Awakening the Lightforged

We’ve stolen smaller ships and scavenged what we could, but we don’t have the Imaia’s resources or work force.

C. 6 days, 22 hours since the assassination of rebel leadership

A dark pit opened inside Estingai as the Lightforged dropped Kozasana's body to the floor. The low thud echoed like a lonely war drum against the stone walls.

Estingai found herself paralyzed as the Lightforged took something with glowing sapphire biogems from a pouch at its waist and knelt over Kozasana's corpse, pressing it to her chest. Bile rose in Estingai's throat as she realized what the device was.

The Auroralight in one's gemcrest didn't wink out immediately when one died. It faded over the course of a few hours instead of a few days. No one knew why dying sped up the process, since the only reason the Auroralight in one's gemcrest faded was due to the body using it up.

The demon took advantage of that, draining Kozasana's Auroralight with its georaural. Estingai shuddered as the Lightforged stood, stalking toward her, the draining device in one hand.

A part of Estingai—she didn't know whether it was instinct, or just some part of her that hadn't been fully beaten down yet—itched to fight the thing.

But what can I do? Kozasana and I both landed killing blows.

And now Kozasana was dead.

"Your Redemption will bring me glory in the God King's eyes."

"I'll never serve Ynuukwidas," Estingai spat.

It laughed, turning Estingai's blood to ice.

“I doubt you’ll think that way once you’ve been Redeemed."

Estingai blinked, clenching her fists.

"Once you’re one of us, I might even bring you with me to your clean up your other bases and visit our informant. The Imaia has no need for rats. Succeeding where Othaashle failed and bringing a Knight into our number might elevate me above even her in the God King's eyes."

Something snapped within Estingai.

It knows where they are.

Koruuksi, Uuchantuu, Araana. Everyone Estingai knew. They were all in danger.

And there was a traitor in their midst.

I need to save them.

The realization seemed so obvious, yet Estingai knew she'd essentially been pushing herself toward death by exhaustion this past week. A part of her wanted to just be done with everything, to join Svemakuu, if Kweshrima's words about what came after death hadn't been just another lie.

I can’t let this thing kill me.

A strange sense of calm set in. Estingai's palms stopped sweating. Her muscles relaxed. Her stomach unclenched.

She did not scream, she barely made a sound.

Gemcrest ablaze with light, Estingai launched herself toward the Lightforged. The pain in her thigh remained, but it was faint compared to the power that roared through her.

The demon hesitated. Apparently it had thought Estingai as broken as she'd thought herself.

The Lightforged moved a half-second later, but that was enough of an opening for Estingai. With her greynodes flared, she moved too fast for the mind to track unaided.

The Lightforged, unfortunately, had her same abilities and more.

Estingai's speed allowed her to get in close enough to crack the monster's head back. Even as she did that, however, the Lightforged caught her with a punch to the gut, knocking her back.

Gritting her teeth, Estingai landed on her feet, skidding with the force of the demon's blow.

She didn't let up as it righted itself. Violetnodes bright, Estingai unleashed a torrent of fire through the room.

The crates and a few other items caught, illuminating the tunnel with a warm, red-orange glow. More importantly, the tongues of the flames pointed back the way Estingai and Kozasana had come, confirming they'd been traveling away from the exit.

Estingai dashed in that direction, not wanting to risk suffocation by the flames or the smoke, then brightened her aquanodes as the Lightforged gave chase.

She pulled at the flames, at their energy, shaping them into a whip that she snapped at the gaps in the demon's armor.

Her strikes landed, but did nothing to slow the Lightforged. Estingai's stomach tightened once more as it advanced. She tried the whip one last time. The demon moved out of the way before her strike landed, then lunged. Estingai brightened her ambernodes just in time, and flared her greynodes, leaping out of the way.

She rolled into a crouch as the rock wall behind where she'd stood cracked from the demon's blow, and flipped back as the Lightforged lashed out with a bolt of lightning.

The energy left dark violet afterimages in Estingai's vision, and she realized that she'd let go of her fiery whip, plunging her and the demon into darkness once more. The

Lightforged glowed with the light of its biogems reflecting off its armor as it advanced on Estingai. Just as the Deathknight had the night it took Svemakuu from her.

Estingai retreated, dodging and deflecting almost without thinking as her ambernodes guided her.

They worked differently than her orangenodes. Those always showed visions of the past. Ambernodes showed the future for a very short time if flared, though that used up the Auroralight in seconds. Using them like this at a standard brightness didn't last much longer—two or three minutes at most—but it granted something far more valuable to someone like Estingai: heightened precognition.

With her ambernodes bright, Estingai could sense what would happen to her mere seconds before it occurred, and her mind and body could process that information fast enough to react. Against any normal opponent, it made her a god, unstoppable.

Against a Lightforged, like this, it merely prolonged her death.

She and the other Knights had always faced these demons in teams, often using nothing more than an extra set of ambernodes to run out the Auroralight and defeat their opponent. It hadn't always worked, but at the moment it was Estingai's best chance.

That still didn't address the Lightforged's healing factor, though.

Despite her wound, Estingai matched the demon blow for blow. The Lightforged was arrogant and reckless, so she scored more hits than it did, but that was all they were.

Killing blows might as well have been scratches as far as the Lightforged was concerned.

As Estingai's Auroralight waned, panic started to seep in again. The Deathknight's mask, its impossible face, overlaid this demon's. Her arms and legs burned despite the energy her Auroramancy granted her. She couldn't run fast enough, and how could she kill this monster?

I can't let this thing win.

She needed to get home to Uuchantuu and Koruuksi. Needed to see her husband's plan for the Remnant fulfilled.

I faced the Deathknight and lived. I can find a way out of this.

"How can you expect to Redeem me if you can't even beat me in a fight?"

The Lightforged cocked its head, but did not slow in its attack.

"I survived your Deathknight. I don't think you're stronger than her, otherwise you'd be in charge."

Estingai let a blow glance off her shoulder so she could get in close. She couldn't kill this thing—not yet at least—so she landed an uppercut on its jaw.

Her speed gave the blow enough power to crack the demon's neck again, but that barely slowed it. It grabbed Estingai's arm, nearly wrenching it from its socket as it threw her across the room.

Estingai grunted when she hit the wall, then groaned as she pushed herself to her feet.

She blinked.

Her shoulder wasn't broken. Her ribs weren't cracked. They should be.

Is this thing still toying with me?

Rage flared within Estingai at the insult. She started to fight it down and reign herself in.

It's toying with me because it knows how hard it is to kill, and it's expecting me to be cautious. To try to survive.

Estingai took a moment to run through what she knew about Lightforged. She didn’t know much, but like everything on Efruumani, they ran on Auroralight.

That's it.

Estingai glanced at the demon's hand. It still held the little light-draining georaural.

She brightened nearly every pair of nodes in her gemcrest, and leapt at the creature with a roar.

Her greynodes and ambernodes were just bright enough to keep her alive. She flared them. Estingai flared her yellownodes for luck as well, then her blacknodes, hoping the

Auroramantic sense they granted her would feed extra information to her ambernodes. With her rednodes, she made herself a hardlight shield, and with her violet and aquanodes, she forged a dagger of white-hot fire that crackled with energy.

Estingai bashed the Lightforged in the head with her shield. Her flared amber and greynodes gave her just enough of an edge for the blow to land. The Lightforged stumbled back, masked head at an unnatural angle.

Estingai brought her fiery blade down on its wrist.

The Lightforged roared as the weapon seared through its flesh, cauterizing as it went.

Its smoking hand fell. Estingai whipped out a hand and caught it just before it hit the floor, then pried the georaural from its fingers. The mechanism was simple enough to her eyes. It had one function: draining Auroralight.

Samjati could do that with their bluenodes. Estingai couldn't. She could give someone else the Auroralight from her gemcrest, but she could only draw in Auroralight from outside herself if it was from the auroras or contained in a biogem unattached to any living being that would use its light.

Like the ones that powered this device.

Estingai's ambernodes alerted her as the Lightforged struck at her, a hardlight spike in place of its hand. Estingai dodged that blow, but found herself retreating once more as the Lightforged advanced.

It wouldn't even have to kill her. All it needed to do was wear her out.

No. This ends now.

It had to. She was nearly out of Auroralight in her ambernodes. She could transfer more, but that would handicap her other abilities.

Estingai thought for a moment, then let the Lightforged hit her shield, throwing her arm back. She used the momentum to get inside the demon's guard, then brightened her violet and aquanodes again, and formed a spike of her own before the hand that held the draining georaural. She turned on the device.

Estingai stabbed the knife through a joint in the Lightforged's armor. Then the spike. Again. And again. Always in a slightly different spot. She put everything she had into her greynodes, returning her ambernodes to a low burn. If this didn't work, nothing would.

Half-hearted blows glanced off her shoulders and arms, but Estingai kept going. Her muscles burned, but she pushed through, flaring her greynodes.

She punctured the Lightforged’s lungs, heart, liver, stomach, over and over again. Faster than the eye could track, too quick for her mind to count, all the while draining Auroralight from the Lightforged—its gemcrest, and whatever georaurals and reserves it had on and beneath its armor.

Estingai had found the secret to killing Lightforged: Auroralight.

When she killed the demon, it took a moment to heal. In that moment, it wasn't entirely alive. It couldn't think like a warrior. Like Estingai. And that healing took Auroralight.

If she didn't give it time to heal completely—if she kept killing it—it wouldn't be able to fight back, and it would keep using Auroralight.

Estingai kept drawing in the Auroralight from the geoaural. That helped. She didn't know how fast the device drained its victim, or what percentage of a Lightforged's Auroralight it took to heal these wounds. She didn't have time to think about that. She just had to keep killing it.

Estingai's arms stopped moving and she blinked, acutely aware of how they burned.

Instinct told her to dim her gemcrest. She did. Only after, did she realize her mistake, and braced herself.

The blow didn't come.

Estingai unclenched, brightening her clearnodes. She hadn't used those as much during the fight.

The Lightforged lay in a crumpled heap on the stone floor.

She brightened her rednodes—she still had some Auroralight left in those—and slammed a block of hardlight into the demon’s body.

It didn't groan, didn't breathe.

Estingai sucked in a ragged breath and fell to her knees with a strangled laugh.

I did it.

Looking down at the georaural in her hand, Estingai pulled in the Auroralight contained in its biogems. That made it little more than a useless hunk of metal for now, but she needed the Auroralight.

Her body ached. The throbbing in her thigh grew more insistent by the second. Exhaustion pulled her down toward the cool, smooth stone.

Groaning, Estingai pushed herself to her feet. She stumbled back through the cave, raising an arm to her nose to dampen the sting of smoke from the burnt crates.

She stopped when she found Kozasana's broken body, falling to her knees.

A ragged sob slipped out as she ran a hand along Kozasana's cheek. Estingai hadn't had the chance to do this with Svemakuu.

"Thank you."

Estingai took a deep breath, wincing at the pain, and rose to her feet. Kozasana deserved more than that. More than to be left here in the darkness. Estingai had no choice.

She could come back for Kozasana and the others later. She would come back. But she didn't know for certain that the demon had come alone.

Estingai headed back toward the mouth of the cave, pausing when she came to the Lightforged's broken body. She considered it for a moment, then dropped to one knee beside the armored corpse and began stripping it of its armor.