Page 72 of Under the Iron Sky

Serone’s back legs touched the ground, mist whirling beneath her wings like currents of red snow.

There were more machines down here than Ikarus had realized. Nerves clawed his throat as he beheld each one, the dozens and dozens of jets and rifles, the cannons like the one that’d shot Serone out of the sky, and finally the machines that could rival even the enormous size of a fully grown golem—Sentinels.

Ikarus hadn’t seen one operational for years. Horrible things. Fearless, incorruptible men made out of hard metal and Light.

He strained his ears, listening for boots scuffing against the earth or the cock of whatever weapon she was no doubt pointing at him right now.

The world was silent.

And then … fluttering. A sinister smile stretched across Ikarus’s face. There you are.

Summoning a knife from the sheaths across his back, he followed her heartbeat through the fog, his feet nearly silent on the stone.

“Come out, come out, human,” he called, playing along with her game. “You know you don’t stand a chance against me.”

Oh, she thought she was so clever hiding here, didn’t she, among all these empty suits of armor. Thought that he wouldn’t be able to hear the steady thump, thump, thump of her heart here, the only sign of life among all the death.

Ikarus waded through the rusting bodies, ignoring the skeletal remains on the ground and hanging out the cracked windows of the machines, and followed her heartbeat through the wreckage. Couldn’t help but smile as he tracked it all the way to the wing of a broken jet that was half snapped, digging into the stone.

It’d been a while since anyone had really made him sweat like this—and oh, what a thrill this was.

With a wave of his hand, he tore the wing away, the metal popping off with a scream, and tossed it aside.

The human was not there, and in her place, wrapped in the white leather of an old flight jacket, was a circular device made of greenish metal, ticking softly.

Clever girl.

The gears inside it whirled, and Ikarus was just fast enough to throw out a hand to encompass the thing in a ball of power before the bomb detonated.

But this power was old and hungry. Pure Light from before the Vordellians had started diluting their reserves. Stronger than anything he’d encountered in his adult life, and even with the bands of his power wrapping around it, aftershocks smacked into his chest, pushing him back so forcefully he slammed against a Sentinel crumpled feet away.

Teeth and head ringing, he pushed to his feet just as Serone let out a snarl and something crashed in the distance.

The low hum of engines permeated the following silence, then a rotting fighter jet shot into the air. Then a second one a moment later. A third. Fourth. Each speeding off in a different direction from the one before it.

Hissing, Serone lowered a shoulder to the earth, urging him onto her back so they could fight this together as the team they were. Ikarus charged forward, grasping the reins to pull himself onto the saddle—

Then stopped.

Something wasn’t right.

The human had known this graveyard was here, had either glimpsed it from her window or worked out where she was in relation to her own kingdom above and realized his castle was near where this legion of machines had sunk.

She’d planned everything meticulously—so would she really go to all that effort just to loudly pilot a jet knowing he’d just chase after her?

Diversion. That one word trailed up his spine, making him pause.

He’d underestimated her twice already today. He would not do it a third time.

Ikarus let the reins fall. “Go after the jets. If she’s not there, take them down and come back to me.”

Serone whined, bumping him with the tip of her snout, but did as she was told.

Alone, Ikarus waded back through the crimson fog, magic crackling at his fingertips. “I know you’re still here, Vous Mylista. Don’t you want to come and play with me?”

A ray of Light shot out from somewhere to his right. Ikarus phased, cracking out of existence just before it passed through his calf and reappeared a few feet away, just as another zipped toward him from somewhere else.

He phased again, pushing his power out to pick pieces of broken metal off the floor and throw them toward where the attack originated.