Since arriving in New Avignon, Diya felt a bit like a fish out of water, but in that moment, soaring through the skies above the city, she felt back in her element.

  “Does it ever get less terrifying?” asked Tamsin, who was seated behind Diya on the giant roc, and gripping her so tightly that she could hardly breathe.

  “Not really. You just kind of learn to embrace the terror. Sort of like the way some people love scary stories.”

  It was hard to hear over the wind, but Diya thought she heard her masked friend groan. A wicked smirk creased her lips, and Diya whistled sharply. On command, Shikra dove gracefully towards the city. A feeling of weightlessness washed over them. The girls had opposite reactions to the maneuver; Diya cheered, while Tamsin shrieked.

  With effortless grace, Shikra pulled up from her descent and glided smoothly. Sunlight pierced through skeletal buildings, glinting off shattered glass and twisted metal. The bird banked left, then dipped between crumbling spires, talons brushing against the remnants of balconies and archways.

  Shikra landed atop the spire with a rush of displaced air, stone groaning beneath her talons. Dust scattered into the sky like startled birds. Diya slid down from the saddle and crouched, one gloved hand brushing rough marble. The tower felt unstable; she couldn’t tell if it was the wind or if perhaps the centuries had been waiting for her weight to bring it all down.

  Tamsin dismounted behind her, far more at ease than she had been in the air. She stood with a familiarity that made Diya pause. The masked woman turned slowly, eyes sweeping across the ruins with something close to reverence.

  “Have your people lived here long?” Diya asked.

  “Born here,” Tamsin said, her voice muffled behind the mask. She stepped to the edge of the spire, boots crunching against cracked tile, and gestured outward. “New Avignon. A shame I’ll only ever see the bones of what was...”

  Diya joined her at the edge, scanning the city below. To her eye, it looked alien. Too precise, too deliberate, even in its ruined state, as if some obsessive god had pressed the buildings into place with a ruler. Ghanesha had no such order; its neighborhoods grew like barnacles, clinging to whatever space they could. “Strange,” she muttered. “It feels more dead because of how neat it is.”

  Tamsin gave a humorless laugh. “That’s New Avignon. Order imposed on a world that doesn’t want it. And now…” She pointed past the city’s grid, toward the black stain marring its edge. “Now it belongs to them.”

  The Skarlith camp spread across a broad plaza with a collapsed bridge at the center. From atop the towering spire, Diya could see the shimmer of their bone-like shelters, pulsing faintly as if alive. Insectoid figures worked tirelessly with uncanny unity.

  From up here, they looked like ants. Diya thought, almost laughing at the absurdity of it all.

  Shikra ruffled her feathers, crooning low. Diya laid a hand on her bird’s neck, steadying her. “And here we are,” she said softly. “Two women and a bird, against an army.”

  Tamsin peered out at the camp; she was impossible to read behind her white mask.

  “What do they want? Can we negotiate with them?” Asked Diya.

  “No one knows for certain, but I’ve never heard of them communicating with us,” Tamsin said, tossing a pebble off the spire. “They seem to be scavengers, most of what we know is based on rumors and old fables.”

  Diya stared down at the hive of activity. It didn’t look like a temporary camp, they seemed to be constructing a small settlement. Worst of all, this was no raiding party, there were hundreds of them down there. “If in the past they were always content to raid the surface, then return underground, but now they appear to be settling on the surface, maybe something has changed in their society underground?”

  “Sounds plausible, but it’s impossible to know for certain.”

  “At military academy, I had to study a lot of subjects. One such subject was geopolitics,” Diya mused aloud.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Tamsin’s brow raised, then she shot Diya a look like she was dancing at a funeral. “Fascinating. How’s that going to help us?”

  “Imperialism is the practice or policy of extending a nation’s power and influence beyond its own borders,” Diya explained. “What if instead of just raiding the surface, the Skarlith are attempting to set up a colony up here?”

  “Well, a race of warlike bug people aren’t the most ideal neighbors, that’s for sure. If your theory proves to be true, then my people will most likely have to abandon our ancestral home.”

  “Can’t your coven fight them? One big offensive to drive them back underground?”

  “We don’t have the numbers.” Tamsin sighed. “Only a handful of us are warriors; most are farmers, or tradesmen, or laborers. We relied on magical wards to repel the Skarlith, and for some inexplicable reason, they appear to have developed a resistance.”

  Diya gasped, “Maybe we can develop a new way to repel the Skarlith! I don’t just like blowing things up, I know my way around a workshop. With the right reagents and experimentation, we might be able to find a new way to repel them.”

  “Not a bad idea, but I doubt we have enough time.”

  “Then we'd better get to it,” Diya grinned. “Is there a botanist among your people?”

  “We have one very skilled in gathering and crafting potions, his name is Quin. He’s a bit of a recluse, but I think I can convince him to assist us.” Tamsin said, removing her mask and letting the warm rays of sunlight caress her face.

  “Perfect! We’ve just one more thing to do before we pay him a visit.”

  “And that is?”

  “It’s not good manners to show up without a gift. We’re going to need to catch ourselves a bug to properly test our repellant.”

  Tamsin laughed. “Without a doubt, old Quin is not going to love us showing up to his shop with a savage in tow.”

  “Well,” Diya muttered, “perhaps he will love when he is lauded as a hero for helping us save your people.”

  Her eyes grew wide like a bird that just spotted a mouse and Diya pointed down into the street below. There walked a patrol of Skarlith scouts, conveniently heading their direction.

  Diya froze, her breath catching as the patrol came into view below. Five Skarlith, their carapace gleaming like lacquered armor. Macabre trophies of past raids hung from cloth wraps, human skulls and bones, as well as various odds and ends. She thought she could even make out a teapot hanging from one’s belt. They marched in perfect unison, their clawed feet scratching against the stone.

  “Scouts,” she whispered, more to herself than to Tamsin. “And just the right number.”

  Tamsin placed her mask back on and turned her head to look. “The right number for what, exactly?”

  Diya gave her a sharp grin. “An ambush.”

  Before Tamsin could reply, Diya slid down the spire’s cracked surface, catching a torn banner with one hand, then dropping with the easy confidence of someone who had done this too many times to count. Shikra shifted above, talons scraping against stone, the giant roc unsettled but silent at her rider’s command.

  Tamsin followed, slower but steady, each movement economical. She didn’t look like a soldier, not exactly, but something in the way she wielded those weapons spoke of experience.

  They crouched behind the shattered ribs of an archway. The Skarlith neared, antennae tasting the air, their formation tightening as if they could sense something amiss.

  Diya pulled a small iron sphere from her belt. She held it up, fuse already primed. “Smoke and sound. I split them. You break one.”

  Tamsin gave a curt nod.

  Diya lobbed the bomb. It struck stone, rolled twice, then burst with a thunderous crack. Smoke belched across the street. The Skarlith shrieked in unison, their perfect rhythm broken. Two peeled off toward the noise.

  Like an apex predator, Diya moved. She fired her pistol once, the shot taking one insect in the shoulder and spinning it sideways. The recoil stung her wrist, familiar and grounding. She drew a breath of smoke and ash, heart steady. This was the part of life that made sense.

  Tamsin became a blur. Her blood magic flared, her body accelerating with a surge that made her cloak whip backward. She smashed one mace into a Skarlith’s knee joint, cracking chitin like ice beneath a pick. Before it could collapse, her second mace crashed into its mouth, silencing its scream.

  Another warrior lunged, but Shikra dove from above, wings folded, a living spear. The roc’s talons raked the insect’s shell, forcing it to stumble.

  The fight was quick, brutal, and uneven. In mere heartbeats, four Skarlith lay broken or bleeding. The fifth scrabbled backward, leg twisted from Tamsin’s strike. She stepped forward, pressed a boot to its chest, and pinned it with the weight of inevitability.

  “This one lives,” she said. Her voice was calm, though her shoulders rose and fell with exertion.

  Diya holstered her pistol and knelt beside the captive. Up close, its many eyes reflected the world like shards of obsidian. Its voice clicked in a rhythm that might have been language, or maybe just rage. Impossible to know.

  Tamsin pulled a length of rope from her belt, winding it around the Skarlith’s limbs. Each knot cinched tight, chitin scraping against silk.

  Tamsin glanced at her, head tilted. “You sure this is a good idea?”

  Diya met the black, alien eyes. “I don't know that I'd recognize a good idea even if it fell from the clouds. The only difference between a bad idea and a good one is whether you can live with the it afterward. And I’ve lived with worse.” She straightened, brushing soot from her gloves. “But it does feel like our best shot.”

  The Skarlith hissed, the sound sharp enough to make Shikra ruffle her wings uneasily. The noise echoed down the ruined street.