Dorja hadn't been tested like that. She wasn't prepared for what she found on that city that rests on the World Serpent's spine. Before Wyrmdov, the enemies she had encountered were all quite predictable. Bastards, killers, desperate survivalists, kidnappers with some gift at sophistry, men and women of lost faith, but predictable. That wasn't the case on Wyrmdov. – from the journals of Solomon Kirek, scout, ~720 DE (Doom Era)

It was hard admitting to herself that she was not up to the challenge, that she had bitten off more than she could chew, that she should’ve listened to Kirek and Master Jerrod and all the others who had ever told her she was far too emotional and much too headstrong when it came to facing a challenge. Dorja the Blade. Pheh! The nom de guerre tasted bitter now, as painful as the lactic acids now coursing between each of her muscle fibers.

Dorja had overexerted herself, and now she felt foolish. She had put everything at risk by strutting into a city she didn’t know shit about, and now here she was, only hours later, already a fugitive in an alien city. Kirek was gone, she had no idea where he was or what he was doing. He was probably still back at the café, still drunk, having half-forgotten her. The dread now roosting in her chest was for Turtle, who she’d stupidly left aboard Veringulf, naively believing it to be safe.

The elevator took her up three levels to the spaceport’s main hangar. It was almost like an enormous garage, in which a dozen or so starships hung from large gantries overhead. Veringulf, blessedly, was one of the few ships that had been parked on the ground, connected only to a docking claw that descended from the ceiling. The hangar was empty, which she thought was suspicious. No sign of her face on a holopaned wall anywhere, no sign of any fungus-covered enemies. That should’ve been her first clue.

When she punched in the ten-digit access code to Veringulf’s cargo ramp, Dorja was met with recycled starship air, which came fluttering out thanks to the slight pressure differential between it and the spaceport. She ran up the ramp, wincing from the wound in her leg, still limping. “Turtle?” she cried. “Turtle!”

She moved through the cargo bay, walking straight past the hologram of Master Korvix, who said, “You need to leave. Now.”

“Why?” she said, walking into the main corridor. “Where is Turtle—?”

“Leave, Dorja! Now! Do as your Master tells you!”

“You are not my—”

She froze. In the corridor, standing just outside of the cockpit, were six men, one woman, and Turtle. Most of the men were covered in patchwork synthflesh, and most of it was tattooed with lewd words and images, and, of course, the three-headed serpent of the Hekkites. The woman was hunchbacked, missing her natural arms, and both were replaced by shoddy-looking cyberware, each one with dangling wires and charging cords. Turtle was clutched by each of those gangly metal hands, held by the wrists, her arms splayed out. She looked at Dorja, tears in her eyes.

One of the men stood just behind Turtle, and smiled warmly, showing rows of yellow teeth, almost gold, practically shimmering. He had colorful clothing, a red-and-gold jacket with a high collar. He ran a hand through his slick black hair, pushing aside locks that partially concealed the shaven side of his head, where a scar was etched jaggedly across. He cracked his neck side to side, casually resting his right hand on a sheathed saber. Both his wrists were wrapped in bracers, which looked like they were made of compristeel.

Luxury. Confidence. Privilege. A supreme lack of fear. Dorja had smelled his kind long enough to know what he was. A leader. The others looked excited, smiled when he smiled. “Lullock?” she said.

“Yep,” he said.

Dorja swallowed. “Let the girl go.”

“No-no, sazha-han. Can’t do.”

“It’s not her you want—”

“It isn’t?”

“No. We can talk about this—”

“We can?”

“Yes. She’s not what you want—”

“And how do you know what I want? We only just met.” He smiled again. “You don’t know one damn thing about me, about any of us, and yet you came traipsing into my city with those hideous arms and that hideously blue flesh. You paid no honors to the priestesses, I observed you spilling no wine into the gutters to tribute their fane. And within a few hours, you crippled some of my men, put some of them close to death.” His smile evaporated. “And now you want to listen? Now you want to talk? Now you want to negotiate?”

“Your people came after Dorja first.”

“Dorja?” Lullock took on a curious look. “The girl did say your name was Dorja. The priestess, too. I admit I’d never heard you, but apparently you really did a number on some folks out in the Far Reach, Illium-IV, a few other places.”

“Just let the girl go, and you can have Dorja.”

“I can have Dorja, anyway,” he laughed.

“Not if you don’t let the girl go. Dorja is good with this,” she held her glaive in both weeping-hands. “She is very good with this. At least four of you will never be the same.”

“Maybe you get one or two of us—”

“Four,” she repeated. “At the very least.”

“Okay, then, four. Let’s say you even get five of us, Dorja. Will we die? Not likely. From what I’ve seen, you seem to leave people alive. A code of yours? So, if all you’re going to do is threaten to maim us, well…” He drew his sword, and tapped its glimmering blade against the woman’s cyberware. “You can plainly see we aren’t exactly afraid of a little maiming.”

“Kill them, Dorja,” said a voice from behind. Dorja glanced over her shoulder and saw Master Korvix strolling out from the cargo bay, his hologram flickering, stalling, and jumping around. “Kill them, or you and the girl won’t live another day.”

Lullock and his thugs all straightened, and Lullock’s own expression fell dead when he beheld the hologram. “What in the wide red void is that?” he said. “Who are you, pazh’ka?”

Dorja just realized that, even though the dead blademaster’s hologram was jumpy and staticky, it doubtlessly looked better than any holo-imaging these people would have ever seen. Difficult enough to find new tech and keep it working, but to find old tech like this and see it running so smoothly, and, more to the point, with no obvious holoprojector anywhere in sight—

Master Korvix must look like an apparition to them right now, she thought. Dorja tried to think of a way to leverage this to her advantage, but the look on Turtle’s face had her gripped by a fear she’d long forgotten, and this sort of strategy had never been her gift.

But Master Korvix filled the tense silence by stepping forward, grinning through his own set of deep yellow teeth, and said, “I am Blademaster Alterrio Korvix. Emerald Assassin. Guardian of the Monarch Blade of Duterattis Beta, Reclaimant of the Zetheros Spear, three-time grand champion of the Summit of Killers, Silver Badge recipient of the Kingdom’s Great Hall of Blademasters, Blademaster Augur and Advisor to Suzerain Forrest MaKhall, Sellsword Instructor of the Far Reach Rebel Alliance, Bladedancer to the Burmiian president’s Ninth Daughter, and co-author of the Book of Eleven Killers. And you are?”

Lullock looked at the hologram agog. Dorja looked over at Turtle, her heart aching at the child’s visible terror. Then, Lullock snorted out a laugh. “What is this? A con? Where are you projecting from?”

“From an essence box, placed inside the cargo bay,” he gestured that way. “I’m afraid I cannot come much—” He stalled, jumped, and started again. “I’m afraid I cannot come much closer, the essence box’s range isn’t very far.” Then, as if he’d forgotten something, and just now remembered, Korvix turned to Dorja and said, “Ah, kill them. As I told you.”

Now Lullock guffawed. “She isn’t killing anyone, my friend. She’s not got it in here.”

“I am a thousand years dead. Perhaps more. I’ve spent a long, long time trapped inside a small space, thinking to myself, forgetting half the names and people I knew. But I do remember the look of a killer, and the look of a dead man. Dorja here, she’s a zealot, and she absolutely will kill you if it means protecting the girl, she just doesn’t know it yet. Because she still thinks she has options.”

“Korvix,” Dorja said. “Not now. You are not helping—”

“But once she realizes that she doesn’t have a choice, and that all her options have been abrogated down to one—I always loved that word, abrogated, such a fine word, nobody uses it anymore—Dorja will realize she has but one option left. Trust me, you and I have already had this conversation.”

“We what?”

“Or have we not?” Korvix said, a quizzical look replacing his smile. “It’s so hard for me to tell. Time is funny in the box—”

“Forget him!” Dorja snapped. She stared squarely at Lullock. “This is between you and Dorja. Just you and her. Nobody else. Let Turtle go and no one else needs to get hurt.”

Lullock’s face pinched, and a small smile returned. “Really? No one else? My ears in the street say you have been asking about a girl. Someone we took from Herenov—which, by the by, if we had not taken her, she would be dead right now, Brood food, so perhaps a thanks is in order? But no, you came here to take her. So, you expect me to believe that a zealot such as yourself is going to come all this way, and then, what, just turn around? Go home?”

“Dorja will! She swears it!”

Lullock shook his head, and sneered at her. “I don’t believe you, Dorja. You came here for one girl. Tore through half of Wyrmdov for one girl. I know a devotee when I see one. You’re a fanatic, with some damned code you can never let go. Like the priestesses—you’re all the bloody same!”

“Kill him, Dorja,” Korvix said casually. “Let us be done with it.”

“You shut it!” Lullock shouted.

“Yes, Korvix, be quiet!”

“Kill him,” Korvix said, undeterred. “Kill them all. Kill them. Kill them now. You can do it, and probably very easily.”

“I said quiet!”

“Kill them—”

“All you do is provoke, provoke, provoke! Like you did with the visitor! Stop making things difficult—”

“If you were so certain I was wrong, then I wouldn’t be able to provoke you so easily.”

“Shut up!”

“You’re not arguing with me right now, you’re arguing with the part of you that knows I’m right. You know I’m right, Dorja. Kill them. Kill them all now.”

“Silence!”

“Kill them. I command it.”

“You command nothing! You are dead!”

“If you want Turtle to live, and for me to teach you the rest of the Exalted Fists, you’ll have to kill them all.”

“Exalted fists?” said the woman with the cyberware arms, speaking up for the first time. “Did he say—?”

“Kill them or be killed yourself,” Korvix said. “There is no third option.”

“Well, this has all been very entertaining,” said Lullock. “But I think I’m through listening to you two go back and forth.”

“I can help you, Dorja,” said Master Korvix. “I can help you kill them.”

“You’re not even here! So be quiet and let Dorja think!”

“Thinking is not your strong suit. That’s what I’m here for. Now, close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Close your eyes,” said Korvix. “Or else you’ll be sorry you didn’t.”

Lullock held his sword reverse-grip, and touched its tip to the ground as he got into a relaxed posture. “You really don’t want to be listening to your imaginary friend right now—”

“I know that stance,” Korvix said. “That’s the Seven Vile Blades of the Abyss. I’ll bet you’re not even aware of its weakness against polearms, are you?”

Lullock’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

Korvix suddenly threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, ho-ho-hooooooo, this is going to be fun to watch!”

“Korvix—” Dorja began.

“Close your eyes, Dorja. Take a deep breath. And when you hear everyone start screaming, open them again, and attack.”

Dorja started to say something, then she saw the Blademaster’s hologram shimmer, freeze, then dim. Suddenly, a rush came through her, a wash of chi that began at the crown of her head and cascaded down to her feet. A warning? She suddenly clenched her eyes shut, and gasped when a bright light still managed to pierce her eyelids. It was a burning white light, so quick, so brilliant, and over so fast, that she felt a momentary piercing headache. She heard screaming.

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When she opened her eyes, she saw everyone in Veringulf’s main corridor staggering around, hands clutching their eyes like they’d been blinded by a flash-bang grenade. Even Turtle had fallen down, and was rubbing her eyes with one hand while she groped along the wall to try and stand. Dorja didn’t think about attacking anyone in their vulnerable states. Perhaps she should have, but her mind was completely focused on getting Turtle out of danger. She dashed forward, shoving her enemies out of her way and grabbing Turtle’s wrist. “Come on!”

The hunchbacked woman with the cyber arms slashed out wildly with a knife, cutting across Dorja’s armored shoulder. Someone else reached out and grabbed her arm, punched her chest blindly. Dorja head-butted him and knocked him sideways into Lullock, who blinked and tried focusing on her, but he seemed momentarily out of it.

Dorja had to guide Turtle all the way down the ramp, out into the hangar. The poor girl couldn’t see anything, she kept saying, “My eyes! My eyes, Dorja! What did he do?”

“Stay with me, Turtle!”

They were halfway to the exit when Dorja watched the same door she had entered suddenly open, and in stepped a group of four men and two women. Uniformed officers of some kind, all in creased red fatigues, carrying electro-batons. They saw her, drew their batons, and ran straight at her. Dorja knew what this was. Men like Lullock had connections with law enforcement, with bounty hunters, with government types. They were here to protect his interests, not the interests of justice. She sensed it immediately and lifted Turtle in both her reaching-arms and fled down an alley between two towering Hotaggharrii-class starships. At their rear exhaust ports, she turned left, dipping behind a maintenance crane and then sidling up against the hull of a Bun’tha-class freighter.

“Dorja—” Turtle began, but Dorja put a weeping-hand over the girl’s mouth and quietly shushed her.

They waited, listening to hurried footsteps all across the hangar. Lullock’s voice, shouting, dishing out commands, confirming Dorja’s fears.

“You should’ve killed them,” came a voice out of nowhere.

Dorja gasped, looking around for the source. “What?” she whispered.

“I gave you the opportunity,” said Master Korvix. Somehow his voice was all around her, emanating from the walls, the floor, the ceiling, but she didn’t see him anywhere. “I gave you the opportunity and you completely wasted it!”

“Where are you? How are you able to speak to Dorja from this far?”

“Same way I was able to blind those idiots, by amplifying voice and light directional emitters. But that’s going to drain a lot of the box’s power, and it’s going to need to shut down for a while to recharge. Very soon, you and I will not be able to communicate, and maybe for a while. So listen to me closely, Dorja. The Seven Vile Blades has a gap in its defenses when it comes to long weapons. Stay back as much as you can, keep your distance, focus your attacks on the legs, reaping motions mostly, and when you see the opening—”

Korvix went suddenly silent.

“Then what? Korvix, then what?”

But he was gone, and the silence was deafening.

In Dorja’s arms, Turtle was trembling. Dorja looked down at her little face, and felt, perhaps for the first time, a parent’s fear. Not just concern for an innocent, nor fear of failing her Oath of the Candle, but a fear she had not grasped in ages. A fear she did not ever want to revisit. The fear of loss. She shut her eyes, shivering at the thought of the death of her mother, and the death of her Master. Twice she had been left alone, and now she had found…whatever it was that Turtle and Kirek represented. Even Joshua and Newpik, who had become playmates to Turtle, had started to feel like less than just AI, and more like parts of the roots she’d grown.

That was it. It had felt like growing roots inside the walls of Veringulf. Their training, the structure she had created for Turtle…

Turtle.

The girl had only just found a home, had only just started having an education, people who cared for her. And instead of taking her someplace safe, Dorja had selfishly taken the girl on her quest to find Senjelica, a girl who was probably already lost—

No! her inner voice cried. As long as Dorja draws breath, help is coming! Senjelica is not dead until Dorja has proof!

Voices called to one another. She could hear them sweeping the hangar. Turtle whimpered. Dorja kissed her forehead and moved in a low crouch, slipping between a K’rungian-class freighter, crossing into a maintenance corridor filled with repair bots and refueling bots, all of them currently housed in their recharging stations.

The voices were getting closer. Dorja slipped underneath a Nalwengi-class starfighter and hid behind its aft landing strut. They stayed here for a few moments, listening to hurried footsteps crisscrossing the hangar. She heard men speaking hurriedly into radios, using tactical calls: “Uh, that’s a one-three-six, we’re Code Blue over here—” Someone else’s radio spat: “—don’t have eyes-on, proceeding on a two-eight-eight in Hangar Section Delta—”

Dorja suddenly recalled what the woman and daughter had said less than an hour ago when she’d crossed their estate—the Hekkites ran everything here. It was now beginning to sink in.

They literally ran everything. She had been so naïve. The four men that had ambushed her and then laughed when she didn’t seem to understand just how outgunned she was, their smiling faces now drifted into her thoughts. It wasn’t just the Hekkites, it wasn’t just Lullock, it was these strange priestesses, it was the Keepers on Wyrmdov, it was the people themselves. They are all in on it. They are all complicit. There is nowhere safe.

She clutched Turtle close, trying to think fast.

Looking at the neighboring ships didn’t yield much promise. She saw a pair of M-II light freighters and a Salaga-Fruman Luxury Wayfarer. There was a Fugue Colony-class ship, looking rusted and busted, probably been here ages, probably brought in for salvage—

Wait a minute.

Colony-classes were built for just that—for taking large numbers of people across interstellar space to try and colonize worlds. Usually, those worlds were being terraformed by corporations like Nzult Enterprises or Maawas Corporation, but she didn’t think they operated way out here, not since the Doom came. Saito Sector seemed way off the beaten path for anyone trying to reinvest in the Kingdom’s future. From what Dorja had heard, those ships had pulled Core-wards, hoping that the more chaotic (and far more asteroid- and black hole-filled center of the galaxy) would deter the Brood from following the Kingdom’s citizens any farther. Most of the Kingdom’s survivors had gone that way, and the people stuck way out here were those billions who could not find a ship reliable enough to take them to the Core.

Fugue-manufactured Colony-class ships were built for long, boring hauls, and those little bulbous shapes on the outer hull, which looked almost like metallic cancerous growths, were meant to be opened at regular intervals during interstellar flight. They were called scoopers, and they pulled in raw materials from comets or asteroids found along the way in interstellar space. The scoopers even fed raw ore to the ship’s masticators, which chewed it up, mixed it with water and other liquids, and reshaped it into tools and replacement parts the ship would need in transit.

Dorja whispered, “Hang on tight. Stay quiet.”

Turtle said nothing as Dorja carried her over to the Fugue, and felt around with her weeping-hands until she found one of the rusted old scoopers was loose. Someone had welded most of them shut, but Dorja was able to wedge the blade of her glaive in between the scooper’s half-spherical door, pried it open, and held it there with her reaching-hands. “Up you go, Turtle.”

“What about you?” Turtle said, climbing up into the scooper.

“Dorja will be fine. But if I’m not back in—” She tried to think of a way for the girl to tell time in here, then remembered Turtle had a chronometer on her wrist. “If I’m not back in two hours, you sneak out of here and find Kirek.” Dorja described the directions to the café where she’d left the drunken scout, and she did so as fast as she could. She started to close the scooper, when Turtle reached out and hugged her neck.

Dorja held on for only three seconds, savoring every one of them. Then she heard voices approaching. She pulled away, shut the scooper back, hefted her glaive, and ran towards the dark end of the hangar.

* * *

They looked for her maybe for half an hour, and all the while Dorja was never sure she was going to evade them. She heard their footsteps echoing. She ran up a flight of metal stairs, up to the scaffolding that wound around the starships that hung from the ceiling gantries. Maintenance access for bots, tiny little boxy things that rolled around her and paid her absolutely no mind. They were low-level AI, they couldn’t turn her in or alert the Hekkites to her location even if Lullock had sent out an all-points bulletin.

Dorja crossed a metal catwalk, looking down at a group of red-suited Keepers searching the floor below. She was a hundred feet above them, and climbing on top of starship hulls, finding shadowy crenellations big enough to fit her large form. She heard the hum of search drones, and crawled into landing gear of a Corinthian-class deep-space driller until it passed her by.

At times, she thought they had found her. She heard more drones humming through the air, coming close to where she hid behind the dorsal turret of a Galruhnn-class freighter, but they somehow never zeroed in on her. When at last it sounded like the search teams had given up, and took their search back outside, she waited another hour before she came crawling out of hiding.

The immense hangar was silent. It was as if she was inside a great, metal tomb, one made for the corpses of starships only. She crept along with bent knees, hiding behind pallets, stepping lightly down the stairs, watching for what few security cams were scattered throughout the hangar. She opened a door to step out into the main spaceport proper. If she wanted to get her and Turtle off Wyrmdov, she was going to have to find a way of getting Veringulf free of the spaceport’s hangar bay. The only way to do that was to somehow open the hangar bay doors, and then find a way to get through the clear dome that encased all of Wyrmdov’s atmosphere.

The low horn was still blowing outside, and it seemed that Wyrmdov’s residents understood they should remain locked indoors, because wherever she went inside the spaceport, Dorja saw only empty halls and the occasional cleaning bot. The hallways were quiet, except for the occasional automated female voice: “Due to unforeseen circumstances, all incoming and outgoing flights are currently canceled. The low horn is blowing. Repeat, the low horn is blowing. And it will continue to blow until the current crisis is resolved—”

She moved through reception areas, giant rooms that were kept within what were essentially transparent bubbles, giving one a clear view of Mago. The glowing fungus covered a few of the walls, even some of the vidscreens. If there were any staff, they were all locked inside their offices or had dashed home.

It was eerie. The people of Wyrmdov certainly knew when and how to go underground. Dorja did not think she had ever seen a public emergency alert system so respected, so enforced that the people took it this seriously. The level of discipline it took to have a whole colony’s people simply vanish like this—

Not just discipline. Fear. The people here must live in constant fear of either the Hekkites or their enemies. Or the Brood. Or all of them.

Dorja froze. She was halfway across a large, clear-ceilinged room with a giant help desk fastened to one wall, when she sensed movement in her periphery. She turned slowly to her left, and saw Lullock stepping out from a door that had just shunted open. He seemed to have stumbled upon her quite by accident. Accompanying him was the hunchbacked woman with two cyberware arms, clenching a dagger in each metal claw.

The three of them went still, a trio of predators that had accidentally bumped into one another in the wild. Lullock wore a bemused smile. The woman sort of slid out from behind Lullock and stared at her.

“Well,” Lullock said.

Dorja said nothing.

The hunchbacked woman started circling Dorja. Above her, Dorja heard a light humming sound. Looking up, she saw one of the security drones had entered the room with Lullock, and its three lenses were irising open and closed, zooming in on her. She saw the live-feed vid appear on a holopane wall directly behind her, replacing the spaceport’s list of departure times. This moment was being broadcast live all over Wyrmdov. Right then, all its citizens were seeing Lullock squaring off against the blue-skinned interloper.

Dorja brought up her glaive in a Form Four defensive posture.

“I don’t know where you expect to go,” Lullock said. “You know you can’t leave Wyrmdov without the dome being opened. And you know it won’t open unless I tell someone to open it.”

Dorja stared at him. Glanced to her left at the hunchback flanking her. Looked back at Lullock, pleading with all her heart. “Please, just let Dorja go. She understands it was a mistake coming here. She will just leave with Turtle and she won’t be coming back.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It isn’t.”

“It is. You’ll be back. You have to. Because of whatever code you have burning a hole in your insides. The priestess warned me about it, and I can see it in your eyes. You’re a zealot, all right, the hologram of Master Korvix or whoever he was had you pegged correctly. ’Sides, if I let you go, people would start to think they can disrespect everything we’ve built here.”

“And what have you built, that you must kidnap young girls? What sort of operation or dreamworld do you desire here, if it means you have to be so cruel as to—”

“Do you know how hard it is to get regens? Practically impossible.” Dorja strode forward, with all the swagger of a man used to being given everything, always told he was right. He drew his sword and gave it a casual twirl. “The things we do to keep this galaxy going, to keep the structure needed to have a cohesive, coherent government and people…it requires longevity. These works of ours, they take a long, long time to get going, to see results. We’ve seen what happens when there’s a constant change of leadership—”

“You don’t have to do this,” Dorja said.

“One leader begins a project, say, water purification and new artificial meat labs, but then he’s replaced and his successor transfers funds away from the water purification project and gives it to, let’s say, air purification instead. Then his successor drains the funds from the air purification project and…well, you can see where this is going. Nothing ever really gets done, no job ever gets completed.”

“That’s just how it’s always been,” Dorja said.

“It was,” Lullock allowed. “That was how it was done. And for a while it even sort of worked. Barely. Then the Brood came along and put us in a place where we are constantly on the move, never able to put up permanent roots, keeping people moving from planet to moon to asteroid. Christ, we’re living in asteroids now! Like primitives living in caves, only worse because asteroids don’t exactly have the most breathable air,” he laughed.

Dorja glanced at the hunchback, who inched closer. Glanced back at Lullock. “How does kidnapping little girls factor in?”

“The priestesses do what they can to obtain the resources to create new regens, new methods to keep us all alive long enough so that there is sufficient carryover,” Lullock explained, lowering himself into a stance. “It keeps us all alive long enough to make sure things get done.” Then, he started circling her, in the opposite direction as the hunchbacked woman. “If our leaders die at the same rate as the starving masses, we’ll never get anything done. We need a legacy. We need leaders whose lives span generations, to keep all our people on track.”

“No one is supposed to live forever.”

“But everyone wants to live forever,” he shrugged. “And, in this case, it’s actually necessary. And it has helped us all.”

“How does it help?!”

“Have you ever seen a sustained space colony that is as big, or has lasted as long, as Wyrmdov?”

“If we have to live by preying on each other, then it’s not a society worth living for—”

“Did I just hear you advocate for allowing all intelligent, sapient races everywhere to just lay down and die? To go extinct?”

“No. If we could work together, we could stand and fight against the Brood—”

“And we would die.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I’m tired of talking. I know I’m right about this. Because I’m smarter than most people. The priestesses saw to my education. I’m very smart, Dorja. I’m definitely smarter than you. As evidenced by the fact that I’ve been planning for troublemakers like you ever since I took control of Wyrmdov. The low horn was my idea, the priestesses just helped me implement it. See? Control.”

Dorja deepened her stance as the hunchback came within ten feet of her. “You said you were done talking. Well, so is Dorja. So come at her if you’re going to come at her.”

Lullock smiled, and brought his sword’s handguard up to his face. He winked and said, “With pleasure.”

Both Lullock and the woman rushed her, and Dorja sidestepped and parried the first of Lullock’s attacks. He came at her with swift, powerful strikes, each of which she defended her glaive’s shaft. But the woman’s cyberware arms were dialed up to illegal levels of speed, slashing wildly from Dorja’s flank—

Until there came a roar. It was sudden, completely out of nowhere, and when she looked to her left, she saw a blur of motion. Here came Kirek, a kerambit in each hand, slashing out at the woman and severing two or three the wires dangling from her right arm. The woman hissed, spun around to address this new enemy, who was staggering around drunkenly. “Dorja?” he said, by way of greeting. Though, it didn’t look like he quite understood how he’d gotten here.

“Kirek!”

The scout smiled, red-faced and glossy-eyed, looking at Lullock. “If you wagered on her not having any friends, you nuffed it up, pal. Also, probably shouldn’t have broadcast her location to everyone on this cesspool.” He hiccuped, and gestured with his blades at the live-feed on the walls.

“Kirek, run! Get out of here!”

“Better make it fast!” He looked back at the hunchback. “I’m seeing two o’ this witch, and I don’t know which one to swing at—”

The woman leapt at Kirek, who wobbled backwards, picked up a metal chair, flung it at her, and turned and ran into an adjoining hallway. The woman chased after him.

Lullock turned back to face Dorja. Shrugged. “And so. Where were we?”

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