The sirens of the High Tower were a discordant melody of panic. In the VIP box, the air smelled of ozone and the metallic tang of Kaelen Voss's spilled blood.
"Movement, Valerius. Now!" Seraphina's voice was a whip-crack. She didn't wait for my response. Her Glacier Mana surged, forming a frosted path beneath my hover-chair as she pushed me toward the emergency transit-lifts.
I let my head loll to the side, my eyes glazed, my breathing shallow and hitching. Every jolt of the chair was an opportunity to play the part. I wasn't a mastermind; I was a "victim" of the atmospheric pressure.
"The... High Priest..." I wheezed, clutching at the fur robes. "He's... he's angry, Supervisor. Why are they... screaming?"
"Because the world just broke, Cassian," she hissed, her eyes darting to the shadows of the corridor. "And I suspect you're the one who cracked it."
We didn't make it to the lifts.
The heavy blast-doors at the end of the Hall of Heroes exploded inward. Not from a spell, but from a thermal-charge. Through the smoke stepped Lord Alistair Voss, Kaelen's father.
He wasn't wearing his senatorial robes; he was encased in a Vanguard-Class Exo-Suit, the hydraulic pistons hissing with illegal mana-steam.
Behind him were twelve House Sentinels, their faces hidden behind golden visors.
"Where is the boy?" Alistair roared, his voice amplified by the suit's external speakers. "Where is the Valerius rat?"
Seraphina stepped in front of my chair, her ledger spinning at a blinding speed. A wall of solid, translucent ice rose between us and the Voss hit-squad.
"Lord Alistair," she said, her voice dropping to a sub-zero temperature. "This is Academy ground. By the Princess's decree, Cassian Valerius is under Council protection. You are committing high treason."
"Treason is for the losers of history!" Alistair screamed. He raised the exo-suit's arm, a Gatling-style mana-cannon spinning up. "My House is ruined! My son is a cripple! If I fall, I'm taking him along with me!"
"Supervisor... please..." I whimpered, letting a tear of fake terror track down my pale cheek. "Don't let him... I can't... the noise..."
"Quiet, Cassian!" Seraphina snapped, though her hands were shaking. She knew she couldn't hold off a Vanguard-Class suit and twelve elites alone.
Alistair fired.
The mana-bolts hammered against Seraphina's ice wall, spiderwebbing the surface. The heat was intense, melting the frost into steam.
"Vane," I pulsed through the shadow-link in my mind. "Execute the 'Ghost-Script'. Divert the power."
Suddenly, Alistair's exo-suit sputtered. The brilliant blue glow of its mana-tank turned a muddy, flickering grey. The Gatling-cannon died with a pathetic whine.
"What? No! The reserves are at ninety percent!" Alistair hammered at his control panel.
He didn't realize that the "Maintenance Sector" riot wasn't just for show. Below us, Mina and the D-Rank engineers had intercepted the Tower's main power-conduits. They weren't cutting the power; they were inverting it.
Every time a Voss-registered device tried to draw mana, it was met with a counter-frequency of "Zero."
"Your tech is as hollow as your reputation, Alistair," a new voice boomed.
General Valerius, my father, stepped from the side-intercept with a battalion of Imperial Justiciars.
He looked at me shivering in a chair—and then at Alistair. The disgust in his eyes was perfect.
"To attack a dying boy to cover your own crimes," my father said, his voice like grinding stone. "You've fallen low, Alistair. Seize them."
As the Justiciars swarmed the Voss Sentinels, the "invincible" armor of the House Voss elites fell apart.
Without mana to fuel their enchantments, they were just men in heavy, useless metal.
In the chaos of the arrests, Seraphina knelt beside my chair. She wiped the fake sweat from my forehead, her eyes drilling into mine.
I looked at her, letting my lip tremble. "I... I just want to go... to bed, Seraphina. It's so... cold."
She stared at me for a long time, the suspicion in her eyes warring with the evidence of my physical frailty.
"One day," she murmured.
The Voss family was gone. The D-Rankers were armed.