The archdemon’s first missiles impacted the barge the moment the Mythic Veilsurge closed.

  Evantra dashed out of the hall and was met with the blaring of alarms that echoed down the deserted corridors. Apart from the emergency alarms, the ship's interior electrical systems were down. The only light which entered the corridors was from the large, horizontal windows at the ship’s side. The noise made her skin crawl, and set her heartbeat racing with the urgency they instilled. She paused, looking out of the long, horizontal window spanning the entirety of the corridor.

  She was met with a sight of utter devastation.

  Wisptown sprawled out beneath the Spirit of Nimue, looked like a battlefield. Portions of the town’s outer suburbs had caved into large craters. Flames and smoke billowed into dark skies from all over the city. She watched as black lightning flashed in the heavens as ectorain began to stain the hellscape.

  Evantra paused, her heart thumping wildly as she focused on a point in the distance. While the outer suburbs had been destroyed by Caliburn’s explosives, the densely populated town centre and inner suburbs had survived Caliburn’s ritual. Carefully tracing the contours of the town, Evantra could see that many districts had survived Elaine’s explosive array.

  Cypha… You did it.

  Retrieving Clark’s phone from her pocket, she felt dread suffuse her when she realised that she still hadn’t heard back from Noelle and Carmen. She placed a hand on the cracked window, forcing her breathing into compliance as the urge to hyperventilate overtook her.

  Flashes of Galahad, Lancelot and Guinevere meeting their end, returned to her.

  Wrenching her eyes away from the scene of destruction, Evantra forced herself forwards, heading towards the lifts to the siblings’ office. In her grip was the catalyst that had formed the foundation of Caliburn’s ritual – the shattered blade that the ghost had wielded. From the words that appeared in her vision, that Galahad had wielded.

  Evantra was thrown off her feet as an explosion rocked the ship. She groaned, pushing herself off the floor. Turning her head to the window, Evantra thought she saw something flash in her vision from outside the cracked glass, but whatever the enormous machine had been, it had been too fast for her to notice.

  Belphegor.

  The Seeker.

  One of Santa Muerte’s Archdemon drones.

  The Spirit of Nimue is dead in the air.

  The only reason this ship is still standing is probably because they’re planning on boarding and learning as much as possible before this ship ends up in the ground.

  I need to hurry.

  Evantra rushed up the stairwell, pushing open the door leading to the siblings’ floor. She rushed into their office when she realised that Santa Muerte was content to refrain from inflicting further destruction. They were bound to board at any time, and if they found her in the Barge, she dreaded to think what they would to her.

  Evantra swiped Clark’s keycard across the door leading to the siblings’ chambers. Evantra’s eyes locked onto Clark’s holstered Kali pistol, as well as magazines scattered across the floor, having fallen from their perch on a table due to the swerving of the barge. He hadn’t taken it along with him when he had confronted his sister.

  After all, why would he have had a reason to?

  Evantra felt the thump of an aircraft breaching the Spirit of Nimue’s hull. She gritted her teeth, casting a quick glance over the rest of the room, before loading Clark’s pistol and throwing the backpack over her shoulder, having stowed the shattered blade within.

  Clark said there were emergency pods—

  There.

  True to the man’s words, the siblings’ quarters were directly linked to a separate room. Evantra waved Clark’s keycard over the scanner, and watched as flashing yellow lights burgeoned into existence, the mirrors within rotating and scattering the bright hue across the room. The heavy steel doors began to pry apart in a widening “X” formation, until the doors withdrew entirely, to reveal an airlock.

  The moment Evantra walked inside, the lights flickered back to life, and the heavy steel doors gradually closed shut behind her. In front of her was a door that mirrored the one she had passed through. She gritted her teeth as it gradually began to open, the previous one having sealed itself.

  Evantra dashed into a miniature hangar, ignoring the sleek, black AV parked within. She had no idea how to operate it, and what she needed now was an immediate way off the barge, before she fell out of one corps’ hands, right into another’s. She let out a sigh of relief when she glimpsed the pods lined up along the far wall. Evantra once again used Clark’s keycard to activate a pod and ran inside, strapping herself to the singular seat.

  She looked helplessly at the control panel in front of her.

  I don’t have the slightest clue how to operate this—

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  She yelped as the lights inside the pod flickered on, and Evantra could hear the low whine of an engine beginning to prime.

  “Hull breach detected. Emergency protocols activated. Calibrating course to the nearest available city centre. ‘Bastion’ identified.”

  Evantra slammed back into her seat as the pod shot outwards, unlatching from the mining barge. As it twisted away from the ship, Evantra’s eyes widened as they passed over the remains of the Spirit of Nimue. Its size, bulk and shielding had insulated it from Belphegor’s assault, but Evantra saw large swathes of the ship’s flank torn away by hellfire rounds, their scars still glowing with heat, and the slew of other weaponry at the drone’s disposal. The Archdemon itself was still nowhere to be seen, but Evantra suspected that it was attached to the ship’s side to allow Santa Muerte operatives to investigate.

  Her escape pod rocked when one of the barge’s engines blew, sending a concentrated ball of flame hurtling outwards, and the rest of the ship sagging as the barge failed to compensate for the loss of its engine. As the other engines went into overdrive, she saw a second engine catch fire. The combination of Santa Muerte’s assault and the arrival of the Mythic Veilsurge had them on their last legs, and it wasn’t long before the engine exploded in a ball of flame.

  The Spirit of Nimue fell.

  The titanic barge that had cast a shadow over Wisptown since its arrival, crashed towards the surface, smoke and flames trailing in its wake. As the barge impacted the ground, its reactors combusted and she saw a flash before it erupted into an explosion that rocked outwards from the epicentre. Her pod rocked wildly as the shockwave passed over her.

  In the skies above the crashed mining barge, she saw something flicker.

  [Ritual of concealment]

  Veilsouls remaining: 990

  As the pod made its way over the ruins of Wisptown at a steady pace, Evantra undid the seatbelt strapping her in place and crept out of the seat, curling up into a ball in one of the nooks of the escape pod. Her heart was thundering in her chest. She had initially mistaken it for a trick of light, a flash of dark lightning.

  She knew what it was.

  The drone was a fraction of the side of the Spirit of Nimue, but it didn’t need sheer mass to intimidate. Violence was written in every curve and edge of its construction. Its cloaking mechanisms shimmered, betraying its presence abreast of her pod, effortlessly closing the distance to come within proximity. As the cloaking mechanisms deactivated, Evantra saw a gleaming, silver surface that reflected the fires and smoke below. The ectorain didn’t seem capable of tarnishing Belphegor’s chassis as it glided alongside her, as silent as a wraith. From behind the nook where she was hidden, Evantra caught a glimpse of long, elegant railguns that drooped from either side of the machine. Those were the only guns that she noticed. She didn’t see any sign of what had left scars of hellfire rounds etched into the Spirit’s hull.

  The Archdemon revealed itself.

  For a heartwrenching minute, Belphegor kept pace with her pod, before she watched its cloaking reactivate. She felt her pod rattle as the drone activated its afterburners, surging away from her pod at breakneck speed.

  It probably did a scan of the pod, finding no life signs aboard.

  If I hadn’t activated my ritual…

  Evantra finally let out the breath that she had been holding in.

  Please be ok.

  ***

  Noelle Laurent’s POV

  They were seated in a café in Bastion, Carmen’s eyes glued to the television in a corner of the store. Black lightning flashed overhead as the ectorain poured down, staining the windows of the establishment as thunder boomed overhead. Lucas at his mother’s side, Taco clutched within his hands. Carmen’s hands were tightly clasped around both of their own, but her eyes were elsewhere.

  They rested on a diminutive twelve-year-old girl with horn-rimmed glasses that were nowhere to be seen. The girl was seated, stock still next to her mother, whose own eyes were fixed on the ground.

  Grieving their loss.

  The hero, who had evacuated the town, saving those at the border.

  Minh Tran.

  A painful lump formed in her throat at the sight of Amy Tran running her fingers through her daughter's hair.

  “Noelle? Any word? From either of them? Trevor isn’t picking up.”

  Noelle bit her lip, shaking her head briefly to Carmen. Carmen exchanged a glance with Amy, who returned her attention to her daughter seated next to her.

  “Police from Elsecaller city are currently investigating the disaster that struck Wisptown. Early reports suggest that it was the work of an earthquake of high magnitude which weakened caverns under the town’s foundation, causing the collapse of various suburbs—”

  “They’re covering it up,” Noelle said under her breath to Carmen, whose attention was fixed on the screen. “It hasn’t even been an hour, and they’ve already come up with another fucking explanation.”

  They sat quietly in the corner of the café as the customers around them whispered under their breaths, staring at the broadcast. It was showing scenes of the town’s destruction, with fires and columns of smoke rising from various parts of the city. The ectostorm above, black lightning flashing through the air, framing the hellscape beneath.

  “Amy, the other survivors?”

  Noelle saw Tai flinch at the word and curled into her mother’s arms. Seeing the girl’s reaction, Noelle watched anguish enter Carmen’s expression. Amy nodded, gently waving off her efforts with a slight shake of her head.

  “The buses made it to Bastion. They’re setting up shelters, and the wounded are over at Saint Raphael’s. The men were able to evacuate the inner suburbs. They didn’t reach all of them.”

  The bell on the café’s door clinked as they watched a handful of people filter into the establishment. Noelle’s eyes widened when she spotted familiar orange pants, and a black, high-collared jacket, as well as a pair of clouded goggles.

  Cypha Rain, the techrat, accompanied by her parents. Cypha’s mother shared her scraggly brown hair, which was tied up into an abrupt ponytail. Where her mother was short and squat, her father was tall and lanky with a build similar to the plucky techrat’s. Noelle’s gaze fell on Cypha’s fingers, her eyes widening when she realised that they were bloody.

  “Cypha!”

  She stood, calling out to her and watched as the girl’s eyes widened in recognition.

  “You, you’re… is the preacher…”

  Cypha trailed off as she scanned the faces around her. They watched as Cypha’s face fell as she sat heavily beside Noelle.

  “S-she called me.”

  “Cypha, your fingers. They’re bleeding,” Noelle said quietly. Upon noticing, Carmen quickly stood, heading towards one of the café’s waitresses to ask for antiseptic wipes and a first aid kit.

  “Evantra told me about the explosives under the city. She told me to send the crawlers down there. Not all were outfitted with the EMPs. Juno… he helped me install the modules. At first, he thought I was sabotaging his business,” Noelle watched Cypha roughly brush the tears from her eyes.

  “He told me to leave. He stayed back to outfit the last remaining crawlers.”

  Noelle watched Cypha’s parents sit on either side of her. Cypha’s mother took her daughter's hand in her own.

  “If Evantra hadn’t warned us—”

  Noelle Laurent watched the surface of her phone lit up.

  She accepted the call.