Beth slipped from her hiding place, pulling its shadows with her as she stalked down the seemingly empty hallway. The only illumination came from fleshy lumps growing like polyps from the moist fibers growing along the ceiling. Tendrils of something moist and organic split from the ceiling conduit at regular intervals and Beth made sure that she didn’t touch them.

  She had broken into a door in the Citadel’s wall just as the gorgons struck the soldiers on the upper level, meaning to use their assault as a distraction for her own. Instead, she had walked into a trap – probably the most disturbing trap she’d ever encountered. The floor morphed into a rough tongue and door itself was the mouth of something, and she had walked right into it.

  Fortunately for her its cheeks hadn’t been uncuttable, or she would have been turned into its lunch. And wouldn’t Bel be angry then? Not only had she sneaked away, after only telling Seth where she’d gone, she would have also gotten herself killed. So now she was being extra cautious: not touching anything that looked even slightly organic, not disturbing the air around the puffy, frond-like protuberances that emerged from the walls, and constantly using scent erasure and consuming darkness to erase any signs of her presence.

  It was, if she was being honest with herself, stressful. And it was only made worse by the incredible emptiness of the place. The tortuously long, downward spiraling walkway’s only features were the regular holding pens. Those were open now too, their sphincter-like organic doors stretched open to release whatever nightmarish creations Clark and Technis had saved up for this moment.

  She had peeked inside a couple of them, wary of any stragglers or traps but too curious to pass up the information. The rooms were round and empty, but fleshy bulges sticking out from the floor for sustenance and slow-moving streams of water for waste removal. She expected them to smell of livestock, but instead they smelled of nothing. That made it more disturbing, and also meant her nose wouldn’t warn her of any impending ambushes.

  Beth paused before another opening, realizing that this one wasn’t open. That meant that it hadn’t been storing any monsters – could it have people behind it instead?

  She hesitated.

  She needed to find Clark and kill him quickly, but she didn’t know where he was hiding. If she kept going down to wherever the path led her, she could end up in the underworld or in Technis’ lap or Durak knew wherever else. On the other hand – she glanced at her missing limb – if she stopped to check every room then it would slow her down and increase the chance that someone would raise an alarm about her presence.

  In the end, it was her instinct to cover her back that made her decision. If there were people in there, one of them could slip out and shoot an arrow into her back and she would never know what happened. Beth tapped the tip of her favorite dagger against the skin of her arm, drawing out a small amount of vile blood to coat the point. Then she pricked the organic door with it and waited.

  In only a few seconds the muscles began trembling, and in only a few more they went weak. The weight of the muscles made them sag open with a wet squelch and Beth took a quick peek inside.

  There were rows and rows of stacked beds; hundreds, perhaps thousands of them. And that room smelled of sweat and piss, the proper smell of humans stuck together. She had found the barracks, and they were empty.

  She waited a few moments for signs of life, but nothing moved. After a small wait, the door-sphincter recovered and squished itself back closed. Beth nodded in satisfaction and moved on.

  Another closed door awaited her in a few hundred strides, so she repeated her previous inspected. This one flopped open to reveal…

  She looked inside and her brows compressed into a frown. It was another barracks, again with a thousand beds. She went on to the next door, and the next, and then several more, and each one was the same: rooms that could hold thousands of soldiers, rooms that smelled of recent occupation, but rooms that were all completely abandoned.

  There was a mystery there, but she really didn’t have the time to think about it. Beth rushed forward, impatiently checking each room for any differences, but each time she encountered the same room.

  Until she didn’t.

  When the door flopped open she glanced inside, not really expected anything different, but when the moist, cloying air struck her face she recoiled in surprise. She ducked to the far side of the door and replayed what she’d seen.

  The room had been lit by the same fleshy sacs as every other space, but the floor had been littered with novelties. Tables, each overflowing with tools and debris. Huge spools of wire, each wide enough to be used as a table. And in the back, a well-lit area with a mass of fleshy cables descending from the ceiling to cluster like fawning attendants around a chair.

  Beth’s eyes twitched as she tried to remember more details. Was there someone in the chair? Something? Maybe.

  Was it Clark? Beth took a moment to breath in and out, and to imagine her dagger plunging through the old man’s back, straight through to his front. Her fingers twitched, and her breath became ragged, and she had to rely upon suppress emotion to regain control.

  She sheathed her favorite dagger and pulled out her second favorite. Her favorite was meant to stabbing into the gaps in armor, while her second favorite was a more traditional tool with a small cross guard. The old man never wore armor – he was too full of himself for it.

  More importantly, her second favorite dagger belonged to the long-dead lover that Clark had murdered so many years ago. It would be poetic if it rendered judgement upon the twisted old man. Beth brought it to her lips and kissed it for good luck.

  She ran the edge over her cheeks, first one side, then the other, coating it with vile blood. She took a deep breath. Then she moved like fury.

  She whipped around the corner fast enough for her feet to squeak against the floor is she wasn’t suppressing the sound with consuming darkness. She ran straight towards the chair in the back of the room, her eyes quickly scanning the area for traps. She silently vaulted over a spool of thick wire and slid under a cluttered table before spinning around an upright, human-sized box. Beth’s eyes dilated as she saw a figure in the chair. Her mouth pulled back into a feral snarl.

  The person was quietly cursing as he pulled organic cables from sockets in his body. His flesh had a disgusting, grub-like quality: overstuffed and loose at the same time, hairless and glistening with moisture. Beth shadow walked, merging with the darkness as she closed the final distance to her target.

  Her body was tight with rage and anticipation as she leaped over a final obstacle and drew her knife back for a killing blow. With her dagger just and hands breadth from his neck, the old man heaved one of the heavy cables at her, deflecting the blow. She slammed into his chair as he rolled out of it. She lunged and stabbed, and the old fossil barely avoided her poisoned blade, scrabbling and bouncing across the floor.

  Clark put his hands on a large pile of flesh as he slid past it, and the flesh spasmed in her direction. Beth slashed through it with cut like hatred, tearing the mound of muscle in half in an eyeblink, but the distraction had given Clark enough time to find his feet and his cane.

  “Is this the real you?” she hissed. “I would hate to waste my time killing another one of your puppets.”

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  The old man laughed, his ancient, gnarled flesh twitching across his bones. He wore nothing but a pair of pants, his chest and back bare to reveal puckered sockets where the fleshy cables had attached to his body. He spread his arms wide, revealing a mouth full of sharp, perfect teeth. Beth was certain that he’d taken them from some young victim.

  “As you can see,” he said, “I’m all here. I suppose the gorgon thought that you could assassinate me while she held my attention?”

  He shook his head and clicked his tongue as he slowly sidestepped through the messy room. Beth kept pace with him, watching out for any obstacles that could give either of them an advantage.

  “If that spirit had showed up a few moments later, then you may have actually gotten to me. Of course, if that spirit hadn’t shown up then I wouldn’t have emptied the catacombs. I suppose it is pointless to ponder how things might have been.”

  He stopped moving and stared at her, one bushy eyebrow cocked upwards. “But you haven’t learned that lesson, have you? You’ve spent all of your life pondering the things that might have been rather than embracing the way that things are.”

  He gestured with his staff, slowly moving it to point around the room. “All of this power could have been shared with you, if you could have just let go–”

  Beth wasn’t really interested in hearing his sales pitch, and she suspected that he was trying to activate something with his staff. She moved like fury, launching a brazen attack that lacked any of her usual subtlety. Clark spun his staff in a two-handed stance and casually parried the downward stroke of her knife. Her unseen hand punched at his gut, but he breathed at her and Beth found herself inexplicably flying back through the air.

  She spun and kicked off of a table moments before it was blasted into splinters by a beam of light from his staff. She didn’t recognize some of his abilities, but Bel had warned her about the cutting light. Beth ducked down low and ducked under another table for cover. The tabletop met the same fate as the previous one, but Beth had already sprung away from it.

  She kick a tall, metal cylinder over and ducked behind it as it bounced across the floor. It grew hot as Clark hit it with a couple of beams, but Beth was satisfied when it didn’t break. She stayed low to the ground and pushed the cylinder, using it as rolling cover as she approached the old man once again. As she grew close enough that he would be able to see over the waist-high cylinder of metal, Beth jumped out from behind it, along with three of her shadow clones.

  Clark didn’t hesitate over which one to hit, instead tossing a small object in her direction. Beth shadow walked again, but her attempt to flank him was halted when a flash of light removed her chosen shadow. She ducked behind a massive pillar of twisting cables just in time to dodge his disintegrating beam of light. Bits of the equipment was eaten away with each blast of light, but her cover held.

  Everything was going about as well as she expected. Her chest heaved with every breath and sweat already soaked her body. Other than those first few moments, when he either hadn’t seen her or had pretended, she was constantly on the back foot. Now it was time for her to take the initiative.

  She pulled a small lump of coal from her pocket and shoved it into her mouth. Bel had given her the idea to seek out more powerful abilities, even if they came with drawbacks. She’d asked around and learned about a species of island-bound giant tortoises that chewed rocks from the ground and turned their bodies into raging infernos. They were depleted after doing it, but if anything could survive their attacks they wouldn’t have stood a chance anyway. Killing one for its abilities had taken an excruciatingly long time. She was about to find it if her efforts were worth it.

  First, she spawned a little shadow puppet. It was more mascot than murderer, but it had its uses. She dropped a bag at its feet and it began mixing vials as she bit down on the coal.

  She crunched the stone into powder and washed it down with a small flask a nearly pure alcohol. The slurry hit her inner fire and ignited. Instead of burning her from the inside, the heat was absorbed by her internal engine and a massive swell of essence poured into her core. She took a mixed vial of a bubbling substance and tossed it back. Her stomach swelled dramatically and she belched a cloud of smoke, which she warped into a thick smoke screen.

  Then she leaned out from behind cover and charged. Clark immediately blasted with his light, but her smoke screen scattered the deadly beam. She had asked around about his ability too, and had been mostly certain her new ability would block it. Seeing it actually work though filled her a small taste of triumph.

  Clark fired his beam again and again, but Beth breathed out smoke and reformed her smoke screen. Her internal engine kept the flood of essence going, give her the staying power to fight again someone far above her.

  Clark still didn’t panic. He turned his cane sideways and twisted it apart, turning it into two short blades. Bel moved like fury, dodging under one strike and deflecting the second with her dagger, but Clark reared back on his tail and kicked her back.

  She scowled. She hadn’t seen the tail. She pulled a cloak of darkness around herself, spat out three shadow clones, and shadow walked to Clark’s side. He responded by tossing another explosive into the air. It exploded, just as close to him as to her.

  Beth shadow walked again, pulling her shadows tight with shadow manipulation so the explosive wouldn’t dispel them again. She emerged next to him, but he reacted faster than any old sack of flesh had the right to, knocking her dagger aside and impaling her leg with one of his slender blades.

  She hissed with pain, but when her unseen hand took her third favorite dagger and cut like hatred through his wrist it was worth it. Clark reared back on his tail once again, but this time Beth ducked under his kick. He stabbed with his remaining sword and she dodged to the side. It gave him the chance to reach down with his stump, and Beth was dismayed to see strands of braided cables squirm out of his arm and into his severed hand. In a moment it was reattached.

  Then she smiled. For the first time in a long time, an old ability from her merchant days made itself useful. Discern flaws was a trader’s vital skill, allowing someone with an untrained eye to spot flaws in craftsmanship and machinery before paying good money for it. It was the last ability she’d gotten before her lover had been killed, and she’d only ever used it to evaluate weapons. Now though, it was letting her know Clark wasn’t functioning properly.

  She had taken him by surprise, and he had left a vital part of himself behind on his puppeteer station – his cores, somehow removed from his body, were just sitting on a small pedestal. A cable as wide as her wrist still ran from the pedestal to his body, and that was the tail he was using. He had kept it hidden from her, but for a moment when he used it as a leg it had been visible.

  “Oh grandfather,” she said with mock concern, “have you become absentminded in your old age?”

  He sneered at her and advanced with his weapons. Beth’s essence had recovered enough to spawn three more shadow clones. She wrapped a cloak of darkness around herself and swapped her body for a new clone and the four of them scattered before turning towards his core.

  “You brat!” he shouted.

  Beth ignored him, and a quartet of clones leaped towards the prize. Just before they reached it, a pair of barriers sprang into being, one around the core and the other trapping the shadow clones inside. The entire space lit up with light, and the clones were disintegrated.

  Beth watched with interest from her place in the shadows where she had slipped away from her fourth clone. Clark would know she wasn’t dead – probably already knew – but, for a moment, his eyes were somewhere else. She activated everyone ability she had, pumping all of her essence through them, and moved. She strained every last muscle fiber in her body, played tricks with the shadows, and threw with a wild abandon.

  Clark knocked her throws aside with precise cuts of his swords, danced away from her wild slashes and her unseen hand, and delivered a powerful kick to her shoulder. Her body slapped painfully against the ground. She gagged as the massive hemorrhaging of her nose clogged her throat and she weakly held her dagger up in a defensive position. Her entire body was trembling with exertion, her cores were empty, nearly all of her abilities spent.

  “Pathetic,” Clark spat. “To think you have even a fraction of my blood.”

  “C’mon granddad,” she responded hoarsely, “I got the only good part of you.”

  She grinned at him, taunting him with her happy expression.

  He frowned at her. After a long period of silence he finally gave in.

  “And what is the only good part of me?”

  “Your tricks,” she said.

  Her tiny shadow puppet ripped his cable out of the jar with his cores. For the first time in her life, Beth saw a look of real surprise and worry cross over his face. She didn’t have long to enjoy it – a moment later, her shadow shoved a personal explosive through the opening and detonated it. The damage was tiny and localized, but was easily enough to destroy an undefended cores.

  Clark pivoted. He leaped and stumbled, his body suddenly bereft of its abilities.

  “No,” he wailed, “I am one of the chosen ones! The best of the many! I am–”

  Beth stabbed her second favorite dagger into his back and out through his front. The old man gurgled helplessly, and she shuffled backwards to enjoy his final moments.

  “That was for Henry, you old bastard. I hope you rot in hell.”

  He was dead before she finished speaking. Beth leaned back against the nearest table. She barely had the energy to stand, but she had finally done it.

  She felt…

  Relieved, maybe? Relieved that she could finally let it go and get on with her life.

  And guilty, guilty that she had left Bel behind. Was her sister okay?

  “What the hell, Beth!”

  Beth turned and smiled.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, Bel,” she said.

  Bel jumped to her side, took one look at Clark, looked back to her, and slugged her in the face.