Chapter 9: End of Line
The pulverized remains of several combat robots lay scattered around Cayman as he lifted the last mech in sight over his shoulders, leapt high into the air, and drove it back into the floor like a blazing meteor. Scorching bits of metal blasted from the busted machine and slid and bounced their way into the pile.
Shiron pumped his fist in excitement while he watched the master work. Just then, a beep came from the monitor.
"That's one down," Shiron said. "Apollo works quick."
Shiron made a few inputs, and Apollo came zipping back down the codestream before emerging at the tower's base. Shiron greeted Apollo who looked around at Cayman's trail of destruction.
"Looks like you met some resistance," Apollo said.
"These things?" Cayman said and popped his knuckles. "They weren't even worth their weight."
"That's what concerns me," Apollo said. "Security was strangely light on my end."
Before Shiron could ask what he meant, another beep came from the monitor. Shiron responded to it and brought BB back from his own line.
"Any trouble on your side?" Apollo asked.
"Nope," BB said and crossed his arms behind his head. "Easy peasy. There were some crazy portal shenanigans going on, though. And I thought the circuits were dizzying."
"Then Merak's here, too," Apollo said.
"Merak?" BB said. "Wasn't he some kind computer warlock, too?"
"He is," Shiron said. "Which means, either our mystery intruder is giving them a lot of trouble or…."
"Kirin!" Apollo gasped.
. . . . . . . . . .
Kirin pressed against the wall next to the sliding doors. She had tracked the line from the central point to an ominous, dark pyramid structure with a similar beam streaming from its top. The circuit ran straight under the doors; it had to be the lock she was after. Though she had cut through some basic security on the way, none of it had offered the kind of resistance she would have considered a challenge.
Expecting trouble, Kirin pushed her thumb against the guard of her sword, exposing a sliver of the bright steel, and hovered her hand over the door switch. She slapped the button and, gripping the sword, swiveled between the hissing doors. Nothing opposed her entrance.
Without loosening her grip, Kirin stood a little straighter and stepped, cautiously, inside. Within the pyramid, Kirin stood at the center of a long, circuit-lined walkway running between a wide set of towering columns. The columns, which on second glance, may have actually been stacks of blinking server towers, stood like the prominent pillars of an ancient temple. The circuit lines, pulsing down the walkway, ran like frozen moats from an elevated, central altar upon which was enshrined a golden diamond, beaming its radiance into the false heavens above.
A weighty silence covered the colonnade, such that the hard click of Kirin's heels on the floor echoed coldly against the myriad pillars with every tentative step. She ascended the altar stairs unopposed and stood before the humming diamond. Her eyes traced the beam from the diamond through the tip of the pyramid. With her head tilted back, she sighed through her nose. Something about the pseudo-religious nature of the quiet space invited her to contemplation.
Since the crisis began, Kirin had found no time for her regular meditation. In truth, she was afraid to. As Yuna's poison had revealed, Kirin's own mind was against her, accusing her with vehement damnation. That dark reflection of Kirin: could it really have been herself? Was she actually that close to breaking?
The nature of her septima was its function as a seal: restraint, focus, control. The disruption of her image pulses was already a clear sign of that seal degrading. Kirin knew it was her own lack of control that had unleashed Elise and her deathly plague. If Kirin slipped any further, if she lost any more control, what would be left? Who would hold back the chaos? How would she live with herself? And how was she going to explain any of those thoughts to Apollo?
In a way, she was glad to have stepped into the digital realm for a time. Chaotic as it was, it had offered her a brief escape from the constant reminders of her failure and the dangers therein. Kirin shook her head. She knew she should get back before the others started to worry.
Kirin hit the switch to disengage the digital lock, causing the diamond to float down into a crevice on the altar. Before it locked into place, however, a wormhole opened beneath the diamond and sucked it through. The altar began to derez. Kirin stepped back and sprung off the collapsing stairs.
"So, this is what passes for Sumeragi now?" a voice echoed.
A holographic display spanned between the pillars, projecting an unamused, blue-eyed face with two short antennae atop his head.
"Merak," Kirin said. "No wonder Teseo hacked our systems so quickly."
"Yep," Merak answered. "New faces or no, you people are still easy to predict."
He snapped his fingers, and a series of multi-armed Buddha statues dropped from portals between the pillars. Kirin already knew what was coming. Lasers beamed from the statues' serene faces and strobed through the temple. Kirin twisted and dove between the lasers before taking cover behind one of the pillars.
"I'm not even surprised at this point," Kirin said. "Nothing is sacred to you idiots."
"That's kind of the point, isn't it?" Merak said. "The world we know is falling apart. Life, death: nothing's going to mean anything anymore. All that's left is to accept it."
"Sounds like you're already dead," Kirin said.
"And you're not?" Merak scoffed.
The top of the pyramid closed off with a slam and covered the colonnade in a veil of darkness. Within the foreboding glow of the neon circuits, Kirin heard a hiss from above and, looking up, perceived a layer of purple smoke trickling like waterfalls from vents lining the entire length of the chamber walls. The heads of the Buddha statues detached and, with eyes aglow, began to float between the pillars, hunting for Kirin.
"Shiron," Kirin whispered into her comms. "Shiron, do you read me?"
No answer.
One of the heads hovered around Kirin's protective pillar and blasted a laser from its eyes. Kirin cartwheeled out of the beam's path and slashed the sacrilegious trap in half with a dashing cut. Within the severed head, she observed a speaker system. Just then, she heard a crackle like radio static followed by a newscaster's voice echoing between the pillars.
"Following up on the situation in Japan, we've just received confirmation that the outbreak is, in fact, not a disease but, rather, the result of an out-of-control adept. While the peacekeepers have made a nationwide response, these situations are usually handled by Sumeragi's Bureau of Dragon Saviors."
The floating head's red eyes shifted into Kirin's vision. Before it could fire a beam, she threw a talisman and sliced through it with an arc chain. The same broadcast, however, continued through another mouth.
"Despite the bureau frequently making headlines over the past year, information remains sparse on the group's elusive leader, known only as Kirin."
The head came careening toward Kirin. She thrust her blade through one of its glowing eyes and slung it to the other side just before it exploded. The voices, however, still echoed through the hazy halls.
"The Sumeragi Group, which has almost single handedly controlled national defense and septima policing since taking priority over the JDF in the wake of the Eden terror attacks, was clearly not prepared for this catastrophe."
She cut through another of the talking heads, but several more trained their burning gaze on her. She flipped away from the lasers and landed back on the central walkway. The swarm of demonic heads spiraled around her and spun in place as the fog rolled over Kirin.
"While there has been no official death toll, our sources estimate that today alone may encompass the greatest loss of Japanese life since the second world war."
"Shut up," Kirin said
One by one, the heads fired their accusing glares at Kirin. As she weaved between the beams, Kirin slung a marking talisman whenever she could. The broadcasts began to overlap into a mob of discordant voices.
"All air and seaports have been closed off. No one is getting in or out of the country."
"The United Nations have called an emergency council to coordinate a global response and contingency–"
"Regardless, the effects on the global economy will be nothing short of devastating–"
"Leaked video appearing to show human experiments–"
"How long before the outbreak reaches the mainland? How did this happen?"
"The Bureau building has been converted into one of the safe points, but the group is nowhere to be found."
One of the lasers stung the back of Kirin's shoulder. She cried out and fell to one knee.
"I said shut up!" she screamed.
Kirin tagged the last of the spinning heads and became a raging gale as she multi-arc-chained through them all at once. Her lungs heaving, Kirin dropped back to the floor, sucked in some of the smoke, and coughed. She looked at the hand she had coughed into. A spiritual distortion was creeping over her. It was radiation. The smoke was saturated with dragon radiation.
"Shiron," Kirin said, "if any of you can hear me, I need help."
"So, yeah," Teseo answered through the communicator, "nobody's coming to save you. #dealwithit."
"I'll leave you two with it, then," Merak said. "Just be sure to record this for me, kay Tes?"
"The stream's already live," Teseo said.
Merak disappeared from the projection, and Teseo's spiked crown and cheshire grin covered the screen instead.
"Well, Kirin," he said, "welcome to die. Also the internet. #samething."
"You would try to poison me again," Kirin said. "You're already a plague to the internet."
"Yes, but actually, no," Teseo said. "See, you're in my world atm, so that would make you the virus. #reversecard. And I'm not the only one getting sick of you. Check the feed."
Teseo changed the display to his social media feed. Angry comments covered the screen.
"What the hell are the Dragon Saviors doing?" one said. "There are primal dragons everywhere!"
"My friend is dead," another said, "and none of you were there for him."
"The Dragon Saviors are just the clean up crew for Sumeragi's corrupt mess," yet another said. "They're nothing but Sumeragi mascots. They never cared about helping anyone."
"Who even are these people? None of them were ever military or police. Why the hell are we trusting a single squad of randoms to handle such a huge security threat?"
"Where did Kirin come from? Were the Dragon Saviors involved with the experiments? People are dying, and we need answers!"
All of the posts concluded with the hashtag "no one's saviors."
"You wouldn't believe how fast I got that trending," Teseo said. "Literally everyone hates you. You're so canceled!"
Kirin looked with wide eyes at the hate-filled screen. Her heart was sinking in her chest. She shook her head.
"It doesn't matter," she said. "I'm still the one who's going to fix this."
"Actually, I've rigged a little social experiment to test that theory," Teseo said. "Do the words 'Star Dragon' mean anything to you?"
Indeed, they did. A horrified look spread over Kirin's face. That was the real reason Teseo and Merak had come to the satellite base, not just to disrupt communications: they were after the orbital laser. Kirin met Teseo's eyes with a look that said, "You wouldn't." His eyes were laughing at her face.
"Bingo," Teseo said. "That beam can pass straight through the Kamishiro, which means, the safe zone barriers won't stop it either. And I've already picked out the perfect target."
The screen changed to the laser's targeting display upon which a countdown was already active. There was no mistaking the building on which the satellite's sights were trained; it was the Bureau of Dragon Saviors HQ.
. . . . . . . . . .
The timer hit zero and an explosive blast rocked the room, swiveling the heads of all the slack-jawed zombies and mounted beam turrets, as Copen and Zeno charged, guns blazing, through the dust of the shattered barricade. The two were stacked like a breaching crew: Copen in front, standing low with his shield up, while Zeno pointed his rifle over Copen's shoulder.
Their barrage of shots popped like fireworks, ripping through the crowd of screeching zombies and throwing them one-by-one to the floor. Zeno had his rifle in single fire mode, and with each disciplined trigger pull, he punched a whistling bullet through at least one zombie's rot-brained skull. Copen's cyber eye was projecting a targeting reticle directly into his vision, allowing him to aim precisely around his shield and blast any zombies that came too close.
A beam from one of the two turrets ricocheted off the shield. Lola answered the attack with a zap of the Stellar Spark. The blue bolts crashed into the turret, detonating it, and arced to the other, briefly shorting out its firing mechanism. Zeno dropped the last zombie and set his sights on the disabled turret. He sent a round straight up its barrel and blew it to pieces.
"All clear," Lola chimed. "Now that's how we get it done!"
A warp gate into another circuit path stood at the end of the room. Zeno loaded a fresh mag into his rifle as they walked toward it.
"Tell it to me straight," he said. "Do you actually have any idea where we're going?"
"Of course he does!" Lola said. "Copen-kun has the tracking instinct of a sabertooth tiger, the discipline of a samurai warrior, the genius of a nuclear physicist!"
Lola inched closer to Zeno's glasses with each comparison until her spherical form was nearly headbutting him.
"That will do, Lola," Copen said. "I'm tracking their septimal signature. It should lead us right to them."
"Can't these guys just teleport, though?" Zeno said.
"Not once I get a shot at them," Copen said.
He raised a disc shaped cylinder of septima bullets.
"Greed Snatchers," Copen said. "Septima canceling. Unblockable. Unprevadable. I'll have those lowlifes dead to rights."
"Badass," Zeno said. "Hey, can mine shoot those?"
"Not in your hands," Copen scoffed. "And what did you do to the grip?"
"This?" Zeno, motioning to his holstered revolver, said. "It's a septima conduit. All my guns have it."
"How dare you?" Copen snarled.
"Hey, man," Zeno, hands up, said, "same side, remember?"
"For now," Copen said.
Copen turned and walked toward the gate. Zeno shook his head and followed.
"What have I gotten myself into this time?" he said.
They both stepped into the gate and shot down the circuit, but as soon as they emerged from the other side, they fell straight into one of Merak's portals.
"Couldn't let it slide, huh guys?" Merak said. "Well, you will now."
The wormhole spit them out onto a steep slope which they both immediately began to slide down. A tightly packed hoard of zombies waited with open hands and jaws in a pit at the bottom. Before they even reached the pit, however, a spiked panel popped out from the slope directly in their path. Still sliding, Copen fired his jets to the side and rolled into Zeno, jostling them both off the collision course.
Another spiked panel emerged just above the pit to obstruct their new course. Zeno's black boots lit up with blue LEDs, and he planted their soles against the slope. The boots magnetized to the surface and ground Zeno to a halt. Copen, however, was still descending. Zeno pointed his left hand toward Copen and launched a grapple line from a device on his wrist. The hook caught hold of Copen's armored collar and, in tandem with Copen's hover jets, stalled his descent.
Copen could see an exit hall on the opposite side of the pit. The ledge was just beyond his dash range and certainly beyond Zeno's range. Copen looked up at Zeno who was still straining to hold him up.
"Get ready to move," Copen ordered. "I'll get us across."
"Gotcha covered," Zeno said.
Copen snatched the hook off his collar, leapt over the spike panel, and hovered. As soon as Zeno's grapple line retracted into his gauntlet, he put his left hand on the trigger of his underbarrel grenade launcher and thumped an explosive round into the pit. The blast blew apart enough of the zombies to clear a small landing space for Copen. He pulled back his shield.
"Trident Geyser!"
Copen rocketed downward and nailed the EX Gear's muzzle into the floor. Two geysers of water, immediately followed by a third, burst violently from the floor in a pattern like the points of a mythical sea god's trident around Copen. The aquatic eruptions blasted droves more zombies into the air and washed back others with the subsequent deluge of the trident's collapse.
"Come on!" Copen signaled.
Zeno stood and deactivated his mag boots, allowing himself to surf down the slope. He swerved past the spike panel and leapt straight toward Copen. Copen braced his shield evenly over his head and caught Zeno on the makeshift platform. The moment Zeno's boots planted onto the shield, Lola launched the Twintail Bunker's drills at the ground, and Copen fired the boost jets on both his shield and armor. The pair blasted away from the zombies' claws and flew toward the opposite ledge. With a quick burst from his hover jets, Copen landed cleanly over the ledge while Zeno crashed with only his arms over the edge.
"A little help?" Zeno grunted.
"Lola?" Copen said.
"I got him!" Lola responded.
Lola shifted under Zeno and bumped forcefully against the seat of his pants. With a pained expression, Zeno flopped onto the ledge.
"A hand would've worked, y'know," Zeno said.
"Get moving," Copen said. "I don't have time for dead weight."
Copen kept walking forward without helping Zeno up.
"What an ass," Zeno mumbled under his breath.
. . . . . . . . . .
The orbital laser's sights were trained straight onto the helipad of the Bureau as if it were a bullseye. From the hyper magnified orbital view, the refugees in the surrounding safe zone moved like ants. Kirin's horrified gaze was fixed on the hazy screen as Teseo snickered through his toothy grin.
"No," Kirin gasped.
A legion of four armed Eden robots digitally constructed in front of each pillar. Each machine wielded either an energy knife in each hand or a paired spear and naginata. The golden diamond from the altar reappeared high on the far wall. The robots all swiveled their triclops, spherical heads toward Kirin, the lights flaring through the toxic smoke. Two minutes flashed across the countdown timer.
"Tick-tock, Kirin," Teseo said.
The countdown began, and the robots raised their weapons. Kirin's heart rate spiked. The nearest spear robot, presenting the tip of its spear with its bottom arms, raised its naginata over its head and charged at Kirin. Predicting the thrust, Kirin held her staff vertically and deflected the spear's point to the side. The machine immediately chopped with its other weapon, but Kirin spun to the side and drew her sword, ripping a gash between the robot's stacked arms. The machine crumpled.
Before Kirin could take more than a single step, a knife robot was slicing at her collar. She leaned back and danced between the flurried blades until the robot attempted a cross cut at her throat. Kirin limboed under the blades and fell all the way on her back to avoid being stuck by the thrust from the lower arms. From the floor, she kicked the robot's shin and shoved her blade up through its rounded chin. Its many arms went limp.
As the robot fell next to her, another spear robot was leaping through the air to pin her to the floor. Kirin flicked a talisman at it, and just before the spear could pierce her belly, she arc chained behind the robot and severed its head with a quick, aerial cut. One and a half minutes remained on the countdown.
"Another thing," Teseo said. "Elise left you a message, and I trained an AI to read it in her voice. Lmk if it's convincing."
"Kirin," the second Elise's voice echoed through the hazy halls, "I hope you know that we can empathize with what you're feeling right now. That feeling of being alone in the dark. That helplessness, knowing that no one will save you."
The clock was still ticking. Kirin threw a talisman at the next charging spear robot and chained to its front. She was met, however, with a loud clang as the robot blocked her overhead strike with the shaft of its naginata. Kirin gritted her teeth in frustration; Teseo and Merak must have programmed the robots to react to her techniques. She somersaulted over the machine.
"You tried to act like you understood us," Elise continued, "but we could both see it in your eyes: the fear, the judgment. You may think you have regrets, but you won't know until you've lost everything."
One minute. Kirin only engaged the robots as much as was absolutely necessary to keep herself from being impaled. She performed empty arc chain after empty arc chain and pounded the floor with her feet. The tainted smoke was clinging to her skin; she couldn't stop her lungs from sucking it down.
30 seconds. A horrifying realization swept over her: the diamond appeared just as far away as when she had started pursuing it, and the robots were just as numerous. She launched a talisman as far as she could. In the distance, it vanished into a slight ripple. It was an illusion. She hadn't gained the first foot of ground.
"Truth is," Teseo said, "the game was rigged from the start."
The robots surrounded Kirin. She couldn't escape without clashing with them. 15 seconds.
"You'll only find out what's really in you when the rest is stripped away," Elise said. "It's like a glowstick; your true colors only show once you've snapped. Only then will we believe you."
Kirin broke out from under her bladelock with the robot. She reached desperately.
"No!" she cried.
Zero. The blinding beam fired, zipping from orbit in an instant. The laser pierced straight through the roof of the Bureau and blasted a shockwave over the surrounding camp. The building split and collapsed, dissolving as it fell. The whole structure disappeared into a billowing cloud of dust and ash.
"Now, we have an understanding," Elise concluded.
Kirin dropped to her knees. Her hands clung to her staff, the only thing keeping her from collapsing into the irradiated haze entirely, and her lips trembled. Any of the robots could have sliced her throat unopposed, but instead, they simply watched her with their cold eyes.
It was gone. Her home. All the people who had trusted her to keep them safe. Gone in an instant. Her quivering eyes stung. She'd failed them, failed everyone. It was her fault. She'd let them die. Kirin let her head hang onto the tip of her staff. Silent teardrops wet the floor.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Teseo said, "I think we broke her. Elise is gonna love this."
"How could you?" Kirin whimpered. "Did their pain mean nothing to you?"
"Oh, they didn't feel any pain," Teseo said. "That laser's basically a delete button. They were all black marks on the floor before they felt a thing. And now that I've held up my end of the deal, it's time to delete you, too."
One of the knife robots raised its four arms with a hydraulic creak. Kirin closed her wet eyes. She planted one foot on the floor. With trembling hands, she slowly unsheathed her blade. The robot leapt. Kirin's sheath rattled against the floor.
[You're Mine- Furi ost]
The murderous look in Kirin's cut back eyes would have frozen the most hardened soldier in his tracks. The machine, however, knew not to heed such a warning. Before any of the robots could process that she had climbed to her feet, Kirin unleashed the Divine Ruin Arc, shredding the entire phalanx of robot soldiers like a grinder.
The illusion cracked, shattered, and fell like a wall of broken glass. Teseo leaned into his monitor. As the shattered pieces crashed against the ground, their broken reflections revealed the backdrop of jagged gashes on the pillars and the agape, searing eyes of the one who had made them. Her irises burned like pink-hot balls of plasma within the infinite darkness of the void: the eyes of a primal dragon.
"Oh my god," Teseo said without an acronym. "It really happened; you literally snapped!"
Kirin gripped her sword with both hands. The mirrored blade reflected her own haunting reflection back at her. A hundred thoughts of panic and shame flooded her mind, but they all drowned in the ocean of rage that was bursting the floodgates of her heart. There was a movement in her peripherals. Her black eyes twitched upwards.
The burning plasma edge of the knife was plunging straight toward her pupil. She didn't blink. In a flash of steel, Kirin severed the hand mere centimeters from her face. She furiously slashed back and forth across the robot, and kicked its metal plated chest. All six of the machine's limbs went flying back individually, and its divided torso trailed behind them. If Teseo's monitor hadn't been running at the highest frame rate possible, he wouldn't have even seen Kirin move.
A polearm robot made a diagonal slash at Kirin's neck, but she lowered her head, grasped the lowered spear just behind its head, and rammed the point of her sword through the robot's side. The machine froze up; its programming hadn't anticipated such an aggressive movement. Face to face with the robot, Kirin pulled her sword back out and immediately shoved it through the robot's rounded chin. She carved the blade sideways through its head and ripped it out the top. The sparking, shuddering robot, falling to its knees, almost looked as it felt the agony of its wounds. Kirin hoped it did.
Two more knife robots swung their flurries of blades at Kirin from either side. She took one step back and swung with her own crazed flurry. Sparks flew from the clashing blades, and severed, artificial fingers hit the floor around Kirin's unmoved feet. Talisman tags stuck to both robots. Kirin leaned back under a swipe and made a circular slash, cleaving backwards through the robot to her left and forward through the one on her right. They both split at the stomach and fell.
She tagged and chained to another polearm robot's front. It lifted its weapon to block, but Kirin, her cloak swirling around her, spun with a slash and double whirlwind kick. The kicks spun the robot's head completely backwards, causing it to stagger back in a futile attempt to reorient itself. By the time its head spun back to face Kirin, she was below its scanners' vision, ripping her sword through its waist. The legless robot flopped face first onto the foggy floor, and Kirin nailed her blade through its back.
Another spear robot charged from behind Kirin. Leaving her sword planted, Kirin spun around the robot, grabbed the back of its head, and slammed it onto the sword's counterweight, scrambling the machine's sensors. Her other hand cocked back like a claw as if she were about to plunge it straight into the robot's chest and rip out its heart. She froze.
"What the hell am I doing?" she thought.
Kirin stared at her twitching palm. The deep purpled distortion of dragon radiation writhed around it like the glitching effect of a corrupted screen. Her thoughts shot rapid-fire through her brain.
"What's happening to me? I'm losing it. It's all slipping away. I can't hold onto anything, anyone. It all keeps falling through my fingers."
The spear robot made a poke at her. Kirin snapped back to attention. She pole vaulted over her sword, tore it out, and made a counter thrust of her own. The tip of the blade plunged into the robot's shoulder as Kirin caught the pole of the top weapon against her own shoulder. She snatched the sword and machine back towards her and, talisman in hand, crashed her palm against the robot's chest with a thunderous palm strike.
As the robot slid back, radiant chains sprouted from the talisman and latched into the robot's chest plate. Kirin could feel them with her twitching fingers. Her hand still outstretched, she started to squeeze. The machine's chest began to crumple. Seeing what she was doing, Kirin twisted her palm and clenched her stiff fingers into a fist. The robot's chest twisted inward and compressed, tearing a hole straight through it. The pressure of the compression released and blew the machine to pieces from inside-out.
"Pog!" Teseo shouted. "This is so going viral!"
With the illusion gone, Kirin had managed to greatly thin the robots' ranks. She blocked a polearm strike behind her back and, twisting under the weapon, carved a gash through the robot's torso and chopped its head off. She tagged and chained to the last isolated knife robot; the rest were advancing as a line.
Kirin performed a handstand on top of the knife robot's head, spread her legs, and twisted. The motion flipped the robot over Kirin and slammed it, arms chained, to the floor, Kirin's hand on its face. The radiant chains squeezed in, crumpling and compressing the robot bit by bit until Kirin clenched her fist around the vacuum. The line of robots lunged and leapt at her. Without turning her gaze, Kirin raised her clenched fist toward the robots and opened her hand. The compression exploded like a cannon from her palm and blasted the machines back in a rattling hail of disjointed metal.
"I hope you're having as much fun with this as I am, Kirin," Teseo said, "because it's the last thing you'll ever enjoy."
Kirin stood and glared at Teseo's projection. A sharp pain screamed through her temples, and she clutched her head in her hand. Dragging her blade, she staggered down the glowing walkway toward the last robot that was still twitching. The dragon radiation had permeated her. It was in her skin, in her veins. To Kirin's spiritually alert mind, it was like an awful stench, suffocating her every breath.
It wasn't merely the noxious fog choking her, it was her, her own aura; she had begun to produce the radiation herself. It was undeniable then: she had turned. She had become a primal dragon, the very thing she was sworn to combat. It was too late for her, and yet, she was still conscious, still aware of her own thoughts. Was her septima letting her hang on to a thread of control, or was that merely how primal dragons always felt? She took the hazard of opening her mouth.
"Let me make myself clear," Kirin hissed.
Standing over the disabled robot, she lifted her sword, spiked it through the twitching machine, and twisted the blade back and forth as she spoke.
"I've never killed a primal dragon," she continued. "I held back, even when they were about to kill me. But you?"
She dragged the blade, making a sparking, grinding, metal screech as it carved through the robot.
"What I'm doing to these machines is nothing to what you'll get…."
Kirin tore the sword out, flipped it around in her hand, and lifted its point toward Teseo's display. Oil and other fluids staining the blade dripped from the steel.
"When I reach you," she concluded.
"Smh, Kirin," Teseo, unphased by the threat, said. "You're never making it out of there. Now, let's raise the difficulty."
Between Kirin and the golden diamond on the back wall, Teseo's digital septima beamed from the pillars and constructed an autonomous stealth craft in the air.
"This doesn't end until you let it," Teseo said. "Can't wait to watch these things shred you, but there's something else I really need to take care of. So, if I don't see you next firing cycle, F to pay respects, Kirin."
"Don't you run away from me!" Kirin yelled at Teseo's deactivating display. "Your fate's already sealed, you bastard!"
Two air-to-ground missiles popped from panels in the craft's undercarriage and locked onto Kirin's position; their afterburners fired. The missiles' explosive radius would be larger than Kirin could dodge, and cutting through the warheads wasn't an option. She threw a talisman, hoping to arc chain behind the missile, but to her surprise, when the talisman struck the missile, a chain sprouted from it and latched into the other missile, drawing them both off course. The heat seekers detonated between the pillars and threw Kirin to the floor. The angular, black stealth craft accelerated, cloaked, and vanished into the smoke.
Kirin's tingling fingers clawed marks into the floor as she climbed to her feet. She looked in horror at the vile glow staining her hands. From her palms to her elbows, yellow chains were twisting around her arms which were themselves being enveloped in black, scaled gauntlets. Kirin clenched her fists. The shame was burning her chest as much as it burned her hands.
"How did I let this happen?" her thoughts cried. "It's all my fault. It's what I deserve. But I have to hold on, at least until I take them with me."
Kirin felt a shift in the smoke. She snatched up her sword in her defiled hands and turned to face the threat. The stealth craft was decloaking just as it emerged from between the pillars. Its gatling gun was spinning up. Kirin launched forward and slid on her knees to narrowly duck the torrent of bullets. As she slid, she charged a talisman which became enwreathed in septimal chains before it ever left her hand. She slung the talisman at the spinning gun, and the chains coiled around the gun, jamming it.
Kirin arc chained above the autonomous craft and plunged her sword into the top of its hull. The machine blasted its twin jet engines on either side of Kirin in an attempt to evade, but Kirin clung to her planted sword as the craft weaved between the pillars. When the machine blasted straight down the walkway once more, Kirin released one hand from her sword and threw a series of talismans at the rapidly passing pillars. From each tagged pillar, a radiant chain erupted and caught hold of the speeding craft until it halted like a bug caught in a web. Kirin threw one more chaining talisman at the golden diamond on the wall before she ripped her sword out of the hull, cut one of the engines, and cartwheeled off the ensnared machine.
Kirin planted the tip of her blade between the cracks in the floor as she landed and spread her arms wide. Her clawed fingers tensed, and she began to draw her hands together. The chains tightened, and each chain attached to a pillar ripped out of place and reattached around the diamond. Slowly, they drug the autonomous craft, along with a spiral of purple smoke, into the twisting space around the diamond.
As the machine struggled to resist, Kirin repositioned her hands over one another and kept pressing them closer. Two more panels opened on the craft's sides and fired a barrage of energy projectiles, but even they were halted by the force of the suction. The remaining engine, pushing to full power, screamed under its desperate strain, the hellish smoke twisting like a black hole. Kirin roared and slammed her palms together. The craft fell into its prison. The vacuum imploded, slinging fragmented metal, shattered pieces of the diamond, and black smoke throughout the entire colonnade. The circuits all went dark.
Kirin, lungs burning, collapsed on her hands and knees. She felt no satisfaction from her victory, only shame, burning, damning shame. The chains on her arms were crawling further up her skin, slithering under her cloak. Her chest was tightening.
"What have I done?" Kirin thought. "If I can't hold on, no one will stop Elise. The whole country, the world, I let it…."
Kirin heard more robots digitizing behind her. They wouldn't let her go in peace. Breathing shakily, she crawled back to her feet.
"GV," she thought, "it should have been me."
The robots charged Kirin once more, she turned and met them with a primal scream.