A shadow lumbered out of the mist ahead. Magenta flames crackled over a black silhouette of a tiger, and violet stripes glowed along its flanks. A halo of ink-black smoke circled around over its head, forming runes and calligraphic symbols. All together, it had to be twice her height.

“Not good,” Vayra whispered. She didn’t know how not good it was, only that it wasn’t good. A beast like that had to be a guardian of the veil core, and it had to be strong.

“It’s the equivalent of a Grand Admiral,” Myrrir said. “We will have to take it together.”

She glanced at him, and for a moment, she wanted to instinctively protest. But she shut the feelings down and tightened her fists. “How do we kill it?”

“This looks like a facility of the Violet Dragons,” Myrrir said. “Their realm was over simple force.”

Vayra opened her mouth to ask another question, but the tiger pounced. It landed right in front of them, its paws striking the ground with a deep boom, and a shockwave blasted both Myrrir and Vayra in opposite directions. She crashed into the hallway wall and gasped, then staggered to her feet and layered her techniques.

First, the Astral Shroud, then, from within her corespace, a stable loop with Adair. Atop that, she activated her Internal Wards and summoned the scythe.

Finally, she used the Mediator Form, aligning with Phasoné, but keeping it under control.

“I will draw its attention!” Myrrir shouted. “I need you to go for the kill!”

“We will!” Vayra yelled. With all her techniques, she had to be Grand Admiral equivalent. She could destroy the beast.

She flourished her scythe out to the side. Myrrir jumped back toward the tiger, hacking at its forelegs with his sword. It locked eyes with him, and the runic halo above its head pulsed. An invisible bullet struck Myrrir in the chest, but a Ward of gunpowder formed overtop his cuirass, blocking the direct pulse. He only slid back a few feet.

Again, the tiger attacked. He blocked it, and slid back, but it had dispersed all his gunpowder.

“Vayra!” he hissed. “Attack!”

She sprinted forward, leveraging the Astral Shroud, and flashed across the hallway. The tiger raised its forelegs and concentrated its next attack on her, but with cat-like reflexes, she altered her course and hacked through the beast’s paw. It yowled and reared back, but she jumped for its exposed chest and throat and dragged her scythe along it.

The tiger fell onto its back with a boom, but she was ready for the shockwave, and her Wards allowed her to pass straight through it.

She jumped back onto it, landing on its belly, and preparing a killing blow.

Its head snapped up, and it locked eyes with her. At the same time, her spirit cried out in warning, alerting her to a rush of gunpowder surging in from behind her.

It was sharp, spear-shaped…

“No…” she breathed.

But the gunpowder broke off, then swirled around her and formed a cage, blocking the tiger’s next pulse of invisible force.

It gave her a perfect opening to strike a killing blow. She sprinted forward and slashed her scythe through the tiger’s neck, severing its head. The entire beast collapsed, falling to porous black stones and sparks of purple glowing dust. Then, with a final pulse, the stones exploded outward, pattering against the walls of the hallway. Myrrir and Vayra both shielded themselves to protect from the explosion.

All scattered except its head, where two coal-black hexagonal gemstones lay.

‘Not gemstones,’ Phasoné said. ‘Runestones.’

Vayra knelt down and sifted through a layer of dust, then plucked up both the stones. They had perfect, impeccable runes carved in their centers, but she didn’t know what they said or did.

“Phas, can you read these?” she whispered.

‘I can. You’ve got a Tarradhul, a concentration rune—for directing and condensing power. That’s what it did to concentrate its pulses of force, I imagine. That’s the left one.’ Vayra picked it up and slotted it into her mechanical hand, then wrapped a set of starsteel wires into the tails of the rune to fuel it. ‘And the right hand one is a Grurin rune, for impact.’

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Vayra inserted the second stone as well.

“Are you sure you should socket mysterious runestones from unknown sources?” Myrrir asked. “I—”

Vayra pulled her pistol out of her belt and pointed it down the hallway at a stray magmaspawn, then activated the concentration rune. The power of the rune condensed the starlight into a tighter beam and allowed it to surge out faster. It travelled down the hall further than ever before, and when it struck the magmaspawn, it ripped the creature to shreds. She blew the smoke off the muzzle of the pistol, then tucked it back into her belt. “Wonderful.”

“You have a death wish,” Myrrir muttered. “I see now how you two advanced so quickly.”

“One second,” Vayra said. She pulled her arm back, then launched a Starlight Palm at the wall while activating the impulse runestone. An enormous blue-white handprint the size of her body raced forward, vibrating and shaking the ground as it passed. When it collided, it burst apart, unleashing a shockwave and tearing cracks in the stone. A rain of dust fell, and pebbles scattered for hundreds of feet in every direction.

Myrrir ducked, cringing and Warding himself. “By the Stream…”

“You should’ve added runestone sockets to your hands,” she said.

“I have no desire to implant foreign stones whose full purpose I don’t understand,” Myrrir groaned.

“Your loss, then.”

She turned around to face down the hall, again, in the direction that the magenta glow had come from—and still was—coming from. The hallway expanded out into a domed hall with pilasters around its edges and fresco-painted roofs depicting purple and gold dragons standing on mountains or blotting out the sky with their spread, bat-like wings.

At the center of the room, hovering in a floor-to-cieling cage of magenta light and Moulded Arcara, was a crystal sphere. Its individual crystals were cube-shaped, and when she squinted it seemed pixelated, but the squares were stacked and stepped without a formal grid to cling to.

“That’s it,” Vayra breathed, stepping into the room and glancing side to side.

Even without the guardian, the Vale Core unleashed a spiritual pressure that weighed on her, almost driving her to the ground, and it grew heavier as she approached. She blinked faster and opened her mouth, trying to pop the pressure in her ears, but nothing helped.

“How do we use it?” she asked Myrrir, who strode forward confidently, seemingly unaffected by the pressure. If he’d grown up around Gods, he’d have to be used to such strength.

“You need a broad message to all the Vale Chambers across the galaxy?” Myrrir chuckled. “I’m sure it has a threat detection and warning system, to alert all the other Chambers.”

“And we haven’t triggered it yet?”

“Chances are, it’s working on developing another guardian to throw at us, or summoning more minor enemies from elsewhere in the Chamber. Break the core’s cage—which we need to do anyway—and we’ll light the rest of the Chambers. King Tallerion will have his notice.”

“Understood.” She approached the cage of glowing, high-power Moulded Arcara, then mustered her scythe. With a spin, she applied her regular Bracing technique to her arms, then slashed at the cage.

The lines of magenta Arcara didn’t even bend, let alone crack or break. The Vale Core pulsed, then unleashed a wave of force. It caught her in the chest and flung her across the room. She crashed into an ornamental gray pilaster, Warding her back just in time, and it shattered under her impact. She rolled aside before any debris could fall on her, then hopped back up and dusted her shoulders off.

“That’s not going to work,” she breathed.

Myrrir turned in a circle, then sheathed his sword.

“You’re not going to try?” she complained.

“No. I’m not. We can’t hit it directly. Maybe if we had a group of Grand Admirals pummelling it, but not us.”

Vayra glanced back over her shoulder at the ruined pilaster. “This entire place isn’t Moulded Arcara. It might have been strong at one point, but not anymore.”

‘But the Moulded Arcara still is, and if you keep hitting it, the Vale Core will hit you back. It’ll win that fight.’

“But we don’t have to hit it directly,” Vayra said. She pulled her arm back, then launched a Starlight Palm into the floor right at the edge of the cage. The stone shattered, and the Arcara bar suspended in it came loose.

“That should work,” Myrrir said. He launched a spear of gunpowder into the ceiling, loosing another bar.

They circled around the outside of the core, driving techniques into the floor and ceiling and shattering the stone around it into dust. The bars themselves never shattered, but they broke free from the rock and tumbled to the ground, clinking like windchimes. Previously invisible rune-lines shot off the from the locations they were linked to, sending pulses of pure Arcara through the facility.

“And there’s the galaxy-wide warning we need,” said Myrrir.

The Vale Core stayed suspended in the air, hovering on its own free will. Vayra reached out and snatched it out of the air, and it didn’t resist her, though even in her hand, it still wanted to hover. She was about to draw it into her corespace when Myrrir said, “Wait. I am more proficient at handling a God’s presence and such powerful pressures. And you already have one goddess in your corespace.”

She chewed her lip. “All…alright. But if you don’t give it back, or if you damage it before we can use it—”

“Yeah, you’ll destroy me.” He nodded. “I believe you—don’t worry. You already beat me once, remember?”

She swallowed, then sighed. “Yeah. I remember.”

She tossed it to him, though it ended up gliding straight through the air more than arcing. He caught it and absorbed it into his corespace, then said, “Now, let’s get out of here, before the Chamber finds another way to destroy us.”