Elion ran back through the woods, hurrying recklessly back to the town. The sky continued growing brighter, allowing him to move more quickly. But the rising sun also brought a deadline with it. Aterfel would launch its counteroffensive soon.

  I already missed my ride. It would be really stupid of me if I missed the fighting too.

  He kept an eye open for signs of enemies. Be careful. You’re already injured and you’re depending on your Ascended state. Perhaps he felt over confident because of his new levels, or blinded by his single mindedness. Either way, he had to hurry and get back to Kasm before Ascencency fatigue set in again. But so far, he was feeling great.

  Teal laser fire cut through the trees ahead. The crack of a projectile rifle responded. Elion picked up the pace.

  He crashed right into a pair of scavengers, shooting their guns toward a pair of shadows further up the trail. Two other scavenger bodies lay on the ground beside a dead pemalion, laser wounds still smoking.

  The first scavenger fell to Elion’s knife in his spine, instantly collapsing to the ground. The second turned, but Elion was in too close for him to use his rifle. He killed this man too, leaving the dead scavengers behind on the trail.

  Elion ran toward the place where he’d seen the laser fire originate.

  Two figures burst from the trees, rifles leveled. Elion skittered to a stop, throwing his hands into the air. His knife disappeared in a puff.

  “Zelian’s Halls,” Tael said, pointing his laserarm at Elion’s head.

  “What are you doing out here?” Keyla demanded, keeping her weapon trained on Elion’s chest. “What do you think you’re doing? Kasm said you’d run off after the skyskimmer!”

  “Wait, stop!” Elion waved his hands. “I’m coming back to help!”

  “Where have you been?” Keyla demanded.

  “At the Altar,” Elion said. “I used the Ascendency stones.”

  “You used them?” she demanded. “Why did you only give Kasm one?”

  “I saved four for him,” he said. “What are you doing out here? I thought you were supposed to be watching the road?”

  “We’re circling around,” Tael said. “Sophira sent us around this way to take up a position on the ridge over the bridge.”

  Keyla lowered her gun slightly. “You didn’t go on the skyskimmer?” she asked.

  “Obviously,” Elion said, a bit too much zest in his tone. He didn’t like the way they held their rifles, like he was an enemy.

  “Are you infected?” Tael asked.

  Elion looked at the blood covering his arms. Some of it came from the scavengers he’d fought, but most of it was his own. He hadn’t been able to check the stab wound in his back. He’d done most of his bleeding in his normal state, so his Ascended state outfit wasn’t nearly as bloodied.

  “No,” Elion said. “I don’t think so. I just got shot before I could armor up.”

  “Are you okay?” Keyla asked. “Why didn’t you leave?”

  “I realized that I needed to help here. I couldn’t just leave you here like this, with infected everywhere. I couldn’t leave you to take the blame for stealing from Gorman.”

  “You stole from Gorman?” Tael asked.

  Keyla trembled.

  “Gorman’s been lying to us,” Elion said. “He had my missing Tear all along.”

  Keyla dropped her rifle, letting it hang from its sling. She seemed stunned, like when she had seen her mother on the raft in the river. “I didn’t think I’d see you ever again,” she said. “I thought you were just full of big talk and optimistic dreams like Prator.”

  “Maybe I am,” Elion said. "But I just couldn’t—”

  Tears filled Keyla’s eyes, and before Elion could react, she wrapped him in a hug. He winced in pain as his injuries flared through his Ascended state.

  “Oh,” was all he could muster up, returning the hug as she buried her face in his chest.

  “All this time I’ve just been thinking you were just another Aurelian like Prator, only interested in yourself. Then you defended the docks with me, and I thought maybe you were different, I hoped you might be different. But you called Zev, and arranged for the skyskimmer, and… I knew you were just going to abandon us. Every step you took to help made me even more afraid.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elion said, trying not to get too much blood on her. He didn’t mind having her pressed up against him like this. She smelled nice, not flowery, like a girl, but like sawdust and gun grease.

  “Kasm said a skyskimmer flew overhead and I knew you were gone,” she said. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe in you.”

  “Stop,” Elion said. “You were right about me. I nearly did leave. I did go to the skyskimmer. I was planning on getting away.”

  “What matters is that you came back,” Keyla said.

  “Erm, Keyla,” Tael interrupted, glaring daggers at Elion. “We have to get into position. The sun is coming up.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. You’re right,” Keyla said, giving Elion one more squeeze before releasing him. She wiped her eyes, then looked Elion over.

  “Stay safe today,” she said.

  “You too.”

  Tael grabbed Keyla’s arm and pulled her away, continuing their route into the woods. Elion stood, watching them disappear. He ran back toward town.

  Elion reached Aterfel just as first light cracked over the horizon, crepuscular rays shining through fragments of the Celestial Sphere. He ran down into the town to the sound of men shouting and laser rifles thumping.

  Distraction Team ran through the streets, going to houses and garages, collecting vehicles, shooting at scavengers and pemalion. Elion waved his hands over his head, remembering Keyla’s admonishment that ‘infected don’t wave.’ He didn’t want to get shot.

  He ran by Kile, the leader of Distraction Team, hobbling along on his peg leg. Kile shot him a strange glance as he passed.

  Elion reached the open garage of the tower just as Jaxen and his Overwatch Team rode out, leading the Bomb Team.

  Running into the garage, Elion scanned the room, looking for Domas. Kasm sat beside his father, as the ATV prepared to take off.

  “Kasm,” Elion said, running over. “Take these,” he thrust the pouch of Skillstones into Kasm’s hand. “They’re from Keyla,” he said. “No, don’t open it right now. Keep it secret, and if you get a chance go bury them.”

  Kasm’s eyes widened as he felt the bag, understanding Elion’s instructions. He nodded.

  Elion winced.

  “You’re injured,” Kasm said. “Let me see!”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “No time,” Elion said, grunting as he stood. “Get someone to protect you while you go bury those cends. The scavengers are going to be distracted right now. I bet there’s going to be a lot more for you to do today.”

  “What happened to you?” Kasm asked. “Show me.”

  Elion disarmed and Kasm gasped. “I was shot,” Elion said.

  Kasm reached up and probed Elion’s wound with his finger. Elion cried out in pain. “Not now,” he said. “I have to go.”

  “Not with a bullet in your shoulder,” Kasm insisted. Green light flared around his hand, and he drew the squashed disc of metal out of Elion’s flesh. The pain subsided somewhat.

  “Thank you, but that’s enough,” Elion said. “Other people need your help.”

  He crossed the room to the rifle rack and grabbed one of two remaining laserarms. Then he found Domas and climbed inside.

  “Welcome aboard,” Domas said.

  “Sorry I’m a little late. Let’s go!”

  “Glad you made it,” Domas said. “I was starting to think I wasn’t needed!”

  As Domas began pulling out of the garage, following Zayven in the cargo hauler, Elion heard a shout.

  An angry noise from upstairs, he recognized the voice as Gorman’s. As muffled as it was, Elion knew Gorman had just discovered what Elion and Keyla had done to his safe.

  “Too late now,” Elion muttered.

  “What’s that?” Domas said.

  “Nothing,” Elion said, carefully setting his rifle in the seat beside him.

  “Manifest Armaments,” he declared, and his clothes switched. A glitter of light, and he noticed that the t-shirt and pants he now wore had been imbued with threads of gold, woven throughout.

  Cool. So when whatever I’m wearing goes to the void, something does happen to it. It wasn’t just the vacuum.

  He immediately dismissed his butter knife and shouldered the laser rifle. It hurt, pressing into the crease near the bullet wound, but Kasm’s healing had helped, and the Ascended state numbed the rest of the pain.

  I wonder if there’s a way for me to swap the knife for this laser gun, without it falling to pieces.

  They sped out along the dirt road, a convoy of motorized bikes, atvs, and 4-wheelers. Up ahead Elion heard the occasional shot, but the Distraction Team seemed to be doing their job well. Dust filled the air, kicked up by vehicles ahead of them. Elion pulled his shirt up over his mouth.

  As Elion and Domas reached the outskirts of town, they rode just behind Zayven and a woman in the cargo hauler. The hauler jolted and rattled along the road, the side effect of having removed the Artefin enhanced suspension.

  Elion’s ride in Domas was smooth, even if Domas complained about his differential.

  Bodies lay in the dirt as they drove past, mostly scavengers the Overwatch Team had dealt with. A few members of Overwatch team lay among the dead. They reached the separation point, and Overwatch team turned off, heading to the outcroppings of rocks that would let them clear the far side of the river.

  Three men on motorcycles zoomed alongside Elion, Domas, and Zayven’s cargo hauler; Bomb Team.

  They passed the motorcycle Elion had abandoned in his attempt to reach the skyskimmer. Elion felt a tinge of regret that someone on the Distraction Team wouldn’t be able to use that vehicle.

  A bend in the road, and they quickly approached the crystal bridge which had grown from the Shard. This end of the crystal bridge had landed a dozen feet away from the edge of the road, and down a shallow slope leading to the top of the steep cliffs of the chasm.

  As they approached, Elion felt an unusual vibration through his body. His clothes hummed, and the lights of his rifle flickered. He wished he’d gotten one of the dual function firearms, or at least one that would work in the distortion field.

  Domas veered far from the crystal bridge, to the extreme opposite end of the road. “Feel that?” he asked.

  “I do,” Elion said. “Must be the distortion field of the crystal.”

  “I feel sick,” Domas groaned. “I never want to get that close to it again.”

  “Let’s hope Gorman’s bomb works,” Elion agreed.

  The convoy rumbled along the road, approaching the fork that marked the beginning of the switchbacks leading down to the bridge. Elion scanned the trees, wondering where Keyla was.

  “Not as much resistance as I expected,” Elion mused as they rounded a bend.

  Bright lights bloomed in the woods, and a half dozen shoulder mounted rockets spiraled wildly through the sky, hissing as they flew. Bomb Team vehicles swerved as the attack landed, explosions pitting the road and sending sprays of debris geysering into the air.

  Rocks rained down on Elion, and he raised his arm to protect his head, thanking his Ascended state for absorbing most of the damage.

  One of the motorcyclists served too hard and lost traction, the bike skidding out from under him across the gravel road. Elion winced as he watched the man slide, picking up a brutal road rash. The bike flew off the road, nearly sliding off the cliff.

  Zayven swerved the cargo hauler, trying to avoid a crater, but caught a back wheel. The tire exploded, and the whole back of the truck bounced several feet into the air.

  “That’s why it has six tires,” Domas said.

  A few streaks of laser fire from the Overwatch position lanced into the trees.

  “Zelian’s Halls!” Domas yelled, pulling up alongside the biker who’d fallen. Elion extended his hand, pulling the man up into the empty passenger seat.

  “Thanks,” the man said. His face was scraped pretty badly, his pants and jacket dirty and ragged on one side. Elion recognized him as Tharnen; the man who’d been working on the cargo hauler with Zayven.

  “Too heavy?” Elion asked Domas.

  “Not now that we’re headed downhill!”

  They powered forward as rifle fire snapped through the air around them, answered by flashes from laser guns. More rockets flew from the trees, but these exploded behind them as they turned off the main road, heading for the bridge.

  Scavengers poured from the trees, pursuing Bomb Team as they dropped below the ridge, firing from above.

  Laser fire from Overwatch pinned the scavengers down as Bomb Team rounded the first switchback.

  “We’re almost there,” Elion breathed, his heart pounding, exhilarated. He tried to keep his rifle trained on the ridge above, but struggled to hold steady as they took the first turn.

  A light flashed from Overwatch position, followed by a thunderous shockwave that rattled Elion’s bones. Massive stones that formed the outcropping there tumbled down the slope, splashing into the river.

  No longer threatened by suppressing fire, scavengers began scrambling over the ridge, firing down the switchbacks at Bomb Team. Pemalion sprang down the slope, charging beneath the bullets of the scavengers.

  A rocket whined in the air, and Elion watched as it approached them from behind. Because they both moved in the same direction, it seemed to fly slowly.

  Elion leaned back and smacked the rocket out of the air, sending it flying into the side of the cliff where it exploded.

  Ahead a motorcyclist took a shot and lost control, tumbling with his bike down the slope, then plunging down into the river.

  Elion’s chest tightened as they rounded the next switchback. Pemalion sprang down onto the road ahead. He fired with his rifle, recklessly. Tharnen fired too, but amped up on adrenaline, Elion couldn’t tell if they were hitting anything. Domas wove through the creatures, dead and alive, staying close on the cargo hauler’s tail.

  One more switchback, then a short slope down to the base of the bridge. The cargo hauler jolted into the last turn just ahead of them.

  A rocket whistled past Elion’s head, and he watched in slow motion as it smashed through the back window of the cargo hauler. Shards of glass sparkled like a cloud of diamonds in the air.

  The explosion blew out all the windows with gouts of flame.

  Shrapnel and heat blasted Elion. Shards of glass and metal smashed into his armored skin, draining his strength. Tharnen wisely ducked down in the seat, avoiding the brunt of it. Domas swerved.

  The force of the explosion sent the cargo hauler flipping end over end through the air, tumbling off of the road.

  He smelled burning plastic, and noticed that Domas’s front bumper was on fire. Elion leaned forward, batting it out with his hand.

  “You okay?” he called.

  “I’m good,” Domas replied. “On to the bridge!”

  The cargo hauler rolled off the edge of the cliff, cartwheeling down into the river below. A sinking sense of dread hollowed Elion out from the inside.