I went straight to the civilian line that hadn’t yet descended into the crack. For some of them, there was reason.

The truck that had delivered my gun had delivered the extra power cores. It was left unguarded, the Patrol officers busied elsewhere taking care of people who had been hurt in crashes or injured by other means. I loaded the power core into my gun.

I left it.

I’ll be back for you, gun, I thought.

But others take priority. I need to make sure they’re okay. And I can’t bring you.

I flew for the crack. Into that morass where powers were so much weaker.

To find the people who were supposed to destroy key parts of the infrastructure.

Men and women in winter clothes and Patrol outfits were hurrying along this landscape of red crystal, dusted with snow from high above. They were gathering at strategic points. Two of the points we’d wanted to hit were close to our starting point. Just had to get the necessary people down here. Tinker tanks flanked the group, trundling along, turrets sweeping around nervously, looking for a target to shoot. Automated.

My flying was getting sluggish, but I still moved closer to the surface.

Through the crystal, I could see movement. One was on the other side of the hard surface, a Titan-like thing moving across the landscape’s internals. An Agent of the powers.

It took me another minute before I found who I was looking for. Kenzie had mapped it out for me earlier. The starting point, when entering through Rain’s dream. I found Rain and the Patrol on the far side, saw him see me.

I pointed at the agent I’d spotted, and he made a hand motion that looked like a confirmation, still running. Purposeful, focused.

A detonation in the distance made me conclude the first bombs had gone off.

It wasn’t. The tanks were reacting to Skadi’s appearance. When so much of the environment was flat and sloping, she was a stark contrast, impossibly tall, to the point it felt like she distorted the distance between us and the surface. She attacked, and the tanks unloaded. People used guns. Those were the detonations I’d heard, echoing over the hard ground. There were powers used from the surface, exploding around her, altering the crystal, and periodically making her stumble.

It wasn’t nearly enough.

When she wasn’t on the surface, she was down here, doing this. I flew over, struggling to move through the air, to navigate. I had my forcefield and it felt thin, even though it was so thin as to be unnoticeable normally.

I wasn’t sure I trusted it against Skadi, but I’d asked people to fight here and I couldn’t stand back.