“They’ve found us!” Nova shouted from atop Eiga’s back as the Vairo-Syken swooped down into a breathtaking canyon situated deep beneath majestic ice-clad mountaintops.

“Magnus, did you hear me?” she yelled again into his ear, trying to overcome the biting arctic cold and the howling winds.

“Yeah. Fuck! There’s no winning this game, is there?” MC slurred as he wiped the blood dribbling down his nose.

He’d been keeping not only Midar going to guide Eiga, but the Energy Dampener was continuously active as well. With it, they’d at least been somewhat successful in avoiding the Dyn’s global satellite network. Eiga’s speed had helped in that department, easily outpacing the lumbering hovercrafts. It was the only reason they were still alive.

“Magnus, they have a Chariot within range and it’s keeping pace with us. We need to lose it before they open fire!”

“I know! The hell’s up with that anyway? Were they always this fast?”

MC deactivated the Energy Dampener and the splitting headache immediately subsided, prompting him to sigh in relief at the unending pain’s absence. Stealth wasn’t useful now that they’d found him, and the ability couldn’t tank their attacks anyway.

The Dampener had leveled up by leaps and bounds during the course of the past week and could now be projected to cover Eiga entirely—essentially becoming a personal stealth field generator. Still, keeping it active 24/7 was impossible. That and the fact that he had to keep a hole open to fly Eiga with Midar meant that their stealth wasn’t perfect.

The Chariot had decloaked right above them at six o’clock. Its microwave emitters opened fire, boiling Eiga’s wingtip. The great beast dove, roaring in pain as he whipped his wyrm-like neck around in rage. A massive red beam erupted from his maw, squarely hitting the ship. Eiga played the beam all over the craft, to no effect. The golden magic barrier that perfectly wrapped around its hull nullified any magical attacks.

“Eiga, buddy, we’ve tried that before. You know that doesn’t work!”

The Vairo-Syken shrieked at the Chariot in frustration. A sentiment shared by all three of them.

“Hold on!”

Nova further increased her grip on MC’s waist as he instructed Eiga to bank and dive again, nearly clipping a nearby frozen peak as they lost altitude. Nova yelped as her stomach popped.

The mountainside would act as a barrier to the Chariot’s offensive weaponry, but at best he’d bought them a few seconds.

MC wasn’t done though; he glanced back at the receding mountain to Relocate a massive chunk of rock right in front of where he thought the Chariot would appear. He expected to hear the sound of metal-on-granite, yet there was only silence.

The Chariot had instantly trained its bottom-mounted guns on the rock, melting it with a high-power laser right before impact. Whatever was left was blown apart by the Chariot as it passed right through.

“Shit! Definitely faster.”

Those lasers and microwave emitters meant instant death, yet the Chariots were luckily designed to fire most of them downwards. Coupled with their slow speed, the trio had been able to outmaneuver their enemies in every encounter thus far. And that gave him an idea.

“Nova, switch positions with me.”

“But I’ve only just begun to teach Eiga how to fly by voice commands!”

“Just give it your best shot!” He shouted back over the buffeting turbulence.

MC instructed Eiga to rise rapidly before cutting their speed, leveling out when they were about a thousand feet in the air, directly above the Chariot. The hovercraft immediately started ascending to match them.

He disconnected from the stirrup and stood up on Eiga’s back, latching his armor’s belt loop onto the rope they’d slung lengthwise across the black dragon’s back. Now secured, he shuffled to the rear of the beast, grasping his thick scales for balance.

The Chariot continued to rise until it was right on their ass. MC faced it head-on, his black cloak billowing in wind. His cyber-organic left liquified, becoming an amorphous blob before solidifying into a new shape—a gleaming silver blade three feet in length. A neat trick he’d discovered just a few days back.

“Magnus what are you—”

“Something really fucking stupid. Hang out for a sec, will ya? I’m gonna dismantle this motherfucker.”

“Magnus, NO!”

Nova’s eyes went wide as he vanished, reappearing on top of the scarab-shaped Chariot’s back. He instantly drove the arm-blade into the ship’s hull, securing him firmly in place.

“MAGNUS!!!” Nova cried at the top of her lungs, her voice lost to howling winds. But he didn’t need to hear her to know what she was warning him about.

Another Chariot was rapidly closing in on their position from seven o’clock. In just a few minutes, they’d have another Chariot to deal with, so MC immediately teleported to the starboard edge of the insectoid ship’s sloped roof.

He peered over the precipice, opting not to stare at the snow-covered valley thousands of feet below. Taking a deep breath, he began to climb his way down the side of the ship, driving his arm-blade into the hull to afford him purchase. It didn’t take long—Chariots weren’t especially large, after all. MC soon found himself at the edge of the alien vessel’s flat underbelly, legs dangling in the wind.

A gap of about five feet still remained between him and the energy weapons. He’d have teleported over, but the guns were located inside the shimmering magic field, blocking his ability. The shield hugged the surface of the ship topside, though apparently the Zevan mages couldn’t quite shape it to wrap around the bevy of firepower that ran along its belly. That meant there was a bubble he could enter, an area where his abilities could function. The bad news was that he’d have to jump across to reach them.

Even now, he could see the weapons continuously moving, scanning the air for Eiga, but the dragon had sensed the imminent danger and risen to a higher altitude. Unfortunately, that meant that the Chariot also gave chase, rocking MC about as he held on for dear life.

He steeled himself, then launched into the air, reaching out with his left as he began to fall. At the last moment, two of his mechanical fingers latched onto one of the many guns that adorned the bottom of the ship, just as the Chariot banked into a sweeping turn.

MC’s legs dangled high above the snow-covered terrain but with this move, he’d already won. He was now fully inside the protective magic shield, along with the ship. No, that wasn’t quite right—the ship was trapped in there with him.

He went to town, ruthlessly dismantling chunk after massive chunk of the hovercraft, teleporting them into the air nearby. As he Relocated more and more, the vessel’s innards finally became visible. If the outside resembled a metal beetle, so too did the interior. He sawed the Chariot’s biomechanical bridge in half, followed by a dozen Zevan mages. To his great surprise, all of them were unconscious, hooked up to pipes and wires in stasis pods—blissfully plummeting to their deaths. Not one Dyn operator was visible.

A pang of guilt swept through his body, but there wasn’t a whole lot he could do for them now, and even if he did save them, they were in the middle of fucking nowhere; the mages would freeze in an instant. Assuming they didn’t try to kill him.

Utterly helpless against his ability, the Chariot soon lost all power and began to plummet to the ground with what remained of its doomed crew. He threw himself off of the dying ship, spinning around to get a good view of the other Chariot.

The migraine he was currently dealing with was worse than any he’d experienced in the past, though he didn’t really have the luxury to bitch about it. Steeling himself to guard against blacking out, he deployed Midar to get a lock, then teleported onto the other gunship.

MC immediately realized he’d fucked up—big time.

When he looked down, he’d expected to see the black armor of the Dyn assault craft, yet all that greeted him was a snowy valley, several thousand feet below—the craft had juked at the last moment, putting him just a few feet away.

That wouldn’t have been a huge deal, if he could teleport again. Yet his vision faded as he fell from the sky, the result of overloading his abilities time and time again. By the time he regained consciousness, the ground that had seemed so distant now loomed close.

Killing any thoughts of panic, he immediately teleported down to the ground. He couldn’t kill his downward velocity, but he sure as hell could redirect it. MC landed hard, throwing himself into a roll to bleed off as much momentum as humanly possible.

Luckily, the driven powder soaked up the impact like an air suspension, letting him tumble to a stop a hundred feet away. The trail he’d etched almost looked like some idiot had crash-landed an aircraft.

He lay there heaving, staring up at the blindingly white sky as his body ached in pain and his eyes struggled to see. Yet this was hardly the first near-death experience he’d been through, nor was it the tenth, or the hundredth. As he’d done countless times before, he powered through and stood himself up, boots sinking into the snow.

The Chariot continued its brethren’s relentless pursuit through the frigid skies, further and further away. MC mustered the most powerful directed Midar ping he could manage, and the Vairo-Syken responded.

It banked a one-eighty to make a beeline for his position—the Chariot hot on its tails. The enemy opened fire with their microwave emitters, searing the poor dragon’s wings. But Eiga was no idiot; he’d already dived to protect Nova from the blast.

MC felt guilt, and anger. Guilt over letting harm befall his own, and anger over having to put up with this bullshit, day after goddamn day.

One shot. He had exactly one chance to down that motherfucker before the headache robbed him of his consciousness once more.

He reached forth with his right, closing his eyes. He imagined the strongest Energy Dampener he had ever created.

Time seemed to slow.

Every heartbeat, every breath resounded like a depth charge in hostile waters. He imagined the formation of an energy vacuum. Something that could suck every iota of energy from its surroundings.

The very air in front of him began to freeze as its energy was drawn away. The frozen air turned to steam in the next moment when the Chariot assaulted him with its arsenal of radiation. Microwave and laser emissions from the combined might of ten weapons slammed into his barrier.

Air superheated into a furnace, melting the nearby snow. He concentrated harder, willing the excess energy to dissipate. Yet the Dampener had only a finite capacity to bleed energy off.

He needed more.

With a sudden flash of insight that often accompanies such experiences, he connected the Energy Dampener to a Relocation tunnel, opening an alternate path for the incoming energy. The temperature immediately dropped, yet the Chariot kept its emitters active, opting to simply hover in front of him as if it knew it couldn’t be hurt by the likes of a mere mortal.

Too bad he wasn’t just any mortal.

Waves of energy continued to rock his world, and even the snow beneath his boots started to liquify. With every passing second, more and more blood burst out of MC’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. A few more seconds and he’d be dead.

Yet instead of redirecting the energy to a random location, he now forced the Relocation tunnel to terminate back at their point of origin—right in front of the Chariot.

Fleshy vidspheres maximized in his vision—the Relocator and the Energy Dampener. A glossy purple umbilical cord stretched from each bubble, reaching, intertwining in the middle to form a link. A new, smaller bubble appeared over the two, and while he didn’t have the luxury to check it out, he knew exactly what it was.

The Deflector Shield channeled nearly one-hundred percent of the Chariot’s bombardment back at it, melting through the ship’s armor. Before they had a chance to shut off the energy weapons, its front-facing bridge had already melted to slag. The guns continued to fire until the Chariot’s energy core ruptured, precipitating an explosion of epic proportions.

The superheated shrapnel from the blast tore through the overtaxed Energy Dampener and sliced into his face, ripping dozens of small cuts that seared his face and cauterized immediately. He hardly noticed.

Some eternity later, a faint part of him recognized that Eiga and Nova had landed nearby, a pair of gorgeous white wings running towards him. Unable to form coherent thoughts any longer, he collapsed onto his back like a power suit whose batteries had run dry. The last sounds he heard were the sweet, soothing words of an angel.

“You are mad. Truly! Utterly! Mad!”

Coughing up a wad of blood, he grinned through bloody teeth. “Someone once said… that if the enemy has a bigger gun… steal it.”