[BARON VARN'S POV]
The command hall stank of desperation and rotting ambition, my throne room transformed into a war chamber as I marshalled every last resource I had left. Forty thousand soldiers—plague carriers, rot-priests, augmented shock troops, and the desperate dregs of every trafficking ring I'd ever controlled—assembled in the undercity's bowels like a festering wound preparing to rupture.
My hands trembled as I pointed at the holographic map displaying Scourge's fortress in nauseating detail, the blue-light projection flickering against my rot-scarred face. Sweat dripped down my temples, mixing with the greenish discharge that leaked from the plague-veins spreading across my neck. The trait was consuming me from the inside out, but I'd gone too far to turn back now.
"There," I rasped, my voice thick with the rot that had begun claiming my own throat, each word feeling like dragging broken glass across raw meat. "Kaiser collapsed after that... thing he did. The Convergence. He's vulnerable. Unconscious."
The priests exchanged glances, their plague-scarred faces twisting with something between hunger and terror. They'd seen the footage—watched Kaiser tear through my Ashdown forces like they were made of wet tissue paper, absorbing powers like a black hole swallowing light, leaving nothing but corpses and stolen traits in his wake. But an unconscious god was still just meat, still just flesh that could be carved and consumed.
My fingers danced across the tactical display, calling up troop movements and infection vectors that would make even the most hardened military strategist sick to their stomach. Years of perfecting biological warfare, of turning human bodies into viral weapons, all coming to fruition in this one desperate gambit.
"Move as plague," I commanded, feeling the rot-trait spreading through my neural links to every corrupted soul under my banner, the hive-connection pulsing like infected blood through diseased veins. "Infect every approach. Spread like disease through the sewers, the tunnels, the forgotten paths. Surround Scourge's territory before they even know we're coming. And when we breach those walls..."
I didn't finish. Didn't need to. Every soldier felt the command pulsing through the hive-connection I'd spent years cultivating, their individual wills slowly dissolving into my singular vision of conquest. Kill Kaiser. Take his power. For your liege.
The army moved like living pestilence, forty thousand bodies flowing through the undercity's arteries like infection through veins, spreading disease with every footstep, turning the very ground they walked on into contaminated wastelands.
[KANE'S POV]
The war-yard's celebration had barely died down—fighters still drunk on the spectacle of watching me and Kaiser tear into each other like the old factory days, blood and brotherhood mixing in equal measure—when the alarms shrieked their fucking heads off with a sound that made my teeth ache.
Security feeds lit up across every screen simultaneously, showing what looked like the apocalypse crawling toward us from every goddamn direction. Thousands of bodies, moving with that unnatural synchronization that screamed hive-mind coordination, spreading across the approach routes like a living tsunami of diseased flesh.
"Motherfucker," I growled, already moving toward the medical bay where they'd carried Kaiser's unconscious ass after the Convergence overload knocked him flat, my own ribs still aching from his final assault. My armor was in pieces, scattered across the war-yard floor like broken promises, but adrenaline was one hell of a painkiller.
The fortress shook as the first wave hit the outer defenses with the sound of meat slapping against reinforced steel. Explosions bloomed like poisonous flowers. Gunfire rattled like teeth in a skull. Screams echoed through corridors designed to muffle sound. Baron Varn wasn't fucking around—this was total war, extinction-level aggression, and we'd caught it with our pants down and our best fighter comatose.
I burst into the medical bay, finding Hawk standing over Kaiser's prone form like a goddamn guardian angel carved from violence and leather, her Oracle-Eye spinning calculations so fast I could hear the mechanical whir from across the room. Tara huddled in the corner, those wide golden eyes locked on Kaiser's chest, watching it rise and fall with shallow breaths that looked far too fragile.
The kid's hands were clenched into tiny fists, resurrection flames flickering unconsciously around her knuckles, responding to the fear and desperation radiating off her in waves. She looked so small in that moment, so terrifyingly young to be caught in this nightmare.
"How bad?" I demanded, crossing to Kaiser's side in three long strides, my boots leaving bloody prints on the sterile medical floor.
His face was gray, veins showing black under the skin where Convergence had pushed his body past every reasonable limit and then some. Sweat soaked through the med-bay sheets, making them cling to his body like a funeral shroud. His hands twitched occasionally, like he was fighting battles in whatever void his consciousness had retreated to, fingers curling around invisible weapons.
"Alive," Hawk said tersely, not taking her eyes off the security feeds she'd pulled up on the wall screens, her voice carrying that flat tone she used when shit had gone completely sideways. "But his neural pathways are fried. Clara says the trait fusion overload scrambled his brain chemistry like eggs in a fucking microwave. He needs time to stabilize, or the feedback loop could permanently damage his ability to use Convergence ever again. Maybe kill him outright."
"Time's a luxury we don't fucking have," I growled, watching the feeds show Varn's plague army breaching the second defensive perimeter like water finding cracks, rot-priests spreading infection faster than we could contain it, turning our own people into shambling bioweapons with just a touch.
The screens showed nightmare fuel—soldiers convulsing as plague-vectors rewrote their biology from the inside out, skin rupturing to release clouds of infectious spores, bodies swelling with viral payloads that would detonate on proximity. Varn had turned biological warfare into an art form, and we were his fucking canvas.
That's when Tara moved. Fast. Too fucking fast for a kid her size.
One second she was in the corner, small and scared and helpless-looking. The next she was beside Kaiser's bed, those resurrection flames already flickering around her small hands, golden light mixing with something darker—purple shadows that tasted like void and smelled like ozone and death.
"I can fix him," she said, voice trembling but determined, the words carrying far more weight than any child's voice should hold. "The same power that brought him back before—I can—"
"No!" I roared, grabbing her wrist before she could touch Kaiser's chest, feeling the flames lick at my hand, searing through my gloves with heat that went bone-deep. The pain was immediate and excruciating, but I held on. "Kid, listen to me. That poor bastard's brain is barely holding itself together. You pump high-tier energy into him right now, you might wake him up, or you might turn his fucking mind into soup. No coming back from that."
Tara's eyes filled with tears, crystal drops catching the harsh medical bay lights, but she didn't pull away. The flames around her hands grew brighter, more intense, responding to her emotional distress. "But Baron Varn's army—they're going to kill him! They're going to kill all of us! I can't just sit here and do nothing!"
Hawk's hand dropped to my shoulder, surprisingly gentle for someone who usually communicated through violence and sarcasm. "Kane's right, Tara. Kaiser needs time. His body has to process the Convergence feedback naturally, or the neural damage becomes permanent. We've already run the simulations through Clara. Force-healing him right now has an eighty-seven percent chance of catastrophic brain death."
The fortress shook again, harder this time. Closer. Varn's forces were pushing through the third defensive ring like it was made of tissue paper, plague-soldiers throwing themselves at defensive positions with the mindless devotion that only hive-mind control could achieve.
I knelt down, ignoring the screaming pain from my ribs and the seared flesh of my hand, meeting Tara's watery gaze eye to eye. Tried to remember how to be gentle—not my strong suit after decades of war, but the kid deserved better than military bark and commander voice.
"K trusts you, alright? Think he cares for you like you are his sister. Well that makes me your big brother as well huh!"
"Tara nodded, tears spilling down her cheeks in hot tracks that made her look even younger. "Big Brother what can i do."
"Nothing for the time being . you know he'd rather die himself than watch you hurt yourself trying to save him," I said, squeezing her shoulder with my unburned hand, trying to put every ounce of conviction I had into the words. "Give him some time. Let the poor bastard's brain rest. He's the toughest son of a bitch I've ever met—he'll pull through. But right now? Right now he needs us to hold the fucking line."
The kid looked between Kaiser's unconscious form and me, wrestling with the decision, golden flames flickering uncertainly around her hands. Finally, slowly, she nodded, the fire banking down to a soft glow. "Okay. But... Kane?"
"Yeah, kid?"
"You're hurt too. Your ribs—Clara says you have seven fractures, internal bleeding, and at least three organs operating at diminished capacity. You can barely stand upright without compensating through sheer willpower."
I laughed—wet and painful, blood probably filling my lungs from the punctured sections, the taste of copper flooding my mouth. "Perceptive little shit, aren't you? Got eyes like Kaiser, seeing right through people's bullshit."
Tara's hands shifted, the resurrection flames banking down to a soft golden glow that felt warm instead of searing, inviting instead of threatening. The purple void-shadows receded, leaving only that gentle healing light. "I can help you. Make you strong enough to fight. Please? I need to do something. I can't just sit here while people are dying."
I glanced at Hawk. She gave a curt nod, Oracle-Eye finishing whatever calculations she'd been running.
"Alright, Star," I said, using Kaiser's nickname for her, feeling the weight of borrowed affection and responsibility. "Let's see what you've got"
[TARA'S POV]
I placed both hands on Kane's chest, feeling the rough texture of his combat gear beneath my palms, and Clara's guidance flowed through our neural link like warm honey. The regeneration trait wasn't just healing—it was understanding, seeing inside people in ways that felt almost invasive but were necessary for repair.
I could feel every broken rib grinding against its neighbors, every torn muscle fiber crying out for relief, every place where Kane's body was screaming for rest it wouldn't get. His organs were a mess—internal bleeding creating pools of blood where they shouldn't be, lungs partially collapsed from bone fragments, heart working overtime to compensate for blood loss.
Focus, Tara, Clara whispered in my mind, her voice steady and reassuring. Channel the regeneration trait through the neural pathways we've been practicing. Visualize the damage, then visualize it unmade.
Golden light poured from my palms, sinking into Kane's chest like warm honey soaking into bread, spreading through his body with purpose and direction. I could feel the bones responding, the cellular structure recognizing the command to repair and rebuild. The cracks began knitting together with soft clicks and pops that sounded disturbingly loud in the medical bay.
Torn tissue rewove itself, muscle fibers realigning and reconnecting like organic thread finding its perfect pattern. The bruises under his armor faded from angry black-purple to sick yellow-green to healthy pink to nothing, the internal bleeding reabsorbing and redistributing.
The process was exhausting, like trying to hold together a thousand puzzle pieces simultaneously while also running a marathon. But I pushed through, pouring more energy into the healing, feeling Clara managing the flow to keep me from burning out completely.
Kane gasped, stumbling back a step as the healing completed, his eyes going wide with surprise and what might have been awe. Then he straightened fully for the first time since the fight with Kaiser, rolling his shoulders and testing his restored body with the careful movements of someone who'd lived through too many false recoveries.
"Holy shit, kid. That's... that's something else entirely," he breathed, his voice carrying genuine amazement as he rotated his arms and bent at the waist, testing his newly healed ribs. "Feels like I'm twenty years younger. Hell, feels better than I did at twenty."
Another explosion rocked the fortress, closer still, followed by the unmistakable sound of gunfire and screaming. The security feeds showed plague-soldiers breaching the fourth defensive ring, spreading rot with every step.
"Go," Hawk said, already checking her weapons with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd been in too many fights to count. Blades sharp, ammunition loaded, stance ready. "We'll stay with Kaiser. You and Scourge need to hold the line, or none of this matters. We all die here."
Kane nodded, already moving toward the door, his restored body allowing him to move with a speed and grace that had been impossible moments ago. He paused at the threshold, looking back at me with an expression that was surprisingly soft for someone who looked like he'd been carved from violence.
"You did good, Tara. K's lucky to have you. Remember that when this shit gets ugly—and it's going to get ugly."
Then he was gone, boots pounding down the corridor toward the sound of war, leaving me alone with Hawk and Kaiser's unconscious form.
[SCOURGE'S POV]
The command deck gave me a perfect view of the absolute cluster fuck unfolding across my carefully built territory. Forty thousand plague-ridden bastards, moving like a swarm of infected rats with a unified purpose, pushing through every defensive layer I'd spent years constructing and fortifying.
Karin stood beside me, her tactical feed lit up like a Christmas tree designed by someone having a psychotic break, showing infection vectors and casualty projections that made my teeth grind hard enough to crack molars. Red zones spreading like spilled blood on digital maps. Blue zones—our controlled areas—shrinking with every passing second.
"Varn's gone completely batshit," she muttered, fingers dancing over holographic controls to redirect our remaining forces, trying to plug holes in defenses that were bleeding soldiers faster than we could reinforce. "This isn't strategy—it's suicide bombing with extra steps and biological warfare mixed in. He's throwing everything at us, burning his entire kingdom to ash for one desperate shot at Kaiser."
I watched through the enhanced optical feeds as a squad of rot-priests breached the inner courtyard, their bodies bloated with plague-vectors like ticks gorged on diseased blood, skin splitting to release clouds of airborne infection that spread like poisonous fog. My fighters opened fire, but bullets just created more vectors—blood mist carrying the rot, spreading infection through the very act of killing.
"Fucking coward's tactic," I snarled, my hand already moving in those familiar casual arcs that people who'd seen me fight learned to fear. My fingers traced invisible patterns in the air, and reality responded.
Invisible slashes erupted from my fingertips, cutting through space itself like I was dragging razorblades across the fabric of existence. The rot-priests didn't even see it coming—their bodies simply split apart, clean bisections that cauterized instantly from the sheer force of the cuts before infection could spray. Torsos separated from hips, arms fell away from shoulders, heads rolled free from necks.
No blood. No infection spray. Just clean kills through supernatural cutting force backed by willpower enhanced to levels that bordered on supernatural.
My trait hummed beneath the surface of my skin, that unbreakable core of pure stubborn violence that had kept me alive through decades of kingpin wars, territorial disputes, and assassination attempts. Every slash I sent was backed by brute strength enhanced to levels that could split reinforced steel like tissue paper, cuts that could bisect armored vehicles like they were made of cardboard.
The courtyard filled with perfectly bisected corpses, bodies falling in pieces but unable to spread their plague because the wounds were sealed by force and willpower.
"That's how you handle biological weapons," I growled, sending another volley of invisible slashes into the approaching second wave. Three more priests fell, their swollen bodies splitting vertically before they could detonate their viral payloads. "Clean cuts. No spray. No infection vectors. Just dead enemies who can't accomplish shit."
I felt Kane's presence before I saw him—that familiar weight of unbreakable will charging up the command deck stairs like a one-man army, somehow moving better than he had any right to after the beating Kaiser had put him through.
"Status?" he barked, already strapping on a fresh set of armor, this one less elegant but way more functional, designed for extended combat rather than sport fighting.
"Completely fucked, but holding," I replied, sending another series of invisible slashes toward the eastern approach where a fresh wave was forming. Bodies split apart in mathematical precision, my willpower trait ensuring every cut landed exactly where I intended. "Varn's throwing his entire kingdom at us like he's got nothing left to lose—which he probably doesn't. They're moving like plague because they are plague. Every soldier we kill traditionally creates three more infection vectors through blood spray and contact. We need to cauterize this infection at the source, not just fight the symptoms."
Kane's visor caught the light from the burning defensive positions, that scarred face barely visible behind the tactical display overlays. "Where's the fattest concentration? Where's Varn committing his main push?"
Karin highlighted a section of the eastern wall where thousands of bodies were piling up like a tsunami of rotting flesh attempting to simply overwhelm our defenses through sheer numbers and relentless pressure. "There. They're trying to breach through the loading docks. If they get inside the main fortress—"
"They won't," Kane growled, his voice carrying absolute conviction born from decades of never losing. "Scourge, you coming?"
I grinned, feeling the familiar thrill of incoming violence singing through my veins, flexing my fingers as invisible cutting force danced around them like heat shimmer, ready to carve through an army. My willpower trait resonated with anticipation, that core of stubborn refusal to die or lose that had carried me through every fight that mattered.
"Wouldn't miss it for the world, brother," I said, already moving toward the stairs. "Time to remind these plague-ridden fucks why attacking my territory was the last mistake they'll ever make."
[KANE'S POV]
The eastern wall was complete fucking chaos—the kind of meat-grinder fight that turned professional soldiers into statistics and statistics into nightmares that woke you screaming years later. Plague-soldiers threw themselves at our defensive positions with the kind of mindless devotion that only hive-mind control could achieve, their individual personalities completely overwritten by Varn's commanding will.
I waded in swinging, plasma axe carving through bodies in wide, cauterizing arcs that sealed wounds before they could spray infection into the air. The heat was intense—my armor's cooling systems screaming their protests as I turned the battlefield into a crematorium, the smell of burning flesh mixing with ozone and rot.
A rot-priest lunged at me, his body swollen like a tick about to pop, veins bulging with concentrated plague-vectors. I bisected him vertically, plasma flash-boiling the infection before it could spread, his two halves falling away in clouds of steam and ash. Two more took his place immediately, crawling over his still-twitching corpse.
"They just keep fucking coming!" I roared, hacking through another wave with mechanical efficiency, my enhanced strength allowing strikes that would have killed a normal human from the backlash alone. Heads rolled. Limbs scattered. Bodies fell in pieces.
Scourge moved beside me like liquid violence made flesh, his invisible slashes creating zones of death that enemy soldiers couldn't even see until they were falling apart. His hands moved in casual waves that looked almost bored, but each gesture sent cutting force that bisected multiple enemies in perfect lines.
Three plague-soldiers charged him from different angles. He waved his right hand lazily—they fell in six pieces, cut so cleanly that for a moment they didn't even realize they were dead. Then they collapsed, bodies sliding apart along cut lines so perfect they looked surgical.
"Varn's overextended!" Scourge shouted over the carnage, catching a soldier's face between his palms and crushing it like a beer can, his brute strength enhanced to inhuman levels. Blood and brain matter exploded outward, but he'd positioned the kill so the spray went away from us. "This many bodies, this much coordination—he's burning through his trait's energy reserves like there's no tomorrow! He can't maintain hive-mind control forever!"
The loading dock entrance was a wall of corpses now, stacked three bodies deep and still growing, plague-soldiers climbing over their own dead with relentless efficiency. They died by the dozens, but dozens more replaced them, flowing forward like diseased water finding every crack.
Karin's voice crackled through the comms, sharp with stress and fear. "West wall breach! Repeat, west wall breach! We've got rot-priests inside the civilian sectors! They're spreading infection through the refugee areas!"
"Fuck!" I spun, trying to divide attention between fronts, my tactical training screaming that we were being overwhelmed on multiple axes simultaneously. "Scourge, I need to—"
"Go!" He grabbed a plague-soldier by the throat with one massive hand, lifting the fucker completely off the ground before sending a point-blank invisible slash through his torso. The body split horizontally, the two halves falling away cleanly. "I'll hold the eastern approach! Protect the civilians! That's an order!"
I hesitated for half a second—leaving Scourge to face this alone was asking for disaster, requesting the impossible from even someone as powerful as him—but the sound of screaming children made the decision for me. Priorities. Always priorities in war.
Turning, I sprinted toward the west wall, plasma axe trailing smoke and the promise of violence, leaving Scourge to hold an entire army with nothing but invisible slashes and stubborn refusal to die.
[SCOURGE'S POV]
Watching Kane disappear into the fortress interior, I felt the weight of the entire eastern front settle on my shoulders like a physical thing, heavy and demanding and absolutely refusing to be ignored. Forty thousand soldiers in Varn's army, and probably ten thousand of them were focused right fucking here on breaking through my loading dock defenses.
But I'd been in worse situations. Barely. Maybe.
My hands moved in flowing arcs, invisible slashes erupting in waves that carved through the packed enemy ranks like a harvester through wheat. Bodies fell in geometric patterns—perfect lines and curves where reality itself had been cut, plague-soldiers dying before they even understood what had killed them.
A group of twenty charged in formation, trying to overwhelm me through coordinated assault. I sent a horizontal slash through their entire line at chest height. Twenty torsos separated from twenty sets of legs simultaneously, the cuts so fast and clean that some of them took several more steps before realizing they were dead.
Another wave approached from the left. Vertical slashes this time—bodies split down the middle, falling apart like open books. The willpower trait sang through me, ensuring every cut landed with mathematical precision, my brute strength backing each slash with force that could cleave through reinforced concrete.
A plague-soldier grabbed my arm, teeth sinking into my forearm deep enough to scrape bone, plague-vectors flooding my bloodstream immediately. I could feel the rot trying to take root, attempting to rewrite my biology from the inside out, turn me into another vector for Varn's disease.
I laughed. Dark. Manic. The kind of laughter that came from knowing you were either about to die or become legend, with no middle ground between those extremes.
My willpower trait ate the infection, refusing to allow foreign biology to dictate terms, converting the invasive plague-vectors into nothing through sheer force of stubborn refusal. My immune system, enhanced by years of trait development, fought back with violence that matched anything happening on the battlefield.
"You fuckers picked the wrong goddamn fortress!" I roared, grabbing the soldier still attached to my arm and using him as a improvised club to beat three more into paste, his body breaking apart from the impacts but serving as a weapon until he was nothing but pulp.
Karin's tactical feed showed the breach numbers growing exponentially—more soldiers pouring through gaps faster than we could seal them, the eastern wall defenses starting to buckle under relentless pressure.
This wasn't going to end clean. Hell, it might not end at all. But I'd be damned if I went down without taking a few thousand of these plague-ridden bastards with me.
My hands moved faster, invisible slashes filling the air in overlapping patterns, creating zones of death that nothing living could cross. The loading dock became a killing field, corpses stacking higher and higher, but still they came.
Always they came.
[HAWK'S POV]
The medical bay shook with each explosion, the impacts getting closer and closer with every passing minute. Tara sat beside Kaiser's bed, one small hand wrapped around his larger one, tears streaming silently down her face as she watched his chest rise and fall with those too-shallow breaths.
"He'll wake up," I said, not entirely sure if I believed it but needing to say something, anything to comfort the kid. "Kaiser's too stubborn to let something like neurological feedback keep him down. I've seen him walk off injuries that should have killed him three times over."
Oracle-Eye was feeding me combat data from the fortress security feeds in real-time—casualty reports climbing exponentially, infection vectors spreading through multiple sectors, defensive positions collapsing across the entire perimeter. The tactical analysis was brutal and unforgiving, mathematical and cold.
We were losing. Badly. And getting worse by the minute.
"Hawk?" Tara's voice was tiny, fragile, carrying all the weight of a child's fear in the face of incomprehensible violence. "What happens if Baron Varn wins? What happens to Kaiser?"
I checked my weapons for the third time—blades sharp enough to split atoms, ammunition loaded and ready, stance prepared for violence. My body was coiled like a spring, ready to explode into motion at the first sign of threat. "Then I kill every single one of those plague-ridden fucks before they touch him. Simple math, kid. They want Kaiser? They go through me first. And I'm not easy to go through."
Another explosion rocked the medical bay. The lights flickered, died, came back on emergency power. Backup systems humming their warnings.
Tara's resurrection flames flickered unconsciously around her free hand, golden light mixing with purple void-shadows, reactive to her emotional state. "I want to fight too. I want to help. I can't just sit here doing nothing while people die."
"Your job," I said firmly, meeting those wide golden eyes with all the authority I could muster, "is to stay here. Protect Kaiser with everything you've got. If anyone gets through that door who isn't Kane, Scourge, Karin, or me? You teleport him out immediately. No hesitation. No second-guessing. Just grab him and run. Understand?"
She nodded, jaw set with determination that looked far too old for her face, too heavy for someone her age to carry. "I understand. I'll keep him safe. I promise."
The door exploded inward in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.
Plague-soldiers poured through the breach like rancid water through a broken dam, rot-priests behind them channeling infection vectors through the air itself, turning the very atmosphere into a weapon. I counted fifteen, twenty, thirty bodies crammed into the corridor, all focused on the medical bay with single-minded purpose.
Oracle-Eye went into overdrive, calculating attack patterns and weak points faster than conscious thought could follow, feeding tactical data directly into my combat reflexes. My blades sang free from their sheaths, and I moved.
The first soldier caught my knife in his throat before he even realized I'd crossed the distance—I twisted the blade, using his falling body as a springboard to reach the next one, my heel crushing his nose cartilage straight back into his brain. Landing in a crouch, spinning low, slicing through three more sets of Achilles tendons—they went down screaming, and I finished them with precision strikes to vital points.
But there were too many, an endless tide of diseased flesh, and I was only human. Enhanced, trained, deadly, but ultimately limited by biology and physics.
A plague-carrier grabbed my arm, teeth sinking into leather armor, trying to reach flesh beneath. I felt the infection vectors trying to penetrate, Oracle-Eye immediately flooding my system with combat stimulants and immune boosters to slow the spread, buying me precious seconds.
Gonna need full decontamination and possibly amputation later, I thought with clinical detachment, using my free hand to jam a blade through the fucker's eye socket deep enough to scramble his brain, the resistance of skull bone barely slowing the strike.
Tara screamed behind me—raw terror and desperate fury mixed together. I spun, seeing a rot-priest break past my defensive perimeter, his bloated hands reaching for Kaiser's unconscious form with fingers that dripped infectious fluid—
Golden light exploded from Tara's small body like a miniature sun going supernova, resurrection flames detonating outward in a shockwave that vaporized the priest mid-step, his body turning to ash before he could even scream. The force of it threw me back against the wall hard enough to crack ribs, my vision swimming with impact .
When my eyes cleared, Tara stood in front of Kaiser's bed like a avenging angel carved from light and determination, flames wreathing her entire small body, tears still streaming down her face but her expression pure fury that seemed far too old and terrible for someone her age.
"No one," she whispered, her voice carrying weight that shouldn't fit in a child's throat, resonating with power that made the air itself vibrate, "touches him. No one takes him from me."
The plague-soldiers actually hesitated. Actually fucking hesitated, their hive-mind directive crashing against sudden prey-instinct screaming DANGER in letters written in evolutionary survival.
That's when Baron Varn stepped through the broken doorway, and everything went to absolute shit.
[BARON VARN'S POV]
The medical bay was perfect—Kaiser laid out like a sacrifice on an altar, that brute bitch Hawk bleeding and battered, and a little girl playing hero with powers she barely understood. The situation was almost comical in its desperation.
My body had deteriorated further in the push to get here, rot-trait consuming me from the inside out, skin splitting to reveal greenish muscle beneath, but I was so close now.
"Stand aside, child," I rasped, my voice barely human anymore, more like grinding gravel and disease. "This doesn't concern you. I'll make it quick. Painless. You can even keep the body when I'm done extracting his traits."
Tara's flames burned brighter, hot enough that I could feel my skin beginning to crisp from across the room. "No. You leave. Now. Or I'll do to you what I did to your priest."
I laughed—wet, bubbling, the sound of lungs half-filled with rot. "Little girl playing with god fire. Do you even understand what you're holding? That power will consume you long before you master it."
Behind me, my elite guard filed in—fifteen plague-carriers enhanced beyond normal limits, their bodies walking biological weapons primed to explode on my command.
This was going to be messy, violent, and absolutely necessary.
END OF CHAPTER