We push through the skies up toward the glass egg, but more and more of the massive army flies between us and our goal.

Our fleet will fall from the skies before we reach the ship. I can’t see us making it through this, even after all we’ve gone through to get this far, I’m not sure we can make it.

The glass egg is as good as ours. This little distraction that cost us so much has afforded them some little room to act, but I’m not sure it was even needed in the end. I know that we couldn’t fly the whole ship up there without the army following, and we had no opportunity to hide ourselves either, but it’s still painful to realize how little we were needed.

The infiltration team achieved more, with less sacrifice. Here I am standing in a mess of blood and waste having achieved nothing but pointless violence. Worse yet, I’ve pushed us into a corner that I’m not sure we can escape from.

“I’ll just… I’ll have to be strong enough…” I say, stirring the magic within me. The crystallisation of my power, enough mana to blast a hole through the Earth itself. Enough to carve a path through any army that might stand in our way.

“Pilots, right up into the glass egg. Stop for nothing!” I shout, letting my mana turn to magic and burn as annihilation in my heart. The crystal mana sings in a pure note as it burns to become powerful magic.

The magic summons ever more power from the nothingness that exists beyond our reality. In crystallisation, it seems to call upon the source of all mana with a newly found clarity. Aided by unseen hands, I stir my intent into the dense magic and look upon the enemy I seek to destroy.

The soldiers floating in the air before us come in all sorts and colours, yet in formation, they act as but cells of a greater monster. The droplets that make up a terrible wave, they are slaves to a motion that they cannot control.

I would save them, too.

I would save them.

But I can barely save myself.

“Kyra…” Rare stands by my side, her wings stretching out as she faces the same foes. She looks upon the same unbeatable army, a wave that our fleet cannot break through.

I don’t respond but she shares a meaningful look with Shy instead. I can touch upon the thoughts in her mind, the despair that they war against, but I haven’t the time to waste on such distractions.

It doesn’t matter.

I just have to win this.

As I let my magic stew until it is fully ripe, the army floats into place between us and our goal. It’s slow work, thousands of people moving into position is never fast, but more than that I can see no leadership among them.

They adjust their flights around one another, sometimes changing place entirely after speaking with the other squads around them. Without a leader to cut down, it’s much more difficult to force them to scatter, but at least I can assume that they’ll have weak coordination.

They are the last wave we must cross before we see the safety of the stolen mothership and the open ocean beyond. The enchantments on the glass egg are warmed up and ready to take us away, but we need to be up there if we want to be saved.

My own warriors stare up at the sky without hope, they haven’t the strength to make it through this last fight. They can’t win this one.

I do as I should have from the start. I shoulder their burdens.

This is my fight.

Closer and closer we float through the air before finally, the enemy squads charge at us. They move without their own will, even if they don’t receive orders from above.

My own body moves with the same patterns that I’ve trained into it, and they’re the same in all ways but those that matter.

They don’t choose what they do, for who, or why.

I do.

I kill for the sake of those I want to protect.

Darkness stirs in my heart, and I feel cold and calm as I guide destruction through my flesh, destabilising it as I ready it for casting. At the same time, I ready the spells that I’ve stored in my bones and aim them at those who would stand in our way.

Working in loose squads, the first blade cuts down at us, magic strengthening the strike that would cut me down.

Before it can land, I let my annihilation burst to life.

Just as the time before, I carve the sky with dark branches of annihilation. Magic that burns away at reality itself to leave only ashen remains behind. The power behind it is slightly greater than what I used to end the war below, the war that earned me the beginnings of my empire.

Threads of darkness, rotating on a single axis, flowing along a single dimension, carve paths into and through the soldiers before me. On impact with flesh, metal, stone, and mana forms, it spreads out quickly and scatters through their bodies.

Stolen novel; please report.

Men and women, and some who are neither, plants and stones, and creatures completely alien, all fall from the sky in pieces. The blood falls as rain, the flesh falls in scattered chunks, and bone and stone fall as hail.

Yet they do not all fall.

They’re strong, and they’re ready. They shield themselves with magic to take the brunt of my spell, while many are cut down, many others can withstand it. They stand between us and the crystal ship that shines in our eyes, our one hope to escape this.

I pull at the mana still gathered at my feet, my head is light, and my vision suddenly blurred.

Our promised haven fades into the shadows that seize my sight.

My sight is blurred, dark, and a tiny fraction of what it should be.

My eyes.

No.

My Skill.

Without mana and magic, it’s impossible to borrow so many eyes.

I need mana, but I can’t convert it fast enough to get my sight back to what it was, and already the surviving soldiers are coming for us.

My body moves on Skills and instincts that I’ve trained into it, and my blurred vision whirls as I try to stand up against the first few to reach us.

I stumble into one more and pull the collar from him, sending him stumbling to the deck. The next steps away from me, faster than I can hope to reach.

The third is distracted, killing one of my people, and I manage to pull the silver from him. His screams confirm to me that he’s out of the fight, at least for now, so I move to find another.

I try to move, but I don’t know where I am anymore.

Darkness.

Silence.

All I can feel is the mana churning in my guts, mana not yet mine. I convert it as quickly as I can while trying to make sense of the darkness and silence, but the conversion is slow and my senses give me nothing.

The mana cuts through me. It carves out my soul as I try to force myself back on my feet. Feet that I cannot see, on a deck even further away from me.

I need to stand.

I need to fight.

Mana slowly oozes through my body, a slow trickle at first, before the full storm becomes obedient to my will. With the mana comes the waking world.

Light burns my eyes as I take in the world once again. A world bobbing back and forth, blue and green and all other colours too.

I’m not on the deck of a ship but carried in the claws of a little dragon. Her wings battle hard against the air as she burns magic to lift me. My mana is too much weight for her.

I loose all excess mana down at the enemy pursuing us, and Rare lifts me higher now that I’m that much lighter of a load. The wind cuts through us as she dips around the spells that come for us.

Our ships, my fleet, are far below us. We’re leaving them behind.

Our people are being slaughtered on deck.

They fight, though they can barely stand.

I struggle to find a solution.

Some means of saving them, a way to change this ending, but even as Rare drops me on the side of the glass egg I have nothing.

I can do nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Rare says, falling to her belly beside me to look down at the fight below.

“No, this is my fault.”

I say, doing nothing as I watch it all fall to pieces.

“You’re not alone,” Rare says, black ash puffing out of her nose. “None of us are alone. That’s why we come together. The fault isn’t yours alone.”

She rests a wing over me, her rumbling belly still warm for the fires that she’s spent in this fight. We have nothing more to give.

The few soldiers that try to pursue us are caught in some magic trap, wrapped up and locked in place by enchantments the moment they near us. Their comrades hover at the edges of the vessel, watching patiently.

The battle below, so bloody and terrible, pauses, though I see no reason why it should. Their formations start to scatter in confusion, turning away from the fight and landing down on the city streets instead.

They retreat, where they should be pushing to finish us…

Yet, they’ve done enough already.

The ships that should still be flying for us, are now falling though they show no signs of damage.

“They got to the pilots while you were out,” Rare says. “I don’t know any of the details.”

“That’s okay,” Vii says, landing on the ground beside me with a big smile on her face. Genuine if tear-stained. “We’ve got them.”

Magic stirs in the vessel beneath me, reaching down from the sky and grasping the falling ships.

Reality is rewritten, as if by the hand of some foreign god.

“It was us, stupid,” Vii says, nudging my side. “This ship has all sorts of fancy tricks. It’s got this thing that lets them pull up other ships using space magic, see?”

She says waving down at the ships that are now drawn up to us.

“And the officers retreating?”

Vii shrugs, admitting that that part was not her.

In a courtyard far below us an officer, still stained with dripping silver, stands with diminished pride. His face is pale as he takes in the situation surrounding him.

The soldiers gather around him, at his order, but they seem confused by what he says as they set down their weapons.

The small fleet is carried up to us and when the last ship flies under the cover of the crystal canopy, a familiar magic floods through us all. It rushes through my body, as it does for all others, just a moment before we are cut from space and time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 2,202 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 1,094 / 30,271 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Functional)

-Mana surge movement (Functional)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Functional)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)