The wind of its passing fist blew Kai’s hair and the tatters of her jacket. Her jaw tightened, her stomach tensed, her legs locked—and the Penitent’s fist slammed into the face of the statue to its left. Rock buckled, crystal broke, and the Penitent fell. The third crouched and charged, striking Teo’s Penitent in the midsection. Stone arms circled around a stone chest. Teo’s Penitent crouched, sank low, wrapped its arms around the other statue’s back, and lifted. Light erupted from crystals at the joints of elbow and shoulder as its muscles shed waste heat. The third Penitent’s grip broke.

Teo’s Penitent turned, spun, and let go. The other statue tumbled ten feet through the air, landed with a sound like a cliff collapsing, and lay still on the sand.

The second Penitent, the one Teo had punched, was struggling to rise. Teo kicked it sharply in the side, and it collapsed with a scream and a crunch of broken rock.

Kai watched, eyes wide, as Teo’s Penitent turned back to her. Her fingers tightened around the business card, but she did not tear it, not yet.

The Penitent spasmed, and cracked. Dust rained from its joints; arms jerked and knees buckled and it sank to the sand. It screamed—the statue itself, not the woman within, a scream of dead material pressed to breaking and beyond. Pain and fear flickered through emerald eyes, quick as a bird crossing the moon.

The Penitent’s chest cavity broke open.

Two halves of the geode shell swung out so fast Kai had to jump back. One panel listed on a broken invisible hinge.

Teo stood inside the Penitent. She wasn’t smiling. She stepped out from the crystal cage, and where Kai’s crystal had flowed open around her, Teo’s broke, shards disintegrating as they fell until a fine quartz dust painted the sand onto which she stepped.

Teo looked like she’d fought her way up from hell. Vines of light wound her left arm: green, curved and sharp edged and elegant, a geometer’s drawing of fire save for the single savage scar that ran down the inside of her wrist. Kai had seen Craftwork glyphs before, and they didn’t look like this. These were harsher, and did not so much glow as eat surrounding light and make it theirs.

In her hand, Teo held a thing without a name: a red spider with too many or too few legs, an anemic jellyfish, or a small, vicious octopus. She glanced down, as if surprised she held the thing, and tightened her grip.

Kai heard a snap.

The Penitent toppled. It took a long time to fall, and hit the beach with a heavy sound.

Teo let go of the thing she held, and falling, it faded, until when it splashed against the sand it left only an odd gray stain.