The rifle split the air like thunder.
I had a perfect view through my spyglass as Wraithwood’s head snapped back violently. His wooden mask exploded into shards.
The surrounding tatterdemalions jerked abruptly, like puppets on a string… and then slumped to the ground, all at once. The black threads that had connected them to Wraithwood wavered and went limp, as his body crumpled with them.
The sight was deeply surreal. For all that I’d known we had good odds of killing Wraithwood, given the element of surprise, some part of me hadn’t really expected us to pull it off. In the space of that split second, the odds of the battle had swung enormously in our favour.
Suddenly, we could win this fight.
Though it felt as though everything should have paused in that moment, however, time refused to stand still. Lenore calmly chambered another round, just next to me, as another flurry of motion caught my attention down below.
Strahl had surged to his feet with shocking speed. The gorgon who had been watching him was just a hair too slow to respond, distracted by Wraithwood’s sudden death. Strahl threw himself at her without hesitation, using his greater mass to bring them both to the ground. I couldn’t tell, in all of the chaos, whether she had lost her pistol or not—but the serpents that crowned her head lashed out regardless, tearing into Strahl’s exposed skin with vicious desperation.
Strahl ignored the pain entirely. He slammed his forehead into her face with brutal precision. Her body went abruptly boneless; the snakes on her head dropped limp, in turn.
Strahl rolled away from the sergeant, shoving halfway to his knees. The other Cinderwolves were still in disarray, diving for cover to protect themselves from both the sniper and the unseen thing that stalked them from among the nearby tatters—but one of the pyroclasts caught sight of Strahl’s retreating form and turned his focus in that direction.
A hollow boom sounded on the air—followed by an impossibly bright flare. I jerked back from the spyglass with a curse, blinking back spots from my vision. Lenore cringed back next to me, rubbing at her eyes with a hiss of frustration.
I stumbled back to my feet, already heading for the stairs. “We’ll take it from here,” I told Lenore breathlessly. “Just pick off whoever you can.”
I didn’t wait to hear her answer.
I bolted down the stairs two and three at a time, desperate to rejoin the others. Despite Syrene’s early intervention, our plan had mostly gone off as-intended… but I hadn’t had the chance to disable any of the pylons for Miss Hawkins.
If that was the only problem we faced, I told myself, then the odds would still be in our favour. Wraithwood was gone, and the Cinderwolves were currently very distracted with Syrene. A very quiet part of me hoped that Strahl was still his own sort of distraction too, despite the pyroclast’s attempt on his life.
By the time I reached the rest of the crew, my vision had mostly returned. Mr Finch worked at the prototype machine with frenetic anxiety, trying to ignore the pitched sounds of battle nearby. He’d mounted the machine onto a slapdash frame that hovered just a few inches above the ground—a solution for the logistical woes we’d suffered in Old Pelaeia. I knew without having to ask that there was a certain danger inherent in that frame; it had to make use of at least some Seelie aether, which we had long since established did not mix well with its Unseelie counterpart. As neither an engineer nor an aethermancer myself, I simply accepted that the more educated among my crew had already weighed that risk accordingly.
Not far from the machine, Aesir helped Miss Hawkins secure the machine’s focus to her right hand as the two of them spoke in tense, hurried tones. “You don’t need to be an aethermancer,” Miss Hawkins told him, as I scurried breathlessly towards them. “If the worst should happen, all you have to do is listen—”
“What is happening?” Mr Finch hissed at me, as I skidded to a stop beside the machine.
“Slight… change in plans,” I wheezed. “Syrene started the party early.”
An inhuman shriek of fury echoed on the air. A sharp chill shot down my spine, and I watched the blood drain from Mr Finch’s face in reply. Panicked gunfire rattled nearby, followed by another hollow boom.
“Plan’s still mostly the same,” I offered weakly.
“An’ Wraithwood?” Aesir asked tightly. There was a hard, terrified edge to his voice as he said the name.
“Down,” I replied. “Miss Brighton did her job.”
I couldn’t help a glance at Miss Hawkins as I said the words. A series of complex, conflicted emotions crossed her face in swift succession—far too jumbled to pick apart in the moment. But she set her jaw and nodded, without speaking.
“Let’s move,” I said. “We’ll make our run on the machine while Syrene’s got them distracted.” Aesir’s eyes flickered to the longboat, but I shook my head at him. “We’re leaving the longboat here. It’s our getaway plan; we can’t afford for it to take a hit.”
“We need another way past the tatterdemalions, then,” Miss Hawkins told me tightly. “There should be a pylon somewhere close by. If you disable it, I can take control of the tatterdemalions blocking our path.”
I glanced at the open western gate, where a crowd of tatters still stood in eerie silence, staring sightlessly ahead. A horrified grimace crossed my face as I realised where the pylon must be… but I nodded shortly.
“I’ll handle it,” I said. “Be ready to take control, Miss Hawkins. I’d rather not be trampled once those ghosts wake up.”
I strode for the very edge of the crowd, carefully ignoring the sensible voice in my head that insisted this was a terrible idea. Thankfully, I have a lot of practice ignoring that voice—honestly, it barely even registers anymore.
As I got closer to the tightly packed echoes, I found myself assaulted by a unique stench: something like spent aether, dry dirt, and old leather. Another, more familiar scent lurked beneath it all, reminiscent of an open grave.
I came up short behind a silent tatterdemalion, still staring through the gatehouse’s open doors into the plaza beyond. I couldn’t see the echo’s face—which was probably all for the better, given the fist-sized hole in the back of the helmet that it wore. The opening gave me an unnerving peek at the glimmering cloud of aether that roiled inside its makeshift body.
I dropped to my hands and knees, squeezing my way through the gathered forest of blocky legs. It was hard going; the tatters were like solid, immovable statues, rather than human beings. Thankfully, I’m a small man, with plenty of experience wriggling into places that I otherwise shouldn’t.
Eventually, I caught sight of a squat silhouette that didn’t seem to match the surrounding Imperial boots and makeshift legs. I shuffled towards it, trying to ignore the growing ache in my knees that told me I wasn’t nearly as young as I’d once been.
I wasn’t sure just what I had been expecting—but what I found was a lattice of wrought iron, formed into the shape of a tiny pyramid. A faint reddish-black haze wafted from its tip, dissolving slowly into the air. The surrounding smell took on a rotten tinge, and I grimaced against a surge of nausea.
There was a small tube attached to the base of the iron pyramid. Whatever material it was made of, it had been reinforced with metal threads that glimmered in the aether-light around us. Visible rust already stained the tubing, as Miss Hawkins had suspected might be the case.
Another scream sounded from the square ahead of us, reminding me that the party had already started without us. I pried the hand-axe from my belt and hefted it as best I could, cringing back from the place where it came down.
The tubing made a strange cracking noise beneath the axe’s blade. Something hissed softly in the darkness. I snatched the hand-axe back and saw that rust had blossomed along its edge.
The red haze wavered slightly. One of the tatterdemalions next to me twitched oddly… but nothing else seemed to happen.
I gritted my teeth and brought the axe down again—somewhat harder, this time.
The hissing grew in volume and dropped in pitch. Several long seconds later, the pylon ran dry and sputtered out. Soon after, several tatterdemalions lurched forward purposefully. One of them caught the pylon with its booted foot, crunching it soundly into the ground.
All at once, the Imperial tatters came alive again, keen on hurrying through the open gate. I wasn’t in any realistic position to evade them. I scrambled desperately between stony legs, searching for an opening.
A booted foot stopped abruptly, just inches from my face.
Black threads washed across the echoes as I stared up from my place on the ground, catching upon souls like cobwebs. One of those tethers closed around the tatterdemalion above me, winding gently around its neck.
It looked down at me with glimmering, empty eye sockets… then slowly stepped back, in order to allow me up to my feet.
I let out a long breath and stood back up. The sea of marching tatters folded apart with a strange sort of grace, as Hawkins and the others hurried towards me. Though it was a relief to see the tatters obeying her will, I also couldn’t help but find it unnerving.
Miss Hawkins stood next to the prototype machine, holding out her hand. A tapestry of midnight dangled from her fingers; a few of the bright blue veins in her face had been dyed black.
“Quickly, please,” Hawkins rasped, as I came closer. “I don’t know how long I can control this many echoes.”
I nodded sharply. “Let’s aim for the machine, and then get out of here,” I said. “No stopovers, nothing fancy.” I glanced towards Aesir. “You can go back and stay with the longboat, if you want.”
Aesir didn’t respond to me directly. Instead, he pulled his axe-headed blunderbuster and worked the pump with a loud clack-clack.
The echoes turned as one, eerily in time, as they marched their way through the gate and into the utter chaos of the plaza beyond. We followed in their wake, trying to keep our distance as much as possible.
Another loud boom sounded as our cadre of dead soldiers spilled out into the open. One of the remaining buildings there had caught ablaze; the acrid stink of aether-flame lingered on the air. The Cinderwolves had pulled back to use one of the old barricades as cover from sniper fire, even as their remaining pyroclasts burned through screaming tatterdemalions, turning them to slag. I realised belatedly that they were trying to flush out Syrene.
The larger echo machine thrust up through the clotted gatherings of tatters and battlefield refuse like an ominous black sword. Midnight threads still twisted aimlessly around it, without a will to guide them.
A few of the tatters that Miss Hawkins had gathered remained in a protective ring around us. The rest of them headed directly for that machine.
“The echoes are loose!” one of the Cinderwolves yelled. “What is going on?”
“Check the pylons!” another one called back. “One of them must have—” They cut themselves off mid-sentence. “Contact! It’s the Legionnaire from Morgause! She’s here!”
It can be hurtful how often I’m overlooked. Despite my best efforts to cause trouble, the only person anyone seemed interested in killing was Miss Hawkins. Several rifles turned in the direction of our party, while one particular pyroclast levelled their arm at the tatterdemalions that currently shielded us.
A white-hot ball of aether shot for the echoes in front of us. Stone melted. Bones crackled and splintered. Even with the rest of the tatters as cover, I felt the sudden, intense heat of the resulting explosion. Chips of smoking debris rained down upon us.
Suddenly, I wasn’t nearly as certain of our plan. I wondered just how long our troop of tatterdemalions would last against those pyroclasts. Surely, it wouldn’t be long enough to destroy the machine as completely as we required them to do.
I turned for the prototype machine, where Mr Finch now worked furiously, gauging aether pressure and adjusting knobs. “Mr Finch!” I yelled at him, over the din. “I need a canister of Unseelie aether!”
Under any other circumstances, I am certain that my chief engineer would have had some very pointed questions for me about what I intended to do with said canister. At the moment, however, pure adrenaline convinced him to grab a canister and shove it at me blindly.
I stumbled over to a half-skeletonised tatterdemalion—and shoved the canister into its exposed rib cage. The dirt that made up the rest of its torso gave an uncomfortable-sounding squelch.
“Hawkins!” I called out. “Send this one on a scenic route towards that pyroclast! Keep it well away from us!”
The tatterdemalion looked down at me, and gave a jerky nod.
The rest of the Cinderwolves had finally noted our presence, even with the tatters as cover. Bullets caught on tatters and sprayed the dirt beside me as a few of the mercenaries diverted their efforts towards the group of people responsible for their newest threat.
We pulled back for one of the other barricades, as a single tatterdemalion lurched for the pyroclast that had taken an interest in us. Two other Cinderwolves had joined him behind a crumbling wall in order to take shots at us. The pyroclast raised his hand to let loose a gout of seething Seelie flame.
I looked away, just before the spray of aetheric fire lanced out to melt against the echo’s body.
The resulting explosion was… bizarre. At first, there was a violent, soundless blast—followed by a screeching crunch. Air whipped past me, as though being sucked into a void.
Just as I felt myself starting to lean forward, the pull reversed itself abruptly. A roiling wall of dust and aetheric steam billowed out from where the tatterdemalion had been, rocking me back onto my heels.
Stranger by far, though, was the sensation of reality warping around me—as though something had snagged on the weft of the world itself. I wobbled off balance, stifling a fresh wave of nausea at the feeling. A bleak, hollow emptiness settled into my bones: the sort I’d only experienced on my most despairing days, when I loathed myself too much to look in the mirror.
I don’t remember how long I spent on the ground, after that. I do remember the muted world that followed, as I tried to blink the dust from my eyes. I pushed myself up with great effort, taking in the aftermath.
The reaction had been somewhat more intense than I might have expected. What remained of the pyroclast and the other two Cinderwolves was something best not contemplated, though our own barricade had absorbed the worst of the destruction. I was briefly flabbergasted to see that Mr Finch had thrown himself over the prototype device, as though to shield it with his body—a sacrifice which had been thankfully unnecessary. Though Aesir had been knocked flat alongside me, he was already struggling back up to his feet.
Miss Hawkins was still standing—but there was an odd sway in her posture that hadn’t been there before, as she struggled to maintain her concentration. The dark strands that extended from her fingers now flickered dangerously, as the echoes that were attached to them made odd, restless movements.
Movement caught my eye, somewhere within the dust we had kicked up. I heard the grating sound of sluggish footfalls. Shadows stumbled towards us… and I realised that many more of the once-dormant tatterdemalions had been disturbed from their trance.
A sharp surge of panic broke me out of my stupor. “We must have blown out another pylon!” I called back. “The other echoes are waking up—”
Something reached out from the haze to close its fingers around my arm. Old bone and bleached leaves wound around me—then yanked me sharply off my feet.
A strangled, high-pitched noise escaped me, as the echo dragged me into a milling throng of half-melted tatters. Miss Hawkins turned sharply towards me; her eyes widened, and her hand darted out. Black strands whipped for the tatter that had taken me… but though they caught upon it, the aether-ghost refused to let me go.
A strange, sickening buzz started up in my ears as that midnight strand tightened on the echo, wilfully insistent. Finally, something shifted, and the tatter let me go—just in time for another tatterdemalion to grab hold of me.
I soon lost sight of the rest of my crew, blocked in by erratic echoes. Dead hands settled upon me in a dangerous tug-of-war; some seemed intent on shoving me to safety, while others hoped to stomp on my head.
Perhaps Miss Hawkins had lost whatever game was afoot—because soon, even the echoes that had been trying to help me turned hostile. I hit the ground, now assaulted on every side by heavy boots and stumbling ghosts.
I struggled up to my knees and covered my head with my arms, desperately searching for an exit. Something heavy stepped on my leg. Another tatter kicked at me blindly, catching me in the ribs. The breath went out of me all at once, and I soon found I had no choice but to curl up into a protective ball as I wheezed for air.
I rolled pathetically along the ground, clutching at my midsection. The machine rose up before me; from my place on the ground, I could see a tangled web of tubing attached to its base, where the remaining pylons still drew power. I turned to crawl desperately towards the device, hoping that it might still have some calming effect on the echoes. As I moved, something crunched uncomfortably beneath my hand, jabbing into my palm.
I shifted aside… and saw the shattered, bloody remains of Wraithwood’s wooden mask.
Just the mask, I realised dimly. There was no body.
One of the tatters drove a heavy boot into my ribs with enough force to knock me over onto my back. The boot remained on my chest, holding me down. The echo tilted its head, staring down at me with a ruined face of dirt and bone. A black thread glistened softly around its neck.
“Goblins truly are the worst vermin,” the tatter said. Its voice was unfamiliar… but its accent undoubtedly belonged to Wraithwood. “How are you still alive?”
My ribs throbbed with an awful stabbing pain that suggested one of them had broken. I’d yet to catch my breath. But somehow, I dredged up a single ounce of oxygen in order to squeak out my incredulous reply: “She… shot you! In the head!”
As last words go, those would have been pretty underwhelming. Honestly, I have no reasonable excuse. I normally expect much better of myself when it comes to witty banter.
Thankfully, I was given time to adjust my rhetoric as something slammed into the tatterdemalion, tackling it to the ground.
The weight lifted from my chest. Air rushed painfully back into my lungs. Tears stung at my eyes, as I gritted my teeth with each new breath.
My initial instincts suggested that Aesir, Hawkins, or one of her controlled echoes had come to my rescue. But I heard Aesir calling out for me in the distance, too far away to be helpful.
I forced myself onto my knees, and saw instead my bosun—dirty, bloody, and exhausted, with his hands still manacled—struggling back up to his feet.
The tatterdemalion clattered heavily upright. I saw now that there was a jerky quality to its movements, and I began to suspect that Wraithwood had not, in fact, escaped his death unscathed.
“Really, Arcturus?” the echo hissed. It waved its hand in my direction, disgusted.
“Leave him out of this,” Strahl wheezed. He shifted his body into a pathetic attempt at a fighting stance, despite the manacles that still bound his hands behind him.
“He can’t leave himself out of it!” the echo snapped back.
“He’s… not wrong,” I admitted dazedly. I inched myself behind Strahl, shamelessly placing him between myself and the echo that obviously wanted to kill me. The nauseous hum of Wraithwood’s stolen machine vibrated at my back. Tatters pressed in on us in a loose circle, staring us down.
“Captain,” Strahl told me calmly. “Please. Respectfully. For the love of the Benefactor… shut up.”
Somewhere deep down, I managed to marvel at the fact that he was still calling me ‘Captain’. I knew it was a good sign. It meant that the man in front of me was still more Strahl than he was Prince Arcturus.
“Sorry,” I slurred back. “Can’t. Doesn’t work. The Benefactor doesn’t love me that much.”
Far behind us, on the other side of the machine, the staccato gunfire slowly petered out. At first, I worried that the Cinderwolves had bested Syrene. But one of their muffled voices soon called out: “I’ve lost it! Where did that thing go?”
Wraithwood’s tatterdemalion fixed its empty eye sockets upon Strahl. “What are you even struggling against, Arcturus?” it asked, as the circle of tatters inched towards us. “Let us suppose, just for a moment: You fight off an entire city of ghosts with your bare hands. You kill what’s left of me. What then? The Unseelie are coming. And this time, there won’t be a unified Avalon here to stop them.”
It wasn’t the sort of speech I would have expected to resonate with the man I’d come to know. I knew from watching Strahl’s face, though, that it had affected him more than he wanted it to do. He hesitated visibly, struggling with the concept.
I stared up at him. “What?” I managed. “You’re not swallowing this slop, are you?”
Strahl turned his head to shoot me a pained look. “I would love an alternative!” he snarled. “He’s not wrong; the Unseelie are coming. Someone has to stop them.”
I coughed on an incredulous laugh, wincing at my broken rib. “Strahl,” I said. “Everyone is going to stop them. You really think Avalon is just going to roll over and die because there’s no emperor to crack the whip? You think we’re all so stupid we have to be forced to save ourselves?” I shook my head. “This isn’t about whether we fight. It’s about a bunch of terrified old men who can’t bring themselves to let someone else call the shots.”
Strahl stared at me as though I’d hit him upside the head. A strange light of understanding dawned on his face—as though I’d just spouted pure philosophy instead of basic common sense.
“Look at me, boy,” the tatterdemalion snarled. “I am on my last nerve with you. You’re valuable—but you’re not irreplaceable. You already know that.”
Strahl’s manacles gave a soft click, as I finally finished picking their lock.
“So replace me,” Strahl said simply. He straightened wearily. “I know you can. But the answer is still no, Gideon. It will always be no.” He narrowed his eyes at the echo. “And I don’t intend to fight the entire city. I know you’re near. All I need to do is survive long enough to get my hands on you.”
Maybe it was the direct threat. Maybe it was just the absolute conviction in Strahl’s voice as he responded. Either way, the conversation ended abruptly.
Several of the closest tatters leapt for us—eerily unified, if still ungainly. I didn’t react as quickly as I should have done. Somehow, my brain remained just a second behind, still waiting for Wraithwood’s reply.
Strahl, on the other hand, had no such trouble. He whirled to snatch my hand-axe from me. I hadn’t even realised he had spotted it—but then, Strahl had always been the sort of man to track all of the weapons in his general vicinity. The blade sank halfway into the first echo’s neck before catching there. Strahl slammed his heel into the tatter’s chest with a solid kick, tearing the axe head free and shoving the aether-ghost into the way of another advancing echo.
Two more echoes piled onto him in the same breath, doing their best to bear him down. Strahl smashed his elbow into one exposed skull, cracking its weathered surface. Aether streamed like steam from the fissures—but the tatter barely seemed to notice.
I stumbled back, frantically searching for a way to assist. I was barely on my feet, given my broken rib, and Strahl had taken my last weapon. My eyes fell upon the machine—and for a moment, I seriously considered throwing caution to the wind and blindly smashing at its dials, just to see what happened. Yes, it was volatile, and highly likely to take us with it if I did manage to destabilise something… but then, what other options did we have?
Once again, I had managed to forget the last passenger we’d brought with us on the longboat.
A sudden surge of fury whited out my thoughts, as pale roots burst their way free of the debris beneath our feet, grasping at the echoes that had tackled Strahl. Syrene’s bloody figure rose from the cracked rubble of the plaza—eight feet of relentless nature, all focussed on the creatures that had dared to threaten her ward. Those writhing roots pulled one tatter entirely apart in a shower of dirt and scrap. Her stony arm disembowelled the other, nearly bisecting it; aether poured from its ruined form in a disturbing facsimile of blood, before the echo began to crumple.
Our onetime navigator had become a sight straight out of the Coalition’s worst nightmares. Her figure was hunched and primal, wreathed in ashen flowers and vines of faded grey ivy that reminded me of rangy muscle. The arm she’d built from stone was now tipped with claws of rusty scrap metal. Dark red blood spattered her body, stark against the aether-bleached plants that now clothed her.
Echoes skittered back quickly, offering the faerie a wide, respectful distance as Wraithwood reassessed the situation. The shattered, ghastly remains of the echoes in front of us shivered, weakly attempting to reassemble themselves as roots continued to strangle them.
Strahl staggered back to his feet. Fresh blood trickled down his face as he stared past Syrene at the echoes beyond.
“Greetings to the Envoy,” another tatterdemalion said solemnly. “I thought I’d recognised your handiwork. It seems Arcturus was exaggerating when he spoke of your demise.”
A deep roiling anger vibrated on the air, sharp enough to steal my breath. Syrene drew herself up to her full height with a low, ominous creak. “Traitor,” she seethed. “We will find you, Gideon Frey, and send you to explain your shameful tale to Death Victorious.”
“Traitor?” another tatter asked softly. “No. I still serve the last true emperor.”
The device’s dark spire hissed abruptly with steam. Machinery clicked and whirred. Incandescent blue aether dribbled free of its containment, slowly coalescing into the shape of a shade.
All of the tatters surrounding us turned their heads as one to gaze at the figure, following some unspoken instinct. The last remnants of my old Imperial Oath twinged like an old wound, as a sickening feeling travelled down my spine.
Every other shade we’d met had blurry, indistinct features—but this one kept sharpening, like a figure in a spyglass slowly coming into focus. The image resolved into a tall man in a stiff Imperial uniform. A filigreed breastplate covered his chest, festooned with far too many medals. I recognised Strahl’s cold eyes and hard jawline in the aether-ghost before me—but with my bosun standing so close, available for direct comparison, it was strangely easy to see the insecurity in this echo. The simple crown of laurels at his brow clashed with his overly ornate armour, which seemed like a failed attempt to hide the slight portliness he’d gained with age.
I only realised in that moment that I had never seen the emperor of Avalon in person before. I’d seen his proud portrait depicted in posters, stamped on coins, and artistically rendered in books. All of those images had made him seem mythical and otherworldly—as strange and untouchable as the Tuath Dé themselves. But the man in front of me was just… a very tired human being, dressed up in overly expensive attire.
“Strahl,” I said in a quiet voice. “Please tell me that ghost isn’t who I think it is.”
Strahl took in the sight with a bleak expression. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, Captain,” he replied.
Syrene froze in place. Even the bloody leaves upon her head stilled. “We… greet the emperor of Avalon’s Imperium,” she whispered. Her tall, aether-bleached form knelt before the wavering spectral figure.
“Our compact remains intact, Envoy,” the shade spoke. The voice that emanated from it was harsh and low, accented with crisp Imperial tones. “I hereby rescind all of my previous orders to you. I no longer require you to protect Prince Arcturus Lohengrin.”
Syrene hesitated visibly, staring at the echo.
Alarm flashed through my body, swift and hot. “This is ridiculous,” I rasped. “We all know that’s Wraithwood. He’s just using the emperor’s shade as a puppet.”
“Faeries only care about technicalities,” Strahl said quietly. “Wraithwood came to Galtir for more than just an army. If we let him leave here with my father’s echo, he’ll take command of Tiirdan.” He looked down at Syrene—only an inch or two shorter than him, now that she had knelt. “But not you, Syrene. You’ve spent twenty years now standing next to me. This isn’t how that ends.”
Syrene remained where she was, uncomfortably silent. The reaction didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
The tatterdemalions surrounding us now crept in closer, growing more confident as Syrene failed to respond to the threat they represented. We’d already been laughably outnumbered. Without Syrene’s help, we were also ridiculously outmatched, all over again.
I took an involuntary step backwards, briefly forgetting the machine just behind me. My heel tangled in the mess of tubing connected to it, and I stumbled painfully, clutching at my ribs as I rebalanced myself.
A wild, desperate idea floated into my mind as I stared down at that tubing. The odds were unreasonably stacked against us. At least, I reasoned dimly, I couldn’t possibly make things any worse.
“Strahl,” I said calmly. “Give me the axe.”
Strahl flipped the axe in his hand, offering it out to me without so much as a single backward glance.
The emperor’s echo flashed with borrowed fury. “Kill the prince,” it ordered Syrene, “and everyone else who opposes us.”