Cyphira Quinn. Jovday, Aquarius 14, 2354. 2:04 AM. Netherlands, Amsterdam (De Wallen).

Frigid rain pelted Amsterdam, and the neon lights of brothels painted the wet streets of De Wallen with their lurid glow. Forsythe’s venture stood on the roof of the hotel opposite of Het Rode Bos—one of the city’s premier sex clubs and houses of ill repute—watching and waiting. They wore invisibility cloaks over asfalis clothing. But they might as well be useless in the damn rain. Fortunately, the hotel was tall enough that nobody on the streets below had taken notice of their presence.

Cyphira blew into her harmonica, toying with the instrument rather than playing a specific song. She couldn’t help but glance at Forsythe with a wicked grin, knowing every breath of her repetitive little tune grated his nerves. But bothering Forsythe was the best way Cyphira could think of to calm herself down.

After a couple seconds, she managed to break him:

“Would it kill you to learn an actual song, or does your opus delight in abusing the instrument?”

“Personal preference,” Cyphira said lightly, pocketing the harmonica. 

She had only recently discovered the final refinement of her opus—the curious hobby that helped restore her wyrd’s strength—after years of experimenting with flutes, ocarinas, and other small wind instruments. She didn’t particularly enjoy the sound of the harmonica herself but delighted in driving her mentor mad with it.

Kuro shot his partners an irritated look.

“Can you two pay attention? I think our guest of honor just arrived.”

A limousine had pulled to the front of the sex club, and the bouncer opened the passenger door for a sturdy-looking, brown-haired Caucasian man in his mid-forties.

“Are you sure?” Forsythe asked.

Kuro Kiyami was the ninth son of a prominent Japanese amagiate family. He had inherited a wholly unique, hereditary gift known as the Kage no Nomi, or “Shadow Chisel,” which imparted the sorcerous talent to conjure corporeal familiars from shadows. And as a bizarre fringe benefit, his white irises could pierce total darkness and naturally detect glamour magic or illusions. The only trade off was that his eyes saw the world in grayscale. My akrasia may make me one in a million or so, but he’s one of a kind. Just like Forsythe.

“This isn’t the best angle,” Kuro said. “But he’s not glamoured and he fits Visser’s latest description. Could be another body double.”

“I suppose that will have to suffice,” Forsythe said.

Their target, the akrasiac known as Danbram Visser, was the most infamous supernatural trafficker in the world. He traded in drugs, people, and weaponry, but was best known for his brothels where wealthy and influential Johns traded favors—and body fluids—with high powered fae. He’s also a slippery son of a bitch. In addition to his akratic ability to phase into the Faed, he staffed his establishments with surgically altered body doubles and used glamour magic to evade capture. The Amagium had arrested six of his lookalikes over the past decade, but Visser always managed to escape.

“Recall the Amsterdam KF may be compromised,” Forsythe said. “If it is, we shall run into turncoats. Be prepared to face hostile magic.”

“How sure are we about our informant? Will they be suspicious of new regulars?” Kuro asked.

“Not if we sell our cover story,” Cyphira said with a wink.

Kuro scoffed and looked away, but Cyphira saw him blush slightly which she found adorable. They were posing as an adventurous young couple, looking to take in all the thrills Amsterdam had to offer. And I can think of worse partners for the act. Kuro was handsome, striking white eyes sharply contrasting against his black hair. He was also laconic, stiff, and business-like, which she found even cuter.

“Aw, you’re gonna hurt my feelings,” she teased.

“Enough. Let’s prepare a braid. Communication, barriers, and reflexes.”

Of all the techniques Cyphira had mastered under Forsythe’s tutelage, spell braids were one of the most difficult, because they required a deep level of cooperation. Synchronizing three or more enhancement contracts by casting them simultaneously would allow the spells to last longer, and be more durable. In some cases, the spells could synergize and adopt new properties altogether.

Forsythe started with the reflex contract since it was one of his specialties. Cyphira trailed by about a second with the barrier, and Kuro brought up the rear with a telepathic link. The most unsteady member of a trinity generally cast the spell in the middle, though Forsythe often forced her to take the lead on low-risk assignments. It was a standard technique for members of the CIC, but most normal ventures were unaware of the technique. Cyphira suspected that the CIC purposefully withheld the principles involved to have an ace up their sleeve over normal peacekeepers. We’re nothing if not paranoid of our own people.

As Cyphira negotiated with her animus, she felt the spells winding around each other in sequence. The world seemed to slow down to quarter tempo, then she felt her wyrd grow sturdier, and finally a door opened in her head between her and her partners.

“Test, test?” she deliberately thought at them.

Kuro nodded. Forsythe nodded in turn and thought back:

“Get to work.”

— | —

They shed their cloaks on the roof, descended the hotel and crossed the street to Het Rode Bos. Cyphira took Kuro’s arm and thought at him:

“Stop scowling. You look like a damn cop.”

He forced a chilly smile.

“Don’t push me, ‘dear.’”

They approached the entrance to the club where two hulking bouncers waited. One bobbed his head at them.

“Welcome to Het Rode Bos. Are you interested in the club, or seeking private services?”

‘Private services’ referred to fairly pedestrian human prostitution, while the club offered liquor against a backdrop of bombastic, exhibitionist titillation. But clients who secured referrals from regulars were permitted to make reservations at the club’s secret VIP section, which boasted faen delights.

“We have a reservation,” Kuro said. “Morimoto.”

In the preceding weeks, another CIC operative had attended the club regularly, finally shadowing a john who frequented the club’s lower levels. The john was a wealthy businessman and a prominent public figure in the Netherlands. Given his reputation, it didn’t take much pressure for him to crack under the anonymous operative’s ultimatum: provide a referral to the VIP section or wake up to a headline about his faen sexual escapades.

The bouncer checked an incanter-tablet and nodded, and his partner pulled back the velvet rope to admit them. Cyphira felt a surge of relief, even though she had not been consciously nervous. If they turned us away, gods know when we’d get another shot at Visser.

It was the culmination of nearly two years of work, with other assignments like curse-breaking, espionage, and confidential grade monster hunting wedged between. But Cyphira had a personal stake in catching Visser. He literally breeds slaves into existence.

Fae could not be bribed with any normal mortal assets, and they generally found currency to be crass or useless. Visser’s faen whores agreed to prostitute themselves in exchange for the children sired from their johns. The children would be raised in the Faed, isolated from humanity. Most of them were indoctrinated to blindly serve the courts. Many lost their minds, or had their bodies warped by faen magic. It makes my upbringing seem coddled by comparison.

Inside the club’s opulent-yet-dimly-lit reception area, an attractive woman in her mid-twenties greeted them, bowing respectfully.

“Mr. and Mrs. Morimoto? My name is Lelie. I will be your attendant for the evening. Would you care for some refreshment before beginning your journey?”

Wow. ‘Our Journey?’ This has to be the most pretentious flophouse on the planet.

“No, thank you,” Kuro said. “We’re quite eager to get started.”

“Actually, could you direct me to a restroom?” Cyphira asked.

The woman nodded and gestured to a hallway to the right, leading past reception. Cyphira bobbed her head in thanks. She hastily entered the bathroom and locked herself in a stall.

She reached to a matched pair of metaphysic anima in her licenses with her wyrd, and immediately began weaving a spell. Visser might just be passing through. Have to be fast. Thanks to Inherent resonance, Akrasiacs could generally phase through the Veil more easily in places they owned. Cyphira cast as quickly as she could, but the spell was tricky, requiring her to merge the akratic qualities of her wyrd with the spirits fueling the spell. The net effect was a sort of metaphysical cage that would reinforce the Veil in the club to prevent anyone from exiting into the Faed.

After fifteen seconds of meticulous gestures, whispered arcane syllables, and visualization, the spell was complete. Cyphira held her breath for a beat, worried that the spell may have tripped a surveillance ward. But what’s done is done. No use waiting. She flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and stepped back into the lobby.

She half-expected to walk into a gun fight, but Kuro was chatting pleasantly with their guide.

Lelie bowed at Cyphira again and led them down a long hallway appointed in black wood, barely lit by dim filament bulbs. A rib-rattling bass pounded like the heart of a colossal beast, growing louder with every step. Urdic emanators pulsed with sensations of lust, desire, and liberation from inhibition. The receptionist opened a heavy pair of doors upholstered in red leather, and they were greeted by the full blast of the club.

The speakers blasted an oddly compelling mix of industrial rock and dubstep throughout the cavernous room. Emanators matched the beat, switching their projections from “Want,” and “Need,” in a hard-hitting binary.

A circular stage dominated the center of the room, illuminated from bellow by a brilliant shaft of light. It was one of the only sources of light in the club. On it, a chiseled blond aggressively pounded a busty redhead, doggy-style, with his left hand pulling her hair and the index finger of his right hooked between her teeth. Wow. I’m not exactly a shy violet, but even for me, that’s a touch much. Dotted in a circle around the sex altar, there were six smaller stages, built directly onto table tops, where pole-dancers twirled in synchrony. They were all glamoured with illusory lingerie—a series of lace and straps that were there one second and gone the next. Now that, I like. Sexy but still classy. Pussy peekaboo.

“You can stay and watch the performance if you’d like,” Lelie said.

Cyphira felt herself blush, realizing she had been genuinely distracted.

“Not a bad idea. We can scan the room for Visser,” Kuro suggested physically and psychically. “Provided you remember why we’re here.”

Cyphira nodded.

“Sorry.”

The clientele was surprisingly varied. A lot of obvious tourists. Some young, some old. Some looked scandalized—one girl at a table adjacent to the main stage was peeking through her fingers—while others locked their eyes on the displays with seething, naked hunger. Groups and couples in red leather booths watched or put on shows of their own. Others seemed to casually chat and schmooze, as if they weren’t amidst a fuck-forest. I bet they’re the real freaks. I mean, how desensitized can you get?

The central shaft of light backlit the hell out of the club, making it a bastard to try and spot individual faces. But eventually, Kuro cut in to both Forsythe and Cyphira:

“I have eyes on the target. In the back by the stairs.”

Cyphira followed Kuro’s white gaze to the far wall of the room.

Oh my god.

He’s not gone yet.

We have him.

A dizzying rush of euphoria hit Cyphira. He can’t get away this time. Two years of searching, and this is the first time we laid eyes on him in person. I’ve seen plenty of people wearing his face, but they were always rendered in magic or an out-of-date model. Visser compulsively underwent extensive facial plastic surgery and he had his subordinates do the same. But looking at his face from here, it’s lifeless. Stiff, yet somehow rubbery. Cyphira grinned. Guess that’s what happens when you go under the knife too many times.

“Are you sure?” Forsythe asked Kuro.

“No!” Kuro replied, irate. “Like I said: he could be a body double. But he’s unglamoured, and his face matches the last description we—”

“Very well. We’re moving into position.”

The performance ended to healthy applause, and the club adjusted its lighting from shadows-meet-spotlight to merely dim. A friendly, up-tempo jazz track replaced the brutalist sex rock soundtrack. But Visser had seemingly disappeared via the stirring crowd. Cyphira’s heart caught in her chest. Did he phase out? In the same breath, she saw a staircase behind him. Okay. There’s a staircase behind him. Stay cool.

“I’m going to get a drink,” Cyphira said abruptly, noticing the cocktail bar near the stairway.

“Cyphira, we’ve done our part. What are you doing?” Kuro asked, so Forsythe could also hear.

Snitch! Cyphira thought, but not so either of her partners could hear her. Instead, she replied:

“I’m just getting a head start.”

Forsythe didn’t even bother to reprimand her. At this point, he didn’t only plan on her rash actions—he depended on them. He appreciated them, even. If I don’t take the initiative, who will? Kuro? Fat chance.

She made it to the staircase, which she was disgusted to see was made out of alchemically blackened iron. Normal iron was anathema to fae and half-faen flesh. Black Iron was so much more potent that it radiated its caustic presence with a range of three feet. Cyphira quickly descended the stairs taking care not to touch the guard rail, every step searing her feet and legs. Then she saw that the door was made of the same cursed material.

Cyphira used telekinesis to quickly yank it open—it sent a spike of pain through her wyrd—and ducked inside. There was a long hallway appointed with the same black wood as the bar upstairs, which was good. More plausible that I could get lost. Lucky! Then Kuro’s voice entered her head:

“ETA, Forsythe?”

“Seconds. Why?” Forsythe responded.

“Lelie’s taken me hostage.”

“What?!” Cyphira thought back.

“What?” Forsythe demanded, angrier but less panicked.

“When I turned to watch Cyphira skipping off, she put a gun against my spine. She’s ushering me towards the stairs and lecturing me in Dutch. Something about knowing we aren’t clients.”

“Cyphira, take care of her. If we kick down the door while she has him, she might shoot him on reflex.”

Cyphira looked for a place to hide. There were several doors down the hall, but she could hear laughter coming from behind the nearest one. She swore and started casting a contract, reaching towards the electric and psychic anima in her right license cuff. She interwove their energies and phrased her argument carefully. Within three seconds, she had a sedative lightning bolt that would leverage the shock to help knock the target out quickly.

“She’s having me open the door.”

“I’m ready. Get down as you open it.”

“On three…” Kuro thought. “…Two…”

“One!” Cyphira thought back.

The door abruptly flew open as Kuro dove forward. With his enhanced reflexes, he was able to get clear of Lelie’s gun—a simple Plato—before she pulled the trigger. The shot also missed Cyphira, who returned fired with the bolt. It struck Lelie at center-mass and instantly dropped her into a twitching heap.

The lightning crack and gunshot immediately plunged the club above into chaos.

“Go!” Cyphira thought at Forsythe.

— Edryr Forsythe | 2:12 AM —

The vanguard of Forsythe’s strike team had incapacitated the bouncers with enchanted tranquilizer rounds and stood at the front of the club. As soon as he heard Cyphira think at him, he gave a signal for them to storm the club. Unfortunately, the commotion had already caused the crowd to panic. As he approached the club, he felt a storm of binding contracts snapping off, ripples striking his wyrd.

Forsythe followed the vanguard inside the club. His task force had created a cordon barrier around the club that would prevent anyone without an amagiate license from exiting or entering. The bodies of nearly a dozen patrons and staff lay incapacitated in the foyer, held by binding contracts.

“Amagia! Nobody move!” he heard his captain shouting in Dutch.

There was a long hallway leading to the interior of the club, which had been clogged by fleeing patrons, who were now running back the way they came. Forsythe performed a mass binding contract, and another two-dozen asfalis patrons fell to the ground as if they’d been struck dead. The vanguard proceeded.

And then the shooting started.

Forysthe heard a submachine gun fire a quick, muffled burst. Somewhere down the hallway, past the double doors, below ground. Forsythe’s hearing was keen enough to cut through the club’s music—still playing—and the cacophony of screams from within.

The CIC vanguard made it to the end of the hallway, levitating with sorcery over the collapsed patrons to avoid tripping. The first of the Vanguard rushed through the leather double doors, wyrd raised in a dome-shaped barrier in front of himself. Another peel of gunfire greeted him as the door opened, followed by a different breed of screams. Not panic. Pain. Dying gasps. They are shooting blind.

Amidst the commotion, Forsythe heard the unmistakable bark of a Locke revolver. Amagia.

He used sorcery to project his voice and emanated an order to stand down. Even amidst the chaos, it would be unmistakable to other amagia.

“This is the CIC! Stand down!”

If they keep fighting us, they are more afraid of Visser than they are of the consequences of betrayal.

In answer, a ripple cut through the club’s pounding resonators—want, need, want, need—and Forsythe could sense fire magic. With his reflex enhanced, he ran along the walls of the hallway, vaulted over his vanguard and through the door in a graceful aerial spin. He landed in the club and narrowly managed to intercept the fireball contract, choking it out with his wyrd. Without the intervention, dozens of people would have been caught in the blast. There were already at least seven distinct voices crying out in pain and fear. The desperate throngs crashed against him in a tide.

Enough of this.

Forsythe used his two remaining metaphysic anima to fire an intense, selective sedative contract. Everyone without an amagiate license should have fallen into a heap. The panicked throngs fell in concert as a curtain of sleep slammed into their wyrds and reached their brains.

Roughly eight hostiles remained. Only three were amagia. One held his Locke revolver and the other two were casting offensive contracts. The other aggressors must have illegal wards, or some other means of resisting magic. Two of them held Augustine submachine guns. The others had pistols.

I’ll leave them to the squad.

Forsythe dashed to the side of the doorway, drawing three shots from the amagia wielding the Locke, and a stripe of bullets from one of the submachine gunners. Before the first casting amagia could use his contract, Forsythe used sorcery to torque his body to face his ally. As the rogue amagia unleashed his cascade of lightning, it struck his partner, who was still mid-negotiation. The incomplete fire contract destabilized and detonated violently, atomizing the caster’s body from the waist up.

Forsythe moved on the one who had cast the lightning, drew Phobos, and punctured the man’s heart, throat, and head before he could realize why he had fired upon his fellow.

The remaining amagia threw down his Locke and shouted desperately in Dutch:

“What the hell are you doing!? This club is protected, you imbecile!”

Not from me.

Forsythe closed the distance between them and knocked the man out with a savage punch shrouded in sedative energy. He crumpled to the floor. While Forsythe dispatched the traitors, the vanguard made quick work of the asfalis goons. It was a laughable match up. The contract-enhanced special operatives cut, shot, or cast down the hired muscle in the space of a few seconds.

“Clear!” the vanguard captain called.

“Secure this one for interrogation,” Forsythe addressed the captain, nodding at the knocked out amagia. “We need to know how far this infection reaches. Everyone else, clear the club.”

The squad used sorcery to glide over the fallen bodies of the club’s patrons and henchmen, searching for more enemies.

“Status report,” Forsythe thought at Cyphira and Kuro.

“Busy!” Cyphira thought back, her thoughts twinged with exertion.

Forsythe was able to slightly trace the direction of her thoughts, and he sensed it was coming from underground. He dashed toward the staircase, indicating for his subordinates to fall back.When he reached the staircase, he could feel the aggressively, excessively lawed energies of Black Iron radiating from the metalwork. Probably meant to keep Visser’s faen whores from going for a walkabout in De Wallen.

He strode down the steps and was about to push open the black iron door when it blew open. If not for the reflex and barrier contracts, it would have checked him in the face. Instead, he saw something wearing the shape of a man—Black hair swept back in a series of spikes. He was clad in crocodile leather from head to toe. Staircase isn’t hurting it, so it’s not a fae. Must be an egregore. But a powerful one. Its etheric pressure was oppressive by amagiate standards. Strong enough to give even Forsythe a second’s pause.

“Hello there. What are you?”

The man-shaped egregore laughed scornfully.

“I am a dragon, plaything.”

Forsythe couldn’t help but laugh despite himself. The egregore lunged in rage. His arm transformed into a gauntlet of scales and claws, slashing fast enough to catch a normal amagia, even with the benefit of a reflex contract. But I am no normal amagia. Forsythe had leapt backwards to the top of the staircase, leaving the ‘dragon’ to swipe at empty air. The egregore seemed stunned for a quarter second, then paused to reappraise his opponent.

“What did Homer say before he annihilated Athens?” Forsythe asked in Pre-Homeric Greek.

The ‘dragon’ simply stared, uncomprehending. Forsythe grinned.

“What did Jesus say when they drove the first nail into his cross?” Forsythe asked in Aramaic. Again, his foe was silent. In modern Mandarin, Forsythe asked: “Can you understand a single word out of my mouth?”

When there was no response, Forsythe laughed. Any real dragon would possess a Dragon’s Tongue. The ability to read, speak, and translate any language. What stood before him was an aggregation of nightmares. Childrens’ fears formed by the ideas of a dragon. It was an egregore shaped by stories and collective unconscious. Powerful enough in its own right, but a far cry from their absurd, unfathomable power.

And I would know.

“Oh, little egregore. You aren’t the faintest dream of a dragon,” Forsythe said.

The egregore didn’t like that. It shed its leather-clad man-suit and charged at Forsythe as it rushed up the stairs, transforming into a prosaic, but accurate, semblance of a three-ton red and black dragon. The thing’s maw was tall enough and wide enough to swallow Forsythe in a single bite.

Forsythe drew Phobos partially free from its staff-sheath and held it across his body at a diagonal. He caught both edges of dragon dream’s jaw and wedged it apart, preventing its teeth from reaching him. Unfortunately, he still had to deal with the bulk of roughly three tons of ectoplasmic flesh.

Just before the ‘dragon’ could slam him into the wall, Forsythe projected a titanic shockwave of kinetic energy from his back. The blast, paired with the egregore’s momentum carried them both through the club’s structural wall, and they emerged in the rainy streets of De Wallen.

Forsythe’s back ached slightly, and the blow expended his barrier contract in a single hit, but he was still lucid and breathing evenly. Tires screeched to a halt and horns blared.

“Leave!” Forsythe shouted, emanating at the traffic and surrounding pedestrians with as much compulsory authority as his wyrd could manage.

People fled. Cars squealed and collided as they tried to frantically withdraw from the sight of the towering ‘dragon.’

The egregore shook the rubble from its wings and threw its head back in a roar that shook the cobbles. Seven horns and six wings. Forsythe observed. Still a pain to deal with, even if you are just an egregore. Like an angel’s wings and eyes,realdragons’ power levels could be measured by the number of horns and wings they had. A very bad dream indeed.

After rattling the cobbles in the street with a deafening roar, the dragon brought its long, curving neck downwards and tried to blast Forsythe with its breath. Magnesium-white fire, laced with bolts of blackened electricity, issued from its mouth and carved a glass crater into the ground. But Forsythe was already airborne. He jumped onto the egregore’s head, landed with enough force to shut its mouth, and drove Phobos’ blade clean through its pate and lower jaw. The thing’s fire was caught in its closed mouth, and it swallowed a lungful of its own caustic flames.

The egregore bucked Forsythe off and snapped at him again with its massive maw. But Forsythe flipped back into the air, and as he fell, he swept his blade between the dragon dream’s teeth, into its cheek, and dragged it halfway down the length of its long neck.

The attack painted the streets with ectoplasmic blood and viscera and the dragon thrashed, unaccustomed to pain. That’s the thing about tremendous strength. When you are used to winning without contest, the slightest setback will throw you off your game. And I’m not about to give you a chance to recover.

Forsythe began a dual contact with a kinetic and fire animus. He generated a narrow jet of extreme heat and used telekinesis to further hone the spray into a savage lance of plasma. The fire blew a gaping hole in its chest cavity where he believed its primary heart would reside. The beast rocked backwards, its wings, claws, and tail smashing storefronts and carving gashes into the medieval stone buildings. 

Forsythe dashed forward to strike with Phobos, but the dragon had learned its lesson. It shrank from its colossal form into a more maneuverable shape, recovering from its wounds in the process. It now resembled a man-sized, human-dragon hybrid.

It fired another sequence of blasts at Forsythe, carpet bombing the streets with black and white fire. Forsythe danced between the eruptions, firing telekinetic bolts fit to shatter concrete with each step. Three of the bolts struck the egregore’s wings, punching holes in their membranes. Another bolt struck it in the head, sending it careening into the upper level of Het Rode Bos.

Come, Edryr. The higherups have warned you about collateral damage before. End this quickly. He briefly considered removing his ribbon, but that would also earn him a lecture, especially if he did it in public view.

Forsythe leapt to the second story of the building just as the ‘dragon’ was recovering. The two exchanged blows—Phobos’ vorpal blade shearing scales and fingers from the egregores arm’s, the egregore in turn catching him in the stomach with a vicious but shallow slash. Forsythe leapt out of the second story, goading his opponent to give chase into the air.

There are two ways to kill entities that regenerate. You can gradually expend their power, forcing them to regrow limbs and heal wounds until their power is expended. The Death of a Thousand Cuts. That is the path of fools. The superior way to vanquish an enemy is to inflict so much harm, so quickly, that there is not enough of a foundation left for them to put themselves back together.

It would prove extremely difficult against a draconic egregore. But a true dragon’s heart beats in place of the one I was born with. For me, ‘extremely difficult’ is child’s play.

As the egregore flew out of the building, Forsythe performed a dual contract, using water and kinetic anima. He gathered all the falling rain in a fifty-foot radius and compressed it into a crushing column, then force-magnified its impact with the kinetic animus. It slammed into the false-dragon’s spine and the egregore began to fall like a stone.

That’s it for the prep.

Before the egregore could strike the ground, Forsythe began a second dual contract. The abrupt surge of magic sent his wyrd hurtling into exus. The dragon heart in his chest squirmed; it seemed to stretch throughout the rest of his otherwise human body, setting his nerves and muscles alight. And with that might, he used an electric and stone animus to call heaven and Earth to heed.

A jagged spire of concrete and cobblestones shot up from the street, impaling the egregore through the chest. At the same time, Forsythe called a violet column of lightning to slam into the soaked entity, electrocuting it from within and without. The nightmare’s magical pressure broke, and its form exploded into acrid clumps of ectoplasm. As he fell back to the ground, Forsythe cut each of these smaller clumps with Phobos, channeling the residual energy from his wyrd into the blade.

He lost himself for a few seconds, consumed by the fury he always felt, reveling in the release of the power he was always holding back. His human mind struggled for control, fighting the lustful need to remove his ribbon and unleash his full might. He caught himself with his fingers on the tail of the ribbon and forced himself to remain calm.

When he came too, the entire street was spattered with inert black and purple ectoplasm, rapidly evaporating in the rain. Unfortunately, there were a good number of terrified and awed onlookers. People recording his little duel with their symphones. An audience of horrified faces in hotel windows. Mercifully, no one appeared to be injured, but the directive to keep things ‘low profile’ was well and truly dashed.

“Damn,” Forsythe sighed.

I’m going to get another lecture.

— Cyphira | Two Minutes Earlier —

A cascade of egregores and fae emerged from the underground hallway as soon as Forsythe’s task force stormed the club. Cyphira was only surprised for a second. Her contract prevented anyone in the club from crossing over to the Faed, but the spell had an obvious flip side. Visser can’t get out, but that will make it easier for him to bring things through the Veil. Fuck.

Visser was an akrasiac and a flesh peddler, but his dossier also called him out as a skilled summoner. And thanks to his deals, he’ll have plenty of favors to call in with the Courts. He’s summoned a damn army. Cyphira smirked. Fortunately, we brought an army of our own.

Cyphira fired kinetic bolts at the two nearest lights in the hallway, plunging them into partial darkness.

“Kuro! Give me an opening—I’m going after Visser!” she thought.

“On it,” he thought back.

A second voice appeared in Cyphira’s head. Forsythe:

“Status report.”

“Busy!” Cyphira thought, fighting off the first of the redcaps while Kuro did his thing.

Kuro performed a quick sequence of hand gestures, using them to structure his complex wyrd. The monstrous parade of redcaps, spriggans, trolls, ponophages, and violent aethyrie that crossed over into reality suddenly found themselves facing a menagerie of living shadows. Kuro used sorcery to sculpt the darkness into a vicious murder of crows, an enormous three-eyed, four-eared werewolf-like beast, and a pair of stags with bladed antlers. All that without a contract. His hereditary gift sure is something.

The crows streaked through the crowd, raking and pecking eyes with their beaks and talons. The wolf-beast casually tore the head off a redcap with one paw, slashed a spriggan’s throat with the other, and then began to wrestle with a troll. The twin stags charged forward, trampling other enemies to clear a path. Fae were weaker outside of the Faed, as their eminences were far weaker, meaning they couldn’t regenerate or cast spells nearly as efficiently.

Cyphira felt something more frightening emerge behind them, a man-shaped egregore of immense power, but it kicked open the black iron door and advanced upward into the club. Whatever. Forsythe’s problem now.

She rushed through the narrow passage Kuro had created. A redcap managed to nick her shoulder with its knife, and she narrowly dodged a troll’s haymaker punch, but she managed to keep running. Then the doors in the hallway opened and two more goons emerged, both holding street sweeper shotguns.

Cyphira fired two of her red chisels of ice, striking one of the thugs in the chest and the other in the forehead. As soon as the shafts punctured their flesh, a second flash of cold froze their blood into even bigger spikes. Both of them dropped before they could get off a single shot.

She didn’t have time for regrets. Didn’t have time to let her culpability catch up with her. She had become shockingly accustomed to killing ‘bad people,’ and there was always time for guilt later.

Another thug emerged from the corner of the hallway, firing a hail of bullets with a Marx ‘47. Cyphira dove into a somersault, snatched a shotgun from one of the fallen thugs, rolled to her feet, and fired off three shots into the gunner’s stomach, chest, and shoulders. His upper body seemed to evaporate into bloody pulp, and he sagged against the wall, dead.

As Cyphira rounded the corner, a bullet caught her in the shoulder. Without her barrier contract, it might have cost her a lung or worse. As it was, it hurt as bad as getting punched by a troll. She saw Visser standing at the end of the hallway, a hand cannon in one hand, and his other arm around a terrified young woman’s neck. As Cyphira continued to advance, he plugged the barrel of his gun into the woman’s ear. She doesn’t look like muscle and she’s not a major player. Just a scared, stupid girl who got in too deep.

“Give up, Visser!” Cyphira shouted, leveling the shotgun at both of them. “Let the girl go, or I will kill you where you stand.”

“Not a step closer, klein meid!” Visser answered.

His gun hand was visually shaking. He’s panicking. Unstable. I have to try to negotiate, or that girl is good as dead. Cyphira threw down her shotgun and raised her hands, gesturing for negotiation. She hoped the gesture of de-escalation might keep Visser talking, but instead he pulled the gun away from the woman’s head and fired two more bullets.

She suspected he’d try something and managed to deflect both shots with a domed urdic barrier projected in front of her. A ribbon of blood trickled from the girl’s ear—her eardrum had been ruptured by the gunshots. She screamed and started crying. Visser swore in Dutch and put the gun back against her head.

Cyphira could feel Visser straining against her contract, trying to use his akrasia to phase into the Faed. But the barrier was absolute. He was trapped and he knew it. He switched tactics and tried to call something else through the Faed. Cyphira used her wyrd to disrupt his summoning. He recoiled, eyes wide with terror. With her reflex contract, Cyphira could see his finger start to tighten around the pistol’s trigger. Everything slowed down to quarter time. The girl started to struggle and screamed again.

I am not going to watch him kill an innocent woman.

Cyphira fired another lance of ice, faster than she had ever cast the cantrip before. The icicle zipped through the air, lodged itself into Visser’s eye, and an extra burst of cold magic exploded outward, popping the back of his head with the rapid expansion of freezing blood. The gun went off as Visser fell, dragging the girl to the floor with her.

For an awful second, Cyphira thought he managed to kill the girl anyway. But then she heard the girl weeping and sucking in air. She freed herself from Visser’s limp grasp, and scrambled across the floor to Cyphira, hugging her legs.

Cyphira put her hand on the girl’s quivering shoulder and stared at Visser’s corpse.

I killed him. Two years of meticulous tracking, false-arrests, and bartering with shadow brokers to interrogate the man at the heart of the world’s faen trafficking ring. All that work. Gone. Ruined. You couldn’t interrogate a corpse. Even if he left an Echo behind, the information one could derive from such divination was often unreliable or grossly incomplete.

The girl continued to shake and sob as she clung to Cyphira’s legs. Cyphira placed her hand on the girl’s head, holding her.

“I’ve got you,” she murmured. “You’re gonna be alright.”

But I am fucked.

— 2:47 AM —

The asfalis police and the CIC cordoned off the club after the raid, denying the local amagia entry to the crime screen. All told, twelve people—including Visser—had been killed. The other casualties included two Dutch amagia, eight of Visser’s henchman, and one unfortunate patron who caught a stray bullet when the vanguard entered the club. Dozens of others were wounded or injured in the crush to exit the club, but they seemed to be in stable condition.

Between the egregores and the shooting, that could have been a lot worse. Cyphira waited for Forsythe in one of the staff rooms beneath the club. He told her to wait for him, alone, which she had expected, though it had been a long time since he last lectured her in private.

It was a colossal fuck up. But as she reviewed the incident in her head, she didn’t know what she could have done differently. Visser may have had another exit, and if he got out of the club, he would have slipped through their fingers. Bindings and kinetic holds were not Cyphira’s specialty, and he was simply too far away for her to immobilize his trigger finger. If she used any other type of non-lethal combat magic, the girl would have died.

And I’ve seen enough ‘collateral damage’ to last me ten lifetimes.

After about ten minutes, Forsythe entered the room and shut the door behind him. Then he turned to look at her and gestured for her to explain herself.

“My hands were tied,” she said simply. “It was him or an innocent woman and I chose him. I know I went off half-cocked pursuing Visser on my own, but—”

“I don’t care if you go off half-cocked, Cyphira. It’s so expected that my plans depend on it now. I indulge it because you manage to get the job done properly, without incident. What I do not expect—what I cannot abide—is you fucking up by killing an invaluable asset.”

Cyphira drew her head back, unsure how to respond. Forsythe continued:

“You destroyed everything we’ve worked for over the past two years.”

Cyphira shook her head and threw her hands up.

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Wait for back-up. Attempt to negotiate. Cast a bloody binding contract!”

“There was no time!” Cyphira snapped. “I couldn’t bind his hand at that range. I did try to negotiate!”

Forsythe held up a hand and spoke icily:

“Do you have any idea what we’ve lost? That man had ties to every cartel on the planet.”

“He was too unstable,” Cyphira insisted. “He was going to kill her.”

“Then you let her die,” Forsythe said.

“Fuck that!” Cyphira spat.

Forsythe stood silently as Cyphira seethed. Her teacher had lectured her in the past against collateral damage, about the paramount importance of saving lives, and the occasional need to take lives to save others. But if you’re trying to tell me that extends to letting bystanders get murdered so we can interrogate a scheming arch-criminal…

“We’re supposed to be the good guys, right?” Cyphira demanded. “How is letting an innocent woman die to a flesh-dealing scumbag the right thing to do? Ever?”

Forsythe drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. Cyphira continued:

“You hate yourself. It’s been obvious from the first day you started training me, and you told me yourself that you don’t want to watch me become you. So yeah. I killed him. I took a fucking stand. I saved her life and killed a fucking monster.”

Forsythe continued to stand silently with his eyes closed.

“Tell the higher ups it was my fault,” Cyphira said. “Strip my licenses and erase my memory. Put me in a Magicarcerum. Hell, have me executed. I will die knowing I did the right thing. It’s more than you can say for yourself.”

Forsythe locked eyes with her for a long moment, turned, and walked away.