Scarlet Edge is beautiful. Everybody knows that.

  All magical girls are beautiful, of course; it seems to be a requirement for the role, as if Dream-Gods have a keen eye for clear complexion, well-balanced faces, and good posture. All magical girls are beautiful in their own ways, not merely copied and pasted from a master mould of feminine standards, human or dreamlike or otherwise. It would be too easy to see the problem if they all had pale skin and big tits and simpering smiles. But even in all their variation you can’t help but notice how perfect each girl is, whatever her country of origin, her personal physique, the colour of her skin, the depth of her curves, or lack thereof. Every magical girl is perfect, even in her imperfections — no cripples, no skin conditions, no blemishes or birthmarks. Scars sometimes, but only when they’re picturesque and fitting. Fat only when it’s sweetly carried. Bad haircuts only when they are to be outgrown. For magical girls, even flaws become fanciful.

  But Scarlet Edge is a cut above her peers. Everybody knows that too.

  The media fell in love with her at first sight, on the day she was unveiled by the previous Trio of Albion. The public profess to love her comrades no less; Azure Infinity and Dawn’s First Gloaming get no less screen time, internet gossip, and fanart, no fewer front-page spreads, fawning interviews, or television specials.

  Officially the Trio does not have a leader, but Scarlet Edge is always front and centre, most often the vanguard of a fight, regularly the speaker for all three. She’s the first the BBC turn to for a quick word after a Nightmare, though she is so economical with her speech, so unsmiling with her lips, so severe with her expressions. That’s part of why they like her; she is impossible to grasp, like a living flame, in which one can see anything one prefers.

  She’s the one they’ve put on coins and banners, though her crimson drowns out so much else. Plush dolls, cartoon series, cosplay outfits; they all get those, of course. But Scarlet Edge gets more than most. And she’s the one with the most fanart on the illegal websites, the ones you need an equally illegal VPN to visit, though she seems so beyond human touch.

  England’s flame-red rose. Our best foot forward. Our fair maiden. The hair helps. It invites comparisons with Churchill and Elizabeth the First, and foolish whispers about King Arthur returned in England’s hour of need.

  Scarlet Edge is not what I was expecting. I’ve seen her on television and the internet thousands of times. In the sky, up in the air, dozens or more.

  Distance and artificiality did her an injustice. The moving image failed to capture her beauty.

  The long flame-like hair, licking the air with tiny upcurls of phantasmal fire; the set-back shoulders, the puffed-out chest, the regal poise, the grace and balance in her legs and hips; the smooth red silk of her exposed stockings beneath the cream-white satin of her dress, gliding across her calves and knees with a rustle like quiet flames, the insides like bleeding marrow from a cracked bone. The pinched waist, the swelling bust, the chalk-and-garnet lace about her throat and upper arms. Her face, sharp and strong, a statue animated by a spark of divinity. Lips too red, the angles of her face sharp enough to slice your heart open. Eyes like rubies held against a fire; the cameras and the newspapers never catch the way those eyes glow from inside, an inferno welling up behind mortal flesh.

  Steam rises from the damp asphalt around her high heels. Her sword is already drawn, slender scabbard empty at her waist. A length of crystal the colour of dark wine, glowing with inner veins of caged fire.

  Scarlet Edge is more than beautiful.

  Only a few people know this, and it is a curse.

  She stirs something deep within me, something only Willow has stirred before.

  Her eyes travel slowly, first from me, to Nerys on my shoulder, to the blood on my prosthetic hand, to the open security door from which I have burst, and finally to the dead Section Special officer on the ground, with his face caved in and his skull burst out and his brains splattered on the damp ground.

  Scarlet Edge looks at me again; her eyes make my heart leap and flutter. She does not repeat her question.

  She stares at my right eye for just a second too long, those perfect orbits meeting my mangled scar. But my anger has fled before this fire, and whatever was inside me gutters out, overwhelmed and outranked. Why should she not stare? She is perfection, and I am a ruin, coated in the filth of my crimes. I am a cringing, unworthy, cowardly worm before the face of this divine flame.

  Nerys opens her little zoog jaws and hisses at Scarlet Edge.

  I raise my hands, shaking in surrender. My right knuckles are coated with blood. When I take a breath to speak, the air tastes hot and chewy, like distant wood-smoke from a wildfire.

  “It’s not … ” I croak, choke on my words, on the taint of smoke in the air. “This— this isn’t what it looks like.”

  Scarlet Edge raises her chin, dismisses my words.

  “It looks like you’ve killed an officer of the law,” she says. “With your bare hands.” Her eyes flicker to my prosthetic. “Or whatever you call that thing.”

  The crackle of distant flame underlines her voice. Pure Oxford, old home counties, a touch of Received Pronunciation.

  I can’t even swallow. Barely shake my head. I should be down on my knees, face on the asphalt, prostrating myself. “No— no, it’s just— just a prosthetic arm. My— my prosthetic arm. Please. Please, I’m not a Dreamer, I’m not.”

  “Dreamer or not, you are a murderer.”

  Nerys tightens her tail on my upper arm, where the prosthetic socket meets my stump. “Step off, fuck-doll!” she screeches at Scarlet Edge. “I got here in time, this one’s mine! You want her head, you’ll have to fight for it! You want me to show my face right here, huh?! You wanna fucking go?! You’ll shit your intestines out in fear, and then I’ll fucking eat them!” She ends with a loud hiss, spitting droplets of black ooze — then whispers in my ear. “Octavia, ignore her! You have to portal out! I can teach you how, but you gotta do it yourself—”

  I’m not listening to the devil on my shoulder.

  I’m hoping for salvation. It’s absurd, but I can’t help it. I grew up here, like everyone else, and I am a wilting blade of grass before England’s flame-red rose.

  “They shot me!” I say.

  Scarlet Edge raises an eyebrow. “You look distinctly unshot.” Her free hand indicates the man on the ground. “While he lies dead.”

  “Yes, yes, I know, I know. I-I healed, the— the wounds healed.” I clutch at my chest with my left hand, at the bullet holes in my jumper and shirt, at my blood still wet all down my front. “I-I don’t understand, I don’t— I didn’t ask for this— I— please, please, I just want to go— I want to go home. Please. You’re a magical girl, you’re supposed to protect us, aren’t you? I’m just … I’m nobody. A nobody.”

  Scarlet Edge raises her sword, the point toward my throat.

  “The vermin on your shoulder reveals you for what you are,” she says, then shakes her head, almost sadly. “Our faithful mouser is often too merciful. He should have killed you when he had the chance.”

  Nerys hisses at her again. “Vermin!? You can talk, reeking of cat piss and dog cock!”

  “You mean … John?” I splutter. “John Smith? Yes, yes he’s the one who shot me! You—”

  “Cease your prattle,” Scarlet Edge says. “Stay still, or I shall cut you down without mercy.”

  With mercy as bait, I bob my head. Yes, my lady, I will be a good girl, I will stay still and quiet and wait for your judgement, and please, please, please let your mercy fall upon me. I will go wherever you will, wherever you say, as long as you deign to withhold just punishment. I am before the one authority in all England that can protect me from all others, because magical girls are a law unto themselves. Surely Scarlet Edge, of all people, will see that I was the one done wrong here, that ‘John Smith’ shot me first, that I was forced to defend myself, that I am innocent.

  Bullshit. Coward. Turncoat. The thought alone makes me sick at myself. What am I doing?

  I killed two people. Hard to deny that now.

  Scarlet Edge slips a slender mobile phone from somewhere inside her dress. She keeps her eyes on me, not a flicker, not a blink. The sword is steady as iron, pointed at my throat. She puts the phone to her ear.

  Nerys whispers. “Turn and run! Octavia, run! You have to run! You’re one of my girls now, but you can’t face this overstuffed tart, not yet, not alone! Run and I’ll teach you how to leave, I can teach you how to translocate! Octavia! Octavia!”

  The policeman in my heart still clings to life. I stay where I am. I want to shut Nerys up, but I don’t have the courage for that either. What if I pull her off my shoulder and offer her to Scarlet Edge? Would that be enough submission, enough betrayal, enough proof that I’m not worth bothering with?

  But Nerys saved my life. The thought of betrayal curdles into self-disgust.

  Scarlet Edge speaks into the phone. “Nice to hear you’re alive, you old fool.” She almost smiles, too subtle to be certain. “Yes, I’ve found her, she’s outdoors. Do we want her taken back … No, no it’s not in public, but there are plenty of cameras … all right. Keep the civilians clear. I’ll handle this.”

  She lowers the phone, makes it vanish into her dress.

  “Listen, please,” I say. Draw myself up, straighten my spine, try to fix my hair. “Scarlet … Scarlet Edge. I’m a magical girl now, apparently, and I don’t entirely know what that means. I defended myself, that was all. I didn’t want to hurt anyone, it just happened, but I’m … not … I’m not … ”

  A murderer?

  Scarlet Edge considers me with pure disdain. “What you are is weak. You could have resisted. You could have said no. I hate that you’re going to make me do this.”

  Nerys sinks her sharp claws into my shoulder, through my coat, drawing blood, enough to make me flinch and hiss. “Octavia, come on, come on!” she rasps in my ear. “Run now, run, run, run! Bullets you can shrug off, but she can kill you for real! Move your feet, run!”

  Scarlet Edge pulls back her sword, changes to a two-handed grip, adjusts her footing.

  “Make this easy, on both of us,” she says. “Turn away and close your eyes, and I will take your head off in one strike. The pain will be over in an instant. You will feel nothing.”

  Nerys leans forward on my shoulder, black ichor dripping from her snout, jaws wide. “I already told you, you’re too late, you tic-ridden bag! You want her, you go through me! And I’ll gnaw out your eyeballs!”

  “Be quiet, you misplaced vermin,” says Scarlet Edge. “I will deal with you later, here or elsewhere, one way or another. Do not think we cannot find you, and we will, before your next victim.”

  “Victim?” I whisper.

  “She’s making shit up!” Nerys chitters. “You’re not my victim, you’re one of my girls, and I’m trying to get you to fucking run!”

  “Make this easy,” Scarlet Edge repeats to me. “If you make me fight, if you make this hard for me, I will make it hard for you. The more you cling to life, the more I must make you suffer. Turn away. Close your eyes.”

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  “ … I … no, I’m a nobody, I … you want to kill me?” My voice rises, I almost sound like Nerys. “But you’re a magical girl! You’re supposed to protect us.”

  “It’s the only way to deal with things like you.”

  Scarlet Edge — the poster girl, the golden girl, the crimson-and-cream wank-fodder girl, the hijacked symbol of a wounded England in an age of monsters and nightmares — is going to kill me? After all the indignities and all the humiliations of the last decade of my life? All the stares and the assumptions and the process of strapping my body back together every day, all for long ten years, and it ends in this? This insult? After her predecessors killed my parents and took away half my body and left me with this jagged mess across my face? After being right and proper and upstanding, after trying so hard to be a sensible young woman? After scraping together the dregs of my dignity and lashing them to my chest, always running out through my fingers? After resisting the urge to shove my tongue down Willow’s throat and my fingers up Willow’s cunt?

  After all that, the most beautiful, perfect, unblemished magical girl in England — or maybe in the whole world — is going to cut off my head?

  After making me feel a dull echo of the way I feel about Willow?

  And she doesn’t even want a fight?

  My lips peel back. My teeth creak. A tingle runs down my neck, my shoulders, my upper back. Breath, hot and hard and shaking, heaving like bellows. Nerys hissing in my ear, scrabbling at my shoulder, but the words don’t go in. Barely know what I’m doing. Do it anyway.

  Terror gives way, a thin shelf of ice above an ocean of crystal-clear rage.

  I raise my fists. Prosthetic to the fore.

  “Fuck you,” I spit.

  Scarlet Edge frowns, a single crease across her porcelain-perfect forehead. “I tried to give you an easy way out—”

  “I don’t want the easy way out!” I scream over her, louder than I’ve ever screamed before — louder than I screamed pinned in a shelter ten years ago. “I want to live! I want to go home! And you. You. I’ve hated you for so long. All of you. And now … ” I flex my prosthetic knuckles. Caked with blood, but it’s not dry yet, still closing just fine. My heart thunders in my chest. My veins fill with jet fuel. I start to laugh, high and wild, like I never have before. “And now I’m going to punch your head off your shoulders!”

  Scarlet Edge blinks. Twice.

  Oh the satisfaction, to see a crack in that exterior.

  I didn’t want to kill those two men, those two random Section Special officers. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I broke their skulls because they were trying to kill me, and I don’t know my own strength anymore. Heat of the moment, heat of battle, all that. They had families and lives, and I had no particular desire to end them.

  But I want to punch Scarlet Edge. Will it kill her like it killed them? Doubtful. She’s a magical girl, she can take much worse, just like I took those three bullets.

  I can wail on her to my heart’s content.

  I want to shatter that porcelain expression, smear blood and tears and snot on her oh-so-perfect cheeks, hear her cry out in pain and dismay. I want to see her weep and grovel, cheek ground into the gravel beneath my shoe. I want to see that white dress stained and filthy with asphalt grit and mud and rainwater. I want to ruin her.

  Scarlet Edge takes a deep breath. Her hair brightens, colour deepening, the sky and the concrete behind washed out by her intensity. Heat-haze outline shimmers at her edges. The asphalt starts to dry in a wide circle around her feet. Her light forces me to squint, she’s so bright.

  “Remember,” she says, voice like a flame. “When I have gutted you like a pig. Remember that you wanted it this way. You made me do this.”

  She charges.

  Scarlet Edge comes at me faster than I thought possible, a blur of flame and bleached bone and bubbling blood. Her ruby sword flashes out to one side in a whirling strike, so fast it turns to a crimson smear, roaring with superheated air.

  I’ve made a terrible mistake.

  I scream, scramble back, stumble over my own feet, almost fall down on my arse, because nobody has ever rushed at me before, let alone a super-human shard of the dreamlike and divine, faster than the human eye can follow. Scarlet Edge is not human, has not been human since childhood, and my body knows on a deep, instinctive, gut-and-bone level that she is going to kill me, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

  The stumble buys me half a second. Her sword cuts a figure-of-eight flourish inches from my face, ruby tip blazing with inner fire, reeking of burning air. She didn’t expect the dodge; her eyes twitch with surprise, and her sword follows through with no meat to cut or flesh to burn.

  Nerys is screeching and scrabbling at my shoulder, beseeching me to flee; I’m still not listening, because the anger’s still in me.

  I use the momentum of the stumble, though I have no idea what I’m doing.

  Pull back my right arm, gather my muscles, while Scarlet’s blade is still coming back around.

  Full body weight behind my right fist, on purpose this time. My prosthetic arm, a lightweight collection of carbon fibre and foam filling and wire and motors. But it feels like a pneumatic piston. It’s not my arm anymore, it’s the hammer of the gods, roaring inside my head.

  I’ve caught Scarlet Edge off-guard. My fist connects with the flat of her sword, smashes it aside with a clang like a cracked bell, almost tears it from her grip.

  My punch lands square in her gut. My knuckles sink into dress, skin, flesh, organs.

  Scarlet Edge reels.

  Her eyes fly wide; her mouth jerks open, spittle flying, a strangled grunt as I slam the air from her lungs. She totters back on her high heels, putting distance between us. She stumbles to a halt, half-hunched, one hand on her gut, one hand on her sword. Perfect porcelain face creased with pain, eyes squinted with hate. Breathing hard, then a cough, an actual wheeze from that swanlike throat. Hair in disarray, flames flickering and guttering. Bloodstain on the stomach of her white dress, the imprint of my knuckles over her belly.

  I have not punched a hole through her, not like I did with the Section Special officers. She is a magical girl, after all.

  I’m shaking, sweating, breathing like a bellows, my head full of blood, my skin on fire. My mind is a crucible. My fist is a cannon.

  This is the best moment of my life.

  No, that’s insulting. The best moments of my life were all about Willow: tucked up together, hiding beneath the sheets, her hand in mine, her face so close; her eyes when I showed her the way I put my leg on, her curious questions, her pure lack of judgement; watching the way she puts her hair into a ponytail, and lets it down again, and then lets me at it with a brush until it’s silky smooth; her face, smiling just to see me; her lips against—

  But I’m laughing through clenched teeth. I’m here and alive and there’s blood on my fist. My chin is held high, I can’t stop grinning, and Scarlet Edge is ready to beg.

  “I’m going to hit you again,” I say through the laughter. My voice doesn’t sound like me, low and rough and raw. “And again, and again, and—”

  A lash of yellow lighting and a bolt of royal blue fall from the sky, comets streaking from the firmament, to land either side of Scarlet Edge. Suddenly she no longer faces me alone.

  Azure Infinity and Dawn’s First Gloaming, the other two thirds of the Trio of Albion.

  They are no less beautiful than Scarlet, no easier to witness up close and personal.

  Azure is dressed like a fairytale knight, in skirts of blue steel, slender gauntlets on her arms, throat cupped by a matching gorget, her chest-piece bright like the depths of a sapphire nebula. A long blonde ponytail reaches to her waist, flickering with a cerulean aura, as if she carries a clear sky always at her back. She is the smallest of the trio, perhaps a year or two younger than the others, younger than me, but she carries her massive warhammer like it’s made of paper. Her frown is deep and serious, the sea in a storm.

  Dawn is all sunshine frills and gleaming layers and elegant loops of brilliant ribbon, a yellow dress festooned with bandoleers and pockets, short skirt showing off her bare legs. Her hair clings to her skull in perfect braided zigzags; her dark skin glows with captured sunlight, as if she always stands before the sun’s first moments. She has a brace of flintlock pistols belted around her waist, but they don’t need powder and shot. Her arquebus is cocked against one hip, not aimed at me. She’s taller than Scarlet, less stiff than Azure, green eyes twinkling above a quiet smirk.

  Both of them stare right at me.

  “Scarlet!” Azure shouts. “She get you? You cool? You good? Scar’?”

  Dawn purrs. “Ohhhh, I think I like this one. Just look at her, not even a flinch. She landed a punch on you from a standing start, Edge? Either you’re getting sloppy or she’s special. I wonder if she could punch a bullet out of the air.”

  Scarlet Edge straightens up, rolls her shoulders back, raises her sword. “I’m fine,” she snaps. “I don’t need your help. Either of you.”

  Azure tuts and hisses, hefting her warhammer. “All together, Scarlet! We all go together, or not at all. Right?! And we saw her right hook! This isn’t just some shitty Dreamer!”

  Dawn levels her rifle at my face, lazy and slow, hands stroking the bronze trigger mechanism. “Think I should give it a shot? She really might be fast enough to catch the round, and that would be a sight to see, ladies. Care to wager? A hundred pound that she tries, another hundred that she stops the round, a third hundred that it breaks her mechanical hand clean off. Azzy, you in?”

  Azure pulls a face. “What? Dawn, shut up, no.”

  “Too bad. Edge?”

  Scarlet places the flat of her sword against the barrel of Dawn’s musket and forces her to point it elsewhere.

  “She’s mine,” Scarlet says.

  Punching a lone magical girl in the gut was one thing — implausible, possible, wild. But the prospect of fighting the whole Trio sobers me up fast. The rage-high dribbles away.

  “She … she attacked me first!” I say, speaking to Azure and Dawn. “She told me she was going to kill me! And they—” I gesture at the corpse on the ground “—they were going to kill me too! They tried to shoot me! You two … you two aren’t just going to let this happen, are you? I don’t even understand what’s going on here! I don’t understand why … why … ”

  But I do understand why. Dream Control, Section Special, the Trio of Albion, and every other magical girl in England, they all want me dead, even if they don’t know who I am yet. Because there’s a Dream-Goddess on my shoulder and her contract is lodged in my soul. Because I am now the enemy.

  Azure softens her frown. “Octavia, right? You’re Octavia, aren’t you? We’re … we’re sorry, yeah? Sorry this has to happen.”

  “You know my name? Please, I’m just a normal girl, a normal woman. Please!”

  Azure lowers her warhammer and looks away, eyes full of regret.

  “Don’t, Azzy,” says Dawn. “Just makes it harder.”

  “But … but like, we just … she’s not … ”

  Scarlet Edge snorts. “She’s defective. A weakling who gave in. Forget what you heard. Look at what stands in front of you.”

  “Defective?!” I shout. The anger floods back. “I am not a weakling! I’ve done what I had to survive, and you, you … you’ve never had to even try!”

  Nerys leans forward on my shoulder. “All three of you rancid dog-cock-holsters can fuck off before I gnaw out your guts!”

  “See?” Scarlet says. “The vermin makes itself known. There is no other path open to us. But, my sisters, I will shoulder this burden in your place.”

  Dawn puts up her rifle. Cracks a smile at me. “Sorry, girl. Guess it’s just not your day.”

  Scarlet Edge raises her sword again.

  “No!” I shout. “Wait! I didn’t mean—”

  She explodes toward me, a tongue of flame from the mouth of hell, roaring through the air like a backdraft from a burning building. Her sword whirls out to one side again, blurring so fast it hurts my eyes, inner veins pulsing with molten ruby.

  I yank back another punch, but I barely know what I’m doing, all the clarity of my anger is so muddied now.

  And Scarlet Edge has experience. She’s seen the one trick I had.

  Her charge burns the air, the sky, the earth; I try to roar, but it comes out strangled. I loose my punch, all my body weight behind my prosthetic fist — but this time Scarlet flows around the blow like flames around a tree branch. The tip of her sword catches the carbon fibre case of my forearm, tilts my strike, ruins my aim. My knuckles connect with loose dress, then tear through, into thin air.

  Her ruby sword penetrates me low in the gut. Slices through skin and fat and muscle, cauterizing as it goes, ripping upward through meat and organs. The stench of my own burning flesh chokes me; I feel the blade as it punctures my diaphragm and collapses my lungs, scrapes against my spine, and punches out through my upper back.

  She runs me all the way through, tip to hilt. Scarlet’s fists are against my belly, my blood slick on her knuckles.

  White hot fire rends my insides, every nerve screaming, a cold flame eating at my core. I can’t breathe, can’t speak, can’t even splutter, because I’m drowning in a wave of my own blood, bubbling up and out of my mouth, dark as wine. It is the worst pain I have ever felt. Every inch of my skin is frozen with sweat. Meat inside me, grinding against the blade, like nails down a chalkboard magnified a thousand times. This is nothing like the bullets, nothing like being shot. This is death by burning and I am dying.

  Scarlet Edge fills my world, right in my face, our eyes inches apart. Her porcelain perfection is gone.

  She’s panting and flushed, lips parted and quivering.

  She twists the sword. I try to scream, but there’s too much blood in my lungs and throat. Scarlet Edge whimpers with pleasure.

  Azure shouts, “Just finish her! Scarl’, this is fucked! Put her down!”

  “Yeah,” Dawn sighs. “Bit much, isn’t it?”

  Scarlet Edge takes one hand off her blade and gropes at my right shoulder. At first I think she’s trying to get leverage to twist me on the sword again, or trying to rip my prosthetic arm off the stump, just to humiliate me in my final moments. But she hisses and winces, then whips back her hand, bleeding and bitten.

  “Vermin—” she spits.

  She’s trying to get at Nerys. The only person — well, entity — which has treated me as more than meat in the last six hours. My dubious salvation, my strange little friend, my fake zoog. My Dream-Goddess.

  Nerys is hissing and biting, claws dug in so hard she’s tearing up the skin on my shoulder. She won’t let me go, won’t let them take me. And I won’t let them take her.

  I can barely move, pinned on the sword, so I do the only thing left to me.

  I dart my head forward, mash my lips against Scarlet’s mouth.

  And bite down.

  A kiss unworthy of the name. A split-second of velvet lips, hot as a banked fire, the taste of flame and wine and tears. And then it’s all blood and teeth and Scarlet’s muffled scream.

  She rips herself away, reeling back, grip slackened for a second. Blood sprays from my mouth, all over Scarlet’s pretty face.

  With strength that I shouldn’t have, I haul myself off the sword with a wet sucking sound. Feel it in my innards, crystal sliding loose, organs trying to follow. A torrent of blood spills from my belly and doesn’t stop, flowing out onto the asphalt, flowing up my throat, choking and burning, drowning me in my own life.

  But I’m off the sword and staggering away. Scarlet is screaming, wiping my blood out of her eyes, spluttering broken words. And Nerys is still on my shoulder.

  Azure and Dawn are shouting, all jumbled up through the pounding in my ears — “Scarl’, fuck, she’s getting—”, “Mouser’s not going to like this,” “—the pretender, she’s gonna flee—”

  I turn away, try to run, legs won’t work, either flesh or prosthetic. Try to hold my guts in, but there’s so much blood pouring through my fingers, and it’s not stopping, not slowing, not like the bullet wounds. The hole in me is not slicking shut.

  Heavy footsteps rush across the asphalt. A woosh of displaced air — Azure’s warhammer rising in both her hands, right behind me. The click-clack-clock of something that only pretends to be an antique musket, the slippery metal slide of rounds slotted into place by quick and practised hands.

  The Trio of Albion, preparing to take down another newborn Dreamer.

  Nerys hisses, right in my ear. “Right then, I’ll portal for both of us! No apologies for the destination!”

  The world opens a mouth of purple darkness.

  And swallows me whole.

  break week. For those of you who've read my other stories, you know how I handle this. For those who are new, here's how it works: Maidens of the Fall will be published 3 Saturdays in a row, and then take a week out, and then publish for another 3 Saturdays, and so on. 'Break week' is perhaps a bit of a misnomer; the story takes a break, but I use that time to write further ahead, outline and plan, and (hopefully) keep a healthy buffer for emergencies. However, Maidens is going so well behind the scenes that I might revisit this over the next few months, maybe publish bonus chapters out of schedule. Not sure yet, we'll see! If you want to check if the story is on a break week, I will always keep up-to-date.

  a regular zoog! (by Cera!) I was so delighted by this, it made me squeal. I suspect we're going to be seeing quite a few zoogs in the story.

  System Lost, by DarkTechnomancer, is a rather unique isekai story, by the author of Fates Parallel (which I think I shouted out several years ago now!) I don't often shout-out litRPGs, but DT's a real good writer and does some very fun things with characters. If you're looking for something right away, and litRPG is your kinda thing, go take a look, you might like it! I sure did.

  Maidens right away, you can: