Corona Eternus was a planet of bright lights and big cities. And this night was no exception. The sky filled with countless, glowing streaks crossing its canvas from a dozen directions toward the business district. Now and then, one would flare up with a pop and split its single streak into several. They grew as they drew closer, producing a faint noise akin to a low humming.

The hum similarly grew on the approach, rising to a scream overhead.

"Everybody get into position!" Anastasia’s eyes were still blinking away the brightness as she turned to face the soldiers, who were rushing to their battlestations. Engineers held small, glass computers in their hands, which lit up with a chime upon activation. Though the wakeup tones were barely audible over the oncoming hellstorm, they were a welcome sound: Quatopedipan servers, something the Assassin Queen dreaded during the wars, proved to be a bounty more valuable than a Zudrian platinum vault.

She would know: she had demanded that Matthias give her the contents of a platinum vault on her birthday last year. Brothers, they were so useful in ways other than the snuggle and emotional support unit role, especially when they could ruin entire cities by themselves and still not resist a pair of puppy eyes. The Assassin Queen and Demon King celebrated their years of fraternity through crashing a Zudrian noble’s investment tender and market shares. As much as the Zudrians feared him, to her, he would always be the most powerful sensitive person in the universe.

It was one of many reasons that fighting side-by-side with him felt nostalgic. Even now in the thick of battle, it all felt familiar. This fight felt like any other the Shadow Clan had gotten themselves into. High stakes, clashes of immense power. It was kind of becoming their thing.

* * *

Year 1613 ISE (Intergalactic Standard Era)

Anásazoís

23 years ago

Arced triangles – forged from pure telepathic spirit energy – loomed like mountains, emanating a dark violet glow from their apexes that illuminated and reanimated the dying and summoned heroes of old as thralls against the current era. An electrified ax sliced through the air in front of her with an ionic screech. Sparks burnt against Anastasia’s body and a hiss escaped her throat as she clenched her blades and backed away. The hard stare of the ax-wielding human entered her vision, calm and emotionless.

The goliath towered over her and over every soldier the Cruvelian Alliance had managed to field. Not a Gargarean or an Amazon, but the most exceptional and ancient of humans, clad in golden armor inscribed with paintings of old warriors stabbing spears into the breasts of their enemies. This one was a peak of humanity, and not just for his considerable size. The original owner of this body instilled fear every time he released his rage, and murdered without care. Achilles the Ruthless, icon of fury and terror across the cosmos… and long dead. The one now occupying his body was even worse.

“Well, well,” Achilles’s body lunged forward, raised the electric ax, and swept it down again, “so you’re the Third Solares’s little friend…”

She couldn’t charge at him this time. He was ready for that. Instead, instincts launched her away from the possessed hero’s incoming slash. Her landing was flawed: it stung her hands as she rolled onto aching knees, crawling with panting breaths to her dropped weapons. The ax launched again, crackling electricity whizzing across the blade. The Assassin Queen cried out and launched sideways on the terrain, leaving the bolts to bury themselves some feet into the ground.

“I’m not his little friend,” Anastasia said through clenched teeth and heavy breathing, “if I turn your troops into paste, Attila the lizard!”

Dodging could only work for so long. She recovered her knives and tried to stab at his armor, but he avoided her and parried. Every meeting of weapons brought a shock through Anastasia’s body, and her vision grew blurrier with every second that passed. Attila loomed over her, drawing closer every time, fracturing bones with every strike, and all she could do was cry out in pain.

The Deathless Emperor grabbed her by the neck, eyes twinkling with a childish glee. “I suppose…” The ax neared Anastasia’s neck and her heart pounded like drums. “Since I’ve already defeated him… I’ll have to have the appetizer after the main course. So backwards.” She was twisting and squirming, but the human possessed only smiled wider. “You know? You had a good run, Assassin Queen… I have to respect you, you almost have the same grit Hippolyta had… if none of the power.”

“Respect? You turned a great queen into a killer cyborg!”

“So I did…” Attila followed with a nostalgic sigh, “and you’ll soon join her. If your minds were not so narrow, you would understand the honor, but alas…”

There was little that she could do at this monster’s mercy. Anastasia hoped that she would continue to resist even in death. But right now, the only thing within her power was to hold herself together, to meet his stare defiantly even in her helplessness.

And she did not blink.

As if faltering beneath her clear, bloodthirsty gaze, the world itself cracked. Lava flowed from beneath the planet’s crust, boiling and churning through Attila’s soldiers behind him along with any building in sight. Their screams announced their departure. Cruvelian soldiers, meanwhile, gave a battle cry, and a ravenous roar—as loud as the voices of all the aggrieved and damned souls of hell at once—joined their martial choir.

“M-M-Matty?” Anastasia whispered.

“Who the hell is Matty?” growled the hulking beast, only to be answered by a laugh that reeked of sadistic rage. He dropped Anastasia, who fell to the ground coughing. Both of his hands fastened around the handle of his ax and his stance lowered in smiling anticipation.

From the center of the Deathless commander’s army, a tall humanoid shrouded in a hood and mask stepped up out of the cracks in the planet’s crust. Like death themselves, they paid no heed to the masses of screaming Deathless soldiers, not bothering to even spare them a look or slow down. Whenever one made the mistake of attacking him or obstructing his path, they were dispatched without a change in gait. The Assassin Queen squinted at the quickly approaching harbinger of destruction. A shining pair of pupils confirmed her inner hopes: they were shaped in the likeness of a spiral galaxy, pulsating a luminous, blanche white. And one of them winked.

That son of a bitch had her worried over nothing. The Assassin Queen could have strangled him. However, she was in no condition to be getting up; prior to Solares’s arrival, only adrenaline had kept her going, but now relief was draining every ounce of it from her body as she witnessed her brother approaching his nemesis.

“Happy to see me, Attila? Well don’t be surprised: the predator never forgets his prey.” Solares’s focus was so singular that again Anastasia wanted to strangle him. He looked at her, though. Once. Enough to notice her battered arms and legs. And his voice was full of rage: “And it seems, the prey is too stupid to live. Your parents would be disappointed. And they would really despise what I am going to do to you—but I won’t despise it at all.”

Attila didn’t look threatened. Rather, he looked elated: “A second round! Solares, you have given me quite a gift today! I love you, you utter masochist!”

“It’s unrequited, maybe if you just sauteed yourself in lava? Then I would like you more.”

“Are you trying to eat me?”

“No, but I do think you are uncooked swine. If nothing else, it would help us skip to the part where the crows enjoy your many bodies.”

The Assassin Queen laughed, her chest squeezing and contracting before a painful hack followed. She fell onto her knee, releasing coughs that hurt her breast every time she exhaled. Anastasia ceased her movements with a groan. Apparently laughing was a bad idea. Meanwhile, Attila’s answer was to charge. Solares did the same, and their weapons struck together, battering the battlefield with enough air and sound to knock dozens of nearby combatants off their feet.

Glowing talons sparked against the ax blade, and a white flash sliced Attila’s breast. The Deathless Emperor staggered, kicking and flailing at his attacker, but yelling in what could only be described as glee.

It didn’t feel like a dream anymore: Solares was alive. His wrath shone brighter than a sun.

In moments, Attila’s head slammed against the asphalt. The masked attacker descended on him, held his arm, and delivered a series of earth-shaking blows to the Emperor’s body, breaking chunks of the ground in the process, as if each punch were a meteor making contact.

“Damn it,” Attila bellowed between fits of pain, “are you stronger or–”

He was flung hundreds of feet away before he could finish that sentence. Anastasia crawled on her hands and knees, channeling her spirit into healing herself enough to stand. She was on her feet just in time: before her was that cloak, those spiral eyes pulsing red, and the veins that shone as white as raw sunlight. Some would call him a nightmare, a devil incarnate, but Anastasia’s arms wrapped around him while she squealed.

Solares did not fight her embrace. Nor did he squeeze in return, thankfully. He dusted his hands, cracked his neck, and chuckled at the squealing Anastasia. “I told him the first time we met… and when he defeated me.” The Assassin Queen ignored him and squeezed tighter. “‘Surrender and spare yourself’ but it seems he enjoys being battered by me. Strange, only womanizers would like that.” The phantasmic masked being was deadpan, but she could tell he was enjoying himself. “What about you? You look like you have seen a miracle, Anastasia… and the inside of a blender. And do you usually squeal like this while planets are melting? One would think you were here to tan in the flames.”

“Just don’t go dying like that again, okay? I’m serious.”

“No promises.”

“I hate that answer.”

* * *

"Anastasia!"

Delilah and Mei came up alongside her. The soldiers were rushing to their stations, but the two of them were close-quarter spirit energy users, and could only wait for the missiles to get close enough for their powers to become relevant. As they waited, they eyed the blazing sky. It could barely be called night under the illumination of Zudra’s arsenal above them.

"So, what should we do about these exploding things here?” the blonde human asked.

Anastasia was slow to respond: “An enemy once told us we would someday have the whole galaxy against us. Is this what it looks like?”

“In every war,” Mei said, “there are soldiers or people who believe they’re tough shit. Some of them are dictators commanding militaries. Some are the cannon fodder those dictators command. And the rest? Civilians who don’t understand what they’re getting into. If the galaxy wants to fight us, it will run out of soldiers and dictators eventually. The role-players alone will remain to fill the gap. If they want to play games, let them, but I’m not bringing toys for their sake.”

“... I… know…”

“Who told you this anyways?”

“An old enemy.”

“Oh!” interjected Delilah, “You mean the Deathless dictator who wrecked you so badly you were in the sick bay for weeks?” That was not the part that Anastasia was trying to highlight, though it wasn’t actually wrong. Mei tilted her head with a grunt. How supportive. “Well, do me a favor, and don't go all repeating that kind of action movie hero scene unless it’s desperate.”

What? Anastasia blinked at the demand that the champion was making of her. I would… never!

"Why would I run into Zudrian missile fire?" Anastasia asked with lidded eyes, ignoring Delilah's hardening gaze. "It's not like there's anything to gain from that."

Delilah laughed at her, and held a hostility in her cackle. "You found something to gain from dueling an ancient maniac magnitudes stronger than you and Solares combined." Well she didn’t need to be like that about it. “Mhm, your overconfidence, born because you met him when he was a gecko and beat him in his weakest state, didn’t seem to fade when you realized the gecko had freaky technology to cheat death and other geckos willing to die for him. In fact, you kind of got worse. But I suppose, you’ll always find a way.”

“She’s right,” Mei said, “both you and Matthias are walking runaway trains. This is why the rest of us spend so much time trying to keep you both in line.”

Solares broke into a loud cackle nearby, holding his heaving chest with his right hand and yet still managing to stand straight as he approached Anastasia’s accusers. The Assassin Queen, meanwhile, scowled at him.

“Something funny, Matty?” She asked in an all too-sweet voice.

“Nothing, Anastasia,” the Demon King said with a tilt of his head, “I am just grateful to be reminded of saving a certain someone from Cruvelia’s most dangerous reptile.”

Before Anastasia could say anything, Delilah raised a finger. “Have you been paying attention at all?” In a sudden flip of a switch, the humor had left Solares’s eyes and stance, replaced instead by blank, stone stoicism. How typical of him. “This goes for both of you. Try to tone down your lust for danger, please.”

The Shadow Clan’s concern would have been a nuisance were it not matched by their dedication to protect both of them.

* * *

“Anastasia stand still!” Vida—the green-haired, yellow-skinned princess of Cruvelian Monoceros—brought her hands over the Assassin Queen’s chest, “you can’t return to the battle yet!”

A low whine came from collapsing structures ahead. Solares and Attila had taken their fight to a leftover urban sprawl about a kilometer away. Each thunderous rumble seemed to be hundreds of meters away from the previous crash. Each cloud and collapse within the decaying skyline sent several figures soaring through the skies along with liquified rocks. Soldiers, Cruvelian or Deathless, were the collateral damage of the clash. Metallic moans whispered through the air just before screeching lightning splattered against the terrain. Anastasia craned her head up, witnessing showers of molten rain pouring upon enemy soldiers, bolts of lightning striking the psionic pyramids far behind.

“Anastasia… are you…okay?” her earpiece crackled, “Anastasia, answer me here, it’s Fomalhaut!”

Vida was the one to respond. “Shut up! Anastasia is the one I’m trying to heal! And get your ass over here!”

“I’ve got your location. I’m heading over. Sagittari’s coming as well!”

“Helene…” Anastasia said without breaths, “we need Helene here…Vida. Solares…can’t handle him… alone.”

Vida flashed an obvious attempt at a smile. “Just wait for it, Anastasia. She’ll get here soon. Tides are going to turn-” A recognizable roar of pain rose amongst the collapsing buildings before a grand explosion shook the ground from its foundations. “-shit! Sola-Sola! Okay, focus Vida! Focus on healing your sister-”

“Sister?”

“The Shadow Clan is an item, Anastasia. Don’t ask questions now, just shut up and stand still.”

Anastasia, blinking, complied. Fierce Vida could be scary.

* * *

"Here we go again.” Behind the combat engineers, Sagittari and Fomalhaut held two naked singularities within their palms. The speaker, Fomalhaut, sported an expression on his face that one would expect to find behind a cash register at the beginning of a six-hour shift. Weird, given the contrast this created between himself and his sister. Her anticipation was tangible, her legs bouncing her up and down and her hands clenching and unclenching while a bright, sunny smile took over the face. Fomalhaut continued, “Zudra gets exhausting, man. I kind of prefer the Iron Hand rallies over this with the warrior people’s history—”

“Don’t ruin the mood, Fomalhaut.” his sister chipped in with a hard glare. “Seriously, if you do… I swear upon the spirits of most high…” The mood was important to this one.

Fomalhaut had nothing more to say, and truth be told Anastasia would rather that certain people near her not recall a certain hysterical dictator. She gave that particular “certain people” a side glance, and he tilted his head in confusion. Good. Her sanity would not survive the thought of Solares and a beloved Zudrian leader sharing the floor of a fighting arena for the last few seconds of the latter’s existence, and this is exactly the picture Solares would be painting in her mind if he was reminded of it.

She shuddered.

Anti-missile defenses were running at full capacity. Shattering in clusters, Zudrian projectiles detonated in midair, having collided with interception missiles. A far-off booming noise directed Anastasia’s gaze to the right, where a flurry of detonations lit up the horizon in the most humiliating fireworks show the Zudrian military had ever experienced. So far. Second best had to be the time they invaded the Amazareans in some arguable holy war against the female gender—and lost. To be fair, the puppet nation they chose to pit against those women wasn’t exactly loyal. To the contrary, they had a history of supporting their longtime sister nation. And as a collective, they weren’t stupid enough to believe Zudra would allow them any form of dignity if the Amazons lost.

Queen Helene always smirked when talking about the war that named her a “Destroyer”.

The firepower produced on Zudra’s military budget was worrying. Even though Zudra was currently repeating past defeats, the budget still exceeded the entire revolution at the moment. She hoped the Shadow Clan would have enough spirit energy to ride out the storm. Because this was clearly going to be long.

"Anastasia," fires coated Mei's arms and legs as Anastasia gazed at her, "I'll be on air duty, taking out the missiles, and watching for any twelve-coat activity ahead!"

"Affirmative." The Assassin Queen nodded, but did a quick double-check on her comms to ensure Mei’s absence would be harmless. The reply satisfied her.

Delilah marched to her partner, removing her hood and letting blonde locks flutter in the burning air. "Mei-Mei!" The swordswoman answered by turning around to face her lover, who stood with the tiniest of smirks on her face. "Do me and our son a favor, and kick some twelve turd ass for us, okay?"

"You know how it goes, love." Mei shrugged and brought her wife into a tight hug. "Keep calm, alright? And don't let the Iron Hand woo you with his small nuclear missiles."

And the killjoy said those jokes were no longer funny. Anastasia could not say she was amused by the seeming hypocrisy of her incendiary human sister. Never become a comedian, Mei.

"Have fun, Mei!"

A torrent of flames torched the ground and Delilah stepped back as they created a smoldering crater on the surface. Mei had taken off – her partner’s gaze following her into the air – and Zudra's nuclear missile program was now in jeopardy. It should have been that way when it was built. Intercontinental ballistic missiles of all things to stockpile in defense of a planet… the prospect was absurd, unreasonable, and something no sane defense tactician would consider outside of emergencies.

Luckily, the whole clan had seen worse.

* * *

“Move along, you gorgeous killing machines!”

A fiery orange haired, tall Amazon marched past the Assassin Queen, patting her head while she strode forward, a cluster of whirling, flaming vortexes clearing her path. Intermittent flashes of white and orange rang from the center of the city, their vibrations shaking the air and ground into a hellstorm. Shockwave after shockwave burst from the condensed cloud of lightning and flying debris as within their center, two titans collided with shrieking blows that drew blood from the ears.

“Queen Helene,” the metallic couture of glossy cuisses and a hardened abdomen and breastplate marked the speaker jogging to her side as one of her Amazons, “what do we do when we get to that storm?”

Helene shot her underling a heartful look, twisted to shoot a wink at Anastasia, and then looked back at the troops bringing up her flanks. “Attila and our Solares have been tied in there for too long!” She shouted. Indeed they had. “So how about we tilt this battle into the right hands?” The queen threw her fist into the air and then yelled, “Death to the Deathless!”

“Death to the Deathless!” her soldiers screamed in reply.

As she grew smaller, the Amazon’s voice crackled onto Anastasia’s comms, “Sagittari, politics girl, I have new orders for you! Gather as many other Shadows as you can pull away, because you’ll need them for this!”

“What do you need, Queen Helene—ach! Shit, I’m kind of dealing with a bunch of angry crocodile-machine things and—holy fuck they made the flies into a missile?”

“Damn it, this is a bad time for insect-munitions! But Sagittari: I’m heading toward Solares to back him up. As soon as you can escape those things, you need to break Attila’s landed vessels, factories, towers, soldiers, his everything to stop him from resurrecting! Solares and the rest of us will take his head!”

An exasperated voice—still batting away weaponized flies—fired row after row of curses and half-sentences, none of which the Assassin Queen understood. However, she got one thing out of this discussion: reassurance.

Everything would be covered.

“Anastasia, sister,” Helene’s voice was heavy and her tone serious, “I’ll need you back in action as soon as possible. Get those strange monstrosities out of the sky and get your ass in here. Vida,” she said, gesturing to Anastasia’s panting healer, “keep up the good work. And rest after this.”

"It would be easier to rest if Sola-Sola and Attila didn’t keep stacking up patients! Then not wanting healing! Fantastic!"

“Are you sure you can get in yourself?” Anastasia asked.

“Into this? Please. I’m a queen of storms and fire. With these vortexes, I’m in less danger than I was in my days burning Twelvers!”

“But if-”

“Trust, Anastasia,” a swarm of fighter jets screeched through the clouds as the distant figures of Helene and her Amazons faded into the smoke and dust, resembling a painting of saviors and heroes more than living creatures, “trust me, trust your brother, trust Cruvelia.” The word ‘trust’ was burning into Anastasia’s psyche as the cloud swallowed the mighty queen from sight, and her voice, though distorted in the maelstrom, emanated power. “Just trust, okay? We will only grow stronger from here.”

“Okay, Helene,” the Assassin Queen said, staring into the inferno, “I will trust.”

“Good, now get well, get back in this, and I’ll make you infamous.”

“Already am, but thanks.”

“Point taken. How about a cofounder of Zudra’s replacement?”

“Now we’re talking!”

“That’s my girl.”

Scattered by the infernal maelstrom, the booming laugh of the Deathless Emperor and the shrill scream of the Solares seemed to come from every part of the storm at once.

* * *

Anastasia shuddered at the memory. It was one of the few moments she heard her brother truly scream.

“One more thing,” Delilah patted the dust off her clothing as she returned to Solares, unable to hide her concern from seeing her lover fly into battle, “you do well for the most part: you beat all kinds of freaks and all kinds of armies that mess with us—”

“Well, experience has taught me plenty.”

“So I assume it taught you not to drain most of your spirit energy?”

His stance was frozen, his mouth no doubt open and ready to deliver a comeback with snark. But the comeback never came.

“Exactly. Don’t forget that there are also times we have to bail you out for your overconfidence! Even in your most famed battles, you have a history of nearly losing your duels thanks to expending your spirit power like a running faucet. If the rest of us weren’t so good at rushing to cover your back, we would all have lost several times by now.”

The Demon King’s silence remained. He remembered because even he had nightmares.

The Assassin Queen would say it was all the time.

* * *

“Anastasia,” Xeshna shouted over the howling winds and explosions, “stay behind my wings!”

A Nashiyega woman with pale grey skin, matte black armor, and a grand, feathered wingspan wider than twice her height was walking in front of her. Several sleek, black trucks with blue high beams and thick tires brought up the column’s flanks. Flowing behind her, silvery, white-haired locks danced in the wind and hit the Assassin Queen’s visor every now and then. Anastasia did not budge, but sometimes she wished Xeshna trimmed her hair.

Vida was in one of the trucks, recovering. She had collapsed from the exhaustion caused by healing Anastasia’s grave wounds and bringing her back to a state where she could reenter the battle. It had taken longer to convince Vida to rest than it had to carry her into the Alliance transport vehicle. And even that hadn’t taken long: although she was a little stubborn, Vida was no Solares and cooperated without a fuss.

“We’re almost there, soldiers! Come on, Cruvelia!”

Behind their winged commander, a grand army of reptilians, humanoids, insectoids, and mammals from sentient origins, clad in armor stronger than the crust of a planet, marched or rode the transports across a ruined plain of torn igneous rock and melting rubble. Their turrets screeched and pounded into Attila’s army, rubbing salt in the wounds of Matthias’s molten entrance. Ahead of Xeshna’s column was their first target: a mountainous, perfect triangle, crystal from top to bottom, shining a dark purple and azure, lightning running across its grand form. Each time it sparked, another dozen thralls rose from the battlefield. Some of them had recently fallen. Some were recently allies. Still others were cybernetic hybrids, carrying a mix of synthetic and organic parts. As long as these Deathless resurrection devices stood above the battlefield, all progress was temporary.

Black particles zoomed in front of the column. Dancing and sparkling, the glitter went from aimless, formless movement to entirely encircling the convoy. Xeshna’s head swiveled around the area, as if watching every black speck. The Assassin Queen covered the front, eyes trained on the sparkling band ahead of her.

“Anastasia!” Xeshna’s hand was extending, in the middle of pointing at a condensing cloud. “Get that thing!”

The Assassin Queen spun her blades and delivered a salute while charging straight for the black mass. With every step she took, the cloud condensed and solidified, taking shape as multiple living things.

By the time she arrived—even at her full speed—three sword-wielding, armored humanoids made an appearance.

“You’re done!” Anastasia rammed her blades into one of them, knocking it to the dirt, where it lay motionless. Pivoting, and leaping backwards, she dodged its ally’s blade—the sword of an Amazon—and eyed the remaining two mechanical soldiers with the gaze of an assassin. They bolted for her without waiting for her second kill. The Amazon sword pushed into her daggers with the force of a wall, and before she had time to recover, the second blade was swinging for her.

The convoy, meanwhile, became a chaotic maelstrom of turret fire and grinding metal as the invaders attacked from every side. Sparse as they were, the crystals could just keep spawning more units. This clash was a battle of attrition, a contest to see who would break first. And Anastasia was breaking rather fast.

She managed to escape the first coordinated attack without taking hits to her vitals, but the second wasn’t looking good for her.

Then, from the corner of her eye, a pair of black wings. She lunged forward, accelerating as quickly as she could force herself to. As she closed the distance, one of her opponents was engulfed by the Nashiyegan’s fury. When she reached the other, her own twin blades barred the creature from assisting its ally.

She didn’t know these revenants could scream. But shortly after the clang of a metal sword against Xeshna’s claws, and the flash of the air burning with the siren’s silver fire breath, this one screamed. The Nashiyega woman raised them up, forcing them to look her in the eyes… and then the flames blasted through them. All that was left was a mess of grey goo and mechanical parts.

Anastasia was dancing with the cybernetic Amazon, blades spinning and blocking each attack that came at her. Confidence filled her to the brim now that the triple teaming was over. With that in mind, she jumped back, steeled her breath, and ran a ten pointed star into and around her opponent. Winds swelled, blades shrieked with the wind and crashed into one another. The Amazon’s body still remembered its training. It put up an elegant and quick-witted fight against her dance along the sound barrier. But nothing could survive that dance forever, and true to form, this one fell.

It ended with the Assassin Queen’s daggers protruding from the machine’s chest.

“Thanks,” Anastasia panted.

“We wouldn’t be a clan without ripping out the hearts of each others’ enemies now would we, darling?” Xeshna’s beam was both endearing, gentle, and rather dangerous. “Besides, girls just wanna have fun, hun.”