"While the subject's ability to gather and store soul hollows is nearing my optimal projects, its ability to use said hollows efficiently is consistently lacking. There is a general erraticness to every involved variable, from the quantity expended to the efficiency of regeneration. I've tried to streamline this by setting a consistent "order of operations" for resurrections, but this is proving both limiting and, in some situations, counter-productive. For the subject to reach its maximum potential, finding a method for it to consciously direct the expenditure of soul hollows is key. Till such a breakthrough is made, I have some promising options on how to calibrate the subject's regeneration towards a particular goal." - From the notes of Countess Isabelle Gens Silva.

Once again, Yara was disobeying her mistress's orders, and once again Kit was the reason why. Natalie had told her thrall to get some rest in the few hours they had before dawn. A sensible command, one that Yara's own leaden exhaustion agreed with. Yet she could not bring herself to sleep, not while Kit still lived. Everything she'd heard from Mak Murtery had reinforced her own fears about the changeling magi. If he was so tainted that the corrupted oak spirit saw him as a potential ally, then there could be no doubt of his unseelie power.

Kit had planted an obsession in her, one that now bore poisoned fruit at the mere sight of him. So perverse and total was this bewitchment that upon seeing her mistress kiss the homunculus, her treacherous mind had imagined her and Kit in their place. That intrusion, and what it represented, had strengthened Yara's resolve; she would not falter this time, not when the danger was so obvious. He'd been preparing her this entire time as a potential lever, one that might be pushed on at the key moment to topple everything. The changeling needed to die before he could join forces with his kindred, who ruled over this dead city.

So now, knife in hand, Yara stood over a sleeping Kit, ready to drive the blade into his mutant heart and save them all. But the magi had one last trick up his sleeve, one final layer of defense she now struggled to overcome. The dim light of his nearby lantern shone on his face. He slept soundly, breaths shallow, eyes twitching beneath their lids, a sign he was dreaming. Madly, stupidly, all Yara couldn't stop wondering what he dreamt about. Did he dream of magic? Of the faerie realms? Of his music? Of his schemes? Did he dream of her?

"What in the world's name are you doing?"

Yara nearly dropped the knife in shock. Turning away from Kit, she clutched the blade to her breast in a vain attempt to hide it from Natalie. The Alukah's eyes shone red in the near darkness of the warehouse, and Yara found herself painfully reminded that she served a predator of predators. Heart hammering to the point she swore it made the dagger vibrate, she tried to find words, an explanation, but nothing came.

With a sigh, Natalie gently grabbed Yara by the elbow and led her away from the nook Kit slept in. Deep shame flowed through the thrall, and her throat tightened to the point it hurt. Vampire and ancilla soon stood in a secluded corner of the warehouse, one whose window hadn't been properly boarded up, allowing the faintest of moonlight to spill through the cracks. With the casual grace that defined her kind, Natalie hopped up onto a large crate and sat casually on its edge, legs dangling.. Patting a similar container next to her, she said. "Come sit."

Wordlessly, Yara obeyed, hauling herself up onto the crate, and then clutching her legs to her chest like she'd done as a child. Silence grew between them, silence that Yara knew she was supposed to fill with an answer to her mistress's question, but right now, words felt very much beyond her. So, as usual, Natalie took the lead and asked almost casually. "Were you trying to stab him?"

Knowing she'd been disobedient enough for one lifetime, Yara managed to nod. Again, silence grew, and again Natalie cut it down. "Why?"

There was a mix of bewilderment and genuine concern in her tone that managed to shake a few words loose from Yara. "He's bewitched me."

"W-What?" Now Natalie just sounded utterly baffled.

"I'm trying to break the spell he put on me before he can use it to hurt you."

Natalie blinked slowly, her red eyes gleaming with dim moonlight. "Tell me about this spell."

Yara swallowed down a bitter lump and stared at the dusty floor as she told her mistress what had been done to her. The words came slowly, haltingly at first, like her lips were a rusty hand pump being primed; but once they started, they quickly grew into a rapid torrent. She explained how looking at Kit made her feel strange, how she couldn't stop thinking of him, how he'd gotten her to foolishly risk her life for his over and over. She shared all of this, and why the only explanation that made any sense was faerie magic. Magic, she'd fought a losing battle against the entire time they'd been stuck together in Harmas.

As the last of Yara's words left her, she took a ragged breath and managed to look to her mistress. To her surprise, Natalie was shaking slightly, like someone trying to suppress a bad cough. This impression was furthered by how she clamped her hands over her mouth. For a brief, terrible moment, Yara feared that in sharing her fears, she'd unleashed some fae hex. But before that thought could begin to fester, Natalie pulled one hand from her face and set it on Yara's knee.

A bizarre noise slipped free from the vampire, one accompanied by the flash of fangs in the moonlight. It took Yara a solid fifteen seconds to understand what had overcome Natalie. She was giggling, more than that, she was trying desperately not to laugh. Between violent spasms, Natalie managed to say. "I-I'm sorry, I sh-shouldn't, this is se-serious."

The red flushing Yara had grown to associate with Kit, suddenly bloomed across her face. Cheeks and ears burning with some eldritch warmth, she managed to rasp. "Why are you laughing?'

Natalie smiled, her expression both kind and sheepish. "Oh, Yara, you're not under some faerie magic. You've got a crush."

Yara heard these words, yet they didn't make any sense. "A… crush?"

Nodding rapidly, Natalie managed to recover herself a little. "I'm sorry for laughing; that was mean of me. I was just really concerned, and well, to find out this is what's going on, well, it's sweet and strangely comforting."

Again, Yara asked. "A crush?"

Natalie's smile turned a little sad. "We're going to have a lot to talk about. But don't worry, you are in good hands with me."

Strangely, the odd glint Yara saw in her mistress's eyes made her a little doubtful of that.

People always crowed on about being the center of attention, but they rarely stopped to think about what that exactly meant. A roast pig with an apple in its mouth had all eyes on it during a feast afterall. Being the focus of a function was no guarantee of safety, let alone dignity. Those priceless commodities could only be earned and maintained through power. Yet power was a near-illusory thing, and people needed constant reminders of its presence. Stranger still, being the center of attention could act as one of those reminders, leading to a paradoxical cycle of exposure, audacity, and general risk-taking in the name of ensuring safety.

This absurdity was why Countess Isabelle Gens Silva now sat on a borrowed throne, surrounded by potential enemies, unreliable allies, and brainless sycophants. She'd left the security of her citadel and dominion to travel to Violia, the grandest city of Atredia, to ensure those who dwelt here did not forget, nor underestimate her. Clearly, such a reminder was overdue, as her surface-level reason for being in the city was to answer an insult and challenge. Count Ichabod Gens Ator, one of her more unseemly neighbors in the south, had accused her of experimenting with forbidden faerie magic and demanded her research be subject to scrutiny and potential censure

Unfortunately, his claims were completely accurate, if interestingly out of date; she'd stopped toying with the fae centuries ago. This was obviously part of a much larger scheme, as someone had offered this piece of expired blackmail to Count Ator to use him as a catspaw. Ator was a petty, close-minded man who deluded himself into thinking he was one of Isabelle's rivals. Having never figured out her lack of effort to take his territory like he constantly tried with hers, wasn't due to a lack of resources but instead interest. He should have kept to limestone cliffs and olive-growing peasants; there were enough of those in Atredia to go around. But instead, he'd let himself be used as both lure and prod against Isabelle; there would be consequences to that, more than what was about to play out in the arena below.

Isabelle's throne sat beside two others in the ducal box that presided over the enclosed ring of pale stone where the accusations against her would be judged. Among the nocturnal nobility, traditional legal practices had little place. The minutiae of courts and arguments were saved for both mortals and the most extreme circumstances involving vampires. Oddly enough, dabbling with the fae as Isabelle had once done did not fall into that second category. Her careful exploitation of and experimentation upon Grey Beyonders would be frowned upon by the more traditional members of the nobility, but in terms of skeletons in closets, it was practically dull by vampire standards. So this matter between peer nobles would need to be settled in the simplest way possible; whoever had more might, was right. Yet, long ago, the Archduke had understood the inevitable problems born of his elite vassals settling disputes by turning each other into ash. So, in his wisdom, he ruled that a trial by combat must be between non-vampire champions.

Like anything else a vampire of his age and potency did, the Archduke's declaration had layers to it. Not only would this limit losses among the peerage and help keep conflicts from spiraling into blood feuds, but it also ensured a constant arms race among the nobility powerful enough to worry about a serious legal challenges. Necromancy, flesh-crafting, alchemy, bone-smithing, martial arts, enchanting, all of these practices were continuously refined in the creation of ever mightier champions. Where a mortal aristocrat might have a few monstrous barristers on retainer, the vampires could unleash actual monsters.

Looking out from her place of honor at the crowd of nobles lounging among the thick cushions covering the arena's seats, Isabelle had to admit there was an entertainment factor to go along with the political and military ones. Blood and circuses, they never stopped being effective in controlling people. Normally, she'd scoff at the sheer decadence of this display and how pitiful her kin were to fall for it, but right now she was glad for the audience. So many witnesses would surely help get her message across more easily.

Whoever pulled Count Ator's strings wanted to drag her out into the open, to examine her for weaknesses and maybe shake loose the secret she'd spent the last few decades working tirelessly on. Well, they'd get half their wish, but not in the way they imagined.

Leaning forward a little on her throne, Isabelle looked to her right, past the empty central seat, to the other occupied throne sitting parallel to her own. Count Ator sat with perfect court posture, a tiny, thin smile upon his make-up-adorned face. Over-primped and under-aware, Ator was just another vainglorious Moroi who'd snaked his way into a position of power and couldn't stop obsessing about cheating his way higher up the hierarchy. Judging by his small smirk and supposedly regal bearing, the idiot was probably imagining himself as master of these ceremonies. Isabelle wondered if he'd dare to continue his delusion once the middle throne was occupied? Probably not, as even Ator wouldn't be able to keep up his fantasy when the Duchess arrived.

As if conjured by her thoughts, a set of brass trumpets suddenly played a keening fanfare. The sound was a bizarre thing, somehow resembling a more melodic version of an owl's screech. Yet everyone in the arena knew its meaning, and as one, hundreds of vampires rose and bowed before their arriving liege. Isabelle was not exempt from this show of deference, and she lowered herself as the third throne's owner came to claim it.

Duchess Nerva, ruler of Atredia, and true ancient among Strix, emerged from a shadowed passage to greet her vassals. To the painfully ignorant, Nerva looked like a gangly teenage girl with long curly brown hair and pinched, almost mousy features. Unlike so many of her subjects and scions, she was not a classically beautiful, nor did it seem like she'd been destined to grow into one. If it wasn't for her clothes, a fool might mistake her for a junior scribe. As she wore a loose, flowing robe of utterly archaic design. Stranger still, this "peplos", as Isabelle thought it to be called, was colored the deepest black, having been seemingly, or maybe literally, woven from shadow rather than any cotton or silk. Only the large owl-head brooch of white-gold upon her collarbone interrupted the cloth's darkness.

Yet for the more observant, this dress was only a paltry surface indicator of Nerva's true nature. Shadows clung eagerly to her like faithful pets unwilling to leave their mistress, and her red eyes glistened with a cold, monolithic intellect that reminded Isabelle of some of the nameless powers she'd encountered while swimming in the Beyond. In fact, the very Aether around the Duchess sang with dreadful power, letting all with the senses necessary hear the red lament her presence plucked into existence. She was old, so very old, having been sired in an age where only a perfect mix of genius and viciousness would allow one to survive for so long.

This eldest Strix now approached Isabelle and Count Ator without any guards; she didn't need them. "Ah, what a fine night this is, where we might enjoy that most perennial of sports: bloodshed."

Her voice was high-pitched and girl-like, but was flavored by an utterly inscrutable accent, the last memento of a language that had gone extinct long before even the Iskan Imperium was founded.

"You may raise yourselves, my vassals, I wouldn't want either of you to miss a moment of your champion's efforts."

Isabelle slowly complied and dared to meet her elder's eyes, earning a fanged smile from Nerva. "Ah, Isabelle, it is good to see you surface from your experiments. Studiousness is a virtue, but you've been missed here at court."

Casually, with hands that could pull down castles with a gesture, Nerva reached up and stroked Isabelle's hair. "See, you've let more of your hair go white. Take better care of yourself, or you'll soon be matching dear Flavius."

The Duchess of Atredia was rare even among her rank in that she referred to Dracon by his first name. Which, while jarring, did make sense, afterall, Nerva was far older than him. Bobbing her head, Isabelle calmly replied. "It is good to see you, ur-sire. I will take your advice to heart."

Nerva's pale lips twitched at the use of that title. While she kept the exact specifics to herself, lineage lore claimed the Duchess was of the second or third generation of Strix, being old enough to have known the three sisters who started the bloodline. Furthermore, as the eldest active scion of Nontho, the odds were good that one of Nerva's long-lost offspring was the origin of Isabelle's bloodline. While bringing up this distant connection was unlikely to sway the Duchess in any way, Isabelle would be remiss not to try.

Patting the Countess on the shoulder with an almost maternal air, Nerva turned her attention to Count Ator. "And you, Ichabod, it's good to see the centuries have done nothing to diminish your sense of style."

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The count offered a pathetically deep bow. "Yet they've also not given me the skill to match your simple elegance. I must know, is that lovely chiton, silk, or-"

"It's called a peplos," interrupted Isabelle. "But yes, I am also curious as to its composition."

Ator's smarmy expression twitched, momentarily exposing a sneer. Nerva clucked her tongue and stepped up onto her throne. "Now, now, we're here to settle this matter properly, not worsen it through exchanged barbs."

Both count and countess met each other's red eyes and then bowed in such a way that it could be interpreted as either directed at the Duchess or just maybe each other. Smirking at this admittedly petulant display, Nerva gestured for them to sit beside her. They did, and all across the stands, hundreds of vampires followed suit. Carved into living rock, the arena was underground, a place for private duels and bloody spectacles, not like the massive colosseum of Noct Kalat. It's simple, twenty-meter by twenty-meter ring was bordered by two heavy portcullises, one for the west, one for the east. Soon, a champion would emerge from each, and the legitimacy of Count Ator's accusations would be judged by merit of strength.

Raising one hand before her, Duchess Nerva spoke softly, but her voice was carried to all in attendance, like she were personally whispering into every available ear. "Members of the nocturnal nobility, true heirs of the empire, and scions of ancient blood. I greet you this fine night as both Duchess and host. I will not waste unnecessary breath on explaining why we are all here, but I will remind you all of the importance and dignity of this ceremony. Now, let us act as witnesses to this contest of honor and see who is judged worthy through blood and steel!"

No applause, no cheering, followed this speech; instead, the arena radiated with the silent eagerness of predators awaiting a feast. Even if all the blood shed in the arena was wasted, the mere promise of such carnage excited the darker instincts of the audience. As the clank and clatter of heavy chains signaled the opening of the twin portcullises, the crowd unconsciously leaned in as one. By contrast, Isabelle sat still, her grip on the borrowed throne's armrests tightening, but not out of bloodlust; she was far too self-controlled for that. No, instead, she felt another emotion, one cracked and dusty as an old jar left in an abandoned cellar.

Carefully, she examined this strange sensation, wiping away the residue of centuries, careful not to cut herself on its sharp edges. Was this fear? No, even she, with all her power, hadn't been able to fully escape fear. This was something else, a cousin perhaps, but one time had successfully buried.

Before Isabelle's mental archaeology could progress, a portly figure dressed in a brightly dyed toga walked out into the arena's center and bowed so low his nose must have brushed the worn stone floor. Ending his supplication, he spoke with a booming voice, one that must have taken a lifetime to cultivate. "Oh, great rulers of these lands, I come before you to herald two champions, only one of which will leave this place of honor."

The feeling inside Isabelle spiked strangely at the announcer's words, and it took her some effort not to accidentally damage the armrest's thick fabric. Gesturing with one pudgy hand, the herald pointed at the eastern gate. "First, allow me to introduce the challenger's champion."

Heavy, lumbering footfalls echoed across the arena, accompanied by a scraping metallic sound that made Isabelle think of surgical tools being sharpened. Out from the eastern gate, a heavily armored head emerged, soon followed by a hulking body, that even bent over, scraped against the tunnel. Pulling itself free from the gate, its wicked armor clattering and grinding, the creature emerged into the pale glowstone light, letting all eyes examine its brutish form.

Four meters tall and vaguely shaped like a man with disproportionately long limbs, the creature was covered in a collage of wicked edges and scrap metal plates. If Isabelle had been mortal, she'd have feared getting tetanus from just looking at the brute. From the forearm down, this ugly armor was at its worst, forming into a pair of oversized, clawed gauntlets whose vambraces were covered in layers of barbed and jagged spikes. Anything struck by this creature would be shredded apart, and any weapon used against it risked being entangled in its myriad barbs. Simple, but concerningly effective offense and defense.

Isabelle spared a glance for Count Ator, who was not even trying to hide his smirk, an expression that grew upon noticing her attention. He could see the foreign emotion in her and took it for weakness. Incensed, the countess turned her focus back to the arena as the now slightly nervous herald proclaimed the first champion.

"The Scrap Spawn!"

Upon hearing its gauche name, the brute raised both arms and roared, revealing twisted metal teeth. This final bit of flair proved a little too much for Isabelle, and she couldn't help but roll her eyes. Still, as much as she wished to just sneer down at this crude flesh golem, the damnedable feeling inside of her just wouldn't go away.

Having taken a small but noticeable step away from the Scrap Spawn, the herald gestured to the western gate. "Who will now face the challenged's champion!"

Isabelle's cold, dead innards tightened as a familiar figure marched out into the arena. Tall and well muscled, but still recognizably human, her champion wore a light panoply of steel scales and leather, his face hidden behind a rune-etched helm. In one hand, he carried an unusual pole axe with a more prominent spear tip, and in the other was a round shield inscribed with myriad enchantments. What little skin showed beneath his armor was pale and unblemished except for the intricate spell patterns painted along his nerves and veins. The contrast between the two opponents could not be more stark; one was a behemoth of mutation and mutilation, the other mankind perfected. Setting the butt of his poleaxe against the arena floor, Isabelle's champion waited as the herald announced him.

"The Homunculus Knight!"

Staring down at her masterwork and the crude brute he was about to face, Isabelle finally recognized the emotion that had been bothering her: she was worried for her creation. Yet this didn't make any sense. The Homunculus was in no danger of losing; his very nature ensured even the most vulgar war magics were nothing but a short-term annoyance. But as her eyes lingered on the wicked edges of the Scrap Spawn, this seed of fear grew just that much more. While victory was not in doubt, odds were the road to it would not be pleasant for her creation.

Isabelle's confusion was shelved as Duchess Nerva dismissed her announcer with a gesture. After a quick bow, he fled the arena with shocking speed for someone his size. He clearly had no wish to be anywhere close to the clash he'd heralded. With the stage now fully set, both champions looked to the Duchess, who spoke to them through an impossible whisper.

"Begin."

The Spawn roared loud enough to make the blood-filled pitcher sitting near Isabelle shake, and it charged the Knight. To her genuine surprise, the formerly lumbering flesh golem moved with sudden alacrity, crossing the distance to the Knight in less than an eyeblink. It brought both forearms down like twin hammers, and her champion barely had time to bring up his shield. The blows would have splintered mundane steel, but the enchantments etched into the shield not only let it hold, but kept the tremendous energy of the strike from the Knight. Runes flared along the shield's edge, and the Homunculus actually shoved back against the flesh golem, unleashing a shockwave of stored power.

Unprepared to receive a sizable percentage of its own blow, the Spawn staggered back, letting the Knight jab forward with once, twice, thrice with his pole axe, each spear strike scraping harmlessly off warped metal plates. Upon seeing his blows were useless, the Knight trotted backwards, and changed grip on his weapon as it itself changed. Instead of a pole-axe, he now held a heavy warpick whose long, armor-piercing beak started to seethe slightly.

Isabelle nodded to herself at that. Good, he was using her boons correctly. Preparing a mixture that blood-drinking halberd could store and eventually secrete hadn't been easy, but the fool Homunculus refused to use any other weapon, so she'd needed to get creative.

Stepping forward, the Knight ducked under two vicious haymakers from the Spawn and swung his warpick at the fleshgolem's knee. The beak punched clean through the armor, and a storm of acrid fumes immediately erupted from the puncture as Isabelle's concoction melted flesh and bone. Ripping his warpick down and away, the Knight pulled both the spawn's knee armor and kneecap from the creature. Yet it did not fall; instead, the flesh golem, thrust forward with its wounded leg, hitting the Knight with a battering ram-sized knee strike.

The Homunculus was too close to use his shield and took the strike on the breastplate, sending him to his back and skidding along the arena floor. Riding the momentum, he flipped over and rolled to his feet, arcane sparks coursing off the myriad runes bedecking his body and armor. Isabelle's worry lessened upon seeing this; her workarounds were proving most adequate.

In designing and creating the Homunculus Knight, she'd perfected the human form, but not gone much further in terms of biological enhancement; stability and utilitarian effectiveness had been the watchwords for that part of the process. Unfortunately, this meant he was drastically physically outclassed by the majority of her enemies. Normally, the bypass for such organic frailty was an education in magic, but Isabelle's own caution had nipped that option in the bud. She'd designed his neurology so he'd never excel at true magecraft. A security measure that, at the time, felt necessary, but now she almost regretted.

Still, even with the limits she'd placed upon her creation, Isabelle hadn't wanted him to rely solely on his unusual metaphysical structure. So she'd crafted him boons, complex enchantments, and alchemical concoctions that she alone could make and he alone could use. One of which was now ready to be unleashed.

The Homunculus Knight charged forward, moving far faster than he had before, and brought his shield up towards the flesh golem's wounded knee, slamming it rim-first into the still-smoking gouge. Stored kinetic energy ripped free from the enchantments with a thunderous crack. Flesh, bone, and metal broke in the Spawn, while the Knight was sent reeling by the backlash. But instead of being toppled over by the small explosion that just went off on one arm, he twisted and rode the momentum to spin about and drive the warpick right into the fleshgolem's left side. With one leg severed at the knee, and half a meter of seething steel in between its ribs, the flesh golem buckled, falling to its side like some great scrap metal tree.

A small smile graced Isabelle's lips. Storing and unleashing kinetic energy through enchantments was easy; doing it safely was not. Even her fine-tuned series of spells would inevitably cause cataclysmic microtears and fractures within even a body trained in their use, which is where Isabelle's alchemy came in. One of the potions coursing through the Knight massively strengthened everything from cartilage to connective tissue, while also overcharging his body's already exemplary healing ability. Of course, it would also do unspeakable things to his bone marrow in a few years, but that wasn't much of a problem for the Homunculus.

What was an immediate problem was how quickly the flesh golem adapted to losing a limb. It landed in a tripedal posture and loped forward, barreling towards the Knight. Reacting to this change, he dodged the charge and took advantage of its poor turning radius to come at the same side he'd torn open a few seconds earlier. But the flesh golem wasn't stupid, and it immediately rolled towards the Knight like a barrel, turning its jagged bulk into a whirling meat grinder. Knowing he risked being caught and crushed under his foe's body, the Knight danced back from the flesh golem while moving towards its remaining leg.

As the Spawn came to a stop and the Homunculus advanced on it, Isabelle's champion suddenly paused and then threw himself to the right. The limb he'd severed shot along the arena floor, nearly barreling into the Homunculus, before returning to its owner. Flesh popped and metal squealed as crude chains snaked down from the golem's stump and lashed its severed leg back to its body.

Isabelle's eyes widened, and the nearly silenced fear in her breast blazed anew. Furiously, she dared glance away from the combat to look at Count Ator, whose grin had become slimy enough to match eel mucus. Noticing her, he shrugged slightly and mouthed words.

"It helps to have generous friends."

Turning her focus back to the battle, she watched with mounting horror as the Homunculus stood up and faced his foe's true nature. All across its hulking body, segments of its scrap armor uncoiled, forming into dozens of bladed limbs that now stood erect like scorpion stingers. With some of its shell removed, Isabelle could see the Spawn's actual body and now understood its nature. It wasn't a flesh golem, or at least not only a flesh golem. What she'd taken for crude armor was a second construct, a metal golem, built around and within a reassembled corpse. Instantly, her mind could piece together the dozens of advantages such a fused entity might enjoy if both aspects worked in concert. This was a far more creative and nuanced champion than she'd ever expect from Count Ator. Which made sense, since with every passing moment, she was more and more convinced he'd been gifted it for this occasion.

Finally putting holes in her throne's armrests, Isabelle watched helplessly as the Scrap Spawn advanced on the Homunculus Knight. With its body unfolded, and metal parts no longer feigning intertness, it moved with a slow predatory grace akin to a big cat. As if to complete that metaphor, it suddenly pounced, exploding forward towards the Homunculus, wicked limbs flashing.

He caught the first three blows on his shield and knocked another two aside with his warpick, but the sixth struck him in the torso, letting the seventh and eighth draw blood. Reeling from the blows, the Homunculus Knight tried to defend, but he was surpassed in almost every metric by the alloyed golem. Two of its clawed arms grabbed his shield and pulled on it, yanking the Knight off balance and leaving his arm exposed to a cleaver-like strike from above. The limb was severed a handspan above the elbow, and he staggered backwards, leaving his shield and arm in the golem's grip. Blood gushed out of the wound, and the Homunculus collapsed onto his back with an ugly crunch.

Holding the stolen shield above its head, the Scrap Spawn tore it in half with another roar, a gesture that pulled a hungry cheer from the crowd. Isabelle barely noticed; she'd gotten up from her throne and now peered down from the balcony at her masterpiece. The pool of red surrounding him was still growing, but slower now, his body running out of blood to spill. With her inhuman hearing, she sensed when his hammering heart finally stopped, and that silence felt like a silver knife to the gut. She'd not wanted this; she'd wanted to win cleanly, easily, not for him to…

Grabbing onto her emotions, forcing them down, she stared down at the Homunculus and whispered. "Get up."

Count Ator came up beside her and casually said. "Before you go claiming the fight was unfair, the golem is so interwoven that one part cannot function without the other. Therefore, it meets the criteria for singular combatants as put forward by-"

"Shut up!"

Nerva made a noise of disapproval from behind them. "Loss is only bitter to the shortsighted; the wise see it as a whetstone."

It took a lot of self-control not to answer the patronizing old bird's words with a scathing remark. Instead, she rasped out. "It's not over yet, listen."

Ator looked at her with a befuddled sneer that quickly turned to shock as he heard what Isabelle almost missed thanks to his prattling. A slow but growing heartbeat from below. Now he joined her in looking down into the arena and jerked back in surprise. "What? I heard it die!"

The Homunculus Knight had stood back up and was now slowly walking towards the Scrap Spawn, warpick still clutched in his remaining hand. With every step the Knight took, the crowd's clamour died down, as more and more of the vampire audience realized the fight wasn't over. Holding out his no longer bleeding stump before him, the Homunculus watched as bone, muscle, and skin rapidly grew from the injury, forming a perfect new arm, except for the ring of scar tissue around where it had been severed. Flexing the limb like he was testing a new glove, the Homunculus nodded to himself and charged towards his opponent.

Isabelle turned from the clash, her earlier worries crushed beneath manic triumph. Calibrating him to achieve such short and efficient resurrections had taken a lot of time and effort, but the looks on Count Ator and Duchess Nerva's faces made it all worth it. They were vampires, creatures of blood and death intimately familiar with the mechanics of both. And now they'd just witnessed a living, breathing, bleeding person die, and then return in perfect condition through no discernible method.

A wide, eager smile split Countess Gens Silva's face as the crowd's stunned silence grew into a shocked murmur, then a steady drone of disbelief. But when she met the Duchess's eyes, her smile wavered, for the eldest strix had recovered from her surprise and now looked at Isabelle with an icy wariness, no, not wariness, worry. Through that tiny crack in the ancient's mask, Isabelle got a premonition of a future already written, a future of fire and loss.

Yet before she could drown in this dread omen, she noticed something bizarre, a fly sitting amidst the Duchess's elegant curls. As her gaze settled on the foolish insect, the crowd's drone swelled into a familiar buzz. Artificial intuition cultivated through years of psychic self-modification kicked in, and Isabelle lunged for the Duchess, grabbing her hair in a ridiculous act that would have sealed her fate if it hadn't already come to pass. Fingers closing around the fly, as the remembered arena melted around her, Isabelle squeezed the fat little bug, but it didn't burst; instead, it dissolved into ash that tried to slip through her fingers. Having none of this, she clamped down on the soot with all her will, freezing it mid-fall. It struggled vainly, wiggling and twisting like a worm on a hook, but here in her mind, there was no escape.

All around Isabelle, the last of her dissociative dream fell away, leaving her mind crisp and clear. She remembered what had happened in a cave beneath a mountain range. She remembered marshalling her full power to rescue those she loved, only to be thwarted at the very end by a miserable parasite. But most of all, she remembered the plagiarist, the bait who was responsible for all of this, and who she now finally had in her grasp.

As her mindscape settled back into its secure shape as a lake of blood, the metaphor of what she'd captured changed. No longer did she clutch at shifting ash, but instead her hands were wrapped around the throat of a struggling vampire who just wouldn't learn his jagging lesson.

Glaring into the panicked eyes of Wolfgang, Isabelle growled. "We have much to talk about, don't we?"

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