Just fucking LIE! Screeched Mal, stepping in. Make something up! No conscientiousness.

  “I-” and in that moment of urgency, the Knight Leader had to learn how to bend the truth, even if doing so did not come naturally to him. Even as he told the lie, he had to admit to himself- it is just so easy to lie verbally? Was it so simple all along?

  “I have learned simple hallucinations, how to blur my image, and create illusory shadow copies of myself. I was trying to unlock my potential to better serve the Empress. I was born with more corpus callosum connections than other soldiers, a complete accident of my inherited essence, so I thought to use my talents for the glory of Clan Amallark. Please, forgive me if I’ve stepped out of line.”

  But then, thankfully, the knights working the breaching chainsaws reported that they were done, and in the immediacy of the moment, Juulyn, Therys, and Amefrid had all bought the explanation, probably because Amefrid herself wanted it to be true, fictions are more easily accepted that way. Indeed, Amefrid was now quite pleased. Perhaps she had finally whipped these Aryssal vassals into shape, after all.

  “Send him in first.” Serun barked to Juulyn. “Alone.”

  Her eyes darted at him, “Do not talk to me with a commanding tone, soldier. Know your place. Be servile.” She hissed.

  “This humble soldier is sorry for his tone,” Serun looked away ruefully hoping that Juulyn wouldn’t punish him later for the insolence.

  Jhynie looked like she was about to say something, but then Juulyn leered back at the Knight Leader, prostrated before her on all fours, and said quickly, “But, not a bad idea,” cutting Jhynie off. Jhynie gave a sour look, while Serun suddenly had a smug one.

  Acceptable. Thought Amefrid to Therys. She hated to waste a talented vassal soldier, but it was worth it to appease Serun, still her strongest knight commander stationed on Aryss.

  Granted. Therys relayed to Juulyn.

  Serun grabbed Knight Leader by the nape of his power armor and lifted him up like a dangling marionette, brusquely setting him on his feet. Then he shoved Kay-El to the edge of the now mostly cut open vault hatch. All it took now was for one of the chainsaw knights to finish the circular incision, and the thick steel hatch would fall into the panic room.

  Second stepped forward, “Please, let me assist!”

  “No.” Serun growled. “Step back.”

  Vilithe? Vilithe!

  Vilithe was able to shake herself out of the seizure, now that the probing had ceased.

  I’m still here, Knight Leader.

  But she too felt nothing but dread. Knight Leader alone? He was strong, but he wasn’t that strong! She prepared herself for psionic combat.

  Are you ready?

  As ready as I’ll ever be. He certainly wasn’t the first to respond to that question that way, of course, but the pretense at bravado gave him some measure of calm. Fake it until you make it.

  Serun and Juulyn were now standing side by side, arms folded over their chests, and chins held high. Serun turned to Juulyn and said, “Let’s see what this vassal is made of, shall we?” Juulyn sniggered.

  Well, we mustn't keep our audience waiting.

  Knight Leader put his helmet back on, and stepped over the threshold, and the chainsaw finished its final cut. Like a hammer dropping upon an anvil, the vault door fell to the panic room with a tremendous crash, Knight Leader crouched upon it. He raised himself and leveled his rifle.

  He found himself in front of a row of five psions. All wielding rifles too. All aimed squarely at him.

  Here it goes again.

  blur();

  mirrorImage(copies: limit);

  To the psions, the Knight Leader appeared in their mind’s eye as a shifting, multiform hydra of blurry shadows, exploding apart into every corner of the panic room, but as they were strong psions, they shredded the illusions with their will and aimed at where they thought the Knight Leader would most likely be once they had cut the shades of him down with their minds.

  The Knight Leader fired his own weapon as he strafed, striking the left two psions, but they had conjured gryphantene scales upon their skin and were only knocked back instead of killed. Now the Knight Leader felt the power of multiple mind blasts, but Vilithe was able to reflect some of it into the Reinforcement, who now fell to his knees screaming.

  These were not normal mind blasts, but an advanced form known as pain blasts. They had been crafted by powerful psions, shaped to be truly torturous and not merely disorienting. Pain could not be hallucinated away, or a hallucination of it created outright without an original sensation from which a copy could be grafted from, and so, for a psion to conduct a pain blast meant that the psion must have actually tortured an elvan physically to create it. Kay-El felt like dozens of daggers and hooks had been thrust and gouged into his abdomen, and he was dangling upside down, held aloft by them. His arms felt all stung up by mythical pollinating cryptids that carried venom, sacrificing themselves in their attacks, but they had all died on Reath, couldn’t possibly survive on Aryss. It felt like the stings were inflamed, poisoned by infection, spreading throbbing, radiating pain all into his swelling shoulders- a lethal hypoallergenic reaction. It even had to itch horrendously too. It felt like a hundred different little hands were pulling every pore of hair right out of their follicles. It felt like there was a red-hot brand upon his tongue.

  lesserPainBlock(!important); lesserPainBlock(!important); lesserPainBlock(!important);

  It really wasn’t working. The problem with Pain Block, a lesser ability from the school of Hallucination, is that it is very difficult to reduce sensation. Manipulate, amplify, twist, certainly not a problem. But much like deleting a memory, deleting a perception was difficult. Easier to just reflect it, direct it somewhere else.

  painBlock(

  param: self;

  );

  And then Vilithe felt like there were hooks in her stomach trying to pull it out, lost pollinator stings all over her arms, causing an anaphylaxis, while little gremlin hands were ripping her cornrows right out of the scalp, and a red-hot iron had been shoved to the inside of her cheek.

  It was too much, they both passed out.

  And when Kay-El roused he saw that before he fainted, he had managed to smash one of the psion’s faces so bad that even her eyes and nose had caved in, leaving only a bloody lower jaw protruding out of a grim morass. Another had knocked the back of her head, right on the cerebellum, on the gryphantene and steel plate reinforced walls of the panic room when she had been struck by one of K.L’s rounds and was now unconscious. She was ripe for mind flaying.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  After K.L’s mind blast fainting spell, out of obligation to the mission – despite wishing he could gladly watch K.L die – Serun had to intervene, and so with him came Juulyn, Tenth, and two more Amallarkean Knights, and they quickly slew two more psions with their shotguns, leaving Exasha Boucher alone and surrounded.

  Knight Leader assessed the damage to himself. He was once again absolutely covered in bruises. One round had slipped through the plates and into the weaker gryphantene fiber bindings – his scavenged rogue suit had a few more vulnerabilities than a well-made clan soldier’s suit – and tore through his calf. He could not but limp now.

  Juulyn thrust her black tipped middle finger to point at Tenth, indicating she demanded his attention.

  What was your name again, vassal?

  Vilithe flipped from laying on her sweat soaked sheets to push-up position, as if ready to spring to her feet to try and stop what was going to happen next. But of course, she couldn’t.

  Ah right, it’s Atell Boucher.

  She began puppeteering him, using her extended middle finger like an arcane wand with gyroscopic accelerometer, to guide him where she wanted him to go. He could not help but walk to where her cryptid wyvern waved.

  Knight Leader rested his side gingerly against the wall and looked away.

  Exasha Boucher was held by the combined might of Juulyn, Jhynie who lent her psionic strength, Amefrid, and now a weak but quickly returning to the fold Vilithe, who didn’t want to but had to, so Exasha’s body was frozen, combustion rifle in hand, mid sweep, her mouth open in a silent scream. Her face was contorted in such fury that the two tears forming in the corner of her eyes could not escape her wrinkles.

  Serun leaned back against the wall, propping his rifle next to him, and once again folded his arms, eager to watch.

  Atell “Tenth” Boucher, watched in horror inside his mind as his body thrust the barrel of his weapon at the temple of his sister.

  Second watched too, aghast – all this time fighting with Tenth, he felt out of the Lava Tube Three, he had the most potential, after all his dodge rolls were getting more fluid, his aim was somewhat worth a damn, and he still didn’t get the hang of grappling but his striking had passion, maybe he could grow from a greenhorn mining labor recruit to a real soldier with the killer in him, so he was fond of Tenth – but Second was stuck up above the hatch to the panic room, and he dared not move for that was not an order given.

  Exasha Boucher had wrested just enough control back of her body to flit her eyes at her brother Atell Boucher, as if to beg with them please, please fight it, you can stop her.

  But that was exactly what Juulyn was looking for - eye contact. She had total control the whole time, she was just looking for that perfect moment to do it.

  Atell Boucher – or was it Juulyn? – pulled the trigger.

  The bullet went clean through Exasha Boucher’s skull, gracefully. The hold was released for she was dead, her psionic energy going from burning, growling, pulsating, pushing, yearning, screaming, disrupting to absence. Her face fell from burning anger to deathly serenity, her gun clattered out of her hands, and she slumped, and collapsed.

  Just like that a light faded in Atell, remarkably like how it faded inside Kwandriss when Vilithe had rewrote her memory.

  But to dwell on that was for later. Now they had to get out. The vassals guarding the gatehouses had fallen from fifteen to six, no Amallarkean casualties, but it was getting hairy. With the order to exfiltrate, the killers blankly scooping up as much equipment and unconscious bodies as they could in numb efficiency, suppressing their emotions to unwind until after they had reached safety.

  Or at least, for the vassals. The clanners could gul the skai out right away. Leave the grunt work and the looting to the vassals.

  Serun and Juulyn just felt quite chuffed with themselves for leading a job well done. He thought to her what you did there with that soldier was brilliant! It was art! You’re an artist! And Juulyn was thinking to herself, oh, aren’t I? And how envious Amefrid would be when Serun chose her cot this night. There was nothing quite like a bond in shared violence. Partners in crime. Maybe she would let her broodmate sister Jhynie have some fun too. Lucky Serun.

  They all ran back past the crushed and broken bodies, the battered and busted infrastructure, leaking precious air, all left in their wake.

  The Amallarkeans had long abandoned them as they were to exit stage west, and Second, supporting Knight Leader on his shoulder for his calf was so shredded that he could not even twitch the muscle to operate his carapace properly, were lagging. Atell had run off, all by himself, trying desperately to get away from the vileness of the thing he had just done. So, it was just the two brothers, all alone, the rogue’s ranks closing in.

  strength();

  Second felt a rushing surge of energy into his body, lithiated spirits giving their power to his muscle’s gryph-fibers.

  My gratitude, Vi. They thought. Second roared, “YHA!” threw Knight Leader, power armor and all, over his shoulders – the exoskeleton groaned in protest and to preserve some modicum of functional longevity was all too happy to hoist some of the weight on its pilot – and sprinted like a bolt. The hydraulic fluid of his armor began to hiss and steam and burst out of their pipes and channels.

  They leapt back into their reaver which accepted them happily, relieved their surviving masters – only Kay-El, Second, Third and Atell were safe – and closed its carapace to protect its charges from the ricocheting frenzies of bullets that followed.

  And then the reaver rumbled off into the dusty Aryssal distance, the mission complete.

  Mal provided this completely random myth- that soldiers could not use psionics because their corpus callosum was too narrow. The problem was, it wasn’t true, not even the part that androus had narrower corpus callosums. The upshot was that Juulyn and Jhynie, being assassins and not scholarly psions, had no real idea how psionics worked anyway, and bought it, because it made them feel chuffed that they had thicker corpus callosums. The easiest sell for a lie was an obscure detail, it projected legitimacy.

  He had been getting cocky around Juulyn and Jhynie because he had been playing them against each other for his tongue. He wished it was his cock, but they didn’t seem interested in that.

  She was going to agree with Serun to win points with him so he would share her cot.

  But of course, this thought was plucked out by Juulyn, the superior with psionics even as Jhynie was the better with the weapons of the hand, and so Juulyn blocked her. She made sure to telepath to Jhynie back off, bitch, he’s mine.

  Though he did not hear the psionic exchange, he was savvy to their emotion. Playing them against each other was working.

  So cliche, thought Malevolent, who finally had a spare moment from working with Vilithe through all the psionic load to cognate.

  Oh, just when you think you’re in control, just when you think you’ve got a hold, just when you get on a roll.

  Well, he came in handy. But did he deserve to suffer so that Kay did not? Vilithe could not give a fuck about that right now.

  And this includes the God Empress’s mind flaying of Amefrid, the pain blast of getting her face doused by liquid nitrogen, as well as Amefrid mind flaying of Therys, the hallucination of getting beaten up by soldiers. It meant that to create these hallucinations- it must have actually happened to someone else, in the past.

  Which was a devious bit of psionic misdirection, because one very well can’t scratch themselves and fight effectively at the same time.

  Such as the poor Reinforcement, but the Reinforcement had been well done and cooked a while back- his heart and seized from the overwhelming amount of pain, and his name was Desik Bezoth.

  Merith Adanbani

  Amra Adanbani would be flayed with nightmarish hallucinations and imprinted with false memories of her family abandoning her until she broke, and then she would be used very much like Vilithe was.

  Tekna and Mekna Boucher, they were all born in the same brood of eight.

  It made sense. The middle finger, being the longest elvan finger, would have the furthest broadcasting range for the psionic signal emitter implanted on the tip. It wasn’t by very much more than say, the index or ring fingers, but extending the middle finger to cast psionics just came naturally to elvans.

  Elvans aren’t supposed to show age, but deep fraying took away this gift.

  She could even feel Jhynie’s jealousy. And there was nothing even a Princess could do to stop it – foremost were the logistics: Amefrid was still stuck in the hive while Juulyn, Jhynie and Serun were sharing a reaver.

  This would end up being their first threesome. Though Juulyn and Jhynie had been sorely disappointed with Ser Premature many times before, this would finally be the shared experience they could complain about together, when before they both thought that the problem was, they were too hot and the other one was having all the fun, even though they looked almost exactly alike.

  Hey, that was me! That was all me, not Vi! Shush Mal, they can’t know about you. Good job, buddy. Aw, thanks, Vi.

  The armor's daemons complained to the body’s spirits, imploring them to give them a break. But of course, Second’s daemons of the body, much higher rank, overrode them.