A guttural roar vibrated through the air, shaking the dust from the monsters’ fur. It wasn't a roar of aggression, but of deep, protective fury. The colossal sorrow-brute, no longer cowering, rose on four columnar limbs and shielded Fennik with its frame. Its single eye, cleared of purple smog, locked onto the descending warship. Fennik looked up at the holographic image of Ostrom, his kind face a grotesque mask of intent. The words “watch them burn” hung foul over the metal scaffolding. Fennik set his knuckles against the sanded broom handle. Zariya stepped close to Fennik, boot heels scraping the iron grates. “We have to go,” she said, her voice low but urgent. “The moorings are too high, too slick.” She glanced from the titan’s flanks to the ship’s braided steel cables swaying in the downdraft. “We don’t just have to run,” Fennik said, his voice level. “We have to climb.” He patted the creature's bark-rough knee. “Are you with us, big fella?” [Resonance System: Connection Affirmative!] [Weeping Behemoth has offered Ascent Support!] The guardian dipped its neck, a tremor thrumming through its ribs. When it angled its wide shoulder, Fennik scrambled up into the matted gray hide, pulling Zariya behind him. The beast leaned out over the open drop. With a coil of sinew, the beast bounded straight upward. Flat pads broad as wagons struck the steel rigging, driving the monster skyward in rhythmic bounds. The air whipped past Fennik and Zariya, the ground falling away beneath them at an astonishing speed. Wind snapped their tunics, yet the Lattice held his balance true against the shear. Bix, who had been dozing on Fennik’s shoulder, awoke with a startled chirp, digging its tiny claws into his tunic as they ascended. Aboard the bridge, Ostrom watched their climb on the main glass, his mouth pulled thin. “Insolent curs,” he muttered. “Do they truly believe they can breach the ‘Aegis of Ostrana’?” He pressed a control on his console. “Deploy Vanguard Sentinel unit Rho-7. Engage and eliminate the trespassers. Do not allow them past the outer airlocks.” Seven black flight rigs dropped from the cruiser's ventral bay, trailing static. Bastion shock-troopers angled their descent, jetting straight down toward the climbing beast. “Incoming!” Zariya yelled. Violet lances scorched the clouds. The quadruped lurched sideways, thick pelt smoking where a bolt clipped its shoulder. He lifted his broom, not to sweep dirt, but to sweep away the very air of their corruption. With a profound surge of will, Fennik activated ‘Purified Airflow,’ the basic skill of his ‘Cleaner’ class, but now multiplied by untold Empathy Milestones. He slashed the broom across the updraft, trailing crystalline white bands across the slipstream. [Empathy Milestone Achieved!] [Purified Airflow now generates localized atmospheric vacuums!] Where Fennik’s broom passed, the air itself seemed to thin, to vanish. The vanguard pilots hit the pocket of scrubbed vacuum. Thrust nozzles choked without exhaust fuel, their turbines whining down to silent spins. Dead metal tumbled through empty mist, shearing past the mooring lines into the fog beneath the biodome. Zariya gripped the beast’s scruff. “You... you swept the combustion out of their intakes.” Fennik kept his footing. At the warship’s hull, the creature clamped onto the lip of an outer cargo bay and pried the blast hatch open with a shriek of shearing steel. They spilled into a cavernous docking bay, the air stale and thick with the scent of ozone and metal. Ostrom’s voice boomed from hidden speakers. “Such a shame, Fennik. I truly believed you were a simpleton. It seems I underestimated your… resourcefulness.” Fennik dismounted, Bix still clinging to his shoulder. Fennik signaled for their mount to guard the threshold. “Ostrom!” Fennik shouted down the hall. “These creatures belong here! Call off the strike!” “Deserve?” Ostrom’s voice crackled through the overhead grates. “Deserve is for the weak, boy. I built the biodomes, I wrote the central protocols, I preserved Ostrana! Your milestones are an unintended loop in classification matrices, nothing more!” Fennik and Zariya sprinted down the access gangways, tracking the heavy hum of reactor coils bathed in toxic emerald light. They breached the command deck. Ostrom stood before a churning green containment sphere, coat hem whipping in exhaust vents. “You threaten the social order, Fennik,” Ostrom said, fingers poised above a console plate. “But I have administrator access. Watch closely, boy. Watch as your little ‘class’ becomes as irrelevant as you always were.” His finger slammed down on a command. On Fennik’s wrist, the shimmering Resonance Lattice began to flicker violently. The soft, chiming text boxes vanished, replaced by jagged, unstable characters. The pale blue text box turned jagged crimson. [ERROR! ERROR! ADMINISTRATOR OVERRIDE DETECTED!] [CLASS: CLEANER – PURGE PROTOCOL INITIATED!] [CORE SYSTEM CONFLICT! UNFORESEEN PARAMETER: ‘INFINITE GROWTH’ DETECTED!] [PRIMARY SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED!] Ostrom staggered back from the sparks. “What is this? Rejection protocols? In my own framework?” “You can’t just delete compassion, Ostrom!” Zariya shouted, drawing her vibro-blade, its edge humming with the power of her new subclass. “Silence!” Ostrom slammed a red toggle. Sirens screamed as the warhead readout armed on the viewport: 00:00:30. “Then burn with it!” Ostrom seized the reactor’s bypass lever. Blighted fumes vented directly into his torso, melting uniform and alloy into his flesh. His ribs cracked outward, steel plating fusing with warped bone as the headmaster swelled into an eight-limbed amalgam of brass and venom.

Sweeping the Sky