James shook his head and answered, “I already told you… we come a set. Call your support or not.”
Fastening the final clasp, the lights within Serena’s helmet flickered to life. Over the comms in their own helmets, her voice came with a haunting and melodic hum in their ears.
“This is your final warning. Remember that this is for good.”
Liam’s UI lit up with the standard message which signaled the beginning of an officiated match. A challenge request to be accepted, accompanied by a minimal glimpse of the Chevalier’s stats.
Deathmatch clause.
The exalt who deals the killing blow to the last opponent on the battlefield inherits the title of Chevalier.
James accepted the battle clauses and took his first steps into the battleground. He didn’t even return Liam’s wary glance. James clearly wanted nothing more than to fight. As James made his way toward the Chevalier, he conjured a spear of ice.
Liam, meanwhile, felt a chill shoot across his neck.
A voice he could not identify whispered within his helmet.
“Time is passing so much faster than you realize.”
James’s name in the party list didn’t light up with that transmission. It couldn’t have possibly been Serena. Maybe there was a glitch in his comms display.
Had James even heard that?
The tiny map of the battleground in his UI displayed only three marks representing himself, James, and the Chevalier.
However, Liam could not shake the heavy sensation that there was someone else there with them.
15 | Frigid Garden
An avalanche of ice and sleet painted the garden. Snow buried black and white tiles and mixed with the slurry of ice runoff. Three exalts clashed in the dappled shadows of a tranquil garden.
Flashes of electricity followed the swift movements of the lithe Chevalier. She was every bit as difficult to land a hit on as they had heard. Lucienne moved like all electric exalts—fast and graceful, as if dancing to a rhythm heard only to them.
Liam conjured silver pillars throughout the room and each arc of lightning that burst from the Chevalier’s punches and kicks diverted toward them. Liam kept his distance and rebuilt each lightning rod as the Chevalier’s blasts chipped away at their lucidium structure.
Another cascade of sleet and ice rose around them James and Lucienne. The Chevalier’s lightning had little effect against barriers of ice—James had the advantage of both brute strength and elemental resistance. Getting hits in through her agile motions, however, proved Lucienne’s advantage of sheer grace and speed.
The Chevalier dodged James’s heavy fists and kicked off the surface of a pillar to tackle him. Her thighs closed tight around James’s neck and her hands locked beneath his chin. Through the most vulnerable point of an exalt’s helmet, Lucienne sent currents of devastating voltage into his suit.
James’s armor integrity plummeted, and his body seized as if he’d taken a taser to bare skin. When his armor integrity reached zero, nothing would mitigate or dilute the charge. The shock of a taser would become a strike of lightning directly into his body.
“Fuck!” James snarled and thrashed against her to wrestle free.
James’s attempt to re-freeze the runoff was too little too late. Charged water boiled and burst under the voltage. The nearest icy stalagmites burst into glassy shards, one by one. James seized on the flooded floor as the Chevalier made a graceful leap from his shoulders.
Liam attempted to block her path with metal barriers and pillars, all of which she dodged with ease. Her light steps scarcely rippled the puddles beneath her as she bolted toward him. Another pair of silver pillars shot up between them as Liam worked to mitigate an onslaught of bolts.
Sparks and embers rained around them, mingled with splashes of melting frost and shattered ice. The Chevalier sidestepped another pillar with a weightless somersault and followed the motion with a sweeping kick. Electricity tore through Liam’s suit upon contact. Pain surged and burned through his nerves.
Ice crashed across the battlefield and slammed into the side of the Chevalier. In the wake of the ice, James lunged at the Chevalier. A crystalline wall divided the battleground and foiled Liam’s effort to follow his brother into the fray.
Through the glassy, cerulean haze of ice, Liam could only watch their silhouettes kicking and punching through flashes of lightning.
“Damn it!” Liam hissed, attempting to break through the ice.
Another burst of light sent spidering cracks across the ice wall. The cracks deepened and spread when James’s back suddenly crashed into the other side.
“James! I can’t get over there!”
“It’s fine, I-I’m good—” James weakly answered over the comms.
His silhouette slumped and then disappeared again as the Chevalier lunged at him in a storm of flashing light.
As James and the Chevalier clashed, Liam glimpsed a shadow at the edge of the battlefield.
When he turned, however, the figure was gone.
What the hell…?
“Nym, is someone else here?”
When no response came, Liam tried again, “Nym?”
Scrambled audio vaguely resembling the AI’s voice answered. His system didn’t appear glitched in any way—but his own look at the area map showed no signs of a fourth body on the battlefield. Liam could have sworn that he saw someone standing there, observing from the outskirts of the conservatory.
Lightning flashed and across the countless faces of ice around them. James overtook the battleground and appeared to gain a steady upper hand against the Chevalier. He created a small prison of ice around the Chevalier to keep her from dodging his blows—it hardly stopped her, however. She kicked and climbed over each splintering crystal, unfazed by the shifting ice maze.
When the Chevalier burst free of James’s efforts to contain her, she descended upon him. The charged blasts which came with every kick were a deterrent from simply grabbing her ankle and throwing her off balance.
After training with Jove, Liam knew firsthand how deadly physical contact was against an electric exalt in a supercharged state. They would have to rely on striking her down with their elements from a distance if they had any
