“Well, I think that was the last one.” Caeden waved his hand, dismissing the saw he’d been holding back to the Forge.

Over nearly a whole day, they’d managed to cut around the entire ether engine. The start had been the hardest part. The further they got, the more segments they searched and cleared, the better they understood the orientation and positioning of the engine as a whole and the various pipes and cables tied into it.

At the same time, the resistance from the revolutionaries grew less and less as they continued. It seemed that the flagship had truly thrown everything it had at them and failed. Though Caeden didn’t doubt that the increasingly dire lack of power had compounded the Revolution’s problems. Once they’d passed the halfway point, segments started to go dark, their energy supply becoming more and more spotty ever since.

“All that’s left is the main flight lines.” Lily nodded. That was something they’d found toward the stern of the ship. Rather than the smaller connections linking the engine to the rest of the ship, there was a massive, man-sized line tying the ether engine to the ship’s flight systems.

They hadn’t cut it, obviously. The moment that line was cut, the flagship would drop out of the sky. Caeden had been genuinely surprised that the flight systems weren’t also kept within the engine room with the suppression field. But he wasn’t an expert in ethertech. A little consultation with some Bladeborne ethertechnicians cleared up his lack of understanding. The flight engine needed to have some point of contact outside the ship to operate properly. There were several methods to defer that connection through various materials that prevented the actual flight ether from just jutting out the ship, but that connection had to exist. Sticking the flight systems in the engine room, sealed as it was, would have made sealing it off, as it was now, impossible.

The segment they were in was lit only by a ball of light hovering above Lily’s head. Everything was silent, the constant hum and buzz of the ship operating had vanished over a dozen segments ago. The only thing left to do was cut the flight connecter. But there was a problem with that.

“So, we’re not just gonna drop this ship on the island, right?” Erik linked his hands behind his head, wandering along a dark hallway. “Feels like it would make everything we did down there kinda a waste of time if we just ‘bang’,” He smacked a fist into an open palm, “take ‘em all out like that.”

“We’re not just letting the ship fall on the island.” Caeden rolled his eyes. There was no way they were going to do that in the first place. In this case, they’d actually been lucky that it took as long as it did to cut off the engine. After all, Caeden had needed to give Father and a team of Bladeborne a chance to figure something out.

“So, what’s the plan?” Erik flipped over a ripped wall panel that detached with a creak, almost connecting with his legs. The path they were walking took them along already traveled paths, and the ship certainly showed it. Erik had been…enthusiastic…about making sure that the whole vessel was non-functional.

“Well, we need to get back to the flight connector first. Father made something that should do what we needed. After that, we’ll need to get out of here.” Caeden explained.

“Like, leave the ship?”

“Yup.”

Erik shrugged. “Ok, this oughta be good.”

Lily glanced at Caeden, to which he raised an eyebrow. She shrugged back. She trusted his plan to work, and wasn’t worried about it. Caeden would explain, but it wasn’t really worth the time. None of his teammates could add anything to the plan, considering how simple it was. They’d find out when they saw it.

It didn’t take long to stop at the flight connector. The last pipeline connecting the engine to the rest of the ship was still humming, the last bit still functioning as intended. With a wave, Caeden pulled a platform from the Forge and slotted it around the line. It fit perfectly, just as intended. A press of a button caused the whole thing to start ticking.

The piece of ethertech was essentially a set of jaws attached to a timer that would slam shut, severing the flight connector after they’d left. In the meantime, Caeden did what he’d wanted to for hours. Arcs of shroud flowed off him, pouring into a throne of molten metal and sharp blades that appeared over his hand.

Once the power started to drop out, the artificial aura around the ship had dropped along with it. Caeden had, of course, tried to use his aura senses on the engine, but it had an independent false aura, because of course it did.

With his senses freed, Caeden placed the throne on the top of the ship, at the same time calling forth an Entrance Blade right next to him. Then, using his Incarnation’s location as a beacon, places another Entrance Blade next to it.

“Oh, that’s fun.” Erik hopped through the swirling molten sheet that formed inside the Blade.

“If I’m being honest, I totally forgot you could do that with the false aura gone.” Cat admitted, following Erik. Dave merely rolled his eyes and followed his Boss.

“What have you and Father been cooking up?” Lily asked, smirking at Caeden. “Don’t think I don’t know that you’re having fun not telling us.”

“Wellll,” Caeden could admit that she was at least partially right. Everything he’d justified to himself earlier was true, but a large part of him just wanted to show off a little bit. After all, he and Father had come up with an admittedly silly idea. The fact that every model they’d made showed it working was a surprise he wanted to share with his friends.

“Never mind, I’ll let you have your fun.” She shook her head, stepping through the Blade.

Caeden followed, entering the Blade hub, filled with dozens of Exit Blades. All the ones here were man-sized, the larger ones were elsewhere in the Forge. Each Blade had symbols next to it indicating its location, something Caeden and Father had to manually update whenever they moved one. They were still working on a system that was less involved, but the extra dimensional aspect of the travel made that difficult, even with all the time they had.

But the marks weren’t for him anyway. After all, Caeden knew exactly where the Exit Blades and their corresponding Entrance Blades were at all times. Rather, the marks were for the Bladeborne and his friends. So rather than look at the marks, Caeden simply walked over to the Blade he needed.

Asherta was there to meet them, a Bladeborne having told her that they’d be showing up. She still looked tired, despite the amount of time that had passed in the Forge since Caeden had dropped her in. The amount of power she’d used had overdrawn her shroud and emptied out her horde. Asherta’s draconic features let her reach beyond what would be possible for a full-blooded human, but it came with its own unique penalties.

The kind of damage she’d suffered pushing through the armada and energy shield as she had wasn’t something that Erik could heal. Rather, the only thing that could help Asherta recover was time, and a lot of it. That alone was why Caeden hadn’t tried to get ahold of her even after the false aura dropped. She was still on the mend.

“Well, how are you feeling?” Lily wrapped an arm around Asherta.

“Tired, bored.” The half-dragon shrugged.

“You’ve been in here for weeks now, I’m not surprised that you’re getting a little bored.”

“Very bored.”

“Fair enough. But I’m not sure this next bit is going to help with that at all.” Caeden laughed. Turning around, he looked at the thousands of Bladeborne that had congregated in the Blade hub. These weren’t combat Bladeborne. Their bodies were composed of tools; scalpels, saws, and scissors, rather than swords or spears. The combat types were still in the Starry Sea, taking down ever more etherships. These Bladeborne were here for a different purpose.

Once more, Caeden had nothing to say to them. The Bladeborne required no speeches, no affirmations of his appreciation. They were ready.

“Go.”

With that word, Caeden stepped through his own Exit Blade. He appeared next to his Incarnation on top of the flagship, overlooking the dead and quiet vessel. But he didn’t take a moment to absorb the view. Rather, he reached out with his senses to every dagger he’d shoved into a teleport pad across the breadth and width of the ship beneath him.

With a mental flex, Those daggers plunged deeper, the ethertech within interacting with the pads and the Entrance Blade he’d just stepped out of. The two systems interlinked, one piggy-backing off the other. Suddenly, Bladeborne began appearing on teleport pads all over the ship.

Caeden was once more glad that he had nigh-infinite power inside the Forge, as the amount of energy flowing out of him to keep the entire ship’s teleportation array active and running in ways it wasn’t intended was absurd. It didn’t get any easier as Bladeborne began returning with unconscious revolutionaries, sending all of them into the Forge the same way that they’d arrived.

If it was any other group, Caeden would say that emptying out the flagship would have taken days. Weeks, even, if it was a slower group. But the Bladeborne had seen the map that Father had made, and they were single-mindedly focused in the way that humans simply couldn’t mimic. With the path laid out, they couldn’t be stopped.

Smoothly, seamlessly, the Bladeborne scoured the ship from top to bottom at frankly borderline impossible speeds. Any remaining resistance was ended with almost casual ease as the Bladeborne outnumbered the revolutionaries every time. Millions of unshrouded were dumped into the Forge in a matter of hours.

Meanwhile, Caeden was keeping his focus squarely on holding the system together. The transport pads weren’t supposed to be able to move living things, and used an inherently different method to move objects across space when compared to his Blades. Making them an extension of said Blades exposed some unforeseen difficulties that required a little trouble-shooting to fix.

In the end, they managed to empty the ship without a single Bladeborne lost, the entire thing scoured from top to bottom in a fraction of the time that it had taken Caeden and his team to cover less than half the ship. He didn’t regret it, though. The only reason the exploration went so quickly was because of all the groundwork Caeden and his friends had done.

“Ok,” Caeden stretched, finally able to relax for a moment after hours of sitting still and making sure nothing exploded. “Now we can get to the fun part.”

{}

Russell blinked rapidly, not sure he was awake yet. The rapid and unstoppable disassembly of the Liberation had been like a waking nightmare all on its own. The shrouded had broken through every barrier and almost casually taken the flagship, the pride of the Revolution apart. It was galling, to see that they still couldn’t compete with the best the shrouded had to offer.

He’d known it was all over once they started getting messages of entire weapons batteries falling silent. By the time the power started to cut out, the rest of the command bridge had long realized that they had lost. The suppression field remained, so the Revolution as a whole could still complete the assault, but the Liberation would never make it back to base. And none of them would either.

They waited for death. They waited for something. It was the command center, after all. A tactically critical portion of the ship. But no one came to end them. Russell and several others had been hoping to raise one last stand, to make some kind of impact at the end. Instead, all they got was a brilliant flash of light and a burst of sound, followed by a short, sharp pain to the chest before he fell unconscious.

It had happened so fast and completely without warning that Russell had almost believed he’d somehow fallen asleep and dreamed it. But the scene he saw as he regained consciousness was too bizarre, too unbelievable, to have been a dream.

He was lying in a bed, looking around, many more revolutionaries were in the same room as him, in similar beds. It was a large space with high ceilings, longer than it was wide. Each wall was lined with a row of beds, all of them occupied. Russell instantly realized he’d been captured. That was obvious from the forms of those monsters that had taken down hundreds of ships even before the Liberation came under attack.

But why wasn’t he dead? Why weren’t any of them dead? More than that, why weren’t they chained up? He was held in place by a comfortable blanket, nothing more. Unable to believe it, Russell pushed the cloth aside. His low angle lying down hadn’t afforded him the ability to see out one of smaller windows set into the walls at wide intervals. Now he could.

Outside was a foreign landscape, sword-shaped buildings pierced the air as thousands of monsters traveled about like normal people. Beyond the odd city-scape, there was only a burning, molten glow.

Where was he?