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The weight of his sword in hand grounds him. Since leaving the battlefield he’s had little reason to use it, but it’s been a third limb for most of his life. Now he’s almost relieved to heft it and feel familiar adrenaline turning his senses sharp and his mind battle-ready.
In the dim morning the shadows blend together, and wind stirs the grass into a rippling sheet. His enemy’s presence is nothing yet but disturbances in the breeze. The chimera is moving east to west through the grasses, trying to get upwind of him. He wills his heart to slow so blood doesn’t pound in his ears, straining for any sign of the creature.
He doesn’t get a warning. Pebbles scratch behind him. Arsene spins. He lifts the sword, and the chimera leaps.
He aims at the center of its bulk, but his blow is weak—it skids off the scaly chest and goes wide. Arsene lets the sword drag him to the side, narrowly missing one one of the massive swiping paws. The chimera lands where he stood a heartbeat before.
Too slow.
The chimera is huge, with the broad body of a mountain lion and the head of a horned lizard. Its flat black eyes are empty of intelligence. It charges at him and he ducks and spins—faster!—bringing his sword down hard on the back of its neck. The blade wedges deep in the chimera’s hide. With a roar, the beast shakes its powerful haunches and Arsene loses his grip on the pommel. It sidles away, unbalanced by the massive weapon stuck in its neck.
“Shit.” Arsene scrabbles for the knife that should be in his boot, but it’s still laying next to the hollow across the fire. There’s nothing he can use as a weapon. The chimera springs.
He braces himself.
The full force of its body hits him square in the chest. He staggers. Claws scrape his leather breastplate and the chimera’s head darts forward, but he grabs the muscular neck as snapping jaws dive toward his face. It’s stronger than it should be, a perversion of nature. He flips the beast with a grunt and pins it into the ground, wedging his blade deeper into its shoulders. He tries to dislodge the sword, but it’s well and truly stuck now, and he can’t wrestle it free. The chimera’s powerful tail slams into him while he’s distracted. A blow to the stomach, then ripping pain.
Arsene springs out of reach, adrenaline shooting through him.Stupid. He sticks a hand inside his torn shirt while the chimera pants on the ground. Wet. Ragged edges. He gulps. Itwill hurt more in a minute. He spares a quick look across the camp at the hollow, who’s?—
—not there.
A scraping noise yanks his attention back to the chimera. It shakes itself and rises on unsteady legs. Surely there’s something he can use to defend himself—yes—a fist-sized stone. Bending over makes him dizzy enough that he has to bite back bile. The chimera is equally uncertain, its easy prey turning into be a fight for its life. It stumbles at him again, but a dark blur hits its flank like a rock from a sling, and two figures tumble into the dust.
Arsene can only gape like an idiot.
It’s the hollow, except he’s growing impossibly bigger before Arsene’s eyes. The steel cuffs creak and snap and metal shrapnel explodes in all directions. The hollow’s knifelike claws sink into the chimera’s hide. Its powerful back legs kick and writhe, but the hollow doesn’t even seem to notice. His maw splits open to show teeth made for ripping and he closes his mouth over the chimera’s exposed throat. His head jerks strangely and the chimera whines once, high and terrified. Blood sprays from its neck. It falls limp onto the ground.
The hollow spits out a mouthful of flesh. When he turns to Arsene, his eyes are unseeing. Arsene hefts the rock. This isn’t the creature he captured, but is a mindless beast, and if he has to kill to protect himself this time he will.
The hollow comes at him.
It’s not like their first fight. He was surprised by the hollow’s strength, but the hollow was desperate and frightened and Arsene overpowered him with a clever trick.
This time there’s no contest.
He’s flat on his back in seconds. He fights back panic, straining with all his might against strong hands pinning him down, but his muscle is useless. The hollow flattens him to theground with a snarl. His size is not just an illusion—heisbigger. Limbs as long as Arsene’s body, heavy as a boulder on his chest. His gaunt face looms as he tears at Arsene’s collar and…rips off his bandages?
A deep growl emanates from the hollow and vibrates through his whole chest, making Arsene’s head spin. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s a word. A single word he’s repeating over and over.
“Mine. Mine. Mine.”
Cool air hits his neck. Arsene gets it a bare second before it happens, and by then it’s too late.
Far too late.
Teeth sink into the side of his neck. Arsene yells—it aches, sharp and sudden. There’s apull, like a line that’s hooked into his heart, his gut, and…
Fuck. Arsene pushes at the hollow’s shoulders, but his only response is to pin Arsene’s wrists to the ground with humiliating ease.
“Get off me!” Arsene shouts, trying to roll his head away from the stinging, burning sensation. He’s suddenly, horribly aware of how the hollow’s spicy musk fills his nose and mouth. The weight of a body on top of him.
He’s fucked nulls, both before and after the sentinel program. Before it was mechanical, a process that always ended in vague dissatisfaction. After it was unpleasant—not physically, but deep down in a place he doesn’t like to think about often. Yet as he’s held utterly still by the creature, a perversion of how he would be with a vergis, his primus stirs with excitement.
Arsene panics, bucking and twisting in the hollow’s grip. The teeth embedded in his flesh pull painfully. He shouts. One hand gets free, and he beats frantically at the hollow’s bony chest.
Finally he frees the second hand, too. He grabs the long, matted hair and yanks the hollow off him. The hollow lets out alow groan as his teeth come free. Arsene’s neck pulses painfully, but another part of him pulses, too—not so painfully.
He pushes the hollow away. This time the creature stumbles back, sending them both tumbling to the ground.
