His attention turned to his sentisuit status. His Lucidium Conversion Reserve—LCR—sat at a miserable 2%. He would need some time for his suit to regenerate enough reserve lucidium for combat. It was either that or burn through another lucidium battery.
He decided against using one. Only a precious few remained and they still had one more battle ahead of them—if they weren’t killed first, anyway.
“James? You alright?” Liam said.
“I’ve been better,” James answered over the comms system.
Liam exhaled, grateful to hear his brother’s voice.
Through a wavering curtain of smoke, James approached Liam. He wore the same a.Imperator model sentisuit as Liam with the same Odonata Team 5 markings.Subtle differences in their sentisuits distinguished them from one another.
Where the illuminated veins of lucidium circuitry on Liam’s suit glowed gold to indicate his innate element of metal, James’s suit glowed silver for his elemental alignment with ice.
“My helmet’s messed up. UI’s disabled,” James said. “I can’t tell if that bomb of yours did him in. Is Laurent showing up on your display?”
“Mine’s pretty glitched, too… give me a sec.”
James extended a hand to Liam and helped him up. They carved a path away from the growing plumes of smoke. A holographic UI glitched across the interior of his visor.
Like Jove Darner, the status of Julian Laurent flickered between, “LOCATING…” and “UNABLE TO LOCATE EXALT”—which could very well mean that Laurent was dead. Either that or the tracker in his suit had taken too much damage for Chrysid’s network to track him.
“Unable to locate,” Liam said.
“See if Nym can find anything.”
Liam activated the assistant AI in his system with a voice command. “Nym, do a scan of the area. Find Julian Laurent.”
“Working on it,” the AI’s little voice chirped.
James led the way out of the sanctuary and Liam lingered behind to take one last glance through the smoke. What had once been a beautiful and pristine palace to the exalt bearing the title of Eighth Pillar now lay in scorched ruin.
Little remained of the great dome ceiling above or the ornate décor and statues that had been witness to their battle. The battle between the Sterling brothers and Julian Laurent had left little more than chaos in their wake. The remains of James’s ice melted into a slurry beneath the smoke and flames.
It would be rebuilt, though.
Chrysid would always rebuild the trials and battlegrounds of their champion fighters.
Liam’s gaze drifted downward.
A long crack stretched across the black and white pattern on the marble floor. A typical split caused by the alkali bomb’s blast, Liam thought. However, his attention piqued at the subtle, metallic sheen within the crack. As if liquid chrome bubbled up from somewhere below to fill the seam.
James called out to him from the sanctuary’s edge.
“Liam. Come on, we gotta go.”
Liam followed James through sunset-stained corridors. The motions of each step rippled through his skull. His equilibrium took its sweet time to return.
“You alright?” James asked.
“Head feels weird.”
“You got a lot of air in that blast.”
“Did I?”
James nodded with a laugh. “One second we were fighting Laurent, the next, all I see is a flash, and your ass getting launched across the room. Can’t imagine you had the most graceful landing.”
“Something feels off about this, though,” Liam said. “Like we’ve been here before.”
“Well, all these hallways look the same.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean, then?”
“I… don’t know.”
02 | The Spire
Liam watched his UI for any sign that Julian Laurent had been located. No sign of the fire exalt. Perhaps the blast had launched their opponent through one of the sanctuary’s windows. It would have been one hell of a lucky shot, though… and a hell of a long drop for Laurent.
Outside of the cathedral was a three-hundred-meter fall to the slums on the lowest levels of Novus Lucus. That much sudden distance from them could explain Liam’s UI being unable to locate Laurent.
No sentisuit would survive that fall and Laurent would certainly be dead.
Still… something felt wrong.
A small drone buzzed through the smoke and followed the brothers—a vespid unit. It watched them through a bold, scarlet eye and clicked with the occasional snapped photo.
Vespids followed exalts through their battles and trials, serving a live video feed to Chrysid. From there, Chrysid broadcast fights across the Realm of Libelle to entertain eager, violence-hungry citizens.
They pressed on through the cathedral’s winding upper floors until a grand promenade opened before them. A sea of clouds and stars stretched on past the railing.
A band of lights cascaded across the sky in clearer view than Liam had seen anywhere else in Libelle. Colors danced overhead like an aurora, all neon green, violet, and cyan. A glittering wash rolled through the sky like a river suspended in the highest reaches of the planet’s atmosphere.
A band of lights rippled through the sky in clearer view than Liam had ever seen from anywhere else in Libelle. Colors danced overhead like an aurora, all neon green, violet, and cyan. They washed through the starry sky like a river suspended in the highest reaches of the planet’s atmosphere.
This beauty was the planet’s singular ring—the lucidium halo.
“You coming or not? No time for sightseeing,” James called back to him.
Liam blinked away his wonder and jogged after.
“Yeah. You’re right.”
“Get your system repairs going,” James said.
Beyond the promenade’s ornate railings lay a sky bridge. The long structure linked the Cathedral of the Eighth Pillar to a grand, crystalline tower—the Spire of the Chevalier.
The final destination of all exalts who lived to see it.
At the peak of some fifty floors, they would meet their final opponent in the wretched tournament called Exaltation. All exalts in Libelle were in the same race to the top of that tower.
All to fight the Chevalier—Libelle’s champion exalt. All to become the next Chevalier.
Liam only wanted was for his own trek through Exaltation to be over with. He wanted to go home to Euclid.
At least there, somehow, he could figure out
