Tales of the Unquiet Gods by David Pascoe

auric glory etched lines deep on her opponent's face, and Anne felt drawn-wire tight ligaments stretch past their limits and tear. Pallid lips skinned back from its ebony snarl. A series of detonations as it ground its teeth to breaking announced to their tiny world that these abominations could feel pain.
    Her feet met the floor, one on stone and one on a shattered mass of bone and tissue. As soon as she landed, Anne grounded her heel and drove her elbow toward the creature's exposed jaw. On contact, another flash of light accompanied the snap of breaking bone and the dull pop as the joint separated mixed nauseatingly and rolled back up through her shoulder. Before, her stomach had turned at dealing that kind of damage, but hurting these things just fanned the flames of her spirit.
    Anne's world abruptly slowed, and she knew without seeing that a stiffened knife hand tipped with cruel, black claws drove toward her unguarded back. Simultaneously, the thing to her front was throwing the same blow at the ribs under her arm. If both strikes landed, Anne would be out two functioning lungs. More importantly, Chelle would be left at the tender mercies of whatever was behind this hideous display. It was fortunate then, that Anne had no intention of letting either creature gets its claws inside her tender skin.
    It was far easier to move in the direction one already faced. Anne leaned to her right and slid her left foot back, driving her weight through her other foot and into the ruined knee of the center creature. As the monster to her front drifted around its falling companion, Anne arched her back to dodge its strike. Her hands curled around that slowly floating arm and snapped shut.
    Anne cranked herself around, using the man-thing's arm as a lever. She drove her shoulder into its chest and threw it into the path of its fellow. She heard a meaty thud and felt pricking against her deltoid where it contacted the thing's chest. Anne sprang away and saw the thing she'd released slowly slump forward. It slid off the clawed hand of the one behind it with a sickening sucking noise.
    The thing looked down at its fingers, covered in the fluids of its sibling. The shifting pearlescent light washed out whatever color the ichor might have, turning it black in Anne's sight.
    "Tell me, wicked child, do you know how rare it is to find three of one kind?" Its unnatural eyes snapped up, its gaze lancing out to spear Anne's with a burning hatred made all the more virulent for the creature's motionlessness. "Three beautiful male children, all intelligent and sensitive. They came to me. They chose to serve, to gain greater beauty by my will." Anne's mind reeled at the thought of willingly subjecting oneself to such a malevolent psyche.
    "And between you and that one, in mere moments, you have destroyed the work of centuries!"
    "Perhaps you shouldn't have fed off those who hadn't asked for it," Anne panted. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chelle still dancing. It didn't appear she'd paused at all. Her sister's chest heaved, and a sheen of sweat showed on her exposed skin. Chelle's eyes were no longer shut, but stared wide open at nothing. The flickering light of Under Hill danced over them in a way that set Anne's heart aching.
    The unman left standing shrieked, a piercing scream full of the rage of dying stars.
    "You all ask for it! Every moment of every day do you yearn to be made better! With every lapsed plan, every failed calling, every dream sublimated to unlovely reality, you and all your kine beg me to take your grubby little souls in my fist!" The mind ruling the thing twisted its face into a parody of a person, the petty hatred molding the noble features with the inchoate frustration of a thwarted child. "You want someone else to make you dance, to make you sing. Every one of you desires to abrogate your agency to another, to someone better. I am better, and yet you resist!"
    The desperate frustration set Anne aback. So many people she