Curtains of downpour scald the white tarmac nestled within the sprawling Imperial Complex, sweeping over my boots as the gunship’s rear ramp lowers. I linger in the shelter of the cargo bay while the tempest rages. Hand resting on a hydraulic strut. Opposite shoulder bound in a sling. Watching my breath freeze in the air, watching the droplets boil and rain slough off the white stone like dead skin, watching anything I can just to delay my entrance.

Grey of the morning, city blanketed in dour colors that will persist the entire day, the Imperial Complex is a quiet shadow of a bygone era. Thick fog obscures the hedges of skyscrapers that normally loom behind its sprawling forests, cultivated guardians, and high bastion walls. Heavy rain batters the trees and koi pounds and low buildings; archaic relics of our Section’s ancient roots. Icy wind rips through banners of Champions past that rise along the perimeter of the empty square tarmac. Empty poles quietly await the mementos of the future fallen. Fittingly morose, given how the city has changed around us. This place is more a grave to the past than a waiting home of future rulers.

The last to hold residence inside it was Rex Fang, the Champion before Mars, and his granddaughters and their families. Mars kept residence in the Metro Blockhouse itself, absconding tradition to instead continue living beside his peers like he never stopped being a league fighter. He only visited for formal tournaments and coronations. And his iron successor would never inhabit a place like this. Too much nature, too much greenery, the nearest metal nearly half a mile distant where the Imperial Complex’s bounds press against the streets of the Glass District. Gami has taken to building his own citadel in the industrial districts anyways, exhuming the bones of a half-finished martial temple and combat university once intended exclusively for rehomed young of the Vents.

When Tetsuka finally moved to the capital for university, this was to be our home. All the space she needed to sprawl, all the nature and life energy she needed to thrive. But there will be no camaraderie waiting beyond those stone torii gates. No packs of students training in the public dojos or wandering the gardens. My sister will not be yawning as she comes through the door, just back from work. Jolie won’t be sipping black caf and reading romance novels by the fire. Mars won’t be jostling my shoulder as we return from training, both of us thinking of the same house and the same girl.

I will enter alone. Still thinking of her.

Unanswered messages blink for attention on my JOY, shaking me out of my thoughts. Shutting down the sphere, I bare myself to the elements and stride into the rain, crossing the vast expanse of white stone as I head for the largest building in the heart of the Imperial Complex. Unused refueling stations for Mecha affinities and launch catapults for ki fighters flank the edges of the tarmac like dormant gargoyles. Black hair quickly plasters to my forehead. My shirt sticks to my skin. Rain drips down my nose. Distractions that cannot occupy my mind.

I glance up as her white hair, once gold and silver, brushes across my nose. It’s just an early snowflake. A memory, fleeting in passing, but one that steals my momentum all the same.

Fake blue eyes burning like coals. The overwhelming force of her soul screaming into mine through the connection we’ve always shared. Her voice cracking not with love or joy, but a hate that only wanted to kill. All her gentle quirks and smiles, all of the girl I used to love and know for every waking minute, gone. And there’s no one to blame for that but myself. Gami might be sitting on the throne, but he didn’t kill her father. He didn’t upend her entire world, strip away everything she’d ever known, cast her away for dead, then bring her back and push her mind to snapping just to reawaken what I’d already broken.

I did.

If only Mars could see me now. If only he could look upon what became of the boy he loved as a second son. That boy grew into a murderer who thought he could change the world. A slave to his own conviction. The very thing he always feared he would see in the mirror.

That boy was a fool.

And still I hesitate to do what I know I must. I had Tay within my palm. Only time will tell if I made the right choice in letting her go, betting that she might rediscover her strength if she continues to remain in hiding, just with the pressure wrenched higher. One brush against her destructive potential was all the glimpse I needed to know exactly what will happen if it is wrenched from her by force. Better for that butterfly to stretch its wings, thinking itself free, not knowing the cage has merely expanded.

My stage is set now. A stiletto gap between my master’s wary eye and the last loose end of the hero he replaced. Already Gami suspects Tay wasn’t disposed of in the villages. His instincts, that decades-trained tuned sense for danger that every fighter possesses in some amount, will never let him rest easy as long as she continues to live. I can only delay so long. Better to start moving pieces now.

I do not go unnoticed as I stride the simple gravel path to the large central residence. External hallways flank me on both sides. Traditional outskirts style, they are lined by small pillars of dark wood and weary stone and left open to the elements. My hand returns to my JOY as I ascend the slick, rocky steps to the villa’s rear entrance. Three copies of the Shifter class return at the touch of a holographic key. I tune them to the situation at hand, one primed in Psi to insulate my mind from wandering telepathic eyes, the other to Martial Artist. Passive augments of the class lighten my steps and ease the ache in my shoulder as I use a telepathic nudge to slide open the huge paper doors patterned with the clover sigil of our Section’s first Champion, Gage the Wise.

Two women and one animal are waiting in the vast wooden antechamber on the other side. Simple support struts rise around them to support a high ceiling of thatch and rafters. Flames crackle in a fireplace ringed by crimson couches and pillows for sitting. Leaning against one of the struts, Valance, pink and black skinsuit still glossed with rain, shifts her hips to a vaguely more sensual tilt as she sees me enter. She raises a curious eyebrow at my sling-bound shoulder.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

We’re joined by the Mobiak as it crawls off its perch out on the tiled roof with the languid grace of a xenomorphic bulette, rain still dripping off its black carapace. The creature is an eight-legged centipedal nightmare of slavering fangs, razor-sharp digging claws, spine-covered tail, and chitinous armored skin; over a thousand pounds of grisly fighting potential in total. Raspy, hissing breaths and acidic drool trail from its split jaw as it follows me inside.

Many would make the fatal mistake of assuming the feral, unspeaking beast a pet controlled by the Tamer class. Its true nature is far more grisly. Most people use JOYs to augment their natural potential and reach for new heights. Rare few are the useful deviants who reject their humanity and use the technology to delve downwards instead.

The Mobiak is one such monstrosity. Valance and I are well adjusted to the uniqueness of the Modd-classed behemoth, but even we react more to the beast’s rasping presence than the last woman in the room, who sits by the fire with a politician’s poise. She’s waged entire wars against monsters far worse than a Venter nightmare-maker, and she’s been doing it since before I was even born. She doesn’t even flinch at the sight of it.

She does flinch when she sees me.

I bow low to her in a level of respect usually only afforded the Champion. “Jolie.”

Jolie Mons stares silent death at me. Her fingers tense around a ceramic mug of caf like they’d want nothing more than to hold my throat instead. The woman is a rakish shadow of her world-famous twin, narrow and cold with the hawkish frame of a mountain bird. Her crimson hair is pinched in a high formal tail. Innovator hololenses perch above the crown of her forehead, plainly baring the tired marks of her forty-five years of war and love. She’s not the type of woman to find easy description. Those she favors would call her matronly. I prefer effective.

Realistically, I shouldn’t be afraid of Jolie. She’s just a woman twice my age with half the agility and muscle mass. She doesn’t even use a JOY. I’ve spent my whole life training under the most powerful legends in the Section. Yet somehow, it’s the weakest of those legends that reminds me most of my own mortality.

“Keep an eye on Director Mons,” I tell the Mobiak. “I’ll be back.”

It rasps some animalistic noise of understanding. Shirking the needling hatred of Jolie’s gaze, I crook my head for Valance to step outside.

We look out at the rain and forests from the shelter of the porch.

“My bed was a little cold last night,” she purrs in a pure penthouse accent, eyeing my wounded shoulder. “Seems you didn’t get much rest either. Too much foreign stock at that damnable party to pass up a taste of something new.”

I sniff out an amused note of laughter. “I’ve no time for such things. Nor the inclination.”

“You say that as I stand right here.” Valance fakes a slighted scoff. “Really, you’ve always confused me there, Thane. Half of our peers in the leagues would bend over backwards to lay you, and the other half lie when they claim they wouldn’t. Yet you’ve no interest in women. You enjoy them, but you don’t love them.” Her tone turns truculent. “There really is only room in that hidden heart of yours for one lucky girl, isn’t there? One you already found and lost.”

“You’ve been reading where you shouldn’t.”

Her pink, catlike eyes narrow. “I was an Iros of Dynasty, Thane, lest you forget it. I do not need psychologist drivel and therapist reports to know the thoughts of the boys I bed.”

I lean against a wooden railing with a smirk. “Elaborate then, if you know me so well.”

“Your mind does that enough on its own. You think of her every night. That girl with the freckles.” She arches an eyebrow. “You just thought of her again.”

She can’t feel a single thing from my mind; I’ve been using her own class to block her out before this conversation ever began. Clever, really. Using the most minor visual cues and guesses to make it seem like she’s still trawling my surface thoughts. Something only an Iros would be good enough to do. Especially as it’s founded in reality. Either she did browse my files, or my mental wards have been slipping at night.

“I only ask because you make such a secret of it. There’s something so… quietly tragic about the way you carry her in your thoughts even now,” she yawns, turning back to the forest. “Where did you flitter off to after the gala, Thane? One of the icepicks challenge you to an honor duel?”

“Something of the sort,” I mutter, conceding the verbal spar in her favor.

“Must have been quite the show if someone managed to actually tag you.”

I force a light laugh. “Too light a crowd to be a show. You didn’t miss much.”

“You don’t have to tell me, darling. Shepherding our dear Director Mons around like a common tower lackey is the most boring waste of my talents Gami could think up.” She sighs sensually, glancing back at the villa. “I swear, your sister picks the most convenient times to vanish. Lucky for her she started cavorting around with her new girlfriend right when this drama at the M kicked up. I’d have thrown the grunt work on her instead.”

“Convenient indeed,” I murmur, flashing back to last night. “I wasn’t aware Jolie was being removed from her offices.”

“Gami didn’t tell you?” Valance arches a curious eyebrow. “He personally ordered me to relocate her last night. And he’s tasked me with expanding our roster of Shadows, given the increase in recent security breaches. I think he has some new counterespionage tasks in mind.”

What a clever master I have.

I cross my arms under my jacket, carefully listening as Valance begins to unspool the first threads of the plan I’ve been weaving behind my master’s back since before she was ever made an apprentice. She takes the revelation of her newly growing favor with the Champion entirely in stride. But I know the fiend of a mind at work behind those full lips and taunting, catlike irises. A court servant of the Dynasty syndicate doesn’t become the apprentice of a Champion by chance. She sees the momentary rift between me and Gami. And she sees an opportunity.

Valance launches into a cover about where she might look for new additions for the Shadows. I recalibrate the pathI walk. Murmur a quick response when she asks if I have any recommendations. I do. Volatile ones, but ones I can control. So long as I keep the blinders on them.

“Assuming we’re still hosting that dinner in two weeks, I’ll invite them to the penthouse then,” I tell her, rising from my thoughts. “I’m a little busy at present.”

Valance hooks her head at the waiting villa. I nod.

“Jolie won’t speak a word to you, and you know it,” she says.

“Fortunately, her willing cooperation isn’t my concern.” My eyes narrow. Fingers brushing over the half-melted datapad in my pocket. The griptape tag on its back emblazoned with the word DELFINA. “I didn’t come here for forgiveness.”