Chapter 646: This Person, Benjamin Mark, Forged from God-metal

"Do not be silly, little girl. I do not deserve someone as precious as you. And you certainly must not yoke yourself to dangerous folk like me. Do you understand?" He rested one heavy hand briefly on the top of her head, his palm covering her crown, his fingers spanning the small curve of her skull. "It was a pleasure making your acquaintance."

The six of them passed through the courtyard gate and into the street beyond without further ceremony or lingering looks or drawn-out farewells.

And just like that, they departed.

Life inside the house resumed its ordinary rhythm at once, as though the previous three days had been only a strange, vivid dream—a dream from which everyone had now awakened, blinking and disoriented, to find the world unchanged.

Though, Star sat on the low stone bench and wept without restraint, her small shoulders shaking, her hands pressed to her face as though she could hold back the grief with her palms.

As expected of a child.

But my full grown daughters moved through the rooms with the heavy, despondent quiet of people who had already begun to miss a light they had not expected to grow fond of, their footsteps slow, their voices low, and their eyes distant.

Mandarin returned to her kitchen tasks, her hands finding familiar work, but her movements lacked their usual briskness.

I, however, could not set the matter aside so easily.

The Apex Girls were strong—beastly in their power, each one a force that ordinary soldiers would have fled from on sight, would have surrendered to without a fight.

Nonetheless, something about the target they hunted refused to leave my thoughts. It refused to settle into the comfortable assumption that they would prevail.

Why send six such monsters to eliminate a single man?

Why commit so much force to one target, unless that target required it?

They held themselves with the usual arrogance of the strong, but I could not shake the feeling that they might be biting off more than even they could chew.

I had never met this Benjamin Mark, and I could not imagine an anomaly capable of truly endangering them...

Despite this, the possibility sat in my chest like a cold stone, heavy and unmoving.

I told myself these things, and still the headache of worry settled behind my eyes, spreading through my skull like cracks in ice.

Thirty minutes passed, perhaps a little more.

The ground beneath the house began to vibrate in irregular pulses—gentle at first, then stronger, then strong enough to rattle the dishes on the shelves and send dust sifting down from the rafters.

Distant explosions rolled through the air, each one a deep, concussive thump that shook the wooden shutters and set the hanging pots to swaying.

The sounds came from the direction of the Hub—the most dangerous quarter of Lot.

If this Benjamin Mark person was not forged from godmetal itself, how had those women not already finished him?

"I’m stepping out for a while."

I muttered to no one in particular and walked toward the door before anyone could question me, lest they pointed out that I was too old for this, too slow and soft.

I ran.

I ran until the old muscles in my legs burned and every impact of my boots against the cobblestones sent a jolt up into my skull.

I ran until my breath tore in and out of my lungs in ragged gasps and sweat stung my eyes.

My vision narrowed to a tunnel with nothing at the end but smoke and sound.

My balance began to waver, my heart hammering against my ribs, yet I forced myself onward through the narrowing streets, past shuttered windows and frightened faces that peered out only long enough to see me pass—an old man running toward the thunder, running toward the place where everyone else had run away from.

I did not know what I intended to do once I arrived. I only knew that I had to see with my own eyes whether those children were still standing.

***

I reached the source of the explosions and the endless vibration.

The street that opened before me scarcely deserved the name any longer.

Buildings had been reduced to jagged skeletons, their walls torn away, their roofs collapsed, their windows gaping like empty eyes.

Smoke hung low and acrid, stinging my throat, watering my eyes, coating my tongue with the taste of ash and pulverized stone.

Great chunks of masonry littered the ground like the discarded toys of giants, scattered across what had once been a thoroughfare and was now little more than a field of rubble and ruin.

I could see Sekhmet half-buried in a mound of debris, the rubble piled to her waist, pinning her motionless form in place.

Her usual bright demeanor was gone, and her tail lay limp against the broken stones behind her.

Nearby, Saharit knelt beside Zanya, who leaned heavily against a cracked wall, her body tilted at an angle that spoke of exhaustion or injury.

Zanya’s side was dark with blood, the fabric of her robe clinging wetly to her skin.

Saharit’s staff glowed with soft, steady light as she worked over the wound, her hands moving with precision, her hat discarded somewhere in the chaos, her jaw set in concentration.

Zuri stood farther out in the open, bent forward with her hands on her knees, her chest heaving. Her grey robe hung in tatters, shredded by forces I could not imagine.

Sweat cut clean lines through the grime that covered her skin, tracing paths down her cheeks and neck. Each breath she drew looked as though it cost her something precious, something she could not afford to lose.

And in the center of the devastation, Hawthorne and Frigoris fought something I could barely track with my eyes.

It was something that moved like a blur of motion and force, like a storm given human shape—the concept of violence made flesh.

The opponent moved with supernatural reflexes and speed.

Hawthorne took blow after blow, each impact driving him backward or sideways, his heavy frame shuddering under the punishment, his feet leaving furrows in the broken ground.

Frigoris stayed close, her small body almost entirely occupied with defense, intercepting strikes that would have ended her larger partner, her movements economical and utterly without fear.

Their combined efforts seemed only to slow the inevitable, only to delay what both of them must have known was coming.

I stepped out from the narrow gap between two partially collapsed buildings before I could think better of it.

I could not help reminding myself that I was aged and slow—useless in the face of this war. I had no place in that fight.

Frigoris’s head turned first—snapping toward me with that mechanical precision, her heavy-lidded eyes finding me instantly.

Hawthorne’s followed a fraction of a second later, his gaze dragging away from his opponent with visible effort.

Both of them saw me.

And Hawthorne’s brown eyes widened in bewilderment.