throat slashed. Behind him stood one of Aurora’s clockwork angels, bloody sword poised to strike again.
An instant later, the other doors opened to admit two more clockwork angels from opposite doors, bloody swords at their sides. From the third, Aurora stepped into the room. Behind her, Nemo glimpsed the brass wings of more of her bodyguard.
“You are too late,” said Aurora. “I have already crushed your army, but I have no wish to destroy you. Surrender, Sebastian Nemo. Surrender yourself to the truth of the Convergence, and join us.”
Aurora
Aurora searched Sebastian Nemo’s blue eyes for any sign that he saw through her bluff. The same quality that made him valuable to the Convergence was also what made him so dangerous: his intelligence.
He stood beside the globe of Caen. All the clues he required to understand the Great Work lay before him. Even a mechanik like Margaret Jernigan would have been able to deduce their meaning in time. The question was whether the warcaster had been in the chamber long enough to understand those clues.
Nemo responded by raising his staff, activating its charge, and smashing its butt down onto a control panel.
“No!” Aurora leaped toward him. A knight interposed himself, raising his crackling blade.
“Destroy it all,” Nemo shouted to the others. “She seeks to delay us.”
Aurora shoved the knight away. He fell back, but only for an instant before lunging at her again.
As the runic halo of her spell surrounded her, Aurora drove the head of her staff into the man’s breastplate, crushing the steel deep into his abdomen. With a gasp, he dropped his blade and fell to one knee.
Continuing her furious motion, Aurora slammed the butt of the staff against the head of another knight, an older man with the sigil of Morrow displayed prominently on his white armor. He crumbled.
As the woman called Finch smashed a geomantic conduit, Aurora levered the staff to sweep her legs out from under her. With a startled yelp, the adept hit the floor.
As Finch fell, the blackclad leaped toward Aurora. Turning to strike the druid, Aurora felt her wings catch on the surrounding conduits. Even so, one blow from the center of her staff sent the small woman tumbling away.
Aurora’s bodyguard held back, recognizing her frenzy and waiting for it to end before joining her in the fight. Aurora had one more target to strike, and his attention was locked on the room’s controls.
Aurora swung the polynomial staff with all her might. Scant inches from his skull, Nemo caught the blow upon his own weapon, lightning crackling along its length. He shoved back with surprising strength. His eyes narrowed, and for an instant Aurora saw arcane runes circling in his irises.
As her spell faded, his struck.
A brutal impact sent her hurtling across the chamber. Aurora’s own body became the projectile with which Nemo destroyed the room. Her sharp wings severed cables and vents, shredding the fine interfaces of the control panels.
She crashed against the chamber wall and crumbled to the floor, shaking her head to clear it from the tiny explosions of light that dazzled her vision. She had seen nothing of the origin of the blast but knew it came from Nemo.
“Bronwyn, get out!” cried Nemo. “Geary, you too!”
Someone grabbed Aurora’s arm and lifted her to her feet. “Numen, leave him to me.”
Beyond Sabina, Aurora saw the rest of her bodyguards moving in to attack.
The first angel raised her blade to strike the white-clad Morrowan, but rather than block with his mace, the man lowered his head and bull-rushed her out of the chamber.
Another bodyguard stabbed at the druid. The diminutive woman tumbled backward, rolling back to her feet while retaining hold of her gnarled axe. She gestured with her other hand at the clockwork angel standing between her and the chamber door. With a halo of green druidic runes and a whoosh of invisible force, she blasted the angel out into the corridor. Without giving her opponent a second glance, the blackclad rushed out the opposite door, after the Morrowan.
“They’re clear!” shouted Finch.
Simultaneously, the adept and her master raised their staves. Threads of lightning shot forth, leaping from console to panel, through the storm armor of the knights, crisscrossing the room in a blinding web of deadly force.
“Stop!” Aurora leaped forward in a vain attempt to block the lightning with her body.
Sabina dragged her armored body along the wall, her own steel body jerking as lightning coursed into her steel frame. “No, Numen. You— You must— escape!”
With the last word,