“Not forever, Cheyenne. We’re picking up the pieces, and as soon as we get that magical battlefield cleaned up, I’ll make sure Corian gets his ass over here to help me with the rest. And I don’t even know why I feel the need to explain myself to you. Let’s go get the other one.”
“You’re explaining it to me because I’m not just somebody’s yes-drow.” Cheyenne dropped the hunk of O’gúl metal with a clank of loosened parts and followed Maleshi back toward the second.
“No one said you were.”
“Then there shouldn’t be an issue explaining a reason for something. I never said I disagreed with you.”
“Great.” Maleshi bent to lift the side of the second digger.
When Cheyenne stepped up next to her to help lift, the general leaned away quickly, blinking furiously as she stared at the bashed-in, shredded dome on top of the tank. “Did you just flinch away from me?”
Maleshi snorted and tugged on the war machine. “Just pull, halfling.”
The machine left a trail of flattened grass in its wake as they dragged it behind the building to dump it beside the first. It clattered to the grass, and two blue lights flashed within the exposed side before a spear of black metal punched through the opening with a loud hiss.
Cheyenne clamped her blood-slickened hand around the extended pole and ripped it free with another spray of sparks and flashing colored lights. The broken piece of war machine slid through her slippery palm and thumped onto the ground at her feet.
Maleshi stared at it. “Effective. What happened to your hands?”
“Needles, I think. Or something.” The halfling gazed at her palms. “This’ll be fun to patch up. And by the way, you ignored my last question.”
“Hmm.”
“Seriously, why did you get all jumpy when you were next to me?”
“Stand back, kid.” Maleshi cast a quick spell, staring at the remnants of the shredded war machines scattered across the grass. Each piece was encompassed in silver light, lifted two feet off the grass, and raced between the buildings toward where Cheyenne and General Hi’et were standing.
“Whoa.” Cheyenne stepped aside and watched the black metal fragments clunk against the diggers’ hulls when Maleshi’s magic released them.
The nightstalker nodded, dusted off her hands, and cast another illusion spell over the remnants to render all the evidence of the war-machine attack invisible.
“All right.” Turning toward Cheyenne again, Maleshi looked her up and down. “Fair warning, you’re gonna feel like shit when you slow down into regular space-time again.”
“What?”
“Take it from a war general who’s done this a million times.” Maleshi clapped a hand down on Cheyenne’s shoulder. “It doesn’t get better, even with an impressive track record like mine. Go ahead. The longer you stay in, the worse it gets.”
Cheyenne glanced at the nightstalker’s hand on her shoulder, and the woman removed it slowly. “Are you serious?”
“As serious as you’ll be in two seconds, or whatever passes for seconds in hyper-speed. I’m right behind you.”
With a groan, Cheyenne closed her eyes and slipped out of drow speed.
Chapter Seventy-Five
The second she fell back into regular time, Cheyenne couldn’t feel her legs. They buckled beneath her and she tumbled sideways, barely managing to keep her face from hitting the grass. She rolled and hit her shoulder instead.
A heavy wheeze escaped her chest, but she couldn’t form the words she wanted.
Maleshi cleared her throat. She now sat on the lawn beside the halfling and slowly lowered herself onto her back to stare at the blue sky. “What was that?”
“Why?” Cheyenne wheezed again and took a sharp, gasping breath. Her lungs exploded with tingling pain. Am I coughing or choking right now?
The terrified screams and shouts and the pounding of racing feet out of buildings and across the lawn took on more clarity beyond the muted pitch she’d heard at first.
Groaning, Maleshi slowly closed her eyes and swallowed. “The why doesn’t matter, kid. Just the fact that it does.”
The halfling managed to turn herself over onto her back, her hands thumping into the grass beside her. I have to be seeing four of everything right now. “Feels like being hit by a bus.”
The general snorted. “Yeah, a bus that injects morphine into only half of you. Just give it a few more seconds.”
Cheyenne blinked at the bright sky and finally got her breath back under control. The activator blinked in her vision, calm, silent, and ready for her next command. As soon as feeling returned to her arms and she could move them again, she pulled the silver coil from behind her ear and grimaced. “How did I not know about this?”
“There’s a first time for everything.” Maleshi pulled herself up into a sitting position and hunched over her lap. “My first time was during the raids at Holbrukfúrn. Of course, that was two dozen of us against five gremlin warrens, so moving just below the speed of light was pretty much the only way back then to not be overrun.”
“Right. And my first time just happened to be with hybrid war machines that can move as fast as we do.”
“Unfortunate, but yes.” Maleshi pushed herself to her feet, then offered the halfling a hand up. “Once you can breathe again, it’s pretty much downhill from there.”
Cheyenne took the woman’s hand and let the general pull her up. A brief wave of dizziness made her stagger, but she shook her head and it cleared right up. “So, now what?”
“Now we make sure that no one on campus was seriously injured. Or seriously traumatized.”
“By an earthquake and a bunch of flashing lights shooting up out of the ground?” Cheyenne licked her dry lips and shot the nightstalker a sidelong glance. “I’m pretty sure everyone’s traumatized.”
“I meant by magic. We want everybody to feel safe, Cheyenne. Reassured. A little shaken up is fine, but people losing their minds over what they can’t explain doesn’t do
