Nothing in the world made sense. Somehow, Lucas found himself charging forward, following closely on Florence, Valerie, and Cherry’s heels, while Symar launched arrows over their shoulders into the enemy ranks.

  Three of the hooded figures rushed to raise shields in front of their comrades, one a circular buckler, another a rectangular tower shield, while a third held up bracers in a cross guard stance in front of their face, creating a rippling oval of coruscating light. They blocked most of the arrows, but a decent number made it through. Most of the remaining enemies, unfortunately, had power of their own.

  Swords, spears, daggers, and other bladed weapons were more than up to the task of batting away some mundane arrows as the hooded figures rushed to meet the skycloaks’ advance. With the combination of their Swords and Shields protecting them, the enemy Wands and Bows were left free to do as they liked, and they took advantage of it.

  A cryomancer summoned razor-sharp shards of ice and fired them like shrapnel. Another Wand seemed to stir the air with their hands, creating vortexes of wind. Retreating to the back of their group, a geomancer stomped the ground, teeing up chunks of rock at the perfect height for the aeromancer’s vortexes to hit like a whip, launching the boulders like cannonballs. The fourth and final Wand remained fixed in place like they’d frozen, tilting their head back and reaching up to the sky with both hands, like they were beseeching the heavens to smite their enemies.

  And throughout all this, the enemy Bows were launching arrows with abandon. They came in a variety of colours and sizes, and some even seemed to move in slow motion, while others shot faster than a speeding bullet. Symar’s attention was quickly taken up with trying to shoot the enemy arrows from out of the air, but he couldn’t get all of them, and despite the prowess Cherry had displayed with a shield, she couldn’t be everywhere. It felt like it was just a matter of time before an arrow or spell found its mark, and that time could surely be measured in mere seconds.

  But Valerie and Florence were there, both of their blades glowing with mana. The sharp end of Florence’s glaive shone a ruby red, and little red sparks flew through the air as she swung the great weapon. Lucas had held that thing, and reckoned it weighed eighty kilos at minimum, yet the swordmaiden handled it like it was made of cardboard. Where the sparks met arrows, the arrows caught aflame and went tumbling out of their trajectories. Even the boulders and shards of ice mostly couldn’t get past Florence’s sparks, and those that did were either taken down by Symar’s answering arrows or missed entirely.

  Valerie didn’t even bother dodging, displaying her faith in the party to protect her. She charged ahead with impossible speed, her armour glowing a soft white as it helped her direct lunar mana into her blade. The cobbled ground cracked beneath her footfalls.

  One of the hooded figures darted close to meet her, wielding an obsidian sabre that appeared to leak shadows. He lifted the weapon and aimed a brutal downward slash right at Valerie’s unprotected skull.

  A month ago, Lucas wasn’t sure he would’ve been able to comprehend the exchange that followed. Even with his improved abilities, most of the very short bout still looked like a blur.

  Valerie brought her sword up to meet the sabre, batting it aside with almost contemptuous ease. The strength of her parry threw her opponent off balance, leaving them wide open—the hooded figured let out a cry of alarm, deep and gravelly and unmistakably a man. Impressive dexterity allowed him to step back away from the follow-up strike Valerie aimed at him with her backswing, but he could do nothing about the white light that speared out from her blade.

  It cut him diagonally from his hip to the opposite shoulder, slicing through him like he wasn’t even there. The two enemies who’d been rushing to his defence only faired a little better—a shorter figure with twin daggers, one in each hand, and the one with the large tower shield.

  One evidently recognised the attack as the same one she’d opened the fight with and tried to dodge out of its path, but wasn’t fast enough to avoid it entirely, taking a glancing blow that separated their right arm from their body. The dagger-wielder fell to the ground with a girlish scream of agony, clutching the stump of her arm.

  The other, meanwhile, tried to block the moonlight laser beam with their tower shield, only for the shield to shatter like a ceramic vase that had gotten too hot, sending bits of molten metal in every direction. They too collapsed, and a heartbeat later an arrow sprouted from their hood, throwing them to the floor. Valerie finished off the other one, decapitating her as she passed.

  And then the two parties finally crashed into one another.

  Valerie and Florence became whirlwinds of steel and magic and death, even outnumbered ten to two, not even counting the ranged enemies trying to harry them. The enemy’s variety counted for little. One would think that having to adapt to weapons with a range of different lengths and techniques on the fly would close the gap, but Valerie and Florence were just too superior to them for that. The only thing keeping the hooded warriors in the fight at all was the necessity of Florence having to use the spark ability of her glaive to keep away the ranged attacks Symar was unable to prevent.

  Symar was doing an admirable job, too, considering there were half a dozen bows among the enemy against his one, as well as Wands working their magic. He was constantly drawing and loosing, his arms blurring with the speed. Cherry, meanwhile, covered him with her shield, and it was like they were communicating telepathically, with how they never both went for the same arrow or spell.

  The enemy combatants still probably could have caused them some trouble if they moved to flank, giving him too many angles to cover, but it was clear they were focusing on huddling around the Wand who was looking at the sky. Even so, they were still somewhat levelling the playing field. Without them, Valerie and Florence would have easily bowled over the hooded warriors in seconds.

  That wasn’t to say this was an even battle. Their enemies were trained and clearly competent, but sometimes, it seemed, individual ability was just impossible to overcome. They could dodge and harass and harry all they wanted, but they had no answer when Valerie used the lunar ability of her blade. None of them were fast enough to dodge, and none of them could block it. It was just a matter of time before she took them all out.

  Lucas felt a little useless, frankly. He’d ended up with Symar and Cherry at the edge of the battle by default, having decided he was better off acting as a Star was meant to: filling in the gaps of his team. In this case, he didn’t see much of a gap in Valerie and Florence’s side of things, so he was better off focusing on support. His sword hung unused in a loose grip.

  It felt like the battle had halfway passed him by already, caught in indecision. His stomach was doing flips. His gaze darted around, trying to take in everything at once, searching for anywhere he could be useful. It felt wrong to stand by and let his comrades fight without him, but it felt wrong to kill other people.

  Not in the way that it was bad to defend yourself, but in a visceral, general, the world’s gone fucking crazy, way.

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  But they were going to die anyway, weren’t they? It was clear that they weren’t going to flee. Whatever they were here for, they were willing to give their lives for it, and none of them were showing a moment’s hesitation. Even as Lucas was paralysed with these thoughts, an arrow flew towards him. It didn’t make it anywhere close, as one of Florence’s motes of red light burned it out of the air, but it had been aimed at his face. He’d seen it early enough to dodge, but that didn’t diminish the killing intent of the attack.

  Lucas knew he’d just feel worse about himself if he contributed literally nothing here. So he acted. He had to.

  Jam reacted in less than a heartbeat when Lucas called on his heart’s flame, and he was thankful once again for the training he’d been doing. It wasn’t instant by any means, but it was a hell of a lot better than how it had started.

  Fire mana roared through his channels. It was an intoxicating feeling. There was nothing comparable to the magical warmth that suffused his soul, and having his mana system fully matured just made it better. The familiar pyromantic sense appeared in his awareness, unfurling a heat-based map of his surroundings in his mind’s eye.

  He forced himself to focus, zeroing in his attention on the enemy Wands and Bows on the other side of the street, trusting that Valerie, Florence, and Cherry would let none of the close-quarters enemies reach him or Symar. The hooded warriors moved in synch, clearly well-trained and used to working together. They never all attacked at once, instead going through a rotation, making sure they weren’t caught off guard.

  He saw nothing special from the Bows, but he couldn’t help admiring the techniques the Wands showed. The coordination between the aeromancer and the geomancer in particular was impressive. Those boulders looked like they could take someone’s head off. In other circumstances, against lesser opponents than Valerie and Florence, they might have been a decisive factor.

  There was a frozen, breathless, baffled moment where Lucas realised he hadn’t actually attacked another human being with his pyromancy before. This would be the first time outside training. The first time flames conjured from his hand would be used to harm a person.

  So it was with a surreal sort of detachment that he directed his mana into his hand in the way he’d practised so many times, and the limb caught aflame. Pouring more mana in until the flames had turned white-hot, he pointed it towards the enemy.

  The hooded attackers had quickly realised Valerie’s moonlight sword and Florence’s ruby glaive were out of their league, and switched tactics, seeking to overwhelm them, correctly identifying that taking out the two deadliest opponents had to be their highest priority. The battle was chaotic, a blur of movement. Every few moments, another hooded figure dropped to the ground. Their numbers had been halved in only a matter of seconds, but their remainder were faring better, focusing on dodging and hit-and-run tactics rather than futilely attempting to meet the two skycloaks head on.

  Lucas spent a second analysing the opponents. His comrades seemed to have the enemy well in hand, for the most part, and he couldn’t help thinking his contribution would be wasted if he waded in there. He wanted to do something decisive. Take action in a way that actually mattered.

  All that in mind, there was an obvious choice. The enemy side also had a member who was yet to contribute to the battle at all, but Lucas had a hunch the Wand hadn’t been idle at all. With their hands raised to the sky and their head tilted back, they were clearly working on a powerful spell of some kind.

  Focusing on his pyromantic sense, Lucas found nothing untoward about their body heat. But that meant nothing. He hadn’t expected to find an answer there. Didn’t need one.

  After waiting for a gap to open, Lucas attacked. With a thought, a jet of flame speared out from his hand, aiming right for the mysterious enemy Wand. It went right through the midst of the battle, with neither of the remaining shields able to get in its way, lest they expose themselves to Valerie or Florence.

  To his frustration, an enemy saw it coming. The cryomancer stepped in. Holding a crystalline catalyst that glowed a glacial blue in one hand, the other hand seemed to be drawing moisture from the air, forming it into dagger-like shapes, freezing it, then launching it at the battle, all with flowing, smooth movements.

  This time, they simply lifted a hand and summoned a wall of ice to cover their comrade in the blink of an eye, sparing not a thought for themselves.

  A great cloud of steam erupted from the point of impact. Shards of ice burst out. The hiss of fire against ice briefly overwhelmed any other sound on the battlefield. But the enemy was unharmed.

  However, Lucas had now confirmed beyond any shadow of a doubt that the mysterious Wand was a priority for the enemy. And a part of him had been waiting to try out a few pyromancy tricks in a practical situation. Jyn had showed him there was more to the discipline than fire, after all.

  Trusting in his comrades yet again, Lucas closed his eyes and sunk into his pyromantic sense. He let sound and smell and touch fade away, letting his world become heat. Nothing in the battlefield had moved since he’d confirmed their positions visually, so it was simple to pick out the enemy Wand. The next step was significantly harder.

  Luckily, Lucas had been experience, and he’d been practising.

  Affecting the temperature of an enemy from a distance, he’d found, was a matter of establishing a hair-thin link between himself and the area he wanted to affect. Reaching out with a tendril of fire mana, he directed it around the battle, and sought out the great burning building the enemy had kindly gifted him with. It was much easier to affect a pre-existing fire than create one yourself, after all. He’d felt that with the raging inferno he’d created with the firesheep, back on Elwyn’s farm.

  Thoughts of the firesheep and their late keeper brought him a pang of sadness and despair and, most importantly, rage. He channeled that feeling, directing it at these bastards who were getting in the way of the fight that truly mattered.

  And so the fire engulfing the building they’d come here to evacuate suddenly burst from its confines and lashed out at the hooded enemies with a great roar. In his pyromantic sense, it looked like a giant streak of white had suddenly careened across the road like a runaway train, and the heat signatures of the enemy Wands and Bows were utterly engulfed in it.

  Lucas didn’t bother keeping the technique up for more than a few seconds, for several reasons.

  First, it was immediately obvious his attack was effective. Even if it hadn’t taken out the enemies, it evidently cut off their supporting fire for long enough that Florence was able to focus completely on the close-quarters fight, and from there the enemy Swords and Shields lasted no time at all.

  Secondly, the vicious satisfaction of successfully pulling off a new technique was quickly quelled by the possibility that he’d just killed ten people in the blink of an eye.

  That realisation might have affected him more, if it weren’t for the third reason he’d cut off the technique, instead focusing the rest of his attention on his pyromantic sense, delving deeper into it than he’d tried to go before. The fire had engulfed much of the building above ground, but it was only just starting to reach down into the basement levels, where Lucas’ heat sense was starting to map the outline of an underground system similar to the one they’d taken Niall to.

  This one didn’t go as far or as deep. It was essentially just a laddered passage that lead a dozen metres or so below ground until reaching a larger complex about the size of a basketball court.

  And now that he was looking closer, there was something horribly familiar about the feedback he was getting through his pyromantic sense.

  “Valerie,” he said, opening his eyes. She was a few paces away, standing in the centre of a ring of bodies. She looked back at him.

  “Why are there beasts in the basement of an Order safe house?” Lucas asked.