2.28.41 (continued)

She wasn’t from around here, that armor. It looked ancient, defeated, but serviceable depending on where you were from. Not all civilizations out there had been touched by the Systems Alliance, and I suspected her people were one of them. It shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t matter.

Something else was there, not around her, within her. Beneath the composure, the stillness, the emotionless lock of those emerald eyes on mine. A single faint scream. Long, agonizing, drawn out. A woman’s crying plea, or a banshee’s call. I knew that sound. I knew it the way you know a smell from a place you’ve tried to forget. Cold. Familiar in a way I didn’t want it to be. In a way that made me want to step forward and step back at the same time.

It couldn’t be the same thing. It wasn’t possible. Too much was happening too fast and I needed to stop—I needed to not be thinking about this right now.

As she came within striking range, she lunged at me with a powerful upwards swing of her worn sword. I stopped and brought my blade in defense, blocking her attack. She had more force behind the blow than I had anticipated, but I knew this fight was going to be over quickly. With the block, I jumped backward, knelt down, then stepped forward and started a thrust that should have ended the encounter... But before I could land the fatal stroke, her weight shifted, I felt her hand close around my wrist and pull me to my side. The grip, her claws dug painfully into my arm as she held me there for a second. Taking advantage of the hold on my sword being weakened, she smashed her fist against my sword hand, knocked the blade out of my grasp and onto the steel floor below. Her stature alone outclassed mine, her strength stronger, and she clearly wasn’t as slow as her size would suggest. Still holding my wrist in a death grip, she quickly stepped back, pivoting, and flung me away, but I was able to catch myself and land on my feet a bit away from her. I turned around with nothing but empty hands.

My mind raced. Hardly anyone had ever disarmed me with pure martial skill. Advanced tech, Templar gifts, sure, but this was different. Raw, practiced, and faster than I could process. And though I'd used more advanced technology or harnessed my other abilities to defeat teams of armed soldiers in times past, it had been months since I had been here and had never needed them since.

She abruptly threw the sword aside as I faced her. It clanged against the metal floor and reverberated around the room. She took a step back, shifting slightly into it with one leg and her eyes fixed on me. Her calm composed presence transformed into a snarling scowl laced with an underlying eagerness that matched her large feline deportment that was all too familiar... Bloodtiger. Leaning forward ever so slightly, she reached back to her side, hooking her arm like she was about to deliver a strong underhand pitch.

An ancient spark ignited deep within me, setting my gut ablaze. This wasn’t the harmless pirate or rogue mercenary I’d pegged her for. Her arm drew back, and violet motes of power flickered into existence in the stale cargo-hold air, swirling into a pulsing orb that flared between her fingers.

“Don’t even,” I snarled, feet planting wide. My red-and-white fur bristled, old energies I’d locked away for months clamoring at the edges of my mind. I’d sworn off my own gifts—too dangerous, too likely to unleash the darker side I’d spent all my time here on Tier burying. But necessity calls. This was about to become life or death. In all my years with the Systems Alliance—and under Sun Jin’s ruthless puppeteering—I’d only sparred with a few of our kind. She was a Templar. Tonight, I was face to face with my equal.

Our eyes met: hers a razor-bright emerald blade, daring me to guess her secrets. What arcane paths had she walked? What cosmic currents did she command to mete out her brand of justice? Show me now.

She snarled back, then underhand-pitched the crackling violet sphere across the floor. It shrieked like a wounded beast, gouging a trench through steel plating, an inferno raging in its wake. My muscles recoiled with reflexive dread—then snapped into action. In one fluid motion I swept my sword arm overhead, yanked the sheathed katana from across my back, and unleashed a ferocious downward arc. The blade met the plasma-like orb with a high-pitched crack, bisecting it in a thunderous blast that tore a jagged hole in the bulkhead, spewing searing energy across the deck like molten wrath.

I inhaled the metallic tang of scorched steel and readjusted my sight. I raised the katana into a classic ready stance, blade tip resting in the air right between us. Her lips curled in an amused, almost reverent smile—still in complete control, eager for the next strike.

“You,” she said. First words. “How did you do that?”

“Just like you,” I answered quietly.

“Just like you.” She let the words settle in the air between us, tasting them, then shivered—a single, involuntary tremor that moved through her like a current.

I kept my eyes on her. Something was happening.

“I can feel it. What is this?” Her eyelids dropped shut. Her arms hung loose at her sides. She tilted her chin up slowly, tendons pulling taut in her throat, and let out a low groan that seemed to come from somewhere deep and involuntary.

Then I felt it—a ripple moving through me, outward from my sternum, like the rings that spread from a stone breaking the surface of still water. Faint. Rhythmic. Hers. I stiffened. This was not something done to me by a blade or a fist. This reached inside, past muscle and bone, past anything I had a word for. I had never felt anything like it.

“There is something inside of you.” Her voice dropped to just above a whisper. “The darkness. From the other place.” A slow exhale through parted lips. “It’s so strong in you. It has taken hold—and yet you are still pushing back against it.” Her eyes opened and found mine, and the look in them was not quite hunger, not quite reverence, but something uncomfortably close to both. “You’re right. Just like me.” She leaned forward a fraction and pressed her fist against her chest, over her heart, and the groan she let out was raw and unguarded. “But you’re different. You’re not just another one of his pawns.”

My grip tightened. What did she know? How much?