Kei

  I may not know who I am or where I came from. But I do know who I’m here to help.

  --The Shadow Journal of Kei Kimura

  I know as soon as I fight the Hounds that I’m not going to beat them.

  They’re far too valuable alive and clueless. And for once I thank Kestrel for her maniacal focus on taking me down and taking me back.

  No weapons, not even a shattered staff. Only the blindness and bloodthirst of the Hounds, but for my purposes, that’s all I need. Well, surviving would be nice, too, but fortunately my mind doesn’t even consider such an outlandish outcome. Fairy tales can wait till I sleep, and clearly, I can sleep when I’m dead.

  The lead Hound charges me, five more following in his wake. I whirl as he closes, reach past his jaws with my right arm as he snaps at my left, and grab his scruff like a handy collar. And then my leaping wolf is airborne and arcing around me.

  And aimed. He takes the next Hound under the legs as his packmate is about to spring, and then I’m diving between their crumpling collision and the third Hound. I’ve whipped off my jacket and used it as a bullfighter’s cape on Number Three, giving him a target to commit to as I pull it clockwise around my body.

  The path, once again, my Gift has decided to drag everything along. For now.

  I grab him by the scruff, also, hauling him along hard for good measure.

  An unseen whirlwind grips the unnatural beast, its strangely solid-yet-immaterial flesh somehow more vulnerable to my power than even the sparking, sub-par throwaway drones racing along behind me.

  He howls, unclear of how or why he’s now in the air, but he doesn’t need to know. His flexible, mutable body makes perfect cover for the drones almost on top of me.

  The Hound takes them broadside as he flies free from the eyewall of my Gift, and howls again as they explode.

  And then I’ve whirled back in the other direction, and Hounds Four and Five are upon me, while One and Two have scrambled to their feet.

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  This is the interesting part.

  I dive, again, right below Four’s feet but landing and sliding on my back as his immense fangs and clawed forepaws come down to rend me.

  They want me alive as long as Kestrel does, but they never bring back quarry in one piece. And if anything, I’ve given them more reason to break me than most prey. I’m anything but easy.

  But I catch his forelegs just above the paws, yank my own body sideways and then heave, straining every muscle and letting the Hound’s momentum combine with the sudden clockwise pull of the power around me seizing his entire body. My sudden sideways ‘stance’ along the ground hits more than just Four. All five Hounds feel the shift in forces, as if gravity itself were only pulling partially from the ground, and the rest circling whatever axis my body now lays in.

  Four doesn’t have time to think about that, but hits a few more unsteady drones behind us, instead, before crashing to the ground. He’ll be up soon enough, like One, and ready to rejoin the dance.

  Fortunately, Hounds don’t run away unless Kestrel commands otherwise. They’d rather die than give up prey.

  Five bites down hard on my jacket, and through it, into my arm.

  Or rather, my fist as I rise from the ground and slam a punch straight down its howling throat. The jacket’s a good bit of camouflage for the strike, but the coldfire coursing through my hand ignores it and rips through Five’s head like a whirlwind somehow warping a mirage. Five stumbles, then tries to howl again, fist or no fist, as my left hand gouges into its eye sockets for a grip and I shift my body, my power and its inertia into another accelerated judo throw.

  The drones are slightly more cautious, this time, but Five hurtles their way, end over end. I hear at least one detonation from his direction as I turn on One and Two, as they come at me as one.

  They dive low, too low for me to go under either, which is why my first step is on One’s head and my second on his spine. My third launches me from his tailbone and I’m aloft once more, the Hounds behind me. And I hear more howls from the woods around us.

  Because of course I do.

  But I’m almost to the Maze’s entrance, where a fierce swarm of more advanced drones has clustered to wait for me.

  I’m thankful. I’m also zig-zagging away from them, and smashing straight through the hedge wall of the Maze.

  The shrubbery is tough for plant life, but nothing to someone who can trade blows with a pack of Hounds. So I explode through the foliage, hit the next wall and the next, and am slicing through the Maze in a blur. Sometimes rushing a down a corridor and worming under a hedge or two to confuse my trackers, sometimes blasting through half a dozen walls for the speed.

  My glimpse earlier at the layout of the Maze told me two things. One, there was something off about the lighting at the center. Two, I think the pulse I felt earlier from the Maze may have emanated from it, dead center.

  So if I’m going to play human decoy, I might as well investigate, and satisfy my own curiosity before murderous machines and sadistic specters catch up with me.

  Which doesn’t leave me much time.

  I dodge and weave along, using the cover of the hedgerows and the disruption of my own power to hide myself from my pursuers. As fast as I am now, I don’t need to sow that much confusion.

  I race down the last green corridor and reach the entrance.

  And almost stumble over the shattered body of an immense armored knight. A knight with no actual body inside, just clockwork mechanisms.

  And beyond those remains, I can see the grassy center of the Maze, which is no longer grassy at all. Or even ground.

  Instead, there is a gaping shaft at least ten-yards wide. At first, I can’t see the bottom. And then I can, and it looks like a ghostly, almost archaic copy of Waycross sprawling out, far, far below.

  I stare down in wonder, even my Gift seemingly flummoxed and flabbergasted. Or simply struck silent.

  And then, a vast shadow falls over me.

  And I look up to see a much, much larger steel giant descending like a hammer from the heavens.

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