Senusret spread his arms wide in a welcoming gesture, his grin stretching his pale face wider still. It was an evil thing, that grin. Full of malice and the promise of pain long overdue.

  His three men fanned out around him, though Heshtat didn’t recognise them. Strange for the crime-lord to be out in unknown company.

  “Heshtat, Heshtat, Heshtat,” he crooned as he stepped forwards. “It has been far too long. A handful of days, I recall you saying you’d be gone for. And yet here we are, nearly a whole month later.” He tutted like a Sesh scolding a young child. “What am I to do with that?”

  Heshtat watched the man as he began to weave a dramatic story, but he had no time to listen to it, no time to let the man spin his yarn. And more importantly, Heshtat had no reason to do so. He wasn’t beholden to the crime-lord any longer.

  He stretched his back out, rolling the arm that he’d landed on to ensure the pain was just that, and not the herald of a break. “Fuck yourself,” he said simply.

  Senusret’s eyes widened in outrage. “Oh, I shall make you regret that, dog. Do you have any idea the hell I’ll put you through for that?”

  Funny how the insult just slid right off now, unable to find purchase under Heshtat’s skin. “You’ll do nothing,” Heshtat replied calmly. “You’ll die like all the other craven men that thought they could take advantage of my queen’s weakness.”

  He squatted down, brushing a hand over the dirt of the road, then rubbing his palms together. He stood, eyeing Senusret with what he hoped was contempt. He wanted to keep him in view but knew that every moment he feigned disinterest set another stab of rage burning in the serpentine man’s heart. And an angry enemy was a predictable one.

  “I’ll flay your skin from your bones with my shadows. I’ll string your naked corpse so high in this city that everyone you’ve ever known and loved will see it. I’ll visit your sister and that baker you so love. And maybe after that, my men and I will take a trip down to the palace and visit your precious queen. You’ll rue the day you insulted me, boy!” He was spitting by the end, his jagged voice hoarse from anger as he ramped himself up further with each word.

  Heshtat let the tirade wash over him and then quirked an eyebrow. “I’ve insulted the gods in their sanctums. Do you think a crime-lord holds any interest to me? You call me boy, but I’ve experienced more of this world than you can ever hope to. How many masters have you spoken with, Senusret? How many gods have you communed with? How many aspects have you awakened? How many sights and sounds and smells have you tasted from distant shores?”

  He grunted, rolling his shoulders as he prepared himself for the coming fight. He hated the theatricality of it, knew that precious time was wasting, that men and women were dying even has he stood here measuring cocks with this pompous snake. But despite his feigned confidence, it would be a hard fight. His spiritual senses weren’t the clearest, having atrophied during his decade without an awakened soul, but the three men flanking Senusret seemed to at least have awakened a single aspect, if not more. He’d need every advantage he could get, and if he needed to sacrifice a few extra seconds to preen around like a peacock, then he would do so gladly.

  “You are nothing but a small man ruling over scraps, thinking himself better. What of those men behind you, eh? Do they hold your leash? Which of the foreign mercenaries and assassins stalking the streets do you answer to?”

  Senusret was boiling with rage now, face scarlet and mouth twisted. “I’m in charge here!”

  “Do you feel in charge?” Heshtat asked. He stepped forwards lightly, jutting his chin over the man’s shoulder to gesture at the men behind. “Are you sure they are not—”

  Midway through his own sentence, he struck. He’d always thought of Senusret as a snake. From his oddly hairless head to his sinuous limbs and quiet hiss of a voice, everything about him seemed serpentine. And yet, it was Heshtat that moved like a cobra then.

  He launched forwards, blade jabbing in a lightning quick strike. The crime-lord cried out and fell backwards, hand rising to his now blood-drenched neck. Unfortunately, the man was far faster than Heshtat had given him credit for and had backpedalled quicker than expected. His strike, meant to open Senusret’s throat, had instead sliced his ear off.

  Heshtat kept moving, leaping over the crime-lord and falling on the thug behind him. A quick flurry of blows followed before he too fell to the ground, arm separated at the shoulder. Heshtat darted to one side, avoiding the surge of black spears shooting past him as Senusret rolled to his front and joined the fight.

  Heshtat slipped on some loose gravel but managed to catch himself as he fell. There was a crash behind him as the remaining scaffold tumbled to the street, dislodged by Senusret’s soul art. It was a versatile one, Heshtat had to admit. Shuyet—the Shadow—was often considered a powerful aspect simply because of how often its practitioners received combat-focused abilities from their channels. Shadow-stepping of some form, a living shadow to fight beside them, or as in the crime-lord’s case, the ability to shoot slivers of his own shadow as hard and sharp as steel with his mind alone.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Heshtat rolled aside as Senusret flung an arm out towards him, a trio of umbral projectiles soon following, and they missed him by inches. He flung a handful of gravel at the man’s eyes, then leapt to his feet and skirted around. The other two thugs had backed away a few paces and were readying their weapons—a spear and pair of hatchets, respectively.

  Heshtat cursed inwardly, changing tack and diving at Senusret. He was the most dangerous of the group, anyway. He landed on the man, rolling to bring the crime-lord’s body atop his own as a barrier between himself and the two thugs.

  Senusret was still blinded by the grit Heshtat had flung at him, but it would only be a matter of seconds before the man stopped flailing around and realised Heshtat was close enough to kill without opening his eyes.

  A battle is a chaotic thing, but so is a duel. Heshtat had fought in both, and the difference often came down to honour. There were some that insisted there was no honour in a duel—that once the challenge was made, it was a fight to the death and everything was permitted. Heshtat knew better though. A duel had a purpose beyond death. It represented something bigger, be that warring states or bickering noble houses, the duel itself was a proxy for a real war that would be far more vicious and bloody. To let go of honour in such a case risked far more than one combatant’s death.

  War was different. There was no honour in war, nobody to count who was doing what and on to whom the blame should fall in the chaos of it all. Men screamed and cried, shit themselves and abandoned their comrades in terror. And sometimes, in confusing pitched battles and wild skirmishes in the dark, sometimes men killed their own companions by mistake.

  Heshtat lay on the ground, Senusret atop him and the two thugs standing a mere yard away. The spear-wielder had his weapon levelled, its tip barely a foot from Senusret’s face. As the crime-lord stopped scrabbling at his face and truly understood that his quarry was right below him, Heshtat coiled his legs and arms beneath him, and pushed the man up.

  It was a brutal shove, and the thin crime-lord was thrown bodily onto the spear, point sliding into his open mouth. Teeth cracked and Senusret let out a muffled scream of pain and surprise as his tongue was sliced to ribbons. The spearman panicked and tried to pull the weapon back, but it was stuck in Senusret’s head, so he dropped it instead. Heshtat didn’t give him time to think further on it, springing up and rushing the two thugs.

  The one with the hatchets swung clumsily at him, but it was as if he was mired in honey. Heshtat swayed aside from one swing, parried the second, and then his curved blade was punching through his stomach to splash the man’s lifeblood across the white-daubed house behind. He turned and slammed his shoulder into the last man standing, who had been attempting to back away now that his weapon was gone. He fell to the ground with a cry, and Heshtat loomed over him, blade dripping.

  “Don’t move,” he growled, essence lacing his words and giving them an edge as sharp as his weapon.

  He turned to his former boss, who lay writhing on the ground, moaning incoherently around his shattered jaw. His whisper was more a gurgle now as he drowned on his own blood, and Heshtat spared a second to look at the man and the pathetic sight he now made. How long had he spent under this man’s shadow?

  No longer.

  He saw Sensuret’s eyes roll his way, a desperate plea in them that he surely must have known would have been pointless. Heshtat spat to one side, then kicked the spear haft as hard as he could, snapping the man’s head back and driving the point out of the back of his skull.

  Then he turned back to the former spearman lying on the ground. “Who organised this?” he growled. “Who is behind this attack?”

  “I don’t know, I swear! I was never included in the planning!”

  “I am a practitioner of Jb—I can tell when you lie,” Heshtat said. It was a lie, but he doubted this man would know better. Didn’t seem the sort to spend much time around priests and temples.

  The man nodded, throat bobbing. “It’s true! I know nothing about—”

  Heshtat’s blade fell, silencing his words forever. Then he looked to the rooftops, and the burning sky above them.

  ***

  He caught up to his companions to find them crouched on a building ledge overlooking the grand avenue as it spilled out onto the front of the palace district. The gates were barred, the inner wall manned with the palace guard. They were in a pitched battle, warriors assaulting the gates and walls on either side. There were no ladders or ropes, no siege equipment necessary for a battle of this scale between cultivators.

  It was far more chaotic, with invaders flying full over the wall to land behind it, or men that could slip through stone, tunnel beneath the earth or teleport through shadows. The defenders weren’t idle either though, raining down elemental fury on the invaders, sending waves of glowing swords, leaping from the wall to land with thunderous concussion and craterous force in the midst of the invaders below.

  “How do we get past all of that?” Neferu said, eyes wide. She was trembling, he realised, and he took a small moment to appreciate her bravery in being here. Maatkare might have teased her as a quitter with her inability to hold a single job for more than a few months, but when the time came for true bravery, she was a shining exemplar of it.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Harsiese rumbled, his eyes tracking back and forth across the vista. He looked Heshtat’s way. “Run into trouble?”

  “It’s handled,” Heshtat said. “But Harsiese is right. It doesn’t matter how we approach, it’s already too chaotic. Without Ahhotep to transport us through…” He tilted his head in consideration. “We could travel through the Other. It’s no doubt reeling with the effects of this battle, but it might be safer than trying to brave that wall.”

  “Do you have the energy for that?” Harsiese asked.

  “If it can get us to the palace? Yes.”

  The man nodded and turned back to the battle outside the gates, the entire spectrum of colours on display as cultivators flew through the sky in battle and profound, reality-warping magicks were released by both sides upon the other. Each soul art was unique; determined by its aspect, its channel, and the vagaries of its wielder. And yet, at such a scale they all started to merge together. Men screamed and died, split apart by shadowy tendrils, ripped asunder by bolts of glimmering energy, dragged from their feet by moving earth and squashed by falling rubble.

  Heshtat felt the strain in his soul from the battle thus far, but he summoned his goal to mind. Cleo’s silver eyes stared straight through him, and he breathed out slowly, letting his conviction firm.

  “Come,” he said, raising his khopesh high. “Into the Otherworld one last time.”

  is a brilliant play on the well-known expression 'snakes in the grass' - how good of you to notice!