“This bubble’s not going to last long,” snarled Scorio. “The second you run out of mana—”
But then his own Heart guttered and died. The loss of his strength felt like a curse, weakness stealing through him, his scales, talons, his monstrous form melting away in an instant.
Agon grinned. “What was that? Louder for the people in the back, if you will.”
A black tail made up of ebon vertebrae rose into view, its end tipped with a great triangular blade. It whipped through the air so that its side smacked against Agon’s head, knocking the kid sprawling.
The gravity sphere dissipated.
The Nightmare Lady hopped up onto the rooftop, lethal and poised, her tail undulating behind her.
“Damn.” Scorio picked himself up. “You almost killed the guy.”
The Nightmare Lady sneered. “If I wanted him dead he’d be in two pieces right now. Now get over here. We have to go.”
Agon lay bonelessly across the tiles. If he moved wrong he’d roll right off the roof. “We can’t leave him here.”
The Nightmare Lady hissed. “Since when did I become a mode of public transportation?”
Scorio hauled Agon up and over one shoulder then stepped to the edge of the roof. The Nightmare Lady’s tail wound around his chest, segmented and hard-edged.
“You’ll have to drop first. I can’t lift you both.”
Far, far below, Javok lay in his human form. He was smothered in glowing butterflies who rhythmically fanned their wings, Leonis crouched by his side, fingers to the brutish man’s throat. There was no sign of Ymissa or the stone-body man.
He took a deep breath and stepped out into the void.
The Nightmare Lady’s tail squeezed about him, the knobs of bone pressing cruelly into his flesh, but his fall was immediately arrested. For a second he and Agon hung there, then the Nightmare Lady dropped to the third floor balcony, and in fits and starts they descended, broken tiles and twisted metal marking their passage.
When his boots touched the cobblestones Scorio laid Agon out beside Javok and then fetched his miniaturized bridge. “The others?”
“Decided attacking us was a bad idea,” said Jova primly. “Took you long enough.”
“Yeah, well, somebody hogged up all the mana.” Better than admitting he couldn’t burn his Heart for very long, regardless.
“We need to get off the streets.” Leonis rose to his feet, Nezzar disappearing. “These may not be the toughest Great Souls in our class, but sooner or later we’ll run into some heavy hitters.”
Zala gestured and her butterflies all rose into the air to disintegrate into thousands of glowing specks. “Where are we going? You said something about a group called Manticore?”
“Ward 11,” said Scorio. “Where my friends have their business, The Flame. They can put us in touch with Manticore, who’ll get us out of Bastion.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Lianshi, binding her raven black hair back. “But we’d best hurry.”
Scorio looked around the triangular courtyard. Nothing but overturned chairs and abandoned tables. The windows were shuttered, and the alleys that ran off it were empty.
But he could hear coordinated shouts drawing closer.
More Great Souls.
“Right. I think Ward 11 is this way. You guys ready to run?”
Jova smirked. “I don’t recall you ever running faster than me.”
“I’ve learned a few tricks since our last race. See if you can keep up.”
Naomi scowled and stalked past them both. “If you two are done flirting?”
“What?” protested Scorio.
“We weren’t—” began Jova.
“Guys?” Leonis backed away from the alley that led to the Academy. “I think that’s Bronwen approaching.”
“Damn it,” hissed Jova. “Run.”
Chapter 2
They raced across the triangular courtyard. Scorio set to drawing wisps of mana into his Heart, wishing he were more adept at shepherding the Copper. Naomi led the way, leaping over a fallen chair, around a potted tree, and into the far alley.
It was so narrow Scorio’s shoulders brushed each wall. Shuttered windows and closed doorways flashed by. The sun-wire’s burning radiance barely reached them.
“Who’s Bronwen?” shouted Scorio.
“She’d have made the top ranks if she’d wanted to,” Lianshi shouted back, but there wasn’t time for more.
They emerged into a broad avenue. A large patrol of House Hydra guards marched down the center, pikes over their shoulders. They startled, began to fall into a combat formation but checked themselves at the sight of their Academy robes.
Naomi ignored them, tearing off to the left.
“Why didn’t she want to?” Scorio yelled to Lianshi.
It was Leonis who answered, powering along behind them. “Because she turns into a mindless killer when she goes all out.”
Scorio looked back over his shoulder. No sign of pursuit. “That bad?”
Leonis grimaced. “Worse.”
Naomi turned into a side street and raced up a flight of heavily eroded stone steps.
“No!” Scorio skidded to a stop. “Ward 11! This way.”
Naomi turned back to him. “It’s this way, you idiot!”
Scorio looked around, nonplussed, then realized he was arguing with a local. “Right, sorry!”
A handsome young woman with terracotta-colored skin stepped into view at the top of the steps, her black hair twisted up into a pile above her head, strands hanging down about her face. She’d discarded her outer Academy robe so that she wore only a black wrap over her chest.
“Found you.”
Their whole group froze, Naomi drawing back from the topmost step.
“Aisha,” hissed Lianshi. “Chains.”
Leonis’s Heart incandesced and Nezzar appeared in his fist. “Which means Normal’s around here somewhere.”
“Normal?” Even Scorio had heard of her. “Damn it.”
Aisha showed them her palms from which twin chains extruded themselves, links gleaming, each ending in an inch-wide sphere.
Naomi rose into her Nightmare Lady form and cracked her tail like a whip. “Don’t make me cut your pretty chains apart, Aisha. Get.”
Aisha smirked. “Come try, ugly.”
“Behind us,” said Juniper, tone terse, and Scorio glanced back to see two pale-skinned people approaching. One was a short, waif-like guy, his mousey brown hair rakishly cut, eyes narrowed as he inhaled on a rolled-up cheroot. The other was his complete opposite, a powerfully athletic woman almost six feet tall, her rich burgundy hair bound into a thick ponytail that flowed down her back, her nose prominent, her eyes a porcelain blue.
“Which way?” asked Leonis.
A second woman stepped up beside Aisha. Not Normal, thank the gods, but a girl Scorio knew from his history class, skin like wheat and lips a gentle pink, pert-nosed and lightly freckled, hair like liquid gold, and at whom he’d stolen countless covert glances over the semester. Gwyneth, whose telekinesis power would have put her safely into the upper half of their class if she hadn’t run into Kuragin in the first round of the tournament.
“Which way?” asked Gwyneth with obvious amusement. “Back to the Academy.”
“Bronwen and Smoke coming up behind us,” said Zala, voice tight with alarm.
Scorio had been filling his Heart to bursting all this while, and now he smiled. “Looks like it’s time for a scrap. Go!”
And he burst down the steps to race at the approaching pair. Smoke squinted at him, drew his cheroot away, and clenched his free fist as if breaking a tiny glass ornament within it.
The air before Scorio shattered like a dropped mirror. Both Great Souls fractured into disparate shards. It had to be an illusion. Scorio ran through the kaleidoscopic space, Igniting his Heart and rising into his scaled form as he went.
But the air before him remained shattered, disjointed; it felt like gazing at the world through a fragmented prism, both foes scattered and flitting from one shard to another. Scorio snarled. He’d ignore what he saw, continue running straight, barrel right into them—and then a massive force like an invisible hand plucked him off the cobblestones and hurled him bodily across the street.