Page 45 of Flamesworn

“Of course you’d think of it that way.” Kataida pulled Ares on top of her. In the dark, they didn’t know what form they wanted to take. Kataida seemed to like the way they existed outside the spectrum of mortal sex, but they never really gave it much thought for themselves. They gave themself a cunt this time, and a flat, smooth chest that tingled deliciously when Kataida dragged her nails down their skin.

A sharper pain seared through Ares like a wave, and Ares gripped Kataida by the arms as they were violently jerked to the side. Kataida tumbled with them, wrapping her legs around theirs, and twisted her fingers in Ares’ hair.

“What was that?”

Pain rolled through Ares again, and they felt the draw of someone calling them, a mix of the worship of a supplicant and the order of a general. “I’m being summoned,” they said. “Whoever wants me is being—” They gasped, their form flickering, shifting, the uniform of the enemy crawling overtheir shoulders. They willed it away with a grunt of effort. “Determined.”

“They lost the battle. Of course they’ll want revenge. Stay with me.” Kataida’s dominance filled the tent, and she lay a hand on Ares’ throat, pressing down just enough for them to gasp and arch into it.

“I can almost see them,” Ares said, and shuddered as the summons came again—and they appeared, not at the enemy camp, but just outside Evander Akti’s front door.

Elena Akti was crouching over a dead soldier, her eyes hard. Behind her, Ares could hear Aleks’ voice as he tried to soothe their child, but Elena’s gaze as she looked out over the street was cold and detached, the eyes of a hunter. A strange feeling twisted in Ares’ stomach, the same one they’d felt when they watched the young trainees die. It felt sick and low and personal, nothing like the thrill of dancing under the shadows of a volley of arrows.

This wasn’t a summons for War. It was something else, but Ares couldn’t name it yet. They weren’t summoned for small things like this. If assassins were slipping into a city while the army was distracted, they would have appeared with the assassins, watching them spread out through the streets. They shouldn’t have been called here, where outrage rolled through Elena Akti’s body like an oncoming storm. It was too private. War wasn’t supposed to linger on one person at a time, but that’s what Ares had been doing with Kataida, hadn’t it?

“Elena?”

Ares turned to the sound of Kataida’s voice, and drew back as they saw her stepping forward, a hand on Ares’ shoulder. How had she come with them? “What happened? How are we here?”

“Kat?” Elena twisted to look, and as she did, Ares lurched as another summons dragged them out of the quiet doorway. Kataida’s grip tightened on their shoulders, and they werethrown violently into the dark between places, before appearing in the cold, gray shadows of a small room.

They were both still naked, which was even stranger, because Ares at least should have taken on the uniform of whoever called them. Ares manifested the martial uniform of a Mislian mage. They slipped off the robes and handed them to Kataida.

They’d never brought a living mortal with them when they were summoned before. The last time they’d brought any mortal with them, it had been the dead boy from the training school, and they didn’t like the thought of that when Kataida was so close, her body tense as a hawk about to strike.

But something wasn’t quite the same. Ares stretched out a hand, and the dim light from the center of the room filtered through their skin. The windows were shuttered, but Ares could hear wind blowing as though they were in the heart of a gale. Beneath them, Kataida looked similarly half-real, as though she were made out of smoke.

“I don’t think we’re physically here,” Ares said. They could feel their body back at the tent with Kataida. “I think people are summoning my spirit, and I brought yours with me.”

“Is thatsafe?”Kataida whispered. Ares shrugged. “Wonderful. Where are we?”

That was a good question. Ares stepped forward, careful to keep a hand on Kataida’s incorporeal form. The last thing they wanted was to lose track of her spirit. The room they were in was poorly lit, with a few sconces set into the far wall near a doorway. The walls and floors were made of wood, not the stone the Arkoudai used in Axon, and a man knelt a few paces away, silhouetted in the dark. Before him, a group of people stood in hoods and cloaks, keeping a distance despite the chains that clinked at the man’s wrists and ankles, pinning him on his knees to the floor. Marks stood out against his bare skin as he shifted, light running over lines in the old language of the empire.

“It’s the Beast,” Kataida whispered, “but why is he chained?”

“He failed,” Ares said, but that didn’t seem quite right, either. They got up and stepped forward, pulling Kataida after them, and stopped as a hooded man approached the Beast.

“War,” the hooded man said, and Ares felt the summons again, strong enough to taste the ash and copper of battle lust on their tongue. He raised a knife and a bowl, and the Beast shifted again, chains scraping lines across the floor. “Possess this worthy vessel with an unworthy spirit, the body of Atreus Akti reborn. The soul within is not strong enough to resist your will.”

The Beast let out a low bark of laughter, and the hooded man fumbled the knife, dropping it between the Beast’s knees. He had to bend down to pick it up, and as he did, the Beast hunched over and bit him, hard, through his robes. The hooded man cried out and dropped to a knee, and three others raced over to restrain the Beast. He tipped his head back with a wild grin as someone put an iron collar around his neck and yanked on the connecting chain.

“Strong enough to resist yours,” the Beast said.

“You broke to our will long ago,” the man with the collar said. “Thirty-one years, creature, and you betray us the moment you see the sun. What were your orders?”

“To honor Arktos in word and action,” the Beast said, and laughed. Kataida gasped at Ares’ side, and the Beast coughed as the collar was yanked back again.

“To obey,” the man holding the collar said.

“I preferred him when he didn’t speak,” the man with the knife said. “I told you he wasn’t ready. He took one look at Kataida Akti and ran.”

“Her name’s Kataida?” the Beast grunted as someone struck him in the back of the head.

“We may have a solution there,” said the man holding the collar. “But we’ll try this first.”

“Yes, go on.” The Beast tossed his hair out of his eyes, and Kataida went still behind Ares, her ghostly hand almost slipping free. “Bleed me, beg for War, chant and curse and scream. Send me some of your own for culling, if you like.”

The man with the knife cut into one of the scarred runes forWaron the Beast’s chest. “Enough. Gracious One, we call on you to take this vessel.”

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