alchemy, usually a sedative, and used to bring down huge Kameira. It had taken a little time for the solution to work, but whatever cocktail Petal had devised, it was flowing through the Lyathatan now.
Through the visor of the Emperor’s helmet, Calder looked into the Lyathatan’s eyes.
“It seems your life is in my hands,” Calder said, letting his Intent flow through the chains as he spoke. Though he suspected the Elder could understand him regardless. “Shall we renegotiate?”
The Elder’s fury at the indignity warred with its pragmatic understanding of the situation.
Shuffles fluttered up until it was in between the Lyathatan’s eyes. “LIFE IN MY HANDS!”
Intent flowed back through the chains, and Calder interpreted the message into words. The Great One allows no one to steal from him.
Calder’s will blazed like molten iron, and he couldn’t tell if it was from a lingering shred of the Emperor’s Intent or if it was his own.
“You’re not his anymore,” he said. “You’re mine.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
There is a law beyond this world. We are apart from it, against it…but we are not above it. It binds even our kind.
—Kelarac
present day
Without Loreli at his side, Calder would never have made it into the Imperial Palace.
Between the half-complete evacuation, the attack from Urg’naut, the shattering of the sky, and the still-thundering battle that shook the heavens, the Capital had descended into complete madness. The streets were choked with panicking people fleeing, fighting, or shattering windows to snatch whatever was within.
He’d thought the Guild War had pushed the Capital to its limits, but the end of the world had removed those limits entirely.
So he was glad he had taken the time to rescue the Regent.
She had been traveling aboard another Navigator’s ship—Captain Marstrom’s Heart of the Aion—and they had been virtually stranded on the storm-tossed ocean. The arrival of The Testament had been a godsend, and the Regent had gratefully accepted his offer of a ride.
Though she had demanded that he rescue all of Captain Marstrom’s crew as well. Not that he minded.
Loreli could never be nondescript in her trademark silver-and-white armor, and surely someone would have recognized her if not for the blinders of terror. However, as they disembarked, she began to radiate such an aura of peace and tranquility that even Calder felt the shadow of Urg’naut in his mind begin to recede.
Red-faced men with overflowing trunks stuffed under their arms came stumbling to a halt when they got close enough to the Regent, blinking rationality back into their eyes. The mob filling the streets slowed its actions, fading from manic fear to a more controlled dread.
Loreli carried a small bag—the only luggage she had brought with her from her ship. From within it, she pulled a captain’s horn and raised it to her lips.
“Fear not,” she announced. Magnified by the Intent in the horn, her voice carried up and down the street. “I have come to resolve this. Stay in your homes and wait. We will keep you as safe as we are able.”
A crackling wholly unlike thunder shook the air along with a flash more alien than lightning. Calder thought the effect might undermine her words, but the crowd began to filter away as though they had been controlled by the Emperor’s crown.
“I can’t do this all the way to the Palace,” Loreli said. She tucked the horn back into her pack. “We’ll have to hurry.”
She continued projecting her aura of peace as she leaned down into a sprinter’s crouch, then kicked off and dashed up the street into the city.
Calder followed her, certain that he would overtake her in seconds. He had just taken another potion to stabilize himself, and as far as he had ever learned, Loreli was no Champion.
He ran through crowds that were just being struck by her calming aura, and he leaped over the heads of puzzled people who had just begun to lower bloody weapons. Several blocks down, however, and he still hadn’t caught her.
He never did, reaching the gate of the Imperial Palace on her heels.
Either her armor enhanced her physical abilities or she had been alchemically augmented at least as much as he had. The Emperor’s armor, which he was still wearing, did nothing to empower him. Only to protect him.
Even so, he was surprised at her speed. He supposed he shouldn’t have been. It would be almost impossible for anyone to survive direct combat with a Great Elder without an enhanced body.
Darkness stabbed through his thoughts as he remembered Urg’naut raising an arm and striking