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Two more jets shot upward, raining bullets on those guarding the newly formed checkpoint. The space above the crack rippled, then the shield fell away, allowing them to soar right out of Illieck.
More followed. Soraya counted fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, all loaded with multiple Sentinels and Banks, all likely filled dangerously close to capacity with weapons and equipment packed to the brim with Light.
“The shield is down!” one fairy screamed from the floor. “Helmets on! Now!”
Many fled, gathering their young or elders in their arms and taking flight, hundreds of wings fluttering together into the eastern region of the cave until they were swallowed by the darkness, while those who stayed, all of them now wearing either iron or crimson helmets, brandished swords and shields and spears, swirling like a living black tide that rushed the human soldiers as one.
They were no match for this new Vordellian arsenal. One by one, the fairies fell away, wings and flesh burned to cinders while more Sentinels and jets just kept appearing from that first burrow.
Morana was there. Screaming, she raised her hands high above her head, long nails in perfect line with the horns atop her helmet, and started pulling thorned vines from the walls and buildings to slash and tear soldiers in two.
Ikarus had disappeared the moment the fighting had started. Soraya looked for anyone she knew. Twiigs. Theron. Even Vander. She recognized no one.
It killed her, standing up here, watching everyone below fight while she could do nothing.
She paced the balcony, feeling utterly useless. Golla was speaking from inside their room. Soraya scarcely heard a word he said. She had to get down there. Had to do something—
The air in front of the balcony rippled with red light. She suddenly felt warmer.
Soraya stopped pacing.
Was this … No. She grabbed a stone off the floor and threw it; it zipped through the air and landed on the ground far below.
The shield was gone.
Was Ikarus hurt, then? Or was he so distracted by what was happening below, by what he was doing, that he could no longer maintain the shield?
Soraya didn’t let herself dwell on it. She bolted through their room, ignoring Golla’s panicked shriek to please stay, and straight through the unshielded door.
Illieck was a bloodbath.
Soraya tried not to look too long at the bodies she stepped over.
She passed a fairy with dozens of burning holes still smoking from their chest. Then a human without an arm, only to find that missing appendage several feet away, still holding a gun.
It was horrific. Grotesque.
It was war, and that had been her reality now far longer than it hadn’t.
Kneeling, Soraya pried the gun from the severed hand, the fingers still warm when she peeled them away, then slid the fallen soldier’s bracer onto her forearm. Both were fully charged.
The area was quickly filling with smoke from fires raging on the main street and within some of the burrows. Soraya tried not to breathe it in.
She activated a scythe, gun gripped in the other hand. Keeping low, she crept through the battle, looking for Theron or Twiigs. She kept out of sight, slashing her arm whenever an enemy got too close. If she could get to the burrow the last Vordellians were still trickling out of, hopefully she could find an empty jet she could take or a piloted one that hadn’t left yet.
She was almost there when a flash of curved horns gleamed in the distance.
Shit.
Deactivating the scythe, Soraya slipped into the nearest burrow, her breath quickly sawing out of her.
If he’d seen her … If he knew those shields around their room were gone …
Please, no.
Pulse hammering in her throat, Soraya slowly peered back to the battle.
The horns on Ikarus’s helmet somehow looked even more sinister paired with his civilian clothes. He was a good fifty feet away, and she watched him thrust out a hand to capture the Vordellian soldier charging toward him, scythe poised, and toss him into the air, where he was set ablaze by Malakai’s flames.
