Cornelius was too shocked to move. Just as she planned it. He had left himself vulnerable, and her aim was true.

But she never could have been fast enough.

Genevieve’s arms wrenched back, seized and twisted by the inhumanly powerful hands of a looming automata. She gasped in pain, and the knife she was gripping so tightly clattered to the stage.

A deathly quiet fell over the crowd.

"You're putting on quite the performance, my pet," Cornelius said, visibly trembling with rage. His impeccably coiffed, pedigreed face looked like it was about to grind all of its teeth to dust. With a single heavy footstep, angrily and ominously stomped into the wooden floor, he leaned in right up close to her, and glared daggers into her eyes.

"Your Highness, what is–" the priest began to say, but a single look from Cornelius silenced him. He shut his holy book and left it on the altar as he walked off the stage. Cornelius didn't wait for him to leave before he turned his attention back to Genevieve.

"What did you think you were going to do, you backwoods ingrate?" he hissed in his most loathsome voice. "Do you believe my father's pointless political dance will stay my hand?" He put his hand on her chin, squeezed her face between his thumb and his forefinger. Brushed away the bridal veil with his other hand. Looking her face over like he was inspecting a piece of fine pottery for chips and flaws. And he scowled at her for being a disappointment, squeezing her cheeks forcefully, speaking in a low, threatening growl from the back of his throat. "What use do you think I have for a toy I'm not allowed to break?"

Everything Genevieve could possibly feel was roiling through her all at once. Her limbs were frozen in fear, but her entire body shook with unbridled fury. The pain screaming from her twisted arms was just barely numbed by the adrenaline surging through her, the deep icy chill down her spine only warmed by her seething, raging, white-hot hatred. She wanted to fight, she wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, she wanted to live, she wanted to die, she wanted to strangle Prince Cornelius in front of all his subjects and every other soul in the world.

She wanted to go home.

The bastard's face was so close to hers.

There was nothing inside her now but spite and desperation. She was cornered, helpless, and restrained. But she needed to act. In whatever way she could.

Princess Genevieve welled up all the saliva she could get from her mouth and spat in the Prince’s face.

A gasp ran through the assembled crowd and was quickly swallowed by stunned, terrified silence. Cornelius took even a second longer to process what had happened. He stepped back, so taken aback he forgot to be furious for just one brief moment, and wiped his face off with the sleeve of his fine, luxurious, royal suit.

The Prince slowly turned his gaze towards the crowd. He stared at them all blankly. And then he turned that same blank stare onto Genevieve. Her brain started moving again in that moment, and she kicked and strained against the grip of the automaton holding her in place. But something dark and cold and monstrous in the Prince's eyes stopped her flailing. She froze, and stood numbly with the metal hand tight around her wrist.

He turned his back to her. The automaton waiting at the edge of the stage, the smaller one adorned in royal regalia, approached him. Prince Cornelius reached out to remove the long, thin blade that it was wearing on its hip. He held the sword up for a moment, as if testing its weight, and then he simply stood still. For one second, and another, and another.

And then he whipped around. His sword held out. The tip extended just far enough.

In the split second she had, Genevieve saw the point about to slash across her face. Held by the automaton, she could only jerk away from it. Her eyes closed tight, waiting for the cut. A small whimper escaped her lips.

Thock.

A sound like a knife smacking against the bark of a tree.

“What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

Genevieve opened her eyes.

Standing in front of her was a cloaked figure. Right arm held up, blocking the blade with a thick, padded armguard.

“Is this the kind of sick show you like to put on around here?”

The voice was feminine, but husky and brusque. A blue, spaded tale wound its way out from beneath their cloak and flicked the air in indignation.

Cornelius’s face twisted from confused anger to furious rage. “How dare you,” he snarled with open malevolence.

“What, you got this big-ass crowd of people and they’re just supposed to watch you slash up a lady’s face?”

The Prince pulled back his blade, keeping it in his hand but down at his side. “Get this thing off the stage,” he commanded furiously. “Get it off!”

At his word, the dozen automatons standing idle all sprang to life. Long, flat, heavy blades extended from inside their arms, and they charged at the cloaked person in uncanny unison. The closest one had been standing right by Cornelius. It lunged forward, blade extended, already close enough to strike. The figure in the cloak didn't move. Their hand twitched and then it was at their hip.

BLAM

A deafening explosion rang out. The automaton stopped in its tracks, a hole blown clean through its center. It fell to the ground in a shaking, malfunctioning heap. The cloaked figure held something–a black powder pistol, but not like any Genevieve had seen before. The hood covering her head fell back, and for a brief moment Genevieve could see a glimpse of a young woman. Her round, boyish face was covered in fine blue scales, and two nubby horns poked out from underneath her short, messy black hair. Genevieve could just barely make out, over the ringing in her ears, loud, fearful cries of ”Demon!” from somewhere in the crowd.

The girl whipped around towards the pair of automata closing in on her next. There were two more loud BLAM BLAMs, and a second pistol was in her right hand now, each gun blasting a hole into an automaton, each automaton crumpling where it stood.

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She turned casually and–BLAM–fired a shot towards Prince Cornelius while he made a rapid exit from the parade stage. The small automaton in the military uniform leaped out in front of the bullet, catching it in the midsection. With an uncanny shudder the machine crumpled and fell to the ground as a sad pile of scrap metal.

Cornelius was out of her sights, so the woman turned to Genevieve. Her right hand traced an odd semi-circle in the air, looping around Genevieve’s body–then aiming just to the side of her head. Genevieve winced and

BLAM

the grip around her loosened as the newly-perforated automaton fell down to the floor. She wrenched herself from its mechanical hands. The demon girl leaped towards her and was suddenly on top of her. She didn’t look much older than Genevieve, and she was a few inches shorter, but she pushed Genevieve down, gently but insistently, arching her back protectively as she did so. She yelled something Genevieve couldn’t hear over the ringing in her ears, and Genevieve looked at her confused. The demon girl repeated it again, as uselessly as the first time. When Genevieve could only shake her head the girl took Genevieve’s hands and pressed them against her ears. Finally getting the idea, Genevieve hunkered down as it seemed the girl wanted her to, and pressed her hands against her ears as tightly as she could. She didn’t know how much it was going to help after her ears had already been blown out by gunshots, but it was probably better than nothing at all.

Evidently satisfied, the demon girl stood up–just as an automaton approached behind her and plunged its sword down into her. Or at least it intended to. Instead it found itself stuck in the wooden floor of the altar, the edge of the blade grazing harmlessly against the girl’s padded right arm as she pivoted out of its way. She raised her guns and with two more loud bangs blasted holes into the automaton, which collapsed against the stage with its sword arm still embedded in the floor.

The rest of the guards weren't simply standing still. Six automatons surrounded the gunslinger and swung their blades at her with precise coordination. She darted back from one sword, only to put herself directly into the path of another. She could only avoid it by bending far backwards and letting the arc of the blade narrowly pass over her midsection. Then she had to twist wildly to right herself and slip away from the blades of two more automatons, who clashed against each other as they struck where her gut had been just an instant before.

The last two automatons couldn’t get through the mass of their comrades to attack her directly. But they swung in her direction anyway, boxing her in with the tips of their blades. The devil girl had almost–perhaps literally–supernatural agility, and her nimble, sinuous body was small enough to dodge away from the automatons’ heavy protruding blades at every turn. That didn’t matter when she was surrounded by six guards that wouldn’t give her time to aim her guns or room to fire them. They’d forced her into a battle of attrition, and she was going to lose.

There had to be something Genevieve could do to help her, but she couldn’t think of what. She looked around the stage desperately, but there was nothing–Cornelius ran off with his sword, of course, and even if she had a blade…

Then she noticed the small, crumpled automaton in the regal uniform, and the slight, faint, but deeply familiar shimmer coming off of it. A tiny, almost imperceptible trace of magic leaking from the hole the devil girl’s bullet had blown through it.

Genevieve knew what that must mean. It was almost a relief nothing had been released from the other ones. But she didn’t have time to dwell on that. She ran to the downed machine and scooped the little shred of energy it had into her fingers.

Genevieve hadn’t been given much chance to exercise this muscle since she was sent to Gryst, three whole months ago. And even with a bit of magic, the barren earth didn’t give her a lot to use it on. But she could at least stop the ringing in her ears. Undoing minor physical inconveniences was the first thing anyone learned to use magic for. So she channeled a piece of that tiny spark of life into her ears, restoring her hearing with a loud pop. Suddenly she could hear the clashing of swords and the devil girl’s exertions as she dodged between them. But just as she channeled a little bit more, to protect her ears from the rest of the explosions that were sure to come, she heard something else–the clanking of metal, loud and fast behind her.

She had no time to think. She threw herself to the side, feeling that little bit of magic she recovered slipping out of her fingers to be sucked back into the starving earth. The armored fist of an automaton crashed into the wreckage of its former captain, smashing what was left of it into pieces.

The guard turned to loom over Genevieve. She was helplessly trapped in the thick layers of her own dress, and flailing about trying to get to her feet only made things worse. She yelped in fear and frustration, backing up towards the edge of the stage. Falling to the ground was the only escape she could think of. But the automaton was on top of her, and there was no way she could throw herself off before she was grabbed.

Her cries caught the devil girl's attention. She glanced in Genevieve’s direction, but she didn't let herself get caught off guard. She slid under an automaton's sword strike, and then jumped right at the machine's armored chest. Her feet came up and she planted them on its plated chassis, digging her clawed toes in with a metallic crunch. The force of the impact didn't move the automaton in the slightest. It didn’t have to. With all the strength she could muster, she kicked off its chest and launched herself up and over the melee she was caught in.

One of the guards swung at her while she jumped over it. She twisted out of the way, but it managed to catch her in the shin and she went tumbling. Her head banged against the automaton's helmet and knocked it off completely. It clattered to the ground and so did she, smacking into the wooden platform with a hard, ugly thud.

Genevieve could see her out the corner of her eye, past the automaton reaching its hand out to grab her neck. Crashing into the ground didn't slow her down. Teeth gritted and eyes focused, she raised her gun and fired. Bang.

The bullet punched a hole clean through the automaton’s chest. Genevieve could see clearly the strange, gently glimmering web of metal threads and geometric shapes inside the machine. A light inside it flickered red for a brief moment before dimming completely. And the guard went down–with Genevieve underneath it. Its heavy metal body collapsed on top of her, leaving her to struggle and wriggle her way out from underneath it.

"Agh," she grunted while she jerked her arms free. "Damn it, damn it, damn it…"

"Sorry!" the devil girl exclaimed. The automaton she had jumped over loomed behind her, sword raised for a killing blow, until she leaned to the side, bent her arm behind her head, and fired a shot behind her through its chest. "Sorry," she repeated. "I'll help you out, I will, just lemme–"

She vaulted forward, narrowly avoiding a leaping plunge directed at her spine, and rolled onto her feet. She twisted around on her ankle and fired off a quick shot through her attacker's middle.

But there wasn't even a moment's respite. Another guard leapt over its fallen comrade and charged at her with a fast, lunging stab. The demon girl simply jumped over it, like a practiced runner leaping over a hurdle, to land perched on one foot atop the flat of the broad, thick blade.

Before the automaton could shake her off, she stepped forward with her other foot and sprung into a flip. Guns raised, cloak flowing behind her, and tail whipping through the air, she soared over the automaton and put two more bullets in two more guards that were waiting behind it. Then the momentum of the flip pulled her head forward and down, under her heels, and she fired one more shot into the back of her mechanical springboard. Her feet hit the ground just a second before three automatons did, one after the other in rapid succession.

Only one guard was left, and it wasn't programmed to back down. But now the tables were fully turned, and the devil girl was in her element. The last guard swung at her once, twice, three times, a flurry of quick, devastating strikes, but she slipped past each one with easy, fluid steps. Finding no success, the automaton reeled back for one more decisive blow, striking down diagonally to slice through as wide an area as it could.

The girl leaned to the side and raised her arm. The blade sailed a fraction of an inch past her head. It scraped briefly against her armguard. And then the barrel of her gun was pressed against the automaton's chest.

She pulled the trigger and one last blam rang out, echoing across the chapel grounds. Genevieve, feeling her small bit of magical protection fade, pressed her hands to her ears so they wouldn’t get blown out again. The last automaton crashed to the ground, and a long, still silence fell over the altar.