“So . . . do they need to be here?” he asked.

  Then he heard a voice from . . . somewhere. It came from all around him and right in front of him at the same time. It was Qrora’s.

  “You must fight against evil,” the M’Nok said.

  Henry nodded as light filled one of the indentions on the table.

  “Okay, fair but simple enough,” he said.

  “You may not win at the cost of your humanity,” said a voice like Astreia’s.

  The Lady tapped the new indention that had lit up.

  “Interesting. This seal protects your mind,” she said. “As long as you fulfil the rule.”

  “You must fight something stronger than you,” Krek’s voice said. Henry couldn’t help but smile at the meathead M’Nok’s rule.

  “You must not attack a Human with the sword,” Five’s voice said.

  “You must not attack an M’Nok with the sword,” H’Kai’s voice said.

  “You must fight to save the world,” Chloe’s voice said.

  “You must fight your opponent one-on-one,” the twin voices of Ari and Ozzi said.

  Henry’s jaw dropped.

  “What the hell, twins?” he asked. “Do I need to formally challenge everyone I see?” The Lady of the Lake chuckled, and Henry shook his head.

  This continued, totaling twelve rules. In addition to the other ones, fighting an energy being would limit the sword’s abilities, as would fighting a sea monster, acting with cruelty, or breaking a promise, and finally, curtesy of Illyana’s voice, he was ordered not to use the sword on another member of Midnight.

  “Weird hearing from her,” Henry said. “I really only just met her.”

  The Lady of the Lake leaned forward.

  “This space isn’t bound by time,” she said. “You may not be close now, but you will be.” Leaning back, she continued. “These seals say a lot about your bonds, as well as the people you’ve bonded with.”

  Henry looked down and saw a hilt protruding from the center of the table.

  “Alright,” he said as he reached for it. “How am I getting back?”

  The Lady giggled, and her face resembled Jessica Howard’s.

  “The same way you came, silly.”

  His fingers wrapped around the hilt, and within seconds, he found himself engulfed in light.

  Qrora stalked around the crashed ship as the Homeland Defense Forces established their perimeter.

  “We’re on the clock,” he said. “Assuming whatever is in there survived the impact, that EMP effect will only last five more minutes at most.” He waved Gene over and took a knee. “What are you thinking regarding the breach?”

  “Thermal shaped charges,” he said. “Probably an entryway or whatever we can find. If they rely on nano-machines, then I doubt they have access panels or maintenance hatches.”

  “And why’s that?” Qrora asked.

  “If you got little robots the size of a molecule, it saves you from needing to have a guy crawl in there,” he replied. “At least, that’s what I’d do. Worst comes to worst, though, we can just wait it out and let the Forgotten show us where the escape hatches are.”

  Before Qrora could respond, a low hum coursed through the air. He felt his hackles rise, and he raised his weapon.

  “Whatever that was, it wasn’t good,” he mused.

  Sure enough, the back of the shell part of the horseshoe crab opened up. Qrora gestured to the twins and Gene to follow him as they slowly navigated around to where they could train their weapons on the opening. An F-44 circled above, diving to bring its weapons to bear.

  Unfortunately, a purplish beam lanced out from the ship, tearing through the strike fighter and sending it to the ground in a pillar of fire. Forgotten troopers crawled out of the ship, led by a strikingly un-baron-like figure.

  Its tall figure emerged from the ship with an air of imperious aloofness that Qrora hadn’t seen in the other constructs he’d confronted. A round featureless face sat atop a tall frame, with a thin body concealed by what looked like a cloak made of living metal. Qrora couldn’t tell where the cloak ended and the thing’s head began, but a pair of spindly arms emerged from beneath it. They directed a series of ghostly drones to light up the members of the Homeland Defense Force and Midnight November.

  Qrora hit the ground, his spike rifle snapping to the figure in the middle. He fired off a series of controlled pairs, but whatever material the figure’s cloak was made of suddenly became solid when struck by incoming fire. He hissed, then realized that, if projectiles didn’t work, he had an ace in the hole.

  “Bort, hit the Warlock with the gravity projector!” he cried. He ducked behind a mound of disturbed earth right next to Gene as he tried to keep an eye on the threat.

  “How do you know that’s the Warlock?” Gene asked.

  Qrora dropped a pair of Forgotten troopers as he ducked back behind cover.

  “Take another look at that thing, and tell me what else it could be,” he gasped. He looked back to see the Warlock . . . just looking around. It stood unaffected by the incoming gunfire and even managed to somehow cancel out the effect of the gravity projector.

  To his horror, the Warlock, using some form of telekinesis, grabbed a British soldier and dragged him towards the towering figure. The poor guy struggled and screamed as he approached the dark shape of the Warlock, until its thin metallic fingers wrapped around his face.

  The being’s face lacked any features or expression that Qrora could read. It didn’t tilt its head as it held the man in front of its face, or what he assumed was its face, nor did it shift its head to change the angle from which it examined the poor guy. For all intents and purposes, it looked over the man the same way a man noticed a strange bug.

  Then a chittering sound rose from the Warlock, and the man resumed screaming, as much in pain as in fear. An oily black substance raced across his body, dissolving his legs and torso, working its way up until his body was gone. All that remained was his skull, which quickly transformed into another one of the ghostly drones.

  Qrora ducked back behind cover and pulled up tactical. I hope someone’s about to find that sword because we’re in some deep shit.

  Chapter

  Nine

  Henry emerged from the River Irthing with a gasp. His memory between grabbing the sword and returning was . . . foggy at best, but now he stood waist-deep in the River Irthing with a sword in his hand. He took a brief moment to really look at the weapon.

  On the surface, it looked like a well-made English long sword with some Roman influences. It felt lighter than it looked in his hand, more like an extension of his arm than an object he lifted. When light struck it, golden lines were revealed, taking on the shape of a series of twelve circles along the length of the blade, each with a Roman numeral inside it.

  That was all he really had time to take in before the scene in front of him erupted in chaotic splendor. Forgotten troopers blasted away at British soldiers and the rest of his team. Weird drones punctuated the madness with purple beams that incinerated anything they touched, and in the center of it all, a tall black figure stood passively, taking it all in. That must be the guy in charge.

  Henry spotted a small figure on the reverse slope of the river bank, his HUD identifying Ari taking potshots from behind the protection of the slope. Henry dove and joined him.

  “What’s the score?” he asked.

  “3-12, them,” Ari answered. “Not going to lie, the bullpen’s kinda letting us down.” He glanced over at Henry and noticed the sword in his hand. “Though it looks like we’re about to bat.”

  Henry grinned, proud of the young M’Nok he’d turned into a baseball fan, and glanced at the sword. Soft light filled six of the seals, and he felt his fatigue from the past few days dissipate.

  “Alright, I’m going to see if I can get this guy one-on-one,” he said.

  Ari looked up at him.

  “Do you have to?”

  “Yeah, it’s your stupid rule,” he said.

  The young M’Nok tilted his head in confusion but said nothing.

  Rising from behind their cover, Henry hefted the blade and charged. Running straight across a flat, open field wasn’t normally something he’d consider, but luckily for him, Excalibur overcharged his shields. He winced as plasma blasts struck his shield, but they held.

  The figure in black didn’t budge. It didn’t seem at all bothered by the fact the Henry was rolling up on it with something that could kill it. Unless they’d jumped the gun and the sword couldn’t kill the creature permanently. Which would suck, because they still needed to figure out how to get around the Baron’s invincible body. Then again, the ancient Keblarians had been unable to kill any of the Forgotten leaders, and Midnight had managed to kill two of them so far.

  He’d crossed over half the distance between him and the figure, cutting down Forgotten Troopers as he passed, when he was suddenly pulled from his feet, rocketing towards his target uncontrollably.

  A thin metal hand grasped the arm holding the sword. The being seemed thoroughly uninterested in Henry, its curiosity spiked by the sword in his hand. Henry struggled to move his arm, but the thin metal fingers held him firmly in place. Rotating his wrist, he managed a glancing blow against the thing’s arm.

  That elicited a response from the towering dark figure. It immediately dropped him and examined its forearm. Henry hit the ground with a dull thud. Here’s my chance.

  Springing to his feet, he swung at the figure’s body as if he was trying to hit a line drive to the fences. Rather than cutting right through the thing, he bounced off as if he’d struck the Empire state building with a Louisville slugger. Henry found himself becoming much more intimately familiar with English soil than he’d have liked to be.

  A whine drew his attention up, and he scrambled away from the drones firing their purple beams at him. Alright, we’re going to need a new strategy. He sprang to his feet and cut through a Forgotten trooper before he dove behind a pile of dirt.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Qrora said as Henry looked back at the figure. “We figured you were dead.”

  “Really, I should be,” Henry said. “I landed headfirst in like three feet of water, but I woke up next to a lake.”

  “Arno Strong weirdness?” Gene asked.

  “Arno Strong weirdness,” Henry confirmed. “So my question is: what is that, and how do we kill it?”

  “Well, we were hoping you’d have an answer,” Qrora replied.

  Their saving grace at the moment was that the figure in black didn’t seem to care about them. It was vaguely interested in the shallow gouge Henry had left in its arm, but its drones harried anyone that overtly attacked the thing, as if bullets and spikes could get past its cloak. The Forgotten troopers had been thinned out, and the few that wandered past their wide perimeter found themselves domed by members of Midnight November. Whatever it had going on, it was much more important than the men trying to bring it down.

  “If I can get a good hit on it, I can kill it,” Henry said. “We just need to figure out how to get past that cloak.”

  Gene popped his head up near him.

  “It’s made of nano-machines, obviously,” he said. “It looks like whenever something strikes it, the machines tighten their connection and disperse the force throughout them rather than allowing anything to get through.”

  Henry looked at Excalibur again. This was the most advanced weapon on the planet—there had to be another way of using it besides merely swinging it around.

  “Tell the others to back off and focus on the Forgotten,” he said. “I’m going to try and take it on one-on-one.”

  “Are you nuts?” Gene asked. “I don’t think we can take it on with everything we have here.”

  Henry shrugged.

  “It’s one of the rules the sword has. I’ll explain more later.” There has to be another way to use this thing. He imagined what this thing could do, would do, if nothing stopped it.

  Remembering a picnic with his family when he was eight, he recalled his brother’s first encounter with fire ants. Issac had a fit when he got some on his food, and even more so when they bit him. Henry had been annoyed by his brother crying, so he’d taken a magnifying glass to the fire ants’ nest. Using the sun’s rays, he’d burned them before moving on with his life.

  If this thing had its way, it wouldn’t be any different. Visions flipped through Henry’s brain of a world stripped of life, no plants or people, dead oceans bare of fish or mammals, the bones of the great reefs empty and lifeless. And it would move on, to do the same to some other planet, without passion or glee, but with a stark indifference. None of this mattered to the Warlock; it simply did what it was meant to do.

  “This is a battle to save the world,” he muttered. With that, he readied Excalibur and charged, a new seal on the blade lighting up as he did.

  This time, the Warlock noticed his presence as he approached. It didn’t act alarmed, but there was an urgency Henry hadn’t sensed the first time. With a wave of its thin hand, it focused its ghostly skull drones on him.

  Purplish beams lashed out at him. His suit wailed an alarm warning him his shield approached saturation, even with the boost from Excalibur. Instinctively, he batted one of the incoming beams with the flat of the blade. The stream of energy bounced and struck one of the drones, igniting it in a ball of fire. It’s a base hit.

  He’d brought himself some relief, as now the drones were forced to take evasive action. He tried to close with the mysterious figure, but it pulled out something new. It raised its hand and fired a broad length of the material its cloak was made of, about the width of a scarf.

  Henry just barely managed to deflect the strange metallic weapon away from his face, though it cut a trench in the side of his helmet. Blood ran down the side of his head, but he grit his teeth and pushed on. Stepping forward, he tried to take a swing at the Warlock before it managed to wrap the blade in two ribbons of the unusual weapon.

  He struggled against the bindings as the Warlock forced him to raise the blade over his head. He blinked away sweat from his eyes and felt another surge of strength from the sword. A white beam of energy pulsed out of the tip of the sword, shooting off into the gray sky. With a grunt, Henry forced the blade down, angling the beam into the Warlock’s face.

  The featureless black surface cracked, and a low hum filled the air. The beam burst out the back of the Warlock’s head, and as Henry strained under the power of the sword, he lowered the beam. It continued down, cutting through the spiteful creature and annihilating its body.

  Henry breathed a sigh of relief as he hit his knees.

  “Three down, one to go.”

  Chapter

  Ten

  Henry gulped down water as he sat in the Relentless’s troop bay. He’d long stripped off his armor and had a bandage wrapped around his head. Excalibur sat on a hastily made sheath on the briefing table as the rest of Midnight November quizzed Henry on how he got it.

  “And next thing I knew, I was standing in the River,” he said. “The rest you know from there.”

  “So what exactly are the sword’s capabilities?” Swayze asked.

  “Not sure,” Henry replied. “I didn’t feel like I had time to ask the Lady of the Lake about it.”

  “I figured from our encounter with Arno Strong that you’d have as much time as you’d need,” Swayze said. “So what exactly are these restrictions?”

  “I kinda breezed by those, didn’t I?” Henry said. “As far as I can tell, they’re in place to ensure I can’t run around using the sword at full power however I’d like, though I’m not even sure what that would look like.”

  “And you’re sure the limits weren’t set by the Lady or a being like Arno Strong?” H’kai asked.

  Henry nodded.

  “The limits weren’t things I think they would want,” he said. “Don’t use it on Humans or M’Nok, don’t act cruelly, don’t lose your humanity.” He chucked his empty bottle at Ari. “Fight things one on one.”

  “You killed the Warlock,” Illyana said. “My people weren’t even sure that was possible.”

  “So the sword can kill things that normally can’t be killed,” Qrora said. “And shoots a laser, apparently.” He looked down at the sword on the table. “Honestly, I felt like we had a better understanding of it before we found it.”

  Astreia flipped through an old notebook and glanced back at the sword.

  “Well, I found a reference to the seals,” she said. “It’s in an older legend, mainly considered apocryphal, but it lines up with what Henry’s told us.”

  “We know it can put down the big Forgotten, like the Warlock, but how?” Henry asked.

  “I have a few theories,” Gway offered. “So starting with the big ones, the leaders, remember when Issac was babbling about gray goo?”

  Issac blushed. “Did I really—”

  “Oh, it was insightful,” Astreia said. Henry couldn’t help but notice she set a hand on Issac’s as she shifted the conversation. “But the SparkNotes are, if a nano-machine could replicate itself endlessly, it would essentially eat resources until everything became it.”

  “That’s right!” the bubbly AI said. “His theory was there must be nano-machines that could infinitely make other nano-machines, but those nanos would have limiters so they couldn’t grow out of control. I think the fortress brains have producer nanos, but only a smaller amount, whereas the leaders have many, many more, likely in their core.”

  “Their core is probably what has sentience, then,” Issac mused. “It’s a wonder we were able to beat them at all.”

  “Well, it stands to reason that if we damage or destroy a core nano-machine, it won’t be able to replicate properly,” Qrora said. “If at all.”

  “And we attacked them in ways they weren’t ready to deal with,” Carlos said. “Eclipse undermined the Navigator’s shields and killed it with gravity. The Architect probably had the smallest core, and Q2’s strength and flamethrower allowed him to damage it faster than it could regenerate.”

 

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