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There’s gunshots ahead, past where the tunnel bends downward.

I bolt, no time to see if the shadows are following.

I scramble down the steep tunnel, sliding half the way in my haste, and find Victra crouched behind a rock. She darts to the next. A pulseblast turns the floor behind her molten.

“You left your men to die,” Victra says. She moves to the next boulder. Two shots sizzle past her before she takes cover.

“I’ll find more,” Harmony says from deeper in the tunnel, where it widens to form a chamber with slick, dark walls and no source of light but the acid green spasms of her firearm. She must be wearing optics to see down here. Wait, how can I see? The figures are murky, like shadows over ink, but I can make out Harmony as she peers down her rifle’s sights.

“You murdered your own people.” Victra fakes a dodge to the next rock. Harmony sends a stream of shots along the path. Victra goes the other way, disappearing into a caved-in section of the tunnel. “You killed Ares.”

“Because he was one of you!” Harmony shoots into the shadows. “Come out and fight me, bitch.”

I lie in the shadows and take careful aim with my pistol.

“You killed Lyria’s family.”

“Who cares?” Harmony sneers. She checks her rifle’s ammunition gauge just as Victra swings down from above.

Harmony pulls the trigger.

Click.

She exhales and then throws the gun at Victra and reaches for her bootknife. Victra catches the gun in one hand and smacks Harmony’s hand. Harmony stumbles back, fingers broken. The knife clatters to the ground. She swings at Victra with her other hand. Victra punches the balled fist, shattering it. I tuck my pistol away and walk after them.

“You killed her child,” I say to Harmony. Victra cracks a flare and tosses it at Harmony’s feet. She rips off Harmony’s night optics.

“She killed mine,” she snarls, tracking my arrival with almost as much hate as she does Victra. “They rotted from a disease we cured six hundred years ago. Why? For what?” She spits. “For this.” As I watch her froth with hate, she isn’t the monster I remember. The powerful force that ate up my brother and family out of this world. She’s just a woman enraged. It makes her so small to me, I can barely understand it myself. I pity her smallness, but not enough to scourge the hate from me.

I hear something behind her. A deep whispering. I edge forward as she glares out at the world.

“You’ll all burn,” Harmony promises. “I’ve got a torchShip. Gave the order if I don’t say otherwise, it’ll lay into this mine with everything it’s got. What it don’t burn to cinders, it’ll pinch in here under two hundred meters of stone. You’re trapped in here with me. But if I call in…we can play another day.”

Victra raises her razor. “I’ll permit you what I permitted the poet. Choose your last words.”

I creep closer to the whispering.

“I’m valuable to the Republic.”

“Nah.” Victra is about to stab Harmony through the heart when I grasp Victra’s thick wrist. She frowns at me.

“Trust me. Not like this.”

I walk up to Harmony and rip a flare off her belt. Cracking it open, I throw it toward the whispering. In its light I can see that not far from where she made her stand against Victra, the floor gives way. A narrow cleft of rock leads across a chasm, no doubt where Harmony was trying to lure Victra to her death.

I kick the flare down the chasm as Victra drags Harmony forward. The flare lands amongst a pool of pitvipers gathered near the heat of a hot spring. Warm, clammy air oozes up.

I turn to Harmony and see her looking down, childish with fear.

She thought they were her salvation.

“Those are adults,” I tell her. “They won’t kill you. They’ll give you enough poison to paralyze you, and then they’ll burrow their eggs inside. Few days’ time, you’ll be gobbled up from inside out.”

“Poetry in motion. Bye, bitch,” Victra says and then grabs Harmony’s belt and collar and hurls her into the pit.

Harmony’s arms windmill as she falls amongst the pitvipers. A nasty bitch thicker than both my thighs claims her first, striking before she even lands. The fangs make a meaty punching sound as they enter. Harmony grabs another knife from her waist, but the pitviper is already coiling around her arms and legs, immobilizing her with soft rustling sounds as it burrows its head into her lower stomach to implant its eggs out the womb sack in its neck.

Harmony’s mouth opens in silent pain.