Each of James’s attempts to impale her with jagged ice spikes missed. The Chevalier dodged three more kicks and blows before she landed a flashing cartwheel kick to his head. A bolt sparked upon impact and left James seizing the ground.
His SAI sat at a critical 17% by the time Liam broke through to their side of the battleground. He summoned several metal spears and launched them at the Chevalier.
The Chevalier turned to the oncoming spears and with one outstretched hand, a white-hot flash bolted between the spears and the lightning rods.
Liam watched in disbelief the spears slowed in mid-air and lit up with the heat of her charge. For a moment, he thought he glimpsed the same surprise in the Chevalier’s eyes. Confusion, perhaps, followed by visible effort to keep pumping electricity into the growing magnetic space between them.
An electromagnetic field…
The next thing he knew, the Chevalier reversed her pull and the spears thrust back in his direction. The first spear hit him sideways and slammed his body against the charged pillar behind him. Painful bolts ripped through his suit and pain burned at his nerves. His SAI percentage tanked as the Chevalier trapped him between the electrified lightning rod and the stray metal spear.
Lucienne roared as she unleashed another storm through the battlefield.
His defenses fell below 10% and then 5% as the pain doubled with every tick closer to zero. Liam knew only agony as the final spear pierced him through his solar plexus and pinned him to the pillar. The vibration of her surge followed, carried through the spear. His suit had only a split-second of warning chimes and glitched screens before it went dark and silent.
Liam faded in and out of vibrating, buzzing consciousness as pain lulled him back into the world of the living. His numb muscles ached with a kind of fatigue he’d never known. It felt as if every atom in his body had been shredded and melted back together again. A coppery scent stung his nostrils. Smoke, charred meat, burning hair, and the acrid stench of overheated metal.
Each labored breath came with a new wave of agony. Had he the strength to cough, he may have choked on the blood trickling from his nostrils and past his lips.
Soft footsteps crossing a flooded floor were all he could hear over his own bloody wheezing.
A burst of lucidium illuminated the frigid garden. Exhaust from the converter on the Chevalier’s back signaled his fate. She was going to finish him with an aetherbreak.
Radiant wings broke free of the Chevalier’s silhouette as she raised her hands above her head to form a sphere of light.
Liam watched in the dizzy stupor of blood loss. The Chevalier’s aetherbreak was as beautiful as it was blinding.
Then, the flickering dimmed and slowed. Liam squinted, mesmerized by the blooms of light and hazy perceived by his broken eyes. The darkness between each flash grew longer and longer until only a slow pulse faded in and out with every rolling shadow in the garden.
Liam blinked in exhausted confusion. Perhaps this was a hallucination, perhaps he was already dead.
A weak cough flooded Liam’s body with pain. Scarlet beads of blood floated just past his lips.
Time had slowed nearly to a halt.
Darkness engulfed the room once more and as light rolled back across every prismatic, icy surface, a fourth figure stood beside the Chevalier.
A tall man in a silver suit approached Liam, unnoticed by the Chevalier. As he drew closer, Liam realized that the man did not wear a silver sentisuit—the man himself was made of silver.
The silver man stopped before Liam in silence. Liam couldn’t have known the look on the man’s face even without waves of darkness pulsing over them.
He gripped the spear and Liam screamed, voice drowned in his own blood. Pain surged through him as the silver man pulled the weapon from Liam’s torso. Blood poured as Liam crumbled into a curled heap on the ground. He clutched the wound, desperate to keep from unraveling.
The silver man tossed the spear aside and knelt before Liam.
“Don’t forget this time, Liam.” The quiet voice reverberated in his skull with soothing kind of familiarity. “This is where it begins.”
Another tide of light rolled over them and the silver man was gone. Light burst around him as the Chevalier’s aetherbreak landed upon the pillar. Little more than sparks and a fractured stalagmite remained where Liam had once been pinned.
As the Chevalier realized the Liam, albeit bleeding out on the ground beside the pillar, had lived, she lowered her arms. He sensed as much confusion in the electric exalt as he felt in himself—what the hell had just intervened?
A frigid avalanche crashed over the Chevalier, followed by James and a barrage of ice.
Liam squeezed his eyes shut and attempted to move. He screamed as pain ripped through his body, emanating from where the spear impaled him.
At the heart of the battleground, James and the Chevalier fought. He froze her arms to the ground and smashed a thick, ice javelin into her visor with bloodlust in his roars. The Chevalier kicked back and screamed with a chaotic surge. The ice around one arm exploded and it was all she needed to hook one hand behind James’s knee and pull him into another paralyzing surge.
James crumpled beside the Chevalier, body jerking and writhing in agony as smoke billowed off the surface of his suit.
I know her electricity is stronger than my metal… especially if I’m in this shape. I’m not trying to kill anymore. I’m just trying to buy him time. This is my contingency plan.
“James…!” Blood sputtered over Liam’s lips.
The Chevalier had freed herself and made her way toward James as sparks rolled across her fingertips.
Liam opened the battery compartment in his collar piece and replaced the empty one in his suit’s core. His suit lit up once more with full LCR. His broken armor mostly sealed as threads of lucidium wove across the gap. The damage was too severe for a mere battery
