With his free right hand, Kip pulled the mirror array’s crystal to rest against his forehead, exactly where the pagans said the third eye resides.
“The bane have all made landfall,” Big Leo said from beside Ferkudi. “Thousands of drafters and wights are swarming from every one of them. We’re surrounded.”
“Not all the bane. Superviolet’s gone,” Kip said.
Liv had found her old loyalties were stronger than she’d expected after all. She’d withdrawn from the fight. Thank you, Liv.
He drafted superviolet and put his right hand on the other grip—and suddenly felt his awareness cast out of his body as if he’d been catapulted from himself, far out into the ocean.
“Whoa, whoa! What was that?!” He yanked his hands away from the grips. It had not done that before. It was as if the presence of the bane had somehow charged it up.
Everyone was staring at him, unnerved.
“Not that I’m surprised or anything,” he said with a weak smile.
“Boss?” Ferkudi asked.
“No worries,” Kip said. “I got this.” He checked himself. This wasn’t what had happened yesterday, but yesterday he’d practiced using only the barest amount of superviolet and no other colors—knowing that the bane would deny him the use of them. He’d already had so much to learn. The superviolet let him focus the mirrors. Today—dammit, when had he drafted a little bit of blue? Probably just spectral bleed from the superviolet, and this bluer-than-blue beautiful day.
He emptied himself of blue on the nub of hellstone he kept at his belt, then tried again with only superviolet. Now he was simply directing the mirrors as he had yesterday.
Andross had told Kip not to draft on the array, told him drafting with so much power at hand would burn him out in seconds or minutes. He was—irritatingly—surely right. But if Kip drafted not through the array but before he touched it, and then it still worked without frying him, then maybe that was worth exploring.
So he lifted his hand, drafted a bit of blue—and now he could cast his vision wherever he wanted.
He blew out an exasperated breath. Why did he always have to figure things out the hard way? Could no one leave a short instruction book chained to these magical devices?
There was no time to waste, though.
He launched himself back to where Zymun had last focused the array, far out in the sea, but saw nothing there.
Why that bit of the sea? No reason?
Zymun must have kicked the mirror array when they’d hauled him off it after he’d blown his halos.
Kip drew his attention back to Big Jasper.
The array snapped into focus instantly, the entire thing lifting him bodily on an articulated arm to point him wherever he willed. This damn thing was one of the wonders of the world. Of course it was: it had been made for the Prisms themselves. Probably it had been made so they could look out for bane.
If he were a Prism, if he could split light and draft as much as he wanted, this battle would be finished in ten minutes.
Did Koios know that? Had the White King attacked now because he knew the Chromeria had no Prism to defend the Jaspers, or was he just that lucky?
It didn’t matter.
Kip’s vision had passed over the armada as he’d brought his will back to the Jaspers, but now he went back. They were bombarding Big Jasper’s cannon towers. A gunner stood on deck, linstock in his hand.
A spotlight the size of the gunner’s whole body suddenly lit him up as hundreds of mirrors turned toward him. He turned, shocked at the heat, throwing his arm up in front his eyes at the glare.
Kip sharpened the focus convulsively.
A beam of light no thicker than a thumb shot through the man’s upraised arm and then out the back of his head.
He dropped, and every part of his head that passed through the beam as he fell was burnt through. His open skull smoked on the deck, and a hissing furrow was carved deep into the sea beyond him.
Kip’s self was pulled with it, as tightly focused as the beam itself, plunging into deep waters sizzling and hissing to steam. He pulled back.
Someone was yelling at him, but he realized he’d done the wrong thing.
He didn’t have time to kill men one by one. He widened his focus.
In a broad spotlight that encompassed the entire ship, where men were standing agog, a hundred hands put up in front of eyes in the same way the gunner had, Kip found an open barrel of black powder on the deck behind the cannons.
He tightened the beam once more.
The powder keg exploded in his face.
He threw himself back as the explosion overwhelmed him.
His hands came away from the grips and he found himself in his own body once more.
“The storm, Breaker! The lightstorm! Kip!” Ben-hadad was yelling. “Come on, brother!”
“You’re back?” Kip asked, blinking. “When did you get back? Did you get Zymun?”
“No,” Ben-hadad said. He seemed relieved Kip had finally heard him. “They’re regrouping. We think they’re going to attack us up here—it doesn’t matter. Kip, you gotta do something about the light-storm.”
“Lightstorm? Oh, right!”
Superviolet was so alien, so orderly, and so damned curious that Kip had been working his way from the small-scale applications to the larger ones without even fully realizing it. He’d momentarily lost regular human concern—like for the crackling, seething sapphire tornado streaming upward from the seas around the blue bane.
He turned away from the exploded, burning, sinking ship and moved his will to the skies.
Within the brewing blue lightstorm were tens of thousands of razor-edged crystals of blue luxin. Some smaller, some heavier, different shapes from square caltrops to edged planes to spikes.
It all spoke of a mind that was experimenting. Curious. And new to what it was doing, just as Kip was—but also as sharp as the razor rain itself would be, because this storm was almost ready now. It was ready long before any of the other incipient storms brewing over the other bane.
Kip hadn’t willjacked anyone in a long time. It was counted too dangerous to be taught to nunks like he’d been when he’d left the Jaspers. But it had also been one of the first things he’d ever done.
Will-Breaker, they’d joked about him, long ago. And Andross had repeated it, not joking at all.
We’ll see about that.
Kip charged at the blue lightstorm with all the bristling fur and snarls and momentum of a turtle-bear. He caught the Mot completely unawares, and blasted her off her feet, scattering her powers completely. He knew her then as Samila Sayeh, the instant his will collided into her and snatched away the reins.
She’d been lifting the entire storm to bring it down on the defenders at the walls. Kip snatched it away and brought it down on the sub-red bane floating next to the blue and on the armada’s ships nearby.
Fist-sized blades fell from the sky, cutting the air with a frightful sound, thousands of edged weapons falling unexpectedly from the sky. Bodies were slashed; timbers chipped and exploded under the relentless rain.
The sub-red bane blossomed with fire at each strike. Every sub-red crystal in its surface had to be sealed from the air lest it burn openly. The razor rain cut them open.
Men and drafters and even wights howled at the intensity of the sudden flames. It was too much heat and fire for most of them to redirect away from themselves, so fireworkers though they were, they burned to death.