Evelithria blinked.

  She felt unnaturally exhausted. Was the local dimension really draining her this much?

  "You subjugated our world," Archer's yellow-violet eyes stared at the Admiral filled with pure hatred. "But your fucking agents didn’t get her yet."

  "Good for her. Now put down the arbalest—"

  "You keep saying that she’ll be here too." Archer's voice cracked. "Claimed. Bound. Trapped forever like me. Serving you."

  Evelithria's eyes narrowed.

  Had she said that? Probably. It sounded like something she'd say. Many talented prads from dominated worlds eventually ended up in the Third Fleet as servants.

  "Even if I did," she said, buying time for the Seeker to help and for her wounds to heal, "shooting me won't stop the expansion. The Agents of our Empire will continue the harvest. Your little tantrum accomplishes nothing. If you shoot me, I’ll just get reincarnated. Put. Down. The weapon."

  "I know," Archer said. The kobold smiled. It was a wet, grotesque smile around the metal bug eating his face. "But at least I’ll… give her a chance."

  “A chance for what, idiot?!” Evelithria's claws extended. “This little rebellion of yours accomplished nothing! I order you to put the weapon down!”

  “Agent Langalirri Frontenachii… deceived me, sold me a lie.” The centipede’s red eyes pulsed brighter, and Archer's body shuddered. "I was promised things which you never gave me. The blood contract is screaming at me to stop, yes,” the cheetal bubbled. “To kneel. To obey. But there's less of me every second. Less for it to hold onto. And soon..."

  "HOSTILE… ACTION… IMMINENT," the Seeker drawled like a half-dead snail. "INITIATING… COUNTER—"

  “This is my vengeance,” Archer breathed out. "Goodbye, Admiral."

  He pulled the trigger.

  The Admiral tried to avoid the arrow, leapt to the side, but the cursed bolt targeted her heart, veering in the air. The bolt struck Evelithria in the center of her chest, pinning her to the wall like a butterfly.

  Green fire exploded through her body. The cursed metal bolt overwhelmed her Wendigo regeneration like an avalanche burying a candle. The poison spread through her veins, burning, consuming, destroying living cells.

  The Seeker's railgun finally responded, unfolding from a wall. A single shot obliterated Archer Silvertail's head and the dungeon centipede in a spray of bone, brain, and corrupted metal.

  Evelithria collapsed against the crystalline red wall, violet blood pooling beneath her naked body. The green curse-fire continued to burn through her, preventing regeneration.

  Around her, the torn bodies of her dead kobolds lay scattered. She didn't spare them a thought.

  They were replaceable and would be reborn. She had a thousand more kobolds on her Slayer’s Sword that would serve her once this crisis was dealt with.

  The green fire reached her spine.

  Her last thoughts held no regrets.

  Kobolds occasionally rebelled on colony worlds. It was a natural process. The Corpse Seekers responded and the rebellion leaders were spliced into walls and life went on.

  They’re all going to PAY for this when I return, she thought as her brain caught fire from within.

  . . .

  Evelithria's soul tore free from her dead body.

  She fell through darkness that wasn't darkness, through void that wasn't void, toward a light that promised nothing good.

  She once again saw the accursed Wheel of Death. It had been a very long time since she died.

  Thousands, millions, trillions of souls ignited one by one all around her, spiraling in an endless tunnel that stretched toward the all-devouring funnel.

  Arxtruria. The Wheel.

  The tunnel pulled at her. She could feel herself being drawn in, becoming part of the vile spiral, the edges of her identity wobbling.

  I am Admiral Evelithria Frontenachii, she screamed into the void. I am a daughter of the Aegis! I do NOT get recycled like common garbage! I am IMPORTANT!

  The Lazarus bracelet held her soul in its embrace, not allowing her to plummet into the infinite, all grinding wheel.

  She hung there, suspended between death and rebirth, watching the other souls spiral past her. Some of them screamed. Some of them laughed. Some of them had already forgotten who they were, their identities dissolving into the cosmic soup of the Astral abyss.

  How long? she wondered. How long until they pull me back?

  How DARE they make me wait!

  Time didn't work in the Astral. A second stretched into a century. A heartbeat contained millennia. She watched souls spiral past—countless billions of them, the endless dead of all adjacent dimensions flowing toward the same inevitable destination.

  She suddenly saw faces she recognized. The spliced criminals, disobedient leaders from her ship's walls.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  What? No. This was impossible! How could they have gotten free? The wheel was screwing with her! It was an illusion, a trick, a lie! A hallucination of the abyss, reflecting her mind back at her, clawing at the edges of her soul.

  One of them laughed madly at her as it passed, recognizing her.

  An eternity passed.

  Another eternity.

  The rage kept her sharp, kept her focused even as the tunnel's light pulsed with hungry, endless patience.

  Pull me back, she commanded. Pull me back NOW, you infernal idiots! I have vengeance to enact! I have kobolds to punish for their insolence. I have a niece to torture. I have a primitive Emperor to flay alive and turn into a conversation piece.

  PULL ME BACK!

  Another eternity passed.

  And then...

  There was light.

  The Leviathan blood of the Incarnation Well filled her lungs.

  Evelithria's consciousness clawed its way back into existence through layers of disorientation, a new body forming around her soul like crystallizing ice.

  Someone grabbed her hand and pulled.

  She emerged into the air gasping, coughing, spitting silver blood of the Leviathan onto white bone tiles.

  Hexasuit-wrapped Wendigo arms set her on the cold floor, drying her off with a towel. The tiles were of the wrong color, the wrong texture, the wrong… everything.

  "Legate Evelithria." Evelithria distantly recognized Commander Sillicia's voice.

  "What did you just call me?" Evelithria croaked, spitting more silver fluid out.

  Sillicia didn’t reply.

  “Where the Abyss am I?” the Admiral demanded, her mind waking up from its dive into the embrace of oblivion. “This isn’t the... Incarnation temple.”

  "The Abyssal Sorrow. My warship." Sillicia's face finally swam into focus. "My personal Incarnator. I recovered your Lazarus bracelet from your Seeker. You've been dead for approximately three hours."

  "Three hours?!" Evelithria struggled to sit up. "Why wasn't I resurrected immediately?"

  “We’ve had… problems to deal with first,” Sillicia sighed.

  “What problems?!"

  "Incarnation facilities across the fleet were overwhelmed with casualties." Sillicia stepped back. "You were prioritized as quickly as possible given the circumstances."

  "Given the... I am the ADMIRAL! I should have been FIRST!"

  "Everyone is waiting for you in the command chamber." Sillicia's tired expression didn't change. "The Legates have been in session for a while now. They'll explain the… current situation."

  Something in the Commander's tone made Evelithria pause. "What happened to my ship? Is the hoard salvageable? Tell me the dimensional anchors held and we can gate in a recovery team."

  Sillicia met her gaze without flinching.

  “Commander!” the Admiral growled.

  The young Commander handed the Admiral a folded hexasuit and a ring. Evelithria snapped the hexagon to her chest and watched as a hexasuit flowered around her body. Then she pulled on the offered V-ring.

  "The capital ship is gone. Crashed into the moon." Sillicia finally answered. "The hoard is not accessible. The crash site is dimensionally sheared. Covered in Astral Fountain contamination blooming from the shear. Nothing is salvageable."

  Evelithria felt something inside her crack.

  "NOTHING?! No. It… cannot be… My hoard," she uttered, refusing to believe the Commander’s words. "The temple. The Entertainment Deck. The trophies. The artifacts. The—"

  "Gone," Sillicia confirmed. "All of it is gone forever."

  The Admiral tried to grab the Commander’s thoughts with her hooks.

  She found a terrible view of the moon there, one her mind simply refused to process.

  . . .

  Sillicia led the swaying, distraught Admiral across the smaller warship.

  The meeting chamber of the Abyssal Sorrow was mundane in its décor compared to the Slayer's Sword's grandeur. A circular table dominated the space, surrounded by chairs and projection alcoves that displayed the holographic forms of Legates from across the Third Fleet.

  Not all of them were holograms.

  Legate Ixthia Frontenachii sat at the head of the table in the flesh, radiating cold authority. Beside her, also physically present, sat Legates Vethisa and Obliss. Their expressions were haggard, exhausted; the look of Wendigos who spent the past several hours managing an utter catastrophe.

  "Where are Legates Theraxia, Vindarria, and Krussha?" Evelithria asked as she entered, noting the empty seats of her trusted supporters.

  "Reincarnating," Ixthia said simply. "They were murdered during the evacuation."

  "Murdered?" Evelithria's eyes widened.

  Murdered… just like she was murdered.

  "Murdered by dungeon artifacts wielded by their own kobolds." Vethisa's voice radiated barely contained fury. "Many Legates and Commanders were killed. Over two hundred pradavarians turned against us today."

  "We need to…" Evelithria ground out. "Make an example. Show them what happens when—"

  "We will," Obliss interrupted. "It was a well-coordinated suicide attack. Every perpetrator is currently being reincarnated under maximum security protocols and being placed under arrest in kobold quarters."

  "In kobold quarters?" Evelithria's voice rose. "They murdered us and you're giving them HOUSE ARREST? We should be…”

  "Once again, ALL kobolds, except for a select few, have been separated and confined to individual quarters in small groups pending our investigation," Ixthia stated, glaring at the Admiral. "Every warship is being scanned by Corpse Seekers and gun units for concealed dungeon artifacts. Half of Weapon-Net is still down and lagging so the process is slower than we’d like it to be. The Datamancers are busy sealing the deep fold breaches and containing the released memetics.”

  In the shadows at the chamber's edge, Evelithria noticed someone... Keeper Morrígan stood there, bandaged face turned toward the gathering with unsettling stillness. And beside her, held by her bony, bandaged hand, was none other than…

  Archer Silvertail.

  The gray cheetah wore a simple, baggy, gray, cloth shipsuit.

  “There you are, you little bastard—” the Admiral hissed.

  The kobold stared back at her with violet-gold eyes.

  He wasn’t afraid of her. Why wasn’t her kobold afraid of her?! Why in the Abyss was he reincarnated before she was?

  She spun to look at Ixthia. The Wendigo Legate radiated irritation and… smugness? Superiority?! What in Slayer’s name was going on here?!

  "Archer Silvertail has been reincarnated and reassigned to my household," Ixthia said. "He provided extensive testimony regarding the kobold rebellion."

  “Reassigned?! Why?!” Evelithria began, head spinning. She looked across the stern, weary faces of the gathered Legates, finding no support there.

  “Archie worked on the Entertainment Deck of the Slayer's Sword,” Ixthia pointed out. “Considering how there is no longer an Entertainment Deck… he’s no longer employed in that particular sector. Now, Datamancer Kipriss, if you would.”

  The nervous-looking crow snapped her claws, and a holographic projection of Archer appeared above the meeting table.

  "I was one of many who wanted to resist you," the recorded Archer revealed to a Wendigo interrogator. "We couldn't fight back directly, the blood contracts prevented it. So we found another way."

  "Who organized this?" the interrogator demanded.

  "Everyone who was fed up with things. We talked on the Entertainment Deck, deep in the dungeon where there were no recording devices. We planned. We found dungeon-runners who could provide the artifacts. And we waited."

  "Waited for what?"

  “To die often enough,” Archer answered.

  “Why?” the interrogator asked.