An EM storm blossoms directly overhead, and Yetic drops me moments before he tumbles like a wounded bird to the plasteel surface of the high plateau.
It’s all part of the act. Still, falling from five meters up isn’t fun. I hit the ground feet first and roll as the crackle in the air raises the hair on my arms. I turn in time to throw a weak pulse over the head of a charging Y’etl.
His fist held high, he leads a surprisingly terrifying charge of bedraggled and crazed butterfly cadets. Only a few of them are capable of generating pulses sturdy enough to knock someone out. But they’ve got blood lust in their eyes.
I fall backward as Y’etl barely misses my forehead with a roundhouse. He dives at me. I roll to my side as he drives a bony elbow into the rubbery surface of the plasteel centimeters from the side of my head.
“Boy, you don’t hold anything back.” I assume a sparring stance while continuing to shuffle toward the citadel. We’ve narrowed the gap to nearly seventy meters.
“There’s no point in holding back when you believe each day to be your last.” Y’etl sprints toward me and launches both feet at my chest.
I block the kick, but not without being knocked to the ground again. This time my blood boils. Show or not, I refuse to let some shrimp get the better of me. From the ground, I arc my back and throw myself into a backhand spring. I land ready for Y’etl’s next attack.
Without pause he brings it, complete with guttural growl.
I block his punch and choke him while placing a knee in his stomach. My butt hits the plasteel hard as Yetl’s momentum carries us backward. Extending my legs, I toss him over my head and roll onto my feet in time to watch him sprawl face first.
Exhausted and barely able to breath, he chokes out the words, “Is that all you’ve got.”
As I charge to finish him off, a rippling red light births between us. I throw my hands in front of my face the moment the storm blossoms. The force tosses me spinning to the ground. Through bleary eyes I focus on the citadel, now forty meters distant.
“Need a hand?” Yetic swoops overhead.
I raise my arm.
Yetic latches onto it and tugs me into the air.
Another EM storm swells beneath us. “Those butterflies are good actors,” I croak.
Yetic wraps his arms around me. “That last one was from me.”
“What? You nearly—”
“You looked like you were about to kill their commander.” Yetic dips a shoulder to dodge an EM pulse that appears suspiciously out of thin air. “Whoa.”
“The operator?” I curl my legs around him as if I were climbing the trunk of a tree.
Yetic nods, “It might be time to talk to your brother.”
“Will do,” I pause. “I wouldn’t have killed Y’etl by the way.”
“No skin off my teeth. I just figured we might need him.”
I close my eyes and hail Olin. Ready?
A few more seconds. His response is abrupt, as if he’s under duress.
What’s happening?
There’s a long pause inside my head. I grit my teeth while waiting to hear back.
“Jags are engaging!” Yetic dives suddenly for the surface. “We’ve gotta go now!”
Steam rises from our sweat soaked uniforms as a large EM storm builds in our vicinity.
“Hold on!” The words barely escape Yetic’s mouth before a blood red storm drives us into the ground. Yetic spins so that his shoulder hits first. The crushing blow dislodges me and sends me skittering toward the steep cliff of the inland valley.
“Cap! Grab hold!”
All I see is a human-shaped blur as I shoot past. I throw out a hand and snag what feels like an iron anchor. Without a hitch, I’m yanked to a stop at the last second—nothing below my dangling body except thin air.
“Watch that last step. It’s a doozy.”
“T’zan, where’d you come from?” I blink my eyes into focus as the monstrously oversized cadet pulls me up.
“I’ve been sticking close.” T’zan sets me down a meter from the edge of the sheer cliff. Thirty meters below, Serpent 4, 5, and 8 are dug in and waiting for the doors to open. The citadel itself rises dramatically behind us, only twenty meters away. “What now?”
I turn a wary eye toward the narrow windows high up the fortress wall. “You think you can get me to the wall of the citadel?” I flinch as a pulse shoots out of the nearest opening. It’s aimed at someone else.
“How close?”
“Touching it.”
He swears under his breath. “Ah hell, I’ll take a stunning for ya, no problem.”
I grin, “Come on then, cover me.”
Together we sprint the final distance, T’zan assuming the role of human shield. The slick gray surface of the citadel blends with the plateau seamlessly. Above and below the surface, it’s all one impenetrable mass. Or so they would like us to believe.
Olin?
I’m at the security lock. Sorry about the wait. We had a few Jag fliers to deal with.
I say, Hold on. I’m approaching the citadel now. The hair on my arms rises. “T’zan!”
“I see it!” He veers to the right and slams his hands together. The concussion feels as if thunder has struck the inside of my head. My braid strips from around my neck and yanks taught. My arms and legs fly forward as the outburst propels me toward the citadel a dozen times faster than I can run.
“Olin!” I cry out to my brother as I have so many times before. Clamping my mouth and eyes tight, I focus on a far away place—my mother’s garden. Olin and I are both there. We’re working idly, enjoying an escape from the grind of Worker City. We’re happy just being kids. Now!
An EM torrent from unseen origin and unknown destination rips through me before I sense its coming or going. An infinity—a seed of a universe—sprouts from the darkness. I thrust open my hands and give it birth.
Instantly the world begins to crumble. What had sprung to life less than a heart beat earlier, begins to shatter. A terrible rattling threatens to tear me apart. I flail to escape the tug of the current until I find an open door in my mind. It’s wooden and old, creaking on rusty hinges. I run my hand across its rough surface. I feel a familiar pattern engraved upon it—an emblem of a tree with vines wrapped around its trunk. I know it. I’ve felt its presence before.
In a final gasp I swing the door shut.
The deafening roar disappears. The torrent leaves, taking my senses with it.
My eyes flicker open. Someone is tugging me to my feet. He’s talking to me. I can’t hear him. It’s Y’etl. He’s grinning and angry at the same time. I feel something solid against my back. Y’etl says something else before raising a brow as if waiting for a response. Then he’s gone amidst a stream of cadets. Some of them I know. Some I don’t. They’re yelling—plunging headlong into battle.
A spark fires at the back of my brain. The citadel. Olin.
“Calli?”
I hear my brother’s voice. It doesn’t sound right. I place a hand on the ground in an effort to stand. The plasteel is warm to the touch. I gaze overhead and realize I’m in some sort of tunnel. But not a tunnel. A door.
“Calli.” Olin’s face appears in front of me.
Olin.
“I’m right here.” He takes my arm and pulls me to me feet.
I sag into him, depending on him for support. Finally, I dislodge my tongue. “Is that how it feels for you every time?”
Olin nods. Wisps of his hair tickle my ear.
“I don’t know how you do it.”
“I know you’ll be there to pick me up,” he smiles and holds me at arm’s length. “Now come on, there’s still a battle to fight and a tournament to win.”
“Right.” I wobble on unsteady feet as an errant EM pulse shrieks past and explodes several meters overhead. “Where are we?”
“Inside the citadel wall,” Olin smiles. “Before the operator realized I was borrowing energy from the security system, you transferred enough of it to disintegrate a hole through the wall the size of a mammoth.”
“Xoxochueyi,” I swear under my breath while awakening to my surroundings. The citadel is oddly well lit despite being encased by five-meter-thick plasteel walls. Thirty meters below our entry point, the battle continues to rage. My memory latches onto the moment before I transferred Olin’s storm into the wall. “T’zan?”
“Alive but unconscious.” Olin flashes a blue EM burst and brings down a Jag flyer inside the citadel.
The proximity of the attack jars me completely into the present. I step out of Olin’s protective shadow, slash my arms downward, and ignite my hands with a crawling green heat.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Olin gazes down into the EM energy brewing in the central caldron of the citadel.
“What?” I pretend I don’t know exactly what he’s talking about.
“Fly or die,” Olin seizes me around the waist.
“Oh great,” I grit my teeth.
“You still don’t trust me?” Olin asks as he sweeps me over the edge.
My breath catches in my throat. A moment later Olin slams on the brakes. He places me gently on my feet, and both of us are engulfed by the melee.
I throw a block with one hand while squeezing Olin’s arm with the other. I yell into his ear, “I just don’t like falling.”
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