Soren banged his fist against the door as he peered through the thick glass window there. “Let me out!”
He could see people moving around in the warehouse, but he couldn’t see where the woman had gone. He banged his fist against the metal door a few more times before giving up, flexing his fingers against the bruised feeling left behind.
Soren stumbled back, turning around to get eyes on the chamber he was in. Holes were cut into the metal siding high up near the curved ceiling, and there was a drain set in the center, heavily stained around the edges. Precisely cut, trapezoid pieces of clarion crystal surrounded a larger circular one in the center of the ceiling.
The clarion crystal was an opaque gray that looked wrong. Itfeltwrong, scratching at a sense Soren carried but which he’d spent nearly his entire life ignoring. But his head still spun, and it was impossible to ward off the heaviness blossoming behind his ribcage.
He tore his gaze away from the clarion crystal, staring at what looked like a viewing window above him. Through the thick glass, he could just make out the woman’s face from her spot on a high platform overlooking the chamber. With the door shut, the rancid smell of old blood and body fluids hit his nose.
“Shit,” Soren whispered, dragging one hand through his hair, wincing at the way his skull throbbed from the touch.
A sharpclickechoed through the chamber, and then a staticky voice came through a speaker positioned above the viewing window. “Any last words, warden?”
“Fuck you!” Soren yelled, not sure if they could hear him.
A heavy thrum, like an engine, filled the air, vibrating through the ground and up his feet. Soren froze, gaze darting about as he tried to figure out what was happening. Then a hissing sound reached his ears, and he watched as sickening green gas poured into the chamber from the holes in the ceiling. The first whiff of the stinging, noxious scent made Soren drop lower to the floor where the air was cleaner, though it wouldn’t be for much longer.
The changes the alchemists at the Warden’s Island put every tithe through meant wardens could survive most poisons and even revenant attacks. But a sustained poisoning in an enclosed chamber like this would be enough to kill a warden given enough time.
Since he was locked in the damn thing, that woman would have all the time in the world to run her experiment.
No, he thought to himself, breathing in air that was steadily growing more poisonous by the second.I’m not dying here.
Whatever this death-defying machine was meant to do—and he had a horrifying idea what that was—Soren refused to be a victim. He refused to die in the poison fields like this and leave Vanya and Raiah wondering why he’d never returned.
Soren crawled toward the door, pressing his fingers against the seam in the metal, trying to see if air came through. But the seal was too tight, and he’d been forced to leave all his weapons behind.
That heat in his chest became a pressure that was nearly unbearable. Soren’s breath came quicker than he could afford. The poisonous gas, heavier than air, drifted closer to the ground, already at head height in his kneeling position. Soren breathed it in, tasting it on his tongue, in the back of his throat. He drew it into his lungs because he had no choice—this was all he had to breathe.
He knew this poison, knew how it would numb his nerves until his lungs no longer worked and he suffocated for want of air. He could survive it if he got out.
He just needed to get out.
Panic cut through his ribs like how his poison sword sliced through rotting flesh. Somethingbrokedeep inside, the sound echoing in his middle ear like a ringing that would never go away. Soren became unmoored, drifting, the catalyst for a power he’d so carefully denied himself over the years at the behest of a star god.
The heat banked behind his ribs erupted like the volcano that had blown on the Tovan Isles some generations back. It exploded outward like a star gone nova, crashing against the chamber walls. Distantly, Soren heard crystal and glass shatter, metal squealing in the way it did when it twisted so painfully out of shape before shattering.
Starfire—uncontrolled, uncontained—slammed through the death-defying machine like a hungry beast. Through the crackling burn of pure aether, Soren heard the distant sound of screams that didn’t last very long.
The chamber exploding set off a cascade effect in the machinery around him, though Soren was only vaguely aware of the destruction happening. He felt as if he were underwater, drowning in power he didn’t know how to control and had no frame of reference for.
He might have, though, in some other life, some other time.
Soren collapsed to the ground, breathing in heated, untainted air. He coughed to clear his lungs, head and body aching. Pieces of the warehouse roof came down around him as starfire punched through the building. He blinked spots out of his vision, gritted his teeth against the pain, and forced himself to crawl out of the grave they’d attempted to put him in.
Somehow, Soren got his feet underneath him. Somehow, he stumbled his way out of a conflagration that was hot enough to melt metal but which he barely felt at all. He made it out of the warehouse in time to not die in its collapse.
Around him, everything had gone up in white-gold flames, starfire licking at the night all around him. The clatter of bullets popping in their magazines as starfire overtook the automatons was background noise. The Daijalans and Solarians who manned the warehouse couldn’t outrun starfire and burned to ash wherever they were. The debt slaves were just as unlucky, and later, Soren would feel guilty for that, but he didn’t have control over starfire the way Vanya did.
Presently, he was just trying not to immolate himself.
The world was too bright, making it difficult to see as he stumbled through starfire to where he’d been forcibly divested of his gear. He couldn’t find his pistols, but he found his poison sword still where he’d left it, sticking in the dirt.
Soren collapsed to his knees, dizzy and weak-limbed. He wrapped one hand around the hilt of the sword, the other over the pommel, and leaned forward to rest his forehead against his knuckles. He closed his eyes, breathing shallowly, feeling as if he were being spun into nothing.
On your feet, warden.
The voice pierced through the roar of the starfire, loud enough that it startled him out of his daze. Soren jerked his head up, blinking at the flickering white-gold flames eating through the structures and fence all around him.
