“It’s a long way down.”

“They can’t stop us.” Of that, Misery is sure. She has spent her life eluding the grasp of her enemies, going places she isn’t supposed to. “Do you remember when we first met? Do you remember how hard I was to stop, even back then?”

Lightning grins, her face close enough to share breath with Misery. There! There she is, that flame-haired whip of danger Misery first encountered in the hot bowels of the Capital. Hungering for fat and thirsting for blood. She wets her lips. “You were a worthy match then. Now you’re invincible. Destroyer of obstacles. I remember what you did at the arena.”

“And I’ll do it again,” Misery says. Her blood and bone vibrate with the need for action. “Let’s go.”

Back down the corridor, hand in clenched hand, navigating the unfamiliar dark again. But Misery doesn’t need light to see. All she needs in the song in her veins. Like all space-fed settlements, Monkglass runs on holystone, layers upon layers of sacred material, but the call of her archangel is louder and clearer than any of that weakwater melody. Misery runs in its direction.

Bobbing alongside them, luminescent in the dark, Ruin says: “For what it’s worth, your engineers were correct about the composition of the Heretic shield. Not that it matters now. You’re just going to destroy the lead ship, aren’t you?”

Destroy the lead ship, and they destroy Esse Temple. Forget the six-dimensional plans and DK ratios or whatever the fuck they’re called. Sometimes the easiest solutions are the simplest. The archangel Misery will chew up the Heretics and spit out the bones, littering them across the stars like beacons, like flags of victory, proving to the Faithful that the nullvoid shall not prosper while the hand of the Demiurge moves.

Around them, Monkglass shudders to life. The lights come up, the station’s lungs breathe again, and the HUD stutters back into existence. All around them a faint cheer goes up at the restoration of power. An expletive escapes the princess. They both have implants that Monkglass’s system can track down in a heartbeat. “How far are we from the hangar?”

“Too far,” Misery says. The archangel burns in her awareness like a supergiant, and that nova is several floors beneath their feet.

“So how fucked are we?”

Misery smiles. She shouldn’t, but that emotion bursts from her anyway, that wicked curve like a blade. Layers and layers of holystone lie between them, pregnant with ability, just waiting to be awakened. “The real question is, how fucked are they?”

Lightning glows with a similar hunger. “Do it, then. Cut us through Monkglass. Show them the mistake they’ve made. Do it.”