5-8
Sara regained consciousness staring up at the evening sky. For a second, her rattled brain couldn’t comprehend how she’d even gotten there. Had she been taking a nap on something flat and stony?
It was in the middle of a fight, and Sara had just set off the second-largest bomb she’d ever detonated. Like flexing a muscle deep inside of her, she triggered her body to regenerate; the sheer loss of mass turned what was normally near-instantaneous into a long stretch of painful discomfort. That done, Sara lurched to her feet, rushing to seize control over the scenario before the enemy Pretenders could.
The street… looked like someone had just set off a gigantic bomb in the middle of it. Every building for twenty meters in either direction had taken some amount of damage, be it bent structural timbers or just some shattered windows, but no bystanders could be seen, injured or otherwise.
Sara alone amongst the survivors still held onto her First Pretense, which was why she flickered back to human there and then. Boxcutter was dead, reverted to her Qinglong street punk appearance, a shuddering orb of refined edgeblood floating above her body. The same was true of the librarian: there were chunks of flesh missing from her corpse, the result of blast damage to her building-body.
The more pressing matter was the fate of Sara’s allies. Gilead, in particular, had been too close to the blast for his own good. He lay on his back, in human form, blood oozing out of the corner of his mouth. Sara rushed over, falling to her knees at his side.
“I’m sorry, it was the only way I could get rid of Boxcutter—the mirror Pretender, that is.”
“Thou heldest no ill will,” Gilead said, his voice a shrill whistle. “However, my ribs are broken.”
“We can fix that. Zahra! Zahra!”
Zahra wasn’t coming, and Sara’s frantic head-turning couldn’t spot her anywhere. Her thoughts moved to the next station: she was still in combat thinking, and that meant speed and focus.
“Vilena? Are you alright?”
If nothing else, she was doing better than Gilead. Her regeneration had erased any visible wounds, but she still looked miserable. Her pale skin was discolored and green, with black throbbing veins, the outline of a skull visible through her face.
“By God, what happened to you?”
“I spent the last several minutes being beaten half to death by multiple copies of myself,” Vilena replied, her voice a low monotone. “They didn’t know how to kill me for good, but that much regrowth… not easy.”
You didn’t need to be smart to piece together what would come next. “How much blood will you need?”
“Not enough to kill someone.”
“I’ll do it,” Gilead wheezed.
“Are you mad? You’re beat halfway to the grave already.”
“And I won’t be,” Gilead insisted, “Once Zahra gets here.”
Vilena’s eyes bulged from their sockets, and her fangs had enlarged, now poking out from between her closed lips. “You mean it?”
“I mean it. To spare another from thy bite, if only this once? The least of my duties.”
Sara scowled. They really were made for each other, the two romantic idiots. “We’ll take care of that once we get to a hotel, assuming anyone in this town will still rent for us after what we did.” There was something missing, and it took a moment for Sara to figure out what it was. “Where’s Qi Zhen? We need to find them, that fucking eagle…”
“They were at my side,” said Gilead. “We fought together for a while. But we separated, that I might come to your aid unmolested.” ‘You’ was plural, Sara remembered; that meant he was counting her as well as Vilena.
Vilena spun around, hunching over like a big cat about to spring. What she sensed, Sara didn’t know—but she trusted Vilena’s senses to be better than hers. In a flash, she was ready, hand at her hip and feet ready to run if necessary. Sure enough, someone was moving: the dutchman, returned from his sword-form, racing down the muddy street in his silly pointed shoes and padded jacket.
The calculation flashed through Sara’s mind faster than she could think it through. He was a foe, repeatedly demonstrating lethal intent. He was not surrendering, but retreating, and in a state fully capable of resuming the fight later on. Valid target by the laws of conventional and unconventional warfare.
The Glock passed into Sara’s grip without the need for thought. Three rounds at a range of slightly less than twenty meters. Two struck the dutchman’s back, leaving two puffs of blood to soak his back when he fell forward.
Gilead’s jaw fell slack, but he lacked the energy or will to look truly horrified. “Sara!”
“If he’d wanted fair treatment, he’d have surrendered. For all we knew, he was running off to prepare an ambush for us later on.”
“That it is fair doth not make it merciful,” Gilead muttered.
An orb of refined edgeblood grew from out of the dutchman’s body like mushrooms off a rotten tree stump. He was dead.
“Vilena, will you keep watch over him while I find my sister?”
Wordlessly, Vilena agreed, and Sara set off in the direction Zahra had run. A little down the way was a tea shop where a few dozen bystanders had taken shelter. As soon as Sara approached, Zahra broke from her hiding spot, in the center of the crowd with the other children.
This hadn’t been the first time these people had had to keep themselves safe when violence broke out in their streets. While Sara took Zahra into her hands and thanked them profusely in every language she knew, she wondered: had it been Pretenders the last time, or just men with guns and swords?
Zahra was eager to heal Gilead of his injuries, the first time eagerness had crossed her features since being rescued from Ruthven’s palace. At the same time the sisters were returning, Qi Zhen also made an appearance, limping out of the alleyways with an entire human corpse slung over their shoulder. They had accumulated more injuries, scorch marks all across their frame, and the flashing light indicated they were on low power.
“I counted six,” they said. “The dutch sword, the woman carrying him, Boxcutter, the eagle, the ghost, and this bastard,” they said, wiggling the arm holding up the unfamiliar corpse. “We need to account for all of them.”
“Dutchman, Boxcutter, and the librarian are all dead,” Sara said, pointing to their edgeblood orbs in turn. Zahra sat down at Gilead’s side, running her fingertips carefully over his ribs and letting the luminescence flow.
“The eagle is also dead,” Qi Zhen confirmed. “Gilead here tricked it into running headlong into this fucker’s laser vision. Burned to death. Bad way to go.”
Six minus five. Sara dropped out of school in the sixth grade, but the Resistance needed soldiers who could do maths, and she’d picked up more over the years as a Pretender. Six minus five equals one.
“The succubus yet lives,” Gilead said as he levered himself up off the ground.
“Succubus?”
He nodded. “Her powers are thus: in First, she removeth all will to doubt, drawing the mind into her deceptions. In Second, she is a being of fine matter, able to enter the lungs and draineth strength. Had I not my venomous breath, I would be dead.”
Sara swore, tightening her grip on her gun. That was a hell of a Pretension for subterfuge.
“Are we going to hunt her down?” Vilena asked.
“I think we should,” Sara replied. “If she is made of subtle matter as you say, she could attack at any time.”
“Dost thou truly think that she will have wish for encounter with us, all five, when she hath seen us slaying her companions?”
“If she thinks she can get away with killing us all from ambush, then probably. Imagine the bounty of edgeblood on offer.”
“I do not have to sleep,” said Vilena. “And I do not breathe. I can stand watch.”
“I’d be careful,” said Qi Zhen. “She was able to drain me, and I lack lungs altogether.”
“Both of us, then,” said Vilena. “Both of us stand watch while the humans sleep. If she tries anything, we can wake the others; she cannot attack us both at once.”
Sara, meanwhile, continued to ponder possibilities. “Wait, if the eagle and this bastard died over there, then…”
“I already took the edgeblood from both of them,” said Qi Zhen. “The eagle was relatively new to this. Mr. Lasers was less so. I gained a new ability with some… interesting applications. Splinters that expand in the presence of a lie.”
“A puppet, that makes sense,” Sara said, a hint of laughter to her voice. “Could prove useful for interrogation.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
Finally, someone for Sara to talk to who understood the concept of brevity and focus. “In that case we have three edgeblood orbs to divide amongst three pretenders: Gilead, Zahra, and myself. Boxcutter’s is the largest, so I propose Gilead takes that one, Zahra takes the other two.”
Boxcutter’s orb was the largest by far; Sara imagined that even her own orb would not be so huge. Boxcutter had been doing this for a long time, and the power of their Pretension was the proof.
“None for thineself?” Gilead asked.
Sara had made the calculation so quickly, so automatically, that the conversation had to stop dead while she came up with a verbal justification. “I don’t need it. You’re new enough that you need all the edgeblood you can get.”
“Is it possible to split an orb?” Vilena asked.
“Oh, yes, I suppose it is. Not easy, but possible.”
“Why don’t you and Zahra split the largest one, and Gilead can have the other two?” Vilena squinted in the direction of the orbs, trying to put them on a scale. “That will still mean more for him.”
But it would mean less for Zahra; unacceptable. Sara opened her mouth to protest, but was met by three pairs of eyes all making the same expression, the same wordless request. Please take care of yourself, Sara, you exist for better reasons than to take care of your sister.
“Fine, fine, we’ll do it that way. You know what to do, Gilead?”
He nodded, first going to pick up his sword and shield before trundling off in the direction of the two fallen Pretenders. For entirely ineffable reasons, Sara and Zahra took up positions on opposite sides of Boxcutter’s orb. Zahra was the first to thrust her hand into it, the edgeblood flowing around and over her. Sara wondered if she could just lie about having taken some; but the risk was too great. Once her sister had had a firm head start, Sara took the leap.
Absorbing edgeblood was familiar in the way that getting a wound stitched up was familiar, or period cramps. And just as red as both. The matter was thick, silky yet gelatinous, and wherever it touched was left with a need to be washed, regardless of the complete absence of residue. Like desert flies, it would seek the most vulnerable places, forcing its way into the nose, mouth, sometimes even the eyes, leaving Sara blind and choking. But that explicable invasion was vastly preferable to the inexplicable ones, the blood that would make its way through whole skin. The whole way through you could feel it inside your flesh, a sickening waterfall that only faded into numbness somewhere in the muscle.
And as though all that wasn’t awful enough, edgeblood did nothing good for the brain either. Sara’s pulse picked up, clutched in the grip of an atavistic need to flee. Strange visions flickered before her eyes, objects that she was sure would resolve into useful prophecy if only she could focus on them hard enough. But doing so would merely draw her deeper into sickness.
And then the orb was gone, edgeblood consumed. Sara waited for a moment, feeling her feelings, searching for the inner sensation of a new power. None yet. Though something did twinge internally, which suggested that she was probably close to getting a new power.
Zahra, meanwhile, hadn’t looked better in years. Though her eyes were still empty, her skin was rich with life, her movements smooth, free of pain and exhaustion. It was everything that Sara could’ve possibly hoped for; maybe the psychological wounds just needed time. If Zahra stayed this healthy, then she would have that time.
Gilead looked like shit, though. He already didn’t like being a Pretender very much thanks to his own religious convictions, and as this was his first time consuming edgeblood, well. The first orb cored out his spirit like an ice cream scoop: he stood limp for a while, eyes unable to focus, before lurching off down the street toward the second orb. Sara watched him go. Annoying as her new closest ally may have been, it just wasn’t natural, seeing him so lifeless.
By the time Gilead finished, the other four members of the team were all crouching in the dirt waiting for him.
The first words out of his mouth were, “where are we going to stay the night?” He sounded like he was whispering, even speaking at full volume.
“What did you get?” Sara asked. Gilead made a wordless noise, asking what she meant, so she elaborated, “New Pretenders power up quickly, you definitely got something from that much edgeblood.”
Gilead’s knees buckled, and he fell to the ground with a wordless sob. Even still he tried to say something, but it only came out as disjointed syllables drowning in tears, his misery so profound that Vilena moved to shield him from sight. Sara didn’t understand this moping, this depression. In the heat of the moment, on the battlefield, sure, emotions were running high; but here, after everything had settled? Gilead had been a Pretender for four days, and when he’d become a Pretender, he hadn’t had to lose a damn thing! What was there for him to cry about?
…
Mezesh, collapsed back into her mortal form, carefully observed the group that had killed her entire team. Out of combat, they seemed so… ordinary. So pathetic, even.
But she couldn’t quite bring herself to feel vengeance’s burn. It had been her mistake, after all; she’d been the one to convince Bill to lure the beefcake away from the others to shank him, the one who had forced this to become a fight. She wanted to excuse it, to say that it would have been a fight nonetheless, but was that really true? Or was Mezesh just trying to wriggle out of responsibility like she did so many other times?
They weren’t looking for her, though. None of them even knew what her Zeroth looked like, and she definitely wasn’t going to do alone what her entire team had failed at.
The others were all dead. Gone. Mezesh had been walking with that crew for—she thought about it, counting months—over a year and a half, and they’d vanished in the span of less than an hour. She was supposed to be sobbing right now, but the wound was so fresh that the pain had failed to kick in, a numbing dream still covering the grief. As she walked away from the scene, Mezesh rubbed at the scales where her frill met the back of her skull, trying to scratch away the ghosts gnawing at her flesh. She would find… something. Somewhere. And maybe vengeance another time.
…
The Arnhem set sail for the Kingdom Forest three turns of the watch ahead of schedule and with fair winds. It should have been an easy journey. Then the ship’s captain pushed his way through the curtain door of their cabin and informed them that the ship was soon to be boarded by pirates.
“Pirates?” asked Vilena. “Like from a movie?”
“Pirates, privateers, the point of the matter is that we’re Pretenders and it’s our duty to keep the ship safe,” Sara rattled off. “Am I wrong?”
The ship’s captain informed her that she was not. He’d been at this for a while, Sara could tell: the man had salt burned into his pores, and by his dress he’d probably been a sailor in Leedsrealm well before being brought to Scrapyard.
Of the five of them, only Vilena remained below-decks, nearly incapacitated by sun-sickness. About two dozen crewmen had assembled above, armed with swords and matchlock muskets, ready to follow the Pretenders’s lead. A few hundred yards away and rapidly closing was the reason why flight was not an option: the pirates were traveling on a 21st-century yacht, gasoline-powered and with vintage machine guns mounted on its flanks.
The machine guns didn’t fire, though: the better to keep the prize afloat. Instead, the yacht closed distance until its crew could haul the two ships into contact with an elaborate array of ropes and pulleys. The defenders on the Arnhem’s deck prepared to repel boarders… but none came.
The pirate crew retreated into cover, but made no move to attack, not even firing their own superior Leedsrealm-produced guns. Sara, confused, held her own fire. Was this some kind of trap?
“Wrong direction!”
There was someone up above them, high in the rigging. No sooner had she drawn all attention towards herself than that someone descended, leaping off of the yardarm and sliding down a rope onto the deck.
The entire battle line turned around to see who it was. She was dressed to impress: her brown leather boots had high heels and went up almost to the knee, her breeches were salaciously tight, and her sea-coat was dyed a brilliant shade of sapphire blue, the gleaming brass buttons undone low enough to show off her bust. Even her eyepatch was a fashion accessory, the patch itself metal and elaborately engraved, while the strap served to hold an asymmetrical complex of layered braids in place.
The arrogant woman whipped a jeweled rapier out of a scabbard at her hip, twirling it through a series of demonstrations that ended with its tip pointing directly at the rising sun. With a voice like the leading woman of a romantic play, she announced her arrival.
“Salutations, seafarers! You find yourself in the presence of Vyrsa Valiente, Swashbuckler Supreme and Queen of the Pirates! Surrender your valuables and any capable warriors among you, or face my blade!”