You’ve waited long enough. ‘Night Shadow’ Taka is back with brand new special edition changes. Read on to discover how the escaped assassin came upon his blazing, molten metal blades!

‘NIGHT SHADOW’ TAKA (SPECIAL EDITION)

MODEL CHANGES:

Special edition change: Crimson Shadow Gythian armor

Gythian armor Power-cooled respirator mask and night-vision eyepiece

and Special edition change: Blue ion arc-blades

ion arc-blades Kaku turns Taka into a fox in a robo-box

Flashy molten metal spark effects

Redesigned ability animations

READ THE LORE: ‘GYTHIAN WALL’

After two nights and days astride the wide-backed pangomoose, the slowest beast of burden imaginable, the courier can see Gythia’s twinkling lights in the dark distance. Home: just a steep, winding hike down the inside of the wall and an hour’s ferry away. His thighs ache from straddling the saddle; his temples throb with exhaustion; the thought of his mother’s squid ink pasta floods his mouth with saliva.

And he can’t get through the gate.

“No night shipments,” says a guard. “Post-war regulations.”

“This is a special delivery. I am expected,” insists the courier, pointing at the blue flag of the couriers that droops from the pangomoose’s saddle.

“Turn around, friend,” replies another guard, expressionless behind his helm.

Four meters above the gate, an assassin stands flat against one mirror-smooth obsidian glass spire of the Gythian Wall, the weapons in his fists emblazoned with the crest of House Kamuha, souvenirs from a lost time. He does not understand the conversation between the courier and the guards. In Gythian, the assassin knows these words:

I, You

Hello, Goodbye

Yes, No

Yours, Mine

Have, Be, Understand, Kill, Go

Who, Where, What, When

He does not need anything else, especially why. Why is not his problem. Where he goes, he learns these words and leaves why to the Employer.

How is his problem.

The courier pulls at his ear with annoyance. This is the Gythian Wall’s only opening, the section blasted out by the Technologist rebels during the civil war, now a legal trade entry to the city. There are other passages through the wall, littered with the bodies of explorers gone mad in the mirrored black maze. In the dark night, one misstep could cast him over the sheer cliff drop into Bladed Bay, where razor sharp spires protrude from dark waters.

“Please, this is a peculiar circumstance.” The courier rummages through the pack on the pangomoose’s rump, producing two blades; with the flick of a switch, the metal blazes alive, molten metal flashing and spitting. “I admit I am not a courier, but the Cartographers’ Guild expects this delivery by dawn.”

The Employer provided the assassin with a decade-old version of the guards’ armor, but his mask is all tech, with a power-cooled respirator mask and night-vision eyepiece. He does not need to understand the conversation. He understands those blades, flaming eerie green through the infrared lens.

Four guards, all rushing to open the gate. One over-armed wild card. One tired, underfed beast of burden.

His tongue sucks up onto the roof of his mouth. He slides his weapons back into their sheaths, silent, knees bending, anticipating the big spring, breath slow.

The assassin jumps, landing with the toes of one foot on the pangomoose’s head. Before the courier can react, the assassin has side flipped over him, his tail whipping in a spiral. He snatches the hilts of both blazing blades from the untrained hands of the courier, whose terrified face glows green.

“Mine,” says the assassin, and pushes one molten blade down between the courier’s left clavicle and shoulderblade, incinerating the man’s heart.

When the guards turn away from the gate, only a shadow remains behind the blank-eyed courier, who slides sideways off the pangomoose to a heap of burning flesh on the road. A shadow, and the one thing left in the courier’s pack: a leatherbound journal bearing the compass insignia of the Cartographers’ Guild.

To be continued…

WALLPAPERS