Lilian took Silver’s place in the captain’s chair while Angel paced in the tiny amount of space in the back of the chopper, muttering under his breath. The minutes flew by like seconds, and even that was still too slow. Molten Ridges was now close enough that Angel could just barely make out its walls in the smoke.

“It’s time,” Lilian said. “We’re getting close. They’ll notice me soon.”

“Then we should make ourselves scarce,” Silver said. “Bring the chopper near the ground. We’ll hop out while it’s still moving.”

“Good luck,” Angel said. “Don’t get killed, Lilian. I’ve spent too much time fixing you.”

She snorted and pulled a lever near the dashboard. The chopper started to lower, stopping about a building’s height away from the sand.

“I don’t think I can get any lower while we’re still moving. I might crash,” Lilian said.

“This is good enough,” Silver replied, gritting his teeth as he pushed the door open. The wind fought him valiantly, trying to keep it shut. Angel joined in and it swung open, slamming against the side of the airship with a loud bang.

A gale shot into the chopper, blowing Angel’s hair back and forcing him to squint. He gritted his teeth and grabbed the board from his back. Silver gave him a sharp nod and leapt out of the chopper.

Angel followed after him, positioning the board beneath his feet and activating it as he fell. It spun to life moments before he hit the ground, kicking up sand in a spray when he landed. He leaned forward as far as he could, shooting across the Barren with Silver at his side.

Acrid smoke bit at Angel’s eyes and stung his nose. He pulled a scarf around his face, trying to filter it out, but it did little to help.

He squinted, ignoring it as best as possible as he focused on the Buried God before them. The lights that marked its eyes had turned in the direction where Lilian was coming from.

From the ground, Angel could only make out a single one of its massive legs. It looked like a metal tower that rose up into the heavens from beside Molten Ridges. The pollution in the air was so thick that he couldn’t even make out the rest of its body.

The city itself was in bad shape. One of the walls had been turned into molten slag and the sand around it to glass. Plumes of smoke rose from many of the buildings and the city’s enormous cannons were all either shattered or melted into scrap.

The level of damage was much less than Angel had feared. The Buried God could have leveled the city entirely with nothing more than a thought. It must have been holding back most of its power to avoid accidentally killing Tilly or Alison.

“How do we get up there?” Silver yelled. “The mouth is hardly an option now.”

“We escaped through the hangar last time,” Angel replied. “That was on its midsection. We have to climb the leg.”

“Have you ever tried skating up a vertical surface?” Silver asked. “It doesn’t work very well.”

“You’ve got swords,” Angel replied, flexing his fingers as they grew closer to the leg. “Use them.”

He raised his arm and fired a grappling barb. It thunked into a knot of silvery-red muscle between the metal plates and pulled, launching himself up and around the leg in a tight circle. He ripped the barb free as the board touched the leg’s surface and shot him upward.

Gravity pulled at his back, but Angel fired the barb again before he could start to fall. He spotted Silver climbing the leg below him, alternating between skating and jabbing his Serpentine Blade into the Buried God’s flesh.

Angel didn’t have time to worry about the other man. It took all his focus to continue ascending the leg and keep himself from losing momentum and getting stuck midway through the daunting task.

Even at the speed he was moving, it took nearly half an hour for Angel to clear the leg and reach the torso of the creature. The air this high up was much clearer than the smog covered ground, but he still had to dodge the vents and superheated Magitech that covered the Buried God’s skin. Luckily, its main body wasn’t completely perpendicular to the ground and had enough of a slope for him to increase his pace slightly.

He reached the entrance of the hangar a short while later. Angel’s features set and he fired the barb at the roof, pulling himself inside. Several choppers still remained, but the hangar was almost completely empty. Its only inhabitant was a single, metal masked man. He spun toward Angel, taking a step back in surprise.

Angel didn’t stop moving. He ripped the barb free of the ceiling and slammed into the man board first, knocking him to the ground where his head hit the metal with a loud crack. Without glancing back, Angel leaned forward and directed the board toward the exit of the hangar.

He was forced to lower his speed as he zipped through the halls within the Buried God. The turns were too tight and the space to little. He ran down several other men. The Reawakening’s clones were entirely unimpressive when they didn’t have their energy fields up, and it didn’t look like the leaders knew of his intrusion – yet.

A part of him wanted to head straight for the Buried God’s head and try to find his students, but he suppressed it. He’d have to trust Silver to do that, and Reave wasn’t going to be in any hurry to kill the girls. They’d have to survive until the bandit could save them. And, even if Silver did manage to get them away from the Reawakening, if he couldn’t kill the Buried God, it would all be for naught.

His metal arm tingled. Sparks of purple energy danced up and down it, popping eagerly. Angel bared his teeth.

“Hungry, are you? I’ll find you something to eat soon enough,” Angel whispered. He reached a split in the tunnel and leaned back, stopping the board as he assessed the two openings before him. There was no apparent difference between either of the paths.

A tendril of energy reached out toward the rightmost tunnel. Angel blinked. Not for the first time, he wondered just how intelligent the Star Fragment was and how much it actually knew. If he survived today, Angel promised himself that it would be the next thing he researched. Until then, all he could do was trust that the strange orb wanted to devour the Buried God’s power and not some other artifact or relic. He took off through the right tunnel.

The halls grew tighter still as Angel entered the deeper parts of the Buried God. He was forced to hop off his board and sling it over his back to continue on foot. There just wasn’t enough space in the turns and it was hindering him more than anything else.

He forced himself to slow his pace, hiding his footfalls as much as possible to avoid alerting the clones now that he wasn’t moving fast enough to speed past or over them. The Reawakening almost certainly knew he was here by now – if they hadn’t gotten a report from one of the clones, then Lilian’s arrival in the chopper would have told them everything.

Angel stepped around a corner and nearly caught a sword to the face. He leaned back, dodging the guard’s swing, and swept the man’s feet out from under him. In the same motion, Angel drove his metal arm into the man’s head, crushing it against the ground. He stepped over his opponent and continued on without missing a step.