"You're sure this isn't too convoluted a pn?" Sara asked Evie as they walked through the empty streets of Hagos. It was dark outside, nearing midnight.

  "When my mother pnned to eviscerate an opponent at court," Evie said, answering in the form of anecdote, "she did not do so with one masterful stroke. Instead she busied herself with the ying of constant obstacles, a maze of minor aggravations in the path of her rival. None were disastrous on their own, but their volume meant some minor mistake was inevitable. Pack an upcoming ball with their political adversaries, bribe their guards to grow x, and spread sacious rumors among their staff, all at once, and eventually an opportunity would present itself. Whatever it was that eventually caused the problem, she would be there, ready to strike, aggravating the issue to the breaking point."

  Sara made an ugly face. "Being raised by a woman like that sounds like tons of fun."

  Evie stared owlishly at her. "If it's any indication of her motherly skills, Master, I will remind you of the blissful soce I have found in outright svery."

  "Point taken."

  They were following the directions that Evie had decrypted from the patterns of previous bck market gatherings, weeding their way through the 'rougher' streets of Hagos. To Sara they were nothing more than the pces where the popuce was more often employee than employer, but Vesta's staff had spoken of it with an air of disdain and fear.

  Their target was the abandoned warehouse that would soon be hosting an illegal gathering of sve traders. Of particurly sour note to Sara was that the 'illegal' portion of this exchange came not from the buying and selling of living, thinking beings, but tax evasion. All it would have taken to legalize the whole affair was a few sheets of properly signed stationary and government bean counters to keep track of money.

  Eventually Sara spotted a rger building poking out between the peaked roofs. She pointed to it.

  "Is that it?"

  "I believe so, Master."

  They continued down the street, footsteps echoing. Most taverns were still poputed, but they'd drawn thick sound-blocking shutters, paying lip service to the city's curfew.

  "So we really just walk in? I mean, I know I'm not exactly famous, but surely someone will recognize me."

  "And?" Evie tapped her colr and gestured to the simple rags she'd chosen for the evening. "You're already widely known to own one sve. Why would they assume you wouldn't want another?"

  Sara's stomach rebelled at the thought. "Cause I'm not one of those nasty motherfuckers."

  "Mm. A shame for them that they don't know that."

  The streets became slightly busier as they neared the warehouse. Sara caught glimpses of the occasional group of people darting between alleyways, talking in subdued voices, while Evie's ears flitted about much more frequently, narrowing in on footsteps or whispered conversations that Sara had no hope of hearing. She might have been mildly suspicious in normal circumstances, but with the added context of their destination, Sara's skin crawled.

  When they reached the wide bay door of the warehouse and began to wait, Sara tapping her foot impatiently, more people began to come out of the woodwork. Sara was soon surrounded by a small crowd of people waiting under the starlight, impatience rumbling through their whispers. Though the market wasn't set to open for another half hour, the doors began to slide open, whoever was in charge recognizing that the crowd would draw less attention inside.

  Sara filtered in with the rest, paying careful attention to each of their faces. Only a handful wore something close to a disguise, and even those only bothered with heavy makeup and a hood. Most walked about with head held high, holding normal conversations with their fellows. Sara couldn't memorize all of them, but she'd damn well try.

  Sara's teeth ground as manacled people were marched up to dispy stages around the room, iron chains cnking as they were prodded forward by other mournful sves, these wearing nothing but the colrs around their neck.

  "Master?" Evie whispered. "We were supposed to mingle before doing anything."

  Sara's jaw clenched, hand drifting towards the pouch at her waist. Weapons weren't allowed, but no group of ragtag smugglers had the ability to search for enchanted bags.

  "We haven't prepared yet, Master," Evie whispered again. "If you wait, we'll save more."

  Sara took a steadying breath, settling her hand on her belt next to the pouch. Evie led her forward, taking the lead for the first time since they'd first met.

  Sara kept her eyes straight ahead as they weaved through the building crowd, negotiations beginning even before the full 'stock' had been put on dispy. She followed Evie up and down the rows, from stage to stage, pretending to surveil the shackled men and women as the demented freaks beside her did.

  Evie, meanwhile, kept her head bowed, hands pressed into her gut as if repeatedly peeling her own fingernails. None of the other market goers paid the feline any mind, their interest evaporating as soon as they recognized the colr around her throat.

  The few individuals that worked up the courage to approach Sara directly were bluntly ignored, since Sara didn't trust herself to speak. She did look them straight in the eyes, though, especially the richest looking among them. She'd remember their faces, at the very least. And she'd find them again.

  Eventually Sara and Evie had made a full circuit of the room, the agonizing minutes having passed by. Only then did Sara look away from the sves, doing her best to appear approachable for the first time in the evening.

  As she'd expected, one man that had been subtly following her immediately scuttled off. He returned a moment ter with an imperious woman, covered in a truly prodigious amount of jewelry. Golden bangles covered her arms from wrist to elbow, fine rings glittering in the firelight, her hair dotted by rubies and sapphires. She looked down her hawkish nose at Sara as she approached, lips split in a cheshire grin.

  "Lady Sara, your reputation precedes you. I am overjoyed to see you at a gathering such as ours, and was hoping to personally see to any purchases you might make tonight."

  "My Master inquires as to your identity," Evie smoothly replied, recognizing Sara's rictus grin for what it was.

  The woman didn't so much as gnce at Evie, already familiar with exotic interpreters. "I am the fine proprietor of this temporary establishment. While the goods you see all come from various purveyors, it was I that gathered them together-"

  Several things happened at once. First among them was an all-consuming screech that split the air, blinding lights fring to life in dozens of pces throughout the room.

  The next was Sara's bck bde flying forward, aimed at the bastard of a woman across from her. Unlike the idiot Lord Anidas or whatever his name had been, this woman responded much quicker. The bangles on her arms colpsed into a solid wall as she brought them together in a boxer's block, catching Sara's bde in a shower of sparks. She leapt back before Sara could swing again, whistling for guards.

  The screeching continued, fmes intensifying to magnesium white. All around the room Evie's pnted sigils were entering their second stage, imbued with two Heightened charges of the spell Molten Fme. Constructing so many of the custom spelltraps had cost ten or twenty times as much as Sara's sword; thankfully Lady Vesta was anything but short on cash.

  Several of those in the surrounding crowd immediately drew swords from hidden pces, advancing on Sara without further orders. Most sported pin shortswords or daggers, easy to conceal and draw in a hurry.

  Sara took the hilt of her bck bde in both hands, flicking it out to its full length. The advancing guards stuttered in their step, suddenly faced not with an idiotic saboteur, but a woman wielding a clearly enchanted Greatsword.

  Evie sprinted at the closest guard, hand extended. Chuckling to himself, the guard flicked his sword in a swipe that should have slit Evie's throat. Instead, a light fshed, bringing into being Evie's Rapier of Recalling. With a flick of her wrist she disarmed the man, then flicked her wrist again, de-arming the man.

  Of the ten facing Sara, four ran. Two colpsed in defensive positions around their boss. Four charged her. Sara settled into the most aggressive stance she knew, bubbling rage bursting through her mouth in a bellowing challenge.

  "Taze!" She shouted as she swung wildly at the first challenger. The woman caught her telegraphed attack easily, then began spasming as lightning spiraled off of Sara's bde into her body.

  Her smoking corpse dropped to the ground. Sara was down one of her three spells for the evening, but the blow had its intended effect.

  Rather than attack her in one coordinated whirlwind, the three remaining guards paled and stumbled back, waiting for someone else to make the first move. Sara obliged them, lunging for the throat of the next closest man.

  He tried to lean out of the way of her sword, but all that achieved was turning his decapitation into an impalement, Sara's sword sliding through the rich vest on his front and out the bear pelt cloak on his back. She ripped the sword up and out through his shoulder, shredding whatever had remained of his lung.

  The other undercover guard tried to flee, only to find an expertly timed rapier pinning her knee to the ground from behind. She screamed as she frantically swiped a blind swing behind herself, catching nothing but air. Evie promptly removed the sword from the woman's leg, pced it through her eye, and then removed it once more, wiping its length on the rags of her clothing.

  The final guard, having watched this dispy, surprised Sara. She'd braced herself for him to either swing or run, but instead he flipped his dagger around to grab its point, flinging it at her. Sara, not used to facing thrown projectiles, idiotically tried to knock it out of the air.

  It nded point-first in her gut, just below the left side of her ribcage. The pain was intense, vibrant, the first time Sara had been wounded in such a manner.

  But it still wasn't as bad as the time she'd run an acetylene torch over her leg like an idiot, welding on her own after the shop had closed. She'd dragged herself to her truck after that one, then drove herself to the hospital.

  Sara plowed forward, dagger still embedded, heading straight for the hawkish woman in charge. The two guards saw her coming and raised their shortswords in nervous stances, spurred on by the svebroker's spiteful shouting.

  Just before she was in range of the two guards, she pulled back for a stab and shouted, "Warp!"

  In an instant she was behind the svebroker, poised to strike. Her bde nced forward without hesitation, aimed at the woman's spine.

  In the blink of an eye, seemingly halfway through the movement before Sara had even reappeared, the woman spun about.

  Sara's bde sparked off the golden arm bands once more, giving light to the vicious snarl that the svebroker threw at her between clenched fists.

  Sara shoved her sword forward to break the lock, heaving the bde around for a second strike. Before she could, though, the svebroker's boxing stance shifted. An uppercut unched for Sara's gut.

  Sara tried to twist out of the way, but failed. The woman's fist nded squarely on the hilt of the dagger, driving it to the pommel in Sara's gut. White tinged the world for a moment as Sara wheezed, stumbling.

  "Coward!" Came a sharp cry, somehow rising over the mayhem. Evie, standing between three new corpses, leveled her rapier at the svebroker. "Lord Vesta said you were respectable, but this is pathetic. Strike me down or be forgotten, peasant!"

  Some strange sense Sara couldn't define bubbled up in her mind, the connection between Sve and Owner informing her that Evie had just activated one of her Skills.

  Incensed beyond words, the svebroker howled in a broken rage, knocking aside her own guards to charge Evie. The nimble Feline hopped backward, white blur of her rapier deflecting the golden fsh of the woman's punch.

  Sara, hand pressed to her gut, was forced to recognize an opportunity when it was given to her. The sves around the room, though freed from their chains by white-hot fires melting the metal, remained trapped by panic and confusion. Some had already fled, but not enough, most huddling up on their stages where the panicked crowd wasn't. Some enterprising nobles had realized the chaos was fairly localized and had begun to have their guards physically haul desirable sves away.

  Sara forced down her nausea, focusing on the burning pit of righteous anger in her gut.

  Or maybe that burning was the dagger. She wasn't sure, and the fact that she was seeing double through the fmes licking up the walls certainly wasn't helping.

  Sara raised her sword towards the closest stage, shouting to warp again. She appeared directly behind a nobleman's guard that had been re-binding a sve's legs. Sara cut the rope bindings by sticking her sword through the nape of the guard's neck, the snap of his vertebra reverberating to the pommel of her bde.

  Sara pulled her sword from the guard's neck, bcksteel soaked red. She looked up at the trembling sve, blood foaming at the corners of her lips as she spoke.

  "Get the others grouped up so I can take you out of here. The Goddess of Love sent me, and I'm going to fucking gut anyone who tries to stop me."

  With that she stumbled towards the next stage, using her sword as a cane to help her walk.

  Regrettably, she'd learned during her practice that her Warped Stride couldn't take her very far. Ten feet at the very best, and between pointing her sword, invoking the incantation, and regaining her bearings at the other end, it was usually slower than walking. So she only used it to get up and down the stages, not trusting herself to avoid worsening her dagger wound by repeatedly jumping up and down.

  The next stage held a full family of catfolk, their only clothing their fur and the price cards hung around their necks. She spat a mouthful of blood to the side as she hobbled up to them. "Get to the other sves. I'll protect you." She pointed her sword and disappeared, heading for the next group.

  She was surprised by a little furred blur darting past her, the catfolk child she'd just spoken to darting up onto the stage. She watched as the kid, probably no older than six, pointed at her excitedly. The four sves that had huddled on the stage regarded the child first with disbelief, then confusion, staring at Sara.

  She snapped her weapon up in a wobbly salute, flicking it back to its shorter form to prove that, injured as she was, she had a magic weapon. That would mean something to them, she hoped.

  The sves began to follow the catfolk child just as the kid's parents caught up, the father sweeping his child up in his arms. Even as their parents squeezed the life out of them, the kid kept up a rapid flow of of borderline nonsensical squeaks, pointing to Sara. She was just moving past them when the first sve she'd freed walked up, expining in much calmer words what Sara had said to him.

  Slowly, moving with skittish energy, but moving nonetheless, the group of sves began to follow Sara. Before she even reached the next stage the sves there had begun to crawl down, heading for the herd behind Sara.

  Sara continued on in that fashion, moving from stage to stage, each group of sves quickly realizing that the limping, bloodied, scowling woman was their best chance at survival.

  Sara kept walking, dripping blood, and all the while she watched Evie fight the svebroker.

  Unlike Sara's duel with Evie, this fight was prolonged. Every swing of the brutish sver was accompanied by a guttural roar, arms bolting forward like flung pistons. Evie only barely weaved between each blow, littering the much rger woman with a web of bloody sshes. Sara winced every time the sver managed to connect a blow, her golden arms first crossing Evie along the cheek, then cracking a rib, every nded punch sounding like a butcher tenderizing meat.

  The only reason that Sara hadn't involved herself was her certainty that Evie was winning. She could trace the winding path of the two women's duel throughout the warehouse floor by the trail of blood drops, every successful ssh of Evie's sword distinguished by a sptter of red. The svebroker had already powered through enough wounds to kill a normal person, but that endurance couldn't st forever. Sara followed the duel in snapshot gnces, focusing on keeping the sves following her safe.

  Eventually the warehouse was mostly emptied, the nobles and their guards having fled. The remaining sves were either making their own break for it or folding themselves into Sara's group, their numbers rge enough that no one would dare try to charge them.

  Floating embers falling down from above, Sara watched Evie and the sver duel. The warehouse was engulfed in fme now, boards and beams falling freely, and Sara was limping for the exit as quickly as she could.

  There was a sudden collective gasp from the crowd behind her, prompting Sara to spin around. The gasps quickly turned into cheers as Sara saw Evie's rapier ram through the dead center of the sver's chest, blood-soaked steel glinting out the other side. The sver's golden arm bands broke into pieces, bangles cttering to the floor as she pawed uselessly at the bde with wide eyes.

  Evie pulled her sword from the woman's chest in a mechanical motion, letting the sver drop bonelessly to the floor. The sver gasped up at her, trying to cw at Evie's legs as her lungs failed to draw breath.

  Evie dropped to a knee. She grabbed a fistful of the woman's jewel-encrusted hair, using it to wipe her sword clean, then leaned closer, whispering in the woman's ears.

  "See? Pathetic."

  With that, Evie stood, jogging towards Sara. She welcomed her with a hug, then let herself be supported beneath the shoulder as they led the sves out of the burning building.

  Where Sara had expected maybe a crowd, or the gathering of city guards, she found something else entirely. Awaiting their exit in the street was a very strange group. What looked to her to be a collection of nobles, or at least wealthy individuals, had gathered in a small clump, their collected guards taking up a formation before them. These nobles had all taken measures to hide their faces, wearing low hoods with wooden masks, while their guards were wearing closed-face helmets. Sara recognized none of their outfits from the sve auction.

  "Ho, Champion of Amarat!" The lead noble called. Their voice was warped by some spell or another, to the point that she couldn't even tell if they were man, woman, or human. "It seems you've staged quite a caper. One wonders what sacious pns the chosen of Love's Goddess might be brewing with so many sves to herself."

  Sara shrugged Evie off of her, taking a single step forward. "Your corpse," she raised her sword to the speaker, "won't even have time to get cold before I toss it in the fucking river."

  The guards, despite their polearms and armor, shifted nervously. Something about walking out of a burning building soaked in blood and holding a magical bck sword seemed to be intimidating them.

  "I see," the noble replied politely. "I assume that negotiations to change your pns will be out of the question, then?"

  "I don't even have a goddamn pn," Sara spat another wad of clotted blood to the stones. "I'm just killing svers. And I'm gonna keep fucking killing svers, because that was the best party I been to in years."

  "A shame. I'd hoped you be more open to diplomacy."

  Sara stumbled forward another step, weaving in pce. "Gonna open up your fat fucking guts, that's what I'm gonna do, find out what you ate st night." She took another step, waving her sword wildly. "Gonna take your stupid fucking cloak and hang you by it." She cwed at the dagger in her gut, trying to pry it free. "Gonna cut your tendons and throw you in a ditch, watch you drown in shit water."

  The lead noble looked to their companions, sighing theatrically. "I'd say that fairly well qualifies a refusal on her part, wouldn't you agree?" The figure waited for a round of responses that Sara couldn't hear, then bowed ever so slightly. "Then we will bid you adieu, Champion of Amarat."

  With that the triangle formation of guards began to backpedal, covering the retreat of the nobles as they melded into the shadows.

  Sara dropped to a knee, supporting herself with her sword. She watched blood fall from her mouth onto blurry cobblestones, trying to force her legs back up so she could chase the pack of pretentious pricks.

  A warm hand touched her back. A hand she knew, one that was soft. Sara coughed as she heard Evie's kind voice in her ear, calm and reassuring.

  "It's okay, Sara. I've got you."

  "Oh," Sara mumbled. "Thanks, Evie."

  She tumbled forward, caught just before her forehead cracked the ground. As darkness began to take her, she heard the whispers of the no-longer-sves behind her.

  "...saved us..."

  "...insane..."

  "...what now..."

  "...glowing pink..."

  "...I know a..."

  Sara felt her face press against familiar softness and sighed, finally passing out.