The skyskimmer listed, slipping sideways and burying its edge into the ground. The craft creaked and groaned, protesting this treatment. Elion pulled himself back to his feet and exited the cockpit. He ran down the lopsided hall, passing closed doors, and emerged into a cargo hold.

  The elevation platform had not retracted, leaving a large triangular hole in the bottom of the hold. Through the hatch Elion did not see Keyla. Two warlocks lay sprawled on the ground, smoking holes in their robes suggestive of laser fire. *Must have been Keyla. I hope my distraction here is letting her get away.*

  Beside the warlocks, a woman in a kind of military uniform scrambled, hitting buttons on a machine. A man watched her work, shouting orders at her, then shoving her aside to do it himself.

  “I’m doing my best, Dave!” the woman protested as he worked.

  “Your best isn’t good enough right now,” he said, his voice high pitched and nasally. He slammed at buttons and flipped levers on the side of the machine. A pair of handles ran along the long sides of the box, and all the controls and instrument readouts were clustered on the side facing Dave.

  They hadn’t been placed in a very ergonomic way, so Dave had to crouch awkwardly and shield his eyes as he activated the machine.

  Elion climbed down an angled ladder into the cargo hold, nearly falling as the skyskimmer settled further. He kept an eye on Dave, but searched for a way to ramp up his distraction so that Keyla could get further away.

  Dave’s device began to hum, and the man gestured to his assistant. She flipped open the top of it, revealing a long, white, oval plate lying in the bottom of a shallow chamber.

  To Elion, the device looked a lot like a long chest freezer, or maybe a boxy coffin; a container with a lid on top.

  “Activating Swordinator!” Dave shouted.

  *Swordinator?* Elion thought. *What kind of a translation is that?*

  The same teal light that often accompanied Artefin machines flashed along circuits in the side of the machine. The white plate shimmered with a soft, silvery light, and deep inside the device flickered flashes of red.

  He tore himself away from the strange view, scanning the interior of the ship.

  A door beside him held a sign with several bright colors and symbols. Elion didn’t wait for Praxis to translate the sign; he got the gist. ‘Warning, do not enter, etc.’

  He pushed into the room. A swirling sphere of silvery light pulsed in the middle of the room, surrounded by alien equipment. Everything was smooth and white, like eggshells. Elion felt like he’d just entered an Apple Store, and almost expected to be confronted by the newest generation of iPads.

  Spaced around the room were podiums, filled with instruments, readouts, buttons, and switches. Elion used his knife and began cutting chunks of white plasticky substance off the interfaces, slashing through screens, knobs, and toggles. A warning siren started to sound, an urgent but somehow calming pulse, compelling action but not irritating.

  *See how you like this!* Elion grinned. Even if they wanted to chase after Keyla now, they were going to have a much harder time of it.

  Elion left the room and returned to the cargo hold. As he emerged, a warlock climbing up into the hold saw him and shouted as he drew his wand.

  The runes on his wand flared, and violet flames danced at the end of the stick. With a gesture, the man sent the spell flying through the air at Elion. As it flew, the rippling fire consolidated into a wedge.

  Dodging the blast, Elion ran toward the man, knife in hand. The ground lurched beneath him. *I’ve made a terrible mistake,* he realized. *Keyla might have gotten away, but now I’m trapped.*

  The warlock called down to Dave. “He’s up here! He’s on board!”

  Facing Elion, the warlock began to glow, a pale pink light leaking from his skin and eyes. *Ascended state,* Elion realized. The wand responded to it, runes engraved on the 3-foot long length of wood pulsing energetically.

  The only way out of the ship was past the warlock and through the hole. The warlock sent another dart at Elion; this one formed more quickly than the first, and clipped his shoulder. It sent a buzzing, electrified tingle down his left arm.

  Elion gritted his teeth and barreled into the man, knife flashing.

  The warlock caught Elion’s wrist, and they wrestled on the lip of the loading dock.

  Below, Dave flipped open a plastic cover and pulled down on a lever, triggering the swordinator. A high pitched whine split the air.

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  A force gripped Elion’s blade, jerking his hand forward. The sudden push overcame the warlock’s resistance, and Elion plunged the blade through the man’s robe and into his chest. He gasped.

  Elion’s blade continued onward, traveling forward with a mind of its own as it slipped out of his hand. He tried to fight it, but slick blood ran down the blade, lubricating the handle.

  The blade popped out of the warlock’s back and flipped through the air, spraying blood around it in a circle. It snapped onto a large white plate mounted to the device with a loud clang.

  Tumbling backward, the warlock fell through the hole and landed heavily on the ground, unmoving.

  Elion followed, diving to the ground and landing with a role. He ran to the swordinator.

  “Hey, get back,” Dave yelled at him, but Elion shoved the man aside. His assistant ran off, holding her hands in the air and shouting for help.

  Elion tried resummoning the blade, but some kind of barrier pushed against him, preventing it. The blade stuck to the white, oval plate inside of the machine. Elion tried grabbing the knife, but it didn’t budge.

  Laser gun fire behind him caught his attention. Several warlocks lay strewn around, either knocked down by the skyskimmer or hit by lasers. A group of them pursued Keyla, who ducked behind rocks and ridges, taking occasional shots at the group.

  She hadn’t run for safety.

  Venya still stood in the road, her curls glossy and dark in the bright sunlight. She seemed unperturbed by the scene, scanning across it with her sultry eyes. She spotted Elion beneath the downed Skyskimmer and smiled.

  “He’s there!” she shouted the command. “Get him, fools!”

  The warlocks abandoned their pursuit of Keyla and swarmed for Elion. Keyla took the opportunity to run for the safety of the tunnel, where Snickers prowled anxiously.

  Behind Elion, the warning siren of the skyskimmer grew louder, more urgent. He kicked the machine that gripped his knife. It fell over, but still held strongly onto his blade with some kind of magnetic field.

  Elion had cornered himself. He saw no way past the warlocks and arachnatronics who now ringed him. He backed away, pushing himself up against the the skyskimmer, and raised his fists.

  A warlock’s blast caught him in the side, slamming him to the ground and sending him sprawling. A second blast took him in the chest, slamming him against the side of the skyskimmer, causing the craft to groan. A wave of nausea told Elion he was pushing his armor to the limit. He fell to his hands and knees.

  A new spell caught him in a purple sphere, and he levitated off of the ground, spinning slowly in mid air.

  Venya strode up to him, white teeth flashing as she smirked.

  “Well, well, well,” she said, “Won’t Dorian be proud of me. Frankly, I’m disappointed you didn’t put up more of a fight.” Her words came through muted and dulled by the power of the bubble.

  Elion windmilled his arms, and grabbed his laser rifle, unslinging it from his back. He aimed the weapon at Venya, and she just grinned. He fired, the wet splatter thump of the rifle reverberating in the sphere.

  The noise of the rifle echoed loudly in Elion’s ears, and the shot caused him to spin slightly.

  The warlock holding the spell staggered and stumbled, but the bubble held.

  Elion fired twice more, and a low power indicator on his laserarm illuminated.

  The warlock holding him captive trembled. Another warlock stepped up, casting the same spell over Elion and relieving the first.

  Elion scowled.

  The siren from the Skyskimmer grew more urgent, and a man in a uniform came scrambling out of the ship. “He’s sabotaged the Argent Drive!” he shouted, waving his arms. “Everyone—”

  His words were cut short by a blast of power from the skyskimmer. A concussive wave blasted outwards.

  Grass and weeds ripped from the ground, but strangely, the blast didn’t even stir the dust on the road.

  Elion, elevated slightly by the warlock’s spell, was launched upwards. The purple bubble dissolved as the energetic blast tossed bodies through the air. Even Venya went tumbling, her elegant skirts blowing up around her head as she skipped along the ground.

  Thanks to his slightly elevated position relative to the warlocks, the blast hurled Elion farther, over the heads of his enemies. He braced himself.

  He struck the ground hard on one side, trying to roll but mostly failing him. In his ascended state, his protections ate most of the impact with the ground, reducing the impact from ‘hit by a car’ to ‘accidentally ran into a wall.’

  The sickening sense of having overextended his ability settled into his gut, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to take much more punishment before he was forced to power down and recover.

  He dragged himself to his feet, dismissing his armor. He couldn’t have it knocking him out right now. His vision tunneled, blackness creeping in at the periphery, and his body responded slowly to his commands, like he was drowning in molasses.

  Head spinning, Elion stumbled toward the dark tunnel. Sweat dripped down his face, and his lungs burned as he gasped for breath. One knee shook sporadically.

  Keyla called to him from the darkness, her face occasionally illuminated by laser fire as she covered his escape. He reached the darkness and saw Keyla and Snickers there. He started to catch his breath, but Keyla turned and ran, pulling him deeper into the tunnel.

  Long shadows flickered out in front of them as they were illuminated from behind by the lights of the arachnatronics. Purple light flared as warlocks cast spells, sending flaming darts down the tunnel toward them.

  Keyla pulled Elion around a corner as a half dozen bolts blasted past, flying further down the tube. He panted for breath, then he activated his armor.

  > << Manifest Armaments >>

  Golden light bloomed around him, and he felt a surge of strength and energy roll into him. At the same time, he felt the cold fingers of Ascendency fatigue clutching his bones. He was still very drained.

  His knife did not appear in his hand.

  “Hey,” Keyla said, grabbing him and trying to pull him deeper into the sewer maze. “We have to keep going!”

  Snickers did not stop to wait, but continued on into the darkness of the tunnel.

  “It’s me they want,” Elion said, shaking her hand free. “Go with Snickers, get away. They’ll stop chasing you. I can hold them off. Then I’ll find you.”

  He tried summoning his knife again but it did not come. *Maybe I’m just too tired. Ascendency fatigue?* He could feel the blade out there, but could not will it to himself.

  “You’re being stupid,” she said. “We can lose them in here, no need for you to sacrifice yourself. Come on!”

  Elion peered around the corner, staring down the tunnel at the oncoming arachnatronics. “They’re too fast,” he groaned. “They’ll catch us.”

  “We’ll fight them then,” Keyla said. “Not yet.”

  At that moment a wave passed through them. Something rippled through the air, a plane of darkness distorting the light, and Elion’s armor vanished, replaced by his clothes as though he’d disarmed.