We’ll pick up where we last found me.

That being the floor, off to the side of Yhana’s room, rubbing my freshly smacked skull and moaning loudly, pitifully, because dignity be damned, you’re the only witness to this. It was a nice few days but I guess I’ve entered that stage of my life in which that’s as long as I can go without being shot at, and it’s not just bullets and fireballs this time. My complaint, directionless as it is, has been justified well in advance.

Yhana is quick to reenter the room, taking me for being in a state of half-consciousness and shaking me by my shoulders vigorously, as if the room didn’t seem to spin enough.

“I’m okay, I’m okay!” I protest, batting her away and standing up. I can’t tell if my legs are wobbling or the ship is still swaying from the force.

“You know something about necrotech, right?” she asks urgently.

“I hope so, I only dedicated my life to it,” I respond.

“Great, we need you below,” she says, dragging me by my wrist out of the room as quickly as I can manage to snatch up my macana. “They’ve broken our forcefield, and Jori’s out cold.”

“Oh, lovely,” I grumble, following her through the twists of ship’s interior. I just needed a ride, that’s all it was, but circumstance has to make me its victim even now.

The domestic veneer immediately below deck isn’t present further down. Pipes and wiring coat the walls and ceiling, all unevenly sprayed off-white a la the landlord special. Guiding me through the narrow corridors I’d surely get lost in on my own, Yhana bursts into a circular room with minimal lighting, save for the diodes set into the walls next to sealed, cylindrical tanks. The department my father and I worked for— nepotism-free I’ll clarify; on our little island chain there were only a few places the directorate could place us —had an array similar to this one, preserved brains and spinal cords, rune-etched and hooked up to a computer to delegate commands to them. Each nervous system retained a small bit of soul, but lacked the complexity to redevelop identity, allowing them to be used to cast spells from a terminal in an almost completely ethical manner. Back home we mostly used it for fabrication purposes, but it’s clear to me this array is a defense system.

I move along the walls, drawn to the literally-panicked flash of diodes by a couple of the tanks. Despite having only the barest amount of person left in each brain for casting, it’s just enough in there that something like an anxiety attack or a deficiency of some kind is enough to render them defunct until taken care of.

“Alright, these two are breaking down, I need—” I don’t even get to finish before Yhana stuffs a couple of capped syringes into my grip. “…Yeah, these.”

“I’ve watched Jori enough to have some idea of what does what down here,” she explains.

“Good, this place is a mess; we’d be in deep shit if you hadn’t,” I reply, pulling the cap off of one and jamming it into a port. Almost at once, the lights slow in their flickering, responding well to the sedative. I repeat for the next one; it’s more resilient than the first but it settles down just the same.

“That was easy enough, what did you need me for?” I ask.

“Because my room’s a dead end,” she responds, running over to begin engaging every lock the array room has. “The ship that came up on us is big; there’s no way we can hold them off, and when they come looking for us, we don’t want to be cornered.”

“So… you ran?” I raise an eyebrow; for as tough as she acted when she was in a position to exert power over me, she was quick to tuck tail.

“Oh, like you’re a fighter yourself,” she retorts, picking up on my tone. “The people I deal with usually don’t come leaping onto the deck brandishing swords as big as a human. Besides, this is good for you.”

“Right, right…” I mutter, shaking my head a bit. “Well, what was that about a dead end, you said?”

“The vents in here are big enough to crawl through; we can either get to the kitchen or Mom Nahrrimurn’s room from here.”

“Is she gonna be okay?”

“Yeah, probably.” She grunts a little as she slides the last bolt into place, putting an ear to the door. “She’s a little old lady, the Prelature loves those. They won’t harm a hair on her, or their saint in charge will probably like, eat them or something. And I hear they don’t chew over there either.”

She stifles a gasp as somebody tries the handle, her eyes narrowing as whoever’s on the other side of the door speaks to a cohort in Radiant. Backing away slowly, she points me silently to one of the grates above the tanks, her arm jolting a bit as the soldier thumps against the door in an effort to knock it down. Making no progress, it’ll be seconds until they try something more effective.

I pull over a stray stepladder, undoing the latches on the sides of the grate as quickly as I can with my shaking fingers, allowing it to be lifted up. Yhana rushes over and I motion for her to climb in, but I don’t follow quite yet.

“What are you doing? Get in!” she whispers urgently.

I lift a single finger dismissively, before waving her onwards. The console in the middle of the room has my attention and I know we’d just be followed as soon as the grate was noticed. As terrifying as it is to remain here for even a second longer, I start tapping keys carefully and injecting a healthy dose of stimulants into a port nearby. Fluids pass through clear hoses into a vat beneath the floor to be conveyed to 01, the brain of a necroharmonic, stationed immediately to the right coming in through the door. My eyes go back to the dull orange backlight behind the clicking panels, filtering itself into language; thankfully the technical jargon is mostly the same between languages, aside from using a different script. Finding no errors, I hold my breath as it executes. 

Something impacts the door, a faint glow showing through what metal remains. I allow myself to exhale, moving on to dial up sound sensitivity as high as it will go for 01. It seems almost mean, coming in here to soothe some of the brains but deliberately startling another. Quietly as I can manage, I lift up the grate to shove my weapon in and climb in after it to follow Yhana, but she’s long gone.

Another impact, and the door quite literally pops open. It’s loud, just as I expected. For a second, the sound of steps rushing in reverberates in the round room, and then a stifled cry and a sound like a clot of mud hitting pavement. The first couple of soldiers are likely a black stain coating the control matrix, liquefied by the spell trap, but I don’t linger to find out, and the sounds of alarm from those that remain is more than enough cover that I slip through the vents unheard. 

I guess each one leads to a single destination alone, as this one doesn’t seem to fork anywhere, save through another grate fastened in place and leading straight up. A smattering of debris rests at the bottom, it smells of tobacco and clay; not something I’m looking forward to having in my fur but it beats dying. Boots clack against the vent cover high above; at least four other soldiers, moving unimpeded. At least now that the forcefield is back up we won’t have to worry about more of them boarding than there already are.

Yhana waits around a bend, appearing relieved to see me. She motions for me to proceed ahead of her, which I do. She soon takes the rear, giving my tails plenty of berth; they take up the whole height and width of the vent on their own, I’m sure. I still haven’t gotten used to them all.

We come to another grate, stopping a short distance away and resting down to look and listen. Mom Nahrimurrn sits with her back to us, staring placidly at the soldiers in their scaled armor, who ignore her and discuss amongst themselves at the far end of the rectangular room, just by the door. I’m unsure what to do, but thankfully, Yhana seems to have some idea. I’m less than thankful however, of the fact that she saw fit to climb directly over me in this tight space, in order to reach out and softly tap the grate.

“Neien,” she whispers.

Seconds pass, until the cat turns subtly, her once-black fur now a salt and pepper, but still her amber eyes stand out enough that I can make them out even from my squashed position beneath Yhana. She’s just loving this, I bet; I can’t express my complaint or I’ll kill us all by drawing unwanted attention.

But it seems that Neien only needed to hear her own name to be made to spring into action. Quietly, she gets up from her padded periwinkle chair, shuffling over to a wardrobe. I struggle a bit, sliding forward and beside Yhana somewhat to try to catch a better sight of what she’s getting. I’m glad I did. If I had been told that this fragile lady who had clearly seen better days had not only kept a bazooka in her closet but possessed the strength to heft it onto her shoulders, I would have been skeptical. But here I was, seeing it with my one eye that remains unobstructed by someone else’s fluff.

She looks to us, still wearing that peaceful smile, before turning to the soldiers who still have not taken notice. Why would they? She’s harmless, so they thought. She stomps her foot, claws clicking on the hardwood floor.

One, and only one of the Prelature swordswomen turns, vocalizing half of a warning before the cat pulls the trigger. Gore and metal and splinters erupt in a pyroclastic cloud, my jaw dropping as the dust of furniture and people alike glitter in the light where a door and the wall surrounding had once been. Neien sits down, loading another rocket, and turns to us again, still with that smile. This came naturally to her, it was clear by her expression. The years had not been kind to her, nor had she been kind to them. Weapon primed, she crouches with some effort by the grate, before unlatching it for us, and we spill out at roughly the same time.

“Ah, I knew you’d be alright,” Yhana says through a chuckle, taking Mom Nahrrimurn’s hand as she gets herself upright. The cat helps me up next, brushing cigarette dust off of me, and then doing the same for Yhana; she must have gotten most of it, but clambering over me had a way of redistributing filth.

“What now?” I ask, unable to take my eyes off the ripple of viscera and scorched wood.

“Well, I suppose we go look for the others,” Yhana suggests, picking up a sword from the remains. Long and thin, still in good condition. Wise to rely on weapons; too much casting and we’ll be more susceptible to enemy spells as our auras thin out. 

My grip on my macuahuitl tightens. “And if the others are dead?”

“Well, I guess we die too,” Yhana says with a shrug.

“I was worried you’d say that…”

“You worry too much,” she snickers, coming up to flick me on the nose. For as dire as this situation is, her carefree nature is imperishable.

Before any further planning can take place, Neien begins a determined shuffle forwards; of course, she’s got sons to save. At this time or any time, I don’t suppose I could have asked for a single more inspiring leader. Both of us follow after, waiting for her to check the hallway for other soldiers; surely the noise drew attention. And yet, the halls are empty.

As we surface, I realize what those soldiers had been holed up hiding from, a number of dead and those soon-to-be strewn about around two looming figures; captain Tsing, her bared claws and teeth overshadowing even her sophisticated weapons systems, and Leonov, Jori slung over one shoulder and his enormous free hand gripping a suitably-enormous hammer. The captain nods to us at our approach, before springing onto a soldier who dared to move, crushing breath and bone with a splayed metal claw. She looks up, an undaunted smile on her face, and as I peer out from the shielding around the hatch to see what she’s looking at, I barely catch sight of her quarry on the deck of the other, much bigger ship before she backs up too far to be seen. I didn’t get to look at the metal mask adorning her face for more than a couple of seconds, but I recognized it all the same.

Saint Eren Grym, the once-matriarch of Uldrynth, and here she stood on the deck of a ship that might as well have been a sheer cliff above us, separated from us only by a thin wall of energy that she could no doubt rip wide open with her bare metal hands if she saw fit to. And yet, for the moment, she retreats.

Tsing allows herself to relax as Eren disappears. “They haven’t taken anybody; Dahlia has them in the upper cabin. Yhana, how many did you encounter below?”

“Three for sure, but Neien took care of them,” she replies.

“An indeterminate number cornered us at the necrotech array,” I add. “At least a couple are taken care of but there are a few more.”

“Find them, but don’t kill them,” Tsing dictates as she heads for the control cabin herself. “Once they realize none of theirs are alive, they’ll sink us without hesitation.”

“What’s the plan for the long term?” Yhana asks.

“We will get to that, just buy us some time.”

“Right, Captain.”

“I need to check the upper cabin,” I interject. “I need to find my companion, he’s… he shouldn’t fall into their hands.”

The aberrated feline nods to me but says nothing else. With her silent approval, I hurry around back to enter, hands up as I fully expect at least a couple of weapons on me in case I’m an enemy. The barrel of Dahlia’s shotgun greets me momentarily, and a somewhat injured Rohka joins in, an odd weapon in each hand resembling a throwing axe, each with three blades lined parallel to each other and a wide barrel bisecting the middle one. I can’t imagine it’s very practical but it’s alarming to have them aimed at me, either way. A couple seconds to process, and they lower their guard. I step back reflexively as Rohka hurries towards me with a limping gait, but he passes wordlessly to embrace his mother, who emerges soundlessly behind me.

“How’s the situation outside?” Dahlia asks.

“Hard to say, they’re not firing yet and we might be able to use hostages to keep it that way,” I explain. “Is my kangaroo friend in here?”

Before anyone can answer, a sound as loud and sudden as thunder from the encroaching vessel catches us all off guard and our ship rocks. Cannon fire, I momentarily wonder, but as I stagger back out of the room to take a look, it’s the bridge of the enemy’s ship that’s on fire, nothing of our own. And silhouetted in that blaze, synthetic fur wreathed in its own lively smoldering, is Suraokh in mid-leap, motioning as if unzipping the air, falling straight through our barrier. I should have been surprised, at least a little bit, but I wasn’t, and I hate that. I’m traveling with what might be the most dangerous creature I’ve ever met and for lack of any alternative I’ve resigned myself to be okay with that. 

He lands on the deck in a heap as I rush around to meet him, moving to help him stand, but he gestures me away, reassembling his pieces with a series of pops and clicks while bringing himself upright. “We need to move now.”

Again, nobody gets to respond, as another loud sound interjects, only this time, it actually is cannon fire. The first of many; before the first echo can die away, a fusillade spills against us, force field rippling worryingly. It won’t hold.

Captain Tsing rushes back onto the deck, dragging a couple of enemy soldiers, but the sight of them elicits no quarter. One simply hits the deck as she drops her, grabbing for her intercom and issuing an order to move. Suraokh stands closer than traditionally respectful, staring up at her while explaining the situation. He doesn’t get to finish before she starts back downstairs.

“Engineers to your stations!” she calls out on her way down the hatch, her voice transmitting through loudspeakers scattered throughout the ship. “All others ready the skiffs!”

I had expected some skepticism or perhaps just a little bit of hesitation on her part, but there seemed to be some greater understanding between the two of them, and I only grow more certain of this as the kangaroo follows her. Before I can ponder it for long, I feel Yhana’s hand come down on my shoulder.

“Come on, you and me,” she says. “If there are still soldiers down below they’ll have gone for the skiffs too. We’re still in good shape so we’ll stop them from making off with them and you’re gonna wanna get on one as quick as you can.”

I nod; I’m too frazzled to protest about anything anymore. On our way down, Leonov brushes past us, carrying a somewhat groggy Jori.

“We’re in danger!” he exclaims simply and cheerfully. If only my ability to process fear was so numb as his, I’d coast through everything. It’d be reckless of me, but it seems like it’s worked for him just fine, so I’m sticking close.

The ship picks up speed, matched by the much larger vessel, pelting us with force sufficient to make us rock even through our shield. Other crew members join us in the corridor, splitting off for stairwells heading down, and regrouping with us below. A familiar fox bumps into me, his odd gun brandished, its projector still giving off vapor.

“Hello again,” Nym says with a grin. “How’s the passage so far?”

“I have some concerns,” I reply; I don’t have it in me to snap at him right now. “Where have you been?”

“Hunting down stragglers, but I know I missed a few. Only one place they could be now.”

And we’ve just arrived there. The lifeboat bay is already unsealed; everyone either takes a precautionary position, or holds back others who were too eager to leave to think about the risks. 

A red-bearded human places his palms a hair’s width from the bulkhead, testing it for traps with a subtle spell, and finding none, pulls it open by the loosened valve, leading the charge inside; there are about ten of us down here, by no means was I among the first inside but I wouldn’t have been content to be the last, either. But there was no need for a fight. The soldiers were already dead.

Coordinated suicide, likely from some transmitted order. Suraokh’s urgency was well-founded; they wouldn’t have been saved.

“Everyone,” Captain Tsing shouts through the intercom. “listen carefully. The call for aid has been sent; we will arrive at our intended destination via the boats and hold fast. Those of you without means of flight or aquatic inclination, gather up eight to a skiff; the rest of you will rely on your gifts to convey yourself to safety. We have precious little time.”

The order doesn’t even run its course before those here scramble for a spot, and much of the rest of the crew spills in after us. Thankfully Yhana, Leonov, Jori, and I find seats quickly all on the same boat; it’s of sturdy make with a decent motor and means of penetrating the force field.

Leonov smacks a nearby panel, opening bay doors and sliding us out on a slanted track, revving the motor as we drop into the water, taking off on contact. 

I don’t get a good look at what’s on the enemy’s deck above us, it’s too bright but it fans out like wings… or maybe like a vascular system snaking in vertical directions, I can’t tell. That rainbow light glows brighter, before a beam of it strikes the field, causing it to flex like cellophane, geometric fractures now apparent in it. The light builds up in those branching limbs again, too quickly for anyone’s comforts. More boats deploy, rocking precariously as they’re practically thrown out onto the water by the ship’s motion. Others rush out through the bay, floating along through the air, or they leap from the deck and dive. I don’t see Suraokh, but it seems like everyone else has made it off, the engineers abandoning the ship and leaving it to its fate.

The second bolt hits, piercing the field and the ship all at once, a molten scar peeling it down the middle. There are cries of outrage, of fear, and of Nym’s woe at the loss of his recent hunk of money still on board. The collective despair of the crew is tangible, mine as well, and it only amasses as that glowing tangle above puts off more light, turning on us like a spotlight.

But Suraokh, the absolute maniac, has gone back for seconds; I don’t know how, but evidently, he made it back on the ship, their engine releasing another gout of flame, and the force throwing the next bolt off course to boil water as it slices into the arsenic-saturated sea, well wide of any of the skiffs. All eyes watch as the kangaroo sprints across the deck, bounding off and simply opening up its forcefield again, vanishing under the water’s surface with an anticlimactic splash.

He doesn’t come back up; I guess he’ll do it on his own time. I just hope it’s soon. Enemy skiffs deploy over him, speeding towards us, and necrotech artillery begins to glow vibrantly, releasing a barrage in our direction, but the beams are shaky and inconsistent. With the ship’s engine in such critical condition, it’s likely the brains are under extreme stress, or maybe Suraokh went out of his way to damage them too. Even so, they still clip uncomfortably close; jagged black lightning turning seawater to steam in a flurry of antilight flashes.

I finally bring myself to look away from our pursuers to see where we’re going; the wreck of what had once been a target, now our only hope for shelter, looms close ahead. 

Someone next to me cries out as those quivering beams drag through the gray waves and around our formation, striking one of the skiffs. Nobody I knew, but watching them be torn asunder between here and the void, and the rest struggling to stay afloat only to be butchered in passing by the enemy fills me with horror. I hadn’t actually witnessed any fatality among our own until now, and all of a sudden, this danger, if it hadn’t already, begins to seem even more real.

The beams sweep again, their right-angled flickering concentrated into more precise areas this time. Panicked operators swerve around them, loath to slow as we approach the rocky shore the derelict Prelature barge had been driven against, standing motionless like a great spike angling out of the ocean, but we do eventually turn broadside. There’s no delay on anyone’s part before we leap out of the boat and towards that breach at the bow. 

A final volley of void artillery cuts into shallows. Rapid-fire, deafening, explosive on impact, atomizing deep craters into the shore. My ears still ring with the previous salvo; it’s hard to separate each sound, registering more as a sharp, percussive ache than as noise.

As the last shot casts silt and vapor skyward, soldiers rappel down to pursue on foot. Many of us turn, firing weapons and slinging spells; even I join in, geometric lines of inky void zigzagging outward from my palm as I make every effort to keep as much distance between ourselves and the hostiles, to the point that Yhana has to grab me by my shirt and tug me with her. Incoming, searing light carves through gravel and sand, making slag and glass in its wake, but as we take refuge behind the rune-warded hull of the ship, a collective sigh of relief is shared as we find the one thing the necrotech turrets can’t cut right through.

The tilted interior of the place doesn’t make for easy traversal, but we run for the walkways, bracing ourselves on whatever we can and climbing as we make for one of the bulkheads; this might have been a place to dock smaller boats at one time but they’ve since vanished, taken by the previous crew, so there goes our fallback for an escape.

The enemy rounds the corner, arrows and void lightning showering against us, with Tsing a few of our casters staying at the rear to hold up barriers until finally, we arrive at the bulkhead, sealing it tight, melding it shut with arcane heat, and frantically scratching a runic threshold. Anyone who might teleport through will be in for an unpleasant surprise, so it should buy us at least a little time as they’re forced to cut their way in instead.

“Everyone, deep as you can!” Tsing bellows. “Battleship or not, it’ll have a reinforced prayer room; we’ll make for that and barricade ourselves in. If anyone still remains here, eradicate them.”

Everyone else answers with a grunt of affirmation, naturally falling into a formation with the most heavily armed at the front, non-standard combat personnel including Yhana, Nym, and myself in the middle, and long-range fighters near the back, with a row of skirmishers in case of the enemy’s sudden arrival from behind.

“This is far from routine,” Yhana says as we hurry along. “I am sorry you had to find yourself involved in all this.”

It’s the first time I’ve seen her without her usual playfulness, so it catches me off guard even in the midst of this crisis. “Would you believe me if I said I’ve been through worse?” I ask.

“If it’s something you haven’t already told me, you’ll have to regale me, assuming we survive this.”

I’ll need to find a way out of doing that. This is what I get for trying to alleviate some of her worry for me. That’s something for me to worry about when I come to it though, there are more pressing matters at hand. Suraokh’s whereabouts, for example. Again. I suppose I should trust in his ability to take care of himself, but the fact that he openly expressed some fear about what was on that boat makes it hard not to have some concerns. 

More immediate concerns spring suddenly to the front of my perception; as we hurry through the winding, pipe-lined passages of the ship, I hear the bulkhead far behind us blow open, our foes pouring through with quiet footsteps and a roaring battle cry. There’s not enough time. There was never enough time.