Rage was tempered with purpose, subdued. The Eidolon stood over the hound’s carcass — a position he had been in too many times before. Steam rose from his arm, still clutching the sword, hot with blood and quicksilver slowly cooling in the dim biolight. The monster twitched and quaked, accelerated healing, attempting to stave off the fatal damage. But, unfortunately for the beast, it would not be enough this time.

  The Eidolon had been many things, but it was this that he claimed most resolutely as his identity — a killer — mutely aware of the sacrifice that was to come.

  His future? Well, he had none. He was doomed to the same fate as his predecessor, to die in the dark.

  Taneberr groaned, using his sabre to pry apart the wicked claws that kept him bound. The Eidolon offered a hand and pulled him to standing before they rushed around the fleshy mass of the beast’s disgorged tongue. Hurried, the Eidolon used a sword and a cloak-swaddled hand to pull at the meat. Taneberr seized it in his armoured grip, drawing upon his strength and weight to heave it back. They uncovered the gasping, fallen forms of Marchemm and Menmarch.

  More hands soon joined them, pulling the pinned warriors free together. Marchemm was deathly quiet, and Menmarch quaked with a severely damaged leg and broken ribs. Both recuperated slowly from the ferocious attack and the toxins in the beast’s saliva.

  “We have to get out of this place,” Menmarch muttered in pain, looking around with fear in his eyes.

  “Easy, my kin,” said the Eidolon, his voice calm and confident.

  The Eidolon knew they had made a mistake in following Tanebarr into the open. It was the only mistake they had made that night. Nevertheless, he was thankful for their survival and proud of their bravery today. The hand that he placed upon Menmarch’s shoulder was hard but warm.

  The brutal Taneberr held the Eidolon in quiet regard, not for the first time. But Sir Enhash scowled beneath his helmet, his attention on Marchemm, still heaving for air, kneeling amidst the bones of the square. Llewtoll stalked at a distance. The knight and the hunter were born survivors and would not join in the camaraderie.

  “We must get out of here,” Menmarch repeated, the sweat on his forehead and the blood on his armour glimmering in the biolight. He looked around again, bemoaning, “Everywhere is saturated with that… That sucking, corrosive, air…”

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  Sir Enhash clicked his throat, summoning the Eidolon’s attention. Their yellow eyes met in the dark, and the subordinate knight gestured to Marchemm, still collapsed in the filth, silent and shivering. A wet crunch filled the air as his arm fractured and reset itself. A gash grew under his helmet, weeping blood, then resealed itself. Tasting the infrared, the Eidolon saw that Marchemm was burning hot.

  “Phage,” Marchemm hissed, finally breaking his silence. Upon hearing him, the group seized with an anxious note, and all their eyes locked onto him.

  The Eidolon looked to Taneberr, who shook his head. Then, the Eidolon looked to Menmarch. He watched as the injured warrior crawled to his kin and put hands upon his slouched and feverish shoulders.

  “Brother,” Menmarch wept.

  Swallowing down his illness, Marchemm managed to put an arm over his twin’s shoulder, groaning wordlessly as the nano weapons tore his body apart and remade it, battling with his self-repair augmentations. Taneberr moved first, seizing Menmarch by his sides, lifting and dragging the injured warrior back.

  “No! No! Don’t you dare!” Menmarch cursed and wheezed, kicking the leg that he could.

  Despite that, the Eidolon moved to stand over Marchemm, who met him with eyes that filled with blood. Ignorant to the pleas of Marchemm’s twin, the Axiamati champion held the blade in his hand firm. The Eidolon knew well the curse of the phage. To try to live with a corrupt mutagen was worse than a death sentence.

  The phage was a tainted form of quicksilver that replicated itself uncontrollably, overtaking a host until it consumed the body’s oxygen to dangerously low levels, dulling the brain until only the basest senses remained. In the process, it drove lace and augment to malfunction in pursuit of automated survival.

  It never simply killed. At best, it led to eternal, comatose torment. At worst, it turned a freak into a hound, maddened with the pain and driven to devour or infect everyone around them.

  Taking a knee before the fallen warrior, the Eidolon uttered, “You know what I must do.”

  Even in his weakened state, Marchemm managed to nod. His spine seized, and his fists clenched, wracked with agony. The Eidolon took Marchemm’s head under his hand and embraced it to his naked belly. The infected vat-born groaned as his superior raised the blade.

  They all watched as the Eidolon carved off Marchemm’s head, sparing him this wicked fate. The gleaming blade severed the spine and the arteries, disconnecting augments and phage in his body from the neural lace in his head and ending his life. Blood fluted from his throat in terrible arcs, the quicksilver in it spiking and shuddering with a life of its own. All the while, the Eidolon held Marchemm close during his final moments, interrupted only by the desperate screams of his brother.