I awoke in Nexxali’s arms as the neural-linked gun unit's systems came back online.

  The serval was carrying my ‘corpse’ through the innards of the alien warship. Two hundred thousand miles below, I sat across from the disarmingly-perfect Skinwalker girl with “BITE ME” written on her cheeks with magic freckles.

  I pushed the Frontend awareness to the background, focusing everything on my mission, evaluating our location with my gun-body sensors and lenses concealed in the gold skull-mask.

  Nexxali marched through the ship's arterial, dark metal passages, following the Admiral carrying Shady's body.

  The dark passage spiraled downward in a gentle curve, widening with each rotation. Gold veins in the walls grew thicker, brighter, until they dominated the bone-like structure completely.

  Massive stalactites began to appear overhead dotted with gold stars.

  I wasn't sure if they were some kind of natural cave formations or an alien design. Gradually the stalactites became decorated with eerie carvings. Each one depicted scenes I couldn't quite parse. Battles? Rituals? The images shifted as we passed beneath them, perspective changing with viewing angle.

  "The Incarnation Temple," Nexxali murmured against my ear, her voice barely a breath. Her arms tightened around my dead body slightly.

  The spiral passage opened into a vast cavern.

  The ceiling soared at least a hundred feet overhead, supported by massive pillars shaped like a gargantuan ribcage. Each pillar was covered in intricate reliefs—thousands of tiny figures engaged in scenes of worship, combat, death, and rebirth. The golden veins from the passage walls exploded here into full arterial networks, pulsing with billions of tiny gold stars.

  In the center of the temple stood a statue about sixty feet tall.

  The Slayer, I guessed, a naked, faceless, muscular humanoid rendered in polished celesteel. His posture expressed transcendent fury, one arm raised overhead wielding a sword the size of a city bus. Beneath him, carved into the floor, the Leviathan writhed in its death throes.

  The cosmic dragon’s body coiled through the temple space, its segments forming natural alcoves and chambers around the room's perimeter. Upon closer examination, the massive body of the dying Leviathan was made from miniature carvings of thousands of female Omnid bodies entwined, fused into each other.

  Arms melted into arms, faces merging into faces. Eyes. So many carved eyes followed us.

  I'd seen religious iconography before. Cathedrals, temples, mosques—all of them designed to inspire awe, to remind the visitor of their smallness before the divine.

  The Slayer and Leviathan depictions didn't ask for worship. They demanded acknowledgment of violence as the fundamental force of existence. Creation through destruction. Life purchased with death.

  Beneath us, the floor mosaic featured different species in various stages of death and rebirth. Some were clearly Omnids. Wendigos, dragons, prads, an entire ocean of beings I had no names for. Some looked almost human, faces crying out in twisted agony or ecstatic relief.

  Admiral Evelithria's claws clicked against the disturbing mosaic floor art as she carried Shady's body toward the center of the temple. The floor art overall was a massive spiral pattern that depicted the cycle of death and resurrection, starting from the outer edges where carved figures died in battle, moving inward through stages of decay and dissolution, finally reaching the center where they emerged reborn from pools of silver blood.

  A figure stepped from the shadows between two pillars.

  She was nearly as tall as the Admiral. Where Evelithria radiated predatory grace with her dark armor, this being moved with the deliberate slowness of ceremony. Her body was covered in flowing, thin, layered black and gold robes.

  Her face was pale white, eyes covered in bandages.

  "Keeper Morrígann," the Admiral greeted the Omnid.

  "Admiral Evelithria," the deathly pale, lanky woman bowed slightly. "How may the Incarnation Temple serve you today?"

  "I have a body requiring your services," the Admiral stated.

  "Princess Aquillianne Quantivia Frontenachii," Morrígann intoned. "Daughter of the Royal Line. Bearer of the Empress's blood." She reached out with skeletal hands. Her fingers were too long, featuring too many bony joints. "I... sense that her passage through the Veil will be... Incredibly tumultuous."

  Evelithria's silver eyes narrowed slightly. "How tumultuous? What do your Ankou senses tell you?”

  “The Astral Ocean sings of our doom,” the Keeper replied.

  “Doom?” The Admiral blinked. “What doom?”

  “I cannot see the details.” The Ankou sighed. “I see destruction and darkness, pure, inescapable and absolute. I see the moon. I see the ship shearing in twain. I see fountains of unlife. I see devastation and ruin like no other. I see a liminal tree wreathed in gold flames and a legion of darkness.”

  The Admiral frowned. “When?”

  “Soon.”

  The Admiral exhaled. “Maybe the Empress will send us to some Slayer-forsaken dimension once we're done with the subjugation of this planet.”

  "Perhaps. Now let me see her. The Princess's soul is..." The Ankou tilted her bandaged face, as if listening to something only she could hear as she waved a clawed hand over Shady. "Fragmented. If I reincarnate her, the Wheel of Death will pull at each fragment differently. Some will resist, cling on. Some will fall to Arx. Others will..." She made a gesture I couldn't quite parse with those many-jointed fingers. "Dissolve into the Astral Ocean entirely."

  "But she will resurrect and remember everything, yes?” the Admiral asked.

  "Yes." Morrígann nodded. "The Lazarus bracelet will anchor her core. She will heal, be reborn. However… It would be better to use Phoenix Tears on her.”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  "No," the Admiral said simply. "Reincarnate her with the well.”

  “You are certain?”

  “I am,” the Admiral intoned. “Do it. This is an order.”

  “Doing so will steer us straight towards absolute disaster,” the Keeper insisted. “I can feel the dark future thrumming in my bones. If you do this, the Sword will slip from your grasp and the liminal tree will…”

  “I don't care for your vague tree-doomsday visions, Keeper,” the Admiral said. “We’ve lost ships in combat before. We can rebuild. Not getting the Keys the Princess stole is a far worse disaster for our Empire. Also, one more request."

  "Yes, my Lady?"

  "I want you to reincarnate my niece in twenty hours," the Admiral ordered.

  "Admiral," Morrígann said carefully, "twenty hours is... highly irregular. If she died recently and we wait twenty hours... the Princess will emerge—"

  "Weak," Evelithria finished. "Disoriented. Malleable. Yes, I know exactly what she'll emerge as."

  The Ankou's bandaged face tilted again. "You wish to interrogate and overwrite her while her defenses are compromised?"

  "I wish to save my niece from her own stubborn foolishness," the Admiral corrected, her tone suggesting she believed this dastardly rationalization completely. "She's clearly been corrupted by external influences. A period of soul-cleansing through extended death plus your aid in reconstructing her soul... will help burn away those corruptions."

  "As you command, my Lady Admiral," Morrígann sighed. “I have spoken. When we meet again… tomorrow, I will speak once again. Tomorrow… you will understand that I was right and weep at my feet.”

  “We'll see.” The Admiral's silver eyes swept the temple space, cataloging exits, alcoves, the positions of the two pradavarian guards standing at attention near the entrance. "You will follow my instructions precisely, Keeper. No deviations. No improvisation. No attempts to 'help' the Princess. We'll Incarnate her kobold in twenty hours too, interrogate him about this Earth, find who serves him."

  "Yes, my Lady." The Ankou's bandaged face remained impassive.

  The Admiral transferred Shady's corpse into Morrígann's skeletal grasp. The Keeper cradled the body, lanky limbs holding Shady like she was something precious rather than a political problem requiring solution.

  "Marshal Commandant," Evelithria turned to Nexxali. "You will remain here. Ensure the Keeper follows protocol. Voicecast me if any issues arise.”

  "Yes, my Lady," Nexxali nodded. "Do you...?"

  "I'm exhausted from being planetside. That world's Astral is like trying to breathe through mud. I'm going to my personal chambers to bathe and rest and then enjoy a nice hunt. You will stay here and guard the Princess's body. If anything—and I mean anything—goes wrong during the waiting period, I'm holding you personally responsible."

  "Yes, Admiral." Nexxali saluted. She was probably singing to herself inside her head, adjusting her thoughts and behavior to be the perfectly obedient servant.

  Evelithria's silver eyes lingered on Nexxali for a long moment, then swept to me, dismissed my corpse as irrelevant, and finally returned to the Keeper. "I shall see you in twenty hours, Morrígann. Not a minute less."

  "As you command."

  The Admiral turned. The sound of her departure echoed through the temple, growing fainter with each step until silence reclaimed the space.

  The two pradavarian guards shifted their stances slightly. One was a wolf with gray fur, the other a fox with rust-colored markings. Both wore the standard fleet hexasuits and carried symbiote guns folded into their hand-held forms, the hexagonal barrels gleaming in the golden light.

  Morrígann moved toward one of the alcoves carved into the Leviathan's body. "I shall prepare the Princess for her extended stay with Death in a crystal sarcophagus," she intoned. "Marshal, bring the Kobold Administrator's corpse along."

  The Keeper glided ahead of us, Shady's corpse cradled in lanky arms. The black and gold robes flowed around the Ankou like liquid shadow, never quite settling into a fixed shape.

  We passed beneath the Slayer's outstretched arm, his huge sword casting eerie shadows. The golden veins in the walls pulsed brighter as we approached the alcove—some kind of biological response, maybe, like capillaries dilating to allow more blood flow.

  The alcove revealed a dim chamber. The floor here was different from the main temple featuring smooth obsidian that reflected the golden light like dark water.

  At the end of the chamber sat several crystal sarcophagi on raised pedestals. They looked like fanciful display cases, transparent crystalline coffins that refracted the pulsing golden light.

  Morrígann approached the first sarcophagus with Shady's body. The lid lifted with no visible mechanism, rising smoothly as if pushed by invisible hands. The interior glowed with soft blue luminescence.

  "The Princess will rest here," the Keeper intoned.

  I watched through camera lenses as Morrígann carefully arranged Shady's corpse inside the crystal sarcophagus. The Ankou's skeletal fingers adjusted her arms, straightened her antlers, and repositioned the diamondust dress to appear more presentable.

  There was something obscene about the care she took, like a funeral director preparing a body for viewing.

  "Gun units, master command override Nexxali-Alpha-Seven-Seven-Seven," Nexxali ordered with a bark into the distance. “Disconnect yourselves from the Weapon-Net!"

  "So it's indeed my time to di—" the keeper stated calmly, rotating slowly.

  Nexxali's hand moved, blurring in the air. Her square gun unclipped from her belt holster. Her arm came up, flashing to aim faster than the Elder Omnid could do much or even finish her sentence.

  "FREEZE!" the serval snarled with an echoing bark.

  The Ankou froze.

  “You will not remember how you died,” Nexxali sang and pulled the trigger.

  The railgun shot caught Keeper Morrígann center-mass in her bandaged skull.

  The Ankou's head snapped back. Morrígann's too-long body collapsed in a tangle of black and gold robes, skeletal fingers twitching once, twice, then going still.

  I moved slightly and Nexxali set me on the floor.

  The gun unit frame controlling my "corpse" fully surged to life. The hexasuit beneath my Emperor robe engaged, synthetic muscles contracting.

  The two pradavarian guards rushed forward, their symbiote weapons now useless hunks of inert metal in their hands.

  They were soldiers who'd been bred for combat and didn't need guns to be dangerous.

  Thankfully, I had a far more effective killer on my side.

  "Halt! Don't move!" Nexxali's voice carried extradimensional resonance.

  Both guards froze mid-stride. Their legs locked, eyes wide with shock.

  "You will not remember the last five minutes," Nexxali intoned and then walked over and shot the fox and the wolf in the head, splattering the beautiful mosaic with pradavarian blood.

  Shady looked serene in her glass sarcophagus. The blue luminescence cast her skull features in an ethereal glow, making the silver stars dotting her dark fur flicker.

  "How do we open it?" I asked, running my hands along the sarcophagus edge. The crystal was seamless, had no visible hinges or locks.

  "The Keeper 'prolly used telekinesis," Nexxali said, glancing at the second empty sarcophagus where my corpse never reached its destination. "Or some kind of magitek manipulation keyed to Arch-Keeper authority."

  "Which neither of us have."

  "Nope." She aimed her railgun. “I have a gun though."

  The crystalline sarcophagus exploded in a cascade of glittering fragments that caught the golden light like a thousand falling stars. Shards scattered across the obsidian floor, each one refracting the pulsing veins in the walls into miniature rainbows that danced across the Leviathan's carved ribs.

  I shielded my face instinctively, even though my gun unit frame didn't need such protection. The shockwave from the railgun blast resonated through the temple’s chamber.

  When the last shard stopped skittering across the floor, Shady's corpse lay exposed in the pedestal base, arranged in the funeral pose Morrígann created for her.

  "Okay," I said, stepping closer. "Now what? She's still very dead. Are we dipping her into the well? Because the Keeper said that such is a terrible idea since she'd lose all of her floaty little Shady bits.”

  "Nah." Nexxali holstered her weapon and examined the alcove's walls. "This is the Incarnation Temple. Which means..."