Jarel Craith stepped out of the translocation rift, shielding his eyes from its intense light with one hand and gripping Lawbringer tightly in the other.

  Against a backdrop of sand and sky, The Venturian Sixth engaged with giant automata built of black stone, demi-human war bands, a variety of beastmen, and a handful of renegade Imbued. The automatons fought everyone, suggesting they were the guardians of this place, and thus considered both the legion and Redmane’s followers trespassers.

  No matter. All would be silent soon.

  A footstep shook the earth behind him.

  He turned, slashed with Lawbringer from left to right at a slightly upward angle, and its blade swept through a colossal sentinel’s leg as if it were illusionary.

  But the thunderous sound of the sentinel’s fall, the cloud of fine sand it kicked up all around them, and its foot, standing flat, cleanly severed just above the ankle, were all quite real.

  The sentinel turned and crawled at Jarel, reaching out to grab him and crush him in its huge hand. Evidently dismemberment was not enough to deter it from attacking further, so with a look of minor annoyance on his face, Jarel Craith dodged its clumsy attempt to grapple him, and efficiently severed the rest of its limbs from the torso, including the head, Lawbringer leaving silvery arcs of Gnosis in its wake as it cut through stone like warm bread.

  That, apparently, was enough to make it helpless.

  He took a moment to study the workmanship of the head, the structure of the stone face. He’d seen it before, he thought. In history lessons. It was the work of the people of Mago Hadas, who first discovered the secret of travel between worlds. They built cities on the backs of Abyssal leviathans who swam the dark seas between worlds in their eons-long migrations.

  All the waters of the universe were connected, they believed.

  Once he would have called it foolishness. But not today, not on this world. There were several real, functioning Abyssal Wells here. Perhaps that was why this place was home to such powerful and unruly divinities. Whatever the cause, these artifacts would make splendid exhibits in a Numantian museum.

  The find brought more accolades for Jarel Craith to look forward to, once he sorted out the mess in front of him.

  Two more sets of earth-shaking footsteps drew near, one from the west and one from the north, converging on their fallen comrade. Their change in direction attracted a pack of beastmen from the northeast; these had the heads of wolves and the horns and cloven feet of goats. Their howls preceded them as they charged, some holding weapons high, others running on all fours like the beasts they were.

  Jarel watched them come without a flicker of fear. Even as the charging leader of the beastman pack let out a guttural laugh as he shoved aside a giant stone sentinel, who staggered and backpedaled, trying in vain to right its balance before crashing to the ground on its back.

  The beastmen had grown powerful.

  They had experienced four distinct evolutions in a brief period of time.

  They would have to have a fifth today to have any prayer of survival. For Jarel Craith silently swore he would slay every beastman in this gods-forsaken place.

  That was the picture of Jarel Craith. Or rather, his image of himself.

  He was the ultimate argument.

  He and his weapon, aptly named Lawbringer, were what stood silently astride civilization, the only things preventing its inevitable slide into chaos and barbarism. It was his purpose. The reason he existed. Laws and principles governed the Praetor’s life, and they rewarded his devotion.

  They guided his blade and will so that they moved as one, the reward for years of rigorous training and study. They had the power to turn a decision into reality, here: a charging beastman closed in on him and he decided to emphatically separate his head from his shoulders, sending it up into the clear desert air trailing spatters of blood, its tongue lolling out behind it, curved by the trajectory of its spin.

  Two more beastmen leapt at him from the left and right. He decided to bisect the one on the left vertically and the other horizontally, and the principles ingrained in his mind and hand and blade made it so.

  This was his most cherished prize. The power to decide who lived and who died.

  The rest of the beastmen swarmed around him, all power and ferocity. But the Praetor’s blade turned aside the brutal swings of their weapons with minimal force. He neatly sidestepped their tackles and bull rushes. Claws swept through empty air as he intelligently positioned himself outside their path each and every time.

  And Lawbringer found its mark. Again, and again.

  It pierced through a beastman’s eye socket and out the back of his skull.

  It severed a clawed arm in a flash of silver.

  It zigzagged across the body of a beastman from head to toe. Five cuts, splitting the head, torso and limbs into twelve flying pieces.

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  It struck ahead and behind, and to the left and right, Lawbringer flashing at such a speed that resembled an unfurling lotus of steel.

  The mind at the center of the lotus was calm, and still. Pleased at its own control. Within that mind there was only a brief stirring of remorse, that he had once lost control so utterly.

  He’d conjured demons, and with a mighty effort he had stuffed them back into the vault where they belonged.

  It had been worth the risk.

  He was at the absolute end of need. There was no other way.

  But that was over and done.

  Making quick work of these animals helped him put it out of his mind. Reminded him of the hard-earned rewards of discipline and piety.

  The two sentinels halted on either side of Jarel and the beastmen and opened their mouths, hosing down the street with beams of golden Gnosis that fried the bodies of the beastmen while leaving the stone roads and structures unharmed. Jarel translocated away when a beam reached him, having waited just long enough for it to incinerate the beastman in front of him before flickering up into the air, slashing the sentinel’s head into four pieces and then attending to the other one with an equally quick and merciless series of cuts.

  Their pieces landed around him, sending up clouds of dust as he alighted upon a nearby rooftop, graceful as a bird of prey, Lawbringer gleaming in his hand.

  A voice drew his attention then. Not the voice of a beastman, but of a man.

  Jarel wheeled around to spot its owner.

  A traitor.

  One of the Imbued who served the renegade.

  In fact there were two of them, posted on another rooftop some distance away. One tall and the other short, the tall one wielding a bow and the short one wielding a crude firearm. Both of them were firing on a passing formation of legionnaires.

  —

  Valtr Khazador

  Class: Hunter

  Archetype: Master Marksman

  Faction: House Redmane

  Level: 137

  Vengarl Khazador

  Class: Hunter

  Archetypes: Marksman, Trapper

  Faction: House Redmane

  Level: 139

  —

  The hunt for Redmane could wait a moment.

  These traitors didn’t know it yet, but they had just found themselves at the front of the headsman’s queue.

  Arnth Turan led the Governess and her unusual retinue toward central processing at a sluggish pace.

  It felt like a walk to the gallows.

  He felt dazed. His fingers felt icy. His heartbeat was sluggish. He reached into his robes for a handkerchief, lifted it to dab the sweat from his forehead, and realized both his arms were shaking.

  Because the Governess had just ordered him to destroy this world.

  To snuff out so many lives, like two fingers pinching the wick of a candle.

  Such things were not done, unless under the most dire of circumstances. And so far as he understood, while this Blight might have been a bad one, it was hardly an existential threat to the rest of the Domain.

  It made no sense. Nor did the appearance of these strange women at the Governess’s side.

  They didn’t speak, so he didn’t either. Whenever he glanced back at them he found the Governess’s faint smirk on her face, her default facial expression. The old crone walking next to her held her head low, her back bowed with age, but under the cowl of her robes he thought he saw a grin.

  And then there were the quadruplets with blue-green eyes and hair, who were looking about with curious smiles on their faces, as if he were taking them on a leisurely tour of the facilities.

  They were either simpletons, or what was about to happen had not been properly explained to them.

  Arnth put his eyes back on the hallway ahead, and tried his best not to see its end as the end of his career, his life. Everything.

  He led them through the pristine corridors ahead, where the walls and floors gleamed with polished sheen which reflected the soft, ambient light from ever-burning torches and candelabrums, the air crisp and cool, carrying a faint but pleasant scent of antiseptic cleanliness. But as they moved out of the areas meant for public traffic, the halls gave way to a more utilitarian gray, the polished surfaces replaced by exposed pipes and conduits which snaked along the walls and ceiling in crisscrossing routes, like blood vessels.

  The lighting dimmed as well, reflecting his mood.

  They cast long shadows on the floor on their way to central processing. The air became heavier, tinged with the metallic tang of machinery and the distant hum of Gnosis batteries.

  The further they descended, the more the corridors narrowed, the ceilings lowering to create a sense of confinement. The once smooth floors became scuffed and marked with the passage of countless feet and equipment, and the walls bore the occasional stain or patch of rust.

  Arnth's footsteps echoed hollowly in the oppressive silence, each step taking them deeper into the bowels of Taracon, where the heart of the facility pulsed with a mechanical rhythm.

  Central processing was a cathedral-sized chamber with a domed ceiling, the entire room lined with thousands of faintly glowing pipes which fed into a central machine at the rear of the room. Atop that mechanism sat a command—and—control platform made of fine Numantian marble, its control surfaces, dials, levers and switches masterfully wrought and plated in gold.

  Arnth Turan stared at it as if he were trying to burn the memory of its perfection into his mind. Like staring at the face of a loved one before execution.

  Mecia Porsena jabbed him in the side lightly. “You can wipe the doom off your face. We’ll be alright.”

  Arnth half turned to stare at her incredulously.

  “We’ll be alright?” he repeated the question, his tone breathlessly skeptical. “My lady, please forgive my candor but… We will not be alright. This world was entrusted to you by the Regent of the Venturian Domain himself. When he sees what you’ve done, I do not think any of us will be alright. We’ll be lucky to receive swift executions.”

  Mecia smirked and reached out to grasp the Artifex’s shoulder, making firm eye contact.

  “You’re right about that much,” she said. “But there is much you don’t yet know. I shall explain it all, but first we need to take care of this.”

  Arnth’s eyeball twitched.

  “Take care of this? Quickly drain Volos dry? Wring it out like a wet tunic? It’s alright. No one will mind if we take a centuries-long process and shorten it to a day, for a tiny fraction of the Gnosis yield—“

  Mecia slapped him across the face, hard enough to forcibly turn his head to the left. He blinked, stared off into space for a moment, the tempest of his thoughts suddenly focused on the stinging pain in his cheek.

  “The outcome won’t be what you’re expecting,” Mecia said it slowly, to ensure the words sank in.

  Slowly, Arnth Turan returned his eyes to the Governess, his own tight with a mix of confusion and suspicion.

  Meanwhile, the perky quadruplets were taking up positions on the command platform, examining the buttons, knobs and levers with an alarming level of familiarity.

  Three of them, that was. The fourth was climbing the pipes, to stand in the precise spot the Gnosis channel would run through before being diffused through the astral conduits.

  One of the quadruplets at the control panel tugged the old woman’s robe, then pointed at her sister. “I stand in that spot over yonder, yes?”

  When she pointed, the other identical quadruplet smiled and waved her hand.

  The crone nodded, grinning. “Aye. Thou standeth there, and assist me here. This one, the Artifex, will provide his credentials so that it may be carried out.”

  Arnth Turan spluttered.

  What in the Abyss was going on here…