Raksha liked to think that he was a reasonable person. If someone had an issue with him, he’d usually be willing to talk things through and try to come to some sort of mutual understanding. Admittedly, he wasn’t very good at that, which was why he ended up having to resort to his fists or his blade more often than not. Still, he tried, most of the time, which had to count for something.

That was why he believed that he was a reasonable person.

The woman seated across him in the same wooden bathtub, however, was definitely not.

“Hi,” Sadea said, grinning.

“Uh,” he replied.

After he’d helped her drag the chimera’s head from the manufactory and mount it on a hook on her horse’s saddle, he’d bidden her farewell and walked away, ignoring her demands for him to wait. Then, at the closest town, he’d paid a copper coin to get his clothes laundered and another to bathe in the common bathhouse.

After scrubbing the grime of the road and the gore of battle off, he’d sat down in one of the communal tubs, anticipating a warm soak that would loosen his muscles.

He definitely did not expect the door to fly open and for Sadea to stalk in, wearing no more clothes than anyone else in the men’s bathing chamber.

“Out, all of you,” she’d said, before pointing at Raksha. “Except you. Stay right there.”

“But I just got here,” a middle-aged man, balding and pot-bellied, whined. “Can’t I at least rinse my—“

Then he’d squealed and run off, trickles of lightning nipping at his heels.

“And close the door behind you!” she’d called as the last man stumbled out.

Therefore, Raksha had no choice but to conclude, as Sadea sat down in the same tub as him, that she was not a reasonable person.

“Women’s baths are next door. There’s a huge, clear sign in the hallway,” he said.

She did not reply. Instead, she smiled enigmatically and leaned back, in a manner that left nothing to imagination. Not that Raksha minded the eyeful of curves, at all, though.

“Ah, I see.” He’d just figured out why she was here and gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic nod. “You can’t read. It’s alright. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I couldn’t not too long ago, and to be honest, I still can’t read very well. But it’s not an impossible skill to attain. You just need to put in the work and ask for help when you need it.”

Her face grew darker as he spoke.

“Now that you know, why don’t you head over to the women’s baths?”

“Of course I can read, you moron!” she snapped. “And no! I’m staying right here!”

“Why?”

“To clean myself up, of course.” Her smile returned, though it seemed slightly forced this time. She ran her hands through her reddish-blonde hair, unsubtly arching her chest upwards.

“Then you should have scrubbed and rinsed off first before coming into the tub,” he told her, thumbing over his shoulder to a row of taps and a tray of washcloths.

Sadea growled. “Shut up about bathing, already! I’m here because I want to ask you some questions!”

“Sure. You can find soap there, wrapped in packets of wax paper.”

“I’m not here to ask you where the soap is!” Sadea raised a hand above the water. “Oh, what the hell. I’ll just get to the point.”

An arc of lightning danced from her fingertips. It struck Raksha’s aegis and stopped an inch short of his flesh. To Raksha’s surprise, it did not dissipate like all other forms of sorcery did before the Conflagration. Rather, it hung in the air, a crackling blue arc connecting him and Sadea.

“How is that possible? That’s what I want to know,” she said.

“It’s my aegis.”

“I know what aegises are. I’ve fought and killed martial scientists before. None of them have been able to just abide my lightning like that.”

“Beats me.” Raksha had wondered many times about the resistance, if not outright immunity, the Conflagration granted him to sorcery or mind-altering poisons. The latter he could speculate about, since the Conflagration’s initial sequences involved the opening and fortification of the first Solar Gate, where most of the major cerebral channels were clustered. It thus followed that if the Conflagration made his brain stronger, then fewer things could affect it.

Why the Conflagration’s aegis defended him against sorcery, however, he had no idea.

Sadea had been staring silently at him for a few moments now. And not at his face.

“Wha…what are you looking at?” Raksha demanded, cursing under his breath at how he’d stammered his words.

Sadea looked up and met his gaze, her eyes wide and innocent. “Oh? I was trying to pierce your soul with my mage-sight, but I’m not having any luck. I’m also getting an eyeful too, because fair’s fair, right? And hey, not too shabby. I’ve seen better, but also worse.”

Raksha shuddered and started to get up from the tub. He’d just remembered why he didn’t like sorcerers. They enjoyed reading the minds of others, which, to him, was a violation, or at the very least, an intrusive intimacy he desired to share with none.

“Hey, hold on,” Sadea said. “I think I’ve figured it out. Somehow, your aegis strengthens the veil between the material and immaterial. My lightning does the same, allowing me to hurt the unclean and unnatural both physically and spiritually. The flames of your soul run along the same wavelengths as the lightning within mine. They are mutually inviolate.”

“Sounds complicated. Don’t care.” Raksha stood up, but Sadea dipped the lightning dancing from her finger downward, so that it struck the water.

The electric shock seized Raksha’s muscles. He fell backward into the tub, limbs flailing in helpless spasms. Involuntary breaths filled his lungs with lukewarm water. The Conflagration blazed in response, flooding his body with its strength, pushing the electricity from his muscles, and allowing him to regain control of his limbs.

Seizing the sides of the tub with his hands, he pulled his head above the water. Sadea was still chattering away as he coughed the moisture from his lungs.

“…not affected by my own lightning, of course, but now I know if I can’t zap you, I’ll just have to zap around you.”

With a roar, Raksha expanded his aegis. It burst the tub, reducing it into a shower of wooden splinters. Water rushed from the demolished vessel, and Sadea fell heavily, a startled grunt escaping her lips.

“Hey!” she snapped, wincing and rubbing her rear. “What was that for? Didn’t anyone teach you any manners?”

Raksha thumbed a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth and shook his head incredulously. If not for the Conflagration, he would be dead now, his heart electrocuted to stillness or his flesh charred by lightning. And here she was, yelling at him about manners.

She stood and waved a finger in his face. “In any case, I wasn’t finished speaking yet. Now…”

Raksha snatched a discarded towel from the wet floor. Footwork from the 17th offensive sequence of the Raging Claw carried him to Sadea’s back. Her words trailed off, signaling her realization that she’d been talking to thin air for nearly a second.

A deft flick of his wrist snapped the damp towel squarely against the purpling bruise on Sadea’s flesh.

“Heh,” Raksha chuckled as the sorceress squealed, clutched herself, and hopped around. He walked over to the rack where the launderers had laid his cleaned clothes. Steelbreaker was there too, propped against the wall.

As was the sorceress’s staff, a dark rod topped by a sickle-shaped headpiece.

It rose into the air, tumbled over his shoulder, and twirled into her grasp. Her eyes blazed with electricity.

“Now, come on,” Raksha began. “I was just—“

The wall beside him disintegrated beneath a colossal lightning bolt, opening up the bathing chamber to the air of the streets. As a chill evening draft whispered across Raksha’s face, whatever words he’d been about to say died in his mouth, probably because he’d gone slack-jawed.

“Aim’s off without my gloves,” Sadea muttered. “Now, just hold still. I shouldn’t miss again.”

Not knowing what else to do, Raksha drew Steelbreaker. Perhaps he could reach her before she brought the entire building down…

“Stop,” a crisp, feminine voice said. “Or I will shoot you both with concussive grenades.”

Raksha turned to the speaker, who was standing beyond the massive breach of the bathing chamber. It was the necromancer he’d met in another town a few days ago and reported the Tree of Hearts to. Unlike Sadea, she was tall and pale, with straight, dark hair that cascaded across her shoulders. Her thin, bloodless lips were twisted in disapproval as her fatigue-ringed eyes traced the smoldering remains of the demolished wall. She wore an olive-green long-coat of a utilitarian cut over her slender frame.

Two flesh golems stood by her, one on each flank. The animated corpses’ frames, bulky with vat-grown synthetic muscle, were clad in coats of the same hue and fashion. Plates of riveted black steel covered their skulls and faces, except for where copper knobs sprouted from their temples. One golem held a sleek automatic grenade launcher in its gloved hands. The other carried a steel shield and wore a sheathed sword.

The grenade launcher swiveled toward Sadea.

“I mean it, Sadea,” the necromancer warned. “Calm the hell down, right now, or you get a grenade where it’ll really hurt.”

“But, Vicky, he—“ Sadea began, only to be shushed by the necromancer.

“Don’t call me that!” she said. “And I don’t care what you two have been up to. Get dressed. Both of you need to come with me, immediately.”