In one hand, Baylen held his big, ugly hand cannon. With the other, he supported his father. The older Baylen looked pale, his green-and-orange shirt black with blood just beneath the armpit. Didn’t look ready to die, though.

  Baylen yelled at someone behind him. Two men appeared from a side tunnel, dragging something between them, something shrouded in a familiar cream bedsheet.

  The hatchling.

  No spots on the sheet, other than dirt and stains. Void wyrm blood is green, their oxygen cycle based on copper instead of iron. I didn’t see any on the sheet. The hatchling was alive.

  “How did you track us?” old man Baylen said, his voice strained.

  “Doesn’t matter, pops,” Baylen said. He lifted his hand cannon, aiming at my head from a few meters away. The muzzle was huge.

  Old man Baylen pushed it away.

  “Think for once,” he said. “Does the wyrm have a tracker implanted?”

  “Why should I tell you?” I said, trying to sit up. I failed, collapsing back to the floor. My head pounded, as if a mad mechanic was ramming it with cargo loader. To my right, Hao twitched. Not much, barely a jerk of her arm. Trying to crawl, looked like, or reach her pellet gun. She failed, too.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “I could spare you,” old man Baylen said. “Send you off with a nice pay.”

  Not likely. He’d shoot me the moment he knew the hatchling was safe.

  “Just shoot him,” Baylen said. “Whatever he did, it will be gone.”

  “Unless there’s some kind of magic tracking on the wyrm,” old man Baylen said. “Fancy landing on Rorden Station and having every Federation hunter-killer waiting for you, do you?”

  He stepped up, right to the edge of my spare bed sheet, the cream cotton in a rumpled heap in the middle of the corridor.

  My spare, warded bed sheet.

  “Give me your word,” I rasped. “Your word that you will send me off with pay. No revenge. Five percent of whatever you get for the hatchling.”

  Old man Baylen nodded.

  “My word as a Baylen,” he said. “How did you track us?”

  Weakly, I pointed to the sheet.

  “This?” young Baylen said.

  “It’s warded,” I said.

  And Baylen bent, tangling the barrel of his hand cannon in my sheet, and lifting it.

  “That a ward?” he said, spreading it.

  I conjured all the force I could, shoving it into the ward, up-tuning it as far and as fast as I could.

  For a second it shimmered, blues and greens chasing each other over the ward. And then it shattered.

  Flames burst from the sheet, engulfing both the Baylens. Not regular flames, but wardfire, clinging to any organic surface it could find. Like the Baylens.

  They screamed, trying to push the fire away, spreading it further. Baylen dropped his Da, dropped his gun, slapping at the blue flames. The tunnel echoed with their screams, filled with the ozone stench of magical discharge.

  I fed the fire, dragging threads of force through my mind, black spots before my eyes, sour bile in my throat, struggling to hold myself together, to keep my focus, keep the magic flowing.

  Old Baylen collapsed. Young Baylen kept flailing for another two breaths, then fell over his father’s corpse.

  It was the last thing I saw before the pain in my head blacked me out.