Anthem's Fall

Chapter Twenty

As the prodigious transport rose from the barracks, Vengelis discerned something flying after it. With sudden dread, Vengelis exploded toward the lone pursuer. In his heart he knew it was another one of the Felixes. As he did so, the blonde Felix charged after him as he bore down on the huge transport. Without the slightest difficulty, she caught up to him. He was flying as fast as he could when from his blindside a burning elbow careened into the center of his face. Vengelis felt his nose break and his face burst with a crunching of bones and cartilage.

The Felixes had surrounded him.

Vengelis squinted through watering eyes and unspeakable pain as the distant Felix caught up to the Royal Transport and tore into the side of the giant craft like a missile, disappearing entirely into the steel hull. The transport split down the middle, and for a moment Vengelis caught a glimpse of its riven innards: steel supports, command decks, hallways. Then the fuel cells sparked, and the craft erupted into white-hot flames. Two smoldering halves of the gigantic ship plummeted to the ground far below, marring the sky with a broad streak of smoke.

Desperate, Vengelis now turned to see the blonde Felix brutally beating Master Tolland. His teacher was going to die, and Vengelis had not followed his last order. But Vengelis could not bring himself to flee. He turned his back to Master Tolland and began to fly toward the falling wreckage. Yet another Felix was already on him. His last vision was the pieces of the transport crashing through the roof of the maimed palace far below.

There were too many of them. His family was dead, and he knew he would soon follow. Vengelis reached out to the distant calamity as the blonde Felix—having defeated Master Tolland—mounted her legs around his midsection and began to unleash a flood of eager punches at his undefended face. Vengelis vaguely felt his head rock back and forth from each blow. His jaw cracked and each of his cheekbones shattered from the consecutive knocks. Soon the strikes felt like nothing at all, he was so loosely clinging to consciousness.

Vengelis descended limply through space, free falling toward the ground, his face unrecognizable and his armor cracked and shredded to ribbons. Closer he fell toward the ruined and burning intersections of his once beloved Sejeroreich.

Note from the author: The excerpt of Anthem's Fall here on Wattpad is just the very, very beginning of the novel. If you would like to support Anthem's Fall and read the novel in its entirety, go to http://amzn.com/B00M7NPD28. I will keep posting here on Wattpad, but it will take some months for the updates to finish the complete novel. Thanks so much for your support!