Chapter 28: Beyond the Cage.. Continued

Mei twisted both shadow-blades sideways.

The Heart of the Apocalypse inside her chest roared to life, surging a devastating wave of unstable dark plasma through the steel directly into the commander's internal power grid.

BOOM.

The silver plate across the commander's chest detonated. He was hurled backward across the seamless deck, dragging a heavy groove through the black metal before crashing into the warship's central control spire.

Around them, the ship's ambient light flickered. The deep, friction-free hum of the hull buckled, replaced by an agonizing, low-frequency screech as the vessel dropped five feet into the churning sea, violently slapping the indigo water.

"Spatial stabilizer damaged," the commander's synthetic voice cut through the alarm klaxons, distorted and laced with static. Cold mercury-like fluid pooled beneath his ruined chest plate, but he slowly rose to his feet. "Re-evaluating sector threat. Feral entity possesses core-decay capabilities. Requesting orbital reinforcement from Astraea Prime."

"Not going to happen," Kael growled.

He dropped out of the sky like an anvil, bringing his broadsword down in a brutal, horizontal arc that sheared the warship's main communication antenna clean off the deck. The shattered spire tumbled into the boiling foam below, severing the light beam reaching up toward the vortex.

Out of the sea, Joshua breached the surface with a deafening roar, his paladin armor dripping with scalding water. He hooked his greatshield over the vessel's stern rail, hauling himself onto the deck alongside Captain Shane Williams, who landed heavily beside him with his broadsword drawn and his command visor locked onto the enemy line.

The three remaining silver warriors formed a defensive ring around their wounded commander, their gauntlets charging with raw, white-hot extinction energy.

Mei stepped forward, her dark wings spreading wide to cast a towering shadow over the entire bow. The violet patterns etched across her skin flared with absolute, terrifying stability.

"Your boundary is gone," Mei said, her voice echoing with the unified weight of the Heart and the void. "Your system is blind down here. And if your High Regent wants this world back..."

She raised her twin shadow-blades, pointing them directly at the pale, amber-lit visors standing against them.

"...they're going to have to come down here and take it themselves."

The commander stared at her through the flickering light of his cracked visor. Without another word, he struck the deck with his gauntlet. A violent flash of pale spatial light consumed the warship's surviving crew, warping them instantly off the deck and back through the tear in the sky.

The black dreadnought fell silent, drifting empty and dead on the indigo waves.

High above, the massive violet tear in the heavens didn't close. It widened—pulsing like an open eye watching the shattered coast of Luminaria from across the stars.

Joshua dropped his shield with a heavy thud, exhaling a cloud of steam into the cold air. "They'll be back. And next time, it won't be a scout ship."

"Let them," Shane said, rolling his shoulders and wiping a mixture of salt and silver fluid from his blade with a grim, satisfied smirk. "Now we know their armor bleeds."

Kael leaned on his broadsword, looking past the dead dreadnought toward the endless ocean stretching into the unknown horizon. "So... what's the plan?"

Mei looked up at the spiraling void tear, her shadow-wings slowly dissolving into wisps of violet smoke that settled around her shoulders like a mantle. The wind blowing off the open sea was freezing, but for the first time in two lifetimes, it carried the smell of absolute freedom.

"We salvage the ship," Mei said, her silver-flecked eyes burning bright against the darkness. "We learn how their tech works. And then we go see what the rest of the universe looks like."