Reo stared after her, surprised at her fortitude. "What are you going to do now?" he called after her. She heard his feet on grass as he jogged to her side.

"That bastard is still alive," she muttered through clenched teeth. "We need to reach him before they do."

He noted the temper in her tone, but said nothing.

Wobeck corpses littered the forest. Maeyune kicked aside one of the giant, dismembered bodies and procured the creature's plasma rifle. She snatched various other items to which she didn't give a second thought.

Reo followed her example with another body. "And what are you going to do when we reach him?" he asked, gathering a few other devices on the ground.

She unclipped her rifle's plasma pack and checked its contents. Satisfied with the amount left, she snapped it back into place with violent purpose and met Reo's eyes.

"I'm going to kill him."

Her words were firm. Gone was that shock from before. All she felt now was a vicious rage to hunt.

Yes, push away the pain, she told herself. Overcome it, like you have always done your entire life. You need to get this done.

Be strong.

You must live.

She met Reo's eyes and saw that he had been watching her the entire time. His eyes were black in the darkness, his face emanating concern.

That was when she finally realized it.

"I can't see your aura," she uttered, brow creasing. Her words were laced with worry. Indeed, she could no longer see that golden glow around the sun warrior.

He gave a near-imperceptible nod. "I can't see yours either."

That was why he had been staring at her so intently. If she had no powers, then she had no magical aura. And with no powers, she certainly couldn't see them on another.

She felt despair take a painful bite inside her chest, and she gritted her teeth and forced anger back.

Be strong.

Now that Yunra's companion no longer had powers, had Reo experienced a disconnect? Had he felt the moon's destruction like she had?

"Do you still have powers?" she asked.

Reo extended a hand forward, his palm turning up to her. Gold energy whisked between his fingers, momentarily flashing with green.

Her eyes fixated on the scene, and curiosity diminished her ire, if only for a bit. "What is that?"

"I think it might be some aftereffect from the machine," Reo answered, frowning. He turned his hand over, examining the emerald coils that appeared at random.

"The Overlord said that we were conduits," he noted. "I think he was using our bodies to conduct Vaius's life force into his ships. So, maybe when we turned Vaius's life force into energy, I think we absorbed some of it."

"Then why do I not have it?" Maeyune asked feebly.

He looked at her then, lips drawing tight as he contemplated. "I...I don't know."

She didn't know why she thought he would have the answer. He was as clueless as she was, as lost as she was.

That ship. That moon-destroyer, she thought wretchedly, for lack of a proper term. Where had it come from? Was it a part of the Overlord's fleet?

Shattered.

Maeyune stared at her hand, her fingers outspread like Reo's and wondering if, by some miracle, she would start seeing green.

When there was no such miracle, she dropped her hand in discontent and then glanced in the direction where she had last seen mountains.

"We head toward the mountains," she declared. "That's where the Overlord will be."

But as she took a few steps in that direction, Reo said, "Maeyune, wait."

When she stopped, he gestured toward her path with a nod. "Those are the Goldhorn Mountains that we passed over." Then, he pointed behind him—in the opposite direction. "But there's a Beran military base about fifty miles north from here. If we move that way and resupply, we'll be better prepared to face him and the Wobeck."

She shook her head and shifted into a half-turn, intending to leave. "There's no time. We can't let the Overlord rendezvous with his reinforcements."

"But we can't face him like this," he said. "We don't have any idea where he landed, and we'll be going in blind. We don't even have water or food. If we head toward the base, we'll have a better chance of someone finding us."

"If we don't go after him, he will escape," she argued. "Who knows how long it will be until we find him again?"

Reo didn't bother to hide his incredulity. His frown deepened, and he stared at her with careful appraisal. There was a short pause before he continued, "I thought you were the practical one."

The remark had her turning and facing him entirely. "What does that mean?"

He took a step toward her, his hands pushed forward as if to plead with her. "Maeyune, I want to go after him as much as you do, but you--"

He cut himself off. His face twisted as he tried to find the right words, but Maeyune still heard what he had wanted to say.

But you don't have powers anymore.

"If we head that way," he went on, jerking his chin in the Overlord's direction, "then we will be going a day without water, food or rest and without any chance of help. I can manage when the sun rises again, but if we get caught before that, we'll be too tired to fight."

Maeyune refused to concede. "You are more than welcome to head toward the base," she said. "But I am going to destroy the Overlord and the rest of the Wobeck."

She spun on her heels. She was ready to leave him, when his hand caught her elbow to stop her.

From the sudden, physical contact, something sharp struck her mind--a memory.

A stampede of emotion rushed through her, and her face flushed with heat. She staggered backward away from him, and he released his hold immediately. When she'd finally righted herself, her wide eyes took in the sight of him, of his worried expression—of his lips.

The kiss. She had remembered the kiss.

"What happened?" Reo demanded. "Are you alright?"

The concern on his face was genuine, but he wasn't breathing hard like she was now.

He hadn't seen the memory. Only she had.

She opened her mouth but found that she had lost her voice. She wouldn't have been able to speak had she wanted to, because a few large objects whistled past overhead and obstructed all sound.

Maeyune and Reo's gazes snapped up, in time to watch as black aircrafts streamed over the canopy. Without exchanging a glance or a word, they sprinted after the vehicles. They returned to the hill on which they had previously witnessed the moon's demise. When they could finally see the night sky again, they watched as the aircrafts--perhaps a hundred in count--veered toward the approaching monstrosity that was the moon-destroyer.

However, it wasn't just the moon-destroyer that awaited them. What had been a ship before was now...ships.

Black silhouettes dispersed from the large ship and were nearly invisible against the night. Their shapes were growing far too large for them to pass as birds.

Maeyune felt the breath leave her. No...

Had those ships and that moon-destroyer been waiting beyond the planet's shield this entire time? The moon had forged a shield around itself and the planet, but after giving Maeyune the rest of its power to annihilate the remaining Wobeck ships, the moon had been left momentarily defenseless.

On account of that, these new ships had made their attack.

The aircrafts, Maeyune saw with stunned eyes, were Beran gunships. Her heart flew into her throat as both sides opened fire on the other. The aerial battle sparked with color, joining the illustration of the moon's shards in the sky.

"They came from the base!" Reo shouted above the blasts. "That's not enough!"

With the arrival of this new Wobeck force, Maeyune had been thinking the same thing. There were too many of the enemy.

Maeyune spotted three Beran gunships as they veered toward the forest--toward the hill. But before Reo could light up his energy as a signal, enemy crafts rounded above them, and two of the Berans were shot down.

The third lost its wing from plasma fire, and it plunged directly to where Maeyune and Reo now stood. Maeyune didn't need to hear Reo's warning yell. She was already running off to the side to avoid the gunship. The hill underneath them shook when the plane made contact, and the ground spit up lumps of dirt and grass behind her.

The sound of the collision deafened their ears. They flew onto the ground and tumbled down the hill's slope, barely missing the gunship as it skidded past. And when they rolled to a stop, Maeyune found herself sprawled over Reo, chest to chest and faces just inches apart.

There was a split second when wide eyes held each other. Her hair created a black curtain around their heads and obscured the view of the sky, and for a breathless moment, they were both made oblivious to the battle. The ringing in Maeyune's ears nullified the chaotic blasts, but it wasn't loud enough to mask her own thunderous heartbeat.

Quickly, she squirmed and rolled off of him, mumbling, "Sorry."

She thought she heard a muffled reply, but she was already on her feet and sprinting toward the fallen ally.

The latch to the Beran gunship's helm had been torn open, and the pilot inside was struggling to release the seat's buckles. Smoke whirled around him, and he broke into incessant coughing.

"Hold on!" Maeyune heard herself scream.

But the moment she met the pilot's eyes, the aircraft burst into flames. The wave of the explosion sent her flying backward into Reo again, and he conjured a shield to protect them from flying debris. They toppled over, and when she fell hard onto the ground, she felt the impact rattle her bones.

She couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't speak. Her head throbbed from noise and exhaustion and the stench of war. She was hardly aware of herself as she pressed her hands to her head, a futile attempt to remediate the pain.

It was a long time--hours, it seemed--before her senses cleared and she could decide which way was up and which was down.

"No," she heard Reo murmur. He was already on his feet, his eyes on the sky.

Eventually, Maeyune found her sense of balance. She stood, the movement lethargic, and gave one stupified glance at the gunship. Flames blackened the metal, and thick smoke moved up in a lazy waltz from the damage. The pilot--burnt beyond recognition--lay unmoving in his seat.

Maeyune set her jaw.

"No," Reo said again, and she followed his gaze.

In only a blink of an eye, the human forces had dwindled down to but a dozen left. The alien aircrafts had converged into various formations and now picked off each scrambled gunship like synchronized vultures.

All Maeyune and Reo could do was watch. They were two spectators to a battle that which they should have led. Shock mounted their bodies to the ground where they stood. As the last of the Beran planes combatted its way to escape, it was shot down seconds later.

Both Maeyune and Reo felt the devastation in their hearts.

Powerless. Helpless.

What heroes were they?

Minutes passed before the noise finally settled, and all that was left to indicate an abrupt battle were the spires of smoke and flames shooting upward from the forest.

A hundred emotions and thoughts coursed through Maeyune.

They should look for survivors. They should go after the Overlord. They should find a way to board that moon-destroyer and blow it out of existence.

But all Maeyune could do was stand as still as death.

Reo was the first to articulate what she was thinking. "They just destroyed us like it was nothing," he said, his voice coarse.

The larger ship, the cursed moon-destroyer as Maeyune had reluctantly dubbed it, had come so close that the sight of it made her skin crawl. There were more sharp edges and points on it than there were curves. It was as if it had torn away from the side of a mountain and had discovered how to fly.

Her eyes hadn't lied to her when she'd thought its shape looked like a spinning top. It had one elongated leg that pointed downward and a squat, ovate top for a head. There was another part of the ship that revolved around the head--something much like a jagged ring, or a thick belt of rock.

What looked like extremely large rods protruded from the top of the moon-destroyer. They were too many to count and were spread across the head's surface. Maeyune thought they resembled some sort of antennae.

She spotted several other mammoth shapes that came into view and drifted beside the moon-destroyer. She drew tight fists when she recognized their silhouettes--they were the smooth and long structures of the Wobeck mother ships. They dulled in comparison to the moon-destroyer and now appeared like sentinels on guard duty.

There they were: more of the Overlord's fleet. How large was his armada?

The answer wasn't important to Maeyune at this point. The only thing that mattered was how they were going to defeat such a force.

Reo glanced back at Maeyune, and she saw the golden rage that simmered in his irises. They were two small beacons in the dark.

"We need to regroup at the base," he said grimly. "Who knows when the Wobeck will find it and destroy what's left. We need to be there."

This time, she did not object. She didn't know how much they could do in their current state, but she only nodded, her lips a tight line.

The sun warrior didn't so much as give the sky another regard. He gathered his fallen plasma rifle and a few other weapons before he started north.

Maeyune couldn't move after him; her heart had become a heavy weight to carry. She tried to find that anger again, the one that would keep her moving. But there was too much despair standing in the way.

They had lost so many men and women in this brief battle, so many that the attempt in the end had been meaningless. The humans had attacked without their moon and sun warriors, but even if Maeyune and Reo had been there, she didn't think they would have made much of a difference.

If only she could ascend to god form and rain hell on the alien threat.

Squeezing her fists, she waited until her nails bit deep into her palms. She embraced the pain and at last was able to will her rage back into place.

She was certain the world believed her to be dead. And reasonably, they believed Reo to be dead, too.

Her eyes flicked over the new, approaching Wobeck forces, at the strange ship that now predominated the heavens, before finally taking in the crippled moon.

The Overlord was going to pay.

(Continued in Part 3)