The axe was an unfamiliar weight in his hands. Weapons like it weren’t completely unfamiliar on battlefields as Gaylen knew them, but it was still bigger than anything typically used against humans in heavy armour. The head was broad, as if for maximum slashing damage rather than penetration, and the handle was wrapped in real leather. It spoke both of the ancient past, and of worlds and ways of thinking that simply weren’t his own.

Gaylen squeezed his fingers around the handle. Then he stepped towards the door.

Enough running. The thing had proven it would not relent, and that he could not simply outrun it. Better to save up what little stamina he could.

It was nearly on him. That ghostly, eerie feeling was almost as strong as it had been when the thing reached the Heg agents. He was left with only seconds to figure this whole thing out.

He’d seen Bers take one of these things out before, although he’d been in a rather confused state of mind at the time. It could be done. He knew for a fact that it could be done, and he worked hard to remind himself of that.

But how? Wari… Bers had used that word before, and it seemed to have something to do with spirit.

He now heard the thing, behind the door, taking the last steps down the hallway.

Spirit. A loose concept, but a universal one. Did he mean to just fight hard, with nothing held back?

The door rattled a little, as a very, very strong hand tried to pull the handle to the side.

Gaylen touched the spot over his own heart. There was no risk of him not fighting hard. Not with his life on the line. He’d had to do it so damnably often in this existence of his.

From behind the sturdy metal came something that might have been an angry voice, and hit his nerves like a knife. The door rattled harder.

Gaylen’s mind did an emergency-speed review of all that he’d seen and heard of the Kalero Wardens, the strange tales told by spacers that had been to the true fringes, and Bers and his general weirdness.

The door shook and groaned and bent, as the thing worked on clearing the obstruction.

Gaylen realised that he was doing exactly what Bers had told him not to: Thinking. As his heart thundered ever louder over what was to come, at the visible reminder of this thing’s sheer strength, he fought to clear it all away.

Fine. Heart. Feeling. Will.

He wanted to live. He wanted to continue on. He wanted to continue to do better, and step by difficult step, improve the person he was. He wanted to be able to feel pride in himself. As the door continued to bend, and the metal bar slowly gave way, what stood out to him were the good things. The people. The times he’d done more than just endure and survive.

He wanted to see Kiris again. He wanted to feel her warmth in his arms and enjoy those brief moments when it felt like everything was alive. He wanted to have drinks with Jaquan. He wanted to share a table with the others again, and thank them for their company.

As all else pushed away, that was what remained. Not thoughts, so much, but feelings. A burning fire, demanding to live.

And as the thing tore the door away, Gaylen charged forth and unleashed it.

An overlong horror of an arm came of the darkness to snatch him, but his axe blow knocked it to the side. Huge as the thing was, it could not easily fit through the doorway, and that was his biggest advantage as he chopped again.

The axe blade met whatever that thing was made of. It sure wasn’t flesh, but it did part, to a degree. And it hurt. The thing produced a snarl from somewhere; perhaps just the air itself. It tried to swipe at him again, but Gaylen was again quicker with the axe. He would have expected keremak to sever the limb, but settled for knocking the strength out of it, and delivering another hit to the lumpy mess that made up the thing’s core.

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He landed another blow, and another, and it actually retreated. The thing vanished back into the blackness, away from the glowstick still shining on the balcony floor. Gaylen retained the sense not to follow it into an environment that favoured it, and took a couple of steps away from the doorway. A moment later he took a couple more, to stand beside the doorway rather than in front of it.

He was still alive. And just that alone gave him greater strength.

There were noises from inside. However stealthy the thing could be, that did not extend to its environment. Gaylen wasn’t sure what was happening, but something was being broken and torn up. He worried that perhaps it was going to come back out with an improvised weapon. Or start throwing objects at him.

He stayed on alert, ready to react, ready to fall back or swing again as needed. He was going to survive this, and that meant taking that fucking monster out.

The noises stopped. They had served as a vague indicator of where the thing actually was, so the sudden silence carried with it the menace of the unknown. A silence could mean anything, after all, and this night had taught Gaylen not to trust his senses.

Still, he stayed at his post, ready to block the gap again, ready to take advantage of this bottleneck. Then the thing came from above.

A thin part of the wall exploded outwards, and rained down in chunks of cheap concrete. The thing came with them, and mixed in with the bursting noise was what might have been a scream. Gaylen, his nerves primed for anything, turned on his heel as the monster sailed over his head. Its feet hit the balcony floor with a great thump, and it immediately turned with a swipe.

Gaylen ducked beneath it, felt the air in his hair, and swung the axe low. He hit the thing in the leg, cutting a deep gash into the not-flesh, then hopped back to escape a swipe with the other arm.

It came at him, free from the constraints of the doorway, but now limping. There was decent space on the broad balcony, but those arms were so damn long. Gaylen waged a fighting retreat, chopping, jabbing and dodging. He awaited a window of opportunity for getting around it, for a clear shot, but those big swipes weren’t allowing him one. It had the advantage in height and reach and strength. So in the end, Gaylen simply had to wager it all on a do-or-die attack.

And whether through luck or skill, he made it through the split-second gap between swipes. Bers’s axe cut deep into the torso, and a shudder went through the oversized body. Gaylen struck again, and as the thing raised an arm to defend itself he sent another low chop into the same leg. The limb still held together, but the thing couldn’t turn fast enough to catch him as he went around it. He drove a wild blow into its back, then kept on turning as the thing tried to turn to face him. He got several more chops in, before their mutual movements landed him too close to the wall.

He had to stop turning, and with that the thing was finally able to twist around on him. But the blow that came was slower and weaker than before. The more he hit it, the more it weakened, and so hitting it got easier, and so it weakened further…

He was winning. He was going to kill the bastard and survive this, and the more he believed it the more it became the truth. A turning point came when it simply started to retreat from him, and he started to land more grazes than solid hits. But there was only so much balcony for it to retreat along, and his swings kept on driving it. He gave it no space, no moment, to start striking back, or even turn around. He would eventually trap it up against something, and…

The axe hit nothing. Because there was nothing in front of him.

Gaylen swung a couple more times, where reason told him the thing ought to be, just in case his mind was messing with him. But he hit nothing.

The fight had moved away from the glowstick on the floor, but not that far. He saw the railing, he saw the floor, he saw the balcony up above him. He ought to see the gigantic horror. Instead, it was gone. But the dread wasn’t. It was still there, gnawing, silently screaming of danger and sheer, profound wrongness.

He stood still, straining his ears. There was nothing for them to pick up, save for wind and distant birds. But the dread… the dread was a sense of its own. And in this moment, when he knew an attack would come, he let it guide him.

Gaylen dodged to the left, and the sudden swipe hit nothing. The thing was back in view, and its other arm, marked by many wounds, came down in one last, desperate blow. Gaylen ducked under it, then gave that maimed leg yet another hard chop. The limb seemed to finally lose all strength, and the thing fell up against the railing. Tall as it was, the railing served to trip it up rather than stop it, and Gaylen sped the process along with one last blow, delivered with all of his strength.

The thing fell, and he heard it smack into a balcony on its way down to the ground. Then came the solid crash of a full stop.

Gaylen immediately took out his last glowstick, activated the chemicals, and let it drop. It landed near the huge, misshapen body. Moments later, in a haze of that unreal, undefinable colour, the thing faded away into nothing.

He stared at the spot, for a measure of time he did not count. He needed it. He needed to assure himself that neither his eyes nor mind were playing some trick. It really was gone, just as the thing that Bers had chopped up on board the Addax that one time. There was nothing left. Even the axe blade was dry and clean.

“Screw you, you ugly bastard,” Gaylen muttered. Then he started moving again.