Now airborne, Mortivore, the Robo-Dog, glided directly towards Chidi with intense ferocity and relentless speed, its metallic frame gleaming even as the dusk was slowly turning to night. It honed in on Chidi. Its aim? To grab him from the slopping terrain he was climbing.
Chidi and Lù-Qímiào were hoping to make it to the top of the fortress. But the treacherous path they were climbing offered little protection, and the fortress loomed ahead, and they were too slow to evade the machine dog's wrath.
Lù-Qímiào's gaze snapped upward just as Mortivore came within striking distance. Without hesitation, her voice cut through the chaos.
"Trust me?" she shouted.
Before Chidi could process the words, she was already in motion, launching herself at him with all the power of a spring uncoiling. Her body collided with his, knocking him from the path of Mortivore's descending claws, which raked the cliffside in fury. The crunch of rock echoed as the beast's talons scraped inches from where Chidi had been.
In a heartbeat, both of them were airborne, tumbling toward the abyss below. But Lù-Qímiào had no intention of falling to their doom. She had a plan. A dangerous plan. With a swift motion, her left hand shot out, fingers splayed, and a shimmering elastic thread unfurled from the space between the base of her palm and her wrist where her tattoo started: its gleam cutting through the air. The string shot upward, latching onto a jagged slit in the fortress wall above with a force that yanked them like a pendulum toward safety.
In a matter of moments, they were flying over the edge of the cliff, landing hard on the solid ground inside the citadel. Chidi collapsed in an awkward heap, while Lù-Qímiào landed with the ease of a feline, graceful as ever.
Though both were alive and unscathed, the fear was still etched on Chidi's face, his breath coming in shallow gasps.
"H-h-how?" His voice wavered, his eyes wide with disbelief at the incredible stunt she'd just pulled off.
Lù-Qímiào didn't waste a second. "I'll explain later," she snapped, already springing into action. "RUN!"
The Academy of Bullet Bending had never experienced war. Not real war. Sure, students trained daily in the art of deflection, redirection, and scatterwave firing. Sure, the Watchtowers kept rounds of E M P launchers in case of breach. But no one at the Citadeled Academy truly believed an enemy would dare violate its sacred airspace... Until now.
The clouds above the Academy swirled in a sudden vortex of smoke and fire.
From the distance, the Robo-Dog, Mortivore: Unit Thirty-seven-K Nine, was no longer just a silhouette of menace. It was here. And it had come for one mission: Chidi.
Its metallic paws thundered on marble stone, claws ripping up the Academy's blessed glyphs etched into the ground by ancient Masters. The eastern tower rang the Call of Ironstorm: a signal not used in over three centuries. But even as weapon gates rose and artillery arrays deployed, the Academy's finest were not prepared. Not for this.
Blastron Phasers erupted from Mortivore's core like hellfire from a demon's gut. They painted the courtyard in red-hot lasers, disintegrating barricades, melting iron statues, and exploding the eastern wall into molten rock.
And... boom! The Citadel groaned.
Chidi ducked beneath a stairwell's shattered canopy, his ears ringing, heart pounding. He'd seen war simulations. He'd passed the top score in Tactical Anticipation class. But nothing in those tests prepared him for this. For the raw force. The unrelenting pursuit. The certainty of death.
Rubble exploded to his left. Chidi threw his body right, but the shockwave caught his ankle, sending him tumbling into a wrecked water fountain.
"I can't outrun it!" he screamed.
Lù-Qímiào landed beside him, flipping from what used to be the second balcony. Her white uniform was torn, blood trailing from a shallow gash on her shoulder. But her eyes, sharp, calculating, never blinked.
"We're not outrunning it," she said, drawing a micro-blade from her belt and slashing a conduit wire from the ground, wrapping it around her left wrist. It sparked. "We're outwitting it."
"Can't you see?" Chidi gasped, struggling to rise. "This isn't a normal war machine. It's learning. It knows me."
"I know you too," she replied.
Mortivore burst through a granite pillar as though it were a paper screen. Its sensor head swiveled once. Locked. Chidi's body heat painted in neon across its vision.
Lù-Qímiào threw two plasma flares. A decoy tactic: old but sometimes effective. Not this time.
The Robo-Dog twisted mid-leap, ignoring the flares, hurling a mounted claw-blade straight at Chidi's chest.
But she was faster. She leapt in front of him, a spinning cyclone of movement. The blade ricocheted off as though striking a metallic barrel on her left wrist: which felt like a shield. It still knocked her back five feet, into a pile of crushed lockers, but she was breathing. Alive.
Chidi's brain short-circuited. He wasn't sure what he had just witnessed. He was, however, sure she had a tattoo on her left hand, not a metal wrist shield: especially one powerful enough to defect an equally powerful deadly weapon from a first-class mass-terminator!
Chidi's voice broke. "Lù-Qí...!"
"I'm fine!" she hissed. "Move!"
The western defense turret opened fire: a last measure. Explosive-tipped rounds rained down in a flurry. Mortivore staggered as one found a joint seam: but then it roared. Not like a machine. Not like a program. But like a predator.
It returned fire. Phaser burst: cone-wide. Impact radius: seventy meters. The blast collapsed the west tower. Screams rang out from inside. Students. Benders. Master-Benders. Gone!
Dust and despair swept the Academy. And still, Mortivore locked on Chidi. It began to shift again. Hover mode engaged. Thrusters extended. It would not chase anymore. It would descend like a god of execution.
Lù-Qímiào stood, arm trembling. The cut on her left shoulder had deepened. Blood traced symbols down her forearm, pooling at her wrist where something ancient stirred.
Chidi didn't notice at first: he was pulling her toward the only remaining exit, under the fractured West Dome.
But the hum. The sound like a tuning fork struck inside a cathedral.
Chidi turned and saw it. The tattoo linings on her left wrist began to twist. Began to move. Began to... glow. Spirals of blue and crimson light unfolded like mechanical wings. The tattoo was shifting. Unraveling. Becoming.
Then, with a burst of radiant force, a Brace, just like his own, materialized on her wrist. Fully formed. Fully alive.
The blast from its appearance sent Mortivore back four feet, knocking its trajectory mid-flight. It landed unbalanced, digging trenches into the courtyard with its claws.
Chidi's jaw dropped. "There's… another?"