After the brief wave of missiles hit, surrounding Helios and me in a torrent of shrapnel and fire, the warship had begun hovering in place with Flameye and the Shadowbane Amulet inside somewhere.

  Sand and rocks rattling around me, I crawled out of the rubble in a daze, but only bruised this time. The physical pain was nothing, but my mind couldn’t even focus on whether I’d been hurt. There was just a cold spark in my vision, drawing me to look in silence up at the warship’s presence.

  Flameye had just crossed a line I hadn’t known existed. He had used me to foil my own mission. He had used me to forsake my own kingdom. He had watched me find his weapon, and he was going to destroy everything. He was going to kill everyone. I slammed my fist into the ground, still quiet, but with a hiss of brimming rage. Helios landed beside me, his eyes reflecting the same pain as mine.

  “Rasil, I’m sorry.”

  “Helios... I practically gave him the Shadowbane Amulet.”

  “Maybe,” Helios replied, “but don’t think about that right now. We’ve gotta hurry.”

  “Helios?”

  “Rasil, we’re still here. We’re still breathing, and it means Flameye’s rusty. He can’t yet properly trigger the Amulet, so until then-”

  “It’s a glorified chimera generator?”

  “Exactly. If we hurry, we can stop Flameye before the Amulet lets out a time wave.”

  Helios then proceeded to signal our allies in the hope that they would help. If I could get inside before the warship made its return to the jungle, before it hit Embershard’s airspace, then the military could stop it over the ocean, and Flameye would be caught in the open. Frankly, I was going to attack alone, if need be. I was going to make Flameye pay or die trying.

  “Rasil, I’ll fly you up," Helios said, grabbing my shoulders with his talons.

  “Good,” I said blankly. I triple checked my pistol holster, then Helios lifted me. Slowly, he flapped his wings and hovered towards the warship, pulses of antigravity energy from his wings betraying how much effort it was in his tired state.

  The warship was quieter at first. Since the weapons weren’t firing, and the racazoids inside were no doubt preparing for an invasion of Embershard, there were quite a few openings to use. Helios mentally debated for a minute on which entrance would be ideal while I drew my knife from its case. A walkway along the starboard side near the hangar was our choice. But the engines suddenly roared as the warship began to move once more.

  Helios tossed me towards a nearby window. I worried momentarily that I would just smack into the side of the massive fortress, but I managed to kick forward and crashed through the window. Rolling along the corridor, I brought myself to a stop by jamming my dagger into the floor. The metal split easily, but then the friction forced the blade to catch downwards. I stood carefully.

  Unfortunately, it was stuck too tightly. I couldn’t pull it out on such short notice, so I sighed and left it behind; this was better than the last time I had boarded the warship.

  The sounds of machinery echoed through the corridor and gave me an eerie sense of deja vu. I slid up to a wall to get out of sight and looked through a small window. Helios had thrown me into the ideal spot despite the sudden movement: a hallway overlooking the main hangar.

  These warships had hangar bays that stretched the entire length of the interior. I was at the back end of the ship, which meant that going through the sprawling hangar would take me to the command center at the front, and Flameye. I couldn’t have asked for a better situation, actually.

  Or so I thought.

  My spirit faded as I saw the hundreds of racazoids between the two ends of the hangar. They swarmed like insects moving as one hive. Troopers were armed with heavy firebolt pistols and more of those personal chimera packs. Bruisers were patrolling every twenty feet, and autocannons threatened any approach from above. I had that familiar whisper in my mind, one I would’ve quieted on better days, ‘I can’t win this.’ It made me hesitate for a moment, but I shook my head and jumped through the window.

  No time to freeze up.

  Fortunately, it appeared the troopers were not expecting me. My left hand quivered as my right hand drew my gun. I landed on one racazoid and killed it with a kick to the neck. I fired at two more troopers and killed them before any of the racazoids realized what was happening. The chimera packs started to activate, and the two dead troopers stood up and returned fire, so I rolled to the side and ducked behind one of the storage crates lining the hangar.

  Big mistake.

  The crate contained a blaze autocannon, which activated and crammed its barrel through the box’s side. My blood ran cold for a second. “Well, that’s a problem," I whispered to myself. An autocannon can’t normally be dodged at less than thirty feet of range. I had painfully little chance. I flinched as I heard the cannon fire, and I was already raising my pistol to partially shield myself from the blow, but when I didn’t feel an impact at all, I opened my eyes.

  “What?” I exclaimed. The cannon was destroyed, and a shield of molten obsidian was guarding me. Heat shimmered above it, a smoke trail demonstrating what had happened. “Jason, what the heck is your timing?” I laughed gently. I was relieved, then curious about how or why Jason was there so soon.

  “I wasn’t gonna leave you hangin’, boss!” Helios announced proudly through my comlink. I looked up and saw black-armored Embershard dropships flooding into the hangar in waves. One of them had a side panel open and was carrying Jason, who looked at me with a reassuring smile before blasting away at the racazoids surrounding me.

  The group of racazoids was burned and launched backwards as Jason threw a fireball into their midst. I finished off the few that remained, destroyed the chimera packs on them, and ran to where Jason’s dropship was landing. Jason stepped out of the side of the vehicle and said, “Sophia’s sending three battalions to aid us.”

  My metaphorical jaw dropped. “Three?” I clarified in amazement.

  He smiled and ignited his magma blade, answering, “We’ll worry about the army of troopers; you worry about Flameye."

  “Got it.” I looked out and saw the hangar, which had quickly transformed into a battlefield. Human soldiers were pushing the racazoid frontline back to clear a path towards the command center. Then I noticed the significant forward tilt of the hangar deck. The antigravity generators in the front must have been weakened, because the hangar was essentially a downhill slope.

  “That’s it... Jason, give me a boost," I said.

  Visibly glancing at the ground ahead, he created a disk-like shield of obsidian in his hands and let me climb onto it. “Is this a good idea?” He asked as he strained to lift me off the ground with the makeshift snowboard.

  “No.”

  Having joined the comms, Gears suddenly interjected, “Rasil, you will get yourself killed doing that!”

  “Maybe," I admitted. I nodded to Jason.

  Gears and Helios both shouted, “No!” as Jason created an explosion in his hands that sent his snowboard—and me—flying towards the front end of the ship.

  I landed with the snowboard on the deck and began to slide down it. It was made of Jason’s obsidian, so it could withstand the friction without breaking. I focused on the fight ahead while keeping my descent at a reasonable speed.

  “Rasil, you could’ve just fallen if you needed to get there fast,” Gears said.

  “And get swarmed in the air?” I asked.

  A racazoid trooper flew toward me from the side, but I leaned away and shot it in the head. As it crashed into the deck and its parts went flying, I snatched its pistol in my left hand to shoot debris landing in front of me. More troopers fired charged shots that I had to spin to either side to dodge, so the racazoids started to surround me.

  “Rasil, you will reach the command center in five minutes!” Helios shouted as he flew above me to give cover fire.

  “That’s not fast enough!” I responded. “I need to reach Flameye and keep him focused on me!” Two more troopers flew toward me and fired beams while a third landed on my snowboard. I ducked and shoved the trooper in front of me as a shield against the beams. It dropped dead before I shot the other two down with Helios’s help.

  “Jump incoming!” Helios signaled. The warship was starting to crack apart from the cannon fire and energy strain, and a large gap opened in front of me. Helios grabbed my snowboard and helped me slide it onto a raised edge, which acted as a ramp and sent me across the drop. I decided to ignore the visible, purple surges of time energy creeping through the bowels of the ship below.

  The ground shook without warning as a bruiser galloped at me from behind. It was mostly sliding, like me, but wasn’t heeding its safety like I was. I stood up and gazed at it, realizing that I wasn’t going to outpace it. I blasted it anyway, turning to face it and leaning backwards to keep moving.

  My bolt hit the eye, only angering the beast. It retaliated by swinging a clawed hand at me, barely missing as I ducked to the side to dodge. I aimed and shot the knee, forcing it to collapse and expose its weak point in the gut. Helios and I both fired into the weak point and disabled the bruiser. “Yes!” I exclaimed just to myself. The bruiser’s body fell lifelessly out of the warship through another gap in the deck, likely splashing down in the ocean.

  It looked like I had a chance until I remembered how long it would take to reach Flameye at this rate.

  “We need to speed up," I commanded Helios.

  “There’s nothing I can do," Helios said.

  “But there is something I can do,” Gears responded as he flew the chopper past me. It still bore the damage from earlier, but it was operational, and Gears had been so quiet this whole time... He must have landed at my earlier entry point and fixed it up. Good for him, but I recoiled as I saw where he was headed: straight toward the warship’s front reactor.

  I remembered now what Gears had said about his prototype engine designs, and the fact proven by the antigravity rotors of that helicopter. When it came to power crystals of a large enough size, one engine malfunction could singlehandedly take out a reactor core, intentionally in some cases. He was going to ram the reactor with that chopper.

  I yelled, “Gears, stop! I’ll take the risk of getting there slower!” My thoughts flashed away from Gears as five more troopers flew toward me and fired their pistols. I spun left and right to dodge, then Helios shot two of them down while I hit two more.

  My bolts bounced, this time, off their tough armor, and they fired another volley. This time, one of the shots grazed my left wrist, scorching skin. I grimaced from the brief heat as I slid the snowboard up an angled piece of debris. I jumped off and shot the three troopers while in midair. This time, my bullets made their marks and I brought the troopers down.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Helios caught me and dropped me onto my snowboard. I immediately thought back to Gears, who Helios told me was approaching the reactor.

  “Gears, just tell me what you’re doing,” I asked, though I knew the answer.

  “Speeding things up," he sighed knowingly. “If I blow the front reactor, the ship will tilt forward, slow its velocity, and increase your relative speed. It’s not just for you, though; it will also knock the whole blasted ship into the ocean.” He sounded unusually determined.

  “I’ll find another way!” I yelled at him.

  “No,” he answered, “I will.”

  The warship shook with the force of the explosion. Metal plating around the hangar splintered, jagged beams shooting off as the inner fuselage was slammed forward and crunched under the pressure. At the same time, the shockwave of the power crystal rupture hit. It was less a force and more a chill of electrical energy. It arced between nearby objects, almost striking me with burning streams of light, but also hitting the racazoids. Flying troopers shrieked as they were zapped and pummeled. Some were sent flying into walls with a crash that broke them apart, while others were melted or overloaded. Several titanic slams echoed through the hangar, the sound of the detonation and the following aftershocks...

  Helios and I were speechless for a couple seconds.

  “Rasil, you know I’m fine, right?” a voice picked up on the comlink.

  “Gears?” I asked.

  “Rasil,” he asked, “did you actually think I would stay in my seat while ramming into a fusion reactor?”

  “You—”

  “I jumped out, you lunatic," he chuckled.

  I was broken from my concentration by the warship tilting forward. As the destruction of the explosion continued to shred the floor and walls, the path was clear, and the ship was coming to a violent stall. As Gears had said, I sped up when the deck became a dramatically angled slope. More shockwaves pierced the walkways in front of me, but revealed an emerging gap. The command center could be seen on the other side, but the ship was still splitting at the seams.

  More pieces of debris were raining down from the ceiling, explosions rocking the warship into an oblong tilt as the momentum and the last engine failed. I had to make it there right away! I ducked down and skated onto another makeshift ramp, aiming straight for the gap. Helios flew ahead and blasted the door to the command center open.

  “Jump," he suggested worriedly, too spent to fly me the whole way again. I slid upwards and into empty space. Time seemed to slow, just in my mind, as I leapt from the battered obsidian snowboard to the open door.

  I barely gripped the edge, but then Helios gave me a push that got me into the corridor. I rolled to a stop and gazed around me, seeing an entrance to the main bridge. The large room had nothing in it except one large door.

  Behind that door, with no other path, was Flameye, and I could even feel the heat rushing through the hinges. I realized then that he was expecting me alone, otherwise there would be guards.

  Panic started to surge through me as I thought about what was going to come next. If he was waiting for me, and he would be even stronger than last time, I didn’t have a chance. I hesitated, silently dropping my arms to my sides and breathing heavily. Helios saw this, and landed gently on my shoulder. “Hey," he whispered, “You made it, so go get the Shadowbane Amulet.”

  My panic turned to frustration. “You know this is a long shot," I muttered.

  “No, I don’t,”

  “Yes, you do. If you knew my family, you’ve seen what Flameye can do.”

  “Uh-huh," he replied matter-of-factly. “But I’ve also seen what you can do.”

  “Why are you so encouraging now?”

  “I always was, I only show it to protect my family." I was a bit stunned by what Helios was implying, but he continued, “You care about me, despite what everyone else thinks, despite what you’ve seen, and despite what I’ve done. That means you’re family, because members of a family support each other, no matter what.”

  “I wish I could live up to the regard you have for me," I whispered regretfully.

  “You can if you walk through that door.”

  “What if I can’t beat him?” Helios clutched my arm, dragged me to my feet, and looked me in the eye.

  “The Rasil I know doesn’t ask questions like that. Never did, and never will!” he declared, “Now get in there, and show him why!” He shoved me forward, and I opened the door.

  ***

  Lord Flameye stood on the other side of the rounded room. He wistfully glanced at the hole in the glass he’d thrown me through previously, which I could tell from the tilt of his head. His back was turned to me, and he said, “You actually came. That was very... unwise.” He puffed briefly and raised his wings. His claws flexed outwards, his stance wide and waiting. I clutched my gun and ran forward.

  “Let’s end this, Flameye!” I yelled.

  “Gladly, Rasil!” He spun to face me and unleashed a storm of fire. I stepped to the side as though pushed by instinct. I felt no heat, nor pain, and only a little fear. Flameye roared like a thunderclap, and I blasted five shots into the scarred side of his face. If I reopened older wounds, overcoming the chimera had to be possible. Jumping over a swipe of his claws, I aimed carefully and fired directly into the gap where his horn once was. Stunned, he stumbled backward and flapped his wings to launch himself into the air. “You underestimate me. Always too quick to charge forward!”

  I ran to the side of the platform as I vented my gun and charged another shot again, but he crashed down from the air with a swing of his left claw. The hand swiped just past my legs, but I cleared it! I rolled beneath him before the next strike and blasted his knee, but the bolt did little damage to the armor. “You’ve gotten faster!” he remarked, stepping back and blowing me away with his wings.

  “It’s been a long day," I responded, getting to my feet. “I guess persistence is your weakness.”

  Flameye rushed at me, galloping on all fours while his chimera pack healed the damage I had done. He then slid upright, lifted both hands, and swung down at me in one swerving motion. His claws scraped at my gun as I dodged. His talons then gleamed purple and radiated heat as he swung again, raising his claw higher than with the last attack. This time, I fired while sidestepping, and I hit his weak point in the ribs.

  Flameye didn’t appreciate that.

  Before I knew it, his opposite hand was coming toward me with a sweeping attack! The swing was a mere blur as he clipped my foot, right in the padding of my boots, and I briefly soared through the air. The floor aggressively slammed against me, leaving me out of breath as the ground and air rumbled equally. Flameye laughed heartily at his success and, charging his fire breath, said, “It’s a shame you fell as easily as your father, after all that talk of avenging him.”

  “I guess I have," I whispered as I fought my aching muscles and my wounded leg. For a brief moment, I remembered my father’s death. But I didn’t have time to reminisce, and I wasn’t planning to. To counter someone like Flameye, you sometimes have to really play that you’ve been beaten.

  I didn’t recover. Visibly, at least, I was still stunned. I coughed in a fake attempt to get air circulating through my lungs. My gun, I pretended, was just out of reach. I looked away for a second to further bait him. With all of the signs that I was unprepared, Flameye couldn’t resist.

  He confidently stood back, then cried with a metallic grinding, “DIE!” He unleashed his flames, but I gripped my gun and fired a blast directly into his open mouth as I rolled away. He clamped his mouth shut and snorted as the shot exploded in his mouth, rupturing the emitter for his flames. After using a quickly-dissipating surge of healing energy and seemingly realizing he was low on chimera, he rushed forward and swung down upon me with the very same downward slash that had killed my father.

  “Big mistake,” I declared, shooting the weak point that I had destroyed in Et-Shal-Kraesa. Like clockwork, the components of the hand splintered and detached. His eyes widened in shock as his arm exploded.

  I, however, was reinvigorated from seeing him weak, and finally leapt to my feet. Flameye still knew better than to leave himself exposed, so he took to the air and lifted his remaining hand as a shield against my bolts.

  I then noticed the tilt of the platform again and noted a loose console sliding toward the front windshield of the bridge. I could use it to vault upwards! The heavy object slid closer, and I jumped for it, hitting the edge with my boots and kicking into the air above. Flameye tried to fly backwards, but I grappled onto his hip and swung onto his back.

  “Get off me!” he bellowed. He swung his claw behind him, but I evaded and climbed onto his head. I felt the rumble of his core and the scream of his gears as I aimed and shot relentlessly at the chimera pack. “Stop it!” he cried, as it broke apart. The now useless piece of machinery fell to the ground, bursting into purple flames. I gripped Flameye harder, kicked his scrambling claw away, and pulled back the plates guarding the neck. “No!” came another primal scream from Flameye.

  I could see the spine! I stuck my gun into the gap and gazed one more time into the eyes of my enemy. He was terrified. The glow had disappeared from his normally blazing irises, and his good arm was hanging limply. For a brief instant, he made no attempt to throw me off, like he had accepted the truth of his situation, but I couldn’t stop. Not now. Not ever. “It’s over, Lord Flameye," I whispered as I ended his life with one final blast.

  Flameye’s body collapsed onto the rumbling platform with me atop it. As soon as the light from his core burned out, I was suddenly reminded of my next priority. Fortunately, I could already see the Shadowbane Amulet glowing inside a compartment of his chest. It slowly rolled out and landed on the platform as the explosions from the warship’s spent wings became more insistent. I reached for the Amulet, ready to take it and leave.

  Everything slowed...

  Gears’s words, I learned then, were true. I forgot the sting of my wounds, the grinding of metal, the heat in the air, and the war I was fighting. What did they matter, anyway? It was all for this power. So sought after, and yet always so distant. The power to fix one’s mistakes. The power to be without regret, and in doing so, the power to accomplish anything.

  It wasn’t so distant anymore. If I used this, I could fix everything the racazoids had ever done, not just the death of my father. My outstretched fingers brushed against the button on the Shadowbane Amulet’s surface, yet I felt apprehension, and drew my hand back as if it were injured. The Amulet glowed brighter with the power I craved, beating like a heart. Was it alive? Did it, want this? I reached for it another time, thinking of my father. My fingers touched its rim ever so slightly.

  The ringing of my finger along the metal, almost imperceptible, sounded like the raising of Flameye’s axe, the final moment before my father had died. The memory snapped my mind back into its proper place. Any doubt of what I needed to do disappeared. “It’s too much of a risk. Nobody should have this power," I whispered with a slight grimace, “Not even me.” I drew my gun and aimed at the center of the Shadowbane Amulet.

  I fired, hitting dead center and watching as it split into five broken pieces like shards of glass.

  “Goodbye Father," I breathed.

  ***

  Once I came to my senses again, I grew worried. “I’ll be fine," I reassured myself sarcastically. “It’s not like I’m in a wrecked warship about to crash down into the ocean.” The hopelessness of the situation didn’t last long; I heard the door I entered through swing open.

  “Come on, you idiot!” Helios said as he flew into the room. He grabbed my shoulder before I could protest and flew out one of the windows. I looked behind me and saw the warship hit the water. Waves careened upwards and swirled through the air as the impact displaced the ocean’s already tumultuous surface. I then realized Helios’s timing was perfect. He noticed my gaze and asked, “Were you dreaming in there?”

  “Not really,” I answered.

  “You almost died.”

  “As always. Thanks for the save.”

  “No problem," he answered. “Now come on,” He said as he gently dropped me in the water, “Gears is waiting.”

  ***

  Back in Embershard keep, I walked downstairs toward the Basement, pretending to brandish my gun in case Gears was “upset”. Jason spotted this as I walked by and gave a small chuckle. Gears’s lab was mostly empty, dimly lit, and spotlessly clean. He was sitting at his desk drawing some blueprints—for the chopper, of course.

  He had indeed jumped out of the chopper seconds before ramming it into the reactor, thank goodness, and now it seemed his next immediate mission was to rebuild it from scratch and dub it the Spearhead. I still question the sanity of building an absolutely exact replica, but I’m probably not one to judge.

  Helios was perched on one of the chairs, captivated by spinning it around in circles. And yet, he seemed upset. I sat next to him and asked, “Where's your typical smile?”

  “On the inside.”

  “If you were good as new, you’d be stealing something by now.”

  He laughed, then sighed in dismay, “For a minute there, I felt like things were different.” I understood then why he was upset. He continued, “Back there, we were friends. It was brief, but we were friends. Now we’re enemies again.” He gazed at the ground sadly.

  “Actually,” I grinned, “that’s not true.” I handed him a small document.

  “Ooh, yay," he replied with an eyeroll, until he read the paper. “No way," he gasped. “How did you-”

  “Don’t question my methods," I ordered, waving a hand carelessly

  “Yes, sir," he remarked as he flew out of the lab.

  Gears looked to me and asked, “You didn’t pardon him, did you?” I gazed at him with a barely contained smile. Sometimes, I could really appreciate the advantages of being royalty.

  “Yes. I pardoned him.”

  “Really, Rasil?”

  “He gets one freebie because he’s technically a Terran Knight.”

  “Your mistake," he shrugged, going back to his work. I rolled my eyes, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  I sat down to think for a moment. What if I had grabbed the Amulet? What if I had used its power to bring my father back?

  My life would certainly be different, probably better. But none of that matters even now. My father died. That’s it. Sometimes fixing something would be disastrous, and sometimes it needs to be accepted.

  But the future? That’s something anyone can change for the better. I looked down as I pulled a small object out of my pocket. In my hands was one of the pieces of the Shadowbane Amulet.

  “I will learn to use your power,” I whispered to it, “and I’ll use it to protect the family I still have, not the family I’ve already lost.” I gently closed my hand, tense in a way my face didn’t reflect, and certain things were just getting started.