Jackknife paths and recoil slopes extend and retract, vector-walls forming and reforming to bring the combatants now tantalizing close, now infuriating apart. The arena moves with a predator’s intelligence, its heuristic array as much participant as battlefield. The ground stinks of sweat and hemorrhage; neither waveform ceiling nor parabolic tiles have ever been cleaned. The stains are mortality, the weapon fragments a reminder: nothing lasts, nothing is forever. Not even, perhaps, an eternal prison sentence. Jingfei, and Jingfei. Two shadows of equal height, equal might, similar mass. Their weapons too are twins: swords sculpted from the leavings of the fortress itself, shed shells from velocity shadows and sloughed nacre from iteration cycles. Over the lifetimes that have layered on top of another and condensed into an unbreakable edge—sediment to diamond—Jingfei of Moth River has acquired many skills, though she chooses to neither use nor craft firearms. They are too fast, finish disputes too soon.
What do You think about And The Burned Moths Remain?
