The blue magical dome exploded outward again, pushing the pouring rain away. It formed a ten-foot-wide umbrella of crackling blue light over the huddled group. Frank stayed on his knees, holding his glowing arm up. He was panting wildly. His chest heaved. Blood mixed with sweat and rain ran down his dirty face. His body was completely covered in terrible, smoking acid burns. He looked like a piece of meat that had been thrown onto a hot grill. "Frank," Elara cried. She dropped to her knees beside him. She looked at his burned skin. "Oh, Frank. Look at you.""I... I got them," Frank wheezed. His voice was incredibly weak. "They are... all here."Elara looked around under the blue dome. It was true. All forty refugees were huddled together inside the ten-foot circle. It was incredibly tight. They were crushed against each other, shoulder to shoulder, chest to back. They were all crying. They were all burned and hurting. But no one had been pulled under. Frank had saved every single on

Frank raised his glowing blue and gold Phantom Limb high into the dark purple sky. He spread his magical fingers as wide as they could go. "SHIELD!" Frank roared at the top of his lungs. A massive, blinding explosion of pure blue light erupted from his left stump. Inside Frank's body, the System began to burn his biological life force. The magic drained the sugar from his muscles. It drained the oxygen from his blood. It converted his very heartbeat into raw, crackling, kinetic energy. The small, ten-foot umbrella of light instantly expanded. The blue magic shot outward in every direction. It flew over the heads of the forty refugees. It stretched wide, turning into a massive, solid dome of hard-light. The glowing blue dome pushed outward, fighting against the terrible hurricane winds. The edges of the massive blue dome hit the dark metal floor of the arena. The impact was perfectly solid. The hard-light shield formed a complete, closed bubble around the entire camp. Where the

The blue dome flickered violently. It cracked. A single drop of golden acid leaked through a tiny hole in the magic, sizzling as it hit the metal floor near Mrs. Gable’s boots. "We are not going to make it," Silas wept, falling to his knees. Elara looked around wildly. She stared through the swirling, violent golden storm outside the flickering blue shield. The rain was pouring down in thick sheets. The white bone dust blew in massive, blinding clouds. But then, the wind shifted for just a fraction of a second. The thick yellow clouds of acid rain parted slightly. Elara squinted her pale eyes. Through the break in the storm, she saw something. It was not the massive, smooth black spike of the Prime Core tower. It was something much closer. It was only fifty feet away to their right. It was a massive, dark silhouette standing in the middle of the flat metal arena. As the blue light of the flickering shield cast shadows across the storm, Elara saw the details of the shape. It wa

"System," Frank begged in his mind. "I need one more shield. Just fifty feet. Just to the doors."[ CRITICAL ERROR. ] the System replied weakly. The blue text in his mind was barely visible. [ NO ENERGY AVAILABLE. ]"Take my pain," Frank commanded. "Take the heat. Take whatever is left. Just give me an umbrella."Frank raised his burnt, severed left stump. He pointed it toward the open courtyard. He closed his eyes and screamed into the dark. He forced his mind to squeeze the very last, hidden drops of magic from his dying Echo Core. A pale, weak blue light flickered from his stump. It was not a blinding explosion of power. It did not form a perfect, muscular arm of compressed energy. Instead, a thin, flat sheet of pale blue hard-light projected outward from his stump. It expanded into the air, creating a flat circle about fifteen feet wide. It looked exactly like a large, glowing blue umbrella. "Get behind the shield!" Elara shouted to the crowd. The forty refugees quickly gat

"What are they?" Kael asked, stepping up beside Elara. He gripped his metal pipe tightly, half-expecting the statues to come alive. Elara remembered the skulls Frank had found in the bone dust desert outside. She remembered the truth Frank had learned from the ancient terminal. “The Root is an interstellar parasite. It has consumed 14,208 planets.”"They are monuments," Elara whispered. A cold chill ran down her spine. "They are statues of the Root's previous victims. The alien races it destroyed on other planets. The Root digested their worlds, but it kept their twisted shapes as trophies. This temple is a museum of extinct species."The refugees murmured in fear. They huddled closely together in the center of the giant hall, terrified to stand near the horrific, mutated statues. The flickering orange firelight made the stone monsters look like they were dancing in the shadows. "This place is evil," Mr. Thorne said, rubbing his bald head. "We should not be here.""We have nowhere el