Perhaps the culture the Enforcers spoke of was a curse they had laid upon her. Perhaps that curse was what made her heart quake.

She felt pangs of cutting pain as she clumsily led the metal to the surface. Blood seeped from the wound, inadvertently pulled on by her thoughts. Even through the warming haze of the morphine she felt terrible pain.

Aatto’s breathing became briefly troubled. “I live only to support you and witness your deeds! I will absolutely, without a doubt, employ every part of this body in most excellent service! Master, what ordeals will you subject me to today?”

“I will see it as a personal failure if among the enemy there are not at least 30,000 KIA. My goal is to utterly destroy their ability to make war on our fragile people, who don’t know the evil of the world the same way that I do.”

“The work of Allah, subhanahu wa ta’ala, is in all things, but this is verging on jinn talk.” Fatima mysteriously spoke up at that point. Alex looked at her with a certain confusion.

Upon hearing his remarks, Jayasankar’s face turned cold. She turned a chilling glare on him. “We entombed ourselves in steel and poured our blood into making this country, the same as you. Yet you hate us for not deceiving kids like her with sappy dreams.”

Her soul screamed for understanding, justice, and redress. Suddenly the vortex flashed as if in response to her desires, overwhelming white. In the blink of an eye, Murati saw out of her eyes not a void but a world.

“It’s her loss if she turned down such a handsome and courteous young lady as you.” Homa’s ears stood back up. Her face flushed red. She nodded and walked away. Kalika could see her tail swishing as she left. Awkward girl; so cute when she was flustered.

“Do they have good jobs? Can they live anywhere? Do they get to go to the university?” Kitty’s expression darkened a tiny bit. “They do have their own habitation there–” “So they live in a ghetto.” Homa said. “Don’t mince words about it. I’m not a dumb kid.”

“I just want to go home– and kinda forget everything today. I– I’ll be okay.” “I get it. I also want to put today’s nightmares away before receiving tomorrow’s.”

Many underestimated the capability of the Union to fight. The Volkisch characterized the Union as a state of ethnic inferiors with a pretend navy composed of lesbians and effeminate men in women’s uniforms.

Squirming, mouth hanging in horror and the red rings of psionic power around her eyes. “Boss, I can’t stop it! She’s comin’! The Autarch! We gotta run boss!” Hunter III raised a shaking hand at the main screen, tears rising as steam from her eyes.

“It will help you to have people with strength and resources on your side– and I believe you won’t cooperate with anyone else. Because your power lies in your empathy, Mona– the Keyring is proof of that.”

Astra looked up at her with dim eyes that saw only enough light not to go totally blind. She reached her hands out to touch, desperate, weak, addled by malnutrition– What she really wished was that Ganges would’ve never existed. That she was dead.

Shalikova felt more helpless, useless, worthless, than she could possibly imagine. She was no hero. It was her fault that Zasha was killed.

“I– I wouldn’t be here without you. I don’t know– I don’t get what compelled you to risk your life for me. It’s hard to accept that you decided to take such risks for my sake. I think– it was reckless, and stupid of you. But– I’m alive now. I’m here, thanks to you.”

“You will find I’m not alone in that sentiment, Ms. Bashara!” Zozia replied. Her tone was so suddenly elevated and jovial. “It’s universal to the downtrodden! Vengeance is our great need! We don’t join militias for the slogans.”

Hunter III felt herself be pulled up as if by invisible hands. Raised up by her wrists, dangling like a doll in front of the lounging Arbitrator II.

Years of an inevitable tension were released in the span of mere minutes. Weapons roared, the currents parted, and human life, as always, ended in the wake.

She smiled. Euphrates’ legs gave again. Kneeling with her head down in front of her. Her voice shook out of a throat of shattering glass. “I don’t want to fail you too.”

“I promise, Mona, I will become strong enough nobody will ever touch you again.” In the dark, amber and green eyes met with determination. Despite the pain, Mona reached out her hand and caressed Olesya’s dog-like ears. “I know you will.” Mona said.

She already had the power and already could not use it anymore, and Shalikova trusted Maryam would judge her character and deem whether or not she was worthy of it– “Wah! That’s so tragic! You’ve been through a lot! Come to the cuddlefish right now!”

“Isn’t it just a little facile to study the concept of Infinity?” “Mathematics, philosophy, many things are studied because they might become practical or lead to practicality– but they are also studied out of fascination or even aesthetics.”

Sieglinde’s eyes drew wider as Gertrude spoke, with dire certitude, about literal magic.

Holding Euphrates by the throat which she had not seconds ago completely shredded. “Our hearts want to connect, Norn. That’s why I can bring you here.” Her voice was rough. Her blood-stained lips curled into a little smile. “Ganges’ childish philosophy.”

To her, every new year meant that she had a narrower focus on what interested her. And a greater disdain and less time to spare for anything that she found boring. It was only Norn von Fueller who truly understood the appeal of her philosophy.

Both of the intruders bowed in a similar, almost rehearsed fashion, grinning like devils. “Syzygy Enforcer III: Gula, the Gluttony.” Said the daintier one. While the handsome one locked eyes with Zozia. “Syzygy Enforcer I: Avaritia, the Greed.”

“I’m a soldier with my vices. I still pray, I still fast. I do the things I grew up doing. And I fight like hell for others– if my soul ends up in the abyss for some drinking, I hope the many more souls I saved can live less broken lives than I.”

Like iron, we sharpen each other.

It could only have been her who shattered Euphrates. No one else could hurt so deeply. But the shadow of her would not stop. No matter how many times she met with destruction. Everything around her crumbled but– Her own pieces inexorably picked themselves together.

“Suit yourself.” Eris said. “Then I’ll just rip that Doll’s stupid key out of you, expose your real body, and tear you limb from limb. Then I’ll have my way regardless. Once you’ve grown everything back maybe you’ll have attained some much-needed perspective on this situation.”

Everyone was far too knocked about to clap or to take much pleasure in Erika’s speech. However, the tiniest smiles crept onto the faces of the bridge crew. Once more, against mounting odds, they lived to return to the Ocean and fight another day.

“Mona, he’s going to make off with her!” The woman whispered with a note of desperation. Mona lifted a finger to her lips to signal quiet.

And it was getting to her mind, her heart. She was not a machine or a monster. In fact, if you asked Arbitrator II, she would say Hunter III was the only “real” human here.

She had to calm herself before Braya saw her again. She had to calm herself, and to think, to uncover more. She had to do something to protect them. Arbitrator I could not afford to fail in the face of the Syzygy. Not again. She could not lose another home.

Thump thump, went Ingrid’s tail.

“Whenever I try to paint it just seems to devolve into these shapes. My worlds are nothing but shapes strewn about in a chaos. Did I really choose any of this?! Or does it just happen to me like a sabotage? Can any of this be called art?”

He who had been first to break his shackles, and whose next action, was to break the shackles of his neighbor, and the neighbor after that, until he had freed scores of his kin.

“None of us can escape Destiny.” She mumbled to herself. Weeping profusely. “He’s wrong.” Samoylovych said. “The power to defy Destiny exists. But those who wield it have turned their backs on the Loup and on the atrocity of the Host. That is the truth.”

She was a human, a person, Olga Athanasiou of the Rotfront. She had made herself human. No longer the ‘the Hunter of Pactea’. And not ‘Hunter One’ in a maniac leviathan cult. She alone made herself human, and she alone decided she would be among the hominin.

Upon the “polyhedron” itself could be seen hundreds of snaking cables and pipes and other arteries such that it appeared like a terrifying mechanical heart, pumping purple glow and eldritch energy.

“You think I’m just a stupid little girl who can’t do anything–” “Murati that’s the last thing I think–” “I’m going to end this war! I’m going to make all the Ocean safe for us.” Deshnov blinked. He stood there, speechless, for a moment.

She could feel that touch, the comfort, the desire, the certainty of a partnership. I will go wherever you do. I will be your inseparable confidante.

Without the God at the center of the tower, and its attendant angels in the walls, there was only the clamor of the frightened, the anger of the beaten, and they made the music of the festival and its dance of despair.

When Daksha left the Union in the hands of that insipid idealist Ahwalia and that utilitarian brute Jayasankar, Kremina had followed dutifully because she believed in her. She owed her life and allegiance to Daksha Kansal.

“Thank you, Mona.” The Professor said, walking past the detective on her way down. Mona almost felt like calling her by name– but she silently followed her down instead.

“Do Pythiria and Tritipha actually fuck in this one?” “Such vulgar terms are always crossing your lips! Their relationship, I’ll have you know, is quickly approaching a thrilling apex of titillating hurt/comfort escalation in volume three.”

Rather than agony, however, Gertrude felt warmth, closeness, affection through those fangs ripping skin, tearing fibers, blood swallowed up she was filled with something made a part of it connected to a grander whole

She could barely begin to describe what she saw upon that canvas. It was not that it was abstract or formless– it would have been facile to say that it was all random, that it was a “smear” or a mess. Rather, the chaos of it had been completely deliberate.

“No, please, Parvati, please tell me it’s not– please tell me–” Ulyana begged. “It’s not your fault.” Nagavanshi reached out and took her hand for comfort. Ulyana Korabiskaya broke down into sobbing, crying, and finally screaming.