Mod Superhero

Chapter 7.32 - Seraphina 2 / Quick Comm

Seraphina was still in the maintenance artery. She moved with clinical precision, triaging the failures as they came. Sparking suppressors, groaning coolant lines, and flickering panels... Each action was a stitch in an unraveling tapestry, and her power was the needle that kept it together.

Seraphina fingertips brushed against the wall. The glyphs flickered unevenly, like a candle guttering in the wind. With a measured breath, she pressed a thread of her will into the stone. The rune steadied, its glow tightening into a clean, constant line.

The reports hadn't slowed. If anything, they came increasingly faster. Dozens of mages calling in tremors and faults. She listened, judged, then issued commands in words as clipped and sharp as the tools in her study. Her voice never rose, but it carried down the hardline like a strike of steel.

Through the lattice, she felt her guards moving into position. Most were Vault-born, and all of them had trained for years in corridors like these. They were among the best battlemages on the planet, and Seraphina took pride in them. She felt biomechs advancing alongside them.

Like other mages, Seraphina had been hesitant to work alongside the metal men—

But their effectiveness was undeniable. The biomechs were tireless, and efficient, and while they would never replace her mages, Seraphina was glad to have them on her side.

Then there was the Iron Choir.

She could feel them as they stepped forth from the walls, one by one, eight foot tall golems of stone and iron. Their forms were brutal and deliberate, animated by layers upon layers of sigils and glyphs. The golems were nigh indestructible, and each possessed the strength of a Class 4 super.

A thunderous heartbeat rose in the mountain—one hundred arcane engines beating in unison. The rhythm passed through her body like a titanic drumbeat, like the mountain itself was coming alive.

To others, it was noise. To Seraphina, it was a song—her song—rising through the lattice like a choir harmonizing.

Seraphina stood still in the passageway, her senses extending through the rest of the Vault. She felt the steady march of her forces as they mobilized and then felt first battles break out as guards and intruders met.

She didn't need her mages' reports to know what had happened. She felt it herself—intruders fighting against a group of mages, biomechs, and a single golem. Her web of perception shivered as they exchanged blows.

Then came the song.

The golem's note reverberated through the lattice like a scream forged from tuning forks and cathedral bells, too perfect and too terrible to be mistaken for anything natural. The resonance hit Seraphina's awareness like a blade across glass, and even so far away, it was powerful enough to make her wince.

And then silence.

She felt the intruders' presence wink out. Snuffed like candles. Her web of perception stilled in their absence.

Seraphina allowed herself the smallest flicker of a smile. One by one the intruders would fall. If any had the sense to surrender, they'd find themselves imprisoned a short walk away. Then the mages could repair the damage. Order would be restored soon enough.

Then, the threads flickered.

The presences were back—same chamber, same number, steady as if they had never been touched. Impossible. No one survived the song. Not mages, not supers...

Seraphina's brow twitched. For the first time in years, she felt doubt, like a string slipping from her grasp.

She forced her will back into the lattice, clamping down hard. Lockdowns spread through the local wards as she tried to isolate those intruders.