The hypersonic crack of the ARC-7 Mag-Carbine shattered the humid, fungal gloom of the plenary chamber.
The three-hundred-grain solid heavy dark metal flechette left the barrel at Mach 4.2. It tore through thirty feet of swirling purple spores in a fraction of a split second. The round struck Vespera Nyx squarely between her milky-white eyes, delivering twelve thousand foot-pounds of striking force into her forehead.
The impact should have blew up her skull like a high-pressure water balloon.
Instead, her fine china forehead yielded with a sickening, wet squelch, like a lead weight plunging into a bowl of fermented dough. The heavy dark metal penetrator punched straight through the back of her head, embedding itself six inches into the marble pediment behind her throne.
Where her shattered skull should have been, no blood flowed. No bone fragments splintered.
A writhing knot of semi-clear violet hyphae exploded from the entry wound, weaving through the jagged cavity with frenzied, insectoid speed. In less than three-tenths of a second, the hole filled with pulsing fungal cords, the skin smoothed over in a fresh veneer of alabaster flesh, and Nyx’s black lips curved into a slow, mocking smile.
“A predictable reaction, little surgeon,” Nyx’s telepathic voice whispered inside Arthur’s mind, rich with amused, echoing malice that made the time bones behind his ears throb with pain. “Moving weapons. Fire. Lead. You cling to the crude physics of dying primates who believe their tiny, isolated bodies are sacred.”
