8. Rhykor #3
More machines, it’s always more machines.
They pour from the alley’s maintenance tunnels with mindless, relentless purpose, virulent code driving ruined bodies toward a target they've been programmed to destroy.
Planting myself before the clinic door, I become a wall of heat and violence.
Serrated edges of my wings spread wide, slicing through anything within reach.
Intense heat radiates from my hands to ignite the surrounding air, leaving tiny flickers of flame to dance across my knuckles and forearms. The ceremonial markings carved into my chest and arms light up my flesh, ancient patterns pulsing as my body pushes past the safety thresholds my biology enforces by default.
Coordinated and lethal, the final wave of six machines attacks from three angles at once.
Thermal blasts catch the first two, turning them into slag mid-stride.
The third slips inside my guard to rake my ribs with claws, but I retaliate by crushing its optical housing.
Sweeping my wings through the next pair leaves their midsections severed and sparking across the pavement.
Only the security bot remains; it manages to fire three rounds into my right shoulder before I close the gap and grab its head to melt the metal away.
Silence drops over Ash Alley like a physical weight.
I stand in front of the clinic door, surrounded by a field of destroyed machines—molten slag, sparking wires, shattered chassis, and the acrid stench of burnt circuitry saturating the air.
My hands still burn, fading from white-hot to dull crimson as the energy bleeds off in shimmering waves.
Blood runs from the claw marks scoring my ribs, the torn skin already swelling against the shredded fabric of my vest. My wings tremble with exhaustion behind me, membrane-thin and glowing faintly along the damaged seams.
The clinic door opens.
Cassia stands in the doorway with her pulse pistol drawn and her medical bag over one shoulder, Wen behind her, and Elias leaning on the wall further back, his mouth slightly open in stunned disbelief.
Behind them, a dozen civilians huddle in the corridor—patients and terrified families driven from their beds by the jarring, chaotic alarm of the attack.
Her gaze locks onto me, sweeping over the destruction radiating from the doorway that sheltered her. My hands still shimmer with residual heat, and blood drips from wounds I’m only now beginning to register. She sees the carnage I created—the price of ensuring nothing reached her.
Her mouth opens and closes before opening again.
The pulse pistol trembles in her grip, and those intelligent eyes that have stared me down throughout our standoffs are bright with undisguised fear.
She's looking at me the same way the civilians looked at me when I first started patrolling Ash Alley, like a monster wearing a familiar face.
The recognition carves through my chest worse than the claws did.
"Stay inside," I rasp, sounding like it is dragging across gravel and broken glass. "Don't come out until my crew gets here."
I trigger my comm and bark orders of perimeter teams to Ash Alley, full security deployment, and nobody in or out without my authorization.
My crew responds instantly, voices tight with adrenaline, already mobilizing from positions across the district.
Within minutes, the first of them arrives, armed Kraaj and human fighters who’ve served under me long enough to know better than to ask why the Dragon is standing in a pile of molten wreckage outside a human clinic at midnight.
"Lock it down," I order my second. "Nothing touches this building or even comes within two blocks of this alley. You hold this position until I come back, and if anything with corrupted optics gets within rifle range, you burn it to the ground."
He nods, and I'm already airborne.
I need answers, and I need them before the adrenaline bleeds out of my system and the image of malformed machines converging on Cassia's door starts replaying behind my eyes on a loop I'll never shut off.
I fly to Ash Alley's depths on wings that barely cooperate, each stroke ripping through tissue that Cassia recently stitched together and I've already destroyed twice over, and I descend the bolted corridors and flooded tunnel, taking the worn stone steps to Mother Serak's chamber for the fifth time in my life.
She's sitting in the bioluminescent light, where ceremonial markings shift across her ancient ash-gray skin. Those milky eyes track my entrance with their impossible accuracy. Her hands are already folded. The incense burns nearby while the cushion across from her waits, positioned.
She was expecting me.
"Sit down, Rhykor." Her tone is gentler than our previous chat. Her inflection sends ice sliding down my spine. Mother Serak trades in truths too sharp to touch. Gentleness from her means whatever she's about to say will leave a mark. "You're bleeding."