The Orgiastic congregation screamed out in unison to proclaim their champion.

  “Odarask!” The horde shouted. Odarask, the Seneschal, bore down on the blade Isbrand blocked, gouging deeper into his arm with each moment.

  “The great horn of the beloved mother!” The horde chanted louder. Isbrand started to be driven back.

  “Odarask!” The horde howled. Isbrand dug his clawed limbs into the ground, anchoring himself to halt Odarask’s advance.

  “Break the pitiful wretches!” The horde demanded. Odarask drove in harder, continuing to press Isbrand back. The floor beneath Isbrand cracked and splintered as he tried desperately to hold his ground.

  “Odarask!” The horde repeated. Isbrand raised his free arm from the floor, letting himself be pushed back further. He aimed both barrels of his fist at Odarask. Fire poured from them, washing over the Seneschal in a flash of orange light, illuminating the growing horde of Orgiastics around us. Even as the flames engulfed Odarask, Isbrand was still being driven back.

  “Anoint them in our everlasting bliss!” The horde bayed.

  The word ‘WARNING’ etched itself into the corner of my vision in red letters. The readout displayed the J-reading of the area. The numbers were spiking upwards. Down in the dark among this orgy of flesh, the world had scarcely known such palpable joy. My vision began to blur around the edges as my mental defenses were being eroded.

  The Orgiastics were breaking through the veil around my psyche. If that happened, I would be defenseless against the Harlot Queen.

  Pritch came diving out of the shadows, her blades gleaming with the light from Isbrand’s Incarnum. She landed on Odarask’s back and drove both swords down into the Seneschal’s shoulders.

  Odarask twisted in pain, staggering back from Isbrand. The Seneschal had lost his grip on the greatsword lodged in Isbrand’s nearly ruined arm. Odarask struggled furiously, bucking as hard as possible to throw off his attacker. Several thin mechanical limbs had unfurled from Pritch’s back; each filed into a razor-sharp point. Pritch stabbed each of them into Odarask’s back, neck, and shoulders with blinding speed and fury.

  Isbrand took hold of the Seneschal’s greatsword and pried it out of his Incarnum’s arm. The better part of Isbrand’s forearm was lost in the separation, clattering onto the ground at his feet in a wrecked heap. He had no time to mourn its loss, charging towards Odarask instead. He hoisted the greatsword over his shoulder, priming to swing the massive blade.

  Odarask’s arm twisted around at an unnatural angle to grab Pritch. His enormous hand wrapped entirely around Pritch’s waist and wrenched her away from his back. The blades from her arms broke off along with all but one of the smaller piercing limbs. Odarask whipped Pritch around over his shoulder and drove her down toward the ground at his feet. Pritch went limp as Odarask slammed her into the ground on her back.

  My vision, which had blurred around the edges, suddenly sharpened. A feeling burned at the back of my throat. It welled and pressed against my very being, molten and seething.

  I roared in boiling fury.

  Isbrand’s voice rose to join me.

  Our righteous indignation burned away at the feeble joy of the Orgiastics.

  Isbrand brought Odarask’s blade aloft over his shoulder before cleaving it down into the base of the Seneschal’s neck. The blade shattered through the bone plates of Odarask’s armor and sliced through the soft flesh of his innards. The sword carved a path through the abomination that ran down the length of his body. Isbrand drove through with the blade until it had bisected the Seneschal.

  The two halves of Odarask’s body were thrown against the ground roughly with Isbrand’s blow.

  The Orgiastic horde cried out in sorrow for the first time.

  The sound rose around us like a song.

  A lamentation of lost flesh.

  A dirge for Odarask.

  It was a promise.

  “Odarask!” The horde cried.

  “We will tear your redemption from them!”

  “Their lifeblood will sing your soul back to our hearth!”

  “Your glorious sacrifice will not go unrewarded; You shall rise anew!”

  “Reborn from the flesh of the most hated! The bringer of flame! The ruin of joy!”

  The darkness around us came alive. The air itself shook with movement. We could only hear the Orgiastic’s clawing through the hive structure. The rest of the horde was upon us.

  “Hearken, brothers and sisters! Drown them in the sanctimonious tide of our flesh!”

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  It sounded like hundreds. Thousands. Something beyond measure.

  “For Odarask! For the Blessed Mother! We proclaim!”

  The horde surged forth from the shadows.

  “Retribution for the Seneschal!”

  They swallowed the light.

  “Douse the fire!”

  I screamed.

  Isbrand cut down the first of them with Odarask’s blade. It was torn from his grasp in the chaotic tide of bodies assaulting us. I saw him there like a beacon in the darkness. Every shot from his slugger flashed another snapshot of the swarm around us. Another booming shot. Another flash of orange. A sudden spray of mangled blood and bone. Over and over again until they tore Isbrand’s slugger arm from his body. He hacked and chopped with his machetes, felling swathes of the horde like a scythe through weeds. Isbrand tunneled through the carnage, digging out a trench to reach Pritch. He knelt over her motionless form, shielding her from the endless battering of Orgiastic bodies. They swirled around us, a furious current.

  Warnings played across my vision, the only thing I could see in all the darkness now. We were being crushed under the weight of the Orgiastics. I had made Isbrand to withstand all the things I could never. This was too much, even for him. There wasn’t an Incarnum capable of surviving this. We were going to lose.

  A single spark ignited in the darkness. Isbrand was suddenly ablaze. Flames poured from his back and spread in every direction. The fire would not die in Isbrand. It spread forth to sate a hunger unlike anything I had ever witnessed. It swept through the tides of flesh around us like a wild beast, blackening everything with a tooth of fire and a nail of flame. As Isbrand began to rise, the Orgiastic horde settled around him as great piles of ash. The fire around him subsided, leaving only the warm glow of his Incarnum to cast out into the darkness.

  Isbrand stepped over Pritch’s body, wading through the ashes towards the Harlot Queen. A few stragglers from the outer edges of the hive trickled into the brood chamber, rushing desperately to protect their Queen. Isbrand cut through the first and hacked through the second. More reached him too soon. Three more, and another ten to follow. He was being swarmed again. The last of the Partisans clung to him like pleading hands. Their crude arms clattered against the Incarnum’s metal frame. Isbrand drove forward, all the same, one step after another.

  He was halfway to the Queen when his leg buckled and snapped in two at the knee.

  Isbrand stumbled to the ground, unable to catch himself while fighting the Partisans. It didn’t matter that he was on the ground. He raged and roared all the same. He stabbed, punched, hacked, chopped, bludgeoned, and cleaved with all the might he could still muster. Muted silence fell over the chamber after he drove his machete through the neck of the last Orgiastic.

  Isbrand dug his blades into the ground, dragging his body with his thin upper limbs. He pushed with his remaining leg. He was still going to make it to the Queen.

  I could see the spark growing in him again. The flame was building to one last gasp. The Queen shrieked in abject panic. Isbrand started to laugh. Then he let go of the flame one last time.

  The tremendous orange jet of flame bathed the Queen and set her alight. She writhed and twisted, screaming out in protest. She slammed into the nearby wall, sending a shockwave through the chamber. Her bulbous form began to split and crackle against the flames. The sickening fluids of her abominable body hissed as they slaked the fire burning her.

  The Queen was still alive.

  Isbrand didn’t have anything left.

  Even after everything he had done, it wasn’t enough.

  No, this was my fault. Isbrand had given everything he could.

  I was the reason we had failed. It was me.

  We were going to die unless I did something.

  What could I do? The thought raced across every part of my mind, screaming for an answer within every facet of my knowledge. There had to be something I could do. Indeed, there was something I hadn’t considered. I needed to think like Isbrand.

  What would he do if he were me?

  He would choose to win.

  I only had one way to win.

  The Harlot Queen raised one of her gangly, charred legs above Isbrand. She was going to end him.

  It was now or never.

  I cast my psyche forth, honing my thoughts into a spear. I broke through the veil around the mind of the Harlot Queen. She was too distracted and injured to mount much of a defense. I built a steady bridge between our minds. I used the finished link to Incarnate within the Queen’s Mind.

  The tiny flame flickered before me, begging to be freed from his wretched suffering. I would reach out and visit upon him a Queen’s mercy. He had denied my glorious gifts. He had profaned my beautiful body with his callous fire. He had cut down my champion. For these crimes, I could not offer joy, only merciful death.

  It was time to snuff this flame for good.

  You can’t. I heard a voice speaking within my mind.

  I can’t? Why couldn’t I?

  Because I’m done losing.

  A Queen does not lose. What was this feeling? I couldn’t understand what was happening.

  I want you to remember something for me, Your Majesty.

  Remember? What did I need to remember? Had I forgotten something?

  I want you to recall a man named Donato Schade.

  I don’t know—

  My mind exploded in withering pain. This was pain enough to drive out every memory of joy and pleasure I had ever known. Every sense I had so treasured was turned against me. I burned. Not my body as before, but my very soul.

  Please. This had to stop.

  I couldn’t take it.

  Kill me, please.

  Gladly.

  My body twisted into itself violently, stricken and seizing with the pain coursing through it. I had no control. I didn’t want anything more than for the pain to be over. Whatever it took, it had to be over. Every fiber of my body clenched inward, bowing my frame to its breaking point. I tried to scream but found my voice stolen in my suffering. My soul snapped from the moorings of my body with nary more than a choked whisper.

  I was ejected from the Harlot Queen’s mind as she died. I had no sense but what I had subjected myself to within her: pain. I outlasted her once it had started. That was the only thing that mattered. It would become manageable again in time. Until then, I would huddle in the back of my own mind. It was quiet and peaceful there. It was far away from Isbrand. It was far away from Pritch. I had no worries about the brood chamber here.

  “Elias, wake up!” Isbrand shouted at me.

  My eyes shot open, and everything was brought back into focus.

  “What?! What now, Isbrand?!” I screamed. The pain had driven all semblance of patience from my mind.

  “We have to get out of the chamber before it collapses,” Isbrand said. I tried to listen to the world around me, pushing past the distraction of my suffering. He was right. I looked at Isbrand.

  “How? I can’t get you out of here on my own!” I exclaimed.

  “You’ve got to use Pritch! Get her up or pilot her body! We’re running out of time!” Isbrand urged.

  I looked towards Pritch, where she lay in her divot in the ashes.

  I reached out to her mind, feeling for a connection.

  She was there. Still alive but unconscious.

  I was going to have to enter her mind.

  Even if we managed to escape, Pritch would kill me when this was all over.