Mcmolly

Amygdala Circuit

It was so quiet. How could a place like this be so quiet? Even the crackling hills seemed muted in Quinn’s ears. The shroud tugged at her, worried—Not safe it muttered, but it wasn’t the same certainty as before. It wasn’t a warning, it was just…afraid. It was very, very afraid. And as Quinn continued to run, past the fires and rubble and the ichor, that voice sank down as well. The pain was fading, the panic, less so.

Dragon lay like a dead mountain. A waterfall of black blood poured from its half-gone face, spilling down its throat and pooling on the earth, staining it deeper than rain ever could.

As she drew closer, almost to the edge of that umbral lake, there was static in her ear.

“Quinn!”

Dahlia.

She was okay.

“Quinn! You’re—ohmygod—you’re alright! You—stop! Stay there, don’t come any closer to the ichor. I’m out, I’m on the—hold on!”

Moments later, Dahlia emerged into view, clambering over the Savior’s chest. She spotted Quinn, shrieked something unintelligible, and then hurried down. She was limping and as she drew closer there were clear bruises on her face, cuts from where the vents in her suit had snapped and broken. But she was alive, and so was Quinn.

Dahlia hit her like a missile, arms wrapping around her so tight and so fast it took them to their knees. She shrieked again, and this time it was clear that she was saying Quinn’s name, broken by thin air and heavy sobs.

Amygdala Circuit

Dragon was wild, possessed of every bit of bestial fury Quinn had seen in Roaki. Her long fingers swiped at the swordsman, and when she dipped or ducked his swings, her jaw would unhinge like a snake devouring an egg, and a beam of light would blast forth. But he was nimble, fast, he seemed to know what she would do the same instant she did, and every shot sailed past him.

Dahlia could feel herself speeding towards the threshold. The Circuit always seemed so eager to meet her, to speak, to take. The two ends were hands on her head, pressing, squeezing to come together, pressure ready to crush her skull and finally make itself whole again.

But she never slowed down.

The Modir was good, incredibly so. But then, it had crossed swords with Ghaust and won, and when she had dropped down into Hovvi, it had fled before she ever laid eyes on it. Skilled, smart, fast. She couldn’t outpace him, and she certainly couldn’t take a hit from that blade.

Her mind raced, as if employing the dead pulses of her Savior’s brain to work in tandem with her own. She thought quickly, as was the way when you only had minutes in the cockpit.

Not minutes now. Not even moments.

She passed the threshold. The hands began to squeeze. Dahlia grit her teeth as the light burned in her core, radiated from her like sunlight through blinds. It poured from her eyes, from her chest, it made her horns glow molten. The swordsman must have known—of course he did. He whirled his blade and struck for her heart, perhaps expecting her to duck it and put herself out of position to unleash another attack.

Instead, she let it run through her shoulder. The pain was blinding, the pressure on her temples was so strong she thought her ears might be bleeding. But she grabbed the blade near the hilt, and on the guard, and she held. Her mouth opened, a bouquet of flaming teeth and a maw as bright as the sun.

The swordsman’s grip loosened, his sword vanished into the air. His hands took hold of Dragon by the throat and he wrenched her to the ground, face-down. It took every effort in the world not to let the blast go, to let it turn her and him and everything within a mile into ash and void.

Quinn.

I won’t lose Quinn.

Dahlia swallowed fire for her sister.

It was pain she’d only ever felt a few times, and as it traveled down her throat she knew it would push her out of consciousness. So with a final, furious scream, she pulled herself free of the chair, and Dragon went limp.

The swordsman saw it, must have known she’d disconnected. He yanked her up from the ground and then threw her down again on her back. Dahlia slammed against the cockpit walls, crying out, tumbling against the seat and then down onto the floor. He dug his fingers into her mouth and ripped the Savior’s lower jaw clean off. Then, reeling back his fist, he made to punch clean through the skull.

That was when Quinn’s blast hit him. It exploded against his cloak, sending modium and ichor flying. When the smoke cleared there was a crater in his shoulder, and his arm hung by black threads.

He turned to her, red eyes furious—and when she looked back she saw only her own reflection.

Before Quinn could fire again, the swordsman was gone. Vanished into the void. Escaped, again.

The battlefield fell silent, for the battle was over.

Amygdala Circuit

From a Modir, even anguish sounded like death. Ablaze took Quinn’s pain, took that pitiful shriek and morphed it into the low and rumbling beginnings of a battle cry, and when her breath finally caught up with her fury, the roar it released laid low the very wind. She loosed her cannon with enough force to shatter the air with a CRACK that matched her volume. Above and around her, scores of drones faltered, slamming into one another from the shockwave and falling to the earth in pieces.

The cannon flipped end ‘round end, and with Ablaze not far behind it, it seemed that no matter what the swordsman did, it wouldn’t be able to avoid both of them.

Perhaps it was the pain, or the panic—both still dragged beneath the surface of her mind, both kicking wildly to emerge—but by the time Quinn would have noticed the cannon hurtling towards, and then through, its own reflection in the air, it was too late.

The swordsman swiped its blade up, and cleaved clean through the cannon. Unlike the axes, it did not combust and dissolve, its halves merely vanished, and Quinn could still feel it in the ether beyond, tied to her, ready to be reclaimed.

She could also see, between the two of them, the mirrorlike sheen of a second singularity, and the red eyes behind it.

It shattered out, and two Modir came barreling through, slamming into her. Ablaze’s war cry was snuffed as the air was ripped from her lungs. One of the monsters had spear-tackled her at the gut, and the other ‘round her chest. They brought her crashing to the ground, rolling end over end until they came to a stop and both were atop her.

One had a vicious pair of gauntlets around its forearms, ending in claws sharped and more wicked than either Ablaze or Blotklau’s. It used them to clutch Quinn’s arm, to pin it to the ground and pierce her skin at the wrist and shoulder.

The other bore a mace, which it used to pin her other arm down by the haft. It snarled in Quinn’s face, leaking slaver and ichor onto her. Kick and struggle as she might, against the weight of both monsters she was utterly, helplessly locked.

The swordsman approached, and came to stand with a foot on either side of her chest. Behind him Blotklau still lay motionless, steaming from the wound in her chest but, it seemed, nowhere else. Raising the blade high, the Modir brought it down fast and fierce—

—Into the dirt beside Ablaze’s head.

It knelt down, low. One hand came and clutched her by the face, claws digging into her jaw. It pulled her up enough for their faces to be close, enough for her to see into its deep, crimson eyes. Many moments it held her there. A low, gruff sound pushed smoke through its jagged teeth.

“You.”

A voice. A man’s voice, rough and low and brimming with contempt. Not a whisper, not a feeling at the edge of her consciousness, or a sense bubbling up from within her. That was a voice, real and clear and—it wasn’t in her mind.

“Who is that?” Besca shouted—she could hear it too? But of course she could.

It was in the comms channel.

“Who is that?” Besca repeated. Demanded. “Identify yourself!”

There was no ID, nothing to show, nothing to trace. Just an empty profile hovering beneath her own. The swordsman rumbled again, and Besca was suddenly ejected from the channel. Only Quinn and the stranger remained.

“Do you believe yourself safe, cowering in there?” he asked, though it seemed more as though he were thinking out loud. “Did you think you could hide from me?”

Twisting his hand, he brought the blade’s edge up against Ablaze’s neck. Quinn could feel it digging in, shallow now but for how much longer?

“I found you in Runa. I found you here. Quinnlash. Loughvein. Yes, I know you well.”

The swordsman let go of her face, stood up tall and pulled his sword from the earth. He held it in both hands, blade poised down over her head.

“This time you will not escape death.”

Something thrashed within her, so strong and so desperate it was like she could feel her own, plugged-in body convulse. Ablaze arched, pulled against the other Modir without Quinn’s will, but it was useless. The burning fuller shined in her eyes. The swordsman’s gaze was red doom.

“Get the fuck away from her!”

Something crashed into the ground behind Quinn, so hard and sudden that it blasted the four of them with the earthen gore of the hill it had cratered. The swordsman stepped back, vanishing in the storm of dust as the two Modir lunged away.

Finally free, the unwilling thrashing turned Ablaze onto her stomach before dying away. The cloud of debris settled, and rising up from it was the shape over another Modir. Tall, so devastatingly thin that its flesh seemed painted over its bones. Ribs burst freely from its chest, curled up and in like a calcified cuirass. Its spine was a mountain range of sharp, bulging ridges that carried on long past its back, into a black, spinal tail that ran almost as long as it was tall. Twin horns curved backwards from just above its ruby eyes, over its head and back into tips that curled upwards. It was horrifying, and monstrous, and was in every way a nightmare to behold.

It looked like a Dragon.

Her hands splayed out into long, thin fingers with too many digits. They burned with black light. She brought them up to her face, into her mouth, one hand down and one hand up, and then she pulled. Hard. Hard like she meant to rend her jaw apart, to tear her head in two. Instead the black light flashed, and her fingers pulled through her skin as if phasing right through it. In their wake, she had ripped her weapon into being.

It was her mouth.

A hundred razor teeth gleamed with ivory fire, the inside of her maw was ringed with light and steel and it carried to the outside of her jaw, like armor.

Dragon took a long, deep breath., head tilted towards the sky, jaw clamped shut. The brilliant light gathered in her throat, pooled in her mouth. The armor about her cheeks bulged with barely-contained power. The clawed Modir and the one with the mace charged, screeching fury and lusting for blood.

She lurched forward, and from her mouth shot a beam of pure white light, as thin as her withered limbs. It carved the clawed Modir in half, and carried on past it, where it pierced the distant hills, and then further, slicing the center mountain of the dividing range clean apart.

The Modir and the swordsman paused, then split. Quinn heard Dahlia scream bloody, enraged murder over the comes, and Dragon projected it in a high-pitched and gut-curling roar. She charged for the swordsman, crushing the clawed Modir’s head underfoot.

The Modir with the mace turned like it meant to aid the swordsman, but as if by some unspoken command, redirected its attention to Ablaze. It readied its weapon, raised it high, and charged.

Amygdala Circuit

The answer to both questions was yes.

“Quinn! Just hold on, I’m headed to the lift now, I’m—I’ll let it take me low enough for a good angle and then I’m dropping down! Just keep your distance!”

Strangely, that didn’t seem like it would be too difficult. The swordsman turned its body sideface as Quinn’s shot flew past it, exploding harmlessly on a distance hill. It matched her circling, and as the space grew between them it didn’t swerve to chase her. Instead, it reached down and plucked up one of the axes buried into the ground, not yet returned to the void. It stared at Quinn silently, and clutched the axe’s haft hard.

White flames burst to life on the head, as though activated. Only that couldn’t have been so—Modir never had two weapons. Did it mean to come at her with both? To make good on Roaki’s promise to gut her, to tear her limb from limb?

Evidently not. The flames on the axes grew brighter, spread from the blades down into the hilt, and burned deep. The swordsman’s grip closed harder, and there was a metallic keening sound, brief but sharp, before the blazing axe crumbled into embers. Far away, its twin collapsed into dust. It was nothing at all like how weapons were normally dismissed. What on Illun had it done?

She didn’t get much of a chance to wonder. Strange task done it kept walking, still staring straight at her but not a step towards her. Why? It had obviously come for a fight, and with the camp so far away, she was the only one—

It stopped over Blotklau, and before Quinn could even realize what it was doing, it lifted its sword high and plunged it down into the Savior’s chest. The fuller flared, the ichor that poured out from Blotklau’s heart burned and spewed silvery smoke. The swordsman tilted its head, pulled the blade free, and then repositioned it over the Savior’s face.

A Song of Ice & Fire: After the Spring

Lira Dayne

LIRA DAYNE

_{[ ⚔ ]House}

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House Dayne

_{[ ⚔ ]Birthdate}

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191 AC (20 years of age)

_{[ ⚔ ]Reputation}

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As the third of four children to Lord Gerrod Dayne, the Sword of the Morning, Lira’s greatest achievement for much of her life was simply being his daughter. Most believed she would go the way of her older sister Polleni, a courtly girl drawing in suitors from all manner of Dornish and Westerosi houses. It wasn’t until she returned from warding in Salt Shore with her brothers Uther and Micah that she began to distinguish herself.

By her sixteenth year, Lira was courted exactly three times, one of which had fallen through because the little lord had insulted her father at supper, and another had been using her as a means to flirt with her sister. The third, a proposal from House Dalt, had ended so disastrously that she didn’t receive another until her twentieth year, and by then it had become clear that she meant to follow her brothers’ path.

Their intentions were clear: prove themselves fit to succeed their father as Sword of the Morning. The three have gone their separate ways, in search of their own glories, and with Gerrod’s blessing and reputation behind them, they have found no shortage of people willing to accept their aid.

_{[ ⚔ ]Appearance}

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Lira is a tall woman who is most often found at least lightly armored, and with a sword either on her person or close at hand. Having grown up in the heat of Starfall and Salt Shore, she tends towards thicker and longer clothes on her foray north, finding even the temperate climates of Westeros to be just a bit brisk.

She has a pale, stone-Dornish complexion, and black hair that falls just past her shoulders. She carries herself with a confidence that she might have had to defend far more often, were it not for the colors and crest of her house upon her cloak. There’s a coldness to her eyes that belies the warmth and sincerity in her smile and words.

_{[ ⚔ ]History}

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Growing up the third child behind an aristocratic savant, and between two boys practically born with swords in their hands, Lira was able to shirk her house responsibilities for most of her youth. When she wasn’t sat with the maesters and septas, she was free to roam Starfall at her leisure. She spent most of that time shadowing her brothers, watching as father taught them how to swing a sword with the skill and grace expected of their house. She would mirror them, which Lord Gerrod found amusing at first, but he quickly grew tired of taking wasters away from her, only to find them stashed under her bed the next day.

Her mother, Pollenda Gargalen, was salt through and through, and wished to foster what she saw in Lira as good spirits. So, when her brothers Uther and Micah went off to ward in Salt Shore, she was sent along with them.

Lira enjoyed much more freedom under the care of her grandparents at Salt Shore. While she was still subjected to lessons in history and courtship, she was also able to spend her free time training with the masters of arms, learning many of the things she had always only been able to watch her brothers learn. She came to understand why the Salt Dornish were viewed as hot-blooded and temperamental, and as a child of ten, Lira was enthralled.

She took to the sword with a fervor that she hoped would have made even her father proud, training each day in the bright hours and often still into the dark. She nurtured childish dreams of the day she would return to Starfall, to astound her lord father and stand beside her brothers as a knight of House Dayne.

At thirteen, she and her siblings returned to their home. Though Uther and Micah had warmed to her desire for knighthood, Lord Gerrod was not swayed. He found it impossible to keep her from training alongside her brothers, but her salted temper cooled over time, and he insisted she entertain the few marriage proposals she received. By sixteen, that trickle of suitors had dried up, and Gerrod dismayed. It wasn’t until a late summer morning, where he watched Lira best Uther in a spar, that she finally saw a twinkle of pride return to her father’s eye.

He didn’t attempt to stifle her further, and her comradery with her brothers eventually evolved into a shared dream to be worthy of their family’s ancestral weapon, and the title that came with it.

Though Dorne had managed to emerge from the Spring Sickness unscathed, their Westerosi neighbors had been slaughtered by it. Lira saw opportunity in the rising of a new Vulture King, whose raids upon the weakened marcher lords threatened to sunder what little peace remained between the Stormlands and Dornish. If she could slay this bandit lord, quash the raids, and help ease tensions, perhaps she stood a chance at achieving her dream.

So, setting off for King’s Landing, Lira seeks to meet with her good-uncle, Maekar Targaryen, in the hopes of securing aid to help with her crusade in the marches.

_{[ ⚔ ]Family Tree}

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-Lord Gerrod Dayne: Lira’s father, lord of Starfall, and the Sword of the Morning.

-Pollenda Gargalen: Lira’s mother, the lady of Starfall.

-Uther Dayne: Eldest son of Gerrod and Pollenda.

-Delia Dayne: Eldest daughter of Gerrod and Pollenda.

-Micah Dayne: Youngest child of Gerrod and Pollenda.

Amygdala Circuit

Besca stared up at the screen, watching as Ablaze dropped to a knee and the light dimmed in its eye. Voices picked up around her again, but this time there was no cheering, just wild confusion. She…hadn’t done it. She hadn’t killed Roaki. But it was plain as day to anyone with eyes—and anyone watching through the hundreds of eyes in the sky—that Blotklau was down for the count.

Was this…allowed? It couldn’t be. Besca had never seen anything like this. Ever. There had been survivors before, but they’d lived through fluke, not mercy. You didn’t spare people in duels, it just wasn’t the way things were done.

And yet, it was done.

Her eye wandered to another screen, the news where a handful of unfortunate reporters who hadn’t gotten clearance to cover the duel were instead covering the minor twin singularities. Duds, apparently. They’d been open all morning and nothing had come through them. She’d never seen that before, either. What was that, then? Two miracles in a single day?

She smiled.

“Darroh!” Toussaint said, storming over to her. “Darroh what the hell is going on? What is she doing? It’s not over!”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“She’s not dead!”

Besca shrugged.

“So then get back on the line with her and tell her to finish the fucking job!”

“Nah,” she said, and walked past him, turning her attention to the crew. “Oi, go get my girl out of there. She won. We’re going home.”

---

---

The dark was cold and angry. It was thick, and tried to hold her down in the seat as if it had arms, as if the arms were hers. She could feel indignance from it, confusion, but mostly it was angry at her. How could she? How dare she? This was their purpose, this was what they had been born for.

LISTEN TO ME it raged, but beneath that it was pleading. DON’T GO

But Quinn went. She opened the cockpit’s door, and the daze from her phasing paired with how long she’d been in the pitch made the sun an angry glare for more than a few moments. Her thigh stung, but she could tell it and the little sore knicks across her body weren’t real, and with every moment the world grew clearer, the pain faded as well.

She walked out onto Ablaze’s shoulder, into a world of smoke and ash and dying ivory fires. And ichor. God, it was everywhere; splattered across her Savior’s body, pooling beneath Blotklau, and strewn all over the hills. A rank smell, metallic and…brine? Brine, and home. Paint—white paint on four walls no windows no doorknob no—

The shroud returned. It closed around her like a hug, grudging and unsatisfied, but present. It took hold of the burgeoning panic within her, as it had taken hold of her pain, and it sank. It sank deep into her mind, not to drown, but to tread water. With every moment, every breath she took, it grew more distant from her, and she more numb to it.

It would be back. We would face it together.

Staring off into the horizon, she could see little dots traversing the hills, drawing closer. They were coming to get her—to take her home.

She’d done it.

Quinnlash Loughvein had won her duel without taking a life. The drones swarmed above her, buzzing, excited. Something new had happened today, and it wasn’t clear yet, not to her, not to anyone, what that would mean.

But she’d done it.

It was actually over.

GET BACK INSIDE

So clear, it was almost like she was still connected. The words came to her with dreadfully familiar urgency, only last time, they’d said something else.

They’d told her to RUN

GET BACK INSIDE

QUINN GET BACK INSIDE. RECONNECT.

“—Quinn get back in! Get back in now!”

Besca’s voice was frightful, panicked. But what? What was it? Blotklau remained still behind her, and there was nothing else but the drones and the approaching convoy.

Except…except she couldn’t see the convoy anymore. She hadn’t lost it, she knew where it was coming from, but at the same time it was just…gone. No, not gone, hidden. There, some ways ahead of her, between her and them, the air was strange. Strange, and shimmering, almost mirrorlike. It flexed and undulated with liquid motions, but with every moment that passed she saw her own Savior’s reflection there, hovering in thin air as the edges around it grew more and more real.

THEY’RE COMING. GET. BACK. INSIDE.

Ablaze’s reflection changed. Its shape was different, its posture, and its eyes…red. Awake. The realization struck her then, on one side of the moment, that it wasn’t her reflection at all.

But it was familiar. So terribly familiar.

And on the other side of that moment, the air shattered, and a Modir came walking from the void of a singularity. It was tall, and donned from its shoulders was an iron cloak that ran down one side. In its uncovered hand it held a blade with a sharp cross guard and a fuller blazing with white light.

It was the swordsman.

Amygdala Circuit

The pavilion erupted. In sixteen years—hell, in her whole life—Besca had never heard so much noise from so few people. They cheered louder than the Helburkans’ dirge, louder, it felt, than the roar of Ablaze’s cannon. It was hard to tell how much of it was her own, but Besca was absolutely certain her throat would be raw tomorrow. In her ear, she heard Dahlia squeal and burst into sobs of joy, and god if it wasn’t the second time in too-fucking-soon that she didn’t have to fight back her own tears.

It was over. It was over, Quinn had won. She’d beaten an animal like Roaki Tormont, and in stunning time.

She’d survived.

She’d—

“Disconnect! Disconnect! Or I take the arm too!”

She hadn’t—

“Quinn!” Besca shouted. She hadn’t noticed how the people around her had fallen almost instantly silent as they all saw what was happening. Saw that it wasn’t over. “Quinn you have to—that’s not how it works. You have to…”

“KILL.” This was not a word between breathes, a ripple at the bottom of her mind. This was a voice in Quinn’s ears, as real as the screams it overshadowed. “KILL HER. YOU WON. KILL HER.”

Beneath her, Blotklau thrashed and low, warbling groans dribbled from its mouth. Roaki’s screams wavered between pure, hellborne rage and broken, agonized sobbing. The hand of her ruined arm clutched impotently at the earth, unable to do anything more than drag ditches into dirt and stone. She arched against the foot on her back, trying to turn herself over, but Quinn had her pinned at the elbow by her cannon. White hot fire and burning exhaust seared the flesh where it touched, digging deep, closer and closer to bone each moment.

“I—I’ll…” neural static fuzzed Roaki’s words, but they were choked nearly beyond intelligibility anyway. “No! N-no! Wuh…ghah…won’t…not…”

The harder Quinn pushed, the harder Blotklau pushed back. The popping, the sizzling of ichor, hollow snapping of great bones and the tearing of colossal tendons. Roaki’s enraged pain took on a panicked edge as the inevitable grew closer, and faster than even Quinn could realize.

“I’ll…kill…you!”

A final shriek overtook the awful sound of Roaki’s arm ripping apart at the elbow, raw, furious, as Blotklau torqued around, propped up on the shattered bones of her other arm, and lunged at Ablaze’s face, razor maw gaping and ready to clamp shut on her neck. But even with the element of surprise it wasn’t enough. She barely made it as high as her chest, snapping uselessly at nothing.

The air in Roaki’s lungs wore out. Blotklau shuddered, her head twitched, and then she fell back limp on to the dirt. The red lights of her eyes dimmed. Over the comms there was a soft, pitiful wail, and the sound of someone tumbling out of their chair. Then quiet.

“FINISH. IT.”

A shiver passed through Quinn’s body. Not her Savior, but hers. For the briefest of moments she was two beings, and that shroud that had wrapped her, protected her from the pain, now constricted her. It was almost like she was back in those early dreams, a passenger in her own body, only the driver couldn’t quite move it. She could feel Ablaze twitching, see herself repositioning the cannon over Blotklau’s head. She could still do it. It wouldn’t be hard, we could do it together. We can. We can kill her Quinn, it’s what she deserves. We hate her, don’t we? Helburke dog. Monster. Taker. She deserves it.

PULL. THE. TRIGGER. NOW.

Amygdala Circuit

Dahlia sat in the cockpit seat, hunched over the tablet, clutching it like a life raft in a storm. When the axe dug into Ablaze’s leg, she gasped loud enough to echo in the cramped, dark chamber. She had been ready to throw the screen aside and connect, wouldn’t have given it a second thought, but something stopped her. Not something she saw, not something she heard, but rather, something she didn’t hear.

She didn’t hear Quinn scream.

She heard her gasp, or grunt, maybe. She heard something but it wasn’t the cry of agony she’d expected. And when that absence gave her pause, she saw Ablaze right herself, almost immediately.

In a daze, Dahlia watched as Quinn dipped, ducked and deflected enough of Blotklau’s assault to keep herself alive. Then, in a sweeping arc, Ablaze’s leg came up, extended straight over her head like a clock struck noon. She might have been frozen there in that moment forever.

The leg came down. Hard. The toughened shin and modium scutes slammed down onto Blotklau’s shoulder with such speed and force it sent the Savior down to a knee, and the ground beneath her caved and the air cracked. Ichor sprayed the air, sprayed Ablaze, and Blotklau’s outstretched arm went limp.

Roaki screamed raggedly in the comms. There was unabashed pain in her voice, but it was quickly and violently overtaken by fury. As Ablaze backed away, Blotklau stumbled after her, tumbling down a hill and slamming into the next one as she dragged herself up it. Her left shoulder was crushed, caved in like the ground behind her. Bones black by nature or simply drenched in ichor splintered up through the flesh, and she could hardly so much as lift her forearm.

It didn’t stop her.

“Fuck you! Fuck you!” She clawed after her, hunched, her sprint fast and loping. “You think you can hurt me? No one hurts me! No one hurts me! I’ll show you—I’ll fucking show you! I’m gonna gut you like a fish! C'mere!”

Ferocious though her threats were, it took a long time for her to get her speed back, and by then Quinn had gained enough distance and momentum that, when she did catch up, did swipe at her, it was never quite close enough. Her claws skinned flesh, scraped modium, but couldn’t find purchase.

“Quinn,” Besca said, and while the worry wasn’t entirely gone, there was something equaling it now: confusion. “You have a shot. You have lots of shots, here. You gotta take one before she gets close again!”

A breath in Quinn’s chest, not from Quinn’s lungs. TAKE THE SHOT.

Roaki reached out her hand, and the axes tore into being. One she kept in her grip, the other she bit down on, held so firmly her jaw locked and her teeth cracked and shifted.

Besca’s warning was too late, she was already close again, and closer every second.

But the seconds were up.

A blackness crept in on Quinn’s vision, enshrouded her. The voice within her took a deep, bracing breath, and together they passed a dark threshold. On the tips of her ears, just soft enough to be ignored, but too loud to deny, came whispers from somewhere else. Somewhere that felt like home. Somewhere she wanted instantly and desperately, so desperately to return to, to be again, to be whole again and—

“No.”

“We are here.”

We. Are. Here.

She was here. Here, on Illun, in Casoban. Right here, in Ablaze. It was like something had anchored her by the soul, and refused to let her go, refused to let anything take her away.

Her eye burned, not with pain but with power. That red orb burst with white light, her cannon hummed and then roared with unbridled potential.

Quinnlash phased.

Amygdala Circuit

There was a tense moment in the pavilion, a sharp sound as everyone watching collectively sucked in a gasp as Quinn launched herself into the air, then a wave of almost deafening hollers when she landed again in one piece. Beneath the surface of her mind, she might even have caught the ripple of panic from the depths.

Besca was not immune, having stood up so abruptly her chair toppled behind her. She was might have nearly broken her silent pact not to curse in front of her, had she not been paying close attention.

“Quinn!”

The word hardly reached Quinn faster than the axe did. A low, horizontal whirl came to an abrupt and violent stop in Ablaze’s thigh. Not deeply, and skewed sidelong from how far it had been thrown, but to someone new to flesh wounds, judging the severity would be difficult through the explosion of pain.

“You can’t run from me!” Roaki shouted. And just as Quinn had thought, Blotklau had indeed covered the space in no time.

The deflected axe lay discarded, yet unrecalled, perhaps momentarily forgotten. The one in Ablaze’s leg, however, was left there out of malice. For pain’s sake. Blotklau came at her unarmed, but it would have been a foolish and final mistake to assume her any less dangerous.

Something boiled within Quinn, louder than that shunned command to KILL. It wrapped her like a cloak, like a barrier between her and the Savior, and in the same way she’d shoved the voice under before, now it was wrestling to rein in her pain. A layer of numbness came to her, dull, but not ineffective. IGNORE IT it demanded, agonized. FIGHT.

Claws splayed, Blotklau came at her in a flurry of slashes and spearheaded strikes. Where they landed on flesh, even grazing, they carved and sprayed ichor, and in the bottom of her mind she could feel something pulse each time.

“Let me hear it!” Roaki’s voice was ravenous. “Scream! Beg! Come on!”

Amygdala Circuit

There were few words more terrifying to hear from a pilot than: “Trust me”, but Besca didn’t object, because there also few words that could make her feel as helpless. Trust her, she thought. Well I don’t have much of a choice.

She watched as Blotklau took a few starting steps forward, only to stop as Quinn…taunted her? Besca balked, she wouldn’t have thought Quinn capable of insult. Then again, up until last week, she wouldn’t have thought her capable of swearing, either. It was a crass jab, and, frankly, about as blatant a play as she’d ever seen anyone make.

And it seemed to work like a charm.

“Oh, I get it,” Roaki growled in her head. “You think making me mad’ll get me to kill you quick?”

Blotklau hunched, her hands flew out wide and her claws tore unreal holes into the air. Swiping her arms across her chest, the axes flew into being, blades bursting to life with white fire.

“Tough fucking luck! I’m gonna pull you apart slow and careful! You’re not gonna die ‘til I say you can die!”

The girl screamed fury, but even with her voice in the comms, Blotklau’s roar was louder. The Savior broke into a mad sprint, low and nimble, closing the distance with frightening speed. With only a hill between them, she reeled back one of her axes and threw it in a whirling arc for Ablaze’s leg, poising to lash out with the other.