Wind whistled past Dellen’s ears. A cloud of glass shards fell with him, somehow he was more on his back than straight up and down, he had moments to come up with a new course of action, or meet the ground at speed. Dellen pushed Electrical Aether to his hands and feet, creating strong magnetic fields.

A magnetic pull slammed him into stone walls, and scraped him before he crashed in through a window. He kept moving until he slammed into a lamp on the far side of the room.

The lamp’s glass shattered under his fingers, sharp edges carving lines of red and of heat into his palms. Dellen hissed, dropping the magnetism, clutching just around the wounds, shards of broken glass sticking out of his hands. Blood poured to his fingers, spattering the floor in a steady stream.

“Who are you?” Came a calm feminine voice, more curious than angry.

Dellen froze, and his head came up slowly, he was going to have to lie again, this habit was getting out of hand. He did not hear any screams from Tiberius, which meant Tiberius and Ardentus were probably already running after him. At a guess, he was three storeys down, that gave him maybe a minute before they could find him. “They pushed me off the roof,” he said, trying to sound shocked.

“Did we?” Tiberius asked, floating in through the window, “It looked to me like you jumped, and not from the roof, but from my quarters. Hardly the actions of the innocent. Wouldn’t you agree, Master Theolatus?”

“Suspicious indeed,” agreed Master Theolatus.

Dellen looked her over, her robes bore the same symbol over her chest as Tiberius’s. Tall and imposing, she had stepped out from behind her desk, exuding confidence and danger. Sharp eyes peered at him from behind her silver mask.

“Why were you running from Master Tiberius?” She sounded in control, as though Dellen answering her question was a foregone conclusion.

“Careful, you cannot trust a word from his lips, he claims to be from some sort of… sect of watchers within our order.”

“How novel,” Theolatus replied.

Tiberius stayed between Dellen and the window, while Theolatus crossed the room to bar the door.

“What is it you think I’m going to do?” Dellen asked, indicating his bloody hands, “I’m not going anywhere.” He should have tried to land closer or even on the ground and run for a wall or the main gate. Eyes darting about, he licked his lips and waited to see what they were going to say next.

“He knows about Katherine’s unsullied,” Tiberius said to Theolatus.

“How very curious,” she said, returning her attention to Dellen, “Why were you running, falling, from Tiberius?”

“He was getting ready to attack me,” Dellen said.

“I’m getting ready to attack you,” Theolatus said, “Tell me something interesting, or the only thing left of you will be the blackened metal of your bones.”

Dellen felt a chill, and his stomach churned, with a threat like that, Theolatus almost certainly had a Pyro Affinity. A ripple of calm spread through him, maybe he could use her affinity to his advantage. Tiberius had no natural way to handle fire, and everyone had seemed shocked at the exhibition when Dellen had walked out of the fire unharmed. He forced a laugh, “You think I’m scared of you? Pyro Aether is decidedly inferior to Electrical Aether, it’s for the unrefined, untalented, and unworthy.”

Fire kindled in Theolatus’s fingers. “Unrefined and unworthy am I?” Her voice carried lethal menace.

“We want him alive,” Tiberius said, his tone light.

“You want him alive,” Theolatus corrected him. Fire roared from her fingers, surging toward him in a blinding torrent.

A complex figure of electricity and magnetism took shape in Dellen’s mind, circling his body like the pipes of a machine. He had formed this during the exhibition, he could do it now. He shaped magnetic fields around his body, two circular openings with opposite charges, led to tubes that wrapped around Dellen’s back, their ends pointed at Tiberius.

Blinding gouts of fire split in front of him and rushed past him. His skin blistered, screaming for his attention, the heat was much more intense than what he had faced in the exhibition.

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

A high-pitched scream of pain told Dellen that his fire had hit its mark. The flames dropped away, leaving Theolatus looking at Dellen, her expression confused.

Dellen risked a quick glance at Tiberius, his robe was almost all gone, little bits of red cloth amongst an overwhelming majority of blackened, cooked, and cracked steelskin. The little bit of his face visible with his mask on was ruined.

“What did you do?” Theolatus demanded.

“Me? Nothing? I don’t use Pyro Aether, why did you burn him?”

“I…” Theolatus began, attention darting between Dellen and Tiberius.

Dellen walked over to Tiberius and crouched down, “I’m sorry the way this happened, but I am loyal to the order, is she?” The back of his throat convulsed at the charred scent.

Tiberius let out a tortured scream.

“I am loyal to the order!” Theolatus sputtered.

“Attacking another master doesn’t make you seem loyal,” Dellen said.

“I didn’t attack him, you did!”

“Does this look like Electrical Aether to you?” Dellen asked.

Theolatus hesitated, “Yes, yes it does, it looks like the result of a nasty bolt of lightning, something that could only have happened in the presence of a trusted confidante, someone who Master Tiberius let his guard down around.”

Dellen’s eyes widened at her words, she might have been shocked a few seconds earlier, but she was recovering, and she was coming up with the narrative that she would make the order believe, for the second time in as many minutes, he lunged for the window and fell.

Wind tore at his ears and pushed at the ugly glass shards in his hands, but he didn’t think about anything except surviving the landing. Dellen used a magnetic field to launch the buttons at his side straight down, ripping out of his pocket, through his robes, accelerating away from him, straight at the ground.

He created the strongest repulsive magnetic field he could manage and tried to find anything to push off of.

Buttons sank into the grass, and Dellen’s fall slowed. He could feel his Spark Core straining to maintain the fields.

A faint voice from above yelled down at him, “You!”

He looked up, Theolatus hung out of her window, pointing at him, “Stop where you are!”

Dellen’s feet touched the ground, and he immediately reversed his magnetic field, trying to pick up as many of the buttons as he could. Little buttons slammed into his palms crunching glass into his steelskin, and making him buckle at the knees. He reached out to brace his fall and snatched his hands back before they could hit the ground. His knees pressed into the grass, and he tried to stand. His hands throbbed, and kept bleeding.

Gilgamesh floated nearby, “Where did you go? I followed you out the window, and you were just gone,” his tone abruptly shifted, “What did you do to your palms?”

Dellen forced himself to his feet. He swayed from left to right, and tried to steady himself, “No time,” he forced out.

“Never mind, run,” Gilgamesh said.

With just a bit more control, Dellen pulled the buttons toward him with a weak magnetic field, and let them hover, just next to his palms.

Then he ran.

Putting one foot ahead of the other, Dellen forced himself to sprint toward the wall closest to where he had landed. In a stroke of luck, he was on the side of the tower obscured from the main gate. In what proved to be less fortunate circumstances, there were dozens of bodies in red robes, and quite apart from having jumped out of a window, Dellen was leaving behind a trail of red dripping from his hands.

Robed figures scattered ahead of him.

Dellen did not know their responsibilities, but the order’s oppressive nature worked in his favour, they had not been told to stop him, and none of them took the initiative to step outside of their roles.

In a matter of seconds, Dellen was under the trees, amongst the raking members of the order. The ground was soft, at least softer than stone, but each impact of his feet shook the glass in his hands, making every step an act of will. Dellen forced himself to keep running. Thirty seconds after that, he reached the wall. It loomed ahead of him. He was nowhere near where he and Miss Thornbrook had melted buttons into the stone.

Dellen threw a few buttons at the grass and pushed against them, trying to get higher. His Spark Core strained, the Electrical Aether was sluggish and slow, it did not want to flow. He managed a weak magnetic field, but not enough to lift him more than a few feet from the ground, then the field failed.

Dellen fell.

“Get up! Get up!” Gilgamesh yelled at him.

“I think,” Dellen said, “I may just lie here a while,” the ground was soft, and he hurt, his hands throbbed and his body felt drained.

“That’s the blood loss, you need to keep going,” Gilgamesh screamed at him.

Dellen looked at his hands, they were bleeding a lot more than he had realized. “Maybe it is the blood loss,” he said, then closed his eyes, “Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right! Get up, before they catch you.”

“I can’t get up the wall,” he said, “What am I supposed to do?”

“Don’t just lie there! Get up! Find a way out!”

Dellen felt cold, “Just give me a minute.”

“You have seen Thaddeus,” Imogen said, “Can we consider your time here done?”

Miss Thornbrook considered Thaddeus before giving the two women before her a slow nod, “I suppose we can, thank you for accommodating the whims of a curious guest.”

A tendon strained on the side of Imogen’s neck, and her jaw looked tight, but all she said was “Cordelia, please escort our… guests out.”

Dellen looked around and sighed, he was in a new loop, starting just after he had shaken hands with Thaddeus.

“I think you bled out,” Gilgamesh said, “Someone got to your body before we came back here, but they couldn’t wake you up.”

Dellen hid a shudder.

“Wait!” Eliza said, “Before we go,” she turned to Thaddeus, “Could you give me the names of everyone in the fleet?”

Thaddeus gave Eliza a quick nod, and listed off names which she recorded.

“Thank you, dear,” Miss Thornbrook said, turning and retracing their steps back.

Once they had left the syndicate behind Dellen spoke up, “I think I know what the order wants with the unforged for.”