The ride back was quiet.
Aries Beta sat across from us, eating with the determination of someone who had marched for hours and was only now remembering hunger. Wrappers and tins piled beside him as the airship hummed steadily through the grey sky.
Behind me, something caught my attention.
An object floated near the rear of the cabin.
It was black. Three-dimensional, yet wrong somehow. Not quite a sphere, not quite a cube. Its surfaces folded in impossible angles, like geometry struggling to exist.
"Can I go to her?" I asked.
Miss Rho glanced up from her seat.
"No."
Her answer was simple and final.
I decided patience would serve me better. If Victoria survived the journey, I would see her at headquarters soon enough.
So instead, I observed.
Miss Rho sat beside the strange woman—Lady Alvie—pouring tea with quiet politeness.
Aries Alpha lay on a bench reading a book. His sword rested beside him, sheathed. After seeing what Aries Beta could do, I doubted that sword was anything ordinary.
Then Miss Rho did something that made me sit upright.
Casually, as though opening a locked door, she pulled space itself apart.
A thin slit appeared in the air.
Without ceremony she pushed the unconscious cultist—Eudora—through it and closed the opening.
No qi.
No ritual.
No visible artefact.
Reality simply obeyed her.
"Are you thinking about a biscuit?" Miss Rho asked, sitting beside me.
"Biscuit?"
She offered one anyway.
"Thank you," I said quietly, taking it.
Everyone was eating.
Even Lady Alvie was sipping from a delicate porcelain cup.
"What is that sound you had playing earlier?" I asked her once the music filled the cabin again.
"Oh," she replied lightly. "The Well-Tempered Clavier by J. S. Bach."
She handed me tea.
I had a thousand questions, but instinct told me most would go unanswered.
"You all seem to eat a lot," I said after a moment.
She smiled.
"The job demands it," she said, placing a hand to her chest.
Across the room, Beta had fallen asleep mid-meal.
Alpha remained lying down, book open, eyes still scanning the page.
"Just a few more hours," Miss Rho said, checking her pocket watch. "Then we'll be home."
She glanced at me.
"How are you liking your new job—"
She paused and laughed softly.
"Perhaps not the best time for that question."
Even Lady Alvie had drifted into sleep.
"It has its ups and downs," I replied.
After a moment I asked the question that had been sitting in my throat.
"Will she be okay?"
"I don't know," Miss Rho said gently. "We'll have to see what the doctors say."
She patted my head. Her tail wagged lazily behind her chair.
"How did—"
The question died in my throat.
The airship lurched.
The entire vessel tilted violently downward.
"We are under attack!" Miss Rho shouted, already sprinting toward the rear compartment.
My stomach dropped as the ground rushed upward.
Rho returned moments later carrying Victoria over her shoulder. She had been dressed properly, but remained unconscious.
"Beta, wake up!" Alpha barked, lifting the still-sleeping Lady Alvie onto his shoulder. "We're going down."
Are we just going to crash?
Before panic could settle in, Miss Rho tore open space again.
"Inside!"
We all jumped through.
We landed inside a medium-sized room.
No doors.
Simple furnishings.
Shelves. Crates. A bed.
Eudora lay there, unconscious, handcuffed to the frame.
"What are we—"
A hand covered my mouth.
Miss Rho stood before a blank wall.
"Heiwa," Alpha said calmly. "Pick a weapon."
He pointed toward a narrow cabinet.
I grabbed my naginata.
Then Miss Rho twisted her waist.
The room collapsed, folding inward like paper in a fist.
Reality folded.
And suddenly a heartbeat later, we were standing at the crash site.
Debris floated in the air around us—held back by Beta's gravity field.
Someone clapped slowly.
"I was wondering how long you'd keep me waiting."
I turned.
A man stood behind us.
Brown hair. Glasses. The posture of a scholar.
The gun in his hand ruined the illusion.
Was he the one who shot us down?
No one moved.
Everyone waited.
Then—
Bang.
The bullet reached us—and curved sideways, caught in Beta's gravity field, circling lazily in the air.
The man sighed.
"Ah. I see."
He lowered the gun slightly.
"Well then… may I have the lady back?"
Bang!
A second shot echoed.
The bullet punched straight through his skull.
"No dice," Beta said lazily.
The man blinked.
His head… healed.
No blood.
No wound.
"Rude," he muttered.
"Ah," Beta said. "Cultist."
Rho grabbed Alpha's gun.
Alpha drew his sword in one smooth motion.
The moment his hand touched the hilt—
Another pair of hands appeared over his own.
An entity materialized beside him, already holding the drawn blade.
Alpha stepped back, drawing a pistol instead.
"Rho," Beta said calmly. "Time."
I moved before thinking.
Qi gathered at my fingertips.
A sharp motion.
My strike cut the cultist cleanly in half.
Blood spilled across the ground.
But his body reassembled.
"Orient," he said, raising his gun again.
He smiled.
"I suppose I simply wait out the clock."
Then Alpha's summoned entity sliced him in half.
Rho and Alpha opened fire.
Beta pulled him into orbit—shredding his body into a storm of fragments.
Still he remained.
Damage was happening.
It simply wasn't staying.
Then space opened behind me.
Lady Alvie stepped out.
Gun already in her hand.
"Hmm," she murmured. "Interesting ability." The smoke from the burning wreckage paused mid-air near her, curling as though examining her hands. The shattered glass on the ground reflected her gaze with uncanny precision, each fragment showing the cultist's next move before he even made it.
A spear appeared and pierced the cultist through the chest.
Still nothing.
Then it clicked.
"He isn't immune," I realized aloud.
"He's transferring the damage somewhere else."
The cultist abandoned his gun and drew a sword from the rubble.
He charged.
Spears erupted from nowhere.
They impaled him again and again.
Alpha's summon cut him down.
Alpha himself suddenly looked pale. Rho quickly injected something into his arm.
Beta wiped blood from his nose.
"Rho," Lady Alvie said calmly. "You three retreat."
Rho obeyed instantly.
The spatial doorway opened.
Alpha's summon vanished, leaving the sword behind.
Beta gave one final gravitational push that crushed the cultist flat—
Then he stepped back through the portal.
Silence returned.
The battlefield was ash, smoke, and burning wreckage.
"Well then," Lady Alvie said pleasantly, twirling the spear in her hand.
"Heiwa. Let's take this cultist to court."
She wasn't fighting. She was theorizing. Testing.
Even the flames hesitated near her, licking the air but never touching her.
The distant crackle of collapsing wood sounded slightly ahead of itself, as if the universe were taking cues from her thoughts. Every fragment of debris aligned just slightly with her line of sight, whispering hints of the cultist's next move.
The cultist was doing the same.
Swords erupted from nowhere. Some struck the air inches from her. They shivered and fell apart before touching her, as if reality itself refused the collision.
She twirled the spear in her hand. Her eyes were calm—unruffled by fire, smoke, or chaos. Around her, the world seemed to lag, each fragment of ash hovering a heartbeat longer than physics dictated. Watching her was like reading the first chapter of a novel and knowing the ending.
Then a voice spoke behind me.
"Mother, should we just kill her and go after that fool?"
I spun, raising my naginata.
Two identical figures stood there.
Twins.
No—
One was female.
Or perhaps something that had chosen a female form.
"Why did she call him mother?" I wondered.
Qi flowed along my blade.
"A cultivator," the other twin said quietly.
"Such luck."