Aerie Station was split for the first few days.
On one side, engineering, the analysts, even medical, were utterly ablaze with confusion and excitement. The nascent, eerie rumors that had begun to surround Quinn since her first connection began burgeoning into a local mythos. From her astounding phasing speed, to the inexplicable refusal of her Savior’s eye—and it’s eye only—to heal, to now her pulling a weapon that every last soul on board was intimately and frightfully familiar with.
Coincidence was a strange and unwelcome guest that most who worked in Savior programs refused to entertain. Theories abounded that could have found comfortable homes in movies and chip-novels, and Besca made a concerted effort to quash them, and, failing that, to keep them away from Quinn.
On the other side was Dahlia.
The girl’s immediate reaction to Quinn’s drawing was to race back to the dorms and violently hurl sake-saffron into the toilet. By the time Quinn was finished with her medical evaluation and made it back to the dorms, her sister had migrated from the bathroom to a door she’d managed to keep shut for nearly two weeks: Safie’s room. There, she barricaded herself in blankets that muffled her sobbing.
“I can’t, she’d said in the moments she had the will to speak. “I can’t—it can’t be real. It can’t.”
It was days before she was able to look Quinn in the eyes. She apologized profusely, promised it wasn’t her and that this didn’t change the way she felt about her. But there was an air of unease about her after that, and every time the unnamed Savior came up, Dahlia would wilt, her fingers would twitch, and she’d find the earliest excuse to leave the conversation.
Eventually, one night, Quinn cornered her gently and finally got a straight-forward answer from her.
“Those things, they killed my friends, my dad. They destroyed my home,” she’d said, and every word seemed to break her further. “And now I don’t just have to watch them kill again—I have to want them to. I have to hope for it. And I do. Quinn, there isn’t anything in this world more important to me right now than you winning this—and I hate it.”
There hadn’t been time for much else. Quinn had been running herself into the ground; eat, sim, sleep. Eat, sim, sleep. Her sessions drew crowds from every department onboard, but the one who followed her closest was Besca. If she had been shaken by the cannon’s presence, she didn’t show it. She showed nothing that week but fretful support. She prepped Quinn’s meals, regulated her sleep schedule, monitored her sims. There wasn’t enough time for the tech team to put together a reliable model of Blotklau for her to train against, but she seemed to spend most of her time familiarizing herself with her weapon anyway.
As for her opponent, the dossier Quinn received was barebones. There wasn’t even a picture.
Designation: Blotklau
Weapons: Twin Axes
Pilot: Roaki Tormont
Age: 15
Phasing Speed: N/A
Footage was scarce as well. Blotklau was an old and storied Savior in Helburke, but Roaki only had two duels to her name as its pilot. One had occurred three months ago, the same day she’d become a pilot, and the second was last week, where she had been paired with another Helburkan Savior against the Casobani pair of Enavant and Spectre. Her partner had been felled early, and yet, despite being outnumbered, Roaki had managed to kill both of her opponents. Enavant rarely fought duels, but Spectre had a rather impressive record.
Most of the crew who watched that duel found their appetites withered. Blotklau didn’t fight like a person. She didn’t fight like a Modir. She fought like an animal. Sprinting, pouncing, howling; she ripped and tore and when her axes were buried too deeply in the other Saviors’ flesh she bit and ripped and spit hunks of ichor-drenched flesh and modium.
In both duels her opponents had been utterly mulched. All that remained were the heads—the sole sign that she obeyed some law of humanity. Killing pilots was the standard in duels, but destroying Saviors? It wasn’t forbidden, but it was heavily discouraged, and often led to compensation that outweighed whatever victory had been achieved in the first place.
The fog of focus surrounding Quinn’s mind was thick, but when she looked at that footage, when she thought about facing Blotklau, there were spikes. A seething. A hunger. They never sank deep, but they never stopped, either.
Too soon, Quinn’s week was over.
They never saw whatever stretch of land had prompted the duel. Aerie Station hovered over Casoban, and its elevator took Quinn, her Savior, and a retinue of crew and soldiers down wide, reaching plain of hills, halved by a jagged spine of mountains. On the very outskirts, behind a topographical bulwark, was the Parlay: a building nestled between the two camps, within which both parties were expected to meet to discuss terms and observe the duels together. Most often, it was used as a means for the pilots to interact before the battle began.
They arrived with a day to spare, and by the time they had set up their own camp is was afternoon. Helburke’s own station was gone, off to monitor its homeland until the business was done. Its camp was small, and comprised of only a few squat, utilitarian shacks, while RISC set up its array of stations under the umbrella of a single, sectioned pavilion supplied by Casoban.
Behind Helburke’s camp, Blotklau stood. Dark, gangly, menacing. They had positioned it to stare directly at the Runans, head tilted, jaw slacked hungrily. Its body still glistened with ichor.
Only a handful of Casobani remained. Toussaint was among them—a short, balding man perhaps ten years Besca’s senior. He wore a monocle over one eye, the other was cybernetic in a much more pronounced way than Dahlia’s.
Besca met him at the door to their camp, and it took every fiber of her being not to grab him by his collar and slam her forehead into his nose. He started to speak, and she looked him sharply.
“Shut the fuck up, she said, after making sure Quinn wasn’t close enough to hear her swear. “Just shut the fuck up.”
Dahlia rode down with Quinn, and though she didn’t look up at the unnamed Savior, she had softened more. She stood close to her, held her hand tightly when Blotklau came into view. She whispered, “It’s going to be okay,” and didn’t know if it was meant for Quinn or herself.
Inside the pavilion, Besca was waiting for them. “Get settled in best you can. Helburke’s invited us to dinner in the Parlay. Tradition. Just the duelists and the brass, and you, Deelie, if you want. We should go, I think. Chance to gather any last-minute information.”
It didn’t seem like there was much of an option.
As noon waned into evening, the small group of RISC’s command departed for the Parlay. Music carried on the sunset sky, low and foreboding. Thick strings and heavy drums. It came from the Helburkan camp.
“What is that?” someone asked.
Besca’s lips pursed, but Dahlia answered.
“It’s a funeral dirge,” she said, cold memory in her eyes. “They play it at every duel. It’s for us.”
The Parlay was low and round, and had only one entrance on either side, guarded by their respective soldiers. Inside, the massive room was split right down the middle by a pane of glass, and on either end were a mirrored arrangement of tables. Some were distant, others were pressed right up to the divide. There were slots on the far walls, each with a door on either side through which things could be passed only if both were open.
On Helburke’s side, there were already people there. A dozen or so, all dressed in sharp, militaristic uniforms of toughened leather and dark cloth. On their shoulders were patches bearing the insignia of House Tormont—a wolf in a woodprint style, biting the end of its own tail like a lupine ouroboros—save for the most prominent figure.
He was a man nearing middle years, with a face made of hard lines and deep shadows. His eyes rested in pits beneath a stern brow, and he seemed to have the measure of every last one of the Runans before they’d taken three steps inside. He wore the same dark, militaristic uniform, only without the patch. In its place was the Helburkan flag—a star rising from the belly of a mountain.
This man Quinn would know from her debriefing as Karle Donner, one of the Crown’s officials. For Helburke, while the decision to demand a duel was often left at the discretion the Great Houses, international diplomacy necessitated royal representation. The House could have or lose its honor, but nothing happened beyond the eyes and ears of the Crown. When it came to negotiations, the lords could make their suggestions, could write their terms—but it was Karle Donner who did the talking.
“Commander Darroh,” he said. Though the glass could likely have taken the brunt of an explosion without issue, it didn’t stifle is voice in the slightest. They might as well have been talking outside. “It’s been some time.”
“Not long enough, Herr Donner,” she said, and with a nod her group dispersed to the tables. “Don’t suppose you asked us here to break bread and talk peace?”
Herr Donner didn’t seem capable of smiling, but his lips twitched as if they meant to try. “Peace is an illusion, commander. We asked you here for Henkersmahl, as honor compels. You are free to eat, and you are free to speak—but this is a night for acceptance.”
She huffed, glad she hadn’t ruined her palette with a smoke. “You know, all the doom and gloom of someone serving you a ‘last meal’ sorta wears off once you’ve had two or three.”
“For you,” he said, and his stony gaze flicked to Quinn. “Perhaps your new duelist will feel differently.”
Besca scowled. They walked away from the glass, and the door on Helburke’s side opened up. A handful of soldiers entered carrying a pair of massive trays, which they laid down upon a table and uncovered. Steam flooded the air, and the smell of cooked meat permeated both sides of the Parlay. Roasted boar browned and glistening with honey glaze, laid upon a bed of vinegared greens and thickly sliced potatoes.
They began to carve servings off onto plates, which went one at a time to the Helburkan side, and then to the Runan’s through the slots. There was a time Besca would have refused, or had the food tested for poisons, but over time she’d come to understand Helburkan traditions. The truth was, there wasn’t a single place on Illun they were less likely to die than at a Henkersmahl before a duel. Sabotage was dishonorable, and weak, and as such had no place here. The meal was a blunt message free of nuance—‘we’ll send you to your maker with a full stomach.’
As the last of the plates were sent out, and Quinn settled at a table by the glass, Helburke’s door opened again. This time only one figure entered.
She was a silhouette in the light, slight and short, and moving slowly, almost limping. The door shut behind her, revealed her to be a girl who couldn’t have been Quinn’s age. She looked odd, eerie. Her skin was blanch-white, as if all the color had been bled out of her, and the same was true of her hair, which fell wild and messy down to the small of her back. Even her eyes were a soft, dun silver. The left side of her face bore erratic gray marring, almost like burn-scars, but inexplicably different.
She was dressed plainly; a dark shirt with short sleeves, a jacket tied ‘round her waist that trailed to her ankles. The bottom layer of a pilot’s suit stuck up from her collar, worn underneath as if to be ready at a moment’s notice.
Her left arm was gone below the shoulder. Her left leg was missing at the knee, where a roughshod, wooden prosthetic kept her upright.
No one seemed to notice her, or those who did, didn’t seem to care. Nor did she. Her eyes found Quinn instantly, and Quinn’s eye hers.
Taking a plate, she walked unevenly, unused to the wooden leg, and sat down at the table directly across from Quinn’s at the divide. She made no move to eat, only stared hard at her, like it was her the Helburkans had cooked and served as a last meal.
A sneer split her lips, flashing too-sharp teeth.
“So,” said Roaki Tormont. “I guess you're next.”
