Three men approached the Storm Conqueror with malicious determination. Looking behind them, a throng of cloud surfers stood silently, waiting for their orders. They were dressed in Indirrith cloud surfer garments; baggy pants that ballooned out and tightened at the ankle, loose black and purple overshirts that were tucked into the pants, and a bandana that was surgically wrapped over their head. These weren't the drunken travellers that normally inhabited the sky-docks this late at night - these cloud surfers were organized and dangerous. All three men held a long metal staff that they gripped tightly close to their bodies. The usual silence of the dock was now bristling with tension as the men inched forward, silently hopping onto the ship's deck, hoping to catch the Shimmer caster by surprise. Regular cloud surfers had worryingly few advantages against casters, namely numbers and the element of surprise. They had both. The conditions were perfect. The target was cornered. One of the men stepped ahead of the others and peered through the window attached to the door. Against the faintly flickering light of the All-Shimmer lamp, he couldn't see much, but it was enough to tell that there was no one in the room. He paused. Not no-one. The lamp created a line of light against the back wall, and the cloud surfer spotted it. Blood. His eyes following the smear of blood down the wall he finally reached the large pool that had accumulated on the floor and a large lump in the middle of it. Moriarty. Moriarty's garish suit was instantly recognizable, its bright yellow shades dulled by the metallic blood that was slowly seeping down his shirt and splattered against his coat. Wait! The blood is still pooling. This just happened!

The man swung around to his comrades, eyes wide and mouth open about to alert them of the casters' hidden presence. Before he could get a word out, his eyes widened further and he choked, his grip on the metal staff slipping and clattering against the ground breaking the anxious silence of the otherwise peaceful night. The man gurgled and blood dripped from his mouth. His comrades stared in horror as they peered inside his accomplice's mouth, only to find the deadly sharp end of a knife pierced through it, ripping through his tongue and dislodging a few teeth. Before the men could react the knife swung back out in a sickening crunch, and the soldier crumpled onto the ground, revealing Malanda, who had seemingly appeared out of the shadows.

One of the men sprung into action, placing his left foot back and right foot forward, legs bent, as they drilled into him in training. Gripping the metal staff, he pointed it towards Malanda, holding it close to his body, and squeezed. The tip of the staff, a plain silver pointed blade with a hole in the middle of it suddenly brightened, and a concentrated blast of Shimmer burst through the blade, forcing the cloud surfer back, who resisted with his feet planted firmly on the ground. Malanda ducked expertly as the Shimmer nearly grazed his head and flew above him, slamming into the door, creating an explosion that tore the door from its hinges and sent it careening into the back wall where it splintered into several pieces.

"*What power!*" Malanda thought to himself.

The other man wasn't as fast, still reeling in shock as his comrade lay crumpled before him. As the adrenaline kicked in, he fumbled at his staff and tried to aim it at the masked assassin, but it was too late. Malanda, after ducking, pushed forward and slammed into the second man with his shoulder, sending the man flying across the deck of the ship into the crowds of soldiers who were advancing onto the dock.

"I can't take them all..." Malanda observed, quickly counting the twenty-five men who were now rushing at him.

The final standing surfer on the deck swung the metal staff at him and fired, Malanda was just able to dodge out of the way. The shot flew past him and past the Storm Conqueror slamming into another small sky-ship that was docked for the night, piercing its wooden hull, leaving a sizeable hole. Malanda whipped out his All-Shimmer as the man readied for another blast and flung it into the air.

"Tectonia!"

Wood from the deck shifted and splintered, and the floorboard cracked and spun upwards into twisted timber spirals, jutting out from under the surfer's feet, piercing his body from several angles, pinning him in the air. The final piece of wood blew out from the rest and impaled the surfer from under his chin, exiting from the top of his skull. Brain matter and viscera spilled over onto the deck, and the surfer dropped his staff. Malanda watched as it rolled away, falling off the Storm Conqueror into the dark seas below.

No time to react!

Malanda felt a light wind blow next to his head and a thick crunch as a heavy object struck his head. He saw stars as he stumbled backward and realized that a surfer had flanked him while he was Shimmer casting.

Shit.

The surfer raised a wooden bludgeon over his head, ready to finish the job. Malanda, still dazed, flung some All-Shimmer in panic at the surfer's face.

"Ginirasa!"

The powder ignited, and a furious raging flame erupted on the surfer's face. He dropped the bludgeon, screaming as his skin melted and his hair burned. Malanda's nose filled with the overwhelming smell of cooking flesh and he began to gag. There was no time for weakness!

Without waiting a second longer, Malanda was back on his feet, still woozy from the heavy strike. He looked forward and realized that all the surfers were rushing at him as a group. They were not about to under. Surfers were rushing at him en masse. Malanda was lucky. It seemed like only three of the surfers carried Shimmer staff. If more of them had it he would have been dead a while ago. Still, this was no cakewalk. He roared and rushed at the next cloud surfer, ducking under a wild swing of the surfer's machete and slamming his knife into the man's chest. Using the momentum of the stab he pushed forward, using the limp man as a body shield as more surfers attempted to rush at him head-on. He managed to topple two men before his knife slipped out and the dead surfer dropped onto the deck.

Five men surrounded him, circling him slowly, not rushing to attack him recklessly. They were fully aware of the fate of their comrades and knew that he would exploit any irrational movements and lone attacks. There was only one way to do it, and that was to attack simultaneously. Eyeing each other, none of the surfers knew when to make the first move, as their commanders now lay either dead or unconscious. Their hesitation cost them as Malanda leapt up and Shimmer casted himself into the air. While he made quick work of about 6 or 7 people, he neither had the endurance nor the Shimmer to deal with 20 more. It was time to get out of there. Now that the commanders with the Shimmer staff were incapacitated, he didn't have to worry about any ranged attacks. He still felt dazed from the blow to the head, partly because it was just a heavy, unexpected strike, and partly because his Shimmer use was taking a toll on his body.

Malanda hovered in the air for a moment, pulling out his satchel one more time. He would have to fly out of there. He had just a bit of Shimmer left to get him off the docks and back to the ground, where he could easily melt into the shadows and escape before they made it to the streets. Pulling on his satchel, he grabbed the last bit of Shimmer and...

*BOOM!*

*PAHIL!*

A blinding light expanded in front of him and sent him rocketing back to the ground, slamming into the dock so hard that the wood splintered and cracked from the impact. His body rag-dolled for a few seconds before he collided with a jutting pole that held a Shimmer lamp that swung violently from the impact. Malanda groaned as his vision became blurry and his body gave away before him. He was alive. It took incredible reflexes (or incredible luck) to use the last bit of Shimmer to cast a defensive spell to block most of the damage from the explosion. How could he have missed it? In the throngs of soldiers that were rushing him, a commander had been hiding amongst them, concealing a Shimmer staff to wield at the right time. These surfers were not just well-trained, they knew everything about how Malanda operated. The situation was dire.

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Malanda was out of All-Shimmer. His body was drained and even if he had shielded himself from fatal injuries, he was still too hurt to fight competently. Was it over? His revolution had ended before it had started. The commander who had blended in with the crowd grinned as he pointed the Shimmer staff at Malanda, gleeful to take the responsibility of putting down the dangerous rebel leader. Malanda shut his eyes, accepting his fate. As his final seconds approached him, an image of his father flashed before his eyes, the day he was captured by Grattan soldiers who had kicked his door down and arrested him at the dinner table. He remembered the fierce determination in his father's eyes as he stood before his colonizers, spitting on the Grattan general's face before they struck him down and beat him to death. His father never closed his eyes. Neither would he. Malanda opened his eyes and stared directly at the commander who was readying his staff for the killing blow. The sudden intensity of the stare threw him off for a second, and a seed of doubt was planted in his mind. Was he going to do something? He was the infamous genius strategist of the rebel Koth group. Was this all part of his plan?

In those seconds of hesitation, Malanda heard something. It was whistling in the air. It sounded familiar. In an instant, something struck the commander's head. It impacted him with such force that it ripped his head clean off his body and slammed into the hull of a floating sky-ship, exploding into chunks of viscera and gore. What remained was a blood-soaked spear that was deeply embedded into the ship. The remaining surfers stood in shock as the body of their final commander crumpled onto the ground, blood spurting from his headless stump. They temporarily shifted their attention from Malanda who was slipping in and out of consciousness towards the direction from where the spear came from.

A lone figure stood in the distance, a dark silhouette purposefully making their presence. There were no theatrics or shadowy tactics, this person wanted to be seen. A sky-ship floating next to the individual dipped for a moment, allowing a slice of moonlight to pass through, illuminating their face. The wide, enraged eyes of a woman seemed to freeze the surfers in their place. Her terrible scowl turned into a snarl into a growl into a scream as she gripped a spear and sprinted towards the closest surfer who could only let out a whimper before she brutally stabbed him in the chest, lifting him up in the air with her weapon, and flinging his limp body off the docks into the sea below. It was an incredible feat of strength that sent ripples of fear down the waves of Indirrith surfers. She didn't stop there. She bent her knees and pounced, a jump so powerful it cracked the docks her feet were on. Gliding through the air, she aimed for the largest concentration of soldiers, a group of six or seven men who were staring up at her in awe. She crashed back onto the ground, right in the middle of the group, and swung her spear around, slashing two men across their bodies, and sending them flying into the ground. The remaining men raised their weapons in time to block the move but were still pushed back by the sheer force of the swing. Her physicality was unnatural.

Malanda opened his eyes one more, the sudden crash jolting him awake. He saw blurs of red and gold furiously dispatching the soldiers with ease. Was it...Malaika?

A guttural scream emanated from Malaika, a fury burning inside her as she expertly blocked and deflected the desperate and crazed attacks of the remaining surfers. Ducking below one of the attacker's swings with their longsword, she deftly switched the spear to her left hand, balled up her right fist, and uppercut the soldier under the chin, knocking him out instantly. Without wasting a moment, she used the momentum from that punch to kick the falling surfer and swing around to face another behind her who was preparing a precise thrust with his sword. She used the spear to push the sword out of the way as he began his jab and raised her legs for another fierce and precise kick to the liver knocking the wind out of the surfer and dropping him into the ground gasping in pain.

Malanda now back to being fully conscious was watching the fight in awe. He had watched his sister in battle several times, but it never ceased to amaze him that she battled with such raw intensity, but maintained a fluidity that only came from a mastery of Koth hand-to-hand combat. He also knew that the rage that Malaika was channeling was real, but was also a tactic to intimidate her enemies, as if her All-Shimmer enhanced strength was not already intimidation enough. Malanda attempted to stand up, but is body gave away. He had taken too many vital hits to be of any use in this fight. It also worried him that Malaika was fighting with an intensity that he had only ever seen a couple of times before. That only meant one thing, Malaika had used the last of her All-Shimmer too, and was trying to end the fight quickly before the exhaustion caught up to her. There were still over ten men standing, ready to fight. No matter how intimidated or fearful they seemed, not one of them ran away. Their leadership was more terrifying than the siblings were. If he couldn't stand up, there was only one thing he could do - think.

Malaika slammed her elbow into a surfer's face and cackled as blood spurted from his nose as it cracked, whipping his head back violently. She then gripped her spear and shoved it deep into his stomach, lifting it up and throwing his body at two men who were rushing at her with bludgeons. She was in a flow state, using every bit of momentum and power to outplay these soldiers, cutting down their numbers until they were all wiped out. She prepared to defend against another assault from a longsword that swung upwards through the air toward her face, in an attempt to split her skull. She lifted her spear above her head and blocked the attack. This time, however, she felt the entire weight of the attack on her body and could barely hold it back. She groaned as the weight of the sword bared down on her, and quickly kicked the surfer's knee so savagely that it cracked. The surfer lost balance and stumbled, losing grip of the sword, and Malaika used the opportunity to stab the man through the eye, ending his life in an instant. She felt heavy and slow, her every move taking longer than normal. Her reflexes were barely keeping her alive. It was the All-Shimmer. The tiredness was hitting quickly and there were still too many men for her to take without being enhanced. She desperately glanced at Malanda, who was now awake and staring directly at her with determined eyes. He had a plan, she just couldn't figure out what it was.

"MALAIKA!" Malanda screamed, mustering the last vestiges of strength that he had.

She whipped her head at him, the tiredness now holding her back at full force.

"OFF THE EDGE!" Malanda ordered in Kotha, pointing out into the sky.

"Off the edge?" Malaika thought to herself incredulously. Is he insane? This was Malanda. In a way he was insane. But that insanity always seemed to save their lives and Malaika trusted him all the way. Without a single word, she screamed as she threw her battered spear at one more surfer rushing at her, embedding itself in his throat, and rushed at Malanda, who was slowly getting himself up. Outstretching her arms, she grabbed him, wrapping herself around him, and flung them both off the edge of the dock, seemingly to their deaths.

Hurtling through the night sky, both siblings had their eyes shut, letting the cool winds caress their faces as they fell off the sky-docks. A moment later - impact. They felt a checkered bouncy material catch and hug them, softening their fall. Malaika opened her eyes. The nets! The flowing nets that hung below the docks had cushioned their impact. She rolled Malanda off her and stared at him before breaking out into incredible laughter.

"You're crazy!"

"I'm a genius," Malanda replied softly, with a soft smile on his face, as he sprawled out on the night staring at the sky. "We're not out of it yet," he mentioned, gesticulating at the faces of the remaining surfers peering over the docks at them. They began throwing their weapons down at them, hoping one would strike the daring siblings.

"What do we do now?"

"Your aim still good?" Malanda inquired.

"Never better," Malaika replied grimly.

Malanda dodged as a spear narrowly missed his face and cut through the net. He swore before pulling out his knife and handing it to Malaika. "The net is held up by ropes on all four sides of the dock. The one on the other side is already broken," Malanda explained, pointing at the other end of the net which was freely flowing in the wind, not attached to the dock. "We cut this side off too, drop the net, and climb down it to the top of that tower below us."

"We might fall," Malaika replied.

"Not if we hold on tight."

"Can you even handle this? Your body is weak," Malaika exclaimed, concern heavy in her voice.

"Just do it! Now!"

Pausing for a moment, Malaika held her breath, ignoring the rain of weapons around her. Swaying in the wind with no balance, these were the least ideal conditions to make a precise knife throw, but this was their only chance. Making last one last look she twisted her arm back and flung the knife. It arced through the air, elegantly curving as it spun. Both siblings held their breath and the ropes of the net alike, gripping tightly in preparation for a fall. It worked. The knife cut through the rope that held the net like butter, and all of a sudden the net shifted below them. They gripped tightly as their feet gave away, and they hung onto the net several 100 feet off the ground. Malanda had no strength left but drew from every source of power he could find as they made their slow descent to the peaking tower below them. Weapons still rained around them, one even grazing Malaika's hand, cutting it open. She winced but didn't let go. The throwing of weapons finally slowed down as the surfers rushed to the lift to get to the bottom before they could. They would never make it in time. It would take several minutes to get to the lift, several more to get to the ground, and an exponentially longer time to get to the tower the pair of siblings were reaching.

Inch by inch they continued their descent, nearly giving up at several moments, but they finally made it, reaching the bottom of the net. They were still a few metres short of the tower and would have to drop down to slanted tiling they could easily slip off. They looked at each other for a moment and nodded, both of them releasing the net at the same time. Malaika hit the roof standing, managing to find a foothold easily. Malanda, on the other hand, seemed to make a similar landing before his legs gave away and he began stumbling and rolling off the roof. As he was about to plummet onto the sidewalk, Malaika grabbed his cloak and held him tight, groaning as she held the entire weight of her brother, pulling him up with every ounce of strength she had left. He sprawled out on the roof and looked up at Malaika with fading strength, his eyes fluttering open and shut.

He remembered the day his father died. He remembers his unfathomable rage as he watched his father groan weakly as they savagely kicked his head and stabbed his body while they made the rest of the family watch. He remembers blindly picking up a knife on the table and almost pouncing at the Grattan general, the one with the scar down his cheek. And then he remembered. Malaika grabbed him, gripping his body so tight that he couldn't move his arms. Holding him in a warm hug, saving his life and the life of everyone else. He remembered his deep sobs in his sister's arms as he dropped the knife. She shielded him from the pain. He closed his eyes as his father died on that kitchen floor.

Malaika had her eyes wide open.