The dinner had been something to remember. It was so extravagant and luxurious; each dish resembled a work of art too precious to consume. Viin wanted to scream. She had eaten a century’s worth of wages in a single meal. The elf could not figure out if she was lucky or cursed to have been invited to the same table as such people. Without a doubt in her mind, she knew that she could never afford anything that could even begin to approximate their decadent lifestyle.

Viin could argue that it had been a work dinner. After all, through most of the time between bites, she had to type an ever-growing number of documents. Fill forms, greenlit and set up a couple of projects and training programs. It was all under the pretext that the Fredrik Institute wanted to employ GS Security as a long-term guard force. However, it felt artificial to her, as if no one really cared about it.

And then, there was Lady Altstark. She and her employer’s former wife had kept trading insults, but despite that, she continued to observe the elf. Viin tried to remain calm, telling herself it was nothing more than a professional interest in her modifications. But the way she spoke, it felt like talking to the guys from Unit Twenty, who were permanently tasked with guarding the building. There was more to that woman than Viin could see.

Actually, the elf felt more comfortable talking to the former special-ops soldiers than to Lady Lilly Altstark. She felt happy to see her betters move from the dining room to Martell’s private apartment on the floor above. They had left her alone in a room, where the table alone was worth more than her life.

In the name of the Goddess, the furniture was all made of natural wood from the frozen marshes of the Bleak. Viin was so tense, fearing that any move she made would damage the priceless objects, that her back had stiffened. This was too much, she was just a secretary, not a noble. But that was also the main problem at the moment. She was the secretary of Martell Regis, therefore she couldn’t just leave and she hadn’t been dismissed.

“What have you gotten yourself into girl?” She let out a soft sigh.

Her words stirred the two guards who stood like statues by the elevator leading out of the dining room. Viin was still debating if they were there to prevent her from leaving or just earning their paycheques.

“Is there something you require, ma’am?” The one on the left asked in a cold metallic voice.

He was human, a former military enforcer if she remembered correctly. His body, bulked by artificially grown muscle, stretched the black polymer trench coat he wore. A heavy rebreather unit covered most of his face, making it impossible to determine his age. The thin cybernetic combat unit, which had replaced the right side of his skull, glowed in feint mint colour, indicating it was on stand-by. It was the same with the indicator on the magnetic submachine gun gripped in his hands.

“Ah? No, there is nothing Jonathan,” Viin said hurriedly after realising she had been staring at him.

“Perhaps you and Rupert would like a bite?” She felt obliged to ask after a moment of awkward silence.

She waved her slender hand in the direction of the table. There were plenty of bite-sized items, still untouched on it. It was a simple attempt for Viin to silence her consciousness. After all, the two guards had just stood there throughout the entire dinner without moving. While she had stuffed her face with bronze caviar quiches and blue-tail crab rolls.

“Our apologies, ma’am, but we have to decline.” The one on the right said in a polite fatherly tone.

He was identical to his counterpart, save for the red strip of hair running through the middle of his head. As expected from a former assault trooper, he kept his back straight and had his jade eyes fixed on a position somewhere above her head.

“I would like to ask, you refrain from using our names, during deployment ma’am,” Jonathan added.

“Why? It’s just us three. No one is listening. I’m not going to tell anyone, are you?” Viin flashed the man a playful smile.

Instead of voicing his response, the man took a deep breath and slightly moved his chin upwards. For a moment the elf stared blankly at him, failing to understand why he was indicating the… camera above the elevator door. A string of profanity, worthy of a retired battle lord, escaped her lips.

“By the Goddess…” Viin clasped her hands over her mouth.

The secretary felt her heart stop and her world crumble around her. That was it. In just a minute she had ruined her carrier. She might as well start wording her resignation letter because the camera was connected to the main security network, and her employer made sure to review every second recorded when he had guests.

“There must always be twenty,” Martell said calmly and leaned back into the padded chair.

“By the Hollow Gods, Mar!” Till exclaimed with growing frustration from the sofa. “You make me question my skills because I’ve clearly missed the stick lodge so deep in your ass…”

“Enough,” Lilly placed a hand on the professor’s shoulder, stopping him from saying anything more.

She turned to face him, her eye the colour of frozen water, pinned him to the couch. There was accusation in that stare. And there was restrained anger in her voice as she spoke.

“Martell, you need to accept it. There can never be twenty of us. Never again. It’s only us four, Dominique and Inney who are left.”

“Don’t you dare forget about Nadene,” Martell hissed at her, crushing the armrests of his chair in his fists.

“Mar, I have counted you as my friend for over two millennia,” Till spoke, sadness and pain clouding his words. “That is why I beg you to listen to me for once. Really listen.”

The old man gulped his glass of coppery liquor in one go. He was choosing his words carefully, the Second was sure of that. He would listen, he owned the man that much, if not more.

“Nadene is lost to us…”

“Bullshit!” Martell could not contain his anger.

His suit flared in bright crimson before going dark. The emotional feedback had overloaded its capabilities. He would have lunged at his friend if not for Cylin. Her limiter burst like glass as she used the full extent of her powers to pin him on the spot. Martell could struggle as much as he liked, but there was no chance of overpowering her.

“Mar, everything I can do is just enough to keep her stable. And I mean everything.” Till closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “She is slowly wasting away keeping the seal active. Every time Regis wakes, it kills her slowly and there is nothing I, any of us, can do.”

“She…” Martell began to say but was cut off by Cylin.

“She knew the risk and she was prepared to pay the price for her plan.” The beautiful face twisted with anger as she spoke.

“This is pointless,” Lilly’s voice was detached and cold. She poured herself another glass and one for the Second. “He will not listen. How many times have we had this conversation?” She said with resignation.

All four stood silent. Each one nourished a glass as if it could heal the wounds that tore at their souls. Wishing, hoping, that perhaps this time they could get drunk from the toxic liquid. The anger and tension were replaced by a sombre mood. There were so many memories of lost friends and comrades, that they dwarfed all the betrayals and petty rivalries. Martell knew that the others were right. However, he could not accept it. He could not give up, because he was their leader now, even if he hid behind the rank of Second.

They didn’t understand it, and he could not blame them for it, but he had given his word that Godslayers would survive. That they would be there when the last of the Hollow Gods perished. That they would watch the creature take its last cursed breath. And what did Martell have to show for all his efforts – nothing. Two-thirds of them were dead and those that were left constantly conspired against one another, because they assumed that the monsters who had cursed were gone.

He observed Viin on the monitor occupying a third of the wall on his right. Was he ready to add yet another name to the growing list of regrets? For what? Just to satisfy a foolish hope, that this time would be different. That this time, by some miracle, they would make the machines beneath Scoria work?

“The Regis cannot walk in this world,” Martell spoke quietly.

“We know, my dear,” Cylin sighed. “We know.”

“You should understand that no matter how many more we condemn; they are nothing but imitations,” Lilly added; her eye fixed on the screen. “The modification process is far too complex.”

“And we lack the key. Not even the Hollow Gods understood why it worked on us.” Till said, his hands crossed in front of his face. “For the love of Bathá, I can calculate the space transition vectors for an entire squadron in my head, and I only understand a fraction of the capabilities of that facility.”

Martell had to agree on this. Despite their desires to make the former Slayers equal in every way, the Hollow Gods had failed as well. Each one of them was an individual and excelled at different things. And out of all of them, the Professor was the smartest. Save perhaps for Regis, but that door was closed for them. They had foolishly tried to reason with the thing their captain had become and paid dearly for that. No, Regis was no more, Martell corrected himself. Now there was only the Regis, and no matter the cost, they had to keep it contained.

“Pondering on what we cannot do, is a waste of our time, my love,” Lilly placed a loving hand on her husband’s back, bringing Martell to the topic at hand. “I am more interested to know, why her?”

“Seriously Mar, she’s an elf. Not even a pure one, but a damaged modification.” There was accusation in Cylin’s words. Her ice-blue eyes tore through his soul searching for an answer.

“The child makes a valid point,” Till’s eyes mimicked those of the mage. “So far, not a single elf has survived the modification process. And trust me, I have made countless attempts with an absolute zero percent success rate. Give me one good reason why I should condemn one more soul to a horrific death?”

At the end of his outburst, Till produced the same plain envelope as Cylin, when she arrived in his office. A second later, Lilly placed the same one on top of his, albeit hers was untouched. Martell knew that sending each one of them an individual letter was redundant, however, he wanted to stress the importance of what he was about to say next.

“Because of this.” Martell downed the glass in his hand and gave the command to the quantum computer in the monitor. “Display personnel file of Viin Tar, Vermilion extension, page thirteen.”

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had spent days staring at those five lines, analysing them, pondering their meaning. Martell knew that the others would need some time to wrap their heads around the information displayed on the screen. After a minute he opened his eyes slowly to see them still staring at the lines of text. A smile crept on his face, they had missed it as he had at first.

“Split screen. Keep file on the right side.” Martell issued the new command with a level voice. “Left side, display archived file Inney Asal, Vermilion extension, page thirteen.”

His smile widened as he saw the faces of his comrades shift from confusion to astonishment. It warmed his heart to see his only rivals lost for words. It was enough for him to allow a small chuckle to escape from his chest.

“What the…” Lilly made a poor attempt to formulate a proper response to what she was seeing.

Ever her rival, Cylin followed close by with a string of incoherent profanities in her native language.

“No, no, no, no, no, that is impossible,” Till mumbled to himself while pooling at his hair. “There has to be a mistake.”

“There is no mistake. I had the test done a hundred and nine times. The result was always the same.” Martell stood up from his chair and walked to the minibar at the other side of the room.

He did not bother to take a glass, instead opting for the entire bottle of the Godslayers’ favourite liquor. Lilly stormed beside him and snatched the crystal canister from his fingers. Half of the bottle’s contents poured down her throat before Cylin pulled it in turn and drained what was left of the coppery liquid.

“It has to be a mistake, Mar,” Till shouted in a shaking voice. His face a distorted reflection of his usual calmness.

“No mistake, my friend,” he shook his head, keeping his voice calm. “I nearly bled the poor girl dry, thinking that the samples could have been contaminated somehow.”

“It’s impossible!” Till bellowed, slamming his fist on the short table next to his chair. “We are fucking sterile! Every, bloody one of us!”

“I know.” There was smugness in the Second’s words.

“Then this has to be a lie. There is no other explanation.” The Professor snapped as he grabbed the edges of the monitor.

“Could it be a… I don’t know… A damned coincidence?” Cylin offered, clearly not believing her own words.

“No! This is not how genetics work. Those markers cannot be like that, because of some whim.” Till gently slammed his head into the screen. “But most of all, this entire group cannot be the same, unless…”

“Inney had a daughter.” Lilly finished for him, her cybernetic eye turning red. “And that cannot be.”

“Because she is not Inney’s,” Martell finally joined in the conversation. “However, she is her direct descendant. It took me some time, but I did track her lineage back to the sixth century.”

“You have found the Book of Emoleth?” Lilly narrowed her eye in disbelieve.

“I found what was left of it.” He moved to the rows of books beside the minibar and revealed a hidden panel.

The library slid up to give way to a glass wall. Behind the already priceless tomes, there were the originals of several burned volumes of the Book of Emoleth – the elf book of families as it was known to humans. Sigils, indicating a radioactive hazard, glowed vehemently on the surface of the glass wall.

“Twelve badly damaged tomes,” Martell said in a cold voice. “That’s all that is left, after the nuclear bombardment of Tristan during the last civil war.” He opened the transparent lead glass wall, ignoring every warning and sign of danger.

“Tome seven – The bloodlines of Mardaar.” He read the intricate script decorating the hardwood cover of the fragile book.

“You’ve had it for two hundred and fifty years, and you never thought of telling us?” Till snapped at him, breaking the glass he was holding.

“I found them last spring.” Martell flung the relic in the Professor’s direction. “I had to make sure it was genuine before I contacted you.”

“Are you insane?!” Lilly slapped the Second across the face, hard enough to split his lower lip.

“That was uncalled.” He wiped away the blood with his thumb. “I have it transferred to an encrypted file.” He picked a small data chip from a compartment next to the glass window containing the originals.

“After all, you can’t just carry a very radioactive book with you.” He smiled at the one-eyed woman.

“You are a real ass.” Cylin shook her head as she wormed her way to look over Till’s shoulder.

Her curiosity was more than justified. A lot of people would kill to have a single page in their hands. The tomes in the Second’s possession were enough to shed much-needed light on the line of succession of the elven clans. A bit too much light for the Godslayers’ liking. Some secrets were better off left in the darkness, and Inney had gone to great lengths to protect hers. To the point that she had arranged for all possible locations of the book to be nuked into oblivion. Something Till was yet to forgive her for, but as with everything else, with time this transgression would be ignored.

“There must always be twenty,” Martell said calmly and took a large sip from the new bottle he took from the minibar.

“Aye.” Came the response from the other three Godslayers.

“We have a majority.” He smiled, but there was no warmth in the gesture.

Although this was how they made the most important decisions, it was always followed by some bloodshed. However, this time Martell knew where it would come from. All that was left was to minimize the damage, and for that, he would swallow his pride and accept the candite the greenhorn was going to propose to fill their ranks.

“When are Dominique and Inney coming?” Cylin asked and raised an eyebrow, taring her attention away from the book.

“Two weeks, until the liner enters orbit. Why?” Lilly looked at the mage with suspicion.

“I can’t wait to see her face when she sees this…” The girl from Scoria chuckled.

The four present Godslayers fixed their stares at the information displayed on the monitor. The two perfectly identical genetical signatures, highlighted in large bold font, were reflected in their coal-black eyes with irises the colour of frozen water.