“I’ll hand it to you, girl,” Larra spat. “You’ve made my job more difficult than it’s ever been before. This chase has been more than enjoyable! But it’s time to put it to an end.”
“Phas, scythe,” Vayra whispered, giving up control of her mechanical hand. The scythe began to form.
She had everything she needed. Mana, Arcara, and techniques.
But if she couldn’t make it to Captain, Larra would win.
Larra sprinted forwards, her boots ripping up the floorboards behind her. Vayra ducked to the side, letting Larra’s staff smash into the glass. Cracks spread across the wall, threatening to shatter the mandala lock, but they didn’t touch it.
But neither of them could afford to let the wall take any more hits like that, unless they wanted to be trapped here forever.
Vayra dove between Larra’s legs and rolled to her feet on the other side of the hulking woman. She swept the still-forming scythe back at Larra, trying to cut the woman’s ankles. Larra raised a foot and kicked Vayra in the chest, sending her flying across the room. Vayra smashed into a wall of control panels. The wood cracked beneath her, and a shower of loose panels from the roof fell onto her.
She rolled to the side to avoid a swipe from Larra’s three-part staff, then pushed herself up. The scythe had formed entirely, now, and she was ready to fight.
Larra spun around to face Vayra, twirling her staff at her side.
“I thought you were trying to take me alive,” Vayra grunted, brushing wood chips off her shoulder. She unclasped her cloak and let it roll off her shoulders. She’d need to be at her very best performance, and a cloak would just get in the way.
“You’d be surprised what a First Lieutenant can survive without,” Larra sneered. She threw her own cloak off, then pulled her coat off too. “If we’re getting serious.”
Vayra took stock of the situation. They stood in the center of their half of the control room. Vayra had her back to the central wall again, and Larra had her back to the guardsmen’s room.
Straining her eyes, Vayra examined the glob of elixir outside—the only thing keeping the trap from going off. The elixir had dimmed to a quarter of its previous brightness. Any moment, the trap would trigger, and a guardian golem would charge out of the walls.
Larra spun her staff down along the floor, ripping up debris and floorboards. Vayra threw out a Starlight Palm to blast the debris away, then another to knock the staff aside.
Her attack worked. The little palm strike deflected the staff just enough that it didn’t smash down on her shoulder—that wouldn’t have worked before reaching First Lieutenant.
Gnasher, Larra’s wolf, charged up from the other direction. Phasoné uttered a faint warning, and Vayra struck the beast with the blunt end of her scythe, sending it tumbling back across the room, before circling the blade around and sweeping the white-hot head at Larra, forcing her back as well.
Larra ran her hand through her wolf’s watery mane, and the power radiating off of her surged. With the help of Gnasher’s tooth, she boosted herself straight to an Admiral. “No more messing around. One last chance: surrender, and I’ll make this painless.”
Vayra glanced over her shoulder. Nathariel and Pels were watching.
“Not a chance am I going with you willingly,” Vayra said. She and Phasoné flourished the scythe like they had practiced a hundred times before, then met Larra in a bind. Vayra Braced her arms, then let the white light expand and seep down across her shoulders. It burst into white flame, and she pushed it even further until the Astral Shroud erupted over her entire body.
She bashed a flurry of strikes into Larra’s staff, then flashed to the other side in a blink of an eye and tried to drive another gash into the woman’s back. Even as an Admiral, Larra couldn’t keep up with the raw speed of the Shroud. The scythe left a thin gash down Larra’s back. It would have cut a normal human in two, but the woman’s hardened skin resisted the blade, and her flesh was like stone.
Phasoné shouted a faint warning, and so did Nathariel, but the Vayra couldn’t fight back against Larra and Gnasher’s combined onslaught. She blocked wolf jaws and ducked under staff swipes, she dodged and deflected, yet no matter how slippery she made herself, all it took was one swipe. The tip of Larra’s staff bashed into Vayra’s chest, and she barely had enough time to push a shield into her chest before the force of the blow flung her back across the room.
She skidded to a halt in the hallway between the control room and the guardsmen’s room. The elixir in the trap barely twinkled, now. A pulse of Arcara seeped through the root, and the wall in front of the golem shifted.
She needed more time to prepare. She needed to reach Captain.
Using the haft of her scythe as a crutch, she pushed herself to her feet, feigning that she was ready to keep fighting.
Larra let out an enraged shout, then tucked her head and barreled towards Vayra.
When Larra was only feet away, Vayra used the Shroud’s speed to drop to the ground and push herself flat against the wall. She flashed out of the way, and Larra sprinted past harmlessly.
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The woman ran straight into the guardsmen’s room—and just in time for the trap to trigger. A golem spilled out of the wall and lumbered towards Larra, swinging its fists around.
Vayra jumped back to her feet and sprinted back into the control room. She fed mana into a panel just beside the doorway, and a thick wooden sheet slid into place between the guardsmen’s room and the control room. It wouldn’t keep Larra out normally, but if the god-heir was preoccupied with a golem, she wouldn’t be able to spare the time opening the door.
Vayra deactivated her techniques and ran to the center of the control room. She sat down cross-legged and shut her eyes. “Phas, we need to hit Captain. It’s now or never.”
“Vayra!” Nathariel yelled through the glass. “You and your Path are one and the same. Think about what you are, and the revelation will be easier!”
She held her hands out. A boom ripped through the air from the other room. Larra would destroy the golem in minutes.
‘Don’t worry about the future or the past,’ Phasoné provided. ‘You are not who you once were, and you can choose who you will be.’
Vayra did her best to meditate, clearing her mind and searching for answers.
This minor enlightenment needed to come faster.
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Glade pressed his foot down on the tip of the giant floating sword, angling it down. The swordwyrm, controlling aspects of both sword and air Arcara, lifted the blade. When Glade angled it, it began to move. It slipped through the air, slow and hesitant at first, until he found his balance.
Holding his arms out, he pushed the blade down to the end of the armoury. The big stone doors blocked the entrance, but glowing golden light seeped through. The two God-heirs outside were trying to break it down.
Before he reached the doors, he hopped off the blade with a stumble. Something had been keeping it trapped in here, and he needed to disable it.
Just in front of the armoury’s sliding doors, a small seal of runes had been carved into the floor. It barely glowed, but there was still a touch of mana in it. He bent over it, and though he was no expert on runes, it definitely wasn’t the strongest seal. Either the swordwyrm would have become strong enough to overcome it in a few years, or the mana would eventually have faded from the loop.
But he didn’t tell the swordwyrm that.
“I break this seal,” he said, looking directly at the wyrm, “and you help me defeat them. Understand?”
The swordwyrm angled itself and shook side-to-side, as if wagging its hilt.
“That better be a ‘yes’,” Glade muttered. Then, he drew a tendril of metal filings out of his pouch with his Reach technique and blasted it across the seal. It scoured away the edges and defiled the calligraphic scripts, and the little mana that was left in it flooded off into the air.
Then, walking side-by-side with the swordwyrm, Glade approached the armoury’s main door. He drew his own mana and Arcara back out of the lock by placing his finger in it, then heaved the two stone doors apart.
Immediately, bolts of concentrated sunlight rushed into the armoury, searing anything past the entrance with their enormous heat. The swordwyrm floated upright and deflected one with its blade before it hit Glade, and Glade sliced through another with the Arcara-enhanced cutting edge of his own sword.
Before any more blasts could surge towards him, he flung his tendril of metal filings out at the nearest God-heir. The blast caught the man in the chest, shredding his vest and the skin beneath, and flinging him back across the courtyard outside.
Glade sprinted out into the open, where the God-heirs couldn’t pin him with ranged attacks. They seemed to specialize in that, but if he could get up close…
The swordwyrm followed him. He half expected it to take off once it was out in the open, but it stayed. It deflected two more blasts of golden light before clattering to the ground.
Glade poured his mana reserves into his Dawnspear body and sprang across the courtyard, trying to reach the God-heir he’d already hit. The man stumbled back again, trying to create distance. He used a Bracing technique—or at least, he started one—but Glade led with a low swipe, slashing across the man’s ankle and using the Arcara in his sword to disrupt the technique.
The man fell onto his back, rage in his eyes. He pulled his arm back, trying to conjure another technique, but Glade drove his sword through the man’s neck before the technique could fire.
The other God-heir pulled his arm back. A sphere of light formed in his hands, as bright as the sun. Glade wouldn’t be able to deflect such a highly-charged technique, and he had no cover to hide behind. The swordwyrm popped back up, ready to honour its half of the deal, but Glade doubted the blade would last long against it either.
He winced, readying himself to take a hit—or worse—but before the God-heir could let off the technique, a hailstorm of wood chips and sawdust rained down on him. It shredded him into a pulp, swirling around and ripping through flesh. The half-formed ball of sunlight burst apart into harmless sparks as the sun-Path God-heir collapsed, gurgling and screaming. After a few seconds, he stopped moving entirely.
A downdraft blasted the dust and debris out of the center of the courtyard. Wings fluttered softly, and a shadow descended onto the courtyard.
Glade craned his neck upward.
Wren descended, her wings fluttering like a giant cape. She threw an unconscious body down onto the ground. It skidded across the ground and came to a stop beside Glade.
Ameena.
He backed up. The swordwyrm floated over to his side, hovering just off his shoulder like a shield.
“I figure I’ll take the loot of this fortress as my prize now!” Wren laughed, dropping down to a crouch in the center of the courtyard. “I thought you were dead, though! Should’ve expected this much. Should’ve expected one of Nathariel’s disciples to live through a fall, though.”
“You should have killed me first,” Glade said. He crouched down beside Ameena, feeling for a pulse in her neck. She was still alive, but barely.
“I’d rather save the weakest for last,” Wren sneered, tilting her head toward Ameena. Then, she drew her weapon—a short musket with an axehead in place of a bayonet—and walked towards him. Wood chips and dust swirled around her legs. “I’ll make you suffer real well, and that’ll teach Nathariel not to abandon his apprentices again!”
Third Lieutenant against a First Lieutenant?
At least he had the swordwyrm with him.
He held his sword out in front of him, then leaned towards the swordwyrm and whispered, “I will give you a treat if we live.”
The swordwyrm wagged its hilt in agreement.
Glade charged.