Thresholder

It was the night of the full moon. The next day, they would be going to have a big old fight at the fairgrounds in the shadow of the huge tower, which would hopefully be finished by then. The schedule had looked good until it didn’t. The pieces that Perry had been putting in place had felt like they’d somehow multiplied thanks to Mellon’s indecision or ambitions — it was hard to tell which. Mellon had promised that it would be ready, but his schedule had slipped many times before, and Perry wasn’t sure that the deadline was going to be met.

Perry and Flora spent the night before the planned fight together, which was how they spent every night. Perry could feel the effects of the moon, even with the blackout curtains. They had pinned and taped everything a week ago, and it seemed to work to keep the moonlight out.

Flora was on edge, and needed to run through every possibility with Perry.

“There’s a good chance it’s a trap,” said Flora. “Or that whatever happens will be identical to a trap. That is to say, this is a pitched battle, not a spontaneous one.”

“Pitched battle,” said Perry, turning the words over. “Pitched, like a tent?”

“You don’t have that word where you’re from?” asked Flora. She was standing by the kitchen counter, where her papers were, and she set her pencil down. “This is another language issue?”

“We have the phrase, I just thought, uh, that a pitched battle was an intense one, rather than,” he paused. “One where both sides have chosen to commit. I guess it is ‘pitch like a tent’.”

“You have decided that you can win, and have leveraged your resources toward this battle,” said Flora. “Cosme has decided the same. We don’t know the extent to which he has the king’s backing, but from what Temmie and her people can tell, it’s less than he probably hopes. We have a good shot, assuming that the tower can be completed.”

“We also have more allies than they’re counting on,” said Perry.

“I don’t know how much faith we can place in them,” said Flora. She sat down on the couch beside him. “None of us are fighters. The king’s vampires were all made from soldiers, many of them veterans but all of them trained. We’ll have people who are craftsmen, scholars, bankers — people who have experience with their powers, but who haven’t fought, not really.”

“Except that some of them are veterans too,” said Perry. “Good people to have in a fight, given they’ve been through potentially more wars than any human ever could.”

Flora frowned. “Still, some won’t show up.”

They had a map of the city, which showed the fairgrounds and all the buildings around it. One of the advantages of the grounds as a mutually agreed-upon battlefield was that there was no particular entrance or exit to it. People could stream in from practically anywhere, and stream back out again, which meant that the trap would be at the field of battle rather than along the way, at least if Perry’s superior intelligence service could avoid the worst of it. That superior intelligence of the enemy’s movements was largely due to the power armor, the drone, and Temmie, but wasn’t quite perfect. It had also helped in rooting out traitors and collaborators, a few of which Perry had dealt with as the time drew near. So long as Perry was standing on top of the roof of a building, Marchand could listen in on a whispered conversation two levels down.

The map was sitting on the kitchen counter, where no food was ever made, slightly furled.

“What do you rate our odds?” asked Perry.

Flore let out a breath and craned her head back, exposing her throat. “With or without the tower?” asked Flora.

“You think Mellon won’t come through?” asked Perry. This had to be considered as a serious possibility. “In that case, I don’t think we’d have a choice but to call it off. We no show on Cosme, I’m sure he’ll understand.” Perry’s mood had been more sardonic as the big day approached.

“I’m not sure that we can call it off,” said Flora. “The only reason people will come fight with us is because they think we can win. It would be such a blow to morale that there would be no recovery. People would turn traitor, take their chances under the king’s regime, and hope that they would be granted clemency.”

“Mellon says that it’ll be ready,” said Perry. “Realistically, the last panel needs to be installed tonight, so I’m going out, in the suit, to grab it. I’ll stay until dawn, if I have to. The suit should stop me from wolfing out.”

“It’s not ideal conditions for testing that,” said Flora. “But in theory, yes.” She was frowning.

They were sitting with their arms touching each other. Perry’s had grown hairier, like a second puberty. Hers were pale and slim, especially in comparison to his.

“Will you miss me when I’m gone?” asked Perry.

“Yes,” said Flora, without hesitation.

“Come with me,” said Perry. “Stay by my side, step through the portal with me.”

“This is my home,” said Flora. “These are my people. If I abandoned them, I could never live with myself. Besides, it’ll be harder for me than it is for you, with my limitations.” She spoke of her diet like that sometimes, as a limiter, a burden. She laid her hand on top of his and gave him a demure look. “You’ll miss me too?”

“I will,” said Perry. She was, essentially, his girlfriend. He didn’t really know why that was the case, and they’d never talked about feelings. In fact, most of their conversations were exchanges of information or arguments about strategy and tactics. There was very little warmth between them on any given day, just companionship, if that. She let down her guard only rarely, the tenderness in what felt like calculated moments.

Flora had never talked about who had come before him. If she’d had boyfriends, she hadn’t spoken of it. If she’d had random encounters, she hadn’t spoken of those either. She seemed to care about her reputation, and acted colder toward him when they were in public. He’d made the mistake of trying to hold her hand once when they were walking down the street together, and she’d scowled at him, like he was a misbehaving dog.

“I feel like I don’t know you,” said Perry. “And I feel like the time for me to know you is almost up. This is, hopefully, the end of Cosme Walsh, and with the Adversary gone, the Portal will open, and I’ll be off to the next world.” It felt daunting just thinking about it. He was rolling the dice.

“You will,” nodded Flora. “This is what thresholders do.” She seemed so content with it, like it was fait accompli, something that she’d seen coming a mile off.

Perry pursed his lips. “I’ve been trying my best to understand this world,” he said, which felt a bit like a lie, because there were certain aspects he thought would inevitably be stupid or annoying to him. The world had its own version of Christianity, and Perry had about as much desire to understand that as he had to understand ultra-conservative Christians from his own world. The people of Teaguewater were backwards by his standards. Even the thought of trying to dive in and wrap his head around their stupidity was exhausting, so he hadn’t done it, not in full. “Sex, to your people, is … not casual.”

“No,” said Flora. Her eyes were on him. “It is a matter of grave sin. Everlasting torment awaits those whose hearts are filled with lust, who succumb to their amorous desires.”

“And you don’t believe that?” asked Perry.

“I do,” said Flora. She gave a quite serious nod. “I grapple with it.”

“You don’t outwardly grapple with it,” said Perry.

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Flora with an idle wave of her hand. “You said before that it was a casual matter. You told me of Richter, and said in an airy, indifferent way that you had defiled her, that she had casually degraded herself with you.”

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t put it like that,” said Perry. He couldn’t remember what, exactly, he had said. If March had overheard it, maybe it might be worth a listen. “Maybe I talked about her working in her underwear, I guess.”

“I found that attractive about you,” said Flora.

“The way I talked about her?” asked Perry.

“The casualness of it, yes,” said Flora. She reached up and brushed hair from his face. “There are a few ways in which the world you grew up in makes you ideal. Others … not as much.”

“The jokes and references that you don’t get?” asked Perry.

“I can appreciate that,” said Flora. “It has its own texture to it. I meant more your attitudes toward certain subjects, the disdain you feel, the anger, sometimes, at things I hold dear.”

“Sorry,” said Perry. She was talking, at least in part, about the monarchy, which Perry refused to pay lip service to. He had been a knight in the last world, but had never held any illusions that it was a good system of governance, and certainly the reverence rubbed him the wrong way.

Flora shrugged. “You are who you are, and I am who I am. We were thrust together, and we deal with the uneven places where we meet.”

There was a moment of silence. They had nothing more to say about the planned battle. That conversation that had run its course, planning and strategizing, running through scenarios, fretting about allies and whether the tower would be finished in time. “There were other men, before me?” asked Perry.

“Few and far between,” said Flora. “Do you really want to hear this?”

“I’m very likely leaving,” said Perry. “I don’t think we’ll see each other again. It makes me sad, but it would make me more sad if I didn’t have the full picture.”

“You won’t think less of me?” asked Flora. There were quite a few things Perry liked about her. She could arch an eyebrow like no one’s business.

“No, I won’t think less of you,” said Perry. He wasn’t entirely sure that was true. There were certain levels of promiscuity that he would likely have found alarming, especially given the dangers inherent in this time and place. It would be like she was admitting that she had a meth problem, or perhaps less extreme, like a modern person saying that they never buckled their seatbelt.

“The first … I was young, an orphan, alone. He convinced me that he was in love with me, and I convinced myself that I was in love with him, and we told each other that we’d be married, because that made it easier to think that what we were doing wasn’t wrong.”

“Well … it wasn’t wrong,” said Perry.

“This is why we haven’t talked about this before,” said Flora.

“I mean, there are whole realms of discourse around this sort of thing where I’m from,” said Perry. “I don’t know what else I can say, if not that.”

Flora frowned. “If the story is familiar to you, that of people convinced they’re in love for the sake of sex, perhaps I can skip over it, and we have more to get through. It would suffice to say that it ended poorly. I buried myself in my work, but it happened again a year later, that same heady intoxication of false love.”

“Hmm,” said Perry.

“I don’t think you can imagine how it is to be a woman in this world,” said Flora. “Everything you’ve said about your own world says that it’s different in so many ways. A female gendarme is something new, did you know?”

“You’d mentioned,” said Perry.

“They wanted women as part of the police, mostly to deal with certain crimes,” said Flora. “I wonder if it’s the same in your world, how much we hate domestic violence. A murder, that’s foul, but at least there’s a clear killer, a clear crime, not conflicting stories that need to be sorted through, not victims that recant their story the next day, or return to be victimized again. It’s intractable. That’s largely why there was a position for someone like me. They wanted someone that women might actually talk to, someone that could help those women. It didn’t help much, of course, but it was the justification.”

“You worry about your reputation,” said Perry. “That’s why before me, it was always something secret, hidden.”

“As much as it could be,” said Flora. She looked at her fingers, which were now resting on his. “Discretion was the name of the game.”

“Thank you for trusting me,” said Perry.

Flora gave him a skeptical look. “Do you think it was trust, that first time?”

“No,” said Perry. “I think it was … some kind of gross necessity.”

“The necessity was a comfort,” said Flora. “It was an excuse to indulge myself, to do what I’d wanted to do since that first night I had left you on the factory rooftop.”

“I … didn’t know you felt that way,” said Perry.

“If you could spot my sin from a distance, I would die of shame,” said Flora. “You don’t know me, and I don’t know you.” She shrugged. “We know each other better than when we first met, but we come from different worlds. I might understand you, if I understood America. You might understand me, if you understood Teaguewater. But that understanding comes slowly, so there will always be a gap between us.”

“No,” said Perry. “You could talk to me like this, give me the messy confessions, take great hacking cuts at the important bits. We could get eighty percent of the way in a hurry, if we wanted to.”

“If that’s what you wanted to do, it’s what you would have done,” said Flora.

“I’m leaving,” said Perry. “I don’t want to — I mean, there’s every chance that we never see each other again, that I never find a way to go from world to world, that I either settle down somewhere or keep world-hopping forever. I want to take as much of you with me as I can, and you’re saying that we don’t actually know each other.”

“The most likely thing to happen is that you die,” said Flora. “If not against Cosme, then against the next person, someone worse.”

“That’s fair,” said Perry. “Still, I want to not leave too much unsaid.”

“You do this,” said Flora. She was watching him with sterling eyes. “You behave one way, then speak as though the behavior somehow wasn’t you.”

“You think that I should have said something sooner,” said Perry. “That … if it were important I would have gotten on with it much earlier?”

“Perhaps the gravity of your departure is only now hitting you?” asked Flora.

“Maybe,” said Perry. “I don’t know.” He felt deflated. “I think in the next world, I’ll do things differently. I’ll try to … I don’t know.”

“That might be why you’re a thresholder,” said Flora. She turned away from Perry. “You should get some sleep. The final preparations for the tower need to be finished tonight, if Mellon can pull through.”

Perry frowned, but she was right, he did need sleep. It came more readily than he’d thought it would, even though his mind was troubled.

~~~~

Twenty-four hours later, Perry was hanging in the air above the fairgrounds. Night had fallen once again. There was an unusual amount of smog in the air, though Perry didn’t think that had all that much to do with the upcoming battle. It was a complication, nothing more, and while it was thick enough to hide him, it wasn’t so thick as to block out the moonlight, only to likely delay a transformation. Flora had said that Perry would be stronger than her under the light of a full moon, but they’d had no desire to test it.

Perry was hoping that it wouldn’t come to that.

Cosme was standing around on a large stretch of lawn, all by himself. If Perry hadn’t had superior surveillance capabilities, he might have thought that Cosme really had come alone. Instead, Perry had been able to peer into the tents with the suit’s powers, and Marchand had made some reconstructions. There were at least a hundred men in the tents, all of them silent, waiting, moved there in ones and two throughout the previous few days. They’d taken in coffins as well, Temmie’s people had reported, for unclear reasons.

On Perry’s side were thirty-three vampires. Most of them were older, which in vampiric terms meant that they had some advantages, but only perhaps a dozen of them had significant combat experience, some of it quite outdated. They were further away, outside the area, but stationed up and ready to go on Flora’s signal.

Mellon hadn’t come through. The tower had been left unfinished, and they would have to battle without it. Mellon was, at that very moment, on top of the tower, working out ‘kinks’ in one of the plates, but the wide-scale glamour with its multiple pieces meant to hijack the structure were pretty much completely untested. Perry had been stalling, hoping that Mellon wasn’t overestimating himself again, but it had been an hour and a half.

At some point, Cosme would simply leave. They could try again, possibly, but the king’s side was getting stronger by the week, and some of the meager support that Perry had been able to scrape together wouldn’t come a second time.

“We’ve given Mellon as much time as we can,” said Perry. “We’re going to need to act. I’m going to come in for a landing, talk first. Flora, you listen in.”

“Good luck,” said Flora. Her voice was tight. They’d delayed several times already, always hoping that Mellon’s frantic last-minute work would come to something, even though the tower was meant to have been done days ago.

The earpiece was one of their advantages, instant communication for coordination rather than having to rely on signals of any kind. If — when — Perry needed reinforcements, they could be there at a moment’s notice.

Perry landed in front of Cosme with little fanfare, descending down out of the fog in what he hoped would make an impression. Cosme startled, then held firm, staff in front of him. The man was wearing black slacks, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a black vest with a tie tucked into it, hardly the clothes that Perry would have chosen for a fight. Cosme was holding the staff by one end, as though it were a club, and his bracer was in full display, shining with as many rubies as it could hold. There was no sign of any other equipment, and the suit was too well-tailored to hide anything.

“I was expecting a surprise attack,” said Cosme. He was sizing up Perry. His eyes went to the places where the armor had obvious damage, the chest and arm.

“I wanted to lay some ground rules,” said Perry.

“Seems like the place to do that would have been over the radio,” said Cosme. He was guarded, wary. There was too much bad blood between them. He thought the worst of Perry, clearly.

“We’ll fight until the portal appears,” said Perry. “Then, we’re out. There’s no need to go until the death, if what you said is true.”

“I haven’t lied,” said Cosme. He was leaning forward a bit, eager. He wanted to be believed. “I kept things back, things that could hurt me — physically hurt me — but I never lied. We ended up on opposite sides here, but I don’t think that’s how it had to be. There’s still time for us to come to some kind of agreement.”

“You’re working with a king who seems intent on starting a world war,” said Perry. Marchand was keeping watch as much as possible. The drone was in the air, overseeing the fairgrounds, making sure that no moves were being made, that the conversation was costing nothing. Perhaps a month ago, Perry would have just taken the surprise attack. He wasn’t sure whether his tactical considerations were being overridden by the fact that he actually somewhat sympathized with Cosme.

“The king’s not ideal, no,” said Cosme. “You have to look at the big picture though, the trend of history, the effects of technology. I know we spoke over the radio, but there’s time to have a dialogue on the subject.”

Cosme had spent an entire radio broadcast opining that progress was, if not inevitable, then at least the most likely consequence of technological innovation. He used the worlds that he’d been to as proof. They were aligned on many things, but democracy and equality were two of them, and Cosme felt as though it was practically inevitable that you’d get egalitarian societies when technological advances led to moral, spiritual, and philosophical advances. That was the history of Cosme’s world, and the history of a few world’s he’d visited. Perry was far more of a skeptic, but it was a question of degrees: certainly this world would have been a better place with more electricity, more indoor plumbing, better agriculture, and all kinds of things that Perry had taken for granted on Earth.

“The time for dialogue is over,” said Perry. “I saw the morgue inside the castle. There were children there.”

Cosme’s mouth fell open. “That was you? The poisoning? Fifty men dead?”

Perry nodded. “All in the past now. All that’s left is the fight.”

“You think that your monsters have the moral high ground?” asked Cosme. “They’re vultures — do you have that animal?”

“Yes,” said Perry. “Scavengers. They could be worse than that, if they wanted to, worse than people who pick over the bones of the dead. They could be what the king wants to be, immortal rulers. Already he’s started to turn his soldiers into these same ‘monsters’ you seem to despise. And thanks to Wesley, this kingdom is going to run on blood soon, the blood of the lower classes. They’ll be lucky if they’re not bled dry.”

“I couldn’t have seen that coming,” said Cosme. “There are things that I haven’t handed over, chapters that I’ve torn from the books, burned.” There was something pleading in his voice. Maybe he wanted Perry to believe, but it was also possible that he was pleading with himself, telling himself a story wherein he was the noble hero.

“It’s all spiraled out of your control,” said Perry. “You couldn’t have known how it would go with Wesley, and now you’re here, having left the world worse, through no fault of your own, is that it?”

“It was the vampires who came to us,” said Cosme. “They wanted amnesty, to make deals. I had almost nothing to do with any of it, save for the books speaking of blood.”

Perry frowned, which he knew Cosme couldn’t see. It was good to stall, on the off-chance that Mellon could fix whatever it was he was trying to fix, but the question of blame was lingering in the air, and Perry didn’t like it. There was a good argument that everything that had happened was essentially inevitable, just moved up by a few years or decades. There was another argument that it was their presence here, nothing more, and the entire conflict had happened without much regard to their actual actions, as though it was this inevitable thing.

So far as Perry was concerned, Flora’s people could keep eating up the scraps forever, they weren’t hurting anyone, or probably weren’t hurting anyone. It was only intolerance, prejudice, bigotry, all the same old things that were causing problems. Maybe in another fifty years, no one would think all that much of it, but that might have been underestimating how long memories could be.

“I’ve seen rebellions,” said Cosme. “I’ve told you about them. But your people, they’re …” He paused. “It’s different.”

“Different how?” asked Perry.

“It’s,” began Cosme, but his brow was knitted. “Strange.”

“It’s strange?” asked Perry.

“There’s something,” said Cosme. He had lost focus and was looking only at his free hand.

Perry felt it too, a touch of confusion. Something was happening, and Perry couldn’t place his finger on what it was. It felt dangerous, threatening.

Cosme had started the fight.

Perry took that moment to attack, not waiting for the next symptom.

Marchand began firing the gun with a barked order. Perry swept forward with his sword in front of him, and he reached for a pouch at his side and flung a handful of lye right at Cosme’s face. The staff did the work of blocking both the bullets and the sword, wrenching Cosme’s arm all over the place, which was part of the point. Cosme sputtered from the powder, which would take some time to work. None of that was Perry’s focus.

Instead, Perry was thrusting with his sword, not in the places where Cosme was, but in the places where Marchand was predicting that Cosme would be. The staff moved to parry in regular, predictable ways, and with some prompting and refinement, March had been able to make an algorithm that would near-perfectly guess where the staff would end up in response to any sort of attack from any angle.

By following the dynamic plotting that Marchand was doing, Perry was able to score hits on the hand, if not anywhere else. It was soon bloodied and cut up, though Cosme’s grip remained firm even as the staff grew slick with blood. Cosme himself was largely absent from the fight, letting the staff defend on its own as he used his free hand to get his eyes clean. If the man was blinded, Perry felt like the fight couldn’t possibly last that long.

“Movement from the tents,” said Marchand.

“Shit,” replied Perry. “Keep an eye on it, let me know what’s going on.”

The predictive algorithms were working, better than Perry had hoped they would, and a well-placed stroke of the sword sliced through two of Cosme’s fingers, not just down to the bone, but enough to cut them off entirely. He screamed in pain, momentarily distracted from the lye in his eyes, and the bracer on his arm flared with power as he began swinging the staff with incredible power and great abandon.

Perry backed off, floating backwards with the sword, and called for March to stop firing the gun. He’d gone through seven bullets without incident, but he was worried about the gun heating up, the servos that drove it breaking under loads they were designed for. Cosme had been trying to drive him off, but a blow from the staff with the bracer at full power was something that Perry had felt before, and he didn’t want to feel it again.

“There’s fighting in the tents,” said Marchand.

“Fighting?” asked Perry. “Our people?” He felt confused. The nearby tents were where Cosme’s backup was hiding, and if Flora was going to move on them, he should have known about it.

“Not our people,” said Flora. “We’re not anywhere near there, still on standby.”

Perry looked at the tents, which were some distance away. Whatever was happening inside, it was violent, and there were screams coming up from within them. He had no idea what it could be, other than the king’s men turning on each other. Something that Temmie had arranged without telling Perry? Some kind of internal coup? It seemed like too much a stroke of luck.

Cosme was blinking through red eyes. His whole face was red and looked waxy, the lye having done its work. It was a mean trick, unsporting, but also not something that had been brought up before, and whatever the bracer was doing for Cosme’s health, Perry thought the other thresholder would probably heal from it. Perry would have used something worse, if he’d have been able to get his hands on it.

The screams coming from inside the tent were getting louder. Gunfire finally broke out, and someone was launched out the side, bloodied and bruised.

“What is that?” asked Cosme. He’d turned to look at the tent too, though with his eyes as they were, there was no way that he’d be able to make anything out. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t think I did this,” said Perry.

“Werewolves,” said Marchand.

“What?” asked Perry. He was blinking, trying to make sense of it.

Why would March say something like that? Everyone knew that werewolves weren’t real. The AI was supposed to be smart, supposed to know fact from fiction, but it had taken damage, and sometimes had trouble with magic.

A large dog emerged from the tent, blood around its muzzle. It was huge, the size of a horse, with bulging muscles that seemed to get larger in the moonlight. A second creature joined the first, then a third. They had spotted Perry and Cosme, and were turning toward them. A loud scream came from the tent, and they turned back, bounding inside.

The other tent was opening up, this one with soldiers in it, men with heavy weapons, cannons similar to the one that had shot Perry. These were Cosme’s people, but the wolves, or whatever they were — where had Cosme gotten wolves?

“Flora, I don’t know what’s happening, but you should bring in your people now,” said Perry. Even as he said it, it sounded insane.

“I think it worked,” said Flora.

“What worked?” asked Perry.

“Mellon’s plan,” said Flora. “The tower.”

Perry frowned. He was drawing a blank, maybe because of the threats around him. The huge wolves, the cannons, Cosme himself, it was more than enough to be overwhelming, but still … he was drawing a blank.

“Cosme is using some kind of memory-affecting power,” said Perry. “I’m compromised.”

“Follow March,” said Flora. “We have plans for this.”

Perry frowned. They did have plans for it, he remembered that now, but so much of it was blurry. Mellon’s plan had worked, and there were plans for if Perry lost his memory, but were those things connected? He only knew of two powers that Cosme was supposed to have, the bracer and the staff, and possibly one other, which Perry couldn’t call to mind. The muddled memory made him question everything.

“The wolves, are they on our side?” asked Perry. “Something of Temmie’s?” He had no idea how that would be possible. Cosme was recovering, but Perry didn’t want to press the fight if there were these odd wolves out on the field.

“The wolves are his,” said Flora. “Either they meant to hold them back and didn’t, or they’re willing to accept casualties. Perry, you’re going to have to put them down, which is going to be hard during a full moon.”

“They’re not werewolves,” said Perry. “They can’t be. Werewolves aren’t real.”

Cosme had turned back to Perry, murder in his watery eyes, malice across his red face. “What is this?” he asked. “Some trick of yours? Wolves to kill my men?”

If it was a ruse, it was a baffling one.

“Perry,” said Flora in his ear. “They must have stolen teeth when they killed the werewolves, they wanted something to use against you, but they must have forgotten about the precautions they’d taken. The coffins, those were to keep moonlight out, but then they forgot why they were in coffins. I don’t know how much of that you’ll be able to understand, but —”

Cosme lunged forward. He was shaking off the lye attack far too quickly, and part of that might have been that his bracer was flaring up with red light. After some discussion, Marchand had been cajoled into adding in a counter for the rubies as part of the HUD, and the bracer was already a tenth depleted.

Perry did a quick-step back and dodged the wild swing, but the staff hit his sword, the power of the strike ripping it from his iron grip. Perry let it go and rushed in, trying one of the more dangerous things that he’d made plans for: grappling.

The staff moved to block him, placing itself exactly in the path of his hands, but Perry had more than two hands, and had his leg hooked around Cosme’s. With the staff playing defense, Cosme couldn’t strike out with it, and his ruby-red arm was the strongest part of him, which was stuck holding the staff in place to keep the grasping hands from getting to him. The hooked leg worked, and Cosme was soon on the ground, being followed quickly by Perry, who was on top of him, the staff still between them.

Cosme punched with his free hand, aiming squarely at Perry’s chestplate, where there was clear damage. Moments later, he was pulling his hand back in pain, even in spite of the rush of power he’d put into it. The HUD showed no damage from the punch, though it had hit harder than a bullet.

Perry was gripping the staff with both hands, trying to use his legs, to kick. Cosme’s strength seemed to be located in the one arm, right where the bracer was, as much as that strength could spill over.

“Shoot him,” said Perry.

The suit’s gun popped up and fired almost before the words were out of Perry’s mouth, and the staff rushed to block, moving out of Perry’s grip. Perry struck, but he struck slow, moving his right hand deliberately, like a hunter sneaking up on his prey. When his hand had made contact with Cosme’s chest, he put his entire weight into it, all the bulk of the armor, everything he could summon with his leverage.

Cosme was pushed against the damp earth, and then, unceremoniously, there was a crunch in his chest as the bones gave way. Perry pushed harder as Cosme let out an involuntary breath, and the white shirt beneath his vest grew bright red.

The bracer flared hard and Perry was pushed off by the staff, thrown into the air for a brief moment before landing on his feet. He held his hand out and the sword flew through the air, slotting neatly into place, but that had to have been a death rattle. The pieces of bone had gone into the lungs, into the heart, they must have, and while Cosme had demonstrated a much greater durability than a normal person, even with the bracer flaring it should have been too much to handle.

Cosme slowly got to his feet. He didn’t seem to believe it either. He coughed once, hacking up a globule of blood, but then it hung in the air in front of him, suspended. After a moment it drifted back into his bloodied chest, soaking in.

“What was that,” he croaked. “Was that you? Or me?”

“I’m not going to be able to finish this on my own,” said Perry. The tent with the wolves was starting to empty out. There were a dozen of them, all coated in blood that was not their own. The men from the other tent had been watching the scuffle between the thresholders, weapons raised but not yet firing.

“We’re moving in,” said Flora.

The wolves had gathered into a pack, and as Cosme dropped into a fighting stance that shouldn’t have been possible given that he’d just had his chest caved in, the second round of the fight started in earnest.