Olevia barely heard him, her mind already racing. The bitter chill was nothing compared to the dead halt of her defenses. Miro and Zosha, who had been huddled behind her, now stood completely still, their small forms trembling. Goran, who had just materialized beside them, let out a low, guttural growl, his spectral form flickering with residual strain. The absence of the nail-guns’ whirring, the steam vents’ hiss, was a deafening void. Then, a new sound cut through the mist: the grinding tracks of at least a dozen armored vehicles, their engines thrumming like a swarm of angry wasps, approaching from the north. The sound grew, a terrible, mechanical heartbeat pounding the frozen earth. “No,” Olevia murmured, her eyes scanning the fog-shrouded clearing, “not collapsing. Concentrating.” Her gaze fixed on Yevra’s house across the clearing, now ringed by military personnel. The structure, though pristine, felt like a magnet pulling at something unseen beneath the frozen soil. A cold certainty settled over her. That structure sat directly atop an anomaly fissure, a natural conduit for the spatial rift. The garrison commanders were tapping it as their central node. “Their field reactor,” Olevia murmured, her words clipped. “Down in Yevra’s root cellar. That’s why they left the frame standing.” Drevic followed her line of sight. “You think you can… what? Shut it down?” he asked, disbelief etched on his face. “It’s their main power source, and they’ll have it guarded like a general’s vault.” “Shut it down?” Olevia bared her teeth. “No. I’m bleeding it dry. Every spark feeds *our* grid.” Drevic stared at her, then a slow, dangerous smile spread across his face, a mirror of her own resolve. “Insane,” he breathed, “but I like it.” Keeping low amidst the swirling fog, Olevia and Drevic moved with practiced stealth. Goran flowed around them, a shifting dark presence obscuring their forms further. The yard bristled with armed conscripts, their breath pluming in the frigid air as they barked into field handsets. The heavy scent of burning diesel and damp earth hung thick. They found a narrow gap between a stack of supply crates and a half-track’s treads. Drevic, with the silent precision of a trained operative, dispatched a lone sentry with a swift, brutal strike to the neck, dragging the limp form into the deeper obscurities. Olevia, meanwhile, was already at the basement window, her fingers working with astonishing speed on the rusted latch. The glass, thin and brittle, offered little resistance to a carefully applied pressure. They slipped into the damp storage pit. The floorboards above vibrated against Olevia's scalp, matching the tug inside her chest. In the middle of the earthen room, an array of brass-cased machinery glowed with cerulean light. Thick cables snaked into packed soil and up through the joists. The main field turbine. A muffled cheer from above. Then, the rhythmic thud of heavy boots. The stair door creaked, exposing the wooden risers to the kitchen. Olevia and Drevic flattened against the damp stone, Goran wrapping around their boots in a pool of ink. Through the warped timber, the kitchen came into view. Yevra Vlas, smeared in grease and muck, knelt on the floorboards before an officer in a mud-spattered trench coat. The officer, blocky and scarred, held a half-empty tin of greasy pork. His uniform was immaculate, stark against the grime. “Please, Commander! A little more! Just a crumb for my loyalty!” Yevra’s voice was a simpering whine, utterly stripped of its usual venom. She reached out, her fingers trembling, trying to touch his polished boot. The officer spat onto the planks by her knee. He took a deliberate bite of the canned meat, chewing slowly, then spat a piece onto the floor beside Yevra’s head. “Loyalty, old crone? You’re vermin begging for gristle. You pointed out the valley's tremor lines, nothing more. You don’t sit at my mess table.” His boot lashed out, planting hard in Yevra's chest. She tumbled across the wet boards, the tin clattering after her and dumping gray lard into her hair. Olevia smiled, watching the village matriarch choke on pig fat in front of the invaders. Olevia stepped onto the kitchen threshold, Drevic tracking her shoulder with rifle raised. Goran padded across the floorboards without a sound. Two guards dropped their cigarettes; Yevra's bootlickers scrambled back against the sink. “Well, well,” Olevia’s voice cut through the stunned silence, clear and sharp, dripping with mockery. “Look how the mighty have fallen. From village matriarch to a dog begging for scraps. And here I thought you only licked the boots of Stoyan.” She gestured with a dismissive hand at the spilled rations on Yevra’s face. “Is that what your ‘noble’ family has come to, Yevra? Eating dirt for a tin of stale pork?” Yevra gagged on lard, her mouth twisting in fury. “You! How dare you!” she screeched, but the commander shoved her flat with a leather gauntlet. The commander sized Olevia up, thumb hooking his holster. “So, the cabin wife shows her face,” he said. “You’ve caused enough trouble in my sector.” “Your sector is out of fuel,” Olevia said. She whistled. Goran dropped straight back through the floor hatch, his phantom claws clamping onto the humming turbine below. Olevia dropped down the cellar ladder before the commander drew his sidearm. She drove her reinforced steel pry-bar into the turbine's brass casing. Violet sparks showered the dirt floor, static popping across her skin as she pried the primary copper busbar from its mount. The machine's whine dropped an octave. “Goran, take it!” she yelled. From the guts of the copper housing, Goran’s form flared. Inky ribbons erupted from his paws, wrapping the sheared busbar and burrowing through the earthen wall, shooting straight through the subsoil toward the cabin. [Siphon initiated: Temporal Ley-Line Power Transfer. Energy Flow: 10%... 25%... 50%...] The brass turbine let out a shrieking squeal as its load surged. Blue discharge flooded the foundation walls, cracking the timber beams above. Men shouted in confusion above as their flashlights shorted out in showers of embers. The commander lunged toward the hatch, but stopped short at the cellar lip as blue discharge crackled along the floorboards. Olevia stood beneath him in the blue haze, grinning, the shadow cables pulling taut toward her homestead. “Shoot her!” the commander roared into his dead radio. “Bring the armor up! Flatten the whole homestead!”

Siphoning the Vipers