It was the dead of winter, and Panther had just killed Taro Zhon's champion in single combat.

  "The looks on their faces," Ibis chuckled happily, in repose. "Panther, my love, I never tire of watching you humiliate my enemies."

  Though it was only midday, the two of them had retired early—and so here they laid, atop a veritable hoard of blankets, with sunlight drifting in long and lazy stripes across their faces. Everything was calm, and everything was warm, and all was quiet save for the intrusion of their own whispered voices. "It galls them, you know," said Ibis. "The idea that some no-name, scruffy-looking little foreigner like you—" she ruffled Panther's hair with great affection, "—might very well be the finest duelist in all of Vokia. These fool noblemen don't even know who you are."

  "A mystery, am I?" Panther quipped, with a ghost of a self-satisfied smile playing across her face.

  "Not to me," Ibis replied smugly. "I know exactly who you are."

  "Yeah?" Panther opened one eye. "Tell me."

  So Ibis leaned in very close. And even after all this time, still Panther could not help it. Still did her breath catch, as the Empress drew near, and as the Empress's fingers traced ghostly and ethereal along the contours of her jaw, and as the Empress told her:

  "You, Panther, are my secret weapon."

  "Hello, Tiger! I knew I smelled your Aia around here somewhere. And hello to you too, Panther. It's a pleasure to meet you both. My name is Daiga; I'm an Incipitor-Errant of the Shalasharan Royal Government Apparatus, currently under fourth-level command of Primarch Ralan Qelas. And I'm here because the First Pillar ordered me to abduct you, and to kill you, and the reason he did that is because he's the one who conspired with Taro Zhon to murder your lover, Ibis. You get what I'm saying, right? Both Ralan Qelas and Taro Zhon were directly responsible for Ibis's death. I really want you to understand that. I also really want you to know that I'm complicit as well, indirectly—because I still work for the man who orchestrated that whole plot, and if I had been ordered to kill Ibis then I very gladly would have done so. Honestly, seeing the looks on your faces right now, I'm kind of jealous that it wasn't me. But—oh well. Look, I just wanted to get all this out in the open. I want you guys in the right headspace—I want you to take this seriously, okay? Tiger, feel free to use your Sorcery on me. I can take it. And Panther, I can tell that sword isn't your actual weapon. So drop it, pull that dagger, and let's fight for real, guys. Okay?"

  The man in the white-leather armor was smiling the whole time he talked, even as fresh rivers of blood were dribbling down the length of his sword. There were little flecks of red in his hair. He had one hand behind his back, quite properly, and the other had the tip of his sword pointing right down at the floor. Both his pupils were dilated to the absolute widest of black orbs, and he blinked only in perfectly even time. He was overall friendly, conversational, and relatively well-composed.

  He absolutely reeked of death.

  For a few moments, Panther says absolutely nothing. Her face betrays not one hint of emotion.

  Then she replies: "Okay," and sheathes her sword. Then she drops promptly down to one knee, unclipping her scabbard and laying it flat upon the floor. Then she rises, and reaches up to unclasp her cloak, and a moment later that cinereous shroud is descending in surreal slow-motion behind her, briefly appearing to take some manner of rigid form before hitting the ground and dissolving, quite simply, into a crumpled mess of dirty cloth.

  And then, as requested, her left hand drifts to the fat-bladed dagger on her back.

  Daiga waits patiently and without complaint.

  "Panther," says Tiger, right in her ear. He is working very hard to keep his voice calm. "Listen to me. That is a Shalasharan Incipitor. The stories I've heard—they're monstrous. You can't possibly fight one."

  Panther's fingers curl, one by one, around the hilt of her dagger. Her grip is white-knuckle tight.

  "Yeah?" she replies. "Watch me."

  The air tastes like blood. Panther braces on the tips of her boots.

  One more moment of fraught quiescence—and then Panther explodes into motion, leaping forth in one tremendous burst of speed and sending, ahead of her, a little throwing-knife that whistles through the air to make communion with her opponent's right eye. Daiga, in response, just calmly tilts his head to one side—the knife grazes his cheek, before going on to embed itself in a nearby locker—and then his eyes go wide, and he breaks into a delighted grin, and without further ado he steps forward and sweeps his sword in one wide, lethal arc before him.

  It's a hell of an opener. Daiga's first move is equal parts vicious and astonishingly reckless, leaving himself entirely unguarded so as to just outright go for his opponent's jugular. It's a hungry strike, greedy and impatient and eminently dangerous. It's the kind of bold play that would leave a lesser fighter disemboweled right then and there.

  But Panther once protected an Empress. Panther doesn't even blink; she drops to a shockingly low crouch, feels cold steel graze the top of her skull, then springs back up with a rising snap-kick right to the Incipitor's chin. Then she lands firmly on both feet, sidesteps the inevitable retaliatory swipe, carves the offending arm from wrist to elbow as it passes—and finally she darts in close, right inside Daiga's guard, and cuts him in three different places before he can even begin to properly react. None of these cuts are lethal, mind you. But they're bleeders, all of them, and they'll all hurt like hell. Each one of those wounds is a toll exerted upon Daiga's focus, his precision, his coordination. Each wound is a step closer to the Incipitor's unmaking.

  Bleeding and blindsided, Daiga staggers back, and Panther sweeps in right after him with knife glinting on-and-off in the flickering lamplight. And for a moment, it seems as though she has made a grave misstep indeed—for the Incipitor's harried stumbling proves to be but a seamless feint. On his third backwards step, Daiga braces on his back heel and then springs forward without warning, closing the gap far quicker than Panther had anticipated, and now in the blink of an eye there is a bloodied blade racing in from the upper right-hand side to bury itself deep in her unguarded neck.

  And this, again, would have been the death of a lesser fighter.

  Instead, Panther just raises her right elbow—and there follows a resounding clang! as Daiga's sword impacts against her metal arm-bracer. A bracer painted specifically to blend in with the rest of Panther's padded-leather ensemble, a bracer specifically designed to induce the half-second of surprise that now follows. Panther has felled so many would-be superior fighters with this one simple little trick—a momentary interruption of the rhythm, a pause where there should be a beat.

  And now the followup is immediate and brutal: Panther launches into a spinning roundhouse kick, and this time Daiga is sent staggering back for real, after which the bodyguard kicks off the nearest wall and dislocates the Incipitor's shoulder with yet another flying kick and a sharp pop to follow. His sword jabs out in clumsy reply but Panther back-steps with ease—and now, with Daiga wide open, does Panther really begin to press her advantage. She erupts into a whole flurry of rapid-fire stabs and thrusts, the dagger flipping and switching seamlessly between both her hands, between forwards and backwards grips, all whilst carving the Incipitor to bloodied ribbons.

  An aside: Panther, as a young girl, was prone to a violent and choleric temper.

  Another aside: They beat that out of her, in time.

  With that in mind; right now, Panther is far from the cold and composed warrior she appears. Right now Panther is seething, scalding, all but boiling over with white-knuckle fury that fuels her every motion, every cut, every punch and kick and injury she inflicts therein. Panther keeps her anger tight-leashed, sure. Panther forces it to work for her. Yet still—it cannot be denied that right now Panther is absolutely seeing red. Panther is throwing every ounce of her skill and strength and guile at this man because right now she really, really, really wants him dead.

  This man—this Incipitor, Tiger called him—will hardly suffice for her revenge. This man had hardly anything to do with Ibis's death at all. But, still. He's here. And he will, if nothing else, make for a fine warmup.

  I'm sure you understand, now, why Panther sees the opportunity for the kill and does not hesitate to seize it. There is no foresight, no assessment, no thought behind her action at all. Just instinct. Panther sees the moment and she moves, stepping inside his guard and tossing the dagger behind her back and catching it with her other hand, and now her blade is racing in from the exact direction her opponent isn't looking. Low, diagonal, surging up and in—a cutthroat's stab, a maneuver usually reserved for bandits and thieves and other such low killers. Panther doesn't mind that connotation one bit. Panther has always considered herself a cold pragmatist at heart.

  And what happens next—well, at risk of repeating myself, let me make this clear: were he a lesser fighter, Daiga would have died right there on the spot.

  But Daiga is top-shelf material. Daiga is the exception to every rule. So instead, Daiga just raises his arm—and there follows a squelch of gore and a spurt of blood, and a hideous scraping of metal against bone. And Panther—unshakeable, unflappable Panther—is flat-out astonished to see her dagger wedged right through Daiga's forearm, right up to the hilt, with the blade having stopped naught but a quarter-centimeter from the Incipitor's face.

  Daiga's eyes are wide and manic, and brimming with glee. "You're doing great so far," he reassures her, as Panther tries and fails to yank her weapon free. At the continuing mutilation of his own arm, there follows not one acknowledgement of pain across his countenance. If anything, the Incipitor's smile seems only to widen with the blade's every motion. Now, he leans in a tad bit closer, and adds: "Just—try a little harder, please. If you can."

  Panther never gets the chance to reply. Daiga's request is punctuated by a crunch of bone as his crossguard smashes against her face, and followed by a colossal heart-stopping blow to the gut, and finally concluded with yet another sweep of the sword that Panther barely, just barely manages to avoid. The bridge of her nose splits open as she falls back, forced to abandon her dagger entirely. And now she hits the floor, somersaults backwards and springs right back to her feet with hands already racing for her throwing-knives—to which Daiga, who has already closed the gap in three broad steps, simply grabs her by the face and slams her skull against the wall. "Good form!" shouts Daiga, cheerfully. "Were you an acrobat or something?" And Panther's only reply to that is a horrendous crunch, and yet another squelching of flesh, and so once more do the two of them suddenly part—only now, Panther's mouth is overflowing with someone else's blood. And without further ado she turns her head, and without another word she spits Daiga's little finger right down on the floor between them.

  For a moment, nobody says or does anything at all. Daiga's eyes flick down to his severed finger, then back up to his mutilated hand. Then back to Panther. "Heh," he snorts, and then—unable to hold it in any longer, he bursts out: "Bwa ha ha ha!"

  It's a genuine gut-buster of a laugh; the Incipitor holds up his ravaged hand to the lamplight for all to see, cackling and snorting all the while. "Not bad!" he guffaws, delighted. "Stars, Panther, you're ruthless! I'm bleeding all over the place!" He laughs and laughs and now, finally, his laughter is dying down, and now he runs his uninjured hand through gore-streaked hair as his uproarious mirth turns to a long, wistful, satisfied sigh. All the while Panther just glares from a low crouch, bereft of sword and dagger both. Her shoulders rise and fall in haggard rhythm, for her wounds have reopened and it now hurts very much to breathe. Warm blood trickles down the side of her face from some unseen point on her scalp.

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  Now Daiga pulls her dagger free with a great symphony of horrendous flesh-rending sound, then proceeds to chuck the weapon straight down. He does so with startling force—as it was with his arm, the weapon is embedded up to the hilt in the wood-plank floor below. The resulting thunk could very well have been mistaken for a thunderclap. "Hey now," the Incipitor offers, taking one step forward as Panther takes one wary step right back. "I know you're probably not feeling too great at the moment, Panther, but don't give up!" He reaches for his shoulder, braces, and pops it back into place with a satisfied little hiss of pleasure to follow. Then he goes on: "You're super tough to pin down when you're jumping around like that—and you've still got, what, two throwing-knives left? Plus whatever trick weapons you're hiding in there. I know you've got a pop-out dagger or something, surely. So don't lose hope! There's still time to take one of my eyes, or another finger, or to give me some kind of scar before I—"

  "You gonna talk all day?" Panther interrupts.

  Daiga halts—frowns—and then his head tilts, and that friendly smile turns for the first time to a low, malevolent sneer.

  "Nah," he replies. "I'm done."

  And then he's coming at her. Fast. Panther liked to rush her opponents but this was something else entirely; this was far beyond mere aggression, mere ferocity. This was outright rapaciousness. Daiga was all but sprinting head-on to meet her, his sword leaping out and cutting across and jutting forth like some mad, slavering animal just barely restrained at the end of a leash. It was pure savagery, a relentless assault that Panther was enduring only by the barest of margins. Desperate and already tired beyond belief, she now goes low and tries to sweep the Incipitor's legs—but Daiga sees it coming plain as day and so she takes a boot to the chest instead, her head knocking against the floor a moment later and that same boot hovering portentously overhead just a moment after that. She rolls, avoids one stomp intended to mash her skull to pulp, rolls again to avoid another, and then is forced to simply cross her arms and block as a third one comes slamming down with what feels like ten thousand pounds of force behind it. Daiga was so much stronger (or heavier?) than he looked and now Panther was pinned, now Panther could no longer expand her lungs to draw breath and so she was gasping, choking, her complexion turning from olive to crimson to a dark, dire purple.

  "You're not supposed to let me pin you down like this," Daiga chides, leaning over and lowering himself to one knee. His boots reek of mud and viscera. "I'm way stronger than you, Panther, so you're pretty much always going to die in this situation." Then he cocks his head to one side, observes her with faint disappointment, and adds: "Come on. Get the fuck up already. What would Ibis say if she were here to see this?"

  Well there it is. Those words—that name—sets Panther's oxygen-starved brain absolutely alight. With a ragged yell she slams her bracer hard against the floor, hard enough that a concealed blade springs forth with a metallic little shring, and without further ado she jams it right through her attacker's shin. Daiga laughs out loud—and doesn't even flinch, of course—but then she pulls it free and makes to sever his heel, and this time the Incipitor is forced to yank his leg right back. That half-second opportunity is all Panther needs to somersault away and handspring right back to her feet, even whilst hacking and coughing all the while. "That's the spirit!" Daiga cheers, his sword already sweeping hungrily for Panther's neck as she backpedals, ducking left and right and losing a little chunk of hair in the process. "Come on, get mad! Fight back! I told you to take this seriously, didn't I?!"

  At which point, abruptly, they both stop.

  And both their heads snap in perfect unison right to the same spot, right to the same totally unremarkable little section of wall.

  There can be heard, very faintly, a rustling of chains.

  Nobody moves. Everyone waits.

  "Here we go," says Daiga.

  And then twin daggers—each affixed at the end of a long, rusty chain—come piercing through that wall, cleaving right through that flimsy plaster and sweeping the whole room in double-helix arcs of rattling death. Daiga parries with perfect calm as Panther is forced to leap away—leaping into a backflip, into a handspring, into a midair corkscrew with which she avoids what smell very much like poisoned blades by a matter of literal inches. Finally she lands back on her feet, back to a low crouch, and her eyes snap to the sabre laying right there on the floor just as Tiger calls out: "Behind you!"

  Two-hundred feet away, at the far end of the hall, Kyar draws an arrow back with his grotesquely over-muscled arm—twists the bowstring no less than five times—then closes his left eye and says: "Gotcha."

  Panther drops to the floor on pure instinct and is rewarded at once with continued existence; the arrow splits the air above with something between a whistle and a whip-crack, then proceeds to shatter the nearest cabinet and go on to pierce no less than five more cheap-plaster walls beyond it. And of course Panther has absolutely no time to process or react—because at that exact moment the nearest wall outright explodes, and out comes the Empty Man in all his lanky bandage-wrapped glory, his chains whirling about him like the orbit of some maddened, drunken satellites above.

  And from there it's just chaos. Panther dives for her sword, rolls and scoops it up and literally chucks the sheath away, and then blocks just in time as two of the Empty Man's daggers come slamming down from up on high. Then Daiga tackles the Empty Man with a delighted peal of laughter, and suddenly Kyar is here and tackling Panther with strength that cannot possibly be human—no, it's not him, it's just his damn misshapen right arm—and now Panther is rolling away and parrying once, twice, thrice as Kyar's blade-tipped golden bow turns from a projectile weapon to a sort of whirling, twin-pointed stave in his hands. Panther blocks, twists, draws him close and then kicks him away—to be more accurate, kicks him at Daiga, who has his sword buried halfway through the Empty Man's chest and is covered in streaks of some bizarre dark-purple fluid (which surely cannot be the Empty Man's blood), and all this is coming to a head just as—well, just as Panther remembers that Tiger exists. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that something, some manner of otherworldly instinct or sixth sense or ominous premonition, has her turning very suddenly to see what the prince is doing.

  It's a good thing she does.

  Tiger's right eye is on fire; Tiger's right eye is burning brilliant, blazing jade. His tattooed hand is clutched tight over his mouth; blood dribbles freely from a bitten tongue and lip, filtering down in glossy rivers between his fingers. His other hand is outstretched, claw-fingered, palm directed right at Daiga and the mercenaries both.

  Panther's eyes go wide. "Wait—"

  "Combust," says Tiger.

  And at that same time Daiga's head snaps around, and his eyes alight in recognition, and the Incipitor raises both his arms like a shield before him and replies, "Null."

  Panther's ears pop.

  And then the air turns to fire. It is quite literally an explosion sans the actual detonation; a roaring emerald fireball just appears, swallowing the whole of the space before Tiger's palm. It is a singular burst of heat, and light, and sound. It is quite literally something made from nothing.

  And then Tiger is on his knees, vomiting—vomiting red, and chunks of black, bleeding profusely from his nose and his ears and his mouth. His world is spinning. His eye is still on fire. And Daiga is standing above him now, totally unscathed, his stitch-scars oozing blood and his skin trailing dark wisps of smoke. His own right eye burns with inky jet-black flames. He looks down at Tiger with and he says something the Shalasharan prince cannot hear—no, wait, he's saying not bad, Tiger! and shame this is over already. And even as Daiga is congratulating him, he's also raising his sword high, and even though Daiga's eyes are alight with a sudden malice still his smile does not diminish one iota as he prepares to plunge that blade directly through the base of Tiger's skull.

  And in that moment, even if he could move, Tiger would still lack the willpower required to do so.

  And then there is a swift, sudden blur of motion, and—roughly in the span of Tiger's next blink—Daiga is simply gone. And suddenly something or someone has Tiger on his feet and is half-carrying, half-dragging him away. Panther, he realizes, just as the whole world snaps back into crystal-clear focus: the gatehouse burning, everything burning, everything collapsing down around them, Panther saying the whole time, "Come on, come on, you're okay Tiger, you're okay, you're gonna be fine, just walk please walk we have to go, we need to move—" And Tiger is so alarmed by the uncharacteristic panic in her voice that he does just that. He stands upright and starts limping on his own, albeit with her arm still wrapped firmly around his shoulder, and so the two stumble in a drunken stupor down rickety stairs as half-ton flaming wooden beams crash down around them like a hail of outer-world comets. They make it to the lobby together, somehow, and then there it is: an open door, a portrait in miniature, a whole microcosm of purple sky and grey-steel industry. The promise of an alternative to this crackling-green inferno. That door is everything to Tiger, in that moment. That door is all that there ever is or ever was, and all that matters is that he reach that door.

  And then without warning he is falling, because he has been dropped. He lands on one knee and twists around and sees Kyar at the base of the stairs, bow drawn all the way back, one eye closed. And this time the mercenary doesn't say a word.

  Panther raises her sword in a desperate and futile attempt to defend; Tiger doesn't bother entertaining any other future than the obvious one ahead. He just spits thick blood on his tattoo, thrusts his left hand forth with fingers clawed, and roars: "Oust!"

  Kyar's ears pop just a moment before an invisible wave of force sends both him and a good chunk of the gatehouse's first floor hurtling away, with wood shattering to splinters and all of it just going flying, all of it turning to total indecipherable chaos as the second floor descends to succeed the first, and this time Tiger's cheek is back against the floor from pretty much the moment he bellows that word. There's an ocean in his ears, and he can no longer see. He retches and vomits, feels blood oozing out from beneath his fingernails, feels what must surely be his own skull clamping down like a vise around his brain. It is all agony indescribable.

  And then, mercifully, Tiger ceases to feel anything at all.

  Somehow Panther manages to get him out.

  Somehow she's full-on sprinting even with Tiger's full weight slung over her shoulder, pushing her body far beyond the limits of what it should be capable—and oh, already she is feeling the consequences. Every muscle in her body cries out for relief; her breathing is quick and ragged and she is very nearly hyperventilating as she slips into the city's labyrinthine alleyways, her brain slaved only to the simple command GET OUT AND GET AWAY. She rounds one corner, then another, then another, and such is her exhaustion and her anguish that she does not see the leg that juts out at the last second before her.

  So, of course, Panther trips. And no sooner have she and Tiger fallen face-first onto the pavement than Panther is whirling around, eyes wide and all but feral, and thus does her last throwing-knife impact against Casso's flask with a sharp metal spang!

  Casso glances down at them both, with an expression of very mild disinterest—and then he just takes another swig from that battle-scarred flask. And then, as Panther is slowly and surreptitiously crawling backwards, he remarks without looking: "Found ya."

  Panther rises very quickly to a half-crouch; her hand darts to the sword tucked through her belt, and she draws it partway. Casso, by contrast, just belches loudly and tucks the flask back into his coat. And then he turns, and looks Panther dead in the eye, and says, "Don't bother, kid. I'm a pro."

  The old man's hand never leaves his coat.

  Panther's eyes are bloodshot slits.

  Casso's gaze is lazy and half-lidded.

  Seconds pass. Clouds converge. The sky darkens. A lone raindrop strikes the pavement just between them; another hits Panther right on the bridge of her nose, whilst a third impacts against the tip of Casso's shoe.

  Nobody moves.

  There comes a distant rumble of thunder—and then finally the old man just yawns and turns away. "Too much of a hassle," he sighs. "I'll get around to you some other time." And with that, the old man is departing with hands in pockets and back left totally exposed, not even sparing a wayward glance for his would-be quarry as Panther scrambles for her throwing-knife and rises now with weapon in hand, poised and ready to bury it between Casso's shoulder blades.

  And yet. Somehow Panther knows, with perfect certainty, that it will never happen. Not in a million years.

  And so she doesn't even try. The knife never leaves her hand. She just stands there, panting heavily, watching as Casso vanishes 'round the corner—and then she keeps on staring. She doesn't stop. She stares and breathes and gasps for air, for relief, as a fusillade of ten thousand liquid missiles comes raging down from the heavens above. Thunder roils and roars; lightning fractures the sky as though traced out by some shaking, unsteady hand. She stares until she and Tiger are both soaked, until the adrenaline has drained out the soles of her feet and left her empty and cold.

  And then, with great difficulty, she hoists Tiger aloft. And, as she drags her companion away, she says—to him, or to herself—"I fucking told you."

  And then she keeps on walking.

  I was right there with her, of course, right there in the middle of all that freezing rain. I was right there watching them struggle—and I, of course, did absolutely nothing to help.

  End Credits Theme