The dark, undersized tunnel proved a harrowing climb.
It didn’t seem intended for people at all, even tiny ones – the handholds I was forcing my fingers and toes into were crudely cut into bare metal. The burning hot surfaces proved the necessity of the route however – everything outside of the narrow vertical shaft seemed to be flooded with magma.
Although it was bypassing that danger, the cramped space was far from safe.
The monsters were following my movement through the walls, swimming after me in a frenzy through the liquid, great shocks making the walls tremble and sway as the largest among them smashed their way through various walls and barriers.
Their superheated glass lasers cut through my cover as I fled upwards, lacerating my flesh with boiling, stabbing blows whenever I was too slow, and unleashing fresh showers of magma to scald me. Smaller foes, unimpeded by the structures of the mine, actually tried to tear their way in to devour me alive.
My injuries were serious as well as numerous, my body shaking from the endless and cruel exertions, but still those latter hunters found their prey more than a match for them, even in the coffin-tower through which I hauled myself.
Their casualties kept increasing, but so too did my wounds.
The beasts were unrelenting in their berserk savagery, attacking to the last, until the pack seemed to run out of hunters small enough to enter the shaft and pursue me directly.
That respite was a small mercy, given the blasts of fluid glass still tearing through the walls, lucky shots tearing into my sides along with them.
Climbing for what seemed hours on end, I pushed myself onwards despite the growing exhaustion. Stopping for more than a few seconds would let the predators catch up.
Sighting the top of the crawlspace ahead was a heavenly revelation, the relief at seeing that grungy dark ceiling ludicrous. It was the promise of an end to the grueling climb.
The lapse in focus almost got me killed as I relaxed a little too much. My vision blurred, and my blood-slicked fingers slipped from my handhold.
Feeling the sensation of falling I was roused once more, catching myself before I could slip down into the glowing mass rising up behind me.
Breaking through the top of the tunnel I found myself in a small storage area. I wasted no time inspecting the place, instead running for the entirely-too-small door and bursting through the metal wall around it.
I was finally above the flooding, all of it. I stood in a giant chamber filled with equipment, cranes and ore, with three gigantic halls leading off, staging areas, each ending in a giant, ornate door. Those could only be the exits from the hellish mine.
But I’d arrived too late.
Hopeful though I’d been, a confrontation at the end of the tunnel, above the magma, had been inevitable.
Between me and escape, at the centre of the space, what had once been a colossal shaft was now a bubbling pool of magma. Giant sliding metal doors had sealed it off, but they were torn like tissue by the form of the huge obsidian monstrosity which now emerged, the heat in the chamber instantly intensifying.
It wasted no time on roaring, already gathering essence to shoot me.
Groaning in pain as I moved my bleeding, abused body, I was still faster.
The rays the monsters shot were deadly in power as well as speed, but readying that much heat and essence took time. I gave it none, lifting and hurling a giant metal ore cart from the tracks nearby.
Gemstone powder scattered, glittering in the wake of the tumbling maw of the container.
Light and swift despite its mass, my enemy leapt from the bubbling pool. The tumbling, multi-ton projectile passed under its rippling, bladed body to slam into one of the gigantic sets of doors.
Soaring through the air, the creature couldn’t dodge the second ore cart already hurtling towards it.
The monster spat its molten breath and cleaved it in two as if swinging a vast sword, the pieces deflected up and down, one breaking apart against the ceiling, the other splashing into the magma.
With the attack spent it lacked another shot to deal with the human girl leaping up behind the metal box.
I had a grim smile at the familiar situation. What was good enough for Aellope was more than these obsidian beasts deserved.
Unlike a concussed and bewildered Stormqueen, this foe still had its murderous tail weapon. It lanced towards me like a liquid spear, but I caught the knife-edged limb between my hands.
The creature looked shocked, outraged even. I could practically hear it complaining about my monstrous body.
Gripping tighter I anchored myself. I couldn’t fight gravity for long, especially with my mana still badly depleted, but I meant to finish the battle quickly either way. If I didn’t, I’d be collapsing from blood loss whether I preserved mana or not. With Echo in my mouth I couldn’t use it for much else either.
Ignoring the awful burning as it cut into my palms, I spun, whipping the octoped through the air and releasing it like a hammer-throw, aimed squarely at the already-damaged door.
The metal burst at the seams as the huge monster rammed headlong into it with an earth-shaking boom.
It slumped down to the ground beneath, body riddled with cracks, but I frowned at that – I’d meant to break through entirely with that move, but the doors were impressively strong.
Lurking unseen in the magma below, a second enemy took full advantage of my distraction, bursting out and raking my back and side with its tail, slicing a fresh gash in my flesh that joined up existing wounds.
The shock and pain disrupted my mana control and the blow overcame my anchoring to toss me through the air.
I almost blacked out, but even with my consciousness wavering I managed to catch the metal ropes of a crane I was tossed against, and swung back around to launch myself towards my enemy.
The monstrous foe threw its own great mass forward to meet me, giant claws aiming for my chest and hips.
Deflecting the first two with backhand strikes left another pair closing in, but too slow. My kick knocked the monster back, cracks spreading around its torso as I hit like a bullet, the thing sent sprawling against the metal floor behind the magma pool.
Negating most of the recoil, I landed atop the creature, kicking aside the legs that tried to protect its injured chest.
The predator unleashed a plume of molten glass as it tried to dislodge me, but my hands stabbed into the burning hot cracks in its neck and wrenched its head around to aim towards the doors.
Air rippled with flames as the white-hot blade cleaved through the door with ease.
The creature followed after it, flailing its limbs as it tumbled end over end, thrown with no more dignity than the mine carts.
The ruined door blew apart. Outside I saw a glimpse of something white and distinctly un-lava-like, but the other hunter was already on its feet and coming for me.
At my back the flooded shaft was rumbling, the building shaking as something bigger than anything I’d yet faced tore its way out; the pack leader, about to catch up to me.
I had to get out, right now.
The attacker blocking my escape leapt at me.
In my haste and exhaustion I met the attack with all the strength I could muster, kicking the howling monster back the way it came, aimed squarely at its friend outside, but I failed to anchor myself, and so I too was thrown back by the force of the blow, slammed into the wall at the far end of the building with equal force.
When sight and awareness returned to me it took a second for me to realize where I was and what had happened.
Stupid. I was so tired I forgot about momentum.
My body was begging me to just lay there, in the cratered metal, perfectly shaped around my battered form. Instead I got up, legs shaking, blood pouring from my many wounds. The mine was moving around me, the air distorting with the heat now, the essence so thick I could barely breathe.
Something was wrong, but I couldn’t think what. A sudden wave of nausea made me stumble, fatigue clouding my mind and threatening to claim my senses once more, but the pain in my body kept me going. The way ahead was clear now. It was time to leave.
Leaping over the magma pool, I had no idea what was waiting for me.
Screaming, blinding obsidian tore through my flesh, heat beyond burning, volcanic fury consuming me.
The details of my injuries, of my body and my exertions were all blank. All I knew was agony, worse even than the magma.
Murderous power was coming from all about, mana and obsidian attacking me on all sides, and I understood instinctively; I was inside the hunter, eaten alive.
I was going to be destroyed. Not burned but disintegrated, skin and bones alike, reduced to mindless, dead plasma as even my atoms broke apart.
It would be a relief after pain like this.
But what about Echo? They were defenseless in my mouth still. The moment my body gave out, they too would die. Assuming they hadn’t already been killed by the impacts and the temperature.
I couldn’t just let the monsters take me either. Not after all I’d been through in the Underworld. Not after all I’d suffered and overcome. I knew better than to give in now.
With every facet of my self, my body and my soul, I fought, pushing back against the overwhelming tide of death that had come for me. I had to live, to save Echo, and to save myself too!
Essence surged through me, power greater than anything I’d yet produced from my body, suffocating and drowning the raging inferno around me in its crushing, implacable depths.
Roaring erupted with pyroclastic savagery and power, the sounds of glass and rock deafening as the essence of the titan redoubled in a firestorm of might and malice.
Felt as much as heard, the hate and rage of mountains smelted into glass and magma battered me, but still I fought back.
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It was a creature which lived on geological time, the crushing weight of eons brought to bear to stifle my short life, to end the death struggle by crushing my essence along with my body.
It was losing.
Gathering all my strength, every fiber of my body tensed.
My enemy screamed the wail of a dying age as I shattered it.
Leaping free, I joined the cascade of tumbling, splintering fragments.
They were bursting apart almost like snowflakes as they fell.
The drop from my slain enemy’s wreck was longer than I’d expected, and my legs buckled as I hit the ground and collapsed to my knees. My eyes were still on the sky however, even the climactic crash of the body breaking on the land at my back dismissed as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
There really were snowflakes.
It was snowing in the giant cavern, flakes fluttering down from the sparkling white ceiling, where tendrils like ice gleamed, mist flowing over their surfaces.
I had to be hallucinating. I was hurt badly, I knew. I must have a concussion from one of the many blows I’d taken.
Then I saw the combat suits, and the set of tripods behind them.
I’d seen both of those designs before… at Grand Chasm.
Finally I understood. The Pharyes were the miners, and they were also the invaders. The tiny people who built Vitrgraf were also the ones who attacked Grand Chasm and ruined so many lives.
Burning pain returned as my mana ran dry, but anger staved off exhaustion.
~~~
Dust was still settling as ice crystals fluttered down over the otherwise frozen scene.
They melted into wisps of steam where they fell upon the burning, broken ruin of the colossal kajatora, the obsidian corpse losing its form as it reverted from a supernatural being to mere glass and flame.
Between it and the eighteen Pharyes stood one small figure, facing them down with a dark and menacing air even after the suffocating essence withdrew, seemingly oblivious to the burning liquids still adhering to its body, and the vapors of blood it gave off.
Ivaldi couldn’t believe for even a moment that creature was a human.
His suggestions to the Justicar had been a lie, a convenient excuse to get to Vitrgraf… yet….
He stared at the fallen dragon, and the mine pulverized beneath it.
The abomination had come up from the depths of Vitrgraf, from far beneath the magma table… in the jaws of a titanic earth dragon.
The aulogemscire’s head spun as he tried to make sense of the impossible, but there was no time for him to piece together the puzzle.
Hairless, blood-soaked and drenched with molten glass as it was, his petrified mind could only imagine this ‘Safkhet’ was some horror of the places beneath the deep fires, an ancient terror that preyed on even dragons.
There was surely no way they could defeat such a nightmare. They had to retreat; escape back to the crawler.
He had just opened his mouth to say as much when Uldmar gave an order.
“Kill it-”
The voice was drowned out by a scream as the monstrosity smashed a fist through the taller frame of a Skidbladnir. Tubing and pistons scattered fluid like blood, the machine split in two at the waist, just below the cockpit.
Ivaldi felt sick as he looked for some trace of the pilot amid the carnage.
For all its horrendous strength, their foe wobbled on its feet after throwing the punch, and more war machines closed in behind the monster.
Hammer and fist struck, and the thing staggered forward from the blows.
A sword swung down a moment later, aiming at the neck of the shorter foe, but the blade stopped short, frozen in an instant as the beast caught it bare-handed.
With no more than pure physical strength it crushed the reinforced, tempered blade into metallic tatters, mana sparking from the riven weapon.
But for all the appalling power the creature exerted, it was slow and unfocused, even to Ivaldi’s panicked eye. Perhaps they could still overcome it?
To the front three more nobles leveled the lightning gems in their palms at their foe.
Before they fired it kicked off with impossible alacrity, dodging the bolts of electricity and shedding layers of glass and blood as it sprinted forwards. Fresh screams tore through voice and rung in Ivaldi’s ears as two of the melee attackers were struck by their own allies.
“Imbeciles!” Uldmar roared. “Everyone coordinate! Cut off its escape and pin it down! We can’t let it get to the crawler!”
Ivaldi’s mind raced even as his body was frozen, standing uselessly at the back of the group. There was no way they could win. He felt the unseen, reproachful stares of the other nobles, even through their cockpits, but he was no warrior.
The pampered children of the nobility which Uldmar had gathered were at least trained in combat, but though his Skidbladnir, Idi, was a potent weapon, Ivaldi himself was an aulogemscire to the core. Despite all his father’s hopes, and all his pushing, Ivaldi had never even thrown a punch in anger.
The attacking horror evaded lightning and flame alike with fearful ease as it moved through the group, but as their ranks closed it jumped up, over the obstacles.
It never saw Uldmar’s finned spear arcing towards it from above. Guided on a thick metal rope, the weapon actively tracked its target, vents lining the blades and shaft emitting a roar of flames.
It lanced into the exposed back of the beast and slammed it down into the metal ground in the middle of the formation.
That should have pinned it to the floor even if the creature survived, but the spearhead seemed to have stopped without even piercing through to the bones of the monstrosity. It was more durable than any Skidbladnir, as Ivaldi reflected in his disjointed dismay.
The creature was already rolling away from the attacks of the others, and though it staggered as it rose, it was on its feet again before anyone could catch it.
Ripping the spear from its body the creature brandished the stolen weapon like a bludgeon and darted forward again, towards Idavoll this time.
Hers was of the more imposing heirlooms, bulky armor wrought in metal stained green and gold and embossed with heroic scenes, it’s broad, curving shoulder-pieces each trailing an embroidered banner marked with the symbols of her house.
The distance closed rapidly, the attacker raising the spear to crush Idavoll, but that plan was foiled as Uldmar yanked the weapon back out of its hand with the metal rope.
Disarmed in the moment before the clash, the monster looked oddly Pharyes in her clear confusion.
Idavoll showed no mercy; she gave a war-cry as her glaive flashed out at the blurring target, the edge whining as it cut the air.
Driven deep into Safkhet’s thigh, the blade halted her charge and eliciting a strangely muted groan of pain as she fell to one knee.
A quartet of production models closed in, weapons at the ready, yet Ivaldi joined them in gasping as he watched the weapons glance off the skin of their enemy, merely scratching the surface and smearing blood from the countless wounds.
“W-we can’t cut it! It’s tougher than a kajatora!”
“We can!” proclaimed Hlesey, pushing past amid the panic.
But the terrible Safkhet wasn’t going to wait for him to arrive.
Already their foe had pulled the glaive free of her thigh. Brushing off the lesser Skidbladnirs’ attacks, she ignored how the vibrating blade sliced at her palm as she stabbed the butt of the weapon clear through the leg of Idavoll’s machine, with an awful noise of tearing metal.
Safkhet lifted the entire machine into the air, swinging it directly into Hlesey like a bludgeon. The impact sent both sprawling in a twisted, broken mass, with enough force to hurl the others around them off their feet too.
“Don’t stand there watching, you cowards! Aim for the wounds!” Uldmar howled.
His own battlesuit articulated at the arm with a three-jointed, whipping motion, launching his spear with a crack, faster than sound. Flame-jets took over in flight as he steered it towards his target.
Forewarned this time, the monstrous girl met the supersonic missile with a kick that ripped the air and smashed the spearhead to shrapnel, the shaft spinning away, bent by the impact.
But even with his throwing spear destroyed Uldmar was far from out of weapons.
Second of the prided ancient weapons of House Hreidmar, the frame of his Skidbladnir Gres-Jarn was black and sleek, the raised lines and angles of the limbs and torso coated in irregular, fanciful decorations of jagged and gleaming gold and artful flowing silver inlay, a regal design befitting a family of royal lineage. Now those golden ornaments were peeling away and standing out on end, the flourishes and spikes detaching, branching into weapons.
Grabbing the three-bladed throwing stars at his shoulders he hurled them in wide arcs, thin lines trailing behind them.
The ‘human’ saw the weapons coming, but they passed harmlessly around her to either side.
Gres-Jarn whirred, tensioning the guide lines embedded within the wires to make them bend. The weapons came spinning back around from Safkhet’s rear, arcing in towards her throat with deadly precision.
Ivaldi stared in disbelief as she caught the weapons through the holes in the centre of each, but even as her fingers hooked the openings a flurry of pneumatic hisses announced the launch of spearheads from all over Gres-Jarn, tiny darts actively curving towards her from multiple directions.
Despite the storm of high-speed shots the monstrous creature evaded them all with ease, ducking and leaping between them.
Trailing wires were harder to evade however, surrounding her on all sides.
The cage of bladed metal snapped shut with a mechanical, metallic buzzing as the fibers sliced the air and bit into her flesh.
Uldmar’s weapon hummed with power, energy transmitted along the cores of the conducting cables, and the sawing countermotion of the fibers in each wire gave out a distinctive, upsetting whine, the twisted woven metal riddled with free-moving strands made to project their jagged edges like teeth as they moved back and forth, chain-sawing through their target.
Safkhet’s choking, guttural cry as they ate into her body was accompanied by the sounds of the precision-made cables twisting and stretching, and Uldmar’s own anxious shout.
“Quickly! The wires are jamming in its flesh! It’s breaking free!”
Then came the green fire and white lightning of a dozen production models, all focused together, striking the figure of the enemy and bathing the monstrosity in raw power. Even bound as she was their foe managed to guard her face with both hands, but the attacks scored her already wounded body, flash-vaporizing the remaining layers of glass and boiling off the freshly escaping blood to blacken and penetrate the skin.
In the wake of the attack a haze of mana and vapor dissipated slowly amid the snow.
Ivaldi watched the swaying, staggering figure of their foe. Surely that had done it. No monster could endure such punishment and keep going.
With his wires severed Uldmar was drawing the bident from over his shoulder, a wicked weapon with a curved head that was bladed all the way around. He stepped closer, two others at his sides, and they raised their weapons.
In an instant the three struck, and there was a splash of hissing fluids, bubbling in heat.
Catching two of the swings in her hands Safkhet’s kick had cleaved the third attacker in half, the production model split from hip to head, showering her in mechanical gore and hydraulic fluids that vaporized as they hit her superheated body.
The pilot was screaming, his cockpit torn open, his mushroom leathers ripped.
His wounds looked minor, but even so Ivaldi couldn’t stop staring as he fell with the ruined Skidbladnir, towards the figure of their enemy.
“Someone protect Gnef! Ivaldi, help us!” wailed a voice.
Their dread foe ignored him, stepping around the falling metal.
~~~
Dark blobs swam through my field of view as the mercifully cool liquids hit my body, still burning from the heat of the monster, and now the invaders.
Some of the shapes were Pharyes, but others seemed to be spots in my vision.
Nearby someone was screaming. I didn’t recognize the voice, but it was probably me again.
After the magma beasts and the lightning my whole body was agony – no change there. What was new was the sense of emptiness in my chest, the weakness and aching where once I’d held boundless energy and strength. Every step was a battle all its own, each punch and kick a minor victory – yet even as I kept myself going I felt that it couldn’t be for much longer.
I had to get away; to break through the enemies before they overwhelmed me.
Behind them was a huge angled shaft, easy enough to run up if only I could reach it, assuming they didn’t gun me down with more strange rockets or lightning.
Sidestepping the two attackers blocking my way left only four ahead of me now, and with them a trio of tripods.
I could do this.
I only had to hold onto consciousness long enough to lose them, and then I could rest.
Two, the mass-built models, tried to block my way, yet they moved with the obvious and clumsy control of amateurs in battle, unable even to touch me as I slipped between them.
The third was one of the custom-jobs, but it seemed to be malfunctioning, totally immobile as I sprinted forwards.
That just left the tripods, spread out in a line as if to protect the bulbous figure behind them. That must be the leader. Take that one out and I might have a chance in the chaos.
~~~
“Protect the captain!” Hlesey bellowed, he and Idavoll still trying to disentangle themselves.
“And the Chief!” screamed Hylli, clumsily piloting her own Skidbladnir after the smaller figure of the enemy. “Chief Ivaldi, please! You have to fight!”
“Stop it, before it reaches the crawler, or we’re all dead!” Uldmar insisted, amid a rising tumult of panicking voices.
Captain Beyla’s was not among them, even as she stared down the charging enemy.
The monster shifted as she ran, as if to slip past to one side, yet the Triskelions moved to cut off the path.
Indignation roused Ivaldi from his shock and bewilderment, his heart pounding in his chest as he realized that Beyla was trying to take the creature on herself.
“Don’t do it!” was all Ivaldi could think to say, the words lost among the chaos of many voices at once.
Suddenly he realized who Captain Beyla so reminded him of; his father.
He could see the man even now, infirm and weary, yet still piloting Idi to the defense of some beleaguered outpost, attacked by the Grafvollud. Or had that been the Nornir? He’d near died fighting both at one time or another, not to mention his many encounters with the Formorians. Little wonder Ivaldi’s mother had spent so many wheels of lost sleep in the study of aulogemscis. With such suicidal devotion to duty her husband had needed the help just to stay alive.
Plumes of fire from the three golems coalesced on the figure of Safkhet, yet she burst through unfazed, exploding one into a shower of fluid, essence and shrapnel with a single kick and easily ducking under the other two.
She was coming straight for him, yet the foe pivoted to pass Ivaldi by.
The petrified aulogemscire wasn’t even worth a second glance to her. He was nothing but a minor obstruction, not even worth destroying.
He could hear Uldmar and the others, screaming and cursing, but they were too far behind to stop her now.
Mere paces from the captain, her arm pulled back, ready to strike. Burnt and wounded as they were, her muscles were still powerful enough to shatter the immersion suit and captain both.
Beyla, in turn, was simply holding out the arms of her suit uselessly, pointing at the incoming enemy, nothing but the metal prong of a welding tool on one arm of the machine to defend her.
Brave as she was, the captain was terribly stupid. Couldn’t she see that trying to fight the monster was suicide?!
“Would you prefer we let our people die?!” asked his father.
The memory was an old one, yet even now it was as clear as ever in his mind, the gnarled nose of his father a little too close to the face of his young son, the elderly man’s sudden intensity leaving the nascent aulogemscire shocked, even confused.
Idi’s hydraulics hummed as Ivaldi struck the charging foe with a thundering blow!
Punching down from behind as she passed him, the Skidbladnir’s arm telescoped out with explosive force to shake her skull.
Safkhet took the blow totally unguarded, with no chance to anchor against it, but still she managed to protect her face as she was slammed into the ground.
Blindly kicking towards the source of the attack, she forced Ivaldi to jump back before he could steel himself to hit her again. He’d given Beyla no more than a moment.
Yet she made full use of it.
As the creature rose to her knees thick plumes of coolant hissed in jets from the vents on the hands of the captain’s suit; a blue cloud of thick fluid striking Safkhet full in the chest and face.
That was just like father too, Ivaldi thought distantly, always finding new ways to break mother’s work and amaze everyone by beating the odds once again.
Recoiling, Safkhet fell backwards, sprawling and groaning at the extreme temperature change, her arms pressing together, desperately trying once again to protect her face.
Beyla stepped in and stabbed the welding lance into a bleeding gash in Safkhet’s stomach with a merciless flash of discharging electricity.
Safkhet screamed in agony, head rolling back and body convulsing as the unexpected lightning discharged directly into her wounds.
The sound was muffled, as if she was choking on something, and from her mouth she coughed a glimmering object, some sort of gemstone.
Ivaldi watched in detached fascination as the thing tumbled, striking the metal ground with a high, clear note and bouncing away across the hard surface.
Even with the spike still stabbing her, the monster reached for it, grasping desperately for the strange inscribed cube as it came to rest by the feet of Ivaldi’s machine, even as the spears of the Triskelions stabbed into her many cuts.
What could it be that the bestial foe needed it so badly?
He reached down for the beautiful, angular object, Idi’s fingers picking it up gingerly.
The creation was staggeringly intricate, impossibly fine three-dimensional circuits of angular rainbow essence flowing within it, pulsing with energy. It was likely Dweomer-made, yet he couldn’t imagine where the creature got it, down beneath the magma table, or what possible reason she had for carrying it in her mouth.
Turning over, Safkhet hauled herself to her feet, giving a savage, enraged roar, notes and tones unintelligible to Ivaldi. It was the first time their enemy had spoken, yet even the strange and ferocious language carried clear intent.
He dropped the thing at once.
That ought to have placated the enemy, yet as the cube spun back towards the ground her sounds were of pain and fear.
Blocked by a Triskelion, the girl tore through the thing as though it were moss as she staggered forward, ripping the arm from Beyla’s suit and dragging the third golem behind her by the spear still lodged in her side as she tried to catch the falling device.
It struck the metal once more, and the concern was obvious on her bloodied, burnt face.
With that he understood.
Already Safkhet was freeing herself from the last Triskelion, Captain Beyla hurled aside like a doll by the berserk power of the girl.
He thought of his father again, and his foolhardy ‘duty’.
Reginn would be just the same if it should come to that. He would gather the Varangians to face this new threat. Like father, the General was brave to a fault, and for all his doubts in the Justicar, he would surely die for his people before he would retreat or surrender.
Ivaldi couldn’t let that happen. Safkhet had to be stopped, here and now.
He raised a leg and pressed the sole of Idi’s foot to the top of the multicolor structure.
“Surrender!” he shouted, Idi amplifying his voice to transmit through his cockpit to the outside. “Or I’ll smash it!”
There was no reason to think she could understand his words, but the intent should be clear to the girl all the same.
“Don’t hurt them!” she screamed, eyes wide in horror. “Please!”
The words were spoken in near perfect Pharynx, but Ivaldi had no idea who the girl spoke of.
“Stop fighting and we won’t hurt anyone!”
Behind her, the others were running, just a moment.
“I surrender! Just don’t hurt Echo!”
Uldmar and Hlesey rammed into the girl, smashing her into the ground, weapons stabbing deep into her body, but still her eyes burned up at Ivaldi.
“I-I won’t harm this… whatever it is, I promise.”
Following his words the small figure of the girl seemed to go limp, as if she’d finally run out of whatever wild strength and desperation was driving her.
Even impaled as she was at the shoulder and hip, bleeding and burnt and battered, she looked almost relieved.
He noticed that one of the prongs of Uldmar’s bident had snapped off against her collarbone, unable to cut all the way through the girl, even without her resistance. Where as if she’d still been conscious she could easily have killed Uldmar on the spot with the strength she’d demonstrated.
Ivaldi collapsed back in the seat within his cockpit, wiping the pouring sweat from his forehead.
It felt like a miracle, but Safkhet was theirs.