IN.

OUT.

FUNCTIONS CEASED.

POWER.

TWO POINTS.

ANOMALY.

ANOMA—

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The killing machine reeled as I parted its head from its shoulders with a thought. Both of its arms had a long piston powered spike and a side mounted rotary autocannon, the latter of which it used to attack the area around itself in a series of predetermined patterns. That was until a second thought from me sent the robot crashing back into a nearby building. Gears shifted and whined, pulling the mechanicum from the crumbling stone. Sparks spat instead of blood, and it rushed me.

I froze it in place with my will, watching it heave and grind against the invisible barrier I had created. I tightened the air around it, folding space. The shriek of twisted metal filled the alley as the machine was crushed and snapped, bending over and over until it was nothing but an ugly clump of parts. I let the hanging remains fall, and they splashed into a rivulet of water that angled through the street.

I turned to what really mattered. The ethereal lay sprawled before me, broken and bloodied. I kneeled at her side, tracing the two gaping wounds with my fingertips. The first of the robot’s piston attacks had cleanly severed her spine, and the second had pierced the back of her skull. I turned her delicate head, seeing a torn hole where her left eye socket should have been—the obvious exit point of the stroke that had killed her.

“Why did you die?” I asked aloud.

Truly, I wondered. Ethereals were an exceptionally gifted race, rare as they were deadly. How had such a mindless adversary bested one of their kind? I flitted my awareness across her form, searching for signs of toxin, contagion, or nano-virus, anything that would have impaired her killing grace, but there was nothing.

A handful of bullets skipped off the shield of energy that encircled me. I turned briefly, melting my attacker’sbrain within his skull. He didn’t even have time to scream.

I looked back at the ethereal’s face, noting the delicate veins that spread underneath her pale skin like a spideryderra tattoo. Out of those here, she had been the most likely to make it to the end with me—an opportunity that I had relished. It had been many years since I had last tested myself against an ethereal, and it would likely be many more before such an opportunity presented itself, if ever again.

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“You’ve disappointed me, Hgana,” I said, using the name she had chosen for the entry lists.

She clutched two slim daggers with desperate abandon, and on a whim I went to pick one up. A hair’s breadth before I touched the naked blade, I sensed the void within the metal and yanked my hand back, my fingertips suddenly numb.

“By the Core,” I whispered.

With infinite care, I reached my mind out to the blades. I braced myself for the attack to come, knowing it would pull at my very essence again.

Nothing.

My brow furrowed. Did they only respond to physical stimuli?

Steps slapped behind me, and it took all my will to turn away from the twin mysteries.

It was a big man, his right arm replaced with a gaggle of mechanical limbs, ranging from buzzsaws to drills to claws. His body also twitched, making it clear that he was gene enhanced. An obvious close combatant. Such a foolish limitation.

I was about to shatter his form when an idea occurred to me. With a strong mental tug, I pulled one of the daggers from Hgana’s hands and whipped it at the man.

“A shaper,” he hissed, turning to run, but I froze him in place, letting the blade catch in his massive chest. At firstit seemed as if the dagger had done nothing more than any other edged weapon would, causing blood to bubble.

At first.

With my double sight, I could see his life force being ripped away from his body, tearing free as the void within the blade absorbed it. In seconds, his flesh would be a husk.

But no.

Sheets of energy lashed out from the blade, pushing in the opposite direction. The space around the man twisted and bent as conflicting powers surged against each other, and then a flash filled the alley, so bright I thought my eyes would be baked in their sockets.

When my vision cleared, the dagger lay on the ground, and the man—the man was gone. Frowning, I stared at the blade. After my near contact with it, I had assumed it to be a vessel of sorts, designed to cut souls from the flesh and store them. However, there was clearly a second, opposing force at work within the weapon. Why someone would have designed it to function in such a fashion—when there were countless other, much simpler ways to destroy a target if that was the intended purpose—I couldn’t imagine.

Sirens sounded, the noise accompanied by a series of lights, which indicated where I was supposed to go to meet the final competitor. I lifted the dagger from the ground with a thought, letting it float ahead of me since I had no wish to touch even the protected handle with my skin. I used another whisper of power to snap Hgana’s dead fingers, pulling the second blade up beside the first, and then strode out of the alley.

It was time to finish this.

He was waiting for me. Standing in a section cleared away by a tremendous blast. He bowed at the waist as I approached.

“Dar’lax.”

I cocked my head at the stranger. “It seems you have me at a disadvantage.”

The man smiled in a boorish way, pointing a finger up.

My name and that of my opponent were projected far above us in huge block letters, but my attention quickly turned to more important things. I couldn’t use the blades again. Their current state might be temporal, and I wished to study them as they were.

Not that it mattered. My mind would be more than enough.

I didn’t wait for any ceremony to start the fight, I simply reached out with my will. Invisible fingers closed around him, ready to crush the life from his flesh, but his form suddenly wavered and broke apart. It was nothing but a simple hologram. How could I have been so careless?

I crouched, sweeping out with my thoughts, searching for his life signature. Nothing. Walls sprung up around me, thick as stone, yet clear as glass. No matter what angle he attacked from it would be repelled, and then he would be revealed.

A whisper of air tickled my neck. I turned to find the man looming above me. His hands clamped around my throat, shockwaves of lighting rolling from his gauntlets into me. My body snapped back and forth, catching on fire, breaking—

shzzzzzt