Honor is worthless if you are too dead to revel in it.

  The words of her mother thrummed in Xarina’s mind as she flowed through the motion of her forms, twin shortswords whining through the air with a lethal hum as her white hair fanned around her. The movements were technically perfect, she knew, but they lacked something she couldn’t quite define—a smoothness that still escaped her ability to actualize. She had learned the Art of Zunai, the Dance of Blades, from her mother, but Xarina had never managed to emulate her deceased Matrimar’s effortless grace.

  Her [Starshadow Core] hummed within her, suffusing her with strength.

  The midnight leather and black chain of her combat attire were constricting, but that was in keeping with the point of the forms: to maximize movement without having to mitigate one’s armored protection. She had been a student of duels, war, and conquest since she was old enough to conceptualize them—just as expected of her bloodline. She had passed the Rite of Ten Shadows, overcome the Leap of Faith, and moved past the Inheritance of Sin. She had done everything that had been asked of her, and yet…

  Precision is only powerful when wielded by one who understands it.

  The words were as enigmatic now as they had been when her mother had delivered them, standing in her flowing white dress, and observing the auroral skies of Tarilnar. Xarina grunted as she spun into a smooth pivot and decapitated an imaginary foe. Had her mother known, even then, that her life would take this path? Had she prepared Xarina for the coming Integration, with full knowledge that only one of them would be able to traverse to the New World?

  Power and privilege had been ingrained in her since she could remember, codifying her views and solidifying her sense of obligation. She owed her life, her breath, her very existence to the women who had preceded her. Duty was too small a word to encompass the enormity of what she was expected to exemplify, and too shallow a phrase for the immensity of the task that her people sought to undertake. This new world, this ‘Terra’, was a chance—a chance to be free of the evernight, of the monstrosities that had plagued her people, and of the endless abyss they had only ever managed to half-tame as their own.

  It is not your place to doubt, Xarina. Doubt is the soulslayer. Faith will be your shield.

  Not faith in any Divine or mercurial deity, but instead faith in herself, her swords, her arms, and her legs. Faith in her skill, her drive, and the immutable truth that she was as bound by her Bloodline Quest as any of the women before her. Her gaze, faintly aglow with crimson lumescence, narrowed as she completed the final part of her Executioner’s Kata and spun her swords into their hip sheaths. There had never been room for argument or resistance, and her futile attempts at escaping the cycle had shown her the error of her ignorance. Hers was not a matriline that could escape the shackles of demand.

  Hers was not a legacy that would accept a refusal of obligation.

  If I finish my quest, then I could find a new path. Maybe then I could be free of this—all of these squabbling games and feuding Matriarchs.

  Xarina’s eyes lowered to her hands, thoughtfully, and she traced her gaze over the Svartfennyr Runes stitched with aetherweave onto the gloves—covering her hands but for her ash-grey fingers and manicured nails. She narrowed her stare faintly as she read over the words ‘Obligation’ and ‘Perseverance’, and then tightened her fists in cold self-castigation.

  These thoughts are useless, she concluded firmly, in a way she pretended wasn’t designed to convince herself to be more unfeeling than she truly was. They only serve to distract from your purpose, Xarina. You were not born to be free. You were born to be used and discarded, like every woman of your matriline. Do not delude yourself into the belief that you can escape that.

  The harsh truth of her life was that the delusion of choice was itself a trap, a merciless pitfall that had claimed more of her matriline than any other failing. So many of her foremothers born beneath the tidally-locked skies of Tarilnar had succumbed to the same weakness: the same insane, deluded belief that they would be the ones to finally escape the Quest that haunted her matriline.

  Cataclysm.

  The word was seared into her psyche like a brand, scorched into the very essence of her soul in a way none might ever comprehend. It was the origin of the fear, the drive, the rage, the panic; the very essence of what it was to be Svartfenn on Tarilnar. Their world had been made as it was by such a creature—riven, altered, irrevocably changed by the power of a living apocalypse that defied the comprehensions of all who had opposed it. It was as much the conceptualization of a deity-in-mortal-flesh to her people as it was the specter of inevitable doom.

  And now, from what their raids had revealed, one had manifested on Terra.

  Xarina bit her lip in frustration and turned, striding out of her training chamber with certain and unfailing footsteps. Of all the worlds, in all the Nexus’ immense expanse, it had been this one that had seen the first progress in her matriline quest for generations. The cruelty of that was not lost on her—nor was the providence of it. Her foremothers had been seeking to fulfill an impossible objective, all without ever knowing it: a task that, by its very nature, was a matter of opportunity rather than dogged determination.

  But now I have a chance, she affirmed coldly to herself, her hands flexing idly at her sides as she prowled with proper, traditional adherence to minimal-energy-movement through the spartan chambers she called her home. A bed, a writing desk, a few lamps, a closet, a stand for her armor, and a rack for her blades. It was all she needed or wanted. The Matriarchs had tried to give her more—tried to impress upon her the importance of her station.

  How can I rot in luxury when obligation is so close to fulfillment?

  Xarina stepped out of her chambers to the sight of two maidenguard standing watch, their wicked spears braced at their sides, butts to the dark stone flooring, and their silvered black plate shimmering faintly with reflected wytchlight. The cold, blue-grey flame was all that Svartfenn needed to see—all the light they could ever want. Normal fire was too bright, too much of an alarm; it alerted things that no nightlander wished to be alerted. To survive on Tarilnar was to know danger, and Xarina had not survived by accident.

  “[Scion Xarina,]” one of the maidenguard said as she passed, stopping her in her tracks. “[The Matriarchs have called for you.]”

  Xarina closed her eyes for a moment in frustration and then settled her expression into cool indifference, turning to face the woman who had spoken.

  “[For what purpose?]”

  “[A Night Sister is needed for a reconnoiter,]” the maidenguard said simply, the words ‘night sister’ sounding equal parts reverent and petulant. A reject, then—unworthy of the sisterhood Xarina herself belonged to.

  “[There are many Night Sisters within the Starhold, maiden,]” Xarina said coolly. “[Why am I being summoned?]”

  “[That is not for me to know, Scion,]” the maidenguard said with just enough deference to be considered proper, and not a whit more. “[I simply do as asked. The Matriarchs await you in the Honorium.]”

  Xarina’s right eye twitched, just slightly, in a frustration-induced tic she had never been able to alleviate, and she waved her right hand.

  “[Fine. I will go there, then. In the interim, no one is to enter my quarters.]”

  Both maidenguards paused at that, and glanced at one another with a creak of their conical helmets, before the second of the pair—a shorter, stockier, and younger woman—spoke.

  “[You are still refusing the indulgence, Scion?]”

  Xarina narrowed her eyes at the word ‘indulgence’, spoken like it were a privilege instead of a strangling shackle—fingers twitching toward her swords.

  “[I hold no interest in being a Matrimar, maiden.]”

  Both women seemed taken aback by that.

  Xarina studied their reaction for a moment, then understood why.

  New Cadre. The usual worthless obsession with childish gossip.

  “[But you are not maiden-sworn, Scion,]” the maidenguard persisted. “[Why do you deny yourself a Matrimar’s glory?]”

  “[I defer the glory of being a Matrimar to those more deserving. I am a Night Sister, and that is all I wish to be,]” Xarina stated frostily, her hands flexing with the desire to grip steel.

  In her head, her mother’s face watched her with disappointment.

  Xarina ignored it. She had grown used to disappointment long ago.

  “[But you are a Scion,]” the first maidenguard said with a reverence that Xarina instinctively bristled at.

  “[I am more than my origins, maiden,]” she replied flatly.

  “[We have already lost three of you to this world…]” the first maidenguard continued, her cadence less aggrieved than it was possessive. “[Why jeopardize the continuation of your matriline?]”

  “[I am no lightlander weakling in need of offspring to validate my existence, maiden,]” Xarina said with a disgusted curl of her lip. “[My matriline survives through my cousins on Tarilnar. You are of the maidenguard,]” she continued with reproach, “[yet you encourage another to sacrifice her power for such a thing? Do you not hear the hypocrisy in your words?]”

  “[We meant no offense, Scion,]” the second maidenguard said with a glance at her cadre-sister, and then a return of her own ember gaze to Xarina—the color more orange than the purer, Scion-blooded red of Xarina’s own. “[We are simply confused. You have your pick of the breeders, yet you choose to decline them—even for pleasure, for release. It is not normal for one of your station. There are rumors that—]”

  “[My station,]” Xarina said as her rage finally eclipsed her wish for control, “[is to be a Blade of Nocturne. I am not some mewling, sniveling Haelfar wet between the legs at the first sight of inferior males. Your words are heard, maidenguards, and unwelcome. Speak them again, and I will have to recommend you for enlightenment.]”

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  Both women froze at her words, and Xarina immediately regretted the threat—shame and guilt warring with incensed anger. Scion. Scion. Scion. So often that title was weaponized against her, as some cudgel to compel her toward a course of action. She was barely halfway through her second temper, and they wished to see her brooded and diminished? To see her progress stunted by pregnancy and all its insidious, infirm weakness?

  It was infuriating. It was outrageous.

  “[We will not overstep again, Scion,]” the second maidenguard said once more, drawing a quick nod from the first. “[It is only… You are the sole Blood of Lyrin in this world. We fear that the Svartfenn will lose your matriline. Forgive us, we only worry for the legacy of the Starhold.]”

  Xarina drew a breath in through her teeth, then let it out—cooling her fury in the process. She could understand their concern when phrased that way, even grudgingly empathize, though their chosen remedy remained a point of incandescent loathing.

  “[When you are asked to break your spear and have a brood, maidenguards, perhaps you will better understand my aversion. This time, I will overlook your misstep. Ensure it is not repeated, by you or any of your cadre-sisters, or I will hold you two responsible.]”

  The pair nodded swiftly and snapped to attention, slamming their open palms to their chests, fingers splaying out before shifting to a clawed grip as if to rip the hearts from their breasts.

  “[Thank you, Scion Xarina,]” the second maidenguard said quickly.

  “[Yes, thank you, Scion. We will ensure no more insult is rendered,]” the first maidenguard assured her emphatically.

  Xarina cast her smoldering gaze over both women again, let loose a grunt, and then stalked away down the corridor that connected her chambers to the starwheel commons of the garrison tower she resided in.

  They were just girls, she reminded herself as her temper simmered still beneath the surface. Curious maidens, freshly sworn. It is nothing new.

  It did not mean it rankled any less, though.

  She hated being seen as a mare for her Matriline’s continuance.

  Two more maidenguards stood sentinel at the doorway to the starwheel commons and thumped their spears when she passed, their orange gazes following her with respect. Those two she recognized—veterans of the first Cadres that had arrived with the Starhold on Terra.

  Xarina marched with careful moderation of her energy through the starwheel commons, meeting the greetings of the few Night Sisters lingering within the area with curt nods. Each starwheel factored in seven points of entry, the shape they formed giving the design its name. It was easily mass-produced and had become standard for almost every Starhold’s overarching design method.

  Passing through the commons’ primary entrance brought her to a narrow, linear stairwell that was easily defended by the maidenguard—a testament to the brutally earned survival insights of the Tarilnar Svartfenn. Vulnerability for the sake of ostentation was a lightlander affectation. Nightlanders had no need for such.

  She prowled past the next pair of maidenguards standing just outside the primary door, down the stairs, and then along the wytchlight-illuminated main thoroughfare of the Starhold. The large fortress held five layers of decreasing size; the garrison towers—one for each of the seven sects of the Starhold’s Svartfenn—at the outermost points, connected to the outer ring and the home of the subject races, corralled by the clerical Enlighteners and their Truthguard enforcer Cadres.

  Xarina often avoided the outer ring wherever she could, if only for the fact that the rampant amount of other species within made her uncomfortable. They were all too soft; even some of the nightlander races that had shared the evernight with the Svartfenn Starholds. Her people had ruled the nightlands uncontested for millennia, but it had not been without sacrifice—often protecting their subject species at great cost.

  It had been necessary, but it remained a point of frustration for many of them.

  People were more numerous the more she walked, appearing with far greater frequency as Xarina marched through the outer ring and its subject race residents toward the inner ring, blessedly avoiding any unwanted discourse as she transitioned past a complete formation of ten Truthguard standing watch at the large gateway between the outer ring and inner ring.

  Her eyes narrowed in trained assessment, and she idly fingered the hilts of her shortswords.

  The mixed male and female Svartfenn greeted her with orange-eyed dips of the head as she passed, though she largely ignored them. Her aversion was, blessedly, hardly uncommon: she, like many others, found the Truthguard utterly incongruous and lacking in proper order. They permitted males to serve without regard for appropriate hierarchy, even allowing them to lead their formations—Testaments, they called them.

  Passing through the large gate to the inner ring was a quiet relief, and she emerged into the primary residences of the Svartfenn commoners that resided within the Starhold. Here she allowed herself to relax, idly sweeping her gaze over the various hawkers, stalls, shops, and various services offered across the rare sea of colour that comprised the inner circle thoroughfare. When it had become the default location for the Starhold’s market was unclear, but the growth of commerce had been a boon to everyone.

  Their new homeworld’s resources were rich and expansive, and the insights they’d gleaned from captured Terrans or surrendering survivors of the Integration’s first months had given them substantial knowledge of the world and its potential. The stories the natives told of their ‘United States’ remained a source of skepticism for many of those within the Starhold, but some credence was given to their tales from the scale of some of their cities.

  The world had clearly been thriving despite its laughable weakness, thanks to the lack of System mana affecting and evolving the flora and fauna on the planet.

  Her path through the eclectic expanse of the inner ring thoroughfare concluded at the large gate to the second layer of the starhold, the heartwall. When she strode through without stopping, the helmets of the Heartwardens turned toward her in examination, but none of them impeded her. The Heartwardens were of mixed sex, like the Truthguard, but did not succumb to its lesser eccentricities.

  Males were wielded, but were kept in proper position. There was no point in their brutish brains confounding good battle planning with their inherent recklessness. Xarina did not hate males, despite popular belief—she did not even find them objectionable to look at. It was the consequences of indulgence that had curated her aversion to copulation—that, and the naturally simple-minded approach to reality which males seemed to hold.

  If they cannot beat a problem into submission, the brutes lose all coherence.

  Xarina only vaguely remembered the male she’d known as her father. He had been killed while slaying an Ancient Skirvir, a mix of what Terrans called scorpions and spiders, save that it was the size of a large home. He had died well, by all accounts, defending her mother from the creature’s fury and taking its life at the cost of his own.

  It made him worthy of being her father in her mind, but that was all.

  Her mother had reportedly grown distant following his death, but Xarina paid no attention to the gossip she’d heard in that regard. Her mother had been iron-willed and coldly focused for as long as she’d known her. The idea that she would be affected by the death of a seed-giver was ludicrous. She’d barely even spoken of Xarina’s father, much less mourned him.

  Gossiping, useless broodlings—they’d rather sit in their towers and play with their seed-givers than pursue true power. Good riddance they remained on Tarilnar.

  The heartwall opened around her as Xarina passed through the gate, and her eyes narrowed in focus. The heartwall was the residence of many of the most famed matrilines from the Starholds of Tarilnar, and the various grudges, blood feuds, and relentless pursuit of dominance that raged among the matriline Houses were primarily played out within its austere, decadent halls. It was the most ostentatious locale within the Starhold, rife with the eccentric whims of the powerful Matriarchs who served as the Council of Rule within the Starhold.

  With no Empress yet raised by the Rite of Ascension, and no agreeable candidates nominated due to the squabbling matriline Houses, the Matriarchs held the ultimate power in the Starhold.

  That, among other things, remained a point of tension for Xarina.

  As the only Scion of Lyrin on Terra, it had been expected that she would swiftly abandon her Night Sister duties and find seed-givers by which to forge her matriline’s continuance on the new world. The very assumption itself had been insulting enough for them to think she would so easily abandon her vows as a Blade of Nocturne—but to be hounded by the Matriarchs like a rebellious child was worse.

  None of them would have dared to do so on Tarilnar, but that had been when her mother lived.

  Now her Aunt ruled her family’s matriline, until one of Xarina’s cousins bore a daughter-heir. The integration had saved her from that duty. If she had stayed, her Aunt would likely have pestered her until she finally gave in, just to end her prattling. She was fond of the woman, but she was not fond of her views on ‘familial duty to the matriline’. Xarina had her duty, her obligation: the Quest.

  Nothing else mattered.

  Xarina stalked through the heartwall with that in mind, hands on her blades to ward off the various broodlings she saw populating the streets or enjoying games of fancy—from knife-throwing, to sparring, to the not-so-discreet sounds of carnal indulgence with native subjects or even one another. The excesses of the matrilines had always been a point of disgust for Xarina, and the fact that they were almost used as a demonstration of power was sickening. The broodlings had no respect for themselves—they cavorted around like brainless dolls, absent will or drive.

  By the time she passed through the main thoroughfare in a prowling stride and reached the gate to the Honorium, she was ready to incur several blood feuds if it meant purging the Starhold of the rampant excess that such a tame, comparatively safe world had created in place of Tarilnar’s merciless evernight.

  These decadent, mewling quims will never survive the Integration’s next stages if they do not rein themselves in.

  Her forward momentum was finally arrested when she came to a halt before the smallest gate in the Starhold, and the Heartwardens that guarded it. Xarina’s eyes moved among the sentinels in silent assessment, and she eased her hands reluctantly off her swords when she saw their orange gazes watching the placement indicatively.

  The action helped ease some of the unspoken tension.

  “[You are finally here, Xarina,]” A voice that was easily and immediately recognizable said coldly. “[Good. You are to attend us in the Honorium. We have a task for you.]”

  Xarina’s eyes narrowed at the statuesque, red-eyed Svartfar that emerged from behind the parting Heartwardens. She was adorned in dark silks, with silver bangles on her wrists. Her silvered hair, a sign of her age, was tied up in a bun impaled by two lethal needles in an ‘X’ shape. The woman oozed power and certainty of self in equal measure, and even Xarina was forced to concede that she was a force of nature inasmuch as any living being could be.

  “[Matriarch Yvrain,]” Xarina greeted the woman who commanded the most influence among the Matriarchs, and the former leader of the Night Sisters, warily. “[I was informed that I was desired for a reconnoiter.]”

  “[Yes. You are to go and infiltrate a lightlander city, a bastion we have discovered some distance away. We will make you aware of what we know, and equip you for the task.]”

  Xarina sucked in a breath, but felt the weight of obligation settle on her shoulders. It was an opportunity to pursue her own goals, away from the hidden knives and conniving eyes of the Matriarchs who wanted to use her for their own ends. There was a positive to be found in that.

  “[How long am I expected to be gone?]” she asked as she stepped forward, through the Heartwardens that remained parted to permit her forward.

  “[As long as is needed. You will likely be gone for at least a tenth-cycle—one Terran year. Your success will directly impact our ambitions here, and the efforts against the Great Enemy.]”

  Xarina grimaced at that but nodded.

  “[I am ready to serve,]” she said, hands brushing her sword hilts.

  “[Good,]” Yvrain said frostily, “[because you are expected to].”

  The doors to the Honorium closed as they entered, and Xarina felt her [Starshadow Core] hum in reflected excitement.

  Finally, she thought with grim satisfaction, I can begin the hunt for you, Cataclysm.

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