Next to Sadea, a broad-shouldered, thickset woman in worker coveralls had her gloved hands wrapped on what could only be an unlocking valve on a control panel beside the doors. Now, she was staring at the sorceress, her jaw agape.

“Leal, right? If only you’d moved faster, instead of being a dithering moron,” Sadea snapped, “then I wouldn’t have needed to come in like that. Oh, and probably fewer of your friends would be dead.”

“Wha…”

“Ah, shut up. Just shut up.” Sadea leveled her war-staff at the chimera. The beast was now padding its way across the room toward her, evidently intrigued by the psychic energy emanating from her soul. All such aberrations always were, being creatures born from freak confluences of the Ethereal Tides themselves.

This one was slightly different, though. Its body had none of the lesions and tumors that spoke of genetic instability, an inevitable consequence of the unfettered mutation that gave these creatures their warped, misshapen forms. Also, such creatures were usually laden with multiple demonic possessions, mutated flesh being ambroisal vessels to entities dwelling within the Ethereal Tides. But this one had a full-formed soul, blazing with hatred and malevolence before Sadea’s mage-sight.

“Huh.” Sadea shrugged. “Eh, don’t really care. Just want my money.”

Lightning danced across the tips of her war-staff’s crescent head before it coalesced into a crackling ball of energy that hung in midair. The chimera halted in its tracks, as if suddenly aware of the threat it was facing.

With a thought, Sadea shattered the ball of lightning and cast its bladed fragments into the chimera’s faces and chest. The beast howled as its body convulsed in electrocuted anguish. The stench of burning flesh filled the air, causing Sadea to wince and pinch her nose with her free hand.

“Ew. Gross,” she muttered. “Why can’t people or things smell nicer when I zap them? Life just isn’t fair.”

More lightning gathered between the crescent tips of her war-staff. She molded it into a single bolt, and then she hammered it into the chimera’s rearing chest, hurling the creature backward and smashing it into the wall at the far side of room.

The screams in the room gradually died down, giving way to mutters of awe, disbelief, and more than a little apprehension as the workers realized they now had a sorceress in their midst. Sadea snorted. Her ability to pick up the surface thoughts of others had always been miniscule, and it was during times like this that she was especially grateful for her lack of empathic sensitivity.

“Yeah, yeah, I killed it,” she said. “Feel free to thank me, applaud, get on your knees, and so on. But anybody who tries to lick my boots is getting kicked in the face.”

And some of them did thank her, in the form of nervous mutters and whispers. Others pressed themselves around the edges of the room as far as they could manage from her and the smoking carcass of the chimera.

Whatever. She turned to Leal. “You getting that thing open any time this century?”

Slack-jawed, the forewoman put the valve through its final rotation. Gasses hissed from the hinges of the doors, and they opened, rumbling inward on wheeled tracks.

“Finally! See? With lots of encouragement and proper instruction, even idiots can function in society!” Sadea clapped Leal on the shoulder. “So there’s no need to worry, sweetie. You’ll do just fine.”

“You…”

“Shush. Don’t try to talk anymore. You’ll overwork your brain.” Sadea turned to the chimera’s carcass, wondering if she could salvage any of its body parts for sale as trophies or fake elixirs to foisted off on the idiotic masses. “Goddamn it. Should have brought the bone saw from my saddlebags. Eh. Too lazy to walk there and back. Let’s see what I can zap off.”

The only reason she survived what happened next was her stepping in a pool of blood, slipping, and falling backwards. Gigantic serpent jaws snapped close on empty air an inch from her face, an instant before her rear hit the floor.

The screams from the workers arose anew, interspersed with cries of “it’s still alive,” which made Sadea role her eyes in exasperation. Of course it was, but it was also evidently wounded, picking itself shakily off the floor and fixing her with a threefold glare of pure hatred, even as Sadea scrambled backward and got to her feet.

Blood poured from the ears of its goat head and the nostrils of its lion head. Plasma oozed from the burnt, cracked flesh of its serpentine torso. Its goat head reared backward, puffing up its cheeks. Sadea hurled herself to the side.

A grayish cloud burst from the creature’s mouth and nostrils and roiled through the room. Sadea had managed to get herself out of its path, but several workers were caught in the miasma. As she watched, their agonized screams died as their flesh hardened and turned to stone. Within seconds, they clunked to the floor, twisted and immobile monuments to unthinkable pain and horror.

Sadea raised her war-staff, ready to unleash another torrent of lightning at the chimera, but before she could focus her thoughts, the beast leaped into the ceiling vent from which it had entered. The sounds of its claws and hoofs scraping against permacrete and steel grew distant and faint even as she stepped underneath the pitch-black opening.

“Well, shit,” she said.