shriek cuts the night open—sharp, organic, too high to be natural. Selene's ears twitch beneath her hood at the sound. Against the moonlit sky, it looms: a Wyvern, or what’s left of one. The thing is monstrous in silhouette, bone and sinew lashed together by old magic. Its wings—half-skeletal, half-leather—beat in slow, thunderous rhythm, rattling the platform with every downward sweep. Each flap pulses through her chest like a hammer. The noise that follows isn’t a roar. It’s a dirge. Hollow. Ragged. Wrong.
She plants both palms against the mana stone. Cool. Slick with condensation. Her fingers tremble—but only for a breath. She reins them in with force of will, grinding her teeth to hide the strain. Aether trickles down from her core in slow, deliberate pulses, met with resistance. The stone throbs like muscle—alive, but not hers.
“That’s—” Her voice catches. She swallows it down, throat tight. “Lyra. How much longer?”
It comes out sharper than she means. Not anger—pressure.
Lyra doesn’t look up. Her fingers blaze with motion, tracing out the final rune in searing lines of light. “I’d be finished already if someone hadn’t given the Automatons creative liberties,” she hisses. The words land like knife-edges—cold and precise.
Selene’s eyes flick to Garik. Just for a moment. Just long enough to catch the way his shoulders lock tight, the theatrical flare of his hands.
“We’re seconds from death and you're lecturing me on aesthetics?” Garik snaps, voice grinding like stone dragged across metal.
Selene shifts her gaze. Movement—exact, synchronized—catches the edge of her vision. Four Automatons step forward in unison. They glide more than walk. Too smooth. Too practiced. It sets her nerves on edge.
Two of them begin stacking crates and sandbags. The pattern they form is complex, symmetrical—almost elegant. Decorative, at a glance. But beneath that—yes. The angles are sound. The weight distributed with unsettling precision. She doesn’t like how well it holds.
The other two whir and split apart with a hiss of reshaping limbs. Their arms fold inward. Out slide mounted Gatling cannons—large, rune-bound, already whining with a low charge hum. The pressure in the air thickens. Magic builds in the joints. Aether arcs down each barrel like lightning drawn to a fuse.
Then the guns unleash.
Selene flinches. Not from fear. Reflex. The recoil rattles through the platform. Comet-bright bolts rip into the night sky, streaking upward in rapid succession. Magic—hot, focused, and lethal.
The Wyvern reels mid-air. Its bones shift with awful grace, too fluid for something dead. Its eye sockets blaze, twin cinders boring down on them with baleful hunger. The screech it gives sounds like wet iron dragged across broken glass.
Garik's face twists in open frustration. “For the love of the hammer—Lyra!”
Selene draws in a breath. Slow. Steady. She locks her focus, watching Lyra’s hands blur faster now. The final rune flashes white-gold. Complete.
The stone answers. A heavy thrum rises beneath her palms—deep enough to vibrate the bones of her wrists. The turret groans as power surges through it, raw and reckless. Gears shriek in protest. Bolts clatter. The entire frame shudders, and still—it holds.
Barely.
Then comes the roar.
A real one. Not mechanical. Not arcane.
The Wyvern dives.
Its wings rip the wind to pieces. It comes fast—headlong, no hesitation. Selene’s aether stirs unbidden, sensing the spike in pressure, the wrongness of the pattern twisting in the air.
The turret fires again.
No rhythm. No restraint. The magic bursts from its core like a lightning storm given shape. Uncontrolled. Untethered. But still devastating. One bolt—thick, white-hot—meets the Wyvern mid-flight.
Impact.
The sky bursts into flame. Orange swallows black. The creature howls—a shriek of rage, pain, and something older—and tumbles from the air in a broken spiral. It disappears beyond the trees, its fall ending in a wet, distant crash.
Silence creeps in.
Selene pulls her hands from the stone. They tremble now, uncontrollably. She hides them beneath the folds of her robe. Her pulse hammers through her chest, loud enough she swears the others must hear it.
Across the platform, Lyra straightens. Smug. Radiant. “Success,” she announces, flashing a grin. “You’re welcome.”
Selene exhales—thin, controlled, measured. Her shoulders don’t drop. Her gaze stays fixed on the horizon, eyes narrowed against the dark.
Because she knows.
One strike doesn’t end a storm.
Tibbins stares at the sputtering turret—its scorched frame coughing smoke and spitting sparks into the night. “Statistical anomaly,” he mutters, brittle and hollow. “That’s all that was.”
Selene doesn’t answer. She straightens atop Genevieve’s armored back, spine drawn tight despite the ache threading her joints. Her robe hangs heavy with soot and ash, the detritus of survival. She brushes it off with a flick—efficient, final. Dirt is chaos. And chaos has no place on her.
Beneath her, the construct hums—a low, steady vibration like a tether. A rhythm to anchor her against the chaos unfurling above.
Then she sees it. And her breath stills. Not a wyvern. A tide.
Far beyond the horizon, where the light of the twin moons thins into gray, the sky begins to move. Wings—skeletal, torn—beat against the stars in writhing patterns. Dozens. No. Hundreds. A churning storm of shadow and exposed bone, swallowing the twin moons' pale light and turning the heavens into a graveyard in motion.
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Their cries rise together, sharp and dissonant—like glass flutes crushed in the fist of a god. A chorus of death, broken and wild. The sound needles through her, makes the fine fur along her tail stand on end, ears twitching involuntarily.
Her pulse staggers.
“Undead convergence,” her thoughts name it—clinical, contained. “Coordinated. Summoned. Artificial.”
She inhales. Deep. Measured. Ritualistic. Her body still wants to panic, but she files the feeling away.
Observe first. React second.
She shifts her focus to Garik. “We have work to do,” she says, low and clear, each syllable edged in quiet steel. She meets his gaze, unwavering. “And I will not do it alone.”
He exhales—slow and long, as if trying to let out something too large to name. His posture sags for just a breath. The mask slips. And in that fleeting moment, he looks almost… human. Not the gruff engineer. Not the proud craftsman. Just a dwarf buckling under consequence.
His eyes drift to the Automaton butlers.
Still moving.
Still perfect.
Porcelain masks serene, detached. They sweep debris, reload barrels, recalibrate mechanisms with the same delicate precision one might use to arrange teacups. Too graceful. Too composed. A choreography unbothered by blood or flame.
Selene watches him watching them. She sees it—a twitch in his jaw, the slight tightening of his fists. Regret. Or perhaps recognition. Either way, a shift.
Her ears flick again.
Another scream.
Closer. This one tears across the night like a blade, sharp enough to cut thought.
The swarm drops—an arc of darkness spilling across the sky, descending in one unified, merciless sweep.
Garik squares his jaw, voice low and grounded. “Let’s move.”
Selene nods. Once. Clean. Certain. There’s no time to waste. No space left for hesitation.
She grips her grimoire. The leather is smooth beneath her fingers, but cool, almost wet—slick with condensation or blood, she’s not sure. Doesn’t matter. Her hand tightens around it. No shaking. No doubt.
She turns her gaze toward the next turret. A lonely silhouette against a sea of dark. Exposed. Incomplete. Vulnerable.
“Distance: two hundred spans. Contact in… two minutes, fifty-three seconds,” her mind offers automatically. The data slides into place, smooth and cold.
Selene kneels low against Genevieve’s plated spine. The metal hums—warm from friction, not fire—its surface trembling faintly under her palm. Her ears twitch at the high-pitched whine of stressed mana, the sound brittle, too thin, too sharp. A note at the edge of rupture.
She narrows her gaze.
Garik’s fingers shake as he wrestles with the Aether Emitter—a crude, soot-streaked cylinder choked in warped glyphs. They flicker dimly in the turret’s gut, light pulsing out of sync. Even from here, she feels it: the wrongness. An unstable thrum. Jagged. Like a heartbeat that’s lost the beat.
“Breach within seconds.”
Her thoughts form clean and cold.
“Too narrow. Too fast.”
Garik mutters under his breath—a sound more grit than voice. Shoulders hunched, he shoves the emitter into its housing. Sparks bite the air, white-hot and eager, crawling up arcane threads like lightning searching for bone.
Selene braces.
A breath coils tight in her chest—expecting the flash, the rupture, the scream of mana detonation.
But the turret hums low. The sound evens. Stabilizes.
A soft exhale threads through her nose. Slow. Measured. Tension unwinds from her ribs by degrees.
“Mobility secured,” Garik rasps. She barely hears him over the whir of arcane systems kicking in, but his gaze—quick and cautious—flicks toward the turret line.
Selene shifts with him.
Turret One stirs. Steel joints groan. The barrel lifts with mechanical reluctance, a slow breath before violence.
Above them, the sky collapses.
The swarm descends in pieces. Shadows blot out the twin moons—wyverns, necrotic and shredded. Bone wings torn to ribbons. Limbs too long, jaws split too wide. They move in formation, not instinct. A convergence, not chaos. Dozens, then more. Their screams shatter the air—shrill, furious. The sound buzzes in her bones.
Her ears flatten.
“Undead convergence confirmed.”
“Wave pattern detected. Coordinated origin.”
Her chest knots. Not fear. Pattern recognition.
To her right, Lyra locks in the final crystal. Hands shaking. Eyes hard. The turret jolts alive with raw elemental fury. Glyphs surge to life, lit like veins under steel skin—beautiful in their violence. Precision layered in design.
Awe slips beneath Selene’s skin.
“Refined latticework,” she notes absently. “Energy flows intentional. Stable. Brilliant.”
At the core, the charge condenses—a sun held in steel. Far too bright.
“Discharge imminent,” Selene says. Voice clipped. Exact.
A bolt tears skyward.
Electric fire shreds the night. The first impact blooms in orange ruin—wyvern bone bursts mid-flight, splinters raining down like ash-stained petals. Selene squints against the light, then turns. Turret Two engages. Then Three. Then Four. Each lights the heavens anew.
Frost. Flame. Pure kinetic burst. The sky fractures under the barrage.
She watches. Measures. Tracks every ripple.
Wings snap. Bodies crumple. The swarm fractures. That unified wave—so absolute just moments ago—shatters beneath fire and steel. Shapes spin to the earth, trailed in toxic green smoke that hisses across the grass like steam on stone.
Her breath stutters—then sharpens.
Not fear. Focus.
Her eyes snap to Garik. He stands tall now. Jaw set. Shoulders squared. No more shaking. No more doubt.
Down the line, Lyra laughs. Wild and bright, teeth flashing in the flickering light.
Selene’s attention narrows.
“Pattern shift detected.”
She scans the black horizon. Movement. A second wave, crawling out of the dark.
“Ninety seconds,” she calls. Her voice cuts through the chaos like chalk on slate. “Secondary formation incoming. Maintain targeting priority. Don’t celebrate yet.”
She lays her palm to Genevieve’s flank. Feels the steady thrum of anima inside the construct’s heart. Solid. Grounding.
"Prepare for re-alignment. Seventy degrees elevation. Prioritize cluster density."
The turret groans. Recalibrates.
Her heart pounds once, but her thoughts move faster—precision coiled into intent. Her fingers close around her casting focus. Light threads between her knuckles, slow and deliberate. A spell forming, quiet and sharp.
She rises to her feet.
That...
Was to easy.