He knifed up and let loose hisSsignakht, mouth pursing as he perceived distinct silhouettes skulking near his hut.
His enhanced psionic vision locked onto the interlopers.
They wore high-spec armor and carried heavy-yield rail rifles, but it was the unique symbols on their flanks that made his blood run cold.
Fokkin Rhixon sentinels, trespassing on his home.
Idan bared his teeth and muttered in Sacran.
It was no curse; it was a release of spectral power that unleashed the wards he placed around his farm months ago.
The air around the first wave of Rhixon hounds pulsed with a potent frequency.
As the lead scouts stepped over the invisible threshold of the south pasture, the space encircling them warped.
Ethereal, shimmering gold bands of light, ancient Sacran hexes woven into the fence line, snapped into sight.
One soldier reached out, mesmerized, his hand dissolving into glowing particles before he could even register the pain.
The jinxes acted like a localized event horizon; the intruders got sucked into the luminous geometry, their physical forms stretched and disintegrating into fine, golden ash that the wind swept away as if they had never been.
A spray of pulse-fire erupted near the lower creek.
Idan’s sight shifted to find Lago.
His shepherd was in the open, trying to lead the sheep herd away from the treeline as plasma bolts scorched the grass close to his boots.
‘Futa!’ Idan snarled, the curse tearing from his throat as he glimmered from the cliff face.
Space folded around him in an aetheric crystalline fracture, as he reappeared on the porch of his hut in a burst of static.
In hisSsignakhtvision, the world turned into a map of glowing ley lines.
With a wave of his hands, more radiant gold bands of the hexes surged upward.
With a flick of his wrist, they barreled toward the men hedging Lago in a spiral of divine lightning.
The guards fired with blind abandon, their rounds passing through the luminescence, but still the bands kept coming.
As the aureate light touched their armor, the mercenaries unraveled.
Their atoms got stripped of their bonds, their high-tech gear and reinforced plating turning to glittering dust against the relentless, shimmering hunger of his wards.
Within seconds, the farm was silent again.
The only trace of the hit squad remaining was the scorched patches of grass and the fading pulse of a savage storm that retreated into his palms.
The clock in the central tent read nine p.m.
Sheba stepped from the shower, steam clinging to her skin as she reached for clean clothes.
As she dressed, readying herself for bed after her late shift, she glanced outside.
Smiling as laughter rose from the mess and soft music poured from a neighboring dwelling as the compound settled into its evening rhythm.
With no warning, a blast split the air.
Not from thunder nor an engine misfire.
