Walking through a drow city was an exercise in looking threatening enough that someone wouldn’t casually want to mess with you. If you didn’t look threatening enough personally, then whoever you were affiliated with had to be threatening enough to do the job if you were messed with.

If you were someone that didn’t have anyone backing them, like four breshkt in outlander garb and towing behind them some Disks laden down with expensive stuff, you had to look pretty dangerous, indeed.

We looked totally intimidating, because we didn’t look concerned at all.

Pickpockets and snatch and grabbers about to have a go at us saw fingers rise, a head slightly turn, and their blood went cold and their eyes went elsewhere. Some thugs with muscle and guns thinking they saw an opportunity saw our eyes just glance over at them and move away without the slightest indication that they were a threat, and swallowed their words and let us pass right on by. Some cocksure bravos who thought they were dangerous with bodyguards and fawning attendants came into our paths, four sets of eyes leisurely set on them, and they got out of our way like someone had spiked their gonads.

Drow have an acute sense of don’t-fuck-with-me. Intimidate checks at post-50 set off their little spidey-senses and highly honed survival instincts, and accompanying degrees of shamelessness sent them scampering out of our path, thinking thoughts of revenge and humiliation and how they’d get back at us, while we walked on by.

Reading the signs and indications wasn’t all that hard, and the local version of a Band was among the things I had retained from the dead pink-haired slaughter sisters. So, we made our way unerringly to a fine merchant with no hesitation whatsoever about buying a highly prized commodity like hoverboards from us for a fair amount of money, while the whispers about what we’d done flew out ahead and around us, and certain individuals began to look askew at us and start plotting how to use us.

All the more fun for us.

------

She was a fallen gladiator from the higher arenas, a blade-witch who’d been cut up and stoned out too many times, and no longer had the edge or appeal to compete before the ruthless upper crowds. The faint shriveling of her black skin showed that her willpower was failing, and soon she’d go barmy and start a wave of slaughter that would end with her being shot to pieces by disinterested parties for target practice.

Happily, she never got to that point, because Celestia stepped into the fighting ring across from her.

She might be falling, and her pink hair going bloody magenta, and her eyes all crimson, but she was a highly trained killer of the high arenas. She had dueled all manner of foes, and was perfectly used to slaughtering larger numbers of lower-born and less trained opponents. She was drugged to the gills, dancing on the edge of the killing madness and combat high that was sucking in her sanity, and finding a breshkt stepping into the arena across from her earned only a sneer and a mocking laugh from her twisted lips.

“A half-breed dares step into the arena across from me!” she shrieked out, as if this was a personal affront to her, her reputation fallen so low that even breshkt dared to face her. “I will bleed you slowly and watch you die in pain!”

The three of us quickly placed our bets as the crowd of drow, sixteen different species of aliens, breshkt, umbvar, and some Warped creatures that could have come from multiple species simultaneously, and probably did, all howled out at the display and clamored with their bids.

Well, this wasn’t going to take too long, so we had to bid quickly...

Chill dropped into Celestia’s hand; a thirty-four-inch dual-edged blade of Full-Tempered Adamant flowed out of the Sword Focus. Harsh, metallic silver light hissed in the runes on her Blade, and she didn’t even bother to bring her buckler Out into play.

Or her Arakne Arms. Or her Tails. Or her Philosopher’s Might Tats. Or her Halo Crown...

She just glared.

She wasn’t a slave to her Talent, but the fact was her Talent was Ice Cold. Her natural emotional state was as hard and cold as diamond. She had been a completely cold and harsh bitch with the uncaring social mindset of a dagger until her Charisma reached 30 and she was able to slice off a thoughtstream that actually had some emotions and could empathize and relate to normal people. As a Rantha and having the same foundation as all her sisters, she was aware of how different she was and what her Talent did to her. She loved her sisters, and kept a sharp eye on her moral leanings and how her natural hardline emotions veered towards doing unconscionable things without batting an eye, and so engaged in introspective self-analysis with her Wisdom thoughtstream constantly.

She had very little faith to go around, but probably none of the other Ranthas engaged in as much constant introspection about the fate and color of their soul.

Her soul had belonged to a ruthless manipulator of her family and students, a psychopath willing to do almost anything to get ahead. She had inspired fear in her family, siblings, fellow students, and even instructors... but at the same time she had been a horrible recruit for Amourae, because she considered the plunging into sensualism and emotional release utter weakness. She had forced the headmistress to dominate her personally to make her submit, making her one of the last of the girls of Wendlerton Academy to be subverted, and only then by catering to her fantasies of power and dominance.

She had not been a good person, and it was entirely likely she would have been Warp-fodder on death, or the epitome of a ruthless noblewoman with distant bloodstains on her hands had she lived.

She had been weak... a slave to her own personality and Talent, and too low Level to defy the Headmistress.

But she was a Rantha now. She could split her own mind, make thoughtstreams that were not bound by her Talent, and open herself to the full range and joy of emotions that her sisters felt, even if she rarely ever showed it.

And oh, she was not weak in this life, and her glare was death.

The drow had juiced reflexes, bio-enhancements, was drug-amped for speed, a full Ten with her Dexterity sitting at the racial maximum, basically a requirement for bladewitches who survived the arenas. She was sitting around a 40 Dex, wielding two Psychic shortswords with monomolecular edges, incredibly precise, controlled, flexible, living in a slow-motion world.

An Intimidation check at 70 slammed into her fracturing mind and let her know she was about to die.

Celestia took one step, and glided across the twenty yards between them with it. The disassociation behind the motion and the movement, flickers of the body associated with Imperial Sun swordplay, drew the eye and mind into a strangely confused dance, as if what was happening was just an illusion, was not happening, and would just be blinked away...

The bladewitch’s bloody eyes grew very large, feeling a horrible, overwhelming pressure coming from the blue eyes of her opponent, endless ice fields reaching out to clamp down on her soul.

Her blades came up to parry the cut coming across as she tried to dodge and avoid it. The light, narrow blades, made for finesse combat at eye-blurring speeds with artful speed and style, came into the path of the heavy adamant Weapon massing over ten kilos, wielded as lightly as a rapier and moving so fast unenhanced reflexes couldn’t follow it. Chill crashed into the light weapons, smashed them right aside, sheared into the half-armor of her leading side, ripped right through it, moving forward and to the side to mirror her instinctive motion. The edge carved through bone and flesh as if they weren’t there, fast, too fast...

Celestia’s shoulder slammed into the drow as Chill exited her body, and the two halves of her corpse went flying away at the impact as her step ended abruptly, blood and organs already starting to wither and burn as psychic balance was lost and her life was emptied violently from her.

She bounced and hit the ground, flesh burning and flaking as the death she’d held off for so long sucked away her screaming soul, and left a shriveled husk behind her.

---

The odds-makers who had sudden thoughts about not paying us looked sharply to the side, finding us Right There, and smiling with shining blue eyes that were cold as diamonds.

She got her win bonus, and we made several times that in bets, and the bookies got to keep their heads.

Her manager and this cheapass drow arena owner did try to kill Celestia almost immediately. Getting a true bladewitch down here, even if she was a spent rag, was a big thing, and us killing her was going to affect both bets and crowds come to see a true high-end killer do her stuff.

Jensa slit the throat of the manager; I reaped my way through the cybered yuan-ti bodyguards of the owner and divided him into more pieces than I did them; and Keva took down four of the assassins while Celestia charged right into the waiting bully-squad and sent a lot of body parts flying in merciless, terrifying savagery that had more than a few of the jaded watchers pissing themselves. Watching her rip a cybered mi-go’s many limbs right off it as it flailed at her uselessly was rather impressive, and a few of the gloating spectators got to enjoy a personal experience when its acidic, poisonous blood splashed them, rather screamingly effective.

------

From that incident, our reputation was established and began to grow. Naturally we irked those backing the arena manager, and probably the bladewitch’s old coven, as such a quick death was something of an insult to her Tradition, but, eh, that was the whole point of it.

At the same time, other arenas looked askew at a group of four breshkt fighting women not using finesse combat very curiously, and word spread of our little group of duelists. We began the long climb up the rankings.

Celestia had gone through this process personally back in Janus Prime, Keva had started the process with the Bladebelle League, and of course the four dead bikini-bitches had done so, albeit with the support of their Coven, so they had started at a much higher level. I followed their lead as we began to write a script for our group.

The reason we were doing this was to justify our traveling around the city, and thus getting closer to the Portals that were the lifeblood of the city.

Breshkt had no place outside Gloomheart; racial purists would butcher them without a second thought. There was no better place for them to go, so us leaving this place certainly wouldn’t occur to anyone. A group of breshkt actually wanting to set the realspace exit points of Gloomheart Portals was just a crazy notion... why would we want to admit people who would kill us without blinking into the only place where we wouldn’t be killed on sight?

The major Portals were up in the sky, used by full-blown starships. Naturally this meant we were going to be restricted mostly to the Portals on the ground, which were generally the property of individuals, clans, covens, or organizations who monopolized control of them and charged for the privilege of using them.

So, build up reputation, get hired by certain individuals to do certain things to other certain individuals, all of whom deserved what was coming. The only hard point about all of this would be having to watch how they dealt with slaves, and a vast number of those slaves were human.

Mmmmm. If only we could smuggle a planet-cracker in here and take out this whole city... but that just wouldn’t happen, too many safe-guards in place.

Time, place, contacts, and getting out of here. If we were lucky, we might instead find Portals outside the city to viable places on the other side of the Rift, and word was spreading among the Hyn as it did. It was basically a race now to see which of our groups was successful first.