Free The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension by H.D. Strozier

began to climb over the rubble in the direction where she was sure she’d find Tsubame and Bastet.
    She followed the noise to a collapsed wall and witnessed Tsubame and Bastet outside in the garden, Tsubame looking pristine as ever, as though she hadn’t been near the explosion, while Bastet was missing the heavy black jacket and tunic she had been wearing and was now only wearing a sports bra, her body covered in dust and smoke. In addition to all the flames and the smoke in the air, an electrical storm was cackling in the air above them.
    MaLeila jumped out the window, manipulating the matter in the air so that it was closer together and slowed her descent to the ground and lessened her impact. A bolt of lightning shot down from the sky above Tsubame, while Bastet collected energy from the electrical storm and directed it to the ground to form a fissure. It travelled to where Tsubame was standing and collapsed the ground beneath her just as the bolt struck. The fissure and the bolt caused the ground beneath Tsubame to explode and for a moment, Tsubame was shielded from view. Everyone waited in tense anticipation of the woman reappearing. Then her silhouette flashed, like a trick of the light on a sunny day and then a red blue streak across the grass, striking both Bastet down.
    “You said you didn’t want to hurt them,” MaLeila yelled when the woman stopped not too far away from her.
    “And that’s still true,” Tsubame replied.
    “Then why are you fighting them?”
    “I said I don’t want to. Not that I wouldn’t if I needed to. But Miss Samara I think the real question is why aren’t you fighting at all?”
    The question struck something in MaLeila, something that she had been putting off under the pretense of continuing to watch things unfold. She tried to continue putting it off, by responding that Tsubame had destroyed her staff so how was she supposed to fight her.
    As though reading her mind, Tsubame said first, “And don’t try putting this on your lack of a staff. If you really wanted to stop me, if you really wanted to fight against me, you would have. You want me to stop. Stop me. What’s holding you back?”
    MaLeila knew the answer the instant Tsubame asked the question, but couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. But now she understood why Tsubame was fighting; why she was still here when she had already accomplished what she needed and it would be so easy for her to escape; seemingly wasting her time holding back in a fight she could easily win. Back at the airport, Tsubame had been waiting for MaLeila, Bastet, and Devdan to shatter before sweeping her away so that she could privately tempt MaLeila with the world. And now, Tsubame was bidding her time for the answer to that proposal. An answer MaLeila already had but was afraid to give.
    “You can stop this whenever you want.” Tsubame held MaLeila’s gaze as she tossed her fan in the air and opened it back up again before tossing it in the air like a boomerang to intersect the ring of golden magic daggers headed in her direction courtesy of a once again standing, albeit bleeding, Bastet.
    Her fan missed one though and the golden dagger headed straight toward her. In the second between it connecting with her, Tsubame only looked at as though she had time to contemplate what she might do with it. As the dagger was about to hit her, a shadow rose in front of her and absorbed the dagger.
    “Do you have to be so fucking reckless?” Marcel said appearing next to the woman. MaLeila felt like she should have known. Tsubame probably had known.
    “I would have been fine. I was just going to make things a little more interesting for myself,” Tsubame said with a shrug and then turned to MaLeila. “Alas, now I’m bored. And I wouldn’t want to hurt someone too badly in my boredom. So are you ready now?”
    “If you’re going to leave, she’s certainly not going with you,” Bastet said from where she was standing.
    “Is that the belief