Sliding straight for the canyon. Too fast.
I stared at the gaping maw of the approaching canyon and the unreasonably calm blue sky beyond, clinging to the hope our considerable weight and drag would bleed off our equally considerable momentum in time.
Maybe.
The pilots were in a frenzy, flaring the brakes, dropping the landers.
Maybe.
We were slowing, the lip of the canyon crawling closer, closer to the prow.
Maybe.
The prow crested the lip of the canyon with a mournful crack, barely at a crawl now. But still too fast. I felt the edge of the canyon slide by beneath the pilot’s nook, beneath me and Glenbark. Too far. We were tipping.
I threw myself into the transport’s lightsteel skeleton and heaved with everything I had.
Our slide was slowing, slowing, but at the same time surrendering inch by agonizing inch of leverage. The prow of the transport began to dip into the canyon, the rear tilting up to follow.
I pulled more energy, my body screaming in protest.
Still tipping.
More energy. More.
Too much energy, ripping through every inch of me. I was going to explode with it. I opened my mouth and let the scream tear out of my throat.
The transport yanked to a halt, half-pitched into the canyon.
Shocked silence. Groaning metal. A crackling inferno of energy burning me alive, and—
Why the scud weren’t they moving?
“GO!” I roared.
Glenbark dropped her wide-eyed surprise in an instant. “You heard him, Hounds!” she shouted. “Out the back! Go!”
A flurry of activity from the cabin. Ahead, the pilots disengaged themselves from their restraints with shaking hands and crawled carefully from their dangling nook. I closed my eyes, holding on, each second like a crushing infinity, trying to distract myself with the tiny weight shift of each legionnaires piling out of the rear hatch.
A tugging sensation at my chest nearly broke my focus. The ship teetered, groaning. Men were shouting somewhere behind.
“Don’t give up now, soldier,” came Glenbark’s voice, right in front of me and yet oddly distant as immersed as I was in my personal wrestling match with a ten-thousand pound transport.
Easy for you to say, I tried to get out. Mostly, I think I just growled as she hefted me over her shoulder and set off down the steps.
The world was closing around me, receding to nothing but the tilt of the ship and the blinding light of the energy ripping through my body. I was burning and freezing from the inside, all at once. I thought I might’ve heard Johnny’s voice nearby, running beside us. I couldn’t tell. Couldn’t seem to notice anything but the electric torrent roaring through me and the thudding of astonishingly shiny boots on the deck above my head.
Above my head? That didn’t seem—
Focus.
But it was too late. With slow, inevitable certainty, the transport began pitching further into the canyon. I tried to hold on, tried to restore the balance, but I’d lost it.
That was okay, whispered some dark corner of my mind. I’d tried my best. At least now the pain would end.
But then the world flooded back into my senses, taking shape in the form of Freya Glenbark’s athletic backside by my face, the groaning wreck of our transport lurching away from us… and the gaping canyon depths the three of us were all currently falling into.
This, I decided, was most certainly not okay.
I opened my mouth in a silent scream, trying to reach out—to do anything.
Then my legs smashed into something on Glenbark’s front side, and a pair of arms shot around her backside, nearly cuffing me on the head from both sides at once. Grunts and curses. We were moving, falling. We crashed to the ground, my legs crushed between Glenbark’s weight and the body of our rescuer. Momentum carried my top half off Glenbark’s back, and I caught myself on the dusty rocks, earning myself a scraped hand and a jarred elbow.
Head spinning from channeling fatigue, I glanced down to find Glenbark’s head rising from our pile, looking around in surprise at the pale hands clamped firmly to her buttocks. As if they felt her gaze, the hands shot into the air, fingers splayed, trying to play it cool. Glenbark opened her mouth to say something.
Then the thunderous crash of our transport meeting the canyon floor below jarred us all back to the present.
Glenbark was back on her feet in an instant, waving off the concerned legionnaires pressing in around her. “On your feet, soldiers!” she cried.
“It’s a fine ass, broto,” a voice rumbled underneath me, “but I could do without it on my face, all the same.”
I rolled off Johnny, thinking to get to my feet and help him up, but the channeling fatigue wasn’t done with me. The world spun, my vision wavered, and I hit the dirt and retched.
“Thanks for the catch, ass-face,” I groaned when I was done.
“Lock it down, kids.” Edwards’ startlingly strong arms grabbed me beneath the arms and hauled me to my feet. “Grab-ass time’s over.”
“Tell me about it,” Johnny mumbled, dusting himself off and accepting a hand from Mara.
My legs were shaky, my body trembling with fatigue, but we had bigger problems. More transports were down in the dusty stretch behind us—three more clearly having crashed short of the canyon, the other two in the process of landing to come see what the scud had just happened. And at the sight of a wide-eyed Siren rushing toward me, I remembered what it was that had brought us down in the first place.
I was opening my mouth to call out to Glenbark when the first enemy transports rose out of the canyon, side doors thrown wide to reveal the small army of hybrids waiting inside. And there, in the center transport—
My breath caught, my mind flashing back to the battle at the White Tower.
There, in the center transport, stood Frosty, the dark-haired, icy-eyed Seeker who’d nearly burned Elise alive before fleeing the Tower with the old High Cleric.
And her eyes were alight with crimson raknoth fire.
27
Frosty
For a moment that probably felt longer than it actually was, the world stood still—hybrids standing at eerily silent attention, legionnaires watching with tensed trigger fingers, or looking up from tending wounded squad mates, waiting to see what the beasts would do. As if there was any real question.
Raknoth eyes pulsing bright crimson, Frosty tilted her head back and gave a chest-shaking roar.
The hybrids charged, taking up her call and leaping from their hovering transports like bloodthirsty demons. The air filled with the cracks and hums of legionnaires opening fire all around us. Edwards and Mara were hauling me and Johnny back, away from the canyon ridge and toward the rest of our downed transports and the heart of our forces. I was too busy gaping at the hundreds of spent softsteel slugs slamming into a wall of thin air just shy of the hybrids’ charging line.
Frosty.
She stood at the lip of her transport, eyes burning and hands thrust out in a manner that confirmed my fears.
She’d been taken by a raknoth, abilities and all.
We had another Zar’Faenor on our hands.
A hasty twist of my cloaking pendant cut the charging edge of her army off from her protection. The hybrids faltered from the interruption in telepathic command and the sudden onslaught of slugs tearing into their ranks. Then their beastly instincts took hold, and chaos broke loose. They swept into the legionnaire ranks like wild storm of claws and fangs, killing whatever they could reach, dying in swaths only to be replaced by more.
Johnny pressed a sidearm into my hand as we drew up against one of the downed transports and Edwards and Mara turned to open fire. At the back of the transport, Glenbark rose from a pale-faced legionnaire she looked to have just finished dragging to relative safety, rattling a steady stream of commands over the battle channels as she stalked toward us, sidearm in hand.
“What in demon’s depths is that t
hing?” she cried over the sounds of fighting when she reached us.
It wasn’t hard to imagine what thing she was talking about.
“She used to be a Seeker,” I called back. “Disappeared at the White Tower. Now she’s—”
“RAISH!”
The cry was inhumanly loud, and so distorted I wasn’t really sure I’d heard it right. At least not until I saw Frosty tense and leap from her hovering transport straight for us. She arced impossibly high, sailing through the air, her transport bucking and nearly crashing into the canyon behind her from the force of her launch.
“Holy scud,” Johnny said, gaping up at our coming doom.
Glenbark ripped her sword free from its scabbard, grim determination in her eyes. Much as I appreciated her spirit, I dialed my cloak out, preparing to catch Frosty and throw her straight back down the canyon.
Not that that would stop her.
Before I could, though, a dark skimmer came soaring through the air, aimed to plow straight into Frosty’s side. The instant before it struck, though, Frosty threw out a hand, snarling, and the skimmer crunched to a violent halt, the hood crumpling against thin air a few feet from her outstretched hand.
Frosty hovered there in midair, holding herself and the crashed skimmer aloft with telekinesis, favoring her would-be attackers with a deadly, fanged smile.
Franco, I realized.
That was Franco’s skimmer.
I was already running.
“Get out of there, Lise,” I sent desperately, pumping my legs faster. “All of you. Jump. Now.”
They didn’t hesitate. Frosty was yanking the skimmer closer, looking like she intended to rip it open with her bare hands, when the skimmer’s doors kicked open and four lightly armored forms dropped out. I started reaching out to catch them, then cursed when Frosty beat me to it.
Elise, Franco, Phineas, and James all yanked to a halt barely five feet into their fall, caught again in the raknoth’s telekinetic grasp.
“Mara!” I cried.
She didn’t require any more explanation than that.
Frosty jerked as the slugs pelted into her, her skin rippling light green as her battle hide emerged. But it worked. Elise and the others resumed their fall as the raknoth threw up an arm to cover her face and directed a blind roar in Mara’s general direction. I drew to a halt beneath Elise—or as close as I had time to get—and threw my mind out to catch her and the others.
They thudded to the ground on wobbly legs, and I had to fight to keep my own knees from buckling, drained as I already was from earlier. At a horrendous crash from behind, I turned to find the front half of Franco’s skimmer buried through the roof of the transport Mara had been shooting from. Mara was scrambling back to her feet behind the wreckage. Edwards, Johnny, and the rest of First Squad were still firing, mostly on the encroaching hybrids, but some at Frosty, who was falling their way, crimson eyes fixed on Mara.
“Come on!” I shouted to Elise and the others.
All around us, the fighting raged. The hybrids must’ve been young, scattered as they were in a wild killing frenzy, utterly without organization. The legionnaires, reduced largely to small unit tactics, weren’t faring much better, but they seemed to be pulling it together, regrouping. I couldn’t worry about that now. Not with Frosty rampaging up ahead.
On fresh legs, Elise handily outpaced me, drawing and extending her collapsible spear in a fluid motion as the first hybrid caught sight of her. It died a moment later. She rolled clear of a second creature’s charge, drew a dagger, and tossed it out in front of me along with a telepathic, “Catch.”
I did as she said, catching the weapon with telekinesis and burying it straight into her attacker’s eyeball while she pivoted and paid a third hybrid in kind with her spear.
We pushed on, Franco and the others keeping our flanks clear. Several hybrids were converging on the transport ahead with bloodthirsty howls, now, spurred on by Frosty’s approach. The raknoth herself finally hit the ground and sprang straight for Mara, who was perched atop the transport, dropping target after target with short, controlled bursts.
I lashed out reflexively and caught Frosty with a telekinetic blast that sent her skewing off course—and straight into First Squad.
Mara, having already hit the deck, took a split second to shoot me an exasperated look then sprang to her feet and resumed fire. On the other side of the transport, the screaming started.
“Dammit,” I growled, pushing my legs harder.
We darted past the transport’s prow, around the corner, and—
Voom!
An enormous wall of air and telekinetic force crashed into me like an explosive shockwave. I left my feet. Felt Elise do the same beside me. I clipped something—James or Phineas, maybe—and came out spinning. Reached out and managed to slow our combined flight. Hit the ground too hard next to Elise and James with nothing but empty space in my lungs and a sharp burning in my diaphragm.
”Ah, High General,” came a cold, feminine voice from the transport. “I didn’t see you there. What a pleasant surprise.”
I sat up, wincing, gasping for air, and saw that we hadn’t been the only victims. Everyone on that side of the transport was down, legionnaires and hybrids alike. That had been a monster of a blast. And Frosty didn’t even look bothered by the channeling fatigue as she stalked toward Glenbark, her skin almost fully transitioned to scaly green raknoth hide now.
Alpha, she was powerful.
But it didn’t matter. If Zar’Faenor had been killed, she could be too. I started pulling myself to my feet.
Ahead, Glenbark was already up, facing the supercharged raknoth with her sword in hand and grim resolve in her eyes. Frosty darted in with an almost playful air, like it was a rowdy pup she was trying to catch, and not the High General of the Legion. Glenbark moved with precision, avoiding Frosty and landing a rapid succession of cuts across her arms and throat. Or strikes, at least.
She might as well have been trying to cut permacrete.
Recognizing as much, Glenbark changed tactics and went for Frosty’s underjaw with a hard stab. It might have even worked, if Frosty hadn’t caught the blade in one bare, scaly hand. She raised the other, sprouting long claws to strike… then whirled as Johnny and Edwards charged in, lunging for her in tandem.
Johnny, she batted away with an invisible wave of force. Edwards, she caught by the throat, yanking the massive man aloft without discernible effort.
I threw my mind out, panic gripping me, the final moments of my dad’s life playing before my eyes—when Al’Kundesha had snapped his neck just like this. I reached, desperate to tear Frosty’s hand away before I had to watch someone else die.
A falling blur of dark armor and auburn hair struck Frosty before I could, and there was Mara, kicking Frosty’s knees out, riding her to the ground with her wicked combat knife held ready for the kill.
For a second, I had a glimmer of hope it would work—even shifted my focus, preparing to help Mara drive the knife home. But then Frosty flung Edwards bodily against the transport hull, caught Mara’s knife arm, and flipped her to the ground hard enough to break bones. Mara barely flinched. Just rolled over and jammed her knife into Frosty’s knee.
Frosty let out a piercing shriek, slapping Mara’s knife hand away, raising her foot to stomp her into the ground. I drew energy for a telekinetic blast to knock Frosty away. Something ripped into my left shoulder first—a line of fiery pain blossoming to the tune of a guttural growl and Elise crying my name.
Focus broken, I tried to rock away only to feel it dig deeper. A hybrid’s claws, I realized, right before I felt the hand give a jerk and fall away, dead by Elise’s spear.
A pair of sharp snaps and Mara’s raw scream ripped me back to the fight ahead. It was a horrible scream—all her hardsteel discipline evaporating in that moment, burned away by all-consuming pain. I whirled in time to see Mara hit the transport hull and thump limply to the ground. Frosty was turning to Glenbark, a glimmering bl
ade in her hand—the end of Glenbark’s sword, I realized. Frosty had snapped it in two. The raknoth raised the broken blade, poised to strike.
I wrapped my mind around her and yanked. Hard.
The raknoth sailed toward us, covering half the gap in the air before slamming down to the stony dirt and bouncing a few rolls further. I was already charging forward, Elise at my side, with no better plan than to sink my dagger into one of those crimson eyes. Then I felt the tide of energy pouring into Frosty. She sat up, raising a hand our way.
“Split!” I all but screamed at Elise’s mind.
We dove apart just as the air shook with a low boom. By the whipping wind, it felt like we’d just dodged a damn mag train. I rolled to my feet and launched my dagger at Frosty’s face as she rose. She took it carelessly on the forearm and lunged straight for me. I twisted away from her first grab. Let my extended senses take control, ducking and weaving me through a flurry of attacks.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten you, Raish,” Frosty hissed between brutal swipes. I could feel the aura of energy swirling around her, the air growing frigid as she drew more and more energy, her raknoth body seemingly unperturbed by the effort of containing it. “Too stubborn to die…”
That dam of energy broke open, and a wave of telekinetic force fell on me, crushing me to the ground. Frosty crouched down in front of me, shaking her head.
“… Too weak to matter.”
Barely able to lift a finger, and firmly out of options, I threw my mind at hers like a cornered animal.
She was strong—every bit as strong as I expected a raknoth to be. But our footing in the telepathic arena wasn’t nearly so laughable as our physical discrepancies. The pressure on my body weakened, her scaly lips pulling into a snarl as she repelled my attack.
“This is what Al’Braka warns us against?” she sent, and I thought I could hear just a hint of strain in her voice. “Pathetic.”
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