Chapter 49 - The Dragonslayer [Part 2]

  Unit Zero: Ballista became a part of her, and she became a part of it.

  “Synchronization complete,” the AI’s voice concluded with a monotone finality. “Administrator, please proceed to the launch cradle. Plotting intercept course now.”

  Seraphina lifted the war-suit’s massive left leg and felt her perception of reality stutter. The command left her mind clean and sharp, but it was only a breath later that the limb obeyed, armor servos whining a muted harmony. The fractional delay tugged at her sense of balance, as if her thoughts were sprinting while her body trudged behind. She drew another rasping breath, the reactor flared, and willed calm into a pulse that hammered in counter-rhythm to the Nex Frame’s bright thrum.

  She took a second step. The deck plates of the hangar shuddered beneath the Ballista’s weight, tremors reverberating up through HEA alloy greaves into her spine. Blue latticework still flickered at the edge of vision, a ghostly afterimage mapping neural pathways as they fused with Frame’s circuits. The lag eased, only slightly, but enough for her to feel the suit learning her cadence, sculpting those fractions of hesitation into something dangerously close to instinct.

  “Adaptive latency now eight-four milliseconds,” the Nex’s sub-AI reported. “Compensatory algorithms converging. Recommend progressive motion to accelerate blend.”

  Seraphina rolled her shoulders; harvested Xenodraconic muscles beneath thick armor plate imitating the motion with a faint hiss. Even that small gesture carried a sense of colossal inertia, like steering a thunderhead. She forced herself forward. Each stride shortened the disorienting drag, mind and metal negotiating a shared tempo. She could almost feel her mind straining, but by the time she reached the launch cradle’s illuminated threshold, crimson-gold armor felt less like a prison and more like an echo—heavy, yes, but reflecting her every thought with growing precision. Man, or rather woman, and machine were becoming one.

  The strain eased a fraction. Seraphina had been correct; with greater difficulty came a greater reward.

  “Link stability at ninety-two percent,” the AI intoned. “Intercept trajectory calculated. Elevating cradle in three… two…”

  Seraphina set her jaw. The suit’s reactor thrummed in perfect counterpoint to her heartbeat—two drums forging a single rhythm of war. As the massive bay doors groaned open, ancient rocks dislodged from the ceiling, tumbling down in slow defiance of time. Beyond them, the bright blue sky of late autumn was split by warning klaxons and the strobe of crimson lights.

  She flexed her fingers. In response, Ballista’s colossal hands tightened around the hilt of its greatsword, metal echoing her will and her purpose.

  On a whim, she struck forward—the motion smooth and identical to how it had been in the game. The great blade carved through the air with effortless grace, spinning in a practiced flourish before settling back into its resting position. It was as natural as breathing. Seraphina exhaled slowly, and the Ballista vented built-up heat.

  She was ready to slay a Dragon.

  Triumphant grin on her face, the young girl locked the Dragonslayer’s feet to the mag-rails of the launch cradle. She steadied her pulse, felt the tremor of the reactor rise through bone and metal alike.

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  “Intercept trajectory calculated. Overlaying now. Good hunting, Administrator.”

  “Unit Zero: Ballista, Administrator Seraphina de Sariens, Launch!” she shouted. She simply could not help herself.

  The launch rails roared to life beneath Ballista’s frame. Seraphina keyed the vernier thrusters; they answered with a blinding flare, harmonizing with the cradle’s rising surge of power. A heartbeat later, she was hurled skyward with the fury of a ravenous god, G-forces crashing against her. As the GAI had predicted, an unaugmented body would have shattered under that onslaught—yet Seraphina’s flesh bore the touch of the Old Ones, tempering it into something more than just mere human.

  Then the violent tremor fell away, traded for the vast hush of the open sky. Ballista’s wings angled, thrusters whispering as they trimmed her ascent. Below, the fortress shrank to a scatter of slate and stone; above, only an endless sapphire vault awaited. Weight bled from her bones, replaced by a wild, impossible lightness. The wind sang over armored plates, and for the first time since sealing herself inside this iron giant, Seraphina felt unfettered and free.

  The Dragonslayer—she, Seraphina de Sariens, heir to the Sariens Duchy—was aloft, and the rush of freedom tasted impossibly sweet as her wings spread wide. Yet flight proved far more demanding than any simple stride or sword stroke. Vectors, thrust curves, and wind shear flooded her senses, each needing instant calculation. However, she had honed her mind partly for just such a trial, and now it raced along the ragged edge of overload. Just a half-step from madness. Then Crystal’s cool luminance flooded her thoughts, sharpening every equation, every instinct, giving her focus. Balance returned. The sky became a chessboard of possibilities, and Seraphina moved across it with lethal grace.

  Seraphina snapped into an evasive roll, angling her main thrusters. Secondary nozzles along Ballista’s frame flared in harmony, and the maneuver unfolded with flawless grace.

  “Warning: such maneuvers will reduce operational time,” the sub-AI intoned.

  Of course, she remembered. It was one of Ballista’s major flaws. Its immense power, speed, and strength came at a steep cost—it consumed Ethereum fuel at a frightening pace. In short, it wasn’t a very efficient unit.

  Enough games.

  Seraphina aligned Ballista with the GAI’s projected intercept course. From the hills of Meridian, fire lanced through the sky—ancient, long-buried air defenses roaring back to life as they targeted the Mother Dragon come to reclaim its stolen egg.

  The young noblewoman muttered a curse. If she ever got her hands on that damned egg, she swore she would fry it into an omelette for all the trouble it had caused. All her carefully laid plans, her meticulous preparation, all threatened by a flying lizard’s maternal instincts. Couldn’t the silly creature just lay another? That’s what chickens did, after all.

  “Eat everything!” chirped Cornelia, her small mental voice alight with excitement.

  “Yes, my pet,” Seraphina replied softly, a smile tugging at her lips. “We will most certainly eat everything. I do intend to feed you Dragonsteak before the day is through.”

  She narrowed Ballista’s wings of living metal, drawing the unit closer to the raging storm ahead, where the air defenses lanced skyward in defiance of the approaching Skylord. But then the feed from the Sensorium’s external cameras began to scroll across her vision. The young noblewoman felt a very unsettling spike of fear, a spike of fear which she forcefully pushed down.

  What she saw was impossible—she thought, half disbelieving her eyes.

  No, it simply could not be.

  The flying creature was not merely large, but wrong—as if reality on the display strained to contain it. The game, it seemed, had not just raised the difficulty; it had utterly broken it. This would be the kind of fight that mocked strategy or cunning ploys. It was the sort of challenge that required an almost masochistic level of determination to overcome over many tries.

  But Seraphina had but one life, but one chance.

  To defeat that, she would need more than just a flawless play to overcome such a cruel challenge—she would need a miracle.

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