Arlette felt like she was in freefall, the ground having been suddenly pulled out from beneath her. Nothing made sense anymore. A cocktail of confusion with hints of happiness, betrayal, and rage churned through her soul, leaving her breathless.

“B-Basilli?” she hesitantly called out while she pushed her aching body back to her feet, still not able to fully believe the voice’s existence and everything that it meant. “Basilli! How-”

She stepped around the corner, only to quickly duck back behind it as another blast of flame forced her to reverse course.

“The name’s Jakob, Boss,” Basilli called back. “Always has been.”

“How are you alive?!” she cried out. “I watched you die! There’s-”

Her former comrade’s short, barking laugh cut her off. “You of all people should know that you can’t believe everything you see. Did you think you were the only illusionist in the world? They had to get me out. There was no reason I needed to die with the rest of you, Boss. Or should I say Arlette now? Wouldn’t do to have the real Boss hear me call you that.”

Arlette’s pain-addled brain finally began to piece together the obvious. She felt her legs go weak and leaned against the wall for support as past events began rushing back in a new light. “The trap with the Hidden Shadow all those years ago and your tip off... that was all a ruse to get you into the Ivory Tears.”

“Finally figuring it out? Boss’s been watching you for years. Only natural he’d have somebody on the inside.”

“All those years you were reporting to him behind my back. All those ‘contacts’ you’d go visit in the criminal underworld whenever we arrived at a city...”

“Oh, I did more than just report. Remember when that contract with Drogan fell through right before you were going to take it and you had no idea why? That was us. Or the time we lost half our commission because most of the hostages we’d rescued somehow died before they could be delivered? I mean, they were weak, but they weren’t on their death beds, you know what I’m saying?” He laughed, amused at his own duplicity. “And you ever wonder why so many bounty hunters were able to track us all the way through Kutrad?”

“You didn’t!”

“You all tried so hard to hide your tracks, but all it took was broken branch here, an extra scuff mark or two there...”

“And the bounty hunters who attacked the caravan near Stragma?” Arlette asked, her rage growing with every sentence Basilli—no, Jakob—uttered.

“Oh, that was an easy one,” he chuckled. “Just had to tip off the right people before we left. Didn’t even take an hour!”

“You...! But why? You were only putting yourself in danger!”

“There’s no reward without a little risk, and believe me, Boss gave me quite a reward. He didn’t want you to escape too easily, see. The harder you had to work for it, the more it would hurt in the end when you failed.”

“You fucking traitorous bastard! To think that I mourned your death for days! You scum! Even Sofie cried for you!”

“Sofie?!” Jakob cackled. “You’re still with that useless baggage? Stars above, I’m amazed she’s even still alive!”

“She crushed King Morgan’s balls into paste with her foot, jackass, and that’s the least I’m gonna do to you!”

“Oh yeah? Says the woman cowering around a corner? I’m right here, you pathetic excuse for a mercenary! Come on out! Or are you worthless now that Jaquet’s not around to do all the work?”

As much as Arlette wanted to wring the jeering double-crosser’s neck, Arlette kept herself planted behind the stone corner. Going into that hallway was what he wanted her to do. He had her pinned down. There was no realistic way that she’d be able to traverse that entire hallway before being cooked alive, especially after taking that first blast.

A horn blared from far up above her, up atop the wall, quickly echoed by horns from the three other gates. The Ubrans, they were attacking again! Of course, it made sense. The sound of the gate’s opening process would be noticed by those up above eventually. The Ubrans needed to attack to hold as many Eterian troops up on the wall as possible and distract them until it was too late.

That meant that she had to get into that room somehow. The low rumble of the gears grinding against each other served as a constant reminder that she had a more important task than revenge. Time was at a premium. She needed to get past her former subordinate and stop the gate’s opening process as quickly as possible. But how?

As always, she had several throwing knives on hand, but Jakob wasn’t standing out in the open any more than she was. Hitting him would require a lot of luck and stupidity on his part. This wasn’t some stranger on the other end of this hallway. This was somebody who’d fought beside her for years and was well aware of her techniques and capabilities. He knew she had knives on her because she always had knives on her.

Illusions weren’t going to do much for her either. First, she would have to expose at least part of her head in order to see and Observe any illusions in the hallway. The same was true for Jakob, but while hitting his head with a knife would be difficult for her, hitting her with a flame blast would be sadly easy for him. Accuracy had always been his strongest point, and he could just hit the whole area if he wanted to.

But what else could she do? Could she wait for the others and storm the room together? No, the sound of metal ringing against metal off in the distance told her that they still had their own problems to deal with. She couldn’t rely on others at this moment.

Or could she?

With a start, Arlette realized that she had one more option: a small bag that she’d forgotten to untie after returning from the citadel. After hanging her sword on her waist by the bag as best she could manage with just one fully-functional hand, she loosened the drawstring, reached in with her good hand, pulled out a boomcandle, and temporarily held it lightly between her teeth so she could rummage in the bag again for a stinkcandle.

She turned about and faced the stone wall she’d been leaning against, putting the staircase behind her and the hallway leading outside to her left. This set her right arm in the proper orientation to fling candle-based death down the hallway. Then she concentrated, summoning a small flame and lighting the wick of the stinkcandle before counting to three. Then she threw.

“Is that all you got?” Jakob called out as a blast of fire sprang into being, shooting out to intercept the candle as it sailed down the hallway. The heat burned through the wax in a flash and the candle went off prematurely only two-thirds of the way down the hall, filling the hallway with acrid smoke.

Another shot of flame ripped down the hallway. “Nice try, but that shit won’t bother us with these masks,” he taunted.

Arlette smiled. The caustic, debilitating smell of the stinkcandle hadn’t been the point. Bending down, she counted to three once more and whipped the boomcandle down the hallway along the ground as hard as she could. The small candle bounced beneath another gout of flame and into the room.

“Shit! Get away from-”

With a bang loud enough to make her ears ring, the candle erupted. Though the candle was much smaller than the normal boomcandles due to Pari’s dwindling ingredients, the tiny wax cylinder half the size of Arlette's fist still packed quite the punch.

The grin on Arlette’s face widened as she heard the screams of multiple people, accompanied by the sound of chains snapping and machinery falling apart. The rumble of the gears ground to a sudden, rapturous silence as she reveled in the elation of victory. Then again, with the smoke from the stinkcandle blocking her view, she couldn't see just how bad the damage was. It was better to make sure. She fished her hand back into the bag hanging on her side, looking for the last boomcandle.

“You’re persistent, Princess, I’ll give you that.”

Arlette twisted about at the deep voice, just as a hard boot drove itself into her gut and sent her flying down the hallway towards the entrance. She tumbled across the floor and out into the corridor filled with corpses, her sword flying from her hip and scattering across the stone along with the two remaining candles. A small string of vomit fell from her lips as she tried to keep the rest of her last meal still inside her stomach. It wasn’t easy; she could count on her hands the number of times she’d taken such a heavy direct blow.

Arlette spat out the remnants of vomit still in her mouth as she pushed herself to her hands and knees. Sebastian stood at the intersection of hallways, just staring at her with an amused smirk on his face. He hadn’t moved a step since kicking her. He must have snuck up on her while her ears were ringing.

“Jakob, I want that gate open immediately!” he ordered, still not taking his eyes off of her.

“That bitch broke some of the equipment,” came the reply of the regrettably-still-breathing Jakob Barabe.

“We’re still within our window. Use the replacement parts,” Sebastian instructed as he drew a large sword from his back. “I’ll take care of our little annoyance.”

Arlette scrambled to pick up her sword and the candles as fast as she could. The boomcandle had rolled to a stop just a few paces away from her, with the sword not too far from that, but try as she did, she couldn’t spot the stinkcandle anywhere. Seeing Sebastian take a stride forward, she gave up on finding it and quickly put the boomcandle back in the bag before readying her sword.

It was time, she reminded herself. All those hours of training with her second father, all those days of working on her body and practicing until every muscle in her body ached, all those years of experience fighting with her life on the line... sure, she’d had many reasons for all of that, but deep down hadn’t it all been to prepare for this moment? Hadn’t this been what she’d fantasized about growing up? Him, her, and a chance to end everything? A chance to finally free herself of the terrifying shadow that had been stalking her in the back of her own mind since that fateful day?

The situation could have been far better. Her legs were still unsteady, her left currently weaker than her right. Her scorched arm limited her to single-handed swings, meaning her swordsmanship would be more predictable and her blows weaker.

But still, she had something nobody else did: her ability to fight with illusions. As long as she played her cards right, she could overcome any opponent. She could win this.

Backing up a little to give herself room to maneuver, Arlette waited until Sebastian stepped into the wider corridor and then immediately split herself, her doppelganger circling around to the left while she went right. Given her obviously damaged left side, anyone would expect her to be the one going left in order to keep her sword between her and her opponent, something she was counting on.

Both she and her illusory self charged in, only for a shiver of warning to travel down her spine and send her skidding to a halt just as Sebastian’s blade swept through the air where she would have been. Her illusion vanished as she backed away while he stepped forward, her blood running cold as she watched his eyes. Making another copy, she tried again, this time going left while the illusion went right, only to immediately dismiss her copy and try once more, this time going left a second time in a row to throw him off. Just like last time she stopped just out of his reach, and just like last time a blade flashed through where she was going to be.

An ominous dread filled her: Sebastian hadn’t looked away from the real her a single time. No, he’d followed the real Arlette perfectly no matter what, a bored expression on his face the entire time. Could he see through her illusions? The very prospect of the idea shook Arlette’s confidence to the core.

“Truly, what a tremendous disappointment you’ve become,” her former teacher commented as he continued to slowly advance, pushing Arlette back towards the bodies that littered the rest of the chamber between her and the outside.

Suddenly he launched himself forward, so fast that Arlette could barely bring her sword up in time to block. The impact threatened to knock the sword from her grip and sent her reeling backward. Her foot stepped on a corpse’s arm and she stumbled, almost losing her balance. Sebastian didn’t give her a chance to steady herself, pressing his attack and forcing her to throw herself awkwardly back and to the side to avoid certain death. Pain lanced through her as she tumbled over blood-covered torsos and severed heads.

None of this was working out the way she’d hoped. Even the environment seemed against her, the bodies littering the ground threatening to trip her with every step yet somehow not bothering Sebastian one bit.

Arlette circled to her right, trying to get between Sebastian and the doorway that led back outside, only for her foot to catch on an upturned Sweeper mask. She faltered for just a brief moment, unsteady, and brought her sword up in an attempt to block the incoming killing blow. It was a vain attempt, as the opening she’d inadvertently created in her own defense was something somebody with Sebastian’s skill would never miss. But the blow did not come.

He was toying with her. By all rights, she should be impaled on a blade right now, but he’d let the opportunity pass. She wasn’t foolish enough to think he’d missed it. No, he was enjoying himself, choosing to take pleasure in watching her sweat and confident in his inevitable victory.

She kept backing away, closing in on the nearby exit to the outside. She still had one more realistic shot at victory. If she could get outside to her squad, then the five of them together stood a chance to defeat him. This was her last chance. She turned and sprinted towards the doorway.

“Hmph!” Sebastian sneered. He lunged forward, faster than she’d ever seen him move, and stabbed his large blade directly towards her head.

Desperately Arlette twisted about and brought her weapon up to block. She just barely succeeded, pushing the blade up and to the left, but immediately she felt a foot slam into her torso. The powerful kick sent her flying through the doorway and knocked the blade from her hand. She gasped as she flew through the air and landed flat on her back, winded and in pain. Meanwhile, her sword sailed off to the right, landing a good thirty paces from her.

She looked up to find her squadmates all still alive and seemingly victorious, given how Kima was in the middle of pulling her spear from the chest of what appeared to be the last enemy. Battling against an opposing force twice their number had taken a harsh toll, however. Blood dripped steadily from cuts all across their bodies, especially Lezo and Sergeant Muga. Fighting for their lives had left them each exhausted.

“Arlette!” Sergeant Muga cried as they watched her fly past them and land awkwardly. “Did you stop-”

“Pathetic!” Sebastian growled as he stepped out of the gatehouse with eyes filled with boredom, causing Arlette’s four companions to swivel around simultaneously. “It seems you brought along some pests for extermination. How nice.”

“No!” Arlette screamed. She tried to stand up but found the world spinning wildly when she did, forcing her to stay on all fours as she crawled her way towards her weapon. She needed to join the battle and give her friends the best chance they had, but her body responded sluggishly to her desperate pleas.

Sebastian, however, seemed in no mood to wait. With a wicked grin, he fell upon Kima, who happened to be the closest and still wrenching her spear from her last enemy. As his sword swept down on a diagonal arc, she quickly used her ability, bending and twisting her upper body in a bizarre manner that made it look like her spine had been snapped in half, putting her under and out of sword’s path.

For most any enemy, that would have been enough, but Sebastian was a different story. The world seemed to slow down for Arlette as she watched the blade turn as if it had a will of its own, easily following the diminutive woman as she moved and slicing well into her gut. With a disgusting squelch, Sebastian ripped his sword from Kima’s belly, his evil grin still on his face as her intestines spilled through her desperately-clutching hands.

“KIMA!” Lezo cried out, his face contorting in fury. He roared out his fury as he rushed at his lover’s killer, his large axe carving down through the air with murder on its mind.

Sebastian only scoffed and casually stepped forward, catching the heavy weapon by the top of the shaft and halting its momentum with only his free hand. “Weak,” he laughed in the grief-stricken man’s face.

“AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” Lezo howled, straining his body to its limits and beyond, but the axe wouldn’t budge.

Meanwhile, Sergeant Muga charged at Sebastian’s exposed left flank while Danel sent an icicle the length of Sebastian’s forearm hurtling at Sebastian from the right. With a snort, he tossed the sword in his right hand upward and reached out with perfect timing to nudge the streaking icicle to the side. The icicle continued on its now adjusted path, missing his head by the width of a hair and continuing onward at blinding speed straight into the center of a charging Sergeant Muga’s unprotected forehead.

Then, with one smooth motion, Sebastian caught his falling sword by the handle and swept it across and through Lezo’s neck, dropping the Feeler’s body to the ground like a rock. The newly-deceased man’s axe still in his hand, Sebastian hefted it easily and sent it twirling towards a stunned Danel, who could not react in time. The large axe head buried itself deep into his chest cavity and knocked him to the ground.

Arlette could not believe her eyes. Four warriors, slaughtered one by one in a matter of breaths—so quickly, in fact, that she had only just now reached her sword. Her companions—no, her friends—dead before she could even blink.

Sebastian turned towards her, disgust on his face. “I offered you everything, Arlette. I would have made you something to be feared. Something more than just a warrior—a legend. Instead, you chose to associate with worthless trash.”

The world had stopped swimming enough for Arlette to get to her feet, but her body shook all the while, both out of exhaustion and out of terror. Was it over? Had she lost?

The fog had cleared out a lot by now, giving Arlette a much better view of the area around the gatehouse, though the clouds still smothered the top of the wall. She looked about, hoping to see Eterian troops making their way down to the ground. To her delight, she did, in fact, find them about halfway down the nearest stairway. If she could just delay Sebastian and his crew somehow until the reinforcements arrived...

Just as she had that thought, a series of explosions blossomed on the staircase, followed by another somewhere behind her. Their loud booms echoed through the city, piercing the quiet. Pieces of stone half as long as Arlette was tall fell from above as parts of the stairways collapsed, temporarily halting the Eterians’ descent. The sight destroyed what little hope remained in Arlette’s heart, leaving her empty. She began to back away.

“Did you think that I would just let reinforcements arrive so easily? Surely you don’t think so little of me. By the time they make it here, it will be too late. The Ubrans will already be pouring in,” Sebastian taunted as he began to stride powerfully towards the backpedaling Arlette, cutting towards her left to circle around her. “The fools should have protected their bombs better if they didn’t want me to use a few. Speaking of which, that child of yours shows interesting promise. Perhaps I should take her under my wing once you’re out of her life.”

“Don’t you dare touch her!” she growled, putting up a front that convinced not even herself, especially since she was still backing away. Looking about, she realized that she’d been so focused on Sebastian that she hadn’t noticed that he’d steered her into the tunnel leading to the gate itself. She was cornered!

Behind her, the sound of grinding movement resumed. The beams bracing the gate were once more slowly withdrawing into the wall itself. All she could feel was hopelessness. She’d lost. A complete and utter defeat.

“I’ve been looking forward to this day ever since you escaped Kutrad the second time,” Sebastian said, triumph written all over his face. “It wouldn’t be enough to kill you outright. It is important that you understand just how futile your struggles are.”

“You evil son of a bitch! All this just because I rejected you back then?!” She charged forward, sword at the ready. She’d given up all hope of surviving any longer. Now, she’d settle for taking the man that had haunted her throughout her whole life down with her.

A second Arlette sprang out of the first and joined her by her side, the two identical figures raced towards their hated enemy. This time, she didn’t bother having one go high and one go low, or to try to attack from both sides. She simply went for the head, both swords arcing up to converge on Sebastian’s neck like a giant set of shears.

With a look of fury that she’d only seen once before, Sebastian knocked her real sword away, sending the weapon spinning well out of reach, and grabbed her by the throat with his free hand. He stared bloody murder into her eyes as he lifted her off the ground.

“You think I care so much about the decisions of a child? No, your crime is far greater than mere stupidity,” he growled as Arlette spasmed in agony and clawed at the hand squeezing away her air. With his sword hand, he traced over a spot on his chin almost absentmindedly. “You stole my perfection.”

With a snarl, he threw her away, sending her crashing into the left wall of the tunnel with a sickening crunch. Arlette’s chest heaved as she clutched her throat, gasping for air.

A “clack!” reverberated through the tunnel. Arlette knew that sound: it was the sound of the beams locking into place. Now free of its restraints, the massive gate could begin to open. A moment later, she heard the telltale sound of massive chains working on equally-massive pulleys and the gate began to rise.

“You failed, you pathetic girl. All your efforts, it was all futile. Watch and let the truth sink in.”

The cheering of the Ubrans intensified as the gargantuan metal impediment lifted up a hand’s width, then two hand’s widths. She could see hundreds of soldiers on the other side, champing at the bit as they waited for the gate to get high enough to squeeze under. Then, unexpectedly, Arlette heard the sound of gears slipping and chains coming loose, and the gate fell back down with a deafening crash.

Confused, Arlette looked back towards the other end of the tunnel, but couldn’t see any Eterians coming to stop the gate from opening. Then... what?

The clanking of machinery resumed, and the gate rose again. First and hand’s width, then two, then... the gate fell once more.

“Heh... heh heh heh... hahahahaha!” Arlette began to chuckle at the sight, her amusement turning into outright howls of relief and elation as the ‘truth’ truly sunk in. She grinned triumphantly up at Sebastian as blood leaked from her mouth and dribbled down onto her tunic.

“What’s wrong, asshole? Not enough replacement parts?” she cackled, her whole body quaking. “They can’t do it! AHAHAHAHA! I win, you fucker! I WIN! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

The gate rose a third time and crashed back down once again, eliciting even greater guffaws than before. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she took in her tormentor’s furious facade. She’d succeeded. Against all odds, she’d done it. She’d won.

A roar went up on the other side of the gate as the cold sharpness of a blade came to rest against her throat. “Somebody about to die has nothing to gloat about,” he snarled. “You think a lucky happenstance means anything? It means nothing! I will simply bide my time and strike anew in the future, but next time you, who couldn’t even lay a hand on me, will not be around to meddle in my affairs.”

“Sorry, Sebastian, I won! You will never be able to take that away from me even if you kill me right now,” Arlette replied as her cackles fell away, replaced with little more than a serene smile. “And I don’t need to touch you to take you with me. It’s over.”

Calmly, she lifted up her hand. Resting on her palm was a candle, the specks of black amidst the blue wax easily visible in the light of the flame burning above it.

Arlette closed her eyes, content with the way things had ended up. She’d lived a short life, but it had been a notable one, all things considered. Her only regret was that she would never be able to help Sofie find her way home...

WHAM!!

A heavy impact struck Arlette and forced her eyes open again, but it wasn’t from her boomcandle. No, strangely, it had hit her on her left side, the blow strong enough to push her over. The impact hadn’t come from a weapon, either; it had struck her equally all along the left side of her body and left her head spinning. A sharp pain was emanating from the left side of her head. She couldn’t hear from that ear anymore! What in the stars had just-

Wait! The candle! Panicking, Arlette realized that the blast of whatever it was had knocked the candle from her hand. Meanwhile, Sebastian’s blade had fallen to the ground as he clutched his ears and staggered about, screaming in agony.

What in the stars had just happened? Arlette looked towards the gate, the direction the blast had come from, and froze in disbelief.

The gate, a solid piece of metal so thick and sturdy that not even a season of punishment by the entirety of the Ubran legions had been able to damage it, was dented in the center, about twenty paces off the ground.

WHAM!!!

A second shock wave pounded into her even harder than the first, throwing her forcefully onto her back. As she flew, she caught a glimpse of the gate buckling in even more like cheap armor smashed by a sledgehammer. Her head swam from the impact, leaving her woozy and confused. Her right ear was ringing like crazy but fortunately it seemed to have survived perhaps because she was facing this gate this time. Unfortunately, that meant the rest of her face had suffered instead. She was pretty sure that her nose was broken, and she could feel something that was likely blood as it welled up and began to drip from her eye sockets.

Battered and beaten, Arlette thought to run, but she couldn’t get her body to respond. All she could manage was to clutch at her head as she curled up on the ground while Sebastian fell to his knees about twenty paces closer to the tunnel’s center.

WHAM!!!!

The third blast was the strongest. She felt it wash over her prone form with tremendous power, closely followed by the screeching sound of the gate being ripped from its moorings and tumbling down the tunnel towards her like the world’s largest crumpled piece of paper—except this piece of paper weighed more than five hundred men. Arlette felt a strong breeze as the gargantuan projectile passed just a pace over her.

Sebastian, however, had not been so lucky. Still strangely stunned and stranded out towards the middle of the tunnel, there’d been nowhere for him to go as the malformed metal sheet bore down and slammed directly into him with all of its terrifying force as it crashed its way through and out of the tunnel.

That was when Arlette saw the woman. Landing a few paces inside the tunnel, her eyes glowing a crimson light in the dark passage like cinders inside a brazier, the woman strode forward with a look of steadfast determination on her face as she pulled an absurdly large sword made of some kind of pitch black crystal from off her back.

The monster.

Arlette knew who she was in an instant, even though she’d only ever heard stories. The sight of her filled Arlette with a primal terror, something far more base and instinctual than the fear that Sebastian instilled in her, and it told her that this woman was death incarnate. She had to get away. She had to run no matter what.

A cheer loud enough to be heard even with her one partially-working ear rose from a hundred-thousand throats as the Ubran Army poured into the tunnel. Arlette picked up her boomcandle and ran, summoning one last terror-fueled burst of strength from her battered body. As she exited the tunnel, the Ubrans only steps behind, she spotted masses of Eterians reinforcements swarming towards the area from the city. They were too late. With the gate destroyed, the question wasn’t if Crirada would fall but rather how many hours more until it did.

Arlette swerved right, doing her best to stay away from both sides. In her current condition and without any weapons, trying to fight anybody would just be a death sentence. Instead, she just ran as best she could manage, alternating between running and hobbling until she found herself at the interior wall that separated the Worker’s Quarter with the Commerce Quarter. Her heart felt like it was going to explode and her limbs felt like they were made of stone, but she pushed herself up the steps with everything she had left, trying to avoid the defenders sprinting down the stairs all around her. Luckily none of them thought her an enemy.

It was strange, but, just moments after being willing to die, now she suddenly wanted to live again. She wanted to see Sofie’s and Pari’s smiling faces, and watch the sun rise over the eastern wall, and generally just live even one day in a Sebastian-free world, just one day where she’d be free of fear again. It would be such a waste for her to die right after him. Such a waste...

Arlette fell to her hands and knees at the top of the wall, panting and exhausted, trying to regain enough strength to get moving again. After a few moments, she got back to her feet and began limping towards the citadel. She could only pray that Sofie and Pari had enough sense to get themselves to the citadel on their own. Unlike last time, she didn’t have it in her to come to their rescue. They must have, she told herself. The sound of the gate being beaten in had surely been loud enough to be heard leagues away.

More Eterians streamed past her as she hobbled her way slowly towards the city center. Suddenly a cold chill went up her spine as she heard the sound of battle behind her. Turning about, she saw with mind-numbing dread that the monster had made her way away from the main battle and climbed the wall a good two hundred paces behind Arlette. Arlette paled. What was that woman doing up here?! Why wasn’t she in the middle of the battle, killing scores of Eterians?

Pushing herself to move faster, Arlette tried to put as much distance between her and the monster as possible. Just in case, she cradled her last boomcandle in her right hand, a last resort of pure desperation and insanity but the only one she had left.

She could hear the air crack with every one of the monster’s swings, the woman’s sword moving with force enough to break the air itself. Even with only one mostly-working ear, she could hear the thunderclaps of her blows getting closer and closer just over the low rumble of her blood pounding in her remaining ear. Turning back, she saw that the monster was now only forty paces away and closing astoundingly fast. The woman’s blade moved so fast that it could barely be seen as it carved easily through her fellow soldiers as she passed by them.

It was clear to Arlette as she took in the trail of carnage the monster left behind her that no begging, cowering, or hiding would save her life now. So she did the only other thing she could think of: with last of her strength, she manifested a flame between her and the monster and threw her boomcandle through it.

BOOM!

The candle erupted with great force about twenty paces away from her... and just two paces in front of the streaking monster.

The blast threw Arlette violently into the side of the walkway, more pain sprouting up inside her as she felt several bones snap, including a rib that, judging by the sudden wet rattling in her breaths, had just punctured her right lung. She begged and pleaded with her body to move, to get away before it was too late, but she found that there was truly nothing left this time. All she could do now was lie on her back, her neck propped up against the walkway side, and wait for it to be over.

At least she would go with the knowledge that she’d taken out Ubrus’s greatest weapon along the way. The candle had exploded just in front of the Ubran at about shin height, the blast wave pulverizing everything below her ribcage, including her lower arms, into mush. The rest of her, from the ribcage up, had tumbled through the air with a look of shock and surprise before landing face-first on the stone floor about ten paces past Arlette. She’d heard rumors of the mythical woman’s ability to heal even the nastiest of wounds, but nothing could come back from that, right?

Wrong. Under Arlette’s appalled and dismayed watch, a crimson smoke quickly filled the air as the destroyed portion of the woman’s body seemed to evaporate into mist and condense back onto her body, reforming into whole, undamaged flesh. Arlette would never have believed it if she hadn’t seen it for herself. It was not just impossible, it was straight up unfair.

The monster stood up, a look of anger replacing her previous determined expression. She took one look at Arlette before marching over to pick up her massive black blade, which had skidded to a stop another fifteen paces away. Arlette gazed into her crimson eyes and let out a sigh as the other woman began walking swiftly towards her, stopping just a few paces to her right.

This was it. Arlette literally had nothing left. As the monster stood over her and hefted her gleaming, pitch-black sword high up over her head like it was nothing heavier than a stick, Arlette stared up into the looming clouds for a short moment and then closed her eyes, letting the low hum of her blood coursing through her be the last thing she would ever hear.

A thunderous “CRACK!” echoed off the walls and Arlette found herself covered in wet, sticky warmth. Befuddled that she still breathed, Arlette opened her eyes.

The monster’s head was just... gone. Everything from her collarbone up was nowhere to be seen, with the area connecting the shoulders to the neck replaced by a jagged, blood-spurting mess of flesh and bone. Arlette waited a breath for the mist to appear and reform the head, but that did not occur. Instead, the sword, still held high over the monster's now-missing head, teetered for a moment, swaying left and right slightly before tipping fully to the right. The body followed, its grip still locked tight on the sword’s handle, and the ensemble tumbled over the side of the walkway, off the wall, and out of view.

What.

What?!

Who?!

How?!

Nothing that had just happened made any sense. One moment she’d been about to die, and the next moment the unkillable monster had died instead? And where had that thunderclap come from if not from the woman’s sword?

A second "CRACK" caught her good ear, though it was much softer than the one before. Turning her head toward the sound, she noticed something strange. Far off in the distance, on the tallest tower of the citadel itself, was some sort of gigantic insect. The dull metallic grey of its body made it hard to see in the cloud-dampened moonlight, but from what she could tell, it had four legs connected to a somewhat ovoid, round body. A long pole protruded out horizontally from the top of the insect’s body, swiveling about on its own without the main body having to move.

Suddenly the insect bucked back, pushed backwards by some invisible force, and Arlette heard another “CRACK” a moment later. Arlette didn’t know how to process the thing. It moved like it was alive, but judging by how much of the tower’s roof it occupied as it gripped the slanted top with its legs, the insect had to be at least ten paces long, possibly more. No insect could ever be so big, right?

Distracted by the uncanny insect, Arlette suddenly realized something equally disconcerting: the low drone of the blood pounding in her ear had been increasing in volume, now to the point where it almost seemed to vibrate her entire skull. This was something else, and judging from the direction of the vibrations, it was something from somewhere above.

Arlette’s mouth fell open, unable to believe her eyes as a massive, grey, oblong shape descended through the clouds in the murky night, its gargantuan frame casting an ominous shadow over the city. Long and cylindrical, with each end tapering off to a point, the huge thing hung in the air in complete defiance of the very laws of nature. How, Arlette could not understand; no matter where she looked she could find no wings, only a series of motionless fins on the far end. And yet there it stayed, as if held aloft by some giant, invisible hand.

Protruding from the bottom was a strange boxy structure running along most of the colossal object's length starting near the front. Suddenly a large hatch opened on the structure’s bottom and more insects appeared—five, ten, fifteen. They were smaller than the first, and lacked the massive pole that the other sported, but Arlette found them equally unnerving as she watched them dangle from the ends of ropes running back up into the hatch. They hung in the air, motionless for a heartbeat, then two. Then, as one, they straightened their legs and began to lower to the ground.