Dorsin had seen many Chimeras in his time, but exploding beasts filled with volatile chemicals were new. New, and deadly. "Get reinforcements down there," he said, pointing to the remains of the building at the edge of the town. Acid still sizzled on the timbers of the crossbeams as Chimeras forced themselves inside. The faint screams of men in agony drifted in the night air.

"Right away, Princeps," said Elyah, their water-runner. As the battle had worn on throughout the day, he and the snipers had learned better than to question Dorsin, whose tactical acumen was superior, not to mention his night vision, which was invaluable as the setting sun cast long shadows over the town.

"Make sure they're kitted for close contact," Dorsin shouted after Elyah as the boy scrambled down the stairs. "Heavy armor and appropriate weaponry."

Oralie made a sound of distress behind him. Or perhaps it was a sound of simple disagreement? It was hard to tell.

It had been hard for him to tell all day. Once, he never would have questioned his lock on her emotions. "I know they're hunters, not shock troops," Dorsin said, glancing in the direction of the breach again. The infirmary was in that direction. "But we all do our parts."

"And your part, Dorsin?" Oralie asked quietly.

She couldn't possibly be thinking to have this conversation now. Dorsin turned back to the scope of his rifle and targeted a six-legged centauroid loping from the forest toward the broken building. "I am doing it now." And doing it well, despite that he'd hardly slept in forty-eight hours.

Dorsin's bullet tore the centauroid's throat open, and it crashed to the dirt halfway between the forest and the edge of town.

The boards of the tower creaked as Oralie stepped up beside him. "The infirmary isn't far from the breach."

"I know," Dorsin said, thinking of Rosabella tending to the wounded in the low, wide house that Rab Zakiel had offered for their infirmary.

The silence was too pregnant with meaning. "Perhaps helping her is your part," Oralie said quietly.

The SOPHIOS within Dorsin did hunger for action. It battered at his nervous system, daring him to wade into the middle of battle and let loose, but he'd decided hours ago that Highkirk needed a marshal more than a Magus.

Dorsin calmed his heart before responding, "My place is here with you, Oralie."

He heard her breath catch. Had it been the wrong thing to say? He didn't know any longer. What a mess he'd caused.

"Then perhaps that's my place." Oralie raised a hand toward the town.

He glanced up at her. "You intend to go down?"

Oralie didn't even look at him. Lit by the setting sun, she was golden and beautiful and his heart ached at the sight of her set jaw. She nodded.

Oralie's mind had spent a week or longer in that awful void, and since waking up a day ago she'd gotten no sleep. She'd spent the whole day sending her mind forth into the Chimeras, causing them to slay one another. A claw in a brain at a critical moment, a spray of poison-tipped quills in a crowd, an acid-filled belly burst at the most opportune time--if Dorsin hadn't seen these miracles, he wouldn't have believed it.

But she could only control one or two at a time, and it took effort, and she had to be exhausted. If she went down, the Chimeras would tear her apart. "Please stay," Dorsin said.

Oralie looked at him then. A wry smile twisted into being on her face. "You can look after yourself, Dorsin, but Rosabella and the others need the help of a Magus, and I'm what they have. I have a few combat STIGMOS of my own, and I won't stand by while she's in danger."

Was this Oralie's way of saying she forgave him? "You don't have to do this. It was my fault, Oralie. That we... You don't have to."

She held up a hand to shush him. "Dorsin, you fool. Not everything is about you. I'm trusting you." She blinked as if surprised at her own words. "To watch my back."

"I won't let you down," Dorsin said. Again, he left unsaid.

Oralie ran her gaze over the town from the grass below the bell tower to the Chimera-infested breach, nodded, and then leapt from the tower. Silk strands unspooled with the wind, and white wings burst from her back, ripping through the dress she'd borrowed from one of the townsfolk. She glided down toward the buildings.

Dorsin noticed the other snipers staring at him. Perhaps this wasn't the place for a discussion of marital problems. "Overwatch on my wife," he ordered. "Hop to!"

That snapped the men into motion. They jostled in side-by-side with him as Oralie sailed over the low buildings and wobbled down narrow alleys.

Her gliding leap had allowed her to cross half the town in a single bound, but she still had several alleys to go, and her trajectory would force her to land in the path of a pack of Chimeras that had broken through the breached perimeter. They galloped, crawled, and slithered down the alley straight toward her. Dorsin picked his target, a dog-shaped, lizard-fleshed creature with a barbed tongue that flicked with every few steps of its wheeling claws. It was at least as tall as Oralie.

He loosed. The bullet stabbed through the air and sank into the beast's skull. There was a puff of bone as the projectile disintegrated upon impact.

Dorsin would have given anything for forgebone bullets.

He shot again and again. Finally he sank one into the thing's eye, but by that point, Oralie was almost on the ground. Five Chimerical corpses littered the alley, but the five living members of the pack were almost upon her.

Oralie landed, took a couple of steadying steps, then stood upright as the beasts thundered down upon her. She crossed her arms up over her chest, then flung her arms forward. A wave of fire rippled forward as the millions of tiny cells she'd cast out released their naphthgel. There was a wave of heat and light and a dull roar, and the beasts fell dead on charred grass.

Oralie waved a hand at the flames licking at the buildings to her left and right. A foamy substance burst over the wood, dousing the fires before they could grow.

Dorsin let out a sigh of relief. If Oralie turned left down the next alley, she would reach the infirmary in just a minute's travel.

But Oralie paused at the alley, then continued in the direction the Chimeras had come from, toward the breach. "Bile," Dorsin cursed. He focused on her the same way that he would have focused on maintaining a Synapsis connection. "Oralie!" He saw Oralie's tiny white-gold form pause at the same time a dark hole opened in his spirit, and he felt her presence beyond it. "Oralie, the infirmary is to your left. You're heading toward the Chimeras."

I know. The connection vanished.

"Blood, bones, and bile," Dorsin cursed. Senrii was certainly having an effect on him. He glanced down toward the nearby houses that were serving as bunkhouses for their reserve. Two dozen men had gathered outside it, and the water boy Elyah was gesturing wildly to them. Half of them had on armor and long weapons; the other half were armed with an assortment of guns. The leader of the men, recognizable because he had long curls of hair at his sideburns, nodded and gave an order, and the men rushed off in the direction of the breach.

It would have to do. Hopefully they'd reach Oralie in time.

***

Fear was a Chimera crouching just outside Oralie's heart, waiting for her to slip up and create an opening for it to pounce. Oralie didn't dare show weakness in the face of it, though her legs felt like jelly and she quivered with nervous energy with every step down the darkening alleys of Highkirk. She was no warrior. She was no killer. What was she doing down here?

I am no warrior, but I am a Maga, one part of her said.

My duty is to be safe in that tower, with Dorsin, said another part.

Dorsin, her dear, treacherous husband. Had he been able to tell that she was terrified when he spoke to her? Did he know how badly she needed his help?

Did he know how frightened she was at the thought that she might never again be able to rely on him?

Her ears caught the drip-drip-drip and sizzle of acid on thick wooden beams up ahead. She was close to the breach. She had to be strong. Just for a little while, just until Highkirk could get its fighters in place, she had to shore up the breach.

Clods of dirt flew as a pair of Chimeras came racing around a corner. Oralie fell into Relay-Space and thrust herself into the tentacle-headed one, overwhelming its weak Synaptic abilities in an instant. Chimera-Oralie reached its waving tentacles toward the dog-sized mosquito next to it, grappled the thing's thin legs, and broke them.

Then she shoved her horrible face over the mosquito's head and crushed it with her whipping tendrils.

Oralie surfaced and breathed a plume of xenokaryotic cells at the Chimera she'd just commandeered. "Die now," she said. The monster's skull responded to the STIGMOS by growing inward-facing spikes that tore through the brain.

The breach was just ahead. There was a hole in the inside of the building: a ragged, acid-drenched lacuna in the wall where wood had been. There was a similar hole beyond it on the other side of the building, and the infested forest was visible beyond it.

Oralie stepped over the bodies of broken men and slaughtered Chimeras. She slipped past pools of blood and acid and ducked into the dark, creaking ruins of the longhouse-turned-barricade.

The building was some kind of gathering hall. These Adonists did love their communal spaces. It had clearly been built with defense in mind, just like all the buildings on the perimeter of the town: murder holes large enough for a rifle dotted the far wall. If the building had been intact, they would have let in streaks of dying sunlight, but the acid explosions had reached all the way up through the second story to the ceiling, so the wrecked interior was dotted with whole pools of red-tinged light where dust motes played.

Through the breach toward the forest, several platoons of Chimeras were coming on.

Oralie slipped out to meet them. Her sandals crushed sweet scents from the grass as she set her feet. As gunshots crackled from nearby buildings, the eyes of the charging Chimeras turned to her.

She could imagine their thoughts. The weakest entrance to the town was behind her. She was alive and alone. Standing outside the protection of the town, she was vulnerable.

So they imagined.

Oralie waved her hand forward, painting the grass for a dozen yards ahead of her with a STIGMOS of quick verdant growth, but she held back the epigenetic catalyst. She considered the incoming monsters again. She probably wouldn't be able to catch them all at once.

She would catch the ones she could, then.

The Chimeras picked up speed, racing over the grass. Oralie turned all of her attention to their movement as they galloped toward her, the cancerous pustules of their bodies jiggling with every step.

The front line raced into her trap. She allowed the four Chimeras one more instant, then cast out the catalyst. The grass erupted upward into binding, slicing blades.

The first and second line went down in a wave of blood, simultaneously grappled and julienned. Oralie had no sooner taken a quick breath of relief than a Chimera with a kangaroo's legs and an octopus's head came sailing over the new-grown murder-forest, hitting the ground a step away from her.

Oralie backpedaled, throwing herself through Relay-Space into the Chimera's body. She forced it to leap backward into the razorgrass thicket, which tore it to shreds.

She returned to her body in time to see a clublike arm arc downward toward her head.

A figure in blue streaked into the Chimera in front of Oralie. The impact staggered it, and the blow missed her by a hair's breadth. A forgebone shortsword tore through the monster's gut, and then Oralie caught a glimpse of a tusked boar's head as the blade severed it from the beast's body.

"Get away from my wife." Dorsin flicked azure blood from his blade, then kicked the monster's corpse back into the razorgrass. He turned to Oralie. His face was a mask of concentration, his voice stern. "Get back into the building. I'll hold the breach."

Oralie wanted to kiss him; she wanted to slap him. "No." She pointed past the shriveling razorgrass, which was revealing the field and the forest beyond as it died. "You need me for this."

Timber fell and splinters sprayed into the air as a three-story abomination emerged from the treeline and roared. Oralie counted nine pawed legs, and its upper torso and face were elephantine. The follow-on platoons of Chimeras had slowed to a walk, obviously waiting for the monster to join them.

Dorsin frowned, but Oralie smiled. Perfect.

The monster's will was no more powerful than that of a lesser Chimera. Subverting its sick green star was a simple task.

Oralie smelled blood through a monstrous trunk streaked with slime and clawed at the ground beneath heavily-padded paws. She looked on the groups of Chimeras in the field, then beyond them to the tiny figures, one in white and one in blue, standing side by side.

She ducked her head and charged into the Chimeras. She slapped them into the dust, slammed them with her massive body, knocked them aside with her thick trunk. Each strike of her nine paws smashed corrupted heads like overripe melons.

A few of the Chimeras fought, and pain pricked at Oralie's thoughts, but most of them scattered, racing for the tree line. In the monster's body, Oralie raced back and forth, trampling the routed enemy. As the last of the attackers fled into the trees, she lifted her trunk and trumped an exultant roar.

Then a forgebone brick struck her upside the mind, leaving behind the phantom sounds of a discordant symphont and the mental afterimage of a throne of silver stars. Her consciousness staggered as another intellect grabbed at her thoughts.

It was powerful. So, so powerful.

A Master-Mind was here.

The alien Tool had turned its Synaptic attention on this very battle. It wanted her, or perhaps it wanted her dead; of course it would show itself now, when she was exhausted and vulnerable.

The Master-Mind wrenched her this way and that, trying to shake her control loose. She rode the nine-legged elephant as its thoughts and body bucked and kicked, clinging for dear life. If she let go now, she was dead.

She sensed hesitation in the Master-Mind. It hadn't expected her to be so strong. In that moment, when it paused, she struck back, thrusting with a psychic jab into the throne of its consciousness. It recoiled, and Oralie pressed the attack, forcing herself back into the pilot's seat of the abomination, which was now lumbering across the field toward Dorsin and Oralie.

Dorsin stood in front of her, pistol raised. Unwilling pride swelled in Oralie's heart, but his brave stand was unnecessary. She brought the behemoth to a halt.

Then she turned her attention back to the Master-Mind. She felt its shock through her throne; it hadn't expected her to fight back so fiercely. It had no idea what terrors it had invited upon itself when it chose to make her its enemy--

The Master-Mind pulsed a call into the void. It was a tidal wave of silver sand grains in the black; it was an alien trumpet, like the static of a shortsphere combined with the howl of a thousand wolfpacks and the buzzing of a world-sized hive of hornets.

A distant call answered it, and the other Master-Mind arrived, its throne smashing into Oralie's like a falling skywhale.

They flanked her, and she reeled.

The Master-Mind from the alien ship and the Master-Mind from the caves of La Table d'Or bound Oralie fast. She lashed out again and again with her thoughts, but they grappled her tightly, like two wrestlers ganging up on--

On a weak, defenseless girl.

Oralie struggled to escape, but the Master-Minds held her fast in Relay-Space. She tried to scream, but her body and the muscles of the Chimera alike were unreachable. She peered through clouded eyes, watched via invisible spectra as, trapped in the Chimera's body, she bore down on Dorsin and herself.

Dorsin shot a dozen times to no avail, then shoved Oralie's body aside at the last moment, taking the full force of the charge himself. Her body tumbled aside as Dorsin flew back into the ruined house, hitting the detritus with a terrible crunch.

Triumphant, the possessed Chimera stomped toward her body. Oralie could only watch through alien eyes as it raised its legs for a final stomp.

And then--

Impact.

Oralie felt the very ground quake, felt the momentary flashing heat of an Adonist inferno as halfway across the continent a fireball like none Tellus had ever seen rose into the sky, swept through the caves of La Table d'Or, and burnt every cell within dozens of miles to a crisp.

The Master-Minds screamed and vanished. The beast staggered.

Oralie tried to take control of the Chimera, which staggered this way and that, roaring terribly, but she was spent. It was all she could do to crawl through sludge-like thoughts back into her own flesh.

Grass tickled her cheek. She opened her own eyes in time to see a giant white seedpod descend from the sky. No, not a seed-pod; it just looked like one, though it was taller than the longhouse. Flames flared out from thrusters underneath it as it settled in for a landing a short distance toward the forest.

The abomination shook its head and stood up straight. Oralie had killed the Master-Minds just in time for this thing to slaughter her of its own accord.

A door faded into the smooth white surface of the seed pod.

The Chimera stomped toward Oralie again.

A beam of brilliant light flashed through the dusk from the seed pod, etching a streak of burnt skin across the behemoth's face. It shrieked, rattling Oralie's bones, and staggered back.

"Hey, ugly!" shouted Aoife. "Pick on someone your own size." She stood in the doorway of the pod, wearing nothing but her underwear. Thiyyatt's sword of light from Senrii's memories was in her hands, and she held it before her in an expert grip.

The behemoth turned toward the pod and pawed at the ground. Aoife shifted her aim and a spear of energy glittered across the Chimera's legs, tearing free the scent of burnt flesh.

Tvorh slipped past Aoife, hopping down into the grass. The hairsilk of his scarf--Aoife's scarf--rippled as he tilted his head this way and that. He reached up for his head with both hands and gently cracked his neck this way and that. "All right. Let's do this."

As Tvorh and the abomination charged one another, Oralie rolled onto her back and looked up at the second drop pod descending in the dusk.

She would catch her breath until Senrii was on the ground.

Tellus faded in and out. When Oralie came to again, the sounds of battle had stopped, the sky was darker, Senrii was leaning over her and calling for her, and a skywhale was hovering over the trees. The dig at Strathlic had received her distress call, it appeared.

They'd get Dorsin to the infirmary. They'd clean up the now-leaderless Chimeras.

And then they'd talk about what came next.

About everything that came next.