Wren stabbed his blade into the Overlord’s back. Terrel’s face went slack as the stone fell from his hand, hitting the stairs and bouncing twice before it landed at Kira’s feet.
“Guess not,” Jin told him as Elena dashed forward.
Kira caught her. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
Her hand went to Elena’s neck. No blood. That was good.
“Oh, Nixxy,” Elise said in a lost sounding voice.
Kira barely heard as Elena collapsed, her face wreathed with pain. Kira caught her, holding her up as whimpers left her niece.
“It hurts,” Elena gasped with none of her normal bravado. “It feels like I’m being ripped apart.”
“We need a healer,” Kira told Harlow, trying to hold Elena still as the girl started seizing.
“It won’t help,” Elise said. “He injected her with a marker. Right now, her body is fighting the summons, but it will lose.”
“What does that mean?” Raider demanded.
“She’s being recalled to a Tsavitee home world,” Elise informed him.
Kira shook her head. “No.”
That wasn’t going to happen.
“Blue!” Raider screamed. “Get in here.”
Blue raced down the stairs, having entered sometime during the fight. Kira didn’t question how she had managed that. Blue probably took notice when the Tuann who’d invaded the audience chamber headed inside and decided to follow like the nosy person she’d always been.
Blue knelt beside Elena. “Tell me about this device.”
Her hands were already busy assembling something only she would understand.
“You can’t stop it,” Elise said, her voice anguished.
“Not with that attitude I can’t,” Blue snapped. “Quit wringing your hands like some melodramatic heroine and help me figure out how to fix this.”
Elise moved closer. “You’ll have to find a way to disrupt the isotope that enables the summons.”
“You mean like a signal disrupter? Easy enough.”
Blue pulled several objects from her pocket, disassembling them in a blink before adding them to her creation.
“Jin, do you—“ Blue cut off as the small turtle hair pin that Elena always wore levitated from her head.
A spawn like the lu-ong bracelet Kira still wore, its parts unraveled as Jin extracted a small glowing piece of metal in the shape of a horseshoe and floated it toward Blue.
“Ah, thanks. I needed that for my battery source,” Blue said, flashing a smile as she plucked the object out of the air and inserted it into her device. She added a few more odds and ends before snapping the last wires into place. “That should do it.”
While Blue worked, Eurus gestured at the emperor’s oshota who had taken control of the room. “Escort everyone out. Right now. And I want an investigation into what happened here.”
Blue didn’t look up as the survivors of the battle began filing out of the room, her concentration entirely on her device. The rest of them might as well not have existed for how much she was aware of them.
“Let’s see if this works.” Blue pressed on a button and then waited with bated breath.
A scream ripped from Elena as she writhed, her body convulsing.
“Turn it off,” Raider shouted. “You’re hurting her.”
