///Pilot Neural Interlock requested: accept handshake yes/no?
>y
///running neural interlock verification
.signal origin internal component check PASSED
.signal bio-sign integrity check PASSED
.signal firewall compatibility check PASSED
.signal military authorisation check FAILED
///neural interlock verification interrupt
///elevate permission control
///input standard Afon Ddu MIL-1 ident code
///permission control overridden 99999999 ERROR hours previous: authorization Chief Engineering Officer Rhian Uren
///MIL-1 ident code: 109877-E-RU
///ident accepted
///neural interlock verification resume
.signal neuro-electric check PASSED
.signal mutual handshake check PASSED
.signal non-indig nanomachine contamination check FAILED
///SUSPECTED NANOMACHINE CONGLOMERATION ACCESS ATTEMPT DETECTED
///PRIORITY ONE STANDING ORDERS PREVENT SYSTEMS CAPTURE
///EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN AND SYSTEMS PURGE ADVISED
>n
///PRIORITY ONE STANDING ORDERS OVERRIDE
///EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED
///systems purge in 3 …
>abort shutdown
///systems purge in 2 …
>abort shutdown combat situation priority avert destruction of unit
///elevate permission control
///input Human-Human mastergene code access
///permission control overridden 99999999 ERROR hours previous: authorization Chief Engineering Officer Rhian Uren
///systems purge in 1 …
. . .
///shutdown purge aborted
///neural interlock verification resume
.signal designate check PASSED
.signal designate: Elpida
///neural interlock verification complete
///Pilot Neural Interlock engaged
///internal audio
///Elpida: .“Nnuurgh! Ow! Ahhh … uh, Pheiri, if you heard that, ignore me. I’m fine, keep going, I can take the data stream. Give me the turret controls, I’m ready.”
///turret traverse systems handover SUCCESS
///turret elevation systems handover SUCCESS
///turret auxiliary reactor junction handover SUCCESS
///turret shielding tunnel handover SUCCESS
///PBE targeting handover SUCCESS
///PBE fire control handover DENIED
///internal audio
///Elpida: .“Got it! This is a … a particle beam emitter? Alright. Pheiri, I’m sorry, but I don’t even know what that is! All I can do is point and shoot. I’ve got traverse, elevation, power controls, and … ”
>PBE fire control handover retry
///PBE fire control handover DENIED
>handover denial query
///ERROR undefined parameters
///internal audio
///Elpida: .“Good, good. Great! I’ve got a targeting overlay, sensor access, this is good, this is good! I’m gonna keep talking out loud, okay? This isn’t a true spinal socket so I don’t even know if we have subvocalisation crossover. I’ll keep talking, you keep driving. You got that?”
///subvocalisation pilot neural loop return value
>y
///internal audio
///Elpida: .“Haha! Yeah, I hear you! Well, I see you, but that may as well be the same thing, plugged in like this. I’m with you, little brother. I’ve got your back. Go as fast as you need. I can’t keep up with the peripheral visuals but I don’t need to. All I need is a target lock on the diamond airship. Just give me an angle and give me fire control.””
>handover denial query PBE fire control
///ERROR access denied
>query access denial authorization
///access denial authorization Chief Engineering Officer Rhian Uren
> …
> …
> …
>why
///access denied authorization Chief Engineering Officer Rhian Uren
* * *
Elpida was not alone; a ghost lurked in the wet-meat weave of Pheiri’s brain.
She had not noticed the additional presence at first. The ghost was quiet and subtle and stayed out of sight. Elpida had many other things on which to concentrate, most of which were loud, fast, and dangerous.
Elpida’s mind was flooded with input from Pheiri’s body. Her vision was overlaid with the data from his external sensors; she had a three-hundred-and-sixty degree view around his outer hull, racing through the rotting streets of the corpse city, a composite picture in visible light, infra-red, heat-signature, echolocation, gravitic disturbance readout, nanomachine density estimate, radiological hazard level, bio-chemical readings, and a dozen more she could not name with words, only feel with sense and instinct. Speed, acceleration, and momentum all registered like wind upon her skin. The back of her head churned with munition statistics, armour integrity charts, and a hundred overlapping spheres of weapon range markers, each one flashing and blinking with new firing solutions and confirmed hits.
She felt the throb of Pheiri’s nuclear reactor as if it was her own heartbeat; the pulse and flow of his coolant and lubricants was the rush of blood in her own arteries; the churning of his tracks mapped to the pumping of her own leg muscles. The roar of his engines was the flutter of her lungs. The thump and crack of his guns was the swinging of her fists. The crackle of his active shielding was the tiny hairs on her arms, standing on end.
Elpida’s skin prickled and tingled with the backwash of a million overdue maintenance requests and internal safety warnings and minor error messages.
Piloting Pheiri was not like piloting a combat frame — certainly not one in good condition, well-cared for by an engineering team, regularly linked back to Telokopolis itself, fed and watered with protein-slurry and synthetic hydrocarbons.
Pheiri was a mess.
Elpida spoke out loud: “We gotta get down inside you with a spanner and some grease. Maybe once we’re clear. Once we’ve saved Thirteen. Promise you, alright? I promise. When we’re not fighting for each other’s lives, we’ll see to some proper repairs for you. I promise.”
Pheiri’s reply scrolled across her sight in glowing green.
>y
Pheiri’s sensors picked up voices down below — Elpida’s comrades.
“—we just fucking turn around?!” That was Kagami, raging inside the infirmary. “We turned around! We’re going back! What the fuck—”
Atyle interrupted; Kagami’s voice must have carried. “The warrior plunges into hell for the love of her ghost, poor scribe! Still your fearful bleating! Sing now, sing with me! Or have you no romance in your dead and blackened heart?”
Vicky spluttered, interrupted as Pheiri skidded to one side. “Elpi’s doing this?! What, wait, how—”
Ilyusha broke in at the top of her lungs. “Wooooooo! Wooooo! Whooo!”
“Illy!” Amina squeaked. “Illy, please, hold— hold on, hold me, hold—”
“Awooooo-aroooo!”
Kagami snapped: “I’m not going to sing, you mad bitch! Shut up! Stop! Somebody turn this tank around! Fuck! And stop the borged up barbarian from howling like that!”
Elpida shut them out. They were safe for now, cradled within her flesh and Pheiri’s steel. She needed to concentrate.
Elpida was not joined to Pheiri via a true MMI-uplink, plugged into the base of her brain and wired to her neural lace; she could not reach out with a thought and move his tracks, nor take charge of his many hull-mounted weapons, nor interfere with his more delicate internal systems. Piloting a combat frame had always felt like being magnified; one’s sense of self expanded to fill the machine-meat of the frame, while the frame’s animalistic consciousness nestled safe and secure in the whorls of one’s own brain.
Without the willing sensory deprivation of a pilot capsule, Elpida struggled to ignore her own physical body. She was lying down in the bare metal groove inside Pheiri’s turret — all that was left of a pilot seat. She was shivering despite the fact she couldn’t feel the cold. Her hair was wet and filthy with grey mud, her naked legs were sore from the journey across the crater, and her hand was bleeding freely from where she’d cut it on the edge of the bare metal seat
She shut her eyes; there was nothing to see except the shadows and gloom of the turret. She needed to concentrate on Pheiri’s sensors.
She could still hear the roar of Pheiri’s engine, the rumble of his tracks crashing through brick and concrete, and the thump-thwack of his guns pounding at the pursuing aircraft. Every turn and swerve threw her against the rough metal sides of the pilot seat.
Through Pheiri’s sensors she spotted three of the ball-shaped rotor-craft bobbing through the air in pursuit, trying to hunt Pheiri from the rear; she internalised the composition of the air — even Pheiri’s sensors were overwhelmed by the radiological, chemical, and biological hazard flowing outward in waves of golden toxin from the wounded diamond. The atmosphere was thick with nanomachines, soupy enough to drink — but laced with dangers that would melt unprotected lungs and burn straight through an unarmoured stomach.
“Howl, Howl, please be alright, please be safe out there in all that.”
She spread Pheiri’s communications pickup net as wide as she could, listening for Howl’s voice on the wind.
Nothing but screaming static and the backwash of radiation interference. The storm was too strong.
“Come on, Howl. Come on! I’m right here! Come on! Shout louder. You were always loud!”
>y
“Thank you, Pheiri.”
>y
“We’ll find her.”
>y
Piloting Pheiri felt more like Elpida was being carried on a pair of shoulders. Pheiri was a strong presence, a hard pulse in the back of her head; there was no mixing of intention between her and Pheiri, no potential for their distinctive minds to become confused, as was the way with any combat frame. Pheiri was comforting, distinct, and solid.
She liked that very much. She held on tight to her little brother’s support, and accepted the gun he passed up into her hands.
“Particle beam emitter,” she whispered out loud. “Right.”
Pheiri’s main gun system self-identified to her as ‘PBE model 6.1, flash-charge atmos borer positive, 3.8 ex-watt output.’
Elpida had no idea what those specifications meant. A targeting matrix leapt into her mind when she linked herself with the weapon controls. Red and purple and white filled her external view of the world. The golden diamond was picked out in positive-fire red. Arcadia’s Rampart was null-engage white, a ghost shimmering through the clouds of debris and toxic golden fallout.
The PBE itself was a gigantic barrel, longer than twice Elpida’s height, projecting from Pheiri’s turret in a jutting spear of purple and red. The weapon looked like a prolapsed organ, a swollen wound ejected from the white nano-composite bone of Pheiri’s hull. Elpida did not have time to pause and read the various retrofit records and systems upgrade documents, but she could tell the weapon was a late-life addition to Pheiri’s armament.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Her access gave Pheiri access too. She felt him re-assume reams of locked-out memories as the gun passed through his hands.
She felt him glow with pride. He had used this weapon for something mighty, once upon a time, long ago.
Elpida laughed out loud inside the turret. Her whole body was shaking. She was panting with the effort of the neural load and the nervous tension of the coming fight. They were racing back toward a battle that even Pheiri would not survive intact, if he took but a single blow.
“You deserve the pride, little brother!” she called out. “Let’s hunt some giant!”
Up ahead, through the gaps in the buildings, the golden diamond airship was still flailing and lashing out in all directions. Pheiri’s sensors picked out the gigantic snakes of gravitic power in grey-scale highlights. Great billows of masonry dust and pulverised earth filled the air, churned into storm clouds of crackling electricity and glittering radioactive hazard. An unprotected human — or even a nanomachine zombie — would have been shredded to bone and melted to ash within seconds.
Arcadia’s Rampart weathered that storm like a wilting flower. It had two arms raised high to form a shield of regrowing bone and crawling flesh, blackening and buckling and burning away under the onslaught of gravity and fire and radiation. The combat frame was invisible to the naked eye, barely visible with sensors, sunk deep in debris and interference, half-swallowed by the boiling mud sucking at its feet.
Elpida’s initial assessment was correct: Arcadia’s Rampart was unable to withdraw.
Elpida estimated she had perhaps sixty seconds left before Pheiri reached the edge of the crater and would no longer be sheltered by the cover of the buildings; Pheiri could not plunge into that boiling mud — he would sink. Their only option was to weave in and out of the buildings as they fired upon central’s ‘physical asset’. Elpida did not expect a kill. She just wanted to give Thirteen and Arcadia’s Rampart an opening to withdraw.
And she had to catch Howl. She had to get closer, plunge into the storm, and grasp her sister’s hand.
“Okay, Pheiri. Here we go. I’m gonna start.”
She traversed the turret thirty seven degrees to the right, corrected for Pheiri’s current angle, and raised the barrel of the PBE by four degrees. She locked the targeting matrix to the nearest cross-beam of the golden diamond. Then she accessed Pheiri’s internal speakers.
“This is Elpida,” she said loud and clear. Down in Pheiri’s innards, she heard her own voice squeak to life from a dozen speaker systems. “Brace for shock wave. Repeat, brace for shock wave. Heads down, hold on tight. Brace, brace, brace.”
She reached out with her mind to grasp the fire control mechanism, and—
“Ah!”
Elpida yelped in pain. She shook her right hand — her physical hand — as if she’d planted her palm on a hot stove top. The pain was feedback from an automated access rejection.
“Pheiri?” she hissed. “Pheiri, I need fire control! What was … oh. Okay. Right. That wasn’t you.”
Elpida accepted that she was not alone.
She’d ignored the other presence at first. She had chalked up the sensation to the differences between Pheiri’s body and a combat frame from her own era. Perhaps the presence was one of his sub-systems, or the echo of Melyn and Hafina down below, or something else she didn’t understand about her little brother. The presence did not feel like another thinking being plugged into Pheiri’s mind, nothing like another pilot at the far end of an MMI-uplink chain, like one of her sisters ready to acknowledge and embrace her.
The presence was like the lingering warmth of a hand on controls she had just grasped, or the groove of unfamiliar buttocks in a seat beneath her own backside, or the feeling of eyes watching over her shoulder as she worked.
The presence made itself felt in additional layers of access and identity confirmation, in screens and skins of control web around Pheiri’s subsystems, in esoteric interlock denials that faded before Elpida could investigate.
The ghost had melted away before every one of Elpida’s access requests — until fire control.
Forty seconds to the crater’s edge.
Elpida opened her mouth to ask the obvious question: was this the doing of a Necromancer? Were Pheiri’s systems being corrupted by the golden diamond in the sky? Were they both compromised, before they had even joined the battle?
She killed the question. It was pointless. If they were compromised, then their actions didn’t matter.
Thirty five seconds.
Elpida went digging. She followed the trail of access-denial system-wrappers, pushing through firewalls that turned to shredded gossamer as she touched them; she pulled the loose threads of stray processes, hunting as they led deeper into the knot of Pheiri’s mind; she yanked up the flooring and knocked on the walls, searching for hollow spaces.
And she realised that Pheiri had no idea what she was doing. He couldn’t feel any of it. He didn’t know this stuff was here.
Twenty five seconds.
Panting, covered in cold sweat, bumped and bruised against the sides of the pilot seat, cut in three places where she’d tried to anchor herself with one hand, Elpida worked as fast as she could.
“There!”
Elpida jerked bolt upright.
She found what she was looking for — a fully hidden process, invisible to even Pheiri himself.
Twenty seconds.
She tried to interface with the process, but it protected itself with layers of shell and spike and spear and shield. It flashed warnings and threats and instructions to stay away. But it also held out a peace offering — a multi-format message file, in text, audio, octademcial, binary, and direct MMI-input.
Fifteen seconds.
Elpida did not have time to listen or read, but direct MMI-input carried a serious risk. The file could be a mimetic virus, a trap for anybody who tried to pilot Pheiri. Somebody had planted this program here on purpose, and it was stopping her from firing Pheiri’s main gun. Was it intended to protect central’s physical assert? That seemed unlikely. To protect Pheiri? Probably. But from what?
Anybody who wanted to protect Pheiri was on Elpida’s side, by definition. If she wanted to find Howl and rescue Thirteen, she had no other choice. Elpida decided to trust the file.
She loaded it directly into her brain.
* * *
///message recorded 99999999 ERROR hours previous
///message author: Chief Engineering Officer Rhian Uren
///message topic: Fuck you, or thank you, I don’t know yet. Let’s find out.
*Hello, whoever or whatever you are. My name is Rhian. If it matters to you, then I’m the Chief Engineering Officer in whatever is left of the Afon Ddu cradle-plant fortress. If you’re reading or hearing this message, that means you were smart enough to follow the breadcrumb trail inside my boy’s mind. Yeah, that’s right. My boy. I sure hope you have the semantic range and knowledge of familial relations to understand the meaning of those words. You’re inside my boy’s head, hopefully via that stupid helmet up in his turret. And if you’re reading or hearing this message— fuck, I already said that part. Fuck. Fuck me. No, you know what? Fuck you! I don’t have time to waste on this shit. Bottom line, the program you’re staring at is an Adaptive-Recursive Firewall. Compared to Pheiri himself it’s barely smarter than a snail, but it’s a venomous snail, you understand? If you’re … if you … if you’ve hurt …
…
If you’re a blob, or some kind of nanomachine monster, or something I can’t even imagine, and you’re listening to this after murdering my boy, then I hope the AR firewall has gutted you and fried your brains inside your skull. If you even have a skull. I hope this message is the last thing you ever hear. I would shit on your corpse if I could.
…
Fuck. Alright. Okay. Look, if you’re not any of those things and you have actually initiated neural handshake with Pheiri, then I’m sorry for the temper, okay? I’m about to die. Everyone is about to die. Cut me some fucking slack from a billion years in the future, or whenever you are. I dunno, maybe you’re a great big six foot cockroach and you’re Pheiri’s best friend now. If you’re on his side, then thank you. But this means the AD firewall is stopping you from doing something you shouldn’t — namely, something that puts Pheiri at risk. It can’t stop Pheiri, mostly because I didn’t want it to. It can’t interact with him at all. If he thinks a risk is the right thing, then I’m not gonna hold him back. But it can stop you. And listen, I’m not in there. The firewall isn’t me. I programmed it, but you can’t argue with me. I’m dead.
…
Whatever you’re trying to do, either stop it, or hand the process back to Pheiri, or … or if you really want to unravel the firewall, I … I can’t … I …
Hand whatever you’re doing back to him. Understand?
And if you are his friend, human or otherwise, I don’t care. Just … don’t let him down. Don’t die. Not like I’m about to. I could have gone with him, with him and the girls, but that would be a slow death. A nasty death. A real bad death. Starvation, nano-rot, worse. All three of them would have to watch me drown in my own rotting blood, or claw my skin off, or go mad. I don’t want Pheiri to see that.
I’m taking the coward’s way out, see? Got a full mag, seventeen rounds, in case I lose my nerve. Just gotta finish this and send him off. Then I’m gonna walk up to whatever’s left of the top atrium and blow my brains out before the blobs get to me. Why not? Siana died two days ago. There’s nothing left for me to do. This is the end. This is the end for everything, all of us. There’s no human beings left after this. This is it. Extinction. Just … just a tank, with two artificial humans in it … fuck me …
Why the fuck am I telling you this? You’re not even anybody. You’re a hypothetical future that will never come to pass. Everything Telokopolis made is dead, we’re all dead, we—
…
Just don’t get him killed, alright?*
///end message
///ALERT
///electromagnetic network signal return
///nanomachine control locus detection POSITIVE
///advise immediate priority one procedure
///seal electromagnetic ingress
///raise external firewall
///retract communications pickup net
* * *
Elpida was still reeling from the message when a familiar voice came screaming through the storm.
—lps! Ca—
“Howl!” Elpida shouted. Her voice rang inside the metal box of the turret.
Pheiri’s internal systems were throwing up a cloud of warnings, urging a full shutdown of his comms pickup net, but Elpida threw them wide. She stretched out her and Pheiri’s combined awareness as wide as it would go.
Howl! I’m here! Howl!
Howl slammed into the comms net and passed through Pheiri’s buffers like a weasel down a greased pipe. For a moment she was nothing more than an ultra-dense block of encrypted data, wriggling out of the atmospheric nanomachines and into Pheiri. Then she crashed back into Elpida’s mind and unfolded like a barbed steel blossom.
Elpida screamed. She bucked against the metal seat, opening a huge gash in her arm. The sensation of Howl crawling back into her skull was like being shot in the head. Her vision went grey, then black, then throbbed back in waves of blood-red visual interference. Her skin flushed with cold sweat. She dribbled saliva from the corners of her mouth and spat a glob of bloody mucus into her own lap. She wheezed and shook and wanted to vomit.
But the relief was worth the pain.
Howl?! Elpida shouted into her own head.
Elps! Hahahahaaaaaaa! You caught me! Howl laughed like she’d just pulled off an almighty jape. She was panting and heaving as if from great effort — though she had no lungs with which to draw breath. Woo! Fuck! Like being a leaf in a storm! Hahaaaaa never doing that again. Fuck me backwards. She hiccuped and sobbed, almost afraid.
Howl! Elpida snapped, suddenly fierce with fury Sister. You never leave again without telling me. You—
Howl laughed in her face. Never again! Yeah, sure! But I had to rustle up some fire support!
Elpida sat upright in the bare metal pilot seat. Fire support? From who? Or what? Howl, be specific.
Howl made a sheepish, playful growl. Guess I’m rumbled now, huh? But I don’t give a shit. We’re not leaving that dumb bitch out there behind, right? Anything for a sister! Anything for one of us! Are you even seeing this shit she’s doing?! Thirteen is a fucking ace! Better than you, Elps! Ha!
Yes, that’s what I’m trying to do here. We’re not leaving Thirteen to face this fight alone. Pheiri has a main gun, a—
Particle beam emitter, right! Cool! I see it. Nice set-up you’ve got here. Hey there, little bro. Huh? Eh? What’s this?
Howl reached out from within Elpida’s mind, grasped Rhian’s AD firewall, and smoothed away every venomous spine and poisonous fang and toxin-tipped spear. She soothed it in an instant, turning the program tame and safe.
The particle beam emitter fire control permissions jumped into Elpida’s hands. Ready to fire.
“Howl?!” Elpida spluttered out loud. “How did you—”
Later, Elps! You can spank me later! As much as you fucking like! I’ll stick my ass in the air and wiggle it for you! But right now we’ve got fire to lay down, yeah?!
Elpida was crying. She felt the tears on her face — relief, confusion, horror. But she had no time to dwell on Howl’s return, or what this meant, or what she had seen inside Pheiri’s mind in the moment before her sister had come rushing back. Howl — whatever she was — was on her side. Pheiri’s side. The side of Telokopolis and her comrades and Thirteen, out there in the crater, fighting alone. That was all which mattered. Questions were for later.
Elpida re-locked the targeting matrix onto the golden diamond and grasped the fire control systems. Pheiri was less than five seconds from the edge of the crater. Arcadia’s Rampart was buckling under the gravitic stress. They had to get the diamond’s attention off the combat frame, even if they couldn’t wound it.
Howl’s hand slipped over Elpida’s, a strange sensation inside the space of Pheiri’s mind. Howl yapped: Hold fire a sec!
What?! Why? We—
Howl spoke to Pheiri. Hey little brother, you ready to rock and roll? This thing’s gonna knock your control systems out, right?
>y
“What!?” Elpida said out loud.
Howl cackled. That’s why the little bug wouldn’t let you fire! This bitch-ass fuck-cannon draws too much power. Pheiri’s gonna be driving blind for a few seconds after we shoot. We gotta take control! You ready, Pheiri? Ready for some fun? Ready to let your big sisters take the wheel? Promise we won’t drive you into a ditch!
>y
Okay! Love you too! Count us down!
>three
Pheiri burst from between the buildings.
The leading edges of his tracks bit into the grey mud and then skidded sideways, skirting the edge of the crater and the storm and the lake of boiling golden mud and the fight within. Central’s physical asset pounded upon Arcadia’s Rampart as if trying to squash a bug. Thirteen fired back with salvoes of missile and bullet and flesh. The diamond bled from the massive shattered crossbeam, flooding the air with golden toxin.
>two
Three signals suddenly leapt into view on the far side of the crater — sensor-mangled smears of dark scribble, stabbing into Elpida’s head like spears of living migraine.
Pheiri’s sensors labelled the trio as Bad Customer, Big Face, and Brown Pants.
Worm guard. The three worm guard who had stood watch atop Arcadia’s Rampart and welcomed the Necromancer inside. The trio who had exchanged fire with Pheiri, until his superior firepower and shielding had driven them off.
Pheiri re-targeted his auxiliary weapon systems, rerouted more power to his active shielding, and painted the worm guard as bright red threats.
But Howl whooped and cheered. That’s our fire support! Let ‘em work! I’ve got ‘em leashed, for now!
Elpida had too many questions. But this was not the time to ask.
>one
She sighted down the particle beam emitter, felt Howl’s hands on her own, and engaged the fire control systems.
The PBE discharged in two waves — the first beam flash-bored a tunnel through the atmosphere, through dust and debris and radiation and a storm of wind, to kiss the crossbeam of the golden diamond with a flutter no greater than a butterfly’s wings.
The second beam punched down that tunnel with a lance of charged particles brighter than the sun.
External sensors whited out. A roar of static filled Elpida’s head. Pheiri’s nuclear heart stuttered and lurched. His engines coughed and fluttered. His nervous system and neural network blinked out, scrambling for self recovery.
Come on, bitch tits! Howl roared into Elpida’s mind. Hands grabbed her own and forced them onto unfamiliar controls. You do the tracks and the engines, I’ll do the guns! Pheiri needs a piggyback!
Elpida grasped Pheiri’s insides. Howl did the same. Together they pulled him sideways, smashing through buildings and walls, tucking him back into the relative safety of the corpse-city’s guts. Behind them Elpida picked up the deafening retort of the worm guard opening fire on the diamond, splitting the machine’s attention, giving Pheiri another opening.
Pheiri’s nervous system rebooted. Elpida felt his awareness flood back into her mind.
He was glowing with pride.
Howl whooped and laughed. Ready for another shot, little brother?!
>y