To Freeze and Shatter

Morenna watched the falling rocks as she rode the City Crusher out into the sunlight, but luckily the only ones that fell close enough to imperil her were small enough to snatch with her power and jam into the joints. They were now passing into public view, which meant she had to be a lot more careful to preserve her secret, but in the chaos of tumbling stones and screaming people outside, nobody would notice a few chunks of rock disappearing.

Rakkan went past her to the left, bounding across the Crusher’s hull and the rocks as he re-positioned himself in front of it.

It was still moving too fast… Of course, the treads! Morenna could have kicked herself for the oversight, but instead gritted her teeth and shifted her focus, now jamming rocks as fast as she could into the wheel mechanisms. This was harder; they were better-armored than the joints, and arranged such that rocks stuck in them tended to bounce back out rather than crunching into obstructive debris.

Beneath her, the Crusher heaved up, and then pitched forward as it crossed the incline, landing on the city plaza outside.

The arms were slowed significantly, most now emitting smoke and sparks, but she’d done almost no damage to the treads. They were still moving forward, and this thing wouldn’t need weapons to demolish the city. Just its own bulk, and time.

She was winning; bit by bit, every hinge and wheel was slowing as she clogged them with gravel and dust. But not fast enough. At this rate, half of Kourvald would be flattened by the time she brought the Crusher to a halt.

Rakkan came leaping back the other way, shouting as he went—shouting loudly, pouring the magic of his own body into projecting from the diaphragm. “ESPA! I need a more famous princess out here, these guards are not listening to me!”

With a wordless yell of exasperation, Espa leaped toward him and then toward the beleaguered line of soldiers who’d formed up, contemptuously kicking a giant boulder aside as it tumbled in her direction.

Morenna kept moving rocks, pushing past the sinking awareness in her gut that it wasn’t going to be fast enough—it was still the only idea she had.

Until…

“Morenna!” Now it was Vanerra who came leaping up onto the Crusher’s hull to join Morenna, carrying something that seemed oddly blurry to her shadow senses. Morenna turned just as Vanerra landed upon the flat top behind her, only then discovering that what she held was…

A sword.

It was a rapier—pure white as if not made from metal, and in fact faintly translucent. Like Blackwing, its crossbar and handguard had been formed in the shape of bird wings, though they were shaped differently. The entire sword steamed continuously in the air, and its blade glowed with a golden intensity, as though sealed within the translucent white material was a shaft of captured sunlight.

Vanerra shifted her grip, gingerly holding the hilt by the pommel and one crossbar and extending it so that the blade was angled away from both of them and the handle faced Morenna.

“Never touch the blade,” she said, “Aldan was very clear about that. Every part of the hilt should be safe, but anything that touches the blade… The way he described it, that would be like the effect of Ophia’s fire and ice trick. Anything it touches will freeze and burn at the same time—he said that would cause severe damage to any physical substance, and we probably don’t want to see what it does to flesh.”

Morenna reached out and closed her fingers around the handle.

It was cold to the touch—not painfully cold like true ice, not enough to numb her fingers, but she somehow knew this sword would never warm in her hand. And despite the cold, there was a faint…vibration to it, less than a hum but something she could feel through her spatial sense. This sword felt eager, full of energy and seeking an outlet.

She whipped the blade twice through the air, watching the trails of steam it left behind, then raked its tip across the top of the City Crusher’s hull.

Light flared from the point of contact; the sword emitted a high-pitched, uneven tone like an eagle’s scream. Behind it was left a black scar—a scorched line carved into the nigh-impermeable Machine Men alloy, with cracks radiating out from it, the metal itself turned brittle and fragile.

“Yeah,” Morenna said, an unaccustomed grin stretching across her face as she held the glowing, steaming white blade vertically in front of her face, “this’ll do nicely. Get everyone together and try to slow the machine as much as you can. Don’t worry about me—I will be inside, performing surgery.”

“We don’t have time to be careful, sister,” Vanerra replied. “Perform surgery like a rampaging bear.”

“That’s the only way I know how.”

They exchanged a nod, and then dashed in opposite directions as three giant mechanical pincers came slowly and awkwardly down on their position. Vanerra bounded down the front of the Crusher to join the defense, while Morenna slid off its side, kicking off the base of one arm and vanishing into the dark smoke still spewing from the Crusher’s open wound.

It wouldn’t do to disappear in front of the whole city without shadows to conceal her. This might be a crisis, but it wouldn’t be the last one. A shadow mage had to guard her secrets.