There was no bolt of lightning to mark the conclusion of the rite. Storm clouds did not appear nor did the Earth split open to swallow her whole. It was almost ironic; for all that the Light was venerated across a thousand worlds, the Network cared little for the death of the fleeting and the small. Eight hundred mana had existed at the start of the ritual, and eight hundred existed at its end. So what if the motes had a new vessel to inhabit? As far as the Light was concerned production remained on track.

  The message Sarah received underlined that sentiment perfectly.

  There was a little [Yes] / [No] indicator at the bottom of the box. Sarah stared at the glittering letters for a second before she selected the second option with a burst of mental focus. Her decision was acknowledged by a chime like bone rapping upon glass. Moments later, the prompt suddenly vanished, taking the echo in her ears with it.

   Raul asked from the safety of the ravaged encampment.

  Sarah could feel tiny rivulets of blood dripping from her mandibles, so that wasn’t much of a surprise. The only question was how Raul had figured it out when she was hidden by Pallsburg’s flesh.

   the parasite explained, catching the puzzled cast of her expression.

  The question nearly startled a laugh out of her. Nearly because it was difficult to find much amusing while surrounded by a testament to her sins. The pain didn’t really help matters. Whenever Sarah needed to shift within the confines of her faunal cocoon, her scales would slide across her skeleton like the world’s loosest leather coat. It was enough to make her wonder if they’d fully detached from her skin.

  So much so, that she poked herself in the side to get a better sense of her condition. Sure enough, Sarah could feel a strangely pliant squish, which hinted at a degree of internal bleeding. Hopefully, it was just some heavy bruising. If it wasn’t… if it went all the way to her organs… she might have to make a tough decision.

  Her eyes cut towards Raul, who was still waiting for an answer. Sarah blinked at the perspicacious scrutiny and then replayed his facetious inquiry in her head. How fitting. she reassured him, having scrubbed all of the uncertainty from her tone.

  Raul shrugged and twirled his index finger through the air. After a few revolutions, a stray mote of ‘Earth’ mana trailed around the calloused digit. he admitted before sucking the energy back inside his core.

  No, he was just the sort to flee his family in order to join the fucking circus. It was an urge Sarah suspected the locals would have reciprocated. In fact, between his age and his attitude, it was a surprise he hadn't been invited to their party by name. It certainly would have made it easier to…

  Sarah murdered that train of thought before it could gather steam. There was no point in jumping the gun when her body might recover naturally. Besides, if she made plans, she’d be tempted to follow through on them, regardless of the recourse’s necessity. Better to just let the possibility crystalize in her subconscious while her companion remained unaware.

  ‘You hear that?’ Sarah hollered into the empty recesses of her soul. ‘No killing people simply because it’s convenient. There needs to be a reason for the savagery. We’re not going to make this a habit like every other asshole who’s immigrated from Deravan.”

  The hollow pit didn’t answer back. Instead, a third voice tested her conviction after it casually cut into their comms.

  Every one of Sarah’s muscles contracted, despite her flimsy control. Raul appeared just as frozen. “Do you know this prick?” she asked him once the message wasn’t followed by an ambush. “I thought your family were the only infiltrators in the area.”

  “We are,” Raul replied, his voice uncharacteristically curt. Then, with more humor, “...Or, well, so I thought.”

  Sarah didn’t return his glib smile. She was too busy trying to decide if she should go loud or if her core's emissions would paint a bigger target on her back. she broadcast instead, hoping their conversation would buy a bit of time.

   the voice dissembled, its tone sardonically nonplussed.

  The… the mana was hard to miss? Just how close had this jackoff gotten if they could parse it from the seed’s normal backscatter? Two - three hundred feet? Maybe a kilometer if they were careful and there wasn’t too much interference? The only way that would make sense would be if…

  “They’re on the boat,” Sarah growled. “The one that got chased off.”

  Raul squinted at the empty lake. It was difficult to see anything through the heaving shadows, so his gaze soon shifted from the water to the pockmarked shoreline. “Do you think they heard the gunfire?”

  “Probably,” Sarah spat. “It’d explain why they haven’t charged in yet.”

  Better than the spell, at any rate. No way was that whole ship full of hyper-sensitive warspawn. One Sarah could believe. Half a dozen? No. No shot. It was surely just an infiltrator embedded in a crowd of locals. Since the parasite couldn’t reveal why everyone should keep their distance, there had to be another reason why they weren’t currently hip deep in humans. Gunfire fit the bill.

   Sarah snarled, her fingers clenched around the rifle’s barrel.
  There was a squeal of static as the warspawn clicked their tongue.

  They trailed off. Raul was less inclined to hold his tongue. “This bitch is bluffing; they have to be. The rest of their friends are busy dragging them into a warzone, and they’re calling us to save their hide. The thing is: do we care enough to be their OpFor? It’s not like we still need the seed.”

  No, they didn’t, but witnesses were hardly ideal. The two of them would also be highly visible if they tried to return to the car. They could retreat into the woods - or attempt to take shelter beyond the skein - however, both options meant sticking around for hours if not days. It’d be easier to just throw down.

  ‘Not cleaner, though,’ Sarah acknowledged, her teeth grinding in frustration. ‘There’s also the warspawn to consider. Odds are they’ll take that fight to the ground.’

  It was what Sarah would do. Hell, it was what Sarah had done when she’d squared up with Townsend and Barkley. Since the latter was the reason she was out here in the first place, it seemed stupid to go another round. Tempting, though. She could really use the excuse.

  <...What did you have in mind?> Sarah broadcast before she could second guess her decision.
  A harsh laugh radiated up her tail.

  Sarah opened her mouth to say yes. She hesitated at the last second. <...No. No, you’re not setting me up like a five-year-old being offered free candy. I refuse to take advice from a stranger that I’ve met 'online.' You come down here; we'll do a vibe check, and then maybe we can work something out. If nothing else, I want you in throat-grabbing range once the knives have cleared their sheathes.>

  The warspawn didn’t say anything as a bobcat howled at the stars. Sarah wondered if they were too busy developing a fresh scheme now that their first one had fallen through. Finally, a voice shivered across the relay.

  Sarah turned towards Raul, who was indeed giving off a lot of perfidious energy. she transmitted back.

  The parasite didn’t send a reply. In fact, it felt like they were doing their best to leave the impression that they’d hung up the phone. It was all a ruse, of course - the relays lacked that particular functionality - however, Sarah decided to play along, lest she look weak by belaboring the point. Her warning would be heeded or it wouldn’t. Right now, it was far more important to ensure she could follow through on the threat.

  It was why she began extruding streams of ‘Water’ mana from the depths of her engorged core. Bolstered even further by the [Rite of Ru’Gelesh], it didn’t take long for Sarah to direct the motes to the top of her borrowed rifle. She still spent a good minute ensuring the energies wouldn’t warp when they froze. She’d need the resulting pane to be incredibly clear if it was going to serve as a lens.

  ‘On that note, how about we polish the surface a bit, so it doesn’t look like a pixelated porn ad.’

  Her ‘Purity’ mana practically leapt to the task. Spreading across the verglas until it’d formed a thin film, Sarah coaxed the motes to match her mental image and then pushed them past their physical limit. It wasn’t enough for the ice to be without flaw; she needed it to be conceptually perfect - to enhance the user’s perception as a whole. Nothing less would do for the scope that was slowly taking shape.

  “There,” Sarah growled once she’d forged a second lens and bound them both within a block of hoarfrost. “You won’t be able to adjust the settings, but it should be calibrated, regardless.”

  Raul blinked as Sarah held out the modified gun. “Ah… you want me to…?”

  Sarah nodded her head. “Yeah. Make sure you prioritize this prick’s support if things go wrong. I can handle a single warspawn by myself. Killing the next dozen assholes? That could get substantially sketchier.”

  “Gotcha,” Raul acknowledged before running through the same skit he’d performed in his mother’s kitchen. “I’m sure none of them will be an issue.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Sarah would've been more confident if Raul hadn’t just jinxed them. As it was, she spared a brief thought for Amanda and her own actions during their hike through the Blue Hills. Maybe she owed her ex an apology. She certainly didn’t appreciate Raul adding to her stress level when she was on the cusp of doing something stupid.

  ‘That’s a conversation for later, though,’ she resolved once they’d parted near the treeline. ‘I can always eat my share of crow after I know we’re not going to die.’

  To that end, Sarah focused on her tendrils and the mana lingering in the air. It was hard to detect much beyond the ambient energy of the seed; however, her scrutiny would still serve as a tripwire should anyone start preparing a spell. The memory of Townsend’s water cannon quickly came to mind. She really should have been ready for such a crude and obvious technique.

  “This time will be different, though,” Sarah muttered beneath her breath. “This time I’ll be the one pointing a gun at my opponent’s head.”

  The fact that her guest would be expecting it wouldn’t change the outcome in the slightest. All she had to do was trust Raul to know how to shoot. Combine that with the weapon that Sarah had impressed into his hands, and the consequences should fall like dominos. She simply needed a target.

  Sadly, her preferred quarry was content to take their time. Sarah had told the warspawn to arrive within the next five minutes, and yet - there they were, continuing to putter around after ten. If it wasn’t for the irregular flares of ‘Restorative’ mana, which were wafting over the beach, she’d be tempted to make her displeasure known. As it was, she assumed the infiltrator was having trouble disengaging surreptitiously and choked back her fear and impatience.

  Her forbearance was rewarded shortly afterwards by a quiet rustling in the brush. The scowling visage of a dark-skinned young woman soon revealed itself to be the source of the noise. “Alright, I’m here,” the caustic puppeteer announced. “Let’s get this shit over with before my ‘pee break’ takes all night.”

  Sarah couldn’t quite let that comment pass. “Oh, so now you’re in a rush? Where was that enthusiasm fifteen minutes ago when I was busy twiddling my thumbs?”

  The warspawn flipped her off. “Get bent,” she grumbled while the rest of her fingers dug into her palm. “If you wanted me to make a fast getaway, then you shouldn’t have murdered half of my high school football team. What the hell did they even do to warrant your deranged killing spree? Steal your car and shoot your dog?”

  An acrimonious lour gripped the edge of Sarah’s lips. She didn’t laugh at the joke so much as speak the words aloud. “Ha ha,” Sarah heckled her. “Very funny. I’d snicker harder, except I’ve heard that quip before. It wasn’t funny then, and it’s not now. If anything, it’s the opposite because there’s a decent chance that the guy who made it got domed by a skittish cop. So, run through the rest of your stand-up routine if you want. Enjoy the giggles while you can. Then, once we’re done having fun, maybe I’ll go bury your friends since that’ll put a real smile on my face. What do you think? Does that sound good to you?”

  “No?” Sarah pressed as the jovial atmosphere faded. “Feeling like you should maybe sober the fuck up? That’s fine. I’ll wait. I’ve gotten pretty good at it thanks to all of the time I’ve spent cooling my heels.”

  A cold wind blew across the surface of Squam Lake. During the five or six seconds it took to fly up the slumped mountain, the medic both noticed the chill and dismissed it as the source of her rising gooseflesh. “...Perhaps we've gotten off on the wrong foot,” she conceded, visibly testing the sentence for faults. “If I remember right, we're having this meeting to avoid a fight, so why don’t we fast forward through the usual posturing and get to the introductions. I’m going by Denise these days. Who are…?”

  Sarah cut her off before she could finish the question. “No. Stop. I don’t want to know your name; I don’t want to know your history, and I certainly don’t want to know why you’re here with your delusional friends. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just some bitch I met in the woods. That’s all we are to each other, and that’s all I’m going to allow us to be. Understand?”

  The ‘bitch-she’d-met-in-the-woods’ dipped her chin in a begrudging nod. “Yeah, okay. Great speech. Very mysterious. Can we get to the part where we don’t gun each other down like it’s the end of a Tarantino film, now? Because I’d really like to avoid that if possible.”

  It took Sarah until Denise was done talking to realize that a haze of ‘Water’ mana had begun to leak from her pores. Twisting about her ankles and crawling up her thighs, the vapor bubbled with a palpable malevolence, which threatened to throttle the source of her ire.

  Sarah halted the wandering coils with a thought. She hadn’t even noticed her core start to spin up. It’d simply whirled to life in response to her turbulent emotions. There was a candor there if you had the temerity to acknowledge it. A frankness of sentiment and intention. Where Sarah held her tongue in order to deny her growing bloodlust, her magic displayed it freely, despite the grip she'd kept on its flows.

  The Annolians would have called that natural. Sarah considered it a huge pain in the ass. Because how the hell was she supposed to hold a conversation if the end result was already assured? Was there even a point to entertaining their fragile truce?

  Sarah felt her self-possession slipping and passed control of their feet to Pallsburg. She took a deep breath. “Fine,” she bit out once her tendrils weren't quite so overburdened. “What’s your bottom line? How’s this supposed to work?”

  “Isn’t that for you to decide?” Denise asked her warily. “You’re the one with the trust issues. You tell me what we need to get this shit done.”

  Frustration compelled the parasite to be more honest than her instincts would prescribe. “Well, normally, I’d ask for an [Oath of Intent] and leave the punishment up to the Loom. Unfortunately, that isn’t super feasible right now - what with the Network being missing in action.”

  Denise grimaced at the admission. While the Loom was a little more profligate than either the Light or the Sea, it wasn’t exactly carefree when it came to bestowing its favor. To put it another way, initiating said oath would be easy; seeing it through could leave her dead in a ditch. Mostly because the Network would put her there itself if she violated the terms of their agreement. Oh, it’d reward her too, should she honor her word; however, the recompense could be strangely lacking, compared to what she had to put up. Ultimately, it'd all come down to how the Network balanced the scales.

  And it weighed breaches more heavily than commitment.

  “I… am not doing that,” Denise carefully pronounced. “I am so not doing that, that I don’t even want to joke around about the possibility of indicating otherwise. There’s a reason why the nobility's never used the Network to bind our behavior, and it comes down to how often its adherents have spontaneously combust.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes at the histrionic objection. “Please, the Nobility would geas every one of us if they thought they could get away with it. It’s only the fact that the Offal Sea would pitch a jealous fit that stops them from making the attempt.”

  “Still,” Denise insisted. “I’d rather eat a bullet.”

  “Yeah, well, it might come to that. Especially since my backup plan is a truth spell that wouldn’t make it through your host. How about it? You want to pop out for a second, so I don’t have to bake you like a potato?”

  The infiltrator winced at the vivid turn of phrase. Sarah wasn’t surprised. Even dialed back and applied with the proper care, there was a decent chance she'd cook Denise alive. Call it… thirty percent? Maybe a tad higher? It’d depend on how resilient her bloodline was and the warspawn’s relative size.

  “You’re putting me in an awkward position," the would-be doctor whined. "You get that, right?”

  Sarah felt compelled to circle the clearing and ruthlessly suppressed the urge. “If it’s awkward, then fix it. You say you want a solution, but you’re forcing me to do all of the work.”

  Denise licked her lips. “I could pull everyone back to the boat. Keep them in plain view.”

  Sarah was already shaking her head. If she could see the interlopers, then they could spot her too. Besides, there was no guarantee that Denise had enough influence to convince the group to retreat. More than likely, the order would just make them curious about what was being hidden from their gaze. At that point, she’d be in danger from the terminally nosy as much as deliberate malfeasance.

  “Then how about…” She trailed off. Denise glanced over her shoulder at a second rustling in the brush. A moment later, one of her compatriots suddenly pushed his way through the brambles. He looked a bit like Laurence Fishburne if the actor had lost a foot of height. It was the hair, Sarah decided. Where Denise wore hers in tightly curled braids, Mr. Morpheus straight up didn’t have any.

  “Den, is that you?” said impersonator distractedly called out. “We’re down to five milligrams of epinephrine, and Jason was wondering where you put the rest.”

  A robotic lethargy fell over the alien’s mien. Denise stared at the butcher across from her even as their guest remained focused on her answer. “...It’s in the cabin beneath the co-pilot’s seat,” she eventually deigned to reply. Her neck twitched towards the left and then rapidly returned to Sarah. “The black box. Not the white one that came with the boat.”

  Sarah made a show of examining the unlucky bastard who’d stumbled across their standoff. First to assess whether he’d be able to pick her out of a lineup and then for the reaction her scrutiny evoked from Denise. The warspawn was seriously on edge. Did she actually give a shit about whether this dude survived?

  The corner of her mouth curled down in a frown. That particular observation was a touch too close to prying into the medic's affairs; better to just work the lever that her counterpart had carelessly revealed.

   Sarah pressed as part of her body remained pointing towards the copycat.

  Denise reacted like Sarah had stabbed her in the tit. the parasite blurted, the word nearly straining her tail.

   Sarah agreed.

   Denise repeated, failing to get the reference.

  

   Denise hissed angrily.

  “And I told you that I don’t care!” The shout echoed across the clearing as Sarah’s face twisted into a sneer. “Not for his name, and not for your fucking excuses! Are you seriously trying to tell me that there’s anything innocent about his presence here tonight? That he just wandered over by chance? Funny how that works when you told me to come alone.”

  “Uh… Den…?” the subject of their argument interjected. “What’s going on? Who’s your friend?”

  “Nobody,” Denise snapped, unwilling to show Sarah her back. “Just a survivor in shock from the beach. I’m handling it. I promise.”

  Oh, she promised, did she? “What other lines have you fed this guy in order to get his ass up here? Have you told him why you need his help so badly? Or explained to him what it might cost? ...How about who you are? Have you spilled the beans on that, yet?”

  Denise finally unleashed her core as a cloud of ‘Distortion’ mana billowed across the seed.

  Sarah bared her teeth in a parody of a smile. “I’m going to take that as a no. It’s a bit of a surprise considering how eager you were to defend him.”

   Denise swore. “If you don’t shut your mouth, I will drill a hole through your head and shit into the broken crack!>

  Sarah felt her shoulders relax in preparation for the coming fight. “Then do it bitch. Stop making noise and pull the fucking trigger.”

  There was a moment of silence before Tyrese self-consciously cleared his throat. “I’m… getting the sense that we’ve reached a point where intervention is no longer helpful. Miss, I don’t know what my sister has said, implied or done, but is there anything we can actually do for you? Perhaps an injury we can treat? Or a problem of that nature?”

  The words didn’t really penetrate through the rush of Sarah’s bloodlust. In truth, had he phrased things even a smidge differently, then she probably would have lashed out with a spell. Instead, a small part of his speech pushed its way through the suffocating pall. “...Your sister?” Sarah intoned distractedly. “This cunt is your sister?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t call her that, but yes,” Tyrese confirmed. “Did you… lose someone by the shore?”

  No. Not yet, and not by the shore. If anything, it was the opposite. What else could you call faffing about at her desk while her grandmother was stuck in the hospital. The surgery; the therapy; the ceaseless war against infection and disease: none of that had anything to do with the Light or the Offal Sea. It was just… normal. Perhaps the most normal thing in the world.

  …As normal as worrying about your brother when he was in danger of getting killed by your bullshit. Sarah hated how easy Tyrese made it to recontextualize his sister’s behavior. Now, instead of treating her like the enemy, Sarah had to acknowledge the parasite for what she was: a brutish, sentimental idiot, who was struggling to keep what she'd stolen.

  ‘Fuck you for making this personal!’ Sarah snarled within the privacy of her head. ‘There’s a reason why I didn’t want to hear your sob-story a minute after we’d met!’

  Nobody offered a reply. Sarah wasn’t surprised.

  Denise eased off on her throughput until only a trickle of mana remained.

   Sarah’s admission was more shout than statement as she closed her eyes in aggravation. Part of her was hoping the opening would convince Denise to shoot her shot. When it failed to provoke a response, she had no choice but to sigh in frustration.

   Denise inquired suspiciously.

   Sarah replied.

  The joke didn’t get much play. At first, Sarah assumed it was because Denise was too pissed off to be amused; however, her exasperation soon faded in favor of a half-forgotten warmth. She opened her eyes. There was a screen waiting beside her right breast. [Contact - Reestablished], the Offal Sea triumphantly announced. [Initializing Prior Portfolio].