Rundown

I stopped being Nai Cal-Yan-Ti too.

How odd. I had memories of being both, but now I was both... Both of us? Both of them?

Oh this was going to take some adjustment.

“Are you two okay?” Tasser asked.

“Yes,” I said, but I heard myself say it twice, from two mouths and two sets of ears.

Tasser looked nervously between my…selves…

Oh this was going to take a lot of adjustment.

“I’m okay,” I said twice. “I mean we’re okay. Or…we mean I’m okay? Oh no…give me a moment.”

The superconnector was going full tilt in my mind, exchanging information between…us. Nai and Caleb.

I could latch onto that. The superconnector was in Caleb’s mind, that could be a basis for sorting out which of me was Caleb and which was Nai.

Except right now, my mind was just that. My mind: one. I didn’t feel like two people, connected. I was just me, as normal as could be. Both of me, but still just me.

This was a problem. Both Caleb and Nai’s bodies were acting in tandem, and the whole reason I’d come into being was to act in two different places at once.

“Differentiation,” I decided, still speaking in stereo.

My hands. Farnata bodies had four fingers, human ones had five. I held up two hands, one from each ‘me’, seeing myself from both perspectives.

“I’m Nai,” the ‘me’ with four fingers said. My human body had managed to stay silent.

“And I’m Caleb,” I agreed with myself.

“What are you two talking about?” Tasser asked. “Did it work? What’s the plan?”

“Trust me?” I/Nai asked.

“Of course, and we need to act!”

“Then follow me,” I/Caleb said.

Moving two bodies was odd, but not difficult. Once I learned to recognize the two different sources of sensations, both of me could move independently.

But of course I could. I had been doing so all my lives.

I/Caleb started moving toward the center of the colony, and at the same time I/Nai split off.

“Wait, Caleb, this is the…wrong way…isn’t it?” Tasser said. “Shaper is north.”

“I’m going to fight all of them,” I/Caleb said.

Tasser shot a glance toward me/Nai gently leaping through the moon’s gravity. I knew what I was doing, and it showed on both my faces. But Tasser was my friend twice over, so watching his concern hurt twice over as well.

“Don’t worry,” I/Caleb told him. “I know what I’m doing.”

I materialized something in my hand to put him at ease.

“Oh,” he said. “…Oh. They have no clue what they’re in for, do they?”

“Nope,” I/Caleb agreed. “So this time you’re the one who can focus on staying safe. This fight’s mine.”

·····

With distance put between my selves, it was easier to wrap my mind around which one of me was which. The frames of reference were less confusing the less overlapped.

My Nai half ran into action first. Augmentations were something that the superconnector had no bearing on. And the ones in my Farnata body were better suited to moving long distances. I was in range of Shaper’s beast in just a few minutes. The rest of me wouldn’t reach the other Headliners for another few, so all of my attention fell on Shaper’s creation.

Just as Nai, I could all but guarantee a victory against Shaper. Vorpal fire was too powerful an offensive tool for creatures to compete with. Only rational strategy and planning would give someone a chance.

But even if Shaper’s creatures weren’t rational, their creator was. So I went all-out from the first moment I was in reach of the monster.

It reminded me of a giant white and purple salamander or axolotl from Earth, but with more defined hands and powerful legs.

The finer points of its design went unnoticed though, because fire erupted into existence around the monster. Both of me grinned. The fire came easier like this.

From anyone else’s perspective, nothing would seem amiss immediately. Nai Cal-Yan-Ti made teal flames. Common knowledge. But Caleb’s precision saw him make things efficiently.

And right now?

I was both of me.

The normal time limit for large scale Vorpal Fire was ten minutes. Twelve if I/Nai was pushing it. But like this? With both of me creating in tandem? It felt like I could let these burn for half an hour.

Shaper’s house-sized salamander resisted my teal flames though. Just a few months ago, that would have floored me. I/Nai would have panicked, but Megatherium had been a learning experience, and I had two minds I could aim at a problem now.

The creature swiped its tail at me/Nai like a whip, but to my combined minds, it seemed slow and lumbering. It wasn’t even difficult to create a spike underfoot and have it push me into the air.

I drew on Caleb’s half of my strengths and created a blast of gas behind me, launching me toward the salamander.

I wasn’t trying to wrestle it in a melee though. Just a bit of information gathering instead. I didn’t have to cascade its exotic flesh for more than a second to find the similarities.

It didn’t quite drink in the energy like Megatherium’s augmentations had, but Shaper had definitely taken notes on how to resist supersaturated heat transfer from the material that fueled my Vorpal Fire.

Still, Shaper picked the wrong day to try to beat me/Nai.

I tweaked the design of my fire, changing the types of materials it was most prone to imparting its energy.

The second time the salamander felt the flames, it died before the pain could register. Teal plasma burned clean through its flesh, reducing the entire beast to ash in less than ten seconds.

I caught sight of Shaper peeking out from behind the nearest building, wearing a furious expression.

“Warlock!” they hissed.

That was all the words they had though. Vorak weren’t ones to waste time. Two more white novas shone where Shaper built two new creatures.

Past experience told me their monsters came into existence two ways: slow and subtle, or fast and bright. Without time to regulate the process, the excess energy spilled out as blinding light.

If they were counting on that to blind me, Shaper had another thing coming.

I killed the first one with a kinetic bomb just as the rak finished making it. The second monster proved agile enough to attack me, giving Shaper precious moments to flee and begin forging new creatures to throw at me.

They’d lost. All they could do was stall for time, and they knew it. Sooner, not later, I was going to catch up before they could make another monster.

Meanwhile, the rest of me was confronting three of the most dangerous aliens in the entire star system.

With two minds coalesced like this, from any perspective other than mine, it would look like Caleb Hane had snapped the rules of Adeptry over his knee. Possibly my/his sanity along with them, just charging three Vorak headliners?

I sensed the three of them on radar, taking up positions as I approached them. My human body didn’t have the same augmentations as the Farnata one, but it had its own movement tricks.

The joints and tendons in this body were so tough, I was rocketing myself through the colony with jets of gas. I was barely touching the ground. It seemed possible to slide across a thick layer of gas or fluid between me and the surface, but I wasn’t quite coordinated enough for that.

I/Caleb had tried this before, but that had been little more than moving myself with bombs. This was something new, though. Omnidirectional movement, at a thought. It wasn’t flight, but with the whole of my/Nai’s mass limit to work with, I could actually supply the energy and mass a continuous jet of gas demanded.

Every capability of both my selves, available to both my selves.

Mass limits, intricacy, psionics, battlefield composure, strategic experience, creativity and flexibility, all of it.

It was all shared.

These tricks wouldn’t be possible if not for two minds working in tandem through my/Caleb’s superconnector.

This state of connectedness needed a name. It was an infectious itch, and I had just the one.

Coalescence.

Shaper was in the process of getting a taste, and in a few moments, so would Railgun and their ‘backup dancers’.

A grin broke across both my faces. It was my own joke, from earlier. But I’d also told it to myself and found it some of the best mockery ever leveled at my enemies.

My human body shot up the side of a building, thrust by ten different varying jets pressing on my shoulders, hips, thighs, knees and heels. It was fast enough that when I came into view of the Vorak, one of them opened fire out of panic— and missed.

The bullet was off its mark by almost thirty feet when I skidded to a halt, reinforcing the armor I’d materialized over my body.

Interestingly, they didn’t follow it up.

The three of them were clearly ready for this ‘me’. But since they’d still been moving until the moment I appeared, this wasn’t much of an ambush. The rak I recognized—Railgun—was positioned at the back, and also the one dictating the other two to hold their fire.

“Did you come to surrender?” they asked.

“Do I look like it?” I said.

“Hard to tell,” Railgun said. “Your armor seems to be invisible.”

“Eh, you could see the silhouette with the jets of plasma,” I said. “Am I to take it to mean you aren’t here to fight? Or ruin an electrical substation to prevent any spaceships from launching from Coskit base?”

“…I think you know our orders,” the rak said.

“I think I do,” I agreed. “So I’ll make this easy. Turn around, walk away, and don’t take another step toward the power substation, and I’ll let you live.”

“You are not in a position to make demands,” Railgun said.

“Prove it,” I dared them.

The hesitation on their face was a sight to savor, but not one of fear. It wasn’t hard to figure out why. They didn’t have any reason to be afraid. I/Caleb was just some mouthy alien they were supposed to capture alive.

Only I had no intention of that.

“The Marshal is inbound,” Railgun said. “We will not turn back, but we’re willing to wait.”

Both of me laughed.

“I’m not.”

I summoned up a dozen flashbangs, filling the entire courtyard with light. Railgun and the barehanded Vorak reacted quickly enough to shield their eyes, but the asymmetry Adept was blinded. I wasn’t nice enough to not take advantage of that, following up the flashbangs with a cluster of kinetic explosions as close to the asymmetry Adept.

That would either reduce them to paste or rattle their brain enough to incapacitate them. Either way, it meant I should focus on Railgun.

Pressure jets of exotic gas seized my body again, propelling me toward the Headliner. Experience told me their most lethal attacks came from the safety of long range, so I had to get close and pressure them.

Offense was the key here.

With three opponents, I/Caleb would need to dictate the pace. Even with my mind benefiting from Coalescence, I was still fundamentally vulnerable.

Railgun materialized a crude shield on their arm, to catch my kick. In the moment I made contact, cascading the shield revealed it carried a huge static charge. But if I wasn’t grounded, the charge wouldn’t run through me.

I kicked off the shield, changing my trajectory mid-air with more bursts of gas. I landed out of reach of the barehanded Adept, who pounced after me like a tiger.

The air crackled dangerously wherever their hands swiped at me. I danced just out of reach before creating a huge crystal spike between us. Their claws tore through the material like butter.

Good to know. The armor I was using was formed from the same material.

It was some kind of disruptive effect, wrought into the Vorak’s own body. Some kind of rare augmentation? Whatever it was, it didn’t destroy their own hands, so there must have been some way to counteract it.

Reaver, I decided to call them.

They were an aggressive one, putting me on the back foot for a few moments.

“Enough,” I said, materializing a cluster of kinetic bombs in their path. Reaver’s own charge carried them headlong into the blast, blowing them backward.

At the same time, a bullet slammed into my chest guard.

I created a slab of grey crystal for cover before the second shot could reach. My armor had caught the first one, but it was still totally unexpected.

The asymmetry Adept wasn’t dead, and now shooting at me. Curious.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

They hadn’t moved from the spot I’d blown away with the first volley of kinetic bombs, a shimmering membrane stretched over most of their body.

Right. Kinetic asymmetry. Tiv had told me/Nai about them. They’d somehow shielded themselves from my bombs. Was it by coincidence? I thought I’d succeeded in stunning them with the flashbangs.

It was their turn to get up close and personal with me. Why not use the gun?

They were a different kind of fighter than Reaver. It was still fast, but their approach was more methodical and ready to retreat. They darted around the crystal I’d made for cover and probed at my guard by hand.

Not even a knife or spear.

I blocked the blows easily, kicking them in the belly for their trouble. But surprise, surprise, they were ready for something like that.

My foot caught on the membrane wrapped around them, getting stuck in midair for a second. The impact hadn’t connected solidly, and it left me open and off balance.

But not unprepared.

The asymmetry Adept took a bigger swing at me, and I resorted to jets of gas again to move. In low gravity, with all of my/Nai’s mass and energy carefully managed by my/Caleb’s precision…

It was three-dimensional free motion. It wasn’t really flying, but any direction I wanted to move, however I wanted to position myself, I could.

I spun out of the way of their swing, letting them hit the crystal I’d made instead.

The spire cracked like a tree being felled, only it didn’t fall. It flew.

That had been with a punch! Interesting! The kinetic asymmetry seemed to lie in impacts. Normally a punch powerful enough to throw seven-hundred pounds of crystal slab into a building would also snap the Vorak’s arm.

But that was because of equal and opposite reactions.

Why would the slab break at the bottom though, and not the point of impact? Had the Adept somehow altered something about leverage?

It was like watching cartoon physics in real life. Would they be making a comically large hammer next? Making an inflatable gag weapon that hit like a real one?

They were breaking fundamental laws of physics in ways that even I/Nai didn’t understand.

My kinetic bombs also should have crumpled them like a soda can, but they were still kicking. The membrane was somehow amplifying forces the otter exerted, and dampening forces exerted on the otter.

Asymmetry indeed…I’d call them Lawbreaker.

Gliding to new safe ground, I found Railgun in the back creating a mysterious gun one piece at a time. It looked different from the one they’d used against me/Nai last time. But it was a safe bet this weapon was something similar.

It was time to see just how mobile I could make myself.

I dropped my stance, preparing to blitz Railgun before they could start blowing away buildings.

But something dropping from the sky beat them to it. A large metal ball seemed to have smashed through the colony canopy and flattened a quaint brick duplex.

“Caleb Hane!” a voice roared from somewhere inside the wreckage.

“Were you sure that building was empty?” I called back. It wasn’t, of course. Everyone was evacuated deep underground. I’d been picking up minds at the bottom reaches of my radar for hours now.

A lone rak, sporting glittering orange armor like the others climbed into view.

Halberd. Marshal Tispas. The biggest Pain in my ass.

“Hold your fire!” Tispas barked at Reaver, sneaking up on me from the side.

I made a point not to give the rak even a glance. No, right now I was all eyes for Tispas Ustaramma, Marshal of the Red Sails.

“You need to stand down,” Tispas told me.

“Why?” I laughed. “I’m winning!”

“Three-to-one? Now four? You don’t have a chance, Human. My headliners are being gentle,” Tispas said.

“Yeah? That one—I’m calling them Lawbreaker—even put a bullet into my armor,” I smiled. “You’re going to regret not aiming for my head, by the way. I’m not giving you another chance. I get the feeling ‘Reaver’ here could kill me with just a touch. You’ve given me no reason to believe you before, and I’m not seeing anything new now.”

“Nora Clarke is with the other Humans right now, working with us to help these abductees in other star systems. You’re the only holdout. Stop this! Come peacefully, and I can guarantee you won’t be harmed or mistreated, regardless of everything previous.”

“Ahaha…I can’t get over your sheer arrogance,” I spat. “Last time we talked you said you’d kill me if I tried to leave the star system. You’re saying you’ll be gentle, but only so long as I don’t succeed too much. You don’t get to threaten my life, and then complain when I put up a fight.”

“I won’t pretend we acted perfectly before, but I am trying to prevent things from becoming any worse,” Tispas pleaded.

“You know? I believe you. I really do. That announcement you made was pure [shit] and you knew it, but there was an attempt in it to keep me alive. I appreciate that,” I told him. “This whole day I’ve been worried about just what I’ve been doing. Killing soldiers in a fight I didn’t ask for…doesn't seem right. I haven’t been very successful, but I’ve been trying to find ways to win that don't involve killing every Vorak I meet. It’s just pure arrogance to imagine your soldiers were the only ones trying to be gentle.”

I accumulated energy, readying myself.

“Don’t try it!” Tispas hissed.

“You set the rules for this game,” I said, “so now you’re going to have to play by them.”

“Take him,” Tispas ordered. “Bestir, be ready to stun him.”

Reaver leapt. But I created a forty-foot ground spike underfoot, thrusting me upward and letting me kick off from it. I flared my maneuvering jets again, focused on Railgun.

They hurled a lightning bolt from their crude shield—discharge from earlier, likely—but I materialized another ground spike between us to act as a lightning rod.

“Non-lethal!” Tispas roared at them.

I shook my head as I vaulted off my lightning rod for Railgun. Arrogance.

Lawbreaker threw a cloud into my trajectory though. It acted half-solid, like floating glue that I couldn’t push on. It wasn’t even a solid-enough material to cascade and analyze. Even angling my maneuvering jets against it didn’t seem to push me out of it more than a few inches.

That moment would have been a perfect moment for them to try shooting a bullet through a gap in my armor, but they still didn’t understand what kind of game we were playing.

Instead of pushing on the cloud to get out of it, I had to pull on something else. Opposing charges in my body and the lightning rod I’d leapt off did the trick.

Lawbreaker’s creations must be limited to affecting only certain interactions then. Okay. That might be useful.

Reaver and the Marshal both went for me in close range. Reaver had taken up swords that weren’t crackling the way their hands had earlier, and the Marshal leapt at me with their halberd.

The two of them were well coordinated, and I had to block attacks instead of avoid them. They were both swinging bladed weapons, but even if they scored a deep cut, as long as it wasn’t in my brain, Adeptry would likely see me survive the wound.

In that sense, swords might actually qualify as non-lethal.

I had to deflect both their blades, angling my body to catch each strike with my armor, one after another. The nature of fighting, even for Adepts, was in bursts. No one could fully exert themselves indefinitely, even with augmentations. And I could sense the two of them running out of steam faster than I was.

Because I was on fire right now. My mind was just ready. It wasn’t like when Daniel had been in my/Caleb’s brain. I wasn’t having to swap capabilities between both my selves. Both of me were maximally capable, benefitting from everything simultaneously.

They were clawing back some momentum, and I still wasn’t worried. I still had card after card to play, and all the while half of me was preoccupied tearing through Shaper’s horde elsewhere in the colony.

Their strategy was obvious.

The Marshal and Reaver would stay in close quarters and maneuver me, Lawbreaker would stay at mid-range, finding optimal positioning to hem me in and disrupt anything I attempted, while Railgun maintained distance and stayed ready to execute me with a spike going Mach 10.

My success would come down to energy management. Not in terms of Adeptry, but my body. Coalescence didn’t magically boost my stamina, but I could strategize with exhaustion in mind, keeping me fighting long enough to win.

So I took my licks, watching all four Adepts on radar, deflecting swords and materializing more spikes to intercept lightning bolts Railgun fired.

All the bolts except the first had been fired from their weapon, travelling in straight lines, very unlike real lightning.

They didn’t earn any objection from Tispas. I knew Railgun could modify the charge and voltage. The bolts were flashy, loud, and would hurt like hell if they connected. But they wouldn’t kill me.

They’d just paralyze every muscle in my body for a few seconds though, which was just about as bad in a fight like this.

My chance came when Lawbreaker deployed another cloud-membrane to keep me hemmed in.

By now, I’d created more than a dozen massive crystal spikes across the courtyard we were warring in. The Vorak hadn’t seemed to register just how much mass ‘Caleb Hane’ had brought forth at once.

I darted between two of them, and Lawbreaker stretched a cloud membrane between them to try and catch me, but I was a hair too quick. Reaver and Tispas had to take that precious single extra second to go around my ground spikes instead of between.

That was more than enough window for me. Jet boosting myself from one foothold to the next, I threw myself at Railgun.

Before I arrived though, I conjured another cluster of kinetic bombs. Railgun was the most capable Adept here, and they realized first just how serious I was.

Their own mind must have been blistering fast, because I could practically see the decision play out in their head in milliseconds. They could either attempt to avoid the kinetic bombs that were a heartbeat from detonating, and leave themselves vulnerable as they dodged. Or they could go for a mutual strike, and attack my/Caleb’s incoming body while they were hit by the kinetic bombs.

They chose the latter.

The railgun was aimed at me, and I could only pray my mind under Coalescence could alter the force of my maneuvering jets enough to push me off trajectory enough to avoid instant death.

The weapon discharged the same moment my kinetic bombs went off. The otter was thrown sideways by my blast, their armor taking the worst of the blast. And simultaneously I felt the air scream a few inches from me.

Couldn’t rightly say I ‘heard’ the scream. Railgun’s titular weapon was deafening, even with ear protection.

But a near miss wasn’t enough to make me falter, but my bombs were enough for Railgun to.

I attacked Railgun, truly finding my flow in the fight.

They created magnetic shields, trying to bind my limbs to anything nearby, but I pressed the attack. Even the other three Vorak weren’t safe while I kept my physical attention on Railgun. In my radar’s wider view of the conflict, I could still materialize things to waylay and attack the others.

Kinetic bombs, smoke screens, new ground spikes, rocket knives, flashbangs, I/Nai had once described my/Caleb’s ideal form being victory through endless novel threats.

It was with that novelty that I overwhelmed these Adepts.

Railgun tried to shield themselves with a spiderweb of electricity; I blew it apart with a kinetic bomb.

Reaver tried to catch me off guard, dropping down with their sword from above; I shot a pair of knives into their arm as they fell, knocking them off course.

Tispas tried to pin me by throwing their halberd; I blinded them with a flashbang before it even left their hand.

Lawbreaker was the wild card, because even with two people behind my mind, I still couldn’t figure out their creations.

But my new maneuvering jets were swift enough to carry me around their obstacles without ever needing to.

Railgun was the quickest to adjust to the unexpected, and they ramped up their pace. Their specialty was magnets, and that was a wide umbrella. But I/Nai had fought them before, so the shattering chunks of magnetic steel didn’t catch me off guard, and I was ready to shield myself from their next shot of their railgun.

No material was durable enough to withstand or deflect the shot, but the shot itself was already experiencing stress. It wasn’t durable enough to penetrate a barricade covered in an ablative explosive.

The shrapnel peppered my armor as I dove through the space my barricade had just stood, and I closed the distance again.

Shooting the barricade had also thrown up a dust cloud, and I wasn’t touching the ground enough for their cascade to alert them.

I burst through the dust, creating half a dozen rocket-knives aimed at every gap in their armor.

Every blade was deflected by some invisible force. Magnets, of course. Railgun really was a monster. If they’d known what they were in for going into this, they might have stood a chance.

They swung their spent railgun as a weapon, giving it a massive static buildup simultaneously, but I ducked out of the way with only an inch to spare.

My ground spike caught the empty railgun at the end of the swing, discharging it too. I kicked the rak away, separating them from the gun.

I cascaded the weapon just long enough to learn I wouldn’t be reproducing it any time soon. The specific materials and variety of them was too much. But Railgun had taken several seconds to assemble it one piece at a time.

A burst of vorpal fire slagged the inside of the gun, rendering it totally inoperable. If they wanted another, they’d have to make another, and I wasn’t going to give them the room.

Still, I’d overextended myself a bit. Tispas came at me from my right, Lawbreaker blocking my escape to the left, both of them trying to draw my focus away from Reaver…

I threw out my arms and materialized as many kinetic bombs as I could, in every direction.

My Caleb half was capable of exactly one bomb at a time, and I’d worked quite hard to get to the point where using that bomb didn’t reduce me to exhaustion on the spot.

My Nai half could probably make forty, not as precisely, but making up the difference in initial volume with sheer mass.

I made more than a hundred. Spaced out all around me, blasting every single point of the courtyard and every single point the Vorak could try to dodge into.

Simultaneous with the detonation, I jetted myself straight upward, looking for safer ground to alight down on.

My blasts tore up every corner of pavement, shattered every window of every building nearby, and neatly bowled over every rak I was fighting. Watching them each bounce off the ground would have been viscerally satisfying if not for that stupid orange armor they all wore.

Between that and their augmentations, my kinetic bombs didn’t seem like they’d be lethal without putting extra into each one.

But interestingly, I saw that Lawbreaker’s cloud-membranes, hadn’t survived the mass explosions but my jungle gym of ground spikes was more or less intact.

There must be a limit to their creation’s tolerance. Dump enough energy into it all at once and the membranes couldn’t maintain the asymmetry, or maybe they were pre-imbued with a certain stock of potential energy—tension—that could be depleted.

Whatever the case, I slowed my fall with more bursts of pressurized gas or plasma. I honestly wasn’t sure which it counted as.

All the otters had been violently thrown for a loop, but all of them were still ready to fight. One in particular recovered quicker than the rest.

Reaver’s attack came from behind.

The attack’s timing was perfect. They’d adjusted to my speed, and lunged for me the exact millisecond before I touched the ground.

But I still wasn’t surprised.

They could attack from behind, below; it didn’t matter. Radar tracked it all.

I caught Reaver’s thrust from behind, without facing them. The exotic blade digging into my palm, but my hands were augmented enough to stop bullets. They drew no blood. The other sword came around, slicing at my face.

In one continuous motion, I deflected it using the first blade, still clutched in my hand. Pinning the first blade against the other, I stomped my foot against the sword’s flat, snapping it where I held it.

Reaver was a ferocious one though, and they didn’t hesitate to swing the jagged remains of the blade at me. They didn’t move quickly enough. Or maybe my mind was just too fast right now.

I put my half of the broken blade through their throat.

It was long enough, it poked out the back of their neck. Purple blood gurgled through their teeth, and they wore a stunned look.

They shook it off though, and swung again.

I had to give them props. A sword through their throat and still no hesitation to keep attacking? They were certainly committed.

Fine then… I’d given them all enough rope to hang themselves with.

I caught their wrist with one hand, and with the other I materialized a blade of my own and rammed it under their jaw, stabbing into skull and helmet.

That put a stop to it.

From the first gunshot, our fight hadn’t taken even five minutes. But that was an eternity in a brawl. Every one of us was exhausted, and none of the remaining rak were recovering quickly from my mass kinetic bomb. Railgun hadn’t even finished picking themselves off the ground. Marshal Tispas and Lawbreaker had only just recovered in time to watch their ally die.

Still panting heavily, I let Reaver’s body slump over and bleed onto the ground.

The three remaining Vorak finally looked afraid.

“...Pure…arrogance,” I chided between breaths.