“Attack, windbeast!” Yu commanded.
With the swarm of twisters dispelled, the giant tornado then turned its momentum towards Quldald’s Castle Whirlwind.
“Hail, my comrades!” Quldald bellowed. “Come to me from scorching earth and blistering gales!”
A blast of air mixed with sand spewed from the portal-keep’s open gate. The gust was so sweltering that a single breeze could have seared human skin and left behind nothing but a roasted corpse.
The windbeast’s tempest faltered against the burning sandblast.
“Rudra! Full power!” Yu ordered.
“Blow, winds of Ariadon’na! Bring the hero of Earth to his knees as you did so many nations before!” Quldald beseeched.
Slowly, ever so gradually, the great tornado lurched towards the palace in the sky, but for every centimeter gained, the torrid winds howling out of the keep seemed to push it back just as much. This went on for several seconds before both gales dissipated, their powers spent.
Quldald chuckled. His voice was shockingly close by. “Yes,” he murmured. Yu whipped around and found the mage floating before him, entirely unaided. “Yes, I knew it. You, the royal blood’s chosen, are the better. It would behoove me to allow some time for my little project to reach its completion.”
“What, and we’re supposed to let you get away?” Yu shot back.
“Yeah!” Natsuki said, flying up with the Mark VI. “C’mon, good lookin’! Let’s settle this! Right here, right now!”
Quldald squinted at the conspicuous girl and nodded in admiration for her spirit. “A reasonable proposal, to be sure. However, I must insist. There is more revelry to be had in our rivalry.” He hoisted his staff to the sky, and then Yu realized—this staff was metal and small. His usual one had been wooden. “Starcaller, give these heroes something to occupy them.”
A window popped into Yu’s visor, and he blanched. “What?”
It was a video feed, sent by a surveillance droid that had been patrolling the area. Something was breaking through the clouds and descending fast. Very fast. At fifteen kilometers a second, to be exact. An estimated collision course marked the point of impact thirty-two kilometers southeast of Tokushima.
The burning mass hit the ocean, shock waves of violently displaced air exploded out, and the water’s surface mushroomed into the clouds in an utterly terrifying cascade. Yu and Natsuki could feel the blast, even as far from the epicenter as they were.
“Ah, curses,” Quldald said jokingly. “I meant to drop it on the city, but alas. As you can see, summoning stars with this old tool of mine is tricky business!”
“Star...?” Yu muttered. “You don’t mean a meteor?!”
Yu had seen videos of one that had fallen in Russia. The explosion had been massive, and it greatly resembled the one they’d just witnessed.
Quldald vanished, leaving Yu’s question unanswered and his voice on the wind. “Until we meet again! Await my return with bated breath, heroes of Earth!”
The aurora shimmered away, and the floating castle slowly faded into a spectral mirage.
“Yu, this is bad!” Natsuki exclaimed. Uncharacteristic panic tinged her voice for once. “Who knows what other magic artifacts they have? The archmages could be hiding stuff just like our Asura Frames!”
Leo Makishima lingered near the coast of Tokushima. The place had once been a beach, but he was not there to brood at the endless ocean. No, what he was looking at was not the sea, but a digital window in the back of his eyelids. The nanomachines in his body were streaming aerial footage captured by a surveillance droid directly to him, and he analyzed the Mark III’s movements, the Mark VI’s, and the way their Devicers fought.
The battle had just come to an end. A meteor had crashed into the ocean, and the archmage had gotten away.
Leo opened his eyes. “Replicants really do make all the difference,” he murmured. He reflected on what he’d seen, comparing the data to his own capabilities. “If I can get one of those elf upgrades for myself, I’ll finally be a match for archmages. Hey, Kiriko.”
“Uh-huh?”
The girl standing behind him was an eighteen-year-old girl named Kiriko Kaji. She’d been nano-augmented at the same research facility as Leo in west Japan, and now she worked for Fukuoka government’s military as a warrant officer. Technically, this made her Leo’s superior, since he had refused to take a rank.
That did not, however, stop him from having an attitude.
“Tell the military to get Devicer Three to Fukuoka,” he said. “And his gear too. That Replicant.”
“Leo.” Kiriko sighed. “Don’t act like you didn’t hear all that.” They had listened in on the entire meeting between Nayuta’s representative and the Fukuoka delegation. A MUV Designator auxiliary droid in the pocket of one of the officers had been bugged to allow them to hear every word. “That new Three guy’s like you. They’re not gonna listen to anyone. You need to get a grip.”
Her hair was dyed a light, creamy blonde and cut into a bob. The Ground Defense’s uniform looked horribly unsuited to a girl of her demeanor, and in a better world, she would have been in college right around now.
Despite appearances, though, she was still nano-augmented, and that made her valuable. Her manifestation level wasn’t too bad either. So Leo tolerated her presence.
“You’re not thinking,” he said, a twinge of irritation coloring his tone. “Didn’t you hear? They’ll go to whoever calls them.”
“Is that what they said? It sounded to me like it was more about protecting people, not that you can just—”
“Exactly,” Leo interrupted. “I need the army to grab Three’s attention for me.”
“How’re you going to manage that?” Kiriko asked.
“That’s the easy part. Do what I say and it’ll work out.”
“Dude, we’ve seriously got to work on that attitude!”
“Be quiet. I’m thinking,” Leo snapped. His voice dropped to a murmur. “The only thing that matters right now is making sure I get stronger. Stronger than anyone.”
The war would never end for him, not if he wasn’t the strongest. So it was frustrating that he remembered so little about his loss to the mage called Quldald. In the bitterness of defeat was always a lesson to be learned, as well as the anger that kept Leo on his feet. The chagrin that carried him to the battlefield.