“I am the Technol connection here on Selk,” the Violet Shogun said. “I’m the tech that keeps them running. Born of the very tech first dreamed up by the Technological Edge Mining Company, and breathed life into stolen from these formerly sentient creatures my builders scooped off the streets. They turn into a bunch of disgusting, radiation-drenched ferals when the process is over, but boy what a—”

  Out of nowhere, the roof and walls of the hangar ripped away. Glass shattered and metal screamed. The force of the unseen tornado sent fresh and decomposing corpses, two comatose S-Rats, and the organictech Technol Shogun tumbling across the suddenly open ground.

  I anchored myself with Death Grip, the forest of skeletal hands holding me on the spot, as I threw out a wide sweep of Dead Reckoning.

  It freaked out.

  The incredible, unfettered power of a Ketsu aura slapped me down. I tried to fight it, but I had less chance than a soggy cracker trying to push back against a tractor tire.

  “Death cultivator is not expecting Takeshi?” The Emperor of the Eight-Legged Dragons feigned surprise. “How can this be?”

  Takeshi stalked toward me, his polished wingtips creaking. The concrete cracked and caved in under each footstep. The mere weight of the Emperor’s presence made the Violet Shogun’s pressure trick seem like a joke.

  My lungs flattened out. I couldn’t breathe. It felt like my head was going to explode. Blood burst from my nose. I scrabbled to get my right hand out from under me and summon the Lunar Scythe, but all I managed to do was scrub road rash into the back of my hand and fingers. It stayed pinned under my chest.

  “Does Death cultivator think Takeshi has no eyes?” His voice pounded on my skull, and he wasn’t even yelling. “That Takeshi cannot recognize the fire of defiance burning in the soul of another?”

  Something popped in my right eye, and red colored half of everything I could see.

  Suddenly, that fluttering motion I usually only caught out of the corner of my eye was everywhere, so thick it was almost solid in my blood-tinged vision. It felt like if I really focused, I could finally see what was causing the disturbance.

  Unfortunately, the angry Ketsu-ranked Dragon Emperor I had screwed over wasn’t interested in letting me turn my head to look around freely. My skeleton groaned as he crouched beside me. Every pebble and bit of grit beneath me felt like it was being permanently embedded in my body.

  “Takeshi hatched under the boot of Technological Edge Mining Company. He saw his people enslaved to work the Technols’ mines. He watched his father and mother suffocate slowly, their lung sacs ruined by inhaling toxic dust. He listened to his love Achira die pleading, unable to save her as she became fuel for first organitech murder machine. Hatred, rebellion, righteous fury scorching the bones—” The Varanusko pounded a fist on his chest. “—Takeshi knows them! He burned with them! He burns with them still! And he knows such a fire when he sees it in another. This is why Takeshi does not simply trust Death cultivator, whose defiance blazes like arson, to remain faithful to Dragons so far from Soulhome. Takeshi is no fool.”

  He grabbed a handful of my hair, claws digging bloody lines into my scalp, and yanked my head back so I had to look him in the eyes.

  Takeshi’s familiar Judgment Beyond the Veil played out. The similarities between him and me turned my blood to fire. Last Light, Last Breath immolated.

  Everything I’d been holding off slammed into me at once, and I lost any semblance of cool I’d ever had. I craved his Damnation. I wanted to relish his destruction. I needed to see him crushed by the fist of absolute justice for every evil we had justified.

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  I grabbed the raging golden life point situated in the center of the Emperor’s forehead.

  Takeshi’s life point was a thunderous earthquake, a burning mountain, a galactic cataclysm. My Spirit railed against it, strained with it, wrestled it. I poured spiral after icy, Cursed Death spiral into Damning that firestorm of Relentless Justice to the pits of hell.

  Takeshi shrugged me off like smacking a toddler’s hand.

  “You find Technols’ organitech center on Selk. Is good.” He patted my cheek with one dry, scaly hand. “Is not all Takeshi hopes for, but is start, yes? When Takeshi finishes teaching rebellious Death cultivator lesson, then he must get claws dirty taking what remains of CPA hub. Not ideal, but Takeshi does not accept failure any more than he accepts rebellion. This is why Takeshi is Emperor of Eight-Legged Dragons. This is how he serves.”

  He let me drop and stood up. One clawed hand came out, palm aimed at my face.

  My brain whited out.

  At first, I thought Takeshi had killed me. Then I realized I still hurt all over from the ketsu aura pushing down on me, and I could still feel every bump and rock underneath me. Probably the biggest clue was that I still couldn’t breathe, but I desperately needed to. My lungs bucked in my chest, begging for oxygen.

  The brilliant glare tapered off.

  We were no longer alone.

  Thousands of white-haired, marble-skinned Reapers surrounded us, filling the street and the place where the Technol hangar had stood. More perched on the roofs and overhangs of the buildings to either side.

  One stepped out in front of the legions—the only guy who wasn’t wearing all white. In stark contrast to his glowing white robes, he wore a set of forearm bracers so black that I could see the rays from the unbroken streetlights and the glow from his skin falling into their depths.

  Underneath my muscles, the Lunar Scythe hummed. It wanted the bracers’ attention.

  Takeshi threw the Relentless Justice attack he had in the chamber for me at the bracer-wearing Reaper.

  The bracers ate that deadly flare of Spirit, catching it out of the air and sucking it down just like my scythe did with lightning strikes.

  Takeshi snarled and cranked the volume, throwing out a two-handed attack. The blast shook the whole dome. It sounded like a jet breaking the sound barrier.

  The bracers swallowed that, too.

  The Reaper wearing them stepped forward and backhanded Takeshi like somebody shooing away an annoying gnat. The hit knocked the Dragon Emperor across the street into the crumbling wall of a warehouse. Bricks and chunks of mortar clattered down on him.

  Takeshi’s aura faded as he lost consciousness. The overwhelming weight let up. I gulped down air, finally able to breathe again.

  I stumbled to my feet, wiping the blood out of my eyes. I scanned the glowing army for the ditzy Reaper who had taken me from Earth, but she wasn’t there.

  When I met the bracer-wearing Reaper’s silver gaze, my scythe went crazy. It wanted out.

  “Grady Hake,” the Reaper said. “For willfully following in the footsteps of the Demoness of Death, your hour has come. Will you submit peacefully to your death, or will you force us to take drastic measures?”

  “‘Submit peacefully’? You want me to just let you kill me?”

  Kest’s face popped into my head. She was waiting for me back at the hotel with no idea that my We need to talk was actually an I want to ask you to marry me. Even if she said no, even if she laughed at me and told me to get lost, I had to ask. But she wouldn’t laugh at me because her graphs said it was a good idea and maybe, hopefully, because she loved me.

  I had to find out. I had to get back to her.

  I’d used up a ton of Spirit from my reserve trying to kill Takeshi. Now I started reeling in every bit of Miasma I could pull in off the street from that temple fog, the ferals, and the Contrails and agents who hadn’t survived the organitech hangar.

  The lead Reaper sensed what I was doing. He raised his fists in a loose guard, one slightly in front of the other with the backs facing me, like an old-timey pugilist demanding fisticuffs. His light-eating bracers hummed in time with the scythe.

  “I will not warn you again, Grady Hake. Submit now, and your end will be painless.”

  All around him, the army of Reapers summoned weapons and Spirit attacks. Hundreds of pairs of silvery eyes watched me. Reaper after Reaper, their Judgments declared the same thing.

  Not evil.

  I couldn’t use Damnation on them.

  They knew that as well as I did. That was why they weren’t attacking. They were waiting for me to realize it was hopeless, I couldn’t win. Waiting for me to give up and obey. To fall on my knees and lay my head on the chopping block so they could hack it off.

  All the times before that I’d felt that angry black cobra rear up inside me ready to strike were nothing compared to this.

  This time, I was the cobra. They might be Reapers, but I was Death. They were meant to bow down to me, not the other way around.

  “I didn’t roll over and die when your ditzy friend stole my first life.” I shoved my hand out to my side. Eagerly, the Lunar Scythe ripped out from underneath my muscle and skin, forming gleaming and black in my fist. “There’s no way I’m going to make it easy on you just because you asked nicely.”

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