SOLAR KNIGHT

Azinax took the lead, Razorfang at her side and Micaiah following just behind. Kaellatch loitered a little further back, her crossbow at the ready. As they crossed over to the next aisle, Tellius and his accomplices came into view. Tellius was seated just behind the head of a massive dragonlike construct, a piecewise thing patched together from black panels and silvery filigree. Dain and Cinder stood at its feet as they engaged him in hushed conversation.

"This ends now, Tellius!" called out Azinax. "You're not getting away this time!"

"Wrong and wrong," quipped Tellius as the dragon construct stirred to life. Its movements were stilted and uncanny, almost like the artificial animacy of the undead, though Azinax could sense no taint of necromancy within it. "You were always so lacking in vision, never seeing beyond the end of your nose unless someone told you to. People like you bore me, Azinax, and I have no intention of wasting any more time on boring people."

As Tellius spoke, Dain and Cinder climbed up behind him onto the dragon construct's back. Azinax ran towards them, but the construct was already spreading its wings. As it soared overhead, it craned its neck back to look directly at Azinax, its mouth emitted a beam of crackling black energy. Azinax saw and understood what was about to happen far faster than she could react to it. She flung herself to the side to dodge, sensing somehow that she had begun the movement too late, and yet the streak of energy seemed to curve right past her. She heard a grunt of exertion from Micaiah followed by the cadence of stumbling footsteps but was too focused on Tellius to pay much heed. A peculiar pall had settled over the chamber as the construct's attack had ripped through it, and the light of the continual flames illuminating it had attenuated to the point of plunging the chamber into unnatural gloom. The dragon construct seemed to recede away into the darkness, almost completely obscured as it disappeared into the tunnel in the ceiling.

Azinax scrambled back to her feet, ready to pursue Tellius wherever he might go, but several more constructs, a cohort of jet-black ants the size of hounds, clicked into a facsimile of life and moved to intercept her. Azinax did a mental tally of her remaining allies. Razorfang and Micaiah were still with her but Kaellatch... where was Kaellatch? Azinax ranged her eyes frantically over the small portion of the chamber still visible through the preternatural shadows. Aside from the patchwork dragon and the ants, the rest of the constructs all appeared dormant; evidently Tellius had not had time to activate any others. At first there was no sign of Kaellatch amidst their darkened forms, and Azinax was forced to turn her attention to the the monstrous mechanical insects as they approached. Then, as she kicked away a pair of mandibles, she spotted a blur of motion darting away into the gloom. The blur halted, and Azinax could see that it was Kaellatch glancing back over her shoulder with a pained and conflicted expression. Then she was gone again, vanishing into the dark.

Everyone leaves, Azinax thought to herself, but she had little time to dwell on this notion before the insects were once again bearing down on her. Razorfang crushed one underfoot as it lunged for her while mauling another in his jaws, its legs flailing then falling limp as he tossed it aside. But there were still more threatening to surround the group.

"Now would be a fine time to summon your shadow-beast," said Azinax to Micaiah as she thrust her blade between the mouth-parts of another insect construct.

"I can't, he needs to..." began Micaiah but Azinax cut her off.

"Spare me the details," she spat as she pulled her sword free from the ant's carcass. "Think of something else useful and do that then!"

"These constructs don't have true minds to influence, and my subtler powers are worthless here," complained Micaiah, backing off from an ant that was approaching her. She backed away from it, more out of desperation than any clear plan, and Razorfang smacked it away before it could chase after her. "I need a weapon. You've got two swords! Let me have the one you're not using!"

"That one's not for use in battle at all, never mind in the hands of an outsider!"

"Is that particular proscription of the zodiac mysteria worth our lives?"

"You can have this one." Azinax grabbed Micaiah by the hand and pressed the grip of her killing-edge into it before immediately turning and punching down at an ant that was nipping at her exposed ankle. Micaiah flinched at the contact of a weapon of light inimical to her shadow-touched soul, but composed herself quickly and stabbed the same ant through the gap in its carapace where the two parts of its body met. Between the two of them they reduced it to mangled scrap in seconds.

"There's too many of them, and our real enemy is escaping as we speak," said Azinax as she pulled away another ant that was attempting to scale Razorfang's side. It careened helplessly through the air as she tossed it into a cluster of its brethren.

"Then let's retreat to the worm tunnel," suggested Micaiah. "We'll make our escape that way."

There was the small problem that the ceiling tunnel was too high to reach, but Azinax reasoned that Micaiah presumably had some contingency for that. She would not have suggested it otherwise; despite her usual vague demeanour she had at least that much sense.

After kicking aside yet another ant with her heel, Azinax swung one leg over Razorfang's back and looked back at Micaiah, who had just finished dispatching an insect construct of her own. "Get on, and do whatever it is you're going to do," she instructed. Micaiah obliged and hopped up to perch awkwardly behind her. With the two of them riding double Razorfang lumbered through the chamber, skirting around the milling swarm of insect constructs before doubling back towards the chamber entrance. Micaiah reached down and touched Razorfang's flank, whispering an incantation as she did so.

"Up the wall!" she urged as they approached the tunnel. Razorfang placed one paw on the wall and felt it adhere. So this was the plan! He strode up the inside of the dome with ease, though Azinax and Micaiah had to cling on to maintain their position. Once they reached the relatively level ground however things got a little easier.

At the far end of the tunnel a smudge of violet evening sky greeted them.

m s s s n

Tellius surveyed the land at the mouth of the tunnel. Night had fallen, but he could still see the silhouette of the tower they had all initially entered through, dark against the dying embers of twilight.

"Get the scroll and the keystone out of here," he told Cinder and Dain. "Take them to the old fort near Baystone. There are people there who will know what to do with them and I'll meet back up with you later. In the meantime, I intend to demonstrate our new weapon. Arancalen should make a suitable test target. The council and the praetors alike will understand that we don't play favourites, and that we do mean business."

"I only wish I could be there to see it," purred Cinder. "The carnage will be glorious!"

As the others talked, Dain heard the faint crunch of dry soil as something padded past him in the dark. He glanced towards the direction of the sound, straining his senses in the darkness, and for a moment he felt he could make out the form of a diminutive tailed figure scampering past in the gloom.

"Did you see something?" asked Tellius, following his gaze.

"I don't think so," said Dain carefully. "It's just the wastes playing tricks on us."

"Never mind that," cut in Cinder. "Are sure you don't want me to come with you to the city? Or perhaps to take care of the Phaetusian? I have unfinished business with one of her accomplices, and the sun wolf's priesthood are always so persistent. If we don't kill her now she'll just keep chasing after us until we do."

"No, I need you to keep an eye on Dain and make sure he doesn't run off with the loot," said Tellius. "No offence, but I've only just met you and Neratokthian's pedigree only gets you so far."

"None taken," said Dain mildly. "That's just good sense."

"That said, Cinder does raise a good point about loose ends," continued Tellius. "I think I'll deal with that obnoxious god-botherer and her entourage myself after all. Something tells me she and her allies aren't going to more than inconvenienced by a few lesser constructs. As for the jewel in the temple's subterranean crown, we'll find out!"

Tellius watched as Dain and Cinder departed into the night, then shifted his attention back to the tunnel. With one hand on one of the patchwork dragon's head spines and its chirping, whistling command rod in the other he took another look down into the tunnel. As he did so, he saw a light in the depths rapidly approaching.

"Tellius!" roared Azinax, her voice echoing through the tunnel. Rather than dignify this with a verbal response, with a flick of the command rod Tellius instructed the patchwork dragon to blast her. She might have dodged the first time, but now there was nowhere to go. As the mechanisms in the dragon construct's throat spooled up, Tellius didn't need to see Azinax's face to know her expression would not be one of fear in the face of annihilation. The solar executioner had cauterised away that part of her psyche long ago. However, the likes of hopelessness and despair were very much intact as demonstrated earlier and he considered that close enough.

As Azinax realised what was happening, it occurred to her that she had not entirely thought this through. "Faster, faster!" she urged Razorfang though the link. The patchwork dragon's energy beam was not intantaneous. If the could only close the distance, they might yet have a chance.

With several yards still between them, the patchwork dragon unleashed its attack, necrotic energy pouring from its maw. But rather than obliterate his enemies as Tellius had anticipated, it diffracted away from them, the beam splitting radially. Where it splashed on the tunnel walls bedrock crumbled to dust and showered down on the beam's intended victims.

"I don't think... I'm going to be able to do that again," Azinax heard Micaiah murmur, and she slumped forward, a dead weight resting against Azinax's back. Azinax reached back with her left hand to steady her.

And then, impact.

Although the patchwork dragon was heavier, it still staggered under the force of Razorfang's charge. Tellius flicked the command rod once more, and at the bidding of its buzzing and chirps the dragon construct took a swipe at its attackers. Razorfang stumbled back under the blow and Azinax felt Micaiah's limp form slip away from her. She landed somewhere in the darkness with what sounded like all the grace of a sack of rocks, and in the mad half-light of battle with only the illumination of her lux-borne killing-edge Azinax could not be certain if Micaiah was even alive or dead, only that she lay bleeding in a crumpled heap. Razorfang charged again and leapt, and though his claws and teeth failed to find much purchase against the patchwork dragon's outer shell, it brought Tellius into reach of Azinax's blade. It flashed as she struck, but wound was only a grazing one as the patchwork dragon shook Razorfang off and took flight.

"Descend!" called Azinax, drawing on the divine power invested in her, and Tellius found himself moving against his will, sweeping the command rod in the movements that would induce the dragon construct to land. It wheeled around and touched down in front of Azinax and Razorfang. But the spell was a short-lived one, and Tellius followed up the command with another: to attack the target directly in front, by whatever means the dragon-construct's artificial mind saw fit.

"Drop it," snarled Azinax, drawing on the same power once again, but Tellius just stared down his nose at her. Though he felt a vague inclination to let go of the command rod, this time the enchantment simply pawed at the edge of his consciousness ineffectually. The patchwork dragon made one swipe after another, and although Razorfang was evading them each one in turn at first, he was tiring. The construct was not. Finally as he leapt away from an overhead strike from the dragon-construct's talons, his movements were not as swift as intended and the dragon's head flicked out like a viper's, catching Azinax and unseating her. She struck blindly with with her sword, and as it flared with holy light she felt it bite into metal. The dragon-construct's jaws loosened, dumping her down onto the ground. As she staggered to her feet, dazed by the impact, Razorfang ran to her defence only to find himself in the grips of the dragon-construct's claws. As the dragon-construct began to charge up once more, Azinax looked up into its unfeeling eyes, trying to marshal her strength for one last show of defiance. The battle was plainly lost, and there was nothing left to do but die standing with sword in hand. Then behind the hum and crackle of energy, she heard another sound: wingbeats.

The wyvern fell out of the sky like a meteor, striking the dragon-construct with a head-kick that sent its beam raking across the ground, a furrow of sterile dust left in its wake. Azinax felt something nudge her head and for a moment her vision turned to eigengrau. As her sight slowly returned she realised she was on her knees. Something dripped down the side of her neck, and the cold night air licked at the side of her head. She reached for her ear, and winced as it proved far more tender than expected. As she then held her hand to the light of her killing-edge, she saw that her gauntlet was sticky with blood and putrescence mixed with broken-off fragments of hair.

As Azinax tore off what remained of her helmet, the battle between the wyvern and the dragon-construct was still ongoing. Where the patchwork dragon was stilted and jerky in its motion, the pinecone wyvern exhibited the nimble and light-footed movements of a dancer. It was fitted with a saddle of gleaming mithral, which served to protect Kaellatch from its rattling razor-sharp scales as she rode atop it with a bearing of loathing and conviction. To demean her charge as Tellius had done was an unforgivable slight that could only be recompensed with blood. Leading a head-on assault was not Kaellatch's natural instinct, but for the sake of immediacy she had made an exception. The wyvern, by contrast, took to overt aggression readily. Though its mechanised opponent lacked the scent of a true dragon, it had the shape of one and the wyvern was incensed by the presence of such a rival in its territory. Living talons rent at synthetic carapace and filigree claws fell on keratinous scales, and for a time the match was equal.

The patchwork dragon's tail swept out as the wyvern lunged, knocking one taloned foot out from under it and causing it to stumble, though the wyvern's keenly sharp scales left gashes on the dragon-construct's artificial ones. Jouncing away from the wyvern's bite and drawing back its sinuous neck, the mechanisms in the patchwork dragon's maw pulsed with energy as it readied a blast that would strike straight though Kaellatch and the wyvern alike from behind. Azinax shouted out a warning, but Kaellatch had already whipped around to face the dragon-construct eye to eye. Aiming straight down its throat, she loosed a crossbow bolt and as it struck home there was the sound of something shattering like crystal. Necrotic energy spidered out through the air like like lightning before dissipating inches from Kaellatch's snout. The dragon-construct did not flinch at the injury like a living thing, but instead held position awkwardly as if stunned. The wyvern meanwhile recovered its poise swiftly and took off, only to swoop back in a stoop and send the dragon-construct staggering with another kick.

On the moment of impact, Kaellatch jumped clear with timing and precision worthy of a companion to one of the Dancer of a Thousand Blades' holy beasts and sailed over Tellius's head, snatching the command rod from his hand as she did so. She shook it wildly as she landed, reasoning that a random instruction would in all likelihood be better for her than one chosen with intent by Tellius, and it released a cacophony of shrieks and whistles. The patchwork dragon froze in place again for a moment as if trying to parse the garbled command, then took off.

"No, no!" howled Tellius in vain as he reached helplessly for the command rod, but his mount was deaf to his pleas. At the same time, his now worryingly numerous foes all gathered below him, making escape to the ground untenable. With a word from Kaellatch the pinecone wyvern came hurtling after him, and the patchwork dragon made no attempt to impede it as it plucked him from its back. Then with a flick of its tail the wyvern sent a volley of spines into the dragon-construct's back, where they jammed into the mechanisms at the base of the wings. As the mechanical dragon wavered lopsidedly down to the ground, Kaellatch continued to brandish the command rod like a crazed conductor until finally hitting upon the necessary sequence of movements for the results she was looking for. At last the dragon-construct was quiet and still. Meanwhile the pinecone wyvern landed and waited patiently with Tellius pinned under the claws of one wing.

"He's all yours," said Kaellatch to Azinax.

"I appreciate it, but there's something else I need to deal with first," Azinax replied. Tellius's cries of indignation at being deprioritised were ignored, and Azinax trudged back to the entrance of the tunnel where Micaiah's limp form still lay. She knelt down beside her for a closer look. Even in the absence of the traditional signs of life, she could nonetheless sense the faint energy of Micaiah's soul clinging adamantly to its mortal shell, smothered and marred by years of exposure to the noxious energies of the wastes and yet somehow stronger for it, or at least more recalcitrant in the face of mortality. Azinax dredged up just a little energy from her reservoir of magic, just enough to keep body and soul together so someone else could deal with this later. This thus dealt with, she returned to where the wyvern was still waiting with Tellius. Its talons had split the rings of his mail and blood was beginning to seep through.

"I fear I may have been too hasty in judging your worth," began Tellius, staring up at his captors. "There will certainly be a place in the new world for people with talents such as your. Power, respect, gratitude, everything denied to you in punishment for your loyalty to me, all of it will be yours in abundance and all you have to do is..."

Azinax wasn't listening.

"Have the wyvern bring him to his knees," she said to Kaellatch. With a word and a gesture from its handler, the wyvern obliged. Then after setting down her killing-edge reverently on the ground where it continued to illuminate the night, for the first time in many years Azinax drew the executioner's blade in true earnest. Its tip was flat and the blade was not balanced for combat. Phaetusian doctrine held that strictly speaking it was not to be considered a weapon at all, but a tool for excising from the world the unsalvageables, those whom the world required to not be in it. Those who had fallen victim to one might have called this a distinction without a difference, but naturally they never got the chance to voice such views. Though it was not unique in being an instrument of violence, by creed the type of violence it was intended for was highly specific and to use it for any kind was taboo. The responsibility of bearing one was not given lightly and it was not an instrument of revenge.

Azinax took the blade in both hands, feeling its weight against her palms and fingers. Tellius continued in his expatiations, something about Dain and Cinder escaping, but it didn't hold her attention. She didn't need Tellius's help to track them down; Cinder's diabolic metaphysical stench would be an easy enough trail to follow. She stared down at the blade as it glinted in the light of its sibling. It was forged to kill, but it was not eager to kill. She sheathed it.

Tellius's eyes lit up. "I knew you'd see the light," he cried, his words falling after one another pell-mell. "Now just call off this monster of yours and we can get on with..."

Azinax continued to ignore his voice. "Kill him," she ordered Kaellatch.

"What?" Kaellatch was taken aback. "You're sure you don't want to do it yourself? Or drag him back to Essokia in chains? Or maybe hand him over to the couriers' guild? I know we'd get a fine reward from them."

"Was I unclear?" retorted Azinax. "Dain and Cinder are getting further away as we speak. Get on with it."

Tellius's last expression was equal parts bewilderment and panic as a near-point-blanc crossbow bolt tore apart his skull.

"Keep Micaiah safe," Azinax told Razorfang over the link. "We may need her later." Next she addressed Kaellatch. "I take it this creature obeys your commands, for the most part? I need it to chase down Cinder before the trail of his aura dissipates."

"Then let's go," said Kaellatch. At her command the wyvern crouched down and allowed both of them to mount it. "Mind the scales."

As the wyvern took flight Azinax felt a pang of regret seeing Razorfang sitting staring after her, but as Cinder's fiendish aura prickled at the peripheral of her senses she was soon far too consumed by the task at hand to notice the burden of something like regret.