Back in Megacity Gamma, especially the more desolate sectors, even a smalltime subsector lord could muster hundreds of borged out bodies hopped up on half a dozen stimulants, not even in an attempt to kill her per se, just to inconvenience her, just to try and annoy her into leaving him to his cartelpilled favelamaxxing in peace. Life in Megacity Gamma could truly be that cheap. And oftentimes, Krahe did leave, because oftentimes, the price of the bullets and self-maintenance by far eclipsed the importance of whatever reason she had to be in that particular subsector. In fact, reminiscing on it now, it had been at least three different times that she had tried to set up shop or get access to the industrial chutes in Subsector 5J only to have a horde of junkies annoy her into leaving. Each time, she made the attempt because a new subsector lord had taken over, yet it seemed, despite the violent takeovers, they passed down guidelines on how to bother her the most effectively like some kind of ritual secret for expeling a demon. She of course inevitably bit the bullet and spent the money to blow Third’s compound to high heaven, and finally got to dig up the old datacore she had been looking for to begin with in peace. All that, on and off over the course of a year and a half, nearly a thousand dead, just to get the location of one of the critical parts for the Blackhands. That wasn’t an exaggerated one-off, it was one episode amongst countless others throughout some twenty-five years. Frankly Krahe didn’t remember how old she was when Oasis got nuked, and she had lost count of her own age soon after she had Moravec transferred herself. It hadn’t gone exactly right, but all things considered, it was remarkable how little memory loss her ad-hoc version of that fantastically complex procedure had caused.

  Even more “legitimate” outfits weren’t that different in how they approached the problem of Krahe’s continued existence as a bramble digging into Whitestone’s foundation. When it came down to the immediate threat of getting fried into an tumor-matryoshka full of electronic waste, executives threw entire security companies at her with about as much consideration as one would give to the bullets in your gun or the bomb drones in your hangar. The commanders of those companies expended their squads in the same manner, just as the captains of those squads did their subordinates, and so on.

  In short, Krahe’s path up until this point wasn’t strewn with bones as much as it was paved with them. Everything since her rebirth had been a break, all things considered. Well, perhaps not the raids on the Old Street Butchershop, Slaugherhouse 9, or Mirzaii 2, those were returns to form, so to speak.

  When it came to all the killing… The killing itself was not difficult to accept. To say that it weighed on Krahe’s mind would be a lie. It was more a matter of considering it in terms of how it played into who she was. An examination of doubts, so to speak. Why? Why all the killing? What was the purpose? So many had burned. So many would burn. And in their absence, those they would have victimized would once more be able to grow, and the ashes of these wretched beasts would serve to feed the earth. Krahe’s mountain of corpses would come to be a garden of cinders.

  No magical, spontaneous breakthrough took place, wherein the fifth control rod formed of its own volition. Krahe could feel that the stage had been set, but actually dredging up the maxim and giving it permanent form within her Soul Furnace was another matter. Hoping that entering the right headspace wouldn’t require an elaborate ritual, she leaned forward atop her steed, resting her chin atop its head. Looking down upon Jas’raba, she projected the mental image of her Soul Furnace onto the city, picturing that the corpse-mountain had been replaced with the Atomica as the central obelisk, with the rim of the pit being the furnace’s equator, around which her four control rods and the two empty spaces were arrayed. At first, it was a matter of actual imagination, no different from overlaying any other mental image onto your field of view, but as she pulled Thauma into her actual Soul Furnace, the Atomica’s gigantic obelisk form came alive and the mental image solidified. In every way that mattered, besides the risk of falling in, she was no longer at the edge of Jas’raba. Rocinante now stood atop the first control rod, that of Will to Might.

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  She had, in some way, expected it to be easier than before, that perhaps her previous bottleneck of four control rods may have been in part due to exhausting some intangible mental energy resource. This proved to have been true, though only partly. The sheer volume of Thauma it took to do this unassisted was astronomical, eclipsing even the cost of forming Trinity Composite wards from scratch. And so, bit by bit, as if she were pulling the sarcophagus of some lost king from the bottom of the sea with her bare hands, Krahe forced the mental image and ideal of the Garden of Cinders into a concrete form. Yet, despite the difficulty, the toil, the sum total effort expended, she never at any point doubted that she would complete the endeavor — the ordeal was nothing more or less than the proof of her conviction to that maxim.

  ASTRAL IMPLOSION FURNACE

  FIFTH CONTROL ROD COMPLETE

  GARDEN OF CINDERS

  And at last, it came down to the final missing piece. It wasn’t a sudden bolt of enlightenment, or a momentous realization, but a gradual buildup. Not since the raid, but even before then, even before her first death. The first seed of it had been an insult, an offhanded remark — the very man who had killed her had once said she was “Don Quixote charging at windmills.” Despite this, he had joined her crusade and persisted upon the path until an irresistible force had pushed him to act. The sole reason Krahe didn’t regret that her body killed that man was the knowledge that Whitestone would’ve disposed of him in far more gruesome fashion.

  The struggle had been her life. That seemingly impossible goal, yet one she had come so close to fulfilling.

  And now, she didn’t know how to do anything else. Even if she was on the ground, putting the screws to gangsters and hunting down serial killers, it was all part of one greater whole, part of a greater crusade whose goal was to unearth and slaughter the most monumental evils this world could offer.

  All this killing, all these scars, the injuries and surgery, the bitterly fought-for strength clutched tightly in her hand.

  It was all for this. Whether alone or with allies at her back, this was Krahe’s life. This quixotic crusade. This majestic struggle.

  ASTRAL IMPLOSION FURNACE

  SIXTH CONTROL ROD COMPLETE

  THE MAJESTIC STRUGGLE

  Finally, it was done.

  Both the Implosion Furnace, and the poem. It had indelibly etched itself into Krahe’s memory. She was somehow certain that she couldn’t forget it even if she tried.

  Forging my will into a blazing blade,

  I slaughter evil’s brood without reprieve

  Drenched by ichor and bearing countless scars,

  I rest among the flowers in a garden of cinders,

  and think of my long-lost home

  I take up the blade,

  and set off to stake my life once more,

  all that I am, I give for this majestic struggle

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