Duality Grid

But there was nothing to hide from. In actual fact, the sunset draped from one side of the room to the other. Her sublime expression was reflective of this, and no sooner had he crossed the line than she was administering skill-shots in the direction most conducive to wholesale massacre. ‘Never mind that,’ she said lazily. ‘Where are you coming from, seeing as the route’s off the grid?’ her words sounded unsure.

‘The Infiltrator’s Guild, the one apart for the Acadamy,’ he said. ‘All verses scrawled in barely-legible dactylic hexameter.’ And at that point in time, nothing seemed to matter.

‘That does seem pliable, and with regard to what was mentioned earlier about the blasted paperwork, you can ignore it completely.’ She fumbled blithely with the carriage-shaped transparencies before allowing them to spill to the ground completely, but the teal logistics forms were of little concern to her. ‘Now look what I’ve done,’ she said. ‘It’s your fault.’

‘I can’t help that my mind is geared for war,’ he said, disregarding the accusation altogether. ‘Despite the names, and apart from the blistering heat, waging warfare is not dissimilar to our current predicament.’ He felt the humid warmth pass between them, carried away by wisps of black-night residue provided by a buttressed gothic window, kept open most nights at her request.

‘That’s exactly the response I would have expected,’ she said hastily, moving from atop an obsidian sphere polished to a soft sheen. ‘And my commander would be wise to refuse the request altogether.’ She paused. ‘But you would have the benefit of the doubt in either case.’ The allusion to limited justice dampened the night air to the point that she could feel a noticeable change in the room’s temperature, causing her to shift expectantly.

‘I have hope,’ he said. ‘Just like before.’