If using her lightning aspect to pass through a metal door had been agonizing, assuming it in a steam-filled room was a hundred times worse. She shrieked mentally, feeling the very fabric of her soul begin to unravel from the pain. Sadea moved her form of crackling electricity through the chimera’s flesh itself, searing and shocking it from within.

All three of the beast’s heads voiced its agony, roaring, hissing, and bleating at once. But there was no way Sadea could sustain her incorporeal form long enough to kill the chimera before her soul disintegrated. She pushed herself further through the beast’s body, eventually emerging in front of its right flank, so that it no longer barred her from the pantry’s entrance.

Her lightning form traveled another foot, and then she had to let it go and fall back into corporeality. As soon as her heels clicked upon the permacrete floor, she was hurling herself forward, ignoring the pain that tore through her limbs and knowing the chimera would be in close pursuit.

A stride, another, and then a full-on sprawling dive took her out of the cloud of steam and into the arid mustiness of the corridor leading to the pantry. She felt something swift, massive, and likely sharp—almost certainly the chimera’s feline claws—sweep through the air just above her back, before she hit the permacrete floor face-first.

And then she was spinning around, raising her war-staff and wreathing its head with lightning. The chimera burst from the pantry, all three of its heads rearing from the cloud of steam. The serpent head darted forward, and Sadea hit it squarely between the eyes with a bolt of electricity, all she could muster at the moment.

The chimera roared, bleated, and hissed, staggering back. The serpent head spat a purple, fluid blob, evidently meant for Sadea, at the ceiling in its agony. The spit hit the permacrete and immediately began eating its way through, bubbling and hissing as it dissolved the nigh-indestructible substance that was the backbone of all Hegemonic architecture.

Gasping, Sadea rolled to the side and flattened her back against the wall of the corridor as the chimera stormed blindly forward, obviously hoping to trample her in its path. The creature’s charge died about twenty feet past Sadea, and it turned to glare at the sorceress with all three of its heads.

Breathing hard, she leveled her war-staff at it. “Come on, you little shit! What’s the matter? Scared?”

All six of the chimera’s eyes narrowed, alight with unnatural cunning beyond. Then it turned its tail and raced off down the corridor, disappearing around a corner within a heartbeat.

Sadea sank to her knees, trying and failing to blink tears of agony from her eyes. Her limbs trembled with pain, and she could taste blood at the back of her mouth. Droplets of red fell from her face and splattered against the back of her glove. Coughing, she pulled a rag from her kilt pocket and wiped the blood trickling from her nose and the corners of her eyes away as best as she could. Going to be hell trying to get bloodstains out of my scarf. Definitely don’t want that.

“You were using us as bait,” a man’s voice, rough with nerves and recent screaming, said.

Leaning on her war-staff, Sadea pushed herself to her feet and glared at the speaker. He was a portly man in his middle years, clad in work coveralls like the rest of his peers, all gathered around him. His pockmarked cheeks were partially obscured by a wispy attempt at a beard.

“Yeah? So what if I was?” Sadea sneered. “Most useful thing you lot ever did and will ever do.”

Angry mutters arose from the mob of workers. Pockmark spoke up again. “What makes you think you can toy with our lives like that, you evil bitch?”

“Well, what were you doing with them in the first place? Sitting in this shithole and churning out garbage? Screwing each other in the stinking dormitories? Shitting out worthless spawn to be chained to the assembly lines just like you were?” Sadea spat on the floor, leaving equal parts blood and saliva on the permacrete. “And by the way, you lot would be all dead by now if not for me, so try to squeeze just a little bit of gratitude into those reprobate, subhuman skulls of yours.”

“Go to hell, whore!” a worker shouted, picking up a steel mug as if he were about to hurl it at her.

Sadea raised her crackling war-staff. “Give me an excuse, worm. Go on, do it.”

Pockmark snatched the mug out of the worker’s hand and cuffed him over the head, before turning to glare at her once more. “Well, you’re not using us as bait for the beast anymore. We’re leaving.”

“Ha! Go ahead! I bet you’ll be the only ones who succeed, you precious, special few, unlike all those who’ve already died trying to leave while that thing is still out there, somewhere!” Sadea laughed and swept her hand down the corridor, inviting the workers to walk past her. “Go on. What’re you waiting for?”

The workers started muttering among themselves once more. Eventually, Pockmark spoke. “What do you suggest, Great Lady?”

“Oh? It’s Great Lady, now? You lot of feisty little scrappers suddenly don’t think you’ve got what it takes to survive?” Sadea chuckled. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You are going to stroll through the manufactory. Go wherever. When the beast attacks again, I’ll kill it before it eats all of you.”

“No!”

“Screw you, bitch!”

“Let’s kill her!”

Sadea struck the speaker of that last statement down with a bolt of lightning, leaving her charred corpse in a smoldering heap before the other workers. “No one threatens me and gets away with it. Now, there are four of you left. Do I have to make that number smaller?”

Pockmark raised his hands. “No, Great Lady. Please, we will do as you say. Just… just help us.”

“Spineless, just as I expected.” Sadea lowered her war-staff. “Actually, change of plans. I want you to bring me somewhere in this building. Let’s go.”