Its furnace flared white-hot. The gauntlets ground together as it leaned forward, posture low and predatory.

  It did not accept alliance.

  The Centaur Fiend took a single step forward, head tilting slightly.

  It did not expected the strike.

  The Gauntleted Fiend closed the distance in a heartbeat. Its fist smashed into the centaur’s chest-plate, cracking alien metal armor and hurling it backward. Asphalt exploded upward beneath the impact.

  The Centaur reeled. Its whip-tails lashed instinctively, slicing through two nearby Starspawn before it recovered with a furious stamp. Six legs anchored deep as its scythe-arms swung outward, sparks shrieking as they met the Gauntleted Fiend’s glowing fists.

  The Spiny Fiend leapt in, launching a scattershot of heated spines. The Centaur absorbed the first volley, plates clattering, before pivoting and sweeping two scythes down in a vertical arc that tore through a lamppost and narrowly missed the Spiny Fiend.

  The Gauntleted Fiend pressed forward relentlessly.

  Punch. Knee. Elbow. Roundhouse.

  Heat rolled outward in waves as the Centaur answered with whip-tails and driving charges, its legs hammering the street like siege engines. The fight was brutal and territorial, the ground collapsing beneath their weight.

  The surrounded Starspawn circled, waiting.

  The Centaur lunged, scythe-arms crossing in a killing arc.

  The Gauntleted Fiend met it head-on.

  Its furnace flared to blinding intensity. Two scythes were caught mid-swing. Sparks and molten fragments scattered through the air. The remaining scythes swept low, carving smoking trenches as the Centaur tried to hook its legs.

  The Gauntleted Fiend jumped.

  It came down like a meteor.

  The hammerfist cracked obsidian plates, fissures glowing orange as internal heat bled through.

  The Centaur struck back wildly. One whip-tails wrapped around the Fiend’s arm. The other coiled its torso. With six legs braced, it wrenched, slamming the Gauntleted Fiend sideways into a delivery truck and collapsing it like an eggshell.

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  The Spiny Fiend darted in again. Spines punched deep this time, embedding along the Centaur’s legs.

  The Centaur answered with a blind slash that caught the Spiny Fiend mid-leap and hurled it through a house in a storm of flame and splintered wood.

  The Gauntleted Fiend tore the whip-tail free and advanced.

  It did not waste motion.

  A scythe-arm snapped off. A kick crushed lower torso plates. The Centaur charged desperately, horns lowered.

  The Gauntleted Fiend caught them.

  For a heartbeat, they locked together, heat and strength grinding against heat and strength.

  Then the Fiend twisted.

  The Centaur lost balance. One scythe was pinned to the road. A Gauntlet smashed into its jaw.

  The Gauntleted Fiend wrapped an arm around its throat and drove a fist through its chest, ripping past overlapping plates onto the glowing core within.

  The Centaur’s limbs thrashed uselessly as the Fiend tore upward, splitting armor and ash alike.

  The Centaur Fiend died violently.

  The Remnant came free.

  It was pressed to the furnace of the Gauntleted Fiend and absorbed in a flash.

  The glow brightened briefly.

  Then faded.

  The Remnant was fuel for repair. Nothing more. Power without sensation. Efficient. Empty. Nothing like a soul which would push it forward.

  The Gauntleted Fiend dropped the husk to the street.

  The surrounding Starspawn lowered themselves one by one.

  The Spiny Fiend emerged from the ruins, damaged but alive. The Gauntleted Fiend regarded it briefly, then turned away.

  The hierarchy was set.

  Together, the pack began moving toward distant clusters of bright soul-lights. The Spiny Fiend limped at its leader’s flank. The lesser Starspawn followed behind in reverent disorder.

  The soul-lights pulled at the Gauntleted Fiend like gravity.

  They were brighter than the dim coals of ordinary humans, but not searing like the twin flares burned into its awareness. Still, they were wrong. Ordered. Intentional. The Fiend did not understand what that meant, only that these lights were distinct. Dangerous, perhaps. Nourishing in a way it had not yet tasted.

  It followed their glow through the charred maze of the neighborhood.

  Eight in total.

  The Fiend slowed at the mouth of a cul-de-sac where several houses had collapsed inward, their broken frames leaning toward the center like a ring of shattered teeth. Burned-out cars, splintered fences, and sagging power lines choked the street, leaving a single narrow path winding through the wreckage.

  This bottleneck was a design of chaos. It was formed naturally when the neighborhood burned.

  To the Gauntleted Fiend, it was perfect.

  A pulse rippled outward from its furnace. It didn’t make any noise and was too sluggish to be a pressure wave in the normal sense, but it was pressure, nevertheless. Intent.

  The Spiny Fiend responded instantly, darting to the right and climbing the cracked wall of a half-standing house. It perched above the choke point, spines flexing, their tips glowing faintly orange.

  The lesser Starspawn scattered into position. One slid beneath an overturned SUV. Another pressed itself into the jagged remains of a fence. Two more slipped between collapsed walls and went still, becoming part of the ruin.

  The Gauntleted Fiend moved to the far end of the cul-de-sac where the lane opened into a wider street. It dimmed its furnace to a low, rolling ember, shrinking its presence to a faint pulse.

  To human eyes, it would have looked like nothing more than another collapsed silhouette in the smoke.

  It waited.