“I’ll be honest Captain, I could have put a whole squad out of commision for three days with the amount of toxes I pulled out of that girl’s blood. She should not have been conscious, much less be able to walk here on her own strength.”

“But she will be fine?” Thane asked, to which the face in the corner of his eye nodded. Thane noticed some wrinkles in Mella’s face he hadn’t seen before. His ebony-hued skin was starting to lose its’ shine, and his short black hair was grayer now than it had been when the Exemplar took its’ current posting. Thane wryly thought that his best way to measure time these days was to witness his comrades grow old.

“She’s already gone again.” Mella said, turning away to focus on a task Thane couldn’t see. “Said she was going to take a shower. Rest assured, she won't even be hungover.”

“I thought you had good news for me.” Thane said, but his attempt at humor did not put a smile onto Mella’s face.

“She should be fit enough to sit through a meeting. If you wish to summon her too, that is.” The Auxilium Prime said.

“No. Valk has earned herself a time-out.” Thane said, shaking his head. “A mere warning does not suffice for such a transgression.”

“As you wish." Mella said, bringing what looked like a burnt-out circuit board to his face. He inspected it for a second, then brought up a soldering pen and pressed it against the surface. ”I assume our Duelist and Annihilator will also be attending?” 

“Lachlan is already on his way. I am going to get Despair now.”

“Not responding to your hails again?”

“As long as she is making good use of her time I will not reprimand her for it. I gave her my word.”

“Yeah, well, she’s giving us medics something to do. I won’t be the one to complain about her either.” Mella said, his lips finally curling up. 

“I am approaching the Web now. Notify the others we will be joining in twenty minutes.”

“Aye Captain.” Mella nodded, and his feed disappeared from Thane’s lenses. 

The Captain-emissary found himself in front of heavy double doors made of steel, the hydraulic rails which normally moved them unpowered.   Apparently being able to open these doors of your own strength was considered some sort of rite of passage to the dwellers of the Web.

He took a deep breath, steeling himself, then placed his hands against the doors and pushed them open, the stink of sweat, oil, and alcohol and the booming of electronic music rushing to meet him.

The Web carried such a different atmosphere from the rest of the Exemplar of Valor that Thane found the transition somewhat disorienting. As if he’d stepped through a portal connecting Harir’s flagship with an underground fighting ring on a backwater planet.

Then again, a fighting ring was exactly what the webs were. 

The space had been originally intended for use as a fighter hangar, but around eighty years ago Runoran military doctrine had shifted to wildly different tactics, rendering fighter craft and the hangars which supported them practically obsolete.

This had left the Exemplar with two abandoned spaces, each as large as a small housing block. 

The starboard hangar had found new purpose as a secondary shuttle bay, but the port hangar had been left unused for nearly half a decade. 

Then, eventually, a group of younger soldiers and technicians started to make the space their own. A place where they could feast and drink and duel each other away from the sterile and pompous halls normally intended for such events. More importantly, it was away from their superiors, parents, and any other kind of supervisory force. The abandoned hangar soon became a hub for the youth made for them and by them. 

After decades of growth, the hangar was filled to the brim with dozens of suspended platforms and walkways connecting various bars, fighting cages, and dance floors to each other both horizontally and vertically like an amalgamation of repurposed steel and minepols. 

The form of construction was what lent the Web its name, though Thane saw little connection between these shoddy structures and the well-organized webs common to the arachnid family. 

In truth, he would have had the buildings taken down decades ago if Harir hadn’t been so enthusiastic about them. Back then the Captain-Emissary had been convinced there would be some kind of catastrophic collapse or accident sooner rather than later, insisting that the ship’s youngsters make use of the designated facilities for the sake of safety.

Time had told that he was –in fact– mistaken, and the Web had since solidified itself as a cornerstone of the Exemplar’s shipboard culture. Despite that, and despite the fact that those who frequented the Web back when he voiced his concerns were now among the ship’s seniors, there was a persistent sense that he wasn’t supposed to be here.

The Web was occupied by about two thousand youngsters, from the well-seasoned party-goers nearing the end of their adolescence to the meek, younger teens just starting it. Thane stood out like a sore thumb in this crowd, yet he managed to make his way through mostly unnoticed. Those that did pick up on his appearance took a quick step back or covered their faces so as not to be recognized. 

“It’s Lord Thane.” One of them hissed to his friend, both of whom couldn’t be older than fourteen. The boys quickly retreated, hiding themselves behind the bodies of others. Though spooked, they still stole peeks at him, their awe at his reputation fighting their fear of being called out by a figure with authority.

Thane couldn’t help but smile under his helmet. They were so entrenched in their belief that this pastime of theirs was rebellious in nature that they had forgotten that the Web was sanctioned by the Oracle himself. He gave a polite nod in their direction and made his way further up, heading to the largest and most central suspended structure where the bulk of the crowd had gathered.

He could hear the signs of battle before he saw them. A dull clanging of blades ringing out at a pace and consistency such that it could have been confused as part of the music. There was a fight going on in the central cage, and from the sounds of it, it was a heated one.

Thane already knew who he would find before he laid eyes on the cage. Despair stood alone, facing three others. All were wearing segmented warskins, all held hefty close combat weapons. The stink of blood hit Thane in the face and he turned away from the action to see how a fifth combatant sprawled out on the opposite side of the cage with two medics tending to him. 

Something ancient and vast shifted inside Thane as he saw and smelled the wounded warrior’s blood. Like a monstrously large snake falling upon its prey it slithered around him, constricted him, hissed in his ear.

“Spill their blood.” It urged him. “Kill them all.” 

Thane bluntly ignored the predator on his shoulder and turned his head to watch the fight at hand. He knew that to engage, even if only to deny it, would only feed the monster. When it came back, and it would, his words would have only made it stronger.

For now, the beast tossed him aside in rage and crept back to its lair. Thane knew the monster existed merely in his head, but that knowledge didn’t alleviate the feeling of being watched by a pair of hungry, vengeful eyes.

The clang of metal on metal dragged him back to the present as he watched the team of three attack their lone opponent.

 An ax and a polearm swung in Despair’s direction with a strength and speed no mortal could have matched, the whining of synthetic muscles only overshadowed by the whooshing of vortexes as their blades cut the air.

Despair stepped aside as smooth as a ripple in a pond, then brought her own blade up and went for a horizontal slash at her polearm-wielding opponent who had overstepped by half a centimeter. 

The fourth combatant, this one wielding a mace and energy buckler, stepped in to guard his comrade, blocking the path of Despair’s blade with his shield. His reflexes were good, but Thane was the only one who saw that Despair never planned for her attack to hit in the first place. 

She canceled out the momentum of her zweihander in a display of raw strength that seemed completely at odds with her small frame, then reoriented it and turned her broad strike into a piercing thrust, stabbing the unsuspecting ax-wielder through the shoulder.

The Tidebreaker recoiled with a shriek of pain and brought his weapon up in a defensive stance, but Despair was already behind him. She expertly slashed her blade across his back, cleaving his skin’s power pack in two, then dashed forwards and leapt over her remaining two opponents without missing a beat, striking at them from mid-air. 

The polearm-wielding Tidebreaker narrowly managed to parry an overhead swoop meant for his head with the haft of his weapon, though the impact severely dented it, bending the shaft to the point of near-uselessness.

The Tidebreaker didn’t hesitate for a moment and snapped his own weapon in half, now wielding his severely diminished polearm in one hand and a weighted steel staff in the other. 

A buzzer sounded, signaling a time-out. The medics had apparently decided that the ax-wielders' wounds were too severe for him to continue fighting and now entered the ring. 

Despair slowly circled the two remaining fighters and dragged her blade over the naked decking, leaving a trail of sparks in her wake. Until the buzzer rang again, the fighters were not allowed to attack each other. The rules said nothing against intimidating your opponents, though.

A wave of murmurs went up around Thane. He assumed them to be remarks about the spectacular fight at first, but the augmented ears of his relic picked up on the mention of his name and rank. 

Looking around, Thane found himself at the center of attention. The crowd took an instinctive step away from him, leaving him an island of solitude where everyone else was packed awkwardly tight together.  

He glanced up at the ringmaster’s booth, finding that the announcer was staring at him too. The young woman tentatively reached for her speakers to announce his presence, but he waved her off. He was already disturbing the normal order of the Web as it was, no need to throw oil on that fire.

He made for the booth and nodded to the crowd as they parted to let him through, greeting some by name. He was greeted back, but he could tell the kids were more nervous than usual now that he intruded on their domain.

“Lord Equerry!” One of the bolder girls shouted to him. “Are you here to fight as well?”

Another wave of murmurs went up, more excited and energetic this time. Thane pretended to not have heard it.

“My Lord, how may I be of service?” The announcer asked, keeping a better air of cool about her than most, but she couldn’t fully hide how tense she was.

“I would like to borrow Despair from you.” Thane said. “But please, by all means, let her finish the fight. I have no intention of cutting the show short.”

The announcer smirked at that, her shoulders loosening as if a burden had been lifted from them. Thane could only wonder what kind of scenarios had gone through her head when she’d noticed him. 

“I don’t think you’d have cut it short by much, my Lord. Ishar and Peroj are fine combatants. Both of them could top the leaderboard a few years back, but two against one against the Duelist Prime? That’s hardly a fight.”  

“We shall see." Thane said, nodding, then turned back to the fighting cage as the buzzer sounded a second time and the fight recommenced. 

The announcer had been right, the continuation of the fight was indeed short. Despair now held a range advantage over her opponents, and she was significantly faster. She was running circles around Ishar and Peroj in the most literal sense of the saying, ducking and weaving and feinting and swinging her blade over and over again. 

Knowing that they were on the losing hand, the mace-and-shield wielding Peroj went for a desperate attack on Despair’s legs, leaving himself fully open just to give Ishar a chance at winning. It would have been a noble sacrifice, but Despair picked up on the plan before Ishar did. 

She again halted her momentum in a way that should have been impossible if not for the warskin she wore, causing Peroj’s attack to go wide. With his comrade now between himself and his enemy, Ishar was unable to capitalize on any openings the gamble may have given them, and Despair finished them both off with a swift one-two swipe of her blade. 

The buzzer sounded once more just as a fanfare of triumphant music blared out of the cage’s speakers, reinforced with the chorus of a hundred young voices screaming in adoration of Despair.

Replays of the fight lit up on four screens surrounding the cage and the announcer quickly went over the highlights, her voice quick as a auctioneers’ as she struggled to keep up with the fighter’s movements, even when the replays were rolled in slow-motion.

“And that brings Despair up to two-thousand-eight-hundred-and-fifty-three victories to a hundred-and-twenty-two losses. She’s just seven matches away from four-hundred wins in a row. Duelist Prime for a reason, right or not?” She nearly shouted, her voice echoing throughout the Web.

The crowd whooped in response, a chant of Despair’s name rose up from their ranks, but the Duelist prime stood motionless at the bottom of the pit, inspecting her blade.

“Now, unfortunately, the rest of Despair’s matches today will have to be canceled. Her duties as a Prime call. But not to worry folks, we still have other exciting fights coming up!”

As Thane had expected, the crowd’s cheers quickly turned to cries of disappointment. Their numbers gave them the courage to protest him where on their own they would never have dared to.

Looking down into the cage, he signed for Despair to meet him outside. He then had his skin hijack the Web’s speaker system. A wave of static followed as the ancient relic melded with new tech, but then his voice boomed from everywhere in the repurposed hangar. 

“I have no intention to lecture you on duty and responsibility today.” He began, overshadowing even the loudest of the bunch.

Thane noted the faces around him went sour as soon as he started speaking, and many of the youths cast their eyes down. In these kids’ experience, when someone said they weren’t going to lecture them, that was often exactly what they did. Thane was well aware of that.

“You have all been told of our virtues a thousand times before. Instead, I wish to make a promise to you.” He continued, a small smirk setting on his face. He saw a few of the youths start to whisper amongst one another, undoubtedly trying to guess what he might say next.

“As apologies for interrupting your scheduled program, I myself shall participate in the fighting cages before the week’s end. One match against the Duelist prime, ten more matches against brave challengers. How do you like that deal?”