There was a half-second where the courtyard was still. One brief instant of total silence and calm as the assembled hosts stared down the barrels of hundreds of guns pointed at them and the army of metallic soldiers who wielded them. It was long enough for Anya to think This is going to get loud, and that was all.

The hosts attacked first, though who it was, Anya couldn’t tell. There was the hum of an energy blast and one of the smaller robots exploded. Then, like the gunshot at the start of a race, everybody took it as a signal to begin.

Domes of protective magic, forcefields, metal plating, and more defensive measures all appeared or deployed at once. The formerly quiet evening rang out with the sounds of gunshots, missiles, magical and electrical energy, and dozens of other sounds as the courtyard erupted into chaos.

Gary pressed a button on his watch and whenever something got near him——bullets or debris——it hit an almost invisible forcefield around him. He gave her a wink and then ran off and vanished into the crowd before she could think to stop him.

Pan squealed in terror, curled into a ball, and then just vanished into a hole in the ground. Samaira’s translucent shoulder cape danced around her and deflected any bullets or other projectiles that got close while she fired arrow after arrow at the assaulting robots.

Anya shouted in surprise as an explosion detonated nearby and pushed her back a few feet. Yai, the old lady, sailed through the air beside her, and Anya grabbed her and pulled her close. The old lady mumbled something in Thai, slapped Anya’s hands away, then spat at the robots. Mist formed around her feet and coalesced into a cloud which Yai floated away on at speed. She waved that big staff of hers and the many trees around the temple bent their branches down and whacked the robots onto their backs or out of the sky.

Anya jumped away from another blast and landed amidst ten of the smaller robots. All of them focused their sensors and weapons on her. Anya grinned.

Half of them held plasma weapons.

Anya clenched her fists and drew on the heat of the plasma weapons, making it expand within their casings, and then explode. The robots holding the weapons were destroyed at once, and the others were caught up in the blasts soon after, or Anya bisected them with her solar glaive.

Part of her was worried about the other hosts. People like Doctor Immonen and a few others had said or looked like they weren’t much in a fight. Part of her wanted to go find Pan and Samaira and haul them both out of there and go after Gary.

But another part of her wanted to just blow up as many of these robots as she could. It wanted to unleash the fiery storm inside her Sun’s Heart and show whoever this very stupid General was that pointing a gun in her face was a terrible idea.

“You will cease your illegal activity at once,” one of the huge armored robot hulks intoned in an electronic voice behind her.

“Nah,” Anya said as she spun around. She launched herself at the huge walking tank with a burst of flight and an explosion at her feet. She encased herself in flame and heat that ignited the trees around her and turned her into a living fireball. She slammed into the huge robot, crashing into it and soaring into the air. She angled herself and the now ruined bot down to earth, and slammed it onto the mountainside and another squad of smaller robots.

All of them were dashed to pieces in the crater she made on impact, and Anya laughed.

Is this normal? she thought. Am I supposed to be enjoying this this much?

Even as she had the thought, she was swept up by the flames inside of her for more. More fire, more explosions, more heat.

The temple and the mountainside had become a full-on battlefield. A giant humanoid robot colored green and white had descended from the sky and joined the fray. It was over four or five stories tall and wielded a sword the length of a city bus. It cut through the enemy robots like it was clearing a path through a garden, and Anya felt some minor irritation that it was taking so many of the enemy for itself.

She condensed the heat from her Sun’s Heart into tight lances and shot it like lasers from her eyes and fingertips. The beams of white-hot light sliced through the robots and trees and left deep furrows in rock.

Brody and Cooper bounded past her, back-to-back and smashed through any robots she missed. Cooper was on defense, wielding a shield made of translucent light, while Brody punched through any robot that got close. More often than not, the shark bit through their heavy armor like nothing more than soggy-bread, and even swallowed it. He still had the huge joint stuck between his back teeth even as he ate, though Anya noticed it had gone out. She snapped her fingers and lit it for him as he passed.

“Thanks luv!” Brody laughed at her and then bit a minigun in half as it tried to shoot down his throat. The gun was followed by most of the bot wielding it before Brody moved onto his next target.

Anya laughed, then gasped in pain as something ripped into her side and she was knocked to the ground. One of the huge robots wielding the strange weapon composed of dozens of whip-like appendages, had struck her. The whips gleamed, some kind of metal, and sparks of electricity leapt between them. The robot lashed at her with the strange weapon again and she rolled to the side. One of the thin whips connected with her leg. The metal strands were incredibly sharp, as it sliced a narrow furrow in her armor and oppened the skin of her calf beneath. Bolts of electricity, at least as bad as what the alien fridge had used, connected with her skin and sent spasms through her.

Anya screamed and glared at the towering robot. Her eyes burned as she made light and fire lance out from them in two tight beams. Her lasers cut the robot in half and the pain in her leg faded as her regeneration took over.

“Are you okay?” a voice asked at her side. Anya yelped and almost ignited the air around her in surprise before she recognized the hazy shape of Dr. Immonen. “I can heal you.”

“I’m already fine,” Anya said as she jumped to her feet. “Has anybody died?”

“No, thank goodness. A few injuries, but I’ve handled those. Speaking of, I’m needed elsewhere, good luck!” Immonen might have waved at her, but it was hard to tell. He was there one second and gone the next.

“You holding up okay?” Samaira asked as she and Chandrali landed beside her. Samaira fired off a quick volley of arrows and destroyed some nearby robots. She was unharmed, but her clothes were singed in a few places, and there was dried blood on Chandrali’s side, but no wound.

“They’re not tough but they keep coming,” Anya said as she melted another big robot with multi-cannons on its shoulders into slag.

“Retreat?” Samaira asked. Anya glanced around at the remaining hosts. Nobody looked seriously wounded, but several of them were sweating or had taken a knee while the hazy shape of Immonen attended them. She couldn’t just leave everyone.

Besides, this was fun.

That second reason didn’t come entirely from her. Was it from her Sun’s Heart? Was it thinking? Or was it just the nature of the fire, wanting to burn and consume?

“Hell no,” Anya said as she shook her head. She had to stay focused. Self-reflection could come after the waves of killer robots. “I’m not gonna run from some uppity general while other people are fighting.”

“Good,” Samaira grinned and then loosed another volley of magic arrows as she rode Chandrali away. “Stay safe!”

“Not a problem,” Anya said, then grunted as something slammed into her back and knocked her to the ground. She’d been hit with a shell the size of a can of coke, and it had flattened itself against her back. Anya snarled as her spine popped back into place and fired a thick cutting beam from the palm of her hand.

“Hey!” Amahle, the woman from South Africa, shouted from nearby the newly downed robot. She punched another one of the big armored bots hundreds of feet up into the sky with an almost dismissive gesture. Her fists were encased in some kind of glowing ethereal armor, along with most of her body. She kicked one of the smaller robots apart like it was made of foil, and sent the pieces spinning at Anya.

“Watch it!” Anya said as she swatted the chunks of metal away from her.

“Then you watch those lasers of yours. Almost took my friend’s head off,” Amahle replied and then leaped the length of a football field and sent out a huge shockwave among a squad of bots.

Anya paused within the chaotic riot of battle to look around her. She had clearcut a section of the forest, left several craters around her, and set another section of the forest ablaze. She hadn’t even considered what she might have done if her flames had gone through a target to a host on the other side.

Her Sun’s Heart wasn’t even half-depleted, and it was hammering away inside of her, eager to unleash more, to burn brighter and hotter.

But it was clear that the fight was winding down. The robot army, in the span of perhaps a few minutes, had gone from hundreds of well-armed troops to perhaps a few dozen stragglers.

The number of hosts had dwindled significantly as well, though Anya didn’t see any bodies. The hosts who were still present all looked in fine shape, if a bit tired. She saw Brody and Cooper pummeling one of the big robots as it tried to crawl away. Mona stood at the center of her own small army of skeletal warriors and spectral shapes. Jiro from Japan had ripped the minigun off one of the robots and was mowing down stragglers with casual efficiency. The swordsman from Barcelona held some kind of saber with a gleaming cutting edge and diced several of the attacking bots into tiny cubes within the span of a couple breaths. And Renn was pointing his finger at several of the smaller robots and making them float high into the sky before some invisible force crushed them into tiny spheres.

“Most of the hosts ran at the first sign of a fight,” Renn said, suddenly beside her. He was leaning against a tree, his white coat and helmet looking no less clean and polished despite the mayhem. Anya blinked in surprise. He had been near the temple just a second ago, but now he was right next to her.

“Oh, sorry, I was chasing down our friend too,” Renn said and pointed up. The woman in the gray cloak who had been hiding in the tree floated upside down above them. Anya glanced from her, back to Renn, then across the forest at where she had first seen him.

Renn was still over there, making robots and projectiles float away from him…and so was another Renn. And a third, a fourth and fifth. All of the Renns looked identical, and all of them were making enemy robots slam into the ground or fly apart with delicate hand gestures.

“Ah,” Anya said. “What is that? Self cloning? And telekinesis?”

“Something like that,” Renn nodded, then looked over Anya’s shoulder. Lightning blasted the last robot to bits, and the cobra-raccoon-thing that belonged to Bernard chittered and hissed at its remains. Bernard patted the creature on the back of its wide hood and it licked him with its long, forked tongue.

“Well, I suppose that will do it,” Renn said and started to walk toward the remaining hosts, the cloaked woman floating and struggling in the air above him. His clones, or duplicates or whatever, also walked toward Renn until all ten of them met and merged into one.

“Is anybody injured?” Dr. Immonen asked as he appeared from behind a tree.

“I got a bit singed, yeah,” Bernard said and pointed at a large red welt on his arm. Amahle looked at Anya pointedly and Anya frowned.

“That was my fault,” she said. “Sorry. Got a bit carried away.”

“No kidding,” Amahle said.

“Ah, it happens. I had trouble keeping all my babies in line,” Bernard said and gestured at his small menagerie of creatures. Immonen approached him and put his hand on Bernard’s arm, and the burn mark vanished at once. “Wow, thank you. That’s better than ever, actually.”

“My pleasure,” Immonen said.

“Anya?” Samaira asked as she emerged from the crowd. She looked the same as a few minutes ago, and better by the second. Blue sparkles floated out of the crystals on her outfit and repaired any damage done to her clothing. “You seen Pan?”

“Nah, he took off pretty quick,” Anya said. “What about Gary?”

“Here,” Gary’s voice said from the remains of his TV bot. It had been cut in half and lost an arm. The remaining arm waved at them, and Gary’s face flickered on the screen. “I’m fine. Made it back to my truck in once piece and sent a few drones out to fight. They got smashed by some of the other hosts, but I can’t blame them. One robot probably looks pretty similar to another in a crazy fight like that. I’m actually picking up the little guy’s signal right under you two, though.”

That was when the earth at their feet bulged outward and Pan appeared.

“Hello! Are all the loud noises gone?” he asked.

“Looks that way,” Anya said and let out a sigh. “You okay?”

“Yes. It was very scary though,” Pan replied.

“Scary nothing! Can we get more of these? Fuck that was fun!” Brody bellowed as he and Cooper approached.

“Those robots were pretty pathetic,” Jairo’s voice echoed out of the huge green and white mecha towering above everybody. It knelt down and a compartment in its chest opened and Jairo sprang out.

Anya frowned. The robots had been cheap. Maybe a nightmare to a conventional soldier or regular civilian, but to the hosts, any one of them was little more than a toy. But Anya noticed a lot of the hosts taking deep breaths as she surveyed the crowd, then looked down at her armor.

The armor was covered in dings, scratches, and not a few holes and tears. There had been hundreds of the robots, but she’d only directly encountered a few dozen of them or so. If she’d been alone it wouldn’t have been such an easy victory, or maybe even a victory at all.

“Pathetic indeed. Who would bother getting such cheap junk?” Mona asked as her skeletons cleared a pathway for her. Kan was just behind her, and he only grunted in reply. Jiro was behind him and just shook his black-helmeted head.

“I don’t know, but I’m hopeful their owner might be able to fill us in on the details,” Renn said. All the hosts that remained looked up at the woman in the gray cloak as she floated in grim silence overhead. “Won’t you share with us, miss?”