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blur of white motion from the direction of her guards. One of the Seraphim cried out and threw herself upon another— the newest one— who moved with blinding speed, drawing a long dagger that glinted silver.
    Her mother slammed into Serena and knocked her away. As she fell, Serena heard a nearby slash of cloth and a gurgling gasp, saw a grisly spurt of blood, and, almost simultaneously, felt a heavy impact. Livia dropped on top of her, covering Serena’s body.
    The third Seraph drove into the rushing white-robed guard, grabbed the gold-mesh hood that covered the traitor’s hair, and yanked her head back with a hollow snap to break her neck.
    Although her mother’s body still covered hers, Serena could see a Rorschach splash of scarlet on one of the guards’ robes, not at all like the precise crimson trimming on the white uniform. A gasping, heroic Seraph— the only survivor of the three— choked out, “The threat has been neutralized, Priestess.” She caught her breath and quickly composed herself.
    Shaking, Livia helped her daughter to her feet. Serena was astonished to see two of her chosen guards lying dead: her bloody defender, fallen with a slashed throat, and the other broken. The traitor.
    “An assassin?” Serena looked down at the woman whose head lay cocked at an awkward angle.
    Livia demanded, “How did she penetrate our training?”
    The remaining Seraph said, “Priestess, we must get you to safety inside one of the buildings. There may be another attempt on your life.”
    Alarms had already sounded, and more white-robed Seraphim rushed to the scene, scanning in all directions for additional threats. Serena felt her knees growing weak as she and her mother were hustled to the shelter of the nearest large building.
    She looked at the white-robed young woman who had saved her life. With her gold-mesh hood askew from the struggle, the guard’s short blond hair could be seen. “Niriem? That is your name, correct?”
    “Yes, Priestess.” She straightened her hood.
    “From this moment on, I appoint you my chief Seraph. Make certain the Grand Patriarch summons his best Jipol officers to investigate this matter,” Serena said, breathless as she ran.
    “Yes, Priestess.”
    Because of the severity of the incident, Iblis would have to get involved personally, and might replace all of the Seraphim… except for Niriem. Serena would leave it to him to unravel what had happened. She could still hardly believe it herself.
    Livia urged her daughter into the safety of the main sanctuary building, a converted manor house with cupolas and turrets. “You have always known the threat, my daughter. The machines are everywhere.”
    Serena’s eyes were dry, her expression cold. “And they will never stop plotting against us.”

A human lifespan is not always sufficient for a person to achieve greatness. To counter this, some of us have seized more time for ourselves.

    — GENERAL AGAMEMNON, Memoirs
    T he greatest enemies of humanity gathered on the primary Synchronized World of Corrin: cymeks, robots, and Omnius, the computer evermind itself.
    Only four of the original Twenty Titans remained alive. A thousand years ago, fearful of their mortality, these human tyrants had installed their brains in armored cylinders so that their thoughts, minds, and souls could live forever. But over the long and violent centuries, they had fallen to mishaps or assassinations, one at a time. In the recent uprisings, both Barbarossa and Ajax had been assassinated.
    General Agamemnon, the leader of the Titans, had repaid that debt a thousand times over, slaughtering countless humans. Crushing them and letting them rot where they lay or piling them in heaps on the ground for bonfires. His lover Juno had helped him plan horrific, vengeful strategies.
    So many ways to kill humans.
    Dante, the unambitious but talented bureaucrat cymek, still served in quiet but necessary ways. The coward Xerxes, who had originally allowed Omnius to take