"You... what?" Leona blinked. Words escaped her. "Are you trying to tell me you... physically entered the Ethereal Tides? And emerged unscathed?"
Raksha shrugged. "Yes."
Leona massaged her aching temples. She must have repeated that act at least a dozen times over the last hour. Her analytical augmentations detected no trace of falsehood from Sadea and Raksha's accounts, but what they were saying was impossible.
The Ethereal Tides were an immaterial realm, a dimension comprised of the psychic energy embodied by the souls of living things in the material realm. Or perhaps the causality ran the other way. It was an ongoing debate among the Hegemony's theologians, one that Leona didn't care to visit, not with a province in ruins, her army in tatters, and her head pounding with agonizing fatigue.
Over the millennia, Hegemonic researchers have conducted countless experiments in which they hurled living test subjects into the Ethereal Tides. Every single one they could retrieve ended up riddled with demonic possession. After a particularly notorious disaster known as the Lazentian crisis, the Church had outlawed all such research into the Ethereal Tides.
Yet here, these two, a transient warrior and a decommissioned Church asset, were telling her that they'd accomplished the impossible?
"They are free from demonic taint, Great Lady," Stefka interjected. "Father Lucretius conducted the scans personally, and the results were then independently verified by Sister Beatrice from Father Diocletius's staff."
"I know that, Operative Stefka," Leona growled. "I ordered those scans myself."
She cast her regard past Raksha's stoic, stone-faced features and Sadea's poor attempt at concealing her anxiety with a rictus-like smile. Her gaze fell on Viktoria Stefka, perched on the edge of her stool at the corner of the room.
The necromancer kept her expression neutral, but the extra micron of sweat on her skin and the slight erratic nature of her pulse showed her concern for Sadea. Leona sighed inwardly. According to records both official and unofficial, the two had been friends for more than a decade and had fought side-by-side on many occasions. Of course Stefka would endeavor to minimize the effects of Sadea's self-sabotaging tendencies.
"Fine. Let's say that I believe you. How did you survive your journey through the Ethereal Tides?" Leona asked Sadea.
"In all honesty, I wasn't sure that we would." Sadea nudged Raksha with her elbow. "But the moron's aegis made us untouchable by the lesser demons, and by the time the more powerful ones took notice, we'd already reemerged into the material realm."
"What she said," Raksha grunted. "I don't really get it."
"Eyewitness accounts indicate that you emerged from a dimensional rift in front of the mortuary gates, where a pitched battle had been going on." Leona tapped a page of her notes with the back of her pen.
"That's right! And we—" Sadea began.
"Enough," Leona cut her off. She looked up and met Stefka's gaze. "Operative. I want to hear your testimonial regarding the events onward from this point in the timeline."
The necromancer nodded. "By your will, Great Lady."
**
Viktoria had named her flesh golems Vasil and Vuk, though she knew she wasn't actually supposed to. In life, they'd been heretics, convicted and put to death as such. In death, their penance now took the form of unleashing God's wrath on those deserving, under her direction, of course.
Vuk was at the forefront, sword flashing and shield flying as he cut down corpse after corpse. Wielding a drum-fed submachine gun in each fist, Vasil swept his brother's flanks with hollow-point rounds, prioritizing the ghouls over the corpses.
YOU ARE READING
Shura Saga: Burn and Slay - Cultivation, Lightning Bolts, Monsters galore
Fantasy"If it lives, we can slay it. And then burn it, just to make sure it doesn't come back from the dead," she said. "...does that happen often?" he asked. "Slaying? Yeah, duh? It's what we're here to do in the first place, dummy." "I meant the coming...
