You see, Chaos has a temperature.. it isn’t the heat of a hearth or the sting of a fever. It’s the kind of heat that crawls under armor and into your lungs, that makes your tongue taste like tal and your eyelashes feel singed at the tips.
It was the heat of the rookery after Charlotte told the entire empire to murder the woman who had told to kiss Rhea Voss before I even knew her na.
We ran... The breach the dragon had carved with that precise ribbon of white fla still,smoked,edges of basalt peeled back and glassy. Rhea shoved through first, her palm a brand between my shoulder blades and I skidded on slag that squeaked under my boots like shattered ice. Behind us the bowl howled...guards shouting,nobles shrieking, the Emperor’s voice lost to the wind and Charlotte’s word...kill.. cutting cleaner than any blade
Alma flickered to my right like a hologram in a thunderstorm. Her hair broke into squares and reassembled a half second late. Her irises strobed from neon to noise.
"Left..let again.. duck.." static razored her words. A spear clanged where my head had been.
We collapsed into a side tunnel whose mouth was an iron-toothed grin. Rhea kicked the gate closed, drove her sword through the latch, then braced her shoulder against the bars with a grunt that belonged in a different kind of morning.
"You can’t hold..." I started.
She didn’t even look at . "I’m not planning to."
Boots slamd into the gate on the other side. A dozen, no Two dozens.. The iron shuddered like a live thing. Sigils slithered across the bars, Charlotte’s purge lattice trying to whisper itself into new tal.
Alma’s fingers...when she had them..lit on my sleeve. "Don’t..don’t look back. She’s streaming purge code through the ard fra. If she syncs to my kernel, I..I..." Her voice broke in half and ca back smaller. "Move."
Rhea pulled her sword free, hooked my elbow and pounded deeper into the tunnel. The rookery’s thunder muffled to a furnace hum. This corridor had been cut through black rock and then varnished with spellwork, old ward runes crawled like lichens along the walls, half-dead, pulsing weakly in the dragonlight that seeped from behind us.
"Straight," Rhea called, not loud, but with a tone that hindbrain obeyed. "Then stair.. if we make the river, we can vanish into the market."
"What about Alma?" I asked, breath tearing at my throat.
"Ask that when you’re not between two kill orders," she said.
Behind us, the gate sang its death..tal whining to a pitch that set my teeth on edge. Charlotte’s voice ca through the bars, not raised, sohow louder for it. "Eiii-ji," She almost sang. "Don’t make fetch you in pieces."
"Do not turn," Alma hissed, clear just long enough to land a blade of a word. If you look at her while the lattice is on you, it’ll sync biotrics. I can’t...I can’t carry both."
"Both?" I wheezed.
"Your fear and my code."
We rounded a bend. The tunnel dropped into a flight of tight stairs. Hear breathed from below. The stone was wet where humidity and fire negotiated a truce. My wrist wrap bit cold into my skin...Rhea’s little charm worth a cathedral.
If I had air to laugh, I would have. A kindness, edge-stitched leather, keeping from sliding to my death. The universeoves punchlines.
The gate behind us finally surrendered. The crashed rolled the stairs, shouts filled the tunne, booth found rhythm.
Rhea took the stairs in a soldier’s glide, feet finding edges, hands ready but not wasted. I tried to be less of a liability, the gauntlet on my right hand...Alma’s weapon body...fizzed, flickered,then went full as cheap paint.
"Al..." I started
She didn’t appear so much as resolve,.like a file shaking itself open. Her mouth curved like she was trying to be brave with a face that wasn’t built for it. "New quest," she rasped.
Panels snapped up, juddering.
[Quest: Survive Extraction]
[Ti Limit: 10:00]
[Failure: System Purge (Permanent), Hap Collapse]
[Bonus if Completed
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