After reassuring Old Man Silver that the loud, lightning-fast aircraft carving through New Denntimo’s territory belong to them, Emily and Pod relax and enjoy the view of the sands rushing past below them.

They both maintain a steady stream of machina through the Cutters, using Overdrive at a low level to help extent the jets’ flight at their insanely-boosted cruise speed with minimal deceleration. Emily barely burns any of her energy to make sure she doesn’t leave her apprentice behind.

After twenty-five minutes of flight, as they pass over a buffer of grassland and into the airspace of the East Woods, they’re still feeling the effects of the slingshot’s boost.

“Engage stealth,” Emily commands, sending a machina signal to the logic chip inside her Cutter to activate her own craft’s anti-detection measures.

She glances over at the jet cruising beside her and watches as the glowing black traces pulse with mana before fading from existence. The effect spreads out to wrap the entire ship, removing it from her sight and dulling its presence in her magical senses to be nearly undetectable.

She’s still able to pinpoint the vessel through the electrical hum of its engine, but Emily quickly dismisses the chance of anyone but an awakened mechanic using that to crack their concealment.

“This is great!” Pod chirps happily through their short-range communicators. “Though, I can still just about work out where you are from your wake turbulence.”

Emily glances back at three faintly distorted vortices trailing behind his ship. The turbulence is masked when close to their ships’ enchantments, but beyond a few metres, it becomes visible again.

“Good spot. I’ll have to tweak how the resistance reduction coating interacts with the cloaking enchantments at these kinds of speeds,” she responds, adding some notes to her virtual notebook.

“Are we going to engage from stealth or on foot?”

“On foot. We don’t want to destroy any of the outposts if we can help it, so we’ll save our Cutters’ payloads for when Denros’ reinforcements are exposed.”

“Got it.”

Their line falls silent as they rapidly approach the first of their targets.

“Prepare to begin deceleration,” Emily says, finally breaking the silence. “In five. Four. Three. Two.”

She turns her head to watch Pod’s ship closely.

“Now.”

They both deploy all their jets’ flaps at once, and the cockpit around Emily suddenly starts to shake. She can see a noticeable disturbance where Pod’s ship is as the air around him suddenly catches against the newly exposed surfaces.

The distorted wake fades quickly as they rapidly slow to only a few hundred kilometres an hour, but Emily’s brow still momentarily creases with dissatisfaction.

That sudden speed change destabilised the resistance coating. Another problem to fix later.

“We’re approaching the coordinates of the first outpost now. This one hides a clearing with an illusion array, so we’re going to get low and skirt the treetops until we find it,” Emily says, tilting her Cutter’s nose down and quickly dropping out of high-altitude flight. “Follow me.”

The two invisible aircraft lower hundreds of metres until their bellies are only inches from the vibrant green foliage blanketing the forest. Leaves rustle in their wake, and the only sound betraying their approach is the hiss of disturbed wind in the trees.

They slow to a crawl as they get close to the coordinates provided by Old Man Silver and, moments later, they pass through a film of mana. The trees below them flicker, breaking into nothing before their eyes and revealing an active military encampment.

It appears no different from any other New Denntimo outpost, other than the stack of over a dozen bodies discarded at the edge of the camp as mercenaries wearing friendly colours hurry past them without batting an eye. The corpses are fresh enough for Mensacus to purr with satisfaction in her lap as they get close.

“Looks like they’ve disposed of the Defense Force and any loyal mercenaries already,” Emily mutters with disdain, bringing her Cutter to a complete halt and hovering in place over the centre of the treeless camp. “You ready for your first real job?”

“Yeah!” Pod responds firmly, but Emily doesn’t miss his momentary hesitation beforehand.

She nods, though he can’t see it, and releases her mana in a thin stream, letting it slowly seep from her ship and slowly wrap around the entire camp. She’s careful to do it slowly, not letting her mana signature overpower the ambient mana in the outpost so none of the traitors realise what she’s doing.

“There aren’t any third circle mages here, only two second and ten first. The rest are unawakened,” she informs him, removing her hands from her ships’ controls and stroking Mensacus’ receiver as she begins layering her thinly spread mana, weaving it into a barrier to block all magical communication. “You’re on your own for this one. Show me your training hasn’t been wasted.”

Emily can hear the faint crackle of machina through their communicator as Pod takes a deep breath to calm his nerves.

“Understood!”

His ship remains cloaked, completely hidden from below, but Emily watches as the cockpit window slides forward, momentarily breaking the stealth effect before vanishing again as Pod appears to rise out of thin air.

He stands on the roof of his hovering jet, glaring down at the traitors scurrying around below him, with a grenade in each hand. His teeth are visibly gritted and, as he floods the handheld explosives with machina and drops them, Emily can hear the hiss of his tense breath tickling the back of her ear.

Nobody notices the two falling silver orbs until it’s too late. They hit the ground, bursting with two sharp cracks and flinging shrapnel into a few passing troops. Three bodies hit the floor, and two of them go limp as the third wails in pain.

Pod flinches at the pitiful cry, but he draws his revolvers without hesitation and activates the enchantment on his boots. He sprints towards the tip of his Cutter with sparks jumping from his legs, kicking off the jet’s nose towards the roof of a nearby building and flipping upside-down midair.

His arms blur along two wide arcs as he spins, and his fingers twitch against his revolvers’ triggers, raining down a hail of bullets that all find their homes in the heads and legs of the surprised traitors below. Emily watches four people drop to the ground, clutching holes in their thighs, as five more drop dead around them, and nods in approval.

Pod gets his feet below him as he hits the reinforced stone roof, skidding to a halt before dashing sideways to reposition as his targets return fire. He reloads his guns by holding them to a set of articulated mechanical arms mounted to the base of his bag. They grab onto the pistols before popping out their cylinders, pulling out the empty casings, and dropping a fresh set of bullets into their place in the blink of an eye.

Pod leaves one of the revolvers in the grip of the arms as he reaches into the bag above and pulls out another grenade to toss down blind.

Emily has a clear view from above as the Denrosi scum posing as mercenaries start yelling about an ambush, only a few of actually tracking Pod and shooting towards him. The rest of their allies react immediately to the sounds of distress, rushing out of and between the camp’s buildings to head towards the shouts and explosions to group up.

None of the fake mercenaries get caught by the third grenade, but a bullet catches an unawakened woman in the throat as Pod hops over the edge of the roof.

The traitors turn their fire towards the alley he slips into, but Pod dashes away from the clearing where they’re gathering. Two first circle mages leap around the corner and try to block his path, but he moves in a flash, sidestepping a flaming sword and whipping his left arm out to make solid contact with the side of the mage’s head with the grip of his gun.

The sword wielder crumples to the floor as his teammate finishes her chant, coating the dirt below Pod’s feet with a slick layer of water mana and raising her magazine-fed, pump-action shotgun level with his head.

The hammer of Pod’s already positioned right-hand revolver slams forward, and a machina-charged bullet whizzes towards the water mage as her gun kicks back into her shoulder. Pod’s shot lands between her eyes, but her spray of pellets sails over his head as he drops to the floor, using his momentum and her spell to slide past her and out of the confined alley.

He tosses another grenade over his shoulder, finishing off the mage he knocked out but failing to harm anyone else as the leading second circle mage chasing him into the alley throws up a hasty wall of earth to absorb the explosion.

Pod runs around the back of the food storehouse, moving almost three times the speed of the average second circle mage as his legs crackle with lightning. Unfortunately, the traitors don’t follow him, instead choosing to retreat back to their group.

Pod glances back over his shoulder and frowns, unable to feel any energy signatures pursuing him, but he doesn’t break his stride. He kicks off the ground as he approaches another gap between buildings and twists as he sails through the air, coming face-to-face with the gun barrels of several soldiers waiting for him.

His shots ring out first, knocking down two soldiers in a faint mist of blood as the backs of their skulls explode with gore. Their allies open fire in response, but two of them fail to correct their aim and send a spray of shotgun pellets harmlessly out into the trees. The third raises her clockwork rifle as she fires, but Pod’s crackling boots find purchase on the vertical metal surface of the wall, letting him run as if on flat ground, and he narrowly avoids catching a bullet with his shin.

His revolvers click in time with his clattering footfall, carving a hole in the forehead of the woman that reacted to him first before punching the lights out of the other two.

Pod drops from the wall above the fresh corpses and glances towards the clearing where the remaining forces of the outpost have finished gathering together. He can’t see them, thanks to the twisted architecture of the confined camp, and, despite his sensitive hearing, he can’t even make out the sound of their shuffling boots as they adjust their formation. However, he can feel the thrumming energy from their gathering tickling at the edge of his supernatural senses’ range.

He stands stock still, staring at the solid wall beside him with a contemplative expression, not sparing the cooling corpses or the blood pooling at his feet a second glance.

“They won’t come to you,” Emily says, breaking her radio silence as she watches the two still-surviving second circle mages directing their troops.

One of them is standing in the centre of their small formation, holding a silver metal orb that glows green as she pours her mana into it to maintain the silencing barrier around them. Six of the surviving first circle mages surround her on all sides, clutching magical foci and chanting defensive spells Emily can’t hear, while the rest of the troops around them are standing shoulder to shoulder with their guns pointed outwards and their tense fingers resting on their triggers.

The male second circle mage is at the front of the formation, wrapped in a skintight layer of earthen armour, with the remaining first circle mages. A few of them have wands in their hands, but their leader has a bulky chain gun held up to his shoulder as he yells commands at them.

Pod silently nods at Emily’s words and takes a step back, placing his revolvers into his bag’s quick-loader and pulling out a few more grenades. The ones he chooses look different from the basic grenades he used earlier, with a twisting metallic spiral wrapping their stretched, spherical shells from tip to tip.

He charges one of them with machina before lobbing it up over the building between them in a wide, spiraling arc.

The chain gun-wielding mage spots the projectile quickly and turns his weapon on it, squeezing the trigger and letting out a spray of lead. One of his bullets catches the grenade midair, but it detonates with a sharp crack of compressed air and fragments into a rain of spinning blades.

Thin sheets of wind and water form to protect the traitors, and the first wave of shrapnel patters harmlessly against them. However, Pod doesn’t stop charging and throwing, and, within a few seconds, the barriers begin to crack under the endless metal hail as more and more of the soldiers turn their guns and wands to the sky to keep the explosives at bay.

After the twentieth throw, when his stockpile of anti-air fragmentation grenades runs out, Pod dashes towards the clearing. He pours machina into his legs and pulls his explosive spear from his bag, gripping it firmly in his right hand as he takes a flashbang in his left.

He charges the flashbang with machina and lobs it into the air over the clearing, looking down at the floor and stepping into the open.

A bright flash fills the sky as a thunderous crack rattles the defending soldiers’ bones through their one-way sound barrier, temporarily blinding most of them. A few of the traitors are watching their surroundings still and, though they flinch away from the bright light above, they still spot Pod as he runs into the open to attack them.

Several guns fire towards him, but Pod leans forward, reducing his profile to a minimum as he raises his left arm to cover his face. Machina bursts from his hand, rippling up his arm and activating the motors hidden on his shoulders beneath the straps of his bag. A series of internal wires running down his bicep tighten, and the metal panels around his forearm spring open into a small, enchanted shield that catches the incoming bullets with a few soft dings.

Pod’s stride never falters, even as one of the men bleeding out from a nasty hole in his thigh reaches out to grab at his passing ankles, and he quickly reaches the clustered defensive formation. Sparks skip down his spear as he passes through the sound barrier, and he sets his feet before twisting his torso, drawing a wide, flashing arc with his blade.

The sharp point slides through two Denrosi soldiers’ throats like a warm knife through butter. However, as the man beside them flinches and raises his gun to block the blow, the spearhead clicks and explodes in a burst of fire and steam, cooking his exposed flesh.

The man drops to the floor, screaming in pain, alerting the soldiers recovering from Pod’s flashbang to his position. He doesn’t give them a chance to react, turning his spear on the closest mage and driving it through their chest. He blocks a point-blank shotgun blast with his left arm, wincing loud enough for Emily to hear it before backhanding the woman that attacked him with his aching arm, cracking her jaw as he reaches back to redraw one of his revolvers.

He drops low, spinning and ripping his spear free from one corpse’s chest to slice a man’s legs in two with a grunt of exertion. He fires three shots without looking as he turns, finishing the woman clutching her mouth on the floor and two more half-blind, unawakened soldiers.

Pod doesn’t notice the sound barrier vanishing around him as he uses his machina to eject a spent shell from his spear, letting a fresh one push itself into place from the internal magazine running through the weapon’s shaft. He throws his spear at the gun-wielding second circle mage, shattering the armour covering the man’s chest and sending him stumbling back as he drops his gun.

A bullet punches through his heart and finishes the mage before he even gets a chance to find his feet, but at the same time, a spinning orb of wind appears beside Pod. He notices it just in time, relying on his machina-enhanced reflexes to twist and throw his left arm between himself and the attack, but the orb bursts with a pop, shattering his shield and knocking his revolver from his grip.

He tumbles to the floor, hissing in pain, but even as he falls, his right hand moves back to draw his other gun under the control of his second core. He rolls back to his feet, raising his pistol and unloading it towards the woman who attacked him, but his aim is shaky, and his shots get caught in the body armour covering her chest, knocking her back in pain but failing to kill her.

One of the stray shots catches a defensive mage trying to protect her, but as Pod’s revolver clicks empty, his enemies finally start to recover the sight they had lost thank to his flashbang. The first circle mages lower their barriers from the sky to face him, but Pod can see them panting with exhaustion after blocking his initial bombardment.

He quickly flicks his right wrist, throwing a small electromagnet on a wire towards his discarded spear and using machina to make it stick. The motors on his right shoulder whirr into motion, reeling in his weapon and pulling it back into his hand.

He winds his arm back and throws his spear at the stacked barriers trying to block him, shattering two of them. Pod dives to the side to dodge a wild spray of gunfire from the few surviving unawakened mercenaries, and as he rises from another roll, he pulls a new weapon from his bag.

He shoulders the rifle and plants one knee on the ground to create a stable firing platform as he flicks it into fully automatic, dumps the last of his machina reserves into it, and holds the trigger until it clicks empty.

The first few machina-charged shots crack against the last barriers, shattering a few wind layers with five bullets each and a water with eight. By the time he’s used up the heavy double drum mag hanging below the basic kinetic rifle, a hundred empty casings are lying on the floor around him in a thick pool of his enemies’ blood.

Pod lets out a shaky breath as the adrenaline from the battle finally gives way to his exhaustion, and his legs give out beneath him. He winces as he hits the floor, only now feeling the aches and pains of several places where bullets deflected off the thin body armour beneath his overalls.

Emily exits her Cutter, stepping off the edge of the ship and catching herself with a gust of wind as she falls to land beside her apprentice, who’s grown in the past two years.

At full height, he now only stands a single head shorter than Emily, and the last traces of childish youth have vanished from his face to be replaced by a faint stubble across his chin that he refuses to cut. With his hands visibly quaking in his lap, still gripping his rifle tightly despite the battle being over, he looks nothing like the curious young boy that asked her to teach him about magic years ago.

“Well done,” Emily says, reaching out to ruffle his hair and push his head down, forcing him to stop staring at the pile of half-dead soldiers as some of the unlucky ones still hanging on make gargled attempts to breathe through the blood pooling in their lungs. “You did great. Just leave the cleanup to me.”