Adarin screamed as Liora turned into the first ring street of the city. She tried to dash across it, but the wyvern was closing in. Too rapidly. I need to do something— Adarin hissed. He considered his options: throwing the dagger, attempting some sort of magic, accelerating himself somehow. Nothing that will work in time.

  Why don’t I have any fucking ranged options?

  He cursed himself for the oversight again.

  Liora almost made it across the street, only a few more steps till she would reach the tight alley between cottages. But his hopes of her escaping were dashed. She went down, fell to the ground, and tumbled through the dirt. Adarin reached the middle of a cottage by the side of the street. Maybe… maybe if the thing doesn’t kill her straight away, I can throw it off her body. If—

  A red beam of light painted the side of the creature. It turned its head mid-jump while flying toward Liora. Opening its jaw as if in confusion. Adarin saw the glint of a dagger in her hand. Healing spell. What—

  The sharp rapport of a cannon sounded from down the street. Something hit the wyvern, throwing it sideways into the corner of a wooden cottage, splintering the wall. Where there had been beautifully grass-green scaled skin, a boiling crater erupted—whitening flesh and boiling blood spewing acrid pink vapor from the beast’s side.

  It seemed to freeze. So did the world. Silence reigned as Adarin rattled to a stop, barreling into the street amidst scattering gravel. He saw the cannoneers, with Devon, Gavin, and Gisela at the front, at the ready under the safe cover of fifty skeleton pikemen.

  Action resumed violently as the wyvern took a deep breath and screeched, spewing pink blood and boiling steam in a long, ear-shattering death cry. It twitched and spasmed in final throes, and Adarin watched it standing next to Liora until it stopped long seconds later.

  He turned to her. “What were you thinking playing fucking bait? Who authorized this?”

  Liora tilted her head, a proud smile contrasting with an angry flash in her eyes. “I did. I’m in command.”

  Adarin took a long breath, running through a mental calming routine. He spoke clearly and slowly. “Liora, the commander isn’t supposed to be—”

  She smirked. “Oh yeah? That’s coming from the guy who goes jumping through fire and wrestling wyverns to buy time.”

  Adarin groaned, but movement in the sky suddenly caught his attention. Liora’s hand shot up and a flash of putrid green lightning erupted. Adarin focused on the creature in the smoke. The big wyvern was descending, claws ready to reap carnage. Liora went to her knees as she maintained the necrotic lightning spell. She clenched her fists as her breathing grew labored and her knees shook. It was a variation of the blast, something more controlled than what she had done to the swamp troll.

  The large wyvern cawed, the mocking cadence clear. The spell bounced off its wings under the abjuration shield that Adarin now saw was supported by strange runic patterns engraved into the scales on the wings. Fifty meters. Maybe five seconds. Liora growled, seeing that her best shot was ineffective at rotting away the beast's wings. Before Adarin could suggest it, she targeted the body. With a screech like nails on a chalkboard, the abjuration spell splintered. The elder wyvern’s flesh began to rot away, turning white, blackening, necrotizing. Its ribs became visible.

  It screeched, banked to the side, and its wings failed it with the violence of a crashing airplane. Tumbling end over end, it smashed into the straw roof of a cottage, caving it in, leaving only the gable standing on both sides.

  Adarin didn’t hesitate. He readied the dagger and charged, but the debris allowed no good way in. He tried to jump, but the wall was too high. I need to get at it. Can't let it escape. Then he realized he wasn’t alone.

  “Devon, Gavin!” he thundered. “Hit it! Cannons!”

  They were already maneuvering, and Devon’s reliable voice sounded loud and clear. “Fifteen seconds.”

  Adarin began the mental countdown in his head. “Liora, can you—” But he broke off.

  The young woman was kneeling in the street, breathing heavily, sweat matting her forehead. The intense ozone sting wafting off her mixed disgustingly with the burned rock and ammonia stench of boiling wyvern blood. She’s down for the count.

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  Peripherally, Adarin perceived how the last wyvern had been bogged down by pikemen, and was being systematically slaughtered by spells and musket fire. He tried getting at the elder one again, scrambling up the collapsed roof, but it had fallen outward, creating an angled barricade. He hacked and tore at wood, trying to make a way to the stirring apex predator. One by one he tore away straw, planks, and beams.

  Five seconds.

  Without warning Adarin’s world turned white, then black in an instant. His sensations of the outer world were gone as if a light switch had been thrown.

  He blinked, seeing only status indicators and combat interfaces of his mind space. What— His head snapped sideways. All connections lost. Slowly he coaxed the core’s nanonic layer to re-establish the interface. Painful seconds passed as he rebooted the link between sphere and body.

  He used the lightning spell. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Liora. Everyone. The cannoneers. Am I—

  Then the probing tendrils of nanotech from his diamonoid core reconnected, bringing his body back under control. Relief—merely the interface, not the system, had been fried.

  Liora was fine, still kneeling in the street. The lightning had targeted the cannoneers. Several detonations went off down the road where the cannoneer mages had thrown the gunpowder barrels. The elder wyvern had ignited the gunpowder stores, but inscribed abjuration wards and the cannoneer mages’ experience with kinetic emergency evocation had saved them. Adarin promised himself that he would write commendations for each and every one of those mages.

  Drunkenly, the big wyvern was struggling out of the ruins. Adarin saw new holes in the houses and smoking cannon barrels. Dozens of cannoneers lay on the ground, their bodies marred by burn wounds. Liora began scrambling to tend to them, preparing to do her life’s work. He reached out and ordered the cannoneer sergeants to help her.

  The air stirred as the monster extricated itself. With thunderous wingbeats, the elder wyvern lifted off the ground. Its body bore necrotic wounds and peeling skin, but it screeched a mournful cry. A protesting cry answered from the smoke over Oakridge. Slowly, the big one gained altitude, then gave a more insistent cry. A disappointed one answered. The two wyverns began flying toward the forest.

  Something snapped in Adarin. No you fucking don’t.

  He snarled, scanning. His eyes fell on a gunpowder barrel, only lightly scorched, scattered near him. He grabbed it with a manipulator and sprinted down the road, past the unit spiking the last grounded wyvern.

  He held the barrel high. Fitting. This whole mess began with a stink bomb.

  The enraged soldier ran up the earthen rampart, jumped the wall, the impact jarring his body, and followed over hillocks into the forest corridor between town and river.

  Suddenly he was at the forest’s edge. His memory fragmented. He recalled one wyvern crashing, tilting sideways as something black appeared on it. Next the elder wyvern staggered as if something had landed on it. A crash of wood shattering. A cawing screech, burbling breaths of a pierced lung. Then a second crash. What the fuck is going on. He shook himself like a dog, then refocused on his mission. On the kill he was going to make.

  One hundred fifty meters deeper, movement—emerald-green scales shifting in the undergrowth.

  He checked his tools: two manipulators armed, a gunpowder barrel, a diamonoid dagger. This will have to do. He dashed forward.

  Undergrowth whipped his body, but he barreled through like a tank. The smaller wyvern came first. It had made the intimate acquaintance of a young beech tree, which now grew through its ribcage.

  “Stay here,” Adarin muttered, then giggled. What the hell is wrong with me?

  He came to a stop as he entered a clearing where the big one had gone down. Half its wing membrane was ripped away. The abjuration runes and scale patterns on the right wing were scorched and burned, the wing torn like a banner. Something black seemed to watch him—red eyes—but when he blinked, only the wyvern remained.

  The beast rose, presenting itself in full glory—ten meters from hind claw to snout. It stood on hind legs, wings beating: one beautifully rune-etched, the other a torn rag. Its body was half deep emerald armor, half blackened, necrotic flesh.

  It screeched, the pause between cries making Adarin’s systems shudder—a clear challenge.

  Adarin cranked his speakers up and screamed: “Fuck you!”

  The beast flinched slightly. Adarin chuckled darkly. That’s right, I’m the bigger predator here. He knocked the manipulator holding the dagger back like a scorpion stinger, a boxer’s killing blow. He covered the gunpowder barrel with his body.

  Now, how do I do it? The fight with the two others went badly. I won’t turn this into some epic last stand. I have a bomb. He paused. Famous last words, those.

  He studied the grass at the bottom of the clearing and groaned. Yes, I have gunpowder. But how the fuck do I ignite it?

  The wyvern lunged in a gigantic leap. Adarin tensed his legs, scattering leaves and dirt. He dashed behind a tree. The tree was sheared in half by a claw swing, nearly collapsing on him. The wyvern snapped, but Adarin was already dodging behind the next tree. All his remaining attention was split between cursing and considering options to ignite the powder.