Serra Crystalstine's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

Celestia's warning stuck with Serra all night. Killing scouts only bought days. The warlord hid somewhere she could not reach, and her wing-blade meant nothing until she found him. She needed someone who tracked people for a living. So she went to the Galaxy Opal Arena, where the independent fighters gathered, and found the one hunter who never missed a mark. Astra Ironwing stood at the arena's edge, wiping blood off her knuckles. The hourglass in her chest measured what was left of her life, and it ran fast. Serra had watched her drop a dragon from the sky once. Astra did not waste movement, and she did not waste words. "You hunt things that hide," Serra said. "I need to find the warlord draining time. He finds me first every time. I can't find him at all." Astra kept wiping her knuckles. "He drains my hourglass too." She nodded at the glass in her chest. "Show me how he finds you." Serra unwrapped the wing-blade. It sang that high note, the same note it rang on the anvil. Astra went still. Her eyes moved from the blade to the empty air above it. "That," Astra said. "Every time it sings, it answers back. Look." Serra followed her gaze. Above the blade, faint, a thin burnt-orange strand drifted toward the arena's open mouth. A timeline thread. She had never seen it. The blade's song pulled the warlord's attention, and the thread showed the direction his drain came from. "He doesn't hide from your blade," Astra said. "Your blade points at him. You just never read it." Serra's clock ticked loud in her chest. "Then I follow the thread to his location." "No." Astra caught her wrist. "It fades. The drain eats it. You pin it, or you lose it." She pressed a cold claw against the thread where it left the blade. The strand flared, then held, fixed in the air like a tight wire. The thread stretched out of the arena and bent down toward a cluster of dark spires far below the floating city. Not the sky. The deep levels, where no scout ever circled. "There," Astra said. "He was never above you. He was under you." Serra stared at the pinned thread burning steady in the dark. For two chapters she had killed scouts and bought hours. Now she had the place. But the thread pulsed once, and Serra felt it answer back through the blade, a cold tug against her hand. Astra felt it too. She let go and stepped back. "He felt the pin," Astra said flatly. "He knows you're coming now." She picked up her gear. "You wanted his location. You traded surprise for it." Serra wrapped the blade. The thread held in the air, pointing down into the dark spires, steady and bright. She knew where the warlord was. And he knew she was on her way.