Chapter 18 Chapter Seventeen

Twelve hours ago, Colonel Federman Kassad stepped out of the spiral staircase to the top level of the Crystal Monolith.Flames burst into the sky in all directions.Kassad saw darkness through the breach he had blasted into the building's crystal face.The sandstorm below raised vermilion dust, which kept flying in through the small holes, and the air seemed to be filled with blood powder.Kassad put on his helmet. Ten steps away, Moneta was waiting for him. Under the energy skin imitation suit, she was not wearing anything, and the visual effect was like pouring mercury directly onto her body.Kassad saw the flames reflected in the curves of her chest and thighs, and the light refracted in the hollow of her throat and navel.Her neck was long, and her face was carved in extremely smooth chrome.The same tall figure was reflected in those pupils - Feldman Kassad.

Kassad raised the assault rifle, setting the manual selector to full-spectrum fire.At the same time, the inner compact armor is activated, the body shrinks, and it is ready to attack. Moneta waved her hand, and the skin-like suit dropped from her head to neck.Her defense has been greatly reduced now.Kassad felt like he knew every part of that face, every pore and bony protrusion.The brown hair was cut short and fell gently to the left.The eyes are the same as before, big and full of curiosity, and the deep green is amazing.The corner of the small cherry mouth with the plump lower lip still has a smile that is not a smile.Kassad noticed that her eyebrows were raised a little curiously, and he gazed at the tiny ears he had kissed, whispered to them so many times.And the soft neck where he had pressed his face to listen for her pulse.

Kassad raised his assault rifle and aimed it at her. "Who are you?" she asked.The voice is as gentle and sexy as I remember, with a slightly elusive dialect accent. Kassad put his finger on the trigger and paused again.They've had sex dozens of times, in his dreams, in their love nests in military simulations, getting to know each other.But if she really came back in time... "I see," she said, her voice calm, as if unaware that he had begun to put pressure on the trigger, "you are the one that the Lord of Mourning predicted." Kassad gasped.Then he spoke, his voice painful and very tense. "You don't remember me?"

"I don't remember." She raised her head and looked at him suspiciously. "But the Lord of Mourning prophesied a warrior. He and I were destined to meet." "We met a long time ago," Kassad finally said.The assault rifle automatically aimed at the face.Once the finger is buckled, the firepower will change the wavelength and frequency every microsecond, until the defense of the skin-like suit is completely torn, and then accompanied by the hell whip and laser beam, there will be steel spears and pulse plugs shot out instantaneously. "I don't know what happened so long ago," she said, "that in the usual flow of time you and I were moving in opposite directions. In my future, which is your past, when you knew me, I What is your name?"

"Moneta." Kassad took a deep breath, trying to control his fingers so as not to go off. She nodded with a smile. "Moneta. Daughter of memory. What a blatant irony." Kassad remembered her betrayal, and she had suddenly changed the last time they had made love in the desert above the abandoned city of poets.It's not known if she became the Shrike, or if the Shrike took her place.This makes the act of showing love extremely disgusting. Colonel Kassad pulled the trigger. Moneta blinked. "Guns don't work here. They don't work in the Crystal Monolith. Why do you want to kill me?"

Kassad snarled, threw the useless weapon over the landing pad, focused energy on the gauntlet, and charged at her. Moneta made no attempt to escape.She watched him charge the ten paces away; looking down, Kassad shrieked as the compact armor shrieked and changed the crystalline alignment of the aggregates.She lowered her arms to meet his charge. Kassad's speed and weight knocked Moneta down, and they rolled to the ground together. Kassad tried to clasp his gauntleted hands around her throat, but Moneta held his wrist tightly, Clamping him like a vise, the two of them rolled across the landing platform, hugging each other, to the edge of the platform.Kassad rolled over her, trying to use gravity to attack, his arms outstretched, the blades of his gloves springing out, his fingers curled in a murderous stance.His left leg was hanging in the air, and there was a dark ground sixty meters below his feet.

"Why do you want to kill me?" Moneta asked in a low voice, turning over to one side, and the two rolled off the platform together. Kassad screamed and shook his head, goggles dropped.They tumbled down from the air, their legs gripping each other's body tightly in a scissors' foot position, and Kassad's wrist was firmly held by her, unable to move.Suddenly, time seemed to slow down until they were slowly descending, the air passing Kassad like a blanket slowly over his cheeks.Then time sped up and returned to normal: at this time, they still had the last ten meters of their whereabouts.Kassad screamed, imagining the appropriate sign to stiffen his compact armor, and then there was the terrible impact.

Feldman Kassad struggled to the surface of consciousness from the blood-red abyss, knowing that only a second or two had passed since they hit the ground.He stood up unsteadily.Moneta was also getting up slowly, kneeling on one knee, looking at the crater their fall had made in the glazed floor. Kassad focused energy on the servos in the suit's legs and kicked her head with all his might. Moneta dodged the blow, grabbed his leg, twisted, and threw him against the three-meter-thick solid crystal wall, smashing it and rolling into the night desert outside.Moneta rubbed his neck, the luster of mercury flowing on his face, and followed him out.

Kassad lifted the shattered visor and removed the helmet.The wind ruffled his short black hair, and sand rubbed his cheeks.He knelt down, then stood up.A signal device on the collar of the suit glowed red, warning him that his last stored energy was about to run out.Kassad ignored the warnings; that energy was enough for the next few seconds... and the showdown. "No matter what happens in my future...your past," Moneta said, "I haven't changed. I'm not the Lord of Mourning. He—" The two were separated by three meters. Kassad leaped over and landed behind Moneta. The deadly blade in his right hand formed an arc, piercing the sound barrier. The edge of his palm was tightened, as sharp as the sharpest carbon-carbon piezoelectric wire.

Moneta didn't crouch down or try to block his attack.Kassad's gauntlet choked her around the lower part of the neck with enough force to cut through a tree or pierce a rock half a meter deep.In the hand-to-hand combat in the Brescia capital, Platinum Mins, Kassad quickly eliminated an Ouster colonel in this way—his iron gloves pierced the tight armor, helmet, body energy field, and flesh without hesitation— —The man stared at his corpse for twenty seconds before the God of Death finally took him away. Kassad's strike hit her, but the glove came to a screeching halt on the surface of the quicksilver skinsuit.Moneta didn't even shake, and didn't fight back.Kassad felt his arms go numb as the power of the suit dropped sharply and his shoulder muscles cramped violently.He staggered back, his arms drooping limply by his side, the energy of the suit disappeared rapidly, as if blood was gushing from a wound.

"You don't listen to me," Moneta said.She stepped forward, grabbed the front of Kassad's combat armor, and threw him twenty meters in the direction of the Emerald Tomb. Kassad fell heavily to the ground, and the compact armor stiffened, but the residual energy was insufficient, and only part of the impact was absorbed.He shielded his face and neck with his left arm, but soon the armor locked and the arm hung uselessly below him. Moneta jumped twenty meters, squatted beside him, lifted him into the air with one hand, grabbed the tight armor with the other hand, and tore his battle armor from the front, tearing two hundred layers Microfibrils and a final layer of polymer cloth.She slapped him lightly, almost lazily.Kassad's head tilted to one side, nearly in shock.The wind and sand hit his bare chest and abdomen. Moneta ripped off the remaining armor, ripping off the biosensors and feedback devices.She grabs the naked man by the upper arm and shakes him.Kassad tasted blood, red blobs moving across his vision. "Why are we enemies?" she said softly. "You... shoot me... first." "I just want to test your reaction, not to kill you." Her lips moved naturally under the quicksilver omentum.She slapped him again, and Kassad flew two meters into the air, landed on a sand dune, and rolled toward the bottom in the icy grains of sand.The air was filled with tens of thousands of speckles of every color—blood, sand, a carousel of colored lights.Kassad rolled over and struggled to his knees, fingers numbly curled into claws, desperately grabbing the moving sand. "Kassad," Moneta whispered. He rolled over and lay down, waiting. Moneta hides the skin-like suit.Her skin looked warm and flimsy, so pale it was almost translucent.Soft blue veins loom above her perfect breasts.The legs looked strong, finely carved, and were now slightly apart.Those eyes were a deep green. "You love war, Kassad," Moneta whispered, leaning over him. He struggled, trying to move aside, throwing his arms out to attack her.Moneta tightly pressed his arms above his head with one hand, her chest seemed to rub against his chest on purpose, and she bent down between his spread legs, her whole body radiating heat.Kassad could feel the slight curve of her stomach pressing against his own. He immediately realized that if he didn't respond, it would be rape.Reject her to resist.But it didn't work.The surrounding air seemed to become a thick liquid, and the storm became far away, and the sand particles were suspended in the air, like a light lace curtain being lifted by a steady breeze. Moneta leaned against him, moving back and forth.Kassad could feel the excitement stirring up inside him.He resisted this feeling, resisted her, struggled, kicked, tried to free his hands.But she is much stronger.She pushed his leg aside with her right knee.The nipples grazed his chest like two warm pebbles; the warmth of her belly and cunt made his flesh respond, growing like a flower following the sun. "No!" Feldman Kassad screamed, but Moneta's lips pressed to his lips, silencing his voice, her left arm still pressing his hands above his head, while her right Swipe between them, seek him out, guide him. Warmth surrounded her, and Kassad bit her lip.His struggle brought him closer, into her.He tried to relax, but she leaned all over him, pushing him into the sand.He remembered the moments they had had, when wars roared beyond the forbidden zone of passion, and they sought reason in each other's warmth. Kassad closed his eyes and tilted his neck back to stave off the feeling of excruciating pleasure coming over him like a wave.He tasted the blood on his lips and didn't know if it was his or hers. A minute later, still moving in the same rhythm, Kassad realized she had let go of his hands.Without hesitation, he lowered his arms, wrapped them around her, pressed his fingers tightly on her back, and roughly hugged her tighter, then slid one hand upwards, gently holding the back of her neck. The strong wind blew up again, blowing up the sand grains on the edge of the dunes, and the droplets swirled upwards, and the ears were full of voices again.Kassad and Moneta slid down the silky curve of the dunes below, and rolled down the warm sand wave together to where it rested, forgetting the night, the sandstorm, the long-forgotten battle, forgetting All in all, only this moment and the other party are left in my mind. Then they stepped together into the scattered beauty of the Crystal Monolith, and she touched him first with a golden ruler, then with a blue ring.He looked at himself reflected in a shard of crystal, a mercury-like human silhouette, perfect to every detail of a man, even the line of the ribs on his lean body. ——What now?Asked Kassad, it was a medium that was neither telepathic nor vocal. ——The King of Great Mourning is waiting. —You are his servant? — by no means.I am his companion and nemesis.his overseer. —You came with him from the future? --no.I come from my own time, and walk backwards with him. ——Then who were you before—— Kassad's question was interrupted by the Shrike's sudden appearance... no, he thought, sudden presence, not appearance.... The monster was exactly the same as he remembered when he first met him many years ago.Kassad noticed that the surface of the thing was as smooth as mercury chrome, which was very similar to the skin-like suits they wore.But his intuition told him that there was more than just flesh and bones under that armor.It stood there, at least three meters high, with four arms that looked unremarkable on a graceful torso that seemed to be a mass of thorns, spikes, joints, layers of jagged wire mesh. Sculpted, eyes burning with light, perhaps lasers from folded rubies, long jaws and cascading teeth are the stuff of nightmares. Kassad braced himself for battle.If the skin-like suit gave him the same strength and agility that Moneta got from it, at least he wouldn't be defenseless. But there is no time at all.In an instant, the Lord of Sorrow jumped over the black tiles and stood five meters away. In an instant, it came to Kassad again, grabbed the colonel's upper arm, and its steel blade was like a vise, deep into the skin-like suit. The energy field, blood gushing from his biceps. Kassad tensed his muscles, waiting for the Shrike to strike, deciding to strike back at the same time, even though doing so meant impaling himself on blades, thorns, and wire. Shrike raised his right hand, and a four-meter-high rectangular entrance appeared.It is similar to the teleportation entrance, the only difference is that it emits a violet light, and the thick light fills the interior of the monolith. Moneta nodded at him and stepped in first.The Shrike took a step forward, and the fingerblade sank just slightly into Kassad's upper arm. Kassad tried to withdraw his hand, but he felt his curiosity overwhelmed his desire for death, and he and the Shrike stepped through the entrance.