“Blood of angels.” Aetha’al’ain opened a small case, taking a vial and handing the case off to her huntmasters. When she drank of the blood, she felt ancient magic surge inside of her. She charged the shattered window and leapt from it, falling for a time toward the palatial promenade. Buildings and streets of polished white marble shone with glass in the sanguine sunset, bridges connecting the hundred isles of the archipelago they called the Golden Reef. Its bright earth, generously veined with gleaming pyrite beneath soil of ochre and amber, overgrown with beige grasses, sun-hued lilies, and flowering alders with yellow leaves, shone brightly above the world’s bluest sea.

Magic burst from Aetha’s back, phantasmal wings resembling those of the angels whose blood she jealously kept. The wings spread on their own, slowing her fall, and then the angelic instincts sank into her body and she flapped them for flight. Aetha caught her momentum and soared over the city’s towers, watching the movement of the golden guards on the walls. Her wings started out glowing with holy magic, but quickly faded to dark red to suit her.

The queen’s huntmasters had never partaken of angel blood before. It took them a moment to join her. When they did, it was with confidence and grim seriousness. Master Kan’al’oth flew to Aetha’s left, a somber old sanguinate who had never once asked for a share of high-quality blood yet clearly drank his fill on a regular basis, hunting prey by his own hands no doubt. He was stout, thickly-bearded, and heavy-muscled, a breed of anthral with natural claws on his hands and a crown of spikes just below his hairline. His ephemeral wings shone as red as Aetha’s own. “The guard’s tracking your beast through the middle of the city. It’s not fighting anyone, just fleeing. I’ve commanded fifty guards at each gate, and the rest are spreading out in case it can scale the walls.”

Master Quil’al’nex flew to Aetha’s right, a narrow-faced sanguinate that had lived on animal blood by choice long before the plagues made it a necessity, his body long since adapted and changed. He was ghostly gray, bored features raven sharp and voice quiet. “Some few peasants took up arms against it, but the beast knocked them aside oh so gently. Strange behavior for a monster.”

“It sought my death readily enough,” Aetha said to them. “Going through the middle of the city? To what end?”

Kan said, “Either to a refuge we can’t predict or one of the north gates.”

“Command all gates closed but that of the two gates near the Parro Strait Bridge. Have the guards chase it into that passage and close both gates to trap it. I’ll be there.”

Quil said, “You want to be trapped alone with the beast, my queen?”

“Obviously.” At the sound of a gunshot, Aetha lifted her head and rolled in her flight to look at the city. She saw a plume of gunpowder smoke on a watch tower above the park district. “And tell your men to put their rifles away. I want it alive!” Aetha flapped hard, then dove toward the tower she’d spotted. She banked beneath the seven city-spanning arches of marble , around the ever-turning tower of spiraling gold awash with water from the fountain atop, and between the boughs of great trees flowering with petals that glowed like the sun. When she arrived at the watch tower, she grabbed the rifle and wrist of the guard that had fired, pulled him from the tower and dropped him to the streets below.

She kept the rifle – polished ivory plated with pyrite, a black bayonet as long as the barrel – and sheathed her sword.

“My queen!” Kan bellowed from above, “Your quarry flees west!”

Aetha spun in the air, listening to shouts from the golden guards along the walls. She hissed to herself, “Idiots. It’s going the wrong way.” She flew west, past the parks, over the stone towers the people of the Reef dwelled inside, over aqueducts that fed water to every part of the city. She flew toward steam and the smell of fire and coal, toward the wide-open wooden buildings where workers refined metal and wove textiles.

The beastly woman burst through the grated wall of a foundry, trailing steam and leaving terrified shouts behind her. She moved like a predator, hitting the ground for just a moment before bounding to a stone pillar, leaping off it to the roof of another building, and dropping into an open square beyond. Her heavy boots cracked the paving stone.

A foundry worker, a thinly weathered man dressed in faded rags woven from yellow grass, squared off against the beast, holding an iron rod as though it were a halberd. “Not my forge, beast! Not mine!”

“Out of the way, peasant!” Aetha dove into the square, swinging her rifle to knock the worker aside and carelessly tearing the bayonet through his abdomen. She didn’t even notice, except to shake his bloody body off the weapon so she could point it at the beastly woman in front of her. Snarling, “Flee, animal!” she fired a shot that glanced off the woman’s red helm.

With a snarl, the beastly woman lifted her left hand and the strange red machete appeared as though it had been hanging invisibly nearby. Then she leapt at Aetha.

The queen smiled, laughing, “The beast dares!” as she used her angelic wings to bolt swiftly to a side, flying a half-circle around the square. The beastly woman’s momentum took her into a nearby building, slamming through a wall to enter, bursting from another to exit. She chased after Aetha as the queen flew circles. Banking onto a street, Aetha said, “If I’d known it was as simple as an invitation!” and led her pursuer north through the city.

When they came near the northern wall, a huge gate awaited them. The gate was open, its polished silver teeth just barely visible at the top of the arcing entryway. There was a twenty-meter tunnel to another gate, the bridge beyond leading away from the city and to the archipelago’s northern isles. Aetha flew into the tunnel and there stopped, flapping just enough to hover with sunset at her back while she waited. “Was this not your direction, beast?”

Only a moment later, the beastly woman leapt from the city, landing in the tunnel beneath Aetha. And, as Aetha had commanded, the gates on both sides fell fast into place.

Aetha smiled down at the creature. “Here, beast, I gift you a fair chance to defeat the hunter queen of the Golden Reef. Fail, and you will be mine.” She broke the rifle she carried across her knee and dropped the two halves in front of the red-scaled woman. Aetha drew her obsidian sword, magic crackling along its length.