Matthew noticed first, he signaled the rest of the squad. Shane did not follow.
"Hold," Margo commanded. "Where is Shane?"
Erik turned. Shane stood near the wall, head tilted slightly, as if inspecting something only he could see. Margo keyed her comm and called his name. No response. The wall shifted inward.
"Turn back," Margo said immediately. "We follow Shane."
Steam burst from Shane as his Vigor flared. The crystal blade ignited and he accelerated forward, movement sharp and sudden.
"He's engaged!" Erik shouted.
Matthew broke formation. "Shane!"
Margo swore and ordered pursuit. Erik matched pace with Raen as they moved, controlled rather than rushed. They reached the concealed bulkhead and took cover.
Gunfire cracked from the tunnel.
"We have contact," Raen called, returning fire
"Stay in cover," Margo snapped.
A tall silhouette stood deeper in the tunnel. Erik watched as the figure tore open the tunnel wall with sand, not violently, but decisively. Erin raced through the opening. Shane followed, slowed briefly when Matthew grabbed him, then broke free and disappeared into the shifting sand. The opening sealed behind him
"Get to Matthew!" Margo ordered.
Erik called forth Pyra. A wall of heat rose in front of him, the air distorting in front of him. The bullets from the mercenaries melted into slag, and fell harmlessly around him.
Raen moved behind Erik, firing through gaps as Davin and Tovin forced the mercenaries back with precise shots. Lira and Margo held the rear.
The tall figure watched them behind a faceless white mask. Posture wrong for a mercenary. Calm and certain. He glanced behind them once before sand built up around his feet and carried him swiftly down the tunnel.
Behind them, grit fell from the tunnel entrance. A deliberate surge, thick and fast, climbing the opening like a curtain yanked closed. It packed tight in a breath, grains locking into each other under directed pressure until the tunnel mouth vanished behind a wall that moved but did not settle.
"Lights!" Margo commanded.
The dragonkin of the group commanded Pyra and created small orbs over their heads that immediately lit the tunnel up.
Mercenaries came out in disciplined stagger, rifles up, pistols low, spacing wide enough that a single Pyra wall wouldn't catch them all.
"Down," Margo snapped.
They dropped into what passed for cover, broken ribs of old supports, a low foundation seam. Not enough. Never enough underground. Raen had grabbed Matthew when they broke formation. Lead rounds from Zao, sharp and fast, chewed stone and turning dust into a choking haze.
"We need room!" Margo shouted, barely audible over the gunfire.
Erik opened his eyes to quest. Veins of Pyra pulsed gently around them, deep within the stones. Erik reached out, extending his arms. He pulled.
Fire roared out of the stone as Pyra commanded to burn in a blaze poured down overhead. Gunfire immediately ceased. The inferno burned bright and hot, making it impossible to see beyond it.
The team regrouped. Matthew slumped against the wall, vest scorched where a round had struck. He looked ragged.
"What happened?" Margo demanded. "Why did you break formation? You could have been killed!"
Matthew winced from pain. "Erin was bait. A trap."
"Yes, obviously," Erik said. "And that masked and bandaged individual. That had to have been Ara-dul."
Nods from all the team.
"Can we break through the blockage?" Margo asked.
"Sealed," Lira said. "We can try explosive Pyra, but that could cause damage to the tunnel."
"Well, we follow the tunnel," Margo sighed. "They must have been expecting something like this. Or expecting Shane at least."
"We have the target," Erik said. "We just need to hope we can get to him quickly. The mercenaries are well trained, but we are better."
"Get tight!" Margo commanded. "We break through."
Steam thickened around them as Vigor stayed engaged. The shimmer of burning Vigor clung faintly to limbs. Davin and Tovin slid left, Matthew right. Lira drifted rearward. Raen took point without being told, not reckless, just built for first contact. Erik stayed center, ready to release the flame wall.
"On your mark, Margo," Erik said.
Margo counted down. Erik quested and looked through the flames. The mercenaries stood impatiently. Waiting for them.
The flames vanished.
Erik fired two controlled shots and dropped back. Margo advanced a step in the same beat, fired, dropped. Davin and Matthew laid suppressive fire, short bursts to keep mercenary heads down. Movement over power. Discipline over spectacle. Lira took two shots and dropped two. The mercenaries began to retreat. The team stayed in tight formation as they pushed forward in measured increments. Stepping over the bodies of mercenaries.
A bandaged silhouette appeared again, deeper down the line.
Erik's jaw tightened. "Ara-dul, back line. That's him."
Margo nodded once. "Marked. Stay hot, stay tight."
They entered the second chamber. Guns firing. The mercenaries in full retreat. Maybe only a handful left.
It opened wide like a subway platform, ceiling higher, space meant for crowds long gone. The crystal node rose from the center, pulsing faintly, ancient and indifferent. At its base sat another device, a compact metal cube anchored into stone, dull bands etched tight, inert to the eye.
Margo stopped them at the threshold.
Hold.
The mercenaries stopped too. Taking cover away from the device and away from them.
The bandaged silhouette stood near the device, half-lost in dust and distance. Ara-dul did not hurry. He did not posture. He waited, like someone pondering an art piece.
Tovin swallowed. "I think he activated it."
The crystal's veins brightened within. Not a flare. A warning.
Margo's eyes narrowed. "Take cover!"
Raen moved before the thought finished. He broke from the line in a hard sprint, Vigor surging so violently steam tore off him in a plume. Bullets snapped past, but he didn't slow. He hit the device and grabbed it with both hands, fingers digging under the clamps, wrenching with brute force.
"Raen, back!" Margo shouted.
Too late.
The crystal's glow intensified. The air tightened, pressure building until Erik felt it in his teeth.
Lira shot at Ara-dul. The Anima bullet deflected by sand. Ara-dul stepped back. Sand curled at his heels like a living escort and whisked him away.
Raen strained, muscles locked, trying to rip the cube free.
Then Anima tore.
Light first, blinding and impossibly bright. Then silence, like all the sound in the room was sucked in.
The crystal core did not explode. It ceased. Stone, metal, flesh, unmade in a flash too complete to be a simple explosive.
Erik saw Margo's mouth open, an order he never heard. A shockwave followed, a wall of force that slammed into Erik's body and threw him hard. The far walls shuddered. Dust became solid. The world tilted as gravity briefly forgot itself.
Erin ran like the tunnels belonged to him. Shane ran like nothing else mattered. Steam poured off him as he burned, white vapor venting excess energy as his body pushed past comfort into violence. The sword in his hand was awake, present, not speaking in words so much as pressing, a constant insistence behind thought. Erin glanced back, eyes unfocused, as if his gaze had to travel through something else to reach Shane.
Erin led Shane to the last crystal's room. It was significantly larger than the first's. Erin spun around, and used Vigor to fuel his jump and backflip over the crystal putting a barrier between Shane and himself.
Shane noticed the device installed next to the crystal. Waiting.
"You're late," Erin said.
Shane frowned. "Late for what?"
Erin's mouth twitched. "Late on finding me."
"What are you talking about?"
Erin shook his head, listening. "You know. I thought we would have met sooner. After I was nearly killed, and you chased me. I thought you would not have let me go."
Shane's gaze sharpened. He was not sure what his brother was talking about.
They rotated the crystal, swords up to defend themselves. Their swords burning, Erin's cobalt flame and Shane's orange glowing within their eyes.
Shane moved first. He sidestepped the crystal and lunged. Erin was ready and redirected Shane's blade. Shane's hands were steady, but his pulse roared in his ears. Every movement he made mirrored the other. Same stance, same rhythm, same precision. The sword in his hands, wrapped for weeks and hidden beneath cloth until now, gleamed when he ignited it with Vigor, flames licking along the crystal edge. The blade flared, a living fire that seemed to feed on his anger.
Erin moved opposite him, sword drawn, blue flames crawling over the crystalline edge just as Shane's did. They were mirrors. Shane had seen it before, but not like this, this was intimate, precise, a reflection of every choice they had ever made, every divergence of their paths crystallized in combat. Every strike Shane parried felt like a conversation, every dodge a rebuttal.
It brought to surface memories of them as children. Erin and him would spar in front of their father under the tutelage of their instructor. Memories that Shane did not want to remember. A time when he adored his older brother. Before everything was ripped apart.
"Why!? Why you!?" Erin screamed.
"You chose this," Shane said steady.
"Why can't I beat you!?"
Shane had the upper hand. They had been taught the same, but Shane was the better, was always the better. The duel was brutal and technical, broadsword against broadsword, weight and leverage over speed. Crystal rang against crystal, light flaring at each bind. Erin's form was correct, drilled clean, but rigid. Shane read faster, broke patterns when they stopped serving him.
He drove Erin back with pressure, forcing him to spend Vigor just to hold ground. Steam bled off Erin thick and uneven as he burned harder to keep up.
Erin feinted high and dropped low.
Shane didn't bite.
He stepped inside and slammed shoulder to chest, turning the exchange into a collision. Erin stumbled. Shane's foot came up and kicked the other to the floor. Erin collapsed and twisted around trying to stand up, but Shane kicked him again.
Erin looked up at him, face full of terror. Shane felt no remorse as he raised his blade for the final strike. Shane looked into his brother's eyes, and saw his mother. Erin took after her looks.
His mother's voice surfaced, quiet and steady. 'Forgiveness isn't weakness,' she would teach him. Erin and him would always get into petty arguments and fights. 'We forgive, so that we can be forgiven.'
Erin saw his hesitation and used it to force Shane back. Back on his feet Erin retreated slowly, trying to create space. Shane watched him anger contorting his visage.
"You deserve this."
"I only wanted to be loved," Erin hissed. "It was you that scorned me!"
They clashed again. Shane did not allow Erin a chance to recover. He pushed him back. Forcing the other man towards a wall. That way he could not escape. The sword pulsed, feeding on the surge of emotion.
Kill him
Shane screamed and cut Erin cleanly across the face, missing his neck. Erin cried out and fell back, still somehow managing a defensive stance. Shane breathed heavily as his hate filled him.
"Not yet," a voice rang out.
Shane turned a fraction late and was hit with a wall of sand. He tumbled head over heels. He rose shaken, but okay. Ara-dul stood over the device and appeared to activate it.
"I didn't mean to ruin your reunion," the masked man said. "But I am on a time schedule."
Erin slumped. Blood covering his face and soaking his shirt. Ara-dul glided over to Erin and lifted him in a cradle of sand.
"Don't get close to the crystal if you wish to see your brother again."
"Get back here!"
Shane raised his blade. A bright light filled the chamber. Shane closed his eyes, blinded from the light before pressure slammed through the chamber. The shockwave from the bomb hit like a god's palm. Shane was thrown sideways, skull cracking stone, vision bursting into white.
Shane tried to rise. His body refused. Steam still curled off him, but his burn was broken, pathways scrambled. Shane reached for his sword. Missed. The world narrowed and then vanished. The retreating figure of Ara-dul and Erin the last thing he saw.
Erik woke choking on dust. The second chamber was gone at the center, a clean absence where matter had simply stopped. Around it, cracked stone and falling debris told the rest of the story.
Margo was on one knee, blood at her hairline, pistol up.
"Report."
"One up," Davin said.
"Here," Matthew coughed.
"Arm's bad," Lira said. "Still functional."
Tovin shook against the wall, eyes wide.
"Raen," Margo said.
No one answered.
There was nothing to answer for. There was no Raen. There had been. Now there was not.
They rose together, formation incomplete. Erik led them to the crater. The crystal was gone. Nothing left of it just like Raen.
No one else was in the room with them. The mercenaries fled. Their job complete.
"Tovin," Erik asked. "What was that?"
All eyes turned to the big dragonkin. He stood there chewing on words that would not leave his lips.
"I don't know."
"What can you tell us?" Margo asked.
"That explosion, it… it was the most violent thing I have ever witnessed, but… so controlled. It is… impossible."
"What is impossible?"
"The control, on a blast that absolute, I would have said it could not be done."
Erik looked over his team. They were beaten and hurt. He locked eyes with Margo.
"I am taking back command. Form up. We are leaving."
The team battered, let training take over. Moving slow, but with control, they headed towards the only other tunnel.
The wind from another shockwave blasted through the tunnel, followed by the low rumble of another explosion. A second bomb went off.
The team tried not to show their disappointment at their failure. And kept moving thoughts to themselves.
They found the third chamber. Silent and still. The crystal here was missing, everything other than its cap which was tossed across the length of the room. A body lay under rubble at one of the far corners.
"Shane!" Matthew called out.
The team rushed to his position. Matthew knelt beside the younger human and checked his pulse.
"Alive," he breathed. "Someone help him onto my back."
Tovin helped Matthew and they continued onwards. Erik saw Shane's sword embedded into the wall and retrieved it.
NO!
"Ah," Erik hissed. The sword fell from his hand. A voice?
"What it is?" Margo asked.
"Nothing."
Erik grabbed the blade again. No voice this time. He admired the beauty of the crystalline blade, the way it reflected the lights over their heads. But, he could not shake the feeling that this beauty held a great cost.
"Hey, I see some stairs," Lira called out. "Lead up."
They followed the step right up into the abandoned maintenance building they had been watching.
"Call Fliss, Margo," Erik commanded. "Tell her we need transport now. Set up a perimeter. We do not need any guests."
"Sir."
Erik took a post at a window carefully looking out at the city that seemed completely unaffected by the destruction of the crystals.
As if fate wanted to continue to play with him, they heard the sound of the third and final bomb go off from the shaft they just climbed.
No one exchanged glances this time. They just remained in their thoughts as they waited for Fliss to arrive.
Erik stood there, the final bits of Vigor drifting from his collar as he released his burn, and understood it wasn't fate. It was design. This Ara-dul had been more prepared than they could have ever thought possible.