More Stories by Corinn Heathers

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Novels

Dawn of a New Astral Age

bound together

dimension fracture

rebirth disconnect

celestial paradigm

Binary System

Binary System: Deneb

Falling Colors

Amity

Short Works

The Dusty Man ~ K.J. Russell

“Tears”

Tides of Possibility ~ Edited by K.J. Russell

“Imaginary Numbers”

Tides of Impossibility ~ Edited by K.J. Russell & C. Stuart Hardwick

“Wind and Ash”

dawn integration

dawn of a new astral age, book five

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corinn heathers

dawn integration

dawn of a new astral age, book five

copyright © 2017 by Corinn Heathers

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced without express written permission from the copyright holder, with the exception of short excerpts for review purposes.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and situations are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

karin's chapter / ascent

the cold

council

shattered bonds

descent

adversary

restoration

meilin's chapter / clemency

discontinuity

rebirth

huntress

preemptive strike

red haze

shadow path

analysis

reunion

family

karin's chapter / evolution

alliance

little hopes

providence

precision

hidden path

armistice

pale expanse

meilin's chapter / wrath

calamity

final approach

legion

avatar of hate

unseen blade

redeemer

broken heart

karin's chapter / limit

bloodstain

release

ascent

prevention

fated encounter

abyss call

binding force

celestial twilight

dawn integration

epilogue

memento

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about the author

karin's chapter

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ascent

the cold

It took me longer than usual to wake up that morning.

I yawned, trying to stifle the sound as I felt my jaw stretch wide of its own accord. I was tired, but then again, we all were. To be fair, Misaki and I were probably the least affected due to the astral energies that surged through our spirits.

The others—the ordinary humans—were probably a lot worse off than we were. I sat in the passenger seat of my car, watching the road and the other cars speed past. Misaki was driving, legally this time. After our reconciliation with AEGIS and the removal of Blondie—excuse me, former AEGIS Director Nergal—we managed to get her license, nice and official.

Thanks to the new director, Ceres, Misaki was permanently granted full citizenship in the United States. The first astral spirit ever to become an American citizen. It'd be one for the history books if it hadn't been such a secret.

Not that either of us tried very hard to hide ourselves from others. There wasn't much I could do to hide the shifting colors of my eyes. Like biological mood rings, the damned things would swirl with various hues that indicated my emotional state. It was just one of many of the weird side-effects that had befallen me after my astral pattern assimilated that of Misaki's Relic, the Blade of the Nine-Tailed Fox.

Misaki's fey pedigree was a bit more obvious. Indulgently, I watched her through heavy-lidded eyes as she drove. The sound system was tuned to some station she favored that played bass-heavy electronic music that seemed to throb through my body even at the low volume I'd insisted upon. Her long-fingered hands tapped rhythmically on the steering wheel as she expertly maneuvered in and out of traffic, and her fox-like ears were perked straight up.

The great bulk of Misaki's tail was curled around to her right side, nearly filling the console between our seats. Covered in a copious quantity of the softest and silkiest fur, Misaki's tail was a honey golden shade, with a faint reddish tint.

“Your tail is getting bigger,” I observed, only half-serious.

Misaki nodded but didn't look away from the road. “I'm wondering if it'll start dividing. I hope not. One enormous fluffy tail is difficult enough to deal with in a world designed for tail-less humans. I don't know what I'd do if I had nine of them.”

“You know Mama was just talking about an old-country legend, right? Just because your Relic was called the Blade of the Nine-Tailed Fox doesn't necessarily mean you will end up with nine tails.”

“I'm just fucking with you, Karin.”

I felt my cheeks redden and sank deeper into my seat.

“It is getting bigger, though,” I insisted a moment later.

“I thought you liked it.”

“I do. I'm not saying it shouldn't. I was just making an observation.”

Misaki shot me a wicked grin. “So was I. I mean, you certainly seem to enjoy my tail and what I can do with it whenever we get—”

“Okay, that's enough out of you.” I could feel the blush on my cheeks get darker and warmer as my mind went places it really shouldn't be going, considering the gravity of the day's tasks. “We've got much more important things to worry about, like—oh, I don't know, a meeting with the President.”

Misaki burst into a fit of laughter.

“I'm serious,” I argued, struggling mightily to maintain a reproachful gaze as Misaki put on a rather coquettish expression. “We're pretty important people now, love. When was the last time we were called to meet with the President?”

“Never.”

“My point exactly. I don't know what he wants for sure, but I'm sure it has something to do with what happened in Alaska.” I turned away and gazed out the window at the capitol skyline. Here, in Washington D.C., was the seat of the federal government. I'd been here a few times in my life, the most recent visit at Nergal's behest, during the mission to destroy Orn Thaal's demon-maker. This time, however, it was the President doing the asking.

“What should we expect?” Misaki asked.

“I don't know. Ceres didn't tell me shit and I'm just guessing here. Whatever it is, we probably don't have the security clearance to know about it until we get there.”

My wife said nothing, tapping the brake pedal and sliding over into the right lane. The car slowed as it followed the off-ramp that would take them onto a surface street leading to a secure parking garage with nearly direct access to the presidential residence.

Neither of us spoke for the next few minutes. Misaki pulled the car up to the gatehouse outside the parking garage. A young man dressed in a black suit emerged from the small building and approached the driver-side window. I couldn't get much of a sense of his emotions or surface thoughts, but neither could I sense the minute deflections of an active Spell Engine.

Not AEGIS. Secret Service, probably.

Misaki rolled the tinted window down and gave the agent her most adorable smile. There was no way he could miss her ears, either—I stifled a chuckle as a current of surprise ran through his emotions. The Secret Service man did an admirable job of keeping his cool, all things considered.

“This is a restricted area.”

“We're expected,” Misaki replied. She produced both of our IDs and held them out for the agent to take. The man studied the two cards for a long moment, then pulled his phone from a hidden pocket inside his jacket and spent another moment staring at the display.

“Your ID checks out.” He handed the cards back to Misaki and tapped a series of commands into his phone. The heavily armored barrier retracted, sliding down beneath the level of the road, and a green light blinked on above the entryway. “Follow this road down till you get to the fourth sub-level and then park in any of the open spots marked with a blue stripe. An escort will be there to meet you shortly.”

“Thank you.” Misaki grinned and winked lasciviously at the guard. I nearly lost myself in a fit of giggles as the man-in-black's serious mein shattered and he actually blushed. My wife hit the accelerator as soon as the barrier disappeared entirely into the ground.

It took only a little while longer before we reached the designated area. There weren't many cars parked in the blue section, so Misaki chose a spot nearest to the elevator, the armored doors sealed with a heavy auto-lock. She killed the motors and we stepped out onto the weathered concrete.

I shivered and hugged my arms to my chest. “It's cold.”

“I told you to get a heavier jacket,” Misaki chided.

“The only one I have is that loud sporty jacket I got in Tokyo,” I retorted, somewhat defensively. The jacket I had chosen was one of my few dress blazers, and it wasn't very thick. Today was one of the very few times in my life that I chose to dress professionally. I would have felt really weird meeting the President in my usual attire, a pair of jeans and my battered old leather jacket.

Misaki sidled up next to me and curled her enormous fluffy tail around the small of my back, wrapping it around my midriff. Warmth radiated from her and seeped into my body, dispelling the chills that had me shivering. I eyed the no-smoking signs hanging from the ceiling with a great deal of enmity as we waited for our escort to arrive.

Fortunately, there wasn't much waiting to do. Within less than two minutes, the armored elevator doors slid soundlessly open. Two people stepped out of the elevator. One of them I knew well and immediately recognized; the other was likely some manner of Secret Service agent.

“It's good to see you again, Ceres.”

“Likewise,” the new director of AEGIS said, offering a warm and genuine smile. “The meeting isn't scheduled to start for another half an hour. We can chat for a bit over some coffee while we wait.”

“Is there tea?” Misaki inquired.

“Of course.” Ceres pushed a lock of glossy black behind her left ear and gestured to the open lift, where the Secret Service agent still stood impassively. This agent was a young woman, perhaps five or six years my junior, and held an unusual carbine loosely in her hands.

The three of us entered the lift and I stood, sandwiched between Misaki and the agent, while the elevator both ascended and traveled horizontally—making it more a transit lift than a true elevator, I suppose. Ceres must have caught me staring at the agent's weapon, because I detected an amused flicker in her emotional state.

“Yes, it's based on the technology my predecessor created,” she explained. The director of AEGIS reached into her coat and drew an equally strange pistol from her shoulder holster, holding the weapon out for me to examine. “We took the development data from the Synthesized Relic and devised a way to create our own astrally-conductive materials.”

I stared at her. “You managed all of that in just a few weeks?”

“Well, no,” Ceres admitted. “The data's been available to our researchers for quite some time now, as the process of creating the Synthesized Relic took a great deal of time. How much time is unfortunately classified information. As you are not a member of AEGIS, there are certain things I'm not permitted to divulge to you.”

“So AEGIS released the design to other agencies?”

“Just the Secret Service.”

“But not the military?”

Ceres shrugged and holstered her sidearm. “I can't say, but I can remind you of what you already know—these weapons are too delicate to survive the demanding requirements of military operations. They are also very, very expensive… and yet we've been given leave to produce them in quantity.”

The grim note in Ceres's voice told me that at least some people in the upper echelons of government were taking the threat of the spectral horde seriously. This was a good sign; both Misaki and I had been half-afraid that we'd spend most of the meeting trying to convince the President and half a dozen of his advisers that the threat was even real in the first place.

I chose not to ask any further questions and the four of us rode the conveyance to our destination in silence. Misaki's expression was the one she usually wore at times like this: barely contained impatience and boredom. The “little fox,” as my mother often referred to her, was far more interested in action than in talk. She would deal with her discontent, I knew, since it was important to make sure this country understood the danger.

When the doors next opened, Ceres stepped out and beckoned for us to follow. The silent agent nodded to the director of AEGIS but remained in the lift car. I stepped out, my boot heels clicking coldly against the hard floor. Misaki followed a moment later and the two of us waited expectantly as Ceres pulled out her phone, tapping in a sequence of commands.

A door slid open about ten meters down the very long corridor.

“Come, let's get you two warmed up.”

council

It was actually only five or so minutes after Misaki and I began to sip our hot beverages before the door to the small break room opened again. Another person wearing the same plain black suit and tie entered the room and waited silently until Ceres stood. The two of them began to converse in low tones that I couldn't quite make out—and chose not to enhance my senses in order to catch. It didn't matter much; Misaki's ears were nearly impossible to hide from, and judging by the fact that her bored expression didn't change, I assumed the conversation was mundane.

“We'll be holding the meeting in a secure conference room a little down the hallway,” Ceres said, addressing me directly. The director of AEGIS sipped at her own coffee. Her expression was pensive as she regarded me. “From your expression I gather you expected the White House, but you know how it is. The true purpose of the agency is not known to most of the federal government, after all. It's best that the rank-and-file of the administration are not given any reason to believe AEGIS is anything but an FBI anti-terrorism task force.”

“Let them think what they will, then,” I reasoned.

“Just so.” Ceres's lips curved into a wry smile. “We have a few more minutes before the protection detail arrives at the conference room. It's been a while since we've had a chance to just talk. How have you and your family been?”

I wasn't surprised that Ceres was asking us this question. Immediately after taking control of AEGIS, Ceres unilaterally discontinued the deep surveillance and monitoring that her predecessor had placed over my entire life. Unlike Nergal, Ceres both respected me as a person and acknowledged the ever-increasing amount of power that I possessed. Ending the surveillance was, I suppose, extending an olive branch.

“As well as can be expected, I guess,” I replied after a moment's pause. “Things are still strained with the extended family. After my cousins were abducted by Valendir's forces, a lot of the familial bonds were stretched beyond the breaking point.”

“Have you managed to reconcile with your aunt?”

I shook my head. “Mama did, but… there's still a lot of fear there. Yayoi knows something of what I am, what Misaki is, and worse still, what her children are. All of it scares the shit out of her. There's anger there, too; she blames me for the agency twisting her arm to make sure Kotori and Yuto learn how to manage their abilities.”

“But that was not your doing,” Ceres objected.

“Doesn't matter. I think the only thing that keeps any kind of peace at all is the fact that they're being trained by someone who isn't connected to me somehow.” I shrugged and took a long swallow of my coffee, not caring that it was still hot enough to burn going down. “From what I've heard, Farisa is a wonderful teacher and they're both excelling in their training.”

“You're not upset with me?”

“Not really. Things seem to be working out, so it's fine. I wouldn't have guessed that your second cousin was one of the few surviving members of the Silver Crescent. Misaki was even more shocked than I was.” I glanced at my wife. At the mention of the Silver Crescent, her ears seemed to droop a bit and she slumped in her seat. “Not to mention she still feels responsible. Say something to her, would you? Get her to stop beating herself up over this.”

“Karin,” Misaki growled.

“Lady Ashley is right, though.” Ceres's expression softened and she gazed at Misaki with large, liquid brown eyes. “You were under the control of House Tsukimura. You aren't responsible for your actions under their dominion.”

“I know, but I still feel… like I should have done something. Could have done something. The whole time Tsubame was under House Kihara's control, she was able to resist. She protected Soleil despite the danger. I… should have done more.”

I sighed. “That's different. Lord Kihara couldn't exert nearly the same kind of total control over Tsubame. It was because he wasn't as powerful or as skilled at wielding the Bright Swallow that she was able to act against him at all.”

“The destruction of the Silver Crescent was not your fault,” Ceres insisted. “How many other arcane houses were your forced to help eliminate or assimilate? Could you have done anything in any of those cases.”

“Too many, and no, I couldn't.” My partner let out a soul-deep, regret-filled sigh. She sat up more straightly in the chair and her ears ceased to droop as she regained her composure. “Okay, okay, you've made your point. Still, though, I can't express how sorry I am for the part I played in the destruction of your family's House.”

“There's no need for you to apologize.”

Misaki opened her mouth to reply, perhaps to argue, but then the door slid open once again and two Secret Service agents stood in the hallway behind it. Ceres nodded to them silently and set her mug down. There was no need for any more discussion; Misaki and I left our own mugs and stood up, following closely behind Ceres. The two protective-detail agents walked behind us, their sense alive with well-trained awareness.

Ceres went into the conference room first and we followed. The small meeting room resembled the Oval Office to some degree, though it was a little bit larger and, of course, possessed no windows. It was a reminder that we were still underground, somewhere within the secured and armored bunker beneath the White House.

Both Misaki and I took our seats in front of the vacant President's desk. Only half a minute passed before another door opened and a man in his middle years stepped into the room. He wore a well-tailored gray suit with a light green tie over a pristine white button-down. Dark-skinned and dark-eyed, the President of the United States was a tall and well-built man, still in his physical prime despite being over fifty-five.

President Green sat down behind his desk and ran a hand across his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair, one of the man's more well-known mannerisms. Misaki and I both stood, with Misaki executing a formal, very low bow of the type usually reserved for kings and lords.

“Such formalities aren't necessary,” Green told her. “I'm just an elected official, not a divinely-empowered Emperor.”

Misaki straightened herself out and blushed. “My apologies.”

“None are needed. Please, be seated, the both of you.” The president turned a friendly but penetrating gaze on me. No one spoke for a long moment. I suspected that Green shared the same fascination as most. The shifting colors of my eyes and the faint luminosity of my skin never failed to attract curious stares.

To his credit, though, he managed to put that aside and got right to business. “Lady Ashley, I've read your entreaty and Director Ceres's recommendations thoroughly. The information you provided was rather detailed. It's clear that you've put a great deal of thought into this.”

“Have you come to a decision yet, Mr. President?”

“Almost. I have a few questions that, while adequately addressed in the abstract, I would prefer to hear in further detail, in your own words.” Green drew a file folder out from his briefcase and thumbed it open. “For starters, I want you to expound upon why you believe your efforts should be separate from AEGIS.”

I glanced at Ceres, then Misaki, before turning my attention back to the president. The three of us had extensively discussed these particulars, knowing that this part of my idea would be the hardest sell of all. I took a deep breath and launched into my prepared speech.

“As you already know, Mr. President, AEGIS has been built, from the ground up, to manage the activities of the various arcane houses operating in the United States and abroad. The agency is versatile and able to adapt to changing circumstances, true, but it was never intended to perform such a mission as this and doesn't possess the sort of autonomy necessary to—”

“Yes, I know all of that,” Green interrupted. “I want you to give it to me straight: does this have anything to do with your history with the agency?”

Misaki's eyes narrowed and she shifted in her seat, but I spoke up before she could. “In a word, yes. Ceres may be in control of AEGIS now, but there are members of the Directorate still who were aligned with her predecessor. I trust her, albeit conditionally—and I have no reason whatsoever to trust anyone else.”

“Is that all?”

“No, sir,” I replied, shaking my head slowly. “There are other, more practical considerations, as well—though I don't think I need to tell you how badly things can go when collaborators don't trust each other.”

“Indeed.” The President's expression held the bland neutrality of a trained diplomat, making him difficult to read. “And those practical considerations?”

“AEGIS can't do this,” I stated. “The agency is just that—an agency of the federal government, run entirely by ordinary humans with no inherent connection to the world beyond mundane physical reality. It can't function outside of the framework of human society that it exists within, and is beholden to other power structures within that society.”

“People fear what they don't understand,” Misaki added, jumping into the conversation after having overcome her initial anxiousness. “That fear can engender hatred and distrust. The only one within the agency that has more than cursory knowledge is sitting right next to us—and she has very good reason to keep our true natures hidden.”

Green was silent, at least for the moment, as he digested our response. I could sense his surface emotions, but it was hard to get anything more out of him. The level of stress that weighed down on his consciousness was about what I'd expect of the leader of an entire country's government, but there was something else there… a faint but sharp sense of suspicion, tinged with fear. It was subtle, but I could detect it.

A glance at Misaki told me that we were both thinking along the same lines. This meeting wasn't really about issues of jurisdictional control—they were worried about something else entirely. If Misaki and I felt like we were in over our heads, there was no way that Green or the federal government would do anything at all but drown… and here he was, still afraid of something that had already been resolved.

Best to just get it done and over with, then.

“This is really about Rika, isn't it?”

President Green stiffened in his chair. Slowly, mechanically, he turned to stare at Ceres, his features slack with astonishment. I didn't even need to look to know that the director of AEGIS wore a very obvious “I-told-you-so” expression.

“What about Rika?” Misaki growled, suddenly becoming defensive.

“The Celestial's status is a critical matter of national security.” Green's expression darkened, his tone becoming indignant. “When the entity first appeared in our world, it caused terrible destruction and an enormous loss of life. Keeping the incident under wraps and the Celestial safely contained was the work of decades, at a cost of billions of taxpayer dollars.”

And you woke it up. Green's unspoken, yet entirely true accusation hung heavy in the air.

“You don't need to worry about Rika.” I consciously softened my voice, making my tone soothing and calming. The last thing I wanted was to get into an argument. “When I released her from the stasis cylinder, the missing fragment of her spirit was re-integrated with her astral pattern, bringing with it my own intuitive understanding of our universe. She is no longer in danger of inadvertently neutralizing space.”

“You expect me to just take you at your word?” Green demanded. “I've read the reports, Lady Ashley, and to put it plainly, they frightened the life out of me. The physical manifestation of the Celestial in this universe is dangerous beyond any threat the United States has ever faced, beyond any threat the world has ever faced. Everything else, including the Pillars of Heaven and their agenda, is secondary.”

“I just told you that's not going to happen. A condition of her adaptation to our world prohibits the full release of her power. She can't unseal herself as long as she remains in this universe.”

“Will the Celestial return to her original world? You already stated that the entity refused to leave once you released it. Other than your word, what assurances do I have that another disaster will not happen—”

“None,” Misaki interrupted, fixing Green with a fierce scowl. “You have no assurances except for the true and steadfast promise of one who commands unimaginable power that you and yours could never achieve. As you said yourself, you're simply an elected leader of a human nation—you are not a child of the Astral. These matters are outside your sphere and none of your concern.”

“If it concerns the safety of the American people, it is absolutely my concern,” Green shot back, obviously angry but maintaining iron-hard control of his tone.

I blinked. “Misaki, calm down. He has a right to be worried. It's his job.”

“I will not calm down. I'm sick of humans trying to profit from and exploit forces that are vastly beyond their limited understanding.” Her emerald glare sharpened and her ears lay flat and back against her head. “The meddling of humans who thought they knew how to wield a power they can barely even comprehend is the very thing that caused this crisis to begin with.”

The President leaned back in his chair and sighed. “That's precisely why I'm worried. The mere existence of such a power in the hands of anyone is a danger that cannot be ignored.”

“You insist on thinking of this in human terms—you really shouldn't,” Misaki retorted, her tone sharpening further. “Rika isn't human and doesn't have human motivations. I guess I can understand that you'd be fearful of what you don't understand, but trying to ascribe human motivations and temptations isn't going to work, either.”

“Yet the one who holds the Celestial's reins is human.”

“Is that what you think is going on?” Misaki turned toward me and made a disgusted sound, a grimace twisting her features. She threw up her hands in exasperation. “This whole interrogation is fucking ridiculous. Karin is not what you think she is.”

Ceres shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “We were under the impression that anima Karin absorbed gives her the power to bind the Celestial to her will.”

“That's not entirely accurate, Director. When I released Rika, the piece of her I absorbed was reclaimed, yet also remains within me.” I lifted my chin and met Ceres's penetrating gaze squarely, more than a little annoyed that she misunderstood so badly. “Ultimately Rika is me, and I am her. Our connection is completely mutual, not even remotely close to the enforced hierarchy between a summoner and their bound specters.”

Neither Green nor Ceres responded to that; the two of them exchanged quick, inscrutable glances, but I didn't think either of them would start arguing. It was obvious that the president was not happy with this arrangement. I was pretty certain that he wouldn't be satisfied as long as both Rika and I existed.

“Regardless of the status of the Celestial,” Ceres said after a long, awkward silence, “I agree with Lady Ashley: her mission is outside the agency's purview. It is my opinion, as Director of Operations, that Karin and her allies not be placed under AEGIS authority and are permitted to operate independently.”

The president's expression was once again an unreadable mask. I had to give the man credit for his ability to keep his emotions on an even keel. It was pretty obvious to both me and my partner that he hadn't expected Ceres to side with us, and yet he handled the unexpected reversal without making a big fuss.

“Very well, Madame Director,” Green conceded after a moment. “Lady Ashley and her friends will be permitted to operate independently and without oversight. However—” The President's voice hardened and he turned toward me, his eyes narrowing sharply. “This is by no means a free pass to do whatever you like. As far as the federal government is concerned, you don't exist as anything but an ordinary citizen of this nation—and you will be expected to abide by the law, just like everyone else.”

shattered bonds

“That went better than I expected,” Misaki observed as we sped across the freeway, an hour after the secret meeting came to an end.

“Yeah.” I tapped my foot against the accelerator—this time I was the one driving—and moved up a car's length. Traffic really was the worst. Snow was already starting to build up on the ground, and the worse the weather became, the more problems we would encounter on the road.

“So… the government's not going to get in our way, so long as we're discreet and don't make a big scene. That's one less thing to worry about. What's next on the to-do list?”

I didn't respond right away. At the moment, I had one thing on my mind and it had nothing at all to do with trying to reach the Astral Terminus. Misaki was sharp, though, and it didn't take her long to know what I was thinking—or to figure out where we were going.

“She still hasn't woken up, has she?”

I tried to ignore the stinging sensation in my eyes. “No. The damage done by that Mindfang artifact was beyond current medical science's capabilities to correct, and that isn't even counting the mess it made of her astral pattern. I don't know if we can do anything to help her, but I want to at least try.”

Misaki eyed me with a mixture of sympathy and curiosity. Both of us knew that my astral pattern, fused as it was with the Relic's and connected to Rika's through the anima I'd absorbed, was more inclined to destroy than heal. I didn't have nearly the same array of incredibly versatile processes as my wife—even after months and months of training, I could still only manage a handful of invocations that weren't intended to explode or disintegrate things.

“Okay, love.” Misaki's voice was warm and supportive. “Let's go see her.”

Neither of us spoke much for the remainder of the trip. Several minutes later, we pulled into an unremarkable building's parking area. I killed the electric motors before opening the door and stepping out onto the paved surface. Misaki and I walked slowly and silently toward the heavy sealed doors leading into the building's lobby.

Only a moment passed before the auto-lock disengaged of its own accord, the doors sliding soundlessly open. There were no receptionists or clerks seated at the desk, adding to the eerie atmosphere. Considering the fact that this clinic was not open to the public and only authorized personnel were permitted entry, it made sense.

I strode through the lobby with Misaki at my side, matching my steps. Her tail swished slowly behind as we approached the elevator. Because she was not human, I couldn't read Misaki's surface emotions, but I hardly needed to use that power when all it took was one look at the position of her ears. The grim weight that bore down on us both was exemplified by the heavy droop of large, fox-like ears of red-tinged gold.

The lift doors opened and we stepped inside. It was a short ride to the third floor—the clinic itself had only five levels and perhaps only a hundred or so rooms total, as it was wholly devoted to treating AEGIS personnel who suffered inexplicable astral maladies. Meilin's room was the second door down the hall on the right.

Like all the doors in the clinic, hers was unlocked. I pushed the door open and walked inside, steeling myself for the inevitable emotions to come.

“Lady Ashley, this is an unexpected surprise.”

I forced a smile. “We were in the area, so I figured I'd come to see if we could help.”

The doctor attending Meilin was young, perhaps a decade younger than his patient, and seemed to exude a comforting warmth that suggested excellent bedside manner. He was currently holding a device that looked like a large tablet computer with various sensor systems affixed to the external casing.

“Nothing's changed,” the doctor muttered. “Her vitals are fine—better than fine. Meilin is still in exceptional physical condition. The usual scans don't show anything out of the ordinary—they don't match the usual readings for someone who has lapsed into a coma. It's as if… as if she's fallen into an eternal sleep and can't be awakened.”

Misaki's tail swished pensively. “Her astral pattern is probably damaged somehow. Valendir didn't just take control of her mind, but he also forced a pattern realignment so he could channel miasma through her.”

“We know that, but there's little we can do.” The doctor's brown eyes seemed to seethe with frustration and helplessness. “Do you have any ideas, Lady Ashley?”

“I think I have an idea as to what might be blocking her.” I closed my eyes and placed my fingertips on Meilin's bare skin. She felt warm, soft; I could sense the vitality thrumming through her physical form.

I fell silent as I considered what was known. Meilin's injury, if it could even be called an injury, would be inexplicable to our current understanding of science. The damage was entirely confined to her astral pattern, a part of her being that was not physical and did not exist in the same way as our physical bodies. That it could affect her like this suggested that the configuration of lines of force within Meilin was somehow impeding her consciousness, keeping it dormant.

“I'm going to take a closer look inside her astral pattern.”

“Please, Lady Ashley, do what you can. I have other work to do, so I'll leave you to it.”

I glanced at the doctor. “This could take a while, so feel free to go tend your other patients.”

“Thanks. There's far more to do than people to do it.” The exhausted young man offered a weary smile that was nonetheless tinged with hope. “Press the call button if you need anything, or if there is any change in Meilin's condition.”

descent

“Ready?” I asked.

Misaki nodded from her place on the floor, her tail curled around and resting in her lap as she sat seiza-style with the ease and comfort of one who was no stranger to meditation. I couldn't sit that way for more than a few minutes before cramping pain shot up my legs, but I guess you eventually got used to it.

I was sitting in a chair pulled up next to Meilin's hospital bed. For something like this I knew I'd need every bit of my focus and energy—and some of Misaki's as well. My wife's regular breathing slowed as she sank quickly into a meditative trance, leaving behind the senses of the flesh in order to better direct the flow of astral energy.

The effect was immediate and noticeable. A stout line of force bridged our astral patterns and I felt the intangible sense of connection as Misaki offered her own astral energy to me. Before I'd fused with the Relic, before I shattered the limiter that prevented Misaki from accessing the astral flow directly, this wouldn't have been possible.

I felt a change, subtly and from a great distance, and the energy available to me increased yet again. Rika understood my intention and moved to assist me as best she could. The seal placed on her after reuniting with her missing piece severely restricted what she could do, but even so, Rika chose to aid me without hesitation, and she didn't even know Meilin. The two had never met, but the friendship I'd forged with the woman I once only knew as Star was just as precious to her as it was to me. The peculiarities of this permanent unison of souls continued to surprise me.

With my eyes still closed, I reached out to touch the rent and tangled mass that had once been Meilin's astral pattern.

When I next opened my eyes, I was no longer in the physical world.

I stood upon nothing, suspended within a void that seemed to simultaneously extend into infinity and not exist at all. Despite the complete lack of any focal point, I felt neither dizzy nor disoriented; I was not using my physical senses. This was not a physical location, but a construct of Meilin's soul. The void that my intangible presence inhabited was a conceptualization.

“What is this place?”

Rika appeared in front of me. The other me that was also not me smiled sadly and tucked a strand of long, pink-streaked black hair behind one ear. She gestured toward the white nothing.

“It's an empty section of Meilin's astral pattern. This 'location' is blank and can be written to. If we help her, then she should be able to repair the damage by rebuilding the fundamental structure.”

“She can't do it on her own,” I reasoned. “Something's blocking her.”

Rika's expression was solemn. “Yes.”

“Why does this free space exist?” I asked.

“The pseudo-Relic device Valendir used to alter her astral pattern—”

“He claimed it wasn't a Relic.”

“Yes,” Rika agreed, her blue-pink eyes narrowing slightly. “Valendir was telling the truth about that. The 'Mindfang' artifact was not a remote terminal in the usual sense, and wasn't designed to gain access to the Terminus's systems.”

I gazed at the other me dubiously. “Then what is it?”

“It's an independent terminal intended to forcibly alter the behavior of other processes. The closest equivalent would be that of a computer virus—a fragment of malicious code, designed to run on target systems and circumvent their normal operation, taking control of them.”

“The 'target systems' being people. Biological terminals.”

“Correct.”

“What can we do, then?” I asked. The information Rika provided was interesting, but academic at best. It wouldn't help us figure out how to wake Meilin up. “How can we remove the block?”

Fortunately, Rika was already two steps ahead. “The changes to Meilin's pattern that enabled Valendir to control her and manipulate the flow of miasma aren't permanent. The underlying structure hasn't been destroyed, just altered. We can undo what he did to her.”

“If we do, will she recover?”

“Yes. The altered structure still contains a significant amount of miasma. To protect itself from corruption, her mind severed its own links to her astral pattern.” Rika extended a hand and placed it on one of mine. I could feel the warmth in the grasp—

And abruptly, we were somewhere else, again.

The white, empty void was gone. We stood on a featureless gray plain underneath a colorless sky that was dominated by the presence of a seething, pulsating mass of darkness. It was like an inverted sun; rather than emanating light and life, it paradoxically seemed to absorb itself into itself.

“What is that?” I stared at the twisting, contorting black sphere, waves of revulsion surging through my awareness. “That looks like a lot more than just 'a significant amount' of miasma to me. It looks like a—”

“Like a corrupted core,” Rika finished for me. Her luminous form flew up into the “air” where the black mass was suspended. Cautiously, she approached the sphere, stopping short about four or five meters from it, or whatever physical distance translated to in this simulacrum.

The miasma confluence reacted.

A line of darkness shot out and struck Rika's intangible form, slicing through her projection with contemptuous ease. She was blasted back several meters, the two halves of her drifting apart. Silvery-white wisps of anima poured from the cut edges and I watched, transfixed with shock and horror, as Rika dissipated into radiant currents of anima.

It was a human reaction, purely instinctive, and the emotions fled quickly as the brilliantly-glowing prominences collapsed in upon themselves. There was a burst of argent light that even my conceptual eyes couldn't bear to look at—

“Well, that didn't work,” Rika mused in a thoughtful tone. “The core is active but it doesn't seem to be conscious. The defensive reflex is a problem, though.”

I stared at her in astonishment. “What the fuck just happened?”

“It tried to destroy me,” Rika replied.

“Yeah, I gathered that much. I mean, how did you just… reform and come back like that? Didn't that hurt you at all?”

Rika shook her head. “I expected something like that to happen, and so I was prepared to counter. If I hadn't dispersed into anima, it could have caused permanent damage to our astral patterns. Don't get too close to it; you can't do what I did.”

“Don't have to tell me twice,” I muttered, still staring at the miasmic core with a great deal of enmity. “So what do we do to get rid of that thing and wake Meilin up? It's not like we can just cut it in half with a Relic—wait. Maybe we can't, but someone else can.”

“Ceres,” Rika agreed. “Unfortunately, Ceres would not be able to enter the neutral space within Meilin's consciousness. She doesn't have the same kind of bond that you and Meilin share. I can contact Kyrie and request that she and Ceres come to the clinic.”

“Do it.”

Rika's radiant projection vanished into nothingness and I was left alone with the great pulsating mass of corruption that festered at the heart of Meilin's astral pattern. Now that I had time to reflect on the situation and my own memories of a similar astral phenomenon, it made perfect sense.

Under ordinary circumstances, summoners and mages couldn't manipulate miasma directly; the corrupted astral energy was dangerous for multiple reasons. There were several methods that allowed summoners to control miasma indirectly, through a spectral medium, but the method used by Isao Tsukimura was the most powerful.

Centuries ago, the Lord of House Tsukimura fused his own astral pattern around a miasmic core taken from a mighty specter. Binding the corrupted astral entity within an unbreakable pattern, Lord Tsukimura was able to destroy the specter's consciousness and sever the miasmic core from the being's own pattern. Fusing his own essence with that of a specter allowed Lord Tsukimura to directly control miasmic flows in the same manner as a specter.

Valendir's method was different. The Pillars of Heaven were capable of magecraft and miasma manipulation beyond anything Isao Tsukimura could have imagined. This miasmic core hadn't been taken from an extant specter, but constructed directly by the Fifth Pillar. A piece of his own essence was detached and then grafted to Meilin's spirit through the same conduit that enabled the Mindfang to dominate her will.

I had no idea how to mark time in this not-place, but shortly after she departed, Rika returned, and this time she was not alone. The projection that floated next to her possessed long, thick black hair and ruby eyes that shimmered with their own inner fire.

“Ceres will arrive at the clinic in a few minutes,” Kyrie announced without preamble.

“It's good to see you again, too, Kyrie.” I smiled at the Relic spirit's usual blunt manner. The last time I'd seen her, she was still shaking off the lingering anxieties and fears left behind by her abusive former master. “You're looking much stronger than the last time we spoke.”

The Relic spirit's cheeks flushed. “T-thank you, Lady Ashley.”

“Socializing can wait,” Rika admonished me, gesturing grimly at the suspended core. The thing seemed to be pulsating and writhing faster, as if it somehow detected Kyrie's presence. “We have more important things to worry about.”

“No shit. Getting this thing out is priority number one.”

Kyrie turned a red-eyed gaze on the other me. “What did you have in mind?”

“We'll need to sever the connections between Meilin's astral pattern and the miasmic core, but as long as the defenses are active, we won't be able to reach those links. Within this simulacrum, the core's external programs are vulnerable to astral energy.”

I arched an eyebrow curiously. “Destroy the defensive process, then? This isn't just typing a command into a terminal, though. Do invocations even work here? Can we use magic like we would be able to in the real world?”

“Yes. I can restrain the core's most potent defenses, but you and Kyrie will need to deal with whatever counter it attempts. Buy me the time I need to disable the defenses and forcing the core into your instance will be simple enough.”

Rika's projection soared up, high into the “air” until she came within a few meters of the dark core. The sphere of corruption seemed not to react to her presence just yet—I realized she had stopped just short of the distance that provoked a defensive strike. Both Kyrie and I watched, intrigued, as Rika's form was obscured by a dense, sparkling cloud of anima.

The silvery mist continued to thicken and grow. I couldn't see Rika inside the anima; rather, she was the anima that drifted toward the miasmic core and enveloped it within her own substance. I had the faintest sensation of an urgent struggling and could just make out the silhouette of black, whiplike appendages lashing again and again, striking nothing.

And then, the miasmic core went still, completely surrounded by Rika's anima.

I glanced at Kyrie. “Be ready for anything.”

“Of course.”

adversary

Six black shapes materialized on the flat gray plane, rapidly reshaping themselves into vaguely humanoid figures. I glanced at Kyrie, receiving a slight nod in response, before focusing my attention back on the core's guardians.

They looked vaguely like specters I'd fought before, but possessed unique qualities that set them apart and gave me pause. I had no idea what to expect in terms of abilities or attacks from spectral entities that resembled a thousand-eyes without any eyes, but with the same impossibly-sharp crystalline talons of a shardwight.

Each of the six core guardians were utterly featureless. Like frozen flames of miasma, they had no faces, no defining marks or coloration. Their skin was insubstantial smoke, but as the seconds wore on, their forms became more and more corporeal.

I didn't feel all that confident fighting alongside Kyrie. The two of us had never worked together like this before, and I had only cursory knowledge of her abilities. Compared to Misaki, the spirit of the Synthesized Relic was far less suited for raw devastation. Kyrie's powers were those more useful for clandestine work within the shadows than a stand-up fight, but she was hardly a pushover.

“Got any ideas?” I asked.

“Ceres told me that your defensive capabilities are limited. I'll establish a barrier to protect us and project a shadow to distract some of the guardians. I think I can keep them from effectively working together.”

“Split them up so I can take them one-on-one?”

“That's the idea.”

The six core guardians began to advance on our position, moving slowly and purposefully. Within the featureless gloom burned two red points of light like searing coals. I had no clue if their “eyes” worked anything like normal eyes, but I didn't think there'd be any harm in trying a few things.

A burst of red-black crackling force sprang into existence, encasing my body in crawling arcs of ruby lightning. I felt a tingling sensation and understood that Kyrie's barrier was different than Misaki's. Rather than deflecting the power of any strike, this barrier would absorb that energy and redirect it back at the attacker.

It was a novel design, though it did have some weaknesses. The barrier could be overloaded, of course, but Kyrie's reserves of astral energy were considerable. Ceres was no naturally-gifted mage, but an ordinary person, just as I had been. All of her astral capacity was at Kyrie's disposal.

Another burst of red-black shot out and slammed into the ground near the core guardians. The astral projectile exploded, setting two of the guardians back on their heels as they shielded their heads with arms of solid black smoke. At the center of the impact area, a shadowy clone of Kyrie dropped into a battle stance and materialized twin blades of hard light.

I waited just a moment longer as Kyrie's shadow leaped at the core guardian closest to her, slashing and striking viciously. The specter fell back, ceding about a meter and a half of ground to the shadow, but Kyrie's clone refused to let her opponent have even the slightest moment to regain its balance.

The sheer brutality of the attack seemed to shock the other guardians into action. Two broke off from the main group and darted in with impossibly-sharp crystalline claws. One scored a direct hit on the shadow, but Kyrie's small smile told me that it would do little to avail them. The Relic spirit held a pale hand out and snapped her fingers.

The shadow's aura of red-black astral energy intensified. The projection redoubled her efforts, moving with superhuman speed and accuracy. Kyrie's simulacrum slashed and cut, parried and riposted. I didn't know how long Kyrie could maintain her shadow while also keeping the both of us and the clone protected by a reflection barrier, but I suspected it wouldn't be long enough.

Unless…

The core guardians weren't splitting their formation. Three of them hung back, their monstrous red eyes focused on me, waiting for me to make my move. Kyrie's shadow had already turned one of the guardians into a mess of amorphous miasma on the ground, cutting it apart so thoroughly that it could no longer fight. The clone was an astral construct, not a living being or spirit, and would never tire so long as Kyrie continually supplied it with mana drawn through the Relic

They expected me to try and take out one of the distracted guardians. It was the obvious choice and would be a sensible read of our tactics: send in the shadow to keep the enemy pinned down while the mages throw attacks from a distance. It was also wrong—I never intended to hang back and snipe at the guardians.

Warmth radiated from the Relic fragment still embedded in my chest—though I'd noticed that since Rika and I reunited, it had been sinking deeper into my body—and I moved. White fire engulfed my right hand as I broke into a dead run for the nearest core guardian.

The three specters didn't seem to be surprised, though I doubted they actually had the capacity to even feel emotion at all. Even a fully-sapient specter was pretty much restricted to anger and outrage and vicious glee, and these were just unconscious projections, similar to the simulacrum Kyrie had created.

I dodged and ducked down low, narrowly avoiding several fast-moving clots of miasma flung by the beleaguered guardians, then shoved my palm violently against the torso of my chosen target. Silver fire poured from my body and into the guardian, limning the specter's silhouette in searing argent light. An awful stench assaulted my nostrils as the dematerializing power ate away at the core guardian's binding energies.

I staggered as the other two guardians struck with a withering barrage of miasmic projectiles, but the impact was far less than I would have expected. Kyrie's barrier flared with crimson brilliance as the energy of the attack was absorbed and digested—then redirected.

Twin bolts of red lightning arced from the barrier to the outstretched hands of the two core guardians. Roiling black miasma warred with its own energies turned against it, then exploded abruptly. I shielded my eyes from the blast with my left arm and dropped back. An act of will brought the unbinding silver light back to my free hand.

Spots danced in my vision, but I could see clearly that not only had Kyrie's barrier worked, it had destroyed the arms of both specters. Miasma flickered and churned around the shattered limbs and the obliterated arms reformed themselves. I sidestepped as one of the guardians materialized a black blade of corruption and lashed out in a charging uppercut slash; the attack missed, but the specter wasn't overbalanced by the heavy swing.

The next attack connected. Bright pain shot through my left leg as the miasma blade bit deeply into Kyrie's barrier. This time the shield wasn't able to retaliate—instead, the strike caused it to shatter like glass.

I was unprotected, but there was no time for evasive maneuvers. I moved with the direction of the swing and let my leg collapse, using the momentum of my fall to swing my radiant right hand around. Fingers closed around the impossibly-sharp plane of force, but I felt no pain. The silver-white aura flowed into the blade and it crumbled into nothingness.

Another dark sword materialized in the specter's hand, and this time I was already on the ground. Something like triumph seemed to gather within the spectral projection's limited cognitive framework, but it was doomed and it didn't even know it. The miasma-consuming brilliance still burned in my hand. At that point it was just a matter of reaching out and touching.

The horrible stink of decomposing miasma reached my nostrils as the specter flailed around in absolute agony, all the more horrible for being silent. None of the spectral projections had mouths and unlike the thousand-eyes, they seemed unable to vocalize. I managed to get to my feet before the specter's disintegrating corpse fell on top of me—though I doubted it would have done me any real harm—and threw myself back into the fray.

There were only two projections left. Kyrie was holding her own gamely, but I could tell we were running out of time. Her shadow was gone, but she stood back and flung blasts of crackling red-black lightning. Most only hit the miasma shields of the enemy, but I smiled as one pushed past their defenses. The scrambling bolt took the specter in the upper thigh. Crawling arcs of enervating power enveloped the specter in a field of weakness.

I darted forward as quickly as I could, taking advantage of the stricken specter's inability to defend itself effectively. A beam of pure white disintegrating power slashed out and took the thing's head off. The decapitated corpse staggered briefly before it collapsed to its knees, and then fell flat on the ground. Hungry silver fire licked at the miasma construct, eating away at the corpse so quickly that it may have well been formed from molded gunpowder.

With only one projection left, the core seemed to understand the danger. The last specter backpedaled a few meters, but then a determined light appeared in the thing's glowing red eye-points. The specter held its hands out wide and—

“It's tearing itself apart,” Kyrie observed. She watched as the specter's material form began to unravel into streams of smoke-like miasma. The corrupted astral energies whirled and spun, blowing the air of this place into a fierce whirlwind.

“Trying to form a miasma vortex.” I shrugged at the specter's last-ditch effort. This was the sort of behavior my friends and I had come to expect from specters trying to defend a position. They would fight until the last, then the final entity would unbind its own essence to form a wild storm of miasma, hoping that last act of defiance would take down some of its opponents

Countering these miniature catastrophes was something I knew AEGIS had struggled with for years, but the inherent nature of my power—“unbinding”—made it fairly easy for me to deal with a self-destructing specter.

“Stay back,” I warned her as I lifted one hand and let the astral light come forth. My fingers enshrouded in searing white, I started to push my way against the wind—not an easy task, considering the rate of rotation had now vastly exceeded that of natural storms. The air pushed by the whipping, whirling currents of miasma was blowing so fiercely I had to lean into it in order to stay on my feet.

One step after agonizingly slow step, I came closer and closer to the whirlwind. The storm itself was only perhaps a few meters in width, but the column of deadly corrupted power shot high into the “sky” of this world. The extent of the vortex reached almost to the central miasmic core, but Rika's own substance was keeping it at bay. As long as it couldn't reinforce the projection's energy reserves directly, it would be a simple matter to quell the storm.

I continued to trudge against the wind, leaning forward, letting my body weight carry me through the force of moving air that pushed me back. One more step, then another, then another… the distance of a few meters now felt so much farther. Inexorably I moved closer, my hair whipped back behind me, my clothing plastered to my skin by the force of the moving air.

All it took was a touch.

Like oil-soaked tinder, the miasma vortex was set ablaze with argent fire. The shockwave blasted me from my feet, throwing me to the ground, but I was left relatively unscathed. Silvery sheets of disintegrating flames consumed the miasma within the whirlwind, becalming the air with an abruptness that seemed unreal—but then again, this whole “place” was merely a construct, a conceptualization of reality that existed within Meilin's astral pattern.

Kyrie was standing over me, holding a hand out to help me to my feet. I took the offered assist and stood, wiping the sweat from my brow. The reds and blacks that swirled in my irises faded and lightened to a neutral gray-blue. The Relic spirit and I both looked up at the miasmic core and noticed two things. One, the core was absolutely still, no longer pulsing and roiling with its own dark and corrupt power.

Two, Rika had reformed her physical manifestation and was floating gently to the ground. I smiled at my other self as she nearly knocked me to the ground with a fierce hug. “The miasmic core's defense program has been purged and the core's physical manifestation is exposed. All that's left is for Ceres to destroy it.”

Kyrie's faint smile told us all we needed to know. The Relic spirit vanished into nothingness, returning her consciousness to the material world. Rika and I watched in silent satisfaction as a line of pure white bisected the core, flaring brilliantly for a moment before it crumbled into a fine, gray ash.

restoration

I was back in my own body again.

I blinked, my eyes adjusting to the dim illumination in the clinic's recovery room. Moving stiffly, I stood up and stretched. My muscles felt cold and tight, as if I hadn't moved in days, though the whole operation couldn't have taken more than a few hours at the very most.

Misaki was beside me, supporting me with her body. I felt her tail curl around the small of my back, nearly engulfing my torso within the great fluffy thing. Fortunately, no one tried to talk to me through the unpleasant period of disorientation that followed astral projection. My mind struggled to make sense of what was going on around me—

Ah. Ceres was here, and she held the Synthesized Relic loosely in one hand. The artifact created by her predecessor was constructed of some substance that could reform itself into various configurations based on the desires of the wielder.

When Nergal possessed the thing, it looked like a broad-bladed saber. In Ceres's hands, the Synthesized Relic was shorter and more narrow, taking the form of a light and agile blade that could be easily used in either hand. I recalled that her ability with the sword was about on par with mine—that is to say, we both sucked—so she made the Relic into more of a tool than a weapon, employed to slice miasmic cores in half while leaving her gunhand free.

The small pile of miasmic ash on the ground near the foot of Meilin's hospital bed brought me fully out of my disorientated state. Ceres closed her eyes and I felt the push from her own will that shut the Synthesized Relic down, causing the blade to draw back into its hilt. She shoved it in a hidden pocket of her jacket and fixed me with a curious gaze.

“Will this work?”

I didn't answer immediately. Instead I turned to regard Meilin, still unconscious in the bed. It didn't appear as if anything at all had changed, but I had no idea what, if anything, our actions would have accomplished. Rika may have claimed Meilin could rebuild her own astral pattern, but she didn't say how long it would take—

“She's waking up!” Misaki cried.

The sleeping woman stirred in her bed, moving her limbs weakly. Her eyes opened, slowly, little by little, as if she were forced to fight to regain consciousness every step of the way. Meilin stared at the ceiling for a long moment before her gaze traveled throughout the room.

“What… happened? I feel so—” She grimaced in pain as she tried to sit up, but her muscles protested and she fell back to the mattress. A sour expression crossed her face once she realized that her body was not yet fully under her mind's control.

“You were unconscious,” I explained, motioning for Misaki to bring Meilin a container of water to drink. I handed the small phial to the newly-awakened woman and placed my hands on hers as I sat back down. “While you were investigating Luna's suspicious activities, you were attacked by the Fifth Pillar of Heaven.”

“But I was… Elias…? No, that's not right.” Meilin paused for a long moment and nearly drained the water container dry. She coughed once and groaned, her free hand coming haltingly up to rub her left temple.

“It was Valendir, disguised as the Archivist. The real Elias was killed years ago, long before any of us had any involvement with Luna.” Misaki's ears flicked rapidly with barely contained relief and joy, and it was taking all of my wife's control and focus not to pounce on our friend. “He used an artifact called the Mindfang to take control of your mind. Do you remember anything that happened between then and now?”

Meilin closed her eyes. “Not… really. It's all a jumbled mess. It's like the memories are half-fragmented and deleted, and what's left over… it doesn't make any sense at all.” She frowned, studying the water bottle in her shaky right hand. “I feel horrible. How badly was I hurt?”

“Not very badly, all things considered. Your body's in good shape, but the connections between it and your consciousness is still pretty shaky. Valendir didn't just put you under heavy-duty mental domination, but he also fused a miasmic core to your astral pattern.”

“So he could channel miasma through me,” Meilin managed, a bleak expression forming on her ashy features.

I nodded. “During the battle with Valendir, Eirene destroyed the Mindfang. The continuous invocation cast by the artifact was canceled, but the core remained. To protect you from the corrupt energies, your astral pattern isolated itself from your body and consciousness.”

It was then that Meilin seemed to notice Ceres's presence in the room. Her eyes widened in shocked recognition upon seeing the woman. I wasn't really surprised that the two of them knew each other—they had both worked for the same agency, and before Ceres took over the role of Director, she served as a liaison between the Directorate and the wider organization.

“It's been a long while since we last spoke,” Ceres said in a neutral tone. “At least two years, if I recall correctly.”

“How are you… why are you working with—ah, fuck it.” Meilin chuckled to herself, shaking her head in rueful astonishment. “It seems like a lot has happened while I was down. I would appreciate being brought back up to speed on everything.”

“There'll be time for that later,” I assured her. “For now, you should focus on resting. You're going to be weak for a little bit while your astral pattern rebuilds itself and repairs the damage caused by the miasma. Let's just say that things have… changed considerably since before you were attacked.”

Meilin let her head fall back to the pillow and closed her eyes. “Amber isn't here.” She let out a slow, sad sigh and turned away from me. “There's only one reason I can possibly think of why she wouldn't be here.”

Neither Misaki nor I could respond to that. The two of us glanced at each other, both of us wearing identical expressions of sadness and renewed grief. Amber's death hurt the both of us immensely, and now that Meilin was awake, all of those emotions would return. It would be much, much worse, we both knew, once Meilin figured out what happened. No matter what we did or said, she would eventually find out.

Even refusing to discuss it left me feeling guilty, but Meilin had enough adversity to deal with at the moment. She seemed to recognize that, at least, and chose not to press any of us for more information.

“Things have gotten worse, haven't they?”

I wasn't going to lie. “Yes. They have.”

“In that case, it's likely that you're going to need my help.” Meilin pulled the covers back up over her shoulder and nestled down more deeply into the bed. “You should go. I promise I'll rest up and work hard on getting back into fighting shape. The last thing I want is to be stuck in a hospital while the rest of you are out risking your lives.”

“I'll make sure someone is available to brief you on the current situation,” Ceres offered. “Just let the orderly know when you want to speak to a representative from the agency. They'll make all the necessary arrangements.”

“Thank you.”

Misaki was already at the door and she beckoned for me. I didn't say anything else and fell into step behind my wife. The two of us were headed out of the clinic when Ceres stopped us in the lobby on the first floor. I turned to her, knowing that I wore my annoyed impatience written all over my face and in the shifting hues of my irises, but the director of AEGIS didn't seem to notice.

“Karin—I just wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

Ceres waved back toward the elevator. “We're going to need all the good people we can get just to survive this crisis, much less put a permanent stop to Aestivar's spectral horde. It'll be good to have her back.”

“You think she'll work for AEGIS again?” Misaki asked, more than a little dubiously. “Even after all that happened?”

“I should think so. I doubt she truly blames the entire agency for the actions of Nergal and his supporters.”

“Assuming she wants to, it seems like a natural fit,” I admitted. “I'm not sure you should be making plans like that without talking to her first, though. Not to mention there are other considerations.”

Ceres's expression was grim. “I know. I promise I'll make sure she receives only the very best of care.”

“I'm more concerned about Meilin pushing herself to work before she's really ready.” I gestured vaguely toward the door leading back out into the night. “She's going to have to be told what happened, eventually, or she'll figure it out herself. It's going to be bad no matter what, but I think if you're forthright with her, it'll be easier for her to deal with.”

“I see.”

“You should also clear her fiancé to come visit her,” Misaki pressed. “Meilin's going to need the support of her friends and loved ones to make it through this.”

The director of AEGIS nodded. “Done.”

I started to turn to leave the clinic with Misaki at my side, but I stopped, a thought occurring to me. There was another way I could help Meilin recover, perhaps become even stronger than she had been before.

“One other thing, Ceres.”

“Yes?”

“Don't be too surprised when Rika shows up. I can't leave Meilin alone like this, but I also have other issues that need to be dealt with.” I turned and offered the director of AEGIS a faint, dangerous little smile—one that I'd picked up from my partner, of course. “Fortunately, I can be in two places at once. Sort of.”

meilin's chapter

/

clemency

discontinuity

The world was a blur of white and bright light. Coffee-brown eyes blinked rapidly, trying to clear the gummy and fuzzy sensation away. The nausea was still there, but vastly diminished from the last time she'd woken up. That time, at least, the lights had been off and the world was quiet and dark, not this hot blade of light emitting from a circular array of LEDs mounted above.

Meilin groaned and clutched her temples, turning over on her left side. She muttered a stream of curses under her breath as her disused eyes struggled to adapt to the brightness—

Abruptly, the intensity of the light was cut by half. Reflexively, Meilin sat bolt upright… and immediately regretted it. A wave of nausea washed through her and the blood rushed from her head, making her feel faint and nearly causing her to collapse to the mattress again.

“Who—who's there?”

“It's me, pretty lady.”

Meilin's jaw dropped open in astonishment. She still couldn't see too well, but that voice was unmistakable.

“Gabriel… ? What are—how are you even here?”

“Karin and Misaki made the arrangements. She wanted to make sure you were well taken care of, and couldn't think of anyone better to do the job than yours truly.” Gabriel sat down on the edge of the hospital bed and took one of Meilin's hands in his own. “They filled me in on what happened… with AEGIS, the mission, the Pillars of Heaven… all of it. I'm not certain I completely understand everything that's going on, but there's nothing I'd rather do than be here for you.”

“You… AEGIS—but… what?” Meilin's voice was hoarse, and her eyes round with shock and confusion, but she didn't appear to be anything but fully alert and aware. “You're working for the agency now? Did they threaten you?”

“No and no.” Gabriel shook his head. “I'm just here to be with you, babe. No threats, no intimidation—just a nondisclosure agreement I had to sign, and here I am.”

“That must've been Karin's doing.”

“Yeah. Given what I know now, it'd be weird if the feds didn't make me disappear. You have some good friends, pretty lady. Good enough to make certain that I'd be able to be with you.” The tall man smiled, his green eyes twinkling, and he squeezed Meilin's hand softly. “I know damn well she feels guilty that she can't be here with you.”

“That would be like her, yes,” Meilin agreed. The grogginess was starting to clear from her voice and the fog lifted away from her mind. Her memories, however, were still a jumbled mess of fragmented images and snippets of recollection, none of which made much sense. “I'm still pretty well out of it. I can't… really remember what happened, and my head is pounding.”

“I know. You'll get through this—we'll get through this. Together.”

Meilin smiled faintly. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

“Well, that and I imagine this as well.”

The still-shaky woman's eyes widened with pleasure as Gabriel dug around in the bag he'd set on the nearby table. She caught a whiff of something savory and smoky; her smile grew as her fiancé took out a container and a plastic fork, handing them over.

“It doesn't look as good as it did an hour ago, but—”

“It smells wonderful. Thank you,” Meilin cut him off. Shakily, she opened the container and started to eat, first slowly and then much more quickly as she became acutely aware of her ravenous hunger. That wonderful, beautiful man had brought her favorite meal: soft scrambled eggs and smoked salmon, sauteed mushrooms and onions, all smothered over a thick slice of garlic-rubbed and buttered toast.

Conversation was momentarily suspended as Meilin devoured the first meal she'd eaten in weeks. Despite her unconsciousness, she hadn't lost any weight or suffered any deficiencies of nutrients. It was another strange side-effect of her mysterious affliction. Still, though, newly awoken and lucid, Meilin felt as if she hadn't eaten in years.

“I brought some coffee, too, if you'd like,” Gabriel offered.

“In a minute.” Pausing only long enough to reply, the former AEGIS operative continued to eat with indecent haste. She wiped a bit of oil from her lips and chuckled to herself. What a sight I must be, stuffing my face like a starving wolf.

Less than two minutes passed before the container was empty of even the smallest morsel of egg or salmon or mushroom. Meilin licked her lips and held her hands out as Gabriel poured coffee, complete with cream, into a small plastic mug. She sipped at the drink much more carefully, as it was still rather hot.

“Feeling better now?”

“Much.”

Gabriel smiled, but Meilin could detect a barely-concealed pain in his sense. The smile didn't quite reach his eyes, didn't quite hide a bleak anguish that bubbled just below the surface. She understood that his presence here today wasn't simply a warm-hearted “welcome back,” but the prelude to something much worse.

Of course, he was perceptive enough to realize that. “Better enough to handle talking with Ceres? There are some things you need to know, and… well, I just want to make sure you're ready to hear them.”

Chaotic spirals of fragmented recollection whirled in Meilin's mind, but she still couldn't make any real sense of it. The throbbing pain in her temples had lessened, somewhat, but attempting to focus on the events leading up to her incapacitation proved impossible.

“I can't remember. It's all a mess, like someone reached into my mind and crushed the memories into thousands of tiny pieces. They don't fit together or make any sense at all.” Meilin let out a deep, slow breath and met her fiancé's eyes squarely. “My sister is gone.”

Before Gabriel could respond, the door to the small recovery room opened and Ceres walked inside. She said nothing as she pulled her phone from her jacket and tapped on the screen a few times. The door slid shut and Meilin could hear the sound of the auto-lock pins engaging. The display above the door no longer displayed a green “Security Level 2,” but was instead replaced with the red “Security Level 6.”

“Madame Director,” Meilin murmured, regarding the newcomer warily.

“No need to be so formal. Ceres will do.”

“You're not here to check up on my recovery.”

The director of AEGIS nodded. “There are things you need to know, as I'm sure you've already been told. As much as all of us would wish to shield you from what has to come next, that just… isn't possible. If we want to survive the coming storm, we need you to hear the truth.”

Meilin closed her eyes. “I know.”

“Do you know what happened?”

The woman's shoulders shrugged helplessly. “I know, but I can't… I can't recall it. I can't draw that memory out.”

“What do you remember?”

“I don't… I remember finding data within Luna's systems, evidence that Elias was using the renegade summoners from House Kihara to call specters into the world.” Her brown eyes went dim and glassy as she struggled to piece the memories back together. “I made a stupid mistake, set off an alarm and had to run. I remember… being brought before Elias. I remember something that was like a Relic, but somehow not.” Meilin's lips twisted in frustration. “Everything after that is like shattered glass.”

“That was not Elias, but Valendir, the Fifth Pillar of Heaven,” Ceres informed her. “The man you knew as the Archivist was an impostor; he killed the Order Magician Elias decades ago and assumed his identity.”

“I thought… yes, I can remember. He wasn't who any of us thought he was. He had a Relic, or something that was like a Relic. The astral energy contained within it was so powerful I could feel it, like it was a physical thing. I… don't remember any more than that.”

“The Mindfang—not a Relic, but an astral artifact that had the power to completely dominate the will of any human it touched. You can't remember anything because Valendir used the Mindfang to subvert the connections between your conscious mind and your astral pattern, stealing your will and taking control of your body. The Fifth Pillar turned you into his puppet, as he had done with so many others.”

Meilin's eyes were filled with desolation as she looked up at Ceres. The life was slowly draining away from those eyes even as the blood drained from her face. Fragments of corrupted memory began to piece together, bit by bit, coalescing around the information she'd just been given. A picture started to form—the picture of a horrible nightmare.

“No. No.” She squeezed her eyes tightly shut, nearly dropping the still-scalding coffee before Gabriel snatched it away. Meilin didn't even seem to notice. Her eyes were glassy and flat as the awful memories started to reconstruct themselves in her mind. “No. I couldn't have. There's no way—no matter what, I never would have… I couldn't.”

“You didn't,” Gabriel insisted, reaching out to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. “The power that held you was beyond anything you'd ever faced, beyond anything you could have ever hoped to withstand—”

“You think that makes me feel better about this?!” Meilin snarled. She slapped his hand away, hard enough to set him back on his heels. “That I should be forgiven for what I… what I did, for being too weak to resist?”

“Any of us would have been too weak to resist. The Mindfang was capable of dominating the wills of humans—any humans and all humans, no matter how strong. Only astral entities would be immune to the artifact's effects.”

Somehow, Meilin's face became even paler than it had been. Her flat, lifeless eyes stared through Ceres with such frightening intensity of despair that the woman visibly shivered. “He couldn't get Karin, so he used me… used me to kill Amber, to steal Karin's family so he could force her to do as he wished.”

“Yes.”

Meilin didn't respond for a very long time. Both Ceres and Gabriel bore the silence with calm stoicism. The woman's memories were piecing themselves back together, bit by bit, with the awful revelation the catalyst for repair. She felt dizzy and sick, not just physically, but she felt as if a toxin had been injected deep into her soul, weakening her spiritually.

Her stomach began to entertain second thoughts about the meal she'd consumed and she doubled over, but her gorge didn't rise—and the crushing nausea vanished as abruptly as if someone reached up and flipped a switch. Meilin's astonishment was mirrored in the eyes of both her visitors as a third person abruptly appeared in the room.

Gabriel did a double-take and jerked back violently, but Ceres quickly mastered her emotions and gazed at the newcomer with a mixture of irritation and well-concealed fear. Meilin's eyes seemed to gain a bit of luster and life as she stared at the very familiar form of one of her closest friends and allies.

“K-Karin?!”

“It's not Karin,” Ceres corrected.

Meilin blinked, confused. “It's not?”

“Not entirely, anyway.” Rika shrugged and pushed her way past the Director of AEGIS without so much as an acknowledgement. “Rika is the name Karin gave me, but we haven't met… at least, not directly.”

“Is there any secure location on this entire world that you cannot breach?” Ceres demanded.

“No,” Rika replied without hesitation. “Didn't we also tell you I'd be here?”

“Yes, but that doesn't make it any less creepy.”

Rika shrugged. The sealed astral entity turned her attention back to Meilin and placed a warm hand on the woman's shoulder. Despite Meilin's lack of innate astral affinity, she could feel the power coursing through Rika's hands, raging with what felt like an infinite intensity of light and power far beyond anything she'd ever felt.

“Who… no, what are you?”

“A child of the astral and a caretaker of the Integration.” Rika's expression was pensive. “Your people named me 'the Celestial.' Many years ago, Aestivar of the Pillars of Heaven performed a summoning that brought me to this world. His power was such that I could not resist, and so I was dragged through the boundary, albeit not unscathed. I was manifested upon your world, but in an unstable configuration. The Pillars and their subordinate summoners exploited that instability and stole a part of my power.”

Ceres glared at the astral entity. “You have been remarkably unwilling to share information with us in the past. Why start talking now?”

“It wasn't relevant until now.”

The Director of AEGIS's expression clouded over. Meilin suspected Ceres was not happy about Rika's words entering the ears of two who were not under the agency's direct command. Of course, that was likely the astral being's intent.

As if she hadn't been interrupted at all, the astral being turned back to Meilin. “The anima taken from me was used to create the 'demons,' mindless hunting hounds released for the purpose of destroying True Relics. It was extremely effective. Only the Blade of the Nine-Tailed Fox, the Dagger of the Bright Swallow and the Fang of the Rising Storm survived unscathed.”

Meilin recognized the names of the first two Relics, but not the third. Karin's Relic had been assimilated into her astral pattern. The Bright Swallow was still wielded by Soleil and protected by the guardian spirit Tsubame. The third Relic, however, was one Meilin had no knowledge of, even through her study of both AEGIS and Luna's extensive archives.

Though she'd never heard the name before, it seemed… oddly familiar to her. Something about that name tickled some deep part of her subconscious. The sensation was maddening, akin to having a half-recalled memory hang on the tip of her tongue.

“What are you talking about?”

“The 'sample' AEGIS recovered from Valendir and placed in their deep-storage facility,” Rika explained. “It is a True Relic, once known as the Sword of Levin, the Fang of the Rising Storm.”

“I'm not even going to ask how you know that.” The director of AEGIS ground her teeth in a mixture of frustration and embarrassment, glaring hard at Rika. “Do the words 'violating security protocols' mean anything at all to you?”

Rika met Ceres's gaze squarely. “This is not a secret that should be kept—especially not from Meilin. No one else has the right to claim the Fang. The bonds between the two of them are not to be taken lightly.”

“I was going to tell her.”

“But not until you were certain there were no other possibilities.” The spirit-girl turned back toward Meilin, startling her with the intensity of the gaze in those fey eyes. “It doesn't matter how many hands grasp the Fang's hilt; yours is the only one it will remember fondly.”

“The Shattered Sword!” Meilin blurted, finally making the connection. “But… it's been broken for centuries. How can it be restored to its full power?”

“Wounds will heal with time, even those that seem so terrible and final that death seems inevitable.” The celestial reached out to take Meilin's right hand, turning it over and running a fingertip along the palm. “Karin and I brought your soul out of the darkness. You can do the same for the soul of the Relic.”

rebirth

The auto-lock disengaged and the heavy vault door swung open. Ceres walked inside, followed closely by Meilin. Their escort, a security specialist attached to the Directorate, waited at the entrance to the vault, not possessing the required security clearance to enter. Slowly, the vault door swung shut on soundless hinges and the auto-lock re-engaged.

“This is AEGIS's primary deep-storage facility for astral artifacts,” Ceres explained as the two of them made their way past rows and rows of locked containers. The smell of warm electronics was thick in the air and Meilin could tell from the slightly disorienting sensation that she was surrounded with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of active stasis fields.

Overhead, cameras were set into the ceiling every three meters. Meilin shivered underneath their unblinking gaze. Not that she needed to worry, of course—her mere presence in this location spoke highly of her newly-bestowed security clearance as a special aide to the Director. None of the hidden defenses, of which there were many, would pose the slightest danger to her.

“I knew we collected a lot of artifacts through our operations, but I never imagined it could be like… like this,” Meilin murmured softly. “It's incredible. Even the Order of the Moon's full collection couldn't compare to this.”

“They had a different focus. Luna sought to obtain astral lore for the sake of preserving knowledge of the arcane. AEGIS sealed these artifacts here, out of the reach of the squabbling Houses, to maintain the balance of power and prevent any individual clan from rising too far above the rest.” The Director smiled wryly and made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “Our agents were tasked with relieving Luna of dangerous artifacts, just as we did any other House.”

A dark look entered Meilin's eyes. “I doubt the agency didn't make use of what was here.”

“Believe it or not, we didn't. Or at least, the Directorate never approved such use. Even Nergal was loathe to violate our deep-storage protocols; instead, he ensured items that should have been stored here were diverted. The fragments of Karin's assimilated Relic, for example, should have been brought here, but instead ended up at a facility controlled by the former director's closest reformist allies.”

Meilin glanced at the cylindrical object hanging from a clip on Ceres's belt. The Synthesized Relic was the culmination of Nergal's clandestine experimentation on Relics, built from the broken pieces of Karin's Blade of the Nine-Tailed Fox.

Noting the look and its significance, Ceres cracked a faint smile. “I would have ordered it sealed here, too, but it lacks the ability to sustain an imbued spirit without a wielder. I couldn't just let Kyrie die.”

“He betrayed her, too, just as much as he betrayed the rest of the agency,” Meilin murmured softly, pursing her lips as she did so. Her pensive look was meant to hide the frustration and exhaustion she felt simmering beneath the surface; Nergal's grab for power shattered the lives of so many people…

“Well, we will do the best we can with the hand we've been dealt.”

“I know.”

Ceres stopped as they approached a second door, armored and nigh-impenetrable like the vault's sole entrance, but this one was smaller. Tucking an errant lock of dark hair behind one ear, Ceres reached out and placed her hand on the auto-lock's activation panel. The panel's indicator LED blinked twice and turned green. Metallic thunks reverberated through the floor as the high-security door unsealed and swung open.

Inside the vault-within-a-vault was a small room containing only a single stasis capsule, mounted firmly to a raised dais. Various pieces of sensing equipment hung from the low ceiling, and Meilin had to duck to avoid bashing her head on some of the bits of sophisticated tech.

“Sorry, this cell isn't really meant to have much in the way of foot traffic,” Ceres offered. The older woman was shorter than Meilin by enough to clear some, but not all, of the various devices that monitored the vault's contents. “We've kept it here, under close observation, ever since Valendir's defeat at the Alaska facility.”

Meilin gazed curiously at the sensors. “Under observation? What for?”

“See for yourself.”

Ceres tapped a string of commands into a panel on the side of the stasis capsule. The shroud hissed softly as it retracted, revealing a long, narrow cavity filled with panels of a dense, gray closed-cell foam. Upon the padding rested a large and heavy longsword that Meilin recognized instantly as her sister's Relic.

Memories that had been fragmented since she'd been brought out of the darkness started to fit together once again. Images, snippets of recollection—the sound of Amber's voice, her deep and commanding alto, the rich and bawdy sound of her unrestrained laughter—all of it came smashing into Meilin at the speed of light.

She saw her sister, standing her ground on the cracked driveway in front of the Ashley home, as the miasma-soaked blade of a spectral knight was plunged into her back. She had been right there, right in front of Amber as the profane weapon destroyed her sister's heart and stole the life from the most lively woman Meilin had ever known.

Her lips were twisted into a sneer that wasn't her own. Malevolent satisfaction washed through her mind as the specter's blade seared and corrupted, destroying sinew and bone as easily as it severed the links between Amber's body and soul.

It was then that she realized she'd dropped to her knees. Tears streaked her cheeks and her body was wracked with choking sobs. Seeing the Shattered Sword again, being close enough to feel the electric currents of astral energy that flowed from the blade itself, was almost too much for her to handle.

Strong hands took hold of her and pulled her to her feet. Meilin sniffled loudly and blinked through the blur of tears at Ceres. The woman's expression was one of sympathy but not pity, of understanding and acceptance of the pain that radiated brightly.

“I'm sorry.”

Wiping her eyes, Meilin shook her head and took a deep, steadying breath. “There's no reason for you to be sorry.”

“None of us wanted you to have to experience this pain, but…”

“It was necessary.” The grief-stricken woman's shoulders shuddered. Sobs no longer shook her body, but tears continued to slowly trace lines down Meilin's cheeks. “A lie, even a lie of omission, would have been… far worse.”

Everything was beginning to fall into place. She had never been very important to AEGIS; just one agent among thousands. Sure, Meilin had always been good at her job, but that was hardly a unique quality in an agency filled with the elite, the best of the best. Her new assignment, attached to the Directorate as a special aide to Ceres's office, was conspicuously over-generous. At first, she assumed it was done to placate Karin, whom they needed in order to write a new conclusion to what may well be the end of the world.

Thanks to Rika, Meilin understood why her value to AEGIS had increased.

“No one can bind the Shattered Sword.”

“Without a wielder, the damaged Relic should have started to degrade further until it failed completely,” Ceres said. “Our understanding of the method the Order Magicians used was limited, but we knew enough to know the Relic would fail without a constant mana source, and we knew that without an imbued spirit, the Relic should have bound to anyone.”

“But it didn't.”

“No, and we don't understand why. The Shattered Sword has no governing intelligence and hasn't had one for centuries. Why, then, would it suddenly begin to reject potential wielders—and do so violently?” Ceres shrugged helplessly as she gazed at the Relic inside the stasis capsule. “It killed three Hunters before I convinced the Directorate to stop.”

Meilin blinked, shocked. “It killed people?”

“Nothing we've learned about the Relics indicated that such a thing was possible. With an intact imbued spirit an unbound Relic can refuse to bind to a wielder it considers unsuitable, but I've never heard of the refusal being lethal.”

Moving closer to the stasis capsule, Meilin leaned close to examine the Shattered Sword. It looked the same as it always had, complete with the deep rents and cracks in the polished steel of the weapon's blade. It did seem somewhat cleaner than before, however, and while Meilin doubted anyone but Amber knew for sure, the Relic appeared newer than she remembered.

“I must be remembering wrong; I swear it looked more, well, broken, the last time I saw it.”

“You aren't misremembering,” Ceres corrected. “Over the past few weeks, the Shattered Sword's astral pattern has fully stabilized and has been repairing itself ever since. We have sensor data to back it up.”

“Why?”

“This is merely speculation, but it's behaving as if it has an imbued spirit, and a particularly willful one at that. The wardings and containment invocations placed upon the Relic by the Order Magicians were inexplicably dismantled and consumed, their energies recycled to accelerate the blade's recovery.”

“It's just like Rika said.” Meilin met her boss's gaze coolly. “I'm the only person that can bind this Relic. That's why you brought me back, why you assigned me to the Directorate and you instead of resuming my old duties as a mission controller.”

“I'm not forcing you to do anything, Meilin. If our assumptions are wrong, the Shattered Sword may very well claim your life. I don't believe I'm wrong, though, and I can see from your expression that you don't, either.”

The younger woman turned her gaze away from Ceres and to the Relic itself. Even in the short time she watched it, Meilin could see the steel slowly repairing itself. The blade had been covered in cracks and fissures, but more and more of the artifact's surface smoothed out, becoming as bright and new again, as if time itself was winding backward.

Something deep inside tugged at her consciousness, seemingly drawing her toward the hilt of the Relic. Before she realized what was happening, her right hand was only a few centimeters away from the dangerously powerful artifact. The compulsion to claim the Relic was overwhelming; Meilin found it difficult to think clearly as she struggled not to simply snatch the blade up.

“It's calling to me—I can sense it, strongly,” she murmured, barely audible even in the near silence of the vault. Her hand quivered, almost if it was attempting to move toward the Shattered Sword of its own accord, but Meilin hesitated.

Ceres turned to gaze at the somnolent Relic. “I can't help you with that decision. If you choose not to bind it, the Relic will remain sealed in this vault. We don't know what'll happen to it long-term, but I won't permit anyone else to attempt to bind it.”

Meilin felt the chill settling around her shoulders once again. The Relic was still calling to her, imploring her, tugging at her very spirit.

“If I take the blade, it'll bind to me,” Meilin said in a deadpan voice. “Each corrupted spirit I destroy will strengthen the Relic, the bond between us… and me. Every miasmic core I cut will put me one step closer to… to becoming like Karin. I don't know. I don't think I can—can deal with that. I'm afraid of—of losing my mortality.” Her violent shiver had nothing to do with the temperature of the vault. “We all saw what happened to Karin after she was fused with her Relic. The clock ran backwards as her soul was infused with astral power that will sustain her life indefinitely.”

“The Directorate estimated that it would take years for the Relic to absorb enough astral energy from miasmic cores,” Ceres argued. “Our data suggested it would have been at least a decade before Karin's Relic—

“Yes, but you're forgetting something,” Meilin interrupted, holding a hand up to forestall any further objection. “There are more specters now than ever before and they've managed to summon and anchor even more powerful corrupt entities into our world. Unless I severely restrict the number of specters I dispatch…”

Ceres's expression told Meilin all she needed to know without saying a word. AEGIS was stretched to the breaking point. There was no possible way that the Directorate wouldn't seize this opportunity and use her and the Relic to maximum effect. The agency was desperate to stop being forced to rely upon other government agencies for additional support. A skilled Hunter wielding a True Relic could slaughter specters with frightening efficiency, allowing AEGIS to redistribute its regular forces more conservatively.

There really wasn't a choice and she knew it. Meilin couldn't let her own fears stand in the way of her duty to protect the people from the dark designs of the Pillars and their allies. She let out a long, deep sigh and reached out to grasp the Shattered Sword's well-worn hilt.

As her fingers closed around the leather-wrapped grip, no killing burst of searing purple-white lightning came forth. The blade remained quiescent, at least on the outside, as Meilin lifted the heavy sword out of the stasis capsule—

There was an abrupt and sharp sense of connection that sent waves of intangible pressure through Meilin, but only for a fraction of an instant. The trauma of the joining was quickly smothered by a blinding, raging rush of brilliant power that surged into Meilin's astral pattern from within the Relic's own pattern. Links between the two snapped into place, solidifying within seconds, forever binding the two together with mystic ties that could only be broken by death.

Meilin felt the haziness fall away from her mind. Startling clarity and calm blasted through her with the force of a gale. The chaotic, disorganized and disconnected nature of the lines of force in her spirit were altered. From the jumbled traces, an orderly and complex circuit started to form, bit by bit. Those lines that had been withered by Valendir's Mindfang were filled with the Relic's power and thickened, straightening and regaining their bonds with other vias and pathways.

Less than a handful of moments later, the electric creation was complete and Meilin felt a deep sense of peace and calm.

“It's bound to me,” she murmured. Meilin opened her eyes—and nearly dropped the restored Relic to the floor.

Standing in front of her, where no one had been only moments before, was the unmistakable form of a tall, muscular woman—and Meilin's heart lurched up into her throat as she stared at the imposing figure in complete and total shock.

Her hair was short-cropped and tousled, her lips curved into a cocky half-smile that Meilin recognized instantly. Piercing topaz-colored eyes blazed with a feral, mischievous sort of inner light beneath the mass of iron-colored strands… and a pair of large, triangular ears, similar in shape but somewhat smaller than those Misaki possessed. A long and thickly-furred tail swished to and fro behind the woman, tinted the same as her hair, darkening steadily toward the tip until it became as black as coal.

The newborn Relic spirit's smirk developed into a full-blown grin, a grin that Meilin had seen many, many times in the past, and one she never expected to see again.

“Hello, dear sister.”

huntress

The three of them sat around a table in one of the Directorate's secure conference rooms, the door sealed firmly behind a maximum-security lock. Meilin let her gaze linger on the Relic spirit—on Amber, her sister!—for a long moment while the other was fully engrossed in the pile of grilled meats that was heaped on her plate. Prominent fangs, larger than Misaki's, were visible as the Relic spirit indulged her primal aspect while she ate.

On the table in front of Meilin was the Relic. As Rika predicted, it was no longer “shattered” at all. In fact, it looked completely different: the artifact's form had shifted, altering its shape and design to fit Meilin's smaller physique and shorter arms. The blade was shorter and more slender, while the hilt was long with a small cross-guard.

The shape of the Relic wasn't an accident; Meilin knew her subconscious mind helped reshape the weapon into something more suited to her as it repaired itself. The Emulated Relic she had wielded for years in her previous service to the agency was similar in weight and balance to the new form of the Fang of the Rising Storm.

Intricate flows of the steel made the Relic appear to have been pattern-welded, as if the binding process had taken the broken pieces of the old Shattered Sword and reforged them into a new blade. This wasn't too far from the truth, Meilin knew; when she binded to the Relic, it took full advantage of its new source of mana, consuming its physical manifestation and rebuilding itself using the fragments of shattered astral-imbued steel.

As a result, Meilin felt more than a little weakened by the whole ordeal. Unlike the Relic's guardian spirit, Meilin's appetite was nearly absent and she pushed the food around on her plate. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Amber giving her a critical look, her lupine ears twitching in agitation.

“Eat.”

The woman felt a chill run down her spine at the sound of the Relic spirit's voice—her sister's voice. It wasn't exactly the same as it had been; there was an odd resonance to it that seemed to hint at the newfound power now surging through Amber and the Relic. Despite her conflicted emotions, she found herself obeying.

The Relic spirit that had once been Meilin's sister was still nude—neither of the other women had anything that would fit her or accommodate that tail—but she seemed just as completely unperturbed by that fact as the human Amber would have… when she was still alive. Meilin silently continued to eat, shoveling the food in her mouth, barely tasting it despite the fact that it was good Korean barbecue from a nearby take-out joint.

“I still can't believe it,” Meilin murmured, refusing to look at the Relic spirit that was—or was once?—her sister. She hesitated for a long moment, the fork in her hand wobbling as her hands trembled.

Amber crossed brawny arms over her chest and gave the woman a dubious look. “I know you want to ask, so just out with it already. Say what you want to say, Mei, before you explode.”

“Don't call me—”

“Right, sorry. Meilin.”

Meilin shook her head. “My code name is Star. I'm working for the agency again, after all.”

“I don't give a shit who you're working for.” Amber paused long enough to tear another bite off of a massive chunk of slow-cooked beef shortrib. She licked brown sauce and grease from her lips and jabbed a bare white bone at her sister. “Even before, the first time you worked for AEGIS, back before we met Karin, I still used your name. If the boss lady there cares enough—” Amber jerked a thumb at Ceres, “—then she'd say something, and she's not saying anything.”

The Director of AEGIS chuckled. “I never required her to assume her old identity.”

“Of course you didn't.”

“I'm right here, you know,” Meilin snapped, glaring at the Relic spirit and her commanding officer with equal irritation. She set her fork down and turned her full attention onto Amber, her gaze softening somewhat. “How is this even possible? How are you here, talking and breathing and eating, and imbued into the Relic that should be damaged beyond repair?! You died, Amber! I can see it in my memories, replaying over and over again: I watched you die. I caused your death. I commanded the specter that killed you.”

The Relic spirit's ears twitched pensively. “Out with it.”

“Is it really you, Amber? Or are you just an echo, simply the Relic making use of my sister's astral pattern to rebuild its governing intelligence?”

“I don't have a clue how this happened,” Amber replied, frowning at the pile of bones on her plate. Ceres made no comment and pushed another box containing more food toward the hungry spirit. “I was never an Order Magician, nor did I work in the Archives. What little I know about the Relics I learned while we were trying to research the Pillars of Heaven. Sorry, but I can't shed any light on that subject. Maybe Elias or Ibrahim or even Soren knew, but… they're gone, so…” She trailed off, shrugging her shoulders as her ears drooped, the steady swishing of her tail slowing.

Meilin's lips curved into something akin to a smile. “Elias is dead and Ibrahim is still missing, but Soren is very much alive and has been working with Karin and Misaki.”

“Wait, seriously?” Amber's ears perked up instantly. “He's still alive?”

“I just said that.”

“I had no idea—I mean, of course I didn't know, since I was dead and all. I just… I figured the coup and the specters and all the Kihara and Tsukimura summoners would have wiped everyone out.” The thoughtful expression and drooped ears were no more; Amber looked positively chipper, her tail swishing more rapidly than before. “Look, Mei—”

The huntress scowled. “Star.”

“Mei,” Amber growled, her lip curling back to show off her enlarged canines. “I may have just been brought back from the grave, or from inside the Relic or what-the-fuck-ever, but don't pull that shit with me, dear sister. Things are different now, largely thanks to Karin—hell, Boss Lady here pretty much said that not but a half hour ago. You don't have to beat yourself up for what happened to me—especially since it's you who gave me a second shot at life.”

“Shackled to a sword forever as a Relic spirit?” Meilin demanded bitterly. “I thought my weakness stole your life, but instead I did far worse than that.”

“Did you ever think to ask me if I was actually upset?”

Meilin didn't respond.

“Why don't you ask, then?”

The smaller woman only glared at her.

“Look,” Amber began, pausing for a moment to tear off another chunk of spicy-sweet barbecued beef from the shortrib in her hand, “I don't know what you're thinking, but this isn't the awful fate you seem to think it is. I was dead and now I'm not. I was plunged into eternal darkness, but now I'm back. I can breathe the air, taste the food I'm eating, feel my arms and legs and, uh, tail. Yeah, so what if I have a few extra parts I didn't have before? I'll get used to it.” The Relic spirit shrugged and proceeded to clean every scrap of meat from the rib before continuing. “What matters is I'm here, we're here, and together we can make a difference. I can make up for my failure.”

Meilin frowned. “What failure?”

“Karin asked me to protect her family.” The pain of deep regret was clearly visible in Amber's expression. “I wasn't able to.”

Moisture glistened in Meilin's eyes. “Because of me.”

“No, dear sister. Because the Pillars. They used us to get to Karin—but they failed, and guess what? That failure has given us a massive advantage. Ceres is on our side, AEGIS is on our side, Karin is stronger than ever and we have three functional Relics to work with. The First Pillar and his allies won't know what hit them.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“That we cut their strength off at the source.” Amber let out a sharp bark of laughter. “Every huntress needs a good hunting hound. Well, you've got yours now, dear sister.” The Relic spirit grinned and curled her tail around her body, onto her lap. “If Karin's going to have any hope at all sneaking through the back door and denying Aestivar his prize, we're going to have to keep his eyes firmly on the window he's trying to break.”

“Our people have been trying to find the source of the spectral anchors ever since they were first discovered.” Ceres frowned and fixed both the huntress and the hunting hound with a dubious stare. “We aren't even sure where you should start your search. The Pillars have worked exclusively through intermediaries and servants for hundreds of years. Even if you were able to find it, I have my doubts as to whether the First Pillar would take the field himself.”

Amber rapped her knuckles on the table's surface. “If we—meaning us plus the agency—can discover where the anchors are manufactured, Aestivar won't have a choice but to show up. The spectral horde is the rock he needs to throw at that window. If he lets us take it, his whole plan is a wash.”

The director of AEGIS didn't respond to that.

“It stands to reason, judging by the quantity of anchors AEGIS has already located and destroyed,” Meilin murmured, her voice growing stronger and more confident as she spoke, “that the devices are being mass-produced.”

“Yes, that's correct. Our study of the anchors we managed to capture intact suggest a highly-advanced manufacturing process would be required to produce devices with the sort of precision necessary.”

Amber nodded vigorously. “Exactly. What kind of infrastructure would they need to make so many of those damned things? You'd need the kind of money and resources only available to a big corporation.” The Relic spirit's lips split in a predatory grin, showing off her fangs. “We head out and shake down the Pillars' allied arcane houses, targeting those that have deep corporate connections, and see what falls out.”

The huntress sighed and rubbed her temples. Amber may have been brought back from oblivion and become an immortal astral entity, but she really hadn't changed at all. Subtlety and finesse was never her strong suit. This time, though, Meilin knew, her younger sibling was right. The rules were different now; the goal wasn't to carefully police the behaviors and actions of arcane houses, but to brutally and efficiently destroy an enemy determined to bring apocalyptic ruination to the world.

Meilin turned to her commander, fixing Ceres with a cool gaze. “Is this what you want us to do, Madame Director?”

“It's as good a first step as any,” Ceres replied after a moment's hesitation. “If Karin is to have any hope at all of succeeding, we need to make absolutely sure the strength of the Pillars is both directed away from her and reduced as much as possible. Our Hunters are spread so thinly that we've been forced to take other federal agencies into confidence, to assist in the clearing out of anchors and securing population centers. We're balancing on a razor's edge; all that's keeping panic and chaos from engulfing the nation is the enemy's reticence to deploy their forces. Our current tactics are only delaying the inevitable.”

Meilin grimaced. “It's going to get worse.”

“We're well aware of that,” Ceres agreed, her tone becoming somber and her expression darkening. The older woman's lips were pressed together in a grim, bloodless line. “This is our best chance to avert a terrible catastrophe.”

preemptive strike

“How are you feeling?”

Amber shrugged, her tail curling up toward her back. “Shouldn't I be asking you that question? Didn't we already establish that I'm not upset with how things turned out?”

“Sorry,” Meilin mumbled.

“It's fine. Don't worry about it. We've got more important shit to worry about.” The Relic spirit stared critically in the mirror, examining the set of clothing Ceres's people provided. Clad in dark stonewashed jeans and a red tank top, Amber frowned as she adjusted the fit to accommodate her tail. Modified with a U-shaped cutout and a short strap that secured the top of the “U” closed, it was relatively comfortable and didn't press on the base of her unfamiliar appendage. “This thing is really going to take some getting used to. Where the hell did Ceres get pants made for a tail in the first place? Misaki's half my size and Kyrie doesn't have one.”

“It wouldn't surprise me if the agency has their own garment fabricators.” The Hunter shrugged and handed her sister a lightweight synth-leather jacket, nearly identical to the one Meilin wore herself. “Don't we have 'more important shit to worry about' than where your clothes came from?”

“True,” Amber conceded. “So, what's our first move?”

“We've got access to all of AEGIS's intel on allied arcane houses with links to tech manufacturing companies.” Meilin handed her phone over, the device's screen displaying a list of locations all over the country. “Filtering for the kind of capability necessary, we've narrowed it down to half a dozen different arcane houses.”

“The Pillars really got around,” Amber grumbled.

“Aestivar's plan has been centuries in the making; it's not surprising that he's managed to spread his influence far and wide throughout the predictably power-hungry clans.” Meilin reached over and tapped her index finger against one entry toward the top of the list. “Our first candidate is also the most likely.”

The Relic spirit's eyebrows rose sharply. “House Griffith?”

“You know of them?”

“Yeah. Luna had some dealings with them, back when I first joined,” Amber said, a disgusted expression twisting her features. “Ibrahim, Soren and I met with a guy named Alastair Griffith, the clan's head, to negotiate for the purchase of astral lore. We all knew he was a real piece of shit, but the Archivist insisted that the data was important enough that we ignore the house's 'less-than-savory' reputation. None of us liked how cozy Elias was with these houses who openly summoned specters, but… I guess we know why now.”

“AEGIS provided a pretty detailed dossier on the family.” Meilin jerked a thumb at the phone in her sister's hands. “Enforcement actions were taken multiple times to curtail conspicuous behavior, but since they tended to operate with strict secrecy, the agency didn't do much more than observe. I've never participated in any operations involving them, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect.”

“Ah, yes, the AEGIS prime directive. Commit all the atrocities you like, slaughter all the innocents you want, so long as you sweep it under the rug, keep it all a secret from the average citizen. How did it go? 'Prioritize maintaining operational security,' right?”

The former AEGIS controller grimaced. “You don't have to rub it in.”

“Sorry. I know it's not your fault. It's not like I'm any less guilty of being duped.”

“We were all used,” Meilin agreed.

“I can't wait to pay them back for that.” Amber cracked her knuckles, the expression on her face suggesting she was anticipating their new assignment with a great deal of relish. A wicked grin split her lips as she read through the dossier. “If the agency's information is up-to-date, then one Simon Griffith is in Washington right now, making nice with his daddy's puppet politicians.”

“The eldest son?” Meilin frowned. “What are you thinking?”

“We go shake his tree and see what falls out,” Amber replied, a disconcerting sort of smile curving her lips. “Simon Griffith looks to be much more involved with the 'legitimate' aspects of the family business. Get the intel we need and then eliminate him, no nonsense, no fucking around.”

“That's… rather extreme.”

“So is summoning a millions-strong horde of specters and setting them loose on the world.”

The huntress grimaced. “Point made.”

“Good. Let's take care of this while we're in the area.”

Meilin took her phone back and slipped it into a pocket. What Amber suggested made sense; that sort of highly-visible and direct attack on one of the clan's most powerful and influential members would certainly draw the ire of the entire family. Meilin had little reservations about killing the man; she'd spent the past few hours going over the files AEGIS had on the family.

“You're not seriously thinking we should spare his life, are you?”

“No,” Meilin answered. “I read through the dossier. He's an evil man that should be put down—doubly so considering he's working to help bring about the sort of apocalypse Aestivar intends for the world.”

“Then what's the problem?”

“I don't… I just feel a little uneasy, is all. How can you be so sure of what we need to do? Where does that confidence come from?” Meilin opened up the weapons locker and pulled out her sidearm. She tapped the slide release and checked to ensure the pistol was fully loaded before sliding it into her shoulder holster. Two additional magazines, loaded with high-potency MQ rounds, went into her jacket's inner pocket.

“Where do you think it comes from, dear sister?” Amber arched an eyebrow as she held out her left hand. With a sudden sharp crackle of released energy, purple-white arcs of lightning jumped from fingertip to fingertip, crawling over her hand. “The power of the Rising Storm is rooted deep within my soul. I was a dangerous bitch before I became a Relic spirit—and now I'm just that much stronger.”

Meilin let out an exasperated sigh as she felt the worry start to slide away from her heart. The feeling of connection between her and Amber was more than just the bond between the two siblings. Linked as they were through the Relic, Meilin felt her sister's confidence and arrogance bleed over into her own emotions.

“Come on, Mei,” Amber prodded. “We've got work to do.”

For once, Meilin didn't even bother objecting to Amber's favorite nickname.

“Yeah. Let's go.”

red haze

Meilin tapped her phone's biometric sensor, waking the screen, and noted the time. It was already after ten o'clock, well beyond the point where most bureaucrats and others of their ilk left for the day. The nondescript building she stood outside was utterly unremarkable, like dozens of other nearly identical buildings in the bustling heart of the nation's capital.

The fortieth floor was home to the Washington offices of a private technology company called NanoSynth Technologies. Like most of the stronger arcane houses, House Griffith operated in the public sphere mainly through capitalism. Through the wielding of astral might and the service of their bound specters, arcane houses often rose to prominence through the shrewd and careful use of legitimate business interests as a front for their activities.

By all reports, Simon Griffith was a workaholic who spent nearly all of his waking hours in the various offices of his company. While the clan itself was ruled by his father, Alastair, the son enjoyed his own kingdom at the helm of NanoSynth. Even if they uncovered no useful information concerning the location of the secret factory, killing the son in front of his father's cronies would spark a crisis within the clan.

Meilin frowned as she waited for the Relic spirit's signal. Under normal circumstances, AEGIS would never have agreed to something like this. It was the agency's goal, after all, to keep the existence of astral powers hidden from the general population. She imagined the discussion between Ceres and the rest of the Directorate had been… heated, to say the least.

The game had changed and with it, so did the rules. AEGIS's deception was badly damaged already, as the agency had been forced to show its hand to other federal agencies and portions of the military in order to slow the coming of the spectral horde. Rumors and strange incidents were already flying across the internet and social media. People all across the world were rapidly beginning to exhibit latent astral talent.

Not every country was handling the situation well. Areas of historical political unrest were thrown into greater turmoil as mysterious stories of criminals, rebels and revolutionaries with seemingly-supernatural abilities were whispered beneath the strident shouts of governments insisting that nothing was amiss. Even within this country, several cities and towns were under a kind of plausibly-deniable martial law as AEGIS worked to contain the threat and destroy any anchors they could find.

It was a war of attrition that Aestivar and his allies were winning, but Meilin refused to let herself become discouraged. The power of the Relic burned within her, and the alterations Valendir forced upon her astral pattern increased her own affinity beyond anything she thought possible. The huntress and her allies had the power to change the course of fate.

She glanced at her bare left hand and felt a tug at the corner of her lips. No longer did Meilin need her Spell Engine to shape astral energy into a sword or a shield. Just as the Fang of the Rising Storm was an intrinsic part of her, so too was the magic she needed to complete a mission this risky and audacious.

A spark of electrical discharge caught Meilin's attention—the signal she was waiting for. A split second later, the lights inside the building's lobby went out. She waited a moment longer, her body tensing up for the attack, as the beam of a flashlight appeared in the darkened lobby. The security guard was up and out of his chair now, a phone in his other hand as he called in the outage.

Under normal circumstances, the building's back-up generator should have automatically kicked in and powered the security system, but this wasn't an ordinary power outage. Even if the generator did turn on, it wouldn't be able to deliver electricity to critical systems with the nasty little virus that was currently propagating itself through the security network.

Meilin's half-smile blossomed into a wider one. It would be a while before the building's security could repair the damage caused by Amber's intervention and AEGIS's hacking. They'd have to manually reroute power to terminals inside, or more likely, bring standalone computers in to access the system's diagnostic mode and reboot everything.

The lobby guard put his phone away and drew his sidearm. Meilin saw the beam of his flashlight wobble as his hands shook; it was clear the man was afraid. With no immediate backup and the security system down, he was savvy enough to know what was going to come next.

Or so he thought.

With her hands empty, Meilin darted toward the heavy glass double doors that led into the lobby of the building. Killing an innocent security guard, a pawn with no knowledge of the darkness he protected, was not something Meilin wanted to do. Things were different, though, and she had other options.

Vivid cerulean astral sigils burned in the air as Meilin traced the invocation. The air around her distorted and bent, collapsing in on itself to form a pressure wave that shattered the glass of the doors—and several of the windows flanking them. The guard whirled toward the thunderous shattering and aimed his weapon, the muzzle shaking violently, then fired.

Meilin avoided the hastily-aimed shot with ease and traced another series of sigils, enacting a new process that formed a shimmering kinetic barrier around her body. The basic principles of channeling astral energy was no different than using her Spell Engine, but the execution was markedly different. Invoking on the fly was slower, yes, and she had to focus her concentration on forming the process commands accurately—but the capacity and flexibility was more than worth the trade-off. Meilin wasn't limited to three or four basic invocations that she had to pre-load into the device before using them.

The kinetic barrier rippled as two more shots struck it, the soft lead bullets disintegrating against the defensive shield. It wouldn't do to have bullets bouncing all over the place, even if she and the guard were the only ones present on this floor. Meilin walked calmly toward the guard as he fired and fired again, each successive shot having no more effect than the one before it. By the time she was within arm's reach of the man, he'd dropped his weapon and was staring at her in abject horror.

“What the fuck—what are you?!”

“You're in my way,” Meilin growled. She took a step forward and struck the guard solidly in the midsection, doubling him over before she delivered a sharp blow to his neck, sending him into unconsciousness. The huntress took a moment to make certain the man was still breathing before she traced a short invocation of restriction.

Meilin sprang to her feet and ran through the doorway at the end of the elevator hall, leading to the emergency stairwell. The AEGIS virus and Amber's sabotage cut power only to the first three floors, leaving the rest of the building operating normally. The two of them would meet back up on the third floor and take an elevator to the fortieth floor, where the NanoSynth offices and their target were waiting.

She was scarcely breathing hard as she cleared two steps at a time. Despite her weeks spent trapped within her own mind, Meilin's physical condition hadn't deteriorated at all. She felt only the slightest burning in her lungs as she reached the fourth floor elevator hall. Pushing the door open, Meilin smiled as she caught sight of Amber, standing calmly near an open elevator.

“How did you get here first?” Meilin demanded.

Amber grinned, those wild golden eyes twinkling. “Magic.”

The older sibling rolled her eyes at her sister's sarcastic remark. “We don't have much time before things start getting a lot more dangerous. Let's go.”

“Fine, fine.” The Relic spirit shrugged and stepped into the waiting elevator. Meilin followed and the doors closed a few seconds after she pressed the button for the fortieth floor. Neither of them spoke as the elevator began to rapidly ascend.

The doors opened into another elevator hall, identical to the one on the first floor. Amber stepped out first, her eyes narrowing as she scanned her surroundings. The hallways were empty at this time of night, with many of the offices dark, their doors locked securely. NanoSynth's offices were further down the corridor, on the opposite side of the building. It was only a few moments before they reached their destination.

NanoSynth's logo was etched into the glass of the door. It was locked, of course, as this particular office wasn't open to the general public. A reception desk was visible through the door, but it was vacant. Meilin eyed the auto-lock panel securing the door shut, examining the keypad for telltale signs of a biometric scanner embedded into the touchscreen. She leaned to one side to get a good look at the auto-lock panel from an off angle and found what she was looking for: an odd pattern of barely-visible reflective traces.

“It's set up to scan fingerprints,” Meilin observed in a low tone. “It looks like we're going to have to do this the hard way.”

Amber grinned again and placed a finger on the metal housing of the auto-lock panel. A jolt of actinic lightning flashed abruptly and the display panel went dark. A thin tendril of smoke wafted from the heat-warped edge of the display panel.

Meilin gave her sister a dubious look. “That's not going to open the door.”

“No, but it'll keep the alarm from going off when I do this.” The Relic spirit held her hand out and drew upon astral energy, shaping the raw power into a shimmering, faintly-visible blade of absolute sharpness. Amber delicately manipulated the tip of the paradoxically-intangible sword, slicing through the bolts securing the door shut with no effort at all.

The hunter and the hound slipped through the compromised door and into the NanoSynth office. The hallway behind the reception desk was still illuminated, but Meilin could tell most of the doors were shut and locked. At the very end of the corridor, around a corner, light spilled out from the window of a sealed office. Even through the door, Meilin could hear the sound of angry and impassioned voices.

“Sounds like they're having an interesting conversation,” Amber commented in a wry tone.

“Things are about to get even more interesting.”

With a thought, Meilin materialized the Fang of the Rising Storm, the Relic withdrawing from its extradimensional pocket. With startling abruptness the astral-forged blade formed, bright and hard and solid, in Meilin's right hand. Her fingers tightened around the wrapped hilt; with her free hand, she unsnapped the retaining strap on her holstered automatic. It was likely that Simon Griffith had at least one hidden specter acting as a bodyguard.

Amber dismissed the sheer plane of astral force she used to cut open the locked door and shrugged, falling into step  beside her sister as the two moved down the corridor. On this particular floor, the security systems were active and they were undoubtedly being recorded. This suited Meilin and Amber just fine—they wanted this attack to be seen, after all. It would be difficult to drive a wedge between House Griffith and the Pillars without striking fear into old man Alastair.

The huntress and hunting hound stood on either side of the door to the conference room. Voices could still be heard from inside. With her free left hand, Meilin traced a sigil of amplification that would enhance her sensory perception. Astral power flowed through her and with startling abruptness the muffled speech became perfectly coherent.

“How many?” Amber whispered.

“Five different voices, but I feel… something dark and cold.” The Hunter's expression was grim as she regarded her sister. “Griffith has at least one specter summoned, probably as a personal bodyguard. I can sense the tethering strand of corruption.” Meilin shivered involuntarily. “It's not a pleasant feeling at all.”

Amber shrugged as if it didn't matter. “You'll get used to it.”

Meilin didn't respond to that. Before she died and was reborn as a Relic spirit, Amber was the wielder of the Shattered Sword. That bond with the Relic would have given her the ability to detect miasma as well.

I never imagined things would end up like this.

The argument inside the room seemed to be winding down. Meilin doubted that any of the people in the meeting would have been burning the midnight oil in a clandestine meeting like this without an important, morally-questionable reason.

“They're finishing up, sounds like,” Amber observed. “It's now or never.”

“Go in first. I'll seal the hallway.”

The Relic spirit grinned, displaying her prominent fangs, as she took a casual step out in front of the door leading into the conference room. Her body moved, a symphonic confluence of fluidity and power, spinning around as her foot came up and delivered a devastating kick that crumpled the metal door and nearly tore it from its hinges.

Without even a second of hesitation, Amber darted through the open door. Meilin turned back toward the corridor and traced the symbols that would enact a strong kinetic barrier. Mana thrummed through her body, drawn in from the space around her as it was converted into a tangible, physical effect. The shimmering, translucent indigo barrier was harder than any physical matter could possibly be. Without first dispelling the obstruction, Simon Griffith would have no way to escape his fate.

Screams of terror—but not pain—reached Meilin's ears. She dashed through the wrecked doorway and into the conference room. Everything was going according to plan, at least thus far; bindings of invisible mana encircled the bodies of the lobbyists and politicians. Amber's restriction would ensure the other men couldn't interfere or call for help.

The most elderly Congressman was fuming, his face a dusky red with exertion as he strained against the unbreakable force that bound him. “What—what is the meaning of this?! I—I can't move! What the fuck is going on, Mister Griffith?!”

Similar complaints erupted from the other restricted men, but neither hunter nor hunting hound paid the fearful objections any mind. Meilin didn't bother suppressing a smile as she let her gaze drift to Simon Griffith. Unlike his guests, Amber hadn't bothered to bind him. He stood stock-still, his eyes glassy and his breathing raspy and harsh.

“Ooh, he looks mad,” Amber noted with a taunting chuckle.

Griffith ignored her, instead turning his fulminating glare directly on Meilin. “You're here to kill me, aren't you?”

Meilin only answered with a flourish of the Relic, twisting and flipping the blade around before halting the deadly tip mere millimeters away from Griffth's throat. To the summoner's credit, he didn't so much as flinch, but the molten fury in his eyes intensified.

“Who sent you?”

“Who do you think?” Amber's grin went feral. “AEGIS, of course.”

“Absurd.” The man's lips twisted in a grimace. “You're gravely mistaken if you think House Griffith has violated protocol. I will lodge a formal complaint—”

“Don't bother. We know you're working for the Pillars of Heaven,” Meilin cut him off. “That by itself is more than enough to warrant a complete purge of your House, but as I'm sure you already know, the agency is spread rather thin these days.”

“Killing me will do little damage to our organization, but will invite vast retribution.” With so many uninformed outsiders present for this conversation, Griffith was clearly nervous, but managed to hide it well beneath his outward indignation. “Lord Alastair will see to it. You're making a grave mistake that you will regret for the remainder of your short, miserable lives—”

“On his right, Mei,” Amber interjected coolly.

Bright silver flashed as Meilin took a step back and brought the Fang around into a brutally powerful backhand slash, apparently aimed at the empty air to Griffith's right. What seemed at first to be nothing but a shadow began to fade into visibility as the violet-white glowing edge of the Fang dug a steaming furrow into the specter's body.

Corrupted blood and gaseous miasma spilled from the wound, but Meilin knew at a glance that the laceration was superficial at best. She took another step back as the now-visible specter exploded into a furious series of strikes and stabs with a pair of curved ebon blades. The huntress had expected this, and her evasion was well-timed; the spectral blademaster's attacks were parried expertly, setting Meilin up for a quick riposte that dug a deep furrow into the specter's thigh.

Simon Griffith made good use of the handful of seconds provided by his specter's abortive attempt at an ambush. Tarnished brazen runes flared in the air before him and an obsidian-like shield of miasma encased his body.  Meilin recognized the defense as something of a double-edged sword; inside the shell, Griffith would be exceptionally well-protected, but unable to directly affect the world outside its bounds.

It's a sensible tactic, the Directorate agent mused as she swept out with the Fang. The spectral swordsman was fast and clearly skilled with the twin blades it wielded. Meilin recognized the specter's type as a faceless. Roughly humanoid in appearance, the specter had no visible facial features save for a pair of burning red eyes, floating within the churning cloud of miasma half-hidden by a ragged black hood.

A brilliant stream of lightning arced out toward the spectral swordsman. Twin blades swept out, crossing together and bursting in a black cloud of miasma that absorbed the attack. Taking advantage of her sister's assistance, the huntress sidestepped and drove the tip of the Relic into a brutal stab that tore deeply into the specter's right leg.

The creature's voiceless shrieks of agony rippled through the astral flow. Meilin winced at the “sound” and stepped back to avoid the expected barrage of miasma bolts, whipping the Fang around into a guard position.

The huntress snarled with vicious determination and advanced on her prey.

shadow path

The Fang's pattern-welded steel rang shrilly against miasma-forged blades as Meilin parried another strike from the spectral swordsman. She was surprised that the Griffith son was capable of summoning such a powerful specter; their dossier on the man suggested his astral pattern was nowhere complex enough to bind and control a servant this dangerous.

“There's some kind of self-reinforcing link between them,” Amber muttered under her breath, but loudly enough for Meilin to hear. The faceless slashed out again and the huntress parried with the Fang while Amber loosed another bolt of lightning—again, absorbed into a miasma cloud. A fusillade of clotted miasma answered back, striking Meilin's barrier with enough force to set her back on her heels.

“What?”

“It's why he surrounded himself with a solid barrier. It doesn't need to be reinforced. He's feeding all his mana into the specter.”

Meilin's expression darkened as she shifted the Fang to her right hand and drew her automatic with her left. The pistol came up and fired twice; predictably, the faceless specter released another absorbing cloud of miasma, but the dusky purple flashes of the detonating MQ rounds warped and twisted the defense, preventing the magic from redirecting the energy back at her. The shock of the destructive feedback sent the specter reeling backward, giving Meilin an opening that she took full advantage of.

The Relic's incandescent edge tore deeply into the spectral swordsman's hand; Meilin twisted the blade and slapped hard against the flat of the faceless's black blade. The curved obsidian shard was sent flying through the air to smash into the wall nearby, shattering into a thousand tiny fragments.

Meilin lashed out with a foot, kicking the room's solitary empty chair over into the path of her opponent as it tried to bring its remaining weapon to bear. The specter saw it, albeit a little too late, and stumbled as it tried to avoid being tripped up by the chair.

Growling with furious bloodlust, Amber descended upon the overbalanced specter. Lightning crackled and spat, crawling over her fists as she ducked, dodging the specter's off-hand blade, and struck the creature with a rapid succession of electrically-charged blows. Miasma formed into the physical likeness of a body crumpled and burned, shattered and broke apart. Spurts of black blood oozed from the sundered specter's cracked and broken flesh.

Her fangs flashed as Amber ignored the slashing blade—swung at an awkward angle with little power behind it—as she grabbed the specter's shoulder and forced it around into an unbreakable arm bar. The powerful muscles in her thick arms tensed like steel cables as Amber leveraged all of her natural and supernatural strength—

The specter let out a soundless and unearthly keen of telepathic agony as Amber tore the creature's arms away from its body. More miasma and corruption filled the air as the disembodied limbs were unable to maintain their physical manifestation. Amber stepped back and delivered a powerful kick to the “disarmed” swordsman that sent it to its knees.

Meilin didn't waste any time at all. She stepped forward and swung the Relic around before slashing through the specter's midsection with a single stroke. She felt an abortive jolt of resistance for a fraction of a second before the thing's miasmic core was obliterated. Roiling wisps of miasma were sucked into a singular point as the specter's core collapsed, leaving little behind save for a scattering of gray ash.

The huntress frowned, turning her attention back to Griffith. The summoner was still bound within his own defensive prison, but the frozen miasma wouldn't be able to hold up against the two of them working together. Meilin glanced at Amber and nodded wordlessly. The Relic spirit's grin grew wider as she took a step forward and thrust a lightning-shrouded hand through the thinnest part of the shell.

Metaphysical obsidian glass shattered and a tangible pulse of destabilized astral energies washed over both Meilin and Amber. Simon Griffith's mouth opened wide in an attempt to speak, but the Relic spirit's iron-hard grip on his throat forestalled any further objections or complaints. The summoner clawed frantically at Amber's hand, trying to dislodge her fingers, desperately trying to push away the darkness that undoubtedly started to nibble away at his awareness.

All the fight had gone out of the man. Like so many summoners who commanded astral might through a bound specter, he was no battle mage, no true warrior, just a coward and a bully. Meilin knew that if she asked Amber to release him, he'd try just about anything to save his own skin. That would work to their advantage.

“Let him loose.”

Amber shrugged and relaxed her grip. Coughing and gasping desperately for air, Simon Griffith fell to his knees, no longer held up by the Relic spirit's supernatural strength. To his credit, the man managed to collect himself fairly quickly and gazed up at Meilin with a hateful look.

“You've won. Kill me and be done with it.”

“Shut up,” Meilin growled, her brown eyes narrowing at the summoner. “I want to know how you managed to summon and bind the specter we fought.”

“What makes you think I'd tell you anything?”

The huntress thrust the tip of her Relic at the man, letting him get a very good look at the impossibly keen edge and the searing, miasma-destroying line of astral energy that gave the blade its unique capability.

“You're going to kill me anyway.” Griffith's voice sounded muffled, and he spat a mouthful of blood mixed with saliva.

“True,” Meilin admitted, releasing the physical manifestation of the Relic with a thought, “but what we do next largely depends upon your answer to certain questions. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way, if you'll forgive the cliché.”

Griffith scoffed. “You'll torture me to death? Bullshit. You haven't got the balls.”

“Whether or not we have balls is irrelevant.” Amber crossed her arms over her chest, her tail swishing idly behind her back. “We've read your dossier back to front. We know there's no possible way you could have even called that specter on your own—much less convinced it not to kill you on the spot, much less bound it to your will!”

The summoner opened his mouth to object, but Meilin cut him off. “Don't bother trying to argue; I'm guessing you're using some type of spirit anchor. A special model, perhaps… a one-off, custom unit, built to your own personal, exacting requirements? Am I getting warmer?”

Griffith's fulminating glare told both of them all they needed to know.

“Take it off him,” Meilin said. “No need to be gentle about it.”

The man's eyes widened in horror as Amber materialized a shimmering blade of shaped mana and slowly turned toward him. His face went absolutely white as the blade slashed down, and he stared in blank, mute astonishment as the sleeve of his expensive tailored sport coat fell away, revealing a wide wristband set with a familiar aperture mechanism.

“Oh-ho, what do we have here? This looks expensive.” The Relic spirit's grin became predatory and the color of the materialized blade shifted, altering to a darker, more solid violet-blue. Amber slowly moved the tip of the astral weapon closer to Griffith's left arm.

“Wait! Wait, okay, fine! I'll take it off!” Griffith frantically clawed at the fasteners and pulled the device off of his arm, thrusting it out at Amber. “Take it! Take the damned thing!”

“Much obliged.”

The Relic spirit dismissed the materialized blade and examined the device for a long moment before she handed it over to Meilin. “It's causing deflections, all right—this is definitely an anchor of some sort, though the design seems closer to that of the Spell Engines they were based on.”

“Did you—”

“Yeah, the same sort of distortions are present,” Amber interrupted, anticipating Meilin's question before she could even give it voice. “There's no doubt about it; he used this thing to amplify his own power and shield himself from the feedback effect.”

Meilin didn't respond at first. Instead, she spent a good long time taking a good long look at the device. Her original suspicions were further confirmed—the thing resembled a Spell Engine far more than the stand-alone spirit anchors, but didn't seem to possess the same sort of process-storage capability one would expect. It was sort of a halfway point between both Spell Engine and spirit anchor, functioning as both an amplifier for the wearer's own power and a protective barrier against the negative effects of binding a corrupted entity.

“Well, it turns out we don't need you to say anything at all,” the huntress said as she slipped the device into one of her jacket pockets. She glanced at Amber and offered the Relic spirit a slight nod. “We're done here. Care to finish the job?”

“Thought you'd never ask.”

“Wait—wait!” Griffith cried out, holding his hands out in a manner he clearly believed to be placating. “I can tell you more, much more—”

“We don't need more.”

Amber's materialized blade flashed. Blood spurted from the man's throat as the astral weapon sliced through the soft tissues and cartilage as if they were nothing but air. Not bothering to watch the life fade from the summoner's eyes, the huntress turned around and walked away.

analysis

By the time the two of them were on the road again, it was already past midnight. Getting out of the building had been somewhat easier than getting in; AEGIS expedited the process by faking a bomb threat that emptied the building out quickly and efficiently. The scene was overrun by the local police and the FBI—or rather, AEGIS operatives passing themselves off as the FBI—and the huntress and hunting hound were able to slip out unseen amidst the chaos.

Meilin glanced at her sister, and then at the device that she held in her hands. The Relic spirit was still studying the anchor-like device—though it might more accurately be called an astral amplifier, considering what it did and how it worked.

From the looks of the thing, it was very clearly based on old-model Spell Engine designs AEGIS developed decades ago. There were some newer design elements incorporated, though, suggesting that the Pillars made use of the prototype data Amber took during the mission to rescue Karin from Nergal's clutches. Unlike the spirit anchors that were popping up all over the country, this device was all about quality over quantity, intended to increase the wearer's power beyond normal limits.

“Shouldn't we have let him talk some more?” Amber asked.

“Didn't need to. The agency has plenty of info on NanoSynth's operations. We don't need him to tell us where they own factories; that's all a matter of public record. That gadget is all the proof Ceres will need to convince the Directorate.”

“I wonder how much of this was even necessary.”

“Maybe it wasn't. It's hard to tell with the agency.” Meilin leaned back in her seat, idly watching the road as the car drove itself along the still-busy freeway that would take them both back to the agency's headquarters. “Of course AEGIS would have found the clues eventually, but there's the bureaucracy to consider. Giving Ceres this thing should expedite the process.”

Amber looked pensive. “You think so?”

“Analysis of the amplifier will tell us how it was made. From there, the agency should be able to figure out which of NanoSynth's factories produced it.”

“There is that,” Amber admitted.

“It's highly unlikely they have more than one facility for manufacturing these devices—the more sites and people involved, the harder it is to maintain secrecy. Once we have the location, though, it'll become a liability—one the First Pillar won't be able to ignore.”

“You think it'll actually draw Aestivar out?”

“The anchors are critical to his plan. Without a working production line, our people will eventually finish destroying the ones out in the field. No anchors, no spectral horde, no way to generate enough miasma to create the conditions he requires.” Meilin sighed and she closed her eyes, rubbing her temples lightly. “If they don't have enough specters to undermine the boundary and completely overwhelm the militaries of the world, it'll fail and the only thing they'll accomplish is making themselves a target.”

Amber snorted. “That's hardly any comfort.”

“It's going to be bad regardless, but if we can trade an apocalyptic war against an army of infinite darkness for a period of social upheaval and chaos… I'm all for making that trade. Humans are adaptable to a fault, after all. It'd be painful, but I like our chances of learning to deal with that hard reality much more than having front-row seats to the end of the world.”

“Point,” Amber conceded.

“Besides… if Karin can gain control of the Astral Terminus, who knows what'll happen? Our future is not decided, is still in motion.” The huntress chuckled softly and gazed out at the cars slowing down in front of her. “Not that I'm taking our success for granted or anything. We'll be the ones facing the First Pillar in battle, of course…”

“That's quite a tall order for one huntress and one hunting hound, even with the Fang nearly restored to full power,” Amber observed in a sour tone. “I doubt the agency will be able to lend us much in the way of support. Just how in the hell are we supposed to storm the castle by ourselves, dear sister?”

“I think we should ask Soleil and Tsubame to help us.”

Amber's reaction wasn't what Meilin expected at all. The Relic spirit's eyes widened for a split-second before she looked away, biting her lip self-consciously.

“What's wrong?”

“I'm… it's nothing,” Amber muttered. “I'm just… I don't know. I'm… not sure I want Alicia to see me like this. At least, not yet. Not with all of this going on, not right before going back into a battle that could kill me—again.” She took a deep breath and looked away, staring out the window at the myriad lights of the cityscape at night.

“I understand.” Meilin's tone and expression softened as she regarded her sibling. “You don't want her to have to go through that pain again.”

“Yeah… but I really do want to see her again. I'm just afraid, I guess. Nervous, maybe? We only just started to get used to each other as—as family, and then things happened and she was taken by Valendir, with Karin's family, and I just…” She trailed off, her ears drooping down against her hair. The movement of her tail had also ceased and the appendage lay limp across her lap. “I don't know if I can face her, after that, after my failure to protect her.”

“I'm sure she would never blame you for that,” Meilin insisted. “I'm sure Alicia will be overjoyed to see her mother again—”

“Do I have the right to be called that anymore? I'm not even… human anymore. I'm an astral being now, part of the Relic, neither of this world or the other.” Amber ran her fingertips through the soft fur that covered her tail, one of the outwardly visible aspects of the Relic's original guardian spirit that had once been infused into the Fang of the Rising Storm.

“That doesn't matter at all. You're still you, and you're still Alicia's mama.”

“You weren't sure of that a few days ago,” Amber reminded her.

“I admit I was skeptical at first, but… I can't deny that you are you. Relic spirit or not, you're still my little sister, and you're still just as much a part of my family—and Alicia's—as you were in your previous life.” Meilin took hold of the steering column and switched the car out of auto mode. She slid over into the right lane and took the exit that would put them back on the surface streets near the building where AEGIS was headquartered. “Misaki doesn't seem to let being a Relic spirit stop her from making those same connections, does she?”

Amber blushed faintly. “No, she doesn't. Neither did Tsubame.”

Neither of the sisters spoke for a long moment as Meilin headed into the AEGIS building's secure parking garage. The car stopped at the guardhouse and both waited patiently while they were authorized. Amber gave the carbine-wielding guard a toothy grin as the light flashed green and the car proceeded into the underground deck.

Amber's ears twitched thoughtfully as Meilin drove down into the deck and located a free parking spot. The silence had just started to grow long and uncomfortable as they stepped into the lift that would take them to the upper floors, where the Directorate offices were located.

“Would you prefer if Soleil and Tsubame didn't tell Alicia?”

“What? N-no, I mean… I don't know.” The Relic spirit's shoulders slumped and her ears followed suit. The steady swishing of her tail slowed as she watched the ascending floor numbers on the small OLED display. “Give me a break, Mei. I'm allowed to be anxious and uncertain. Just because I'm tough doesn't mean I'm not also an awkward dork.”

Meilin smirked. “You said it, not me.”

“Hey! I'm self-aware enough to admit my flaws,” Amber shot back.

“Oh really?” The other arched a dubious eyebrow. “Since when?”

The elevator chimed and the doors slid open before Amber could respond. On the other side was a familiar face, pale and doll-like dominated by large ruby-colored eyes, framed with wavy raven locks. Kyrie smiled at Meilin and Amber as the two of them stepped out into the lobby.

“Director Ceres is waiting for you in her office,” the black-clad Relic spirit said. Impeccably dressed, as usual, Kyrie wore a well-tailored black suit. Underneath the jacket was a white blouse, the first two buttons left artfully undone. Her long tresses were held back in her customary wide scarlet ribbon, perfectly tied into a large bow.

Meilin fell into step behind the other Relic spirit. Kyrie's suit was something she'd expect to see Amber wearing, but the guardian of the Synthesized Relic imbued the somewhat androgynous attire with her distinctive femininity. The ribbon in her hair certainly helped.

Kyrie stopped at a closed door and pressed her fingertips against the auto-lock panel, the nails painted a vibrant red to match her eyes and hair accessory. The door opened with a solid thunk as the lock disengaged. Meilin gave the Director's adjutant a nod and a smile as she walked through the open door and into Ceres's office, with Amber coming in right behind her.

The Director of AEGIS was sitting behind her desk—a very uncommon occurrence, as she was typically being called away all over the capitol to meet with the heads of other federal agencies. She leaned back in her chair and took a sip from the half-full mug of coffee in front of her before turning a critical eye on her two most valued agents.

“Well,” Ceres began, “how'd it go?”

Meilin took the amplification device from her pocket and slid it across the desk for Ceres to examine. Without bothering to ask for an explanation, the woman picked it up and turned it over in her hands, studying the device for a long, silent moment. When she finally did speak, it was in brisk and efficient businesslike tones.

“It appears my suspicions were correct. You took this from Simon Griffith?”

“Yes. It looks like a one-off, something he had made while the process was being developed, likely at his father's urging. Using this device, Griffith was able to summon a specter that vastly exceeded his inherent ability.”

“There's no chance it was working with him voluntarily? Or that the specter you fought had been summoned and bound by the Griffith patriarch? Our files suggest that Lord Griffith is rather protective of his eldest, a gifted businessman who unfortunately didn't inherit his father's skill at astral manipulation.”

“No chance at all,” Amber confirmed. “The distortions in this device's astral circuitry are identical to those I felt while we were fighting the specter itself. Not to mention that Griffith was directly feeding it mana through a bond similar to that of a Relic and its wielder.”

Ceres was silent for a moment as she considered the information she'd just received. It was clear to Meilin that while AEGIS had suspected, they'd never been able to prove the suspicion without direct intervention. With the manpower crisis the agency faced, it was no wonder that such intervention had been impossible until now.

Besides, I doubt any regular Hunters would have been able to beat that specter, Meilin mused privately, her expression becoming troubled. It took us both working together, with a lot more power than could be managed from Spell Engine and Emulated Relic, to take that thing out.

“Excellent work.” Ceres offered the two of them a grateful nod. “Without the two of you and the Fang, this would have taken far too long to make a difference. I'll get our best analysis people working around the clock to figure out the peculiarities of this device. With a little luck, we'll be able to pinpoint the factory's location before the Pillars can respond.”

“How long?” Meilin asked.

“I don't know. NanoSynth owns multiple factories, and it'll take some time to verify. A day, maybe two?”

The huntress frowned. “The longer we wait, the more time they've got to shore up their defenses. We have to strike them quickly, or not at all.”

Ceres grimaced and nodded slowly. “We can't afford to make a mistake. If I dispatch you and Amber to the wrong facility, we'll lose even more time—and we'll have shown much more of our hand than I'd like.” The Director of AEGIS sipped at her coffee again before echoing Meilin's words back to her. “We have to do this quickly, yes, but we also have to do it right, or not at all.”

“Yes, Madame Director.”

“Even if they don't build up forces,” Amber added, “which is pretty damn unlikely, it's still going to be a bit much for the two of us. We're going to need some help to get the job done, and even then the likelihood that we're all going to come back in one piece is… low.”

“Our forces are stretched to the breaking point,” Ceres replied. She straightened in her chair and tapped her fingers against the terminal monitor perched atop her desk. “I'm already going gray-haired from the containment operation alone, even with the assistance of other federal and military agencies. We just don't have any people to spare.”

Amber's ears twitched. “Mei wants to ask Soleil and Tsubame for help.”

“I have my doubts either of them would agree to work with AEGIS after all that happened regarding my predecessor, but if you can convince them to help, then you have my full authorization.” The director of AEGIS pressed a button on her desk and the door opened again. Kyrie returned through the open door and walked up to Ceres's desk, taking the curious amplification device from Ceres and placing it into a cube-shaped sample container. “We'll begin analysis of the device and our data on House Griffith and NanoSynth. Is there anything else I can do to help you prepare?”

Meilin glanced at Amber. Her sister nodded wordlessly.

“Get us booked on the next flight to San Francisco. I think we'll have a better chance of getting them to help us if we do it in person.”

reunion

“I'm nervous,” Amber admitted.

“I know.”

Meilin raised a hand to the door of the small apartment and knocked twice. There was a stirring of activity inside and the auto-lock disengaged. The door slid open and a wary-looking young woman—really a girl in her late teens—stood in the threshold. Her guarded look melted away instantly and her eyes widened in pure astonishment as she looked upon Amber.

“I don't believe it,” Soleil managed after a short pause. “A-Amber?!”

Amber struggled to keep her voice even. “Hi, Soleil. Um, can we come in?”

“Y-yeah. Come on in.”

Still in a bit of a daze, the girl retreated from the doorway, letting Amber and Meilin enter the little apartment. There was a soft hiss of released gas as the door slid shut again and the auto-lock thunked as it re-engaged.

Meilin took in the tiny little studio dwelling. It seemed very small for something shared by three people, but considering the exorbitantly high cost of living in this city, it was likely the best the three of them could manage. It helped that none of them seemed to own very much in the way of belongings, a natural consequence of lives lived on the run.

The apartment was neat and clean, with a single main room. A smaller twin bed was pushed against one wall, with a somewhat larger one on the adjacent wall to the left. On the other side of the room was a kitchenette inside a small alcove, and a door nearby led to the unit's small bathroom and shower. Clothing was all neatly folded or hung in a pair of narrow standing wardrobe closets. A tiny dining table with three cheap wooden chairs filled another corner of the room.

Meilin stood silently while Soleil, still recovering from the shock of seeing Amber, who should be dead, and certainly not with the obvious primal features of a Relic spirit.

“Where's Tsubame and—and Alicia?” Amber blurted, no longer able to contain herself.

“Tsubame's at work, Alicia's at school.” The girl took a deep, steadying breath and pushed red curls away from her face. It was clear Soleil was doing her best to stay in control and not lose her composure, but she was losing the battle. “Which is probably for the best right now. What… what's going on? What happened to you? How did you become a Relic spirit? How the hell are you even alive at all?”

Amber's ears flattened against her head and her tail curled around her thigh. “I don't really know, exactly. Some kind of interaction with my soul and the Relic when I—when I was killed.”

“After Karin and Misaki defeated Valendir, AEGIS recovered the Shattered Sword and placed it in secure storage,” Meilin added. “Nobody really knows exactly what happened or how things ended up like this… but the Shattered Sword somehow filled the void left by its destroyed guardian with Amber's soul and began to repair itself.” Her lips curved into a warm smile. “I was able to bind the Relic and… and then…” She trailed off, feeling her eyes start to become misty.

“What my dear sister means to say is that with a source of mana, my awareness was restored and I came back,” Amber finished for her. The Relic spirit's ears were still flat and forward, an expression of vulnerability that Meilin had seen dozens of times on Misaki but never expected to see on Amber.

Soleil sighed and adjusted her glasses. “Sit down, you two. I'll put some tea on and we can talk more. I know you didn't just drop in on us out of the blue for a friendly visit.” The girl straightened her shoulders and filled the electric kettle on the counter with water. She pressed the button, turning it on, as she dug around in the kitchen cabinets. “You need our help for something, don't you? And let me guess—it has to do with AEGIS and the Pillars of Heaven.”

“Perceptive as ever,” Meilin muttered wryly.

“I don't like being underestimated just because I'm young.”

The huntress and the hunting hound took their seats at the small table. A moment later, Soleil brought two steaming mugs of strong black tea and a plate of small homemade scones, the crumbly pastries dotted with dried berries.

Amber took one from the plate and nibbled a bit on a corner. “This is good. Thank you.”

“Alicia made them the day before yesterday,” Soleil noted. The girl's gaze sharpened rather severely as she sat back down, this time with her own mug of tea, and sipped at the steaming beverage slowly. “Let's get this out of the way first—I'm not entirely sure I want you two here when Alicia comes home from school.”

Meilin blinked and shot a glance at her sister, who nodded slowly at Soleil. The Fang's wielder sighed and rolled her eyes before turning her attention back to the bespectacled girl. “Amber said the same thing, multiple times, before we left the capitol. You don't want to risk Alicia experiencing that sort of loss a second time.”

“No, I don't,” Soleil agreed.

Amber's ears twitched. “I don't, either.”

There was an uncomfortable silence that seemed to stretch into infinity. Meilin opened her mouth to break it, but Soleil cut her off with a raised hand before she could even begin.

“What we want isn't always necessarily what we get, though. I just wanted to make sure my own desires were out in the open before we made any firm decisions.” She sipped her tea and sighed softly, gazing out the large windows that overlooked the city below, the great towers of the Golden Gate Bridge looming far beyond and shrouded in fog. “So start talking. Tell me what you need and we'll figure it out together.”

The huntress and the hunting hound glanced at each other and nodded. Meilin placed her fingertips on the table and tapped the well-worn surface lightly. “The agency has a lead on the location of the factory producing anchors. We've been assigned the task of destroying it and cutting off the spectral horde at the source.”

Soleil blinked in astonishment. “What? Just the two of you? You're joking.”

“I wish.” Meilin grimaced and shook her head. “The task of culling active spectral anchors has Ceres dealing with a personnel crisis nightmare.”

“AEGIS is in no position to send even a single unit of Hunters with us,” Amber added, absently stroking the fur on her tail as it flopped idly in her lap. “This is privileged information, but the agency's had to break protocol and share information with the Secret Service as well as a number of Special Forces units. They're so shorthanded that it really is just us or nothing.”

“So you came to us to ask for help.”

“There wasn't anyone else to ask,” Meilin admitted, frowning. “Karin and Misaki have their own mission, one of even greater importance. It's critical that we have the strength to draw the First Pillar's eyes away from Karin.”

“That's even worse.” The girl stared at her guests with wide eyes. “You're actually trying to goad the First Pillar into a fight?”

“It's our mission.” Amber shrugged and sipped at her tea. “We just want to make sure we can actually pull it off, and to ensure that outcome… we need your help, and Tsubame's.”

Soleil was silent for a long time. Meilin could imagine the gears turning within the girl's mind as she contemplated the task set before her. The huntress suspected that Soleil's answer would depend heavily on Alicia's safety and well-being in Soleil and Tsubame's absence.

Not wanting to push the girl, Meilin simply waited for her to speak. Her tea was starting to cool off enough to take more than a few sips, so she closed her eyes and finished her drink. The huntress was certain that Ceres would agree to safeguard Alicia for the duration of the mission if it meant gaining Soleil and Tsubame's assistance, but it would require the girl be sent to the capital, where Kyrie could protect her.

I'm not sure either of them would agree to that arrangement, Meilin mused to herself. She broke a corner off her scone and took a bite of the crumbly pastry. It was quite good, sweet but not overwhelmingly so, and just the right amount of tartness to compliment her tea. I suppose we'll just have to ask and hope for the best.

Finally, after nearly five minutes of silent deliberation, Soleil spoke up.

“We'll need to talk to Tsubame, of course, but I think we can help you—if you can ensure Alicia's safety.”

“I can't promise she won't get bored,” Meilin replied, a rueful smile curving her lips, “and she'll have to fly to Washington, but Gabriel can take care of her for the time being. Ceres's people will be able to keep her safe.”

Soleil brightened at the mention of Gabriel's name. “A familiar face will help. No matter what, even if we all make it back alive, this is going to be hard on her.” The girl adjusted her glasses again, something of a nervous habit Meilin recalled her acquiring some time ago. A sparkle of something that might be called hope started to form in Soleil's brown eyes. “Her future, the future of all of those with magic, will look a lot brighter if we can do this.”

The huntress and hunting hound both nodded solemnly. Amber's tail slid away from her leg and started to sway more vigorously. The mood was still rather grim, but now that they had an agreement, things didn't look quite as desolate as they had hours before. Meilin was under no illusion that the mission would be easy, even with two Relic-wielders and their attendant guardians fighting side-by-side…

But at least we have a fighting chance.

Did they, though? No one, not the agency, not the remnants of Luna, not Karin or Misaki, knew exactly how powerful Aestivar was. The only baseline they had to even attempt measurement with was that of Karin, who had fused with her Relic some time ago. There were too many unknowns, though; the First Pillar was not only merged with a Relic, but had been so for centuries. While Karin was still stumbling around trying to learn to walk, Aestivar possessed lifetimes of experience with the breadth and limitations of his power. Not to mention that, like the other Pillars, he was also infused with concentrations of dark mana beyond that of any living human summoner.

The only person alive who knew the intimate details was Eirene, the mysterious sorceress who had once been Aestivar's second-in-command within the Pillars of Heaven. And no one had seen Eirene recently, nor did anyone have any idea where she might be hiding.

Meilin didn't consider her own life, even the lives of her sister and of Tsubame and Soleil, to be too large a price to pay to halt the spectral horde and avert a terrible catastrophe. She was far more afraid of failure than of death.

“Alicia should be home any minute now,” Soleil noted, breaking through Meilin's private thoughts. “We're about to get to the emotional part of the reunion, so perhaps you should handle the arrangements for her care before that happens?”

The huntress nodded. “I'll take care of the details. We don't know how long it'll be before our people locate the facility, and this apartment is a bit small for five.” She favored Amber with a warm smile. “I'll call you after I talk to Ceres and book us a hotel room for the night. I know you want to stay and see Alicia.”

Amber blushed faintly and her ears flattened forward against her hair. “You sure?”

“What, you don't think I can handle it?”

“It's not that.” The Relic spirit rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “I just thought you might like to visit with her, too, you know? I mean, you lived with her. I don't know if I should be the only one here to—”

“I don't ever recall my little sister being this timid,” Meilin cut her off, laughing. “Aren't you the charge-headlong-into-danger type? Smash first, ask questions later?”

“It's not the same and you know it, Mei.” The fur on Amber's tail rippled as the slow swishing motion slowed even further in her discomfiture. “Rushing into an army of specters would be a lot easier—and less confusing—than trying to figure out my feelings right now. Fighting is easy, but this kind of family stuff…” She trailed off and shrugged helplessly.

“I know, but…” Meilin trailed off, pointedly avoided her sister's gaze. “Look, the last time Alicia saw me, I was under Valendir's dominion. I don't… quite know if I can face her until I've made up for that.”

“I'd think bringing her mama back to life would count for a lot,” Amber muttered dryly.

“It's just better this way. There are things that need to be taken care of—we need a place to sleep and I need to call Gabriel and talk to him about caring for Alicia. I'm sure he'll agree, he took to her very well when she was staying with me, but I—”

“Mei, really.” Amber rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I think you're making way more of this than is really necessary. Nobody blames you for being victimized by the Pillars. They've all played all of us like fiddles, including and especially Karin. There's nothing to feel bad about.”

Soleil held an interjecting hand up. “Actually, I agree with Meilin. AEGIS will locate the factory as quickly as they can, right? Anything you need to get done will need to get done fast, plus Tsubame is going to have to pull Alicia out of school and make arrangements with clients she has scheduled. All of us have things we have to do, so let's be smart about this.”

“Including me,” Amber mumbled.

“Yes, and spending time with your daughter before going off and risking dying a second time is an important thing to do.” Soleil shrugged and tipped back her mug, draining the last vestiges of her tea before she set it down. Then she turned a penetrating gaze upon Meilin. “You should get going if you want to get all of that stuff taken care of.”

Meilin nodded wordlessly.

family

Amber sipped at her third cup of tea since she'd arrived at Soleil and Tsubame's small flat. Her tail twisted and bent back and forth at the tip in anticipation she couldn't quite keep contained or hidden. Her wolf-like ears swiveled to catch every tiny sound, every little perturbation that could possibly indicate someone was at the door.

“Would you just relax already?” Soleil demanded, for the third or fourth time. “You're making me anxious.”

“I'm sorry, it's not every day you get brought back from the dead and have to reunite with your adopted daughter.” Amber snorted and topped her mug off with the kettle in the center of the small table. Her expression darkened considerably and the fur on her tail stood on end. “I barely even have the right to see her again, after I failed to—”

“Then make up for that failure,” Soleil snapped, cutting her off. Then her voice softened and she turned a sympathetic look on the Relic spirit. “I don't know how you feel, but I can tell you're still struggling to adjust to becoming a spirit. It's probably overwhelming you in ways you've never been very good at dealing with.”

Amber chuckled self-consciously. “Am I that transparent?”

“It's only just short of blindingly obvious. You can't shunt all of your feelings into rage you feed into the Shattered Sword's power any longer. Now you have to deal with all those emotions instead of just pushing them aside.”

The Relic spirit opened her mouth to argue, but closed it just as quickly, understanding that Soleil was right. Her old coping mechanism relied upon the idiosyncrasies of the damaged Relic, letting the Shattered Sword digest her negative emotions and focus her mind on the battle. Now that the Fang of the Rising Storm was whole again, the astral processes that served as a makeshift release valve no longer existed.

“I've always had a temper,” Amber admitted after a long pause. “I mean, I don't apologize for it. I had valid reasons to be angry. Lots of them, in fact, and that didn't change as I got older. It didn't stop until the Shattered Sword passed into my hands.” She turned her gaze away from Soleil and instead looked at her own hands. “I always wanted to think it was the nature of the battle trance, the cold and still eye of the storm. That narrow, razor edge between life and death that I walked every time I fought.”

“You fought since then. How was it different?”

Amber's expression was pensive. “I don't know, exactly, but it was different. There was no need to suppress myself or fall into myself, no need to 'let the training take over.' I know becoming a spirit has changed me, but I didn't expect… I didn't think I'd lose that still and cool place of emotional detachment.”

“Is it a loss, though?”

The Relic spirit didn't immediately respond. Soleil's question was more nuanced than it appeared on the surface, even though the obvious answer came to Amber right away. Pragmatically speaking, the loss was a net gain—she would be far more effective in combat with the full control and clarity of her conscious mind available to her.

It felt… strange, however, and inhuman. Like she lost a part of her soul, displaced by the astral energies that now sang through her spirit and surged within her physical manifestation. Her body itself was no longer human, but a sort of construct formed of mana that mimicked the behavior of a living being. Sure, it functioned much the same way a human body did, albeit with a few extra parts and a good deal more resilience, but it was ultimately a projection of an existence that differed from this world's definition of life.

“Well?”

Amber shook herself free from her wandering thoughts and turned back to Soleil. The girl was looking at her expectantly, waiting for the Relic spirit's answer—apparently the question wasn't a rhetorical one.

“I don't know.”

“Yet,” Soleil insisted.

“Right, I don't know yet.” Amber let out a long, slow breath and closed her eyes. Calming her emotions was so much easier than it had ever been in her previous life. The real answer to Soleil's question may have been stubbornly out of reach for the moment, but the Relic spirit suspected she was about to glean part of it—as the auto-lock to the apartment disengaged and the door slid open.

“I'm home!”

A small figure stepped through the threshold and the door slid shut behind her. The newcomer dropped a narrow portfolio case on the floor and started to pull her shoes off. She hadn't noticed Amber just yet, but that wasn't likely to last very long.

“Welcome home, Alicia,” Soleil offered.

“I don't have any homework to do tonight, so I think I want to—”

There was a strangled gasp as the girl realized a third person was present in the room. Her eyes locked on the woman sitting at the table in front of her, becoming as wide and round as saucers.

“M-M-Mama?!”

Alicia's lower lip quivered violently and tears appeared in her eyes as if magically summoned, flowing down her cheeks unheeded. The girl seemed to tear herself away from the paralysis of shock and she flung herself directly at Amber and clutched on tightly.

“Y-you're… you're alive, Mama!” Alicia exclaimed, sniffling as her tears left dark spots on the fabric of Amber's clothing. “How—I mean, I thought you—I mean, I'm just…” The girl laughed and sobbed at the same time as she grabbed hold of Amber as tightly as she could. “I missed you so much.”

Alicia stared, still utterly bewildered and confused, at the woman who rescued her both from her father's abusive denial of her identity as well as House Kihara's culling of poor and homeless children with latent astral affinity. Amber saved her life and changed it forever by accepting Alicia as the person she was.

“What happened to you, Mama?!” Alicia gawked at the fur-covered tail that was hanging limply to one side of the chair Amber sat in. “How did you—how are you here? How are you alive? And you're like Misaki now! I can't believe it!”

Wiping her own tears from her eyes, Amber smiled warmly at her adopted child. “We're not really sure what happened exactly, but the Relic and my sister brought me back. I… don't entirely understand or know what to make of it all just yet, but seeing you again, seeing you smile again—” The Relic spirit broke off and easily pulled Alicia into her lap, holding the girl tightly to her chest in a desperate embrace.

“I'm so happy, Mama!” Alicia grinned widely through her tears. “I… I thought you were dead. Everyone told me you died.”

“I guess I was, but I'm… I'm back now. I'm here now.”

“But you're not going to stay,” Alicia stated, both her laughter and her tears subsiding almost instantly. The girl pulled herself upright in Amber's lap and stared unabashedly into the woman's faintly-glowing eyes. “I know you're going to fight again. You came here to ask Soleil and Tsubame for help, didn't you?”

“You're too sharp.” The Relic spirit placed a steadying hand on Alicia's shoulder and met her daughter's unflinching gaze squarely. “I won't lie to you or try to sugar-coat anything. We have a mission, a very important mission to cut off the source of the Pillars' spectral army.  I need Tsubame and Soleil to help make sure we succeed.”

Alicia's eyes narrowed. “It's dangerous, isn't it?”

“Yeah, it's dangerous. That's why we need help.”

“Then I want to help,” she insisted. “I want to go with you, Mama.”

“I'm sorry, but it's not a place for you, Alicia.” Amber leaned forward to kiss the girl's forehead, then brushed a strand of hair from her face. “We're going to be fighting the strongest opponents the Pillars can field against us.”

“I—I'm a lot stronger than I was before,” Alicia argued in a sour tone. “I can control mana much better than I used to, and Tsubame has been teaching me new invocations. I'm not just a weak little kid anymore, Mama. Soleil isn't even that much older than me and you're asking for her help.”

“I know you want to help, but it's not just about what you can do with your powers. You aren't trained for combat. Soleil is—and she has the Bright Swallow, too.” Amber pulled the girl close again, wrapping her arms around Alicia as she went on. “If you came with us, none of us would be able to fight freely without distraction. We'd have to protect you, and the enemy would figure that out very quickly.”

Alicia sighed and seemed to melt in her mother's lap. “Yeah, I know. I know it's different, but I just… don't want anything to happen to you again.”

“I know. But think of it like this—the Pillars want to summon an immense army of specters to destroy everyone and everything.” The Relic spirit's tail curled around Alicia's back as she smiled at her daughter. “We have to stop them. If we don't, we'll all end up being killed anyway—not just us, but everyone. And if the First Pillar succeeds, it could get much worse than that.”

“Y-yeah, I know what's happening in the world, Mama,” Alicia murmured. She slid off Amber's lap and stood up straight, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “I just feel… helpless and frustrated. I have this power, I can feel the magic singing through me. But I can't fight, so I don't… I don't know what to do.”

The Relic spirit pursed her lips thoughtfully. “There are other ways for you to contribute.”

“Oh?” Alicia brightened, perking up instantly. “How?”

“Amber, no,” Soleil warned. “The deal was keeping her safe. If you want us to keep our side of the bargain, you better be willing to keep yours.”

Alicia glared at her. “You can't expect me to just let you and Tsubame and Mama go get yourselves killed without making a fuss about it. Don't start treating me like a kid now just because it's convenient for your argument.”

“We aren't going to get ourselves killed, and I'm not. I'm just being practical.” Soleil's gaze softened as she regarded her girlfriend. “Everything everywhere is getting a lot more dangerous. We just want to make sure you'll be safe.”

“Relax, Soleil. I'm not about to hand her a rifle and send her to the front lines.” Amber snorted and her ears twitched in mild annoyance. “Alicia can help with treating the Hunters wounded by specters. She'll be both able to help and be even safer for being surrounded by some of the best security measures the agency has to offer.”

Soleil opened her mouth to argue, but thought better of it and simply sighed. She placed a hand to her forehead. “Okay, fine. We'll go with that, if Alicia wants to do it.”

“I'll do it!” Alicia exclaimed. “I told you, I seriously want to help!”

“You'll have to be out of school for a while, since you'll need to go to Washington and stay with Gabriel.” Amber pulled her phone out of her pocket and tapped on the screen for a bit. “Mei ought to be calling soon. We're going to be staying here in the city until the agency locates the factory.”

“I'm—I'm glad Aunt Meilin is okay,” Alicia said, biting her lower lip. “I was… worried. I heard what happened, that she was controlled by the Pillars and forced to fight you while the specters captured me and Karin's family. It was… awful.”

“If it wasn't for Karin and Misaki, she wouldn't have woken up, and the Relic wouldn't have been able to bring me back.”

“Is Aunt Meilin coming back?”

Amber hesitated before answering. “Yeah. I think we should all go out together, the four of us, and have dinner together. Mei doesn't feel like she deserves to be around you anymore, and I need your help to make sure she knows that's not true.”

“By reassuring Meilin, you'll also be helping us in our mission,” Soleil added. “All four of us need to be clear-headed and focused if we're going to succeed. I'm sure she'll be able to fight even harder if she knows how much you worried about her while she was sick.”

Alicia nodded solemnly. “Of course! Aunt Meilin is family.”

“Then it's settled.” Soleil got up from the table, taking the empty mugs and tea kettle to deposit in the kitchen sink. “I'm going to go get a shower and get dressed. Pick something out for me to wear, okay?” The girl walked back over near the table and stepped in front of Alicia, leaning forward to kiss her lightly.

“Soleil!” Alicia protested, blushing fiercely. “Not in front of my mom!”

“What difference does that make? You kiss me in front of Tsubame all the time and it doesn't bother me, and she's almost like a mom.”

“Yeah, but it's different! You don't get—I mean, it's embarrassing.”

Soleil arched an eyebrow. “It's embarrassing that I love you?”

“N-no!” Alicia's face reddened even further and she shook her head vigorously. “It's just—I mean, I don't—aah, don't tease me like that, Soleil!”

Amber laughed.

“I see you two have made some progress.”

karin's chapter

/

evolution

alliance

I tapped my pass against the door's exterior auto-lock and waited while the servos moved the heavy bolts securing the thick piece of steel in its frame. Behind the heavy armored door was a small lobby area, complete with a security desk currently occupied by a young man I vaguely recognized as one of the surviving members of Luna's security force.

“Lady Ashley, Lady Misaki,” the man said, standing respectfully. “It's an honor to greet you both, though I must apologize that we weren't expecting you until tomorrow. The facility is still in a state of disarray, as you can see.”

“It's fine. We just need to speak with Soren.”

“Of course. You will find him in the Archives.”

I thanked the guard and my wife and I walked past the security station. The lobby itself reminded me somewhat of the various secured outposts we used as contract hunters working for AEGIS. The lack of hidden death-dealing devices, of course, was a major difference, but I was certain security would tighten up considerably once the clandestine federal funding started to flow into the Dawn's coffers.

This particular building was one of the Order of the Moon's former satellite archives, a secure facility that held physical copies of the astral lore the house collected over the centuries. It was one of the few locations that we'd managed to recover, largely thanks to Ceres. The agency seized control of it well before the Fifth Pillar's plotting fragmented the organization. Soren and I managed to convince Ceres to relinquish it in exchange for an information-sharing agreement.

Misaki and I walked down the hallway in silence. Her expression was neutral and slightly bored, one which she would likely wear for the duration of our visit. The corridor terminated in yet another heavy door with a rather massive auto-lock. I tapped my card against the panel and waited while a second, surreptitious biometric scan made an additional verification of our identities. A few moments later, the locking mechanism disengaged with a loud thunk and the door slid open.

Inside the Archives, the smell of musty old tomes was immediately apparent. I took a deep, slow breath, taking in the pleasant and unique scents. Underneath the odor of old paper was a hint of oiled leather and the faintest spice of flowers and herbs, pressed and dried long ago between the pages of arcane volumes.

The library itself was far larger than the size of the facility suggested, thanks to the clever use of interior space and the layout of neighboring structures. Rows and rows of bookshelves were laid out neatly and heaped to the brim with various types of media. Old leather-bound books shared shelf space with plastic or metal cases containing every type of electronic storage media imaginable, from data cassettes to floppy disks to optical media and memory cards.

Before the Order of the Moon had been subverted and fragmented by the Pillars of Heaven, this particular facility was intended for long-term storage of original astral lore that Luna had digitally recorded one of their two datacenters. Now, however, both of those server farms and the outposts containing independent backups had been destroyed or compromised by Valendir's minions. The painstaking, tedious process of preserving astral lore had to be started from scratch once again.

The man leading that process was the Order Magician and now acting-Archivist Soren, the son of Ibrahim, formerly Luna's highest-ranking mage under the Archivist. I'd only met him a handful of times before Valendir's scheme shattered the Order, but he always struck me as a good guy. His astral pattern was similar to my cousin Yuto's, possessing power far more suited for his mission of observing and preserving ancient records and treatises than for destabilizing fundamental binding forces. Which explained why we hadn't interacted much.

Soren stood at a terminal situated in a small open atrium about ten meters away. The endless rows of shelves and storage compartments gave way to a series of flat work tables. Four people I didn't recognize, dressed in white lab coats, pored over the books and scrolls, recording the information once again into portable, digital form. None of them even bothered to look up from their work as Misaki and I passed them by—and for good reason. There were a pitiful few of them left, and they had so much work to do.

Snippets of emotions and surface feelings swirled around the technicians. Despair was not in short supply here; every last surviving member of the Order of the Moon felt a tremendous sense of loss, of bleak hopelessness that threatened to overwhelm them with the sheer futility of it all.

Soren would have none of that, however. I caught sight of him speaking in low tones to one of his aides. He was tall and handsome in an earnest sort of way, with a wholesome, boy-next-door look about him. The young acting-Archivist glanced up from his multitude of information-saturated displays and smiled at the sight of us.

“Lady Ashley—”

“Just Karin is fine,” I interrupted. I jerked a thumb at my partner. “Also just Misaki is fine for my worse half.”

Misaki's eyebrow arched. “Worse half, huh? I'll remember that next time we're in bed together and you ask me to do that thing—”

“Okay, okay, better half.” I waved my hands to forestall further detail, feeling the heat on my cheeks intensify, the shifting hues in my irises likely telegraphing my embarrassment. I leaned over and kissed Misaki's cheek in contrition. “I offer sincere apologies, my love.”

“Do you, now?” Misaki rolled her eyes in exasperation at my obvious sarcasm. “Prove it, then.”

“Oh, I will,” I promised, and winked lasciviously. “Later.”

“Do you two always run with this little comedy routine?” Soren demanded, stifling a laugh.

“Usually, yeah.”

“It helps with the stress,” Misaki added.

The acting-Archivist's expression became more grim. “There is much to feel stress over, that is certain. I have been attempting to spend more time with my family… but there is so much work to be done. The actions of the Fifth Pillar of Heaven have left us, the pitiful few survivors, with an impossible task.”

Not wanting to open right up into the depressing stuff, I tried to change the subject. “Speaking of family, how's your new baby doing?”

“He is well. My son is strong and healthy, with a curiosity I can't even begin to satisfy. He has his mother's eyes and his father's legacy.” Pride filled Soren's voice as he spoke. “It's still early yet, but my initial examinations indicate that my son's astral pattern will be just as strong and healthy as his body.”

“That's wonderful news.”

“Yes,” Soren mused, almost absently, as his gaze roamed over the pages and pages of ancient astral lore still displayed on his monitors. “It's my fervent hope that this crisis will be resolved soon and that I'll have the opportunity to train him myself.”

“I know you'll have that opportunity.”

Soren's eyes widened imperceptibly. While my words may have sounded like nothing more than a polite assurance that all will be well, the acting-Archivist understood the deeper meaning of my assurance. Without another word, he stepped away from the terminal and beckoned for us to retire to his office.

Though the facility itself was fairly large—in its original incarnation, the building housed a public library—the small office that Soren led us into was not what one would expect from the leader of an arcane house. Despite the fact that Luna was critically damaged, those who remained still possessed a great deal of power as well as knowledge. Which was, of course, the whole reason I wanted to help them regain what they had lost.

The door shut behind us and the auto-lock engaged, ensuring our privacy. Misaki and I both took our seats opposite Soren's desk; the Archivist sat down in a battered leather executive chair and met my gaze squarely, a hard and cold look in his eyes.

“Did AEGIS agree to step back?”

I nodded and took a deep breath. “Yeah. Ceres was fine, though her bosses are not happy about it. Regardless, the President seems to be smart enough to realize it's better to stay on our good side. There are only two options, after all, and I'm the option that doesn't want to destroy the whole world.”

“It sounds very dire when you say it like that.”

“No shit,” I admitted, “but the big deal here is that President Green really wanted to place us firmly under AEGIS authority, for a reason I'm sure you can guess.”

“No need to guess.”

“Yeah, it's obvious, isn't it? We've got a murderous religious fanatic trying to summon an endless horde of evil spirits to plunge the entire world into chaos and despair, and all that he can worry about is Rika.” I rolled my eyes in exasperation, a gesture complimented by Misaki's rather rude-sounding, wordless vocalization of disgust.

Soren shook his head slowly. “I'm not surprised. Remember, the President and his people have seen the destruction caused by the Celestial's inadvertent neutralization of space. They are preoccupied with the entity because it affected—”

“Her name is Rika,” Misaki growled. “Not 'the Celestial.' And she's not an it.”

“My apologies. It was not my intention to depersonalize your friend, but to reflect the opinions of those who fear her. Were you able to convince the President of the danger posed by the Pillars of Heaven?”

Misaki made a rude noise. “Even though Ceres told him everything, he couldn't shut up about Rika and what happened when the Pillars summoned her decades ago.” My partner's tone was sarcastic and sharp enough to etch glass. “He can't stop thinking about this in human terms, which I guess makes sense, but it's wrong. The agency's run itself ragged trying to smash all of those gadgets and he thinks that's a victory, that it's enough.”

“For every anchor they break, five more pop up somewhere else. It's terrifying how easily they replace the fucking things. At the rate the agency's taking them out, maybe it'll take Aestivar another month or two to reach critical mass.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a cigarette. Soren wrinkled his nose in disgust, but he didn't bother trying to stop me. Smart guy. He knew how to pick his battles.

“AEGIS can't stop this.” A tiny silver-white jet of flame burst from the tip of my index finger and I lit the cigarette, taking a deep draw. I blew the plume of smoke up toward the ventilation grating in the ceiling above. “These Hunter teams sent out to destroy anchors are engaged in a battle of attrition, one they're losing. Ceres knows it, too, but she can't do anything else.”

“I know.”

“Yeah, and that's why we need to move quickly,” I continued, flicking the ashes into a small glass ashtray that appeared on the table at some point.

“Luna has been fragmented beyond repair. My father is gone, likely slain by Valendir or one of his subordinates. Much of our records and knowledge was lost to the machinations of the Pillars and their allied Houses.” Soren bowed his head, letting out a deep sigh filled with resignation. “You and your friends have given us hope that we might be able to at least make a stand against our final destruction.”

“More than that. We're going to kick their asses,” I boasted, my voice filled with considerably more confidence than I actually felt. “It's going to be left up to us, to the outsiders, the outcasts, the weirdos.”

“What do you plan to do, then?”

“I don't really have much of a choice if we want to stop Aestivar for good. As much as it galls me, I'm going to have to find Eirene.”

“Indeed?” A dark eyebrow arched quizzically. “It was my understanding that whatever alliance may have existed between you and the former Second Pillar was broken by her betrayal. It doesn't seem likely that she would be willing to help you, or that you would be willing to accept any aid she offered.”

“She'll cooperate with us,” Misaki interjected, a strange and eager light burning within her emerald eyes. Her tail swayed to and fro for a moment before curling itself around and laying atop her lap. “She won't have much of a choice if she wants to save him.”

Though my wife was clearly intending for me to explain, I didn't immediately speak up. For a moment, I thought of Eirene and our troubled history together. The first time we met, she attacked me without provocation, employing astral invocations beyond mortal capacity to force a merger of my astral pattern with that of the Relic I wielded.

We were first enemies, then allies, but ultimately I realized that I was just a tool to her. When Eirene plunged the searing blade of the critically overcharged Relic into my body, she chained my future to her desires almost as surely as if I'd been placed under the sway of Valendir's mind-controlling sword. Everything that came after that was all part of her plan to deny the Astral Terminus to her former beloved.

She knew Aestivar's plans and countered them, using me and my friends, exploiting Valendir's disloyalty and ambition. It was Eirene who ultimately placed me on the path to destroy the Third Pillar's stone circle, to absorb the anima of the celestial Aestivar intended to consume, in order to create a path to the Terminus. In denying the First Pillar his most certain route to achieve the awakening of his imaginary deity, Eirene knowingly created the circumstances that would result in the mass summoning of an endless horde of spectral soldiers that would inexorably and inevitably destroy the world as it existed today.

I shuddered inwardly as I thought of how near a thing it was. If I hadn't impulsively freed Rika from her confines, trusting in the piece of her soul that resided within me, that calamity would have been inevitable, unstoppable.

“Karin?”

I blinked, pulled from my internal musings by my wife's worried tone. I must've paled or gone ashen or something, because she was gazing at me with wide eyes. I put out the stub of my cigarette and pulled out another one.

“Sorry. I was just… thinking.”

“About Eirene.”

“Yeah.” I turned back to Soren, who had been waiting patiently while I'd sorted myself out, and sat up straight in my chair. “Misaki and I talked about this. We know that Eirene wants to save Aestivar and prevent him from gaining control of the Terminus.”

“Those goals are contradictory,” Soren observed. “The First Pillar has been consumed by his madness and his zeal. He cannot be stopped… unless someone else takes control of the Astral Terminus before he can.”

“That's the plan.”

“You intend to take control of it yourself.”

“Yes.”

Soren didn't respond.

I knew what had to be going through his head right now, but I knew he would have figured it out on his own eventually, anyway. I wanted to be open and forthright with him from the beginning. I was putting him in an impossible position, but it wasn't like any of the options we had available were especially good.

There was no way to win a conventional war against Aestivar; it was far too late and we didn't have enough time. The Pillars had been planning this contingency for centuries. Even if we could find and destroy all of the sources of the spectral anchors, enough of them already existed to put the entire world into an unholy war it could only inevitably lose.

Suffering and death would spread, subsumed into miasma by lords among specters. It would take decades, perhaps centuries, but the corruption would saturate our reality, irrevocably altering the nature of this universe. Aestivar's boundless pain would infuse the Astral Terminus and birth a god of madness to rule over a graveyard of blackened souls.

I did my best to shove those depressing thoughts back into my mind and tried to focus on what was actually happening in front of me. There was something else Soren wanted, though I couldn't quite put my finger on it. He had always been annoyingly difficult to read and my astral-borne ability to sense the emotions of those around me didn't seem to help.

“If you intend to look for the Second Pillar, I may be able to offer some small amount of assistance,” Soren began. He tapped a key on his terminal and addressed his secretary. “Have Oriana come to my office.”

I glanced at Misaki, who looked back at me and shrugged.

“Who is that?”

“You'll see.”

little hopes

A few minutes later, in which Soren wouldn't volunteer any more information, the auto-lock on his office chimed and flashed green. The heavy panel slid open before a slight figure dressed in a black long-sleeve tunic and denim pants walked into the room.

The newcomer blanched as she realized Soren wasn't alone in the office, but instead of simply gawking at Misaki and me, she turned her attention back to the Archivist.

“You sent for me, sir?”

My first impression of the woman was that she seemed both very young and very small, but I was getting a strange and outsized sense of her astral pattern. I frowned and examined the lines of force within her more carefully, and I was intrigued to find that the general arrangement and the nature of the astral pathways felt startlingly familiar.

Oriana's eyes widened almost imperceptibly and her gaze locked onto me. That was even more interesting. Was she able to detect and recognize my admittedly intrusive scan? I kept my expression carefully neutral as I pulled away, studying her with my human senses instead. She was shorter than me and had a build closer to Misaki's than mine. Her skin was far darker than mine, a dark, sun-bronzed brown. Scatterings of freckles dotted her cheeks, and a thick mass of wavy black hair cascaded down around her shoulders.

“Oriana, this is Karin of House Ashley and Misaki of the same,” Soren said, introducing us without any awareness of what had just happened under the surface.

“Um, hello.”

There was some fear in her sense and her eyes were downcast. I wasn't entirely sure, but I suspected she had no idea who I was but was still able to pick up on the fact that I was far more astral entity than human being. I took a step closer to her and she looked up at me, giving me a good look at her eyes for the first time. They were a deep violet in color with a gem-like quality and the same sort of eerie light I saw when I looked into my wife's eyes, or when I looked into the mirror at my own reflection.

I still couldn't shake that feeling of sameness, nor could I place it, exactly. It was like it was on the tip of my tongue, a thought that was just barely beyond reach. I searched my own memory for a moment, trying to recall if I'd ever experienced this sensation before—

I laughed out loud. Of course. I felt like a fool for not making the connection right away.

“Your power feels—”

“—just like mine!”

We both stared at each other.

“Looks like you two finally realized it,” Soren observed in a wry tone. “I thought it would be better to give the both of you a chance to discover it for yourself. Yes, Oriana has been infused with a fragment of the same celestial essence.”

“I'm sorry for prying so deeply.” My expression was contrite and regretful, but Oriana still made a point to not look at me. “I just… felt something that I didn't expect. It caught me off-guard and so I made an impulsive decision. I apologize for that.”

“It's… it's okay.” Relief seemed to tug at Oriana's features and she lifted her head and looked at me. I couldn't get a good read on her emotional state, but she seemed to be less afraid now that she understood my nature and hers were the same. “I felt it, too, and all I could think of was the… the last time I encountered such a presence.”

My expression became pensive. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“You examined my astral pattern. Can't you just tell?”

“All I can tell is that you and I both absorbed some amount of anima, and that all of those fragments came from the same astral entity. The way it altered the arrangement of lines of force in your astral pattern is similar to what I experienced. I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I'm guessing your piece is a lot smaller, though.”

Oriana nodded slowly and gestured at the Archivist. “That's… that's what Soren told me. He said it was very, very small, but it was enough to protect me. It was just enough to ensure that I would survive, when the rest of my people did not.”

“Survive?” Misaki echoed.

“I don't remember much about it.” Oriana frowned and wrapped her arms around her own shoulders as she sank deeper into the chair. “The Archivist told me what happened after the fact, when I woke up. He explained to me that I'd been… removed from existence, somehow.”

My wife's ears twitched quizzically. “Removed from existence?”

“Neither of us can explain it any better than that,” Soren admitted. “Oriana's memories have otherwise not been affected, and we've spoken at length about her past—or rather, our past, and her present.”

“Y-yeah, that was a shock.” Oriana clasped her hands together in front of her and took a deep breath before continuing. “You may not believe it, but I was born in the year 1981. I was fourteen when my latent astral affinity awakened; less than a year later, I was scouted by agents of the Order of the Moon. They offered to teach me how to use my power in exchange for service to the Order. By the time I was twenty, I was officially recognized as an Order Magician.”

Sadness twisted her features. “Two years later, I was sent on a special mission to investigate the troubling behavior of a powerful arcane house. That mission ended with the deaths of my entire team as well as the summoners who had vastly overreached their power.”

“Of course.” The pieces were starting to fit together. Oriana would have been twenty-two in the same year! “You were there when Rika was summoned! That's how it happened—that's how you wound up 'removed from existence!'”

Just as I made the connection, so did the other me. The air around us started to warp and distort, at least in my perceptions if not visible reality. Weird twists of both the presence of existence and lack of it contorted and parted as a section of space was parted. Rika stepped through the tear, the gateway from another place vanishing as her feet touched the ground.

“Oriana was indeed present when I was pulled across the boundary. The space immediately surrounding the summoning diagram was shifted out of phase with this instance and became 'neutral space.'” Rika turned toward Oriana and inclined her head in a penitent bow. “I'm very sorry what happened to you. If I could have contained the shifting, I would have.”

The former Order Magician blushed and shook her head. “I-it's fine. I think—I mean, I know it wasn't your fault.”

“I still don't even understand what's going on,” Misaki grumbled, fixing me with an annoyed look that I struggled not to laugh at. “Care to explain it to those of us who aren't carrying a bunch of anima in their souls?”

I offered her a placating smile, which seemed to soften some of the irritation and smooth out her tail. “As near as I can tell, Oriana was lost to this world when Rika's incompatible nature inadvertently altered the space around where she'd been summoned. What's weird is that it killed everyone else but not her, and that she's been trapped inside a neutral locus ever since.”

“I woke up when you freed the Celestial—”

“Rika,” Misaki interrupted, her tone forceful.

Oriana's expression was chagrined. “I'm sorry. I only ever knew of the entity by that title.”

“It's okay. Don't worry about it too much. Misaki's a little protective of her, is all.”

Rika shrugged. “I appreciate the sentiment, but I actually don't mind. The title of 'Celestial' is fitting, considering the mythological origin of the term. I don't find it offensive in the slightest, and most humans will inevitably view me as a threat regardless of what I'm called.”

“See? We're good. Now, let's get back to the shit that's a bit more pressing, shall we?”

“Fine.” Misaki didn't look satisfied, but she relented. “Let's do that.”

“A-anyway,” Oriana continued, “When I regained consciousness, I awoke in a hospital bed in a strange place. It turned out to be a clinic for treating people who were harmed by astral energies.”

Recent events rose to the surface of my thoughts. “I know the place.”

“I was greeted by a woman who said she was with AEGIS—”

“Ceres?” I cut in, frowning.

“I don't know.” Oriana shrugged helplessly. “She never gave me her name. She did tell me what happened to me, that I'd been displaced from existence for a very long time. The neutral locus that I fell into was closed around me. It should have unmade me, but somehow a tiny piece of the energies that inadvertently erased me became an integral part of my astral pattern.”

“It must have been a very small piece,” Rika mused, “because I couldn't even tell it was missing.” The spirit girl took a step forward and locked eyes with Oriana. The woman's cheeks flushed faintly under the heavy scrutiny, but Rika didn't seem to notice her discomfiture. “It was enough to protect you from the spatial shifting. It's likely you would have slept forever within me as I slept forever within the comfortable bed AEGIS provided.” She paused for a moment and smiled, glancing at me. “Until I was awoken.”

Oriana's blush darkened a shade. “I'm grateful for that.”

“I, too, am grateful.” Rika's contented expression faltered and became grim. “I would have remained asleep forever, if not for Karin. The anima taken from me by the Third Pillar is now within Karin, and Karin is within me, and I am within her. The particular neutral space reverted and you were drawn back into this world.”

“What does all of this mean, though?” Misaki demanded, tilting her head to stare hard at the quiescent Soren. “You said she could help us, but how, exactly? She doesn't look like much of a fighter to me. What are we supposed to do with her?”

The color seemed to drain away from Oriana's face, and a cold, clear filament of dread seeped out from her thoughts. I understood what Misaki was trying to do—she was testing the young woman, attempting to plumb the depths of her character and, of course, find out if she really had any reason to fight at all.

Before Soren could answer, Oriana responded in a clear and calm voice. “I don't know what happened to me while I was removed from existence. When I awoke, my mind was filled with thousands of astral processes that were somehow etched into my consciousness.”

I blinked, not certain I'd heard her correctly. “Wait, what? Did you just say you know thousands of invocations?”

“Yes.”

“And you can cast any of them whenever you want?”

Oriana nodded. “As long as I have enough mana available, yes.”

“You've tested this?”

“After I returned to… to what was left of Luna, my successors in the Order Magicians sought to explain my condition. They were trying to figure out how I'd been affected by my exclusion within a neutral locus. I was told that the experiments were inconclusive. Nobody seems to know how my mind was filled with all of these invocations…”

I glanced at Rika. “Do you know?”

“It's possible that information contained within my memory was accidentally transferred to Oriana. This is all academic, however; it doesn't really matter how she obtained them.” Blue-pink eyes narrowed as she fixed me with a cool stare. “What matters to us, here and now, is that she wants to help us fight to protect this world, and can offer her extensive repertoire to our cause.”

I didn't say anything to that. Rika was right; so was Misaki. This discussion of the hows and whys were not especially useful at the moment, no matter how curious I was. Perhaps more of Luna's scholarly ways were rubbing off on me than I'd previously thought. That was well and good, but not that critical at the moment. We had more important things to be worrying about.

“I guess that's it, then,” I murmured, studying Oriana's expression for a long moment before standing. I opened my mouth to continue, but Rika beat me to it—though I still wasn't sure where her words/thoughts began and mine left off.

“You'll be working with Karin and Misaki directly,” my other aspect stated, her tone final and leaving no room for argument from anyone else in the room. “If you've assimilated the processes in my memory, you should be able to do nearly as much as I can. That will work to our benefit, as I can pursue different avenues of investigation on my own.”

I blinked, surprised. “You don't want to travel with us?”

“It would be more efficient for us to work separately, at least for the moment.” Rika's grim expression softened somewhat and she smiled. “Besides, with so much of my power sealed, I doubt I would be all that useful in a fight.”

“You may be operating at a tiny fraction of your capabilities,” Misaki argued, “but you still have power equal to the strongest human mages. Not to mention you can do all that projection stuff.”

Rika shrugged. “Regardless, my physical presence isn't required for that sort of thing. Through Karin, I can go anywhere she happens to be.”

“She's right. Her body is even less of an issue than a Relic spirit's. She can deconstruct and reform it whenever she wants. Remember what she did when we took that trip into Meilin's astral pattern.”

“Exactly,” Rika agreed.

“Excuse me, but I have a question.”

I turned to face Oriana, the source of the query, and frowned. “What's up?”

“What do you intend to do next?”

My expression turned sour. I wasn't exactly used to this leading thing, having people depend on me for direction and purpose. On the other hand, though, it was fairly obvious what we had to do, as there really was only one option we could take.

“We need to find Eirene and convince her to cooperate. Other than Aestivar himself, she's probably the only one that knows his plans; definitely the only one who would tell us anything.” I suppressed a grimace as some of my more unpleasant memories of the former Second Pillar drifted to the surface. “We don't know much about him, other than the obvious, and I really don't want to rush headlong into a fight without learning as much as possible.”

providence

It felt a little weird being back in my hometown again, years after all that had happened. Ever since my life was forever altered by the Relic and by Misaki, by the various circumstances that all began with a late-night break-in at the Records & Licensing Agency's west coast office. But that was all pretty unimportant compared to what we were setting out to do.

I didn't know where Eirene went after our last encounter. Rika had pretty decisively put her in her place, and so I doubted she was particularly excited about seeing me again. My bond with a true astral entity stole the former Second Pillar's greatest capacity for deception; any attempt at deception would not make it past my other self.

Assuming we could find her, I was reasonably sure she would work with us; after all, we were just about the only game in town. Maybe she found someone else to manipulate into becoming the godhead of the Astral Terminus, but that was unlikely, mostly due to the fact that there weren't many other options. While there were still a few Relics hanging around, neither of their wielders fit the Second Pillar's requirements.

Ceres was fundamentally a good person, I knew, but as a spymaster and director of a secretive security agency dedicated to containing the excesses of the world's arcane houses, she often leaned toward dark solutions to even darker problems. There was a great deal of moral gray area in the operation of AEGIS, even after Nergal and his “reformists” were ousted and the agency brought back under the tight control of the conservative members of the Directorate.

Regarding Soleil, I'd spoken to Alicia about it a few times since Amber's death. Soleil, Tsubame and Alicia shared a small apartment in San Francisco, trying their best to keep a low profile. I wasn't in consistent contact with them, so I didn't know all the details of their lives, but I knew enough to surmise that Tsubame and Soleil were earning their living by working as spirit hunters.

Through Alicia I'd learned enough about Soleil to confirm my suspicions. The girl may have been barely over fifteen, but she was… well, there was no delicate way to say it. Her curly red hair, freckle-covered face and pretty brown eyes belied her dark nature. It wasn't really her fault; after all, she'd been taken by House Kihara at a very young age and turned into a killer. Not exactly a surprise that she'd been shaped by that grim upbringing. While she did appear to limit herself to the corruption that festered in the dark, I was a bit concerned what she would do when there were no more enemies to slay.

“I wonder how much of that is Alicia's doing,” I mused aloud as I stared out the window. Snow was already building up on the highway. Soon the plows would be out in force.

“What?”

I blinked at Misaki and smiled. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Trying to work things out, figure out what Eirene's been doing these past months. According to all our information, she hasn't been seen by anyone since she showed up at So-yi's house and got called out by Rika.”

“I don't think she'd go after Soleil or Ceres,” Misaki observed, aligning with my own thoughts on the matter. “Neither of them fits Eirene's ideal—and that's assuming she'd even be willing to start over, not to mention the fact that we don't even know if Nergal's reverse-engineered Relic can even fuse safely.”

“He seemed to think it would, though Eirene claimed it otherwise.”

“Yeah, and he also thought a lot of other things that were wrong,” my partner pointed out. Her expression became pensive as she drove carefully through the snowfall. “If Eirene is serious about her agenda—and there should be no doubt of that—then you remain her only option, Karin. The Pillars' plan to whittle away the competition was too effective.”

I frowned. “What about the Shattered Sword? The agency's been keeping it in a secured vault until they can figure out what to do with it.”

“What do you mean, what about it?” Misaki's ears flicked lightly and she reached into the console to pick out a piece of her favored road-trip snack, my mother's homemade spicy dried meat strips.

“I mean, Valendir apparently had some sort of use for it, but he never got that far.”

Misaki's ears flicked toward me. “It was probably part of his plan to double-cross Aestivar. No matter what else he did, Valendir would still need to fuse with a Relic to gain access to the Terminus.” She kept her attention on the road as we drove over the snow-dusted streets. “I suppose that implies it could be repaired somehow, but this is all just wild-ass guessing.”

“Um… excuse me.”

I blinked and turned to gaze past Misaki and into the back seat of my car. Amethyst eyes blinked and a faint blush appeared on the woman's brown cheeks. Oriana hadn't said much at all since we'd left the old Luna facility. I chose not to try and force her to interact with us, instead opting to let her open up whenever she felt comfortable.

“What's up, Ori?”

The blush on the woman's cheeks darkened a shade. “Respectfully, Lady Ashley, I think we should focus on our more immediate task right now. Speculation on what might have been will not get us closer to the Second Pillar.”

“Wow,” Misaki muttered under her breath. She smirked at me. “Damn, Karin, you certainly got put in your place.”

The Order Magician blanched. “I'm sorry.”

I tried very hard not to laugh. “Okay, okay, let's talk strategy, then. It's been a while since… since we first ran into Eirene in that empty lot. The parcel's been built over, right?”

“It has,” Oriana observed as she scrolled through the listings on her phone. “That whole part of town has been undergoing significant redevelopment. From this information it looks like it was used to store fleet vehicles and cargo haulers, but the nearby warehouses were demolished and the entire place is being built over with an even bigger warehouse.” She handed me her phone, pointing toward one of the items near the bottom of the list. “Take a look for yourself.”

I took a closer look at the information Oriana pulled up. “Some kind of distribution and shipping facility… owned by…” My voice trailed off into silence as I continued to read through the ownership information. I tapped a link and opened up the company's website, all while a faint chill started to crawl down my spine. “Well, well. The shipping company has partnerships with dozens of corporations, but a few of them stand out: Mason-Kihara being the most damning.”

Misaki's observation was succinct and accurate: “Fuck, they're like cockroaches.”

“I'm afraid I don't know what significance these names hold,” Oriana admitted.

“They're corporate fronts for arcane houses.” I reached over the seat and handed the phone back to her before I settled back down. “House Kihara was supposed to have been destroyed by AEGIS, but that's not the end of their story. A lot of the surviving members were absorbed into Luna during the Fifth Pillar's subversion of the organization. These other companies are all run by arcane houses that AEGIS suspects of involvement with the Pillars.”

Oriana's expression darkened. “That's suspicious.”

“Yeah. It could just be a coincidence, since it's a natural place to put that kind of facility, but I think it's all a bit too convenient.”

Misaki let out an affirmative grunt and smoothly changed lanes, pointing the nose of my car down the off-ramp that would take us off the freeway and onto surface streets. No more conversation took place for the next ten minutes. My partner hit the accelerator a bit too hard for comfort's sake, but she didn't come close to losing control, even on the slippery road. The tires spun for a second or two as we sped around a corner and down a deserted street.

It didn't take long before we could see the new construction starting to rise up from what had been a barren rectangular expanse of cracked and worn tarmac. The area had long been an eyesore for the city and I suspected that the shipping company didn't have anywhere near the usual trouble obtaining permits and such. Scaffolding covered the outside of the half-completed structure, though it was far enough along that the outer walls were solid, preventing us from getting any glimpse of the interior.

Even though I could barely recognize it, memories started to come back to me as I felt the warped lines of force, still damaged and distorted from the incredibly powerful magic Eirene used to force the Relic to fuse with me. No matter how different it looked, that weird twisting of astral energies was a dead giveaway. I nodded at Misaki and she pulled over to one side of the street, killing the motors and shutting the vehicle down.

“Looks like we have guards,” she said in a low tone. Her hand came up and pointed to two metal platforms suspended by scaffolding around the upper edge of the partially-completed structure. “There and there. Humans, not specters.”

“Regular security guards or something more?”

Misaki's ears laid flat against her hair. “They're not regular guards. I can feel deflections in the ambient energy.”

I was silent for a moment as I considered those implications. Deflections of loose mana meant that the guards were armed with some sort of astral technology that utilized quintessence, or crystallized mana, as a power source. That might have suggested the presence of AEGIS, as the agency pioneered the development of astral tech, but they weren't the only ones who made use of such devices.

The three of us watched the guard posts for a long moment, trying to get a feel for what exactly we were up against. As the sentries moved I could see motes of mana being pushed around in a weird and familiar pattern. I had to use my eyes to check their other weapons, but didn't spot anything larger than the automatic pistols the two sentries wore in hip holsters.

“They've got Spell Engines.” Misaki observed. “Their sidearms are probably loaded with MQ rounds, too. Very interesting. What could they possibly need all of that for?”

“That's a good question,” I muttered under my breath. “There's something here, all right, something significant. If the guards were just here to keep people out, they wouldn't be equipped to fight astral beings.”

Our newest team member spoke up. “It seems like they're trying to keep something in…”

I frowned. “You think so?”

“They're not watching the streets very closely at all, and notice how the guards are keeping to platforms that overlook the interior of the structure?” Oriana gestured toward the two black-clad figures and for a long moment we watched their movements. I was a little surprised, but she was right—the emotional sense I got from both sentries was more akin to that of a jailer than a guard. I closed my eyes for a moment and concentrated on the flow of ambient mana, trying to sift through the noise and determine if there were more—

“There are three more guards, at least,” I muttered under my breath. “Or rather, three more Spell Engines, and I'm guessing they're attached to three different hands.”

“I feel them, too,” Misaki agreed. “So, what's the plan?”

“Five against three isn't good odds. Even if we managed to take them all down and remain undetected, if they really are trying to keep something from escaping, we're going to have to deal with whatever that is, too…”

“Let's take this one battle at a time, Karin.” Misaki's voice was testy. “We're going to be doing good just to take out all five of those goons without giving them a chance to call for backup or coordinate their own defenses.”

“That shouldn't be a problem.” Oriana shrugged and zipped her jacket to the collar. “We have all the elements necessary to overcome this level of resistance. It's only a matter of planning and execution.”

I shot the Order Magician a dubious look. “You say that like it's easy. Got any brilliant ideas on how to accomplish all of that without getting all of us filled full of holes?””

“Yes,” Oriana replied in a confident tone. “I can enact a displacement field to prevent them from communicating and coordinating their movements. Their barriers shouldn't pose a problem, as your power is strongly rooted in breaking down binding forces. Misaki can raise a defensive shield to keep us safe from their small-arms fire. Even if they're equipped with MQ rounds, her barrier should be able to hold, at least long enough for you to reduce their numbers.”

“That's… that sounds like it'll actually work,” Misaki marveled, staring at Oriana with a mixture of confusion and admiration. “At least, I think so.” My partner's ears flicked pensively as she turned her attention back to me.

“Yeah. Let's go with that.”

precision

I was less than ten meters from the sentry and he still hadn't seen me yet. The man was young, probably younger than I was. His face was partly obscured behind a wrapped scarf that protected him from the cold, but I could see the youth in the easy fluidity of his movements. His clothing was somewhat bulky, complete with woven body armor and multiple pouches to hold equipment and supplies, but I was certain he was strong and fit underneath it all.

It wasn't long before Oriana's signal came, a soft clicking whirr that sounded very much like the call of a local pigeon. That meant she was in place and ready to cast an invocation that would blanket the area with a displacement field, temporarily pushing this area just slightly outside the physical space it normally occupied. While it wouldn't stop anyone from wandering inside the boundaries of the field, it would obscure the area from casual observance as well as prevent the functioning of electronic communications.

I hoped it would be enough. I nodded silent confirmation to Misaki without looking away from my target; it was time to go to work.

Astral energies gathered within me, flowing through lines of force that acted like metaphysical circuits. I no longer needed to trace command sigils in the air in order to invoke the power that was now rooted to my very being. It was akin to moving an arm or leg, a simple act of will that spoke volumes on the subject of my altered nature.

I knew we wouldn't stay hidden for very long. Misaki waited, watching, her eyes narrowed to emerald crescents, tail stilled as she held herself poised for action. The shadows around us were dispelled by a brilliant silver-white glow as I extended my hand and prepared to release a line of disintegrating power.

In the corner of my eye I caught Misaki's hastily-scribed runes as she brought forth her signature defensive invocation, a shimmering golden dome of protection. In that split-second of chaotic instigation, I caught a surge of alarm from the nearest sentry. Without the slightest bit of hesitation, he drew his sidearm and fired. Dusky purple flashes of distorted quintessence erupted against the golden light, but the shield held through the first barrage—and that's all the time we needed.

It took less than a second for the beam of pure white destruction to part the man's barrier and strike the vulnerable flesh beneath. Astral brilliance tore through his body, disintegrating flesh and bone. With a muffled thud, the guard fell against the catwalk like a dropped sack of wet rice.

One down, four more to go.

More small-arms fire peppered Misaki's barrier as the dead sentry's comrades showed up. The element of surprise was no longer with us. Purple blossoming detonations warped and distorted the boundary of the shimmering shield—I glanced at Misaki, whose expression was locked in rigid, fierce determination and concentration. She was doing okay, it seemed, though it wouldn't be long before her defense failed underneath that destabilizing onslaught.

I picked my next target and again loosed a searing beam of disintegrating power. Blue light flashed as the sentry's barrier failed and the dematerializing ray passed through the flesh beneath as if it wasn't even there. The volume of fire being directed at us decreased as the enemy scrambled to take a purely defensive stance.

Visible cracks were starting to form in the intangible surface of Misaki's golden shield. Sweat beaded on my partner's forehead and dripped down her cheeks; her eyes were tightly squeezed shut and the fur on her tail stood straight up. More telling were the invisible currents of mana that surrounded her, drawing into her spirit to continually reinforce the shield that was steadily weakened with each violet impact.

“Hurry up and finish them off,” Misaki managed between gritted teeth, her voice sounding strained and exhausted. “I can't keep this up too much longer, love.”

“I know.”

The warmth of astral energy that burned within me began to rise, the Relic fragment drawing more and more mana within. It was starting to feel sluggish as more of the ambient mana was depleted. Maintaining the shield against MQ rounds was burning enough astral energy as it was, but Oriana's jamming was drawing nearly as much on its own.

I delved deeper within myself and touched the place where my astral pattern was inextricably tied in with that of another. An endless sea of silver-white anima stretched out into infinity; I let my conscious mind dive deep.

Amorphous anima-flames leaped from my hand and I felt Rika's subconscious, bonded to mine, guide the shaping of the raw material into what I needed to complete the task at hand. The twisting and flickering silver fire began to shrink in upon itself, coalescing into a brilliant point of argent light.

Rika's voice, so much like my own, echoed into my thoughts: You don't need to rely on the presence of residual mana. Assembling this process from the anima inside you is much simpler than transmuting free astral energy.

I hadn't known that was possible, but she was the expert, after all.

You've become accustomed enough to the anima to tap into it natively. Besides, the other method is just a workaround, a way for disconnected remote terminals to access certain privileged functions without authorization.

I very nearly laughed out loud. Did she really just say that invocations were hacks?

That's an apt description.

“Karin, whatever it is you're doing, you need to do it fast,” Misaki grunted, the edges of her words pulled down by her exhaustion.

“I'm doing it.”

Argent light poured from my outstretched hand. Instead of a single, discrete beam, this time the release of energy split into three separate streams—streams that curved. Winding around obstacles, the sinuous rays of deadly unbinding energies struck each of the remaining sentries in rapid succession.

Rika was right; it was so much easier—so much so that it frightened me and sent chills running down my spine. There was virtually no exertion, no mental effort spent drawing in the little bits of unformed mana that drifted and flowed through the space around us. An endless sea of silver magic seemed to stretch out into infinity around me, a boundless reservoir that mocked the enormity of what I'd just unleashed as a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of what was possible.

Less than a second later the shimmering golden dome fell apart, breaking into large planes of shaped mana. Misaki gasped in utter relief and released her hold on the defensive invocation, causing the shards of golden light to fade away into the deepening shadows.

“What the hell, Karin?” Misaki's ears flattened as she glared at me, obviously annoyed. “Why didn't you do that to begin with?”

“I didn't know I could,” I countered. I felt a shiver crawl across my shoulders as I surveyed the destruction I'd wrought; all three of the corpses were blasted from the scaffolding to fall on the ground nearby. The closest body was twisted at a bad angle, but even so I could see the fist-sized blackened hole that burned through body armor as well as flesh and bone. It was an ugly sight and I turned away quickly.

“How much longer can you hold the displacement field?” I asked.

Oriana shrugged. “The ambient mana has been heavily depleted, but I should be able to hold it for another half-hour without issue. Do you think we'll need more time?”

“That'd be up to you, wouldn't it?” I walked up to the door, sealed with a heavy auto-lock and cross-bar, and frowned. This was going to take some doing to get open. “How long will it take for you to pick up Eirene's scent from the traces left behind here?”

“Not long. A few minutes, at most.”

“Then let's get in and get it done. We've already made a mess, so no point in being careful now,” Misaki growled, pushing past me to stand in front of the door. She gave the locked gate a once-over, then her ears flicked slightly. “I'm going to blast it open. You two might want to step back.”

I sighed and took several steps backward, gesturing for Oriana to follow. Spell-flame enveloped Misaki's hands as she called forth her native elemental affinity. The red-orange twin infernos brightened and intensified, turning a bright blue before she released a blast of crackling plasma at the unfortunate door.

The edges were smoking and still glowing with borrowed heat as Misaki stepped through the massive hole melted through the door—and part of the wall and floor around it. I was careful not to get too close to the edges and the little fires burning where metal had given way to plastics and other materials as we slipped into the partially-completed structure.

“The outer wall is ten centimeters thick of layered armor and shielding,” I marveled, examining the melted section of steel and composites where Misaki's brute-force method granted us entry. “Since when does a warehouse need that kind of impregnability?”

Misaki sniffed and pointed toward something inside the building. “Well, if you stopped gawking at the hole I made, you could see for yourself.”

I turned and peered through the slowly-clearing smoke and dust from the explosion. We stood near a section of crumbling asphalt, the only visible reminder that this place had once been a parking lot.

Inside the building was a shimmering barrier of uncommon potency. Warding diagrams were etched around a circular area about two meters in diameter, projecting a translucent wall of force that rose up and formed a flickering, glassy dome. The barrier was similar to Misaki's signature shield, but it seemed somehow more solid and permanent. It was thick enough that I couldn't see what was inside.

“What on earth is that?” Oriana wondered aloud, pointing at the barrier.

“This is the spot where Eirene forced me to fuse with the Relic,” I muttered as I approached the warding diagram. A strong sense of revulsion filled me as I recognized the silvery liquid that flowed in the channels dug into the glassy, melted tarmac. There was no connection or affinity that I could detect, but it was unquestionably anima. “It looks like someone put this warding and barrier right where it happened, and they used materialized anima to strengthen the whole system. Why, though? What were they trying to do?”

Misaki was beside me, a troubled expression on her face. “I don't know why, but I definitely know who.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I recognize the style used in the diagram.” My partner's ears drooped down even further, nearly matched by the frown pulling at her lips. “A Tsukimura-trained summoner erected this warding—and did so proudly. All the little flourishes and hallmarks are there.”

“Your old 'family' did this?”

Misaki bared her fangs in an open snarl. “Most likely Akane Tsukimura. She would have learned how to employ anima from the Pillars.”

“Why would Akane Tsukimura put a ward like this over the spot where I fused with the Relic?”

“That is a good question, isn't it?” Misaki's ears twitched as she regarded the glass-like dome of force that shielded its contents from outsiders. “The Pillars and their allies know humanity needs Eirene's knowledge to fight them effectively. They don't want anyone, AEGIS or us, to find her before they do.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” I agreed, “but it's not like I can't take this warding down. Actually, I'm one of the only people who could. Any other mage wouldn't be able to absorb the anima here and keep breathing.”

Oriana shrugged. “Perhaps Akane Tsukimura was most concerned about AEGIS.”

“Look, we can sit around and make wild-ass guesses all day,” Misaki interjected, “but we should probably hurry up and get out of here before we're spotted. Just dismantle the damn warding, love.”

I bent down next to the edge of the diagram, touching my fingertips to the surface of the flowing trough of silvery liquid. At first, nothing seemed to happen. The anima itself was warm as blood and I could feel it moving through the graven diagram like a tiny, viscous river—

There was a brilliant flash of light, lasting less than a second, as the materialized anima was drawn intangibly through my astral pattern. I could envision the sea of silver within, that place where Rika's spirit was linked with my own: it was an infinite font of endless, boundless power, its surface stilled by the suppressive effects of the limiter she'd placed upon us.

Drops of anima fell from the gray sky and into the surface of the sea. What had been absorbed was so insignificant it didn't even create ripples in the vast, unbroken expanse.

I opened my eyes and let my mind readjust to the material world. The barrier was gone, of course, just as I knew it would be. All that remained of Akane Tsukimura's weavings were the carved troughs in the ground surrounding a rather unremarkable patch of blasted asphalt. Though I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary, the distortion Oriana hypothesized was indeed present; it twisted the course of the astral flow, altering the currents of loose mana in the space around us. All the magic used here had depleted the ambient energy; I figured the warped flow would be a lot more obvious once the levels returned to normal.

“There, the barrier's gone.” I turned to glance at a visibly impressed Oriana. “Do what you have to do and let's get the fuck out of here.”

hidden path

For someone who hated flying, I seemed to find myself in airplanes an awful lot these days. I looked out the small, rounded window. Misaki sat next to me in the middle seat, with Oriana near the aisle. The small passenger jet was otherwise filled with a random assortment of travelers, half of which were federal agents, contractors or engineers. A few of the more aware passengers stared at Misaki, still sticking by her refusal to hide her distinctive features. None of them could seem to work up the courage to actually approach her, though, which was just as well. My partner slept soundly, nestled comfortably against my shoulder, and Oriana leaned against hers, a small pillow propping her head up at a less awkward angle.

One of the many odd bits and pieces of becoming—well, whatever it was that I was—was the fact that I didn't seem to need to sleep any longer, unless I was seriously injured. It would have been a lot more obnoxious if I couldn't sleep, rather than simply just not needing to sleep, but still, it left me awake and aware while even Misaki needed rest.

After I'd collapsed the warding, Oriana was able to get a fix on Eirene's power and seek her out through the astral flow. With the help of Soren and the other Order Magicians, were able to get a fairly accurate read on where the Second Pillar was hiding. I wasn't terribly surprised to learn she was in a densely populated urban center, where the presence of so many people with latent but sealed astral affinity would mask her presence so long as she kept a low profile. I was more intrigued by which population center she'd chosen.

I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind a bit. A chime sounded over the aircraft's intercom and the pilot's voice came over the speaker, reminding passengers to remain seated and strapped in while the landing procedure began. In only a few more minutes, we'd be on the “ground,” figuratively speaking, of one of the largest monuments to technological achievement in the history of humankind—the Pacific Magnetic Launch Array.

The deep blue of the ocean below was broken by an enormous irregular polyhedron of gray and black, rising more than a dozen meters above the waves. Though I couldn't see it too well from the small window at this poor angle, I could envision the artificial island easily enough. The superstructure appeared to float atop the water, making it seem even more fanciful and impressive than it truly was, though I knew it was anchored in place in such a way that allowed it to be all but impervious to even the strongest earthquakes.

I'd never actually been to the place before, but I grew up hearing about the construction efforts ever since I was little. The place had been under development for decades and it had finally officially become active last year despite the project being plagued by the inevitable sort of delays and crises one would expect. Colloquially known as Heaven's Gate, the PMLA was the world's first practical reactionless launch facility.

In the center of the island were the “Gates” themselves, a series of eight deceptively-slender towers that soared nearly a kilometer into the air. From what I'd read about the Gates, they also descended  an equal distance into the ocean below the artificial island. Each of the towers was a tremendously powerful magnetic accelerator, designed for the sole purpose of “firing” a launch vehicle to escape velocity without the use of expensive and environmentally-unfriendly chemical rocket engines.

Construction of the artificial island and the magnetic launch array had cost hundreds of billions of dollars, of course, but the future cost savings would be considerable. Space development was the new economic frontier and capitalists of all colors and nationalities couldn't wait to dig their money shovels deep into the inky blackness outside our planet's atmosphere. Since Heaven's Gate went operational, the number of spaceflight missions performed by private industry increased significantly. Using one of the Gates meant a significantly increased payload for a lower cost and far lower environmental impact.

It'd get even cheaper in the coming years as more and more development took place. Once humanity established a firmer foothold in orbit around Earth, once routes for extraterrestrial fuel and raw materials were established, the costs would dive so sharply that our people would finally be able to take our first decisive steps away from the cradle that raised us.

Though I suppose they weren't really my people any longer. I felt my lips curve into a small but bitter grimace. With every day that passed, I sank deeper into that infinite silver expanse. I could physically feel myself becoming more and more distant from the people who were inextricably rooted into this macro, material existence. The closer my existence and Rika's became, the less real everything around me seemed, and the more normal the astral sea became.

If we succeeded at taking control of the Terminus, I had my fears that the distance would become insurmountable. I had no idea what would happen, and what bits of me that were still human regarded the change as significant as death. Worse, actually. Timeless oblivion was a lot less intimidating than losing myself while being completely aware of it.

Not that we had any other options. I thought again of Blondie—Nergal, rather, the former Director of AEGIS, who had attempted to reach the Astral Terminus with the intent of severing the link between worlds.

Stilling the astral flow forever would have resulted in millions, perhaps billions of deaths, for those who had been gifted (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with inherent astral affinity would wither like a blossom cut off at the stem. Our world's magic would die, forever—and who knew what other terrible things would have happened as a result?

No, this was the only option that made sense. Eirene once told us that her former lover and champion had descended so far into despair and prophecy, envisioning his quest as a holy mission to reawaken his sleeping god. His goal was a product of his unwavering faith and we all feared what would actually happen if the First Pillar were to succeed in gaining control of the Terminus. He believed he would die, sacrificed to breathe life back into the somnolent Father…

My thoughts slid away from that uncomfortable notion. The traitorous Fifth Pillar turned on the man he believed to have gone mad, but I wondered how true that really was. The actions of the First Pillar were cold and calculated, with the supreme patience of one who had denied the march of years and spat in the face of death. Not what one would expect from a total loss of control.

The airframe of the passenger jet shivered slightly as the pilot made a picture-perfect landing on one of the artificial island's narrow airstrips. Access to Heaven's Gate was heavily restricted and it was one of the highest-security locations on the planet. I imagined the whine of repulsion gunships flitting around the island, their vigilance never broken as shifts of patrol craft would continually monitor the skies. Cameras and sensors were everywhere, and armed sentries were stationed at regular intervals. Even our flight had been accompanied by two federal agents with automatics hidden beneath their expensive, custom-tailored suits.

After Oriana and her colleagues in the Order Magicians had pinpointed Eirene's location, it was up to me to get us access to Heaven's Gate. This was no easy task, but Ceres pulled a few strings and issued the three of us security passes that would allow us limited, but sufficient, access. The Directorate's decisions suggested that there was no small amount of consternation at the existence of a person who could so thoroughly circumvent their security measures.

Eirene was on the island, a place where none of her enemies could reach her. The Third and Fifth Pillars were dead. Other than Aestivar himself, she was the only person in the world who could ride the currents of mana and move to any location the astral flow touched. According to Ceres's information, Heaven's Gate was all but untouched by the machinations of arcane houses; none wished to risk discovery by operating in such a place.

It was one of the few places in the world that Eirene could have gone to distance herself from her enemies, while still remaining accessible to me.

I felt movement at my side and glanced over at Misaki. She was awake, now, as the plane's passengers began to unfasten their seatbelts and file quietly out into the boarding area. My partner got a few more weird looks from the various passengers, and so we waited until the plane emptied out before getting up ourselves. We didn't bother with words as the three of us grabbed our carry-on baggage and exited through the main hatch.

By the time we were out of the plane and in the airport's terminal, three people in dark suits that screamed “federal agent” approached us. I couldn't see any sign of weapons on any of them, but the deflections of loose mana caused by their Spell Engines was so obvious they might as well put “AEGIS” on their suit jackets in huge letters. One of them, a woman with short-cropped, flaxen blonde hair and gray eyes, stepped forward and stuck her hand out.

“Welcome to Heaven's Gate, Lady Ashley,” the AEGIS operative said, reaching out to shake my hand firmly. The woman reminded me a lot of my sister's wife Nicole; they had similar builds and hairstyles, and both had the same casual androgyny of appearance. “You may call me Astraea.”

Obviously a code-name, but that was usually how the agency operated. “Thanks. This is my partner, Misaki, and Oriana, of the Order Magicians.”

Misaki flicked her ears but said nothing.

“This place is astonishing,” Oriana breathed, no longer paying attention to any of the AEGIS people or us. She was standing at the large window that faced west, looking deeper into the interior of the island. Even though the airport was a good four kilometers away from the Gates proper, the enormous structures seemed to extend infinitely into the heavens.

Astraea, to her credit, laughed at the Order Magician's overawed expression. “As much as I'd like to allow you to properly appreciate the most ambitious engineering project ever attempted in human history, we have important work to do.”

“You've already been briefed?” I asked.

“Of course.” The agent shrugged and gestured for us to follow her. “I would ask that you say no more for now. While Heaven's Gate is known for its exceptional security, there are things that should not be spoken of in public. Follow me.”

Misaki fell into step beside me, with Oriana between us and Astraea as we followed the agent through the airport. Our security passes and escort enabled us to skip the usual security screenings and the long lines that went along with them. As we stepped out into the open air, Astraea approached a nearby black sedan with darkly-tinted windows and tapped on the glass. The window rolled down halfway, allowing her and the driver to have a conversation too low-voiced for me to make out, but I caught the swivel of Misaki's ears out of the corner of my eye.

My wife's expression remained calm throughout the little exchange. If the Heaven's Gate AEGIS branch was playing anything close to their chest, they weren't giving any outward indication of it. It looked, at least so far, like Ceres had cleared all the necessary conditions.

Astraea stepped back from the car as it drove away before turning back to us. “I've arranged for a secure conference room in the external security building. This way, please.”

We continued to follow her until reaching a heavy door sealed with an auto-lock. Astraea touched the biometric panel with her right hand. With a loud thunk, the bolts disengaged and the door slid open with a hiss of expelled gas, revealing an empty corridor that streched on for several meters before terminating in a blank white wall. Astraea stepped inside and stopped near the second door on the right.

Inside was a familiar-looking conference room. I wondered exactly how many of these places the agency had, scattered all over the country. Our host strode inside and seated herself at the small table; Oriana and I followed suit. Predictably, Misaki went directly for the counter on the other side of the room, where a coffee maker and electric kettle sat next to a basket filled with several tins of tea. The AEGIS woman blinked, gawking incredulously at Misaki as she waited for her tea to brew, her tail swishing back and forth contentedly.

“Don't try to stop her,” I commented. “Nothing gets between Misaki and her tea.”

The agent smiled thinly. “I see.”

A few more minutes passed as Misaki waited for her tea to brew. When she finally came to the table, our host looked more than a little annoyed and Misaki looked pleased with herself. It was a not-so-subtle display of the power dynamics between us. I had no doubt that Astraea and her people were losing more than a little sleep over the revelation that the Second Pillar had sought refuge in this most delicate of places.

“Thank you for taking the time to speak with me,” Astraea said after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence.

Misaki snorted. “Not like you gave us much choice.”

“Forgive me, but there are certain… factors that must be taken into account if the three of you are to operate within Heaven's Gate. This is no ordinary city, as I'm sure you already know.”

“You were briefed by Ceres, right?” I asked for the second time, letting some impatience creep into my own voice. “So why are you delaying us? You know why we're here and what we've come to do, and you should know that you don't have any real authority over us.”

“Yes, I know, and I promise I won't take up too much of your time.” Astraea placed her fingertips against each other and studiously ignored Misaki's loud tea-slurping. “Director Ceres contacted this branch and informed me of what had happened and what was to be done about it. I understand that the unauthorized intruder is beyond AEGIS's capabilities to deal with, and I accept the Directorate's decision to let you handle it.”

I scowled. “So why are you holding us up?”

“AEGIS has far less influence in this place than in the country proper,” Astraea continued, her voice taking on a slight edge of frustration. “I must insist that you do everything in your power to avoid engaging in battle while on the island. Heaven's Gate is outside of AEGIS's normal jurisdiction and our presence here is a very… delicate matter.”

“So you're saying if we blow anything up, you can't get us out of trouble,” Misaki reasoned.

“Blunt, but accurate. My words have very little sway with the Gate's internal security force.”

“It shouldn't come to that.” I let my expression soften a bit and I smiled at my wife before turning back to meet Astraea's steely gaze. “Eirene chose to come here because none of her enemies could have followed her here. The arcane houses have no presence and security is so tight that, realistically speaking, the only person who could and would have followed her here is, well, me.”

“How did she manage to slip past security?” Astraea demanded.

“Didn't Ceres tell you?”

The senior unit controller shook her head. “Director Ceres only informed me that the former Second Pillar was here, but not how she managed to get onto the island without being detected. Perhaps you know.”

“Eirene can go wherever there's loose mana, so basically anywhere she wants,” I explained after a few moments of internal debate. I could tell that Astraea wasn't one to mess around with and beating around the bush wouldn't be wise. “She has some sort of powerful magic that lets her travel through the astral flow itself. No security system, no matter how well-designed and otherwise impregnable, can stop her.”

Astraea stared at me. “You're saying she can teleport anywhere she wishes? Is there no way to prevent this? Does anyone else possess this power?”

“As far as we know, if the concentration of astral energy is depleted to a significant degree, the Second Pillar would be unable to materialize in that location,” Oriana spoke up. “As the ambient mana is continually replenished by the astral flow, any intentional depletion would be temporary at best.”

I nodded and my expression turned pensive as I regarded Astraea. “I came here to make a deal, to get her to help us do what she wanted to do in the first place. If she agrees—and I don't see any reason why she wouldn't—she'll leave this place and be out of your hair permanently.”

“What if the Second Pillar refuses to cooperate?”

I glanced at Misaki and Oriana and shrugged before turning back to the AEGIS controller. I'd asked myself that question dozens of times up until now, and I was still a little worried even though we'd be offering Eirene the exact thing she always desired. Astraea was not going to like the answer to her question, but there was no sense in trying to soft-soap the facts.

“If that's the case… well, I know you'll do what you have to.”

armistice

“Pretty amazing stuff,” Misaki quipped as our borrowed agency car sent us cruising through the streets at a leisurely pace. Her ears were flat against her head and she cast a baleful glare at the self-driving car's console, which was locked against direct control. “Can't this piece of shit move any faster?”

I rolled my eyes. “How suspicious do you think we'd be if we were screaming down the streets leaving burned rubber in our wake?” I gestured outside the windows vaguely, toward one of the omnipresent black-uniformed security officers that crawled over the whole island. “We can't look like anything out of the ordinary if we want to be able to find Eirene.”

“Why not? We have Ceres's permission to be here.”

“Astraea already mentioned that AEGIS doesn't have much power here,” I reminded her. “This place has its own laws and restrictions that exist outside of the country proper. The last thing we need is to get into it with the Gate's security force. Even if Ceres managed to convince the president to bail us out, we'd get kicked off the island and our mission would be fucked.”

I didn't mention, nor did I need to, that meekly submitting to their demands wasn't an option we could even entertain. Our task was critical, went far beyond the tawdry “secrets” held here by mundane agencies and corporations with inflated senses of their own importance. I didn't say it, but my companions knew—and I think Astraea knew, too, which is why she tried so hard to convince us to avoid fighting.

“Do you believe we'll be able to convince the Second Pillar without battle?” Oriana inquired.

I scratched at my head and sighed as I looked out the window. I wanted to roll the damn window down so I could have a cigarette, but that function was locked out, too. We had no choice but to wait until the car reached its preprogrammed destination.

“I don't know. She wasn't very happy about Rika letting us in on Aestivar's plans and how she intended to subvert them, but I don't see how she'll have any other options but to work with us. It was what she wanted in the first place, after all, and I don't think she wants to let billions die. Despair is a pretty powerful emotion, and she probably thought it was the only way.”

I heard Oriana shift in her chair behind me. “How?”

“The Pillars needed a way to weaken the boundary enough to punch a hole through it, but it's not so simple. Crossing over from this side would take more energy than exists in our entire universe, but astral energy—in all of its forms—is not of this universe. We know they intended to bind Rika to one of their own summoners, force her to part the veil by releasing all of her power at once. Unfortunately for them, I ended up binding her instead.”

“And so the First Pillar kept a contingency waiting in the wings,” Oriana reasoned.

“Yeah. If he'd managed to bind Rika to a mage under his control, the Pillars would have already won, but they were too clever for their own good. If they hadn't spent all that time using the anima to create those magic-eating monsters, I never would have been able to take it from them before it was too late.”

“The spectral horde is the Pillars' contingency?”

“Yeah, not their first choice. More of a sure thing, since the Pillars have spent centuries mastering the manipulation of miasma.” I shrugged and tried my best to suppress the chill that ran down my spine. “Once they've reached critical mass, the Pillars intend to set them loose. The amount of miasma present in our universe will rise exponentially as the corruption spreads and distorts matter and energy, and all the while the mass summonings will weaken the boundary itself, lowering the energy requirements necessary to breach.”

“There's also the mass suffering and death that'll let Aestivar to unite humanity in worship under his god, beseeching the 'Father' for salvation,” Misaki added, her tone disgusted. “The world will be wrecked and anyone left alive will be forced to live in a theocratic dystopia.”

“How will we stop this?” Oriana gasped, horrified.

I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips against my chest. The Relic fragment had shrunk so much it was almost imperceptible, having vanished beneath the flesh some time ago. “Eirene's actions were all calculated to snatch Aestivar's prize away from him. She picked me because I was convenient, because I didn't know anything about astral lore and the arcane underworld. All of that made me easy to manipulate.”

Misaki's ears twitched and she glanced at me out of the corner of her eyes. “She also chose you because you're a good person, love. Don't leave that part out, because it's easily as important as her other reasons.”

I blushed faintly. “Yeah, I guess that's true, too.”

The car slowed and came to a stop outside a fenced-off area filled with rows of identical, windowless buildings—though perhaps that was stretching a point too far. Modular and removable, the “buildings” were more like very large shipping containers that could be affixed to repulsion lifts and moved onto enormous cargo ships. The entire area looked completely unremarkable with nothing particularly out of the ordinary, but I could feel a slight twisting in the currents of ambient astral energy.

“Someone's here, all right,” Misaki observed. “I can't tell if it's Eirene or not, but the presence is powerful.”

“Let's take a look, then.”

I opened the car door and stepped out onto the paved surface at the edge of the road. Unlike an ordinary terrestrial road, the pathways of Heaven's Gate were all comprised of a very lightweight plastic-like aggregate material, possessing similar durability properties to concrete while also being significantly less dense.

I mean, it made sense. The island didn't exactly float in the water like a boat, as it was secured to the seabed underneath, but weight would always remain a concern. The superstructure hidden beneath the surface was immensely strong, but even with countless weight-saving engineering tricks, Heaven's Gate was by far the most massive single structure created by humanity. It needed to be, not simply to withstand natural forces, but also the incredible recoil generated by accelerating heavy launch vehicles into orbit.

It would have been nice to come here just to see this place, this marvel of human ingenuity and engineering prowess, but that wasn't to be. We had far more important things to worry about than admiring the technology of the Gate.

Misaki and Oriana followed closely behind me as I led the way, drawn by that sense of twisting in the astral flow. It was too faint to recognize exactly, but I didn't think Oriana's efforts had led us astray. It was, as I'd already reasoned, the perfect place for Eirene to hide from the Pillars and their subordinate arcane houses.

After a few moments, we came to another intersection and I stopped, closing my eyes briefly as I focused again on that perturbation in the loose mana. It was here, it was not moving, and it was close—within a few dozen meters. I opened my eyes again and noticed something very interesting about the security sensors mounted at the corners of each building.

Misaki realized it, too. “The sensor arrays are down.”

“We've entered a displacement field.”

“Did we?” I frowned at the Order Magician. I hadn't felt anything—no change in the way I perceived color, none of the odd hazy visual artifacting I'd expect from an active field effect. “It doesn't feel like the one you generated—”

A familiar slender figure seemed to materialize from the air in front of us. Motes of shadow began to coalesce and darken, gathering together into the shape of the former Second Pillar of Heaven, the immortal sorceress Eirene.

She looked much the same as she had the last time I'd seen her. The characteristic neatness and precision of appearance was still gone. Her hair had grown long in the months since we'd last spoken, and her empty eyes were still flat ovals of gray glass. Eirene looked far more ragged than I'd ever seen her. The practiced, studious precision of appearance that had always marked her seemed to be an indication of the ordered nature of her mind and goals. Now it looked as if she'd just let herself go.

Neither she nor I spoke at first, but I could see a spark of the old light return to those gray eyes, which were much rounder and larger than I remembered them. Her expression was unreadable, but it was obvious she hoped, but hadn't expected, for me to seek her out.

“Karin,” Eirene mumbled. Her snow-white cheeks flushed faintly with the barest hint of pink, the only indication that she was even slightly affected by my presence. “I… I didn't expect to see you again.”

“Well, you did try to attack Rika,” I reminded her, keeping my voice even. “You also manipulated me, forced me to fuse with the Relic, nearly tricked me into passively standing by and allowing the deaths of billions, all so that you could raise me up into the Astral Terminus and save Aestivar from becoming the imaginary vengeful god he worships.”

“Yes, that is so.” Eirene stared at me with a dull, unhappy expression. “I see no reason to deny what you already know.”

“It wasn't all that difficult to figure out.” I shot a warning glance at Misaki—I could already tell she was getting worked up with the way her ears were smashed against her head like that—and turned back to face the mysterious mage. “I really should have put all the pieces together sooner, but I'm aware of my own limitations. Subtlety has never been my strong suit, even when it's the clumsy kind.”

The Second Pillar was silent for a long time. I guess she was considering her response, though I couldn't sense any anger from her. My emotional sensing ability only extended to ordinary humans, though, and Eirene was about as un-ordinary as possible. Though she no longer drew on corrupted energies to fuel her invocations, her essential nature was still more astral than material. The Pillars had embraced corruption to fight corruption and had predictably become corrupted themselves along the way. Eirene realized this at some point. The stains on her soul remained, though.

“Why are you here, then?” Eirene inquired, the smallest trace of pleading entering her hollow-sounding tone. “If you know what I intended, then why do you seek me out? You are powerful enough to slay Aestivar, though not without difficulty. The seed of the apocalypse you seek to prevent is not here. Leave me to my solitude.”

“That's an awful lot of self-pity I'm hearing for one who spent years playing us like pawns on a chess board,” Misaki snarled. “We're not here for a social call, obviously. Take the poor-little-me act and shove it up your ass; we've got more important things to discuss.”

The Second Pillar glared disdainfully, a little of her old haughtiness returning. “I do not expect a mockery of life to understand.”

Misaki's scowl deepened. “Shut the fuck up.”

I rolled my eyes in exasperation and fixed a hard glare on Eirene, knowing exactly what it would take to drag her out of despair and make her stop wallowing in self-pity, but I wasn't giving anything out for free. I wanted to get as much as I could out of her.

“Let's say you're right, and we manage to defeat Aestivar and his horde. Let's say that humanity does prove to be stronger than the Pillars' expected. None of this is certain at all, but for the sake of argument, let's say that we 'win.'” I paused for a moment and took a cigarette out of my jacket, lighting it with a tiny silver flame. “How many people are going to die? How many more will suffer? What will our world even look like after such a war? Will it even function properly after the miasma corruption permanently distorts the fundamental mechanisms of nature?”

Eirene didn't respond to that, but it was fine. I didn't expect her to. I puffed away at my smoke for a few moments before continuing, flicking a bit of ash onto the ground.

“We want to stop this before it happens, and I know you know how it can be done. You know what Aestivar intends to do and you know how it can be stopped. You know the details of his plans, how he intends to reach the Astral Terminus, and how he intends to take control of it.”

“I can't—”

“I'm offering you what you tried to do to me without my consent.” My scowl deepened as I fixed the ancient mage with a contemptuous glare. “I just want to make sure it happens before the whole planet gets wrecked and billions of people are slaughtered. This is what you wanted, right? To put someone else in control of the source of all magic before Aestivar could seize it for his imaginary god?”

“No!” Eirene's dead eyes were wide and wild. “You cannot interfere until the time is right, until Aestivar has passed through the veil and defeated the—” She broke off abruptly. The dull, lifeless expression returned to her face and she simply stared at me. To say she looked desolate would be a massive understatement.

“Neutralized the what, Eirene?” I demanded. “Start talking.”

“I will not tell you.”

Oriana shifted uncomfortably next to me, and Misaki took a step closer to her, curling her tail around the woman's body. I appreciated the fact that neither of them were attempting to help; Eirene was already unstable enough to start flinging explosions around at the slightest provocation and I needed to handle this delicately. It wasn't my strong suit, but it definitely wasn't Misaki's, and Oriana knew only a little of the situation.

“If you want to save Aestivar, why are you doing this? Why are you letting this awful thing happen? Why aren't you trying to stop him from destroying everything?” I let my voice soften a bit and turned my best earnest expression on the Second Pillar. “Tell me how I can stop him from breaching the boundary and I promise I'll do everything in my power to save his soul.”

“I… you cannot. I cannot be a part of this, Karin. If you use the Celestial's power to enter through the neutral locus before Aestivar… everything will be lost. It will sense you, and at full strength, It will destroy you utterly. No one will be left to contest its mastery of the Terminus, and through its dominion, Aestivar will be lost forever.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

I glanced at Misaki and suppressed a grim smile. I didn't expect she'd be able to remain silent for very long, though her question was unnecessary at this point. Though I didn't know exactly what Eirene was referring to, I could make a pretty good guess.

“You're talking about the first spectral entity?”

Eirene blinked, and nodded. “The Defiled One, the Bringer of Plagues, a fallen angel with broken wings of pestilence. It is the progenitor of all specters, the source of the infectious corruption that has blackened the heavens.”

Despite the heavy religious language Eirene used, I knew at least in theory what she was going on about. We'd known for a while that miasma was altered, corrupted astral energy. From what Rika told us, it was logical to conclude miasma wasn't a natural part of her world. What it really was and where it originally came from were questions I couldn't answer, but it made sense that there was a vector. From that vector, the infection spread, birthing more and more specters and creating more and more miasma.

“It didn't have to be like this,” Eirene whispered.

“What?”

“You released the Celestial when it was bound to you. You could have done what needed to be done, but you… you refused! You were unwilling to sacrifice, and instead you chose to inflict terrible suffering on others. That is a much greater evil.”

“Enslaving Rika and forcing her to destroy herself would have been the evil choice,” I retorted, trying not to let myself get too angry, but it was difficult. “Not to mention the whole eating her soul part. Oh yes, that's a much greater evil.”

Eirene glared at me.

“You can't blame this on me, no matter how much you want to,” I said, taking a last few puffs off my cigarette before dropping it and grinding it out under my boot heel. “I didn't set these events into motion and I sure as hell didn't involve myself by choice. You forced it on me, remember? Now I'm taking control of this scheme. I'm not going to sit around and let billions suffer and die just to save your malevolent ex-husband's soul.”

“Please, Karin Ashley… do not,” Eirene implored. “I beg of you, wait. Not for my sake, but for the sake of your people. If it possesses him, it will gain a native understanding of this world! It may even be able to cross the veil. Mankind will surely be destroyed!”

“Maybe. Maybe we'll all die—and that's only assuming I fail. But if I don't do this, billions will absolutely die.” I turned to look at Misaki and Oriana, then closed my eyes, letting my mind travel through memory. The faces of my friends, my family, all appeared in my mind's eye—Mama, So-yi and Nicole and their child. Meilin, Soleil, Tsubame, Alicia, even Ceres and Kyrie. There was no way I could sit around and let the world go to shit just to gain a tactical advantage. “If you're not going to do things my way, I think we're done here.”

“Please, do not do this.”

I shrugged wordlessly and turned away, walking away from the intersection, heading back out of the displacement field Eirene had created.

“Karin!”

Misaki and Oriana both looked at me expectantly, and I stopped in mid-stride. I didn't bother to turn around. “If you want to save him, you need my help. If you want to grant him rest and release, you're going to have to cooperate. We do it my way, or we don't do it at all.”

Silence.

“If that's your answer, then…”

I started to walk again, but I felt a tug on my jacket sleeve. I turned back to Eirene, and I noticed there was more spark in her eyes than I'd seen in a long time. A grimace twisted her lips and she stared at me.

“If… if you are determined to see this suicidal course through, then I have no choice but to do everything I can to ensure you succeed.” The woman brushed unruly strands of black hair from her face and tucked them behind her ear. “I offer myself into your service, Lady Ashley, and will follow your commands.”

pale expanse

Rain lashed down from the sky, striking the plate-glass window with an uneven staccato that quickly intensified into an indistinguishable roar. Heaven's Gate was frequently hit by heavy rains, which wasn't too surprising given its location and the rapidly-accelerating effects of global climate change. Though nearly every society on earth had shifted or begun to shift as close to carbon-neutral as they could, it was too late to stop the worst of the changes.

Astraea sat next to me, sipping a cup of coffee as the two of us stared out the window. Neither of us spoke for a long time. Not that I needed her to speak to know how she felt; the relief washing off of her in waves was almost palpable. The intruder had been located without incident and the Gate security forces were none the wiser. The AEGIS controller was only too happy to allow Eirene to make use of the agency's outpost to get cleaned up, so long as it meant she would be leaving with us as soon as possible.

The door to Astraea's office opened and Eirene stepped into the room. I turned my head and gave her a once-over. She certainly seemed to look like she had pushed off the worst of her despair. Her hair had been fashionably styled in a short pixie cut that worked well with the clothing she'd been provided. The outfit wasn't nearly as elegant as the suits she typically preferred, but the maroon cable-knit sweater and neat black denim pants did look rather nice on her, especially paired with soft brown leather ankle boots.

Her gray eyes were clear, if not bright, and she looked as if she'd awakened from a long and fitful slumber. The typical lack of emotion I'd become accustomed to was nowhere to be found, and when she realized I was staring at her, a pink flush stained her cheeks. Because Eirene was, like me, more spirit than human, I couldn't get a clear sense of her emotions, but I didn't need to. It was obvious just by looking at her that the humanity she'd so deeply buried was revealing itself.

“You look much better,” I commented.

“I… thank you.”

Astraea glanced at the Second Pillar with a suspicious expression on her face. “You plan to leave Heaven's Gate with Lady Ashley, correct?”

The door opened again and Misaki strode into the room, giving Eirene a dirty look and a dismissive swat with her tail as she passed by. After stopping by the counter to obtain a cup of tea, my wife sat down in the chair next to mine and scooted it close enough that she could lean against my shoulder.

“She's leaving, yes,” I said. “I don't believe we'll be working directly together, but Eirene has at least promised not to return to Heaven's Gate. With her displacement invocation active, none of the island's security systems should have detected her.”

“Good,” Misaki muttered.

Astraea nodded and tapped a few commands into the console on her desk. The windows became opaque and the office darkened a touch before the automatic lighting brightened. I heard a click as the auto-lock to Astraea's office engaged.

“Director Ceres wished to speak with you upon the completion of your mission here. I can connect you with her secure line now.”

“Go ahead.” I straightened in my chair, jostling Misaki and earning a dirty look directed at me, as well. My partner made a frustrated noise and straightened up herself, squaring her shoulders and doing her best to look professional.

The display panel on the far wall flickered as it powered on, and after a moment, the image resolved itself into Ceres's face. She seemed as efficient and no-nonsense as usual, but I could see a bit of weariness at the corners of her eyes, an exhaustion and tension that dragged the corners of her polite smile down just a bit.

Ceres's eyes moved on the screen, toward Eirene, and her tired smile widened. “I see you've obtained her cooperation. Not that I doubted you, of course.”

“It's good someone respects our capabilities,” Misaki complained. Then her gaze sharpened and her ears flattened just a bit. “Did something happen? I didn't think you'd need to talk to us so badly that it couldn't wait until we got back to the mainland.”

“Something, yes.” Ceres's expression became grave as she regarded the four of us. “Using data obtained by an agent attached to the Directorate, we've managed to locate the fabrication plant that is producing spectral anchors.”

My eyes went round in surprise and I nearly choked on my coffee. After a moment or two of coughing and trying to catch my breath again, I stared at Ceres's image on the monitor. “You're not fucking with me, are you?”

“I'm deadly serious, Lady Ashley,” Ceres assured me. “We know where those things are being made, and the agency is preparing a mission to destroy the facility as we speak. Considering that these devices are a critical component of Aestivar's plan, I suspect a frontal assault on the facility will draw the First Pillar out into the open.”

“That is so. Aestivar's minions are not so numerous as to summon and bind millions of dark spirits unaided.” Eirene's grim expression darkened even further and she turned away, refusing to look at the image of Ceres on the screen. “If the production of anchors is halted, Aestivar will be unable to weaken the boundary sufficiently or obtain enough miasma to destroy it. He will have no choice but to take matters into his own hands.”

“Our people reached the same conclusion.”

Eirene snorted softly. “Your warriors will be slaughtered.”

“Ceres knows that, Eirene,” I noted. “She wouldn't be planning this kind of thing unless she had a team already assembled with the power to stand against the Pillars.” My eyes narrowed in suspicion, as I had a pretty good idea who was on that team. “How did you manage to get Soleil and Tsubame to go along with this?”

The director of AEGIS shrugged. “I did nothing. It was Meilin's doing.”

“She's leading the strike team?”

“Correct.” Ceres frowned and her hand left the frame before returning, holding a coffee mug of her own. She sipped at it for a moment and set it down on her desk with an oddly loud clatter. “I've ensured her team will be well-supported, but even with two Relics, the likelihood of success is still rather low.”

Misaki's ears shot straight up and she stared, openmouthed, at the screen. “Wait—two Relics? When—where the hell did you find a second one? You can't possibly be thinking about going, too, are you? Because that would be a very bad idea.”

“Don't worry, Misaki—I have no illusions that I would last long on such a battlefield.” The woman let out a rueful, self-deprecating chuckle. “Kyrie has volunteered to join the strike team, but I will remain here.”

I looked at my partner and shook my head. “Meilin bound with the Shattered Sword… only, no, that can't be all of it. Something significant took place.” My vision went unfocused for a moment as the dual consciousnesses twined together seemed to waver and shift. Memories flashed through my mind—not my own memories, but Rika's, rising to the surface of my thoughts as naturally as if I'd witnessed the events myself. “The Relic was imbued with a new guardian spirit and it repaired itself. That's… interesting, I guess?”

“You have a talent for understatement, love,” my wife grumbled.

“It's also true.” Ceres sighed and took another drink from her mug. “I didn't want to put Meilin back into the firing line this quickly, but time is not on our side. We have no choice but to strike hard and fast,  before the Pillars can reinforce the defenses or, worse yet, move the facility elsewhere.”

“So you've got Meilin, the Relic's new spirit, plus Soleil, Tsubame and Kyrie,” I mused aloud, only peripherally aware of the other people in the room. “That is a lot of specter-killing power in one team. What do you think, Eirene?”

The former Second Pillar blinked at me in surprise. “I did not think you would wish for my counsel.”

“You know Aestivar better than anyone. He was your husband, after all.”

A flash of pain was visible in Eirene's gray eyes for just the barest of moments, but she quickly pushed it aside and turned toward the image of Ceres on the screen. “The factory itself will be guarded by specters and allied summoners, but it is Aestivar himself that is the true danger. In his mortal life, he was the most skilled warrior I have ever known. He has had a thousand years to grow even stronger.”

“You believe the strike team will fail, then,” Ceres reasoned.

“Without my aid, yes.”

Both Misaki and I gawked at Eirene. Neither of us expected something like that out of her, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made in light of what we'd already discussed. I'm sure Eirene would have liked to be peacefully reunited with her lover, but that desire was little more than a fantasy. Everything she'd done to me, everything she'd done to betray her former comrades, all of it was painstakingly planned and engineered to result in the death of Aestivar before he could take control of the Astral Terminus.

“I see.” Ceres's expression was unreadable, and since she wasn't actually here, I couldn't sense her emotions at all. “What assurances can you give me that you will not betray my people and assist your former lover?”

“I want to save him,” Eirene replied in a voice so small I could barely hear it. “If only I could talk to him, convince him that this course is folly, that he has been led astray…” Tears gathered in the corners of the woman's eyes and she let out a slow, ragged breath. “It matters not. It has spent the past several centuries nurturing his hatred—for me, for the world, for what he views as the countless sins of humanity. Aestivar cannot be turned from his course. If I confront him directly, he will not hesitate to slay me, and I will kill him. It is the only reason I still draw breath.”

“You won't survive the battle, either, will you?” I asked, though in truth I already knew the answer. The strange expression of peace and resignation on Eirene's face spoke volumes.

The Second Pillar shook her head.

I turned back to the monitor. “Is that good enough for you?”

“I wish I could afford to be more careful than this,” the director of AEGIS muttered, her lips twisting into a grimace, “but the situation is dire, and the agency has no strength to spare. We're already giving more than we have.”

“Understatement of the century,” Misaki commented.

The faintest ghost of a wry smile curved Ceres's lips. When she turned her attention back to me, I could again see the desolation in her eyes, even if I couldn't sense it through the drifting astral currents. That despair wasn't total; there was a tiny glint of hope there, too.

Eirene shifted in her chair uncomfortably. “It will be best if you do not directly attach me to Meilin's strike team. If I remain hidden until the battle has worn on, I will have a much better chance to take Aestivar by surprise.”

“Wouldn't he be able to sense your presence?”

The Second Pillar shook her head. “I excised the miasma from my soul long ago. If he could discern my whereabouts, I would have been slain long ago.” She shivered visibly, and it was hard not to notice just how overwhelmed Eirene was at all the emotions building up within her as her ancient quest was finally about to come to an end.

Ceres's image remained still and silent for a long time, ostensibly considering the situation and all of its nuances. Even though I had strong personal distaste for Eirene—after all, she'd completely hijacked my life and derailed nearly every part of it, forcing me to lose my humanity and become a half-spirit, turning me into a tool with which she could use to thwart her husband's schemes—I still trusted that she'd act in her own self-interest.

“I feel like I'm going to regret this, but… I agree to this plan, on one condition.” Ceres sighed, finally breaking her silence after nearly a full three minutes. “Eirene, will you consent to follow my orders?”

“If Lady Ashley commands it of me,” the Second Pillar replied without hesitation.

“I feel like I'm going to regret this,” I echoed, giving Ceres a dirty look that elicited a slight but sympathetic nod, “but what the fuck ever. Work with the strike team to kill Aestivar, but I'm not putting you under AEGIS control.”

Ceres's image scowled at me. “Karin.”

“I'll grant you that the agency under your leadership is a hell of a lot better than Blondie's, but I'm not stupid enough to believe that your superiors share your values.” In fact, I knew for a fact that President Green didn't, but of course I didn't actually say that. A sour expression crossed my face as I realized if all went well, I would be placed in a position of such power that my commitment to my values would be tested like never before.

Of course, I still had no idea how much of that entity would still be “me.” It wasn't a pleasant line of thinking and I tried not to dwell on it.

“I will fight with your warriors,” Eirene promised.

“Very well.” The director of AEGIS pursed her lips as her fingers flew across the haptic keyboard interface built into her desk. “You will receive a sending from Kyrie with the particulars of our assault.”

I offered her a faint smile. “Thanks, Ceres.”

The connection dissolved without further words spoken. I yawned and stretched my arms above my head. I didn't feel ready, but there was no more time to waste. We made our date with destiny, as the cliché old saying went.

“The agency will arrange for air travel to any destination you require,” Astraea informed us, more to fill the silence than anything else.

“Good.” I closed my eyes and let out a slow breath. After a moment's introspection, I turned toward the former Second Pillar and fixed her with a critical glare. Eirene stiffened in response, the uncertainty in her expression deepening under my scrutiny.

“We've held up our end of the bargain,” I informed her, tapping on the smooth surface of the table to emphasize my words. “Now it's your turn. Tell us exactly how and where Aestivar intends to part the veil and cross into the astral world.”

The Second Pillar grimaced and turned away. “His servants are creating a singularity of dark mana to exploit the shifted reality within a neutral locus, expanding the area of distorted space. It is here that he plans to gain entry.”

“What does that mean?” Misaki demanded.

“The places where Rika's summoning inadvertently mangled the fabric of reality—they're the weakest spots in the boundary, an ideal place to try and punch through.” I let my gaze drift away from Eirene and toward the gray skies outside, rain slashing against the plate-glass window. “It's much easier to break something if you focus your efforts where its structure is the least stable.”

Eirene's expression was solemn. “Aestivar directs the miasma to gather within the neutral locus. His servants work to condense and compress it further and further, fueling the birth of a dark prominence. If the gathering is not stopped, the invocations not dispelled, it will eventually reach critical density and collapse.”

meilin's chapter

/

wrath

calamity

Meilin shifted in her chair and sighed. It had only been a day since the reunion. She hadn't been able to keep it together, especially not after Alicia forgave her with an ease that stole her breath and sent the tears streaming down her cheeks.

Gabriel agreed to take care of Alicia without hesitation, as Meilin knew he would, and she felt her love and devotion to that wonderful man burning brightly in her soul. They'd taken Alicia to the airport early in the morning, seeing her off as she boarded her flight. It was Alicia's first true mission, the first time she was called to help others and fight against the corruption in the best way she could.

The huntress smiled to herself. Amber had been so puffed up with pride for her adopted child that she could scarcely contain it and had to be firmly placed back on task by Soleil. The Relic spirit who was once/also her younger sister now sprawled wildly across the hotel room's single bed, her arms and legs splayed outward and her tail twitching rhythmically between her legs. Every once in a while, Amber's ears flicked and swiveled, and Meilin wondered if she was dreaming.

Do Relic spirits even dream? It wasn't something she'd ever thought of before. One of many things, really, since the peculiarities of a Relic spirit's existence was never so close to her heart as it was now. Misaki and Tsubame were close friends, yes, but this was different, and not simply because she and Amber were bound together by the Fang of the Rising Storm.

Meilin's musings were shattered by a sudden chime, breaking the silence. She picked up her phone off the table and woke it to check her notifications. An extra layer of security covered the special messaging system and she waited while the decryption completed. As was standard with such communications, the message was short and to the point.

Preparations complete; report to 43A west outpost immediately for further instruction.

She set the phone back down, not bothering to type out a reply—none was expected, and she had to proceed with the unenviable task of waking up her sister. She walked over to the bed and none-too-gently nudged the sleeping form.

“Hey, wake up. We've got orders.”

Amber's ears flicked sharply and she stirred, but didn't wake up. Meilin sighed heavily and shoved harder, nearly pushing her sister off the bed. One eye opened and stared murderously at the unfortunate soul who had dared interrupt her rest, but it was a futile gesture and Amber knew it.

“Put your clothes back on,” Meilin grumbled.

“We have a location?”

The Directorate agent crossed her arms over her chest. “I wouldn't be trying to drag you out of dreamland if we didn't. Come on, we've got to head to the area outpost.”

“Do we need to go pick up Soleil and Tsubame?”

Meilin shook her head. “I'm sure they've already been contacted and are on their way. If we hurry, we might get there before the external collaborators and not look so lazy.” She nudged Amber again, favoring her sister with a grin. “Hurry up and get dressed so we can get going.”

“Yeah, yeah, I'm getting up.”

Amber levered herself into a sitting position and started to sift through the pile of discarded clothing near the bed. Considering how much she imbibed—and ate—she seemed even more hale and hearty than Meilin herself, who intentionally abstained from alcoholic beverages at the reunion dinner.

The two of them were walking out the door within five minutes, and took to the road in their rented vehicle. Despite it being well after midnight, the streets of San Francisco were still quite busy, especially as they drove through the downtown area and headed north and east. The streets thinned and emptied out as they made their way toward the old financial district.

Nearly all of the damage from the quake had been repaired, but the destruction wrought by soil liquefaction made it impossible to keep stacking tall office buildings and expensive condos. The land that sank those towers had been shored up, reinforced with technology similar to that used in the construction of the artificial island Heaven's Gate, and replaced with much-needed residential districts.

Meilin put a bit more pressure on the accelerator as the car went up a ramp and onto the stabilized platform that covered the land, providing new construction with firm foundations that would be impervious to all but the most apocalyptic quakes. The streets were mostly empty at this time of night in the new districts. Here, most of the businesses closed at eight or nine in the evening, with only a few blocks here and there dedicated to offering the late-night crowd the entertainment they sought. Most would head deeper into the city where the night life was more lively.

AEGIS's outpost in San Francisco was hidden within a city government building located within easy access of the major transit hub and the bridge that spanned the bay itself. Unassuming and mislabeled, as usual, the outpost was on the fifth floor. Meilin pulled her car into the building's “underground” parking lot within the stabilized platform.

The guardhouse was empty and the lot was ostensibly closed at this hour. She stopped the car in front of the barricade and took out her phone, tapping out a sequence of commands into the secure messaging application. Less than a few seconds later, the red light flashed green and the barricade slid aside. Meilin waited a few more moments for the tire spikes to retract before driving down the incline into the parking area.

“It's a bit creepy,” Amber commented.

“What is?”

“The silence, the emptiness. Are there even any guards keeping watch?”

“Not human ones, if that's what you mean,” Meilin replied. “Most everyone uses security drones these days. Much cheaper to field than paying people, especially with the effects of the city's basic income initiatives. We've been cleared through the system, of course—the agency has backdoor access to all the drones assigned to this building.”

Amber snorted. “Drones aren't much use against specters, though.”

“No, but they can still be used to detect intrusions, whether by specters or people. I'm sure AEGIS thought of that, too. The last thing the agency needs is for local cops to be stumbling upon such an intruder.” Meilin shrugged and gestured to a black sedan near one of the secure elevators that would lead to the outpost. “That's an official vehicle—probably how Tsubame and Soleil got here, since they don't have a car of their own.”

“Guess we're the ones who look lazy.”

They parked next to the government car and walked to the elevator. Amber's ears swiveled around and her tail, the fur fluffed out a bit, lashed back and forth anxiously. Meilin suppressed a smile. AEGIS-related stuff had always made her sister nervous, even during the woman's mortal life, but it seemed more pronounced now that she was reborn as the spirit of the Relic.

Meilin placed her hand on the auto-lock panel and the doors to the lift opened with a quiet hiss of escaping gas. She stepped inside, followed closely by Amber, and the two of them waited in silence as the elevator ascended.

The doors slid opened as the OLED readout above the threshold indicated they were on the fifth floor. Like the parking garage, the corridors that stretched out from the elevator lobby were quiet and empty. Meilin could see the faint glow of some interior light coming from the right-hand hallway. Most of the outpost would have been shut down at this hour, though the Directorate agent didn't worry about any locked doors. Her security clearance granted her near-limitless access to the agency's resources and facilities, second only to the director herself.

“This way, it seems,” she muttered, gesturing toward the door at the end of the hallway. Other doors lined the walls, but only one cast a dim pallor into the corridor. Meilin tapped the smaller auto-lock panel and the door clicked, allowing her to push it open easily.

“It's about time you got here,” a familiar sweet-sounding voice announced.

“Blame Amber,” Meilin groused. “She may look wolfish, but sleeps like a hibernating bear. It took me almost ten minutes to get her to drag herself out of bed.”

The reincarnated Relic spirit's ears twitched indignantly. “I do not. And it was more like three minutes.”

Soleil grinned at the rejoinder from her place at the small room's table. Next to her sat Tsubame, the imbued spirit of the Dagger of the Bright Swallow, sitting silently with her fingers knitted together on her lap. Standing at a podium near a massive widescreen display was Kyrie, the Relic spirit and Meilin's counterpart as Ceres's most trusted agents. As usual, the woman's thick black hair was bound with her customary red ribbon, but it was also tightly braided and wound into a secure bun, to keep it out of the way during the fighting to come.

“It's just the five of us?” Amber asked as she pulled a chair out and took her seat next to Tsubame.

“Unfortunately, the agency cannot spare any others, and… frankly speaking, there are no others who would be able to survive a mission like this.” The words were bleak and her tone grim, but Kyrie's ruby eyes glittered with determination. “The five of us, working together, have a greater chance of succeeding against the factory's defenses.”

“Not to mention the First Pillar himself, once he takes the field,” Soleil added.

Kyrie grimaced. “Yes. Unfortunately yet again, we have very little intelligence on our primary target, but at least we know a little about the factory itself.” The Relic spirit tapped a command on the podium's keyboard and the display behind her flickered to life. A static image of a schematic appeared—not an architectural blueprint, but a tactical map created from all that AEGIS knew of the facility itself.

“The factory is located in a flat, barren part of the desert, an ideal location for the sake of security as well as convenience. It is owned and operated by NanoSynth, a company that specializes in the manufacture of certain types of microprocessors and other components used in the computing industry.”

Several more images flashed across the screen, displaying aerial and satellite photos of the factory. From the outside, at least, it looked completely innocuous and ordinary. There were two main structures connected to parking lots and several warehouses, some of which were almost as large as the fabrication plants themselves. The level of detail was such that it was easy enough to make out the shipping and receiving docks and the sections marked off specifically for automated cargo haulers.

“It looks just like any other semiconductor fab,” Meilin mused. “From the outside, at least.”

“And the inside, as near as we can tell.” Kyrie tapped her keys again and another series of images appeared on the screen, followed by a handful of short video clips navigating the interior of the fabs. “Our data suggests that both Fab 1 and Fab 2 are completely legitimate. The larger of the two, Fab 1, manufactures CL-3D RAM chips. Such capability was one of the critical factors that led us to this facility.”

“What the hell is a CL-3D RAM chip?” Amber queried.

“It's a newer technology for creating memory chips of greater density and capabilities while maintaining power efficiency.” Kyrie shrugged and tapped the screen again. “This is relevant because a variant of the same process was used to create the spectral anchors. Rather than creating a device to manipulate electricity, NanoSynth developed a method to manufacture tiny, nanometer-scale artificial astral patterns, etched onto wafers of crystalline quintessence.”

Meilin's expression was pensive. “That explains how they're able to bind so many specters to a single device, but it still doesn't show us where they're doing it. The equipment required to do this kind of thing would have to be completely custom-designed and purpose built. They can't possibly be using ordinary tools to do it.”

“We believe there is a hidden, third fabrication plant, hidden underground beneath Fab 1 and using variants of the technology NanoSynth pioneered for CL-3D chip manufacturing.”

Soleil frowned and adjusted her glasses. “How can you be sure of that?”

“We weren't, at first,” Kyrie admitted, “but we took a closer look, and this is what we found.”

The Relic spirit pressed a button and the screen shifted yet again, this time replaced with a large heat map showing the semiconductor fab and the desert immediately surrounding it. Meilin stared at the map and muttered a curse under her breath.

Kyrie chuckled aloud. “Ceres had a similar reaction. Through the use of displacement fields and various other methods, the Pillars managed to keep the incredible miasma concentrations hidden from view—but they were unable to completely cloak its turbulent effect on the ambient mana. From the data we obtained… we may have found the single densest concentration of miasma ever recorded.”

Soleil and Tsubame glanced at each other, then at Meilin.

“Densest concentration of miasma,” echoed Amber. “Looks like we're about to go knock on Aestivar's front door. And here we were worried that he might not intervene and give us the chance to face him directly.”

“Well, he had to be somewhere.” Kyrie closed down the display and stepped off the podium, heading toward the small counter across the room. She drew a cup full of hot water from an electric kettle, placing a mesh metal ball of loose tea leaves inside the mug. “It makes sense that Aestivar would choose to lair near the most valuable and delicate component of his plan. A fabrication plant like this, even without the 'cover' of a legitimate factory above, would be impossible to relocate quickly.”

Amber eyed the other Relic spirit as she took a seat at the table and sipped her tea. “Picking up some of Misaki's habits, are you?”

“Maybe a little,” Kyrie admitted with a smile. “She recommended this variety and I've found it to be very much to my liking.”

“What's our timeframe look like?” Soleil asked.

“Preparation for the mission has already begun. There's a repulsion gunship standing by on the roof helipad, loaded up with all the gear we need.”

“They'll be able to track that.”

Kyrie nodded to Meilin. “Yes, so we'll be deploying a fair distance away from the facility itself, outside of their detection range. Our initial objective is to cause as much damage as possible to the facility above before breaching the inner defenses and gaining access to the hidden factory.” The red-eyed spirit frowned and took another sip from her mug. “This mission relies much more heavily on brute force than subtlety and subterfuge—”

“That places Soleil at a marked disadvantage,” Tsubame interrupted, a concerned look in her crystal-blue eyes. “The Bright Swallow's powers are not suited for direct warfare, and Soleil's area of expertise is more in the areas of sabotage, surveillance and assassination.”

“I've reviewed the dossiers of everyone present, and I believe I have developed a battle strategy that will take full advantage of our individual strengths and minimize any weaknesses.” Kyrie paused for a moment, her ruby eyes narrowing and her expression becoming grim as she continued. “Our primary objective is to destroy the facility; the First Pillar won't hesitate to use all of his immense power to stop us.”

“Sounds like a suicide mission to me,” Amber commented, her tone thick with sarcasm.

Kyrie shook her head firmly. “It's my job to make sure it won't be.”

final approach

Meilin grimaced as she adjusted the straps securing the unmarked combat armor to her body, careful to ensure the ceramic trauma plate was lined up properly in front of her heart. The damn things weren't exactly intended for the presence of breasts and it compressed against her chest uncomfortably.

The huntress sighed and closed her eyes. Discomfort was likely to be the least of her worries soon enough, but they weren't on the ground just yet. The whine of the repulsion gunship's engines thrummed quietly through the sound-dampened fuselage of the aircraft; outside, the noise would be loud but not the thunderous thud-thud-thud of a helicopter's rotors. It didn't matter that much, in any case, as the gunship's pilot would be setting them down in a shallow valley near the rocky hills that overlooked the NanoSynth factory.

Spending the next few minutes checking her gear, Meilin tried very hard not to let her mind drift too far from the objective at hand. There was no getting around it; her chance of survival was vanishingly small, especially once they engaged the First Pillar himself in combat. Failure wasn't something she liked to contemplate outside of formulating a contingency plan.

No such contingencies could be put in place this time. The tactical plan laid out by Kyrie was short and uncomplicated because the nature of their task was only slightly removed from wanton destruction. An opening bombardment with the most destructive offensive invocations Amber and Tsubame could muster, would punch through the outer defenses and bring Meilin, Soleil and Kyrie into the forefront of the battle. Hidden by Kyrie's misdirecting powers, Soleil would slink around the battlefield to sow chaos and death while Meilin, Amber and Tsubame engaged the factory's defenders.

The primary objective was the factory lifelines and power generation systems; the initial strike would take out the nearby substation, cutting the facility off from the power grid and forcing a switch to auxiliary generators. From the intel provided by AEGIS, Meilin knew the factory possessed a miniature nuclear reactor that would automatically start up and power critical systems.

Once the initial assault began, the second phase was a clean sweep: seek out and destroy every living thing in the immediate vicinity. This immediately elicited objections from Meilin, but they were quickly silenced as Kyrie explained that the only humans physically present in the facility were summoners of House Griffith and their allies. Much of the factory's operations were automated, but those tasks that could not be were performed by bound specters rather than people.

Aestivar's mere presence leaks enough miasma to corrupt or kill humans with prolonged exposure, Meilin mused to herself as she drew her sidearm and checked it over. She racked the slide to chamber a high-density MQ round before flicking on the safety and holstering it again. Add to that the need for security and it makes perfect sense that the Pillars' allies would summon lesser specters to labor in the fabs.

Those weak specters would be the least of their worries, even though there was more than a hundred of them present. Summoners of the Griffith clan and other arcane houses serving Aestivar formed the facility's tough defenses. It stood to reason that the house's mages used similar devices to the astral amplifier Meilin and Amber took from Simon Griffith, enabling them to summon and bind specters that would ordinarily be far beyond their capacity.

Meilin let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and slid her shoulder from underneath the strap of her manaburst rifle—a vastly improved and redesigned version of the astral energy weapons created at the behest of Ceres's deceased predecessor. She'd checked the weapon twice already and knew well that it was ready for action, but there was little else to do while the gunship swooped down into the final approach.

“We're about to land,” Kyrie informed the team. “We'll be deploying within ninety seconds!”

Meilin glanced at Amber, standing next to her. The Relic spirit didn't bother with mundane weapons or armor, opting instead to travel light while relying on her innate astral powers. Tsubame and Kyrie were equally unburdened, and Soleil was lightly armored and armed, carrying only an automatic pistol alongside the Bright Swallow.

Further conversation was lost as the rear hatch began to slide open before the gunship even touched the ground. A sliver of early-morning sunlight illuminated the dim interior, steadily becoming brighter as the hatch opened further. Kyrie was the first to hit the ground, leaping out of the gunship before it even touched down. Amber and Tsubame were next. Meilin waited until a tremor shook the aircraft's fuselage before she took off down the ramp and out onto the sun-baked earth.

The gunship's pilot didn't hesitate. Almost before Meilin was clear the ramp started to retract and the aircraft began to rise into the sky once again, reaching a low ceiling of a few hundred meters before it streaked off toward the west. She unslung the rifle and placed her finger lightly outside the trigger guard, ready to fire at a moment's notice.

Kyrie gestured for the four others to gather around. Astral sigils glowed in the air as she traced an invocation that projected a cloaking aura of energy, bending electromagnetic radiation around their bodies. A secondary invocation followed the first, one that would allow them to see themselves and each other, albeit through an odd, shimmery haze.

“The cloak isn't perfect,” Kyrie reminded them. “The more you move, the more light will end up distorted and create a lensing effect that others can see. So long as they're not too close, though, we should be able to pass by the outer security ring undetected.”

Soleil arched a ghostly eyebrow. “What about electronic surveillance?”

“It's better at fooling cameras and human eyes than the senses of specters,” Amber said as she took up a brisk pace, the others following suit. “We'll have a lot more to worry about if one of them catches onto our presence, but that's why we have Relics, after all.”

The young woman shrugged. Meilin studied Soleil for a moment and frowned. If the girl was at all nervous about the high possibility she would die today, it certainly didn't show in her demeanor or expression. A neutral, somewhat bored look dominated her round, freckled face, but the hard edge in her eyes was colder than ice.

Kyrie placed a finger against her lips, silencing further discussion. They'd all studied the plan as much as they could in the short time alloted, but timing and execution were only truly critical for the very first stage. After Tsubame and Amber's bombardment, speed would be the key to keeping the enemy from devising an effective counter-strategy.

And, of course, all strategy would be dispensed with once the First Pillar deemed them too troublesome to ignore.

It took the strike team another ten minutes of navigating carefully through the barren, rock-strewn desert landscape. The NanoSynth facility itself was large enough that it dominated the horizon, less than a half a kilometer away. Having climbed their way out of the craggy troughs carved by ancient, long-dead rivers, Meilin felt herself gasp involuntarily at what she saw—or, more accurately, what she sensed.

A terrible burning chill settled over her. She knew without a doubt, even if it was invisible to her human eyes, that a black plume of miasmic flame raged dark and terrible somewhere very, very nearby. The sensation was so all-encompassing and smothering that she almost dropped to her knees—and then Amber was beside her, supporting her with strong arms.

“Thanks,” Meilin murmured, steadying herself with her sister's help.

The Relic spirit grinned. “Of course.”

“You feel it, too, don't you?”

Amber's lupine ears flattened against her head. “Yeah, I do. Not as strongly as you do, but I can tell it's there. It's like… I don't know, super-concentrated miasma, but it's so incredibly pervasive that I can't tell exactly where it is.”

“Right.” Meilin pulled herself up an angled rock formation that protruded a few meters above the ground, following Kyrie and Soleil as they made their way to the top of the rocky outcropping. It would be from this position that Amber would begin the bombardment of the facility, while Tsubame used her unique powers to take to the sky and rain death down from above.

Amber sprang up to the flat part of the projection and held out a hand, taking Meilin's and pulling her up onto the ledge with casual ease. The woman had always been physically powerful, but her rebirth as an imbued spirit seemed to push her strength far beyond what a human would ever be capable of.

“Tsubame is in position,” Kyrie noted.

“I'm ready, too.” Amber took a step forward, standing only a meter from the edge above a ten-meter dropoff. They were only about four hundred meters from the factory itself, relying on Kyrie's invisibility cloak to ensure they weren't detected too soon.

Meilin flicked the safety off and shouldered her manaburst rifle, sighting down the adaptive optical targeting scope. The laser rangefinder gave her an exact number—three hundred eighty-one point four meters—and she settled the crosshairs on a cluster of gas storage tanks marked with a half-dozen warning labels. The only one Meilin really cared about was the “flammable” icon.

“Begin your invocations,” Kyrie said.

The huntress took a deep breath and waited. Her part in this would be the simplest, a gentle caressing of the trigger that would send a raging torrent of unstable astral energy into her target. While she'd never used the manaburst weapon in combat before, the effect seemed to be on par with Karin's dematerialization powers, though not nearly as precise.

Astral energy flowed into the Relic through her, a seething font of power that sang across the bond between her, the Fang and Amber. The air around them began to whip and whistle. Small bits of rock and dust were blown about, but Meilin held her target calmly. Crackling bursts of violet-white lightning began to crawl and arc from Amber's outstretched hands, converging into a central glowing sphere of intensely bright plasma.

She couldn't see Tsubame from here, as the spirit of the Bright Swallow had already taken to the air on wings of shimmering blue-white. Next to her, only a couple of meters away, the sphere of raging destruction had doubled in size, resembling a miniature star that had come falling down to earth. Despite the deadly orb's proximity, Meilin felt no heat and little other effects save for a faint, acrid scent of ozone lingering in the artificial winds.

Inside the orb was a different story, and the huntress kept her focus and continued to stare down the scope of her rifle. Merely glancing directly at the astral prominence would have been a bad idea; there was no way the facility's defenders wouldn't realize what was transpiring less than half a kilometer distant.

The terrible presence she sensed before flared with awareness that sent sickening waves of revulsion through Meilin. There was no longer any turning back now; the First Pillar knew they were here. They were fully committed to the fight, with no other option but to kill or be killed.

Meilin squeezed her eyes shut, desperate to protect herself from the searing light that shone forth as Amber completed her invocation. Violent tremors shook the land and a thunderous roar swallowed up all other sound. It took all of Meilin's considerable concentration and control to maintain a steady grip on her rifle, but she was already on target and didn't need to see to know it would hit.

She squeezed the trigger. The manaburst rifle issued forth a roar of its own, barely a whisper compared to that of the awesome magic being worked around her. Her ears rang painfully despite the military-grade hearing protection she'd donned before they left the gunship.

Go!

Kyrie's command rang through her mind. Meilin opened her eyes and took off in a dead run, leaping from the edge of the rocky outcropping. A ten-meter fall, under normal circumstances, could have been fatal, but the huntress was enveloped in a protective kinetic barrier. The defensive invocation didn't care if the impact came from a bullet, a moving vehicle, or the ground as she hurtled toward it. The barrier became briefly visible, flaring a hazy purple-white as it harmlessly absorbed the impact that would have otherwise broken bones.

Meilin tumbled over into a paratrooper's roll, scrambling to her feet and bringing up her weapon as she ran. From above she could see a faint blue-white corona split apart and send a torrent of bright projectiles raining down into the smoke-choked devastation. The huntress was alone, for now, but soon would be joined by Kyrie. Soleil was nowhere to be seen, making use of the frenzied chaos to slip past the defenders' lines and strike from the shadows.

“Forward!” Kyrie cried out, amplifying her voice with a simple invocation to carry over the staccato detonations of Tsubame's withering bombardment. Crackling red energies split off from the spirit and formed two dusky projections that looked like shadows, each bearing a pair of wicked-looking glassy black blades. The two became four, and they rushed headlong through the gaping hole Amber had blasted in the exterior security fence.

The huntress gripped her rifle tightly and charged into the breach.

legion

The huntress's manaburst rifle erupted with searing energies. Half a dozen specters were obliterated by the column of violet death before it slammed into a glassy miasma shield. The defenders were in disarray, but they were powerful, and Meilin didn't expect them to stay confused for long.

All around her, a furious melee had erupted. She fought back-to-back with Kyrie and her shadowy projections. Black blood and clouds of escaping miasma mingled with the fires and smoke that poured from the buildings that had been reduced to little more than rubble.

Successive detonations ripped through the ruined factory before slacking off; Meilin threw a quick glance up at the sky and was not surprised to see Tsubame streaking through the air, a quartet of winged draconic specters trailing behind her. None of them thought the defenders wouldn't attempt to contest the wind spirit's mastery of the skies, and she would soon be forced to descend and rejoin the strike team.

More specters poured forth from the rubble. Not all of them were wounded; those that were quickly saw those wounds healed as a small knot of summoners reinforced their troops from behind a miasmic barrier. The huntress could sense an odd oscillation in how the currents of mana were redirected, digested into miasma and sent along the binding ties to the spectral minions they fought.

“Amber, the summoners—they've got those amplifiers!”

The lupine Relic spirit grinned savagely and roared a wordless challenge. Her tail lashed eagerly as she broke into a fearsome charge, both her hands shrouded in crawling arcs. Bolts of congealed miasma shot through the air, but Amber bent and twisted as she ran, diving into a roll to avoid the worst of the assault, before leaping high into the air. Thunderous bolts of electricity surged from her fists as she physically slammed into the miasmic barrier—

Meilin ducked abruptly, narrowly avoiding the slashing claws of a shardwight specter. Her eyes widened as the feint was followed with a blast of negative radiance that knocked her to the ground, but she managed to roll away from the descending crystalline claw mere moments before it would have disemboweled her. The strength of her barrier had prevented the dark projectile from doing much damage, but she was in trouble.

Screeching in otherworldly rage and hatred, the shardwight rushed into close combat, spinning and whirling a savage dance of death. Meilin let go of her rifle and pushed it behind her on the sling, materializing the Fang of the Rising Storm just in time to parry a flurry of blows that drove her scrambling back.

Behind the shardwight was a pair of thousand-eyes, but the huntress couldn't worry too much about those while the specter right in front of her was attempting to slice her to ribbons. She leaped to her feet, her muscles tingling with power as the Fang sensed her need and reinforced her physical capabilities beyond mortal limits.

Astral-forged steel met spectral talon with a ringing shriek, but thusly empowered, the huntress gritted her teeth and kept her grip on the hilt as the Relic's blade sheared through the shardwight's claw. Meilin took a single step forward, placing her well inside the specter's guard, and laid it low with a brutal backhand slash that took the monster's head and shoulders off just above the center of mass. The Fang's preternaturally-sharp edge rang shrilly as it cut through the specter's body, and she slashed again and again, sundering the dark spirit's miasmic core with a heavy vertical cleave.

The shardwight exploded into glittering fragments of reddish-black crystal and gray ash.

“Watch out!”

Clots of miasma assaulted Meilin, battering her and nearly destroying her barrier. It was a near thing, but the huntress managed to keep her feet long enough to spring into a diving thrust that buried the Fang deep in the belly of the nearest shardwight. The thing screamed in mortal agony, the sound unbearably loud in Meilin's ears despite the fact that it had no mouth. A split-second later, the specter burst apart in a shower of gore and black mist.

Yanking the Relic from the dying thing's body, Meilin whirled around to face the second specter, but it had already engaged one of Kyrie's clones.

The projected image spun a dizzying death-dance with its twin blades, slicing gash after deep gash into the thousand-eyes. Dozens of those grotesque orbs split open and spewed forth filth and the thing roared in rage and pain. Kyrie's shadow ducked to avoid a miasma blast, then stepped into a double-thrust, plunging her blades deep.

Meilin took full advantage of the opportunity, decapitating the thousand-eyes mere moments after the shadow stepped back, then spun around, gathering momentum for a disemboweling upward slash that split the monster's core in two. The knot of dark mana abruptly detonated, nearly knocking Meilin to the ground again, but instead she caught herself mid-stumble. The tip of the Relic was jammed into the cracked pavement beneath her feet as she regained her balance.

Out of nowhere, a seething line of malevolent power sliced her barrier to shreds. The huntress leaped back, narrowly avoiding a second and third beam. Tiny fragments of pulverized concrete bit into the exposed flesh of her face, the larger pieces opening superficial wounds on her forehead. Meilin ignored the stinging pain and thrust her left hand out, tracing the sigils that would restore her barrier—

“Mei, look out!”

Amber charged out from behind a flame-wreathed chunk of shattered masonry, leaping up into the air with lightning-wreathed hands reaching out for the summoner who levitated several meters above the battlefield. Presented with this new target, the man ceased his attacks on Meilin and wheeled around, lashing out with a simple blast of telekinetic force.

The Relic spirit's predatory grin widened as she twisted her body in mid-leap moments before the invisible blow struck. She grunted in pain, but her evasion spoiled the attack that should have knocked her out of the sky. Amber threw her tail back and arrested the wild spin just in time for her to slam into the summoner like a living missile.

“Going down!” Amber exclaimed gleefully, wrapping her legs around the man's torso and striking repeatedly with sizzling bursts of spell-lightining. The summoner—judging by his appearance, an assimilated survivor of House Kihara—howled in mingled pain and fear as the Relic spirit grappled him in midair.

Meilin felt her own wicked smile forming as the entangled pair began to fall to the ground, the Kihara summoner's flying invocation overwhelmed by the addition of eighty kilos. Amber didn't simply hold on, either, but continued to lash out with elementally-charged punches. The Relic spirit released her leg hold on the man and spun around as she fell, landing lightly on her feet a few meters away from her sister.

The Kihara wasn't so lucky. Bloodied and burned and barely conscious, the man had no time at all to renew his flying magic. Amber's tail curled back in anticipation and she loosed a ball of crackling electricity to finish the job, destroying what little remained of the summoner's barrier before enveloping him in a lethal shroud of lightning.

“Thanks,” Meilin bit out, racking the charging handle on her manaburst rifle. Almost casually, she raised the weapon and fired, blasting a knot of lesser specters into gory chunks of blackened meat. Great clouds of miasma had mingled with the smoke and reflected light from the fires, lending the entire scene a hellish, dusky orange glow.

“Fight now, talk later.”

Waves of specters continued to boil out of the ruined facility, though more than a few of them were trailing wispy plumes of miasma from the multitude of wounds they'd sustained. A series of explosions rocked the battlefield again and Meilin shielded her eyes from the bright flashes. When she opened them again, Tsubame had landed nearby. Intricate blue-white lines glowed in the air as the silver-haired spirit enacted a potent area defense.

A shimmering dome of pure, cool blue materialized around them, pushing back the miasma-tainted smoke and dust clouds kicked up by the battle. Amber stood beside her, the tall woman's feet planted wide as she condensed mana to form into crackling balls of incandescent power. Tsubame's defense was stationary, but like Misaki's golden barrier, it was a potent shield against miasma-based attacks. Amber's lightning orbs and Tsubame's mana plumes streaked out of the shield unaffected, while purple-black beams and clots of tortured miasma seemed to slide off the bubble like raindrops.

There was no sign of either Kyrie or Soleil, but Meilin knew both of them could take care of themselves. They were both much more suited to striking from the shadows than standing toe-to-toe with the enemy in a chaotic melee. The huntress's finger caressed the trigger again, and again, sending screaming columns of overcharged mana tearing through the ranks of lesser specters.

What should have felled dozens instead seemed to lose a significant amount of its destructive energy before striking, only wounding a handful of the weak spirits. Frowning, Meilin bent over her rifle's scope again and started to scan the area—there had to be more summoners reinforcing their minions, protecting them from the withering bombardment.

“Tsubame—to your right, two summoners. They're healing the specters!”

The elegant Relic spirit nodded grimly. “I'll take care of—”

A bloodcurdling scream echoed across the blasted tarmac. Confusion twisted Meilin's features, but she noticed Tsubame's smile and realized what had happened. The thick, choking veil of corrupt energies evaporated a moment later as a second scream followed, ending in a wet gurgle that spoke of a slashed throat.

“Soleil has those well in hand, it seems,” Tsubame noted. She raised her hands again, unfurling her glowing wings, and loosed a terrible fusillade of mana-charged feathers. Each of the destructive little missiles picked a target of their own and sought it out, twisting and diving in the air with impossible maneuverability. “How much longer will it take to draw him out?”

“I have no idea, but there's no way he doesn't know we're here.” Meilin shrugged, letting a moment pass before echoing Amber's earlier words: “Fight now, talk later.”

avatar of hate

It took another twenty minutes of bloody, frenzied violence before Tsubame's grim question was answered.

Meilin consciously attempted to slow her rapid breath and glanced at her companions. All of them were dirty and tired, streaked with sweat and soot and blood, not all of it the blood of their enemies. Amber, Tsubame and Kyrie were the most hale of the five, for Relic spirits could draw upon the mana of their counterparts to refresh themselves. Meilin and Soleil, on the other hand, were faring considerably worse.

Without warning and in near-perfect unison, the fighting stopped. Enemy summoner and specter alike allowed killing spells to die in mid-cast, releasing their unfinished processes as they fled. The ruins of the fabrication plant were eerily silent, save for the dull roar of the fires that still burned. Beneath Tsubame's azure shield, the strike team watched warily as the remaining specters and summoners rapidly pulled back.

They know they can't beat us on their own, Meilin reasoned. If the master of the house doesn't take the field himself, we'll eventually exterminate them all and have plenty of time to destroy the secret underground factory.

The huntress held her rifle tightly, unwilling to lower her guard even in the slightest. Not that she expected the weapon to be all that useful against Aestivar, and she only had a handful of shots left before the weapon was empty.

Like Karin, Aestivar had fused with his Relic and transcended his mortality, and like Isao Tsukimura, his astral pattern was augmented with a modified miasmic core. The level of power Aestivar possessed would be an order of magnitude greater than either. Experience and knowledge were more important than raw potential, and Aestivar had over a thousand years to master the godlike power he commanded.

A roaring crumble sounded in the distance, a portion of the damaged building collapsing under the strain of its own weight. Meilin ignored it and instead continued to watch vigilantly, her eyes only blinking occasionally, as she surveyed the ruins that had been abruptly emptied of both specters and summoners.

The slowly-churning currents of miasma outside Tsubame's bubble of protection began to twist and draw away. The effect was subtle enough at first that Meilin thought the wind had changed, but she quickly realized only the miasma was moving—the smoke from the fires continued to drift lazily into the air. There was not even the slightest breeze.

“He's coming,” Amber observed. “I can feel it.”

Streaks of wispy black converged and coalesced into a solid sphere of absolute black. Arcs of black-violet energy crawled over the exterior of the condensing mass, splitting the near-silence with peals of thunder louder than any natural lightning could produce. Meilin was immensely grateful for her hearing protection, but even with the heavy sound-mufflers clamped around her ears, she still winced at the booming detonations.

The sphere of darkness drew inward, reforming itself into the figure of a man, but more. Taller and larger than any mortal human, the First Pillar of Heaven brought to mind the image of a towering dark knight, the physical manifestation of an ancient god of war.

Fully three meters in height, Aestivar was encased in an archaic suit of half-plate of some dark metal that reflected the orange firelight ominously. The man wasn't just tall, but enormous—his body rippled with power both physical and magical. He flexed his huge arms and muscles moved under his sun-bronzed skin like taut steel cables. His long hair was nearly as dark in color as his armor, but it was bound up tightly against his head, likely a concession taken to allow for the heavy helm that he gripped in his right hand. At his waist he wore a sword so large and heavy that no living human could have even lifted, much less wielded.

Not his Relic—but it could be an artifact of another kind, Meilin mused silently.

Aestivar stood, silent and unmoving, for a long moment. The warrior-priest's eyes blazed with brilliant violet fire that lent him an otherworldly appearance beyond his size and apparent physical strength. His expression was serene and unreadable as he studied the intruders into his domain. No trace of contempt or anger or even irritation crossed his fierce visage.

Meilin glanced at Amber, tensed and ready to strike at her side. Fortunately the Relic spirit seemed to understand that attempting to rush their immortal opponent would lead to little more than an early death. All five of the members of the strike team held their primary objective foremost in their minds: keeping the First Pillar occupied for as long as possible, so that Karin could snatch his prize away from him.

Aestivar's cold gaze fell over each of the women, one after another, before it settled on Meilin. Those burning eyes narrowed sharply as his features twisted into a sneer of ancient hate and even older resolve.

“Few have dared offered the First Pillar of Heaven such a grievous insult,” Aestivar began, his voice holding an odd distorted resonance that whispered and thundered simultaneously. Meilin recalled a similar resonance that sometimes colored Karin's voice and was much more obvious within Rika's.

The First Pillar's tone was grim as he continued. “It is merely yet another example of the decay of morals and principles in this blighted world. To be challenged by heretics is an affront I cannot ignore.” Aestivar's sneer returned and he crossed his massive arms over his armored chest. “It is infinitely clear to me that the words of the Father have gone unremembered as He has slumbered. His Divine Word must be restored, and His Divine Will must be enforced.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” Amber demanded, her ears laying flat against her head. Her prominent fangs were visible as she let out an anticipatory snarl of bloodlust.

Aestivar ignored the Relic spirit, still focusing his attention on Meilin. “Keep your dog silent, else I will silence it for you.”

“Fuck you,” Amber snarled. Small arcs of lightning crawled across her hands.

The First Pillar raised his free hand and snapped his fingers.

An earsplitting crash heralded the instantaneous destruction of Tsubame's barrier. Hazy blue-white energies fragmented into glassy shards that dissolved into countless motes of mana. Before any of them could react, a black-violet tendril of miasmic energies erupted from the ground, slashing out to encircle Amber's body.

Roaring in pain and rage, the Relic spirit thrashed against the binding magic, to no avail. It was no ordinary restriction invocation, but a potent parasitic bond that held Amber so tightly she couldn't move, feeding on the mana stored in the Relic spirit's own astral pattern. Such an ability would become more difficult to dispel the longer it remained active.

Amber's violent struggles slowly weakened in frequency and intensity. Her face was ashen and bloodless and she seemed to be only minutes away from losing consciousness entirely.

“Return to your master and tell him of the insult he has dealt me by sending heretics and women as his herald.” Aestivar's left hand came around to the blade sheathed at his hip and drew the massive weapon with a ringing cry of steel on steel. “Let him know the depths of his cowardice and depravity and deliver to him my challenge. Beseech your lord to honor himself as a Son of Man and to beg the Heavenly Father for forgiveness.”

Meilin shrugged and materialized the Fang of the Rising Storm with a thought. In one smooth, fluid motion, the huntress swept the blade out in a powerful spinning slash that sundered the shadow bindings encircling the hunting hound's form. The Relic's edge burned with brilliant silver-violet light and let out a shrill ring as it devoured the miasma eagerly.

“I'm afraid we can't do that,” Meilin retorted.

“Oh?” Aestivar's eyebrow rose incredulously. “And why is that? Do you long for death so that you would dare stand against me? Is your master truly such a craven coward that he would send such rabble to fight his battles for him?”

The huntress laughed. “For starters, our leader isn't even a man.”

Aestivar's expression conveyed immense disgust. “The need is great, indeed, if Mankind has become so debased and degraded, ruled by heretics and women. The Father's Divine Word be heard, the Father's Divine Will be done.” The First Pillar spun his blade around in a lightning-fast flourish that seemed impossible judging the weapon's sheer size and mass. Roaring torrents of fast-moving air accompanied the ritual salute as he leveled the blade's tip at Meilin.

“This course is that of a fool. Your mission was doomed to failure before it began,” the First Pillar continued, his sword still held, steady as a rock, with the tip pointed at the huntress. “You wish to destroy the factory that produces spectral anchors, to halt the gathering of my host, but you will not be successful.”

“Considering the mess we made of this place,” Meilin noted, her tone casual, “I don't really think stating the obvious is much of an intellectual accomplishment. Didn't you just get through saying you were superior to heretics and women?”

Aestivar's eyes narrowed sharply but otherwise ignored the little jab. “It is already too late; the boundary has been weakened by the host of specters called forth, and the concentration of miasma within the world of Mankind will soon reach a critical point. It is only a matter of time before my servants part the veil between the Heavenly Realm and the Earthen Realm.”

Meilin stared hard at the monstrous man. “You're bluffing.”

“I do not bluff.”

“Neither do I,” the huntress commented. Her right hand clenched tightly around the hilt of the Fang. The ancient astral weapon's impossibly-sharp edge blazed with light too bright to look at, sensing the sheer volume of miasma that raged within the First Pillar's soul. Meilin could feel the weapon's aching hunger. “How will it feel to be struck down by 'mere' heretical women? Will your bloated ego be able to accept that every part of your worldview is not only outdated but false?”

Aestivar's scowl deepened, his eyes nearly hidden beneath his heavy brow.

“Wasn't your entire plan thrown into disarray by the actions of a woman?” Amber added, picking up on the thread that her sister had laid down. “You sound like any other entitled little boy who never grew up, whining and throwing a tantrum because Eirene would not—”

Red rage suffused Aestivar's face. The First Pillar struck with blinding speed, but they'd all expected it. Eirene, the former Second Pillar and Aestivar's wife during his mortal existence, was counted by the Pillars as the ultimate traitor to their cause and their faith.

With a great ringing clash, the Fang of the Rising Storm intercepted Aestivar's unfocused, rage-filled slash. Meilin knew she would never be able to withstand his attacks with force alone, and angled the weapon's blade in just such a way that it would deflect the swing away from Amber. A searing flash of astral energies nearly blinded her, but she shut her eyes and back-stepped quickly.

Aestivar's sword smashed into the ground with earth-shattering force. Concrete cracked and split in a spiderweb pattern; the still and calm air was shattered by a thunderclap detonation. The First Pillar roared a bloodcurdling battle-cry and leaped back into a defensive stance. Slowly, deliberately, he placed the helm upon his head, freeing up his previously-occupied hand.

Meilin braced herself for what was to come, planting her feet wide. Out of the corner of her eyes, Tsubame's wings flashed and she shot into the sky with such impossible acceleration that the air around her had distorted and glowed along the astral currents. The sonic boom of the wind spirit's passing was but a faint whisper compared to the raving cacophony that exploded around her.

Aestivar extended his free hand and loosed a meter-wide column of tainted fire, aimed directly at Meilin. Fortunately, Amber was far quicker than the First Pillar could have expected. The Relic spirit snarled as she leaped forth, furiously reshaping astral energy into a dense barrier of churning, crackling plasma.

“That will not avail you, heretic dog!” Aestivar taunted.

The First Pillar's miasma-flame slammed into Amber's barrier—but did not explode. No supernatural blast wave flensed the flesh from their bones; instead, the plasma wall had taken on a distinctly orange tint as it absorbed the miasma and fire magic combined.

Aestivar's brow rose in grudging admiration as the barrier surged outward, toward him, narrowing and contorting into a twisted stream of brilliant flame and crackling energies. The miasma had been stripped away and the remaining power redirected back to its source. Amber's counterspell continued to pour out a torrent of astral devastation that wreathed Aestivar in deadly flames shot through with crawling arcs of lightning.

Smugly, the First Pillar made a slashing gesture with his free hand. A tiny, perfect black sphere appeared in front of him, drawing the burning magic away from Aestivar's body and within itself. His armor blackened and smoking, the ascendant warrior-priest's eyes were twin fonts of violet flame. Wisps of condensing mana flowed from his eye sockets, rendering his appearance even more terrifying.

The huntress glanced around at her companions and was not terribly surprised to see that only Amber stood with her now. Tsubame and Kyrie were nowhere to be found, and she knew Soleil was hidden somewhere in the burning ruins, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Aestivar didn't seem to notice or care that his opponents had been reduced from four to two. He was deep within the festering hate and rage that the miasma did all it could to amplify. The First Pillar strode toward the huntress with singular intent and purpose.

Amber's ears twitched as she dropped into a fighting crouch. Twin blades of jagged, frozen lightning appeared in her hands. The Relic spirit spun the mana-forged weapons around in a ritual flourish of her own. She glanced at her sister and nodded almost imperceptibly.

“Do it!”

Meilin dashed to her left, placing as much distance between herself and Aestivar's sword arm as she could. At the same moment, Amber's body was limned with astral light. Her movements seemed to no longer be fettered by physical limitations; the Relic spirit moved with such incredible speed that Meilin's eyes could not even track her.

A ringing succession of sparking impacts staggered Aestivar in mid-stride. The First Pillar bellowed in hate and rage as he spun his sword around and delivered several brutal slashes that would have reduced Amber to a messy stain on the cracked concrete—

Assuming they could hit her.

The Relic spirit leaped and soared into the air, striking Aestivar with a countless succession of precision thrusts and stabs. The First Pillar jammed his sword deep into the ground in front of him, leaning upon it as he traced a series of angular sigils in the air.

Meilin recognized the invocation; a dispelling process that would nullify all other astral processes in the area of effect. Amber's continual strikes were slowing him down, surely, but it wasn't a particularly difficult spell to cast. If the Relic spirit were caught within the dispel, her defenses would be stripped away and her supernatural speed would vanish.

The huntress dropped her free hand to the holster at her waist. She drew the automatic pistol in a smooth, fluid motion and dropped the sights on Aestivar. At this range, less than ten meters, and with such a large target, she couldn't possibly miss.

Meilin squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession. The report of the high-powered automatic barely registered above the shriek of mana-forged blades on miasma-infused steel, but the effects were instantly apparent. Dusky-purple flashes of tortured energy erupted around the First Pillar as the MQ rounds struck their target, twisting and warping the lines of force until they folded back in upon themselves.

Aestivar's invocation failed spectacularly just as he began to trace the final rune. A dull thump, more vibration than a sound that could be heard, permeated the air. Sympathetic explosions tore through the battlefield, sending tremors through the ground that nearly caused Meilin to lose her footing.

The First Pillar strode out of the ravaged, smoke-choked blast crater, looking none the worse for wear. His dark armor was blackened further, but the huntress realized the change in color wasn't soot from the fires, but miasma that continually flowed into the imbued breastplate, reinforcing both the armor itself and Aestivar's own power. Wisps of dark mana rose from his body.

Meilin's eyes widened in horror as the First Pillar rushed toward her without a hint that any of the attacks he sustained had even done the slightest damage. Aestivar's sword, wreathed in black flames, was held high overhead. His contemptuous scowl was gone, replaced with a wide and evil smile as he reveled in the blood frenzy that overtook him.

“Die. Die. Die… you will all DIE!”

unseen blade

The assassin slipped quietly into a niche in the rubble. Fires burned all around her, and the battlefield was choked with chemical stench so thick it would have killed her without the protective aura that surrounded her and cleansed the foulness from the air.

Soleil watched as Amber and Meilin traded blows with the First Pillar. His towering, godlike appearance was false, an astral projection; the invocation of seeing that Tsubame had woven over her made it possible for the young woman to see the truth of their enemy. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was even more terrifying than the image he presented.

An aura of crawling dark mana encased the gaunt, skeletal figure of a man. Inside the illusory projection of his idealized self, Aestivar was little more than skin-wrapped bone, held together with fluid sinews of oily, materialized miasma. The First Pillar's true form was hairless, his facial features dissolved by centuries of exposure to corrupted astral energies. What was once a hard-edged and regal visage now resembled a blackened skull, bereft of flesh.

Every part of this man had been consumed by the evil he willingly invited, over a thousand years ago, in a Faustian bargain for the power to crush his enemies. Soleil didn't know nearly as much about the First Pillar as she would have liked, but she did read the files on him Kyrie had provided.

Trading one's soul for spectral essence wasn't unheard of, even if the ultimate end result was always a violent loss of control and imminent death. Ancestors of the Kihara clan had done so in the past, consuming the heart of powerful specters whose consciousnesses had been obliterated. Lord Isao of the Tsukimura clan had done the same, and met with his own end at the hands of Karin and Misaki.

Yet Aestivar had persisted for centuries, and though his form was continually twisted by the decaying power he harnessed, he was somehow still alive. Soleil had no proof, but she suspected that fusing with his Relic changed his astral pattern enough to prevent the miasma from completely overwhelming him.

Much in the same way Karin had relied upon that same strength to absorb and integrate anima, the First Pillar was able to channel the corruption and wield miasma effortlessly, all without endangering his life.

Whether or not he would maintain control was entirely up for debate, however. As Soleil watched the battle's beginning, the movements of the First Pillar became more frenzied and chaotic. Meilin and Amber fought on, striking repeatedly with enough ferocity and strength to utterly annihilate even the strongest specter. Aestivar deflected or shrugged off blow after blow, but as the battle wore on, his movements became more desperate.

He's using a lot of energy to keep from losing control, the young woman mused silently. The Bright Swallow was held easily in her right hand, but she would not attack until she was absolutely sure that she had an opening. The image of an enormous, muscle-bound warrior-priest—that Soleil could see as a fleeting projection superimposed over the skeletal horror—was starting to flicker and fade as more and more miasma was drawn into Aestivar's grim figure.

“How much longer?”

Soleil glanced at Tsubame. The Relic spirit had been out on the battlefield herself, flying high overhead and bombarding the fabrication plant with explosive, mana-infused feathers, but now that the nature of the fight changed, she chose to withdraw and support the Relic's wielder. Like Soleil, Tsubame wasn't the sort of warrior who could stand in a brutal melee like this.

“I don't know,” Soleil murmured. She kept her voice low but loud enough for her companion to hear. “If he keeps absorbing miasma at this rate, he'll eventually go berserk—I don't think Meilin and Amber will be able to survive if that happens.”

Tsubame arched a snowy eyebrow. “We won't survive that, either.”

“I know.” The young woman adjusted her glasses and shrugged as she continued to watch.

Amber fought like a living weapon—which wasn't too far from the truth, now that she'd been reborn as a Relic spirit. Using her whole body as her blade, the Swordlady reborn delivered a devastating series of rapid-fire kicks, slashes and leaping drops that set the First Pillar back on his heels. The speed and violence of her attacks never wavered or slowed, for a Relic spirit would never tire so long as they had a steady supply of mana. To facilitate this, Meilin kept back, well out of the fray, and reinforced Amber's efforts with defensive barriers and enhancement invocations.

“He's not invoking anymore,” Tsubame observed, her eyebrows furrowed in puzzlement.

“There's still enough awareness there to remember that Meilin's MQ rounds are the biggest risk he's facing.”

Soleil recalled the story Misaki had related concerning the death of the Tsukimura lord. She and Karin fought what was inevitably a losing battle against the master summoner, only succeeding after using MQ rounds to turn Lord Isao's own power against him. The young woman had no doubt that Aestivar understood the possibility that he might seal his own fate in the same manner.

“It doesn't matter, though,” Soleil continued, frowning. “The depletion of ambient mana will catch up with them. All the First Pillar has to do is outlast them, and he knows it. The longer the fight lasts, the weaker we become and the stronger Aestivar becomes. We have to do something before it's too late.”

Tsubame shook her head solemnly. “His defensive barriers are nearly perfect. The armor he wears is forged of some sort of imbued metal that continually reinforces its own physical structure with dark mana. The effect is contained within; Meilin's MQ rounds won't be able to create the sort of destructive feedback loop necessary to destroy it.”

“There's got to be something we can do,” Soleil protested.

The Relic spirit shrugged. “I can't think of anything.”

Soleil sighed softly and turned her attention back to the battle raging before her. Together, Amber and Meilin were more than capable of fighting Aestivar to a standstill, but as she'd already observed, the situation was untenable. The First Pillar was content to wait until his opponents had exhausted themselves upon his defenses.

Meilin had dismissed the Fang and was once again gripping her manaburst rifle. The weapon couldn't have had all that much charge left, but the huntress aimed and loosed a devastating beam that struck Aestivar squarely. The First Pillar didn't so much as budge, but in response to the attack, his armor continued to drink deeply of miasma.

“Is she trying to push him over the edge?” Tsubame muttered, her voice incredulous.

“Yeah, I think so. I hope she knows what she's doing.”

“Where did Kyrie go?”

Soleil shrugged. “I don't know. She was fighting the specters alongside those two, but she's gone now—”

“There was another matter that required my attention,” a familiar voice cut her off. “It seemed prudent to accomplish our primary mission while the First Pillar was fully engaged in battle and too preoccupied to stop me.”

“You managed all of that on your own?” Soleil gasped in surprise and turned her head, staring at the ruby-eyed Relic spirit with consternation. Somehow, Kyrie had managed to sneak up on both her and Tsubame without either of them noticing.

“Yes. I rigged timed explosives at key structural points within the facility's sub-levels. The factory will be destroyed, regardless of this battle's outcome. Even if we fall, Aestivar's plans will be thrown into disarray.”

“Makes sense.” The young woman glanced back at the fight still raging—Meilin and Amber had already been engaged for almost twenty minutes, an eternity in a fight this brutal, and none of the combatants showed even a hint of exhaustion. That wouldn't last forever, though. Once the ambient mana was depleted, the odds would be tilted heavily in Aestivar's favor. “What do we do about this, though? Tsubame can't find a weakness in his barriers, and none of us will last long if we don't figure something out.”

A series of thunderclap explosions sent tremors through the ground. Meilin fell back several meters, putting more distance between her and the First Pillar. She raised her manaburst rifle to fire again, just as Amber ducked out of the way. Unfortunately, Aestivar predicted the move and cut the Relic spirit's assault short with a kick that shattered Amber's barrier.

Soleil's eyes widened in horror as the corrupted warrior-priest stepped into a follow-up smash with the pommel of his sword. The heavy metal counterweight, unimpeded by any sort of defense, crushed Amber's skull and snapped her neck back with a sickening crack of bone.

The Relic spirit dropped to the ground, still and unmoving. Her mana-forged blades of frozen lightning flared brilliantly before vanishing in a bright, snapping spark.

“Shit!” Soleil blurted, her eyes wide. “You two better come up with something quickly. Amber's out of the fight and Meilin won't last long without her!”

Dismay and fear etched into her expression, the huntress took a long step backwards and held up a shaky hand. She rallied, though, and managed to trace a single rune into the air, recalling Amber's crumpled body into the Relic.

Aestivar pressed his advantage, leaping forth with frightening speed. His sword screamed through the air, trailing corruption as it slashed out in a devastating blow that would have sundered Meilin's barrier and cut her in half at the waist—

There was an earsplitting shriek of metal on metal and Soleil blinked as she realized Aestivar's deathblow had been stopped cold—by a reddish-black shadow wielding a pair of short obsidian blades. A second and third shadow appeared in a burst of crackling red-black lightning, also armed with their own mana-forged daggers. A fourth shadow materialized somewhat behind the others, carrying no weapon of its own, but held out slim hands enshrouded in crimson radiance.

Soleil glanced at Kyrie. The Relic spirit was standing rigidly, her eyes closed and her hands clenched into fists at her side. Power washed off of her body in waves as a fifth and sixth shadow appeared on either side of Meilin. Both carried long-bladed swords in both hands and took up a defensive posture.

“This is my limit,” Kyrie whispered, her voice cracking. Soleil recognized the sheer strain placed upon her by the effort required to maintain half a dozen astral projections at once, all of them acting independently. “You have to find a weakness in Aestivar's defenses. I can't maintain this many shadows for longer than a few minutes.”

Soleil didn't respond to that, instead turning back to watch the battle. Aestivar's armor had absorbed so much miasma that there was no hint of its original metallic sheen. The artifact had been completely saturated, becoming so darkly stained that she couldn't even make out the ornate breastplate's engravings.

The First Pillar was struck from all sides by enervating beams of red-black light. He staggered under the assault, but any damage done was superficial at best. His black armor was a beacon of negative radiance, and Kyrie's clones redoubled their efforts. Soleil watched, horrified, as the forms of the projections began to waver and dissipate. He was turning the magic against them, using their own attacks to drain them of energy!

“Kyrie, stop—release the shadows, now!”

“I—okay.”

Shaken by the sudden reversal, Kyrie etched a precise rune into the air, an invocation similar to what Meilin had used to draw Amber's body back into the Relic. The astral sigil glowed as it was etched, but then abruptly faded and vanished before it could trigger.

Kyrie's eyes went round and wide. “I can't dismiss them!”

Aestivar's armor had taken on a blood-red hue. The attacks he'd repurposed into conduits widened further into raging torrents of energy that funneled all of the projections' mana into the First Pillar. The shadows' expressions contorted with pain shared between them and their creator as they shattered into innumerable fragments—

The other shadows vanished without a trace. Kyrie's scream of agony sent a terrible chill up Soleil's spine, but it was short-lived. The Relic spirit, overwhelmed by the destructive feedback, dropped to the ground.

Tsubame and Soleil glanced at each other, both the wielder and the spirit sharing an identical look of grim resignation. With both Amber and Kyrie down, the First Pillar would have little trouble killing Meilin… and then he would turn his attention to the two of them.

“Should we retreat?” Tsubame muttered, her tone nearly as bleak as her expression.

“We won't get very far.” Soleil gripped the Bright Swallow's hilt so tightly that her knuckles turned white. “Keep him busy. I'll hit him from the shadows. If you stay up in the air, I think we can keep him occupied for a little while longer.”

“O-okay.” The Relic spirit paled, visible even on her snowy complexion. With an act of will, her glowing wings unfurled and extended out from her back. “I'll do my best—”

She broke off suddenly, a puzzled expression on her face, and stared up at the sky.

“Wait!” Soleil hissed. She grabbed Tsubame's arm tightly, preventing her from stepping out of their increasingly-compromised cover.

“Did you just…?”

“I feel something… familiar,” the girl said, nodding. “Familiar and powerful. You feet it, too, right?”

The Relic spirit's wings drew back into her body and she turned to gaze at Aestivar, who had abruptly stopped, his attention no longer focused on Meilin. The First Pillar seemed to have lost all interest in his opponent, even though his victory was all but assured.

“I remember this presence,” Tsubame murmured.

Countless tendrils of black shadow erupted from the ground around Aestivar, encircling his legs and his arms and binding him firmly in place. Soleil was entranced, staring in sheer astonishment as a small bolt of clotted black streaked down from the sky, slamming into the First Pillar's breastplate.

The attack, whatever it was, had no visible effect—at first. There was no detonation of arcane flames, no sizzle and crackle of devastating energies. It seemed as if the projectile had done nothing at all… and then the shadow bindings convulsed violently. Aestivar's breastplate shattered into thousands of tiny crystalline shards, taking all of the miasma it had absorbed along with it.

The shadow bindings vanished abruptly.

A slender figure floated slowly from the air. The newcomer's mundane attire seemed out of place on the battlefield, but the silvery-gray nimbus of a nigh-impregnable barrier surrounded her body. Soleil could almost see the torrent of astral might that gathered, seething and roiling, just under the surface of that slender woman's physical form.

“Aestivar.”

Eirene's voice was calm and collected, but held a core of unshakable conviction that sent shivers down Soleil's spine. The former Second Pillar of Heaven narrowed her gray eyes and held her hand out, manifesting a long-hafted spear with a wickedly spiked blade forged from some strange, midnight-blue metallic substance.

“I will save you,” she promised. “I will kill you.”

redeemer

“You failed to kill me a thousand years ago,” Aestivar mocked. His expression was both cool and even, but pure hatred burned in his voice. “In that time, you turned away from your true power and I have become so much stronger than you could ever imagine. You have no more hope of defeating me than these heretics.”

The First Pillar glared at the crumbling remains of his armor, that priceless artifact crafted by shapers of mana whose skill hadn't been seen on this planet for centuries. With the loss of the imbued breastplate, the image of the shining knight and the Father's favored son began to dissipate, releasing even more miasma.

“The 'strength' you think you have mastered comes from an awareness that seeks to control you.” Eirene whirled her spear around and jabbed the weapon's point at the gaunt, skeletal figure that now stood before her. “We all took a terrible risk by binding our souls to the darkness. It seemed as if there was no other option; to fight monsters we had to become monsters ourselves. But we never wanted to. It was necessary that we wield this power in order to protect the people from the evil that was too large to confront otherwise.”

The former Second Pillar slammed the butt of her spear into the ground to punctuate her words. “It was a terrible mistake, my love. We viewed the miasma as merely a tool, a weapon that we could wield to fight the specter cults on equal footing.”

Aestivar scoffed. “Equal to the devils? Bah! We exceeded their paltry might!”

“Because we were being used,” Eirene said quietly. “You never stopped to question the ease at which our power increased. You never even considered the possibility that we might have become the tools, wielded by a terrible, alien consciousness that sought nothing more than a key to a lock it couldn't open.”

“When we last met, you openly admitted to heresy and blasphemy.” The First Pillar's scowl deepened even further, righteous anger twisting his skull-like features. “It seems that the years have done little to restore your faith. Of all the betrayals I suffered, yours was the greatest. You turned your back on the glory of the Heavenly Father out of cowardice—as if a mere woman could do anything else.”

“You know nothing.” Eirene's even tone evaporated into a furious snarl. “It was never about that. I cared nothing for your so-called god—”

“LIAR!”

“Indeed,” the woman retorted, her tone filled with anger equal to Aestivar's. “I am a liar, like every other 'lesser being' who suffered underneath the Disciples' patriarchal rule. How many do you believe would openly admit to apostasy when the penalty was a slow death? Of course I lied to protect myself, so that I could protect the people. I yielded everything so that I could stop the encroaching darkness.”

She took a slow, deliberate step toward the gaunt, miasma-saturated figure. Aestivar stood, silently fuming, staring down at her with demonic eyes set ablaze. His massive ornate blade, still held tightly in hand, began to quiver and shake in his grip.

“Even so, I still believed we shared the same creed,” Eirene went on, stopping only a meter away from the corrupted monster that had once been the man she loved. “The five stalwart Pillars upon which Mankind's future rested, giving our lives to the darkness, relying upon the strength of our bonds and convictions to sustain us.

“But that wasn't enough for you. You couldn't be content to simply fight for a future for the people. You wanted to shape that very future into one that was more to your own liking.” The Second Pillar's voice softened and she let out a slow, resigned sigh. “It wasn't enough to halt the onslaught of dark spirits. The people weren't worth saving if they didn't bow before your god. Their souls were nothing if their lives were not solely dedicated to the Father.”

The First Pillar's skeletal visage twisted into a terrifying scowl. “I will not heed the poisoned words of a heretic.”

“Fuck your god,” Eirene snapped bluntly. “I care nothing for your zealotry! It does not excuse what you did. We are all sinners who chose to wield miasma as a sword with which to fight evil—but you? You embraced the corruption for no other reason than to gain more power! You invited it deep into your soul, letting it seep into every aspect of your being. You chose, freely and without reservation, to surrender yourself to the miasma—”

“Blasphemy!”

“—and now it owns you.”

The First Pillar's corrupted limbs tensed but he did not strike.

“I did what I had to do to survive and protect our people. You did what you wanted to do, and your invitation to the corruption led to what, exactly?” Gray eyes pierced the First Pillar with a scathing, accusatory glare. “I know you had Synelle executed for 'blasphemy' and then buried the truth of her death. You manipulated Orn into becoming your mindless puppet. Your single-mindedness disillusioned Valendir and led him to betray you.”

“Do not try to downplay your own involvement,” Aestivar spat. “You reveled in it. You drank deeply of the sweet wine of blood and gleefully slaughtered, killing and killing. Drunk on the carnage, you fought with more ferocity than any other of our number!”

“I won't deny that I gorged myself on the death of summoners and their spectral minions, but the desire for vengeance against the evil that threatened us all is in no way equivalent. I never allowed the miasma to seize my soul, and when it became clear that it has a will of its own, I discarded it, seared terrible wounds into myself in order to completely excise it.”

Aestivar, apparently having had enough of this banter, shook his malformed head slowly, almost sadly. He brought his blade up into a guard stance with incredible speed and control, the too-heavy sword seeming to be no lighter than a feather in his grasp.

“Those wounds will be nothing compared to what I will inflict upon you.”

The First Pillar rushed forward. No longer burdened by the invocation of imaging that projected the figure of a demigod, the skeletal creature that had once been a human soared across the cracked and blackened concrete.

Eirene's spear slashed out and spun in a dizzying series of strikes. Aestivar seemed almost disinterested as he parried each attack with contemptuous ease. The dark figures clashed over and over, neither of them able to slip past the other's guard. Sparks and motes of miasma were sent shooting into the sky like tiny stars.

“Meilin!”

Meilin whirled toward the source of the voice—it was Soleil. The girl darted out from behind a ruined pile of structural material, the Bright Swallow gripped in her hand. Her counterpart, Tsubame, followed close behind as the remaining three members of the strike team regrouped. The huntress gawked at Soleil and vaguely gestured toward the violent, hate-filled clash that had erupted between Eirene and Aestivar.

“Where the hell did she come from?”

Soleil glanced at Meilin and shrugged. “I have no idea, but if I had to guess, I'd say Karin may have had something to do with it.” The young woman glanced at the winged Relic spirit and her expression became grim. “We need some cover.”

Tsubame voiced agreement and etched a series of blue-white sigils into the air. The Relic spirit let out a fierce growl of her own as she erected another defensive barrier. Mana gathered from the air around them, sluggishly, for the area was already becoming depleted as the battle wore on.

Silver hair whipped in the astral winds and she let out a keening call, so much like that of the primal aspect she embodied. A great wall of dense, gale-force currents formed, drawing the air inward, compressing it and twisting it with the force of a miniature hurricane—

A thunderous explosion tore through the air. The blast wave slammed against Meilin, knocking her painfully to the ground. She gasped, sucking air into her emptied lungs as quickly as she could, and scrambled backward. The huntress rolled and came to her feet, wincing as a dozen new injuries made themselves known.

Meilin turned to face her allies. Tsubame had caught Soleil as she fell, steadying the girl and herself with a few gentle beats of her shimmering wings. The power behind that blast would have easily ripped the flesh from their bones had Tsubame not raised her barrier.

The former Second Pillar entered a deadly dance, wheeling and ducking as she worked her weapon with the skill of someone who had spent a dozen lifetimes on the battlefield. Her opponent struck the first two blows away with parries, then followed up with a double stroke of his free, clawed hand. Eirene bent her body in response, causing the eviscerating slash to whistle shrilly through the air only centimeters away from her midriff.

“What should we do?” Soleil demanded, staring at the two combatants. It was clear that Aestivar no longer thought of anything other than killing his former partner. Fortunately, Eirene was making that task exceptionally difficult. The fluid grace of her fighting style was inspiring to behold, but there were more pressing pragmatic concerns.

With Eirene fighting Aestivar to a standstill, and the First Pillar's armor destroyed… they had a better chance than ever before of either landing a deathblow themselves, or distracting the Father's favored son long enough for Eirene to finish the job.

“Let's support her the best we can,” Meilin suggested. The woman hefted her manaburst rifle, peering through the targeting scope as she brought the weapon to bear. A numerical indicator in the lower-left corner of her field of vision informed her that the rifle had only three shots left.

“How?” Tsubame demanded. “Do you really think you can get a clear shot? What if you hit Eirene instead of the First Pillar? Or she is caught in the blast?”

“I don't particularly care. Neither does she.”

“What?”

Meilin lowered her rifle and gestured toward the storm of astral-infused steel. Aestivar's strikes and slashes had become so impossibly fast that his deformed body seemed to vanish and reappear, moving so quickly the human eye couldn't track. Eirene, however, proved to be more than up to the challenge. Her movements were much more fluid and smooth, appearing almost stately in their slow grace, but somehow the Second Pillar managed to block or deflect every blow.

“She doesn't care if she dies, so long as she takes Aestivar with her. That's been her goal the whole time—everything she did to Karin, every time she meddled in our lives, all of it was to make sure Aestivar couldn't reach the Terminus.”

“We'll follow your lead, then,” Soleil said, glancing at Tsubame. The Relic spirit didn't respond with words, instead unfurling her wings and catching the air beneath them. “The other specters should be gone. All that miasma Aestivar absorbed had to come from somewhere, after all—you should be safe enough in the sky.”

Tsubame smiled. “I know.”

“Keep the pressure on him from above,” Meilin ordered. “I don't think it'll distract him, but the little bits of damage will accumulate, wearing him down. Eirene will be able to exploit that.”

The silver-haired Relic spirit responded not with words, but a great beat of her wings that sent her soaring into the sky. The huntress turned to Soleil and frowned, glancing at the girl's Relic. Engaging Aestivar in melee alongside Eirene would be exceptionally dangerous, not only because Soleil's reach was nowhere near that of the First Pillar's, but because their presence would hamper Eirene's spear. The Second Pillar's long-hafted weapon made it ideal for keeping opponents at a “safe” distance.

“What are you thinking?” Soleil asked.

Meilin's frown deepened further. The huntress removed her gunbelt, laden with her pistol and the spare magazines of MQ rounds, and pressed the bundle into Soleil's hands. Though both of them had been provided the same automatic pistol by AEGIS, handing the weapon and reloads over gave the girl considerably more firepower.

“What about you?”

The huntress hefted her manaburst rifle.

“You don't have many shots left,” Soleil objected.

“True, but you can't use magic and I can. Neither of us would last longer than a few seconds at best by trying to fight at Eirene's side.” Meilin yanked the charging handle back and primed the manaburst rifle for operation. “Watch and wait until he starts to channel miasma. It'll only be a matter of time before he loses what's left of his self-control.”

Soleil sighed and dismissed the Bright Swallow. She encircled the second gunbelt around her waist and cinched it down tightly. With the practiced ease of one intimately familiar with the use of such weapons, Soleil drew both pistols and darted away, disappearing somewhere into the blasted rubble and half-demolished buildings.

Meilin shook her head in slow admiration. The girl's skills were, of course, augmented by the power of the Relic, but she was still amazed every time Soleil managed to vanish right before her eyes. Perhaps that skill would be their salvation, but Meilin read in the girl's eyes the same despair and resignation that she herself felt.

Hefting the manaburst rifle to her shoulder, the huntress took careful aim.

broken heart

The former Second Pillar spun around, weaving wide slashes between devastating thrusts that sought to pierce the weaknesses in Aestivar's guard. Each attack was deflected, parried by the heavy sword wreathed in deadly black flames.

Eirene ducked low as Aestivar swept his sword toward her, snapping his grotesquely-distorted wrist in such a way that sent an arc of burning miasma spreading outward. She felt the dark power's passing as a soul-chilling heat that seared and froze all at once—a feeling she was intimately familiar with.

Suppressing the shudder that threatened to weaken the strength of her attacks, Eirene bared her teeth in a soundless snarl. Her polearm twisted around and she slid down on the weapon's long haft, extending her reach considerably as she swung it around in a horizontal semicircle.

Aestivar seemed to expect the move. Instead of intercepting the brutal slash with his own blade, the First Pillar leaped backwards, narrowly avoiding being bisected at the waist—

Just as Eirene had predicted.

His corroded visage was difficult to read, but his whole body jerked back in consternation as Eirene darted forward, ducking under the trajectory of the weapon that now swung itself. She let go of the haft and the weapon continued to spin, faster and faster. Eirene drew a pair of long knives from crossed scabbards at the small of her back and broke into a lightning-quick charge.

Aestivar's instinctive parry was late, and it only deflected one of the new blades coming hard at his throat. The First Pillar only just barely avoided decapitation by twisting his body to one side, spoiling his opponent's aim. Eirene's off-hand weapon bit deeply into the miasma-tainted flesh of the First Pillar's right arm instead of his neck.

Blood sprayed from the wound, filling the air with a sickly-sweet scent that mingled with the oily smoke of chemical fires and miasma that enshrouded the battlefield like an evil fog. A horrible, otherworldly roar of pain and rage and frustration issued from Aestivar's blackened lips.

Eirene leaped up into the air, twisting her body as she went, and executed an astral process with an act of will. Shadow tendrils slashed out from the ground and wrapped themselves around Aestivar's legs, midsection and his sword arm. As Eirene ascended higher into the sky, her autonomous spear continued to spin, faster and faster, as it inexorably drifted closer to the entrapped Aestivar.

With Eirene safely out of the way, Meilin didn't hesitate. She squeezed the trigger of the manaburst rifle, loosing a brilliant beam of destructive force that struck the First Pillar squarely in the center of his gaunt, too-thin chest.

Aestivar's terrible shriek slammed into the huntress with tangible force, the sound itself seeming to carry a vile power of its own. Meilin gritted her teeth and stoically bore the sharp pain that exploded in her head. She fired again, loosing another column of overcharged mana at her target.

The scream abruptly died. Aestivar went still, his malformed body charred and covered in huge black blisters that weeped disgusting fluids. The First Pillar's eyes flashed with sinister purple fire that seemed to double and redouble in the space of the nanoseconds it took for the beam of astral energy to cross the distance—

The shadow bindings abruptly shattered. A huge, impenetrable barrier of negative energy sprang into being, interposing itself between Aestivar and the detonation of condensed mana that raged around him. A split-second later, Aestivar shot up and out of the incandescent sphere. Dark currents of miasma twisted and writhed over his body, converging on the remnant of his severed limb. Mingled flesh, blood and miasma bubbled and roiled violently, contorting weirdly into the shape of an arm.

All of this took place so quickly Eirene could not react in time. Aestivar shot into the air, his sword discarded and forgotten, both taloned hands leading. Miasma crystallized around the First Pillar's fingers, reshaping them into huge obsidian claws. He slashed viciously, repeatedly, battering against Eirene's barrier with tremendous force. The Second Pillar's defense was torn apart; she arrested her invocation of flight and let herself fall, only just barely avoiding the terrible dark claws as they reached to tear her apart.

Eirene's legs buckled as she hit the ground, but she managed to roll away just in time as the mindless monster that had been her husband slammed down nearby with stone-shattering force. It wasn't fast enough; Aestivar's claws came up and he clenched them both, enacting a restriction invocation that froze her in place.

“Now, Soleil!”

The assassin leaped from the shadows with both pistols leading. Soleil's fingers worked the triggers repeatedly, sending round after anti-magic round into the berserk Aestivar's torso. Each slug splattered against his barrier, but it didn't matter if the MQ rounds penetrated his flesh or not. Miasma currents feeding his regenerating arm halted, reversed. Bubbles of weird distorted mana formed and charred great smoking holes into the creature's body.

Eirene, freed from the restriction invocation by the destructive feedback inflicted on her opponent, leaped backwards to avoid the claw swipe that would have torn her body to pieces. With a fluid motion, she sheathed her twin daggers and held a hand out, recalling her spear. The weapon re-manifested in her grasp just in time for her to parry a series of furious claw attacks.

“It's over, my love,” the Second Pillar stated.

Aestivar's blistered and mangled body shuddered, stretching tight like the limbs of a drawn bow, as he met the brutal thrust of Eirene's spear with claw and tooth. The gray-eyed woman's gaze never faltered, never wavered, as the blade of her polearm tore the creature's chest apart, plunging through bone and sinew.

Meilin lowered her rifle.

The spear's long, razor-sharp blade had penetrated completely through Aestivar's body. Eirene gasped and coughed wetly, glancing down at the four claws embedded deeply into her body. Blood poured freely from the mortal wounds, and she coughed wetly. Her determination to end it for the both of them was such that she wasn't able to turn aside to avoid or deflect his attack.

Eirene shuddered and gasped, blood spilling from her mouth. The corrupted miasmic entity that had once been her husband responded with a mournful wail. Those twin points of violet fire slowly faded, guttering out into empty, scorched sockets. Eirene's gasping breath slowed, then stopped. The light fled her gray eyes, which remained open and unblinking.

The space around the two fallen combatants seemed to distort and bend. Twisting, tortured reality parted and Meilin watched silently and solemnly as both Eirene and Aestivar's bodies began to fade away into nothingness.

“Is Aestivar dead?”

“I… think so.” Meilin closed her eyes, attuning herself to the currents of mana that twisted and curved around them all. There was scarcely any trace of the tremendously dense concentration of miasma that had been Aestivar's corrupted existence. All that remained was a wrenching distortion in the sluggish and depleted astral flow. “I can't feel any miasma at all.”

“It seems as if our mission has been successful, then.”

Meilin turned toward the voice and managed a smile as she noticed Kyrie limping toward her, slowly and favoring one leg; the other was twisted at an unnatural angle. The Relic spirit looked as if she were about to fall over at any minute. They were all injured and weary beyond the point of exhaustion, but they were alive—all of them, largely thanks to Eirene's sacrifice.

Soleil glanced around the blasted landscape. “Is Amber—?”

“She was beat up pretty badly, but she'll survive,” Meilin answered. “I had to recall her into the Relic for now.” She turned to Kyrie and looked at her fellow Directorate agent oddly. “Did you know this was going to happen? That Eirene was going to show up and take Aestivar out herself?”

“I did.” Kyrie's expression was apologetic. “I was instructed not to speak of it.”

Meilin sighed wearily. “Ceres is an asshole.”

“I won't argue.”

There was a tremendous rush of air as Tsubame descended from the skies, landing lightly next to Soleil. Out of all the strike team members, the winged spirit was in the best condition, having spent much of the battle in her native element, well out of the reach of enemies.

“We should leave this place before we're spotted,” Tsubame observed. “While I was in the sky, I detected several emergency response and police vehicles, all of them headed this way. I suspect AEGIS can no longer keep this incident under wraps now that the displacement fields have failed.”

The huntress turned to gaze at the spot where Aestivar and Eirene had slain each other, then faded away. A crater had been blasted into the ground, surrounded by countless smaller divots dug by Tsubame's explosive mana plumes. Briefly, Meilin wondered how the first-responders would interpret the inexplicable destruction wrought by their furious battle.

“Yeah,” Meilin agreed, her tone solemn. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

karin's chapter

/

limit

bloodstain

The first thing we noticed was how cold it was.

Frost was already collecting on the exterior hull of the unmarked repulsion gunship we'd taken from Heaven's Gate to our destination. I stood outside, thanking the vagaries of the universe for the fact that my steady transformation rendered me immune to the soul-deep chill that permeated the basin.

I turned to glance at Oriana. Like me, she seemed utterly unperturbed by the chill, thanks in large part to the anima within her soul. It was this place, in fact, where she had been lost for longer than I'd even been alive.

“I wish I could accompany you,” Oriana said, not for the first time.

“The fewer we take with us, the better.”

“Besides,” Misaki added, “no matter what happens… someone will need to tell our family what became of us.” My partner gave me a look that defied comprehension and she started to walk toward the edge of the clearing where Rika already waited.

“You won't be returning to us.”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket and pulled out a cigarette, lighting it with a small silver flame. Oriana's words were a statement, not a question, and I felt the weight and impact of those words spoken aloud.

“Probably not,” I replied after a moment. “If we fail, we'll die and that's that. If we succeed, well… I don't know. Won't know until it happens.” I watched the slow-curling plume of smoke drift up into the air off the tip of my cigarette. The unnatural cold was so extreme that even the smoldering ember seemed weak and listless.

Oriana's shiver had nothing to do with the temperature. “I don't know what to say.”

“It's okay, you don't need to say anything.” I smiled at her, eliciting a faint pink blush that contrasted heavily with the dark skin of her cheeks. “Except maybe goodbye, and good luck. I'm sure we'll need as much luck as we can possibly muster.”

“Karin, let's go!” Misaki shouted at me from across the clearing, but I ignored her.

“It's been a pleasure working with you, Ori.”

“L-likewise, Lady Ashley,” Oriana stammered.

I sighed and shook my head slowly. “Haven't I told you to just use my first name?”

“O-okay, Karin.”

“Thanks for all your help.” I held a hand out to shake—and my eyes widened as she took the offered hand and pulled me into a tight hug. When she released me several moments later, I drew back and was only a little surprised to see her eyes wet.

“Good luck.”

“Karin, we need to go now!” Misaki yelled. She and Rika both stood about ten meters away, at the bottom of the flat-topped hillock where the airship sat waiting. I sighed and waved goodbye to the Order Magician.

“I hope I'll be able to see you again.”

“Me, too.”

“Karin!”

As I turned to join Misaki and Rika, I caught my partner's ears twitching with mirth that her facial expression didn't reflect. Predictably, her poker face didn't last very long before Misaki burst into a fit of giggles.

Rika frowned curiously. “What's so funny?”

“That girl could have turned this whole frozen valley into a tropical paradise with how hot she was getting,” Misaki observed, rolling her eyes in theatrical exasperation. “And Karin just threw even more gas on the fire.”

“So you're saying that Oriana is…” Rika trailed off, her own cheeks taking on a faint pink tint.

“Attracted to Karin? Yeah, that'd be an understatement.” Misaki nodded vigorously. She glanced at me with a sly look in her shining green eyes, her ears twitching in amusement. “Oriana has a crush on her the size of the solar system.”

“That's not—”

“It was love at first sight,” Misaki cut in, giving me a look that suggested she was enjoying this little exchange. “You may not have noticed, love, but I can feel subtle differences in heat distribution, as you should damn well know by now.”

“Hey, it's not like I planned for this to happen or anything,” I protested, waving my hands in front of me in surrender. “

Misaki cackled, obviously amused at my discomfiture. “Well, it still happened, and I know damn well it's mutual.”

“That's not—ugh, I don't want to get into this now.” I turned away from my partner and tried not to let too many of my troubled emotions boil to the surface, but it was hopeless to try and hide from her. “This is… hard enough as it is, without having to think about all the friends and loved ones we're leaving behind.”

“Yeah, and I'm still pissed that we didn't even call Mama to say our goodbyes,” Misaki growled, giving me a hard and accusatory glare.

“Again, this is hard enough without having to think about all we're leaving behind.” I fell into step beside her as we walked through the frozen landscape. “If we made that call, if we'd gone to visit them… I don't think I would have been able to do this. I don't think I would have been able to leave them.”

“You wouldn't have had a choice, love.” Her ears laid flat against her hair as she turned her huge emerald eyes fully upon me. “If what Eirene said was true, anyway.”

I turned away. “I know.”

“You're more afraid we'll succeed than fail.”

“I'm afraid I'll lose myself—that we'll lose ourselves.”

Misaki gave me a dubious look. “You don't know that. You're letting your own fears spin out of control, jumping to conclusions and getting yourself all worked up. You don't know what'll happen to us if we succeed. None of us know—except maybe Rika, and she's not talking. We've got more than enough to worry about without inventing new things.”

“What else could I expect, though?” I demanded, my expression becoming frantic. “Taking control of the Terminus will undoubtedly alter my outlook on a fundamental level. Will I even be conscious any longer? Will I even be me any longer? Will I even care what happens to the people I loved once I've become the glorious astral goddess Eirene always wanted me to be?”

My wife made a disgusted snort. “Did she say that?”

“She said that Aestivar would—”

“Yes, but we know why now. The 'Defiled One' or whatever it was that Eirene called it, the miasmic origin, would have possessed him once he gained access to the Terminus, using the dark mana in his soul.” Misaki pushed aside a snow-covered branch and ducked behind it, flicking her ears as a clump of snow fell on her head. “You're not filled to the brim with miasma and tied to an evil god-thing, so how the hell could that even happen to you?”

I grimaced. “I'll opt not to speculate, thanks.”

“Good. Don't think about things that way, love.” An impish smile worked its way across my wife's face and her ears flicked straight up. “Don't think about what you'll lose; think about what you'll do when we get back. Like… oh, I don't know, taking Oriana out on a date?”

“W-what?” I gawked at Misaki. “You're fucking with me, aren't you?”

She fixed me with a challenging grin. “You sound awfully sure of that.”

I bit my lip to stop myself from bursting out laughing. “You're serious?”

“Completely. Get yourself dressed up all cute, take her out somewhere nice. Have a romantic dinner together, get a hotel room, make her orgasm so many times she can't walk straight the next day.” Misaki's ears practically danced on her head and her tail swished rapidly as we walked. She did nothing to hide her sly smile. “Consider it something to look forward to!”

“Now I know you're just fucking with me.”

My wife shook her head firmly. “I'm not, Karin. Your attraction is only slightly less blindingly obvious than her crush on you, and if anyone at all in the world deserves to really cut loose and have some fun, it's you, love.”

I didn't respond to that. That Misaki was being so forward about this did serve to dispel a bit of my irrational guilt at being attracted to another person. Handling the situation with her usual blunt forcefulness was threatening to make me start laughing—which was her goal, of course.

“I agree with Misaki.”

I stared at Rika and sighed, shaking my head slowly. Of course she did. It was in no way unusual for the two of them to join forces against me.

“What? You too? What did I ever do to deserve this treatment?”

“I agree that our mission is of the utmost importance, but you're wearing yourself down. If you don't calm yourself and stop letting your fears run wild, we won't survive.”

“So basically you're saying I need to chill out.”

Misaki's tail swished around and playfully smacked me in the butt. “Understatement of the century.”

Ever since Rika became a part of our life, it seemed as if she and Misaki conspired to gang up on me over all manner of issues. It was especially galling since Rika and I shared a large portion of our subconscious awareness. It was as if the better, more adult and responsible parts of me had taken physical form and were literally chastising the not-so-good parts.

I shoved aside a crumbling branch covered in ice. The frozen wood cracked as I pushed it, falling into pieces that shattered as they struck the ice-hard ground. “It's like the whole basin was doused in trillions of gallons of liquid nitrogen.”

Misaki frowned. “The astral flow is nearly stilled, too.”

“We are nearing the locus of neutralized space,” Rika clarified. She stopped in mid-stride and closed her eyes; I could feel her reaching out with her perceptions to study the place that was our destination. “Most of the damage was reversed by AEGIS after I was sealed away. This locus should have contracted enough to have no discernible effect on this instance, but as we can see, that isn't the case.”

“Should be?”

Rika shrugged. “The point of neutral space was intentionally expanded.”

The air around us was unsettlingly still. There was absolutely no wind at all, contrasting with the chill wind I'd felt after we left the gunship. “It feels like… like we're standing inside a hole in our reality.”

“That's an accurate description.” Rika turned and gestured to a gap in the foliage. The closer we got to our destination, the more the snow and ice gave way to a scene far more surreal than anything we expected. “There's a small lake up ahead—it's completely frozen.”

“Not just frozen over?”

“No—the entire lake's contents have frozen solid.”

I didn't respond to that. I wanted to see it with my eyes before making any further speculation on what may have happened here. The three of us managed to work our way through the fragile plant life, our footsteps sounding incredibly loud in the total and utter silence of the cursed valley.

“Now that's fucking weird.”

We stood at the edge of the frozen forest, only about ten meters or so from the banks of a sizable lake—or what was once a lake before it was afflicted by its proximity to the locus of neutralized space.

The lake Rika sensed was indeed frozen solid—but it had apparently been frozen solid in an instant. It was like standing in a photograph taken the instant a large object plunged through the lake's surface. Huge, spraying arcs of water and churning, roiling eddies and waves were locked forever in sprays of otherworldly ice that would never thaw.

It was the most unsettling thing I've ever seen, and that's saying a lot considering some of the shit that both Misaki and I lived through. The blatant impossibility of the frozen lake gnawed at my consciousness, at the small part of me that was still human, threatening to overwhelm it with a slow-creeping madness.

“Well now, that's not totally creepy and weird.”

I walked up to the edge of the frozen water. Though we all knew it was frozen completely solid, I still felt a very human revulsion welling from deep within as I hesitantly placed my foot upon the surface. It was hard and unyielding, of course, but the distorted impossibility around me…

“This place is utterly inhospitable to human life.” I took a step back, suppressing the shudder that threatened to run down my spine. “No, it's worse than that. It's inhospitable to any life native to this world.”

Rika shook her head. “Not just this world, but this entire instance. The physical laws and axioms that life depends upon to function have been altered enough to wipe it clean. We only remain unaffected thanks to the blessing of the Astral.” She turned a meaningful gaze out over the frozen lake. “Our destination is in the center of the lake. Whomever or whatever caused the locus to expand is there.”

“Of course it'd have to be there.” I did my best to keep my human perceptions and preconceptions from rebelling too much as I stepped out onto the ice. Rika and Misaki followed, both of them wearing wary looks as they scanned the area around us. “Can you sense any traces of miasma? Or any echoes in the currents?”

Misaki's ears flicked for a moment. “No, but that doesn't tell us much. The loose mana is so depleted I wouldn't even be able to detect any distortions.” She sniffed lightly, tasting the air, and made a face. “It doesn't smell right here.”

I knew what she meant—the air smelled of nothing but an odd, flat emptiness. The strangeness of this place weighed down on all of us. Misaki's usual ebullience was absent, as if her emotions were weighed down by a cold, wet blanket. Rika didn't seem to be in much of a better mood, either, and I was struggling to do my best in keeping focused on the mission.

“Yes.” Rika's reply was subdued but broke the heavy silence. “Nothing is right here.”

I shrugged. “Let's keep moving.”

release

“What is that?”

The three of us stood at the center of the time-frozen lake, peering over the edges of a dark hole that seemed to extend into infinity. I definitely did not like the looks of the hole itself, but we didn't have much choice but to press on and investigate for ourselves.

“It's deep,” Rika murmured. “I think it extends all the way to the bottom of the lake—we're at the deepest point.”

“How far?”

“The survey data claims it's about eighty meters at the deepest points.” I frowned and turned my gaze back to the shore. “If we want to follow our quarry, we're going to have to take the same route they did.”

“Correct,” Rika agreed. “This path was used by Aestivar's servants.”

Misaki shot me a sidelong glance. “We've got to go down there?”

“I don't like it any more than you do,” I replied, staring into the yawning void with a great deal of uneasiness. “But yeah, we have to go down there.”

“The tunnel descends at a sharp angle—almost straight down.” Rika turned away from the hole and regarded me coolly. The spirit-girl seemed calm and collected on the surface, as she usually did, despite what we were all about to do. “I don't think we can just walk to the other end.”

“I'm not inclined to trust a flying spell, either,” Misaki added. She didn't bother mentioning the problem of the ambient mana depletion in the basin; we were all painfully aware of the sluggishness of the astral flow. Her tail curled around her left thigh, enveloping it in fluffy red-tinged gold, as she considered the problem.

“Can't rappel down it, either—we don't have the gear.” I frowned and reached into one of my jacket pockets. There was a possibility that things were even weirder than they seemed on the surface. I pulled out a spare magazine and stripped one of the rounds off the top. Misaki's ears twitched quizzically.

“Karin, what are you doing?”

“Testing a hunch.”

Both Misaki and Rika watched, curious expressions on their faces, as I leaned in toward the opening. The closer I got to it, the more I felt the edges of the borehole seem to pull at my body in a manner that was disorienting.

I tossed the cartridge into the yawning abyss. Common sense would have the small bit of lead and brass arc downward sharply as it fell to the bottom of the lake. I didn't think common sense was going to be very sensible in this fractured bit of reality. Plus I just had a bit of a feeling that things were simpler than we were making them out to be.

We all watched as the loose round arced through the air as I gave it a gentle underhand toss. It reached the peak of its parabolic flight path and fell almost straight down into the hole—

And then it fell “down” toward the walls of the pit, the trajectory altering at a perfect ninety-degree angle. The round clattered against the solid-but-not-frozen water, laying only a meter or so from the mouth of the shaft. It looked as though gravity had been turned on its side—which wasn't too far from the truth.

Misaki jerked back in surprise. “What the hell?”

“It looks like we'll be able to walk after all,” I observed. Taking another step closer to the pit, I could feel the pull more strongly. My body protested, but only a little; the sensation of vertigo and nausea quickly passed as I leaned into the hole and jumped.

“Karin!”

When my booted feet touched the “ground,” it was as if I stood in a smooth, nearly horizontal tunnel. I could see Misaki standing at the edge; from my point of view, it appeared as if she were the one standing on a vertical surface. I knelt down and retrieved the MQ round I'd used to test my theory, sliding it back into the spare mag.

“It's safe; just lean forward and jump.” I gestured to the ground, which seemed to be a sheer wall from Misaki's persepctive.

Rika didn't bother hesitating; being a part of me, she shared my kinesthetics, feeling much of what I felt. The spirit-girl landed next to me, her knees buckling slightly to absorb the impact and adjust her balance for the radical shift in gravitational orientation. A few seconds later, Misaki followed, but stumbled slightly as she passed through the point where “down” began to disagree with itself.

“Easy, love,” I murmured as I caught her in an embrace, partly to keep her from losing her balance and partly just because. I felt her shiver slightly at the sheer otherworldliness of standing on the side of what should have been a nearly vertical shaft.

My partner's cheeks flushed faintly. “I'm okay, Karin.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I'm fine.” Oddly, Misaki seemed to be the most affected by this new strangeness, which was weird considering that I was still at least partly human—though for how much longer I couldn't say. “Just a little disoriented, is all.”

“Let's just get to the end of this tunnel,” I told her, leaning forward to give her an encouraging kiss on the lips. “Aestivar's people have one hell of a head start; we're going to have to move quickly to catch up.”

None of us spoke any further as we started to walk into the darkness. The pallid light cast from the world above began to fade as our steps echoed ominously off the walls of the unearthly tunnel. We were only a dozen meters or so beyond the surface when all light was extinguished.

I couldn't see Misaki or Rika any longer, despite the fact that they were right next to me. I started to say something, just to break the awful, smothering lack of sensation, but the sound of my own voice was gone, too.

The part of me that was also Rika surrounded my consciousness with a calm clarity that prevented natural human panic from setting in. My senses, attuned and evolved for the environment of this world, were incapable of functioning properly in this fragment of another world that had somehow become lodged inside our native instance.

Time passed.

I had no idea if it was ten minutes or ten hours. The absolute, all-consuming lack of information I could process made it difficult to gauge such things. I couldn't even count my steps. I didn't even know if I was still walking. I felt as if the physical existence of everything was replaced with nothing at all.

At some undefined point in time—if the very concept of time even applied within the singularity of this whatever-the-fuck it was—my eyes opened slowly. I guess I closed them during the “walk,” but I couldn't say for certain.

Now, though, sensation began to return, bit by bit. I could feel my body again, feel the impact as my booted feet touched the ground. There was sound—I could hear the sound of wind whispering in my ears. Absolute blackness gave way to a soft, ethereal illumination that didn't seem to originate from any specific point.

Never mind that—I could see and hear again. Strands of my hair wafted around my face as I turned and spotted both Misaki and Rika only a few meters away.

We were all here, together. Wherever “here” was, anyway.

The three of us were standing upon a smooth platform constructed of some sort of gray, metallic substance. I tapped the toe of my boots against the floor beneath me and was rewarded with a soft ringing sound that was almost melodic. Looking up at the sky, I felt my mouth go slack and my eyes widen in complete and total astonishment.

We were not on Earth any longer.

Trying to put this place into words was difficult. It was almost indescribable, nearly beyond my ability to parse, but I had some sort of idea what it was we were looking at… and a reasonable guess as to where we ended up.

The platform we currently occupied was  suspended in midair, unaffected by gravity and held firmly in place by… nothing at all. From our vantage point, I could see innumerable platforms stretching out beyond the horizon, both above and below our current location. Varying in size and shape, the platforms were all composed of the same gray metal. Some of the platforms were free-floating, while others were interconnected to each other with a crisscrossing network of bridges and pathways.

I looked up, past the levels above, and shielded my eyes from the blue-green light of an ethereal sun. Without any frame of reference it was impossible to tell the celestial body's size or distance from this world, but like my own world's star, it was bright enough that I couldn't gaze at it directly without hurting my eyes.

Making the scene even more surreal was the total absence of features on any of the various “levels” of platforms. Millions of empty, flat, gray expanses, arranged in a manner that appeared random and arbitrary. There was a strange haziness that overlaid the entire tableau, as if my eyes were dry and my vision gone cloudy.

“Where the hell are we?” Misaki blurted.

Out of the three of us, only Rika seemed mostly unaffected by the incredible vista. Her expression was, as it usually was, cool and collected—but there seemed to be something else in her manner, something I couldn't quite place.

“Home.” Her expression was troubled. “In a sense.”

“We couldn't have already crossed the boundary—if it was that easy, Aestivar would have beat us to it a long time ago.” I stared, wide-eyed, at the other me. No, that wasn't it—we both knew it couldn't be right. If we'd crossed over into Rika's home universe with such ease, surely Aestivar would have already made it here, would have already gained access to the Terminus.

“The veil between worlds was distorted.” Rika's blue-pink eyes widened and she nodded her head vigorously. “We stand above the surface of my homeworld. A portion of it has become displaced into your universe.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Misaki demanded, her ears pressed so firmly against her head that they almost disappeared into her thick locks. The fur of her tail stood out straight; it was clear that she was far more unnerved than either Rika or me.

“Aestivar's efforts have caused the boundary between worlds to temporarily redefine its borders.” Rika waved her hand out at the vast expanse of layered platforms that covered the surface in all directions. “To put it in human terms, it would be akin to moving your fence into your neighbor's yard, if the fence was elastic and could stretch. Through the Pillars' manipulation of a neutral locus, this fragment of my world is now partly inside your universe.”

“The Pillars and their flunkies were able to do something like this?” Misaki gasped.

“Yes,” Rika answered, her expression becoming bleaker than I'd ever seen it before, her blue-pink eyes taking on a faraway look. “I'm certain of it. Aestivar's servants are here, pushing against the fabric of the boundary.”

My next question was the obvious one: “Can they punch through if they keep up like this?”

“Yes and no. The veil will continue to stretch and distort, but it will not part—at its current strength.” Rika's eyes narrowed and the cool, calm expression she usually wore was replaced with one of grim resolve. “However, the more miasma Aestivar controls, the more specters cross over into your world, the weaker the binding energies will become. If we don't stop this, the First Pillar will be able to sunder the division between worlds.”

I turned to stare out over the edge of the platform, at the layers of disjointed platforms floating above and below. There were so many layers, more than I could count, and each layer of surfaces stretched beyond the edge of the horizon. The sheer scale of this place was incredible… and so must be the civilization that created it.

A chill ran down my spine as I looked directly down, through dozens of layers of platforms. We were high above the surface of the planet—or whatever this place really was—but the air was clear and I had little trouble identifying what was beneath the lowest layers.

Blanching, I turned back to face Rika. “Is that—?”

“The astral sea,” my other self answered. Her lips curved into a grim smile, despite the gravity of our situation, and she gestured for us to follow. “I would love nothing more than to show you my home, but we have more important tasks.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, stepping back from the edge. “Let's go.”

ascent

Misaki looked even more uneasy than she did when we first arrived some time ago. I found myself almost wishing that I'd asked her to remain behind with Oriana, but I killed that thought quickly enough. Misaki was fierce and tough and attempting to leave her behind to protect her would rob her of agency. Neither of us wanted to do that to the other… though the urge to protect the other out of love was strong for both of us.

“Don't start thinking that, Karin,” she admonished me with a faint little grin.

Damn. I decided to play dumb. “Thinking what?”

“Don't 'what' me, love. You're thinking you should have asked me to stay behind.”

It was obvious she could see right through me, but that worked both ways, of course. “What do you expect? If your tail was any lower it'd actually be tucked between your legs. This place scares you.”

No anger or embarrassment twisted Misaki's features, but her ears—easily the most expressive part of her—drooped down even further at the observation. “Yeah, it does. It would weigh on you, too, if not for the anima and Rika.”

“I'm aware.”

As if summoned by the mention of her name, Rika turned to regard the both of us, her expression once again calm and collected. “You don't need to fear this place. The only danger here is the distortion in the boundary and the intruder that's causing it.”

“There's no anything here,” Misaki remarked as dryly as her emotional state allowed. “It's just a bunch of huge, floating empty gray platforms. I can barely even tell we're going anywhere at all.”

“That's just a defensive measure employed by the local node; the two of you have been dimensionally displaced just enough to fool your senses into thinking there's nothing here.” Rika shrugged as if it wasn't that big a deal. “Soon I'll be able to make a connection to the node and disable it.”

“Wait—so all this is an illusion?”

“In a sense. It's more the illusion of emptiness, though.”

Misaki gawked at the spirit-girl. “What?”

“That explains why we've been taking such a winding path.” I shook my head in a mixture of disbelief and resignation before adding, “There are actually structures on the platforms, but we can't see them.”

“Yes—which is why I need you to follow closely—and try not to trust your eyes too much, unless you want to slam face-first into a solid wall,” Rika reminded us both. “We should suspend further conversation until after I connect with the local node. It would be bad if either of you fell from the path.”

I blinked and felt a chill run up my spine. The uneasiness that Misaki was feeling seemed a lot more reasonable than the cool detachment that suffused my emotions. Rika's infallible calm bled through the shared consciousness, smothering the very human inclination to feel fear, to panic at being suddenly transported to an alien world.

“I really wish you didn't do that.”

Rika stared at me curiously. “Do what?”

“Mute my emotions. Make me feel so calm all the time.”

“It's not intentional,” she informed me, shrugging slightly. “From a pragmatic standpoint, though—”

“Yes, I know, I know, it helps us. This is going to be tough enough without having to fight off silly human emotions.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, even though the air we were breathing wasn't technically real.

We continued to trudge across the allegedly-empty gray platforms for what seemed like a very long period of time but was probably only a few minutes, perhaps fifteen at the most. The route got even more convoluted and Rika motioned for the both of us to walk slowly and follow her very closely. I wasn't even going to bother thinking about what that actually meant.

Abruptly, the celestial stopped and held her right hand out, placing it upon some flat vertical surface that neither Misaki nor I could see. Her eyes closed as I felt a tugging on some part of the anima within me; that pervasive serenity quickly gave way to intense concentration and focus.

And then, just like that, in the blink of an eye, the world around us was revealed.

The three of us stood on a raised platform, suspended above a labyrinthine network of pathways, some narrow, others quite wide, that stretched out for several kilometers. Tall, impossible-seeming structures—buildings, maybe?—soared above us and descended down below our feet for hundreds of meters before vanishing into the shimmering silver sea below.

The light from the blue-green sun appeared a bit brighter now. Gone was the flat, drab grayness. In its place were swirls of shifting colors, some of which I perceived but couldn't describe or even comprehend.

I turned my attention to Rika. She still stood before a column of some unidentifiable material, her hand pressed against its surface. Unlike the platforms and the walls of the structures around is, this particular landmark seemed to be cast from translucent crystal. The column exhibited properties of a liquid and a solid simultaneously. Soft colors rippled around where Rika's hand was partly submerged in the substance, which was rather disinclined to follow gravity.

“The local node has been updated to accept you and Misaki,” Rika told us as she slowly drew her hand from the strange column. The translucent, faintly luminous substance slid off her hands, leaving a series of ripples in the surface that quickly dissipated.

Misaki stared at the node. “Is that thing a computer?”

“Sort of.” Rika turned around to face us both. “This node is part of the larger network and governs the function of all systems in the communal network around it. In that aspect it functions very much like one of your computers.”

“But works completely differently,” I added, nodding slowly in understanding. “Because the rules here are different—the physical laws and the fundamental forces of this world are subtly different than those in our world.”

“Yes.”

I frowned and my gaze flicked on Misaki for a brief moment before returning to study the weird computer-thing. “What's going happen to this place if the intruder isn't stopped?”

“The boundary reacted to the pressure by deforming and the intruder gained access to this fragment of my world. The—” Rika paused and I knew she was trying to figure out some way to put this in human terms, “—metaphorical 'volume' of a given instance cannot change, and so the boundary itself was pushed into this world. As the 'material,' for lack of a better word, of the veil is stretched, the thinner it becomes, further lowering the energy requirement to part it.”

Misaki peered out over the edge of the raised platform. “So even though we're physically occupying a part of your homeworld, it's not possible to get to the Terminus from here?”

“No. Not yet, anyway. The boundary still stands, albeit greatly weakened by Aestivar's servants. If the First Pillar manages to acquire a critical mass of miasma and the boundary weakens further, that will no longer be the case.”

“So how the hell are we suppose to get there?” I demanded. “It's not like we can just wait around for Aestivar's plan to work.”

Rika's expression was pensive and she looked away. “I don't want to tell you. At least,” the celestial amended, “not yet. Not until we've dealt with the intruders.”

“The way you say that makes it sound like I'm not going to like the answer.”

There was no response, but I didn't really expect one. Though we shared a portion of our consciousness, it was difficult to get any sort of sense of what Rika was thinking. It seemed that she was actively trying not to think about the ultimate resolution of our task.

Silently, appraising the monolith with critical eyes, Rika moved slowly around the node and placed her hand on one of the other sides. The whole thing looked uniform and unbroken to me, but it was obvious she knew what she was doing. Blue-pink eyes closed softly and her hand sank into the bizarre liquid/solid material.

“What is she even doing?”

I exchanged a glance with my wife as we waited for Rika to finish. Her expression was one of deep concentration. I really didn't know what exactly was happening, but I could feel the distant, veiled connection as the node's astral pattern began to interlace with Rika's.

Information streamed through the link—so much of it that I couldn't possibly comprehend even the smallest fraction. This was made much more difficult by the fact that Rika and I only shared a small fragment of interlocking astral patterns. Our linked consciousness was not integrated enough for me to make any sense of the information. My counterpart knew this, of course, and she chose not to translate the connection.

After a few minutes of communication with the node, Rika drew her hand out of the strange device and opened her eyes. “The system is experiencing severe instabilities, but I've managed to locate the intruder.” The celestial beckoned for us to follow. “Let's go. We need to hurry and stop them while we still can. They're far closer to succeeding than I'm comfortable with.”

prevention

The lift platform cruised above the maze of structures and walkways, only a few meters below us. Judging by the blur of motion beneath us, the platform moved with incredible speed, but I couldn't feel even the slightest sensation of acceleration nor turbulence. No stiff wind blew our hair back. The contradiction of motion without the proper kinesthetics was disorienting, to say the least. Were we actually moving, or was the platform stationary and the world moved beneath us?

I had no idea. It didn't really matter. Contemplating the bizarre properties of this alien reality construct would have to wait for another day, preferably when we weren't busy trying to stop the enemy from destroying my world.

“Why aren't there other, um, people here?” Misaki asked. “There are other beings here, members of your species or whatever, right?”

“Yes and no,” Rika answered, again using ambiguous terms. “Those who were materialized when the boundary was distorted…” The spirit-girl heaved a despondent sigh before straightening her posture. She gestured below our conveyance, pointing down between the spires and platforms at the vast sea of silver. “Those who rest in the astral sea won't be able to materialize safely until the nominal state of this instance has been restored.”

Misaki stared at her. “Then that silver ocean below us is—?”

“Pure, metastable liquid mana,” I cut in, receiving an affirmative nod from Rika. “It's also the natural habitat of Rika's people.”

“Correct.”

I didn't say anything. The beings that lived within this world, including Rika, were not suited to living in the reality I'd been born to. When the Pillars of Heaven forcibly tore her from the astral sea, dragging her out into the air bereft of all but the smallest amount of sustenance, it was a wonder that she survived at all.

“How many… how many were materialized when this distortion hit?”

“I don't know for sure.” The spirit-girl's expression dropped. “A lot.”

“Let's just move on,” I insisted, placing a comforting hand on Rika's shoulder. She glanced at me and smiled despite the pain and sorrow filling her heart. I pulled her closer and held her, reaching up to wipe away her tears. She nodded wordlessly and sniffled.

“Don't ever be ashamed of your tears.” I let out a slow breath and leaned forward to kiss her on the forehead. “I spent too many years being embarrassed by my own, and since it looks like you're just as sensitive… take it from someone who knows. It's not worth it to try and suppress your feelings.”

Rika smiled. “Thank you.”

“If everyone accepted their tears, I think we'd all be better off.” I shrugged awkwardly and turned to gaze out over the seemingly-endless, multi-dimensional maze of platforms, paths and structures. The sheer size and complexity of this place made me dizzy.

“We're getting closer to our destination,” Rika observed, her voice still a little ragged, but clearly back to her usual calm and collected demeanor. “You should be able to see where the distortion started.”

I turned to look in the direction she indicated.

The platform began to decelerate and descend. Our velocity dropped off quickly and the flying disc itself slid into place near a walkway that jutted out from the main thoroughfare. Filaments of a silvery-metallic multiphase material flowed from the edge of the walkway and encircled the drifting conveyance, locking it securely into place. The process was so perfect that both the platform and walkway appeared as a continuous and seamless structure.

Under normal circumstances I would have been utterly fascinated with the alien world and fantastical technology that surrounded me, but my attention had been wholly captured by something else entirely.

Rika, Misaki and I stood before an enormous expanse of nothingness. The spirit-girl's homeworld seemed to just end, less than a kilometer directly ahead.

A colorless void blocked all continuity with what lay beyond it, slicing down through structures and walkways, descending deep into the astral sea below. Beyond the cutoff point was literally indescribable because it was truly nothing. Merely attempting to look into the void confused my eyes with swirls of chaotic nonsense.

Misaki's ears flattened down against her head as she stared at the impenetrable barrier. “Is that… the boundary? How can we see it now? I thought the boundary wasn't a physical thing.”

“It's not. We're not seeing anything.” I frowned, turning to look away from the non-dimensional space. “It looks the way it does because our minds are trying to fill in the gaps with whatever they can.” I glanced at Rika for confirmation. “Right?”

“Yes, that's right.”

Misaki's ears twitched. “What do we do now, then?”

“I'm not entirely sure,” Rika admitted as she regarded the wall of nothingness, her lips compressed into a thin line. “This has never happened before. I have no idea what to expect.”

“If we dispel the magic doing the pushing, what will happen to this place?”

“The boundary will recede.” Rika turned to regard Misaki grimly. “We would share the fate of my people who were materialized when the distortion appeared.”

The obvious question came to my lips: “How fast does that happen?”

Rika shook her head. “I don't know.”

“What if it happens really fast?” I pressed, my own expression darkening nearly as much as Rika's. “How are we going to get out of here if it snaps back instantly, like cutting a tensioned cable? It took us almost an hour flying on this damn thing just to get to the edge.”

The spirit-girl didn't reply immediately. I could tell, not just from the intense look in her eyes, that she was thinking hard about something. The impressions and emotional bits and pieces that bled through our shared consciousness told me she was trying to decide whether to reveal something important.

“Just say what you want to say, Rika. The longer we stand around dithering, the less time we have.”

“I can't.” She bit her lip and turned to look at me. “You'll understand when it's time.”

“Damn it, Rika.” Misaki's ears flattened against her head. “Why are you so reluctant to talk to us all of a sudden? It's not like you.”

“I'm sorry. I have my reasons—which will be made clear soon enough.” The astral being sighed and turned away from us. Rika looked about as unhappy as I'd ever seen her, and I was starting to wonder just how much of it had to do with the deaths of her people.

Whatever her reasoning was, I decided that pressing her would be unwise and likely ineffective in any case. She was right; we did have more important things to worry about. Thanks to our linked minds, Rika knew me just as well as I knew myself—so I did my best to trust her and accept her refusal to elaborate further.

I let out a slow, resigned breath. “Okay, Rika. I know you know what you're doing.”

“Thank you, Karin.”

“So.” Misaki's ears flicked upward and her tail swished around her thigh. “What do we do next, then? We're at the edge of the boundary—where do we go from here?”

“Down, to the bottommost material layer. Aestivar's servants are there.” Rika placed her hand on Misaki's shoulder. The spirit-girl's lips twisted into a grimace. “We're running short on time. Follow me.”

Misaki and I fell into step behind Rika as she led us down a slowly-descending ramp that would take us to the layers of contiguous platforms beneath us. As near as I could tell, the layers were spaced about fifty meters apart. The Pillars' agents were apparently at the bottommost level, closest to the fluid “surface” of the planet; I could sense the change in the movement of ambient mana as we got closer.

“Whoever it is, they're powerful.” I glanced at Rika and gestured toward the maze of structures and platforms that stretched out before us. “A lot of loose mana is diverting toward their location… and the way it moves feels familiar, but I can't get much more than that.”

“It's Tsukimura,” Misaki bit out, baring her small fangs in an open snarl. “Akane, at least—though there are probably other summoners. It's a little hard to tell exactly with that massive lump of dark mana blotting everything else out.”

“You're sure? Even through all that interference?”

“Yes, I'm sure. There's no way I'd fail to recognize a Tsukimura summoner.” Her tail lashed violently. “Recall that I was their slave for centuries, love. I'll never, ever forget the style of their magecraft.”

“I didn't think Akane Tsukimura was that powerful,” I admitted.

“On her own, no.” Misaki's ears flattened against her head. “I don't think we have to guess who helped her get this far…” She bared her fangs in an open snarl, letting out a growl fairly dripping with hatred and the desire for vengeance.

“Misaki,” I murmured.

“What?”

“Promise me you won't do anything stupid to get revenge. As satisfying as it might be, yielding up your self-control won't help us.”

Her ears flattened against her head. “I know that, love. Don't patronize me.”

“I'm sorry, I'm just worried.” My voice softened as I turned toward Misaki, leaning forward to place a kiss on her cheek. “And I'm not trying to invalidate your feelings, either. I understand what you have to do and I'm not going to try to stop you. I just want to make sure you survive the encounter, regardless of what closure you want to get.”

A slim hand reached up and grabbed my chin roughly. Misaki turned my face toward hers and she kissed me with that wonderful, fierce enthusiasm of hers. I closed my eyes, struggling against the overwhelming sensation of weakness and desire to yield myself to her.

Misaki's body pressed against mine and she held me up easily, encircling her free hand around to rest on the small of my back. Before I could really lose myself in her embrace, she pulled back and grinned, licking her lips.

“That was yummy.”

fated encounter

I stepped off the edge of a lift conveyance and onto a large platform on the very lowest layer, glancing around furtively, taking in my new surroundings. Despite the various towers and spires rising all around us, the bottommost material layer wasn't shrouded in shadow. Though the light of this planet's sun had trouble reaching down this deeply, the surface of the astral sea below was ten meters below. Ethereal silvery light welled up from beneath the calm surface.

The plan of attack we decided on had the three of us splitting up. It was a simple enough strategy; I would make contact with the intruders first, engaging them either with words or battle, while Misaki would drop in from above and take them by surprise. While the two of us fought the intruders, Rika would attempt to discern the nature of their weavings so that we might undo what had been wrought.

I could feel the dense currents of magic warping even more strongly now. They were close and it was only a matter of time before they detected me—if they hadn't already. That sense of danger became sharper and more imminent as I crossed a short bridge between two platforms. Glimmers of conduction flickered ominously through the ambient mana.

The “walls” of this deep artificial valley extended up and out between a forest of soaring towers. Some of them stood against the edge of the platform and descended into the astral sea beneath, vanishing beyond my sight deep into the shimmering liquid. Other structures were free-floating, suspended in mid-air in the same inexplicable manner as the platforms that hung above the planet's surface.

As I started to walk the length of the platform, I stopped abruptly. There was that faint sensation of magic at work again—

A black-purple crackling ball of death streaked through the space where I'd just been standing less than a second ago. If I hadn't felt the disturbance, a miasma bolt that potent would have, at the very least, destroyed my barrier. At worst, it would have hurt—a lot.

Instead the attack went wide and slammed into one of the towers nearby. I expected it to detonate on impact, but instead the surface buckled and changed phase, becoming viscous and fluid. The clotted dark mana was simply swallowed up into the material of the structure as surely as a pebble thrown into a stagnant pond. Shimmering with a silvery iridescence, the strange material absorbed the power of the attack before reforming into a perfectly smooth, solid surface.

Without the expected detonation to cover a counterattack, I changed tactics. The lines of force in my astral pattern rearranged themselves and a defensive barrier materialized around me in a defense akin to Misaki's signature shield, impervious to almost any form of attack for a brief period of time.

A second barrage of miasma bolts streaked out from the far end of the platform, less than twenty meters away. This time I didn't bother to dodge them at all, instead allowing my barrier to deflect the deadly spheres of corrupting energies.

I enacted a new astral process as I broke into a dead run. Silver-white disintegrating power coalesced in my left hand. Rounding the corner of a particularly wide structure in the center of the long platform brought me face-to-face with a young man in his twenties. Misaki's instincts had been right on the money; the summoner was one of the surviving children of Tsukimura. The man's resemblance to Lord Isao was unmistakable.

“Ashley!” Tsukimura snarled, his face contorting with hate. His left hand etched a series of sharp, angular runes in the air—or tried to.

I let a smug little smirk twist my lips as I interrupted the invocation with a thought. The sinister sigils disappeared, their nascent binding forces erased by the counterspell. Not bothering to wait for him to recover from the shock of losing his invocation mid-cast, I darted forward and low, intending to end the battle before it even truly started.

My left hand struck his sternum with an open-palmed blow that sent the Tsukimura summoner staggering back. Before he could attempt to recover his balance, my right hand closed around my automatic and drew the weapon with a single, smooth motion.

I brought the weapon up and fired twice. The Tsukimura summoner's hate-filled snarl was abruptly cut off, replaced with a shrill exclamation of pain as a pair of MQ rounds struck him in the left leg. Blood spurted from the twin holes and he went down hard.

“Don't try to invoke,” I warned, surprising myself at how unwilling I was to kill the man, especially considering how likely it was he would die regardless of my actions. “Those were high-potency MQ rounds. You really won't like what happens if you try to cast something. Tell me where your boss is.”

The fallen Tsukimura hissed in pain. “She will kill you.”

“I doubt that.”

“She will. You have no idea the depth of her hatred for you, Ashley. Your meddling… ruined everything.” There was a ragged gasping sound as a fresh wave of pain washed over the downed summoner. “I promise you, she will deliver to you a death that will be slow and exquisitely painful.”

I shrugged, not bothering to banter with the summoner who was clearly deriving satisfaction from taunting me. He wasn't a threat any longer and the feedback would kill him eventually, anyway. I turned away and continued to follow the currents of mana.

The supposedly blind corridor wasn't actually a dead-end; there was a narrow, curved ramp that led up and into a wide structure at the end of the platform. I shivered from the sensation of dark and cold; the unmistakable presence of a high concentration of miasma.

I did my best to make myself undetectable as I ascended the ramp and entered the structure. I wasn't entirely sure the earlier exchange with their sentry hadn't already been detected, but the sheer volume of dark mana gathering here would make it hard to sense anything else.

Faint whispers of a presence, of raging flame and primal power, informed me that Misaki had somehow managed to get ahead of me. I didn't think the summoners ahead would be able to feel her, either. The enormous amount of mana being converted into miasma within the distortion was doing a pretty good job of blotting out lesser sources of astral energy.

I found myself in a vast, ghostly antechamber, a wide-open space that seemed insubstantial and ephemeral. The walls, floor and ceiling were crafted out of some crystalline substance that had the same strange phase-shifting property as the structure's exterior. Soft lines and curves of multicolored light wound through the not-quite-opaque material.

In the center of the antechamber, her back turned to me, was Akane Tsukimura.

The master summoner made no indication that she was aware of my presence, or that her sentry had been taken out. I knew she had to be in a very deep and focused meditation to be able to control the miasma that expanded the neutral locus against the veil between worlds.

There it was—an incredibly dense sphere of corrupt astral energy, suspended in the air above a wide, circular hole in the platform. The confluence of dark mana itself was perhaps only a few centimeters in diameter, but was so concentrated that I felt sick just looking at it. Three other summoners stood in a triangle formation around the black sphere, their hands raised up as faint tendrils of dark smoke swirled from their fingertips before being captured by the miasmic singularity.

Akane Tsukimura's shoulders stiffened as she realized the newcomer was not one of her own subordinates. I waited silently as she made a few motions to the summoners maintaining the singularity's integrity, then stood up and turned around slowly.

“Expecting someone else?” I taunted.

The Tsukimura summoner shrugged. “Hardly. You had little choice but to come here. Lord Aestivar predicted that you would eventually puzzle out the rest of his plan, and that you would follow me into the Astral Realm.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “It's just you, is it? Alone?”

“Yeah. Just me.”

“You're not especially good at lying, Lady Ashley.” The summoner's scowl returned and she crossed her arms over her chest. “I know you and the traitor followed us through the expanded neutral locus and were led here by that troublesome celestial. Not to worry, though—my servants and I are more than capable of responding to whatever ambush you may be planning.”

“Talk is cheap,” I shot back, feeling about as confident as I sounded. The anima infused into my being seemed an overflowing font of unimaginable power. Here, on this small piece of Rika's homeworld drawn into my own universe, that power was further amplified by the presence of the astral sea mere meters below.

I shuddered to think of what that would feel like once I reached the Terminus itself.

“Perhaps you are right,” Akane allowed, pursing her lips for a moment before they curved into a sinister little smile. “Action speaks louder than words, after all. I will enjoy repaying you for the insult and injury you inflicted upon me and mine, Lady Ashley. Let us dispense with further conversation, shall we?”

“Fine by me.”

I didn't wait for her to strike first. In less than the time it took to form a thought, the energy of the astral sea poured directly into my spirit. I made a long side-step to the right and extended my right hand, palm outward.

A searing line of incandescent doom burned through the air, missing Akane's head by perhaps only a few centimeters. Her energy barrier shimmered and sighed as some of the power of the beam was blunted by its glancing path, but the shield was more than robust enough to continue operating without issue.

“Your aim seems to be off,” the Tsukimura summoner mocked.

I grinned. “I wasn't aiming at you.”

Akane whirled around and her gaze settled on the pile of whitish ash that had once been one of her servant summoners. The remaining two were still locked in the throes of their channeling, but with the maintaining flow of miasma cut down by a third, the growth of the singularity slowed appreciably.

“You think that will stop me?”

The Tsukimura slashed a jagged series of runes into the air, far faster than I'd expected, but it didn't matter much because I no longer needed to take such a roundabout method. I willed the half-formed invocation to unbind, severing the temporary link between the summoner and the process she wished to enact.

Dark sigils flared brightly before abruptly vanishing. Pent-up dark mana was caught in Akane's astral pattern, with no easy way out. Alarmed, the summoner quickly released the stored energy, expending the increasingly-unstable mana in a dull reddish glow of light and heat.

I expected her to handle that as she did. A summoner as skilled as her would have trained against opponents utilizing counter-invocations. Though my counters worked differently than those of the average mage, breaking the conduit between the caster and the energy they sought to channel, it didn't surprise me at all that Akane was able to defend properly.

That didn't mean I was worried, of course—though it was clear she was.

“You know what you're up against, right?” I smirked at her with as much smug superiority as I could manage. “It doesn't matter what you do—if you try to use magic, I'm just going to unbind it before you can cast. Even if you keep bleeding off the excess, it doesn't change the fact that you're not going to be able to do much of anything.”

Akane made a rude noise. “If you think you've won, you're sorely mistaken.”

“Oh? Then show me something. Make it interesting.”

I blinked in mild surprise as the summoner began to trace a series of complex runes in the air. I had a strong feeling that this was bait—if she knew I could counter her faster invocations, then why was she bothering with a really long one?—but I knew I couldn't just let her cast something this powerful.

Not a bad move, Akane.

Again I willed the process to disjoin; again the sigils flared brightly before guttering out and vanishing completely. Instead of releasing the pent-up mana, Akane's weavings stopped entirely and I realized, almost too late, that she hadn't been casting much of anything at all, nor was there any excess mana built up in her pattern—

My barrier flashed repeatedly with dusky purple and I staggered back, struggling to reinforce the defense before it failed completely. Akane's sinister smile had blossomed into a full-blown feral grin as she gripped a large automatic pistol, the weapon's wide bore pointed directly at me.

She fired again and again, battering against my barrier. The MQ rounds slamming into my defensive shield weren't as strong as the ones made by AEGIS, but they were enough to keep me busy shoring up my barrier. If I stopped for even a second, one of the rounds would get through. A round in any part of my body, even a leg or an arm, would put me in an extremely vulnerable position.

“That's… definitely interesting.” I gritted my teeth as another round, and then another, slammed into the shield of astral energy projected in front of me.

One of the channeling summoners ceased their work and drew a weapon of his own—a compact sub-machinegun, hidden beneath the man's long coat. Only one summoner continued to channel miasma into the singularity, which seemed to be stablized but quiescent, though honestly it was a little hard to tell while Akane was blasting away at me.

While the rate of fire wasn't too high, it was high enough to keep me busy continually reconstructing my barrier. I couldn't redirect much attention to offensive processes, though I still had enough focus left over to manage counters, should Akane try to invoke again.

The tall man lifted his SMG and racked the charging handle, preparing to unleash a hail of MQ rounds that would definitely overwhelm my barrier—

A brilliant blue-white column of flame engulfed the summoner from above. Misaki soared down from above, her hands enshrouded with astral fire as she landed lightly beside the man she'd just turned into a human torch. Her tail whirled and counterbalanced her body as she threw all of her strength into a spinning kick that sent the half-incinerated summoner into the hole in the center of the antechamber.

I had a pretty good idea of what would happen to the summoner once he hit the surface of the astral sea, and I winced as a fierce flash of blazing silver light shot up from the yawning abyss.

“No!” Akane screeched.

“I thought you said you'd be able to handle anything we threw at you?” I grinned as the enemy mage's sidearm clicked impotently, the slide locking back on an empty magazine. I took a threatening step toward her. “It doesn't look like you're doing that good of a job.”

“How did she pass through the displacement field?!” Akane demanded.

“Rika made a few changes to it so it wouldn't recognize me,” Misaki replied without missing a beat. Her ears flattened against her head and she bared her small fangs in an open snarl. “Then I just waited until you thought victory was assured.”

I gave my partner a very dirty look. “You could have done a little less waiting, you know.”

“I wanted to make sure I got at least one of those other guys, so I had to wait until they stopped channeling.”

“You may think you've won, but you haven't,” Akane muttered under her breath, so quietly I almost didn't hear her. “Bear witness to the prophecy of your doom—graven in blood.”

Slowly, deliberately, the Tsukimura summoner reached to a small sheath on her belt and drew a long dagger. Ornately inscribed with macabre designs chasing down the length of the black metal of the blade, it seemed more decorative than a true weapon.

Worse than that, the blade was so saturated in dark mana that it throbbed with power.

Before either of us could react, the Tsukimura summoner inverted the blade and, with both hands gripping the hilt tightly, drove the razor-edged tip of the ritual knife deep into her chest. Akane screamed from the undoubtedly intense pain as the sharp, hard steel slid between her ribs and tore into her heart.

Blood was pouring down the dying woman's chest. She stumbled, falling to her knees, as the life continued to spill from her mortal vessel. This time, however, the blood that fell to the floor did not vanish into the strange gray substance.

The crimson pool spread out from Akane Tsukimura, wider and wider, as she continued to bleed—far more blood than should have been spilled by such a wound. As Misaki and I watched, simultaneously entranced and horrified, the blood began to darken, fading from scarlet to dull reddish-brown to black in the span of seconds.

Akane's face was locked in an agonizing grin of triumph as she was bled completely dry, her face bone-white. More and more blood poured forth, spilling onto the floor, darkening almost instantly, becoming thick, oily and black.

And corrupt.

The dying summoner fixed her dull eyes on me, just as dense plumes of miasma began to rise from the “blood” that had spilled out on the antechamber floor. Her lips spread in a macabre grin filled with equal measures of hatred and agony.

“Die screaming, Lady Ashley.”

abyss call

“Uh, what the fuck just happened?”

I turned to stare at Misaki, who was herself staring in sheer astonishment at the dead summoner. We both watched as the pool of blood that spread out from Akane Tsukimura's lifeless corpse began to change. It had darkened to a pure jet-black in color, resembling oil or pitch far more than human blood.

“It's some kind of summoning,” I muttered, my expression nearly as horrified as that of my partner. “I don't think we're going to like what comes out.”

Bubbles filled with dark mist began to form on the surface of the black blood as it continued to spread, defining a perfect circle exactly two meters in diameter. I had no idea what or where the boiling miasma was coming from, but—

“Karin, look out!”

Rika's voice brought my head spinning around to face the new threat. The last of the three summoners channeling miasma into the neutral locus had ceased her casting—and yet, the miasma singularity was perfectly stable. No, it was more than stable—it was growing!

Freed from her task, the last remaining summoner broke into a dead run. From within her robes, she drew out an automatic pistol and fired wildly, loosing a chaotic and badly-aimed barrage of MQ rounds. None of the shots even came close to striking any of us. The slugs that went wide slammed into the interior of the structure.

Dusky purple flashes of the detonating MQ rounds sent a spiderweb of cracks through the mana-infused structural material. I felt my jaw drop as I stared in horror. The summoner wasn't actually trying to hit us at all!

Cursing under my breath, I enacted a process with an act of will. A line of unbinding white fire lanced out from my extended right palm and struck the woman's weapon. There was a momentary flash of light, immediately followed by a dull ringing sound as matter was forcefully dissociated at a fundamental level.

The summoner shrieked in agony; my skill with dematerialization wasn't quite up to the level of precision needed to destroy the weapon alone. I'd managed to take the woman's entire hand and half of her arm along with the gun, though I don't think it would have mattered at this point.

“This structure is going to collapse!” Rika shouted over the ominous crack and rumble that filled my ears. With the flow of mana distorted in the structure's walls, the systems within the metastate material were unable to control further phase changes. “We need to get out of here, now!”

“YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE, ASHLEY!!!”

I gasped in surprise and protest as Rika and Misaki grabbed me by each wrist and practically dragged me out of the collapsing structure. Chunks of brittle crystal fell from the ceiling of the antechamber, shattering into countless shards of blue-white as they struck the floor.

Though we were outside, the entryway to the antechamber was wide enough—and the collapse had exposed even more of the interior. I watched in macabre horror as the grievously-wounded summoner calmly walked out into the perfect circle of miasma-soaked blood. The summoner turned to face me, her lips splitting wide into a disturbingly macabre grin.

And then she disappeared into the black liquid, as if the bubbling, miasma-spewing circle was the surface of a deep well, rather than a thin film atop solid ground.

“What the fuck?!” Misaki gasped.

Rika's expression was grim, her complexion having gone ashen as the three of us watched the antechamber crumble to the ground. Much of the falling spire's kinetic energy was absorbed by the properties of the platform upon which it had been erected, while other fragments were floating suspended in midair, seemingly unaffected by gravity.

“Karin.” The astral spirit-girl turned to face me, her blue-pink eyes dull and lifeless.

“You know what's happening, Rika?”

She nodded.

“Want to enlighten us?”

The celestial entity turned her dead-eyed gaze to focus on the circle of corrupted energies—and the miasma it released, in great quantities, toward the singularity that powered the distortion of the boundary between worlds.

“Akane Tsukimura's death enacted a powerful summoning, using her own astral pattern as a framework and the lives of the two mages as a power source.” Rika turned back around to face me and I was taken aback by just how fearful she looked.

The circular well of miasmic pitch began to swell into a dome of shimmering black, glistening wetly for only a moment before it hardened. Upon achieving solidity, the dome became a shell, dulling to a matte black so dark and featureless that seemed to suck in light itself.

In a terrible instant, the dark cocoon shattered, blasting outward with bone-rattling force. Suspended fragments of the destroyed antechamber were sent flying through the air. I shielded my face with my arms and a hastily-erected kinetic barrier, the bits and pieces ricocheting off into the space surrounding the bottom-layer platform.

An abyssal creature stood upon the layer's surface. Though I'd never seen this thing before, I knew without a doubt the identity of this deformed, skeletal creature. Corrupt energies saturated his body, mind and soul so completely that he was scarcely recognizable as the human he had once been.

Aestivar, the First Pillar of Heaven, stood before us, bound completely to the malevolent will of the miasmic origin.

Long, spindly arms nearly reached the ground, each of them ending in a massive claw with obsidian talons. Aestivar's legs were equally grotesque, folded back and possessing an extra joint. Those legs extended as he stretched to his full height—towering nearly four meters at the top of his elongated, skull-like head. Instead of eyes, the blackened sockets were home to a pair of sinister violet embers that burned with endless hatred.

I tensed as the abyssal creature began to slowly stride toward us.

[You are too late.]

The voice rang painfully from within my mind, sounding like nothing and everything beyond and outside of human experience. The transmuted physical manifestation of the First Pillar's miasma-infused soul had no mouth, no lips, no way to communicate with the spoken word—but his power was so incredible that such crude methods of communication would have seemed out of place.

I drew myself up to my full height—which was less than half of that of the First Pillar—and scowled at him with as much forcefulness as I could muster. Fear should have been gripping my heart in an icy vise, but that familiar soothing, preternatural calm suffused my soul. Misaki, too, stood her ground resolutely.

Rika took a step forward, closer to the Origin-possessed Aestivar. I didn't try to stop her.

“We are here, and we will stop you,” the celestial said out loud, her blue-pink eyes narrowing in fierce determination. “We won't allow you to gain control of the Terminus.”

A staccato hissing sound emanated from the gaunt creature.

He—or rather, it, was laughing at us.

[Your mere existence profanes the Heavenly Father. Your death is assured.]

“Tough talk coming from someone who looks like they were left on the barbecue grill too long,” I shot back, folding my arms over my chest. “Don't you realize you're being used? Controlled? Played like a fiddle?”

[I am the instrument of the Father's rage and sorrow. I am His chosen Son, the First Pillar upon which His Divine Will rests. My soul has been yielded up to the One True God, the Father of All. I have become the embodiment of His holy wrath.]

“I don't think it's going to listen to us,” Misaki commented, her tail lashing back and forth as she stared hard at Aestivar. “There's nothing left of Aestivar's will; the Origin burned out what little was left and took control.”

I knew she was right. This was what Eirene wished to save him from, to release his tortured soul from this durance with the sweet release of death. Aestivar was nothing more than an extension of the corrupted Origin, bound tightly to the astral pattern that held the key to accessing the Astral Terminus.

The “god” that whispered into Aestivar's dreams for hundreds of years was no Heavenly Father, was not even a deity at all. It was nothing more than the distorted will of an irretrievably-corrupted process that had infected this world countless eons ago, gaining power and logic and intelligence as it became more and more complex.

But no matter how advanced the Origin became, it would never be able to fully assimilate this world unless it could gain control of the systems that governed it. The infection could spread throughout the material layers of this world, but without a key, it would never be able to surpass its current incarnation.

[Bow before the Father, pledge your soul to Him, and you will earn a painless death.] The creature that was once Aestivar took a threatening step forward, extending one huge, clawed hand. Greenish-black fire erupted from the empty palm, crackling with sickening, soul-deadening malice. [Refuse, and earn the thousand torments fitting a heretical dog.]

“Not going to happen.”

I moved—throwing my body aside the instant the last word left my mouth, rolling to the left as Misaki enacted an invocation of flight and shot up into the air. Rika remained in place, a small smile on her face, as Aestivar struck the first blow.

Clots of miasmic flame roared from the outstretched claw and slammed into Rika's body, but the celestial simply tsked with contempt and derision. Her fingers snapped and the flame vanished, swallowed up into the metastate platform.

Rika was immediately answered with a brutal fusillade of miasma bolts. Again, the celestial shrugged them off, appearing unruffled and uninterested—though I knew that attack had to have worn down her barrier at least a little. Even though we were sort of on her world, the distortion in the boundary kept her locked within her sealed form.

I released a wide disrupting beam that struck Aestivar's leveled claw. The white light slashed through miasma flames, extinguishing them and sending crawling arcs of energy deep into the creature's body. Unlike other things I'd turned the dematerialization process on, Aestivar's twisted form seemed to be resistant to the destructive unbinding. It still seemed to hurt him, though.

A psychic roar of rage and frustration pierced my brain with needlelike agony, but I rallied somehow and managed to step back as Aestivar re-ignited his power. Rapid-fire bursts of dark flames scoured the spot I'd just been standing—but again, the platform's material absorbed the tremendous amount of deadly energy, bleeding it off to some unknown location.

“Die!” Misaki roared as she shot down from above, both hands wreathed with searing blue plasma. Discrete blasts of supercharged fire mana struck Aestivar's spindly form, one after the other, sending the First Pillar staggering back. The impossibly-hot projectiles didn't explode on impact, but seemed to splash like droplets of water, limning the abyssal creature with burning flames that ate away at the miasmic armor shrouding its grotesque limbs.

The Origin's eyes flared like twin suns. [It is YOU who will die!]

Black flashes winked all around Misaki as countless long spikes of obsidian were conjured into existence, surrounding her on every side, from every angle. My eyes widened in horror as the needles shivered once before they shot toward my partner with incredible force. She had no time to avoid the spikes that sought to transfix her.

A bubble of impenetrable force interjected itself between the needles and Misaki's body, less than a nanosecond before they hit. If I hadn't been mind-linked to Rika this whole time, I wouldn't have noticed at all, it happened so fast.

Currents of miasma blasted outward as Rika detonated the temporary shield she'd put around Misaki. Before the obscuring black mist could completely dissipate, Misaki shot directly up into the air, repositioning herself even further away from Aestivar. A series of explosive fireballs slammed into the First Pillar's body, adding an orange-red glint to the blue flames that slowly and inadequately ate away at the miasma seething within that twisted monster.

We had been doing okay, but that last attack was way too close for comfort. I shot a glance at Rika, who returned my look with a grim one of her own. The three of us working together were enough to fight Aestivar on relatively equal ground. However…

The Origin was confident in its power at this early stage in the battle, secure in the knowledge that we were little more than annoyances to be swept aside at its leisure. I found it difficult to argue with that assertion.

I suppressed a sigh and prepared myself to enact another unbinding process. Things were already bad, but I knew from painful personal experience that no matter how bad things seemed to be going, there was a very high chance they could always manage to get worse.

binding force

The abyssal creature's silent scream sent my head throbbing, but I was able to shrug off the damage it would have ordinarily caused. I shot a quick glance at Rika, who took a long step backward and directed silvery anima-flame toward the nightmare thing.

Misaki and I were tired, which was the point, of course. The Origin-possesed Aestivar would not succumb to the weaknesses of physical form. What little was left of his body served only to provide a thin vessel for the animate corruption that was his sword and shield Though there was little left of the man's original conscious mind, the alien intellect of the Origin was more than capable of complex strategic thinking.

Aestivar continued to wear us down, turning this into a battle of attrition. This chaotic, frenzied trading of deadly astral energies dragged on, but we knew the Origin was holding back. Most of his power seemed to be focused on maintaining his defense. He was extremely wary of my powers, and with good reason, but all of our strikes were met with impenetrable protections.

I could tell from the way he moved that Aestivar was once an aggressive warrior, relying on power and skill to overwhelm his opponents before they could so much as scratch him. And yet, he was focusing almost entirely on defense…

Rika's anima-flame shot out and curved, snaking around to encircle Aestivar's left leg. The abyssal jerked backward and slashed at the mana-forged binding, severing it with a flash of argent light. The First Pillar leaped back and materialized a translucent shield of black glass with one clawed hand, while the other seethed with clotted miasma—and was aimed directly at me.

I instinctively reinforced my barrier, but it proved unnecessary.

“Dodge this!” Misaki roared.

Searing blue plasma exploded from behind Aestivar, staggering the creature enough to throw off his aim. The miasma bolt that had been intended for me went wide, careening off the platform to evaporate into nothingness a few meters away from the silvery waves. The First Pillar let out a keening psychic shriek of frustration and pain, whirling around with both claws held high.

Misaki, seeing the attack coming long before it would have landed, backpedaled and traced a complex series of sigils. Dozens upon dozens of mana-forged needles materialized in the air only a second before Aestivar's claws dug huge, deep furrows into the ground. The conjured weapons rained from the sky with bone-shattering force. Enough kinetic energy, in fact, to knock the overbalanced abyssal to the ground.

While Rika and Misaki continued to launch attack after furious attack, I watched and waited for an opportunity. Whatever defensive invocation Aestivar used to resist dematerialization rendered me little more than a liability in a straight-up fight. Instead, I studied the twisted creature, making note of the peculiarities. Judging by the crumbling remains of a tattered arming coat hanging from his cadaverous limbs, trailing bits of shattered black crystal, and the gaping hole blasted through his blackened chest—

Ah, that made sense. The damage was Eirene's handiwork. She and the AEGIS strike team must have fought with Aestivar at the hidden factory—and the Second Pillar's interference had nearly defeated him. The summoning contingency he forged within Akane Tsukimura must've been set to activate if his physical manifestation was critically damaged, whisking him away from the danger and bringing him to where he most needed to be, all in one fell swoop.

From the moment he emerged from the bloodgate, every second that passed, the possessed Aestivar grew in power. Here, within the distortion caused by the expanded neutral locus, the Origin's malevolent influence was so much stronger. Lost within the long-nurtured delusion that the dark intellect was the unconscious will of his sleeping god, the despairing First Pillar embraced that dominion.

The only upside I could see was that the Origin could not fully assimilate into him so long as the boundary, albeit weakened as it was, remained in the way. It could feed the miasma singularity, maintaining the distortion, and it could support the First Pillar with a continuous supply of corrupt astral energy, but it couldn't fully claim its prize until the veil was parted.

“As if that's not enough to kill us on its own,” I muttered under my breath.

Misaki and Rika rushed the First Pillar from either side. Blue and silver fire shot out, waves of supernatural heat warping and twisting the air. Aestivar stood his ground, crouching low to absorb the bulk of the impact. Obsidian shields of solidified miasma sprang into existence, intercepting the projectiles of explosive magic in mid-flight.

I let my hand fall to the holster at my hip and drew the automatic, thumbing off the safety as I lifted it to drop the sights on Aestivar's torso. My finger squeezed the trigger once and the weapon fired three times in rapid succession, sending a trio of high-potency MQ rounds slamming into him while he was pinned down by Misaki and Rika's assault.

Dusky purple flashes burst against Aestivar's barrier. I waited a half-second before I fired again, loosing another three-shot burst that reached their target at precisely the same moment his shield shattered into flickering, glassy shards.

One right after the other, each of the three MQ rounds buried themselves into the corrupt flesh. No blood welled from the wounds; instead, plumes of black smoke poured from the holes blasted through stony hide. His directional defenses faltered and fell, just in time for a quartet of blue and silver projectiles to slam into his body and detonate.

Wreathed in astral fire, Aestivar whirled to face me, voicelessly screaming in rage.

Well, that got his attention.

The First Pillar was unbridled rage personified. He rushed forward with lightning speed, so fast I couldn't even track his movements, much less offer any sort of defense or counter. Covered in burning energies that ate away at his power and his physical form, Aestivar was a terrifying sight this close up. I barely had time to brace myself for the blow as both claws came down.

My barrier flared brilliantly as it took the brunt of the sundering strike, but instead of breaking, it merely seemed to drive me down—

Rika was beside me. Or rather, above me.

The platform I stood upon softened beneath my feet and stretched, its newfound elasticity absorbing enough of the impact to keep my barrier from shattering. My other self sent me a faint smile and with an act of will, she altered the state of the platform yet again.

With a musical ringing sound, the metastate material reasserted its solidity, flinging me up into the air, well outside the range of those slashing, grasping claws. I twisted my body as I shot up, up and up… and up some more, as Misaki quickly invoked the power of flight and threw it over me.

I willed myself to arc further toward the edge of the platform, slowing my trajectory enough to line up the sights for another shot. Again, Rika and Misaki worked in tandem to pin Aestivar down, giving just enough of a window of opportunity to let fly another burst of MQ rounds.

The First Pillar's voiceless roar pierced through our minds again, but it was different now. The terrible keening was still filled with rage, but now there was a note of fear that hadn't been there before. With six MQ rounds embedded in his flesh, the miasma that flowed through him was turning in on itself, twisting and warping. Great gouts of smoke poured from the wounds that burned with Rika's silver fire.

The Origin understood its precious key was in danger.

Misaki, perhaps sensing that the battle was starting to turn in their favor, redoubled her efforts and dove through the air, both hands blazing with spell-flame. Astral death burned out in great waves as she flew past Aestivar, burning him with blast after blast of incandescent plasma.

Aestivar's clawed hand swiped at her, slashing the air as she flew past, but the attacks were wild and unfocused. Misaki willed herself backwards, rising up on the backblast of her own roaring gouts of destructive magic. More smoke roiled up from the abyssal creature, so much that I could barely make out Aestivar's form.

The First Pillar continued to swat at the flying Relic spirit as if she were an irritating gnat, missing by a considerable margin each time. Too much of a margin. Something wasn't right—and I felt my blood turn to ice water when I realized what was happening.

“Misaki, stay back!” I shouted, desperately trying to warn her. “Get away! He's trying to—”

It was too late. The words weren't fast enough; Aestivar straightened his form out and struck with brutal efficiency. His left claw came up and seized Misaki in an unbreakable bloody grip. I stared, numb with shock and horror, as the tips of four claws burst through her body. Bright blood sprayed from the wounds, and Misaki screamed.

“NO!”

The celestial was already moving. A flat, bladelike plane of silver-white disintegrating force materialized in her grasp as she leaped into a spinning aerial slash, aiming her strike to sever the claw at the wrist—

Aestivar's free claw abruptly shifted, as if grasping the haft of an invisible weapon. Within the span of a heartbeat, a wicked-looking spear forged of some midnight-blue metal materialized out of thin air. I'd never seen the weapon before in my life, but the magic that radiated from it was unmistakable.

The First Pillar spun Eirene's spear around, wielding it one-handed with an ease that stole my breath. Rika nimbly leaped out of the way as the butt of the spear came crashing down to slam into the platform, and she sprang up into a rising uppercut slash. The unbinding force of the astral blade warred with Aestivar's compromised miasmic defenses for a split second, but the MQ rounds in his body had disrupted the precise flow.

Aestivar's severed claw, still impaling Misaki's torso in four places, fell free of his arm. Rika spun around as she landed from her leap, her booted feet coming into contact with the metastate platform. With a thought, the platform softened and buckled before springing back, propelling the celestial up into another spinning slash.

The First Pillar acted without hesitation.

Eirene's spear came crashing down, the tip aimed directly for Misaki's heart.

Time seemed to slow down, stretching out and into infinity. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak or shout or even cry. It was just too fast for me to even react, and there was a blinding crash as unstoppable powers met and warred with each other.

It was so bright. I couldn't see, I shielded my eyes with my hands, scarcely aware of the clattering sound as my automatic slipped from my grasp. I couldn't open my eyes even though I desperately wanted to, needed to, needed to confirm what had happened.

I forced my eyes to open, ignoring the pain that stabbed into my brain from the pure and intense radiance that would have blinded any ordinary organism. Instinctively I channeled astral energy to reinforce my frail human senses—

Rika stood before Aestivar, her astral blade burning with argent brilliance at her side. The mana-forged weapon flickered and faded before vanishing completely. I blinked, confused, but only for a moment as my vision cleared further.

Aestivar's headless corpse slumped to the platform, the monster's claw still gripping the haft of Eirene's spear.

The tip of that weapon had been swept downward through Rika's body, slicing through her physical form and embedding itself into the platform beneath her. The celestial's torso had been opened up from throat to navel by the wickedly sharp blade, the wound made all the more terrifying by the fact that there was no blood at all.

Rika's body did bleed when it took physical damage; I'd seen it happen multiple times. This wound, however, was not completely physical in nature. Silvery anima shimmered from within the wound as Rika turned and walked over to where Misaki had fallen.

My partner lay no more than a few meters from me. The celestial, ignoring her own wounds, dropped into a crouch beside the battered and bloody Misaki. After Rika had severed Aestivar's claw, the miasma-forged appendage had vanished… but the four bloody holes left by each talon remained.

I somehow managed to stagger over to Misaki and Rika. I felt too numb to realize I was forcing my limbs to move.

“Rika… Misaki is—” I croaked. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to finish the thought, as if not voicing it would somehow prevent it from occurring.

The celestial shook her head.

“She is still alive… though just barely.” Rika turned to gaze at me wearily. The slash that had opened up her spirit was not sealing itself shut, the way her wounds usually healed. I could hear the weakness in her voice and knew that she, too, was…

I didn't want to think about it, much less give it voice.

“Is Aestivar… dead?”

“Stopped, but only for a short time,” Rika answered in a sleepy voice. “The Origin won't allow its key to be destroyed so easily. We… need to hurry.”

I couldn't even respond to that. I didn't even want to think about that. Misaki was terribly wounded and might even die. Rika had been damaged to the point where her death was a certainty I could see in her eyes and her expression.

“Hurry?”

Rika didn't answer me. Instead, she placed her hands upon Misaki's torn and bloody chest. A soft white glow of healing energies pulsed from her hands, sinking deeply into my partner's ruined flesh. I said nothing as I watched—and felt—the vitality transfer from the celestial entity and into the dying woman's body.

The white light condensed into silvery liquid anima that filled up the jagged puncture wounds. Within a few moments, all four had been completely sealed with the shimmering, materialized astral energy. Misaki's expression relaxed and her wide, glazed-over eyes slowly closed. Her labored breathing eased and became slow and regular.

“Karin.”

I blinked. Rika fixed me with a penetrating stare that told me in no uncertain terms that I was to do what I was told without argument. The celestial nodded weakly toward Misaki's unconscious form. “Take her and… and lower her into the astral sea. My people will… will care for her while you complete our mission.”

I was shaken badly, but I still didn't miss Rika's use of the word “you.”

“You're going to die.” I managed after a long, tortured pause.

Rika nodded and sat down on the platform. She turned her head, slowly, to gaze at the headless body of Aestivar. Unlike the severed claw and head, the body hadn't vanished—but instead was teeming with twisting, roiling motes of dark mana.

Carefully, I lifted Misaki up and walked to the edge of the platform. The astral sea was ten meters below. I glanced at Rika expectantly, and the celestial returned my querying look with a reassuring one of her own.

A two-meter-wide section of the platform's edge stretched and elongated, divorcing itself from the substance around it and forming a much smaller, oval-shaped platform. Gently as I could, I lowered Misaki's unconscious form onto the platform. As I took a step back, it drifted down toward the calmly-rippling surface of the planet.

Only a few seconds passed before Misaki and the litter that bore her vanished beneath the shimmering infinity.

“I'll come get you soon, love,” I whispered, not bothering to wipe away the tears that streaked down my cheeks. I turned from the edge and back to face Rika. She looked even weaker than she had a moment ago, and I knew that the effort it took to save Misaki's life had doomed her own—though something told me that it was an inevitability.

This had always been her fated end, no matter what.

“It was always going to end up like this, wasn't it?” I muttered bitterly. “This is why you didn't want to tell us anything. You knew that you'd have to give your power to me, even if the battle didn't go badly for us.”

Rika's faint smile confirmed my suspicions. “Yes… this was inevitable. Neither of us would be able to stand against the Origin without transcending our individual existence.”

I didn't say anything. I didn't need to. We both knew each other's minds. With the anima I'd absorbed in the mission to destroy the mana-eating demons, I'd forever bound myself to Rika's existence, in such a way that could allow full control over her power. It was this bond that allowed her to exist in our world at all in the first place, enabling her to seal the bulk of her power away and emulate a human existence.

Completely assimilating Rika's astral pattern—all of it—would change my nature irrevocably, permanently integrating the two of us into one entity. The seal that was required for her current existence in my world would no longer be necessary, and the full extent of a celestial's power would be mine to wield freely, without the risk of inadvertently propagating neutral space.

“I'm going to miss having you and Misaki gang up on me when I'm being an ass,” I managed, my voice hoarse and raw.

“It makes me happy to hear you say that.” Rika let out a soft chuckle. “Be at peace, Karin. You know that I'll always be with you.”

I tried to suppress the sad smile that wormed its way across my face, but I couldn't. For a long moment, I just looked into Rika's eyes. Those wide and expressive eyes, so much like my own, but also so different. We remained that way, just enjoying the last moments of our shared company, before Rika looked away.

The celestial turned to point at Aestivar's dormant figure. My smile faded away instantly as I realized the motes of miasma swarming over his body had already repaired much of the damage we'd dealt him. The abyssal creature's severed claw had already reformed itself, albeit still somewhat translucent and not quite materialized.

Clouds of thick miasma circulated rapidly where the First Pillar's head had been. Through the thick, roiling clouds of corruption made manifest, I could see a faint outline of Aestivar's skeletal head beginning to reform.

“Karin. It has to be now.”

I turned toward Rika.

“I know. We're almost out of time.”

I clasped my hands with Rika's, and squeezed my eyes tightly shut.

I didn't want to watch it happen.

celestial twilight

I didn't know exactly what I expected to feel. I don't think I had any real expectations, nor did I let myself even consider the possibility that this would happen. In the moments leading up to this, my human mind spiraled out of control, imagining results both fantastic and horrible.

A part of me recalled the day I was forced to fuse with the Blade of the Nine-Tailed Fox. Eirene, unknown to me at the time as anything other than an enemy somehow related to the miasmic beasts eating AEGIS personnel, called down one of the most potent invocations imaginable. The dimension fracture mimicked the same sort of catastrophe that Rika had accidentally inflicted upon her original summoning.

I braced myself for unimaginable pain as the power of a celestial rushed into my soul.

That didn't happen, though.

When I did open my eyes, there was no trace of Rika. I had no idea how long I'd been out, but judging by the quiescent form of the possessed Aestivar, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes at the most. Motes of miasma continued to coalesce around the creature's head, which was considerably less insubstantial than it had been… before I—

You aren't alone.

I smiled. The echo of Rika's voice—or was it her actual voice? Or was it mine? I had no idea, nor did I particularly care. Tears ran down my cheeks though I felt no sorrow.

In accepting and honoring her sacrifice, the vast and incomprehensibly-complex expanse of her astral pattern was now permanently fused around mine, linked through countless unbreakable bonds. I could feel the sheer weight of the knowledge that had been passed to me, but Rika's strength of spirit came with it and protected the last vestiges of my soul that was still a frail, mortal human.

I closed my eyes again and sent my awareness plumbing deep into the endless spiral of Rika's—or rather, my soul. What I sought was something I'd placed here, not so long ago, when I released her from the eternal slumber that she had grudgingly accepted.

The seal that held back Rika's power, allowing her to exist within the framework of my home universe without unintentionally causing destruction, was no longer necessary. Her astral pattern was now perfectly aligned around me and my innate, inborn understanding of my own reality.

Within the distortion caused by Akane Tsukimura's weavings, Rika could not have released the seal without exponentially increasing the volume of the miasma-tainted neutral locus. That wouldn't be an issue now, though—and just in time, too. The dark mana that surged through the weakened boundary and suffused Aestivar's maimed body had become an opaque cocoon, encasing the abyssal creature in an oily sphere of materialized miasma.

The cocoon shivered once before it collapsed in a great deluge of vitriolic filth. Aestivar's skull-like visage snapped around to face me—and twin violet flames of rage and hatred burned within the empty sockets.

With a thought, I dispelled the limiter I'd placed upon myself.

A psychic shriek of pure violence tore into my mind, but I didn't feel any pain. In that astral keening I detected a rippling reverberation, a cacophony of thousands of distorted dark voices that sang of the death of all things.

The abyssal leaped up into the air like a rifle-shot bullet, soaring high above as it screamed again and again into my mind. The creature's dessicated hide rippled and shifted as its howls reached a terrifying crescendo.

A spray of oily materialized miasma burst from the abyssal's back and torso, shifting and molding into a double pair of enormous dark wings. Within seconds the wings solidified, altering their state from a thick liquid to a hard-edged, shimmering obsidian… that was somehow still flexible enough to beat powerfully and keep the abyssal aloft.

It was clear there was nothing left of Aestivar's human soul, nothing to subconsciously resist the Origin's malevolent intrusions. Rika's decapitating strike had put far too much strain on the little pieces of humanity the First Pillar still possessed—and they shattered easily underneath that terrible will.

It held out a crystalline claw.

A massive column of purple-black doom burst forth from the outstretched palm, striking the platform I'd just been standing on. The subsequent detonation rippled through the air, distorting space and time as the raving astral energies annihilated everything within a fifty-meter radius.

“Too close,” I muttered to myself, staring down at the perfect sphere that erased everything it touched. I willed my body upward, faster and faster as brilliant silvery-white corona formed around me.

A quartet of dark mana beams, smaller and weaker than the first, scythed out from the four grotesquely enormous eyeballs that emerged from the monster's shoulders. I twisted and weaved around the first two, hardening my barrier to deflect the third and fourth attack as I changed directions. Corrupted fires roared all around me and I gritted my teeth through the pain, but I couldn't let it herd me where it wanted me. Even with celestial power, getting hit by that big beam would not be fun.

Not-Aestivar wasn't about to give me an opportunity to counter, though. It snapped its wings outward and dove down at me, claws held out like an enormous bird of prey. I snapped my right hand out and materialized an astral plane of dematerializing force—the same sort of weapon Rika had used to strike the head from the creature's shoulders.

At the last second I shot upward and spun around, extending the silvery-white blade. My body twisted into a spinning slash that would have separated Aestivar's torso from its legs, but the abyssal twisted and brought one of its obsidian wings around like a shield.

My blade struck the wing and melted a deep gash of molten reddish-orange into the material, but it wasn't enough to cut through. The First Pillar's hiss of pain seared into my mind, but I shunted the terrible “sound” away and kept my focus as tight as I could. I let myself fall and spun into a brutal overhead axe-kick that blasted the thing back and sent it careening through the air.

Aestivar recovered by spreading its wings wide, arresting the fall that threatened to plunge it into the astral sea—something it clearly wanted to avoid. I knew from the knowledge Rika had passed to me that sending this much concentrated miasma into the shimmering surface would cause a calamitous detonation that would destroy us both… and very likely kill Misaki, along with a hell of a lot of Rika's people.

I angled away from the abyssal as it beat its wings, accelerating into a sharp climb. The filth-covered eyes on its shoulders moved around disgustingly before they all fixated on me. Enormous pupils widened and shimmered with dark mana a split-second before blasting out four columns of violet-black death.

I whirled around in mid-arc and flourished the astral blade, reshaping the narrow plane into a wide and flat mirror shield. The four beams struck the reflective surface, redirected back to strike Aestivar with its own power. Great gouts of black smoke erupted from the creature's torso and legs as its own power chewed through tainted flesh.

My feet hit a platform on the layer above and I took a moment to collect myself, though I hardly needed it. I was breathing a bit hard, and my whole body felt weak; adjusting to this much astral might wasn't so easy—especially not while fighting a nightmare creature determined to destroy me and consume all of the anima within.

Blades of negative radiance scythed through the bottom of the platform, slashing and laying about with chaotic fury as the First Pillar burst from beneath the platform. It wasn't about to let up, of course; at that moment, the malevolent will of the Origin wished for nothing more than to destroy me.

I wasn't about to let that happen.

Flickers of argent light burst from the platform, twisting and shaping themselves into astral shadows of myself. Each of the five projections wielded a shimmering mana-forged blade, and they rushed at Aestivar a split second after it burst through the floor.

The first shadow lashed out with a dizzying series of slashes and thrusts, but the possessed Aestivar back-stepped and beat its wings, knocking the attacker to the ground. Two of the eyes on its shoulders blazed with miasmic fire, disintegrating the prone shadow in the span of a heartbeat. A wave of disgusting satisfaction rippled from the abyssal's mind as I felt the doomed projection's slender astral bond snap and dissipate.

Two more of the shadows charged in at once, their blades held out and ready, and struck with sundering overhead cleaves that forced the First Pillar's claws up to parry. A third shadow darted around behind and delivered a quick series of slashes that burned lines of melted glass into Aestivar's wings and back.

Pain-filled shrieks bit into my awareness and the Prime's clawed hand smashed a projection into flickering white shards, then a wide-arcing swipe of obsidian talons cut another apart. It didn't matter, though, because the shadows had bought me more than enough time.

I let out a deep breath and extended my right hand.

A beam of pure silver flame leaped across the space between me and Aestivar, striking the creature in the upper torso. The disintegrating energies of the dematerialization process warred briefly with the abyssal's tough armor of dark mana, but I only intensified the strength of the unbinding energies.

The explosion ripped through the remains of the ruined platform we stood upon and sent chunks of it scattering off into the sky. Howling winds rushed past me, blowing my hair in front of my face—

I waved my hand and enacted a minor process that cleared the dust and streaming plumes of miasma away. The Origin lay upon a shattered chunk of gray, its form glowing a brilliant red-orange from the power released by the annihilation of astral energies. It struggled to stand, claws striking the floating fragment, but its right arm had been weakened too much, cracking under the strain of trying to lift itself.

“It's over,” I said, though I don't know if the Origin could hear my words. I'm sure it understood that it had failed, however. Those twin violet flames burned with pure wrath and an endless malevolent compulsion that I fervently hoped I would never see again.

With a thought, I materialized the sword that started it all.

The flawless astral recreation of Blade of the Nine-Tailed Fox felt reassuringly heavy in my hand. Originally forged centuries ago and imbued with the blessed power to destroy specters, this projection looked exactly as it had before Eirene shoved the broken blade into my chest.

Memories flooded into my mind as I held the weapon at the ready. The break-in at the Records & Licensing Agency. My first encounter with a specter, and the fight that ensued and resulted in my binding with the Relic. All of the missions I'd been given by Meilin and all the specters I'd destroyed with this very same Relic. Uncovering Nergal's scheming within AEGIS, discovering the existence of the Pillars of Heaven…

All of it flashed through my mind. Those weren't the best memories, though.

I stopped beside Origin-Aestivar's fallen form and swept the Relic outward. Searing yellow-white heat burned along the blade's edge as I brought it around in a vicious horizontal cut that tore deeply into the twisted and corrupted monster that had once been the First Pillar of Heaven.

I felt no resistance as the blessed sword ripped through tainted flesh as if it were wet tissue paper. The edge of the Relic flared with incandescent brilliance as the artifact's greatest power drew out the Origin's core.

Gripping the blade with both hands, I spun around, gaining momentum and power as I went, and brought the Relic down upon the seething, pulsing black singularity of dark mana. The sundering strike left a bright line of silvery-white bisecting the core precisely in half.

The core's pulsations faltered and stopped. All-enveloping darkness dulled and faded to a washed-out gray as the two halves of the destroyed core fell apart and struck the platform, disintegrating into small piles of gray ash.

I released the Relic's manifestation and turned back to the larger miasma singularity, still pulsing slowly a few hundred meters below. Stepping off the broken platform's edge, I let myself fall for a few seconds before slowing my descent and allowing myself to drift closer to the sphere of dark mana.

This was Akane's invocation, the magic that had distorted the boundary. Without a source of dark mana to fuel the process, the weavings were starting to unravel. I watched as strand after strand of lines of force were unbound. It would destroy itself eventually, but I knew I could clean this mess up with less risk of harming the beings that dwelled in the astral sea below.

I did admit to myself I was more worried about Misaki, though.

Enacting a careful dematerialization process, I sent my awareness into the neutral locus that surrounded the miasmic singularity. The way fundamental forces and existence had frayed within this broken fragment of space was familiar; it had been done, inadvertently yet intentionally, by Rika when the Pillars first dragged her from the astral sea.

I opened my eyes and drifted closer to the confluence of dark mana. This was going to take a little while.

dawn integration

I drifted lazily within the astral sea, unbounded by my material form.

It felt… odd, but not frightening, as the boundary receded—just as rapidly as we'd feared. The structures above that had been destroyed and affected by bits and pieces of other worlds were efficiently purged, the foreign matter and energy introduced into this place utterly erased from existence.

As the effects of the Pillars' scheming faded, I let myself stretch out through the astral sea I had escaped into in order to protect myself from the destructive redefining of the boundary between worlds. I waited, though not idly, as pieces of my awareness flowed and traveled through the endless currents, searching for other minds.

I could sense the awarenesses of other celestials nearby, but I couldn't quite understand what they were saying. It didn't matter right now, because I needed to find Misaki first. Then I would do what needed to be done.

It didn't take that long to find her, as she hadn't been able to unbind herself. My beloved partner's body floated just beneath the surface, held aloft by the invisible and intangible strength of the celestials who, as Rika had promised, cared for her. They would periodically push her face above the waves so that she could breathe.

They didn't try to communicate with me directly, but I felt emotional impressions, sensations of gratitude and relief. I turned my attention back to Misaki, who looked absolutely beautiful and radiant in her slumber. Her clothing was still torn and bloodied, but the four terrible puncture wounds had healed completely.

I smiled inwardly—of course, as I didn't really have a face or lips at the moment—and willed my spirit to lift Misaki from the water. I sensed the gentle cradling grasp of the celestials release her, and I took over. My partner's body broke free of the silver ocean, rising up on a faintly-visible column of white light, before she settled lightly on the edge of a platform on the bottommost layer.

With a thought, I was standing on the platform beside her, fully materialized and with a wide smile as I watched her eyelids flutter softly and open. Those brilliant, emerald-green orbs were hazy only for a moment before they cleared and focused on the woman who knelt down next to her.

“Karin,” Misaki murmured.

“Hi, love.”

A slender hand reached up and pressed to my cheek. “Did we win?”

“Yeah. We won.”

Misaki levered herself up into a sitting position, gazing into my eyes, a curious expression present on her face and in the set of her ears.

“You look different,” she observed. “Like you did before.”

“I do?”

My partner reached out and took hold of a strand of my hair, drawing it back enough so that I could see it. I was not terribly surprised to see that my natural hair color had returned—and I suspected that the strange shifting colors in my eyes were likewise gone. I supposed that made sense, as my body was no longer the vessel that held my spirit, but a projection from that spirit, intended to allow for interaction and compatibility with my home world.

Home…

“I like it better,” Misaki added with a shy smile.

“And here I was worried that I'd lose more of my humanity.” I laughed softly and reached up to clasp the hand against my cheek. The fears that had lurked in the back of my thoughts for the past several days were gone. “How are you feeling, love?”

Misaki's ears twitched. “I feel good, very rested, like I just woke up from a long, lazy nap.”

“Well, you kind of did.” I gestured down toward the slowly-swelling surface of the astral sea, a few meters below the platform we sat upon. “The celestials made sure you were cared for, and it looks like they did a pretty good job of it.”

“I don't remember.”

“You were close to… to dying.” I stumbled over my words, feeling a stinging sensation in my eyes. Tears welled up, and I felt perfectly ridiculous—simultaneous conflicting emotions warred for supremacy in my heart. “I was worried.”

“Of course you were. I almost died.” Misaki leaned forward, closer to me, and brushed her lips against mine. My eyelids became heavy and I felt a familiar weakness creep up my spine and radiate from inside of me.

My partner drew back, a sly smile on her face.

“What evil is swirling in your mind?”

“You still melt into a puddle when I touch you like that. I'd say your fears were completely, one-hundred percent unfounded.” Misaki grinned and got to her feet, holding a hand out to help me stand. “Admit it. You were worried about nothing.”

My cheeks went hot at that remark. “H-hey! It's not like I had any idea what would happen if we managed to get this far!”

“Excuses, excuses.” My partner tsked at me, her tail swishing bemusedly.

“I—I'm capable of admitting when I'm wrong, you know.”

“Not very often,” she retorted.

I chose not to respond to that.

“So… what do we do now?” Misaki asked after allowing me a moment to salve my ego. “I can tell the distortion was unbound and the miasma is gone. Our world is back to whatever passes for normal, right? Did we—?”

“Yeah. We're on the other side.”

“It feels… different, but somehow more right than the world I was brought into. I can't really explain it better than that, but everything just feels natural. Easier.” Her face scrunched up and her ears twitched pensively. “Like I'd always existed with weights hanging from my arms and legs, and now someone took them off.”

“Probably because you're not having to sip little scraps of energy. I mean, just a few minutes ago, you were floating in a literal ocean of mana.” I walked over to the edge of the platform and  gestured for Misaki to follow me. “Come on. We've still got one more thing to take care of.”

My partner stepped beside me and pressed herself against me. The lay of her ears told me she was anxious and apprehensive, and so I held her close as I manipulated the platform's metastate material with an act of will.

Beneath our feet, a three-meter wide section of the gray metallic substance divorced itself from the platform, drifting slowly away from the edge. The lift I'd created started to ascend, rising a few meters so that it was positioned between the two bottommost layers.

“Karin?”

“What is it?”

Misaki bit her lower lip and her ears drooped down even further. “You destroyed the corruption's source. The 'Defiled One' that Eirene talked about? And Aestivar is gone, too, right?”

I had an idea where she was going with this.

“Yes, the Miasmic Origin has been destroyed. What little was left of the First Pillar's existence was purged along with it.”

My partner continued to chew her lip. “Can't we just… go home, then?”

I didn't expect that to hurt as much as it did. For a long moment I didn't say anything, merely trying to master my own feelings on the matter. Misaki's quietly spoken question exploded into my mind and I realized just how much I wanted to do exactly that.

It would be possible, of course. I could even return with the full measure of a celestial's power, with no risk whatsoever of accidentally neutralizing the space around me. My astral pattern and Rika's were fully integrated and together our strengths overcame each others' weaknesses.

I knew the answer, though. Without an administrator, the Astral Terminus would constantly remain a temptation. While the source of dark mana, miasma, whatever you wanted to call it—while it had been eliminated, the lack of that particular threat didn't mean there weren't other, even nastier things out there.

“Karin…?”

I sighed and shook my head. “We can't leave it alone, love. It's too dangerous.”

“I know that, but… there aren't any more Relics, except for the three, and the people who have them would never do something like that—”

“I know, but there's no guarantee they'll always be the wielders,” I replied in a gentle tone. “If we take our place as guardians of the Terminus, then we can make certain that the power of this place isn't misused.”

Misaki turned away. “You're right, of course…”

“We'd be a danger to the world, too.” I closed my eyes and turned my awareness inward, contemplating the enormity of what I had become after consuming Rika's power. “Though I won't accidentally turn reality inside-out like Rika did, the two of us joined just have… too much power to ever be able to use it ethically back home.”

“I know, Karin.” My partner's expression was heartbreaking. “I just wish…”

“That we could just leave all of this behind, relinquish all of the power we've inherited, and just live finite mortal lives as an ordinary couple?”

Her ears dipped forward and she blushed. “Y-yeah.”

“Don't think you're the only one with that desire.” I leaned my head against hers as the platform accelerated, faster and faster, though like before, there was no wind or even much of a sensation of movement. “I never wanted any of this, but what I want is a lot less important than making sure our world and the people we love are safe.”

Misaki's tail was practically tucked between her legs. “I'm just… frustrated, is all.”

The lift began to slow as we approached what appeared to be an island upon the surface of the astral sea. Like the other structures that occasionally extended beneath the waters, this particular construction was formed of the same metallic, metastate material. Unlike the others, however, this one only reached the lowest layer.

As our conveyance came closer to the structure, I could see that it was a perfect hexagonal projection, perhaps forty meters across at each vertex. The “ground” of the island was smooth and clear of any obstructions, save for a slender crystalline pylon that stood at the center.

Slowly the lift platform descended and met the surface of the hexagon, merging into the material without a trace that it had ever existed. I could feel Misaki shivering next to me, and I squeezed her shoulders with as much warmth and reassurance as I could manage.

“Can't we just… talk to the celestials, let them take control of this thing?”

I shook my head. “The system isn't designed that way.”

“How do you—wait, never mind. You know because Rika did.” Misaki drew herself away from me as the two of us stood at the edge of the hexagonal island. “Can you fill me in, at least? I trust you, love, but I'd like to understand if… if we really have to do this.”

“I haven't had a lot of time to really look over all she… passed on,” I explained, frowning as I studied the Terminus's external access port. It looked remarkably mundane and boring considering what it represented. “This place, this planet, even—it was all constructed by some highly-advanced civilization a very long time ago. The 'celestials' are essentially the same as Relic spirits. They're created beings, artificial intelligences tasked with maintaining the system, but they're constrained from administering it.”

“What happened to their creators?”

“I don't know. Rika didn't know, either. So much was corrupted by the Origin when it began to spread throughout the system—it's not likely that any of the current caretakers remembers what happened to the people who built all of this.” I shrugged helplessly and turned to stare out over the astral sea that disappeared beyond the horizon. “It's possible that the Origin itself was responsible for letting the astral sea leak into our world and other worlds, so it could seek out a suitable key with which to take control of the system.”

“But it's gone now,” Misaki objected. “Why do you have to stay?”

“The link between worlds is strong, and there's more than I can count, more than I can currently comprehend. The only other way to possibly prevent any further danger would be to… to do what Nergal wanted to do, and sever all external connections.” I felt the corners of my mouth twist into a grimace. “Of course, if we did that, we would be committing a terrible evil.”

“Every soul touched by the astral flow would die from the sudden shock,” Misaki finished for me, a shudder running through her at the abhorrent thought. “Not just the people in our world, but every other world that touches this place.”

“Yeah. We don't even know how many other worlds rely on the astral flow, or how much they rely on it. Countless lives could all be snuffed out in an instant.”

My partner let out a slow breath from behind me before she took hold of my hand and turned me around to face her. I gazed into those perfect emerald-green eyes for a very long moment, and I could see that she understood and accepted what we had to do.

Together we walked toward the central access node. It wasn't far, and as I approached the shimmering argent spire, I could see the intricate lines of force etched into countless layers of crystalline substrate. The complexity of the system would have been beyond any ordinary person's comprehension… but Rika understood it, and so did I.

I placed my hand on the exterior of the node, and Misaki placed her hand next to mine. We turned to look at each other just as I felt the system begin to awaken beneath our touch, responding to a request for supervisory access—

A request that hadn't been made in a long, long time.

“Besides,” I said, the faint smile on my face illuminated by silvery-blue light, “there's no rule that says we have to stay here all of the time.”

epilogue

/

memento

So-yi Ashley turned the wheel of her car sharply as she backed into the parking spot on the street. Her mother's car and Nicole's van was taking up the driveway, as per usual, but fortunately none of the neighbors had dared take the curb next to So-yi's home.

She let the electric motor power down a moment before opening the door and stepping out onto the pavement. It was a nice, cool evening. The sun was just beginning to start its descent below the horizon, painting lovely swaths of pinks and oranges across the clouds. So-yi reached for her bag left on the passenger seat and slung it over her shoulder before shutting the car door.

The front lights were already on—a good indication that her mother, Yoshiko, was home. The presence or absence of her car rarely told the full story, as the older woman liked to spend a good deal of her time out walking her dog, or taking Rowan somewhere. A smile wormed its way onto So-yi's face as she disengaged the auto-lock and walked into her home.

“Mama? Nicole? I'm home.”

“In the kitchen,” called out her mother's cheerful voice.

So-yi dropped her bag on the couch and strode into the kitchen. Her wife, Nicole, was sitting at the dining room table with a well-worn laptop perched in front of her. The tall, athletic blonde woman stared intently into the screen, apparently not noticing So-yi's arrival.

“Nicole,” Yoshiko grunted.

“Hmm? Oh!” Nicole glanced up from her computer and smiled widely at the sight of her beloved. “You're home early!”

“It'll be a bit before we pick up another big project like that, and the boss decided to let me off the hook for the mundane stuff we usually get. Said I should spend more time with my family, and so, here I am.”

Yoshiko fixed her daughter with a critical eye as she set down a fresh, steaming cup of brewed green tea. “You should get a week's vacation after all of that nonsense they put you through. I know, I know, it was a big important project, but you look exhausted, sweetie.” The elder Ashley crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. “Worse, actually.”

“That… doesn't have anything to do with work,” So-yi admitted. She sat down at the table and sipped her tea slowly. “I'm worried—no, I passed being worried a long time ago. I'm angry and  scared and frustrated all at once, Mama.”

Nicole and Yoshiko traded meaningful glances.

“We don't know anything bad happened,” Yoshiko admonished her daughter. “It's only been a month since we last heard from her. You know as well as I do how her life has… has changed, with all that's happened the past few years.”

“I probably shouldn't have to ask, but you have contacted that woman, Ceres, right?” Nicole queried. “She's the head of the agency, after all. She should know.”

So-yi grimaced at her partner. “She won't tell me anything.”

“Did she say something like 'it's classified information' or some such nonsense?”

“Surprisingly, no.” So-yi paused and sipped her tea. “Ceres told me that it's not her story to tell, and that she didn't know the particulars herself.”

“And you believed that?” Yoshiko demanded incredulously.

“I did… Ceres doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would lie to me about this. She understands our position, but she can't tell us what she doesn't know. If Ceres had that information, but couldn't reveal it for security reasons, she'd say so.”

“Did she tell you anything at all?” Nicole pressed.

“Nothing concrete… just that Karin and Misaki departed from the AEGIS outpost on Heaven's Gate to an unknown destination in order to complete a secret mission.” The woman sighed and paused to sip at her tea, not caring that it was still hot enough to scald her tongue. “That was last month, and… well, maybe it's time to accept the possibility that she…”

“Karin is not dead,” Yoshiko stated in no uncertain terms.

“There's no way to know that for sure—nobody knows what happened.”

“Yes, dear, but I'm not mistaken about this.” The older woman uncorked a frosted-pink glass bottle filled with sake and poured a healthy amount of the clear liquor into a heavy-bottomed crystal tumbler. “She isn't dead, nor is the little fox. I would know it if they… if my child lost her life. I would feel it. I did the… the first time it happened.”

That particular observation seemed to suck all of the warmth from the room. So-yi chose not to respond to that; her memories of her deceased elder brother were not at all pleasant, and the emotions shared between them were already dark. There was no reason to restart the old conflict between daughter and mother over a family tragedy that could no longer be resolved.

“I just wish there was something,” So-yi murmured over the rim of her teacup. “Some kind of… I don't know, closure or something.”

The doorbell rang.

“I'll get it,” Yoshiko offered. So-yi nodded, as her mother was already standing. The elder Ashley disappeared into the front of the house, and So-yi could hear the sound of the door opening and a muffled exchange between Yoshiko and the visitor.

A short moment later, Yoshiko led an unfamiliar woman into the kitchen. So-yi had never met this person before, but her eyes widened and her heart leaped at the sight of the newcomer. There was an oddly familiar otherness about this woman that reminded So-yi heavily of her elder sister. A strange and ethereal nature, quickening the air in the room with a fey tingle that felt almost alive and aware.

“I'm sorry to bother you at home like this, So-yi Ashley,” the woman said, bowing deeply and respectfully. “I was instructed to contact you after a certain period of time had passed—”

“Who are you?”

“Oh! I'm terribly sorry.” The woman's dark cheeks flushed pink. “My name is Oriana.”

“You were instructed to contact me by whom?” So-yi inquired. “And what about?”

“I'm deeply, deeply sorry that I wasn't able to reveal anything until now,” Oriana said, ignoring So-yi's questions as she continued to speak, rapidly and anxiously. “I was instructed to wait one month before attempting to make contact, to ensure that there was no possible chance that what I have to do might not work—”

“Slow down, dear.” Yoshiko placed strong, warm hands on Oriana's slender shoulders and guided her into a chair at the dining table. “Sit. Would you like some tea?”

“I don't—um, sure.”

So-yi was unable to contain herself any longer. “You're here about Karin, right?”

“Ah, yes! How did you know?”

“You… have the same kind of presence,” So-yi explained, her tone somewhat more animated than it had been before. “It's not exactly alike, and it feels… lighter, less substantial, but the sensation was familiar enough that I recognized it.”

Oriana's blush returned. “Y-yes, that is likely because we both carried a portion of celestial light. That you can detect such things so soon is curious, though I suppose everything will be changing from now on…” The woman trailed off and seemed to look as if she were deep in thought.

“Oriana, please.” So-yi's voice was gentle but insistent. “Tell us what happened to Karin and Misaki.”

“I'm sorry, I sometimes get distracted.” The former Order Magician smiled sheepishly as Yoshiko returned with a steaming cup of tea. “Thank you, Mrs. Ashley. I think it's probably better if—if you hear it all directly.”

So-yi was having difficulty keeping her frustration hidden. “Hear what?”

“It's—we really should go outside,” Oriana insisted, the cup of tea completely forgotten as she stood up and gestured toward the sliding glass door. “I don't know if this kind of thing will damage anything in your house and I wouldn't want to be responsible for breaking anything important by mistake.”

The younger Ashley daughter blinked in confusion and fixed her mother and partner with a puzzled stare. This was met with equally-puzzled looks from both Yoshiko and Nicole. Oriana didn't seem to notice, however, and continued to open the door and step out into the back yard.

“What's with this girl?” Nicole muttered under her breath.

“I don't know, but… I think we should go see what she's doing.”

So-yi stood up and half-walked, half-ran out into the back yard. It was quiet and empty; her mother's dog, Kaede, was usually prowling around the carefully-tended grass during the daytime. At this hour, though, the pleasantly plump and self-satisfied Shiba Inu was sleeping on the couch in the living room.

Nicole and Yoshiko followed So-yi out into the yard. Oriana stood at the edge of the patio, her eyes closed. The three women stared at her, first in confusion, then astonishment, as Oriana began to call forth powerful otherworldly forces.

Lines of force within the world around them started to glow, responding to the woman's invocation. A single point of silvery-white light flared into existence a few meters in front of Oriana as she silently continued to bend the astral flow to her will.

The bright point of light seemed to stretch and expand, growing into a dizzyingly-intricate circle etched into the ground in front of the mysterious mage. Oriana's shoulders slumped as she completed the casting—it had obviously taken a lot out of her, and her breathing became heavy and ragged.

So-yi barely registered this fact as the astral prominence resolved itself into a shining projection of ethereal silver. The vague silhouette of a person appeared within that projection; as So-yi marveled at the magic worked before her, the light began to fade, leaving behind a translucent, ghostly figure.

Enveloped in flowing streams of brilliant astral light and power, the faintly-translucent projection of the woman that stood before So-yi smiled, her face nearly as familiar to the youngest Ashley daughter as her own reflection.

“Hi, little sis,” Karin said in a soft voice, thrumming with a subtle resonance. She grinned and nodded to the others. “Mama, Nicole.”

“K-Karin?!”

So-yi, Yoshiko and Nicole all stared at the bright shade in open-mouthed astonishment. All three of them had been stunned speechless. So-yi's mouth opened and tried to form words, but all that emerged from her throat was a strangled cry.

“My lady,” Oriana said reverently, bowing deeply to the shining spirit.

“I thought I told you to use my name, Ori.” A small smirk appeared on Karin's face as she waved away the woman's obeisance. “Just because you can summon an aspect of me doesn't mean I'm your lord and master or anything.”

Oriana's cheeks flushed yet again. “S-sorry, Karin. I just… I don't think—”

“Yeah, I know, we'll discuss that later. Thank you for doing this for me. I know it's hard on you.” The bright shade floated over to Oriana and grasped her chin with a ghostly hand. The easily-flustered woman squeaked as Karin pulled her close and kissed her lips. Oriana's body went limp and her eyes closed as Karin's projection held her up. After a long moment, the bright shade pulled back and smiled.

“Y-you're q-quite welcome.” Oriana's voice hitched as she self-consciously stepped back.

“Karin… you're not… dead, are you?” So-yi ventured, staring in awe at the astral spirit that had materialized into her back yard.

“Nope—I'm very much alive and well. I'm just not, well, here.”

“Why do you look like… like—”

“Like a ghost? Well, this isn't actually all of me—just a piece that Ori brought over, so that we can talk.” The bright shade drifted closer to So-yi and took the younger woman's hands in her own, clasping them between sparkling fingers. “See? Solid and warm. Definitely not a queen of the undead or anything like that.”

Yoshiko was the next to recover. “What in the world happened to you, dear? And where's the little fox?”

The shining astral maiden's expression became pensive. “Well… long story short, I've become the governing intelligence of the Integration—that is, the source of the power we call magic. The rest of me is deep beneath the astral sea, inside the Terminus Core.” Karin's projection shrugged as if it was no big deal. “Most of our power and awareness has been dedicated to attuning ourselves to the Integration and learning how to maintain it.”

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that Misaki and I will be… extremely busy for a very long while,” Karin answered in an apologetic tone. “I don't know for exactly how long… but it won't be quick.”

“That's why you asked Oriana to come to us,” So-yi reasoned.

“Right.” The bright shade drifted to one side, as if her body was weightless and drifting upon the light breeze, before turning to look at Yoshiko. “The assimilation process has taken up pretty much all of my mental capacity, even with Misaki helping. For now, the best I can do is occasionally project this aspect whenever Ori calls for me. It's difficult for both of us, but especially for her, so it's not something I want her to do lightly.”

So-yi's expression was stricken. Her sister's implication was depressingly clear—and it didn't take long before both Yoshiko and Nicole also understood.

“I'm sorry, I really am… but there's not much I could do about it. We can't afford to leave the Integration without a protector. You know how dangerous this stuff is when used for the wrong reasons and by the wrong people.” The astral spirit of Karin Ashley offered her sister and mother and sister-in-law a sad smile. “There was nothing else I could do without risking a repeat performance of the almost end-of-the-world we just barely managed to avoid by the skin of our asses.”

“This is what I get for instilling a sense of responsibility into you,” Yoshiko grumbled in a mock-disgusted tone. The elder Ashley's tone softened and her eyes became liquid blots as she gazed at the aspect of the celestial entity that had been—no, still was her daughter. “I should have taught you to be a little more selfish—for my sake, at least.”

“I know, but if standing watch over this thing keeps you all safe…” Karin trailed off for a moment, her expression twisting into a thoughtful frown. “Besides, it's not like this is the last time we'll ever speak.”

“It'll never be like it was, though,” Yoshiko blurted, her lower lip quivering.

“Yeah, things have changed, and they'll change even more.” Karin moved closer to her and reached out with an ethereal fingertip to brush the tears away from her mother's eyes. “The whole world is going to change.”

So-yi narrowed her eyes sharply. “What do you mean?”

“You detected Ori's power, didn't you?”

“I guess—I mean, I got a weird feeling that reminded me of you,” the youngest Ashley daughter replied, gazing at her sister's projection curiously. “Are you trying to say that—that I'll be able to use magic? Like Kotori and Yuto?”

“Not just you.” Oriana practically beamed as she smiled, her expression filled with pride and hope and joy. “As Karin continues to assimilate with the Integration, she will be able to resolve any errors and instabilities in the system. All of humanity will eventually be awakened to their latent astral affinity.”

“So you're telling me,” Yoshiko began, her tone filled with astonished disbelief, “that my formerly somewhat useless daughter is… what? A new goddess of magic?”

Karin looked alarmed and she waved her hands in desperate objection. “Wait just a minute, that's not what I—”

“Yes!” Oriana exclaimed, her voice lilting with her obvious joy.

“Hold on a minute!” Karin's aspect recoiled, her features twisting in chagrin. “I'm not okay with this—I don't think this is a good idea at all—”

“Shut up, dear,” Yoshiko snapped, cutting her daughter off in mid-objection.

The bright shade's shoulders sank. “Okay, Mama.”

“You chose this, after all.” The older woman's arms crossed in front of her chest again and she fixed Karin's aspect with her patented and fearful mom-glare. “Own up to it. Unless you plan to withdraw completely from this world and its troubles, you know how people are going to view what you've become. You'll need to accept and understand that—that is, if you don't intend to abandon us to our fates.”

Karin opened her mouth to object, but thought better of it and let out a rueful sigh.

“I knew you'd say something like that.”

“Of course I would. I'm still your mother. It doesn't matter if you've become a celestial soul dwelling beyond the heavens.” Yoshiko Ashley's expression was filled with both sadness and pride as she reached out to the sparkling aspect, pulling Karin into a tight embrace. “You'll always be my daughter.”

.

about the author

Hi there! My name is Corinn Heathers, and I'm the author!

Most about-the-author blurbs are written in the third person, but I find it tiresome and dull to do so. So here it is, from the top: I'm a queer trans woman, a low-level femme, a gigantic nerd who loves role-playing games, MMOs and visual novels… oh, and I'm an author of speculative fiction based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I love to write science fiction and fantasy, or science fantasy fiction, or science fiction masquerading as fantasy and everything in between. As you might have noticed, I write stories with predominately female and queer casts.

Dawn Integration is the fifth and final chapter of Karin and Misaki's story, which started almost three years ago as a 70,000 word NaNoWriMo entry that eventually became bound together. I've also written stories in my space opera series, Binary System, and published multiple short stories; two in anthologies published by Skipjack Publishing, as well as a guest author contribution to my fellow author and close friend K.J. Russell's debut dark fantasy tale, The Dusty Man.

Readers can connect with me through my Twitter account, @syn010110, or by following my Facebook author page (facebook.com/corinn.writes.stuff), though I'm not the most active social-media butterfly. I also maintain a public email account that readers can use to contact me if they wish (corinn.writes.stuff@gmail.com), which I check reasonably often.