Tyson had been a magjistar for thirty-seven years.
He'd fought daemons that could level city blocks. He'd survived the Crimson Tide of '98, when a horde of Third-Grade daemons had nearly overrun the eastern seaboard. He'd stood shoulder to shoulder with Victor Khan himself during the Abyssal Breach, watching the most powerful magjistar of their generation single-handedly hold back a nightmare that should have killed them all. In thirty-seven years, he had never seen anything like this.
"Fall back to the secondary position!" he roared over the chaos, his voice barely audible above the screaming and the gunfire and the inhuman shrieks of daemons tearing through his people. "Fall back! Regroup at..."
The order died in his throat as a drone buzzed overhead, its camera tilting to track their movements. Three seconds later, the position he'd been directing his people toward erupted in a column of fire and shrapnel. The explosion sent bodies flying, some of them still alive, thrashing and screaming as they hit the ground. Human technology. That was what was killing them.
Not the daemons, though those were bad enough. Not even Poison herself, though the First-Grade Daemon King had personally dismantled two of their strongest squads without breaking a sweat. No, what was truly decimating the Organization of Magjistars was the brutal efficiency of modern warfare combined with supernatural power. Drones for reconnaissance. Thermal imaging to spot magjistars hiding behind cover. Radio communications that let enemy forces coordinate with terrifying precision. Explosives planted along their retreat routes. Snipers picking off anyone who tried to cast a spell that required more than a split second of concentration. Magjistars were trained to fight daemons. They were not trained for this.
"Head of Defense!" A young magjistar, barely out of the academy, couldn't be more than nineteen, scrambled toward him through the rubble, blood streaming from a gash on her forehead. "The Kelly forces are requesting backup on the eastern flank! They're being overrun!"
Jerome Kelly. The leader of the Connate Faction himself had taken the field, bringing the finest archers the magji world had ever produced. The Kelly Family's bow techniques were legendary. Capable of striking targets from distances that would make human snipers weep with envy. None of it mattered when the enemy could see you coming from a mile away and call in an aerial attack before you got within range.
"Tell Jerome to pull his people back," Tyson ordered, already knowing it was futile. Jerome Kelly was too proud, too stubborn, too convinced in the superiority of magjistar tradition to accept that they were losing. "We need to consolidate our..."
Another explosion. Closer this time. The shockwave knocked him off his feet and sent the young magjistar tumbling into a pile of debris. Tyson's ears rang as he pushed himself up, tasting blood and dust and something that might have been ash. Through the smoke, he saw them coming. Daemons of every grade and type, mixed with humans carrying assault rifles and body armor. They moved together with disturbing coordination, the daemons drawing fire and attention while the humans flanked and eliminated anyone who posed a real threat.
It was a strategy that shouldn't have worked. Daemons were supposed to be mindless monsters driven by hunger and hatred. Humans were supposed to be weak, fragile, useless in a magji conflict. Poison had proven both assumptions catastrophically wrong.
"Earth Volume III: Fortress Wall!" Tyson slammed his palms into the ground, channeling every ounce of mahna he could spare into the defensive spell. A wall of stone and compressed earth erupted from the street, buying them precious seconds of cover. It wouldn't last. Nothing lasted anymore.
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The field hospital, if it could be called that, had been set up in the basement of an abandoned office building three blocks from the main fighting. It was supposed to be safe. Protected. Far enough from the front lines that the wounded could be stabilized before being transported to proper medical facilities. That had been the plan, anyway. Now it was a charnel house. Sera Star moved between the cots, her hands glowing with the soft golden light of healing magji as she tried to stem the tide of death that threatened to overwhelm them. She was exhausted. Had been exhausted for hours. But she couldn't stop. Wouldn't stop. Every time she paused to catch her breath, someone else died.
"Healer! Over here! Please, he's not breathing..."
"My arm, my arm, I can't feel my..."
"Where's the rest of the medical team? We need more healers!"
There were no more healers. That was the problem. The Star Clan had sent everyone they could spare. Seventeen magjistars with healing-related connate magji, the largest deployment in their clan's history. Eight of them were dead now, killed when the enemy had somehow located their first field hospital and dropped an incendiary bomb on it. Four more were so depleted of mahna that they could barely stand, let alone cast. That left five healers for over two hundred wounded magjistars, with more arriving every minute.
It wasn't enough. It would never be enough. Sera finished closing the wound on her current patient, a middle-aged man from the Mercenary Faction who'd taken a daemon's claw across his chest, and immediately moved to the next cot. A woman, young, one of the reinforcements from one of the other branches. Her lower body was a ruin of shattered bone and torn flesh. Shrapnel from one of the endless explosions.
"Please," the woman whispered, her eyes glazed with shock and pain. "Please, I don't want to die here. I have a daughter. She's only seven. Please..." Sera placed her hands on the woman's abdomen and began to work.
Healing magji wasn't like other branches of magji. You couldn't just learn it from a book or pick it up through practice. It was connate magji, one that let you sense the flow of life energy within a body and guide it toward restoration. Without that innate gift, all the training in the world wouldn't let you close a wound or mend a broken bone.
This was why healing magjistars were so rare. This was why the Star Clan, despite being one of the smaller clans in the Connate Faction, wielded influence far beyond their numbers. They were the only major clan whose connate magji "forced" them into being healers, as other magjistars liked to put it. Forced. As if saving lives was a burden.
The woman's wounds were bad. Worse than bad. Sera could feel the damage spreading through her body, the internal bleeding that her mahna couldn't quite reach, the organs that had been punctured beyond her ability to repair.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, tears streaming down her face as she pushed more mahna into the failing body beneath her hands. "I'm so sorry. I'm trying. I'm trying."
The woman's hand found hers and squeezed weakly. "Tell her... tell my daughter I love her. Tell her mommy was brave."
Sera nodded, unable to speak. Thirty seconds later, the woman was dead. Sera allowed herself exactly two breaths of grief before moving to the next patient. And the next. And the next. Outside, the sounds of battle grew closer.
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"This is insanity!" Lucus Cook shouted, his normally measured voice cracking with something that might have been fear or fury or both. "We're being slaughtered! Every idea, every historical precedent, none of it applies! They're not fighting like daemons, they're fighting like..."
"Like humans," Luna finished grimly. The leader of the Mercenary Faction, the Wanderers as they preferred to be called, crouched behind an overturned car, reloading the enchanted pistol she'd taken from a fallen enemy. "Because half of them are humans. Wake up, Lucus. This isn't a daemon incursion. It's a war."
"Wars have rules! Conventions! This is..."
"This is what happens when you underestimate your enemy for too long." Luna peered around the car, spotted a daemon advancing on their position, and put two rounds through its magji shard. The creature dropped, twitched once, and went still. "Poison's been building this organization for months. Recruiting humans, integrating them with daemon forces, developing tactics that combine the worst of both worlds. And we did nothing because we were too busy playing politics."
Lucus fell silent. He had no argument against that. The Learned Faction leader was a scholar, not a warrior. He'd spent his life studying magji theory, cataloging ancient spells, preserving knowledge that might otherwise be lost. He understood the flow of mahna better than almost anyone alive. He could recite the complete history of every major daemon incursion for the past three centuries. None of that helped when bullets were flying and people were dying.
"We need to retreat," he said finally, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. "Regroup. Find a defensible position and..."
"And what? Wait for reinforcements?" Luna laughed bitterly. "The reinforcements are here, Lucus. They sent everyone they could spare. This is it. This is everything the Organization of Magjistars can muster on short notice."
"Then we need to call for more. The overseas branches..."
"Will take days to mobilize. We'll be dead by then." Luna checked her ammunition, found she had six rounds left, and grimaced. "Face it. Without an S-Grade magjistar, we can't match Poison directly. And Victor Khan is dead." The name hung in the air between them like a curse.
Victor Khan. The strongest magjistar of his generation. The man who had single-handedly turned the tide of a dozen battles. The teacher who had trained the most terrifying human being the magji world had ever seen. Dead. Murdered months ago, and the news only recently confirmed to the other branches. Luna had revered him. The entire Mercenary Faction had revered him. He'd been one of them, after all, before he'd risen to heights none of them could match. When she'd heard he was gone, she'd gotten drunk for three days straight. Now she was watching his legacy crumble.
"There has to be something," Lucus insisted. "Some spell, some tool, some..."
The wall behind them exploded. Luna moved on instinct, tackling Lucus to the ground as debris flew over their heads. She rolled, came up firing, and dropped two of the humans who'd breached through the hole. A daemon, Third-Grade, serpentine, fast, lunged for her throat.
"Wind Volume IV: Razor Cyclone!"
The spell came from somewhere to her left. A whirlwind of cutting air engulfed the daemon, shredding it into ribbons of flesh and ichor. Luna glanced over to see a young man in the tattered remains of a Wanderer's jacket, his face pale with exhaustion but his eyes burning with determination.
"Thanks," she said.
"Don't thank me yet." The young man pointed toward the breach in the wall. More enemies were pouring through. Daemons and humans alike, an endless tide of death. "We need to move. Now."
Luna hauled Lucus to his feet. The scholar was shaking, his face ashen, but he was still alive. That would have to be enough.
"Fall back," she ordered, raising her voice so the surviving Wanderers could hear. "Fighting retreat. Don't let them surround us!" They ran.
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"The eastern flank has collapsed," he reported, studying the tactical display on his tablet. Human technology, magji-enhanced for reliability. Another of Poison's innovations. "Kelly's forces are in full retreat. Estimated casualties: sixty to seventy percent."
"And the Learned Faction?"
"Scattered. Their leader is still alive, but his forces have been reduced to a handful of survivors. They're trying to link up with the Mercenaries."
Poison nodded slowly, her emerald eyes fixed on the distant battlefield. Even from here, they could see the flashes of magji and the columns of smoke rising from a dozen different locations. The air smelled of blood and cordite and something else, something bitter and acrid that Webb had learned to associate with daemon presence.
"The healers?" Poison asked.
"The second field hospital has been neutralized. We estimate less than a dozen healing magjistars remain operational." Webb paused, checking an update on his tablet. "One of our human teams is moving to eliminate the survivors."
"Good. Status on the Oubliette?" she asked, changing the subject.
"The magji array is complete. We're ready to deploy on your command."
"Good." Poison's hand moved to the mahna-shielded case at her hip, fingers brushing against its surface with something that might have been anticipation. "Zoey Winters will come eventually. When she does, we'll be ready."
"You're certain she'll come?"
Poison smiled. A thin, cold expression that didn't reach her eyes. "If someone killed your mother, you would do anything to get justice for her, right?"
Webb nodded and returned his attention to the tactical display. On the screen, red markers representing Poison's forces advanced steadily across the map, pushing back the blue markers of the OM defenders. It was almost beautiful in its efficiency, a perfect demonstration of what happened when innovation met tradition. The Organization of Magjistars was dying. And Webb felt nothing but satisfaction watching it happen.
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Jerome Kelly had not retreated in his life. The head of the Kelly Family, leader of the Connate Faction, had built his reputation on unwavering resolve in the face of overwhelming odds. His ancestors had stood against daemon hordes with nothing but their bows and their pride. His grandfather had held the line during the Dark Winter of '52, when a First-Grade daemon had threatened to tear open a permanent rift between worlds.
Kellys did not retreat. Kellys stood their ground. Kellys died on their feet, not running like cowards. So why was he running now?
"Lord Kelly! We have to keep moving!" One of his retainers, a young woman named Chen, one of the finest archers in the family, grabbed his arm and pulled him forward. "They're right behind us!"
Jerome stumbled, nearly fell, caught himself on a piece of rubble. His legs burned with exhaustion. His mahna reserves were dangerously low. He'd been casting almost continuously for hours, trying to create openings for his people to escape, and there was almost nothing left. Around him, the remnants of his proud force fled through the ruined streets. Thirty archers had followed him into battle. Eleven remained.
"We can't..." He coughed, tasted blood. Something was wrong with his lungs. Shrapnel, maybe, or just the accumulated damage of too many near-misses. "We can't keep running. We have to make a stand."
"With what?" Chen's voice cracked. "We're out of arrows, out of mahna, out of everything! The only thing we can do is survive long enough to regroup!"
"Kellys don't..."
"Kellys are dying!" Chen shouted, and Jerome saw tears streaming down her face. "Your son is dead, Lord Kelly! Derick and Paul and Rin and half the family are dead! If you die too, there won't be a Kelly Family left to lead!"
His son. His eldest son, the heir to everything Jerome had built, had been killed in the first hour of the battle. A sniper's bullet through the throat while he was drawing his bow. Jerome hadn't even been able to retrieve the body.
"I..." He stopped, swaying on his feet. The world was spinning. His vision was going gray at the edges. "I don't know what to do, Chen. I don't know how to fight this."
Chen's expression softened. She was young, barely twenty-five, but in that moment, she looked older than Jerome had ever seen her.
"We survive," she said quietly. "That's what we do. We survive, and we remember, and we make them pay for this. But we can't do any of that if we're dead."
Jerome closed his eyes. Drew a shuddering breath. Opened them again.
"Lead the way," he said.
They ran.
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The fighting had been going on for six hours when it happened. Tyson saw it from across the battlefield. A flash of green light so bright it was almost blinding, followed by a scream that seemed to come from everywhere at once. He turned, squinting through the smoke and dust, and felt his heart stop. Poison had taken the field personally.
She moved like nothing he'd ever seen. Faster than any daemon, more powerful than any magjistar, utterly unstoppable. The magjistars in her path didn't even have time to react. One moment they were fighting, casting spells, trying desperately to hold the line. The next moment they were dead, torn apart by claws that glowed with venomous green light.
"Oh gods," someone whispered. "Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods..."
Tyson watched as a squad of veteran Peacekeepers tried to engage her. They were good. Experienced, well-coordinated, each one at least B-Grade. Against most threats, they would have been more than sufficient. Against a Daemon King, they were nothing. Poison didn't even slow down. She flowed through them like water through a sieve, her claws flashing, her body twisting and spinning with impossible precision. In less than ten seconds, all twelve Peacekeepers were in pieces on the ground.
"We need to retreat," Tyson said, his voice hollow. "Everyone. Full retreat. Now."
"But sir..."
"NOW!"
The order went out. What remained of the OM forces began to fall back, abandoning positions they'd held for hours, leaving behind the bodies of friends and comrades. It was a rout, a complete, catastrophic defeat. And through it all, Poison continued to advance, leaving a trail of death in her wake. She wasn't even trying. Tyson could see it in the way she moved. This wasn't a battle for her. It was barely even an inconvenience.
This was what an S-Grade threat looked like. This was what they'd lost when Victor Khan had died. This was the end of everything.
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Kira Reyes had been a magjistar for three years. She was twenty-two years old, a graduate of Supreme Magji High, specializing in fire magji. She'd joined the Peacekeepers because she wanted to protect people. Wanted to use her abilities for something meaningful, something that mattered. Now she was going to die. She could feel it. The daemon advancing on her position was Fourth-Grade at least. Maybe Third. Its body was a nightmare of twisted flesh and too many limbs, and its eyes glowed with hunger. Behind it, more enemies approached. Humans with guns. Other daemons. An endless tide of death.
Her mahna was almost gone. She'd been fighting for hours, casting spell after spell until her reserves had dwindled to almost nothing. She had maybe enough left for one more technique. One final attack before her body gave out entirely. It wouldn't be enough. Nothing she had would be enough to turn the tide. But maybe... maybe it would be enough to buy time.
The thought came to her unbidden, accompanied by a memory from her academy days. A lecture on forbidden techniques. Dangerous techniques. Techniques that no sane magjistar would ever consider using. Overdraft. Every magjistar knew about it. The ability to draw mahna directly from your own life force, converting biological energy into magical power. It could multiply your strength tenfold, a hundredfold, give you enough power to challenge threats far beyond your normal capacity.
The cost was your body. Your health. Your life. There hasn't been anyone known for using Overdraft commonly. That was what her instructor had said. Because anyone who tried didn't live long enough to become known for it. Kira looked at the daemon advancing on her. Looked at the enemies swarming behind it. Looked at the distant figures of her comrades, still fighting, still dying, still holding on despite everything. She thought about her parents. Her little brother. The life she'd never get to live.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay." She closed her eyes and reached deep inside herself. Past her mahna reserves, past her training, past everything she'd been taught was safe. She found the place where her life force resided, that fundamental energy that made her who she was.
And she pulled. The sensation was indescribable. It was like being burned alive from the inside out, like every cell in her body was screaming in protest, like she was dying and being reborn at the same time. Power flooded through her, more power than she'd ever felt, more than she'd ever imagined possible. Her eyes snapped open, and they were glowing with pure white light.
"FIRE VOLUME X: SOLAR EXTINCTION!"
The spell erupted from her body in a wave of heat and light so intense that the air itself ignited. The daemon that had been advancing on her simply ceased to exist, vaporized in an instant, along with everything else in a fifty-foot radius. Enemies screamed and burned. The ground beneath her feet turned to glass. For one perfect moment, Kira felt like a god. Then the pain hit.
She collapsed, her body seizing, her skin cracking and splitting as the Overdraft consumed her from within. Blood poured from her eyes, her nose, her ears. She could feel her organs failing, one by one, shutting down as her life force was depleted. But she was smiling. Because in that moment of divine power, she'd created an opening. A gap in the enemy lines. A chance for her comrades to escape.
"Run," she whispered, though no one could hear her. "Please... run..." Her vision went dark. Her heart stuttered, stopped, started again. Then stopped for good.
Kira Reyes was twenty-two years old. She had been a magjistar for three years. She died a hero, and no one would ever know her name.
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Poison stood in the ruins of what had once been a Peacekeeper command post, surveying the carnage with cold satisfaction. The battle was over. Not officially, of course. There were still pockets of resistance scattered throughout the city, magjistars who hadn't gotten the message that the war was already lost. But those were mopping-up operations, nothing that required her personal attention. The Organization of Magjistars had been broken.
"Casualty reports," she said.
Webb stepped forward, his tablet in hand. "OM forces: approximately four hundred confirmed dead, two hundred wounded, an unknown number captured or missing. Our forces: thirty-seven daemons killed, ninety-two humans dead or wounded."
A four-to-one kill ratio. Better than she'd projected.
"The faction leaders?"
"Jerome Kelly is alive but wounded. His forces have been reduced to less than a dozen. Lucus Cook escaped with a handful of Learned Faction members. Luna and the Wanderers managed to extract most of their surviving personnel, but they took heavy casualties." Webb hesitated. "Tyson, the Head of Magji Defense, is still alive. He organized the retreat. Without him, the casualty figures would have been significantly higher."
"A competent enemy." Poison nodded slowly. "He'll need to be dealt with eventually. But not today." She walked through the rubble, her feet crunching on broken glass and spent bullet casings. The smell of death was everywhere. Blood and smoke and the particular acrid stench of daemon remains. It should have been unpleasant. Instead, it smelled like victory.
"The Council?" she asked.
"In disarray. Xavier Kahn is dead. Killed months ago, as you know. The remaining Council Heads are arguing about how to respond. Some want to sue for peace. Others want to escalate, call in forces from overseas, launch a full counteroffensive." Webb's lip curled. "They can't even agree on who should be in charge."
"Let them argue." Poison stopped beside a body. A young magjistar, female, her face frozen in an expression of peaceful acceptance despite the horrific burns that covered her skin. "Infighting will do our work for us." She knelt beside the body, studying it with detached curiosity. She didn't know any notable daemons with fire magji this effective.
"This is for you, Ethan," she whispered, too quietly for anyone to hear. "All of it. Every death. Every victory. Every moment of suffering I bring to the people who took you from me." Her claws flexed at her sides, still stained with the blood of her enemies.
"I promise you," she said. "I'll make her pay." And she would. No matter how long it took. No matter what it cost.
Zoey Winters would pay for what she'd done. Poison would make sure of it.