The Ascended did not cast spells. They performed Miracles, fueled by the divine Grace that flowed through their sacred blood. To call it 'sorcery' was heresy…

  …Though some preferred the old term as a sign of rebellion.

  * * *

  “What in the actual fuck…”

  Below, Loric coughed, rolled, and propped himself up. White dust flecked his hair and lashes. A cut bled along his cheekbone. The look on his face wasn’t his usual lazy amusement. It was a naked shock, then the quick scramble to hide it. “What just happened…”

  His mind raced to search for an explanation. How did a mere Satellrite suddenly obtain the strength to not only break through the ropes but to throw him off as well? Not just throw him off, but toss him outside the mansion, into the front yard with such monstrous strength.

  No…he tried to place his mind back to what happened just moments ago. What he had sensed back then was no doubt the flow of Grace.

  He looked up in time to see Magnolia drop from the broken wall. She hit the garden feet-first. Stone and soil buckled with a dull thud, a shallow bowl blooming under her boots.

  Servants burst through the arbor, drawn by the commotion and by his cry. Their faces were white above dark uniforms; their shoes tapped anxiously on the marble. “My lord!” one called, perhaps thinking to protect or to restrain.

  Loric waved them back with a flick of his hand, feeling a surge of amusement at their seriousness. “No, no,” he murmured, his smile widening, “stay there. I will handle this. Today will be filled with fun just like I planned. Though perhaps a different sort of amusement than I’d envisioned.”

  There was a gleam in his eyes, a heat that belied his easy tone. He had already decided to relish this.

  A Satellrite with Grace? Impossible. Grace was the birthright of the Ascended, not the rabble they cast down here. Unless… had the government slipped up? Sent one of their own into the Satellite by mistake?

  The thought almost made him laugh. But no, how could such an error even happen? Even the buffoons in the office weren’t that incompetent.

  He lifted his right hand. The air above him wavered and then dark mouths opened in the sky.

  From within came tendrils, thick ropes of shadow with a pearlescent sheen that suggested wetness.

  “Come, Kraken!” Loric commanded.

  This was the Miracle of his house. A summoning based Miracle that allowed them to borrow the strength of their contracted creature.

  The tentacles shot down in a synchronous rain, each one big as a tree trunk and tipped with barbs. They aimed for the girl at the center of the meadow. And she, astonishingly, disturbingly, moved through them all.

  Her body seemed to anticipate the strikes; she flowed between them like water diverted by stones. Each time the ground exploded where a tentacle struck, sending showers of loam and peony petals into the air, she was already a pace away.

  Loric narrowed his eyes, the edges of his smile sharpening. This isn’t the movement of an amateur…

  Where had she learned to dance like this?

  How did a mere labourer, a common girl who had hauled crates and performed the most menial of labors, pirouette through a rain of kraken limbs as if she had been waiting for this challenge her whole life?

  He kept up the barrage, leaning into his Miracle until his breath came short and his heart thudded. His dark portals were like eyes now, glaring down, the limbs thrashed at the flowerbeds and smashed the marble benches to powder. Roses were shredded, ancient oaks groaned as bark was stripped away. Statues toppled with an echo like a last gasp. Magnolia dodged again and again, her silhouette outlined in the pale purple energy of her Grace that cloaked her body.

  Eventually, Loric managed to land a hit, the world making sense to him once again in that brief moment. One of the tentacles wrapped around her waist. Loric tugged, and Magnolia flew backwards, her limbs flailing. The ground where she landed broke open like dry bread, a crater blossomed, dust pluming up in a ring. He did not let up. More limbs descended into that dust. There was a heavy, wet sound, the sound of flesh being pierced, of earth being churned, and another eruption of soil. From the torn up ground, shards of marble, bits of topiary, and sprays of blood arced like macabre confetti.

  Finally, the tentacles withdrew. For a moment they dangled above the destruction, as if admiring their handiwork if they had eyes, then slid back through their portals, trailing gore.

  Loric bent forward, hands on his knees, panting. His chest heaved; he felt the sweat cooling on his temples. That fight definitely took more out of him than he expected.

  “What a waste,” he murmured under his breath, looking at the churned earth. “Another toy is broken already.” There was regret there, but it was the regret of a man seeing a vase he liked shattered, not the grief for a life taken.

  But the dust cleared. And she was standing.

  Dirt clung to her hair in curls and to the hollows of her collarbones. Her clothes, those flimsy working?class garments, were shredded into ribbons. In her torso were holes, horrific, jagged punctures through which one could glimpse the torn webbing of bone and the glistening slickness of organs. It was as if she were a doll made of meat.

  Blood flowed freely, thick as paint, pattering onto the soil. Loric’s stomach clenched in something like nausea, though whether from the sight or the knowledge that he had miscalculated, he could not say.

  Slowly, the holes began to close. Muscle fibres writhed like snakes weaving themselves together. Skin bubbled up from the edges and sealed. In less than a dozen breaths, the wounds were gone, leaving only pink newness. It was repulsive, miraculous, and oddly beautiful.

  Magnolia looked up.

  Gone was the panic, the hunted-animal look she’d worn in the bedroom. Her eyes narrowed and fixed on Loric with a cold gaze. There seemed to be a strange mystical shine coming out of her eyes that made her look inhuman.

  Loric felt the chill run up his spine before he even realized he’d started to step back. The smile she gave him was small and humorless, an invitation with teeth.

  “You finished?” Her voice was quiet, smooth, almost gentle. A dangerous calm. “Good. My turn.”

  Something rippled beneath her shoulder blades.

  Loric's breath caught.

  The skin along her back split.

  Flesh peeling away like wet fabric as four massive limbs erupted from her spine in a spray of crimson. The sound was hideous, like tearing meat mixed with the crack of breaking bone. Blood misted the air, caught the light, fell like rain.

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  They unfurled.

  Thick. Muscular. Grotesque. Each one as wide as her thigh, ridged with corded sinew that pulsed and flexed with every movement. They arced overhead, dripping, glistening red-black in the morning sun.

  Veins stood out along their surface, dark lines branching like roots, throbbing faintly with her pulse. The limbs swayed, serpentine, as if tasting the air.

  Magnolia rolled her shoulders, tilted her head, calm, curious, like she was trying on a new coat. Her smile widened.

  "Let's see how you handle it."

  She did not hesitate. Her newly made limbs plunged into the earth, anchoring themselves. Then, in a motion so swift that the eye could not follow, she pushed off. Her body became a blurred streak. Dust spiraled up in her wake. In less than a heartbeat she was upon Loric.

  He saw only a smear of color. His own enhanced reflexes screamed at him; he bent backward, his spine arching backwards. The four crimson tentacles swept past where his torso had been. Their edges sliced the air with a sound like tearing silk. If he had been a moment slower, he would have been cut in half.

  The girl was fast. Way too fast.

  Magnolia did not relent. Above him now, silhouetted against the sun, she gathered her appendages and stabbed downward. They became four spears aimed at his chest. He twisted, rolled, let his training take over. The tentacles struck empty grass and drove deep, leaving holes the size of wells.

  Loric landed on his hands and used the momentum to flip to his feet. He retreated a dozen paces in three long bounds.

  What is she? He thought.

  The Ascended channel their Grace into their flesh to amplify strength and speed. But even the strongest physical body has a limit. But this seemed to be too much. Odd in a way that he couldn’t put his finger on.

  Magnolia advanced again, relentlessly. Loric fell back through the wreckage of his own garden, his boots crunching on shards of marble and crushed shells. His mind raced. What had triggered this transformation? The way she had turned from a defiant, frightened girl into this quiet, precise killer…

  It was too abrupt. It felt like watching a lantern being snuffed out, only to have a bonfire flare in its place. He had planned to frighten her, to break her, to taste and savor every inch of her, to enjoy the process. He had not planned to be hunted.

  "Kraken!"

  Loric's voice cracked on the word. Both hands shot up. Light bent around him, warped, and suddenly there were rings: portals, six, eight, a dozen, hanging in the air like holes punched through reality.

  The tentacles came through fast.

  Thick as tree trunks, gray-green and glistening, they whipped out with the sound of wet leather snapping. One. Three. Seven. They coiled and lashed toward Magnolia, heavy enough to crush bone, fast enough to blur.

  She met them head-on.

  Her crimson limbs shot forward. The impact was visceral. Meat on meat, the slap of it loud enough to make Loric's teeth ache. One of her limbs wrapped around a tentacle and squeezed. The Kraken's flesh bulged. Something inside it popped.

  Another tentacle lunged for her throat. She batted it aside like swatting a fly. It hit the ground hard enough to crack stone.

  "No, hold, damn you, hold!"

  But they weren't holding.

  The Kraken's tentacles were massive, sure, but they moved like they were drugged. Slow. Clumsy. Every time they struck, Magnolia's limbs were already somewhere else. Coiling, snapping, tearing. One of hers shot forward and punched clean through a tentacle. The Kraken's flesh split with a wet ripping sound. Dark ichor sprayed.

  Loric felt it through the bond. Pain. Panic. How is she so strong? How is her Grace reinforcement so much better than a noble like him?

  Even worse, his Kraken was retreating.

  The tentacles pulled back toward the portals, curling in on themselves, trying to escape back through the rifts. One of them dragged across the ground, limp, leaking.

  "No! Get back here, you coward!" Loric's voice pitched high, desperate. He slammed a fist against the nearest portal, but it passed right through. "Fight, damn you! FIGHT!"

  But the portals were already shrinking. The tentacles slithered back through, faster now, fleeing like whipped dogs.

  This cannot be happening, he thought. This was a nightmare. A nightmare where a filthy Satellrite awoke to the power of Gods.

  She sprinted at him again. There was no hesitation in her steps, only a cold efficiency. He saw his own death then. He knew she would kill him if he did nothing. The thought ignited a final spark of cunning. He smiled and whispered, “Ink.”

  A head, vaguely cephalopodian, burst from the portal nearest his shoulder. From its mouth came a jet of ink. It was not ordinary ink but a cloud of viscous blackness, thick as oil and shot through with glints of green and silver. It billowed into the air and then hung there, defying gravity, spreading as if underwater.

  Magnolia ran headlong into it. Immediately she was blinded. The ink clung to her eyelids. She could not see him. The crimson limbs thrashed at the darkness, but none hit their mark.

  Loric dashed, using the last of his Grace to propel himself behind her. In one smooth motion he drew from his belt an ornamental dagger. Its blade was black as obsidian and curved like a smile. This was his Divine Armament, a weapon embedded with a potent Miracle so that even the slightest nick spelled death. No one had ever survived its kiss. He pictured himself driving it into the soft place behind her ear. He pictured the look of shock on her face. He allowed himself a small thrill.

  With this, he was going to end this nightmare.

  He burst through the ink cloud. Blindness was total, but he trusted his memory of where she had been a breath ago. His dagger arm extended. He lunged. He felt , not the resistance of flesh, but the sharp pain of an impact against his forearm. Magnolia had kicked backwards, somehow knowing where he was even though she shouldn’t.

  The dagger skittered across a stone, rang once, and lodged in the roots of an upended tree. Loric’s mind went white for an instant. How did she —

  He did not have time to finish the thought. Her fist met his jaw with a crack that split the night. Then her other fist. Then one of her crimson limbs crashed into his ribs, another into his shoulder. The world became a storm of blows. There were flashes of white behind his eyes each time she hit him, like lightning behind clouds. He tasted blood and enamel. His nose broke with an almost polite popping sound; blood gushed down his throat.

  He tried to raise his arms; she battered them aside. He fell. She did not stop. She continued pounding until his face was a mask of purple and red, until his left eye swelled shut, until his lip split and fat drops of blood ran down his chin and neck. Somewhere, dimly, he heard the wail of a servant, or perhaps it was the wind through the torn hedges.

  At last she straightened. Her chest rose and fell evenly. Her skin, though smeared with his blood and ink, glowed faintly with Grace. She looked down at him with a gaze that held no malice, only a kind of clinical curiosity. He blinked up at her through his one good eye. He tried to speak. He tried to shape words around his swollen tongue.

  “Please,” he finally managed, though it emerged as a garble. There was no dignity in it. His voice sounded to his ears like that of a child begging not to be punished. He hated himself for it and hated her for making him sound so small.

  She ignored the plea. Her attention moved to the dagger lying a few paces away. She walked over to it. The ground squelched with blood beneath her bare feet. She bent down and lifted the weapon.

  Loric tried to roll away; his limbs betrayed him. His Grace reserves were empty; his body was leaden. He saw, as if from a great distance, Magnolia approach him.

  He saw the curve of her wrist as she brought the blade to his throat. He saw the reflection of his own swollen face in the polished steel. There was a moment, perhaps half a heartbeat, when he thought she might hesitate. People always hesitated. They always looked into his eyes and remembered his name and what it meant and lowered their hand.

  She did not. She drew the knife in a clean, decisive motion. The edge slid across the tender place beneath his jaw. It was almost gentle. Warmth spread down his chest, the warmth of himself. He felt the venom in the blade bite too, a numbing cold that travelled up, then down, then in. His hands scrabbled weakly at the air. His mouth moved, forming a soundless shape. He was not used to begging, but he begged now. He begged in the language of the dying, in looks and in soft, gurgling groans.

  Magnolia’s eyes remained on his. She watched the life drain away as if she were studying a painting. When he was still, she let the dagger drop. The ink cloud dissipated in the breeze.