. Jack understood that warbeasts had been the principal weapons in this world’s final war and that the monsters they had encountered were intelligent beings, soldiers as much as weapon systems. According to Rogan, the beasts weren’t artificial intelligence systems like the ones he had seen during his last years in the Army, tools that could emulate human thought in …

. The tower containing the transfer stage to Gosgun in the grasslands territory called Thantasjein lifted its stony might many hundreds of feet above their heads. That destination sat on the western frontier of Orosjo on the world of Cantaree. Although these same coordinates corresponded to the bottomlands of the Grandwater on Trin, it was far to the west of …

. After Nam treated her continuously until the sun had been up for an hour, Simkit was able to walk the full distance to Aum, although they’d had to let her rest several times. Meadhbh was riding double with Fionna, so her mount was now doing packhorse duty, carrying Simkit’s gear. The guardsman was… doing as best he could. He …

. She sat on her bed, staring at a small cylinder in her hands. Her daughter was asleep, but her anxieties were horribly awake. She had pulled the object from its hiding place and had been about to use it, until she actually saw the thing. Since then, she had merely sat and stared down at it. Gold-plated, and filigreed …

. Visually, it was still lost in the darkness, but her flux senses could already clearly make out the lumbering form pushing through the forest. It was following one of the many paths already blazed by decades of warbeast movements, so no new trees were being shoved down in the process. “Hold fire until we see what he does,” Koursh …

. He heard Fionna let out a sigh of relief. The night was still enough that he could hear it despite her distance from him. “Th’ Ilidi beasts are retreatin’,” she announced. Everyone remained at the wall, as the Gireid beasts were still out there. The Orosjoese and Fionna all had the same posture, on one knee, rifles trained outward. …

. Time felt like it was standing still. She could feel the probe sweeping up and down her body, but she had no idea what it was looking for. Ilidi had an inborn ability to sense their own kind, a special adaptation of flux sense. Did their warbeasts have it? Could this one tell she had the genes of another …

Nam She couldn’t do this in a trance, because she might need to help her comrades fight, so she began sinking herself into the Maryhahdil hunter’s reverie, creating the binary mind that combined herself with her totem spirit, her Gedin, becoming one, as an expanded predator consciousness. The huntress stared down through Ooe’s eyes as the specter skimmed the treetops …

. After sleeping for a time insufficient to recover her Rhyuin– barely more than an hour– she had briefly rolled over to satisfy herself that the teenage mercenary sleeping in the cot next to her was no longer in immediate danger. Once satisfied, she had put herself into a meditative trance. The purpose for the first hours was the most …

. For a moment the unreality held him frozen in place. There is a burning ball of flame in my hand. It was getting very hot… alarmed, he doused the flame, before he even realized that the knowledge of how to turn it off was somehow part of the knowledge of how to create it. He merely had to stop …