Chitinous tarsi lighted down on cold stone, lost in the enveloping patter of the rain rushing down sloped roofs. Droplets of water beaded ineffectually on waxy exoderm, repelled by both bodies. Only their setae-furred antennae and locks of silken hair needed any cover.
Darkling sky over chilled air over empty streets. The two chrylurks had stealth so far, gliding and bounding over the cities rooves. Now nearing their destination, they had to descend to the streets, courting the great risk: a mortal spotting them.
But mortals were why they were here.
They touched down beside a cobbled road, a short stretch bracketed by hard turns each leading to larger road. This short extent served a little clump of buildings all packed tight. A cart lay on the side of the road. Above them, lamps of burning oil leaked light from a few windows.
—Does the trail linger? (sent Heresy, strumming the ghostly silk between them. Clear yet fuzzy: the rain inflicted the barest interference.)
The two were stepping under the eaves of the roof they leapt from. Cipher, the smaller chrylurk, was pulling a fabric sheath off their antennae, segmented lengths shivering in the wet air.
Chrylurk marks could stick well on their own, but the rain only trapped the scent. Cipher’s antennae waved then flinch-froze.
The familiar scent of Sister Disgrace had guided their journey. This was her hunting grounds, and she’d left marks all across the territory. Old scents, though — this was fresher, meant to be a message.
—This is where it went wrong (Cipher said.)
—How can you tell?
Acrid notes of distress, metallic notes of pain — an odor so much like hemolymph, and not by coincidence. Drawn morbidly, Disgrace neared an alley, thin gap between packed buildings.
—Scents for warning and tracking, and here. (She crouched, tugging at the shawl covering her hair. Her silk fell out, a pale waterfall.) Cast a line. This is her silk.
Heresy did not cast a line, though a spiderlouse crawled down her neck. The chrylurk plucked it with a claw and tossed it toward Cipher. A dragline stretched the distance; the roof-filtered drizzle was caught and suspended.
Discarded silk, scattered among the grime and puddles, was faintly drawn upward by her hair’s evanescence, like magnetism, while the spiderlouse dug about for the same and began to chew.
Then Heresy’s swarmling found it: a hooked spool of shed chitin, still bearing knots of preserved serivane.
Heresy seesawed her antennae, a nod.
—Her belaying spool (sent the hunter.) So she clipped all her hive-bindings here.
—Three reasons you might do that (sent Cipher.) One, to protect herself: she needed quiessence to hide from an alchemist. Two, to protect us: she needed to cut her trail so an alien hive couldn’t find ours—
—Why leave tracking pheromones, then? Why lure us?
Cipher rose, hair waving in an wind that did not exist. Her apertures narrowed to slits at the interruption, but she continued:
—Or three, she had no choice. She lacked the sanguine reserves to maintain hive-bindings.
—She dropped everything. Maitaining one thread, or even sending a distress signal would not deplete her unless she was already starving.
—You think that makes it impossible. I think it makes it so much more concerning.
—It would mean she might be—forgotten.
Cipher took a step toward her sister, a clawed leg reaching out (reaching up; the hunter was taller) and touching a coxa-shoulder. Reassuring, except her sharpness prod.
—If the alternative is she fought an alchemist? (sent Cipher.) I think both these threads tie the same knot.
Creak.
Cipher had to turn her head — Heresy could see it already.
While they’d investigated, a door had opened further down the alley.
A human bore a lantern in hand and carried a pot stinking of trash and waste, fit to be tossed among the alley’s garbage. He dropped both at the sight of the two shadow-black bugs skulking.
(I wonder if he’ll answer our questions) Cipher thought.
“More of them?” came his whisper aghast.
Nevermind, Cipher thought.
Chitin-hooves smashed against cold stone. Abound as the pair were, when Heresy leapt high, Cipher was already crouching low. They moved in concert; the larger hunter lunging and the lithe weaver skittering.
Cipher’s silken hair writhed akin to a pit of snakes. Rope, woven in preparation for this operation, unslung themselves. The jab of one primary claw hooked a rope, and a flick of her secondary hand sent a thorny loop toward her prey, while finally the grip of her tertiary talons kept her braced to the stone of the alley.
Heresy fell with a predator’s vicious grace. The man witnessed sudden, vision-eclipsing violence. A chrylurk was upon him — two primary raptorials stuck down to disable his arms — one secondary hand thrust forward, strangle-tight at his neck to silence the screams.
He could do nothing — not even run. The rope Cipher had thrown already whipped past him and curled around his legs, thorns digging into linen. All his limbs were bound.
He fell: the thunk against the stone was wet in two ways. Cipher still skittered forward. Swarmlings crawled out from the nest between her legs, and she sent them seeking onward, destined for the still-open door. But her focus on was on her over-eager sister.
—Bite him (Cipher advised.) Tranquilize the threat. We can drain him later.
—No.
—More useful to us alive. Can’t drain or parascixtize dead meat.
Heresy lifted a claw and slammed it down. Blood gushed as her claws dug in, then a gurgling sound, then she ripped. The man’s trachae was gore dislodged from a bloody cavity.
“Exšh’t,” she scraped.
Cipher thought of Disgrace, those acrid notes of distress and hive-harmony clipped and spooled with panicked abruptness.
—I don’t blame you (Cipher sent.)
Heresy rose, her hooves giving the corpse with a bone-shattering stomp. Her head snapped to her sister, proboscis curled sneeringly high, toothed mandibles bare.
—Obviously. How could you? (she sent, but her hive-song was more tone than message. Brutal satisfaction and hate radiating.)
Again, a shared thought and two moved as one. Heresy lifted her dripping secondary hand, and Cipher rose from her skitter-crouch like a flower rose. Rivulets of blood descended from the murder-drenched hand and fell upon Cipher’s mouthparts. Her hypopharynx darted forward to lick blood warm from the killing.
Heresy’s other hand came forth, brushing across Cipher’s head. A pat for one second before she gripped the voluminous silk-hair and pulled her sister up the rest of the way.
—Let’s finish this (the hunter said, chiding.) You were yapping about what’s useful, but this—
—Cost nothing (the weaver interrupted.) I sent my swarmlings to scout the building, and await a report. Three more heat signatures on the ground floor, smells like two humans and a freemouse.
—And Disgrace?
—Her scent’s strongest behind a door my bugs can’t slip past. No way to reach her but through the mortals.
—Do you want me to wait around for you to spin up a plan?
—I was thinking about the utility of that.
—So “yes”. That answer is “yes” and takes six words less.
—It’s “no,” I think. The sound of your violence was muffled by the rain, and I wove a vaneweb — reckless, but telling. Were any of these mortals alchemists of the most dangerous sort, they would have sensed it and stirred into action at once.
—So they’re all easy pickings. That also takes less words.
(Disgrace would tell you to be nicer to me) Cipher thought. But she didn’t send it — not when that rift in the fabric had not yet been stitched.
And there was no way to stitch it but to cut.
Cipher stepped aside. The door was on the right side of the alley, and she’d skittered along the right wall. Now she followed a hair’s breadth behind Heresy — an easy distance to manage when both moved in concert.
Heresy opened up the door gently. For all her ferocity, she knew not to spook her prey. She stepped inside, and did not even need to scan around.
Cipher’s swarm had carried forth lines of silk, so both chrylurks knew the lay of the space. The side door opened perpendicular to a corridor which joined to one room rich in heat and scent (likely the kitchen) and one room with mud tracks (likely the entrance).
The two humans were behind this wall before them, but reaching them meant going around. The freemouse stood in the kitchen, pausing at the door’s faint creak.
Swarmlings relayed all they heard and all they vibrated their silken lines. Cipher’s stout scalp-hive integrated all these noise-waves, but it was guess-work.
“Malkom —— so long. Trash’s —— hold up?” Snatches of almost-intelligible speech from the other room.
“He’s ——ing. Patience.”
“Keep going w——out him. Just skip ——.” Followed by a laugh.
“Not fair, n—— fair. Maybe —— can check in on him?”
“R——, the help’ll fetch ’em.” Then he continued in a louder voice tha carried through the house: “Hey! Yoneymum!”
The freemouse perked up. “Yes, master-mine?” High-pitched, squeaky.
Before her parascixion, Cipher had known freemice could be proud. This? This was affected. Embarrassing.
“Malkom went out! Fetch him, see what’s up!”
“As you-you wish!”
—The servant is coming this way. Think you’re for taking out the humans? (Cipher sent.)
It was bait. (Disgrace would say be nicer.)
—Think that mouse might be too much for you?
But they both moved, Heresy stalking rightward, back toward the entrance. This time, Cipher leapt, her claws finding purchase in the wooden walls. She climbed, weaving lines behind her, and soon found herself on the ceiling, held up by hooked claws and bound silk.
She could continue down the corridor. Alternatively?
The freemouse darted forward. Awkward; this species couldn’t truly run, at least not effectively. Their fastest gait leveraged all four limbs in a scurry.
But she knew why this one didn’t.
As it toddled forward, it passed by a line she’d woven, a loop of rope. Her trap caught a leg and Cipher pulled, reeling the freemouse in.
“Don’t scream, little slave,” she hissed. “Be good, and we’ll save one of your masters, but you have to tell us who we’re looking for. Otherwise we kill everyone.”
Coincidence proved her point: a bang and screams started in the other room.
“Eep—” the freemouse squeaked.
A claw thrust into the freemouse’s snout, blocking it and slicing her tongue in the process.
“Don’t try us! One more chance. This time, you don’t get to speak. Three questions. The alchemist is behind the metal door, aren’t they? Basement?”
Quivering, the freemouse nodded.
“As expected. The two humans in the other room, man and woman, they’re working for the alchemist?”
A pause. Then a nod.
“Which does the alchemist like more? The woman?”
A longer pause. Then a nod so slight it might’ve been more trembling.
(All of my suspcions were right) Cipher thought.
Then came a half-muffled scream, wet and gagged. Did she get the answer too late?
—O Heresy, try to spare the lady. I have a plan.
—Another plea for mercy? (she replied, exertion in her tone.) No, sister. Tonight is for hate, not zeal.
—Not for parascixion (she clarified.) We will kill her — later.
“Ha. So I haven’t learned anything from you, little mortal. What use are you?”
A squeak slipped past her muffling tarsus. When, belatedly, the freemouse had the idea to bite her, the chrylurk’s exoderm was chipped, but a flex of her claws — sharp enough to cut silk that merely falls on it — put that foolish ambition to rest.
(Speaking of zeal…) Before her parascixion, Cipher had known freemice well.
She’d been converted.
“Our kind is merciful, you know. Loving. I could tie you up, spare you here. We’d take you, make you a thrall. Perhaps even a drone. You could be free of all this.”
She removed her clawed hands, granting that last chance.
“N-no, no! Please, b-begone! I — I’d rather serve-serve righteous masters.” Blood and spittle dripped from a mouth struggling to speak.
Cipher hissed, and there were no words in it. “We have no masters. Is a hand slave to the heart? I offered you everything, exšh’t.”
Already the claw was in place. Cipher thrust it back, lower and could feel the freemouse’s pulse. Gushing — quickening rhythm only to sooner reach its ending. She grabbed, she wrenched, and she tore.
Even as the storm battered the roof, a red rain fell indoors.
—Yes (Cipher told Heresy,) I truly don’t blame you
—Obviously. You need to hate them more, sister. You’re not tenny-fresh anymore. Remember what Disgrace said.
Cipher remember her words well. The Queen only loves those who are worthy of love. If and only if. We are worthy. To extend that to every piece of exšh’t is to insult us. Cherish that we deigned to save you, as we cherish that you wise enough to be saved. I love you, sister, because I hate those who are not you.
The corpse of the freemouse who spat on her offer wetly fell into the puddle of its juices.
—I’m waiting on you, sister (Heresy sent.)
Cipher lighted on warm wood and gazed down with contempt at the body. She was reflected in the pool of blood, though. (Candles danced in the wall-sconces.) The fires of contempt smoldered to self-derision. She was a fool.
She’d asked the freemouse three questions, and not one of them concerned what was most important, what had brought them here.
Her thoughts drifted to Disgrace again, but she had to stop there, lest the that unstitched rift torment her. Not now.
To be exscient is to be ignorant. Death is forgetting and forgetting is death.
Cipher walked the halls, tracking blood with each step. In effort to banish her thoughts, she tightened her hive-binding to Heresy, and drank up her recollection of her rampage.
She had slowly stalked across a dark room — leather furniture, a rack with four raincoats, papers stacked on a table. Then she crossed the threshold into a room with a fireplace crackling.
Two human had sat at a table playing cards, though there was a third hand of cards laying face down on the table. They wore robes, pale-dyed with bronze-colored trims.
Heresy hadn’t paid attention, on her way in, but Cipher took note of it. The human they killed outside had not worn robes.
(So that’s the hierarchy? Alchemist, two students below that, then a layman and freemouse servant.)
At the chrylurk’s appearance, chairs clattered. The man yelped his surprise while the woman cursed and slammed her hands on the table, madly groping.
The man charged toward the bug, and Heresy snarled forward, swinging a raptorial — and then the man thrust up a blade, a runic transmutation circle sparking.
(Incompleat) Cipher thought (but trained enough to complete another’s work?)
The bug backed away, the three ocelli on her brow glowing. She scried for alterlight — not that she’d be able to parse whatever magic the mortal was working. Heresy wasn’t Cipher.
The woman held a rod and pointed it at the chrylurk. Two unknowns to worry about now. Heresy thought tactically for a moment.
She swung a raptorial primary but the man dodged. Short sword thrusted and she felt a mad jolt thundering up her arm. The limb convulsed even as the blade pinned it.
But the blade, too, was held in place. Both of her secondary arms shot forward to grab at his waist. The man dropped, then, fearful of those limbs, and even let go of his sword to fall faster. For a second, the glowing blade kept zapping her, the aching limb shuddering. Air rushed from her spiracles, almost a roar.
But all this was planned. Heresy twisted, her other raptorial striking outward. Her spikes cut through the robe and sliced his torso. She fell on him.
He lost, then. Raptorials, claws, talons, hooves. He was outmatched — outnumbered, in a way.
But as she tore into him, her hive-binding to Cipher pulsed with a message, urging her to spare the lady.
(Lucky positioning) Heresy though, but she couldn’t resist taunting her sister for the fickleness of her heart.
Another interruption. She she grinned above her murder-in-progress, a dark dollop dripped down. Not hemolyph or venom — liquified exoderm?
Her head shot up to the woman determinedly pointing the wand at her. Heresy hissed. She lunged. A two-step launch, first step to rise and second to accelerate, but she aimed to second so that it stomped the man’s brains into the hardwood.
“I have bad news, exšh’t,” Heresy taunted.
“Don’t ever listen to it,” the woman murmured under her breath. “Just a mimic. Just a mimicry of human speech.”
“You’ll have to forgive me,” she continued, annoyed to have to rewrite the quip, “but I’m not going to kill you.”
Still rising in the air, still sealin forward, now her last pair of legs caught on the table. She kicked forward, flipping over the heavy wood obstruction. It hit the ground and slid forward, slamming the woman into the wall. She grunt-coughed, chest bludgeoned.
“And worse news,” Heresy said. “I’m not going to bite you, either.”
Then, when Cipher came in, Heresy had the woman on top of the table, which had been pushed back upright (though the card game was beyond salvaging). Her robes had been cut away, and the shirt she wore underneath was soaked with blood.
Pinned to the table, the chrylurk idly dug her raptorial spikes into the meat of an arm. Cloth had been shoved deep into her mouth, so the game seemed to be finding how loud she could scream despite that.
—Took you long enough.
Less than a minute, all told.
—I’ll handle her from here. Lead the way, O Heresy.
Heresy twirled her antennae and hopped off the table. The other chrylurk hadn’t use any sort of bondage. In other circumstances, one might worry the human would flee, but this specimen was exhausted, perhaps not even conscious.
Cipher climbed up, and checking the pulse and the pupil response. Brown eyes met her gaze through tears. The chrylurk’s limbs busied themselves with unfurling lengths of prepared silk. Tying the legs, the hands.
Meanwhile, mandibles parted, and the hypopharyx darted out to lick the blood splattered on the woman’s neck, cleaning. Then her fangs came down, sinking in without resistance or ceremony.
Next, Cipher found the tattered robes, fallen to the floor, and quickly tied them across the wide gashes torn into the human’s chest.
By the time she finished, bleeding was staunched and numbing venom icily flooded the veins and tissues. Then she was interrupted.
—Door’s locked. Does she have a key?
Cipher opened her mouth to ask, but she had a suspicion. She glanced over at the brain-splattered pile of gore. Darting over, she patted down his robes and found a hard form that jinged at her touch.
—Dead one did.
—Didn’t notice, ha.
Time to leave. Grabbing the live human by the collar of her shirt, the weaver peeled her off the table.
“Can you walk?” she asked, dropping the human to watch them stagged and fall limply against her thorax. “Then I’ll guide you. Come, my sister is waiting.”
“Th-thank you. I f-feel—”
“No need.”
Cipher didn’t care — but it was more useful if the human wasn’t screaming in agony. She should have told Heresy as much — but she truly didn’t blame her. How could she?
But then Cipher was thinking of the freemouse. “Servant, or slave?” she asked the human master.
“W-what?”
“The freemouse. She called you master. Was she treated well?”
“I — I shouldn’t be t-talking to you. You’re just a m-mimic that echoes human speech. Like a raven.”
Beyond the room where they played games lay another dark room, piled with boxes. Her questing swarmlings had found the metal door here and been unable to progress further.
Cipher tossed the ring of keys to a quick —Thanks.
“Knight Gram—” A claw touched her lip and split it.
“Shush.”
The metal slid open and then banged against the wall. Dark steps, but only until the first bend. The basement was lit, but not lit with the same warm, flickering flames as lay upstairs. Alchemists had colder and much more consistent sources.
Heresy was rushing down the steps but Cipher strummed insistently.
—Slow down, it’s important that I’m not far behind you.
—Then speed up!
They both complied; they still moved as one. Heresy waited at the first landing; Cipher swept the woman off her feet and carried her.
The steps weren’t wide enough for two segmented bug-chimerae to walk side by side, but again Cipher walked impossible close.
Shelves were stocked with tomes and scrolls. Stray pages littered the walls, graphite interlined with ink to effectuate arcane, inscrutable results. Hardwood had given way to stone here, and chalk lined that stone, circle after circle drafted and most of them forgotten, left as inoperable smudges.
Cipher was braced for an attack. Heresy was raring to go.
Instead, a calm voice.
“There you are, chimerae.” Snapping gazes found a man knelt in meditation, dark hair a curtain over the face. He lifted his head, and glasses caught a glint of light. “I should say welcome to my laboratory, but you are not. Not even slightly.”
He posed no immediate threat, so wondering gazes were drawn — like flies to flesh — to what lay beside him.
Disgrace was the queen’s surrogate. Silken hair had been dyed with a sharp panoply of queen-enticing colors, and she had adapted to walking with not two, but three pairs of legs on the ground — the only effective way to support the weight of her plump abdomen.
Her hair lay as grime-crusted cobwebs, and all her fat was depleted to leave a gaunt body, flayed of all exoderm. The thick curves of her limbs had been amputated outright. Disgrace’s body was as limbless as a grub.
Heresy roared. “You—”
“I am Knight Grammaltom, second compleation, and I have my suspicious I am guilty of tremendous sin.”
Cipher could hissermy aggreement, but there was a more pressing concern. “Second compleation,” Cipher started, “that means you could have felt us approach. Why hide? Unless you wanted us to come—”
“I expected it, though I thought I would have more time — time to ameliorate — but you had more alactrity than expected. Or perhaps we were always more helpless than we thought. There is so little we understand.”
“Explain yourself.” Cipher trembled — from the strain of holding up the woman. She sat her down — the tortured human’s eyes were fixed on the knight, staring with terrified incomprehension. The bloody human looked at once like one glares at a criminal deserving condemnation or to a priest offering absolution.
“Just what I said. We do not understand — but you do, don’t you? You understand what I’m saying. Really understand. It’s more than mimickry, more than animal cunning.”
“Parascixion is ascension.” That was something Disgrace once said. “Did you truly think we were beneath you?”
“My study is one of nervous systems.” He lifted a hand, and both chrylurks flinched. Second compleation hands were not to be trifled with. He closed the hand. “Your kind has a brain the size of my fist. My books tell me chrylurks have, at best, insidious instincts and deceptively cooperative behavior. But I digress. At the outset, I had believe myself to be hunting a mere species of animal chimera. That was the object of this research program.”
“Research?” Heresy said, stalking forward. “You killed—”
“I do not believe she is dead. This is why I did not — could not — make a move to save my students from your savage egress. My transfiguration sustains her nervous systems such as I understand it. I was studying how your kind operates. A gruesome procedure, but the Five consider animal subjects ethically permissible.”
“Just like every other piece of exšh’t!” Heresy said. “Of course everything you do to us is justified! If you only understood what you were denying us, denying yourselves — if you knew the need that burns us alive — you would understand how much you deserve all of this!”
“I agree,” said the human.
Heresy paused in her stride, one leg held mid-air. “Huh?”
“I do not blame you for what you did to my students, for all that it was cruelty the heart must ache to see. I had a practical excuse to remain here and sustain my ritual, as I explained, but what I felt in my heart when I introspected… was a kind of sympathy.” He glanced to his side, eyes looking at the corpse — if he was to be believed, the seeming corpse — and he seemed to flinch from the sight. “As I said, I believe myself to be guilty of tremendous sin and trespass against your kind.”
Heresy glanced at Cipher, a significant look. “We will not give you parascixion,” she declared.
The weaver did not hesitate to wave two antennae in a nod.
“Make no mistake, I am not begging your forgiveness. You asked for an explanation, and I endeavor to furnish one. Perhaps I have been to garrulous? Concisely: I believed you to be animals, and treated you as such. By the time my experiments caused me to doubt this, I…”
“You had already tortured and mutilated the bug who sired us,” Cipher finished.
He closed his eyes, breathing deep. “I see. You even have a conception of family.”
“What?” This time, it was the woman who spoke, more a wail than a word. “Teacher! What are you saying? How can you—”
“I am thankful for the the mote of mercy it took to spare my student,” he said without looking at her. “Yet I can only surmise your intent was to subject me to some excruciating consequentialism, yes?”
“She was meant as hostage, if that’s what you mean.”
“You chose well. I wish for her survival, even above my own. But if this was meant to persuade me, you may find we already share an interest in revitalizing your mother.”
—Once again, sister, your mercy has proven pointless.
—Yes. I’m learning. Slowly.
“You said you believe her to be alive. Why?”
“Pulse, heat, spasms. I remain utterly mystified as to how your flesh can persist absent a soul, but it leaves you quite susceptible to transmutation — in this case to her benefit.” He gazed down, forlornly. “Despite my efforts, though, dead bugs continues to slough from her insides — are they a part of you? Her silk became brittle and faded, which seems quite dire given how profusely your kind normally secretes it. I have supplied her nutrients, but I’m still missing something. Something vital.”
(Oh, not all, exscient. What’s missing is something you have in abundance!)
Finally, Cipher advanced. She ignored the human woman, still tied up and weeping, and instead padding her way to her mother’s side. She felt the clammy carapace. Melanized from so many dissection wounds, this was a site of a devastating battle. She did not twitch, and whatever life remained in her would be locked far below waking consciousness.
Forgetting was death and death was forgetting — and so the hive did its utmost to ensure it did not forget its hivelings. The worst fate this reconnaisance of theirs could have uncovered would have been discovery of a body violently, irrecoverably, reduced to fluids and particles. (Alchemy was so adept at deconstruction.)
Disgrace had made this city district her hunting grounds, and consequently the last time she’d unspooled her mind into the queen’s archives was months ago. Months that would be forgotten. Months of a ruthless, lively chrylurk to be orphaned by history.
The next thing they feared was finding a corpse intact. Brain gone cold and connectome falling to pieces — but scrutable to the veil of indentity. She could be restored, in part, like ink on a wet page deciphered.
And this was better than all of those dire possibilities, if far from the relief of meeting Discare hale and hearty.
What was missing? Sanguine nectar. That power extracted from the blood of prey — from it they spun serivane. Disgrace had been starved of the definition of chrylurk existence.
She could be fed, sanguimel administered through the lurking heart’s slit between her first pair of legs. But before Cipher could spare any thought to that, there was a metaphorical dramul in the room.
For all his overtures of understanding, every breath drawn in the same room as a second compleation alchemist was made under threat. They had to address him.
“Do you think you can save her?” asked the knight when the chrylurk’s gaze returned to his. “I’ll lend what aid I can.”
He had blue eyes. Cipher stared into them. She gazed from aperatures created by multipart eyelids closing like six flower petals, and she saw them widening in her reflection. Inside were convex compound eyes — a purple void abscent any pupil for humans to read.
“Do you trust us?” Cipher hissed.
He broke eye contact to gaze at the woman covered in her own blood. She lay on the ground, curled fetal, and may have lost consciousness. The robes the weaver had haphazardly strung up as bandaged had fallened away, revealing wounds were the hunter had twist-stabbed or slowly peeled her in abject malice.
Despite it all, her chest rose and fell.
“I believe your kind has mercy,” he said.
Cipher smiled above her fangs. “Thank you. My sire always told I have more zeal than hate.”
When she approached the alchemist, there was no flinch.