Cheyenne sailed backward over the startled, confused crowd of Peridosh’s magical shoppers. Some of them were so focused on getting off their own attack spells that they didn’t notice the drow flying over their heads. Gritting her teeth, Cheyenne reached out with both hands and sent whipping black tendrils toward the beams of a storefront as she passed it. The tendrils curled around the high beams and held fast, jerking the halfling out of her trajectory and swinging her into the store’s front window.
Glass shattered as she barreled through the side of the shop, skidded across tables covered in stacks of dusty old books, and finally stopped in a heap against a bookshelf on the far wall. A shower of books fell on her one by one until she shook her head and gathered her wits enough to stand.
The shopkeeper, an old troll woman with purple skin so dark it was almost the slate-purple of a drow, stood from behind her desk. The pipe she’d been smoking was forgotten in her loose hand, thin lines of gray smoke curling up in front of her face.
“Sorry.” Cheyenne stepped carefully over the scattered books on the floor. “I’m just gonna go take care of that thing.”
The machine outside in the main avenue skittered across the stone floor amidst the shouts of the underground magicals as they tried to fight it off.
The bookshelf beside Cheyenne groaned and started to tip forward. She braced her hand against it and shoved it back against the wall. But she misjudged the force of her drow strength, and the frame of the wooden bookshelf splintered against the stone wall. The shelves buckled, books toppled to the ground, and the halfling stepped quickly away before she could do any more damage. “Sorry. I’m just trying to help.”
A skaxen and two goblins flew past the shattered window of the bookstore, screaming as they hurtled across the marketplace and crashed into someone else’s shop.
Cheyenne pointed outside and glanced briefly at the old troll woman.
She hurried across the book-littered floor, trying not to slip on any of the volumes and break her neck in the process. The shopkeeper didn’t say a word.
Once she made it into the wide avenue again, Cheyenne pushed her way through the crowd, darting around fleeing magicals as they rushed in a flowing tide toward the other end of Peridosh. The machine creature clicked and whirred, skittering across the stone and tossing aside everything in its path. It moved so quickly now that sparks flew from those hooked metallic legs scrabbling on the floor. Then it lurched forward with a shrieking scrape as it slid across the stone. Purple and orange sparks flew against its back, and the machine creature turned to aim its flashing black and silver lights at Tate, Yurik, and a screaming Bhandi.
All three FRoE agents pelted the thing with their magical attacks, and it didn’t make a difference. The machine spat a volley of green fire at each of them, then leaped onto the wall and crawled upside-down along the tunnel like a spider—toward Cheyenne.
Magic isn’t gonna bring that thing down, at least not that way.
The halfling watched the machine skitter toward her overhead and reached out with her earth manipulation. Her fingers hooked around that pressure in the air, and she pulled at the wall of the tunnel. Huge chunks of stone burst from the ceiling, but the mechanical creature kept coming.
Change of tactics, then.
Cheyenne glanced at the open stone floor in front of her and gauged the machine’s speed. She waited until the last second, when it hung upside down right in front of her, ready to launch itself at her, then hooked her powers around the tension she felt in the earth beneath her instead and pulled it apart. The stone floor of Peridosh buckled and spread open in front of her as the insectoid machine dropped toward her.
Slipping into drow speed, Cheyenne stepped back and sent black tendrils whipping from both hands. They coiled around the mechanical creature, which struggled against the bonds of her magic in real-time but didn’t have the means to save itself from its slow-motion fall.
With a shout of intense effort, she tugged the creature to the ground with all the force she could muster, falling on one knee to carry through with the momentum. The second the machine hit the stone and the foot-wide crack running through it, Cheyenne slipped out of her enhanced speed, released her tendrils, and pushed down with her magic.
The machine’s hooked legs scratched at the floor as it tried to right itself, but it couldn’t get to its feet again before the half-drow’s magic curled around the crack in the earth and split it wider. With another grating screech, the metal beast braced its legs on either side of the chasm opening around it, sparing two of those metal claws to try to pull itself back to the surface.
A ball of green flame spewed from its beak and nearly caught the halfling square in the face. Cheyenne ducked and snarled, trying to squeeze the earth back into place around her inorganic attacker.
“Just fucking go down!” She brought her arm up in a wide, curving arc like she meant to strike the thing with a hammer. With her magic still tightly gripping the earth’s energy, one side of the chasm lurched against the other when her fist hit the stone floor. Rocks and metal parts and tiny gears burst from the crack before both edges folded in on each other, crashing down and down, burying the metal beast in a puff of dust and a stream of thick black smoke.
The whirring gears and clicks slowed and fell silent within seconds.
Cheyenne paused,
