There's no warning at all—just the subtlest little flicker of a shadow beneath his feet.

  It doesn't make any sense. How can something moving that fast do so with nary even a whisper?

  Nevertheless, the shadow does catch Tiger's attention—and so he turns at the very last second to look behind him, and is thusly rewarded with a brief glimpse of two terrifyingly wide eyes.

  And then Daiga hits him.

  It's a full-on bodyslam; the Incipitor's shoulder catches Tiger square in the chest and knocks the seventh prince right off his feet. Now Tiger lands hard on his back, goes rolling away like a log—not one of Panther's agile somersaults, mind you, this is just pure momentum at work—and then, at the apex of said roll, manages to get himself halfway up on one knee. Just before Daiga's fist connects. And oh, does it connect. Tiger can't quite hear the clatter of his own tooth against the floor, mind you—not over the ringing in his ears—but he certainly feels it when the thing come violently loose, and is lucky not to have swallowed it outright.

  Again, Tiger drops. Or tries to, anyway. Instead: a pair of rough hands seize him by the collar, arresting his descent and hauling him a full one-hundred-and-eighty degrees around before slamming him hard against a cold stone wall. And just like that, in the span of twelve brutal seconds, the faces of Tiger Qelas and Incipitor-Errant Daiga are now hovering only a scant few inches apart.

  Daiga's eyes are wide as saucers, and his breath reeks of rotting gore. He looks absolutely ecstatic.

  "Tiger," he purrs, with serrated affection. "Your father would like to see you."

  To which Tiger's reply is only this: his left hand goes over his mouth, his right clamps hard around the Incipitor's bicep, and without further ado he commands, "Burn!"

  And Daiga, of course, is already crossing both arms over his chest and replying, "Null."

  The last time they performed this particular dance, Daiga had deigned to let Tiger's Sorcery fully manifest before cutting it short. Not this time. This time Daiga smothers it right in the crib. This time there comes a strange distortion of the space between them, of the air itself stretching taut like a rubber band—and then it snaps back with an ear-splitting BANG! like the coming of the ninth apocalypse itself.

  Permit me a brief digression, now. Let us call to mind every Sorcerer's favorite analogy: that they are all, on a fundamental level, nothing more than shameless and incorrigible liars. That the act of Sorcery is, in essence, the act of deceiving the material universe. There is fire here, Tiger says, to the universe, and so it is that the universe is inclined to believe him. Now, mind you, this whole metaphor is wildly misinformed—a narrative-driven, anthropomorphized little aphorism born out of human beings attempting to explain the inexplicable—but it is also, if nothing else, a useful model for understanding what happens to Tiger next. In the framework of this childish analogy, Daiga has just brought Tiger's treachery to light. He has given the universe a dire warning: this man has been lying to you.

  So. How, if you were the universe, might you respond?

  Perhaps you might be so magnanimous as to forgive and forget; alas, this particular slice of reality is a punitive sort indeed. And thus, for exactly one-tenth of a second, Tiger is made to experience pain beyond description. All analogy falls short, for there is no sensation analogous to this. Every one of his nerve endings is very briefly set on fire, and so Tiger goes sinking to his knees with eyes rolling back to white. And so Tiger is just a hair's breadth from passing out—when Daiga strikes him again.

  Again: Electricity! That blow knocks Tiger right back to lucidity, snaps him right out of the Negation's terrible aftershock and sends him sprawling away—no longer pinned between Daiga and that frigid brick wall, no, but now stumbling frenetic and free. And so his sideways tumble turns to a controlled stagger, and so finally Tiger plants his feet and snaps his head back up and fixes Daiga with a clear-eyed glare. His fingers are still trembling from the terrible memory of that pain. His heart is racing wildly. And none of this matter. It's only sensation, Tiger tells himself, once again. Endure. And so he does.

  Tiger Qelas squares his shoulders, plants his feet, and shakes the agony right off.

  And then he racks his brain for what he could possibly do next.

  Here they are, now, the hunter and the prince. They stand in the center of a vaunted atrium lined with rows and rows of towering ferns and sprawling trees and creeping, flower-dotted vines. The light of the fading dawn comes streaming in through stained-glass windows above and around; that luminescence filters down in a monocolored shade of deepest crimson, bathing the whole artificial jungle in infernal hues of fire and blood.

  Here, the whole world is naught but scarlet. Here, Daiga's appearance turns vividly chthonian. His visage is alight in the glow of the dying sun; the Incipitor is now a red-drenched, mad-eyed devil of viscerally illuminated features. The white of his left eye shines in violent contrast to the cerise refulgence of its surroundings; his right eye burns inky-black for just a few seconds longer before sizzling out to nothing more than a thin wisp of smoke.

  It is here in this nightmare of a chamber, faced now with this nightmare of an opponent, that Tiger remarks: "You know something, Daiga? You're pathetic."

  Daiga pauses very briefly at that. Allows the words to soak in. And then he responds, with a low chuckle, "Really? I certainly don't feel pathetic." Daiga raises one white-gloved hand, then, and lets his fingers curl slowly to a fist. The sound of leather straining against leather is faintly audible. He looks down at said fist—basking, momentarily, in the depths of his own strength—and then his bloodshot eyes snap right back to Tiger. "Right now," Daiga says, then, with a malevolent grin, "I feel absolutely fantastic."

  "Because you've been designed to," Tiger sighs, with a condescending little roll of his eyes. As though merely annoyed and exasperated, and in no way fearing for his life. "You do understand that, don't you? You're only obsessed with me because your masters ordered it to be so. You only feel good right now because your masters want you to feel good when you're doing what you're told. I'm sure the data shows that the self-satisfaction you're experiencing right now makes you some small percentage-point better at capturing your prey, or whatever."

  "I feel good," replies Daiga, grin unfading, "because I am good." His fist clenches tighter. "I am so spectacularly good at what I do."

  "Such a proud little slave," Tiger mocks, with venomous derision. "You've got nothing to be proud of, you idiot, because you aren't even a person at all! You're a doll, a puppet! A hollow vessel to be filled up with someone else's whims!"

  "I am a perfect tool for a perfect—"

  "You literally just said it yourself," Tiger sneers. "You're a fucking tool. Hey—try something for me, would you? I wanna test something out. Say my father's name for me."

  The Incipitor doesn't even blink. "Primarch Ralankasado Qelas," he recites at once.

  "Very good!" Tiger deadpans—even as his palms are running thick with sweat, and his heart-rate has only been steadily increasing all this while. "Alright, Daiga. Now say my father's Given Name."

  To which, Daiga opens his mouth to speak—and then stops. Closes it. Blinks. Says nothing. And then slowly, slowly are the edges of his grin beginning to fall.

  "You can't do it, can you?" Tiger smirks, daring just one single step closer. The red-painted Incipitor stands perfectly motionless before him. "Here: Ralan Qelas. Ralan Qelas. Come on, Daiga, you you're not even trying! Ralan Qelas. You know that you're not allowed to—that you're physically incapable of showing anything other than full and formal deference to your masters. And your refusal to even try says that you don't want me to see you fail. You're embarrassed. Or angry. Or ashamed." Tiger takes another step, cocks his head to one side. "Or...are you? Are you even allowed to feel any of those emotions, Daiga? Can you even conceptualize of them?"

  Daiga doesn't answer. His smile is fading fast.

  "Well. You can certainly feel rage," Tiger nods, anyway. "That makes sense. It stands to reason that Yauju Daret—your true master, the man who subjected you to unthinkable agony and then trained you like a dog—would encourage that anger. That's the reason why you hate me so much, Daiga. Even right now." One final step. Tiger sneers: "Because your master has a use for that hatred. And for you. Honestly, Daiga, you should be grateful that he even allows you to—"

  It happens very quickly. Two thunderous steps and then Daiga is mere inches away; Tiger, having surreptitiously carved an inverse cross upon his palm, raises his hand and opens his mouth to speak the Locus Word aloud—to which Daiga, with startling speed, slaps the hand away and seizes the seventh prince by the throat.

  "You," Daiga grins, through gritted teeth, "are lucky they want you alive."

  Immediately it is impossible to breathe; immediately Daiga's fist collides with Tiger's stomach, and his very last reserves of air are forced out in one long, rattling wheeze. Immediately Tiger kicks, thrashes, punches, claws—but Daiga, his smile now a strained and rictus thing, doesn't even flinch. His other leather-gloved hand just comes snaking up—and now Tiger's thrashing turns to desperate frenzy as the Incipitor forces his fingers into the seventh prince's mouth, fumbling for just a few seconds before outright seizing the other man's tongue. Animal panic sets in. Tiger bites down with all the force he can muster; unlike Panther, his teeth stop at the bone, failing to cleave all the way through, and just like before the Incipitor's only reaction is a faint hiss of pleasure. Now Tiger's mouth is overflowing with blood, and Daiga is poised to rip the tongue right out from his throat, and all the while the Incipitor's eyes—irregardless of the smile below—are painfully wide and bulging, all but throbbing with a hatred so visceral that Tiger can hardly stand to bear witness.

  "There were two purposes," says Daiga, now—the words low and slithering, slinking their way out from between his lips—"to your little speech. I get that now. The first; that you might somehow stall me until help arrived. As though—" he jerked the prince very close, close enough that their noses were brushing together, and that Tiger could smell even clearer the rot on the other man's breath, "—there is any living soul on this earth who could possibly save you from me. And, secondly—" the Incipitor's grip tightens even further; Tiger can literally hear his skin stretching and straining, "—that you wanted to goad me into killing you, rather than taking you in."

  Tiger's vision was darkening; his limbs were going slack, and he perceived the world now only through blurred streaks of scarlet fire. Even his deepest limbic functions were settling down like a cat circling its bed, languidly eager for the long sleep to come. Tiger had no such revelatory internal dialogue as Panther had experienced—he had almost no capacity for thought at all. Daiga was wringing the words from his brain like a wet rag.

  "Which is honestly very funny," Daiga goes on, still with that same horribly pleasant expression upon his face, "because you then proceed to go on this whole smug diatribe about how I'm just an instrument, a tool, an weapon that literally cannot disobey. You said it yourself, little Sorcerer—I do exactly as I'm told. That is why you will not die here; that is why you will not provoke me into doing anything other than exactly what I was put here to do. That is why I am Shalashar's most perfect instrument, and that is why," the Incipitor drags him even closer, their faces all but mashing together and their eyeballs nearly touching, "nobody, Tiger, is coming to save you."

  And that's when Panther's boot connects with Daiga's skull.

  Bone cracks aloud; in one smooth motion, Panther drops low from that flying kick and instantly pivots to a spinning sweep of the leg that—unlike their last encounter—fully succeeds in putting the Incipitor flat on his ass. And then, before Daiga can even begin to move or react or blink, Panther's sabre leaps like a flash of lightning from its sheath—and then, just as quickly, the point of her blade is hovering mere inches from the Incipitor's nose.

  Panther isn't stupid. Panther knows not to be too hasty, not to push for the kill on a seemingly-defenseless Daiga. She knows that Daiga is never defenseless, and that he'd gladly take a sword through the face just to put his own through her heart. So, instead, she just holds him at bay, whilst a gasping and choking Tiger drags himself to relative safety behind her.

  Above, the sun continues to set. The apex of that dying light slinks along, abandoning Daiga entirely. Now Panther is the one bathed in that hellish crimson; Panther who looms above, a red-soaked avatar of devastation and death. A woman resurrected, who clawed free of those unending black depths and who stands now with jaw set and sword ready and eyes as smooth and flat as polished river stones. She is utterly composed.

  It is to this otherwordly figure that Daiga looks up, with a sly smile stretching itself across his face once more, and declares: "Finally."

  "Hey," says Panther—to Tiger, behind her, without looking.

  "Hey," Tiger coughs back, pounding his chest and hawking up a glob of bloody phlegm. "It is very good to see you."

  "Same," says Panther, eyes never leaving the Incipitor.

  "This is great," says Daiga, happily, rising and uncoiling now like a serpent rearing to strike. Panther takes one brisk, singular step backwards. "Seriously, I feel like it's my birthday. I'm getting everything I ever wanted today." He tilts his head left and then right, audibly cracking his neck one way and then the other. A trickle of fresh blood runs down from the point where Panther's boot struck his skull; his stitch-scars ooze something translucent, watery, and rancid in odor "So many good fights today. So many people I've killed in so many different ways. But—this? The two of you at once?" Daiga laughs out loud, spreads his arms wide. "This is what I've really been waiting for."

  "Tiger," says Panther, calmly. "How's your Sorcery?"

  "Bad," the prince rasps, leaning bodily against a tree for support. "He Negated me. Was already near my limit."

  "Can you still—"

  "Yes," Tiger interjects, very quickly. Rapidly nodding his head. "I can. Soon. I just...I need a moment. I need a clear head. I—I just need ninety seconds," he resolves, suddenly, with a surge of resolve in his voice. "Ninety seconds, Panther. Count on it."

  "It's been a long, hard week," Daiga drawls, now pacing eagerly back and forth. The lion stalking his infernal jungle with eyes glued greedily upon his prey. "But that's okay. This is my reward."

  "Got it," says Panther. "As soon as you're able, Tiger, you use it. Don't worry about hitting me." A brief pause, then: "Just kill that prick. No matter what."

  "Alright!" Daiga exclaims, clapping his white-gloved hands together. His pace comes to an abrupt halt; he pivots on his heel, turns to face his opponents fully, and now with slow-savoring pleasure does his hand drift down to the sword waiting eagerly upon his belt. "That's enough chatting, I think."

  The Incipitor looks his opponent dead in the eye. He smirks. He prompts: "Ready for round two?"

  To which Panther doesn't bother to reply. She just draws one foot back, does the same with her sword-arm, tucks the hilt into her right shoulder-pocket and levels the point of her blade like a crosshair, right between the madman's eyes. And she waits.

  "Good girl," Daiga sneers.

  And then he takes one step forward, one step into the red, one step into her world—and then their blades turn to blurs of crimson and showers of glowing rubies, clashing together no less than thirty-three times in a blistering prologue of almost entirely small, subtle movements of the wrist. For the first few seconds, Panther and Daiga's duel is the very platonic ideal of swordcraft.

  And then Daiga turns it all to outright savagery. He intentionally takes a long gouge to his shoulder so as to barrel right through Panther's guard, to step right over the invisible central line that exists between two respectable fighters, and that is the moment that their duel truly begins. Daiga comes in on full, gleeful offense, laughing and slavering and swinging his sword all about like a madman possessed, and his eyes are all but overflowing with truly esurient malice.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Once, Daiga might have overwhelmed her right then and there. But Panther has had the time and the hindsight to recalibrate her expectations; Panther understands, now, that Daiga is no opponent to be bested. Daiga is a storm to be weathered. And so she immediately draws back, kiting the Incipitor's maddened aggression, using the sabre's length to keep him forever at arm's reach. Thirty-three seconds, she thinks to herself, face impassive even as she is all but barely keeping pace. Thirty-four seconds. Thirty-five. "What's wrong?" the Incipitor crows, as their swords lock together and a whole spray of glowing metal issues forth. "You were fighting so passionately before!" Steel grinds against steel for just a moment longer—in a clash of strength that Panther knows she cannot win—and then Panther's trick-blade springs free of her bracer, and she lunges, and in the blink of an eye she very nearly slashes the Incipitor's throat wide open.

  "Don't you dare disappoint me now!" Daiga bellows, leaping away to avoid that untimely execution and then racing right back into the fray. "Come on!" He steps in very close with sword arcing just behind, and harries her with a wide-sweeping feint that transforms—without warning—into a whip-crack little jab that nearly plucks her eye from its socket. "Come the fuck on!" the Incipitor roars, leaping straight up with an audacious two-handed overhead slash. Panther evades the blow by only a hideously narrow distance; Daiga strikes empty ground with an animalistic snarl, then darts after a back-stepping Panther with his sword ripping sparks against the floor and his laughter turning to a hyena's feral, frenzied pitch.

  For all that he is a reckless and impulsive fighter, Daiga is also shockingly canny when it comes to which injuries he will and will not allow. On the surface he appears a hyper-offensive madman; midway through their second duel, however, Panther has finally come to understand that this careless manner of fighting belies an astonishingly depth of knowledge and skill. Daiga knows exactly how to leverage his unique advantage—his immunity, if not outright affinity for pain—and he never, ever takes the bait. Never overextends himself. Never leaves himself fully exposed. And Panther, well—Panther would tell you herself that she is no swordswoman. This style of fighting is far from her forté—the sabre isn't even her preferred weapon! And so she is backpedaling, almost sprinting backwards now, parrying and deflecting with sabre and bracer both, sustaining so many cuts in so many places that she hardly even notices them anymore. Everything hurts.

  Seventy seconds. Tiger, outside that world of red death, braces himself against a row of fat-leafed ferns. He is hunched but upright; his breathing comes fast, and shallow, and always with great pain. He is bleeding profusely from both his eyes.

  Seventy-five seconds. Tiger watches as a flagging Panther is forced to grip her sword with both hands, and as every parry sends both their blades ringing shrill cries of death soon to come. She is steadily losing ground.

  Eighty seconds. Tiger's mind is a jumbled mess. It's like trying to get a spyglass into focus; he twists this way, that way, tries to force the lenses of his own thoughts to align. Thick fog obscures it all.

  Eighty-five seconds. Daiga knocks Panther down; she scrabbles upright, narrowly deflects a killing blow, hurls one of her throwing knives in last-minute desperation. It embeds itself in Daiga's shoulderblade and he does not even flinch.

  Tiger has to save her. He has to. He can't watch Panther die! So the seventh prince balls one trembling hand to a fist and pounds it against his chest, hard, and immediately there comes a torrent of bile avulsing itself from his throat. He hunches, gagging, his mouth tasting only of bitter acid, and at the moment of impact he felt what could only have been a cracked rib shifting inside him. Tiger very nearly passed out on the spot.

  But compared to the pain of Negation, well.

  This was nothing.

  Still enough to matter, though. Still enough to purge Tiger's mind of all that accursed fog and set his focus razor-sharp, adrenaline-clear. For just a few brief moments, then, Tiger is completely and utterly lucid. And that is all the time that a prodigious Sorcerer of the oldest Shalasharan dynasty will ever need.

  His right eye bursts into flame.

  Ninety seconds.

  "Panther!" she hears him shout—and stars above, she is quick to respond. Panther explodes into motion, charging the Incipitor head-on with a diagonal slash that he is forced to block, and now once more their swords are locked and glowing and he is laughing and she is not, she is not saying a word, her eyes are ice and her face is naught but sheer implacable granite. She knows her role very well indeed.

  "Fulminate!" Tiger howls, his eye a pillar of crackling flame—to which Daiga, magnificent Daiga, takes one hand off his sword and crosses his arm over his chest and replies, once more, "Null."

  And so with one hand, the Incipitor holds Panther effortlessly at bay, and with the other he snuffs out Tiger's fire and sends the unfortunate prince crumpling to his knees. And so, that is that.

  That is the moment.

  That is when Casso Vos steps out from Daiga's shadow.

  He makes no sound and disturbs no air; even to Panther's eyes, it as though the old mercenary has simply materialized from nowhere at all. His knife is already racing for the back of Daiga's neck—to kill, and to kill instantly—and his face, once more, is nothing more or less than a mask of cold focus.

  In that moment Daiga's hyperactive mind takes small note of the way Panther's eyes flick just ever-so-slightly to one side, as though looking at something just behind him, and so it is on pure electrified instinct that Daiga whirls around just in time, just as the knife arrives to make final rendezvous with the soft flesh of his throat.

  And then, without thinking, with absolutely no other option to preserve his own life—Daiga just tucks his chin and bites down on the oncoming blade. Hard.

  And so the knife halts.

  And so the moment passes.

  "Huh," says Casso, in the cadence of a man for whom nothing is ever a surprise. And then immediately he abandons the knife and ducks straight down, avoiding a retaliatory slash, darting in and circling around and evading two more swings of the Incipitor's sword before getting in close, putting two fingers to the exposed flesh of the other man's wrist, and saying—quite deadpan—"Sightless."

  Casso's eye flickers; Daiga's eyes go black. So too does his vision. Suddenly the Incipitor sees nothing; suddenly Panther and Casso are leaping upon him with knives gleaming and hungry, each moving in perfect concert to put down this maddened beast as swiftly as they possible can. They know that they have exactly thirty-three seconds to do so.

  And there was, really, a world where this might have worked.

  But not this one. Not this world, wherein Daiga has been fighting half-blinded from the Empty Man's poison all this time. Wherein the meager glint of Casso's conduit leaks just enough Aia that Daiga can still smell him. Wherein Panther has been so obsessively the focus of Daiga's thoughts that he can read her footsteps plain as day. Wherein Panther and Casso are both so assured of their opponent's blindness that they each, in small and unconscious ways, are leaving themselves vulnerable.

  Even so—even as Panther and Casso, two veteran fighters, run headlong to their own doom—we can forgive them, almost, for this brief moment of indiscretion. Because Daiga, rain or shine, is always smiling—so why should the vicious, knowing little smirk spreading across his face register anything out of the ordinary?

  Toscht is done.

  Honestly, that's underselling it. Toscht should be dead. But somehow, by some sheer single-minded force of will, still has the sellsword managed to force himself along in pursuit of the Incipitor's ruinous path. Limping, at first. Then crawling. And now just dragging his failing body along on ruined legs, dragging himself by forward only by grace of his sole remaining arm.

  It has been a long, arduous journey—here, at the twilight of Toscht's life. And now it is done. Right at the finish line his body has collapsed; his arm has gone limp, his fingers slack. Now he can only watch through the narrow slant of the doorway as Daiga falls upon Panther and Casso with a madman's crowing laugh, his sword turning to a whirlwind of silver and fresh-spilled blood. He sees them struggle; sees Panther reeling, caught off-guard, sees Daiga's sword gouge diagonal across her chest. Hears Tiger's panicked shout, sees Daiga backhand the prince without even sparing a glance. Sees Casso alone, knife flipping back and forth between his hands, sees the hunch of the old man's shoulders and knows he is about to cut his losses and abandon them all to their fates. Toscht sees all of this, through the murky lens of his dying mind, and he understands. And there is nothing he can do.

  And then, from behind, there comes a voice:

  "That looks like it hurts."

  There were no footsteps. No sound. No indication of any other presence at all. And Toscht's puzzlement is just enough to cut through the murk of his fading awareness; with great effort and a great deal of pain he props himself up on one elbow, now, then forces his dying husk of a body to roll and lands upon his back with a squelch of wet gore. And then, whilst bleeding his life away, Baras Toscht looks up—right into eyes like molten gold.

  "Good evening," says the stranger, with a tip of his wide-brimmed hat. "They are both going to die soon."

  He's tall. That's all Toscht can even think to think. This odd visitor looms overhead like a pillar of burnt char, like some towering stygian obelisk with two gilded suns at the very apex of it all. He feels impossible, somehow, this stranger. As though he cannot possibly exist.

  "Tiger will die first," the stranger tells him. His voice is the smoothest and lowest of baritones, equal parts a rumble and a hum and a hiss. "He will die to save Panther's life. Then Daiga will murder Panther also. He will cut her from here—" the stranger reaches up, traces a line from his left ear to the center of his throat, "—to here. It is not going to happen quickly."

  Toscht's mind reels. His heart lurches. "No—" he chokes, gasps, amidst a spray of blood and spittle. "They—can't—!"

  "Oh, yes," the stranger nods, with oily sympathy. "You could have saved them if you moved faster, maybe. But now it is too late. Your body is a ruin and you can do nothing. You have failed to fulfill your role." The stranger's lips part in a grotesque imitation of a smile. "How sad."

  "How do you...know this...?" Toscht demands, blearily, even as his stomach sinks like a stone. Even as everything is fading away—everything, save for those incandescent golden eyes.

  "I am The Eye," the stranger hums. "I see it all."

  Now, as Tiger and Panther fight for their lives just beyond the doorway, does that looming visitor lower himself down to one knee. Those twin suns draw ever-nearer; now all Toscht's vision is drowned beneath the shadow of the stranger's hat. Now the whole world is going warm and dark and very, very quiet. And now the stranger asks him: "Would you like some help?"

  Toscht knows enough to know that any deal made with an individual such as this can only end in certain death. It is never a fair bargain, never an even trade. It is always a trap. A death sentence.

  And yet. Toscht knows his role. Toscht has never been afraid to die.

  So Toscht looks right up into those smouldering eyes and he demands, through a mouthful of blood, "What's your price?"

  "No price," the stranger answers, smoothly "This one is on the house."

  Toscht's brow furrows. He tilts his head, jerks his one remaining thumb towards that cracked doorway. "Why not just...save 'em...yourself...?" he slurs, for even on death's door he is still no fool. "If that's...what you really want..."

  The stranger lets out a series of rumbling, undulating, low-clicking little sounds that could only have been his impression of a chuckle. "You are wrong. I do not care if Tiger and Panther live. I only want to see you die, in pain, for a foolish reason. And I want you to choose it." He leans in even closer, then, allows his smile to widen, and extends a hand to the dying sellsword.

  "So, Baras," says The Eye, "what do you say?"

  Toscht realizes, on some level, that there is no real choice. There is no fork in the road, no twin paths branching off into the future. He knows the shape of his own soul. He knows what's at stake. He knows what he's been hired to do. And he knows, now, at the very twilight of his life, that he won't hesitate for even a second to do it.

  So he doesn't. He just reaches up, with one trembling arm, and grasps the stranger's hand.

  "I know my role," Toscht growls, through grit teeth. "So, whatever it is you're gonna do..." He surges, forces himself upright onto one trembling knee, and looks his opposite dead in the eye, and tells him—with perfect clarity—"Just get the fuck on with it already."

  For a moment, then, the stranger says nothing at all.

  And then Toscht begins to change.

  After that, everything occurs in slow motion.

  Panther is the first to see him—Baras Toscht, looking like nothing short of the living dead. Baras Toscht with whole pieces of himself hacked away and outright missing; his left arm shorn clean off, the stump gushing freely even now. Baras Toscht sprinting headlong across the atrium with one singular blade gleaming silver and scarlet in his hand, somehow faster than any man in his condition should ever have been able to move.

  It is Panther alone who catches his eye, as he passes, for just the briefest of moments. And there is a strange clarity to his gaze; a certain tranquility, perhaps, or even peace. This moment stretches on for an infinity.

  And then it passes, and Toscht hits Daiga with the force of a man five times his weight. His sight just recently restored, the Incipitor's eyes go wide—blood spurts from his open mouth, and the point of Toscht's sword bursts gorily from his chest—and then Daiga is gone, swept right off his feet as Toscht carries them both all the way across the atrium.

  Ahead, there looms a stained-glass mural: the crescent-moon symbol of the Yellow Equinox, depicted in a shade of jaundiced ochre from which there emanate thirty-three spokes of scarlet and crimson melange. It is an auspicious icon, equal parts a plea to the unknowable minds of the Other Side and an outright lamentation of the ineffable, of the inconceivable forces of the universe writ large. It is in many regards a monument to the futility of your brief, fragile little lives. It is a dark thing to reckon indeed.

  Together, Toscht and Daiga hit that monument dead-center. There comes the briefest of pauses, wherein the glass turns to a whole scribbled spiderweb of cracks and canyons and valleys—and then it all just gives way. It is gone. The mural becomes naught but countless twinkling shards; the atrium is flooded with every color but red, with the whole spectrum of unfiltered sunset and cool, whispering evening air. The foliage turns to green and brown, and the brick to grey and black. All the world's hues are restored; in the end, only the blood remains as it was.

  Toscht and Daiga go right over the edge—and then, with not a sound, they simply cease to exist.

  For a moment, all Tiger and Panther can do is gape. Just gape, eyes wide, in the broken shadows of that atrium. And then it is Casso who barks out: "C'mon, damnit, let's go!"

  Tiger and Panther both whirl around. "But—" the former tries.

  "Whoever that was, he's dead and we're not," the old man snaps, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "Now shut your mouths and move, before the Vokians lock down this whole stars-damned city!"

  Toscht, whom they both knew and liked but never quite truly understood, is gone. Toscht no longer exists. So much has happened so quickly and at such a relentless pace; for Tiger and Panther both, the world is so loud and overwhelming and cluttered that they can hardly even begin to grapple with it all.

  But, in the end, what else can they do?

  They stick to the plan.

  They shut up, and they move.

  As the three of them depart, then, their harried footsteps gradually fading back to interminable silence, The Eye glances back at me and tips his hat in greeting. "Come, Truth-Teller," he says, with a trace of amusement in the subterranean rumble of his voice. "Are you not got to watch?"

  I had no desire to watch; I already knew full well the ugly thing that was going to happen below. But I did, anyway. I stepped over to that shattered stained glass-window and I peered down, an unspeaking and unseen observer, to witness the end of Baras Toscht.

  Daiga, too, was finished. Not dead—oh, no. Certainly not dead. But there was a sword rammed straight through his chest, on top of a dozen other grievous injuries, and now he'd fallen no less than three stories down upon a parapet of solid brick. It was Toscht who had cushioned his fall; Toscht who clung to his back even now, even with body broken and bruised, still twisting the blade and further marring the Incipitor's insides.

  Daiga knew. Daiga knew that in his current state it would be suicide to pursue his prey and so he physically could not. The byzantine rules and restrictions of Yauju Daret's conditioning had Daiga bound in check; he was simply to wait here, and play dead, and wait for help to arrive. And so that was exactly what he was going to do. And so that was why, as he rose with great difficulty to his feet, that Daiga's mind was ablaze with anger beyond all reckoning. That was why he roared like a raw-throated animal and sprinted straight backwards, slamming Toscht hard against the nearest wall once, twice, three times before finally the sellsword's hand came free. The Incipitor whirls around, eyes bulging and teeth grinding, and puts fist to the other man's gullet with such force that Toscht immediately vomits up a gruesome melange of acid bile and thick, chunky gore. Another punch and the sellsword was on his hands and knees; a third kick snaps two ribs, and a fourth nearly caves in the dying man's skull. And oh, Toscht was dying now. Of that you could be certain. Even The Eye's ruinous gifts would carry him no further.

  "You," Daiga pants, circling overhead like a vulture, "stupid fucking mongrel." His fists are clenched so tight that his palms weep trails of blood. "Twice now I've failed, because of you!" He delivers another brutal kick to the side; this time Toscht actually cries aloud, though the sound is drowned out beneath a terrible cracking of bone. "You've wasted your life, you fool! You've traded yourself for nothing!"

  "Yeah, maybe," Toscht manages to admit, chuckling wryly, as Daiga bends down and scoops up the battered remains of his sword. "But...hey. No matter who you are, when it's your time to go..." the sellsword's hand drifts down, unseen, to the knife concealed in his shoe, "...you just gotta go. Just the way it is. S'true for all of us, Daiga. Even you."

  The Incipitor raises his sword high; the blade flashes bright against the flames of the setting sun. "What a pathetic little axiom," he snarls, face locked into a mask of rigid fury.

  Toscht looks up, without fear—not at Daiga, no, but at the sky. At that whole vast, sprawling expanse. His hand curls tight around the handle of his knife. The clouds stretch on and on, forever, immortal and unending, and he is so very small beneath them. His hand does not tremble.

  "You think so?" asks Toscht, into the cool winds of dusk. "I find it kind of comforting."

  And then, with no warning at all, the sellsword leaps up—just as Daiga's blade comes scything down.

  The sword meets with its target. The knife never even comes close.

  And that is simply that.

  End Credits Theme