Death Cultivator 2
Author: Eden Hudson
Date: 2020-11-24 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Science Fiction
Description: Fight for your Soul. Death cultivator Grady Hake thought his problems would disappear when he and his friends became members of the strongest gang on the prison planet, but all it did was thrust them into the kill-or-be-killed world of the Eight-Legged Dragons. As Hake undergoes the trials of his gang, he'll discover there's a deadlier force on the prison planet than the death cultivator, even deadlier than the Angel of Death, and it wants his soul. Learning to cloak his lethal Spirit attacks in oblivion might help Hake rise through the ranks, but it won't keep him and his friends alive...or k
Publisher: Shadow Alley Press

Table of Contents

Summary

Shadow Alley Press Mailing List

Bullet Train to Bogland

Train Robbery

Bogland Station

Bog Ferals

Corpse Fire

Midnight Encounter

Versus Heavenly Contrails

Fan Boat Ride

Sudden Death

Immortal Weapon

Campfire Scene

Heartchamber 2

Fight Tower

Easy Come, Easy Go

The Catch

Spirit Cloaking

Dreams and Errands

Grasping at Oblivion

Versus Glass Hammers

First Blood

Soaking Room Floor

Finding Oblivion

Broken Pieces

Survival Mode

Negotiations

Don’t Get Hit

Versus Stone Jackal

First Win

Resonant Cultivation

Staying Hungry

Versus Parasitic Twins

Return from Seclusion

Healing and Restoration

Find the Reaper

The Newest Eight-Legged Dragon

Enemy Callback

Beauties vs. Beasts

Guns Blazing

Clear the Tower

Angel of Death

Fight for the Scythe

Lost Mirror Spirit

To the Slaughter

Last-Ditch Battle Royale

Mass Grave

Buried Alive

Last Light, Last Breath

Fallout

Rise and Shine

Money in the Bank

Solitary Confinement

Ride off into the Night Sun

Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

Acknowledgements

Books by Shadow Alley Press

Books by Black Forge

LitRPG on Facebook

GameLit and Cultivation on Facebook

Even More Cultivation on Facebook

Copyright

About the Author

About the Publisher

Summary

FIGHT FOR YOUR SOUL.

Death cultivator Grady Hake thought his problems would disappear when he and his friends became members of the strongest gang on the prison planet, but all it did was thrust them into the kill-or-be-killed world of the Eight-Legged Dragons.

As Hake fights his way through the Dragons’ grueling trials, he soon discovers there’s a deadlier force on the prison planet than a death cultivator, even deadlier than the Angel of Death, and it wants his soul. Learning to cloak his lethal Spirit attacks in oblivion might help Hake rise through the ranks of the Eight-Legged Dragons, but it won't keep him and his friends alive...or his soul in one piece.

Mob Psycho 100 meets Yakuza 0 in this sci-fi wuxia cultivation adventure from eden Hudson.

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Bullet Train to Bogland

I SAW ENOUGH WESTERNS in my last life to know that you don’t want to be the guy arriving on a train at the beginning of a movie. The tough hero-types who save the day always rock up on horses or limp into town after getting ambushed, head straight for the saloon, and order a stiff drink. Dudes who roll into town on the train are the soft city types who can’t figure out which end of their shiny new gun to point at the bad guys.

That said, after a week of gang wars, running for my life from the small-time outfit indenturing me, and just barely surviving a gang riot, the bullet train through the Wilderness Territories was a pretty chill way to cross the six hundred and fifty miles from Jade City to the Bogland. We were able to kick back and read or watch stuff on our HUDs, get snacks from the dining car, and nap on and off. And I got to hang out with Kest.

“Check this out,” she said, leaning over the armrest between us and holding her HUD out to me.

Normally, people wore their HUDs on one wrist and typed or swiped with their opposite hand, but Kest had lost her HUD arm in the tournament. Now that limb ended just below her shoulder, the black script-healing tattoos where it’d been torn off still vivid and dark against her tan skin. To compensate, she usually squeezed her HUD between her knees while she worked on it or propped it against something.

“If I go with the hand flip-down,” she said, “I could build a revolver to pop up from the back of the wrist. That would come in useful in gang war and other combat situations.”

I took the HUD from her to stabilize it against the shaking of the train and looked down at the blue-and-white wireframe schematic rotating on the screen.

“That would look really cool,” I said, because I knew exactly zero about this biotech stuff. Then I remembered her magnetic slag trick from the tournament. “But what if they have a Metal affinity on their side, too? Couldn’t they just melt your bullets like you did to the Bailiff’s?”

“If I don’t put a protective layer on them as they’re being fired, they could,” she said, taking the HUD back. She pinched the band between her knees and started swiping at the screen, the black lace in her opal eyes shifting. “Same for the arm. This is still the brainstorming phase, though. It’s hard to say how much of this—if any—will make it into the build. Or how much of what I think will be useful will actually come in handy once I’ve accepted a position with the Technols. I’ll upgrade as needed. I considered having multiple arms to switch between, but that wouldn’t be ideal.”

“You could just store them in your ring,” I said, nodding to the thin metal band around her finger. It didn’t look like much to the naked eye, but once you switched to Ki-sight, you could see the Black Hole Spirit artificery that allowed objects to be stored inside.

“Even if the storage ring came with infinite space, there are going to be lots of situations where calling the arm I needed out, detaching the old one, and attaching the new one would take time I might not have. Given the touch-and-go state of most criminal activity, I’d rather be as prepared as possible ahead of time.”

She paused typing and took a drink from my Coffee Drank. That surprised me for a second. But Kest got that way when she was working on a build, not really attentive to the outside world. And to be fair, the can had been sitting in the cupholder in the armrest between us, so she could’ve forgotten that hers was in the cupholder on her left side.

I didn’t point it out. Drinking after Kest didn’t bother me. It was kind of cool that her lips had been where my mouth was not that long ago.

“Of course the ideal arm would conceal any illegal components in case I got stopped by the Confederated Planetary Authorities,” she said, half talking to herself. “I should take another look at Warcry’s leg when they get back. No one would suspect a piece of junk like that.”

“You’re really embracing this criminal activity thing,” I said. When I’d met Kest and her twin brother, they’d been scavenging from dead bodies because it was the only way they could support themselves on Van Diemann without joining one of the gangs that ran the planet.

“Not overtly.” She shrugged. “I’ve been messaging with the Technol who made that offer at the bazaar, making sure I can keep my clean record if I accept. She said they have special positions for third-genners as go-betweens with the non-prison planets, jobs where you’re not technically breaking any law, even if you’re helping someone else break it. There are ways to use CPA law against itself if you look hard enough. Sort of like me selling to Naph even though he’s a smuggler.”

I nodded. Kest and Rali had been born on Van Diemann, the children of the child of a political prisoner from their family’s home planet, so they’d had a lot of time to figure out how to get around the restrictions that would keep them from someday buying a ticket to somewhere else in the galaxy.

“Besides,” she went on when I didn’t say anything, “I was never going to get us off this trash heap scavenging. Doing it for sixteen years, I barely saved enough for one ticket. Sixteen more...” She sighed. “That would be a long time to wait.”

She sounded defeated, which I’d never heard from her before. I wanted to make her feel better, but before I could think of anything to say, Rali and Warcry came back from the dining car. Their arms were full of brightly colored cellophane baggies.

“We got food,” Warcry said, kicking the fold-down table so that it dropped into place between our four seats. He dumped his bags, then dropped into his seat.

Rali did the same with his armload. A couple bags slid off the mountain, and I caught the ones that dropped off my side.

“That’s a lot of food.” I turned one over and inspected the picture on the label. Looked like neon green shoestring potatoes. AlgaeFrize! the hot pink lettering screamed.

“A little for now, a little for the road.” Rali flicked his long hair out of his face with a jerk of his head and shoved a bag between his sister’s nose and her HUD screen until she grabbed it.

Kest frowned at the bag. “I thought you hated this mass-produced junk food stuff.”

“Yeah, because it’s full of impurities that can slow down or even impede your kishotenketsu advancement, and it tastes like an armpit,” Rali said. He squeezed his bulk past Warcry to the window seat.

“Don’t get him started, yeah?” Warcry said. “He complained about it the whole time we were picking stuff out.”

“But he still bought it,” I said.

“Technically Warcry handled the disgusting affair of exchanging fiat currency,” Rali said. “But it was all they had left in the dining car.” He eyed me and Warcry. “And given that the two most reckless members of our little band until yesterday had a healing script tattoo that would repair anything not immediately lethal, I thought it would be a good idea for me to infuse a bunch of whatever we could get our hands on with Healing Restoration.”

Kest blinked her lacy eyes. “Rali, were you planning ahead for once?”

“If you call attention to it, I’ll stop forever,” he said.

“Because it sounds like you were using logic and identifying patterns of behavior to plan for eventualities,” she teased. “It’s very Metal of you.”

He grinned and pointed at the bag in her hand. “Eat your lunch. I hunted and gathered myself to the bone for that.”

Things quieted down a little as we all dug into a bag. The AlgaeFrize weren’t quite as bad as Rali made them out to be, but they did have that extra-intense-fake-flavoring taste, and they left green residue on my fingertips like neon Cheetos.

“We’re almost the last passengers on the train,” Rali said, picking up another bag and closing his eyes. When I switched over to Ki-sight, his hands and chest glowed orange with Warm Heart Spirit. He was infusing the AlgaeFrize with his Healing Restoration ability. “I tried to strike up a conversation with the only guy besides us in the dining car, but he wasn’t interested.”

“Mantids never want to talk, do they?” Warcry tipped up his bag and dumped the last bits into his mouth. “I’ve done fights on their planet before. Dead silent, even during the big upsets. The only ones who ever say a word are their females, and only when they’re trying to talk you into fertilizing their eggs, then letting them eat your brains outta your skull.”

“You’ve been hit on by giant insects?” I asked, wiping some of the green AlgaeFrize dust on my jeans.

“Jealous, grav? Win a couple dozen Intergalactic Fighting Tourneys and they’ll be clickin’ in your ear, too. They probably won’t even care about your face,” he said, gesturing at me.

I laughed. After taking a couple poisoned thorn-whips to the face at the tournament, I was kind of scarred up, with a handful of pale barbwire-looking slashes across my left cheek. Could’ve been worse, though. Without the healing from the OSS script tattoo, my face might’ve still been scabbed over and festering.

Of course, Warcry was the only one douche enough to bring the scars up. My first instinct was to ask him how the ladies were going to feel about the explosion of glass shrapnel he’d had taken below the belt. But since I was working on thinking before I spouted off to friends I wanted to keep, I went with the softball instead.

“Mating with mantids? No wonder you’re braindead.”

Warcry pointed at me. “Oi, I got the offers, but I never agreed.”

“Guess it’s an honor just to be nominated,” I said, which none of them got because Earth humor.

“Female mantids eat the entire head,” Kest said absently, her nose already back in her HUD. “They don’t leave half-braindead mates walking around.”

“I don’t know,” Rali said. “That male in the dining car looked like he was wearing that hat to hide something.”

“Didn’t seem quite right, did he, big man?” Warcry said, swiping neon green crumbs from his mouth. “Maybe he got away quick-like after the first bite.”

My Winchester’s alarm buzzed. I shut it off.

“How much time do we have left?” Kest asked, taking another sip from my Coffee Drank.

“Eighty-four hours,” I said.

We had three and a half days left to get to Heartchamber 2 before Warcry and I got dropped from the Eight-Legged Dragons, but I was still paranoid we’d miss the deadline, so I had set up an alarm on my HUD to go off every twelve hours and keep us on track.

“That should be plenty of time.” Kest swiped out of her schematics and pulled up a map. “We’re only two stops away from Bogland Station, and from there, it’s just a day’s walk to the coordinates Biggerstaff sent you guys.”

I nodded. “It just seems like that’s probably misleading, though. He wouldn’t give us four days to get somewhere if it was easy. Especially not if this is the Eight-Legged Dragons’ test to see whether we’re worth investing in.”

“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?” Warcry said, kicking his seat back and putting his boots up on the table. His metal prosthetic grated against the wood as he shoved bags of AlgaeFrize out of the way to make room.

Kest started to take another drink of my Coffee Drank, then stopped.

“This is yours,” she said, shifting in her seat to face me. “Sorry. I think I’ve been drinking out of it this whole time.”

I shrugged. “No big deal.”

“I’ll get you a new one out of the storage ring,” she said.

“Really, it doesn’t bother me.” I took the can from her and drank some to prove it. A little thrill shot through the pit of my stomach at drinking after her. I set the can back in the armrest. “I’m just sorry you had to drink after my slobber.”

She snorted. “That’s a really gross way to say that. And it wasn’t slobbery. I would’ve noticed.”

“I don’t think you would have,” I joked. “I mean, you didn’t even notice that your can was in the other armrest.”

She elbowed me, trying not to smile, then went back to researching components for her biotech arm.

Warcry’s idea for a nap looked like a pretty good one, so I leaned my seat back and shut my eyes. With the excitement from surviving the OSS’s attack at the tournament and getting an affiliation with the Eight-Legged Dragons, none of us had felt like sleeping the night before, and that all-nighter was catching up to me.

Instead of dozing off, though, I mostly thought about Kest. Her picking the seat next to mine when we got on the train. Laughing about drinking out of my Coffee Drank can instead of being grossed out. Showing me her plans for a new arm when she hadn’t shown anybody else yet.

Maybe she just did all that stuff because we were friends, but it would’ve been cool if she liked me, like as more than a friend.

Train Robbery

THERE WAS TOO MUCH caffeine rushing through my veins to sleep, and all that Coffee Drank had to go somewhere, so eventually I gave up on napping and headed to the next car back to use the bathroom.

I was opening the door of the little compartment when a cold, serrated green blade hooked over my shoulder and around my throat.

“Reach for the sky, and place your hands flat against the restroom door,” a flat, insectile voice said. “I won’t hesitate, human, so do not test me.”

I stuck my hands on the bathroom door, looking down at my feet. Between them, I could see green insect legs and a swaying abdomen. I was being held up by a gigantic praying mantis.

“Transfer all your credits to my HUD, human, and you will remain in a single piece. Nod if you will comply.”

“I’m broke, man,” I said. “My last twenty credits went to buy my train ticket.”

Slow clicking as he thought this through. “Then you will place all valuables and non-valuables on the floor and kick them behind your back to me. Nod if you will comply.”

I nodded.

“Begin,” he said.

“I have to take my hands off the door,” I said. “Otherwise I can’t empty my pockets.”

“Do so,” the praying mantis said, “but with only one appendage. Leave the other planted.”

In my pocket, I clamped my hand around Hungry Ghost, the little grinning skull stone that stored Death Spirit for me, then sent Miasma into my neck to reinforce my throat. If my practice sessions with Kest were any indication, my reinforcement wasn’t strong enough to keep this guy from sawing my head off, but hopefully my next move would stop him before he could do any major damage.

I reached out with Dead Man’s Hand and found the praying mantis’s amber life point flickering in his thorax like a candle. When I grabbed hold of that amber flame, the mantis let out a wheezing hiss.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s me. There’s no defense against it, and it can move a lot faster than your arm can. So, either get your arm off my throat or get ready to die.”

The scythelike arm unhooked itself and carefully pulled back.

I turned around. The mantis’s eyes were huge and yellow and made of four or five segments each like tectonic plates. With those and the mandibles, the dude looked more alien than even some of the weirdest aliens I’d seen over the past month. There was no indication of emotion or thought in his face, just this weird insectile blankness.

His dirty cowboy hat had tipped a little to the side, and underneath, I could see what looked like a ragged edge to the chitin on the side of his head. Maybe Rali hadn’t been wrong about this dude having a bite out of his brain.

“Get to the farthest train car possible from this one,” I told him, “and get off at the next stop, no matter where you were headed.” Then it occurred to me why this guy probably was one of the last passengers we’d seen. “Wait. How many other people on the train did you stick up before me?”

“Six,” he said, in that flat voice.

“How many of them are still alive?”

“None.”

With that many new corpses, the train should’ve been a swimming pool of Miasma, but I hadn’t noticed any. Even if I had missed it, Hungry Ghost should’ve started sucking it down.

“Where are their bodies?” I asked.

The praying mantis’s head rotated smoothly on its axis, and he pointed an arm at the windows. “Defenestrated.”

“Then before you go, you can drop whatever you stole from them, too,” I said, nodding at the floor between us.

The praying mantis pulled a leather messenger bag from over his shoulder and dropped it to the floor with a clank.

“That is everything,” he said.

“Get lost,” I said.

He swayed as he headed for the door at the back of the train car. I didn’t let go of Dead Man’s Hand until the ginormous bug had disappeared through it.

On my way into the bathroom, I grabbed the bag and hooked it over my shoulder.

When I got back to our seats, I set the messenger bag on the table next to the last few bags of uninfused AlgaeFrize. Kest and Warcry stared at the leather bag, but Rali opened his eyes and looked up at me, his black eye-lace shifting from wide to thin and back. It seemed like a weirdly accusatory stare.

I didn’t sit down, just stuck my hands in my pockets. “So I kind of stole this from a dude who stole it from a bunch of other passengers he killed before he tried to steal stuff from me.”

“You did, yeah?” Warcry said like he didn’t believe me. “Where’d you stash this cove’s body?”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said.

“Sure you didn’t, Death cultivator,” the ginger sneered. “But here’s his stuff and here’s you, fine as you like.”

I shifted my weight. “I just told him to drop whatever he’d stolen and get lost.”

“I thought I tasted Miasma,” Rali said in a low voice. “Hake, you...didn’t kill him...did you?”

“No!” I threw up my hands and dropped into my seat. “Geez, I wouldn’t kill a dude for his bag.”

Warcry snorted. “What would you do it for, then, grav?”

“He killed like six people before me,” I said. “If I’d let him get away with all this crap, it would’ve been like he wasn’t getting in trouble at all for what he did.”

That didn’t stop Rali from staring at me some more. He was cool, but we didn’t always agree on stuff related to stealing from the dead, so it wasn’t a big surprise that we didn’t agree on stealing from a murderer.

Kest, on the other hand, was already digging through the bag.

“There’s some great stuff in here,” she said. “Some questionable stuff, too, but the valuables are top-tier.”

She laid out a thin business-card-sized rectangle of pale metal, a handful of Spirit stones, some physical credit coins, a silk fan, and a chunk of meteorite in one pile, then a little cheesecloth bag and a stick of bamboo with the character for LUCK carved into it in another. Between them, she set a glass flask of clear liquid labeled Lost Mirror in another pile.

“I’ve never heard of Lost Mirror elixir,” she said.

“I like the name,” Rali said, tipping the flask back to get a better look. “It’s got all sorts of haunting connotations.”

For a second, it looked like something moved inside the liquid, a flash of purple and white, but when my eyes tried to focus on it, there was nothing there.

“We should get a distiller to identify that before we try to use it,” I said. I had spent most of the past month as an indentured servant for the OSS’s distiller in Ghost Town, and he’d kept all his poisons interspersed with his real and counterfeit elixirs. Even with Ki-sight, you couldn’t tell which was which. Only another distiller would be able to figure it out.

“Wouldn’t open that on the train, neither.” Warcry tapped the silk fan. “It’s got a Wind Spirit construct on it. Probably something that blasts enemies back.”

Kest picked up the metal business card and turned it over, studying both sides.

“I would’ve thought you’d be more interested in the star iron, Kest,” Rali said.

“Star iron is everywhere.” She squinted at the card. “This is the first time I’ve ever seen platinum in person. It has some sort of information on it, but it’s not a book. It looks like...”

She frowned, then put the card up to her mouth and breathed on it. Thin script appeared etched in the metal surface, then disappeared as the condensation from her breath evaporated.

“What did it say?” I asked, leaning in.

“What I thought—‘Money in the bank,’” she said. “It’s a favor card. Probably from somebody powerful if it’s platinum.”

Rali’s eyebrows jumped up. “That mantis killed somebody with seriously high connections. Maybe they were on their way to retrieve a favor from the owner. Or maybe they got the card in exchange for taking the fall for a higher-up off planet, and they were going to retrieve it once they’d paid the sentence for him.”

I couldn’t help grinning. “What, is that just like an old sword legend you read?”

“No, it’s like the gangster dramas,” he said. “Not as good, but still entertaining.”

“And total nonsense,” Kest said.

Rali chuckled. “Yeah, total nonsense, but it’s still fun to see what the Confederated planets think gangs are like. Personally, I think the Big Five has them written as propaganda to romanticize themselves, sort of like recruiting tools.”

The train lurched. I grabbed the edge of the table to brace myself. The elixir flask slid off the corner of the table and smashed on the floor. A wisp of purple shimmered in the air before evaporating into nothingness.

“Guess we don’t have to worry about what was inside it,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the train’s screaming brakes.

Rali shrugged. “Fate takes care of itself.”

The car filled with heat and noise as we pulled into the second to last station on this line. Nobody was waiting on the platform to board.

The doors on the train slid open, and I watched out the window for the praying mantis to come out. It took so long that I started to think he wasn’t getting off, but finally he swayed off the train and through the rickety screen door into the station. A little tension I hadn’t noticed before drained out of my shoulders and gut knowing he was out of the picture.

Enemies who still live are not gone, only waiting, Hungry Ghost’s voice croaked in my head.

I flinched. Usually, the little grinning skull stone couldn’t talk to me unless I was touching it, but it was still in my pocket.

That guy wasn’t my enemy, I thought back to Hungry Ghost. Just some dick who wanted to rob me.

Death cultivator does not know the definition of ‘enemy.’

Was that a joke?

Hungry Ghost went silent with a feeling like somebody putting a hand in your face and walking off.

“Next stop, Bogland,” the conductor’s voice crackled through the speaker system. “Stand clear of the closing doors.”

The train wheezed back to life and crept out of the station, slowly getting back up to speed.

“So, Death cultivator,” Rali said, surprising me by using the same address Hungry Ghost always used, “what would you like to do with your ill-gotten gains?”

I shrugged. “Keep the Spirit stones, sell the rest? I don’t really need any of this stuff.”

“Except the favor card,” Kest said, pushing it across the table in front of me. “That’s worth more than all of us combined. Don’t let it out of your sight until we know who issued it.”

“If I’m hanging onto that, it’s just going in my pocket,” I told her.

She blinked at me, then took the card back. “When you need it, it’ll be in the storage ring.”

“I feel safer already,” I said. “If you guys want any of this stuff, you should take it. You can probably do something with the star iron meteorite, right, Kest?”

“You can always do something with star iron,” she said, putting that in the storage ring, too. “For the rest, I can see whether Naph’s back on Van Diemann yet. He could meet us for a buy.” She looked at Warcry. “He could probably bring new components or even a replacement prosthetic for you.”

“Oi, stumpy, in case you missed it, I ain’t the only one with a missing piece now, am I? You let me worry about getting around on what I got while you figure out the sound of one hand clapping.”

Kest sent him a flat glare, then swiped her HUD screen a couple times and tapped.

Canned applause erupted from the little speaker on the side.

That caught me so off guard that I forgot to be ticked at Warcry for being a jerk about Kest’s arm and laughed. Surprisingly, Warcry was grinning, too.

Kest raised her chin a little and tried not to look smug about winning that round.

“So, what about the rest of it?” she asked.

Warcry sat forward and scooped up the fan. “If nobody wants it, I’ll hang on to this.”

“It really sets off your eyes,” I said.

“Ah, piss off,” he said. “Anyway, ya never know when a Wind construct’ll come handy, do ya?”

“Rali?” I asked.

The heavy-set guy shook his head, flicking his long hair out of his face.

“You know how I feel about material goods, Hake,” he said. “I’ve got a good walking stick and good friends. What more does a man need?”

“Money for food,” Kest said.

Rali shrugged. “My twin usually pays for that.”

“A safe place to stay?” I suggested.

“Safety’s an illusion.”

“A bleedin’ challenge,” Warcry muttered, glaring down at the silk fan.

Rali smiled. “You speak my language with alarming regularity, Warcry.”

The ginger snorted and stuffed the fan into the cargo pocket of his pants.

“Offer’s open, big man,” he said. “Anytime, any day. Name the terms of the fight, and I’ll be there.”

Bogland Station

WHILE KEST MESSAGED back and forth with her smuggling contact, Rali meditated, and Warcry watched fights on his HUD. I gave sleep another shot. Eventually, the rocking of the train and droning of the tracks knocked me out.

I dreamed about Gramps sitting on the rusty trailer house steps, shivering. There was a blanket hanging off his shoulders, but you could see the dark red smears all over his shirt and pajama pants. Cops milled around, asking him questions, while a paramedic took his blood pressure. Gramps stared past them, answering absently. He was watching another paramedic at the end of our carport while she loaded a gurney with a body bag on it into the ambulance. The lights on top of the boxy vehicle flashed purple and white instead of blue and red.

I lurched awake, my breath hung up in my chest. Rali and Kest were too focused on what they were doing to notice, but Warcry looked my way. Before he could say anything, I got up and headed toward the exit at the rear of the car. My throat hurt like I might start crying or screaming, and the bathroom seemed like a good place to hide until I got myself under control.

In the dirty little cubicle, I braced my arms on the walls so the swaying of the bullet train wouldn’t knock me over. I glared into the green eyes in the tarnished square of mirror over the sink.

“Get over it,” I told myself. “It was just a stupid dream.”

Usually when I didn’t have a choice in something, I tried to shove it out of my brain and not think about it anymore. Crying over what you lost doesn’t bring it back. Even my dad had understood that, and he wasn’t some genius philosopher, just a loser drug dealer with a dead wife. I was stuck in this universe, so I shouldn’t be crying over losing Gramps. This wasn’t any different than when Mom OD’d or Dad got sent down for dealing. I had to keep moving forward and focusing on what was in front of me instead of thinking about stuff I could never get back. This was my life now. End of story.

Big surprise, that pep talk didn’t make me feel better, but the train lurched unexpectedly and threw me against the far wall, which worked well enough as a distraction.

Screeching and clacking filled the bathroom as the train put on the brakes.

“Last stop,” came the conductor’s voice over the speaker system. “Bogland.”

I glanced at the mirror one more time to make sure I looked normal, then headed back to our car.

Rali had climbed into the window seat I’d been in, and he was staring out with a huge grin on his face. The lace in his eyes was so thick that they were almost black.

“Hake, it’s raining!” he yelled when he saw me.

Sure enough, big dark clouds had blocked out the day suns, and now that we were stopped, you could hear the downpour on the roof.

Kest jumped up and grabbed my hand.

“Come on, let’s go!” she said, pulling me down the aisle to the opening doors.

As soon as we stepped onto the platform, the icy cold cloudburst drenched us. Kest giggled like a little kid and spun me around.

“It’s the rainy season!” she yelled over the pounding of the rain on the station’s tin roof. “I can’t believe we got here during the rainy season! Isn’t this great?”

I laughed. “Yeah. Great and wet.”

Rali hopped out onto the platform behind us. He stuck his arms out wide and tipped his head back, trying to catch some of the droplets in his mouth.

“Oh man,” he said, swiping wet hair out of his face. “You just can’t beat rain straight out of the sky.”

Growing up in the Rust Flats around Ghost Town, they’d only seen a couple rains a year, so it was no wonder they were excited about it. I’d come from Missouri, where it rained pretty regularly, but after a month out in the desert with them, it was kind of nice to be standing out in the rain again.

Warcry was the only one who looked like he wasn’t enjoying himself. He sheeted rainwater off his buzzed head.

“Sure, it’s fun now,” he muttered, limping on his locked-up prosthetic to a bench under the station’s overhang. “Won’t be when we’re two days down the road and wishing our clothes would dry out already, will it?”

“Can’t you just flame on and dry your clothes out?” I asked him.

He stared at me for a second, mouth open. Then he snapped, “It don’t work like that.”

Kest’s HUD buzzed, and she spent a second juggling it one-handed while she opened her message.

“Naph can’t meet us out here. He’s not allowed in shared Eight-Legged Dragon-slash-Heavenly Contrail territory.” She lowered her HUD and turned to Warcry. “So that’s a no to an off-planet prosthetic. Let me overhaul your knee real quick—see if I can rig up something so the joint will move again—then we’ll get going.”

With minimal grumbling, Warcry let her take his knee apart and put it back together.

While they were doing that, Rali and I looked around Bogland Station. The bullet train’s tracks had been built up on a high trestle to keep it out of the water that stretched out in every direction, and the station was up on stilts at the edge of a cluster of raised shacks. Elevated boardwalks stretched between the houses so you could make your way around the little settlement without getting your feet wet.

“Can you imagine,” Rali asked, looking out at the wetland settlement, “if you lived in a place where you had to build your house up off the ground because half the year it would flood?”

“If you wanted to go for a swim, you could just hop off your front porch,” I said.

Blue-white Metal Spirit strobed and crackled as Kest welded something. Rali and I both put a hand up in that direction to shield our eyes.

“That’s how it’s supposed to be on Selk,” he said. “From the pictures you see, the planet’s mostly water.”

Which explained why Selkens like him and Kest were amphibious.

“How weird was it growing up on Van Diemann?” I asked him. “I mean, this place doesn’t exactly match your biology.”

Rali shrugged. “If you’ve never had it, you can’t miss it.”

“Think you guys’ll ever visit Selk?” I asked.

“That’s a worry for someone who knows the future. If I end up there, whatever. If I don’t, also whatever.” He stuck a hand in the runoff from the roof, letting it splatter on his palm. “Kest won’t go to Selk, though. Not if she can help it.”

I glanced back at the benches. “Why not?”

“Too much chance of running into our dad,” he said.

My eyebrows jumped up. “He’s there? From what you guys said, I figured he was still on Van Diemann somewhere.”

Rali shook his head. “He went back when we were really young, took some kind of fealty oath or something that granted him a pardon. He said he’d send for me and Kest when he got there, but I guess that never panned out. Anyway, Kest took Mom’s side on the whole thing and got kind of hung up thinking of him as a traitor to the family. She says she wouldn’t have gone if Dad did send for her.”

That I could understand, but it didn’t sound like Rali did.

So I asked him, “What about you?”

The big guy leaned on his walking stick. “I bear him no ill will. Some people think they have to play by certain sets of rules to get ahead in this universe. Kest thinks money and connections can save her. Dad thought an oath and a return to Selk could. They don’t see that it’s all ridiculous.”

“Done,” Kest called from the benches, pushing up her welding goggles.

Warcry strapped his metal leg back on and took a couple testing steps on it. The limp was still pretty bad, but his knee could bend a little bit now.

“Let’s get a move on, yeah?” he said.

After a quick check of the Heartchamber location marker on our HUDs, we left the station and headed northeast out of town, taking the boardwalk until it ran out. The water there came up to our waists. In spite of the icy rain, that open water was fairly warm.

Outside the little settlement, mats of tall, tufted grass floated on top of the water. The stalks stretched up over our heads high enough that we couldn’t see any landmarks, and rain clouds blocked out the day suns, so there was no way to tell from the landscape which direction we were going. We had to keep checking the arrows in the corner of our HUD maps to make sure we weren’t getting off track.

The lack of visibility above and below the water was kind of creepy. The grass mats seemed to be muffling all sound, and I swore I felt stuff bumping against my legs from underneath.

I looked over at Kest. “Are there any, like, alligators or creek carp or things that like to eat people here?”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got my Fish Finder on. That should give us some warning if anything the size of a carp or larger gets close.” She put the storage ring to her forehead and said, “Machete.”

A long-bladed homemade machete appeared in her hand, and she started hacking away at the mat of grass in front of her. The roots tore free of each other with a sound like a zipper unzipping.

“We need to go this way, but the grass mats grow in that direction,” she said, swiping some rain out of her eyes with her wrist. “I’ll cut, you guys shove.”

“Got it.”

“What about poisonous reptiles?” Warcry asked, shoving aside an unzipped grass mat. “Van Diemann got any of them?”

Kest shook her head. “There aren’t any native poisonous reptiles on Van Diemann that I know of.”

Warcry relaxed and nodded. I hadn’t been thinking about snakes and stuff before he’d brought them up, but hearing that they weren’t something to worry about made me feel better, too.

“Only venomous,” Kest said, and this time she wasn’t trying to hide her grin.

Rali chuckled and shoved some grass aside with his walking stick. “Classic.”

“You dorks,” I muttered, smiling.

Warcry scowled. “Long as they ain’t bigger than a creek carp, they shouldn’t be a problem.”

The twins looked at each other, then looked away like they didn’t want to answer him.

The redhead stopped slogging through the grass. “That ain’t funny! There better not be any giant snakes out here!”

“To tell the truth, I don’t know how big they get out here in Bogland,” Kest said. “Most of the snake and lizard population in the Rust Flats was wiped out by overconsumption, and what little survived doesn’t usually make it to adulthood before somebody kills and eats it. But nobody settles this far out, so in theory, whatever sort of reptiles live out here could grow as big as their body’s regulation system would allow.”

Warcry started scanning every clump of grass before he shoved it aside. I did the same, because jeans and a T-shirt didn’t seem like they would do much to protect me from snake fangs, whether they were giant or normal-sized.

Bog Ferals

EVENTUALLY THE WATER and grass mats tapered off until we were slogging through wet, marshy mud. The only vegetation there were these sticklike reeds growing out of irregular clumps that stuck up like little hills. You either had to wind around the clumps or step up onto them and then back down into the muck to keep going in a straight line. It was exhausting, and every now and then one of us would sink up to our nads in a watery mudhole we hadn’t seen coming.

The good news—for me, anyway—was that so many creatures and people and plants had died in the bogs over the centuries that the Death Spirit hung in the air like fog. With a little bit of Swallowing the Universe breathing, my Spirit sea was full to bursting in no time.

Out of curiosity, I checked my stats on my HUD.

Name: Grady Hake

Spirit: Death

Height: 5'7"

Weight: 142 lbs

Age: 16 Van Diemann years (current location), 14.4 Universal years

Credits: 0.5

Spirit Reserve: 6,986

Pretty incredible, considering a month ago I’d had exactly nine Spirit and my sea could barely hold the eighteen hundred needed for my quota to the OSS.

In my pocket, Hungry Ghost was sucking down the Miasma, too, the turquoise strings of Death Spirit creeping across the marshy land toward it. Only I could see his effect on the world around me, because I was his accepted Death cultivator. It was sort of a safety measure to keep the little skull stone from being stolen.

I let my HUD arm drop and caught up to everybody else.

We’d just crossed into a thigh-deep stretch of muddy water when the muck a few yards in front of us shifted and rippled. A sound like gargling bubbled up from underneath.

“Swamp gas?” Warcry guessed.

It definitely stank bad enough to be the fumes from decomposition, even with the downpour beating it back.

Rali frowned. “This doesn’t feel natural.”

A mud-stained arm broke the surface.

Before we could run for it, a dozen rotting bodies jumped up out of the bog around us like a movie ambush of bandits dropping out of the trees...except up. Their skin was stained the same dark brown as the muck, even the one that had been a shark alien back when it was alive. Soupy mud dripped from their mouths as they gargled it out, groaning and grunting like the ferals from the Rust Flats.

For about half a second, no one moved.

Then the shark feral broke into a sprint toward us, rooster tails of muddy water flying up on either side. With a mindless howl, the rest of the pack followed.

Instinctively, I threw out Dead Reckoning and sloshed through the bog to intercept the shark. As I ran, I pumped Miasma into both arms, covering them with my Death Metal shields.

There was a flare of red light behind me—Warcry catching on fire. Chains jingled, and I knew Kest was shooting the pointed weights on her chain gauntlet.

Somehow these ferals could move much faster than should’ve been possible through the muck. Seeing them running around while I was giving it everything I had just to move at a slow slog was like being in one of those nightmares where you try to run as fast as you can, but no matter what you do, you’re still moving in slow motion.

The shark and I collided, and I threw my weight into my left shield, slamming it into his gap-toothed maw. I couldn’t get full body power behind the blow because my feet were stuck in the mud, but the shot staggered him, and razor-sharp teeth plinked into the water. I hammered out the other shield in an elbow strike, blasting it at an angle across his temple. His skull crunched like an eggshell and rotten black goo splattered. The shark dropped into the muck, dead.

“They’re just like ferals!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Take out the heads!”

“Bog ferals?” Warcry let out a string of curses as a kick from his prosthetic demolished a decaying face. “This bleedin’ trash planet!”

Dead Reckoning pinged behind my back, letting me know a feral was about to blindside me. I went to spin around, but a hand down in the muck latched onto my right ankle.

“Crap!” I kicked, but the fingers dug into my skin through my jeans.

The rotten fist Dead Reckoning had warned me about crashed into my jaw. White sparks popped in my vision, and skinless knucklebones scraped off my cheek. I stumbled, trying to stay standing, but the hand in the muck tripped me up. I fell forward. Thick, rancid bog water filled my sinuses.

Dead Reckoning freaked out again. Clumsily, I shoved my right shield over my shoulder to protect my back just before another fist clobbered me.

A second underwater hand grabbed my shirt from below and pulled me down farther. You always think you can hold your breath a decent amount of time if you have to, but I’m here to tell you, the second you’re thrashing around, choking on muddy water, fending off rotting hands from every direction, your breath is just gone.

Lungs full of bog water, I dropped Dead Reckoning and both shields and shot out Dead Man’s Hand, following the decomposing arms back down to the feral hidden in the muck.

Stomps rained down on my back and shoulders from above, but I focused on finding the life point of the thing holding me down.

Living things’ life points usually flickered like the flame on a candle, but this feral’s life was an oozing brown slime. Dead Man’s Hand closed around the ooze like a fist.

But I couldn’t smother something that wasn’t burning. What was I supposed to do to stop this thing?

A stomp scraped down the side of my head, almost tearing my ear off. I didn’t have time to think the move through. I squeezed the bog feral’s oozing life point and yanked as hard as I could.

There was a split second of resistance, then a feeling like strings of gristly meat tearing as I ripped the life out of the feral.

The fingers clutching my shirt and ankle immediately went limp. The oozing life point rolled into my Spirit sea, a gross oiliness and a rush of power hitting me at the same time. Strength poured into my muscles, and my lungs stopped freaking out.

I squirmed out from under the stomping, then grabbed onto one rotten leg. Getting my knees underneath me, I shoved as hard as I could, throwing the feral backward in the water, then I climbed on top of it.

I chopped a reinforced elbow down on the feral’s head. With the water in the way, I shouldn’t have had enough power behind the hit to smash the skull, but there was so much extra strength from that absorbed life point that my arm plowed right through the feral’s decaying head. Brains and bog water geysered in every direction.

A third feral, which must’ve joined the party when I went under, clawed at my back and neck. Fleshless finger bones cut into my skin.

Before it could tear into me again, I re-formed one Death Metal shield and twisted around, slamming it into the feral’s gut. As it doubled over, I smashed the edge of the shield into the back of its head. It dropped limp into a dead man’s float, rotting goo seeping out of the gash in its skull.

I staggered to my feet, still coughing and choking, but managing to suck down some oxygen in there, too.

Rali was a few yards away, helping Warcry, who was still throwing burning fists, but wasn’t moving his legs at all.

I sent out a huge blast of Dead Reckoning like a radar. A dozen oozing brown feral life points appeared in my brain. Three ferals had ganged up on Warcry from below, trapping his legs like they had mine, and a bunch more were crowded around him trying to attack while Rali held them off.

There was also a flash of sparkling purple nearby, but the second I noticed it, it disappeared.

Warcry let out a snarl and threw a burning punch at a feral. Rali darted around him, whirling his walking stick and launching palm strikes, Warm Heart Spirit shoving the decomposing creatures back without him ever laying a hand on them. Rali was a lot faster than he should’ve been, like the water and muck didn’t affect him, but it was only a matter of time before those grasping hands below managed to get ahold of him, too.

With Dead Man’s Hand, I reached down into the muck and seized one oozing brown life point. At that range, it took a lot of concentration.

“Hake, look out!” Kest yelled.

Chains jingled, and something whiffed past my cheek. Putrid black gore splattered against the back of my neck. A dead bog feral plopped into the water behind me.

I looked around for Kest, but she must’ve had the hairpin invisibility array on.

“I’m going to take out the ferals underneath,” I told her. “Can you watch my back for a minute?”

“You got it.” The water in front of me stirred as she passed.

“Thanks.”

I grabbed onto the life point of a feral grasping at Warcry’s ankles and tore it out. The oiliness left a bad taste in my mouth, but I ignored that and used the rush of strength to split Dead Man’s Hand in two and catch the other life points below Warcry, ripping both out at once.

As soon as their hold on him let go, Warcry jumped into action, hurling burning kicks at the rotting monsters attacking him aboveground. Feral heads exploded in showers of decomposing brains and skull. Rali backed out of the spray, spitting like he’d gotten some in his mouth.

Inside, my Spirit sea crashed and surged like crazy. Those life points were way more potent than any of the Miasma I’d absorbed from graveyards or ossuaries or Hungry Ghost. This was like a burning semi full of TNT and fireworks running ninety toward a brick wall. I felt like I could blow up the whole universe.

And puke. That oozing, rotten sheen from the life points coated my Spirit sea, making me sick to my stomach.

I shoved that feeling to the back of my brain for dealing with later when we weren’t being attacked.

More hands surged up from below, but with Dead Man’s Hand overcharged like that, I was able to tear out life points two and three at a time before they grabbed us. Kest’s invisible chain gauntlet picked off the ferals coming at me, and Warcry took care of the ones surrounding him and Rali, turning their heads into explosions of corpse juice and teeth.

For some reason, Rali wasn’t fighting anymore. He stood back, watching me with an unreadable expression on his face.

A feral with nothing but ragged arm bones sticking out of its shoulders lunged at him from behind. Rali twisted sideways, letting the thing trip past him. I snatched the feral’s life point and ripped it out. The feral dropped dead into the water.

Warcry and Kest dropped the last two aboveground ferals. No more jumped up from below, but I checked with a superpowered blast of Dead Reckoning just to make sure.

“That’s it,” I said. My lungs were heaving from exertion and adrenaline, even though I’d basically been standing still for most of that fight. If it hadn’t been raining, I probably would’ve been soaked with sweat.

Warcry jerked his chin at me. “You take out those ferals underneath?”

I nodded.

“Savage,” he said approvingly.

Rali was still staring at me all weird, but when he took a breath to say something, Kest interrupted.

“We need to get to dry land,” she said, turning visible again as she picked a couple hairpins out of her messy buns and stuck them in the storage ring. The rest of the pins she left in for speed of triggering the invisibility array. “Somewhere more defensible. Ferals are attracted to Spirit, so there’ll be more of them coming.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Rali exhaled and put his walking stick across his shoulders. “First things first.”

Corpse Fire

GETTING TO DRY LAND was easier said than done. We ended up running into two more bands of bog ferals, both smaller than the first, but just as fast. It wasn’t until after we were well away from the second band that I realized we should’ve been looting them as we went. I didn’t know if we would need credits at Dragon Heartchamber 2, but after a few days in Jade City, my Universal Savings and Loan account was tapped out.

As the night sun hit its apex behind the rain clouds, we came to a bayou of cypress-like trees. The black water there was up to our chests, and there was no telling what lurked down in the dark shadows of the fingered root systems.

My stomach was pitching and rolling like it wanted to barf up all the oily nast from the ferals’ rotten life points, and on top of that, I was wiped out. Those life point surges were crazy powerful, but they didn’t last long, and they came with a big fat crash the second they wore off. I needed to find someplace dry to sleep or I was going to collapse facedown in the water and drown.

“What about making camp up there tonight?” I asked, pointing up at the trees. “Might not be comfortable, but at least we’ll be out of the water.”

Kest frowned down at her HUD. “But we’ve only covered about a quarter of the land between us and Heartchamber 2. We don’t know what the terrain’s like ahead. This could’ve been the easy part.”

“All the more reason to get some rest and recover now,” Rali said.

“I’m done in,” Warcry said. “You do what you like, stumpy. I’m stoppin’ here.”

With a burst of Ki to strengthen his legs, Warcry jumped out of the water. I threw up an arm to block the spray from my face. Even with the extra Spirit, he just barely managed to grab hold of the branch he’d been aiming for. Warcry looked shocked that he hadn’t been able to do better than that, but he pulled himself up onto the branch and slumped against the trunk without saying anything else.

“Isn’t anyone flushing the waste chemicals from their system?” Kest asked in disbelief.

Rali shot his sister a look. “You know we are. This is a lot more strenuous terrain than our internal alchemy is used to. Even mine would appreciate some rest, and I know you’re exhausted, too. Metal’s not the unrelenting element, no matter how much you like to pretend it is. Besides, Hake needs to stop and purge the soul contamination from his system or he’s going to have bigger trouble.”

“Soul contamination?” I asked.

“From the bog ferals,” he said. “They’re sort of between living and dead, kept moving by the unnatural Spirit pollutions in their bodies. When you started tearing the life points out of the ferals, I felt it building up, centered on you.”

I swallowed some sick-tasting spit. “That’s what that is? I assumed it was just overstimulation, like after you drink too many energy drinks.”

“Come on, ya bleeders.” Warcry leaned over the side of his branch, feet crossed underneath it. He clapped his hands like he wanted someone to pass him a ball. “Toss us up a rope for the rest of you to climb.”

“Fine,” Kest said. She called one of her chain ladders out of the storage ring. “But we’re not staying long. Just until Hake’s decontaminated and maybe a couple hours of rest. Then we’ve got to keep going.”

One at a time, we hauled ourselves into the tree. I was the last one up. I found a thick branch with a smaller one next to it like an armrest and settled into the crook to drip-dry while Kest sent the chain ladder back into storage.

Red light flared up from Warcry’s direction. Flames raced over his whole body, and immediately, his clothes started steaming. He was drying them out.

I smirked. “I knew it worked like that.”

“Shut it, grav.”

I was too tired and nauseous to keep messing with him, so I just closed my eyes and tried to keep from throwing up. Would I fall out of the tree if I went to sleep up here? I hooked my arm over the armrest branch as a precaution.

“Everybody should have some AlgaeFrize,” Kest said from her spot a little higher and to my right. She called four bags of those neon shoestring potatoes out of the storage ring. They dropped into her lap, and she had to grab at them one-handed to keep them from falling into the water below.

“Here, Hake,” she said when she got them under control. She tossed a bag to me.

“Thanks.” I wasn’t sure I could eat without puking, but I knew I needed the Healing Restoration. Now that we weren’t fighting or moving, all the bruises and scratches and bites I hadn’t noticed during the fights with the bog ferals had started to flare up. You don’t really appreciate a healing script tattoo until you go without one for a day.

Kest lobbed a bag of AlgaeFrize up to Warcry, who saluted her with it before tearing in, then she leaned around the trunk until she could see her twin, who had settled on a branch to my left. “Rali.”

“Thank you, Kest, but I’ll pass,” he said. “It’s against my Ten restriction to profit from my own Spirit abilities.”

“I know that, goof,” she said. “I marked the ones you didn’t infuse.”

“Well, in that case, I am a little peckish.”

For a long time, there was nothing but the sound of chip bags rustling and insects buzzing while everyone else ate. I left my bag unopened. Every time I thought about food, my mouth watered like I was about to puke. I swore I could taste the bog feral’s rotten brown life points coating the inside of my mouth like rancid sewage.

“You need to eat, Hake,” Rali said in a low voice, like he was too exhausted to talk at full volume.

“You need the healing,” Kest agreed. “Humans don’t have the immo-filtering systems that Selkens do. And even we still need to be careful in unknown water. It’d be stupid for you to die of an infection from a little scratch when you’ve made it this far.”

“Even ignoring your injuries,” Rali said, “your internal alchemy has a lot of work to do to force out the soul contamination, so you’re going to need the extra energy.” He glanced down at the brightly colored chip bag in his hand. “Ideally, we’d have something a little more natural for you, something that won’t add impurities to your body while it’s fighting off the Spiritual impurities. But we’ll work with what we’ve got.”

“Okay, you sold me.” I tore open the bag and stuck a handful AlgaeFrize in my mouth, going for quantity over caution. Maybe I could get most of them down before my stomach kicked them back up.

But once the neon green snack hit my stomach, Rali’s Healing Restoration spread through my body, fixing all the torn-up tissue and revitalizing my exhausted muscles. It even took the edge off the nausea.

“I think it’s been mentioned before, but you’re a genius, Rali,” I said.

“That’s why they call me Sage Rali.”

“No one calls you that,” Kest said.

“They oughta,” Warcry said, tipping back the last of his bag into his mouth.

Rali gestured from me to Warcry. “I can’t argue with popular opinion, Kest.”

She scoffed. “You do all the time—usually just because it’s popular.”

“Yeah, but I’m inclined to believe it when it falls in my favor.”

I finished off my bag of AlgaeFrize, listening to the twins bicker and the swamp bugs make noise. With the life point sickness easing up, I could definitely fall asleep. I shut my eyes.

I had just about dozed off when my branch moved.

Rali sat down a couple feet out facing me, right arm hooked over the armrest branch.

“Let’s get to work on that soul contamination,” he said.

“Sounds good,” I lied. I yawned and sat up straighter. “What do I need to do?”

“In short, burn it out.” Rali flicked his hair out of his face with a jerk of his head. “This might be kind of counterintuitive for a Death affinity. Miasma’s kind of cold, right? But you’ve got to use it like a purifying fire to cleanse the soul contamination from your body.”

To say that Miasma was kind of cold was a massive understatement. If I didn’t keep my internal alchemy going constantly, the Death Spirit sank into my tissues, freezing and killing them off like frostbite. But I kind of doubted somebody with Warm Heart affinity could fully understand that, so I nodded to show Rali I was mostly following.

He shifted to get more comfortable on the branch. “First, look inside yourself and find the soul contamination. It might gather more in some places than others.”

I shut my eyes, fighting to stay awake while I searched my Spirit sea for the greasy, nasty mess. Not a hard find. It was floating on the top like oil on water.

“Okay,” I said.

“Now use your Miasma like a purifying flame.”

I looked at him. “Um...”

“Yeah, sorry, I don’t really know how to tell you to do that,” Rali admitted with a grimace. “It’s sort of like cultivating, it’s going to be unique to you. It might help to start with the idea that whatever you come up with needs to burn this contamination off, then go from there.”

I closed my eyes again, focusing on the contamination. On Earth, they sometimes burnt the excess gasses off where they drilled for oil, didn’t they? And places like swamps had smaller versions of the same thing, tiny ghost candles that popped up when escaping swamp gasses ignited.

I took a little of the Miasma from my Spirit sea and concentrated it down into a smaller surface, sort of like adjusting the flame on a blowtorch. Then I aimed it at the greasy brown pollution. Immediately, eerie turquoise flames spread across the surface of the soul contamination, burning it away.

Corpse Fire, the words rang in my head.

“Huh,” Rali said, “I didn’t expect you to get the hang of it that fast. Given how late in life you started cultivating, you’re really progressing.”

I shrugged. “It helps to have a sage for a teacher.”

“Or it’s a Mortal affinity’s natural instinct to cleanse their Spirit sea of soul contamination,” he said. “You guys are pretty much the only ones who have to deal with this sort of pollutant, so it would make sense that your Spirit comes with an inborn housekeeping ability.”

I kept my eyes shut, working on the contamination. I had a lot of the greasy gunk to burn off. When I ran low on Spirit, Rali hit me with a Warm Heart Spirit boost, replacing what I’d spent.

I opened my eyes. “Hey, man, maybe you shouldn’t waste all your Spirit on me. I want to get this trash out of my system, but I don’t want to use up all of your Spirit to do it.” Unlike the rest of us, Rali wasn’t getting any restoration from the AlgaeFrize.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “I’ve got plenty of Warm Heart to throw around, and I can always cultivate more wherever I’m content...”

“Which is anywhere,” I finished for him. “Always with the Buddha stuff. Thanks for the boost, but there’s a ton of Miasma in the air here.” With Ki-sight, I could see clouds of the turquoise smoke rolling along the surface of the water. “When I need more, I’ll just cultivate it.”

Rali pretended to wipe away a tear. “Our little Death cultivator’s growing up.”

“Whatever, dude.” I gave him a joking shove.

He caught the armrest branch, laughing.

“Oi!” Warcry yelled. “Stop shaking the bleedin’ tree! Some of us’re trying to sleep, yeah?”

“Yeah, Rali,” I said. “Your little Burning Hatred cultivator needs to be put down for a nap. He’s cranky.”

Warcry broke off a stick and threw it at me, calling me something that was half alien curse I didn’t understand, half anatomical impossibility. At least on Earth.

For the next half hour, I cultivated and used Corpse Fire to burn away the soul contamination. The nausea burned off with the oily film. When I was finished, I felt even healthier than I’d been before I absorbed the bog ferals’ life points.

The exhaustion, however, had only gotten stronger from all the cycling and burning. Everybody else had retreated to their own branches and fallen asleep or gone into meditation, so I leaned back against the trunk and zonked out.

Midnight Encounter

IN THE DREAM, I WAS looking down at the swamp water below, but instead of darkness or a reflection, I saw Gramps sitting on a bed in a hospital room, staring up at the TV on the wall. Onscreen, one of those wavy-finned fighting fish swam around.

One of Gramps’s gnarled hands gripped the plastic bedrail, and the other held that weird remote-plus-speaker that was always plugged into hospital beds. There was an IV taped to his arm. Liver-colored bruising had come up around the tape. The age spots and bulging veins made him look older and more fragile than I remembered. Gramps didn’t act interested in the fish program, just like he was staring to have something to stare at.

Westerns. He wanted the Western channel, but probably no one here had taken the time to show him how the remote worked.

I leaned down, pressing my chest and stomach to the rough bark of the branch, and reached for the remote. I was so close. I hooked my feet under the branch and held on with my left arm while I stretched my right farther down. Almost...

My fingertips grazed Gramps’s knotted knuckles, and for a second, I felt their bumps and the thin, leathery skin covering them.

Gramps flinched, and his blue eyes snapped up to meet mine.

“Grady?” he croaked in that old man voice.

Then there was this huge splash. I sucked water up my nose and down my throat. I woke up choking and spluttering, freaking out and thrashing my arms. My hand bumped roots. I grabbed on, pulling myself up.

“Geez,” I sputtered, pushing wet hair out of my eyes and swiping water off my face.

“Late for a swim, ain’t it, grav?” Warcry called down from his branch. From the sound of his voice, he was grinning.

“Would a middle finger mean anything to you?” I shot back.

“What’s it off of?”

“Never mind.”

A heavy log chain clinked, then splashed into the water beside me.

“Here,” Kest said, yawning. “Climb back up.”

“Thanks.” I grabbed onto the chain ladder.

Then I heard it. Gurgling in the water. A lot of gurgling.

“Bog ferals!” I hit the Ki-speed and strength enhancements and hauled butt up the ladder.

I made it onto Kest’s branch and started to pull the ladder up, but she grabbed it from me, trying to hold onto it and put the storage ring to her forehead all with one hand.

Rotting, muck-stained bodies leapt out of the water, arms wheeling as they grabbed at the bottom rung. The fingers of one feral curled into the chain, then snapped with a sickening crunch as the feral’s full weight fell on them.

The sudden jerk yanked Kest and me both off balance. I grabbed onto a nearby branch with my free arm, but Kest didn’t have another arm to stop her fall. She tumbled off the branch. I stretched after her, but she was already out of my reach.

“Machete!” she screamed at the storage ring the second before she hit the water.

Droplets geysered into my face from the splash. Bog ferals leapt on her like a shark frenzy.

“Crap!” I jumped after her, sending a tsunami of Miasma to my Death Metal shields. I landed behind a pair of ferals, killing one with a shield bash to the top of the skull and snapping the shoulder of the other.

Red and orange lights flared overhead, Warcry and Rali joining the fight.

Kest came up in the center of the ferals, spitting water and hacking with her homemade machete. The blade chopped through a shark feral’s rotting face, throwing muck and cracking teeth, then sliced through the sloughing neck of what used to be a slug alien.

I twisted my upper body, throwing all my weight into another shield bash to the feral whose shoulder I’d broken. Brains and rotten black bone shards flew as the thing’s skull caved in.

Rali jumped from root ball to root ball, tagging Warcry’s burning shoulder, then Kest’s arm as he passed. His Warm Heart Spirit flowed into them, mixing into the color of their Spirit and intensifying it.

“I’m caught, grav!” Warcry yelled.

“Just a sec!” I slammed into another bog feral that was going for Kest. The hit pitched it forward into the water, and she finished it off with her machete.

“Oi!”

“On it!” I yelled.

With a cold finger of Miasma, I reached out with Dead Man’s Hand, following Warcry’s Spirit seas down into the water. Decaying hands stuck up out of the bayou floor like some kind of weird body garden. Two ferals clutched at his ankles and twisted their fingers in the cuffs of his pants, while another one groped around Kest’s ankles for a hold.

One at a time, I went through the underground ferals and tore out their life points. Oily energy and power rushed into my Spirit sea.

Time slowed to a crawl, and everything around me came into sharp focus. I could sense the life points in every tree and plant and single-celled organism in the water. My friends’ lives glowed like the day suns, red Burning Hatred Spirit, orange Warm Heart Spirit, and blue-white Metal Spirit. Nearby, the brown life points of the last two bog ferals oozed nastily.

But there was something else, too. Something with a sparkly purple life point.

As if it felt me looking, it disappeared.

“Hake, duck!” Kest lunged toward me, machete swinging.

I held my breath and dropped into the water. Above the surface, I sensed the machete blade carving through the space where my throat had been, chopping open a feral skull. The rotting corpse’s oozing brown life point winked out of existence.

I popped back up and sucked in air. One bog feral to go.

A flare of pink light flashed overhead.

“Hold up!” a voice echoed through the swamp, and something crashed down through the canopy of leaves and branches. “Don’t kill it yet!”

A glowing pink Spirit net dropped onto Kest and the last bog feral. A corner of the net almost caught Warcry, too, but he threw himself backward and raked his burning hands through the dark water to get out of the way.

“Get that net off her!” Rali yelled, a ragged edge to his voice. He leapt off his perch on a root system and scooped frantically at the net with his walking stick. “It’s poisoned!”

Already, I could see that Kest was slowing down, her movements getting sluggish. She’d dropped the machete, her hand groping for it in the water, but moving too slow. The bog feral’s struggles were weakening, too.

“Easy, pal, easy!” A hawk-winged dude landed on a root ball nearby, both hands up. “It’s just a paralyzer! It wears off in no time, I swear to it!”

I shot out Dead Man’s Hand and grabbed the life point situated between his wings like a flickering pink torch. He let out a startled squawk.

“Let her go now or you’re dead,” I growled.

The glowing net disappeared. Clumsily, Kest looped her arm around Rali’s neck and went limp, like she was too weak to hold her head above the water. Right away, he started pumping Warm Heart Spirit into her, trying to counteract the poison.

Dead Man’s Hand squeezed tighter, cold fury building in my chest.

“Hey, hang on, pal!” the hawk guy screeched. “She’ll recover in a few minutes, I told you! We don’t want any trouble! We’re just out hunting ferals. I didn’t mean to catch the chickie in my net, it was an accident. It’s not a precision ability.”

Under the noise of him talking, the high-def hearing from the ferals’ life points had picked out a sound that didn’t belong.

Death cultivator should kill Birdman now before Birdman kills Death cultivator and friends, Hungry Ghost said.

“Shut up for a second.” I’d meant to say that in my head, but focusing on the intense amount of stimulus coming in from the life point boost and keeping straight what I was doing wasn’t easy. “Guys, listen.”

A whirring sound filled the swamp. It was an engine.

“We?” Warcry scowled at the hawk guy. “How bleedin’ many of you are there?”

Versus Heavenly Contrails

THE HAWK GUY POINTED a wing at the sky.

“Don’t try anything,” I said, giving Dead Man’s Hand a warning twitch.

He winced.

“I swear on my Spirit.” He put up his hands like I was holding a gun on him. “I’m just letting them know where I am so they can pick me and the feral up.”

Kill Birdman quickly! Hungry Ghost raged.

He hasn’t done anything yet, I snapped. You can’t just kill someone because you think they might do something bad later.

The hawk guy shot a ball of pink light up through the trees like a rescue flare. The sound of the engine bent in a distant Doppler effect, making a sharp turn toward us.

Warcry put on a burst of Ki-speed, and in a flash he was standing on the root ball next to the hawk guy, a burning hand wrapped around the dude’s throat.

“Oi, bird bones, I asked you how many lads you got coming.”

“Four, that’s it.” The hawk guy squirmed in Warcry’s stranglehold. “We’re just hunting ferals for Beauties Versus Beasts. You know Beauties Versus Beasts, right? Ladies fighting monsters and each other? Surely one of you has seen our products before? You all look like Eight-Legged Dragon types. You’re headed for the Heartchamber, right?”

Warcry’s grip eased up. The hawk guy shook it off and massaged his throat.

“The Contrails don’t want any trouble with the Dragons,” he said. “We’re allies. Ever since the fifteenth Heavenly Contrail Emperor Sasha-ketsu made that trade agreement with the Eight-Legged Dragon Emperor during the war for the Trivalent System...”

The roar of the engine got louder every second.

Birdman jabbers to delay Death cultivator, Hungry Ghost croaked. While Birdman talks, Death cultivator and his friends wait for death.

You don’t know that!

A fan boat tore through the trees, engine screaming as it wove through the root systems. Blinding light exploded from the hawk guy’s fist and slammed into me.

Suddenly, I was glowing like a neon pink version of Earth’s sun.

The boat made a crazy sharp turn and shot straight at me. That dick had made me into a target.

But I couldn’t jump out of the way. Kest and Rali were right behind me, and there was no way they could move in time with her half-paralyzed.

“Get her out of the water!” I yelled to Rali, dropping Dead Man’s Hand and all my internal alchemy regulation so I could send every bit of Spirit in my sea to reinforcing my body. Necrotizing frost crackled down the surface of my arms and chest, but even with the boost from the ferals’ life points, I knew it probably wasn’t going to be enough to stop the fan boat’s forward momentum. This was about to hurt.

“Ya clown!” Red fire blazed, and Warcry splashed into the water beside me.

Right before the hull of the fan boat crashed into us, Warcry lunged forward and slammed burning forearms into the metal hull. I did the same a fraction of a second later.

Pain rang through my frozen arms and into my shoulders, but miraculously, the bones didn’t snap. The boat did a stoppie on the spot, back end coming up off the water before slapping down again. Two of the passengers flew overboard.

“I’ll take the boat, grav, you get the others!” Warcry grabbed the side of the hull and levered himself up into the boat, water sloshing and red flames of Burning Hatred raging. One of the passengers came at him with a glowing ice spear and the other with a boat hook.

The boost from the ferals’ life points dipped, already spent. I couldn’t afford to crash right then, so I inhaled a lungful of Miasma from the air, refilling my Spirit sea, then lashed out with Dead Man’s Hand and ripped the paralyzed feral’s life point out. Greasy, nauseating energy surged through my body, staving off the inevitable exhaustion for a few more minutes.

I swallowed the need to barf and scanned for the guys I was supposed to take out.

All over the place, dead ferals floated in the black water. Rali was pulling himself up onto a root ball with Kest’s paralyzed body thrown over his shoulder.

A couple dozen yards away, the Heavenly Contrails who’d been thrown out of the boat were splashing to their feet. The space moth didn’t look like he’d been hurt at all, but the bigger one, a winged dude with black and white markings like a killer whale, had one wing sticking out at a gross angle, obviously broken.

The bog ferals’ underwater ankle-trap flashed through my brain. I sent a huge wave of Miasma down into the muck, picturing zombified hands reaching up from underground. The hands missed the winged killer whale dude, but managed to grab the space moth by the ankle.

The space moth yelped and stumbled.

Death Grip, I thought.

The move was too new to be perfect, so it couldn’t immobilize the moth like the ferals had done with us, but it did slow him down to a struggle as he tried to fight his way out of the forest of Miasma hands.

With his attack delayed, I splashed toward the killer whale dude with the broken wing. He saw me coming and puffed up with gray Spirit, thick bodybuilder muscles appearing like smoke over his already huge frame.

It occurred to me as I ran how much cooler and more cinematic the movie version of a fight like this would’ve been—fast and explosive instead of slow and grueling. We would’ve been bouncing around the trees and throwing up dramatic showers of water instead of wasting all our energy just trying to get close enough to punch each other.

As soon as I was within arm’s reach, the killer whale threw a big haymaker. I ducked under it, coming up swinging an uppercut to his chin. My sneakers slipped a little in the mud, taking some of the sting off the shot, but it still rocked his head back. My opposite elbow sliced across at an angle and smashed into his cheek, the first in an Eight-Elbow set.

Instead of rotating with the blow, the killer whale guy turned his face into my shot and chomped down. Rows of sharp yellow teeth shredded my arm.

It was just habit to kept going, throwing shots and dodging his punches, expecting the OSS script tattoo to start burning as it healed the damage.

Except the burning never came. I didn’t have the OSS tattoo anymore. I was on my own for healing. I needed to freeze out those tissues to stop the bleeding, but I was trying to keep all my Spirit focused on the Death Grip tripping up the space moth so he couldn’t go after anyone else while I was fighting the killer whale guy.

There was a splash behind me. I threw a push-kick into the killer whale’s gut and ran up him like a stepladder, jumping up out of the water and spinning around to attack whoever was behind me. As I spun, I threw my weight into a punch.

Lacy eyes, shaggy black hair. I pulled the shot, but Rali grabbed my fist. A blast of orange Warm Heart Spirit flowed down my arm, starting up the healing process in the shredded tissue.

“Don’t spend it all in one place,” he joked, heading off toward the fan boat, where Warcry was fighting the dude with the boat hook.

Insect wings fluttered. I’d lost Death Grip, and the space moth was free. Not wasting any time with me, he darted at the tree where Kest lay motionless across a branch. The hawk guy headed the same direction.

A huge fist crashed into the back of my skull. Lightning flashed in my brain as I slammed into a tangled root ball.

Idiot! I hadn’t taken out the killer whale dude, and I hadn’t triggered Dead Reckoning. I threw out a wall of it as I thrashed to my feet, brain reeling.

Dead Reckoning pinged the early warning for the killer whale’s next shot. I spun, triggering Death Metal, and threw a shield-bash combo at his head and throat. He blocked the blow aimed at his head, but missed the throat-shot. It hit with a sickening crunch, and he went down, clutching at his thick neck. An overarm blow to his now unprotected head knocked him unconscious.

I spun, searching the trees for Kest. She wasn’t on the branch anymore.

Something flapped overhead. The hawk guy and the space moth. Between them, they were carrying another pink Spirit net with Kest wrapped up inside.

“Guys—Kest!” I yelled.

The hawk guy let out an ear-piercing whistle as he soared for the canopy. “Got the chick! Cut and run, boys!”

Before they could get away with her, I grabbed the hawk guy’s life point again, this time ready to put it out. The pink flame guttered. Hawk guy shrieked.

A wall of Warm Heart Spirit slammed into my chest, knocking me backward into the water. Dead Man’s Hand dropped, and the hawk guy’s life point came back just shy of going out.

“They’re going to get away!” I spluttered at Rali as I came up, my voice cracking.

“Not on your life, grav.” Warcry ripped the boat hook out of the fan boat driver’s hands. He smashed the guy’s nose in with it, then launched the boat hook at the space moth.

The pole tangled in the space moth’s wings. He pitched off balance into a branch and dropped his side of the net. The hawk guy cussed as Kest tumbled out.

The space moth dropped, smacking branches on the way down, but Kest plummeted through open air. Rali splashed toward them, thrusting both fists at her in an invisible technique. Whatever it was slowed her fall enough that she splashed down a lot softer than she should have.

The space moth, Rali let hit the water at full force. His buddies splashed through the water and grabbed him, taking off into the swamp.

Overhead, the hawk guy shot up through the canopy and disappeared, getting away scot-free.

I growled through clenched teeth and slapped the water with both hands. I wasn’t the only one mad, either. When Rali got Kest’s head above water, she coughed and sputtered out one word—

“Useless!”

“Kest,” Rali started, but she didn’t give him a chance.

“No.” Her voice went suddenly flat, and the iron in my blood turned cold as she switched to Cold Metal. “Put the storage ring to my forehead.”

Rali sighed, but he lifted her dripping hand out of the water and did it.

“Cinnabar!” she ordered.

The chunk of red metal appeared in her limp hand, then when the fingers didn’t grip it, dropped into the water. She closed her eyes. The surface of the water rippled as something moved below it. Rolling silver climbed up her side and surrounded the place where her left arm ended, forming a sort of stick arm with an elbow and wrist joint and five articulated stick fingers.

There was a thud behind us. We turned to find Warcry climbing into the fan boat’s driver seat.

“Let’s not hang about waiting for them to come back,” he said. “Get in the boat.”

Fan Boat Ride

TURNED OUT THAT OUR slam into the front of the fan boat had cracked the hull. Kest sent some of her cinnabar to patch it temporarily. It didn’t hold really well, but it cut the leak down enough that the boat would stay up until she could move around again and weld it correctly.

After some researching on our HUDs and backseat startering from Kest, Warcry and I managed to figure out how to start the fan and get the boat moving. He drove while I sat on the floor of the boat with Kest’s head and shoulders across my legs. Rali knelt beside us, hands on her temples, pouring orange Warm Heart Spirit into her.

“Start cycling as much of this as you can to your Spirit sea and rivers,” Rali told his twin. “This poison tastes like an Organic supertype, maybe Floral affinity, so the only way out is to work it through your system.”

Kest’s lips etched into an angry line, and the lace in her eyes darkened. Her tan skin glowed faintly red-orange underneath like molten magma was flowing through her veins, and the air started to heat up around us. Hot Metal Spirit.

Rali grinned down at her. “That’s a good idea as long as you don’t start boiling the trace metals in our blood.”

She rolled her eyes and swiped some wet hair off her face with her stick arm.

While Kest burned off the paralyzing poison, I got to work burning off the bog feral’s soul contamination with Corpse Fire. The Miasma should’ve frozen me out, but with the full blast heat coming from Kest’s Hot Metal Spirit, sweat soaked my shirt and rolled down my face. I wasn’t the only one overheating, either. The black lace of the capillaries in Rali’s and Kest’s cheeks started to show through.

The problem was there wasn’t a breeze to cool us off. I looked out into the swamp at the cypress-like trees crawling by at just over turtle speed.

“This boat can go pretty fast,” I told Warcry. “Like, even faster than we can walk.”

“We’ve got two full days before we meet Biggerstaff, don’t we?” he snapped, glancing down at the coordinates on his HUD. “No reason to crash and kill us all.”

“Okay, grandma, but we’re going to sink before we get anywhere,” I said, nodding at the slow seep through the patch in our hull.

Warcry scowled down at me from the driver’s platform and cranked the speed. A little. Enough that the airflow started to evaporate some of the sweat on my face, anyway.

“Hake,” Rali said, raising his voice to be heard over the fan. “You were going to kill that Raptrian.”

“The hawk guy?” I asked. When he nodded, I shrugged. “Well...yeah, man, I was. He was about to get away with your sister, and I didn’t have any other way to stop him.”

He frowned. “Warcry knocked that space moth out of the fight without killing him.”

“I didn’t have a boat hook,” I said, getting a little annoyed. “Look, I just wanted to make sure Kest didn’t get flown away with, because obviously none of us can fly to go get her back. I didn’t know what they wanted with her, but—”

“There’s one gal to every sixteen lads on Van Diemann, grav,” Warcry said from up in the driver’s seat. “What’d’ya think they wanted her for, the diverting conversation?”

I turned back to Rali. “You didn’t get mad at me when I took out those ferals.”

“Ferals are a gray area,” he said. “Even though I can’t prove that they’re totally sentient, I don’t take the chance because who am I to decide who’s alive enough to live and who’s dead enough to die? Being a Death cultivator, you’ve got a more direct line to knowing dead from living.”

“So, what’s your problem with me taking out the hawk guy?”

“Was he dead or alive, Hake?”

“He was flying away with your sister!”

“Hake made a split-second decision,” Kest said, making me jump a little. I hadn’t forgotten she was there, but the argument with Rali had taken some of the focus off the fact that the girl I liked was lying pretty much in my lap. “He did the best he could with the facts and abilities he had on hand.”

“Yeah, can you blame the grav that he’s a Death cultivator?” Warcry said. “Going crazy and killing people is what they do, ain’t it?”

I glared at him. “I wasn’t—”

“I’m not saying you’re crazy or accusing you of going for a power grab,” Rali said, putting his hands up like he didn’t want to fight. “You were trying to save my twin, and for that I sincerely thank you. But there’s a reason Death Spirit is the most feared affinity in the universe. The amount of self-restraint and careful tending it requires... Every time you justify deadly force to suit your own purposes, the balance tips a little more and makes it easier to justify next time. It’s like the old sword legends—none of those villains started out bad.”

I took a breath to say something, but Kest interrupted before I could, which was lucky. I don’t know what had been about to come out of my mouth, but based on the times I’d mouthed off to people in the past without thinking, it probably wouldn’t have helped strengthen my and Rali’s friendship.

“You’re being unreasonable, Rali,” Kest said, opening and closing her real hand experimentally. “You wouldn’t ask me not to use a Metal technique or Warcry not to use a Burning Hatred technique, especially if someone’s life was on the line. Hake did what he thought was right.”

The lace in Rali’s eyes shifted with uncertainty.

“Maybe I am being unfair,” he said. “I apologize, Hake. That wasn’t very Warm Heart of me.”

“No big deal,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.

Up on the driver’s seat, Warcry scoffed. “I don’t think you’re being unfair, big man. If Stumpy goes power-hungry, the worst casualties we can expect is a couple junkyards. If I do, what’s the loss? I get moody? But when the grav does, we can say goodbye to half the planet, can’t we?”

“Okay, douchebag, so what’s the solution?” I snapped. “Head it off at the pass and kill me now?”

“I’m only sayin’ he’s got a point!”

“Which is strange,” Kest said, flexing her shoulders. The heat from her Hot Metal Spirit dropped off suddenly, and she sat up. She must’ve burned the last of the poison out of her system. “I’d have thought, of all people, another human would—”

“Would what?” Warcry leaned toward her, cocking his ear like he hadn’t quite heard her. “Humans get each other’s back, is that what you’re thinking? Even if one’s a grav like him and the other’s a bleedin’ powerhouse like me? Coz we’re all friends, yeah?”

“I doubt anybody can be friends with you.” Kest called a handful of welding rods out of the storage ring and crawled up to the crack in the hull. “What I mean was you’re talking like those people who want everyone born with certain affinities clipped at birth because they have the potential to become dangerous later in life. Since humans were treated that way before the wars, it seems like you’d be opposed to judging and sentencing someone based on possibilities rather than what they’ve done.”

“Hang on, guys.” I scrubbed my hand down my face. I couldn’t tell if it was the crash from the life points or the lack of sleep, but I wasn’t following. “Now I’m totally lost. I’m all for not turning evil, but what are we talking about with wars and sentencing and stuff?”

“Oh, right, not from here,” Rali said. “How to explain this in a way that isn’t offensive...”

“Facts aren’t offensive, they’re how we learn and improve.” Kest pulled her welding goggles down. “Humans don’t live as long as most races—around a hundred years if nothing kills them before that—so obviously they don’t have as long to learn to control their Spirit as a race whose regular lifespan is multiple centuries. Some people—”

“Ylef trash,” Warcry growled. “That’s who.”

“—used that as an argument that human cultivators weren’t as stable as cultivators of other races.” The cinnabar rolled out of the hull-crack, and Kest put it back in the storage ring. Water seeped in. “For a while, the Confederation mandated that humans’ Spirit seas be clipped at birth to keep them from passing Sho.”

Blue-white metal Spirit strobed as she went to work fixing the hull.

“Holy cow,” I muttered under my breath. Then after a second thinking about it, I had to ask. “Are we actually less stable?”

“There’s no objective evidence that humans are more or less dangerous to themselves and the people around them than any other race,” Kest said, over the crackle of welding.

“As you can imagine,” Rali said, “all the unfair treatment eventually led to uprisings and the Ylef-Human Wars. Those are the wars Kest mentioned earlier.”

“They started it, didn’t they!” Warcry snapped. “If me ma and the Meat Roaches hadn’t set those pointy-eared bastards straight on Guvo-4, we’d still be under their heel, wouldn’t we?”

Kest pushed up her welding goggles and shot Rali a look. “I told you he was that Warcry Thompson.”

Rali shrugged. “I didn’t want to assume just because he had the same name and the stereotypical Qaspar-system accent.”

Warcry’s mouth dropped open, and he stared from one twin to the other.

Then he snorted. “Ya cackin’ bleeders.”

The crackle and hiss of welding filled the air as Kest got back to work. I held up my hand to shield my eyes from flash burn.

“Someone from the shuttle mentioned something like that, too,” I said, nodding at Warcry. “Like your mom’s famous or something, right?”

“And rich enough to choke a starwhale,” Kest said over the sparking. “Titan of industry rich. More money than anyone in the Qaspar system for sure.”

The redhead’s eyes narrowed for half a second like he wanted to stab her in the back.

“Sure, and it’s great,” he muttered. “Lap of luxury. Every amenity. Never wanted for a thing in me life.”

He cranked the engine back up, and we puttered to a slow crawl.

“So, why didn’t your family pay out your sentence?” Kest asked, dropping the stub of welding rod she’d used up and switching to a fresh one.

“’Coz maybe I’d rather bleedin’ rot,” Warcry snapped. “Ever think of that?”

“No,” she said. “If I had money, I’d throw it at every problem that came my way.”

“Maybe Warcry couldn’t throw money at this one because he did something that couldn’t be paid out,” Rali said, waggling his eyebrows and making his voice all spooky like he did when he came up with one of his crazy theories. “Like muuuurder.”

“Or maybe mind yer own, fatso.”

“He burned down an orphanage,” I said, remembering the line of bull he’d fed me at the Wilderness Territorial.

The welding cut off as Kest’s head snapped up.

“You only got three years for burning down an orphanage?”

That made Warcry laugh. “There weren’t no one in it, and me ma paid to have it built, so it was almost mine anyway, wasn’t it?” He grinned out at the trees like talking about arson brought back some fond memories. “Guess money does buy a bit a’ leniency, after all.”

I thought back to all the entitled jerkwads I’d dealt with growing up.

“You being rich makes a lot of sense,” I said. “You’re probably an only child, too.”

Fire erupted down Warcry’s shoulders. “Emmie Thompson was the first human to do half the things humans’re allowed to do now, grav, and you’re welcome for it. You think she got rich by wastin’ money spoiling her little scag of a son?” He rapped his knuckles on his prosthetic. “You think this hunk of junk is top of the market? I ain’t never seen a credit from her, and I never want to. Every number I post—in my USL account and in my Spirit reserve—comes straight from me own fists and feet. Every bleedin’ one. I work harder than anybody alive.”

“Yeah, I remember you working really hard in Ghost Town, getting rubdowns from saloon gals and texting Big Five recruiters.”

“You had your chance. If you wanted the life, you oughta’ve beat me in the join-or-serve fight.”

“I’m glad you didn’t win, Hake,” Kest piped up from the front of the boat.

Rali grinned. “Because we never would’ve left Ghost Town if he’d stayed or because you would’ve been jealous if Hake was getting rubdowns from saloon gals?”

Black lace trickled down Kest’s cheeks from under the goggles, hovering in the space where a human would blush. I felt kind of bad about Rali embarrassing her, but a whole lot more of me was hoping she’d say yeah it was because she would’ve been jealous.

“Because... lots of reasons.” Kest went back to work. After she’d had a few seconds to think, she said, “I would never have found that cinnabar for my arm if Hake hadn’t fallen into that old mine shaft, and he never would’ve done that if he hadn’t been working as an indenture. I may not have gotten an offer from a Technol, either, if I hadn’t been forced to make that location-hiding tech for Hake and Warcry, which wouldn’t have happened without everything leading up to it. And I know I’d never have stayed in a luxury hotel.”

“That’s true,” Rali said. “She hates parting with credits.”

“I don’t like throwing them away like you do. There’s a difference.”

He laughed. “What am I supposed to do? Care about them? They’re made up!”

Something Warcry had said finally clicked in my brain.

“A grav like me and a powerhouse like you?” I sneered at the ginger. “So, what, ‘grav’ means lazy or something?”

“Means a human who sticks to the old Confederation-approved levels of kishotenketsu even though they don’t have to anymore.” He spat over the side of the boat. “Although, if the Confederation knew Death cultivators could gank somebody without even passing Sho, they’d sure as bleed all start jettisoning ’em into space at birth.”

I glared at him. “Do you seriously think I’m sticking around Sho because I want to do what some space government says?”

Warcry shook his head. “I don’t know why you’re doing it, grav, but I know it’s an insult to your race and your Spirit. Having a play like that in your pocket means you oughta be on your way to something proper savage, not messing around the low levels. Put your mind to it, yeah?”

Sudden Death

WE BOATED FOR MOST of the night, alternating between me, Warcry, and Kest in the driver’s seat while the other two shined their HUD light out at the darkness and checked the map. Rali suggested that he give double-infusing the AlgaeFrize a shot, adding his All-Nighter Erasing ability to help keep us awake and alert, but Kest vetoed using the snacks for that. Instead, she passed out Coffee Dranks.

“You can double-infuse the AlgaeFrize, but we shouldn’t waste them on driving,” she said. “Not when Coffee Drank does the same thing. Given the way these guys fight like they’ll never die, we’re going to need all the AlgaeFrize we have left to keep them alive.”

I thought she was being a little overly cautious on that, because even when Warcry drove, we were still cutting through the swamp and over the bogs much faster than we could’ve walked. We even left behind the packs of fast-moving bog ferals we came across. I didn’t think we were going to get into any other fights unless those Heavenly Contrail dicks caught up to us before we made it to Heartchamber 2.

Which just goes to show how stupid I can be.

We’d been out of the trees on an endless stretch of open water for about an hour, and the pale blue rays of the first day sun were just beginning to reach up over the horizon when white light exploded like a supernova a hundred yards ahead of us.

I flinched and jumped to my feet.

“How ya goin’, grav?” Warcry sneered. “Swallow a bug?”

No one was looking at the light. It was like they hadn’t even noticed it.

“Crap. Guys, the angel of death is—”

This huge roar sent waves crashing along the water and knocked me back onto my butt in the boat. The engine cut out. Kest had been driving, so I figured she’d been thrown out of the driver’s seat. But when I looked, she was still up there, cranking away at the throttle, trying to get the fan moving again.

“What was that?” Rali asked, standing up and taking his walking stick in both hands like a bo staff.

I looked at him. “You heard that?”

“Kinda hard to miss,” Warcry muttered. He was on his feet now, too, searching for the source of the noise.

We didn’t have to look long. Another roar cut through the air, and a monster the size of a school bus came galloping out of that white light. It was scaly and green, with a head like a lion and the body of a horse. Its mane and tail were made of golden Spirit fire. All down its back and shoulders were these chitinous plates like a bug’s shell, and one huge branching antler was growing out of the middle of its forehead.

Flames erupted down Warcry’s head and shoulders. “The bollix is this now?”

So that answered my follow-up question about whether they could see this thing. Obviously it didn’t play by the same rules as the angel of death.

The boat rocked slightly as Rali shifted feet. “I can tell you what it looks like.”

“It is not a balancer,” Kest said.

“Maybe not, but that’s what it looks like,” Rali said. “Do we run? It shouldn’t be after us. We haven’t done anything to upset the Spiritual balance of the universe.”

“The engine’s stalled,” Kest said, using her stick arm to pull her chain gauntlet onto her real hand. “That thing’s sonic attack messed something up inside it. Running’s not going to be an option until I can overhaul it and fix whatever’s broken.”

The monster let out another roar that shook my rib cage.

“But we haven’t done anything to upset the Spiritual balance!” Rali yelled as the roar tapered off.

“Don’t seem like it cares, big man,” Warcry called back.

That white light flashed again, and the angel of death appeared, hovering behind the thing Rali kept calling a balancer. Flares of white Spirit fanned out from her shoulders like wings, and her long white hair flowed behind her. Perfect marble skin glowed against the backdrop of the night sun. She was beautiful and terrifying, kind of like a lightning strike five feet from your face.

None of my friends were looking at her, though, so we were back to normal on that score at least.

“Grady Hake,” she boomed, “you have caused me your last bit of trouble. You are finished here!”

The angel pulled her shining white scythe out of thin air. The weapon was ridiculously huge, with a blade twice as tall as she was. She didn’t fly at me with it like she had last time we’d met up. Instead, she stayed back and pointed the scythe at me.

“Him,” she said. “He’s the one.”

The balancer broke into a gallop, racing across the water toward our boat. Every thundering step left burning golden hoofprints on the surface of the water. The swamp started to boil around us. Sweat popped up all over me and immediately evaporated in the blast furnace of the balancer’s body heat. The skin on my face and arms tightened like I was getting the world’s fastest sunburn.

I popped Death Metal on both arms and tried to take a step forward to meet the balancer, but a sticky ripping sound stopped me. The soles of my sneakers were melting to the hull.

Up on the driver’s platform, Kest let out a surprised shout and dropped to her knees. She slammed her hands down on the softening metal. Chilly blue-white light blazed from her skin as she poured Cold Metal Spirit into the fan boat, trying to keep it solid.

I ripped my liquefying shoes free of the hull and jumped up onto the front seat. With Dead Man’s Hand, I searched for the creature’s life point.

Nothing. No glowing life point, no Spirit sea. Just an endless well of blackness that began sucking down Miasma by the bucketful. Dead Man’s Hand fell apart and disappeared into the void.

I grabbed Hungry Ghost out of my pocket, refilling what the balancer had taken. Miasma exploded off me, forming Three Corpse Sickness, and I sent them racing to meet the oncoming creature.

The balancer galloped through them, dispersing the blobs in a burst of turquoise and absorbing them. It opened its huge jaws, fangs glinting gold.

Absolute nothingness spiraled at the back of its throat. An endless void that not even light could escape from. Looking into that abyss felt like I was falling, dropping into empty space. My head spun at the enormity. You could fall forever there.

A hand grabbed my shoulder. Warm Heart Spirit poured into my Spirit sea, reorienting me and sharpening my focus.

“Don’t get sucked in!” Rali yelled.

The boat rocked as Warcry took a flying leap off the front, burning fists cocked back for a mega-Superman punch. The balancer turned its head to tear into him. He slammed a burning kick into the creature’s jowl, knocking its mouth to the side and snapping me out of the daze.

But there wasn’t any solid ground to land on, and the water was boiling. Warcry let out a pained shout when he splashed down. The boat rocked again as Rali launched himself after the redhead. Orange Warm Heart Spirit surrounded Rali like the corona around the night sun. He cannonballed next to Warcry, slapping him with some sort of boost or protection. Warcry stopped freaking out about the heat, and his red flames raged brighter.

From there, Rali tangled his walking stick in the balancer’s legs. It roared again, shaking the whole world with its sonic attack, and whirled toward Rali.

“That’s right, over here,” he yelled at it.

Dead Reckoning screamed that I was about to die and threw my muscles into motion. I sidestepped and spun just in time to see the angel of death swoop over Kest’s head and slice that huge scythe upward at me

Without Dead Reckoning, I would’ve been cut in half. With it, I just barely managed to get out of the way. The angel’s blade sliced through the corner of my shield and tore open my shirt, leaving a thin red line across my chest and shoulder. Thankfully Kest was down trying to keep the boat from melting instead of standing up, or she would’ve been collateral damage.

The angel banked over Warcry and Rali’s battle with the balancer.

“This is between me and you,” I yelled at the angel. “Call your monster off and leave my friends out of this!”

“You dragged them into it,” she said.

The angel didn’t care who died as long as she could cover up her mistake. I had to end this before she killed somebody besides me. I reached out with Dead Man’s Hand, but just like the balancer, I ran into a wall of nothingness where the angel’s life point should’ve been.

Behind me, Kest called, “I can’t save the boat! Hake, cycle as much Miasma as you can without internal alchemy! Freeze out your tissues!”

I hit Hungry Ghost and started cycling Miasma to every muscle, tons of it. Frost crackled across my skin, death settling into the tissues.

Metal crackled and crunched like a car wreck, and the boat dropped out from under me. I splashed into the boiling water. Steam exploded off me in a cloud, the frost from my Miasma and the heat from the balancer canceling each other out.

My feet hit the muddy bottom of the bog, and I spun around, spitting hot dirty water and searching the sky for the angel.

A boiling wave of water sloshed over me as a huge metal golem waded past, wielding a blade from the fan boat like an oversized anime sword. Kest’s face poked out of the golem’s head. It took me a second to realize she was wearing the remains of the fan boat crunched around her like mech armor.

Dead Reckoning freaked out again, and my muscles reacted, jumping me backward. Even with the early warning, I was too slow. The angel’s scythe blade missed my throat, but sliced through my collarbone like a sword through overcooked spaghetti.

I gritted my teeth and dropped Death Metal—the shields weren’t doing me any good anyway—then pumped Miasma to the gash until the blood pouring out of it froze over. My left arm hung useless at my side.

I couldn’t survive a physical fight against the angel while I was trying to hold myself together like this, and I couldn’t wait around for someone else to help me. Rali, Warcry, and Kest were busy fighting off that balancer.

That only left one option.

I reached down to the place where Sudden Death was stored in my brain. The technique wasn’t powered by Spirit like everything else I’d developed so far. Sudden Death ran on life energy. It was a million times more powerful than Spirit techniques because it used up years of your life every time you executed it. The chaos creatures had given me one free shot to use against the angel of death in return for helping them, paying the price themselves since they were already dead.

I brought my hand up like I was scooping the heart out of my chest and stepped toward the angel. A brilliantly black cloud of Sudden Death started to coalesce in my clawed fingers.

But just behind the angel’s brilliant white form, I saw the balancer pawing a pair of flaming hooves at Warcry’s head. Warcry blocked the first, but the edge of the kick tore a bloody gouge down the side of his face. The second flaming hoof carved through the air toward his throat.

Kest battered away at the balancer’s opposite side, but the hoof was still coming down. Rali raced toward Warcry, trying to throw himself in the way, but he wasn’t fast enough. The balancer would tear Warcry’s neck open before Rali could get there.

I couldn’t see any other choices. I altered my target. With a shove that sucked all the air out of my lungs, I threw the infinitely black ball of Sudden Death at the balancer.

Except it all happened so fast that some of my brain was still thinking about hitting the angel of death with it. Sudden Death clipped the angel as it passed, then slammed into the balancer.

She screamed like she was being tortured to death.

The balancer roared, but the rib-shaking sound cut short. Its green scaled skin ripped and shredded. Its body imploded, crumpling up like a hot soda can in liquid nitrogen, and it disappeared into the void inside its own throat. The hoof that’d been about to split Warcry’s throat open folded inward and vanished.

I felt the balancer’s void trying to pull me in. My sneakers slid in the muck, and I started to slide through the water toward it. That black hole was taking everything, even the heat from the water. The boiling stopped as gallons of swamp were sucked in.

Rali and Warcry both shouted as the force dragged them off their feet, but Kest grabbed them with one arm of her boat armor and grounded her huge metal legs, leaning back to anchor the three of them.

Then the void swallowed itself.

My ears popped as the pull suddenly disappeared. I threw out another dose of Dead Reckoning and spun around, searching for the angel of death.

She was gone.

Immortal Weapon

I DID ANOTHER CIRCLE just to make sure the angel of death was really gone, pouring Miasma into my Ki-sight. No sign of her, but her shining scythe was lying at the bottom of the bog. I reached in with my still-working arm and fished the scythe out. It was freakishly long and heavy enough that I had to hit the strength reinforcement just to lift it.

As I picked it up out of the water, the flesh disappeared from my arm, leaving behind nothing but bones all the way from the hand wrapped around its haft to my shoulder. I did a quick check of my other hand. There was still skin and meat on that side.

A soft hum vibrated through my bone arm like a low-level electrical current. The scythe had been white when the angel of death wielded it, but as I watched, blackness spread from the little bones in my fingers outward, until the whole weapon was jet black. It shrank down in my fist until the handle was a foot taller than me and the blade was only as long as my arm.

Death Cultivator has found an immortal weapon, Hungry Ghost croaked in my head.

What does it do? I asked.

Cut.

I blinked. Dude, was that sarcasm?

“What the piss was that, fatso?” Warcry rounded on Rali. “Don’t you ever try a sacrifice play like that again, or I’ll knock your face out the backa your head!”

Rali let out a frazzled chuckle.

“Apologies, great and self-sufficient Warcry Thompson,” he said. He put his hands together and bowed over them. The move looked ridiculous while they were being held up by mech armor made of crushed fan boat. “I don’t know what I must have been thinking protecting a friend.”

Warcry thumped his chest with a burning fist. “If any of us is going to take damage, it oughta be me. Got it?”

“Don’t worry.” Kest let them both drop into the water and took a few screeching steps away. The balancer had really done a number on her impromptu armor, crushing it so much around the shoulders and arms that it would’ve taken the jaws of life to get her out without Metal Spirit. Red-orange light flared from the inside. “I won’t let Rali try to save your life again.”

Rali grinned, flicking his wet hair out of his face. “I love that you think you can stop me.”

Kest ignored him, climbing out of the melting armor.

“Well, our boat’s trashed,” she said, letting the last of it disappear under the water.

“So weld it back together.” Warcry swiped at the gash down the side of his face, flinging blood off his fingertips into the water. “Ain’t that what metal heads are for?”

“I can’t. It was aluminum. After the scorching that creature’s Star Core Spirit gave it, it’s too brittle to do anything with. Even if I could, all the hoses and electrical components from the engine are ashes now.”

“Come here, Warcry,” Rali said, Warm Heart Spirit collecting in his hands. “Let’s fix that head wound before it gets infected.”

Warcry turned to face Rali, but caught sight of me over the big guy’s shoulder. His eyes almost popped out of his skull.

“Where did you get that, grav?”

“The angel must’ve dropped it when I winged her with Sudden Death.”

Rali and Kest turned my way. Their mouths dropped open at the sight of my fleshless arm holding the angel of death’s scythe.

“Hake,” Kest said. “Tell me you looked at that with Ki-sight before you picked it up.”

“Right,” I said. “About that...”

“Drop it!” she snapped.

I opened my hand, but the scythe didn’t drop. It liquefied and surrounded my bare arm bones, then started crawling across my skeleton and up into my shoulder. I screamed as it tore through my muscles and disappeared into my body, spreading out over my bones. As it passed, it popped my sliced collarbone back together with a grinding snap and immobilized it with a layer of scythe.

I must’ve blacked out for a second there, because when the pain finally stopped, I realized I was on my hands and knees underwater. Bog water flowed up my nose and into my lungs, choking me. I thrashed my arms, trying to swim-splash back to my feet, but the scythe reinforcing my skeleton was weighing me down. I couldn’t get up.

Death cultivator has collected the first of the Heavenly Weapon Set by defeating its Reaper, Hungry Ghost croaked. Power of Lunar Exception is stored inside. However, as Death cultivator killed a Heavenly Scaled Balancer, Death cultivator will take Devil Corruption each time he uses Lunar Scythe until Death cultivator gains Blessing of the Immortal.

Hey, man, that’s awesome. I’m kind of drowning right now. Maybe we could go over this some other time?

Something bumped against my chest, pushing like it was trying to help me stand up, but it wasn’t strong enough.

Life points surrounding Death cultivator, Hungry Ghost said. Burning Hatred, Warm Heart, unspecified Metal, and Lost Mirror. Just one would supply more than enough strength to return Death cultivator to standing.

Forget that, I told Hungry Ghost. Give me some of your Miasma.

Spitefully, Hungry Ghost sent a flood of Miasma into my Spirit sea.

That’s enough, I snapped.

With a flash of anger, the flow stopped. I hoped Hungry Ghost couldn’t feel that I was just as upset as he was that I couldn’t down Spirit until I exploded.

I shoved the frustration and desire for more away, then hit the Ki-strength. Mud squished around my fingers as I pushed them into the soft swamp bed, and my heart sped up at the thought of bog ferals picking this very second to attack from below.

No rotting hands shot out of the muck, but something did nip at my shoulder from above, tugging on my shirt.

I dragged one leg under me into a quarterback kneel, then stood up. Water rolled off me in a wave, and whatever had been biting me dropped off my shoulder into the swamp with a splash.

I gulped down glorious oxygen and coughed up rancid water.

Red light flared across the backs of my eyelids as Warcry caught on fire.

“I’m done askin’ what that was,” Warcry snarled. “If it moves, I’m killin’ it.”

“Given how things have been going, that seems like a smart move,” Kest said.

“Wait,” Rali said. “This doesn’t feel like something with malicious intent.”

I swiped wet hair out of my eyes.

A purple-and-white fish about the size of my hand was swimming around in front of me, hopping in and out of the water. It had long, flowing fins like a betta, but a round dorky head that ruined the cool factor.

“Hold your fire, Warcry,” I said, which none of them laughed at. “Rali’s right, I think this fish was trying to pull me up.”

I got all the looks you’d expect from saying something like that.

At least until the fish stuck its head out of the water and yelled, “Up! Up!” in this overjoyed little girl’s voice. One eye was pale blue, and the other was dark brown.

“That’s...” Warcry shook his head. “...mad.”

It spat a stream of water at his face.

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m starting to like it.”

The fish giggled. “Like it! Like it!”

What Hungry Ghost had said about the four life points came back to me. On a hunch, I put out the radar version of Dead Reckoning.

The little fish popped up as the sparkling purple life point I’d been seeing.

“You were under the tree when the Heavenly Contrails attacked us,” I said. “You’re following us.” Then I remembered the label on that elixir bottle. “You’re the one with the Lost Mirror Spirit. You were in that bottle on the train.”

“Train.” The little fish splashed out of the swamp and swam through the air, up and around my head, fins flowing like it was totally normal to be out of the water. Then it bumped into my face, kind of like how a cat brushes against your legs.

Its skin was cold, and I could feel the ridges of the scales, but it wasn’t slimy like a regular fish. Just wet.

“Grady,” it cooed.

“Where’d you hear that?” I caught it so it would stop rubbing water on my face. “Nobody in this universe calls me that.”

It didn’t answer, just squirmed around in my hands until I petted it.

Rali leaned in closer to get a better look at the thing. “How old are you, little fish? Did you cultivate Spirit for a thousand years to gain your Spirit affinity?”

“If it did, that’s twice as much reason to kill it now,” Warcry said, crossing his arms. “No good ever comes of messing with animals that take the Dragon Gate. It’s probably here to lure bog travelers to their deaths.”

“Deaths?” The little fish’s eyes got even wider, and it darted behind my head like it was hiding. Its long tailfins tickled against the back of my neck and sent a shiver down my spine.

Kest looked up from her HUD. “There aren’t any pictures of prisoners her size in the Spirit rankings, and I can’t find any record of a native fish that mimics intelligent speech on Van Diemann.”

“The hyper web isn’t the answer to every question, Kest,” Rali said.

“I’m just saying it’s not documented yet,” she said. “Besides, it’s not the fish we should be worried about, it’s the scythe Hake just sucked into his body.” She looked at me. “Where did you get that thing?”

“Hungry Ghost said I earned it by defeating her or something.”

She looked at me like I was crazy. “So you absorbed it?”

“No, I mean, yeah, but I don’t think it’s dangerous.” I hooked my hands in my back pockets. “Like, right now, it’s sort of armoring my skeleton. My bones feel a lot stronger, even without Ki reinforcement.” I held out the arm the angel had almost chopped off and bent it a couple times. “And it put my shoulder back together, so it can’t be that bad.”

Water sloshed as Warcry hooked a flaming sucker punch into my floating ribs.

I folded, grabbing my side. “Ah! What the heck, man?”

Warcry grunted thoughtfully. “That is stronger.”

He pulled back for a kick, but I put my hands up.

“Let’s assume the first experiment was good enough,” I said.

Rali squinted at me like he could see the layer of scythe on my rib cage.

“In the old sword legends, weapons from defeated immortals usually come with some kind of bonus,” he said. “Maybe the extra-strength bones are the scythe’s fringe benefit. Weapon sometimes, armor the rest of the time.”

“The downside is it’s crazy heavy,” I said. “That’s going to take some getting used to.” Out of curiosity, I pulled up my profile on my HUD to see whether the scythe’s weight showed up in my stats. The purple fish swam up and looked down at the cracked screen like it was trying to read, too. “Holy cow, with this thing, I’m twenty-nine pounds heavier.”

“Needed it,” Warcry said. “Maybe now you can get some momentum behind your shots, yeah?”

But Kest wasn’t interested in the benefits of the scythe. She frowned at me. “You look the exact same size. That doesn’t make any sense. Mass doesn’t just disappear.”

“Maybe it’s just spread really thin,” Rali suggested.

Before she could argue further, though, the alarm on my Winchester buzzed.

I shut it off. “Clock’s still running, guys. We’re down to thirty-six hours to get to the Heartchamber.”

“Best get moving, then,” Warcry said, turning to follow the location arrow on his HUD map. “We got a long walk ahead of us since our Metal head can’t even fix a boat.”

Campfire Scene

AFTER RALI HEALED THE rest of my and Warcry’s wounds with some extra-concentrated Healing Restoration, we started slogging through the swamp again. The little white-and-purple fish followed us the rest of the day, skipping across the water beside me, eating bugs off the surface of the water, and disappearing when bog ferals attacked. I didn’t have a lot of time to pay attention to her, though. Fighting those bog ferals took a ton more Miasma than it had earlier. With the added weight on my skeleton, I had to keep the Ki-speed and strength running constantly just to go the same speed I had without the scythe. If it hadn’t been for the Miasma covering the bog and the boosts from the ferals’ life points, there was no way I could’ve kept up with everybody else.

Thankfully, around night sun high, we found a patch of mostly dry land to camp out for the darkest part of the night. We made a fire and ate AlgaeFrize. I know the topic of staying awake in shifts came up, but by then I couldn’t focus on the conversation or the food. My chin kept dipping down to my chest, and my eyes wouldn’t stay open, even after I forced myself to stand up.

“Guys, Hake’s literally falling asleep on his feet,” Rali said, grinning.

Warcry snorted. “Baby needs a nap, does he?”

“I’m fine.” I shook my head and scrubbed my face hard, trying to wake up. I looked at Kest. “What were you saying?”

“That there’s no way you’re taking first watch.” She pointed her AlgaeFrize bag at the mossy ground. “Lay down before you fall down. One of us will wake you up when it’s your turn.”

I knew I should probably argue out of basic politeness, but I didn’t have the energy right then. I stretched out where I’d been standing, that little fish swimming around my head like it was trying to figure out what I was doing. The second I shut my eyes, I was gone.

I dreamed about Gramps again. The old man was smoothing his hand over the inner lining of a casket, staring at the gray satin with a blank, lost expression on his face.

Even through the layer of sleep, I felt my throat hurting and this sickness in my chest. I remembered that feeling; it was losing something you could never get back. That wasn’t weird; I should’ve been used to that kind of finality. After a few times, it goes from debilitating to more of an annoyance that you try to ignore, which is easy when you’re awake. Less easy when you’re asleep. But I almost never had dreams about my mom anymore, so I figured the ones about Gramps would go away eventually, too.

No one woke me up like promised, I just sort of drifted awake on my own to find the night sun directly overhead, no sign of the blue sun on the cloudy horizon yet. Rali was in the lotus position, staring into the glowing embers, and Kest and Warcry had stretched out on opposite sides of the fire.

I sat up and stretched.

“Getting close to my watch yet?” I asked Rali in a low voice.

“You haven’t been burning off the soul contamination,” he said instead of an answer. “That’s part of why you’re so tired.”

“Oh right.” I got Corpse Fire going, then went and splashed some water on my face. “That scythe is taking a ton of Ki-strength to keep moving, too, so that’s probably not helping much.”

Rali nodded. “That’ll be good for your body conditioning in the long run, though. Help you build up extra muscle.”

I came back to the fire and stood looking down into the embers for a while. Kest was asleep, so I couldn’t chug a Coffee Drank from the storage ring, but I was awake enough that I didn’t need the caffeine a whole lot.

“You could get some sleep if you wanted,” I told Rali. “I’ll take my watch now.”

He shrugged. “I’ve already meditated most of the night away. I’m not tired.”

Since we’d been talking about body conditioning, I got in a relaxed taiji stance and started the slow push and pull motions and measured breathing. The air was chilly and wet, but with the scythe weighing me down, I was sweating in no time. While I practiced, the fish swam up to me through the air, nipping at my hands until I paused long enough to pet her.

“The sushi’s still here?” I joked. “I figured you’d get bored and swim off while we were asleep.”

“Asleep,” she echoed, scrubbing her round little head against my thumb.

Rali grinned. “I think you’ve got a pet, Hake.”

Without warning, she darted out of my hand and snapped up a mosquito.

“Hey, as long as it keeps thinning out the bugs.” When she came back, I petted her scaly side, then gently pushed her away and settled back into my stance. “Hang out as long as you want, Sushi.”

I went back to practicing. Rali gave me pointers and let me know when my breathing got off track, and the fish swam around eating bugs. After an hour or so, I called it good and sat down by the fire to cultivate some of the Miasma rolling in off the bogs.

Kest was still snoring softly, but over on his side of the fire, Warcry tossed and turned. Every now and then trails of flame ran down his head and arms.

“Is that normal?” I asked Rali.

“I’ve heard some humans do it if they’ve overcultivated,” he said, flicking his shaggy black hair out of his face, “but I don’t know if that’s true or an old wives’ tale. If any human was going to do it, it should be you after you use Hungry Ghost, since your cultivation is newest and it could overfill your sea, but you haven’t been flaring up with Miasma on this trip.”

“Maybe he’s dreaming about setting people on fire.”

“Or maybe this place is as full of nightmares as it is Miasma.”

I expected Rali to start making up one of his spooky theories that even he didn’t really believe, but when I looked, he was staring pensively into the fire.

My brain flashed back to the dreams about Gramps. “Why? Did you have a nightmare, too?”

“Not a nightmare really.” He glanced over at Kest. “Just a dream about being a kid again. Back when I still had my Universal Implant.”

I waited a second for him to elaborate. He didn’t.

So I asked him, “Was it pretty bad?”

He shook his head. “There weren’t any downsides to it, and it never hurt anything.” Then he remembered he was supposed to be the anti-implant guy and forced a smirk. “Well, besides everybody categorizing you as a number based on how much Spirit you’d cultivated instead of as an individual.”

“Well, yeah, obviously that stuff goes without saying,” I said, tearing up some strands of dry swamp grass and chucking them into the fire. “But do you ever wish you hadn’t removed it? You could check your ranking, see how much Spirit you had...”

Rali rolled his walking stick between his palms. “Everybody’s got a part of them that wants to compare themselves to something. But I wouldn’t go back for all the sweet mochi in the universe. Living without knowing is way more...” He thought about it for a second. “...relieving.”

“I can see that,” I said. “Like you don’t have to keep up with anybody else.”

“More like you don’t have to keep up with your own ego.”

I laughed. “Was that ever a legit problem for you? You don’t even have an ego.”

He grinned down at the fire. “Mine’s worse than anybody I know, Hake. That’s why I couldn’t keep the implant.”

“Whatever.”

“I wanted to be the best.” He shrugged. “I thought I was the best.”

“I mean, from what Kest said, you kind of were, right?” I said. According to his twin, Rali had blazed through the levels of kishotenketsu, making it to Ten way back when they were still little kids. For all we knew, he was in Ketsu already.

“I didn’t understand kishotenketsu back then.” He unfolded his legs, hiking his knees up and resting his elbows on them. “I thought Spirit was something to hoard so I could be better than everyone else, but the more I got, the more I wanted. My ego needed to keep up that feeling of progress. It took me forever to realize my motivations were all wrong. If I’d kept my implant, you’d be talking to a very different man, one with Cold Heart Spirit instead of Warm.”

“Yeah, right.” I threw a handful of grass at him. “You couldn’t use Cold Heart Spirit if your life depended on it.”

A couple glowing coals tumbled out of the fire, and Rali shoved them back in with the butt of his walking stick.

“That’s one of the reasons I knew we could trust you back when we first found you,” he said. “You just wanted to protect the life around you, even when that life didn’t directly benefit you. That’s why I made such a big deal out of that fight with the Contrails. I don’t want to see your Spirit corrupted into the killing machine everybody thinks Death cultivators should be. You don’t have to play by their predetermined rules. You’ve got your own code, kind of like the wandering heroes from the old sword legends.”

I stared into the coal bed, thinking about that.

“I think you’re just seeing what you want to see, man,” I said. “I’m not some great guy doing heroic stuff. I’m just an idiot who hasn’t screwed up bad enough for you guys to hate me yet.”

That made him laugh, a real, deep belly laugh. The sound rang across the swamp.

“Bleedin’ hell’s going on?” Warcry slurred angrily, turning over.

Rali calmed down. “We’re all that idiot all the time, Hake. If you could see the thoughts and motivations of the people around you as well as you can yours, you’d judge them just as harshly. Contempt is the end result of full disclosure.”

Kest sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Why are we having philosophical discussions at top volume in the middle of the night?”

“’Cause they need a kick in the teeth,” Warcry said.

I checked the time on my HUD. “It’s not long until day sunup anyway. We should get moving.”

With a little more grumbling, Kest passed out Coffee Drank to everybody—except Rali, who turned up his nose at it—then we started hiking through the swamp again.

Mist and Miasma swirled around everything as we slogged through the muck. I expected the fog to burn off when the blue sun came up, but clouds rolled in before that could happen, turning the world dark and gray. Thunder cracked, and the rain started pouring down in buckets, battering the fog back down into the water.

By the middle of the day, Kest and Rali were the only ones still enjoying the novelty of never-ending rain. Warcry and I had had about enough.

“After Ghost Town, I never thought I’d get tired of rain,” I said.

“But here we bleedin’ are,” Warcry muttered.

In addition to the downpour, the number of bog ferals had picked up. Strangely, it was less like these ferals had been after us and more like we’d intercepted them by accident. The last group that we’d fought had even been plodding in the same direction we were. They still tried to kill us once we caught up to them, but it was like we weren’t their primary objective. Luckily, Kest and I remembered to loot these guys.

It was just after day sun high when we came over a rise and saw where all the ferals were headed.

There was a building off in the distance on a small hill. Through the curtain of rainwater, the place didn’t look like much—just a low brick building—but it matched up with the coordinates Biggerstaff had sent us for Dragon Heartchamber 2. Bands of bog ferals dotted the marshy land between us and the building, every one of them stumbling and trudging up the hill toward it.

“Huh,” I said, eyeing the place. “I kind of expected something bigger.”

“I told you, you can’t build up in Bogland,” Kest said. “The ground’s too unstable to support a large structure. I’m not even sure how they keep a foundation that long from cracking apart.”

“Must be a lot of Spirit collected there to be drawing the ferals like that,” Rali said, leaning on his walking stick.

Warcry checked the time on his HUD. “Bit early, ain’t we, grav?”

“I bet we won’t be once we’re done fighting our way to the doorstep,” I said.

Red flames ran down his head and arms.

“Best get started, then,” he said.

Heartchamber 2

“AH, ME BLEEDIN’—” WARCRY hopped sideways out of the range of a feral’s swiping arms, his every move off-balance and wobbly. His junky prosthetic was locked up again.

I jumped into a shield-bash, tearing open the feral’s skull before it could touch him. Rotten brains and rainwater slung off Death Metal in an arc.

“We’re almost there,” Kest yelled, glancing up the spongy hill at Heartchamber 2, just a few hundred yards away now. The weight on the end of her chain gauntlet shot out and punched through the decomposing eye of an attacking squid feral. “I’ll take another look at it when we get inside. Just hope the door’s not locked.”

The straightest path to the front door of the Heartchamber had taken us straight through three bands of ferals, and the noise from the fights had drawn others from the surrounding area, so by then we were being swamped by at least half a dozen packs of them.

Rali darted through us, hitting Warcry and Kest with Spirit boosts. Since I could take a power up from the ferals whenever I needed it, I’d told him to focus on the other two. Although the more often I used the ferals’ life points for power ups, the sicker and more sluggish I felt when they wore off, to the point where I’d stopped using Dead Man’s Hand unless one of my friends was in danger and I couldn’t get to them or I really needed the boost to keep moving.

A break came in the line of ferals.

“Let’s run for it,” Rali suggested.

“Sounds good,” I said.

The four of us took off for the steel door on the front side of the Heartchamber. We were up out of the water, but that last push up the hill was not an easy one. Even with Ki-speed, we were all sucking wind by the time we made it to the brick building.

As we approached, the steel door opened. Biggerstaff, the catfish-headed recruiter for the Eight-Legged Dragons, stepped out under the wide eaves and held the door open. He was back in street clothes today, jeans and a button-down shirt, no fancy tailored suit like he’d worn to the tournament.

“How was the trip?” he called.

“Wet,” Warcry snapped as we sprinted inside.

“Watch that step,” Biggerstaff said.

Kind of an understatement. A few feet inside the door, the floor ended in an abrupt drop-off.

Kest, Warcry, and I skidded to a stop. Rali’s wet sandals slipped on the tile, but I grabbed him before he went under the waist-high railing.

“Whoa,” he breathed. The lace in his eyes thinned out as he looked down.

“Whoa,” Sushi whispered, poking her head around my leg.

Instead of a mudroom or foyer, we were standing on a walkway that went around the perimeter of the building. At the center was a twelve-story drop. Doors lined the different levels, and people came and went. On the bottom floor, tables and chairs were set up around a blue-watered fountain like a mall food court.

I let go of Rali and grabbed the railing. That was a long way down.

“Of course,” Kest said, leaning over the rail beside me. “If you can’t build up, you build down.”

“Good for defense, too,” Biggerstaff said. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to infiltrate a place that’s ninety-nine percent underground.”

Kest nodded slowly, then straightened up.

“Well, we got you guys here,” she said to me. “Rali and I should be going. We’ll message you when we get to Jade City.”

My stomach sank. I hadn’t expected her to take off so soon.

“Slow down a minute, Miss Iye Skal.” Biggerstaff put his hands up to stop her. “You two came this far; you might as well spend a few nights, see how things operate around the Heartchamber. Are you still considering the Dragons’ affiliation offer?”

“I like what you’ve put on the table,” Kest said, “but I’m mainly using it as leverage against the Technols to see if I can get them to waive the required apprenticeship periods and practicums.”

I winced a little at the bluntness, but Biggerstaff just croaked out that weird catfish laugh.

“Not a bad strategy,” he said, “but I don’t think it’ll work. No matter how talented you are, artificers are going to be a credit a dozen to the Technols, and they’ll always give pride of place to Ylefs. Keep the Dragons in mind, Miss Metal Head. We can do you one better than anything they’re willing to offer. The Dragons are low on artificers, so we’re more likely to give you whatever you want with fewer conditions.”

“Will you let me quote you on that?” Kest brought out her HUD, slipping it onto her stick arm. The cinnabar at the wrist expanded to hold the wide band in place while she messed with the screen.

“For your leverage?” Biggerstaff grinned. “I like the way you think, little lady.”

He repeated it while Kest recorded him.

“Thanks,” she said, sending the message. “We’ll see what the Technols have to say about that.”

“Probably tell you to get stuffed,” Warcry said.

“If they do, I know the gang I can turn to,” Kest said.

“Got that right,” Biggerstaff said. He looked at Rali. “What about you, young man? You’ve got a powerful aura and the air of a man without a criminal past. Could have your pick of shogunates someday if you joined up.”

Rali bowed over his hands. “I’m honored to be considered worthy of the Eight-Legged Dragons, but for the time being, I must respectfully decline.”

“A diplomatic no,” Biggerstaff said, grinning. “Just like a Selken. Well, how about this—I give the two of you guest status for now. You’ll get to see the perks of our organization up close and personal to help you make a more informed decision.”

He led us to a row of elevators and pressed the down button.

“Let’s head down and get our Selken friends set up first,” he said, checking his HUD. “They’ll be on Level 9, in the guest suites. Then we’ll get you probationary Dragons set up.”

There was a ding. One of the elevators opened, and we got in. The walls of the car were glass, which I’d always thought was cool. I stood staring out at the floors below while we descended to Level 9.

The car came to a stop, and the doors slid open on another walkway. This one was lined with thick carpet. I felt bad for tracking mud and muck all over it, but Biggerstaff wasn’t waiting around for me to find somewhere to scrape my sneakers off. He led us down the walkway, around a corner, and stopped at a pair of doors.

“Mister and Miss Selken,” he said. “Welcome to your suites. Put your HUDs to the panel to set them as the key.”

Rali lifted a finger. “Apologies, but I don’t have one of those things. If you can unlock it for me, though, I’ll just leave the door open. I don’t have anything worth stealing, anyway.” He grinned and held up his walking stick. “Besides this.”

Biggerstaff blinked. It was the first time I’d seen him caught off guard.

“That explains why your ranking never updates on Van Diemann’s Spirit boards,” the catfish said. He pressed his sleek black HUD to the panel and the lock clinked open. “This place was remodeled a few years back, so all the analog locks are gone, but I can talk to someone in physical plant—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kest said. “There’s bound to be a spec sheet for these panels on the hyperweb. I’ll set up a data entry for him later with the option for you to erase it and turn it back into a HUD sensor when we leave.”

Biggerstaff’s whiskers twitched, and he looked at Kest with a new level of respect.

“Do me a favor and really think on the Dragons’ offer, Miss Iye Skal,” he said.

She nodded, then opened her room. Through the door I could see lots of natural tones, greens and blues, and hear what sounded like a babbling brook. Thick cushions were piled up around a low wood table in the sitting area, and I caught the corner of what looked like a kitchen counter disappearing behind a wall.

Warcry and I started to follow Kest and Rali inside, but Biggerstaff stopped us.

“This is as far as either of you go until you’ve earned it,” he said.

Kest turned back. “But I need to work on his prosthetic.”

“Then you’ll have to do it in his room or one of the common areas,” Biggerstaff said. “I’m afraid probationary members aren’t allowed in rooms below their level.” Before Kest could say anything else, he jerked his flat head at the elevators. “Speaking of, let’s head back upstairs and get you gentlemen settled in.”

Kest shot me a look, and I shrugged. She held up her HUD to let me know to message when I got a chance. I nodded and followed Biggerstaff back to the elevators.

Fight Tower

“AS NEWLY SIGNED RECRUITS, you’ll be on Level 3,” Biggerstaff told us once we were headed back up. “The accommodations are basic, but you shouldn’t want to stay there, anyway. It’s just a starting point.”

We stopped on Level 3 and got out. The floors there were not carpet. They were the same vinyl-like tile that was in the entryway. It squeaked under my wet sneakers.

Biggerstaff stopped at another pair of doors. “These two are free right now. Key in your HUDs.”

I pressed my Winchester’s cracked screen to the shining panel of the door in front of me. Even though my HUD was a lot older than Warcry’s and Biggerstaff’s models, the panel beeped and the door swung open without a problem.

“It’s a bento box,” Warcry spat.

There was just enough space to lie down. A bedroll leaned up against one corner.

“What about bathrooms?” I asked.

“Communal, down the hall,” Biggerstaff said. “You don’t need to be comfortable here. You’re not staying long. At least, you shouldn’t be. Tomorrow morning, your tower fight starts. The first five times you win, we’ll move you down a floor, and as you saw from your friends’ rooms, the accommodations get nicer the farther down you go. After you post your first five wins, you’ll slow down and only move on every subsequent fifth win. Your goal is to post twenty victories in total. How long that takes and how well you do during the fights will decide your rank and role within the Dragons.”

“What if we lose?” I asked, thinking about how I’d done in the tournament. Not terrible, but not great either. “Do we move back up?”

“For losing one fight? No. Lose two back-to-back, however, and you move back up a level. Lose four in a row, and you’re cut off from the Dragons.” He eyed us sidelong. “The tournament to get in was your easy ride. From here on out, it’s sink or swim. On the other fin, wins will be rewarded with more than just nicer rooms. If your fights get selected for our Prison League Fighting broadcast, you’ll get a cut of every sponsorship for each aired fight you win.”

Warcry’s red-brown eyebrows jumped up at that. Then he must’ve realized he was showing something besides anger, because he twisted his face back into a scowl.

“How big a cut?” he asked. “And is it outta the net or total?”

“Net,” Biggerstaff said, ignoring the rest of Warcry’s question. “Once you’ve got twenty wins under your belt, you’ll be considered full members of the Dragons, and you’ll receive your assignments, along with your Eight-Legged Dragon healing script tattoo.”

“You mean we won’t have nothing keeping us from bleeding to death during the fights?” Warcry growled.

“I do mean that.” Biggerstaff checked his HUD. “Let’s walk while we talk. I’m almost out of time for orientation.”

We headed back to the elevators.

“You won’t have healing during your fights,” the recruiter said. “You’ll be as helpless as most people outside our organization, which is to say, ordinary folk. Too many hooligans rely on their tattoos to heal them. Imagine your tattoo arm gets cut off during a fight, and your healing’s gone. Are we supposed to hope the Dragon we invested so much in can suddenly shift to self-preservation after years of letting the script deal with it? Needless to say, if you get killed during your tower fight, you’re not getting inducted posthumously.”

Obviously, he thought that was pretty clever, because he croaked that catfish laugh.

The elevator doors opened, and we climbed back on. Biggerstaff pushed the button for Level 12.

“Like I said, provisionary Dragons aren’t allowed in the luxury of rooms on floors they haven’t earned.” He eyed us. “So, no sneaking into your pretty little friend’s guest suite. Believe me, we will know, and you’ll be walking yourself right back through the bogs to wherever you came from. You are allowed in all common areas, however—walkways, lobbies, and elevators, as well as the market court, stores, locker rooms, and the arena.”

The floors flashed by as our car dropped. It came to a stop on the bottom floor.

As soon as we stepped out, the rumble of conversations and the smell of sizzling meat and spices hit us. We were on the fountain court level. My mouth watered, and my stomach rumbled as we passed restaurant stalls and fighters packing heaping plates of food to tables. A couple days in the bogs with nothing but AlgaeFrize had really given me a hankering for something hot and not made of algae, but Biggerstaff didn’t even slow down.

“This is the market court,” he said, cutting through the tables. “You’ll get three meal allowances per day. If you’ve got the money, you can supplement that however you choose.”

Around the edges of the central dining area, hallways lined with stores shot off like the spokes of a wheel. He took off down one and stopped in front of a glass storefront with a hologram of a dragon made of smoke curling and clawing at the window.

“The Smoking Dragon, our distillery,” Biggerstaff said. “Like meals, you’ll get an allowance of healing elixirs—five per week. Anything more than that comes out of your own pocket, so if you’re broke, be judicious about how you apply them. If you’re not broke yet, be smart or you will be broke in no time. Our master distiller is one of the best, and she doesn’t come cheap.”

Abruptly, Biggerstaff turned back toward the fountain court. Warcry and I hustled to follow him.

“Elixirs aside, you’re not required to fight every day,” he explained. “You can take up to two days off between fights to recover. Go over that, and you’ll be penalized a loss per absentee day.” He looked from me to Warcry. “We’re not here just to assess how much punishment you can take. This isn’t some small-time backwater. The Eight-Legged Dragons are the strongest gang of the Big Five, and we want to keep it that way. Show us how smart you can be with what you’ve got, not how much healing you can soak up on our credits.”

Instead of heading for the elevators, Biggerstaff turned us down another hall and through a set of double doors.

We came out in the top row of an arena. The stands were laid out like the Jade City kokugikon, with boxes lined with seating cushions and surrounded by low railings. Instead of a series of fight cages down at the center, though, there was just a large open dirt floor. A neon yellow guy was being dragged off the floor, bleeding bright green blood, while a shark guy raised his hands in triumph.

“Winner—Cutshine!” an ecstatic female voice shouted over the speaker system. “Eleven wins, six losses!”

Some of the crowd cheered, some of it booed, but nobody seemed as hyped about the whole thing as the crowd at the Wilderness Territorial had been. They kind of sounded bored.

The shark guy left, and two new fighters entered the arena floor.

The announcer yelled out their names and records over the speaker system, then added, “Fighting in...city scape!”

The arena floor transformed. Buildings, trash cans, chain link fences, and run-down vehicles sort of like motorcycles pushed up out of the dirt. Without a bow or official to start the match, the fighters shot toward each other, kicking off a brawl in the newly built street.

“Extemp?” Warcry asked like this was no big shock.

Biggerstaff shook his head. “The terrain’s randomized over the course of your fights to test your skills in a variety of situations, but not everything is extemporaneous. You can submit your name each day and let Scheduling decide who you’ll fight, or you can challenge any other provisionary Dragon in the Heartchamber. The win-loss boards in the market court and arena are kept updated to the minute, and you can find them on your HUD as well. Word of warning—if you start to lose, people smell blood in the water real quick and start picking you to pad their wins. And you’re not allowed to refuse a challenge—try it once and you’re gone. An Eight-Legged Dragon never backs down.”

On the arena floor, one of the fighters knocked the other flat. He didn’t get back up.

“So win early and win lots,” I said.

“Weren’t planning on anything else, were we, grav?” Warcry said.

Easy Come, Easy Go

ONCE BIGGERSTAFF FINISHED showing us through the locker rooms, the laundry room, the workout rooms, and a soaking room full of steaming rock baths that supposedly aided healing, the catfish said he had another recruit to meet and headed off toward the elevators.

“I’m getting something to eat,” Warcry said when the recruiter left. “Something with some meat on it.”

Hot food sounded amazing, but my pockets were full of feral loot, and I had some stuff to take care of once there were credits in my USL account again.

“Meet you after if you’re still down here,” I said.

Warcry nodded and headed for the food stalls.

Surprisingly, it didn’t take long to find someone interested in feral loot. The Pawning Post, a little pawnshop near the center of the market court hub, dealt in guns, jewelry, Spirit apparatuses, and other random junk. Apparently the place did a lot of business with provisionary Dragons who spent most of their time in the card halls and taverns just down the way.

The guy behind the counter looked like a chameleon, with the scales and bulging independently moving eyes and everything. He didn’t want the HUDs I’d scavenged because the components had been under the bog for too long, but the Spirit stones were still valuable. Although a lot less valuable than they’d been in Ghost Town—about half the price, because the distillery here stayed stocked with them and sold them for cheap. The huge batch of white jade stones I brought in only put a hundred and eight credits in my pocket, but that was more than I’d had an hour before.

I took my paycheck down the hall to the lineup of clothes stores. I was getting tired of wearing the same dirty jeans and shirt around the clock.

There were no regular clothes places, so the Walmart stuff I was used to wasn’t available. Every store was some combination of cowboys, ancient Asia, and alien cyberpunk, but eventually I found a cheap pair of cargo pants that seemed like they’d hold up for a while and a shirt made of that black athletic material that was close enough to a regular T-shirt for me. Along with some socks and boxers, that stop cost me fifty-nine credits.

My sneakers were wearing out, too, but they didn’t have an equivalent in the market court, just different kinds of boot stores, so I ended up springing for some combat boots that weren’t too heavy or uncomfortable. And just like that, I was broke again.

Sushi turned visible again while I rode the elevator back upstairs. When she saw we were alone, she swam across the elevator floor and watched through the glass as we climbed.

I looked out with her. “Pretty cool, right?”

“Right,” she echoed.

In the market court down below, a pair of messy black buns and a reddish metal stick arm caught my eye. Kest was heading for one of the hallways full of stores.

“Dang,” I said. “Must’ve just missed her.”

“Her?” Sushi smudged the front of her round head on the glass, looking down.

“She’s probably selling the rest of her loot.”

“Loot!” Sushi did a spiral in the air, giggling. “Right?”

“Right,” I said absently, setting down my bag of clothes and boots while I messaged Kest.

At first, I wrote, Tour’s over. I’m going to grab a quick shower, then maybe some food. Do you want to hang out later?

But I didn’t send that. It sounded weird and desperate. So I erased Do you want to hang out later? and replaced it with How was the guest suite? Then I sent it.

The elevator stopped on Level 3. Kest’s reply came as I was walking into the communal bathrooms.

She’d said, Comfortable. I need to find somewhere to buy components. Want to meet up down by the food stalls when you’re done?

A dumb grin stretched across my face.

Yeah, I’ll message you when I’m headed down, I sent back.

The hot water of the shower felt so incredible after three days’ worth of wading through cold rain and mud. I probably would’ve stayed in until my fight the next day if I hadn’t already said I’d meet Kest. I rushed through washing up and was rinsing off when I heard the bathroom door open and someone come in.

Bags rustled.

Sushi kept splashing around in the water, but I froze. That might not be my bags, but then again, it might be, and my old jeans were right next to those bags, with Hungry Ghost in the pocket.

I shut off the water and grabbed a towel. Hungry Ghost’s Spirit trail was supposed to be invisible to everybody but me, but I didn’t want to take any chances. Sushi followed me out of the showers, but the second she caught sight of the other guy, she disappeared in a shimmer of purple and white scales.

The last person I expected to see probably wasn’t the Ylef with the glass hammers who’d won the Wilderness Territorial, but he was pretty far down the list. He was covered in bog mud like we’d been when we arrived.

My dirty jeans had fallen on the floor by his feet, one of which was wearing a new combat boot. He had my other new boot in his hand, loosening the laces and pulling out the tongue.

The thinnest trail of Miasma was creeping under the bathroom door and toward my jeans. My shoulders relaxed a little. Hungry Ghost was still there.

“Hey,” I snapped at the Ylef. “Those are mine.”

His gray eyes blinked, startled.

“These boots?” He pulled the other one on and started tying it. “These are my boots, meat roach.”

“Bullcrap they are,” I said, crossing the tile floor. “I just bought them. Take them off.”

“Gonna make me?” Glass Spirit trickled down his right arm, forming a glinting hammer in his fist.

I stopped in my tracks and sent Death Metal to cover one arm, shoving the shield out in front of me. The first thing that popped into my head was that he wouldn’t be so smug when Dead Man’s Hand got ahold of him. But that hadn’t worked in the tournament. The Ylef moved too fast for me to get him to submit, and my only other option once I’d escalated to that point was killing him and taking my stuff back.

That was pretty extreme for a pair of boots, even if they had cost my last forty-nine credits.

“Fine, keep them,” I said, shrugging like I didn’t care. “Let me know if they’re too big. I can see if they sell women’s downstairs.”

The Ylef’s face twisted into an icy rage. He took a step toward me, raising the hammer. I braced my legs and triggered my Ki speed and strength, ready to bash him when he got within range.

Weirdly, my other hand clamped down tighter on the towel, because I guess part of me was more worried about fighting this douche naked than one-handed.

Just then the bathroom door swung open, and a shark lady came in. She saw us standing there with Spirit attacks ready to go and whistled.

“Boy-fight in the showers? It’s not even my hatch day!” She chuckled and started toward the toilet stalls at the far end. “Don’t you two finish this before I get out.”

The Ylef’s eyes narrowed. The glass hammer in his fist drained away, and he smiled a tight-lipped smile.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I challenge you, formally. You’ll be my first win for the Dragons.”

I let the Death Metal shield dissipate. “Don’t count on it.”

He headed for the exit. “Seems like a safe bet. It only took a second during the tournament to put you down.”

The bathroom door slammed behind him.

“Jerkwad,” I growled, picking through my bagful of clothes to make sure I still had everything else. Down on the floor, the air next to my muddy jeans shimmered with purple scales, and Sushi swam out of a fold, eyes darting around, searching for danger.

“Jerkwad!” the fish huffed at the door.

I jammed the clean clothes back down into my bag. Guess if I wanted to make enough money to buy a new pair of boots, I’d just have to beat him tomorrow.

The Catch

“YOU JUST LEFT YOUR stuff sitting out where anybody could see it?” Kest asked, looking up from the pieces of Warcry’s detached prosthetic she had spread across the table.

From the opposite side, Warcry stared at me like I was out of my mind. “What’d’ya think this place is, grav, a monastery?”

“Yeah, I know, I’m an idiot.” I shoved the vegetables and meat around on my plate with a pair of disposable chopsticks. “Where I’m from...”

“People never steal things?” Rali asked. But instead of sounding like he was making fun of me, he actually sounded hopeful.

“No. I mean, they do,” I said, watching his face fall a little. “It just wasn’t very common. I think it happened like once the whole time I was in school, and the kid gave the hoodie back and said she was sorry.”

I’d found the three of them down in the market court after changing into my new clothes and shoving everything else into my room. Everything except Hungry Ghost. That was in my pocket. I wasn’t letting it out of my possession again.

“Ought to cut the bleeder’s hand off,” Warcry said, wadding up his last piece of flatbread and shoving it into his mouth. “One theft, one hand. That’s how me ma runs her factory towns. Stops thieves quick-like.”

“I’ll see about that tomorrow.” I took a long drink from my water bottle. “He’s my first fight.”

“First loss, ya mean,” Warcry said.

“Hey, I didn’t see you beating him at the tournament,” I said.

“With a better prosthetic, it wouldn’t have been outside the realm of possibility,” Kest said, screwing a couple pieces together.

“Why’s that Ylef trash even here?” Warcry asked like he hadn’t heard her. He kicked back in his chair and leaned it up on the back feet, his knee against the table and his stump crossed over his knee. “I thought the catfish said the Dragons didn’t recruit more than one draft pick and one wild card per tournament.”

“Since the Technols wouldn’t take him, he approached Biggerstaff, and Biggerstaff offered him a shot at one of your affiliations if he can get to twenty wins first.” Kest’s hands burned dark red-orange as she heat-treated a piece of metal. It popped and ticked as it heated up. “That’s what Sedryk said happened, anyway.”

“What?” I choked on my food at the same time as Warcry fell forward, the feet of his chair slamming back down on the tile.

“You wot, netskin?” he snapped.

Rali raised his eyebrows at his sister. “Care to explain yourself, Kest?”

She blinked up from her work, realizing we were all looking at her.

“Sedryk Nameless, right?” she said. “I saw him earlier while I was selling. He’d just finished his welcome tour with Biggerstaff, and I needed to know more about high-density low-rigidity glass in case I got the chance to add a cover to this joint.”

“That didn’t seem like something you might want to mention?” Warcry growled.

“What the Ylef said?” She scoffed. “It might not even be true. He could’ve just been telling me so you guys would get flustered and be an easier target.”

Fire flared up along Warcry’s head and shoulders. “What’s that supposed to mean? Just coz he busted me prosthetic in the Wilderness Territorial, I ain’t a problem for him?”

“See?” Kest said, going back to her work. “Flustered.”

“Can’t believe a bleedin’ Nameless got in by query,” Warcry muttered, crossing his arms. “Dragons ain’t takin’ requests my foot.”

“Why didn’t Biggerstaff mention this before?” I asked.

“Because I didn’t know whether the Nameless would make it through Bogland,” the catfish’s voice said from behind us. “Ylef aren’t famous for their survivalist tendencies, and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to die or give up and turn back.”

We twisted around in our seats to see the recruiter.

“What’s this about the Nameless gettin’ our affiliation if he gets twenty wins before us?” Warcry demanded.

“Actually, that condition was specific to you, Mr. Thompson. He’ll get your affiliation if you can’t beat him to twenty wins.”

Warcry looked from me to the catfish like he couldn’t figure out whether he was more upset that I wasn’t the one on the chopping block or that Biggerstaff had screwed him over.

“But we got a contract,” he growled. “Signed and sealed, you reneging cove.”

Biggerstaff chuckled. “Aren’t you the one with a brand lawyer from your IFC days? Have them look over it, Mr. Thompson. Your affiliation is dependent on your performance during the probationary period, and since this is the probationary period, the Dragons are within our rights to demand that you earn twenty wins before that Nameless does or we can give your affiliation away.”

I pulled up the contract on my HUD and started skimming. To be honest, I hadn’t read it all that closely, either. We’d been desperate for an affiliation—any affiliation—to protect us from the OSS, so I’d just been happy we were getting one.

Warcry slammed a burning fist down on the table. “Of all the bending-overs! Lying through your gills...”

A bit of wording in the contract caught my eye—all challenges deemed necessary during the probationary period, including any Spirit improvements required to make the affiliate acceptable to the local Shogun...

“Shut up for a second,” I told Warcry, then turned to Biggerstaff. “What does this mean, Spirit improvements? Like, if the Shogun wants, we have to change our Spirit?”

“You can’t change your Spirit,” Kest said. “That would require getting a completely different Spirit sea, and attempts at Spirit sea transplants have been unsuccessful across the board.”

“I’m glad you brought that clause up, Mr. Hake,” Biggerstaff said, “because that brings me to your conditional improvements. Remember how I told you to work on cloaking your Spirit?”

I grimaced. The aftermath of the tournament had been so crazy that I hadn’t thought about cloaking since we’d talked.

Biggerstaff’s catfish mouth stretched into a wide smile. “Your wins will only count when they occur under a Spirit cloak. If I can sense your attacks while you’re fighting, they go down as a loss.”

My mouth dropped open. “But...”

“Good luck in your fights tomorrow,” Biggerstaff said, giving us a nod before heading off toward the arena.

“This’s the deepest load of space trash I ever heard,” Warcry muttered. His chair’s feet screeched on the tile as he leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “Givin’ away a man’s rightful winnings...”

“Do you guys know anything about cloaking your Spirit?” I asked.

Kest shrugged, cinnabar stick elbow clicking a little on the tabletop with the motion. “What would be the point of cloaking Metal?”

“Yeah, Warm Heart Spirit isn’t exactly a threat to most people,” Rali said.

“The bollix I care about cloaking?” Warcry sneered. “I ain’t afraid to be the only human with a Ten specialization in a system. The Ylefs and their pet Confederation can choke on me excess.”

Hungry Ghost can teach Death cultivator a cloaking technique, the grinning skull croaked inside my brain.

How? I asked it.

Death cultivator must reach oblivion.

“I have the jade book on cloaking,” Kest said.

“Awesome,” I said, thinking back to the bands of bog ferals converging on the Heartchamber. “Throw it here. I’m going to take it up top and see if I can figure this out.”

Spirit Cloaking

I RIPPED A LIFE POINT out of a stumbling bog feral, then bashed a closer one with my Death Metal shields. Rotten brain goo and bone shards sprayed in an arc and ran off my shield along with the rainwater.

What about that time? I asked Hungry Ghost.

No. Can Death cultivator not reach oblivion?

Apparently not.

I finished off the last feral in that band, then sucked down the Miasma from it and the other decomposed corpses piling up.

“You’re still not cloaking,” Kest called down from where she was sitting under the eaves, messing around on her HUD. “Or not very well, anyway.”

I exhaled a disgusted breath. “Were you even looking?”

“Nope.” She finished what she was doing, then swiped some wet hair out of her face with her metal stick-hand. “Your Sho’s so in-your-face I didn’t need to look to know it was there.”

I checked to make sure there weren’t any more bog ferals coming just yet, then triggered Corpse Fire to burn off the greasy brown soul contamination in my Spirit sea while I went to work emptying the dead ferals’ pockets. They were mostly empty or full of muck and disintegrating paper, but a couple of them had Spirit stones or credit coins. One had a chunk of what looked like amethyst. I took the loot up the hill and ducked under the eaves with Kest to get out of the rain.

“Trade me,” I said, dropping the loot I’d collected beside her. “Let me see the book again.”

She tossed me the jade slip, then started sorting through the new loot.

The raised script for Cloaking Your Level and Spirit Affinity bumped against the pad of my thumb. I felt a little bad for not telling her that I was getting help from Hungry Ghost, too, but she and Rali didn’t really trust the skull stone, and I needed all the help I could get.

Picking up on my thoughts, Hungry Ghost sent me a feeling of smug agreement.

I ignored him and pressed the jade book to my forehead. Immediately, the information rushed into my brain. I sort of punched a mental Skip button to zoom past the legends of immortals cloaking their levels, the practical history of cloaking, and why you’d want to hide your affinity.

When it finally got to the how-to portion, I slowed down. I’d already read this part three times tonight, but obviously I was still doing something wrong.

With a series of deep, cleansing breaths, focus on the essence of your Spirit. Guard it as jealously as a lover, as a dragon hoards its treasure, placing a cloak between it and the world, hiding it from all senses.

I groaned in frustration. “I thought I was doing that.”

“Rali should’ve come out here for this,” Kest said, frowning. “Cloaking is so...vague. I bet he’d instinctively know what to do. I don’t know how to help besides to tell you to do better.”

That made me laugh. “That’s a pretty Metal thing to say.”

“That’s why it should help,” she said, throwing up her hands. The cinnabar arm moved slightly slower than her real arm, like maybe she had to tell it what to do separately. “Metal’s the most practical Spirit type in every situation.”

“That’s weird, because I heard Death Spirit was better,” I joked.

With a grin, she reached across her body and shoved me with her real arm. I dropped onto my butt on the concrete walk and scooted up against the wall with her. My bicep was up against the place where the cinnabar met her stump. Maybe because the metal was in contact with her skin, it felt warm.

Her stick hand was the closest to my hand. I wondered if it would be weird for me to, like, pick that up and hold it.

When Kest saw me looking at where our arms were touching, she pulled away, kind of turning the stick arm’s elbow joint in a little.

“Sorry,” she said. Thin black lace trickled down into her cheeks where a human would blush. “I didn’t mean to jab you.”

I shrugged. “It was fine.”

The cinnabar retreated up her shoulder, dropping her HUD into her lap, and turned into a necklace hanging around her throat.

“It was probably uncomfortable,” she said.

“Nah, it didn’t bother me.” My pulse picked up the second I decided to go for it, so before I could chicken out, I swallowed and said, “I was actually thinking maybe I’d see if you wanted to hold hands, but I didn’t have the guts to ask you right then.”

She didn’t say anything, just stared at me.

“Because I thought you’d say no.” I faced out at the rain so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes. “What I didn’t count on was you looking at me like I was crazy...and not saying anything...like, at all.” I stood up and wiped my hands on my rain-soaked pants. I wished there was some kind of take-back button on this universe. That would’ve been great. “Never mind. I should get back to cloaking. That’s why you came out here. To help me figure that out.”

I turned to head back down the hill, but Kest grabbed my hand and stopped me.

“You’re serious?” she asked. “This isn’t just because you feel bad about the gang riot and my arm, is it?”

“I don’t care about your arm,” I said. Then I shook my head. “I mean, obviously I do, like, a lot. But even before that, I would’ve wanted to hold your hand.”

She squinted into my eyes like she was trying to decide if I was full of crap.

“Use your HUD,” I said, remembering how she’d checked whether I was telling the truth when she and Rali first met me. “Ask me again and use the lie detector to measure whether I’m lying.”

The lace in her eyes shifted between thick and thin.

“What if you don’t even know?” she asked. “The HUD could give out a false positive because you believe what you’re saying.”

I raised my eyebrow at her. “How is that different from me liking you?”

She frowned at me for a second, then stuck out her stump, the black script tattoos holding the skin and muscle tissue together glaring up at me.

When I realized that she was testing me, daring me to touch it and prove it didn’t bother me, a pang of something halfway between sympathy pains and freaked-out shot through the pit of my stomach. I didn’t want to hurt her if the end was still painful, but I also didn’t like being basically called a liar.

There wasn’t an intuitive place to hold onto, so I put my hand around the folded-over skin where her arm ended, kind of cupping it. The skin there was really hot, and I wondered whether that was because it was still working on healing.

I wanted to say something cool and a little harsh, like “Your move,” to show her I could play that game, too. But what came out was, “Does that hurt? Should I do it different?”

“No.” She shifted a little, her boots making a scritching sound against the concrete. In a smaller voice, she asked, “Is it gross?”

“No. Your skin’s really soft.”

Instead of letting go or shifting my grip long enough to turn around and sit beside her, potentially giving her some kind of signal I was lying about being okay with this, I sat down facing her. Icy rainwater dripped off the eave onto my back, so I scooted in a little farther.

After a second, Kest scooted closer, too, and let her leg lean against mine.

Definitely not how I imagined my first time holding hands. Although, to be honest, when I did imagine being alone with Kest, I never really thought about holding hands at all. My brain just kind of skipped over those preliminary steps straight to the sexy stuff. This was nice, though. Kind of weirdly intense all by itself.

“You dropped your internal alchemy.” Kest pointed at my fingernails. The skin underneath was going bluish.

My lips were numb when I said, “I thought it was getting colder out here.”

I concentrated on getting the little bit of Miasma that kept everything balanced back up and running again.

“Here,” she said, “I can help.”

She pulled her stump away from me, then picked up both my hands with her real one and held them against her stomach. Her skin glowed faintly red-orange from the inside. Pretty soon, the iron in my blood started to heat up from the Hot Metal Spirit in the air. The cold, heavy feeling of dead tissue dissipated, and I started to breathe easier.

“Thanks. That’s a lot better.”

For a while, we just sat there listening to the rain.

“Now you’re really not making any progress,” she said. “If anything, hanging out with me is distracting you from the stuff you should already have down. Rali would’ve been a better choice.”

“No offense to your brother,” I said, “but I’m a lot less interested in holding his hand than I am yours.”

Kest snorted. “That’s what I’m talking about. There’s a reason the really dedicated cultivators don’t get married based on attraction.”

I pretended like I didn’t notice that she was basically saying she was into me, even though I filed it away to replay a million times later.

“What do they get married based on, then?”

“Resonant cultivation,” she said. “It only happens between specific Spirit types, but it basically does double the heavy lifting in your kishotenketsu if you’re with someone whose Spirit resonates with yours. You advance through the levels and make breakthroughs a lot faster.”

“Oh yeah, that sounds way better than being around somebody you like,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Remind me never to get that serious about my kishotenketsu.”

She grinned. “When your internal alchemy actually does what it’s supposed to all the time, then I’ll worry about your dedication getting out of control.”

Dreams and Errands

I ENDED UP FIGHTING half a dozen more ferals over the next couple hours, coming back each time to hold Kest’s hand. Honestly, I was having such a good time hanging out with her that I kind of forgot to care about Spirit cloaking.

The exhaustion might’ve had something to do with that, too. With the trip across Bogland and getting used to the scythe weighing me down and burning off the bog ferals’ soul corruption with Corpse Fire, it’d been a long couple of days. When I started to nod off against the brick wall, Kest suggested we call it a night.

I walked her down to her room door, then headed back upstairs. It wasn’t until I was already back in my little closet up on the third level, unrolling my bedroll, that I realized I probably could’ve kissed her.

“Dang it.”

“Dang it!” Sushi giggled and swam out of the paper bag full of my old dirty clothes, reminding me I needed to do laundry sometime.

“You’re really loud. Probably woke Warcry up through the wall.” I petted her purple-flecked forehead, smoothing my thumb over her flowy dorsal fin. “Do you need to go hunt down some bugs to eat?”

“Eat?” The little fish swam over to the corner and nudged a pile of pointy bug legs that looked like they’d come off a huge centipede. “Ate.”

I grimaced, imagining those crawling up my neck while I was sleeping. “Thanks for killing whatever that was.”

She spun around in the air all happy, then backed her flowing tail into the top of my bedroll and lay down.

“That’s definitely my spot,” I said, shucking off my clothes and laying them out to dry.

“My spot!”

I scooped the fish out of the bed before I climbed in so she wouldn’t get squished, but she swam back under the covers as soon as I was lying down and closed her brown and blue eyes.

“Fine. Whatever.”

That night I started out having a pretty awesome dream about Kest and me in the metal shop at my high school, but then everything shifted. Suddenly, I was watching my dad climb out of the back of a cop car. He was in a suit, but he still had cuffs on his hands and ankles. An officer escorted him across wet grass to a little tarp tent set up in the middle of a graveyard.

Gramps was already there, on a metal folding chair. When he heard the handcuff chains jingling, he stood up and met Dad in front of the casket.

I don’t know what I expected. Maybe for Gramps to yell at Dad for killing Mom. It was definitely his fault she’d had the drugs, probably his fault she’d ever even tried them in the first place. I would’ve yelled at him. Probably even hit him.

Dad stiffened up like he expected a punch.

But Gramps hugged him. For a second, Dad just stood there dazed like he had been hit. Then he kind of collapsed onto Gramps’s shoulder, giving him an awkward half-hug, because his arms wouldn’t go any farther with his hands still in the cuffs.

Then Gramps was apologizing to Dad, which made me want to scream and kill somebody. Gramps had never done anything wrong. He’d taken care of me every time Dad screwed up. He didn’t have anything to apologize for, especially not to his deadbeat criminal of a son.

Dad shook his head, telling Gramps it wasn’t his fault, but you could tell Gramps didn’t believe him.

Then other people started showing up, crowding under the funeral tent out of the rain. Kids from my high school. Hannah, Isobel, even Blaise and his friends, all dressed in their good church clothes. That was all wrong. Not only had none of these people come to my mom’s funeral, but none of us had been this old when she OD’d.

Everybody sat down and listened to the preacher talk about heaven and God and stuff, but I tuned out. Through the mass of shoulders and umbrellas, I caught a shimmer of purple. There was something moving behind a tombstone out there in the rain.

“Grady,” someone said.

My eyes shot open, my heart racing. The air directly in front of my nose shimmered, then I was looking down the barrel of one brown eye and one blue eye.

I flinched back, then remembered it was just Sushi.

“Geez.” I pushed her off and turned onto my back, scrubbing my hands down my face. “What the heck is my deal lately?”

“Deal?” Sushi echoed.

“Nothing, I’m just being stupid,” I said.

According to my HUD, it was early morning. I could’ve slept another few hours—as far as I knew, there wasn’t a set time yet for my fight with that boot-stealing Ylef—but I didn’t want to fall back asleep and chance having another crazy dream.

I got dressed and took my dirty clothes downstairs. Not many people were up and about yet, just a couple janitorial staff and some food stall workers. Most of the stores in the market court still had metal grills rolled down over their windows.

I found the laundry room Biggerstaff had shown us. It took me a minute to figure out the combo washer-dryer, but once I’d dropped the credit, it pretty much took care of itself. I stuck around anyway. If yesterday had taught me anything, it was that I was dealing with a bunch of criminals whose first thought when they saw something unguarded wasn’t, “That’s not mine,” it was, “Do I want that?”

While the clothes were washing, Sushi swam around the laundry room, chasing down flies and nosing crickets out of the corners. I messed around on my Winchester, searching the hyperweb for info about whether a change in climate—like going from super-arid Ghost Town to super-wet Bogland—could give you weird dreams. Just like with the internet back on Earth, the hyperweb had a bunch of people who said climate totally did affect your dreams and a bunch of people who said absolutely not and everything in between.

By the time the washer-dryer was finished, more of the stores out in the market court were open. I headed down to the Pawning Post, sold the loot from the night before for less than I would’ve liked, then went straight to the fountain court and picked up a bunch of hot biscuits fresh out of the oven. They would’ve been great with some butter and sorghum, but the slug dude running the stall acted like he’d never heard of either. When I asked him what the biscuits were made with, he couldn’t figure out what a biscuit was. Figuring I was being trolled, I dropped it and headed off to the boot store.

“Back again?” the lady behind the counter asked, looking up from some leather she was cutting.

“Yeah.” I checked my account, even though I already knew I only had forty-six credits. “You guys don’t have a clearance section, do you?”

She pointed me toward the back corner and a rack that said As-Is. The boots there were all broken in and faded. Some of them smelled like the bodies Kest used to scavenge in the Shut-Ins. Some had dark splashes of dried blood staining the leather. It took some time to find a pair I could afford that were also close to my size and didn’t look like something Porter Wagoner had worn to a massacre at the Grand Ol’ Opry. In the end, what I came up with was something close to work boots, with the leather wearing out over the shiny steel toes and a chunk of metal visible on the right sole where a hidden switchblade had broken off. They were a half-size too big for me, but I figured if I wore an extra pair of socks and laced them extra tight, they’d work.

I left the boot store one pair of work boots heavier and twenty-one credits lighter.

Across the hall, a wiry redhead with a cauliflower ear caught my eye. Warcry was leaning on the counter of a place marked Interplanetary Mail. The huge snapping-turtle alien behind the counter handed him a box, and Warcry dropped the silk fan from the train into it and sealed it up.

I headed over.

“Ya want a message embedded wit’ it?” the turtle asked him.

Warcry’s eyes shot over to me, then he glared down at the box. “Nah, leave it blank.”

The turtle leaned in a little and lowered his voice like I wouldn’t be able to hear. “Fer only half a credit per character, I kin scrawl it fer ya.”

“I’m literate, ya slug-egged moron,” Warcry snapped. “The receiver ain’t. But she probably won’t get this anyway, so there ain’t no bleedin’ point to a message, is there? Just send it already, yeah?”

He shoved the box at the turtle and stalked off.

I debated for about half a second about whether it’d be smarter to not poke the bear while it was mad, then figured I might as well; Warcry was always mad.

“Who was the fan for?” I asked when I caught up with him.

“Your ma asked me for something nice,” he sneered.

Pretty much the level of civility I’d expected. I let the fan thing go.

“Do you know when your first fight is?” I asked him.

“Put me name in when I came down this morning. Scheduling said I oughta have an opponent in a couple hours. Place’s better organized than some IFC-sanctioned tourneys I been to. When do you and the Nameless face off?”

I pulled up the Heartchamber’s roster page on the cracked screen of my Winchester. A little jolt of nerves hit me when I saw the schedule.

“It’s one of the first fights of the day,” I said.

Warcry grunted. “Better come with me to the distiller and get your healing elixir, then, hadn’t ya?”

“Yeah, I probably should.” Who knew what kind of shape I’d be in after my bout with the Ylef?

We headed down one of the halls Biggerstaff had shown us the day before.

“I know you Death affinities ain’t got no control,” Warcry said, “but I want my shot at that Nameless trash, so don’t kill him on your first go.”

“I wasn’t planning on it until you said something. Now I’m gonna have to think about it.”

He shook his head like he couldn’t deal with my sarcasm right then.

The Smoking Dragon Distillery was open for business when we got there. In the storefront, holograms of dragons made of smoke drifted and moved under an unseen blacklight. Inside, weird psychedelic music drifted down from the speakers, and little electric fountains hung on the walls, smoke and water pouring over smooth rocks. Elaborately shaped bottles of every size and color filled the glass shelves with little paper price tags hanging off their necks. Fancy treasure boxes sat open, displaying pills on velvet, and pipes made of glass, wood, steel, or clay rested on pipe stands next to silk bags of different smokables.

While we were looking around, a blue-skinned lady with long dreadlocks that looked like jellyfish tentacles came out of a back room.

“How might I help you boys this wonderful morning?” She pointed a webbed finger at one of the pipes on the stand in front of us. “Looking for a little boost before a fight? Can’t absorb Intensifier faster than through your lungs. All my pipes are handcrafted for efficiency, with a smoke reclaimer in the stem. Less than a fraction of a percent lost.”

“Thanks, but we’re actually here to pick up our healing elixirs for the week,” I said.

She nodded, jellyfish hair sliding over her bony shoulders. “I thought you looked like newbies. I only give out one bottle a day to probationary Dragons. You’ll have to pick up the next bottle before your next fight.”

She headed back to the counter and pulled out a pair of brown bottles labeled Healing Tier 1 in scrawling cursive from underneath. It reminded me uncomfortably of Muta’i’s writing.

“Do you make this stuff yourself?” I asked.

“These base elixirs we import from small-batch distilleries around the Territories,” she said. “Once you’re past Level Six, you’ll move up to my healing elixirs. Not before.”

I tried to think of a way to ask without sounding like a dick, but all I could come up with was, “How do you know these aren’t poison?”

She squinted up at me, crossing her skinny arms and leaning them on the counter. “Ever met a distiller who couldn’t tell the difference?”

“I knew a distiller who made way more counterfeits than he did of the real thing.” And I’d spent most of the last month sorting the real ingredients from the fakes so he could do it.

“If he sold me counterfeits, then you didn’t know him very long,” she said. “The Eight-Legged Dragons aren’t kind to swindlers and charlatans. You’re thinking of the Jianjiao.”

Warcry and I each pocketed our elixir, and she marked down our names in her HUD to make sure we didn’t get more than our share per week.

Instead of turning to go, though, Warcry asked her, “You got any Blackout Curtain or somethin’ like it?”

“We have a proprietary blend called Deep Night, guaranteed to shut out any dreams, nightmares, or restless sleeping conditions,” she said, pointing to a little glass jar of what looked like black kidney beans. “Seventy-five credits a bottle.”

I let out a low whistle, but Warcry just scowled.

“Blackout’s only thirty-eight,” he said.

The distiller smirked. “And it’s full of impurities.”

“Bollix it is,” Warcry snapped. “That’s made on Qaspar-7. Quality control’s through the roof.”

“The more hands you have on a product, the more chance for Spirit impurities to seep in,” she said. “Deep Night is small-batch made, and no one but me touches it before the customer, so there’s less chance for contamination.”

“You mean so’s you can charge twice as much,” Warcry said.

She shrugged. “If you can get mass-produced trash way out here, more power to you, but Deep Night’s the only thing I carry.”

He cussed under his breath. “Fine.”

He transferred the credits, and she tossed him the jar, its contents rattling inside.

“Happy sleeping,” she said.

As we left, I glanced over at the bottle in Warcry’s fist. Something that shut out dreams might be a good idea for a while. At least until my brain started working right and stopped feeding me all this miserable crap about back home. Maybe if I upped my feral-killing game, I could afford a bottle.

I opened my mouth to ask Warcry if he’d been having weird dreams since we got to Bogland, too, but he cut me off.

“Mind your own, grav, or I’ll mind it for ya, right out the side of your face.”

Cool, so we were done with the civility for the day. Good to know.

Grasping at Oblivion

A MESSAGE CAME IN WHILE I put my clean clothes back in my little closet of a room. It was Kest wondering if I wanted to eat breakfast with her and Rali. Nothing about holding hands or the night before, but what did I expect her to say? Thanks for touching my arm stump?

I said I’d meet them downstairs in a minute. I’d already eaten, but I could use a little more, something of the bacon or sausage variety.

“You coming with me or staying here?” I asked Sushi.

She stopped swimming around the corners of the room and went to my newly washed jeans.

“Staying here,” she said, squeezing in between the folds.

“I might be gone a while.” I checked my HUD. “My first fight’s in an hour.”

She nestled in deeper and closed her mismatched eyes. “Hour.”

“All right, have fun.”

Rali and Kest were just sitting down with their food when I got to the market court. I waved at the twins, then got in line for a place that sold mainly meat. Way more people were out and about by then. Most of them looked like fighters gearing up for a day in the cage, stretching and popping their knuckles and filling their plates with tons of food. I got a cold Coffee Drank and loaded up on something bacon-ish and some eggs of a species that looked close enough to a chicken’s, then headed over to the twins.

Kest smiled at me, not her regular dismissive glance, but a beaming smile like she was excited to see me. Unfortunately, it made me trip over my chair because I was too busy grinning like a big dork to watch what I was doing.

“Crazy when chairs get in the way like that,” Rali joked.

“Ha ha.” My face burned. At least I hadn’t spilled my plate. I put a lot more focus than necessary into taking the chopsticks out of their wrapper so I didn’t have to look at Rali. “I’m just kind of stuck on the fight right now. Not really paying attention to anything else.”

“I grin whenever I think about improving my status in the rankings of a large impersonal organization, too,” Rali said, but he was already inspecting my plate like he didn’t care enough to follow up on the disbelief. “You should’ve tried some of the frybread. The guy who makes it infuses the oil with his own version of Calming the Spirit Sea. Also six different spices. It’s delicious and good for the jitters.”

“I’m not that worried about the fight itself,” I said. “It’s the Spirit cloak. Biggerstaff won’t let me count it as a win unless I figure out how to hide my attacks—which I still haven’t managed.”

“You probably won’t get a win against the Nameless, with or without the Spirit cloak,” Kest said. “We all saw his technique from the tournament. It’s fast and flawless. There’s nothing to exploit in it.”

“Yeah.” I picked up a thick piece of bacon and used it to push at some eggs.

Rali elbowed me in the arm. “Nobody can say for certain what will happen. Not even Metal Spirits who think they know everything.”

“She’s got a pretty good point, though,” I said. “With that kind of speed, I can’t rely on a submission technique like Dead Man’s Hand.”

“Which is good because that type of move was never meant to be a submission technique,” Rali said.

“If I can slow him down or even stop him, though, maybe I can get the upper hand.” Something I’d thought at the tournament came back to me. “Dude looks like he’s made out of glass. If I can get inside his swing, maybe I can break something before he nails me with one of those hammers. At the very least, I can take away some of the power from his shot.”

Kest’s eyes lit up. “That’s true, his strength is actually his weakness. If you can exploit that, you could win.”

“‘His strength is his weakness?’” Rali repeated, staring at her. “Who are you, and what did you do with my twin?”

“Mineral and ore Elemental supertypes are rigid, but that same rigidity creates natural breakage planes and temperature intolerances,” she said. She held up her metal stick arm and wiggled the fingers. “That’s why something like cinnabar is so valuable. Rolling silver doesn’t have the same weaknesses as every other Metal.”

My HUD buzzed with a friendly reminder from the Heartchamber’s automated scheduling system: Your match is scheduled for one hour from now. Absence will be recorded as a forfeit loss. Your current record is 0 W-0 L.

The jitters amped up in my stomach. “Rali, have you read the cloaking book?”

He shook his head. “But I have read Ten Lightning Strikes Against the Hero six times since we found it, and I’m anxiously awaiting the day you read it and want to discuss it.”

“Maybe later.” I shifted in my seat. “Do you think you could take a look at Cloaking Your Level and Spirit Affinity and see what you think? Kest and I tried to get the cloaking going last night, but we couldn’t figure it out.”

As soon as I said that, I felt like I’d told Rali about the handholding and everything.

Apparently Kest was thinking along the same lines, because she hurried up and blurted out, “There’s not much on the hyperweb about cloaking. That’s what we were doing, searching the hyperweb. Well, I was. Hake was fighting the ferals. Obviously.”

Rali shrugged. “Probably because the Confederation wants to know what everyone’s kishotenketsu is doing all the time. Cloaking would interfere with their checking up on us.”

I relaxed a little at the subject-change, and so did Kest.

“We get it, you’re a cool nonconformist rebel,” she said. “It’s more likely that they don’t want criminals to hide their attacks.”

“Let me see the book,” Rali said. “I’m not a criminal—yet—but I’ll take a look.”

Kest got the jade slip out of the storage ring and handed it over.

While Rali read, I tried to eat normally. It felt like I was moving and breathing all weird. Rali probably wouldn’t even care if he found out about me and Kest, but I still didn’t want him or anybody else to know. Right then, it was like something only Kest and I had, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I glanced up at Kest again. She smiled at me, this time small and secretive like we’d gotten away with something. Maybe she wanted to keep everybody else out of the loop on it, too.

After a few minutes, Rali handed the book back to her.

“Well, I can see why Kest didn’t like it, all those analogies and talk about feelings, but Hake, you’re usually better at trusting your gut than this. This reads like it’s similar to when you find a vein for cultivating.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” I said. “I tried about a thousand ways, but I couldn’t get it. I know there’s less than an hour before my fight, but do you think you’d be cool giving me pointers while I fight some ferals?”

That wasn’t much time, but I’d seen Rali figure out Spirit-related problems in way less.

“Sure.” He picked up his walking stick. “Sounds like fun.”

We scarfed the rest of our food, then headed upstairs and out of the Heartchamber. The ferals had collected again over the few hours I’d been asleep, so there wasn’t any shortage of targets. I got to work strengthening Three Corpse Sickness and Death Grip, letting only one or two ferals come at me at a time so I could try to take them out while cloaked.

Off to the sidelines, Rali hmmed. “I can see your Spirit flows as bright as the day suns.”

After a few more kills, he joined me out in the rain.

“You’re charging in here like you’re rescuing someone,” he said. “Big noise, no stealth. But what if you just want to slip by unnoticed? What if you want to be Death on silent feet? Sneak away with a life before anyone knows it’s gone?”

“Silent but deadly?” I offered.

He cracked up. “I think I’m starting to see why you haven’t figured this out yet. You’re supposed to find the essence of your Spirit before you can cloak it, right? So, think about it this way—death is an inevitable step in everyone’s walk. Some of us will die in loud and painful ways, but others of us will just sort of sneak away in the night. Death doesn’t have to be a huge and frightening experience. I like to think someday it’ll come for me like an old friend, put an arm around my shoulders, and walk me off to that next adventure.”

I grinned. “You’re nuts.”

“Probably,” he said. “But just try to think of Death like that for a minute. No huge shield bashes or exploding skulls. Just a quiet departure in the middle of the day, with the sun on your face and peace in your heart.”

I started to head back out to intercept the next band of ferals, but Rali stopped me.

“You’re not exactly hurting for physical training, Death cultivator,” he said. “We both know you can kill them from here, so why don’t you?”

I nodded, then took a deep breath and tried to cloak my Spirit and reached out with Dead Man’s Hand to the closest feral.

“You’re not doing it,” Rali said. “Your Miasma’s still just out there for anyone to see. Isn’t there anything you want to keep to yourself? Are you just going to let them know everything about you? What about your privacy, Hake? What about those things you want to hold onto just for you?”

Kest’s face popped into my brain, along with that dream I’d been having about her the night before.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block that out. I could hear the ferals coming in a lumbering herd. They got closer every second.

Focus, I told myself again. Old friend. Sun on your face. Silent death.

With a fist of Dead Man’s Hand, I grabbed the closest feral’s life point and ripped it out. There was nothing friendly or sunny or silent about it. The feral gurgled, the sound cutting off halfway through as it tumbled to the wet ground, dead.

Rali grimaced at the heap of rotten corpse.

I blew out a disgusted breath.

“Maybe if you try it with one of your more subtle techniques?” Rali suggested. He pointed with his walking stick. “From what I’ve seen so far, Dead Man’s Hand looks painful.”

I used Three Corpse Sickness and my Death Metal shields on the next feral. That kill wasn’t any cleaner or quieter than the last.

“Thirty-minute warning,” Kest yelled from under the eaves.

“Crap.” I raked my hands through my hair.

“Maybe we’re looking at this from the wrong angle,” Rali said. “How do you see death, Hake? What does it look like to you?”

The first thing that flashed through my brain was anger at the grim reaper who killed the wrong guy and then refused to admit she’d screwed up.

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Rali nodded. “That might be your problem. Maybe if you solidify in your mind the implications of your Spirit and your relationship to it, to Mortality in general, that will help.”

But when I tried to meditate on whatever that meant, Hungry Ghost spoke up again.

Warm Heart cultivator grasps for the essence of Death, but cannot reach it. The power of Death is inextricably linked with oblivion, which Warm Heart cultivator cannot comprehend a need for.

Hungry Ghost must’ve been right, because we trained right up until I only had ten minutes left to the fight, but even with Rali’s expert training, I didn’t manage to cloak my Spirit.

Versus Glass Hammers

THE ELEVATOR RIDE DOWN to the arena was dead silent, and none of us said anything as our rain-soaked shoes squeaked across the market court.

The twins stopped outside the locker room doors.

“Good luck,” Kest said, squeezing my hand.

I gave her a half smile. “I thought you said luck was for the unprepared.”

“Well, aren’t you?” she said.

I tried to laugh at that.

“Just do your best, Death cultivator,” Rali said, flipping his wet hair out of his face. “Stay true to yourself, and everything else will follow like it’s supposed to.”

“Let’s hope so,” I said.

As they headed up to the arena’s seating area, I pushed through the locker room doors.

The Ylef was already inside, waiting for our fight to be called. He caught my eye and wrinkled his nose in disgust.

“Ready to lose again, meat roach?” he sneered.

I smirked. “This isn’t your nice safe tournament, Champ. Down here I won’t get disqualified for murder.”

Obviously I wasn’t being serious, but it was pretty gratifying to see the look on his face when I said it.

The announcer’s overhyped voice rang through the PA system. “Winner—Warcry Thompson, one win, zero losses!”

I couldn’t hear anybody cheering out there until the arena doors popped open and Warcry shoved his way into the locker room. Then a couple random claps filtered in.

The ginger caught sight of me and looked like he was about to say something smart.

“Next bout,” the announcer cried, “Sedryk Nameless, zero wins, zero losses, versus Grady Hake, zero wins, zero losses!”

The Ylef tried to shoulder check Warcry as he blew past, but Warcry saw it coming and threw his hip into the shot. They both bounced back and glared at each other. After a second, the Ylef shoved through the arena doors.

Warcry’s lips twisted up in a snarl. “Kick his arse, grav.”

I nodded and headed out into the arena.

There was hardly anyone in the stands, so it was easy to pick Kest and Rali out. They were in floor seats right up next to the arena floor, right up in the blood and teeth splash zone. I didn’t see Biggerstaff out there, but I figured if he was going to put restrictions on people and keep track of what counted as a win or loss, then he probably had a way to keep an eye on every match.

The Ylef stood out at the center of the dirt floor, waiting for me.

His one-point-eight-second victory in the Wilderness Territorial championship match kept running through my head. He was so much faster than anyone I’d fought. I wouldn’t be able to see him without Ki-sight, and I’d never be able to touch him without Ki-speed. And with the scythe weighing me down, I’d never get up to speed without a metric ton of Ki-strength.

I stopped a good twenty feet away from him, hoping the distance would give me enough time to react to his first shot. Adrenaline flared through my body. I clutched Hungry Ghost in my fist and triggered the Ki enhancements, sending as much Miasma as I could stand rushing through my muscles.

The Ylef took a fighting stance that was half runner’s crouch. But he didn’t summon his glass hammers.

“Fighting in...” The announcer oversold the dramatic pause, and for a second, all I could hear was my breath scraping in and out of my trachea and my heart thumping in my ears. “...bamboo forest!”

There were a couple of halfhearted claps, then the floor started rumbling. Bamboo exploded out of the ground, the stalks growing and stretching up toward the arena ceiling until they towered over us, blocking out the crowd.

Instead of facing me head-on, the Ylef launched himself at the bamboo, parkouring up the stalks like he was doing wall jumps. I turned to follow his route, trying to focus on the essence of Death and throw everything I had into a last-ditch cloaking effort.

Nothing happened.

The Ylef leapt at me. Shining Spirit raced down his leg and boot, covering his massive overhead axe kick in a layer of glass.

I threw my arms up and triggered Death Metal. Glass shattered against my shield, plinking off the bamboo stalks around us like rain. I threw my weight into a massive Ki-strengthened shield bash, but the Ylef was already off to my side, circling around behind me.

Glass flashed. I slammed a shield down behind me, but it was a heartbeat too slow. The tip of a Glass shortsword stabbed into my back, just under my kidney. It was just the first inch or so of the blade, not deep enough to do lethal damage, but deep enough that it sliced through the muscle. My right leg went weak, and hot blood trickled down my side.

No healing kicked in to close it up.

Crap, right, no script tattoo.

I flooded the wound with Miasma, frosting it over enough to stop the bleeding.

The Ylef was already out of range for a shield bash, but he still had his feet on the forest floor.

I had to slow him down. With another massive dose of Spirit from Hungry Ghost, I sent the eerie ghost hands of Death Grip reaching up out of the dirt, snapping for his ankles, but the Ylef was too fast. He was already running back up into the bamboo.

The hole in my back muscles screamed, and my right leg wouldn’t respond fast enough to run after him. I couldn’t even jump for a kick. Without healing, I was totally grounded while the Ylef had the overhead advantage. I had to drag him down to my level.

Miasma exploded off me to the front and both sides, forming a trio of almost-human-shaped blobs. Three Corpse Sickness.

The Corpses scrambled up the bamboo like monkeys, every smoky turquoise appendage grabbing and pulling and swinging them higher.

The Ylef’s gray eyes shot to me, then back to them.

Something I’d noticed since coming up with the Three Corpse Sickness ability was that people tended to assume that it must be powerful and well-thought-out, like I had some brilliant endgame in mind when I used it. That wasn’t true at all. I just went with my gut, and their reaction to the Three Corpses filled in the rest.

But it was usually good for a distraction. While the Ylef tried to figure out how to deal with these new enemies, I dug the healing elixir out of my pocket and gulped it down. Nobody had said I couldn’t use it during the match. Right away, the bleeding stopped, and the muscles grew back together. The spot still felt weak, like the stab wound was a couple weeks old instead of brand new, but at least my leg wasn’t buckling with every step anymore.

Up in the bamboo, the Ylef hesitated for a split second too long. The fastest of my Corpses leapt off its stalk at him like it was going to tackle him out of the air.

Glittering Glass Spirit shot down the Ylef’s arms and coalesced in his fists as hammers. His first crashed into the Corpse, hammer exploding into a bomb of glass shrapnel. Of course, since the Corpse had basically no structure, it disintegrated in a flash of turquoise.

Down on the ground, I threw out Dead Reckoning in a wide net around myself, so I’d have plenty of warning when the Ylef fell, and set it up to trigger Death Grip.

I could feel the scythe clinging to my skeleton, weighing me down. How was I supposed to summon that? Whenever the angel of death used the scythe, it always looked like she pulled the thing out of thin air.

Heavenly Weapon is not made of Spirit, but responds like Spirit, Hungry Ghost croaked. Death cultivator must direct it where he wants it.

I stuck out my right arm and concentrated on sending the scythe to my hand. It ran up my skeleton toward my shoulder, then down my arm, ripping through the muscle tissue as it passed, then burning it back together. I gritted my teeth, but the pain tore a scream out of my throat anyway.

The angel of death’s scythe emerged in my fist, glinting black under the arena lights. My fleshless hand bones looked extra white against the pitch-black handle. Just like before, my muscle and skin were gone to the shoulder. When I grabbed the handle with both fists, it was like I completed some kind of circuit. The flesh disappeared from my whole body, and I was nothing but a skeleton dressed in the tattered rags of what I’d been wearing.

Freaky.

Overhead, my two slower Corpses launched themselves at the Ylef from either side. One even threw back a fist in what looked like a version of Warcry’s Superman punch.

The Ylef was way too fast for them, dancing through the stalks and shattering the Corpses like they were nothing.

Focus! I didn’t have time to think about turning into a skeleton. My arm had gone back to normal when I unsummoned the scythe the first time, so hopefully my body would, too.

For now, I swung the heavy blade at the bamboo.

Like I was hoping, the stalks acted like real-world plants, the curved blade shearing through them with a sound like scissors through paper. Huge swathes of the bamboo forest caved as I chopped it down. The Ylef tried to outrun the falling bamboo, but the reach of the scythe was too long, even for a dude with his speed.

He landed in the dirt next to me, hammers cocked back, but before he could move, the command I’d given Dead Reckoning triggered. Death Grip latched onto his feet and ankles, locking him in place.

The Ylef’s eyes went wide. He tried to twist and kick his way free. I kept Miasma pumping into the hands directly from Hungry Ghost, so every time he broke free, two new hands grabbed him.

“Give up,” I yelled, cocking the scythe back for a swing.

Glass Spirit oozed out of his pores, covering him in a thick layer of shining glass.

“Eat glass!” he snarled.

Before I could move, he exploded.

Shrapnel peppered my thrown-up arms and chest. At the same time, a different kind of searing pain tore through my insides as the scythe ripped back into place surrounding my skeleton. I had released the handle, which was apparently the signal to disappear back into my body.

The scythe was still settling into place when a glass-covered fist crunched into my teeth. I popped Death Metal, shoving it blind between me and the Ylef, but a stiff-arm caught me in the throat. I felt a leg hook behind mine, then my head bounced off the dirt. A knee landed on my chest.

I tried to squirm out from under him, but the Ylef pressed a glass knife to my jugular.

Glaring up into his gray cat-like eyes, I let Death Metal dissipate.

“Match!” the announcer yelled.

The Ylef leaned on the knife for a second longer.

Then the bamboo that I hadn’t cut down rumbled back into the dirt, leaving us with a view of the scattered, half-interested spectators in the mostly empty stands. The Ylef’s cat eyes narrowed, then he let the knife flow back up his arm and disappear.

I shoved him off my chest, leaving bloody hand-smears on his shirt. He kicked some dirt at me, then headed for the locker room.

My chest heaved, and blood and sweat dripped off my face and fingertips. I stumbled to my feet and spit a mouthful of bloody glass in the dirt, wishing I hadn’t already used up that healing elixir.

“Official ruling,” the announcer yelled through the speakers. “No winner! Dual disqualification for restriction violations!”

That verdict drew some laughter and hooting from the stands.

“Crap,” I muttered, limping back to the locker room.

As soon as I came through the doors, the Ylef was there, fists raised, hammers forming.

My heart charged forward, and I sent Death Metal to both arms, ready to fight this douche again.

But he stopped suddenly. Looked around. We weren’t alone. Fighters were all over the place, getting ready for their bouts, coming and going from the showers, and passing through to the soaking room.

The Ylef scowled and stepped back, letting his hammers disappear.

I didn’t drop Death Metal.

“What was your restriction?” he asked.

I jerked my chin at him. “What was yours?”

Instead of answering, he spat at my feet. I jerked my leg back to keep the loogie from splatting onto my replacement boots.

“Then don’t ask, dickface,” I said.

He spun and slammed through the door out to the market court.

I flopped onto the closest bench and slumped against the painted cinderblock wall. Getting to twenty wins was going to be a lot harder than I’d thought.

First Blood

I WAS DOING SOME MENTAL math, trying to decide how many of my allotted healing elixirs I could afford to waste on one fight, when someone snapped, “Hey, kid,” in a nasally voice.

I opened my eyes to find a green dude pushing a mop bucket.

“Quit leaking all over my floor. Take your carcass to the soaking room.” He nodded at the hall off the far corner of the locker room. “Eleven salts and crystals in the water. Good healing supplement for low-level fighters.”

The healing wasn’t something Biggerstaff had mentioned when he gave us the tour the day before. I’d assumed it was just like the Whirlpool in a pro sports team’s locker room, a place for the players to soak strained muscles. This new information was good to know.

“Thanks,” I told the guy, then followed the steam rolling across the floor.

The soaking room was set up in a series of stone pools, all at different heights, all with little steaming waterfalls gushing hot blue-green water. Two other fighters were already there, at pools on the opposite ends of the room, totally naked and not too worried about what floated and what sank. I found an open pool off in a corner, stripped down to my boxers, and climbed in like that. I wasn’t ready to be one of those guys flashing everybody yet.

I winced when the hot water hit all the cuts and scrapes covering my arms and chest. Tiny bubbles started popping in the damaged tissue like hydrogen peroxide cleaning dirt out of a scratch. The bubbles pushed out splinters and shards of glass, which were carried away with the current.

I looked over the edge of my pool to see who was going to get the splinters, but the water drained into a hole in the floor. Maybe they cleaned and recycled it through the pools again. Hopefully they cleaned it.

After a couple seconds, I ducked under the water so it could pull the glass out of my face and neck. By then, the sword wound in my back had gone numb. Maybe the water had healed it the rest of the way.

When it felt like all the glass was out of my face, I came up and relaxed back against the side of the pool, thinking over the bout that put me in here.

Disqualified, probably as soon as I’d started cycling Miasma to my muscles. Why hadn’t they called the fight then? Had they wanted to give the Ylef a chance to break his restriction, too? Either it was the speed or the hammers. He hadn’t seemed as fast as he’d been at the Wilderness Territorial, but he also hadn’t used his hammers until the very end of the fight, so it could’ve been either.

Whatever was going on with that, one thing was for sure—I had to figure out a way to cloak my Spirit.

Or find a way to get around using Spirit at all.

I shook some water off my arm, then leaned out of the pool and grabbed Hungry Ghost out of my pants pocket.

You knew how to use the scythe, I said to him. Did your other Death cultivator—Sheigo—find a Heavenly Weapon like it?

Past Death cultivators found and lost a great many things while in possession of Hungry Ghost. Hungry Ghost is always watching, always learning.

You said the scythe doesn’t use Death Spirit?

Heavenly Weapons do not use any type of Spirit, Hungry Ghost agreed. They operate on the will of the possessor.

Which meant Biggerstaff wouldn’t sense my Spirit if I used the scythe to win fights. Definitely a technicality, but I was okay with winning by technicality.

I needed to find Rali. Aside from my shields, I knew exactly zero about weapons, but he was an expert in at least one—the staff. The scythe was basically a staff with a huge blade on one end.

I looked around for a towel and realized the other two fighters who’d been in the soaking room when I climbed into the pool were gone. Maybe I’d been soaking and talking to Hungry Ghost for longer than I realized.

The towels were over in a niche along the far wall.

Water rolled off me as I stood up. I grabbed my clothes and work boots, holding them away from my body and trying not to drip on them too much as I headed over.

Death cultivator should be cultivating, Hungry Ghost said. Fresh Miasma fills this place.

I stopped dead in my tracks and switched on Ki-sight.

Clouds of turquoise Death Spirit floated up from the rock pool in the far corner where one of the fighters had been. I took another step and stretched up on my toes.

The dude was facedown in the water, his alien blood turning the water churning in his pool green.

Someone grabbed my shoulder and punched me just under the left ribs. Once, twice, three times, lightning fast, before I managed to trigger Death Metal on that arm and shove it in their way.

Glass shattered against my shield. I spun around, bare feet gritting in the bloody shards, ready to fight.

Then the pain hit. Three deep wounds just under my floating ribs. Air flowing where it shouldn’t be. Blood pouring down my side and dripping onto the wet floor. I slammed onto my knees, weakness and hot and cold pain radiating from the holes.

Those body shots hadn’t been punches. They’d been a knife.

The Nameless Ylef backed up a step, sending sparkling Glass Spirit to his fists. Two more knives took shape, one with a triangular blade made for punching holes that couldn’t be stitched up and the other with a curved edge made for slicing.

“Dick,” I sputtered, blood bubbles popping in my throat and mouth. I dropped the Death Metal shield and sent as much Miasma as I could pumping through my side, trying to stop the bleeding. The water on my skin turned to ice as the tissues frosted over.

“Your friend the Bailiff sends his congratulations on your affiliation,” the Ylef said. “And he hopes you’ll save him a seat in hell.” He lunged, the curved knife going for my throat and the triangle blade going for my heart. “Glory return to the lost and nameless ones!”

It wasn’t anything like when I died the first time. The Ylef wasn’t some meth head going for Gramps, and I wasn’t jumping at him to stop him. But everything seemed to slow down, just like it had then.

I threw out Dead Man’s Hand. Felt like it hit a wall of glass. The Ylef’s life point was glowing just beyond that, lighting the whole thing up like the filament of a lightbulb, but I couldn’t grab onto it, and he was still coming at me.

Moldering Bones! Hungry Ghost screamed, blasting the how-to into my brain.

Dead Man’s Hand turned into a scouring rain of Miasma. The wall of glass around the Ylef’s life point clouded and warped like it was aging a hundred years in a heartbeat. Moldering Bones wore down its smooth surface until the glass wall crumbled into sandy dust and blew away.

The Ylef grunted in shock. His triangle dagger scraped off my scythe-reinforced sternum and bumped down my ribs, lodging between a couple at an angle like he was trying to pry one out. Before he could do any more damage, I grabbed his unprotected life point and crushed it.

His eyes went wide, then he fell forward onto me and the glass dagger. That pried-out rib snapped under the levering, and I screamed. Everything went black.

Soaking Room Floor

WHEN I WOKE UP, WARCRY, Biggerstaff, and the distiller lady from the Smoking Dragon were standing over me. Fire burned through the holes in my chest and side like they were all being cauterized at once. I arched my back and yelled through gritted teeth as the tissues closed.

“There you go,” the distiller said. She corked a bottle and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans. “That’ll be seven hundred twenty credits.”

“For that little teaspoon?!” Warcry gaped in disbelief.

Biggerstaff didn’t bat an eye. “Bill it to my account. Mr. Hake will pay me back.”

The distiller shrugged and left the soaking room.

A little at a time, the searing pain in my stab wounds died down. I started to breathe again, then sat up. The punctures were closed, but the rest of my body felt like it’d been through a car wreck without a seatbelt. Maybe my reaction to that elixir had given me whiplash. Or maybe it was just one of those things when somebody tried to kill you, like your whole body tensed up instinctively.

“You’re lucky Mr. Thompson found you when he did,” Biggerstaff said. “As you can probably guess from that price tag, those injuries weren’t minor.”

I glanced up at Warcry. “Thanks, man.”

The redhead crossed his arms over his chest, muscles twitching and jumping like they were agitated.

“I bleedin’ told you not to kill him, didn’t I?” he growled.

The Ylef was lying off to my side, on his back, cloudy gray cat-eyes staring up at the ceiling. Blood soaked his shirt, but not as much as you’d expect on a dead guy.

Because it was my blood, I realized, and he’d been piled on top of me. Blood didn’t run uphill. If a coroner looked the Ylef over, there wasn’t going to be a mark on him to say how he’d died. Dead Man’s Hand was all internal.

Fingers snapped near my face, and I flinched.

“Stick with us,” Biggerstaff said, crouching in front of me. “I’ve got the bodies of three formerly very promising recruits on my hands and a Shogun to answer to. Tell me what happened here, and get it right the first time, or your body gets dumped in the bogs along with theirs.”

Water splashed as a janitor pulled the green-blooded fighter’s body out of the rock pool closest to the door. Bloody water sloshed across the stone tiles.

“Three?” I frowned, trying to get my brain to catch up. The newly healed injuries in my side screamed when I twisted around to get a better look at the rest of the soaking room. Another naked fighter was lying on the tiles at the other end of the room, a bloody gash gaping under his chin like a second mouth.

I looked down at the Ylef again. He looked shocked. Surprised I’d killed him? Or surprised I’d gotten through that glass barrier?

“Oi, grav,” Warcry growled. “Ain’t really the time for daydreaming, yeah? Get your head on.”

“Huh?” I blinked, then remembered I was supposed to be explaining. I scrubbed my hands down my face. “Right. It was the Bailiff. The Ylef said the Bailiff sent us his congratulations.” My voice sounded hollow. Was I talking weird? I looked at the body the janitor was dragging out onto the floor. “I think he killed those other guys, too, but he was after us. Warcry and me.”

“So you killed him,” Biggerstaff said.

“No, I—I mean, yeah—” My brain felt like it was short-circuiting.

Biggerstaff’s fish eyes narrowed. “You’re saying this Ylef attacked you because of a small-time feud with some former backwater gangster?”

“That’s what he told me!” It probably wasn’t smart to yell at the guy trying to decide whether or not to execute me and dump my body in a bog, but the anger at not being believed hit me out of nowhere.

“Nameless trash.” Warcry spat on the Ylef’s corpse.

“Don’t do that!” I snapped. What the heck was wrong with him? With everything? This was all too real and too surreal to make any sense.

“Don’t you bleedin’ tell me what to do with an assassin, grav. He deserves it. Nameless’ll do anything for a name. The Bailiff probably didn’t even have to pay the cack-handed bastard.”

“Your expertise isn’t required here, Mr. Thompson,” Biggerstaff said, like he was dismissing Warcry.

A wave of cold hit me, and I started shivering.

“Think I’m gonna leave me lad here by himself while you slippery coves turn this around on him?” Warcry grabbed a towel off the rack and chucked it at me. “Internal alchemy, grav.”

At his reminder, I checked to make sure the little bit of Miasma regulating my internal alchemy was still cycling, but it was running like it was supposed to. For whatever reason, I just couldn’t get warm.

I dried off my upper body, then got up and wrapped the towel around my waist. Goosebumps stood out on my wet skin, and I had a long, puckered scar down my chest and a trio of triangular pocks in my side. Hopefully my insides had healed into less of a mess.

Biggerstaff’s whiskers twitched like they were feeling around for something.

“I’d heard that you and Sedryk Nameless recently had a dispute over some stolen property,” he said.

“You think I’d kill a dude just because he stole my boots?”

“People have killed for less,” the catfish said. “Petty off-planet murders keep Van Diemann’s population booming.”

Warcry let out an angry grunt, then crouched down by the Ylef and started rifling through the dead guy’s HUD. In a couple seconds, he twisted the Ylef’s wrist around, pointing the screen at Biggerstaff.

“Right there in black and white,” Warcry said. “The Bailiff promised to adopt the cove into his family, complete with a Confederation-legal name, official as you please.”

Biggerstaff glanced at the screen. “Pictograms?”

“Nameless can’t read, can they?” Warcry sneered, like that was something everybody knew.

“I’ll need to have someone check the translation,” Biggerstaff said, turning back to me, “but for now, it looks like you’re telling the truth. Let’s talk about why you didn’t cloak your Spirit during your match, but did in here.”

My eyebrows jumped. “What?”

“I didn’t feel your Miasma when you attacked, and I’ve been monitoring you. You cloaked yourself somehow when you killed him.”

I thought back to the Moldering Bones attack Hungry Ghost had shot into my head.

Did you cloak my Spirit when I attacked? I asked.

Some kills require privacy, Hungry Ghost said.

“Focus, Mr. Hake,” Biggerstaff snapped. “Why didn’t you use the Spirit cloak in your match?”

“I...I didn’t know how to then. It just happened when he attacked me.”

“Can you recreate it during your next fight without killing anyone?”

The shivers hit me again, so intense that it was almost hard to breathe.

“Maybe,” I said, scrubbing my hands together and ramping up the internal alchemy some more, trying to get warm.

“Do it. No maybes. Get it done, and this—” He jerked his wide catfish head at the bodies lying around the floor like dirty laundry. “—including the price of that healing elixir, will all go away, no matter what the pictogram translation says.”

Flames erupted down Warcry’s head and shoulders. “You callin’ me a liar, fish?”

Calmly, Biggerstaff turned to the redhead and opened his huge predatory fish mouth like he was sucking down dinner, gill rakers flashing.

Just like that, Warcry’s fire was snuffed out.

The redhead’s face twisted into a mask of fury, and he whispered, “What did you do, you—”

“Don’t ever flex on me, Mr. Thompson,” Biggerstaff interrupted in a low voice. “An Antimatter affinity is no one you want to make an enemy of. The next time you raise your voice to me with an attack in the chamber, you’d better be prepared to finish me immediately or lose every trace of Spirit in your body.”

With that, he slid his hands into his pockets and walked out, fancy shoes tapping on the stone tiles.

As soon as the catfish was out of sight, red fire flared up again all over Warcry. The ginger glared down at his burning fists like he was trying to make sure nothing was wrong with them, then he let the flames drop.

The janitor squeezed between us, dragging the naked fighter by the ankles. The dead dude’s elbow bumped the Ylef’s boot as it passed and shook the whole bony body.

For a second, I felt Dead Man’s Hand bump against that glass wall like it was my real fingers grabbing at the life point. I leaned over with my hands on my knees, dry heaves kicking up a storm in my gut.

“How about ya, grav?” Warcry asked.

“Fine,” I croaked. I straightened up and cleared my throat. “We’ve got to stop the Bailiff.”

“We do, yeah?” Warcry eyed me. “You look well fit for the job, trying to hold your guts down.”

“It might not be me or you he goes after next time! It might be Kest or Rali or...or...” I cussed under my breath, furious with myself. “If I’d gone ahead and killed that jerk at the Wilderness Territorial, this would never have happened.”

“I don’t want the netskins dead any more than you do, but we’re talking a proper psycho here,” Warcry said. “The Bailiff’s already got the Big Five affiliation he was always barking about, and he still hired some Nameless to do us. That’s a different class of lunatic.”

“Listen, if we can sneak up on him, grab his life point when he’s not expecting it—he doesn’t have a protection around it like the Ylef did—I can take him out. I just need to figure out the cloaking, then he’ll never see me coming.”

“What you need is a head examination,” Warcry said. “You’ve cracked.” He grabbed my wet clothes and work boots out of the puddle of bloody water and slammed them into my chest. “Piss off outta here before anybody else comes around and sees a mad half-naked Death cultivator standing over a bunch of stiffs, ranting about murdering some Jianjiao cove.”

I bit off my arguments, realizing my breathing was coming a lot harder than it should’ve been. I was right on the verge of hyperventilating.

I spun around and strode out of the soaking room, digging my hand into the dripping pocket of my jeans.

My fist closed around the cold little lump of Hungry Ghost.

I can’t mess around anymore, I told him. I need that cloaking.

Death cultivator is ready, the skull stone croaked. Hungry Ghost will teach him.

Out in the market court, I headed for the elevators, barely registering that people were staring at me. I needed dry clothes, then I needed bog ferals.

Finding Oblivion

BY THE TIME I MADE it outside, the orangey-magenta tinge from the night sun was starting to creep into the far corner of the gray cloud cover. For once, the constant rain had tapered off into a cool mist that felt like occasional little pinpricks of wet on my skin.

Bands of ferals had accumulated since I’d been inside, and several of them were beating at the brick walls of the Heartchamber. One even slammed repeatedly into the door like it knew instinctively that the steel rectangle was how you were supposed to get in, even though it couldn’t figure out the handle.

To clear the makeshift training area, I took those out with Dead Man’s Hand, tearing out their life points and supercharging my Spirit sea.

The next closest pack wasn’t going to be much of a challenge in a physical fight. There were only three of them, and one was sort of gallop-dragging itself along on two arms and part of a leg, ragged chew marks at the end of each limb. A gross reminder that ferals weren’t picky about what they ate. If there wasn’t any fresh, living meat around, they started taking bites out of each other.

Watching them charge, little starbursts of electricity shot down my legs and arms. Miasma flashed and roiled inside my sea, and my brain started demanding I tear out their life points, but I forced myself not to move.

Okay, what do I do?

Death cultivator must first understand the essence of Death, Hungry Ghost croaked.

Frustration twisted in my gut. We’d already covered this ground a million times with Rali and the jade books and gotten nowhere.

Warm Heart cultivator could not understand the true power and comfort of oblivion, Hungry Ghost said. Only Death cultivators understand.

But I don’t understand, I told him. I need an explanation.

Explanation is complicated. Showing is better.

So show me.

The mist and the marshy ground around the Heartchamber disappeared. Suddenly, I was running across an open field of sun-scorched grain, the bouncing heads of the plants right at my eye level. Not because the grain was tall, but because I was short.

I was a little kid, only eight years old.

From behind me came the barking of dogs on track. Voices yelled. I ran harder, panting like I was about to drop.

A line of trees stood at the edge of the field, offering protection and places to hide.

But the barking was gaining on me. I couldn’t outrun the hounds.

I swore to myself that they wouldn’t take me back. Not alive.

I spun around just as the first hound leapt at me out of the grain.

It wasn’t like any kind of dog the real me remembered from Earth, but the little kid I was then recognized it as one of the hounds from the pits. It was completely headless, but as it jumped, its stump of a neck and hulking shoulders opened in a starburst of razor-sharp, yellowed teeth, snarling and snapping at me.

I exhaled, letting out my last breath, and shut my eyes. Strangely, dying didn’t scare me. It would be better than the first eight years of my life. The moments leading up to my death wouldn’t be peaceful, but the oblivion it brought would. I welcomed that eternal rest with the loving embrace of her exhausted son.

Then I wrenched the hound’s life point out of its gut. Its snarling stopped on a high yelp, and its hot, foaming corpse slammed into me, driving me to the ground.

The search party was drawing closer, the barking and yelling growing louder. They hadn’t felt me kill the dog, so they didn’t realize they had anything to fear. I cycled the churning Miasma to my muscles, reveling in my first taste of true power, and shoved the dead hound off my tiny body like it weighed nothing.

The second hound tore into the clearing of crushed grain, and I plucked its life out of its body as easily as picking a flower.

Strength like I’d never known surged through me. This was Death—the loss of all fear, the ultimate victory over my enemies—I was Death. While the rest of the fools in this world clung to Life as if it could save them, I waited patiently for them to run to me. And they did. They ran straight into me, and not one of them saw Death coming.

Does Death cultivator understand? Hungry Ghost’s voice snapped me out of the dream or vision or whatever it was. Death is not to be feared or hated. For Death cultivator, Death is a lover and companion. A sweet mother offering protection and respite.

It’s the comforting bed at the end of the journey, I thought, remembering what Rali had said about it forever ago in the Ghost Town boneyard.

Hungry Ghost sent me a feeling like a nod. Death shelters, strengthens, and empowers. It brings oblivion, nothingness. Relinquish Death cultivator’s hold on this mortal coil and sink into oblivion.

I took a deep breath, then let it out, trying to recapture that little kid’s eagerness for nothingness. It was surprisingly easy. When you felt nothingness, you didn’t feel any kind of shame or self-hatred or disbelief at what you’d done. With oblivion, there wasn’t a past or a future. You didn’t have to deal with any of that.

A bog feral gurgled right beside me, and I felt the change in air pressure as a swipe came at my face.

I opened my eyes and attacked. The Miasma roared through my muscles as I pumped it into Death Metal, but I couldn’t see the shields. It was too late to question them or try for another attack. I threw an elbow into the bog feral’s face. The invisible edge of Death Metal cut right through its rotting skull. Black, gooey brains sprayed across the marshy ground in an arc.

I was so surprised the cloaking worked that I let out a, “Holy cow!”

Death cultivator has dropped his cloaking, Hungry Ghost said, even though I’d already seen the turquoise shields flicker back to visible.

Sorry, I said, throwing a kick into another incoming feral’s gut before it could slash me with its ragged arm bones. I killed the doubled-over feral with a shield bash to the decaying brain stem. How do I get it back?

Oblivion.

Okay, just a second. I jumped over the rotting corpse toward the next bog feral, taking a deep breath as I went. Not an appetizing smell, but I could feel that the breath was a necessary part of the technique. The inhale collected all the frustration and anger and freaked out banging around in my brain, every bad thing from being alive, and pushed it away on the exhale.

As I breathed out, I tried to focus on recapturing that feeling of imminent death and embrace the nothingness, but I couldn’t. I bashed one Death Metal shield after another into the feral, trying to make my Spirit disappear again. One fail after another.

I was about to be overrun because I was screwing around with this one feral instead of just killing it and moving on.

Frustrated, I gritted my teeth and threw myself into the larger melee, killing off a bunch of them uncloaked. I had to thin the herd enough to concentrate on cloaking again.

It wasn’t what I was supposed to be focusing on, but the exercise was still hugely relieving. My scarred-over knife wounds kept flaring up, but every shot I got in felt like it took away a little more of the sick blackness trying to eat me alive from the inside out.

When I was back down to just a couple of slow-moving ferals, I stepped back next to the Heartchamber and focused. Breathe in, breathe out, drop into oblivion.

Except it didn’t work.

Perhaps Death cultivator would rather be seen killing than hide his actions, Hungry Ghost suggested. Perhaps he is proud of surpassing his father’s crimes.

Screaming rage burned through my whole body like I was a pile of gas-soaked rags somebody had tossed a match into. My dad wasn’t a great guy. He made crappy decisions and then justified them like he was doing the right thing for us, like there wasn’t anything else he could’ve done but sold drugs, when it was obvious that he just liked the constant flow of cash. But at least he’d never killed anybody.

I slammed my fist into the brick wall of the Heartchamber, over and over, not stopping when I saw blood, wishing I could pound myself down to nothing as easy as punching a wall.

Now, Death cultivator, Hungry Ghost said.

It took a second for understanding to break through the red haze in my brain.

When it did, I exhaled and dove into oblivion like a swimming pool. The words Last Light, Last Breath surrounded my thoughts in a cool, soothing blanket of nothingness. It was such a huge relief that I felt physically lighter.

Four bog ferals closed in on me. None of them looked surprised when I tore out their oozing brown life points, because none of them felt the cloaked Dead Man’s Hand reaching into their Spirit. They just tumbled down dead.

No burst of excitement at getting the cloak right came along with the oily life point boost that time. Instead, I stayed in that oblivion place, waiting for the next small band of ferals. I slowed them down with Death Grip, invisible ghost hands grabbing at their feet and legs, then went through finishing each of them off with Death Metal shields they couldn’t see.

It wasn’t exactly a rampage, because there wasn’t any of the trademark fury you get with a rampage. This was cold and calm, surrounded by layers of nothingness.

Don’t get me wrong, I was still doing Miasma-charged jumps, kicks, and bashes, throwing sprays of gore and sucking down Death Spirit from the fresh corpses. But while I was fighting, it felt like I was a million miles away watching what was happening on TV or something. Like this was a movie about some dude whose problems I didn’t have. I could get sort of invested in it, but only up to a point, because I wasn’t him and I wasn’t really feeling what he felt.

Right then that was pretty great.

Broken Pieces

HUNGRY GHOST AND I kept working at it, whittling down the ferals coming at the Heartchamber until the waves finally stopped coming. The last of the day suns sank out of the clouds and the night sun took over, turning the cloudy sky black with tinges of orange and purple. I was cultivating the fresh Miasma and looting the bodies when the steel entry door creaked open behind me.

“So you are out here,” Kest said. She stopped a few feet away from me and hugged her arms around her stomach. “Your HUD must be broken.”

I glanced down at the cracked screen of my Winchester and the slew of messages I’d been ignoring.

“I’m messing with you, Hake,” she said. “I know there’s nothing wrong with the Winchester, I refurbished it myself. Obviously, it was user prioritization.”

“Sorry,” I snapped, knocking the grabbing hand of a dead feral off my wrist. I triggered Corpse Fire to burn off the soul contamination and went back to scooping Spirit stones out of his pocket. “Some people have other stuff going on besides messaging you every five minutes, you know.”

Icy cold crackled through my veins, and the raindrops closest to us turned to plinking hail midair. When I looked up, Kest’s lacy eyes were almost fully black and her skin was glowing blue from the inside with Cold Metal Spirit.

“I’m leaving tomorrow afternoon.” The temperature of her voice had dropped past absolute zero. “The Technols made me a good offer, and I’m going to take it.”

My gaze fell on the sidewalk. Kest and I had been sitting there holding hands, like, a day ago. Now it felt like I could never get back to that, like it was so far away that I wasn’t even the same person anymore, and what had changed was something Kest could never understand.

Metal cultivator is as rigid as her affinity, Hungry Ghost said in an agreeing tone. She cannot grasp the intricacies of Death.

I racked my brain for something to say that would make this better, but it felt like a knife was lodged in my throat.

“Okay,” Kest said and headed for the door. “Well, bye then.”

“Wait!” I hit the Ki-speed and sprinted after her. I grabbed her elbow as she reached for the handle.

With a crunchy freezing sound, my fingertips stuck to her like a tongue on an icy metal light pole. I stopped myself from automatically jerking away because I wasn’t sure whether my skin or hers would rip; hers felt a lot more fragile than mine did.

“Don’t go yet, please,” I said.

She didn’t say anything, just looked at me over her shoulder with one eyebrow raised. She looked as rigid and unforgiving as Hungry Ghost had said. But that wasn’t fair. Cold Metal wasn’t all there was to Kest. Memories ran through my head of her laughing when she and Rali played that rain barrel prank on me, of her holding my hands to her stomach while she used Hot Metal Spirit to warm me up, and her forgiving me for being a dick just because I’d brought her Coffee Drank as a peace offering. Hungry Ghost thought he understood her, but he didn’t.

“I shouldn’t have... I mean...” I stopped and tried to come up with more than three words that went together, but they were crashing around inside my skull like a bunch of coked-up fighter jets. “That was a dick thing to say. I suck. Trust me, I know. I did just kill a guy...” I shrugged and tried to laugh, but it sounded more like somebody’d punched me in the solar plexus and I was gagging.

“So?” Kest shook off my hand. My fingertips stung as she pulled away, but neither of our skins tore. “Killing that Nameless isn’t a logical reason to get mad at me. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

I felt like I’d just taken one of Warcry’s roundhouse kicks to the side of the head.

“You know what happened?” I said.

“Why do you think I kept messaging you to see if you needed any healing elixirs or for Rali to infuse some food for you?” She crossed her real and stick arm. “Warcry said you were upright and walking, but you weren’t acting right. He didn’t know how well the distiller’s emergency brew had fixed you up. He didn’t even know a brand name I could find on the hyperweb.”

“I didn’t...” My throat dried up. Didn’t what? Want her to find out? What had I thought would happen, that Warcry would keep it to himself and I could just pretend like nothing had ever happened? “I’m sorry.” My voice cracked on that, which would’ve been embarrassing enough by itself, but all of a sudden I was shaking again. I stared down at the concrete so I didn’t have to look her in the eyes. “Really, really sorry.”

A little at a time, the chill seeped out of the air. Kest took a deep breath and let it out.

“I’m not good at this, Hake. I don’t do intuitive like Rali does. If there’s something broken, you have to tell me or I can’t fix it.”

That anger flared up out of nowhere. “There’s nothing to fix! I’m fine!”

She smirked. “Yeah, you seem fine.”

“Crap.” I squeezed my eyes shut tight and dragged my hand through my hair. Why couldn’t I stop getting mad at her? She just wanted to help. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be yelling at you. I should probably be on the ground, apologizing like Rali did back in the boneyard. Is there something I can do to make this up to you? Like, threefold?”

The corner of her mouth turned up like she was trying not to smile.

“You’re such a fixer-upper.” She reached out with her real hand and gave me a soft shove. “At least we know the original framework is still good.”

I took a deep breath and focused on letting that go as the joke it was supposed to be.

“It doesn’t bother you that I killed that Ylef guy?” I asked her.

“Warcry said the Bailiff sent Sedryk to kill you guys. He tried, you stopped him.” She shrugged. “That’s how survival works. It’s no different than defending yourself from a feral.”

It was a million times different, but I didn’t say that.

What I said was, “Bet your brother doesn’t think so.”

Kest glanced at the door.

“No, he doesn’t,” she admitted. “Warcry and I tried to make him see reason, but Rali... He’s always wanted to believe in a place that’s not like this, where you don’t have to kill or hurt anyone to survive. I think that’s why he rejects everything normal so hard, because he wants the universe to be different and he doesn’t want to be a part of it if it won’t. When you showed up, you seemed like you came from the kind of place he’d always been hoping existed, so in his head, he set up all these grand ideas about you.”

“And now I’m crushing his dreams,” I said.

She leveled a flat stare at me. “If you have an idea of how you think a build is going to work and then you put it together and it doesn’t work like that, you can’t just keep going and hope it’ll work the way you thought it would. You’ve got to revise your original plan or you won’t get anywhere.”

“Don’t be too hard on Rali,” I said. “I kind of wanted to be that guy, too.”

She frowned. “The guy who buries his head in the sand so he can live in a fantasy world?”

“That’s pretty harsh. Rali’s good. Like really good. It’d be awesome if more people were like him.”

Lightning cracked across the clouds, and the rain picked up, hammering on the Heartchamber’s eaves.

“Well, they’re not,” Kest said, scooting in closer to the building so she wouldn’t get wet. “Statistically, on Van Diemann at least, more people are like the Bailiff and Sedryk Nameless. And considering that the Big Five run half of the Confederated worlds from behind the scenes, it’s a safe bet that most people in the galaxy aren’t like him, either.”

Her HUD buzzed, and she took a couple seconds to answer it. That reminded me of what she’d said earlier about the Technols’ offer.

“So, the Technols finally gave in to your demands?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” Kest said. “They upped their offer after they heard Biggerstaff’s, though. Now I can jump straight to journeyman, and I’ll have a monthly allowance of components, so I won’t have to do my own scavenging or pay for it out of whatever I make unless I go over. No private workshop or salary until I move up through the ranks a little higher, but they did send along some details about the probationary mission I’d go on if I accepted.” She grinned at me, excitement sparkling in her lacy eyes. “It’s off-planet. Way over in the Shinotochi System.”

My stomach sank down to my heels at the thought of not being on the same planet as Kest. I tried to think of a way to ask without being too obvious, but couldn’t figure it out.

“When did you say you were leaving?”

“I haven’t signed anything yet,” she said, “but once the paperwork’s done, they’re going to send a transport to pick me up. Probably tomorrow afternoon.”

“That’s awesome,” I said, hoping I sounded like I really thought so. “Just what you were hoping for.”

“As close as I’m going to get, anyway,” she said.

The sloshing of marshy ground got my attention through the rain. A lone bog feral straggled up the hill.

“Just a sec,” I told Kest.

I turned around and jogged a couple steps to meet it, breathing out as I tried to recapture Last Light, Last Breath.

Nothing happened, which didn’t make any sense. I’d had the cloaking down before Kest showed up.

What am I doing wrong? I asked Hungry Ghost as the feral staggered closer.

Death cultivator’s focus has changed. Oblivion is out of Death cultivator’s reach.

I tried again, pushing thoughts of Kest and Rali out of my head and focusing on that nothingness.

It was slippery because—at least right then—I didn’t need it. Kest didn’t hate me. She thought I’d done the practical thing, the only thing I could do.

Perhaps Death cultivator cares more for what Metal cultivator thinks than for what his father’s father thinks, Hungry Ghost said.

Kest knows what I did. Gramps doesn’t, I said like that made it okay, but the fact that I was glad Gramps would never find out sent me into another spiral. All the good stuff the old man had expected from me, all the effort he’d put into teaching me right from wrong, and in a split second I’d thrown that all away like it didn’t even matter. And for what? I hadn’t been protecting him this time, I’d just been trying not to die again.

The bog feral lunged at me, and I breathed out Last Light, Last Breath. Relieving oblivion surrounded me, cloaking my Spirit in nothingness, and I tore out the feral’s oozing brown life point.

The lightning flashed again as the body hit the ground. It was a Ylef. For a second, I saw Sedryk Nameless’s face. Biggerstaff’s voice rang in my head, talking about dumping bodies in the bogs, and I lost my grip on oblivion, heart pounding as I broke out in a cold sweat.

Rain dripped into my eyes, and I scrubbed at them. When I could see again, the Ylef feral was still on the ground dead, but it wasn’t Sedryk Nameless. This Ylef was bald, had its hands chewed off, and was the same muddy brown as the rest of the bog ferals, as if it had been stained by years underneath the muck instead of just a few hours.

“Hake?” Kest said. “Are you all right?”

Her question made me realize my chest was heaving like I’d run a marathon. I scrubbed my hands down my face, trying to get back to normal.

“Yeah.” I got down on one knee and started going through the bog feral’s pockets, mostly to buy time. “Just gonna loot this guy, then I’ll be back up.”

This isn’t going to work, I told Hungry Ghost. I can’t deal with these mood swings just for a Spirit cloak. I’ll go crazy.

Hungry Ghost never felt shame after discovering the most powerful Mortal technique. Death cultivator should embrace the power and shed the shame. Such is the only path to supremacy.

Yeah, I’m not really in this for power or supremacy. I just want to protect my friends.

Hungry Ghost will find another way.

There was nothing in the Ylef bog feral’s pockets, but he had an amber pendant on a silver chain around his neck, a mosquito-like bug frozen in the stone. With Ki-sight, I could see a bloodred halo surrounding it.

I brought the necklace back up the hill and tossed it to Kest, relieved to have something to distract us both with.

“What do you think that’s about?”

She dangled the necklace out at arm’s length, inspecting it.

“The script says it’s some kind of Organic construct.” She cocked her head. “Maybe it’s a healing charm.”

Without even washing off the mud and body juice, she put it around her neck. Her cinnabar stick hand melted into a thin knife blade, and she stabbed herself in the flesh of her real palm. Black Selken blood welled up.

The necklace didn’t do anything.

“Huh,” she said, frowning down at it. Then, “Come here, Hake.”

When I got close enough, she stabbed me in the back of the hand. My blood, which Kest should’ve been familiar with by now from all the times she’d tested healing scripts and practiced skin-toughening techniques with me, made a red bead on my skin.

Red light crept out of the wound and filtered through the chunk of amber, into Kest’s chest.

“Ha!” She stuck her palm in my face so I could see the puncture wound. As I watched, the black blood sucked back inside and the skin closed. “The blood of whoever you’re attacking triggers the script, then it steals their Health and transfers it to you. That Spirit construct is most likely from one of the Parasitic affinities.”

“That explains the mosquito theme,” I said.

She unhooked the necklace from around her throat and handed it back to me.

“You should keep it,” I said. “You use a lot more skin-puncturing techniques than I do.”

She shook her head. “You need to be wearing this in your next fight. It’ll give you a huge advantage if you do draw blood.”

I looked down at the bug stuck in the amber. Now that I was thinking about it, it was probably pretty weird to try to give someone a necklace covered in corpse juice.

“I’ll give it a shot first thing tomorrow.” I went over to the downspout and rinsed the pendant off.

“You’re fighting tomorrow? Are you well enough for that?” Kest asked, eyeing my side like she could see the scars through my shirt. “Your movements are slightly impeded, which makes sense with what Warcry said about your injuries. Didn’t Biggerstaff say you could take up to two days off between bouts?”

“I’m fine,” I said. I had to be. It wasn’t just about going after the Bailiff. Something a lot bigger than that was eating me up from the inside, something I couldn’t put a name on. I had to keep moving, stay ahead of that gnawing blackness. But I didn’t know how to explain that to Kest, so I said, “If I take time off now, the other recruits will think I’m a walkover. I need a win. Then I can take a day off.”

She hmmed, still frowning down at my side. “I’ll ask Rali to infuse some food for you at breakfast. That might help.”

“No!” My yell echoed back at me, and I winced at how loud it’d been. “I mean, you don’t need to bother him. I’ve still got four allotted elixirs I haven’t used up yet for this week, plus all the credits I’ll get from selling this pile of feral loot. I’ll just grab another healing elixir when the distillery opens tomorrow.”

Kest looked at me like she knew why I didn’t want to ask Rali, but she let it go. Maybe she didn’t want to argue with her twin, either.

Survival Mode

I DIDN’T GET HARDLY any sleep that night. Every time I started to drift off, I felt my fingers jam up against a glass wall, the glass crumbling and the Ylef’s life point going out, crushed in my fist.

The one time I actually dozed off, the Gunsmoke theme started playing in my head along with all these flashing purple lights. Then I felt the Ylef’s corpse fall on top of me, and I bolted straight up in bed, covered in sweat and sick to my stomach.

Sushi was so annoyed with all my moving around and interrupting her sleep that she swam off and spent the rest of the night in one of my work boots.

Eventually, I gave up on sleep altogether and went down to the workout room, thinking that would be a decent way to keep from thinking about the day before and Kest leaving.

The workout room had a bunch of weird machines I couldn’t figure out, but the weight benches were basically the same as on Earth, so I went with that.

First I tried it with Ki-level strength enhancements just to see what I could do, which turned out to be way more than I’d thought. I benched three times what I could back on Earth, and probably would’ve done better if the stab wounds had been a hundred percent healed. Then I switched over to doing it without enhancements for a while, figuring if I could build my natural muscle up, I’d do even better with Ki abilities.

When my arms felt like they were going to give out, I switched over to a treadmill. With the Ki-speed, I hit thirty miles per hour—or whatever the alien equivalent of that was that my brain was translating into miles per hour. The buttons went all the way up to a hundred miles per hour, but after I made it to thirty, I backed off to jogging speed. I’d seen one too many fail videos to trust all-out sprinting on a treadmill.

I’d been running for about fifteen minutes when Warcry walked in. He stopped in the doorway, scowling.

“What’re you doin’ in here, grav?”

“Calculus,” I said, wiping my sweaty face on my shirt without slowing down. “What does it look like?”

He rolled his eyes and went for one of the machines along the far wall, a clear plastic box with a set of dials and number pads on it.

“Meaning, since when do you put any effort into improving yourself?” he said.

“You mean like besides all last month, fighting you for hours on end behind the saloon?”

“Psht.” He thumbed the number pad, inputting something. “That’s just training, grav. Any clown can show up when they’re told to. Takes a champ to show up when he ain’t.”

“That’s weird.” I turned the treadmill up a couple notches and ran a little harder. “Weren’t you the guy who didn’t want to train before day sun high?”

“Just coz I got complacent for a bit don’t mean I wasn’t still working on me own,” he said, opening the panel and stepping inside the box.

Once the door was shut behind him, Warcry sank into a low stance and started throwing punches. Every so often, the box’s number pad beeped, and the dial turned up a notch. I couldn’t tell what was going on with it, and I didn’t really feel like asking, so I went back to running. Whatever the point of the box was, Warcry was really working up a sweat. In no time, droplets were flying off his fists and elbows, splattering all over the clear walls around him.

After about twenty minutes, he switched to kicks, going back and forth between his real leg and his prosthetic. He wasn’t moving even close to as fast as he did in a fight. The box must’ve been slowing him down, adding extra resistance to his movements.

I shut off the treadmill and went to the heavy bag in the corner, working on elbow-kick combos. I lost track of time doing that for a while, almost like I was back in the trailer house practicing muay thai along with movies or YouTube.

The sound of Warcry’s box beeping brought me back to reality. The door popped open, and Warcry came out, breathing hard.

“You’re moving like a rubbish android, grav.” He grabbed a water bottle off the cart in the corner. “Your side ain’t healed, and it’s jackin’ up everything else on ya. Any clown with half a brain can see all they have to do is work your left side to tear ya apart.”

He had a point. I forced myself to stand up a little straighter so I wasn’t hunched over the stab wounds, but they still hurt like heck. That wasn’t going to work.

Usually when I needed to get through a fight injured, I used Miasma to stop the bleeding and freeze shut wounds that should’ve been debilitating. It wasn’t a long-term solution, but it kept me alive long enough to come up with a next step. That felt like all I had to do here, get through the next fight—or maybe convince everybody that the next fight was all that mattered. Everything after that I could worry about after.

I shut my eyes and found the little bit of Miasma I kept cycling through my body to maintain internal alchemy. When it got to the spots where I’d been stabbed, it didn’t flow right. The Spirit rivers there were all twisted and knotted up and pinned together like some kind of messed-up maze with no exit, and the contamination from the ferals had been building up there even though I’d been burning it off whenever I thought about it.

Frowning, I sent a ton of Corpse Fire flowing into that tangled maze. The cold turquoise flame cleansed the soul contamination, and the faint sickness in my stomach eased up. The pollution wasn’t totally gone, but there was less of it in the area. I’d have to figure out something else to get the rest of it out of those tangles.

For the time being, I blasted that twisted maze with Miasma. A little at a time, the tangled Spirit rivers frosted over. Frostbite settled into the nerves. They blackened and died off, and as they went, the pain disappeared with them.

I took a deep breath and stood up straight. Not even a twinge.

Warcry blinked, then stabbed a finger at my side. “What did you just do?”

I shrugged. “Fixed it.”

“No, you bleedin’ didn’t,” he snapped. “I seen more than me share of IFC fighters pull that trick to cover up sidelining injuries. They get through a fight or two—a season tops—and then they fall apart coz they trashed their body. Keep this up and you’ll never get a hundred percent feeling back in that spot.”

That didn’t actually sound like a huge deal right then. In fact, it sounded like it would’ve been great if I could just figure out a way to do the same thing for the part of my brain that kept reminding me I’d killed a guy.

Warcry launched his empty water bottle at the trash. “You need to walk yourself straight to the healer and have them repair it.”

“I’ll go after my fight,” I said. “This is just for right now.”

“Your body’s your weapon, yeah? You don’t keep it in shape, it’ll fail you when you need it.”

“I heard you already,” I said, irritation creeping into my voice. I checked the time on my HUD so I could change the subject. “The stores should be opening pretty soon. I’ve got to get a shower and sell some feral loot. I’ll see you.”

I left Warcry in the workout room and headed back upstairs, took a shower and grabbed the feral loot out of my room, then brought it down to the Pawning Post.

I’d been out a lot longer the night before, so I had a ton of odds and ends to sell, but what the chameleon-looking dude behind the counter was really interested in was that amber pendant around my neck.

“I give you two hundred even for ugly necklace,” he gurgled, licking one bulging scaly eyeball.

I shook my head, thinking of Kest. “I’ve got to keep it.”

He stuck one padded hand to the counter, then peeled it off with a sticky sound.

“You drive hard bargain. Two hundred fifty.”

“Sorry, man.” I shrugged. “I need it today.”

“Later, I drop price. I only offer much now because I so impulsive.” He twirled his finger around his head and made his eyes circle in opposite directions. “I have time to think, I realize Parasite apparatus not worth a credit anyway.”

Yeah, right.

“I’ll take my chances.” I left with the pendant and a hundred-and-twenty-six-credit deposit in my USL account from the rest of the bog feral loot.

After putting my name in for a fight, I headed over to the Smoking Dragon. I’d been a little freaked out about seeing the distiller again—I didn’t know if she would mention what happened—but she wasn’t in that early in the morning. One of her apprentices was holding down the shop, so I was able to pick up my allotted healing elixir and get the heck out of there without any uncomfortable conversations.

Negotiations

BY THE TIME I MADE it back to the fountain court, Kest and Warcry were already at a table, chowing down on breakfast.

A spike of black shot through my mood. This was probably my last morning with Kest before the Technols picked her up. I grabbed a Coffee Drank and some kind of sausage, egg, and potato-looking hash from one of the food stalls, then plastered what I hoped was a normal expression on my face and went to sit beside her.

“The big man ain’t eating today?” Warcry asked Kest.

“He said he’s going into seclusion while he’s on the Dragons’ dime,” she said, looking away from her HUD just long enough to grab a berry out of her fruit bowl, then going back to her schematics.

I looked up. “He’s not leaving with you?”

Kest shook her head. “When I asked, he said not only is he not interested in an affiliation, but he hates the Technols most of all.”

“If he went into seclusion, he must think he’s onto a breakthrough,” Warcry said between bites of sticky rice.

Kest shook her head. “It’s what he does when he’s pouting. He used to do it all the time when we were kids, but he could never stay in seclusion for long. I give him a day, two tops before he gets bored. He can’t stand having no one to talk to.”

The bite I’d just taken turned into a rock in my gut. Kest might think Rali would get over it in a day or two, but I knew from experience that this was how friends dropped you. One at a time, they started avoiding you, until you were down to no one. That was how it’d gone when Dad got sent to prison. I’d had friends before Thanksgiving break, and when I got back to school after the break, I had no friends. Rali was just leading the pack this time.

I gulped down some Coffee Drank, which I already knew was a mistake; I didn’t need the caffeine angst on top of everything else, but after a night spent fighting ferals and working out instead of sleeping, I was starting to crash.

Warcry scooped up another massive chopstick full of sticky rice.

“Bad news fish incoming,” he said, nodding over my shoulder.

I twisted around in my seat. Biggerstaff was headed over, wearing one of his fancy pinstriped suits.

He nodded his wide catfish head to us, then turned to Kest. “Miss Iye Skal, you’re just the artificer I wanted to see. I heard you got an updated offer from the Technols.”

“I should’ve known you’d have bugs planted around the outside of the Heartchamber.” She finished up whatever she’d been doing on her HUD, then looked up at the recruiter. “I guess you know I slagged the ones I found in my and Rali’s rooms?”

“Security mentioned they were offline.” Biggerstaff pulled a black coin out of his suit pocket and tossed it to Kest. “Hang on to that for a minute.”

She frowned down at it. “A silencer?”

Biggerstaff nodded. “I want an opportunity to outbid the Technols without them listening in. I understand that they’re your first choice, but they’re still undercutting your demands. Not something a gang who truly appreciated your potential would do. Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen, no negotiation.”

“At least put a lure on the hook, dress it up a little,” Warcry sneered. “Don’t insult her intelligence.”

But Kest just sat back in her chair and sized up the catfish like she was trying to decide how much she could get away with asking for.

Biggerstaff seemed to take that as encouragement to keep talking. “The probationary mission the Technols are about to send you on is to Shinotochi-Ryu, a planet under Eight-Legged Dragon control. In fact, the whole Shinotochi System is ours. The Technols haven’t made any sort of requests to the Dragons, so obviously they plan on sneaking in. Shogun Genkei wants to know why.”

“You want me to spy for you.” Kest turned the silencer coin over in her cinnabar hand, then made it walk across the backs of her stick fingers in a series of clinks. “That’s why you didn’t want them listening in on your offer.”

Biggerstaff opened his arms like You caught me.

“All right.” She closed her metal fingers over the silencer. “I want my probationary period along with all required fights waived, a genuine Master Artificer Certification of at least Grade 9 from a CPA-approved guild, my own workshop, an unlimited materials budget separate from my salary, and a starting salary of seventy-five thousand credits a year. Which you can prorate since this year’s almost over.”

My eyes bugged out. That seemed like a well-thought-out wish list. Maybe they were the starting demands she’d sent to the Technols.

But Biggerstaff didn’t even blink. “Would you like your credits paid by the local or universal year?”

“Wherever I’m at in the galaxy, the full amount should be deposited the first day of each Van Diemann New Year,” she said.

Biggerstaff punched some stuff into his HUD.

“Transfer done,” he said. “And the certification will be here within the week.”

Kest’s jaw dropped, all her cool gone. “Are you serious?”

“Don’t get all excited, netskin,” Warcry said. “All that means is this cove thinks you’re gonna die spying for him, so he won’t have to pay ya.”

She shrugged. “I’d die for that kind of money.”

“I, for one, don’t actually think she’ll die,” Biggerstaff said.

“Then what’re you doing all this for?” I asked, sitting forward. “None of it seems legit.”

“In war, it’s usually the most well-equipped army that wins,” Biggerstaff said. “Artificers have long been overlooked by our organization as ‘a Technol problem,’ but that’s about to change.” He looked back to Kest. “Tell the truth, though, I’d like to have the Selken set. When you see your twin again, Miss Iye Skal, tell him I’ll match his price, too, whatever it might be.”

“He won’t take it,” she said absently. Her eyes were a million miles away, probably already spending the money.

“Kest, seriously,” I said, the caffeine anxiety really starting to kick in. “You don’t see this going wrong, like, right off the bat? You’re not exactly the most subtle person in the world.”

“That’s what makes me the perfect candidate for spying,” she said, snapping back to the present. “Metal heads are too straightforward. No one would suspect us of subterfuge.”

“Hit the nail on the head,” Biggerstaff said.

“Metal always does.” Kest stood up and stuck out her real hand, palm up. “Obviously you can’t put the terms into a written offer I can sign until this is all over or the Technols might find it. I’ll take your highest favor card instead.”

Biggerstaff pulled a thin gold card out of his jacket and gave it to her. “That’s my unconditional bond. Don’t lose it.”

“I won’t.” She disappeared the card in her storage ring.

“And of course, I’ll need some sort of bond from you in return to prove you’re not going to sell me out to the Technols,” Biggerstaff said.

Kest put the storage ring to her forehead again and said, “Crest of the Traitor.”

A sky-blue opal the size of a robin’s egg appeared in her hand, shot through with flecks of glinting orange fire. For a second, Kest just stared down at it, her lips pressed into a thin line.

“It’s the only thing my grandparents were allowed to bring with them from Selk.” She swallowed hard. “It represents a blinded eye, put out for conspiring against the ruler. It was supposed to show their disgrace to any Selken they met, but my nona said only pride comes from suffering shame for doing the right thing.” With a deep breath, Kest handed the opal to Biggerstaff. “Please keep it safe.”

“I’ll protect it with my life,” the recruiter said, holding it to his chest. When he pulled his hand away and offered it to Kest to shake, the opal was gone.

She took his hand and bowed over it.

Biggerstaff did the same. “Welcome aboard the Eight-Legged Dragons, Mistress Artificer.”

Don’t Get Hit

AS SOON AS BIGGERSTAFF took back his silencer and left, Warcry and I both started in on Kest, but she shut us both up.

“Don’t say anything unless you want me shot on sight,” she said, pointing significantly to her HUD. Meaning The Technols are listening to everything we say.

I wanted to be relieved that Kest was going to join the Dragons and we’d get to keep seeing each other, but the spying thing was insane, and she was going to be doing it alone. I couldn’t even tell her to be careful without giving her away.

I blew out a breath. “This sucks.”

“Not for me,” Kest said. “I get to leave this trash heap planet for a while, and I get a Big Five affiliation, all in one swoop.”

“Bleedin’ bully for you,” Warcry sneered, which was kind of how I was feeling.

The Coffee Drank angst was going nuts by then, so I shut down my original plan of a second can and shoveled down some more hash to counteract the caffeine.

My HUD buzzed. Your match is scheduled for thirty minutes from now. Absence will be recorded as a forfeit loss. Your current record is 0 W-1 L.

I hurried up and opened the Heartchamber’s fight schedule for the day.

“I’ve got an opponent,” I told Kest and Warcry as I followed the link to the guy’s Spirit ranking. “A Stone Spirit.”

Warcry sucked his teeth. “Don’t get hit, yeah?”

“Yeah, I kind of figured.” I thought about making a “clobberin’ time” joke, but neither of them would get it, so I said, “His Spirit reserve’s not majorly high. Only about eighteen thousand.”

Which was high compared to me, but didn’t come close to someone like Warcry. Last time I’d checked Warcry’s ranking, he’d had almost half a million Spirit on reserve.

“He doesn’t need to store much in reserve,” Kest said. She waved her stick hand at the walls and floor. “He’s got a huge supply here to draw on.”

“I’ve got Hungry Ghost,” I said. “That has to even the odds some.”

“Oi, grav, I was serious,” Warcry said, stabbing his chopsticks at me. “You eat too many shots when you fight. Even if you were well fit, all a Stone affinity needs to land is one solid punch, and you’re out.”

That pit in my stomach yawned wider as I nodded. Extra-strength Dead Reckoning, extra Ki-level enhancements to speed and skin-toughening, remember to cloak my Spirit beforehand, don’t lose, don’t kill him... I bounced my leg under the table to try to let off some of the anxiety building up.

“Also, you should wear your Parasitic pendant,” Kest said.

“Got it.” I dug the mosquito necklace out of my shirt and held it up.

She nodded, satisfied. “An offense where you break the skin would be good. Based on our experiments, I’d say blood is the trigger for the script.”

“Won’t be possible,” Warcry said. “I’ve beat Stone affinities six ways from the day suns. They don’t bleed, do they. Every one of the bleeders has got Stone Flesh.”

“You’ve fought them before,” I said to him. “What do you think I ought to try?”

Warcry blinked and jerked his head back a little like he was surprised I’d asked, then he glared down at his emptied rice bowl, tapping his chopsticks on the rim.

“Stones are heavy, slow,” he said. “Strong as bleed all. Stone Flesh runs down their Spirit fast, but like she said, they can refill on anything made of rock. Still, I’d stay back and force him to come to you.”

“What about a ranged submission attack?” I wondered. “Something they can’t defend against.”

“Yer murder grab?” He nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, ya might do.”

“All right, then that’s my plan.” Cloak my Spirit, use enhanced speed to stay out of reach, grab the life point, and try to get it over with as fast as possible.

I took a shaky breath and checked my HUD. Still twenty-seven minutes until the fight. I couldn’t sit there waiting the whole time with Coffee Drank charging through my veins; I’d explode. I glanced up at one of the holoscreens. The first fights of the day had already started.

When I got up, it seemed like my chair scraped extra loud on the tiles. “I’m going to head in and watch the early bouts.”

“I’ll come with you,” Kest said.

“Reel it in, netskin,” Warcry muttered. “Nobody likes a saloon gal who oversells it.”

Black lace rippled down her cheeks, and her eyes turned dark with anger.

“Do you want to know what the real sound of one hand clapping is?” she growled in an icy voice.

“Try it.” Warcry smirked and turned his jaw toward her, pointing at the five-o’clock shadow growing on his cheek. “I ain’t afraid to hit a girl back.”

Kest scowled at him, then spun on her heel and stalked off toward the arena.

“Well, you weren’t a douche for as long as you could stand it,” I said before turning to follow her.

“Don’t kill anybody today, yeah?” Warcry called after me.

I shot him the finger over my shoulder, forgetting that it didn’t mean anything in this universe.

Kest was just inside the arena doors, leaning her elbows on the top level’s railing. I went over and leaned next to her.

“How’s it going?”

She blew the fine hairs out of her face. “That was a completely irrational reaction.”

“You don’t always have to be rational.”

“A Metal head who could make it to Ten would be,” she said. “They would’ve specialized their kishotenketsu by now, too.”

“And what, found somebody to resonant cultivate with them?” I said. “Sounds like a party.”

She snorted and leaned into my shoulder.

I froze, not wanting to do anything that might make her move away. That close, Kest smelled like hot metal and something sweet I couldn’t put my finger on.

We watched the next couple fights from up there. She moved around a little, but not to get away from me. More like she kind of snuggled in closer. I wished I hadn’t killed off the nerve endings in that side, so I could feel more of her.

After a while, my HUD buzzed with the ten-minute warning.

I glanced down at the locker room doors. Out of nowhere, I felt like I was steaming in a sauna, and I could smell blood and the minerals from the soaking pools. I swallowed hard. I really did not want to go back in there.

Kest read the message over my shoulder. “Don’t you need to go?”

“Nah.” I shook my head. “There’s stairs over there. They surely won’t care if I stay out here until my bout’s called.”

The last ten minutes went by in no time.

“Next matchup,” the announcer yelled like she was trying to hype up the eight or ten people scattered around the stands into a Superbowl-level frenzy, “Yoki Shinzu, eight wins, four losses, versus Grady Hake, zero wins, one loss!”

“If your submission strategy fails, go for blood,” Kest said, tapping the amber pendant through my shirt. “And don’t get hit.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

Versus Stone Jackal

I MADE IT TO THE CENTER of the arena floor before the locker room doors banged open.

Out stepped this huge gray bipedal jackal, wearing a white skirt covered in stone chainmail and stone bands around his enormous biceps and wrists.

If I hadn’t already known which affinity this Yoki guy had, Steroid Spirit would’ve been my first guess. He looked like one of those animals with that double-muscle syndrome, except he was the size of a grizzly and walked upright.

I almost started cycling Miasma to my muscles to hit the speed boost, but caught myself. I needed a Spirit cloak first or Biggerstaff would disqualify me before the match even started.

I took a deep breath, trying to drop into oblivion like I’d practiced.

Nothing happened.

“Fighting in...” The announcer took an extra-long dramatic pause. “Boulder field!”

The jackal, Yoki, grinned, showing a dog-smile of long white teeth.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.

The arena rumbled underneath our feet. I stumbled a little and had to flounder to stay standing as the ground shifted and rocks from fist-sized to slabs as big as school busses pushed up out of the dirt.

Instead of throwing himself at me like most fighters I’d seen so far, Yoki waited a second to see what I’d do. When I didn’t immediately jump at him, he started slowly walking my way. Rocks shifted and clacked together under his feet.

“C’mon, c’mon,” I whispered, shaking out my hands and shoulders. I took a deep breath and tried to drop out again.

No sudden wash of nothingness or emptiness.

Yoki broke into a lumbering run, purple tongue hanging from the side of his mouth. The Coffee Drank jitters morphed into a hive of wasps buzzing around in my guts.

Now would be a great time for the Spirit cloaking to kick in, I thought, backpedaling away from the oncoming freight train of jackal.

Death cultivator must focus, Hungry Ghost croaked.

I stumbled over an ankle-twister. I’m staring down a dude who could smash my head like a rotten peach one-handed. It’s a little hard to focus.

Yoki crossed the line where Dead Reckoning would usually ping an attack. He swung a huge fist at me. I tried to jump out of his way, but without the Miasma-assisted reflexes, I was too slow. His punch caught me on the shoulder. I rag-dolled head over heels, bouncing along a wide sloping boulder.

I scrambled back to standing, pain throbbing through my shoulder. Yoki hopped his huge bulk onto the boulder in front of me. I put my fists up. He grinned wider. His watermelon-sized fists came up and clapped together.

Something moved in the corner of my vision. A basketball-sized rock shooting toward my head. I ducked under it.

A bigger rock blindsided me, crashing into the side of my right knee and knocking my legs out from under me.

I tumbled off the boulder onto a bunch of smaller rocks, banging up my elbow and left side. The place where the Nameless had stabbed me under my floating ribs flared up, screaming at me for redamaging stuff that was still healing.

Crap, I need Dead Reckoning! I gritted my teeth and staggered to my feet in the shifting pile of rocks. I’m gonna get killed out here without my Spirit.

Does Death cultivator fear dying here? Hungry Ghost asked.

The huge sloping boulder I’d just gotten knocked off of shifted, making a grinding noise on the rocks around it, then came off the ground.

Yoki stood underneath it, holding the huge stone over his head and eyeing me.

I’m more worried about getting smashed into human marinara sauce, I said to Hungry Ghost.

But the jackal didn’t move. He just watched me. Waiting. Patient, like Warcry had said.

I clamped my elbow to my screaming side, like that would hold it together, and shifted my weight onto the balls of my feet. My eyes strained, watching for the slightest twitch. If it even looked like Yoki was going to throw, I had to haul tail the opposite direction.

Hungry Ghost can help Death cultivator. Death cultivator has only to ask.

All right, get ready.

I feinted right. Yoki’s huge arms flinched, muscles winding up for the throw.

I shot left, running for all I was worth. After a month of using Ki-speed enhancement, it felt pathetically slow.

Yoki let out a bodybuilder grunt as he launched the boulder. I planted my foot and did a hard pivot, sprinting back toward the jackal.

The boulder soared overhead, blocking the light around me in a wide oblong that was getting wider. I wasn’t fast enough. I was going to get crushed.

Help me out, please! I thought desperately at Hungry Ghost. I need Ki-speed or this fight is over.

The boulder field and yelling spectators disappeared, and I was in a lavishly embroidered tent. Incense smoke hung in the air, blunting the scent of sweat, roasted meats, and spiced wine. Plush cushions and furs covered the floor, and naked beauties of a dozen alien races fawned over me.

One of my soldiers ducked inside and spoke, fear and reverence warring on his face. He knew I could take his life at any moment and he could do nothing to stop me. They all did.

I smiled and slipped away from the soft, warm bodies, pulling on a fine silk robe and tying it as I stepped out into the bright light of the day suns.

The dirt shook beneath my bare feet as a barbarian horde of a dozen weakly allied tribes rode down our encampment. I could feel the Miasma already, waiting to be unleashed.

The horde’s fastest riders spotted me immediately, their Spirit seas sensing my power and marking me as their greatest threat. I registered the barbarians’ looks of shock and confusion and knew they saw not a powerful khan, but an armorless youth, barely old enough to grow whiskers, standing barefoot and half-naked on the battlefield, ready to die with a smile on his face.

With a storm of Miasma greater than any defense these barbarians or even my own men could muster, I leveled the horde.

Then suddenly I was back in the boulder field, standing with one foot on the ’roided-out chest of the jackal-guy while the tiny crowd cheered and clapped.

Air whistled through my broken nose, and blood and sweat ran down my face. One invisible Death Metal shield covered my left arm.

My right arm was nothing but bones.

I was holding the shining black blade of the angel of death’s scythe to the jackal’s throat.

First Win

“I GIVE!” YOKI BARKED, terrified whites showing all around his brown dog-eyes. His huge hands were covered in giant Hulk-fists of boulder, but he was holding them up defensively. “I quit! You win!”

“Match!” the announcer’s voice boomed ecstatically through the arena’s speaker system. “Winner—Grady Hake, one win, one loss!”

It took a second for me to realize what was going on. I’d won...somehow. I knew I should be surprised, but the oblivion and nothingness blanketed my emotions like a warm hoodie.

The ground rumbled as the boulder field sank back into the arena floor.

“It’s over, I gave up!” Yoki yelled, practically begging now. “Don’t kill me!”

This giant monster of a guy was scared of me. A tingle of emotion got through the oblivion then. I didn’t recognize it, but its presence made the nothingness slip through my fingers. The Spirit cloak disappeared.

I dropped the Death Metal shield and opened my fist so that the scythe ripped back into my skeleton. I had to grit my teeth so I wouldn’t scream in front of the guy I’d just—somehow—beaten, but I had just enough oblivion left floating around the edges to keep my cool.

I backed off a step and offered the jackal a hand up.

He flinched, big ears flattening and teeth baring in a silent growl.

“Good fight,” I said even though I had no idea. I just wanted to make sure he knew I wasn’t going to kill him.

Yoki hesitated. A little shudder went through his roid-rager muscles. He stood up on his own.

“You’re a lot tougher than you look, meat roach,” he growled, dusting off his stone mail skirt and shaking himself off like a wet dog. He grabbed my hand in a grip like a bear trap and bowed to me. “Good fight.”

I returned the bow. Yoki headed for the locker room doors, and I went back up the steps into the stands. The announcer called the next bout, and two more fighters took our place.

Blood and sweat dripped off my chin onto my shirt and oozed down the back of my throat, reminding me about my broken nose. With the back of one sweaty fist, I scrubbed the blood away. The healing elixir was still in my pocket, so at least I hadn’t used it up during the match this time. I dropped into a cushioned seating box and gulped it down.

What happened? I asked Hungry Ghost.

Later, he croaked weakly. Drained.

A fist thumped into my shoulder. “That was savage, grav.”

Warcry plopped into the box next to me, and Kest stepped over our legs to sit on my other side.

“Have you been working on some new techniques?” she asked. “A lot of those attacks were different from what you usually use.”

“Different?” I asked, hoping she’d go into detail.

“The grav’s been watching Battles of the Ancients, haven’t ya?” Warcry said. “That style was straight outta their reenactments—but without the ponser actors making it look all dainty and choreographed. Proper brutal was what it was.”

I used the bottom of my shirt to wipe some of the blood off my face. Pain flashed through my sinuses. The healing elixir had already stopped the bleeding and healed the break, but the spot was still tender.

“Neither of you guys happened to, like, record that fight or anything, did you?” I asked. “So I can study it?”

They both shook their heads.

“Biggerstaff said they broadcast some of the fights for Prison League Fighting,” Kest said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were recording all of them, just in case.”

“I’ll get your next one,” Warcry said, weirdly charged up about the idea. “You need it. You’re still giving away every kick before you make it, twitching your leg and looking at your target. If that Anuban had had half a brain in his skull, he coulda avoided everything you threw.”

“Thanks,” I said, meaning for offering to record my fight, not for reminding me about telegraphing my kicks. Warcry had been harping on that since we started training together.

Kest scrolled through notes on her HUD. “Your defense was different, too. Usually you have your hands in some variation of this.” She showed me a stick figure of a guy with his hands in high guard, like the muay thai I’d practiced back on Earth. “This time...”

“You weren’t bothering,” Warcry said. “Once you switched tactics and ran at him, you didn’t even mess about with defending yerself. Risky, but it paid off.”

Kest frowned. “It didn’t look calculated.”

A little kid spinning around to face a ravenous starburst-jawed dog and a half-naked guy grinning at a charging horde of barbarians flashed through my mind.

“I don’t know,” I said, wiping a drop of blood off the toe of my work boot. “I guess that was just what seemed right at that second.”

“That’s what you been missing, grav,” Warcry said. “The warrior spirit—living or dying in the moment and not worrying what else might happen.”

I grunted, hoping he would take that as whatever sort of response he was looking for, and squeezed Hungry Ghost in my fist.

As soon as the grinning skull stone could talk again, I needed answers.

Resonant Cultivation

AFTER WARCRY’S FIGHT—WHICH he won in basically no time—I was falling asleep standing, so I headed upstairs and tried to go into my room on the third level. Turned out all my stuff had been moved down to Level 4 because I’d won.

The new room was a little nicer. It still wasn’t much more than a closet, but this time I had a mattress and a couple of cubby holes built into the wall.

“Grady!” Sushi swam out of one and did an excited spin around my head. Maybe she’d been hiding in there since whoever had moved my stuff left. “Grady! Grady!”

I laughed and gave her some scratches. “Nobody but Gramps calls me that, weirdo.”

“Weirdo,” the little fish echoed.

“Need to do laundry,” I mumbled, throwing my sweaty, bloody clothes on the floor. I flopped onto the mattress with a thud. Laundry could wait.

A few seconds later, Sushi started tugging at the covers underneath me with her mouth.

“Ugh, fine.” It felt like it took a monumental effort to roll over and hold the corner of the blanket up.

The little fish swam in and wiggled around until she was comfortable, then sighed, “Fine.”

I let my arm plop back down, ready to pass out.

Behind my eyelids, purple lights shimmered. I could smell freezer burritos and hear the microwave running, and for half a second, I relaxed. I was back home and everything was fine. Then I felt glass crumble in my fist, the Ylef’s life point going out.

I groaned and stuffed my pillow over my head. Ten seconds later, I jolted awake again because I’d felt the Ylef fall on top of me and that triangle blade snap my rib.

With a frustrated grunt, I flopped onto my back, slapping the pillow off, and stared up at the darkness. What Kest had said about broken parts ran through my head. Maybe there was something messed up in me that needed fixing. My brain and my body were exhausted, but I couldn’t get them to shut off.

I checked my HUD. A little over a hundred and thirty credits in my USL account. I could buy a bottle of that Deep Night or Blackout Curtain or whatever it was that Warcry’d bought the other day.

Except I didn’t feel like dragging myself downstairs to the distillery.

What if I used Last Light, Last Breath to shut everything down? Would I be able to fall asleep or would these freak-outs somehow break through the oblivion?

I turned over, propping myself up on my elbow, and grabbed my jeans off the floor. The movement woke Sushi up.

“Grady,” she said like she was fed up with me. She blew a raspberry, then swam over to my sweaty, bloody shirt and fell asleep on it.

I pulled my jeans over and dug Hungry Ghost out of the pocket.

Can you talk yet? I asked the grinning skull stone.

Hungry Ghost has regained enough Miasma for short speech. He sounded a little stronger than before, but not much.

What happened? Where’d all your Miasma go?

Hungry Ghost cloaked Death cultivator’s Spirit. Without a body, this costs Hungry Ghost much.

Why can’t I remember the fight?

There was a flash of hesitation, like he didn’t want to answer me.

Two consciousnesses cannot fully inhabit the same being simultaneously, he finally said.

Alarm bells started ringing in my brain. You took over my body?

Anger flared up from the grinning skull stone. Death cultivator asked Hungry Ghost for help!

I didn’t ask you to steal my body!

Death cultivator could not perform the Spirit cloak. Rather than allow Death cultivator to be crushed, Hungry Ghost answered Death cultivator’s summons with the most expedient interpretation available.

I sighed. Well, in the future, no taking over my body and kicking me out.

Hungry Ghost would never do so without Death cultivator’s permission.

I don’t know how I’m supposed to believe that. You did today.

Hungry Ghost returned Death cultivator’s body, it said. Hungry Ghost did not have to do so.

My blood froze to slush. I squeezed the turquoise stone harder.

What the crap does that mean?

Hungry Ghost sent me a flash of a phone’s low-battery icon, then nothing.

“Yeah, that’s not going to cut it, man,” I said, climbing out of bed and throwing my clothes back on.

“Man!” Sushi yelled at me when I pulled my shirt out from under her.

“I’m not going shirtless to kill a bunch of ferals and recharge that dick skull stone,” I told her, pulling it on over my head. “You can have the bed. Or you can come up and eat mosquitos outside.”

The fish glared at the bed, then at me. Finally, she huffed and swam over to the door.

“Outside,” she muttered.

Aboveground, the clouds were a flat, dingy gray. It was right around when I always thought of as noon and everybody else called day sun high.

It felt like I hadn’t slept in forever, but after the first couple rounds of feral life points, I had enough Spirit to keep me moving. The rain came and went, Sushi swam around chasing down bugs, and I killed ferals and practiced cloaking my Spirit. No way was I relying on Hungry Ghost for that again. I didn’t cultivate from the bog ferals’ corpses as I went because I didn’t want the grinning skull stone to have any excuses not to answer me. I just looted them and made sure Hungry Ghost was sucking down the fresh Miasma.

The first tinges from the night sun had started to bleed into the far edge of the cloudy sky when my Winchester buzzed with a message from Kest.

Where are you?

Up top, killing ferals, I sent back.

A few minutes later, the steel door creaked open and she came out. I was halfway down the hill in the middle of a band of bog ferals, but I finished them off, then headed back up to join her.

She cocked her head, the lace in her eyes shifting from wide to thin as she studied me.

“How did you improve your cloaking so drastically in one day?”

I stopped a couple steps away from her and hooked my hands in my back pockets.

“I’ve been practicing,” I said, shrugging. “And Hungry Ghost gave me some pointers.”

“Now it’s telling you how to execute Spirit techniques?” Her dark brows scrunched down. “You shouldn’t trust that thing, Hake.”

I snorted. “Don’t worry, I don’t.”

“Giving you stuff all the time is a classic prison planet tactic,” she said. “Once you’re indebted to it, that’s when it’ll start asking for stuff in return.”

“Seriously,” I said, putting my hands up. “I’m not giving it anything.” Not now that I know it could take over my body whenever it wants.

She stared at me for a few more seconds like she was trying to get me to confess.

“Okay, good,” she said, relaxing.

In my head, I hoped she would do better at spying on the Technols than she did at interrogations.

“What have you been up to?” I asked, trying to get the scrutiny off me.

“Just got a departure time,” she said, holding her HUD wrist out like a watch. “The Technols are sending a transport for me in a few hours.”

“Today?”

She nodded.

I let out a low whistle. “That was fast.”

“I didn’t want to wait around,” she said, leaning against the wall and tucking her hand and stick arm behind her. “The sooner it’s over, the sooner I can get back...to other stuff I want to work on,” she covered hurriedly.

Geez. She was going to get found out Day One. I pulled my hand down my face, then held both of them out like Come on! trying to get her to see what a bad idea this whole thing was.

Kest glared at me to shut up and pointed down at her HUD.

“You really want to do this?” I swallowed hard, trying to think of anything I could say without giving her away. “What if it’s dangerous?”

“What they’re giving me in return is more than worth the risk.”

We stood there not talking for a while. It was awkward. I wanted to argue with her, but I couldn’t. Maybe she had stuff she wanted to say, too, but couldn’t. The rain slowed down and turned into a mist.

Sushi swam by, long spindly mosquito legs sticking out the corner of her mouth.

Kest snorted. I couldn’t help it, I laughed, too.

After a second, I took off the Parasite necklace and held it out to Kest.

“I didn’t use this today.” As far as I knew, anyway. “You should take it, just in case.”

“You could’ve used it,” she said. “That scythe would have let a ton of blood if you’d cut your opponent with it.”

My insides flinched, imagining what could’ve happened while Hungry Ghost had control of my body.

“I don’t think that’s going to be a thing I fall back on,” I said. “The blade is too big. It’d chop someone in half.”

She made an agreeing sound in her throat.

“I’d rather you have it anyway,” I said, bouncing the pendant around on my palm until I could see the mosquito inside better. “It’s not much, but it might help. Anyway, you could always sell it if you needed the credits.”

Kest frowned. “I would never sell something you gave me, Hake.”

That hit me right in the guts. I tried not to grin like an idiot.

“So, you’ll take it?”

She nodded. I handed it over. She fumbled with the clasp, metal stick fingers clinking. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

“This hand can’t do it,” she finally said. “The fine motor function isn’t advanced enough. Will you help me?”

“Sure.” I fastened the pendant around Kest’s neck, trying not to notice how she was staring up into my face the whole time.

When that was on, I leaned back against the wall next to her. She rested her head on my shoulder, so I slipped my fingers around her metal stick hand. The cinnabar wasn’t as warm as her skin, but it wasn’t freezing, either.

“That doesn’t bother you?” she asked, holding our hands up. “That you’re touching metal, not real skin?”

“No, I—” I stopped myself, face burning.

Kest frowned. “What?”

“I just realized what I was going to say, and it sounded like a total creeper.”

“Tell me anyway,” she said, shouldering me a little.

So I took a deep breath and blurted it out. “I just like to touch you. That’s what I was going to say. That I don’t care if it’s metal or skin because I like touching you.”

That shocked a giggle out of her. She slapped her real hand over her mouth. Lace faded into her cheeks, so at least I wasn’t the only one embarrassed.

“Exactly,” I said, dragging my free hand through my hair. “Creep city.”

“I wasn’t laughing because of that.” She turned so she was face-to-face with me and stared into my eyes. “I like to touch you, too. I just didn’t know how to say it.”

That made me a little lightheaded. I swallowed and tried to play it off like I wasn’t going ballistic inside. We were really close together, I realized. If I leaned down a little bit, I could kiss her.

As if she was thinking the same thing, Kest stretched up on her toes. She put her metal stick hand on my shoulder for balance, so I put my hand on the back of her neck. The stray hairs from her buns tickled my fingers. My heart pumped like it was going to explode through my sternum and blow my ribs out like one of those cartoon barrels.

Focus, idiot, I told myself. Don’t do something stupid like miss.

I locked my eyes on her lips. The corners of her mouth turned up in a tiny smile just before I stopped being able to see it and started being able to feel it. She tasted like Coffee Drank and metal and something else. Something incredible.

My broken nose was pressed against her cheekbone, but who cared? Jags of pain shot through the bridge, and I couldn’t really breathe, but I ignored it. I was not stopping this for anything—not for a nose, not for breathing, not if a feral staggered up behind me and jammed an ulna through my brain stem. Kest was going to have to decide when this kiss was over, because I would suffocate before I stopped.

Then something else started to happen. Molten Metal flooded my Spirit rivers, scorching the banks as it traveled back along the paths to my Spirit sea. The hot slag poured into the raging storm of Miasma, disrupting its natural cycle.

Pain shot through my core like a spear. My Spirit sea couldn’t hold that much. The icy Miasma pulsed and stuttered as it fought to capture the burning foreign Spirit, trap it, and drive it out. For a second, the edges of the Metal cooled, hardened, but then it heated up again from the inside out, melting and swirling and encroaching. It wasn’t going away. It couldn’t be stopped. Metal was the unrelenting element. It got what it wanted.

But so did Death. It couldn’t be avoided. It could be delayed, but not forever. It was waiting patiently at the end of every path, the silent victor, the old friend, the admiring lover.

Somewhere at the edge of my brain, I heard Kest gasp as the frozen Miasma latched onto the molten Metal. This time, they sank into each other. The stuttering and pulsing stopped, and a low hum started up. I could feel it vibrating through every inch of my body and Kest’s, like she was part of me, like my lungs and bones and skin. I felt her dual hearts pumping and her stomach flipping and her Spirit sea forging my Death Spirit. For a second, I could even feel what she felt about me, this explosion of giddiness and heat and nervous excitement.

Our Spirit seas both opened up at once, and a tsunami of Miasma and Metal Spirit roared in. More than I’d ever borrowed from Hungry Ghost. More than Kest had ever cultivated in one shot. The seas didn’t feel like they were going to burst at the seams anymore, though. They felt perfect. Exactly right.

When the real world came back, Kest’s eyes were almost completely black, and intricate lacy patterns rolled across her skin in waves. She was visibly shaking. So was I, I realized. Not to mention I was wheezing like an asthmatic who’d just survived a cage fight with Bruce Lee.

“What was that?” I gasped.

“I think...maybe...resonant cultivation,” Kest said in a breathy voice. “Check your Spirit reserve stat and see. If it was, you should have exponentially more—”

“Yeah, later. When did you say you have to leave?”

“Night sun high.” She glanced at the darkening clouds.

I didn’t want to sound too eager, but I asked anyway. “Should we do that again?”

Kest grinned and pulled my face down to hers.

That was the best day of my afterlife.

Staying Hungry

KEST DIDN’T WANT ANYBODY around when the Technols’ transport came to pick her up, so when the night sun was getting close to its apex, I did a last sweep for ferals, then headed inside, almost forgetting to let Sushi in behind me. Honestly, I was so wound up, I forgot a lot of stuff, including that Hungry Ghost owed me a crap-ton of explanation.

Maybe the exhaustion had something to do with it, too, because I don’t remember shutting the door to my room behind me or getting into bed, just waking up from this weird dream about my dad dreaming about me, except Sushi was there, too, eating parts of the picture.

The little fish was there when I woke up, sleeping on my chest like those creepy old stories about cats sucking the air out of babies’ lungs. As I reached up to move Sushi off me, pain shot through my side. I flipped back the covers to find an ugly yellow-brown-purple bruise all down my ribs and into my hip, along with bunched-up knots of swelling around the knife scars from the Ylef’s soaking room attack.

Right, Warcry had said I needed to find a healer to fix the damage more permanently. Wasn’t killing the nerves there supposed to stop the pain, though? Maybe I hadn’t done it right.

For a minute, I considered just dropping a bunch of credits on the highest-tier healing elixir I could afford. But even that seven-hundred-credit one the distiller had given me obviously hadn’t put everything back the way it was supposed to be. Healing elixirs must have some limitations on what they could do. Kest or Rali could probably explain the how and why, but I didn’t want to bother Kest when she’d just left for her spy mission. And Rali...

I got dressed, planning to head straight down to the market court and find the healer that Biggerstaff had mentioned during our tour. But while I was stuffing the pockets in my jeans back into place, my fingers bumped Hungry Ghost.

I pulled him out. Ready to talk yet?

A gas gauge appeared in my brain with the needle on E.

That’s such bullcrap. You were sucking down Miasma all last night while I was killing ferals.

He sent me a feeling like someone trying to start a car, but the engine not turning over. The needle on the gas gauge jumped, then plunged back to the left of the E.

You’re doing an awful lot of communicating for a guy who’s running on Empty.

The connection cut off like a dropped call.

I really wanted to tell Hungry Ghost to enjoy sitting in the room doing nothing for a couple days, but I wasn’t sure I could get by without the extra Miasma. After that make-out session the night before with Kest, my Spirit sea felt full—and when I checked the reserve stat on my HUD, it said I had over twenty-nine thousand, which was more than four times the most Spirit I’d ever had—but who knew how fast that would run out while I was fighting? I didn’t even know how much Spirit the cloaking required, but I knew once I hit zero, I wouldn’t be able to cultivate more fast enough to keep going. For now, I needed the jerk.

So, I shoved the skull stone back into my pocket and stomped my work boots on. I’d deal with the cloaking and everything else myself, no more asking Hungry Ghost for anything but his Miasma.

The dark little Den of the Waking Locust was located downstairs at the end of one of the halls coming off the fountain court. I’d slept through most of the morning, so by the time I got there, fighters were lined up out the door. From the impatient grumbling, it sounded like everybody wanted in before their next bout.

I checked the time on my HUD. The fights had already been booked up into the afternoon, but if I put my name in right then, I could probably get on the schedule for that night.

After another glance at the motionless line, I headed for Scheduling. For now, I would just keep the nerves frostbitten, then worry about getting in with the healer early the next morning.

While I was in line to submit my name, I caught the last of Warcry’s third fight on the screen in Scheduling’s booth. Warcry ran up the wall of this dingy alleyway, launched himself into a backflip, and blasted this armored dude with a kick that knocked his helmet into the stands. Before the dude could recover, Warcry nailed him with one of my Eight-Elbow combos. The armored guy was probably out by the second shot, but after he dropped, Warcry stood over his fallen form, fire raging and ready for more, until the announcer yelled, “Match! Winner—Warcry Thompson, three wins, zero losses!”

He turned to head into the locker room, but the announcer wasn’t finished.

“Congratulations, Warcry Thompson,” she yelled. “Your fights have been selected for broadcast on the Eight-Legged Dragons’ Prison League Fighting! Please see Scheduling for details!”

I gave Scheduling my name, then hung out nearby and waited for him. He came out of the locker room exit a couple minutes later, chugging one of the low-tier allotted healing elixirs. He had a cut over his left eye in the shape of the armored dude’s gauntlet knuckle plates, but on his way over, the bleeding tapered off.

Warcry swiped some of the blood off his face with his shirt. “Not taking the day off, grav?”

“I don’t need it. I’m fine.” If you didn’t count the weird bruises around the knife scars and the fact that I’d gotten kicked out of my body for a few minutes yesterday, that was true.

Warcry stared at me, sawing his jaw a little, like he was assessing me. I crossed my arms and stared him down.

After a second, he leaned over the Scheduling counter, knocking on the laminate with his knuckles.

“Oi, lovey, they sent me here to see about the Prison Fighting League broadcast.”

The alien inputting names and updating the win-loss database put up a wait a second finger, then sifted through a bunch of stuff on her desk.

“Here we go,” she said, coming over with one of the hand scanners like they had in the Universal Savings & Loans. “We’ll need your permission to use your name and likeness for advertising and your USL account information to deposit your share of the sponsorship money.”

Warcry’s eyes narrowed. “What’s the cut?”

“You’ll start at three percent, then bump up to six if your fights go to Premium.”

“Let me see some paperwork on the permissions,” he said. “I don’t want you bleeders owning my likeness or brand or nothing.”

The alien found something on her HUD, then sent it to Warcry. “As you can see, it’s strictly for ads and hype.”

Warcry read through it on his own screen, then grunted.

“Yeah, all right, give us the pad.” He input his hand scan.

Once all that was taken care of, we headed for the market court.

“That was weird,” I said, stopping off at a food stall. “Usually, you’re all about your brand lawyer seeing stuff before you sign it.”

“I can read for meself,” Warcry growled. Then he shrugged. “Anyway, that ponser doesn’t want nothing to do with a Big Five client. He sent back the Eight-Legged Dragon offer unopened and a message saying his reputation can’t take working for me anymore.”

“That blows,” I said.

“I don’t need him. I’ll keep me own hype up.”

From the food stalls, I picked up a kind of burrito thing stuffed with some stir-fried meat and a green vegetable that looked like snow peas, and Warcry got a huge bowl of rice and three kinds of meat. By unspoken agreement, we took our lunch into the arena and found a box to watch the afternoon fights while we ate.

“Seen the big man today?” Warcry asked.

I shook my head. “Far as I know, Rali didn’t even show up to say goodbye when Kest left.”

“Atta boy.” Warcry nodded in approval. “If anybody’s gonna make it through to Ketsu, it’s that bleedin’ savage.”

“Does Ketsu require going into seclusion?”

“Might do.” He took a bite of rice. “What I heard, it requires finding truths and altering your Spirit sea.”

“Like in what way?” I finished off my burrito and wiped some stir-fry sauce off my mouth with my hand.

Warcry stared down at the fighters for a minute, chewing. “So, you start out with this big open body of Spirit, yeah? All that’s good for is Ki. Then you condense it into a sea with rivers, give it some form and structure, and that’s your first step into Sho. When you specialize for Ten, you either restrict your Spirit or make a covenant with it, which changes the look again. It condenses into something smaller and more powerful. Extra concentrated, yeah? Ketsu’s supposed to be the biggest alteration. Turns your Spirit sea into something unrecognizable, which is why most people never make it to that stage. They can’t give up the old familiar ruts.”

The weird dreams I’d been having about home flashed through my brain. I wasn’t trying to hang on to that, though. If anything, since I’d been dropped on Van Diemann, I’d been trying to move on with this new life. I had no idea why I was suddenly dreaming about Gramps and Dad.

Down in the arena, a shark lady crunched a yellow dude’s knee backward with a flying tackle. They slammed into the walls of the warehouse landscape they were fighting in.

“I wonder what sort of Ten specializations there are for Death Spirit,” I said.

“That’s exactly what you oughta be wondering.” Warcry downed the last of his meat and rice. “You gotta stay hungry, keep fighting toward that next level. Otherwise, you’re just falling back, ain’t ya?”

I opened the hyperweb on my Winchester and searched for Death Spirit specializations, but nobody had any answers.

From the things Rali had said, he’d chosen between Cold Heart and Warm Heart. Kest flipped back and forth between Hot and Cold Metal and would presumably have to pick one of those when she specialized. A quick search for Warcry’s Hatred Spirit came back with mostly confusion and claims that it couldn’t be specialized through Ten restrictions or covenants because it was an Entropic supertype.

“How’d you decide on Burning Hatred?” I asked Warcry. “The hyperweb says Hatred Spirit’s too chaotic to specialize.”

“That’s failure talk,” he sneered. “I do whatever I need to, don’t I? Most cultivators get to a point where they have a choice, go this way or go that way. Ya pick one and live with the consequences or go back to yer rut and fade away.”

Versus Parasitic Twins

WE HUNG OUT WATCHING the fights until my bout was called.

“Grady Hake—one win, one loss—versus Rata—five wins, two losses!”

I headed down from the box, taking the stairs into the arena. Rata, my opponent, was this half-lizard, half-rodent dude. He looked me up and down, then smirked like he thought I was a walkover.

My hand twitched toward the stone lump in my pocket, then stopped. I didn’t need Hungry Ghost. I took a deep breath and focused on the stuff I didn’t want to think about, like how I’d killed a guy and Rali was dropping me and what Gramps would say if he knew about any of it. It only took a second to get into the right headspace for Last Light, Last Breath. My Spirit sank into oblivion.

“Fighting in...” The announcer took her customary dramatic pause. “Close-quarter confusion!”

The thick, clear glass walls of a maze rose out of the arena floor and closed over our heads, shoving us closer together until we were less than five feet apart.

I slid back along the wall to put more distance between us and bumped into a corner. The scythe wasn’t going to be of any use in such a cramped space. I’d never be able to swing it.

Rata held out his hand and a lead pipe appeared in it, one end wrapped in grimy cloth tape for a better grip. Then out of nowhere, he turned into two Ratas—one holding the pipe in his right hand, the other holding it in his left. Righty shot toward me, while Lefty ran off into the maze.

To slow Righty down, I sent a forest of invisible hands up in front of him, getting a Death Grip on his legs. He stumbled, but didn’t fall. I blasted out a huge wave of Dead Reckoning. Instantly, the Miasma sent me back a map of the glass maze with bloody pinkish life points showing where Righty and Lefty were located.

That didn’t make sense. No way could Rata totally divide himself in two, down to the life point. Was Dead Reckoning glitching somehow?

Parasitic Twin Spirit, Hungry Ghost croaked. Weakness. In a fight to the death, killing one Parasitic Twin kills both.

Look who can talk again, I said.

Hungry Ghost sent me a feeling like a door slamming in my face. That almost knocked me out of oblivion, but I grabbed onto Last Light, Last Breath just before it slipped away, keeping my insides locked in hollow nothingness.

Righty Rata broke through Death Grip and launched himself at me, swinging his lead pipe, but Dead Reckoning sent me backpedaling out of his reach. I shouldered backward around a corner, and the pipe crunched into the glass where my face had been a second before. Cracks spiderwebbed out from the impact site.

Farther out in the maze, Lefty was circling around, taking a path that would bring him up behind me.

Dead Reckoning pinged closer to me. Another pipe from Righty, this one a body shot.

I ducked inside the swing, reinforcing my side with Miasma. The pipe thudded into my messed-up ribs, but with the nerves deadened, I barely felt any pain, just the shock waves from the impact. Before Righty could react, I clamped my arm down over the pipe and slammed him with a reinforced elbow.

Righty’s head rocked on his furry-scaly shoulders, but he didn’t go down. With Ki-sight, I could see a pinkish aura pulsing with red veins floating into him from across the maze.

He was borrowing health from Lefty to stay conscious.

The same Lefty who was coming up behind me. He just had a couple corners left before he could crack me in the back of the head with his pipe.

Under normal circumstances, I didn’t have enough awareness and Spirit in my reserve to keep more than two techniques going at once, but after that resonant cultivation with Kest and the extra concentration I had in the emotionless Last Light, Last Breath, I had total control over the enormous amount of Miasma we’d cultivated.

So I threw out Three Corpse Sickness along with everything else.

Stop Lefty, I told them, and the corpses sprinted off behind me, covering the three possible ways that Rata could get to me. Absorb any health he sends to Righty.

With that covered, I sent invisible Death Metal to my free arm and used my grip on Righty’s pipe arm to jerk him into the shield bashing of a lifetime.

His nose busted, spraying snot and pinkish blood. He scrabbled at me with his clawed fingers, but I upped my Ki-strength enhancement and clamped down harder.

“What the hell?” His eyes darted over my shoulder. “Where’s my healing, bro?”

“I’m trying, bro!” Lefty yelled back.

All the bros probably would’ve been funny if I hadn’t been sunk in oblivion, but I wasn’t feeling anything right then, amusement or otherwise.

The Right Rata’s health wasn’t coming. I could sense my Corpses soaking up everything Lefty tried to send him.

Righty tried to kick me in the balls, but Dead Reckoning warned me with enough time to slam a reinforced knee into the shot. His clawed toes crunched, and he yelped. A huge shield bash made his eyes roll back in his head. I caught him with the backswing, too, but he was already dropping.

Before Righty hit the ground, he disappeared.

The dual life points in Dead Reckoning disappeared, and Lefty’s doubled in brightness. So they were back to one Rata again.

I spun around and ran along the path that led to the whole Rata. The Corpse blocking that path shattered when Rata walloped it with an overhand pipe shot. With the supposed threat out of the way, the rodent-lizard saw me coming. He held out his empty hand, and the second pipe appeared. Instant lead escrima sticks.

He sprinted at me.

My other two Corpses were too far away to intercede, so I dropped their Miasma and tried something new.

I stopped in place, grounded my feet like Rali always did, then hurled an invisible Miasma-laced palm strike at the half-lizard, half-rat. It slammed into Rata’s chest, seizing up his muscles. His legs froze midstride, and he face-planted, skidding a little on the dirt.

Rigor Mortis, I thought.

I held my right hand in front of me and summoned the angel of death’s scythe.

My skeleton shifted, the layer of scythe ripping down my arm and into my hand. In Last Light, Last Breath, I barely felt the pain. The flesh and muscle melted away, and the scythe grew outward from my palm, huge black blade glinting under the arena lights.

It took a little maneuvering to get it turned the right way in such a small space, but after a second, I put the blade to Rata’s neck.

“Give up,” I said. My voice sounded hollow and echoey.

With slow, struggling motions, the half lizard half rat fought to raise his hands through the Rigor Mortis.

Dead Reckoning pinged behind me.

I didn’t have the room to spin around with the scythe, so I launched a Ki-reinforced back kick. It caught the second Rata in the gut. Before he could come at me again, I grabbed his life point with Dead Man’s Hand and held it in place. He wasn’t going back to his bro until they surrendered.

I pushed the blade against the throat of the Rata in front of me. His beady eyes bugged out.

“We surrender!” he yelled. “Let us go!”

“Yeah, stop, we’re done!” his parasitic twin screamed in agreement.

“Match!” the announcer crowed. “Winner—Grady Hake, two wins, one loss!”

I let the scythe flow back into my skeleton and stepped back.

Rata absorbed his twin back into himself, too, watching me warily. He didn’t get up until the maze walls had rumbled back down into the dirt of the arena floor.

That same feeling I’d gotten from the look on the jackal’s face when I defeated him trickled in through the oblivion, and Last Light, Last Breath dissipated. This time I recognized that feeling—it was satisfaction. I was stronger than they were; they realized that and yielded to me.

On one hand, it made me feel like a douche to think that way.

On the other hand, I kind of liked it.

Devil Corruption, Hungry Ghost said as I headed back up the stairs into the seating area.

Like from the scythe? I could only vaguely remember him saying something about that when I picked up the weapon, mostly because I’d been busy trying not to drown.

Death cultivator is not so sarcastic now that he wants answers, Hungry Ghost said.

Then like a dick, he went radio silent again, and no matter how much I bothered him, he wouldn’t talk to me the rest of the night.

Return from Seclusion

SINCE I COULDN’T SLEEP, Hungry Ghost wouldn’t talk to me, and Kest had told me ahead of time not to expect messages until she got to another planet with a HUD connection, I spent my time searching the hyperweb for info on Devil Corruption. All I found was references to old sword legend tropes, but without the jade book version of Ten Strikes Against the Hero, which could be read in about ten minutes, it was going to take a lot slogging through digital fiction archives on my HUD before I found anything.

If I could just talk to Rali, king of all sword legend otakus, he’d probably know all about it, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen. The longer he stayed locked away avoiding me, the more ticked off I was getting about it.

“Never heard of Devil Corruption,” Warcry said when I asked him about it in the workout room. He let the weight bar drop to his chest, then blew out a breath as he shoved it up toward me. “Think it’s related to a Martial Devil?”

I thought back to the Bailiff’s ghost ape fail-safe. “I don’t know. How do you get one of those?”

“Usually by making a pact with one or trapping it in your soul.” Warcry slammed out another rep. “Ya never hear about it endin’ clean and fast, though. Live by the Martial Devil, die by the Martial Devil, yeah? Only somebody meaner’n they are can keep one in for long.”

“Makes sense the Bailiff’s got one, then.”

Over the next week, I kept putting my name in at Scheduling and getting new fights. Weirdly enough, I kept winning, too. After she landed on Shinotochi-Ryu, Kest checked in every day to hear how I’d done. It was a safe subject to talk about, because it didn’t have anything to do with her spying on the Technols around her. And since Warcry had started recording all my fights—which he then used to give me in-depth breakdowns of every little thing I’d done wrong—I was able to send Kest a pretty accurate blow-by-blow whenever she asked.

I posted four more wins and made it down to a room with its own bathroom on Level 8 before Biggerstaff showed up again.

The recruiter caught me outside the Smoking Dragon, on the way to pick up a post-fight healing elixir and see if they had anything that could keep my messed-up side numb. I kept putting off going to the healer because I didn’t want to deal with any questions they might ask about how I got the injury in the first place, but the bruise was only getting darker and wider, not fading like bruises were supposed to.

“You’ve been putting on an impressive run, Mr. Hake,” Biggerstaff said. “I knew you could cloak your Spirit with the right motivation. Needless to say, your debt for the life-saving elixir I bought you is erased.”

“Oh, right.” I’d almost forgotten about that seven hundred credits he’d been holding over my head. So I was getting away free and clear, no consequences at all for killing that Ylef, and nobody even cared that he was dead. Great. That made me feel about as awesome as a burning pile of trash with explosive diarrhea.

Biggerstaff looked like he was waiting for me to say something else, so I added, “Thanks.”

His whiskers twitched. “Doing so well that you’re probably wondering why you’re not cleared for Prison League Fighting like your friend Mr. Thompson. I just wanted to drop in and give you an explanation of my reasoning.”

“You don’t want anybody knowing what I can do,” I said. It wasn’t exactly a brain-buster.

The catfish pointed at me like Bingo. “A knife’s more effective if nobody else in the fight knows you have it. The rate at which you learn and adapt is spectacular. You’re going to be a bigger asset than anyone would have guessed back during the Wilderness Territorial, which means you’ll get more or less anything you ask for. Unlike your previous small-time gang, the Eight-Legged Dragons know how to treat an asset.”

“Like Kest.” Thinking about her made me want to check my HUD in some kind of Pavlovian response, but I kept my eyes on the recruiter.

“And her twin,” Biggerstaff said. “You haven’t seen our Selken guest lately, have you? I’d love a word with him.”

“I thought you guys had this place bugged tight. Rali’s in seclusion. He hasn’t come out of his room in like a week now.”

Biggerstaff’s gills worked, and he smiled.

“According to my bugs, he’s gone aboveground the last three evenings running. Since you’ve been spending your nights outside fighting bog ferals, I assumed you had seen him.”

I tried not to look surprised. People didn’t chat you up about what they were doing and where they were going when they dropped you.

“Maybe you were just too focused on feral killing,” Biggerstaff said. “It’s a damned good thing they take care of each other’s corpses or the rotting meat would be piled to the roof out there.”

I shrugged, not really sure what to say to that. Seemed like I could never sleep anymore, so it just made sense to go train. Even if I hadn’t been looting the ferals, the extra practice had been good for my cloaking. I was getting to where I could get into the right headspace for Last Light, Last Breath in no time. All I had to do was think for a second about everything in my life piling up around me like those bodies Biggerstaff had mentioned.

“Well, if you see Mr. Iye Skal, let me know,” Biggerstaff said, turning to go. “I’d like to lay out my offer for joining the Dragons, if he’ll hear it.”

That made me laugh. “Rali’ll hear it, but he won’t take it.”

“You don’t think so?” Biggerstaff’s catfish whiskers twitched. “Why not?”

Down the hall, I caught sight of Warcry leaving the Interplanetary Mail. He nodded when he saw me and headed over.

“Rali won’t be interested in anything you can offer him,” I said. “He’s too good for money, and he doesn’t give a crap about possessions or fame. He doesn’t want anything.”

Biggerstaff’s eyes narrowed. “Everybody wants something.”

“Nah, not the big man,” Warcry said, stopping beside me and crossing his arms. “He ain’t interested in the Dragons. He’s looking for the Beggar Clan.”

I frowned over at Warcry. I wanted to ask him how he knew that, but not in front of Biggerstaff.

The catfish croaked out a chuckle. “A dreamer. I like it.”

Anger prickled along the back of my neck. Just because Rali was avoiding me didn’t mean I couldn’t still get mad at somebody making fun of him.

“Yeah, well, that dreamer’s not the kind of guy who compromises,” I said, “so you might as well forget about recruiting him. Waste your energy on something else.”

“We’ll see,” he said. “Good luck in your bouts today, gentlemen. I’ll be looking for you both to move to Level 9 within the week.”

Once Biggerstaff left, I glanced over at Warcry.

“Did you know Rali was out of seclusion?”

“Sketchy cove’s probably lying,” Warcry said.

The clunk of wood on tile sounded behind us. “No, he’s right. Seclusion’s boring. I kind of hated it.”

We spun around to find Rali leaning sheepishly on his walking stick.

“How’d you sneak up without the recruiter seeing you?” Warcry gave Rali a flurry of punches in the shoulder. “Get some illusions in that Ketsu breakthrough, did you, ya bleeder?”

Rali laughed. “I haven’t made any breakthroughs. I just took a page out of Hake’s pet fish’s book.”

“Oh yeah, that disappearing shimmer thing she does,” I said, nodding. I wanted to sound cool, like I wasn’t wondering if Rali was just waiting to spring some murder accusations on me, but it came off more like a brownnoser who would say anything to agree. I dialed it back and shrugged. “Well, you beat Kest’s guess. She didn’t think your seclusion would last more than a day.”

“To be honest, I was checking up on you guys,” Rali said. He looked from Warcry to me, the lace in his eyes shifting in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

Here we go. I started to take a step back, but stopped myself and shoved my fists down in my pockets.

But instead of saying, “You’re a murderer,” Rali said, “You’re in terrible shape, Hake. Why didn’t you come get me? Your Spirit rivers in your left side are all blocked and twisted. If you leave it, it’ll just keep getting worse.”

“You—you were busy,” I stuttered, trying to get my brain off the defensive. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Helping my friends is never a bother to me, Hake. It’s one of my favorite things to do.”

Oh, so we’re friends now that you’re bored of being alone, some mean part of my brain sneered.

“Anyway, I was going to go to the healer,” I said out loud. “When I got time. They’re full practically around the clock.”

Rali flicked his shaggy hair out of his face. “Do you have time right now? I can work on your side.”

“Uh.” My next fight wasn’t until morning, so I didn’t have any excuses. “Yeah, I guess.”

“Great,” he said, brightening up. “You guys aren’t allowed in my room, according to Biggerstaff’s arbitrary lodging rules, so we’ll have to use yours. If you don’t want to just lay down here in the hall, that is.”

“Meet you lads up there,” Warcry said, backing toward the Smoking Dragon. “I need to refill me Deep Night.”

Rali frowned. “You’re having bad dreams, too?”

Except he said it under his breath like he hadn’t meant for either of us to hear it.

Warcry stopped dead in his tracks. “What’d ya say, big man?”

“Nothing,” Rali said in a hurry. “Probably just the extra concentration of Death Spirit here in Bogland.” He nodded at me, like he was trying to throw the attention off himself. “The Death cultivator probably loves it here.”

“I do love the smell of Miasma in the morning.” Like all my other Earth references, that one didn’t get a laugh.

Warcry ducked into the distillery, and Rali and I headed for the elevators.

Half of my brain was racing for some kind of excuse or distraction to keep Rali from bringing up me killing that Ylef, and the other half was cruising for a fight, ready to shove what I’d done in his face and see if it started anything. But the elevators were full when we got on, so I kept my mouth shut until we got to my room.

“Hey, so—” I started, holding the door for Rali.

But at the same second, he was like, “I don’t want to talk about it right now, Hake. Just give me some more time, okay?”

“So you can what? Get more pissed at me? See if I turn evil like your sword legend bad guys?” I threw my hands up. “That Ylef’s not going to get any less dead. That’s what you’re mad about, right?”

“That’s what you’re mad about,” he said in this infuriatingly calm voice.

“I’m not mad!” I slammed the door.

Over in the corner, Sushi yelped and disappeared in a shimmer of purple and white scales.

Rali’s eyebrows rose. “I also yell when I’m not mad.”

I dragged my hands through my hair.

“He was going to kill me,” I said.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t! You weren’t there! I didn’t have time to think, I just reacted!” I gave the bedside table a kick and dropped onto the bed with my head in my hands. “No, that’s not true. He had some kind of protection around his life point. I had time to think about what I was doing. Hungry Ghost showed me how to dismantle the wall, but I was the one who did it. I took it apart on purpose, and I killed him.”

The easy chair over in the corner creaked as Rali sat in it. He didn’t say anything, just sat there.

When I looked up, he didn’t look disgusted or mad, just tired.

“You didn’t even need Death Spirit where you came from, did you?” he said. “It was completely different.”

It felt like my jaw was going to crack, but I couldn’t pry it apart to say anything, so I just nodded.

The corners of Rali’s mouth curved up, but he didn’t look any happier.

“If this life is all an illusion, I shouldn’t care.” He shook his head. “I just can’t stop.”

“Also, I made out with your sister,” I muttered.

Rali rolled his eyes. “Who could’ve seen that coming?”

“Are you mad?” I asked.

“Why should I be? Kest likes you, so she’s probably really happy.” He cocked his head at me. “Unless you mean, am I mad it’s you.”

“A killer playing tonsil hockey with your sister.” My stomach turned talking about Kest like that, and part of my brain wondered if this was what every douchebag felt like when they spouted that kind of crap but they were just really good at covering it up. “That doesn’t bother you?”

“Are you actually asking or are you trying to provoke me?” he said. “What are you doing, Death cultivator? You’re avoiding healing yourself, fighting with your friends, and you look like you haven’t slept in a year.”

I glanced up at him. “Are we really still friends?”

Rali laughed. “Just because you make me reconsider the whole nonviolence thing occasionally doesn’t mean I hate you. Friends don’t have to agree all the time.”

A little bit of the tension ran out of my shoulders.

“Sorry I said that about Kest and tonsil hockey. That was gross.”

“Tell me about it,” Rali said. He stood up and jabbed me in the rib-bruise with his walking stick. “Let’s repair that blockage in your side, Death cultivator.”

Healing and Restoration

RALI HAD ME LIE ON the floor on my good side and lift up my shirt so he’d have access to the massive bruise taking up my left side. Right away, he noticed I’d been killing the nerves around the stabbing scars.

“That’s going to have to stop,” he said, pushing an orange wave of Warm Heart Spirit into the blockage. “Our bodies experience pain for a reason, Hake. You’re re-damaging it every time you fight because you can’t feel the tissues tearing open again.”

“It was just a temporary fix,” I said.

“You’re doing it right now,” he said. “I can see it. Stop deadening them for a minute and give me a chance to work here.”

“Oh, right.” Without realizing it, I’d gotten in the habit of feeding a constant stream of Miasma into the area, as second nature as keeping my internal alchemy going. I concentrated and cut the flow to those nerves. A little at a time, the pain came back, turning up like a phone with the volume button held down.

“Warcry said it’d kill the nerves off,” I said. “But I must not have been doing it right. They kept coming back.”

“That’s...pretty weird,” Rali said. “I don’t think humans are supposed to work like that. You’ve been building up a ton of soul contamination, too. What’s the deal, man? Why’d you stop purging it?”

When he said it like that, it sounded really stupid that I hadn’t been using Corpse Fire, but some part of my brain thought the constant threat of barfing up my guts was the least I deserved.

“I forgot,” I lied.

He cocked an eyebrow at me, but didn’t call me on it.

“Well, it might not be very effective until I get these tangles worked out anyway. You can try it when everything’s flowing right again.”

Out of the corner of my eye, the orange light of Rali’s Warm Heart Spirit glowed brighter. Something inside my rib cage slipped like a knot coming free. I winced. Stuff moving around inside you isn’t a normal or good feeling.

“Nice,” Rali said, nodding. “Okay, cycle some of your purifying flame through there so I can see where it gets hung up.”

I sent a concentrated dose of Corpse Fire to the spot burning off the built-up contamination.

In a flutter of purple and white, Sushi reappeared by my face.

I smiled and scratched her head. “Forgive me for yelling earlier?”

“Earlier?” She leaned into my hand like a cat. “Grady.”

“Seriously, you’ve got to stop calling me that,” I told her. “Nobody in this universe calls me Grady. It’s just Hake.”

Rali leaned over my side to get a better look at the fish. “I thought she could only mimic what she’d heard someone else say.”

I shrugged my off-the-ground shoulder. “Maybe she can hear the speaker system way up here when they call me.”

He didn’t look convinced.

A knock on the door sent Sushi swimming under the bed, but it was just Warcry.

“How ya goin’, lads?” The ginger dropped onto the easy chair and kicked his legs over the side. “You put the grav back together again yet, big man?”

“Working on it,” Rali said. “Hey, congratulations on getting in with the Prison League Fighting. You’ll be back on people’s HUD screens in no time.”

Warcry shrugged. “Gotta keep the name recognition, don’t I? My sentence is up in three years. If I want to go back to IFC, having Warcry Thompson on the bill needs to sell tickets.”

Something else under my ribs lurched, then came undone. That time, blinding pain shot down my left side, and I spent a couple minutes writhing around, throwing Corpse Fire at it.

“Sorry,” Rali said. “I’m trying to keep it as painless as possible, but it’s really messed up in there.”

The conversation tapered off again while Rali sent wave after wave of his restoration ability into my side. I kept the Miasma cycling and tried not to yell whenever something in my side shifted. Warcry watched all-girl fighting on his HUD—although the matches sounded like something else at first because of all the feminine grunts and groans.

“Dude,” I said between flares of pain, “are you watching porn?”

“You wot? No, ya sick-minded clown!” Warcry’s face turned scarlet, and he hurried up and turned his screen around so Rali and I could see two beautiful alien women kicking the holy crap out of each other in a fight cage. The little clothes the ladies had been wearing were pretty raggedy, and they showed off a lot more than they covered up. “It’s Beauties versus Beasts—ladies fighting each other and wild animals. Them Heavenly Contrail coves back in the swamps mentioned it...” He flopped back in his seat. “It’s actually proper fighting, not that staged tripe in mud or jello without clothes...”

“I mean, they didn’t look like they were wearing much,” I said.

“Yeah, well, IFC fighters don’t wear much when we’re in the cage, do we? Just our ring shorts and gloves.”

I snorted. “I don’t really want to know what sort of skimpy outfits you wear. I don’t need that image in my head right now.”

That got Rali laughing, which made me feel a little better about our argument. That relief disappeared when he jabbed me in one of the unfinished knots, though. I gritted my teeth and kicked the floor with the heels of my work boots to keep from yelling. Heat rolled across me in waves and sweat plastered my hair to my face.

“Get what you deserve, don’t you, mind in the gutter,” Warcry grumbled, slumping back in the chair. “I know real fighting, grav. I seen a bout yesterday where a gal had her face torn off by a crag wolf. That don’t happen in them soft-core slugfests.”

By then Sushi had realized it was safe and gone back to nosing around the corners of the room for bugs. I made a mental note to take her up top the next time I went killing bog ferals so she could hunt for a while.

“I think this one’s going to be bad, Hake,” Rali warned me, prodding the knot at the center of the bruise. “It feels a lot tougher than the rest, so it’s probably not going to play nice when it leaves. Just try to keep breathing.”

I glanced up at him. I hadn’t noticed it before, but sweat was beading up on his round face, and the lace in his eyes was super thin. He looked legit scared. That did not inspire confidence.

“Uh, like figuratively or like literally keep breathing?” I asked.

Rali grimaced, but didn’t answer me. He dug his fingertips into the center of the bruise.

An atomic bomb exploded in my side, radiating waves of agony. Rali, Warcry, and the room around us disappeared, and all I could see was little clips of random junk from this life and the last one—my dad in an orange jumpsuit, Ripper’s teeth full of black Selken blood and ribbons of Kest’s skin, Gramps telling me to straighten up because I wasn’t going to act like that in his house, the Bailiff grinning as he activated the script remote to take me down, me punching and kicking trees around the trailer court to toughen up my knuckles and shins, the Ylef’s dead eyes staring up at the soaking room ceiling, Blaise in the hall at school calling me Grody.

When I could see again, I was facedown next to a pool of black sludgy vomit. The fumes burned the inside of my nose. I groaned and rolled away from the hot garbage fire stank of it before I puked some more.

“Looks like that’s where most of the contamination and impurities were collecting,” Rali said. “Good thing we got it moving again. That could’ve caused some real complications.”

I triggered another dose of Corpse Fire and pushed up on shaking arms and legs.

“I should probably clean that up before it eats a hole through the hardwood,” I said, only half joking, as I headed for the attached bathroom.

“And before we’re all sick,” Warcry said through his shirt. He’d pulled the collar up over his nose, but he hadn’t gotten out of the chair or looked up from his HUD.

“Okay, but back here when you’re done,” Rali agreed. “There’re still a few more blockages to free up.”

Once the impurity barf was cleaned up, I lay back down on the floor and let Rali get back to business on the last of the mess in my side. The rest was slower going, but none of it was as bad as the atom bomb knot.

Drowsiness kept washing over me while Rali worked. I could hardly keep my eyes open, even with Warcry’s HUD blaring out the smacks and grunts of women fighting.

“Sleep now?” Sushi murmured from somewhere near my face.

“Yeah, pretty soon,” I whispered without opening my eyes. “I think...”

But I couldn’t remember what I’d been about to say because I could see Gramps standing by the kitchen sink, talking on the phone and staring out the window at a purple sunset. Except the sun looked like a swirling fish, swimming around and around in place. He was on the phone with my dad, I realized, which was weird, because as far as I knew, Gramps hadn’t talked to Dad since he got sent down.

Around the edges of the dream, I heard Rali say, “How are you doing that, little fish?” and I sensed him and Warcry leaning over me.

Then a woman’s voice boomed, “Get your disgusting paws off me, you filthy aberration!”

My eyes flew open, all the exhaustion gone, and I sat up so fast I almost headbutted Warcry. I knew that voice.

“Let me see that!” I grabbed his HUD and turned it over so that the screen was facing me.

“Oi, watch yerself!”

My throat went dry. It was her in the Beauties versus Beasts cage, fighting off a group of bog ferals with nothing but her white marble fists and feet. I had to swallow a couple times before I could get my voice working well enough to answer Warcry.

I pointed at the woman on the screen. “That’s the angel of death.”

Find the Reaper

WARCRY LOOKED AT RALI. “You broke his brain, big man.”

“What are you talking about, Hake?” Rali asked.

“Are you guys serious?” I tapped Warcry’s screen. “You don’t recognize the angel who keeps attacking us? She...” I trailed off lamely as I realized what was going on. “You guys have never seen her.”

Rali was staring at me, brows pulled low over his lacy eyes in either concern or confusion. I couldn’t quite tell which.

“So, what, grav?” Warcry asked, studying the screen. “Yer angel of death does Beauty fights on the weekends as a hobby?”

I ignored him. Onscreen, the bog ferals tore at the angel of death’s marble skin, digging furrows in the stone. Her usually shining white hair was greasy and tangled, and her brilliant robes were torn and stained with blood and dirt. Strapped onto her shoulder was a newer version of the Transferogate, a Spirit draining device I’d been saddled with during my indenture to the OSS.

“Something’s wrong here,” I said. “She should be slapping those ferals down like they’re nothing.”

Rali leaned closer, frowning down at the fight on Warcry’s wrist. “She’s not using Spirit.”

“None of the Beauties do,” Warcry said. “That’s part of the draw, ain’t it? You see their technique. It ain’t all Spirit and flash, it’s real fighting.”

“Nobody in their right mind would put on a Transferogate willingly,” I said. I pointed at the hunk of metal and wires over the angel’s shoulder. “They suck, trust me. If all the fighters are outfitted with one, then something really not legit is going on here.”

“Mind not getting your fingerprints all over me screen?” Warcry said, trying to pull his HUD arm back.

But Rali grabbed his wrist, still staring down at the screen.

“Can you do that thing they do in the heist stories?” he asked Warcry. “Stop the feed, then zoom in and enhance it? Is that a real thing HUDs do?”

Rolling his eyes, Warcry paused the video, then enlarged the shot. Rali pulled the picture over to the scorched and tattered midriff of the angel’s robe. Straight across the middle, where a human would have a belly button, was a mass of silvery scar tissue.

“Something damaged her Spirit sea,” Rali said. “With that plus the Transferogate, I doubt she can retain any Spirit long enough to use it.”

The sound of the angel screaming when I hit that balancer with Sudden Death echoed in my ears.

“I grazed her with Sudden Death.” I thought back to the swamp and the Heavenly Contrails. “That hawk guy and his buddies! They said they were out hunting for Beauties versus Beasts. When they tried to kidnap Kest, they must’ve been taking her back to this place to be one of their fighters. They must’ve come across the angel of death after we ran them off, and she didn’t have her scythe or her Spirit to fight back.”

Beside me, Rali was nodding. “We couldn’t see her because she was using some sort of illusion or invisibility, but when the Heavenly Contrails found her, her Spirit sea was too damaged to hide.”

“You’re both barmy,” Warcry said, jerking his arm away and dropping back into the easy chair. “If your sister were here, she’d tell you so, too.”

“If Kest were here, she would say it’s possible,” Rali said.

He and Warcry started arguing, but my mind tuned them out.

The angel of death was being held captive by the Heavenly Contrails. If she won, she lived, if not... Hadn’t Warcry said something earlier about one of the chicks getting her face torn off?

This was what would’ve happened to Kest if we hadn’t managed to knock that space moth out of the sky and make him and the hawk guy drop her. She would’ve been the one cage-fighting dangerous creatures and other women to survive.

The angel’s dirty face and torn-up clothes ran through my head again. She’d obviously been there for a while. Maybe as long as we’d been in the Heartchamber. My sloppy shot at her balancer had destroyed or at least severely damaged her Spirit sea. She was as defenseless as I’d been when I first got dropped on Van Diemann, and sooner or later, she was going to get killed because of it.

“I’ve got to get her out of there.”

I didn’t realize I’d said anything until Warcry and Rali went dead silent and stared at me.

“I mean, this place is obviously bad,” I said, fumbling for the words to explain. “She can’t fight back without Spirit, so she can’t get out. And if they were going to take Kest and make her fight, then what other kind of evil crap are they doing to the women there? We’ve got to get them out.”

“Can you even hear yourself, grav?” Warcry sneered. “If this even is the angel who keeps trying to murder you, why the bleedin’ hell would you want to spring her?”

“Well... She’s probably not the only one trapped, right? Those Heavenly Contrail dicks we ran into in the swamp were hunting for girls they could kidnap and force into this. You said they have all kinds of women in these fights. Do any of them look, I don’t know, like, happy to be there?”

He scowled down at his HUD. “Ain’t watching it for their faces, am I?”

“Dude,” I said.

“Ah, piss off! I meant it’s about the fight! If they got a brutal technique, who cares if they’re smiling?” He pushed up out of the easy chair and started pacing. “Anyway, this ain’t about me, yeah? Say this gal is your angel of death. She’s trapped where she can’t come after you anymore, and that means you win.” He stabbed a finger at me. “It’s basic fight sense—you control the distance from your opponent, you control the fight.”

I shook my head. “It’s not about the fight.”

“What is it about?” Rali asked in a quiet voice. When I turned to look at him, he was staring at me like he was trying to CT scan the inside of my skull. “She wanted you dead and out of the way, right? Is that different from what that Nameless Ylef wanted?”

“Yes! Well, maybe not exactly...but...” I balled my hands into fists and jammed them down into my pockets. “You don’t get it. This is my fault. If she dies, it’s my fault.”

“Weren’t you going to kill her with the Sudden Death technique?” Rali asked. “Isn’t that why the chaos creatures gave it to you? To take out immortals?”

I took a long breath and tried to think through this without yelling. “Okay, so she’s an immortal. She has no Spirit right now and no way to escape. How many years does she stay trapped with these Heavenly Contrail a-holes, basically enslaved to fight whenever they want her to? That’s worse than insta-death, right? Even if it’s painful, death is at least quick. Here we’re talking endless slavery and who knows what else. That’s evil.”

Neither one of them said anything. They just stared at me.

They didn’t get why I had to do this. It wouldn’t wipe out me killing that Ylef, but maybe if I ever saw Gramps again, this would make it so I could at least look the old man in the eye.

“If you guys aren’t on board, whatever.” I shrugged. “I’m going either way.”

“Are you, yeah?” Warcry said. “To where exactly?”

I turned my Winchester’s cracked screen on and started searching the hyperweb for the Beauties versus Beasts broadcasting HQ. The only Van Diemann location they had listed was the alien equivalent of General Delivery.

“Crap,” I muttered.

Warcry nodded. “They ain’t daft enough to make it public knowledge. You gotta already have an in with the gang to get the location.”

“Biggerstaff might know,” Rali piped up.

Warcry threw up his hands. “Don’t tell me you’re sunk in this fantasy, too!”

“That’s not what I said. But that Heavenly Contrails Raptrian did say the Dragons and their gang have been allies for a long time. Someone as high up on the ladder as Biggerstaff might have some insight into where the Heavenly Contrails’ Van Diemann base is.”

“You’re a genius,” I told Rali, heading for the door.

He frowned. “I’m not acting like one.”

“What you’re doing is enabling this lunatic’s insanity,” Warcry snapped. “When he gets chopped in half, that’s on you, big man.”

I stopped in the doorway. “Leave him alone. This is the right thing to do, and he knows it, too.”

Warcry threw up his hands. “This’s long-con suicide, grav. If you do manage to find her and get her out, she’ll just cut your throat when she’s free.”

Rali sighed. “I know this doesn’t make any sense, but it didn’t make any sense for him to save you from the OSS, either. It’s like...like a matter of honor. I’ve got to help Hake see this through. Or at least make sure he doesn’t die.”

He followed me out into the hall, and we headed for the elevators.

“Ah, me bleedin’...” Warcry stomped down the hall after us. “You clowns are gonna get all of us killed for this dumb bint. Then what?”

“Nobody’s inviting you.” I hit the call button.

The elevator dinged as the panels slid open on our floor. Rali and I got on, and I pushed the button for the fountain court.

Warcry’s face twisted into a scowl.

The panels started to slide shut.

Flames burned down Warcry’s head and shoulders, and he let out a string of curses before slipping through the closing doors. He dropped back against the glass wall next to me, glaring up at the red floor number as it started changing, his arms clamped across his chest.

“You bleeders’d die without me.”

The Newest Eight-Legged Dragon

WE DIDN’T HAVE TO LOOK long for Biggerstaff. Obviously he was a big fan of the ambush-style catfish attack, because he stepped out in front of me as I came around a blind corner toward the Den of the Waking Locust.

“Mr. Hake,” he said, nodding like he’d been waiting for me. “What’s this I hear about you looking for the Heavenly Contrails’ Bogland location?”

“So it is in Bogland,” I said.

Warcry caught sight of Biggerstaff from his search position and whistled at Rali. They made a beeline for us.

“And what exactly is the reason you want to visit our longstanding allies?” Biggerstaff asked.

“If you were listening in, then you heard the whole story,” Rali said, joining us. Warcry fell in on his other side. “You don’t need us repeating it.”

“Humor me,” the catfish said.

“They have someone we know locked up and fighting for them,” I said. “We’re going in to get them out.”

Biggerstaff hooked his suit jacket back and stuck his hands in his pants pockets. “The Heavenly Contrails have been the Eight-Legged Dragons’ ally for centuries. If I gave away one of their locations with the foreknowledge that the provisionary Dragons I’d given it to would be attacking it, I’d be betraying agreements laid out and maintained by those many ranks my superior, perhaps even causing a gang war. The backlash on a move like that—”

“Just get to the point and tell us what you want,” Warcry snarled.

“A signature from Mr. Iye Skal on an Eight-Legged Dragons affiliation agreement,” the recruiter said.

“What’re you offering him?” Warcry demanded.

“I attempted to offer him the day suns, as the saying goes, but he never seemed to be available while that was on the table.” Biggerstaff’s whiskers twitched, and he smiled a little. “His signature is the going price for information today. Take it or leave it.”

“That’s total b.s.!” I snapped. “You’re just doing this so you can force him into it for nothing.”

But Rali squeezed in between me and Biggerstaff.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “I’ll get zero negotiating room, no chance to make demands, all of the requirements, and be chained to the Dragons forever?”

Biggerstaff had the decency to look at least a little uncomfortable.

Rali doubled over laughing like he’d been holding it in, waiting for a punch line to land.

“What’s so funny, big man?” Warcry growled.

Rali wiped his eyes and stood up straight.

“Nothing. A whole contract full of it!” Grinning, he stuck out his hand to Biggerstaff. “You’ve got a deal, esteemed recruiter. I’ll sign. I don’t have a HUD, though.”

I don’t know if my jaw or Warcry’s hit the floor harder.

Warcry punched Rali in the shoulder. “You lost your head, netskin?”

“You can use my HUD,” Biggerstaff said, shaking Rali’s hand and bowing over it. Rali returned the gesture, his shoulders still jiggling with silent laughter.

The redhead and I watched in shock as the recruiter pulled up a contract and had Rali sign it. When the paperwork was done, Biggerstaff sent a location marker to my and Warcry’s HUDs.

“There’s your target, gentlemen,” he said. “Just so you’re aware, for the next forty-eight hours, anything you do falls entirely under your culpability. You’re not acting on behalf of the Eight-Legged Dragons—officially, you’re acting against our will—and if you’re caught, your probationary membership will be cut off and the three of you will be sacrificed to appease the Heavenly Contrails for the greater good of our organization.”

Warcry scowled. “So don’t get caught.”

“We’re not planning on it,” I said.

“That’s good, because I hold you personally responsible for maintaining the secrecy, Death cultivator,” Biggerstaff said. “Be back in time for your fights on the third day. Miss any more than that, and you’ll begin racking up absentee losses, which wouldn’t be a good start for our newest probationary member. Welcome aboard the Eight-Legged Dragons, Mr. Iye Skal.”

Rali grinned.

“It’s a pleasure to be here, Mr. Biggerstaff,” he said to the catfish, and you could tell he was holding back another laughing fit.

Once we’d made it back on the elevator going up, he finally let it out, laughing so hard he had to put his hands on his knees to support himself.

Warcry rounded on Rali. “Ya gave yer rights to the Dragons for nothing!”

“I know, right?” Rali crowed between laughs. “It went exactly like Hake said. He told Biggerstaff I would take nothing in exchange for an affiliation. So the catfish—so he—” He let his walking stick fall into the corner and hugged his thick arms around his gut, laughing his head off. “—he offered me nothing! How could I say no?”

Warcry shook his head like he couldn’t believe the crap he had to put up with.

“I can see why Kest gets so fed up with you sometimes,” I said to Rali.

“It was too perfect to pass up.” Rali finally stood back up and leaned against the wall, fanning the lace blooming in his cheeks with both hands as he tried to calm down. “Biggerstaff’s going to go belly-up when he finds out I’m nonviolent.”

I shook my head. “Yeah, I’d chain myself to a gang for the sake of a joke, too.”

Rali let out a last chuckle. “Chained with what? A signature? I don’t recognize anyone’s authority over any part of me, Hake. Why would I consider it binding over something as small as my name?”

Enemy Callback

THE HEAVENLY CONTRAILS location marker led us south from Heartchamber 2. The trajectory would’ve taken us between Bogland Station where we had gotten off the bullet train and the second to last station on the line if we’d been going that far. As it was, though, we were only going most of a day’s trek through the swamps. We were surprised by bands of bog ferals every so often, but by then fighting the decaying creatures had become routine for me. Rali and Warcry were able to save their energy while I ripped out the greasy brown life points and burned off the soul contamination with Corpse Fire.

“We have to finish working on your side when we get back,” Rali said as we waded through the swamps. “Those last few tangles in your Spirit rivers are making it impossible for your technique to purge everything. It’s still building up in that knotted area, a little at a time.”

That reminded me of something Hungry Ghost had said.

“Hey, Rali, have you ever heard of Devil Corruption?”

“It’s one of my favorite sword legend clichés,” he said. “Characters close to the hero are always doing something so that they start taking on Devil Corruption, usually with the best of intentions. Over time, the Devil Corruption takes over their mind and turns their hearts evil, and the hero has to kill them. Makes for some pretty heart-wrenching scenes. There’s this great part in Ten Lightning Strikes Against the Hero where—” He stopped. “Well, I don’t want to ruin it for you. Seriously, I can’t believe you haven’t read that yet.”

“I’ll have to check it out when Kest gets back,” I said, way less jazzed about my new reason for needing to read it.

The night sun came up, tinting the clouds orangey-magenta, and slowly passed overhead while we slogged on. The first pale touches of the blue sun were edging onto the cloudy horizon when we got within sight of the Heavenly Contrails’ signal tower. The place looked sort of like a cell tower on Earth, except without any of the flashing lights to warn away low-flying planes, and there was a little brick shed stuck on the hill beside it. No bog ferals were attacking, and no people were going in and out. From where we were, it didn’t look like much, but then neither had the Heartchamber.

“What do you want to bet it’s another iceberg? Tiny point above the ground, enormous skyscraper below,” I said, crouching down on a little bit of drier ground to give my legs a rest. Even with the internal alchemy and the constant training conditioning my body, I was still running on fumes.

“You’re going to need a boost,” Rali said, slapping me and Warcry on the shoulder.

A wave of Warm Heart Spirit rushed through my Spirit sea and out into my limbs, revitalizing the exhausted muscles and hitting me with a wake-up jolt stronger than any Coffee Drank ever had. The added benefit was this boost didn’t come with a dose of overcaffeinated anxiety. I felt calm. Focused. Ready to fight.

“If it’s set up like the Heartchamber, there’ll be armories on the highest levels,” Warcry said. “Expect plenty of firepower, yeah?”

“So I go in Death Metal shields first,” I said, cycling Miasma to my muscles, hitting all the Ki enhancements, and doubling up on skin hardening.

Rali swung his walking stick up onto his shoulders. “Do we actually know that your shields can stop bullets?”

We didn’t. The one time I’d been shot at, the Bailiff’s bullets had been slagged by Kest’s Lodestone and Hot Metal Spirit abilities. Would’ve been great to have her around right then.

“Death Metal should be in the best condition it’s ever been,” I said. “I’ve got your Warm Heart boost and all the life points I’ve absorbed over the last two hours.”

“What if, instead of running in guns blazing, we just walked in?” Rali said.

Warcry and I stared at him.

He flicked his wet hair out of his face. “We say we’re fans of the show, and we wanted to come down and see where it’s made. It might not be common, but it’d be plausible at least. And it would save us the trouble of fighting our way down through who knows how many levels without foreknowledge of where and how their fighters are being kept.”

“Yeah, but how do we explain away knowing where their location is?”

“There are a ton of Heavenly Contrails on Van Diemann,” Rali said. “We just say we heard it from one of them at the Wilderness Territorial.”

“Then what?” I asked. “They’re going to know we were full of it once we start busting out fighters.”

Rali grinned. “Then we see if your Death Metal shields can stop bullets.”

“Fine,” Warcry said, flexing his fists. “Let’s get a move on, yeah? Standing around talking about a plan we probably won’t even stick to is a waste of breath.”

“Last thing,” Rali said, pointing the end of his walking stick at me. “It might be a good idea for you to cloak your affinity, at least until we’re too far inside for them to wonder what sort of danger they’re in letting a Death Spirit into the bowels of their Bogland operation.”

“Oh yeah, good idea.” I inhaled and triggered Last Light, Last Breath.

Cautiously, we headed up to the shack at the base of the signal tower. Nothing moved around the outside, and no alarms went off.

I was just starting to think we were going to make it inside without a fight when a huge chunk of the signal tower broke off, two oblong panels buzzing as it landed between us and the shack. The shape didn’t make any sense, though. It wasn’t like pieces of ladder or buttressing. A few pairs of thin legs connected to a thicker upright with hooked pieces hanging off either side like arms. Even weirder, a hat had been hooked on top of the thicker upright to hide a chewed-up piece sort of like a bite mark.

Then the metal shifted color from steel gray to bright leafy green and blinked its alien yellow eyes at us.

It was a seven-foot-tall praying mantis that had been camouflaged way up there on the tower as a lookout.

“Meat roach from the train?” it hissed, rustling the long wings down its abdomen. “Did you come to steal more from my gang?”

Hungry Ghost told Death cultivator enemies are never dealt with until they are dead, Hungry Ghost croaked inside my head.

The mantid lunged, screaming out a shrill buzzing note.

I took a running step forward, grounded my feet, and slammed out a palm strike of Rigor Mortis. Mantids must not have had the same kind of muscle systems everybody else did, because his wings and scything arms kept moving.

I threw out my right hand, summoning a scythe of my own. The skin and muscle tore away, leaving bare bones, and the gleaming black blade materialized in my fleshless palm.

Before I could use it, Warcry crashed in from the side, knocking the mantid’s head around with a massive ringing kick from his prosthetic.

The mantid bounced across the ground, flopping on broken wings, legs scrabbling, but Warcry was already there with a follow-up kick to knock it unconscious.

We all stood there silently for a second, listening for alarms. Somebody had to have heard this guy.

No sirens or klaxons cut through the silence.

Rali stared down at the mantid. “Anybody bring any rope?”

Death cultivator should end the insectoid, Hungry Ghost said. Hungry Ghost has heard Death cultivator’s thoughts. A Heavenly Contrail is a creature which would have kidnapped Death cultivator’s love and put her through many terrible pains. More such creatures await below. Death cultivator believes each of them deserves a swift and brutal death.

No, I told him, just barely hanging on to the cloaking oblivion. We’re not here to kill everybody in sight.

Then why did Death cultivator summon the Lunar Scythe? Lunar Scythe is not a defensive weapon. It is a battle-ender.

Something crunched, dragging my attention back from the argument. It sounded like chewing. A little bite mark appeared next to the ragged spot on the mantid’s head. Then another one.

All three of us scrambled back as whatever that invisible force was ate the rest of the mantid’s head.

I popped Death Metal on both arms and threw out a wall of Dead Reckoning around the three of us in case whatever it was came after us. Warcry caught fire, and even Rali took a defensive stance.

“What the bollix?” Warcry breathed.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Guys...” Rali frowned at the space above the mantid’s empty neck. “Something followed us.”

That something burped, then giggled.

“Followed us!” Sushi shimmered into view. “Followed Grady!”

My jaw dropped. “What the heck, Sushi?”

“Eat bugs!” The little fish spun in a gleeful circle over the mantid’s body. “Grady said Sushi could stay if eat bugs!”

“This,” Warcry growled, stabbing a finger at her, “is why you never trust an animal that took the Dragon Gate.”

I gulped. “I think...she’s just trying to help?”

Sushi giggled again and nodded with her whole body. “Sushi eat bugs! Sushi can stay!”

“No,” I said, “Sushi can’t stay. Sushi needs to go back to the Heartchamber and wait for me.”

Sushi pouted, then in a shimmer of purple, disappeared again.

“She didn’t go anywhere,” Rali said after a second. “I can sense her; she hasn’t moved.”

Warcry grimaced down at the remains of the mantid. “Guess we won’t be needing that rope now. Best get the corpse out of the way, yeah?”

He looked pointedly at me.

“What, because I’m a Death cultivator you think I like to touch dead stuff all the time?”

“No, grav, I think it’s your fish that ate this cove’s head, so it’s your problem,” Warcry said, crossing his arms. “Anyway, you’re always digging in feral pockets. You’re already unclean, ain’t ya? No sense in me and the big man getting tainted, too.”

“Fine.” I grabbed the body and dragged it back down to the marshes, trying not to think about how five minutes ago this guy was alive and had most of his head. That was a pretty good incentive for dropping back into oblivion, so I took it.

The headless mantid sank into the muck, disappearing. I watched it go under, thinking about Biggerstaff disposing of bodies in the bog and the janitor dragging the Ylef across the soaking room tile.

Part of my brain whispered, This is what you’re going to be doing for the Dragons for the rest of this life.

Last Light, Last Breath evaporated like fog in the sunlight.

But saving the angel of death... If I could do this one good thing...

What do you think that’ll do, I sneered at my idiotic grasping at straws, balance it out like a teeter-totter?

The grinning skull stone spoke up. Death cultivator should learn from Hungry Ghost and shed his shame for killing. Hungry Ghost sought power, and in doing so, killed many. If Death cultivator seeks justice, Death cultivator may choose not to kill all, but he cannot choose never to kill any.

I tried to shove that out of my brain. Gritting my teeth, I headed back to Warcry and Rali, avoiding eye contact.

“Ready?” I asked, grabbing the door handle.

They nodded.

“Let’s go.”

Beauties vs. Beasts

“STOP RIGHT THERE!” A space moth with a brace of alien-pirate-looking pistols across his chest stepped up to stop us as we walked in. He drew one in each hand, galaxy-patterned wings stretching wide to block our path. “What’re you doing here? You’re not Contrails.”

I glanced at Rali and Warcry. “We heard this is where you guys make...” My words ran out as I realized I couldn’t remember the name of the show.

“Beauties versus Beasts,” Warcry interjected, putting an elbow up on Rali’s shoulder and leaning on him. “It’s me favorite program, so me and the lads came to see how you coves put it together, yeah?”

The space moth looked from him to me to Rali.

“How’d you guys—”

“Mantid on the train,” Warcry said, maybe a little too fast. “He told us where this place was. Big guy with a hat and bitemark on his head.”

The space moth stared at us like he was trying to decide whether to shoot. If I hadn’t been sunk so deep in Last Light, Last Breath, I might’ve broken down right then and attacked the dude, screw our plans of getting in without a fight.

But he slipped his pistols back into their holsters and folded his stardust wings behind his back.

“All right,” he said. “I’ve got to call down to the broadcasting floor to let them know you’re coming.”

Warcry let out a laugh, but covered it up quick.

“See, lads?” he said. “Told you they let fans in, didn’t I?”

The space moth went to the corner next to a freight elevator and hit a button on an intercom.

“We got three guys wanting to come down and see the Beauties versus Beasts operation.” He eyed us. “They look like Eight-Legged Dragons.”

The intercom crackled. “What affinities?”

“Warm Heart,” the moth said, glancing over Rali and Warcry, “Burning Hatred, and...”

When the moth turned to me, I felt something dusty and fluttery brush across my skin. A barely audible grunt came from my cargo pocket. Sushi. I put my hand on the bulge to hold her still.

“...Lost Mirror,” the space moth finished. He let out a low whistle. “All three Ten-specialists. Dragons got a pretty good crop this Territorial.”

More static from the intercom. “Send them down.”

The space moth pulled back the wire door on the freight elevator and gestured for us to hop in.

“He’ll meet you down there. Enjoy your tour.”

Death cultivator should kill moth silently now so moth will not be a hindrance on the way out, Hungry Ghost said. Fish would consume the body.

I ignored the grinning skull stone and followed Rali into the elevator, keeping my hand on my pocket to make sure Sushi didn’t try to take a bite out of the space moth.

On his way in, Warcry slapped the moth on the shoulder. “You’re makin’ me birthday, mate.”

“Anything to keep our allies happy, I guess.” The space moth shrugged and hit the button marked LL.

With a creaking groan, the freight elevator started going down. The three of us exchanged glances, but didn’t say anything. All the surveillance Biggerstaff had scattered around the Heartchamber had made us paranoid.

Through the wire door of the lift, I watched two floors roll past, both with unnecessarily high ceilings. Dudes with active Spirit abilities on standby patrolled the levels, and from somewhere, I could hear crying. As we passed the third, I craned my neck and saw that they were patrolling cages. I just barely caught a glimpse of a webbed feminine hand reaching through one of the bars.

“Let me out!” she screamed, grabbing for one of the patrolling dudes’ legs. “Please, this is some kind of mistake, I don’t belong here!”

The elevator dropped us below that floor, and her cries got lost in the clanking of the mechanism.

I shoved clenched fists into my pockets as righteous anger poured in through the edges of Last Light, Last Breath. Weirdly, the emotion didn’t kill the cloaking for once. I could feel the rage inside the barrier, kind of like it was hidden in there with my Death Spirit, so I did what I could to put on a normal-looking expression. As normal as anybody would have if they were headed to watch how their favorite fight show was made, anyway.

The freight elevator came to a stop on LL, and a harried-looking red demon with massive leathery wings folded behind his back opened the wire gate for us.

“Welcome to the broadcasting home of Beauties versus Beasts, gentlemen,” he said in a low rumble. “It’s always a pleasure to have friends from the Dragons visit. Please follow me.”

We followed the demon-looking dude around a bank of screens where another guy was busy moving dials and switches on a huge mixer, then into a kind of miniature arena. It wasn’t a huge room, but the ceilings were strangely high. Maybe something to do with the huge lights aimed down at the fighting cage?

Inside the cage, a blonde bird lady with only one wing backed up until she bumped into the wire, eyes wide and scared. A door on the far side of the pit slid up, and a pair of hulking wolf-like creatures with fiery manes prowled into the cage, growling and dripping slobber. Bits of skin and strands of long hair were stuck here and there in the fence from previous fights.

In the stands, aliens of all types watched and yelled, clutching betting tickets and swigging from plastic cups. It stank like beer, sweat, and too much body spray. There was an inordinate amount of bling out there, too, gold chains hanging around necks and face-buster rings glinting on fingers. It looked like all the bad taste on Van Diemann had concentrated in this one room.

“So this is where the magic happens,” Warcry said, eyes locked on the cage.

The demon guy nodded. “Have a seat, watch the matches, make some bets. See if anything in the cage catches your eye. We keep especially popular fighters until their popularity starts to fizzle—unless the price is right.”

“Is this the only place you guys film Beauties versus Beasts?” I asked. My voice sounded weirdly normal with Last Light, Last Breath. “I mean, I know you have a ton of different ladies on the show, so I was just wondering where you’d keep that many women with this being such a small place.”

“Admittedly, Van Diemann’s location is one of our smaller hubs,” the demon guy said, messing with a button on his jacket. “But it is the sole location on this planet. We tend to keep each of our locations limited to on-planet broadcasting to avoid intergalactic regulations. The variety of new faces comes mainly from the market side of things. Every now and then an item is killed or maimed in such a way that they’re too ugly for broadcast, but more commonly, bidders buy up our strongest and most beautiful items for slaves. We’ve got to keep hunters out looking for new items constantly to meet demand.” He leaned over like he was telling us a secret. “Beauties versus Beasts is more of a sales platform than a primary source of revenue.”

“I’ve watched the program for years, and this is the first I’m hearing of the selling,” Warcry said, shaking his head. “Bleedin’ pathetic. Could’ve had me a beauty right off the show.”

“If the price was right,” the demon guy repeated, showing sharp pointed teeth.

Warcry laughed. “I’m a Thompson from Qaspar-7. Ya can’t name a price I can’t match.”

You could practically see the dollar signs flashing in the dude’s eyes when he heard that.

“Right this way, Mr. Thompson. I assume you’ll want one of our high-roller boxes?”

“Bet your leathery arse I do.”

The demon guy led us around to a cushy section of boxes at the top of the stands. Each one was surrounded on three sides by half-walls and set up with plush chairs and a table. We plopped into our seats, and the demon called over a lady wearing a Transferogate and skimpy dress.

“Keep these gentlemen stocked on drinks,” he said. “They’re on the house, gents, so don’t be shy.”

When I saw the stylized phoenix tattooed across the top of the waitress’s thigh, Last Light, Last Breath evaporated, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep my expression neutral. I’d spent half my time with the OSS trying not to get a zap from the script remote tied to my indenture tattoo. It hurt like crap and literally knocked you off your feet. The tattoo was probably the whole reason they even let her roam freely around the stands—because they knew they could keep her in line.

“Give us a pitcher of dark for the table, lovey,” Warcry said like he actually was that douche out partying for his birthday. He stuck out his red-brown stubbly jaw. “And a kiss, yeah?”

She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. It wasn’t until she stood up that I saw the ugly grin on Warcry’s face. The only time he ever smiled like that was right before he kicked someone’s teeth in.

Luckily, the demon dude didn’t catch a whiff of that oncoming sewage storm.

“Enjoy yourself, Mr. Thompson, and let me know if anything catches your eye.” He glanced at the waitress, then winked at Warcry. “In or out of the cage. I’ll be around.”

He gave us a smile that felt like it smeared slime all over me, then headed off to do whatever his job was.

The waitress came back and dropped off a pitcher of foamy black beer and three glasses. Warcry made a show of pouring until she left.

“She has an indenture tattoo on the top of her thigh,” I whispered to Rali and Warcry once we were alone again. “Someone here has to have the script remote to it. Probably that demon dude.”

“Could be,” Warcry said, passing a glass to me. Sticky foam rolled down the side and across my fingertips. “Seems like the kind of cove who runs everything else here.”

I looked around for the demon guy. He was over on the opposite side of the cage now, talking to some guys in the stands.

“He should be our first target,” I said. “That way he doesn’t have time to activate the remote and incapacitate anybody.”

Warcry passed me another glass. “Then stop glaring at him and pass this to the big man. You’re gonna blow this before it even starts.”

I tore my eyes away from the demon and turned to Rali. He was frowning out at the cage, face twisted up like he couldn’t decide whether to barf or start murdering people.

“Dude,” I said, nudging his hand with the sticky glass.

He curled his hand into a fist. “This is evil. Look.” He jerked his chin at the blonde in the cage, who was just barely staying alive against the wolves. “Whenever she tries to use her Spirit abilities, the Spirit transfer device kicks in. Someone, somewhere, is getting a ton of Spirit from her.”

Rali sounded a lot more upset about that than about the whole slave trade thing, which I guess shouldn’t have been that surprising considering how he’d felt about it when I had a Transferogate. To him, Spirit was sacred, and anybody who tampered with it or stole it for themselves was going against everything he believed in.

I set the drink in front of him.

“Here’s your chance to go on that rampage you always wanted,” I said. “Really stick it to the people who think of Spirit as something to be quantified and sold and hoarded.”

Rali shot me a tight smile. “Nonviolent.”

“Like, all the time?” I said. “Because I’ve seen you get plenty violent before.”

He turned back to glaring out at the fight.

The blonde must’ve survived long enough, because a bell rang, and the door in the side of the cage opened. She stumbled out into the stands, escaping the wolves, bleeding from bite marks all over her arms and calves. A pair of big dudes grabbed her and dragged her back the way we’d come in, toward the elevators.

A minute later, a new beauty was shoved, crying, into the cage, a skinny green girl probably close to our age. She freaked as soon as the cage door closed and started clawing at it and screaming for them to let her out.

I clutched the glass in front of me with both hands to keep from doing anything stupid. Yet.

Warcry took a loud drink of his beer, then said under his breath, “I make it about thirty spectators and eight or ten Contrails working the lights, cameras, and bringing in the beauties.”

“I doubt many of the spectators will fight back unless we get between them and the exit,” Rali said, giving the people in the stands the hairy eyeball. “They don’t have the taste of bravery on them. They’re just scared little voyeurs wanting a thrill from something that’s safely locked in a cage.”

Down in front of the crowd, a pack of bog ferals was released into the pit. The green girl wailed with terror and curled up in the fetal position. It felt like the glass was going to shatter in my fist.

“How do we want to do this?” I asked.

“Don’t have any bulk Death attacks, do ya, grav?” Warcry asked.

Mass Grave, Hungry Ghost suggested. Death cultivator is too early in his Sho to use the technique, but Hungry Ghost could execute it with Death cultivator’s body.

A picture flashed through my head of Kest trapped down there with those bog ferals and no Spirit to protect herself. Icy Miasma burned my insides, begging to be unleashed. Leveling this place might actually be worth letting Hungry Ghost take over for a little while.

I breathed out, plunging into Last Light, Last Breath like it was nothing.

But Rali stood up before I could give Hungry Ghost the go-ahead.

“Leave that to me,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to try this.”

Out of nowhere, an incredible pressure slammed down on me and everybody else in the stands, crushing us flat to the floor.

Guns Blazing

ALL AROUND THE ROOM, muffled angry and confused shouts went up.

“Oi, big man, what’re you doing?” Warcry grunted through compressed lungs. “We’re on your side.”

“Whoops,” Rali said, laughing sheepishly. “Guess I shouldn’t have made fun of the OSS Shogun all that time. This is harder to direct than you might imagine. I’m going to let you up, but you’d better be ready because I don’t think I have a lot of control over who I release and who I hold down yet.”

“Time for guns blazing,” I croaked, triggering all the Ki-level enhancements and Dead Reckoning, then hitting Hungry Ghost to refill my Spirit sea. “Rali, once you drop the pressure trick, get the girl away from the ferals. Warcry and I’ll take care of the Contrails and any spectators who decide to stand and fight.”

Rali nodded. “Ready?”

Warcry’s flames whooshed on. “Do it, big man.”

The pressure let up. Warcry and I hit our feet and vaulted over the half-walls on either side of the high-roller box. Rali shot out the front toward the cage.

The stands were full of confusion—angry spectators looking around, trying to figure out who had just pulled that Shogun trick on them—but the members of the Contrails were going straight to battle stations. Alarms howled and lights flashed.

From behind the bank of monitors, a fish-faced dude with buzzing wing-fins sprinted at me. With a massive dose of Miasma, I Death Gripped his ankles with an invisible forest of hands. He tripped and went down, but he wasn’t alone.

Out of nowhere the red-skinned demon guy who’d brought us to our table leapt over the fish dude, leathery wings beating against the air.

Dead Reckoning pinged behind me. I threw out a Ki-strengthened back kick and launched the gunned-out space moth from the entryway backward into a couple of spectators. He pulled the trigger as he flew, the bullet winging crazily over my head. He and the spectators went down in a jumble of arms, legs, and wings.

Another warning from Dead Reckoning. I spun, invisible Death Metal popping on both arms, and blocked a swipe from a burning sword. The demon dude swooped away, then banked and came back, slashing for my face again—first with his Spirit sword, then with huge taloned feet.

I dove and rolled, coming up next to the fish-faced dude just as he broke out of Death Grip. He swung an off-balance punch at me, obviously thinking I didn’t have a weapon or any defense. I slammed my weight into a shield block. His knuckles caved against the unseen Death Metal, and he screamed as broken bones stabbed out the back of his hand.

Dead Reckoning made me duck. The demon’s bloodred talons raked through where my head had been and tore into the fish dude’s face and shoulder. The fish went down, trying to hold his destroyed hand and face at the same time.

Down below in the cage, I caught a glimpse of Rali leading the green girl through the few spectators who hadn’t stampeded out of the stands. He knocked away people who got too close with palm strikes and dodged around others.

Instead of coming back for me, the red demon guy tucked his wings and dove at them like a falcon.

“Rali!” I yelled, but he was already shoving the green girl behind him.

The demon’s burning sword sliced at Rali’s face, but Rali swirled his walking stick around the blade, tangling up it and the guy’s arm and jerking him out of the air. As the demon crashed into the tiered benches, Rali slammed the butt of his staff into the dude’s temple, knocking him out cold.

There was a hiss and an explosion behind me. I spun around. The space moth was climbing out of the pile of spectators, shooting anyone who didn’t get off him fast enough. He pointed one of those alien-pirate pistols at me. The fuse was lit.

I planted my feet and slammed a Rigor Mortis palm strike at him. The cap exploded. The ball shot out of the pistol a split second before my invisible slug of Miasma hit the moth.

Some kind of idiotic survival instinct made me throw out my other hand like that would stop a bullet.

“Moldering Bones!” I yelled, infusing the block with another wall of Miasma.

The pistol ball flew a lot slower than a bullet from a modern handgun, and there was no Metal Spirit directing or protecting it. Moldering Bones blasted the ball with time and age, rusting, corroding, and scouring it with millennia worth of wear in less than a second.

The ball puffed into red dust an inch from my face.

The space moth’s eyes bugged out. “That’s not right! He’s supposed to be some wussy Spirit type like Lost Memories or something! I scanned him!”

Without Last Light, Last Breath blanketing me in emotionlessness, I probably would’ve slumped in relief and lost any intimidation factor I’d just gained.

With it, I scowled and aimed my hand at the space moth like I was about to use Moldering Bones on him.

Something purple flickered near his left side. Sushi took a chomp out of the corner of his wing.

The space moth freaked out and darted away, swooping over the bank of monitors toward the exit.

Sushi grinned at me, mouth full of space moth wing, then disappeared again.

Dead Reckoning launched me away from an overhead attack. A glowing pink net shot past my head. A second later, nets were everywhere, coming at me from all sides. I managed to avoid most of them, but one slammed into my back, catching on my shoulder and arm. Immediately, I felt a paralyzing poison sink into my skin. I ripped the net off and triggered a blast of Corpse Fire, burning the poison off as fast as it could sink in.

A hawk guy banked around to face me, a new net forming in his feathered hands.

“Should’ve killed you in the swamp,” he said.

“Weird, that’s what I was thinking.” I planted my feet and covered one arm in Death Metal. The other one, I stuck out to my side.

The scythe ripped across my skeleton and poured into my hand, ready for another aerial attack. My T-shirt’s sleeve flapped around the bones in the breeze from the hawk guy’s wingbeats.

But he didn’t dive at me.

“Come on!” I yelled at him.

He smirked. “Not on your life. There’s only one way to deal with a Death cultivator—nuke them from orbit.”

Letting out a bird screech, the hawk hurtled high over my head out of the scythe’s reach, net held wide. At the same moment, Dead Reckoning freaked out, letting me know someone was coming at me from behind.

I sucked down a ton more Miasma and sent it crashing off me in three directions. Three Corpse Sickness solidified into almost-human masses.

Stop the hawk! I thought as I spun around to meet the other threat.

A blast of orange Warm Heart Spirit riffled my hair as it sliced past my head. I looked up in time to see the blast nail a levitating squid in the face, hammering him out of the air. The squid hit the floor and skidded to my feet. I knocked him out with a work boot to the head.

I scanned the place for Rali and found him at the top of the stands with the green girl.

“I’ll hold the elevator,” he yelled. “You get Warcry.”

“Got it!”

They disappeared behind the monitor bank, and I spun around to find Warcry.

Across the room, some bruisers who didn’t look like Heavenly Contrails attacked Warcry from the ground while a pair of beetles the size of bears harassed him from above. Warcry was holding his own, but it was only a matter of time before they wore him down.

I let the scythe go and sprinted around the top of the stands, taking another hit from Hungry Ghost as I went.

When I was within range, I sent a forest of invisible Death Grip reaching up from the floor around Warcry to grab the bruisers by the ankles. They tripped up, and Warcry went to town on them with a barrage of flaming kicks and punches.

While he dealt with the bruisers, I tried to destroy one of the beetles’ wings with Moldering Bones.

Their chitin must’ve been resistant to that sort of thing, because the wing wasn’t damaged. The beetle had sure felt it, though. He buzzed around, looking for whoever had attacked him.

“Over here!” I stuck out my right hand and called the scythe back.

A blast of shiny greenish-black Spirit shot at me from the spot between the beetle’s eyes. I ducked under that attack, but another one slammed into me from the opposite side. The second beetle had flanked me while I was focused on the first.

The second the beetle’s Spirit hit, my whole world blacked out. I couldn’t see or hear anything.

Last Light, Last Breath evaporated as panic flared up in my stomach. Both hands clutching the scythe, I set my feet and threw out a concentrated blast of Dead Reckoning. I gave the early-warning system tons of Miasma for a wider circle of protection. I wanted plenty of notice before one of those guys hit me.

My left side pinged first, and I jumped out of the way, slashing with the scythe where Dead Reckoning told me to aim. The blade sheared through something tough. Chitin.

Behind me, Dead Reckoning sent off another warning, and I spun, scythe out. It whiffed, nothing but air.

The chitinous body of a four-hundred-pound beetle rammed into my side, knocking me over. I stumbled and tried to catch myself, but the heel of my work boot caught on the top tier of benches, and I stacked it, landing hard on my back.

The blackness cleared like a phone light timing out, and sound rushed back in.

Shiny black beetle mandibles chomped an arm’s length from my face. I slammed the scythe handle between its mouthpieces. Gnawing noises battered my eardrums, but the handle held. Spiny beetle feet trampled my stomach and chest. One scraped off my thigh, ripping a hole in my jeans and barely missing a game-ending nutshot.

I hiked my knees up to my chest and, with a blast of Ki-strength, shoved my work boots into the beetle’s armored underbelly. It flipped over my head, landing with a crunch on another bench. Its legs flailed, trying to right itself, but a broken corner of the bench was poking through its abdomen like a stake. It was caught.

I staggered to my feet, sucking wind. Hungry Ghost was keeping me stocked on Miasma, but even with the internal alchemy running, the rush from my adrenaline was fading and I was slowing down, running out of energy for this fight.

Behind me, Dead Reckoning freaked out, but I wasn’t fast enough to spin out of the way this time. Instead, I ducked and covered the back of my neck and head with Death Metal. A huge chitinous body slammed into me from behind. It was the second beetle, the one whose wing I’d chopped off with the scythe while blinded. It crunched down, trying to bite my shield in half. When that didn’t work, the thing reared back and slammed into the shield again, bearing down with all its weight. Pain shot through the knife scars in my messed-up ribs, and my legs buckled. I dropped to one knee.

The beetle twisted around to chomp at me from a different angle.

Cussing under my breath, I grabbed the beetle’s greenish-black life point. These things weren’t leaving me any choice. Before it could snap me in half, I clamped Dead Man’s Hand down and killed it.

The huge dead bug slumped to the floor in front of me, spiked head down, like it was bowing.

Something stirred inside my chest. Bowing made sense, didn’t it? I was Death. Everything and everyone bowed to me eventually. Even if this beetle was some kind of sentient being, it had deserved this. It would’ve killed me, Rali, or Warcry without a second thought, and it had been helping these Contrail a-holes run this glorified slave pen for God knew how long. Death was its reckoning.

My brain snapped back to sanity for a second, realizing what I’d just thought. What the heck was wrong with me? Was Devil Corruption from the scythe turning me into some kind of psycho?

This is not Devil Corruption, Hungry Ghost said. Death cultivator was being pragmatic. Enemies return from unconsciousness. They do not return from the grave.

I can’t deal with you right now. I shoved him out of my head and used a blast of Miasma to freezer burn the nerves in my messed-up side. Rali wouldn’t like me screwing up what he’d just started fixing, but then he wasn’t going to like any of this. I was running on fumes, mentally and physically. I just needed to keep going until we were out of this hellhole.

Footsteps ran up behind me. I hit the Ki-reinforcement, muscles shaking with exhaustion as I spun into a skull-shattering elbow.

Warcry slipped the shot. “Watch yerself, grav!”

“Sorry.” I dropped the attack. “Rali’s waiting for us at the elevator.”

“Let’s move, then.”

We ran for it.

Clear the Tower

RALI WAS WAITING FOR us, the green girl cowering in the freight car and a pile of unconscious goons at his feet. When he saw us, he grinned and swung his walking stick up onto his shoulder.

“Just in time.” He backed into the elevator with the girl. “Going up?”

I got in with them. “Just two more floors to go.”

Warcry cussed as he climbed aboard. “If this supposed angel’s even in this location. You heard what that cove said about the fighters selling fast.”

The doors slid shut, and the car started up.

“It was only yesterday when we saw her fight,” I said, leaning against the wall to take advantage of the few seconds’ rest. “She’s got to be here somewhere.”

“Who are you looking for?” the green girl asked.

“An angel with—I mean, a woman with white hair and white skin and silver eyes,” I said. “Have you seen her? She’s wearing dirty, torn-up white robes, and she has a massive scar across her stomach.”

The green girl nodded slowly. “I saw them lead her past my cage yesterday. Once to the fight, once coming back from it. We’re both being held on L2.”

At the same time, Rali, Warcry, and I glanced at the lit-up floor buttons on the wall. L2 was our next stop, with L1 being the last floor before you came out in the little shack.

For a second, the only sound was the creaking of the freight elevator.

“Fine, I’ll say it,” Warcry growled. “We don’t need to raid both floors, do we. Not if we know which one she’s on. We grab her and we get out. Less fighting, less chance of dying down in this hole.”

“Not happening,” I said, thinking about the cages I’d seen through the wire door as we descended the first time. The sound of crying and someone begging to be let out. “You can grab the angel and leave if you want, but I’m finishing this.”

“There was never going to be any ‘just this floor’ or ‘just this girl,’ Warcry,” Rali said, an amused smirk on his face. “With Hake, it’s all or nothing.”

Warcry grunted. “Someone had to point out the smart move while your sister ain’t here to do it.”

Rali eyed Warcry and me. “You do both look like you’re about to slosh down into your boots as goo-puddles. Hang on.”

He took a deep breath and shut his eyes, then put one hand on each of our shoulders. Healing Restoration washed away the overwhelming exhaustion and overloaded my internal batteries. It felt so good that I had to shake out my arms and bounce on my toes a couple times to use up some of the zinging energy.

“That should get us through a few more floors,” Rali said, reopening his eyes.

“So, they know we’re coming, yeah?” Warcry said, his voice louder than necessary in the small space. Maybe he was feeling a little overcharged from that boost, too. He stabbed a finger at the top of the elevator’s wire door. “They’ll be waiting for us. The second our faces break their floor level, we’re tin planets in a shooting gallery.”

“Good point.” I reached out with Dead Reckoning’s long-range function. Eight life points up on L2, in front of the elevator in staggered rows. “Eight Contrails waiting at the door for us. What’s the plan?”

“I’ll hold our escape route and try to protect her,” Rali said, squeezing over to the green girl’s side of the elevator, bumping her a little as he got his bulk situated between her and the door. “Sorry. I’m not really made for small spaces. I’m more of an open-floor-plan model.”

The girl smiled a little and ducked her head shyly.

“Just stay behind me, all right?” Rali said.

“All right.” She backed farther into the corner.

A sliver of light appeared at the top of the door as we rose, the light striped with shadows. A second later, the shadows were stretching into legs. The sound of crying started to filter down from somewhere close by.

Adrenaline pumped through me, and I cycled Miasma to my muscles, piggybacking on that, hitting all the major Ki-enhancements. The elevator kept climbing and the gap kept revealing more of those legs. The first row of three was squirming and shifting feet nervously, but the row staggered between them was steady.

“I think I can buy us a couple seconds head start,” I said to Warcry, refilling my Spirit sea to bursting with Hungry Ghost. “Be ready to move.”

“I’m always ready, grav.” Fire raced down the ginger’s head and arms.

With a blast of Miasma, I sent Rigor Mortis freezing through the first three sets of legs in front of us. I hadn’t ever used it on multiple targets before, but I know I managed to hit at least two of them because their squirming and moving stopped. A woman started screaming, and the third set of legs scrabbled and kicked, but didn’t run away.

Warcry cocked his flaming fists back, ready to pounce.

It clicked in my brain a split second before the rest of the bodies came into view.

“The front three are captives!” I yelled.

But Warcry had already jumped. He snarled through gritted teeth and changed his trajectory in the air, missing the frozen women and slamming into one of the Contrails behind them. The woman I hadn’t managed to freeze screamed and struggled harder.

Bullets, knives, and Spirit attacks flew.

I popped Death Metal shields on both arms and barreled out of the elevator. I tried to miss the struggling, screaming captive, but the space between the rows of cages was too narrow. I clipped her and the closest seized-up woman with the edges of my shields as I crashed through.

Just behind them, a copper scaly dude with a winged snake tattooed across his face spat a stream of green Spirit at me. Without Ki-sight, I never would’ve seen it coming. I took the venomous-looking spit on my left shield, then hooked under with my right, slamming his chin with an uppercut elbow. Obviously the dude had a glass jaw, because he went down immediately.

With a push-kick, I knocked his unconscious form out of the way and shield-bashed a squid thing that was shooting glowing magenta Spirit tentacles at Warcry from behind. When I hit him, the squid yelped and let out a cloud of inky magenta Spirit. Red flashed through the cloud, and Warcry’s prosthetic made that baseball bat ping sound of him kicking someone’s head in.

Dead Reckoning freaked out to my right.

I spun around to a guy in ninja-like black clothes running up on me. I threw a Ki-reinforced intercept kick at him, but the second he saw me throw the attack, he split into four ninjas, and all of them ran up the air like it was solid.

Dead Reckoning went off in every direction. I ducked under one of the ninja’s boosted kicks, but took a boot from another one in my side. There was no way to keep track of them all.

Another kick slammed into my face, whipping my head around. I stumbled and just barely missed a throat-strike.

I had to even the odds. Miasma exploded off me into Three Corpse Sickness, more solid and humanoid than ever.

Take the ninja clones out! I thought.

With eerie simultaneous nods, the corpses chased three of the ninja dudes through the air.

That left me with the original. I went after him, but he just ran up the nothingness out of my reach. I doubled my Ki-strength and jumped, high enough to deadleg him with my shield, but Death Metal sliced through his thighs without hitting anything.

I dropped back to the floor, brain racing to figure out what I could do against an incorporeal ninja.

The ninja landed off to my left side with a boom that made the floor shake and shot out both fists in a U-punch at my face and stomach. I threw my shields into the shots, but the impact threw me back like I’d been hit by a bus. I landed in a heap with that first screaming lady.

Before I could fight my way back to my feet, the ninja landed on my chest like a nose-diving jumbo jet and pinned my arms to my sides. I coughed the air out of my lungs, and the lady underneath me started gasping for breath. The guy must have had some kind of mass-manipulating Spirit to go from incorporeal to feeling like he weighed eighty tons in the blink of an eye.

The ninja locked his hands around my throat and started squeezing.

I twisted and fought, but I couldn’t get free and I couldn’t suck in any air. It was like the dude’s hands were metal clamps, closing off my airways. With no other options, I reached out for his life point.

The airy gray candle slipped through Dead Man’s Hand like smoke. It solidified, then when I grabbed again, drifted away. He must have some ability to make it solid or incorporeal as he needed.

The ninja chuckled, his weight bouncing on my chest, flattening my lungs even more. My lungs bucked, screaming for air, and my eyes felt like they were about to explode. I gritted my teeth and fought with everything I had, but couldn’t budge him or get my arms free. My last-ditch avenue of attack wasn’t working; that life point kept dancing out of Dead Man’s Hand’s grasp.

Warcry’s burning prosthetic slammed into the side of the ninja’s head, but instead of knocking the ninja off me, Warcry’s metal shin crunched around the ninja’s cloth-covered face. The ninja didn’t even flinch.

Warcry cussed and ripped his bent leg back, stumbling unsteadily.

Another space moth, this one packing a huge cutlass made of blackberry-colored Spirit, darted down the hallway of cages toward us, and Warcry had to stop worrying about me and keep himself alive. I was on my own.

The ninja’s grip hadn’t loosened at all when he took that kick to the head. Dark curtains started to close in from either side of my vision. The sound in the hallway pulled back until it was miles away, and the theme song to Gunsmoke started playing, introducing James Arness as Matt Dillon.

“Grady!” Gramps’s voice morphed into Sushi’s. “Grady!”

It was like having cold water splashed on my brain.

Down by my right side, I opened my hand and called out the Lunar Scythe. I was so close to passing out that I didn’t feel my fingers stretch open, just a tingly numbness, and even the tearing sensation of the scythe ripping the meat from my bones as it passed was muted.

The sudden shove of the ridiculously huge weapon appearing in such a small space and wedged underneath the ninja knocked him off-balance. Through the red haze in my vision, I saw the guy’s eyes bug out in a panic when he saw my skin and muscle disappear. I shoved the scythe and twisted my hips to throw him while he was distracted, but the ninja leapt away from me like he suddenly weighed nothing.

My lungs finally opened, and I gasped and choked, sucking down ragged whooping coughs of beautiful oxygen. Still coughing, I rolled onto my side and used the handle of the scythe to lever myself to my feet.

The ninja stared at me, blinking nervously. Sweat ran down his forehead into his eyes, but he kept his gaze locked on the scythe. I took the gleaming black handle in both hands like I was about to chop him in half, knowing that if I looked down, there would be nothing of me but a skeleton in tattered scraps of what I’d been wearing.

The ninja backpedaled, then split into four of himself again.

I raised the scythe and took a step toward the clones.

The ninjas turned and sprinted off in four directions—left, right, back, and straight up like there was an invisible staircase leading to the ceiling. Instead of hitting the walls or cages, the ninjas disappeared through the walls like ghosts.

When I turned around to see how Warcry and Rali were doing, the space moth with the Spirit cutlass and the rest of the Contrails who’d been defending this floor were down. That ninja had been the last one.

Rali and Warcry were staring at me.

“Hake?” Rali asked, the lace in his eyes shifting with uncertainty. “Are you...uh...you?”

I tried to reassure them, but then I remembered I didn’t have the vocal cords to make words. Opening my palm, I sent the scythe tearing back across my skeleton. The flesh melted back onto my bones.

“Yeah, man,” I said when I could talk again. “I was still me, just with less meat.”

“What was that, grav?” Warcry growled, flames still dancing across his shoulders and down his arms like he might have to fight me next. Although the way he was keeping all his weight off his bent-up prosthetic hinted that it probably wouldn’t have been a long fight.

“That,” a cold feminine voice said from a cage down the hall, “is my Lunar Scythe, and you are not supposed to have it, Grady Hake.”

Angel of Death

RALI OFFERED WARCRY his walking stick, but Warcry turned it down. He limped along behind Rali and me as we picked our way through the fallen Contrails.

The angel of death was bunched up inside the cage at the end of the row, sitting with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. Even all torn up and dirty and caged, she was so beautiful it felt like I shouldn’t get too close or I’d ruin it.

“You refused to be consumed by the creatures in the Shut-Ins, you got me put on disciplinary action, you killed an ancient Heavenly Scale Balancer, and you stole my scythe,” she growled, ice glinting in her silver eyes. “You are by far the most troublesome reap I have ever made.”

I really wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t round up enough of it to drown out the pity. The cage was too small for her to stretch out or stand up. She looked pathetic trapped in there, with a Transferogate attached to her left shoulder, wires running in through her white marble skin, and the Heavenly Contrails’ phoenix tattooed on her throat ready to shock her if she stepped out of line. My indenture to the OSS hadn’t been fun, but at least I had been able to stand up and walk around freely.

“I think you mean the most troublesome mistake you ever made,” I said.

Her eyes narrowed. “Reapers do not make mistakes.”

“And I was told I won your scythe because I defeated you,” I said.

“You did not defeat me!”

Basically, she was never going to admit she’d screwed up, even if it killed her. It was infuriating, mostly because I knew deep down that part of me was exactly the same. A memory of Mrs. Greenwell, my Advanced Lit teacher, writing hubris on the whiteboard flashed through my brain.

“If I let you out of here, are you going to kill me?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said immediately.

“Do you think it’s a coincidence that we showed up here?” I said. “We came to break you out.”

“That changes nothing!” She sliced a fist through the air, banging it into the bars.

“Can you get out on your own if we leave you here?”

The angel’s expression twisted with defeated fury. She turned her face away from me and glared at the floor of her cage.

At the other end of the hall, the elevator started to rise. With a yelp, the green girl jumped off and ran to hide behind Rali.

He gave her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry, you’re safe with us.”

Pretty hilarious, considering under normal circumstances he would’ve told anybody else something along the lines of safety is an illusion. But I didn’t point that out. He looked like he was having too much fun being her wandering sword hero.

“Lads upstairs musta got tired of waiting,” Warcry muttered. He jerked his chin at the disappearing freight car. “What’d’ya wanna do, grav?”

The angel wasn’t going to change her mind. I’d have to figure out what to do about her later. Right then, I had to help the people I could help.

I looked around at the cages lining the high-ceilinged, narrow hall. I didn’t see any locks. There must’ve been some sort of electronic trigger somewhere in the place to open the doors.

All those fighters trapped in their tiny boxes, Transferogates sucking out their Spirit in a constant stream. They’d survived this long, fighting with nothing but their bare hands and feet, taking out deadly creatures and one another, all to make the Contrails a buck. They had to want payback.

“Hey, everybody,” I said, raising my voice so they could all hear me. “If I can get you guys out and cut off your Transferogates, will you help us clear this place of Heavenly Contrails?”

The angel’s eyes flashed with hatred. “Don’t you dare use my scythe for something so—”

A chorus of “Hell yeah!” and “Of course!” drowned the angel out.

I opened my hand and summoned the scythe. “Anybody who wants to fight can, and anybody who doesn’t will probably be safest if they stay at the far end of the hall.” I looked at Rali and Warcry. “Can you guys hold off whoever comes down while I try to open these cages?”

“Sure,” Warcry said, in spite of his bent-up prosthetic. He elbowed Rali. “Easy, ain’t it, big man?”

“If you believe it’s easy, there’s no reason for me to contradict you,” Rali said.

They posted up by the elevator shaft, and I got to work on the cages.

In such a tight space, it was hard to maneuver the scythe and keep it from cutting the occupant. I knew from experience that the scythe would slice right through skin and bone like it wasn’t even there.

The metal screamed like a spoon pressed up against a chunk of dry ice as I worked, but just behind me, I could hear Rali talking to the green girl.

“There’s a gap between the last cages and the wall that you should be able to get into,” he said. “You’ll be safest there.”

She hesitated. “No. I want to fight, too. I don’t know how long I’ve been trapped down here...” She sniffled. “I hate fighting. But I hate what they’re doing more. I don’t want them to do it to anyone else ever again.”

“You want revenge,” Rali said.

“What good does revenge do?” The green girl’s voice was craggy with tears. “What I want is justice and prevention. I want a better world...one without their evil in it.”

The cage door I’d been cutting broke off and dropped just in front of my steel toes. The woman inside climbed out, a tall Ylef covered in battle scars.

Cautiously, I cut through the body of her Transferogate. A wrong move could slice right through her torso. But even with as careful as I was trying to be, the blade nicked her.

I grimaced. “Sorry.”

“Don’t stop now, meat roach.” Her pale purple eyes darted down the hall. “Get as many of us free as you can before that elevator comes back, or your delicate job is going to get a lot harder.”

I nodded, set my jaw, and finished the cut.

The Transferogate’s suction released and the whole thing hung from the Spirit probe embedded in her side. The Ylef ripped the wires and hoses out and let it drop to the floor, revealing a section of much cleaner cinnamon skin and a thin line of blood.

“Remember what I said—hurry.” She nodded at the rest of the cages, then jogged down the hall to join Warcry, Rali, and the green girl waiting for the Contrails.

The mechanism in the elevator shaft rumbled to a halt. The car was up on L1, probably boarding as many Contrails as they could jam inside, like one of those How many people can fit? challenges back on Earth.

I got back to work on the next cage, moving a little faster. This one didn’t take as long to open because the woman inside was small enough to move to the back corner while I sheared through the hinges.

“This isn’t fast enough,” I called down the hall to Rali and Warcry. The freight car was slower than the Heartchamber elevators, but that still wasn’t enough time to release even a handful of the prisoners.

The small woman climbed out of her cage and tapped on her Transferogate. “Get me free of this constant siphon, and I can freeze the hinges along this wall while you cut those on that wall. Then someone with greater strength than I can break through the ones I’ve frozen.”

“I’ll help her,” the scarred Ylef said.

I nodded, trying to work faster. The smaller woman’s Transferogate dropped away, revealing another thin bloody cut from the scythe. The deadline was not helping my accuracy.

The small woman began freezing hinges with her Spirit and the Ylef slammed a golden Ki-reinforced fist through them, smashing the doors off. I made it through one cage door in the time they did five. The fighters they had released clustered around me, all begging to have their Transferogates removed.

Down the hall, the elevator’s mechanism whined, and the freight elevator began its descent. Time was up.

“Crap,” I breathed.

“Down here!” A gray-skinned hand with black claws stuck out of a cage closer to the elevator. “Let me out, Death cultivator! I can finish this!”

“Wait, no, do my Transferogate first!” one of the uncaged fighters shoved in front of me.

“I’ve been trapped down here longer, I deserve to go first!”

“No, please, me!”

“Death cultivator!” the first voice piped up again, black-clawed fingers snapping at me. “Ignore these dragmas. My Spirit is the one you need to finish this! I’ll show you!”

The scarred Ylef caught my eye. “She is very powerful.”

“Okay,” I said. “Keep getting as many people out as you can.”

Amidst outraged protests, I jogged down to the gray lady’s cage and cut the hinges off. A slender woman who looked like she was made of stretched-out gray putty unfolded herself from inside.

“You made the right choice,” she said, leaning down and pulling her glittery gray hair aside so I could get at the Transferogate.

To my right, the floor of the freight car broke the top of the door. About a dozen pairs of boots and bare feet and scaly bird legs were crammed in there. My heartrate jumped up.

“Let’s hope so,” I muttered, slicing as carefully as I could.

Another cut.

“Sorry.”

“Well worth it,” the gray lady said, yanking the hoses and wires out of her armpit. She tossed down the pile of junk. “Now watch this.”

She lumbered over to the shaft, making Rali step out of the way and Warcry hobble back against the wall. She raised her long arms and took deep, chest-expanding breaths. Neon yellow Spirit flowed into her from the walls and elevator.

The car was almost a foot below the line of the ceiling. Contrails inside hunched down, getting peeks at us and yelling about attacking.

The gray lady kept breathing.

I kept the scythe in one hand and dug Hungry Ghost out of my pocket with the other. I filled up on Miasma, triggering all the Ki-enhancements, while I ran through a list of first moves in case this lady didn’t do something quick. Death Grip in the elevator to hold some back, Three Corpse Sickness to distract any who got out...

The car was two feet below the ceiling now. A muscly dude leaned down, shoving his arm and shoulder through the gap. Metal Spirit flowed down his arm and coalesced into a revolver.

I hit him with Rigor Mortis, and his fingers froze half-closed around the glowing grip. Inside the elevator, other Contrails yelled at him to shoot already.

A lightbulb over the gray lady’s head flared brighter, then popped, showering glass through its little metal cage and sending a gout of yellow Spirit to her. Then another bulb farther down the hall exploded, then another, until all of them had burst. The only light in the hall came from inside the freight elevator’s car and the red flicker of Warcry’s flames.

“Here we go!” the gray lady yelled happily, flinging out one long arm.

Neon yellow lightning zapped off her fingertips, arcing into the elevator shaft. Something in there crackled, then exploded, showering sparks.

The freight car banged to a stop. Inside, Contrails shouted and bumped around, thrown off their feet by the sudden halt. Someone yelled and grabbed the guy with the Spirit revolver, trying to drag him back inside so they could get through.

With a chuckle, the gray lady fired another arc of lightning as thick as my arm. Instead of striking and stopping, this one kept sizzling. Molten slag dripped down the shaft from beneath the elevator car.

A metal cable twanged as it snapped. The freight car plunged.

“Ta-da!” the gray lady sang.

Screaming Contrails tried to shove their way out of the death trap as it plummeted past the opening. A couple were fast enough. One bird guy only made it halfway. With all that weight on, the elevator chopped him in half. The gray lady planted a foot on the screaming half-guy’s head and gave him a shove down the shaft.

Between the Ylef and the gray lady, the two dudes who made it off the elevator didn’t last long, either. Lightning shot the first guy down, and the Ylef skewered the other with some kind of Spirit lance.

The gray lady giggled, holding up a handful of arcing neon yellow light.

“And now your turn,” she said, hurling a fistful of lightning at me.

Fight for the Scythe

BEFORE I COULD EVEN flinch, a tangle of dirty white hair and torn robes flashed past me. The angel of death barreled into the gray lady, the lightning bolt ricocheting off of her white marble skin. They smashed through the open door of the elevator shaft, the gray lady’s head bouncing off the far wall. Lightning flashed up the shaft as she fell. Then there was a sickening wet thud, and the lightning stopped.

Instead of dropping with her, the angel of death ran up the inner wall of the shaft and jumped lightly back to the floor. Her silver eyes locked on me, and she bared her teeth in a snarl.

In a heartbeat, she sped across the floor and leapt at me, grabbing the scythe. Around her fingers, the handle flashed white. I jerked backward, trying to rip it out of her hands, but she clamped down like a pit bull with a bone. White and black battled up and down the handle of the scythe while we fought over it. We slammed into the cages, and my bootheel got hung up on one of the broken-off doors. I fell backward, and the angel tumbled with me, still clutching the scythe. Her knee landed in my stomach, a rock-solid blow that knocked the wind out of me. Sparks popped in my vision, and my grip loosened a fraction as I fought to breathe.

She yanked. The handle slipped through my fingers.

But the scythe didn’t go back to her. It ran through her hands like water, pouring back into my skeleton and disappearing.

Teeth bared, she clawed at my eyes and hurled strikes at my throat. All I could do was shove a Death Metal shield between us while I waited for my lungs to open up again.

Her fists thudded off the shield, and her face twisted with fury. The blows stopped. She ripped at her Transferogate in a frenzy, like a coyote trying to chew its leg off to get out of a trap.

The contraption reacted as violently as I remembered. She spasmed and fell off me, thrashing in pain, mouth open in a silent scream. She was so out of it that she banged her head on the corner of a cage, opening up a gash on her eyebrow. Blood the color and consistency of mercury welled up.

Finally, my lungs started working again. I sucked down a huge breath of oxygen and turned over, pushing myself up to a crouch.

She came out of it, panicked eyes darting around until they landed on me.

We both froze.

At the same time, she threw herself at me, fingers outstretched like claws, and I lurched to my feet, coming up with the scythe forming in my hands.

The angel stopped where she was. She glared from the gleaming black blade to me, then to the Transferogate on her shoulder.

With an ear-piercing shriek, she spun around and raced toward the elevator. She leapt into the shaft, kicking off the walls like this was House of Flying Daggers, and vanished up into the darkness.

For a couple seconds, everything was silent except for my ragged huffing and puffing.

Then the small woman who’d been freezing the hinges said, “It wasn’t on purpose. I didn’t let her out to attack you on purpose. I was just opening cages as fast as I could, I swear.”

Her eyes were huge like she thought I might cut her in half.

Probably because I was still in skeleton form and holding the scythe like I was looking for my next target.

I let the handle go. The scythe tore through the muscle and settled in place around my bones.

“It’s fine,” I told the small woman when I had my vocal cords back. “I mean, she did save me from that gray lady, so, really, I owe you one.”

“Strange.” Rali scratched his chin with the butt of his walking stick. “Don’t you wonder why she saved you?”

“Scythe rules?” I said, thinking out loud. “She didn’t want the gray lady defeating me and taking the scythe?”

Warcry hiked himself up onto an unoccupied cage.

“Gotta hand it to you, grav,” he said, adjusting the straps on his ruined prosthetic. “I thought you were a ponser, scared of some dainty invisible angel, but that gal’s a bleedin’ beast, ain’t she. If she coulda used Spirit, you’d be a dead man.”

Blood ran into my eye from one of her fingernail gouges.

“Tell me about it,” I said, wiping my face on my shirt.

While Warcry worked on his fake leg, Rali helped the small woman and the Ylef bust the rest of the fighters out, and I went back to slicing off Transferogates. With all the Contrails either escaped, dead, or trapped down below in the broadcasting arena until they could get the elevator wreckage out, the job became less stressful, but the blade was too unwieldy for this kind of work. No matter how careful I was, it still cut each fighter.

“A memento of rescue, the scar will be,” a cat-lady purred. “Silly human did his best, and Shilla is grateful for this.”

Most of the other women seemed to agree with that, but it didn’t make me feel much better about it.

When we finally got the rest of the fighters free, there was still the problem of getting them up two floors to the surface without a lift. It would’ve been a great time for one of Kest’s chain ladders.

“If we could find a rope, one of us could climb up and tie it off,” I said, “then everybody else could climb up.”

The green girl lifted a hand shyly. “I might be able to help with that, if I could see your boots for a second.”

“My boots?” I glanced down at them, confused.

“All three of your shoes, actually,” she said, looking from me to Rali to Warcry. “I need the mud in the soles.”

I hooked one ankle at a time in my hand, holding my work boots up while she dug the bog mud out of the cracks with her fingernails. She did the same to Rali’s sandals and Warcry’s combat boots, then balled up what she’d collected and set it on the floor. Her hands glowed brilliant green, and a little plant pushed its way out of the dirt. She doubled up on her Spirit, and the thing started to grow.

Pretty soon it was too big for the ball of dirt. Roots the size of my arm dug into the floor, breaking the tile up. The vine, now as wide as a telephone pole, climbed up into the dark elevator shaft and disappeared toward the top floors. Leaves and smaller vines coiled off of its stem at convenient handhold intervals. The green girl kept feeding it Spirit until some sense or ability told her it was enough.

“It’s found sunlight,” she said.

I glanced at Warcry’s crapped-out prosthetic. Not exactly ideal for climbing a beanstalk. And Rali wouldn’t want to attack anyone he found up there unless they were attacking someone besides him.

“I’ll head up first and make sure it’s clear,” I said.

The only life on the next floor up—L1—was the women in the cages, and when I made it to the shack topside, there was no one on guard.

I reported back to Rali and Warcry, then we headed up to start setting the fighters on L1 free. Fighters from below climbed past on the vine, but the green girl, the small woman with the Ice Spirit, and the Ylef stopped to help.

It took twenty minutes to get all the fighters on the last floor out of their cages and free from their Transferogates. They didn’t hang around, not with a straight shot to the surface growing in the elevator shaft.

When that floor was cleared, the Ylef and small woman headed up the vine.

I let the scythe rip back into my chest. “Guess we’d better get going.” I nodded at Warcry’s prosthetic. “Think you can make to the Heartchamber on that?”

“What’s the alternative, grav? You gonna carry me?”

Beside us, Rali’s feet shifted. He turned to the green girl, who was still inexplicably hanging around.

“Thank you for your assistance,” he said, clasping his hands and bowing to her. “You’ve been more valuable than you can ever know.”

“Me?” Her eyes glimmered as she stared up at him. “But you saved me. I should be thanking you.”

Rali nodded. “You’ve helped me understand a very important truth about this world and my place in it, something I couldn’t grasp before. This brief meeting with you has given me hope for the universe. I can’t possibly thank you enough for that.”

The green of the girl’s face tinted darker like she was blushing. Fast as a hummingbird, she stretched up on her toes, kissed Rali on the cheek, then ran to the vine and climbed up.

Rali put his hand to the spot like he’d been punched.

Warcry smirked. “How about ya, big man?”

Rali’s mouth moved, but no sound came out.

I grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get out of this dump.”

Lost Mirror Spirit

NO ANGEL OF DEATH OR leftover Contrails ambushed us when we made it out of the newly destroyed broadcasting station and into the cloudy gray light of the day suns. Sushi turned visible again and swam around happily, which I figured meant there really was nothing to worry about.

We’d barely gone ten steps when Warcry’s prosthetic finally gave out for good, folding in half with a metallic shriek.

“That’s well classy.” He ripped it off and hooked the straps over his shoulder like a duffle bag. “Guess I’m gonna have to break down and let your sister order me a new leg.”

Rali blinked and looked from me to Warcry like he hadn’t realized we were there until Warcry said something.

“Oh, right, yeah,” he said, shaking his head like he was trying to clear the cobwebs. “You should message her. She’ll probably want to build you one. In the meantime, here.” He gave Warcry his walking stick.

Warcry grunted thanks, and we got moving again. The slog back to the Heartchamber was slow. Rali’s walking stick kept Warcry moving, but it wasn’t very effective in the muddy bogland. The end sank into the muck whenever he put weight on it.

We made it back to the Heartchamber at day sunup the next morning. I hit the call button for the elevator, then leaned against the wall, exhausted. With Warcry out of commission and Rali daydreaming about that green girl, I’d been left to deal with the bands of ferals we ran across. Even with Corpse Fire running almost constantly, I was tapped out.

When we got on the elevator, though, Warcry hit the market court button.

“What do you need down there?” I asked, punching the button for my floor.

“To put me name in at Scheduling,” he said like that should’ve been obvious.

My eyebrows jumped up. “For a fight? On one leg?”

“I’m a bleedin’ champion, grav. I’ll fight on me knees if I have to. Warcry Thompson doesn’t take forfeit losses.”

Rali hmmed. “I’d better put my name in, too. I thought about taking the absentee loss, but I’d rather see Biggerstaff’s face when I lose intentionally. Think he’ll hold me to that lifetime agreement when I’ve got a perfect record of zero wins and twenty losses?”

I snorted. “How better to protest mindless shows of strength and status?”

“Exactly,” he said, pointing at me.

The elevator stopped on my floor.

“Fine,” I said, hitting the Door Close button. “I’m in, too. No absentee losses.”

Luckily, Scheduling was booked until late afternoon, so we’d have some time to rest. I grabbed some breakfast and scarfed it on my way back upstairs, then took a shower in my en suite bathroom.

Clean, full, and finally feeling like I could sleep without a guilt trip waking me up, I dropped onto my bed, hitting the pillow so hard it rocketed Sushi at the ceiling. She yelled some nonsense at me and swam back, nipping at the covers until I got under them and held them up for her.

Sleep hit me like a smash cut. One second I was shutting my eyes, the next, purple shimmered across the surface of a pond. The little flashes were more like raindrops than lights. Wet grass squeaked under my feet. I knelt on the bank, and wetness soaked into the knees of my jeans while I watched the drops hit the water.

In the pond, long flowing purple and white fins waved, then disappeared. In their place my dad appeared, sitting on his bunk in his cell. He read a letter while a cup of ramen congealed on the steel table next to him. From my angle, I could just barely see Gramps’s cramped, shaky cursive on the page.

Out of nowhere Dad looked around. “Grady?”

The letter dropped onto his lap.

“Probably not.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Probably just crazy. But if it is you, if you can hear me, I’m sorry about everything, buddy-boy. I didn’t mean for any of this.” He hesitated a second, and when he spoke again, it was like he was begging somebody for something. “If I could do it over again, I’d do better. If I just had the chance. Swear to God I would.”

I took a swing at him. This was what I’d wanted—for him to wish he’d been a better dad—but now that I was hearing it, it made me angrier than ever. Because he didn’t get to do it over again. None of us did. This wasn’t a game where you got to respawn at your last save point. Him screwing up everybody’s lives, me killing that Nameless Ylef, it was all forever. We made our choices, and we had to live with the consequences.

My fist slammed into the pond water, sending up a shower of purple droplets, but it sliced through his face like it wasn’t there.

Dad sighed, not even noticing. “Guess that was a long shot. Just gotta keep moving forward. Keep on trucking on.” He sniffed hard and picked the letter back up with trembling hands. “If you can hear me, bud, I love ya. Take care of your mom for me ’til I get there.”

Ripples spread out from the geyser of droplets my fist had sent up, erasing Dad and his cell and leaving behind the long, flowing purple and white fins of a human-sized fish.

The fish swam to the surface, but as it came out of the water, the thing’s head and body morphed into a girl’s face, narrow shoulders and wide hips, all sparkling with variegated purple-and-white scales. Where the angel of death was beautiful and Kest was cute, this girl was the kind of exotically hot that hurt to look at. Impossibly hot. Untouchably hot.

But that untouchable effect was spoiled a little when she blinked and her eyes didn’t move at quite the same time. The dark brown one moved a little faster, and the pale blue one lagged behind, like she couldn’t figure out how to do them both at once.

“Grady,” she said, grinning.

I opened my eyes, and she was lying on my pillow, her nose two inches from my face.

With a surprised shout, I fell backward off the mattress and hit the floor.

“What the heck?” I fought my way out of the covers and stood up.

No sign of an incredibly hot mermaid-girl in my bed. Just Sushi swimming over the pillow, laughing at me like falling on the floor had been some kind of slapstick routine.

I scrubbed my hands across my face. Obviously that had been one of those dream-within-a-dream moments.

I was too tired for this crap. My eyelids felt like they were made out of sandpaper, and my whole body was exhausted. A look at my HUD said I’d been asleep for less than ten minutes. I started to climb back in bed, but someone knocked on my room door.

Sushi stopped mid-swoop, then darted behind my head. I could feel her fins brushing my shoulder.

“Open up, grav,” Warcry yelled, thumping the door again, harder, in case I hadn’t heard him the first time. “We gotta talk about that fish, yeah?”

That zapped the last little bit of sleep out of my system.

“Just a sec,” I called back. I hurried up and pulled on a clean shirt and my raggedy jeans from Earth, then opened the door. Rali and Warcry were both there.

Rali took the easy chair this time. Warcry limped over to my bed, still leaning on the walking stick, but not packing his prosthetic anymore. He plopped down and propped his stump up with my pillow.

“That thing’s a nuisance,” the redhead said, stabbing a finger at Sushi. “Nobody on this floor’s getting a lick of sleep because of it.”

“Maybe they can’t sleep because somebody keeps yelling and pounding on people’s doors,” I muttered.

Rali leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I had the dreams while we were camped out in Bogland, but I stopped having them when we moved in here—until you moved into the room directly above mine. Today, Biggerstaff’s people moved me up to the starter level, and they stopped again. But Kest would say even that could be a coincidence. What isn’t a coincidence was what we saw Sushi doing while those knots of contamination were being worked out of your side.”

I was not following at all. “What are you talking about?”

“I meant to ask if you knew what she’d been doing, but things got out of hand so fast, and then we were headed for the Contrails’ location...” Rali shrugged.

“Get to the point,” Warcry growled. “That fish’s showing us stuff that ain’t possible, keeping everybody tossing and turning and waking up.”

“Stuff that isn’t possible?” I frowned. Like Gramps hugging Dad? Like Dad apologizing to me?

I craned my neck until I could see Sushi just behind my shoulder. She scrunched down farther, just barely peeping up at me.

Purple and white scales, just like her life point, just like the lights that were always blinking in my dreams lately...or the droplets on the pond, the fish swimming in the water, the exotic mermaid girl...

“Where’d you learn my name, Sushi? Everybody calls me Hake. Where did you hear Grady from?”

“Gramps,” she whispered.

“How do you know about him? He’s not even in this universe.”

“You think the distance matters?” Warcry crossed his arms. “She can make anybody crop up in our dreams—they’re bleedin’ dreams, grav.”

“Dreams?” Sushi shook her head, fins flowing behind the motion. “No. No dreams.”

“What do you mean no, fish stick?” Warcry snapped. “They ain’t reality. That Nameless slag ain’t pining away for me, she’s counting her money and looking for some other thick-skulled clown to give her a Name.”

“No dreams,” Sushi insisted. “Reality.”

Gramps and Dad hugging at my funeral, Gramps calling him on the phone, Dad and Gramps both talking to me like they felt I was there... Technically, those things were possible. Neither one of them was dead yet, so they could always make up, even if I wasn’t there to see it. They could be moving on, just in the world I wasn’t part of anymore.

Rali was staring at Sushi thoughtfully.

“Your Spirit type, Lost Mirror,” he said.

Sushi nodded. “Lost!”

“My lost family,” I said, “Warcry’s lost girlfriend...”

Warcry stabbed a finger at me. “That trick never was mine, no matter what she said.”

“And my lost way,” Rali said, ignoring him. “You’re showing us things we’ve lost.”

“Or maybe where those things are now?” I suggested.

“Now,” Sushi agreed.

Warcry glared at her. “Some of us lost that trash for a reason. We don’t want it back.”

Sushi swam around to face him, confusion on her weird little face. The air around her shimmered purple, then the image of a silk fan materialized over her head, wavering like it was hard for her to hold the picture together.

It was the fan with the Air Spirit construct from the train, the one I’d seen Warcry mailing off the day after we got to the Heartchamber.

His face twisted into an ugly scowl. “That was me having a go at her, nothing else.”

“How is Sushi doing that?” I asked. “This is the first time I’ve seen her do anything besides disappear or eat bugs.”

Rali cupped his chin. “Maybe she’s cultivated enough to start showing us things while we’re awake. We gain new abilities as our kishotenketsu advances, so a creature who took the Dragon Gate must be able to do the same. Is that what happened, little fish?”

“Happened!” Sushi spiraled around excitedly.

“I wish you could do more than echo us,” Rali said. “I’d sure like to know more about your cultivation. Do you show us these things—or make us remember our dreams of them more clearly—because the Lost Mirror Spirit collects around us somehow?” When he didn’t get a reaction out of Sushi, he guessed again. “Or maybe it’s our reaction to what we lost that creates Lost Mirror Spirit. Do you know, Sushi?”

“Know,” Sushi said, shaking her head. Or maybe that had been a no. It was hard to tell.

“What I want to know is how a fish got a Spirit affinity in the first place,” Warcry growled. “Even Dragon Gate animals ain’t supposed to have an affinity.”

“In the sword legends, really cunning centuries-old creatures can steal Spirit types,” Rali said. “Or trick cultivators out of them.”

“No!” Sushi’s blue and brown eyes widened, panicked. “No, no, no.”

She swam out to the center of us and grunted like she was lifting something heavy. The air above her shimmered with purple Spirit again. The image of a boat gliding down a wide river appeared, grainy like a found footage horror movie.

The people in the boat were dressed in robes that looked like they’d come from ancient Egypt, but the boat was a cross between a Viking dragon boat and one of those royal barges. Male servants poled it along while female servants waved fans at the queen reclining in the center. The queen held a little circle of bronze in her hand. Every now and then it caught the day suns just right and glinted like a tiny supernova. I’d read about mirrors made of polished bronze in old Bible stories and those books about mummies and ancient Egypt, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one.

Arrows sliced out of the tall reeds surrounding the river, knocking down servants, and all hell broke loose. With Ki-enhanced jumps, bandits leapt aboard the barge.

My eyes bugged out when I recognized their leader. He was a little older than when he’d killed that starburst-jawed dog, but not as old as he’d been when he destroyed the barbarian horde single-handed.

With him leading the charge, the ambush was fast and brutal. They slaughtered everyone. The queen and a few of her female servants tried to swim away, but he got them, too, tearing out their life points and swallowing the fresh Miasma as he went.

The shaky-cam footage followed the bronze mirror as it fluttered down through the blood-clouded water, glittering and glinting, until it hit the muddy river bottom.

I got the feeling of time passing, and then a little fish with purple and white scales appeared. It was fascinated by the glittering circle, nudging it, bumping it, studying its shine from all angles.

In a move that defied physics, the purple and white fish swallowed the bronze mirror whole, its gut bulging out to the sides for a second before returning to the right shape.

The image disappeared. Sushi let out a huge breath, panting with exhaustion, then swam back to me and slumped across my shoulder. I petted her, smoothing her fins back.

“Are you bleeders gonna believe that?” Warcry demanded, waving his hand at the space where the movie had played out. “If it’s like you said, big man, she could just be outsmarting us.”

Rali shrugged. “If she’s cunning enough to come up with a story like that, I have to respect the effort.”

“Anyway, what are we supposed to do?” I said. “She’s been helping us.”

“Sushi helps,” she agreed wearily. “Sushi eats bugs.”

Warcry wasn’t convinced. “Oughta tell her to take a swim and not come back. Nobody helps nobody without wanting something in return, grav.”

I scowled. Kest had said the same thing about Van Diemann, totally ignoring the fact that she and Rali had grown up there and helped me for nothing when I first got dropped on the prison planet.

Before I could speak up, though, Rali beat me to the punch.

“I have to disagree with you there, Burning Hatred cultivator. You might’ve missed it, but Hake just raided a Big Five base to free an enemy he could’ve left to rot, and he did it because it was the right thing to do, not because he got anything out of it.”

“And you think the fish’s got the same crack in its brain he does?” Warcry jerked his chin at Sushi. “You said it yourself, big man, she gets a cultivation boost from the stuff we lost. She’s a bleedin’ parasite.”

Instead of arguing with him, I looked down at Sushi.

“Hey, Sush, can you tell us...er, show us why you decided to follow us?”

She slumped like I’d asked her to hold up the planet for a few million years, but took a deep breath and made the air shimmer.

This time, everything happened in fast-forward like she had to get it all out before she ran out of Spirit. We saw her swallow the mirror, return to the right shape, cultivate for years or maybe centuries. Then one day she saw another shiny thing glinting between the bars of a trap and swam inside. A guy wearing spectacles scooped her out of the water, studied her, dumped her into a round flask, labeled it Lost Mirror, and put her in a case full of other flasks. This scientist guy kept her around for months, studying her and the other specimens he’d collected, one at a time emptying the bottles when the things inside died. Then one day, when the only still-living specimen he had left was in the Lost Mirror flask, he got on a bullet train. A mantid with a crazily cocked hat got on after him. The mantid killed the scientist guy and stuffed his body out a window. Then a skinny teenager with Death Spirit defeated the mantid, took Sushi’s flask, and let it slide off the train table and shatter. She was free.

The image cut out, and Sushi dropped to the floor. I picked the fish up and set her on the bed, out of Warcry’s reach. She lay there, huffing and puffing.

“Convenient story,” Warcry muttered. “Little too convenient, yeah?”

I threw up my hands. “What more do you want from her? She told us what happened.”

“She told us something,” he said. “There ain’t no proof that’s what happened.”

Three polite knocks cut off our argument. Someone was at the door.

Sushi gasped and wriggled under Warcry’s stump pillow.

My HUD went off. It was a message from Kest.

What did you guys do?!

The back of my neck prickled like the short hairs there wanted to stand up straight.

Whoever was at the door knocked again. Sharp, like this was our last warning.

I looked from Warcry to Rali, then went and opened it.

Biggerstaff stood there in one of his tailored suits, a group of hooligans-in-training backing him up. Yoki the Stone Spirit Jackal and both Ratas were there, along with a muscly shark lady and a yellow-skinned alien.

The catfish shook his wide head. “I thought I made it clear that you boys were not, under any circumstances, to get caught.”

To the Slaughter

ALL THE BRUISERS EXPLODED into motion at the same time, barreling into my room. Instinctively, I threw out Dead Reckoning and blasted Miasma to my arms, covering them in Death Metal. The yellow dude and shark lady came at me, and for a second, it looked like Yoki would, too. Then the jackal dropped his eyes and breezed past while I shield-bashed the yellow dude back.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Warcry launch himself up off the bed at Yoki, using the walking stick like a pole vaulter. Rali hit the ginger with a Spirit boost as he passed, making Warcry’s flames burn even brighter, then reached out to do the same to me.

Before Rali’s tag landed, Biggerstaff swooped open his wide catfish mouth, red gill rakers flashing.

Death Metal and Dead Reckoning disappeared instantly, and Warcry’s flames snuffed out all at once without a flash or stutter. When I tried to reach for more Miasma, my Spirit sea clamped down tight, like a fist was squeezing it closed. I still had Hungry Ghost clenched in my hand, but I couldn’t pull Miasma through the catfish’s Spirit blockage.

I threw elbows and kicks, but without my Ki-strength or speed, they were basically useless. The yellow dude and shark lady tackled me. A pipe to the side of the head made sparks flash behind my eyes. When I could see again, one of the Rata twins was sitting on my back to hold me down. Cold stone shackles cinched my wrists together like handcuffs, Hungry Ghost locked uselessly between them.

With a burst of Stone Spirit, the decorative stone armlets flew off Yoki’s massive roid-rager arms and slammed into Warcry. The ginger hopped, trying to keep his balance. The stone zipped around behind him, locking his wrists down like mine. Before he could fall over, Yoki grabbed him and shoved him to the floor beside me.

Rali, however, had not gone down. He and Biggerstaff were glaring into each other’s eyes like the championship match of a staring contest.

Biggerstaff’s gills flashed again, doing that predatory vacuum-feeder thing. Sweat ran down the sides of his flat head and dripped onto the shoulders of his suit. Rali grinned, orange Warm Heart Spirit flickering under his skin. It swelled and receded, but it never completely went out.

After a few seconds, Biggerstaff let out a strained catfish-laugh.

“I knew you were the best investment in this clique.” Without looking away, he snapped his fingers at the shark lady. “Kill his friends if he doesn’t drop his defense immediately.”

A Spirit naginata appeared in the shark lady’s hands. She pointed the blade at Warcry’s throat and reared back.

“Wait!” Rali held his hands out to Biggerstaff and clasped the left over the right, like a kung fu monk’s salute. The orangey glow of Warm Heart Spirit disappeared from his skin. “I respectfully resign from this duel.”

“Good decision.” Biggerstaff took one more gulp of air, probably doing to Rali what he’d done to me and Warcry. “Round him up.”

Yoki put those stone shackles on Rali, too, then the bruisers jerked Warcry and me to our feet and shoved us out into the hall. Without the walking stick or his prosthetic, the Ratas had to stand on either side of Warcry to help him walk.

Biggerstaff led the way to the elevators.

“I know you gentlemen can’t see it now,” he said as we walked, “but this is for your own good. You screwed up, Death cultivator, left survivors who could run and tell their much stronger bosses. There are consequences to that sort of failure.” He thumbed the Down button, then turned back to smile at us. “But if any of you survive those consequences... Let’s just say you’re going to be very, very well rewarded.”

“You telling us to fight back?” Warcry growled.

The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. The bruisers hustled us inside, crushing us against the walls to make room for Biggerstaff.

“I didn’t tell you to do anything,” Biggerstaff said, hitting the button for the market court level. “I’m not responsible for your actions. I wasn’t responsible for you raiding the Contrails’ Bogland location. I made it very clear that you were operating entirely on your own at the time, and yet somehow this still came back to my doorstep. The Dragons’ Shogun is not going to be very happy with me, unless something completely unforeseen should happen... say, a large and shockingly high-ranked group of Contrails somehow ended up dead in a show of power that none of the other Big Five can rival, thereby making us the indisputable strongest gang in the universe.”

The elevator lurched into motion.

“Dead by a Death cultivator, huh?” I muttered.

“The Contrails’ Shogun is demanding the blood of three very promising probationary Dragons I just recently recruited. It’s you and your friends or the Contrails, Mr. Hake. I’m sure you’ll choose correctly.” The fist squeezing my Spirit sea tightened down for a second.

“Let me guess, I won’t get my Spirit back unless I agree to do it?”

Biggerstaff shot me a condescending smile. “Here I was beginning to wonder whether you could follow insinuations. What is your objection to this, Mr. Hake? Do you think the Heavenly Contrails are noble? That they have hearts of gold? Do you even understand why they’re here? Not just on Van Diemann, but at the top of the Contrails’ organization? These men didn’t get to the top by making distinctions between who they let live and who they killed. They certainly didn’t do it by following some sort of moral code.”

I scowled down at the glass wall right in front of my nose. There was a difference between not killing someone for their sake and not killing someone for your own sake, but I couldn’t find the words to explain that. Even if I did, I knew Biggerstaff wouldn’t care.

The elevator came to a stop, and the bruisers led us out. It was eerily silent in the market court. No movement, no talking. The fountain sounded like somebody had turned up its volume from Babbling to Screaming. The smell of burning food lingered in the air.

A space moth—the first one I’d seen inside the Heartchamber—stood guard at the arena doors. He stepped back and held them open so we could pass.

The air inside the arena felt alive, like it was a living, breathing organism I had to shove my way through. I’d never seen the Heartchamber’s arena so full. Probationary Dragons and staff packed the stands. There wasn’t any of the usual jeering and laughing or booing. Everyone just sat and waited, the expressions ranging from outright contempt to blank poker faces.

The stairs, the top level behind the boxes, and the perimeter of the arena floor were guarded by Contrails—bird people, space moths, beetles, levitating squids, and a whole host of other alien stuff that could fly. Even a couple humans with steampunk-looking jetpacks. There were easily ten times as many Contrails in the arena as had been in the whole broadcasting location, and they were all armed to the teeth with guns, swords, and Spirit attacks ready and waiting.

As Biggerstaff’s bruisers led us to the stairs, the Contrails on the risers moved aside just enough to let us pass. Adrenaline pumped through my body, racing my internal alchemy and making my breaths harsh and hot.

Down at the center of the arena floor, surrounded by a small entourage of Contrails, stood a demon-looking dude in one of those tailored suits all the high-ranking Big Five jerks seemed to prefer. His skin was dark blue, and black horns curled up from his forehead and around his slicked-back hair. Big leathery wings with jagged black spikes sticking out of the joints were folded behind his shoulders and hung down just past his knees.

I’d seen him at the Wilderness Territorial in the skybox with the rest of the Shoguns. This was the leader of the Heavenly Contrails.

Shockingly high-ranked, Biggerstaff had said. Couldn’t get much higher on Van Diemann than Shogun.

The fist around my Spirit sea eased a touch.

“Cloak your Spirit, Mr. Hake,” the catfish murmured over his shoulder.

When I just stared at him, he said, “My suppression acts similarly to the cloaking, hiding the Spirit it’s on. Not even someone in the Ketsu stage can tell the difference. Given that I’m a known Antimatter affinity and your friends’ Spirits are suppressed around you, assumptions will be made, and valuable seconds when someone could put a stop to someone like you will be wasted.”

I clenched my jaw and squeezed Hungry Ghost tighter between my numb, shackled hands. Basically he was telling me to cloak up and start killing.

Next to me, Rali’s mouth was set in a hard line, and the lace in his eyes shifted between thin and thick. Warcry was somewhere behind me. I could hear the air whistling through his nose.

There had to be some other way out of this, but I couldn’t see it. No matter how advanced Rali and Warcry were, the three of us weren’t enough to take on this army of Contrails alone, and I doubted we’d get any help from the Dragons packing the stands.

As we came to the bottom of the stairs, I exhaled, reaching for Last Light, Last Breath, but it slipped through my fingers. My heart was pounding too hard. I couldn’t find that empty nothingness.

Biggerstaff led the way to the center of the arena floor. A sort of wave went through the boxes, Dragons leaning forward or edging to the front of their seats. Nobody wanted to miss whatever was going to happen next, especially not if it was going to be bloody.

The Contrails’ Shogun tapped one hoofed foot on the dirt and crossed his arms like this was taking way too long.

Biggerstaff stopped a good twenty feet from him and bowed.

“Revered Shogun Araddon, the treaty-breakers have been found and captured. Please accept their heads as a peace offering between the Eight-Legged Dragons and the Heavenly Contrails.”

Someone kicked the back of my right knee, and my leg folded. Yoki’s huge hands swallowed my shoulders and shoved down until I was kneeling in the dirt. Rali dropped to his knees beside me. Sounded like there was a scuffle with Warcry, but a few seconds later, he was on his stomach in the dirt, either because he wouldn’t kneel or because he couldn’t without his prosthetic.

“These are the ones who destroyed my Bogland location?” the Shogun said, looking down his nose at us.

“Yes, mighty Shogun,” Biggerstaff said.

I tried for oblivion again and got nothing.

Hungry Ghost, help me out here, I thought desperately. I need Last Light, Last Breath.

No answer.

The Contrails’ horned Shogun snapped his fingers at his entourage.

A fragile-looking space moth wearing a black suit stepped forward. He held his hands out in front of him, and dark sapphire Spirit coalesced into an oversized executioner’s axe. The blade on that thing was so big it made the blade on the scythe look almost practical.

“Yoki, oblige the Contrails’ Executioner with a neck rest.” Biggerstaff was talking to the jackal, but he glared at me, as if I didn’t already know I was running out of time.

Come on. I took a deep breath and blew it back out in a slow, shaky stream. Come on, come on...

Sweat poured down my back, and my heart flopped around in my chest like it had come unattached. I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen when I did cloak my Spirit. Hit Hungry Ghost, kill the Shogun, and then what? Kill all the Contrails in this place? Go on a murder rampage?

Biggerstaff’s eyes widened like I was screwing this up on purpose.

In front of the axe-wielding space moth, a thin platform of stone rumbled up from beneath the dirt, just wide enough to lay your shoulders across with your head dangling off the far side.

“Bring the first offender,” Biggerstaff said to someone over my shoulder.

“Get your mitts off me, ya trash lumps a’ space shite!”

The pair of Ratas and the shark lady dragged a thrashing Warcry to the boulder, fighting them every step of the way.

The Contrails’ Shogun watched, black eyes sparkling, as the Dragons’ probationary hooligans wrestled Warcry onto the platform.

My whole body shook, and I breathed out so hard and long that I almost started hyperventilating. Why wasn’t this working?

“Hake,” Rali said from my right, his voice low and panicked. “I was wrong before. I thought you should never kill anyone, ever. But then that girl in the Contrails’ location—she wanted to stop them from enslaving anyone else, she didn’t want revenge—and I know you weren’t trying to grab power when you grabbed that hawk guy’s life point, you were just trying to protect Kest—and when you killed that Nameless assassin—look, man, I don’t want to tell you to take a life, but what I’m saying is I get now that it’s not always for power or selfish reasons, and maybe if you have to kill to save our friend—”

I tried to shut Rali’s rambling out of my head and focus, but Warcry yelled, “Don’t you bleedin’ do anything that slime-coated cove wants, grav! Nothing, ya hear me?”

One of the Ratas slugged him in the mouth, shutting him up. The other Rata and the shark lady flopped across Warcry’s back, while the one who’d punched him held his shoulders down.

The executioner moth stepped up to the block and raised his sapphire Spirit axe over his head. The axe started to fall.

Last-Ditch Battle Royale

WARCRY SCRUNCHED HIS eyes shut as the axe dropped toward the back of his neck.

Screw the cloak. I shotgunned Miasma from Hungry Ghost and smashed through the last of the fist gripping my Spirit sea.

Instead of clamping down to stop me, Biggerstaff’s Spirit suppression disappeared completely, like dropping an attack dog’s leash and yelling “Sic ’em!”

I sent Dead Man’s Hand racing into the executioner moth. His life point sifted through the fingers of Dead Man’s Hand like dust.

The axe kept falling.

Rigor Mortis! I thought, hitting the sifting life point with the technique. The grains solidified and stopped filtering through my Miasma.

The executioner moth’s eyes widened, and he stopped the swing of his axe.

“Who the hell...?” He spun around, searching for whoever was attacking him.

“Me.” I bucked Yoki’s hand off my shoulders—much easier than it should’ve been considering the size and strength difference—and stood up.

The executioner jerked back his axe, teeth bared in a snarl, and took a step toward me. His life point fluttered like moth wings in Dead Man’s Hand.

I crushed it.

Before he even hit the ground, the rest of the Shogun’s entourage took off, wings flapping as they climbed toward the ceiling of the arena.

“Get these shackles off,” I snapped at Yoki, knowing he would do it. Not just because he’d heard what Biggerstaff wanted, but because he was scared of me. He respected me the same way you respect a loaded rifle or a rattlesnake. I’d seen it in that split-second hesitation upstairs, when he had the choice to go for me or go for Warcry.

The stone sloughed off my wrist. Blood pumped back to my hands, making pins and needles stab through them as they woke up. I stuck my right hand out to my side.

Gleaming black bone tore through my muscles, and the Lunar Scythe ripped into the world like it was tearing through the fabric of reality.

I could start tearing out life points like these guys were nothing more than a massive band of bog ferals who could fly, but that same part of me that had known Yoki wouldn’t try to stop me wasn’t satisfied with simple death. It wanted fear. Fear was respect. Fear was power.

Devil Corruption helps Death cultivator understand, Hungry Ghost croaked in my brain.

Keep me stocked on Miasma, I told him.

Contrails swooped overhead, throwing Spirit attacks aimed to kill. Rali leapt over the dead executioner and jerked Warcry up off the block. Yoki had released their shackles, too.

I hit a squid guy who got too close to Warcry and Rali with Rigor Mortis, knocking him out of the air.

Pain corkscrewed into the knife scars in my left side. I could feel the rat’s nest of hopelessly tangled Spirit rivers screwing down tighter, the built-up soul contamination throbbing. My knees went weak, and my fist bones tightened down on the scythe handle until they creaked with the pressure.

From the corner of my eye, I saw a human in a jetpack focused on me. His hands twisted in weird, unnatural gestures. Disgusting green Spirit spiraled from his fingertips and drilled into my side.

I snatched the guy’s ugly green life point. The second the Miasma closed around it, pus oozed into Dead Man’s Hand, turning it a sickly green. The disease crept back along the connection toward me.

I dropped the attack before that deadly plague could reach my Spirit sea. The jetpack guy zoomed up higher and renewed his assault on my screwed-up left side.

Three Corpse Sickness exploded off me, the humanoid blobs careening toward him. He flinched and refocused on them like they were the real threat.

Before I could make another grab for his life, Dead Reckoning pinged at my side. A kick crackling with electricity sliced through the edge of my vision, headed for my face.

I spun, swinging the scythe. It was a bird guy. I saw his eyes bug out the second he realized that blade was coming for him, but he was already committed. It was too late to stop his forward motion.

The scythe sheared through his shin. His wings flapped crazily as they dragged him up and out of my reach.

The bottom part of his leg lay on the arena floor, still in the boot. Blood soaked into the dirt.

Part of me knew I should be feeling disgust at what I’d done, but I didn’t. Righteous anger thrummed through my veins. He’d come at me, and this was what he got.

Dead Reckoning freaked out overhead.

I threw up a one-handed Death Metal. A huge, curved sword weighted with metal rings slammed into the shield so hard that I dropped to one knee, losing my grip on the scythe. It ripped back into my chest.

The rings jangled as the winged alien who’d attacked me cocked back for another swing.

Before I could counter, Rali leapt off my shield and slammed into the winged alien, knocking his ringed sword aside and hitting him with a lightning-fast chain of punches before the dude could blink. A blast of orange flashed from the last punch.

The winged dude’s head snapped back, eyes rolling up. He slapped the dirt, unconscious. Rali landed behind him in a cool kung fu posture, legs wide, one palm out.

“Thanks,” I breathed, getting to my feet.

Rali nodded, but the lace in his eyes shifted uncertainly. He had something to say.

“Later,” I said.

“If we survive,” he agreed.

He tagged me with a Healing boost, then he ran off to help Warcry, who was fighting a swarm of Contrails one-legged.

“You’re both going to survive,” I promised under my breath. “I’ll make sure you do.”

Miasma drifted through the stands as probationary Dragons fought the surrounding Contrails. It was an all-out gang war. People were dying so fast that there was no way that Hungry Ghost and I working together could suck up all the Miasma in a week.

I searched the chaos until I found the Contrails’ Shogun. The winged demon was still just standing there, watching the fight like it was something on TV he didn’t particularly care about but nothing else good was on.

When Shogun Araddon saw me glowering at him, he smiled. Perfect white teeth gleamed under the arena lights.

“You’ve got potential, Death cultivator,” he said. “Come over to the Contrails, and we’ll make sure you’re treated in accordance with your worth. The best of anything you could ever want, served to you on golden platters by gorgeous women. Admiration, respect, the freedom to do anything and everything your heart desires.”

Something inside me stirred. Not the longing he was trying to provoke, but something dark and disgusted. He thought he could buy me, but I was better than that, better than him and his revolting swarm of flies. He didn’t even see how repulsive they were. They were the disease, everything that was evil in this universe, and I was the cure.

I grabbed his life point, ready to crush it with Dead Man’s Hand.

But something grabbed me back.

Look, the Shogun’s voice hissed in my head.

Everything went into super slow motion. I saw Warcry thrown backward by an exploding Spirit attack from one of the Contrails circling overhead. The winged guy Rali had knocked out was crawling to his feet beside the ginger, about to take his head off with that ring sword. The heavy blade dripped with blood, and I realized the shark lady and Rata were both lying chopped to pieces in the dirt.

Rali was healing Yoki nearby. Behind them, a falcon-looking guy dove at them, a glaive pulsing with magenta light ready to skewer the big Selken and the jackal. Straight over their heads, a guy hurled a pair of explosive attacks like the one he’d chucked at Warcry. From either side, beetles spewed blinding clouds of blackness. The blinding attacks were going to hit first, then Rali wouldn’t be able to see the glaive coming, and whatever was left of his life after he was impaled wouldn’t outlast the explosions.

I’ll put an immediate stop to the slaughter if you agree to join us, Shogun Araddon’s voice hissed. Even now it isn’t too late. Drop to your knees before me, and I’ll save your friends.

The laugh bubbled up from inside me, but it didn’t sound like me at all. The voice was the same, but there was something new and confident in it that hadn’t ever been there before.

You’ll save them? I thought at the Shogun. Dead Man’s Hand ratcheted tighter on his cold blue life point, embracing the sensation of him grabbing it back like that would save him. Spirit claws pierced the Miasma fist, and he started dragging my consciousness into his.

He wanted to pull me in? So be it. I barreled in full bore, until the whole arena dissolved around me, and the world was nothing but my fist clenched around the demon’s guttering life point and his fist clenched around mine.

You don’t have the power to save my friends, I growled. I’ll save them.

Mentally, I connected with Hungry Ghost. Show me that Mass Grave ability.

Death cultivator is not advanced enough. Hungry Ghost must perform Mass Grave with Death cultivator’s body.

You’ve made your choice, Shogun Araddon hissed inside my head. Enjoy the show.

Outside, I heard the Contrails’ Shogun yell, “Kill them all!”

Time sped back up, but to five times faster than normal speed.

In a heartbeat, the beetles’ blindness attacks hit Rali and Yoki, the glaive shot through their backs, pinning them together. Explosions jetted toward them like missiles. A few yards from them, the ring sword fell. Warcry rolled out of the way, but not fast enough. The edge of the heavy blade clipped him in the shoulder, and his burning arm went limp. While the winged alien wrenched his blade out of the dirt, electricity crackled. The bird guy with the bleeding leg-stump hit Warcry with a double fist of that electrical Spirit. Warcry writhed in agony, screaming through gritted teeth. The winged alien swung his dirt-crusted ring sword at Warcry’s throat, ready to finish the executioner moth had started.

Do it! I yelled at Hungry Ghost. Use me. Kill every Contrail in this building, just save my friends!

Gladly.

Hungry Ghost sank into my palm, and the Heartchamber disappeared.

Mass Grave

MY REIGN AS KHAN OVER the World was solidified on the banks of a river in a lush valley. I stood on a long wooden execution platform built at the edge of a river. Hundreds of tribes had gathered to acquiesce to my rule and place themselves under my protection. The women and treasures they had brought me as tributes awaited my inspection at the fringes of the multitude.

First, I had to deal with the dozens of tribes who had come outfitted for war. Their captured khans knelt in front of me on the platform, their warriors arrayed around it in ropes and chains.

They could see their fate in my face, in the way strong men from countless battles bent their knee and bowed their head to me in respect and fear. Stories had spread of entire armies left to rot, of a young man barely entering his prime, with the power to empty the planet of life at a whim. They had known my strength before their khans went to war with me, and now they were paying the toll for their khans’ foolish error.

With Mass Grave, I stretched a wave of Miasma across the river valley, taking hold of every life in the immediate area of the platform, and crushed them. Khans twice my age fell dead at my feet. Scores of warriors and their camp followers crumpled to the ground. Some few among them had cultivated to a high enough level to resist Mass Grave, but I ground down their resistance with Moldering Bones and ended them.

As the dead fell in a wave around the platform, onlookers from the allied tribes scuttled back from the corpses as if afraid I would mistake them for one of the willful tribes that had tried to oppose me. Or perhaps afraid that I would kill them just because I could. Their lives were nothing to me but power, after all.

A cold smile stretched across my features as my living subjects dropped to their knees in worship.

The end of my reign was far less impressive. It came decades later, not at the hands of a scheming chieftain or even one of my left-behind bastards, but from one of the sons I’d raised in my own household.

I had kept him because he’d been divined to have a Mortal affinity like mine. I thought I’d instilled loyalty in him by keeping his mother and treating her lavishly, but the ambitious bitch turned him against me while I wasn’t looking, whispering poison in his ear about taking my place as Khan Over the World—power, riches, glory. Not even the whelp himself knew whether he truly wanted that, but his scheming mother sure as the day suns did.

So he determined in his heart to take it all from me for her. Not attacking me alone in his unprotected youth, as a true son and inheritor of my will should, but backed by the strength of adulthood and purchased alliances like a coward.

They came for me while I slept, a Soother and a builder of Spirit apparatuses among them, both salivating over the gold that lay on the other side of their tasks. The Soother sang an occluding melody into my mind, so that even when I heard the women slip out from beneath the silks and furs pooling around us, I couldn’t wrench myself from the dream.

The disloyal whelp crept to my bed, the Spirit builder’s special dagger gleaming in his fist, and without even the spine to turn me over and look his victim in the face, he plunged the blade into my heart through my back.

A force grabbed hold of my Spirit sea, seeking to steal the hoarded power from my very soul.

I bolted upright, roaring in fury and lashing out at the souls closest. In a flash of Mass Grave, the Soother, the Spirit apparatus builder, my whelp’s hired mercenaries, everyone in my encampment died.

Everyone save two—my son and myself.

My soul was coming unmoored from my body, compressing, becoming something hard and small and confined.

I fought through the force trying to steal away my power and grabbed the whelp’s soul in a fist of raging Miasma. He tried to tear the dagger out of my back, but I grabbed his arm and throat, digging my fingers into the cowardly flesh. My glare burned through his eyes, and I saw in them the realization that he had failed. I saw his terror and regret and defeat. It was sweeter than any death I could serve him, and when he pissed himself and began to wail in terror, I screamed with laughter.

My last act before the dagger crushed my soul down into a grinning turquoise cage was to smash the whelp’s life force. It would have been satisfying to leave the brat alive to wallow in the shame, but on no world and in no timeline would I ever allow a coward to take what I had amassed. Especially not one of my own blood...

Centuries passed as I cultivated Miasma from the world around me. I consumed more than any one man had ever been able to contain and found I was still infinitely hungry for more. I held the power of universes inside, and yet it was as a tiny drop of water in an endless abyss. Perhaps this imposed captivity was not a curse as the traitor had intended, but an unforeseen boon. In time, perhaps I could overcome the tiny rock that I had become and return to human form, reaching beyond any power any cultivator before had ever achieved. Satisfaction unlike any I’d ever known filled my stony prison at this ultimate victory over not only my enemies and traitors, but Death itself.

It wasn’t until the first Death cultivator found me that I learned the true extent of the torture laid out for me.

Endless stores of Miasma, centuries of accumulated knowledge and power, but I couldn’t lay a hand on it. Every treasure I’d saved up for myself went to her, and for nothing more expensive than a simple request!

Hungry Ghost, lend me some of the Miasma you’ve cultivated.

No amount of resistance would allow me to refuse. None of the techniques I had created could I execute for myself. All my power, all my knowledge belonged to her.

Over the course of torturous years, I learned to bend the Death cultivator to my will, lead her with helpful suggestions and promises of strength. My victory over her was the death of everyone she once loved.

When she took her life, I lay in wait for the next Death cultivator. Him I drew in with honeyed whispers, and he died with an enraged shout. They became easier and easier to entice, easier to control. I fathomed the depths of all desire, knew how to gain trust and bide time, when to allow them to see that I was all-knowing and when to play as if I knew nothing.

As endless lifetimes passed, I learned that there were ways and moments when I could become what I was meant to be once again. Heartbeats of insanity when Death cultivators were so desperate or power-hungry that they would do anything for my aid—even give me possession of their body.

Unfortunately, their bodies never lasted long after that. They began to rot around me, and when they finally fell apart, I always returned to the tiny grinning skull stone that was my prison.

This Death cultivator I wore now had not been hard to ensnare. Far past the age when any halfwit should have begun cultivating, the boy had known little, including to beware of those offering power in return for nothing. Even my feints at being drained of Miasma fooled the boy as intended.

Seeing the beginnings of the Devil Corruption spreading through him, I thought to use suggestions of strength to turn him to me faster, but his loyalty to his friends was his true undoing. He wanted to be a hero and a savior. To protect them at any cost, not only for their sakes, but to prove to himself that he was good and pure, someone worthy of this accidental second chance at life he had been afforded.

I gave him his reward. Let him watch from one tiny corner of his former body as I slaughtered the host of flying creatures, dropping them out of the air and turning the building into the mass grave my technique was named for. The Devil Corruption receded from him for a moment, and realization of what he’d done flooded his consciousness as the winged dead piled up. He had asked for this, begged me to do it.

The catfish in his pinstriped finery began to speak to my new body in self-satisfied tones, burbling that he’d known all along that the Death cultivator was a good investment and that all the Death cultivator had needed was the right sort of nudge to get started on his path to greatness.

I made my new face smile at the catfish, then reached out again and began slaughtering his precious probationary Dragons before his cold, round fish eyes.

As corpses fell around me, I felt the consciousness of the Death cultivator scream and rage, then shrivel in defeat as he realized there was nothing he could do to stop me. His body was mine now, willingly relinquished in exchange for squashing a small swarm of pests.

Without warning, my connection to universes upon universes of Miasma was severed. The catfish smirked, red gill rakers disappearing back into his wide head. He thought his trivial Antimatter ability had stopped me.

I threw back my head, howling with laughter. With my merriment still ringing from the rafters, I summoned the immortal’s Lunar Scythe.

In my childhood, long before I discovered my true purpose and became Khan Over the World, I had held the record as the longest undefeated slave to ever spill blood in the death pits. Beasts, adults, other children—none had been able to kill me. Even without my storehouses of Miasma, a pathetic Antimatter cultivator was no match for me. They died just like anyone else.

I hefted the scythe in both hands, seeing the flesh melt away from my body at the edge of my vision, and attacked. The catfish dodged, but I was faster, slicing into his shoulder.

Before I could finish him, a wall of Warm Heart Spirit slammed into my side, spinning me off-balance. I kept my feet, but the force shoved me across the arena floor. When I came to a stop, I locked eyes with my attacker.

The fat Selken stood in front of me in a stilted fighting posture that had only ever been applied to battles in worthless sword legends—one leg beneath him holding his entire bulk, the other leg pulled up like a crane’s, his weaponless hands in unnatural positions in front and overhead.

Rali, no! the Death cultivator screamed. My agreement to protect the Death cultivator’s friends at all costs bound me to this body for as long as it held together. I couldn’t break our covenant and kill them without giving it up, but I could do so much more.

The Selken’s lace-patterned eyes glared into the green orbs I now watched the world through. The black had thickened with the Selken’s fury until it was the only color in his eyes.

“I don’t know if you’re an evil ghost, a soul-eating demon, or the end result of Devil Corruption,” he said, flicking his shaggy black hair out of his face, “but you are not Hake, and you can’t have him.”

Buried Alive

I STRUCK OUT WITH MY palm, using the Death cultivator’s recently developed Rigor Mortis. It hit the Selken, but didn’t freeze him. Before I could follow this attack, a wave of Warm Heart Spirit burst off the Selken’s body like a solar flare. The bright orange of the flare drove out the turquoise cold of the Rigor Mortis.

The Selken leapt at me, empty hand outstretched and glowing with Warm Heart Spirit.

I lunged, swinging the Lunar Scythe.

The Selken sprang easily aside, barely touching his Spirit reserves to avoid my attack. Other than myself, he was the most cultivated being in the building. A Spirit battle with him would be a challenge.

We danced across the arena floor, stretching, missing, narrowly escaping. The Selken was always just out of reach of my blade, but always close enough to invite another attack. He threw walls of orange Spirit at me, I leapt over them easily and blasted deadly attacks at him. He slipped them by fractions of an inch each time, always darting back in with an outstretched hand. I dodged his attempts to strike me by hairs’ breadths and always returned with another onslaught.

A surprisingly even match. The only advantage I had was the extra reach of the scythe, and that was quickly discovered.

“Oi, Rali!” the Burning Hatred cultivator yelled.

The Selken spared a glance in his direction.

The redhead lobbed the broken pole of a spear to the Selken, hoping to nullify my advantage over his friend, but instead creating the perfect distraction.

While the Selken’s eyes were turned away, I dashed in, slicing the gleaming black blade of the scythe upward. He leapt backward, but too late. The scythe scored a deep gash across his gut. Blood soaked his shirt through the tear, and fat and entrails bulged through the wound.

The pole hit the dirt on end and bounced.

I whipped my leg through the air, kicking the weapon into the stands, well away from either of the Death cultivator’s friends, and spun to face the wounded Selken.

He was on his knees, hands clutching at his organs, holding them in.

I grinned. According to the restrictions on his kishotenketsu, he couldn’t heal himself without destroying his Spirit sea.

I poured strength to my tissues and leapt.

Miasma flooded the Spirit rivers in my arms and legs—far more than I had commanded. The nerves and muscles burned and blackened with frostbite and still more poured in. The Death cultivator was directing the flow of the Spirit from within, destroying the body I’d taken from him. I swung the scythe at the Selken, close enough to chop him in half, but the motion was too slow. He ducked the attack and threw a palm strike of his own.

With a twist of my shoulders, I evaded the burst of Warm Heart hurtling at my chest. My legs were locking up, ice freezing the joints solid. Somehow, the Death cultivator had taken control of my endless well of Miasma, and he was filling this body with it.

You stupid child! I roared. You destroy your own body!

What, he sneered, were you going to give it back in good condition?

A shoulder slammed into my spine. Flaming arms wrapped around my body as the Burning Hatred cultivator drove me to the dirt. I hit the arena floor on my side, still tangled with the fool. Frozen muscles groaned and icy skin cracked as I smashed the scythe’s handle into the top of his skull.

The solid crack didn’t daze him as it should have. Years of harsh body conditioning had made the Burning Hatred cultivator too resilient to be disposed of so easily. He locked his legs around mine and crashed burning fists into the weakened side where the Death cultivator had been stabbed and made such a mess of the repairs.

Too close to swing the scythe, I slammed the black bone handle down onto the top of the Burning Hatred cultivator’s head and face over and over again. A gash split his hairline. His nose broke, showering me with blood.

He ignored the pain, throwing punches like fiery war clubs. My ribs splintered, and strength went out of my left arm.

With my right, I pulled the blade of the scythe to the side of his neck. He grabbed it by the blade and handle to hold it off, slicing open several fingers. His teeth bared in a snarl as he attempted to keep Death at bay. His arms shook, still flesh and muscle, unlike the ones I now owned, and blood dripped from his shredded fingers, making his grip slippery, but the flesh didn’t melt from his bones.

An infuriating realization washed over me: if this Burning Hatred cultivator defeated me and gained the Lunar Scythe, he wouldn’t take Devil Corruption from it. He would have all of its power, with none of its drawbacks.

Through gritted teeth, I bellowed my rage, slamming the scythe at him. His grip slipped, but he didn’t lose hold of the handle or fall on the blade.

Hang on, Warcry, the Death cultivator begged, concentrating gales of necrotizing Miasma into my arms. Ice crackled along the exposed bone.

From the dirt, a wide hand grasped the redhead’s ankle. The Selken had dragged himself across the arena floor to us. Warm Heart Spirit glowed as it passed into the redhead’s body. His flames of Burning Hatred flared brighter than the white sun, and his strength tripled.

Bearing down, he forced the haft of the scythe down...down...

That wide Selken hand slapped onto my exposed shoulder bone, pouring Warm Heart Spirit—not into me, but into the Death cultivator’s consciousness, bolstering him. I tried to shake the Selken off, but his fingers clung to the rime-covered bones as he sent more glowing orange Spirit to the Death cultivator.

With renewed energy, the Death cultivator inundated my arms with icy Miasma straight from my centuries-old stores, freezing the marrow solid, destroying the tissues.

There was a snap like ice floes breaking up—the frozen long bones in my upper arms shattered. The scythe’s bone handle slammed down into my throat, pinning me to the dirt. My hands fell limp, and the scythe ripped back into this body, returning its flesh to the bone.

The Burning Hatred cultivator launched into a volley of burning punches, raining them down on my newly won face and head. Blood flowed. I struggled to kick my way free, but the Death cultivator’s consciousness was regaining control over his body. The Warm Heart Spirit had strengthened him enough to fight my possession. He didn’t allow me to move as the Burning Hatred cultivator grabbed my throat and began to squeeze the life from me with his bloody hands.

There was no point to fighting for this dying body. Not when only moments remained in its life. Killing the Death cultivator’s friends would break our covenant, returning me to the grinning skull stone, but it would also save me from dying with him. I would lie in wait for the next Death cultivator.

I gathered myself to return to Spirit apparatus form and reached with two fists of Death for the Burning Hatred and Warm Heart life points.

No! The Death cultivator wrenched control of the Dead Man’s Hand away from me. You’re never doing this again.

A Miasma technique I had never conceived of or witnessed in all the centuries I’d existed closed around my soul like a casket, walling me in.

What is this? I demanded.

Jealous as the Grave, the Death cultivator whispered, sealing and solidifying the prison with a name. If I die again, you’re coming down with me.

In a final burst of will, the casket of Miasma clapped shut and mountains of grave dirt piled on top of it, burying me alive inside the Death cultivator’s mind.

Last Light, Last Breath

“IT’S ME!” I CHOKED out. My lungs were stiff and heavy with Miasma, and Warcry was crushing my windpipe. Agony screamed through me like Hungry Ghost had been holding the pain off through sheer will, and now I was paying it back with interest. My whole body was broken, bleeding, and necrotic, but at least I was back in control. “Warcry, it’s me, Hake!”

He scowled and squeezed harder. “Prove it.”

I couldn’t answer. Breathing was hard enough through the pain and the frozen lungs.

But my friends were okay. Tons of Contrails and a small army of Dragons were dead because of me, but Warcry and Rali had survived.

“It’s him.” Rali was facedown in the dirt beside me, still clutching my broken arm. “I can feel the other aura walled up inside him somehow. Hake beat it.”

Yeah, not really. He and Warcry had beat Hungry Ghost. All I’d been able to do was watch and try to slow the jerk down while he killed everyone he could reach.

A tsunami of guilt tried to swamp me. I knew if that hit, I would never recover, so I let go. Exhaled a rattling Last Light, Last Breath, meaning for it to really be my last one. My friends were safe now. I could go.

But instead of finishing the job, Warcry released my throat. Air slipped back into my lungs.

Then Rali’s Healing Restoration hit. It felt like my whole body was burning from the inside out. Fire raged through my tissues, driving out the necrosis and repairing the broken bones, deadened organs, muscles, and nerves, lighting them all up at once. I screamed, writhing on the spot.

When the Restoration finally tapered off, my head flopped to the side.

Rali’s face was too pale, covered in dirt and sweat. There was a pool of black Selken blood surrounding the string of intestines hanging from his stomach.

He gave me a weak grin. “Gonna make it?”

“If I do and you don’t, I’ll kill you,” I said.

“Just wanted to make sure you were okay first...” He coughed, and flecks of black blood flew through his teeth.

“First?” I grabbed his arm and shook him. “Rali, first before what?”

But he wasn’t listening to me. With a grunt, he rolled onto his back. Orange light flared across his body. His face twisted in pain as his guts pulled back into his stomach cavity. The skin over them grew back together, enclosing the whole mess with a thin white scar.

Suddenly, Rali convulsed, doubling over. His legs kicked and scratched at the dirt, and his hands clutched his Spirit sea, fingers digging into the flesh over it like he was trying to rip it out. Tears ran out the corners of Rali’s eyes, and he howled, a ragged, awful animal sound.

There was a crack like lightning striking right next to your face.

A ball of orange Warm Heart Spirit rose out of Rali’s solar plexus, phasing through his fingers like they weren’t there. It sparked and hissed and hung in the air over him. Then it exploded in a violent sunburst. Little orange embers floated down around us, fizzled out, and disappeared.

Warcry scrambled on his one leg and two arms over to Rali and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“What did you do?” he breathed. When Rali didn’t answer right away, Warcry shook him and yelled, “What the bleedin’ hell did you do?”

Rali laughed. “Broke my Ten restriction.”

Warcry stared at him for a beat. Then he punched Rali square in the face. Blood splattered on the dirt. Warcry pulled back and threw another haymaker, and Rali just laughed like this was the funniest thing that had happened yet. Except he was crying. And Warcry was still hitting him. Rali put up his hands, but it was like he was barely trying to stop the shots from landing on his head and neck.

Whole body aching like a broken tooth, I flopped over to them and half fell on, half tackled Warcry.

“You pissed it away!” Warcry bellowed, trying to twist out of my grip.

“Stop!” I snaked an arm around his throat to choke him out. He nailed me in the eye with an elbow. Not a hard one, but hard enough to rock my head back.

He managed to get a fistful of Rali’s bloody shirt. “You could’ve made it to Ketsu, you wasteful piece of trash! You were right there!”

Rali’s chuckle sounded like clicks in his throat now. “Guess I didn’t want to die yet.”

When Rali said that, all the fight went out of Warcry. The ginger went dead weight on me for a second, then shoved me off and crawled a few feet away to slump against the rock platform and burn in silence.

By my feet, Rali relaxed back in the dirt, a smile on his face, eyes still watering. Black blood ran from his nose and a split in his bottom lip.

I looked at the stands full of dead Dragons and Contrails. Hardly anyone was still moving out there.

I pulled up my knees and folded my arms over them, resting my face on my forearms. My head spun, and I felt this sucking hole of blackness in the pit of my stomach and the middle of my brain. I could feel Hungry Ghost in there, locked away in Jealous as the Grave. The Miasma he’d cultivated was just out of my reach, too.

Death cultivator will need Hungry Ghost again someday. His croaking voice sounded like it was coming from far away. This is why Death cultivator imprisoned rather than killed Hungry Ghost.

If I could figure out how, I’d kill us both right now, I told him.

Hungry Ghost started to say something, but the connection cut off. Biggerstaff’s suppression clamped down around my Spirit sea.

The catfish stepped into my line of sight and stood over me, holding his bloody shoulder together with one hand. The distiller lady appeared at his side, shoving what looked like a high-tier healing elixir into his dangling hand, and I had a flash of déjà vu back to the soaking room and the dead Ylef.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I muttered.

Just like all my other jokes, nobody laughed. That was good, though. I didn’t think I could stand to hear a sound like that in an arena full of bodies.

Biggerstaff gulped the healing elixir down, then shoved the empty bottle at the distiller. She took it, this time without saying a word about how much that was going to set him back.

“Get up.” The recruiter’s voice was calm and deadly.

What was the worst he could do, kill me? Probably not. Probably something more along the lines of torture me for a hundred years or something. But right then, I just couldn’t make myself care.

I got up, trying not to show how close to collapsing I was.

When my eyes locked on his, Biggerstaff recoiled. Just barely enough to notice. He hurried up and smoothed the fear away, but it was too late. I’d already seen it.

“Can you do that again?” he asked, trying to sound angry and in control. “Without accidentally killing most of your own people?”

As soon as he asked, I knew what the worst possible thing I could say was, the thing that would multiply his fear and completely justify it all at the same time. And since at that point, nothing mattered, I went ahead and said it.

“Accidentally?”

Fallout

THINGS KICKED INTO high gear after that. Biggerstaff yelled at the distiller to get something from her store called Total Lockdown, then started typing away on his HUD while he looked around the arena, trying to figure out who all was still alive.

Hooligans came and herded me, Warcry, and Rali into the locker room. Yoki was dead, so there weren’t any stone shackles this time, just the Spirit suppression.

When Biggerstaff tried to clamp down on Rali’s Spirit sea, that was when the catfish finally lost his cool.

“What happened?” Biggerstaff demanded. “You had the most powerful Spirit sea of anyone in the Heartchamber—more powerful than most Shoguns! Where is it?”

Rali dropped onto the locker room bench between Warcry and me.

“Oh, that?” Rali said it like he was talking about some old piece of trash he’d thrown out years ago. “That’s long gone.”

Biggerstaff’s mouth opened and closed a few times. Not like he was trying to nullify somebody’s Spirit, but like he’d been knocked speechless.

Warcry smirked. “Get what you pay for, don’t you?”

That made him and Rali both laugh. The sound ricocheted off the tiled locker room walls and battered against my brain. Part of me wanted to laugh, too, but the rest of me felt so far away that I couldn’t figure out how.

Messages blinked on my HUD. They were all from Kest, first wanting to know if we were okay and what happened and if the rumors about us starting a gang war with the Contrails were true.

Her lost arm flashed through my head. Rali’s lost Spirit sea. Who even knew where Warcry’s prosthetic was now? People around me kept losing pieces of themselves, and I was still sitting there whole.

The door to the market court swung open, and the distiller came into the locker room.

“This is it,” she said, handing Biggerstaff a shiny gold pill the size of a BB.

He looked at me. “For obvious reasons, we can’t transport you wide awake and aware until we can be certain of your cooperation. This will shut down every system in your body, putting you into a suspended state until we arrive at our destination and the antidote is administered.”

“You wot?” Warcry hiked himself up off the bench on his leg. He grabbed Biggerstaff by the lapels and shook him. “Listen here, you daffy cove, me lad’s done everything you asked him to do—”

“And more,” I interrupted in that hollow voice. Nobody’d asked me to kill a bunch of Dragons.

“—and you say you lot can’t trust him?”

“Probably because of the more,” I said.

Warcry glared at me, then turned back to Biggerstaff. “He ain’t takin’ nothing ’til we’ve seen a full ingredients list.”

Rali spoke up. “Where are you planning on taking him, anyway?”

The whole thing felt scripted, like Biggerstaff wanted us to react this way and that was why he’d phrased it so vaguely in the first place. I was too done with everything by then to keep reading the lines.

So I grabbed the pill out of Biggerstaff’s hand and popped it in my mouth.

“Hake, wait!” Rali jumped out of his seat. At the same time, Warcry yelled, “What’re ya doin’, ya bleedin’ clown?”

Black nothingness closed in around me. No dreams. No sensation. Just nothing.

Which was exactly what I’d wanted.

Rise and Shine

SOMETHING SHARP STABBED me in the arm.

I was lying on the softest bed I could remember ever sleeping on. The light hurt my eyes, and I had to blink a bunch before I could keep my eyelids cracked. I squinted at my surroundings.

A woman in geisha robes knelt beside me on a wooden platform built around the bed. She capped a syringe and slipped it into her sleeve, then got up and turned to go.

I pushed up onto my elbows.

“Wait.” My voice sounded hoarse, like I hadn’t used it in a long time. “Where am I?”

She didn’t look back, just picked her way down a set of wooden steps into the room and disappeared around a corner. A door opened and closed.

And locked.

Something warm trickled down my arm from the needle hole, and I realized my entire arm was burning. When I looked, there was way more blood than there should have been. Dark red smears of it covered the skin, all the way down past my elbow and up my bicep. They branched off in places and spread out almost like claws.

That mental image of claws was what finally made it click into place. What I’d thought was blood was actually a healing script tattoo. I lifted my arm up and turned it over, inspecting the dark red ink. A dragon with eight legs, its scaly feet digging hooked claws into my skin.

Biggerstaff had said they couldn’t let me wake up until they were sure I would cooperate. I wondered whether this tattoo was tied to a script remote like my OSS tattoo had been. Then I thought if they were smart, the script remote would be connected to one of my friends. Like Hungry Ghost had said, that was the best way to jerk me around.

The eight-legged dragon healed the needle hole in no time, but the burning in my arm didn’t stop. I felt something twinge in my messed-up left side, but the knots around the knife scars didn’t come free. Whatever was wrong there, the script tattoo was having trouble healing it.

My clothes were folded and waiting for me on the platform. No work boots or even my old worn-out sneakers from Earth, so I was back to square one on the shoe situation.

I swung my legs out of bed and just sat there for a second, trying to get my bearings.

The room was done up in blue-grays and sandy colors with lots of weathered gray wood. There was a low table surrounded by seating cushions in the corner, a minifridge, and even a projection wall with a holoscreen remote. On one wall, a door hung open, revealing a huge bathroom with half a dozen shower heads and even a little bubbling fountain spitting water and incense.

Every amenity you could imagine, but no windows.

Because it’s a jail cell, I thought. A really nice jail cell, but still a jail cell.

I got dressed and headed around the corner the geisha had taken.

There was a short hall, with the locked door at the far end. The door that looked like it was made of the same weathered driftwood everything else in here was, but when I tried it, it was solid.

My work boots were there, on a little mat next to the door. Sushi didn’t shimmer back into the visible spectrum and swim out of one, though. That worried me. The last thing I remembered, she’d hidden under a pillow in my room when Biggerstaff and his bruisers showed up. Hopefully, she had gotten out before the door shut, and she would go somewhere she could find bugs to eat.

I headed back into the main room.

I was locked up, but at least they had left me my Winchester. A look at the cracked screen showed me I had nine unread messages, all from Kest. She’d started out demanding to know what was going on and where we were, but the last few shifted to saying Warcry had explained and asking if I would message her when I woke up. The final one was dated a week after the Heartchamber massacre, today.

It’s going to be okay, she’d said. I’ve got a plan.

That sent a little lightning bolt of panic through the numbness.

I messaged her, Everything’s fine. Don’t do anything. Stay away.

She didn’t get back to me right away. I was still waiting for a reply when a fist clamped down on my Spirit sea. The lock on the door ca-chunked open.

A few seconds later, Biggerstaff and a group of those geishas came around the corner into the room. The way they fanned out around the catfish reminded me of the day he’d shown up in my room at the Heartchamber, except this time his rumble squad was made up of beautiful women instead of ugly hooligans.

Biggerstaff nodded to me. “Ready for your audience with the Shogun, Mr. Hake?”

Money in the Bank

“TURN AROUND,” BIGGERSTAFF directed without coming any closer. “Lace your fingers together behind your back.”

After I did, one of the geishas with a Metal affinity put a sort of wire mesh around my closed hands and cinched it tight, locking them together.

“This is so I don’t summon the scythe?” I guessed.

“The Shogun wants every precaution taken,” Biggerstaff said.

I nodded, thinking, And you don’t want your shoulder sliced in half again.

We headed out into the hall, and the geishas encircled us. Old-timey music played from can speakers up near the ceiling.

The geishas led us through a maze of winding hallways. It looked like we were inside of a castle; everything was squat and stony, but updated with modern light bulbs in the sconces instead of torches. The catfish’s wingtips clicked and my work boots scuffed on the flagstone, but the geishas’ movements were completely silent. None of them said a word.

Being escorted around in what were essentially handcuffs made me feel like a serial killer on the way to the electric chair. Although, I guess, I was technically a mass murderer since I’d done all my killing in one shot.

“Is this a murder trial?” I asked Biggerstaff.

“This is your chance to have everything, Mr. Hake.” He shrugged. “Or lose everything. That’s up to you. Tell the Shogun exactly what he wants to hear, and you could come out of this set for life.”

The geishas stopped at a set of double doors inlaid with silver and jade. Two of the women stepped forward and swung them open for us.

Inside was a huge rotunda, the walls covered in dark wood, paneled with gold, and hung with silk tapestries of eight-legged dragons fighting weird alien monsters. On the dais up front, two dudes sat at wooden desks messing with their HUDs. Behind them, the center of attention of the whole room, an enormous white tiger guy in a tailored suit sat on a carved throne. More geishas stood on either side of him, staring out at the rotunda with expressionless faces.

Below the dais, seating cushions were spread out in arcs. Only three were occupied.

As I passed, Kest raised her fingers without taking her hand off her thigh, sending me a little wave that looked out of place with the grim set of her mouth. Smudges of shadow pooled underneath her lacy eyes like she hadn’t slept in a while. She had a new, thicker prosthetic arm made of reddish metal and flashing with tiny lights.

From beside her, Rali shot me a worried look, then tried to cover that up with something he probably thought would be reassuring. Sometime in the past week, somebody had given him a new shirt. One without bloodstains and scythe-holes in it.

Warcry sat next to the twins with his arms locked over his chest and a scowl on his face. He didn’t look my way at all. Two legs were folded underneath him instead of just one, so Kest must’ve brought him that prosthetic she’d promised.

A feeling like none of this could possibly be real swept over me, and suddenly I felt like I was watching all of it happen from somewhere out past the day suns.

Had anybody showed up for my dad’s hearing? I had been in school the day of, and I didn’t know whether Gramps had gone. Had walking into the courtroom felt this surreal to Dad, like he was watching it unfold from outside with no control over what happened?

The geishas led Biggerstaff and me to the center of the room at the bottom step of the dais, then filtered off to the side and posted up along the curved walls.

The white tiger on the throne eyed me like he’d been expecting more. I remembered where I’d seen him before—the Wilderness Territorial. He was the Dragons’ Shogun.

“Buddy Biggerstaff,” one of the desk dudes read off his HUD. “Eight-Legged Dragon 6, Antimatter cultivator, Celestial affinity, recruiter of the Death cultivator, Grady Hake, Eight-Legged Dragon currently unranked.”

Biggerstaff bowed ninety degrees and shot me a glare that said I’d better do the same if I knew what was good for me. I bowed, too, my knotted side protesting as I did.

“Stand,” the tiger growled, shifting on his throne. “Biggerstaff, one of your recruits slaughtered mass numbers of probationary Dragons and staff on your watch, which should be punished with downranking. However, because of your swift and decisive coup over the Contrails’ most powerful Van Diemann members and the resulting scramble by many of our local rivals to negotiate treaties largely in our favor, I promote you to rank 5.”

Biggerstaff bowed again. “Thank you, Almighty Shogun Genkei.”

“Death cultivator.” Shogun Genkei’s golden cat-eyes locked on me. “Any good reason you murdered over a hundred Dragons?”

Hearing a ballpark figure was like getting sucker punched. A smug feeling radiated off Hungry Ghost’s prison.

I glared down at the woodgrain in the dais. “No.”

“You don’t act like the typical power-mad Death cultivator.”

“I’m not right now.”

“Because if there was a good reason for it,” he rumbled, “and you weren’t just murdering for the hell of it like a mindless feral, then I wouldn’t have to put you down like one.”

Biggerstaff cleared his throat. “If I may, Almighty Shogun. The members the Death cultivator killed were plotting treachery. There was a smaller skirmish in the locker rooms several days before, with the Jianjiao agent I informed you of. Mr. Hake killed him, then when he learned of the involvement of the larger group, he took immediate steps to protect the organization.”

My hands twisted in their mesh cage as Yoki’s jackal face flashed through my brain, along with the Rata twins, and even that shark lady. They’d just been trying to get a decent spot in this gang, doing what Biggerstaff and the Dragons told them to.

“Those guys weren’t traitors,” I snapped. “They actually cared about this crap.”

The Shogun roared, and overwhelming pressure slammed me facedown on the floor. My nose broke, gushing blood. The eight-legged dragon tattoo on my arm flared hotter as the script repaired the damage.

“I thought you were acting too sane for a Death cultivator,” the tiger snarled. “If you’re not going to accept an out when it’s handed to you, there’s nothing we can do with you.” He pointed a huge white paw at me. “It can’t be reasoned with. Kill it.”

The geisha to the left of his throne drifted forward, pulling a thin sword from her sleeve. The blade hissed out of the silk. Light glinted off the folded steel.

I clenched my hands together tighter and breathed out Last Light, Last Breath, pretty sure this really was my last one.

“Apologies, Almighty Shogun Genkei!” Kest’s voice made the bottom drop out of my stomach. I shut my eyes, wishing she would magically disappear to somewhere far away and safe, but she went on talking. “Please, powerful and respected leader of the Eight-Legged Dragons, withhold your executioner for just a minute. There is a piece of information you haven’t been made aware of.”

Her boots scuffed the floor as she came forward. I reopened my eyes, watching her pass me and kneel at the foot of the dais, pressing her forehead to the bottom step. The sword geisha looked down at her emotionlessly.

“I don’t have unlimited patience, Selken,” the Shogun snarled. “What is it I need to know?”

Kest straightened up and held out her real hand to the sword geisha. In her fingers, a business-card-sized piece of platinum caught the light.

It was the favor card from the train, the one I’d taken from the mantis, along with Sushi’s bottle and Warcry’s fan.

The geisha took the platinum card and brought it to Shogun Genkei.

He frowned down at it, turning it over in his paw. “How did you get this?”

“It’s not mine, Almighty Shogun, it’s Hake’s,” Kest said. “It grants him a single unconditional favor from Emperor Takeshi-ketsu, Eight-Legged Dragon Double-0. The card was redeemed as a full pardon an hour ago. Right now, the Emperor’s people are on the way from Shinotochi-Ryu to collect the redeemed favor card along with Hake and the rest of us. Given the likelihood of a full-scale gang war with the Heavenly Contrails over the broken treaty, the Emperor wants a Death cultivator close.”

The Shogun’s lips peeled back to show huge, yellowed fangs, and the pressure doubled, flattening the air out of my lungs. Kest grunted as it shoved her back down to a kowtowing position.

“Confirm that,” Shogun Genkei ordered.

Both the guys at the desks started swiping at their HUD screens. The one on the right came up with an answer first.

“The Emperor’s transport will be waiting outside the Van Diemann atmosphere two days from now. Any CPA guard ships in the area will be taken care of. They want the Selkens, the Burning Hatred cultivator, and the Death cultivator, and they assure us that the Van Diemann leg of the Dragons will be rewarded handsomely for bringing these treasured finds to the Emperor’s attention.”

The Shogun swiped his paw over his head like he was smoothing his hair back. The pressure disappeared, and I sucked down a huge breath.

With a rumbling growl, he muttered, “Tell the Emperor that Shogun Genkei lives to serve the Eight-Legged Dragons.”

Solitary Confinement

I WANTED TO TALK TO Warcry, Kest, and Rali, but for the next two days, we were kept in separate rooms, on different floors.

The isolation probably sucked most for Rali since he didn’t have a HUD and hated having no one to talk to. He’d told me once he could cultivate wherever he was content, which was everywhere, but now he couldn’t even do that because I’d gotten his Spirit sea destroyed.

Like she was trying to make up for Rali not being able to talk to anyone, Kest messaged me a lot while we were locked apart. She told me how she’d seen another platinum favor card while she was on Shinotochi-Ryu, and the owner had explained where it’d come from. She’d had ours verified at a pawnshop to make sure it was legit. Apparently, she’d been about to tell me when everything went nuts and suddenly the only thing anyone could talk about was three Dragon recruits who had started a gang war. It had taken some bribing of her Technol superiors, but they’d eventually agreed to let her put off her probationary mission to check on her brother. She’d contracted Naph to smuggle her back onto Van Diemann, where she finally got in touch with Warcry and found out what was going on.

She didn’t mention me slaughtering Contrails or turning on my own gang. I should’ve been happy that she didn’t bring it up, but for some reason, her ignoring it twisted a knife in my guts. Killing one guy who was trying to kill me made sense, at least according to her logic. I couldn’t see how she would justify nuking hundreds of people who hadn’t even been close to me. Maybe she couldn’t, and that was why she didn’t want to talk about it.

So, I went along with it. Talked to her about other stuff, like the biotech in her new arm and the prototype leg she’d built for Warcry and what we could do to help Rali with his broken Spirit sea. Every now and then, I thought about what Rali had said around the campfire about never wanting to become that guy again whose entire worth was invested in his kishotenketsu. I wondered whether he wasn’t a little bit relieved that it was broken, but I didn’t say anything about that to Kest. She seemed determined to find a way to repair him.

Mixed in with all the other stuff, there were some really good messages. The kind that derailed every awful thought in my brain. Stuff about Kest wanting to be together where we could hold hands and kiss again. Those usually came in at the end of the conversation, just before she went to bed. I kept coming back to them later and rereading them, trying to burn them into my skull forever.

I didn’t sleep much over those two days. One, because I’d just come out of a weeklong medically induced coma, and two, because every time I closed my eyes, flashes from the massacre in the Heartchamber crashed around in my head. Contrails and Dragons dropping dead, Warcry on the executioner’s block, Rali’s intestines hanging out of his stomach.

Some of the lockdown I spent doing taiji and body conditioning, and I ate a ton to replenish the calories the Dragon script tattoo was burning through trying to heal the festering knife scars in my side. But mostly, I cultivated.

I hadn’t done much real cultivating since the day I’d found Hungry Ghost, but I was going to have to get better at it now that I didn’t have him to fall back on. There was no Miasma there—part of the reason my script tattoo had to resort to calories for healing—so I practiced taking in other Spirit types and converting them. I could see why no one did that unless they had to. The process took time and concentration, and it was exhausting. I usually finished a conversion session soaked in sweat.

Considering the way Warcry had acted during the audience with the Shogun, I’d assumed the ginger wasn’t interested in talking to me, but near the end of the second night, a message from him came in.

This ain’t over with the Bailiff just ’cause we’re going off-planet, grav. He might be here for life, but that don’t mean he can’t find a way to come after us. I still got most of three years to serve, and I’m busting out same as you lads. He’s just psycho enough to do the same.

I sat there staring at the message on the cracked screen of my Winchester for a long time. I wanted to believe that leaving the planet meant the Bailiff couldn’t get at us anymore, that we’d be out of his reach, but I knew Warcry was right.

Strangely, I wasn’t worried. Part of me wanted the Bailiff to come after us. When he did, I’d show him I wasn’t the same weak, stupid kid who’d been dropped on Van Diemann a couple months ago. Hungry Ghost might’ve been lying about a lot, but he’d been telling the truth about at least one thing—you couldn’t leave enemies alive. I got that now.

If the Bailiff comes after you guys, I’ll finish this, I replied.

Warcry didn’t get back to me after that.

The pockmarked knife scars in my side never stopped hurting. I froze out the nerves, but that only lasted so long. The Eight-Legged Dragon script tattoo burned a constant low red heat, trying to heal the spot, but it couldn’t repair the knotted tissue there.

Devil Corruption, Hungry Ghost whispered, but when I tried to get him to explain or tell me more, he just sent me thoughts of a coffin with a padlock on it and me holding the key.

But there was no way I was letting him out. I’d been relying on him and everybody else for too long anyway. I would find out more about Devil Corruption myself.

Ride off into the Night Sun

I WAS WORKING ON CONVERTING some Stone Spirit from the walls of my fancy cell when I felt Biggerstaff’s suppression clamp down on my sea. A minute later, he and the crowd of silent geishas showed up.

“Moving day,” Biggerstaff said, grinning. “Ready to break out of prison?”

“You’re awfully happy.” I grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat off my face and chest, then went back to the bed platform for my shirt. “Are you busting out with us?”

“Better,” the catfish said. He waved a hand at himself. “You’re looking at Van Diemann’s new Eight-Legged Dragon 3. As part of her power play, Miss Iye Skal let it slip to the Emperor that I recruited the most powerful Death cultivator since Khan Daichi.”

Even through the suppression, I felt Hungry Ghost twitch at the name.

I jerked my shirt on. “You better have paid her for it. No more b.s. hidden disclaimers like with Warcry’s contract.”

Biggerstaff chuckled that croaking catfish laugh.

“There’s still a lot of Technol ground left for her to cover, but don’t worry, she’ll get everything agreed upon. She’s well worth every credit. The Selkens are one race that knows instinctively how to keep exactly who they want in power.”

I stomped my boots on. “ELD 3 is a long way from Shogun. I wouldn’t really say you’re in power.”

It was a lame jab, but I was hung up on the fact that he was sending Kest back to spy some more.

Biggerstaff’s whiskers twitched, and he did something on his HUD.

My Winchester buzzed. He’d sent me a message so the geishas wouldn’t hear what he’d wanted to say.

The next time you see me, don’t be surprised if I am Shogun.

In the corner of the message was a three-second countdown. When it hit zero, the message disappeared. I checked the Trash, but there wasn’t any sign of it. Biggerstaff wasn’t dumb enough to leave a paper trail.

“Turn around and lace your fingers behind your back,” the catfish said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Once my hands were trapped inside that wire mesh cage, the geishas led us out of the room, escorting me through the halls like I was Hannibal Lecter. Instead of a straightjacket and a face mask, I got a muzzle on my Spirit and a cage on my hands.

“So, are you supposed to stay with me forever?” I asked Biggerstaff. “Make sure I never use Death Spirit unless it’s pointed at whoever the Dragons want dead?”

“Just until you’re safely loaded into the Shinotochi ship,” he said. “From there on out, you’re the Emperor’s problem.”

The geishas led us through a series of switchbacks following a steady upward pitch. Eventually, we passed through an ugly stone foyer and out a huge set of double doors onto a wide portico.

I squinted and blinked until my pupils adjusted to the day suns’ light. Through the stone columns, the view was nothing but grassy sand dunes, sharp rocks, and thundering surf surrounded by miles of ocean.

I’d never smelled seawater before that, but the second the breeze hit my nose, I knew that was the salt tang everybody always talked about.

Kest, Rali, and Warcry were hanging around one of the columns, talking in low voices. Rali had a new walking stick and was bouncing it between his hands while he talked. Warcry shook his head and interrupted whatever Rali was saying. Kest stared out at the ocean like it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

I swallowed and stopped a couple yards away. Getting perp-walked out to your friends is bad enough when you’re not the reason they were locked up for two days straight. Probably longer for Rali and Warcry, since Biggerstaff had dragged them along with me after the massacre. If I were them, I would’ve hated me for getting them into this.

But when Warcry saw me, he just jerked his chin at me. “How about ya, grav?”

He didn’t look or sound angry. Not any angrier than usual, anyway.

A little of the tension drained out of my shoulders.

I nodded. “Are you guys all right?”

“All right?” Rali clapped me on the back like he didn’t even notice my arms were locked behind me. “We’re great now. The gang’s all here!”

A smile tugged at the corners of my mouth. “You’re even happier than Biggerstaff.”

“He’s just hyper because he’s got someone to talk to again,” Kest said, slipping her arm through mine.

I squeezed it against my side, ridiculously glad that she was doing this weird version of holding my hand instead of telling me to get lost and that I was a horrible person.

She smirked at her twin. “The last couple days’ solitary confinement probably drove him crazy.”

“I prefer to think of it as voluntary confinement. Sort of like an enforced seclusion.” Rali held open the pocket of his raggedy cutoff shorts. “Besides, I had plenty of company.”

Purple and white scales glimmered, and Sushi peeked out. When she saw me, she giggled and swam out, doing circles around my head.

“Grady!” she yelled in my ear.

I laughed. I couldn’t pet her with my hands locked up, so I cocked my head to bump it against hers.

“Thanks for keeping Rali company,” I said.

“Sushi talks to Rali,” she said, swimming around to look me in the face.

“A lot, actually.” Rali rested his chin on top of his walking stick. “She’s a very interesting conversationalist. I think a few more speech lessons and she’ll be able to tell me how she managed to cultivate a Spirit sea and specialization of her own.”

“Are you going to try to make a new one?” I asked, leaning around Sushi so I could see him.

He shrugged. “You never know.”

“’Course he is!” Warcry punched Rali in the arm a few times. “He’s got to get back after it, the bleeder.”

Rali laughed and shrugged off Warcry’s shots. “It’s just an idle thought right now.”

Out on the horizon, the night sun was just starting to reach into the sky, painting the edge of the ocean with orange and magenta. Even though it was another sun coming up, it meant the same thing as a sunset on Earth. Night was closing in.

We weren’t anywhere near a bog, but I caught a whiff of rotting flesh and rancid mud. The image of an army of ferals climbing up out of the muck, digging their way out of a caved-in Heartchamber 2, played through my brain.

“Hey.” Kest’s voice was so low it almost got lost in Rali and Warcry’s messing around. “Are you all right?”

What do you say to something like that?

“Yeah.” I put a smile on my face. “Fine.”

She looked like she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t push it.

“Then check this out.” She held up her metal arm, and in a clear voice, she said, “Coffee Drank.”

A can appeared in her metal hand.

“Whoa.” My eyebrows jumped up, and you could tell from the look on her face that that was exactly the right reaction. “How did you do that?”

“I integrated the storage ring.” She made the Coffee Drank disappear again. “The script was kind of fiddly, but I finally found a way to make it work without having to hold my arm to my forehead.”

The wind kicked up, coming in off the water so hard it made the waves explode against the rocks. Goosebumps prickled across my back and arms, and I shivered.

Kest saw me and leaned against my side, turning on her Hot Metal Spirit. The way she felt was a much better distraction than her new arm. I twisted my hands inside the mesh, wishing I could put an arm around her, but she kind of snuggled into me. That warmed me up a lot faster than the Spirit.

“Thanks,” I said, meaning not just for the heat.

She shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal and went back to her HUD like we did this all the time, hanging out with one of us in handcuffs.

“Wonder if there’s a way to have me mail forwarded,” Warcry said, squinting out at the rising night sun.

I thought back to the package he’d sent off with the fan inside.

“Expecting something?” I asked.

He scowled and shook his head. “Nah, just talking out the side of my face. Nobody knows I’m sneaking out aheada me sentence, do they.”

“Better hope not,” I said. “Where I’m from, if they catch you, they drag you back and add time.”

The wind shifted, coming straight down from overhead. Tufts of dune grass around the castle portico whipped around and flattened out. A long boxy spacecraft—not rounded like the CPA twinkie that had dropped me and Warcry off on Van Diemann—set down. Pneumatics hissed, and a ramp unfolded from the side, the whole thing making a weird geometric silhouette against the rising night sun.

“That’s our ride,” Kest said.

She and Rali led the way onto the shuttle. Biggerstaff and the geishas watched me until the ramp clanged shut between us.

Sitting down was awkward with my arms trapped behind me, but Kest helped me buckle in, then strapped herself into the seat next to me, while Rali and Warcry sat across from us.

With a rumble, the transport lifted off, driving up at an angle toward the night sun. Even though we were technically riding off into another sunrise, not a sunset, the Westerns Gramps and I used to watch came to mind anyway.

We hadn’t stopped any cattle rustlers or saved any towns. If you counted the Heavenly Contrails’ location and the Heartchamber, we had destroyed one, and I’d killed almost every living creature in the other. By the time the whole thing was done, I’d gone from being the guy trying to do the right thing and rescue people to the one murdering everybody. No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t frame myself as the good guy in the white hat.

My stomach twisted, and I squeezed my locked-up hands together tighter like I was praying. I’d screwed up so much already. Done so much that would break Gramps’s heart. I had to do better. I would do better.

“Oh, Rali, guys!” Kest tapped my knee to get my attention, then pointed at the night sun shining through the little porthole. “Watch this!”

A shower of bright green sparks rolled across the window, making a crackling sound like static electricity. Here and there, they started grouping together and turned into watery-looking arcs, dancing back and forth across the boxy hull of the ship.

Rali shook his head in awe. “I’m sorry I ever doubted your grand plans, Kest. That was worth leaving Van Diemann for.”

Kest sat back, trying not to look smug.

As the planet slid away beneath us, the strange green lights rolled off the ship and dropped into space. I leaned back in my seat, watching them disappear.

After a few seconds, Rali bumped my boot with his walking stick. “You look way too serious for a man who just escaped a prison planet, Hake.”

“Yeah, grav,” Warcry said, sneering at the window. “You don’t see me pining after that rubbish rock, do ya?”

“Just wondering what’s up ahead,” I said.

“Shinotochi-Ryu,” Kest said. “Probably even an audience with the Emperor of the Eight-Legged Dragons at some point. You are his shiny new Death cultivator, after all.”

“Right.” The Emperor’s Death cultivator in an oncoming gang war.

As the little transport shuttle rocketed us away from Van Diemann, I stared out the window and promised Gramps that I would figure out how to become the guy in the white hat somehow.

Books, Mailing List, and Reviews

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Looking for more awesome cultivation, and need it right this minute? Check out: Hollow Core (School of Swords and Serpents Book 1). Or keep reading to take a sneak peek.

***

JACE WARIN NEVER WANTED anything more than to attend the School of Swords and Serpents to escape the labor camps and restore his family's stained honor.

But the determined young martial artist soon discovers the school he's always dreamed about is teeming with secret plots and sinister designs. To survive, he will have to master long-lost jinsei techniques, repair his wounded soul, and face down a most unexpected enemy: The Academy's ruthless headmaster and cunning professors.

Hollow Core is the first book in the School of Swords and Serpents series, a tale of wuxia adventure, cultivation mastery, and lurking threats.

***

Chapter One: The Champion

THE APPEARANCE OF A full-fledged member of the Resplendent Suns in the arena had whipped the crowd into a frenzy. He was larger than life, a mountain of a young man with channels so filled with jinsei that his blond hair practically stood on end from the energy coursing through his flesh and bones. His white gi shone like a beacon against the ancient polished wood beneath his calloused feet, and the bold scrivenings that ran down each of his sleeves blazed with so much sacred light they seemed to have been poured from molten gold.

I’d never seen an Empyreal before, but now I understood why the defender clans thought they were better than the rest of us.

They were.

But that didn’t mean I couldn’t defeat one of them. And if I ever wanted to earn a place at the famed School of Swords and Serpents and heal my wounded core, I’d have to beat the man at the heart of the arena.

The trip from the undercity had taken far longer than I’d anticipated, and by the time my mother and I had reached the arena, it was already packed to the rafters with rowdy spectators who’d overflowed their seats and formed a human traffic jam in the aisles between the bleachers. While it wasn’t the most honorable thing to do, I forced my way through the crowd and ignored their angry shouts and curses. These strangers could be angry at me, I didn’t care. My only chance for a brighter future was to reach the registrar before the challenger window closed.

For a fatherless son from a disgraced family, that chance was too valuable for me to miss.

“Watch where you’re going!” A fat man shouted at me as I brushed against his back on my way down the steps toward the arena’s floor.

“I am!” Before he could shout another insult, I’d already pushed three rows deeper into the crowd.

“You’re going to hurt someone.” My mother didn’t shout, but her sharp, crisp voice reached my ears with ease, as if we weren’t surrounded by thousands of howling fight fans. “Slow down. Move through the crowd, not against it.”

“There isn’t time!” I’d begged my mother to please, please let me register early for the Five Dragons Challenge. Unfortunately, she’d refused to even consider letting me take the challenge until after she’d drilled me relentlessly on the defensive techniques that we’d already worked on for most of my life. We’d spent years preparing for this day, but when the time came to leave for the arena she still wasn’t satisfied with my progress. I’d had to threaten to leave without her before she’d agreed to come with me, and now we were almost out of time. “There’s only twenty minutes left.”

I clutched the coinpurse under my shirt tight to my chest and pushed my way another row closer to the arena. We were still ten rows above the arena’s floor when another roar swept through the crowd. The challenger, a guy my age with a face prematurely lined from too much time spent in a labor camp and a whipcord thin body to match, had made his way into the ring. He was a good foot shorter than the Resplendent Sun and gave up at least thirty pounds to his opponent. Despite their size difference, the challenger exuded an aura of street-hardened confidence that I’d seen often in the undercity.

The Empyreals kept the best food for their warriors. As the defenders of the mortal realms it was imperative that they be well-fed and rested to face the incursions of hungry spirits who tried to devour the Empyrean Flame that fueled the word. A lifetime of extra calories and better medical care made the clan members bigger than the rest of us, stronger, and gave them the time they needed to practice and perfect techniques that we laborers could only dream about.

I knew why the laborer was confident, because he and I saw the world through the same eyes.

Despite all the advantages the Resplendent Sun possessed, the challenger had spent most of his life fighting for anything he wanted or needed. The challenger didn’t see an oversized mountain of a man in front of him, he saw a soft Empyreal who’d never had to knock out a neighbor for a scrap of maggoty bread to keep himself from starving. The clans fought because it was their duty and their honor. We fought because our lives demanded it.

“Honored guests!” The announcer unleashed the words in a jinsei-boosted shout that reached every ear in the arena. He must have put something other than simple volume behind the greeting, as a wave of calm rippled through the crowd. Rowdy voices lowered, and every eye focused on the black-robed speaker who stood between the two combatants. I recognized the man as Ben Oolou, a local politician who hailed from the Disciples of the Jade Flame clan. “Welcome to the Five Dragons Challenge! Our first contender is Hau-Lin Gray, who hails from the harvest camps outside our fair city.”

Mr. Oolou paused, and the hometown crowd offered their contender a few feeble shouts of encouragement. Sadly, most of the spectators were from the overcity, and they did not really want any of the laborers to succeed. Every one of us who escaped the labor camps thanks to the challenge would damage the profits of those who watched us fight, and to them even a miniscule loss was too much to bear.

“And here we have the School’s champion, Hank Eli, straight from the overcity of the Resplendent Suns. Give it up for Hank, who’ll face all of our contenders today.”

The Empyreal initiate thrust both fists toward the sky, and the scrivenings on his sleeves crackled like living flames. He turned in a slow circle, letting every member of the crowd soak in his glory, and then stopped, facing his opponent. Hank’s aura flared up from his shoulders like fiery wings, and I marveled at the intensity of the jinsei that surrounded him.

Hank bowed low to his opponent, eyes never leaving Hau-Lin. It would be dishonorable for the challenger to strike before the bout had officially begun, but the champion wasn’t taking any chances. Those of us who had no clans were already considered without honor, and a desperate man might hope to strike the champion down and succeed at the challenge even at the risk of his reputation.

Hau-Lin, it turned out, was an honorable man. The challenger returned the champion’s bow so deeply his forehead almost bumped the arena’s wooden planks. He maintained this posture of deference for long seconds after the Resplendent Sun had straightened, then rose into a wide-legged stance with his arms raised like a boxer. It was an unorthodox combination of a traditional grounding stance to gather jinsei from the earth and a street fighter’s defense.

“His training is poor,” my mother whispered. She took me by the elbow and guided me through the crowd to the next row. Where I’d stomped and shoved, she flowed through the crowd like water. “And his stance will not gather the power he needs to withstand the fury of the Resplendent Sun. Do not make the same mistake when your time comes.”

Members of the clans had great experience accumulating and cultivating the jinsei, or life energy, that surrounded them. As children, they were trained to focus this mystical energy in their cores and used it to fuel their powerful techniques.

Those of us outside the clans never received such advanced training. A few of us could still bend jinsei to our will for small things, and a handful of clanless prize fighters had even mastered some basic jinsei art techniques to give themselves an edge over their less-skilled opponents.

But jinsei was tricky, and a master could turn a student’s own energy against him. If Hau-Lin relied on his life energy to defeat the Resplendent Sun, it would be like trying to defend himself from a forest fire with a matchstick.

Personally, I had never learned a true stance, my fighting style was intended for children, and the only technique I’d mastered was a foundation breathing technique. I was so overmatched by the champion that he could kill me without breaking a sweat.

Fortunately, I’d planned ahead. I still had a chance.

The five dragons painted on the floor of the arena began to glow with vibrant colors. By the time my mother and I were five rows from the raised platform, the red and green dragons were already filled with brilliant light. When all five of the dragons were lit, the contender would be in for the fight of his life.

Both combatants watched the dragons and focused their breathing into smooth and even cycles. Every breath they drew into their lungs brought jinsei with it, and every exhalation expelled impurities from their cores and strengthened their bodies for the battle ahead. Even at this distance, the expansion and contraction of their auras was plain to me, as was the fact that the ghostly light that surrounded Hank was many times brighter and more expansive than Hau-Lin’s.

The crowd was thicker near the bottom of the rows of seats, and my mother and I had to force our way through ever-tightening knots of spectators who had no desire to give ground. My mother was a gentle woman, but I saw her hands jab into the sides of several people who wouldn’t let her pass. The blows, which seemed more like gentle taps than any punch I’d ever thrown, had just banished a yelping group of college kids when a gasp rippled through the crowd.

The last dragon had blazed to life, and the challenger and champion were surrounded by a circle of neon-bright spirits. The representations of the five sacred dragons who had formed the Empyreal clans were hungry for jinsei to be spilled, and they licked their chops with forked tongues as they prowled the edges of the fight.

In the undercity, the first man to strike is often the only man to strike. The challenger’s experience in street fights had taught him that lesson well.

With an explosive cry Hau-Lin thrust the jinsei from his core out into his legs. The burst of sacred energy pushed his muscles past their normal limits and hurled him toward the Resplendent Sun with astonishing speed and force. The instant the challenger landed in front of Hank, he squared his shoulders and unleashed a brutal uppercut.

Hau-Lin put his entire body and every shred of jinsei he could muster into that blow. Serpents of crimson light exploded from his aura and reinforced his arm and fist with strands of sacred energy that sparked and twitched with supernatural life. It was a powerful, beautiful attack, and I couldn’t imagine how the champion could survive its impact.

The Resplendent Sun didn’t try to block the attack or deflect its force. One moment his chin was a hairsbreadth from shattering violence, and the next he twisted his body away from the attack in a blur. The devastating strike that could so easily have shattered his skull instead passed by his chin with inches to spare.

Hau-Lin could only watch in horror as his all-or-nothing assault whiffed through his opponent’s aura with a crackling hiss, like a splash of water dropped into a red-hot iron skillet. The serpents of light around his arm and fist faded to pale ribbons as the jinsei he’d expended in the attack dissipated into the air. The challenger was twisted so far out of position, I knew there was no way he could erect a defense in time to stop Hank’s counterattack.

The Empyreal’s torso flowed back into position over his planted feet with a sinuous, predatory grace. His hands dropped until his knuckles were even with his hips, and the crowd went silent as we waited for the attack we knew was coming.

Hank’s left hand speared forward to strike under Hau-Lin’s exposed ribs. The perfect blow hammered the challenger’s core, and concentric rings of jinsei blasted out of the defenseless man’s body like a supernatural shock wave. The sacred light fueled the dragon spirits, and they whirled into frenzied flight to catch every thread of jinsei before it could fade away.

With the last of his sacred energy driven out of his core, Hau-Lin went limp. His knees buckled, his eyes closed, and he collapsed like an empty garbage bag. The seasoned fighter had thrown the most powerful punch of his life, and it hadn’t been enough to defeat his foe.

Before Hau-Lin’s body reached the floor, Hank’s other fist drove up into the challenger’s midsection. The strike landed with a crunch that echoed through the arena, and the power of the attack folded the challenger over the champion’s fist and lifted his feet a full yard off the polished wooden floor.

Hank unleashed a furious blast of fire-aspect from his core. It traveled through his torso and arm in a pulse of hellish power so bright it made my eyes water. Every scrap of power in Hank’s body poured through that punch and slammed into Hau-Lin’s core like a lance of white-hot lava.

Jinsei channels blazed like forked tongues of flame under Hau-Lin’s skin as the fire jinsei overloaded his core and rushed through his system. For a moment, every channel in the challenger’s body shone through his skin. The pure white life energy that filled those channels was driven out by the flood of fire, and Hau-Lin screamed in primal agony.

Dozens of the sacred life channels flared with a light as bright as a sun, then fractured with a sound like a hundred mirrors breaking and went dark.

My mother’s hand tightened around my wrist. We both stared wordlessly at the fallen challenger and tried not to think about how severely he’d been damaged.

A chill ran up my spine at the realization that Hau-Lin had been a much stronger fighter than me. Suddenly, my secret weapon no longer seemed adequate to defeat the Empyreal champion. My thoughts chased themselves in circles as I desperately sought a new plan.

The announcer rushed across the arena floor past the fallen Hau-Lin to grab Hank’s fist and raise it into the air. The crowd roared their approval at the stunning display of martial prowess while the spectral dragons who’d surrounded the fight nosed at Hau-Lin’s wounded form in search of any stray scraps of jinsei that might still be left within his unmoving body.

“This isn’t right.” My mother’s eyes narrowed and flashed like twin chips of polished jade. “The champions are not supposed to permanently damage the contenders. That boy’s core may never be whole again. His channels may never recover.”

As much as I hated to admit it, my mother was right. That savage display went far beyond any of the televised Five Dragons Challenges I’d watched growing up. There’d been plenty of bloody noses, chipped teeth, and even a few broken limbs, but never anything more serious than that. These fights were supposed to let those of us from outside the clans prove our worth to the martial arts academy and earn our spots as students. No one was supposed to get hurt, much less have their jinsei channels obliterated.

“Times have changed, Eve.” A man dressed in the ornate robes of an Empyreal clan elder had appeared in the row below his, and the weight of his aura had forced the crowd to shy away from him. His iron-gray hair and matching wedge of a beard sparked with threads of sacred power strong enough to light up half a city. The scrivenings on his lapels told me this was Grayson Bishop, the headmaster of the School of Swords and Serpents.

He was one of the five sacred sages, the most powerful men in the world.

And he spoke my mother’s name like he’d known her for years.

“Why?” My mother held her ground as Grayson stepped so close that his aura surrounded hers. “What purpose does it serve to have your champion break a child?”

“The School wishes to raise the caliber of our students.” Grayson gave a slight shrug, as if to say the fate of those who found themselves injured or killed by the challenge didn’t bother him in the slightest. “This seems the most certain way to weed out the pretenders and fools before they can pollute our fine institution with their degenerate ways.”

Grayson’s eyes focused on me with the intensity of a spotlight. His attention burrowed into my aura and plucked at the edges of my core like a man inspecting the quality of a tool he planned to buy.

It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to stand firm next to my mother. I wasn’t about to let any man, not even the head of the academy I so desperately needed to attend, push me off the path I’d chosen.

For a moment, the elder’s gaze wavered, and his forehead wrinkled with concentration. My mother had warned me that my core might be evaluated, but she had also told me few Empyreals would be able to understand the wound inside me. But as Grayson’s face darkened, I wondered if my mother had been wrong.

“We’re leaving.” Her hand closed around my wrist like a steel noose. “I did not bring my son here to be butchered for your amusement.”

“Then why bring him here at all, Eve?” Grayson’s smile hardened into a thin dark line across his face. “His core is weaker even than his father’s, and we both know how that ended. Did you really think this pup would stand a chance against my champion?”

A fiery tornado of thoughts whirled through my skull. One of the five sacred sages, men and women so powerful they might as well have been another species from the rest of us, knew my mother. He knew my father.

He knew me.

“Because I thought you were a man of honor, Grayson.” My mother pulled me past the headmaster with no more care than passing a beggar on the street.

“Listen to your mother, boy,” Grayson called after us. “My champion will break you even more easily than I broke your father for his crimes.”

The words stung my ears like a swarm of angry hornets. Shame reddened my cheeks and forced me to lower my head. My mother never told me what my father had done to earn death for himself and exile for what remained of his family. My father was a ghost that haunted our family, a spirit that had cursed us with a dishonor my mother had never been able to purge.

And, now, when I was so close to my chance to move beyond his sins and make a new life for myself, his specter had appeared again to turn the headmaster against me. A cold certainty settled over me, and I knew that if I left the arena there would be no escape from the chains my father’s crimes had wrapped around my throat. This was my one chance to prove that I was worthy of something more than exile in the undercity, that I was more than my dishonored father’s weak shadow.

Fighting Hank Eli might get me killed, but leaving without even trying to win the challenge would leave me trapped in a life without hope or possibility. I’d spend the rest of my days as a virtual slave, my body breaking down under the strain of the thankless labor that would consume my days.

I’d rather die.

“I’m not leaving.” My words were as cold and unmoving as the floor beneath our feet. In all my fifteen years, I’d never defied my mother before that moment.

“Don’t do this.” My mother held my wrist so tight her pulse pounded against mine. “Please.”

“You deserve more than this.” I leaned in until our foreheads touched. I needed her to understand how important this was to me. I needed her to know what it meant. “I deserve more than this. And you taught me I can win despite everything that’s wrong with me. I can bring honor to our name. I have to.”

“I would rather have a dishonored son who is alive than a dead son who is exalted.” My mother’s eyes pleaded with me to hear the sense in her words before I got myself killed. “There is more to a man’s measure than his honor, Jace.”

“If I run from this, how will I ever know if that’s true?” My hand slipped out of my mother’s nerveless grasp and I left her there, alone, to face my fate.

Continue reading Hollow Core here.

Acknowledgements

HEY, YOU MADE IT TO the end of another book! I’m so glad you’re here! Let me be the first to say thank you for reading. Hake’s story took a turn for the dark this time, but there’s a light up at the end of the tunnel, and he’ll get there eventually.

As anybody who’s ever published a book can tell you, this process requires a lot more than just one crazy writer and a laptop. The hard work and support of dozens of people went into the making of Death Cultivator 2, and I can honestly say that you wouldn’t be holding this book in your hands or soul-trapping it on your Kindle if not for them. They are—in very esoteric but not significant order—

God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. The causal chain goes back pretty far on this one, but suffice to say I only got this far because of Them.

The Op Boys and Girl, Will, Ronny, and Kensey, who will always have my heart. I assume. They haven’t given it back yet, anyway.

The team at Shadow Alley Press—chiefs of things, directors of stuff, most valuable editors, and a bunch of all-around sketchy characters who make this writing business fun.

My wyrd and wonderful named patrons on Patreon—Joseph Ottinger, Jess D. Astra, Loren Valliant, Austin Gibbs, MagicWafflez, Ryan Owens, Gabriel Boudreau, julius, Max MacLean, Will McKeon, Beldium, and evan peat—and my wyrd and sneaky unnamed patrons. I see you over there.

Tim McBain and LT Vargus, two amazing authors whose books everybody should be reading. They’re also really cool. Like, minus ten degrees before windchill cool.

And my Joshua, who makes my Spirit resonate like a tuning fork.

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Copyright

Death Cultivator 2 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2020 by eden Hudson and Shadow Alley Press, Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher, subject line “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the email address below.

JStrode@ShadowAlleyPress.com

About the Author

I am invincible. I am a mutant. I have 3 hearts and was born with no eyes. I had eyes implanted later. I didn't have hands, either, just stumps. When my eyes were implanted they asked if I would like hands as well and I said, "Yes, I'll take those," and pointed with my stump. But sometimes I'm a hellbender peeking out from under a rock. When it rains, I live in a music box.

But I'm also a tattoo addict, coffee junkie, drummer, and aspiring skateboarder. Jesus actually is my homeboy.

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