Page 138 of The Only Way Out Is Up

“Fine,” he mutters. “Taj Fara is the victor of the Ascent.” His cheek twitches. “But I do not extend my pardon to the criminals. Execute them.”

“What?” Hisham steps in Alzimyth’s face, drawing himself up to his full if diminutive height. “Have you no decency, sir? No honor? Everyone heard you give your word!”

“I don’t keep my word to vermin. Get out of my way, old man.”

He shoves Hisham, and the Council Secretary sits down heavily in the wet earth, more startled than hurt. Alzimyth gives a deep sigh.

“Fine. I promised to show mercy.” He glances at Quech with an ugly gleam in his eye. “Only kill one of them.”

“Which?” Quech growls.

“Do I look like I care?”

The big man hefts his spear and looks at Spike. “Little bitch has been nothing but trouble.”

I’d felt frozen in place, unable to believe what I was hearing. Now, suddenly, everything starts to happen at once:

Quech raises his spear.

“Guards!” Hisham shouts, recovering from his shock. “Arbiters, um, stop him!” But the Specials are surprised themselves, and too far away.

Spike looks up, eyes very wide, too startled to flee.

Ky starts to run, her sword snapping out, the pieces clicking into place in slow motion, snick snick snick.

Star surges forward and hits the barrier field, strobing energy crackling around his forelimbs. More of his sigils pop, but he shoves with everything he’s got, and sparks fountain from the chain at the barrier’s base.

Quech lunges forward. Spike closes her eyes. Ky is steps behind him, but too slow, too slow—

Somi’s big body sails between the descending spear and the skinny girl. The spear goes into his belly, and he drags it down as he crashes to his knees. It punches all the way through him, all of Quech’s weight behind it, and Spike’s eyes snap open to focus on a bloody spearpoint emerging from Somi’s back, stopped only centimeters from her face.

I scream.

Ky’s blade flickers, distant light gleaming off its cold, perfect arc, outlined in the air for one frozen moment.

I keep screaming.

Quech’s head hits the ground with a thump and rolls away.

I keep screaming.

Star hits the barrier again. It’s finally lost too many sigils and the whole thing shatters in a fresh spray of sparks. Star crashes free, broken and battered but heading straight for Alzimyth. Kill him! I send, even as the scream still tears at my throat. Kill him kill him kill him, and it merges with Star’s own thoughts as he raises his bladed limbs to slash the knight apart.

“Oh dear,” Alzimyth proclaims, as though to an unseen audience. “Clearly self-defense.”

The air above him moves. It twists in a way that makes me want to claw at my eyes, and in between blinks there’s something there that wasn’t there before. It’s enormous, three meters high, a mountain of metal and glass and shimmering energy. A runic, but a runic unlike anything I’d ever imagined, sleek and smooth and translucent in places as though it isn’t fully real. It has a birdlike shape, wings folded tight at its sides, two legs with massive talons digging furrows in the ground, a sleek, almost featureless head with no eyes or ears but only a squat four-sided beak.

It leans forward, and that beak splays open to reveal inky blackness, shot through with sparks of brilliant white light. The sparks grow and grow, merging into a ball of actinic white light suspended between the four triangular sections. A high-pitched whine shivers down the octaves, from falcon’s shriek to subsonic rumble. The ball distends, snapping forward into a beam of energy so intense I feel it searing my retinas.

Star skids to a halt, and his shield-arm comes up. The beam washes over him, and even against that light I can see the burst of sparks as Ekkeban’s precious green RESIST shatters. Every other sigil in Star’s body seems to burst at once, and his carapace goes from battered plates to yellow-white molten metal in an instant, sloughing away like sopping paper. Behind him, the beam carves into the hillside, detonating the ground in an explosion of steam and dirt.

I can barely tell when the light dies away because a solid purple afterimage floats in my vision. The bird-runic’s beak closes, and it straightens up. Alzimyth is already moving, taking hold of a handle on the runic’s hindquarters to swing himself up onto its back. Once he’s aboard, the runic leaps, powerful legs propelling the whole vast bulk of it into the air. Its wings snap out, half metal and half glowing energy fields, and it beats them once. A downdraft slams into us and everyone staggers. That single motion sends bird and knight hurtling into the sky so fast the air rumbles like thunder with their passing.

Star!

I can barely see. My throat is raw. The place where Star was standing is nothing but steaming mud and molten metal, radiating hot like the open door to a furnace. I try to push forward, looking for a flash of ruby sigil, looking for anything.

Star’s core is indestructible. Of course it is. If it wasn’t, I could never send him into battle. That ruby THINK has been battered, hammered, slashed, crushed, and subjected to every other abuse dozens of constructs can devise.