The Beginning After The End

Chapter 469: Hunted

ELEANOR LEYWIN

“Is that a person?” A shiver ran down my spine as I realized what I was seeing. “There's no mana coming from them, yet they're releasing such a strong aura. But how…?”

“So, this is Gideon’s secret project,” Caera said beside me, the words thick in her mouth.

I shot the young woman with the short golden hair a worried look. “We need to get you all to a healer.” Hesitant, still not quite sure what these Alacryans were thinking, I added, “It…looks like the battle is turning.”

The lizard-person-thing was so fast that it had already reached the highway, leaping twenty feet in the air to clear a little pastry shop and land on the embankment right in front of several groups of Alacryans who had reached the lowest levels.

The Alacryans began to throw spells, but the many streaks of orange, green, and red mostly bounced off the gray scales. The thing—soldier? Suit? I couldn’t make up my mind what to call it—spun, swiping away two Strikers with a single blow of its tail and showing us its back, which had a framework of some kind of metal fixed right into the flesh, scales, meat, and bone. Any gaps in the steel and flesh were covered by more of the transparent mana barrier.

A second of the human-piloted mana beast suits reached the battle. This one had thick bleached-gray fur, missing in tufts. The arms were powerfully built and supported with more metal, and armor plates were inset into its flesh across its broad chest and ribs. Tusks protruded to each side of the pilot’s face, where the mana beast’s wide jaw would have been. It cleared a ten foot jump with ease, soaring past a Striker to crush and gore a Shield.

More of the strange, somewhat grotesque, things came out, and soon a small army was sweeping the Alacryans from the streets. I probably should have felt relief, or even glory at the victory, but really all I felt was a faint queasiness, which moved into my head and made me dizzy.

Searching inside, I realized I’d depleted more of my mana than I’d first thought. Within my body, five spheres of mana burned brightly, each one sitting at a primary intersection of my mana channels. I reached for one of these spheres, which I had painstakingly gathered and stored within myself. When my consciousness touched one, it melted away into pure mana, which then rushed through my channels and into my core, revitalizing me.

My grip on Caera tightened. “Come on, we need to find Mom. Boo’s with her, hopefully still at the Earthborn Institute where I left her. We’re almost there.”

“But my guardian…” Caera looked over her shoulder, back in the direction she’d originally appeared.

In turn, I shot a pointed look at the rest of our group: the two Alacryan boys carrying the unconscious girl with the short golden hair, Mayla, and Caera herself, who could barely stand even with the mana I’d given her. I knew I could condense mana into a kind of litter to carry her friend, but it was already going to be a difficult journey. “We’ll have to send someone when we reach the institute.”

Caera reluctantly nodded, and I started moving away cautiously, leading the group of Alacryans toward shelter and, hopefully, my mom.

We hadn’t gone far when one of the pilots, this one in a silver-furred mana beast much like a bear, its torso open but shrouded with the transparent barrier, its insides supported by a structure of bluish metal, charged up to us. Thankfully he recognized me—although I wasn’t sure how he could see with the rune-covered cloth across his eyes—and quickly accepted that I had taken the group of wounded, tired young Alacryans prisoners before moving off again.

We made it to the level of the Earthborn Institute not far from its gates, and I was surprised to see them shut. Still supporting the majority of Caera’s weight, I shouted up at the guards. “Hey! Open up, I have wounded prisoners who need to reach the emitter, Alice Leywin!”

A dwarf with a trimmed black beard and flat, crooked nose peered out of an arrow slit, his helm scraping the sides of the narrow opening. “The Earthborn Institute is in lockdown, Eleanor! I can’t unseal the doors until Lord Carnelian himself releases the hold!”

I gaped up at the guard, whose name was Bolgermud. “Is my mom still there?”ᴛʜɪs ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɪs ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ʙʏ Novᴇ(l)Fɪre .ɴᴇt

He blanched. “I’ve heard her yelling even through the inner doors. I believe it was her intention to join the fighting, or at least get out there to utilize her skills as a healer, but she was caught within when Lord Earthborn locked the palace down.”

I turned around to look at my “prisoners.” Although their curse hadn’t been set off by their “defeat,” I couldn’t be confident that they weren’t still a threat, or that they themselves weren’t in danger.

My eyes slid off them to where more of the mana beast pilots were fighting in the distance, pushing the Alacryans back and hunting them through the city. Perhaps it didn’t matter; Gideon’s secret project seemed to have been a success, and although the battle hadn’t been won yet, it wouldn’t take too long now. Still, I couldn’t seem to release the knot that had formed in my stomach.

“Is there somewhere else we can go?” Mayla asked, her voice small. “Enola needs help. She’s…”

“There’ll be an emitter or two up in Lodenhold,” I answered, knowing I didn’t sound entirely confident. “We might be able to reach the palace, if the fighting isn’t too bad…”

“Seris,” Caera said, her voice raspy with pain and fatigue. “We should find Seris. Or Lyra. They need to…know everything. They can end the fighting.”

Remembering the presence of the two powerful Alacryans, who were my brother’s ally’s, I searched for the signs of their battle only to realize that I could no longer sense it. Activating the first phase of my beast will, I drew on the senses of a guardian beast and scanned the city. Following the signs of where the powerful mages had clashed, I sensed the distant but muted mana signatures of white core mages.

“Lance Bairon has driven them into some of the side tunnels.” I pointed. “There, where that barrier is completely shattered.”

Caera had closed her eyes and was frowning with concentration. “I can barely sense anything. I’m too weak.”

Nerves gripped me like the claws of the mechanized mana beasts now battling the Alacryan invaders all across the city, but I shook them off. My own life, and the lives of those following me, relied on me keeping a level head.

Since there was no point in begging Bolgermud, I instead inspected the smooth stone walls of the Earthborn Institute’s outer courtyard. They were twenty feet high at least, with no grooves or imperfections for getting a handhold. There was no way I could get Caera or the injured girl over. There were the newly installed bunkers, but we’d have to go all the way through the city to reach them. And even if we did, would there be any emitters there? Enola needed help immediately.

“We have to do something,” the boy with the dark skin—Valen, I thought they’d called him— said, tense as a drawn bow. “We can’t just stand here and wait for one side or the other to decide to attack us.”

“No one is going to attack you—” I started, but my words turned into a yelp as dark fire suddenly rained from the air, splashing against the Earthborn Institute’s outer walls. I threw up a barrier of bright white mana around us, and Seth conjured a barrier beneath mine. “What the…”

I felt the fire burning through my mana like it was alive inside my mana veins.

“Soulfire,” Caera gasped. She was frantically searching the cavern for the spell’s source. “But who…?”

I gritted my teeth so hard they hurt, giving every ounce of my concentration to holding the barrier in place. The black flames—soulfire—kept burning through in small patches even as I absorbed a second of the mana reservoirs, and it was only due to Seth’s secondary barrier that we weren’t engulfed. It was the most powerful spell I’d ever felt, and it wasn’t even targeted toward us; the flames were raining down over half of Vildorial.

On a level below us, I watched as the gray fur of an upright thorned growler, which was supported by a complex exoskeletal structure of the bluish steel and mechanical parts I couldn’t describe, dissolved beneath the flames. The translucent barriers of mana shrouding the pilot within fizzled away, and then the flames ate into the pilot too. The suit and pilot collapsed, neither moving again.

Suddenly the fiery rain faded, and I released the shield with a gasp. There were several explosions all at once, and three of the stone-shrouded passageways out of the city burst inward with a hail of rock and dust. Soldiers in the black and crimson of Alacrya began to pour through in groups of three and four.

I gaped at Caera and the others, but I could tell from their expressions that they were just as surprised as I was.

The soldiers piloting the mana beasts suits began to turn away from the route of the first Alacryans and back toward the new arrivals, but even I could see that they were struggling to organize. This fresh wave of enemies was more organized and dedicated to the fight, and they showed no inclination to break free of the defense and into the city, instead taking the fight directly to any Dicathians they saw.

The closest of the breached tunnels was only a level below us, and already the Alacryans were spilling up the road. We would be trapped with our backs against the massive iron gates, and there was no way we’d reach the bunkers now.

“We need to head back up, toward the palace,” I said, finally deciding on a course. “If we avoid the highway, we can probably stay away from the advancing forces and the worst of the fighting until we’re almost there.” As I spoke, I reached out for Boo, mentally calling him. Knowing Mom was safe inside the Earthborn Institute gave me the confidence to summon him away from her, and the big guardian bear appeared beside me with a faint pop.

I scratched him between the eyes. “Thanks, big guy.”

He rumbled, then his small dark eyes landed dangerously on the others aside from Caera. They backed away nervously.

I turned to lead them back up the cavern, but three Alacryan battle groups had already broken away and were quickly marching toward us. Behind them, two of the mana beast machines slammed into the front lines of the larger force.

“You're my prisoners, and your mission in this city is over. If you try to escape, I’ll have no choice but to kill you,” I said, trying to add a level of fierceness to my voice that I didn’t feel.

Caera suddenly took me roughly by the arm and began marching in the direction of the other Alacryans.

“What are you doing?” I hissed nervously. Boo rumbled, bristling.

She shot me a glare. “Just play along,” she said from the corner of her mouth. The sudden hostility didn’t extend to her tone of voice.

I steadied my breathing, trusting her completely.

“You there, who is in command of this force?” Caera yelled when the Alacryan soldiers were still fifty feet or more away. “There is no sign of our target here. Report to your commander; we’re falling back.”

A short, thick woman who could have been mistaken for a dwarf eyed Caera’s horns. “A Vritra-blooded among the rebels and traitors? That’s a surprise. And a damned shame. No mind, though. I’ve got my orders and you’ve got yours. Do your bloody job or the High Sovereign will light you up like a candle, isn’t that right?”

“I’ve done my job,” Caera insisted, holding herself firmly, her presence commanding despite her fatigue. “The signal needs to be sent. Lance Arthur Leywin isn’t in—”

“Wait a second,” the woman interrupted, her focus settling on me. Her eyes flicked between me and Boo, then went wide. “You’ve captured one of our targets. How’d you do that then?” Instead of waiting for an answer, she looked at the man next to her, a wire-thin mage wearing dark battlerobes with crimson pauldrons and blood-red chain lining peeking through. “That’s her, isn’t it? The sister? She’s even got the bear, like they said.”

I felt my eyes widening before I could stop myself. “What?”

“It is!” the woman said, practically shouting. “Hand her over. We’ll deliver her to Scythe Melzri directly.”

Caera glanced at me, caught wrong-footed. I gave the smallest of nods.

Spinning, I ripped my arm free of her grip, unslung my bow from my shoulder, drew, and fired at the enemy soldier’s throat before her brows even finished rising.

A shield of green-tinged wind enveloped my target as the thin man cast a spell, and my arrow burst against it.

Caera lunged forward, her hands sprouting black flames. At the same time, she melted away into several ghostly copies of herself, each one drawn in gray fire. The stout woman was bringing up her gauntleted fists to defend herself, but Caera reappeared right in front of her, and her flame-wreathed hand pierced the shield and wrapped around the woman’s throat.

The black fire didn’t burn the woman’s flesh. Instead, it almost looked like it was being drawn into her pores.

The soldier let out a choked gasp. One gauntleted fist slammed into Caera’s chest. Blue hair waved like a flag as Caera was tossed backwards, a secondary shield appearing far too late to help dampen the blow as Seth struggled to react in time.

Caera hit the ground hard, her breath rushing out in a pained gasp.

I dodged away from a blast of concussive sound, threw out three small discs of condensed mana, tucked into a roll, and came back up to my feet with an arrow of golden light against the string of my bow. Caera struggled to stand as the arrow struck her in the chest. It melted against her body and wrapped around her, giving her a protective layer of pure mana.

The stout Alacryan soldier was already on the ground, black fire dancing from her mouth, nose, and eyes. I could feel the mana burning in her flesh.

Boo let out a resounding roar and charged.

The Shield cursed and started to fall back. “Melzri wants the girl alive if possible, but don’t hesitate to kill her if necessary.”

Several of the other Alacryans surged forward, weapons drawn and spells prepared. The discs of mana exploded, sending the two remaining Strikers and one Caster flying as the Shields struggled to react. Boo pounced on the fallen Caster, who was only saved by a gleaming shield of black stone that formed a dome over them.

A winged creature flashed by overhead, diving into the chaos and tossing the remaining Alacryans aside. The dragons! I thought, my heart in my throat.

But it wasn’t a dragon. Nor was it a beast; at least, not entirely.

The mechanical mana beast form stood at least nine feet tall and looked kind of like a lithe griffon standing on its hind legs. Steel-gray feathered wings opened out to its sides like scythes, and as it spun the feathers sliced through a barrier of gusting wind and then the thin Shield behind it. The form wielded a huge glowing orange sword in one taloned foreclaw, which it brought down on a reeling Striker. The big Alacryan seemed infantile next to the huge machine, and his mana-imbued blade like a child’s toy.

Steel sparked, and the Striker’s arm gave way a moment before glowing hot steel parted his flesh from shoulder to hip.

A sparkling ball of lightning glanced off the gray feathers and flew harmlessly away. One wing came around to block a steaming ball of black ice and metal spikes. As the machine spun, I saw through the transparent mana sheathing where the beast’s throat used to be to the woman within. Although her eyes were covered by the same rune-etched band of silk I’d seen on the other pilots, I still recognized her: Claire Bladeheart.

I’d seen her around the labs while working with Gideon and Emily to test my spellform. I didn’t know her, but I knew about her, especially how her core had been destroyed years ago, during the attack on Xyrus Academy that caused Arthur to be arrested by the Lances. But watching her move now, I wouldn’t have guessed that she had no magic of her own; she fought like a silver core augmenter.

With the talons of her free claw, she ripped open an enemy Caster, then did a kind of mid-air pirouette. At the conclusion of the spin, several feathers launched from her wings like arrows. A few pinged off the two barriers being conjured by the enemy Shields, but more struck home, dropping three of the enemy mages in a single strike.

A woman wrapped in conjured stone-and-metal armor and spikes threw herself on Claire’s back and pummeled spiked fists into the mana barrier covering parts of her exposed lower back, which could be seen through a mesh of mechanical braces.

Shaking off the horrified awe of the fight, I sent an arrow of pure mana through the last Striker’s eye. She went limp and slumped off Claire, who proceeded to wade through the remaining Alacryans with brutal efficiency.

When the last Shield fell and the dome of obsidian collapsed, Boo’s jaws closed over the final mage’s skull with a wet crunch, then he returned to my side, sniffing the air warily as he regarded Claire.

She, in turn, was scanning our surroundings. Apparently deciding it was safe enough for the moment, she turned the griffon’s beaked face toward me.

“Eleanor Leywin. You shouldn’t be out here,” she said. Her voice was muffled and distorted, almost as if she were speaking to me from under water. The griffon’s head shifted slightly so Claire’s face pointed toward Caera, who was still on one knee. “And Lady Caera Denoir. You very likely shouldn’t be either. You would both make likely targets for the enemy.”

“These mages”—I indicated the field of corpses—“said they were looking for me.”

Claire nodded once, sharply, the beak of her machine scything down. “Then we need to get you to safety. I can carry you, but only you.”

“I’ve got injured with me,” I hurried to say. “These two both need healers immediately. If you could guide us to the palace, help guard us, we could—”

Suddenly Claire was spinning and bringing her blade up to deflect a blow I hadn’t even seen coming. The shockwave threw me off my feet, and I landed on my back hard enough to knock the air from my lungs. When I looked up, I found myself on the edge of a crater that had been smashed into the street outside the Earthborn Institute.

Claire was face down at the center of the crater. A woman with pure white hair and jet black horns stood over her. The woman’s dark eyes were full of disgust as she regarded the combination of organic mana beast and magical mechanisms that supported it. Through the transparent patches of mana along the back of the torso, I could see Claire struggling inside.

The same black flames from before wreathed one of the woman’s long curved swords. She raised the blade over Claire’s helpless form, then brought it down with a flash of dark fire.

Clang!

Wind blew through my hair from the force of the strike and nausea threatened to overwhelm me.

The fire-wreathed sword was hovering a foot and a half above the back of Claire’s neck. A crimson spear had appeared beneath it, catching the blow. Lance Bairon held the spear’s haft with both hands, and bright blue lightning ran across the surface of the armor covering his straining arms.

The woman regarded him with red-rimmed eyes. When she spoke, her voice was thick with fatigue. “For my sister’s death, I’ve come to claim several deaths in return, as I am owed. I will start with yours, Thunderlord.”

Bairon grunted as he pushed her sword up and away, forcing her back a step. “Evil begets evil, Scythe. You can’t hope to live a life of dealing death without that same death eventually finding you.”

She shifted her stance to something a little more cautious and began to circle around him to have a clear path toward us. “Evil?” She scoffed, jaded. “The High Sovereign wants Arthur Leywin’s core, but I don’t give a shit about any of that. Leywin killed Viessa, and so I am honor-bound to kill his sister. After that, all these asura can choke on their own blood for all I care.”

Bairon’s back foot shifted, and stone cracked beneath him as he pushed off, driving the crimson spear forward in multiple quick thrusts. The scythe I assumed to be Melzri blocked and countered with the burning sword even as her second blade became wrapped in cutting lines of black wind. This second sword snapped out, and the black wind carved the air all around us.

I curled into a ball where I lay, instinctively pushing outward with mana to form a silvery bubble. The bombardment of cuts and slashes tore my mana to ribbons in an instant. A heavy, furry presence crushed down on me, pressing me into the street. Metal screamed as it was ripped apart, and something heavy struck the ground hard enough to make it tremble beneath me.

I couldn’t open my eyes, but I felt each release of mana like a physical blow to my chest. Pained grunts, desperate moans, and frightened screams issued from all around me, but I couldn’t move even an inch as spellfire tore the street to shreds.

This isn’t the Relictombs, I thought with sudden desperation. If I die here, I won’t just step out of a portal to try again…

The desperate thought seemed to sap my strength and clutch my lungs, making it impossible to catch my breath. I couldn’t fight Scythes or retainers or Wraiths like Arthur could. I wasn’t even as strong as Claire or Caera. And I’d never get that strong if I died huddled on the ground, fear pumping into me with every painful squeezing of my heart…

Boo’s pain leaked through our shared connection.

My eyes snapped open. Through Boo’s shaggy fur, I could just make out Seth huddled nearby, his focus on holding a shield around Valen and Enola, both of whom were lying unmoving on the ground. Mayla was crawling away from us toward where the gates of the Earthborn Institute had collapsed under the weight of Melzri’s spellfire.

“Let me up, Boo, we have to move!” I shouted, struggling to free myself. The heavy weight and dense fur eased off, and I scrambled forward toward Seth and the others. “Grab the boy,” I ordered my companion as I absorbed another of my stored mana reservoirs and imbued mana into my body.

Boo grabbed Valen, lifting him up like a mother shadow panther carrying her kittens as I threw Enola over my shoulder and held out my hand to Seth. He stared at it for what felt like forever, then grabbed it and let himself be pulled up.

Caera was ahead of me, lifting Mayla and dragging one arm around her shoulder so she could support the younger girl’s weight.

I flinched as a shadow fell over me, but when I glanced backward, I found Claire, blood-stained but on her feet again, her wings spread wide as she tried to shield us all from behind. “Go!” she shouted, pressing a huge talon against my back.

Instinctively, my gaze tracked across the mechanism she piloted. It was generating its own shielding barrier from within, but the potent aura of mana it was giving off was weakening by the second as blades of wind bit into her. Uncertain it would work, I pushed out my own mana, targeting the core of the machine—a beast core, I assumed, and a very powerful one at that.

My mana infused the beast core, and the machine’s aura intensified. There was no time to wonder about the specifics, and I drained yet another of my mana reserves and hurried my pace, quickly catching up with Mayla and Caera as we tried to flee into the now-open outer courtyard of the Earthborn Institute, which would at least give us some shelter from the rapidfire battle happening behind us.

A force of dwarves filled the dust-choked gap where the institute gates had been. “Inside, inside!” Bolgermud shouted, waving to us.

Seth shot me an uncertain glance, and I pushed his back, urging him onward. We all broke into a hobbling jog, moving between the lines of dwarves with their weapons bared. They fell into position across the opening after we’d passed, magic humming around them as they focused on defensive spells.

Outside of the collapsed gates, Lance Bairon moved like a lightning bolt, and Mezlri responded as a tornado of black fire and wind, their exchanges little more than a blur of mana-tinged motion that even my enhanced senses could not follow.

In the face of such power, the tall walls seemed like little comfort.

We huddled behind the dwarves, alone at the center of the large barren courtyard that led down into the institute and our home there. Valen stirred when Boo set it roughly on the ground, then sat up blearily. I eased Enola down beside him more carefully; she was still unconscious, her skin pale and clammy. Mayla and Seth hurried over to administer what care they could to their friends.

I didn’t dare waste even a moment of the brief reprieve, and I started absorbing mana. By activating my spellform, I could pull it more quickly and hurry its purification. But I only had moments before a horn was blasting, resounding throughout the entire cavern, seeming to issue from the stones themselves and filling the air with a crackling tension.

“That’s the signal that the city has been cleared,” Seth said breathlessly, looking around as if expecting an explanation to manifest out of the dust. “At least for those of us who came with Seris, they should begin pulling out of the city now!”

Mayla let out a breath of relief that turned to squirming pain. She reached around and clutched clumsily at the small of her back, which was flickering with visible displays of light.

Caera grabbed the girl’s face in both hands, forcing Mayla to look at her. “This isn’t over. Mission parameters have changed. You need to retreat from the city and await further orders, but you are a prisoner of war. Think it, girl.”

Mayla squeezed her eyes shut tight, a look of intense concentration on her face. The rest of us watched breathlessly until, a few seconds later, the crackling light along her spine faded.

Shouts from the line of dwarven guards drew my attention as a line of cutting void wind crashed into them, ripping up the stonework but just missing any of them as Bairon managed to deflect part of the mana. My hands slapped over my ears at the following thunderclap, and Melzri vanished in a flash of light that left the image of a crimson spear imprinted on my eyeballs.

Following the flash, the world seemed to go green, and I blinked, trying to get rid of the afterimage. The green fog now clouding my vision only thickened, until the dwarves were nearly hidden from sight. That’s when the screaming started.

The green tint wasn’t an after-effect of the flash, but a thickly pooling noxious gas that was swallowing our dwarven defenders. As I watched, their exposed skin began to darken, then blister and burst open in bloody boils. One by one, they clawed at their faces, eyes, and throats before collapsing. Out of the mist, stepping heedlessly through their remains, came a creature that seemed to have crawled up from my deepest nightmares.

She had stick-thin limbs that stuck out at exaggerated angles like a spider. Thin, damp, swamp-green hair clung to the sides of her malformed face, and rags of dark cloth were practically glued to her jutting ribs.

“R-retainer Bivrae…” Seth stammered. Despite his terror, he conjured a shield between us and the horrible woman.

She bared her teeth in what might have been an evil grin, then swept a clawed hand through the air. The shield shattered, and Seth let out a pained gasp.

Caera stood between us and the retainer. Ghostly flames danced along her body and the ground around her.

The retainer cocked her head and sniffed like a wild mana beast, inspecting Caera warily.

As I watched her move, recognition sparked in my mind: she looked like the retainer Tessia had fought in Elenoir, and like his brother, the one Boo and I had killed.

With a bestial snarl, the retainer lunged to her left, slashing her claws in the air. Caera melted away into shadowy flames, which parted as cutting mana sliced through where Caera had been only an instant before. There was a glint of silver, and beams of black fire launched at Bivrae. The retainer batted them aside, and her dark eyes turned to the rest of us.

Boo charged with a roar, but she caught him by the snout with one hand, spun with snake-strike quickness, and hurled him away using the force of his own weight and momentum. I drew and fired, my golden arrow nearly parting Bivrae’s bedraggled hair before impacting Boo and wrapping him in a protective barrier only an instant before he crashed into the guard tower and was swallowed by an avalanche of stone.

Claire, towering over the retainer in her mechanical monstrosity, brought down the glowing orange blade in an overhand arc. Bivrae skittered out of the way, but Claire whirled a wing, the sharp feathers spread out wide, the cutting edge sweeping directly at Bivrae’s neck.

The retainer dipped beneath the attack, ripped her claws through the machine’s left leg, which was covered in fur and had a paw like a world lion, and then breathed out a spray of acidic bile that stuck to the machine wherever it touched and began eating into the barrier of mana.

I watched this with one eye, searching for the best opportunity to assist. With the other eye, I was scanning our surroundings, trying to keep track of my companions and the fight beyond the gates.

Seth was huddled over the others, his shield wrapping them all in a dome of mana. Caera flashed around the battlefield, hidden within her illusory flames and sending lances of soulfire at Bivrae’s back. I tried not to look at the group of dwarves, including Bolgermud; they were all dead, and their corpses were a gruesome sight.

There was a surge of mana from Claire’s griffon-suit. Her wings beat, lifting her a few feet up in the air as she avoided a slash to her throat, then the oversized sword exploded with a dry heat I could feel from thirty feet away. The suit's aura was suddenly visibly as a wavering gray light emanating from within it, and an orange echo of the blade followed it as it moved.

I released my mana arrow.

It split into two. These two split, and then split again, and the resulting barrage sank into the solid stone of the courtyard tiles.

Claire surged down in an orange and gray blur. Bivrae started to skitter away, then the field of arrows began to explode around her, knocking her off balance. Both sword and the talon clutching it hitched in midair as they came into contact with the mana cladding Bivrae’s gray skin, then hot steel sizzled through flesh, muscle, and into bone as the sword lodged in Bivrae’s shoulder.

The retainer gave an inhuman screech as a nova of venomous green mana exploded out of her. Claire was sent flying backwards, end over end, and landed in a heap, her wings tangled.

Slowly, Bivrae straightened. She glanced at the black blood flowing from her wound, then seemed to discard it. A black-fire lance bore down on her, but she deflected it back at Caera, whose illusory flames had faded, and Caera was forced to leap out of the way.

Bivrae focused on me again.

“Run!” I shouted to anyone who would listen, but I didn’t follow my own advice. Instead, I stepped toward the retainer, outwardly calm, hoping to keep her attention on me.

But instead of listening to me, Seth was hurrying to the collapsed mana beast machine. The mana barriers that helped to bind the construct together had all faded, and there was no longer any hint of an aura emanating from the mana beast core inside it. But Claire was still moving within the prone mechanism.

I drew the string of my bow and conjured an arrow against it. “Did you have two brothers?” I asked, playing for time.

The horrible woman’s head turned too far to the side as she regarded me silently.

“I think I met them,” I continued, my limbs trembling slightly. “My friend, Tessia, killed one. The retainer. She’s the Legacy now.”

Bivrae scowled, and she began to walk toward me.

“Maybe you don’t know,” I said, resisting the urge to take a step back. “But your other brother…I killed him, not Tessia.”

She stopped, her clawed fingers twitching. “Impossible. You are a gnat.”

Caera had moved to Valen and Enola and was dragging them as far away from the combat as possible. Seth was helping Claire disentangle herself from the machine, both of them wrapped in his shield spell. Behind Bivrae, Boo shook himself free of the rubble, his small eyes jumping from me to the retainer and back. His urge to attack burned angrily in my mind.

“Maybe, but I’ve proven pretty hard to swat so far, witch.” The arrow flew with the soft hum of my bowstring.

Bivrae flowed away from it, not moving her feet but contorting her torso to avoid the strike. The arrow exploded just behind her, and Boo charged through the white mana, slamming into Bivrae from behind. I hit him with another barrier arrow just as her claws came around to bite into his side, and his jaws closed on her shoulder.

Pulling from my last mana reservoir, I loosened arrow after arrow, forcing them full of mana so they exploded around Bivrae’s feet and head, knowing I couldn’t do much damage but keeping her off balance as best I could as I sprinted for Caera.

A resonant hum came from the mana infusing the charwood doors leading into the Earthborn Institute itself, and they burst open with enough force to crack the facade. Dozens of dwarves spilled out with a thunderous battlecry and began hurling spells and weapons at the retainer. Trapped in Boo’s jaws, she couldn’t avoid the battery of attacks, and small wounds appeared all over her twisted body.

Relief washed through me, though not because of the reinforcements. Over the heads of the small army of Earthborn soldiers, near the rear of the long entrance hall, being held back by Hornfels Earthborn, I could see my mother. Her eyes locked onto mine, and I felt her distress like a fist around my heart, but also relief and, more importantly, even trust. In that instant of connection, all her emotions seemed to flood into me, and I felt the same burst of confidence I got when Boo infused me with his will.

Seth and Claire made it to the doors, while Caera supported Valen with one arm and had Enola draped over her other shoulder. Turning to face the battle, I followed behind the others through the lines of dwarves while continuing to release arrow after arrow, some targeting the retainer, others fortifying Boo, who was absorbing the brunt of her fury.

I was halfway across the entrance chamber and could hear my mother shouting for me when the wall into the institute burst apart.

Everything was flying stone, steel, and fire. I lost the sense of up and down and my vision went white as pain override all my other senses.

Blinking rapidly, I searched around myself, trying to get some sense of what had happened. Dust choked the air and lightning crackled across the floor, through which a kind of trench had been dug up out of the tiled floor. Little black fires burned everywhere I looked. The Earthborn soldiers were scattered across the floor like abandoned ragdolls.

In a crater at the far side of the room was Lance Bairon.

Someone shifted beside me, and I looked over to see my mom partially covered in rubble. Caera was already back on her feet, but she was sagging, her mana signature very weak again. I wasn’t sure where the others were.

An overwhelming mana signature approached. I turned toward the source, where the entire front of the Earthborn Institute had been blasted away. A silhouette floated within the dust, one arm holding the other, the figure's posture seeming fatigued even hanging in the air. As she drifted forward, her dark eyes came clear, and Scythe Melzri was staring down at me, and only me.