…
Humans and godspawn cowered, paralyzed by the scream, and when it cut off—when the woman bit it off and bared her teeth at them in an animal snarl—they were left reeling in silence, each of them feeling stranded, as though the scream were a wave that had hurled them onto a beach and left them alone and gasping, the bits and pieces of who they were strewn all around them.
The invaders fanned out before them in the air. They were flying, or floating, impervious to gravity. Besides the leader, there were two men and a woman, all blue, and all clad in the same oily black—a uniform that fit like skin, with boots that looked built to crush bones underfoot and somehow stood on air. Sheathed short swords hung at their sides, and they were grim-faced with menace, all wielding rods of some gray metal with two short prongs at the end. Lightning leapt between the prongs, emitting an ominous crackle.
The sight brought Lazlo back to himself. In the wake of the scream, instinct returned—not in a surge but slowly, as though scattered bits of his mind were trying to reassemble themselves. His first thought was to put Sarai behind him. For her part, she could only stare. She felt as though she were back in Minya’s nightmare, because this woman with her fair hair and pale brows…she knew her. She’d seen her in the nursery doorway.
Korako, she thought.
So did Eril-Fane, though he knew it was impossible. He remembered his knife plunging into her heart, the life leaving her eyes. But her eyes glittered now, alive with brutal intensity. He drew his hreshtek. Azareen did, too.
Lazlo, hearing the twin sounds of blades unsheathing, gave his sluggish head a shake and reached for his power. It was too late to close the orb and keep the intruders out. They were in, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stop them. Already, he had learned: Nothing could stop mesarthium. He opened himself to the energies that were alive all around him. Gritting his teeth, he willed his metal to strike, and up from the floor of the chamber, a geyser of mesarthium erupted. It was a shining blue jet of liquid metal, propelled with volcanic force. It surged up at the woman. It would annihilate her on impact. But Lazlo didn’t have annihilation in him. He willed the geyser to hollow and open, making a molten tube that would, instead, surround and contain her.
Or, it should have. But just as it reached her, it froze. Gaping open like a mouth around her feet and ready to swallow her, the whole explosive jet of metal…stopped.
With a sickening helplessness, Lazlo felt his mesarthium awareness peel away from him. The sensation of claiming—the metal claiming him, and he it—evaporated, and the energies, too, as though the air had emptied of its staves of silent music. It was akin to sudden blindness or deafness, the loss of this new sense. He sought his power, desperate, and…nothing.
The others looked to him and back at the intruder, their eyes wide, confused. Why had he stopped? “Lazlo…?” asked Sarai, a quaver in her voice.
“My power,” he gasped. “It’s gone.”
“What?”
The walkway had come to rest hanging out into the chamber like a half-finished bridge. Sarai and Lazlo and the others were all clustered together at its end. They had shrunk back at the first screech of onslaught, only to be paralyzed by the unnatural scream. Now they all snapped out of stillness.
Ruby kindled into Bonfire. Her eyes filled up with flame. Her hair writhed and glowed like rivulets of lava, and sparks hissed in her closed fists. She’d never attacked anybody before. Minya had told her she was a weapon, but she’d never felt like one until now. But before she could do anything, she felt it snatched away. It: her fire, her spark.
It was taken, and no sooner did she register its loss than the attacker’s eyes turned red and leapt alight. Her flaxen hair smoked, aglow like a bed of coals. Ruby saw. She felt gutted and guttered, as though the woman had reached inside her and stolen what made her her. “You,” she choked, outraged. “That’s mine. Give it back!”
At the same time, Feral, with a gulp, closed his eyes and ripped a thunderhead from a sky half a world away. The air above the attackers darkened. The rain was instantaneous—a gyre of stinging, half-frozen pellets, each one a tiny ice blade. The dense cloud strobed and crackled, lit from within by unborn lightning. The roar of the thunder flattened out under the chamber’s muting properties, but it still reverberated in their bones. For years, Minya had tried to make Feral do this very thing: summon storms as weapons, aim and strike with lightning—but he’d always been afraid, so he’d always failed. Now he felt his power as though it were boiling in him and pouring out like steam, as though he were a conduit for the sky’s full might, the untamable power of nature itself. For the first time in his life, Feral felt like a god.
And then the feeling vanished like vapor.
The invader, wet-sleek, with icy rain rolling down her face and her fair hair slick to her skull, lifted her arms from her sides and made a show of her stolen powers.
In her open hands, fireballs flared, hissing and dancing under the pelting rain. And they weren’t just balls. They were blooms. They were flowers sculpted of fire. They began as buds and opened, unfurling petals of living orange flame, blue at the center and paling to white at the ruffled fringes of their petals.
Ruby’s breath caught. She’d never made anything half so beautiful, and envy infused her outrage.
Sparrow made no move with her gift. Minya had always scorned her for her uselessness in a fight, and she had never minded, but now she did. She felt small and helpless as the thunderhead roiled and crackled overhead, glowing with its bounty of lightning. Then it split open and three bolts shot out, white and fast, right at the walkway. They had to hurl themselves down, and only the railing Lazlo had made kept them from falling off. The smell of ozone settled around them, clean and sharp, and they huddled there, all watching, awestruck and afraid, as the frozen mesarthium geyser turned molten once more. It didn’t erupt or engulf the woman—at least, not as Lazlo had intended. Instead, it flowed with slow grace up her legs, over her torso, and out along her arms, shaping itself into plates of armor. They were nothing like the heavy bronze plates the Tizerkane wore, held in place with buckles and thick leather straps. These were as smooth as poured water, and so fine they were virtually weightless. They added no bulk, and they moved with her body, and still they were stronger than anything in this world. They wove themselves into the black fabric of her costume, and shone mirror-bright: on her shins, up her thighs, in an elegant fanfold over her knees. A breastplate formed, worked in a pattern of an eagle with its wings spread. She still held the fire flowers in her open palms, even as the metal flowed out and wrapped her arms in pauldrons and vambraces more elegant than any ever wrought with anvil and hammer.
She floated in the air before them, eyes glowing red, flames blooming in her hands, wearing mesarthium armor and wielding lightning like spears, and the godspawn and humans were humbled and appalled.
“Who are you?” asked Feral, his voice shaking.
“What do you want?” Sarai demanded, afraid of the answer.