Mecia Porsena of Numantia, Colonial Governess of Taracon, leaned against the balcony rail of her bedchamber to have a look at her domain. She held a half finished glass of wine negligently in one hand, swishing its contents around, more interested in the sound of her nail tapping the glass than the flavor of the drink it contained.

  Jarel Craith was about to come through her door.

  Truly, she didn’t think he had it in him.

  But as it ever was, junior officials had a tendency to talk themselves into ill-advised courses of action, from time to time.

  She supposed moral outrage would always be en vogue among the young. She could understand it. The universe was an ugly place. An ever-turning wheel of violence and consumption and fornication, lust and pride and envy, anger and heartbreak and misery.

  There was no such thing as a 'divine order,' the way most conceived of it.

  But try to tell that to a believer, praying to the Nine as if the Nine were anything but talking Skills.

  People like Jarel Craith didn’t like to hear those kinds of things, though.

  This wasn’t about expanding civilization. It wasn’t about taming the barbarians. It was about one thing, and only one thing. The extraction of power and resources. Everything else was a formality.

  The Blight had indeed been a crisis, but out of that crisis emerged what could be the most productive colony in all the empire and she, Mecia Porsena, was its Governess. Truly they should all be celebrating. She would learn the cause of this unprecedented productivity, and perhaps they would even gain the ability to replicate it elsewhere. Mecia’s heart fluttered, like a maiden in love, at the commercial and political possibilities of such a discovery.

  And even if they couldn’t, Volos would soon be a name known to all in Numantia nonetheless.

  Her Praetor would be foolish to terminate his soon-to-be illustrious position in such a manner.

  But he was a fool. There was nothing for it. She’d simply have to appoint fewer fools in the future. Preferably none.

  Mecia heard her door open, a dozen pairs of quiet leather shoes walking on her polished floor with the measured stride of soldiers, then the clack of boot heels behind them all. It could be her imagination, but that last set of footfalls sounded hesitant.

  She turned around and leaned against the rail, a smirk on her lips as a row of blank faced Sicari formed a semicircle around her. Jarel Craith stepped through their ranks to face her, and she noted with a certain satisfaction that his eyes tightened at the corners when he saw her, and his gaze locked to her eyes.

  She’d chosen this nightgown for a reason.

  Lar Tathvaal would have given his teeth to see her in it.

  “Are you certain this is what you wish to do,” she said, in a tone as casual as if they had been discussing plans for dinner.

  Jarel Craith set his jaw.

  “You leave me little choice,” he said. “Trafficking with an Abyss Witch alone is an unpardonable sin. Redmane and his minions must die.”

  “There’s no such thing as an unpardonable sin. Not with this much Gnosis on the table.”

  She noted the way his eyes flared with righteous anger, despite all his efforts to keep it contained.

  “You think yourself unbeatable,” he said.

  She smirked again. “I am the definition of unbeatable.”

  The room held its breath.

  Twelve Sicari stood motionless, their presence a silent wall. Their heartbeats echoed in her keen ears, drums marking the seconds before the inevitable. The thirteenth drum beat at a higher tempo than the rest, much to her amusement.

  Mecia maintained calm eye contact with Jarel, a wry smile on her lips, his own pressed flat together to contain his anger, his fear and uncertainty. But his face gave it all away.

  She finished her drink and set the glass on the rail.

  “I appointed you to this role for your steadfastness, and you have not disappointed me,” she said. “I even understand why you think all this foolishness is necessary. So I’ll give you a chance to step back from the precipice. You can take your hounds and leave my chambers, wake up tomorrow morning alive and well and still in my good graces. All shall be forgiven.”

  He actually considered it.

  She could see a flicker of vacillation in his eyes.

  Certainly he’d estimated his chances of victory, and found them slim.

  Jarel Craith’s mouth opened as if to speak. To relent, and apologize. Torn between righteousness and obedience.

  Obedience nearly won.

  His lower lip quivered a bit. Then he shut it tight in a frown.

  He pointed. “Sicari, seize her.”

  And they all moved at once.

  The Sicari were on top of Mecia faster than the eye could follow, but the Governess was faster still.

  They translocated to her, but she translocated to a point in space beyond her balcony, floating high in the air, and several things happened at the same time.

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  Aelia’s Emerald Redoubt

  Drusilla’s Lance

  A translucent sphere of green force surrounded Mecia’s body.

  A blue circle of symbols appeared in front of that sphere, and it fired a column of incandescent Gnosis at the balcony and all its occupants.

  Anyone watching from afar would see it light up the night, blast all the way through the top level of the Governess’s tower and out the other side for nearly a mile, sending debris and fine furnishings sailing through the air.

  Ten of the twelve Sicari translocated out of the blast zone. Two were not fast enough, she noted, as she watched them fall toward the city with the ruins of her splendid couch and divan.

  And Jarel, of course. He was fast enough — this time.

  He streaked through the sky at her like a falcon, his Sicari close behind, glittering Star-Steel blades in their hands.

  Teucer’s Apotheosis

  Mecia gathered Gnosis into herself, enrobed her body and soul in it. She breathed it in and felt it lace itself through every part of her, awakening her, enlightening her. At first, it was like an infusion of ice in her veins. Like jumping naked into an arctic lake. A terrific shock of cold from which there could be no protection, but on the other side of that shock came a communion with power too complete, too profound for a junior like Jarel Craith to comprehend, let alone try to imitate.

  He could only be a Praetor.

  But here, in her city, at the nexus of her power, she became the divine center of the world.

  The Skill made her mind into a godlike engine of cognition, and her body into a perfect conduit for the channeling of Gnosis. It gave her the power to follow the movements of ten Sicari and one young Praetor as they came down on her all at once. Even the most powerful high level Imbued could be defeated by a focused assault from their lessers. In Mecia Porsena’s opinion, too many arrogant Imbued met their end in this way.

  But not her. Not tonight.

  Skills became her form and her appendages.

  She countered blades with glowing spears and razor sharp crescents of Gnosis.

  Aelia’s Emerald Blade

  Ravanna’s Ruinous Rain

  Zor-Anon’s Ray of Disintegration

  Velavesna’s Detonation

  She soared through the sky, baiting flurries of translocations she then punished with attack Skills. Skills that detonated in the air like bombs. Skills which swarmed like a hail of daggers. Skills which covered whole swathes of the sky in incandescent death.

  Far below them in the city, onlookers gawked up at the light show taking place in the night sky. Many wondered at the occasion. Was it a holiday? A master’s exhibition?

  A few, who knew what they were truly seeing, stood frozen with fear.

  Jarel Craith and a trio of his cronies circled around her, to strike her sphere of force from every side.

  They met each other in midair, for she was no longer between them.

  One Sicari didn’t recover from the collision at all, too injured was he already, and he fell like a stone to the streets of Taracon far beneath them.

  It was too easy to make them get in each other’s way. Too easy to slip to the left and right, or up and down, and engage them one at a time, or all at once with a Skill of surpassing firepower. She almost wished she’d brought her glass and decanter. It would be lovely to sit in her Emerald Redoubt and sip wine and laugh with scorn while she watched these children try her.

  The Sicari moved through the air with precision, attacked with perfect coordination, their artificial minds joined to form a cohesive unit, a group mind.

  Mecia tracked them effortlessly, set traps for their every choice, their every position, her singular mind a symphony of calculations, more than a match for these glorified automatons.

  When they attacked, she catalogued their vectors and technique choices. When she struck back, she observed the endpoints of their defensive translocations.

  Setting a trap for them was as simple as baiting mice.

  Nine remained, but only six of those were still fresh enough to fight effectively. Those six formed the primary attacking team, with the injured three hanging back as auxiliaries. They came at Mecia again and again, testing the swiftness of her flight and the resilience of her shield. And despite their best efforts to conceal their patterns from her peerless mind, the patterns emerged anyway.

  They swarmed at her as one and she blasted them back with Velavesna’s Detonation, provoking their translocations.

  This time she knew precisely where they would translocate to.

  Nine instances of Aelia’s Emerald Lattice appeared in each of those locations, waiting for them.

  They fried.

  Three perished instantly, and the other three were now as grievously injured as their comrades.

  Jarel Craith couldn’t hang back and watch anymore. He struck at her bubble of force with swords, daggers, axes, spears, both held and hurled. His connection to the God-Slayer’s Arsenal gave him the power to call whatever weapon he wished to hand. The training of a Praetor demanded no less than mastery with every weapon on the rack, and she’d chosen Jarel because he was a star pupil.

  He put on a clinic in swordsmanship for her.

  His movements were graceful, stately, powerful in their perfectly honed aggression.

  Jarel Craith took her through his whole codex of beautiful techniques, one page after another.

  If he were trying to win her approval, this show would have done even better than the first time.

  Unfortunately he was trying to kill her.

  Under normal circumstances she would be loath to destroy such an artist. But, to borrow his own words, he left her with little choice.

  Cantaro’s Invincible Snare

  Bands of glowing yellow force appeared in a circular mesh around Jarel Craith, and then snapped down onto his body, pinning his arms and legs together.

  Drusilla’s Lance

  The blue circle of symbols reappeared, its edges shimmering with an ethereal glow, and erupted in a torrent of incandescent Gnosis, engulfing the body of the helpless Praetor.

  Jarel Craith fell, his fine uniform charred and tattered, his body trailing smoke.

  Mecia smiled sadly at the sight of him.

  But then his eyes snapped open.

  Marce’s Baleful Transference

  The six surviving Sicari glowed red. Their eyes, normally empty and void of all emotion, widened in shock as the Skill forcibly drained the vitality from their bodies. They twitched and convulsed, that red glow forming an aura around them all, an aura which then reached out for the plummeting body of Jarel Craith.

  When it touched him, the Sicari fell from the sky as one and Jarel Craith’s trajectory through the air changed, it dipped and curved and then he streaked upward like a comet at his foe. There was a flash, as he called two swords to hand from the God-Slayer’s Arsenal.

  The weapons he chose made Mecia Porsena’s eyes grow wide.

  The Crossed Swords. Lifedrinker and Soulstealer.

  They were twins, forged in some forgotten world discovered at the dawn of Numantian expansion. Curved, single-edged swords whose blades shined like obsidian. Their workmanship was crude by Numantian standards, but the power emanating from within them was undeniable. Glowing sigils decorated the bases of the black blades, red for Lifedrinker, blue for Soulstealer, and the pair radiated an aura of wild, destructive power.

  It was said that they would indiscriminately drain the Corpus and Gnosis of their wielder, even to the point of death, and holding the pair of them at the same time amplified the effect tenfold.

  And if the Crossed Swords were to claim your life in this way, they would wholly consume you, in both body and soul, leaving nothing behind to mourn or to bury.

  He should have known what wielding them together would do to him.

  Why…

  Why throw his life away?

  Even as she beheld him soaring up at her, watching his charred face, the gritted teeth, the righteous fury in his bloodshot eyes, she was at a loss to comprehend it. The mind of a zealot was truly a self-destructive thing.

  Soulstealer struck her shield and it shattered into shards of glowing green.

  Lifedrinker swept for her throat, but she swooped away at the last instant and conjured her own slender sword to hand.

  Playtime was over, clearly.

  Time to put a rabid dog to sleep.

  PATREON