Nicole woke with a start to the crash of thunder still echoing through their cave. She heaved out a heavy sigh when she realized what it had been and sat back down against the corner of their makeshift shelter. Maraline was still sound asleep, and it was hard to accept that the Syn general could be so vulnerable. There was a temptation to take a rock and smash her head, deliver a crippling blow to the enemy war effort. Yet, with the likes of Bartran and Guiana on the other side, it was clear that Maraline wasn’t the major pyer everyone thought her to be.

  She was just another pawn being used to gain control with the promise that she could become queen if she fulfilled her role correctly. It was almost funny to consider it like that, but it really wasn’t far from the truth. Maraline was so convinced of her own right to rule, but it had been taught to her from whatever counted for birth for her.

  Water spshed against her boot and Nicole nearly jumped in surprise, then she gasped in horror with the next fsh of lightning. The small trickle of fresh water they had been using was now a wide stream that flowed down the cavern and into the depths. Their fire was completely smothered under the rising water, and her heart leapt into her throat at the realization.

  “Maraline, wake up!” she shouted.

  The Syn general was on her feet in an instant at the sound of her name being shouted, her eyes moving in the sporadic light of the fshing lightning. The pair were out of the shelter in an instant, the water already up to their calves as they looked out at the raging storm, then deeper into the dark cavern where water broke against twisted branches trapped against rocks.

  “This cave is a natural path for the water,” Nicole yelled over the thunder. “We need to leave, find higher—”

  Her words cut off as the st crack of thunder hadn’t quieted, and she had just enough time to turn her head and comprehend the crushing wall of water before the fsh flood smmed into them both, sweeping the pair away in the unrelenting torrent.

  In her panic, she reached for her watch, which did not respond, only to sm full bodied into the cave wall. It had been an instinctive action despite not having the morpher for weeks now. The device remained non-functional, which meant that Nicole was at the mercy of the torrent while she was being swept away to what was almost certain death.

  It really was just like the battle of Anoka all over again, she was in a hopeless situation with everything to lose and nothing left to give. Somehow Maraline managed to grab her hand and pulled her in close, helping to shield them both from the worst of the impacts. Nicole tried to grasp the warmth within, but it proved elusive as always.

  Something sharp impaled her side, breaking off as they crashed through wood and stone alike. Nicole gasped, sucking in a lungful of water on reflex and cursed herself for doing so. She’d just ensured that she was going to die, even if it had been obvious from the moment the water smmed into her.

  They were both going to die, but they wouldn’t be alone.

  It was strange, Nicole spent so much of her life wanting to die, yet each time she was confronted by death, she defied it. Now, she had reasons to live. Grace came to mind without even having to think of her, her smiling face turning into a ugh. Then her cracked helmet as Bartran stood over her and a protective urge surged over her.

  Protective.

  Latching onto that sensation, she focused on Maraline, ignoring how the jagged rocks continued to hammer into her, one cut her arm, another hit the hand cradling Maraline’s head. Nicole’s face was scraped raw even as hair was ripped from her head. She had to focus, she had to protect.

  Her veins burned as power surged through her, unfocused and wild. It was all consuming heat and electricity, yet she felt invigorated all the same. It was familiar, and she knew immediately that she had morphed in the same way that she had against Bartran. She took a deep breath, unhindered by being underwater, the water in her lungs now burned away. The sense of impending doom ebbing out of her with the surety that she would survive. Unfortunately, that did little for the fact that she was currently caught in a torrent that was dragging them deep underground.

  She curled tighter around Maraline, confident that her morphed form could take the hits better than her companion’s unprotected form ever could, no matter what biological enhancements the Syn had given her over a baseline human, her technological enhancements remained offline. The Syn general seemed to grasp that much, and curled into a ball within Nicole’s embrace.

  The impacts were dull and muted, and she was tempted to phase now that she could do so again, but she wasn’t sure what might happen if they phased into solid rock with nothing on the other side. She didn’t have to wonder for long, the torrent had dumped them into open air and it was only with the enhanced vision that her transformation brought with it that she could see at all.

  The cavern was vast, easily over ten miles wide, and they were falling towards a pool of water that was steadily filling. Maraline gasped now that she actually could, coughing up the contents of her lungs as they fell. Nicole looked around, finding a high pile of rocks and braced her foot against the water and kicked off.

  It wasn’t as solid as actual ground, but it was still something, and the raw force she could put into the motion gave her just enough leverage to direct their fall. She turned her back towards the rapidly approaching stone, and let herself crash into it. The rubble burst apart on impact, spraying rock all around, but Nicole barely felt it even as her kinetic barrier sent sparks flying in all directions.

  She hadn’t been able to appreciate it before, but it was clear that this freeform morph channeled far more power than whatever her morpher managed. It wasn’t any wonder how she had almost killed herself in the battle against Bartran given the power she could feel swelling within.

  “You okay?” Nicole asked.

  Maraline grunted, rolling out of her grip to fall on her hands and knees, heaving up water from their near death experience. Nicole didn’t seem to have that problem, despite her lungs having filled with water earlier, she was breathing just fine, not even winded. It remained strange seeing the powerful Syn so vulnerable, but she wasn’t about to take advantage of it.

  “Well, we’re alive,” Nicole said, sitting back. Just because she wasn’t physically drained didn’t mean that she wasn’t dealing with an adrenaline crash from the experience. “Now, where the hell did we end up?”

  “I am,” Maraline started, only to cough further. “Unsure.”

  Nicole smiled under her helmet. “The question was rhetorical, I wasn’t expecting an actual answer.”

  She took a moment to actually look around the cavernous space they had fallen into, something about it was unnerving, but she couldn’t pce it. It was almost like there was a presence hanging over them, the air heavy with something she couldn’t quite grasp yet familiar all the same. Once again she was reminded of the time she stood across from Bartran, the aura he seemingly gave off. She hadn’t been sure it was real or imagined at the time, but now she could say that there was something out there.

  What that was remained to be seen.

  “I’m going to take a minute to look around,” Nicole said. “Yell if you need me.”

  Maraline nodded, sitting back as she coughed more, then in a surprising dispy, fshed a thumbs up. Shaking her head in amusement, Nicole hopped off the pile of rubble to what she hoped was more stable footing, then jumped into the air and turned incorporeal.

  The return of that ability felt as though she had regained a limb once lost, yet she also knew that it was a dangerous monkey’s paw. The same power currently allowing her to act was also capable of killing her if she drew too deeply. Already the warmth was growing within, each breath pushing more power into her form. She would need to drop her morph soon, or it might just kill her this time.

  Hanging in the air, it gave her a good vantage, as well as a chance to take in the space with less immediate danger hanging over them. The water was flowing into a rger tunnel, moving less swiftly than she expected, which meant it wasn’t a sudden drop into the dark. That didn’t do her much good, but if she couldn’t find another cave leading back up, that might have been their only chance to get out.

  Their.

  It was strange how she was still considering Maraline like that, yet she couldn’t just abandon her. For all that they were enemies in a war, she had never once treated Nicole as anything other than a genuine friend.

  Maybe she actually was, but that didn’t change the truth of reality. There were decent odds that Maraline would be the cause of her death, even if indirectly. Nicole knew she wouldn’t have it in her to kill the woman who reached out to her when nobody else would. Not even Grace had extended a hand back then, not that she had a chance to do so, yet Maraline had when there was nothing to prompt her to do so other than her own volition.

  Betraying that trust was never an option, and Nicole wouldn’t consider it even if it meant saving the world. That might have been selfish, but for someone who had endured the crippling desire to end it all, that hand extended with genuine care meant more than the world. The only problem was that her world wasn’t just her anymore. Grace was someone who had become just as important, someone she would sacrifice the world to save.

  The idea was there, and it was oh so tempting, but would Grace forgive her for even considering it? Humanity was doomed, she was fated to die, but did it have to be like that? One of her favorite shows had featured an equally hopeless struggle, but nobody ever considered the alternative option.

  Maraline wished to help humanity into a future that their own people would never consider. Human government had been killing the pnet in the name of short term profit for the st hundred years. Almost anything would be an improvement, so long as there would be a tomorrow for them.

  It would need to be a lengthy conversation, one where everything needed to be put forward, even the darkest truths that the Syn General knew. Could they survive the experiments and find a path to a better tomorrow?

  Descending back to the ground, Nicole steeled herself for the coming conversation when something odd caught her eye. A dull glow, bleeding through a distant pile of rocks. Putting aside her thoughts, she let herself drop down and made her way back to Maraline who seemed to be doing better. Her coughing had subsided and she was standing with a frown on her face as she stared up at the water falling from the ceiling.

  “The water has a way to flow that doesn’t look to be instant death,” Nicole said, rejoining the Syn general. “That’s a st resort, but I did spot something strange.”

  “You are not the only one,” Maraline asked. “That water formation was not natural.”

  Nicole blinked. “Felt pretty natural to me.”

  “It is old, but the path the water took was unusual,” Maraline expined. “Almost as if it was a straight line to this pce.”

  “That is strange,” Nicole admitted.

  “It is as though something crashed here, long ago.” Maraline’s finger rose, then began to trace the air and pointed off into the distance. Right towards where she had seen the glow. “Was that where you observed something unusual?”

  Nicole could only nod, a strange knot welling up in her stomach. Just what had they stumbled upon? Was it truly an accident that they had ended up in this pce? Now that she focused in that direction, she could tell that the foreboding pressure was wafting away from it. They had barely crested the first hill when Maraline paused, her eyes narrowing at the sight of the glowing light seeping from the fallen rocks against the far wall.

  “We need to investigate,” Maraline said. “No natural meteor would survive such an impact, nor would it glow so long after entry.”

  “I’ll go first,” Nicole said, gesturing at her morphed state.

  Maraline nodded in agreement, but didn’t comment on it. Neither she nor Maraline seemed keen to bring up her current morphed state and Nicole wasn’t about to admit that she still wasn’t sure how to replicate it at will. She trusted Maraline, odd as that was to admit, but the rest of the Syn invaders was a completely different matter entirely.

  Guiana had seemed genuinely interested in her condition, but Bartran wanted her dead just for existing. If he knew she was able to control the surge of power that led to his near death… He might just wipe out humanity on principle. The chill that ran through her was more mental than physical, but she put it aside as she stepped towards the strange glow.

  Up close, the rocks were a retively recent addition, as none of them looked worn from weather or water. Jagged edges still shone and it was clear they had fallen from the above rock face sometime… Okay, Nicole wasn’t a geologist and had no fucking clue how recent it had happened, just that it was much ter than the rest of the rock she had seen on the way over.

  The glow filtered through each gap in the rock slide, the pale light unlike anything she had ever seen before. She reached out, letting the light wash over her glove for a moment, then sighed. She was going to have to phase through it to find the source, or risk bringing down the entire cavern…

  “I’m going to phase through and drop down,” Nicole called back. “I’ll try to be quick about it.”

  “Exercise caution,” Maraline answered. “You know not what awaits.”

  Nicole could only chuckle. “You know me.”

  “That is why I am concerned.”

  Laughing out loud now, Nicole let herself shift into shadow and began to drop towards the light. She drifted through what felt like hundreds of feet of stone, but didn’t attempt to abort. She wasn’t even sure if she could at this point, not without setting down on something solid and jumping back up with all her might.

  The fall ceased abruptly, and the most concerning part was that her feet touched something solid despite still being phased through the rock. Panic welled up, as she wasn’t sure if she would be able to jump back up even with the solid surface, but the light was also right in front of her now, if angled slightly down.

  With nothing to lose, Nicole stepped forward, finding the footing to remain solid as she walked. The light grew sharper as she stepped towards it, and idly she thought of the old ‘walk towards the light’ superstition. Was she walking towards her death? Did it even matter given the situation?

  Shaking her head, Nicole kept walking for several minutes until she walked right into something that wouldn’t let her pass through. She couldn’t see it through the rock that currently occupied her head, so she shifted until she was free of the stone and could see the metal that blocked her way, and the glow that illuminated it.

  Well, at least she had identified the source of the light, but what the hell was a metal door doing in a forgotten… Actually, it made perfect sense if this was the control room that Maraline had been speaking of. It might have been counted as luck that they had stumbled upon it if they hadn’t nearly died in the process.

  There was just enough room for her to turn solid, and she did so, warmth flooding her form as she did. Nicole sucked in a breath, attempting to reign in the sudden influx of energy she had drawn upon. Pushing it out with each breath, she cooled ever so slightly.

  “Hah, maybe I can learn to control it.”

  She didn’t get a chance to ponder that as the light pulsed and the door slid open without a sound. One of the rocks shifted with the now open door, but it didn’t cause a catastrophic colpse either so she would take it. Just as Nicole was about to step forward, she was stilled by a warm voice.

  “Language Profile Recognized. Authentication Confirmed. Welcome Nicole Hayes; Ranger of the Void.”

  Pendragoon