Sadea finished her candy bar, then reached for another. She popped open her water canteen and took a few swigs between bites. The confines of the manufactory were laden with the chimera’s psychic spoor, even to her dull and poor mage-sight. If she were any good at all in psychic tracking, she would have had no trouble at all finding the creature and slaying it.

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But she wasn’t. Neither was she good at a lot of things most other sorcerers were at least competent in, like basic telepathy, scrying, or biomancy. Hell, she wasn’t even that good at telekinesis. Doctor Horatius’s surgeries had seen to that.

But they’d also given her an unparalleled capacity for evoking and shaping lightning to do her will. Living artillery, the doctor’s friend, Father Diocletius had once called her. The doctor hadn’t been too pleased about that, and he’d rebuked the priest sharply, insisting that Sadea was not just a weapon.

She was his child, if not in blood, then by love and regard.

Sadea growled as she noticed that her upper lip was trembling. Nearly a decade had gone by, and not one day had passed without her missing him. She wiped her eyes with the back of her glove, tossed her candy bar wrappers on the floor, and put away her water canteen.

No time for such sentimental nonsense, not now.

There was another gift Horatius had left her. The chimera was wounded, yes, but all the licking in the world wouldn’t do its wounds any good now. Creatures infused so strongly with the raw energies of the Ethereal Tides were on the cusp of demonhood. They had strong regenerative capabilities, capable of healing the most grievous wounds or even re-growing lost body parts.

If the chimera had survived being caught in cannon fire or put through a storm of blades, it would recuperate within several hours. But the more unearthly and unnatural something was, the more Sadea’s lightning would hurt it and leave behind wounds that would never heal.

Not without fresh blood, meat, and horror, anyway. Something like the chimera fed on psychic agony as much as it did on flesh.

With practiced ease, Sadea muted her psychic presence. As far as ethereal senses could tell, she was no more alive than the permacrete walls.

Then, humming quietly, she began trailing the workers, who, in her mage-sight, had congealed into an anxious, muttering blob reeking of fear and unwashed flesh as they made their way to the manufactory’s pantry.

What should I do first after I get paid? A perfumed bath. Mani and pedicure, yes. There were those earrings I saw the other day in Javier’s Emporium. New dress would be nice, too. Sadea smiled, picturing herself rolling around on a luxurious bed, preferably with one of the really expensive male courtesans from the Pink Orchid brothel.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

The walk to the pantry was quite long, giving her ample time to both indulge in her fantasies and fight off thoughts about paying her debts.

Ugh. Maybe I should just leave the province. But then I don’t want to deal with debt collectors. They’re the worst. Sadea groaned. Don’t want to end up in some smelly backwater, either.

Right on cue, just as the workers arrived at the pantry, fanned out, and began searching for food, the screams began once more, followed by the chimera’s unholy chorus of roaring, bleating, and hissing. Sadea jogged lightly toward the carnage. Can’t start a fight all out of breath, right?

She pushed open the pantry door, a thin sheet of pasteboard, and was greeted with the sight of the chimera’s serpentine head swallowing what could only be Leal’s dismembered torso. The forewoman’s head was in the goat’s mouth, and the lion head was chewing on her limbs.

“Alas, sweet lady, I barely knew you. Didn’t really want to, anyway.” Sadea raised her war-staff. Once more, cobalt-hued lighting burst into existence about the tips of its crescent head. “Alright, could you please die now? I really don’t want to be here when I could be on top of some pretty boy from the Pink Orchid Brothel instead.”

The serpent head swallowed Leal’s torso with what she would swear was adamant spitefulness. The goat head crunched down wetly on the forewoman’s skull. Sadea could see some of the weeping, discolored flesh about its body start to heal.

Cursing, she hurled a globe of crackling lightning at the chimera, strong enough to dissipate its component atoms. Grow back from that, you little shit.

The goat head reared and spat slivers of broken skull from its mouth, but it hadn’t been aiming at Sadea. Instead, the bone fragments punched into the tin pipes running across the pantry ceiling. Clouds of steam gushed forth from the punctured vessels to suffuse the entire room.

Wreathed in vaporized water, Sadea’s lightning globe fell apart into showers of sparks that discharged harmlessly against the bare permacrete floor.

“What the…” Sadea barely had time to voice her shock before she had to throw herself aside to avoid the chimera’s lunge.

The creature sailed past her and crunched down on a worker instead. Its lion head tore out the hapless man’s throat with languid casualness, while the goat and serpent heads turned their gaze to Sadea.

“Shit.” She called more lightning to life, but it began to fall apart under the steam almost as quickly as it gathered about her war-staff. “Shit shit shit.”

The chimera wheeled its massive frame to face her, the coils of its torso bending into an arc to corral her off from the pantry’s only entrance. A strange sound, not unlike short, shallow breaths interspersed with tongue-clicking, began to emanate from all three of its heads, and it didn’t take long for her to recognize it as the creature’s laughter.

Sadea swept her gaze around frantically for a route, any route out of the steam-filled room. She darted to the left, only to halt in her tracks as the goat’s jaws clicked close on empty air less than an inch from her face. Shuffling left only forced her into an undignified sprawl to avoid the serpent’s fangs. And then she had to scramble backward on her hands and knees before the chimera’s feline paw came down her head.

The creature’s laughter rose in volume. After cornering her, it could have killed her in an instant. Instead, it was now toying with her. And enjoying it.

“Yeah, laugh while you still can,” Sadea growled. She clutched her scarf with her free hand and called on its enchantment once more. As the web of cobalt light wrapped itself around her body, the chimera lunged, evidently sensing that something was amiss. The fangs of its lion head actually managed to brush against her neck before her flesh fell away into sparks.