Page 142 of Under the Iron Sky

Malakai hummed. He pulled a dagger from his armor and started flipping it over as they walked. “And what happens if we run into enemy fire? You know the Vordellians like to train new recruits around here.”

The human tilted her head, her black eyes sliding toward the knife, and a part of Ikarus willed her to try and grab it just to prove she was still in there somewhere, buried deep beneath the Hex.

“Not that I’m scared of a few humans, mind you,” Malakai went on, still playing with that knife. “Might make things a bit more interesting, ya know?” He balanced the hilt in his palm, then flipped it over again.

The human watched him turn that knife over, the blade right there within her reach. Ikarus’s pulse quickened.

Come on, he almost snarled aloud. Take it. Use it to try and carve my heart right out. She wanted to. How could she not after everything he’d done.

Come on. Fight the Hex. Fight me—just do something.

She frowned slightly. The fingers of her left hand, the one closest to the blade, twitched once. Twice. Ikarus held his breath, but then her eyes slid forward again, and she was a corpse once more.

The edge of the crater had just come into view, the large divet in the city where Aleena’s palace had once stood, sealed by golems long ago, when a thunderous bang echoed from one of the nearby abandoned buildings. Every soldier behind him jumped to attention, but Ikarus merely lifted a hand above his head, not tearing his gaze away from the human, and halted the falling bridge shard that’d snapped free in midair, bits of rotting metal falling around them like green snow.

He brushed it aside, then stilled.

It was too quiet.

“Why are we stopping?” an Iron behind him asked.

Ikarus pulled the human closer. Silently scanning the area, he grasped the edges of his power, knives slowly floating out of their sheaths—

A star winked from a dark window high above. Ikarus pulled the human behind him, raising a hand to cast a shield.

The Light snuck through, and the Iron behind him didn’t have time to scream before it burned a hole through his heart. His body had scarcely hit the ground before Vordellian soldiers were leaping out from behind rusting trains and broken windows.

Ikarus’s team quickly melted into formation, following the precautionary instructions he’d laid out before this mission, should they come across any unexpected problems, but the humans weren’t alone.

Three familiars shot forward, two large cats that moved swiftly between the Dar’rak like the tide around stones, and a single bear whose right arm had been replaced with a glowing yellow scythe, moving with the humans as a single unit, bronze guns, claws, and fangs glittering as one.

Rays of Light rained down, and Ikarus’s team retaliated with fire and stone and blades.

A Crimson dropped to his knees on the very edge of the crater, clutching the bloody stump that’d been his left arm. The bear familiar roared, the sound almost eclipsed by the loud whirl of metal in its mouth, and slashed that blade of Light through the air again, taking the Crimson’s other arm.

A metal lynx whipped through the chaos, leaping into the air and landing on an Iron’s chest with enough force to send them both toppling to the ground. The Iron screamed, magic completely forgotten in his panic, and uselessly clawed at the thing while it shoved a massive paw onto his helmet, tipping his head back to expose his throat, and sank its fangs into his flesh.

The Iron screamed, rivulets of blood spilling down his neck—

Like a hound on a scent, the human came alive at the sight of that blood. The sound of it spraying across the floor.

A wave of her hand and the blood was rising into the air, crystallizing into pointed shards that she fired with a quick flurry of her wrist—just as Ikarus had seen the Ancient One do a hundred times.

Before Ikarus had even done a full sweep of their surroundings, his powers reaching out like tentacles for something to throw, the human whirled around and sent more of those crimson shards spearing into the leopard familiar that’d been stalking his back.

Malakai seemed to be in silent competition with her, scorching two soldiers for every one she killed while Ikarus made short work of the snipers hiding on the balconies above.

She was lethal and unstoppable. Everything they’d hoped she would be.

This was what he’d wanted, wasn’t it? To make her the ultimate weapon for him and his master. So what was this tightness forming in his chest?

Working together, Ikarus, Malakai, and the human quickly cleared the field of threats.

Until only two remained.

Ikarus hardly recognized him as the boy from her memories. The years, the war, neither had been kind to Theron. He sat atop a decaying metal horse, one hand curled tightly around the machine’s reins while the other gripped the largest sunrifle Ikarus had ever seen. A rifle that was pointed at Malakai’s back.

He turned just as Light flared and quickly rolled his arm to conjure a shield of roaring blue flame—but not quickly enough. Light slammed into the shield, and Malakai was tossed into the air, landing mere feet away from the crater.