Page 177 of Elven Crown

“Knox?” Whit called out.

Rebecca shoved Shell away from her and tried to stand as she pointed up toward the wings. “Watch the balconies!”

She hauled Shell to her feet again a split second before the weapon from above sent that obliterating brown-yellow light zapping down toward them again with a crackling buzz like an overacting generator.

The blast hit the floor much closer this time and sent both Rebecca and the troll woman flying forward to sprawl across a slanted ground face first while more chunks of cement and splintered wood rained down all around them.

“Take cover!” Maxwell bellowed before he opened fire up at the balcony. Bursts of deep green light erupted from his augmented rifle.

Up above, the insane machine that was almost as bad as the magical laser at the docks powered up again for another blast.

At their team leader’s cry—and now that they could hear it—the operatives leapt into action, wasting no more time. They split down the middle, half of them diving as far as they could beneath the balconies on one side of the room while the other half did the same on the opposite side.

Finding cover from above at least enabled them to look up into the wings without being shot for it. Then the firefight was in full swing.

The Shade team returned the vast amount of magitek weapons fire volleyed down at them from the balconies, lighting up the otherwise darkened theater hall with ballooning explosions of blue, crackling nets of electrocuting yellow, or sharp, bursting stutters of bright orange darts ramming up into the balconies and enemy targets overhead like exploding throwing knives tossed by an expert hand.

It briefly occurred to Rebecca that someone might want to offer cover to Diego, Titus, and Burke, all of whom were unconscious again after the last power surge. But then she realized every enemy raining magical blasts down on them had to know about the ward-bomb traps.

So unless someone was trying to get themselves killed on purpose, no one was stupid enough to fire at the three prisoners on the stage. Even an incoming magical attack would trip the ward’s alarms and end this fight instantly.

True to her theory, none of the overhead enemy fire came anywhere close to the stage or the warded contraption holding them all captive now.

At least she and her team didn’t havethatto worry about on top of everything else.

While Maxwell barked orders, squeezing off his own shots in the process and ducking to avoid wayward shots, Rebecca scanned the theater hall.

There had to be a better way to stop this. To get behind enemy lines and put a stop to this whole thing before it got any worse.

Just when she realized she could go up the stairs toward the balconies the same way their attackers had, the double doors into the theater hall burst open, and in rushed backup.

For the enemy.

The place lit up with battle magic and augmented weapons fire in one endlessly flashing, strobing, violently rippling light show of every color imaginable. The air sizzled with concentrated magic, heat, cold, and every other sensation a skilled alchemist could have produced for magitek weapons.

Rebecca aimed her freshly loaded pistol at the new enemies streaming down the empty slanted floors toward her and her team, joining in without thinking much farther into the future than surviving this.

The enormous weapon on the left-hand balcony, with its crippling yellow-brown shots, turned on again, blasting an endless stream of destruction even more reminiscent of the energy laser on the docks. It pummeled the auditorium’s floor to flying pieces and bashed aside enemy targets spilling through the doors, failing to differentiate between friend and foe.

All to the Shade team’s advantage, because it seemed whatever hulking creature had attempted to take control of that weapon had since lost some of that control.

Rebecca fired more augmented rounds into the chaos, then turned to blast an orb of crackling red battle magic at a dwarf who’d hobbled much too close. Her attack launched him off his feet and sent him sailing backward up the floor’s incline untilhe caught an accidental burst of yellow-brown friendly fire and disintegrated on the spot.

She couldn’t have said how long she stood there with her team, fighting back with nothing but survival in mind. Any way out now was blocked to them when they hadn’t freed their captured operatives yet.

But she did become acutely aware of the growing change in the air when something new appeared to join the fight.

Something ancient and powerful, slowly brought into being and then to life somewhere close.

The use of this growing magic made Rebecca’s entire body tingle with warning shivers. Nothing like the mostly pleasant sensation she still felt every time Maxwell came close.

This was more like the hot and cold pins-and-needles of a limb having fallen asleep and the nerve endings now painfully waking up.

This magic was dark, insanely powerful, and if Rebecca remembered correctly, not particularly legal on Earth, as per the MJC’s constantly updating and evolving Earthside regulations.

There was some serious power here with them in this building. That was for damn sure.

The kind of magic much like Rebecca’s Bloodshadow abilities that had come straight from Xahar’áhsh, bringing all its destructive fury with it.

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