She scrambled through her anti-rogue supplies.

  A combustion submachine gun.

  A cyanide pill. Did she want to pokgai? No. She certainly did not think about killing herself at this moment, not when she was just about to finally hold her lover in person.

  A bolt action sniper rifle! By Mother-in-Law that was going to be her ticket.

  But she had no idea how to use a sniper rifle!

  Voli, need an upload, quick. Voli was in sync with her beat for beat, and was a bit annoyed with the redundant command, because he was already uploading the skills the moment her eyes fell on the gun.

  She quickly donned her pressurized bodysuit, the helmet, a flimsy polymer of forbidden fire byproducts, and opened the emergency top hatch, leveled her scope.

  The first two rolling at her were obviously Malkuth and Yesod. They were well ahead of the rest of the pack. But- they were on motorcycles! Vilithe’s breathing heaved hard and fast and oscillated the barrel and its aligned scope too rollicking for Vilithe to possibly land a shot, even if she did know all the formal instructions of how to blow someone’s head off from a thousand clicks away. Yes, including adjusting for the wind, grasp, and curvature of Aryss. Plus, it was a heavy sniper rifle. It always felt like Clan Amallark was compensating for something. Tracks for Serun.

  Even though Vilithe now knew how to use the big gun now, it was an entirely different thing to use it effectively.

  Muscle memory and experience in the heat of pressure were simply not possible to transmit psionically. Even if the whole memory of the action was imprinted, it is an ethereal body – someone else’s neuromuscular system – and was of no use when it came to fine tuning and dialing in for her own corporeal body.

  She needed her Knight in Shining Armor!

  She telepathed to Eidren.

  Boo. I need help.

  Meanwhile a little while ago, Eidren had been rolling along in his reaver with the great hero Jhynie, who, now being the highest ranking psion left remaining in the decimated Amallarkean forces, was tasked with restraining his psionic power. But Jhynie was no good at psionics. Still, she didn’t let anyone know, because the duty was an honor.

  So, she decided to just use plain old intimidation instead. She let her bullpup railgun – she was considering naming it Juulz in honor of her dead sister with how finicky it could be – rest gently on her lap, gynospreading. She let Juulz sit cradled precariously on her lower slouched thigh. She patted it every once in a while, to remind Eidren who was boss.

  But, being oppressed under the matriarchy, he was pretty used to this sort of treatment, “You know those things take forever to reload, right?”

  “Won’t need to reload.” She was the best, you had better know this by now. She let that stray thought lazily drift from her head, daring Eidren to scry it, if he knew how.

  Psh. Of course he could. He-

  Boo. I need help.

  Wait, what? Already? We had just- holy Rogue Goddess he had just cradled his dying mother in his arms! Or, well, one of them. And his brother! He hallucinated a cigarette for Nonny! He-

  BOO!

  Sorry. What is it, bae?

  I need you to Dominate me. I need it now. Badly.

  Wait wha-

  Don’t think, just do! I need you to-

  I’m not sure if I can pull off psionics at that level, bae, I- he scryed hard now and gathered the sitch, quick as soldiers do.

  And just like that his psionic projection was suddenly there beside her, his fae taking breaths of the unbreathable non-air of the Aryssal wilds without even a helm. Because, of course, his real physical body was protected in Jhynie’s pressurized reaver.

  He was so handsome. And he did it! Vilithe was so proud of him. He had pulled off a psionic projection!

  “Woah this is cool, I’ve never-”

  A bullet whizzed by Vilithe’s breathing helm. Malkuth had begun to lay suppressing fire. She ducked quickly back down the hatch as a clatter of bullets bouncing off the Reaver’s back plates drummed retorts. Damn!

  Then Yesod began to attempt to infiltrate her mind. Dark muddled brown veins began to creep in from the edges of her vision, which began to get very blurry with astigmatisms. She gritted her teeth and pushed the intrusion out.

  Boo! Focus!

  “On it, bae.”

  He guided his fae hands into hers, and it felt like an encouraging pat on the back telling her that bae- you got this. No. Better than that. Like he was soothing her, sliding his hand down from thoracic to lumbar, giving her frisson, and serenity. Or, at least, that was the intention. Yet it excited her instead of calming her.

  And of course it couldn’t compare to holding his hands for real. She had yet to do that.

  “Woah, bae, chill, please. You gotta calm down. Your heart rate is topped out, your breathing-”

  Not helping, boo.

  “Right. I got this.”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Together they weaved a psionic calming aura around Vilithe, using their memories of holding each other through the memory of the Battle of Phyros.

  They were both in Sanctuary now. Warded against psionic attack. Yesod’s attempt to mind blast her was now completely ineffective. The dark muddled veins cleared away.

  “Alright,” the fae Eidren said gently, and then he psionically dominated his lover for the first time. But it was a gentle domination, just a simple consensual one. Direly consensual because it was Tar O Dar for Vilithe now. A puppeteering of her fingers, she knew the rest. Not so bad, right?

  Breathe. Exhale. We’ve been here before.

  “Rack the bolt, keep both eyes on target, even the one off the scope, especially off scope, not until you’re ready and in the zone. This is crucial.”

  She was so grateful.

  “Ok, got it?”

  Got it, boo. In the zone. Here we go.

  “Crosshairs on target now. Breathe in.”

  She breathed in, crosshairs on target.

  “Dilate time. Hold that breath.”

  Thank you, boo.

  “Squeeze the trigger.”

  CRA-ACK!

  Malkuth’s head blew off, her head was just basic forbidden polymer after all, it had no chance of withstanding a- well, the rifle had a totally unnecessary caliber of 12.7mm. No wonder the thing was so heavy.

  Vilithe’s jaw dropped, aghast as she watched floating ribbons of blood and brain hover in a cloud around where the fifty-cal round, meant to penetrate gryphantene carapace plate, had burst Malkuth’s brains, and sinuses, and skull, and jaw for that matter, completely apart.

  She spent too long gaping in horror, for it was the first time she had really seen such violence with her dragonrider lensed eyes, the first time she saw it happen in her natural radiation-based vision, instead of standard elvan conic celled tri-primary chromatic vision. She had never actually witnessed with her own eyes, instead of merely astral projecting and scrying through the eyes of others, such grotesque violence before. Psionics had always made the immediacy of the violence far removed, she was never in real physical danger.

  She was now.

  But she had been so before. She had seen dragons incinerated, yes, she had seen the Nimbii back home in Phyros erupted in flames.

  But never an elvan’s head blown apart to bits. In excruciating detail with her dragonrider’s vision.

  And with a bullet she just shot right through it, too.

  Yesod and Hod were closing in, and fast now, and they were too close for the unwieldy anti-material rifle to easily find the mark on.

  Vilithe tore her eyes away from the scope in frustration and cursed, “Diu la sing [??那星]!”

  “Language, Vi!”

  “Not now, boo!”

  “Time and place, got it, got it. Other guns?”

  “Other- guns. Other guns. Gods damn it.”

  She slung herself back into the reaver and retrieved the submachine gun, the P90 clone.

  “Oof- what is it with Clan Amallark and bullpups, do they think they just look cool or something? Bae, I hate to say it, but these things are a bitch to reload-”

  “Is everything a bitch to reload with you?”

  “You have a point. Right. I got this.”

  He puppeteered into her completely now, they were out of time. She felt ecstatic that she could feel her love performing such powerful psionics on her mind, and that she could feel so close to him. It felt like he was holding her safe, keeping his Princess protected from any harm that should befall her. Kill these demented rogues who would dare step to her. She was royalty, her mother-in-law need not remind her of that.

  First, we’ve got some pieces we’ve yet to play. Castle.

  The reaver pulled into defensive mode, the plates locking tight, providing better cover for Vi’s sniper’s nest, and railguns protruded from its mandibles. Good boi!

  PA-AK! PA-AK!

  The reaver blew both of Hod’s arms off, and she ran in a circle shrieking, blood just gushing from her torso, soaking the Aryssal ground around her in a balletic spiral pattern, before she quickly collapsed from blood loss. Woah there, boi.

  “I understood that reference. It’s chess, right? I think-”

  Yep! That’s right Eidrie, it’s when the King piece has a clear path, without a check to-

  Time and place, you two! Shrilled Volent, as Yesod used her psionics to pry open the reaver’s top hatch. Bad boi! Bad!

  Yesod leapt up high. In the lesser grasp of Aryss, it meant even with lesser strength, an elvan could jump quite high, but Yesod had spirit strengthened calves. As she descended through the hatch, she pumped and fired her double-barreled shotgun downwards, again, and again, the counterforce giving her a double, then triple jump, and- well no it was just the two. While still mid-air, she fumbled for more shells in her pockets.

  Eidren puppeteer-dived his love out of the way and then puppeteer-whipped the bullpup submachine gun into Yesod’s face just as she landed gently, before unloading a burst right into her stunned sei lun yeung [死撚樣], and her body slammed and rattled on the inner shell as the bullets smashed into her face and upper chest.

  All this time Jhynie just stared at Eidren jerking and twitching about, having slumped and fallen to the bottom cavity of the reaver’s inner chamber in the action, swinging his arms about erratically and miming firing a gun. He winced, considering he was still covered in gauze, where his mother had sliced him up with Muramasa. She kept her railgun leveled at him, her psionics far too dull to sense what was really going on. “What the f-”

  An Amallarkean P90 Clone.

  Cantonese for ‘die on the street, alone, unloved’, one of the most offensive things that could be said in Cantonese, and exactly like the orcish ‘pokgai’. Exactly. It’s in fact, the very etymology.

  Relax, she was wearing a long dress for this formal occasion in their parade home, she wouldn’t let this admittedly cute vassal knight get anywhere near her- what do the orcs call it? Her hai. Not unless she wanted him to.

  Taking a page out of Drizzit and Vyerna’s playbook, now? They didn’t even have a safeword yet.

  Still no safeword!

  This Malkuth was once one Yuni Bezoth, but that identity had been scoured away from her.

  Or was it Eidren who shot it? Sometimes the boundaries of accountability get a bit blurry with psionics.

  Meaning in Cantonese, “Fuck your stars”, which doesn’t really mean anything at all. She had wanted to say [??妳老母臭閪], fuck your Mother’s smelly pussy, but Vi thought better of it, didn’t want to profane mothers, considering all that had just happened earlier. Also- gross.

  If it wasn’t immediately obvious by their calling each other ‘boo’ and ‘bae’, the very act of transforming into the Archon, and unlocking their full access to the psionic legacy, had irrevocably transformed them both in a complete and total way.

  They totally did think they looked cool.

  Sofie Fatale, more like Sofie Fatality.

  Hod was once Aisyndra Wilson, but that identity had been flayed out too.

  Cantonese for ‘fucking dickface’.

  Goodbye, Yesod, now no more. Once Brinde Rothschild, but that identity had been no more, a while ago.