The Wanderer leaped into the air, his mana surging as he conjured stone. In the blink of an eye, the rubble sharpened into jagged iron spears that whistled toward Skida.
She barely looked up, a flick of her wrist vanishing the projectiles into nothingness. "Your intent is too loud, maggot. Obvious."
As she spoke, the ground beneath her feet vanished. Kuma had dismantled the stone floor into a bottomless, dark pit. Skida manifested a series of floating iron platforms, hopping across them with grace.
"My turn," she said, landing on solid ground. She opened both palms, and a barrage of hundreds of arrows materialized, launching in a blackened cloud toward the pair.
The Wanderer and Kuma shared a split-second look and nodded. The air shimmered, and the deadly hail of steel was unmade, fluttering down around Skida as rose petals.
Skida paused, an eyebrow arched in confusion. "Petals? Really?"
That second of distraction was the opening they needed. The Wanderer snapped his fingers, flash-heating the air behind him while freezing it behind Skida. The sudden pressure differential created a localized gale that swept the petals toward her in a swirling vortex.
While Kuma’s mana gripped the petals. They hardened, thinning into razors.
Skida had no time to dismantle the assault. The razors shrieked against her plate, chipping the black armor and drawing a thin, crimson line across her cheek. She finally dismantled the wind, but the damage was done.
She touched the wound on her face, staring at the blood on her fingertips before licking it. Her eyes burned with mana. "No holding back, then."
She unbuckled her armor, letting the heavy plates thud into the dirt. As she stood in her tunics, her skin began to darken, as she turned her entire anatomy into living steel.
She vanished. A second later, she reappeared in front of Kuma, planting a steel knee into his abdomen with the force of a battering ram. The Wanderer lunged, conjuring twin blades of white-hot lava and swinging them in a pincer move.
Skida caught the magma blades with her bare metallic hands. She forced the lava to extend, stretching the molten rock into massive, glowing sheets that covered the entire training ground. She snapped them shut like a giant pair of scissors.
The Wanderer tackled Kuma, diving under the closing blades as Kuma desperately dismantled a hole in the molten ceiling just large enough for them to crouch in.
Skida canceled the spell, the lava vanishing into mist. In its place, she manifested a solid iron sphere the size of a house and sent it hurtling toward them. They broke into a sprint, the ground shaking behind them.
The Wanderer pushed his mana into the sphere, but it wouldn't budge. "I can't dismantle it! She is preventing me!"
Kuma tried as they ran, his face straining. "I can't either! She’s locked the structure with her own mana!"
Thinking fast, Kuma slammed his hands into the dirt, conjuring a steep stone ramp. The momentum of the massive ball carried it up the incline, launching it into the air. The Wanderer immediately engulfed the flying sphere in a roar of flames, redirecting it back toward Skida.
She simply reached out a single hand, stopping the burning mountain of metal in mid-air above her head as if it weighed nothing.
The Wanderer followed up. He conjured black storm clouds directly above the training grounds. "Now!"
Lightning arced down, the bolts drawn irresistibly to Skida’s metallic body. Explosion after explosion rocked the grounds as the electricity discharged into her frame. Smoke and dust choked the air.
Silence fell. Kuma wiped dirt from his brow, his chest heaving. "Is it over?"
A sharp crackle of static was the only answer. The smoke cleared to reveal a nightmare. Skida integrated the energy. Her body was a pulsing conduit of lightning and thunder, her silhouette blurred by high-frequency vibrations.
She moved. They couldn't see her limbs, only the flashes of light that preceded the pain. The Wanderer felt his ribs crack before he even realized she had moved. Kuma was sent spinning as a localized thunderclap erupted against his shoulder. Their mana barriers flickered and died.
They both hit the dirt, broken and gasping. Skida reverted to her human form, her skin returning to its weathered, scarred state. She walked toward them, barely winded.
"Good," she said, looking down at them. "You actually pushed me. Enough for now, we have a meeting. Let's go."
The Wanderer coughed, pushing himself up with trembling arms. "You held that trick back."
Skida didn't look back as she gestured for them to follow. "A good mage always keeps a few tricks up her sleeves."
Kuma leaned close to the Wanderer, his voice a whisper. "Do you think she believed it? That we couldn't dismantle the ball?"
The Wanderer watched Skida's back, his eyes narrowing. "She wouldn't have stopped if she didn't."
They walked to the heart of Draemir till the large obsidian tower. When they entered Skida’s office, her elite inner circle was already waiting, men and women whose eyes held the same predatory glint as the General’s.
Skida leaned back in her high-backed chair. "From today, Kuma and the Wanderer are officially part of this unit. Treat them as such."
The soldiers offered nods, their eyes lingering on the bruises and frayed mana lingering on the two newcomers.
"Now, to business," Skida said, her voice dropping into a low. "Tharos was killed."
She paused, her eyes locking onto the Wanderer, searching for a flicker of grief or recognition. The Wanderer gave none.
"The civil war in Lythra has reached its peak," she continued, satisfied by his silence. "We need to strike now, before the chaos settles and a new power consolidates."
"Say the word, General," one of the veterans growled, his hand slamming the table. "Lythra will be leveled by week's end."
"We can't rush this," Skida countered. "Lythra is built between the mountains and the sea. Those natural barriers are the reason the last invasion failed so miserably."
"You weren't in the previous invasion, General," the soldier noted. "This time will be different."
"Exactly," Skida said, a map of the Lythran coast shimmering into existence above the table. "The main army will attack from the front, throwing everything they have at the Great Gate."
"The path is too narrow, General," the Wanderer interrupted. "They’ll be slaughtered in the bottleneck before they even touch the walls."
Skida’s lips curled into a smirk. "That’s the distraction. Let the regulars bleed for the glory of Draemir. While the gate consumes their attention, we will take the sea. Ships are already prepared for a flanking maneuver."
Kuma, who had been staring at the map calculating, finally spoke up. "How about we don’t use ships?"
Skida tapped her fingers on the table. "What do you mean?"
"Ships are visible," Kuma said, his fingers tracing a path through the deep blue of the map. "Even with cloaking magic, the displacement of water is easy to track for the naked eye, let alone Qi users. But if we conjure a vessel to move beneath the waves... we can reach the mountains before they even realize the sea is a threat."
Skida stopped tapping. The silence stretched as she ran the math through her head. "A submersible vessel," she mused. "The pressure would be immense. It would require absolute focus to maintain the structure and the air supply."
"I can handle the structural integrity," Kuma said, his voice gaining a spark of his old confidence. "The Wanderer can handle the propulsion and air. Together, we can move the whole unit."
Skida stood up. "Alright. But we have to test it first. Get to work. I want the design by dawn. It needs to be large enough to carry all of us and reinforced against the deep-sea pressure."
"I'll have it ready," Kuma promised.
"Good," Skida said, dismissing the room with a wave of her hand. "We meet tomorrow at our nearest colony to Lythra. Prepare yourselves. For the empire!" Said slamming her fist to her chest.
The soldiers followed in unison. “ for the empire”