The whine of the sonic cannons escalated, a needle of sound that vibrated through the water and into Kalpit's bones. They had less than a second.
Anasuya reacted first. She didn't try to outrun the attack. She pushed off the wall, launching herself directly at the nearest serpent-drone. At the same time, she ripped a small, metallic disk from her belt and threw it. The disk shot through the water, a tiny propeller whirring to life, and clamped itself magnetically to the drone's head, right next to the charging cannon.
It was a miniaturized EMP grenade.
VREEEEE—POP.
A silent sphere of blue energy pulsed outwards. The charging whine of the first drone's cannon died instantly. Its red optics flickered and went dark. The machine, its systems momentarily scrambled, went rigid and began to drift, paralyzed.
The second drone, however, was unaffected. It compensated instantly for its partner's failure and fired.
SHWOOOOM!
It was not a beam, but a concussion. A sphere of pure, focused sound erupted from its maw. It hit the water and expanded, creating a vortex of cavitation bubbles. The water around them felt like it was boiling and freezing at the same time. The impact, even from a dozen meters away, was a physical blow that rattled Kalpit's teeth and threatened to rupture his lungs.
He saw the blast coming, a ripple in the water, a distortion in his Muladhara-sight. He didn't have time to dodge. He had only one option. He activated his Manipura, but not for an attack. He created a small, dense, flickering shield of golden energy in front of his chest.
The shockwave hit. The shield, an untested and desperate defense, shattered like glass. But it absorbed the worst of the impact. Instead of being pulped, he was thrown backwards, tumbling through the water, his ears ringing, his vision blurring.
He fought to orient himself just in time to see the second serpent-drone lunge, its metallic body coiling like a striking snake, its pincer-claws snapping open, ready to tear him in two.
Anasuya was already on the move. Having disabled the first drone, she was rocketing towards the second, a vibro-knife humming in her hand. But she was too far away. She wouldn't make it in time.
Kalpit, dazed and disoriented, was out of options. His Prana reserves were low after using the Mantra-shila and creating the shield. His body was battered by the concussion. He had no more weapons, no more tricks.
The drone's head, a nightmare of sensors and blades, was centimeters from his face.
Parashurama's voice echoed in his memory, a low growl from another lifetime. Pain. Focus. Strategy.
The pain was a certainty. Strategy had failed. That left only focus.
He looked into the drone's central optic, a single, glowing red eye. An eye was a lens. It was a sensor. It was designed to receive information.
He did not raise a shield or prepare a strike. He closed his own eyes and reached out with his weakest, most subtle tool. The fledgling power of his Ajna. The Third Eye.
He didn't fire a beam of energy. He didn't try to hack it. He simply opened a one-way channel from his mind to the machine's optic sensor and showed it a single, terrifying image from Parashurama's memory-infusion.
He showed it the image of a god wielding an axe that cleaved reality.
He showed it the death of a star.
He poured an impossible, cosmic concept, a sliver of a god's-eye view of universal destruction, directly into the drone's simple, logic-based processing core.
The effect on the machine was akin to showing a calculator the concept of infinity.
The serpent-drone froze. Its claws, inches from Kalpit's throat, locked up. Its red optic flickered erratically, from red to blue to amber, cycling through a thousand diagnostic errors at once. It was not physically damaged. It had suffered a catastrophic logic failure. A digital aneurysm. It had seen the face of a god and its circuits had burned out from the sheer, unacceptable scale of the data.
Anasuya arrived a second later, driving her humming vibro-knife deep into the drone's primary power conduit at the neck joint.
SHUNNK! FZZZZZZZZT!
The lights on the second drone died for good. It hung motionless in the water, another piece of dead metal in the spire's forgotten moat.
Silence. The chaotic, violent battle was over in less than thirty seconds. They were alive, floating in the dark, cold water amidst the husks of their defeated enemies.
"What did you do?" Anasuya's voice came over the comm, a mix of awe and confusion. "It just... stopped."
"I showed it something it couldn't understand," Kalpit replied, his head throbbing from the mental effort. Using the Ajna like that, as a weapon, had felt like screaming with his soul.
<"Impressive. Truly,">> Atri's voice crackled, cutting through their post-battle recovery. <"You two are a remarkably effective combination of old magic and new chaos. But you've made a lot of noise. Their internal systems will be registering the loss of two primary sentinels. A security team will be on its way to this vent. You must be inside and out of sight before they arrive. Go!">>
The urgency in Atri's voice snapped them back to the mission. They swam through the dark opening of the geothermal vent, a tunnel wide enough to drive a truck through. The current here was weaker, the water calmer. After about fifty meters, the tunnel began to angle upwards. They surfaced in a pool of dark water inside the spire itself.
They pulled themselves out onto a narrow metal catwalk. The air was warm, humid, and smelled of ozone and recycled air. They were in a cavernous, dark space, the only light coming from a few red maintenance strobes. The rhythmic clank-hiss of heavy machinery echoed from somewhere above. They had made it. They were inside.
Kalpit pulled the rebreather from his mouth, his teeth chattering uncontrollably now that the adrenaline was fading. He leaned against the railing, his body shivering. He was spent.
Anasuya was already moving, her senses sharp. She pulled the last of Parashurama's gifts from the satchel. The strange, silent leather pouch. The 'Tamas' pouch.
She moved back to the edge of the pool where they had surfaced and submerged the open pouch. She then placed one of the unused Mantra-shilas inside it, the rune for Paralysis. She pulled the drawstring tight.
The moment the pouch was sealed, the Paralysis stone, humming with a latent power that would be detectable to any Prana sensor, simply vanished from Kalpit's awakened senses.
Anasuya secured the pouch to the underside of the catwalk, deep in the shadows. A breadcrumb. A trap.
"When the next set of sentinels or security divers come to investigate," she whispered, her voice low in the echoing chamber, "their sensors will find nothing but dead machines. No Prana signatures, no active hostiles. It will confuse them. Make them second-guess their orders. It will buy us time."
It was a brilliant, simple piece of misdirection. She wasn't just a soldier; she was an insurgency expert.
A distant clanging sound, the sound of a heavy blast door opening, echoed from the far end of the chamber. A sweep of bright, white light cut through the darkness.
"Time we don't have anymore," Kalpit whispered. "They're here."