"Took so long—"
Gold struck the place where his head had been.
Const dropped sideways. The fist passed his ear, hit the floor, and drove a broken seam through the length of the chamber. His coat peeled off his shoulders before he finished falling, spread flat beneath him, and snapped rigid.
The second blow struck the cloth.
It rang.
Const slid across the floor behind it, boots finding purchase as the coat bent along its middle and tipped the descending arm aside. Golden knuckles ploughed through stone. He pulled his legs under him and rose inside the creature's reach.
His waistcoat opened along three seams.
Fine strands spilled out, gathered into narrow blades, and drove upward beneath the thing's extended arm.
One entered. Two scraped against something harder than bone.
The creature turned.
Const recalled the strands and ducked under its elbow. The returning filaments whipped past his cheek, knitting themselves back across his ribs while his coat curled around the creature's wrist and pulled.
He stepped with the pull. Changed the angle.
The corrupted-golden thing's next punch went into a pillar.
The pillar broke halfway up. Above it, a section of the ceiling sagged, split, and fell inward, opening the chamber to a narrow strip of sky.
Something smaller came through the falling debris.
It was howling.
The sound dragged through several pitches at once, wet and broken, catching somewhere inside a throat that could no longer hold its shape. Violet light flickered through its chest. One shoulder appeared a little behind the other, then snapped forward with a crack.
Its hand reached Const's unguarded side.
Stopped.
The fingers clenched so hard that their tips sank into its own palm.
Const turned his head.
The golden creature was already coming around behind him.
His coat tore free of its wrist and folded into a shield beside his shoulder. The impact sent him skidding. Before his heel stopped dragging, the smaller thing was on him again.
Fast. Far too fast for the ruined body carrying it.
It struck for his face, and Const caught the wrist between two stiffened folds of his coat. A second arm came low. His waistcoat tightened across his abdomen; the claws scraped over the hardened weave and threw sparks.
Then the thing's knee buckled.
Its head wrenched sideways.
Const's coat snapped forward to strike—and gold filled his vision.
He let the cloth go slack.
The fist drove into it, carrying a pocket of empty fabric past his chest while he pivoted around the outside of the arm. The coat's sleeves wound together behind the creature's elbow, straightened, and shoved.
Another miss. Another length of wall demolished.
Const was already watching the smaller one.
It had a clear path to his back.
It took it.
Its hand opened. Light gathered in the palm, tight and vicious and perfectly formed—
—then the arm jerked upward.
The spell tore through the ceiling.
The creature screamed at its own hand.
Const's eyes narrowed.
"You…"
The golden thing lunged between them.
He pulled his necktie free of his collar.
The fabric stiffened in his hand, keeping its narrow shape, its taper, the small crease where the knot had been. He set it against the reaching wrist and turned the arm just far enough to pass beneath it.
His coat struck from the other side.
The creature staggered half a step.
Const withdrew the tie immediately. His coat swept back around him, its hem dividing into long, grasping folds that braced against the floor and hauled him out of the next blow's path.
The smaller thing came low again.
This time he was still landing.
His coat was extended behind him. The strands of his waistcoat were reaching for the golden creature's eyes. For the briefest moment, his chest was open.
The smaller creature's hand reached it.
One inch.
Its whole body seized.
The elbow locked. The spine arched. A strangled, almost human sound broke through the howl, and the creature hurled itself sideways with such violence that its shoulder struck the golden thing across the knee.
The larger creature nearly fell.
Const moved.
His coat stretched across the gap, spread wide, and wrapped the smaller creature from shoulders to ankles. One sleeve bound its arms to its sides. The other tightened across its chest. The hem wound beneath it and lifted it clear of the ground.
Const closed his hand.
"Purification."
Pale light bled through the cloth.
"Be vanished."
The thing inside convulsed.
He pulled the weave tighter, holding every fold in place. The violet fractures beneath it began to fade. Something black seeped through the fabric and broke apart in the air.
His waistcoat's blades were still returning.
One had caught in the larger creature's shoulder. He severed it, drew the rest back, and felt the loose strands searching for their places across his ribs.
Then the gold vanished behind the bound creature.
Const's gaze snapped sideways.
A footstep.
Close.
The larger thing came around the hanging bundle at his right, low enough that its first movement had been hidden entirely. Its fist was already beneath his elbow.
The coat was occupied.
The waistcoat had not closed.
His fingers tightened around the tie.
Should I use it?
The fist came on.
Const kept the tie drawn against his chest and raised his left leg.
The blow met his shin.
Something broke with a short, unmistakable crack.
His breath stopped.
The second fist was coming for his head. He drove off his right foot before the first blow could fold him completely, throwing himself backward across the floor.
The second punch missed his mouth.
The third tore through the trailing edge of his shirt.
He landed on his good leg, failed to hold it, and caught himself on one hand.
His left foot lay at the wrong angle.
For a moment, he could hear nothing except the blood in his ears.
The coat still held.
Across the chamber, the smaller creature had stopped screaming.
Light seeped out around its neck. A piece of the blackened surface peeled away from its face, then another, dissolving before they reached the ground.
A man's head emerged.
Middle-aged. Gaunt. His mouth trembled between breaths.
Blood poured from both eyes, running over skin with no wound in it.
"L-Lord… Agares…"
Const stared.
"S-Seer?"
The man's head lifted with terrible effort.
"Help us…"
His lips pulled back. For an instant, violet light showed between his teeth.
"Lord Agares… and me… kill him for us. Please…"
Const glanced toward the gold moving through the dust.
"Him..?"
"Y-yes…"
The Seer tried to say something else.
His jaw opened too far.
The scream returned.
Violet fractures spread across his cheeks. The face that had briefly been a man's began to slip out of alignment, the mouth dragging sideways while the eyes remained fixed on Const.
Const reached toward him.
The pale light inside the coat brightened.
"Wait. Stay with—"
Gold flashed behind him.
He released the binding.
The coat unwrapped in a single violent turn, crossed the chamber, and hardened against his back.
Agares struck it at arm's length.
The cloth held.
Const did not.
He flew across the hall, hit the floor shoulder-first, and rolled into the base of the opposite wall. His broken leg caught beneath him on the second turn.
A sound escaped him that he would have preferred to keep to himself.
He lay still for half a breath.
Then the coat dragged itself over him, one fold bracing against the wall while another pulled him upright.
Across the chamber, the Seer lowered his head.
Nothing human remained in his face.
Agares moved left.
The Seer moved right.
Const watched the distance widen between them. His waistcoat finally closed across his ribs, the last few filaments drawing tight with a faint, dry whisper.
"Fuck…"
He lifted his eyes toward the ceiling.
Dust drifted through the broken roof. Beyond it, a thin piece of sky showed between the fractured beams.
Two ways out.
The coat tightened around his left leg. Beneath the cloth, the bones began the slow, nauseating work of drawing back into place.
One, and Aim will know I'm a fraud.
Agares lowered his shoulders.
The other…
The Seer's fingers scraped along the floor.
No. Too late for that one.
Both charged.
The light above them changed.
It brightened without warmth, bleaching the edges of the broken roof. Shadows sharpened beneath the fallen stones.
A shape appeared beyond the opening.
Then another.
Flat faces met at exact angles around centers that seemed to shift whenever Const tried to follow them. One edge passed behind another and emerged somewhere it could not have reached. The shapes occupied the sky without drifting, descending, or making any sound at all.
Agares stopped so violently that the floor broke beneath his feet.
The Seer twisted toward the opening.
Both began to roar.
The geometric things did not move.
Blood ran from Agares's mouth as he bellowed upward. Beside him, the Seer clawed at the air, shrieking until his throat split and closed and split again.
Const flexed his left foot.
Pain.
Then obedience.
Healed.
He launched himself.
His coat braced against the floor behind him and snapped straight, driving him upward at an angle. His shoulder struck Agares below the ribs. At the same instant, a stiffened fold caught beneath the creature's knee.
Lift. Turn. Send it through the opening.
For a fraction of a second, the weight began to move.
Then a voice reached the chamber.
"Come back now. Both of you."
[ Authority of ███████ : ███████ ]
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The dust stopped.
Const remained against Agares's side, one foot clear of the floor, his coat held in a long, rigid curve behind him.
Nothing answered when he tried to move.
Agares's roar ended.
The golden head turned.
Slowly, almost carefully, the creature stepped out of Const's arrested strike.
It crossed the chamber.
The Seer stood waiting, blood suspended beneath his chin. Agares bent, gathered him onto its back, and straightened.
Then it rose.
Stone broke around its shoulders as it passed through the roof. Fragments hung where they had been displaced, outlining the widening hole.
The gold receded.
A moment later, both were gone.
Const could only watch.
He had spent his first sound step carrying himself toward the things above the roof.
Now there was nothing between him and them.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
The Western District.
Water hung above the ruined road in long, motionless ribbons.
A roof tile remained suspended beside a broken farmhouse. Farther away, on the great city wall, soldiers stood with mouths half-open and hands arrested on their weapons.
Above the fields, geometric shapes occupied the sky.
"You stopped time, Terminus?"
Flaure (???) looked at him without apparent concern.
Behind the mask, his eyes followed her moving hand.
"Then why haven't you stopped?"
"I made a few preparations."
"…Hmph."
She glanced upward.
"Go on, then. Three minutes at most, I'd say, before the world and those Punishers force your Authority back on you and burst your heart."
The shard rested loosely between her fingers.
"What will it be, hm? Shall we keep fighting, or call it here—"
Terminus's longsword drove for her throat.
Her cane lengthened into steel and caught it. The blades scraped together, sending sparks into the still air.
She stepped outside his leading foot and turned the point past her cheek.
"I am going to kill you. Do look forward to it."
Her mirror shard rose.
"Goodbye—"
Violet light opened behind her.
She slipped through.
Terminus raised his own shard.
And followed.
A few minutes earlier.
The mirror dimension.
Aim stumbled out of the light with Flaure gathered against his chest.
His left arm throbbed inside its makeshift splint. The coat beneath her bore most of her weight, its folds held taut by his catalyst, but the landing still sent a bright line of pain from his wrist to his shoulder.
He managed two uneven steps.
Behind him, Isolde came through headfirst.
"Oh, shi—"
She hit the floor, rolled over one shoulder, and ended with her legs against the lower edge of a chair.
"…Ow."
"Sol?"
"Alive."
"Good."
"Give me a second to decide whether I'm pleased about it."
Aim blinked until the violet glare began to leave his sight.
A room took shape around him.
A table. Chairs. A small arrangement of cups beside a waiting teapot. Quiet so complete that he could hear Isolde's sleeve dragging across the floor as she pushed herself upright.
No shouting.
No wind trying to tear his head off.
He looked farther into the room.
"Lady Vine? You're here already?"
The woman beside the table turned.
"Of course I am. Come here, Mister Aim. Come, come—I'll make you some tea."
"Yes, ma'am!"
The answer escaped before he had considered it.
He let go of Flaure and watched Lady Vine reach for the teapot.
Wait.
We haven't known each other that long, but… is she usually this enthusiastic?
A cup settled onto a saucer with a small, pleasant click.
Maybe because we're somewhere private.
His shoulders began, cautiously, to lower.
And we did it. We actually brought her back.
His coat loosened beneath her, and he had just begun to withdraw his good hand when the air behind him split open.
Two figures came through together.
White cloth. A mask.
A longsword already moving.
The woman in front caught the descending blade on her own and turned it aside with a sharp movement of her wrist.
Steel flashed across the room.
Aim followed its direction.
Past the chair.
Across the table.
Toward—
The blade struck Lady Vine while she was pouring the tea.
The teapot slipped from her hand.
For one absurd instant, Aim watched the tea continue falling, a thin amber stream pouring into empty air.
Then Lady Vine went down.
"LADY VINE!"
He lunged toward her.
Something struck the other woman—the one who had just come through the mirror.
Her feet left the floor.
Aim had barely turned his head before her body crashed into him.