Acrisius roared out, a wordless alert for me to keep pace behind him. I felt like a child being dragged along by their parent; it was familiar. Memories of the bazaar in Qisharro’m, my parents hauling me along and remarking a name I never chose to bear. Thankfully this was far more fulfilling, the trail of carnage was much more befitting my pedigree.

“You’re lost in thought, cat.” He barked at me as he came to a standstill, his body jerking faintly as he twisted himself to stare down at me. He was right of course.

“Oof.” I vocalized as my head knocked into his armor. “Yea, I guess I am.” I said softly, as my ear flicked. I cast my gaze into the empty slits of his wicked armor. All I saw were faint glints of purple-black that burned within what should’ve been sockets bearing eyes. He was alike me, perhaps, a scaphid lost to the sands of time. Far too tall.

“Can you hear a word I’m sa-” He growled, cutting himself short “Whatever.” He lurched back, diving into another trench garrison to reap his harvest, the strokes of his glaive casting blood spatter in a beautiful pattern, the dull earthern bastions twisted pretty with his lust for red. He was done in but a moment, the dance he partook in ending with a silent lunge to the exit and a blitz to the next target. It was remarkable how little he seemed to bear fatigue, the weight of conflict almost came in waves, shedding off like an ablative layer of filth as he leapt from prey-mark to prey-mark. Energy surged to him in wicked torrents, his body visibly pulsing with renewed vigor the moment he seemed to waver. He was mechanical in his behaviors…

I could almost hear his breaths through the thick padding of his warhelm, labored and gross in the way they growled past what could only be teeth clenched to the point of breakage. The knight-scything was finally to end as he came to the trench-head, hours seemed to have passed since we first came down. I was exhausted, panting past my facewrap as I kept my distance from the wide-swinging lunatic deigned my chaperone by the sun-demon. He stared back at me, his eyes obscured but the veilpiercing nature of his gaze ever-present. I went cold.

“What?”

“You did nothing.” He said flatly.

“Y-“

“Good.” He interjected, grabbing at my wrist and dragging me up the sloped rear of the trenchwork. “We have another line to clean. Remarkable how slow word travels when you walk in the shadow of winter.”

“A-absolutely.” I stuttered as I was jerked along, entirely unsure what I affirmed. He sounded a lot more cogent than the last time he spoke, at least from what I could parse.

Within moments we were at a rear trench with the winter storm still bearing down at our backs, providing ample obfuscation to our brazen march-in-plain-sight. Acrisius was without any doubt the first to drop down the sheer forward face of the trench, his foot meeting the densely plated head of a rifle-wielding soldier, his attire far baser than the fire-knights of prior dispute. The ghazi’s face was broken into his skull with the introduction of his helmet to the earth, giving the corpse-knight the leverage he needed to start his break into a rampage.

“In my wake, revel in the slaughter!” He cried back at me as he grinded to a stop and pivoted right, smashing past the wooden garrison door and claiming his harvest. “They’re bountiful, Maharra! Earn your keep!” His muffled cry replied. I suppose I was being a bit lazy.

A sharp exhale crept past my lips as I broke into a sprint down the opposite length of the trench, heeled boots cracking silently against the snow-stricken wood as I met the face of a trench-garrison, grasping for the handle and whipping it open. They were awake and preparing to man the line it seemed. Three of them, all in similar grimy plate, pedestrian styles of attire. Their gunpowder was crude and foreign, even to the sands of Sivakh.

“Katzen!” One of them cried out. “Fioran mercenaries, in a storm!”

I hissed, jutting my two first fingers ahead as I clenched the rest into a fist. I lifted my free hand behind me and emptied my lungs with my palm facing the door. Each bit of breath that vacated my body was replaced with a sensation of heat that grew into forks of electricity cracking outwards towards my extremities. The world around me melted at its edges, ripples of perception grinding against the way I partook in sense. My enemies were fuzzy, motionless, and weak. They existed in the same nightmare I did, but I was the mover behind it. I gave a scorpion’s touch to the first one’s neck, my fingers grasping for support as I came to a halt. I clenched, feeling the lightning burn to my digits as time began to run correctly. All of the trouble I caused was his fault, now.

I staggered backwards and clapped my hands, the molten world pulling onto him before he was nothing but a red smear against the dirty mosaic I had lovingly set. In this event was the world normal again, the beautiful mess now a memory quickly melting away like the rest. Replaced fully with the present. My empty sight pivoted to meet one of the two who remained. He was cold, his gaze fixed to the foor. The second as well watched on in a broken fog of supernatural horror. I grinned, feeling no need to over-indulge like my chaperone.

I turned and made pace to the next, my short legs dragging through densely piled snow before I met the wooden face of the second dormitory I was to reap. I suspected the rest of them were awakening as well, so I’d do best to preserve myself. I planted a foot firmly ahead, smashing my palms against the door’s angled face and dragging them down to its foot. As my palms touched the doors lower frame I exhaled, pushing my hands firm against the floor with a groan. The door surged, straining inwards against its hinges as a chorus of screams contended against the ruckus of scattered furniture and trinkets. I pushed myself up off the floor, giggling as I felt a foggy wave brush over the surface of my skin, heat gathering in my head as I struggled at the boundary of the sane. A hand, my hand, met the side of my head to scatter the warm haze as I shook it. I weakly moved on to the next.

There was a rifle fixed on me, two actually. Perhaps a third, I was a bit deficient in this manner. My left hand twisted to a pious sign. My first two fingers were raised, my index finger curled halfway with the middle kept firm. I crashed the finger-sigil against my chest and snorted. All of the rifles fixed on me sounded off in a messy cadence, a barrier of temporal numbness pushing past my body and grasping at the spent shot that barreled towards me. My hands discarded the munitions with little effort, swatting them aside as I pushed ahead, smashing the finger-sigil I still held into the helmet of the closest gunner I could meet, his head collapsing into itself as he crumpled backwards into the floor, the weight of the world growing stronger on him and all the rest who struggled against the nature of the way things were. They were sluggish, their hands effetely dropping to withdraw their blades as I worked. I leapt at the farthest now, collecting on his chest as a painful wave bult at the apex of my limbs and spilled into him, twisting him in a wailing wretch of a man as his flesh withered against his bones.

All fun things, of course, had to come to an end. As I threw myself off his chest I had realized that time was no longer at my back, rather, it was fully at the whims of its own desires. I was still a sluggish little thing when reality was within reach, and my prey had become predators without them even realizing. They were fast, well trained, and competent. The weighted pommel of a straight saber met my unarmored skull while I tried to find my next victim, discarding me lifelessly into the cold, snowy prison piled at the sloped rear of the trench; turning the world into a messy blur as I screamed out in a writhing display of protest. I hadn’t felt pain like this before, in all my time as a hunter of ways. I was crushingly mortal in spite of all that my ambition had inspired in me, I was nothing profound. All I felt was pain, pain creeping in on the boundaries of sanity, my perception breaking down into a fuzzy blur. I collapsed into a state of existential fog, sounds and scents and emotions alike crumbling into a twisting, dusty cloud that danced around my mind, my body nowhere to be seen or felt. I was feeling a second winter, a winter of the mind or something. This couldn’t be what pain felt like, this was beyond what I imagined in my protesting youth. The pain I inflicted on myself in protest was nothing alike the reality I faced. I was supposed to be the scourge of time and desire, the Asghazi Maharrat of yore! The sun itself had deemed me its foremost persecu-

“Shut up cat!” I heard burn past the warm veil of nothing, a sharp pain ripping into my mind at the behest of a burning crack. A sharp, acrid stench had pierced past the comfortable, blind fog I was trapped inside. The pain, somehow, had transcended to something new in the wake of that retort. I felt like the living dead, fully numb yet fully aware. A prisoner to the corpse I inhabited. How grim.