TWENTY
ARAX
The trap is exactly as prepared as our intelligence suggested and exactly as dangerous.
A fortified plaza at the base of the engine’s core. Thirty defenders at minimum, with concealed reserves. Overlapping suppression fields constructed by people who have studied how we fight and built their defenses accordingly. The anchor points pulse with the specific frequency I have learned to recognize as the engine’s suppression architecture—deliberate, targeted, designed for us specifically.
I count four visible anchors. More probable.
“The anchor points are the priority.” I map the sequence: eliminate those, and the suppression fields collapse. Without the suppression, my domain recovers. With full domain capacity, the remainder becomes straightforward. “Collapse those, and their suppression fields fail.”
“Which means fighting through them to reach the anchors.”
“Yes.”
I look at her directly. The blood from her side wound has darkened her clothing. Her face is controlled in a way that means she is managing pain she has decided not to acknowledgeuntil there is time. She is running the same calculations I am and reaching the same conclusions.
We don’t speak the conclusion. We don’t need to.
We move.
The plaza becomeswhat I make it.
I come from the east. My domain, diminished but functional, flares in controlled bursts designed to conserve what I have. I erase wards. I end cultists who position themselves between me and the anchor points. I move through prepared defenses with the efficiency of something that has been ending things long before this Choir existed.
I’m aware of Tanith working the western approach. I do not watch her. Watching would mean divided attention, and she does not need my attention—she needs my trust.
A cultist breaks through toward her. I cover the distance and intercept before he reaches her, because the alternative—watching a blade find her when I could have prevented it—is not a variable I’m capable of accepting. I don’t examine whether she needed the intercept. I act on what I will not permit.
The first anchor falls to her Termination. The suppression field it maintained collapses, and my domain surges into the reclaimed space. The second anchor falls to me. The third to both of us together—her magic stripping the protection, mine ending what remains. We are not coordinating this. We are simply operating in the same direction.
A blade bites into my shoulder. I turn the stagger into a strike and keep moving.
She takes a cut to her thigh. I see her compensate. She keeps moving.
The last defenders are falling. The engine’s core is exposed ahead of us. We are going to reach it.
The commander isdifferent from his rank.
Human, but shaped by decades of annihilation theology into something that reaches toward what I am without ever arriving. His domain—partial, cultivated, a human approximation of a thing that cannot be approximated—radiates genuine threat. He has been waiting for us. Specifically for us.
“Yael witch.” He addresses Tanith with the particular attention of someone who has spent considerable time planning this encounter. “I wondered when you’d arrive.”
He is not addressing me. He is addressing me through her. Testing my reactions. Mapping which lever produces the response he wants.
“We’ve been watching since Niren Hollow. Learning. Adapting.” The smile carries genuine pleasure—a creature who has found his purpose and is exercising it. “You’ve taught us so much about how dragons and witches fight. The Cardinal will be grateful for the intelligence.”
Tanith moves to examine the angles available to us. I move to flank the commander. He tracks both our movements with the professional attention of a tactician.
“Dragon. Your obsession is showing.”
He wants me to respond. He wants me to demonstrate that I’ll prioritize her over the objective. He has prepared for that demonstration and intends to use it against us.
“Tanith.” I cut through whatever he is constructing. “Collapse the core. I’ll handle this.”
“Arax—”
“Now.”
