Chapter 34 - God Flash

This is a story that begins with grain.

Not the relentless monoculture of the agri-domes, with the modern advantages of genetically-modified feedstock and colossal production zones controlled by gigantic macro-processors. No antibiotic treatments or dispatch flyers for crop-dusting, no harvester leviathans prowling the gray fields with whirring blades and dirigible-drones for mass extraction-

But grain, all the same. Sheathed in inedible husks, pounded by pestle and mortar - Great hollowed-out tree trunks, higher than the pounders themselves.

Imagine: Raising the pestle. Letting it fall, catching it after it crushes the gritty covering, but before it smashes the grain. Over and over again, day and night.

World without end.

Hard work. Backbreaking work. Grinding, pounding: Some of the heaviest tasks that could ever be undertaken, in this age. But necessary, all the same - For the mills belonged to the nobles, and the fees charged were as high as they could make them.

For years, that must have been his life. Come rain, or snow, or sun: Watching the rise and fall of the pestle, between threshing and tossing the seed, splitting logs and drawing water. Feeding the scabby animals, silently praying that the wheat would rise in time, for the alternative was starvation.

Hard years, unrelenting and monotonous. Working the soil, until one joined it.

Did he curse the life he'd been born into? Growing up, staring at grain, knowing that there was nothing beyond it.

The revelation must have come to him, in the end. The focus, the intensity, to see each individual grain falling and knowing where it would land. Pounded into him with each repetition, until it came as naturally as breathing.

The sword must have found him, somehow. The sword, and his gift.

An old blade, hung above the mantelpiece. Kept oiled and sharp, for the day when black figures came out from the treeline - torches flickering in the gloom - to burn and pillage.

Or perhaps it was a remnant of some war, somewhere. A cheap sword, poorly-balanced, with a rattling blade and a hilt that turned in his hand.

Or maybe it was some ancient hide-scraper, one that had passed from hand-to-hand, traded for drink or a hot meal or relief from a debt.

But in his hands, it had made him invincible. The world had turned, and - With perfect clarity - he had seen the new possibilities that awaited him. The path ahead, and all that came with it.

In the silver gleam of that long-ago blade, he had seen his future.

And so the boy had become a lean, bronzed man, strong of limb and quick of eye, and the farmer had become a swordsman.

As the saying went: Every man has but one destiny.

The blade's name was Hydra-Slayer.

Like all weapons from YGGDRASIL, it carried its own radiant mythology. If you had the eye for it - the eye, and the patience - you could read (in neat, ten-point placeholder text) its procedurally-generated, algorithmically-arranged past.

In an era before the Great Scattering, it had been the blade of Vairocana the Frenzied. He had quenched its peerless edge in the blood of friend and foes alike, carving his way to a bestial enlightenment - Until the day Vairocana the Frenzied had become Vairocana the Transcendent One, and set the trappings of his warrior past aside.

With a single stroke, it could cleave a man's head from his neck without slowing. It had tasted so much death that the blade's vicious spirit amplified the wielder's own speed, granting him a measure of Vairocana's peerless skill.

But when the last server shut down, when the lights had gone out for the last time, Hydra-Slayer had faced its inevitable fate. Doomed to languish forever in someone's Item Box, along with the forgotten curios of an adventure that never ended, but would never continue.

But Hydra-Slayer was not lost to the world, not at all.

Before the brutalities of localization, it had an older, truer name: Orochi.

That was the name it bore, when it passed into Brain Unglaus' hands.

He'd crossed the desert, in the end. Long, torturous months beneath the pitiless sun, facing hunger, thirst and horror: For there was little left of the Greed Kings and their great works, except the strange places, poisoned mountains, odd forests and deep tunnels, filled with long-forgotten dangers and the echoes of that long-ago cataclysm.

The great empire of the Greed Kings, which had seemed poised to conquer the world, had perished as utterly as the Eight themselves. Not so their capital, Eryuentiu - In spite of everything, it had endured.

A metropolis thrived in the long shadow of that flying city, in seeming defiance of the fall. The denizens styled themselves the lords of what remained, inheritors of a proud legacy - But in truth they were merely squatters, picking through the ruins for scraps of treasure and ancient lore.

What they found, they hoarded. The greatest of the ancient relics were beyond the dreams of avarice, but - for the right price - lesser wonders could change hands.

It was less a journey, and more of a pilgrimage. For only the most determined, the most driven, could have come all this way. Walking in the steps of the Thirteen Heroes, retracing the paths they'd taken, between the winding dunes.

But in the end, he'd arrived. A stranger amongst strangers, far from home. There, beneath the disdainful eyes of the eternal guardians - their ornate weapons charged with the sick light of a lost age - he had begun his search.

The curiously-curved blade he'd purchased, with gold earned from years of bloody work, must have seemed like a treasure beyond belief. A lesser marvel, but a miracle still.

There was a genius in its working. An echo of the inhuman - some would say more than human - skill known only to the Greed Kings and their servants.

To look at it was to fear it. To see it in the hands of a man who could use it, like Brain, was to understand the mind that had made it. Razor-sharp, a perfect arc of mirror-bright steel, it sang in his hands. Humming through the air with the quiet keening that only a peerless edge makes.

Smooth as grey silk.

A warrior's dream: A beautiful, exquisitely-balanced killing blade.

A matchless weapon - Perfection, in plain, shining steel.

And then he'd made his way back to E-Rantel, back to Re-Estize, and found that a greater weapon had been waiting for him all along.

It must have been something of a shock. A jest worthy of the Great God of Wind, who takes with one hand and gives with the other.

Beside Orochi, the Eryuentiuian blade must have felt raw and cheap and crude - Like something hammered out from pot-metal, barely capable of holding a decent edge. Barely worthy of the name.

He'd accepted, of course. Any swordsman would have done the same.

It was, after all, a weapon from a different age. All this time, in his search for strength, he had been searching for a fragment of forgotten genius: Now, the thing entire had been delivered unto his grasp.

And - to the best of my knowledge - it was only the first of the gifts. Others had followed, one after another. The bracers that steadied the hands and imparted an unhesitating speed; the scabbard that granted any sword the genius of sharpness, an edge that cut through the higher metals like a knife through parchment.

The ring that turned his already-formidable will to iron.

The tinctures that made his limbs surge with cold strength.

He must have had his suspicions, of course. A sense that he was being primed for something, positioned with the insect calculation of a player moving a piece across the board.

Had he known, even then, the shape of his destiny?

The men of the Death-Spreading Brigade may have - hesitantly, for they feared him as much as they needed him - raised the question:

"I don't know, Brain. This might be dangerous-"

He must have smiled, back then. Wryly - A little world-weary, a little arrogant, with a swagger he didn't truly feel.

"So am I," he must have said.

"-So am I."

We faced each other in the infinite, now.

The moon had come out from behind the clouds. Smoke streaked the sky, a grey pall backlit by the harsh glow of distant flame. Bodies, torn and broken, scattered like so much cordwood. Steam rising from their wounds, like souls wending heavenward. The moans of the wounded and the dying, fading - slowly, ever-so-slowly - into nothing.

Blood, pooling in the dust.

Like a scene from one of the many Hells - Yet it was cold, so cold our breath smoked, so cold each gust of wind cut to the bone.

Surreal, like the transition from life to death.

Instinctively, without thought, I readied myself to attack. One shoulder aimed forward, feet wide apart. Sword held upright, bisecting my face. As the Interfector settled down to a steady burn, pellucid blue flame rippling along the edge, snow flashed to steam where it kissed the blade.

No words, now.

For this would be decided in a single strike.

I could feel Brain's unblinking gaze on me. Unwavering, unmoving, he was a point of stillness in an ever-shifting world. For there was so much of it, now - the flutter of banners in the cold wind, the guttering light of torches, the wingbeats of carrion-eaters, drawn by the noise and the blood and the fear.

No. Not stillness.

It was a coiled potential for violence, a meditative readiness that seemed to flow out from him. It filled the intervening distance with a capacity for action, as though all around him had become an extension of his self.

As if he was the axis of it all, and the world spun around him.

I watched him watch me, with concentration that equaled his. Calculating angles, possibilities, outcomes.

The weight of the sword in my hands.

The blood slicking the snow beneath my feet.

The burning in my muscles, the ache in my battered ribs.

The fight in the courtyard had been a blunt, ferocious thing. Impacts given, impacts received, all blood and fury. Flailing, hammering, dealing out death without pause or thought - Like a machine of slaughter, driven by pitiless algorithms, until nothing remained to face it.

This was different. For the slaughter had driven the red smoke from my head, and my mind was as cold and clear as a depthless lake.

In that pristine clarity, I knew: The Vanisher had sent this man to kill me.

Not like the others, who had barely known what they were facing. Not like his undead or his mindless pawns, all the way from YGGDRASIL. They'd been puppets, driven by uncaring intelligences and set to their task without care or consideration.

This swordsman, this Brain Unglas - He had been honed for this, a blade edged with poison.

For I could feel it, in the cold that crept up my spine. That death was close, close as an old friend. That to close the distance, to get within reach, was to die. Like every iota of the space around him was filled with phantom blades, about to converge and take me to pieces.

I remembered how it'd felt, when the whirring knives had closed in. Shredding me an inch at a time, like chain-toothed lightning. The copper taste of my own blood, bitter and metallic.

A starburst of clarity:

The throat.

He would go for the throat.

A tremor, in my right hand. The one where my knuckles had been flayed to the bone, showing bright and terrible through shreds of skin. The thought of it sent a flurry of twitches down my arm, working in my cheek-

I focused on the only thing I could. On Brain's distant figure, angular features set in a serene mask of focus. Watching my every move with seamless concentration, the indicators that any creature gives before violent action.

For violence is never easy. You have to work yourself up to it, with fear and fury and hate: To muster the desperate courage, to cultivate the rage that lets you take life.

He knew this, of course. Which was why - with the infinite patience of a graven image, with the total concentration of a steel-and-velvet card player - he waited for me.

I thought of Loyts. Thought of the camps, and all I'd seen.

Thought of my world. Like the bad dream of a life, lived in Hell.

Thought of what the Vanisher would do to Re-Estize, and everyone in it.

The rest was easy.

Swiftly, but without haste - I lifted the Interfector above my head. The flame of the blade flickered, a heartbeat from spilling down the hilt: At the very edge of control, coiling and churning in that eternal blaze.

Then it was enough.

Then there were no more guesses to make.

There came an instant's pause, when our eyes met. A flicker of mutual, intimate understanding-

Now.

Somewhere, a universe away, a torch-pole fell. The fire spat and crackled as the flame struck the snow, the molten hiss rising like the exhalation of a striking serpent.

And then I saw it. Saw Brain's left eye twitch, just a fraction. An instant, a flicker of distraction-

In that moment, I moved.

Stone shattered, beneath my pounding feet. The world slid past me, like a dream. I could feel the surge within me, a pulse that coursed from my spine and burned in my limbs - The burn of fire. Of power, carrying me forward in a single, surging rush.

Over the blood-slick pavers. Through the intervening space.

Across the threshold.

The Interfector cleaved down. A two-handed swing, from the right shoulder - All of my weight behind it, a single, shearing blow.

But I knew, even then. Even as I struck, I knew.

That flicker, that infinitesimal lapse, had been a trap. A feint, to draw the rush.

To deceive, then kill.

Brain gave no warning of any kind, no hitch of breath, no preparatory tensing of muscle, not even a shift of his eyes. In one instant, he was perfectly motionless: In the next, his hand blurred and Orochi's silvery flash sped through the twilight gloom-

So fast. So impossibly fast.

So fast it was merely a mist, the blade shimmering as it became one with its own shadow. It arced, like a scythe through long grass: Outrunning its own sharpness, a lightning-bright line cutting into the air.

Like light, flashing through the dark.

Reality shrieked as it tore. The pressure-wave of that single, perfect stroke rippled outwards, churning the air - A thunderclap, a point-blank concussion, ethereal winds spinning through the courtyard with the force of a sudden storm.

Directly in line with me. Filling my vision, my world.

I dove towards him. Toward the blade.

Toward death.

Blood sprayed.

Across the courtyard, a multi-tonne weight of stone slid sideways. Like a calving glacier, it slithered down a sudden ramp, sheared through: Cleaved along a plane about eight meters wide, a length that stretched onward into infinity.

Orochi's cut had been smooth as glass, a translucently shimmering line of inviolate sharpness that had entered the stone - parted it - without resistance.

When the massive slab crashed down, the ground shook. I could feel the tremor in my bones, as momentum found me at last: It caught me, carried me through a standing slide, sent me skidding over the flagstones.

Past the blade. Out from the shadow of sharpness.

I never even felt the cut, not at first. Just a distant, dull ache in my side as I lurched to a stop, a haptic buzz beneath my skin, an insect drone in my ears. All of a sudden, everything was achingly, exquisitely slow - As if cold liquid metal ran in my veins, turning my limbs to lead.

The Interfector's hilt grip was hot in my grasp, my legs threatening to give way. The sword's point sank into the dust, my hands folded on the pommel: I felt the heat and wind flicker past my body as I leaned on the blade, trying to force my legs straight.

Trying to focus.

But all I could hear was the short, halting gasps of my labored breathing, a strangeness descending into the hanging silence.

My heart beat, thudding hard against the cage of my ribs.

-once-

There was a slit in my mythril armor. Just under my right arm, along the seam of weakness: The sheared edges of the glimmering metal gaping open, like a fissure. Even as realization blossomed, I felt the wound begin to tingle, then to throb.

-twice-

Blood, a slow trickle of it, wept between the fingers of my clamping hand and streamed down my flank. It hissed, where it touched the blade. Smoked, as it fell to the cold ground.

-again.

Slowly, ever-so-slowly, the cold line turned burning hot. Right through the armor, a deep gouge in my side.

But not deep enough to kill.

The world seemed to speed up, then. The chill air was raw in my throat as I tried to fill my lungs, a migraine pressure throbbing in my skull. Somehow, somehow, a breath came to my lips, and the numbness in my limbs - the pain in my chest - receded.

Behind me-

A sound. A sigh, a gasp, a grunt.

Finally, achingly, I turned around.

Brain Unglas stood, seized in place. Like an automaton in spinal lock, frozen in the position it had chosen to occupy for the rest of eternity. For one blank instant, we stared at each other - His face blank with sheer, dysfunctioning surprise.

He opened his mouth. Closed it, his brow furrowed, as if contemplating some conundrum for which he had no answer. I could see the disbelief in his eyes, gone wide and somewhere beyond pain-

For this was the end. Not just of his own existence, but of the world as he understood it.

The Interfector had cleaved a great gash across his chest, through cloth and armor and flesh and bone. It was an extravagant wound, tongues of blue flame licking at the edges of it - thick, arterial gore spurting as his head fell forward, as he coughed blood down the front of his coat.

"You-" he whispered, his fist tightening around the hilt of his curved blade as his arms sagged to the side. I could see the toll the action took, writ large across his face - His gaze searching mine, as blood vapor steamed from the ruin of his chest cavity.

For he knew, better than anyone. That what I'd just done was impossible.

I wasn't Gazef Stronoff. I didn't have the Warrior-Captain's wisdom or Climb's tenacity or even Erya's arrogant genius. All I had were the lessons of YGGDRASIL, driven deep into the very core of my being.

And so I hadn't tried to outfight him, or to attempt a reversal of my own.

I had focused, simply, on being faster. Faster than anyone, than anything, mortal.

So fast that time had run out of step. So fast that the snow had hesitated in mid-air.

So fast that I had become a speed-distorted phantom, blurred to invisibility.

Yet, dazzlingly, he'd seen it. Somehow - In the face of that incredible acceleration, staring into the void - he'd turned the slash to my throat, a slash that could no longer connect, into a slice to the heart.

Orochi, that wondrous weapon, had cleaved through my armor and bitten deep into my side.

But - against all odds - it had failed to cut through me.

In that moment, I think, he sensed the nature of his enemy. Realized that his path had come to an end, and all that remained was for him to end with it. And yet, it wasn't pain that I saw in his dimming gaze, but a kind of furious dismay.

Dismay, for he was not finished. He was not done, not at all.

With a cheated look, Brain Unglas sank to his knees, and died.

It took everything I had, to heave myself up.

The world swayed. There was the taste of copper in my mouth, cold sweat prickling on my skin. I kept my gauntlet on the wound, willing it to close, willing the bleeding to stop - The blood clung to the bright mythril, dulling the gleam, as I made myself look at what I had wrought.

He'd collapsed in a kind of sitting position. Folded forward at the waist, head down, as if lost in prayer. I kept waiting for him to fall down completely and stretch out dead across the flagstones, but he never did. He simply remained as he had fallen, blood streaming serenely from his corpse, gathering beneath him in a widening pool.

A slow, fading sigh issued from the ruin of his chest, like the moan of the wind through the trees: An eerie sound, one that sent a pang of instinctive dread through me.

I looked down at him, for a long, long moment. It felt like I should say something - A prayer for his soul, or a salutation to the vanquished. An explanation, perhaps, or an apology.

But it would have been hollow. For he was gone, and all the good and bad he had ever done was gone with him. Only his husk remained, emptied of everything he had been.

I suppose it makes me a hypocrite, pausing to contemplate this one death over the others. Setting his life apart from all the lives I had already snuffed out.

For many, many were the dead: In my hands, Forge-breaker and the Interfector had been indiscriminate weapons. Shattering, burning, laying waste-

The ground was littered with the tattered and disfigured dead. Crushed to a pulp by the bludgeoning stones or by the splintering impact of a scarletite maul. Gouged with wounds, hacked-open or caved-in, ripped open by the peerless edge of the holy sword…

Some were blackened, fused, scorched so badly that all distinguishing features had been stripped away. The Interfector's flames had found their way into them - through open wounds, open mouths - and incinerated them from the inside-out. Others lay in guttering pools of blue fire, a fire that consumed but never went out.

Distantly, I wondered why some had burned, and others hadn't.

Most troubling of all, I felt nothing. Even as my gaze followed the haphazard butchery - the ruined walls and the ruined men, I felt…

-Steady. Centered.

Not oblivious to what I had wrought. But calm, determined. As if I had seen, taken my measure, and come to a singular conclusion-

That this, too, would pass.

I half-expected my hands to start shaking again, but they were steady. Unwavering, my knuckles white against the Interfector's hilt. Metal scraped on metal, as I slid the blade back into its sheath; Already, the blood had burned away to nothing, leaving the holy sword pristine.

Like me, I thought. Like me.

And, with a sudden lurch of realization:

Oh, God.

This is how Wolfgunblood feels.

This is how he feels, all the time-

I shut my eyes. Drew a deep, calming breath, waiting for the acid taste of adrenaline to fade, for my pulse to slow to something approaching normal. The wound in my side ached abominably, but I could feel it closing. Some artifice of my armor, perhaps: Heat tingled beneath my skin as the pain faded, a dull twinge to my ribs as I breathed out…

-There was a slow, dragging scrape.

I turned.

"-ome on, you bastard thing! Mov-"

Amid the field of death, Forge-breaker remained where I'd left it. The ground had cratered, where the great hammer had landed - the haft standing, tall and proud, waiting for me to take it up once more.

But someone had beaten me to it.

He must've been one of the Death-Spreading Brigade, I think. He had that look: Scraggly-haired, rashy, hunched - Faintly ratlike, with the look of one of the derelicts you saw in the half-ruined arcologies. His shirt of rusted chain clinked, hands gripping the hammer's hilt as he strained with all the strength of his gangling limbs…

So hard that his bulbous, broken-veined nose went red. So hard that the muscles stood out in his scrawny arms, his teeth gritted as he hauled at the hammer.

I stared. You would have, too.

The sight was so grotesque, so absurd, I couldn't look away. A single, wilting figure - sweat beading his slack skin, the collar of his stained shirt drooping from the exertion - pulling at a weapon he just couldn't lift. The dim light flashed on the frosted edge of the axe he'd (somewhat unwisely) thrust into his belt, a gold-inlaid buckler flapping loose on his arm…

Memory stirred. I'd seen both of them, moments ago, in the hands of a dead man.

He'd been looting the dead.

I stepped towards him. Calmly, with slow purpose, intention taking form: I felt, inexplicably, the strangest urge to laugh. But the laugh curdled within me as he looked up, his bloodshot eyes going wide.

"Fuck," he breathed. He made one last attempt to pull Forge-breaker free, one last furtive wrench - Before he was backing away, nearly stumbling over himself in a paroxysm of terror. "No, your Lordship! Not Zach-"

My hand settled on the Interfector's hilt. His face, already sallow, drained of all color.

"Nononononono-"

His voice rose in a screech of terror as he fled. Arms flapping, legs snapping like shears, he clattered like an entire armory, the swords on the other side of his hip bouncing unmercifully, a bejeweled dagger jolted from the lining of his boots-

Apollyon hit him from the side, and trampled him into the dirt.

Zach's despairing wail cut off with an abrupt crunch of bone. He simply vanished beneath the pounding hooves, like an unfortunate worker sucked into a scramjet engine. Instinctively, I flinched, looking away from the abrupt impact…

-But I saw him come apart, all the same.

The destrier trotted towards me, made monstrous by darkness. Blue fire still mantled its mane, the vents in its gleaming carapace shedding steam. Little tics of lightning crawled across its armor as it came to a perfect stop, untroubled by the blood that dappled its pitiless form.

Standing, quietly. As if nothing at all had happened.

For what was there to say?

Everything had gone quiet, suddenly. Everything was cold and clear.

Lights had come on, in the villa ahead. Like a kicked hive, scrambling with sudden activity: Frenetic silhouettes darted past the windows, jerky, panicked, as if afraid of being spotted. Faintly, as if from an immense distance, I could hear a confusion of voices - An echo of the pandemonium that had followed me through the burning city, brought here at last.

For they had seen what I had done. Seen the devastation I'd wreaked, the appalling carnage I'd left in my wake.

Don't get me wrong: They weren't fools, and all weakness - all pity - had been burned out of them a long time ago. In the grand scale of things, the Death-Spreading Brigade had ultimately been expendable, and so they'd been expended, except for the tattered remnant that had fled to the dubious safety of the main house.

But the bleak scale of it, the totality…That had exceeded their most jaded expectations. It had unnerved them, left them reeling as they sought for an answer-

Because I was still out there.

Because I was coming for them.

My hand clenched around Forge-breaker's haft. A light dusting of ashes sifted between my fingers, the great maul tight in my grip. Miasmal flame seethed, churning around the head - A sullen crimson blaze, a counterpoint to the clean, bright flame of the Interfector.

I looked to Apollyon, waiting, silent.

"Stay here," I said. The words rang oddly, in the confines of my helm: Cold and hollow, stripped of all affect.

Armed with death, I strode on.

They could have fled, of course.

Some must have, I think. The prescient and the cowardly, casting off their allegiance with a shrug and a curse, fleeing through either the stronghold's gates or the rat's-nest of passages that wound their way through the building's walls. It was no small decision, for the capital was erupting in blood and violence: By taking flight, they took their own lives into their hands.

As for the others-

It was no small force that lurked within. By my estimate, the sprawling structure held around half a hundred fighting men: The elite of the capital's underworld, gathered in one place, well-armed and well-equipped. They had the advantage of home soil, the knowledge of the estate and how to exploit it.

More, that number left out the individual retinues of the Dust magnates and dissipated nobles the Nine Fingers had attracted. They'd been drawn here, lured by promises of wealth, power and the allure of being close to - but untouched by - danger, content to ride out the storm in what seemed like the safest place.

And then there was Zero.

Zero, of the Six Arms. Shaman-warrior, martial artist, enforcer without par.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In truth, I'd expected them to fire on me. Bolts and arrows hissing down from the windows, falling like rain the whole way. The villa might not have had arrow-loops cut into the walls, but there had to be a not-insubstantial number of bowmen left - Enough to make the approach a nightmare, to keep me on the back foot.

But instead, there was the banging of shutters, the frantic scurrying of distant figures. By now, it was impossible not to have seen all that had transpired, to know that I had been slowed not at all.

At the foot of the manor, I paused. Looked up, glimpsing pale, stricken faces, peering down from a balcony far above. As my helmet tilted back to regard them, they shied away - I heard the murmur of frightened voices, in the heartbeat before there was a clatter of running footfalls and the slam of wood-on-wood.

Battening down the hatches, I supposed. Bracing for the storm.

A rebel impulse cried out for me to try something cunning, something clever: To circle around, perhaps. Find a servant's entrance, maybe. Some secret tunnel, some approach they hadn't considered. I discarded that thought, as soon as it came to mind - They knew I was coming, after all.

Best to just get on with it, then, Pavel's voice murmured, from the corners of my memory. Sound advice, I had to admit.

The villa's main doors towered before me, great lanterns set in the mouths of the carved stone gargoyles on either side. They had the same solid aspect as the great walls that had enclosed the inner ward, made heavy with the weight of years.

"Auspex," I murmured, and the dark, iron-bound wood lit up in my field of vision. Indecipherable glyphs glowed, like gems in their setting - It didn't take a genius to guess that they foretold an unpleasant future for would-be invaders.

There was a trick to it, of course. Some passphrase, some talisman. I could've gone back to search the fallen, but the thought of going through the pockets of the dead, rummaging through the appalling aftermath of violence, made my stomach roil.

Instead, I reached for my belt. Drew forth the bells.

Climb had pressed them on me, when we'd parted ways. I'd tried to tell him that I didn't need them, but he'd insisted.

"Take them with you," he'd said, his jaw set in an increasingly familiar look of unyielding determination. "They're Miss Gagaran's - She gave them to me for a reason."

He'd been right. They'd languished in the timeless void of my inventory, until - Along with Forge-breaker - I'd drawn them forth. In my gore-spattered gauntlets, they looked impossibly delicate, almost incongruous…But I'd seen them in use before, and knew exactly what they could do.

I raised the first one, a pyramid set with emeralds: It chimed, once, the angry glow of the wards shifting to a pale, cool green. Before the sound could fade away, I gave the cube-shaped bell a brisk shake, their echoes overlapping in a contra tempo.

There was a series of clicks, mechanisms unwinding as tumblers and pins shifted into new configurations. The rifle-shot clack of bolts being drawn back.

A warm breeze gusted over me, as the doors - Ponderously yet soundlessly - swung open.

Silently, I thanked Climb and Gagaran. Drew the Interfector, shadows jumping and wavering in that cold blue flame. Braced myself for what came next, as inevitable as it was ruinous.

Ready or not, I thought, and stepped through.

In truth, I wasn't sure what I was expecting. The grainy footage of corp-sponsored pacification raids generally showed heroic enforcers purging dens of human misery, most likely to discourage anyone from getting ideas. The great narco-cartels didn't want any competition, either, so that worked for them too.

But from a certain level onward, I suppose you get a better class of criminal.

The floor was polished jet, the high, arched roof lit by glow-orbs. Above me was a great fresco of the God of Thieves - Hooded, anonymous except for the gleam of his eyes, picked out in lapis-lazuli - his mutilated hands prominently displayed.

Eight fingers, I couldn't help but notice. Only eight.

Of the rest, I only caught fleeting impressions: Two great staircases sweeping upwards, carved from three different colors of marble. Doors inlaid with rare woods in the pattern of beasts. Tapestries shrouding the walls, abstract patterns and elegantly understated landscapes. A triumph of good taste over ostentatiousness, by anyone's standards.

I wondered, fleetingly, if Hilma had a hand in this.

The survivors of the Death-Spreading Brigade had come this way. An anonymous smear of blood, a great swipe of it, dragged across the plaster finish of the wall - Weapons, quivers, segments of armor scattered the ground, tossed down so their former owners could flee faster. Gore pooled and puddled, grimy bootprints tracking their way up the steps and into the hall ahead, a silent testimony to their flight.

No-one, wisely, had lingered to fight. No desperate line of archers, ready to barrage me with arrows as soon as I opened the door. No avarice-crazed mercenaries in a spear-bristling phalanx, desperate to kill or die for coin.

No-one was that stupid. No-one was that greedy.

Just that terrible silence, like a held breath. As if every soul in the villa was waiting for what would come next.

I glanced to either side, wondering where to start. It was a large place, after all, with multiple wings to cover: With a mental shrug, I turned right, resolving that one direction was as good as any oth-

"Grandmaster Samuel?"

I stopped. Looked up, to see a dour-looking man in blue-gray livery descending the steps. He walked with a measured cadence, as if taking care not to give offense. Gray-haired, gray-eyed, he had his hands out before him, open and empty, in the universal gesture of peace.

"-I am Grausam. Seneschal of this estate."

Cold sweat glistened on his face, the cuffs of his waistcoat wilting as he halted, mid-step. He had the expression of a man who'd never expected to find himself here, now - Like he was face-to-face with some ravenous predator, one about to go for his throat.

I nodded. I'd have gestured for him to continue, but with the Interfector in one hand and Forge-breaker in the other, I was afraid he'd take it the wrong way.

"Go on," I said, instead.

"I-" He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing. Started again. "...What is the nature of your business?" he asked, each word taut, carefully measured. He reeked of fear, every fiber of his being longing to flee - But it was like he overruled them moment by moment, categorically refusing to yield to the obvious before his duty was done.

I stared at him. For a moment, I felt the urge to snarl at him, to spit the words-

But then I looked. Really looked, for the first time, at this gray man. So undistinguished, he'd have vanished in a crowd. Sensed the steel he must've had, to meet me like this. Alone and unarmed.

I drew a breath, held it until the fist in my chest relaxed, and said:

"I'm here for-" Hilma, something whispered in my ears, but I fought the words down.

"...the Vanisher," I finished. "Or any of the Nine."

The flat coldness was stealing into my voice, giving each word a metallic taste. "-I don't have an appointment."

The seneschal clasped his hands together before him. It was a smooth, well-practiced gesture, one born of years of etiquette - But his nails were biting into his palms, so hard they broke skin.

"As you wish," he said, with admirable calm. "Master Zero awaits you in the gardens. Please - Allow me to be your guide." He bowed his head, straightening slowly. Making no sudden motions, nothing to startle the beast. Carefully, he made his way to a set of doors that bore a distinct lion-head imprint, reaching for the ring of keys on his belt…

"-You're not going to try something tedious, are you?" I asked.

He froze. Facing away from me, his back ramrod-straight.

"I, uh-" he began, but I kept going.

"Lead me into an ambush. Abuse my good nature. That sort of thing."

"No, uh, we - I would never…" His hands were shaking, now. Against all odds, he sounded surprised. "I mean…Honestly, what do you take us for?"

I waited, as his shoulders slumped. As the key turned in the lock at last, a brittle clack.

"-It's just…There's, ah, been so much death. If there was, was a way to end this-" Grausam's voice sank to a whisper. "Lord Paladin, you must understand…"

I sighed. Shook my head, just once.

"That's reason enough, I guess," I said. "Lead on, then."

I could have killed him, as soon he turned his back to me. Cut him in half with a single swing, then made my own way. Bludgeoned my way through the walls, stone shattering beneath Forge-breaker's swings, until I found someone I could wrench the truth out of.

I won't lie: There was something attractive about that idea. A great unleashing, a casting-aside of restraint…

But I've never enjoyed killing. Not for its own sake, not unless I absolutely have to.

It could have been a trap, all the same. The paid killers of the Nine Fingers could have been hiding behind furniture and wall panels, ready to pour forth in a howling tide of murder. Some last-ditch effort to repel me at all cost.

And yet, it felt like…I owed it to myself, if no-one else. To give them a chance. To find a way to resolve this, without further butchery.

For that was the luxury of power. I'd never had any, before - But now, I had a choice. I could choose to act on something other than the principle of self-interest. To do more than just survive.

In that, I was wrong.

As Brain had said: When it comes to numbering the dead, there's always room for one more.

It wasn't far.

To his credit, Grausam didn't try to mislead me or divert me from my course. As far as I could tell, he was guiding me along the fastest possible path to our destination - He moved with an almost indecent haste, just a hair short of running.

I didn't blame him. In his place, I'd have done exactly the same thing.

The hallway turned into a lounge area. Red satin sofas, abstract sculptures of black marble: Not what I'd expected, for the stronghold of the Nine Fingers. It was like they'd never, not in a million years, thought that anyone would make it this far-

The impossible has a way of making itself known, when you least expect it.

We weren't alone, of course. I could see servants - household staff - fleeing before us. At one point, I saw a battered-looking mercenary lurch past, a parcel hugged to his chest. When he saw me, his eyes went wide: the parcel fell from his hands, the contents scattering everywhere.

Spoons. Of all things, spoons.

He snatched up a handful, reached for another. Thought better of it, staggering back the way he'd come. I caught a glimpse of his furtive, horrified expression as he took to his heels, already-ugly face twisted into a rictus of dread.

Dimly, I wondered at the frantic flight I'd inspired. Where were the others? What would they have done if Grausam had failed? I could imagine them cowering behind overturned furniture, sheltering behind hasty barricades as I pulled the building down around them, brick by brick-

I was being watched, I knew. I could feel unfriendly eyes boring into me, that sense of being watched growing more intense with every step. As the seneschal hurried me along through empty staterooms - Some with half-empty plates of food still on the table, shattered wineglasses spilling their contents across the polished floors in spreading slicks - it was increasingly aware that our progress hadn't gone unobserved.

And yet there was nothing they could do about it.

They'd seen what had happened, outside. No-one was mad enough to try conclusions with me. Not yet, anyway.

Ten paces into the next room, a splendid chamber with an indoor fountain and great windows of stained-glass, I stopped. Distantly, over the white noise of running water, I could hear-

The clink of glasses. The murmur of voices. Plangent music, drifting down from above.

Grausam stopped, too. Turned, slowly, like a man about to face his own executioner. Admirably calm, despite it all, though the sweat had soaked through the back of his shirt.

"-What is that?" I said. Too sharply: In the confines of the room, my voice echoed like a rifle shot.

"Grandm-"

"Fuck that," I said, harsher than I'd intended. "My name is Samuel."

I shifted my grip on Forge-breaker, jabbed the maul's head at the arch of the roof. "I hear…people. What's going on, up there?"

His mouth worked, as if seized by palsy - "We, ah…We have guests in attendance. From, uh, from all over…"

"Guests?"

He shrugged, helplessly. Eyes wide and round, like twin moons.

"It was, ah, meant to be an informal gathering," he said, sweating freely now. "Magnates like, like Sires Olson and Caxton, Master Boros of the Admiralty Guild, Lycas of the Reform Club…"

Some of those names sounded familiar. Lakyus had mentioned them, in passing - Part of the corruption in Re-Estize that all of this was meant to target. What were they doing here, of all times? And now?

I remembered what the Vanisher had said. What he'd let slip, before the blades had come out.

I wondered if this world had ever heard of the Night of the Long Knives.

The seneschal's voice had fallen silent. He'd said too much, I knew - Not like I could fault him for that. With a dull pang, I realized two things, one obvious, one less so:

First - The Vanisher was not here.

Second - They would never let me leave this place alive.

I could live with that.

"Just keeping you honest," I said, shortly. "-Let's go."

The long hallway opened up into a great round room open to the night sky, eight archways leading in. Blank-eyed sculptures looked down from above - The Four, minor deities, representations of fantastical beasts in sharp relief.

It's funny, the mythologies we spin around ourselves. One world or another, the urge was still the same.

It was a garden. Calming breezes gusted through the greenery, coaxing a spray of pink blossoms from the cherry trees. Water trickled, the flowers nodding in the rigidly ordered, formal beauty of their beds. Paved paths wound their way between well-trimmed lawns, converging on the cobbled space at the center. No statues to break the garden's rugged beauty: Instead, menhirs of white stone shed their long shadows across the grass, like the fangs of some forgotten beast.

From here, I could see the terraced balcony above, two floors up. A small crowd gathered at it, close to the railing, buzzing with excited chatter. There were faint gasps at the sight of me, as I looked up at them - Glimpsing the bright colors of ladies' dresses, the equally fabulous clothing of the men, a contrast to the drab livery of the servants moving through the press.

I was reminded of the duel with Gazef, at the palace gardens. This was like an imitation of it, a little louder, a little cruder, but with the same humming tension in the air-

For I could see the shape in the distance, seated atop the stones. Just a dark silhouette, at first - But a presence radiated forth from him, a palpable air of force. He was huge: Standing, his shaven skull would have been more than two meters above his boots. Even at rest, I could see the broad span of his shoulders, the muscles that bulged in his heavy arms.

He carried no weapon, none that I could see, at least. Not that he needed one: His sleeveless vest of fur-trimmed leather revealed a chest that looked like it'd been hewn from granite. Black pants - scuffed from long use, showing patches of gray - hinted at legs like an orbital elevator's buttresses.

But it was the tattoos that made him terrifying. They swirled across his skin: Falcon and auroch and lion, seeming to shift and move as he took a deep swig from the gourd-flask he held in one hand.

I turned to Grausam.

"Run," I said, and strode up the steps. Out into the open, sword and maul at my sides, weapon swirling with coronas of flame. Each step slow, purposeful, as I willed away the fatigue - My perceptions narrowing, centered solely on the here and now.

Behind me, there was a rapid clatter of footfalls, as the seneschal took my advice.

I could feel every pair of eyes swing towards me, as I stepped forward. Kept walking, as the revelers looked on. His head swiveled towards me, with the slow-motion menace of a tank's main gun finding its range - His craggy features splitting in a smile.

It was a predator's grin. Teeth bared, a threat-display of primal ferocity: When he rose, it was like some great beast unfurling itself, a feral intensity smoking from his form as he let himself drop from his perch. The ground trembled, when he touched down - tall stalks of grass shivering, as if stirred by his ferocious animal exuberance.

"So you're the one," he rumbled, a purring growl that began deep in the furnace of his chest. "Another slave of that whore. Another dog, sniffing after his betters."

The Princess. He was talking about Princess Renner.

At a silent command, the high-crested helm shivered away. I felt the warm breeze on my face, heard the murmur from above as I drew a slow breath.

Because I'd decided: I would look this man in the eye when I killed him.

"You must be Zero," I said. Calmly, without any particular inflection. It was like the slaughter had burned out something in me, like I'd reached my capacity for horror. For I could still feel that cold, clear-headed focus, drowning out all else.

"-Strange. I thought you'd be bigger."

He laughed. A brief bark of laughter, one that never touched his eyes.

"Ha! So you do have spirit, after all." Zero flexed his fingers, as they half-curled into claws. "Good," he said, and the word hung in the air like a sentence of death. "I'm going to enjoy this."

Murderous good humor gleamed in his dark eyes, as he took a step forward. Arms spread, almost in salute, as he faced me across the distance.

"That's what Brain Unglas thought," I said, and Zero snorted.

"Hmmph. He never understood, you know. His heart was never in his work, that one," Zero said, broad shoulders lifting in a shrug. "It's not about skill. It's about being the strongest." That hideous grin again. "It's about making an example. Letting them know how far you're willing to go."

His voice dropped to a low rumble. Half his face in the light, his other eye just a gleam in the dark.

"-To let everyone see what happens to the fucking fools who cross the Nine Fingers."

For that was how it worked. With the naturalness of an animal: He had to kill me.

Rend me limb-from-limb.

Rip my flesh from my bones.

Kill me hard enough to teach a lesson, to make the message perfectly clear-

That anyone who dared challenge him would die screaming.

In that, at least, we wanted exactly the same thing.

Above, the crowd was pressing closer to the balcony, eager for the best view of the murder. From here, their faces looked grotesque, like caricatures - Bloated with wine and bloodlust, swollen with anticipation for the spectacle to come. They must've been here the entire night, feasting and rutting and drinking, indulging themselves as the city burned…

I felt the bright flare of fury at the core of my being, the embers kindling to a blaze.

"Kill him!" someone shouted, high and shrill, and I honestly couldn't tell who they meant. It was like the starter's gun, for the guests to start jeering and whooping and calling. The baying voices, calling for blood and death, sounded nearly inhuman in their raw-throated shrieks.

Neither of us spared them a single glance.

That marked Zero as even more dangerous than he looked. He'd brought me here to slaughter me, to grind my bones into the dirt - But he was no fool, no brute. My helm had been banished, but an echo of Auspex's insight remained: The air around him swam with odd colors, throbbed with veins of light, the faintest suggestion of coiling smoke swarming at the core of his being.

He was ready for me, I didn't doubt. The Vanisher had made him ready, aimed him at me like a weapon.

I was just glad I didn't have to fight both him and Brain Unglas at once.

Zero just kept watching, until the hooting and stamping faded. Until a breathless hush descended, an odd lull in the wall of noise. At some point - I couldn't quite say when - he'd drawn a slender wand: A short length of wood, too fragile to be a weapon, small lines of text stippling the surface-

Something about that. Something about it sent a thrill of warning through me, as my hands tightened around my weapons.

Something I was missing.

"Let's go," I said. Like a spur, the words sent a sharp spike of adrenaline through me. Halos of blue and red flame swirled around me, the Interfector humming in my fist as I braced to lunge-

There was a brittle, papery crack of wood splitting.

Light blasted the world away.

It was an implosion. A white flash, one that tore the leaves from the trees and scattered the blossoms in a whirlwind of petals. As the echoes of the thunderclap died, I blinked through the momentary swirl of smoke and ash to see-

Zero had cloaked himself in steel.

Great, mauling gauntlets - spined knuckles crackling with lightning - sheathed Zero's arms, each fist as large as my head. A low, evil drone buzzed in my ears, as they came to life: a blur of distortion gathering around each oversized cestus, like a heat-mirage.

He had greaves of the same cobalt-blue metal, blood-red gems set in adamantite sockets. They glowed with a vivid fever-dream intensity, circuit-patterns of light playing across the surface of the metal in patient oscillations.

He was smiling, I knew. Smiling, eyes bright with unchained fury, behind the half-mask of steel - shaped like clutching skeletal fingers - that rose up on his broad neck guard. Like hands, placed over his mouth.

When Zero let out his answering growl, the words came out as a distorted snarl of white noise. But I heard him, all the same, as he brought his fists together with the brutal slam of hammer-on-anvil.

Time to die.

I charged. Feet pounding down. Running, cloak swirling like my own personal storm. Sword and maul swinging in great, shattering arcs.

So did he. Hurling himself forward. Accelerating towards the point of mutual impact.

A surging rush that shook the world and everything in it.

We met, and the fury of our combat lit up the night like a lightning storm.

Next: Lord of Shadow