Kit gazed at a smirking Hanz in open-mouthed horror. “What did you do, Hanz? What the hell did you just do?!?”

“Shut the fuck up and put up your wards!” Richtor roared, hesitation replaced by a merc’s furious intensity as the deafening roar and almost blinding muzzle flash of a pair of TAC-50s firing at rates only class-boosted weapons used by inhumanly fast and strong Classers were capable of, a hooting Hanz laughing like a madman as plasma bolts spilled out as fast as an automatic rifle when ten shadow pumas became seven then five before the remainder fled under cover of endless fields of grass.

“Woo Yeah! Talk about rebel fucking yell!” Hanz roared, eyes alight with a fierce glimmer of triumph. “The dinosaur didn’t even stay around to play! And the fucking cats ran like bitches, and we still popped half their cherries! Fuck yes! I told you that little bitch was nothing but hot fucking air!”

He pumped his fist, then glowered when he saw the looks everyone else was giving him. “What? Fucking hell, man, that little shit was bluffing! No way it can warn its master now, it’s dead! Come on, if that’s the best that fucker’s got, this will be the easiest twenty million we’ll ever make!”

“What the hell, Hanz!?” Lucy’s eyes crackled with barely contained fury. “We were negotiating! Do you understand what that fucking means? You just killed a necromancer’s familiar, and you don’t think he’s going to wake up from his fucking beauty sleep? A necromancer that can control fucking dinosaurs! And in case you forgot, shithead, we’ve seen nothing since we’ve gotten here! An orange tier unclaimed territory, with so much wild magic in the air that it tastes like fucking sand dune spice, and you’re acting like you did anything but sign our fucking death warrants!”

Hanz glared, lips curling with barely concealed contempt. “I signed up with you because you’re the best, Lucy. And you never messed with our cut. But I’m beginning to wonder if that was a mistake. Because all I’m smelling from your skanky ass is fear.”

“Watch your mouth, hombre,” Carlos said in a voice so soft even Hanze froze where he stood. Pinned by the fury he saw in the swarthy man’s gaze. “You don’t even know what the fuck you just did, you stupid little punk, or how fucked we might be right now. So best you just. Watch. Your. Mouth!”

Fear turned to fury written large upon the young man’s face, clenching his blaster so tight Kit began to whimper.

Until he heard the Richtor chamber a fresh round. Freezing where he stood, knowing better than anyone not to turn around.

“What’s say you ease off the trigger, cowboy?” Richtor said. “That’s right. Everyone take a deep fucking breath while we decided our next move.”

“What fucking move!?” Kit sobbed, eyes wide with panic. “We just took out the familiar of a major player! The son of a fucking queen of Faerie, and not the nice one! We are so fucked… oh god, we are so...”

She broke off with a sob, the air ringing with the crack of Lucy’s palm against her cheek.

“Snap out of it and focus!” Lucy hissed, glaring at her team. “Alright, way I see it, plenty of fuckups to go all around.” She glared at Hanz. “You want to be a part of this team, you listen to fucking orders and you don’t shoot unless I fucking say so, you got it?”

Hanz inhaled to snap an angry retort, glittering eyes flickering from one hostile stare to another before finally deflating. “Yeah, I… shit. Yeah. Okay, Captain.”

“Damn right it’s okay. And if you think you’re getting a full share after this, you damn well better fucking earn it!”

She turned to Richtor and Carlos. “Alright boys, major shit just hit the fan. We all know where Kit and Hanz stand. All I want to know is: do we try and put that fucker down at a mile, or do we get the fuck out of here, and never look back? You’re our long ranged snipers, so you got ten fucking seconds to decide!”

The pair of men shared a long look, and then a nod, turning to Lucy as one.

“I think you know as well as we do what are move has to—“

Richtor abruptly broke off, furrowing his brow. “Shit, you guys feel that?”

Carlos frowned. “The ground… did Blue Faction actually build a working locomotive?”

Hanz paled, eyes widening in sudden alarm. “Oh no, oh fuck no. That’s no train… you assholes never even saw… it’s not like the movies. That’s a fucking stampede!”

Kit gasped in horror, bronze features taking on a sickly pallor. “We have to run. The hunt is on.” Terrified eyes met their own. “The Sidhe embrace the Wild Hunt, and we’re the prey. We have to run!”

Lucy blinked, shaking her head in dazed disbelief. “No, fuck no. This isn’t a fairy tale, Kit! We took out one fucking rabbit!”

Richtor cursed, glaring at the ferns all around them. “You can feel it, Lucy. Somethings changed. We got to go. Now!” Wasting no more words, Richtor took off at a loping jog, Carlos nodding her way and doing the same.

“Fucking asshole cowardly bullshit!” Hanz snapped, though he took off faster than any of them, all of them leaving a befuddled Lucy still trying to process the shaking ground with a single foolish shot by her newest recruit.

“Lucy, come on!” Kit screamed, snapping Lucy out of her daze. Even if she had been out of it for less than five seconds, she knew she dare not waste another moment.

Not when the air rang with a hideous roar that instantly turned an anxious run into the sheer terrified dash of a tiny mouse darting frantically for cover as a nightmarish shadow turned daylight to twilight’s gloom and the promise of death, Kit collapsing with a wail as a sickening wave of liquid fear washed over them all.

Carlos began sobbing and praying to a god Lucy knew he had forsaken in so many ways. As they all had. Richtor alone kept his cool, grabbing a paralized Kit, eyes glassy with utter panic, and running for all he was worth. Lucy knew she would feel nothing but gratitude for the rescue of her lover, if she weren’t rendered speechless by a roar that had no place on Earth crushing them with a terror so profound she wanted to scream and sob and cry out for her mother.

A fear only made worse by the message her damned Interface just had to show her, when she had gotten so good at repressing its’ bullshit.

You have been suppressed by Dragon Fear!

You are now at -4 to all actions until you are free of Contender Influence!

You must save versus Terror every round to Stand Your Ground!

You have failed to save versus terror!

You are fleeing for your life!

“A dragon?” Richtor sobbed in disbelief, still by some miracle, holding Kit. “No, not fucking possible! The only dragon is at the New York Federal Reserve. Our contacts swore it!”

“Goblin contacts, you stupid fuck!” Hanz snarled. “Fucking assholes set us up! This was all a goblin setup to get us to kill each other off! We should be hunting them. God, we fucked up. We should be—“

Lucy’s desperate run turned to a stumble and fall, unable to believe what her eyes were showing her, ears growing tinny with the sound of Richtor and Carlos’s warbling shouts, eyes widening at the apparition she saw.

An apparition appearing right before her youngest hotheaded recruit.

Who was now collapsing to his knees with the strangest look on his face, hands going lax on the blaster carbine slipping from trembling fingers, gazing down at the three feet of shiny metal Lucy’s interface screamed was priceless mithril that had just erupted from his chest, bursting through military grade tactical armor that could stop armor piercing bullets like it was absolutely nothing, Hanz gasping as he gazed at his own lifeblood spurting from the hole to his chest onto the thirsty soil.

Lucy was no stranger to death, or war. Nor was Hanz the first boy she had fancied to die before her eyes. Even if she felt another piece of her soul tear free in bitter pain she could never quite numb as she forced her eyes up, up, up to lock gazes with the wild-eyed predator with unspeakably beautiful sapphire blue eyes and features so inhumanly perfect it was terrifying, gazing at her like a hunter eyeing its prey.

A monster radiating such a terrifying aura, he could only be a Contender. A master. One who could shape the world with his will alone. Pinning her with those striking eyes that seemed to suck all light, crushing all will to resist, promising only death.

“Please!” Sobbed Kit, on her knees.

“Fucker just killed Hanz! We end him!” Carlos hissed, raising his TAC-50 with a hot-eyed glare. Right before the Sylvan prince turned to pin a suddenly stumbling Carlos with a glare so intense even Lucy felt it like a blow.

Then Richtor, by some miracle, fired his gun without freezing like a bitch like the rest of them had, roaring and hollering and shooting for all he was worth, seeming almost to vibrate as he put every perk he had into play. And for just a single heartbeat, Lucy actually thought they had a chance.

The apparition disappeared under the hail of Richtor’s fire, Carlos flashing his friend a relieved smile as he racked his weapon and scanned the area before collapsing in a spurting shower of blood, his head windmilling lazily through the air.

Lucy stumbled back.

The apparition had reappeared.

Golden blond hair blowing in a breeze that touched no one else, teeth wide in a furious smile as Carlos’s blood washed over his crimson scale armor like a baptism of blood.

Before locking gazes with Lucy once more.

And she would never forgive herself for how she fell to her knees, dropping her gun even when Richtor’s furious roar became a desperate cry. “Lucy! Pick up your fucking gun! Now’s our chance! If we don’t take him out no—“

Lucy blinked, feeling an awful discordance as a sudden gust of hot wind washed over her, their executioner who couldn’t have been older than Hanz or Kit suddenly before Richtor, fist clamping on the barrel of his TAC-50 with a smile so cold it made Lucy sob as he slowly pulled it free of Richtor’s increasingly panicked grip, furious snarl having become a frown of concern, then the horrified awareness that he was facing Death itself, and there would be no reprieve, no escape.

And how effortlessly their executioner flowed away from a roaring Richtor’s furious flurry of kukri strikes, pure deadly offense designed to take out a foe before he could lay a single finger on you, and Lucy knew damn well just how effective Richtor was with that tool of death, with a fat 60 in Vitality, Strength, and Quickness, in addition to 90 in Perception and Finesse, her deadliest sniper and a damn fine melee fighter, which no one was expecting. And this boy slipped past every thrust, weaved and dodged every artery-ripping slash, as if it were nothing.

Then with a single shout, it was over.

“Fragor!”

Lucy stumbled back with a cry, eardrums rupturing, spitting up blood as her closest friend in all the world crashed to his knees with a groan, giving the most piteous wheeze as he fought just to breathe, both his eyes going bone white as he shook and spasmed on the ground, Lucy’s party interface blaring with the criticals her best friend of ten years had just suffered, multiple damaged organs and cracked bones, hit points spiraling down to just a hair over a hundred.

“Please!” She screamed, her voice hoarse and raw, her words utterly futile.

“Fragor!” That nightmare of vengeance and death roared a second time, and all her blinking interface messages suddenly blinked out as Richtor’s head exploded in a shower of crimson gore, splattering them all as his neck stump splurted for a few sporadic seconds before easing to a dead man’s trickle.

Richtor, the man she had known and loved for years, was now gone.

Then the monster was before her sobbing 20 year old lover, curled up in a frightened ball.

“Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me!” Kit sobbed. “I liked the bunny! I used to have a pet bunny that looked just like her, and we were all going to leave! No one wanted Hanz to fire. I never even wanted to be here, I swear it!”

For long perilous seconds their executioner just stood there, gazing at the sobbing pleading girl like a curious bug he was debating whether to crush under his feet, or simply ignore.

Before slowly tilting his head to gaze Lucy’s way once more.

She immediately fell to her knees, about to do the most stupid and pointless thing of her life.

Holding her hands as if she could actually pray to her judge, jury, and executioner. And the terrible thing was, no matter how much she deluded herself into thinking she was a roguish hero, a vigilante with a somewhat checkered past… none of that bullshit mattered. She wasn’t the hero of this story, or any other. She was nothing more than a cold-blooded contract killer with a knack for shutting off her emotions whenever dollar signs or credits flashed, and her mark had gotten the drop on her, and she and everyone she loved was either dead or soon to be dead.

“Please don’t kill her! She didn’t want to be her!” Lucy sobbed. “Please! She’s just a kid, she’s never fired a single shot on any mission!”

And so fast she couldn’t even blink, the monster was before her, eyes glittering with all the secrets of death peering into her own.

He didn’t say anything. He just stared.

“Please… please! Kit’s a good kid. Look I...” she swallowed, bowing her head. “Yes, we took the contract. Counselor Malice offered 20 million if we could take you out. And yeah, I know what comes next,” she whispered. “But Kit’s just a clueless little dyke too shy to even come out. Not until I recruited her. Because I could smell her potential, so sweet and thick, that popping her cherry was like drinking honeyed wine.”

Lucy choked back a sob. “She’s just a stupid little girl I’ve wound so tightly around my finger that she’d wear my collar in a heartbeat, if I asked her to. You think I can’t manipulate her into doing whatever the hell I want? You think she’d even be out here, or doing anything but soft core runs on easy mode with a bunch of piss-poor dreamers if I hadn’t led her here with so much honeyed bullshit you’d puke?”

She chuckled bitterly, forcing herself to gaze right into death’s cold blue eyes.

“So yeah. Kill me. I’m the bitch who called the shots for our sad little group. But Kit, she wanted to be a hero. Can you believe that? Telling us about dreams of liberating the whole fucking world, as if she hadn’t just been recruited into a bounty-hunter guild.”

Lucy cried out when the creature lifted her up so effortlessly, peering at her like a curious bug. Before stripping absolutely every item of worth from her person, and Lucy didn’t even move. Didn’t dare move an inch under his probing gaze, until she was wearing nothing but her undergarments.

And then so fast it chilled her just to see it, the youth radiating such a monstrous aura strode right past her three fallen companions, men she had laughed with, fought beside, and gotten drunk as lords and enjoyed the wildest parties imaginable with... and now they were lost to her forever.

Then he was before Kit once more, and Lucy couldn’t hold back a guttural cry. That of a mother about to lose her child. So piercing sharp was the ache tearing through her, she crumpled into a ball, just praying the monster would stop toying with them and just fucking finish it.

“Eric, don’t. Please… I wanted to save them!”

Lucy trembled before a voice she never expected to hear again. Forcing her eyes back open, no matter how her heart skittered in her chest.

She might be the world’s biggest fuck up, but the hell with being too fucking cowardly to see death coming with her own two eyes.

She didn’t know whether to be horrified or awed by the sight of the grizzly remains of that tiny broken rabbit dragging itself free of the foliage into the clearing they had fought in, before plopping itself right on top of Fitz’s corpse.

And how horrifying it was to see poor Fitz’s powerful figure begin to waste away before her very eyes as flush cheeks turned thin, leathery, and weathered, powerful muscular arms withering to those of a decrepit old man in just seconds.

More horrifying still was the way the young merc’s eyes still rolled in his head, as if he had somehow been holding on, second by desperate second, only to experience the horror of every last drop of his life force being torn away until he was nothing more than an ancient wizened old man too decrepit even to make a death rattle, tight leathery skin wrapping brittle bones save for two still wildly blinking eyes in the bleached skull.

Until the bones grew so brittle they collapsed in a pile of dust upon which the rabbit they had thoroughly eviscerated stood, caught by a shaft of moonlight so bright the creature literally seemed to glow.

Yet all the while that horrific display had occurred, the massive gut wound the panting bunny was holding with tiny trembling paws began shrinking as the last of its dragged intestines slurped back in its torso, before all signs of injury sealed itself shut.

As if it had never been injured at all.

A heartbeat later, the rabbit was wrapped in the arms of the monstrous killer… now sobbing, actually sobbing as he held his bunny against his tear-stained cheek, as if he really was the boy Lucy had seen on so many magazine covers after her last tour in the middle east.

And not the bloodthirsty abomination she now knew him to be.

“Lucy?”

Lucy nodded, catching it as well as her desperate friend. Their target was paying absolutely no attention to the girls exchanging desperate looks.

They would disappear like ghosts, slipping forever free of goblin debt. In their place would be two young adventurers just looking for a safe place to call home, where the could put all the nightmares behind them.

A second chance neither of them deserved.

But before she could take a single furtive step back, trusting Kit to use every last ounce of Mana she had to cloak their presence, she found herself crashing to her knees.

Crushed by the weight of terror now clamping down upon her soul.

“You will wait here.”

She trembled before words that spoke in absolutes she dare not defy. And how odd it was to find herself shaking with terror, fighting not to heave as the coppery tang of blood and the sickly sweet stench of burning meat assaulted her senses. Yet her spasming stomach was denied even the relief of wretching as the weight of judgment clamped upon her brow like a vice.

But no. It was just a finger. A single solitary finger caressing her brow.

She found herself furiously blinking away warm drops of rain trickling into her eyes… bright red drops that stung and burned. For just a second, when she blinked, she didn’t see a spoiled kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but a wild-eyed killer radiating such a monstrous aura she felt it like a physical weight.

The weight of a dragon, suffocating her within its winding coils so tightly she couldn’t even breathe.

“You will wait here, and you will be judged.”

“Yes, my lord, we will. We swear it!” Sobbed a breathless Kit.

A plea that meant very little, it seemed, as cold, pitiless eyes continued to judge them both. Clearly finding them wanting.

“Eric? Come on, fearless leader. We’ve wasted enough time with these silly chumps. Let’s go! We still have colonists to save and a dungeon to clear. We’re still going for a 100% clear, Right?”

Lucy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she realized that the little rabbit, the familiar her idiot of a recruit had torn open with blaster fire, was actually trying to save her and Kit. Again. Gazing at them both with a sympathy she would never have expected and damn well knew she didn’t deserve.

Eric Silver, her would-be target she had been so incredibly foolish as to believe she actually had a shot at taking down, gave a casual shrug and nodded.

“Sure, Bunbun. We can do that.”

And with a final cold glare sent her way, he was gone.

In the literal blink of an eye.

“Fuck, how the hell did he move so fast? I mean, I know I blinked, but it was only for a split second!”

“Kit, are you really here? Are you really okay? Or is that demon just playing with us?”

Lucy choked back a sob. “I thought for sure you were...”

Kit flashed her trademark cheeky grin, before breaking down in a shaking heap Lucy comforted as best she could.

“How the hell did it come to this, Lucy? Ten minutes ago, we were all joking and bullshitting. Then Hanz panicked, and everything went to shit!”

“I know,” Lucy soothed, holding her sobbing companion close. “Things went real bad, real fast. For all of us.”

“Why, Lucy? We were so close to getting out of this in one fucking piece! Carlos could be playing Don Juan right now, seducing all the girls at the inn, Richtor stinking up the place with his stupid cigars, teaching me how to shoot. Fitz could have finally had a drink with that girl he’s been mooning over for days…”

“Hush, moppet. I know. Believe me, I know.”

“And now they’re all dead!”

Lucy bit back bitter tears that stung far hotter than a madman’s blood.

“Why, Lucy? Why the fuck did we take on this goddamned assignment?”

“Because we’re deep in goblin debt, and it was either that, or the collars.”

Kit gasped and pulled away.

Lucy lowered her head.

There. She had finally said it.

Their employer had made an offer they literally couldn’t refuse.

Kit gazed at a shamefaced Lucy for endless seconds. “You never told me anything but that you went out on a limb, helping me gear up.”

Lucy flashed a bitter smile. “You saw our TAC-50s. Fitz’s blaster rifle. You know we’re Advanced Classers. Hell, Fitz actually had an Adept tier class! How much do you think all that cost? How much do you wanna guess the goblins charged me to gear us up with half-decent equipment? To let us use an untainted pod?”

Kit squeezed her almond eyes tightly shut, bitter tears streaking down her cheeks. “We were fucked from the start. There was no way we could win this. Ever.”

Lucy sighed and nodded. “No way in hell. All we could do was survive. Survive and count on good guns and Classes to pull us through.”

“Only it didn’t.”

Lucy shook her head. “No. It didn’t.”

She swallowed, forcing a smile on anxious lips. “Sure, that asshole stripped us near naked, grabbing all our supplies. But we’re 40th level. Come on, sweetheart. If we put our all into it, we can make it to Freetown before dawn tomorrow. Just so long as we don’t meet any high level critters here in orange territory. We’ll backtrack exactly the way we came. I’m not afraid of white tier, and neither should you be.”

Kit gazed at her with soft brown eyes for long uncomfortable seconds. “We can’t.”

“Sure we can, silly! We just don’t report mission failure to that slimy little fuck who’d love an excuse to collar us inside his pleasure garden. I got friends and contacts in Freetown. I’ll call in a few markers. Set us up with some half decent shit, then we make our way to New York along the white corridor, and from there take a caravan as a pair of standard Classers with typical weapons just like everyone else, heading straight to Texas. From there, we start over. Put this bullshit behind us. Clean slate. A second chance.”

Kit shuddered, tightly squeezing Lucy’s hand. “We can’t, Lucy. He said… he said we had to wait.”

Haunted eyes locked with Lucy’s own. “You do know who he is, right? Who must be coming to collect?”

Lucy’s fragile hope plummeted just like her stomach, tasting the doom about to claim them once more.

“Oh fuck. Who’s coming to pick us up?”

And that was when she felt it. The cold chill crawling up her back.

Freezing her right where she crouched.

Her eyes widened when the warm spring day turned so bitter she could see white plumes of misty breath with each exhalation, hissing at the sound of brittle grass crackling under approaching steps.

Kit began to sob in her arms.

Lucy tried so desperately hard to urge her friend to move… to RUN for all she was worth, sensing the weight of Winter’s judgment upon her soul. But she was so frozen with terror, uncertainty, and that awful hideous cold, she couldn’t even move herself.

Too chilled to whisper a single word.

Too chilled even to think.

Only observe, as the most strikingly beautiful woman imaginable strode in to view from a cloud of icy white vapors, jade green eyes flashing like judgment itself, lips stretching wide in a feral grin that had Lucy screaming.

But only in her mind.

Recognizing that feral furious grin so damned well.

Their executioner had worn it just minutes ago, when his crimson blade had pierced a wildly blinking Hanz’s heart.

It was a smile that looked absolutely nothing at all like the winsome teasing grin of the cinematic celebrity that had been the queen of a thousand tabloids, her face known to countless millions of people, world-wide.

Who hadn’t seen a dozen movies with her seducing high powered lawyers, stopping super powered criminals, or exploring ancient ruins with bullwhip and six-shooter?

Aurelia Silver, queen of the silver screen.

And according to a sobbing Kit, falling to her knees and begging for clemency…

She was the faerie queen of winter as well.