He was going to take his shot, and he'd deal with both of them without so much as raising his pulse.
That's what I expected.It's probably what he expected.
We didn't anticipate that of course they would have come here knowing that Araxis would be difficult to take down.Everyone had watched him in the Tournament.Theyknewwho they were here to deal with.
I saw him take a deep breath and line up a shot and then there was a strange clattering sound as something landed at his feet.My mind barely had time to process that there was a little metal disc near his boot; it blinked with a strange green pulse, and then everything went to shit.
A shuddering sound wave tore down the upper hallway with a physical force, like being shoved by the wind kicking out of an engine followed by a cloud of shrapnel.Araxis was thrown backwards, slamming into the railing on the side of the walkway, head cracking hard against the metal, as I staggered back.I surged back upwards, saw Araxis down on the floor – limp, eyes closed, silver blood leaking from one ear.
At that moment, the ketaari crested the stairs, barking out something to the abaya below as he blinked up at me, surprised.
I know, from watching the footage back, that what he said was, "Target's down and – Oh shit,Sashen Solaris here."Amused, as he turned to look back down the stairs, which was a fucking mistake.
Then, though, the words didn't penetrate the ferocious war drum of my own pulse or the pressure I could feel clamping down on my skull, tighter and tighter, like I'd fallen thousands of leagues below the ocean's surface, like everything was underwater and I was collapsing inward, rib by rib by rib.
Some part of me clicked off as the ketaari turned his head away, and something else came bounding and snarling from the dark inside of me.Furious, ravenous.Eager.
It's dishonourable to shoot someone from behind.Good thing I haven't ever cared about honour.
I raised my golden lance and cracked off two bright shots of white-hot energy; the first went wide but the second caught him in the side of the neck, a gout of blood misting the air as part of his neck simply evaporated.He stumbled, there at the top of the stairs, and, in a blink, I crossed the span between us, leaping forward and kicking his back hard.He tumbled down, landing in what presumably was a clatter.
But I couldn't hear shit, only a distant, high-pitched shriek that echoed through my skull.A piece of metal shimmered next to me as a pulse of energy – not from a blaster; not from a lance; a fuckingplasma beam?– lit up the railing next to me.
My stare dropped.The abaya was crouched, pale and washed out, lips tinged green in the strange atmosphere Araxis had created on the ship; her pistol was held out, pointing directly at me, her lips moving.I didn't realize it then, but she was trying to bargain with me – to placate, to soothe, to assure me that I would be treated well.I'm not shooting to kill, she called out, although I didn't care.Calm yourself, virra.All will be well.
But I couldn't hear her.I didn't think.I couldn't think.There were no thoughts in my mind, no feelings in my body.I was elemental, a force of nature; I was a tornado; I was the hungry wolf.
I fired off a shot and the abaya ducked out of the way, which gave me enough time to leap down the stairs, landing hard enough that my knees and ankles splintered with sharp pain.The ketaari, not quite dead, had a hand clasped to his neck, writhing on the ground.
I'd deal with him later.The abaya slid into the kitchen, darting past the doorway; I burst forward, chasing her.The moment I ducked in the kitchen –ourkitchen – she fired off another shot, but it sprayed wide again, her hands unsteady.I threw my own gun aside – I didn't need it;Iwas the weapon – and leapt at her, grabbing her wrist and slamming it hard against the wall, so hard I could feel something give, fragile.It was glorious, almost, to be onthisside.She made a startled sound, hand spasming as the pistol clattered to the ground.
The abaya jabbed at my stomach with her other hand, but she was slow, washed out to a sickly green.I hauled back with one hand and punched her square in her face, feeling the crunch of bone beneath my knuckles.I didn't blink and miss itthistime.This time, I was there; this time, I had acquired a taste for the ugliness of violence.
"Virra, wait –" she began, but I couldn't hear her, not in that moment.All I could hear was the high-pitched scream inside my skull, the hammering of my pulse, and the void calling to me.A snarl somewhere deep in my chest, rumbling louder and louder; the clarion call of violence justly done.
This time, when I drew back, I didn't go for her face: I went for her throat.Control.My fingers latched hard around the column of her neck and I tightened like Andiri had done to me.I could feel her kelthil shivering in her throat as her lips darkened to a dangerous green, her eyes wide and black.She thrashed against me, hands pummelling my torso, all pretense at making nice gone – but it was a losing battle.The air was killing her.I'd get there first.
It wasn't anything like the dramas.I didn't have anything pithy to say.I didn't have anything to say at all, and I wasn't even screaming this time.Instead, I just stared into her eyes as I – monstrous, violent, a nothingness given physical form, a hunger finally feasting – crushed her throat until she sagged against the wall.When I stepped away, she fell down, lifeless.
I realized, at that point, that she'd had a dagger and had stabbed me just above the hip.I looked down at the hilt, distantly surprised in a hollow way, before reaching down with my murderous hands.My fingers weren't even trembling when they grasped the blade and pulled it out.
I heard the sound I made then, at least, a thready gasp of pain and surprise and maybe,maybehorror.I let the blade clatter to the floor and instead grabbed my arc lance, glittering in the lights above, lustrous despite the darkness of the thing I'd become, and returned to the hall.I wanted the radiant force of my lance for what would come next.
The ketaari was still down.I half-fell to a crouch by his side, nestling the muzzle of my lance up underneath his chin and then, with the smell of burning skin and blood in the air, I blasted a clean hole through the top of his skull.
Sounds began to filter back in, drip by drip.The air system, hissing.My pulse.The sound of the rebreather as I breathed, even, slow.A voice calling out, somewhere in the hold.
I stood.I could drop the brin too.But –
Behind me, I heard a soft groan, a heavy footstep.
Some part of me woke up, as if rousing from a dream or a waking nightmare.I shuddered violently, my body quaking.I sucked in a hard gasp through the rebreather.
When I turned to look back at the stairs, Araxis was standing at the base, pale and bleeding, his stare unfocused."Sashen," he said, sounding grim."You're –" He moved forward, unsteadily, reaching for me.
Words escaped me.They were so far beyond me that they might as well have been pricks of light in the vast darkness of space.Instead, I moved to meet him, touching my hand to the blood leaking from one ear, a slow rivulet winding its way down the column of his pale neck.I hissed as he pressed his own hand to my side, just above my hip.
Distantly, I heard the scuff of boots on metal from the stairwell to the cargo hold.Araxis shoved me aside, pushing me hard toward one of the bulkheads in the hallway which provided a sliver of cover.But the face that peered up from the stairwell wasn't the brin: it was an abaya with a rippling halo of quills behind them and a rebreather firmly strapped over their mouth.
