Once the regens ran out, and immortality was no longer an option for the rich and powerful, then the Kingdom truly fell. Our leaders had lost that drive that our ancestors once had to strive for a better future even when you don't see yourself in it. Our leaders had grown to love only themselves, and once they could no longer see themselves in the future, they saw no one else there, either. They thought, What is the point? That is when people lost all hope, and all their faith went into the Cults. And, gods, there were so many of them! So many different kinds. But were any so frightening as the Sisters of Inzytt and their awful fane? – Bastian Gray, Second Summoner to the Arch-Duke of Nullas-VII

Darkness swirled around her. She called it to her and made herself open to it. This was the Invitation, and it was dangerous. The moment when the dark eddies from within the Æther made themselves known to but a few. No one had ever been able to tell Zellana who the dark shapes were, nor their purpose. Not even her mentor had known. But all the priestesses at the temple had bade her listen whenever those dark shapes spoke.

“She’s coming,” one of them said. It had a feminine voice, and moved seductively within the gray cloud that Zellana saw on the backs of her closed eyelids.

“Who?” Zellana asked.

There was no answer, but there was a great deal of consternation among the shapes.

Zellana had to remain focused. She sat at the center of her sanctum, performing the same ritual of lós that she had performed a thousand times before, each time with the intention of emptying herself of her worldly burdens and searching carefully into the Æther for enlightenment. Most times she saw nothing. Sometimes she saw incorporeal beings, as now. Usually it was only one or two, but just now there were many shades, a welter of voices that jockeyed for dominance.

“I beseech you, Great Ones,” she said, her own voice coming out dreamy. “Calm yourselves. Speak one at a time. I must understand. Who is coming?”

Now there was a low muttering, followed by a ripple of what Zellana perceived as laughter but might have been anything. Someone showed her something—a shade accepted her Invitation, entered her mind, had a look around, and then revealed to her a world filled with light, with mountains gilded by the morning light of two rising suns, and a wide green valley filled with strange-looking beings, all of them humanoid, all with four arms and blue flesh…

Then the image receded and the shade that had granted her the vision now vanished beyond the veil.

“I don’t understand,” Zellana said. “What was that? Why did you show it to me?”

A moment later, another shade stepped forward from the swirling cloud of black mist and penetrated Zellana’s mind. She detected a feminine presence, a cheeky sort of spirit that teased her with a word. A single name, whispered. “Lullock.” Then she saw an image. Blood. Blood on a floor made out of old compristeel, and a severed arm, the sleeve bearing the Aynx, the three-headed serpent. The sigil of the Hekkites.

Before Zellana could take in any more details, that vision dissipated and another emerged. Now she stood upon a world quite familiar to her. It spun fast on its axis, the red sun rising so quickly the shadows of rocks and trees grew and shrunk beneath her feet like zent-eels, elongating their own bodies. Zellana turned to her right, and saw a bubble colony, a small town encapsulated beneath a phasic-steel dome. The soft, red regolith that covered its surface could not be mistaken, nor could its fast rotation.

“This is Gotan-VII,” she said. “Why have you brought me here?”

Around her, the shades tittered. One of them pointed down at the ground. When Zellana looked down, she gasped. There were bodies strewn all around her. They appeared to be alive, but many of their bones were shattered and sticking out from their legs, arms, puncturing their enviro-suits.

The sun rose fast behind her and a shadow fell over her. A large shadow. Zellana turned and was blinded by the red sun cresting over the head of a person wearing piecemeal armor and a tattered enviro-suit. The person’s form was feminine but she had a masculine bearing to her. And in her hand…

What is that? Zellana thought. She had never seen a staff topped by a blade so large. It wasn’t a spear, exactly, but some other weapon…a glaive.

“Who—?” Before she could finish the question, the vision changed again, and Zellana now stood on another world she knew. A moon, rather. This one she knew by reputation only. Black and yellow dust sat stagnant on the airless surface, while in the distance massive volcanoes exploded and sent debris high into orbit. Zellana felt the shockwave, and the heat. The ground beneath her feet trembled and she looked up to see that the ejecta was reaching orbit, forming a ring around the moon. And beyond that ring, Khammith, the blue-and-red gas giant that held the moon of Vaspiir in its grasp.

And just as quickly as this vision had come to her, it dissolved into total darkness. Zellana now stood on a mountaintop, looking across at a neighboring peak, where she could see a tall, dark silhouette with four arms wielding a glaive against an army of red-robed women, all wearing armor that glimmered in the noon sun.

And then, this vision, too, ended. The Invitation was over, and the shades receded.

Zellana felt herself slammed back into her body. She kept her eyes closed, for to open one’s eyes before the shades had all departed was to risk seeing their true faces. That way led to madness, she had been told.

“Why did you show this to me?” she called out to them.

The shades continued to recede. But one shade lingered. A small one. Zellana sensed it was a masculine sort of force. It came back over to her, and said one last time, “She’s coming.” And then it added, “You have one chance. Turtle.”

“What does that mean? I have to find a turtle? What does it mean?” she beseeched.

The shade seemed to find Zellana’s confusion humorous, and began humming a song as it stepped away, joining the others in the permanent darkness.

When Zellana opened her eyes again, she felt weak. The act of Invitation had drained her, and though it felt like she had only been sitting there mere moments, a glance at the clock on the far wall showed a whole day had passed. She was starving. She needed food. And water.

And to find out what happened on Gotan-VII, she thought. And Vaspiir.

* * *

Zellana spent the first day after her vision recovering. Sleeping for almost twelve hours, she awoke to the smell of jasmine, sage and incense. She also left a few candles going inside the crystal columns at the center of the room the fane afforded her. She walked across faux-compristeel floors, up faux-stone steps to the wash altar, and looked herself in the mirror. Glyph wards had been painted across her face, smeared in her sleep. Like the candles, the glyphs were meant to keep her enemies from finding her. And the vision had suggested an enemy, hadn’t it?

Zellana washed her face, and replaced the glyphs with new ones on her arms, fingers, and legs. She pulled on the purple robe and black headwrap, each with glyphs woven into the gold embroidery. At length, she looked at herself in the mirror, and the raven-haired woman staring back at her seemed at once familiar and a stranger. The slightly flattened nose was her mother’s, and her green eyes were a gift from her father, but there was something cloudy within. Experience sometimes did that. Age. And was that a new set of lines in the crow’s feet around her eyes?

Regens had run out years ago. Her flesh had lost the slightly green shading that people had when they were on regens regularly. I will die, she thought. It was strange knowing that. She had lived almost seven hundred years knowing that that could never happen, barring any terrible accident or murder at the hands of one of the fane’s enemies. I will die. She wondered if it would sound different if she said it aloud. “I will die.” The admission felt like defeat, and she turned away from her image and went to prepare for her morning prayers.

While she gathered the silver tray of oils and the prayer cloths, Zellana’s mind kept returning to the vision. Priestesses of Inzytt were encouraged to quest for insight from the Æther, but were also taught to work out the meaning of each vision on their own. Part of mastery was having dominion over oneself, and not having to always lean on others. But this image was unusually vexing. For one, it seemed to include portents of something grave happening to at least one of her fane’s allies—a member of the Hekkites. Zellana was certain she had seen the Aynx sigil on the sleeve of a dead man, or at least a grievously injured one.

At the Hour of the Knave, Zellana walked into the Huln Gallery, along with two dozen other priestesses, and knelt at the altar of Inzytt. The goddess’s compristeel statue was more than a thousand years old and fashioned as one twenty-foot-tall glimmering ingot, meticulously shaped into the blind Mother of Void. Down the many folds of Inzytt’s robe, red liquid dribbled down, sometimes in small rivulets, sometimes gathering in little waterfalls. It looked like blood moving down her face, over her robes, but it was in fact wine being poured down from a pipe in the ceiling, collected there from the citizens in the streets above, who sent wine down into Inzytt’s Gutters—gutters that ran parallel to those that collected rainwater.

Zellana set up her prayer cloth on the ground beside Unora and Siliç, women who had entered the fane’s service the same year as she. The two priestesses saw the glyph wards on Zellana’s hands, and gave her a brief look, but said nothing.

She dabbed the scented oils on her forehead and on the insides of her wrists, and soon the light psychedelic concoctions induced small visions. Lights began to breathe, colors became more vibrant, and Inzytt spoke to her.

Zellana always heard the voice of her goddess differently. Sometimes it was a single note sung, sometimes it was a cacophony of screams, once or twice it had been a collage of masculine and feminine voices speaking in alien tongues. Always, it was mysterious, and always, the message of Inzytt grew more sonorous the more she prayed.

Zellana opened herself up to Inzytt’s domain: the Void. Here she sought the opposite of what she sought when channeling the Æther. She sought no-mind, the sense of being empty and without motive, without the stresses of the constant moral soul, without the need to drag along purpose or seek answers to everyday questions.

The people of her city had charged her and all the priestesses of her fane to do this, because it was the priestesses who determined morality for everyone fleeing the Doom. Emptying herself thus, Zellana would be more clearheaded once she emerged from prayer.

She knelt on the prayer cloth and placed her hands on it, bowing so low that her forehead touched the floor, prostrating herself before the image of Inzytt herself. As soon as Zellana’s hands touched the cloth, the sensations intensified and she felt every thread more intensely, and had to work hard on focusing on nothing at all. It was a test.

And when it was done, she opened her eyes and looked around to see others rolling up their prayer cloths and leaving to go about their duties. Zellana sat there looking up at the blind goddess as the bloodred wine flowed down from her head and trickled down her robes and gathered in the pool at her sandaled feet.

“Gotan,” she whispered.

The memory suddenly came to her. Clarity had struck her like a bell, prayer had lifted the fog of distractions and revealed what she wanted. A conversation heard at random some months ago about Gotan-VII. A conversation near the spaceport, practically forgotten, almost certainly lost if not for the wisdom of Inzytt and the ritual of prayer.

Zellana stood at once and rolled up her prayer cloth and gathered her tray of oils and marched back to her chambers. There she threw off her robes and went over to the tatrum at one corner of her room. The tatrum was a small cove reserved for a priestess’s modern conveniences, something they were dissuaded from using unless it was of utmost importance. Zellana waved at the wall and the tatrum’s computer activated and showed her a holopane filled with options. She waved for a connection to the Library.

The Library’s records were incomplete. Priestesses of the past had tried hard to piece together the histories of multiple worlds and species, but the Brood had broken the line of so many legacies, everything from digital recordkeeping to the old-fashioned methods.

It took almost two hours of searching, but finally Zellana found what she was looking for, and then followed clues from one story to another, which carried her search to Vaspiir, then to a place called Yntamok, and soon after that, to the destruction of the Nightmare Sisters at the far edge of the Kingdom, in a sector of space known as the Far Reach.

The Nightmare Sisters. Another clue. For Zellana had heard of those women. An order of mages who practiced human sacrifice as a means to reawaken gods they believed were slumbering at the center of multiple nebulae, like eggs waiting to hatch. But something had happened to the Sisters, all three dozen of them.

The Library was filled not only with salvaged texts from a hundred worlds, but with gossip, stories, rumors told by the refugees of those hundred worlds that came to this city to hide, all collected by her Njollnajak spies.

Zellana waved through a series of stories, superimposing one holopane over another, scanning for details, gleaning whatever she could, trying to determine what had happened to the Nightmare Sisters. She was suddenly certain it was the Nightmare Sisters she had seen fighting the four-armed freak in her vision.

She worked backwards from the Far Reach, reading stories about what happened to a bunch of monks that had been almost wiped out by ravagers on the moon of Vaspiir, all wielding knives and crude swords. But the ravagers had been defeated by a female xeno, an alien of unknown origin, but a humanoid in appearance. A Blademaster according to the stories of a few pilots that had visited Vaspiir and heard the tale from the monks themselves.

A woman of blue flesh, and four arms, or maybe six.

Zellana scrolled down further. Seven months before that event, a similar-sounding Blademaster was described to have undone the raiders on Gotan-VII.

Blue flesh, Zellana thought, recalling the vision she had had of a group of primitives living on a planet with two suns. Blue flesh. A Blademaster. She recalled the vision of the woman with the large blade-tipped staff…A glaive. Had she had four or six arms? Zellana was suddenly unsure, the visions had been so fast and blurry, but she was no longer sure it mattered. This felt like she was on the right trail.

There was one story that said the monks on Vaspiir had offered the blue-skinned woman reward for her efforts. She had declined, saying only, “Dorja needs Coin not. She requires only enough food and fuel to keep going.”

Dorja. Is that the name of her goddess? The very thought of someone exalting a goddess above Inzytt filled Zellana with no small amount of rancor.

It was another two hours of scanning the compendium of rumors to find a better description. There were no pictures or vids of the woman, but, according to one rumor, a Vaspiir monk claimed she traveled alone, in an old Agamorrtek-class starship. When Zellana switched off the tatrum, she turned to face the silence of her chamber. Then she looked down at her glyph-covered hands.

She’s coming.

Zellana recalled the vision of the arm, wrapped in the bloody sleeve of the Aynx.

She’s coming.

* * *

“Why have you brought this to me?” said the Anymyst. She stood regal in her chamber, robes draped over synthware-laden arms and legs. Her synthflesh was underlit by subcutaneous Graber nodes that pulsed, suffusing her whole being in exact lines of yellow energy channeled from chi, siphoned through wires that wove serpentine out from the walls and bit into her skin like they were feasting on her. But it was the other way around. The Anymyst was a woman without station, her name lost to the ages, her body and mind kept alive not by regens, but by the archaic black science that had been en vogue ages ago when she had risen to the fane, long before regens began to run out, back when regens were as common as water.

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Zellana prostrated herself before the Anymyst until she was beckoned to rise with a slow wave of the hand. “Forgive me, Sister, but I believe we have an enemy,” she said.

“We have many enemies, Sister,” the Anymyst said. Her voice thrummed from the vocoder-box melded with her synthflesh, and as her lips moved, she revealed rows of blackened teeth that glowed faintly from the Graber nodes within. Those nodes allowed her to handle the chi being produced from the anima tanks behind her, each one filled with a green nutrient slush and the bodies of sedated men and women that, having faced the Doom, heeded the warnings of the Harbingers that the end was near and had determined it was better to die. As a result, these hopeless souls gave themselves to the Fane of Inzytt as offering, hoping their sacrifices pleased the goddess by keeping her most long-lived disciple alive. “We have many enemies, and will have many more before the Doom finally settles its gaze on us.”

“This one is different,” said Zellana. “I…I know shouldn’t share what I see in my visions, Anymyst, but the shades showed me…they gave me a warning. I’m sure of it.”

“Did they tell you it was a warning?”

“No, not exactly…but I know what I saw. And these stories of this blue-skinned woman, I think they point to something. An agent of some goddess or someone else, an interloper that seeks to undo raiders and pirates.”

“Are we raiders or pirates, Zellana?” A bolt of electricity snapped along one of the wires and the Anymyst’s body gave a slight twitch as her nodes glowed brighter and underlit her flesh for a fraction of a second, outlining her skull within.

“No, Anymyst,” Zellana said. “But we have partners who…have certain habits, certain proclivities. The Hekkites. I heard their leader’s name spoken by one of the shades. Lullock. We must warn them, for their business affects our own.”

“It does,” said the old priestess. “It does, indeed. But this interloper, she is just one woman, isn’t that right?”

Zellana shrugged. “As far as I know.”

“Then what threat is she to an order our size, or to an order the size of the Hekkites, for that matter?”

Zellana had thought about that a lot. Her own faith demanded that she recognize the sovereignty of Inzytt and her total dominion over all things. So, in a way, to fear an enemy, even armies of them, was tantamount to denying the goddess her power. Blasphemy. She had to be careful here. “Perhaps she is not a threat to us,” she said, bowing her head. “But she may be a disruption to our efforts. It could interrupt operations.”

“You want my permission to let you speak to the Hekkites? To warn Lullock and the rest of his ilk? You don’t need that. There is no one in the Kingdom that can tell a priestess of Inzytt what to do, not even another priestess. You know that.”

“Yes, but…you are our elder. If any of us does something…um….unprecedented, then should we not seek out the wisdom of our elders?”

A smile might have touched those ancient lips. Probably not. The Anymyst didn’t smile. She didn’t do much of anything, really, besides exist and meditate and offer occasional counsel. At last she said, “If the other priestesses become wroth with you for doing it, I will defend your decision. You are not offending our goddess, you are helping our allies, and, in so doing, her allies. Her will is our will.”

“Her will is our will. Thank you, Anymyst.”

The ancient woman gave no dismissal, but seemed to be done talking.

Zellana turned to leave. That was one problem down, they Anymyst would support Zellana if her Sisters thought she’d overstepped her bounds. Now all she had to do was approach Lullock. She could only pray to the goddess that the Hekkite leader did not cut her head off upon seeing her.

* * *

Zellana stepped into the lift and ascended. The lift took her up through the many subcutaneous levels of the creature in which she lived, the old wards and buildings showing in the necrotic flesh, streets left unoccupied since the new city was built on top of the exposed ribs of the beast ages ago. One of the lift’s walls was made out of plasteel, so she could see out into those darkened corners. Ebon shapes flitted here and there, those who had somehow become so despondent or disgraced that they could no longer live on the Scales.

The lift took her up, up, up onto the surface. It was never a fine day to walk the Scales, for though they glittered underfoot in the approaching sun, they stank. It was the necrosis. Far above her, through the transparent environmental dome, was the bloodred surface of Mago. Just now, the moon’s vast Helatio Planitia region was coming into view, pocked by dozens of craters from ancient asteroid impacts.

The Grand Gallery was before her, hundreds of stalls open for business. Shopkeepers cried their wares. Hands beseeched her, their owners trying to get her to buy, until they saw what color her robes were. Then they left her alone. The crowd of mostly humans parted for her. Some took out a flask of red wine and poured it into the gutter so Zellana could see. They wanted her to see that they were respectful of her goddess. They also wanted a blessing, which she gave them in short order before moving on.

Skyrakes sailed overhead, soaring between buildings, carefully guided by the AI of Wyrmdov Air Traffic Control. Zellana walked up three levels, moving into the Incantone District, into the neon lights and holographic advertisements that kept the place from ever experiencing true night. She moved onto a street she knew well, one with alleys that no person could squeeze through without walking sideways, then up a set of stairs that were carved into the Higher Scales. Here and there, she could see clearly over the buildings, all the way to the serpent’s head, bobbing gently in the distance, orbiting Mago.

Overhead, wyrms of almost every size and shape flew. Hatchlings were being trained over by the Docks, their thirty-foot wingspans spread to the fullest by their Tamers, catching solar winds and magnifying their power for propulsion. More mature hatchlings, or coils as the older ones were called, were weaving through the air like eels, their bodies buoyant with massive sacks of helium growing like tumors on their bellies. A two-hundred-foot-long vipera (even older than a coil) was moving sluggishly through the air, its twelve wings spread wide, a bevy of passengers strapped to its crenellated spine. They were the spawn of the World Serpent, upon whose back the city of Wyrmdov rested, its entire dying body coiled around the moon of Mago and slowly turning, even as its muscles and scales decomposed.

Some of the World Serpent’s dead scale-plates had been lifted by heavy machinery and used as foundations or platforms, upon which sat the districts. The Headward District contained the largest sections of city that had been built like this, with the oldest buildings of Wyrmdov’s founders now crumbling, used as tenements for refugees of the Doom. The Tail-end District held most of the city’s industry, where people slaved day and night to dig below the World Serpent’s flesh and siphon its water reserves.

The area at the bottom of the city where there were only bare plates was simply called the Scales. Here and there, a traveler could peek over the side of a building and look down into the narrow alleyways below and see the Scalers, the profligate masses moving about in all that muck. The fumes of the rotting Scales wafted up, and if you were a newcomer it likely made you gag. Fortunately, the higher you went, the better the air-scrubbers, which were attached to all sides of every building. The scrubbers whirred and roared and sputtered at all hours, creating a bedlam that was unique to Wyrmdov.

Zellana stepped across a rooftop where a serpens (slightly older wyrm than a coil) came swooping in fast, expanding its eight wings to catch air and cut its speed, and circled the building before alighting on its edge. A few passengers departed, a few others got on, and again the serpens took flight. Zellana marveled at the wyrm’s elegant beauty, its squamous body undulating and its wings quivering in an almost predatory warning before slashing across the sky.

Once, it was said wyrms existed in the billions, with a few dozen World Serpents scattered throughout the galaxy, scales uplifted to absorb solar rays and feast on the energy. Humans and xenos alike let them be, recording them from afar, watching via drones as they had appeared to communicate with each other using bioluminescent algae on their bellies. They lived in clusters of ten or twenty for hundreds of years before growing so large they expanded their wings and rode the solar winds to other solar systems, spending centuries doing so, spreading their eggs there but never interfering with other life-forms.

But, like everything else in the Kingdom, the Brood had systematically assaulted them. Tales were told of battles fought between the titans—wyrm and broodling. The wyrms never won, and more often fought to the death. This had gone on for centuries. The wyrms were diminished greatly in number, and their intelligence seemed to diminish, as well. It appeared that without several hundred years of intense parenting, a wyrm was about as intelligent as a Kibiteri ash-hound. Humans had sought to Tame them first, if only because they were running out of starships themselves.

It was a long walk to the Enin District. She climbed old wrought-iron spiral staircases that had been built during the Brenggian Revolt and still held the general design. Then she emerged onto the Klas District where wrought-iron staircases gave way to a more neo-Quabic aesthetic, inspired by the influx of Millarians that migrated here after the destruction of their hive-world five hundred years before. Much of the architecture even included broodlings in their design, depicting them as crushed insects, almost as if the Millarians had believed that by doing this, they could invoke some spell to make it happen.

Up onto the Diadenidyne District, passing the many theaters and dance halls of the Upollah District, and into the Wide Expanse, where three scale-plates had been erected as a kind of bridge over the gaping wound that saw down into the World Serpent’s guts and split bones. It did not take a forensics expert to know it was a wound delivered by a broodling ages ago.

And now we are finishing the job, Zellana thought, looking at the moisture farms in the distance, sucking the deeply-buried water from the World Serpent’s innards. We are like maggots in the wound of the last Great Wyrm, eating its remains.

Wyrmdov was lit brightly by the fungal rhizome that grew on practically every surface. The fungus’s bioluminescence was what had given the World Serpent its glow, growing wild over all of its scale-plates, and now grew on everything, even some people. Citizens that had spent too much time down on the Scales were easy to spot, for they had red- and green-glowing fungal threads spreading up their arms, across their necks, faces and legs. Zellana had been lucky to avoid such contamination, which was known to greatly shorten a person’s lifespan. The fungus was also capable of altering one’s thoughts, creating a dual personality living within the same body—the fungal rhizome was, as a collective, quasi-sentient, with a will of its own. People that had been “zomed” could communicate not quite with telepathy, but by using pheromones the fungus emitted. The zomed had their own subculture here on Wyrmdov. Thankfully, it wasn’t contagious from person to person, you had to catch it from living in the Lower Scales.

When she finally entered the House of Red, Zellana was exhausted and sweating. She asked the Millarian majordomo standing at the entrance if his master was here. The insectoid creature chittered, and spread its six mandibles before waving her to follow.

The House of Red was a gambling den, the ceiling topped with clouds of smoke from the pipes the patrons smoked. Men and women in elegant slashcoats and amberlust suits watched her cross the main hall and ascend the stairs. The Millarian opened a door and stepped inside, leaving her standing outside. It came back out a moment later and waved her in.

When Zellana beheld Lullock, she was astonished to see him crying. But his face…it was not contorted in sorrow, but in rage. He paced in his dimly-lit room before a man lying dead at his feet, a pool of dark-red blood spreading from his throat. Lullock was bare-chested, and ran a hand over the wide scar on the shaven side of his head. Zellana knew where he got that scar. She was there when he received it.

“Priestess,” he said, and walked over to a table against the wall and poured himself an amber-colored drink from a crystal decanter. He downed it in one go, then refilled the glass.

“Lullock,” she said.

“What brings you here?” Even as he asked it, Wyrmdov’s biggest boss took out a bottle of wine and spilled some on the ground. There wasn’t an Inzytt Gutter here, the gesture was more symbolic than anything. A small gesture. Still, it showed respect to her Order. And it showed that his head was still clear, despite the tears and despite the corpse on the floor.

Zellana looked down at the dead man. His body was emaciated. It looked like he had been starved for a while, and deprived of a bath and a shaving razor. “Have I come at a bad time?”

“Have we ever known good times?” Lullock said, and downed his drink. He held the empty glass between two synthetic fingers, wiggling it slowly, red eyes boring into hers.

“A fair point.”

He eyed her a moment longer. “So. What is it?”

Zellana sighed. “First, I have to ask. Did this man beg for the last rites before you killed him?”

“He did.”

“And will you let me bless him, since I did not get here in time?”

Lullock’s tongue ran slowly over his yellow teeth as he pondered it. At first, she thought he would deny his victim safe passage into the Void, but then he gave a fractional nod and Zellana stepped over to the body and knelt in the bloody puddle. She leaned over and whispered a message that Priestesses of Inzytt only ever uttered to an individual once, at the time of their death—no living person ever got to hear these words.

When she was done, Zellana stood and straightened her robe. Dark blood ran down to the hem. And as she stepped away, Lullock roared and ran toward her. She thought for a moment he would strike her for some reason, but he ran right past her and brought his boot up high and smashed it down into the skull of his victim. He did this repeatedly, until the head finally caved in and he nearly fell over from exhaustion.

When Lullock had had his satisfaction, he stood over his crushed enemy, panting, eyes smoldering.

“Do you require our assistance getting rid of the body?” she said.

Lullock snorted out a laugh, and brushed away another tear. “No, Priestess. This had nothing to do with you or your fane. My people will handle it.”

“In that case, I will simply leave you with the warning I came to impart, and then excuse myself.”

“What warning?”

“There is a woman coming here. Not a xeno, though she looks like one. Humanoid in shape, but with blue flesh and two spare arms, maybe four, not synthetic.”

Lullock scratched the tattoo of the three-headed serpent on his right forearm. “Did this person threaten you?”

“No. But she is a threat to you, which worries me.”

“What’s her name? Where is she?”

“I’m not sure…it may be Dorja, but that may just be the name of her deity. She is a bladeswoman and a damn good one, and she seeks to undo those she sees as evil.”

“Evil,” Lullock scoffed. “What is evil?” He said it philosophically, as if he was truly interested in the debate. He walked over to a closet, opened it, and a bot came trundling out with an array of colorful clothes. He undressed in front of her, tossing his bloody boots onto the floor, his pants on top of them. “Who is she? The daughter of someone we killed? The parent of someone we took?”

“I do not know,” Zellana said, stepping in front of him so that he could see the sincerity in her eyes. “But I’ve never had a vision so clear as this one.”

“Ah. So you saw it in the Æther. Then I needn’t worry.” He chuckled, and selected a yellow amberlust shirt with many pockets.

“You appreciated my visions and my fane’s resources well enough the last time you needed them. A particularly tough interrogation with a Free Ranger, if you recall?”

Lullock looked at her evenly. “You of all people should know I never forget anything.”

Zellana nodded. “This woman is dangerous. She has traveled the stars. She decimated a group of ravagers on Vaspiir, and the Nightmare Sisters of the Far Reach were undone by her. Do you hear me? Undone.” She added, “And she was the undoing of the raiders of Gotan-VII. Here.” She took out her omni-pad and waved a file from it over to Lullock’s own omni-pad, which she saw sitting on the table beside the corpse on the floor. “I’ve got all the files there. Look into it. Read my research into this woman.”

Lullock selected a pair of compristeel bracers, and once he had them clasped around his wrists, he walked over to the table and checked the omni-pad. He perused the files. For a moment, the light caught his eyes and nose a certain way…and Zellana was reminded of the boy they had found living below the Scales, cooking the meat off the walls of the World Serpent’s insides, which he scooped off and devoured ravenously. Zellana and her fellow priestesses had helped raise this man up, shaped him to be the pillar that they needed to keep their faith going. He had always cried both during and after violence, and none of the priestesses had ever dissuaded him from doing so.

Such a tender boy, she thought.

Then she looked down at the corpse, and saw the fruits of her labor, of her whole fane’s labor. There had been a price for creating the man they required to run Wyrmdov’s underworld. The Hekkites had grown stronger. Unchecked, unchallenged. It had been necessary for the Fane of Inzytt to endure, to grant them what few resources they had to stay forever young since the regens had all dried up, but the price they paid along the way…

“If she approaches you, you must stay away,” Zellana said. “Come and get us immediately.”

“And what will you do?”

“Protect you, as ever we have.”

“I thought it was I that protected you,” he said, selecting a red jerkin. The bot offered him an array of scarves. He selected a light-blue one with little black serpents sewn into it.

“We protect each other, Lullock. We are symbiotic. You know that.”

“Do I?”

Zellana gave him a look. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Lullock pulled on a pair of dark-green pants, then turned away from her. Over by his bed, there were three mirrors. He gazed upon himself, straightening every fold, smoothing every crease, checking his sleeves and cuffs, his collar. Exactly as he did in the military. Indeed, each time Lullock was seen in public, it was as though he was in uniform, no matter the colorful getup. His dark hair was always slick, every piece and particle of him manicured. A handsome man. A gorgeous man. Except for those yellowing teeth.

“It means I haven’t had a new shipment of regens in months,” he said, looking at her in the mirror. He gestured at his face. “Look at my complexion. Do you see any green? I’ve gone a long while without a treatment. My men even longer.”

“Don’t you think if we had them we would share them?” Zellana asked. “The Anymyst herself must make do with what she can siphon from—”

“No, I don’t think you would share.” He turned to face her. Another tear fell, this one he didn’t bother to wipe away. “I think you have reserves. I know you do. And you’re holding out, storing them up for when things get really bad.”

Zellana met his gaze.

Lullock finished his ensemble with a belt full of pockets and a holster that held his needler. The compristeel shortsword was buckled to his left side, and a baton was slung over his shoulder by its strap.

There was a knock at the door. A man with a huge patch of glowing fungus across the left side of his face stuck his head in. “It’s time, Doyen.”

“I’ll be right out,” Lullock said, and dismissed him with a wave. He turned to Zellana. “I have to go. There’s trouble brewing in the Underscales.”

“Doyen,” she said. “You know, I was there when they conferred upon you that title. You didn’t see me, but I was watching. We all were. We were all so proud of you when you climbed the ranks. You’ve come so far, Lullock. The boy we raised up from the Scales and sent off to join the military…he’s a man now, standing before me, and I couldn’t be happier.” She glanced at the corpse on the floor. “It pains me to see you grieve, though. Did something happen? Was he your friend?”

“It’s nothing.”

He went to the door. Opened it. Paused. He turned back to face her. “Dorja, you say?”

“Yes. That is the name.”

Lullock nodded. “I’ll remember it.” He stepped outside. The door closed automatically behind him.

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