Aida glanced at Wake. "Got any good ideas?"

Aida glanced back at the Thorn in time to see tendril-like reach of the Thorn whip back to it usual position. The nauseating mirage-shimmer faded, leaving ranks-upon-ranks of Legionnaires. A sharp horn blasted and a thousand voices called out series of short shouts, each sound accompanied by a highly-drilled shift of men and weaponry. Shields interlocked, spears leveled, arrows nocked to bowstrings, and soldiers leapt atop armor-clad striders, readying lances and bows. Several distinctively-attired individuals peeled out from the flanks.

"Legion combat mancers," Wake said, nodding at them. "Arcers, shifters, dusas, and Vengers most likely."

Aida was grateful for the intervening several blocks of space between her and the phalanx they stared down. Looking at its dense pack of trained killers, gleaming armor, bristling spears, and interlocked shields, she had no wonder that formation had dominated battlefields for centuries back on Earth. That they'd apparently invented it separately here spoke even more to its efficiency.

The Legion's arrival finally stirred the locals past their absurdly-high threshold of interest. The trodding foot traffic slowed to a halt, the city folk all standing mutely to stare at this invading army.

"You led them here! Is this a trick?" the female voice of the Directory shouted. Maxem jogged back into view and, with a few curt commands, had their escort of cruder tank-knights clanking after her towards the still-jammed gate now swarming with what had to be engineers of some sort. The riflemen still manning the guard towards drew up and readied weapons.

"No trick!" Aida said, raising her hands. "Rent us the use of a few hundred of your tank-knights or Keens or whatever you call them and we'll clean this mess off your doorstep."

"We're not going to risk our neutrality by keeping you here," the male shouted. "Escort them to the gate!"

"Touch me and you die!" Aida snapped at the nearest of the sleeker tank-knights as they lowered their welding-mask visors and approached. Her strings thrummed to life. Ghillie's needles appeared and Ryk moved to flank her on the other side. Eth, randomly, strolled off into the crowd. With no one to tend her, the Valeer moaned and crumpled to a disheveled heap.

"Wake!" a female voice cried from the Legion. "Wake of Graves, Queen of Rags, I see you there."

They turned to see a tall Dynast in full Legion armor walk to the front of the waiting phalanx, her armor steel instead of bronze. A squad of heavily-armored ferals flanked her. The woman pointed a steel-tipped spear in their direction.

"Of all the Mon-spawned luck," Wake said. "Sava herself."

"Sava who?" Aida said, glancing between them. It was a relief to have a pissed off Dynast pointing weapons at someone else for a change.

"Dynast of Libriam," Wake said, unnecessarily as it turned out.

"Wake!" Sava shouted, her voice amplified somehow to boom louder than if she held a police megaphone. The faint hint of distortion in the tone sounded familiar. With a shock of recognition, Aida realized Sava had to be wearing strings too.

The Ancient Dynast continued. "You may have razed the Annalis and gotten all the menials of Libriam to rise in revolt with the Mother of Exile's name on their lips, but I captured a few of the freemancers and saboteurs you sent to burn my verse. I pried out that it was you who hired them, personally, before they died screaming."

"Get them out of my city," the female member of the Directory screamed.

Ryk stepped forward, light on his feet, his spear ready in his grip, and killing calm in his eyes as he regarded the nearest uber tank-knights. "Do you know what a Paragon is?"

By the stillness and silence that followed, they apparently did.

"They take another step towards us and I swear all of you will lie bleeding out on the unnatural stone of this street before I die."

The super tank-knights looked back towards the parasol-shrouded figures then among themselves while several members of the Directory shouted orders at them.

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Wake grabbed Aida roughly by the arm, her voice hoarse with urgency."Repeat what I say, exactly as I say it. Through your strings. I need to talk with Sava."

"Why me?" Aida said, trying unsuccessfully to peel off the woman's unnaturally strong grip. "You're bruising my arm."

"She won't be able to hear me from here, but she can hear you through your strings." Her grip strength reduced from crushing to merely painful. "Say it."

"Alright already, what?"

Aida became Wake's voice, repeating Wake's words as soon as she heard them. As she spoke, she felt more like a puppet for someone else's whims than even Eth made her feel.

"Sava of Libriam, Wake is indeed here beside me and she laughed to hear reports of the Annalis burning."

"Come out here and fight me, one against one!" Sava shouted, pacing before her army and clanging her spear-haft against her breastplate.

"Why should I demean myself to fight someone who isn't even legally a Dynast?" Aida-as-Wake called back, wondering at the words even as she spoke them. "We spent a special team to Annalis just to retrieve a few records you kept buried in the bowls of Dust before we burned it all. Birth records. Partaking records."

"Lies. All lies. Why would we keep such records?" Sava called back, but Aida shouted over her, motivated by the pain in her bicep. If Wake gripped any tighter, she'd break Aida's arm, Dynast or no.

"According to what we captured, your own age at Partaking wasn't the legally-required one-hundred years required to become a Dynast and rule a verse-"

"Wake, stop talking now or I swear-"

"-so why should I fight one-on-one against some up-jumped menial, illegally elevated to the Black Court?"

"Vale Legion, make ready!" Sava called to her troops. Another horn blasted, the troops shouted, and shields stacked in angles to protect the troops from gunfire from the walls. Aida doubted shields would do much against bullets, but probably helped psychologically.

"Not only that," Aida repeated as Wake whispered in her ear. "But we gathered the records for all the Ancients while we were there. You'd be surprised at how few of you are actually of age to be-"

While she had been talking, a straining fraction of Aida's attention had been listening to Eth. The Imminent had climbed atop a stalled-out, rusting steel truck-like contraption that had been rattling on tank treads down the street but halted when the foot traffic about it stalled.

Eth raised her arms towards the dumbfounded, still-mute crowds. "People of Ink! I know many of you have heard the stories of the Imminent meeting the first Vibrant before the Directory trapped you in these prison cities. They said the Mother would come and the Legion that followed would break the Directory."

"Stop her!" cried one of the Directory bigwigs, pointing a finger towards her. Another of them started to repeat the command, but one of Ghillie's needles suddenly sprouted from his bicep and the man fell from under the parasol clutching his arm.

The man wore sloppily-applied gray makeup. As he fell against the Directory member beside him, much smeared off, leaving half his face a dirty pinkish. These Directory members were fully-colored, fat, and healthy while all their people languished in enervated gray starvation?

"Give the command again and I swear you all die before I do," Ryk promised. The uber-Keens who'd lurched into motion again froze, looking back at their leaders.

"What you don't know is the Legion is just the tinder, you are the fire!" Eth cried to the staring crowds. At that moment, what had appeared to be bundles of sticks stacked upright on the tractor-truck-bed beside her shimmered into half-a-dozen wondrous men and women. Their flesh, hair, and clothing blended and shifted continually between every shade and hue of the rainbow.

"The Scions of Vivid live!" they all cried at once. At that moment, musket fire erupted from buildings all about, clanging off of Keen armor all about them. The Keens split instantly split into groups, some rushing the buildings, others grabbing Directory members and bodily hauling them off, and a few remainders moving to surround Aida and her companions.

"Not only that," Aida had boomed out to Sava just before the violence began and cut her off. "But we gathered the records for all the Ancients and you'd be surprised at how few of you are actually of age to be-"

"Silence her. Kill them all!" Sava shouted. A horn blasted, arrows flew, musket fire rippled from towers, the Keen's half-cannons roared, and the crowds churned in all directions. Some attacked the soldiers and Keens with bare hands or hunks of concrete ripped from the streets while others tried to flee in every direction.

Something like a Molotov cocktail winged from a nearby building and shattered against an uber-Keen, incidentally igniting the discarded Directory Parasols and sending the screaming Keen crashing into a nearby fellow.

"What the hell do we do now?" Aida shouted over the commotion, her strings vibrating hard against her throat.

Ryk shot her a quick, unreadable look as he sprinted off towards Eth. "Don't die."

"Great," Aida said, staggering aside as Ghillie slammed into her. An uber-Keen cannon went off a split second later, blasting holes through or pieces off half-a-dozen innocent bystanders behind her. Aida's responding shout hurled the soldier armor-and-all off his feet and slammed them into another Keen with enough force to dent armor and crack limbs.

"At least we don't ever have to worry about getting bored," she said as Ghillie pulled her to her feet.

Ghillie's eye corners crinkled, the tiny woman patted her on the cheek, and then they turned and fought for their lives.