“There you are.”

Larra smashed through a nearby wall. The bricks of the old housing complex crumbled away, and she marched through, setting sun shining behind her.

“Ah, fancy seeing you here…” Vayra said, backing away from the smashed hole. She whispered, “Phas, get back inside me.” She lifted Adair up, then pulled him back inside the corespace as well, then drew the empty barrels back in.

Phasoné’s ghost dissolved, streaks of white light streaming back towards Vayra.

She and Phasoné weren’t ready to fight yet, and they knew it. They might be strong enough to escape, but if they were going to defeat Larra, they needed to reach Captain. She backed away, looking for a way out. She could run around a bit, try to lead Larra off the chase, then keep moving.

But Larra was currently exerting a pressure of Vayra much higher than Captain. She lunged forward and struck Vayra in the chest with an open palm. Vayra shielded her chest to protect her ribs, but the force of the blow still knocked her back. She pushed a shield into her cloak as she smashed through the wall behind her and slid through the mud outside.

‘That was one way out,’ Phasoné said. ‘Watch—’

Before she finished her warning, Larra’s wolf darted in from the side, leading with its jaws. It bit down on Vayra’s left arm, her flesh-and-blood arm, and kept running, dragging her through the dirt. Yelling, Vayra struck the beast in the neck with Starlight Palms until its jaw unclamped.

She rolled to a stop in the dirt and jumped to her feet. The wolf had dragged her all the way to the edge of the platform—it was only three or four paces behind her. The rogue channel of Stream water rushed by below. This new, higher platform lingered just overtop of it, threatening to drop her down at any moment.

She Braced her legs, preparing to turn the basic technique into the Astral Shroud, but Larra sped towards her. The God-heir slammed her three-part staff into the ground before Vayra could finish the full technique. If Vayra hadn’t leapt to the side, the staff would have smashed through her shoulder.

Larra snapped, “Don’t ever hurt Gnasher again!”

Vayra tried to duck around Larra, to navigate away from the edge of the platform. Her Bracing technique crept up her hips, and it had almost expanded enough that she could push it into the Astral Shroud.

But Larra’s arm snapped down. She caught Vayra around the neck. One of the God-heir’s large hands clenched around her windpipe.

“That won’t work again,” Larra sneered, hoisting Vayra a half-foot off the ground.

Vayra flailed, striking Larra’s arm and trying to land a kick. It didn’t work. The edges of her vision dimmed, and she reached for Larra’s fingers instead, trying to pry them away one at a time. She dropped the Bracing from her legs and instead focussed on her arms. It didn’t work. Larra tightened her grip.

Just before Vayra’s vision blackened entirely, Larra threw her to the ground. She landed hard on her back, coughing, and slid to the edge of the platform. Her head hit the wooden frame. She gasped, breathing erratically and breaking her cycling pattern. All of her techniques dropped.

Larra still couldn’t kill her.

“And this is the galaxy’s saviour, huh?” Larra said. She bent down and ran a hand through her wolf’s fur. “A fragile, weak little thing who trembles before the might of a proper God-heir? Did you even get an enhanced body?”

Vayra rolled over onto her stomach, rubbing her throat. Larra planted a foot down on Vayra’s ankle. “You’re not going anywhere. I’ll put this staff through your shoulder and pin you to the ground if I have to.”

“You…need me…” Vayra grunted.

“Alive? Yes. But Father can come to us, I think.” She reached into one of her coat pockets and retrieved a wriggling pouch of Stream water. A messenger fish. “You’ll stay right here, in my custody, for the month it takes Karmion to arrive.”

Phas, I have an idea, Vayra thought.

‘What is it?’ the Goddess replied, her voice booming around Vayra’s head.

How long does it take for your ghost to manifest?

‘Whatever you’re thinking, we don't have time. It’ll take about three seconds.’

Larra would see the ghost before Vayra could do anything.

“Got nothing to say for yourself?” Larra scoffed. “Ah, what am I thinking? A miserable, scrawny Discarded could never have stood against us.” Her wolf snarled in agreement.

‘If I had a source of starlight-Arcara, I could manifest faster,’ Phasoné said, reading Vayra’s mind. ‘Then we could carry out your plan.’

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

The seer-core would have to do the trick. Vayra held her hand under her stomach, hopefully shielding it from Larra’s sight, and drew out starlight from her scarf. It mixed together with her Arcara in the seer-core. Is that enough? she thought, directing the intent at Phasoné.

‘It should be.’

Vayra rolled over onto her back as fast as she could, and she released the seer-core. In a heartbeat, the starlight-Arcara snapped into position, forming the outline of Phasoné. Vayra immediately grasped the Goddess’ wrist, feeding her a wisp of mana.

Phasoné’s ghost formed a fist. She reached out and punched Larra in the chest. Her fist snapped through the air faster than a musket shot. When it hit Larra’s chest, the air snapped and cracked, and a gust of wind washed over them both.

Larra shielded her chest with water, but she still skidded back a few feet. The messenger fish tumbled out of her hand and onto the ground.

It was just enough of a reprieve. Before Vayra could convince herself not to, she sprang off the edge of the platform.

At first, she flailed her arms. Phasoné’s ghost disintegrated and rushed back inside her. They both plummeted, and there was no way the river was deep enough to catch them—and that was if their bodies didn’t break apart from the surface impact alone.

But it was the same sensation as sending her consciousness to the corespace. She relaxed, retook control, and spread her limbs out, slowing herself as much as she could as she fell. She needed to protect herself from the impact. A shield would do the trick.

She couldn’t Ward her own flesh yet, but she could protect her clothes and the air around her. As she fell, she wove a basket of white light in the air beneath her, building a shield. At the last moment, she tucked her legs and arms up and scrunched into a ball. When she hit the water, the shield absorbed the impact. She blasted down through a few feet of water and straight to the muddy riverbed, and the shield absorbed the second impact too.

The water tumbled and tossed her, and it swept her along without much care. It was moving faster than it looked from the top of the platform. The roots started at the edge of the greenhouse, pouring out their elixirs—which seemed counterproductive for roots, but these were just broken transport tubers.

It fed down a channel. There were a few rocks along the riverbed, which tossed the water around. A stone struck Vayra in the shoulder, and another impact knocked a panel off her mechanical leg.

At a set of rapids, she latched onto a rock and pulled her head up above the water, gasping for air.

She didn’t have long. The rocks were slippery, and her fingers were already slipping.

With the few seconds she had, she took stock of her surroundings. All around, the walls of the river valley closed in. Half of the channel had rigid, terraformed slopes, but years of rushing water had eroded the lower basin until it was smooth. Ahead, the river dipped down into an underground cavern.

“We need to get out!” Vayra yelled, trying to scramble higher up on the boulders to keep herself from falling back down along the river. One of her arms slipped, but no matter how hard she tried to pull it back the other direction and haul herself up, the water resisted her. “Larra can control water! She’ll—”

‘She controls freshwater, not half-refined elixir,’ Phasoné said.

“Then she’s coming for us!”

‘She’d be just as foolish to drop herself in the river!’

“You said it was a good plan!”

‘I thought the part where I punched Larra really hard was a good plan!’

“What happened to reading my mind? Oh, this…is going nowhere!” Vayra tried to look over her shoulder, to see where the river would take her, but her fingers slipped off the rock, and the current carried her away. She shielded her head with her hands. Every time she felt the bottom of the river, she kicked off and pushed herself up, grasping a breath before the water tugged her back down.

The iridescent mixture of half-refined elixir washed around her. She couldn’t see much underwater except a blur, but when the river dipped underground, she couldn’t see anything—barring the faint glow of the water itself.

Then everything fell out from underneath her. She tumbled off a ledge and down a waterfall, then straight into a deep, rocky pool. With a kick, she launched herself away from the swirling basin of the waterfall and out into the center of the pool, where the water was calmer.

Once she was In the center, she swam to the surface, treading water to keep her head up. Between the glow of the water and a few beams of light, it was bright enough to see a few yards in every direction.

The walls were rigid stone, with rocky shelves at even intervals. There were a few holes that led all the way back to the surface, and pollen from a flower forest above trickled in through them. The elixir was turning thicker and more golden. There was only one waterfall pouring into the basin, but a few other rivers trickled away, running deep underground. When it exited the pond, it was mostly golden. It’d flow off into the ground, leaking into the soil and feeding the plants, which would further refine it as it ran downhill.

Vayra swam over to the lowest stoney shelf and hauled herself up onto the shore, then flopped onto her back. She should have felt some boost for advancing to First Lieutenant, but right now, all she could register was exhaustion.

But she needed to get climbing. She needed to get out of this cavern.

‘Vayra, we need to rest,’ Phasoné warned.

“Larra could be right behind us.” Standing up, Vayra reached out for the next ledge up. She wrapped her fingers around one of the slippery stones and pulled herself up. She made it one rock up, then a few more, until her grip gave out and she tumbled right back to the same ledge she had started on—only inches away from falling back into the pollen-elixir mixture.

‘More than likely, Larra is waiting for us on the surface. And if you want to get away, you can’t be exhausted.’

Vayra pushed herself up to a sitting position and leaned back against the wall behind her. “I don’t want to keep running. I want to win.”

‘And you know what we have to do to get there.’

Vayra was silent for a few seconds. “Do you think she was right? Are we useless?”

‘Only if you let yourself be.’

Vayra exhaled.

‘It’s hard, I know. They’re sending their best, favoured children at you, and you haven’t had a chance to see how strong you really are against someone the same strength as you. Well, here, we’ll prove it. We’ll send Larra and her wolf running home with their tails between their legs. We just have a little more work to do to get to that point.’

With that touch of encouragement, Vayra breathed a sigh of relief. “Alright. I’ll rest, but only if you keep watch.”

‘Adair and I will keep our eyes out, and we’ll wake you up if anything goes wrong. Then tomorrow, we’re getting out of here.’