“What?” Yuna and Anya asked simultaneously this time.

“It was created for the Fourth Tribulation.”

He started to cough.

“At least—”

“I’m glad I won’t be there to see it.”

Anya’s stomach dropped and her vision started spinning as her world lost its color again.

He didn’t stop coughing. Dio hurried over to clap Raethor hard on the back, and it did seem to help, but the labor of the big man’s breathing did not subside. He was hunched over and looked half-dead and Anya found herself in the same braced position, not even because they had been so close, but he had been her world in a platonic way. And he wanted to die? Now?

“What do you mean you won’t be there?!” Anya half-screamed.

“He means Peter killed him with Melissa’s ashes.” Will explained bluntly.

Anya stood up quickly and pulled her autorepeater on Peter, though her spinning vision made it hard to aim.

“Fuck you you stupid fucking bastard I’ll—”

Raethor struggled out a few words. “Stop it.” The seconds passed until he could collect his breath.

“Take a pill, Raethor, it’ll help you!” Anya pleaded with him.

“He’s gotten this bad in, what, ten or fifteen minutes since we got here?” Jesús began. “Whatever it is, it’s hitting him hard. A pill isn’t going to help.”

“He’s right, Anya.” Raethor affirmed. “I can feel my lungs getting heavy.”

Anya hadn’t dropped her autorepeater, and didn’t plan to. Her vision was still spinning but she could take the shot. Peter was fast, but her bullet would be faster.

Henry began to step between them. “Didn’t you just save his life?”

“He deserved to die!” She screamed, finger itching with anticipation only just held back by sanity.

“He will.” Luther comforted, “But let him die at his own hand, not yours.”

“The poor bastard probably killed his own family to “protect them” from himself!” Jesús insulted, creating strange bedfellows.

Peter was unperturbed. “You know what I did was justified.”

“It’s not Peter’s fault I collected Melissa’s ashes, Anya.” Raethor said.

Anya closed the distance and moved leftward towards Judgement and Pleroma to create a better angle, caring to preserve enough distance Henry couldn’t grab her rifle barrel too easily.

“Anya!” Raethor began to shout, but quickly collapsed into a coughing fit. He was deteriorating rapidly now.

“If we kill each other the enemy gets what they want!” Lululu shouted. Dio nodded along.

“And if you kill him you’ll be marked KIA.” Dio continued. There was more than subtext in his words. It was true the High Imperial Court could act quickly, but their powers of judgement extended only so far beyond the borders of the Inner Sanctum, and this place was far outside their reach.

Anya sneered. “You’d kill a superior officer and protect the man who did it.”

“You’re the one who saved him!” Lululu quickly retorted.

Raethor finally fell to the ground, exhausted, and with his fall Anya finally noticed the pool of blood he was lying in, and in looking down she finally saw what had been stuck to her feet ever since stepping into the first shallow spattering he had coughed out.

A faint strand of white was stuck to her jackboot, and there were little threads all inside the blood pool Raethor was lying in, alongside larger clumps of it where the threads intersected. They were as white as Pleroma but neither stained nor whitened with time. They were outside time and uninterested in interacting with this world.

Peter brandished his flamer on a comrade for the second time that day. “You know what I have to do,” he said calmly.

“He’s not even dead you cold bastard!” Anya yelled in reply. Henry was beginning to look like he was prepared to intercept her shot by the way his hands were moving slowly to collect his own rifle off the shoulder. Was such a thing even possible?

“If you’re with me, fall in line.” She finally decreed. This wasn’t a matter that could be settled in words.

“If you stop me from burning his body it’s as good as killing us all.” Peter quickly answered, but her words had scarcely left his lips by the time Anya responded the same way as before.

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“So you say. Fall in line!”

She was nominally second in command. In the event of Raethor’s death it was her right to assume his post. Anyone who didn’t accept that was in direct opposition to an order. Though by the same token, Raethor wasn’t dead yet, so if they were to assume his pulse they had to also assume his authority— and Anya’s lack of it. This allowed some degree of legitimacy to Dio and Lululu’s movement toward Peter. It wasn’t unheard of for junior officers to form a triumvirate of sorts in the event of a strong officer’s death. None of them really possessed the authority to fill his shoes, so it wasn’t unreasonable to pool themselves toward that end, at least until a suitable replacement could be determined. This was an especially common practice in subunit-based units such as theirs, where though Raethor was the common glue holding them together and crafting their strategy, subunit tactics were almost entirely left to the lieutenants' discretion.

Dio’s subordinates followed him, which was expected. They weren’t particularly close to Anya and in a matter of direct conflict with another peer officer it only made sense for them to stand by their direct commander. For this same reason it was unsurprising, if not 100% expected, that Jesús and Will stood by their commanding officer. For all his jokes and insults, Jesús did respect the chain of command, and even if he thought the abstract “woman” should be at home in the kitchen, he did respect the fact that Anya wasn’t, if only out of respect for her role as his superior officer. As close as they were to Dio and Jessica, this was a matter of duty, and on this they were aligned.

It also helped that if Anya did possess any degree of kitchen-based skill, she would be able to cook Jesús beyond a char in the event she assumed command and they abandoned her. By all rights, command was hers to take, and by all rights, they should be her lieutenants in the aftermath.

Yuna, then, was a wildcard, seeing as her superior officer was on life’s chopping block. But she liked Anya more than the others and respected her commander’s choice of succession. She therefore moved to Anya’s side more quickly than anyone else. Her agile nature was on full display to the others.

What was surprising, then, was that both Luther and Chris deserted their superior officer for Anya. Lululu wasn’t surprised, but the disappointment was clear on her face. “Why?” it screamed, but there was no explanation from either party, even if Any could guess. Luther, though he deeply distrusted Jesús, generally respected Anya. If anyone was going to shut Jesús down after things shook out, it would have to be either her or a helpful stray bullet in the ensuing violence. Dio was actively complicit in Jesús’ racism, and Peter’s stance was unknown. Lululu could be trusted to maintain unit cohesion, but with Dio being her equal it was unlikely she could wield enough authority to actually do anything in that block. Anya wasn’t a saint, but she was likely the more reasonable option with Dio on the other side.

Jesús, of course, said nothing. He could shout racial slurs at Luther, but at the end of the day Anya needed support. Besides, he could always cast Luther aside later by whispering sweet nothings of his incompetence in Anya’s ear.

Chris was a wildcard. He said little to this point and his opinions were generally unknown, but one thing was clear: where Yuna went, he would follow. It seemed likely that was how the logic played out this time as well, seeing as he had no known opinions on their future leadership. It didn’t help the three-block that he had been relatively close to Melissa compared to the others on account of his severe disability. The same was also true for Yuna, of course. Though her leg was mainly a weapon in terms of maintenance, it did sometimes require medical checkups and tuning to ensure smooth operation, leading them to spend more time with her than the others on average.

And so the lines were drawn. Will, Chris, Luther, Jesús, Yuna, and Anya on the one side, with Dio, Alissa, Alex, Jessica, Peter, Henry, and Lululu on the other. Raethor let out a sputter, and it was clear he was on death’s door. They needed to feed him the pills and start healing him as best they could immediately. Anya had already taken eight, but she had six left. Melissa was dead, but with Lululu here they had the magic necessary to do something, surely! It had been some fifteen or twenty minutes now since he walked in here with scarcely a cough, but now he was almost out of life. It was unnerving, but at the end of the day Anya refused to let—

Raethor started to shake violently, as if he had been possessed. Was he having a seizure? Quickly, they needed to get him some pills—

It was at this moment Peter decided to burn the corpse. Anya’s finger scarcely saw the fire before it pulled her trigger, but Henry’s arms moved just as quickly to his own rifle, firing a counter shot that perfectly deflected her bullet up and out of the way.

There was a second gunshot and then deafening silence as they all collectively decided that they didn’t want to kill each other after all. But Anya’s finger still itched for the trigger. As much as she knew she shouldn’t have pulled it the first time, or brought out the rifle, or brought things to the point they would have to make the active choice to kill or not to kill their comrades, it didn’t sate her anger for Raethor. Even if it was misplaced, even if it wasn’t Peter’s fault Raethor had decided to stir up the ashes and even if she had admitted in hindsight that it may have been a good idea to burn the body that didn’t change how she felt. And she felt it was Peter’s fault.

But her trigger finger stayed itself, though not entirely out of a sense of duty. In the moment and silence after firing a shot she had known would never find its mark there had been a falling out of gravity. The light found itself scattered sideways and her body pulled in all directions as the air spiraled around her neck, prepared for the moment it was finally allowed to twist the flesh off if only Anya’s finger would allow them to.

Every hair on her body screamed to put the gun down, and even as her finger resisted it obeyed its well-trained command. The back of her neck still felt tense, but the air calmed down at least, and she could feel her weight return to normal. Dio seemed to have anticipated this, as his relaxed body language showed and his words confirmed.

“I told you so. The weight of glory watches us.” She wasn’t commander yet, even as Raethor died. It would take a moment for his authority to transfer, and it would seem killing a peer meant immediate judgement from on high.

The fire continued to consume Raethor, and quickly there was nothing left. When he was nothing but a pile of ashes Peter finally stopped the flamer and pulled out a small bag from his supplies. He placed the bag over them, and collected them without allowing the air to make contact.

“We have to find a way out.” He began softly. “Or all our deaths will be in vain.”, gesturing to the ground with the small gray bag he held in both hands. Anya’s rifle was still smoking, but it had recharged itself by now. She could fire off another shot if needed, but at this point…

“If you try something like that again I won’t miss.”

“Neither will I.” Henry said as though it was a known fact.

They didn’t seem to take the shot all that seriously, but she supposed Henry had been prepared and it wasn’t like she had even bothered moving before taking it. She also had Will and a number of flashbangs, Jesús and his heavy weapons, two autocannons on her own back, and far faster reflexes than she had been letting on. It would have been a simple matter to kill Peter if she dedicated herself to the effort, but that hadn’t been the goal. Why did he have to make things so hard? Why did Raethor have to go and die on her…?

“I will now assume command.” Anya said, looking Peter dead in the eyes.