Aster cursed. She called to her keys and she felt her skin prickle. She made sure her iron key connected to her feather key. A number of people jumped up on the wall beside her.

  “Fall back!” she screamed, “stay off the wall until I say so.”

  The villagers hesitated, but stepped down one by one. She couldn’t remember most of them, but they must’ve heard the stories about her, for they showed her a quiet respect in the way no one even questioned her reasoning. For once the rumors proved useful.

  Isaac and Inga argued with each other, the old woman shook her head several times and held out a flat hand as if to signal Isaac to stop. She couldn’t hear anything over the loud ruckus of a whole village preparing for battle at a mere minutes notice.

  She couldn’t make out the argument but she did notice the thrumming sound of footsteps interspersed with the crashing noises of Augusteen’s golem. The nervousness she always experienced before a battle returned in full force.

  She readied herself again, checking and rechecking the iron armament key. It was there. The feathers felt heavy on her skin and she felt the sweat glide down the stilks and pool at the edges. She turned and faced the oncoming mass of gold and dust.

  She paid the soldiers no mind, they were no threat to her, not as long as she could jump away. She only had eyes for Augusteen. He stood on the top of his golem, the furthest away from the wall. She could barely make out the details of his pommel, he was so far away, but she didn’t let that reassure her. She knew what Augusteen was capable of.

  Sure enough, his hand flickered and the sword in his hand struck out with the motion. It would’ve looked odd to attempt a slash from that far away, he wouldn’t have been able to throw the sword far enough, much less strike with it, but then the blade extended in the blink of an eye.

  Right before the halfway mark of the arc, the blade shot out like a telescoping rod, much faster than Aster had anticipated. Her body dropped backwards even before her mind had registered what had happened and she watched the golden blade blur the air above her where her head had been a fraction of a second before.

  She channeled the power of her gravity key and her weight cut to a tenth of her usual footprint. Two large shockwaves blossomed beneath her palms into the ground as she shoved against them and propelled herself into the air just in time for Augusteen’s next strike to pass under her.

  Her body moved on its own, she didn’t have to think, she just acted. And that was a very good thing for the whooshing noise Augusteen’s sword made as it cut through the air sent her mind into panic.

  Years of practice wouldn’t let her mind sabotage her survival however, and she reversed the shockwaves throwing her back down to the earth again. Augusteen’s third strike split the air above her.

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  She touched down on the wall and then the soldiers were upon her. She wanted to jump away, her panicked mind screamed at her that Augusteen would strike again any second. She didn’t know if he would risk hitting his own soldiers. He didn’t seem like someone who would do that kind of thing. On the other hand, he did seem like someone who might think himself good enough to thread the needle.

  It didn’t matter. She couldn’t let the soldiers get down to the courtyard. If they did the village would be overrun and she would die or get captured with them. She didn’t have the option to glide away like she usually did when things got too hot. Chaaron was such a pain in the ass.

  She used the sudden flare of anger to burn away the panic. She sent two volleys of feathers into the soldiers by throwing a hand out to either side. There were so many of them she didn’t need to aim and they had also been so kind as to arrange themselves in two neat little lines along the wall.

  The feathers thunked against the golden armor and inflicted superficial wounds at best but most of them lost their footing and the rest got distracted long enough to get nailed by the hail of projectiles coming from the courtyard.

  It wasn’t enough though, not by a long shot. The soldiers created human barricades by supporting each other from getting knocked off the wall by the furious effort of the villagers in the courtyard.

  It dawned on Aster what an unstoppable warmachine Augusteen had assembled. He’d perfectly stitched together a group to shore up his own weaknesses. Now with the addition of Chaaron they were the perfect unit to lay down a siege.

  Her two greatest weapons, her feathers and her resonance, were completely negated by the golden armor and that oversized golem in turn. She couldn’t penetrate the armor and as long as that golem was there she couldn’t close in on Augusteen himself without getting crushed. If only she would’ve still had her gold key. She cursed the day she had ever first heard the name ‘Tejahl’.

  As it was, she needed the other villagers if she’d have any hope of pushing the soldiers off the wall. If they managed to succeed however, Augusteen would swipe them into submission and they’d be worse off than before from the losses. She needed to keep him occupied somehow. Her only option was to challenge him head on. She’d rather step off a cliff than jump out into the open again, but she didn’t have much choice. Isaac was right, they had to hold the wall, it was the only advantage they had.

  She breathed in, steeled her nerves, and launched herself into the air.

  No sooner had she done so than a blade sang through the air at her. She accelerated by blasting four explosions, one from each limb, and she cleared the attack.

  She channeled her gravity key for all she was worth and she hung in the air as the friction of the air slowed her ascent. She prepared every feather she could muster. She ran out of open skin and she heard her clothing tear from the feathers searching for an open spot.

  She soared over the village and she registered in the back of her mind the true extent of Chaaron’s gas clouds. There was so much of it. Chaaron produced more mass in a day than ten normal people put together. It never ceased to amaze Aster just how much one person could manage alone with the help of the keys.

  Somewhere in those clouds that reached in every direction for miles, Chaaron sat hiding. If only they could find her somehow, then Aster could take the fight to her directly and this whole battle would’ve been a lot easier.

  Augusteen’s sword sliced through the air and she had to twist her upper body into an obscene angle to keep her head on her shoulders. Only the spatial awareness from her bronze key enabled her to react in time. The blade cut the feathers on her stomach in half and the air filled with fluttering fragments.