“Once the outpost has power back, activate a system-wide Code Primary and send a request for aid to all nearby systems,” Kinfild instructed the gathered officers. “They will attack here first and cut off the communications, so there’s still time to warn the rest of the star system.”

“We’ll fire a signal flare once the old reactor is repaired,” the commander said, speaking to everyone. “When you see it, return to the outpost immediately.”

Jace tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. Chaos returned to the room—people barked orders at each other and drowned out any intelligible conversation with their shouts.

He couldn’t wait here any longer. His use wasn’t in a control room, far from the action. He had to get out and do something. He turned back towards the staircase and waded through the crowd. Kinfild followed close behind.

They ran down the stairs as fast as they could. In the distance, orders blared through the outpost, echoing between different officers and demanding that the soldiers be ready to accept their captains’ orders.

At the bottom of the staircase, Jace snatched a loose scarf off a peg on the wall and wrapped it around his neck, then buttoned up his coat and pulled up the hood.

Then, he and Kinfild darted out into the fort’s gravel street, where Jace nearly collided with a mounted yellowcoat captain. The man rode a two-legged creature with a coat of well-groomed brown fur. It was saddled, and a bridle had been wrapped around its snaggletoothed jaw. The rider regarded Jace nervously, but kept riding alongside the column of yellowcoats—towards the outpost’s gate and into the eerie snow-fog beyond.

Kinfild must have noticed Jace staring at the creature, because he said, “That’s a jaikhorn. They’re bred for snowy climates like this.”

“They’re equipped and ready. We should follow them,” Jace whispered, then pointed toward the gate. All this strategizing was making his mind swim—he just needed to destroy some kobolds and harvest their Aes.

Jace and Kinfild ran alongside the column of soldiers and passed under the gate. The gravel paths melted away into the snowy shoals, and the snow pressed up against Jace’s boots. The white powder rose to his ankles, then to his shins. He nearly tripped, but he knew snow well. He regained his balance and sprinted with Kinfild to the front of the column.

The yellowcoats stopped advancing. They began to fan out into a defensive line three soldiers thick. Regardless of the snow, any yellowcoat without a mount knelt. The fog—which was more of a swirling mass of snow and ice crystals than a true fog—rushed over them.

Jace stopped just behind the line of soldiers, just beside one of the captains.

The soldiers all had tags like [Level 8 Yellowcoat]—between level eight and nine, based on their equipment, and possibly how the Split rated their combat proficiency. They were career soldiers, after all, not just regular men. Jace tried not to focus on them; the tags would be a distraction.

The gusting of the wind and erratic clatters of yellowcoats’ equipment was loud, but still he strained his ears, trying to hear any sign of the approaching kobolds. Faintly, he thought he could see columns of smoke rising from the landing crafts’ smokestacks, but he couldn’t be certain.

Suddenly, a distant chitter pierced through the fog and rumbled over the tundra. He didn’t need to strain his ears to hear it. Same sound as on Maehn. The chittering grew louder and louder; the kobolds were advancing.

They were here.

A single kobold charged through the fog. [Level 13 Kobold] read the tag above its head. Adrenaline coursed through Jace’s veins. He leapt forward, and, practicing his precise swipe from the dungeon, he aimed his blow accordingly.

It slashed the kobold from shoulder to hip. The beast disintegrated.

If there was one, the others couldn’t be far behind. Kinfild must have had the same thought, because he shouted, “Take aim!” to the yellowcoats. “Hold until my signal!” All down the line, the soldiers’ rifles lowered. The captains relayed the order.

“What’re you waiting for?” Jace hissed. “They’re coming!”

Kinfild leaned towards Jace. “These plasma rifles are powerful, but they’re not accurate at a distance.”

The chittering and screeching of the kobolds grew so loud that Jace wanted to cover his ears with his hands. He resisted. A swarm of shadows materialized out of the fog. Jace pointed the pistol with one hand, and with the other, he gripped the hilt of his Whistling Blade, ready to draw.

As soon as Jace could make out the spiked shoulder plates of the kobolds, Kinfild shouted, “Fire! Fire!”

Five-hundred shards of magenta plasma and smoke erupted out of the rifles. A wall of magenta wailed off into the distance.

He couldn’t see what happened, nor could he tell if the shots had hit their mark. But a few kobolds let off high-pitched wails. The wounded, maybe. The chittering and clanking armour stopped. If there were any kobolds left, they had stopped advancing.

Jace glanced at Kinfild. “That couldn’t have killed them all.”

“I doubt we even scratched their numbers.” The Wielder's eyes were grim. “But I also don’t think they were expecting to meet any resistance out here. We will have to fight. Keep out of the way when I use the Hollow Dragon’s Bite.”

“What does it do?”

“I have cultivated my Potency attribute very high,” Kinfild said, “as do most members of the Crimson Table. The Hollow Dragon’s Bite feasts on Potency. If the target has less potency than me, it rips them to shreds instantly. If not, it still tries to attack their core, and in essence, places a Potency-limiting debuff on them—a Curse.”

“Ah…so it’d destroy me.”

“If you did not dispel it before it hit you, yes. Resistance still affects it. It will work excellently on the kobolds, who likewise have minimal Potency and Resistance.”

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Jace looked back, searching the sky for any sign of the flare. Even with their magic, they wouldn’t hold the kobolds off for long. “Get them to keep shooting!” Jace hissed. “We need more time.”

“Fasten bayonets!” Kinfild called. The yellowcoat captains repeated the order, and it travelled down the line. The soldiers ahead of Jace drew long knives from their satchels, then attached the hilt beneath the muzzles of their rifles. The blades whirred. A razor-thin serrated chain circled along the blades’ cutting edges.

A few seconds later, Kinfild yelled, “Recharge!”

The soldiers stayed kneeling, and looked between each other with uncertainty. A clatter spread throughout the line as they prepared another volley—they cautiously pulled back the bolts of their rifles to let the steaming casings fall out, then pushed it back into place with another synchronized clunk. Despite shaky hands and quivering fingers, the yellowcoats managed to ready another shot within seconds.

But at the same time, the clatter of the kobolds began again. Jace peered between the ranks of the soldiers in front of him. Distant silhouettes bobbed up and down—beasts closing the distance. Without waiting for orders, the soldier directly in front of Jace fired his next shot. It became the epicenter of a chain-reaction; the rest of the soldiers fired.

But when the smoke cleared, Jace could still see the silhouettes advancing. When the shriek of the rifles subsided, snow still crunched under the kobold’s feet. Armour still clanked, and the beasts let off carrion-bird-like war-cries. This time, they didn’t stop after the first volley.

Kinfild stared straight forward. He shouted, “Fire at will!”

Yellowcoats fumbled with their rifles, and only a few more fired another shot before the kobolds emerged from the fog. The yellowcoats in the front stood up and scrambled backwards.

“Hold your positions!” Kinfild yelled, but it came too late.

The kobolds barreled into the thin line of yellowcoats, impaling themselves on bayonets—regardless of the difference in level between them and the yellowcoats. The kobolds behind them pushed forwards, snarling and slashing. Most neglected to use any weapons; instead, they slashed and gnawed at the yellowcoats with tooth and claw.

Magenta blasts seared the air around Jace. Bodies fell. Black armour shattered into explosions of shrapnel. Kobolds and yellowcoats screamed. Once the two armies engaged each other at such a close range, there was no order Kinfild could deliver that would sway the outcome.

Jace added to the carnage. He cut through three of the beasts, but there had to be thousands in the snowy fog.

Pushing a kobold away from a struggling yellowcoat, he stabbed the beast through the gut with the Whistling Blade. He wheeled around and slashed through another…then another, and another. The glowing edge of the Whistling Blade left streaks in the fog and weaved a spirderweb of light in front of him.

Golden light and dust flooded into his chest, making his channels tingle. With each kobold he cut down, more flooded in. He could keep—

A crude spearhead impaled his hood and nearly poked through his neck.

Concentrate, Jace, concentrate! he told himself.

He parried the same spear’s next jab, then slammed the kobold wielding it in snout with the Whistling Blade’s hilt. Before he could finish the beast off, Kinfild struck it in the head with his staff.

They didn’t drift far apart again. Jace slashed and stabbed at snarling kobolds until his hands were covered with the beasts’ blood—as thick and dark as oil. Kinfild blasted some with bars of flame, the Hollow Dragon’s Bite technique.

“Now would be a good time for your new card!” Kinfild yelled.

“Cover me!” Jace called.

“On it.”

Jace sheathed the Whistling blade and ducked behind Kinfild, who broke the swarm of kobolds with another Hollow Dragon’s Bite. Then, he conjured up his own fortification card. A swirling snake of orange sparks wrapped around his arms, bolstering his staff-strikes. Every time he hit a kobold, he shattered its armour and flung it across the battlefield.

Jace picked up a kobold’s abandoned spear. If he was going to launch something through hyperspace, it couldn’t be anything he wanted to keep.

He switched his cards. Holding his two others as spares in his left hand, he socketed the Wanderer’s Banishment card. As soon as it clung to his core, he activated it.

The card drove his Aes in a complex pattern through his channels—too complex for a mind to comprehend. It shot to his hands, pressed tight against the shaft of the spear. He pointed it at the army of kobolds.

The unrefined card sent spiritual pain surging through his body, and he gritted his teeth. Phantom pain blasted through his channels and needles tingled in his bones.

“Press tighter!” Kinfild shouted. “Launch it! Breathe, and let the card work for you!”

The spear shifted. It lit up with bright light and trembled in Jace’s hands. Jace spread his legs and firmed up his stance, allowing his Resistance to do work for him.

“Kinfild, duck!” Jace yelled.

The Wielder dropped to his stomach. In an instant, the spear shot out of his grip, tearing through the kobolds ahead and disintegrating a line of them. The spear shattered chunks of armour and sent debris clouds flying, and in a wedge about thirty meters long, kobolds were reduced to dust and tarry mist.

It had done more widespread damage than any of Kinfild’s techniques. A column of pure, unrefined Aes blasted into Jace’s chest, a reward for destroying so many darklings at once.

It had also been a hyperspace, light-base ability, but the other soldiers were too busy fighting for their lives to care that Jace was using a forbidden Path.

Jace shook his hands out, trying to dispel the spiritual pain, but more kobolds were coming. They filled in the empty wedge Jace had carved.

He swapped his cards, and in a matter of seconds, socketed the Cleanse card. He activated it with a pulse of Aes to his core, sending cooling waves through his body. Then, while Kinfild struck a few more with his staff, Jace re-socketed the Wanderer’s Banishment. He picked up another spear and used the technique again, spiritual pain be damned.

Another wedge of kobolds disintegrated, and another column of pure Aes rushed into his chest, golden sparks and dust nearly knocking him back a few steps.

“We will not destroy them all!” Kinfild yelled.

“We need to fall back!” Jace ducked under a kobold’s claws, then stabbed it through the gut. “Wherever the generator is, we can keep close to it!” He didn’t have time to check how much Aes head just accumulated, but it filled his channels, and when he pushed it into his core, it filled the little orb nearly all the way.

“Did you see the flare yet?” Kinfild asked as he struck a kobold in the snout with his staff. “I saw nothing!”

“Nothing!” Jace glanced behind him just to be sure he hadn’t, but instead, he saw kobolds. They were breaking through the lines. They let out fierce howls, hungry for more bloodshed as they charged to the garrison and the empty city beyond. The outpost’s artillery began to boom, and the snow exploded into high columns.

Great. Now the ground between them and the outpost was a minefield.

They were out of time. Jace turned forwards, just in time to spot a kobold’s chipped black sword racing towards his head. He sliced it in half with the Whistling Blade, then cut the beast from head to hip.

“You don’t happen to know where exactly the generator would be?” Jace asked.

Kinfild struck a kobold in the chest with his staff, then shouted, “Behind us! Somewhere!”

Jace had figured that much. “It has to be near the outpost!” He kicked a kobold away from him. Between slashes, he yelled, “We need to get away! You gave my clothes a Spirit Enhancement to come with me through hyperspace, but can you do the same for yourself?”

“I could make it happen!”

Jace gripped the collar of Kinfild’s robes, and, slashing at a kobold, he turned away. “Then hold on!”

He activated his Hyperdash card.