High-pitched wails bounced off the domed ceiling. Ravos stood motionless beside Tamsia, pressing her palm with steady fingers. His touch, even in this maelstrom, grounded her. Her mind, usually a whirl of saccharine platitudes, snapped into a different gear. A flicker, quick as a circuit burn, through the grim halls of the Luminary Guild’s subterranean training chambers. The scent of ozone and synthetic blood. Instructor Korm, his face a granite mask, his voice a low rasp: *“A smile, Tamsia, vacuous and sweet, is the only true shield against a drawn blade. They won’t see you coming until they’re already bleeding out.”* The memory dissolved, leaving only the cold, sharp clarity of the present. Her lips, by habit, curved into that familiar, empty smile. Not for the crowd, but for the thrill of the hunt. A burly raider, his face scarred with the indelible brand of a Guild disciplinary court, stepped forward in reinforced plate, brandishing an ornate carbine. He swept his gaze across the terrified Gala attendees, his eyes settling with predatory intent on Ravos. “Listen up, Luminary filth!” his voice boomed, amplified by a throat-mic. “Your precious Oshal is ours. And this man,” he gestured with the muzzle of his rifle towards Ravos, “this genius crafter, Ravos of the Luminary Guild, has been our loyal informant! He ensured your mirages would crumble!” Murmurs broke out across the tiers. Fingers pointed. Accusations, choked with terror, began to fly. Ravos remained impassive, his eyes fixed on the commander, calculating angles. Nimoe, ducked behind an overturned serving cart, scrambled to her feet. Her face was a mask of exaggerated horror, tears streaming down her carefully made-up cheeks. “Ravos! No! How could you?” Her voice was shrill, piercing the din. “You’ve betrayed us all! You’ve betrayed *me*! All this time, you were an infiltrator? I knew it! I knew you were too cold, too distant!” She clutched at her chest, her performance sickeningly perfect, designed to twist the knife deeper into Ravos’s public image. "Take him!" the raider captain barked. Two hulking henchmen advanced on Ravos, carbines lowered toward his ribs. Their movements were heavy, confident. They believed their target was a crafter, soft and defenseless. But Tamsia had already moved. The vacuous smile remained, but her eyes were pinpricks of lethal intent. Beneath the voluminous skirt of her gown, her left hand had already found the hilt of a slim, polished shock-baton, camouflaged as a decorative clasp. Its metal casing sat cool against her palm. A quick, silent click disengaged it. As the first mercenary lunged for Ravos, his rifle swinging wide, Tamsia spun. The ornate, hard-light floral arrangements that had adorned the walls, now inert and dark, became her tools. Her foot hooked the base of an unpowered Mirage-Tulip sculpture. With a dull crack, the crystalline stem smashed into the first assailant's kneecap. He bellowed, collapsing sideways as his firearm clattered across the parquet. Ravos intercepted the second attacker. A swift palm strike caught the man's throat, forcing an immediate choke; Ravos twisted the dropped rifle free, reversed the stock, and cracked it against the man's temple. The intruder dropped limp. The onlookers froze in place. The ‘airhead’ creative director, the bumbling Tamsia, moved with a terrifying grace, her smile fixed as she repurposed the ballroom’s shattered glamour into instruments of pain. She kicked the first mercenary’s rifle away, then used the sharp, broken edge of a Hard-Light Orchid petal, still clinging to a wall fragment, to slice through the straps of his tactical vest. As he tried to writhe away, she brought her shock-baton down, a blue arc of pure energy crackling over his neck. His body seized, then went limp. Her movements were a brutal dance, synchronized with Ravos, whose own blows were efficient, devastating. Ravos disarmed a third hostile who closed in, twisting the carbine loose and kicking him across the ribs. Tamsia, seeing the opening, slid across the slick floor, her gown swirling around her, and used the momentum to drive her shock-baton into the man’s temple as he struggled to rise. Another jolt, another body stilled. The raider captain halted mid-stride, jaw dropping. He watched in stunned horror as three of his vanguard lay incapacitated, taken down by the very people he had come to conquer. His eyes darted from Ravos, cool and collected with a captured rifle, to Tamsia, whose sickeningly sweet smile was now undeniably terrifying. Nimoe, witnessing her carefully constructed framing plot, her meticulously planned downfall for Ravos, shatter into a thousand pieces, let out a strangled cry of pure, unadulterated fury. Her eyes, no longer brimming with feigned tears, burned with a desperate, murderous rage. She spotted a dropped disruption sidearm beside an unconscious guard—a squat piece primed to scramble neural pathways. Her hand snatched it up. Her aim, despite her trembling, was precise. She brought the barrel to bear, not on the intruders, but directly at Ravos’s chest. “If the invasion won’t kill you,” Nimoe snarled, her voice raw with hatred, “I will.”

Shimmer and Shatter