Chapter 103: The Master Who Drew Her Sword

The lead attacker ducked through the broken studs. Shape. Size. Intensity. Lyra rapped the floor planks with her wand tip and released a tight pocket of air directly beneath his lead instep.

His boot kicked out from under him, pitching his collarbone hard into a jagged wall stud, and her follow-up blast caught him under the chin and bowled him back through the gap.

The second operative read the spell’s windup. Dropping into a low crouch beneath the air current, he swept a hooked gutting knife at her ankles.

Lyra leaped backward. Cold steel snagged the hem of her blue dress—the new wool Kōya had paid for at the market—and ripped a foot of fabric away. Her left heel came down on a rolling glass shard, pitching her sideways into the corner wardrobe with a bone-jarring thud that knocked the wind from her lungs and loosened her sweaty fingers on the polished wood of her focus.

The operative surged off the floorboards, knife raised for her collarbone.

Lyra shoved her palm into the six inches of air between them and dumped raw mana through the crystal without shaping it. The unrefined pressure wave slapped the demon’s nose flat, rocking him back on his heels with blood pouring over his teeth, buying her the two seconds she needed to scramble upright.

"Stay down," she hissed, spitting plaster grit onto the planks.

Snarling through a split lip, the demon lunged again. Lyra punched a denser wind sphere into his solar plexus, sending him reeling backward into the chest of the third attacker squeezing through the broken lath. Both bodies tangled and crashed into the overturned washstand.

With the breach clear for three heartbeats, Lyra spun toward the corner. "Are you hurt?"

Kaela’s silver eyes stared past Lyra’s hip toward the empty doorway, unblinking.

Lyra edged closer, her skirts torn and dusty, keeping her wand leveled at the hole in the wall. "It’s all right. I’m right here."

Loose mortar crunched behind her left heel. Lyra whipped her head around as a broad-shouldered brute stepped through the shattered hallway doorframe, having circled around Kōya’s fight on the landing. His slit pupils fixed immediately on the silver-haired beastwoman on the floor.

"Found you."

Lyra threw herself into his path, swinging her wand up, only for a forearm thick as a ship’s timber to swipe at her temple. She ducked under the whistling limb, jammed the crystal tip against his floating ribs, and triggered a point-blank burst. The shockwave slammed the brute sideways into the writing table, tipping the oak surface and sending the clay water pitcher crashing into fragments across the boards.

She pressed forward to follow up, raising her arm to fire again, when the demon’s clawed hand shot out from the wreckage and clamped around her left wrist.

Crushing pressure ground the small bones of her forearm together. Lyra gasped, dropping to one knee as she twisted her shoulder to break the leverage, while the brute yanked her off balance and raised his free hand, five black talons spread to rake her throat.

Steel rang behind her back.

A jagged arc of blue lightning licked across the dark bedroom, filling the air with the sharp tang of ozone, and the brute’s head snapped violently to the left.

Lyra froze in his loosening grip.

Kaela was standing.

***

A hand had reached down for her. That was all Kaela’s fractured mind registered through the grey fog: a dense shadow falling across her knees and thick fingers reaching out to drag her back into the dark beneath the stage.

Stormfront was six inches out of its lacquered scabbard before her conscious mind caught up with her hands.

Residual lightning snapped along the exposed black steel, jumping the gap to scorch the brute’s knuckles. He yanked his hand off Lyra’s wrist, his blackened fingertips spasming from the nerve shock.

Kaela’s breath hitched in her throat. Every starved, torn muscle in her forearms burned from the weight of the blade, and she had no memory of pushing herself up off the floorboards.

The demon bared his fangs, cradling his blistered hand against his belly before lunging straight at Kaela’s throat with his good arm.

Her heels shifted on instinct. She brought the long scabbard and half-drawn blade up on a tight diagonal line.

Claws shrieked against dark steel.

The impact hammered through her bruised wrists and into her collarbones, driving her shoulder blades flat against the cracked plaster wall. Her weakened legs shook under the brute’s superior weight, her teeth clenching until her molars ached, yet the guard held firm.

*Move your feet*, an old voice inside her skull barked. *Never contest raw weight with your arms. Turn the wrists.*

Her left boot slid back half a step across the glass. Her wrists rolled inward. Stormfront’s slick fuller angled the demon’s claws three inches past her flattened ear, dumping his forward momentum into the plaster beside her cheek.

Ten thousand repetitions in a sunlit courtyard. A drill she had beaten into Yuna’s shoulders on summer afternoons, and into a stubborn boy’s hands years later. For three heartbeats, her tendons remembered who she was while her mind remained trapped behind a wall of static.

The demon stumbled off balance against the wainscot. Kaela stayed backed against the wall, both hands white-knuckled around the rayskin wrap.

"Kaela?" Lyra breathed from the floor.

The brute shook plaster dust from his coarse mane, eyeing the crackling blade with fresh malice. "That weapon belongs to the Demon Lord."

He dropped his shoulder and charged her chest to pin her to the studs.

Kaela raised the hilt. Blue light flared across the ceiling beams.

She parried his lead claw high, letting his nails gouge deep furrows into the wood beside her temple, and pivoted her hip into a rising counter-strike with the metal scabbard still covering the point.

The reinforced iron chape caught the brute dead center in the breastbone. Ribs caved inward with a thick crunch, and the force launched him backward over the upturned oak table, reducing the furniture to kindling beneath his spine.

Plaster dust drifted down over the shattered wood.

Lyra’s breath caught. Her wand hand trembled at her side. "Kaela, you—"

Kaela’s chin dipped toward her collarbone.

Stormfront’s tip sagged toward the floorboards.

Her knees buckled without a sound.

Lyra dived across the scattered glass and caught Kaela under the armpits before her temple could strike the planks. "Kaela!"

Even in collapse, the beastwoman’s fingers stayed locked around Stormfront’s hilt and throat, trapping the half-drawn weapon against her sternum. Lyra eased her back down into the corner, propping her limp shoulders up against her own knee.

"Eyes on me. Stay with me?" Lyra pressed her palm to Kaela’s cold cheek. The silver eyes remained half-open, staring unfocused at the ceiling beams while ragged breaths rattled in her chest. "Kaela, please."

Dull crashes echoed from the street below. Kōya had carried the corridor fight out the back entrance. The splintering of a wagon bed and the shrill neighing of panicked horses rose through the shattered window, leaving the upper landing open as another tall shadow rounded the top of the stairwell.

Lyra whipped her wand up with her throbbing left hand. "Stay away from her!"

The new operative grinned, stepping over his unconscious comrade in the threshold.

Lyra didn’t wait for him to clear the doorframe. She fired a tight bolt of compressed air straight under his chin, snapping his teeth together and rocking his head back against the lintel, then chained a two-handed gale into his gut that slammed him spine-first into the opposite hallway wall.

He groaned, rolling onto one elbow. Lyra pointed the wand down and hammered him flat into the boards with a third blast.

"Stay. Down." Her voice came out ragged.

Dropping to her knees beside Kaela, she gripped the beastwoman’s wrists and tried to pry the stiff fingers off Stormfront’s handle so she could haul her toward the stairs. The tendons in Kaela’s forearms resisted like braided iron cable under her pull. Every ounce of force made Kaela curl tighter around the sword.

"Please," Lyra whispered, her swollen wrist throbbing in time with her pulse.

Thick boots creaked on the lower landing. Lyra twisted toward the wrecked doorway, her voice cracking at the top of her lungs. "Kōya! Come here! Please!"

***