"Step away from them right now or you will freeze them into stone forever!" Clara shouted, her hand slapping Marcus's wrist away from the glowing barrier.Marcus pulled his hand back fast, his heart pounding in his chest as he stared at Silas and Lyra. The two of them remained completely frozen in place, locked inside the shimmering glass-like sphere that floated in the center of the broken bridge. Lyra's golden staff was still glowing bright, but the light itself was trapped like liquid caught in ice."I can slice through the shell with my shadow blade," Marcus said, his voice rising with desperation as he stepped around the edge of the time bubble. "I can cut them out before the stasis takes permanent hold.""You cannot use your magic on that surface," Clara warned, her pale face tight with worry as she leaned against a cracked steel support beam. "Look closely at the edge where your frost touched the lower rim."Marcus leaned down and peered at the bottom of the translucent sphere.

"We are blowing a hole through those silver tin cans and taking this beach right now!" Silas roared, slamming a massive iron magazine into the side of a scavenged rocket launcher.The metal deck groaned beneath his boots as he marched toward the shattered window frame of the command bridge. Down on the black sand shore, dozens of automated legionaries had locked their defensive lines around the crashed space-vessel. Standing behind the foot soldiers was a multi-legged mobile fortress, its massive iron legs anchored deep into the wet beach as its high-caliber cannons swept the lower escape hatches."Stay close to me, Mother," Marcus said, keeping his left arm wrapped securely around Clara's shoulders while his right arm swirled with fluid, liquid midnight shadow. "Silas, Lyra, do not drop your weapons near the wet shore. That black sand is loaded with dense iron mineral magnetic deposits.""How bad is the magnetic pull?" Lyra asked, gripping her golden staff tightly as she stepped over