Damian’s hand rested lightly on Kitsuul’s silver fur, feeling the rippling energy thrumming beneath it, alive and volatile. His fingers sank slightly into the thick, starlit coat as he gazed down.
Kitsuul’s massive, radiant head turned back to him, her silver eyes gleaming with an almost childlike joy.
And he realized it, a cold, hollow pit in his chest tightening.
He was raising this innocent, luminous creature into sothing twisted. Into sothing that mirrored him.
Into sothing filled with rage.
Kitsuul tilted her head, sensing his shift. She could feel his emotions through the deep bond they shared, through the pathways opened by the Resonance.
But she only smiled.
"Don’t worry, Master," her voice echoed in his mind, lilting and cheerful. "I’m here to help you. I’ve only had fun since bonding with you!"
Her massive wings flexed once, starlight spilling off them in torrents.
"And besides," she said with a smile full of feral excitent, "we’re just getting started."
Kitsuul turned back to the advancing beasts, the Symbiotic Resonance Entropic monsters now fully bearing down on them, their monstrous forms crackling with chaotic lightning.
She opened her jaws, silver mist swirling in the back of her throat.
And then,
BOOM!
A beam of compressed, silver radiance erupted from her mouth, searing the air as it streaked toward the oncoming threats.
---
Back in the bounds of Ebonreach tropolis.
Beneath the bleeding city of Ebonreach, in the Hollow Stacks, under the fractured skeleton of the Rustblood Circuit Arena, Anastasia moved like a phantom.
Her steps were asured, deliberate, each one swallowing the noise of broken earth and twisted steel. Overhead, the dredges of the Hollow Stacks groaned under Martial Law’s grip. Enforcer drones buzzed like wasps in the streets. Spotlights cut the fog.
But down here, only silence reigned alongside hushed whispers as everyone retreated to their hos, or they would be questioned by the Enforcers.
Anastasia stopped in front of a cracked wall, tracing her gloved hand along the jagged surface. From her coat, she drew a thin, curved device, a scanner, softly pulsing with crimson light. The readings flickered.
There.
A trail. Subtle. Nearly hidden.
Her lips curved into a faint, cold smile.
She held a device from ZENTHRA that had the sa function of scanning for Entropic Energy Values as the Visors Damian and Serena had.
She slipped the device away and reached up, adjusting the mask over her face, a cold, unfeeling facade of black with crimson slits for eyes.
The Blood Witch.
Soone who appeared and disappeared in the Rustblood Circuit Arena like a myth.
Anastasia moved forward, weaving through broken corridors and collapsed hallways. The underground labyrinth of the Hollow Stacks’ forgotten guts.
It didn’t take long.
She found them.
Underground, past the Rustblood Circuit Arena.
A gathering of Vagrant Beast Masters, eight in total, huddled in the depths of a room of a cavernous space where arena debris lay scattered.
They were rough, hardened figures, their coats patched and worn, their bodies marked by tattoos and cybernetic augnts.
Around them, Interstellar Beasts.
The one at the center drew Anastasia’s eye first, a scantily clad woman draped in armor-like cloth and scars, her hair wild, her Symbiotic Resonance Mastiff, a massive beast with obsidian white fur, growling low at her side.
The woman’s beast, powerful, even for a Symbiotic.
But Anastasia’s eyes slid past them to the tallic orb floating above the woman’s shoulder, spinning with purple light, its tallic wings twitching.
HAO.
The Hostile Arena Operator.
Eccentric.
Insane.
And right now,
HAO’s chanical iris flickered as it registered her.
It was the first one to discover her as it analyzed her up and down as she walked in freely.
The silence broke.
"You..." HAO’s synthesized voice warbled. "You were..." The orb trembled, its wings clicking and folding. "You were standing next to the other two masked entities, one who, who leapt down to kill the murderous Masked Guardians! HAO rembers! HAO rembers everything!"
The air thickened.
The Beast Masters shifted, their bodies tensing.
HAO spun once, frantically, its voice rising.
"You are connected to the Judge! You know the Judge who killed the Masked Guardians!"
The woman with the Mastiff stepped forward, her Beast baring its massive fangs.
Weapons clicked. Beast Auras flared.
They moved to surround Anastasia.
But she didn’t flinch.
She stood tall.
A small woman against monsters.
She tilted her head, mask gleaming under the dim, broken lights.
Her voice cut through the tension.
"So these are the Beast Masters of our Hollow Stacks?" she said, tone dry, almost bored. "The ones who were supposed to protect us."
A ripple passed through the group.
One man, massive, his arms covered in glowing tattoos, grunted.
The woman with the Mastiff sneered.
"We protect our own," she said. "We don’t start wars we can’t win."
Anastasia chuckled softly, a cold, humorless sound.
"No," she said, stepping forward once, "you let them butcher your own."
The Mastiff growled. The air shuddered with the tension of barely restrained violence.
HAO whirred, its wings fluttering in agitation.
"Backbone," Anastasia said, the word like a knife, sharp, decisive. "At least soone needs to have it."
The Beast Masters stilled.
HAO’s voice lowered to a near-whisper.
"You’re connected to the Judge..."
Its iris glead.
Anastasia didn’t deny it.
She didn’t need to.
She pulled the mask tighter, the crimson slits burning.
"We don’t need cowards," she said. "We need people that will actually fight for the Hollow Stacks. I am here under the orders of the Judge who killed 5 Guardians that were butchering you all like chicken. Touch , and you will be the next ones to die."
...!
The Mastiff growled again, stepping closer, muscles coiled.
The woman gritted her teeth.
Anastasia’s hand hovered near her waist, not for a weapon, but for sothing worse.
Her blood. It burned with the Nanotech Blood Serum and begged to be released.
She smiled, cruel and cold.
"The Judge sent to see if the so called Vagrant Beast Masters of the Hollow Stacks are worth anything. So, are you all worth anything? Is this all there is?"
...!
Imnse silence reigned down as the Vagrant Beast Masters looked at each other.
The underground trembled with the rising fury of the Hollow Stacks.
Above them, Martial Law reigned.
But down here,
Down here, the blood was already boiling.
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