“Get him out!” Mervok shouted to Aria, engaging another who pushed in from the side.
Aria shoved at Petro’s large form, and the underlord staggered forward. The ground heaved beneath their feet, and ozone drifted through the air.
Someone in this room had talent, and her bet was on the man who had looked human, but had to be something much more. He now stood at the tunnel entrance. His eyes had gone pure white, and sweat poured off his skin.
Dammit,what was he? A Shaker? The ground still quaked, but what was that smell?
Some of the mercs had backed off the fighting and were also shooting the man looks. Aria took advantage of their uncertainty to swing her sword, clearing a path to tow Petro forward through them. Whoever that pale-skinned man was, he looked as vulnerable to a blade as the next guy. At the moment, his ground shaking was working as much for, as against, them, keeping the enemy mercs busy scrambling so that they couldn’t effectively use their numbers.
They were almost at the tunnel when the ground buckled sharply upward toward the ceiling, sending Petro toppling to the side. Aria kept her feet beneath her by leaping forward. She landed on the cracked, uneven floor and fought to stay upright.
The door to the tunnel was now behind her. The mercs guarding it had fled, and only the cause of the upheaval remained, standing with spread arms. If she could just get Petro to the exit... Aria scrambled up the pile of crumpled pavement, heading for where the underlord heaved himself to his feet.
This time when the floor shot upward, it sent her flying. As she used the momentum to roll and flip herself onto her feet, she glanced back to see Danao at the top of the heaving pavement, only half upright.
Aria had come to a halt near the male Shaker, or whatever he was. Talented, anyway; it had to be him doing this ground quake thing. The ozone smell wafted off of him. She hesitated to finish him, considering the heaving floor was all that stood between them and twenty mercs.
“Aria!”
She spun, and for just a split second, met Danao’s gaze. He’d regained his feet amid the rubble, but his mouth opened, and the man who she’d never seen afraid of anything had fear written all over him.
“Pulser,” he yelled. “Kill him.”
Pulser? Her gut twisted tight as she spun back to the man. But before she could reach him, he peeled his lips back from uneven teeth.
The floor at his feet, through the tunnel beneath her, and on toward the room beyond, all shot into the air. And then, in a flash of ozone and flame, the room exploded.
Metal shrapnel whistled past her as the force of the blast hurled her down the tunnel and into the wall, hard enough that she had to fight the blackness that threatened to overtake her. She staggered to her feet with blood pouring down her face.
The Pulser stood on the only undisturbed hunk of ground and stared at the devastation with a twisted grin. Beyond him was an impenetrable wall of debris.
No.Aria’s heart shattered into a million tiny shards, and her anguish fed into her rage. She raised her sword and lunged at him—
The pavement beneath her exploded upward, crashing her into the ceiling.
Time lost all meaning. Aria was dimly aware of his footsteps fading as he ran down the tunnel.
Then she blinked. She heard water dripping, and the occasional clank of settling metal.
Danao. Mervok.
She pushed herself up onto her elbows. There was no sign of the Pulser, or anyone else. The ceiling had fallen in around her, and the moonlight drifted down from the shattered walls above.
Drifted, because the tunnel filled with smoke. The place was on fire.
Aria used a partial wall to regain her feet, and picked her way through the smoke and debris, looking for any signs of life.
Looking for her family.
The smoke was thick, with flames rising to the fractured ceiling at the back. She had to squeeze through the crumpled bits of metal and pavement.
A familiar dark head extended from beneath a slab. Danao, buried to his neck. But as she bent over him, she knew the old shifter would fly no more. Her tears rolled down her cheeks and crystallized, hitting the ground at her feet with small tinkling sounds.
Petro, who had been closer to the tunnel, was completely buried. Over where she’d last seen Mervok, a metal beam had fallen in from above, and it held up a huge section of the floor over the crumpled bits.
Something protruded from beneath a slab of pavement. She stared at it for a few seconds, her brain refusing to acknowledge what her eyes were telling her.
It was a forearm, wrapped in a bracer. The metal, with its Trogian knot, reflected the dancing flames.
