Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer

There’s a smoking hole where my Rembrandt used to be. Not sure if it was blown in or out – I was too busy flying through the air to notice the finer points of the opening part of this assault. Dustin glances toward where I’m looking.
“Sorry about the art. I know you loved it.”
I laugh until I can’t catch my breath. Doesn’t take long: most of my ribs are broken, along with my legs. On the upside, I’m up against a wall, not sprawled inelegantly on the carpet.
“You came to kill. No need to apologise for collateral damage.”
There are chuckles at that. He brought a good team. Then again, after following the breaching of three walls and ceiling with shock grenades through all four openings, he could have come with a kindergarten class. It’s not like I can fight in any conventional way.
They seem to be waiting for something?
“You’re standing about like a band waiting for their vocalist, who’s running fashionably late – again.”
Dustin flushes. I see grins being exchanged.
“Berltan Mu, Abbot of Blades, that was rude.”
The figure stepping through the tallest jagged hole still needs to duck. Standing at a shade over two metres barefoot, she’s nearly three in court regalia.
“Sadura-san, Abbess of Swords, it was allegorical truth. No more, no less.”
“And that was overly familiar.”
“Standing in my spilt blood having strolled through the blasted ruins of my home, you’ll have to put up with my lack of propriety.”
She smiles.
“Accepted.”
“So, the contest between the Schools of Blade and Sword, a manufactured struggle in the name of martial excellence and personal discipline, comes down to bloody murder in the service of trite gratification?”
A couple of the team seem embarrassed. Dustin and Sadura don’t.
She bows.
“Please. There’s nothing trite about this attack, nor the precision that guided it.”
“The School of the Sword rarely considers, while the School of the Blade always prepares. That fundamental difference remains your core failing.”
Dustin steps forward, hand flashing to sword hilt.
“Insult is not-”
He stops as Sadura raises a hand.
“That was observation, not insult.”
“Very good. You noted my holiday?”
She nods.
“We did. An unusual indulgence. The mellowing of age comes to us all.”
“You didn’t bother to ascertain where I went?”
I can see she’s trying to figure out what they missed.
“I spent a month on Suli Serenta.”
Which was relaxing, as well as being the optimum period for a Serenti larva to settle within me. It now shares my body, filling the ‘empty’ places inside with frogspawn-like milky nodules, and getting from me whatever a Serenti does.
Until it matures and leaves, it dies when I die – something it uses unique energy manipulation abilities to prevent. They allow it to take certain liberties with how things stick together at an atomic level. It can also sense everything within twenty metres or so, and react fast enough to reduce bullets to dust and energy beams to lightshows. Things that attract its attention only lose it when they cease to be a threat.
The popular nickname is ‘death field generation’. If it and I hadn’t been stunned by being blown up, these intruders wouldn’t have made it through the door. As is, my resident alien is no longer stunned. It’s waiting to express its displeasure.
Sadura realises. I smile. Her hand twitches towards her sword, then falls gracefully to her side as she dies. Her body topples to join those of her slain team.
Victory. Unsought, but the blade always prepares.