Archive of Our Own

"Commander Kiske!”

bleep! bleep! bleep! bleep! 

“Heavy Gear activity to the west!”

“-to the east!”

“-the north!”

Every display in the war tent was lit up blinking red. Shouts spread across every corner. Total chaos. Gears weren’t this coordinated. Not since- 

“Sir! They’re stronger than we expected!”

Of course the rumors had bubbled up to him. They were impossible to miss. But they couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be-

“Sir! We’re detecting an incredibly powerful Gear to the north! It’s reading-” The technician cut himself off. He muttered, “My God. I didn’t think the scale went that high.”

Not since her. It couldn’t be her.

Ky rose from his chair. “Colonel Whitefang!” His voice cracked. “You and your squad with me. We’ll take them out right now.”

Leo snapped to attention, his typical arrogance bordering on insubordination gone. “Yes, sir!” He summoned his swords with shaking hands. “Men! Behind me!”

Ky strode out of the tent in what he hoped was a dignified, confident manner. “Officer Lyle,” he said to one of the guards outside. “New orders for you. There is a bounty hunter who should be somewhere in this theatre. His name is Sol Badguy. He used to serve with the First Holy Order and you have full access to our archives if that helps in your search. He was in the Second Selection Tournament as well. When you find him or find a way to get a message to him, tell him, ‘She’s back.’ And tell him it’s from me.”

“Who is she, sir?”

Ky reached up to clap Lyle on the shoulder. “Someone we both have history with. He’ll know.”

“Sir,” Lyle whispered. “Is it-”

Ky cut him off, a little too fast. “This is top secret, highest priority. Here.” He unbuckled his decorative belt, the one he’d etched HOPE into so long ago, and handed it to Lyle. “If anyone tries to stop you, show them this. Good luck.” And he turned brusquely on his heel, and marched off to catch up with Leo.

“Ah, something different about you, bambino? Heh, no hope for this mission?”

“Don’t call me that,” Ky snapped. “And don’t joke around.”

The grim smile stayed on Leo’s face. “I’m asking if you expect us to return, Sir. If this is our last day, if we are to meet Death, then we go to her smiling!” A cheer went up from his squad. Ky suddenly felt very small. Very human.

He looked straight ahead. “Colonel Whitefang. We will all certainly return. Believe in me.” Only Leo noticed the waver in his voice. 

“Let’s go.”

The forest outside was engulfed in hell-fire. A last-ditch effort to contain the Gear advance. Too little, too late. The Holy Order's front line had broken. Monsters ran rampant, destroying fortifications and corralling the surviving pockets of humanity into small tight groups, ripe for the picking.

Ky leapt into action, Leo not far behind. A pack of Gears was slowly closing in around something – the soldiers couldn’t see what in the chaos. Ky’s sword flashed blue, lightning arcing across its edge and into the Gear line. Nearly as fast as the lightning was Ky himself, an electric whirlwind, his speed and precision inhuman. Leo’s swords flashed yellow in the firelight, laying waste to Gear after Gear, eviscerating the ones that thought his back was turned to them even faster. A small squad of knights, huddling close to each other back-to-back-to-back, were eventually revealed through the carnage. One of the braver among them spoke up.

“Commander! Colonel! You’ve- you saved us!”

“Naturally,” Leo postured, “now tell us, soldiers, what happened?”

“We don’t know, they were all over us-”

“The First Lieutenant saw.” Another soldier spoke up.

“We don’t- what was she talking about? It was nonsense.”

“Where is this First Lieutenant now?” Ky said.

The first soldier jumped a little. “...There.” He pointed at a body with a leaking hole in its chest,  limbs twisted on the ground as if it had been torn open and tossed aside.

“I’m sorry. But what did she say she saw?”

“She said she saw-”

“It’s nonsense, I told you,” one grumbled.

“She said she saw an angel.”

“Hah,” Leo scoffed, “wings and halo and all, I suppose?”

“She said the Angel of Death.”

“Some sort of flying Gear, then?” He brandished his twin swords. “We’ll shoot it down. Emil squadron! Escort this team to a new fallback position behind the fire line and then move out to search for more survivors. The rest of us, we move!” A few soldiers broke off from Leo’s formation to do so.

“Ah, Commander, sir, you, uh, you have a little, uh, something here.” One of the rescued soldiers squeaked, gesturing vaguely to their entire face. “Sorry, sir!”

“There’s no problem,” Ky said, “Thank you for letting me know.” He wiped his cheek, his other cheek, his nose, his forehead. He looked at his glove, now covered in thick black Gear-blood. He felt it now, sticky all over his face. He looked down at his uniform. His sleeves were drenched in the stuff. His chest the same. Resigned, he brought his bloody glove back to his face, scraping it over his skin, still soft with youth. He still felt it sticking to him. It wouldn’t come off. Ky trudged onward, through the flaming forest. 

It was empty. Past the line of battle, there was nothing to be seen. No Gears, no knights, not even an animal. The only sound in the wood was the tromping of boots and the clanking of metal. 

“Say, Commander. What do you suppose that lieutenant meant by ‘Angel of Death’?”

“I couldn’t guess, Colonel. Some sort of powerful flying Gear.”

“Megadeth-class?”

“I can only assume so.”

“A proper hunt, then. Grand!”

Ky kept marching on.

Marching, through the darkening forest. Through gnarled trees and twisting roots until a soft green glow filtered in from the east. 

“I’m getting a strong magical energy from there, Sir. Do you think that’s our target?”

“If it isn’t, it will lead us to it.” Leo pointed to the glow. Ky nodded.

The company found the edge of a grove, glowing with ethereal light. It reflected across a pond in the center, illuminating a lone occupant seated by it. A young woman dressed in black.

“Hello there, ma’am,” Ky called out. The woman rose to her feet. “Have you seen any type of Gear pass near here? Large, likely winged?”

“I thought I had chased you all off.” The woman began to walk towards them, skirting the edge of the pond. Something trailed behind her, poking out from beneath her dress. It almost looked like a tail.

“Hey-”

“If you could, would you please leave this little grove? I’d rather not bring needless harm to this place.”

Ky’s hand went to his sword. The woman was mere steps away now.

“I suppose you leave me no choice. I really didn’t want to do this here.”

She extended a hand, and with a finger drew a line in the air from one end of the line of soldiers to the other. In an instant Ky drew his sword and began to charge. Behind him the ground erupted with great gouts of fire. Leo’s squad was decimated in a heartbeat. The lucky ones were blasted away by the explosions. The majority were dead before they realized what happened, cooked alive as even their armor melted into them. Only Leo’s reflexes and position at the front saved him, hunkering down and blocking most of the blast with his swords. 

“You – Justice!” he choked.

The woman cast a hand at him and a spear of electricity formed in the air above her. It crackled with barely-contained power and leapt at him, fast as light. Still reeling from the blast, Leo was a hair too slow to block. He dropped to the ground unceremoniously. Ky had seen him lying around before, not lazy but relaxed. Confident. Happy, or whatever passed for it in the Second Holy Order. Now he lay still, eyes open but vacant. His swords faded away, his concentration gone. And for a moment, Ky’s concentration slipped as well. When it came back his feet were off the ground and the woman’s hand was around his jaw. He could feel her strength. She didn’t struggle at all to lift him up, and he knew with a twitch of her hand his bones would crack like twigs. Her tail wrapped around his knees, constricting him totally. She brought her other hand up to his face, the killing hand, the hand that dispatched twenty Holy Order knights and brought low the finest colonel in the army as if they were nothing more than insects to flick away. 

The glow off the water and the fading light from her assault caused Ky to finally get a good look at her face, though he struggled against her grip all the same. She had pleasant features. A kind smile, warm eyes, even her nose was cute. She looked like everyone Ky had ever thought about in his privacy. 

It was disgusting. Abominable. Her eyes, bright and welcoming, were red. Gear-red. Her smile was not inviting, not in this light. Her lips were not soft. They stretched into a sinister grin. There were scores of holy knights dead. Dead in her wake. And her hand, her slender fingers, were reaching for his head. She dragged her finger across his forehead. It was everything Ky hoped it wouldn’t be. She inspected the blood that rubbed off on her. Sniffed it. Slid her perfect finger into her perfect mouth and slowly pulled it out, clean. 

“Who are you?”

Ky was only human. He couldn’t stand against her. The whole of his military career was now obvious to him as a mere fluke. He had been lucky. Lucky that truly great fighters like Sol and Kliff had battled Justice instead of him when they did. He had his chance against Justice now, this new resurrected Justice, and she had defeated him handily. He had failed. He was never anything more than a failure. A jumped-up little boy, a so-called prodigy. Everyone had been right. Leo had been right. There was no hope for them. There was never any hope for humanity. Just delaying the inevitable. Grabbing onto the cliff’s edge as the dirt fell apart under your fingers. Ky could only swing his sword limply, unable to create any power with his legs bound in the air. Even a failure like him could try to have a heroic last stand; setting an example for others even in death. He charged every bit of lightning he could muster into his sword and swung desperately at Justice’s neck. The lightning fizzled out before it even touched her. The Thunderseal, Sacred Treasure, one-eighth of the Outrage, batted her in the neck like an infant’s fist. His will had broken.

“Kill… you… Justice…” he spat around her hand, but there was nothing behind the words.

“I’m not Justice, I’m afraid. She was my mother, I’m told. I’ve never met her, unfortunately. Aren’t you an interesting little man, though? All this blood, all over your outfit. Your friends were all so clean, but you, you’re more animal than man. You swing your sword at me despite, well, I could kill you with a thought. Are-”

“Commander!” A lone soldier of Leo’s company had dragged himself back into the grove. He hurled a fiery projectile at the woman. “Get her!”

Ky could only watch helplessly as Justice’s daughter manifested a white wing to curl around her, blocking the blast and flicking outward, sending a wave of ice across the ground terminating in a spike that shot through the man’s throat, cleaving his head from his shoulders. Ky’s terror mounted as a black wing sprouted from her other shoulder, and with a mighty beat the woman rose into the air, scanning the tree line for more survivors. A few razor-thin shots of fire from the black wing pierced their heads. And then it was all over.

The woman drifted to the ground.

“As I was saying.”

“A… Angel,” Ky gasped. “Angel of death.”

“Cute. I think I like you.”

Ky’s eyes pierced hatred into hers.

“You really are mostly animal. You’re barely human at all. Your comrades are dead. You’re beaten. And you keep looking at me like that. There’s something-”

She might have been right about that, Ky would admit. He wasn’t human anymore. He was a trapped animal. He had no more room for self-pity, for propriety. Everything in the world fell away and there was only him and the woman he hated more than anything. He wasn’t a failure to anyone, he wasn’t falling short of any legacies. There wasn’t anyone else. There was only him and her and the red haze of hatred between them. He looked at those beautiful eyes and he hated. He heard her voice, soft and gentle, and he hated. He felt the soft skin of her hand despite its iron-hard grip and hated. He hated the way her hair cascaded down her back. He hated her figure, her face, her personality, her smell, her voice- 

Ky relaxed his jaw. Her hand slipped higher, and he took it into his mouth and bit with every ounce of hate in his body and he learned something new. He hated the taste of her blood too.

“Ah!” She let out a shriek and Ky’s face split into a wide, sick grin. Finally she wasn’t so put-together. So Goddamn unflappable.

She dropped him on instinct. It was all he needed. He charged the Thunderseal with a lightning unlike any he’d summoned before. The sword’s edge flickered deep red as a crimson lightning raced along it and dealt her a solid blow in the side. She staggered back, one foot splashing into the pond. Ky pressed his advantage, forcing her deeper into the water, lightning splintering off him and into the pond. He didn’t even feel it. There was little response from the woman though, only the most minimal defensive movements to block his sword from a killing blow, but Ky could see her blood staining the water black. He was getting close.

“Stop it! Stop!” She yelled. 

“Rich, coming from Justice’s daughter,” Ky spat. He swung at her again.

“You’re killing the fish.” She pointed down.

The corpse of a carp rose to the top of the pond. It twitched with the electric current still sparking off Ky.

“The… the fish…” Ky struggled to speak. “What are you? Who are you? You can’t be serious!”

“If you want to be serious, we can fight. But please, let’s not harm the fish. They didn’t ask to get caught up in our fight, after all.”

“You… You don’t…”

“Your friend, the big one with the two swords, likely isn’t dead. I was unable to hit him at full power. But he will die soon. I will let you go to take him back to where you came from, and heal him. I give you my word that I will not impede you from leaving.”

“Stop! Stop trying to trick me!” 

“Go, help your friend. I won’t do anything.”

“Why… Why not?”

“So you will leave, and stop hurting the innocent creatures here. Go now if you’re going, every second is worse for him.”

Ky backed out of the pond, Thunderseal’s point facing her the entire way. 

“I am going to kill you. I swear it, on the life of Kliff Undersn and everyone else your mother destroyed. That name means nothing to you, but I swear you will know it.”

“Undersn? It sounds familiar.”

“How? What do you know about Kliff?”

“Hmm… I don’t know any Kliff, but the name Undersn rings a bell. I’m not sure.”

“Then the last thing you ever say will be that answer.”

“My name is Dizzy, by the way. I look forward to our next meeting!” She smiled in the way Ky hated most. 

“Ky.” He couldn’t tell what possessed him to do that. He inspected Leo, and indeed felt a faint fluttering heartbeat. Ky carried Leo out of the grove. The way back to base was blessedly clear, and as the sun began to rise Ky staggered into camp soggy, covered in blood, and with the Colonel over his shoulders. He dropped Leo to the ground, fell to his knees, and passed out next to him.

Ky came to on a cot somewhere. A low cot, in somewhere that looked like a tent, with fluttering walls and earthen-colored floors. He closed his eyes for a while, letting the feeling come back to his body. He was wearing some long cotton-like gown and even under the blanket he felt gooseflesh bubble up on his legs. Where was his uniform? Slowly, to test its movements, he brought a hand to his face, looked it over. He had been cleaned and- ah! His jaw was tender. It felt bruised. He tested the extent of the pain and encountered resistance when he tried to open it all the way. More resistance than mere pain, and reaching up again he felt heavy gauze under his naked fingers. He looked around again and confirmed that he was in the infirmary tent. Then he remembered.

Ky recoiled after turning his head to the side too fast. A spike wracked his neck, and he hissed before slowly inching his head around to find a row of empty beds. Damn the pain! Ky gritted his teeth. He could feel his neck twinge as he braced the muscles there and ripped his head to the other side, gasping again before finally letting his shoulders drop and core loosen. Leo was there, hooked up to several magic sensors but there, present, alive. At least Ky hadn’t been too late for him. An aide at Leo’s bedside looked up from him and saw Ky’s lucid eyes.

“Commander! You’re awake!”

“Yes,” Ky was surprised to learn the most voice he could muster was a low whisper. “I need to speak to command, I have-”

“Don’t strain your voice, sir! I will tell them – they’ve been waiting for you.”

“Waiting for me?” Ky said hoarsely. “How long have I…”

But the aide was already gone, tent door flapping behind him. Scant minutes later the rest of command entered, taking seats on the beds around Ky. It looked almost like the war tent. Ky almost laughed but for the pain in his chest.

“Hello, sirs,” Ky croaked, “forgive me for not standing at attention.”

“No time for jokes, Commander. We need your report. What the hell happened out there?”

“One thing first, how long has it been? Since I came back.”

“You managed to make it back to camp, carrying Colonel Whitefang, ah,” the officer held up a hand as he saw Ky’s mouth open, “He was in critical condition, but he’s pulled through. He’s stable now, but it’s up to him when he’ll wake up. The doc says it might take a week for his body to fully heal, so knowing him he’ll be up and at ‘em in a couple days. Regardless, that took place, oh, yesterday morning.”

“Yesterday?” Ky began to struggle, trying desperately to swing his body off the bed. 

Several officers lunged up at him. “Whoa, whoa!”

“Easy, Commander!”

“Don’t strain yourself!”

“It’s alright Commander, don’t worry. It’s been remarkably quiet on the front ever since you returned. You did it. We’re safe for now. We just want to know what the hell happened.”

“The angel…” Ky laid back, eyes unfocused, staring glassily at the tent’s top. “She’s waiting for me.” 

“She?”

“Angel?”

Ky told them the story. A green glowing grove with a young woman. The massacre. His capture. Leo’s fall. Her terrible power. His escape and his desperate struggle. Her bizarre truce. His trek returning to camp. 

“She called herself Dizzy. And she said she was Justice’s daughter.”

A frigid silence seeped through the room.

“I believe she was leading the initial Gear attack here. They were far too coordinated for a group of beasts. But if they had a command-type with them, it would be a different story.”

“And you believe Dizzy is waiting for you?”

“She said as much.”

“Waiting for you to do what?”

“Fight her.”

“That’s insane!”

“I won’t allow it.”

“You’re hurt!”

“You can’t-”

Ky let the initial wave of shouting die down. “Who else?”

“Still-”

“I am the Commander of the Second Sacred Order of Holy Knights. The burden falls to me. I will not allow anyone to go in my stead. Commander Undersn fought Justice many times. What sort of man would I be if I did not follow his example?”

“And if you don’t-”

“If I don’t win, then I will give her such a fight as she has never seen, and she will not challenge the Holy Order again without thinking of me. Be assured I’ll give as good as I get.” Ky spoke solidly, without ego. His eyes shone with determination, undeterred by bodily injury. “I will do it.”

There was no counting out a surprise attack by the Gear force. Ky’s report on the command Gear indicated she was unpredictable, prone to emotional judgment. She might wake up one day and decide to call off whatever slipshod arrangement she had made with him. She’d call off a fight for fear of hurting pond fish – who knew why she’d start one? Soon after the impromptu meeting ended the camp was full of soldiers and engineers building defensive fortifications, forming watch shifts, drilling for heavier and more capable enemy formations. And yet an air of melancholy, a defeated malaise, began to settle over the rank and file. Leo Whitefang’s elite force had been annihilated. Whitefang himself had barely made it out. And the untouchable, invincible Commander Kiske had staggered back into camp with barely any consciousness left. Whatever was out there, whatever had them on the run a few days ago – word got around. And word was they hadn’t seen the half of how bad it could get. 

Ky spent the rest of his day testing the limits of his body. His bruised jaw, his strained neck, his fingers, his toes. He suspected his wrist might have something too – it felt stiff when he turned his sword hand. He explored the range of pain to its edges and beyond, pressing his neck, his jaw further and further until the pain faded into the background. Pain was pain. It was just sensation. Immaterial. It was secondary to his mission. Secondary to Dizzy. When his neck flared with pain, he remembered her eyes, burning red as she lifted him off the ground and patronized him, tossed him around and played with him like a toy. He flexed his jaw and saw her wings envelop him in a strangling grip, felt her wings beat as she flew up and laid waste to so many with barely a thought. No pain could compare. Eventually, the doctor came by to check on him. And despite the prodding and the stretching Ky didn’t feel any pain. He was somewhere else. And soon enough he was on his feet and out of the tent with a miraculous recovery and a newly pressed uniform.

Ky took out the communicator and brought it up to his ear. 

“Lyle? Anything to report?”

“Nothing so far, sir. He’s got quite the file but he’s hard to pin down. I’m chasing down a couple leads but it’s not looking promising.”

“Keep at it. He might find out you’re looking into him and pay you a visit himself, even.”

“I hope so, it’d be a better shot than anything I’m looking at. I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens, sir.”

“Of course. Thank you, Lyle.”

Ky trudged off to his personal tent, walking heavily to disguise his slight limp. Inside his tent were a small collection of personal affects: a rosary, a few pictures, the Thunderseal when it wasn’t on his hip. He took it in hand, ignoring the twinge in his wrist as he swung it side to side. She was waiting for him? Very well. Ky had heard one shouldn’t keep a lady waiting. She would die tonight.

It was easy for Ky to slip out of the camp undetected. There was a shift change at 1800 hours and he easily slipped out among the commotion. If anyone saw him, he was Commander Kiske. No one was going to stop him.

The forest was deep and black. Shadows stretched between the trees in the setting sun, reaching out onto Ky, shrouding his feet as they limped down the path trod by heavy boots those two days ago. The shadows slunk further and wider as the sun trickled to the horizon, swallowing Ky’s body in the nascent night. Ky trudged on, listening to the forest fall silent around him. He could feel the things out there, sense the presence of slavering Gears lurking in the shadow between the trees. His eyes leapt at every twitching shadow, every ghost rustling in the leaves. But his pace remained steady, only the ambient lightning sparking off his sword betraying his emotion.

When the dark of night became total, Ky found his beacon. The faint green glow of the pond flickered in the distance like a dying candle and he changed his course to make a straight line for it heedless of what might be in the bush. There were Gears there, he knew. That woman’s monsters breathing down his neck, reaching out with clawed fingers, slinking around every tree and curling around his legs, dragging him down, down into the muck and the filth where monsters are born, dragging him into her arms, her terrible grip-

Ky brought his hand down from his jaw, where it had risen unconsciously. He was nearly upon the clearing now and looking closely he could make out the shape of the woman sitting by the edge of a fire, eating something small. He took a step closer and felt the grass become slick under his boot. He looked down and it was blood. Blood covered the entrance to the clearing, buckets of it cast wildly across the grass like a red rainstorm. There were no bodies. This carnage, this invisible massacre, was all that remained of Leo’s squadron. Slowly, Ky looked up at the sky. A few stars could be seen through the canopy of leaves, and Ky realized where he was. Kilometers behind enemy lines. A forest of deadly Gears lay between him and safety, and ahead was the most dangerous of all. Their commander, Dizzy, a threat on par with Justice. One who had evidently invited him into her home, given the lack of hostility as he invaded her territory. There could be no turning back from here. Commander Undersn, in his many battles with Justice, had earned some measure of her respect. Perhaps that same respect was being shown to Ky now. Whatever the case, this new Justice would regret it. Ky silently entered the grove. Her back was to him, focused on the fire and whatever was inside it. He lifted the Thunderseal, ignored the screaming in his wrist, drew one hand over the blade, infused it with magic. His aching legs bent for one good thrust, one lightning-speed attack to end it before she took notice of him at all. One-

“Roasted chestnut?”

Ky blinked. It was all Dizzy needed. Commendably to him, he launched himself nearly immediately at her but in his instant of hesitation her black wing came up, shielding her from the brunt of the force. Ky felt his blow strike true and forced all the power he could muster through the point of his sword, and lightning rushed forth like too much water through a hose. It was a bolt the likes of which Ky had only heard of in stories, stories of cornered Crusaders and miracles from God. St. Elmo’s fire tore the ground apart, launching Ky backwards so that he skidded across the ground for meters and driving Dizzy into the base of the great tree overlooking the pond. It was all he could do to lift his head, blurred vision slowly focusing on the Angel that staggered to her feet as the lightning-fire spread across the grass, wings – one white-feathered, one a mere charred skeleton – hanging limply from her back as she stumbled towards him. Slowly she advanced, slowly, slowly, stretching an arm over him, until she was within a step and Ky swept out with his leg. He cried as his damaged ankle crashed into her foot but she let out a similar noise as she toppled down next to him. Ky turned over to face her, digging one elbow into the dirt to prop himself up. 

For the first time, Ky looked into Dizzy’s eyes and saw something he liked. Not the effortless superiority of two nights ago or even the surprise when he caught her off guard then, but a true emotion. Hatred. Her red eyes were burning with hatred. Ky began to smile. Finally, a quality he could match her in. He levered his elbow and knee into the ground, propelling him enough to land bodily on top of her and force her onto her back. His smile grew, cracking his face open in a savage sneer. Ky raised his good arm over Dizzy’s perfect little face and drove his elbow into it. She mouthed soundless curses between wordless screams, wriggling underneath him like a worm under a boot. Ky couldn’t hold her. She was too strong. She flipped them, tail wrapping around Ky’s waist and hips turning over, forcing him to his back and her atop him. With strikes faster than even he could see, she smeared his nose across his face and split his lip, then thrust her hands downward, wrapping around his throat and pushing his head into the ground. The back of Ky’s head hit hard and his eyes unfocused even as he fought against her stranglehold and blood poured from his face. And like her, he fought like a demon. Writhing beneath her legs, twisting his neck and torso, refocusing his eyes by staring directly into hers, hate crackling between them, never blinking. Ky knew he didn’t have much time left before he faded away. Unconsciousness was already creeping around the edges of his vision, and his escape efforts began to slow. He kept looking at her eyes, trying to convey all the things he couldn’t say in his stare. The haze crept further. Blood from her nose dripped onto him. Now nothing was visible but her, the rest of the grove faded away and the last light in the world the molten depth of her eyes. Ky spit at her. It reached to halfway up her chest. She didn’t flinch. She squeezed harder. Ky’s eyes closed, and with a last burst of strength reached a hand up to the almost hand-like bones of her once-wing and ripped down. 

Dizzy screamed, hands flying off his throat to assuage the pain from her wing. Ky took a greedy breath and lunged upwards one last time. This attempt worked, rolling her back to their first position. Ky didn’t have the strength to raise himself up anymore. He lay atop her, chest-to-chest, and raised his elbow as high as he could. Her tail, still encircling his hips, strained against his body. Her breath was hot on his cheek. Ky paused with his elbow in the air to take a last look at her face – the hatred in her eyes was still there. Good. He brought his arm down again and again until blood streamed from her nose, her mouth, her forehead, matching the color of her eyes, cutting lines through the dirt covering her face, dripping through her hair, soaking into his uniform, into his skin, into his soul. More and more and more and more and more and more until even he was spent and he collapsed on her, his strikes fallen impotent. His neck also went limp, dropping his face into hers. Dizzy offered no more resistance, but Ky felt her breath, still warm where their mouths rested on each other, and the rise and fall of her chest against his. 

He murmured, exhausted, into her mouth. “I didn’t know you bled red.”

“I was going to offer you a chestnut,” she whispered back, lips moving against his.

“Why?”

“They grow here. I roasted some.”

“But I want to kill you. You want to kill me.”

“That’s when we’re fighting. When we aren’t fighting we can do other things.”

“There is no ‘not fighting’. Not between us.”

“You and me?” Dizzy blinked.

“Humans and Gears.”

“So what are we doing now, then?”

“We’re between fights. That’s all.”

Dizzy puffed out a laugh. “Well, I don’t see why we can’t have more time between fights. Time to talk. Like this.”

“I have nothing to talk about with you.”

“Well, you’ve been talking so far.”

Ky avoided her eyes. “Fine. Why?”

“Why what?” 

“Why do you treat me like this? Why do you keep- keep trying to talk to me?”

“Because you keep responding.”

Ky fell silent. Dizzy’s tail uncurled from around him.

“It’s just something about you,” Dizzy murmured into his cheek, breath brushing over his ear, “something… funny. You’re like other humans, but you’re not. You tried to kill me as soon as you saw me, but you kept talking to me the whole time. You stopped when the fish were in danger. You cared more for saving your friend than killing me. It’s like you’re trying to be something other than what you are. You’re a human trying to be good. Or maybe you’re good trying to be evil.”

“You’re the evil one,” Ky whispered hoarsely. 

“Humans invaded my woods. They tried to kill me as soon as they saw me. And when they failed, they sent you. More humans. Stronger humans. You’re all the same. You’re all evil. But it’s strange – I don’t hate them. I imagine you don’t either; I imagine smaller Gears are beneath your notice. But you: I can hate you. You could- you could see me, but you don’t. You choose not to. You never will. I hate that you’re trying. I hate that I’m trying to help you try.”

“Maybe you don’t, but we remember Justice. Your power… you could destroy us all. We have to stop you. We have to at least fight. I’m sorry.”

“You’re not sorry. I see how you look at me.”

“I’m sorry I have to kill you. If we weren’t…” Ky trailed off, eyes unfocusing, lost in thought.

“Well, we’re not.”

“I know.”

“I don’t mind, really. I enjoy hating you. I like you best when you’re at my throat.”

“I don’t understand you!” Ky almost yelled. Dizzy flinched from the sudden movement. “You seem almost kind, but you wiped out twenty people, good people, without a second thought! You keep trying to talk to me- you keep tricking me. You keep making me think- you just- you’re insane! You’re inhuman!”

Dizzy smiled through her blood-streaked face. “That’s true. But I’m not so hard to understand, I think. I want to be left alone, but I also have this impulse towards the Gears. My people, so to speak. To gather them and protect them. To help them. And lately, I’ve found myself wanting to fight you.”

“That’s all you want? Then why-”

“There’s one other thing I want.”

Ky opened his mouth indignantly but was stopped as Dizzy lurched up and pressed a kiss, feather-light, to the corner of his mouth. He froze, transfixed, staring right into her eyes. Her shining red eyes that now creased at the corners as Dizzy started to giggle. Her laughter rang out in a high peal across the grove, a church bell in Ky’s ear, the sound that as a child he believed was God’s voice manifest, the sound that he felt he could worship itself. Her body shook under him with unrestrained mirth and her mouth opened, revealing her perfect bloody teeth. Ky did the only thing he could do.

He brought his fist down across her jaw with a new spurt of energy. Her head jerked to the side, mouth in the dirt. Still laughing. He pounded fist after fist into the side of her head, screaming into the night, begging for something to understand him. Begging to understand himself. The woman made him feel upside-down, inverted, like an hourglass flipped over and sifting though itself. He beat her into the ground until she bled again and still she kept laughing. Her head tilted back, exposing the gentle curve of her neck and Ky bent down and sunk his teeth into it. He ripped his head back and spat her blood into her eyes and she only laughed harder. He shrieked like a wild animal, resorting to smacking her across the head with open palms, too frantic to even form a fist. She gasped out a sentence between heaving laughs.

“Surprised you – we’re even now.”

She thrust her hips up, throwing him, but Ky locked his legs into hers to defend and they ended up on their sides face-to-face. The adrenaline went out of him with a thump as his shoulder hit the ground, and he rested his head on the cool grass.

“That was fun,” Dizzy said.

Ky just stared at her. 

“Do you want to go back to your place or stay here?” Dizzy brought a hand up to stroke Ky’s cheek. He snapped a bite at it and caught a finger. Dizzy didn’t seem to react. Ky held her finger between his teeth as she rested her hand between them so they were looking at each other again, and she didn’t break eye contact. Neither did he. 

“You could stay here, but your friends might come looking. I don’t know what would happen to them.” Ky bit down on her finger. Dizzy sucked in a short breath of air.

“Or I could take you back. But that might cause other issues. I’m not-” 

“Shut up.” 

Ky let her finger drop from his mouth. He closed his eyes, let his head rest on the soft ground, and unconsciousness came over him swiftly and without remorse.

The world around Ky was black. His eyes were open, he was sure, but when he tried to wave his hand in front of them no movement registered. He walked forward, seemingly suspended above the abyss. Everything was the same as everything else. Only he was clear. So he continued to move forward towards a goal he could not see. Implacable was his faith that every road must have its end and through his effort one day he would reach it. The far wall exists. His ankle no longer twinged as he walked; the dull throb in his jaw had vanished as well. His pain left him from top to bottom, like a snake shedding its skin, and Ky crawled out of the molt and kept walking. He felt something drop off behind him, but nothing was left when he turned around. He faced back to his original direction – there was no forward or backward, not here – and a shape was beside him. A decidedly human shape, and it walked beside him in silence for a time. A strange warmth emanated from it. It made Ky uncomfortable – too hot, too direct. It wasn’t warm like a kind summer afternoon, it was a spotlight beaming on his face making him squint, making him squirm and want to turn away from the shadowed shape. He brought his hand up to shield his face from the heat and the shape turned towards him. Inside its head two red lights shone out. Red eyes, that seemed to create light within them. Wings unfurled from its back. Ky was frozen. He tried to move but his legs were stuck in concrete. The shadow moved towards him and the hellish heat was all over him, blistering his face, peeling and cracking the skin on his outstretched hand, boiling his blood under his skin – and the shadow passed through him.

The wake of the shadow was freezing cold. Before, Ky’s feet were rooted to the floor from some mental response, some block in his deep subconscious. He thought he had rid himself of fear – after Justice he thought nothing could so affect him again. But he was not afraid now. Now he was certain he could move, it was just impossible. The cold was too much. He had no feeling in his legs. He couldn’t lift a foot, couldn’t will the muscles to contract even a little. For a moment he was gripped with the terror that an infant must feel – to be thrust into a new world, full of signs and signals he couldn’t see, he couldn’t even move himself under his own power. Ky was frozen. His breathing was shaky and it came slower and slower each breath. There was a deep shuddering in his chest – a shiver that never took over his body, just fluttered limply in his chest, dying in the womb. He was stopping, slowly, from the outside in. It was a thousand times worse than the heat. He’d spend a day on the sun before another minute here. He couldn’t feel but he knew, instinctively, his toes were blue with frostbite. He couldn’t see them but he knew the fingers right in front of his face had become useless. The heat he’d called hellish before, that was nothing. This was hell. An empty land. Truly empty, lacking natural formations or other people, lacking light, and finally lacking even warmth. This was a land God had forsaken. And that shape from before, the angel of heat, it had passed through him and abandoned him. Like everything else had in this abyss. Ky felt his body begin to shut down. The demon of the battlefield, the lightning-fast commander, had been slowed to a stop. He needed the heat. He missed the heat. He missed that shadow. He missed her. And Ky woke up.

It was still night in the grove. Ky was exposed, still lying on the ground where he had fallen asleep. He lurched up, still blinking the sleep from his eyes, memories of the dream still collected in his mind like dew. He was cold. There was no sign of Dizzy. Slowly, Ky picked himself up. He took a long look around the grove. The deep scars of his lightning were still there in the earth, his and her blood running down the grooves and pooling in the grass. But Ky was looking for something else. He didn’t find it – and if he had found it, he wouldn’t have known what to do with it. But he still would rather have found it, and in that moment of finding something would have been made clear to him. Ky felt like he was on the point of a needle. He was on a precipice, impossibly thin, with a place to fall on every side. If he found her he would have fallen, one way or the other. But she wasn’t there, so Ky did not learn which way. He left the grove with a heavy step. No Gears accosted him on his return to camp. Maybe she… 

“Commander?”

“Commander!” Two soldiers manning the watch-post rushed out to him. 

“Where were you, sir?”

“What happened, sir?” The sharper of the two noticed his bloodstained uniform. Ky brushed both aside.

“I’m sorry, but I have to return to my quarters.” 

The guards let him pass, and Ky limped to his tent. He collapsed into another restless, thankfully dreamless, sleep as the first rays of sun crested the horizon.

For the next week Ky felt like he was holding his breath. He was in and out of the infirmary for his nose, for his mouth, for the lightning burns that he couldn’t fully shield himself from. And he saw her in every shadow and every rustle of leaves. Commander Kiske didn’t get rattled. He was strong and stalwart; he was the face of humanity in the rising storm. But Ky couldn’t help himself. When he heard someone walking up behind him his heart jumped. When he went to sleep he saw her silhouette in the flickering shadows, her footsteps in the soldiers milling around his tent. She haunted him for a week without showing a hint of military action. Command meetings had a strange, almost anticipatory air about them. They hadn’t detected unusual Gear activity since Ky’s second incident. It was like the new command-type Gear simply wasn’t issuing any commands. The Holy Order as a whole was glad of it – their numbers desperately needed reinforcement after the first Gear attack and a prolonged siege favored them in the end. But there was no relief felt in the war tent. That general malaise had settled into a miasma of fear that pervaded every inch of the camp. In the long term the numbers pointed to their advantage. But each number was a living, breathing person who didn’t want to be sacrificed to the god of statistics. Reinforcements would be good. Comforting, even. But they weren’t here, and the Gears were. And even when they came, all they signified was the Holy Order hunkering down for the long haul. There was no end in sight.

Ky called Lyle nearly every day. He said he was getting closer, following Sol’s trail, but he hadn’t tracked the man down yet. It worried Ky. He wasn’t a superstitious man. Religious, faithful, yes, but not superstitious. But he couldn’t stop himself from thinking something had left when he gave his belt to Lyle. It was an emergency, he needed to impress the importance of the mission to Lyle, he didn’t have any more obviously identifiable trinkets like some ancient king’s signet ring, naturally it was the best available choice – certainly he wouldn’t have given up the Thunderseal. But since then he hadn’t seen even a shred of hope in the eyes of the troops. They needed something. Some kind of spark to ignite them.

Ky found his spark in the infirmary. He was there for a check-up on the re-setting of his nose when a hissing whisper came from a bed near his. Ky’s doctor dropped everything and ran to that bedside. Leo’s bedside. Ky followed him.

“Leo! Leo! Can you hear us? Are you awake?”

One blue eye cracked open. “Ky…”

“Leo! Are you alright? How do you feel?”

“Ky… did you kill her?” Ky suddenly broke his eye contact. Leo’s open eye closed. “Ah…”

“I couldn’t. I tried. I really tried.”

“Of course you did… next time we’ll…” Leo tried to lift his hand but dropped it after only a slight twitch, wincing in pain.

“Next time we’ll have her.” Ky affirmed, letting the doctor brush him away to tend to Leo. “Next time.”

The camp seemed buoyed by the news of Leo’s return. Ky saw cheer on the faces of the knights for the first time since the Gear attack. It was a failing of his, that he couldn’t bring that to the people under his command. Leo was boisterous, energetic. He drew people to him and they enjoyed being there. Ky was a solid pillar where Leo was closer to a peer. Ky knew his role; Commander Kiske was the hero. His was the face on the recruitment posters. But sometimes he envied Leo for the fun he seemed to be having. It was something he’d never understood. He was always apart from his fellow soldiers, due to his skill, his youth, his personality, whatever the case there always seemed to be a layer of glass between him and them. Leo was the kind of leader who could break the glass. Ky had made himself the kind of man who couldn’t. It was too late to change himself now. 

As the sun set, Ky passed four sentries sitting around a table with cards in their hands. One perked up as he walked towards his tent.

“Oh, uh, no gambling here, sir! Purely a game of skill!” The over-eager knight saluted. Ky looked at his face through his visor. He sounded like a kid, but Ky couldn’t tell in the dusk. 

“Only says that ‘cause he keeps winning,” another knight groused. The first knight coughed, as if trying to cover up the other.

Ky just nodded at them and continued on. Their spirits were up, which was more important anyway. He lifted the flap of his tent and let out a deep breath. Another day of endless waiting-

“Hello,” someone said from within his tent. 

Ky jumped what felt like ten feet in the air.

“Who’s there?” he called, stepping inside and casting the spell to turn on the lamp.

The soft lamplight and what was left of the sun painted the inside of Ky’s tent a warm orange. The light illuminated a woman sitting on his bed, her waist-length blue hair pooling on his cot. She wore a black shirt that cut off well above her lean stomach; Ky’s eye trailed down her body to her denim shorts, the toned strip of leg between the shorts and her black leggings that slipped into her boots. She was a vision. Ky sucked in a breath.

“I missed you.”

Ky drew his sword. Then something occurred to him, or he just thought better of it, and he returned it to his belt. “How did you get here?”

“I look just like a human like this, don’t I? But it’s a little…” Dizzy narrowed her eyes in concentration, then a golden light spread across her back, slowly coalescing into a tail and two wings. One white-feathered and, to Ky’s horror, one black and fully intact. She’d healed completely. He hadn’t even given her a scar. “That’s better.”

“You could have- why didn’t you just kill us all? However you snuck in here, you could have just-” 

“Hmm. I could have, I suppose. I don’t know.”

“I should kill you.”

Dizzy stood up and walked over to Ky. He didn’t move, rooted in place as she took step after step towards him until her face was inches from his. She was an inch or so taller than him. He hadn’t noticed that before now. 

“You’ve said that before.”

“I-”

“Ah- I realize why I didn’t wipe out your camp here. Why I don’t just fly up into the sky and burn it all down,” her black wing ruffled as she said it, “You all are like, oh, like the fish in the pond. I’d rather you not all die.”

“Why?” Ky could only whisper. She had stolen the voice from him again.

“Needless death just seems wasteful. I’d like to avoid it if I can. Of course,” she waved a hand, “Some death is necessary. It can’t be avoided. But unjust death feels wrong. And I extend that same justice to humans. Testament wouldn’t agree, but then again, they left me to decide such things for us.”

“Testament? You’re working with that monster?”

“I don’t feel that they’re a monster. I did work with them, until some time ago. They left. I don’t know what they pursue now. Solitude, perhaps. Do you know them?”

“I was there when they tried to bring back Justice. I saw it all. You can’t claim to talk about ‘avoiding needless death’ and ally with that- with that perversion!”

Dizzy narrowed her eyes.

“Testament was Commander Undersn’s child.” A smile started to spread across Ky’s face. “They were killed in battle, then their corpse was desecrated and turned into a Gear. They never told you that, did they? It would make them a hypocrite, wouldn’t it, to reveal that Justice’s chief minion and the advocate for the destruction of humanity was once a human themselves.” Deep in the pit of Ky’s stomach it felt good to be mean to her. It felt warm.

Dizzy put a hand on his chest, and Ky could feel the power barely restrained there. She must want to throw him across the room. Perfect. “I’ll thank you not to refer to the individual that raised me that way.” 

Ky leaned forward, into the wall of pressure her hand was giving off. “I told you you’d learn what the Undersn name meant.”

“Then you said you’d kill me.” Dizzy leaned in as well, almost imperceptibly. Only breath separated them.

Ky nodded, never taking his eyes off hers. His throat had suddenly stopped working. The warm feeling in his stomach expanded and now his whole body felt too hot. She was right up against him.

“Do it, if you can.” Her mouth hardly moved to say it. Her voice was nothing more than a whisper. 

Ky stood there stupidly, overheating, stock-still, dumbfounded. Dizzy realized something there, on the precipice of movement. He wouldn’t ever move. Ky needed to be pushed. So Dizzy took the initiative and tackled them both off the point of the needle, the dancing angel falling off the head of the pin. She covered his mouth – dry, chapped, cute – with hers and kissed him like she was drowning.

It took Ky a moment to kiss her back. A long moment where he asked the forgiveness of God and all the saints, where he apologized to Kliff and the former Testament and Sol Badguy and Leo and Lyle and every soldier he’d ever met or had ever died. A moment where he pondered the weight of the sin he was about to commit and prayed for his immortal soul. A moment where he almost convinced himself he was dreaming and none of this was real. And then the moment passed and he was kissing her, kissing like she was air he hadn’t known he needed to be breathing. His hands instinctively came up around her back, finding their way to opposite shoulders so he could hold her tighter, press her into him, twine their very souls around each other so they’d never be apart again. Her wings wrapped around his middle and her tail hitched one of his legs up to her hip, drawing him closer even as her hands ran up and down his face, mapping out every delicate feature that he’d been teased for in his life. But he only felt appreciation from her hands, genuine affection that left him like soft clay, willing to be shaped by her. 

Dizzy led Ky’s pliant body backwards, over to the cot. At first he seemed reluctant, that his new world would attempt to pull away from him like this, but once they reached the cot and collapsed into each other he could see the benefits. With her draped on top of him he felt closer than ever to her, felt every curve and line of her body pressing into his. He could almost black out from the euphoria. Her hands left his face and he was colder by their absence until he felt them again at his hips tugging up on his shirt. She pulled back to take it fully off – Ky sat up to follow her before he realized what she was doing – and as Ky raised up his arms to shrug it off she indulged herself in the contours of his muscled torso. He huffed out a ticklish laugh as she stroked his sides and he saw her eyes crinkle as she laughed in response. Ky dumped his shirt on the ground unfolded and leapt up to capture that laugh in another kiss. His hands roamed up her back, seeking to return the favor with her own top. She felt him pull on it and with another heaven-sent laugh it faded into light and the roots of her wings were bare under his hands and her breasts were flush with his chest. 

Ky took a shuddering breath. This was… this was more than he had even dreamed it could be. The mere sensation of her pressed against him was enough to send him over the edge, the slow grind of her hips against his as she caressed him sent his mind into somewhere past awareness. Soft fingers snaked below the waistband of his pants and brushed the head of his penis, having been straining rock-hard since – well, since he’d first seen her lying on his bed like she lived there. His cock twitched up further into her grip, using muscles Ky hadn’t even known were there.

“Eager boy,” she whispered into his mouth, and Ky realized why what they were doing was a sin. The way he felt – he’d do anything, go anywhere, say anything to feel it again. God had disallowed this because a world with Dizzy in it already had a better candidate for worship than Him. Oh, he hated her. He hated how she wormed her way into his thoughts, into his dreams. He hated how she wouldn’t leave him alone even when she wasn’t there. He hated how he was drawn to her. He hated her with every fiber of his being, every breath in his lungs, because he enjoyed it. He loved to hate her. She gave him the excuse to let go. In hating her Ky could feel alive. He could feel real. He could feel like the person everyone thought he was and in those times more and more frequently where he didn’t feel like a person at all he hated her most. He was Ky Kiske, who wasn’t Dizzy. Because Ky Kiske never felt like this. Only Dizzy could bring him to this point. 

She wrapped a hand around his dick, not taking it out of his pants but just giving a slow pump, almost experimental. That was all it took. Ky rolled his eyes back and clenched his neck and squeezed his toes, every muscle in his body taut to try to prevent himself from slipping for just one second longer but it was too late and he was already cumming. Streaks of semen splattered out of his penis, spilling on her hand, on his pelvis, even some shots made their way up to his stomach. He froze, even as his dick kept throbbing empty convulsions. Dizzy froze too, then slowly – she did everything so damned slowly – took her hand out of his pants. She sat up and looked at the cum dripping down it, considered Ky beneath her, and wiped it on his chest. He flinched when she touched her. 

“Sorry,” they both said at the same time. And that broke the tension. Dizzy shook her head with a warm smile. Ky barked a short laugh. Dizzy leaned down briefly to kiss his nose, no longer caring about the mess between them. When she sat back up some of the cum was smeared on her breasts. Ky didn’t want to admit it was getting him hard again. Dizzy licked the back of her hand, still slightly cum-stained. She brought that hand down to Ky’s mouth and he licked it too. It tasted a little salty but mostly like nothing. Her skin was warm. He kept his mouth on her hand, sitting up as she drew back. Dizzy savored the feeling of his abs flexing under her thighs. She playfully yanked her hand away but Ky sunk his teeth into the flesh behind the index finger and thumb, and the tooth marks stayed as Dizzy took back her hand. She smiled.

“You certainly had your fun,” she said. Ky nodded. “I’d like to get mine too.” Ky nodded. Whatever she meant he would give to her. She could take the Thunderseal and walk away and he would thank her for it. 

Dizzy took Ky’s hand in hers and gently guided it down her side, tucking his fingers beneath the waist of her shorts. 

“Here,” she said, dismissing her wings and rolling onto her back. Ky was pulled on top of her. “Put that sword hand to good use.”

Ky didn’t really know what to do. Her hand was pressing down on his, squeezing it between her soft thighs, running it over a patch of tangled hair and then his fingers were touching something slick. Dizzy noticed his lack of movement and started herself, grinding into his palm, curling her tail around his wrist and pressing him into her. She rocked back and forth under him, piloting his fingers, leaning up into his neck.

“Like that,” she whispered, and took her tail away. Ky dutifully continued, working his hand like a piston the way she had, her writhing coating his hand in her fluids. He was already getting hard again. Should that be embarrassing? The heel of his hand brushed up against some protrusion near the top of the vagina and her eyes shot wide. 

“Again.”

In his further strokes he made sure to hit that spot, just to see her face when he did. Her eyes looking up at him clearly, her mouth dropping agape – but something was missing. It wasn’t quite what he wanted. He wanted something deeper, something he’d only seen once and then only briefly. He wanted her hatred. So he stopped. He kept pumping his fingers in and out but kept his hand frustratingly, tantalizingly still. And he always kept eye contact.

She started to notice. “Go back to that.”

“Not yet,” Ky whispered. He felt a strange urge to give in, to follow her command, but he resisted it. He hadn’t gotten what he wanted yet.

She looked at him blankly. Then her eyes narrowed. “I’m so close, Ky.”

“Not yet.” He kept his face perfectly impassive. 

“Is this some sort of revenge? Why, because you came too quickly?” There wasn’t enough malice in her question for Ky.

“Just a little more.”

“Ky, I’m going to…”

He shook his head.

For a bare instant something flashed in her eyes. That was it. Ky was fully hard. 

“I’ll just do it myself.” Her tailbrushedhim and Ky let himself rub her again. Her back lifted off the cot as she came. He brought his other arm underneath her on reflex, his busy hand dripping with the product of her orgasm. Her tail flexed and stretched out to its full length, pushing at his legs, then fell limply at her side, forgotten. Her head jerked up and bit into the meat of his shoulder, muffling her cries. What Ky could make out among them was one distinct ‘You bastard’. Her pussy clenched around his hand and he could feel the muscles in her body tensing under him and then she bit harder into his shoulder. Ky felt her draw blood and he came again, without being touched. 

They rode it out together, collapsing onto their sides when all was said and done. Ky shrugged his soaked hand up and rubbed it off on her breasts, cracking a slight smile. He licked it clean, like she had. Then they just laid in the afterglow, not looking at anything in particular but always looking at each other. 

Dizzy spoke first. “I have to go.”

“Can’t you- ah, of course you have to. I don’t know why I thought-”

“I’m glad at least you thought it.” Dizzy leaned in and pecked his nose. “But if you want to find me, you know where I am.” She rolled over him to get off the bed and for a moment he thought about holding her in his arms and never letting her go, staying with her all night and damn the consequences, damn whoever found them in the morning and damn whoever would come between them for the rest of their lives. Then she rolled off him and it was over.

“Will you be safe?”

Dizzy’s tail lingered on his thigh as she magicked her clothes back on. She looked back over her shoulder at Ky with a faraway look in her eye. Her tail stroked up his leg, almost of its own volition. She seemed like she was considering the same thing as him. Then she straightened up and looked him in the eye, like she had just remembered he had asked a question. She gave him that perfect smile again and scoffed in answer. Her wandering tail disappeared and she left the tent. 

Ky needed to clean himself, he needed to clean his sheets, he needed to do a hundred things. But when Dizzy left, seemingly any energy he had left with her. Ky just rolled onto his back and closed his eyes, and a deep sleep came over him. So deep that he slept through the normal wake-up call and the incessant blinking of his communicator, which displayed an urgent, top-priority message from Major Lyle.

Ky finally woke with the sun in his eyes. The inside of his tent was brighter than he’d ever seen it. He groaned, rubbing the crust from his eyes and squinting at his clock’s glowing display. 1225 – oh, God. He’d slept in this long, how had he missed the camp rousing, how had no one sent for him – he threw off the blanket and swung out of bed. His foot landed on his discarded shirt. Right. That hadn’t been some insane dream. It was real. Ky almost fell back onto his bed, suddenly lightheaded. He brought a hand up to his shoulder and felt the teeth marks, remembered the overwhelming sensation, and then he did fall back on his bed. Oh, God. He’d had his first time with the destroyer of humanity’s daughter. The Angel of Death had visited his bed. They weren’t even married. Oh, God.

It was mid-afternoon before Ky was able to fully collect himself and eat a meal. He staggered out of the mess, eyes blinking away the sun already well into its descent. It appeared to be business as usual around the camp, soldiers milling around, reinforcing defenses, drilling, waiting for something to break. Then a man with short-cropped blond hair ran up to him with a certain buckle in hand. 

“Sir! I’ve been looking for you for nearly an hour, where have you been all day?”

Ky fumbled the buckle Lyle thrust upon him. It fell in the mud under their feet, but the HOPE inscription faced up, staring at him. Ky bent slowly to pick it up and as his fingers scraped the dirt he noticed it had been smudged and scuffed over Lyle’s journey. His face was indistinctly reflected in the metal. The Ky of a month ago would have gone to polish it immediately. Today’s Ky wasn’t so fast. He had given it up. He had handed his hope to another and confronted the woman without it. It had brought him to a place he was unused to. A dark and hateful place, a hot and stifling place, a place not unlike Hell. And for those in Hell, those damned souls, there was no recourse. There was no hope.

Ky straightened up with his old buckle in his dirty hand. “I apologize, Major, I was… preoccupied. I take it you found him?”

“Oh, ah, yes, sir. I informed you last night but I didn’t get your response. I sent another message this morning but it seems that one also didn’t go through. Yes, he’s here. He’s waiting outside; he won’t come in. Doesn’t feel comfortable, he says.”

“Fine. Take me to him and I can handle it from there. Good work.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Lyle took him to the forest’s edge, just outside of camp. “Down this way, sir.” 

“Yes. Thank you, Major.” Ky crept down the foot-worn trail between sun-dappled branches and small chittering animals. A thin cloud of smoke rose up from behind a tree. That would be him. 

“Sol.”

“Brat.” A large man stepped out from behind the tree, his red jacket and black top barely stretching over his thick-muscled arms and chest. He still wore his Holy Order buckle, the etched FREE still in that rough, sloppy hand and the ROCK YOU carved in his headband the same. He threw his cigarette on the ground and stomped it out.  

“Do you mind?” Something about the man pushed Ky’s buttons like nothing else. He could not keep his mouth shut around him.

“Nah.” Sol kicked the butt in the direction of the camp. “So? Take me to this new Justice, or whatever it is.”

Ky began to explain as they set off. “She’s not Justice. She calls herself Dizzy, says she’s Justice’s daughter.”

“Her daughter, huh…”

“I’m inclined to believe her. She certainly has the power to back up her claim. We’ve seen her exhibiting Command-type Gear abilities. She also claims to want a place for Gears to live peacefully, separate from humans, but-”

Sol spat. “Can’t happen. Not Gears.”

“I’m aware.”

They continued on in silence as the shadows lengthened. 

“Lots of Gears around. I can sense ‘em.”

“They won’t attack us. She knows I’m coming.”

“She knows, eh?”

“It’s happened before. She’s let me through. She said she likes fighting me.”

“Did she.”

Ky kept his head resolutely forward.

“Well, good for you, kid. Glad you can trust her.”

Ky was quiet. 

In the dying sunset they came upon the grove. She was there, naturally, resting by the pond. Sol sniffed the air. Fire sparked off his hand. But before they could break the tree line a crow darted from the forest, then another, then another and another and a swarm of crows circled around the edge of the grove. The mass of birds passed in front of their eyes and a tall and pallid thing emerged, humanoid in build but proportioned like a poor model of clay. Its arms were too long and too thin; its fingers hung by its knees. Its neck and face were sallow and gaunt, and its eyes never seemed to blink. Its stringy black hair fell in front of its face as much as it did behind, and it shambled towards the two on unsteady legs supported by a gnarled stick taller than the being itself. As it advanced a crow came up to perch on its shoulder and a scythe-blade of dripping blood grew out of the stick’s head. The scent of the grave flowed before it, a cloying miasma that made Ky’s eyes sting and water.

“Thought you might be here,” Sol appeared unfazed, “Testament.”

“Sol Badguy…” their voice was surprisingly clear, despite their zombie-like appearance.

Sol didn’t waste time. The fire building in his hand grew, consuming his arm as he launched forward and pulverized Testament’s head into smoking red goop. The rest of their body dissolved into the same substance, and Ky watched, mouth agape, as they reformed behind Sol, swinging their scythe in a reaping motion to cut across his chest. Sol was barely able to jam the Fireseal in the crux where the blade met the handle and shove Testament away, thrusting the blade into the ground and sending a wave of fire out towards them. 

Dizzy looked up from the other side of the grove, squinting at the commotion among the trees.

Testament hissed as the fire splashed over their legs, taking a step back to heal themselves. As they retreated, they shot a hand forward and it seemed an entire forest of creatures descended on Sol. The crow flew from their shoulder to peck at his eyes; a demonic beast rose biting from the ground beneath him; a ghostly woman with a grinning skull for a face swung down with an ethereal scythe of her own. While Sol was distracted they focused on their legs, burned skin smoothing out and its inflamed red hue returning to the deathly pallor of the rest of their body.

Ky summoned his lightning as Sol fended off Testament’s familiars. The Thunderseal crackled with power, far more than Ky was used to. The sword shook in his hand as it overcharged with magic power. Jagged lines of black and red arced up the blade and coalesced into a spitting ball of power at the tip, then launched. The orb of lightning shot wide of Testament as Ky tried to control the recoil of his blast, burning clean through three trees before burying itself smoldering in a fourth.

“Ky? Testament?” Dizzy’s voice came from the edge of the clearing. “Why are you here?” Ky turned to spot her peeking out from behind a tree. Testament turned to face them, neck twisting too far around their shoulders. 

“Dizzy, I-” Ky started.

She caught his eyes. “Who did you bring?” Ky wanted to look away, but the burning in her gaze drew him in. 

“Ah, Dizzy.” Testament’s cool voice floated over. “I wish we could have reunited under better-”

Sol’s burning fist crashed high on Testament’s neck, snapping it with a crack that echoed in the forest. Their head hung limp and their mouth flapped open, soundless. Sol caved their chest in with a kick and sent them sprawling dozens of feet back into the clearing proper. 

“I got this one. You take her,” he grunted, sprinting back after Testament. They had already stood up, re-setting their head and neck with their hands and holding it steady while it healed. They blocked a swipe of the Fireseal with their scythe and the battle continued apace.

Ky slowly walked forward, his eyes still on Dizzy. He didn’t say anything. Just continued to walk towards her, something close to an apology in his eyes, red and black lightning splintering off his sword and singeing the tips of the grass.

“Well, Ky?” She sounded upset. Ky stopped in his tracks. “Aren’t you going to take me?”

“I- I-”

Ky gasped as the wind was knocked out of him. Dizzy had unfurled her wings and shot into him like a cannonball, shoulder into his stomach, her arms pinning his to his sides. He tried to take a deep breath but the air was stolen from his lungs again as Dizzy tore upwards into the sky. At a couple hundred feet she stopped, hovering. She didn’t look upset. She didn’t look anything. Ky wanted her to be mad, to cry, to scream, to lash out. She just looked at him. She looked, Ky remembered with growing unease, like she did when they first met. She looked at him like he was a perfect stranger.

Her wings started to shimmer and warp, dissolving into golden light. Out of that light two humanoid figures grew out of Dizzy’s back where the wings once were, one ice-blue with the visage of a beautiful woman, the other cloaked in black with green skin stretched thin over its skull-like face and eyes that glowed red deep in its sockets. Their arms, the woman’s freezing cold and the skull’s burning hot, closed around his and held them against his body, freeing Dizzy’s hands to cradle his face. 

“What did you do, Ky?” Her eyes were cold, blank.

“Dizzy, I swear, I didn’t mean-”

“I don’t want to know what you meant or not. I want to know what,” her wings gripped him tighter, “you,” the skull-faced figure leaned over her shoulder to leer at him, “did.”

“Dizzy, please-”

“Look me in the eyes.”

“He’s Sol Badguy,” Ky muttered after a long pause.

“That’s Sol-?”

“He killed Justice. We- I sent for him that first night, before I ever met you. It took us this long to track him down. And when he finally showed up I couldn’t just tell him we- I couldn’t tell him about us.”

“I’ve heard of Sol Badguy. And of course Testament would follow him, come crawling out of wherever...” Dizzy trailed off, the rest of the sentence too low for Ky to hear.

“Wait, didn’t you- what’s going on between you and Testament?”

“We had a disagreement. Then they left. But Ky,” her grip became painful and her tail wrapped around his neck, “I’m starting to see their point.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Silly things like ‘what you meant’ don’t matter anymore, Ky. This is what you did. Look!” She raised her voice in a way Ky hadn’t heard before as her tail seemed to grow longer, sliding up the back of his head and wrenching his gaze downward to survey the whole grove. 

It was on fire. Trails of fire spread from Sol’s tracks as he traded blows with Testament, gouts of flame spraying from the Fireseal and scorching tracks across the grass. Small flickering spots of flame lingered at the edges of those scorches, and Ky watched as they started to spread, creeping across the grove inexorably. But worse than those small fires were strange patches of brown dead grass, covered in some sort of bubbling purple liquid. This poison had been scattered all around seemingly randomly; Ky scanned the area desperate to find the source. Maybe once this skirmish was over they could put it right- Sol slugged Testament in the face then launched a blast of fire so powerful it severed Testament’s arm at the shoulder. They grunted as the arm flopped to the ground, right by the edge of the pond. A curious carp came up to nibble at the fingers.

Ky was the only one to take notice of it. Dizzy was forcing his head down, making him look. He could feel her quick breath on the top of his head. Sol was pressing his advantage, driving Testament back into the trunk of the great tree by the pond. Testament was regrowing their arm, trying to fend off Sol’s assault. Ky saw the old arm dissolve into liquid. The purple, bubbling, poisonous liquid that was seeping into the earth of the grove. Ky saw the liquid start to disperse through the pond. He saw the carp flip on its side and float lifelessly to the top a moment later. The grove was dying.

“I did this?” Ky’s question was resigned. It was to himself more than anyone else, an expression of shock, an admittance of guilt. But as quiet as it was, Dizzy heard it.

“Ky, I’m trying very hard for your sake. I told you, I don’t want you all to die. I had thought you would become receptive eventually to recognizing this forest as an independent Gear nation. I even enjoyed my time with you. With that in mind, I am trying very hard to think of any way this could not be considered a declaration of war. I can’t think of anything, though. Can you help me?”

Ky couldn’t respond. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. His head was burning and lava was running though his veins. He took breath after breath faster and faster but there wasn’t enough air in his lungs no matter what he did-

“Ky, you changed.” Dizzy let his head up to look into his downcast eyes. “I don’t know when or why, but you changed. Your body and your mind. You’re different now. Ky, I want to ask you something. Look at me, Ky. I want to ask you something.”

Ky looked at her.

“Do you hate me?”

Ky looked at her. He couldn’t lie anymore. 

And Dizzy dropped him. 

There wasn’t the raw hatred on his face anymore, the naked pure emotion that Dizzy loved to watch twist his features into snarling, biting shapes. It was simple surprise.

On her face, Ky didn’t see anything he recognized. In the fractions of a second before gravity’s hold pulled him away from her he saw her face flatten into something unrecognizable. 

Dizzy watched Ky plummet, hovering lazily. I never liked him anyway , Necro whispered, leaning into her ear.

Ky was falling from several hundred feet in the air and he still could think of nothing other than Dizzy’s face. It wasn’t the kindness that always seemed to rest there or even the flashes of hatred their battles had drawn out of her. It was like he was an insect in her eyes. He was beneath her notice.

That’s not fair, Undine said, He was fun while he lasted.

The forest rushed up to meet Ky. He was going to die. He was certainly going to die and all he could think about was that Dizzy wanted nothing to do with him. The woman had taken over his thoughts for near the past two weeks, who had been at the forefront of each emotion of his, each day spent thinking of her, waiting for her to appear, seeking her out deep in the Gear-infested woods. And now she had killed him and, worse, had cut him out from her as she did. Ky would have preferred to die in a blood-red heat of battle, spitting on her face as she punched through his chest. This… this ignominy was not the death Commander Ky Kiske deserved. It couldn’t-

Ky’s leg shattered against a tree branch. The branch splintered under the force as well, cascading to the ground alongside Ky, whose hip and shoulder met similar fates before he even reached the ground. Inevitably, he did reach the ground, and the rest of him broke. Everything went black. Blessedly, he didn’t feel the pain.

“Ah. The Holy Order’s Commander is here as well.”

“Master, he appears to be-”

“I recognize it. It is of interest, but not pressing. We must still ensure the meeting of the Flame and the Scales stays within acceptable bounds.”

“Understood.”

Some time passes.

“He’s still-”

“It appears so. Not all are so proficient at reconstitution as you, Raven.”

“Well. What a skeleton for the Holy Order’s closet, eh, Master?”

“Indeed. This does bear noting.”

“Shall we take him with us?”

“No, leave him be. But in time I will return to investigate him further.”

“Yes, Master.”

“In time. Now, we must go. I can’t allow us to meet yet, Frederick. There is still too much to be done.”

Ky was at the bottom of the ocean. Beyond the reach of sunlight, down in the Stygian depths where the fathomless pressure crushed him flat, unable to move. He felt like liquid, like the impossible weight of the water squeezed him flat and spread him over the ocean floor like butter. It was cold too, a slow, oppressive cold that sunk into his bones and prevented him from even thinking of moving, as much as the pressure held down his limbs. It was cold and dark and heavy such that Ky could not think of anything but the sensation.

He wasn’t sure how much time he spent like that before something changed. The lightning in his heart ran up his spine and he felt like he had a chance. A chance to breathe, to think, to move. He tightened his index finger and felt it curl towards him. Movement. Something was possible in this abyss. He couldn’t turn his head to look but he could feel his finger scraping across the ground. He tried the middle and it came too, then the ring and the pinky and he tucked his thumb into a fist. The rest of his body was still pinned down but his fingers could move. He could move. He extended his hand and made to clench his fist again, made to flex his wrist and carry the movement up his arm to the rest of his body and maybe right himself-

The water pressed down on him again, and he could not bring his fingers in a second time. He was helpless again. It was all useless. The freezing water leached the strength from his arms and crushed him into the sand and rock beneath. It was all black, above and below. This must be what death would feel like, overwhelming and inevitable. Ky had spent his entire life in fear of death; he’d trained and fought so hard to stay just one step ahead of the shadow over his shoulder. It had its claws in him now. There was nowhere left to go, and so Ky gave up trying. He relaxed his hands, let his head become smothered by the sand. One way or the other, he’d find out now if everything he had devoted his life to had been right or wrong. A soft, golden light passed over him, originating from somewhere above. He couldn’t tell where, but it was warm and pleasant such that he didn’t care to find out. There was still dull sensation in his shoulders and back and his legs and feet but as the light suffused throughout him those feelings went away. It wasn’t that he was warmed by the light, just that he no longer felt the cold. 

Then the light vanished. Like someone flicked a switch. A swift current picked up and dragged Ky bodily along the floor of the sea. Everything started to feel again; everything started to hurt again. His body was scraped raw on jutting rocks, his head dribbled off hard-packed sand. He was tossed to and fro, still limp, still given up. Was he dead? Was this hell? Had he done something wrong? The world was black. He was whirling, and whirling, then with a last sudden jerk he woke up.

The forest was blinding. Light that felt like a noonday sun stabbed Ky’s eyes. He shut them reflexively, only able to make out a shadow standing over him. His hands scrabbled in the dirt around him, but they came back wet and sticky, grasping nothing but twigs and leaves.

“Wake up, kid.” It was Sol’s voice. 

Ky could only groan. He felt his eyes adjusting slowly as the light came in even through his eyelids. 

“You alright now? You can get up?” 

“You’re being awfully nice,” Ky mumbled hoarsely.

“Yeah, well, there’s a couple things I gotta tell you. One thing though. Open your eyes.”

“Too bright. Can’t.”

“Ky, it’s the middle of the night.”

Ky cracked his eyes open, squinting up at the sky to see Sol was right. Tiny pinpricks of light – starlight – scored the sky while the moon hung heavy and low, casting soft light through the leaves. Why was it so bright before? What happened to him?

“What happened to her?”

Sol looked into Ky’s eyes like he was looking for something, then, apparently satisfied, turned away.

“She wasn’t anything like Justice. Don’t drag me out here for some bullshit like this again.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Gears are weapons. Even their hearts. So when I have Testament dead to rights, tell me why she jumps in and tries to take the hit for them. What kind of weapon gives itself up for someone else? There are no Gears that want to die.”

“But she- she…”

“Whatever she is, it ain’t another Justice. And I think you know that. I think you know her pretty well.”

“I don’t-”

“Don’t bullshit me, kid, I watched you regenerate your broken legs for the last five minutes. Your eyes are red.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’re a Gear now.”

Ky’s world started to spin. “No. That’s not- that can’t-”

“I’m doing you a fuckin’ favor here, so slow down. You,” Sol pointed at Ky’s hyperventilating chest, “are a Gear. You probably got Gear cells off of that girl. Did you ingest her blood? Mucus? Other bodily fluids?”

“What?”

“Figure it out, kid. I got a lot going on, I don’t got time to babysit the world’s newest Gear.”

“What- how do you know all this?”

“Come on, you’re smart, you gotta have had your suspicions.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I gotta spell everything out for you? Fine.” Sol began enunciating slowly. “You are a gear. I know this because I am a Gear. You became a Gear because you somehow ingested Dizzy’s cells. Are you following?”

“You’re a Gear? How- how did you fight Justice?”

“Gonna have to wait for my fuckin’ autobiography to come out to get that one. Now you gonna keep asking stupid questions or are you gonna let me help you out?”

Ky nodded silently.

“Good. First thing, you’re a hell of a lot stronger than you used to be. I bet you can feel it squirming in you, like an animal caught in a sack. Take some time to yourself and get out in the woods to just let loose. Fell a couple trees. It’ll feel better in the long run. The more you bottle it up the worse it gets. Second thing your senses are going crazy. You can probably smell deer shit a mile away. Focus hard on one thing and try to block out the rest so, you know, you can hear someone speaking. It takes effort. Third thing, can you feel that tingle in the back of your neck? That’s me. You can detect if Gears are nearby. Mine’s going off right now too – that’s you. Hey, you listening?”

Ky was looking at his hands, staring at the lightning arcing between his fingers, crimson and black sparks lighting up his face.

“Okay, so your magic may change a little too. That’s normal. Well, it’s within expectations. Hey, you know, you could talk this shit over with the girl. You’re both young, relatively new Gears. Help each other out with the shit. I can’t be assed anymore.”

“I don’t think she really wants to hear from me.”

“What, you piss her off somehow? I guess she did leave you laying in a puddle of your own blood. Fine. Do whatever you want. I’m leaving. And don’t think I’ll just come running back if you say Justice’s name again. Good luck, kid. Watch yourself.”

Sol set off into the forest, his figure quickly swallowed by shadow. Ky’s head was still buzzing. 

I can’t be a Gear. I can’t be a Gear. I can’t be a Gear .

Slowly, he gathered his feet under him, knees shaking as if they weren’t used to holding his weight.

I can’t have healed from that fall. I must have been mistaken about the height. I must have been scared and panicking. It must have been shorter than I thought.

His legs continued their unsteady march on the way he knew instinctively was back to camp. 

It’s ridiculous. I’m not a Gear. Sol isn’t a Gear either. A Gear couldn’t be in the Holy Order. He must have been lying.

Sol Badguy didn’t lie. Ky knew that. It wasn’t worth his time. 

I can’t be a Gear. I can’t be a Gear. I can’t be a Gear.

I can’t be a Gear.

I can’t be a Gear.

The road to camp was well-trod. Ky hopped over a root, then stumbled as he had leapt further than he expected. He caught himself and continued on. 

That was normal. I’ve just been though a harrowing fight. I’m adjusting. It’s understandable to misjudge a small jump over a tree root and end up five feet down the road.

I’m still not a Gear.

Ky was getting closer to camp. He could hear voices if he concentrated. He couldn’t see it yet, but he could hear soldiers whispering, equipment clanking, clothes rustling, surely he was just upon them.

Two minutes of walking later he could see the flickering light of the lanterns and fires of the Holy Order’s camp. Another two minutes after that he reached the gate.

“Commander Kiske, is that you?”

No need to sneak in, then.

“Bernard, tell command he’s back.” One of the watch saluted, then ran off into the camp.

“I see I’m expected.” Ky said in what he hoped was a cool tone and not an exhausted pant.

“Yes, sir,” the remaining soldier saluted, “we were informed by the rest of command to detain you if you showed up.”

“Detain.” The word swirled through Ky’s mind. How could they know? Stop, there was nothing to know! He wasn’t a Gear! What did they have against him?

“Ah, Commander,” the soldier was backing away slowly. Ky realized he had taken a step forward and conjured a spark into his clenched fist.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Ky raised his hands, showing his palms to the knight, whose sword hand was shaking. “I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s nothing bad, sir! I promise! I heard them talking about it, it sounded like new orders, they told everyone to keep an eye out because they couldn’t find you! Sir!”

“For the love of God, can I finish a sentence without getting interrupted today?” Ky grumbled. The soldier blanched and stumbled another few steps back. 

Ky let out a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’ll just wait here.”

Soon enough the other soldier – Bernard – returned, with a couple figures in tow. Ky recognized the logistics chief’s shorter stature and halting gait, but the other he didn’t expect.

“Leo?” A true smile lit up Ky’s face. Finally, for the first time in weeks, a piece of good news. “You’re well enough to walk around – that’s incredible!” 

Ky went to shake Leo’s hand, or perhaps clap his shoulder in that jovial way Leo was wont to do, but he noticed some slight aversion. Leo’s hesitation to extend a hand, or a slight twisting away of his shoulder, or that the smile on his face didn’t quite seem to reach all the way to his eyes.

“Is something wrong?”

“Why don’t you tell us, Commander?” the Captain asked.

“Tell you what?”

“Ky,” Leo started, “you can’t keep doing this.”

“I have to. I’m the Commander of this unit. It’s my duty. It’s my responsibility.”

“Well, you can’t keep disappearing and coming back all bloodied in the middle of the night,” the Captain interjected. “You need to inform us. We should at least be sending a scout team with you to infiltrate and report. This is an army, Commander. No matter your rank, no matter how strong you are, you can’t take matters into your own hands.”

“I’m not some vigilante, Captain. I’m giving the rest of command reports. I understand your concern but I’m giving you all I have.”

“That’s exactly it. You’re giving us all you have. Imagine what a fully equipped and coordinated scout team could do on top of that. Enemy forces, formations, numbers, command structure, supply lines, I mean, you’re not even letting anyone even know when you’re gone!”

“Eric…” Ky brought a hand to his face.

“You’ve been so secretive about the whole thing it’s led some to believe you’re hiding something. That your reports aren’t giving us the full story.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Ky was surprised by how easily the lie came to his mouth.

“I’m trying my best, Ky. We’re just working with what we have. It’s all moot anyway. We’ve got new orders.”

“Well, what are they? And from who? Who’s got the authority-”

“Straight from the Wartime Administration Bureau.”

Ky fell silent.

“They want us to launch an invasion within the week.”

“That’s insane!” Ky exploded. “We’ve been digging in for weeks. We don’t have the manpower or the infrastructure for an offensive.”

“It’s what they said.”

“This is real? These aren’t false orders? Some kind of sabotage?”

“We confirmed it directly from them.”

“God Almighty. And they’ve given some sort of reasoning for telling us all to kill ourselves?”

“They say the threat that Gear poses is immediate and endangers the world. It must be stopped as soon as possible by any means.”

“That’s-” That’s not true, Ky was going to say. Wasn’t it? Dizzy wouldn’t do that. Would she? He felt a thrumming in his chest as he realized he didn’t know. Perhaps he never did.

“And because of your recent… let’s say erratic behavior, we are temporarily relieving you from duty. Colonel Whitefang will lead the mission.”

A knife started to twist in Ky’s chest.

“Relieving him from duty?” Leo finally spoke up.

“It’s our only option.”

“I was under the impression, Captain, that while I led the mission Ky would remain under my command, in an advisory role at the very least.” Leo said. “I want him with me.”

“No one said that. I’m sorry you got the wrong impression, Colonel.”

“I’m… this…” 

“I’m sorry, Ky. To be honest, we just can’t trust you. And look at yourself, man. Can you even trust yourself?”

That was it, wasn’t it. 

Ky looked at Leo. “Are you sure you’re healed?”

“Well enough to fight.”

“Very well, then. I place my hope in you.” Ky left for his tent, mind a blur.

“He took that remarkably well,” the Captain said.

“He likes us,” Leo said. “Though I am worried about him.”

“Do you think he’ll do something?”

“I trust he’ll make the right decision.”

Ky’s tent felt cavernous, like the earth beneath his feet was about to collapse into a gaping sinkhole and bury him. Before the vertigo swallowed him completely he took a seat on his cot, mind swirling. He was a Gear. He wasn’t a Gear. Sol was a Gear. He was being relieved of command. The Holy Order was marching on Dizzy. Dizzy didn’t want him anymore. Each of these thoughts dragged him further and further into the muck. He felt like he was choking on his own breath. The world was spinning around him. His head was pounding. He could hear everything. The rustling of his tent in the wind. A leaf being crunched underfoot outside. Someone breathing as they walked past. What did Sol say? His chair creaked as he shifted his weight imperceptibly. He wanted to throw up. His clothes were scratching his skin. When did they get so rough? A shadow jumped in front of him – no, just an insect crawling on the wall. Focus on one thing and drown everything else out. The ticking of his clock. Tick, tock. Tick, tock. His heartbeat was screaming in his head. Tick, tock. Time stretched like rubber between the seconds. Tick. His hands were shaking. Tock. Why didn’t he feel tired? He wasn’t hungry either. Even that near-constant hunger that had lived with him since his youth had faded away. Dizzy had said he’d changed. Had he really changed so much? If Sol and Dizzy could tell, who else could? Tick. Is that why he’d been relieved? Oh, “relieved of command”, what a joke. A transparent excuse to get rid of him. They’re scared of you. They can sense the new power you wield and they want to get rid of you before you realize they can no longer control you. Tock. Use your power. Destroy them all. 

Ky found himself at the edge of his tent without remembering getting up. His hands, clenched into fists, were curled around the flap. He looked at them in shock, reeling back, blinking wildly. There was something in his head. Something clawing, burning, screaming to get out. It was too much to ignore. It couldn’t be – but Sol had mentioned something like this too. 

Whenever Ky gave any thought to what Sol had said, he felt a great pit open in the center of his body and he felt like he was falling into himself. It couldn’t be true, obviously it wasn’t true. Not him. Certainly not him. But things kept happening and what Sol said kept making infuriating sense. Could he be a Gear? The question loomed over him like a mountain; he could tell a landslide was building on the slope, ready to explode. Something was about to break. The air in his tent became uncomfortably hot. Sparks jumped off his fists. Pressure built under his skin. He tensed his shoulders, flexing his back and chest to try to relieve it. His whole body shook. The pressure mounted. That slinking voice returned, creeping up the back of his neck. Kill them. Kill them. Get out of here. Go.

Go!

Ky tore out of his tent into a largely empty camp. Everyone except the night watch had retired to sleep. His flight continued unabated, faster than he’d ever run before. He reached the edge of camp where it met the forest, out of the sight of the watchtowers, under the cover of the trees. 

In the woods Ky moved unerringly fast. None of the careful maneuvering around roots and branches and down an undiscovered trail, now he tore sure-footed and straight as an arrow, like there was some radar in his mind pointing to his destination. Lumbering Gears wandered around his path, not taking any notice of him as they passed. Some larger ones grunted and made to push him off like he was a small animal, but Ky was gone too fast to care. He was on a mission.

Ky burst into the grove, not even out of breath. Dizzy was there, of course, milling around a patch of dead grass. The place was still wrecked. The grass was spotted in brown, the pool gave off an acrid smell, the trees had dropped their leaves. 

“What did you do to me?”

“You again.”

Ky took a step forward. “What did you do to me?”

“I tried to kill you. I suppose I failed.”

“No, you did something else. You turned me into- into this thing! You made me a Gear!” It felt good to say. It felt right. True.

“Is that so?” Dizzy still hadn’t turned to face him. 

Ky strode across the dirt, grabbing her shoulder to spin her around. “You-” 

Dizzy didn’t budge, even as he pulled with all his might. She took his hand and lifted it off her effortlessly. 

“Leave me.”

“You made me this! You said I changed – you changed me! My whole life, it feels- it feels upside down. I don’t have anything left. I have nothing! You took everything from me!”

Dizzy turned her head and saw Ky’s face, wracked with pain, twisted in rage, and deep in his eyes the glimmer of hatred she had missed. And yet seeing it again, she felt no sense of happiness. Not even relief. 

“You did too.” Dizzy gestured to the dying grove. Her face was blank.

Ky stopped. 

“If you’ve come to kill me, go ahead. Take my head to your masters.”

“No,” Ky muttered. “I haven’t. But the others are coming. Some time soon they’ll come for you.”

“Perhaps I will let them, then.”

“Why?”

“Why? Why what?”

“Why do you want to die? You’re a Gear. You’re a weapon. Made to kill. Why would you want to die?”

“I am a Gear. You are too, you said? I can sense it.”

Ky didn’t respond.

“I don’t want to die. But neither do I want to live. Not in this world. Not in this grove. I don’t know what I was made for. Perhaps you’re right, and I am made to kill. I don’t believe I’m beholden to that purpose. Do you?”

“Well-”

“You’re a Gear now. Are you made to kill?”

“That’s different.”

“Kill me if you’ve come to do that. But stop wasting my time.”

“You have to help me. Things are happening to me I don’t understand. I’m lost. You’re the only one who can help me.”

“So you insult me with one side of your mouth and beg for my help with the other?”

Ky swallowed. “What I came to do is ask for your help. I don’t expect it to be free, though. There must be something you want. Before this,” he swept his hand across the ruined grove, “you must have wanted something. I’ll help you get it.”

“Before this,” Dizzy whirled around to face him standing, “I wanted a territory for Gears. And I thought I had found the man who could give it to me. But he brought this instead. And now nothing is left.”

“I can make that for you. I can help you get there.”

“You would betray humanity?”

“Humanity wants nothing to do with me anymore, my lady.” Ky dropped to one knee, taking her hand in both of his. “I hereby pledge my undying fealty to you, Dizzy, Queen of Gears. Your causes shall be mine. My life shall be yours. This I vow, until my dying breath, upon my honor as a knight.”

Dizzy lifted her hand from his and kicked him in his supplicant, pleading face. Ky sprawled onto his back.

“You think that’s it?” She loomed over Ky, pressing her foot down on his chest. “You think you can just say a few words and I’ll bend over for you? You think if humanity leaves you behind you can just jump ship to my side? After what you’ve done?”

Ky stayed silent. Dizzy pushed her foot down harder.

“Look at me! Look around, Ky. What makes you think you have any right to ask me anything?”

“I don’t,” Ky whispered.

Dizzy stomped down and Ky felt something crack. The pain was immediate, overwhelming. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t find the air.

Dizzy sat down on his stomach, straddling his sides. She pressed a hand into his broken sternum, feeling his new biology try to knit it back together. 

“I have something I want, Ky. Help me get it.”

“Anything- anything,” Ky choked out. He hadn’t been aware enough to notice before, but the healing hurt as much as the injury. He could feel Dizzy’s hand on his shattered breast, could feel the parts of his body trying to reconstitute and it hurt just as much as when they had broken. He felt something click together and with a twitch of her hand Dizzy broke it again. He gasped. “Anything for you.”

“I want you to kill yourself.”

Now Dizzy’s face was the one contorted in hatred. Her eyes were the ones flashing, a scornful shade of red Ky had only ever seen glaring out from under a metal brow. He felt no satisfaction either. Just base fear, and a small sense of relief. It was what he had wanted her to say.

“Let me stand.” 

Dizzy got off him slowly but not before pressing sharply into his sternum one last time. Ky rose with great strain, grasping his chest as it restored itself. He stumbled over to a patch of dead grass, stabbing the Thunderseal into it to brace himself. Slowly, labored, he stood on his own, leaving the sword in the dirt. Ky unbuckled his belt, running his fingers over the inscription, contemplative. Then he draped it over the Thunderseal and turned around to face Dizzy. She couldn’t read the look on his face. 

With painstaking precision, Ky undressed. He gathered his Holy Order uniform in his hands and folded it to exact military standard. He laid it on the poisoned ground and gathered his strength in his core, channeled it to his hands, and launched a spear of lightning into the pile of clothes.

The scraps that weren’t incinerated from the blast quickly caught fire and turned to ash. He gestured at what was left to Dizzy and spoke with a measured voice, uncaring of his nakedness. 

“I am no longer a part of the Holy Order. I give up my sword and my uniform, and give myself entirely to you.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I won’t do that. It would be needless.”

“I wish for revenge on the human that tore apart the grove. Grant it to me.”

“He no longer exists. I killed him.”

“Ky,” Dizzy warned.

“Do you still feel like you want to die? If I attacked you, would you still not defend yourself?”

“What?”

“Hate me. Hate me for the rest of your life. Kill me right now. Just keep yourself alive.”

“Why? What- why do you care?”

“You gave me something I had never had before. I didn’t realize until now. You gave me something to look forward to. You gave me a future beyond duty. Yes, it’s selfish. But I want you to continue. I want to continue with you. You’re my grove. I don’t want to die, and I don’t want you to die either. What can I do?”

“Ky.”

“What can I do to convince you?”

“If you’ll allow me to do this, I will give you a chance. But if I do it, you will be mine entirely. I warn you, in case you would rather die.”

“I have been yours for a long time now. I’ll do it. Anything.”

Dizzy raised a finger to her neck and the fingernail extended, glistening sharp and red. She drew it slowly, a shallow cut trailing in its wake. Blood began to swell.

“Drink, Ky.”

He covered the cut with his lips and sucked greedily. His blood felt on fire as hers entered his body. 

“Surrender to it. I will be here.”

Ky could think of nothing but hot blood in his mouth and her soft skin under his lips. He sucked and sucked, more and more, gnawing at the wound, trying to deepen it and pour more blood into his mouth. Dizzy could feel her skin bruising and an involuntary little moan escaped her mouth. Her arms wrapped around Ky’s back, but instead of warm skin they found hard scales. Ky was changing.

A black mass of armor was spreading across Ky’s body. Starting at his mouth, where her blood still spilled over his lips, a dark exoskeleton grew from his skin. It fit over his body in segmented chunks, like a knight’s plate. Dizzy hugged him closer as the armor closed over his face. 

“You’re doing well.” she whispered.

The eyes under the armor began to glow red. The mouth pulled away from Dizzy’s neck and howled into the night, triumphant.

Before Dizzy stood a humanoid shape, covered head to toe in black chitinous armor. It was scored with Lichtenberg-figure rivulets all over, the shapes of true storm-lightning. Through those grooves red sparks gathered and coalesced into full bolts of electricity, racing across his body at light-speed. The fingers on the gauntlets came to sharp claws, decorative spikes ran down the spine of the backplate and over the newly formed lizard-like tail, the cuirass was emblazoned with a Gear mark. One that appeared derivative of hers. She smiled.

“Down, boy.” Dizzy commanded.

The armor squatted.

“Good. Now come.”

The armor raised up and approached her. 

“Excellent. Turn.”

The armor spun in a circle.

“Good boy. You deserve a treat. Now go.”

The armor sunk into Ky’s skin and he came back to the world, flushed and panting. 

“What the hell was that?”

“It was the full extent of your power, and you handled it quite well for your first time.” Dizzy leaned in and pecked Ky on the lips. 

“Huh?” Ky pressed a finger to his mouth in amazement, eyes wide.

“That was for being such a good boy. So cute.” Dizzy said. “I’ll give you more control as you develop. Now, you mentioned an attack on us imminently?”

“Yes.”

“I want you to repel it. Use whatever means you find necessary. You may kill, if you wish. I won’t stop you. Just do as you see fit.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Now, come.”

Ky jerked forward before he understood he was moving. As soon as he was under his own power, he took another step towards her, massaging the healing cut on her neck.

“I’m sorry I did this to you.”

“You seemed to enjoy it.”

“I’m sorry for everything. For the grove, for this, for ever making you feel bad.”

“Thank you.”

“This- this feels right. I was lost before you. Before this. Now I’m found. You found me.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Ky looked up at the sky slowly softening into dawn. It was exhilarating, to throw one’s life away. It was breathtaking. This must be how it felt to be close to God. He was, at that. His God stood before him, smiling like the nascent sun, reaching out to muss his hair. He’d do it all again, he knew in that moment. A hundred times. A thousand times. All the pain and heartbreak and death, and there would certainly be more of that to come. But just for this moment now he’d do it again. The face of God smiled at him, and Ky leaned in to kiss it.

There is a forest in Europe that none dare enter, called the Forest of Demons. Its trees grow thick and deep, and no path survives in it for long. In the wood monsters walk and sunlight dies, swallowed by gnarled trees and twisting roots. Red eyes glint in the darkness within but nary a sound escapes, not even the twitter of birds or buzzing of insects. Whispered tales tell of a witch-woman who lives there, beautiful and terrible, the Angel of Death. And behind her – some say a dog-like servant beast, some a handsome and kingly man – her imposing Black Knight. The forest swallows all tales, true and false alike, in its Stygian depths. But not every inch of the forest echoes that mythical abyss. There is one place where light still falls, a clearing ravaged by fire and poison, with a pool of water stained forever black and a once-great tree now limp and dead, rotten at its core. Sunsets still cast this grove in color, though the vibrant yellows and oranges only throw into relief its lifelessness. In these sunsets, the shadows of the grove grow long, yet one thing still holds fast to the light, never succumbing to the night until the sun has fallen below the horizon for good. The last embers of sunlight catch in a sword embedded in the sickly earth and a buckle that hangs from it, and even in this dying light the inscription on it can be read. HOPE.