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Bix leapt onto the chest of an Alohym soldier. The man screamed and tried to raise his arcwand towards her. Before he could finish the motion, Bix buried a dagger in each of his eyes. The man fell forward, landing on his knees. Bix kicked off his shoulders, sending his body rolling into the ones that were behind him. Two more raised their arcwands and shot at her. Bix rolled away from the point of impact and left to the roof of the passageway. Her daggers and feet dug into it, and she began to skitter across the ceiling.

That was when she started singing. It was a tavern song, one Haradeth knew well. His eyes widened as he listened to it come from the mouth of an automaton dispensing bloody death.

“I met a man on the road to Greymoan,” Bix sang as she dove off the ceiling, her daggers held outwards. She sliced through the necks of the two who had shot, and they clutched their throats. Blood ran between their fingers.

“When he saw me, he called to me.” Bix flipped around, her tail lashing out to wrap around a soldier’s neck. One next to the newly struck soldier swung with his arcblade, trying to sever Bix’s tail. Bix’s dagger lanced out, catching the blow. In one fluid motion, she snapped the man’s neck and drove her dagger into the other man’s knee. When he fell, her other dagger met his chin.

“Oh, fair maid, why do you walk alone?” Three more soldiers charged her, screaming in what was either defiance or fear. Bix waited until they grew close. The moment they were in range, she popped up on her tail like a Jack-on-Spring and thrust daggers into two of their chests. Holding on by the daggers, her tail lashed up and caught the third in the groin.

“Because alone is how I wish to be.” The soldiers began to back up now, arcwands unslinging. They started opening fire, beams of unlight lancing towards Bix. She dodged them with the speed of a monkey dancing among the treetops, using her tail and feet and arms interchangeably.

“He called me fairest he’d ever known,” Bix kicked off a wall, driving herself across the chasm. Her tail sprung a blade with the motion, and with quick whips she drew it across the stomach of every soldier she passed. Three fell, clutching their guts and screaming in agony.

“And for my hand he started to plea.” True to the song, Bix drew out the last word as she flipped between unlight beams.

The Alohym soldiers stopped firing. “So, I” Bix sang, drawing out each word. As she sung, her back began to vibrate and four new hands sprung from her back, each ending in a bizarre implement unlike anything Haradeth had seen before – one some kind of needle attached to a tube, another a serrated blade that spun, a third like a two-pronged fork with lightning dancing between the tines, and the final a device that looked like it was loaded with tiny needles attached to thread.

“Stabbed him, stabbed him,” Bix sang the words as she danced into the group. The original lyrics were far bawdier, and far less murderous, that what she was singing, but Haradeth could barely focus on that. His attention was completely held by the spectacle.

The sawblade lashed out, severing a man at the knee. “Stabbed him,” Bix sang, and the electric fork rammed into a soldier’s kidney, causing him to dance and bleed from the eyes, “Stabbed him,” Bix brought one of her knives around directly into another man’s groin, and Haradeth winced.

“I stabbed him right there on the road,” The limb that ended in the needle loader aimed at fleeing soldier. It began to fire needles, and they started to wind through his skin.

More were starting to break and run. “I stabbed him,” Bix swung the needle-tube around and shoved it into another man’s neck. The tube constricted, and the man clutched at his head as blood ran from his ears.

“And offered to carry-” Bix had to duck under a frantic slash, her tail lancing up to crush the man’s trachea “his-” Bix dove forward on the closest fleeing soldier. “loooooooooad.” She ended his screaming with two daggers thrust into his lungs.

The remaining Alohym soldiers were routed. They were hardened men, veterans of dozens of battles, and they’d seen horror before. Yet even the strongest man was not prepared to stand against a metal woman half their size singing lewd songs as she cut their fellows down.

Bix turned to Haradeth and bowed. She was covered in so much blood, her usual bronze color was almost uniformly crimson. After a moment, she glanced up at him. “Start clapping.”

Haradeth began to clap like his life depended on it. Synit joined in, her antenna twitching in terror.

Bix smiled and bowed again.