“Honor your enemies either as men, worthy of respect, or as beasts, worthy of a quick death. Only Chimeras exult in violence.”

—The General Principles of Gens Nethress

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Approaching Mimus Tor

Rising Blooming 19, 1885

“Quetzal One approaching the coordinates, over.”

“Roger that, Quetzal One. Quetzal Two with eyes on ground.” The crackling of the shortsphere fell away into the subaural zone beneath the tearing of the air and the furious flapping of the vessel’s rear wings. Ferghall paid little attention to the chatter from the cockpit. He prepared to spend what time he did have left on more important things.

Like the image of his family that he held in his hands, the only reminder that he’d been able to keep of happier years. He squinted through the darkness of the cargo hold, which was large enough for ten men but carried only him.

The paper was rumpled and fading, but in the tiny colorful fibers he could still make out the smile of his wife, so subtle and self-assured. Age had taken a lot away from the image, but it couldn’t take away that smile. Or the sheen of his baby girl’s golden hair, or the developing musculature of his growing boys’ arms. Good lads and lasses, all. He wished he had a more recent picture, one with all the children.

Would killing the pilots bring him any closer to returning? More likely it would just buy his own death.

If he could get the image some sunlight, it could revitalize. Chances were good he’d be getting some soon. If he didn’t die first.

“Quetzal One to Flight One, no surface structures are obvious here.”

“This is Flight One Actual. Continue circular sweep pattern and confirm.”

A voice came from the cockpit. The pilots were talking. “Good ground for weapons testing here, so close to Dead Man’s Gulf.”

“So close to the Wildlands, too? What, are they looking for a target-rich environment? It’s suicide. This whole thing’s a wild goose chase.”

“Don’t let Actual hear you talking like that.”

“Why, you leave the shortsphere on? Hey— what’s that?”

“What’s what?”

“Flight One Actual, Quetzal Nine. I have visual contact with a…”

Pointless. Let them babble. If they did actually find anything, Ferghall had his orders. They’d been whipped into him well enough. Bring the Dux in alive and security the facility.

Idiots, when they weren’t scumbags. If they wanted the Dux alive, they shouldn’t have bothered to bring Ferghall in. More likely, his hated captors anticipated spending him like a gamepiece against their enemies’ bodyguard. They’d be cowards, hiding in their Quetzals while a Warlock did their dirty work. And they’d stay cowards, sending in their slaves to mop up the room, in both the literal and the figurative senses, while the Generosi drank their wine and screwed their sisters and waited for favorable news.

Ferghall growled inwardly. He was not a coin to buy a bit of ease for this worthless Nxtlu scum. He was not a slave to take their orders. He was a free man.

But in that case, why was he here? Why had he been here for the past four years?

It would be so easy to kill them. It would be so easy to release himself just a little bit, tear them to pieces or burn them to a crisp, and then grab the controls of the Quetzal.

—burn them to a crisp—

The SOPHIIS began to uncoil in his mind. The quiescence factor was wearing off from the Sequencing Organism: Prophage/Human Interface in Inadequate Symbiosis. For a Warlock like him, remaining enraged was a recipe for disaster. Or for murder.

—murder—

What would Adon say? Could he do it? Would he end his own life just to end a couple of nobody pilots?

The hated guest quivered down his spinal column, pulsed through his muscles, invaded his thoughts, and sent out a terrified plea. —no die no die— Foreign terror began to grip Ferghall’s heart, and it was all he could do to swallow it back down. The SOPHIIS knew it was in danger.

“Flight One Actual, Quetzal Nine,” one of the pilots said. “It’s concrete. Small for a lab facility. I don’t think—”

There was a deep plosive noise and the boat shook, tossing Ferghall off of the bench and sprawling him on the aisle. It happened again, bouncing him a few inches into the air. “Flight One Actual, we’re under attack!” the pilot screamed into the shortsphere, but the device was already filling with the frantic cries of the rest of the flight.

“Mayday, mayday. Quetzal One is hit. We’re going—”

“—taking sustained shots, flak and concussive, from—”

“—Quetzal Two-Five! Quetzal Two-Five, losing altitude!”

“Two-Five?” one of the pilots said as he pulled the bird into a steep turn. “That’s the second wave. Nethress AA must be spread out across miles.”

“I told you it was a trap,” said the other. “They knew we were—”

Screeching forgebone-on-forgebone assaulted Ferghall’s eardrums, and a blast of frigid air burst in through a new hole in the floor two inches from his face. Ferghall jerked back and clambered to his feet.

—killkillkillkill—

He could feel himself losing control. The parasite was gibbering in terror somewhere deep within his soul. He drew deep breaths as he backed up against the wall of the craft. No fear. No fear. No fear.

Adon have mercy on him.

The Quetzal lurched as a direct concussion knocked it into a roll. Ferghall fell to the wall. Flak tore through the body of the craft.

“Quetzal Nine is going down. Quetzal Nine is going down.”

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You can’t kill them, Ferghall thought. They’re the only things keeping us alive!

The SOPHIIS didn’t want to listen. It was upside down and backwards, disoriented; it had almost died. It wasn’t agitated; it was terrified.

The bird lurched sideways again, and Ferghall’s feet touched the floor again. He set his stance against the tilt of the craft that insisted he fall down toward the cockpit. His soles settled and rooted in— literally; when he glanced at the floor, he could see tiny shoots growing out of his boots and into the forgebone beneath.

Just for a moment, he wondered what it would be like to have control of his Symbiont like a real Magus, instead of being surprised by everything it did.

Then there was an earthshaking crash, and the whole Quetzal shook madly. Inertia tried to force him forward; the roots, product of the insane SOPHIIS living inside him, disagreed. The roots won the day, and Ferghall remained standing as the screeching and the forward motion drew slowly to a close.

The silence left a ringing in his ears.

“Cargo still okay?” one of the pilots asked, turning about in his seat. The windshield past him was piled with dirt from bottom to top. “Good,” the pilot said. “Buy us time to get her flying again.”

“We’re not gonna get her flying,” the other pilot said shakily. “She’s done for.”

“Fine. Then get us out of here.”

Idiots. They were transporting him solo for a reason.

“I’m letting the cargo door down now,” one of the pilots said. “Tell us once it’s clear, and we’ll come out.”

Ferghall turned to face the rear of the craft as a crack of light appeared at the top of the cargo door and widened into a broad beam. Smoke and dust whirled into the vessel, and Ferghall strained to see through the blinding brightness.

A half-dozen rifle barrels met his gaze.

The SOPHIIS shrieked with rage and terror inside Ferghall, and his sight washed red with blood. Ride it out. Ride it out. Ride it out. But the adrenaline was pumping, forcing his heart to pound, setting his muscles quivering, empowering the unwanted parasite inside him. He screamed— he thought he screamed; he was fairly sure the cry was his— as flesh gave way to whipping tendrils. Then there were more screams, his and others’, and Ferghall disappeared from his own mind.

When he returned, the inside of the craft had been painted red, and blood hung like vapor in the air. The bodies of men— boys, really— in Nethress armor were twisted and contorted on the floor, held in grotesque positions by spiny tendrils that pierced their necks, mouths, and eyes. The dust swirled slowly, silently as the tendrils hitched and retracted. The oily sensation as the spines withdrew into Ferghall’s body sent shivers down his spine.

He glanced back at the cockpit. The two pilots were staring at him, mouths agape at the destruction he had wrought.

The rage — at being taken like an animal in a trap, at being forced to do the blasphemous bidding of Gens Nxtlu — boiled up inside Ferghall again.

He left the pilots’ bodies to rot in the ruined cockpit of the Quetzal.

Bursts of light and sound swept across the battlefield as Ferghall ran from the bleeding wreckage. The pilot had been right; it had been a trap, as well-laid as any Ferghall had ever placed. They’d been caught like a deer in a thorn-grasper. Nxtlu was distracted; they’d never notice if he went missing. He could run—

And do what, exactly, to shove the SOPHIIS back into quiescence? Even now, it was thrashing in his head. He couldn’t live like that, live without the quiescence factor. And what about his family?

He hated Nxtlu. And thanks to the awful Symbiont living inside of him, he needed them.

Adon damn them to Gehenn.

Ferghall ran, not really knowing where he was going or what he intended to do, up green hills and down into a watery gully. As he splashed up the other side, a shrill warcry met his ears.

—kill—

The SOPHIIS lashed out. A Nethress soldier, charging with forgebone sword held high — high ranking, then — burst into white-hot flame. His charred remains tumbled to the ground in front of Ferghall.

Ferghall jogged through the sparse woodlands, trying to get his bearings as the sounds of battle raged all around him. Past a small rise ahead of him, he saw a small concrete structure. It must have been the facility the pilots had seen. Dux Dorsin would be inside. Ferghall could still fulfill the mission. Maybe then they’d let him go.

No. Nxtlu would never let him go.

Go on with his mission? Abandon his family? Or forfeit his life? Every animal wanted to live, even the deer in the thorn-grasper. Every animal wanted its offspring to live, too. Ferghall ground his teeth and pressed forward.

The SOPHIIS grew fearful in his heart. Ferghall hadn’t been seen; he was sure of that. So why was he rooted to the ground?

The bushes exploded around him as Nethress legionnaires leapt up in terror and tried to run. Fast-growing roots entangled their feet, their legs, their bodies. Bloody thorns pressed into their flesh, and their skin and muscles melted away as the SOPHIIS injected something horrible into them.

When the roots retracted, the corpses collapsed like rag dolls tossed to the ground.

When his daughter had been a toddler, she’d had a favorite rag doll…

Ferghall fell to his knees. He couldn’t go on like this. It was too much to ask of any man. He could take his own life. He should, he needed to take his own life. But what sort of man did that? What sort of coward decided life was too much to bear?

Ferghall threw back his head and loosed to Yesh a howl of torment that the claps of gunslinging and booms of distant artillery swallowed up.

“Ho there. Slave.”

Ferghall caught a glimpse of the Generosus out of the corner of his eye, and rage boiled up within him. The SOPHIIS tittered with terrified glee. He wanted to rip the man’s bald head off his shoulders, wanted to bathe in the man’s blood until his clothes were stained blue—

No. Candice. He had to protect Candice. He needed the quiescence factor. So he watched silently as the Nxtlu Magus passed him by.

“Get behind me, slave,” the blue-blood said, raising his rifle to his shoulder and sighting toward the concrete building. He shot, and a distant cry went up. The blue-blood smiled. “Expecting us or not, they won’t stop us in our mission.”

Ferghall followed the Magus out into the killing fields around the building. He slapped bullets through the tall grass at opponents Ferghall couldn’t even see, and his aim was always true; his muscles flexed as his macuahuitl crashed into necks, opened jugular veins. Ferghall found himself admiring the man’s skill despite his breeding. He would have made a fine frontiersman.

What a waste of a life.

Waves of flesh-eating bacteria pulsed from the blue-blood’s hand, clearing the final steps to the front door of the structure. “Now, slave, prove to me whether you are a beast or not,” he commanded, pointing his sword toward the entrance.

The SOPHIIS was hungry. Ferghall could feel it breaking down his muscles, seeking sustenance for its STIGMOI. And here he was, so close to one of the very same blue-bloods who’d taken it all from him—

“Hey, handsome.” A rich contralto voice pushed through the screams of the dying and the concussions of the battlefield, drawing Ferghall’s attention up to the roof of the building. A lithe woman in a skinsuit— a Maga, then— waved from up above. “Nice to see you.” She leapt from the building, landing lithely on the ground. “So, here’s the deal. You can come with me.”

The Magus smiled. “I think not.”

She shrugged. “Or you can suffer a fate worth than death.” Her forgebone sword rang as she slid it from its sheath. “Your choice.”

Then she was on him, and the clashing of forgebone filled the air. The moment had passed. He could have taken the blue-blood if she hadn’t interfered. Stupid.

Stupid him, or stupid her?

A high parry left her body open and netted her a kick to the solar plexus. She dropped her sword and barely got her arm up in time as she jerked forward into the Magus’s space. She struck his arm hard; he dropped his own macuahuitl but bore forward into her. His hands latched around her throat.

The woman’s eyes widened as the Magus squeezed, grinning at her all the while. Her gaze shifted frantically, falling at last upon Ferghall.

Aoife’s eyes were blue, and this woman’s were brown; Aoife was short, and this woman was tall. But in this moment, this unknown girl was Ferghall’s daughter.

Ferghall screamed, the SOPHIIS screamed, and tendrils and roots and fire slashed and burned at the blue-blood’s back as the door of the facility opened and a great barrel of a man, ebon-skinned and Stigmata-armored, ran out from the building. The Magus yelled in agony and released the girl as he fell to his knees.

The Maga screamed something that Ferghall couldn’t hear through the pulsing in his ears. She produced a syringe and plunged it into the Magus’s neck, her hand deftly avoiding the whipping tentacles. Then forgebone arms encircled Ferghall’s own waist and something pricked his neck.

“Die, blue-blood!” he screamed as the world began to fade and the SOPHIIS fell away into his heart. He dropped to his knees and could only watch as a tall man clad in the furs and colors of Gens Nethress filled the door of the structure. His face was not old, but the gray discoloration in his hair and the depth of his eyes belied his apparent youth.

Then the world went black, and Ferghall slept with his SOPHIIS.