Sekhmet was striding high atop the peak of Tsen's fortress, unhelmeted and unbothered even amidst the naked void of space. Cutting-edge gravity dampeners embedded in her heels allowed her to walk as the Liquidators did, heedless of any zero-g environment. At that moment, the totality of her mind—of her entire being—was a sharpened edge, a honed needle-point with but a singular target. There was nobody else. There was nothing else. There was only Kore, and only what Sekhmet would do to get her back.

Sekhmet found a vent, eventually, just as she knew she would, and with ease she wedged her fingers underneath the edge and ripped the hunk of metal free. It floated away, gentle and weightless, as Sekhmet peered down a narrow shaft that seemed to simply plunge forever into darkness.

She leapt.

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Sevas Gerr

They had been expecting an attack like this for a long, long time.

The primary hangar—the antechamber, the closest thing their ant-colony of a fortress had to a foyer—was currently packed to the brim with ninety-odd soldiers tucked into countless defensive position, all with las-carbines at the ready. Repeater turrets, both automated and manual, peeked out from a dozen different nooks, well entrenched and well-defended. There were plans for this stuff, you see. There were contingencies. Even if it currently sounded as though God himself had just banged his fist on their roof and shouted for them to quiet down.

At the center of it all stood Sevas Gerr, Tsen's second-in-command, she whose sharp-voiced commands were currently the only thing keeping order. Get to your positions, she told the men, time and time again. Hold the line. Fear could easily be overrode with mundane and simple directives such as this. There were contingencies, after all, and they needed only be followed to the letter. The thinking had already been done; this was all a part of the plan. All within the scope of Tsen's vision.

Tsen. Sevas wrinkled her nose. After this, she was done with that narrow-minded fool. His obsession had become more than just his own undoing—it was going to get good men slaughtered under her command, all dying for something so petty and so infantile. No, of course they couldn't just yank the shit out of that blasted Kore woman and be done with it. No, of course she had to switch sides willingly—after they had just butchered her psychopathic wife, of course. What an attractive prospect! It was all obsession bordering on genuine insanity and Sevas would no longer be a party to it.

Her thoughts were interrupted, then, when the doors blew in.

"Open fire," Sevas ordered calmly, her voice echoing over comms into the ear of every man and woman present. They all rose quite spectacularly to the task; at once, the air was but a shimmering sea of superheated red as ten thousand las-bolts streaked into that nebulous cloud of ash and dust and melted whatever poor souls dwelt within down to nothing more than their base constituent atoms. To a sludge of metal and once-was-man, and nothing more. They fired and fired and fired and finally Sevas signaled for them to stop.

And wait.

Everyone reloaded. A few congratulations and jeers were exchanged. Most were dead silent. Sevas just watched with narrowed eyes, clutching her own rifle tight, and said not a word.

And then, like ghosts, they materialized one by one—jade-glowing, T-shaped visors in the mist. One, then two, then five, then ten. Then twenty. Thirty. Forty. Fifty. Eighty black-armored terrors of the Grand Architect, fifty of them raising heavy-duty disruptor rifles to fire.

Sevas didn't need to give the order—and it was a moot point, anyway. The Liquidators opened fire and unleashed hell itself, their iridescent-green bolts an interconnecting net that tightened and severed, scything down twenty of Sevas' men in a single salvo. Only there were no salvos—just one long, continuous, sustained sheet of fire as the Liquidators marched ceaselessly forwards, butchering the soldiers of Heraldry with the precision and callousness ordinarily reserved for unthinking machines. A dozen JAGGANOTH missiles screamed overhead, then came crashing down, bathing everything in emerald fire—and by the void, Sevas despaired, why did everything have to be fucking green?!

She popped up from cover, sighted in, squeezed the trigger, put two shots center-mass on an advancing Liquidator—only to see him merely stumble in place as two of his fellows came to immediate assistance, peppering her position with blistering disruptor-fire. A bolt pierced her shoulder, flash-melting it and sending the charred remains of her left arm flopping to the ground, and Sevas let out a scream of equal parts pain and rage as she raked the oncoming, unstoppable mass with a spray of impotent gunfire.

"Fall back!" she bellowed, scrabbling for cover, as though every sane man had not already committed to doing so. "Fall back!"

And all the while, the Liquidators never stopped. They never even slowed. They just marched on and on, as inexorable and undeniable as the tides.

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Sekhmet

She fell five-hundred feet and landed without a sound.

And then she was gone; vanished into shadow as if some supernatural curtain had simply closed around her. She flew unseen and unheard through what were, really, a myriad series of interlinked caves, excavated by sustained blasting and propped up now by great pillars of concrete and steel. Floodlights abounded; heavy spools of wire hung like countless strands of hair amidst the stalactites above. Fortress though it was, it was also very much a work in progress—a temporary installation that existed for one purpose, and one purpose only. To break Kore. The thought enraged Sekhmet.

Speed had always been her greatest gift, and so she leaned into it now, accelerating her pace as she tore past dozens of hurried, shouting, panicked Heraldry soldiers. Not one registered even a hint of her presence. In the domain of shadows, the Se-dai were unchallenged lords, leaving but the faintest of imprints upon the world whilst they moved about at their leisure. And all the while, Sekhmet's augmented eyes were in overdrive, clicking back and forth and back and forth and rapidly processing a nonstop array of visual data, keeping a keen lookout for anything that might even remotely begin to hint at a prison or cell. Or, better yet, Jiang Tsen.

Sekhmet's ears perked up, then. She skidded to an abrupt halt, then melded into umbral nonexistence as a contingent of fifty-odd Heraldry soldiers stormed by, most sporting rifles or carbines and four of them hefting a massive repeater-turret on their backs. And at their rear, the Se-dai saw at once, was none other than The Bastard himself. Messy black hair, striking brown eyes. A voice like coarse dirt and slight hunch to his shoulders. It could only be him, and Sekhmet was listening very closely now as he spoke into an unseen comm unit.

"Ah, Sevas," Kore's kidnapper—and possibly, killer—was saying, "we both knew the Jade Wolf would eventually come looking for his beloved pet." A pause. "Yes, well, it was never going to be ideal, was it? Liquidators notwithstanding."

Distantly, there came a low rumble that emanated all throughout the cave, shaking the very ground beneath the Se-dai's feet. She remained effortlessly upright, via a series of gyroscopic actuators nested within her center of gravity. Tsen, meanwhile, was still speaking.

"Just hold them off for as long as you can," Tsen told his subordinate, quite harshly. "Kore takes priority above all else. As soon as you can, cut and run, and I promise that the shuttle will be right there waiting for you." At that, Sekhmet saw his lip curl.

"One more thing-" Tsen added, just as Sekhmet was about to move. "Is Wren with you?" A brief pause, and then the Heraldry leader scowled. "That cowardly son of a bitch. All that posturing, just to turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble." With that, Tsen clicked off his communicator and began gesturing to the soldiers assembled.

"Go on ahead!" he ordered, his hand going to the las-pistol on his belt. "Help Sevas, and buy as much time as you can! I'm going to go back and retrieve the VIP. And, hey-death to the false Emperor! Death to all Emperors!"

"Death to all Emperors!" the men chorused—and then they went one way, and Tsen went the other, and Sekhmet watched all the while.

Tsen rounded the corner.

Sekhmet waited.

Waited.

Waited...

And then she sprung into action, stealth be damned, and tore up that steel ramp into what appeared to be some manner of transitory shipping zone. There were two guards waiting there, listening with tight lips and nervous eyes as the ceiling continued to rumble and shake overhead. Neither one of them saw her coming.

Her knee hit the first square in the jaw and he sunk like a stone, neck well and truly broken. She dropped to the floor in the blink of an eye and thus the second's gunshot went entirely wide, scoring against one of two dozen anonymous steel crates with little fanfare. In one explosive burst of power Sekhmet swung three-hundred-and-sixty degrees around, intending to sweep his legs but instead shearing one leg clean off, and thus Sekhmet merely silenced his cries with one final, decisive stomp.

Relatively clean work, all done in the span of one-point-four seconds. Sekhmet rose to her feet, dusted herself off, surveyed her handiwork. Took stock. Made an honest assessment.

That was, she declared, to herself, a decidedly sloppy performance. The second guard should never have gotten a shot off at all. She just couldn't help it; everything still felt wrong, as though she could clearly visualize what she wanted in her head but just couldn't quite make it real-

And then, abruptly, Sekhmet had other problems.

"Found you," came a voice like gargling nails, and before Sekhmet could even register what was happening a massive fist impacted hard against her side—the side currently patched-up with inferior mithril composite—and then she was flung bodily across the room, smashing right through a pair of crates and landing painfully amidst a shower of what appeared to be semiconductor parts and freeze-dried ration packs. It took Sekhmet one fraction of a second to recover her wits, another to comprehend what had just happened to her, and a third to look to identify the threat. All unbearably sluggish, by her own standards.

From the darkness, then, he was emerging—a towering figure wrapped in a cloak of brilliant crimson. His face was a brutal collage of half-mended scars and misplaced parts; his body a cruel totem that radiated dominance and power such that Sekhmet could almost smell it. In his hand there loomed a gargantuan halberd, a ridiculous weapon in the hand of any other than the cybernetically augmented. A ridiculous weapon in the hand of any other than the Death Knell, the Crimson Emir's infamous cyborg vanguard—supplanted, now, by the Loyalist Se-dai, yet no less effective than they ever were before. And he was leering at her, through reddened eyes, like a man with a great deal of frustration to let out.

"Knew I smelled a rat," the red knight rasped and rumbled. Though the words were clearly discernible, the way they were transmitted only dimly qualified as 'human speech'—his voice was moreso a garbled mix of grinding metal, spinning gears, and other sounds best left undescribed.

"Hands to yourself, you patchwork bastard," Sekhmet spat, rising to her feet and dusting herself off. "These are nice clothes." It was, unfortunately, a glib comment that served only to underscore her mounting anxiety.

For anyone outside Ceres that had known Sekhmet, the first word they might have used to describe the itinerant Se-dai's personality would likely be competitive. Sekhmet craved a challenge, craved to push herself to the absolute limit against the absolute best and then win. She loved being the underdog, loved being the one with something to prove. Imbalances were nothing more than opportunities, insofar as she was concerned. It was the reason why Sekhmet was, for the 109th ranked Se-dai, known among her peers for a tendency to punch above her weight.

Against Gaun, however, that feeling had faded—she had only felt anger, only wanted to see the Vzngtch Enforcer dead. Against Wren, now, she felt something she had never felt in a fight before, never even once: fear. Fear, because she was in the single worst shape of her entire life. Fear, because she had hardly tested her new self against the un-augmented and now here she was, facing down a full-fledged cyborg knight. Fear, because in addition to all of this, it was Kore's life on the line. This was too important to lose and far too easy to mess up. She reached down for the comforting presence of her katana and realized, of course, that her old friend was no longer there.

For the first time ever, as Sekhmet raised her fists and narrowed her eyes and delved deep into that razor-thin dimension of pure focus, she actively did not want to fight.

"Name's Wren," the cyborg told her, for whatever voidforsaken reason. "You must be that woman's Se-dai bitch, the one that's supposed to be dead."

"Rude," Sekhmet chided, keeping her tone light and her body perfectly still.

"We've wasted a lot of fucking time with that woman," Wren growled, taking one single step forward. He dented the floor, with what was almost certainly deliberate emphasis. "Sitting around, fucking talking, fucking waiting. That moron Tsen; I was planning to pull him apart, when all this bullshit was over. Now you've just fucked that up for me."

"Still plenty of time for that."

"Nah." Another stomp closer. "I think I'll play with you, instead." And another. "See if you Se-dai bitches are all you're cracked up to be." And another. "See how long it takes you to break."

And then, abruptly, Sekhmet decided that this situation called for a change of tact.

"This is insane-you know that, right?" she blurted out suddenly, abandoning her fighting crouch for a casual, lackadaisical stance. She threw up her hands in blatant exasperation. "What are we even doing here? This cave is going to collapse on our heads any minute now, and the Liquidators are almost guaranteed to catch up long before either of us manages to kill the other. It's over, Wren. You've already lost. So, you know what? Maybe you and I should just set aside the bullshit, cyborg-to-cyborg, and-" Her leg-muscles fired, and with not even the barest hint of warning she leapt forward with a snarl on her lips and a flying kick angled straight for the Death Knell's throat.

The cyborg just sidestepped, grabbed her mid-air by the throat, turned, and slammed her hard against the closest pillar.

"I hope," Wren rumbled, and Sekhmet's olfactory sensors reported that his breath smelled like literal rotting death, "you can do better than that." He flung her aside—all eight-hundred pounds—like a broken doll, and though Sekhmet tried to land on all fours she instead just ended up sprawled on her ass, somehow. Can't even land right she thought bitterly, to herself, amidst all her mounting panic. Sekhmet looked up, then, saw the gleam at the edge of that massive halberd-blade, and with that sight there came something else that she had never experienced in a fight before: a keen sense of impending doom.

"Otherwise," Wren said, sweeping his blade in a wide arc before him, "this shit is going to be over quick."

Sekhmet didn't answer with words. Instead, she darted forward, narrowly avoiding an immense horizontal cleave, then was forced to duck and roll away as the point of the halberd leapt twice for her, quick-quick like a striking viper. Already fatigue was clawing at the edges of her vision; Sekhmet bade those grasping hands begone as she leapt above another horizontal slash, then kicked off the flat of the blade and somersaulted forwards into an eight-hundred-pound drop-kick. Wren blocked it gamely with the shaft of his weapon, in turn—and that was exactly what Sekhmet was hoping for. Her other leg came up, from below, and with a deafening crack she split the halberd quite neatly in half.

A momentary victory, one that was dampened at once as Wren simply tossed aside the broken weapon and hammered her four, five, six times right in the face. Sekhmet staggered back, the Death Knell cocked his fist for a seventh, and then she dug in her heel—physically dug in, nearly an inch deep into solid rock—and interrupted his barrage with an open-palm strike to the chest that put him clean through a concrete pillar.

"Je t'emmerde!" Sekhmet shouted, her blood now boiling-hot as she leapt through the dust and the raining chunks of rock. Just as Wren was beginning to recover, she landed mere inches before him, pivoting perfectly on one heel and delivering a brutal roundhouse-kick to the stomach that all but folded him in half. "Come on, Wren!" she jeered, eyes glowing bright. She jumped back, bouncing lightly on her heels, beckoning for the red knight to attack. Finally, she felt right. Finally, she felt like herself. "You're gonna have to try a little harder than that, petit con, if you ever wanna-"

He fell upon her like a rushing shadow. She didn't even see it coming; one moment she was fine, the next he had her and then there was a sound like nothing she had ever heard emanating from his throat as he floored her with a left hook that had every floodlight in the room flickering madly. There were dozens of alarms wailing in her ears, and then he had her by the ankle and then he was slamming her into walls, pillars, crates, whatever was nearby. Finally, like a dig dissatisfied with a chewtoy, he flung her aside, and she crashed into the corner in a dust-covered heap, with Maít's clothes torn to rags and a trickle of steaming-hot teal dribbling from the corner of her supplanted eye.

Her body was telling her, in every voice that it had—alarms, notifications, and good-old-fashioned pain—to stop getting hit, or it was just going to shut down and wash its hands of the bloody matter. And as Sekhmet lay there, struggling to hoist herself to her feet with one arm as the demon loomed overhead, making a noise that should have never, ever translated as laughter, she just thought to herself Well, I suppose they can always resurrect me again.

But that was a lie, of course. A second chance was a lucky thing indeed. A third, a bonafide miracle. A fourth?

It simply would not happen. Sekhmet would kill him, here and now—or she would die without ever seeing Kore's face again.

"Come on then," she said, raising her fists once more, because there was nothing else she could do. "She's waiting for me."