Necroepilogos

The saint crushed the demon’s throat in a grip of burning iron, howling wild laughter into her face; Lykke could not escape, kicking and flailing, screaming and screeching, pinned like a moth with a nail through her abdomen. Her wings of gore lay broken upon the ground. Her aurora of bloated white flies formed a carpet of tiny corpses, like greasy ashen snow settled upon the grey metal and the crimson blood and the scattered bodies of Lykke’s former hounds.

Elpida — monster, cannibal, revenant predator, a true devil of the corpse-city, clothed in the false armour of righteousness — held Lykke at bay with nothing more divine than a single bare fist.

Eseld wanted to screw her eyes shut and deny what she saw, but she was not permitted even that slender mercy.

She remained paralysed, her body frozen, her eyes wide.

Lykke tried to hit Elpida in the face, now that Elpida’s helmet had been knocked aside — an open-palmed slap, poorly aimed, fingernails hooked to rake across the saint’s exposed flesh. Elpida caught the strike on the vambrace of her free arm, smashing Lykke’s hand aside with a sharp crack of broken bones. Lykke screamed in fresh pain and manic alarm, her remaining eye wide with terror and running with blood-streaked tears.

Elpida howled again. “Never learned to fight without an advantage, did you?!”

Lykke squealed, choking on her compressed windpipe, both hands flailing, trying to slap at Elpida’s face and head. One bloody hand landed true upon Elpida’s skull, then tightened and gripped a fistful of white hair. Lykke yanked, ripping snowy strands from Elpida’s scalp.

Elpida reared backward — then jerked forward, smashing her forehead into Lykke’s face. The demon’s nose exploded in a fountain-arc of blood, choking her cries beneath clotted gurgles and wet splutters.

The force of the blow ripped Lykke free from Elpida’s grasp, but the saint’s fist was stronger than Lykke’s demonic flesh; Lykke’s throat tore open, pale skin ripping and parting with the sound of rending meat. A chunk of Lykke’s body came away in Elpida’s naked fist.

Lykke reeled back, staggering for balance on her white talons, putting distance between herself and Elpida. She raised both hands to ward off the saint. A waterfall of blood emptied from her open throat, cascading down the front of her ruined white sundress, bubbling up through her lips and glazing her chin with sticky crimson fluid. Her wounds oozed and spluttered as she heaved for breath, one eye bulging, jaw hanging open. The ruptured flesh of her throat did not raise or reknit or renew. Her wings stayed broken. Her flies did not stir.

“What—” Lykke gurgled, then spat a gobbet of wet, red, quivering tissue from her blood-glazed lips. “What did you— do to me?”

Elpida raised the bloody chunk of Lykke’s throat to her teeth, then took a bite. She tore into the raw meat with a sideways flick of her head, then chewed with an open-mouthed grin, crimson droplets running down her copper-brown chin.

“It’s not the size of your network access that matters,” Elpida said through a mouthful of meat. “It’s how you use it, babe.”

Shilu still stood a few feet to Elpida’s rear, arm-blades raised, positioned for her own aborted confrontation with Lykke. She said: “Zombie, that is Necromancer flesh. That—”

“You stay the fuck out of this, you oversized cheese grater,” said Elpida. She did not look away from Lykke. “Unless you want the same special treatment? Want me to bounce your stupid metal head off the floor a few times until you find your marbles? This is between me and this bitch cake here. Shut the fuck up and wait your turn.”

“Understood,” said Shilu.

Lykke stared down at herself, at the terrible wounds all over her body, the bullet holes and burn marks upon dress and her skin, the massive blown-out portions of her chest and her hips. Her gore-wrought wings twitched and jerked, as if trying to rise on shattered bones. She kept gasping — sharp, hard, tight little hitches of breath. She shook all over. Tears ran in a bloody track from her one remaining eyeball. 

“W-what—” she croaked. “What is— what is this … this sensation? N-no, no … ”

Elpida crammed the rest of Lykke’s stolen throat-meat into her mouth, chewing and swallowing with obvious relish. She licked her middle finger with a loud, wet pop.

“Pain,” Elpida said, grinning a wide and blood-soaked smile. “Pretty cool, huh? Not the full load, sadly. I can’t bring you all the way down to our level, but I can jam your own nerves open. Stuck a few other tricks in there too, screwed up your polymorphics and your cellular control and your ambient nano-draw. And hey, looks like you aren’t lofty enough in this hierarchy of mega-bullshit to override your own settings.”

Lykke tried to laugh. The sound emerged as a gurgle of choking pain. “And— if I r-release you z-zombies, you’ll l-lift this—”

“Nah,” Elpida grunted. “If you want the pain to end, you gotta fuck off. Fuck all the way off and suck a log of shit out of your own arse. Pretty sure you can twist that way now, what with no spine or guts or anything. Go on, get bending, girl. Pucker up for some anal self-suck.”

Lykke’s face blossomed with rage. “You— I can still f-finish you o-off. P-pain is n-nothing, you filthy bag of flesh and—”

Elpida reached down and unclasped the coilgun support rig from around her waist. She wriggled out of the backpack and lowered it to the floor, then straightened up again and rolled her shoulders.

Lykke narrowed her eye. “What are y-you doing— zombie?”

Elpida raised her fists — right one naked, left still clad in a gauntlet of metal and ceramic. “Come at me then, bitch tits.”

Lykke blinked, then gurgled: “W-what?”

“You and me,” Elpida said. “One on one. No tricks, no nanomachine crap, no shape shifting, no back up. Isn’t that what you wanted? You wanted to dance, right? Well, cunt-face, I’ve got my fuckin’ dancing shoes laced nice and tight to go up your arse. Let’s rock.”

Lykke gulped down three great lungfuls of air. The demon was hyperventilating in panic, losing control of her emotions.

She screamed, raised both hands, and flew at the saint.

Elpida’s right fist crashed into Lykke’s face. Lykke’s head snapped back, blood arcing into the air from her broken nose. Elpida followed with a second punch from her gauntleted left hand, smashing into Lykke’s jaw with a compound crack-a-crack of shattering bone. Lykke reeled backward, hands pressed to her face, sobbing and spluttering and heaving for breath. Elpida leapt forward, grabbed a fistful of Lykke’s hair, and dragged her upright. The demon’s hands came away from her face, flailing at Elpida’s armour, revealing a mask of split flesh and flowing blood and one terrified eyeball. Elpida ignored the flailing slaps and punched Lykke in the face twice more, breaking her jaw again, splitting her lips, cracking her eye sockets, fracturing her skull. Elpida slammed an armoured knee into whatever was left of Lykke’s guts. Lykke doubled up, squealing and wailing. Elpida grabbed her by the back of the neck and yanked her upright a second time, then punched her in the face again, and again, and again, and again, right arm pistoning back and forth.

“You wanted to dance with Elps!?” Elpida shouted. “Too fucking bad, bitch! You got me instead!”

Eseld realised the implications of what she was hearing, even through the spectacle of the demon’s fall from darkly divine grace.

There was more than one Elpida.

The first was the Elpida who had rescued her, who had strode into the tomb under fire, who led her companions from the fore; that Elpida was perhaps worthy of sainthood. That Elpida spoke with calm confidence, showed respect for her soldiers, and compassion for the ones she had rescued. That Elpida was a shining beacon, beyond anything Eseld had imagined in all her fifty seven deaths, or even before, in her true life.

The second was this Elpida, who revelled in cruelty, and held the power to banish a demon.

With an almighty kick and a desperate backward shove, Lykke managed to tear free from Elpida’s grasp. She staggered away, face reduced to pulped meat and shattered bone, running with a waterfall of blood, hacking and wheezing and whining and heaving. Her broken wings dragged after her, brushing aside the carpet of dead flies.

“I—” she coughed and gurgled, spitting a spray of blood. “I hate you! You were supposed to be mine!”

Elpida’s face ripped into a blood-soaked grin. She opened her mouth and howled a war-cry, then leapt at Lykke. The demon could not escape, she was too slow now, too wounded, in too much pain. Elpida’s gauntleted fist smashed her face aside, driving her back, once, twice, three times.

After more punishment than any human or zombie could have endured, Lykke gave up.

Her body deliquesced instantly, turning into a thin blue soup. Elpida’s final punch passed through empty air. The pale blue mass slapped to the floor and soaked through the grey metal in the blink of an eye. The corpse-carpet of white flies did not follow, lying dead upon the floor and the corpses of the fallen zombies, little insect bodies fouled in the pools of blood.

Silence settled over the gravekeeper’s chamber, backed by the roaring static fury of the hurricane beyond the tomb’s walls.

Lykke’s paralysis broke. Zombies jerked back into animation.

“Fucking hell!” Kagami shouted, still cradled in Hafina’s arms, struggling to sit upright. Her lips were black with tarry blood and her eyes were shot through with crimson veins. Her coat and lap were littered with white flies; she raked the tiny bodies out of her hair with shaking hands. “Fuck that! Fuck all of that! Fuck! Fuck!”

The little berserker — Ilyusha — shook herself like a dog, throwing down her ballistic shield and spitting out a mouthful of dead flies. Atyle merely inhaled deeply, filling her lungs before she chewed and swallowed; she stuck a finger into her mouth and pulled out a single half-crushed fly, bringing it upward to examine the tiny corpse with her peat-green bionic eye. Serin started laughing — a deep and raspy metallic sound behind her half-mask, even as she swung her boxy weapon up to cover Shilu; flies fell from the inside of her robes, as if shaken free from secret folds inside her body. Only Hafina seemed mostly unaffected, doing her best to cradle Kagami and stop her from trying to rise to her feet.

Cyneswith wept and shuddered in Eseld’s arms. Eseld retched out a mouthful of dead flies, snorting them from her nose and shaking them from her russet hair. She cringed at the feeling of the dead insects on her skin and inside her mouth.

On the other side of the gravekeeper’s chamber, Sky drew in a deep, rasping breath, then began to hack and cough and convulse. She was surrounded by the shattered pieces of her armour and her broken gun-rig. Her eyes stayed shut. Thick blood bubbled up out of her mouth, carrying a wave of dead flies upon a crimson torrent.

Elpida straightened up. Her right fist was grazed and bruised; her mouth and lips were streaked with blood; a clump of her perfect white hair was tangled and matted from Lykke’s grip.

Kagami shouted: “You did not know that would work! Commander, don’t you dare pretend otherwise! That was a fucking gamble and I hated every second of it!”

Elpida turned around. Her purple eyes were bright with victory. “Howl was right,” she said. “It works. We can fight Necromancers.”

“No!” Kagami snapped. “Howl can fight Necromancers. The rest of us have to sit back and choke on flies!”

A nasty grin — the other Elpida, ‘Howl’? — flickered across Elpida’s face. “You’re welcome, Moon cunt.”

Kagami let out a great huff, shaking her head and spitting out more blood.

Elpida returned to normal as she glanced at Shilu. “Are these flies dangerous?”

“No,” Shilu said. She lowered her blades. The swords transformed back into hands and forearms of black chrome and serrated metal. “Lykke has abandoned the biomass. They’re inert.”

“The Necromancer bitch is correct!” Kagami shouted. “They’re nothing now. Ugh. Ugh! Nothing except vile!”

“Elpi!” Ilyusha snapped as she straightened up, aiming her shotgun at Shilu. “You hurt?”

Elpida shook her head. “I’m not wounded. Illy, hold your fire.”

Ilyusha hissed between clenched teeth. Shilu stared into the mouth of the shotgun, no expression on her pale polymer face.

Elpida snapped out orders: “Illy, go help Cyneswith and Eseld back to their feet. Grab the backpack full of raw blue. Haf, you take one cannister and get it down Kagami’s throat. Kaga, you stay still and concentrate on rebooting the drones. Get me a sitrep from Pheiri, we need his ETA. Atyle, take a look at the other zombie, see if we can stabilise her. Give her some blue.”

“Sky,” said Shilu. “The injured one is called is Sky.”

Elpida nodded. “Serin, cover the … cover Shilu. Don’t shoot her unless she moves. Shilu?”

“Yes?”

“I suggest you don’t move.”

“Understood.”

Elpida’s disciples hopped to their orders. Ilyusha scurried over to Eseld and Cyneswith, pulled Cyneswith to her feet, then got the backpack of raw blue off Cyn’s shoulders. Eseld assumed the disciples were about to claim the cannisters for themselves, but Ilyusha took only two from the bag, then left the rest at Cyneswith’s feet.

Ilyusha paused for a second, staring at Eseld. “You hurt? Hey? Heeey?”

Eseld felt nothing.

Her internal metaphors of sainthood and divine intervention and demonic power had collapsed into sand and trickled away between her fingers. What use was that flimsy framework of comprehension when a monster like Elpida was the only force capable of banishing a demon? What kind of former world did Elpida truly represent, what salvation did she offer, when she had butchered Eseld once before, as a predator in the guts of this rotten, abandoned, Godless world? The inside of Eseld’s chest was empty and hollow. Her skin was numb. Her heartbeat was gone. Yet she could not tear her eyes away from Elpida — from that white hair and those purple eyes, that healthy, glossy, rich dark skin, that commanding height, that presence of power, that clarity of action.

All of this, from a false saint. A monster. A cannibal — no different to Eseld herself. No different to any other zombie.

Ilyusha cracked a grin. “Yeah. I know, right? Serious though. Wounded?”

“ … no,” Eseld croaked.

Ilyusha scurried off. She handed one cannister of raw blue to Hafina and the other to Atyle. Hafina helped Kagami sip from the open cannister. Atyle skirted around Shilu and headed for Sky.

Cyneswith helped Eseld to her feet. Warm little hands touched Eseld’s wrists, then her face, trying to cup her cheeks.

“Miss Eseld? Miss Eseld? We’re delivered! We’re safe. We’ve been saved. Miss Eseld?”

Elpida and Shilu faced each other. Serin covered the latter with her boxy grey gun, and two other weapons besides — new guns that had appeared from inside her cloak, clutched in additional spindly arms. Ilyusha joined them, scowling at Shilu.

Shilu stared back with wide dark eyes.

Elpida said, “Well then, Necromancer. Here we are. Mutual enemy defeated. What now?”

“I do not know,” said Shilu. “You seem to be in command here. I surrender myself to you.”

“How long do we have until Lykke returns?”

Shilu blinked. “I cannot be certain. She requires a full permissions reset. The conditions of the hurricane are likely interfering with the network. Hours. Perhaps days.”

Elpida nodded. “I have a lot of questions for you, but we can’t ask them here. We need to secure the supplies from this tomb and return to our vehicle.” Her eyes flickered to the gravekeeper, to the half-a-zombie inside her upright coffin, then upward toward the perfect black sphere cradled in the apex of the grey pyramid. “Though I would prefer to attempt communication with the gravekeeper.”

“I do not recommend that,” Shilu said. “It is not communicative. I have tried.”

Elpida smiled. “Right, not unless it’s Lykke. So, Necromancer, will you come with us, or will you try to stab me in the back of the head again?”

“I don’t know,” said Shilu. “But I’m not going to assassinate you.”

“Glad to hear that.”

“I have … questions for you, as well,” Shilu said.

Kagami spluttered. “Commander! Elpida, you cannot be serious about taking this thing back to Pheiri! You—”

“This is intel,” Elpida said. “Highest priority. Best we’ve ever gotten. And she doesn’t have to come inside. Kaga, sitrep from Pheiri?”

Kagami huffed. “He’s gone as deep as he can. Passages get too small. The entrance is overrun with zombies trying to escape the storm. Winds have hit eight hundred and fifty miles an hour, and still climbing. Hailstones enough to strip flesh from bone.” Kagami swallowed. “Commander, Elpida, I don’t know what the fuck is happening out there. That’s like the surface of a gas giant! This storm should be impossible!”

“None of us understand,” Elpida said, then nodded at Shilu. “Except maybe her.”

“I have no information on the storm,” said Shilu.

On the other side of the chamber, Sky rolled onto her side and vomited up strings of sticky white mucus; Atyle was crouched next to her, dripping raw blue onto Sky’s lips. Everyone looked round, including Elpida.

“Atyle?” Elpida shouted. “How is she?”

Atyle called back: “This tin soldier is in poor condition. Her paint flakes. Her metal is bent. Something burns inside her.”

Sky’s eyes were swollen shut. She vomited again, retching stringy masses of white gunk into a growing puddle on the floor.

Eseld stumbled out of Cyneswith’s gentle hands. She cast around nearby while the others were distracted, her feet lost in the swamp of corpses and blood and drifts of dead flies.

Shilu said, “Lykke may have compromised her. I can purge her internal nanomachine permission strings. Or perhaps you can do that too, Elpida?”

Eseld located her submachine gun, down on the floor. She pulled it from a pool of blood and brushed away the flies. She slipped the magazine out with shaking hands — empty.

Elpida said, “I think that’s beyond me. What do you need to do, Shilu? Touch her?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I’m not moving without your permission.”

Eseld dropped the submachine gun. She had taken more weapons from the armoury earlier — a pair of pistols, a PDW, a combat shotgun, and those grenades. The shotgun was in her backpack, which she had lost at some point. The PDW was too unwieldy, strapped beneath her coat. She reached into her pockets to grab a grenade, but her hands were slick with sweat and shaking too much; she could not hold one of the metal spheres.

Eseld finally managed to get her right hand around the grip of a lightweight pistol. She pulled it from inside her coat, racked the slide, and flicked the safety off.

Cyneswith’s hands touched Eseld’s shoulder. Perhaps she murmured Eseld’s name, but Eseld wasn’t listening.

“Serin, Illy,” Elpida was saying. “Cover her while she moves. Let her touch Sky. Atyle, back away, give her room. Kagami, any word from Ho—”

Eseld turned around and pointed her pistol at Elpida.

“Look at me,” she said.

The disciples reacted first. Ilyusha spun on her clawed feet, baring her teeth, aiming her shotgun at Eseld. Hafina twitched upright, half her guns coming up, limbs locking her weapons in Eseld’s direction. Kagami spluttered in surprise; her drones twitched where they lay on the ground, half of them jerking into the air. Atyle raised her eyebrows with curious interest. Only Serin stayed absolutely focused on Shilu.

“Hold fire!” Elpida shouted. “Hold fire, all of you! Illy, Illy, stand down! Kagami, drones back. Hafina, that goes for you too. Hold fire, stand down.”

“Commander!” Kagami spluttered. “She’s pointing a gun at you, you—”

“She’s earned the right.”

“What?!”

“It’s her. One of the four. She’s the one I finished off.”

Elpida’s disciples looked upon their leader with baffled confusion, then with slowly dawning realisation. Kagami’s eyes went wide behind her visor, staring at Elpida, then at Eseld. Ilyusha hesitated, then lowered her shotgun, squinting at Eseld in disbelief. Hafina did as ordered. Atyle broke into a smile.

Had they not known? Did they not know their saint’s sordid and sadistic past? Or were they all in on it?

“Fucking hell,” Kagami growled. “Commander! Commander, what are the chances of this? A billion to one? You think this is a coincidence? You have an assassin standing at your shoulder, and you think this girl is a coincidence—”

“I don’t care,” Elpida said. “She’s earned the right.”

“Look at me,” Eseld repeated. “Look at me!”

Elpida looked.

Purple eyes met Eseld’s gaze, within a face dirtied by demon’s blood.

“I see you,” said Elpida.

Eseld’s hands and arms were shaking hard. Her palms were slippery with sweat. She could not hold the pistol steady, could not keep her aim true. She wrapped her free hand around her wrist. A weight like a millstone lay on her chest, crushing the breath from her lungs. Cyneswith murmured something, trying to touch Eseld’s arms, but Eseld shook her off with an angry hiss, baring her rows of sharp teeth. Cyneswith stumbled back, silent and gaping.

Eseld stared into those glowing purple eyes, searching—

For what? For meaning? For answers? For a reason?

She had expected the other Elpida to rise to the surface, the cruel one, the one who could never be a saint. But it was the first Elpida staring back at her, the confident commander, not the devil clothed in flesh.

“You … ” Eseld tried to speak, but she could barely whisper. “You recognise me.”

“Yes,” Elpida said. “I do.”

“Why?”

Elpida took a deep breath. “Because I have spent every day for the last forty one days staring at pict-captures of when we killed you and your friends. Because I have etched your face into my memory. Because you did not deserve to go unremembered or unmourned. None of us do.”

Eseld couldn’t breathe. She could barely stay standing or hold onto her gun. The weapon felt as if it would slide out of her grip, though her fingers hurt from squeezing so hard. She shook her head, jerking it back and forth. “Wha—what? Why? What are you— why? Why?!”

“Because—”

“Is it not enough to eat me?! You had to … to stare at … my … my face?! What—”

“I kept your skull, too.”

Kagami let out a long hiss, squeezing her eyes shut. Ilyusha looked away, gritting her teeth, as if in shame. Atyle just kept smiling. Serin may have laughed, but Eseld could not be certain through the ringing inside her head.

Eseld said, “My skull?”

“Yes,” Elpida replied. “All four. Yours, and those of your three companions. I had hoped to one day place them in some kind of reliquary, or shrine, or simply bury them with proper headstones, grave markers, when we could be sure the nanomachine ecosystem would not eventually erode or destroy them. Something along those lines. A memorial. The skulls are held inside our vehicle, our home. I can take you there and relinquish the skulls to you, whatever else you decide. You have an absolute right to them.”

Tears fogged Eseld’s vision, running down her cheeks, yet she did not know why she was crying. Elpida’s words made no sense. Was this cruelty? Was the false and hateful saint simply lying to her? Or did God — and God’s remaining instruments, those who had outlived his death yet stayed true to the world — work in ways Eseld could not begin to comprehend?

Was Elpida a saint or a demon, a devil hiding inside a person, or something else? Eseld didn’t know. Saints and demons didn’t really exist, only nanomachines and God’s empty throne. Was Elpida aiming for that throne, by any means necessary, even through preying on the weak?

Had Eseld not realised that she would do the very same, if given the opportunity?

As Eseld hesitated, the sound of the storm steadily increased. Though the gravekeeper’s chamber lay deep in the core of the tomb itself, perhaps even deep underground, the fury of the wind and the rain and the hail penetrated the layers of black metal as a growing static voice pouring from the heavens. Great slams and cracking sounds creaked and pinged through the warren-like guts of the tomb. The wind howled like the voice of a demon trapped beyond the walls. Perhaps it was. Perhaps Lykke had joined the hurricane.

Sky coughed up another gobbet of stringy white vomit, shaking and shuddering in Eseld’s peripheral vision, behind Elpida.

Kagami cleared her throat. “That zombie is going to expire. Elpida, your obsession is going to cost us.”

“Eseld,” Elpida said. “May Shilu—”

“Yes!” Eseld spat. “Yes! I don’t care! Help her, kill her, whatever! Go on!”

Shilu nodded to Serin, asking permission. Serin nodded back. Shilu strode across the room, clicking on the spear-tip points of her feet, and then knelt at Sky’s side. Atyle watched her with naked curiosity.

Eseld ignored all of that.

Elpida said: “We won’t hurt you, Eseld. We certainly won’t eat you, not again. We wouldn’t have expended all this effort to save you, just to do that. Do you believe me?”

Eseld couldn’t decide what she believed anymore, if anything at all. “So … out there you eat us, but in here you save us?”

Elpida took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yes.”

Kagami hissed, “Great answer, Commander. Yeah, wonderful. That’s really going to convince her not to shoot you in the face! You, you, what was your name, Cyneswith? We’re not going to eat you, okay? Come over here, come away from her, don’t get yourself perforated because of these fucking fools, you—”

Elpida said: “Are you going to shoot me?”

Eseld panted, staring into those purple eyes. “I … I … ”

“There was no justification for what we did to you,” Elpida said. “There is no justification for any of this.”

“The—then, why … ”

“The meat in our bellies came from your body. Our strength was once yours. You and your three companions fed us all, which allowed us to be here today. Without your meat and the meat of your friends, we would not be here to save Cyneswith there, beside you, or Sky. We would not have been here to fight Lykke. None of those things would have happened.”

Eseld’s head spun. “Is that your excuse?”

Elpida waited as if for Eseld to continue, then shook her head in the storm-tossed silence. “No. It’s not a justification, it’s just what happened. We owe you. We’ve been developing alternative sources of nanomachine supply, ones that don’t rely on killing and eating other people. But we couldn’t get there from a standing start. We had to sustain ourselves in the meantime. But I have no power to compel you to accept any of this.”

“Then why … ”

“I’m telling you because, above all else, you deserve to understand why it happened, why we did it. You deserve answers, possibly restitution, maybe even revenge.”

Eseld felt a great sob building inside her chest. “What … what are you?”

Elpida took a step forward, hands raised, palms open. The boots of her carapace armour crushed white flies to powder beneath each footfall.

“She’s a fool,” Kagami said. “But she’s not lying. We’re not going to eat you, you moron. We did what we had to. Now we don’t. Put the fucking gun down.”

“Yeah!” Ilyusha snapped. “Put it down!”

Elpida gestured with a chop of one hand. “Stop, both of you. She has a right to this.”

Eseld said, “Answer me yourself. Answer me! Are you a—” Eseld almost choked on the word. “A saint? A servant of God? Or just another demon? What are you!?”

Elpida took another step forward.

“I’m a promise,” she said. “I’m a promise that there will always be a place for all, no matter the mistakes and missteps we make. I’m a piece of a living promise, handed down all the way into this nanomachine afterlife, into this curse, this madness, and I am still that promise, even if my flesh is undead and I’ve killed and eaten others who did not deserve to die. None will be left behind, none will be abandoned. That’s why I kept your skull and memorised your face. That’s why I want to know the names of your three friends, so I can remember them too. Do you understand, Eseld? Even in death, I was not willing to abandon you, though I’d never met you before, though I had wronged you, and eaten your flesh, and ended you. I am a promise, and that promise is called ‘Telokopolis’.” She lifted her naked right hand to the symbol on the chestpiece of her armour — the spire-like tower silhouetted by an arc of moonrise. “Have you ever heard that name before?”

Eseld shook her head.

“It means a place for all,” Elpida said. “Where none will be left outside or forgotten.”

Elpida took another step forward; she was only a few paces away now. Eseld pointed her gun directly at Elpida’s face, finger coiled on the trigger. “That doesn’t answer anything!” she hissed. “What— what are you? What—”

Elpida took another step. Eseld stumbled back — but Elpida surged forward, and pressed her forehead to the muzzle of the gun.

“Elpi!” Ilyusha snapped.

“Commander, for fuck’s sake!” Kagami joined in too. Even Atyle said something and Serin grunted out a word or two, though Eseld was not sure what they meant.

Elpida’s face shifted, as if somebody else peered out from inside her flesh, wearing an expression alien to her musculature — darkly amused, lips curling upward, eyes narrowing tight.

This was the other Elpida, the one who had beaten and tortured Lykke, and banished the demon. Elpida called her ‘Howl.’

Howl’s eyes burned with purple flame beneath the grey gunmetal of the pistol’s muzzle, looking down at Eseld. Up close she was so very tall.

“Serious answer?” Howl rasped. “I’m not gonna lie to you. Not that Elps was lying, but shit, she can’t do this. She can’t even say it. She’s too kind. Doesn’t wanna admit what we’re turning into. You really wanna know what we are? There’s no going back, if you do.”

“Y-yes.”

Howl grinned. “We’re the best chance in forever that any of you zombies got to stop fuckin’ eating each other.”

“ … what?”

“Even if we did have to eat you once before.” Howl winked. “So you got a choice, girl. Be one of us, or go back out with the predators and the monsters, all alone. And that’s up to you. With that gun in your hand. You’ve got the choice. Take your pick.”

Eseld stared into those burning purple eyes and that face-splitting grin. The silence of the gravekeeper’s chamber turned to deep static and the howling of the wind around the walls of the tomb, pressing in on Eseld’s skull. The storm felt like the inside of her own mind. She could not think.

She sobbed, and squeezed the trigger.

Howl smashed Eseld’s arm aside; the gun discharged into the air, bullet slamming into the wall of the gravekeeper’s chamber. Howl grabbed Eseld’s wrist in the gauntlet of her carapace armour and held the gun high; Eseld squeezed the trigger again and again and again — bang! bang! bang! Howl tightened her grip, crushing Eseld’s wrist so hard that the bones creaked. Eseld cried out. The pistol tumbled from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

“Sorry, zombie,” Howl said. “But I can’t let—”

Eseld lunged forward, shark-toothed maw open wide, aiming for Howl’s throat.

Howl caught Eseld’s teeth on her bare right arm. Eseld bit down, puncturing the healthy, glossy, copper-brown skin, sinking her teeth deep into the meat. Blood exploded into her mouth.

Howl tried to shake her off, so Eseld wrapped her legs around Howl’s waist and bit down even harder. Howl slammed her to the floor, knocking the wind from Eseld’s lungs. Still she bit down, deeper and deeper, slicing and tearing through the meat. Howl tried to pull her forearm free, so Eseld wrapped her other arm around Howl’s back, clutching and clawing at the cold plates of the carapace armour. Eseld sobbed, salty tears mixing with the hot blood running over her cheeks and chin.

She met Howl’s burning purple eyes.

But Howl was gone.

Elpida smiled. She showed no pain or anger, only a distant melancholy.

“Bite as deep as you need,” Elpida said. “Take as much as you want, flesh or blood, it’s yours. You’ve earned it.”

Elpida let go of Eseld’s wrist; Eseld wrapped her other arm around Elpida’s back, against the cold metal of her armour, clinging on tight. Elpida cradled the rear of Eseld’s skull in her gauntlet.

Eseld cried, hard and wet and messy, wracking her body with each convulsive sob. She bit down and down and down, anchoring herself in Elpida’s flesh, clenching her jaw until her teeth met bone.

Saint’s blood flowed down her throat, rich and dark and hot, like liquid iron.

Eseld’s world dissolved in the taste of tears and blood.