“Fireball! Roll the ship!” Xeshna yelled. The slow ripples of the dropship’s heat sensors pounded like a beating heart, increasing in tempo as the ship ground through airborne debris.

Every second brought rattles and shrieks. Although the dropship stayed above ground, the roaring wind slammed against the front hull and pushed it with enough force to make the ship edge backwards at times. Lightning bolts screeched and sent glowing blue and red slices through the dense, churning clouds around them.

The Assassin Queen’s eyes were focused not on the crying storm, but on the spirit scanner graphs aboard the ship. When she had entered the dropship from the medical transport, only the bottom of the graph was illuminated. Not that she noticed at the time: the medical transport's tools had only recently finished gluing her punctured skin back together and printing replacement tissue, and most of the walk between transport and her current seat had been filled with her hissing. It was only when the pain had subsided that she began glancing at the sensors.

The light green at the bottom indicated class D at the time, which was an expected error with Xeshna on board. Even dormant, her powers leaked out enough to read on the ship’s sensors. Now, however, every bit of the graph was lit: yellow, yellow-orange, orange, and at the very top, a dreadful stripe of red. Triple ‘S’ manipulators were showing up on the ship’s scanners. Solares and Attila were close.

Static cracked and whizzed on the ship comms. While Xeshna made a firm and steady march toward the computers, the others on board held still, as though their stillness could soften the tempest’s screams and let them listen. Their expressions radiated discomfort. Vida bit her lips, Ultimatum’s body leaned forward, and Krystal’s knuckles were white from gripping her seat. Nevermind their emotions, the Assassin Queen was listening to fear itself. Between crackles, the sound systems caught the shocks of explosions and the screaming battlefield. Ground. Audio was coming from the ground and somehow the radios down there were reaching through the storm.

Had Solares decided to communicate? No, he rarely ever talked to anyone during duels; the shithead never had the decency to call allies during a fight, especially when it was this personal. It often seemed he would rather die. If not Solares, that left her with one sign of hope: Helene. Maybe the Queen of Amazarea called in for help, and though that meant terrible news it also indicated that she was still alive.

“Can…” a woman’s voice broke through the static, the shakes and shatters of the storm outside of the ship, and even the battlecries of the storm’s twin sources—the Alliance’s champion and his Deathless adversary. “Anyone…hear…me…” Coughing forced out of the throat on the other side of the signal and left a churning sensation in Anastasia’s own abdomen.

She wasn’t alone in this either. Ultimatum froze, and Anastasia wondered whether he was even still breathing. Krystal seemed to wonder the same, and was now leaning close to him, concerned. Only Xeshna kept her cool, as she pressed a button on the dashboard and responded: “Are you okay?” The woman on the comms gave no answers. “Do you read? Can you provide a location?”

Although kept firm, Lady X’s voice gradually edged on panic and worry. Empathy hurts: the helplessness of being forced to sit and watch as one’s own allies suffer makes everything worse. Xeshna’s claws dug into the ship walls, making a tearing noise that brought Anastasia’s hands to her ears.

“I’m… not… surviving…” the Amazon returned to coughing again. “He’s more powerful than last time… too… strong. My Queen… the Solares… still… fighting him.

I fought for my people and my galaxy… but I can’t no more…

Death to the Deathless… avenge us.”

A choke caught Anastasia’s attention. She turned and witnessed Vida, with a wet face which leaked tears like a cracked water pipe. Although the Monoceran princess was clutching the seat for dear life, something in her eyes communicated bubbling wrath along with grief; if anything, she may well have taken the plea for avengeance to heart. It was a messy mixture of tears and fury.

“Lady X,” the Exoignan pilot said as he banked the vessel to dodge another fireball, “the storm is intensifying.”

Anastasia could feel the ire in Xeshna’s unnatural, Efilian growl. The latter stood steady, her claws still clenching the metal wall of the dropship, “It’s gonna get worse before it gets better!” Worse before the better. It had better not. The best example the Assassin Queen could imagine of things getting worse was Attila’s victory, and if that occurred, “better” wouldn’t come.

The ship shook harder. The lightning ripping through the clouds became more frequent. Anastasia clutched the newly printed skin of her still-battered abdomen and fought against the force of the dropship’s lurches and jolts, to no avail. Printed skin hurt. At least for the first few hours, it was several times more tender. And it hadn’t even been one hour since Xeshna had rushed her to a surgery bot and then into this dropship. The force of the ship banking and rolling was the last thing her stomach needed. Xeshna, on the other hand, could have been riding an entirely different vehicle, by the looks of her. With the claws of a single hand buried into the ship walls, her eyes stayed locked forward, and her feet stayed planted. It was as though the skies thundering, flashing, and tearing against the craft were merely a backdrop to the black-winged angel and her desperation to reach the battlefield in time. Her poise was only broken when she noticed the Assassin Queen struggling and extended an arm.

Adapt and improvise. Anastasia rolled with the shocks of the ship, working her way to her ally’s side. Just as another jolt forced her on all fours, Xeshna’s arm clutched, stabilized, and pulled her to her feet.

And right on time.

The battlecries changed in pitch and timbre, no longer obstructed or muffled by the storm. The wind, meanwhile, became harsher, and as the dropship dipped to the ground, even its screaming descent was drowned by the bellowing cries of Solares and Attila. The ship collided, its hull crunching from the speed of the impact. Before Anastasia could recover from the force of the landing, Xeshna kicked the crumpled door open, not even bothering to check if its controls still worked.

Vida, Ultimatum, Anastasia, and Krystal stumbled out after her. The Assassin Queen followed with every inch of nerve she had in her. Noticing her exhaustion, Xeshna placed a hand on Anastasia’s back and guided her off the dropship. Gods know just how much she owed Lady X right now.

The world she entered was one torn to shreds. Numerous cracks cut across what were once streets and sidewalks, splintered entire city blocks, and laid plumbing and support beams bare. Whether burned or ripped apart, tall and towering buildings had been sliced down to their foundations like a man being skinned alive by saw. To complement the ruins, busted pipes spilled water around the area and moved down the cracks and through the new, miniature canals that now ruled the landscape.

Not even water could do anything to the fires, let alone reach the ones burning through the piles of rubble around the city. The Assassin Queen smelled smoke, sulfur, and the chemicals of several maintenance closets spilling open into cauldrons of water, sewage and blood, reeking of bleach among other things, spreading across the area. As for the others around her, Ultimatum was coughing a storm and firing mucus onto the ground. Anastasia, seeing this, held her breath and eyed Krystal. While Princess Vida appeared entranced by the flashing dust clouds some mile ahead, Krystal pulled gas masks from the many pockets and pouches of her cybernetic combat suit, put one on, and tossed another to Ultimatum. Then to Anastasia.

After Vida got her mask and threw it on, a moan came from up ahead. Krystal looked at the princess with an eyebrow raised, and Xeshna signaled her allies forward to the source. When more noises came, the Assassin Queen let the sounds guide her wandering through the ruins; closer, closer, and closer, the noises grew in recognizability as a strong but heavy woman’s voice. Her wander sped to a jog, with Xeshna following close behind. The sounds were crystal clear by now and were sending multi-armed street rodents scuttering away.

Then, a glowing, bleeding palm exploded from piles of ruined brick. If any question remained in her mind, it was dispelled now. The red ember glow of her palm, her familiar, Amazarean grunt: this was Queen Helene.

Another hand burst upward to clench the next pile, and Anastasia rushed forward to lift debris. Hands trembling, she tossed bricks and chunks of concrete aside, digging down to her pinned ally. Within seconds, Xeshna’s claws were tearing through the pile as well.

“Helene, hang in there! For the love of science!—” Krystal yelled.

Brick, wood, and metal beams flew from the ruins and tossed onto the wet waters of spilled plumbing. A mop of red hair peeked from the rubble and drew the attention of all watching, and the body hoisted itself up from the carnage. Orange armor, red hair, piercing on the nose and cheeks, arms thickened with muscle, and a face trickling down streams of blood.

“Helene,” Ultimatum gasped, “holy fuck…”

The Amazon Queen was raising herself to her full glory, revealing the chunks of armor broken on the abdomen and sternum, and letting blood fall from several lacerations in her exposed skin. She growled as her thighs fought to carry themselves through the rubble with an unnatural grace reserved only for giants.

She swelled her chest for a breath, trying to walk again as explosions sounded from the clouds behind, but then swayed. The woman caught herself still in one instance of imbalance only to land in yet another one. Anastasia and Vida made for Helene’s arms and each of them took one.

“Dearies,” Helene heaved, “the fight still happens… I need…I need to avenge my fellows.”

Xeshna shook her head and stepped in front of the stumbling woman. “You won’t be doing that when you can barely walk, Amazon Queen.” The Amazon Queen fell on one knee and hacked blood to the ground. The woman who told Anastasia to have faith that things would resolve themselves in time appeared on the edge of death.

“Helene…” the Assassin Queen got the attention of the Amazon, but couldn’t find words to say.

Helene turned her attention toward the assassin. “I am…still alive…Attila…ruined so much of me… and he has—” Lightning from within the dust cloud, screeched and exploded on the ground, and led to a cry of pain and a laugh that glazed over the faces of all surrounding the Amazon Queen. “—taken to fighting Solares again.” She narrowed her eyes at everyone and coughed. “I need to return to the battle now.”

Xeshna reached into her armor, struggling with the pockets inside. The Assassin Queen kept a firm hold on an Amazon Queen gasping and holding her breath on a string. All the blood pouring from Helene’s body dripped onto the charred soil and turned it a moistened red. Had the woman not been known, Anastasia would’ve wanted to puke.

“Aha! Got this motherfucker!” Xeshna pulled out something, alright: a sheet of paper. Anastasia’s eyes focused on the papyrus, which had graceful, handwritten, miniature text upon it alongside a large-font, flowery signature that took up a fourth of the page. The Assassin Queen had never seen such glorious handwriting, and she had spent years forging signatures.

“Ogdona” the signature spelled.

Ogdona? In a fairytale she read as a child, a farmer and his family were cursed with blindness by a cruel and wrathful god. When his son sought the advice of sages, they sent him on a quest to seek the help of another, kinder god to break the curse. She was a benevolent, unfathomably beautiful deity.

Ogdona, the kind goddess

She lends her hope

In times of darkness

Anastasia had always hoped Ogdona’s fairy tales were true, and seeing that name brought a shock to her heart. Could Ogdona be real? Could those fairy tales be anecdotes of a caring goddess?

Xeshna ripped the papyrus, and it instantly burst into flames and geysers of smoke that surrounded and engulfed her. The Assassin Queen froze in focus, full of wonder and anticipation as the smoke kept Lady X obscured from her eyes. When it settled, a white dove was perched on Xeshna’s hand. In her palm, it seemed to have placed a miniature, golden brown loaf of bread. An intoxicating scent rose from it, somehow drowning the putrid odors of the battlefield, sparking sudden hunger pangs in Anastasia.

Helene yanked herself free of the Assassin Queen and Vida’s hold, falling to her knees with a quick, angry groan. In a feat of determination, the Amazon hoisted herself into a sitting position and kept her back straight as her eyes flicked between the bread and the one holding it.

“Ambrosia? How?” Helene coughed.

“We have sponsors, Helene.” Xeshna said, “Inferna isn’t united against us.”

The pieces clicked together in Anastasia’s mind: “Was that a contract with a goddess?”

“Not a contract,” Xeshna smirked, “a bet. And Ogdona lost the moment all seven of us reached Attila.” She handed the bread to her desperate comrade, who shoved it into her mouth. Within seconds, steam was rising from Helene’s gashes and her coughing had ceased.

“Wait what?” Krystal piped in.

Helene, food still in her mouth, pounded her fist on the ground, unleashing a tremor already above what would be expected from a Queen gasping for her last breaths only a moment ago. With everyone’s attention, she pointed.

“She’s right. What are we all standing around for?” Ultimatum said, earning a nod from Helene.

From the storm ahead of them issued blinding flashes, battlecries and laughter.

Taking the lead, Xeshna stepped toward the battle, and waved her hand for the others to follow her. Anastasia clutched the hilt of her right dagger and scanned the burning clouds a thousand feet ahead. It was like an explosion every time a pulse popped within the smoke. Her stomach clenched as lightning bolts curled in and about the swelling smog of what was now a ruined urban district.

All or nothing, she thought as the five of them made quickening steps toward their circle of the inferno.

“Get well soon,” Anastasia placed her free hand on the Amazon’s shoulder as she walked past. “I’ll be seeing you when you do.”

“You better not die.”

As the Shadows trekked, the dismembered, red bodies of soldiers and civilians who had been unable to evacuate presented themselves. Eyes open, jaws unhinged, and flies swarming around made the messy piles of bodies fit for scavengers to feast. Perhaps after the war ended all the worms and vultures of Anasazois would fill their stomachs. Even Xeshna, who was supposed to be used to these kinds of things, appeared to gag and choke on her bile.

Xeshna delivered what appeared to be an attempt at processing the carnage with humor: “Just like the bathrooms.” It didn’t help.

Each flash grew in intensity, making out with blurry lines a tattered figure in a cloak and a taller man in a suit of heavy, spiked armor and an ax in his right hand. Anastasia hissed as the masked man ran for the ax-wielding goliath and slid under a high swing heading for the head. Before a blast kicked up dust and once again obscured the two of them, she witnessed an orange, glowing uppercut going for the ax-wielder’s chin.

“We’re here,” Anastasia whisper-shouted, “Matty held on for that long.”

Ultimatum jogged alongside. “Because Solares is a stubborn son of a bitch who doesn't say die. I guarantee he’s bleeding bad.”

Xeshna seemed to spy her opening, and with a beat of her wings, launched into the fight, removing two swords from the scabbards on her back, just as the outlines became visible again. With a glowing heel, Solares delivered a thunderous kick, in the split-second of his enemy’s disorientation, that knocked Atilla onto his knees. Then, his own right arm disintegrated and morphed into a sword composed of pure plasma. The Deathless Emperor lunged for his weapon, only to have his hand stamped into the pavement by his masked adversary and blocked by the flaring sword.

Solares let out a chuckle and began clawing Attila’s face with his left hand. “How about a makeover, you disgusting lizard? This is how the surgeons do it!” Little did he know that while Attila’s face was bleeding, his free hand had enough will to grab the ax and charge it with bolts once again.

The Deathless Emperor delivered an upward swing that slashed Solares’s waist and stiffened his movements as he stumbled backwards. The King of Demons now bled from his lower waist to the sternum, and Attila rebounded with a lunge. Or at least, the first half of a lunge: he screamed in frustration as he pivoted to face Xeshna’s charge.

Attila forced the ax to swing at Xeshna, a motion that was met by the latter’s two swords, crossing in an ‘X’ in front of her. A deep, painful, and long groan came from a few feet away where Solares still kneeled. Anastasia watched as Vida let out an exasperated sigh and ran toward the previously downed Demon King, whose entire body now glowed orange as he struggled with himself to get back in the fight.

“Sola-Sola, what the fuck are you doing?” Vida screamed with a hoarse throat.

“I have a job to do, princess.” Anastasia heard Solares say as she rushed the gaps in Atilla’s defenses. “You wouldn’t understand. I leave nothing unavenged.”

As preoccupied as she was dodging Atilla’s ax, the Assassin Queen was still impressed with her ally’s inability to see his own injuries.

So was Xeshna, “spare me!” she cried, as she threw her weight and anger behind her swords, “the toxic bullshit!”

Krystal fired a stream of icy gas from her palms, landing them beneath Attila’s feet and hindering his attempts to stand firm while Ultimatum threw balls of pressured gravity at the emperor’s face. Attila’s ax swung in a spinning flurry of strikes and parries and his feet cracked the ice on the ground as he stomped backwards to give himself space.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Solares yelled, sputtering the blood dripping down his face. Anastasia turned as chains flew in front of her and landed around their adversary. “We are not finished!” he smirked.

“Are you kidding me?” Xeshna screamed back, “Sit down for fucks sakes!”

“Your opinion is unwarranted; this is for Haven.”

“I’m trying to heal you! Stop!” a mist of Vida's powers dissipated into the air as she attempted to pull him back into her healing embrace.

Ignoring their protests, he held the chains taut as he dragged himself towards Atilla.

“Damn it!” Attila was thrashing within several layers of chains coiled around him, forcing his once mighty stride into a stagger. The Deathless Emperor, now a prisoner caught by the Third Solares and his black, metallic chains, flared electrons within his axe. “Nice move, Third! But you are too stubborn for your own good—”

Anastasia ran as fast as her spirit energy allowed her, the world blurring around her periphery, but the tug-of-war between her brother and Attila remained in sight. She raised her daggers, mind on slashing the emperor’s neck, and eyes on her prize.

And he noticed.

Changing his plans, the Deathless Emperor roared and clenched his arms. Anastasia’s knives began vibrating, her hair standing on end, her mouth filled with a metallic taste, and her head getting fuzzier. A stab ran through her arms, forcing her palms open, letting the knives drop from her grip. On the end of Solares himself, he kept pulling closer to his opponent without a change in gait, like a rabid animal. She knew this battle cry though, more animal than man: he was in pain.

Flash.

Branches of crooked, bright bolts emanated from Atilla and Solares both. One of them found Anastasia as she approached and the shock ripped through her every nerve and threw her to the ground before she could respond. As for Solares, his cry of pain metamorphosed into the most maddened laughter she had ever heard.

“Nice try. But you cannot escape my vengeance.” he said before firing a stream of black flames from his mouth.

The Assassin Queen could only watch from the ground, her entire body outside of her control. Even after the Emperor’s static shock wave had diminished—his focus placed entirely on shielding himself from the firestorm—she still couldn’t move.

The orphan girl who once fended for herself, wanting little more than a few companions, had finally found her home, and here she was paralyzed on the ground unable to defend it. Screw that. Focusing on her spirit energy, pumping it through her extremities, she managed to force her stomach and thighs to roll her over onto her side.

Solares was losing steam along with the blood. The flames were dying out, and the chains were slackening. As if unsatisfied with his own limits, two flaming swords emerged from his waist, punched the ground behind him, and propelled him forward.

With the small degree of freedom the loose chains had allowed him, Attila swung his ax to meet his foe. But it missed, redirected by the telekinetic force of a grunting, strained Ultimatum.

Solares’s arms, morphed into flaming swords themselves, slashed across the Deathless monarch from above.

Anastasia finally stood. After running from the Zudrians, dealing with the creepiest cultists on an unstable so-called “Haven”, and training herself to survive in a bloodthirsty universe where only the strong could rule, she’d be damned if she let herself lie useless now. There was finally a place where she could feel safe, somewhere to protect and be protected. And she was willing to pour every experience, the memories from every desperate scrap fight, into defending it.

That thirst poured into a running jump and a two-legged kick to Attila’s abdomen powerful enough to make even the body of Achilles contort into itself as it launched backward. The Deathless Emperor flew until the chains grew taut again, screaming as he crashed into a pool of lava no doubt spawned from their earlier struggles. The Assassin Queen watched her target flail within splattering lava, fighting himself to not sink inside. It wouldn’t kill a creature like this, but it would certainly hurt.

She landed on her feet, glaring at the glowing, molten fountain.