"Arrrghhhhh!!!"

A scream tore through the night as a security officer's arm came away from his shoulder. Not cut. Not severed cleanly. Ripped. A one-horn's grip had closed around flesh and bone, twisted, and pulled until something fundamental gave way. Tendons snapped like overstressed cables. Muscle tore in wet sounds that carried across the camp. The limb came free with the socket still attached, dangling from the Harbinger's fist like a trophy.

The officer—Davis Kowalski, though nobody would remember his name after tonight—stared at the space where his arm used to be. His brain hadn't caught up yet. Shock was a mercy that wouldn't last. His fire manipulation flickered around his remaining hand, orange flames guttering like a candle in wind, completely inadequate for what was happening to him.

His partner, Tosin, made a decision born from desperation rather than tactics. He launched himself at the one-horn's back, fingers scrabbling for purchase on grey skin that felt like stone wrapped in leather. Maybe he thought he could restrain it. Maybe he thought his enhanced strength would matter. Maybe he wasn't thinking at all, just acting because watching Kowalski die was worse than trying something stupid.

The Harbinger reached back without looking. Its hand found Tosin's vest, closed around the tactical webbing, and pulled him forward with the casual ease of someone picking fruit. Tosin's feet left the creature's back. He sailed through the air, came around to hang in front of the Harbinger's face, suspended like a child's toy.

Tosin met its eyes. Saw something that might have been amusement. Then the tail came up.

The appendage moved like a striking snake, faster than Tosin could process. The tip punched through his stomach, right below the ribs, and kept going. Exited through his back. Tosin's mouth opened but no sound came out. Just blood, running down his chin, dripping onto his chest.

The Harbinger pulled in opposite directions.

Tosin separated. Upper body and lower body, the tail having done its work with surgical efficiency. Both halves hit the ground with wet sounds that made nearby crew members turn away or vomit or both.

Kowalski was still screaming. Still hadn't processed that his arm was gone, that his partner was dead, that in approximately ten seconds the same Harbinger would turn its attention back to him and finish what it started.

Lila saw it happening from thirty feet away.

Her telekinesis caught the one-horn mid-turn, invisible force wrapping around its torso like hands made of solid air. The creature stopped completely. Not slowed—stopped. Its feet locked in place, its arms frozen mid-motion, its entire body held in grip that suggested Lila had done this before to things exactly this size.

The one-horn's eyes went wide. It pushed against her hold, muscles straining, natural strength that could tear through steel trying to break free. Nothing moved. Lila's pale blue eyes were focused, her jaw set, and the creature wasn't going anywhere.

Sophie appeared from the side, both plasma blades ignited, purple-white energy screaming as she closed the distance. The one-horn was still struggling against Lila's telekinesis when both blades came down in a crossing pattern that caught the creature at the neck. Superheated edges carved through natural armor, through flesh, through vertebrae.

The head toppled. The body collapsed.

Kowalski stopped screaming. Looked at his missing arm. Looked at Tosin's separated halves. Then he passed out, which was probably the kindest thing that could have happened to him in that moment.

"That's three down!" Lila called out, already scanning for the next threat. Her breathing was steady despite having just held a one-horn completely immobile. The boost Noah had sent them was still active, purple energy dancing faintly around her hands, making everything easier, sharper, more responsive.

Sophie's breathing was elevated but controlled. Her blades stayed active, both hands gripping the hilts with enough force that her knuckles showed white through her tactical gloves. "At least six more two-horns that I can see. Possibly more we haven't spotted yet."

The camp had transformed into something unrecognizable from what it had been an hour ago. Shelters were collapsed or burning. Equipment lay scattered across trampled ground. Bodies—both human and Harbinger—marked where desperate fights had played out with varying results.

Crew members who could fight were doing so. Those who couldn't had already been moved to the Peregrine's panic room along with Governor Sebastian, following Angel's orders from earlier. The ship's reinforced compartment could withstand everything short of a direct orbital strike. Which left the actual fighting to people equipped for it.

Two more two-horns were approaching from the western perimeter, moving in coordination, using destroyed shelters for cover. Smart tactics. Pack hunting. One drew fire while the other closed distance, then they'd switch roles, keeping defenders off-balance.

Sophie moved to intercept, her plasma blades humming. These two were ready for her. They split, came at her from different angles, forced her to choose which one to engage first.

She chose left. Drove both blades toward the creature's center mass. It blocked, caught her wrists, stopped the blades inches from its torso. Its strength was overwhelming even with Noah's boost amplifying her capabilities.

The second Harbinger was already moving in from her blind spot, preparing to strike while she was committed to the first engagement.

Purple energy flared brighter around Sophie's arms. Noah's boost was still active, still pushing her beyond her normal limits. She flexed, twisted the first Harbinger's arms back against their joints, forced them into angles that made something crack audibly. The creature's eyes went wide. Then Sophie's plasma blades came up through its torso, crossing in an X that carved through its chest cavity and emerged from its back.

She spun without pausing, bringing both blades around in a horizontal slash that caught the second Harbinger mid-charge. The creature's head separated from its shoulders in a spray of black blood that painted the ground in abstract patterns.

Lila was already engaging another threat. A two-horn had emerged from behind a collapsed shelter, moving fast, trying to reach the remaining crew members who were providing covering fire from defensive positions.

Lila extended both hands and the two-horn slowed. Not stopped like the one-horn had been—this creature was heavier, stronger, and even with Noah's boost Lila couldn't fully arrest its momentum. But she slowed it enough. Turned its charge into a crawl.

A cargo container the size of a small vehicle lifted from where it had fallen during the crash. Rotated in the air. Launched itself at the struggling Harbinger with force that created a sonic boom.

The impact was catastrophic. The creature folded around the container, its body wrapping backward in ways that could only mean multiple structural failure. Both the Harbinger and the improvised projectile tumbled through the camp until they hit the far perimeter.

The Harbinger didn't get back up.

Another two-horn, bulkier than the others, had learned from watching its companions die. It grabbed a fallen tree trunk, easily thirty feet long, and threw it like a javelin toward the cluster of crew members.

Lila's telekinesis caught it mid-flight. The tree trunk stopped, hovering in the air. Her nose started bleeding from the effort of redirecting something that massive at that speed. But the tree stopped.

Then she reversed its trajectory and sent it back.

The bulky two-horn tried to dodge. Wasn't fast enough. The tree trunk hit it center mass with all its original momentum plus whatever additional force Lila had added. The impact drove the creature backward, pinned it against a standing tree, crushed its chest cavity.

It thrashed for several seconds before going still.

More two-horns kept coming. Sophie and Lila fought them methodically, their coordination honed from months of fighting together. Sophie's plasma blades carved through natural armor. Lila's telekinesis created openings, controlled battlefield positioning, turned the environment itself into a weapon.

But they were getting tired. Noah's boost was incredible, but it couldn't erase the fundamental reality that they'd been fighting for ten minutes straight against creatures that could kill them with a single solid hit.

Then Angel entered the fight.

She appeared from the direction of the Peregrine, moving at a sprint, her ravager blaster in one hand. A two-horn intercepted her path, probably thinking she was an easy target separated from the main group.

Angel didn't slow down. As the creature swung at her, she dropped into a slide that carried her between its legs, came up behind it, and slapped both palms against the back of its knees in passing.

The two-horn took three more steps. Then its legs gave out. Blood was pouring from the joints, from inside the creature's body, vessels rupturing in ways that should have been impossible without physical trauma. The Harbinger collapsed forward, tried to stand, couldn't. Its knees wouldn't support weight anymore.

Angel raised her ravager blaster without breaking stride and fired once. The shot took the creature's head clean off.

But that should have been impossible right?

Correct, the ravager blaster wasn't what took the Harbinger's head off. Something else did. Something Angel had done that was too quick for the ordinary eye to spot.

She reached the main defensive perimeter and immediately began engaging targets with such efficiency that made Sophie's tactical training look amateur. Every shot from her blaster found critical points. Every movement placed her exactly where she needed to be. She fought like someone who'd spent years perfecting the art of killing things that were objectively stronger and faster than her.

A two-horn charged her position. Angel sidestepped its charge, pressed one hand against its ribs as it passed, and the creature stumbled three steps later before blood began pouring from its mouth, its nose, its eyes. She shot it in the head before it could recover.

Another two-horn learned from that mistake. It approached cautiously, using destroyed equipment for cover, trying to find an angle that wouldn't leave it exposed. Angel formed a sphere of blood in her palm—not her own blood, but blood she'd pulled from the ground where previous Harbingers had died. The sphere floated above her hand, spinning slowly, waiting for direction.

She threw it. The blood sphere crossed the distance in under a second, hit the cautious two-horn in the chest, and detonated. The explosion wasn't fire—it was superheated blood that sprayed outward in all directions, covering the creature in scalding liquid that immediately began crystallizing, hardening, creating a shell that locked its arms against its torso.

The Harbinger struggled against the crystallized blood, natural strength cracking the shell, breaking free piece by piece. Angel was already moving, closing distance while it was restrained. She reached the creature, touched its exposed throat, and more blood rose from the ground to wrap around the Harbinger's neck like a noose.

The blood constricted. The creature's struggles became frantic. Then the noose tightened completely and the two-horn's head separated from its body.

Sophie and Lila had stopped fighting to watch. They'd both seen Angel in action before, during the Peregrine assault, but this was different. This was Angel with room to work, with access to her full capabilities, with dead Harbingers providing material for her blood manipulation.

"That's fourteen two-horns down," Angel said, her voice carrying across the battlefield without being raised. "Anyone see more?"

Silence answered. Just the sound of fires burning, crew members breathing hard, someone crying quietly in the distance.

Then the ground shook.

Not vibration from something distant. Impact tremors, getting closer, each one strong enough to rattle equipment and make people stumble. Trees in the forest were falling, pushed aside by something massive moving through them with complete disregard for anything in its path.

"Three-horn!" someone shouted from the perimeter.

Sophie felt ice settle in her chest. They'd handled two-horns through numbers, through Noah's boost, through Angel's blood manipulation. But a three-horn was a different category entirely. The kind of threat that required either overwhelming force or specialized capabilities.

The creature emerged from the tree line, and Sophie's eyes immediately swept through the details. Eight feet tall. Lean build suggesting speed over raw power. Three horns swept back in elegant curves. Similar to what Lyra had described to Angel that Noah was fighting.

Angel moved forward without hesitation, positioning herself between the three-horn and what remained of the camp. Blood from the dead two-horns began rising around her, responding to her presence, forming into shapes.

A scythe materialized in her right hand. Four feet long from tip to base, the blade formed from crystallized Harbinger blood that looked almost metallic, black with red highlights. The handle wrapped around her grip perfectly.

More blood formed into spheres that orbited around her left hand. Five of them, each maybe the size of a fist, spinning slowly, ready to detonate or crystallize or whatever else her ability allowed.

The three-horn charged. Not mindless—calculated, its intelligence evident in how it approached, most likely testing Angel's capabilities.

Angel didn't wait for it to close. She threw one of her blood spheres. The projectile moved faster than she could have thrown it physically, propelled by her blood manipulation. It hit the three-horn's chest and detonated.

Superheated blood sprayed across the creature's torso, immediately crystallizing, hardening, creating a shell that restricted movement. The three-horn roared, stumbled, tried to break free of the crystallized coating.

Angel was already moving. She sprinted toward the creature, scythe raised, and as she ran more blood rose from the ground to follow her. The liquid coalesced around her right leg, wrapped around her boot, her calf, her thigh, hardened into something that looked like armor except it moved with her.

She jumped. The blood-coated leg came around in a kick aimed at the three-horn's head.

The impact created a sound like thunder. The creature's head snapped sideways with force that broke its neck audibly. It dropped, massive body hitting the ground hard enough to create a small crater.

Angel landed, pulled her scythe around in a follow-up strike, and the blade took the three-horn's head clean off.

Silence.

Sophie stared. Lila stared. Every crew member who'd witnessed what just happened stood frozen, trying to process how Angel had just killed a three-horn in under thirty seconds.

Then movement in the forest. More impact tremors. Heavier this time.

Three more three-horns emerged from different sections of the tree line, moving with coordination that suggested they'd been watching and now adapting their approach.

"Sophie." Lila's voice was tight, the purple energy from Noah's boost completely faded now. "I can handle one if I push everything I have. But three? We need—"

BOOM

Something dropped from the canopy overhead.

Not fell. Dropped with purpose, with enough force that its impact cratered the ground between Sophie and Lila. They both jumped backward reflexively, weapons raised, and then froze when they processed what they were looking at.

Twelve feet tall. Feminine silhouette. Four horns curved back from its skull. The Widow's form, except made entirely of black-purple void energy that crackled and sparked like contained lightning.

Everyone in the camp stopped moving. The three three-horns approaching froze mid-stride. Crew members who'd been preparing to fight suddenly weren't sure what they should do.

Around the construct's neck, tied like a scarf, was a piece of black fabric with purple stitching. The Eclipse faction insignia, unmistakable even from a distance.

"Hold!" Sophie's voice cut across the camp, stopping several crew members who'd been about to open fire. Her mind was racing, connecting dots. Purple void energy. Eclipse insignia. Noah had sent them that boost, which meant he was still fighting, still alive, still capable of using his abilities.

"That's..." Lila started, her voice carrying disbelief. "That's ours?"

"Has to be," Sophie replied, though saying it out loud made it sound insane. "Noah's doing. Look at the insignia. He sent it to help us."

The Widow construct's head turned, eyeless sockets glowing with purple light, and seemed to assess the three approaching three-horns. Then she moved.

Not running. Something faster. Her void energy form displaced across distance in bursts that looked like teleportation, covering ground in ways that suggested she wasn't entirely bound by normal physics.

She reached the nearest three-horn before it could react. Her tail came around in a whip-strike that created a sonic boom. The three-horn tried to block, got its arms up, and the tail went through both limbs like they were made of paper. Severed them completely, void energy eating away at the stumps.

The Widow construct's clawed hand followed immediately, drove through the three-horn's chest, emerged from its back. She pulled the creature closer, opened its jaws and bit down on its skull.

The three-horn's head came apart like overripe fruit. The body dropped.

The other two three-horns reassessed.

"Mother?" One of them said.

But giving how "Mother" had just ate the head of one of their comrades. And despite this being looking just like the widow they seemingly knew, something about her made them react no different to other threats.

Whatever intelligence governed them recognized that this four-horn construct was a bigger threat than the humans. They split, came at the Widow from different angles, coordinating their assault.

She met them both simultaneously. Her tail caught one three-horn around the neck, constricted, and the creature's vertebrae separated with sounds like breaking wood. Her claws tore into the other three-horn's torso, carved through natural armor, and in an instant, that one dropped dead too.

Both three-horns dropped within seconds of each other.

The Widow construct stood among the corpses, void energy trailing from her form like smoke, her eyeless gaze sweeping the battlefield for more threats. Found none. Turned toward Sophie and Lila, head tilting slightly like she was assessing them.

Sophie raised one hand slowly, showing she wasn't a threat. "We're Eclipse. You're with us."

The construct's head tilted further, processing. Then she moved to the camp's perimeter and settled into a defensive position, clearly intending to guard against further incursions.

"Okay," Lila said quietly. "That's the most terrifying thing Noah's ever done and I've seen him summon dragons."

Angel walked over, scythe still in hand, blood spheres still orbiting around her other hand. She studied the Widow construct for several seconds, her expression unreadable.

"Your teammate can create four-horn Harbingers," Angel said. It wasn't a question.

"Apparently," Sophie replied. "We didn't know he could do that either until about thirty seconds ago."

"Where is he?" Angel's tone shifted to something more urgent. "Noah. Where is he?"

"Fighting," Lila said. "Somewhere in the forest. But we don't know his current status or what he's dealing with."

Angel looked toward the forest, then back at the camp. The immediate threat was neutralized. The Widow construct was guarding the perimeter. Crew members were securing the area, checking on wounded, beginning the process of accounting for casualties.

"The governor is secure in the panic room," Angel said, already making a decision. "You two can handle defensive coordination here. I'm going to find Noah."

She didn't wait for agreement. Just started moving, heading into the forest at a run, following the direction where the three-horns had emerged from. Her scythe dissolved as she ran, the blood returning to liquid state, but more blood from the ground began following her movement, ready to form whatever weapon she needed.

Sophie and Lila watched her disappear into the tree line.

"Should we—" Lila started.

"No," Sophie interrupted. "She's right. We need to secure the camp, make sure nothing else attacks while everyone's vulnerable. Angel can handle herself. And if Noah's in trouble, she's probably the best backup we could send."

They turned their attention back to the camp, to the wounded who needed treatment, to the defensive positions that needed reinforcing. The Widow construct remained at the perimeter, motionless except for the void energy trailing from her form, a silent guardian that made everyone uncomfortable but nobody was going to argue with.

In the forest, Angel ran. Her ears picked up sounds of combat in the distance—impacts that created shockwaves, the crack of breaking trees, roars that definitely came from Harbingers. Lyra had told her about the three-horn that attacked Noah and her during their patrol. Had said Noah stayed behind to fight it while she returned to warn the camp.

The sounds Angel was hearing suggested that fight was still ongoing. Or had escalated. Multiple impacts, overlapping, coming from at least two different sources judging by the varying directions.

She pushed harder, her superhuman speed carrying her through undergrowth, dodging obstacles, following the sounds of destruction.

Then she burst into a clearing and stopped.

Noah stood in the center of the devastation, breathing hard, covered in blood and dirt. His armor—that void-black set she'd seen him wearing on the videos she watched of him—was cracked in multiple places, pieces missing entirely. At his feet lay a three-horn Harbinger, its body twisted in ways that suggested it had died badly.

But that wasn't what made Angel stare.

In the distance, maybe two hundred meters away, another three-horn lay dead. This one had what could only be described as broken wings. Actual membranous wings that spread from its back, now torn and dissolved, void energy having eaten through them.

Noah noticed her arrival, his head turning. His dark eyes were sharp despite obvious exhaustion, and when he spoke his voice was rough.

"Fighting that one—" he gestured at the three-horn with wings, "—I noticed something. Smoke trail in the sky, opposite direction from camp. Rising from beyond that ridge."

He looked at Angel directly.

"I'd bet everything that's where their mothership is or at least something big carrying them here. The source of all these Harbingers. We've got two options. Either we try to get everyone mobile and run, hope they don't have more Harbingers to deploy. Or—"

"We take the fight to them," Angel finished. Her hand went to where her scythe had been, blood already rising from the ground to reform the weapon. "You mean assault a ship full of Harbingers. That's insane."

She pulled the scythe from the coalescing blood, tested its weight, and her teeth showed in a grin that was all blood-covered and feral.

"Let's do it."

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