“She’s a centarch!” he screamed, as her haken ignited with a flaming hiss.
Then she was in front of him and he had his blade out, swinging clumsily for her throat. Maya parried, automatically, the brief contact with deiat carving a glowing notch out of the ordinary steel. Fast as thought, she went into her riposte, a simple upward slash across his body.
If she’d been fighting Jaedia, this would have rewarded her with the blue flare of a panoply field and perhaps a word of praise when the fight was done. Instead, her haken carved a long, charred path across the smuggler, from his hip to his shoulder, flaming blade shearing through clothes, flesh, and bone and leaving smoldering ash in its wake. The man managed a choking cry as he fell, sprawled motionless in the dirt.
Maya had killed plaguespawn. She’d even killed ordinary animals, deer or rabbits for food, once a loadbird that had broken a leg and needed to be put out of its misery. But, until that moment, she’d never turned her power on a human, never snuffed out a life with deiat.
It was horrifyingly easy.
“Plaguing fuck!” The other smuggler’s swearing refocused her attention. He was a larger man, stripped to a tunic and trousers for hard labor. Another heavy coat lay nearby, and he scrabbled with it, searching for something. Maya leveled her glowing haken.
“I said stop,” she grated, stepping around the corpse. “You are both prisoners of the Twilight Order.”
The big man came up, a blaster pistol in hand.
Maya had been expecting another crossbow, which was hardly dangerous with her panoply up. A blaster was another matter. She threw out her hand, sending a focused wave of flame crashing over the smuggler, but it wasn’t fast enough. Bolts of blue-white energy cracked across the cavern, slamming into the walls with explosive concussions.
One of the shots caught Maya in the chest, and she felt herself picked up and tossed backward as her panoply flared. The power drain was horrific, as though her entire body had been plunged into a pool full of ice, and her vision darkened. She fought desperately to stay conscious, tucking her body into a ball and turning her skid across the ground into a roll. She came to a halt against the wall of the cavern, white-hot chunks of rock landing all around her. Dimly, she could see a figure in flames rolling wildly on the ground.
The third smuggler, the woman in the coat, stood untouched amid the guttering fire. She was smiling. There was something off in her face, as though one side of it were distended, and her right eye was deep purple and bulged like a grape. Dhakim.
“Fucking Twilight Order,” she said. “Do you know how many people I’m going to have to kill when I’m done with you? Someone’s been talking.” She glanced at the cages. “I thought we had plenty of insurance, but apparently not.”
Maya staggered to her feet. Deiat was still flowing, and her haken still burned, but it was a near thing. Taking a blaster shot head-on was enough to almost exhaust her reserves.
“I don’t suppose you want to lie down and die?” the woman said. “It would make this much easier.”
“You. Are a prisoner. Of the Order.” Maya gritted her teeth. “Give it up.”
The dhakim laughed. “Small chance of that.” She gave a high, piercing whistle.
Twisted shapes circled the pile of crates. A half dozen dog-sized plaguespawn, bodies rippling with skinless red muscle, exposed bones sharpened to rake and tear. Remade jaws dripped slaver that sizzled when it hit the floor, and long limbs twisted unnaturally. The dhakim was grinning wider, and she whistled again, a low, short command. The plaguespawn charged.
Keep moving. It was Jaedia’s voice in her head. Remember, plaguespawn are not truly animals. For a moment Maya felt detached, distant, watching the scene from afar as her mentor lectured her. Then her heart began to trip-hammer, her pulse a roar in her ears, and she was yanked back into her body. Jaedia’s voice faded to a barely audible drone. They can never hunt as a pack. It is always every creature for itself.
Maya didn’t know whether that applied to plaguespawn under the direct control of a dhakim. But it’s the best chance I’ve got.
She went straight at them.
There were three on each side of the crates. Maya charged one group, and the leader stood its ground, rearing up on telescoping hind legs until it was nearly as tall as she was. The two creatures behind it, though, couldn’t push past, and Maya speared the lead monster through the chest, leaving her haken in place for a moment until its flesh started to bubble and smoke. Then she spun away as the plaguespawn collapsed, the two behind it leaping over the body. The three from the other side had closed the distance, but one was faster than the others, and Maya intercepted it with a downward sweep that severed its misshapen head in a gout of steam and black blood.
Four left. Unfortunately, if the creatures lacked the pack instinct of natural hunters, they also lacked their fear. Even without a dhakim to drive them, plaguespawn had no sense of self-preservation. They would attack until they were dead or she was.
And then they’d take me apart. She imagined her own eye staring out from the folds of skinless flesh, her hand twitching at the end of some composite limb. It made her bile rise. The Thing seemed to be red-hot in her chest, pain shooting through her ribs with every ragged breath. Her connection to deiat was as unstable as a stumbling drunk, and she dared not draw any excess power.
Not exactly my finest hour.
But there were children in cages, and four plaguespawn still standing.
Two of them came at her together. She dodged left, evading a pair of snapping wolf jaws, but the other creature’s face split into a nest of writhing tendrils, and two of them whipped along her side with bladed tips. The flare of the panoply field from even this minor wound was enough that she nearly passed out on the spot, and the flame of her haken flickered. Desperately, Maya wrenched the stream of deiat away from the panoply belt, deactivating it. Her skin tingled, unprotected, and the Thing pulsed again.
Behind the monsters, the dhakim woman was sitting on a crate, like the audience at a theater. Her swollen eye flicked from side to side, taking in the action, and she smiled at Maya’s obvious exhaustion. She had one hand on the hilt of a sword but seemed content to watch.
Fine with me. Giving ground, Maya veered away from the tentacled horror and baited the wolflike one into another lunge. That was easier to avoid, and her desperate chop took off a front leg and most of its face. It was still moving, blood spewing across the earth, but slowly enough that she could afford to ignore it. The tentacled creature came at her again, and Maya stood her ground, aiming a slice right through the nest of whirling blades. Her sleeve shredded, and multiple cuts blossomed along her arm without the panoply field to protect it, but she chopped the thing nearly in half, and it went down with a gout of foul-smelling smoke.
Two. Blood dripped down her arm, sheathing it in red, wet and sticky on her fingers. With a frown, the dhakim got down from her crate and drew her sword. It had the iridescent gleam of unmetal, the short, flat style that was standard in the Legion. Maya swallowed hard as the two plaguespawn separated, letting the woman approach, then padded forward at her side.
“Always wanted to kill a centarch,” she said. “But they can be hard to come by. They say that the ability to touch deiat is in the soul and not the flesh, but I’ve always wondered if you couldn’t find it if you diced things fine enough.” Her engorged eye stared at Maya, unblinking. “I guess we’ll find out.”