“Belphegor the Seeker—”

  The attendant’s words were interrupted by shockwaves.

  Her skin crawled as she heard the telltale sounds of detonation after detonation activating sequentially, the waves of force spiralling outwards, reverberating throughout the Spirit. The echoes of the blasts reached them, shaking her to her very bones, originating—

  From Wisptown.

  She triggered them.

  The multipurpose hall glowed red.

  Evantra’s eyes widened as she felt her anger wash away, replaced by a new emotion.

  Despair.

  At the sight of the red glow, Lancelot abandoned his pursuit of her, running towards the gallery’s railing, before vaulting over it to the ground below. Visceral dread and guilt clawed at her soul at the muted echoes of the explosions, but Evantra held them back with the last vestiges of her rage, as she sprinted back towards the gallery’s edge.

  The sprawling and arcing lines of blood meticulously drawn across the hall in intricate patterns cast the hall in a morbid, red gleam. A broken blade placed at the centre of the ritual glowed gold, its beautiful hue melding with the tones of the ritual beneath it. It was the same broken blade that Lancelot had wielded to kill the ghost possessing Trevor. In the short time since Lancelot had kept her occupied, it seemed as if Elaine had deployed the artefact and set off the explosives.

  The ritual had been activated.

  A force smashed her downwards, driving her to her knees. Her vision began to vibrate as her surroundings began to shake at a frequency just within the bounds of her perception. It hurt to breathe, and every breath was laboured as she struggled to crane her neck upwards against the force driving her down. The sniper rifle in her arms forced apart interlocked fingers, clattering to the ground below. The balustrade beside her, weakened by Galahad’s light machine gun began to groan and shudder.

  As the railing crumbled, Evantra finally saw the true fruits of Caliburn’s ritual.

  A Mythic Veilsurge.

  The dark line in reality which spanned the entire height of the multipurpose hall tore itself asunder. Evantra felt the gallery begin to give way beneath her, as dark wood cracked and strained under the force of the Mythic Veilsurge’s presence. Gravity was being amplified, and not even the wood underneath her could withstand its force. As her hearing returned, Evantra could hear the whine of the Spirit of Nimue’s engines as it struggled to compensate against the forces imposing itself upon it.

  The barge tilted, making her slide across the wood towards a broken part of the gallery.

  [Razor claws]

  She dug her sharpened fingernails into the floor, raking tears open in the wooden floor as she gradually edged downwards as gravity shifted and the ship tipped, before its gyroscopes kicked in, righting its orientation.

  The gallery crumbled.

  As the floor beneath her gave way, Evantra dropped into a freefall. She scrambled, attempting to grab onto the section of the gallery that remained intact, but her hands narrowly missed the edge. She was in freefall, a moment of weightlessness before everything turned into pain. She screamed as her bones cracked, finally making contact with the ground. She felt her [ritual of concealment] deactivate as pain seared through her limbs and body. Tears filled her eyes, brought from the pain emanating from her lower limbs. She heard a muffled voice and just barely felt the cold pinprick of a stim entering her thigh. She blinked the tears from her eyes to find Guinevere crouched beside her, having made her way over even under the pressure imposed by the Mythic Veilsurge.

  [Clot acceleration]

  Evantra felt immediate relief as the skill took hold and her pain ebbed away. She could feel her muscles twist and contort and her bones reattach, as the Panacea stim worked its magic on her broken limbs.

  “Evantra?”

  She saw Guinevere looking down at her with a hint of concern, before the Ghostslayer returned her attention to the centre of the hall.

  Evantra watched as the rift widened.

  The gravitational force redoubled, and Evantra could feel the Spirit of Nimue itself begin to tremble, its engines now screaming in an attempt to compensate for the gravitational forces it was subjected to.

  Evantra watched a single being stride out of the Mythic Veilsurge.

  It was wreathed in immaculate black armour. Dark mist-like shadows peeled off the surface of the plate armour, swirling in the knight’s wake. Millions of tiny drops of clear water slid down the creature’s black, plate armour, which made Lancelot’s own, sleek, hexagonal armour of the future look like the plaything of a child. Paling in comparison to its artistry. Every step it took resounded across the hall, and through the ship beyond it, its presence inescapable.

  The footsteps of a giant.

  Evantra watched as Elaine Hallwell alone remained standing in the wake of the creature’s sheer presence, her cybernetics allowing her to maintain her footing. Her ruby red eyes were wide as she stared up at the figure that towered over her. Elaine took a knee and bowed her head. Her words, spoken softly, still travelled through the still air to reach her.

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  Each syllable, laced with reverence.

  “Sir Galahad. We beseech you.”

  The figure towered over even Lancelot in its proportions, standing twice as tall as the seven-foot Ghostslayer. Lancelot and Steve knelt on either side of Elaine, but their eyes carefully traced the ghost’s movements as it strode closer. For the first time since she had met them, Evantra glimpsed fear plain on either Ghostslayer’s features.

  The weight of the ghost’s presence continued to impose itself upon them as it drew closer.

  Evantra broke out of her trance, her mind racing. Recalling what she had glimpsed from her use of the skill in the Mundane Veilsurge where she battled the rotstag, she activated the ritual on a whim.

  [Ritual of Veilsight]

  Veilsouls remaining: 1,025

  Evantra was blinded.

  Her vision flashed into greyscale, and even as the walls of the multipurpose hall around her faded to a dull grey, the Mythic Veilsurge burned so brightly that it seared itself into her irises. The blood ritual spanning beneath it was an abyssal black by comparison, and she could see wisps of smoke trailing from the ritual into the Veilsurge.

  Then, the ritual flickered.

  “Sir Galahad, I am a representative of Caliburn Mining Industries. We seek an accord, to obtain your protection and blessing to enter the vaunted mists of Aval—”

  Evantra watched as the top half of Elaine Hallewell’s head slid from its position.

  The knight’s sword cleaved through subdermals and her reinforced skull faster than her eye could see. The same cybernetics that had effortlessly halted an armour-piercing round from a Liberty sniper. A millisecond later, the vacuum left in the sword’s wake collapsed with a resounding crack that she felt in her bones, as the swing severed Elaine’s skull in half. The wall behind Elaine was ripped to shreds as the knight’s strike somehow seemed to extend beyond the reach of the broken blade in its grip.

  The knight was wielding the ritual’s catalyst.

  Evantra watched the ritual flicker once more before the abyssal lines glowing on the ground winked out.

  The ritual had failed.

  The knight, no, the ghost was unbound.

  The Ghostslayers burst into action. Lancelot extracted a submachine gun at his side, bullets drilling into the knight’s helm as he emptied the entire magazine into the figure that loomed over them. The intricate black helm slowly traced his movements as the Ghostslayer dashed in an arc, attempting to flank the creature.

  As Lancelot occupied its attention, Galahad hefted his light machine gun, muzzle burning red with heat as it unleashed heavy rounds into the creature’s helm to bolster Lancelot’s efforts. The gargantuan ghostslayer masterfully controlled the recoil of his weapons, sending bullets arcing towards the creature’s joints, identifying all possible weaknesses to exploit.

  Lancelot’s clinical and calm instructions pierced through the din of gunfire.

  “Guinevere. Galahad. Retre—”

  A single, glowing line appeared horizontally across Lancelot’s hexagonal plate armour, the only evidence of the arc of the knight’s swing as it cut through the air faster than her eye could trace. Evantra felt Guinevere’s hands tighten around her biceps as the wall beyond the ghostslayer was torn apart by the force of the creature’s swing. The shockwave of the blow emitted outwards a millisecond after the bright cut appeared, shearing through the wall behind Lancelot.

  Lancelot fell to the floor in pieces.

  Galahad dropped his light machine gun and sprinted for the door closest to him. He made it a single step before the creature’s next slash carved through his hips, obliterating bone and separating his legs from his torso. The hulk of a Ghostslayer, who had confronted a rock golem head-on, fell to the ground, glassy eyes staring back at her.

  With the fall of the second ghostslayer, the rage and adrenaline burning through her veins abruptly subsided, as Evantra stared into the knight’s dark, shadowed helm. The rounds that they had unerringly directed towards its weak points had glanced harmlessly off its armour, clattering to the floor. Even as she did, her lips twitched upwards when she realised that for all she had witnessed, there was a simple question that burned in her mind.

  She turned to Guinevere.

  “Was it you? Millie.” Evantra whispered, her voice shaking.

  She felt Guinevere’s hands loosen around her biceps as the Ghostslayer rose to her feet. Evantra stared up into familiar, bright green irises. The eyes of a killer that had found a place for mercy.

  Stephanie graced her with a sad smile.

  Mercy, it seemed, that she had only afforded her.

  Guinevere attempted to turn invisible, but the damage to her cybernetics inflicted by her battle with the spirit possessing Trevor sparked, leaving the slightest portion of her shoulder visible. Evantra watched as the ghost threw the sword towards Guinevere, the broken blade flashing through the air in a fraction of a second before embedding itself in her chest.

  Guinevere slammed into the wall behind her, falling to the ground softly.

  Her death was instant.

  It was then that Evantra realised that the knight had not taken a single step since its arrival. Evantra closed her eyes with a soft sigh, waiting for the reaper to swing its scythe.

  Her eyelids fluttered open when the sound reached her ears. The groan of armour shifting, before making contact with the wooden floor. Evantra turned, and she stared motionless as the towering knight strode closer to her. Each second drew on infinitely, and an eternity passed before the knight wreathed in armour of the abyss inclined its head towards her.

  “You are right, Galahad. She is not like the others.”

  The words were none that Evantra recognised, but as they entered into her perception, she could feel them twist themselves into her understanding.

  “She does not take lives as frivolously as they do.”

  Evantra watched as a ghostly figure placed a pale, translucent hand on the knight’s shoulder. The face of a creature more beautiful that Evantra could comprehend greeted her, ghostly, hazy lips curving into a smile, its eyes crinkling with compassion.

  “A kind, gallant soul. Or one, who tries to be.”

  She watched as the knight knelt, its arms extending far over her to retrieve the broken hilt from Guinevere’s body. It lay the blade, no, the catalyst, at her feet. The ethereal creature at its shoulder hovered in the air, inching downwards, a single item in its grip.

  “One in search of redemption.”

  A rose.

  Its petals were shimmering mist rendered solid. They shone with impossible moonlight, emitting a pale, white glow that entranced her and drew her in. Crystal droplets of water had formed on the surface of each petal, as if betraying its origin from within a lake, pure and untouched. A rose held delicately to match the beauty of its bestower, a generosity she couldn’t comprehend given its form.

  CATALYST DETECTED

  · Nimue’s Rose

  Execute [ritual of consumption]?

  Evantra ignored the words hanging in her vision as she stared deeply into the shifting eyes of… Nimue, which seemed to contain within them a shifting, effervescent white mist, betraying her own origin.

  The mists of Avalon.

  Evantra watched as the knight turned, having deposited the shattered blade at her feet, the ritual’s catalyst. The Mythic Veilsurge began to flicker as if struggling to maintain its grip on existence. The knight seemed to incline its head towards her, before it straightened and strode back through the tear in reality.

  Staring at the rose she had had been bestowed upon her, clutched in bloody hands—

  Evantra executed the ritual.