I carry Getye back onto the killing field, the crass music of combat still raking through the trees behind us. Ahead the barbed wire clatters in the wind. There’s only the two of us out here. The others must be back in the trench already. I’m closing the distance fast but this gives me little relief. Getye is too light in my arms. She’s too still, one arm dangling while the other grips the back of my neck.

I almost turn back but enough bullets hiss past that they can’t be aiming for us. A moment later, I realize their true target when thin trunks begin to break and fall, and I feel the rumbling under my boots. Heart in my throat, I pick up my pace.

But I’m close now. Close enough to see Brea and Imeshan’s dark heads craning over the sandbags, then their arms waving me in. Pressing Getye to my body, I leap over the palisade and crash down on the duckboards. All around the troops shout and wail and guns crack, crack, the mortars have joined in now. My sisters take my arms to help me up.

We wind our way through the communications trenches and back through the lines, pushing past troops moving in to reinforce the forward position. We carry our wounded sister together, Brea and Imeshan with one arm across my back and one arm under Getye, helping me cradle her. As the cacophony falls away behind us, we hear it. Humming. Quiet, unsteady, the tune jaunty and light. It’s Getye. Her face is blank but her dangling arm keeps flexing, trying to reach for something.

Brea kicks open the door of the dugout and leads us in. Inside the Proxy springs up from her notebook at the table, her face hard. It doesn’t soften when she sees Getye, but she says, “Put her on a cot, quickly.”

Getye is still humming. She’s already so pale. Her eyes flicker open and shut. She looks around but doesn’t focus. Not until Imeshan runs her fingers down her hair and behind her ear, and Getye’s gaze drifts up to her. For a moment the two are alone with each other. Getye’s voice even seems to steady a little. It’s almost as if some miracle is about to unfold. The bullets in her back will slide out, and her blood will flow down my armor and back into her veins. This doesn’t happen to us.

As her stare lingers, the shimmer in Getye's eyes begins to fade. It's like watching the sun go out. That light, so immaculate, dimming. The soft edges of its glow receding in on itself. One might expect a great fiery roar as it dies. Obliteration to flood from it and wash everything away, and there would be a mercy in that because then we wouldn't have to watch. But there is no fire. There is no roaring. The shine just drains from our sister's eyes. Once it's gone, they're a pale green, staring past us at the ceiling.

This doesn’t happen to us.

Imeshan folds over Getye’s body, their masks almost touching.

Outside the dugout, something is burning. The stink of smoke pushes through the vinegar smell of angelic blood. The Proxy looks to the door, still standing ajar. Sounds of battle enter through the crack, not so distant.

We linger a moment. Then, Brea lets go of Getye’s hand. I run my fingers down her shoulder one last time. Imeshan stays longer. Frozen over her, as if the proximity might warm her back to life. But then she lifts our fallen sister’s head so she can stand and sets it, loving as the dawn, back down on the thin pillow. She knows as well as we do that Getye is gone, and that our Queen’s orders still stand.

Fire greets us. Half of the restored hamlet crawls with flame, rolling black smoke choking out the morning sky. Inch-deep furrows cutting through the ruin hint at the source of the flames. Gunfire and the crash of light artillery in the near distance tells us some part of the defences still hold, for now.

Until another throne smashes through the blackened husk of a burning house towards us.

The throne rolls into the fence and thuds to a stop, the barrier too solid and just too high for it to bowl over. Then it unfolds, segments disconnecting and rearranging into a massive two-armed serpent of metal and flesh, the jaws of its still-human face agape and exhaling chemical smog.

We’re only halfway across the hamlet square when another wheel veers into our path, ripping the earth as it speeds towards us. Brea and I leap to one side as Imeshan dodges to the other. This puts us right in the path of yet another throne coming between the burning structures. I roll aside and see Brea just barely manage the same. I help her up and we race for a better position. We have a truce today, a gift to our fallen sister. We will survive this so she didn’t die in vain.

The inferno forces us apart again. I return at the throne with controlled bursts but it turns itself after me. I flee across the square from the pursuing wall of flame, throat and eyes stinging from the smoke and heated chemicals filling the air. I don’t run for cover, however. Once I’m almost in line with it I fire again, peppering its head and side, clenching my jaw. Our hatred of the Host was always personal. They threaten Cratavn and its people. They oppose our Queen. They impede Her mission of salvation for humanity. These were reason enough. But now the enemy has given us another: they killed our sister. The throne tries to raise an arm to shield itself but I can see pops of black as bullets find its flesh. Its flames sputter, the smoke in their wake roiling and tar black.

Coughing a head of oily smog, the throne tries to coil itself back into its wheel. It’s almost tucked its head away when its temple bursts in a spray of bile. With a groan of old bone and metal, it collapses into a heap, revealing Brea on its other side. She lowers her weapon. I reload and step over our fallen foe to rejoin her. Then we scan the hamlet. Blood and burning cloy our noses and the crackle of fires surround us, almost drowning out the chaos at the front. What we don’t find any sign of, however, is Imeshan.

Rage and grief fall away under a heavy, queasy feeling. Brea and I run to catch up with Imeshan. Even once we’ve reached our sister, however, she stares ahead, ignoring us. Her movements are stiff. Is she injured? We look over over but find only the throne’s blood on her hands and across her face. Her eyes are not serene but focused intensely on something far from here. We’ve heard of shellshock in the troops, the constant thunder and quakes and terror of artillery throwing something in their heads off balance. I put a hand on her shoulder, a rudimentary test of responsiveness. She responds by shrugging me off and picking up her pace.

We pounce upon her. She knows we’re coming. She tries to run but Brea and I are on her back too quickly, taking her down to the grass and pinning her there. She whimpers as she kicks and squirms, eyes staring at the gunmetal horizon, sad as always. She looks sad even as she kills, as if she pities the Host. I understand her sorrow today, at least. But what she’s doing is blasphemy.

Breaking our vow of silence unaddressed. A second blasphemy. Brea grabs Imeshan by the hair and forces her face down into the grass, smothering any more words she may try to speak. Still Imeshan struggles. Still she mutters and whines into the dirt. Who does she think will hear her out, when she shouldn’t even be speaking? Brea and I mourn Getye, as well. We are not abandoning our duties. We remain loyal. I almost want to speak myself. I’d tell Imeshan that this is why she’s so rarely our Queen’s favorite.

Back to our dugout, to the Proxy.

“Yes, Proxy.” Brea and I reply in unison. Imeshan hangs her head in silence, her raven hair a frayed curtain over her face.

“No, Proxy,” mutters Imeshan.

Imeshan is silent. Her arm weakly trembles in my grip.

Our sister’s head bows lower. “Proxy,” she says, “I attempted to desert.”

Brea and I let go of Imeshan’s arms and step back. She stands, hunched and motionless. A statue, immaculately detailed but set in this awkward, imbalanced pose.

Brea and I go to opposite corners on the Proxy’s end of the dugout, taking position to watch.

Whatever madness has seized our sister, it’s powerless against our guiding star. Imeshan shuffles over to her.

Imeshan straightens. A few dark wavy hairs remain loose across her tan features. The Proxy brushes them back into place, the graze of her fingertips restoring order. Our sister regains clarity, her face rising only a little hesitantly to meet the Proxy’s.

It starts small. Imeshan blinks, as if she’d just been on her way to a task and lost her train of thought. Until she starts to blink harder. Until her fingers start to twitch. Until small damp sounds begin to make their way up her throat, like she’s trying not to swallow something.

Imeshan flops down to her knees, careens forward and only straightens as the Proxy nudges her back with her knee. Our sister’s eyes dart around. Trying to find something. They won’t, though. They’ve turned to stained glass, radiant but vacant.

Imeshan’s answer is a small, flat groan. She’s swaying on her knees, fighting to stay up. Fighting a losing battle. Her hands grasp at air at her sides.

“I attempted…” It only just sounds like words. A thin rasp, breathless and placid. The only affection is how it shakes as a tremble spreads throughout Imeshan’s body. “I-I attempted to… To deserr…” The word slurs into another groan.

The Proxy is steadfast. “Up.”

The Proxy repeats, “Confess.”

“Why are we here, Imeshan?”

“For what purpose?”

“So you realize all this,” continues the Proxy. Each word is the blow of a gavel. “Yet you still attempted to abandon your duties.”

“Even knowing that this could have gotten your remaining sisters killed, as well.”

“Even knowing that then, Getye would have died for nothing. All of your sisters would have died for nothing, and Cratavn would be doomed.”

“Why?”

The Proxy kicks her onto her back. “Why, Imeshan?”

For one of the cots.

The Proxy’s eyes settle on our dead sister, before returning to Imeshan. She crouches over her twitching form, and grabs a fistful of her hair to lift her head, so her darkening eyes meet her own ice blue. “Getye is dead,” says the Proxy. “You still have orders.”

“Repeat it,” says the Proxy.

Once these moments have passed, the Proxy rises. “Up.”

“You were ordered to defend this position for ten days.” The Proxy raises her voice to address us all. “It has only been five. Under no circumstances will you abandon your post or disobey myself or the Queen-Minister again. Is that understood?”

“Remain alert.” She slips a cap onto the needle of the syringe and sets it inside a small case beneath the table. “There could be another wave.”