Zellana watched with the other priestesses in the common room. Their eyes were glued to the holopane showing the live feed from the orb drone. Everyone in the city would be watching this footage, waiting with bated breath to see if the drone found the Interloper. The strange blue-skinned woman with the four arms had been cunning, evasive, and to hear the accounts coming in from Zellana’s people at the House of Red, entirely unbeatable in combat.

She watched the footage for a full hour until it became clear the drones had lost track of her. With mounting frustration, she left her fellow priestesses where they were and went down to speak with the Anymyst, who, after hearing Zellana’s concerns, said only, “Do what you must.”

Zellana took this as approval for her next actions. She sent out a public wave, which called all the priestesses in the city to her. Most of them were already in her district, and arrived by either wyrm or skyrake. They assembled in the Chamber of Our Lady, and after a short augury by Priestess Nalen, they stood in a circle and looked to the one who had called them all. Zellana looked at her fane sisters and said, “You all know what’s happening, you’ve all seen the footage. The low horn blows and our friends in the Hekkite community need our help.”

“What sort of help?” asked Teveen. Her flesh was bright green, which meant she had recently undergone an intense telomere treatment. The regens had her looking almost Zellana’s age, despite being three times as old. Her voice was still raspy, though. Always had been. “We are not armed as Lullock’s people are.”

“We have other means,” said Zellana. “Inzytt’s gifts were bestowed upon us for a reason. The Void is hers, her magic is ours to wield.”

“Only for good reason,” said Hanna.

“Yes,” Teveen rasped. “Good reason.”

“We have good reason, sisters,” Zellana said. “Inzytt endures by us, and we endure by the connections we have made on Wyrmdov, the careful allegiances our fore-sisters so painstakingly assembled.” She added quickly, “I have consulted the Anymyst. She agrees we must aid the Hekkites. We cannot allow this woman to undo the sanctuary we have created here on Wyrmdov, nor the fane we’ve raised for Inzytt.”

“One creature cannot have such power to undo all of us,” Abarra growled from the far side. She was stooped, burdened by many chains of her office as Chronicler for their fane. “To suggest otherwise is blasphemy.”

Hanna considered this. Shrugged. “But if the Anymyst says so…”

“The low horn is low work,” sneered Anel, quoting a long-dead priestess. Anel was much younger than the others, and often resentful of interacting with the above-world. She liked it down here where the citizens provided for them, and she wanted to keep it that way. “Getting involved means letting others see us at our work. It has always been best for them not to know the extent of all that we do.”

Zellana sighed in frustration. “The Hekkites bring us the children we need. The arrangement we have with them allows us to use the children to sustain ourselves, while we store up our regens. Some of these children also become our next generation of sisters. If this woman breaks the Hekkites, then it could break us.”

“How can one freak break all of the Hekkites?”

Zellana’s jaw clenched. She decided to tell them. “I had a vision.” They all looked at her, stunned, possibly even offended she would think to share what the shades had shown her. “I saw this woman standing on many worlds, with much blood around her. Many broken bodies lay at her feet. And I saw the Hekkite sigil there, a sleeve with blood all around. I saw her do this to others. This woman…” She swallowed, trying to find the right words so as not to blaspheme. “I believe she has done this on many worlds. I have found rumors of her, stories, whispers from travelers who put their tales into the Library. You must understand, she is a bladeswoman like no other, possibly without peer—”

“No bladesman is without peer,” Anel put in.

“—and she is a relentless traveler who will stop at nothing until she gets what she wants,” Zellana finished.

“And what does she want?” Teveen rasped.

Zellana looked at her. “I don’t know, exactly. But I get the feeling…there is something inside of her. A compulsion. She is…offended by the sort of works we conduct here. What we see as giving the children over to Inzytt to maintain Her Glory, she would see as base, broken, evil.”

Anel laughed. “Then let her try to match Inzytt. The goddess will break her against the Scales, flay her flesh, and wear it as a gown.”

The others laughed.

“Perhaps,” Zellana suggested carefully, “the goddess could do that through us? We are her instruments.”

“Well,” Hanna said again, “if the Anymyst says so…”

Anel waved a dismissive hand. “If you wish to get involved with Hekkite matters, sister, I will not stop you. But neither will I get involved.”

“Nor I,” said Teveen.

“Nor I,” said the others.

Zellana nodded reluctantly. “Then, with your permission and blessings, I leave you now.”

The others bowed low.

Zellana shut her eyes. Gave herself to the Void. The Graber nodes beneath her flesh ignited, tapping into zero-point energy and extending her awareness to feel every crevice of the room, every beating heart nearby, every building for several miles around. And, in a puff of black smoke, she was ripped apart at the molecular level.

* * *

The spaceport was just up ahead. Dorja had moved across the rooftops of one- and two-story buildings, mostly using the plankways, occasionally having to jump from one to another. From the edge of a roof, she sat perched and watching the streets. Her face was plastered on almost every wall, and the giant holopane of her was still hovering near the dome.

The streets were empty. A strange, black condensation moved through the air in a weird drizzle. She looked up. Of course there were no clouds, but there were blooms of black smoke rising out of a few pyramidal smokestacks in the distance, near the mountain that was just the very beginnings of the World Serpent’s head. Dorja looked at her fingers, at her arms, which had all gathered the black condensation. She imagined the moisture in the air sometimes captured that black smoke and got carried on the wind currents from air-scrubbers.

The whole city shifted, and Dorja held tight to the roof’s edge. Occasionally, the World Serpent gave a little lurch, possibly a twitch in its dying throes. She looked ahead at the Headward District, where the supermassive head was crossing into darkness. Over the next three minutes, she watched the hard line of darkness come towards her, blanketing the city first in the penumbra, then in the total umbra. Neon lights lit up the city streets, as well as the holopane of her face, of course.

Dorja found a set of stairs, a fire escape leading down. She crept down to street level and splashed across giant puddles of brown, foul-smelling water. She pressed her back to a wall, peeking around the corner. Once she was satisfied the coast was clear, she moved in a low crouch and with soft knees, clutching her glaive behind her with her weeping-hands and crossing the street to the spaceport’s entrance. The metal doors did not part for her. She tried waving her hand at the natural-user interface panel just beside the door. Nothing happened, just a red light and a buzzing noise that she took as the universal sound for “no admittance.”

Dorja looked around. The street was still empty.

She crept around the side of the spaceport, looking for windows. There were a few, but mostly too small for her to fit through. She recalled the spaceport had a large translucent dome that allowed newcomers to look up at the moon and stars. If she got up there, she might be able to smash her way into—

“Be careful, Dorja,” a voice rasped.

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She turned and found an old man staring at her from the shadows. A spirit. He was pale and had a long gray beard done up in uneven braids, missing an eye and most of his teeth. “What?” she whispered.

“The shades are talking. A green priestess is moving through the Void. She was red but now she’s green.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have powers here, Dorja. The green priestesses…they can move like me, and like you.”

Dorja had to suss that one out. He means they can move both like ghosts and living beings. The hackles on the back of her neck raised. Black science.

The old man looked around abruptly. “She’s coming! I have to go, Dorja! Run, Dorja! Get out of here! Save yourself!” The man became shadowy, like the sun had gone down wherever he was. When Dorja blinked, he was gone, but she still heard his last words in her mind. Save yourself…

Suddenly, a strong wind stirred, pushing the black drizzle into her eyes. That was strange, because there usually wasn’t any significant wind inside a domed city, nothing more than the chill air itself. Something touched her shoulder. Or felt like it. Tiny little fingers crawled up her spine and Dorja felt a certain nausea come over her, slowly, from the bowels up. And she felt electricity in the air. Static. The dust storms on Erada-II were often precipitated by such disturbances in the air, but this felt like it swirled all around her.

Dorja felt something tug at her, something drawing her attention, as if the Æther itself wanted her to look in a certain direction. The same connection she had to the afterlife gave her the sense to know when something was moving just behind the spirit veil. That’s what her mother had called it: the spirit veil. Dorja could almost see a shadow moving behind the very air itself, a dim, feminine figure that wavered in and out of existence, like the heat rising up off of an arid Gerenghii desert.

A second before the clawed hand tore a hole in the fabric of reality and lashed out at her, Dorja leapt back and brought her glaive up to block. Taloned hands scraped across her blade, bringing a brief flash of sparks. Not metallic sparks. Magic sparks. They were blue and orange and they were quickly followed by an ebon-robed woman leaping out from the shadows and moving with the speed of an adder.

Dora shuffle-stepped sideways, thrust forward with all her power, but the witch vanished in a puff of black smoke.

The witch reassembled herself instantaneously behind Dorja, who dove forward a second before the talons would have ripped her throat out. She landed on the ground, rolled, weeping-hands forcing her up to a kneeling position as her reaching-hands held her glaive out defensively. Now she saw the dark shape clear—or rather, as clearly as one can see a shade. A dark robe fluttered around her ankles, and a priestess’s hood was drawn over her head, half concealing a pair of glittering green eyes. Beneath her skin, Graber nodes flashed yellow and green.

“You’re her?” the witch whispered. “You’re Dorja the Blade? Dorja the Merciful? Dorja Candlebearer?”

Dorja blinked. “How do you know Dorja?”

The Graber nodes beneath the witch’s skin glowed a bright gold. The light revealed part of her face. It was round and heart-shaped and beautiful. She grinned.

“Which god do you serve?” Dorja asked, recognizing all the signs of a high-ranking priestess.

“I serve the goddess Inzytt.”

“Dorja knows her not.”

“She is Mother of the Void. She controls all that is in it.”

“She does not control Dorja.”

“She controls all.”

“We’ll see.”

The witch darted forward, slashing out with her talon-sharpened fingers, and Dorja batted them away with the blade end of her glaive before ducking and shooting off to the side. Dorja gave the witch a wary look. She followed her gut. “Does Inzytt defend the Hekkites?”

“As a matter of fact, she does.”

“Then the bitch is forever Dorja’s enemy. This I vow!”

The witch’s eyes went wide with the sheer shock of the blasphemy and she screamed as she leapt at Dorja. And as claws met blade, Dorja thought the woman’s scream did not sound anything like a human’s. It had the ring of a woman wailing in childbirth, and yet it was layered, coming out in different tones, three or four different voices all layered, all coming from the same throat. Dorja transitioned to Form Five, an offensive form. She stood in a high stance, utilizing the fast, staccato attack patterns Master Jerrod had taught her ages ago and remained defensive—

Until she saw her opening on centerline, channeled her chi up from her feet and into her weeping-hands, and hit the witch in her sternum with a full-on J’ing attack. The witch gasped, backpedaled, recovered and came back at her slashing.

Dorja adjusted her grip on the glaive, moving her reaching-hands up the shaft and closer to the blade, giving her greater control in close quarters. Her weeping-hands controlled the lower part of the shaft, creating waving circles, while the reaching-hands swung with full force whenever they found the opening. The witch screamed, exploded into smoke, vanished, rematerialized behind Dorja and above, dropping down from the sky a second before Dorja rolled out of the way again and sprung back up at her.

The Graber nodes flashed.

Lightning, golden and crisp and gorgeous, spat from the witch’s clawed fingertips, and Dorja felt the pain go through her, cascading from her eyes, boiling the spit in her mouth, seizing her chest muscles in alternating currents. She staggered backward, recovered, and swung upward in a reaping arc that would have cleaved the witch’s arms, had she not dematerialized once more and rematerialized beside her.

Dorja push-stepped sideways, slamming her shoulder into the witch’s chest and head-butting her at the same time, and as the priestess staggered backward, Dorja teep-kicked her in the chest. The priestess’s air came out in a loud “Oof!” and she fell back against a wall. She raised a clawed hand and Dorja smashed it with all her might. It should have broken the woman’s hand, but Dorja now saw it was a cybernetic extension—not a replacement, but some augmetics that lengthened the fingers, extruded fingernails like a raptor’s claws, and it all appeared to be made out of compristeel.

But the arm was batted away, and Dorja spun and brought the blunt force of her shaft onto the witch’s right temple. She heard a crack, and saw her go down. Dorja leapt at her, meaning to put her blade to her enemy’s neck and ask her some questions, but then another arc of golden lightning came pouring out from the witch’s Graber nodes, from her fingertips, from her eyes, and the assault sent a splitting migraine into Dorja’s mind and flung her backwards. She landed on her back, weeping-hands springing her back up by reflex. Dorja knelt on one knee, lungs gulping air. Vision slightly blurred, she saw the dark priestess once again rising to her knees.

“What are you?!” the priestess screamed. “A test sent by Inzytt?!”

“Dorja is Dorja, witch! And you are her test! You test her patience! And at the moment, Dorja is failing!”

She launched herself at the witch, who once again exploded into a dark cloud as if a bomb had gone off inside her chest, just completely torn apart, atomized. And at that exact moment, Wyrmdov crossed into Mago’s light side, and darkness fled again. Brilliant sunlight came through the alleys in golden bars.

Dorja waited.

Sniffed the air.

She felt the tingling sensation again. Felt the cold wind. She balled her weeping-hands into fists and prepared herself. The timing had to be just right.

A detonation happened behind her, and she spun around just in time to see the priestess coming for her. In that exact moment, Dorja unleashed her faery lights at full press. It hurt. The top layers of her skin flaked off and ignited in a whirlwind of light. Brief, over in seconds, but it stunned the priestess enough that she stopped abruptly before completing her slash and Dorja batted her compristeel claws away before delivering a J’ing-fueled jab to the witch’s throat.

The priestess fell on her ass, gagging and clutching her throat. She looked up at Dorja, wide-eyed with wonderment. She gasped for air, and looked as helpless as a babe when Dorja raised the butt of her shaft. The witch would have taken a crack across the skull if she hadn’t dematerialized again.

Dorja stood there, panting, her muscles still twitching from the jolts they had received.

The air went still. No more static. Still, she waited. She had to make sure the witch had truly retreated before moving on.

“She’s gone,” a voice said.

Dorja spun around, and stared at the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

* * *

“Your skill deserves an audience,” said the man. “It is absolutely marvelous. I’ve rarely seen anything like it. I’m sure most on Wyrmdov haven’t. But when compared to the accomplishments of other, true Blademasters, your limitations are cast into sharper relief.” He wore spotless dark-green pants and a brown leather jacket with a black hood. The clothing was exceptional quality, you would have needed a microscope to find a wrinkle, probably aethersilk. From his hip hung a holstered needler. Dorja wondered if it was real, or fake like most. The shortsword buckled at his side was almost certainly real, though, as were the steel tips of each of his black boots, which shimmered like his slicked black hair. “Dorja?” he said. But he said it slowly, drawing it out, like he was tasting the word. “You are Dorja?”

“This is,” she said, and pointed at herself.

“This is what?”

“This is Dorja you see here.”

The beautiful man smiled, revealing his first blemish—rows of extraordinarily yellow teeth, the canines filed to fangs. He tilted his head side to side, like a dog listening to a curious sound. Then, in a motion so smooth and swift it took Dorja aback, he drew his shortsword and gave it a flourishing twirl. He looked her up and down, assessing her. Then, his brow furrowed, and he re-sheathed his sword. “No, it’s not time for us yet.”

“Us? What do you mean?”

“You’ve been weakened in your duel with the green-and-red priestess. You’re not at your peak, it wouldn’t do for me to kill you now.” He turned and started walking away, but then he paused near a locked door leading into the spaceport. He punched in a few digits, and the door gave a happy little chime and slid open. The man stood to one side and waved her towards her ship. “After you.” He turned, and started walking away.

Dorja, close to exhaustion, hobbled over to the doorway. She paused before going in, and called out to him. “Who are you?”

“Name’s Syyd,” he said, tossing a waving hand over his shoulder. “Be seeing you.”

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