Though they were slow-witted ghouls, there was nothing slow about the way they trained their rifles on Kano, though they hesitated to fire on her. It was a shame, at least for them. Maybe they could’ve gotten a lucky shot.

Dashing the female ghoul’s skull against the wall, Kano grabbed her rifle. She fired at her companion one-handed, while her free hand guided his barrel to the side so that his bullets passed harmlessly by. Once both the guards had received sufficient perforation, Kano looked over her shoulder at the cowering Urick. “Well, come on.”

Scuttling forward, he discarded his old weapon for the far shinier one the guard had so recently made available. “Are we really going to just charge in through the front like this?”

Kano blinked, already halfway up the stairs to the first floor. “Yeah, why?”

“Isn’t that a bit, y’know, suicidal? This is a fortress, after all. Front assaults are exactly the sort of thing it’s designed to resist.”

Kano recalled it working fine during her liberation of Urick from that cleaning company he’d been working for, but maybe he had a point. She was down a force field, which could make things a little trickier. Fortunately, it took her all of a second to come up with a better plan. “Fine, if you’re so scared, then follow me. I know another way in.”

And follow her he did. Kano was touched. Blind obedience was such a wonderful thing. What wonderous being had seen fit to imbue ghouls with such a trait? It was a pity those she was here to rescue lacked that virtue. But it was too late to turn back now. She’d already gone to the trouble of coming all the way here.

Circling around the enormous building to the back, Kano sought out a patch of dirt seemingly no different than the ground around it. But as she tapped her heel in a peculiar pattern, the ground fell away, revealing a metal hatch. The ill-maintained mechanism squealed in protest as she pulled the hatch open and beckoned for Urick to join her as she descended into the tunnel beyond.

“How did you know about this?” Urick asked once they were both inside.

Kano paused. How did she know? When she’d been thinking of how to get inside, the knowledge had come to her unbidden, yet in a way that felt natural. “Shut up.”

Cracked and crumbling, the underground passage brought them to a large metal box beneath the citadel. Suspended at the bottom of a shaft, Kano assumed it was a similar mechanism to the one she’d encountered in Gresitosis’s lair.

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The doors opened at their approach, and not seeing any alternative, she stepped inside. The interior was sheer metal, absent any form of controls. After a few seconds, the doors closed, and their transport shuddered to life. The ascent started off slow, but it quickly accelerated until Kano struggled to keep her balance. Urick, on the other hand, clutched at the walls for support only to slam into the floor.

The car carrying them slid silently to a halt, and the doors opened. A warm yellow glow suffused the room beyond, lit by a series of lights set in the walls and ceiling. Most of the room was taken up by a huge glass tank filled with a gray rubbery-looking substance. As Kano approached, parts of the substance rippled behind the glass. The material wobbled and split open, revealing an array of beady little eyes that focused on the interlopers.

“What the fuck is that thing?” Urick asked, lingering by the entrance.

With a faint sense of wonder, Kano gazed at the strange being behind the glass and said, “I’m not sure, but it’s definitely something a necromancer made.”

“What? How can you be so sure?”

“I can’t quite remember how or why,” Kano said, staring into those strange little eyes, “but I’ve seen this thing before. Besides, who else would have made something like this?” She shook her head. This was all so complicated. But even amidst the confusion, she was certain this thing was familiar. Whatever it was.

“Can it understand us?” Urick asked, walking up and waving his hand from side to side in front of the tank.

“I think so. I’m not sure if it can hear us, but it can definitely see us.”

“Huh. So it has a brain, then?”

Kano shrugged. How was she supposed to know its anatomy? “I guess.”

A narrow limb extended from the central mass and tapped on the glass near Kano. At first she thought it was a greeting or some other sort of communication. But as the tapping continued, she realized it was trying to draw her attention to a series of switches on the side of the tank. Of the four, all but one were in the same position.

There was nothing to indicate what purpose the switches served, so Kano flipped the only one that wasn’t like the others. The tapping grew louder and more frequent. Maybe that was the wrong choice? Not knowing what else to do, Kano flipped all the switches.

The gray being’s limb melted back into its form, and one by one its eyes closed. Kano was wondering if she’d killed it when waves spread across the creature’s surface. Spots of color flowered across its formerly drab exterior until there wasn’t a speck of gray left. Now it gleamed beneath the lights, awash in a mad riot of colors. Whatever it was doing, it was making a hell of a show out of it.

A small portion of the exterior bubbled and writhed, and a figure rose. Other than its strange texture and multicolored hue, it was a facsimile of Kano. At least above the waist. Below, its body merged into the larger whole from which it sprung. Leaving a trail of the colorful substance it was made of behind, the figure flowed forward until it reached the edge of the tank.

“Can you hear me?” Kano asked, wonderstruck. Her double nodded, and she continued. “Who are you?”

Their lips parted as if to speak, but no sound came forth. It closed its mouth and tried again. The word that came forth was quiet and raspy, nothing like her voice at all, but understandable. “Kano.”