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All of Homeworld seemed to scream. The entire planet. Every particle. Every quantum field. Everything wept and begged to be put out of its misery.
“Helena,” Auryn’s voice was the only thing I heard, “rip it apart before it dies.”
Thirty-Seven
He didn’t have to be sovisceralabout it.
Akoni hissed and dug metal deeper into the creature.
I took a step towards it, drawn into the space between heartbeats. The echoes didn’t reach back, but the longer I focused, the worse the sense ofdisruptionbecame.
I shot in on the thing. My body shifted into amphiptere form on its own, while I instinctively wrapped my torso around it. Awful echoes with no specific memory pounded against my scales.
It crashed in a wave that never ended, over and over and over. It pulled me down, but I onlystretched, through the firmament itself, into an abyss that—
Nothing?/null
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Nothing?/null
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Auryn’s light barely reached me in the null-here. A tiny spot of light, fading and shifted deep, deep red, at the very edge of my perception and about to slip over the rim.
That was impossible. A Distant Star was always visible.
The stretching pain in my tethers made me scream.
The null-wave splintered with the sound of a glass bell ringing once, then shattering.
My scales exploded and my ribbons tore into the creature. Magic slid into allitscracks and split it open like a fucking crowbar popping rusty hatches.
I released it. Akoni grabbed me by my murky fringe and dragged me out of the way. My scales trembled and made a noise like chaotic cathedral bells.
The creature, thrashing against the light-pikes, gave a final few jerks before it collapsed. Its handful of blue scales fell off the hide into the dirt. The blue lattice membrane of its wings burned away and left holes where it had been.
I crawled up Akoni’s shoulder and draped myself around his neck like a shaky, rattled scarf. Thenullhaunted me like a hole in my existence.
Except a hole had a bottom. At least a holewas.
Auryn banished the light pikes with a flick of one wing. Akoni spit out some sparks, while Keon nibbled gently between my horns. “Helena?”
Chirp.
My scales felt like wind chimes, each one getting hit by a different breeze.
Auryn nibbled behind my left horn very tenderly. I closed my eyes as my single long lung shuddered, which only made everything else hurt. “You aren’t physically injured.”
Chirp.
Thethinghad hit me with something else. Something that made my tendency to break shit look basic. It hadn’t been magic. It’d been... fuck. I had no idea. I flopped and tried to arrange my body, but it wasn’t working.
“Is she magically injured?” Akoni asked worriedly.
“Yes, but it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before,” Auryn said.
