Mereque tossed the Pelter.

  Jenker caught it one-handed, racked the slide without looking, and started shooting. Military muscle memory. Good.

  The rounds vanished into Tarmour’s flickering skin like rain into a black hole.

  Perfect distraction.

  Mereque snatched the drift-log they’d been hiding behind, spun it once like a baton, and charged.

  Mereque felt the log’s weight settle in his palms like an old friend who’d never let him down.

  Every muscle in his back uncoiled at once.

  He didn’t think about the pain in his ribs, the blood in his mouth, or the fact he was about to hit a literal nightmare warrior with a tree.

  He just ran.

  Sand exploded under his boots.

  The world narrowed to one target, one swing, one heartbeat.

  The knight’s helmet snapped toward the gunfire.

  Too late.

  The log hit Tarmour square in the chest with a sound like a ship’s mast snapping. Two hundred kilos of Zaxvoyan muscle behind three metres of solid wood.

  The impact travelled up Mereque’s arms like a second heartbeat. He felt ribs that weren’t ribs give way, felt the knight’s body fold around the blow like wet paper.

  Tarmour left the ground, flew thirty metres, and carved a trench through wet sand before skidding into the shallows.

  Steam hissed up around him, hot enough to boil seawater.

  Mereque’s lungs burned.

  Every stride tore at the flechettes buried in his side.

  He tasted iron and salt and something older.

  The ocean screamed as Tarmour’s armour cooked it alive.

  He didn’t slow. Couldn’t.

  If he stopped the pain would win. If the pain won he would lose. Simple equation.

  Mereque didn’t wait. He sprinted.

  Every stride sent fire through his stitched shoulder, through the flechettes still burning in his side. He welcomed it. Pain meant he was still moving.

  Jenker flanked high, still pouring useless but beautiful fire.

  Tarmour rose, sword screaming.

  Mereque leapt (ten metres straight up, log overhead like a battering ram).

  The world slowed. He saw Jenker’s face (mouth open, eyes wide), saw the knights on the beach freeze mid-step, saw the ocean itself pull back from the coming impact.

  Came down swinging.

  The blow drove the knight into the earth hard enough to crater rock and crack bone that wasn’t bone.

  The shockwave rolled up Mereque’s arms and into his teeth.

  Sand exploded outward in a perfect ring. For one frozen heartbeat the beach was silent except for the wet crunch of something inside Tarmour giving way.

  Then the knight moved.

  Not staggered. Moved.

  As if the crater was just an inconvenience. Black-white armour flexed, fractures sealing like water. The sword screamed louder (hungry, insulted).

  Mereque felt it in his teeth, in his soul. This creature didn’t break. It adapted.

  He was swinging before the dust settled, log whipping sideways, catching him across the ribs and sending him skipping again like a stone across water.

  The knight swung his sword in a low arc.

  Sand and stone exploded upward, a blinding wall.

  Mereque lost lock.

  He charged straight through the storm anyway.

  Sand scoured his visor like a thousand angry bees.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  He couldn’t see. Didn’t need to.

  His chip painted Tarmour in ghost-green, a heartbeat away.

  He burst through the wall, spitting fury and rage. The knight was already turning, sword rising.

  Mereque smiled behind his cracked visor.

  He couldn’t let the bastard breathe.

  Tarmour was already in the air, wings of broken light beating once.

  Flechettes punched through Mereque’s armour like hot needles through paper. Dozens. He felt every one (white fire in muscle, bone, lung). Blood hissed where the shards pressed into his skin. He grunted, kept running.

  The flechettes burned cold, then hot, then cold again, like the metal couldn’t decide if it wanted to freeze him or cook him.

  His HUD flashed red: MULTIPLE PENETRATIONS. MAJOR BLOOD LOSS DETECTED. EMERGENCY SUPPLY RELEASING.

  He told it to shut up.

  Every step sent fresh fire up his spine. He welcomed it. Pain meant the nerves were still talking. Pain meant he was still in the fight. He laughed once (short and ugly).

  The log became a spear.

  Tarmour’s sword flashed vertical.

  Wood exploded into splinters around the knight like a bomb made of trees.

  Mereque rolled under the follow-up strike, came up limping, leg on fire.

  The cut ran deep (calf muscle sliced to the bone). He felt warm wetness fill his boot with every step. Didn’t matter. Pain was just noise.

  Tarmour landed between him and the trees, sword screaming.

  A boot caught Mereque in the helmet (stars, ringing teeth, sand in his mouth).

  He hit the ground hard, rolled, came up with the sword already falling towards him.

  He threw his hand against it, the edge slid despite his grasp, screeching as if voicing its hatred.

  Going for the chest. Going for my heart.

  Push, dammit.

  The point of the weapon dropped,

  Unholy steel punched through the amour, meat, and bone of his left thigh.

  Pain whited out everything.

  For one heartbeat the world vanished. Only the blade existed (cold, hungry, singing inside his bones).

  He saw Grace’s face in the white. Heard the roar of a dragon as it burned the world around her.

  Then the override kicked in (hard, brutal, beautiful). Pain became data. Data became fuel. He came back roaring.

  The blade kept going (halfway to the elbow, the living metal twisting its way in).

  He clamped down anyway, vice-grip on the blade, blood hissing where it touched the unnatural weapon.

  Every heartbeat pumped more red onto the sand. He felt his pulse in the wound, fast, defiant.

  Tarmour snarled and drove clawed fingers into the holes the flechettes had left in Mereque’s shoulder.

  Flesh tore. Bone ground.

  The world narrowed to an indescribably blinding agony.

  He felt the sword burrowing within him (slow, pulsing and puling). Every heartbeat spurred it deeper. He let it. Because if it busy with him, it wasn’t swinging at Jenker. He was giving his friend a chance to live. It was the least he could do. This wretched world was bad enough; he wouldn’t let another friend die because of it (or because of him).

  Mereque locked eyes with the enemy and smiled through the blood.

  Pain clawed through the inhibitors.

  Tarmour’s fingers dug deeper, scraping bone.

  Mereque snarled, sent the silent command.

  Override: All.

  This time the chip slammed the gates shut on every nerve. Pain vanished (replaced by cold, perfect clarity).

  He felt nothing below the shoulders. Just the sword in his hand, the enemy in front of him, and the single burning thought: Not today. Not while Jenker was still breathing. Not while one human heart on this cursed planet still beat free.

  He slammed three short punches into the knight’s chest (hard enough to dent hull-plate). Each one carried five hundred escape pods and every name he’d failed to save.

  First punch: for Antoinette. Second: for the captain who never knew his wife was dead. Third: for the kind fairy he’d left behind on an island with a bloodthirst dragon and worse.

  The armor dented. Tarmour didn’t flinch.

  Mereque felt the knight’s ribs shift under the blows (not break, just shift, like hitting a bag of knives).

  He cocked his fist for a fourth.

  Tarmour answered by driving his hand deeper.

  Mereque dropped to his knees, the disconnected pain center was momentarily overwhelmed, his grip slipped from the sword.

  One heartbeat from death.

  Then the world exploded.

  Jenker hit Tarmour from the side, Pelter pressed under the helm’s jaw.

  One shot.

  The left side of the knight’s neck vanished in a spray of black-white sand.

  Tarmour staggered back, clutching the hole that should have been fatal.

  Jenker hauled Mereque up.

  “Run!”

  They ran.

  Mereque’s leg screamed, his whole body wailed, but the chip kept him moving.

  Jenker pointed ahead, voice raw.

  “He’s not alone!”

  Mereque looked.

  The beach was opening.

  A hundred black-white rectangles tore open the air like freshly made wounds. Edges ragged, bleeding black-white fire.

  Mereque felt the temperature drop twenty degrees in a heartbeat. Against all reason, the sand beneath his boots began to steam. Every portal exhaled the same stench: old graves, burnt incense, tears held for uncounted centuries.

  Each rectangle birthed a knight in perfect silence (no footfalls, no breath, only the soft click of swords clearing scabbards).

  More waited in the tree line.

  They were boxed in.

  A hundred fractured helms turned in perfect unison. All towards them. No sound but the wind, the surf, and Jenker’s ragged breathing.

  The Blanched melted into the bleeding landscape (white on white, absence on absence). When they moved, colour fled before them like frightened birds, leaving perfect scars of nothing behind.

  Mereque tasted fear and bitter regret rising within him.

  He’d dragged this man out of his cage in order to save him, not so they could be murdered on some miserable beach in the middle of nowhere.

  Mereque skidded to a halt.

  Jenker caught up, chest heaving.

  “They’re in the trees,” Mereque said. “We’re boxed.”

  Jenker glanced back. A hundred fractured knights advanced in silence, wings half-spread, swords already tasting the air.

  He looked at Jenker (eyes wide, hair matted with sweat). He looked at the knights. He looked at the ocean.

  No way out.

  No way I’m giving up.

  One chance left. One stupid, impossible chance.

  Mereque pointed at the waves. “Ocean. Now. Can you hold your breath?”

  Jenker barked a ragged laugh. “Nautican Marine, mate. I was born holding my breath.”

  “Good. I can feed you air. Move.”

  “What about you?” Jenker asked, eyes wide.

  Mereque was already running.

  Behind them, the nearest knight raised his sword and the tide itself recoiled.

  The first flechette hissed past Mereque’s ear and buried itself in the sand.

  Jenker kept pace, half-laughing, half-cursing. “Next time you save someone, let’s pick a beach without a hostile honour guard!”

  “Next time I’ll make sure to read the brochure,” Mereque growled.

  A flechette hissed between them, carving a groove in the sand.

  Jenker glanced back. “What’s the plan?”

  He didn’t answer. No time.

  Another step and the water hit their knees (cold, real, alive).

  Mereque tightened his grip. “Hold your breath on three.”

  “One—”

  A sword screamed behind them.

  “—forget three!”

  He just grabbed Jenker by the arm and charged.

  The ocean waited, ready to swallow them whole.