Pertuli.

Advancing toward the heart of the city's power, I thundered down deceptively quiet alleys in Ginnilis' silver armor. Each calamitous step took me closer to the Roggarth Palace, and where shadows confronted me, I challenged them to disgorge a still living Riposte. Screams and clashes of steel echoed toward me, painting a landscape of hate and turmoil on the nightscape, and hung thickly in the fog like the very anticipation of doom.

I was an unwanted witness to ghastly revels as I emerged into the amber light of Palace Wall Street. Teams of ruffians and armed peasants were endeavoring to force entry into many of the ward's estates. The night's violence goes further than the weresaur outbreak. Looters and thieves, availing themselves of the chaos, no doubt. They threatened the private men-at-arms and pounded on the iron bound doors protecting rich palazzos and upscale town homes. Several buildings had been set to burn, and the hellish flames obscuring my radiance sight silhouetted gangs that danced in the street like clans of hunting goblins.

I could hardly reconcile the sheer numbers involved in the unrest with the peaceful city I knew, so I paid them no mind. Once the true threat was dealt with, these rioters would desist.

An inconsequential blow fell on my shoulder, but with a fierce glare that returned my assailant to the shadows, I ignored that too. Armored as I was, it would take a more determined foe to do aught but annoy me, and the untrained throng was wary of my gleaming blade.

The Ward Guard was clearly occupied elsewhere, and for some time, if they were leaving the town's gentry to fend for themselves. Red capes were everywhere; a fortune in dye clothing the raving minions of a hopeless revolt. Those red capes... could my initial assumptions be in error?

I rushed on, following the palace wall eastward, only to discover the gate open and breached.

The lookouts at the gate could be dealt with in a moment. Even with appropriated weapons and wearing discarded helms and shields, unprofessional human thugs were beneath my notice. The lizard, a slick black shape in the radiance shadows across the square, could pose a more significant problem. It paced like a bipedal menace, twenty four hands or more of hulking muscle and swishing scales. Even at range, I felt its crimson eyes bear down on me.

I charged the gate, avoiding eye contact with the beast. I'm here for my win, I thought at the "guards" with a grim smirk. I made enough noise to warn them I was coming.

The thin man on the left, whose oversized helm rattled as he went erect with surprise, gave a startled shriek and bolted at the sight of me. The thicker man on the right made a show of bravery, even leveling his stolen halberd to intercept my charge. Somewhere behind me, there was a hiss of movement.

I leaped into the attack, deflecting the axe point past my left arm and hooking my elbow around the man's neck. Though he was taller and heavier, my inertia brought his head back and forced his weapon up in time to impale the weresaur following me. It screamed hideously as its bulk was forced down the spear tip and onto the axe blade where its attack was necessarily halted. The ash staff of the halberd sagged under the weight, but planted against the palace wall as it was, the lizard could move no further toward me.

"Kalithra save me!" the guard screamed, finding himself prone and weaponless under the enraged monster. He left me holding the weapon and scurried away on his back, following his comrade into the courtyard within. I wasn't in much better straights. I desperately parried the beast's madly thrashing claws. Everywhere I cut, slapped or punched, the foul smoke of burning flesh wafted away, but as the lizard slowly sank further onto the axe blade, it was able to bring more of its muscle and claws to bear.

Smoke guttered around the silver inlaid head of the weapon, but it was clear the monster was more interested in killing me than preserving what was left of its own hateful life. If I stopped defending to strike a mortal blow, it could conceivably kill or crush me. If I rolled aside or I lost hold of the halberd, it would shake loose and be free to kill me. If it thought to retreat, it might free itself as well. Time limited and no room to maneuver, I could see only one way to survive.

I really, really wished there was another.

I tucked into a spin and chopped the halberd in half.

The monster's full weight slammed into me. I groaned, crushed beneath the force of the collision, but more importantly, the sudden impact with the shortened shaft of the halberd gave the pole axe the force it needed to run the beast completely through. An eruption of putrid smoke and black ichor sprayed over me, and everywhere my armor touched, it sizzled and popped uncontrollably.

In that moment, I discovered I had never truly known the perils of having so refined an olfactory sensibility.

"Oh Elders, get it off!" I cried in panic, and began pushing for all I was worth. The smell and repulsive gooeyness of the hellspawn's simmering corpse were only fleshing out my repertoire of horrors for the next time I met eyes with one of these things.

Eventually, I dragged myself from under the carcass, fuming and cursing in my fury. My—or rather, Ginniliss'—beautiful armor was charred black with splattered lizard blood and smelled positively repellent. The only silver lining, as it were, was that I was now mentally prepared to return the armor at the soonest possible moment.

"Someone is going to pay for this!" I bellowed into the still night sky.

Still?

Silence after the former din of battle and chaos within the Palace Gate was unnerving. There was no fighting, no shouting. Someone was speaking loudly to be heard, as if over a crowd.

"... At last, our victory is at hand, my brothers! With Roggarth's surrender, the city is ours by conquest, and when, at dawn, the Migarian force approaching on the Dragon River arrives to find the city gates open in welcome, all Dollif will fall. In less than a fortnight, Teldor will likewise come to its knees, making our temporal holdings the mightiest empire since Lundora. The North will fall like balanced tiles, and then—the world!"

The commanding voice sounded strangely familiar. As I turned inside the gate, my blood ran cold to see why.

"Perinor!" I cried, unable to contain my shock. He looked strong and vibrant despite the lines on his face and gray in his hair. Inflated by his victory, he seemed purposeful and full of life. King Roggarth, by contrast, was forced to kneel at Perinor's feet and seemed older and more shaken though they were likely contemporaries.

"Look! Another knight comes to bow before the Scarlet Society." Perinor mocked, clearly not recognizing me. I was a mess, after all. "Once your king has surrendered the city, I will be happy to hear your oaths of fealty."

"I saw you die!" I accused, striding forward, "your neck crushed, less than six hours ago!" I ignored the ranks of men between us, forcing guardsmen and rebels alike aside by the conviction of my march. "You're one of them. A lizard ... how?"

My voice and build betrayed me as Tilwen, but the captive ward guards were unsure what to make of me. Their rebel captors, just as baffled by my familiarity with their leader and purposeful stride, and waited for some sign to arrest or detain me.

"Pertuli Ill'Enniniess?" Perinor laughed, unable to keep a dark glee from his voice. "Yes, you and that scoundrel Classicant left me for dead, but I woke to discover that an accidental bite while working with one of the newly infected the day before had saved my life." He paused to subconsciously scratch at his left arm. "You can't imagine the—"

As his sword moved away from Roggarth's throat, I found I did not want an explanation after all. I drew and launched a dagger in one fluid motion, then charged.

The crowd was so stunned, they probably hadn't followed the movement, but Perinor, with his cursed lizard blood, reacted quickly enough to deflect my throw, the parry necessarily moving his blade a precise distance to the right....

I crashed into him in a clatter of silvered steel, taking him to the flagstones while deflecting his expected riposte. Behind me, the guardsmen leaped to their feet in a roar, turning on their distracted captors to seize their weapons.

Perinor reached for my throat with his open hand, fumbling about my gorget to find a place to squeeze. It didn't take long.

"Aaarggh!" he bellowed, as his skin began to blister and hiss.

"That's right," I grinned, close enough I was sure he could see my grin through the slits in my helm, just as I could see the new, lifeless ebony of his eyes. "The weresaur curse may have saved your life, but you will find it comes with a marked reaction to the purifying influence of silver!"

I pressed my length upon him, seeking every area of exposed skin I could and struggling to keep his gladius at bay with my longsword. He screamed in pain and rage, and his weapon scraped closer, sparks flaring where steel bit and scraped along steel.

He was too strong. Maddened by pain, he gathered strength and gave me a massive shove that sent me flying to the middle of the courtyard. Though the blow left me groggy, I rolled to my feet and lifted my sword at guard position, ready for the attack that had to come.

But it didn't.

Perinor was slow to get to his feet. He turned, unsteady, and looked about for the king. A knot of guardsmen had fought their way to the monarch, and were working to break through a thinning line of rebels with their mix of retaken weapons. Perinor vented his fury with a wordless cry and stormed off toward the conflict.

I prepared to intercept when a blow took me from behind. Hard.

I slid noisily, face first along the flagstones for several moments before coming to a stop, fighting for breath. Ginniliss was going to be disappointed about his armor. He might not even want it back. I sucked air into flattened lungs, ignoring the bright motes dancing about me and using the time it took to choose my last words carefully.

"Ow," I said, opting for brevity. Surprised I had time for more, I flipped over and continued stupidly, "what was that?" My sword slid to a stop moments later, having skidded considerably farther than I.

"Tulip, GET UP!" a female voice advised, in an octave of sheer terror. Ivy? I wondered, very briefly. What's she doing here?

I tried to take her advice. I really did, but instead found myself flying through the air across the courtyard in another direction. I was having trouble with the breathing process again, perhaps aggravated by the massive dents now permanently pressed into the breast and back plates of my armor. Fortunately not having any breath in one's lungs saves one from having it knocked from one again upon landing.

Very efficient, I groaned inwardly, declining to speak the comment aloud.

"I'm gonna rip yer arms off, Ill'Enniniess!" a rumbling voice informed me, "just like you took mine!"

Intrigued, I raised my head to find an enormous dwarf barreling down on me like a charging bull. His arms were lengthy appendages of A'Shee mechanics blending steel and muscle in an ingenious, if chaotic, mix of rods, gears, and bulging sinews. As expected, the clockwork fists terminating those processes closely matched the new impressions in my armor. I gathered he meant to leave a few more before delivering on his promise.

Ginnillis will laugh so hard when he hears about this one, I hoped.

Ivy was dallying with some rebels, and no one else was really in this corner of the courtyard, so I forced myself to my feet as the dwarf came charging in. A duel, then. How I detested fair fights. At least if the odds were uneven the victor could congratulate himself on a stratagem or desperation well conceived.

I didn't have a weapon at least, and the dwarf, in some sense, was armed with two, so I congratulated myself on that.

Time to skate the glacier's edge, and take my chances.

I dodged my opponent's first swing. As his fist plowed a furrow of redstone from the palace wall, I was confronted by a white bearded, slavering face. To my surprise, it was one I recognized. He was far quicker, despite his years, and at close range the black scales crowding around the puckered scar tissue of his mechanical arms hinted at the source of his inhuman—or rather, indwarven—strength and agility.

"Boss Bhozak?" I gasped, forced to sidestep two more scything blows. "You're looking well."

"Shuddap," he snapped, as he renewed his vow, "I'm gonna rip your arms off, tilly!"

"Still upset about that, are you?" I observed, my mind providing a hazy recollection of performing a messy double amputation of the mobster's previous pair a century past. "I have moved past the incident myself—I don't suppose you'll tell me why you've taken up arms against the king?"

He growled but was otherwise silent. There was more dodging. More gratuitous damage to state property. Flagstones and bricks alike splintered and exploded about me. I couldn't keep it up. Fortunately I had an endgame he couldn't expect.

"Come now, a century is a long time to hold a grudge," I panted, dancing to his left. "Violence clearly isn't the answer... We should hug it out!"

I dashed forward, eager to give him the same heated embrace I had given Perinor a few drips earlier. I reached about his shoulders—the only exposed skin I could easily seize—from the side, and pressed my hands and helm to his face. From a distance it might have looked like a mildly romantic interlude with a morbidly obese (and hairy) human adolescent, but I didn't care. I braced for the noxious smell and nauseating hiss of cooked lizard.

For the record, the outraged dwarf was entirely surprised. He paused long enough to curse in bewilderment, then flung me from him like a wet cat. I struck and slid down the wall, bricks raining off my helm.

No sizzle? I thought, my brains feeling rather like churned butter.

It dawned on me that all my sliding and scraping about the courtyard had worn most of the silver plating from my armor's front and rear.

"Well," I coughed, distributing blood about the inside of my helm, "I find myself somewhat taken aback... If you don't return my feelings we could at least part as friends..." As a parting quip, I contented myself with a poor showing; it hurt too much to say more.

Bhozak advanced slowly, savoring my pain. I tried to rise, but found that my leg was twisted in an angle at odds with my intentions, and any rate hurt too much to be of much use. I pulled off my helm so I could breath a little easier, though the dents in my armor were still pressing into my chest from both sides.

"I'm going to enjoy this, tilly," he said, his grey beard parting in a crack-toothed cavern of sadistic anticipation.

He seized my left arm at elbow and shoulder in large mechanical hands and began to crush and pull. They were impervious to the effects of silver, and clearly my plate was no obstacle for him. I beat uselessly at his metal arm with my free hand, but he ignored me. Pauldron and vambrace warped and collapsed, and I cried out with what little breath I had as my very bones began to scream in pain.

He did it slowly.

In momentary delirium, I witnessed an angel descending in a nimbus of silver fire. Amber hair billowed around her like tangled light, and the crescent moon fell from the sky like lightning.

There was a thunderclap, and Bhozak's right arm fell loose.

The dwarf roared in pain, and turned to face my angel, black blood streaming from the fizzling stump of his right arm, but both hands continued closing on my shoulder as if left with orders not yet rescinded. No longer were they pulling my bones apart, but my elbow and shoulder were being inexorably crushed.

Still in control of his left hand, the dwarf released me to defend against Ivy's scimitar while I writhed on the ground, contending with his right. I seized a nearby brick and bashed at the arm's mechanisms, hoping to strike the right gear or nerve to render the arm lifeless.

Ivy, surrounded by radiance, fought Bhozak with speed and strength beyond her physical abilities. She was like light itself, whirling and striking in flashes, while halting cold the most powerful of the reptilian dwarf's cruel blows. Bhozak's strength ebbed as his cursed blood ran out, powerless to heal the wound caused by the silver blade.

He paused in his attack, breathing hard, and spied me, still contending with his severed arm. He leered at Ivy, then, malice twinkling in his cold black eyes.

"Come on then, tilly bitch," he gasped, losing life force fast. "I'll tame you yet."

"Fat chance," she spat back. She charged with a screech, pouring a century of rage and unfinished business into her attack. Her scimitar plunged smoothly into Bhozak's middle, its point barely penetrating the distant boundaries of his back. The wound vomited black smoke as she dragged her blade upwards, irreversibly sundering numerous vital organs.

Bhozak rocked back, his face an ecstasy of pain. When he rolled forward again, she had withdrawn the blade, but not in time to block the massive steel mitt that closed about her throat and started to squeeze.

"No!" I gasped, having just detached myself from his other arm and powerless to intervene.

"Gurkk-!" Ivy croaked, and with a swipe, severed the dwarf's arm.

It didn't help, as, I suspect, Bhozak knew it wouldn't. He had opened himself to a mortal blow so his clockwork hand could finish the fight postmortem. He fell to the flagstones lifeless but satisfied, black blood pouring from a cracked and bearded leer.

Ivy dropped her sword, the nimbus of manifestation winking out around her. Whatever Terrok had helped her accomplish was done, and she was on her own. She clawed helplessly at the steel fingers closing around her throat, tanned face turning blue.

I seized my brick of mechanical arm slaying and lurched forward on my good knee, stumbling as fast as I could to her rescue.

"Ah!" I gasped. My bad leg was dead weight behind me. Darkness swirled, reducing my vision to a narrow tunnel before me. I sucked in air and forced myself ahead on one hand and one knee; willing the brick in my hand toward the key gear that would halt the inner workings of the steel hand at her throat.

"T-tulip!" Ivy gurgled as she fell, eyes losing focus.

I was beside her, raising my brick in both hands even as her slender throat gave way before the evil steel fingers. Is it already too late? Has the damage already been done? I would not have another chance.

I brought the brick down with all my strength, weight, and will as lightning struck again, somewhere in the distance.