With the emotionless clarity that Razor provided him, Pablo's mind whirred like a, processing the tactical situation as the maelstrom of battle engulfed him and his team. Eden and Zoe were fighting their way toward his and Sasha's position with the freed prisoners between them—scared and ragged civilians who'd been seconds away from becoming monsters themselves. More Boar-Men and Raptor-Hounds were emerging from the jungle behind them every second. The Goat-Shamans were regrouping near what remained of the surgical table, their staffs glowing with that sickly green light.

  We’re too exposed. We need to fort up. Fast.

  Pablo called his armor’s summoning phrase. Silver radiance exploded around him as chrome plates locked into place all around him with familiar weight and strength. The world sharpened through his HUD—threat assessments, distance markers, armor integrity, all painted in clean data overlays. He felt the surge of power as his armor's systems came fully online, his muscles reinforced by nano-servos, his senses enhanced by the sensor suite.

  "Alright, Team," Pablo announced over the comm link as well as his helmet’s loudspeaker, his voice steady despite the adrenaline singing through his veins. "Just like we practiced. The move is Bastion."

  Over the comm link, he heard Sasha’s quick intake of breath—surprise mixed with approval. They'd drilled this formation with Delta dozens of times, but never in actual combat. Never with civilian lives on the line.

  Time to see if all that practice was worth it.

  "Copy!" Sasha’s voice rang back.

  “On our way!” Zoe replied.

  Not far off, wind shrieked as Zoe carved a path toward them, Gale flashing in her hands. Eden followed in her wake, water spiraling around their jumbled formation in defensive walls that kept the prisoners bunched together and the monsters temporarily at bay. The civilians stumbled through the chaos—some supporting the injured, others just trying to stay on their feet. Rowan was among them, that improvised spear still clutched in white-knuckled hands, his eyes wide but focused as he ushered Sam—dazed and horrified—along.

  "Sasha, fall back. I have the line."

  "On it!" Sasha's orange armor gleamed as she tucked into a backward shoulder roll, Bedrock still in her hands.

  She'd been holding off three Boar-Men almost single-handedly, her Aetheric Challenge keeping them focused on her. Pablo surged forward to fill the gap she'd left. Razor sang as it met the first Boar-Man's club in a shower of sparks. A crossbow bolt whistled toward him from one of the Raptor-Hounds. Pablo's Detect Metal power screamed a warning about the iron tip. With his Nexus-empowered armor, he wouldn’t have worried about a mundane crossbow bolt or even fully automatic rifle fire. However, these were Nexus-generated and empowered opponents, and even if they hadn’t been, he’d learned his lesson back at Middle Velma Lake about making such assumptions. Reflexes and body singing in harmony, he twisted and swept Razor in a precise arc. The bolt pinged off the flat of his blade and went spinning into the jungle.

  Another Boar-Man charged him; massive, tusked, and swinging a bone club that could shatter concrete. Fortunately, his Analyze Style power—unlocked just a few weeks ago—had been running since they entered the dungeon. While active, the ability cataloged details about how an opponent fought and gave him a compounding bonus to his battle stats, the longer Pablo engaged or observed an opponent in combat. Unexpectedly, the non-sapient, dungeon-spawned Boar-Men and Raptor-Hounds lacked so much individuality that his Analyze Style power treated each category as individual targets as opposed to each resetting between unique creatures like the power did when he had sparred with his team.

  After their trek through the jungle and the brief but intense assault on the village, Pablo’s mind was brimming with weak points, showing him the creature's pattern of attacks. Right-handed. Favors overhead swings. Weak parry on the left side. Pablo stepped into the attack rather than away from it, bringing Razor up to catch the club mid-swing. The impact jarred his arms even through his armor's reinforcement, but he held strong. Razor’s impossibly sharp edge sliced clean through the bone club. Then he pivoted, using the creature's momentum against it, and slashed Razor across its exposed side. The blade bit deep, crimson blood spraying as the creature's health bar dropped by thirty percent.

  Through the soles of his boots, he could feel the earth begin to shudder. Faint over the comm-link, he heard Sasha muttering to herself, “You got this.”

  ***

  The alien ground sang to Sasha—literally sang, a vibration she felt through her gauntlets as she pressed both palms to the dirt. The island was different from the parking garage in Napa, or really anything she’d felt on her planet, wild, primal, and undeniably alien, yet still her domain. Dirt, stone, the bedrock layer fifty feet below, all of it responded to her will.

  Earthworks was one of the powers she’d first unlocked back at the lake, during their first 24 hours of being Paladins. Since then, she'd practiced with it for what felt like hours in training, building walls and barriers from whatever stone was available. They’d all come a long way since the fateful camping trip.

  While Pablo continued buying her precious seconds, Sasha gritted her teeth and, with an effort of willpower, pulled. The ground rumbled obligingly. Stone erupted from the earth in response to her command. A curving wall of mason-worked stone rose in a circle around her. She shaped the wall as it grew, her mind holding the image of the structure she wanted. The emergence of the wall knocked aside flimsy village huts and pushed back the encircling monsters.

  With another pulse of power, she called more stone. A ramp leading up to a platform. Crenellations along the top for cover. She drew from the earth continuously, pulling up material and shaping it to the image in her mind. Warnings flashed on her visor’s HUD. Her Earth Aetheric Energy was plummeting rapidly. Seventy percent. Sixty. Fifty. The castle was draining her fast, but she couldn't stop. Not yet.

  Still more to do. Another use of Earthworks. A slender tower began rising under her feet, lifting her higher than the outer wall. With a thought, she sculpted battlements that would give them cover. Her mind held the image clearly now—she'd seen it a thousand times in movies, studied it in books, knew every defensive feature.

  "Zoe and Eden are through!" Pablo's voice came over the comm. "Incoming civilians!"

  The tower shuddered and locked into place with a satisfying thunk of stone settling against stone. Sasha released her power and sagged against her hands pressed to the stone, her armor compensating for the sudden drain. The HUD display showed her Earth Aetheric Energy at thirty-two percent.

  Worth it.

  Atop the tower, she rose on trembling legs and surveyed her creation. The inner tower rose fifteen feet at its peak—more chiseled and refined than it had any right to look. Thick outer walls with a defensible ramp leading up to an arched opening.

  "Holy shit," Eden's voice came echoing over Zoe’s comm-link as she and Zoe burst through the opening, prisoners stumbling behind them. "Sasha, is that—"

  "Helm's Deep?" Zoe finished, her helmeted head turning to take in the structure. "You built us a miniature Helm's Deep?"

  Despite everything—the exhaustion, the danger, the monsters still pressing in from all sides—Sasha grinned inside her helmet. "Delta suggested that the more familiar a structure was to me, the easier it would be to construct. So, yeah. It's Helm's Deep. Just...smaller, and without a mountain behind it, entirely circular. And made in about thirty seconds."

  "Bad ass," Zoe said, already turning toward the rescued prisoners as they continued flowing in. "Everyone inside! Move, move, move!"

  The civilians scrambled up the ramp in a chaotic rush. Rowan and Sam helped injured prisoners, while others ran for the perceived safety of the stone walls. Walking backward up the ramp, Pablo backed through the gate last, Razor still flashing as he deflected attacks from pursuing Boar-Men.

  Sasha was just about to jump down from the tower’s top to join Pablo at the entrance when a storm of purple lightning erupted from the cluster of chanting Goat-Shamans at the rear of the mobbing monsters. Even within her armor, Sasha’s body went rigid as eclectic agony lanced through her body and warnings flashed across her HUD. Off balance and body rigid with residual shocks, the world spun as Sasha toppled off the tower’s top toward the crowded courtyard below.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  ***

  Zoe felt her breath catch in her throat and her heart stutter as Sasha plunged from the tower’s roof. Tendrils of black smoke snaked up from her friend’s cracked and charred breastplate.

  “Sasha!” Pablo shouted, his alarm ringing clear even through the smothering effects of his Iron Mind.

  Then Zoe snapped out of her instant of horrified reverie and reached for the wind. Teeth bared beneath her helmet, she slammed power through Gale and commanded a narrow funnel cloud into whirling existence beneath Sasha’s plummeting form. It wasn’t enough to arrest her fall, not in the handful of feet remaining to her fall, but it slowed her considerably.

  Instead of crashing to the ground like a devastating meteor, Sasha landed with a bone-jarring thud. Only then did Zoe release her conjured twister.

  “Good work, Zoh. Now go put those casters down. Hard,” Pablo ordered

  “With pleasure.”

  “Eden, check on Sasha,” Pablo continued even as he planted himself firmly in the open archway at the top of the ramp.

  Zoe didn't wait for further instruction. Her armor's flight thrusters screamed to life as she launched from the stone battlements, wind shrieking around her white and silver form. The Goat-Shamans were clustered near what remained of the surgical table, their staffs still glowing with residual purple lightning. Six of them, arranged in a loose crescent, were already beginning another chant.

  Not this time. She accelerated hard, Gale extended like a spear point, wind howling in her wake. The distance closed rapidly; a hundred feet, seventy-five, fifty—

  One of the Goat-Shamans bleated a warning. Staffs swung toward her. Purple light coalesced at the tips of their twisted wooden weapons.

  Here it comes.

  The first bolt of lightning crackled through the air where she'd been a split second before. Zoe banked hard right, her body’s enhanced Dodge stat responding instantly to her desire. A second bolt followed, then a third—coordinated fire that painted deadly purple tracers across her flight path.

  Zoe twisted into a corkscrew spiral, using the wind to accelerate her spin. Lightning crackled past her, close enough that her armor's sensors registered the electromagnetic discharge. Her HUD flashed warnings—multiple targeting locks, threat assessment rising to critical.

  Too many angles. Can't dodge them all.

  She shifted tactics, extending her free hand and channeling power through Gale into an Air Shield. Compressed air solidified into an invisible barrier just as two more lightning bolts converged on her. The shield absorbed the impacts with a thunderous collision of forces, purple electricity spider-webbing across the shield’s nearly invisible surface. Her Air Aetheric Energy dropped, but the shield held.

  Nearly there! Thirty feet. Twenty.

  The Goat-Shamans spread further apart, trying to flank her approach vector. Their staffs glowed brighter, chanting rising to a fever pitch. Zoe's tactical awareness screamed a warning—they were building to something bigger, a coordinated strike that would overwhelm her defenses.

  No time for finesse. Zoe dropped the Air Shield and poured everything into a final desperate burst of acceleration. Her armor's thrusters combined with her wind powers, hurled her forward in a burst of speed that blurred the world around her. The air itself became a weapon, compressing ahead of her like a battering ram.

  She hit the Goat-Shaman formation like a missile.

  The first creature barely had time to raise its staff before a flyby sweep of Gale took its head clean off. Blood—just a little darker than human—sprayed as Zoe's momentum carried her through, spinning to engage the next target. Wind erupted from her free hand in a concentrated blast that sent two more shamans tumbling backward.

  Not bad, but the remaining three were ready for her. A staff swung at her from the left—crude wood that shouldn't have been a threat to her armor, except for the purple lightning that wreathed the weapon, Nexus-empowered and deadly. Zoe tried to dodge, but she was too close, her forward momentum too committed. The staff caught her across the ribs with devastating force.

  Pain exploded through her side despite her armor's protection. Zoe felt something crack—a sensation that sent white-hot agony screaming through her chest. Her HUD flashed red warnings: ARMOR INTEGRITY COMPROMISED — RIGHT TORSO. INJURY DETECTED: FRACTURED CLAVICLE.

  She staggered in mid-air. A second Goat closed in from what should have been her blind spot, its staff crackling with energy. Air Sense warned her, but not quite in time. Zoe tried to turn, to bring Gale around defensively, but the pain in her shoulder made her movements sluggish. The staff struck her helmet with the force of a sledgehammer.

  The world exploded into white light and ringing silence. Zoe's vision swam, her HUD flickering with static. She crashed into the hard-packed dirt and skidded across the ground. Somewhere distant, she heard alarms—CONCUSSION DETECTED. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION—but the words felt muffled, like they were coming through water.

  Get up. Move. Fight.

  Training and instinct took over where conscious thought failed. Zoe rolled to her feet and lashed out blindly with the wind, creating a sphere of howling air around her body that forced her attackers back. The respite lasted only seconds, but it was enough for her vision to clear marginally.

  Five shamans left. Three raised their staffs in unison while the two who were knocked off their feet by the wind regained their feet. Purple lightning building to an overwhelming crescendo. Zoe did the only thing she could—she charged.

  Gale flashed forward as she closed the distance, her armor's servos compensating for her injuries. The three shamans with raised staffs released their coordinated strike. She twisted desperately, ducking under the first lightning bolt by pure instinct, felt the second sear across her back, and took the third full in the chest.

  Electricity coursed through her armor and into her body. Every muscle seized. Her heart stuttered. Pain beyond anything she'd experienced—worse than breaking her leg sophomore year, worse than the necrotic blast she took from Velgrin, worse than Mark's—

  No! Focus! Kill or be killed.

  Through the agony, through the muscle spasms that made her limbs jerk and twitch, Zoe kept moving forward. She called a gust of wind to blow against her back, lending even more speed to her lurching charge. Gale carved through the neck of the center Goat-Shaman even as purple lightning continued arcing through her armor. The creature's health bar dropped to nearly zero, its body collapsing in a heap. She stooped low and drove the point of her kukri into the square pupil of the Goat-Shaman’s eye.

  Spinning, she brought Gale around in a wide arc that caught the second shaman across its midsection. The blade bit deep, blood spraying, and the creature crumpled with a bleating cry. She focused and conjured a Suffocation Bubble around its head even as two of the remaining shamans fled toward the jungle, while one turned to face her with staff raised.

  Zoe didn’t want to let any of them escape, though. With the bubble still finishing off one goat, her options were limited. Through Gale, she summoned a Whirlwind. The spinning vortex caught the fleeing shamans and sent them both sprawling face-first into the dirt. The one facing her began chanting, purple light gathering at its staff tip.

  Firing her back jets, Zoe dove through the air to close the distance and plunged Gale deep into its chest before it could complete the spell. It collapsed, and Zoe wrenched Gale with a wet gurgle before delivering an armor-assisted boot stomp to its head. She sensed that her Suffocation Bubble had done its job and dismissed it with a thought.

  The two fleeing shamans were scrambling back to their cloven-hoofed feet, staffs forgotten in their panic to escape. Zoe stalked toward them, each step sending fresh waves of pain through her broken collarbone. Her vision kept threatening to gray out at the edges, the concussion making the world tilt and spin.

  One shaman made it to its feet first and turned to run. With a grunt, Zoe threw Gale. The kukri spun through the air, wind guiding its trajectory and adding force to her hurried throw. It caught the creature between its shoulder blades and buried itself hilt deep. The shaman pitched forward and didn't move again.

  The final Goat-Shaman froze, staff trembling in its hands as it watched Zoe approach. It bleated something—fear, maybe, or a plea—but Zoe felt no mercy, not after what they'd done to Sasha. Gale was still buried in the other shaman's back, too far to summon quickly. Fine. She didn't need it.

  Zoe closed the distance in two ground-eating strides, her armor's exo-muscles singing with power. The shaman raised its staff defensively, but Zoe batted it aside with her left hand—a strike enhanced by a precise blast of wind against her own forearm that multiplied the force. The staff went spinning away into the dirt.

  Her right fist crashed into the creature's hairy face with the combined force of her armor's enhanced strength and an Air Blast hammering against her own shoulder. Bone crunched. The shaman's head snapped back, dark blood spraying from its shattered snout. It staggered backward but didn't fall.

  Zoe didn't give it the chance to recover. She pursued it and grabbed its slender shoulders and drove her armored knee up into its midsection. A brief burst of flight lifted her leg—and entire body—at the moment of impact, adding explosive force to the blow. The shaman doubled over with a choked bleat, its health bar plummeting. Zoe brought her elbow down on the back of its skull; the strike drove the creature face-first into the hard-packed earth. Its Health bar flickered, nearly empty but not quite gone.

  "Stay. Down," Zoe snarled, punctuating each word with a stomping kick to its ribs. Her armor’s humming micro-servos amplified each blow. The final kick caved in the shaman's chest with a wet crunch, and its Health bar finally vanished.

  Six down. That’s all of them.

  For a moment, Zoe just stood there, swaying slightly. Her armor's HUD was a mess of warnings and alerts—armor integrity at forty-three percent, multiple injuries detected, Air Aetheric Energy down to twelve percent. Her clavicle sent shooting pains through her shoulder with every breath. The concussion made the world tilt and spin sickeningly. Her Accelerated Healing would patch her up, but it wasn’t nearly fast enough for Zoe.

  "Casters neutralized," Zoe reported over the comm, her voice tight with pain. With a thought, she used her Air Control to yank Gale free and fly the curved blade back to her hand, "Coming back to... to the walls."

  "Zoe, your vitals are all over the place!" Eden's voice cut through the static in her ears. "Are you—"

  "I'm alive, and they’re not," Zoe interrupted, though even she could hear how unconvincing it sounded. "Just...need a minute for the healing to kick in."

  Lifting into the air, she turned back toward the miniature fortress, her flight path wobbling slightly as her armor's systems struggled to compensate for her damaged body. From above, she could see the battle still raging. Pablo, Sasha—back on her feet—and Eden were holding the arched entrance, more monsters pressing in from the jungle.

  This is far from over, she told herself as she neared the crenelated wall.

  jet turbine