Snippet the Last, IRONGHOSTS.

I’ll put the whole thing up tomorrow, after edits.

…

Omega bothered with neither the door, nor the wall, instead choosing to smash through the ceiling in a shower of plastic and metal. And she roared as she came. It was a bizarre roar, full of choppy shrieks and staccato grunts, all at a pitch and tone that Nat had ever heard before, and focused inexorably on Mu, now lying battered on the ground below her ‘sister.’ And disarticulated: Mu’s arm had snapped off like a twig in Omega’s vicious grippers, and the larger golem was shaking her roughly, screaming more of that bizarre cacophony as it popped off ever-larger pieces of Mu. There was a horrible delicacy in her dismemberment, though. Clearly Omega wanted her pound of flesh, and was willing to take her time in getting it.

It occurred to Nat later that he should have at least considered running away. True, it would have been pointless, but the thought never even crossed his mind as he rose, took aim, and spat out certain nonsense syllables while clawing at the intangible. For one horrible second his fingers found no purchase on the roiling aether around him, but then his arcane grasp firmed, and the power was flowing up through his fingers, and out of his mouth.

The magical bolt that struck Omega was a jangled, ugly thing, the product of haphazard training and only furtive practice. A Dominion teaching-mage would have scowled at the sight of it, and reached for his training whip. A Hersheyian Special Tasks Instructor would have coolly nodded, and penciled herself a reminder for instituting remedial training. But a Virginian wizard would have applauded, because it did exactly what Nat wanted; it got Omega’s attention, and in a perfectly dramatic manner, too.