Hexi Walled City.Ten years ago Ethan had lifted the entire city into the sky and ringed it with a protection array. For ten years, Hexi had known nothing but peace. People had nearly forgotten the siege that once hung over their heads.With the whole city raised, the ground beneath it had opened to the black ocean. The water was bottomless, and the monsters hid under it, so there was nothing to see.Deep in that dark water, a handsome man—beautiful enough to look carved from the sea itself—opened his eyes.He had come to Earth with Song, one of her Grand Generals. The landing had gone wrong. Everyone had written him off. Instead he'd hidden in the ocean, drinking its energy to heal, and now, at last, he was back at his peak.He swam up and saw the floating city hanging in the air.His brow furrowed.He remembered Earth's civilization index. Below one—a low civilization under the interstellar treaty, free to be looted and invaded. That was why the Hamlai had come to strip this world a

Felix's face was ugly. His hand went to the necklace at his throat.Ethan had given it to him the last time they'd met, saying it would buy him his life if it ever came to it. Felix had never expected to use it.He drew a breath and herded every man in the garrison out. He didn't have to. The noise had woken them all; they came out to a sky on fire and a blackened half-city.Every head was ringing. They'd been comfortable too long. Ten years of ease had burned the edge off.Hexi was nothing like the four Walled Cities that took attacks every day. Hexi was safe. No monsters came here. The only fighting was the occasional convoy, for points and supplies. They had never imagined the shield could vanish. Had never imagined half the city could die in the dark without a sound."Move! Suit up! We're on!" Somebody shouted it, and it broke the spell. They dressed, they armed, they fell in.Felix led his thousand straight into the fight.The monsters were already inside. The fliers had carried

"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Ethan glared down at him. "Trying to get yourself killed?"Felix grinned wider, opened his mouth to answer, and coughed out a mouthful of blood. His eyes rolled back. He folded forward like a coat dropping off a hook.Ethan cursed, caught him, stuffed three pills into his mouth with his other hand, and hauled him back.Hexi Walled City was finished. Half of it had collapsed into raw wreckage; the rest had been fought over until the streets ran red. But the three million defenders who had held the line had held just long enough. More than five million children had made it out alive. Apart from the ones cut down in the first seconds of the raid, before anyone could react, not a single child was lost.Ethan repaired the teleport array the moment the fighting stopped and ran every survivor out. The professional corpse-collectors from the other five cities came in to clean up. The dead soldiers went to Capital City. The living were spread, in s

"Aah—"Lian screamed. The sound went on and on, raw and animal. She had never been helpless before, and her body didn't know what to do with it. Every time a thorn sank into her soul she felt herself shudder down to the bone, a pain that had nothing to do with flesh and everything to do with being unmade.She couldn't fight. She couldn't even breathe around it. Her face twisted. The monsters on the ground flattened themselves, legs too weak to hold them, too afraid to stand.Song watched the woman who had grown up at her side get torn apart and something in her face cracked."Ethan." Her voice shook. "Let her go. Right now. If you spare her, I swear—even when we take this planet, I'll spare some of your people. You pick. Five hundred of them."Ethan laughed. It wasn't a nice sound. "I kill her and your people live anyway. Your word isn't worth the air it costs." He didn't bother feeding thorns in one at a time. He drove all ten home at once, straight into her sea of consciousness."AA

"What the hell are these things?"The battlefield dissolved into chaos. Earth's fighters couldn't figure out the target, and they couldn't figure out the rules. Physical damage vanished into the slugs. Magic fire vanished. Even spirit attacks—anything—they absorbed it all. Worse: once a slug had drunk enough damage, it fed that damage right back out. Earth's side had no answer, and the slug's counterblows were more than they could survive.It was the kind of sight that made people wonder what the point was. Why fight when losing was arithmetic? Why not just lay down arms?A hundred thousand soldiers on one ridge fired until their hands bled. The slugs swallowed it all. They didn't stagger. They didn't hiss. They just kept crawling, and the energy they drank in glowed faintly under their hides until the glow reached some threshold and spat back out—a wave that scythed through the soldiers who had fired it. Men who had survived ten years of monster wars died behind cover, killed by thei