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inches from the ancient street below.
    “Keep low,” Julieth heard Riad’s instruction overhead.
    He held her, pinning her down, but she moved her head and watched as a man charged toward them with drawn sword. Blood smeared his face.
    Riad leapt from overtop her, beating back the attacker’s sword with his metal arm and then clutching the enemy’s throat, releasing the life from his body as the foe’s eyes rolled in his head.
    A moment later a blast came from across the cavern and Julieth witnessed the form of an attacking archer disintegrate with electricity, ash from its body wafting away like the ash of a fire in the breeze surrounding them.
    “We need to move!” Riad shouted as he struck a look back at her. “Can you get us up there?”
    “I’ll need defense, but I think I can carry you both, at least that short distance.” Julieth looked over the debris, scouring it for living attackers. She expanded her vast wings and flew over to Ivanus. “You know what to do.”
    He went behind her, bracing an arm over her upper body and holding the massive weapon in his other hand.
    Julieth lifted up and flew to Riad, holding down her hands for him to take.
    She beat her wings in full span behind her as the trio rose. The weight of the two men pulled her down, but somehow she made slow progress. As she approached eyelevel with the street she saw armed warriors watching them in fear and awe. Some fought her people in the streets, while others clenched their swords, ready to fight.
    Archers volleyed arrows toward them and she quickened her wings’ pulse, barely avoiding the arrows’ range. She was about to call out to Ivanus, but felt the charge of the gun, watching as its blast lit up the archers, causing them to duck or flee.
    “Go for the far side!” Riad called out as Ivanus ceased fire, adjusted, and then fired on the mercenary swordsmen.
    Julieth looked and saw that the unmanned far side of the open crevice. It had been cool in the tunnels, but hot, dry wind cut across her as she beat her wings toward the area.
    Men rushed their way as she reached the space.
    Riad let go of her wrists, hitting the ground hard as he landed, and then drew a mine and thrust it into the coming onslaught.
    BOOM! The enemy’s bodies were shredded in the blast.
    As Ivanus dropped from her back, she pumped her wings and soared into the sky. The city dropped away, revealing two major pockets of fighting, both nearby. Chaos raged around where they opened the hole.
    Julieth took a breath, taking a moment high above the fighting to calm her nerves, and then realized she didn’t have that moment she had just taken to spare. Arrows shot toward her from below and then fled down toward the earth once more, completely out of range. She reached into her quiver and pulled out a fire-powder tipped arrow, quickly pulling it back in her bowstring and firing it into the enemy below. She watched as bodies of the enemy were decimated in the blast.
    Something caught her eye below. Her people drove back a group of mercenaries that had pressed deeper into the city. The mercenaries, the size of minute creatures below, fell quickly. Riad, Ivanus and I are not there, she thought. We have a real chance to defeat them.
    Electric light struck through the fighting below as Ivanus utilized the weapon they had taken from Riad.
    Julieth needed to return to their side. Her people might recognize her, but would not know Ivanus and would see Riad as the enemy. She drew an arrow as she dove, firing it into the skull of an attacker charging for Riad, as she landed near him on the street, blood webbing and pooling in the cobble’s crevices.
    “That way!” she shouted, holding an arm out toward where she had seen her people making progress. Julieth fired more arrows into the enemy before them as Riad took them on with his bare hands.
    Swords glanced off Riad’s cybernetic limbs as if they had never touched him, and he thrust his metallic half forward first, using it