“Do you remember me?”

That voice was like nails scraping at Luke’s soul. If you asked him, it belonged to the mythological Bane, a dreadful monster of destruction that ravaged every corner of Asundria and sought the end of all life. Legends said it was vanquished long ago by Cardinalis, strongest and mightiest of the Flocks, but the legends have never heard that voice.

Luke blinked away tears, grabbing at the hand wrapped around his head. His gaze passed over an eerie smile that curled higher and bared teeth.

“Oh, you’re definitely what I think you are. I wonder where that snake of a father hid you. Up in the rafters, perhaps?”

His entire world turned blue, a circular fan of ice marked in the middle by a single bottomless black pit that surely led Below.

He didn’t remember screaming, only that he did. He pulled as much Red into his arms as would fit, shoving his nightmare back with the force of all his fury and fear. The Bane fell on his backside— after flying several feet— with a look of pure shock in those frost-colored eyes.

Still screaming, he stepped— no, crashed, impacting the dirt with a Red-fueled foot— and readied a punch. The colors streaked like lightning across his arm and brightened as they were concentrated. He imbued his entire arm with as much hate as he possibly could.

There was shouting and screaming and movement and chaos all around him. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was turning this vile creature into paste.

He pounded forward with his other foot and threw the punch. At the last moment, someone shielded the Bane. A man in a vivid purple tuxedo coat, arm raised defensively. Bone audibly splintered and the man’s arm fell away, bent at an impossible angle.

A heartbeat later, he heard glass shatter to the side. Thinking quickly, he blinked Yellow. Glittering specks of Green flowed through the man’s body. Unlike Luke, it did not originate from his chest, but rather a single point on his other arm.

With astonishing speed, the man thrust his other arm forward, two fingers extended. He thumped Luke’s exposed elbow with them, delivering a jolt that left him stunned, fist breaking into numbed fingers.

The man blurred, roundhouse kicking Daniels down into the dirt as he reached for his spear. He spun back around to Luke and disabled his other arm with another jolt. Arm blurring, he struck Luke in the shoulder using an open-palmed push, knocking him down.

“Enough, Calliphlox!” the Bane snapped, rising. He fumbled a hand into his coat pocket, searching for something. “Deal with that!”

Metal met metal with a thunderous ringing.

———

The Shadow crossed Hagetaka with a medium-length straight sword that seemed to materialize from nowhere. He’d drawn it so quickly Typhos could barely understand where it came from— a hidden sheath pressed against the man’s thigh, carefully tucked behind a belt buckle.

Typhos’s hood fell back as he whipped forward, pulling away and testing another angle, trying to exploit the Shadow’s disability. Again, his blade connected with steel. He tried again and again, and each time, the man named after a god met his advances with perfect precision.

How can he be this skilled with only one arm? Typhos thought in frustration. And so fast. Was he trained in one-armed combat? He had never met a man with such reflexes. It was as if he could read movements from the first twitch of a muscle.

To test his theory, Typhos began adding feints to his barrage of attacks. It was so subtle a novice wouldn’t be able to tell— but the man named Calliphlox did slow down a feather.

Their deathly dance of steps and reverse steps, slashes and parries, ducking and weaving drew the two a small distance to the side of the others. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed Master Vega decking that Daniels fellow back onto the ground.

That tiny lapse in concentration was all it took for the Shadow to graze his shoulder with a sudden jab evaded too slowly. He planted his feet firmly and began his counterattack, feinting and thrusting, making full use of the tachi’s advantage in range.

The embers of emotion that spurred him into action vanished into the vacuum constructed inside his head. There, in the heat of battle, he found the solace; the peace. There was nothing else. No past, no future. No life or death. Only the moment.

The Shadow’s concentration deepened as they fought. He could see it on the man’s face; the creased brow, the way his analytical eyes no longer darted everywhere at once, the tightening of his lips. For that man as well, motivations and loyalties and reason and purpose were discarded. There was only the moment.

His feet were planted firmly, always moved deliberately. His stance was that of a slight crouch, left side angled toward the Shadow to make his chest a smaller target and the tachi’s reach longer.

Every heartbeat a decision was made. Sweep here, thrust there, counter this, dodge that. The execution of their chosen moves was masterful. It was just a matter of making the right ones.

They locked blades, both baring teeth and straining knuckles. Typhos was of smaller stature, but their power was comparable with the man’s fresh disability. No, reflexes would decide this duel. Yet his were far worse. It was a conundrum. He would lose. No. Wait. There was a way.

Typhos broke the lock aggressively, sliding across his opponent’s sword in a shower of coruscating sparks, forcing the Shadow into a response. The man diverted the strike and riposted. He evaded the thrust and brought his blade back to parry the follow-up slash.

The Shadow attempted to knee him in the gut. He anticipated this and withdrew one step, sucking in his stomach to avoid the blow by a fraction of an inch. He feinted reaching for a belt dagger. The purple-coated man slammed the straight sword against Hagetaka to knock it out of his hands. He stabilized the hilt with both hands just in time.

Fast as the Flocks! Typhos thought, incredulous. Calliphlox indeed! But the exchange taught him the timing needed. Sweat beaded down his forehead. He could pull it off.

The Shadow darted to the side, sweeping wide with a low kick. Typhos drove his foot into the Shadow’s leg to counter it. Hagetaka ripped through the space between them in a beautiful, deadly arc ending at the man’s throat. The tachi found the straight sword’s crossguard instead. Still turning from the momentum of the kick, the Shadow threw his shoulder at Typhos in an attempt to ram him. He stepped to the side to evade. When the man’s foot next came down he restored his balance with the grace of a god, meeting Hagetaka’s overhead slash with the straight sword once more.

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Their blades locked again, Typhos pushed past sparks, intending to part the Shadow’s head from his shoulders. The Shadow riposted, lifting Hagetaka up with all his strength to create an opening for a downward thrust that could not possibly be met in time.

In that moment, Typhos released the tachi as if the force had knocked it from his grip. He flung his hands to his belt and came up with two obsidian-edged daggers, a maneuver practiced tens of thousands of times. One to stop the sword’s advance, another to bury in his foe. He felt the edge shatter against the straight sword’s tempered steel, but that was of no concern. The second dagger pierced cloth and flesh and plunged right through the Shadow’s lung. Hagetaka thumped the dirt as he drew the dagger out, its black edge slick with blood.

The Shadow kneed him the gut. It was so incongruent with what he expected he couldn’t avoid it in time. A stain began to darken that purple tuxedo coat as he kicked Typhos hard in the thigh. He grunted from the pain, meeting straight sword with bloodied dagger. He could feel the weapon giving way and feinted with glancing eyes and a bend of the ankles a desperate lunge for Hagetaka. The obsidian edge cracked as the Shadow swept a leg out to reposition the tachi. He slammed a boot down on the hilt to stop it from moving and threw himself out of the sword’s way. He tossed the first dagger aside and dug his toe under the hilt, kicking it up into his free hand as he swung the other dagger against the incoming slash. The sword shattered the second dagger to pieces and kept going— meeting one-handed Hagetaka and knocking it aside before Typhos could discard the dagger and get a second hand on it.

That was that, then. He was dead. The Shadow’s slash had arrived so fast. Unbelievable. It was as if the very wind guided this man’s path.

In a final, truly desperate act he threw himself at the Shadow, hoping to embed the obsidian shards clinging to the dagger’s hilt inside the man’s other lung. Of course he knew it would be parried, but he’d drawn too close and could not evade the sword defenseless. The only hope now was that he would choke on his own blood in their last exchange.

The man called Calliphlox swept Typhos’s legs out from under him, avoiding the exchange entirely. He flipped the sword into a reverse grip and kicked him over. He drove the blade point-first through the back of his palm into the dirt, eliciting a scream. He swept the dagger aside and forced Typhos all the way down with a knee to the back. He let go of the sword buried in the earth and grappled Typhos’s other arm into a lock. He lifted his knee and slipped the arm underneath, pinning wrist to back. He would allow him neither last exchange nor death.

He craned his neck and watched the Shadow reach for his ankle and come up with a hollow needle. He dextrously flipped it around his fingers and jammed it between his ribs to reinflate his collapsed lung. This without so much as a whimper. Did he feel nothing? Not even pain?

He was, Typhos realized, the greatest weapon in all of Cathartes.

———

Luke groaned, writhing on the ground. It was hard to breathe. His entire body felt like prickling pins.

“Enjoy that,” the blue-eyed Bane said, holding a needle-tipped syringe. “It’s a paralyzing agent.” He grunted the last word, kicking Daniels— lying on the ground— hard in the ribs with a thick black boot.

The captain cried out, arms tight around his torso to protect his insides. He’d lost easily. At some point he’d drawn his spear but it was battered away by the Bane like a toy from an unruly child.

Cyrus had fallen to his knees further up the street. He held himself up on feeble arms, staring down at the dirt, lips moving in either prayer or denial. Why wasn’t he running?

As if in answer, James slammed to the earth, the clattering of steel ended. His brother let out a scream as the purple-suited man nailed him through the palm. Luke would have winced if his face could still move that much. He’d never seen James lose a fight to anybody.

“It is done, Master Vega,” the man said, knee planted firmly on James’s back. He shoved his brother cheek-first into the dirt. Blood was soaking through the tuxedo coat, but his voice was refined, breathing steady, expression serene as if the stain were a leak in his watergourd.

Vega dusted off his charcoal-colored coat, shining a button with the back of a finger. He cleared his throat quite dramatically, unable to keep the featherless bastard grin off his face.

“Brother, yes?” Vega asked. Luke tried to kill him by staring a hole through his head, but it didn’t work. “The resemblance is quite striking. I thought we’d settled this, Ty? Cathartes is your family. No other.”

“He’s not my brother,” James said through pained gasps and clenched teeth. “Please, Master Vega. I didn’t know he survived.”

“Sounds like you know him to me,” he said, replacing the syringe and shuffling around a different pocket for something else.

“He’s nobody,” James breathed. Everyone else was terribly quiet. “Nobody, Master Vega. You’ll never see him again.”

“I sure won’t,” Vega said lightly, drawing a thunderflute. He pointed it down at Luke’s heart. The face from his nightmares smiled at him.

“Please, master,” he begged, hyperventilating. “Please. Please.”

Flocks. This was it. Luke shut his eyes and saw old man Snare, smiling, welcoming him home, chastising him for going on such a foolish adventure. Kindly Hanami and chivalrous Hou were there to greet him.

The last things he heard were the rushing of wind and the bang like burning bamboo from his dreams. A terrible pain unlike any other blossomed in his chest and everything ended.

———

Deen’s spirit broke as he watched Luke die, the thunderflute piercing his heart in a sickening spray of blood, flecks of red scattered on the wind like grisly petals. Luke, who’d he sworn to protect. He’d failed again. His life had been nothing but a series of failures.

He would leave Lyla a widow. She would never know, always uncertain whether or not he would return one day. She would never have peace again in her life. All because of him. She would… She…

What was that wind?

Deafened by the bang, he could still faintly hear it rushing. It battered everyone, whipping hair and clothes and dust all around in a gale. The wind and dust became a roaring column, crashing down on them and blowing Vega and Deen back.

In the middle of the column, a figure fell from the sky. They landed in a crouch, one hand to the ground. They were slim, wearing a black cloak and completely wrapped from head to toe in generous white bandages that revealed not a strand of hair nor a scrap of skin, only a set of gleaming golden eyes. Deen thought it must be one of the Twelve Flocks given shape, come to perform a miracle.

Whoever it was met Deen’s eyes and pointed at the saddled horse. Vega— his face gone slack— aimed the thunderflute at Deen’s head, but as he fired it with a bang, his arm jerked from an intense gust and missed, the projectile veering out of sight. It was the most incredible thing Deen had ever seen. Vega gripped his forearm to steady his aim, this time at the bandaged figure. He was barking something, and the man named Calliphlox lifted himself off of Luke’s brother.

Deen shook himself out of his reverie and snatched up his spear, then grabbed Cyrus by the hand and yanked him into a run. Two more deafening pops split the air to hasten their step.

They stumbled to a stop before the horse, anxiously trembling with eyes rolled. That wasn’t good. They might have to abandon it and try their luck on foot. It was a grim premise, this far from civilization. Cyrus suddenly reached out a hand and stroked the horse’s snout, saying something he couldn’t hear with his ears still ringing.

He spent a few precious seconds watching their savior. The bandaged figure warded off both attackers with blasts of wind, determined not to let either one get their footing. He returned his attention to the horse, and found that Cyrus had managed to soothe it.

Cyrus climbed on, motioning for Deen to get behind him. He wasn’t about to complain— he’d ridden before, but not without a bridle. He decided if Cyrus thought he could do it, that was that. He grabbed hold of Cyrus’s hand to boost himself up and took an unsteady seat. He wrapped his arms around the boy for stability. Cyrus picked up the lead and gestured. He severed it from the pole with the tip of his spear.

Cyrus leaned down, prompting the horse with his knees, and they began to ride. The last Deen saw of Cherima was that cloaked figure bending, cradling Luke’s corpse, and springing into the sky.