A wind whipped over the parapets, searing with heat.

Dozens of armed and armored centurions formed a perimeter around the tower’s top. They almost looked like statues, were it not for the sweat dripping steadily down their scaled faces and soaking the heavy layers of their uniforms. Each one with a rifle in hand.

And Poire could see Eolh and Ryke tied to two spindly trunks of wood. They were made to face the city. To watch it burn beneath all that light. Eolh’s feathers waved in the wind. Ryke had no feathers left to wave.

Four guards flanked the twin stakes, their rifles ready to bayonet Poire’s friends.

“That’s it?” The Magistrate said, disbelieving.

“Yes.”

“Stand down,” he said, and the guards lowered their weapons. The old cyran’s eyes twinkled with delight.

Eolh twisted against his bonds, trying to see behind him. His beak looked spectacularly black against the brilliant light of the city below. The Queen did not move at all. Lacerations, both old and new, crisscrossed her sickly, pale flesh.

Beyond, the barge hovered above the city’s center. Its cone of light spread wide over the city.

“Honored One.” The Magistrate bowed as if he were a king welcoming some esteemed visitor to his court. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you. I’ve waited so long—”

“Stop this,” Poire said, holding out his wrists. He stepped out onto the center of the tower, looking around for the top of the pylon but not seeing it. It must be buried beneath the bricks. Damn.

“I told you,” Poire said. “I surrender. Make this stop.”

“Surrender? You misunderstand. You are my guest here; I will do you no harm. Please, put your hands down.”

“Make it stop.”

The barge’s ring was shimmering with light, concentrating it into the city. Everything below looked overexposed. Unreal. Even the countless bodies lying in the streets were incomprehensible to Poire.

He wondered if any of them could possibly be alive. Every second that passed lessened their chances. Where the light touched, the city seemed to waver and warp in its own heat.

“You’re killing them.”

“You need not concern yourself with this, honored one. I’ll soon have this city under complete control. The savages who used to live here—”

“You can’t do this!”

The Magistrate pressed his lips together, his pleasant smile darkening into a frown. “How old are you, human?”

“Please.”

The Magistrate touched one gloved finger to his lips as if sincerely considering Poire’s request. Those gloves were pristine. Someone had wrist guards made of white leather, but Poire could easily make out the twisting metal patterns that ran down the fingers. And the way his hands moved, every gesture so exaggerated.

He’s taunting me.

All these guards around him, trying to keep their heads high while the boiling heat of the winds rushed up from the city below. They were soaked with sweat, breathing heavily under those helmets and the weight of all their uniforms. Even these soldiers were just for show.

If the Magistrate could use those gloves, he didn’t need any of them.

“Can’t you control the ship?” the Magistrate said slyly. “I mean, you are a god, aren’t you?”

Poire’s hand balled into fists. “You say that I am.”

“Look at you. You can’t be more than a child. Here I thought you had finally come to your senses. But no. You’ve come all this way just to beg like some common servant.”

That grin spread across his gold-scaled lips once more. “How strange. I knew you would come; I knew you struck a deal with the Queen. But I didn’t know you would be so simple. I always wondered if there was something that made you different.”

He was holding up his hands, admiring the gloves in the sunlight. As if his fingers were covered in the finest jewels. “But now I can see. There is only one difference between the gods and me. The gods are dead, and I’m not.”

“Your own people are down there.”

“You forced my hand, human.” The Magistrate jabbed a finger through the air. Poire felt the liquid armor rippling over his chest, reacting to a sudden change in gravity. If the gloves ever had a safety mechanism, it had long since worn away. “You helped them destroy my Fangs. Yes, I know it was you. All of this is your fault. All their blood is on your hands.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Then, the press of gravity was gone, though the liquid armor yet squirmed. I have to try.

He offered his wrists again.

“Take me,” Poire said. “And let them go.”

The Magistrate’s smile soured into a sneer. “You are so disappointing. All this time, I thought hunting a god would mean something. Where is my challenge? Where is all your legendary power?”

“What do you want from me?”

The Magistrate gave him a look. Pity and loathing in the same expression.

“Now that I see you, I know what you are. You are lost. Even among your own kind, you were nothing, weren’t you?”

It felt like a knife in his heart. Is it so obvious?

“Yes.” The Magistrate took a step forward, his smile growing. “I can see it. The only thing special about you is that you were born human. Nothing more. Even they weren’t proud of you.”

The lights were too bright. Poire had to hide his face. To turn and blink away the city. All those streets, all those buildings, wavering in the rapid evaporation of the jungle moisture. Even the green gardens of the Highcity were wilting and browning in the heat.

“Well,” the Magistrate said, “you came to beg, didn’t you? So beg.”

The heat of shame rose in Poire’s cheeks. Every instinct told him not to do this. But it’s not about me. He only had to save them.

As Poire fell to his knees, he forced himself to look up at the Magistrate’s burning sneer. Those inhuman eyes, dancing with a ravenous light.

“Oh, yes. You are going to give me everything, human. You are going to make me a god.”

“Whatever you want,” Poire said. “Just let them go.”

“You really care about them, don’t you?” the Magistrate said. “Guards. Kill the prisoners.”

Poire threw himself forward. His wrist was humming, amplifying his will.

Defend me.

Chrome bulged under his clothes, and needles pierced out of his shirt, until his whole body was covered in undulating, metallic spines. A cold, metal river rose up the back of his neck, spreading out to cover his head, his face.

When Poire spoke, his voice was filtered through the armor. A crystalline sound.

“Stop!” he said to the guards closest to Ryke and Eolh.

They looked at each other, uncertain.

“Leave,” Poire said, “and I won’t hurt you. I don’t want to hurt any of you.”

They couldn’t know that Poire would only act to save him. Poire held his hands out to the guards, metal spikes rolling down his forearms in waves.

“I said kill them!” the Magistrate shouted.

They fidgeted with their weapons, oscillating between Poire and the Magistrate.

The Magistrate rose to his full height, his face carved with ugly disbelief. “What is this? Obey me!”

None of the guards moved.

“You think he’s a god?” The Magistrate howled. “I will show you a god!”

The Magistrate threw his gloved hands in Poire’s direction. His fingers were curled into a gnarled cage.

There was a sound like all the world was breaking. The stones under Poire’s feet began to rise, and bricks clapped against him, snapping and grinding against the metal armor, pressing harder until fragments popped and burst into dust. Poire tried to lift his arms, to shield his face. The whole world pushed back.

The Magistrate snarled and leaned in. He bared gritted teeth, and his fingers tensed around an invisible resistance. All his focus was on Poire. More stone cracked as the floor of the tower began to fold up and in toward Poire; more bricks slapped against him, smashing into pieces. Crunching against his armor.

And then the armor was being squeezed against him. Pressure clamping down, bruising his skin. Crushing his lungs and his bones against each other.

Poire tried to fight back, but the more he struggled, the stronger it became. Do something! He impulsed his will at the armor. Attack him! Anything!

But each time came the same aggravating response. A vibration in his wrist, an echo in his head: You do not have access to that command.

Override!

You do not have access.

The Magistrate was leaning forward now as if shoving some huge, unseen object. Grinning and growling through gritted teeth.

Poire could not breathe. Could not move. The armor struggled to keep its shape around him. It was starting to crumple against his skin, and his vision was going black, and there was nothing he could do . . .

A screech pierced the air.

An explosion of black feathers erupted on top of the Magistrate. Eolh, somehow, had gotten loose. His talons raked across the Magistrate’s face, shearing off scale and flesh, gouging new, fleshy valleys down the Magistrate’s face.

The Magistrate screamed. One of his eyes had been ripped out of its socket, and he threw his hands out wildly. Eolh, who was coming back for a second attack, was smacked by an invisible wall. His body was flung off the tower.

The Magistrate wheeled around, throwing his hands in a circle around him. He caught a handful of guards and swept them off the tower too. Even the parapets were ripped away.

But without all that pressure, Poire could move again. He ran to the Magistrate, keeping his head low while the Magistrate searched blindly for him.

Only a few steps away, his wrist picked up the gloves’ signal. Please work. He opened the menu, and with all his mind, he impulsed the command: Shut down. Shut down!

The Magistrate threw out his hand.

Silence. No more chunks were blasted off the tower. No bodies went flying.

Poire launched himself at the Magistrate, knocking him to the ground. The Magistrate clawed impotently at him, shrieking as the metal needles stung back. They sank like teeth into his flesh, spraying the bricks with blood and glittering scales.

A black shape, shimmering in the heat. Racing toward the tower, flapping like mad.

By the time Eolh thumped down next to Poire, the Magistrate had ceased fighting and was covering his face with his hands, wet blood running down his azure cheeks and staining the gloves with flowers of red.

The corvani didn’t look much better. Blood smeared the feathers under his wings, and his plumage was broken and sticking out in clumps. But he was alive.

“Can you hear me?” Eolh asked, staring at Poire through all that liquid metal.

Poire nodded.

“Can you stop the light?”

Poire squinted over the city. Trying to look up at the barge. To channel all of his thoughts, willing them out toward that low-hanging ship.

Nothing. He couldn’t even feel the twinge of digital recognition in the back of his skull.

“It’s too far,” Poire said. “It’s too much.”

Underfoot, the Magistrate was still breathing. Still making bloody sounds somewhere in the back of his throat. Eolh stepped over his body, put one talon on the pale scales of his throat, and cawed, “Turn it off, and I’ll let you live.”

The Magistrate was spluttering, choking, with his mouth full of blood. His lips stretched in a red-spattered smile.

“A god,” he was saying to himself. “The power of a god.”

And the barge continued to wash the city in that blistering white glow.