Read The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4) for Free Online

sense, enabling him to navigate. His bone was of a density that made him an excellent juggernaut, which even if damaged, could heal at a rapid rate. Raus Kapler had dubbed him, in this configuration, the “Porta Fighter.” Nils had been the top Locsard student, but only because Hilene had gone the route of the Artifact Competition.
    With his Artifact, the Alloyed Splitter, Nils’s bone was transformed into an organic steel alloy that was stronger than diamond. His shape was streamlined as well, with three four-pointed pinwheels, fat at their bases and tapering to wicked edges, along a two-meter horizontal axis, the ends of which formed deadly points. The middle pinwheel was the thickest and largest, spanning two meters tip to tip. The outer pinwheels were half the size of the larger and dotted with projections—knives—jutting out at forty-five degrees. The Alloyed Splitter also enabled Nils to break apart, much like Icsain’s Gran Lej, into thousands of much, much smaller versions of his transformed state, which he was able to control. This, according to Raus, was the “Cloud of Gnats.”
    Hilene Tanser was the granddaughter of a participant in the Artifact Competition prior to hers, but she was far more skilled in the Darkness Piercing Spear Hand than her grandfather had ever been. More terrible, though, was her Locsard-honed ability to become insubstantial, like a ghost, and yet still affect physical space. Though her Artifact, the Attenuated Splitter, gave her the appearance of being an animate statue of implacable steel—the Emperor’s idea of poetic justice, some said—her power to become intangible was perfected, made inexhaustible, and enhanced so that she could temporarily divide herself into ten perfect, independent copies. This time Jav, not Raus, had given her the appropriate moniker of “Secret Weapon.”
    She was a hundred and fifty-eight centimeters tall, and only slightly taller while Dark with the Attenuated Splitter, mostly because the helmet was disproportionately large and bulbous, though not, strictly speaking, a helmet at all. She was thick—not fat, but athletic—and small-breasted. While Dark, very little was left to the imagination except for her face. She was, indeed, a living statue of smooth, seamless steel.
    The nicknames for both of the final additions to the Titan Squad were often used in jest, but never in condescension. They wielded power far too great for anyone to treat them lightly. Nils was bookish and quiet, humble, but never allowed anyone to push or taunt him. Hilene commanded respect at all times. She understood and obeyed hierarchy, but there were few she accepted as equals or betters. Few could argue.
    Hilene flew close to Jav now as they approached the road leading up the stone structure up on the crag. Nils, by default in the Porta Fighter configuration when Dark, flew high, between Jav and Raus upon their Grans.
    The structure they all approached looked equally naturally-occurring and man-made. Myriad spindly rock arms spread out from it gracefully, making it look delicate and beautiful, but there was no mistake. It was a castle and it held the local power, whatever that might amount to. An entourage was already making its way down the road from the castle and the Viscain contingent would meet them before too long.
    “What do you think, General Holson?” Hilene came close enough to Jav to ask.
    Jav shrugged. “Scanlan’s instruments picked up some unusual energy signatures. They don’t appear to radiate from the very basic technology here, so we might be in for an interesting surprise.”
    “Do you still find yourself surprised when meeting the opposition following planetfall?”
    “Sometimes. There will always be something new, I suppose.”
    She nodded. “I am always impressed with the variety, never the intensity.”
    Jav snorted. He’d seen enough in his first three years to easily discount her sentiment, but in her defense, the opposition had never again