There was a dark red haze lingering over Aurra’s natural orange as they neared N, first visible when the twenty airships of varying size made it over the mountains that separated the City from D. Once they were a few miles closer, Garder, Sasoire, Menin, Rivia, and several other high-ranking Angel officers saw the numerous plumes of dark smoke rising from the City’s outskirts. It was a sight they hadn’t expected to see again.

  “N’s never been attacked in this war…” Sasoire murmured. “What is the Guard trying to do? Why not just go after D again?”

  Rivia asked the bridge’s radio operators, “Anything yet?”

  “A signal’s coming through, but it’s still too noisy, sir.”

  “Agh. Damn it…” Rivia impatiently paced back and forth for a moment before conferring with Tabi. “I could use a suggestion here.”

  She replied, “If this is full-scale, we’re only going to be able to do so much until the rest of the armor and ground carriers come through. I know it’s different for you this time, General, but… keep a cool head.”

  “I’m not the one you need to worry about,” Rivia assured her. Upon noticing Garder glaring at his home with a tight grip on his sword’s hilt, he squeezed his shoulder and told him, “We won’t let them take it.”

  “Menin, how much armor is in the air with us?” Tabi asked him.

  He ran some numbers in his head, stepped away from the pilot and the helm, and replied with a sigh, “Sixteen tanks. A few armored carriers. Add in the couple dozen escorts we have buzzing by us, and I’d say… we may only be capable of holding a few miles of City in the south.”

  “We’ll have to do better than that,” Rivia replied.

  Sasoire added, “If we can just get inside the sun’s protection before the City’s locked down and hold out until those on the ground arrive…”

  “God damn it…” Garder muttered angrily.

  “Sir!” one of the radio operators exclaimed and turned to Menin. “We’re getting an automated message from N.”

  “This far out?” he wondered. “Clean it up and raise the volume. They’d need something powerful to overcome any jamming.”

  Everyone caught the last few words of an automated broadcast message, in which the those on the other end pleaded for help. A few seconds later, it looped, coming in a bit cleaner.

  “Message repeats… This is the Independent Military Police Force of N. We are broadcasting from Pisces Tower. Our numbers are in the hundreds and we are barricaded in. Invading Guard forces are attempting to breach. We are on day two of the occupation and cannot hold out much longer. We have lost contact with the rest of the military police.

  “We believe the Guard needs this building intact in order to install a suppression device on our radio mast. Angels, if you are listening, we need your help. The Guard will not relent. They now shoot us on sight.”

  There was a brief pause, during which Garder murmured, “They didn’t mention why this is happening in the first place…”

  “Shh,” Sasoire shushed him as the message continued.

  “It is with regret that we must inform all those listening to this message that Governor Fitzpatrick was murdered—” a few words were missed among the gasps on the bridge “—his office shortly after the Guard arrived and began to level a district in order to create an airstrip. They have betrayed us and now kill our people and are actively destroying our City. We urge the Angels, our citizens, and anyone else listening to rise up against the invading tyrants. Help us. Do not let them take N. Help us.”

  Once the message began to repeat again, the operator turned it down and everyone turned to each other, struggling to find the words.

  Finx, who had been keeping quiet towards the back of the bridge, stomped over and angrily exclaimed, “Why would they kill the governor? Wasn’t he doing everything he could to keep the peace?”

  “Tactically, this makes no sense,” Sasoire replied. “Even if they wanted to seize N and go back to D from there, why would they be this destructive about it? It seems like… something went wrong.”

  “That’s an understatement,” Tabi said as she gazed out at the approaching, burning skyline. “Looks like everything’s falling apart.”

  “Queen Pristil would never directly order someone to carry out an assassination on a City official,” Rivia stated. “And I doubt she’d approve of any of what we’re seeing out there.”

  “Can’t argue with you, Jonan. She’s often been called too soft by her military commanders. This is far beyond even her desperate hours.”

  Garder, feeling a seething rage boil over, suddenly let out a loud, primal shout and slammed the back of his fist against one of the bridge’s support beams so hard that he nearly left a dent. The others looked at him as he panted out deep breaths that could almost be called growls.

  “Get everyone ready,” Rivia ordered Menin. “We’re moving in.”

  “Yes, sir.” He sounded a combat alarm to all nearby ships. “To the fleet: go-ahead full and prepare to engage the enemy. Cannon crews, take your places. Ballonet crews, prepare for heavy counter fire. Our course…” He looked towards Rivia for guidance.

  “The Pisces tower is on the other side of the Ozarus river. We need to fortify the east side of the City before attempting to cross it.”

  Menin nodded and finished his marching orders, “We must cross the river of Ozarus, which cuts the City in two. East N must be under our control before our ground forces arrive. Expect heavy resistance.”

  As the crews and soldiers scattered and the remaining pilots onboard scrambled to their waiting aircraft to add to the escorts and engage enemy interceptors, the ship’s captain pushed the throttle forward, straining the Tenor’s engines and causing the turbines to rattle the hull.

  The damage to N became devastating in appearance as they closed in on the City’s border. Just like the sight of the metropolises during the first two years of the war, entire blocks were turning to ash while hundreds of chaotic skirmishes sparked and then exploded into urban warfare. The local military—which Garder knew well as he and Milla both briefly served within it as cadets—were leading the charge, but there must have also been thousands of ordinary citizens fighting back, alongside the few Angel cells hidden throughout a City that had remained neutral until just recently.

  “Holy hell…” Finx muttered. “N is… burning…”

  Only seconds after the Red Tenor had entered N’s protection, enemy chariots took to the air and filled the sky with gunfire and exploding shrapnel, while light anti-air emplacements on the building rooftops tore into the carrier ships. Most of the enemy fire was directed into the ballonets, and the Red Tenor was hit several times within seconds, causing the sudden release of air and a loss of lift on the front end.

  But the Angels were prepared; all of their airships had veteran ballonet crews onboard. Working together, plant adepts regrew the damaged portions of the organic balloons themselves, while their watairre partners compressed and redirect surrounding air back in. They couldn’t maintain the process forever—eventually all the helium would still be lost amid sustained fire—but they could still keep the ships aloft for far longer than a crew of any Earth zeppelin from a century ago.

  “Chariots, focus on the enemy aircraft,” Menin said calmly as dog-fights broke out in the sky ahead of them. “Once we’re close enough, we’ll take out the emplacements with our cannons.”

  Garder, watching from the starboard side as the Blue Rosely took severe fire that set its envelope ablaze, grumbled back, “We’re going to lose airships before we get close enough.”

  Menin sighed angrily. “We don’t have a choice. We can’t risk sending in what few bombers we have just to take out the AA guns.”

  “Then I’ll take care of it,” Garder assured the others and raised three fingers on his left hand. “They never should’ve brought this to N…”

  “There’s nothing alchemagi could possibly do from here—”

  They watched as he bashed at a segment of the bridge’s glass hemisphere with his blade, shattering it and filling the command center with cold blasts of wind. He used his right hand to generate a shield of air right away to block it, which would still let his alchemagi flow out ahead.

  “Mr. Nolland!” Menin shouted at him. “Do not cast spells from my bridge! You are endangering the entire ship!”

  “Garder, he’s right,” Tabi frantically replied. “Bad idea.”

  He looked at Rivia and Sasoire for any further arguments, as they knew him better than most anyone else. The two did look hesitant, but there remained some degree of trust in his abilities and restraint.

  Their quiet resignation was all Garder needed, and he spoke the words of a strong spell in his mind. He didn’t need to impress anyone; to him, unleashing his power was purely out of necessity.

  By violently twisting and swirling the air a thousand feet in front of him, he created one maelstrom twister after the next, each one lasting only several seconds on the top of the rooftops they hit. Those few seconds were enough to rip apart the emplacements, and blasted their operators away at high speed before they plummeted to the streets below.

  His alchemagi reserves filled a deep well, but even he could still be exhausted, and after creating over a dozen small tornadoes, he had to rest and catch his breath. Before his air shield faded away entirely, Menin lowered the blast shutter over the broken window segment.

  “Don’t strain yourself too much,” Rivia urged him. “We’ve got a long day ahead of us, just trying to get a foothold here.”

  “Milla…” he huffed. “Milla, Shin, and Xavier are all here…”

  “That is certainly possible, and we’ll do everything we can to find them. We will. Don’t go off on your own.” After waiting for a response that never came, Rivia asked, “Do you know where they might be?”

  “Shin’s apartment… But it’s on the other side of this river.”

  “There is still reason to hope that they made it across already.”

  “General, where can we settle down?” Menin asked him. “We need to get men on the ground ASAP, before we’re hit by a full counter-attack.”

  “There is a park several miles to the east that should hold two airships at a time. But we’re going to need backup.”

  Tabi, her gaze fixed on burning buildings, replied, “We’ll contact the burrow. If ever there were a time for them to assist, this is it.”

  At Eden’s Burrow, the youth squad was just finishing combat prep for their early morning scheduled departure. Unlike the minutes prior to their journey to V, the six remained quiet and rather solemn. They knew they would be protected and kept off the frontlines, but there still remained the fact that they would, within minutes, see a City devastated by war.

  “Lechi…” Norria spoke up as the others finished up with their uniforms. She approached her team’s commander, sitting on her bunk and staring at an old photograph of herself as a child against the backdrop of N. “If… If you don’t think you’ll be at your best, you can stay here, and I’ll take command today. We would understand.”

  “I don’t know if you could keep Rhys under control,” she said sardonically. She then looked up at her and exhaled. “It’s okay. They’re counting on all of us out there. I can put aside… any personal feelings.”

  Brim, bundled up to keep warm and having just slung his sniper rifle’s case over his shoulder, promised her, “We’ll kick the Guard out of your home, Lech’. We’ve got the whole City on our side now.”

  There was a knock on the door, but Corus didn’t wait for a response before swinging it open. For the first time in years, he was dressed in his burrow uniform and looked respectful and commanding, with his own rifle case on his back.

  “You kids ready to go?”

  “Looking good, old man,” Brim said as he walked past. “Glad to see you got your spine back.”

  “Hey. I spent years in Z. I earned some time to wallow.”

  The seven of them stepped out into the hall, where the other soldiers and tacticians of the burrow were rushing off towards the main hangar. Their forces were small, yet highly trained and equipped with the finest armor and weaponry Aurra had to offer. But they primarily headed out on their own or at most in pairs, mainly for espionage, arms or tech delivery for the Angels, or simple information gathering. It was rare to see so many going into combat at once; N was just that important.

  Tanesh was running around excitingly, sniffing at their boots as they rushed by, a few of the soldiers stopping briefly to pat him on the head. Once they reached the Mezik’s hangar, they saw that there was already a line of soldiers waiting to board. Colt, Michael, and several other engineers were working on de-coupling the last rocket nozzle on its side.

  “They’re still not done working on the Mezik?” Rhys asked.

  Simon came up and said to them, “Colt’s insistent on not bringing his rockets into a war zone. Even though he likely isn’t going to stay.”

  “Even now?” Corus replied in disbelief.

  “Removing the rockets first I can understand—we’ve been working on getting them just right for years. But I can’t agree with him just dropping everyone off and then coming back without firing the guns.”

  “It may be his ship, but its services belong to the Angels. Is Leovyn okay with this? When all of Onasia is on the line?”

  Leovyn, coming over with Osk at his side, answered, “I’m not ruling out bringing her in. But we need to see what it’s like up there and make an informed decision. It must have been three days of hell. We don’t want to warp in and start blowing things up. Could just make it worse.”

  “It doesn’t help that we were short-staffed when this all began and are still playing catch up,” Osk added, eyeing Leovyn.

  He shrugged and tried to defend himself, “Hey, we had to do a computer hardware run on Earth while we had the chance. The new parts and processors will help us in the long run.”

  “So…” Brim murmured. “Should we just go back to bed, or…”

  Osk replied, “No. You all can take the L. The rest of us will join you shortly. When you arrive, just take some time to get situated. I believe that among you, only Brim has seen a war zone firsthand.”

  “Well. Live long enough, and war becomes a part of your blood. And I suppose it helps if you’re born a guy most of the time.”

  Rayna, ensuring for the fifth or sixth time that her restraint bracelets were properly locked and tight, asked the others, “J-just in case it gets bad for us… How far… How far should I go?”

  Lechi told her, “There’s no easy answer for that. You’ll have to see how you feel at any given moment, and determine the danger we’re in. It’ll be us or them out there, Rayna. If this really is total war we’re heading off into, the enemy probably won’t even stop and realize who you are.”

  Rayna looked out towards the Mezik’s line and spotted her parents talking with some soldiers. They weren’t fighters, but they had volunteered to do what they could to help, and both were fairly adept in alchemagi.

  Corus led them to the Mezik L, off to the side from her mother ship. It occurred to Lechi that she didn’t know who would be piloting it. Before she could ask, Xidona opened the side hatch and greeted them with crossed arms and a confident smile, hoping to boost their spirits.

  “Well, look at that…” Rhys said. “You sure earned their trust fast.”

  “They needed a pilot. And if the Guard is out there attacking Cities that didn’t even take a side… I have to do something in response to that.”

  “You sure W doesn’t need you right now?” Corus asked.

  “One thing led to another, I’m here now, and it’s too late to go home. I think that I should also see the Aurrian war first-hand.”

  “No arguments here. You ready to go?”

  With Hilden at his side this time, Leovyn walked over again for a brief farewell. He appeared rather nervous, which was a rare look for him.

  “Lechi, I just… I wanted to formally ask you to do what you can to help my children. We still don’t even know where Milla is, and Garder can’t be in a good place right now. I think I’m even more worried for him.”

  “I will, Mr. Nolland.”

  “Ah… I know this is a do or die sort of time, but still, we’ve never left the burrow so empty… Hilden, you’re in command down here while we’re gone. The security systems should keep the place safe enough.”

  “I’ll take good care of the fort,” she promised him as the kids boarded. “And, Corus, you had better keep them safe up there.”

  “Yes, yes. I’ll watch over the brats,” he grumbled. “Though they’ll probably end up saving me. They’re a force to be reckoned with, really.”

  He climbed into the shuttle, closed the door, and took his spot in the co-pilot’s seat, where he watched Xidona flick some switches on the overhead console and then warm up the central demirriage terminal.

  He asked her, “You know what you’re doing, right?”

  “Colt gave me the rundown. She just needs a set of coordinates. Our guys in N gave us the numbers for their operating base.”

  “Just hope it’s still there and not, you know, a smoldering crater.”

  Xidona punched in the digits, and looked out of the windshield, waiting for the hangar operator to give them clearance. A few moments later, he raised his orange batons to indicate that the security field was down and they could depart. Xidona activated the demirriage engine—only to find that the system strained under stress, causing the fuselage to tremble. Outside, the light swirled and flashed, and the gravity changed direction and strength multiple times within the span of a few seconds.

  “What’s going on?” Temki asked nervously from the back.

  “Are we about to get our atoms spattered?” Corus huffed.

  “The system’s picking up interference,” Xidona replied as she studied the messages on the control screen. “Hold on, it’s auto-resolving. Could be that the damage is so bad, or there’s so much going on that—”

  They successfully warped before she could finish, and they reappeared in a cold, dark, and gray concrete bunker just large enough to accommodate the Mezik L. The bird casting a strong shadow on the wall as a batch of flood lamps lit it from the side, Xidona looked out on her left, using a hand to try and keep the lamps from burning out her retinas.

  Once the approaching silhouettes of the Angel guards identified the vessel, they lowered their weapons and gestured for the new arrivals to step out. Corus was the first to do so, while Xidona shut down the aircraft. He passed by the lights and shook a few hands belonging to the weary men.

  “Welcome to N, sir,” a young corporal greeted him. “The others will be glad to see burrowers starting to arrive… If they can find a moment to notice you first. We haven’t gotten…” he yawned, “much sleep.”

  “Understandable. The big Mezik might not be here for a while yet. But there must be somewhere we can be until then.”

  “Daschel might have something for you,” the officer replied and looked past Corus to see the youth squad emerging. “Ah, they’re young.”

  “Why… is the ground vibrating?” Rayna wondered shortly after her feet touched the floor.

  “Things are exploding everywhere,” Corus curtly replied. “How deep are we, Corporal? Place looks and feels pretty fortified.”

  “The basement of a chemical storage facility, a lucky find at the end of our first day here. Not much left of the top, but the old depot down here is strong. Don’t worry—the storage tanks themselves are empty.”

  Following a security hallway, the eight arrivals emerged into the central command chamber, which was bustling with activity. Dozens of officers and soldiers were coming and going every second, whether they were returning to their beds to try and get some sleep, being carried off on stretchers to triage, or leaving to start their next shift in the hell above. All the while, the dangling fluorescent tubes flickered and dust fell after the seismic waves from every deep, reverberating impact hit the base.

  “Kids!” Tabi shouted over the noise and approached, properly dressed in an officer’s uniform for a change but looking battle-worn. “Right on time… Ah, at ease, soldiers. I’ll take them from here.” Once the escorts left, she turned toward Corus and Xidona. “Glad to see you back in action, and you, Security Chief… Is W officially in the war?”

  “Just me, maybe,” she answered. “But this is already looking worse than I expected. What the hell’s been going on out here?”

  “Come on… I’ll show you.”

  The plant paradigm led them to the combat operations area, where Sasoire, Yvell, Jaraphim, and Menin were all seated at small desks, each of them trapped within their headsets and keeping their radios warm. They couldn’t stop talking for a second, and constantly switched channels for updates and to issue orders to the many leaders fighting outside.

  “Fall back to Sector Four and regroup with Zulu,” Sasoire spoke, and flowed right into another conversation. “Copy, Bravo. Be advised that Guardian mechanized infantry has been spotted crossing Velkinson Bridge. Hold current position only if your armor is still combat capable.”

  “Blue Rosely, Amber Moth, escort chariots refueled and heading your way,” Menin told their captains. “Turn to heading 2-7-0 and await instruction. All Angels, air support will be temporarily unavailable.”

  Daschel, on his feet and pacing behind the others, was in command for the moment and supervised decisions. His four fellow young officers, despite being overworked, were entrusted to control their side of the battlefield, but ultimately Daschel had the final say on any order; in a way, he was the one true architect of how the fight for N would proceed. It was also up to him to remember where all the chess pieces were placed and both their past and next moves. Considering that he was the sole child commander to not be born a mind adept, it was an impressive feat.

  Jaraphim, who was leading special operation tasks, was the only one of the five that seemed to be able to take brief pauses between his moments with the various squads at work. “Copy that…” he sighed and took a sip of his coffee. “Good work. Move onto the next anti-air when able. Every one you take down lets the captains breathe a little easier. Yes, yes—we’ll cross the bridges in due time. Switching channels, over.”

  In contrast, next to him was Yvell, who was upset and struggling to keep any remaining semblance of composure. “Backup is coming, just hold on! Hunker down at your current position. Tell me who’s left without leaving cover. An extraction team is only blocks from…” She fell silent as the barely audible sound of bombs being dropped leaked out from her headphones for the others to hear. “A-are you still there? Please come in… A carrier is… a carrier is en route, if you can just…”

  Daschel came up behind her and squeezed her shoulder gently. “Nym, get some rest. Your uncle can take over for a bit here.”

  “I… I can’t keep them alive…” she murmured. “We just lost Esper Company. That’s three in the last twelve hours… All gone…”

  “The provisional forces are doing their best job keeping the Guard from closing in on us. So are you. You haven’t failed them.”

  Yvell stood up with a somber look and drifted away into the officers’ quarters. Shiloh then came in and took her place before her chair lost any of its warmth, taking over the oversight in a seamless transition.

  Daschel finally had a chance to greet the new arrivals, and after a deep breath, told Tabi, “Ms. Feretta, please bring them into the war room. I’ll meet with them shortly.”

  “It’s been like this basically since we touched down,” Tabi said as she led them away. “I haven’t slept in thirty-six hours, so don’t expect me to join you guys just yet. I need some rest before the big op at dawn.”

  “And what’s happening at dawn?” Corus asked her.

  “We’re crossing the river with birds, keeping low to avoid the anti-air. In and out, just to get sitrep on the other side, maybe punch some holes in their supply lines if we get a chance. Can always use more pilots, Chief.”

  “Is something making crossing the Ozarus difficult?” Rhys asked.

  “Therein lies the crux of this whole thing,” she said and opened a door to a room that used to be the facility administrator’s office. “Take a look at the map; you might notice our little problem right away.”

  The war room’s walls were covered in diagrams, charts, company and platoon information, and dozens of maps. The centerpiece was a large roll-up map of the immediate area, laid out on an old conference table and covered with synthesized stone markers to indicate the day or hour’s current tactical placements for Angels on the ground or in the air. There were ruby-colored stones for confirmed Guardsmen emplacements, and a few green stones indicating where the remains of the local military were positioned. But what really stood out were the three solid black, longer pieces in the City’s narrow river, each of them separated by bridges.

  “W-wait…” Lechi murmured thoughtfully. “Why are there Guardian destroyers in the Ozarus?”

  Tabi replied flatly, “Because there are destroyers in the Ozarus.”

  “Come on,” Corus grumbled. “Jaraphim probably just misplaced his bath toys. Because that isn’t possible.”

  “I’m afraid it is,” Daschel said, closing the door behind him. “It was the biggest mystery of this whole invasion for a while. Those ships shouldn’t have been able to sneak past the N naval blockade to begin with, much less squeeze into a river and get past the bridges. So, we simply have to contend with the idea…” he looked at Lechi, “that they warped in.”

  “The demirriage engine Fordein was working with…” she breathed out and rubbed her eyes. “Nish made this invasion possible…”

  “Or much easier, at least. We just don’t have the firepower on the ground to sink the things, and we’ll never get across those bridges and have a chance to take the west with them in place. Best we can hope for is to pound them from the air, but there’re so many advanced emplacements—”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  Corus interjected, “Advanced?”

  “Heat-seeking missiles. Good old flak is nasty enough, but if those stingers take to the air, we’d be torn apart in seconds. The only way we get rid of them is by scaling the towers that they’re on top of, on foot.”

  Norria’s eyes went to the northwest part of the map, where four airship-shaped markers were placed, and asked curiously, “I didn’t know N had an airfield that big, or a park that could be used as one…”

  Tabi frowned and had to avoid looking her in the eye as she replied, “It didn’t. The Guard made one on the outset.”

  “Ah, hell…” Corus muttered. “Mobile hammers?”

  “Knocked down twelve blocks just to clear enough space.”

  Temki crossed his arms and looked uncomfortable, but asked anyway, “Did they at least give people time to evacuate the buildings?”

  “At first,” Daschel replied. “Before they sped everything up.”

  “Always the same with these bastards…” Rhys said lividly. “It’s not enough to kill the governor, they also have no remorse for civilians.”

  “We aren’t sure what happened with Fitzpatrick,” Tabi stated. “From the Guard chatter we’ve managed to pick up, we’ve heard mentions of an ‘incident in his office’ while meeting with one of the pretorians. Could be some validity to the hearsay.”

  Daschel added, “In other words, it probably wasn’t a planned assassination. So, yes, something likely did ‘go wrong.’”

  “Where are the City’s civilians?” Lechi asked.

  “Most of them fled the growing zone of exclusion, towards outer N. Those that couldn’t make it went underground. The local military opened up the old Administration facility for them.”

  Temki, after a brief recollection of the past, murmured, “I still remember what it’s like down there… But aren’t there Administrators?”

  “They apparently all left several years ago. Honestly, at this point it’s hard to say if they’re under any City, except U.”

  “Just flee and let the war run its course,” Tabi said with a grunt. “Typical not to protect the world they supposedly maintain. Cowards.”

  “Anyway, this brings us to your first assignment here. This bridge in the north…” Daschel pointed to the one at the edge of the map. “It’s out of the destroyers’ reach, but if we used it, it’d be a slog through miles of Guard-infested City blocks. We’d never get to Pisces tower in time.”

  “In time?” Brim wondered.

  “Ah, right. Forgot to mention the deadline. The Guard wants the tallest tower in N, right in the middle of this mess,” Daschel said and placed his finger on a place on the map surrounded by enemy units. “N’s military is holding it, but they’re cut-off and surrounded. We give them three days at most before they’re overrun and the Guard gets a suppressor installed.”

  Tabi continued, “Then we either have to withdraw from N, or sacrifice thousands trying to get a breaker team like Xavier’s up there.”

  “But we want to cross the bridge in the north at dawn for another reason. Milla, Xavier, and Shin finally, just recently got a message to us that they made it to a good extraction point not too far from the bridge. But they’ll never be able to cross it without our help.”

  “And we have to finish something else first.” Tabi pointed out an embassy building close to the bridge. “A number of local officials—and even one of N’s senators—are still holed up in the City’s Tillethy embassy, and their underground escape route was destroyed in an aerial bombing. We’ve been escorting them out with armor, but it’s taken time. We can’t risk crossing the bridge with the embassy so close. It could take fire.”

  “We have one last extraction coming up, and we need eyes in the towers alongside the main road there and back. You won’t be alone—we have several other teams providing cover to our tanks and carrier—and we also don’t expect any enemy incursion; they haven’t tried anything as of yet.”

  “So, another watch-out mission,” Brim surmised. “Not terribly exciting or dangerous, but important nonetheless.”

  “The hell are you talking about?” Rhys exclaimed. “Have you seen our luck? Don’t you remember what happened to us last time?”

  “It is important, though,” Tabi said. “The senator in there is N’s good one—him waiting to be on the last ride out is evidence enough of that. He needs to get back to A and tell the chamber what happened here. There’s just a chance the invading Guardsmen would prefer him to be killed in an ‘unfortunate collateral incident’ before that can happen.”

  “You’re moving out right away,” Daschel concluded. “A carrier will get you to the tower, and you’ll take over a shift. This area of N has lost power, so you’ll have to climb some stairs. Any questions?”

  Rayna had one. “Where’s… Where’s Garder right now?”

  “Taking on an enemy advance in the south, with Rivia and Viktor. That’s where most of our forces are fighting at the moment.”

  “Let’s move,” Corus said. “We’re keeping the other team waiting.”

  Daschel guided them out, and it seemed like it was his turn to get some rest, as Tabi turned towards those on the radios to take command. On the way, they passed by the triage room that was near the medical station, its beds full of injured Angels—and some local military as well, most of them badly hurt but receiving the best treatment possible.

  He stopped for a moment upon seeing that Harken appeared to be in an argument with Mesette, who was leading the care teams. He was beaten and bloody, but ready to go back out on the field and must have been refusing to remove the gauntlet-claws from his arms. He was more concerned with his fellow pugilist and right-hand man, Prell, who was worse off and having an arm bandaged by a nurse.

  “He can’t go back up there until I approve him again,” Mesette said, urging Harken to calm down. “And, Mr. Harken, I’m worried about you, too. I don’t know what you’re running on, but I doubt it’ll keep you going for another six-hour shift up there.”

  “Rivia’s men are going to get wiped out without us, and my men don’t fight without one of us on the field.”

  “Then recall your people and let them rest. And have some faith in the Angels. The general will make sure they pull through.”

  “Seth, enough,” Prell groaned in pain and took another swig from his flask as a different wound was stitched up. “We’re both at our limit.”

  “Do I need to say anything here?” Daschel asked.

  “I don’t think so, sir,” Mesette assured him. “Mr. Harken can behave when he wants to.” She turned to him. “Can’t you?”

  “Gah,” he said with a growl and walked past them, down the hall.

  “Too much pride in ’im,” Prell tried to apologize. “Stuck thinkin’ he’s still in the Guardfall glory days. Can’t stand having a boss.”

  “It’s really bad up there, isn’t it?” Rhys asked him.

  “Used to be even worse.”

  “Are you okay on supplies, Mesette?” Daschel wondered.

  She looked around at the injured and answered, “We can last a few more hours before we need to do a hospital run again.”

  “All right. I’m going topside for a moment, rest when you need it.”

  They made it to the stairwell, went up to the nearly empty top floor of the sub-structure, and proceeded down a hallway with a few soldiers on break, some smoking with shaking hands. At the other end was a destroyed entrance, its doors blasted away some time ago, followed by the rubble of what used to be the rest of the building. Trenches had been dug around the facility that had become an Angel bunker base, with the wide, center ditch leading to the first floor of a parking garage. Transport vehicles and heavy armor were coming and going within the sheltered staging area, lit up by flood lamps. As they arrived, a reinforced buggy pulled up for the group.

  Daschel told the driver, “They’re going to Tower Five. Go slow, no headlights.” He then turned to the others. “You’ll be picked up once the escort arrives safely; it’s departing in two hours. Keep your radios on but don’t talk over the air unless it’s an emergency. There’s another team in the tower across from you. Use torch Morse to communicate with them.”

  “Torch… Morse?” Rayna murmured.

  Corus pointed to his shoulder-mounted lamp. “Flash light talk.”

  Daschel headed back, and Corus took the passenger seat as Rhys opened the back door so he and his friends could climb in and take their seats. The steel enclosure only had a single, narrow window in the door itself, which they used to observe the City outside while they passed by.

  The streets were in bad condition, and they were repeatedly rattled in their seats despite the speedy vehicle’s military-grade suspension. Lechi recoiled several times after looking out, only to do it again moments later. None of the buildings had lights, but any intact windows on the towering silhouettes reflected the sporadic burning fires across the floors.

  Buzzing aircraft passed overhead, distant explosions shook the air, and acrid smoke blotted out a full moon. Each time they reached another block and had a brief view of the river, miles down the perpendicular roads, all they could see was the inky blackness of no man’s land.

  “N’s in rough shape…” Norria said somberly.

  “It’s a large City,” Lechi replied as she tried to meditate and collect her thoughts. “It can’t be this bad all over. There are still people to help.”

  A set of rairer armor that had lost its owner seemed to be the marker for the buggy to turn, and it swerved straight into the bombed-out lobby of an office building. Corus hopped out and opened the doors for the kids, the driver staying in place to wait for the returning team.

  “How long’s it take to get up there?” Corus asked the driver.

  He answered through his opened driver’s side door, “Depends how out of shape you are. The last guys made it to the top in ten.”

  “Issuing a challenge, huh?”

  “No fluttering, Rhys,” Lechi ordered. “Save your energy.”

  “Uh-huh,” he muttered. “Just… wear my legs out instead, then.”

  On the twenty-fourth floor, one below the top, the team arrived into an office space that had apparently been empty even before war had reached it. Most of the windows were blown out, but the concrete under their feet did feel intact and reliable.

  Upon noticing their relief team, the five adults by one of the glassless windows facing the main road below picked up their gear and headed out, leaving several empty coffee tins behind. Among them were Dak and Kyler, and upon noticing Temki, they stopped for a moment.

  “Hey, kid. They didn’t tell us you were heading up here,” Dak said.

  Temki coughed on the dust and smoke in the air and replied, “Um, y-yeah… I just hope this isn’t too dangerous, what we’re doing.”

  “Shouldn’t be,” Kyler assured. “The rest of the escort runs went fine. All you gotta do is keep your eyes open, call in anything suspicious.”

  “This sort of thing is easy for our human radar station here,” Brim replied with a grin and patted Temki’s back. “The VIPs are in good hands.”

  The team proceeded to the small camp, where some metal chairs surrounded a hot plate and coffee maker hooked up to a battery. Corus signaled the team in the tower across the avenue with some flashes of light. After they responded, he took a seat and opened up his rifle case, with Brim doing the same as Lechi ran some test manipulation on her sword, Galvan.

  Rhys got right up to the edge of the gaping window and gazed at the night sky, the distant plumes of smoke throughout the City all lit by a dim orange glow and barely visible. He leaned in a little too much, felt gravity taking over, but then summoned a quick gust of wind to push himself back in. Behind him, Corus had just attached a new assist device created by the burrow: Leovyn’s promised periscope-like tool, which snapped right onto the existing scope and reached over to his left eye.

  “You good, sir?” Brim asked Corus.

  “Yeah. Guess this’ll work,” he muttered, taking his over-the-knee sniping position on the floor and trying out some rifle maneuvers.

  “Glad to be back with the best shot in Onasia.”

  “All right, all right. Don’t butter me up.”

  After some time passed, Rhys asked, “Brim, you got me thinkin’ about something. About war ‘being in your blood’? What’s that mean?”

  “You at least get the phrase, right?” he asked and loaded his rifle.

  “Sure, but, what does that feel like? Gotta remember, I barely have any concept of Earthen history. Everything I experience is very new to me.”

  “War puts you in a different state of mind. It’s one thing to be a civilian in a country at war, and another level to be on the frontline. Thanks to Earth’s violent history, most souls my age have experienced at least a few, at varying distances from the battlefield. It’s hard to explain until you’ve actually been there, but… you learn just how fragile the balance of peace can be. It’s like, eventually, you get the ability to always see the cracks forming long before everything escalates, and by the time things explode and everyone else is surprised, you aren’t. It’s that ‘season again’ to you. The politicians tout their bravado, the generals scheme up their grand plans, and the soldiers have to become selfless, or they lose their minds waking up every morning and thinking today’s the last day.”

  “Ah. That’s all very uplifting. How long has Aurra had ‘cracks’?”

  Corus interjected from his spot by the window to report, “I see the carrier and its escorts coming. Thing’s protected by five… no, six tanks.”

  “Aurra always had cracks,” Brim replied. “You think all that rage soldiers felt just goes away when they arrive here? Or that they wanted to be bossed around by the Guard? Suppression was just the lid on the pressure cooker. Providence was the Guard. Now that it’s gone and probably not coming back, we need a new system. And a lot of people out there are recalling their past battles, reliving all the wars on Earth they experienced, those emotions, their training… Millions of us know how it goes, and we’re just going through the motions, day by day, until it finally ends.”

  “But do you remember specific wars?” Norria questioned.

  “Yeah, a few of them. Weapons change, but the mindset and the chain of command don’t so much. For me, it’s just a switch to be flicked, like going to a job you treat very seriously, something ingrained in you.”

  As Rayna and Temki wandered to the windows on the other side of the tower and Lechi kept watch with Corus, Norria asked something she had wanted to for a while, “What do you remember, as an ancient?”

  He shrugged. “I have pretty good recall, so I still have some images and feelings from long ago. I remember the markets in Babylon. And I believe that I witnessed the Library of Alexandria burning.”

  “Come on. What are the odds you saw that?”

  “A lot less people back then. Better chances? I’m pretty sure the first time I fought in a war was alongside King Leonidas. I think I lived in a tribe in America centuries before it was colonized… Hm. Ah, I clearly remember the year electricity was discovered in Aurra. Of course, that was just a thousand years after the fall of Rome—who could forget that?”

  “Let me guess. You were on the Titanic, too.”

  “Nah, missed that one. Don’t be jealous, Norria. You’ll be around your own share of history once you’re old enough. Thing of it is, though, a lot of historic moments are also terrifying, so it’s not always a blessing.”

  Temki, who had overheard Brim from across the room, asked Rayna, “Do you know about many of those events? I’ve only studied a little bit of Earth history since coming to Aurra…”

  “Not really. But… if my recollection ever comes back, maybe I’ll realize I’m even older than he is,” she replied with a tiny grin.

  The two looked out at the arrival site for the Mezik, a shallow reflecting pool that had been drained of its water and was now surrounded by more flood lamps and waiting Angels.

  Just as Temki was about to ask Rayna when she thought the rest of the burrowers would arrive, the two saw the space at the landing site bend into itself and glow vibrantly for a split second. The Mezik’s lengthy, heavily armored mass then exploded into existence, generating a blast of air in all directions that reached the tower and rattled the broken glass on the floor.

  “You can really see how big the Mezik is from here,” Rayna said, and turned around to ask Temki, “Have you seen it outside before…” she trailed off upon seeing four armed men in black emerging from the stairs.

  He sensed them just as she saw them, but they had managed to sneak up on the other five and were already raising their rifles. Rayna reflexively raised her arms to take them out with a nova spell, but Temki managed to strike first, unleashing a powerful floor-wide neural shock.

  The attack debilitated everyone else except for its creator, bringing the intruders to their knees as they held their heads in pain. Corus was the first to recover, after which he turned around and following a split-second summation of what was happening, took out the four infiltrators with the same number of bullets, all of them fired two seconds apart.

  “What the hell?” Rhys muttered in pain. “Who were those guys?”

  “Rayna, are you okay?” Temki asked and helped her to her feet. “Sorry about that, I… I didn’t know what else to do.”

  She breathed deeply. “It’s fine. At least it wasn’t me that had to…”

  “Son of a bitch,” Corus huffed, turned towards the other tower, and rapidly tapped at his light to signal them. “Come on… Respond.”

  Flashes of light went off, but they weren’t from a lamp nor directed towards them; Corus had to watch from a distance as the second team was caught by surprise and gunned down, meeting the fate that Lechi’s squad nearly suffered. Enraged but under control, Corus looked through his scope and took out three more of the stealthy Guardsmen from across the street, with Brim getting in the last shot. But neither one looked relieved.

  “This is probably about to get a lot worse,” Corus said. “And now we’re on our own. Get in position and watch the skies.”

  With the other team down, the team knew it was up to them to protect the convoy below, and they all gathered up near the window as the local military carrier and its rolling armored escorts reached the main road. Seconds later, they could also hear the ominous buzz of nearly a dozen Guardian rotorbirds coming in from the opposite direction.

  Once the aircraft rounded the nearest intersection, the group could see that they were anti-tank twin tiltrotors—little more than two giant turbines keeping a pilot and chain gun aloft between them. Brim was the first to take aim, but Corus pushed his rifle down and signaled to wait.

  “They might think we’re dead,” he explained. “We need to see how many we can take down at once; let them gather first.”

  “But they’re in danger…” Lechi said, worrying for the convoy.

  “If we don’t play this right, we’ll be in even more.”

  The rotorbirds opened fire on the friendly tanks, lighting up the night with tracer slugs. The tanks aimed upward and returned fire, but the cannons had little hope of hitting the fast-moving aircraft. Tank gunners popped up to man the chain guns that would be more effective, but not before three of the tanks burst into flames and came to a stop.

  “They’re all going to be killed,” Lechi said. “We have to help.”

  Corus looked for any other enemy birds coming in, waited a moment more for the rest to come closer, and then signaled to his team to open fire once the loud, buzzing aircraft were directly across from them, floating in the air just a few feet higher than their floor.

  Knowing that their first attack had to be decisive, Corus and the kids gave it their all. Norria brought up her earthen shield and took control of the loose concrete rubble on the floor, directing it into a battering torrent of rock that slammed into one of the rotorbirds and tore off its engines, sending it plummeting. Lechi tossed Galvan out, slicing in half the engine of another before pulling back her heavy blade and then molding it into a shield of her own. Corus fired his rifle and curved the bullet to correct it, landing a perfect headshot on a pilot. Brim used his crystal ammunition to launch a small vector mandala that took out another engine, and Rayna generated a nova burst that completely obliterated a cockpit.

  With six of the birds taken out in as many seconds, Rhys tried his best to down a seventh, but the air blades he was pushing through his alchemagi knives weren’t powerful enough to breach the light armor. His target, and the other surviving rotorbirds, turned their focus away from the tanks—each one now already ablaze with their operators evacuating.

  Corus managed to take out another pilot before they could all open fire on them, sending the bird spinning out of control until it exploded into the tower across the street. The remaining three then tore into the floor with their chain guns, forcing the group to take cover behind the twin alchemagi shields. After several seconds, their pilots ceased fire and began a strafing maneuver, running parallel to the building to try and flank them.

  When she could see them again once they had moved out from behind the shield, Rayna began compacting more air into explosive spheres in attempt to destroy the birds—but they were moving too quickly, and she had trouble landing a solid hit with the delayed bursts, which did little more than briefly rock the aircraft. Norria and Lechi adjusted their shields and prepared to absorb another stream of slugs, but then saw the rotorbirds suddenly power up their turbines and jump higher into the air.

  “Where are they going?” Rhys asked. “I can still hear them…”

  Corus looked at the ceiling and ordered, “Girls, shield our heads!”

  They understood the danger right away and brought their large dual shield over them, in time to deflect a rain of hot tracer slugs that ripped through the existing concrete above them. The gunner-pilots were brutal and determined, keeping the storm going for as long as they could, ripping apart and weakening the floors all around them.

  “We’re going to be crushed or dropped to the floor below,” Rhys warned them over the noise. “Are they just going to shoot forever?”

  “No,” Corus replied. “Just hold out a few more seconds.”

  With the floor groaning under them, the rain suddenly stopped, and they could hear some distinct mechanical noises above.

  “They’re changing drums,” Corus explained. “Norria, can you heal, the, uh… the building?”

  She knew she had to try, so she placed her hands on the deteriorating concrete under their feet. Despite the missing material that was sprinkled somewhere on a lower level, she easily fused the many scars together, stabilizing the structural integrity. She then worked her magic on the ceiling and even the rooftop past it, and in seconds, the holes had vanished. Once she was finished, she brought her shield back up.

  “Damn, good work,” Rhys complimented.

  “Still think focusing my training on defense is a joke?” she huffed.

  “What? No. Hey, I was just kidding about that…”

  “At least we’re buying the escort team some time,” Corus said. “Guard will only stick around for so long before they worry about backup. We should be getting help in another five minutes or so.”

  “They’re not unleashing on us a second time,” Brim noted.

  “Probably gave up when they saw the building fix itself.”

  “That just means they’re going to try something else.”

  He was right; seconds later, the three rotorbirds came back down and began high speed-strafing runs across the side of the building, their operators now desperate to take them out so they could annihilate the team below, who were taking potshots up at them whenever they had a chance.

  They were moving at high speed, making it nearly impossible to hit them with anything as they flew by sideways, lighting up the floor with gunfire. Their shots were messy and sprayed everywhere, and although the twin shields were taking less damage, they had to be constantly adjusted by their owners to block the stream of hot metal. The birds came back from the other end of the building for a second run, and by the time they were trying it a third time, Rhys let out a fed-up groan following Rayna’s attempt to blow up an engine with a trailing series of miniature nova explosions.

  “Yeah, okay… That does it,” he said and brought out his knives.

  “Rhys, don’t do anything stupid,” Lechi told him.

  “More stupid than hiding here until you exhaust yourselves? Nah.”

  Once the three terrors started on their fourth run but before they opened fire, Rhys left cover and generated a vacuum tunnel in front of him to blast himself clear across the room, into the air, and on top of the central pod of one of the birds. The pilot tried to shake him off, but he was able to stay on long enough to use his knives to create close, powerful wind blades that severed the fuel lines of an engine, putting the aircraft into a spin.

  “Kid’s crazy!” Corus exclaimed, leaving cover to observe the scene.

  Rhys’ incursion drew the attention of the other pilots, who turned to him and revved up their cannons. Norria saved him by rocketing her part of the layered shield forward, slamming it into the bird closer to Rhys just before it fired. Her target then also began to spin out of control, and it smashed into the tiltrotor that Rhys clung onto, sending both aircraft careening into the tower across from them. Rhys was thrown off before they hit the building and erupted into flames, but he managed to manipulate the air around him in time to save himself, if just barely. Once the birds had fallen down to the street and some smoke cleared, the others could see that he was hurt, and trying to crawl away at the very edge of a broken window.

  Finally seeing his first easy target of the group that had killed the rest of his men, the only remaining pilot swiveled in the air, ready to take out Rhys, separated from his friends and still trying to recover.

  “Rhys!” Brim shouted for him, and fired a vector-bullet that the rotorbird easily avoided—the pilot was moving erratically, up and down, left and right, to keep himself alive long enough to make that single kill.

  “He’s in trouble,” Corus said. “Lechi, do you think you can—”

  “Rayna, don’t!” she suddenly shouted.

  During a moment when no one had an eye on Rayna, she slipped out of cover and walked away from the others, towards the windows. It was also Lechi who noticed that she had removed one of her restraint bracelets, letting it dangle between the fingers on her left hand as she raised her right.

  “Oh, hell…” Lechi huffed and ordered the others, “Stay down!”

  They hid themselves behind the shield, and once Rayna was close to the edge, she compacted the air where the rotorbird was darting about into a sphere three times larger than usual, to create a spell that her target would never be able to avoid. Unaccustomed to her higher potential, the following explosion took her by surprise. A millisecond after it had fully enveloped and vaporized the aircraft, the blast hit the side of the building, and partially collapsed the already weakened top few floors.

  “Rayna!” Temki shouted after he watched her slide down the slope that had formed in the fa?ade of the building.

  The others hurried over, but Corus stopped them before they could get too close to the damaged floor, as cracks extended outward to their feet. Any additional weight could cause a complete collapse.

  Lechi peered over the edge and saw Rayna hanging onto an exposed piece of rebar with the street far below her and yelled, “Hold on!” She looked at Norria and, trying not to panic, asked, “Can you help her?”

  “I… I don’t know… I’m worried I’ll cause it to break.”

  Brim noticed that Rhys had gotten to his feet in the other tower, and was looking back at them as he tried to shake himself out of a daze. Brim waved to him, caught his attention, and gestured towards Rayna.

  After assessing the situation from his end, Rhys shouted, “Don’t worry, I’ll catch her if she falls! Try to—” he suddenly stopped.

  They all saw it: a larger rotorbird with three turbines was coming in, just barely able to fit between the buildings. It was a cargo aircraft, designed to aid in building construction. But this morning, it was hauling a schutz under its bulky frame instead, kept off the ground with three heavy hooks and wires. The machine was dropped, and its carrier flew off just as quickly as it had appeared. Once the plummeting mechanized weapon cratered into the road, it caused a tremor that shook everything nearby.

  It was enough to cause a shift to the damaged floors, and seconds after the schutz had landed, Rayna lost her grip and found herself free falling helplessly, letting out a scream as on the way down.

  Rhys responded before the others even had a chance to realize what had just happened, by diving off the building feet-first and accelerating himself downward, all while keeping an eye on Rayna as she fell and running some physical logistics in his head.

  Half-way down, he air-blasted himself off the side of the tower, covered the width of the street, and then stretched out his arms to catch her—immediately afterwards raising his legs and slamming his feet into one of the windows down below. It refused to shatter and let them through, so he pushed himself back with another blast of air, and created a cushion under them to slow their final descent. Their impact with the road was still a hard one, and Rhys collapsed under Rayna’s weight.

  It took her a moment to realize she was alive and get to her feet, amidst the burning, smoking debris of all the birds they had brought down.

  “You okay?” she asked, helping Rhys up. “W-wow… Good catch.”

  “I wasn’t going to let you die here. Wait, didn’t a schutz just…” He looked back at the burning tanks, and the undamaged carrier they were escorting, where several local military men were taking as much cover as they could. “They’re still in danger. We have to destroy that thing.”

  Rayna watched as a well-dressed man stepped out of the carrier to see what was happening, only to be pulled back inside by his bodyguards. The kids both then turned around upon hearing heavy machinery firing up. Releasing steam as it rose out of a shallow crater on its six legs, the schutz revealed itself, its armor coated in a unique blue sheen.

  “Oh, great, it has heavy alchemagi coating…” Rhys muttered, and then exclaimed as the chain gun revved up, “Get down!”

  Rayna did so, covering her head and going prone against the road, but asked him, “I thought… we had to destroy it?”

  “Yeah, but wait for the others to catch up! We don’t stand a chance alone.” Once it began to shred into the broken-down tanks, he added over the noise, “As long as the leftover armor holds out for just a minute…”

  Above them, the rest of the group was heading down the stairs as quickly as they could, with Corus stopping at a window to fire a few shots at the lobster to try and draw its attention. Brim also tried a shot, forming a large mandala out from a bullet that simply disappeared into the alchemagi shielding of the machine. Despite the attacks, the schutz’ focus remained on the tanks, which it would soon tear through. If it managed to breach the armor, the carrier and its occupants wouldn’t last another second.

  “I can destroy it…” Rayna said and stretched out two fingers.

  “You can’t cast your spells from down here, and if you stand up, it’ll kill you! Rayna, just wait for them to…”

  “Those people are out of time.”

  Rhys looked at her eyes to see how serious she was, and saw that they were strangely vacant. It was almost like she had fallen into a trance.

  Hoping to get through to her, he pleaded, “Please, don’t…”

  “It’s okay. It won’t shoot me.”

  “How would you know that? Rayna? Don’t!”

  She left the ground and looked at the schutz, without fear or any other emotion. It stopped firing and rotated its top half in her direction. Rhys was certain it would kill her in an instant, and thinking that she was dazed and not right in the mind, he worked up the courage to pull her back down, or do whatever it’d take to keep her alive. But then the schutz’ visor blinked red, and the machine returned to drilling through the tanks instead.

  “Stop it!” Rayna ordered the machine. “I said stop!”

  Upon seeing that the machine was unceasing, Rayna unleashed a powerful nova spell that, in all likelihood, had been witnessed by virtually no one before. Glowing nova halos with ornate circular patterns appeared on either side of the smart weapon, and from them erupted twin beams of intense, exotic energy that enveloped the schutz in light. Unlike other nova spells, the destruction was contained in a perfect sphere of extraordinary luminosity, pulsating like a small star. Not even heat could escape the container, leaving the totality of the spell directed into its target.

  Rayna maintained the fireball for five seconds in total, and once she collapsed to her knees and was quickly breathing in and out, the light vanished to reveal a thoroughly destroyed machine, with only its innermost, carbonized and collapsed metal skeleton remaining.

  Rhys scuttled over and grasped her shoulders tightly, himself feeling true fear for the first time in a long while as he shouted, “What were you thinking? That thing could’ve… Rayna? How did you learn to do that?”

  She looked at him, her eyes having returned to normal, and she tried to explain, “It was… a technique in the book I’ve been reading…”

  “N-no way. It would’ve taken years to learn by yourself.”

  “Memories…” she murmured to herself. “Her memories…”

  “Are you both all right?” Corus said as he and the others rushed over and avoided all the burning debris. “You had me worried there.”

  Rayna looked back at all the lives she had saved, with the senator and his many guards approaching them somewhat hesitatingly. Other than the sound of burning metal and popping combustibles, the night had become quiet, with the Guards’ attempt on an official’s life having failed.

  “Hey,” Lechi said to Rayna and tried to comfort her. “I don’t know what just happened, but we saved some people. That’s what’s important.”

  Feeling like herself and with those intrusive recollections of another life locked away again, Rayna nodded and accepted Lechi’s support.

  “… Understood,” Phisa said with a deep sigh, as she stood over the governor’s desk, in his office within the evacuated capitol building. “I had hoped for better with the senator, but we’ll manage. N will still fall.” Upon hearing approaching footsteps from down the hall, she ended her call with one of Fordein’s lieutenants, “Keep fighting. The City is nearly ours.”

  Once she hung up, she turned towards the tall, muscular man at the window, staring at the darkened City outside. He had a graying blond beard and hair, a pair of small glasses, and a distinctly elegant dark red suit with a flame crest made of pure gold embedded in its breast pocket.

  “Shame,” he said. “Now we can only hope that he’s not foolish enough to testify in front of the senate about what’s happened here.”

  “The war’s bad everywhere. It wouldn’t be news to the politicians.”

  Lenox Crawn stepped back from the window, looked down at his protégé, and said gruffly, “I suppose that isn’t completely inaccurate. If we could somehow frame the Angels or their local sympathizers for the governor’s death, or simply blame the chaos of the moment…”

  Kae and Charles entered the room, having just arrived from A to help oversee the coming assault against the invading enemy. As Phisa had expected, neither one of her superiors looked happy to see her.

  “Is it true, Ms. Camryde?” Kae was the first to speak. “What we’ve heard from others… Did you kill the governor?”

  Avoiding eye contact, Phisa crossed her arms. “It was an accident.”

  “Is that what you call what’s going on outside?” Charles replied. “The goal was to strong-arm the City into a forceful but peaceful transition. Instead, you single-handedly gave the entire local military a reason to fight!”

  Lenox, nearly as tall as Kae and able to run a room even more than she could, stepped in to defend Phisa. “N was always looking for a good excuse to rise up against the Guard. They tolerated Rivia’s virtue signaling for years—is it such a surprise that it was actually a powder keg?”

  “Fitzpatrick threatened us,” Phisa added. “You weren’t here to see him pull a gun on us, and demand that we take ourselves and our ‘demi-ships’ back to A. You would’ve thought just seeing an intimidating man like Crawn in his office would have been enough to back down.”

  “We were actually quite patient with him, considering.”

  Kae grumbled, “Mr. Crawn, you really should stop trying to get involved with pretorian affairs. This should’ve never happened.”

  Charles added, “You were supposed to wait for us before meeting with the governor, Phisa. You disobeyed us, thought you could handle it on your own, and look what happened. When we’re done in N, regardless of who takes it, you will face a tribunal for this.”

  “Then let them judge her,” Lenox said. “The League of Flame will have her back. The council still values my word.”

  Phisa, unafraid in part due to Lenox’s presence and assurances, kept her composure and told the other pretorians, “If it makes any difference, our suspicions about Fitzpatrick were not unfounded. We’ve searched the office and gathered evidence that he had instructed the local officers and officials to resist any Guard oversight and edicts that went ‘too far.’ He even knew of some Angel cells and didn’t go after them.”

  “It’s possible that well over half of the military here was secretly in support of the Angels. It’s similar to the sentiment we’ve seen in J, which may boil over soon just as it inevitably would have here. Onasia may be in need of a few purges and loyalty assessments, to start with.”

  Kae and Charles looked at one another, with Kae replying, “Are you certain you have the evidence to prove this?”

  “He spoke of such things in coded conversation and disguised orders, but, yes. It’s there if the council intelligence committee looks.”

  Phisa threw in one last remark to seal the security of her position, at least for now, “I would’ve preferred to see Fitzpatrick’s day in court, of course, but at least all this has forced the traitors out into the open. It won’t be without struggle, but we’ve an opportunity to cleanse N of the disloyal.”

  “Charles…” Kae said with lingering impatience. “We’ll have to sort this out another time. It’s nearly dawn and we both have places to be.”

  “Agreed,” he replied. “But, Phisa, from here out, I expect you to follow our orders to the letter. We can’t risk losing Onasia because of you.”

  She waited for them to leave the room before letting out an angry, scornful sigh and dropping herself in the governor’s leather chair.

  “Those two will be too busy to interfere with your plans today,” Lenox reminded her. “Are you still going through with them?”

  Tapping her fingers anxiously on the desk, she nodded and replied, “It all depends on the timing, but, yeah. It’s going to happen.”

  “And how will you explain it to them? If it looks personal-—”

  “It won’t. There’s a solution for that problem, too. Besides…” she looked up at her respected teacher, “they’ll appreciate it when the Nollands are no longer a threat. They’ll honor both of us. And the League.”

  “Hmph. Perhaps they’ll never doubt us again.”

  Phisa dropped her mask back over her face and replied with her digitized voice, “May the Flame burn eternal.”