Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS

I slammed into the ground like a wet sack of rice, barely able to react in time to shift my form and reduce the damage I would take. I cursed as I crawled to my feet, glancing back to the titan, and the immortal standing upon its metallic frame. A vast field of mist expanded around him, fighting for purchase in the air with the titan’s shroud of flickering miasma. Wisely, I began to flee.

As I did, I took stock of my wounds. The Hadal Clan’s Supreme Elder had only attacked me twice, neither of which had taken much of his power to attempt. Moreover, he did not even bother to attack me with his own body. Given the speed at which he had arrived at the titan, it was clear that I would have been in trouble if he did.

Ultimately, I had survived intact simply due to luck. Or perhaps, I thought, ‘intact’ might have been an overstatement. My body was darkened with bruises and scrapes, the damage caused both by my fall and by my exposure to the intense flickering miasma. It was difficult to assess the extent, but the worst of it might take weeks to fully heal. Still, none of my bones appeared to have shattered, and my eyes were intact. Though I had already grown tired, I was still more than equipped to carry on.

I wondered whether my dantians might have been damaged if they still existed. Perhaps the best part of becoming a spirit refiner of the formless path was that we lacked physical cores in the same sense that others did. It would be easier to kill me than it would be to destroy one of my cores.

As I shook the worst of the pain off and made my way down the street, Rachel appeared before me suddenly, a concerned expression on her face.

“I’m sensing a lot of damage to your skin and muscles. Are you alright?”

I shrugged, continuing to march away from the battle behind me. I suspected that Du Qin would be the victor, and there was a chance he would take the time to kill me if I was still near when he

“How are the others?” I asked, willfully changing the subject. Rachel gave me a knowing look, as if sensing my motives, but gracefully accepted the diversion. She knew as well as I did that we had yet to achieve our goals here.

“Irid has yet to reach the location, I feel you should meet up with her, if you’re truly uninjured. Karie… She's fine for now.” She shook her head, something flashing across her eyes. “I did not anticipate that situation.”

“Where’s the Shade?” I asked.

Rachel gave me a smile that somehow seemed almost like a grimace.

“The traces suggest that she’s inside the hangar. Be careful, Cyrus. It’s undoubtedly a trap of some kind.”

I glanced across the gap, past the lotuses that almost seemed to be parasitizing the titan, to the destroyed factory where I had fought with Keitel, and the aperture in the stack’s side where the titan had emerged. I agreed with Rachel’s concerns. Was it truly wise to go inside of there? I almost felt as if I were a rat stepping into the trap.

Ultimately, I wondered, how much did I want Janottka to be dead? She was a threat, certainly, and we had found evidence that she might have been manipulating public opinions to her advantage, but the Shade had only fought with us directly on one occasion. Perhaps it was possible for us to come to an accord.

I scoffed as I dashed for the next bridge across. There would be no accord, that I knew. Ultimately, the Redwater Sect’s sole advantage against the other underworld forces was the power that Rachel’s presence provided. And Janottka was possibly the only being in the system who could threaten her information systems hegemony.

I sprinted through the sea of flowers and purple mist, feeling it grind into me as if I had scraped myself on an abrasive metal sponge. It took mere moments to cross the expanse, but my skin must have been even more irritated than before. I idly wondered just how awful I must have appeared at that moment.

The enforcer had yet to move far from its emergence point, so the open aperture was still there, barely a floor and a half beneath the devastated factory where we had first found the Hadal Clansmen.

As I took the flights of stairs upwards to reach the landing above the aperture, I circled the final pillar to find the form of Irid standing there, as if she had been awaiting my arrival. Unlike myself, she remained in good condition, though her robes and hair were slightly mussed, implying she had been in combat.

I met her eyes, and wordlessly nodded, giving her a positive hand signal. She smirked, bared her pointed teeth, and returned the motion. As humanoids who shared a homeworld, there were ways for us to communicate without words, and that short exchange had allowed us to share everything that we needed to.

Waiting no time, I leapt the railing in one bound. My hands gripped tightly to its metallic shape as I subsequently swung myself back towards the stack and into the shadowed aperture. For a moment I was swallowed by darkness, but my eyes quickly adjusted to the hangar’s lighting as I landed softly onto the pads of my feet.

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Glancing around, I found that the room was far larger than I had expected, and was lit by both red emergency lighting and the orange glow of flickering miasma that had yet to dissipate. Though it was composed of metal and stone like the majority of Tseludia Station, it was clear from just a glance that the materials of the room’s construction had been created by the Celans rather than the Staiven. Slate-colored metal walls wrapped in cords which leaked orange mist covered the cavernous space, which was centered around a heavy bronze structure that appeared to be a cradle the titan might have rested in. A small fence surrounded a dip in the floor beneath the cradle, separating the walking area from the workspace, what might have once been the domain of the vast machine’s technicians.

When we arrived, I found two Celans waiting for us. One of them was leaning against the railing, her lengthy hair untied and draped behind her. She was thin for a Jobu, looking more like a Merris, and her hair was an unnatural shade of bright pink. Beside her was another Celan, but I found myself easily able to recognize the city’s sole Magister.

As the two stood together, it almost felt as if I were looking at a young couple. The pink and blue of their respective hair seemed to match, as if the two were making a statement against societal norms. But the mood between them did not seem to fit, and more importantly, I could not sense the woman’s soul. Every sense told me she was there, but there was no trace of her spirit. My mind went to Rachel’s case, and I wondered whether this, too, was an illusion. No matter what, I thought, I was surely glancing at a Shade. She smiled upon noticing our approach, like a child who had spotted an interesting toy to play with.

”It’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh, Cyrus,” she said. Beside her Triezal remained silent, a sour expression on his face.

I frowned. She was speaking as if we had previously spoken through some other means, but Rachel had always been the one who communicated with her.

Watching my reaction, Janottka laughed, and with a broad smile, answered my unspoken question.

“No, this isn’t the first we’ve spoken, Cyrus. Do you not remember?”

I frowned, pausing to think for a moment, but quickly realized that I had no such memories. My people rarely made a practice of dying their hair, and even the Celans would generally not dye theirs in such a strange color. I was fairly confident that I had never met her before. Rachel had not even bothered to show me her image, and had been confident that her true form appeared nothing like it.

Rachel’s thought had been shared with my own. I still did not quite understand. How could she have possibly traveled the station with a form so large? Any Staiven or martial artist passerby would have noticed the oddity of her lack of a soul at a glance. Had she been staying within Little Celah? But if that was the case, how did she get there from the Spacedock?

The questions faded from my mind as Janottka gave me another knowing smirk. Suddenly, her body contorted in a disturbing manner as humanoid form shimmered with a reflective silver, and almost seemed to begin to dissolve. She toppled over, limbs shivering and splitting apart. All exposed skin shifted its color as I witnessed chitin form and crack, pale gray hairs starting to grow out beneath them. She had soon the form of the Hadal Clan’s Leader, as I had seen him during our video call just a few weeks before.

“What happened to our deal?” laughed the old man. “Weren’t we going to attack the Ceirrans together?”

She was speaking with his voice, and I found it odd to hear the tone of voice befitting a young woman emerge from the Leader’s wizened form. Was the Heirs’ Leader already dead? How long had it been since she replaced him? Concerned, I pursed my lips, delivering no response as I dashed forwards, my sword singing as it rushed through the air.

Her form rippled, shifting back to her humanoid appearance, but Janottka’s hand, raised to guard herself, was too slow. My blade flashed with a powerful blow that took advantage of my speed, pressing with all my might as I moved, unwilling to take her lightly. Janottka smiled and laughed, as if she were excited to accept the blade, but her fingers missed its path by mere inches. The blade’s edge caught her mid-change and clanged against the skin of her forehead. The vibration resonated up my arm as the sword fractured in my grasp, unable to handle the collision, and the fragments littered the ground around us. It felt as if I had impacted a hard metal bulkhead, rather than a humanoid being.

So this was what it meant to fight a machine, I thought, taking several steps backwards in shock. Was she composed of metal beneath her skin? I glanced at the wound on her forehead, but saw that it had already healed over, as if nothing had ever happened to it. I frowned, desperately trying to think of a way to deal with her without a weapon.

Beside me, Irid made her move as well, and a sheet of black mist exploded out from her, causing me to wobble on my feet. It pushed back the thinning orange glow from the area, filling the region with an overpowering gloom. Irid faded into the mist.

From the corner of my eye, I watched as Triezal stretched his arms wide, allowing a pair of finely crafted Celan pistols to fall into them. My fists raised up in a threatening stance as I faced off against the two aliens. No matter how much of a threat they were, I thought, this could not possibly be more dangerous than what was happening outside.

Upon that thought, I felt the stone beneath my feet rumble as the stack shifted slightly, and I charged towards the pink-haired Shade thoughtlessly, trusting in my ability to adapt to the situation. So what if I lacked a sword? I was a spirit refiner. My body itself was the weapon.

The Celan and Epon Celan Disparity: [It is said that in all fields but one, the current Celan civilization has yet to surpass their ancestors, the Epon Celan civilization. The Epon Celans were masters of mundane technology, said to be the greatest in all of Telles at the time. But their miasmic technology had fallen behind, which left them vulnerable to the weapons of the Khalak’Ora. For this reason, the natures and abilities of a Celan Shade seem strange and near impossible to most mortals. Their most exceptional innovations were in fields whose use is illegal under Pantheonic law- nano-scale machinery and artificial intelligence.]