Turtle.

It was the first and only thought she had. Turtle. It was paramount in her mind. If they were coming for Dorja, they might be going for her ship. For Kirek back at the pub. For the Kennisons. For Veringulf. For Turtle.

Dorja had never been surrounded like this. Never. It was terrifying seeing her face plastered in giant 3D holopanes coming from projection emitters embedded in every wall, every surface. Holopanes like those were usually used for advertising, and now all they showed was her live image. And a reward.

Never had she met such resourceful enemies. “Gods below,” she whispered. “Be with Dorja now. Be with Turtle.”

In the alley behind her, she heard the four thugs still laughing at her, but all Dorja could think about was Turtle’s arms around her, hugging her, then condemning her as she shouted that Dorja had brought her to a dangerous place. Dorja had believed she could protect Turtle, keep her safe aboard Veringulf. Now liquid fear poured into her gut, heavy and acidic. She felt sick.

Have to get back to her, she thought.

But that was easier said than done.

They were on to her. Dorja slinked from one alley to the next, and everywhere she went, the orb drone followed her, broadcasting her image on countless surfaces. She sidled up alongside walls, peering around corners, marking the open windows. She moved from cover to cover. Twice, a deadly shaft of wood or steel sliced the air near her. A third bolt came so close it grazed her hair bun and embedded itself into a wooden door. One of them actually tagged her in the shoulder, but her body armor snagged it before it went too deep.

Dorja was moving relatively freely. She heard shouts from all around, the men with blades were fanning out all over the streets and alleyways, probably trying to surround her. They had the advantage. They knew these streets and plankways better than she did.

The plankways were small bridges made out of whatever detritus the locals could muster, and usually the planks traversed a wound in the World Serpent’s hide, some necrotic, infected gap that stank like a morgue. Whenever she crossed, she could look down and actually see the inner workings of the World Serpent’s body, split skin with massive crags that were essentially blood clots, scabs, integument, and mounds of dead skin or scales. There were black, wriggling creatures moving all around the wound…

A shaft was let loose. Hissed somewhere off to her right. Nowhere close. Someone bellowed from a window, “SHE’S OVER HERE!”

Someone else responded, “I see her, me-me!”

Dorja slid down a sloped plankway and fell a short distance into a narrow alley with ankle-deep water spewing from busted pipes. Five other alleys splintered off from this one. She waited at the junction. Waited for nightfall, which she estimated couldn’t be too long now. In just a few minutes, Wyrmdov passed behind Mago and night blanketed the World Serpent. The glowing fungus was mostly absent in this alley, so it was very close to dark. She drew chi up into her weeping-hands, illuminating the alley in the pink-purple of her faery lights. Dorja’s lights scared a homeless woman, who drew herself deeper into her blankets, shrinking from her.

As soon as she emerged back onto the streets, she saw her face still plastered on every wall in real-time.

For the drone still followed her.

“Ak’tak!” she hissed. It was an old di’goji curse. Her mother used to say it whenever a bothersome pest found its way inside their home. And the drone was a pest. Dorja tried to take it out. She climbed up a few levels, onto ladders that the locals seemed to leave everywhere, attached to almost every roof, with shards of scale-plate acting as bridges between roofs as plankways, lashed together by sinew that had presumably once been the innards of the World Serpent. But no matter how high she climbed, the drone always remained a dozen or so feet above her. “Ak’tak!” she cried. “Ak’tak, ak’tak, ak’tak!”

Three crossbow bolts slashed across the rooftop, bouncing off the tiles. Dorja ducked and ran, dropped back down a few levels and ran down a wide street with several parked skyrakes. At one point, she heard a shuffling noise. Dorja spun and aimed her blade at the threat. A homeless man went scuttling off into an alley like a frightened beetle.

Dorja came to a housing district with lots of tenements, lots of ladders and plankways. She bounded on top of another roof, aware of the drone but also needing to get her bearings. She knew the general direction whence she came, and knew that the spaceport, with its lift car going back up to Veringulf, was in the Headward District. From here, she got a clear view over the fungal-riddled houses and apartments, glowing like how the valley of her homeworld would be lit during Midharvest festival. Behind her, in the Tail-end, she could see enormous smokestacks rising high, ascending towards the clear dome above. Ahead of her, she saw the enormous swell, like a horizon breathing. The head of the World Serpent.

That way lay her means of escape.

Hang on, Turtle, she thought. Dorja is coming.

That’s when she felt it. A strong gust of wind. It was there and gone, accompanied by the sound of flapping wings. Huge wings. When she looked up, it was too late, the enemies were dropping down from the hatchling wyrm. Six of them. Blades already drawn, they landed in skilled crouches. One of them would have landed on top of her, but Dorja clutched her glaive in her weeping-hands and rolled out of the way, stopping her momentum on the sloped rooftop with her reaching-hands.

When they came at her, it was with a skilled coordination she was unused to. Not thugs, and not pure feral wildness like the Nightmare Sisters of the Far Reach. No, these men were a unit, they had trained together, likely bled together and killed together, refined their techniques and tactics and strategies together.

Their blades met hers. Dorja spun and twirled and committed herself to the footwork of the Six Courses of the Blademaster Yirill, zigzagging and parrying without thought of attack. Their blades sang their one-note song in the night. She opened their centerlines for attack, and was glad that Master Korvix’s striking technique proved powerful enough to set them reeling backward. Five of her opponents were human, but one of them was a Gower, its five eyes glittering in the fungal light, its prehensile tail snapping out at her, more of a distraction than an attack.

One of the humans was shouting out commands, “Don’t let her move! Block her path! Flank! Flank! I said flank, Ferguson! Cut off her escape—”

They knew exactly what they were doing. They were more in their element than Dorja was in hers.

In this case, Dorja could only make space and beat a tactical retreat. She laid down a heavy defense, utilizing Form Seven’s fluid stances but with Form Nine’s rigid blocks. The J’ing attack smashed through their raised arms and knocked two of them unconscious. She maneuvered herself over to the roof’s edge, then took them by surprise when she suddenly spun around, gripping the end of her glaive in all four hands, twisting hard at the waist and swinging with all her might, aiming for their legs. This single reaping motion hit all of them, either clipping their knees or severing tendons. They screamed as they fell. But three of them wore armored leggings, and stood right back up and came at her, wasting no time.

But Dorja had the opening she needed for retreat. She bounded up a plankway to a neighboring roof, dashed across another plankway, slid down a sinew-made ladder, and bolted into an alley. She turned right down another alley, then left, leaping over a sleeping homeless Gower. She crossed a street just as a skyrake came roaring down from the sky, braking speed hard at street level and spinning around her. Its engines whined as the pilot strained to whip it around and aim spotlights at her. The windows opened and men rattled off a number of arrows and crossbow bolts. Dorja slid behind a parked Unkta, which someone had hitched to a steel post.

The skyrake’s lights splashed all over her. The drone hovered above her. Ahead were no more alleys, no more streets, just the large, dark windows of a stone building.

She was pinned.

The Unkta stirred, frightened by the lights and all the excitement. Arrows stabbed into its rough shell. It let out a grumble and a hiss from its horned snout.

The ’rake circled around, looking for an angle on her.

Growling, Dorja set herself to fight. This is it, she thought, a tear welling up in her eye. Dorja is sorry, Turtle, but this is it. This is where she dies. This is where—

She stopped. She turned and looked at the building. The stone building. She recalled suddenly what Kirek had said about those. Stone was hard to come by on the World Serpent, stone had to be imported either from space or from a moon or planet. It indicated wealth. Whoever was inside would be no mere homeless person or skag looking for a quick eighty-five thousand dah’ms. Perhaps they would even be nobility, someone with traditions of honor and who would want to help Senjelica. Some Noble Houses were known to observe old traditions, forbidding bloodshed within their halls.

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If nothing else, Dorja can get out of sight of the drone.

Dorja took one look around the Unkta. The skyrake had landed now, and three men were jumping out of the back, all armed with long swords.

Darting from cover, Dorja made it over to the stone building, peeked in through the windows, but could only see very little. She tested the window. Of course it was locked. So she used the butt of her glaive to break a single pane. Glass shattered, but she didn’t care that it was loud. She was being surrounded and had to move fast.

She reached a weeping-hand through to find the latch. Unlocked it. Climbed through the window easily. Having four arms helped with such coordination. In fact, her weeping-hands shut the window behind her and locked it back, for what good it would do.

It was dark in here, but from the glow of her weeping-hands, Dorja could tell immediately she was in a forest. And that was very disorienting. It took her a moment of listening to the sounds of birds and forest vermin rattling through the grass beneath her feet before she realized what this was. A flora sanctuary. She maneuvered over to an oogala tree, which were hardy things, genetically engineered to grow in harsh environments. She pressed her back up against it and looked around at the boutique forest, obviously someone’s idea of bringing a little slice of planetary life to this dreary city.

Dorja brightened her faery lights and had a look around. The strong, brown bark of the oogala trees was resplendent with flower-covered vines. Bloodred azaleas and jade roses and other genetically-altered flowers littered the forest floor. And there was dirt! Actual dirt beneath her feet, with tufts of grass and dense bushes arrayed all around her, all of it in a well-manicured state. The aroma was not unlike that of the valley back home, and for a moment Dorja was removed from Wyrmdov and transplanted back into the woods where her mother hunted—

She glanced back at the windows. Lights were moving all around them, but so far no one had entered. Surely the drone must have seen her go inside.

Dorja stepped lightly between rows of trees, which went on for what seemed like forever. She crossed over a bubbling brook, and then, even more surprisingly, a swift river. There were large, flat stones laid down neatly in places, marking a path one might take on a pleasant walk. There could be no denying that someone wealthy lived here.

She found stone steps that were cleverly woven into the environment, non-intrusive, coming right out of the ground with vines growing naturally and wildly. The steps led up to other levels of forest, stretching across wooden platforms and scale-plate bridges. A waterfall glittered in the sunlight, which now returned and poured in from the windows in great golden shafts.

The wildlife responded. Insects heralded the coming sunrise with chirping. A flashik bird fluttered from its nest, startled by something, and zipped past her head. Dorja froze when she came upon a tall, lazy-eyed lizard, roughly as tall as she was, with red and orange scales, standing on two legs. It eyed her dully before slowly turning away and slipping into swampy waters.

“Do you see her?” someone whispered.

Dorja doused her faery lights and pressed her back against an oogala. Waited. Listened. Footsteps rustled over leaf-strewn ground. More whispers. She moved in a crouch behind a row of multicolored stones arranged ornately around a pond of fish that glittered in sunlight. She knelt here and waited longer. She heard no more voices, no more footsteps. She crept along, sidled up beside another oogala, and waited. Peeked around, watching a short field of tall grass.

The first blades slashed out from the bushes on her right. Dorja ducked and one of the blades sliced off the oogala’s low-lying branch. She shot her weeping-hands out and brought her faery lights to bear at full brightness, so that she could see her enemies, and with her reaching-hands she parried a blade from a black-sash-wearing female that leapt at her. With the glaive’s shaft, she reaped her right foot, knocking her off balance, then kicked the woman over. Two more black sashes came at her, but they were even clumsier. She disarmed one with Form Five’s shinkendo-style technique, then side-kicked him to the ground. The other’s attacks she blocked three times before smashing his wrist with her blade and crushing one man’s teeth with J’ing. The grip on his sword melted and he fell to the ground, screaming and clutching his bleeding wrist and face.

Dorja bolted through a thicket of vines and brambles. She ran until she came to a stone archway that led into a compristeel-lined hallway with scale-plate flooring. The lights were on but greatly dimmed. She left the forest behind and went searching down cold corridors, each one lit by flickering flames from torches held in sconces. There were rooms on either side of her, all with solid steel doors shut tight with keycode panels for admittance. She came to a gallery filled with sculptures and found a window, opened it slowly, peeked out. When she didn’t see the drone, she leapt outside, ran a hundred yards or so until she came to a fence and leapt over it and landed on someone else’s estate. Another stone house was just twenty steps away. She ran to it, hiding beneath the canopy of a gazebo, and looked up at the dome.

What she saw shocked her.

High above, plastered against the dome, was a translucent hologram of her face. It wasn’t a live image, thank mercy, so that meant that the drone had truly lost sight of her. Even so, it was clear the entire city was aware that she was public enemy number one.

Distantly, the low horn still blew.

Dorja heard footsteps behind her. In a flash, she spun around and grabbed the young woman’s hand by the wrist, wrenching it hard with her two weeping-hands and forcing her to drop the dagger she had meant to plunge into Dorja’s back. The girl screamed and fell on her backside, looking up at her in terror. “Let me go, you witch!”

Dorja held out her hands. “As you can see, girl, Dorja has already done that.” The girl appeared nonplused. She had long red hair and a synthware left arm. She wore a rich girl’s robes of amberlust and qwaers’in silkweave, and she was almost regal in the amount of jewelry clattering on her wrists and neck. But she was no adult. This was a rich man’s daughter. “Do your parents own this estate?”

“I’m not talking to you!”

“And yet you just did,” Dorja countered.

The girl started to say something. Stopped herself. Her eyes darted around in puzzlement. She remained sitting there on her butt, looking around for help.

“This is Dorja you see here,” she said, tapping her breastplate. “She comes when people need help.”

“What does that mean?” the girl hissed.

It broke Dorja’s heart that it needed explaining. “It means that as long as Dorja draws breath, help is always coming for those who need it. Now tell me, child, why do you wish to kill Dorja?”

“What do you mean? Don’t you know anything, you-you?” The girl spat at Dorja.

“Tell Dorja!” she shouted, stamping her glaive on the ground. “Why do you wish to kill her?”

“Because that’s what the low horn is. That’s what the low horn means, it-it.”

“The low horn…it is the call to kill?”

“Yes!”

“Why obey the low horn? You don’t know Dorja, so why obey the low horn?”

“Because of who blows it!”

“And who blows it?”

“Stupid witch! You don’t even know what you’ve brought down on us! On all of us-us! If he even thinks we gave you succor or comfort, he’ll kill our whole family, him-him!”

“Who is he? Lullock?”

“Of course! Who else?”

Dorja heard someone shouting nearby. She pressed her back up against a stone column. She looked up at Mago, and saw that night was still pretty far off. She looked back at the girl. “The Hekkites. They have that much control over this place?”

“They are the control,” someone shouted. Dorja turned and saw a middle-aged woman with red hair and gray streaks stepping out from a doorway, dressed in ornate red robe and jewelry, short sword raised uncertainly at Dorja. The mother, Dorja assumed. The woman looked hesitantly at Dorja’s glaive. “Leave her alone! She’s just a child, her!”

“You raised her to kowtow to slave traders?” Dorja said. “You taught her to help them? Is this the way of all of Wyrmdov? Dorja was shot at today by countless people! People that Dorja never hurt or offended!”

“What did you do to bring this on us all, you-you?” the woman said, voice trembling, tears falling. The blade was shaking in her hand.

“Dorja did nothing. She simply asked about a girl that the Hekkites took, that’s all.”

“Why would you ask about one of their girls, you?” the woman asked. “Why would you pry in their business.”

Fed up with the obstinance of locals, Dorja stamped her glaive against the ground and it jolted both the mother and her daughter. “Because that is what good people do! Gods above and below, have you all forgotten your duties to one another? The blood you share? Did the Brood devour your souls when they ate your worlds? Did they eat your minds? Is Dorja the only one left with a Candle?!” she shouted, and stamped her glaive again. “You wound Dorja, woman. Both of you. You wound her greatly. You know of what the Hekkites do to girls just like you, and yet you defend them?” She spat.

“What else are we supposed to do?” the girl said, lip curled in a snarl. “Fight them, us-us?”

“Yes! Always fight them! Fighting is always the answer with creatures like these! Power never cedes ground unless it is fought for. You start fighting and you do not stop until you run out of blood or run out of people to save! That’s it!” She glowered at them both. “Those with authority and power grant nothing to the common people, not unless it is taken.” It shocked Dorja that she had basically just quoted Master Korvix, nearly word for word.

“Easy for you to say! This isn’t your problem!” said the woman.

“Problem? What problem? You see a rodent, you chase it out of your house! You see a whip-cat sniffing around your farm, you sick the hounds on it! You see pirates abducting children, you smash their bones! End of problem!”

“Just leave it be,” the mother said. “Just leave the girl you came for…leave her be. Leave us be. Leave us all be.”

“Dorja will cut out her own eyes and nail them to the street before she leaves the girl to the Hekkites!”

At that point, the mother looked her up and down, giving a reappraisal. “Who are you? From whence do you hail?”

“Dorja is Dorja,” she said. “And she hails from the Light.” She lowered her glaive so its blade was aimed at the ground, but walked over to the mother, towering over her. “Now, tell Dorja the truth, and she will leave you alone, woman. Which is the best way to the spaceport?”

image [https://i.imgur.com/f6fHUfp.jpg]