Sadea's brain throbbed painfully in her skull. Her augmentations had filtered most of the alcohol out of her system, but they'd also accelerated the onset of the most dreaded consequence of drinking too much: the hangover.
She sat on a stack of wooden pallets, her legs dangling over the side, and held her temples in her hands. The mercenaries' voices rang painfully in her ears, their inane babble punctuated by the occasional one-word responses from Raksha.
He was sitting next to her, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees, and doing his best to ignore the Stammerers, who were piling them with compliments that were equal parts many congratulatory or appreciative and backhanded or sarcastic.
Only the martial scientist named Mingyu hung back, leaning against a permacrete pillar. She glared at Raksha, a murderous expression on her face.
There must be a really juicy story there. I'm going to dig it out of the dummy, one way or the other.
As always, the martial scientist wore a mask of sullen stoniness on his face, but his eyes seemed unnaturally bright, and his seemingly stoic demeanor didn't quite hide the underlying impatience and excitement that bubbled beneath its surface.
"You're enjoying this," Sadea accused, wincing at the sound of her own voice. Raksha gave her a sidelong glance and scoffed.
"What makes you say that?" he demanded.
"Everything." Sadea groaned, covering her eyes to shield them from the glare of the lamps scattered throughout the warehouse. "You're so simple-minded I can read you like a book."
Raksha grunted and turned away, but Sadea could tell she'd struck a nerve in him, which meant that her guess had hit the mark. What was it about this entire fiasco that he found so pleasing? The rabid, murderous mutants? The conniving nobles and their schemes? The megapolis's stifling, polluted air? The fact that Leona would have already executed them if they hadn't agreed to do her bidding? She wanted another drink.
"Great Lady Leona wants a word with the two of you," Rini said, pushing her way through the mercenaries clustered around them.
"Leave me alone. Tell her to go kill herself," Sadea moaned. "You should kill yourself, too."
Something not too unlike a steel cable wrapped around her waist and picked her up. Sadea opened her eyes and let her head hang limply. Raksha was carrying her under his arm as if she were a rolled-up rug. He brought her toward the scrying mirror that she'd caught a glimpse of before the haunter's attack.
That's expensive stuff. Nothing but the best for our Great Lady Leona, after all.
"Come no closer," the Stammerers' sorcerer said, holding up his hand and halting Raksha's advance nearly ten feet away from the mirror.
"I see it now. You're wreathed in some kind of psychic nullification field," he continued and pointed at Sadea. "But it's somehow not affecting her. How is that even poss... whatever. That's not important. Stand right there. Don't get too close to my scrying mirror. God knows what disaster that might cause."
Raksha shrugged and put Sadea down on the floor, where she gratefully did her best to resemble a formless heap, a posture in which her head seemed to hurt the least.
The mirror hummed, and Leona's image appeared in its glassy face. The Hegemonic Lady was sitting atop a simple wooden stool. Behind her, maps and charts adorned the canvas interior of what appeared to be a military tent. She wore dark combat fatigues, with golden braids dripping from her shoulder epaulettes and rank pins sitting above her left breast pocket.
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...
