Necroepilogos

Eseld lunged at Shilu.

She crashed into Shilu’s side, fouling her aim — but not enough. Shilu’s arm-blade of lightless black metal punched forward, moving so fast it became a blur, the point aimed at the rear of Elpida’s helmet, to puncture the saint’s armour and split the skull beneath.

Elpida’s head jerked aside. Shilu missed by several inches.

Eseld clawed at Shilu’s sword-arm to prevent a second strike, nails raking bloody scratches down Shilu’s soft brown skin. Momentum carried them both to the floor, landing in a tangle of kicking legs and slapping hands and the loose sides of Eseld’s armoured coat. Eseld found herself on top, knees buried in Shilu’s gut. Her hands flailed, trying to catch the blurring shadow of Shilu’s weapon.

“No— Shilu— don’t— don’t!”

Shilu wore no expression around her wide dark eyes.

Eseld did not know why Shilu had tried to kill Elpida, but she knew she could not let that happen. Eseld did not know who Elpida really was, or what she looked like under the dirty grey helmet of her carapace suit. She knew nothing of the sins Elpida may have committed in her past, or what unsavoury methods she may have employed to gather and bind her disciples to her side. None of that mattered, not beneath the blazing light of hope, an emotion Eseld had not felt with such clarity in all her infinity of fifty seven deaths, not since the warm days of true life. Elpida had strode into battle against overwhelming numbers, itself an act of madness, for nothing more than to save the meaningless lives of fresh meat. Elpida had not only scattered the opportunistic cannibals, she had also refused to retreat from Lykke, after all else had failed and all hope faded. Even Shilu had given up and declared defeat. But not Elpida.

A living saint stood in defiance against the very absence which lay at the heart of all creation since God’s death. Her actions redefined Eseld’s world.

Whatever Shilu’s metaphysical disagreement with the saint, whatever protection and kindness Shilu had offered, none of it mattered. Eseld would throw herself upon Shilu’s blades rather than stand by and watch the murder.

She knew she was dead now. Shilu was strong and fast in a way that no mere zombie could hope to match. Another heartbeat, another breath, and Shilu would slice Eseld open from throat to gut, then toss her aside and attack Elpida again. But perhaps Eseld had bought Elpida enough time to react. Perhaps her sacrifice would not be in—

Eseld caught Shilu’s sword-arm in both hands, just above and below the elbow. She gaped, stunned by her own success. This was impossible; Shilu must have allowed her to win.

Then she slammed Shilu’s arm to the floor, pinning it with all her strength. Her nails dug deep, drawing beads of blood from Shilu’s skin.

Elpida’s disciples were turning toward the scuffle, shouting confused questions or snapping requests for orders, levelling weapons, backing away.

Shilu stared up into Eseld’s eyes, and said: “Are you certain?”

Eseld hissed, “Yes! Don’t kill her, don’t—”

Shilu bucked. The world turned upside down.

Eseld hit the floor face-first, cracking her chin off the metal, biting through a chunk of her own tongue, knocking the wind from her lungs. The impact rang a chorus of agony down the patchwork of bullet-bruises across her chest and belly, scraping her insides with the jagged ends of her own broken ribs. Her vision blurred, eyes blinded with tears, throat choked with an uprush of bile and acid. She drooled long strings of sticky spittle from slack lips. A pounding pulse inside her head drowned out all sound.

Cold metal hooked beneath her chin, dragging her upright. Eseld clawed at the arm around her throat, breaking her fingernails against black chrome.

“Be still,” said Shilu.

“No—” Eseld wheezed, kicking against the ground, choking for breath. “Don’t hurt— not her—”

“Be still.” Shilu paused. “I don’t want to kill you. Please.”

Eseld stopped struggling. The metal arm slackened the chokehold. Eseld blinked to part a veil of tears.

Shilu had dragged her clear of Elpida’s formation, over to the foot of the grey metal pyramid. Eseld could feel Shilu’s true body pressed against her back through her armoured coat — a landscape of sharp metal edges and cold black chrome. One of Shilu’s arms was wrapped around Eseld’s throat; the other was a blade, poised in front of Eseld’s face.

Elpida and her disciples were about twelve feet away. Eseld realised with scant relief that she was still within the pyramid-shaped protective barrier formed by Kagami’s silver-grey drones.

Elpida’s disciples retained their coherence despite this surprise from their midst. The giant — Hafina — swung half her exotic energy weapons to cover Shilu, splitting her attention between Lykke and this new target. Kagami squinted and blinked at Shilu from behind her full-face visor, lips moving in silence. Ilyusha brandished her shotgun and spat a string of colourful insults: “—cuckfuck traitor shit-beak—” Atyle merely stared, curious and unmoved. Only Cyneswith was paralysed and speechless, mouth agape, tears running from her eyes, hands fluttering in helpless panic.

Serin — the tall one wrapped in black robes — levelled that boxy grey firearm at Shilu.

Perhaps that mysterious gun really would harm Shilu through her shield of tattered divinity. But at this range it would also rip Eseld apart, unless Serin was an expert shot. The muzzle of the gun was a wide mouth. It did not look very precise.

Eseld turned her head and squinted, bracing herself for the shot, for the end, for yet another death. At least she had used this life to protect something worth her sacrifice. At least Cyn would survive, sheltered by the saint. And if Lykke could be defeated, perhaps Sky was not lost either.

Elpida snapped, “Hold fire! Serin, hold—”

Serin’s finger compressed the trigger. Eseld screamed between her clenched teeth.

Nothing happened.

The smooth grey gun didn’t even make a sound, not like Sky’s ‘EMP’ weapon or the microwave rifle. Serin flickered the muzzle up and down, as if painting Eseld and Shilu with an invisible beam or cone of power, but Eseld felt nothing.

Serin grunted behind her metal mask. “Huh.”

Kagami hissed, “I keep telling you, that fucking thing doesn’t work! The gravitic engine is broken, or misaligned with the grid. Give up, for fuck’s sake, especially right now! We have more important targets, don’t you think?!”

Serin pointed the gun at Lykke again. “We’ll see.”

Elpida raised an armoured glove. The dark eyeholes of her helmet faced toward Shilu and Eseld. “Everyone hold fire! Kagami, talk to me, tell me what I’m looking at.”

“Nothing!” Kagami spluttered. She gestured at Eseld and Shilu. “Normal zombie, as far as every reading is concerned. Which is obviously bullshit, fine, yes, but that’s all I’m getting. Slightly more nanomachine density, sure, but not like her over there.” She jabbed a finger toward Lykke.

Serin rasped, “They hide. She’s a Necromancer.”

Elpida said, “Atyle?”

The fearless one — Atyle — was staring at Eseld and Shilu with her right eye wide open, a solid green sphere of bionic augmentation.

“She is alone,” Atyle said. “Unstrung. Not the same. Are you trapped, like us?”

Lykke let out a giggle, a high-pitched bubble of bloody mirth. She had one pale hand pressed to her mouth, eyebrows raised, her remaining eye gone wide. She held her gore-wrought wings swept backward to keep them out of the way, their surfaces flowing and gurgling with boiling blood and organ meat and chips of bone. Her aurora of white flies pulsed and buzzed to a silent heartbeat.

Elpida turned her helmet to acknowledge the laugh.

“Oh, please, don’t mind me!” Lykke said, voice tinkling with breathless amusement behind her delicate blood-glazed fingers. “Do go on. I’m dying to see where you’re taking this, Shishi! This is positively original!”

Kagami hissed a curse beneath her breath. Ilyusha spat on the floor and sneered at Lykke.

Elpida ignored that. “Eseld,” she said. “Are you wounded? In pain?”

Eseld croaked, “I’m okay.”

“Thank you for the help, Eseld,” said Elpida. “That was quick thinking. Quick reactions. Well done.”

Shilu spoke from behind Eseld’s shoulder. “You didn’t need it though. You dodged. And that helmet doesn’t have a rear head-up display.”

Elpida answered with a smile in her voice: “I had an early warning. Nice try.”

“Thought so,” said Shilu. “You have network access.”

“Not quite. Shilu, yes? What are we doing here, Shilu? Answer me quickly. Talk fast.” Elpida nodded sideways, toward Lykke. “She’s not going to stay entertained for long.”

“Ha!” Lykke laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Oh no, no no, I’m deadly serious, please do take your time. Bravo, Shishi, I never expected this of you, of all people. You were always so—”

“I was sent here to kill you,” Shilu said to Elpida.

Eseld’s stomach lurched; vomit tried to climb up her throat. Her head throbbed with a dizzying rush of blood. Shilu was an assassin? All this was part of a plot to slay Elpida? All this death and madness, this false hope, the predators in the resurrection chamber, the storm outdoors, all of it? And what manner of being would ‘send’ something as powerful as Shilu? Did this mean Eseld herself was part of the same assassination plot? And what did that mean for Lykke? Was the demon on the same side as the saint? What were the sides, what did any of this mean?

The religious metaphors to which Eseld had clung for the last few hours began to fall apart; she knew they were not literal, they were merely her own inventions, but they made the horrors of this Godless world easier on her mind.

She started to hyperventilate. Her mouth filled with the taste of bile. Her heart raced faster and faster and faster. A terrible weight pressed on her chest.

Shilu was still talking. “I was placed in your path so you would stumble upon me. You, your group, the rogue Necromancer you met, those are my targets.”

Elpida said, “Who sent you?”

“I’m not sure.”

Kagami scoffed. “Fucking hell!”

Ilyusha growled and spat, pawing at the metal floor with one of her clawed feet. Atyle shook her head, a sad smile flickering across her lips. Serin’s attention did not waver from Lykke. Cyneswith let out a whimper.

Elpida said, “And now you’ve changed your mind about killing me.”

It was not a question. Sweat ran down Eseld’s face. Her mouth was full of vile-tasting saliva. She wanted to vomit. Her chest felt as if it would collapse and crush her heart.

The sound of the storm outdoors filled the silence. A standing wave of static hissed and hummed beyond the distant walls of the tomb.

Shilu did not reply, so Elpida continued: “I saw the bodies when we entered this chamber. You’d already killed a dozen revenants, single handed. That wasn’t the Necromancer over there, she was too occupied. If you wanted us dead, you would attack us right now. You don’t need a hostage. You’ve changed your mind. Save us both the time, don’t deny it. Just make your point, and make it quickly.”

Shilu spoke again. “This whole situation is wrong. My current state, without network access. The storm outdoors is not natural, something summoned it. The tomb is armed and active. The Necromancer to your left is named Lykke. She should not be here. And now you.” Shilu paused. “You are not what I expected.”

Elpida said, “What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know.”

Kagami snapped, “Seems like there’s a lot of things you don’t know!”

Elpida gestured for Kagami to stop. “Kaga, please.”

Shilu said, “I knew I was being used. I’m used to that. But now I’m not certain that completing my mission will get me what I want.”

“Why?” Elpida asked.

Shilu paused again, then said: “The falcon cannot hear the falconer. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

“And what do you want, Necromancer?”

“To be dead, and remain so.”

Kagami hissed, “Great. Just fucking great. This one is no more sane than the first.”

Ilyusha barked a nasty laugh. She made her shotgun go click-crunch and pointed the big black muzzle at Shilu, right through Eseld. “We can do that for you, reptile fuck! Put you back in the dirt!”

Elpida raised a hand for silence. Her disciples stopped. “What are you proposing?”

Kagami hissed, “You’re fucking joking! You have to be fucking joking, Elpida. Commander, it’s a Necromancer! It could be doing anything! That’s not even its real face! We are being lied to.”

“I know,” Elpida said. “Shilu, what are you proposing?”

“Lykke has network access,” Shilu said. “I don’t. I can’t beat her. She was sent to stop me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she knows who you are, or that she is restricted from killing you or harming you. I do not know why she was sent. She refuses to stand down. Can you really fight a Necromancer, or was that a bluff, zombie?”

Elpida was silent for a long moment, eyes hidden behind the twin lenses of her helmet. Behind her, Serin started to chuckle — a long, low, rasping sound behind her metal mask. Kagami went very pale and swallowed twice, eyes darting to glance at Lykke. Hafina and Atyle didn’t react at all. Ilyusha grinned and made a biting motion toward Shilu.

Lykke broke the silence. “Of course they can’t! Shishi, don’t be so—”

“Yes,” Elpida said. “We can disable her. However, we will need an opening. She needs to stay still when we act.”

Shilu said, “I can hold her for a few moments.”

“What happens after we defeat our mutual foe?” Elpida asked. “What happens then, Necromancer?”

“I don’t know anymore.”

Elpida laughed inside her helmet, surprisingly warm and easy. “I’m gonna need you to release Eseld first.”

“I won’t hurt her,” said Shilu. “I just don’t want you to shoot me yet. I’ll let her go once we start.”

“Commander!” Kagami hissed. “Elpida. We cannot trust that thing! Every word it says could be a lie! They could be working together, playing with us for some sick shit! We are in too deep, we need to extract, now.”

Atyle let out a soft hum. “Mmmmmm. Even the smallest of devils will play tricks on the mind. Lead the unwary traveller astray.”

Ilyusha shouted, “I vote we blow her open! Fuck her up!”

Kagami said, “We need to pull out. Leave this behind. Commander, we cannot fight in here!” She gestured upward, past Eseld, toward the grey metal pyramid topped by the perfect black sphere. “I don’t know what might happen if I use gravitics in this place. The last thing we want is that AI substrate feeling threatened. Commander, we cannot fight here!”

Even the giant hesitated, swinging her armoured head back and forth, as if waiting for the order to disengage.

Elpida sighed. Eseld saw the subtle rise and fall of the armoured plates of her carapace suit. The saint was listening to her disciples, preparing to make sacrifices. And then Eseld would be left behind with Shilu and Lykke and whatever was left of Sky, denied her salvation, denied this one chance to be something more than meat. They had to work together, Elpida and Shilu. Eseld’s heart hammered against her ribs and she wanted to vomit up her own intestines with fear and disgust and worse. The weight on her chest compressed her broken ribs into her lungs.

She tried to wheeze, “She— Shilu helped— protect—”

“Shilu protected us!”

Cyneswith’s voice was reedy and weak. She clutched her hands before her, fingers interleaved, like a supplicant in prayer. Her eyes were upturned, pleading with Elpida.

“Please!” Cyn went on. “I do not understand what is happening, what manner of fairy mound we are within, or what terrible wars have disordered your realm so badly. But Miss Shilu protected us during our descent. She saved us when we climbed from our coffins! She fought Lykke when Lykke turned into a beast. She led us here, without abandoning us. And she could have! She bid us clothe and arm ourselves. She tried to protect us. She fought for us. Please, please, trust her. Please don’t leave us behind. Don’t leave Miss Eseld or Miss Sky behind. Please, I beg you, great warrior. I beg you.”

Serin snorted. “Fresh meat. Clueless.”

“Yes,” Kagami hissed. “Clearly. Elpida—”

“Alright, Necromancer,” Elpida said to Shilu. “You have a deal. We fight our mutual enemy, then we talk. Are you ready?”

Lykke burst into peals of laughter.

Her mirth echoed off the grey metal walls of the gravekeeper’s chamber in deafening girlish giggles and guffaws, snorts and snickers, rolling through the carpet of corpses and the pools of drying blood. Eventually she trailed off into little hiccups, waving a hand as if her laughter was smoke before her face. She ended on a big sigh, filling her lungs and puffing out her chest beneath the fabric of her stained and torn sundress; blood bubbled from several of her wounds, followed by the squirming bodies of yet more white flies, emerging to join her pestilent corona of bloated insects.

She smiled, and said, “You’re serious! You’re actually serious, golly gosh gee I’m such a lucky girl sometimes, I never thought I’d see the day! I’m sorry if I seem rude, it’s just that I assumed this was all an elaborate joke, not the real thing. Shishi, this is just ridiculous. You can’t be doing this for real, can you? You must own up to the hands behind the curtain, this is too silly. I’m awed, really! Look, you even got a genuine laugh out of me. We’re equal! Come on, sweets, let’s just go back together and let bygones be bygones.”

Shilu said, “I’m ready.”

Elpida nodded, then turned to face Lykke. She raised the coilgun receiver and took aim. “Kaga, tell Pheiri to abandon his position and start moving deeper. Holding the gate no longer matters, there’s no other survivors.”

“Done!” Kagami snapped. “Less walking, good!”

“Be ready,” Elpida continued, her voice calm and confident. “Haf, you’re on catcher duty, don’t worry about firepower. Illy, Atyle, back me up, don’t move if you can help it. Serin, you know when, just in case. On my count.”

Lykke sighed, shoulders sagging, all her good humour vanishing in an instant. “As if!” she snapped. She gestured upward, at the silver-grey drone hanging at the apex of the loose pyramid formation which protected Elpida and her disciples. “I know exactly what you’re going to do, zombie. You aren’t the first to figure this out, nor even the first to attempt it. You’re going to squish me with gravity and cut me off from the network. It’s been done before and it’s very boring! And that!” Lykke gestured at Serin. “That’s not even a new technique, and it doesn’t work. I don’t know what you hope to achieve by disrupting my intracellular connections, but any satisfaction will be very short lived. I am bigger than this body. How do you zombies have such trouble with that simple principle? Ahhhhh,” she sighed. “I was hoping for better than this. You got me all riled up and ready, Shishi, and now you’re just disappointing me.” Lykke paused, put her hands on her hips, and looked Elpida up and down. “And you’re even worse, zombie. I thought you were up for a bit of spicy tango, but you’re just—”

“We’re going to put you in a cage, Necromancer,” Elpida said. “If you break out, I will personally strangle you to death. This is your last chance to flee. You have until my count. Three.”

Kagami took a deep breath; she was visibly shaking, wringing her hands together. Hafina turned all her guns toward Lykke, ignoring Shilu. A grin ripped across Ilyusha’s face as she pointed her shotgun at the demon. Atyle shrugged and waved her submachine gun vaguely in Lykke’s direction.

“Two—”

“One!” Lykke roared. “Too slow, here I come!”

Lykke cracked her great wings of hanging gore and frozen blood, propelling herself forward with a gust of noxious wind. The reeking air drew tears from Eseld’s eyes and burned the lining of her throat. A cloud of flies surged forward, smashing their tiny, glistening, greasy bodies against the invisible shield strung between Kagami’s drones. Lykke launched herself from a standing start like a bird of prey from the skies, cackling at the top of her lungs as her taloned feet sliced through the air, razor-sharp points aimed straight at Elpida.

“Go,” Elpida said.

The disciples opened fire. Bullets and shotgun rounds pounded into Lykke, tearing gobbets of steaming flesh from her body and wings. White-hot flashes from Hafina’s energy weapons seared patches of Lykke’s dress, melting the skin beneath and turning her muscle to cooked meat. Elpida fired the coilgun. The magnetic thump shook Eseld’s guts. The round punched a hole clean through Lykke’s belly and blew out her lower back, her spine flopping free like a dead snake, pelvis shattered into a million pieces, strung out behind her like the train of a wedding dress.

But the demon could not be stopped. The many wounds did not even slow her down; her flesh simply rose again, reaching outward in tendrils of ragged muscle and prehensile feelers of blood and bone. Bloated flies poured from her wounds in their thousands, crashing against the invisible shield in thick waves of white.

Lykke cackled, claws descending toward Elpida’s armoured helmet. “I can’t believe this play was for real! You dirty little minx, maybe I will have a little dance with you!”

Eseld bit back a desolate sob. Even the saint did not comprehend that mortal weapons could not harm a demon.

Kagami was the only one not shooting. A convulsive shiver passed through her body. She squinted hard, eyes scrunched tight. A bead of blood ran from her nose. “Commander!” she screamed. “I need a second to—”

Shilu’s arms left Eseld’s throat.

Eseld collapsed to her knees, choking and wheezing, pressing one hand to the tiny cuts on her neck left behind by Shilu’s sharp edges. She raised her other hand toward Elpida, desperate to help, to throw herself in the path of the demon, to buy her saviour that one second.

Shilu shot across the grey metal floor and exploded through the wall of white flies. She had transformed back into her true self, her scarecrow body of black chrome and razor-sharp lines, balanced on a pair of spear-tip feet. The insects swarmed over her, suffocating her black metal skin beneath a living carpet of slick and shiny flesh. The flies tried to press themselves up her nostrils or wriggle past her lips or jam their tiny bodies into the corners of her eyes. Shilu’s pale polymer face went blank and flat, transformed into a featureless surface to deny Lykke’s filthy swarm their ingress.

Shilu raised her arms, a pair of lightless black blades.

She caught Lykke’s twinned talons on her swords, black edges tangled in white claws. Lykke flapped her gigantic blood-and-organ wings. Each beat was like a breath of the hurricane from beyond the walls, tearing at the corpses on the floor, shivering the pools of blood as if beneath a storm.

Elpida hunched, locking the joints of her armour to resist the terrible downdraft. Kagami collapsed with a strangled squeal; Hafina caught her in two arms before she could hit the floor. Atyle sheltered behind Ilyusha’s shields; Illy dragged Cyneswith into cover beside her, pressing Cyn to the floor. Only Eseld was alone, down on her knees, then smashed to her front again, with the reek of the wind filling her mouth and nose and lungs with the stench of rotting meat and boiled blood and fear and sweat and putrid flesh.

The force of Lykke’s wing beats drove Shilu to her knees.

Lykke cackled. “What are you even trying to do, Shishi?! We had this fight earlier, and I won! You think some zombies with a few busted grav—tricks can actually contain one of us?! Look at you, playing down in the mud with the meat! You’ve gone mad! Let me put you out of—”

A crack of electrical power passed over Eseld’s skin in a painful tingle. Her mouth filled with a fresh gush of iron, gums bleeding freely, washing away the foul reek of Lykke’s downdraft wing beats. The flies pressed up against the invisible shield spasmed and fell, a wave of tiny white bodies floating to the floor like pale ash.

The silver-grey drones — the four points of Kagami’s protective pyramid, the only thing that kept the demon from paralysing Elpida and her disciples — hinged froward, like a paper toy unfolding into a new shape. One drone whipped past Eseld’s face, moving so fast it made the air pop with pressure. The two other points raced forward, matched by the drone at the apex. Thousands of surviving white flies were swept away and gathered up as if caught within an invisible net.

The drones surrounded Lykke and Shilu in a much smaller and tighter pyramid than before. Lykke’s great wings folded up, crushed inward by invisible force. Thousands upon thousands of flies were compacted down into a tiny space, plunging Shilu and Lykke into a miniature swirling snowstorm of greasy pale bodies and buzzing wings.

Lykke tumbled to the ground, landing in a tangle of limbs, blanketed by the gore of her own broken wings. Shilu stayed kneeling, frozen in place.

“Cease fire!” Elpida yelled, lowering the receiver of her coilgun. Her disciples obeyed. “Kaga, do you have them?”

Kagami was collapsed in two of Hafina’s arms, but she was still conscious. Blood ran from her nose, smeared all down her lower face, wiped across one arm of her grey coat. Her hair was stuck to her scalp with sweat, she was shaking and shivering as if in the grip of a fever, and squinting as if exerting every ounce of strength in her petite little body.

But she was grinning. “What does it look like, Commander? I’m a genius!”

“Kaga,” Elpida snapped. “Report.”

“Fine, fine! Yes, they’re both in the cage. And it’s stable. Points locked, drones externally stabilised via the remaining two. I can keep them there for six to eight hours, give or take. We have them. Fuck me backwards and sideways, I am done. Ugh.” Kagami slumped, scrubbing her bloody face on her sleeve. “I’d give my left tit for a bath.”

Eseld couldn’t believe her eyes, nor her ears. The saint and her disciples had put the demon in a cage? It was true, everything Eseld had hoped was true, and more besides, miracles she could not have imagined.

She started to weep slow and silent tears. The others emerged from cover, straightening up from behind Ilyusha’s ballistic shields. Elpida locked her coilgun receiver to the support rig strapped around her hips. Cyn crawled away from the disciples, scrambling toward Eseld and worming into her arms.

Inside the cage, Lykke lay still. The white flies were so thick that Eseld could not see any expression on the demon’s face. Shilu was coated with the insects too, still and silent.

Elpida said: “Haf, get Kagami secured. Illy, help the other two up, get them on their feet, grab their gear, double-check the raw nanomachines. Atyle, head around the cage, check on the other one, the one Lykke attacked. Tell me what you see, tell me if we can save her. Kaga, isolate Lykke, please.”

The others all started to move. Kagami just sighed. “We’re really letting the other one free? We—”

“Please do it, Kagami.”

“Yes, yes, do this, do that, jump here, jump there. Ha!” Kagami spat a bitter laugh. “This one isn’t like the other one, Commander, I can’t just—”

A tentacle of shimmering heat-haze unfolded from the perfect black sphere at the apex of the grey metal pyramid.

It descended like a falling leaf, slow and fast at the same time. Eseld’s insides rocked with a sudden wave of nausea. Cyneswith doubled over in her arms and vomited a mouthful of bile onto the floor, whimpering and wheezing. Eseld’s head span, blood pounding inside her skull.

The gravekeeper — the zombie inside the upright coffin — said: “We are suborned those never born.”

The heat-haze distortion brushed against the demon’s cage, then vanished.

All four of Kagami’s drones clattered to the floor. Kagami screamed and writhed in Hafina’s arms, then twisted sideways, vomiting a stream of black blood. The rest of Elpida’s disciples were reeling to regain their balance, shaking their heads, clenching their eyes against the same effect Eseld had felt. Ilyusha spat a string of vomit to one side. Atyle sagged and grunted. Only Hafina seemed unaffected.

“Hold!” Elpida shouted, choking for breath. “Everyone hold!”

Lykke flowed back to her feet.

Her wings billowed upward to take her weight, her aurora of flies swirling to mirror the curves and lines of her body. Shilu staggered upright as well, lurching backward, arms raised to ward off the resurgent demon.

“Can’t keep a good girl down!” Lykke crooned. “I told you, Shishi, the tomb is mine, and that does include—”

Serin raised her boxy grey gun and pulled the trigger.

Lykke screamed.

The demon’s body juddered backward, like paint smeared across a canvas by a careless hand. Her flesh, her white dress, even the flies of her putrid aurora, they all flickered and jerked, turning jagged and angular, as if Lykke was an image projected upon a surface, and the surface been been torn and ripped by a fistful of knives. Her skin flickered and flashed, turning a hundred different colours in the blink of an eye, all shades and hues running into each other, then exploding outward into naked muscle and bleeding tissues, her body sprouting into uncontrolled growth. Her white dress melted into fluid, then seemed to meld together with her flesh, the layers of fabric and skin floating through each other like cloud or mist upon a hillside. Lykke’s hair suffered the same fate, mixing into her skin, then hardening into chitin or bone, then floating free like tissue paper. Her face ran like hot wax, her eyes cycling through a dozen colours and shapes and sizes.

The demon was not Lykke anymore. She was a hundred people, trapped in one body. A legion of souls.

Only her bloody wings escaped the disruption; the effect of Serin’s gun was not wide enough to erase the coherency of the boiling blood and blackened bone.

Then, Serin released the trigger.

Lykke returned to normal, her body sucking slowly back into shape. She blinked several times, smoothing her bloody hands over her wide hips, smearing the gore in slick red swoops down her sides. She took a deep breath. Her cloud of flies reformed, whirling in a spiral and settling above her like a great halo. She breathed out, purring into a smile.

Nobody was saying anything. Nobody was moving except Hafina, her helmet twitching back and forth, and Shilu, who was raising her lightless blades once again.

Eseld realised she couldn’t move. Her lips, her tongue, her limbs, even her lungs, all were frozen.

She was paralysed, exactly as she had been before. They were all paralysed — Eseld and Cyneswith, Elpida and her disciples. Serin had not released the trigger; Lykke had forced her to stop shooting. Lykke had taken control of all their bodies.

Lykke had won.

Eseld wanted to weep, but she could not. The demon had snatched victory so easily, dashed whatever faint hope had been kindled by the saint’s arrival and the clever mechanical tricks deployed by her disciples. Eseld did not understand how Hafina could still move, but that didn’t matter. Firepower alone could not halt the demon’s designs.

All zombies were nothing but meat before the ragged remnants of heaven’s host. 

Eseld felt her sense of self drop away, falling into a dark pit, descending back into the animalistic hell she had occupied for fifty seven deaths. Hope and humanity fled together. She was meat; she would always be meat. There was no escape, not in death, not in sainthood, not in service, for there was nothing left to serve but one’s own appetite and hunger. Nobody and nothing was coming to save her. No way out, for ever and ever.

Lykke spread her wings with a sharp crack. Her halo of white flies exploded outward, filling the gravekeeper’s chamber with the greasy mass of their tiny bodies, flooding every cubic inch of air.

Thousands of flies landed on every disciple, crawling across their exposed flesh, swarming over their armour and coats and clothes and weapons. Eseld saw Elpida’s carapace suit buried beneath an avalanche of white. Cyneswith and Eseld were blanketed a split-second later. Eseld felt thousands of tiny feet coat her face and scalp, worming down beneath her clothes and into the fold of her flesh, forcing their way into her mouth and jamming themselves up her nose, wriggling hard to penetrate the corners of her eyes.

Lykke’s voice rang out, high and girlish. “Now, Shilu, let’s finish this tedious errand and go home! Let’s go—”

A voice interrupted, audible over the drone of a billion flies.

“You’re sure?” said Elpida.

Before anybody could answer, Elpida moved. She reached over with her left hand and unclasped the buckles of her right gauntlet and vambrace. The armour plates clicked free and slid away, clattering to the floor, revealing a muscled forearm beneath, the skin a healthy pale copper-brown.

Lykke’s bloated white flies burst outward from Elpida, as if repelled by a breath of clean wind.

Elpida strode forward, walking free and untouched.

She stepped past Shilu and reached out with her exposed right hand. It happened so quickly that Lykke and Shilu could not react. Lykke’s eyes flew wide at the last second, mouth gaping open.

“W-what?! How— you should be—”

Elpida grabbed Lykke’s throat, fingers digging into flesh, squeezing the demon’s windpipe.

Lykke jerked as if hit with an electric shock. Her wings whirled, trying to pull her free, but her muscles weren’t working properly — the wings drooped and flopped, organs and bone and blood collapsing to the floor. Her flies fell like rain all around; Eseld felt them tumble out of her nose and go still inside her mouth. Lykke shrieked and wailed, bucking and kicking, trying to yank herself free of the saint’s burning gasp. She flailed with both hands, smashing her fists against the front of Elpida’s armoured helmet.

One of Lykke’s strikes landed true. Elpida’s helmet was knocked free from the neck-clasps which locked it to her suit of armour. The helmet tumbled off, landing with a hard thump upon the floor.

A waterfall of pure white hair. Copper-brown skin, clean and glossy. A pair of glowing purple eyes.

Not a saint. Not a saint at all.

Eseld recognised that hair, that skin, those purple eyes. She recognised it all, from the monster who had inflicted her own most recent death.

Eseld needed to scream. She could not even whimper.

And the monster — Elpida, or whatever spoke through her — was grinning, her mouth wide and full of teeth.

“Surprise, bitch!” Elpida howled into Lykke’s face. “Told you I’d choke you out!”