Sen hooked arms with Dorian and me. She took a step forward. All three of us jumped into that swirling light.
We were going back to finish the fight. I just hoped we weren’t too late.
5
Lyra
“Hold on,” Sen whispered as we tumbled through a rainbow of colors. Amber light filled my vision in a flash and faded fast. I opened my eyes to the plains outside the training camp. Dorian stumbled beside me as we found our footing on the Immortal Plane terrain. No more reflective silvery ground to walk upon for ages with no distinctive horizon.
The world around us overwhelmed my senses as the smell of acidic decay greeted me so strongly that I nearly choked. The sounds of gem blasts sang through the air, promising war. Sen let out a surprised hiss at the intensity of the sensations. My body trembled with all the human pleasure and dread of finally being reconnected to all my senses, but in a time of war. Hell of a reunion for my sensory perception and the lower planes.
We had landed on the inside of the camp toward the back. I snapped on my bracer from my gear bag, which Ruk grabbed before he dissolved his estate from the old tower room, feeling the comfort of having Lanzon’s stone on me again. I craned my head back as lights streaked overhead. The energy blasts were fatter and stronger than usual, coming from the fleet of hunters. When I looked to the side, Sen still appeared in her human form, but she’d exchanged her robes for a copy of my Bureau clothing. The only difference was that her fatigues were smoother and a shade of dark silvery blue. Her presence looked especially ethereal outside the Higher Plane. I wasn’t sure how we would explain her to our friends, but we’d cross that bridge when we came to it.
“I much prefer your landings to Ruk’s,” Dorian said as he shook himself. Yes, last time Ruk brought us from the Immortal to the Mortal Plane, we ended up nearly drowning in sand. “Lyra, look!”
I glanced up to follow his pointed finger to the sky. A gasp left me. We hadn’t seen it from our vantage point through the window, but the tear was… monstrous. It covered the entire horizon, from our perspective. Thundering clouds of crackling energy swarmed around the enormous opening. Even Sen sucked in a sharp breath. But for now, we had bigger problems.
“Let’s go,” I urged. We ran toward the chaos of battle. There were invisible enemies lying in wait for us, but we needed to duck in to make sure things were okay before we dealt with them. I touched the necklace around my neck. Dorian and I needed to be careful to save them for emergencies, but this felt like one. At least we weren’t dealing with the curse. Thanks to the last-second fix, Dorian was right beside me, and I felt nothing but a rush of relief that we were in this together.
Sen wrinkled her nose delicately. “It smells like—”
An errant energy blast streaked across the sky. A small jaspeth came flying toward us. Dorian and I leapt out of the way. Sen side-stepped neatly and watched the jaspeth crash to the ground. The wildling pilot leapt to safety and rolled across the dirt with a pained grunt.
Sen blinked. “Oh my.”
I took a mental picture of her face before turning back to the battle. The main skirmish was up ahead. Some skimmers had apparently dropped to the ground, but several redbills flew overhead and clashed with skimmers still in the air. More shots fired from the camp’s barrier wall. It was impossible to tell who among our allies was piloting what. I couldn’t even see Reshi’s large jaspeth. Had they grounded it, or run afoul of a powerful skimmer team?
I ran as fast as I could with Dorian at my side. A ghastly cry cut through the air. I skidded to a stop as a shrieking decay cut off our path, dropping down from the sky. Its jaw unhinged to release a slew of gunk, which slammed into a nearby building. Shouts rose from inside as makers poured out of the building. The acid destroyed part of the walls, leaving a scar in its wake. A maker, male and stout with powerful muscles, turned with two allies to fire a weapon that resembled a crossbow.
It was a crossbow with a thick rope attached to it. The cord ended in a grappling hook. It tried to embed itself in the shrieking decay, but the monster was too fast.
Madness swarmed the camp. Some of our allies, who I recognized from their prominent vests and general lack of hunter-level height, toted around similar crossbows. A Reshi design? I watched a vampire in the distance hook a rope onto the skimmer. The pilot slammed his steering back, and the poor vampire flew into the sky before thinking to disengage. He plummeted to the ground, landing with a groan.
“Bav, disengage! Team Tahn, protect the resources in our stockpile. We need everyone at the entrance,” shouted a familiar voice. My face lifted, searching for the source of that well-known bark of confidence. “Team Grayson, go for the skimmer’s wings. Don’t let the skimmers pull you around like a game.”
Bravi.
If there was one person I was happy to see in charge at the camp, it was her. She effortlessly delivered orders like she’d been doing it all her life. Her precision was impeccable. She was alive and fighting with all her might. My heart felt light with a rush of affection despite the chaotic battle going on. She was really in front of us, finally.
Her short black hair was cut down to an inch. She snarled as another beast descended from the sky, but she was quicker with her crossbow than the others we’d seen. The animal was unlike anything I’d witnessed in the Immortal Plane; it had an almost humanoid form in its legs and trunk, but its beefy black torso ended in a set of leathery bat wings. Three terrible green eyes sat above a wide muzzle. The creature opened its mouth to shriek, revealing a row of sharp, spindly teeth that dripped with saliva.
Bravi glared up at the beast and aimed her crossbow weapon with expert precision. Her grappling hook connected. The cord lit up with sizzles of amber energy as it made contact with the monster’s skin. The bat-like beast wailed in pain, pumping its wings in an attempt to escape. Bravi gritted her fangs together and pulled back hard on her crossbow.
“Get down here,” she shouted, her words interspersed with grunts of effort.
“This one is fascinating,” Sen muttered behind me. Bravi, or the ugly bat? The arbiter mind was a mystery.
I took a step forward, preparing to help Bravi, when a gem blast cut me short. It came from a hunter strapped to the back of the animal. His saddle had blended in expertly. If the other hunters had invisibility, perhaps some of them were cloaked on the monsters and using them as mounts.
Bravi snarled with frustration, but the bat monster put up the perfect amount of resistance. She was fully engaged and unable to fight back. The creature tried to dislodge the cord with his wings as the hunter continued firing. Since he couldn’t get a line on her, he was attempting to sever the cord at an angle, but it made a small target, and the frantic motions of the beast complicated his aim.
Dorian glanced up at the beast and then back to me. He jerked his head in its direction and mimed climbing. Climb up a flying monster I’ve never seen before to punch a shooting hunter off his mount? Only for Bravi.
“Bravi,” Dorian called. She didn’t hear him at first. We both shouted her name as we ran up. She pulled her precious attention away from the monster for a moment and stared at us. Her face froze.
“Let us crawl up the rope,” I told her. Sen trailed behind us, elegantly dodging any blasts that came her way. She watched our exchange with interest.