Firing a magerifle is nothing like creating a connection. You're not going to explode for one. The danger lies in putting too much of yourself into it, sucking the magic from the void, cramming threads into the rifle faster than you can handle. Getting your mind burned out in the process.

  Magic is dangerous. But it is my kind of dangerous.

  I knew where the Void Orb clan's armory was. I knew my wards. I knew what I could do.

  A single, labored breath, trying to force my heartrate down. No time. The warded lump where the rifle's muzzle would have been bobbed, a heavy, unsteady weight in my arms.

  Good enough. You aimed with your mind, not your eyes.

  Time.

  I conjured up twin threads of force. They came, snaking, wobbly, cool flows. The first one went into the direction wards, flowing through the rifle, searching past the horizon, into the bunker, sending back vibration. It was like feeling for a pearl in a pool of gravel. Cold stone. The heat of life. The vibrations of metal.

  Knowing what I felt. A room, elongating, four walls becoming two and a ceiling, becoming a corridor.

  A door, thick, blast-proof. My thread flowed through it like light through glass. The tingling, grainy feel of unstable chemicals.

  I released the other thread, filling the flame, razor, and void wards in the rifle. It up-tuned, overflowed.

  Fired.

  The force rushed forward, following my already established thread, bypassing the walls, the ground, all the Void Orb defenses, melding with the explosives.

  Releasing the wards.

  The explosion hit my guide-thread with such strength that it shattered and I fell backward into the sand, my camouflage cloak wrapping around me.

  No sound. No recoil. Instant death.

  "Did you fail?" the Knife said. "Too far?"

  I shook my head, realized he couldn't see me beneath the cloak.

  "No," I said. "Three kilometers. Nine seconds."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "What do y-," he began.

  The ground-wave hit, a powerful jerk of the sand, shifting the rocks around us, like a one-shake earthquake. The Knife caught his balance instantly, started to rise. I pulled him down, and slapped my hands over my ears. He did the same, as did Hao.

  The blast wave was like being struck by a glass wall, a huge wave of sound and pressure that rolled over us, pressing down, ripping sand away from the dunes. The protective wards in my stockman hat blocked it, making me momentarily deaf. Then that, too, passed.

  I rose, lifting my rifle, the tension in my jaws sending a shiver of pain up my temples. I pushed it out of my awareness. It would get worse before it got better.

  "Time for another shot," I said.

  "Nothing this spectacular, I hope," the Knife replies. He sounded shaken, his voice quivering like a blade struck with a hammer.

  "Better," I said.

  I conjured up another two threads, held one in my mind, sent the other through the wards, searching for the electric vibration of an active fusion process.

  It came, close to the flickering razor feel of a raging fire. I opened my eyes, following the path of the thread.

  The sky above City flickered in red. The armory fire had to be huge. I felt a stab of remorse at the amount of lives lost. At least the armory had been a separate bunker, adjacent to the main Void Orb complex. In the chaos, the slaves might have a chance at escaping. Maybe some of them would make it off Remba, too.

  It was better than the chance the Syndicates gave them.

  Again, I touched the vibrations of the fusion core. Then I rammed my other thread into the rifle.

  This time, there was a flash that illuminated the clouds.

  Fusion cores don't suffer catastrophic meltdowns like molten salt fission reactors can. Breaching their wards simply releases all their energy in one, big flash of fire. Then the reaction shuts down, lacking the 100-million-degree heat necessary to keep the hydrogen fusing into helium.

  Of course, breaching the wards releases a plume of 100 million degrees hot plasma into the sky.

  From three kilometers away, it was a magnificent sight, a glowing pillar of light at least a kilometer high, maybe more. It spread out to the sides, fading as it did so, until all that remained was a purple after-image in my retinas, and the beginnings of a massive headache.

  I flopped down on the sand. The Knife pulled me up.

  "We need to move," he said. "That will have woken up the Syndicates. There's going to be fighting."

  Not enough fighting. The remaining clans would fall upon the Void Orbs, trying to loot everything they could, and then bicker over the turf the Void Orbs controlled. If I was any judge, the Void Orbs in the hunting force were either getting shot, or bargaining for a place with the other clans. Or both.

  But that wouldn't be enough. The other clans would portion out the Void Orb assets and smile at the spoils.

  We needed a full-scale war.

  I started jogging, blinking my eyes furiously to clear them. Running blind into a razor wire would be a very bad thing.

  "I need to get closer," I said, still blinking. "I can't see."

  "I can," the Knife said, guiding me. "Vladimir, you're point. Tall girl, you're after me."

  To my surprise, Hao fell in line. Likely, she was raising her eyebrows furiously. As long as she kept running, all would be fine. Every step was getting us closer to City, increasing my ability to keep firing my magerifle. The sky was turning violet, but we would reach the port in a matter of minutes.

  The first shots stopped us.