Nemesis

a widening stream that swept over Spear and knocked him backwards.

The Callidus had claimed many victims with the weapon. It was a singular horror

in its own way; not content with the cessation of a life, instead the pistol behaved as

an intellivore, disintegrating the connections between the neurons of an organic

brain, killing only memory and mind with the brutality of a hurricane sweeping

through a forest.

On any other target, it might have worked. But this was an amalgam of

uncontrolled human mutation, merged with a predatory form from a dimension made

of madness. What it had that could be called mentality was a lattice of instinct and

obedience suspended somewhere beyond the reach of anything in the physical plane.

Spear shrugged off the flickers of energy, folds of skin and fronds of flesh-matter

crisping and peeling away from its head like a tattered layer of ablative armour. The

grinning, fang-lined mouth underneath was wet with fluids and pus. The killer’s

cutting blades swept in and the barrel of the neural shredder was severed cleanly.

The gun screamed and spat watery orange fluids in jerking sputters, twitching so

hard that it jolted itself from Koyne’s grasp and tumbled away, falling into the

shadows beneath collapsed sheets of flakboard. The Callidus shrank back, grasping

for the twin to the memory sword already at point and ready.

The killer and the assassin fell into a blade fight, fat yellow sparks flying as the

molecule-thin edges of Koyne’s rapiers cut into the organic swords and broke off

brittle, sharp fragments with every hit. Spear’s blades flawed without blunting, as the

Callidus learned at cost, the wet lines of them cutting deeply into the stealthsuit.

Where blood was drawn, it was slow to clot. The tooth-matter exuded some kind of

oily venom that kept the wounds from scabbing over.

Spear changed the balance of the combat, powerful muscles bunching beneath his

red flesh, forcing Koyne back and back towards the fractured walls of the courtyard.

The animated contours of the Callidus’ face altered as each blow landed or was

deflected. A whirlwind of parries flew from Koyne’s arms, but Spear was gaining

ground, pushing the assassin deeper into a defensive stance with each passing

moment. Koyne’s inconstant aspect showed a carousel of old faces and new faces, all

of them in fury and frustration.

Spear laughed, threads of drool stringing from the split between the halves of his

shovel-faced jaw, and in that second Koyne managed a downward slash of both

blades. Spear barely parried the move—it was overly aggressive and unexpected, and

the tips of the memory swords carved a cross over the killer’s scalp that penetrated to

the blackened bone. Wire-thin worms poured from the wound, exposing a milky eye

beneath the injury that wept ichor. Spear’s laugh turned to a howl of agony.

There was something fundamentally wrong with this creature. The assassin was

not touched by witch-mark like Iota and her Culexus kindred, but still Koyne could

sense on a marrow-deep level that Spear was not meant to exist in this world. The

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creature, whatever amorphous amalgamation of warp-spawn and human it was,

flaunted reason by the mere fact of its existence. It was a splinter in the skin of the

universe.

Koyne did the trick with the koans once again, marshalling the density of bone

and lining of musculature for a leap into the air that defied human potential. The

Callidus jumped upwards and pivoted in mid-flight, falling out of Spear’s line of

sight over a buckled wall.

The killer came rushing over the hillock of rubble and followed his foe into the

atrium proper. The wide, high chamber ran almost the entire length of the terminal,

the litter of the dead and the wreckage of the port building lying ankle deep and

swimming in stagnant falls of rainwater.

Koyne was rising back into a fighting stance, slower than the Callidus would

have liked, but the stress of muscle reformation on the run took its toll. All the nomind

focussing mantras in the pages of the clade’s Liber Subditus were worth

nothing against a blade in the hand of an enemy like this one.

When Spear spoke, Koyne knew that the moment was near. The fury in the

killer’s hissing, sibilant voice was the sound of a serpent uncoiling, hood fanning

open before the bite. “I murder and murder, and there is no end to you,” he spat.

“You are not challenges to me, you are only steps on the road. Markers for my path.”

“What monstrosity gave birth to you?” Koyne asked the question, thinking aloud,

the changing face shifting anew. “You’re just a collision of freakish chance, an

animal. A weapon.”

“Like you?” Spear’s mucus-slicked blades flicked back and forth, gleaming dully.

“Like the wretch back there and the dark-skinned one I killed with my mind? But

what have you done of worth, faceless?” He threw an inelegant, bored attack at

Koyne that the Callidus avoided, splashing back through a puddle into the shadows.