Jace stood up and turned back to Kinfild. “What is it?”

“Come closer,” the Wielder said. “Now that you’ve completed your ability enhancements…well, I believe on my task sheet, if I still had it, it said I was supposed to put a spirit-enhancement on your clothes.”

Jace tilted his head. He took a step closer to Kinfild’s cell.

“An enhancement?” Lessa asked.

“Indeed,” said Kinfild. “It is a basic process, though I do not have access to many enhancement types. The scope of my enhancing is limited to…I suppose you’d say ‘mildly helpful’—I am not an alchemist nor a master enchanter. But I can push up certain attribute ratings ever so slightly. If I do it while you’re wearing it, it has the slight side effect of binding to your spirit.”

Jace raised his eyebrows. “I…can take them off if you want.”

“Quite the opposite,” said Kinfild. “I will boost the Resistance rating a touch while you are wearing it, and it will bind partially to your spirit, allowing you to carry it with you on a hyperdash without any resistance. Just mutter a few sutras, push as much Aes as I can past this restraining collar, and I should achieve something. I won’t be able to activate a technique card, but this is a manipulation of the Split itself.”

“Will I ever be able to take it off?”

“Of course, but any object with the enchantment will be marked for use by you—and you only.”

Kinfild cupped his hands over his mouth and whispered into them. Jace didn’t know what the Wielder was saying, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to know. It sounded very…non-human, like something an eldritch space-beast might scream at him. Not what an old man would say. It fluctuated in pitch and intensity, and at one point, it sounded like two people were speaking at once, each an octave apart.

After a few seconds, Kinfild opened his hands. A cloud of golden dust, pure Aes, washed out, sailing through the air and swirling towards Jace. It latched onto his pants and belt and soaked in, forming runes and swirls as it clasped onto the fabric. Slowly, the dust faded, and his pants looked (and felt) no different than before.

“And there you go,” Kinfild said.

“Thank you,” Jace said. He looked back at Lessa and inched back to her cell. “And thank you, above all, for helping with the card.” He looked her in the eyes. “You were very useful.”

She beamed.

Kinfild said, “I will do the same to the rest of your items—when you bring them to me.”

For a few minutes, they sat in silence. The starship rumbled, shook, and shuddered, and Jace knew they were getting close. He moved closer to the bars, ready to escape.

“What are we going to do once we escape?” Lessa asked.

Kinfild pressed his hands against his knees and stood up. “What do you mean?”

“What’s the plan?” she said. “What are we doing once we get away from Maehn? Where are we going, at least?”

Jace looked at Kinfild as well. He was curious as well, but not enough to voice his questions. Besides, he didn’t feel inclined to raise his voice over the ever-increasing protests of the starship as it slowed down.

“We’ll find the Luna Wrath.” Kinfild stated. “It’ll be back on Lyvarion—Aur-Six knows to return there in emergencies.”

“There?” Jace asked, tilting his head. “Not…like, some fancy Crimson Table hideout?”

“There,” Kinfild confirmed. “We have been spending a great deal of time there in the past few years, waiting for the worldjumpers to arrive.”

“And once we get the ship back?” Jace asked. “I need to keep advancing, somehow, someway. The Vault Cores are nice, but…are there other places we can go to find high-level darklings and better equipment?”

“When we return to the Luna Wrath, we can make a proper plan,” Kinfild said. “Until then, we should worry about staying alive.”

The starship lurched, a boom rolled through the vessel. The light outside the small window faded, and the darkness of space seemed to creep into the brig. They had arrived. He inhaled, then put his hands against the bars of his cell.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“It’s time,” he whispered, then stepped back to the edge of the cell. He’d get a running start, just in case.

“We’ll be here, waiting…” Lessa whispered. “No pressure.”

The comment earned a snort from Jace. He picked his target—the central hallway of the brig—then ran. Halfway across his cell, he activated the technique card and flashed through the air. He braced for impact. He prepared himself to feel a hard thud as he smashed into thick metal bars, and a sudden…lack of existence.

Nothing held him back. There was no drag, not even a whirl of Aes around him.

The flash faded, and he appeared on the other side of the bars—in the center of the hallway. Instead of a trail of golden sparks, he left behind a trail of blue sparks.

He looked back and forth across the hallway. None of the guards had noticed—not yet. They stayed in a small room at the end of the hallway, staring down at a table. They were tossing square playing cards down in a pile.

Jace ducked low and crept towards them, careful not to poke his head higher than the guards’ viewing window. There was only one door in, and he couldn’t open it without them noticing. If he ran in, one would probably draw a gun and shoot him.

He had to lure them out, then. He reached up and pressed the button beside the door with his hand. It slid upward into the wall.

Jace, however, didn’t move. He stayed hidden, currently out of sight. There were a few disgruntled groans, then one guard stood up. The man muttered something in a language that Jace didn’t understand and walked towards the door.

The moment the guard peered outside, Jace kicked him in the knee. He reeled backwards, and Jace grabbed his pistol from its holster. He flicked the safety off, then blasted two of the guards in the small office. The third lifted a rifle off the table, and Jace ducked down. As he ducked, he grabbed the head of the guard whose pistol he stole and rammed it into the wall.

With his Strength enhancements, he didn’t feel much stronger than normal, but more than he had been a few days ago.

A blast of plasma soared overhead. It bit into the wall behind him, and Jace jumped to his feet. He blasted the guard in the forehead; the man didn’t wear a helmet.

Jace tucked the pistol into the back of his belt and dashed into the office. The rest of his, Lessa’s, and Kinfild’s equipment waited on the back table. He snatched up the shirt he’d worn to the party and pulled it back on, then grabbed the sheathed Whistling Blade and his backpack and donned them as well.

Beside his items, he found Lessa’s overcoat, as well as Kinfild’s suit jacket, staff, and tophat. He bundled them up and tucked them under his arm, then pulled a new, fully-loaded pistol from one of the guards’ holsters.

The moment he stepped out of the office, a shout rang out. The hatch at the end of the hallway slid open. Two Koedor-Terginian soldiers prowled through the steam. They were here to trap or kill him, and he couldn’t hesitate. He pointed the pistol and fired at them both. He killed the first in one shot, but the second’s armour deflected a blast into the wall. Jace fired once more, blasting through the weakened armour. Both bodies fell.

Jace ran back down the hallway—to Kinfild and Lessa’s cells. He slid the pistol under the door of Lessa’s cell, then drew the Whistling Blade. Gripping the sword with one hand, he slashed off the locking mechanism of Lessa’s cell. The barred door swung outward. Jace tossed her the overcoat, then moved to Kinfild’s cell. He raised his sword and hacked straight through the locking mechanism. As soon as the door swung open, Jace tossed Kinfild his jacket, hat, and staff, then cut the restraining cuffs and collar off.

“Are we gonna take control of the ship?” Lessa asked, picking up the pistol Jace had given her. Another soldier ran through the hatch on the far side of the hallway, and she fired a pair of shots at him. The blasts sparked against the doorframe and, at a long distance, deflected off the man’s armour. She fired a third shot, and this time, it blasted straight through the soldier’s visor.

“We will try,” said Kinfild.

They ran down the hallway, back toward the hatch that the reinforcements had emerged from. Jace held the Whistling Blade ahead of him as he ran, the glowing white edge lighting up a halo in the swirling steam and smoke.

The moment they reached the end of the hallway, an alarm blared. It was high-pitched and painful. Jace wanted to plug his ears, but he couldn’t. He had to keep moving. A red light flashed over and over, casting the hallway in a flaming glow.

They ducked under the hatch. A short ladder led up, and Jace scaled it. The moment he arrived in the upper level, a soldier swung a curved, Aes-shielded saber at him. He deflected it up into the roof, then stabbed the man through the chest.

They had arrived in a cockpit. It was a long, rectangular room with a thin viewscreen on the front wall. Switches and dials and brass tubes covered every surface. One of the pilots turned around, holding a pistol. Before he could fire, Lessa shot him.

The other pilot leaned over the dashboard and began to yell into an upright cylinder: “They’ve escaped! The prisoners have escaped! They’re—” Jace stabbed through the back of the man’s seat before he could finish. The tip of the Whistling Blade also pierced through a swath of controls, and the starship shuddered.

For a moment, Jace held perfectly still. The alarm still blared, and a wire crackled. Then, a speaker on the dashboard crackled. A voice crept through it, distorted and crackled. “Are you alright? What’s happening? Transport Em-Seven, do you copy?”

Jace glanced at Kinfild, then at Lessa. Out of the two of them, Jace figured he was the only one who could pass as a crew member—Kinfild was too old, and Lessa’s voice was too feminine. He tried his best to mimic the Koedor-Terginian accent—it was like a German accent, but softer. He hoped the crackling static would obscure any imperfections. “This is Transport Em-Seven. We hear you.”

“What’s happening, Em-Seven?” the voice demanded.

He looked around. Out either side of the viewscreen, the escort starships lingered. If they tried to break away now, the escorts would destroy them. They were headed to an eerie, reddish orange planet, wreathed in clouds of dark, inky black. Their only chance was to fit in with the other starships and head to the surface.

“We…we subdued the prisoners,” Jace stated. “We’re bringing them to the surface now.”