Baras Toscht is already exhausted.

  He's breathing hard, the points of his twin swords tapping against the carpet with each and every shoulder-sinking exhalation. Blood mars his face, his hands, his sight. The stench of it mars his very thoughts. He reaches up now, wipes face on sleeve, gets the viscera out of his one good eye and forces himself to breathe. Just breathe.

  There are dead and soon-to-be dead all around him. An approximately equal number of Vokians and Kainoans strewn about the Southern Hall, the tide having turned in favor of the manor's defenders only by grace of Toscht's last-second arrival. He fought the enemy like a man possessed—blades flashing, whirling, snatching away life after life—and now, momentarily, the fighting is done, and so it is now that Toscht's body that must pay the price for its thieving of so many human souls. Hence the shortness of breath, the trembling hands, the aching of old wounds. Not one of these is unfamiliar to him.

  It's hard work, after all, acting as Naok manor's de facto tip-of-the-spear. It's even harder when you're up against the Sathai, the Vokian heavy-armor elite—all of them battle-tested veterans who cut their teeth on the Seven Years' War, upon the boiling sands of distant Shalashar. That is the caliber of opponent Toscht now faces—Toscht, and perhaps some two-hundred-odd conscripts and mercenaries as well, all of them moreso experienced in bar-room brawls than in any form of professional soldiering. To say that the day's outcome has already been decided would be merely stating the obvious; let it suffice to say Toscht is well aware that he and his comrades have been set upon a ferociously fast-ticking timer indeed.

  Nevertheless. When Toscht told the Governor that this was all just The Job, he wasn't lying. Far from it. For Baras Toscht, this is the job. This is his role to play.

  This, among other things.

  So, with the burden of responsibility weighing heavily upon his mind, Toscht cuts his respite short. Extricates himself from that sea of corpses, wipes his blades clean of gore and then strides forth, rubbing at his sweat-drenched forehead all the while. Above, sunlight filters down in discolored, diagonal rays from a series of stained-glass windows: shades of red, of orange, of autumnal decay and of fire and death. Toscht passes through one such spotlight. Then another. Then, midway through the third, he becomes aware of someone coming up very quickly behind him—and he manages to pivot just two-thirds of the way around before Panther all but smashes right into him.

  They tumble as one; Panther hits the ground, rolls, leaps back to her feet in one smooth series of motions, whereas the beleaguered Toscht simply puts his fists to floor and raises himself, groaning, up onto one knee. His wounds all cry out in protest; he ignores them, doggedly, just as he always has.

  And then, for one surreal little moment, he and Panther lock eyes.

  She looks—well, she looks to be in better shape than him, at any rate.

  "Tiger," Panther blurts, with no preamble whatsoever.

  "Tiger," Toscht agrees, just as quickly. "You got—"

  "Separated," Panther nods. "I have to go."

  "Wait—" But Panther has already turned back around and is already sprinting right away; she makes it just about two steps before Toscht snatches up a fistful of her cloak, and Panther—caught entirely off-guard—is all but yanked right off her feet.

  "What?" she snaps, with rare fervor, immediately whirling around and ripping her cloak free. And, on instinct, her hand goes right to the small of her back—right to her new knife, no doubt, which does bring Toscht some measure of satisfaction even in this most dire of moments. Good gift, Baras. Good job. But now Panther is eyeing him warily, her whole body a live wire—tense and frantically still, every muscle primed at any moment to bolt. It is, no doubt, only the tenuous camaraderie between them that stops her from taking off outright. Or from just simply cutting his throat.

  Now, here's the thing: Toscht has a decision to make. And he knows he can't hold Panther here for long, so he knows that he'd better make it quick.

  What else does Toscht know? Well.

  Toscht knows the stakes. He knows the consequences.

  Toscht knows—to some extent—the broader shape of things.

  Most importantly, Toscht knows his role.

  So he hesitates...

  And then he tells her, just like he's supposed to: "You'll never make it."

  "Watch me," Panther scoffs, and turns to go.

  "Damnit—not that way, I mean!" Toscht snaps, holding his hands out in a gesture of sudden placation. "Panther, listen to me, we've already lost the Northern Wing! Just about everything ahead of us is a stars-cursed warzone right now!"

  Her expression twists at once. "Shit," she hisses, half-pivoting away and now pacing back and forth with all the barely-subdued neurosis of a convict awaiting trial. Then she whirls right back around and declares, just as Toscht opens his mouth to speak, "There has to be another way."

  "That's what I've been trying to tell you!" exclaims Toscht, with great exasperation. "Look. You need to head back just the way you came—" he jerks a thumb over his shoulder, "—only this time, you hook a right. Then it's two more rights, one left, and then you have to cut through the kitchen, and then the nearest set of stairs should take you right to the Eastern Wing. Okay?"

  And those words are like magic; instantly, Panther's face settles back down to its natural state of smooth self-assurance. "Got it," she replies, with perfect calm, to which Toscht cannot help but feel the faintest stab of envy—until, with a hint of worry creeping right back into her voice, she asks him: "And what about you?"

  Toscht blinks, momentarily taken aback. "What about me?"

  "Which direction are you headed?"

  "Which—oh. Well, you know. The shitty one." The sellsword points dead ahead, to the war-torn Northern Wing, with a slight grimace upon his face. "I've still got work to do."

  Silence. Panther doesn't reply. She just stares, for a moment, regarding him with some curious mix of emotions playing out behind her ever-guarded expression. Weighing what she should and should not say. Weighing what she has the right to say, no doubt. Then, finally: "Baras, you seem like a decent person."

  "I'm not," Toscht chuckles, without humor. "I'm really not."

  "Don't die for these people," Panther tells him, anyway.

  And ah, poor Toscht—that one really does hurt. "Why not?" the sellsword shrugs, totally nonplussed. Totally nonchalant even in the face of his own impending doom. "That's exactly what I've been hired to do."

  "It's just money, Toscht. It's not worth it."

  "It's not always about money, Panther."

  "Then what is it about? Some idiotic sense of duty? To—what, to your employer? That's insane."

  "It's just like your duty to your dead Empress, isn't it?"

  That one hurts, too. Panther's eyes narrow; her expression hardens at once. "No," she answers, with no hesitation, and in a decidedly different tone of voice. "It is not."

  Another tense silence passes between them.

  "Don't you have somewhere to be?" Toscht prompts, finally.

  "I do," Panther is forced to agree—and just like that, those two words are all that marks the end of their strange and stunted little friendship. Panther takes off in one direction, and Toscht departs for the other—for the Northern Wing, and for obliteration. And this time he makes it almost all the way to the north-facing doors before a familiar voice calls out, from behind, "Hey, Baras!"

  He shouldn't stop. He shouldn't turn. There is so much work to do and so little time to do it. But he does stop and he does turn, anyway, and so he sees Panther just halfway around the far corner, caught in the twilight of obligation just the same as he. Yet still she takes the briefest of moments to tell him, albeit quite gruffly, "Uh, thank you. For the knife."

  And despite it all there comes a slow, wry, rueful, and—yes—a deeply melancholy smile upon the sellsword's face. "Anytime," he tells her, with a two-fingered salute. And then he turns away, and pushes through the doors, and slams them shut with not one word spoken further.

  And then he's off, striding down the manor's bloodstained halls at a measured, spartan pace. He kills two Sathai in a frenetic duel that lasts no longer than thirty seconds, and sustains a grievous shoulder-wound in the process. Then he assists a group of men-at-arms—his ostensible comrades—in repelling another Vokian push, then slips away before anyone realizes he has gone. And now he is moving with ever-increasing haste through the ruined battlefield that was once, very briefly, his home. Now these halls are naught but a grisly display of entropy writ large, with the corpses of guards and noblemen and servants alike all scattered like pieces from an overturned game-board.

  Toscht comes from a long lineage of self-sacrifice; his mother died for a foreign cause in a foreign land, and his grandfather before her went much the same. He is no stranger to tragedy, to cessation, to the total sublimation of the self. The Toschts are sellswords, after all. Hired hands. Baras Toscht is no different. He understands his duty, and he understands that now his duty is to die.

  And so it is, when Toscht opens that last set of double-doors and is met with the nightmare beyond, that he finds his mind awash with something almost resembling peace.

  A sword is yanked free from a skull with a splurch of blood; the owner of said weapon is already turning, already raising his free hand in greeting. And Toscht sees him there, amidst the dead—sees his leather-padded gambeson, once starch white, now indelibly stained with a whole maculated panoply of deep crimson and some strange, purplish ichor. Toscht sees that roguishly handsome face, that easy smile, that well-groomed raven hair all peppered with viscera and little chips of bone. Toscht sees those wild, bloodshot eyes. And most importantly Toscht sees the stitch-scar circling the stranger's skull like some vulgar crown and so it is that Toscht knows, well and truly, that this is where it all comes to an end. For him, anyway.

  Toscht closes his one eye. Grants himself the briefest of reprieves. Chuckles under his breath, quiet and bitter, and remarks: "Well, shit." And then he opens his eye, and dares take one single step into that death-stinking room, and dares look the mad Incipitor head-on.

  And the mad Incipitor looks right back. "Hello," says Daiga, with an amiable little wave.

  "Afternoon," Toscht returns, with an upwards tilt of his chin, as he takes three steps down those carpet-padded stairs. Daiga's dilated eyes are well and truly locked on now, tracking Toscht's every move with obsessively strict focus. The Incipitor takes two steps backwards, in response to the sellsword's advance, then flicks his sword free of gore with one simple snap of the wrist.

  Toscht takes another step. Below, Daiga waits at the center of a whole maelstrom of death; of men-at-arms and Sathai in equal number, all of them butchered and broken and all but hacked to bloody pieces. The Incipitor's face is marred by a multitude of open wounds; if they bother him, he does not show it. He only grins, and stands oh-so-very unnaturally still, and eagerly awaits the sellsword's arrival.

  "You know," Toscht remarks, about halfway down, because he just can't help himself, "that's funny. The Incipitor I fought, I don't think she even knew how to smile."

  "What can I say?" Daiga replies, with an pleasant little shrug of his shoulders. "I'm in a good mood. My prey is very close. And there are so many tough opponents here—like you."

  "Me?" Toscht raises his eyebrows, puts one hand to his chest. "Oh, I don't know about all that." He takes two, three, four steps down. Passes the halfway point. Crosses the Rubicon. "Honestly, I'm dead-average at best."

  "Nonsense," the Incipitor chides, shoo-ing his words right away. "I'm sure you'll do great."

  "You really think so?" Toscht deadpans.

  "I'm certain," says Daiga. "Now, come on. Get down here already." The Incipitor's grin fades; his eyes go wide and dark. "I don't feel like talking anymore."

  One more step to go. Toscht twirls his swords; the blades flash in wide silver arcs, in easy and confident and utterly lethal motion. His one eye goes cold as the grave. And so Toscht transforms, in the span of that final step, from a human being into something else entirely.

  A vessel. A tool. An instrument.

  A role.

  "Gladly," Baras Toscht replies.

  His sandals touch down upon the floor.

  And then, with a snarl and a startling burst of motion, Daiga is upon him.

  The soldiers of the Sathai 43rd Legion ('Earth-Eaters'), 17th Contingent, have thus far searched no less than twenty-eight rooms of Naok Manor's lavishly-decorated Eastern Wing.

  That is to say that twenty-eight doors have been kicked in and thirty-five individuals have been summarily executed, in strict accordance with orders passed down from Emperor Taro Zhon himself. The 17th Contingent have suffered zero casualties themselves—the Eastern Wing seems populated almost entirely by noncombatants—and they are, in fact, almost a tad bit disillusioned by just how easily their task is progressing. These are men and women accustomed to harsh battlegrounds, to grueling Shalasharan deserts and the ferocious partisans dwelling within. Out there upon those blood-drenched sands, each Sathai could have either lost themselves to the misery or learned, somehow, to love it—and so they did, these surviving veterans. They learned to love it. The suffering, the hardship, all of it. And so here, now, fighting in the comfortable confines of a well-furnished mansion just a few days' journey from their own homes, the men and women of the 17th Contingent are—quite frankly—a little bored.

  At any rate; now, one of the Sathai braces his armored boot against the twenty-ninth door and, quite unceremoniously, kicks that intricately-carved slab of wood right off its gilded hinges.

  Inside, they find none other than Tiger Qelas—seventh prince of Shalashar, the current object of the 17th's search—with electricity crackling incandescent emerald between the fingers of his right hand. The left is clutched tight over his mouth; blood runs down, from a bitten tongue, between his tattooed fingers.

  The prince's head rises, as the room oscillates wildly between light and dark, and he looks the lead Sathai right in the eye.

  "I don't want to kill you," says Tiger. "So take a step back. Now."

  The lead Sathai considers this for one singular second, then takes one singular step forward—at which point Tiger claps his palms together and the whole room goes dark.

  And, of course, everyone's ears pop.

  "Fulminate."

  The instant his palms connect, a jagged bolt of green lightning leaps forth to spear the nearest Sathai right through the midsection. And the effect upon Tiger's own body is a ruinous one; the prince, caught off-guard by the sudden surge of pain, staggers forward, and for a brief moment that streak of crackling electricity does not cease. Rather it continues on, carving a blackened path all the way across the right-hand wall and splitting no less than nine Sathai into more than bisected chunks of charred, dying meat—and then Tiger, with eyes rolling back in his head, collapses right down to the ground.

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  Only—he doesn't collapse. Not fully. Not yet. The seventh prince catches himself, puts fists to the floor and forces, yes, forces himself upright and aloft, even as his eye burns and blood streams freely from both his nostrils. He knew this was coming—the agony, the nausea, the disorientation—and he has trained for it, anticipated it, and will now push headlong through it until the minute this arduous day is done. He lurches forward now, catches himself on the shattered doorframe—sees nearly a dozen dead Sathai, as well as a dozen more still very much alive—and without further ado turns to run in the opposite direction as fast as he possibly can. He tears down the hallway and around the leftmost corner and already he can hear a dozen pairs of metal boots stomping up behind him, their pursuit further heralded by a ragged chorus of oaths and curses and threats. There is an entire tsunami of bronze swelling up behind him, fast, and all the while the seventh prince is coughing up chunks of mucus and bloody phlegm. It's only sensation! Tiger tells himself, quite forcibly, even as his ears ring and his vision swims. Pain is only sensation, and sensation can be overcome!

  At which point an armored hand seizes his wrist with force sufficient to crack bone. Tiger yelps equal parts surprise and pain as the towering Sathai yanks him back and, without ceremony, slams him hard against the nearest wall. The soldier's hand goes right for the sword on his belt and Tiger, with frenzied unthinking, carves a small triangle into the palm of his hand with one jagged-cut thumbnail. The sword comes out; Tiger puts left hand—the newly-mutilated one—to bloodied mouth, and puts the palm of his right to the center of the man's breastplate, and shouts: "Flood!"

  The effect is instantaneous; where once there was empty air, suddenly there is a whole rushing surge of pitch-dark water, and that offending hand is promptly removed—along with all the Sathai, who are subsequently lifted off their feet and outright swept away, swept down the hall, with a few suffering broken necks and crushed skulls as the conjured waters recede and scatter them about.

  For a moment, then, even Tiger is stunned to silent unmoving as the dozen-or-so remaining Sathai lurch in waterlogged disorder to their feet. And then his eyes grow wide as a distant door swings open—and then Tiger is turning right around and taking right off, right as Kyar Kyaolos steps into the hallway to join them.

  None of the soldiers even notice him at first. There is simply a SNAP, followed very quickly by a THWOOSH, and then a Sathai's head explodes into a shower of flying gore and shattered skull and broken, flaming bronze.

  And so as Tiger rounds the corner, Kyar is already upon his pursuers. The mercenary surges in with that blade-tipped golden bow whirling like a pointed stave in his hands, carving the nearest soldier from stem to stern and gouging another's jaw wide open. Then a third ocean-drenched Sathai tackles him head-on—imagine two hundred pounds' worth of armor moving very quickly—and sends the mercenary crashing down, with a hoarse cry of "Traitor!" at the moment of impact.

  Subsequently, every one of the Sathai looks straight down.

  And Kyar looks straight back up—with an arrow already notched, and a smirk upon his face. "Whoops," he quips, just as his first shot splits the nearest soldier vertically in two. And then the mercenary is right back on his feet, blocking one strike and ducking another and sending a third soldier flying away with an augmented punch to the chest. Now he leaps back—notches three arrows at once, closes one eye, gives the Sathai just a single half-second to try and charge him—and then, even two halls away does Tiger hear the triple-thundercrack retort and the trio of resounding THUMPS to follow. Thus does Tiger increase his pace; thus does Tiger try to increase his pace, at any rate, as his vision swims seasick and dizzy, his ears ringing like longship sirens and his heart pounding, pounding, pounding in his chest. He's crying blood now; the whole front of his shirt is stained vivid-red as he stumbles and staggers ahead. Endure, he orders himself, through the ever-thickening fog of agony. Remember what Panther said: I won't always be able to carry you. So come on, you miserable, useless son of a bitch—make yourself useful and walk!

  Ahead lies a heavy wrought-iron door; Tiger tries it, somehow already knows that it won't budge. It doesn't. And so he carves yet another symbol (a seven-pointed star) with one trembling thumbnail, then puts left hand in its usual place and right palm flat against that cold metal barrier, and commands it, "Shatter." And the door, of course, does just that. It shatters into thirty-three congruent chunks of iron that all clatter quite unceremoniously to the floor, and so Tiger leaps through this newly-created portal just as another thundercrack-projectile whizzes past his ear with a great rush of wind to follow. Tiger ducks, belatedly—stumbles ahead, as the arrow races on to decimate a statue at the far end of the hall—starts to lose his sight but pounds his fist once, twice, three times against his skull and forces himself to focus as he races forth once more, ducking right around the nearest corner...

  ...and right into a trio of red-garbed Kainoan guards, whose accents immediately expose them as undercover agents of the enigmatic Fifth Pillar. They have Tiger in an instant; one of them loops an arm around the prince's waist and clamps a hand over his mouth, whilst another barks an order—"Block it off, stars damn you!"— and a third steps forth with hand outstretched and eye aflame, just as Kyar skids into view with bow already twisted five times back.

  The mercenary lets the arrow fly; the lead agent is blown straight to gory chunks. Yet even as that ruined corpse falls, and even as Kyar notches yet another fatal shot, still does the third agent—the Sorcerer—raise her right hand high.

  Her thumb and little finger are both tucked in; with the remaining three digits she makes a short, sharp, diagonal chopping motion and commands, just as Kyar's bowstring is drawn all the way back, "Down!"

  The ceiling obliges at once. That is to say, it—and much of the room directly above—comes crashing down, and Tiger catches just the briefest glimpse of Kyar's eyes going wide before a literal avalanche of plaster and stone and broken brick comes raining down upon him and between them, and a whole hurricane of choking dust sweeps over all present as the once-empty hall fills, all the way to the top, with a brand-new wall of heterogeneous rubble.

  In the scant few seconds that follow, then, in the coughing haze and ringing ears and what-have-you, already is someone slapping his face and calling his name. "Are you unharmed?" demands the voice—no, the man, the agent who until just a moment ago had one hand clamped tight around Tiger's mouth. "Prince Tiger! Can you hear me? Can you move?"

  "I'm—alright—" Tiger coughs, dazed and distant and very much overwhelmed. His poor skull throbs like the beat of some bloated, sickly heart.

  "He's still alive?" interrupts the Sorcerer, striding over with a nosebleed and a right eye still billowing umber-orange flame. For the mangled corpse of her companion, she spares not even a glance. Instead, her remaining eye settles upon Tiger with an emotion he cannot quite parse.

  "Yes," replies the first agent, in a very different tone of voice than before. "He is going to live." And then, before Tiger can even process what is happening, the first agent is releasing him and leaping forth—with switchblade emerging from his sleeve, glinting like a distant star in that distorted light—and in the blink of an eye there comes a fat spurt of blood, and the Sorcerer-agent is dropping to her knees with eyes bulging and flame extinguished and a whole ocean of red spilling out from beneath her chin. She raises her hand again—once more with two fingers tucked back, once more with eye sparking alight—but the first agent just clamps a hand over her mouth and muffles whatever Locus Word she was about to speak. And he whispers, instead, "Shh, shh, shh...it's okay. It's all over. Just go to sleep."

  Fraught seconds pass. The Sorcerer thrashes once, twice, and then finally dies with disturbing lack of fanfare. And so, after a moment, does the last of the agents rise and dust himself off.

  And then he turns to find Tiger, with eye aflame and right hand clawed like a carrion-bird's talon.

  "Who are you?" growls the seventh prince, through a mouthful of blood.

  "Don't," the agent commands, with such sudden vehemence that Tiger is startled to momentary inaction—and that brief pause is all the man needs to surge forth and seize the seventh prince by the wrist, wrenching his hand away and putting a finger right to his lips and telling him, quite simply, "Tiger. Listen. You need to go."

  "No!" the seventh prince shouts at once, jerking his wrist free and leaping back. "No, I am not doing this stars-damned cryptic bullshit! Answer me right now—who the fuck are you? And what the fuck was that?!"

  "I am a friend of a friend," the stranger answers at once, with infuriating calm. "I am here to fulfill a role."

  "I told you no cryptic bullshit—"

  "There is another," the agent insists, leaning in close—just as the very floor beneath their feet is rocked by some manner of titanic impact, and the whole of the rubble-wall bulges and begins to split apart. Kyar is, undoubtedly, breaking through. "Listen," the stranger hisses now, with far greater urgency. "This other—I do not know the face or the name, none of us do. But they will help you get out. They will keep you alive. You will know you can trust them—when the times comes, there will be a clear sign."

  The floor shudders again; both Tiger and the stranger are bathed in a shower of debris and dust. "Listen," the stranger repeats, eyes locked almost mechanically onto the prince's own. "My role is to buy you time. Your role is to run for the back exit of this manor—you should know where, you should know the one—as fast as your feet will carry you. Just—Tiger. Hey, Tiger. Look at me." The stranger pulls him close; Tiger, in that surreal half-moment, can only stare in total lack of understanding. "Do not worry about anything at all, okay?" The man smiles. "Just stick to the plan."

  And that is the final straw. "What plan?!" Tiger demands, jerking his arm free—just as the rubble-wall outright explodes, and the stranger shoves him away with both hands, and the prince is sent stumbling several feet back. Then, as the barrier falls, Tiger catches the briefest glimpse of that wild-eyed mercenary amidst the storm of his own destruction—and then, stars save him, Tiger does exactly what he's been told. He sticks to the plan.

  He turns around and runs for his life.

  And all the while, his mind is nothing more or less than a roiling storm.

  Keep a cool head.

  Don't think about Tiger. Don't think about failing him the same way you failed Ibis. Don't think about losing the last living person who has ever cared about you. Don't think about the fact that if he does die, it will be entirely your fault.

  Just go.

  Don't think about Daiga. Don't think about those stark-blue eyes, those black pits swelling at their liquid centers. Don't think about that horrible little grin. Don't think about the fact that he's better than you, in every single way, at the only thing you've ever been good at.

  Just go, Panther. Just go.

  This and more she tells herself, as she races down the halls of Naok Manor in exact accordance with Toscht's instructions. Wait—shit. Don't think about Toscht, either. Don't think about the fact that he is almost certainly dead. Don't think about the fact that you still don't understand why.

  Just like your duty to your dead Empress, isn't it?

  No. Panther—stop it. Get those words out of your head right this instant. Don't consider them. Don't even acknowledge them. Because they're nonsense. Because it's not. You don't have any sort of duty to Ibis—you want to avenge her because you loved her. Because you love her. Simple as that. You want her killers to suffer and to die in darkness, because that is what she would have wanted. You want revenge because you still can't stop thinking about her, not even for a single second, and because every day you find yourself missing her more and not less. You want to do this because you know, in the far-back chambers of your own miserable skull, that without some purpose to singlemindedly devote yourself you would almost certainly put that rope right back around your neck, and draw it tight, and finish what the Magistrate started all those years ago...

  This and more she tells herself. These are the thoughts that churn about her mind like livid pyroclastic flow, boiling and bubbling and hissing with slow-motion subterranean heat—until abruptly, and thankfully, all thought is cut short, and suddenly Panther is nowhere but the immediate present as she skids to a last-second halt.

  She stands now at the back entrance to one of Naok manor's six kitchens. The one she's supposed to cut through, specifically. She stands at the very outskirts of a cramped, low-ceiling, wood-paneled enclosure packed with all manner of bubbling cauldrons, smoke-belching ovens, quiet-sizzling grates over open-crackling fires—as well as a whole smorgasbord of pots, pans, plates, bowls, knives, tenderizers, cleavers, graters, peelers, basters, tongs, and ladles.

  She also stands before a scruffy-bearded old man in a wool sweater and a long, worn, haphazardly patched-together coat that hangs all the way down to his ankles. One hand's in his pocket; the other is on his flask, just as it was when first they met. His eyes are dull and drooping and shadowed by a low, perpetually-furrowed brow. And he is regarding her, just as he did the first time, with near-total lack of interest.

  He doesn't say a word. Not at first. Casso Vos just puts lips to flask, and tilts his head back, and takes three long swigs before letting out a sigh and then offering, in weary deadpan: "Sorry, kid. End of the road."

  Panther isn't scared of him. Not exactly. She just knows, somehow—just as Toscht did—that this is a battle she has no hope of winning. Primordial instinct whispers in her ear that she shouldn't even try.

  But Panther isn't listening.

  Panther only thinks to herself:

  Here it comes, then. The next punch. Right from my blind spot, just like always.

  "So this is it?" Panther prompts, meeting the old man's eyes without fear.

  "This is it," says Casso.

  Fine by me.

  So Panther starts forward. And she makes it just halfway inside the kitchen before the old man sighs, "Oh, man...you're not gonna go down easy, are ya? This is gonna be such a fucking hassle. I can feel it."

  Panther stops. Replies, with icy calm, "No. And yes."

  "Fuck's sake," Casso mutters, putting one hand to his forehead—and tucking flask back into coat with the other. "I am way too sober for this." A long pause, and then: "Hey..." one droopy eye peers out from between weathered fingers, "...you know what, man? I'm not doing this."

  Panther arches an eyebrow. Says nothing. Waits.

  "Seriously," Casso groans, leaning his head back against the nearest cabinet. "I really don't feel like fighting today. Stars-damned hangover..." He waves a hand, dismisses her without looking. "Fuck it, you're free to go. Again. I don't care."

  Still Panther says nothing. Five beats of silence pass. Then she tells him, simply: "I need to get by."

  "Whatever," the old man grunts, pressing himself flat against the cutting boards and gesturing with one hand. "Be my guest."

  Instead, Panther studies him for just a moment longer. Takes in every iota of his face, his eyes, his hands, his posture, his voice. Scrutinizes every inch of her surroundings, too—a narrow line kitchen, barely wide enough for a single person to fit, packed tight with all manner of dangling utensils and high-stacked porcelain dishes. And, on the other side of all this—the Eastern Wing. Tiger. The only thing in the entire world that matters to her right now.

  Keep a cool head.

  So Panther starts walking.

  So Panther steps right up onto the line, both her shoulders brushing against the wood-carved cabinets on either side. There is almost zero room for her to maneuver in this place, and only one direction for her to continue: dead ahead.

  Casso isn't even looking at her; Casso has his head tilted back and his eyes closed, and is massaging his temple with one hand. The other hand has still not left his coat.

  Just keep a cool head...

  Panther takes three steps forward. Her boots sound out against that tiled floor—THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. And then, just like that, she and Casso are standing exactly parallel, so close that she can smell the alcohol on the old man's breath. For all his talk of sobriety, Casso Vos is indisputably very drunk.

  "Excuse me," says Panther.

  "Sure thing," says Casso. His eyes do not open.

  Panther takes another step. The old man is no longer within her line of sight.

  Nothing moves. Nobody breathes.

  Panther takes one more step—

  ...and take it on the chin.

  —and whirls around, knife already in hand, just a half-second too slow as Casso does the same with a blade already in his hand, a blade that may well have materialized out of thin air as it races with terrifying speed right for her throat. Panther barely gets her own knife up in time, and so their blades lock in the middle with a fearsome clash of sparks that paints both their faces in truly demonic hue. Then Casso twists his wrist and rips his knife down the length of hers with a piercing shrrrrring!, and Panther leaps back to evade a killing blow by mere half-centimeter—to which Casso, totally nonplussed, just steps forward and hooks one ankle around her own. And then he yanks.

  Panther, blindsided by this sudden burst of aggression, goes right off her feet. But she's also one-third Casso's age, still razor-sharp from sparring with Toscht, and—most importantly—she's always had exceptional reflexes. So Panther goes down, yes, but she also goes with it—grasps the countertops on either side as she falls, hefts her whole body clear off the ground and then kicks her legs straight out. Both her boots catch the old man square in the chest and he staggers back one, two, three paces before abruptly bracing on the heel of his back foot and halting his momentum altogether.

  And then, for both of them, there comes a brief pause.

  Both combatants are breathing just a tad bit harder than they were before; Casso thumps a fist twice against his chest and lets out a hacking cough. Panther just rolls her shoulders, feels all the tendons popping and ligaments snapping just as they should—and then becomes aware, belatedly, of a fresh cut dripping blood down her cheek. She hadn't even felt the knife go in.

  Above, there can be heard—faintly—the sounds of pitched conflict, of steel clashing in maddened frenzy against steel. Someone screams, distantly. Another roars. Feet thump against the ceiling in constant staccato rhythm; below, all the pots and pans are now rattling about, and it feels very suddenly as though that kitchen is a grey-metal forest alive with so much writhing, skittering motion.

  Panther's expression is much the same as it ever was. That cool, liquid-metal calm—even as the whole of her body is coiling, tensing, pulling itself taut in preparation to snap. Her head is empty, purged of all but singleminded muscle-memory. Her mind is slaved to one sole purpose. And you should understand, by now, that for the first time in many days Panther is not grieving.

  Just three feet down the line, Casso stands there with his usual disaffected slouch—but now his eyes are dead-set upon his opponent as well. Gone is the old man's glassy-eyed and drunken stare; in its place, eyes are narrowed to slits, and the look on his face is one of utterly lethal focus. Of precision. And now, slowly, does the aging mercenary raise both his hands—one with fingers half-curled, the other with knife clutched in upside-down grip.

  Slowly, Panther raises her own hands, and mirrors her opponent.

  She is unafraid. She is ready.

  Just like Toscht.

  "Not bad, kid," her opponent admits, as the pots and pans rattle noisily about.

  "Thank you," Panther replies.

  "Now," says Casso, his open palm curling to a fist, "let me show you how a pro moves."

  And then, in the blink of an eye, he does just that.

  He moves.

  End Credits Theme

  way too many rewrites! Be not afraid; this week I am going to do everything in my power to get back to weekly update cadence.