9.

What in Celestra’s name is that, Silvah thought, her heart squeezing together in her chest.

It edged closer, and it became clear that it was the head of a great beast. The teeth lining its maw were wicked—

Giant, bony fingers settled around its mouth, and wrenched the creature to the side. Its long body sped across the hole, and a tremor sent pieces of rubble plummeting from the roof.

A pause.

Ryu turned to not-Damien. His face contorted, he cursed, and jumped back up, disappearing from view.

There was a silence in the basement, then. The interim between the start of a play you looked forward to and the drawing of the curtains. Silvah found that she could move her muscles again, and a premonition rose to the forefront of her mind before she turned to Lesha. A feeling if you may. She hadn’t heard a peep coming from the other girl. Not before or after the man next to Ko had made it so she could not move. Silvah’s neck twisted over her shoulder.

The head of a verdant pole had pierced Lesha’s stomach and pinned her against a crate. In a sick joke that only fate could play, the tip of the spear consisted of three parts, shaped like clover leaves. Have you ever seen a three-leaved clover? Horrified as Silvah was, she instinctively understood that the wound by itself wasn’t enough to explain Lesha’s silence. Perhaps she’d remained quiet after the initial hit. Maybe even gone unconscious for a second after her head slammed against a hard surface. But afterwards? Lesha would’ve whined. Yet the real world always had a logical explanation: her windpipe had been crushed. Leaning over Lesha’s corpse was a black-haired woman in a gown eerily too white for the amount of blood dripping down her chin. Carefully, so as to not make a sound. Slowly, like she was peeling a peach, the woman cut a thin and sharpened nail along the outlines of Lesha’s face.

Silvah was too bewildered to think. Her brain was trying at once to understand what she was seeing and grasp why someone would do this. If she was really honest, she couldn’t even tell if the action was truly malicious. Lesha looked at peace. Simply asleep.

She looked more carefully and saw that different, coloured flaps of skin covered the woman’s face. They were fresh and added to the blood falling from her chin. They made the last incision. One nail gently dug underneath Lesha’s chin, then pulled. The unlucky girl’s face ripped off like a fresh band aid. The woman who could not be anything but a beast turned towards Silvah, allowing her to see her face fully. She was wearing Snarl-face’s skin. There was no other with a similar, permanently upturned lip.

An instant later, Lesha’s skin covered that of Snarl-face, and the woman played the part of the adorable, too quiet and avoiding Lesha. That sweet girl who wouldn’t hurt a fly when asked to.

Just like her sister.

The creature tilted her head and smiled.

Laughter rang from the middle of the room.

‘Now this is an audience worthy of our status as the thieves of the Stars!’

Silvah barely heard it. Something was ringing and cascading between her ears; Asha was howling, crying over the death of a kindred spirit. The cold pumping through Silvah was so terrifyingly frigid she thought her insides would freeze over. It invaded her toes, her lungs and head. When she exhaled, her breath was damp mist.

The thief cackled.

‘Kill each other.’

10.

The man doubled over, and what seemed like all the blood inside of his body gushed out of his mouth. His body dropped to the floor.

‘Ohto!’ Someone cried.

The words sounded as if they had to drown through an ocean to reach Silvah. So muddled were her senses. But the face of the monster wearing Lesha’s skin was clear as day. Silvah didn’t remember moving. Had not noticed her foot lifting. However, the next second, her heel blew over her enemy’s head, sending the hairs on the top fluttering as the beast jumped back and ducked low. The smile had wiped off Lesha’s face. She went on all fours, glaring up at Silvah similar to a hound.

A small wave of heat spiked around the creature, wafting over Silvah’s skin. Time slowed for Silvah.

Something is coming, she thought—there was a near invisible flare on the creature’s back, and Silvah knew that if she didn’t move, she would die. So she spun with the remaining inertia of her leg sweep.

The sharp point of an arrow-like object cut across the space dividing them and dug into her lower abdomen. There was no pain. There should've been, her subconscious knew. The fact that there wasn’t meant something was horribly wrong. But there was a haze clouding her mind where her logical thoughts should be. This thing needed to die. No matter the cost.

She pulled the pistol she had asked her uncle for and fired three well-aimed shots at the neck, between the eyes, and the mouth. The beast took a few steps back. Yet it remained wholly unharmed. Silvah wanted to compare her firing to shooting at metal, but at least then the bullets would have left a dent. Here, the projectiles ricocheted off the beasts’s skin as if she had slapped it with wet paper.

The gun is no good, Silvah realised as she searched the knowledge base Shisui had granted her. If she wanted her pistol to work, she needed to infuse the bullets with foul or cele energy. Something she was not capable of. She lacked the skill, as Rose had said.

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Silvah threw her gun to the side, freeing her hands. The creature’s eyes widened as it tried to figure out what her play was.

She was right next to Lesha’s corpse now. Which meant she was in front of the dagger they had been admiring. The golden handle flashed as she claimed the weapon, snatching it from the girl’s dead hands.

The creature snarled. Silvah charged.

Another spike ripped free from the creature’s back. It was more than a loosed arrow this time. It was a harpoon with an unnatural degree of freedom of motion, curving from the beasts’s back like a tentacle and homing towards Silvah. She lunged, swinging her dagger. The black blade clanged with the sound of metal on metal and scraped off to the side, almost falling out of Silvah’s grip.

The tentacle pierced the floor, and bits of stone flew everywhere.

Tch. Silvah tutted her lips. Even the magic blade is no good? It had to be, though. She was just missing something…Long ago, she heard Lesha say, the rest of the monologue flashing through her head.

Bingo.

Silvah landed from her lunge. The second tentacle was already halfway to its destination, aimed at the middle of her chest. But Silvah’s eyes were fixed on the creature’s face. It was grinning again. A bloody, wicked smile. An abomination of Lesha’s laugh.

Her sister’s laugh.

Silvah yelled, and it resonated within her. A dam around her heart erupted, flooding the canals flowing through her limbs. Blue energy blasted through the dagger handle, and the lines on the blade flushed with life—Lesha had been right; the scratch marks proved its worth.

Whining through the air in front of her, the blade tore into the tentacle, cleaving it in half before it could her. The decapitated part crashed into a crate behind her.

The beast recoiled.

Feet shifted; shoulders lowered. In its eyes sparked recognition—the understanding that it, too, could be wounded.

It hissed at Silvah and began to circle her. But what was it? Silvah couldn’t get herself to feel any fear. She knew it was there since the pit in her stomach was growing. Yet she was calm.

Emotions, Shisui’s knowledge told her, are the key factor in summoning your bound companion. Thus, the first and foremost method of getting a summoner in control of their partner, is a crisis.

Silvah wasn’t alone.

She didn’t need to touch and pull on her necklace. Asha came out by herself. Her sister’s ghostly touch settled on her shoulder like a mantle. She floated behind her, part of her, yet not.

The beast’s steps had grown slower, wariness growing on it as weeds.

‘Prepare yourself,’ Silvah said. There was an echo to it. Like two people were speaking at once.

Then the skinner screeched, and the foul energy within it spiked. Silvah’s eyes went wide. Tentacles numbering the legs of a spider burst forth from its back. She couldn’t dodge all of those. There’s was no way. She needed to judge which ones to tank—

Trust, Asha’s voice whispered in her ear.

Silvah nearly froze. But she didn’t. She grinned as she sped up, cutting to her right and slicing through two of the projectiles at once. Silvah spun and curved her back around another one. Two others missed completely.

She skidded to a halt. Five down. Three to go.

The tentacles spread and came from above, assaulting her in a triangle formation. She would only be able to cut one.

Middle, came the call from inside, and so Silvah cut above her head in an arc as she charged through. Her blade ate through the meat of the tentacle directly overhead, leaving her slightly out of position to parry the two others aiming for her neck and chest.

The beast hollered. Assured of its victory.

Asha’s arms extended past Silvah’s shoulders, her hands blocking the point of contact of Silvah’s skin with the tentacles.

Where the appendages touched the ethereal Asha, they evaporated. Like they were being sucked into a whirlpool. Faintly, Silvah felt a stream of cold travel through the connection she had with her sister. Was she feeding her energy? She couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter in the moment.

She was in position now. Silvah reversed her blade, pointing the edge upwards, took a step, and carved that red smile the beast seemed to enjoy so much over their body—starting at the hip and ending on a curve away from the neck. It screamed as its arm flopped on the floor.

Tch. The angle had been a little off so she couldn’t behead it like she wanted to.

It jumped backwards, trying to create space. Then Asha clasped her hands in front of her like she way praying, her face crunching up. The monster’s head swivelled around, its inhuman eyes ripe with fear. Above its head formed a net of cele energy that spread—

‘Enough!’

Silvah quickly ducked as something cut above her head from behind. It hadn’t been the beast. The net Asha was forming broke before it could become anything tangible, and the creature finished its leap to safety. Where its feet had previously been, the ground had split apart, cratering underneath an invisible force.

Silvah whipped around. Behind her was a battlefield. Diamonds, gold, paper scrolls, and instruments lay broken and torn. Everything in the centre of the room was gone—disintegrated how a grassy plain with a plague of grasshoppers in the middle of it would, ceasing to exist from the core outward. Green, muddy liquid covered the floor. Where it touched marble, it ate away at the material, sizzling while it did.

Had a twister ripped through the building while she wasn’t looking?

Someone hovered in the air to her right. She recognised him as Koushin a second later. Currents of wind curled around his feet. His eyes were red with strain, and he held his two hands stretched out in front of him, pointed at the obsidian-skinned thing, which looked like Damien.

It had grown. For it must’ve been at least two and a half metres now. Another horn had joined the first, curling beautifully. Torrents of what must’ve been blood fell out of its body, forming a spear within its hands. Silvah said fell, because her stomach wound was a joke compared to the holes drilled through its torso and thighs. It was more holes than flesh.

Ko and Ohto were nowhere to be seen.

The winds around Koushin picked up.

‘Foul speech sorcery—a revolting ability.’ He seemingly spoke to the room. ‘But hiding is no use. You’re not leaving this place with that egg.’

Koushin glared down in front of him.

‘Then there’s you.’

His opponent clenched its teeth, shaking as it did so.

‘I’ll admit it,’ Koushin said. He clasped his hands. ‘You Meteora whelps are strong. This year was the most talented year, didn’t they say? However—’

Maybe Silvah imagined it, but the face of a little girl appeared on his shoulder for a moment before it dissolved into smoke, coalescing into a sphere of what Silvah could only call unbridled force.

‘—you have much to learn.’

Koushin’s skin flushed pink with effort.

‘Profane Echo: Zephyr’s breath.’

Silvah didn’t know what happened next. Couldn’t even see it. One moment she had been standing. The other she was flung backwards as if caught in the blast wave of a city-ending explosion. Her flight lasted all of two seconds before her back cracked against something hard. This time the haze wasn’t enough to squash the pain. Better yet, it was gone. She screamed, the whipping winds that rend her skin apart at their touch drowning out the sound. Blearily she opened an eye. A tornado was shredding through the room. Literally.

Asha had returned, hiding from the winds. Worrisome noises sounded in Silvah’s thoughts, but they weren’t audible.

Please stop, she begged. Make the pain stop.

No God heard her begging.

Or maybe they did.

The silhouette of a green lance pierced through her line of vision. It flew through the storm, bisecting it. Koushin yelled and he got a taste of his own medicine as he was flung through the air. The tornado didn’t dissipate, though. Instead, it quaked, imploded, and a final, devastating detonation mangled the storage room.