Angel awoke to the sun beating down on his face, mildly surprised that he was still breathing. He opened his eyes, squinting as the sun nearly blinded him, and pushed himself upright with a groan. He sat in the shadow of the chopper, which was somehow still in one piece. The desert sprawled out around him, its dunes stretching past the horizon.

“Are you okay?” Lilian asked. She, along with Silver and the girls, were sitting a short distance to his side.

“I think so,” Angel said, rubbing his forehead to ward off the faint headache building. “What happened? Why is the chopper still in one piece? The canister ruptured. We should all be smoldering remains.”

“We were hoping you could say,” Silver said. “It looked like you sucked up the explosion and then collapsed. I managed to bring the chopper down with the last dredges of power. It had a pretty rough landing and isn’t going to be moving again, but all things considered, I’ll take it.”

“With the Star Fragment?” Angel asked, a frown crossing his face. “It has a limit to how much energy it can absorb. If I’d tried to drain the canister before it blew up, I doubt I could have done anything. Draining it at the point of the explosion seems… dubious at best.”

“Well, that’s what it looked like,” Tilly said. “It all funneled into your arm and your eyes went purple for a moment. That’s all we saw. Maybe you did something else?”

Angel chewed his lower lip as something tugged at the back of his mind. Something had happened, but he couldn’t remember what it was. The headache intensified and Angel let out a sigh, letting it go. If it was important, he’d remember soon enough.

“Blue, do you know what happened?”

“You forcefully activated a feature that your body was not prepared for,” Blue replied, pushing out of his travel back and floating into the air. “Drawing on my full strength is dangerous for a body as weak as yours. I aided in channeling the energy and absorbed a portion of it myself instead of sending it into you.”

“Wait, does that mean you can hypothetically absorb more energy?” Angel asked, thoughts racing through his head.

“At full power, I could drain anything this world has to offer,” Blue replied, a note of hunger reaching its voice. “But it would probably tear your body apart in the process. If you were to become stronger, then you would be able to handle more.”

“What about a Buried God,” Angel asked. “How much stronger would I need to be for that?”

“I don’t have an exact number, but roughly fifty percent stronger than you currently are,” Blue said. “If you want to avoid damage, that is. You might be able to get away with less if you are willing to risk significant injury.”

“Noted,” Angel said, exchanging an excited glance with his companions. They had a way to destroy the Buried Gods, so long as he could get stronger.

“I suppose you don’t plan on eating any more human cores?” Silver asked. “That would be the fastest way.”

“Not if I can avoid it,” Angel said, shivering in distaste. “It’s wrong.”

“Then we’re in the perfect place to grow,” Silver said with a bitter laugh. “The middle of the Barren, roughly four days of travel away from the nearest city.”

“Wait, we can’t take the chopper again?” Tilly asked. “I thought we were just going to wait for Angel to wake up. Couldn’t Alison power it or something?”

“Too dangerous,” Angel said, shaking his head. “She’s got a lot of magical energy, but the large canisters that power airships pack a serious punch. The ship might drain Alison’s power faster than she expects, and then we’d be falling from the sky with no rotors at all.”

“We’ve all got skates or other forms of travel artifacts,” Lilian said, rising to her feet and brushing the sand from her pants. “And we’ve got rations to last a week. We just need to avoid any overly dangerous monsters and we’ll be fine.”

Angel winced. “Did you have to say that? That’s basically begging a big ass bastard to pop up behind us.”

“Let’s just get a move on,” Silver said, adjusting his hat and rising to his feet. He turned his skates on. “We’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Lilian, take the lead?”

Wings sprouted from her back, fluttering to life and lifting her off the ground. Angel tossed his board onto the sand and it activated with a hum. Tilly and Alison turned their stakes on as well, and the group shot off into the desert.

It took all of two hours before Angel realized they were being followed. The sand in the distance shifted and sank as dunes crumpled for seemingly no reason.

“You screwed us,” Angel called over the roar of the wind. “Something’s after us, and it’s big.”

Lilian glanced over her shoulder and pressed her lips together. “That isn’t my fault.”

“It totally is,” Silver put in. “You were kind of asking for it.”

“Oh, shut up.” The amplified voice coming from her throat crackled, and Angel chuckled despite the situation. The mirth quickly left as whatever was chasing them started to gain ground.

“I think it’s faster than us,” Tilly yelled.

“Can your skates go any faster?” Angel asked. “I’m not moving at full speed.”

“No. This is it,” Tilly said. “And Alison has the same ones I do.”

“Great,” Angel said. “We’re fighting, then. Don’t want to get caught with our pants down. Get to the top of that dune and stop. I’ll force this bastard out from under the ground.”

They shot up the dune in question. The others slowed as they reached the top, but Angel continued at full throttle. He didn’t have time to brace himself for a proper shot. Their pursuer was moving far too quickly. The plates on his arm hummed and crackled with energy as the relic in his palm emerged.

He twisted his body near the peak of the dune, launching into the air and spinning. The cylinder in his arm spun and a canister clicked into place. A thick bolt of lightning leapt from his palm, knocking him back as it arced through the air and scarred the desert floor.

A furious roar filled the air. The sand exploded. An enormous white centipede the size of a small sand barge erupted from beneath the sand. Its claws were shaped like paddles and fangs as large as Angel dripped with black acid.

“Vyrg!” Silver roared, drawing his blade with a melodious ring. “Get back!”

Angel landed back on the ground beside the others. He threw the board over his back and flipped the kickstands on his arm down, taking aim once more.

The Vyrg surged forward, slicing through the desert as fast as a sandship. Another bolt of lightning struck the creature in the side, shattering a thick plate of armor on the monster’s side. It screeched, lurching back.

“Lilian, get the girls away,” Angel yelled. “We can’t fight this thing close quarters. Silver, I’ll distract it. You make sure it doesn’t get close to them.”

“To the Barren with that!” Silver laughed, activating his skates and zipping toward the Vyrg. “I’ve never killed a Vyrg before. I won’t be missing out today. They might be fast in one direction, but they’re bloody slow at turning their heads.”

“Crazy bastard,” Angel snarled. He only had one lightning spell left before he was working with earth and ice, but he wasn’t too confident that either would be particularly useful against the Vyrg’s armor.

Lilian herded Alison and Tilly away from the fight. Angel took two canisters from his travel pack and slotted them into his arm while Silver shot past the Vyrg, forcing the creature to twist its body to watch him. His strange blade fluttered around him like a ribbon, carving thin lines across the Vyrg’s armor.

Despite himself, Angel paused for a moment in awe. His empowered spell had barely damaged the monster’s carapace, but Silver’s sword was cutting through it like butter. Unfortunately, the strikes were probably more annoying than dangerous. The monster was just too large.

The Vyrg reared back, rising up several stories into the air. It slammed itself into the sand, knocking Angel from his feet and sending up a huge cloud around it. A flash of worry shot through him.

“Too slow!” Silver laughed from somewhere within the sand cloud. Angel rolled over, bracing his arm against the sand again and taking aim. Silver might have avoided the Vyrg’s first strike, but it was only a matter of time.