Chapter 745: To the Surface

Mingyue moved before the fragments reached the allied position.

Purple ice spread through the air in front of the soldiers. The largest pieces struck it and stopped long enough for Vesa to move the group clear.

Alex threw a rune barrier above the upper route, keeping the smaller fragments away from the soldiers moving through it.

The space around Thepes filled with dust.

He burst out of it with blood running down his face.

"You think throwing rocks will stop me?"

Blood formed the hammer in Alex’s hand again. He met Thepes’s next strike on its head. The impact drove him backward toward the upper passage.

Thepes had spent more power breaking through the ruin, and he was still following them away from the pit. Alex hadn’t needed the throw to stop him.

Alex kept moving.

Behind them, the red-eyed army came through the falling dust. Its first ranks climbed over the broken stone while the bodies farther back forced their way through the spaces left by the collapse.

Dorian’s fighters couldn’t simply turn and run. Every time one group withdrew, another had to hold the attackers off long enough for Vesa to move them.

Selene brought the remaining wounded past Alex’s position.

One of the recovering Sovereigns was helping a soldier whose leg had been torn open. His own movements were slow, but he kept the man’s arm over his shoulder while a guard protected their other side.

Alex let them pass, then sent green fire into the gap behind them.

A red-eyed vampire pushed through the flame.

Its upper body was already burning, yet it kept reaching for the last guard. Alex knocked it away with his hammer. It hit a fallen block, then tried to rise again.

He took an Awe Cube from his storage ring.

Capturing one of these attackers would remove it from the line without another soldier having to stand and destroy the body. If the cubes worked, he could give Dorian room to move much faster.

The cube opened in his hand and cast its light toward the fallen vampire. Before the capture could finish, red power surged from the body and forced the light back.

CRACK!

The cube broke between Alex’s fingers.

Alex frowned at the fragments in his hand. He had seen the same rejection when another power repelled the capture light from Derrick’s body. That attempt had failed before the cube could take him inside.

Mingyue’s sword struck past him, cutting through the attacker before it could rise fully.

Thepes attacked before Alex could try another cube.

Alex threw the broken cube aside and met him. Their weapons clashed, and the force sent cracks through the remaining walkway.

"I’ll hold him," Mingyue said.

She stepped between them, her twin swords crossing against Thepes’s blood blade.

Alex moved beside Dorian’s retreating line.

The first target had carried the power of a dead Sovereign. He needed to know whether the rejection came from that strength or from the blood forcing it to move.

He selected another attacker, one clearly weaker than the first, and threw a second cube.

The light touched the vampire’s chest, but red power spread across the contact point and forced it back. The cube split open before taking anything inside.

Dorian cut the vampire down as it reached him.

Alex caught a third body with a ring of runes after its legs had been destroyed. It could barely drag itself forward, and the nearby fighting had separated it from the front of the red-eyed force.

He tried one more cube. The same red power rose from within the body.

BANG!

Pieces of the cube struck the stone beside his hand.

"Forget the cubes," Alex told Dorian. "Their blood is repelling the capture."

He still had more cubes. That wasn’t a reason to waste them when weaker and badly injured targets had rejected the capture too.

Green fire entered the trapped body’s head.

Dorian called his nearest fighters back and closed the opening himself. Vesa moved the waiting group to the next cleared level, then turned for the ones still holding the rear.

Alex went back to Mingyue.

Thepes was pressing her toward a broken wall. She moved through his attacks without giving him a clean grip, but each clash shook more debris loose around them.

Alex struck at Thepes’s exposed side.

Thepes blocked the hammer and gave ground. Mingyue used the opening to cut upward through the roof of the passage. Light showed through the gap. They were almost at the surface.

Thepes looked toward the opening, then back down into the buried city.

Alex stepped closer. If Thepes returned to the pit now, they would have spent all that power evacuating the army without depriving him of his supply.

He moved between Thepes and the way back down.

"You’re already looking for more corpses?"

Thepes’s face hardened.

"Then stop running."

"Come up."

Alex jumped through the opening Mingyue had cut, sensing Thepes close behind him.

The next blow struck him before he cleared the broken ground. Alex caught it on his hammer, and both of them crashed through the remains of a building above the passage.

BOOM!

The wall burst outward into a ruined street.

Cold air reached Alex’s face.

He landed among broken paving stones and turned as Mingyue came out beside him. Behind Thepes, red-eyed bodies were climbing through the widening breach.

Vesa brought the next allied group onto an open section of the street, away from the mouth of the passage. Selene led them clear while Dorian and the rear fighters emerged behind the last of their withdrawing soldiers.

The two armies spread across the surface.

Alex rose into the air before Thepes could drive the fight back among his people. Mingyue moved to his other side, keeping the enemy between their weapons and the opening below.

Thepes followed them upward.

Mingyue cut across his arm as he rose. He pulled back before the blade reached bone, but the wound stayed open while he turned to face Alex.

The thin trail still stretched from Thepes toward the breach. Blood pulsed up it, and the narrowing cut closed completely. He was still drawing from the remains below, but the next pulse took longer to reach him.

Alex followed the trail down toward the broken street. In the chamber, another stream had reached Thepes almost every time he burned one away. Up here, he could at least see the path he needed to cut.

Alex raised his hammer as Thepes prepared another attack.

A shadow moved across the ruined street.

Mingyue looked up first.

The leading Human Empire warship descended through the smoke above the city. More vessels followed behind it, their formations spreading over the capital as weapons turned toward the fighting below.