“Who are you to command me?” asked Merryway.

  “I am Watchful. I am the last survivor of the team that created the Benevolent Heart and Sapient Brain. With them, we performed the first Scissions. We made perfect humans, and, with them, the malforms.”

  “Don’t trust him!” whispered Thyssa.

  Merryway sounded nauseous. “You…you’re the thief. You used our holiest place all for what…an experiment? To be better than us! You let countless people die of disease, of malform attacks, of despair…all so you could be perfect!”

  “We saw a fountain that gave health, and we thought to concentrate that power in the stones.”

  Merryway scoffed. “Steal it, you mean.”

  “Yes. We stole its holy power, and told ourselves it was for the greater good. Why settle for curing disease when we could cure madness, hatred, even death itself? In our blasphemous pride, we reached for perfection, and we lost what made us human. And what we lost came to life.”

  Merryway burned with indignant rage. “Every death. Every mourning. Every ‘they’ll come back someday.’ Forty years of blood and misery, all on your hands.”

  “Yes. I have kept myself alive with the Sapient Brain all these aching years, just to fix my mistake. And prevent anyone else from making the same mistakes.”

  “Run,” whispered Thyssa. “I can distract him, but you have to run.”

  Merryway paused, considering Thyssa’s words. They turned to Watchful. “If you truly want to fix your mistake, help me restore the Goddess Fountain.”

  Watchful reached out a hand in panic. “You mustn’t!”

  Merryway sighed. “I thought as much. So that story about fixing your mistakes was rubbish.”

  “Please. You must listen to me. Both water and stone are tainted incurably. As long as that power remains, so too will the malforms. The stones must be shattered! Return tainted stone to tainted fountain, and nothing can repair the Scissions and unmake the malforms. People will remain split, scattered, fighting their own shadows.”

  “I need it to save my mother.”

  “What poisoned her?” asked Watchful. “It was a malform, was it not?”

  Merryway’s grim silence agreed.

  “The threat must be dealt with at its root. You can save her, or you can save everyone!”

  Thyssa turned to Merryway, her eyes pleading. “Merryway, you can’t! You saw how I could talk to malforms. Anyone can! We’re people, just like you!”

  Merryway’s eyes widened. “You’re a malform? But…how?”

  “It speaks the truth,” said Watchful. “It has been using the Benevolent Heart to take a human shape.”

  Thyssa bared her teeth. “And you tried to kill me for it.”

  Merryway swallowed. “So that’s why…I guess that explains a lot.”

  “I only poisoned it to take the Benevolent Heart,” said Watchful. He was facing Merryway – he only needed to convince them, not her, and she was dirt to him. “If I had broken both stones, I could have ended the malform plague then and there! But it’s still not too late. It’s weakened, now. It can’t go back to its true form. If we work together, we can overpower it and stop the malforms forever!”

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “You’ve traveled with me, helped me, trusted me,” pleaded Thyssa. “Even if we were made by evil means…we’re our own people now. He’d take that all away, reduce us to nothing more than unwanted flaws.”

  Watchful drew his sword. “I would make people whole!”

  Merryway stepped in front of Thyssa and drew Grief Chaser. “You would shatter not only my people’s health, but their souls. You would make butchers of us, and I will have no part in it.”

  Thyssa drew her own blade, the mirror shard. “You…stand by my side?”

  Merryway smiled back at her. “I have faith that, no matter how hard it seems, we can find a solution together. For now…neither of us wants the stones destroyed.”

  Thyssa nodded. “So we kill this guy.”

  Merryway pointed their sword at Watchful. “Only if he doesn’t stand down. I would not shed blood in this sacred place.”

  “So be it,” said Watchful. His ticking sped up, and he charged forward.

  “Behead him!” yelled Thyssa. “That body’s just clockwork!”

  Merryway nodded. “Right!”

  Watchful swung at Thyssa, and Merryway blocked it. He swung at Merryway, and Thyssa blocked it.

  “You can’t beat us together,” said Thyssa.

  “Why do you help this monster?” asked Watchful, facing Merryway while lunging at Thyssa.

  “Because the way you talk about her people sounds familiar,” said Merryway. “Like they talk about my people.”

  Watchful spun around and hacked at Merryway with righteous fury. “You claim to love your people, and you would scourge them with malforms!”

  Merryway parried his blows, one by one. “You took the Goddess’ blessing from us. I won’t let you take my love as well!”

  “A malform knows nothing of love,” spat Watchful. He tripped Merryway with a sharp kick. He swung down on Merryway, but Thyssa blocked it.

  “If my kind doesn’t know love,” said Thyssa, “it’s because people like you keep us from it!”

  Watchful drew back his sword, but Merryway had already rolled to the side and sprang back up.

  “You cannot defeat me,” said Watchful. “The Sapient Brain sees all of your clumsy moves and tells me just how to match them.”

  “Does it tell you how you’ll die?” asked Thyssa, her blood afire, her blade swinging wildly.

  “A machine does not die. It only serves its relentless purpose.”

  Watchful swatted the mirror shard out of Thyssa’s hand. Thyssa reached for it, but he kicked her in the chest, knocking her to the ground. He raised his sword to swing down on her.

  But he had taken his eyes off Merryway – just for a moment, but that was all they needed. In a flash, they were behind him. With all their might, they swung Grief Chaser and beheaded him. The birdlike mask fell to the temple floor.

  Yet Watchful did not die. With unnatural grace and speed, the body spun around and impaled Merryway. Watchful pulled out the sword, and Merryway fell to the ground in a dreadful spurt of their own blood.

  Thyssa screamed in anguish and fury.

  It was just her and Watchful.

  Separating the body from the head wasn’t enough. She had to separate the head from its power source. Thyssa grabbed the head, grabbed the mirror shard and ran as the body chased her. As she ran, she cut away parts of the mask until the Sapient Brain was exposed.

  But it’s hard to run and precisely cut at the same time. Her hand slipped, her gait faltered, and soon the body had her cornered. Nowhere to run. Ignoring her instincts, ignoring the headless figure raising its sword to cut her down, Thyssa focused on prising out the Sapient Brain. She jammed the mirror shard into a crack and pulled with all her might.

  Just as Watchful’s blade swang down, the mask clattered to the ground, and the Sapient Brain was there, in her hand. No longer connected to its power source, Watchful’s machine body fell limp, the sword clumsily falling to the ground.

  Thyssa rushed to Merryway’s side. Watchful had wounded them deeply; their blood flowed freely to the temple floor. They were breathing – just barely – but they didn’t move. If she didn’t do something very soon, they would die. But what? Lili had never taught her medicine.

  She gripped the Sapient Brain tightly. “Machine, goddess, body of water…whatever you were, whatever you are now, show me how to keep this one alive. You…you owe them! After all the misery you’ve caused, all the suffering, all the killing, do this one good thing, or prove everyone right about you!”

  Suddenly, Thyssa had an image in her mind. She was kneeling over Merryway’s body, the Benevolent Heart in one hand and the Sapient Brain in the other, holding both to the wound as it healed.

  Thyssa did as the vision showed – both stones to the fatal wound. The wound glowed, the bleeding slowed. The stones were all that kept them alive now. She had to focus – couldn’t falter for a moment.

  “Don’t die,” she said.

  “More blood on your hands,” came a cold voice.

  Thyssa’s heart sank. “Lili.”

  “And guests,” said Lili. She snapped her fingers, and the Stormwatch surged into the temple.