As the results of Zudra’s escalation waned above them, announcing themselves less frequently, the final words of the Deathless Emperor replayed themselves—looping—in Anastasia’s mind: would the Shadow Clan really be an enemy to all the cosmos? Would the powers of the universe keep searching for more destructive weapons in hopes of holding back the Shadow? Her head tilted in the direction of her brother, who had switched from bickering and bantering with Delilah and was now doing so with the black hole twins. Sagittari and Fomalhaut, for their part, were shining a bit weaker: their spirit energy was nearly depleted from their defensive struggle, and the sweat trickling down their skin gave testament to their exhaustion.

And something was telling Anastasia that even with a few launch facilities disabled, Zudra was nowhere near done. In fact, they still had enough arms that asking the twins to rest would be a death sentence: the alliance that had risen to oppose Zudra—named the Ashraya Compromise in the wake of the Deathless Wars—had far fewer munitions than even the result of Sagittari’s “stop hitting yourself” had left Zudra. As soon as the Ahsraya’s anti-missile defenses were expended, the barely-constructed base of operations would evaporate in a sequence of blasts, and even nearby civilian buildings would explode in hellfire. The callous collateral damage her family often wrought would look like child’s play compared to what Zudra would bring the second they realized there was a hole in the Shadows’ defenses. Continuing was dangerous. Stopping would be worse.

Either way, they would die or risk dying.

“We’re going to have to watch for the next Zudrian move.” Solares grunted, “Their missiles are going back to them, which means a ground response is on the way. Are the land defense guns prepared?”

“Yes, Solares, sire!” Delilah toyed with him.

“Excellent!” Solares pretended not to notice, “It is fortunate that I sat out the coliseum… I have a hunch Zudra still has a few manipulators amongst them.”

“Now you see I had a point? Save your energy, Matty!”

“If you insist. But I’ll have you know that strength is built by pushing your boundaries.”

“Spare me the Licentian propaganda. We should both know it’s all bullshit by now.”

“Propaganda you call it…” Solares was surely going to bark back, for the Zudrians taught all of their subjects what true malarkey looked like. However, instead of saying anything more, he slumped back into himself. Delilah crossed her arms and smirked, waiting for a response that never came.

“Assassin Queen?”

A combat engineer apparently of Zudrian descent walked up to her side as she bowed her head. “We managed to get you in contact with our allies on world.” The Assassin Queen raised an eyebrow and motioned for them to further explain. “Took us a while, but the operating system was being a bitch, and we had to try several encryptions before figuring out which one they were using–that and we kind of had to clean the computer, and so we apologize for any and all—”

“Okay, okay! We get it, you’re good with computers, while I’m not. Just put them on a call with me and seventy–three, I need to give him grief for the coliseum situation anyways.”

“Right away,” he jogged back to a workstation where he spoke a few words, and she was soon hearing voices as if they were a foot away, “alright boys, try not to mess up the channels again, okay?”

“Hello? Did you get them connected?” a static and tearing voice was on her comms.

“He did, amazingly enough.” Anastasia responded, “welcome to the Ashraya. This is the Assassin Queen speaking.”

“And this is Watcher five-one-seventy-three,” came Watcher’s voice, “Who are we speaking to?”

“You’re speaking to a guy who’s seeing missiles explode everywhere,” came the voice between the static, “maybe insulting Zudrian cinema was a bad idea?”

“It’s the Solares,” said another voice in the background of the speaker, “I mean… they wouldn’t give a fuck! They do what they want.” The speaker groaned. “Plus, these sons of bitches are draining Zudra’s missile supply. You should be celebrating, Cricket! This is beautiful! I knew we could trust that winged dominatrix of a Nashiyega lady to get us some action! Always wanted to know what it’s like to be in one of these grand battles.”

The man apparently holding the comms device simply said, deadpan, “Assassin Queen, meet Shasps, our commander. I also apologize for his lack of self control.”

“You wouldn’t know a good woman even if she hit ya in the testicles, Cricket. X is givin’ us a good way to die! Woo!”

“Anyways,” Cricket apparently didn’t want to dignify Shasps’s comment with a response, “we’re picking a place to strike to support the Ashraya Netcher, but if you’re going to tell us to go anywhere under those missiles, the answer is a firm no. As much as the crew I belong to would love to go down in a blaze of glory, it’s my job to prevent that. Or at least prolong it as long as I can.”

“We blaze it everyday, plebeian. That’s how the big boys roll. We roll more than just our stomachs.”

“Are you implying that the rest of are—”

“Nobody cares!”

“Alright…” said Anastasia, “someone still has energy, apparently. We recently tore down some of their missile launch facilities: would you be willing to attack the ones we couldn’t reach? Surely they can’t launch missiles at themselves.”

“You,” Cricket began, “underestimate the effectiveness of Zudrian propaganda.”

“These people would blow up their own pregnant wives!” Shasps chimed in, “Zudra’s been telling everybody they can get into heaven by dying for the empire. And boy do they buy it! I’ve seen people throw themselves at incomprehensible freaks of nature like they were hedge fund traders at a bachelor party. On the bright side, at least they get health insurance… if they survive.”

“Holy shit… I’m so… sorry.”

“Oh don’t worry about us, little lady: they’re poor as dirt and can’t fight for shit either. I mean, they haven’t even managed to kill me yet, and I’m as stupid as they are!” Anastasia’s stomach sank. This Shasps guy, whoever he was, brought back something that she would rather not feel right now. As far from Solares’s grim exterior as Shasps’ cheeriness was, the sentiments underneath reeked of Solares when he actually tried to die. “Anyways, we have a little twelver problem that isn’t so little: our spies inside of Tuitio base are telling us that Zudra’s been playing stupid this whole time. They haven’t even sent you a tenth of the site’s tanks. We hear they’re powering them up right now.”

“Damn it…”

“Yeah, they stopped jerking themselves off. The lunatics keep getting tax refunds and subsidies and keep using them on the mother country’s weapon brands! I wouldn’t trust an Ignistech weapon to tickle my testicles.” No wonder this guy loved Xeshna so much – though he seemed to have her beat in vulgarity.. “But they buy entire cannons from them! If it worked, it would be different. Maybe the Zudrian snail eaters use this in bed with their concubines… you know, to compensate?” Anastasia had seen the girth of Zudrian nobility quite recently, and really did not need to picture that. “Anyways, thanks to their terrible taste in weapons tech, all the money goes right back to the motherland! Time to time, Eternus puts in to make sure the slug lovers give them spaceships that do more than glorified sex toys. And it seems like they're bringing out the busters now. Which is fine, since getting nailed by a Zudrian’s overcompensating strap-on wasn’t exactly the way any of my boys wanted to die.”

“Okay,” Anastasia said, “we get it, Zudra has a well-endo—uh, well-connected defense industry. And… I understand. I wouldn’t wish for that either.”

“Stop, Queen. You’re giving me hope for this stupid universe, and I don’t like it.”

“Then be glad you’re not next to me. There’s enough hope in this alliance to suffocate someone. Even your doomsday–loving, vulgar behind.”

“You had me at suffocate: I like your kinks!”

“And you have interesting preferences on how you’d like to die, so tell you what? If we make it through this, you’ll get such a high dose of hope and optimism from this legion that you’ll break… just like the guy next to me. Poor Solares! He’ll never be strong again!”

“That doesn’t sound as fun.”

Solares snapped his head up. “Excuse me? Are we still on this? I was stronger! I could summon flames!”

“He’s right, Shasps. He’s so weak these days that he has to resort to photon rays that can pierce a planet! His old comrades would mock him if they saw him now. No one takes him seriously anymore! Come here you poor, defenseless planet-killer!” As soon as she had Solares trapped in her embrace, she continued the conversation, “Are there roads going out of Tuitio? Can you keep them inside?”

“Hell yeah we can! We’ve got tank traps and a whole shipment of the nastiest terraforming charges this planet has ever laid its hands on. Thank Lady X for me, if you don’t mind. She’s the best!” Solares grunted and tried to move, but Anastasia’s arms kept him in their hold. “We might not be able to stop the first wave, but we can trap an orgy’s-worth of ground vehicles for at least a few hours. Maybe even a day or two. Enough to give you a lunch break.”

“That’s a relief, we can rush our asses and make a response as soon as we can…”

“You’d better. The ones that will get out before we mangle these roads will probably be loaded full of compensation.”

“Delilah! Matty! You’re with me!” she yelled, “we’ve got some tanks to cut off.”

“Finally!” Solares grunted, as if to himself, “I needed something a little more challenging than these missiles.”

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“You seem down bad, Solares.” Delilah wagged her finger.

“You have said enough, Delilah. I am just bored.”

Anastasia gave a worried glance to the black hole siblings, who simply nodded. As depleted as they were, they were signaling a readiness to fight further. She wouldn’t let their efforts waste: she mounted a motorcycle and twisted the handle, easing her way up past the rubble.

“Get on the bikes,” the Assassin Queen stopped hers for a moment, worked her hair into a helmet, and stared at the two Licentians in front of her, “we’re going to smash the Zudra!”

Solares blinked as Delilah boarded the second bike. “We are going to ride on these things?”

“No, Matty, we’ve got pegasi. Of course we’re riding these things!”

“Could I not just cut a path through the terrain with my powers? It fits my reputation better.”

“Firstly, overdramatic. Secondly, you agreed to not waste spirit energy. Besides, that would slow you down and we all know how you hate that… you would rather give up an arm and spend all your spirit energy than need to walk somewhere instead of running. Now, hop on before we run you over!”

“Like that would work…”

A few pointless comments later, the three motorcycles exited the newly created Golden Syndicate Crater. Attila’s final warning echoed again: the whole cosmos, eh? Maybe he was correct. Maybe their alliance, the Shadow Clan, would give birth to powerful enemies. If so, they would need an empire even stronger than Attila’s. Zudra alone, with all its political and military influence, would amass strength by any means necessary. Beginning now, the Shadows would need to do the same. They would need to gather every race – nay, every single group – chafing under Zudra’s oppression, and convince them to lend their strength to an alliance that could rival the mightiest powers in the known universe. Many cells, one organism, she thought, the one thing I retained from Krystal’s biology rants. That will get everything through. The thought had yet to calm her anxiety.

Maybe smashing these tanks would help.

Streetlights zipped across her field of vision. The walls of gated communities rose and fell alongside them, almost fluid-like at the speeds the motorcycles maintained. However, a new sound rose above that of their motorcycle’s drag and passing lamp posts. A static, not from her radio, nor Delilah's or Solares’s, but from—somehow—everywhere else. The noise came from buildings towering over them, and through alleys and streets that their motorcycles passed. The sound reached from enough places at once that it carried echoes. Almost assuredly, even those back at base fighting the missile onslaught could hear the static tear, it seemed so omnipresent. Surely the entire planet could hear.

"Well, well, what do we have here?" The static gave way to a booming voice. "Such chaos, instability, and terror upon everyone here… a pure shame." Delilah’s head swiveled briefly from the road toward Anastasia, shooting a worried glance her way, and then turned back to the road. The last peek the Assassin Queen witnessed was a mixture of confusion and fierce defiance. "And so I ask you. Just what do you think? What do you think the universe would be… without us?" Anastasia's body tensed. "I'll show you. I'll show you what the universe would be like without Zudra."

Headlights crept onto the road before them. First two, then four, then an entire row riding head-on against them on the road to their target base. The sound picked up, mixing with their own vehicles in a reverbing choir of steel and heat.

"We're gonna do a Gladiator's Pike!" the Assassin Queen snapped. Her allies briefly lifted a hand each from the handlebars of their bikes to give her a thumbs-up sign.

The oncoming vehicles stopped and fired shots of plasma that heated the air enough to cook the orichalcum metal of the walls surrounding their own gated communities.

"What the hell are these tactics?”

“People of Corona Eternus, this is General Tsada speaking: your lives as you know them are over,” the loudspeakers continued, bafflingly clear amid the hissing ordinance and crumpling collateral buildings, “and it is the fault of the Shadow Clan who have destroyed this planet and destroyed the thin line standing between her people and chaos. The law is null. All of your possessions are unprotected. Many will be justified in taking what they want. But if you can destroy the property and homes that these tyrants are soon to desecrate, your family’s name and those that carry it will be honored. Your deeds on this day will be recorded, and the criminals who seek to steal from you will gain nothing. If you chance to do this and survive the oncoming massacre, you will live a life of fame, glory, and luxury.

That I promise you.”

Anastasia’s brain couldn’t process this insanity, especially through all of the plasma taking up her attention. The trio were swerving across the road, dodging fire as they closed the gap with the group of lightly armored vehicles so rudely greeting them. She would deal with this fanatic’s broadcast later.

As soon as she was close enough, spirit energy flooded into her arms and legs, and in a move uniquely her own, the Assassin Queen dismounted from her ride at its full speed into an accelerating sprint. She hit the sound barrier just as she reached the assailants, and the kick she delivered to the centermost LAV’s armor folded its walls as though, for a single instant, the whole thing was made of cloth. The force of her kick sent it skidding, grinding and spitting sparks across the road, taking everything in its path along for the ride, scattering a few more members of the motor blockade.

The sides of the blockade, meanwhile, were sanded away under a hailstorm of cannonfire, widening the gap Anastasia had created. The salvo’s source sped through the opening a few seconds after Anastasia made impact, and she once again sprinted, this time to match speed alongside the Solares’s bike and climb aboard behind her adopted sibling.

If they had any intention of stopping the Shadow Clan, they would need a hell of lot more than—

Another row of headlights appeared ahead. The Assassin Queen hissed. The Zudrians brought backup and they were pouring out in large numbers. Turning to Delilah, she nodded and gave the blonde human the go ahead: Delilah flared a fireball within her right hand. However, the oncoming horde seemed to have a little more up its sleeve. Anastasia saw the ground beneath this second blockade lifting itself up and asphalt ripping as if a black hole were nearby.

"Earth manipulators! A swarm of them!" Anastasia hollered at the biker clan. "Slow down and charge your power! Solares, you get to do what you wanted after all! Solares, smash!"

The shroud slowed the bike both he and Anastasia rode and laughed. "Sister, you bring me joy." By the spirits of the galaxies, Solares just loved causing decimation—even when he didn't show it. A high pitched noise emitted from his fingers—that new whir that put the space telescopes to shame. "Have faith, remain patient—" Those words warmed the Assassin Queen’s heart. "And let’s see if you’re right about me piercing planets with these powers. You won’t be living it down if I can’t."

Their bikes slowed to a halt, Delilah’s flames charred the top of the wall, and the Solares’s lasers fired. It occurred to Anastasia that if their opponents’ goal was to hold them still for a single moment, then their opponents seem to have succeeded.

Then her world tipped. Everything spun on numerous axes. The bike seemed to flip over her, or behind her. Her every limb and every visual point of reference rocked and reeled—the streetlights and plasma and lasers all blurred and disappeared into blackness.

Flash.

Instead of the glow of Corona’s light pollution reflecting off the atmosphere, Anastasia was standing beneath a sky full of smoke. Standing. No motorcycle, no blockade, no companions and no headlights. Just the dull, red-orange glow of a sun unable to penetrate through black smog.

The smell of something rotten hit the nostrils, lowered cries made ambience in the foul air, and black and brown muck and scum encased her feet. The Assassin Queen pinched her nose and let out a moan of disgust. She let herself walk through this black, sticky goo in which her form was caught, all the while calling out for Delilah and Solares.

Where was she? Was this supposed to be Corona Eternus? Certainly not the part of Corona she was standing in a moment ago. Besides, there was no equipment. No mines. A landfill or trash heap might look like this, but what surrounded her was not trash. It was broken equipment, melted beams, and partially evaporated vehicles. If this was Corona, it was ground zero of some kind of attack.

Corona Eternus, after all, may have been lesser developed and messy in some areas, but Zudra’s colonies never decayed this quickly. The Grand Union of Zudra didn’t give a region these kinds of resources if it wanted them destroyed immediately.

"So this world, whatever it is—" Anastasia walked by a busted pipe that pumped a river of thick oil across the ground. "—is somewhere worse…" She snapped her radio on and flipped through the UI, looking for Watcher 5173, Delilah, Solares, Mei, or Xeshna. In the first attempt, she got no answer. In the second, Delilah did answer her.

But not in her proper voice.

"Licentiyaha… eternahah… dominaha…" Delilah's words drove a chill into Anastasia’s stomach. "Justice… feel this… live it…" The Assassin Queen knew what this was, for in the chambers of the Grand Spiral, the Licentian Order would worship their utterly twisted deity inside of a room entirely decked out into the shape of a spiral with torches. Hundreds of torches, and rumor had it those were meant to represent his eyes. "Licentiyaha… Eternahah… forever…" What the hell? "Kill sin… kill sin… kill sin! Kill sin! Kill sin! Kill—"

She shut off the radio… and then caught a breath.

Anastasia's eyes were slightly wider after that. "What the fuck was that?" Her voice barely retained its usual tone through its trembling, and her stomach didn't want to stay in place anymore. Nope, not after hearing Delilah say that and certainly not with all the screams in the atmosphere.

In the avalanche of rubble and disgusting red muck, the Assassin Queen sucked in her gut and pushed through. Aside from the disturbing radio transmission, she seemed to be alone in this world: the only company she had were dead bodies. The skulls had the gall to smile at her even in their emaciated and cracked state. Anastasia felt her belly ache intensify, and as if she weren’t having a hard enough time keeping the bile in her stomach, she saw other corpses around her begin gushing cold blood.

She didn’t need to scream, for the world did the screaming for her. No one near her seemed to be alive, but just out of sight, it sounded as though men screamed so loudly, at so many varied pitches that their voices ripped, women cried out beside them, children yelled for their mothers, and then all were silent. Her eyes fixed on the horrendous-smelling, flaming piles of scree sitting ahead. They were sliding, sinking out of sight. Maybe she took in the smell of shit from whatever cursed hole this stuff was falling into, but whatever it was already died.

“What the fuck?” Anastasia whispered as she struggled to make her way over to whatever massive sinkhole was consuming the waste around her. “What the actual…” If only to get a look down, she went to the absolute edge and took to her knees and craned her head over the abyss. Then, more flame ruining the bottom, houses burning, vehicles detonating, and carcasses being thrown like play dolls across the asphalt greeted her golden eyes.

She dared squint.

The source moved with deliberate slowness. Heavy footfalls took her ears hostage, and the orange light emanating from the figure obscured it from any direct sight. All she saw was a light that compared to the last thing stories told of death. She shook her head. This was no afterlife. Not even Hell was like this.

“Could it be some kind of fire?” Anastasia muttered to herself, her chest contracting into her body and her lungs thick with air. She hadn’t breathed in what felt like minutes. “What the fuck is that…thing down there?”

Could it be the Zudrians? Whenever they had a military operation they always left some deployed infantry behind. The quantity of supplies remaining with those abandoned troops depended on how recently the army left them for dead. From what the Assassin Queen knew from life on Haven or visiting other planets in the Deathless Wars, the dead bodies, partially eaten corpses, and weapons, loaded or unloaded, were all they left behind. A grave for the lost and forgotten that disgusted even Matty.

The orange luminescence flared. Blinding rays of light struck the Assassin Queen hard enough in the eyes to make her recoil. She grabbed a standing rock to hoist herself back up, but the light disoriented her, and she stumbled. Were these intentional flares? Armies used such tactics to dissuade enemies. However, the light was too mindless, striking whatever skies it could.

Anastasia huffed. Besides, she hadn’t seen this kind of strategy in forces other than cheaply paid mercenaries and even they had some sense in them. She heaved her chest, pressed a button on her suit to deploy her visor, and returned on her stomach to the edge of the cliff. The Assassin Queen bent down her head and bore witness.

The clouds of debris had cleared, at least a little bit, allowing her to see a massive and humanoid thing, with more mass in its limbs and thickness in its muscles than were present on most humans. Its skin colored a pitched black, camouflage of the same colors as the polluted skies right now. When the Assassin Queen squinted her eyes, the thing’s head turned as the rest of its body remained stationary. Whether it was from its arms or face, multiple red pupils stared at her and the thing’s mouth opened to reveal an eerily gleaming smile.

“What the fuck!” Anastasia jumped away and fell on her back.

Two feet, two arms, silhouettes of claws, and orange glowing across their hands. What was that? What was it? If only she had more time before the embering body had made a deliberate turn toward her direction. Its eyes had flashed upward, glowing a shade of crimson the Assassin Queen had not seen in years.

And had hoped to never see again.

Standing again, her own eyes widened. “It can’t be…” The red glow became brighter, assisted by stomps that shook the ground and chipped away at the walls of the sinkhole. Anastasia whipped out her daggers on both hands and jabbed them into the terrain to stay above. Rocks, dirt, and debris sunk into the crater, removing the barrier between her and the warrior below. It was clearer with every hazard the figure pulverized. It was obvious who this was. “It can’t be…”

A low, rumbling and bestial laugh given with the energy of a child but the colossal nature of a beast boomed from that pit. It was like it replied to her. No, it answered her.

“Matty?”

A horrendous roar exploded from the crumbling abyss.

Anastasia had one priority: scream back, challenge him, get him back in order, assert herself, and stand ground. She did not know where she was or how this version of Solares came back, but she could bring him around, couldn’t she? Some part of him would understand because deep down, he didn’t want a fight with her.

Usually.

The brother she knew recently might have been soft as a pillow and sweet as a pastry made of dairy. But the cloaked one here was different. The one here was a version that was supposed to be gone from inside of him, a version responsible for all her worst memories of him and for causing him more pain than even Zudra, if that were possible. It was the part of him that earned him the title, “King of Demons.” An animal, a beast, a presence beyond this world. And she knew exactly where she had last seen it.

Haven.

This force of destruction sought only violence, proved willing to grab skin and fork it out of almost every living thing in sight, and almost seemed to crave challenges to its dominance, if only to violently beat them into submission. Maybe even from its host, but whether Matty dethroned it or not didn’t matter. She never wanted a measuring contest with this thing. The Assassin Queen wanted it gone.

The third draft of a god’s cruel experiments.

“There should never have been a second…” Anastasia clenched her knives tighter as she looked into the creature's ominous, spiral eyes, “nevermind a third! We meet again, Cain.”

The creature let out a raspy laugh and coughed. Once again, the ground beneath Anastasia vibrated to the sound of Cain unleashing yet another roar.