She vanished.
But he’d expected that. He was already rotating, shooting toward where she’d appeared, her bioelectrical signature intense to his senses when backdropped by nothing but sky.
The range of her automatic teleport was greater than Keda’s had been. Only by about seven meters. But there was an implication there. Something for later.
She vanished again as he closed the distance.
Alexander didn’t slow, immediately jerking to a stop, then pursuing her at the new location.
This time, though, the chains spread out in three directions, while Droney repositioned toward its own guess.
“Veli Veli’kai!”
The Marquess vanished.
Alexander didn’t slow. He released his control over the chains, throwing the extra power into accelerating harder.
There was a panicked shout from just ahead, the Marquess realizing too late that her invisibility was meaningless against him.
His right hand closed around her throat, the metal of the gauntlet digging into flesh. His left wrapped around the staff. Lightning erupted all throughout his Domain. The Marquess shrieked, and he wrenched the staff from her weakened grip.
She struggled.
He shocked her again.
“Drop the spell.”
Droney translated.
The Marquess complied. Her neck reappeared between his fingers, and the rest of her slowly rippled back into view.
Metallokinesis pulsed, and they dropped fast toward the ground. Alexander didn’t take his eyes off the Marquess, whose breath hitched. She grabbed at his wrist with both hands, a choked scream passing her lips as they fell.
The Tier 1 guards were spread all across the estate grounds, staring up at him. None of them made any movement toward the remains of the mansion as Alexander carried the Marquess down the stairs into the basement.
Alexander came to a stop halfway across the room, and tossed the woman onto the ground in front of the prismatic barrier. He transferred the staff to his right hand, gauntleted fingers wrapping tight around it. It couldn’t be sent into his ring just yet.
Then he narrowed his eyes at the gateway.
The creature on the other side had changed. It looked like a little girl, maybe five or six years old, in a bloodsoaked dress. She was sucking on her thumb, and looking up at him with wide eyes.
Then she pulled her thumb free of her mouth and grinned up at him, revealing the same disturbing, unnatural mouthful of teeth.
Alexander landed, then strode past the Marquess where she’d collapsed. He stopped right in front of the barrier and studied the thing on the other side of it.
It reached out, its hand passing through the gateway, and pressed its palm against the barrier.
Color flashed. Light focused where the hand met magic. Flesh burned, and black smoke rose.
But the thing continued to stare up into Alexander’s eyes, its horrific grin unchanging.
Alexander sensed the Marquess climbing to her feet behind him. He turned. “What do you see?”
Droney translated.
The Marquess’s eyes shifted, looking past him, and landing on the monster. She coughed into her fist.
“A great hound with oozing pustules. It’s grinning.” She paused. “It’s always grinning.”
It didn’t make sense. There was no rhyme or reason for what he was seeing. The eyeball and the grin had been unsettling. Creepy. The girl was the same, just in a different way. Perhaps it was a trick, meant to entice him into trying to save her. Except the grin gave it away. So did the hand pressed against the barrier, smoking as flesh burned, without the slightest sign of pain.
“Tell me what it is,” Alexander demanded, closing the distance and coming to a stop before the Marquess.
She shook her head. “He Who Whispers already told you. My master spoke no lies. You are a fool to refuse the Empress’s generosity.”
“Tell me how to kill it, then.”
The Marquess laughed. “That is no secret. Everything hurts them. You hit them with everything you have until they vanish.”
Alexander frowned. That told him nothing. It was how you beat anything. By beating it.
She leaned against a pod. “What makes them dangerous is that they feel nothing.” She sighed. “But they are cunning. And they just keep coming until whatever dark magic holding them together fails, and their elemental form dissipates into nothing.”
“What does that mean? ‘Elemental form’?”
The Marquess looked up at him. “They are pure elemental energy. What you see is merely whatever horrific thing it’s dredged from your mind.” She shrugged. “Or maybe it’s just how our minds interpret their dark magic. It doesn’t matter. The only thing we can do is keep them sealed.”
Alexander glared down at her. “By kidnapping people and stuffing them into pods until you burn them out?”
He could sense the bioelectrical signatures in the pods. Most of them were far weaker than he would have expected for their ages, though none were in any immediate danger.
“You judge us, but your people sent us this trial. We will do whatever we must to survive it.”
Alexander shook his head. “We didn’t send anything. And you could ask for volunteers. Or power it yourself.” He glanced at the gateway. The girl watched him, her head cocked. “Or just kill the fucking thing.”
She laughed. “The last Marquis tried. He even succeeded, though it took him with it. And as you can see, another took its place. His effort was pointless.” Her eyes lowered to the floor, and her voice dropped lower. “Dolyn always thought himself a great man. It hurt him to sacrifice even those beneath him.”
“Sacrifice?”
The Marquess looked up at him.
Alexander gestured at the pods. “There is no sacrifice here. Just enslavement and death delivered by those who think themselves superior.”
They stared at each other in silence for a few moments.
Then Alexander sighed. “How do I release them safely? And how long will the barrier last when I do?”
“You want to save them?”
“Of course I do.”
“What about the people of the city?”
Alexander’s eyes narrowed. “What about them?”
The Marquess smiled. “Do you know why we call them Nightmares? Because your System sends them to destroy our Dream. The Dream of Magic. We of the Empire of Stars are beloved by magic. These people who wallow amongst the dirt are nothing.” Her smile widened. “It doesn’t matter how many of them die, so long as our Dream survives.”
She pushed off from the pod with a whistle, then clicked her tongue.
Light flashed from the head of the staff, still held tight in his grip.
The nearest pod hissed as the crystal canopy opened an inch. The energy pulsing from the pod into the wall stopped abruptly, and the glowing, shifting symbols on the wall began to fade, beginning from where the tubes connected to it.
All across the room, pods started to hiss.
Alexander’s gaze turned back to the Marquess.
She raised her hands and shrugged. “Oops. Now you—”
Alexander’s cybernetic hand snapped out. Metal fingers seized the woman’s throat. Then he twisted, and snapped her neck.
As the body slumped to the ground, Alexander sent the staff into his ring and strode toward the prismatic barrier. The magical script running across the walls faded faster, and already the edges of the shield were beginning to crack.
The girl in the bloodsoaked dress stuffed her thumb back into her mouth, all the while grinning around it.