It was mid-morning—and the sky had all but fully completed its transition to a rotting purple hue—when Tiger and Panther signed on to a migrant caravan.

  Nobody was particularly thrilled at this decision. Not Tiger, not Panther, and certainly not the wagon-boss (who had rightfully pegged them as trouble from the moment he saw the scar around Panther's neck). Panther herself had raised the obvious objection that two wanted fugitives should be doing everything in their power to avoid large crowds of people; conversely, Tiger had reminded Panther that traveling the road alone during a Yellow Equinox was essentially tantamount to suicide. Panther, ever the realist, had conceded the point in characteristically taciturn fashion: "Fine."

  And so here they were, now, inbound for the northern tributary province of Kaino. Altogether they made for quite the checkered procession—a whole assortment of Vokians, Shalasharans, Revendals, Keloken, and even a few Gor-Gamai, all clad in a quilt-patterned smorgasbord of coats and furs and cloaks and a few instances of cheap plate-metal armor. They gathered in a tight pack around that enormous twelve-wheeled wagon, the elderly and infirm hanging off the sides whilst the vast majority trudged it out on foot, and they journeyed forth together as wary, side-eyeing acquaintances all. Hired men-at-arms marched at each of the convoy's four corners with bows and shortswords readily at hand; wood-masked shamans trailed before and behind, chanting words of Minor Significance (mostly the names of certain long-dead individuals) and swinging glowing censers that burned thick clouds of lavender incense. And for the first few hours, all was relatively calm and casual.

  One could pinpoint the exact moment when the atmosphere shifted; it happened four hours into the journey, just as the Vokian capital's open-rolling plains had begun giving way to fifty-foot-high walls of thick autumn forest. There must have been some manner of invisible line, some unseen boundary crossed, for each and every one of those nervous itinerants felt a distinct shift between the before and the after—hair standing on end, goosebumps prickling their skin, a certain primordial fight-or-flight impulse running cold fingers down the lengths of their spines. The air here was simply wrong. It smelled wrong, and it tasted wrong—and also like absolutely nothing at all. The sky, too, seemed a very different shade of purple than before. It felt sickly, almost. Etiolated. A sallow and parodic imitation of its former self.

  "Stay close to me," was all Panther said to Tiger, in the moment they crossed that invisible line.

  She didn't have to say it twice.

  Tiger and Panther were being watched.

  There were two of them that Panther spotted at first—a pair of bald-headed men with dark eyes and hatchet faces. Panther noted that they were doing a very poor job of concealing their interest and so she understood, in turn, that these two were likely nothing more than a pair of red herrings. It took her another few hours to finally pick out the spy that she wasn't supposed to notice—a cheerful, portly old woman in a deep-blue shanku robe. This one Panther had to intuit rather than directly identify; at no point did she ever actually catch this woman in the act of spying, or even staring too closely. This spy was good, or at the very least not intentionally bad.

  This scenario was the ethos of Oculus distilled: pay all attention to my left hand, whilst the right comes round to stick a dagger in your neck. Oculus agents delighted in the presentation of nested false realities, in the all-sundering lie of I know what's really going on here. Ibis had long—and loudly—disparaged her brother's favored tactics on several private occasions, for she herself very much favored a blank-faced and opaque approach. "Why involve yourself at all?" she scoffed, once, as she and Panther rode alone in a carriage bound for the Shalasharan Royal Ziggurat. "Show nothing, give nothing, offer nothing. Keep them guessing—that's the way. Taro's too in love with his own cleverness to ever be anything more than a halfway-decent liar."

  Those words—now with a distinctly bitter aftertaste—were swirling about in Panther's mind as she filled Tiger in on their would-be stalkers. "What if there are more?" the prince had replied, almost immediately. "I mean—what if the Purple Woman is also bait, and there's still another spy that you aren't seeing?"

  Panther pondered that very briefly. "If there was," she told him, finally, "I'd know."

  A moment passed, then: "Man, that was tough," said Tiger, with obvious sarcasm. "I'd know. Damn. You're so cool, Panther, you know that?"

  "Shut up."

  Now, after a long day fraught with unresolved tension, did the caravan finally come to a halt. The sun was falling and the moon was rising, and nobody had any intention of marching out into the dark of that night—into shadows darker than night, into a starless and yellow-lit tenebrosity that even now seemed to swirl and undulate all around them like spilled ink. All day the forest had been eerily quiet; now, it was abominably loud, with a whole shrill symphony of shrieks and whoops and hollers and caterwauls and all other manner of other unfamiliar, hair-raising and inhuman undulations. Pairs and trios of glowing eyes regarded the itinerants from beyond that shadowy treeline: yellow, red, sparkling green, and of course a distinctly lupine yellow. Strange figures paced and padded just out of sight, some diminutively small and some horrifically, imposingly huge.

  They of the caravan carried on as best they could, despite this unwelcome attention. A roaring bonfire was set up at the mouth of the wagon; rations were dispensed, guards were posted, hymns were sung and runes were carved deep into the mud. Thick clouds of lavender burned. Tiger and Panther were one of few groups to strike out on their own some hundred-or-so feet from the main encampment; periodically, one outsider or another would attempt an approach, and subsequently Panther would ward them off with that steady liquid-metal stare she so readily possessed. This proved a consistently effective tactic; the sword displayed upon her hip didn't hurt, either.

  And so they sit, the two of them, arranged around a meager little fire of their very own. Tiger has thrown his coat over a log and is smoking idly now, brow knit in curiosity and concentration both as he etches his own set of sigils into the mud—distracting himself with experimental new combinations, new methods, new theorems. Sorcery, you see, is a 'science' almost purely intuitive in nature, and guided entirely by one's own internal and emotional logic. Often it is guided by no logical schema at all. So it is that the practice of learning Sorcery is really nothing more than repeated trial and error—and since Panther had expressly forbidden Tiger from actually practicing said 'Vile Arts,' it seemed that for now theory alone would have to suffice.

  Panther, meanwhile, sits upon a mossy stone with cloak thrown back over shoulders and legs spread wide—running an old cloth back and forth over the steel of her most-favored dagger. She looks very much the part of the languid, lounging feline for which I named her—but alas, it is the cant of Panther's legs that betrays her true intent. Tiger learned to discern this long ago: when Panther was actually at ease, she tended to cross her legs and fold her arms, and to almost close in on herself. When she was sitting like this—body language open, legs spread, posture unguarded—then her pose was just that. A pose. In this moment Panther is, contrary to her appearance, very much a coiled spring ready at any moment to leap into sudden and violent action. Tiger has witnessed the flipping of that switch twice in his two years in Vokia, and both times he was left utterly blindsided by just how quickly the bodyguard could shift into motion. What he came to believe, eventually, was that Panther simply never relaxed. She never let her guard down. She never stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  At any rate; Panther was—whilst also surreptitiously observing their trio of Oculus hanger-ons—thinking about Ibis. Despite all her best and most futile efforts to the contrary, here she was. Dwelling on such stupid little memories. Such meaningless little exchanges, whispered snide remarks, moments that had meant nothing at all—for there was such an abundance of moments in the days before that day, all so very much taken for granted. Those moments meant nothing then and everything now. Panther, you see, had come to the same inevitable conclusion of any on the heels of a devastating loss: that she had wasted their time together. That she had somehow wasted Ibis. She thought herself so unimaginably arrogant to have believed that Ibis would remain forever—she thought herself a vile, sinful creature to have spent their time together so cheaply. She was filled with so much anger and so much despair, and she turned to that anger to escape that despair—and, lacking any other proper target, she was forced to turn that anger upon herself.

  Abruptly, Panther—an insomniac for her entire adolescent and adult life—wanted desperately to sleep. The sadness was too much and the world was too dark and bitter a pill to swallow, and so she craved, like an animal caught in a trap, to gnaw off her own leg. To simply stop thinking, and stop feeling. And just as her thoughts seemed liable to take a dangerous turn, just as her course was set to swerve into a pit from which she would not emerge, it was Tiger who shattered this most dire train of thought by wondering aloud: "So, what's the plan of action here?"

  Bliss, then, as suddenly Panther's mind is nowhere but the immediate present. Though her head does not move, those slate-grey eyes flick right to Tiger's own. "Be specific," she tells him, laconic as always.

  Tiger rolls his eyes in exasperated fashion. He is almost certainly playing it up for her benefit. "About, you know," he says, gesturing without directly indicating, "them." And this time his meaning is plainly clear.

  "Nothing either of us can do until Kaino," Panther replies, with a measured shrug of her shoulders. "They'll probably try to take us at the gatehouse."

  "Okay, so they'll try and take us at the gatehouse. Got it. At which point we will do...what, exactly?"

  "At which point, I'll see them coming," comes Panther's cold reply. The flames glow warm amber off the surface of her blade; she flips her dagger up into the air, end-over-end, then snatches it back with practiced ease. "And I'll be ready."

  No droll witticism this time; Tiger just grimaces and nods, forced as he is to make peace with the inevitable violence to come. And so do Panther's eyes return to the bonfire, and so does her mind once more begin to wander. Her thoughts drift like aimless clouds to an impossible past, centering themselves in meditation upon that which she can no longer have, and that chasm yawns wide and hungry and oh-so-welcoming—until once more Tiger, perhaps picking up on her unspoken desire for anything other than space to think, grouses aloud: "Stars, how do you Vokians live like this?"

  Once more, Panther's eyes flick back. She regards him dryly. "I'm not a Vokian," she replies, simply, and that is the end of that. Until, after a beat, she presses: "Like what?"

  "This miserable cold!" Tiger complains, even as he continues to warm himself by the light of their shared fire. "We're only halfway into autumn and already these nights are freezing! Look around—this isn't even winter, the leaves are still on the damn trees! What in all the stars above are we doing here?"

  "That's how it's always been," is all Panther offers, to that.

  "Well, I find it thoroughly fucking miserable."

  Panther hesitates—then, alas, she takes the bait. "If this were Shalashar," she counters, "we'd be sweating like hogs right now."

  "Fine by me," Tiger replies, leaning forward and blowing smoke out the far corner of his mouth. "I'd take sweltering heat over freezing cold any day."

  "Tch," Panther scoffs, almost genuinely irritated now. "Of course you would."

  Tiger, having successfully provoked the most stoic individual he knows, folds his arms in restrained triumph. "Now," he demands, "what is that supposed to mean?"

  "You don't fight for a living." Panther folds her own arms in turn. "And you don't wear armor."

  "You don't wear real armor either," Tiger counters, gesturing to the bodyguard's padded-leather gambeson.

  "That's because I like to move when I fight. Not the point."

  "And I like when the air is not literally stinging my eyes all day. Look at my eyes, Panther. Look at them. See how red they are? That is from crying all day, Panther. Don't you feel bad for me?"

  Panther almost smirks at that—but in the end, all Tiger sees is the perfectly impassive expression of some blank-faced ancient statue. "You'll live," she tells him, in dry monotone.

  Tiger grins, and shoots back: "Or I'll be eaten by some damn Equinox Beast before the night is done."

  "Or that."

  That night, the two of them huddle for warmth beneath Panther's pewter-grey cloak—her head resting upon his shoulder even as her eyes are open slits, busily sweeping back and forth across the treeline and caravan both. Her hand never leaves the hilt of her dagger, and her attention snaps in an instant to every errant sound or movement. There is no pretense of sleep, nor is there any opportunity for Panther's mind to wander. For six consecutive hours she just sits there on high alert, ready and waiting—and almost eager—to fight.

  And this is, in a way, almost a relief.

  The first night passes without incident; all rise bleary-eyed into that frigid morning, everyone huddling beneath coats and cloaks as dried rations are swiftly and sparsely distributed. Daylight is an essential commodity and so it is not wasted; not a half-hour later the caravan is on the move once more, even whilst half-asleep. All the while Tiger watches the Bald Men, and the Purple Woman watches Tiger, and Panther watches the Purple Woman. It is an uneasy, unspoken, and unavoidable détente in which they are all ensnared.

  On the second night, things go wrong.

  Firstly, there appears—just as the bonfire is sparked, and an atmosphere of good cheer has reluctantly risen—a lone figure at just the edge of the treeline. A bit too far to properly discern, a bit too close for anybody's comfort. Its whole body appears as naught but more inky shadow; no further details can be established from any angle, save for the intense whites of its eyes. It does not respond to hails, nor to threats of violence, nor even to one foolhardy crossbow bolt fired just past its head. It just stands there and watches, hands at its sides, unmoving and unblinking.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Eventually the shamans instruct the others to simply carry on as they otherwise would, and to avoid meeting the figure's gaze if at all possible. They then proceed to make countless treaties to certain individuals whom I very much doubt could even perceive such things (and would be far more harm than help if they could). Now everyone eats in uncomfortable silence; a pall has fallen over the caravan, and Panther's fingers are drumming back and forth, back and forth over the hilt of her sword. At one point Tiger mimes the act of removing his glove, and points to his right eye, to which Panther leans in and hisses: "Absolutely not."

  So the night marches on, and one by one the fires are all snuffed out, and the caravan passes halfheartedly into slumber—though nearly a third of their number yet remain awake, some on guard and some merely incapable of sleep. And it is not twenty minutes into this uneasy silence that a young man's voice pierces the darkness: "Stars above, somebody help me!"

  Panther and many others sit straight up; her hand is darting to her knife when Tiger grips her shoulder, yanks her back, and puts one finger right to his lips. There is something he knows that she does not. Despite this, Panther's eyes cannot help but flick back to that plaintive sound—yet slowly, slowly does Tiger shake his head, and slowly does Panther's common sense prevail. And so the two of them can only listen, totally still, as the same voice cries out: "No! I don't want to die!"

  There follows a great rustling of foliage, a snapping of branches and crushing of leaves underfoot—and then it emerges. Nearly fifty feet in length, six-legged, at once canine and reptilian in form—a furless individual pacing forth, towering some ten feet into the air upon thick, muscular legs. Indeed its entire body ripples with bulging musculature. Its snout is split by a narrow mouth stretching nearly five feet back at either end; said mouth is filled with rows and rows of triangle-pointed teeth, all slavering with viscous yellow saliva. Though seemingly eyeless, it sports three pairs of what are unmistakably human ears, and the nose at the end of that terrible snout is twitching and snuffling even now as this individual searches, blind yet far from unseeing.

  "Amaya, just go! Run! Amaya!" screams the young man's voice, the sound emitting from one of several black pits along the individual's flank. From another, there comes a different voice: "Please—please—please—please—please—please—" And a third just wails for his mother, voice rising higher and higher to a fevered, shredded pitch.

  The individual tramps freely across the camp; nobody moves, nobody dares even draw breath. Even Panther's eyes are wide as saucers. The nose at the end of that snout is probing, probing, and the white-eyed man is watching all the while, and there is no sound but the heavy breathing and snuffling to follow. Despite Panther's instruction to the contrary, Tiger's right-hand glove is fully off, and he has bit his lip to the point that blood is dripping, dripping down onto the tattoo on the back of said hand.

  The individual probes for what feels like amber-frozen eternity—until finally it turns, and its snout splits further than any present would have ever thought possible, and a long reptilian tongue snaps out whip-like to encircle one of the guards tight around the waist. That unfortunate guard is already screaming as clothes and flesh both sizzle loudly; the individual retracts its tongue and bites down once, and the resulting pop of bone is enough to nearly turn Tiger's stomach, and thus a whole mess of steaming gore spills down from the individual's open jaws. And so the individual kneels down, and so for nearly fifteen minutes it slurps at this puddle of shredded organ and melting bone. Until, finally—satisfied—it steps back and steps away, stomping back into the underbrush, trumpeting the guard's dying pleas and prayers with perfect, unerring accuracy.

  The white-eyed figure does not move.

  Neither does anyone else; but somehow, at some point, still does that figure manage to slip away just before the sun crests the horizon and all the shadows are mercifully excised. Nobody sees the figure go, or even move it all. Perhaps it was simply banished away with all the darkness of that terrible night. Or perhaps it never existed at all?

  It does not matter; come morning, there is neither breakfast and nor consternation. There is no discussion to be had. Everybody is already awake. And so, as soon as the sun is up, the caravan is moving once more.

  When the Kaino gatehouse finally appears, the wave of relief that washes through the caravan is all but indescribable.

  Kaino, a tributary province in name only, could very well pass for a nation-state itself to the uneducated eye. Picture it: a sprawling walled city, endless crimson-shingled Vokian-style roofs like the steppes of some distant rocky plains, all peppered with innumerable spines of curling black smoke. This is a place one smells for miles before it is actually seen; it is the unmistakable reek of coal, of steel, of industry and of tight-packed human life. Those mighty red-bricked walls for which Kaino is so famous are crowned by a gatehouse at each of the four cardinal directions: here, at the south, there looms a pair of mighty iron-hewn doors topped by a hardwood arch and one long, narrow balcony above. It is a fortress all its own, equal parts gateway and military garrison—and right away, Panther can sense that something is very wrong.

  Two dozen legionaries man the balcony with crossbows in hand, their red-and-yellow tabards marking them as members of Kaino's private militia. Below, eight more stand with shields and tasseled glaives at the ready, faces concealed behind narrow-eyed steel helmets perched atop knotted scarves.

  "We have a problem," says Panther, now, as the caravan approaches. She says so in a low voice, out the corner of her mouth, in such a way that only Tiger can hear.

  "Problem?" Tiger repeats, a little louder than intended. He has not mastered the art of subvocalisation as she has. "Are Oculus finally making a move?" His eyes dart unconsciously back and forth, trying in vain to pinpoint their longtime adversaries through the sudden throng of the crowd.

  "Too many on the balcony," Panther whispers back, instead. "Full arms and armor. They're waiting for us."

  "Well...maybe something happened? Maybe they were already on high alert?" Tiger offers these hopeful futures halfheartedly, and without truly believing, for he has long come to find that Panther's instincts are rarely wrong.

  "Maybe," Panther replies, and by the shift of her cloak Tiger knows that her hand is on the hilt of her sword. "Maybe not."

  And so they approach, that beleaguered coalition of desperate itinerants, and so the wagon wheels noisily forth. Everyone can feel it now—the danger in the air. The potential energy. Panther notices one of the Bald Men moving surreptitiously ever-closer, and pretends not to see him in turn.

  "Halt!" a sharp voice barks out. Panther's eyes narrow immediately at the sound. The wagon dutifully halts and with it, the pilgrims halt as well.

  "Hail!" calls another—the wagon-boss, stepping forward now ahead of all the rest with overcoat whipping in that frigid morning wind. There is a pipe clenched tight between his teeth and thus his voice is muffled, somewhat, as he shouts back: "My name is Hanaro Vraugh! I'm the owner and proprietor of this migrant caravan! My dues are paid in full, and this is my fifth trip to Kaino this year! Is something the matter, Enforcers?" He gestures to all behind him. "If you need to search my wagon or my patrons then by all means, search them, but I would appreciate the dignity of doing so behind closed doors! We come here on the heels of a very unpleasant night!" This is as congenial and polite as any of said pilgrims have ever heard the man speak, and this obvious display of deference sets them all even further on edge. They can hear the apprehension in his voice plain as day.

  "Not one step further!" thunders that same guard right back—and at that, Panther's head snaps up.

  Tiger hears it too. "That accent—"

  "Shalasharan," Panther agrees.

  "Fuck me! Did they kill the guards?!"

  "Guess so."

  "Not one step further!" Hanaro agrees, warily, with hands up in the air and breath clouding mistily around him. "Easy, lads, easy." His own men are clutching their crossbows tight, their postures twitchy and ill-at-ease. All present whisper nervously amongst themselves and there is very much a swelling undercurrent of energy, now. "If you don't mind me asking," the wagon-boss tries, over the howl of the wind, "what exactly seems to be the problem, sirs? Whatever it is, I'd be more than happy to comply!"

  "They're going to bolt," Panther hisses suddenly, throwing back her cloak—revealing gambeson, sword, knives, the whole affair. She, too, is taut-coiled and ready to explode. "When they move, we move. We head straight for the gatehouse and we do not stop."

  "What?" Tiger blurts, whirling around. "We'll be shot!"

  "We are all about to be shot," Panther replies, cool and steady as always. "These woods are death. The city is our only choice."

  "You are harboring wanted fugitives!" the lead guard booms. "A man and a woman, guilty of regicide!"

  The caravan erupts into panicked shouts. "If I am, I do not know it!" Hanaro hollers back, with desperation plain in his voice. "But whoever they are, I'd be more than happy to turn them over!"

  "Stay close to me," Panther whispers, for the second time. Tiger nods and drops low, ready to run, face hard-set and determined. Panther's own countenance remains almost irritatingly calm in that moment, for she is well and truly a woman in the eye of the storm.

  The lead guard says something to the man beside him. Word is passed; above, the legionaries grow eerily still, their crossbows still trained upon the hapless pilgrims. The tension draws sharper and closer. Everyone smells the violence on the horizon.

  "Please!" shouts Hanaro—trying in vain to alter the inevitable. "Whoever these fugitives are, we do not know them! We do not claim them! Whoever they are, we will gladly hand them over! You don't have to do this!"

  From just outside Panther's cone of vision, suddenly, the Bald Men are very close. Tiger's head snaps around; he catches a glimpse of steel in one's sleeve, the barest hint of a bladed edge. And he opens his mouth to warn her—just as the air around the gatehouse balcony distorts, and compresses, and sucks down to a narrow point, before exploding outwards in a cavalcade of flying splinters and broken bodies.

  Everyone's ears pop.

  And then Panther barks, "Go!" just as the surviving legionaries open fire and the air turns to naught but a hailstorm of whistling death. Panther is fast and Tiger is not, but her grip on his wrist is fierce and so he is dragged right along as she darts and ducks and weaves her way like flowing liquid through the cracks of the crowd, never stopping and never slowing even as countless itinerants flail and fall with crossbow bolts through their chests, their backs, their shoulders, their skulls. The crowd turns to a crush and Panther and Tiger are surging just beneath, even as the Sorcerer-in-disguise—one of the shamans, a woman with twin-braided hair and tattoos that no-one had ever noticed—dies with a bolt through her eye and an explosive wave of invisible force to follow.

  The panicked crowd falls upon the landlocked soldiers below; those soldiers reply with vicious abandon, their glaives cutting bloody swathes through the ranks of the innocent. It is a slaughter and it is utterly without mercy. Hanaro himself jams a machete through one legionnaire's gut and whirls around to batter another away, only for a third glaive to bury itself two-thirds of the way through his neck. And this is the opening through which Panther and Tiger slip; under and around the wagon-boss's plummeting corpse, with Panther literally vaulting over one legionnaire's shoulder and Tiger forced to duck and leap his way between. Now Tiger hits the ground hard; Panther releases his wrist and breaks into a full-on sprint, cloak flaring out like a living shadow behind her, and Tiger scrambles to catch up. Her hand is right on the hilt of her sword as she batters down one of the gatehouse's side doors with a grunt of exertion, and moments later she is storming up oak-carved stairs with Tiger hot on her heels. Muffled now, the sounds of butchery and death are all but apocalyptic as the two of them tear across a thankfully-empty garrison, boots thundering loudly against that old wooden floor.

  "They're—Fifth Pillar, they have to be!" Tiger gasps, struggling to keep up. He has just witnessed death on a scale hitherto unknown; his mind and body are both reeling, and the bile is building steadily in his throat.

  "I thought there were only four pillars," Panther answers back—still sounding impossibly sedate, as the two of them round a corner and barge right through another door.

  "The Fifth isn't a person! It's an intelligence group!" Tiger pants. "Spies, infiltrators, like Oculus! But I can't believe they'd be so brazen as to—"

  The two of them come skidding to a halt, then, with Tiger's sentence left forever unfinished—for now they are face-to-face with a trio of armed legionnaire who seem, from the outset, far too unsurprised to see them. Without needing to think or consider for even a moment, Panther shoves Tiger back and takes one portentous step forward, and her sword is already one-quarter out of its sheath when the nearest legionnaire commands her: "Stop right there!"

  That's Shalasharan, alright. No mistaking it now. Tiger's left hand darts to the glove on his right.

  "No Sorcery," Panther snaps, without looking, before Tiger can do a thing, and now her perpetual calm has coalesced down to something small and hard and razor-sharp. "I've got this." Now there is an edge to her every motion and word.

  "But—"

  "Don't even try it, Panther," snaps the legionnaire. His own sword is already unsheathed and in hand. "It's three to one."

  "Panther, wait—"

  "Bad odds for you," Panther replies—and then her sword comes out with a metallic shrrrring, and in an instant she is upon them. She surges in from the right and then jukes to the left at the last second, harrying the first legionnaire with a trio of rapid-fire stabs before allowing their blades to lock tight together. Sparks fly; Panther lets the clash continue just a moment longer before releasing her grip on her sword entirely, spinning around, snatching her weapon right back up and carving her bewildered opponent from groin to shoulder. Blood sprays wildly as another legionnaire comes in with a two-handed overhead slash, a slash that Panther back-steps with ease before darting back in and plucking the offender's eye with a blink-and-you'd-miss-it little thrust through the slit of his visor. And before he can even scream she's already dropped low, pivoting on her heel and sweeping the legs of her third and final attacker.

  The maimed second clambers to his feet just as the third topples to the ground; now he comes at Panther with a whole maddened flurry of attacks that she parries with practiced ease, one-two-three-four-five, before snapping his wrist with an explosive snap-kick and piercing his heart in the moment of agony to follow. And the third, finally, makes it halfway upright before Panther—glancing back over her shoulder—just flicks out her non-dominant arm. Something small and grey blurs between them and then the legionnaire falls right back, wide-eyed and gurgling blood, with one of her throwing knives embedded up to the hilt in his throat.

  "Stars," Tiger gasps, all the way back against the far wall, breathing heavily as Panther bends down and jerks her knife free from the dying man's throat. For all her cold nonchalance she, too, is breathing noticeably harder than before. Her shoulders rise and fall in steady rhythm as she wipes her sword in the crook of her elbow—then turns that slate-gray gaze upon her companion.

  "We need to go," is all Panther says, throwing her cloak back over her shoulders. "Now." And Tiger opens his mouth to reply, to blurt out something or anything or to maybe just yell, as any ordinary person in his position would be wont to do. But he is cut off, instead, by the sudden explosion of violence from the room next door.

  Both their heads snap around as there issues forth the muted sounds of a terrible conflict—roars, shouts, clashes of metal on metal and, eventually, a series of agonized screams. Screams, and gasps, and gurgles of pain that are all cut short, one by one. One by one does the floor shake with a heavy thumps of what could only be a human bodies; step by step does Panther slowly retreat, sword thrust horizontal before her like a duelist's rapier, eyes never leaving the door even as she beckons Tiger closer.

  "Quietly," she says, pointing left with her free hand. "Down the stairs. See if you can find another door. I'll be right behind you."

  "I'm not leaving you!" Tiger hisses back at once.

  "Just go!" Panther snaps. "I'll find you!"

  "Fuck off! I'm not letting you sacrifice yourself for my sake!"

  "It's not up to you. Now turn around and go, before—"

  The knob turns.

  Panther freezes. Tiger freezes.

  The door creaks open.

  And there comes, from around that open doorway, a slow-spreading pool of crimson. A hand faintly visible, forever clawing up at empty air. The thick stench of death. Then, alongside the heavy thudding of boot against floor—there comes a long silver blade, slick and streaked with fresh-steaming gore. Then an arm. Then, a man.

  Tall, narrow, clad in a stark-white gambeson marred by splotches and splatters of red. Face dashingly, daringly handsome, with vivid blue eyes and a grotesque stitch-scar rimming his skull. His head swivels smoothly around; his gaze locks upon Tiger and his pupils dilate at once, turning from tiny pinpricks to wide, featureless black orbs. His mouth shifts to something between a warm smile and a sardonic knife-slash sneer.

  "Hey now," Daiga grins, pointing a finger. "I know you."

  End Credits Theme