She used the momentum from the impact to twist around in the air and she let loose a small volley as she wound back around.

  Despite the small number of feathers the golem closed in on its master, shielding him. Good, that was the opening Aster needed.

  With a quick motion she snapped her gravity silver key off her keychain and clicked it onto her iron armament key which in turn hung from her feather projectile key.

  Her hold on gravity vanished the moment she removed the gravity key but she just let herself fall towards earth. She flicked off the remaining feathers on her arms into an upwards arc. She waited a few seconds, then she ripped out the halved feathers on her stomach and threw them herself into the same arc as the previous feathers. They’d probably start spinning and veer off course on the way down but it would have to do.

  She used every ounce of concentration she had in aiming true. If she did this right, Augusteen would have a continuous hail of iron tipped feathers raining down on him. The feathers would spend just that extra bit of time at the precipice of the arc because of the gravity key she’d just connected to them, before they fell back down. Perhaps Augusteen’s copious golem really was impenetrable, that wouldn’t stop Aster from exploiting its strength, namely its massive bulk, as a weakness.

  She threw the last of her feathers just as she touched ground. She kicked the footing out under a soldier and sent him sprawling over the wall. She filled her lungs with air to the breaking point, swiveled towards the villagers in the courtyard and screamed.

  “NOW!”

  The inhabitants of Heimgaard moved as one large wave of motion turning the tide of the battle.

  Aster punctuated the counter-attack herself by blasting the two closest soldiers with a shockwave of resonance each. The two unfortunate souls watched her with dumb expressions as their keys flew out the back of their armor and clattered down the wall. Her use of resonance made the other soldiers nearby shy away from her. Even if the armor they’d received from Augusteen still remained intact the prospect of losing one's keys was more than most were willing to risk.

  She knew from Tejahl that most of the soldiers used animal aspected growth keys for the inherent strength granted from them. Without the added strength to use the armor offensively, they stood little chance against the varied powers of the villagers. For some reason Kin Tao was reputedly very stingy with his silver keys and preferred to only give out bronze keys to his followers.

  The lines of gold atop the wall were soon replaced with the beige and brown colors of the villagers. The soldier’s formations buckled in a dozen places within just a couple seconds. The rocks beneath Aster’s feet grew slippery and she struggled to stay upright. The air grew stale and warm. She breathed in huge gulps between each movement gliding from attack to defense and back to attack again.

  Then there were no soldiers close enough to attack and she let up, finally able to breathe properly again. Her mind registered dully that if there were no more soldiers then Augusteen would attack again soon. She needed to distract him again, or their counter-attack would backfire.

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  A huge shadow fell over her. She didn’t take the time to look up, instead she blasted off to one side, gaining speed so fast her sight darkened for a brief moment. Augusteen’s golem landed next to the wall and it punched through the top part of the wall and rocks the size of her head sprayed into the courtyard, killing in swathes.

  Augusteen landed on top of the golem’s head one second later. His blade swiped out and a line of villagers dropped. The battle turned around in just three seconds. The villagers closest to the golem panicked and ran into the other people in the courtyard, turning it into a frothing mass of chaos and confusion.

  Inga’s eldest son slammed his fists into the earth and a wall of granite sprouted out from the broken hole in the battlements. The golem punched again and forced another wall to be made further back to keep a repeat of the earlier slaughter from happening again. They were losing ground by the second. Soldiers poured in from the opening by the golem and the battle resumed in the courtyard.

  Aster landed next to Inga’s son and fought the tide of soldiers on the right side of his newest wall inside the courtyard while he took the left hand side.

  Augusteen swiped down a second swathe of defenders through the courtyard but then moved to defend himself as Inga’s eldest daughter sent the tiny planets circling around her at him one by one.

  Aster stepped out of the range of three spear wielding soldiers who charged her. She flung an arc of feathers at their visors. One soldier went down clutching his helmet but the remaining two closed in. She blasted off an explosion to one side but she barely moved. She didn’t even clear the ground. Her gravity key still hung from the projectile key! She’d never connected it back to her chain.

  The two soldiers thrust forward as one with a practiced motion. The spear heads blurred. They trailed her stumbling motion and she used that fact to her advantage by stopping her motion with two large shockwaves of resonance. The unexpected stop made the spears graze her hip rather than skewer her through.

  The two men bumped into one another in their eagerness to take down Aster, making their follow-up awkward. Aster had stopped her forward momentum but sacrificed her footing to do so. Rather than fighting the inevitable she leaned into the motion and rolled over the retreating spears.

  She whirled around once she regained her footing to resume the fight but the soldiers had disappeared in a shower of rock. Augusteen’s golem had stepped through the breach and now hammered the secondary wall inside the courtyard. Still acting on instinct Aster shot a volley of feathers at its eyes but the golem ignored her attack and sent a boulder sailing through the air in return.

  She reacted without thinking by sending herself up into the air with two huge discs of light beneath her feet and realized too late that she wouldn’t make it. She hung helpless and exposed in the air and without her gravity key all the resonance in the world wouldn’t be enough to get her out of the way.

  Isaac crashed into her and tackled her to the ground. The boulder smashed into the dirt behind them. Isaac’s familiar thundered up to Augusteen’s golem which punched at the intruder. Rocky caught the punch in his paw-like fist and locked onto the golem’s shoulder with the other. The two creatures trashed in a brief stale-mate but the golem appeared to be the one being pushed back the most.

  The ground shook from the giant feet fighting for the superior foothold. Every other combatant, be it golden soldier or villager, gave the two of them a wide berth.

  The golem tried to twist its locked arm out from the familiar’s hold on its shoulder to punch at him but Rocky thwarted it at its every attempt. The familiar had the golem beat in both agility and strength.

  The struggle reached the wall and the golem stopped the advance by securing its feet in the rubble. Rocky let out a series of frustrated sounds that sounded a lot like rocks smashed by a hammer.