She had always wanted to know what a mermaid tasted like.
"Should I skin her or chop her up first?" Rosalind growled.
Glaring at the empty platform, Rosa exhaled in her dark, half-sheltered corner. Her tattered boots squealed as she pressed against the barricade. A thick haze enveloped the area as steamy raindrops sizzled against the ground, warm mist seeped into her pores, damp fabric clung to her clammy skin.
Rosa huffed, "The underworld's centre—wet, shit, and soggy."
She wanted to shake it off like some drenched demon hound, but the weight of her own presence soaked her worse than the rain. Her bright snow hair—an inheritance she never asked for—stood out like a beacon, a curse from being the love child of the empress. A stain she'd tear out if she could, replace it with a darker shade. Something dull. Muted. And not sparkling fucking white.
But instead of lingering on her glistening hair, she wiped her sodden watch, the embedded crystal flickering against the misty gloom.
The dials inside ticked.
The gemstones hummed.
And time was running out.
"That slippery mermaid twat," Rosa spat. "All talk, no spine. Hells, maybe I should gut her, grill her up—serve her medium-rare, still screaming."
She resisted the impulse, but her soaked jacket molested her back, her tail squirming against the sticky fabric. Combined with the downpour that could liquefy a corpse, her body ached with exhaustion. She was tired—worn to the bone, caught in the endless fatigue that hammered her. Days, months, maybe years on the run. Planning. Experimenting. The war never really left her mind.
A little shut-eye wouldn't hurt. She still had time—a sliver of a moment.
But like an animated film playing on an involuntary loop, flickers of memory flashed behind her eyelids.
The darkness yielded to the ghost of a horde that rumbled and churned. Even now, the imprint lingered in her brain tissue like an infected wound. Like pus, grotesque limbs splattered through her mind as if she had seen it yesterday—fresh, deep, rotten. Shops, houses, homes once filled with laughter.
All gone.
And she had to fix it.
Warm liquid splashed against the cobbled ground, and her lashes snapped open. Frozen in place, she listened. Amid the rhythmic downpour, the sound of heavy boots echoed across the platform—armoured guards, marching in tight formation.
She pressed her heartbeat down, willed her pulse to slow. The silence met her breath, her body moulding into the shadows, her damp coat wrapped tight around her frame like a second skin.
Four.
Four Middling demons clad in the gaudy, decorative fluff of Pride's city.
She smiled.
"You're rather light on units, Empress," Rosa whispered. "Shame, shame indeed."
Her tail flicked. She could do this alone if she had to. She'd skin that mermaid later. Right now, the sword hilt hidden beneath her dress called to her—biting metal, one flick from a cut, one flick from having a colorful morning.
This time, she would have it. This time, she would uncover the truth.
A flicker of heat coursed through her veins like flowing lava, and she stepped from the shadows.
"Finally," Echo groaned, stretching ghostly limbs. "Pretending to be a corpse is hard, you know."
Rosa didn't even glance at her fragment's scowling image.
"You still get that I'm the source of your power, right?" Echo huffed. "You can't ignore me."
Unfastening a button on her coat, Rosa let the excess heat escape. Her dress fluttered in the tainted air, her skin kissing the mould laced air. But more importantly—her tail, heart-tipped and twitching, was finally free, her fangs grinning with relief.
Then, beside her, a corpse sputtered to life.
"Succubus!" the thing blurted.
Rosa flinched at the slur, her frostbite-blue eyes locking onto the grim-skinned demon. She had mistaken him for a rotten vegetable—an oversight on her part.
But she smiled, tail curling. "Looks like I've found a replacement," she mused.
The man stepped back. Odd. Considering he had no idea what she was thinking. Even garbage had instincts, apparently.
"Stay back!" he stammered. "You can't have my seed."
She laughed at that, "how superstitious," she said, her fangs visible now.
"Vampire?" he guessed, voice brittle.
She didn't know why he asked—he already knew. But she licked her fangs anyway, her wet teeth dripping with intent, hunger.
Then she closed the distance, her grin tasting the sweat on his expression.
"Won't you do me a little favour?" she purred.
His fingers twitched, desperate to find something—anything—to stake her with.
"So cute," Echo crooned. "Does he think the old myths ring true?"
Rosa channelled her Gravium reserve and pointed to the other platform, her finger directing the foul-smelling demon's sight, her touch invisibly tethering the two.
The demon hesitated. "What?" he rasped. "I don't see anything."
His eyes met hers.
The silence crept up his spine—just like her fingers. Slow. Steady. Savouring the slight crease of his brow, the flicker of realisation in his pupils. He might have thought she was crazy—harmless even.
Then—
"Jump," she ordered.
A snap of her fingers.
The man's body wrenched forward, reeled like a flopping fish, yanked by an invisible force.
"Don't call me a Succubus." She whispered, "But thank you for the distraction."
He hit the oncoming ship with a sickening splatter. The roaring metal met squishy flesh, and the demon splattered like gooey paste, the horrifying spray of bones, blood and whatever breakfast he had, painting the crew in gore.
The guards and demon knights groaned.
"That's the fifth jumper this morning," a guard said. "We were able to shoot the other two, but hell, can't they die somewhere else."
Rosa itched at her gunshot wound; she might find the family of that guard and shoot them later. That cracked-horned dipshit didn't have to go for her leg, of all things. Now, she had a limp.
How was she supposed to hide a limp?
"Stop bitching and clean this shit up." A knight ordered, "We have a schedule to run."
As the guards grumbled, trading their firearms for mops and buckets. Rosa fastened her coat, ensuring her tail and hair remained tucked inside.
Then she stepped onto the platform.
Time to board.
With her core disengaged Rosa crept behind the knights and onto the armored cruiser. Turns out, scrubbing gore off glass took time, which made slipping past them easy.
Almost too easy.
She nearly bit her lip when one knight caught her fancy—tall, broad, the kind of dangerous that made Echo purr inside her mind. The fragment's hunger rippled through her core, lust-tainted and relentless.
"Not now." Rosa pushed, her fragment disagreeing.
But yanking her horny ghost, she ducked into the cannon's barrel, the dusty weapon more of a relic than a threat—a far cry from the behemoth that once rained demon-sized ammunition from orbit.
As she squeezed through the weapons bay, the ship's core rumbled, sparking to life. The fortress of metal vibrated under her feet, engines surging as they set off.
She might have underestimated how long it took to clean blood, effortlessly quickly, apparently.
Rosa's claws wrapped around the hilt of her unsheathed sword, the purple glint of solid Gravium glass warming in her grip. It hummed in anticipation, thirsting for use.
"Focus, Rosa," she whispered, "remember the plan. Get in, get the book and get out."
Echo yawned as Rosa's core flickered back online. The fragment magically appeared as if Rosa hadn't just crawled down an oil-coated barrel, the mirror image annoyingly cleaner than the genuine counterpart.
"Not judging," Echo said, "but bringing a sword to a gunfight is a little…"
"Shut up," Rosa muttered.
She knew. But unlike her brother, Marshal, she couldn't tether bullets. A sword was personal. It made things quiet. Intimate.
"He's half-brother actually," Echo corrected.
Rosa slapped at the phantom's grinning face, her fingers passing right through.
"Be quiet," she hissed. "Do you want us to die?"
"You're the one whining like a needy little sister," Echo teased, gesturing dramatically. "Besides, they can't hear or see me."
Rosa hissed at the fragment, her tail balancing her as she crept down the hall. But she had to focus, mocked by a ghost that looked just like her or not. Meanwhile, Echo—wearing a youthful version of her own face—smiled back at her like the bitch she was.
However, perhaps due to the gunshot wound in her leg or the fact that she excelled at slicing and dicing rather than stealthing a ship's steel, her boot inadvertently knocked a box over as she squeezed between the pallets—the most miniature, utterly ridiculous boxes, filled with nothing more than tedious paperwork.
That was the kicker, the crash that turned two burning hot rifles at her.
"This is why I wanted a stealth mermaid," she muttered.
"What—?" one of the guards blurted.
His gun shook, clearly flustered by the brooding coat with a purple stick standing in their top-secret aircraft. She must have looked like a flasher in this get-up.
"How the fuck did a vagabond get on board?" the other said, gun still raised. "First, I had to clean up gore—now this?"
Rosa tilted her head. Fast cleaner. Shame he's wasted on guard duty.
Before they could shoot, she ripped off her coat and flung it at them. It wasn't like she could warp away now—not after all the effort it took to get here. She just needed a second—a breath.
Her core flared.
Echo's heat surged through her body, steam rising from her skin as her dark dress and white hair whipped free.
"Her empress?" one guard gasped.
Rosa smirked, stretching her spine, arching into something deliberate.
"Usually, I only do private shows," she purred, "but here's one on the house, boys."
She blew them a kiss.
The barrels of their rifles ignited.
They weren't interested in playing.
Bullets ripped through the air, tearing her coat to shreds.
Shame. She'd stolen that from her brother.
But in light of more pressing matters—her body already moved, Gravium firing through her core, throwing her to the side. Her blade hissed hot in her palm, tail flicking as she dodged the barrage.
"Intruder!"
More shouts. More boots. More guns joined her party.
"Fantastic." She said.
It took the guards all of two seconds to recognise what they were dealing with. Because outside her seductive charms, Rosa was—
"Archdemon!" one roared
The word sent panic through the room.
Fingers scrambled to strip their belts, chains, any crystalline weapons or ammo.
Unfortunately, it was a little too close, too late.
Rosa raised her sword and surged.
All belts, chains, bullets, and anything made of glass shot away from her.
The metal tore free, spraying upward like shards of confetti.
Then, flesh.
Then, blood.
Then, screams.
Bodies and glitter smothered walls into hot goo, crushed beneath the sheer force of her crystalline pull.
She rolled her shoulders.
"Quite the party."
She should've picked a fancier dress.
But the chaos wasn't over; Voices shouted from the next room. Heavy boots. The reordering of forces. She needed to hurry. She needed to find it.
The archive was close. The documentation, the research, the truth—it had to be here. They had already lost their first home, and she needed to know why.
She ignored Echo's giddy glee and let go of her sword, letting the gravity defying material hover beside her. Then she turned her focus to the shelves, her fingers one by one scanning through books.
It wasn't quick enough; so she dug at her reserve and surged Voltite next.
The new power kicked in, accelerating her mind as green energy crackled off her skin. Her fingers flowed like lightning, flipping through pages in a blur.
But the footsteps of demon knights marched closer.
It had to be here.
She had done so much planning and work to find it.
She couldn't have been wrong about it.
Everything mounted on this single thing.
She needed to stop a second war.
She needed to win it this time.
The echo of boots pounded down the hall; every entrance and exit blocked, and her inevitable failure began to register.
She had seconds.
Then, at last—
A stained book. Tucked between dull, bureaucratic ledgers. A thing no one would expect to hold classified pre-war knowledge.
Her gut clenched.
She found it.
Written by the first demon herself, her wisdom buried in time, her secrets extending beyond the birth of bipedal demons, her scribbles, notes, and stains enough to change the world. It was life changing. It was more than Rosa could have dreamt of, right at her fingertips.
"I wouldn't wag your tail just yet," Echo murmured.
Rosa steeled herself and grabbed the book.
It didn't move.
What?
She yanked harder.
It was stuck.
The book refused to budge.
The guards' voices sharpened. Close now. Too close.
"Report: Valkar Archdemon confirmed," a knight barked. "Deploy the Solelite-Encrusted Casings. Shoot until you run out."
The hum of Anti-Archdemon rounds vibrated in her senses, the Gravium surge in her blood, feeling each and every casing, the hundreds of bullets all destined for her skull.
Her fate hit her in an instant.
This was it.
Months wasted—a total loss.
"Maybe if you listened to the little old me, we might not be in this mess." Echo snarked. "But you are the daughter of pride, afterall. Listening isn't exactly your strong suit."
Rosa clenched her jaw, and, in a last-ditch effort she opened the book.
She wouldn't go empty-handed. She wouldn't leave without something. Not this time.
In one sharp motion, she ripped the first page from the book. Some might call her a heretic, but she'd call it surviving.
"Fire!" the Knight ordered.
At that moment, Rosa searched her reserve for Obsidium and surged. In a blink, bullets flew, and the archive, the secrets and history of demon lore, was shot to pieces.
But before round could splatter skin, she dimensionally jumped, warped between realms, and landed on the tip of a railing.
Next came the fall.
Her old momentum launched her like a rocket into the abyss, her fingers unable to save her in time.
She screamed, "ECHO!"
She couldn't calculate the fall—the sheer velocity, the pull of gravity; her neurons would burst before she calculated the right push-pull vector.
"Echo," she pleaded.
The fragment growled.
And every power inside her... cut off.
For one terrifying millisecond, Rosa was in free fall.
"Echo—?"
Her hair whipped, her voice breaking.
"Echo…?" She repeated.
She flew wide eyed, her fangs ready to scream. Her hope snapped thin.
"ECHO!" she ordered.
…
Then—
A full-throttle Gravium blast ripped through her core.
Her body wrenched back, snapped into the invisible grip of Gravium-threaded forces. Strings of raw energy tethered to every crystalline point in the cityscape, forming an intricate network of pushes and pulls.
Her descent slowed.
Then stopped.
Rosa's boots scraped against steel as she landed upside-down, clinging to the underbelly of a Voidscraper. Below her, the endless mist of Voidium churned like a beast licking its lips.
She exhaled hard, her tail tasting damnation's pull.
"That was fucking close," Echo huffed. The fragment was barely a solid shape anymore, mist unraveling at the edges. "You owe me for that."
Rosa stared at the monolithic ship.
Her fingers clutched the single sheet of paper.
The ship's thrusters sputtered momentarily before the Obsidium aura surged, consuming the steel.
Then—
It warped out.
Rosa's stomach twisted.
"I guess I might need to ask him for help."
Echo's form darkened. "He won't be happy about that."
"I know," Rosa muttered. "But this affects us all. Even a broody knight like him."