“Then—”

“Our best chance is to wait for backup. And no, I haven’t seen it coming, I’m still looking. Please let me concentrate.”

“When are—?” Caldera started to ask, then stopped.

Another series of coughs. The light in the next room blinked out and the house went dark. One of the shots must have cut the power cable. There was a groaning sound and a rumbling crash that I could feel through the floorboards. The floor shifted under my feet.

Caldera snatched a look out into the hall. “Mist’s clearing,” she said in a low voice.

“I know.”

“Got another?”

“No.” I don’t stockpile condensers—they work best when they’re fresh. I’d lost two in the battle with Chamois, and the one I’d just used had been my last. I kept scanning through the futures. There was some sort of disturbance up ahead, something like . . .

. . . fire?

Now I just needed to figure out how to keep us alive until they got here.

The coughing sound came again and the wall ahead of us shuddered. “I think I’m going to have to go keep that thing busy,” I told Caldera. “Wait up here, okay?”

Caldera glared at me. “Screw that!”

The wall shuddered again. A few more shots and it would collapse. “Stay in the corner,” I told Caldera. “When that wall goes it’ll take down most of the floor, except for the far corner. As long as you stay there, you won’t fall.”

“If you—”

“You’re hurt, I’m not.” I kept my voice calm. “I’ve fought these things before; I can stall it for a little while. We just need to survive another forty seconds.”

Caldera hesitated. I don’t know much about medicine, and I hadn’t had a close look at Caldera’s wound, but I’d seen the futures in which she tried to fight the golem, and they’d been brief and messy. We didn’t have time to talk it through. “Stay back,” I said, and walked to the edge.

There was a final cough. The wall groaned and collapsed, taking the section of floor I was on with it. I’d been ready for it and rode it down, jumping off at the last second to land in the living room, rolling to soften the fall.

I came up to see the golem turning to face me. Plaster dust was in the air, and broken drywall littered the floor. Taking down the wall hadn’t collapsed the house, not quite, but it wouldn’t take much more. Caldera was hidden by the remains of the ceiling. From the back garden I heard a yell, then the golem moved to attack.

The laser burned a line across the carpet as I dodged right. The golem approached, swords coming down, and I backed away. The living room flashed, lit in the glow of spells from outside: red, blue, red again. I couldn’t take the time to look and see. All my attention was focused on the mantis golem.

The laser fired again and again, a glowing golden line of death. I stepped aside from each blast, calculating how to position myself to dodge the next. The golem was herding me, pushing me towards the corner. The spells from outside had stopped; the dust in the air was cutting the visibility but I could see the futures that were approaching and knew what I had to do. Just need a little distraction . . . I stepped forward to go under the next laser blast, letting myself be drawn into melee range. The golem’s swords came down.