The Needle seems to grow steadily larger as 11 gets closer, but somehow, she cannot for the life of her find a path that leads to it. The buildings in this part of the city are packed together so tightly, and the roads so winding and endless, it feels to 11 like she is a mouse navigating the maze of some psychotic scientist. And the tower, its dome and vines and flower bulb always just barely in sight, taunts her with its perceived vicinity.

But just as 11 comes around yet another bend in the road, and feels another chunk of her patience being sliced away, she passes by two brick buildings and glimpses something grey at the end of their alleyway. She stops, backtracks, and spots the unmistakable base of Nranhana’s Needle, there in the distance.

“Finally,” 11 sighs, and cuts directly through the alleyway without hesitation, forgetting all about Safir Silverbeard's warning of sticking to the open path.

The brick buildings turn out to be taller than they had looked from the main road, but the space between them is so narrow only two people can walk through side-by-side. With each step, the light around 11 seems to dim, as if night has encroached upon this separated section of the world. The sounds of the city quieten behind her, until all she hears is the clicking of her boots echoing between the moldy walls. She thinks about going back, but the stone tower is just on the other side, beckoning. She quickens her pace, her mind flashing back to all those crime and thriller movies she’s watched, back when she was hunting the mountain demon Gargoloth.

Dark, musty, and secluded, this would be the perfect place for a mugging, 11 muses, trying to inject some playfulness into the creepy atmosphere.

Then as if on cue, two hooded figures emerge from the shadows twenty feet in front of her, like spiders, detaching themselves from the walls.

11 stops, just as another door creaks open behind her, and two more figures bleed out onto the path, their hooded cloaks sliding across the concrete.

11 is boxed in. She gasps.

It’s actually happening. Just like the movies!

She’s more surprised at her own premonition than the actual situation, of course, but the cloaked men seem to take it as an exclamation of fear, and that gives them the signal to start slinking towards 11. Knives and rusty chains appear from within their hiding places, swinging and dangling menacingly in the men's hands as they approach. They hold themselves low to the ground, giving off the image of a pack of wolves stalking their helpless prey.

11 waits.

Altogether, the hooded men stop, not ten feet from her. One of them steps forward, pulling back his hood to reveal a set of yellow teeth framed in an oval, pockmarked face.

“Well, well, aren’t you a pretty little thing?” Malice drips from his mouth as the man’s sunken eyes crawl along 11’s body. He smacks his lips together and chuckles to the tall man next to him. “It’s our lucky day, Lars.”

The tall man stiffens. “Duuude,” he whispers, pulling on his companion’s sleeve, “I thought we agreed it’s ‘Lancer Edge’, remember?”

“No one’s calling you that,” the first man snaps, yanking his arm free. He turns back to 11, and begins sauntering towards her while tossing a curved, ornate knife between his hands. “Besides,” he says with a wicked grin, “this little cutie won’t be telling our names to anyone. Isn’t that right, cutie?”

“I don’t have any money,” 11 says, taking off her backpack. “But you can have this.”

A wave of cackling passes through the gang.

“That’s okay, we’re not here just for your money,” the knife-carrying man coos, closing the gap between him and 11. He grabs the bag from her, and tosses it to the side. “You look like you have plenty to offer us under that cloak of yours,” he says, raising the knife to her throat, “if you catch my drift.”

11 feels the cold tip of the metal blade pressing against her skin, but it does not bother her as much as the hand slithering behind her back. The man is so close she can see lice, jumping around in his matted hair, and it’s just about enough.

“Sir,” she says, keeping her voice level, formal. “This is illogical. I have nothing you want.”

“Oh I doubt that,” says the man, almost drooling as he stares at her chest. “I reeeally doubt that.” The hand on 11’s back moves south.

And that does it. 11 feels the familiar red mist seeping through her chest, reaching upwards and filling her mind with terrible thoughts. Without giving the order, her scanners begin stripping the man bare of all his secrets, laying him out like a frog on a dissecting table.

Target Identified.

Species: Human.

Age: 21 years.

Damage Output Level: 6.

Threat to humanity?: No.

Possibility of hostility: 78%

But before 11's scans are complete, Mother's voice chimes in.

Don’t kill him, Gier 11. The Protocol forbids you to.

I’ve already broken the Protocol once, 11 points out, her fists clenching. But before she can decide which bone in the man’s body to snap first, a bold, defiant voice rings out from somewhere above.

“Hey, assholes! Hands off my prey!”

A shadow swooshes from the sky, landing directly between 11 and the knife-wielding man, forcing them apart. The man leaps back with a yell, narrowly avoiding getting stepped on by the shadow.

The first thought 11 gets is, Aralyn! And her pulse soars into the sky and it’s all she can do not to lunge out and embrace the hooded figure right there and then. But when the shadow straightens and pulls back her hood to reveal two curved horns, sprouting from a messy head of light yellow hair, 11 feels her spirit sink like a weight dropped into the ocean.

“We had an agreement, Zoldan,” the horned girl snarls as she squares up to the knife-wielding man. She is a kid compared to him, even if her horns almost make up for the height difference. “You’re violating those terms,” she tells him.

The man, having now recovered from the shock, spits out a laugh. “Oh did we now? That’s strange, I don’t seem to remember making a deal with an animal.”

The girl bristles. “You remember damn well the oath we swore, you piece of disgusting filth!” she yells. Then she points at 11 and says, “I get the women, you get the men. We made an agreement in front of the Mistress. Tell him, Lars!” Her finger moves to the tall man behind Zoldan. “You were there too!”

“Oh, uh, hey, Yue’li,” the tall man says as he gives the girl a lame wave. “The name’s not Lars anymore. It’s Lancer Edge, now.”

For a long beat, the girl just blinks at him uncomprehendingly. “That's so stupid,” she says finally.

“Ah, ah, it’s all coming back to me,” says Zoldan as he strolls towards 11 and Yue’li, showing off his mouthful of yellow teeth. “I did make a deal with a naive little thief all those seasons ago, when she was still a part of my team. I probably would’ve listened to that girl.”

He raises the knife in front of his own face and starts to swing it from ear to ear like a windscreen wiper. “But you…” The blade seems to come alive, flashing red-green in the dusky light. “You’re just another poor, unfortunate yaojin who started a fight with the wrong folk down the wrong alleyway.” Zoldan begins to sway, drunk from his own degeneracy. “When the guards find your bodies here tomorrow, that’s the kind of lazy story they’ll come up with, so they don’t have to waste their time investigating something they don’t even want to.”

He stops swaying, his face going very serious. With a snap of his fingers, the two men behind the girls start closing in with their own knives raised.

“Wh-what do you think you all are doing?” Yue’li shouts, going into a fighting stance, but 11 can see the small frame of her body quivering beneath her cloak. “We were part of the same team! Where is your thieves’ honor?”

The men snicker as they keep advancing.

The Protocol forbids bringing unneccesary harm to human beings, Gier 11.

You have one strike against you already. Do NOT commit another. Do you need me to remind you of the consequences?

Yue’li backs into 11, horns knocking into her chest. “When… when I give you the signal,” 11 hears her shakily whisper, “run like hell, got it?”

So this is a yaojin, thinks 11, resisting the urge to plant her fingers into that head of soft-looking curls.

“Now!” Yue’li shoots her arm into the air, revealing a black pellet pinched between her fingers.

Zoldan zips forward, too fast. He catches Yue'li's wrist and shoves her sideways, so hard against the wall 11 hears the air leave the girl's lungs. A trail of red mist lingers behind Zoldan, like an after-image, before evaporating.

Rough hands grasp onto 11 as the two thugs behind her press themselves against her, wrestling her to the ground. 11 lets them, but somewhere in the back of her mind, she is looking for loopholes, and reasons, to fight.

It takes Yue’li a few seconds to clear the stars from her eyes, and when her mind has finished catching up, she squirms against Zoldan’s grip, shock and dismay making her voice squeak pathetically. “This isn’t fair!” she cries. “Thieves don’t use magic! Let go, you sick-” She swallows back the rest of her words when Zoldan pushes his knife to her throat.

“Oh, Yueyue, my stupid little yaojin,” the man chuckles, pressing his full weight into Yue’li, crushing her against the wall. “When are you going to grow out of the fairytale the Mistress weaved for you? There’re no such things as fairness or honor when you’re dealing in blood-stained money.” This close, Yue’li can smell his breakfast of stale oats and cheap ale. She strains away, fighting the urge to gag.

Zoldan laughs, enjoying Yue'li's torment. “It’s all a ruse to keep fools like you in line,” he continues, “so you'll keep doing the Mistress’s bidding without questioning why.” He digs his knife harder into the girl’s neck as he says this, until trickles of warm blood run down the blade and over his fingers. Zoldan’s heart starts to race, and a fire roars inside him, consuming the alleyway, his men, and the other blond-haired girl in an inferno of desire. He presses his face into Yue’li’s curls and breathes in the scent of sugary baked goods, spiked with her delicious fear.

A whimper escapes from Yue’li’s lips, and Zoldan feels the fire reaching low. “Don’t worry, Yueyue,” he whispers into her ear, “I’ll treat you well, so well, you’ll wonder why you ever left my side.” He closes his eyes, losing himself in the girl’s exquisite terror, amplified ten folds through his magically enhanced senses. He pushes his knife deeper into the yaojin’s neck, wanting her to scream.

Yue’li bites down hard as trails of fire bloom through her body, scorching her insides as if she’s being force-fed a bucket of smoldering coals. The pain doesn’t last long, mercifully, before it’s replaced by intense tingling, starting from her fingers, and then followed by heavy numbness. Yue’li takes this respite to wriggle her free hand down to her hip, feeling for her dagger, but her fingers are stiff and unresponsive, as if wrapped in a layer of foam. A few seconds later, her legs are gone, then her feet, and toes, too.

Paralysis poison.

The words blare in Yue’li’s mind, but too late. A watery film has covered her eyes, and when she blinks to try and clear it, her eyelids feel like slabs of iron. A moment later, her heart stutters, its beating growing sluggish. She is suddenly aware of her body going limp against Zoldan, but she’s struggling too hard to breathe to think about anything other than not dying.

The last thing Yue'li is aware of before the world slips away, is a strange tightness in the air, and a rusty, electrifying tingling on her skin, like how it feels just before a monstrous thunderstorm descends from the heavens.

Zoldan grins as he watches the color drain from Yue’li’s face, and feels her body relax under him.

“I’ve wanted to do this to you for years,” he tells the barely-conscious yaojin, using one hand to unclasp the cloak tied around her neck. The heavy fabric slips easily over Yue’li’s shoulders, sliding to the ground with a sigh.

Zoldan licks his lips. His eyes flicker over the subtle swell of breasts, the long scaly tail, the expanse of soft, bare skin visible between leggings and pants. “It’s time for you to become my woman, Yueyue,” he whispers, tucking his knife into the band of his trousers, and reaching for the yaojin’s unguarded body.

“Hostile forces identified. Engaging targets."

Zoldan turns to the source of the strange voice. It seems to come from the blond-haired girl. “Who dares-”

A roar of hot electrifying wind bellows through the alleyway, launching the thugs around the girl into the walls. Decades-old brickwork shatters around them, raining down like shards of ice.

Zoldan's eyes bulge, and he rubs an arm over them as his brain struggles to process what he thinks he has just seen.

“How did- What the-”

His words stick to his throat as his eyes make contact with the girl’s red, murderous stare. Zoldan feels his blood freeze, even as his heart leaps against his ribcage. His body is instinctively wanting to run, but his muscles have been turned to stone under that gaze.

Those are not the eyes of a living thing, he thinks with petrifying conviction. Those are the eyes of a monster.

The girl steps towards him, lightning bursting through the ends of her hair like jagged blue snakes. The air shimmers around her delicate figure, folding and cascading in distorted fragments as if Zoldan is looking at her through a fractured lens.

Not a monster, he thinks. A goddess.

The girl keeps advancing. With each step, the ground fractures under her feet into a web of cracks, stretching towards Zoldan, reaching around him, for him. He turns to his remaining thug. “What the blazes are you doing, Lars? Get her!”

Lars hesitates. “It’s Lancer-”

“JUST GO!”

Muttering, Lars strides past Zoldan, seemingly more bothered by his name than Death approaching. That's because he doesn't see it, Zoldan realizes, and watches as Lars pulls out a heavy chain from within his cloak and swings it around lazily, the weight of the crude iron humming through the air.

“I don’t know what kind of magic you’re pulling here,” Lars says to the girl in as much authority as one can muster against the unknown, “but I’m going to have to put a stop-”

Zoldan taps into his Crimson Ore and focuses all the power into his eyes. The world slows down, and this time, he sees how the girl grabs a fistful of Lar’s tunic through his cloak, whirls around in a circle, and smashes him straight against the wall in a shower of brick and stone, all before Lars can even blink.

The sound of bones shattering reverberates through the following silence.

A bit of dust flies into Zoldan’s mouth, but he can’t seem to remember how to close it, or cough, or breathe. He watches, still as a corpse, as Death creeps up to him like a trail of cold seeping through a window. She isn’t even tall enough to meet my eyes, he notes with sobering clarity, but as the girl brings a finger up to his forehead, Zoldan finds himself facing down a behemoth of unspeakable horror.

“Nranhana… no. Sharn, have mercy.”

The girl cocks her head to one side. "I am neither."

As a thief and a thug, Zoldan has brushed shoulders with Death many times in his life; a job gone wrong, a betrayal from a partner. He always thought he’d seen and done everything in this meager existence he called life, and was ready to embrace its conclusion. But now, as he finds himself gazing into the terrifyingly beautiful face of the end he has managed to elude for so long, a sudden feeling of pathos, and loneliness, wells inside him.

The yaojin drops from his grip as tears start leaking down his face, but Zoldan does not care to stop either of them. Cry now, he thinks, for there will not be time for that later.

“Is there anything you want to say?” the girl asks, so cold she may as well be asking for the time. “Anything you have to convince me to save you?”

Zoldan laughs mirthlessly through his tears. “Save me, from what?”

The girl’s red eyes are so blinding that it's like looking into the sun. But there is a sadness within them that Zoldan sees only now, when she is this close.

“Me,” she says.

The rest of Zoldan’s laugh sizzles away as he stares into Death’s eyes, seeing his life flash across their dark immensity.

All these years, stealing, pilfering, fishing coins from pockets or prying them from broken fingers... It has all amounted to nothing. The pointlessness of his accomplishments dawns on Zoldan, as horrific as it is enraging as it is maddening. No matter how much he stole, how many people he killed, here he is, in the same alleyway, doing the same routines, and meeting the same fate that everyone and everything must face eventually, including him. Especially him.

Zoldan closes his eyes, the darkness welcoming him.

“Do it,” he whispers. “Please.”

11 flicks her finger against the man’s forehead, and his head snaps back like he’s been shot. The force launches him off his feet and he soars majestically through the air, out into the light.