For all that the scale of the battle escalated, the balance remained unchanged. No matter how much Raze tried to turn the tables on this Calliope, he couldn't land a single hit. Not even one.

  His severed arm was just the start, growing white blades and exploding into tiny fragments of bone dust that would kill anyone they came into contact with. Calliope merely countered those deadly white clouds with shockwaves.

  Raze grew desperate, soon. His arm gigantified in a wave of dark red muscle and gleaming sharp bone, smashing into the ground so hard the entire base trembled. The hand attempted to grab the young hero-turned-rogue, but she stayed out of the way.

  Having the power he did, their boss wasn't actually capable of a full transformation. He wasn't a shifter, after all. But that didn't make him less dangerous because he was perfectly capable of transforming his legs for boosted speed, and he'd held off on that so far to surprise his opponent.

  To no avail.

  Maybe it was lucky that the base itself was mostly safe from collateral damage, as the two were moving away. Or maybe not. Raze probably didn't want to lose the property during the fight and be left with nothing after, and Calliope seemed to have high cognizance of her environment in general. No sneak attack had hit her yet.

  He blitzed forward, legs bulging and tearing out of his pants, only for Calliope to lean to the side and send him tumbling with another shockwave as though she had seen him coming. He used his arm to carve up the pavement around her and send it flying at her back, yet she leaped into the air and dodged the majority of the impromptu rock shower.

  Some bits of hardened ground still reached her, but she was ready, slicing through them with her sword wherever she could and even kicking off one of the projectiles as a platform in midair.

  They leaned forward as it looked like Raze was finally going to land a blow, one that could end the fight because it didn't seem like Calliope had a warrior-type physique. The enormous hand, large enough to belong to a titan, crashed into the sound manipulator.

  And kept going right through her, leaving her undamaged. Calliope’s form was blurred, vibrating at extreme frequency as she phased out of the back of the offending limb. She… she could pass through solid objects!?

  Xena stood up, licking her lips and gripping the railing tightly as her pupils dilated. This was something else.

  The masked woman righted herself with the grace of a professional gymnast and swung her sword, cutting off a huge, gnarly finger. Raze screamed in pain, retracting the arm, using his massive legs to stomp away for a breather.

  “Help me, you idiots!” Raze roared, fear bleeding into his voice.

  Cipher, Chaffster and Bloodbrand exchanged looks, then collectively shrugged. This was par for the course. After all, it was how Raze had gotten his position from the previous leader in the first place. So they kept on watching.

  Just in time for the finisher.

  Since Calliope wasn't holding a weapon big enough to sever any more arms and legs, she burst back and forth across the battlefield, raining down cuts that Raze tried to regenerate from while attempting to flatten, shred or grind her to dust.

  Unfortunately for him, the damage accumulated faster than he could handle, and he began to get whittled down, unnatural dark blood seeping out of his enormous limbs while his regular sized body snapped its head back and forth to keep up with the zipping blur methodically taking him apart.

  Craters and trenches spat out smoke all around him when he stomped again, but Calliope deflected another explosion of bone knives and closed in, unafraid.

  With a final jump, she kicked his leg hard enough for tremors to run through his entire body, causing him to fall over. Upon hitting the ground, the whole base quaked. Xena steadied herself as Calliope ran up the twisted muscle and lopped off the left leg. And the right, and the remaining arm.

  Raze was helpless to defend against Calliope’s glove, fingers closing around his face and dragging him along on her journey down the still-falling arm to the ground.

  Wet splattering noises sounded in her ear in time with Raze hitting the ground, and Xena was confused about why she could hear it so clearly. Calliope must have been amplifying the sound for their benefit, she realized.

  “St- sto- ugh,” Raze coughed when Calliope kicked him in the stomach. He tried to speak agan but only received a boot to the face for his trouble.

  “Stop?” Calliope said with a chuckle. “I don't think so. Your gang is mine now, Raze. Spoils to the victor and all that, wouldn’t you say?”

  The crowd began to cheer, members of the Carrion Feast gang, powered unpowered alike, baying for blood. Xena was no exception, howling for the mystery woman to end it already.

  Part of her thought the newcomer wasn't going to do it. Perhaps, being a former hero, she'd cauterize every bleeding stump and throw the bastard in a cell. That part of her was wrong.

  Calliope cut a surprise bone blade and started bringing her foot down on Raze's face. He groaned something unintelligible. “What was that? I can't hear you,” she mocked.

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  Lifting her foot, she brought it down over and over until his head popped like a melon. His scattered brain matter spread out on the pavement, getting warmed up by the midday sun.

  They loved it, overwhelming cheers washing over the new leader, whose body language betrayed nothing of her thoughts.

  “You,” she spoke once the cheering calmed down somewhat, pointing at a random grunt. “Clean up the mess.”

  The guy rushed to obey without question. Calliope paid him no mind as she strode towards the building, at which point Xena and the others knew it was time to go meet the boss.

  Reaching the bottom floor, they were just in time to see the gang members part around Calliope like an ocean, allowing her quick passage to the supes.

  Things went quiet when she reached them, a silent staredown taking place as they stood in front of each other.

  “Are any of you interested in taking revenge?” Calliope finally broke the silence.

  “Not particularly,” Cipher answered for them. “But then, I suppose that's why you chose our gang and not a different one, correct?”

  The boss conceded a nod at that but didn't otherwise respond. She looked them all over a second time, making Xena’s spine tingle when those dark eyes passed over her.

  “I only need one of you as my second-in-command,” she announced, leaving the unspoken question hanging in the air.

  “I'll do it!” Xena said. She knew an opportunity when she saw one. No one objected.

  “Come on,” Calliope said while taking the lead, apparently not needing anyone to show her around the building. Cipher and Chaffster just left them to it and Hoodwink observed quietly from the corner without following. Xena found herself walking faster than intended to keep up with the taller woman’s gait.

  Surprisingly, Calliope found the old meeting room on her first try, pushing the door open far enough that it almost hit the wall on the other side.

  The moment they were both inside, Calliope looked around at the space with a speculative hum, the door closing on its own behind them.

  In the middle of the room was a round table with enough chairs to seat every superhuman in the gang and then some. Xena decided to sit two seats away from her leader, wanting to get to know her but also not wanting to misstep and get the watermelon treatment.

  Both seated, the first thing Calliope did was sigh and remove her mask.

  Xena gasped.

  “Uh, boss, don't you think this is a little quick? Even Raze waited a couple days before unmasking, you know? Not that I don’t like your face,” she hastily added at the end.

  She was a bit shocked to see how their next leader measured up in the looks department, honestly. An exhausted-looking half-Asian girl with black hair in her late teens—though apparent age wasn't an absolute with unbindings being a thing. Calliope, or whatever her real name was, had this nonchalant sort of air about her. Xena recognized it; it was the vibe you got from naturally beautiful people who either didn't know or didn't care they were naturally beautiful. It would've pissed her off if she didn't find it so hot. And scary.

  “That's not for you to worry about,” Calliope responded, now sans voice filter.

  “U- uhh, right. Yeah, of course,” Xena agreed.

  Calliope leaned back in her chair, studying Xena with an unreadable expression. “First things first—we're rebranding. Carrion Feast is dead, along with Raze. I want something new, something with real weight to it.”

  Xena blinked, leaning forward slightly. “Rebranding? You mean... a new name?”

  “A new name. A new image. A new direction,” Calliope confirmed. “We're done being scavengers picking at scraps. From now on, we take what we want.”

  Xena grinned, excitement bubbling in her chest. “Alright, boss. What are we calling ourselves, then?”

  Calliope smirked, eyes gleaming with something dark and decisive. “The Black Dirge.”

  *******

  Outside the borders of Apexia, away from the confines of the United European Federation's megacities, sprawled huge swathes of overgrown wilds. Untamed lands which served as a habitat to various species of primebeast, from the smallest ducklings to the enormous natural disasters humanity had grown to fear over the past century. They could all be found here.

  And yet, humans dared tread these grounds in kind, seeking to strike down these predators with supernatural capability. Countless wars had been waged, small and large. A push and pull dynamic between two sides for territory, neither willing to let the other exist in peace, for that was not their nature. Humanity sought conquest, innovating and building its collective wisdom with every generation in pursuit of heaven and earth.

  Primebeasts, meanwhile, held the innate compulsion to destroy humans on sight, territorial though they might have been. Among conventional researchers, the cause for this was unknown, as nothing about the nature of “powers” should suggest any inherent desires attached to them. Superhuman psychology wasn't different enough from baseline for that to be the case. Truly, they were lost.

  They were fools.

  In the wilderness, well away from human civilization, a mountain stood tall and proud, its peak grazing the clouds. To a casual observer, one thing that would immediately become clear was that this mountain had not formed naturally. No, its angles were too perfect, its sections geometrical in a way nothing in nature was. However, it was also not man-made. It was about as far from man-made as possible, in fact. For human hands did not possess the glory of their overseer who would bring about the end.

  Such was His prowess that they need not fear for their lives in these quarters. They were protected by an otherworldly will. Because they had each vowed to eternally serve the collection of beings who sought their rightful place in this world.

  The Hollowsworn, they were called.

  Two men stood in an empty room, their faces obscured in shadow. One, a compact figure with an axe in his hands, stood at attention. The other, a taller man with a dark beard, gazed at his subordinate.

  “Any word on Shellrend?” he asked in a low baritone.

  “None, Master. After returning to this dimension, he has not moved,” came the reply. It was cold and no-nonsense. He preferred it that way. Much better than Sheepskin in that regard.

  “I see. Remain vigilant; seek to apprehend him if we get the chance. He is a unique specimen, and we cannot afford to lose him. Nor can we allow Summitway to find another connection to our world when we have not even located its latest one,” he declared.

  “Actually, Master, he is not.”

  “Elaborate.”

  “Shellrend, I mean. He is no longer unique. There is a second successful merging underway.”

  The room was quiet for a long moment, until the Master spoke. “Give me a name.”

  And he received one. “...Worldsong.”

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