WAYFARER: CLAIM THE UNCLAIMABLE

The wreckage above Maelor never reached him. For less than a heartbeat, everything Gant had prepared across the battlefield crowded around the center of the bloom. Broken shop frames, slabs of canyon stone, twisted metal, shattered flower ribs and pieces Rovan had discarded during the fight crossed from different directions with enough force to bury Maelor beneath half the Exchange.

Then the pale moon pulled harder.

The change passed through the wreckage at once. Stone shrieked against stone as every piece bent upward around Maelor, some passing close enough to stir his coat before accelerating into the pale disc. The first slab struck its surface and opened a crater. Metal followed, then flower ribs and entire pieces of ruined shops, until the clean circle hanging above the canyon was pitted with dark wounds and half-buried debris.

Maelor remained beneath it without a mark on him. Dust rolled around his boots while smaller fragments trembled overhead, but one hand stayed raised after the last impact had ended. When he finally lowered it, two fingers refused to straighten immediately, and his next breath dragged deeper through his chest than the ones before it.

Gant noticed. Blood continued dripping from his chin, yet he watched Maelor’s hand instead of the failed attack, and the faint change around his mouth looked almost satisfied.

So that cost him something. Useful information for the person currently trapped inside his own body.

The tail behind Sio wrapped around a silk support before the next vibration reached his damaged leg. His weight shifted safely to the other foot without his permission, and the familiar delay between movement and thought scraped at him harder than the grit in his throat.

The information broker appeared on a slab floating beneath the damaged moon. Several translucent windows opened around him, each replaying Gant’s convergence from a different angle while dust passed harmlessly through his projection. ”You nearly made him work for that,” he called, clearly enjoying the idea more than Gant seemed to.

Maelor ignored both of them. His gaze crossed the broken market until it settled on Angle, then dropped to the solar gauntlets around his hands. Their light reflected faintly in Maelor’s eyes.

”Recover those gauntlets,” he ordered. His voice carried through the pressure hanging over the canyon. ”Every Eclipse member still standing.”

The battlefield changed almost immediately. Rovan turned away from Gant while familiar steel spread back over his damaged forearm. Selyn changed direction across a broken petal, and other Eclipse members emerged from collapsed galleries, torn shops and bridges Sio had assumed were empty. Tavian remained connected to the flower, blood still running from his nose and lips, but several enormous roots shifted below and began curling toward the routes ahead of Sio’s group.

Perfect. Karkas wasn’t enough. Apparently we needed the entire organization too.

Arch caught Angle’s shoulder when light started building around one gauntlet. ”Only use them when you need them.”

Angle pulled free without slowing. ”They’re already coming for me.”

”I can see that.” Arch looked once toward Maelor, then at the gauntlets. He clearly had questions, but none he could answer while the market collapsed around them. ”So stop giving them a clean view of where you are and keep moving.”

Something wet struck Sio across the cheek. His head turned before he decided to look, and a small creature dropped from his skin onto the amber beneath his boot. Six thin legs unfolded under a swollen dark body. Its underside was almost translucent, something contracting beneath the skin while the front opened around a ring of tiny hooked parts.

Another landed beside Sterling. One bounced from Angle’s shoulder, and then dozens more struck the roof around them. The sound spread beneath the groan of stone and tearing silk, a soft irregular patter that reminded Sio of rain until he looked toward the canyon rim.

The masked newcomer had one hand raised.

Thousands of parasites fell through the dust around him.

They struck roofs, bridges, flower petals, corpses and people still trying to escape. Some bounced and unfolded immediately. Others clung to clothing or exposed skin and began crawling with quick, searching movements.

Gumm reacted before anyone else. Every eye across its little body opened, and it flattened against Sio’s neck while making a low clicking noise he had never heard from it before. The tail controlling Sio snapped downward and crushed the nearest parasite into the amber, leaving a dark smear beneath his boot.

Arch slowed when another parasite landed beside a wounded merchant below. The creature turned toward the long tear running through the man’s calf and pushed itself inside before his hands could reach it. His scream climbed above the market noise, then collapsed into a wet choking sound as his body seized.

Another parasite clung to a woman’s face. Her nails scraped desperately across her own cheek before the creature forced itself beneath one eyelid and vanished.

Arch’s attention locked onto it. ”The thing controlling the Baron of Bramble Watt was this same parasite.”

Angle glanced back. ”You’re sure?”

”I carried one out of that town.” Arch watched another disappear into an open wound beneath someone’s ribs. ”I’m sure.”

Sio remembered Arch sealing the dead parasite away after Bramble Watt and treating it as more important than the Baron himself. Great. The mystery we carried out of that town brought relatives.

The creatures used whatever entrance they found. One crawled into a man’s ear while he struck the side of his own head. Another vanished through a puncture near someone’s shoulder. Several landed on a corpse trapped under a fallen stall, slipping through its mouth and the torn flesh across its chest.

The way they entered was ugly. What happened afterward was worse.

The wounded merchant stopped screaming. His fingers slipped away from his calf, and his head turned toward Angle with a stiff, delayed motion. The woman followed a moment later. Then the man who had been clawing at his ear turned as well.

Beneath the stall, the corpse moved. One leg remained crushed beneath timber, so it dragged itself forward on both arms, the ruined limb scraping behind it through broken wood and sap.

They’re not attacking whoever is closest.

Across the canyon, more people stopped fleeing. Some were alive. Some had barely been moving before the parasites reached them. Others had already been motionless beneath wreckage.

Every head eventually turned toward Angle’s gauntlets.

They want what Eclipse wants.

The masked figure lowered his hand. Across the central bloom, Gant finally got a clear look at him, and something in his posture changed immediately. Gant had taken Maelor’s blows, been thrown through buildings and continued fighting with blood covering half his face.

Now he lowered himself onto one knee.

The broker’s laughter stopped.

Maelor’s reaction went in the opposite direction. The detached calm he had worn through the entire battle disappeared as he stared toward the rim, and the pull around the false moon shifted with him. Loose stones began crawling uphill across the flower.

”Cestor.”

Cestor tilted his masked face slightly.

Maelor launched himself from the bloom hard enough to crater the surface beneath his feet. Gravity bent along his path, dragging hanging silk and loose wreckage sideways as he crossed the canyon toward Cestor.

Whatever happened between those two definitely wasn’t friendly.

Cestor answered by releasing a dense swarm from beneath his coat. These parasites did not fall. Hundreds rushed directly toward Maelor’s face, gathering around his eyes, ears, nose and mouth. Maelor twisted one hand, and the swarm veered sideways as though the canyon itself had tilted beneath them. Their bodies struck the stone wall in a wet burst.

Gant rose from his knee at the same moment. A marked slab ripped loose from the flower and crossed Maelor’s path from the side. Maelor redirected it toward the pale moon, but the interruption gave Cestor enough room to close the distance.

Gant joined him.

Their next collision split part of the upper bloom. Maelor’s gravity dragged debris upward while Gant’s marked wreckage cut against the pull from different angles, and Cestor kept filling every opening with parasites. Maelor crushed one swarm against stone only for another to spill across the space Gant had forced him to abandon.

The broker appeared on three pieces of falling wreckage at once. His projections flickered so quickly that Sio could no longer tell which image the man was actually using to watch the fight. Windows multiplied around him, freezing impacts, tracing trajectories and replaying pieces of the clash while the real battle continued behind them.

His expression had gone beyond amusement. His lips remained parted between breaths, and one hand slowly dragged down his face as another collision tore open the canyon rim. A shiver passed visibly through his shoulders before laughter escaped him.

”Oh, that is beautiful.” His voice broke slightly around the last word, but he did not seem embarrassed by it. He opened more windows instead, eyes darting between Cestor’s swarms, Gant’s marks and Maelor’s warped gravity as if missing even a second would physically hurt him. ”Again. Come on. Show me what happens when none of you backs down.”

Maelor drove Cestor through a curtain of parasites while Gant pulled three marked slabs toward Maelor’s exposed side. The broker’s head tipped back, another breathless laugh escaping him as his projection flickered across the battlefield. ”This is why I stay,” he whispered, fingers still pressed against his cheek. ”This is exactly why I stay.”7