The Spectacular Exhibition (S3G2) [Round 2: Space - Abridged]

[Pick Yer Poison]

A pile of lifeless bodies littered the floor underneath the ladder, the remains of faceless grunts who had been sent to defend something they knew nothing about. A squad of three had unwittingly descended the ladder, directly into the line of fire of a heavy machine gun sprouting from a mechanical body.

As he listened to the screams of the dying, for the first time since he'd been abducted, Red felt like he was in control. This - ending worthless human lives - was what he'd designed his machine for, and it was doing so perfectly. It didn't strike him that he was getting a little excited over such a small number of kills; rather, the gratification they granted him made it seem as though each person he killed was worth a hundred. He was no longer worried about the troops he heard marching above him. In fact, he welcomed the challenge. The notion that he might be in any real danger had entirely vanished from his head.

A few tense minutes passed before the sound of marching feet faded. Red peered around uneasily. It had started coming from the sides as well just before it stopped; were there hidden doors of some sort? Suddenly, a loud CRASH came from the walls, several dents appearing on various sides of the room. It only took him a few moments to realize what was happening; it took the same amount of time for the teams in the adjacent corridors to impact the walls a second time, tearing three new doors into the room.

Red's torso swiveled on the spidery base as pods of mustard gas launched from his shoulders, bursting open on impact, several to each door. A few of the entering soldiers fell down, choking, but were quickly dragged out by the people behind them, who had quickly put gas masks on the moment their comrades collapsed. Red took the opportunity to fire a carefully-aimed grenade into one of the openings, and was rewarded with screaming, which turned into choking and coughing as the gas masks fell off of those who were hit. As he swiveled towards another of the holes to repeat the procedure, he was rewarded with the sight of buff security guards pouring out of him, firing various weapons at him. The bullets pinged off of his armor. Heedless, he shouted back at them as he stretched out his hands. "Bad move!"

Brooklyn, meanwhile, was so involved with the console that what was going on barely registered with her until a few bullets pinged off her metal form. The shock shattered her concentration, and she flew at the source of the bullets more out of reflex than anything else. The soldier who had fired them tried to dive to the side, resulting in only his arm being sawed apart, instead of his torso. He crumpled to the floor, staring in a daze at his disconnected arm. Brooklyn was about to chase after the rest of his squad, who had decided to haul ass when they saw a flying chainsaw coming at them, when the soldier connected the dots and screamed.

Brooklyn looked back at him, intending to finish him off. His screaming petered out, the blood pouring out of his wound bringing him ever closer to the verge of death. His shockingly pale face looked up at her in what she first took to be fear, but after a moment's scrutiny, realized also had something else mixed into it - hope. He was hoping she'd finish the job and spare him the agony of her mistake. She revved herself up, but could do nothing but stare at him as he slowly bled to death.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, oh god, I'm so sorry," she repeated, unable to bring herself to finish him off. She had said it several more times before she realized he was dead.

Red noticed none of this tomfoolery and continued to tear through the soldiers flooding in through the door openings with reckless abandon, jeering them on as he slaughtered foe after foe, until finally they began to call a retreat. Unable to fit through the holes to follow them, he settled for firing grenades through and sending them bouncing down the corridors as far as he could. "COME BACK, COOOOWAAAAAAARDS!" he jeered. "WHY ARE YOU RUUUUUUNNIIIIIIIING, COOOOOWAAAAAAARDS?"

---

Tria's eyes were as wide as saucers, and her free hand moved to cover her mouth. Who was down there? They were...those screams, they couldn't be...what were they doing? Was that gunfire? She looked at the fish next to her, which was gasping as it asphyxiated in the open air. Did they just hit a planet? Fear and anger began to flare up inside her. Why were they endangering an entire planet? What gave them that right?

The sharp sound of metal bending startled her out of her reverie. She looked around and saw the twisted form of a gutterpipe, which had, for some reason, curled itself in a crude circle around a seemingly-random point in the air. She glanced down at her arm again, but even before she did so she knew that it had done it - she had felt a small twinge within it just as she heard the gutterpipe bend, although it had taken her a few moments to put the two facts together. She grimaced. Getting used to not having the AI controlling her arm would take some getting used to, especially if just getting a little angry could make it react.

Meanwhile, the broadcast was still going, albeit with a lot less talking and a lot more shooting. Explosions could be heard at first, but they quickly stopped. The worst part, Tria decided, was the way one of the tinny voices kept laughing and jeering at the screams of the dying. It made her sick at heart. She started clambering down from the rooftop of the apartment building she was on. She had a vague notion of working her way over to wherever the commotion was happening, but what she really wanted to be sure of at the moment was that she didn't go the same way as the dead fish next to her, flung off in an interplanetary collision and thrust into an environment in which she couldn't survive.

As it turned out, finding the entrance to the bunker Red and Brooklyn were in was easier than she had expected. Although to be fair, a chainsaw flying out of an alley door and up into the sky was a bit of a dead giveaway.

---

Red clanked over to Brooklyn, who was still floating dejectedly over the dead body of the soldier. "Why are you not back at console? Work to do. Need to fix whatever you messed up."

Brooklyn spun around to face him in a way that he couldn't interpret as anything but angry. "The hell is wrong with you?"

Red didn't respond.

"What kind of threat were they supposed to be? They couldn't even hurt us. It's not like either of us are particularly...not immune to bullets!"

This time Red chose to respond. "You sawed man's arm off. Watched him die. Not like me. Deaths were quick, painless. Justified. How can you lecture me?"

Brooklyn's voice didn't splutter, but her engine did anyway. "I panicked! That's totally justifiable! Anyone could've done it!"

"You are too reserved! Scared of killing!"

Brooklyn flared up and flew over to the ladder, turning back to Red before heading up. "Fuck you, you mangy cockroach. I don't need to sit here and listen to you insult me. Have fun in that stupid carapace of yours." With that, she floated up through the hatch, rocketing through the facility's corridors until she reached the exit, her mental map serving as a good enough guide. She shot out from the hidden entrance - not noticing or just not caring that Tria saw her - and flew off, toning her jet engine down as she left the planet's gravity and looked around to decide where to go.

She quickly found the planets involved in the collision. It wasn't hard; there had only been one solid planet involved, and when it had been hit by the giant floating sphere of water around a gravity generator that constituted the other planet, a good portion of the water had started floating off elsewhere as the gravity generator lost its hold on it, creating a scene that looked remarkably like a time lapse version of someone taking a water balloon to the face. Brooklyn flew towards the disaster; she might as well see how much damage she'd caused.

[Mirdini]

Tria had just clambered down onto the highest landing of a fire escape in an attempt to get a closer look at the alleyway below when Brooklyn came roaring out of the bunker’s entrance, her exit accentuated by the dim rattle of machine gun fire behind her. The ghost punctuated her furious ascent by flaring her rockets as soon as she reached open air, which unfortunately for Tria meant precisely when Brooklyn was next to the rooftop the girl had been scoping out the alleyway from. Only a jarring dive to the floor saved Tria’s eyebrows from a lethal scorching, her prosthetic thankfully bearing the brunt of the impact with no more than a twinge in her still-aching shoulder.

As the sound of Brooklyn’s propulsion faded into the distance, Tria momentarily considered what the hell she was doing above what was by all accounts a kill zone. Why had she instinctively headed towards danger? Had she lost even more of her mind since getting caught up in this nightmare? The murderous rampage she’d caught snippets of during the broadcast was awful, sure, but what made her think she’d stand any more of a chance against whoever was behind it than the tattered remnants of the spec ops teams fleeing the neighborhood? She had barely a clue as to how to use her only weapon, she’d never been in a combat situation – the idea that she’d be able to save someone from whatever was going on down there was crazy! And who was she hoping to help – the feds? They weren’t her friends, or even neutral parties – hell, they’d probably arrest her on sight! So why had she come over here? What had possessed-

Tria’s agitated introspection was rudely interrupted by the sharp clang of a door swinging open once more as Red emerged from the bunker. What he was doing there was less important to Tria than the fact that if the broadcast was any indication there was a bloodthirsty mechanical – … lobster? Is that what he was? - directly below her, one that might at any moment chance to look up. As far as she could recall Brooklyn couldn’t actually speak, which left the owner of the apologetic voice on the broadcast a mystery – maybe that Pollet guy? The crazed laughter from below and heavy weaponry still bristling on Red’s secondary carapace while he took potshots at the security men unfortunate enough not to be out of sight left no similar doubts as to the source of the brutish jeering.


Red’s bloodlust had hardly been dimmed by Brooklyn’s exit; if anything her disparaging comment about his suit made him more determined to prove its worth. Not that he had anything to prove to such a crude, makeshift piece of engineering – but his machine was finally performing in the environment he had designed it for, and he could hardly turn down the opportunity for more testing. As the terrified humans had seemingly deserted the bunker, he worked his way back up to street level, eager to see if he had truly driven them out of their precious control center. He was almost disappointed to find no ambush set up as he clattered into the alleyway, and settled for launching a few missiles at the fleeing remains of whatever human group had dared challenge his beautiful craftsmanship. He laughed at their impotence, marveling at the efficiency with which his mech reloaded and fired as he painted the alleyway red.

As the smoke cleared Red scanned his immediate surroundings, feeling the satisfaction of a job well done when it became apparent that there were no more life signs to be found in the alleyway. This left him at somewhat of an impasse, however: continue pursuing the humans, or return to the bunker to ensure the chainsaw’s meddling hadn’t endangered his kin? Deciding on the latter (after all, there’d still be time to wreak havoc later) he managed a step towards the bunker before the glass of his aquatic enclosure was splattered by some sort of low-viscosity liquid. Quickly ascertaining that it had come from above, Red swiveled to investigate the source – were the humans trying to blind him now? Or was it some sort of bioweapon? He shouted a challenge at his hidden aggressors.

“WHAT IS THIS? YOUR SNEAKY ATTACKS WILL NOT HARM ME, COWARDS! COME OUT AND FIGHT!”

Tria had fucked up. She had a low tolerance for lactose products in general, but when a quick raid of an empty flat during her way over had turned up only cereal and milk she’d gone against her better judgment and scarfed some down. After all, she hadn’t had an opportunity to eat since she’d been transported by the Counsellor and who knew when the next one would come along. She promptly regretted that reasoning when upon witnessing Red’s casual slaughterhouse action in the alleyway her already upset stomach decided to stage a full-scale rebellion. It was all Tria could do to not vomit on her sneakers, and as she leaned over the railing of the fire escape the dreadful realization of what gravity was doing with her puke slowly dawned on her. She glanced down to find the crab-bot shouting and pointing its myriad weapons straight at the fire escape she was sitting on. And her arm still wasn’t done cooling down.

Though his reserves were somewhat depleted, Red still had enough missiles stocked to feel comfortable launching one into the proverbial dark. Though his vision was somewhat obscured he could still make out some sort of platform directly above him, which was doubtlessly where the foul assault had come from. He readied a missile, aimed-


Hoofstad had been careening through space for a little under three hours at this point, narrowly avoiding several major collisions. It ran out of luck moments before Red locked onto Tria’s fire escape, colliding apocalyptically with the fairytale planet Itrelii. The ensuing earthquake understandably threw off Red’s aim.


Tria might’ve been relieved by the sight of a missile narrowly missing her perch if she hadn’t been so preoccupied with the fact that the building next to her was collapsing - Hoofstadian building codes apparently not being written with interplanetary collisions in mind.

Shit shit shit shit shit what the fuck was that it’s like the planet exploded what the hell is going on oh damn oh damn this thing is going to fall

The building lurched, setting the fire escape at an untenable tilt to the ground that only grew more precarious as the building slowly proceeded to fall like some giant domino piece. The fire escape itself was barely holding onto the building, its moorings snapping one by one. A few more and it would go careening into the landing zone of the building on the other side of the alley – and the irritated crustacean that was still struggling to regain his balance below it. Tria felt like a protagonist in one of those cheesy disaster flicks she’d sometimes caught on the holo. This building didn’t seem like it was going to miraculously stop collapsing, though. On the other hand, it seemed to be doing the whole collapsing thing rather slowly now that Tria thought about it.

Oh. Right. Low grav.

She had been so at home in the cityscape that she’d forgotten the planet she was on was essentially a miniature, and that with just a bit of force she'd hopefully be able to launch herself clean away from the whole disaster.

Alright, deep breaths. One, two, three

She leapt from the top of the fire escape, shooting into the sky. For a moment she was elated, but gravity would have none of that. Despite her heroic effort it acted, leaving Tria briefly suspended above the imminent devastation below before slowly pulling her back in. She could picture it chuckling darkly at her predicament as she floated back to earth - and with her current trajectory she was set to fly straight into yet another crumpling apartment block. It was precisely at this juncture that Tria realized her arm had finished cooling down. Though the fire escape wasn’t directly below her anymore it was still the closest metal object of any significant mass, and Tria pointed her prosthesis at it, hoping it’d live up to half of its name as she fired off a juiced-up directed magnetic pulse. The shock to her shoulder felt like she’d punched a brick wall.

Tria rocketed out of Hoofstad’s gravitational pull parallel to the colliding planets, caught between confusion at being able to breathe in what was supposed to be a vacuum and spouting liberal profanity over the pain in her shoulder. Those distractions were replaced with a growing sense of alarm as she closed in on Itrelii’s surface at an uncomfortable if not outright lethal velocity, this time without any handy metal constructions to bounce off of. She braced for impact.

[whoosh!]

When Nemaeus rose to his feet his ears were ringing. Something big had just occurred – the shaking of an entire planet was testament to that – but whether that was limited to just seismic disturbance was another mystery entirely. Right now, there was only silence and settling clouds of dust.

His gaze drifted to the contented crackling of the sword, which was still embedded in the mossy ground. It gleamed at him. The weapon was beautiful, and that unnerved him. Things made for the express purpose of killing shouldn't look like that. They should be functional, certainly, maybe even noble or robust if the user thought like that, but beauty – true beauty – looked out of place here.

No killer deserved it.

A few faces, faded by time and a lack of familiarity, flickered through Nemaeus' mind. It didn't matter. He recognised every one. He'd consider himself lucky if he could ever forget.

Sighing, he closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He didn't know what he was supposed to be thinking or feeling right now. He'd made his peace before he donned the noose. It was supposed to make up for the things he'd done, put it all beyond his power to fix or atone for. It was all meant to be over.

Hoping for a sign, or perhaps just to silently appeal to the heavens, Nemaeus opened his eyes and looked up at the sky at the same time as, quite by accident, Tria was falling from it.

He had time to blink, start to shout and turn around to run before she hit him with full force. (And a rather satisfying WHUMP.) Nemaeus instantly crumpled, landing face down on the ground and winded. His relatively restrained curses were fortunately muffled by the ever-obliging moss. Tria rolled off of him a few moments later and climbed to her feet.

“Ah,” she said, catching sight of her impact site. “Sorry.” It seemed an appropriate thing to say.

Nemaeus raised his head and looked at her, astonished. He staggered to his feet for the second time in as many minutes and – staying completely silent – twisted to look back at the sky. Hoofstad loomed. It was not as close as it might have been, partly because they were standing some distance from the point of collision and partly because it had rebounded slightly. But it was still utterly and undeniably there.

“You came from that planet?” Nemaeus didn't even bother to point. Tria looked up anyway, in spite of herself.

“That's where I jumped from.”

“Hm.”

Nemaeus stared at it for a moment more, stroking his stubble.

Somewhere far away, something rumbled and echoed. But in the aftermath of an earthquake, such noises are surprisingly easy to ignore.

He turned back to Tria, ran his fingers through his hair, and looked down at his shoes.

“You're one of the contestants. Combatants. Whatever we are and whatever this is.”

“Yeah.” Tria shifted her feet.

“Are you...? Do you intend to...?”

“Kill you?”

Nemaeus glanced up, and their gazes met for a moment. For the duration of that moment, Tria's thoughts completely derailed. For a single, silver breath she felt... happy. Everything was wonderful. Everything was peaceful. Everything was... silver.

But then the moment passed, and another second or so later and she was wondering why she'd thought that. The world, dreary and monotone as always, looked back.

“Yeah,” Nemaeus replied. He rubbed the back of his neck, gaze still averted. “I'm not – that's not my intention, anyway. To kill anyone. I don't really know what to think of this situation, really.”

Tria rubbed her shoulder, suddenly aware of the pain again. “Yeah, okay. I'm not going to try it either.”

Still quite far away, something roared and echoed. It might have drawn the attention of the two talkers a little better if not for the muffling effect of distance. It might just be another rumble or aftershock, after all.

Nemaeus visibly relaxed at her words. “Good. That's good.” He still didn't look at her, instead examining the surroundings as if casting around for a topic of conversation.

“What's that?” Tria pointed at the sword. Sparks and streaks of lightning danced around the blade now, far faster and louder than previously.

Nemaeus looked at her, surprised again, then towards the sword. He moved towards it, paused midstep and suddenly looked up at the sky behind Tria.

Something roared again, and this time it wasn't distant.

Nemaeus dived for the crackling blade, wrapping his fingers around the hilt as he slammed into the ground. Rolling aside it was pulled free, and the spot where it had once stood burst into flame. Tria leaped back from the heat, throwing up an arm instinctively. An instant later, Nemaeus had grabbed it. Tria stumbled as he started running.

“What-”

“Don't look back! Just run!”

“But what is it?” She yelled, panic rising. If she just knew what the hell she was running from, maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

“It's a fucking dragon!”

Perhaps not.

[Akumu]

If one were to attempt to follow their Planetary Guidebook to Hoofstad, capital of planets, they would at the current point in time find only a slowly dispersing cloud of dust and debris, pancaking out on one end and stretched out to a point on the other, a tack-like shape which formed, luckily enough, a crude directional indicator. Following in that direction, the signs of destruction would be abundant, space being filled with wobbling pockets of liquid and shards of rock, their trajectories already bending in towards each other to form loose accretionary blobs. It would not be long until Hoofstad itself was located, moving at a stately pace through the heavens, its glacial speed belying the gargantuan amount of momentum it truly possessed. This seeker of Hoofstad, seeing the looming form of Itrelli over the shoulder of the bustling metropolis, would be best served to call off their search and consult their Guidebook for an alternative destination. However, if they were stubborn enough to continue, down past the once gleaming towers now coated in dirt and soot, down past the plutopause to the brick and mortar and iron of the lower levels, down even past street level into the crater that they had been pointed to, they might notice in the crater wall a tunnel burrowed into its side. And when, peering into that dimness, they felt the world shudder beneath them as it scraped apocalyptically into its fairy-tale neighbour, they might see the glint of a pair of eyes snapping open and staring back at them. God help that stubborn, curious traveller then, if they happened to be human and were not, in fact, hypothetical.

- - -

His burrow jerked beneath him and he jolted into wakefulness, instantly alert. The shaking continued, dislodging a shower of loose dirt to sprinkle down on him. He had been utterly spent after his struggle against their imprisonment and his retaliation, and he had had just enough stamina to dig out a small den before lapsing into unconsciousness. Now though, the safety it had offered turned sour as images of collapse and entrapment flashed through his mind. His mouth went dry and he scrabbled out of the burrow without even thinking to check whether the coast was clear outside. Luckily, the area around the crater had cleared out around the time of its creation, and now the rest of the population of Hoofstad was trying to make its escape, streaming off the surface and into the void like dandelion fluff. He wasn’t aware of this, of course, wasn’t aware of much of anything other than his need to get free of confinement. Even in that state of mind, it was hard not to notice the form that filled the sky from horizon to horizon, looming above the towers that swayed like stalks of grass in the breeze. With his weak eyesight, it was impossible to gather much information other than it was big, very big, and not where it was supposed to be.

His ears swivelled towards a new sound that rose out of the general roar of the ongoing earthquake. A high-pitched keening, like an animal crying out to warn its brothers as it is set upon by predators, was coming from the nearest tower. Instinctively, it made him want to shuffle away from the sound, but even more convincing was the sight of the tower beginning to lean inwards towards him. He scrambled up the side of the crater, gaining footholds on the half-slagged pipes gushing water towards the shear upper edge, and then was out on the hard black stone and running across the broken glass that covered every surface. Behind, the tower screamed and sloughed, its size making its sagging fall seem slow-motion, but when it hit the ground it sent a wave through that shattered apart the surface black shell and picked him up and flung him through the air away from the impact.

His trajectory followed a low, lazy arc down the avenue, taking him half a block in a dreamy low-g freefall before he impacted back into the ground, tumbling across the shattered stone and glass. Old wounds opened alongside new, and the machine in his back ground into him, driving the air from his lungs. When he came to a rest, he was oozing from a hundred different cuts and scrapes, and a deep ragged breath dissolved into a fit of barking coughs that splattered glittering blood onto the street. Despite all that, he could not imagine being happier, because drifting out of the nearby side-streets he heard a familiar voice.

“I LIVE, COWARDS! WILL HAVE TO DROP MORE THAN BUILDING TO END ME!”

Pushing himself shakily to his feet, he staggered into the alleys in search of his brother. He still had a message to deliver, after all.

- - -

Red hurled invective upwards, cycling through detection modes to find one that could pierce through the veil of smoke and dust that obscured the sky. He felt invincible, his suit having performed flawlessly through all the humans had thrown at it. One attacker had evaded him thanks to the earthquakes that wracked the city, but he would remedy that soon enough, if he could just spot them through the haze.

Focused as he was on the sky, Red missed the motion along the ground until an automated subroutine pinged a proximity warning. Coming towards him through the alley, practically dragging itself, was the hideous aardvark he had thought himself rid of when he had dumped it into freezing arctic waters. It looked even worse than before, its body stretched in unnatural ways and lumpy with crystal growths, torn to shreds and barely even functioning. Red’s antennae twitched in distaste. Why did something this misshapen even bother to exist? He raised a mechanical arm, internal mechanisms spinning an explosive shell into its chamber before popping a mini-cannon out of its hatch. The aardvark drew to a stop and hunched in on itself, probably trying to prepare another blinding burst. Red took aim, and was about to fire when his communications systems came to life in a burst of static, before disgorging a jumbled mess of voices.

“We must not hurt buddy. Buddy must not eliminate buddy, s’alright. Hope hope hope hope hope s’alright. We need to band together as a group.”

On the street, the aardvark loosened again and looked directly up at him, panting with exertion and looking for all the world like it was incredibly pleased with itself.

[whoosh!]

The feeling of running from the drake was incomparable to anything else that had ever happened to Nemaeus. He could virtually feel his heels burning.

Sure, he'd run from people before. Dangerous people, mostly, or at least intended to be more dangerous than him. And they'd been armed, certainly. But they'd never boasted powers of flight or the ability to spit flames.

And he'd never had anyone else with him. He cast a glance at Tria, keeping pace beside him, half hopefully and half fearfully. He tried to remember what the Counsellor had said about her, but all he could recall from that time was numb shock, confusion and despair. It had all been too fast, too fast -

You should be dead.

He could feel it now, see it, hear it. The rope was rough around his neck. The curtains were open, and he could see the city lights. The blare of traffic drifted in through the open balcony doors, as did the cool touch of the breeze. He hadn't intended to write a note, it had never been in his plans, but he'd found himself encapsulating all the pity of his existence in those two terrible words anyway. Nobody would care. Maybe somebody would even read them. He'd smiled a little, and straightened his lapels. It was funny, the way the suits had just become part of him. Couldn't imagine life without one. Couldn't image death without one either. He'd bundled the pelt around his shoulders for the same reason. Stroked it, ran his fingers through the creature's fur one last time. These were all the things that formed his life.

Night. City. Wind. I'm sorry. Suit. Pelt.

Time to go.

With only the slightest twinge of apprehension, far too late for him to act upon, he had kicked out the stool from underneath him. For a second he had fallen, and for a second he had been utterly free. A dead man had no debts.

“What are you doing!?” Tria screamed at him, huddled behind a ruined and broken wall. Her eyes were red, and Nemaeus was sure she was shaking. He stared at her in utter confusion. His mind was still in the room with his suicide note and the cool night breeze.

Things became a little clearer as the light of the sun was blocked out. Staggering in sudden darkness, he threw his gaze upwards only for the light to return. Nemaeus cursed and covered his eyes, but he had seen it.

Some long buried sense of preservation burst through into his mind, screaming and flailing. Barely thinking, he flicked the wolf skin upwards.

The wall of flame brushed the air beside him. The rest of the inferno dissipated against the fur. It was gone in a second, leaving him choking and gasping but very much unburnt. Seizing the chance, he leapt and staggered to Tria's wall.

She looked even worse up close. Perspiration streaked her face, and her eyes were wide. Her eyes focused on him and she tried to speak, but she only succeeded in half-mouthing something and croaking a little. She absolutely was terrified. Not knowing what to do, Nemaeus outstretched a hand. She flinched and he immediately withdrew it.

How the hell am I supposed to deal with this?

He glanced up at the sky, curiously blue after the storm. No dragon in sight. For the moment. He had time, at least, but what was he going to do with it?

Think!

In response, a few words, half forgotten, politely floated up into his consciousness.

“...she suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress, pyrophobia, and has some overall personality issues...”

Pyrophobia. Of course.

He looked at her again, sharp twinges of guilts running through him as he did so. Why had he taken her with him? He had the sword, so presumably he was the dragonkiller in this story. She had nothing to do with any of this.

He looked away sharply as her eyes met his, but the thrill of the exchange ran through him in that moment. Could he... could he convince her that it was fine? Could he twist her into something more useful? Did he dare?

It terms of pure logistics, it would be simple. Maybe once she was more pliable and less frightened, and nobody could stay scared forever. And if he could protect her...

Then what?

Once he had his ally, what would he do with her in a battle with only one survivor? Is it that difficult to imagine?

Not to mention that logistics wasn't the only thing to consider. Nemaeus looked at Tria once more, not meeting her gaze. The guilt stabbed like knives this time. She's just scared. And she doesn't deserve to be.

Nemaeus felt the fur beneath his fingers. For a moment he stared at the skin of the legendary wolf, and then his mind was made up.

He stood up. Tria immediately clawed at his suit jacket, hissing at him to stay hidden. He gently disentangled himself from her, and stabbed his sword into the dirt. It burst into a flurry of lightning, but he ignored it. Instead he unfurled the pelt. The Kyprian wolf's upper jaw stared reproachfully back. That wasn't worth his attention either, so instead he draped it over Tria's back. The head sat over her own, and the rest wrapped around her fairly easily. The wolf had been large, and Tria wasn't the bulkiest of people. She stared up at him, (causing the skull to fall off and bend back against the fur in a somewhat surreal manner) looking at him with... what? Confusion? Gratefulness? He didn't know, so he lifted the morbid hood back up.

“Don't take it off. You'll be safe from the fire if you keep that on.” He wrenched the sword back out of the dirt, and it crackled contentedly.

He waited for a moment, hoping for some response, but she only looked at him with that curious expression. He paused a moment longer, then coughed and turned away. A roar crashed through the air, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.
Nemaeus inhaled. This was suicide.

He began to walk. The ruins were curious and sprawling, but a relatively intact tower towered before him. He began to climb the steps. Gaining height might actually let him get close to this monster.

His mind flashed back to the single second of freefall, noose around his neck, and nothing in the world weighing him down.

Yes, this was suicide.

That was part of the appeal.

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I'm not sure we're ever going to get around to fighting this dragon, much less killing it.

[SleepingOrange]

Several hours had passed like minutes. Like seconds, even, or moments. Perhaps they had passed for Crepitans in a way that had little to do with time; treefolk of all bents are notoriously awkward about their perceptions of chronology in any case. His departure from the beachy planet had been one bookend to a frenzied, atemporal story, certainly; what followed, though, had stood out less like a plot and more like a series of disconnected events.

A clan of tiny humans – were they tiny for humans, or just for him? – had fallen. He remembered fondly, or perhaps experienced in the moment or even was daydreaming about, their screams. As soon as he'd landed, he'd scooped one up, pulling it apart like an insect and flinging its still screaming corpse at what was probably its mate or offspring. It had certainly set an excellent tenor for the rest of the rampage, as the bloodied survivor had gibbered in abject horror as its home and family were crushed and splattered like the garbage they were. Crepitans had been sure to make sure that victim had been the last. Probably. The last of the first in any case. Cabins and cottages had fallen like blocks and splintered like toothpicks under his assault, followed by bridges and suburbs and radio towers. He supposed he'd moved between planets at some point, then, hadn't he?

Shrieks and shrikes and terror and laughter all blurred into one dreamlike recollection for him. How many lives had his blood-rimed hands claimed since the beaches? A dozen? A hundred, a thousand? That didn't seem right. There hadn't been time for that. Probably. Regardless, it had been many. Faces and species melted into one another and all died the same way, all chaff to be winnowed from the worlds they undeservedly inhabited. His boughs clacked and squelched with new trophies, his bird chirping contentedly in concert with his swaying.

Why wasn't he killing anything now, actually? Crepitans blinked and shook what could be called his head, trying to rouse himself from the then-and-now world of his memories or fantasies. He'd run out of victims, then, yes. As he had before. Long after he'd expected to come across another of his laughable competitors. Another planet – [i]had it been a city? A forest, perhaps? – had been drained of life, its peaceful inhabitants not prepared to deal with a behemoth of wood and blood and vrutality. So he'd, yes, he'd leapt again. As he had before. There was the creak of wood on stone, no, soil, and he'd left another impossible gravity field. Soared through the sky that wasn't a sky but was emptiness and landed again. Killed those who had lived there too, was killing them now, forced his spiked fingers through the bones of a bag of flesh. No. He blinked. That was then.

With an effort, he focused himself. He wasn't going to fall into the traps of doddering old grey-needled pines and lose a sense of when. Now, now, now. Now, he was floating in blackness, an ocean of black with spheres ahead and spheres behind and spheres around. Ahead and behind, one before and one after. The behind-spheres were past. He was moving ahead. Why wasn't he there already? Why had he stopped?

Well, he hadn't. He was still moving, or the worlds were moving around him. It was the same thing. His last leap simply hadn't had the force to get him to his destination, or perhaps he'd aimed poorly. It didn't matter. Probably.

He twitched, then thrashed. With nothing to gain purchase on, there was no way to steer, no way to gain speed. So he drifted, annoyed at this peaceful interlude of darkness. Of course, he hadn't actually slowed down since his leap; the breathable void didn't truly have any air resistance. He simply had longer to go before he reached anywhere than before. And so he thought.

Mostly, he thought the same thoughts he'd thought before. Thoughts about the Counsellor and Professor and the idiots he was supposed to be ending at their behest. Thoughts about how they had proven so inept, so foolishly incapable of organizing a deathmatch that he'd shed the blood of perhaps dozens of equivalents to his targets and seen none of them. Perhaps he was too competent, and they sought to hobble him and prevent the battle ending in minutes. But then why enter him against such obviously inferior targets to begin with? Incompetence, probably. Probably. It was all very, very vexing. He had things to be doing, better people to be killing in more exciting ways. Better plots to hatch than "Murder, then murder some more, then murder the one who asked for the murders."; it was all too straightforward, too beneath him. He could be ending empires, not swatting fleshy flies.

Perhaps he landed again, or perhaps he simply drifted back through his own personal bubble of time. Roots slammed into cobblestones, cracking them in a very satisfyingly ominous way. He followed the splitting rabble with a bloodthirsty roar, flinging seeds into the mass of little things that had come to see the ruckus. They were humans, maybe, or little plantlike beings with leafy skirts. A race of insects, a species of bird. Did it matter? They bled, or did something close enough, and they wept and they died. He wove spells as many among their number fled, causing their bones or plates or stems to twist and throb with agony, their muscles to turn on them and pull them apart. He laughed as some approached as though to fight. Did they throw fireballs, or was it some kind of mechanical device? Swords had probably played a pivotal role in being as unable to harm him as everything else. He let the ones who would fight live longer than the others, so they could watch each other die painfully, futilely. The broken soul of a brave warrior was a treasure to be savored before its skull followed suit.

This repeated itself, perhaps literally and only in his mind, perhaps figuratively and more tragically across a slew of planetoids. Spheres of all sizes and colors dripped with the shed ichors of their inhabitants, at the very least in the mind of the shaman. Certainly several had been exsanguinated and exterminated. Did it matter how many? No, it couldn't. Definitely. It was enough, it was many. But it wasn't as many as it could be, and it hadn't lead him to his real targets yet.

And yet, here he was, once again drifting aimlessly. Perhaps simply still drifting so. In the dark expanse of space that he'd never hitherto considered, it was harder than it ever had been on solid ground to follow the threads of when and where, realized and planned. No sun ticked and tocked across his canopy like an unwindable clock, no true interactions with other sentients set his pace, no complex or measured rituals filled his hours. It could have been hours, it could have been days. It could have been minutes, but it was hard for Crepitans to admit the possibility that his carefully-maintained linear awareness had so quickly crumbled as to fade in minutes of unnatural stillness and activity.

The only other being who could have cared about Crepitans's durations – and had survived to see befores and afters – wasn't in much of a position to evaluate them either. He'd been unconscious, or dead, and had just woken up. Maybe he was about to, instead. Either way, he couldn't know how long sweet comatose senselessness had dragged on for, even if he still had the faculties to evaluate it or the memories to make it relevant. Regardless of his consciousness or lack thereof, and regardless of what he might think about it, Norman Randall Pollet's little graveyard planet had just seen another one-sentient boom in population, and the man was soon going to have to deal with an angry and murderous and detatched saptwister.

Probably.

[Schazer]

Chainsaw screams and rocket roars resounded through Space, fleeing from Brooklyn as often as they arced about the constricted endlessness and chased her in turn. Her omnipresent wails merely fuelled her hysteria, a beach and a forest and knot of cogs and a crystal ball of a moon and a castle and cemetry and a carpark and an ocean over a city all hurtling past her again and again into something homogenous and awful and incredible. It must have taken someone lifetimes, to build it or move it or achieve something close to divinity to exist it into place.

Add one ghost, one messily-curtailed echo of one lifetime. Cities burnt, shores crumbled, and a dozen soldiers carved to pieces. They couldn't have hurt her.

ArooooOOOOOOOoooo, howled Hoofstad's sirens, as Brooklyn sailed past them a fourth time. She cut the thrust, and aerodynamics be damned the chainsaw sailed onward. The silence served to calm her down, blanking out external noise as simple as not concentrating.

Not looking was simple as well, for the most part. The mundanity of just knowing where and what things surrounded you, so integral to living that there weren't pithy words for the whole experience, you lost that when you died. Or died, but stuck around jammed in a testament to your most spectacular mistakes. Brooklyn didn't know the difference, but a joyride of crippling guilt and merely-symbolic fleeing from phenomenal balls-ups was giving her time to think.

Moons. Water. Rubble. More moons. The little knot of cogs, a smear of sand in three dimensions. Another moon. A haunted house, and its token ghost.

A ghost!

Brooklyn slammed the metaphorical brakes, then realised that didn't do squat and sliced circles out of the void for a bit before the chain's revs pointed her mansion-ward. Her charge was a bit too enthusiastic, and carved straight through the roofspace of the North Tower. Oops.

Trenton, to his credit, just waved.

"Are you that ghost from the desert?" she demanded, loose bolts rattling irritably as her chassis twitched this way and that. Ghost sight, as it turned out, took a while to warm up again.

"Oooh, you saw me? Couldn't be sure how I'd look to you, if you could see me at all. Norm's never any help when I ask him."

The ghost's cheerfulness was disarming. "Norm?"

"My brother. The preacher creature you're supposed to be sticking your pointy end in, according to the... Councillor?"

"... Counsellor, I think."

Trenton just looked confused. "Isn't that what I said?"

"With an 'e'."

"With a what now?"

Brooklyn snorted with frustration; the Pollet's uncomprehending gawk in the face of danger just annoyed her further.

"Ugh, you're as hopeless as your brother, aren't you? Can you even read?"

"Woah!" cried the striking but indistinct smudge that comprised the best part of Brooklyn's sight. She could've sworn its aura flared up once, like a particularly petulant and indignant sun. "Of course I can read. I can write, too!"

"Really," Brooklyn retorted, vaguely aware (and even more vaguely, comfortable) she was falling headfirst into an argument with a veteran idiot. "Says you and what publisher?"

"My brother's assorted nebulously extant deities," swore Trenton. He hadn't actually stopped his incessant swinging in circles while grasping the tail of Skullclops Manor's rusty weathervane, but Brooklyn couldn't see that. "You are rude!"

"And you," snarled the chainsaw, "have no right-" creak creak, round round round, went Trenton on the weather vane- "no right at all-" creak creak squeak- "to claim a scrap of superiority over your idiot of a brother!" Creak, creak. "What's he doing in a fight to the death, anyway?"

Creak cr-

"I was just wondering about that."

"Wait, really?" Thank god (only as a turn of phrase, granted), a sane thought in his head.

"Pffft, nah."

Brooklyn clanked, choked, fell about a foot in the air, then seemed to finally compose herself.

"This is a waste of time."

"This is a waste of time," parroted Trenton, leaping atop the weathervane and deftly balancing upon it. "Look at me! I'm a dragon in a box! A metal monster, busy as can be! I haven't the time or the nose to smell the flowers, only to turn it up at silly little ghosts as I fly by to my busy ghostly business!"

"If you think you're being funny-"

"All the time in the mortal coil, and I've shuffled out it in a magical flying suit of armour! There's not a second to waste!"

"Shut up," snapped Brooklyn. The poltergeist refused, or maybe he didn't hear her over the shriek of her chainsaw.

"But I'm trying to help!" Trenton chided. "Look, for discourse's sake I'll even worship your timeless shrine, give up my slothful ways, and cut to the chase. Why did you come looking for me?"

And despite her obvious answer - her harried, impatient self, Brooklyn found herself unable to answer. Not without feeling like she had to blurt the obvious and sound dumber for saying it.

"You a ghost. Like me. I just- I just needed someone to talk to. About, uh. Ghost things."


There was an awkward science.


"Iiin my defence," grumbled Brooklyn, seething in her chassis, "talking to you seemed a damn better idea before I actually talked to you."

"That is such a sweeping generalisation if I ever heard one! I mean, just because we're both ghosts, we're automatically going to have so much in common? It's not like being a ghost has to define you, it's not like we only hang out with ghost-friends and ghost-allies, only talking about ghost-things-"

"Yeah, I get it."

"It's not like there's one single way to ghost-dom either! Poisoning, soldiering, drowning, dysentry, childbirth, lynching, simply nodding off to sleep at a ripe old rage and a lifetime's regrets-" Trenton stoped at this point, not for lack of observations on ghost-dom, but because his conversation partner had her blade in his head. It was a tad more disconcerting than when Norman and his staff actually got the jump on Trenton and cut an ineffectual swathe out of him, but not by much. He stopped more out of courtesy.

"I," growled Brooklyn, "am not in a good mood."

Trenton sniffed. It smelt of post-storm forest; fresh air mixed with churned mud and snapped branches. "I didn't need to be a published author to figure that one out."

"Good."

---

Norman Randall Pollet's book was interrupted by splintering roof, though he didn't recognise it as such. A dusting of crumbled cobwebs and decreptiude turned solid dislodged from the ceiling, sprinkling itself gently across the page.

Norman glanced up, his solitude registering in that single moment. The noise was upsetting. He wanted to be alone, and knew as soon as he'd decided that that whoever was out there would not indulge him.

"... Damnit," growled the clergyman, uneasily uncertain of Who was supposed to be damning things for him. He rose from his seat (a pile of musty albums and other books he'd already read), shuffled out the door and to the cupboard under the stairs where he'd stashed his cane. The sight of it alone wasn't anything special, nestled as it was in shadows and spiderwebs, but Norman just knew. He'd grab that staff, march to the front door, and someone would tell him something he should've already known and had no wish to know; like where he'd gotten it from and who he'd done despicable things to just to have gotten it.

Norman sighed. Some hellish cockerel yodel-screeched above, wishing him good morning, you self-serving scum.

How could you do that to that poor boy?

Do you know him!?

Norman did not. The staff in his hands felt like it was chewed up and spat out a sawmill, any connection to its tree shrivelled and dried and snapped off with disuse. Oddly comforting, really. He made his unhurried way to the front door, not entirely certain where it was after his perceived months of hermitage.

Grin-nh-nh-nhn-nh-nh-nhn-nh-nh-nhn, went the cockerel on the roof.

[Mirdini]

Nemaeus walked up the spiraling staircase, his sword's crackling breaking the silence between his footsteps. The tower was much larger than it had first seemed, giving him plenty of time to think. He still wasn’t sure what he expected to find, much less do once he finished climbing - there was no guarantee the drake would even get close enough for the sword to touch it. Even if it did, without the pelt’s protection Nemaeus would be hard-pressed to find an opening large enough to swing at it. One wrong step and he’d be ashes.

Well, beating the odds is what a hero’s supposed to do, isn’t it? I’ve just got to get in character.

He shook his head wryly. Despite his best efforts fate had seen fit to cast him in this role; all that was left was to play it out. At least he cut a dashing figure in his pinstripe suit, mythical sword in hand - a murderer seeking redemption at the peak of an ancient ruin. Details mattered. This was a story, after all.


Tria sat on the ground, watching Nemaeus walk away. She wanted to say something, thank him for the pelt, say anything. All she managed was to shrink further into the fur’s embrace, shivering as the dragon’s roars slowly faded from her immediate surroundings.

The wall the dragon’s fire had brushed earlier was slightly warm to the touch as Tria leaned against it. She wasn’t sure when she’d found the strength to stand, much less move in the direction Nemaeus had gone. He wasn’t lying about the protection the pelt afforded – she’d seen that much for herself. So why had he given it to her? Why had he left? And what was up with his eyes?

Just what is that guy’s deal?


Nemaeus reached the top of the spire, clambering across some particularly enterprising plants that had encroached upon the stairwell. He found himself in an overgrown tower garden, trees and ruins interspersed with avenues now covered in all manner of vines and vegetation. Thick gray blanketed the sky, the deep blue he’d started his ascent with now banished by billowing clouds. Nemaeus worked his way deeper into the garden, hardly noticing the sword’s crackling growing in intensity. The drake was missing, but among the ruined columns and towering oaks he could make out the sound of flowing water, pulling him ever onward.


The drake had no name, unlike many of its antecedents. This wasn’t particularly surprising - it had had no-one to give it one. The hero in this telling of the tale didn’t belong. He had skipped straight to the climax, and far too early at that; though that did not reduce the burning hatred the beast felt for him and his cursed sword. Each telling the dragon had lost, slain by the noble soul chosen by the sword. This drake was no different – doomed to fail and fall to its death as countless others had before it.

That was if this had been an orthodox telling of the tale. But this hero was foreign, and through his presence and failure to follow the narrative he had done the impossible.

He had given the drake a chance.


Tria deliberated as she stumbled forward, the clouded sky casting the ruins in a grim light. She was supposed to be in a fight to the death with these six other… people, yet so far just one out of the three she’d met had been obviously hostile. Nemaeus had helped her. If anything, he seemed about as confused about the whole thing as she was. She couldn’t rule out that that had been an act, but his words had felt genuine.

She’d been proven wrong time and again about the kindness of strangers, so what made this guy any different? Why did she think he was worth risking her life to follow?

I’ll figure that out when I catch up with him.

Was she really still naïve enough to believe someone would help her without an ulterior motive?

As she began to ascend inside the tower she’d glimpsed Nemaeus enter, she was surprised to realize that the answer was yes.


The source of the water was nearby, though curiously the vegetation seemed to be thinning out as Nemaeus drew closer and closer to what had to be the center of the rooftop garden. A large ring of fluted columns loomed out of the dim surroundings. Walking toward one of the wide gaps between them, Nemaeus found his gaze drawn upwards, discerning that they supported an overgrown roof far above. His eyes were still glued to the ceiling as he entered the massive gazebo, making the sudden splash his shoe made when he walked down into the lightly flooded floor of the structure all the more surprising. His eyes jerked down to stare at the source of the pool: an ancient fountain whose lowest tier had begun to crack, allowing a trickle of water to escape.

The drake wrapped around the fountain stared straight back.


It had felt him approach, the burning flames in the back of its throat swelling in anticipation, yet it made no move to ambush the hero. He might have been an interloper, an anomaly, but the drake was still bound – and a surprise attack at this juncture simply wasn’t how the story went. So it waited, contenting itself with thoughts of roasting flesh. His arrival was understated, as if he didn’t know that this was the place where he would encounter his nemesis, and that their final battle would ensue. The drake did not care. It stared at the hero, waiting for its cue.


Nemaeus slipped, almost falling face-first into the water at the sight of the drake. The thing was looking straight at him, but not moving from its perch. It was almost as if it was waiting for Nemaeus to do something.

Well if it wanted him to do something, he could oblige. Locking eyes with it, he threw all his charm at the drake, hoping against hope that it was less resilient than that fucking aardvark as he began talking.

“Alright big guy, just sit tight while I come on over. We’re going to have a nice talk, you and I.”

The drake slowly swayed in time with Nemaeus’ steps. Making his way through the pool of water and up the fountain without breaking eye contact took some effort, but Nemaeus eventually found himself face to face with the beast. It was still captivated.

“Okay now… stretch your neck out for me, nice and easy,” he muttered, slowly raising the sword in a two-handed grip. It was radiant with blue lightning, the crackling almost drowning out his words.

Nemaeus could hardly believe his luck when the drake complied, leaning forward to give Nemaeus a clean shot at beheading it. This was too easy.

He swung down the blade.


Blinding white light

deafening thunder

the jarring crack of the sword bouncing off, flying out of his grip

the drake’s tail whipping about, clipping him as it roared

flying through the air

landing as the roof collap-

Silence.


As she trudged up what felt like the fifty-thousandth stair that day, Tria wished she hadn’t spent half her time in this new universe clambering up and down fire escapes. At least these stairs were carved stone, as opposed to the torturously steep metal on Hoofstad.

The tower was wrapped in an eerie calm, save for the wind whistling through its narrow windows. She caught glimpses of the sky as she passed them – glimpses she’d soon start ignoring as the clouds refused to stop roiling ominously.

Some calm before the storm. Can’t the weather just make up its mi-.

Light streamed in through every window of the tower, followed by a thunderclap that nearly sent her flying. Several heartbeats passed without the stairs collapsing under her, spurring Tria to resume marching up. She’d nearly reached the roof, and whatever was going on up there certainly wasn’t peaceful.


Nemaeus opened his eyes, surprised to find that he hadn’t been reduced to charcoal yet. His back felt like a tenderized steak, but he was alive. Slowly pushing himself up against the column he’d landed on, his hand stopped as something cut into it. He looked down to find that piece of shit sword, stuck in the column about a foot from where his head had been resting. It didn’t seem very coincidental.

He cut it free using the Kyprian claw, cursing his decision to not just try to cut the drake’s head off with that instead. Sword in one hand, claw in the other he wondered why he’d let himself get caught up in the drama.

Hadn’t he come up here to get it all over with? Why was he acting as if he wanted to win this fight?

...

Was there even a fight left to lose?

He glanced back to where the fountain had stood. It was now buried under what had once been the gazebo’s roof, an avalanche in which his chances of survival would have been slim. Seemed the drake had saved him with that pat on the back. The beast itself hadn’t been so lucky, as various limbs sticking out from under the rubble attested.

Then they began to move.


The drake did not know what foul magic the man had used to immobilize it, just that it hated him all the more for it. What he had done had been unnatural, wrong, but fit well enough with the concept of the hero challenging it that it felt freed from its restraints. Flexing its wings, it prepared to take to the sky - finding moments later that they would not respond. It screamed, flames melting stone as it bucked against the rubble weighing it down.

As soon as it was free, he would pay.


Nemaeus found himself sprinting towards where he remembered the stairwell ending. Once the first jet of dragon breath had erupted from the rubble to ignite the nearby foliage, he’d found his instincts were rather opposed to the idea of being incinerated. Nothing like the peace he’d found in that second of free-fall awaited him in front of that drake, only searing pain.

So he vaulted waist-high roots, dodging from wall to column, all the while aware of the creeping fire behind him. The drake had managed to free itself; that much was obvious. He’d hoped the overgrown garden would keep it from taking off or chasing too effectively, but it wouldn't be doing much to shield him once reduced to a smoking crater.

If the stairs aren't in this direction...

No, that didn't bear thinking about.


She took the stairs three at a time now. Tria had heard the dragon roar, and mindlessly charging forward was the only way she could keep herself from sprinting back down the stairs instead. As much as she was terrified of – better not to think about it – if Nemaeus was up there with that dragon he needed the pelt much more than she did. Not getting it to him would be as good as killing him. The events in the pyramid had been awful enough; she wouldn’t allow herself to have Nemaeus’ death on her conscience as well. She skidded past yet another landing, barely noticing the vines that had started to appear as she flew up the stairs.


He could see the edge of the tower, the sky beyond still draped with churning clouds that refused to deliver on their promise of rain. The garden around Nemaeus was an inferno, flames brushing him as he ran past trees reduced to pillars of fire, the ground a mess of burning roots and vines.

He burst out of purgatory into the outer ring of the rooftop, leaning his head through the metal fence surrounding the tower’s edge to catch a few smoke-free breaths. A short wall and the biting wind out here were functioning as a temporary firebreak, though Nemaeus didn’t see that lasting long. As soon as the wind changed this refuge would be engulfed in flames, and he wasn’t keen to stick around for that. A few dozen feet away he could see the entrance to the stairwell, and after a final deep breath Nemaeus went for it.

At which point the drake come crashing out of the flames, knocking over part of the wall and landing right in front of Nemaeus. It looked crazed, almost rabid, and far beyond any sort of compulsion he could hope to lay on it. That trick wasn’t going to work twice. He noticed the sword in his hand was crackling with lightning once more, and considered just tossing the thing off the tower in the moments before his imminent incineration. The blade put on a good show, but for all that it had failed abysmally. The claw in his other hand felt comfortable, reliable.


Ironic. The Counsellor had whisked him from a death he desired, only to send him to one he wanted no part of. He looked up from his weapons to see the drake inhaling. All thoughts of escape fled as he froze. Whether in fear or acquiescence, the result would be just the same.

Back again. The city lights in the distance, a dark night sky hanging above. Hands rough from fashioning the noose, adjusting it one last time. The breeze gently shakes the curtains, his suit and pelt wrapped around him, a part of him. The coarse rope like a dull razor. One last breath. A light kick.


The drake began to exhale.


One second of freedom. Such a small thing, yet it feels like all the time in the world. No debts, no worries, no orders. Just him, his suit, his pelt, his life in freefall.

I’m sorry.


His head cracked against the cobblestone path, throwing Nemaeus out of his reverie. He could hear the dragon’s breath rushing past him, the air around him ablaze. He hadn’t thought he'd lose his sense of pain that quickly, but that was just as well. If he was that far gone it was far better than the alternative. Lying back, he waited for the end.


Death refused to claim him.

He opened his eyes, expecting the dragon’s maw, only to see the wolf’s jaw staring scornfully back at him.

Behind it the drake’s mouth yawned wide, flames temporarily extinguished. He moved on instinct, arm snapping to extend, sword piercing deep into the soft tissue within. Light. Noise.



The drake crashed to the side, scales still crackling with an unearthly blue energy. As his senses slowly returned, Nemaeus realized he was weighed down by more than just his pelt. He flipped the wolf’s jaw back to find Tria lying on top of him, hands locked in a death grip on the sides of the fur. She raised her eyes to his, quite obviously petrified and exhausted by what she’d just done.

Nemaeus quickly considered and discarded the idea of persuading her that she wasn’t scared or tired, that she could stand up and run down the stairs with him. Somehow she’d fought her way up here, and twisting that into something more immediately beneficial would be sickening. Instead he scooped her up as he stood, throwing the pelt around his shoulders and rushing between the gleaming black corpse and the conflagration it had started to reach the stairs.


They were about halfway down the tower before Tria spoke, her voice barely audible.

“You were right about that thing” she croaked, nodding at the pelt.

Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she fell into welcoming darkness.