After so long tense, exhaustion arrived along with the dawn — and before I realized it, I had fallen asleep. I couldn't pinpoint when reality had transformed into dream. The Purge had taught me that the body made decisions without consulting the mind when it reached its limit, and falling asleep had been one of those decisions — not a choice, but a controlled collapse, the organism forcing the stop I hadn't authorized.
But when a scream rang out loud and I recognized the voice, I understood the dream was over.
I opened my eyes.
What I saw was terrifying.
"So this is a Birman."
The creature held the girl as though holding a feather — without concern, without effort, without any sign that the weight registered anywhere in what sustained it. Nearly three and a half meters tall. Humanoid body but extremely stocky — as though it had been born and lived only to develop every muscle fiber to its maximum possible, without margin for any other function, as though the universe had looked at that form and decided that elegance was a waste of material that could be strength. It wore trousers of a golden-bronze color that were probably more resistant than any standard human armor, but no protection on the chest — which gave it the barbarian air that was the race's mark, the kind of absence of protection that wasn't carelessness but declaration, the statement of one who didn't need armor because nothing it had encountered until then had justified the effort of wearing it.
The humanoid form ended at the neck. In place of a human head was a dense mane, and when I finally managed to see the face, recognition arrived before the word: White Lion. Sharp teeth. Large feline snout. Even so there was still something human in its face — the eyes were extraordinarily human, which made the combination more unsettling than it would have been if they were completely animal. There was intelligence in those eyes. And intelligence in a creature of that size was not comforting.
He held the girl while she thrashed in desperation, tears streaming without control. Undressed, her bronze-toned body contrasted with her face still dirty with mud — the only sign that she had tried to camouflage herself as I had, and that the attempt hadn't been enough. Then he lifted her above his head and slowly opened his mouth, with the calm of someone who was enjoying the process and not just the result — the calm of something that had done this before and had learned that rushing was wasting the best part.
"Wait, please… I have the ring. I have the ring."
The girl produced something I hadn't noticed before — it had been in her hand the entire time, but only now had I noticed it. A ring. Very similar to the one I had found on the Wendigo, but slightly different — simpler, yet somehow still better than the one I had taken from the noble who had tried to invade my territory.
"So that's what it's for."
Since verifying the reward for the disappearance of the noble Jamine Bloodline, something hadn't fit. I had mentally connected it to the ring without being able to understand the relationship — the correlation existed, I felt it, but the logic sustaining it remained just out of reach every time I tried to grasp it. Now, with that scene before me — and remembering that nobles from the great houses survived the Purge in a proportion extremely disproportionate to the rest — the correlation was beginning to take shape. The ring was some kind of guarantee. Trade currency. Passage. The human nobility had found, at some point I couldn't date, a way to negotiate with the races that hunted them. Not to fight — to negotiate. Which said something about the nobility and something even more interesting about the races in the Oasis.
But it still struck me as strange that a race as strong and barbaric as the Birmans would care about that. Politics was a tool for those who needed allies. Creatures of that size rarely needed any.
My mind raced.
The Birman had recognized the ring — that was visible in the way its eyes fixed on it, the specific pause of something that had found a reference where it hadn't expected to find one. But it hadn't released the girl. It was calculating, weighing, with the expression of something that understood the value of what it saw but hadn't yet decided if that value was sufficient — or if there was something more valuable in what it already held.
Another concern took shape as I watched. His footsteps in the soft earth came from where I was — which meant he had passed by me without noticing me, and had found the girl even though her hiding spot was deeper and more carefully prepared than mine. That didn't make immediate sense. A meter of earth above her, more care, more time preparing — and yet she had been found first.
What had I done differently.
"Could it be the earth?"
But even that seemed insufficient. So it wasn't the quantity of earth. I had done something beyond burying myself — I had covered myself, had blended in, had eliminated the distinction between what I was and what the environment was.
It was the clothing.
It made sense with the specific cruelty of things that make sense too late. Clothing had a function I had never considered as a disadvantage — it kept the body clean, separate from the environment, distinct. Under normal conditions, an obvious advantage. But I wasn't under normal conditions. Without clothing, covered only in wet swamp earth, I had done something beyond visual camouflage — I had become part of the smell of the environment. Those enormous nostrils couldn't differentiate me from the earth because I was the earth, because my scent had been replaced by the scent of everything around me. The girl's clean clothing, however buried it was, had communicated presence before any movement could. There was a thread of information coming out of her hole, and the creature had followed the thread.
While the Birman was still deliberating over what to do with the girl, an idea took shape in my mind — not gradually, but all at once, as most ideas arrived when the environment didn't give time for process.
"What would the prize be for the prey that kills the hunter?"
All survival in the Purge came with benefit. The humans', for being the most irrelevant race, was the right to leave the Oasis. But what would I gain if I didn't just survive — but killed one of the assassins sent to hunt us? No human had done that in any documented way. The Codex had no entry for that outcome because that outcome hadn't existed to be documented.
The opportunity as it had appeared would hardly repeat itself. The Birman was occupied. I was invisible. And there was a creature between him and me that was paying the price of existing in the wrong place — which was cruel, but which was also the only reason I was still alive to calculate anything.
Without the girl's food I would probably be dead. But I wasn't naive enough to call that altruism. She had given me the bento out of fear, not kindness — she had calculated that I was less dangerous than the enemies hunting her, and had made the most rational trade available. Perhaps she didn't even know if the ring she was showing the Birman would work — the Birmans had never been a political race in any relevant sense, and it was unlikely to work with the specific creature before her, which had clearly decided that the killing process was more interesting than any deal's outcome.
But her capture had given me a window.
I would use it.
"I'm going to kill him."
I can't say when survival became murder in my head. At some point between waking up and that moment, the line had been crossed — not as a decision, but as recognition. I had already crossed it before I realized. My mind believed it was possible, which was different from knowing it was possible, but in that moment it was enough to move.
The problem was that I had no weapon.
The shield was in the ring, along with the retractable sword — but the ring was with Morgana. Impossible distance. Variable eliminated.
While I was processing that detail with the urgency of someone processing against time, something incredible happened.
The tattoo on my arm began to move.
✦
It slid down the arm with the fluidity of something that wasn't being forced but was responding — as though it had waited for that moment, as though the activation condition was exactly what had arrived: necessity without alternative. It concentrated in the hand, and then began to materialize outside the body with the deliberate slowness of something being built, not merely revealed.
The blades curved to the sides like the wings of an ancestral predator — black with a slight green tone that suggested something alive, not just dark. Each tip carved with the clear intent of leaving no escape, not as an aesthetic detail but as function, as though whoever had created it had begun with the function and arrived at the form afterward. The dark bronze of the center carried engravings that seemed alive — interlaced reliefs that told stories I didn't know.
At the center, something resembling a small shield connected the two blades on opposite sides.
It was too large to be called only a weapon. Too wide to be only a shield. It was both things and neither at once — a contradiction of steel and magic that seemed to defy any definition one tried to impose on it, that existed outside categories with the naturalness of something that had been made before the categories existed.
When it finished materializing, the weight arrived.
It was real, honest — the kind of weight that didn't pretend to be less than it was. And at the same time there was something in that balance that suggested cooperation, as though it chose to be carried as much as I chose it. It wasn't the weight of an inert object. It was the weight of something that had decided to be there.
"What the hell is this."
The weapon was too large for me. It clearly hadn't been made for me — it had been made for something much larger, for hands that measured twice mine, for a body that had been built to carry it without effort. But by the form, I finally knew to whom it belonged.
Zaridan.
The integration had finally revealed itself.
"Alright, my friend. If you change form, now is the time. What I need is a shield and a sword."
As though it understood — and perhaps it did, in some way I couldn't map — the enormous glaive began to disappear as the tattoo danced. It didn't disappear into a vacuum, but divided and redistributed, like water finding a new vessel: half to the right arm, half to the left. This time the result was practical. A sword identical to the one I used — familiar enough for my body to know what to do with it. A round shield that fit the forearm with the precision of something that had been measured, not improvised.
Whatever it was read what I needed and delivered without question.
I didn't waste time.
✦
The entire process had cost me precious time — seconds I didn't have to spare and had spent anyway because there was no alternative. But the Birman seemed in no hurry, and I had begun to understand why: for him, this wasn't an emergency. It was entertainment.
He continued with the girl, taking light bites that drew blood from her legs with the precision of someone who knew exactly how much pressure caused exactly how much pain — exploring how much he could extract before concluding, as though concluding too early would waste something he had been waiting for. The ring apparently hadn't worked, or had been discarded as an option.
The girl had stopped struggling. Her eyes were open — but with the look of someone who had understood there was no way out and had stopped looking for one, that specific transition from active despair to passive despair that happened when the body exhausted the options before the mind finished accepting it. What remained were the tears and the screams that came out involuntarily with each new bite, without decision, without control.
I advanced carefully. Feet sliding across the terrain with the attention of someone who had learned, in those days of the Purge, that the difference between sound and silence was the difference between living and not living. Following the Birman's own deep footprints — each step exactly where he had stepped, taking advantage of the already compressed earth, without creating new sound on new ground. It was using his own passage against him, turning the predator's trail into the path of what followed.
Before I realized, I was a few meters from the creature.
The Birmans had two hearts. It wasn't common knowledge but it also wasn't restricted knowledge — it was simply the kind of information most people didn't seek because most people had never considered they'd need it. It was a response to the conditions necessary to sustain a structure of that size on a planet so close to a neutron star, which generated gravity five to six times greater than Earth's even at double the distance. A single heart couldn't pump against that gravity with sufficient efficiency — so evolution had created two, dividing the load. It was also the reason their vision was weak while their other senses were extreme: the organism had concentrated resources where it mattered most to survive in that specific environment that maintained a great distance from its star.
The smell I had already solved. Sound was the other variable — and there I was benefiting more from the Birman's failures than from my own capability. He was still occupied with the hunt in a way that bordered on ritual, as though killing were ceremony and not just act. That gave me time.
The two hearts had distinct functions — one pumped the upper body, the other the lower, dividing zones to sustain circulation against the extreme gravity of the home planet. That meant if one stopped, half the body collapsed — not instantaneously, but gradually. Either way, it was the only clear weak point. And the lower heart was the least protected. The bones of the upper region were denser than iron. Those of the lower region, not. It was the only real vulnerability in a creature that didn't even bother wearing armor on its torso.
If I hit that target, it was victory. If I missed, it was what had happened to the girl — but without a ring to negotiate with.
I was positioned. Unrestricted view of the creature's back. Sword in the right hand, shield in the left. The distance was right. The angle was right. The Birman was occupied.
Then the girl saw me.
For a second, her gaze changed — it left the void of someone who had accepted the end and found something in her field of vision that hadn't been there before.
And in the middle of her despair, she made the only mistake she couldn't make.
"Save me."
Two words. Instinctive, involuntary, coming from the place where survival was still trying even when the mind had stopped. Enough.
The Birman turned — but not fast enough. I drove the sword deep into his back, and strangely that sword seemed to slide like butter at waist height, piercing the first heart with a precision I hadn't planned but that had happened — as though the weapon knew where to go regardless of who carried it. To be certain, I moved the blade while it was inside.
"ROOOOOOAAAARRRRRRRRR"
The roar crossed the entire plain with the force of something that hadn't been produced to communicate but to strike. The girl was hurled away like a ragdoll, the Birman losing control of what he held when control of his own body had begun to fail.
"HOWWWW—"
The cry of disbelief. The face of anger and confusion combined — as though the possibility of being wounded hadn't been processed as real until that moment, as though decades or centuries of invulnerability had created a certainty that that blade had broken without asking permission.
He was weaker. One less heart, blood coming out in a volume that couldn't be ignored — greenish, thicker than human blood, flowing with the pressure of something that had been contained by a structure that no longer existed. The lower half of the body visibly collapsing with each step. But even without real control over half his own body, he threw himself in my direction with fury.
Birmans didn't stop by calculation. They stopped by collapse — it was the cruel truth of a warrior race that preferred to take the enemy with them than to die quietly. I had wounded him. Not killed him. And wounded was the most dangerous state a Birman could be in.
I rolled to the side the moment the claws arrived — sliding across the wet earth, gaining enough distance to breathe without breathing being a luxury.
"How dare you, you insolent animal."
It was clear that even weakened he still protected the second heart with his movements — located slightly higher and to the left of where it would be in a common human, just below the collarbone, where the denser bones formed the last barrier. Every movement was animalistic, but there was awareness in them, the specific awareness of where he couldn't be hit. I needed to take him out of that awareness. I needed the rage to overcome the protective instinct.
"I've never eaten a female Birman. I'm going to make sure I have my way with you before I carve you up."
It was a deliberate lie — nobody knew what a female Birman looked like, since by their culture the females weren't permitted to enter the Oasis. But it didn't need to be true to work. I spoke in his language, which was already its own offense — my throat ached with the sounds, which required articulations the human alphabet had never demanded. The effect was immediate. The Birmans were a proud race with a rigid culture, and what I had said pierced every layer of that rigidity simultaneously. Understanding the language and using it to humiliate was the kind of offense that didn't permit a calculated response.
Only an enraged one.
"How dare you BLAGHHH….."
Blood began coming from his mouth before he finished the sentence — the body betraying what the rage still wanted to say. He held his own blood for a second, as though he could contain what was happening by the force of refusing to accept it was happening.
"You… worm."
The advance wasn't subtle. Wasn't strategic. It was the last thing remaining when subtlety and strategy had been consumed by rage and the blood that kept coming.
It was the opportunity.
"Zaetar. Hold him."
Zaetar emerged from the ground beside the Birman — unearthing himself with the speed and surprise effect I needed, the arms closing before the creature had time to process what had risen. It was clear that Zaetar was weaker — the weakened Birman was still stronger than most things the Aqrabuamelu had faced. What held him was the combination of two factors: the Birman's inability to control his own weakened body, tied to the genuine shock of seeing an Aqrabuamelu emerge from the ground centimeters away. It was the second I needed.
I climbed up Zaetar's back. Drove the sword into the Birman's shoulder and began searching for the second heart with the blade — descending, seeking the angle, feeling the bones resist with the thickness of something that had been built not to yield. They were too thick and hard, resisting centimeter by centimeter as the Birman thrashed.
I used all the weight I had. All the strength that remained after the days of the Purge, the hunger, the accumulated exhaustion. The sword descended slowly, costing more than I had calculated.
Then the resistance gave.
The bone had been pierced — not with a crash, but with the discreet naturalness of a structure that had reached the point where yielding was inevitable. The blade descended cutting through everything below.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH—"
The cry came out whole and diminished in rhythmic cadence, in steps, until it ended in something I vaguely recognized as words in his language. Not of anger. Of something else.
"Who are you?"
The irony of existing in a universe large enough to hold entire civilizations that had never met — and still using the same stupid question.
"Go to hell and die already."
The great creature fell.
I fell with it — exhausted in a way I didn't think was possible, the kind of exhaustion that isn't only physical but is the result of having used everything available without reserve, without holding anything back for later because later had been a hypothetical concept throughout the entire process.
✦
"Lord. I sense an enemy approaching."
"Damn… The brother."
I recovered with Zaetar's words — not gradually, but all at once, the body having understood that the luxury of recovering had lasted as long as it could. Whichever of the brothers I had killed, the other had probably heard the battle. The roar had crossed the entire plain — had crossed everything that was on the plain.
I needed to hide. After all, that battle had given me a certainty I hadn't had before it began: it was impossible to win a direct one-on-one confrontation with those creatures. What I had done wasn't a victory of strength — it was a victory of information, of position, of exploiting a weakened state and a second of distraction. None of those conditions would exist in the next confrontation.
Even as I got up, my eyes went instinctively to the blade. It had passed through the Birmano's skin like butter — that wasn't normal, even considering the lower heart being less protected. There was something there I didn't understand, something beyond a common blade, something the integration had left that went beyond catalogued abilities. Without Zeus, no way to identify it. Not the moment.
The blade and shield in my hands. A thought — dismiss them.
They dissolved back into tattoo as though they had never been anything else.
I shook my head. Focus.
Moved over the creature's body looking for something of value — with the speed of someone who knows every second spent there is one less second for what would come. The only thing I found was a necklace hidden within the mane, coiled close to the skin with the specific care of something not meant to be seen. There was no way to know what it was — the type of object, the material, the purpose. But it had been hidden with intent, and intent communicated value even when the value itself was still opaque. I thought about searching for his Nectar Stone — given his quality as a Birman, he would almost certainly have one. But I knew it would be madness. Greed had to have a limit.
Walked a few meters toward where the girl had been hiding and buried it there — better kept away from me, but also out of sight of the brother or any opportunist passing through. Necklace buried, Zaetar dismissed, retraced the path using the dead Birmano's footsteps back to the hole.
Covered myself with earth again. The swamp smell returned — familiar now, almost comforting in the perverse way things become comforting because they are known. Chest still pounding. Breathing took longer than it should to regulate.
"This will do."
It didn't take long.
Something arrived flying — destroying everything around it on impact with the naturalness of something that hadn't calculated collateral damage because collateral damage was a category it had never learned to consider. For creatures that lived in gravity so superior to that of humans, any leap was nearly flight — which made their displacement speed something outside any human reference, the kind of speed you see as a result and can't reconstruct as process.
I was glad to have immobilized the dead Birman's lower half quickly. If he had had time to leap away, I would never have gotten another opportunity.
The creature now observing its brother on the ground was of the same race — but built differently, as though the two had been produced by the same process but with distinct objectives in mind. Where the first was stocky and dense, built to absorb and crush, this one was athletic, focused on speed, with the specific elegance of something that had been optimized to cover enormous distances. The head wasn't Lion but Tiger — the stripes of the fur visible even in that light, the eyes with the quality of something that processed the environment at a different speed.
And in his hands he carried a human head — eyes still open looking in my direction, spine descending a few centimeters below the cut, turning what could have been simple into something deliberately sinister. Not a battle trophy — a declaration. The message of one who had found something on the way and had decided that carrying the result communicated more than any word.
For a second, I was grateful to Zaetar for warning me. For a longer second, I thought about who that head had belonged to.
"WHOOOO DID THISSSS… SHOW YOURSELFFFFFF"
The words were potent in a way that wasn't just volume — it was intent. Each syllable arriving with the weight of something that had been produced to be heard across distances that human sound couldn't reach. The creature beat the ground creating new craters beside the old ones while the human head that had seemed a trophy was now a shapeless pulp, the enormous Birman still tried to sweep the environment with his nostrils with the systematic approach of one who had learned that scent was more reliable than sight on that terrain.
My theory was confirmed when even after a few seconds he seemed unable to locate me despite being just meters away.
Then, as though he had located something, he ran in the direction where the girl was probably still hiding — disappearing at a speed I had difficulty identifying, not following, but identifying, cataloguing as speed and not as the sudden absence of something that had been present.
The distant scream was the last thing I heard in that moment. There was no ambiguity about what the scream meant.
In the end, even after achieving something that most likely no human had ever achieved and coming out alive, I still understood with absolute clarity my hierarchical position. Against those creatures, the best place to be was there — buried like an insect in the wet earth of a swamp, invisible out of necessity, without certainty of what would come next.
[ 50:16:52 ]