Page 67 of Cage of Starlight
Something rolls over the hill—or rises from it—silhouetted black in the fog. No, three of them.
Legion. Every horror story Tory has heard batters around in his skull.
The one nearest him unrolls from its sphere shape andgrows,piercing the ground with vines like spindly, spidery legs, and bursts upward, rising into the sky. At its center, the vines gather into a thorax-like platform. A Seed crouches on the platform, hand clasped around a stellite crystal glowing yellow-white while two other Seeds, beside him, attack the fleeing Westrian soldiers with flames from above.
The other two Legion units take the form of spheres—writhing and ever-shifting. They share the shape of the mechanized things on the training field, but they’re so much worse. They roll over the ground at impossible speeds, vines disentangling from the sphere to spear anyone who gets too close. At this rate, they’ll drive the fleeing Seeds over the cliffs.
A wave of energy nearly crushes Tory. He crashes to his knees in blood-soaked mud.
Enough of this.
Tory forces himself to his feet and runs for the spidery Legion unit. He grabs one of the braided vines at the base and throws all his energy and anger and desperation into it.
Like they did in the lab, the vines break from their curated shape. They unwind, tear apart, wrench away. The Arlunian Seeds tumble from the crumbling platform and land on the ground with awful cracks. The vines drive into the earth on either side of Tory like a doorway of bone. His vision fades, ears ringing.
Another noise fades in, discordant, distant but getting closer. “Arknett,damnit!”
Sena.
Yesterday’s guilt is nothing in the face of his relief. Sena has a terminal case of competence. Tory could do with a dose of that right now.
“Hey, I—”
Sena’s annoyed face morphs into terror. “In front of you!”
He throws the energy from an incoming projectile, body aching with the effort.
He has a fraction of a second to realize his mistake as a shell touches down, clattering once, twice on the springy grass.
It’s not a cannon ball or a balloon. It won’t just lie there.
The pressure from the explosion hits him before he registers the sound. A gasp sears his lungs with white-hot air.
He needs to take the energy and redirect it, preferably toward one of the Legion units, but it’s useless; he’s only practiced with balloons. He grasps for the swelling explosion, but it expands beyond his control. It’s too large, too strong, bleeding a reckless, wild energy. The force of it drives him back and up.
They’ve modified the shell, too.
Of course they have.
Sena’s panicked voice rises above the roaring in his ears. “Tory, stop! Behind you!”
If he can just get his hands on this, if he can contain and throw it—
Arms lash across his back, wrapping around his shoulders, and the energy is out of his hands, thrown only a fraction as far as he wanted. The force of the explosion catapults him—them?—backward.
He expects to hit the ground and get pummeled by the blast, but he keeps moving—up and over and down, down, down. The fall lasts a few seconds, long enough for him to see jagged rocks and hear the lash of salty waves.
A flash of recognition, a lurch of fear. He doesn’t even have time to breathe.
The rest comes in fragments.
A crash as they hit the water, softer than he thought it would be.
Cold, sharp enough to shock the breath from him.
Fire in his nose and mouth when he reflexively inhales.
Then, blessedly, nothing at all.
