It’s a trap, I realize gleefully. The Garde are here!

Now, Setrákus Ra really looks surprised. And, dare I say, a little frightened.

“You have been led astray!” Setrákus Ra screams, pointing his now empty hands at Nine and John. “These boys are fugitives! Terrorists from my home world! I don’t know what they’ve told you—”

“We haven’t told them anything,” John says, interrupting. His voice doesn’t carry like Setrákus Ra’s, but people in the crowd crane their necks to listen. “We’ll let them make up their own minds. A genocidal maniac is easy to spot.”

“Lies!”

Do it now! I urge Nine telepathically.

“I wonder what will happen if I do this?” Nine asks, fiddling with Setrákus Ra’s cane. Before Setrákus Ra can lunge in his direction, Nine raises the cane over his head and smashes it down on the stage. The obsidian eye in its center explodes in a cloud of ash.

Things happen quickly after that.

Setrákus Ra’s body begins to thrash and spasm. The handsome human form he’s been so attached to begins to slough off him, like a snake shedding its skin. The real Setrákus Ra—pale verging on bloodless, ancient and hideous, tattooed across his bald skull, a thick scar around his neck, clad in spiky Mogadorian armor—stands revealed on the stage.

Many in the crowd scream. Even more recoil in horror and turn to run. A gunshot goes off—I hear the bullet whistle past my ear before it ricochets harmlessly off the Mogadorian ship behind me. The gunshots only frighten people more and now it’s a full-blown stampede in front of the stage. More shots are fired, this time into the air. One of the agents taking aim on Setrákus Ra goes down, bull-rushed by the terrified spectators.

It’s chaos.

With a monstrous howl, Setrákus Ra grows to fifteen feet in size. The stage beneath us groans. The old man who was onstage with the Garde tries to run into the crowd, but Setrákus Ra grabs him with his telekinesis and hurls him like a missile into Nine. The two of them fall off the stage in a heap.

Fireballs come to life in John’s hands. They go out immediately as Setrákus Ra triggers his Dreynen field. That doesn’t stop John from charging in, pulling his Loric dagger out of his sheath as he comes.

“Yes!” Setrákus Ra screams, beckoning John in. “Come racing towards your death, boy!”

Unaffected by Setrákus Ra’s version of Dreynen, I pick up a broken piece of his cane. My fingers are clumsy and I nearly drop it twice before I’m able to grasp it tightly enough. I concentrate, ignore the shredding pain under my skin and charge the shrapnel with my Dreynen.

When the broken shard glows bright red, I jab it into the back of Setrákus Ra’s leg.

The Mogadorian overlord cries out and shrinks down to his normal size. I sense the Dreynen field canceling Legacies lift. Too late, Setrákus Ra stumbles forward in a futile attempt to get away from me. The Dreynen-charged cane is buried an inch deep in the back of his calf. When Setrákus Ra yanks it out, a trickle of night-black blood darkens his pant leg. Now that it’s off him, I’m not sure how long the effects of my Dreynen will last.