“Over time, we began to notice in our subjects something that confirmed our suspicions, and the suspicions of many throughout the world who had studied the fall of the old humanity; there is something peculiar to us, the humans alive now. Some of our memories are not our own, some of our thoughts are not our own. Sometimes, we are not ourselves. While this is interesting from an intellectual perspective, there are dire implications. I fear that absent the proper vigilance and awareness of our own nature, we are destined to repeat the past and, eventually, the Desert itself. I recall the things I heard on my own journey, some forty years ago, words that carried with them a sense of déjà vu. I neared the Well at the End of the World, and the visions spoke of the days before calamity. That is why I fear that empire is coming to the world again, as it did before. We are not so different from the old humanity as we would like to believe.”

-From “Inherited Memories: A treatise on the old world’s legacy and its connection to magical mechanics” by Ahbrim Pallacce. Dated 104 YT

Etyslund: 243 YT, Autumn. Two days after the execution of Marga Zelenko.

It wasn’t until the third time they spoke that Zoe Bari asked Kamila to help kill her own sister.

In the late afternoon of the day they spoke for the third time, Kamila Zelenko sat in the basement of her mother’s house, arguing with her younger sister about an accordion. Both ignored the scent of blood in the air – it had not left them in days.

If the soldiers knew where Marga had lived, and knew that her children were still at large, there was little doubt they would check here eventually. It was too obvious, perhaps, to be the first place they’d look, but soon enough somebody would come to the house and search it fully. Their basement might stay concealed, might remain a safe place, and that was good enough for Hilda.

Kamila, however, had other intent.

“This time,” she told Hilda, pacing up and down the length of the basement, “We’re going to get a hostage, and then we can do something about this occupation. Hell, maybe it’ll be Zoe!”

“You don’t want to kill her?” Hilda responded. Hilda leaned against the wall in the lowest corner of the room, her knees near her chin and arms wrapped around them. Her cap was pulled low with its brim almost covering her eyes. Her eyes were puffy, heavy bags underneath, bloodshot from crying. Her voice was calm, steady. She wished she could play her accordion, but Kamila had forbidden it – the instrument lay discarded in its case somewhere under the pile of stuff Kamila had strewn about in rage after the sisters had first closed themselves in the basement, nearly twenty-four hours beforehand.

“Of course I want to kill her!” Kamila shot back. As soon as she spoke, she groaned, held a hand over her mouth and sighed. She ceased pacing and sat down on the cold floor. “I’m sorry. Of course I want to kill her. She betrayed our trust, posing as one of her people’s own victims. There’s just something especially vile about that, you know?” Hilda nodded. “But…” Kamila went on. “If we kill Zoe, we’ll lose our bargaining chip and the other soldiers will definitely kill some of us in retaliation. They’ll probably have an easier time getting their hands on us, too, and they’ll…”

Kamila grit her teeth.

Hilda spoke before she could. “They’d kill us the same way they did Mom.”

“Yeah,” Kamila said. “Just like that. Seriously, Hilda, how can you be so calm about it?” Kamila clenched a shaking fist, glaring at Hilda under a sweat-streaked brow.

“I’m not calm.” Hilda shifted slightly. “It hurts. But I’m in no shape to be stalking around breaking things.”

Of course. Kamila groaned. Hilda’s wounds still hadn’t fully healed – the bullet she’d taken during that chase the other day was out, finally, and lay nearby encrusted with dry blood. But the damage wrought by the injury wasn’t going away with the speed it should have. Hilda’s bear tattoo didn’t seem to have anything wrong with it, but it was working far more slowly than it should have. It couldn’t have failed completely, though, or Kamila would be talking to a corpse instead of her little sister.

“Sorry,” Kamila grumbled quietly. She reminded herself not to grind her teeth, tried to wipe the salt off her nose and cheeks, and faced Hilda. Then, “So, what, we capture one of the soldiers, and then what?”

“We use her as a bargaining chip, just like you said. We get a message to Mirshal for reinforcements while they’re distracted. We try to keep things from escalating until help arrives.”

“You’re putting a lot of faith in Mirshal, Hilda.” Kamila’s smile was lopsided and unamused.

“Wh… why shouldn’t I?” Hilda nearly sputtered at that. “Do you not trust Mirshal? But Mom…”

Kamila lowered her head into her hand and made a noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh. “End of the day, they’re fighting the wind. Maybe we can get reinforcements, but we can’t rely on them completely. We need a plan that doesn’t involve Mirshal.”

Hilda coughed. “But I’m going to be made a Reaper soon. There’s resources I have access to. And once Kivv gets word of what happened, they’ll come to help us. I’m sure of it.”

Kamila stood up and walked over to the corner where Hilda sat. Next to her older sister, Hilda suddenly felt small and helpless, Kamila’s shadow covering her completely. “Yeah, about that.” Kamila sat back down. “Between us, I’m the better fighter, I’m stronger, I’m faster.” She grit her teeth. “Why the hell are you the Reaper, then? Or should I say aspirant? Because for all your talk you’re still just a kid.”

“Kamila! What’s your problem?” Hilda lowered her head, letting the shadow of her cap cover up her face.

“My problem? What’s –“

Knock knock knock.

“Oh. Okay, it’s time. Stay here.” Kamila pressed a repeating crossbow into Hilda’s hands, stood up. She closed her fists, and sliding plates of iron slid into their spots in front of her hands. When she opened her fists, the plates retracted. Kamila checked that her crossbow was slung correctly over her shoulder, and practice quick-drawing it. Less than a second. She smiled grimly. “I’ll be back in no time.” Climbing the ladder and pushing open the trapdoor there, she emerged into the house’s main room.

Kamila quickly moved the rug to cover up the hatch, glad that Marga’s house did not have windows into the main room. She quickly moved across the room, keeping her weight low to the ground, and took a place behind the door. The knocking stopped for a moment.

“I don’t think there’s anybody here,” a voice from the other side said. That voice didn’t sound familiar – it was masculine, slightly detached, bored even.

The other voice that spoke then, Kamila recognized.

“Still might be somebody holed up here that doesn’t want us to find them. We have to check.”

It was Zoe. The fake traveler. The traitor. The reason her mother was dead.

The first voice spoke again:

“Well, alright.” Someone fiddled with the lock, trying in vain to get through, for a few seconds.

“Just kick it down,” Zoe said, her patience apparently already having worn thin before the Invictus soldiers arrived. “We don’t have time to worry about leaving this mound of rotting clay intact.”

“We have all the time in the world, Zoe, but very well.”

The door flew open, and Kamila flattened herself against the wall.

In the corner of her vision, she saw the soldiers enter the center of the room, and acted without hesitation. She first threw her weight to the side, catching the door and slamming it shut behind the soldiers. Zoe began to turn at the noise, but by the time even her head had turned far enough to face Kamila, the door was already closed tight. Kamila felt her tattoos burn as she pushed back against the door with one hand, leapt up, and, bracing against the wooden frame, kicked out with both feet.

Zoe stumbled and fell in a daze, dropping her weapon before she even had the chance to bring it to bear.

As soon as her feet touched the ground Kamila fell into a crouch, fists closed and gauntlets ready, and she lunged toward the other soldier – a rather somber-looking man even when he had a rather large likelihood of death hurtling at him from five feet away.

He turned around and shot Kamila in the chest.

She remembered knocking him down, her body barreling into his in midair, and the note of surprise on his face. She remembered an explosion of white-hot pain that interrupted her vision, and that it was minutes before she could hear properly again. She remembered holding her one free hand to the injury site, her fingers coming away clean as something dragged her across the floor. No blood…?

When Kamila awoke fully, she was propped against a wall with Zoe Bari leaning in close to her, whispering to herself as she waited – waited, perhaps, for Kamila to awaken. Nearby, the other soldier stood with his service weapon in hand, the barrel pointed straight at Kamila. It was far enough away that she wouldn’t be able to bat the weapon aside before the somber man could fire.

“Hey. Welcome back to the living, Kamila Zelenko.” Zoe spoke barely above a whisper, her face inches from Kamila’s ear.

“I’m not dead.” Kamila said it as a simple, flat statement of fact, surprised but not questioning.

“You’re not dead. That was a stun gun, Kamila Zelenko.”

“Stun gun?”

Zoe nodded slowly. “That’s right. Plato is a surprisingly good shot, you know.”

Plato gave a slight incline of his head. “I appreciate that.”

“Now down to business,” Zoe cut back in. “Kamila Zelenko.”

“Quit saying it like that,” Kamila said, raising her hand to try to push Zoe away. she saw that her hands were bruised – and her gauntlets, of course, were gone. Zoe caught her hand, and Kamila cried out in pain – the injuries to her hand screamed, and her muscles spasmed.

Zoe leaned in close and said:

“Kamila Zelenko, do you want to leave this room alive?”

She nodded, of course. What else could she do?

“That’s good. That’s very good.” Kamila started to open her mouth to speak, to ask what the hell Zoe wanted, but Zoe just placed a hand over her mouth and pushed her head against the wall. “Very good. So, Kamila Zelenko, if I’m not mistaken, your little sister Hilda is a member of the Mirshal Reapers and you are not. Is that right?”

She slowly removed her hand. “Yes,” Kamila said. “What game are you playing here? You know this. What about it?” Kamila found her eyes lingering on the barrel of Plato’s service weapon. She could almost convince herself that she could see the end of the barrel – and inside that inky darkness, the rounded tip of a bullet waiting to relieve her of her brain. She couldn’t steady her breath or stop the cold sweat.

“I would stake my service upon this fact: that Hilda is somewhere nearby. Isn’t that right?”

Kamila said nothing. She tried to stare down the barrel of Plato’s gun, tried to delude herself into believing the darkness there was not so dark at all.

“Isn’t that right, Kamila Zelenko?”

“You won’t find her.”

Zoe nodded, and tapped her own head where Kamila’s boots had left a red impression. “And if we did, I am sure she is barricaded and armed. We would not succeed in taking her so easily. You didn’t get too bad of a jolt from Plato’s stun gun, did you? You do remember our conversation yesterday?”

Kamila remembered, of course. She was dazed and talking without thinking, but she did remember.