Going in the front entrance was too risky. That much was obvious. Finding another way in was the harder part.

They circled around the edge of the warehouse, hunting for weak spots or obvious holes in the wall that they could enter through. Debris cluttered the exterior, heaping up against its walls like drifts of snow—barrels, crates, overturned wagons, and old farming equipment. A cluster of bluecoats patrolled the exterior, their muskets clattering, and a pair stood at every corner. Their masks hid precisely where they were looking, but their heads swivelled side-to-side. They were watching their territory, that much was certain.

Vayra, Nathariel, and Glade kept to the shadows, ducking behind piles of rubble and leaping from cover to cover.

Then, finally, when they snuck around a corner, they came within sight of a broad, open window. Faint orange light spilled out of it.

If they could get up, they were in.

Vayra scrambled up onto a pile of bricks, then sprang up the wall, grasping exposed beams and jutting rockwork. She hoisted her legs over a gutter, then hauled herself up to the window. Keeping low, she pulled herself through.

Glade and Nathariel sprang up a moment later, relying solely on the strength of their enhanced bodies to do what years of climbing had taught her.

Through the window, they emerged on a thin wooden catwalk. It spanned over the center of the warehouse, running from one side of the central, open space to the other. Lanterns hung off it, illuminating the floorspace below, and holes in the roof allowed moonlight through.

Vayra pressed her back against the wall beside the window, and Nathariel and Glade did the same moments later.

Two storeys below, through the gaps in the catwalk boarding, a hundred unconscious bodies lay strewn across the floor in neat lines.

Almost exactly like what Larra had done.

‘Like father, like daughter,’ Phasoné said.

“I don’t imagine he needs to test his blood magic,” Vayra whispered.

Each of the unconscious bodies had brown hair of different shades, and they all wore coats like Karmion and Larra.

“Scan their spirits,” Nathariel breathed. “Tell me I’m not the only one seeing this.”

Vayra shut her eyes, first trying to detect if they had any spiritual presence. Each one of them radiated the strength and purity of a Commodore, though it didn’t travel very far. She hadn’t even thought of them, or felt an abnormal tingle or pressure before entering the warehouse.

A hundred Commodores should’ve felt like something.

She opened her eyes and scanned their spirits, trying to observe their channels. They had Arcara, but no mana whatsoever.

“They are starving,” Glade whispered.

“They’re decaying,” Nathariel replied.

All the Commodores below were emaciated, gaunt, and pale, their every feature sunken.

“They’re burning their bodies,” Vayra concluded. “Slowly, so as to not destroy themselves completely, but they’re…still consuming their muscle.”

“Aye, and soon, they’ll be all out.” Nathariel shook his head. “He’s making Ko-Ganall. Each one of those could wreak the same cataclysm as Hammontor. They’d rip apart the entire sector, if not more.”

“How is the progress, Varion?” Karmion’s voice boomed out through the warehouse, rumbling through the floor and shaking the catwalk.

A man strode alongside Karmion—a peak Commodore, in perfect condition, with a fur cloak and red hair. If he was a relative of Karmion’s, he was distant. “The volunteers are coming along. Your sons and daughters will be remembered long after their departure for their unflinching service.”

“Can it still be cut off?” Karmion asked, walking down on the bottom floor. He and Varion marched down the central aisle of the warehouse. “This is our last resort.”

“You have three weeks before the process is irreversible,” Varion replied. “At any moment, I can accelerate their activation, or at any moment, I can cancel them altogether—I’ll flood the building with Stream water, and their mana will refill. But if I hear nothing more from you, father, they will activate.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I’d very much rather I not have to clean up the mess they make.” Karmion shook his head, then flicked one of the unconscious god-heir’s shoulders. “But these will be helpful if worst comes to—”

He stopped talking, and his head flicked up toward the catwalk, right where Vayra and Nathariel and Glade stood. “Three presences. Up there.”

Presences. He hadn’t scanned them close enough to tell if they were God-heirs, or if they were anything but mortal.

There was still time to escape.

‘Run!’ Phasoné hissed in Vayra’s mind. ‘If we make it back to the Harmony, we’re free.’

The others had the same idea. As Vayra unveiled herself and activated her Astral Shroud, Glade leapt onto his swordwyrm and Nathariel activated his Bracing technique.

They ran through the city, racing back to the shore and the harbour. There wasn’t any specific course—just toward the shore, as fast as they could run. Vayra pulled ahead, taking the lead, but she had to wind through the streets. Glade still flew overhead, and if only slightly behind, he kept up.

It was Nathariel who was the slowest of them all.

But none of them were Gods. Karmion would catch up, and surely, he’d want to. He’d need to catch the intruders, or they’d spread word of his plans.

Or at least, that was how Vayra anticipated his process.

She also anticipated him charging in and annihilating the three of them, or at the very least, snapping them up with tendrils of water, or reaching out and manipulating their blood, halting them where they stood. She activated her internal Warding technique, for what good it might do.

Nothing reached out and stirred up her blood, or tugged on her like a magnet.

When they reached the wharf, Vayra stopped and looked back. Nathariel was a few streets behind, now, but he didn’t look concerned. A blast of condensed water raced down from the sky, fast as a cannonball and with such pressure that it could sever even an Admiral’s limb. It shot straight for Nathariel

Nathariel batted it aside, his forearm coated in flame. A burst of steam erupted out of the impact, but the jet of water subsided, and Nathariel was unharmed. He stopped where he stood, at an intersection three streets away from the wharf, staring up at the sky. Was that…a smirk?

Karmion floated overhead on a cloud of mist. A watery orb floated over his shoulder, ready for him to draw on if needed.

The onlookers, mortal civilians and dock workers still awake so late at night, scattered, running from the site of the clash between God-heirs—at least, as they might have perceived it.

“Nathariel!” Vayra hollered, skittering backward across the wharf. Her boots, shrouded in white light, skittered over the stones until she came to a halt right in front of a bollard. The wharf dropped off to the sea, leaving her hanging almost right over the edge. Glade circled in the sky above, watching.

“Nathariel, run!” Vayra shouted.

“No,” he said, his voice calm and low, despite his Bracing technique bolstering his voice box and projecting his words further than usual. “You run.”

“You can’t—”

Glade swooped down and stopped in front of her. “Vayra, he is giving us a chance to escape. Take it.”

“He’ll kill you!” she yelled.

Karmion fired another bolt of water, and it sailed high over Nathariel’s head—aiming right for Vayra and Glade.

But as it passed over Nathariel, a bolt of flame reached up and intercepted it, turning it to a cloud of steam. Both Karmion and Nathariel became silhouettes in their newly-made fog.

“No, I don’t think he will,” Nathariel said. “I don’t think he can—not quickly.”

“What?”

An Admiral against a God? It still wasn’t a competition.

But when Vayra scanned his spirit, analyzed it as close as she could, something was different. It was like his core was a hollow blanket, a perfect veil, but it was cracking. Were those the injuries he had spoken of, from his younger days of pushing himself too hard?

But through the cracks, a greater power leaked. At the center of the orange, cracking, hollow orb was a vibrant marble of orange light, flickering like a bonfire. It bled into his channels, empowering his Arcara.

“Why isn’t Karmion using his blood techniques?” Vayra whispered.

‘I don’t know,’ Phasoné provided. ‘But we need to get out. No waiting around, no bad choices. Get out before it’s too late.’

She clenched her fists, then took one last look back out at the ocean. Then another glance forward.

“Vayra!” Nathariel shouted. He flicked his arms out to the side, and his sash snapped. A column of concentrated water rushed at his chest, but he raised his forearms and blocked it with a shield of flame. The orange cup glowed, sparked, hissed, then shattered.

The water would have struck hard enough to punch a hole in Vayra’s chest, but it only blasted Nathariel back. He skidded through the ground, the paving stones shattering in a trench around him, until he collided with the wall of a tavern behind and came to a halt. The outer layer of his skin had been stripped away, and his chest heaved, but it hadn’t destroyed him.

Still, Karmion loomed over him, advancing, hovering closer. A net of water formed around each of his fists.

But his eyes flicked toward Vayra and Glade. He threw out a knife-thin stream of water at each of them. Just as Vayra prepared her Ward, no matter how much or little it might do, the water fell out of the Reach technique’s control.

Nathariel blasted an arc of flame at Karmion, forcing the god to divert his attention and abandon the technique.

“Vayra!” Nathariel yelled. “Learn your internal Warding! Improve it to its peak! When you win the next fight, request an audience with Farrir!” He deflected a blast of water into the ground. “Go! I’ll keep him busy!”

With that, she turned away and leapt off the edge of the wharf.