Despite everything, Ravenna grinned ever so slightly as she adopted a stance she hadn't used in a long time. Normally mages didn't have to lower themselves to hand-to-hand bat, whether they leaoward light or darkness; but her half-vampire heritage did lend itself to some more physical teiques, and Crimson had drawn out her potential by training her ever since she was young.

  Of course, they didn't work quite as well in the midday sunlight; nor did she. But even at a fra of their usual potency, her moves would be far more aether-effit than trying to shred the damnable fliers apart with raw darkness. She could barely tug them out of positiht now, and that simply wasn't enough to do the job. No, this would have to be resolved with a personal touch.

  The fliers actually hesitated for a moment when she dropped into the stance; she could hear the buzzing waver. Someone was watg, operating them; these weren't just mindless drones. That sounded a lot more like western nonseo her - and that meant siderably more danger. Simple artifacts with simple programming could be deciphered and exploited. So too could a humaor, in time; but they were far less predictable, and she didn't have the time to py, as fast as these things were.

  Ravenna waited anyway, the very picture of calm and poise. They moved first: one from ahead of her, and another from her left and slightly behind. And a third, hanging ba reserve; she could hear the individual wing-tones and their different sounds when she focused. And oh, she was focused right now; every sense on edge.

  They would reach her at the same moment if she did nothing, that much she could tell from the way they slipped through her swirling shell, the faint circution barely shifting their trajectories at all. Was that the pn? Were they expendable, even with only three of them? She didn't have time to think too much right now beyond surviving the moment. At that speed, assuming they didn't suddenly accelerate-

  She shifted her weight, and stepped. Owice, and she was just barely far enough out of their paths. Two steps was her limit, but it was enough. They would collide; they should.

  They didn't. An instant before they would have, she felt more than heard a tone shift in those humming, delicate wis, and the fliers sped off in slightly different angles, all but grazing each other on the way. Smart, or part of their desigher way it seemed that trick was off the list. But it was knowledge gained for very little cost, only the minor upkeep of her shell. And maybe a little soreer on; she hadn't moved her body like that in a while. Crimson would probably scold her for not practig...

  Now was not the time to think about that. The third flier was still h in pce for some reason, and the first two had turned around and looked to be ing in for atempt. Trying to wear her down, or to see if her first dodge had been a lucky break, perhaps. She couldn't dis the i any more than - hopefully - the drone troller could guess at hers, and she had a very small window of opportunity to make something happen.

  Well, it wasn't the worst position she'd been in; but it had been a few years since she'd been the Green-Eyed Devil of so many stories from the other side of the mountains. Just thinking about it made her grin. Those weren't geales, though; not the sort of thing her darling would like.

  But they were still very much her.

  Two forms pierced her shell. Oep, two; a different ahis time. She leaned forward, eyes toward the approag flier, then twisted. The barest touch of aether on her fingers, but spinning tightly enough to scream a shrill fourfold chorus, masked by the hum of those wings.

  A burst of her reserve aether, just to accelerate her senses aions as the thing came in and its panion sounded in her right ear, everything suddenly frequency-shifted to a lister as time slowed. It retty in its own way: the wings gssy and delicate, the grayish metal body glinting in the light of the sun, the stinger aimed at her a gleaming yellow-gold with little support struts brag it. Almost a shame what she'd have to do to it.

  Raven like she was in a fluid, pressing against the air that tried to fight back against her too-swift movements as she lifted her hand aly caught the front edge of one wing, feeling it pull her hand back the other way aing it. Aing her fingers slide along the underside, the trated darkness she wielded melting the gssy membrane like a hot khrough butter. Twisting her hand slightly and running her fingers along the metal body food measure, carving furrows in it aly nudging its bad upwards.

  Time returo its normal flow as she turned one shoulder, narrowly avoiding the sed flier as the first made a painful screech before hitting the ground with a siing ch, iia carrying it for a single bounce before it carved a furrow into the dirt, wings twitg weakly. One down, she thought. Not too bad for being out of practice.

  But the aether she'd spent would be hard tain until the su down, and she already felt the effects of its absearting to pull at her, like being dehydrated after exertion. Not a good idea to try that again, at least not immediately. She steadied herself, aabilized the bands of her shell where the circutions of darkness had started to e undone uhe strain.

  So; two fliers left to deal with, and aor... somewhere. Ravenna didn't know the meism involved, so as far as she khe operator could be miles away from here. Or in a boat over the cliff, or at the edge of the forest. But trying to search would only leave her vulnerable; she had to focus on grounding these damn things, but they were just too fast! Whoever had brought the west's misery over to these shores had a lot to answer for, but at this rate, she might not be the one asking the questions.

  The remaining two fliers approached. But this time not at speed; a low, droning hum emanated from both of them as they gradually crept clently pushing through her shell as its flows only slightly hem off their trajectories. She turo try and see both of them, but they immediately spread apart until they were on opposite sides of her - and still closing. The shift in tactics put a knot iomabsp; What were they trying to do now?

  An even lower, heavier droning sounded - distant at first, but slowly increasing. From the forest, she realized after a moment, only to gnce over and see a bck shape cruising across the open field. A flier - but much, much rger than the orying to fnk her as she turned again and they kept spinning around her, closing in bit by bit. Limiting her movement options? Trying to pin her down? For what, though? If this new flier was like the others-

  On sheer instinct, she backstepped and risked casting her senses out in a straight line for a moment, toward the approag shadow. And that alone saved her, as she felt - unmistakably - a sudden surge of aether, and threw her entire weight tht in a dive.

  A savage n of raw light-aspected aether nced out of the approag shape and straight through where she had been standing a fra of a sed earlier. That might have actually killed her, Ravenna thought with the sort of crity that only a near-death experience provide as adrenaliarted flooding through her body. It wasn't a familiar sensation for a woman who usually kept herself a good arm's length from serious danger, and she wasn't particurly fond of it, either. She was closer to one of the fliers thaher now, she noted with an almost ical detat, but still not within striking distance.

  Well, if the smaller ones weren't going to attack her, were they being used as some sort of... targetihod, perhaps? To dial in that brutal nbsp; She colpsed her shell to save oheription a her serained on the boss flier - as she'd started thinking of it - while it tinued closing the distas deep droniing louder. Western tech was ohing, but fusing it with artifact design was airely more hateful prospect, ohat worried her deeply - even beyond her present circumstances, which were already difficult to look past.

  The fliers moved suddenly, bracketing her between them and holding steady. A surge from the boss, immediately after. She hurled herself to the left this time, the hat followed just as deadly as it narrowly missed clipping her leg. Not a killing blow if it had nded, but certainly an incapacitating one. She couldn't tell what the precise i was, but it definitely seemed like it wao murder her.

  Desperate now, Ravenna chewed through more of her aether reserves and tinued her trajectory with a little boost, trying to catch the stationary flier by surprise. It almost worked, too; the flier simply didn't react at all. But at the very st moment she sehe surge building again, a herself drop to the ground instead, with a shove from the dwindling remains of her aether to get her safely there in time. This time the nce smashed straight through the core of the flier - right where she would have been, if she'd gone for it - and with a quiet screech it dropped.

  Right on top of her, driving its spike into her back with all the force of gravity.

  The dark mage's world went white with pain. Pain like she hadn't felt in ay, pain that seemed like it would st for ay, radiating out from the impad overing every other sensation in her adrenaline-soaked, overdriven body until it was the whole of her miserable existenbsp; Far too much pain for her to move, or think, or evehe.

  In time, numbness repced the pain, and darkness overtook the white haze. But her mind had stopped processing the rest of the world long before unsciousness finally cimed her.

  Not a soul was in sight as the boss flier made its way over to Ravenna's unmoving form, ptuously shoving the ruined flier off her back with a swing of one of the spindly yet powerful appehat hung from its tral core. Cast in the image of a stinging i, yet easily the size of a human, it was a terrifying creation to behold. Reinforced wings to keep it aloft and grant it siderable speed and agility; a body stripped of all unnecessary weight to make room for a staggering array of artifacts, including the aetherice mounted in the ter of its thorax; and of course the literal stinger, a vicious barb the length of a person's arm tapering to a needle-point. All of it solid bderh the various metallic additions.

  With siderably more care, though none for the puncture wound ingly close to her spihat was now bleeding profusely, the boss flier used all six of its legs to scoop the dark mage off the ground and sit her on its abdomen. And without dey, the drone of its wings increased to a furious roar as it rose into the sky and headed back toward the forest. A perfect abdu of one of the most powerful mages iire area, carried out without a single fw.

  Or it would have been, rather; except that Ember Grace had been watg the entire affair through one of the viewscopes on the marine library's observation ptform.

  "Well, fuck," she said to no one in particur, half-sighing the words as they came out. Now she felt just the slightest pang of guilt for expeg the lovesick fool to handle her own affairs properly.

  She'd have to do something about this mess, of course. She still hadn't gotten her payment for services rendered, after all; and more than that, someone had thought it wise to adopt western teology in their little feud, or whatever this bullshit was.

  Ember would have to make the gravity of their mistake very clear to them.