He cursed them, even as the serpent caught up and entangled him, losing its tubular shape and forming an impermeable ball of flames and spikes, crushing and squeezing and smothering the now-falling general.

Alcerys and Red were now left to deal with the aftermath of the latter’s strange conjuring magic, all of the impurity left behind reshaping itself into a purulent monstrosity whose sole instinct was to lash out at those who would cut short the suffering of its original victim.

“Though I appreciate the help, this thing is of your making. Don’t you dare think of fleeing,” said the Charred Judge to the Red Mantis as she struggled for breath, who scoffed at the mere implication.

Lighthouse Square was full of people. Swarming about, mingling amongst themselves, wielding appropriated armaments and dragging away the corpses of those they had taken those arms from. A surreal sense of camaraderie hung in the air, almost approaching revelry.

It happened mere moments after the Red Tankman’s third or perhaps fourth return to the square, the unpainted sections of his armor having grown more and more bloodstained with each trip. He had gone down every major street connected to the square by now, all by his lonesome, smashing through checkpoints and slaughtering their occupants as he went whilst those he had riled up spread through the rest of the city and roused its greater populace into a general revolt.

Those who had gathered in Lighthouse Square to maintain a hold of its territory during the ongoing riots and attempt to breach its perimeter did not expect one of the Lighthouse’s famously near-unbreakable windows to be shattered like sugar glass…

Much less did they expect for the source of said shattering to be the apparent defenestration of a humanoid figure thrice the size of a normal man wrought of pitch-black smoke, or for said figure to be followed and entangled by a serpent of blue-burning metal barbs and tendrils.

It tumbled down from the heavens, that great flaming ball of spikes, trailing fetid black smoke as it fell, and the people beneath hurried to get out of the way.

There was not a smashing of solid metal against cobbles, and it didn’t bounce.

The ball splattered, its constituent metal shattering into uncountable pieces as its metal turned to dust, and that which it had contained moments earlier splattered all across the square.

A great pitch-black stain, plastered at the base of the Rigport Lighthouse, a gutchurning stench causing even the most steel-gutted of bystanders to heave. At its center, horrifyingly maimed and just barely recognizable, laid the broken husk of a thing that had once been a man.

It was not a definable smell, but one that all those who had smelt it would never forget.

To many among the crowd, it was even familiar in a strange way.

For what stench is more memorable, than that of a curse born from the self-sacrifice of thousands of doomed souls?

The Charred Judge and the Red Mantis stood face to face in the mayor’s office, surrounded by the vile-smelling detritus of a curse made matter. Some of the curse-things still clung on, blobs of blackness slithering about as anguished faces swirled across their surfaces and distant screams of atrocities long past echoed from within them. Alcerys still grasped Emberthorn in her hand, its colossal mass swiftly sloughing off, leaving behind its true, relatively unsullied form, alongside a pile of disintegrating slag at her feet.

“I have no quarrel with you or your benefactors,” said the mutant flatly as she donned her golden-hemmed robe once more, even the condensed impurity it had been drenched in slipping off the immaculate arcane fabric. The implications behind her words were not hidden in the slightest, only a half-step short of being spoken aloud.

Do not try to kill me, and I will not try to kill you.

She stopped for a moment as she bent down to pick up her mask, adding, “In fact, I should be thankful that you chose to go after the Queen rather than myself back in the dungeon. Were it not for that, I might not be here - certainly not in possession of my faculties, at the very least.”

Alcerys had many things to say, many things to ask, the most prominent amongst them being “How?”

How was the Mantis of all people innocent? It defied all explanation, and yet, in her gut, the Charred Judge knew it to be true.

Instead, she asked: “What will you do, after this? Pateiria’s already shaky claim on Rigport is all but gone now. The people will not have you. Not for long.”

An enigmatic smile quirked the woman’s deformed features.

“I will remain, for a time, for no reason other than to ensure the proper handing-over of the reins to the rightful occupiers of this city. A peaceful occupation by Grekuria is still more beneficial to the Empire than… Well, this great big mess,” said Red.

“After that I will leave. Perhaps usurp a minor duchy, or take over a tribe of mountain-folk. There are peoples and places in Ikesia the Empire cares not about, and who care not about the Empire, yet who yearn for a steady hand to lead them out of this little dark age.”

She finally sealed the mask to her face, righted her robe, and stood tall. Despite the distortion, Alcerys heard the strange, optimistic melancholy bleeding through it as Red finished.

“I would build something of my own. Be someone of my own. Not unlike you, Renegade.”

A great steel beast roared across an ancient road, upon its back riding a yet greater beast still and a soldier who had surpassed that title. Zefaris held on for dear life, but did not ask Zel to slow down.

From tens to hundreds of kilometers per hour, a monstrous two-wheeled thing screaming down that venerable old road, the landscape scrolling by at an almost comical pace, akin to the moving background in a traveling puppet show.

Fields.

Forests.

Farmsteads and hamlets, both living, dead, and somewhere inbetween.

Mountains in the distance.