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Broken in the Ashes of the Lost Fleet

Slumbering in Empty Eternity

Chaos was the purest substance of creation. All possibilities and all materials into one and the Void was filled with it. Between the atmospheric barriers that protected Tower Thirteen’s Stations and the area immediately around Chrysalis, Chaos ruled. Absolutely anything that was exposed to Chaos ran the risk of immediately being transformed or corrupted into something else as the very essence of Chaos was unpredictable. Of course, there was an equal possibility that it would become more powerful, ascend to godhood or for nothing to happen. Such was the nature of Chaos.

To the naked eye, the Void appeared as a red and black nebulous cloud with distant stars flashing in the distance. The Godslayer, as they had named their transport, was thankfully protected by powerful Void Shields, preventing direct contact with Chaos. Still, it left everyone on edge even Rayne who had lived in the roiling Void as his time as a Demon Prince.

Every hour, Rayne reminded them that if they ever got thrown into the Void, the key to maintain themselves and their physical forms was a sense of identity. Chaos was not inherently evil. It was just… chaotic. But if some form of order, a strong will, stood in the Chaos, then it would remain untouched for however long that individual remained themselves. That was how demons managed to exist in the Void for so long and why their ships never needed Void Shielding.

The Godslayer rattled.

Skye looked the most tense. His claws were scratching the windows that showed the endless possibilities of the Void. Beside him, JD was happily munching away at some of the Firbar Skewers that Sienna had packed for him. She had really taken a shining to the Red Lightning. Apparently, she and Alex had exchanged parenting tips at one point even though Sienna was still without a child of her own. Across from JD, Wood was spinning Cindarc in one hand and Vulcan in the other, his eyes on the distance and every muscle in his body from the tip of his reptilian tail to the top of his broad wings tense like steel wires. Alex, Aria and Tanar were in the cockpit, piloting the ship. That left Kane casually taking up three of the seats, arms behind his back and trying to nap.

Hunter watched them all with apprehension. It was like watching a sports team going through each of their rituals before a championship match. The coaches were out front planning, the team captain was giving them a pep talk and everyone else was rubbing their lucky charms to find a way to calm down before the big match.

For him, he sat quietly next to the cockpit door. In his paws was the large, blue, crystalline cube about half the size of his palm that was his Sequencer. Thin wires made out of light sprang from its sides and connected to his ears, playing music that he used to calm his nerves. As the song ended, he tapped the console on one of the faces of the cube to select another. Within the cube, he switched through the various schematics that he had saved. Each of them were ready for a quick deployment from Wildfire. He had gone through them each with his fellow blacksmiths as he worked tirelessly to equip the team with the best weapons he could imagine that were perfect.

As before, Skye had drained the exhaustion from him and redistributed it to the others so they could rest off his weariness while he kept on working. He hoped that what he had made would be enough.

The Godslayer rattled again but this was different. There was a resounding thud and a sudden silence as the transport dropped out of warp. They had arrived.

As he sat closest to the cockpit, he heard the gasps from Aria and Alex. Ears perked, he got up from where he was seated and headed through the sliding door. The moment he saw what waited beyond the Void, he too gasped. That rallied the others to him and he was pushed into the cramped cockpit. Through the windshield of the Godslayer, he saw what had to be the Lost Incendian Fleet but nothing could have prepared them for what lay in front of them.

The all-consuming Void parted in a spherical fashion across miles of space and nothingness; just inky blackness where the Fleet hovered. What had to be hundreds if not a thousand individual ships hovered in this darkness, the lights from their hulls like tiny stars shining through the murk. Each ship was well-maintained and fully-functional. Hunter could see the glow from their engines, the faint rippling of Void Shields around their hulls and the few sections on their chassis with windows showed illuminated hallways.

They were all working.

“Something is… wrong,” Aria admitted from where she sat in the pilot’s seat.

“You mean apart from the fact that we have hundreds of fully functioning ships just hovering out here and no one has noticed it?” Kane growled sarcastically. “Is the military’s sensors that off whack that they couldn’t detect a whole fucking fleet of this size!?”

“That’s exactly it,” Tanar said. He sat to Aria’s right, facing the right side of the cockpit. He was the navigator and in charge of the ship’s auxiliary functions. Sienna’s ring hovered beside him under the blue light of a scanner that was feeding its data into a console. “Up until we actually entered this weird field that is somehow repelling the Void, we didn’t sense anything. It’s like the Void that should have filled this space was being pushed back to form a super-dense version of the Void that’s interfering with sensors outside of it.”

“It’s more than that,” Aria said. “There’s this… feeling in the air. A feeling that I haven’t felt since the war…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Chronomancy…”

Hunter stared at her as did the others.

“You must be joking,” Alex said, seating to her left. He was in charge of the ship’s meager weapons. “Please do not tell me that you think there’s a goddamn Chronomancer hiding away somewhere here.”

The Templar shook her head. “I don’t know. We -”

Tanar’s sensors suddenly started lightning up. “We have a transmission incoming.”

Rayne sucked air through clenched teeth. “Someone is alive in there…” He stormed forward. “Bring it up.”

A holographic screen popped up in front of Aria, partially obscuring her vision. She immediately gasped, her hand flying to her lips and tears welling up in her purple eyes. The features of a white-furred Wulfun wearing a stark-white scarf and bearing golden eyes appeared.

“Harm…” she gasped.

“Chronos…” Alex whispered.

“I will admit,” Chronos began, “I don’t know how to begin.”

“Why aren’t you dead!?” Aria shouted, breaking her composure.

JD stepped up to her, holding her shoulder tightly. “It’s a recording.” She shot him a piercing look as if challenging him to say that again but then the legendary Chronomancer continued.

“If you’ve come this far, then you’ve either come looking for the Lost Incendian Fleet and somehow found it or just stumbled upon this place. I honestly wouldn’t blame you for one or the other.” The Chronomancer offered a wry smile. “The Fleet is not what you think it is. You might have heard stories that it was once a moving archive. An attempt by myself and my best friend Lumire to recruit people from Incendius to constantly leave their families and the establishment behind to bring their knowledge here and secure it against future incursion. Maybe you’re trying to follow a long-lost family member who disappeared looking for the fleet or are following ghost stories about a fleet that got lost in the Void.

“It is neither of those things. This Fleet… is a mass graveyard.”

The team exchanged glances. Aria wiped away her tears and gave JD a nod, prompting the red Wulfun to release her shoulder.

“It started out as I mentioned. Lumire and I got a few ship captains to convince their fleets to abandon their posts and come here to collate what they knew about Incendian history and preserve it in the case Incendius was lost. Incendius has traditionally always been the weakest of Stations in terms of defenses against demons and we saw this during the Second Demonic War.”

“It’s true,” sighed Rayne with a shrug. “Incendius is not as divided as say Diatollia or as physically fractured as Nebulus but because of its lack of technological advancements and highly superstitious citizenry, it was prey for demons.”

“The experiment worked really well especially during the Purge of Time which immediately followed the Second Demonic War. The Chronomancers never found the fleet and even though Incendius was nearly burned to the ground, the fleet remained. This proved there was merit to the experiment. Over the centuries, we kept adding to the fleet and the fleet kept growing on its own. It became a self-sustaining, mobile country of its own. A man-made nation in the Void. A Station of its own.”

“Holy shit…” Wood breathed.

“That’s… incredible!” Skye exclaimed.

“But as with every nation, things cannot remain the same and when there are differing opinions, consensus will change the course of a civilization,” Harm continued grimly. “We made the mistake of thinking that the people of the Fleet were static and would remain so for all eternity. They formed their opinions as they had the right to. They started believing Lumire to be a god. He was the immortal Propheticus Primoris, after all and they were granted a mission directly from him to join the Fleet. I was his guardian angel, the messenger that would come to them periodically to see how they were doing.”

Tanar shook his head. “Heresy.”

“Tell me they started indulging in orgies,” Kane said with a vicious grin. When Tanar gave him a foul look, the big bear just waggled his eyebrows at the Paladin. An insulted lion turned away with his nose wrinkled in disgust.

“The Fleet and its inhabitants began forming their own cult and this cult grew in power. Eventually, it became the dominating power and they soon forgot their original mission. I discussed with Lumire on what to do with the Fleet. We both agreed that we needed to end the experiment. We needed to destroy it. By now, over four millennia after the fleet started, the original ships that formed the fleet may still exist but the people who had first manned it had long died. Still, Lumire felt guilty and it weighed heavily on him to effectively kill over two billion people.”

“Two billion!?” Alex blanched. “There were two billion in this fleet!?”

“A single ship can house maybe a thousand people,” Tanar said, absently counting with his fingers. “That’s the smallest at a corvette. A carrier can house over fifty thousand as a skeleton crew. Double that at most and maybe double that again if you’re squeezing people in. If these ships were not built for war and were there to house people, you could conceivably fit two billion people in this Fleet!”

Harm continued. “I told Lumire that I couldn’t do it. Gave him comfort that he would not have to shoulder the burden of giving such an evil order and that I would find another way.” The Chronomancer laughed bitterly. “Gave him some bizarre theories of maybe trapping them in Time or displacing them out of reality but no Chronomancer would have been able to do that. Even at the height of their power.”

Then, Harm’s features grew grim and he stared directly at the team. The air just grew cold.

“But I was only partially lying. I’m now going to tell you three truths. All three will horrify you, whoever you are.” He lifted a finger. “The first is that I killed them. Each and every one of them. Obliterated over two billion living souls. They could not be allowed to continue. The Fleet was effectively a nation on its own. A nation where every citizen is trained with a myriad of combat techniques and was capable of manning a fighter craft. Think of it as every person on a single Station being given a carriage, horse, car or flying vehicle but each one of those is armed to the teeth. Then imagine that their houses are tanks or flying fortresses. Now add the final part: each of them is a racist, xenophobic, inbred, militaristic expansionist who had written an entire prophecy that if ever new ships were to stop coming to the fleet, it was their signal to go out and invade the ‘Heretical Land of Light and Shadow’.”

“He had to sacrifice ships over and over again to placate the Fleet,” gasped Alex. “That’s why he had to keep it going for so long. If he didn’t…”

“… then the Fleet would attack Incendius,” Hunter finished. “Shit…”

“I won’t justify my actions,” Harm said grimly. “Maybe I could have instituted a coup. Tried steering them on the better path or something else but there was another reason I needed to do what I did.” He raised a second finger. “The second truth is, the Fleet houses the greatest collection of Incendian artifacts and knowledge in all of Tower Thirteen. It quickly became a dumping ground of things that Lumire wanted to make disappear and keep from the hands of anyone too crazy to use them. One of those artifacts was the Talon of the Fire God. FireFeather_. I - and I alone - decided that, above all else, this weapon_ could not leave the Lost Incendian Fleet. So I did what I had to do.”

Aria’s eyes widened and she got to her feet. “Harm… you didn’t! Two billion people!? You didn’t!”

“What?” Hunter asked. “What did he do?”

“I used the Time of all two billion people to create a very elaborate trap,” Harm said. “A trap you have just sprung.”

“What the shit!?” exclaimed Kane. “What the fuck did he just say?”

Aria, looking paler than she ever did, collapsed into her seat. “No… Harm… How could you?”

“If you did not know already, I was the original creator of the technique Final Hour_. This was the technique that allowed Chronomancers - or anyone really - to absorb the Time out of something and add it to their own. It ’s effectively what gave the Chronomancers enough confidence to start the Purge of Time.”_ Harm showed no remorse or sadness in what he said next. “I used Final Hour to take all the Time out of the entire population of the Fleet and trap it in a sort of time bubble. Here, the Void is repelled and will never encroach upon the borders of the Fleet. The ships will forever remain as they are. They can never be damaged and they will never _move from where they currently are no matter how far they seemingly travel. They ’re effectively trapped in a time loop and now, so are you.”_

“Tanar!” barked Alex.

“I’m on it!” Tanar shouted, leaping to his feet and taking the controls from Aria who had gone limp. The transport was immediately turned around and they started flying towards the wall of crimson and black that they had just emerged from. Hunter hung onto the nearby wall as the Godslayer plunged into the Void…

… only to emerge a few seconds later back into the expanse of the Fleet’s domain.

“Oh fuck me…” breathed Rayne.

“You’ll never escape here,” intoned Harm grimly. “Nothing can. Not even FireFeather. So long as the Fleet stands and remains as it is now, no one can ever leave it. Since the Fleet itself is bound to the Chronomancy as well, it will never change so it is impossible to leave entirely.” Then he offered a rueful smile. “On the positive side, you will at least die. I only bound the magic to the Fleet’s actual ships. Organic lifeforms will age and die as time intended. Whatever ship you came from will likely be integrated into the Fleet and when the spell resets, it will be part of the Fleet forever. Your tombstone in this graveyard.”

He let out a short bitter laugh. “Like I said, it’s a graveyard. And like I said, no one Chronomancer even at the height of their power could have accomplished such a feat. Thankfully, I was one Chronomancer and two billion people. Try to enjoy the sights. Maybe explore the libraries and museums. The Fleet is self-sustaining so you’ll have some fine Incendian cuisine to enjoy. If there’s enough of you, maybe you can start this civilization anew. Just know that you’ll never escape it. I’ve made sure of that.”

Then the transmission ended.

“Motherfucker!” roared Kane, punching the nearby wall and causing a dent. “He probably used that fucking long-ass speech to distract us while the magic took effect! We’re trapped!”

Alarms began blaring.

“We’ve got worse problems to worry about!” Tanar shouted, jumping back to his station. “Nearby ships are arming their weaponry!”

“What?” Alex shouted, scrambling to arm the Godslayer’s defenses. “I thought he said he killed everyone here!”

“Well someone wants us dead!”

Hunter’s eyes widened. “Rahl…” He saw the tell-tale lights of weapons being armed amongst the countless ships. Having served on a starship for most of his adult life, he knew he only had a few seconds to react. The combat engineer lunged for Aria and immediately yanked the control stick hard to the right and down. The Godslayer immediately jerked, its thrusters reacting to the sudden movement. A searing beam of scintillating red light blasted out of a nearby ship and just barely missed them.

“Wake up, Valkyrie!” he roared, immediately jerking the ship left and up.

“Take the wheel!” Kane barked, grabbing Aria by the shoulders and taking her out of the pilot’s seat. Hunter immediately jumped into the broad chair and began tapping commands on the console while his other paw remained on the stick. The transport swerved, ducking and weaving as beams from the cannons of the nearby starships began assaulting them.

“I can keep us from the beam cannons,” he shouted, “but I can’t do anything about those missiles!”

“Leave that to me!” barked Alex. The transport only had a single rotating turret on its hull but it fired some electronically charged particles that could disrupt and destroy projectiles. The twin cannons of the turret blared, sending a constant pap-pap-pap rattling through the transport’s chassis.

Scorching crimson beams burned through the emptiness, barely missing the Godslayer. Beads of sweat dripped off Hunter’s brow and absorbed into his silvery fur. Fangs bared, he worked rapidly to pilot the small, sluggish transport through the constant bombardment. In the back of his mind, he recognized that this was futile. There was no escape. The Last Chronomancer had trapped them here in the time loop bubble. They had limited ammunition, fuel and endurance while the fleet’s resources were innumerable!

He still wanted to fight. He did not want to die.

He wanted to live.

“Fuck this!” Wood suddenly shouted and he barged his way past the others back into the hold. Alarms blared in Hunter’s vision as one of the doors sprang open.

“What are you doing!?” Tanar cried. “You won’t survive out there!”

Wood flashed the lion a grin. “You forget what I am.” Then Wood fished out one of his handaxes. “I’ll buy you guys some time. Get these assholes off you.”

Hunter barely had time to register what he meant before Wood flung himself out of the transport, past the bubble of the Void shields. There was a blinding flash of light then a tremendous roar that shook the Godslayer. Without warning, something huge, immense and green shot out from the space beside the ship. It was an enormous dragon - not a bipedal Draconian like Wood - but a true dragon.

At twenty meters long from muzzle to tail with a wingspan of at least double that, the emerald-scaled beast was propped up on four mighty limbs with its huge wings springing from its back. Coupled with this was what appeared to be two large jetpacks mounted on its back, flanking its spine attached to large, metal plates all over its chest. Along its forearms were two huge cannons twice the size of an average human. Judging by the nutty brown horns and the blonde mane, there was no denying that this was Wood Bladebreaker, Fallen and wielder of the Sin known as Vulcan.

Wood let out a tremendous roar and shot forward, the jetpacks on his back launching him ahead of the Godslayer. Balls of scintillating green energies burst from his muzzle. It took about thirty seconds for it to hit the hull of the nearest ship - a patrol boat - but just two hits caused the entire ship’s shields to fail, the effect looking like a sphere of semi-translucent blue-green glass shattering from around the vessel. The remaining balls slammed into the ship, burning through armor and eating into the hull. Within moments, the entire patrol boat had an entire chunk melted away, rendering it completely useless.

Hunter gulped down bile as he saw what appeared to be bodies flying out of the ship. There were still people in those ships. Despite Chronos claiming that he had killed everyone on the Lost Fleet, there were still bodies. He choked down his disgust and turned his attention back to piloting the transport.

“Fuck me,” Kane growled, clinging onto the back of Hunter’s chair. “When we get out of this, I’m souping up this dump with fucking engines and one of those fucking Physics Engines!”

“What is happening to that ship!?” Skye suddenly shouted, pointing at the vessel that Wood had just destroyed.

Aria snapped out of her stupor and gawked openly at where Skye was pointing.

Whatever damage Wood had done was suddenly… healing. The bodies floating out into space were somehow gravitating back inside the ship. Lights were flickering back on and melted instruments repaired themselves. It was slow but even Wood’s powerful acid had its limit.

Chronomancy, apparently, did not.

“He Time Locked the entire fleet and all the people in it,” gasped Aria. “That’s the crux of his trap.”

Rayne scoffed and marched towards the door Wood had left open. “Chronos always was one sly son-of-a-bitch. Thought outside the box and always asked how he could break the system. Trust him to find a way to break one of the foundations of Chronomancers and twist it to his own fucking design.”

“Where are you going?” demanded Aria.

The teacher grinned her her, hiking a thumb against his chest with his purple eyes glinting. “Wood isn’t the only one that can survive out in the nothingness.” An aura of angry indigo energies emanated from him. Hunter just felt… malice from the otherwise calm, controlled and fatherly physical education teacher. “I’m going in!”

An idea sprang into Hunter’s mind. “Rayne, wait!” He cried, pointing to a nearby corvette. “Make a path for us to that ship! Open the hanger doors and break down the shields!”

The malice from Rayne faded momentarily. “What?”

“Chronomancy is protecting every vessel here in the Fleet. Our best bet of surviving this is to get inside one of the ships, outside of their range of fire and use their own defenses to protect us!”

Thankfully, he didn’t have to provide further explanation. Rayne grinned at him. “I like your way of thinking, Hart. I’ll rally Wood! Someone shut the fucking door behind me!”

Then Rayne was leaping out the door, that malicious aura growing with him. JD rushed after him, closing the door and locking it just in time for a burst of violent, purple energies to erupt from where the teacher had disappeared into. There was no tremendous, earth-shattering roar, no tremor that shook the ship. Just a wave of… chaos. It was wildness, impulsiveness and ferocious feral energy incarnate. For a second, Hunter was overcome with the desire to just tug at the control stick, howl like a wild wolf and send them spinning for no reason that it would be thrilling. Kane let out a ferocious roar and shook the chair Hunter was seated on wildly.

“Fuuuuuuck!” cried the bear. “I fucking love it when he does that!”

That sudden jolt of force was exactly what Hunter needed to remain focused as he wove between two beams from two separate ships. “What was that?” he asked.

“Rayne Noam,” Tanar intoned grimly. “Otherwise known as the Demon Prince Amon or the Loner Prince. Apart from his intelligence, combat prowess and general corruptive powers as a Demon, he is one of the most powerful demons out there. So much so, his moniker of ‘The Loner Prince’ was granted to him because no other demon wanted to be anywhere near him.”

He gave Tanar a quick look before turning back to piloting the ship.

Rayne zoomed past the Godslayer in his full, demonic form. Two, big, black wings draped in black feathers sprouting from his back. Unlike Wood who actually used his wings for flight, Rayne’s wings seemed purely decorative as he propelled himself through space through sheer force of will and his might alone. That purple aura of his glowed all over his large, eight-foot form, leaving a trail behind him where he went. His musculature had tripled from his compact, human shape with his flesh turning black and with this sinews of his muscles showing across his body as a dark, ruby red. Black, armor-like bone joined the muscles and shaped spikes across his forearms and legs, forming spiked gloves and boots. His features had drastically changed as well. Gone were the angular features of a stunningly handsome man. Instead, the Demon Prince’s features were encased in a snarling, almost skull-like carapace with glowing purple eyes beneath a heavy brow. A crown made of the same black bone jutted from his forehead to form five spires rising into the air. A long, black tail sprang from the base of his spin ending in a blunt ball that sported the same black spikes as his arms.

“In short, Rayne Noam is a living embodiment of disaster_,_” Tanar finished.

Rayne’s glistening form immediately came under assault from the myriad of ships around him. Cannon fire peppered the Demon Prince but Rayne just shrugged them off like a mild, summer drizzle. He rocketed towards Wood and seemed to speak to the dragon before they both headed towards the nearby corvette. The rest of the fleet pulled their attention from Hunter and the Godslayer to focus on the two super-powered beings. Large, rectangular lines of line started appearing across several of the ships.

“They’re launching fighters!” he shouted, realizing that he couldn’t communicate with Rayne or Wood. “Fuck!”

Suddenly, Aria’s hand fell on his shoulder. “Focus on getting us to that corvette,” she insisted firmly. “Those two can handle themselves.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “I’ve personally seen Rayne fight. He is comparable or even more powerful than other Templars out there. As for Wood, he may be young but the raw, unbridled power of a Fallen is never to be underestimated.”

Hunter nodded grimly and focused on the corvette, setting the thrusters to maximum and sending them careening towards the larger vessel’s relatively small hanger. Corvettes were escort vessels and rarely had their own hangers filled with combat-ready fighters. Even the larger ones probably could only house two fighters at the most. Most corvette hangers - particularly those from the Incendian Fleet - generally had dropships or transports to ferry their crew around.

So this Corvette - the INCv Flickering Flame - kept its hanger shut.

Which wouldn’t stop Rayne or Wood.

First, Wood hovered some distance from the ship and angled his head and twin, arm-mounted cannons at the vessel. Three balls of green light gathered at each opening, sending out a high-pitched keening noise that Hunter could hear even though the Godslayer was some distance away.

JD and Skye suddenly launched forward, pumping their fists forward.

“Trinity Flare!” they cried in unison.

Wood unleashed his payload, the three balls of green energy launching from the dragon and slamming into the corvette’s shields - shields that were stronger than a patrol boat’s. The balls exploded, unleashing a shockwave of energy that crippled the fighters closing in around them. The corvette’s shields shattered, giving Rayne the opening he needed.

The Demon Prince crashed into the Flickering Flame’s hanger doors, digging his clawed fingers right into the metal that had to be at least two feet thick and weight over ten tonnes. There was a pause and a moment where the door visibly resisted the Demon Prince’s might. Then the metal buckled and Rayne shoved the entire door upwards, forcing it into its slot and giving the Godslayer somewhere to dock.

Before the transport could slide in, however, Rayne charged into the hanger, grabbed the two dropships inside and hurled them out of the hanger, sending them drifting into the Void. Wood provided cover to the Godslayer as Hunter piloted the clunky ship into the Flame’s own hanger.

The moment Hunter set down the Godslayer right in the middle of the hanger, he was grabbing Wildfire and hurrying out the door. Any captain worth their salt would have instantly sent armed men to the hanger the moment they were boarded so violently. Aria had the same thought and was barking orders for everyone to grab their gear and get ready. No one argued though Alex offered a rueful smile now that the Angel was back to form.

They charged out of the Godslayer.

Rayne landed a good distance away, the purple haze around him coalescing around him and compressing his form back into its human shape, clothes and all. Wood arrived a short while later, his immense weight shaking the metal floor of the hanger. His brilliant green light of a transformation returning him to his usual Draconis form… except he was naked.

“Kane!” he shouted, before giving a shrill whistle and holding up his hands. “Hit me up, bro!”

Kane dug into his duffel back and threw Wood some replacement clothes, really just a pair of shockingly short-shorts. No shirt. Wood didn’t complain, put them on and hooked Vulcan into the side. Once dressed, Kane withdrew two other handaxes from his duffel bag, Cataclysm and Cindarc, giving Wood a choice between the two. The Draconis chose the fiery version and Kane threw him Cindarc.

They lined up facing the far door to the hanger. Aria took up position at the front of the ground, spinning Searsparrow through the air to ignite its tip before readying it in front of her, gripping the much heavier spear in both hands. Kane took up position slightly behind her, slamming Spicy Meatball into the ground to make a large dent in the metal before hefting it over his shoulder in a ready position. Rayne strutted up and stood beside Aria. He bashed the knuckles of Burnicade together, causing black sparks to erupt from the armored gloves. Then he rolled his shoulders, ominous cracking emitting from his neck. Slightly behind him, Wood approached, spinning both Vulcan and Cindarc in his hands before spreading his wings threateningly while simultaneously protecting those behind him.

Tanar opened the Codex Infernis while flexing the claws of the red and black Flarecaster. Little, dizzying sparks of flame danced from the pages of his book as he stepped forward, taking up position behind Aria. Skye lifted off the ground, the air rippling with heat emanated from his fire-focused bangles, Nullfire Covenant. Trails of fire emanated from his wrist like a crimson banner. JD drew Conflagration, holding one blade in a reverse grip and the other in a forward grip. Alex stood right next to his son, drawing two of the handguns that made up Stellar Quadrant and lifting the guns with a phoenix motif up ahead of them.

For a second, Hunter felt a burst of pride as he regarded the weapons he had created being wilded by his teammates and friends… then feared that it would not be enough. Recalling the encouraging words of Aria, he drew Wildfire, spun the blade through the air to generate momentum and energy then brought his shield up, standing at the very rear of the group.

The door in front of them hissed open.

Ship-to-Ship Combat

A voice blared through speakers in the hanger; broken, disjointed and heavily distorted. As it did so, strange silvery lights shone through the darkness beyond door.

“Intruders… New… Sparks…”

The owners of those little lights stepped out onto the hanger. Alex lowered the two handguns he held, mouth slightly open. Aria whispered a prayer under her breath while Tanar’s brow knotted in confusion at what he saw. Skye looked horrified, momentarily dropping from the sky. Kane swore, uttering a loud ‘What the fuck’ while Rayne let out a curse of his own albeit one quieter. Wood glanced over his shoulder, looking for an explanation from either Skye or Tanar but when he found none turned back towards the shambling, creatures that emerged from the door.

Each of them were vaguely skeletal creatures made to look like the emaciated remains of various humanoids. However, the skin stretched taut over their bone structure was silvery and metallic like a thin sheet of aluminum foil had been used to replaced their flesh. Though mostly hairless or furless, what hair stuck out from their heads was made of a thin, wispy metallic fuzz. Their eye sockets were sunken and hollow, giving room for strange, silvery flames to glow in the place of eyes - the silver lights that they had seen.

“Consume!” the voice commanded.

The creatures suddenly let out an ear-splitting scream and charged forward, arms outstretched and scrambling over one another to get at the team.

“Fucking zombies!” roared Kane, swinging Spicy Meatball through the air and crushing one of the abominations. His slow swing didn’t stop him from defending himself as he used the momentum of his hammer swing to lift himself up and kick another one’s face in. When he landed, he built up enough speed to keep swinging the Meatball through the air and keep them a good distance away from him.

“They’re not undead,” Aria gasped, thrusting her fiery spear forward and piercing the skull of a nearby creature. There was no blood, no brains or even any sort of internal organs that spilled out from the wound. It was like the creature was made out of solid material. “They’re constructs! Golems!”

She charged forward, thrusting her spear through the rest of the creature in front of her and spearing another behind it. With little effort, she lifted them both into the air and tossed them aside. With energy built up, fiery birds materialized from her spear, peeling away from the winged tip of her spear and speeding out around her, slamming into the constructs and exploding in small bursts.

Rayne pressed his back against hers, fists up and ready.

“Chronos could never have done this,” he said, teeth gritted together. “As a Chronomancer, he had no access to any other forms of magic. Just Chronomancy. He may have been able to Time Lock this entire fleet but the creation of these things is something else.”

He launched off her back, unleashing a blistering combo of kicks and punches to the creatures surrounding them both, moving swiftly and fluidly like a true boxer. The more he hit, the bigger the black flames grew around his fists. When those flames were large enough that they were trailing his every move, he slammed his knuckles together. A burst of blame flames erupted from him, spreading out in a searing dome about eight feet in diameter and scorching the creatures within but leaving any allies unharmed.

A short distance away, Alex fired his handguns, each bullet exploding in small bursts. His explosive rounds and deadly accuracy carved a path through the creatures but as more came storming through the door, that path was quickly consumed. He bared his fangs as the team was forced back.

“There’s no end to them!” He slammed the two handguns together, hidden mechanisms triggering as the two weapons merged together to form a single-barreled shotgun. The gun went off with a crack of thunder, a fan of explosions pushing the constructs back. In one, smooth movement, he fetched another handgun of Stellar Quadrant from where it hung on his hip and fired while he reloaded the shotgun in one paw. “Everyone back to the ship!”

Hunter shuffled back, his shield up. He quickly grabbed one of the canisters from the shield and tossed it over his shoulder. A burst of crimson light came from the make-shift grenade and a second later, there was an automated turret sitting behind him. The turret sprang to life, adding further support to them. The silver Wulfun charged forward now that he had added fire support, slashing with the sword, Wildfire, and building more energy. When he had enough, he threw another canister over his shoulder, adding a second turret that further added to their support.

A loud roar erupted from his left. Wood barreled through the crowd of constructs, swinging his axes around him and spitting acid from his muzzle. He came to a grinding halt beside Hunter, heaving as blood seeped out from scratches all over his body. Hunter gave him one of the canisters which he gratefully took and guzzled down. The magic and energy contained within healed his wounds, a gentle scarlet light wrapping around the injuries before closing them.

“We can’t keep this up,” heaved the draconic berserker.

“We can if I keep giving you guys energy drinks,” Hunter added. He tossed another canister in Kane’s direction. The bear intercepted it with Spicy Meatball, bathing in the crimson liquid that reinvigorated him.

“That’s not what I meant,” Wood said, pointing at the defeated zombie-like constructs. “Look.”

To his horror, he saw that any construct they had defeated still had the strange silvery flame dancing in their eye sockets. Even crushed, maimed or incinerated, the flesh of the creatures seemed to merge with the very metal of the hanger around them. They drew from the metal, reforging themselves. They even grabbed lost limbs and reattached it to themselves.

“Fuck me…” hissed Hunter.

There was a burst of heat from behind him and he glanced over his shoulder. JD had slipped in behind them, flaming rings dancing from his swords. The smaller Wulfun bolted between the constructs, crimson lightning dancing all over his body as he stabbed and severed the spines of the creatures as he did so. Within a second, he was back with Wood and Hunter.

“Don’t give up,” he said encouragingly. “There’s got to be a weakness in them. Tanar?”

The Leomian Paladin stood closest to the Godslayer and grabbed one of the creatures in his enormous, clawed hand. He slammed the monster into the ground while holding up the Codex Infernis. “What I wouldn’t give to have Chaosrender right now,” he grunted. “But there definitely is some strong Pyromancy at work here and some… Deomancy? It’s hard to tell.”

Skye drifted beside him, hurling fireballs and bolts of lightning from his fingertips. “No… it’s not just that. These things have… they have souls.” With a cry, he flung both his paws into the air. A wall of ice immediately erupted in front of him, encasing a group of the constructs. Within the ice was a withering, blue flame that burned the abominations within. The wall gave the group time to rush back towards the Godslayer and regroup.

“What do you mean they have souls?” demanded Aria. “Constructs and golems may seem like they are alive or conscious but they are mere extensions of their creator’s will.”

“No, he’s right, Aria,” Tanar grunted, lifting the construct he had pinned and hurling it over the icy wall. “They have Spirit Energy within them. It’s what’s powering them. Yes, their skin and flesh are entirely mechanical but their power source isn’t someone’s magic. It’s a genuine soul.”

“Chronos?” Alex queried.

“No,” Skye mumbled, closing his eyes. “It has no trace of Chronomancy. It’s more… recent. But filled with hate. Regret. The souls within them vary but they all have the same theme. It’s malicious but driven from pain. Hateful but also regretful. Ambition but one tempered by constant failure. There’s a burning desire to… to… escape but simultaneously a feeling of being trapped.”

Kane grunted as the icy wall began to crack. “How the fuck does that help us?”

Skye regarded them at a loss. “Spirit energy and souls are… they’re far more resilient. Usually they would dissipate when the body expires but when the body is made entirely out of metal that self-heals, it will never leave. It just keeps itself together.”

“So you’re saying we can’t kill these things!?”

JD suddenly sheathed Conflagration. “Not by going after their bodies.” He flashed Kane a grin. “Kane, may I please have Validation?”

The bear instantly knew what he was hinting at, grinned and then reached into his duffel bag. He threw JD the thin, etherium blades that Hunter had made for him initially. The crimson Wulfun drew the two swords from their scabbards, tossing said scabbards back to Kane. Red lightning danced along the alabaster blades. The weapons became semi-transparent.

JD marched up to the icy wall that was cracking against the forces of the constructs on the other side. He jabbed Validation through the ice, piercing the skull of a one of the abominations trapped within. The silver flame within the creature instantly flashed.

“JD! Get back!” Skye shouted.

But it was too late.

All the Spirit energy grew wild and uncontrolled. It immediately exploded, shattering the ice it was contained within and hurling the crimson wolf back right into Kane’s waiting arms. The bear was forced back several feet as he caught his cousin. Large shards of ice were jabbed into JD’s chest and arms. The Wulfun choked, spurting blood from his muzzle. Skye was immediately there, ripping the ice shards from his chest and casting soothing, healing magic. Hunter grabbed a canister and poured his rejuvenating potion into JD’s wounds.

“Fuck cuz,” hissed Kane. “That was goddamn reckless!”

Tanar appeared on Kane’s other side, his normal paw on the bear’s shoulder while the arm that was attached to Flarecaster was extended towards JD. White flames jumped from his fingertips, coursing over JD’s woulds and cauterizing them. “Those things don’t have a central nervous system that regulates the flow of magic. Use of his etherium blades much like an etherium scalpel would have shut a person’s entire magical network down if he had struck them in the brain like that. But since their MNN is unusual, it must’ve overloaded the system instead.”

“Thank you,” Kane growled sarcastically. “You’re a genius.”

Alex, Aria and Rayne slid in front of the gathered group, fighting back the constructs as they poured in from the hole that had been made in Skye’s barrier.

“That still killed the thing,” Rayne shouted. “That bastard isn’t getting back up!”

“But we can’t keep sending my son out on suicide runs like that!” barked Alex. “We need a better solution!”

JD, through bloody lips and shaking paws, reached up and grasped Skye’s arm. “It’s up to you,” he gasped. “They’re pure Spirit energies, right? Be a shaman.” Then he collapsed, unconscious but still alive.

Skye’s eyes lit up. “Of course! Thank you, JD!”

The Tigris got up and spun towards the approaching horde. He held his paws together and then separated them by about four inches, fingers just barely touching with his claws extended. “Everyone!” he declared. “Keep hurting them. Force them to regenerate!” As he finished this declaration, he began letting out a deep, guttural chanting.

“You heard the man!” barked Wood, lunging forward and unleashing a blast of acid from his muzzle. The green goo splashed on a construct, eating away at its frame. However, instead of the creature immediately starting to regenerate, the silver flames that was encased within its skull drifted away from its frame and fluttered towards Skye. The metallic sparks passed into the small gate he made with his hands, dissipating into tiny little stars that scattered into all directions around him.

“Of course!” Tanar gasped. “Miasman shamans have learned how to redistribute Spirit energy throughout their Station! They always believed that Spirits are the culmination of intelligent lifeforms imprinting their emotions and consciousnesses on their surroundings and by dissipating these through their rituals, they can prevent these ‘Spirits’ from becoming wild or unruly while simultaneously energizing their land! It’s why Miasma has some of the most fertile lands in all of Tower Thirteen.”

Kane gave him a dull, pointed look. “Layman’s terms please?”

The Leomian shifted his weight and rose to his feet, standing beside Skye. He flipped open the Codex Infernis and held out Flarecaster. A tongue of white flames erupted from his palm. “He’s performing an exorcism!”

With those words, Tanar began uttering a prayer in the Illuminus Weizar. The sparks of flame in the constructs eyes were suddenly being drawn to his flame even without the team damaging their bodies. Streams of silver fire gathered in his paw only for it to flood into Skye’s paws and subsequently dispensed out into the rest of the ship. Constructs began falling down and those that didn’t were swiftly cut down by the rest of the team. Hunter kept applying his healing elixir to JD’s wounds while Kane held his cousin up.

“It’s… It’s not enough,” Skye grimaced through bared fangs. “All this malice… this resentment… it’s coming from… from the entire Fleet!”

“I sense it too,” Tanar gasped, beads of sweat rolling down his brow and soaking into his tawny fur. “There’s… There’s a network… It’s feeding all this Spirit energy into the ship and that energy is taking the material of the ship itself and forming it into these constructs!”

“Then find the link!” Aria shouted over her shoulder, spearing another golem in the chest and hurling it towards Alex. The gunner peppered the creature with bullets fast enough that it halted in midair and dropped to the ground. “There must be some sort of arterial. Something connecting it to the rest of the fleet!”

Skye glanced around wildly and grit his fangs together. “It’s… it’s everywhere but if… If I pull it towards us…” He began pulling his paws further apart. Thin wires of silver fire connected his paws together like silk. As he kept pulling at it, a wavy beam began forming between his paws. It shoot and shimmered, growing more and more concrete as he forced this spiritual link to materialize. Tanar turned towards the tiger holding his claw over the forming beam. Skye was able to pull his paws further apart and suddenly, there was a true, lance of light hovering between his fingers.

“Now what?” Hunter demanded.

“Someone needs to sever it!” Tanar growled, clearly straining against the force of forming something inherently immaterial into the material world.

“Fuck it!” Kane roared, shoving JD into Hunter’s arms. The big bear got up, charged towards the spiritual wire and lunged at it with his big paws. His fingers simply slipped through it. “Fuck!”

“It’s still spiritual energy!” Skye exclaimed. “We need something magical or… or…”

Suddenly, JD’s eyes snapped open. The Red Lightning disappeared from Hunter’s grip, reappearing in a flash of crimson lightning behind Kane. He gently had one paw on Kane’s shoulder, using it to prop himself up as he carefully but quickly slipped an ethereal blade of Validation past the three men and plunged the blade directly into the shimmering beam.

Then there was a flash. A blinding blast of silvery light erupted that engulfed the entire hanger.

And a scream.

“My spark! My spark!” screamed that voice.

Footsteps echoed in Hunter’s ears. Footsteps against a metallic surface. As the light cleared, those footsteps multiplied until it sounded like an army was rushing down the hallways of the starship. He was suddenly in the hallways of a ship. One much bigger than the corvette. The halls were wide enough to fit six men abreast so this had to either be a cruise, battleship or a carrier.

Leading the group was a broad-shoulder man with meaty, forearms wrapped in leather bands. Those bands carrier traditional blacksmithing tools. The man’s broad, figure was concealed by leather armor that hugged his figure. His features were sharp, angular and brown-to-blonde, straight hair tumbled down from his high brow. A sharp beard that had been styled to a point jutted from his chin. Scintillating brown eyes hidden beneath arched eyebrows scanned his surroundings, a bit of desperation shining through his frantic glances.

“Where are you leading us, Rahl?” demanded one of the men behind him. This man did not fit in with the others. He was dressed sharply like a business man from the Upper Stations. A suit, tie and designer shoes. They were not the hexweave of Haven, though. Pinstriped and made of fabric unlike the smart, nano-metal of Havenese formal wear. This suggested he was either from Xaos or a Station with a lower number. His black hair was curly and heavily styled with thick glasses over his black eyes. A few freckled decorated his cheeks. The suit made him look broader than he really was.

Behind this man were armed mercenaries. Hunter could tell they were mercenaries as they had no uniformity in their gear. Some had leather armor, others camouflage gear and others still barely wore anything save for some ceremonial robes.

“To where I promised,” huffed the man in the lead. “I brought you here to the Lost Incendian Fleet and we are going to find the Talon of the Fire God.”

“What use is finding the fabled blade when we are trapped here by the legendary Chronomancer and brother to the Eternal Prophet?” snapped the man. “You heard what he said in that message. He killed two billion people to cast a spell that would entrap everyone that stepped onto this fleet forever until they died! It’s powerful enough to repel the Void!”

Rahl waved a hand absently at the man as he strode down the hall. “Smoke and mirrors. Chronomancy is fundamentally based on science. You cannot simply warp reality. Two billion souls may seem like a lot but against the might of primal creation? No soul is strong enough to manage even that.” The enigmatic blacksmith charged down the hall. “Now come. We find the blade of a god first and even the elegant trap of Harm Chronos will not stand a chance against us.”

The vision ended.

Hunter found himself standing back on in the hanger. The screeching of the constructs were gone. Bodies of the creatures lay scattered about, the silver flames no longer illuminating their eyes. The rest of the team exchanged glances, equally confused.

“Did… Did anyone else see that?” he asked.

“Rahl,” whispered Rayne. “He was here. But he wasn’t alone.”

“We had always assumed that he had come here seeking FireFeather alone,” mused Aria. “But he had company. Someone who seemed to speak to him as an equal. Who was that man?”

The corvette - the Flickering Flame - suddenly shook. Hunter managed to stay on his feet but other stumbled. A series of quakes rocked the ship. Through the open hanger doors, he could see projectiles befalling the corvette. They were firing upon them.

“Get into the transport!” he barked, grabbing JD who had fallen over and pushing him into the Godslayer. “We need to leave now!” He lay the smaller Wulfun on the chairs and charged into the cockpit, warming up the engines.

“Why are they firing at their own ship!?” Wood barked.

Tanar jumped into the navigator’s seat as he answered. “It’s like we entered a limb and turned it cancerous. By severing the connection this ship had to the rest of the Fleet, we’ve instantly turned it into a hostile.”

“Let’s not forget that Harm’s Chronomancy will only regenerate it,” Alex said, jumping onto the gunner’s seat. “We won’t be so lucky if they rip this place apart.”

Wood removed his borrowed shorts and tossed it and Cindarc into the small, compact ship. Then he was darting towards the hanger opening alongside Rayne. Both men erupted into their unleashed forms and soared out to draw the fire of the rest of the fleet.

Hunter started the engines just as Skye shut the door. He swung the ship around and waited a whole minute before piloting them out of the hanger. His mind was racing on what to do next.

Ahead, Wood and Rayne were doing an excellent job distracting the rest of the fleet. There was a swarm of fighters and smaller craft surrounding them but this was a Fallen and a Demon Prince. They were holding their own surprisingly well. He watched as Wood collided with a patrol boat, shoving his arm-mounted cannons right into the ship’s bridge and firing a beam right into it, shattering it into pieces. Rayne plucked entire fighters out of the air and held them like punching gloves, pummeling a frigate with their hulls and splitting it in two.

A frigate!

He jerked the control stick and started zooming towards one of the ships that was slightly larger than the Flickering Flame. Being military trained and a combat engineer, he had grown to recognize military designs even if it was from a different Station. The nearby frigate - the INF Burning Meteor - would be fast enough and heavily armored enough to do exactly what he needed.

“What’s the plan?” Aria asked.

“We need a ship that will survive a little longer than our transport,” he declared, tapping on the dials and buttons on the console. All power had to go to their thrusters. Shields would be sacrificed but against guns that were designed to tear through battleship hulls, whatever meager shielding their transport possessed would not stop even a single shot. Best to turn all power to their engines. “Then, I say we sever it from the rest of the fleet, figure out what Rahl was doing and see if we can find him.”

“What makes you think he’s still here?” Skye asked.

“Because Rahl was unmolested by those freaks,” replied Hunter. “In that vision, if it’s to be believed, Rahl had a large group bigger than ours. None of them looked injured. None of them even looked like they saw battle or were stressed. Those constructs weren’t there.”

“So they were added between when Rahl landed and us arriving…”

“But Harm’s Chronomancy prevents any sort of changes to happen to the Fleet.” Hunter lifted a finger and quickly lowered it as he needed all his focus to pilot the ship. Alarms began blaring. Someone had a lock on them. “That tells me that Rahl did something to Chronos’ spell and this Fleet. At least that’s a guess. We still need to find him.”

Hunter suddenly jerked the ship to the left, veering it away from a pillar of crimson energies coming from another ship. “Skye, Tanar, the moment we land, I need you both to do that same thing you did. Manifest the spiritual connection. JD, cut it in half! Me, Alex, Aria and Kane will keep the constructs off your back while you do that.”

He wasn’t even sure if JD was conscious but was glad when he saw the crimson Wulfun in the periphery of his vision. “Problem,” said the Red Lightning. “How are we going to punch through a frigate’s shields?”

That was painfully true. With Rayne and Wood preoccupied, their meager cannon designed to distract and swat away fighters would never be able to pierce the shields and hull of a frigate.

“Leave that to me,” Aria declared, lifting Searsparrow. She thrust her spear forward. Arcane runes wreathed in white fire danced around the tip of her weapon. Blinding light suddenly encased the Godslayer. White crystal panels appeared all over the ship, encasing it in a protective construct that made it look like a fiery bird. Hunter could even see the avian’s beak at the front of the transport.

“Alex! Keep firing!” she commanded.

Alex turned the sole cannon towards the frigate they were approaching. The barrels flared out but each kinetic bullet was encased in the white fire from Sun Spear. The shields of the frigate shuddered, each blistering bullet causing the spherical energy field to flash and crack.

Aria’s bird let out a screech and accelerated. Hunter kept the Godslayer on track even as the frigate tried to veer away. There definitely was some sort of intelligence commanding the fleet.

Smash!

The shields shattered. The Burning Meteor turned its broadside cannons directly at the Godslayer and fired. Three beams of light designed to pierce through shielding and melt hulls surged through space. Hunter wove around them, eying one of those cannons directly. The moment the cannon’s beam stopped firing…

… he diverted all power to the engines.

The Godslayer zoomed forward, straight for the cannon.

SMASH!

The shields broke, giving them a direct path to the Burning Meteor.

“Hold on!” he roared. He braced himself while the others strapped themselves into their seats. The cannon rapidly approached and he swore he could almost see the red light appearing within that barrel as it began to charge another volley.

CRASH!

The small transport smashed right into the cannon, destroying the armament entirely and careening into the hallways of the frigate. Aria’s bird-like armor protected them but shattered the moment the Godslayer landed. Hunter’s brain was spinning but he was already fumbling for his seatbelt and running out of the Godslayer even before he was fully collected.

He was tossing canisters around the transport and spawning turrets before any of the constructs could get to them. The air sizzled with the energy of the Spirits. Tanar and Skye were materializing the connection within the Godslayer. Alex, Aria and Kane hopped out of the transport, weapons drawn. Down the hall, silver flames flickered. The constructs started coming at them, letting out that ungodly screeching again with their skeletal bodies scrambling over each other like an wave of metallic bones and skulls.

“They infect me!” screamed that distorted voice, strangely cleared than before. “Tearing my limbs! They burn! They burn!”

His turrets started firing and Alex was right beside him, pummeling the approaching group with bullets. Next to him, Aria generated fiery birds from Searsparrow and sent them launching down towards the constructs in a relentless barrage. Kane swung Spicy Meatball in front of them, generating wave after wave of lava that slowed the approaching horde. The key was keeping them all at distance. As the constructs fell, the spirit fire that kept them alive floated towards the Godslayer, filling the entire battlefield with their eerie, silver flames and giving it an almost eerie quality.

“Keep it up!” Aria cried as the abominations reached about halfway towards them.

“Guys!” came JD’s cry. Hunter turned around. Constructs were pouring onto the transport from the other side of the hallway. The young red Wulfun was fending them off, darting behind each one’s blind spot wreathed in crimson lightning while swinging Conflagration. No matter how fast he was, however, his speed couldn’t take down all of the hundreds of golems that were quickly making their way onto the Godslayer.

“Shit,” Hunter cursed as he and Alex peeled away from the first defensive line and rushed towards their allies.

An enormous shadow suddenly cast over the transport. Green acid came pouring out of the hole in the frigate’s wall and washed over the constructs. At the same time, vile, purple energies crashed down against the metal, ripping through the delicate steel bodies of the Constructs.

Rayne jumped off Wood’s back, reverting to his human form and landing with a terrifying crash. He unleashed a merciless barrage of punches at the constructs around him before finishing with a devastating uppercut.

“Fuck off!” cried the demon lord.

A huge, demonic middle finger made entirely out of his unholy aura burst form the ground, ripping through the construct horde.

Wood reverted to his own humanoid shape, landing fully naked and clutching Vulcan in one hand. He roared, wings spread wide and acid dripping from his jaws. He lowered his shoulder, wrapped his wing around it and then charged, plowing through the horde before their sheer numbers eventually caused him to stop. He shrugged them off, spilling acid from his jaws to give him further room.

“That’s it!” Skye shouted from within the Godslayer. “JD!”

“On it!” cried the Red Lightning and he was darting inside of the transport.

Another flash of silvery light and Hunter braced himself for the memory.

Again, it was like he was viewing the scene from a dramatic angle. A door opened in an immense chamber, spilling light into the otherwise dark hall. The walls were lined with glimmering crystal tablets the like of which was only seen on Haven - each one capable of holding zettabytes of data. Shelves upon shelves of these dominated the chamber while artifacts sealed within crystal columns spoke of Incendius’ history.

The same crew as from before, led by Rahl, marched through the chamber with purpose. Rahl’s eyes were wide and he was licking his lips in anticipation. Again, their team was unharmed. Either these constructs somehow ignored them or they were just so good that none of them had to blink an eye to get past the golems. With that man in the suit, however, he sincerely doubted it.

“This had better be it,” hissed that very same man. “We’ve scoured the fleet for the location of this goddamn flagship for weeks and spent another week going through this goddamn ship. How big is this fucking thing!?”

“Titan class, clearly,” Rahl replied coolly.

If Hunter could, he would have gasped. Titan-class starships were banned all over Tower Thirteen. While not the biggest class of starship - that prestige was given to Colossus-class ships - the difference was that Colossi were designed to be self-sufficient environmental starships capable of defending themselves. Basically flying hotels with guns. Their shielding and armor was incredible but they were really more like holiday destinations than actual warships. Titans were built only for war and due to their sheer destructive power, they were banned from being made hundreds of years ago when once such ship went rogue and it took an entire fleet to destroy it with thousands of casualties.

But if this fleet was built before the ban, then it made sense that a Titan was the designated flagship for the Lost Incendian Fleet.

“Where are we?” asked one of the crewmen.

“From the records I was able to study, it seems that this fleet was designed to be an enormous floating archive to preserve Incendian culture in the off-chance that Incendius was overrun by demons or some sort of culture purge occurred,” mused Rahl. “It was a clever system. Every few years or so, Chronos and Lumire would convince some ship captains and their crew to abandon their posts and meet the fleet, update their records and disappear amongst the Fleet. Much like the trap that Chronos ultimately created around the Fleet. This…” Rahl spread his arms. “… is the culmination of all that effort. The Annex of the INT Catastrophe of the Endless Eclipse.”

That was it! They had the name of the Titan. With that, Hunter knew he could start a search of ship designations in the fleet and maybe find it and Rahl.

“And you’re sure the Talon is here?” pressed the mysterious sponsor.

“Sure?” Rahl laughed. “Fool.” He pointed ahead of him. “Behold! The Talon of the Fire God! The one and only source of all fire! FireFeather!” Rahl’s eyes widened as he approached the sword. “The truest source of all Pyromancy… and the father of all flames.”

Hunter’s vision panned over to the largest stasis crystal within the Annex. Shaped like an enormous six-winged bird, this crystal had a single item encased near the heart of the creature. A single longsword that was bright red in coloration with a silver edge. It was a unique blade. The main section of the weapon appeared like a single crimson blade but then there was a large bird-shaped addition that was attached to its pommel. This attachment had one, large, elongated wing that served as a serrated edge, the tip meeting the point of the main sword. The other wing curled around the grip acting like a hand-guard. There was no denying that the bird-shaped edge was reminiscent of a Phoenix given its red, orange and yellow hue.

Even through the memory, Hunter could feel the magnificence of the weapon. It made him want to melt in place, to ooze into nothingness and prostrate himself in front of the weapon and all that it represented. It filled him with fear, awe, love and ecstasy.

“Whoa…” whispered one of the mercenaries. He stepped forward but Rahl immediately stopped him with a hand.

“Such a glorious weapon must be treated with care,” Rahl warned. “It was encased within a stasis crystal for a reason. Even then, we can all feel its divine presence. We must take care.”

“Agreed,” huffed the sponsor, stepping back. “Let’s leave it for now. Figure out a way to escape this trap with the blade before we go about extracting it.”

Rahl’s eyes lingered on the weapon before he nodded in agreement. “Yes. I think I may have a plan for that.”

Then Hunter was back on the Burning Meteor, shaking his head free of the memory. The constructs were once again silent. A moment of relief washed through him before he remembered exactly why he had brought them to this ship. He drove Wildfire’s blade into the compartment behind the shield component, the blade deconstructing to slide easily into a makeshift sheath. He bolted down the hallway, shouting for the others to follow him.

Incendian Frigates were only about 500 meters long - compared to the kilometer starships of the same class on Haven. They only had the single deck of armaments and were built for speed which made it perfect for what Hunter had planned.

Sprinting about half the length of the ship to the get to the bridge was no easy feat but he barged through the doors and immediately too up the captain’s seat. Aria leapt over him and took up another officer’s role while Tanar and Alex did the same. All security measures were disabled giving Hunter the opportunity to immediately take control of the ship.

He veered the Burning Meteor as far away from the rest of the fleet as possible.

“Tanar, I need you to search the fleet’s directory for any mention of the Catastrophe of the Endless Eclipse,” he commanded. “Aria, kick up countermeasures and the repair drones to patch up the hole in the hull. Alex, arm those guns and keep the fighters off us!”

“We’ll head out and provide an escort,” Wood declared.

“No. Get the Godslayer into the hanger,” he said. “No matter how fast we go or how thick our shields, this fleet is still going to tear us to shreds. What we need is to get to that goddamn Titan.”

Rayne and Wood nodded before taking Kane with them back down the hallway to the Godslayer. He opened all bulkheads in their path and opened the hanger doors for a quick escape.

The Meteor shook. The other ships had started firing upon them.

At this rate, even this frigate - no matter how fast it was - would not last very long. He was already teeing up his next target but first he needed to know in which direction the Catastrophe was.

“Found it!” declared Tanar. “It’s at forefront of the fleet. About ten thousand clicks to our right.”

The Meteor was deep within the fleet. If the flagship Titan - likely the largest ship in the fleet - was ten thousand kilometers to their right, that could only speak volumes of just how big the Lost Incendian Fleet really was. And there were no way they would make it ten thousand kilometers to the Titan without being shot down.

Which was fine because he had another plan.

He began tapping on the console in front of him, bringing up the list of ships between him and the Titan. A grin crossed his features the moment he saw the IND Fall of Dawn. A destroyer.

“Perfect,” he growled.

He pumped as much power to the engines as he could muster and began zooming towards the much larger ship. The frigate was much bigger and much more cumbersome than the Godslayer so there was no way he could maneuver it was quickly as the transport. But he was still trying to avoid as much of the beam fire, missiles and projectiles as he could. Alex manned the automated turrets, fending off much of the fighters as possible but with the shields shattered, and relying entirely on their hull, they were on borrowed time.

“I wonder why this ship isn’t recovering as fast as that corvette Wood destroyed initially,” JD mused aloud.

Hunter didn’t have time to entertain that thought as he put all power to the thrusters and set them on a collision course towards the Fall of Dawn.

“Everyone to the Godslayer!” he ordered. “This is going to be tight.”

The remnants of the team left the bridge and darted down to the hanger. The Meteor was being peppered from all directions. Sparks and fire exploded around them. Somehow, they managed to make it down the precarious flight of stairs to where the Godslayer waited for them. Rayne was in the cockpit, prepping the ship while Wood, in his full draconic form, was on the edge of the open hanger doors, ready to leap out.

Hunter jumped into the Godslayer taking the pilot’s seat while Rayne bolted back outside before giving him a clap on the shoulder. Demon and dragon once again took to the air while Hunter primed the transport.

“What about the shields?” asked Tanar. “The Meteor is going to be torn apart before we even get close to the destroyer.”

“That’s what I’m hoping for,” Hunter said. “I want the shields weakened, not fully destroyed.” He engaged the thrusters and was flying out of the hanger a second later.

As expected, the nearby starships were focusing all of their fire on the Burning Meteor in their single-minded pursuit to destroy the rogue ship. Hunter piloted the transport far from the careening frigate, watching as the lasers and rockets from bombers and other ships alike tore apart the hull and set it afire. The Meteor got dangerously close to the Fall and just as it drew close -

BOOM!

A barrage of projectiles from the Fall crashed into the starship’s bridge and set off a series of explosions that caused the rest of the frigate to ignite into a ferocious fireball. That close to the destroyer, however, the Fall’s shields took a beating, cracking and wavering.

Aria wreathed the Godslayer once more in her crystal sparrow and Hunter dove for one of the cracks. Before the shield could fully recover, the slammed into the field of energy, breaking through. The shields weren’t completely broken, however, so the barrier was still up for most of the ship. He grinned to himself as he flew the Godslayer right into the destroyer’s hanger.

“How did you know that would work?” JD asked.

“Most ships of the destroyer-class and above have multiple shield generators,” Hunter responded, parking the transport down. “That means you can break through one part of the shield and the other generators will compensate and seal it up as quickly as it can. It’s only when all shield generator encounter a failure that they the entire field will be down and require a few minutes to reboot.”

He got out of the seat and charged back out of the transport. Once again, Tanar and Skye stayed behind, trying to materialize the spiritual link between the ship and whatever was controlling it. They couldn’t rely on Wood or Rayne to come barging in to the rescue. The destroyer’s far more powerful shields would keep them out for now.

He drew Wildfire’s blade then began setting up a defensive perimeter.

“Get ready!” he barked just as the doors to the hanger hissed open. “Here they come!”

Spark of Life

The shadow of pain still lingered in JD’s ribs from where the shattered piece of ice had pierced him. However, that was nothing compared to the multitude of deaths he had experienced in the last hour of fighting. None of his other friends and teammates remembered - why would they? - but he had watched them all die over and over in a myriad of ways before he stepped back in time and reset the timeline.

None of them recalled when he had been too slow to use Validation and the Unfired - as they would be known after their next memory was recalled on the Fall - swarmed them. No one remembered how Skye had been ripped to shreds from behind when one of the Unfired ripped through the Godslayer back on the Meteor while they were focused on materializing Rahl’s strange spiritual link to each ship.

But he did.

They had all died multiple times already and JD just kept waking up in the Machine to do it all over again with slight adjustments to get them through the next ten seconds. Now, as he stepped out of the Godslayer, Conflagration in his paws, death once more came rushing to them as the Unfired charged, screaming while the mysterious voice ranted about a ‘Spark’ and ‘Inspiration’, calling them invaders and an infection.

They had already died multiple times here on the Fall of Dawn. After all the various attempts, though, this seemed to be the best course of action. Sometimes, pain was necessary to ensure the best results which was why he had purposefully sliced into that Unfired, knowing full well that it would explode and severely injure him. That action would inspire Skye to use his shamanistic arts to release the Spirit energy holding the Unfired together or for Tanar to perform an exorcism to help him out.

Now, with two members down - kept out by the shield of the Fall of Dawn - and the wave of Unfired heading towards them, JD knew he had little choice. They had already tried multiple times to beak back this horde but the swarms of these constructs were far larger in the Fall of Dawn than the corvette of frigate and with a wider space for them to move, the metallic creatures had far more angles to attack them.

There was nothing else he could do.

JD stood back, Conflagration’s two blades by his side. In front of him, his dad combined all four handguns of Stellar Quadrant into its final form - a incendiary rocket launcher. Alex fired over and over again, scattering the Unfired but ultimately doing little to stall their advance. Behind him, Aria filled the air with fiery sparrows, sending the flock in all directions. It looked like she was dancing as she used her spear to direct the exploding birds. Beads of sweat dripped down her face and desperation was etched on her stunning features. To his left, Hunter desperately kept his turrets stocked, beating back Unfired that got to close with his sword and shield. Kane was to his right, sending waves of lava at the Unfired and crushing anything that got to close. Even the normally confident black bear was baring his fangs.

He took a breath and held it.

They were two members down and another two of their members were focused on materializing the spiritual link. Five of them could not hold back this tide.

At least… not with conventional means.

“This is it,” he told himself quietly. Slowly, he opened his eyes…

… and set one foot in the Machine.

Amongst the ticking cogs and gears of the golden realm, he turned towards the cogs that represented the various Unfired that was connected to his golden gear. With his eyes narrowed, he sliced through them, cutting them in half with his fiery swords and sending their shards crashing down into the black dust below. As soon as one was taken down, other gears began filling their gap.

But they were finite.

In the realm of space, not a single second had gone by and though the Unfired were numerous, they were frozen in time. When replacement gears stopped, JD stepped back into reality. Almost immediately, pain racked up his spine and blood came bursting from his lungs like someone had crushed his diaphragm and compressed his ribs. At exactly the same instant, crimson lightning cascaded all over the battlefield. Flashing of red bolts appeared right behind each Unfired in the hanger before they all collapsed, sliced and diced into ribbons.

Without warning, the hanger was abruptly silent and the silvery flames of the Unfired began flooding towards the Godslayer where Skye and Tanar focused their efforts. JD collapsed to his knees, dropping his swords and clutching his chest. Blood poured out of his muzzle and his eyes were clamped shut in agony. Somehow, he managed to grab one of Hunter’s canisters that he had stored and kept by hanging from his waist. He guzzled it down, swallowing his own blood in the process but it kicked off his recovery.

He barely heard his father cry out for him. Alex’s warm arms caught him as he collapsed on the floor. The muffled sounds of his dad’s voice confused him until Alex reached up and wiped away blood from his ears. Then he could hear him a little more clearly.

“What was that?” Hunter demanded.

“JD pushing himself to the absolute maximum,” Alex exclaimed. “Shukuchi lets him appear in someone’s blind spot and he can trigger it multiple times. But he was moving so fast that it was literally almost like lightning. No one’s body is built for that kind of movement.”

“It was almost akin to Chronomancy,” Aria gasped.

JD’s heart skipped a beat at the mention of that word. Of all the people who would recognize Chronomancy, it would be Aria Valkyrie but thankfully, she didn’t question it further as she leaned down and cast a soothing, divine light on him, aiding in the repair of his body.

“That was incredibly reckless, young one,” she chastised. “I know we are desperate but we are not that desperate.”

If only she knew.

He grimaced, propping himself up on his knees. “Not done yet,” he gasped, reaching for Kane. His cousin knew exactly what he wanted and passed him one blade of Validation. The instant his fingers touched it, crimson lightning cascaded down the length of the blade. His legs felt like lead and he could barely feel his bare toes scraping across the ground but both Alex and Kane carried him carefully towards the Godslayer. Behind them, the Unfired were starting to pour back into the hanger. Though those that he had slain in the Machine were down for the count, there were still more in the rest of the ship eager to destroy them like white blood cells swarming over a virus.

Because that was what they were to the fleet. An infectious plague that was preying on its limbs one at at time and forcing it to destroy those very same limbs to keep the virus from spreading. Of course, with the Chronomancy binding the rest of the Fleet, those wounds would inevitable recover but that did not stop the cause of the virus.

JD hobbled up to the Godslayer where Tanar and Skye held out their paws, the string of spiritual energy glimmering in front of them. He lifted Validation…

… and sliced through the string.

Again, he was plunged into the world of the Fleet’s memory. None of the others realized it yet but these visions came from the very same spirits that Skye worshiped - the spirits of the Fleet, empowered by the creator of the Unfired. This wasn’t he first time he had seen this vision, of course, but now he was wiser everything that came after.

“What are you making?” the sponsor demanded. He was looking more ragged now. His curly hair was frizzy and there was a thick beard around his face. Rahl, however, looked as pristine as ever.

The mad blacksmith stepped aside from his creation. The skeleton of a construct.

“I call it an Unfired,” declared Rahl.

“A what?”

“An Unfired. It is a metallic construct made from the very material of the ship we stand on.”

The sponsor looked frustrated. “What use is it? The Chronomancy that binds this place will just revert it back to its original state! That thing won’t last!”

Rahl waggled a finger at him. “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong. You see, if that was the case, we would never have won the Purge of Time. Yet somehow, the Church and Tower Thirteen survived the onslaught from Temporal. All thanks to a device created by the very same Chronomancer that trapped us here; the Lance of Longinus.”

The sponsor was looking irritated but let Rahl continue.

“The Lance was designed to constantly inflict enough damage to any Chronomancer it pierced but never enough to actually kill them. Just enough to keep them barely alive without letting their Time Locked state to take over and allow them to recover completely. It was a literal living hell especially for those poor souls who were conscious throughout the entire process. Forever trapped in a state of living-death. Never dying and forever suffering because of the black spear that pierced them.”

“Get to the point!”

Rahl glanced at his sponsor with disgust and irritation. “My point is that Chronomancy is not unbeatable. While I cannot replicate the Lance of Longinus, I found another way to maintain enough ‘damage’ to this entire system of Time Magic that it match the rate in which it recovered.”

With a snap of his fingers, the eyesockets of the construct suddenly flared up with a silver fire. The creature gasped and dropped to the ground, scaring the sponsor. The construct shakily got to its feet, arms hanging there and waiting.

“I was inspired by the Talon,” laughed Rahl. “A true spark of life! Fire gave birth to intelligence! Fire keeps us warm! Fire is the father of all civilization!” He gestured at his creation. “And by igniting the fire of the soul within this creature, I am able to create a being that is able to exist! That is gathering Spirit from its experiences no matter how meager which keeps it from being reabsorbed into the ship by the foul Chronomancy!”

The sponsor shook his head in disbelief. “So you created a baby. How does that help us?”

“Don’t you see?” lamented Rahl. “If we create enough of my Unfired, we will be dealing enough damage to the very ship and maybe the fleet itself that at one point, we can break the equilibrium! We will disable the Chronomancy and make our escape!”

At those words, the sponsor’s eyes lit up. “Then what are you waiting for? Do it!”

The vision ended and once again, the pain in JD’s body wracked him. He immediately found the lip of a canister against his muzzle and Kane was pouring one of Hunter’s potions down his throat.

“Easy, cuz,” said the bear gently. “I got ya.”

As the solution did its work, JD found the strength to grab the can and drink it himself.

“That’s how they escaped…” breathed Skye. “They created enough of these Unfired to weaken the system Harm Chronos created and leave the trap.”

“No,” Tanar said, shaking his head. “They didn’t escape. At least Rahl didn’t.” He pointed upwards with his normal paw. “That voice. The one that’s distorted and screaming at us. It’s Rahl’s.” He glanced from face to face. “The mad blacksmith is controlling these Unfired and coordinating their attacks against us. I don’t know what happened but it’s that malevolent force that we’ve felt every time we reached into the network keeping this Fleet together. I can sense it. It’s coming from the Titan.”

Hunter went rigid. “Shit!” He turned and immediately began bolting down the hallway. “We need to lower and the shields and get Wood and Rayne back in here. Then make our way to the Titan_._”

JD grimaced, finding his footing again. “I’ll catch up,” he grunted. “Lady Valkyrie, Incendian destroyers are about a kilometer long. Please get Hunter to the bridge.”

Aria nodded at him. “Excellent knowledge of Incendian military design. Ten points to your rubric.” She then holstered Searsparrow over her shoulders. Wings made of white fire burst from her back and lifted her into the air, carrying her easily down the hallway. She grabbed Hunter by the armpits and disappeared down the hallway.

In an alternate timeline that never would be, Hunter made it to the bridge but the rest of the fleet broke through the Fall’s shields. By the time they had fetched Wood and Rayne, the ship would have been ripped to shreds before they even started to accelerate.

This way, there was more time for them.

JD felt his strength returning but even then, Skye and Tanar kept a close eye on him, pumping him full of healing magic as they made their way towards the bridge. They could feel the ship coming to life shortly after. By the time they reached the bridge, Hunter was already piloting the destroyer while Aria was desperately manning the auxiliary systems by herself. Tanar and Alex took up more stations.

“Wood and Rayne are in the hanger,” Hunter announced. “They’re on their way here but I don’t think we’ll make it to the Titan.” He pointed ahead of them.

Through the windscreen of the ship, they could see it; the tremendous Incendian Titan, the Catastrophe of the Endless Eclipse. Unlike any other starship in the fleet, it absolutely dominated the field. Twenty kilometers long and probably half as wide, it looked more like a floating city than a starship. A floating city armed to the teeth. Even the dreadnoughts that escorted it looked pathetic compared to its armaments. Two large carriers - each seven kilometers long and the largest ship class in any modern fleet - were dwarfed by the Titan.

“Even if we get close, those cannons are going to rip us to shreds,” Hunter said.

“So what do we do?” demanded Kane. “We didn’t come all this way just to give up!”

JD closed his eyes and drew on knowledge from past experiences and past deaths. If he let it happen, the team would devolve into arguments and they would be shredded to bits.

“Hunter,” he began calmly, “charge at the Titan.”

“What!?” demanded the engineer. “Didn’t you hear what I just said.”

JD held up his paw, demanding silence. “We charge at the fleet. Then divert all shields to the bridge. It acts as a lifeboat in an emergency. The plan will be to let the ships hit us and set the reactor to self-destruct. Skye, use your Spirit magic to mask our presence. The Unfired have no internal organs. They have no eyes. So they can’t actually see us. They can just sense our Spirit. If Rahl is controlling the fleet as well, he can probably sense us too or use the cameras in the fleet to do that. But since we severed the Fall from his network, he can’t see us. He can only sense us by our Spirit.”

Kane immediately caught on. “Fuck yeah! We let them destroy the ship and pretend we’re just drifting a float. Shield the bridge from the explosion. Then, when the Titan lowers its shields because it thinks we’re dead, we get Valkyrie to immediately send us to the ship and crash through its hull!”

JD nodded in agreement.

Hunter blinked in surprise, staring at JD with a look of puzzlement. JD stared back fiercely.

“Please,” he pleaded. “Trust me. This is the only way.”

The silver Wulfun shrugged and turned back to the controls. “Fuck it. Here we go.”

Rayne and Wood barged through the doors a minute later as the destroyer was already careening towards the Titan. They demanded what they were planning just as the escort ships of the monstrous starship began firing upon them. When the plan was relayed, they didn’t argue and just strapped themselves into nearby seats. JD sat down himself, closing his eyes and quietly praying that - this time - it would work. He grit his fangs together as the destroyer shook and the telltale shattering noise of the shields failing filled his ears.

Explosions rang out through the ship. Their momentum didn’t slow but as the explosions grew louder and louder, Hunter activated the bulkheads that sealed the bridge from the rest of the ship. A shield generator specific for the bridge activated just as the reactor went critical.

BOOM!

The destroyer exploded and the bridge was sent spinning away from the fiery debris. The fragment of the ship spun wildly. JD had to close his eyes and breathe calmly as the G-forces threated to cause him to black out. The spinning didn’t end but slowed. Hunter killed the lights on the bridge, plunging them into semi-darkness in an attempt to sell the illusion that they had died. As their momentum slowed further, they all held their breath…

“Now…” Skye breathed, casting a spell. Again, he let out that guttural chanting. The air felt… still like the world had held its breath. “No one make any sudden movements. Everyone stay as calm as possible. The less emotions, the better.”

“Easy for you to say,” growled Wood. “Fuck… I feel like I’m going to hurl. Should’ve have had that spicy soup before we left.”

“I think I drank too much of Hunter’s potions,” JD chuckled softly.

Wood gave him a sidelong glance a lopsided grin. “I heard what happened. You’ve got to tell me how you managed to kill over a hundred of those bastards in seconds.”

“Maybe someday.”

Hunter was on the edge of his seat, watching the Titan in front of them. A short distance away, Aria was gripping Searsparrow tightly, ready to pounce the moment the Titan’s shields went down. They waited for a long, tense five minutes.

Then, there was a shimmer in the air around the Titan. The bluish-green sphere of the huge starship’s protective barrier appeared… then slowly dissipated. Hunter waited until every last trace of the shield vanished before -

“Now!” he cried.

Aria immediately got to her feet and let out a primal cry. Light blasted out of her just as the bridge’s own systems sprang back to life. Hunter activated the lifeboat’s thrusters and sent them zooming towards the bridge of the Titan. At the same time, Aria’s crystal bird wrapped around the little escape pod, adding further momentum.

They zoomed straight for the bridge of the Titan.

None of the Fleet even had time to react.

Skye didn’t let his spell drop, further confounding Rahl and the Fleet. To them, this lifeboat just sprang to life with no one piloting it. By the time any of them even thought to react, it was too late. The remnants of the Fall of Dawn smashed through the bridge of the Catastrophe of the Endless Eclipse.

JD clung onto his seat, gritting his fangs together as he was tossed from side to side. No fear gripped his heart. This was different. They had never made it this far before. After all the deaths and disasters, they had finally made it to the final boss - to Rahl. More than anything, he was excited.

The ship stopped shaking and he took a second to get his bearings. Someone unbuckled his seatbelt and he collapsed into the arms of his dad. He nodded at Alex, grabbed Conflagration and jumped out of the bridge. One by one, each member of the team stumbled out of the debris and facing the maestro of the Lost Fleet.

Nothing could have prepared them for what they saw…

The entire bridge was consumed by a mesh of scarlet wires, obsidian pipes and silver machinery. The network began from the captain’s seat, standing five cascading platforms up from where JD and the others emerged from the lifeboat. Each level on the steppe-like bridge was dominated by consoles to manage the enormous Titan’s myriad of functions. The consoles remained intact save for the vine-like wires that spilled over from the haunting throne that was the captain’s chair. These wires tumbled down from the captain’s podium like a grotesque, steel and blood waterfall, seeking out the consoles and interfacing with each one. Those same wires sprayed upwards to the ceiling of the immense bridge, fanning out and consuming the entire rear half of the Titan, barring any exit or entrance.

Perched on the captain’s chair, a dark king entombed in his mausoleum, was a half-man, half-machine. Taut, pale skin was stretched back over angular features and merged horrifically with those blood-red wires. Arms and legs emaciated beyond recognition were transformed into black tubes that quickly got lost into the terrifying tangle. Silvery machinery attached itself to the creature’s chest while his hollow, sunken eye sockets burned with an unholy, silver fire.

“Rahl…” whispered Hunter.

All the holographic screens in the hundred or so consoles on the bridge flashed red and a contorted image of a Rahl’s image screamed at them.

“Intruders! Infection!”

Without warning, they were suddenly bathed in silvery light…

… and they were once again in a memory.

Rahl was dragged into the very same bridge. There were only a few men that remained and all of them looked haggard but still physically fit. Even the sponsor, despite his shaggy beard, stalked behind the group looking like he had bathed and cleaned himself recently.

“Let go of me!” Rahl shouted, struggling against the arms of the much stronger mercenaries. “What do you think you’re doing!?”

“We’re leaving, Rahl,” replied the sponsor coldly. “Don’t think I haven’t gotten wise to your feeble attempts to delay our departure. You may enjoy the isolation, the infinite resources of the Titan and the luxuries of his monstrosity but I have places to be. It’s already been a whole goddamn year since we left. I shudder to think what state of affairs my estates would have fallen into thanks to my bumbling spend-crazy father.”

Rahl was dragged up to the captain’s chair, a pathway hidden up the length of the wires and tubes. “What are you planning? What are…?” His eyes widened at the sight of the throne which currently sat empty. “No… You wouldn’t!”

“You’re so obsessed with staying here. Well let me grant you that wish. Stay here forever, Rahl. Be part of the Lost Incendian Fleet.”

“It won’t work!” cried Rahl desperately. “Even if you link me up to the network, the spell the Last Chronomancer placed on the Fleet is far more complex than a simple Time Locking! He’s implemented a sort of dynamic reset button!” The mercenaries brought him to the throne and he struggled as much as he could to avoid before forced to sit down. “The moment the Fleet reaches equilibrium it will become the new norm! Everything will reset to that current state! I won’t be able to keep the door open for you! I won’t!”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” the sponsor said darkly. “You see, even if you abandoned your attempt to create a network that would cause every ship to self-destruct, I did not. You were right in your first assumption that even if we were to destroy the Fleet’s ships, the Chronomancy holding this place would just ‘normalize’ the debris field we would have created. We’d still be trapped within this place only we would not have supplies.” The sponsor ran his hand over the side of the chair. “But I have learned from you. Learned from the libraries in these ships. Learned from the whisperings of the Fire God.”

Rahl’s eyes widened. “He spoke to you?”

“Spoke to me and more. He showed me how I can attach a soul to this contraption of yours and with a few modifications, cause your pain to constantly weaken the Chronomancy. _”_ A cruel smile touched his lips. “You see, no same form of agony is the same as the last. Even if it were to come from the same stimuli, we will always remember the pain that came before_ … worse yet will be the anticipation of the suffering to come.”_ He patted the chair. “We’ve modified this to constantly inflict pain upon you by treating every ship in the Fleet like it were your own limbs. Then, the program will constantly damage the ships somehow randomly. You’ll feel it. You’ll never know where it’s coming from. And by the time you get used to it, we will be long gone.”

The blacksmith shook his head desperately. “No! No!”

“It’s already done.” With a nod of his head, the mercenaries shoved Rahl onto the throne and the tubes and pipes brutally attached themselves to the craftsman’s body. Rahl screamed as his entire mind was connected to the entire Lost Fleet. He couldn’t even black out because the pain was just so excruciating.

The sponsor and his mercenaries turned.

“We’re done here.”

…

Next was a myriad of emotions, images and sensations that completely threatened to overwhelm them all. It was the opening volley of the mad blacksmith. JD knew exactly what was going to happen. He felt the metal spear of the entombed craftsman dig into his consciousness, trying to inject over a decade of agony, hopelessness and sorrow into his soul.

Desperate attempts to break free of the Last Chronomancer’s trap were only met with the very same trap adjusting to his tactics. Rahl tried forging more of his Unfired from the ship’s confines but the trap just reset. He simply could not make enough of them to break the spell and with him trapped within the confines of the Fleet, there was no escape either.

He tried to move the Fleet, to command it to go after his sponsor but it was not enough. Even the very location of the Fleet was bound by this immense, layered form of Chronomancy.

Then he tried finding solace in his solitude. Creating more of his ‘children’ to work his experiments and perfect his craft. But even that failed when anything he made was instantly wiped away by the spell. His frustration grew and he infused that into his Unfired.

At one point, he even tried to force every ship to fire upon each other, to destroy them. The pain was excruciating. It was like he was commanding his body to eat itself. Even then, it was not enough. The Fleet just returned and he remained trapped within it.

All of this, years of these attempts and the ensuing madness, he launched into the team’s minds. Rahl wanted them to feel his pain. To be swept up in the tides of his suffering and to join him in the eternal torment that was the Lost Incendian Fleet.

What he did not expect was to find the wall that was Jack Denver Clarke’s ironclad will.

Years of suffering was nothing compared to all the time the young Wulfun had actually died. Heartache from watching his friends suffer and returning through time to do it all over again. Agony from suffering grievous injuries only to wake up in the Machine and pick up where he left off.

The blacksmith had a moment of clarity and his mental assault ended.

The psychic assault ended… and JD once more found himself facing the tortured form of Rahl. The craftsman stared at him with those hollow eyes, silver flames burning in those sockets. JD stared back a gentle smile on his muzzle as if to taunt him.

“We all suffer, Rahl,” he said sagely. “But suffering is not comparable. We all have different burdens to bear. But it isn’t the weight that defines us.” He drew the blades of Conflagration, spinning them through the air. “It’s how we carry them!”

His smile grew a little sad.

“Let me ease your burden.”

Rahl

Hunter was not sure how anyone could remain standing after all the images he had seen. Every ounce of pain that Rahl had felt over his decades-long imprisonment rippled through the silver Wulfun’s bones like a distant echo; a memory of an injury. While he knew it wasn’t his pain, that shadow of agony lingered. Yet, somehow, JD just seemed to shrug it off and was darting towards the stationary blacksmith.

Rahl screamed, the screens along the bridge flashing with his angry visage. Crimson wires sprang up from the ground, forming into sinewy hands that lashed out at them. Hunter shook away Rahl’s influence and grabbed a few canisters from Wildfire. He threw them over his shoulder, conjuring auto-turrets that instantly began spitting bullets in all directions.

“You’re trying to play mind games with an Illusionist!?” roared Alex. He marched forward, firing his handguns at the throne. They struck Rahl’s forehead but it seemed that the blacksmith was more metal than man and his explosive rounds just left the metal skull singed. Strangely, the mechanical arms were swiping nowhere near Alex. He likely had cast an illusion to trick Rahl into thinking he was elsewhere. “That’s just insulting!”

“The screens!” Skye shouted, turning towards one of the consoles. He flung two fireballs from his paws at the console, causing it to erupt into a burst of sparks and wires. “He’s as much the Fleet as the Fleet is part of him. We’re in his brain! Destroy the consoles! They’re like his brain cells!”

Kane barreled past the Tigris, swinging Spicy Meatball and bringing it crashing down on another console. Rahl visibly screamed as the crimson screen flickered out. Several wires and tubes came shooting out at the bear. Wood intercepted them, clamping his jaws over the tubes and immediately spitting acid into them while swinging both Vulcan and Cindarc around him.

Rayne charged in the opposite direction, smashing his fists into the consoles as he darted along the semicircle of the first level. His demonic energies left seething, purple cracks on the consoles. Like poison, those cracks spread, causing Rahl to scream further before the screens died. Aria was right behind him, swinging Searsparrow around to generate more fiery birds that collided with the consoles. She finished off any screens that remained resilient to Rayne’s attack and kept Rahl’s wires off the demonic pugilist.

Tanar stepped up beside Hunter and they exchanged glances. The Leomian began weaving spells through the air. Flaming lances sprung from the Codex Infernis and speared the nearby wiry limbs. At the same time, any of those tendrils that got too close, Hunter intercepted and beat back with the sword of Wildfire. When his turrets fell short of ammo, he jumped over to restock them while Tanar took a more offensive role and sent a torrent of flame from Flarecaster. Then they swapped again with Hunter playing a defensive role while Tanar was the ranged support caster for the rest of the team.

“You cannot come close to my genius!” Rahl screeched. “My masterpiece! Behold the true spark of life!”

Wires and tubes collided, twisting to form a vaguely humanoid figure the ten feet tall. The creature had only a single burning eye at the center of its head filled with a shimmering silver flame. It lunged at Hunter and the Wulfun turned, grabbed Tanar around the waist and flung them both on the ground before they were crushed by the construct’s enormous arm. A crimson figure darted past him.

JD bolted up the creature’s arm, fast as lightning, and jabbed both swords of Conflagration right into the creature’s eye. Crimson flames erupted from the tip of the blade, launching JD harmlessly into the air where the Red Lightning somersaulted gracefully and landed deftly on his feet. The golem staggered, stumbled and collapsed back into a mess of conduits and pipes.

“Blasphemers! You interfere with the great work!”

Sharp, crimson wires cascaded down from the captain’s throne like a waterfall of red worms.

“Everyone behind me!” Hunter shouted, lifting the shield of Wildfire. He tossed two more canisters in front of him and they immediately sprung up into two flamethrower turrets. They spewed their payload, melting the wires before they could get close. The rest of the team gathered behind him. Aria jammed her spear into the ground, creating a crystal barrier around them. Skye and Tanar reinforced it with their own magic just as the molten wires broke past Hunter’s torrent of fire. They slammed into the barrier, crawling over the dome and momentarily plunging them into darkness.

“He’s crazy!” Kane shouted. “And I don’t mean that in a positive way. He’s completely lost it!”

“Having your mind, body and soul bound and spread across an entire Fleet will do that to you,” sighed Skye. “We have to find a way to free his spirit.”

“First we get up to him,” Rayne said commanded. “We work our way up the tiers one at a time. Weaken him by destroying the consoles and then move on up. Hunter, Tanar, you provide fire-support with Skye. JD, Alex, you’re our fastest fighters. Hit and run tactics. Wood, Kane. You take the left. Aria and I will take the right. Hit them hard. Unleash.” As he said this, Rayne’s malevolent purple aura emanated from his shoulders.

Hunter nodded his agreement with the rest of the team. Then Aria and Rayne stood side by side, her divine white energies mixing with his demonic purple powers. They both let out a tremendous shout and their power exploded outwards, shattering the dome of wires and giving them the opening they needed. Each of them darted to their assignments.

Hunter swung Wildfire through the air, cutting through Rahl’s tendrils and generating power for his weapon. When he had enough, he threw canisters around the first tier, the turrets ripping through delicate machinery. Kane was slammed against the wall by a large metallic arm. The bear displayed his mighty strength by tearing right through it but he was still injured. Hunter threw him a potion which he gratefully chugged. A short distance away, Aria was swatted out of the air by another of the golems. Skye cast a soothing, white flame over her injuries which healed and reinvigorated her. All the while, JD and Alex darted all over the battlefield, moving faster than Rahl could keep up with and drawing attention or performing surgical strikes that crippled Rahl’s forces.

“No!” screamed the imprisoned blacksmith. “You are infections! Viruses! Gnats against my great work! I was placed upon this throne to pave the way for the Fire God! He will need a Fleet and I will deliver upon him an army and all the ships that he will need to purge Tower Thirteen with his holy fire!”

“Crazy and a fanatic,” huffed Wood as he marched up to the second tier. “Fan-fucking-tastic.”

With the first tier cleared, the rear support moved up, crossing the small ramp up to the second level. While only slightly smaller than the first, it was designed in much the same way. Consoles and cubicles were arrayed to the left and right, all facing the enormous windshield that currently sat cracked and devastated by the crashed lifeboat.

Rahl adjusted his tactics.

“Burn under the glory of my Spark of Life!”

Tubes and pipes burst from the ground, angling themselves at the team. Silvery fire burst from their tips, tearing through the second tier. Hunter placed himself in front of Skye, lifting Wildfire and catching a beam of silver fire that forced him back. Wildfire was instantly filled to the brim with energy and he could see it was about to overload. He rapidly started grabbing canisters and tossing them wildly through the air with no true design in mind. They landed at the base of the tendrils, exploding into fiery bursts. The tentacles let out an almost human scream before falling to the ground.

“It’s pure Spirit energy…” breathed Skye in surprise. “While his consciousness has been spread to every ship, he’s also been able to grow into that role… He’s absorbed the spirits within each ship while simultaneously filling them with all his pain and agony. This silver fire… this ‘Spark of Life’ as he calls it… it’s his torment manifest.”

“Enough philosophizing!” roared Wood. “This shit needs to burn! Vulcan!”

The dragon erupted into a burst of green light. His Fallen form suddenly loomed over Hunter and the three magic casters, protecting them. Wood pulled back his head and breathed a torrent of acid down one side of the tiers, disregarding the levels and bathing the entire section in his corrosive breath. At the same time, his tail swiped left and right, crashing into the nearby consoles and shattering them.

Rahl screamed.

Metal wires lashed out, piercing Wood’s flanks and causing the huge dragon to tumble. Wood immediately reverted to his humanoid form just to escape being fully skewered but was nonetheless bleeding. Hunter poured potions onto him while the rest of the team charged up to the third tier.

“I know now why I was left behind! I am his harbinger! FireFeather will be given to his chosen Champion and then I will descend upon Incendius and bring the true sun to a Station bathed in darkness! You cannot stop my holy mission!”

“Were you always this religiously fanatical before you became a fucking corpse on a goddamn chair!” roared Rayne. The Demon Prince grabbed one of the consoles and yanked it clear from its frame. He tossed it at Rahl’s emaciated form where it exploded but left the skeleton barely singed. Cursing, he instead plunged his arm down to the elbow into the remaining consoles and charged down the line of cubicles, a trial of fire, sparks and explosions following him.

A wall of tubes crashed into the ground in front of him, barring his path. It twisted in the air, forming an almost worm-like appearance. A circular jaw filled with jagged ends of wires sparking with electricity opened in front of him. Rayne stopped his advance…

… Just as Aria lunged forward, a whole flock of fiery birds throwing themselves down the wire worm’s throat, causing the creature’s length to bulge before…

BOOM!

… Exploding.

Hunter grabbed Wood and hurried up to the third tier just as the rest of the team were moving up to the fourth. A loud grinding noise brought his attention back to the first floor. His eyes widened in shock as the lifeboat began sliding out of the bridge. In the far distance, he could see the remnants of the IND Fall of Dawn starting to piece itself back together.

Harm Chronos’ spell was catching up with them. The damage they were dealing now inside the Titan was nowhere near enough to beat the magic of two billion souls sacrificed to maintain the status quo.

“Guys!” he shouted. “It’s starting to fix itself!”

Rahl laughed.

“You see? Your time is quickly approaching! Soon, you will be bound to this Fleet as I am! There will be no escape! Then you will have all eternity to bow down to his majesty!”

Kane bellowed and slammed Spicy Meatball into a nearby console. “Shut!” Lava poured out of the hammer and as he spun around to smash it into another console, he continued. “The!” The big, black bear slammed Meatball into the ground and then reached into his duffel bag. “FUCK!”

From within the bag, he pulled out Going Postal. With all his strength, he was able to hold both his hammers in his paws. He swung them both through the air, lava coalescing into a ball over his head while a hundreds of explosive envelopes fluttered around the ball.

“UP!”

Kane swung his hammers down, sending the roiling sphere of fire and rock straight at Rahl. The ball collided with Rahl, burning through his skeletal remains and -

BOOM!

Erupted into a satisfying burst of fire.

All the crimson images of Rahl…

… remained.

They laughed. They sneered. They flickered madly.

Behind them, the lifeboat had been dragged out and the damage the impact had caused was starting to repair itself. It wouldn’t be long before the first tier was utterly repaired.

“Futile! All of it is futile! You have no hope! No escape! You will be stuck here with me! You will offer yourselves to my Spark of Life!”

Then, JD was sweeping past Kane.

The crimson Wulfun reached into Kane’s duffel bag and retrieved one blade of Validation. He was gone a second later, a trace of lightning leading Hunter’s eyes up to Rahl’s throne.

“I told you,” said the young wolf, “let me free you of your burden.”

He swung Validation through the air, slicing through the smoldering remains of Rahl’s form. He didn’t seem to be cutting at anything… but there was a sound like wires snapping somewhere… following by loud sizzling. The screens that showed Rahl’s face suddenly blinked out, a look of shock on Rhal’s features as they disappeared.

“JD… What did you do?” Hunter asked.

“He used Validation to sever Rahl’s connection with the Fleet,” Tanar responded. “Does that mean…?”

“Not yet,” came a strangely clear version of Rhal’s voice.

Silvery wires surged up from Rahl’s throne. JD jumped away, blades drawn as the wires coalesced and wound together. They formed a pair of strong arms, a broad chest, powerful legs and the facsimile of familiar features. When Rahl opened his eyes, his eyes were completely metallic but within his pupils burned the same silvery fire.

“Fuck,” Kane grunted, letting his arms and hammers hang by his side. He was clearly showing signs of exhaustion. “Human-sized bosses are the worst.”

Rahl regarded them all curiously, a strange clarity in his eyes. “Savages,” he intoned. “Non-creative savages_. All of you. You fail to understand the perfection that I have achieved by the grace and inspiration of the Fire God. I have created the perfect prologue to the God of Fire_’s re-emergence into this world and you taint it with your presence!”

He straightened, forming a claw with his metallic hands and scowling at them. “The Last Chronomancer granted me the gift of infinite time so that I may ascend to become the God of Fire’s herald! The Harbinger of the Scorched Apocalypse! Yet here you stand, defiling this holy ground with your mediocrity!”

Aria stormed forward sweeping Searsparrow through the air. “I don’t know what you think you know about Harm Chronos but above all else, he stood in defiance to anyone who would ever bring destruction to the wider population of Tower Thirteen! He would never do anything with the intention to lead to something called the ‘Scorched Apocalypse’!” She pressed her free hand against her chest. “He was no saint and many of the things he did were morally questionable but he would never cow down to some religious grandeur!”

“You’re only in this for yourself!” barked Tanar. “I see through you, Rahl! I don’t need Chaosrender to tell me that you’ve deluded yourself into becoming the so-called Harbinger of Adramalech to justify your failure to keep FireFeather for yourself and to give yourself meaning in this desolate, lonely place.”

Hunter glanced from face to face. Saw the defiance each of his teammates had against the mad blacksmith. Their strength, their courage, burned through his veins, inspiring him. Then he looked to Rahl and could only feel pity for the man that had fallen so far from the one that Erick and Sienna loved, that Heaton admired. Or perhaps he never was that man and he had only given up that front because he was forced to interact with others.

“Look at you,” spat Rahl. “Thinking you are above the divine will. His Greatest of Flames Adramalech desires to burn the world to ash and you will not stand in his way! This is my test! This is my conviction! I and I alone will pave the way for his return! I await only the light of his divine bonfire!”

The blacksmith raised his hands towards them. Black tubes burst from the ground where he stood and launched themselves down towards them. Hunter lifted his shield, the tubes glancing off the metal while pushing him back. The others were likewise pushed back down to the fourth tier. Rahl then lifted his hands to his side. Molten metal sprang up from the ground, curling around his fingertips and forming two, long, curved swords twice his size while arcane runes were etched all along its length. Hunter had all of a second to realize that Rahl had forged a weapon completely out of metal in the span of a second before the metallic craftsman was rushing down at them, seemingly gliding through the bridge on a platform of liquid metal. Silvery fire burst from the edges of those curved blades, sweeping across the entire tier with enough force that the entire team was pushed back down to the following level. Hunter felt the burns of that silver fire eating away at his armor and clothing. He quickly tossed everyone a cannister of his energy potion to keep them healed.

Rahl was relentless. He dropped the two scimitars to the ground where the liquid metal just absorbed them again. Rods of sharp steel surged out of his platform, zig-zagging through the air like lightning before darting towards the team. Hunter barely had enough time to lift his shield up to defend himself. He barely felt it when JD was suddenly behind him, angling his shield up slightly to the left. One of the steel bars jabbed into his shield, forcing his entire arm to glance downwards where it caught another beam that would have lanced his leg and likely punctured an artery. Pain still exploded from his shoulder were the jagged spike pierced it. The Red Lightning darted from ally to ally, adjusting their defensive stances bit by bit to ensure they were not fatally harmed.

That gave them the time to retreat down to the second tier, downing potions to keep them at peak health. Hunter knew he couldn’t keep generating potions forever and as Rahl stepped down to the third tier and lifted his hands up into the air, he watched in terror as a sphere of liquid metal and coiling wires sprang up above the blacksmith. Hunter began spinning Wildfire’s sword in his paw, generating as much heat as possible but Rahl was too quick. Spikes and sharp wires lanced out of the sphere, showering the bridge with projectiles in an advancing wave. Hunter lifted his shield and followed the others back tot he first and final tier.

They were back to where they started.

Rahl came down to the second tier. That ball glowed even brighter. Silvery fire consumed every metal component within and transformed it into a searing, silver sun. The heat from the fireball could be felt even from fifty feet away. The fireball descended upon the group, slowly and with purpose. Rahl knew there was no escape and he wanted them to know it.

Aria lept forward, encasing them once more in a crystal dome. Like before, Tanar and Skye offered what magic they could to fortify their defenses. The ball crashed into the barrier, a sound like howling winds rushing through their ears followed by the terrifying cracks of the crystal barrier starting to crack. Kane stepped forward and slammed Spicy Meatball into the back of the barrier. Lava poured out of the hammer, coating the inside of the dome. Hunter was immediately inspired and threw his canisters at the lava, red light erupting from the cylinders and quickly generating a steel wall to supplement the lava.

But it was not enough.

BOOM!

The barriers shattered and all nine of the intruders were thrown back, shrapnel coated in silver flames piercing flesh and the force of the explosion crushing organs. Blood exploded from Hunter’s lips and his eyes became unfocused. He crashed into the ground, the agony of his entire body somehow dulling the pain of the fall.

“Do you see the futility of this endeavor?” rumbled Rahl. “You are all specks compared to the great God of Fire. Nothing will stop his return. I have spent over ten years contemplating his return in solitude. My perfect creations are a tribute to his majesty and even they pale in comparison to his greatness! Humble yourself before him!”

“Prefect… creations…?” Hunter repeated.

“Yes. My Unfired. It was Fire that lit the spark of life in all of Tower Thirteen. In my arrogance, I attempted to replicate it. That was my arrogance. However, once I prostrated myself to the God of Fire, he inspired me and I found my own perfection! A Silver Flame of the Soul! A fire that continues to burn from the constant experiences of the creature that it is infused with. A soul that will always remain pure as the day it was created as any memories, any thoughts and any emotions it may feel will constantly be burned to power its frame! That is my Lifyre!”

Hunter’s vision was clearing. He lifted Wildfire and jabbed the tip into the metal ground, using it to prop himself up slowly. “And what happened to your Archfire?”

“Imperfect and arrogant. I thought I could control and command all fire but none may achieve than than the God of Fire!”

“Yeah? What about all the people you inspired with your Archfire?” He spat out blood from between his lips. “What about the likes of Oren and Roran who struggled in your shadow? What about Heaton who you gave your Pilot Light to and always chased you? What about Erick who fought so hard to move on from your departure? And Sienna who kept hoping you’d return? What about any of them!?”

Rahl scoffed. “They were distractions. I came here alongside Magmillion seeking to please the crowds. To find something that would propel me beyond Incendius and place me amongst the ranks of legendary blacksmiths the world over! But that was my human arrogance talking. My hubris. I needed no one else but myself. Myself and my god.”

Irritation and fury built within Hunter. His fingers tightened around the hilt of Wildfire. “You called us ‘non-creatives’. But when you’re forced to always color within the lines, to just follow blueprints you’re given and never allowed to see another’s perspective, you’ll only find yourself get stagnant and repeating the same goddamn mistakes over and over again.”

“I have discarded my capability to make mistakes. I was reforged into perfection by the flames of Adramalech.”

Hunter swiped his sword through the air, finding the strength to straighten. “Bullshit! You’ve only doubled down on your strengths and made your weaknesses even bigger!”

A mocking laugh followed just as black tubes rose up from the ground, looming ominously over Rahl’s shoulders. “Is that so?” The metallic craftsman straightened, lifting his hooked nose down upon the injured Hunter. “Then show me these flaws that must be so glaring to you.”

Rahl lifted a hand towards Hunter lazily with an elegant flourish.

“Burn under my spirit’s blaze!”

A sphere of burning metallic fire erupted from Rahl’s palm, shooting straight towards Hunter.

Hunter released Wildfire _’s_ blade and reached for his Sequencer, rapidly opening the crystal cube up and spinning up one of his designs. In one, smooth motion, he slammed it into its socket against Wildfire_ ’s_ shield and grabbed the two canisters that jumped out at him. He crushed each one in his paws, crimson light bursting from the shards and thin beams tracing a wireframe over his arms. These lights quickly built two, large claws over his entire arm reminiscent of Tanar’s Flarecaster. In fact, they were exact replicas of Flarecaster.

He lifted the gauntlets and caught the descending ball of silver fire. The flames singed his fur from so close but he still roared in defiance. Flarecaster - the weapon he had made for Tanar to offset Chaosrender’s lack of offensive capabilities was designed to absorb all forms of Pyromancy and write their details in its partner weapon, the Codex Infernis. But even without a Codex, the claws were still capable of absorbing the inherent fire magic and siphoning all that energy into Wildfire, rapidly producing more and more potions of energy that clattered to the ground around him. The rate of absorption was just enough to keep the fireball from consuming him. But the proximity of the silver sun was still painful.

“What…?” gasped Rahl in utter disbelief.

The fireball weakened enough that it lost its integrity. Hunter dispensed the flames, a mountain of his canisters gathering around his feet. There was a second where Rahl’s features twinged with annoyance especially when Hunter reached down and guzzled one of the potions, healing the burns across his body.

Rahl then lifted his arm into the air. Metal rods burst from the ground, once again darting around the battlefield in an erratic manner like lightning. Hunter dropped his Flarecaster duplicates to the ground before reaching for his Sequencer, typing in a few commands on the crystal cube and then seizing two canisters. He smashed them together, the crimson light dancing across his forearms to once again form another of his latest creations - Burnicade, Rayne’s weapon. The steel lightning arced towards him. Each ragged bolt gravitated towards his forearms. He was pushed back, sparks flying from the weapons as hundreds of bolts struck him. But with every strike, black flames erupted from the gauntlets until they were powerful enough that they began burning the steel beams before they even reached him.

With a roar, Hunter pulled his arm back and thrust a fist in Rahl’s direction. The stunned and surprised blacksmith could only stand there as the ball of dark flames slammed into his metallic body and singed his frame. Rahl took a second to look at his own hands as the unholy fire ate away at the metal before dissipating.

“This is not fire…”

“You’re right,” Hunter growled, tossing aside his copies of Burnicade. “They’re actually a cloud of nanobots automatically generated from the gauntlets. Kinetic energy is absorbed by the gauntlets and transformed into a cloud of nanobots designed to self-destruct upon contact with anything it touches.” He threw a grin over his shoulder at Rayne. “Not exactly what I gave you but I can totally add that feature once we’re done.” Then he glanced back at Rahl. “Adapting my designs to a fight is something I learned recently. Something I learned from Sienna!”

“A foolish approach. Why compensate for someone else’s weakness when you can reinforce your own!” Rahl lifted both his hands into the air. Metal tubes surged from the ground and formed that roiling orb of steel once more. From the sphere, a wave of snake-like tubes rushed towards Hunter. “Observe!”

Hunter typed in commands into his Sequencer then grabbed several canisters off the ground. He smashed them on the ground and they immediately transformed into thin fans that immediately began spinning protectively around him. As the steel tubes collided with the fans, they were shredded on sharp edges. Each collision generated a flaming sparrow that launched out and made a beeline for the central orb. The small birds only caused small bursts of flame along the writhing mass but as they multiplied, the fire grew bigger and bigger, spreading all over the sphere. The air became filled with the sparrows. Molten metal oozed from the orb and landed on Rahl’s shoulder. The blacksmith saw what was happening and immediately stopped his attack.

The swarm of sparrows ended… but he lost track of Hunter. He was no longer standing in the center of the fans made entirely out of Searsparrow copies. Rahl glanced about then saw the flash of red light from above him. Hunter descended upon the ball of molten metal above the blacksmith clinging on to a big hammer made of what appeared to be magma over his head. Hunter roar, slamming his replica of Spicy Meatball into the orb and sending it crashing down upon Rahl.

“Impossible!”

The ball crushed the craftsman and Hunter quickly bolted off the molten surface back to his team who were just starting to get up. Rahl’s voice came echoing through the speakers of the Titan.

“You have amused me thus far but my patience of your meager entertainment runs thin!”

Rahl’s cocoon of metal exploded, spraying molten fragments in all directions. None of them reached Hunter and fell short, forming cooling clumps of steel along the bridge. Rahl’s form hissed, small parts of his metallic flesh looking melted and distorted. Some of the metallic shards around him meshed together, liquefying and transforming into those twin scimitars of his that quickly were engulfed in his silver flame.

“Your show ends here!”

The mad blacksmith charged.

Hunter was ready. He crushed the canisters he had been holding, red light dancing up his arms. Ten crimson bangles appeared along his arms - five on each arm. He lunged at Rahl, stunning the blacksmith even as those scimitars can swiping at him. Hunter ducked beneath the swings and grabbed Rahl’s wrists. The silver flames from each curved edge flowed like fiery water into the bangles - clones of Skye’s Nullfire Covenant.

“You’re a craftsman,” Hunter growled through bared fangs. “You only ever fought for show. I fought in the military. It was my job to keep people alive with my tools and to fight on the front lines.”

He kicked Rahl. It was like kicking a steel wall but the purpose was to give him distance. As he danced back, Rahl regarded his stunted scimitars in surprise.

“What have you done?” he demanded. “My Lifyre has been… extinguished.”

Hunter dropped the bangles form his arms, their shimmering surfaces roiling with all the power they had absorbed. “You were so focused on your own goals and achievements that you locked yourself off from all other possibilities, other approaches. All you ever saw was making your ‘Lifyre’ better. You were trapped here with only your own voice to ask you questions, to fill you with doubt. But we need to be criticized every now and then. We need other people to ask us questions. We need that doubt to come from somewhere else!”

“Doubt?” barked Rahl, straightening once more. “Doubt leads to failure. Doubt leads to flaws! Doubt leads to overcompensation for a weakness that should never have been there in the first place! True perfection is achieved when there is no room for doubt!”

The blacksmith suddenly flicked his arms downwards. The metal coils that made his body jammed themselves into the ground, his fingers shooting down into the steel floor. The ground rumbled. Black metal pipes covered in crimson wires erupted from the ground, upending consoles and tearing through steel plates. These conduits transformed into two, enormous arms with silvery fire dancing at the tips of their fingers.

“Behold the results of true perfection!”

The large hands wiggled through the air, wires and pipes spilling from their fingertips and weaving together to form sinewy versions of the Unfired. Hunter readied Wildfire. Gunfire erupted from over his shoulders. Alex was advancing, pumping the Unfired with bullets from Stellar Quadrant. Fiery birds came shooting out from behind Aria as she directed them with Searsparrow.

“Perfection sucks!” Kane bellowed, charging through the advancing Unfired. He both of his hammers over his head, winding up for an overhead blow. With a primal roar, he swung them down, plowing through the Unfired in a shower of lava and explosive envelopes.

Inspired by the big, black bear, the rest of the team quickly called to Kane for their alternate weapons. Kane bashed the heads in of two Unfired before reaching into his duffel bag and throwing four, silver handguns with wolf motifs through the air. Alex snatched them from the air and began firing. He combined two handguns from Four Pack and two from Stellar Quadrant, making two individual shotguns. One fired concussive rounds and the other incendiary.

Then Kane hurled Gungnir through the air and Aria snatched it, wielding Searsparrow in her left and her original Valor in her right. She thrust viciously with both and made wide, sweeping motions with the spears. Fiery sparrows followed her trail and with the end of each combo, a large, crystal fist emerged from a magic circle behind her to strike at the Unfired.

Skye snatched Fleeting Dream and attached it to his left arm while Nullfire Covenant remained on his right. With the power of both foci, he lifted high into the air, focusing the power of the pained spirits around him and drawing the silver fire from the fallen Unfired to him. The Tigris let out a tremendous cry, lifting his paws into the air. Metallic fire burst from his right paw while red fire surged from his left. They combined into a single, snarling tiger’s head above him. Then he directed both arms forward, sending the burning construct straight at Rahl.

The blacksmith let out a defiant cry, using both of his large, metallic limbs to block the attack. The flames were too much for his steel limbs. Even the enormous arms could not hold back the raging flames of the Spirits trapped within the Lost Fleet and infected by Rahl’s malice. The tubes and wires melted away and the flaming tiger slammed into Rahl.

The Unfired toppled to the ground…

… though Rahl remained standing.

The blacksmith regarded his own arms which had now been melted down into dripping stumps of liquid metal. There was a long, quiet moment when the blacksmith regarded his helpless limbs.

“How could something so flawed be so powerful?” Then rage entered his eyes again. “I am perfect! I was forged in the crucible of his great fire! My imperfections were burned away by years of agony and pain! All that was left was clarity and illumination!” He lifted his frustrated gaze at Hunter even as his limbs began to regrow, tendrils of steel oozing out from the stumps. “How could you, a whelp plagued by doubt, weakness and troubled by the company of others, defeat me_!?_”

Hunter glanced at his teammates and offered a snarky snort. “As cliched as it sounds, it’s because of all that that I am able to become stronger than you. I’m constantly tested. I have to work with ancient, righteous Angels, a pious but inquisitive Paladin, an arrogant nymphomaniac with a heart of gold, a chaotic but loyal Fallen, an honest-to-gosh Demon Prince, an often air-headed but passionate shaman, a slightly creepy but reliable cripple and his overprotective father.”

He spread his arms to indicate the others across from him. “I made weapons to fit their strengths and shore up their weaknesses. I was inspired by their needs. I don’t make just for my own sense of perfection or desire to achieve some prestige for myself. My version of perfection isn’t going to be the same as theirs. I bet I couldn’t use the same weapons I made as well as they do given time. They’ll learn to use them in ways I could never imagine. Then they’ll tell me what else they need and I’ll keep building on that. Even if they discard what I make in favor of something else, I’ll have learned something from them.

“Most of all, I just know I’m not always right. I’m not perfect.” He shook his head, a soft smile on his muzzle. “I never will be.”

Rahl hissed at him. “Don’t waste your breath on me! Nothing you say will ever change my mind about my pursuit of perfection in his holy, fiery visage!”

Hunter shook his head. “This wasn’t about trying to convince you to change your ways. You’re cold, hard steel. Erick told me as much. No…” He closed his eyes, took a breath and let it out slowly. When he opened his eyes again, they were filled with fierce determination. “This was about me coming to realize that I can stumble, I can doubt, I can make mistakes. I don’t have to be perfect. Because I can always get better. With my friends beside me, I will always get better!”

“Sentimental drivel. What is the meaning of life but the pursuit of perfection?”

Kane stepped forward, hefting both his hammers. “How about some go old fashioned fucking?”

“Family,” Alex added, resting a paw on JD’s shoulder.

“And friends,” chimed in Wood, nodding towards Skye.

“Leaving the world better than how it was when you entered it,” said the floating Tigris.

“The stories we make,” Rayne said resolutely.

“And those that we have yet to experience,” supplied Aria.

Tanar stepped up. “Venturing into the unknown. And that thrill of learning something new.”

JD smiled. “And just being happy or at least finding a way to be happy.”

The metal blacksmith threw his head back, letting out an uproarious laugh. “Do you have any idea foolish that all sounds? How can life have so many definitions? Every problem only has one answer and to have so many responses to the one question is ridiculous! Life only has one answer. _”_ He lifted a restored finger. “Perfection. Each step we take is a step towards obtaining that coveted pedigree of being dubbed ‘perfect’. Every person that dies is a step closer to evolving into the perfect being whether their existence be a lesson in what to become or what not to do._ ”_

He spread his arms wide as the coils of steel at his feet started lifting him up from the ground. “You are all flawed creatures that have a limited existence on this plane! I have transcended death and am fully capable of becoming more! Thanks to the God of Fire inspiring me, I was able to create independent life_! ”_ Rahl swiped his arm through the air, making a grand gesture at them. “What you fail to understand is that with every attempt to thwart me, I continue to learn. My perfection is only becoming more and more defined! You have not defeated me. You are merely facing one component _of a greater whole! One ship in a fleet! What cracks and flaws you have found are merely because I have yet to unleash my full might, the full might of the Fleet, upon you! ”_

“Then bring it on, you metallic motherfucker!” Kane roared. “We’ve knocked you down over and over again! Throw everything you have at us and I’ll show you just how much your ‘perfection’ is worth!”

Rahl grinned at him darkly. “So be it. Witness true perfection!”

The entire Titan began to shake violently. The ground shifted right beneath Hunter’s feet, the metal floors undulating like waves in a tumultuous ocean. He was thrown onto his back before being tossed into the air due to roiling metal. Strange, silvery threads emerged from all around him, flittering like metallic fireflies dancing all towards one central figure - Rahl.

“Wh - Wh - What’s he doing!?” cried Alex, stumbling all over the increasingly violent waves.

Even Skye - who was hovering in the air - was being knocked through the air somehow. “He’s… He’s gathering all the spirit energy from all around him…” The Tigris shaman glanced over his shoulder, out the windows of the ship and his jaw dropped open. “He’s collecting it from the entire fleet!”

Hunter could only spare a second to glance out the windshields to confirm Skye’s announcement. The entire space was where the Lost Fleet was suddenly filled with these silver threads, all of them winding together in dizzying rivers of sparks that siphoned into the Catastrophe of the Endless Eclipse and subsequently into Rahl. Turning towards the mad blacksmith, he watched the threads all connect to his body and a maniacal grin spread across his features.

Rahl lifted his hands up into the air like he was worshiping Adramalech

“Behold! My true power! Over four millenia of spiritual resonance left within these metallic husks, linked to my consciousness alone!”

The Unfired were tough enough but now he was combining all of that power, all of that energy into himself. He could very well embody the entire Titan and crush them with a single thought!

There was a flash of red lightning and Rahl’s grin wavered.

“Exactly what I’ve been waiting for,” JD announced darkly from where he stood behind Rahl. The undulating floors stopped… as did the flow of spiritual energy. In one paw, JD held a blade of Conflagration… and in the other was the semi-transparent edge of Validation plunged into the back of Rahl’s head and sticking right through his skull and out of his forehead.

“What…?” Rahl began just as the silvery threads connecting to his head began snapping away from his form.

JD suddenly dragged the blade of Validation straight down Rahl’s spine and body, the ethereal fabric connecting the blacksmith to the rest of the Fleet suddenly snapping away from his body. Hunter didn’t even get a chance to process what the Red Lightning had done before the blade of Conflagration ignited into a single, searing edge. JD crouched to the ground and spun in a full circle, Conflagration outstretched. The blade sliced right through Rahl’s feet, severing any remaining physically connection he had with the ground and the Titan. Then, the Red Lightning jumped backwards, swinging his sword and limbs in arcs that Hunter recognized as movements from the Art of the Fiery Fist. Crimson, fiery wings laced with JD’s own personal brand of red lightning erupted from the compact Wulfun’s back. Those wings wrapped around JD’s body and he dove straight down at Rahl, slamming into the metallic craftsman’s back and sending him hurtling towards the team.

A perfectly executed Phoenix Charge.

“Now!” JD cried. “Give him all you’ve got!”

Most of the team was still trying to process what had happened but Aria was the first to move and recover. Rahl was hurtling towards them and she launched forward, throwing Gungnir. The divine Valor stabbed Rahl right in the chest but didn’t stop his momentum, merely slowed it. She jumped over the small hills of steel that the ground had become and grabbed the haft of her spear.

“Eat this!” she cried in a very un-Templar way. Spinning in place, she used his momentum to force the metal man to slam into the very hills he had made, doing three full revolutions before she swung Gungir into the air and sent him sailing above them. At the same time, Searsparrow had built up enough momentum that a dozen fiery birds had sprung from the weapon. As Rahl reached the zenith of his rise, the birds crashed into him, slicing his metals skin with their burning wings before spreading out in a floral pattern. They wound back towards him, sending a series of explosions that hurled him back to the ground in a flaming heap.

A series of gunshots quickly followed. Rahl barely managed to lift his arms in defense before concussive and incendiary rounds began peppering him. Alex advanced slowly and with purpose, never keeping his eyes off Rahl. The blacksmith snarled and lifted his hands towards Alex as if to invoke a spell. In one, smooth movement, the burly, red Wulfun threw his guns into the air and pulled out out two more handguns and slammed them against the descending firearms. They connected and reformed into a pair of shotguns.

BAM!

Both weapons went off and slammed into Rahl with enough force that he was sent hurling back a good few feet. Alex holstered the shotgun that came from Four Pack and quickly pulled out another handgun from Stellar Quadrant. He was firing the handgun in one hand while juggling the shotgun and reloading it at the same time.

BAM!

Rahl’s left leg was blown completely off by the shotgun.

Alex was far from done. Handgun met with shotgun and the combined weapon had the long nozzle of a flamethrower jutting out of it. A jet of flame erupted from the weapon, bathing Rahl and melting the metal of his flesh. In one last movement, Alex retrieved the final handgun of Stellar Quadrant and attached it to the flamethrower. It transformed into a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Jets of flame burst from the rear of the weapon as four rockets zoomed through the air and crashed right into Rahl.

The blacksmith was hurled back, slamming into the second tier of the bridge. Despite all the damage, his body was still mostly intact. Though unable to rise due to a missing leg, he was still able to look up in time to see the big, black form of Kane come slamming down from above, both Going Postal and Spicy Meatball lifted over his head. Kane roared, bringing both weapons down upon Rahl. Lava and explosive envelopes erupted from the impact. Kane threw Spicy Meatball into the air, grabbed a handful of those envelopes and shoved them right into Rahl’s mouth, stifling the craftsman’s cry of pain. He then held up Going Postal, allowing Spicy Meatball to collide with it. Red hot lava poured all over the mailbox-based weapon, spreading from Meatball and quickly combining the two into one, large, molten hammer. Kane grinned and lifted the combined, enlarged hammer over his shoulder like a baseball bat and swung it.

SLAM!

Rahl was once again hurled high into the air and slammed into the ceiling of the Titan which had to at least be five floors above them. Before gravity could take hold, a jet of acid blasted at Rahl, keeping him pinned against the ceiling for a brief second before Wood’s emerald - and naked - form came rising up with Cindarc in one hand and Vulcan in the other. He swung the two handaxes wildly, slashing and cutting into Rahl’s body and keeping him pinned to the ceiling against gravity.

Wood finished his combo strikes with a blast of acid from his muzzle and descended to the ground, a green light encasing his entire body. His huge, full draconic form slammed into the ground a second later. He reared back on his hindlegs, leveling his arm-mounted cannons at the descending Rahl, muzzle open. Three searing beams of green light erupted from his weapons, combining to strike Rahl and send him crashing into the third tier in a crater of impacted metal and corrosive goo.

That didn’t stop Rayne. A streak of violent purple energies crossed the bridge. Rayne’s uppercut slammed into Rahl’s gut, the blacksmith’s eyes going wide like he couldn’t believe he was experiencing pain at all. The Demon Prince slammed the knuckles of Burnicade together, generating an ashen clone of himself with glowing, purple eyes. The two piled upon Rahl, unleashing blow after crippling blow, their movements becoming a blinding blur as they juggled Rahl between them like a ball being tossed between two brothers. Rahl against the low wall separating the third tier of the bridge to the fourth. The two versions of Rayne came together, the ashen form dissolving and joining Rayne’s thick, purple miasma. The true Demon Prince unleashed a flurry of blows at Rahl, each one shaking the bridge. Waves of dark energies rippled out of his fists and his human form began burning away against the purple miasma.

The fully demonic Rayne stood in front of Rahl and for the briefest of moments, Rahl genuinely showed fear. Rayne pulled his fist back and -

WHAM!

Sent Rahl crashing up into the fourth tier of the bridge.

That was when he saw it.

Hovering above the rest, paws pressed together to form a steeple, was Skye. Surrounding the Tigris was an aura of shimmering, silver threads. All the traces of spirit energy that had been severed from him by the Red Lightning was being collected by the feline shaman.

“No…” he choked. “No!”

Skye’s eyes - burning with a silvery fire - locked onto Rahl. The tiger let out a ferocious roar and thrust his paws forward. A concentrated beam of silver light shot from Skye’s paws and slammed right into Rahl. The blacksmith managed to lift his hands up in defense, the searing beam slamming into his palms and immediately melting away his fingers and was eating away at his arms.

He was losing… and for the first time in over a decade, he could see death coming from him.

There was a glint of movement from the corner of his eyes. It was the other feline, the Leomian Paladin. Tanar’s large claws from Flarecaster scratched at the metal ground around him. The lion raced around him in a circle and the moment he completed that revolution, Skye pulled back his attack. The metal beneath Rahl’s feet immediately liquefied and he found himself sinking into the platform beneath him. The edges of the circle rose up around him, cocooning him in a sphere of liquid metal that muffled his screams. That sphere rose into the air, rising up above the rest of the team. Silvery fire immediately ignited it in a facsimile of Rahl’s own attack earlier.

The sphere came crashing down, slamming into the remnants of the captain’s chair and shattering in a blinding and deafening explosion. Rahl, or at least his remnants, was thrown against the ruins of the chair. A shadow loomed over him.

Hunter looked down at the craftsman that had borne the title of top blacksmith on Incendius. He could only feel pity for the man. Lifting the blade of Wildfire to his right, he shouted, “Now!”

All his teammates from down on the first level of the bridge grabbed the remaining energy canisters that lay on the floor and immediately began throwing it at him. The cannisters slammed and shattered against the blade of Wildfire. His Sequencer began commanding the energies in the fluids, generating a seething, bright crimson edge on the blade that extended to about ten feet long. When the last potion was expended, Hunter locked gazes with Rahl.

“Do it,” hissed Rahl, a dark smile on his face. “Do it and take my place as the pinnacle of perfection.”

Hunter scowled. “Fuck your perfection and fuck you.”

He swung his blade, slicing downwards in a swipe powerful enough that it cut right through Rahl and the chair behind him. Then he swung it from left to right, right to left, upwards, downwards and over and over. Frustration over everything he had to go through to get to this point, all the pain he had to endure, the trials from each humiliation, each defeat, each deception came out in every blow. But at the same time, there shone the moments of pure joy. The thrill of winning that first match, the excitement of making weapons for his friends and the inspiration he drew from the more experienced craftspeople that he had encountered.

The weight of all that came in his blows, culminating in one, final stab right into Rahl’s chest that sent a burst of sizzling, crimson energies out from the tip of his blade and sending it scorching through the Titan.

Rahl’s mouth was agape for a second. Ignoring all the pain, he was genuinely surprised that he was so close to death. He just had nothing to say. He wasn’t sure what to think. For the first time in his life, he just did not know what to do.

That small, red Wulfun stepped out from behind the one that had stabbed him. His soft, kind blue eyes regarded Rahl not with pity, disdain or disgust. There was admiration in his eyes and that only confused Rahl all the more.

“Why…?” he croaked.

JD leaned towards the legendary craftsman who was little more than a torso now.

“Erick told me that if we did meet you,” JD said gently, “that he always believed you’d keep searching for your light… even if you were dead.” He paused for a second as if considering his next words. Then, he locked gazes with Rahl. “Keep your fire going and your forge hot.”

Rahl’s eyes widened… and then, for the first time in nearly twenty years, a tear squeezed out of his eyes. Even if it was a tear made entirely of liquid metal. A soft smile touched his lips…

… and then he faded, his body falling limp.

Hunter sighed in relief, his shoulders slumping. He pulled Wildfire from Rahl’s body, letting the corpse of the metallic abomination slump onto the devastated captain’s ship.

“Tell me it’s over,” he pleaded.

“This part it,” JD said offering a small smile. “But FireFeather clearly isn’t here. Looks like whoever sponsored Rahl has it.”

The reality of the situation came flooding back and Hunter swore.

“And how are we supposed to escape this place?” hollered Kane, marching up the bridge. “Chronos and Rahl said this place was just going to repair itself, right?”

Hunter glanced about him… at all the devastation that had occurred around them. “No… I think we’ve destroyed this place beyond repair. Beyond even Chronomancy.”

Aria strode up regarding the corpse of Rahl. “Chronomancy is many things but it can never repair the soul of something or someone.” Her eyes drifted towards JD. “What you did, young one, you severed Rahl from the rest of the Fleet, didn’t you? You damaged his Spirit directly. That is something not even Chronomancy can repair.”

Hunter glanced up at her. “Not only that but Skye focused a lot of the Spirits in this place against Rahl. Maybe even expended them.”

“They’re not coming back,” Skye agreed. “I doubt they’ll want to.”

“Which means we’ve dealt enough damage to the Fleet that we might be able to make an escape,” agreed Aria. “But it won’t last. Remember, Harm built this trap to reset to a new ‘norm’ after some time. Once that norm is established, the trap is reset.”

She spun, facing the opening they had made right behind Rahl’s resting place.

“We need to get out of here now.”

Fires for the Forge

Kane was waiting for him right outside the Spicy Boar. Though they hadn’t set up a date of any kind, JD and his cousin were close enough that despite only being on Incendius for a month, the big bear already knew where he would go while the rest of the group were unwinding from their harrowing adventure. They hugged briefly and then, quietly, moved into the restaurant where they were quickly seated.

There was no Sienna. She had taken some leave after Hunter had returned to her with both rings. The story was told and Sienna took it with a steely composure. There was a hint of sadness in her eyes and she excused herself but not before thanking them for finally giving her closure. Where she went, only Erick knew.

Now the second ranking blacksmith in all of Incendius, Erick von Darkmoth took the news of Rahl’s final demise harder than most. He actually cried and was not heard from for about two days. When he finally emerged, he told everyone that he was finally pronouncing Rahl dead. There was some uproar and no doubt he would fight an uphill battle but he nevertheless thanked them for their efforts and even vouched for the students of Pinnacle, garnering them some points. At the very least, JD, Wood and Skye’s grades were finally on the scale… even if it was an F-minus.

JD ordered his usual while Kane settled for some bacon-wrapped Incendian peppers stuffed with chicken.

“Going on a diet?” JD asked.

“Got to watch my figure,” replied his cousin with a grin. “I’ve got a photoshoot after this.”

“Why even bother with lunch then?”

“Because then I’d miss you.”

JD cocked his head to the side, an innocent smile on his face. “Am I really that important that you’d spend your time with me instead of preparing for your shoot?”

Kane grinned at him and gave him a little punch on the shoulder. “Of course, cuz. I’ve done my rounds with the rest of the team and you’re the last one. You’re the hardest to pin down.”

“Really? How are the others?”

Kane leaned back in his large, wooden chair until it began groaning in protest against his weight. “Valkyrie is feeling pretty proud of herself. I had a feeling that the Church higher-ups and her own family were pushing her do that weird angelic sacrifice thing so that she would pass on her legacy. She’s a walking hero and legend after all. A reminder to the rest of the Church that they fucked up and she and her sacrifices is what saved Tower Thirteen after the Fall. They want her to retire. But after all this…” He shrugged. “Well, I don’t know how much she actually told people but I know that finding the Lost Incendian Fleet is pretty big.”

JD canted his ears forward. “I heard. The news is going crazy. The Church brought in a lot of anti-Chronomancy equipment and are working to break Harm’s spell. Strange though…” He offered Kane a little smile. “The news I heard is that the Lost Incendian Fleet wasn’t some self-sustaining community of ships that have abandoned Incendius over the years but rather an automated fleet run by an AI that went rogue. It was meant to be self-sustaining, recording Incendius’ history from a distance but never interfering until it started creating its own ‘people’. The Unfired, the AI called it.”

Kane offered JD a coy smile in return. “Well, that’s what’s coming from the military so it must be true, right?”

“Right.” JD waited until their drinks had arrived before he continued. “What about Tanar? I saw him yesterday. He was kicking off a study in ‘Liquid Metal Magic’.”

“It’s apparently a mixture of Pyromancy, Ferromancy and Hydromancy,” agreed Kane. “Metal and Water don’t usually mix but I guess when you throw fire into there, it works better. He’s been pretty consumed with that. Says that that AI was pretty fucked up but had some pretty good techniques that he picked up on. Going to see if he can at least give the memory of Rahl a good legacy.”

“You mean the AI of the Lost Incendian Fleet,” JD corrected.

“Yeah. What did I say?” answered Kane innocently. “By the way, your dad is worried sick about you. He’s been pressing the school to give you time off but only through letters and shit. Seems he’s been busy cleaning up the mess that Heaton made. Pretty big scandal, you know.”

“I can only imagine. That’s a lot of net worth suddenly gone. I know dad is retired from the military but he’s still got contacts and people still rely on him. It’s how he makes a living. Independent consultant for the military. Still, I love him. Doesn’t mean I’ll take time off school.” JD winced. “Still on an F, after all.”

“F-minus,” reminded Kane. “Speaking of your fellow flunkies, Skye was pretty shaken about the whole thing as well. Channeling all of those spirits and their pain was pretty hard on him. He’s glad to be back here with some ‘calmer’ spirits but he’s sadder. I think he wishes he could’ve done something more for the spirits of the Fleet than use up all their energy to kill the guy that tainted them and turned them into twisted reflections of himself.”

Their food arrived and JD took a bite first before considering his reply. “I think they were happy to help. From what Skye told me, he never uses his spirit magic that much because those spirits are literally… primeval and primitive beings. They have no concept of complex thought or any understanding of what their life is worth. They don’t understand death and yet he knows when he gets them to manifest like that, they die. It’s kind of like asking a loyal pet to die for you. But those spirits on the fleet…?”

Kane nodded. “Yeah. I know. Doesn’t make it easier on the guy. He’s trained to ‘disperse’ the spirits. Redistribute their energies and rage across a place. Not outright use them for combat and to kill. But Wood’s comforting him.”

“Oh yeah? What’s he been doing?”

“Trying to keep Skye occupied with other shit. They’ve been training with Roran, actually. Trying to get a better handle on the weapons Hunter made for them. Wood was inspired by Hunter’s speech about using the weapons in ways that even our resident blacksmith could never think of and is trying to ‘get inspired’. I think he’s a little jealous that you’ve got more points on your rubric than him.”

JD grinned sheepishly. “Aw, come on. That was because Aria was so nice to me.”

“You were the one that cut that AI off from the rest of the Fleet. You also pulled off a killer Phoenix Charge. Improvement.” Kane shrugged. “Props where it’s due, cuz. Even Rayne was saying that he’s planning to drag you into some advanced Art of the Fiery Fist classes so you can pull off more moves. He’s already talking to some other masters to make sure we all get some time in that field.”

He groaned again and rolled his eyes as he finished his second skewer. Noting that Kane hadn’t touched his peppers, he said, “What about Hunter? How’s he taking the whole Lost Fleet thing?”

“Kind of like Wood,” answered Kane. “He was inspired more than anything. That’s why he took our weapons. He’s trying to reforge them and make them better. I even heard that Sienna is there with him now and that’s where she disappeared to.”

“Nice,” JD commented. “So let’s see…” He started counting off. “That’s Aria, Tanar, Skye, Rayne, my dad, Wood and Hunter. You’ve clearly been going around keeping tabs on people. Guess it’s my turn.” He smiled innocently at his cousin. “As you can see, I’m just trying to go to class and having lunch at my favorite restaurant here in Corona.”

“That you are, cuz,” Kane said, finally popping one of his peppers into his muzzle. “You’re doing an awfully good job at laying low.”

“Why would I need to lay low?”

There, Kane locked gazes with him. “So that no one recalls what you did.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “What did I do?”

For a second, Kane paused, like he was considering his next words. Then he said, in a slow, low voice filled with purpose, “You fucked up Harm Chronos’ Chronomancy.”

In a similar fashion, JD took a second to respond.

“I did?”

“You did. Don’t know how you did it. But you did. It wasn’t because we all did damage to the ‘spirits’ of the Fleet either. Somehow, you disabled the spell that Harm Chronos put on the place.”

JD’s brow furrowed, showing genuine confusion… or it would have seemed genuine to everyone else if he was lying to anyone but Kane Fenn. “How did I do that?”

“I honestly don’t know.” Before his cousin could protest further, Kane said, “See, I actually went back to the Fleet after we left.”

JD’s eyebrows went up. Genuine concern was on his face and there was no hint of a lie this time. “You did? Why would you do that?”

“To put back the small transport we stole from the Titan.”

“But I thought it went back after the Chronomancy binding the Fleet reactivated.”

“That’s what you hoped people would believe but you and I both know that’s not the truth. I put it back. Then I waited for Aria to bring in reinforcements and snuck into one of their transports to get a ride back. Wasn’t hard. That drill sergeant knew how to drill me.” He winked at JD. “But after spending a day or two on the fleet and eating their food, I confirmed what I already knew. There’s no longer any Chronomancy holding the place.”

JD remained silent, just smiling slightly at his cousin.

Kane shrugged. “I made sure everything looked like it was back in place. Chronos was right. That place was designed to be automated. Fixed up the bridge. Made it look like Rahl was just an empty corpse and some sort of construct some crazy AI made when it controlled the place, wiped out Chronos’ message and left when the opportunity was right.”

“How long were you up there?”

“Just a day or two. Aria works fast.”

The Red Lightning finished his last skewer. “I guess I should thank you.”

“You should,” Kane said with a grin. “But I should be thanking you too. Don’t know how you did it and don’t think I didn’t notice but I’m pretty sure you were guiding us a little there. Little words. Little actions. Seems insignificant at the time but when I look back on it, I get this sense that if it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have made it out of there.”

“I did sever Rahl from his connection to the Fleet, after all.”

“And that was your major cover. But I’m pretty sure you _als_o did something else. Don’t know what but the moment you stabbed Rahl, you also killed the Chronomancy holding the Fleet together.” Kane’s brows furrowed. “What I don’t get is… why? Why wait until that point? Why sooner?”

JD tilted his head to the left… and then the right. “Say I did what you’re saying I did. We wouldn’t have known where Rahl was until we were on that destroyer and found a way to get onto the Titan. The Chronomancy actually worked in our favor sometimes. Gave us an extra layer of protection. Not to mention if Rahl suddenly learned that he was no longer invulnerable sooner, he probably would’ve gone all out and tried to incinerate us much sooner. I mean, given how paranoid he was, he wouldn’t have let even a shard of the Fall of Dawn float like he did if he wasn’t confident we were dead.”

The big bear nodded, conceding to the point. “I suppose you’d know better.” He clapped his paws together. “I guess we should just end this trail of thought by thanking each other, huh?” He got up, clapping JD on the shoulder. “Thanks for looking out for us, cuz. I really appreciate you having my back.”

JD smiled and placed a paw over Kane’s paw. “Anytime, Kane. I’ll always have your back. Even when you go after the Association.”

Kane regarded him with a sly smile. “Oh? What makes you think I’ll go after them?”

He returned that smile. “I seem to recall the man whom you seduced and stole the supposed ‘Rahl Original’ had the surname ‘Magmillion’, right?”

“Right.”

“And he gave you his card.”

“Right.”

“And wasn’t the man who was with Rahl looking for the Talon of the Fire God, the man who betrayed him, trapped him on the Fleet and stole FireFeather… wasn’t his surname also Magmillion?”

There, Kane’s smile grew into a full-on grin.

“Right.”