Fi pitched onto the Winter Plane with paradoxical momentum, having floated in stasis seconds ago. She fell, gasping for air as her elbows slammed the floor—black marble tile, a crack at the edge. Through spinning head, she noted the half-moon windows, the red glow of the firepit and carved rafters of Verne’s chateau. Static itched her skin, the coat of the Void mixed with energy on the air.
Then, that tang of copper-less blood. Ahead of her, two daeyari tangled on the floor.
Antal was on his back. That useless fool was on his backagain, shirt shredded, wrists bound in scarlet cord. Verne hunched over him with claws buried around his collarbone. Antal’s knees braced her stomach, clawed feet digging into thighs, holding her back from his throat. Slipping.
A heinous amount of blood coated them both, black seeping from rends and punctures.
But for a moment, stillness.
The two daeyari froze from their scuffle, caricatures of mortal combat as they both gawked at Fi’s sprawl upon the floor. Antal’s head tipped back against the tiles, gaze glazed with pain, yet he stared at her as if beholding the most stupefying creature in all the Shattered Planes.
Verne’s breath came heavy, eyes impossibly wide against her honed immortal face.
“How thefuck?” she hissed.
Antal lurched to bite her neck.
They rolled in a blur of tails and teeth. Antal pressed Verne to the floor, fangs digging for her spine. She clawed his stomach. In his flinch, she shoved him off, the leg the Beast had snapped already healed enough to support her weight. Red energy crackled at her fingers.
Fi Shaped her crimson sword and ran. Unafraid. This monster wouldn’t take anyone else from her.
Her opening was brief, a split-second to appraise where to strike Verne and leave Antal unharmed. Pruning an antler would make a humiliating blow.
She swung for a hand instead. Her sword severed Verne’s wrist, cauterizing ash gray skin and black blood. The dismembered limb fell to the floor with a clatter of claws.
“Healthat, daeyari!”
Verne shrieked. What a world-shifting sight, Fi’s lifelong nightmare, hunched in pain on the floor and a whimper through her teeth, the pretty braids of her hair torn into a snarl around her antlers. Not just vulnerable, but pitiful. A wraith made to bleed.
Rage glinted scarlet in Verne’s eyes. Antal lunged, but she swiped with her good hand, Shaping concussive energy that sent him crashing against the ground. Verne’s fist clenched. A whip of energy caught Fi’s ankle and threw her against a wall, driving the air from her chest.
“You think you’re clever, mortal?” Verne shouted. “You think you’re powerful? In the time it takes me to blink, your bones will rot in the soil!”
Red sickles arced from her claws.
Antal tackled her, unbound, the metal cord finally ripped to shreds on the floor. They crashed to the tile, a snarl on Verne’s bloody lips as she turned her claws toward his throat.
But this wasn’t her game anymore. She couldn’t winnow them in isolation, couldn’t turn one-on-one combat to her favor because Fi wasthereat Antal’s side, kneeing him out of the way so her sword had a clear strike. Verne’s attack shifted to a shield, deflecting the swing.
Separated, Verne had bested each of them. Together, she couldn’t get a blow in.
Uncertainty flashed in Verne’s eyes. The confusion of a lioness who, for the first time in her long life, was forced to ponder the peril of the hare. Her movements turned defensive: parrying Fi’s blade, kicking Antal in the ribs, trying to put space between them.
Before Verne could teleport, Antal sank his claws into her thighs, pinning her to the floor.
Fi drove her sword down into Verne’s chest. The blade sank through skin and sternum and heart, lodging in stone beneath.
Fi waited for Verne to get up. She braced for the daeyari’s next blow, a cunning play of magic or trickery to put her and Antal back on the defensive. Verne grabbed the blade in her good hand, energy shrieking against her claws. Her fingers closed. Slipped. No purchase. With neck rent, blood in her teeth, Verne’s gasp came out wet and shockingly… mortal.
It seemed impossible, watching Verne’s arm slump to the floor.
Her breaths shallowed, struggling around the blade in her chest. She didn’t get up. She didn’t pull the sword free. A strike to the heart didn’t kill a daeyari, but it left Verne shuddering. She coughed a mouthful of black then looked to Antal.
“Do it,” she rasped.
The image seared into Fi’s mind: Verne laid low, a sword in her chest, hand severed. In the folktales, daeyari didn’t bleed out on floors. To see the monster broken left Fi as breathless as the Void.
Antal stood slowly. He looked haggard, arm cradling the half-healed gouges of his stomach, claw marks dragged across cheek and sternum, bites along his arms. Yet he had the nerve, the outright audacity to look at Fi, scouring her for injury.
