“It’s not a matter of you wanting to or not, Ms. Camryde,” Henri Stinebeck told the young pretorian inside Evirtide’s old, stony conference room. “You will either report to the capital within the next twenty-four hours, or you will be arrested and brought there through force.”

  “Ah, Henri…” his long-time friend, Headmaster Quinlin said at his side. “She is doing important work on quelling the… protests at the school. And her battle with Rivia should be commended, regardless of how it ended. We both know that he probably could have held out in interrogation without breaking or letting something slip for years, anyway.”

  “Quinlin, she has no recourse. At this point, she will be lucky to stay out of prison. And you should never have continued these duels of yours. Now look at what it’s led to. Our operations here were delicate as they were. The queen may ask to see you next once things have settled. I will see myself out via fibrocator. Clean up your damn mess.”

  “I need to report to Drides. I’m coming with you, Mr. Stinebeck,” Trinqit said and followed him out of the room. Before she headed off, she gave one last vindictive glance at Phisa, and muttered, “You did this.”

  Phisa sighed and leaned against one of the walls. Risar, Vermer, and Lenox were the others in the room that weren’t so critical of her, but Andrine looked as if she could barely stand the sight of her older sister.

  “I wanted to support you, Phisa. I really did,” she muttered. “But after everything you’ve done in the past month, I just… I want nothing to do with you anymore. I’m returning to A, and I’m going to try and convince our father to abandon his plans to run the senate. This war is bad enough. It doesn’t need you and him in positions of power, adding poison to a swirling maelstrom. Risar, let’s go. You’re done with this school.”

  Risar glowered at her and retorted, “No. I do still believe in Phisa, and what they’re doing here. It’s to win, Andrine. And thanks to the school putting alchemagists into the field, and our sister killing Rivia, we will win.”

  “Unbelievable…” Andrine shook her head and tried not to cry. “It only took a few years, Phisa, but you corrupted her, too.”

  “She’s not corrupted,” Phisa nearly snarled. “She’s clear-eyed and nowhere near as na?ve as you. She knows what it’ll take to end the war, and restore our clan. Go on, Andrine. You go march for peace. We’ll see who history forgets. I only regret not making Rivia suffer for his crimes.”

  “I’ll never forgive you,” Andrine said, and could no longer look her in the eye. “Not ever. Have a good life. I doubt I’ll see you again.”

  “Forget her, Phisa,” Risar scoffed once the middle sister had left. “All we need are each other. Oh, and Lenox, too.” She smirked at him.

  “Rivia’s death is having a more profound impact than I had expected,” Quinlin said and began pacing. “In that the public outcry against the Guard has been… loud. But, perhaps that is for the best, considering what we are trying to do with Fordein. Hm. So long as the masses have no knowledge of our plot, we remain in a good position to take over once the main body of the Guard has fallen and the queen is deposed.”

  Lenox grunted angrily and replied, “And if you hadn’t given the Guard half of your best alchemagists, we would be in an even greater position. At least tell me that the ones we do have are somewhere safe.”

  “Of course, of course. Mr. Crawn, if we gave them only our middling students, they would either grow suspicious, or question my methodology and seek to replace me. It was a sacrifice we had to make.”

  “Hehe…” Vermer chuckled. “All this sedition. So exciting! Oh, how people will cry out for the old Guard to save them once we take their place. We wipe out the Angels with our amazing Phisa, and in a way that makes everyone forget what little remaining trust they had in the Guard in the process. Genius. You are so fortunate to have me to help finalize plans!”

  “Stop babbling, and tell us something useful,” Lenox demanded.

  “Oh, fine. Fine. Now that I have access to my intelligence network again, I can tell you some interesting things! J is in open rebellion now; they say the City could fall in a week! And even X is slipping away. Guardsmen switching allegiance. They could only be neglected for so long, I suppose.”

  “Onasia’s about to crumble, then. Hmph.” Lenox looked across at Phisa, who seemed pensive. “What’s on your mind? You worry for K?”

  She shrugged. “It is home… I’d rather not see it trampled on by Angel boots. I know the war was always going to reach everywhere, but…”

  “It’s okay,” Risar told her sister. “Let ‘em have it for a month or two. We’ll take it right back and make them pay for the damages.”

  Phisa gave her a small, worried smile. She was about to tell her something, but then a desperate knock erupted against the wooden door.

  “We’re under attack!” a young Guardsman reported after Phisa let him in. “Fighting’s erupted in the main hall! Confirmed casualties!”

  “How many?” Lenox asked calmly.

  “I’m not certain, but so far, only a single attacker has been sighted. The students have been evacuated to the basement, but this intruder… I saw flashes of his alchemagi on the way here. He’s a watairre. I-is it…”

  “Garder,” Phisa said with a snicker and a sneer. “He finally showed up. And I was expecting he’d come running in within an hour of hearing the bad news. I didn’t think he could show such ‘restraint.’ Do you know how he got in? I need to figure out where he might be going.”

  “Ma’am, he… I heard he went right through the front door.”

  “Ah, how brazen! That’s rage for you. Clearly, he’s not right in the head.” Phisa turned to the others and gave an order, “Lenox, as much as I hate the idea that I can boss you around, I want you to keep Vermer, the headmaster, and my sister safe. Especially her. I can’t put any of them at risk. I’ll intercept the hot-headed avenger before he can find any of you.”

  “Phisa, I can not approve of this,” Vermer argued. “I’ve read all about this Mr. Nolland. He’s dangerous—unpredictable! Please, allow us to assist you in battle. Or wait until we can summon Jenera. Surely, she’s still nearby in A. You can’t take on such a maniac like Garder lightly.”

  “I don’t plan to,” Phisa said and reached for her mask and scythe, waiting for her by the door. “I expect a serious match, but one I’ll still win. Now, do as I say. There may still be Guardsmen I can save.”

  Phisa headed out of the room and hurried across the hall before anyone tried to start a debate, feeling quite sure of herself.

  “Garder…” she murmured. “You’re the one I’ve been waiting for.”

  She went towards the sound of fighting, and arrived in the dining hall of all places, just in time to see the savage beast strike down two Guardsmen in one sweep, and then blast away three others-—and their arrows—with an air burst that sent the men crashing into a table. The tattered remains of over a dozen Guard uniforms covered the marble tile.

  “Mr. Nolland, enough!” Phisa shouted at him. “Why did you bring your rampage into the dining hall? There’s nothing past here!”

  Gripping his sword tightly with a hand that didn’t tremble in the slightest, Garder turned around and threw an air slash at her. She ducked back into cover behind the hall entrance’s stone archway, and the invisible, lethal arc of air slammed into the wall nearby, leaving a noticeable imprint.

  “Wow…” Phisa exhaled, lowered her mask, and tried to steady her breathing. “Heh, yeah, he’s really angry…”

  “I chased them into here,” Garder shouted his answer. “It didn’t matter to me what I did, or how I did it. I just wanted to lure you out.”

  “You sound miserable,” Phisa said, keeping herself hidden. “Hey, how about we get to it, then? I can’t let you continue a senseless slaughter.”

  “Then come out into the open.”

  “Come now, Mr. Nolland. You know we have an arena—”

  “I’m not here to play games,” Garder yelled back, and fired out a condensed, misty ball of air that exploded on impact with the air-sliced wall.

  Caught unprepared for the spell, Phisa was thrown backward by a powerful, frigid shock wave which cooled the surrounding stone so much that frost instantly formed in the hallway. She got back up, just as Garder slowed himself to a sudden stop right outside the dining hall, after having deployed a vacuum tunnel and using the flutter spell to move quickly.

  He turned to her, his eyes entirely apathetic. The rage and hatred she had expected to see just wasn’t there; he showed no emotion at all. He took a step forward, and Phisa, at a severe disadvantage from having to use a large scythe in a narrow, ancient corridor, turned and ran toward the coliseum—just barely evading another air slash on the way.

  Her heart pounding in her chest, she felt true excitement from being chased by a monster. She turned several corners, and looked back each time to see her pursuer appear in an instant just before she went around another. His flutter technique gave him great speed, but it could only take him in a straight line; having to navigate the twisting halls of the school still slowed him down just enough to keep her in one piece.

  Upon reaching the arena, Phisa flipped around and used an air burst spell of her own to propel her backwards, giving her some space—but kept her scythe up defensively, just in case Garder was really not in a playful mood and chose to simply propel himself over to her right away.

  He instead entered like a menacing gladiator from the old times, his shadow and shape all she saw at first as he lumbered onto the stage, thinking himself an unstoppable force of nature. He stopped and looked around at the seats and ceiling of the large chamber.

  “So… this is where you did it…” he muttered. “I can picture it. Hundreds of cheering students, brought in to watch your spectacle…”

  “Don’t generalize things, Mr. Nolland,” Phisa shouted back. “Not all of the students agree with what we did. Good, evil, black, white… I was hoping you weren’t someone who simplified that much. We could’ve been friends several lifetimes ago. We could be a hundred years from now. This is just a brief moment in time, and we happen to be on opposing sides. It doesn’t mean one of us is good, and the other, bad. We’re just stuck on the team we’ve found ourselves on. But I have reason to defend the Guard.”

  “Oh. I very much doubt you and I could ever be close.”

  “The way I see it, if you think of such possibilities, you tend to be a better, more open person. I’m a humanist at heart, Garder. I want to get to know people. Just because a war has made me do terrible things, doesn’t mean I want to keep doing them for the remainder of our existence.”

  “That sounds like a load of garbage.”

  “Does it now? Garder, why does the Guard deserve to be destroyed? Why not just fight for reform in more peaceful ways? There were people and politicians that would have sympathized with your supporters’ plight. Now any goodwill is long gone. You all hold onto grudges, cry out injustice for centuries. Just because the Guard wronged you several lifetimes ago—”

  “Yesterday.”

  “… What?”

  “Yesterday. And all the days before. Two seconds ago. One minute from now. My next lifetime and beyond. The passage of time doesn’t really matter, because the Guard is eternally wrong. Always was, always will be.”

  Phisa barely suppressed a nervous laugh and replied, “You honestly believe that? Sure, it’s corruptible and can be cruel, but the Guard is Aurra’s only global means of order! We’ve kept Aurra free from any major conflict for over a thousand years. Then ‘Angels’ came along. No negotiations, no attempt to prevent war, no peaceful, systemic changes… No, you just exist to fulfill vengeful desires and bloodlust that have built up for centuries. You simply attacked. When Lontonkon got himself killed, you should have worked with the new queen. She may be weak, but she was also once at least empathetic to your cause. All those potential partnerships, squandered.”

  “You people were never going to give it a chance…” Garder muttered, and raised his sword. “The Guard can’t allow change to come from the outside. Because they couldn’t say it came from them.”

  “What a childish outlook on everything.” Phisa sighed, and fired up her scythe’s rocket. “I’m surprised that you seem to be such a simpleton.”

  With that insult, Phisa took her chance for a quick kill, starting with a running leap and ending with a powerful, rocket-enhanced downward slash that would kill her foe instantly if it made contact. But the blade never even touched the ground. Garder didn’t attempt to dodge the attack or leap backward to a safe distance. Instead, he had moved closer to her, where her scythe couldn’t touch him, and with a raised arm, grabbed onto the pole and was now nearly crushing its metal with a mighty grip.

  He was mere inches away, staring at her straight through her mask. He didn’t cast a spell or slice his blade into her, even though he could have. Feeling intimidated but not about to show it, Phisa tugged at her weapon, found that she couldn’t wrest it from Garder’s hand, forcing her to take out her elemental tanto from its sheath. She imbued it with flame and slashed at Garder’s chest. And, the gall of him, Garder grabbed at her other wrist to stop the attack in its tracks. Now more angry than afraid, Phisa kicked Garder backward and caught her scythe before it hit the ground.

  “Fighting dirty, huh?” she grunted. “Fine. We’ll do it that way.”

  Back at the front of the school, Hekens guided a carriage for the second time that night, this time bringing with him Milla, Leovyn, Shin, and Xavier. As much of a risk as it was having so many high-ranking Angel officers in one place, so was leaving Garder alone in a compromised state.

  “Thank you, Gregory,” Leovyn said to their pilot as he was the last to rush out of the carriage. “We can get back on our own. Go home.”

  “I pray you bring him to his senses before he does something… regrettable, or gets himself hurt,” Hekens replied, and then disappeared.

  “On your guard, everyone,” Milla said and approached the steps, on the way seeing some small burning fires, battle scars, and the tattered remains of Guard uniforms on the way up. “Damn it… He really did go in through the front. We should have given him another psyche eval.”

  “These are brutal, but clean kills,” Shin noted, studying some light armor that had been destroyed by an air blade. “He didn’t hold back.”

  “Milla, he knew how to clear every check we gave him,” Leovyn said. “Even after everything he’s done and been through, he was always rock steady during his wellness checks. We rarely had a reason to hold him—”

  “Dad, I know you’re not telling me something,” Milla argued as they cautiously entered the school hall and observed more destruction. “Enough with the excuses. You knew something was wrong, and you kept letting him go out anyway because he got results. This is your mess.”

  “I won’t deny that there is truth to that. I always thought I could just push him a little more… but should’ve known Rivia would break him.”

  “He went on a rampage,” Shin stated. “I don’t sense any nearby life signs. I don’t see any student uniforms, so I hope…”

  “He wouldn’t kill students unless for self-defense,” Xavier asserted. “People, come on. Garder’s vindictive and angry, but he’s not a monster, no matter how much he might scare us. But we do need to find him.”

  “The duelist arena,” Leovyn said. “We’ll look there. If I could just remember… It’s been centuries since I last studied here.”

  “I hear fighting, echoing down the halls,” Shin told them. “Come on. We have to hurry. Enemy reinforcements may be on the way.”

  They picked up their pace and began to run through the corridors, Xavier armed with his rifle and Leovyn falling behind, given his age. Shin still had enough energy left to utilize brief bursts of lightning charges, letting her jump ahead twenty feet or so each time she quasi-elemental-traveled. Taking point, she soon reached a large entryway, peeked in, and signaled to the others. The sound of metal against metal emanated just past her, their hits heavy with alchemagi and fury.

  “Careful…” Leovyn said and created a vector shield to cover the group with. “I can feel the alchemagi from here. Watch for stray spells.”

  Sticking to the sides and shadows of the large chamber, the group snuck unseen under the stadium seating, and then cautiously emerged from a narrow corridor and stepped into the lowest circle of the empty audience stands. Just ahead was a bare and scorched battlefield, small burning fires still littering the area. Unnoticed by the combatants, they watched as the duel picked up in intensity. Both Garder and Phisa were far from wearing out, even with the physical strain they were going through.

  Garder wasn’t flashy, and he was taking the battle seriously yet at the same time, trying not to exert himself more than Phisa, likely waiting for her to tire first. He had two blades with him, but he was still only using Viveri’s old weapon. He was using alchemagi minimally, only employing water or ice to diffuse Phisa’s fire attacks, or air blades and bursts in his attempts to hit her from afar, or propel himself to stay close or move out of the way of one of her powerful, rocket-enhanced scythe swings. His sword strikes were powerful, but not fast enough to land a hit on his agile foe.

  Phisa’s speed was a match for Garder’s strength, and she had a number of maneuvers, twisting jumps, and graceful feints under her belt that kept her out of trouble. Her burning scythe left trails of flame in the air after every slash, and she kept Garder at bay with the smaller tanto blade now strapped to her left wrist. She was also substantially smaller than him, making for a hard-to-hit target that also proved a match in power.

  “Neither one has gone all out yet,” Shin observed. “Mr. Nolland, how do we stop this? Can we intervene? Would Garder… attack us?”

  “I’m not waiting around to find out,” Milla said and took a step forward, only to be pulled back into the shadows by her father.

  “Wait a moment,” he whispered. “Someone else is coming.”

  Unaware that Milla and the others were watching, Garder pulled back from another wide strike as he and Phisa heard footsteps on the VIP observation box above them. Vermer, a new pretorian still on probation, crept into sight, nervously holding an old shield that he peeked out from behind. Phisa audibly grunted dissatisfaction from behind her mask.

  “Vermer! I told you to stay back!” she shouted. “I’m handling it!”

  “Ms. Camryde, please, you are in danger! If you insist on fighting Garder, then I implore you, request aid at once! I would hate for anything to… W-wait…” He concentrated. “There are others here. I sense them.”

  Phisa looked into the shadows and noticed the shapes of those in hiding. She tossed a bright fireball into the air above them, where it slowly dropped like a flare and illuminated the four new intruders.

  “Crap…” Leovyn said and expanded his vector shield.

  “Get out of here!” Garder yelled at them angrily. “You weren’t supposed to follow me. I can take care of this on my own!”

  “Of course, you’d think that,” Phisa mocked him. “You don’t need anyone else, right, Garder? Let me help you with that.”

  “What?” Garder snarled, raised his sword, and stepped toward her.

  Whether she had been stalling and waiting for backup, or was prepared to exploit an opportune moment, it was obvious that Phisa would gladly take a chance to wipe out more Angels—and, worse, both duelists knew Garder would only blame himself for getting others hurt.

  He was moving back into striking range when Phisa suddenly planted the bottom, pointed end of the scythe’s pole into the ground, then grabbed onto it and swung around, accelerating her steel-toed boots into his chest and knocking him backward. Before he could make up lost ground, she tossed her tanto blade, sticking it into the arena floor just feet away from him. The fuel capsule hidden inside its hilt detonated, blasting him into the air and sending him tumbling.

  “Garder!” Milla shouted out, as Phisa got a look at them.

  She sneered. “The new commander, her father, Shinamayu Xin, and… Oh, the one that got away. Or should I say, left his master behind.”

  Glaring at her, Xavier raised his rifle, but didn’t have time to get a shot off. Her left hand having been hidden behind her back for the last few seconds, Phisa twisted about and crouched, launching out four daggers as she did so. Her accuracy wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t need to be. The small, sharp projectiles were dangerous, and every one made it into the corridor.

  Two of them were sliced apart by Leovyn’s vector shield and their halves were sent off course into the corridor walls, and a third was pushed away by a small, desperate air burst from Garder, still recovering on the ground. The last dagger made its way straight into Xavier’s neck. He gasped out in shock and fell backwards, dropping to the stone floor.

  “Xavier!” Milla exclaimed, and crawled over to see the severity of the injury, while Leovyn kept his shield up. “Hold on, I’m right here.”

  His legs still trembling, Garder got to his feet and watched as his sister tried to save the life of one of their good, always reliable friends.

  “You see, Garder?” Phisa scoffed and took up a more serious stance, with both hands on her weapon. “The selfish way you act—it gets people killed. I bet you don’t want to work with anyone now, do you?”

  He squeezed his blade’s hilt and growled. Phisa shook her head, sighed, and then raised her plague doctor mask and tossed it away.

  “It’s a shame,” she said, her voice now almost cordial without the digitization. “If you weren’t so stubborn and blindly loyal to the wrong side, we could easily work together. We both hate the old, stupid ways of things the Guard represents. There are others out there who don’t want to see it go on, either. But I can’t risk an attempt at forming an alliance with you.”

  “Easy, Xavier, hold still…” Milla said as she examined the knife planted in his neck and Shin held his head. “It looks like it missed anything vital. But every breath must be torture. I’m going to slowly pull it out and stitch the wound with vector lines. But you can’t move. Try not to flinch.”

  Milla looked back up and noticed Garder’s gaze, and quietly begged him not to blame himself—and to not add to a festering mountain of self-hatred she knew he had let build over the years. But any one moment could be a breaking point for him by now, especially one such as this.

  “… Screw it all…” Garder muttered. “I’m done holding back.”

  “Going ‘all out’ now, hm?” Phisa continued to mock him. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Let’s see what you can do, ‘all on your own.’”

  “Ms. Camryde, I insist you retreat,” Vermer shouted down.

  “Peh. I almost forgot you were still here,” she yelled back.

  “Young miss, I’ve been trying to breach his mental defenses since I first arrived, and… I don’t understand what I feel. There’s something wrong with his inner-being. It’s a chaotic mess up there, and I can’t—”

  “Stop interfering! I have a handle on…”

  She fell quiet as she, along with Leovyn, watched Garder reach up and pull off his eyepatch, letting it fall to the floor.

  He still had a right eye. But, who owned it was up for debate. It was a bright gold in color, and a pattern of dark lines on his skin surrounded the socket, like they were tattooed with black ink.

  “Garder, don’t…” Leovyn murmured.

  Milla turned around, after having prepared to pull the dagger out of Xavier’s neck. “Dad? What is…” She saw Garder and gasped. “His eye!”

  “It isn’t his eye anymore, Milla.”

  Garder reached around to his back and pulled his second blade from its holster, so that he could hold it firmly in his right arm. Now dual-wielding, he gave the active-engine sword to the apostle within him.

  “That’s her, Caeden…” Garder muttered. “She killed Rivia. I know. I’m sorry for all that. But I’m ready to work with you again.”

  “Having a psychotic break, Mr. Nolland?” Phisa jeered.

  Staring emotionlessly at her, he opened his arms up to take on a bold, confident fighting pose, and then took a single step forward, in the process unleashing a small whirlwind all around him that stirred up dust. His fingers weren’t extended and it didn’t even seem to be a controlled spell. If anything, it was akin to Drides’ inherent alchemagi ability.

  Phisa gulped, took up a defensive stance, and stepped backward. For the first time in a long while, she felt a twinge of fear. But it only served to excite her further, and she tapped into the deep well that held her endless confidence. Garder would be a worthy foe, but he could still be beaten.

  As two personalities intertwined to work together, Garder let go of any remaining restraint. He launched a full-fledged assault on Phisa with both swords—Viveri’s empowered with an apostle’s lightning, which it was designed to take—and the other, becoming a blade of solid razor-sharp ice which doubled as a shield against her flames.

  It became a battle where blades clashed not too often. Keeping back Phisa’s rocket-powered scythe cost Garder far too much stamina, and she couldn’t fare well trying to block two blades at mid or close range. Instead, the two took turns attacking and dodging the blows entirely, as best they could. One bad hit from either might cripple the receiver.

  “You hid all this power? You hid an apostle?” Phisa breathed out as they fought and traded blasts of alchemagi, which erupted into steam. “Ha! What were you so scared of? This is quite impressive!”

  “This is the first time I’ve fully unleashed Caeden on one of the pretorians,” Garder shot back. “You’re stronger than the others I’ve killed. But it still won’t be enough. They were just as self-assured.”

  Phisa smiled deviously, and after feinting a windup that he thought he’d have to parry, she ripped out another dagger and, in an instant, threw it at his right knee. He sidestepped it, just barely, and that gave her a chance to come down hard with her scythe. The blade slammed into the floor, tearing apart stone and very nearly hitting him lethally. It left a long scar in his left arm, causing him to recoil, at which point she leapt forward, ripped her scythe out of the ground, and in a crescent moon motion, fired its rockets and came down a second time, aiming to split Garder in two.

  With a combined air blast and a roll, he barely avoided the follow-up, and then surprised Phisa by freezing the blood coming out of his arm and launching a crimson icicle at her. It scraped her leg before going past her and implanting itself in a stadium seat. Any slight slowdown brought on by even just a light leg injury could very well give Garder the edge.

  “Oh, that is nasty!” Phisa taunted him. “Your own blood? Really?”

  With her free hand, she created a narrow bright flame and swept it over her new scar to cauterize it instantly and stop the bleeding. Garder let out a huff and partially froze his own wound to only slow his blood loss.

  “You’re something special…” Phisa exhaled, and came charging.

  She attempted to impale him in the side with her blade, but he was able to bend backward low enough to avoid it and then hit her with the broadside of Viveri’s sword, sending a shock though her and throwing her off balance. She turned around to block another strike with her weapon’s pole, but couldn’t react in time to avoid it entirely—which she knew she should have, the instant she saw that he had changed the energy flowing in Viveri’s blade to vector, giving the weapon an ultra-sharp green edge.

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  It cut straight through the pole, and very nearly sliced into her, as well. Her weapon’s reach had been reduced by half, but she took the damage in stride, having plenty of other tricks to fall back on.

  She flicked a switch to keep the rocket engaged, and threw the scythe at Garder. With the fiery thrust, it spun rapidly and came at him as twirling death too powerful to deflect. He got out of its way, but only just. It knocked Viveri’s blade out of his left hand, flinging it away into the seats. The scythe itself kept going until it impaled the arena barrier farther back.

  “Come on, Garder!” Phisa shouted and channeled the entirety of her alchemagi outward. “Let’s see what you can really do!”

  Out of a spiral flare, the blazing specter of a dragon three times her size came into existence, raising the temperature in the area dramatically as it let out a roar and stepped forward, billowing burning alchemagi.

  “I only just got the implants!” she continued. “Amazing, isn’t it? Too bad I’ll never get to see how she stacks up to Jeryn’s!”

  “Just shut up already,” Garder muttered.

  “That dragon will prove troublesome,” Caeden’s voice told him. “We need to bring out the leopard to properly counter it. Don’t worry. I can still provide you with some additional reserves. Take her by surprise.”

  “Burn, Garder! Burn to cinders!” Phisa cried out.

  She commanded her elemental beast to unleash hellfire on him, filling up half the arena with flame and igniting several rows of seats nearby. Garder disappeared into the inferno, forcing Milla to look up from her surgical work on Xavier. The dagger had been extracted, and she had moved onto the delicate process of vector stitching. But now…

  “Garder!” she gasped. “No, no…”

  “Milla, focus on Xavier!” Leovyn said, his atomic shield still up.

  “I still sense his neuro-electrical signature, even in that oven,” Shin assured them both. “What’s incredible is… his pulse has barely risen.”

  After over ten seconds of saturating the area with flame, Phisa finally pulled her dragon back. With nothing to burn but air, the flames quickly dissipated, only to be replaced by a thick veil of steam. Following another few moments, the steam wafted away enough to reveal a clear icy dome. Its outer layer was sweating heavily, but inside was Garder, safe.

  “He put that up in an instant? How…” Phisa murmured. She looked past him as more steam vanished, seeing the massive snow leopard behind the dome, and exclaimed, “At the same time? Are you kidding me?”

  The beast let out a roar before jumping on top of the dome, which it dug its claw into. With the added height, it jumped not at, but rather into Phisa’s dragon. Its frigid, transient body slammed into the fiery summon, dousing its flames as it claws tore apart the more solid parts of its body.

  “Damn it. Not good,” Phisa exclaimed and took off at full speed.

  Using the chance to get her blade back while the elementals fought and Garder was encased in his protective igloo, she circled around him and tossed a few spare fuel spheres his way. Upon exploding, they obscured his view of her and cracked his ice. His powers were unnatural, and she didn’t want to take the chance that he could launch something, even while inside.

  As expected, rows of single vector lines suddenly appeared in front of Phisa, at just about the same moment she faced forward again as she ran. If she had kept going another few feet with eyes on Garder, she could have sliced herself apart. She jumped over and ducked under the lines, glancing at her foe when she could to see that his ice had disappeared in an instant, so he could switch over to his simplistic but still dangerous vector spells.

  “Impressive, Nolland!” she breathed out. “Were we in an older, less open-minded age, I do believe you’d be seen as an abomination!”

  With the beasts still clashing in the other half of the arena, Phisa came close to retrieving her blade, only to be stopped by an unexpected earth attack from Garder, which cut a fissure through the arena floor after he slammed his palm into the stone. She’d have to get her momentum back up to jump over it and retrieve what was left of her scythe.

  “You’re more like a true apostle than I thought,” she exclaimed angrily. “Still… if your skills are divided among all these elements, you only need be surpassed by someone who excels in a single alignment.”

  She backed up and got ready to make a running jump, but before she could, her scythe landed near her feet seemingly on its own. She scooped it up without questioning it, and then looked across at the seating to see Risar there, across the narrow ravine with her own fire in her eyes.

  “Kill him, Phisa!” she shouted. “He cut your blade, make him pay!”

  “Risar, I told you not to come out here!” Phisa called back, now with fear in her voice. “Go! Get into cover right—”

  Phisa couldn’t believe it when she saw it: a simple vector mandala was being propelled towards her sister, mere moments after she appeared. She turned her sudden upwelling of rage into power, and having only two or three seconds to react before it hit Risar, she released her dragon, took back her alchemagi, and then redirected it into a flash-fire barrier in front of the entire row of seats. Risar flinched from its brightness and heat, and the mandala disappeared into the thin plasma, where it sizzled apart and lost coherence. Seeing the danger, Risar retreated into the nearby corridor.

  “Never,” Phisa roared with hatred in her voice, and charged at Garder with her scythe ignited. “You never go after my sister!”

  He released his snow leopard, and seeing the power behind Phisa’s coming attack, was forced to create a hybrid ice and iron shield for himself.

  He raised it in time and it took the brunt of a full-bodied blow, but shattered on impact. Phisa came at him again, and his second shield didn’t have time to fully form before it too was destroyed. The scythe ended up piercing his side, digging in several inches before coming to a stop and sending a surge of hot pain through his body that momentarily winded him.

  “I was ready to put up with all that nonsense you were dishing out, but when you go after my family—”

  “Like how you just went after mine?” Garder grunted and grabbed onto her blade to try and keep it from going in deeper. “Always take the opportunity to dispatch an enemy… Isn’t that your kind of stratagem?”

  “You son of a bitch—she doesn’t even serve the Guard!”

  “She will. And after I kill you, I’m sure she’d want revenge. I don’t do half-measures or leave loose ends anymore, Ms. Camryde.”

  “Do you not see the situation you’re in? Your nerves are on fire right now. I doubt even Caeden can help. When I got Rivia like this, it was already over for him, too. He fought well… For an old man.”

  “You’re trying to make me angry. You think I’ll lose control. You know that rage can betray you, and yet it’s all I see under your mask.”

  With all her strength, Phisa pushed her blade in another centimeter and spat out, “Heh… You really are about to die, you know. Do you want to know Rivia’s last words? He told me, rather glibly, that all the Guard was ‘in for quite the surprise.’ The only thing I’m surprised by, is that you didn’t put up more of a fight! Soon, I will become the strongest pretorian—”

  She cut herself off when she saw the subtlest of smirks on Garder’s face. She realized that she could no longer move her scythe. It didn’t budge. She tried to pull it out, but it was like it was stuck in concrete.

  This duel is lasting a while.

  You don't have to leave yourself in suspense if you don't want to.

  But here's a break marker just in case.

  “What… what are you doing?” she panted as she tried again.

  Garder’s grin grew, and suddenly, the tip of her scythe shattered, taking with it about half the blade itself. The metal and infused crystal broke into pieces, freeing the rest of the damaged weapon. Phisa watched, with some revulsion, as Garder pulled out a sizable chunk of bloody ice from his side, latticed together with iron—and parts of shrapnel from her own blade.

  “Y-you—you froze the blood inside your body to crush my scythe?”

  “And reduce the damage. And cool the inner fire.” Garder slashed at her, forcing her to leap back to a safe distance. “When you have half an apostle in you… you learn how to be creative.”

  “You smarmy bastard.” Phisa looked at what was left of her scythe, then tossed it away and raised three fingers. “Can’t wait to see how you’ll stop me from boiling away all your blood. Then what’ll you do?”

  Fed up, Phisa retreated a few more meters and initiated her most powerful spell: a giant, swirling fireball with heat that could match the sun.

  It was’t enormous, but it quickly set the surrounding air ablaze as it floated over the middle of the arena. It was blinding, too, obscuring the combatants’ views of each other. Within a minute’s time, it would reach critical mass, and Phisa planned to engulf one half of the entire chamber in an incinerating flame, vaporizing everything into ash.

  “Phisa!” Lenox called out, his voice muffled by his helmet.

  She turned and saw him, fully armored as usual, standing guard near Risar and trying to keep her off the battlefield.

  “Get her out of here!” Phisa commanded.

  “Dispel your exardescere! You can’t see what Garder is doing!”

  “There’s nothing he can do, other than die.”

  “If he’s as powerful as they say he is, he… No…”

  He had noticed something above, and Phisa looked up as well. A large sphere of water had formed just below the wooden roof high above where there was still vapor in the air and milder temperatures.

  “He pulled all the moisture out of the air, and the wood…” Phisa murmured. “How did he do it so fast…? Oh, no… No, no, no…”

  “Phisa!” Risar called out. “Phisa, release the spell!”

  She tried, but all of the fire and heat she had created needed time to cool. And there wasn’t enough of it. From the other side of the glowing miniature star, Garder froze the outer layer of his bubble to trap the water, then commanded the perfect sphere to drop. It wasn’t very large either, but it didn’t need to be. Phisa had given into anger, and made a mistake.

  “Lenox, cover Risar—” she got out, a moment before impact.

  Mr. Crawn moved in front of Risar at just about the same instant the water hit Phisa’s fire, which was more than hot enough to flash it into steam and generate a devastating, uncontrollable explosion. A shock wave of superheated steam and air went off in all directions, blowing apart the roof, and both burning and nearly deafening Phisa. The entirety of the school shook as seats and rafters were torn off their hinges.

  Her alchemagi studies completely based around fire, Phisa had no way to defend herself other than the light armor she wore. It didn’t keep a pressure wave of steam from burning her eyes and reddening her exposed skin. The temperature cooled quickly, but by the time it no longer felt like a furnace, she had been badly scalded all over. Meanwhile, the arena was still obscured by hot mist, and Garder had shielded himself with ice beforehand.

  “Where are you?!” Phisa cried out, barely able to keep her burning eyes open. “Don’t hide, Garder! Fight fair! I can still…” She was able to make out the shape of a moving figure in the fog, and out of desperation, extended a single finger and created a small, fast fireball to destroy it.

  It blew away steam as it traveled, and exploded brightly on impact.

  “Got… you…” Phisa groaned in pain.

  Enough of the mist parted, and she saw that she had only hit and blown apart the top half of a block of ice that vaguely resembled a human. All that was left were the legs, rapidly melting in the heat.

  A second figure, far faster, then came in at her side, and cut with its sword, so fast and sharply that she didn’t feel it at first. She looked down to see that her casting arm, still extended from her spell, was suddenly gone from the elbow down, disappearing somewhere into the swirling gray.

  “Ah…” she whimpered as she processed the grave injury. “You just…” She brought what was left of her arm to her chest and wrapped the wound tightly with the remaining sleeve, before falling to the ground.

  More steam dissipated, and Garder approached her, sword still at his side. Without alchemagi or scythe, she knew she was defenseless.

  On her knees and now trying to look as harmless as possible, Phisa said through her pain, “I yield. I’m not the kind to fight to my death.”

  “No more tricks, I take it?” he muttered.

  “N-no… I used them up… Just… Please, take me in, and don’t harm my family. I’ll cooperate for their sake… For me, it’s better to live.”

  Garder sighed and knelt down. For the first time, she could get a good look at his eyes, both very different from one another.

  “It would have been better if a lot of other people had lived, too. But you made this personal. Attacked my home, my school, a mentor. You lured me out. I’m so sick of wars. They always go on too long.”

  “You think we want them to last? What about your responsibility?”

  “I didn’t start it, didn’t want to fight it. But I still believe that the fastest way to see it end… is by destroying the Guard as soon as we can.”

  With a trembling, scared smile, she reached up with her remaining hand, and lightly touched Garder’s cheek. “I know that face. You really do feel no fear. I’m not sure you feel much of anything anymore. I pity you.”

  “Garder!” Milla shouted, the vapor having thinned out enough for them to see each other. “Stop! This isn’t who we are—we can capture her!”

  Knowing what was coming was unstoppable, Phisa murmured, “If you do this… You can’t claim to be a victim anymore, Mr. Nolland.”

  “… You make a good point. But I’ll sacrifice that for Rivia.”

  Without any further hesitation, he ran his blade right through her. He just missed her heart, and she lived long enough to let out a gasp.

  “Phisa!” Risar cried out and tried to run into the arena but was held back by Lenox. “What’d you do, Garder? Why?! You demon! You’re evil!”

  As Phisa crumpled to the floor and began to burn off into orange smoke, Garder stood back up, turned to the two, and said emotionlessly, “I guess that means you both are next. I can keep going… A little longer.”

  “Garder!” Milla exclaimed and came running up. “No more!”

  “Jesus, kid!” Leovyn added, with Shin nearby covering the three of them and prepared to strike. “You were never supposed to take it this far!”

  “Now’s our chance,” Garder went on like a machine. “We take all of them out. Lenox, Quinlin, Vermer… We can keep…” He felt faint.

  “Don’t you see how much you’re bleeding?” Milla chided. “You need medical attention at the burrow! Caeden can’t save you from this!”

  “You will all pay,” Lenox promised coldly, Risar struggling in his arms. “Absolutely dishonorable, the whole lot of you. If I didn’t fear for Risar’s safety, I would destroy all of you right here. Don’t think this vile cowardice will be forgotten. Phisa did not deserve such treatment.”

  Garder fell to his knees, realizing that he was at his limit as his adrenaline faded and Caeden rested. Shin tore off a bandage and wrapped it around his torso, and it quickly soaked up with crimson.

  “I can’t cauterize an injury that deep,” Milla said. “If we don’t get you to the infirmary in a few minutes, you might bleed out. What were you thinking coming here alone? To say nothing of disobeying orders!”

  “I didn’t think you were this far gone, boy…” Leovyn sighed. He looked around, gauged the light levels in the room—it was badly damaged, but enough lamps were still running—and shouted to Xavier, “Mr. Holden, bring the carriage! We need to get out of here. Immediately.”

  A bandage around his neck and unable to speak, Xavier came stumbling up and unfurled the demirriage scroll. It would take some time to form in the dim light, but fortunately the arena seemed to be empty.

  Trying to calm herself, Milla asked Garder, “Is Caeden…”

  He nodded and replied, “He still… goes quiet sometimes, but he hasn’t slept for five years. I can always hear him, and use his alchemagi…”

  “All this time? God sake… Dad, you knew about this, didn’t you?”

  Leovyn frowned. “We were monitoring him, working with him daily. It was my call, but I never expected him to do something as stupid as come out here for revenge, killing Guardsmen left and right, taking on a…”

  He trailed off after the five of them heard footsteps, coming from the VIP box. They looked up, over, and across the ruined coliseum and saw that Vermer had returned on his own, a look of disgust on his face. His right arm was outstretched, and perched atop it was a peculiar dark owl with bright reflective eyes—yet there was no moon out to hit them.

  “Monsters! Murderers! You treat pretorians like dirt. Lenox may have run off for Risar’s sake, but I won’t permit you to leave here alive!”

  As Leovyn studied the owl, Shin took out her sword and shouted back, “And how do you plan on doing that? Rodrick Vermer… They say you went insane. Why would anyone ever make you a pretorian?”

  “Allow me to show you,” he snarled. “As I burn out your synapses.”

  “Run!” Leovyn suddenly ordered. “That owl is the mind elem—”

  The unassuming bird’s eyes flashed, and in an instant, it paralyzed the group, yet kept them standing in place. Their nervous systems went into overdrive and heated up as the coliseum turned into a blurry mess of colors and shapes around them. Bizarre imagery began to come into focus, rapidly changing form and after a few seconds, becoming a living mural of places on both Earth and Aurra from all across history.

  Roman cities, modern architecture, bombed ruins from a World War, a Royal Navy wooden war ship on rough seas. The early age of steam power in Aurra, a far older palace in City A during a Christmas celebration, an ancient version of City D before it had any buildings over a few floors. It became clear to the others what was happening, and Shin confirmed it.

  “Our minds are at full blast…” she huffed. “Can’t… control our own thoughts. Too loud for telepathy. It’s a shared… recall cascade…”

  “Moments from past lives…” Leovyn muttered through the mental duress. “Shin, what happens if this goes on for too long…?”

  “Best case? We all fall into a coma… Augh. Try to concentrate on one moment in your past, a chain, a story… anything to calm your head… Might prolong it, give us time to… find a way out…”

  As both Xavier and Garder suffered in silence, Milla did her best to recall a very memorable moment, a happy one, which had persisted in her thoughts and dreams for many lives in Aurra. Gradually, her contributions to the chaotic mess of the histories of five different people solidified into a single, coherent experience, playing out like it was coming from a flickering projector in front of her. If it wasn’t just an effort to hold back a dangerous mental attack, it would have been an amazing way to share a story.

  It was her coronation as Queen of Aurra from centuries ago, which happened when she was only fourteen years old. The palace’s grand hall was full of nobles, watching as she received the crown, all of them with different expectations as to how she might rule. But soon everything became dark, and screams and fighting filled the air. The nobles shifted form, becoming the shadows of Guardsmen fighting warriors who struck back with lightning-based attacks as Lontonkon stood where Milla just had, smiling like a madman. The real Milla looked at Shin, who grimaced back.

  “Sorry…” she murmured and winced. “That old story again…”

  Leovyn’s story grew and took up most of the projected area next, showing him much younger as he was inducted as a pretorian back in the palace again, where he started his brief stint with the group. Milla couldn’t help but look at the abstract, nearly amorphous form of Jeryn overseeing the event, before his memories were erased and he led her group.

  Xavier, trying to calm himself down and barely moving, watched as his recollection steadily became dominant, moving like fluid. He was a young military soldier at the academy in N, and Rivia was speaking at the graduation ceremony in the auditorium, to a large crowd of cadets.

  But it was Garder’s history that spread the fastest, and had quickly taken up just about all of the space on the swirling sphere of memories around the five of them. His was incredibly detailed and focused, and it relegated the collective memories of the others to the patchwork edges of the recall cascade. He was clearly struggling to contain it, and was helpless as his past gained in size the more his friends and family took notice of it.

  “No…” Garder murmured weakly. “Don’t… watch…”

  Milla peered down at him, clutching his side on the ground. He was trying to hide it, or think of anything else, or at the very least minimize its power and appearance against the other thousands of memories. But with Caeden at rest and himself in a weak physical state, he had no control.

  “I can’t… make it stop…” Garder said, tormented by history.

  “It’s okay,” Milla tried to assure him. “Whatever it is, whatever happened to you… Garder… It’s okay to hurt.”

  He shook his head and kept trying to return the memories to the lockbox in his head, but the more he held on, the more vivid they became for the others to see. A sequence of events played out, each scene lasting only seconds. The first one, which had kept going on a loop until Garder could—just then—no longer contain it, was recognizable to everyone.

  It took place at the formation of the Angel alliance, when Guardfall and other minor rebel groups were brought under one flag after the start of the war. Harken represented dozens of his officers at the accord, who took up a third of the seats, while smaller groups got the few places that didn’t go to Angels. Guardfall, which originated in Mightoria, had been developed in secret for a thousand years and employed older, more barbaric means of warfare and weaponry to strike terror into the rulers they had hated with a passion for centuries. Uniting with them required firm negotiation through strength, which was the only thing they respected.

  Garder’s memories of the evening mostly centered on his reunion with Milla after two years of war on different continents. H had just been given back to the Guard, and the ceding of their only occupied City in Mightoria had hurt Angel morale. But Rivia was up at the lectern, giving a passionate speech and reminding the many officers all that they had already accomplished elsewhere during the course of the conflict thus far.

  Temki was at Garder’s side, and in the way Garder remembered the story, whether true or not, Temki walked over to Milla’s side with a look of reluctance, despite spending some of his youth in open warfare.

  “Temki boosted Garder’s alchemagi in Mightoria’s battles, right?” Shin asked. “But this recollection has to be a lie. We all knew Temki would be safer in the burrow. This couldn’t be what’s torturing Garder, right?”

  “The retreat from H was rough on him,” Milla said. “Only half our forces that served there made it back to Onasia. And just days after all this, Garder returned to his unit and went on a mission he’d never talked about.”

  “I can almost think straight again,” Leovyn groaned. “Most of my body still feels like tar, but my head’s settling down…”

  “Garder must be ‘absorbing’ most of the owl’s attack,” Milla theorized. “It’s like… his pain and memories are… overpowering.”

  He was a heap on the floor, feeling weak and helpless, unable to subdue his thoughts as they played out for everyone else. With effort, Milla was able to crouch down and put her hands on his shoulders, if only to let him know she was there. He was too weak to resist sympathy.

  That touch almost seemed to trigger his next chain of memories, as the accords were replaced by the cold, buzzing interior of a troop carrier plane, full of nervous Angel soldiers waiting to parachute into the night. An officer at the front of the line was reminding them of their mission, but his voice was muffled, his words incoherent and hard to decipher. Their task had something to do with securing a port in T’s harbor, the only City on the western island of Wathpol in Tillethy. Leovyn remembered the mission.

  “We needed to rebuild our navy after losing so many ships running from H,” he refreshed everyone’s knowledge. “We stole three destroyers right out of T’s central port and destroyed a war factory, at great cost to us. But… I didn’t even know Garder had gone… Why was he in that plane?”

  Having admitted defeat to his memories, all Garder could do now was get through them more quickly. They began to flash by like a poorly-edited movie, although there was always enough context for the others that they could piece things together and understand the story.

  City T was a sprawling, low-wealth place, with a large core and expansive suburb-style housing around it. Houses were a rare sight in Aurra in general, and they only existed in substantial numbers in T. And at some point, Garder’s plane was shot down, along with several others on their way towards the port in the west. He went tumbling out of the aircraft with the other men, only some of which were able to activate their parachutes. Garder dropped toward the neighborhoods below, yet even back then, he didn’t panic and was able to trigger his chute.

  But it must have been shredded by shrapnel from the flak cannons that tore apart the plane, as it was full of holes and useless. He ditched it and created an air cushion for himself just before impact, but he still ended up all but smashing onto a quiet street surrounded by Aurrian houses.

  He lay there in pain, both legs broken, one far worse than the other. He managed to crawl off the street and onto the nearby sidewalk, where he flipped over on his back and watched more Angel aircraft being shot down, set ablaze and breaking up in the sky as neighborhood lights turned on and people stepped out into the night to see what was happening.

  Garder looked like he had resigned himself to dying on the side of a road, or at best being captured. Instead, a man in his forties stepped out of the home he had landed near, and working together with his wife, was able to bring him inside. After two years of bloody warfare and hatred from both sides, the younger Garder looked utterly surprised that such kindness could still exist in the world, especially from and to strangers.

  The group watched more intently as entire days began to go by, switching from lunches to dinners, from days to nights. The family that had brought him in were kind and sympathetic, although there was nothing audible to be heard from them; no voices or opinions. They couldn’t tell if Garder’s rescuers were Angel sympathizers, or opposed the war, or were simply trying to live their lives despite the times and save someone else.

  There was a hard-working red-haired daughter around ten, a young girl around six or so with a cheery disposition and amber hair, and between them a middle child, a boy with dark hair who showed up the most in the memories, and got Garder to open up—it being clear that he began sharing stories with the curious lad as he was nursed back to health in a spare room.

  Gradually, the house’s guest started getting out of bed and joining the family for their dinners. He would demonstrate low-level alchemagi “tricks” using just the base alignments, and the boy, of the plant element like Verim, trained with sprouts in a flower pot as Garder mentored him. Stuck in a house with the kids during the day as the parents went to work, Garder had plenty of free time and little else to occupy himself with.

  After dinner, Garder would listen to a radio show with the boy. He helped the father repair things around the house, and he’d be in the corner of the room, quiet and keeping to himself, as the mother would read stories to or with her three children; all typical Aurrian family events that he had missed out on. Gradually, he healed both physically and emotionally.

  Sometime after he first step foot inside the home, Garder watched from behind the curtain of the second-floor bedroom as the parents met with and spoke to three Guardsmen MPs going through the neighborhood, who must have been searching for him, or other stranded Angels. They left empty-handed, and he was kept out of their hands, if only momentarily.

  The good memories of hospitality and warmth, his only experience with real family life in his current visit to Aurra, flashed by for maybe just a minute more for the audience before the light of the story darkened.

  As the present day Garder suffered silently on the ground, his projected younger self was shown having another dinner at the table with everyone. But he was strangely despondent, trance-like, as if he already knew and expected that something terrible was on its way. This part of his memory was corrupted and untrue; likely a result of the pain it caused and the distortion on his very psyche that it had wrought.

  The family, talking around him about likely nothing remarkable, smiled and laughed as they had before. The boy was the first to finish his meal, and left for the kitchen to clean his plate. And then, in an instant…

  Walls shook and windows blew out. There had been an explosion just outside the house. The four members of the family at the table looked around, terrified about what was happening to their small part of Aurra.

  The younger Garder woke up and reacted instinctively, and in seconds, had created an ice-metal lattice dome. It was only big enough to cover himself. But the ice was pure and clear enough to see through, and he had to watch as a bomb fell through the ceiling and exploded. The house turned to splinters and dust around him, and the dining room became gray, broken, and lifeless, the table upended and thrown into the wall.

  “Oh, God…” Milla murmured quietly, as Shin let out a faint gasp.

  Garder released his protection once the flames had gone out, and emerged into a world colder than his barrier. He seemed numb, unable or unwilling to process what had happened. He looked over at what little remained of the kitchen, to see the boy stumbling over the debris, one of his arms missing and bloodied all over, perhaps unaware that his entire family had already gone to Hold without him. He wasn’t granted the mercy of an instant journey, and soon fell into Garder’s arms.

  Neither one knew what to say, and no words were exchanged. A few more seconds went by, and without any signs of a struggle to stay alive, the boy quietly died in the arms of a young man who undoubtedly blamed himself for everything, because it was in his nature to do so.

  “Garder…” Milla whispered and squeezed his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have… There wasn’t time to make a big enough…”

  He said nothing, and the story continued with his younger self listlessly stepping out into a burning neighborhood completely flattened by the shock waves from a Guardian bomber, and the officers or pretorians who told it to fly after judging that the sacrifice of a hundred or so civilians was worth the chance to take out a dangerous Angel only suspected of being harbored in one of their homes. All that cost, and not even a result.

  Under a dusk, smoke-covered sky, Garder got clear of the debris and dropped to his knees on the empty street, already feeling the pain from knowing that, despite the horror of the situation, he had to keep going.

  He observed the smoldering hellscape for a few moments, unmoving, and it was like someone had hit pause on a video.

  During the respite, Leovyn quietly spoke up, “Damn it… Even though this is the quietest it’s been, I still can’t sort out the noise enough to recite an incantation in my mind. One beam to Vermer’s neck—that’s all I need. That owl elemental has us all trapped.”

  “Dad. I didn’t know Garder was suffering this much,” Milla said.

  He sighed after shaking his head in another attempt to get his mind straight, “He needs more help than I can give. If we even survive this.”

  The remembered Garder suddenly came back to life, and shouted into the burning sky in rage and despair. Caeden tried to take over, and his whispers from the past became audible to the others. He promised his host that they would get revenge, that they could make the Guard pay, and gave him other platitudes about how to make such a loss not be in vain.

  Garder, who must have heard all of this far too many times, started begging for Caeden to leave him alone, to get out of “his skull,” to go back to sleep. The more he tried to resist the parasitic soul, the angrier Caeden became, and he actively tried to take control of Garder’s body after first seizing his right eye, as he’d done before. Then there was that name again.

  “Neisa…” Caeden growled. “I still have my own people to avenge, Garder, and I’m often disappointed when I leave you in charge.”

  “Get out!” Garder yelled at himself. “Just get out!”

  Garder tapped the storage disc at his side, where Viveri’s sword and several smaller weapons were kept, and a dagger materialized in his hand. Without hesitating, he tried to plunge it into his right eye. Caeden had issue with that, and with a resistant, harsh whisper of “No!”, he wrested the arm from Garder’s grasp enough to just barely pull it back, and the edge of the weapon instead slashed through his brow and cheek, leaving a long scar.

  “You’re weak.” Caeden scolded Garder as he fell onto his hands and bled into the street. “I can’t trust you anymore. Perhaps… you should lend more of yourself to me… And then, I will only sleep… when you do.”

  Garder pleaded for him not to, but Caeden’s patience with his lingering kindness and empathy had run out. At that moment, he seized much more control than he had in the years prior, breaking Garder’s consciousness in two. As his psyche was bent and twisted into a new shape to better intertwine the two souls, the memory itself was torn apart, and the sight and sound of the burning neighborhood shattered into chaotic noise.

  It lasted only a few seconds, at which point the entire story, starting at the accord, began again, only much faster this time. Images and events went by in flashes, and on the third loop, things only sped up more, and for the others, it all became just as bad as it was at the start of the attack.

  “He’s trapped by these memories,” Shin shouted over the discord. “He’s going to suffer a mental breakdown at any moment. If I could just… move my legs… and bolt my way out of this…”

  Following a fourth and then a fifth rapid loop of the traumatizing events, Garder finally gave out after murmuring, “Make it… stop…”

  He collapsed onto the ground, with Milla and Leovyn wishing they could move enough to catch him. As he fell into a comatose state, the full impact of the owl on the others returned, and their recall went back into overdrive. As a consequence of going after Garder, the four of them were made to suffer greatly, and without a recent black hole of a memory to get lost within, they quickly felt their willpower and mental acuity draining.

  But after about a minute since Garder had lost consciousness, a powerful shot rang out, and a bullet tore into the VIP box, barely missing Vermer. Everyone looked up to see the Mezik hovering over the hole in the roof, running quiet with all of its lights off—except for the interior, which cast Pip into silhouette as he worked his bolt-action rifle from the ship’s open bomb bay doors. In another second, he’d line up his next shot.

  Vermer, fearing for his life, let out a curse over the engine noise and retreated, breaking his spell on the group. While they tried to recover, five ropes with mechanized ascenders dropped from the bay.

  “Hurry up!” Pip shouted down at them. “We gotta move!”

  Not hesitating or questioning the rescue, Shin went up with Xavier after she retrieved Garder’s blade, while Leovyn and Milla worked together to get him attached. Once he was secured, Milla activated the ascender, and it pulled him up, its mechanism whirring as it brought him into safety.

  “The burrow never should’ve sent the Mezik after us…” Leovyn grumbled and attached himself. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if Colt went rogue to pull this off. Milla, are you all right?”

  She nodded, shakily, and replied, “I’m worried about him.”

  “We’ll stabilize him in the Mezik’s infirmary. I wouldn’t want to risk even just moving him out of the hangar at this point. Well. Up we go.”

  Father and daughter flew up into the cold night air, leaving behind a devastated school. Once in the safety of the bomb bay, Pip ran to Milla and the two shared a brief embrace, his rifle now strapped on his back.

  “I was trying to kill the bastard,” he said. “If I could’ve seen him better in the darkness down there…”

  Milla shook her head. “It’s fine. You saved us. And they already lost a pretorian today.” Milla looked at Garder, being rushed into the onboard clinic by Leovyn and Shin. “Pip, what are—”

  “We’ll talk later. We need to get buckled in.”

  “Wait!” a voice called out from down below. “Please!”

  Pip looked through his scope, then, puzzled, said, “It’s a student. Alone. And he’s looking pretty desperate to get up here. Here, look.”

  He handed her his rifle, and she got the student’s face in the lens, at which point she exclaimed, “Pip, that’s Jeremi. Hekens’ son. Let him up.”

  “You’re the boss, Milla…” Pip sighed and lowered a rope.

  Jeremi grabbed on and propelled himself upward, slipping in just before Colt forcibly shut the bay door. He exhaled and nearly collapsed.

  “Jeremi…” Milla said and helped him stay up. “You can tell us everything later. We need to get seated right away. Are you okay?”

  Exhausted and dirtied, Jeremi nodded and was then led up to one of the passenger seats in the ship’s midsection with Pip. Milla continued on past the clinic where Shin and Leovyn were providing care to Xavier and Garder, and dropped herself in one of the cockpit’s jump seats.

  “This was my idea,” Colt said, anger in his voice as he kept his eyes on the instruments and on the City outside. “Never been to the school, but you’re lucky my memory of living in the City two centuries back was good enough. Set a timer for the hangar—it’ll be open again in one minute. Local air power is probably mobilized by now; might be here before we can leave. I can’t evade them, can’t build up any momentum before our teleport.”

  “I’m sorry about all this, Colt…” Milla apologized quietly.

  He let out a disgruntled sigh. “Your brother just put three other Angel officers at risk, including our new commander, and the Mezik. I hope we at least got something out of this disaster. Damn it. I see incoming lights.”

  “He killed Phisa.”

  “Well. Then Rivia’s been avenged. But they’ll just replace her with someone worse. Okay… I’m done. Not my job to chew out my superiors. I just fly.” He got on the ship speakers and told those aboard, “Hold onto something. We’re warping to the burrow in three… two… one…”

  As Guard and local military interceptors came in, their pilots ready to take on the fearsome Angel flagship, it suddenly vanished from M, and the school that had been forever changed—and exploited—by the war.

  In Hold, Phisa opened her eyes and walked forward into a void world of white, emerging near a group of Guardsmen that looked shocked that she would ever end up with them, in this place. Most said nothing and bowed their heads out of respect, and she found that she didn’t feel any fear or anger. Hold typically helped to wash those emotions away, but for Phisa, this felt like a deeper change. She looked down and felt the place where Garder had stabbed her, and did so without experiencing old trauma.

  “It doesn’t hurt…” She gazed out into the abyss and felt strangely at peace. “Garder… Pain doesn’t have to make you weak. But you let it.”