Page 2 of Grounded (Convergence #1)

The touch of those Nethren had damaged the magic in the converged barrier, but that was common.

Happened all the time. Nearly every time there was a breach.

Which was at least once a month. Repairing the damage usually involved a few taps of Liria's fingertips.

Converged barriers were resilient things that bounced back into prime condition easily.

Not today.

To Liria's left, the officers on her team hunched over their control panels, focused just as ferociously on their cacher screens.

So, she wasn't the only one having trouble with the convergence.

Something was off. Wrong. A flash of the Nethren's stare filled her mind.

Gray. Cold. Smug. What the fuck did he know?

Liria glanced to the right, at her second screen.

Where her main screen showed vid feed from the pit floor, her secondary screen had shots of the sky.

With the two screens split into multiple feeds, Liria could see every inch of the pit and the airspace above.

And that air was full of Aethari. You'd think it would be a bad idea to send a fully Aethari team to deal with Nethren, what with the Nethren's bite being lethal to Aethari.

But a Nethren could just as easily kill a Medean.

And Medeans couldn't simply fly out of the reach of those metal fingers.

The Aethari team dove, pulsers and bursters going off with flashes of light and, in the case of the bursters, booms. They got within range of the Nethren, made their volley like a flock of predator birds, and then twisted in a synchronized formation to soar back into the sky.

The winged men and women made it look so easy.

Almost beautiful. But they'd been trained to fight like that—taught to engage with extreme caution.

Meanwhile, the Nethren aimed their projectiles at the Aethari.

Despite the drawbacks of such weapons, they were effective, and an Aethari fell from the sky, clutching at his chest while still shooting his pulser.

Liria didn't follow his fall from one screen to the other.

It would only distract her further. But, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the puff of debris and dust his landing caused.

The only way she could help that man was by fixing the barrier.

So, Liria left the Aethari team to worry about their fallen soldier while she returned to her job.

She wasn't out there in the middle of enemy fire, but her work was just as important as the combat team's.

If Liria's team didn't get that barrier functioning again, there would soon be more Nethren crawling out of the breach.

They'd swarm the pit and take the fortress.

But they wouldn't stop there. The monsters would spread through the nearby town of Dubar and then branch out in all directions.

The entire continent would fall. Then the next and the next until all of Para was theirs. Because Liria failed.

And wasn't that motivating?

“Damn it all!” Liria shot to her feet and stretched her arms upward, summoning magic directly from its source instead of tapping a ley line. She needed the pure stuff.

“Go, Chief!” someone shouted.

Usually, when Liria worked with a converged device, the magic naturally flowing through her was enough to repair any damage or give the device a burst of energy it could use to reboot. But sometimes that wasn't enough. Luckily, Liria had been trained to deal with situations like this.

Cold blasts of celestial magic streamed down through her arms while her legs drew up the molten, metallic flow of technology.

Air and fire, light and darkness, sky and stone.

All became harmonious within her. They converged.

Once the might of the world and the magic of the sky were one, brought to the surface to merge inside her, Liria set her hands back on the cacher control pad.

She didn't have to press a single key.

The convergence was complete inside her, burgeoning with knowledge of what Liria wanted.

Her command. It surged through the machinery, along magical connections that united the metal cogs and gears in the room with those of the barrier down below.

With a whirring sound, the barrier came alive.

Magic fueled machinery. The thunderous sound of bolts driving into locks and magic coating the metal didn't reach Liria, but she could feel the vibration of success in her bones.

Sighing, Liria sat back in her seat, her hands slipping away from the panel in relief. Her job was done.

A sign that hung high on the wall, above the window that overlooked the pit, drew Liria's attention.

As her team cheered and congratulated her on an expert convergence, she read the words written on that sign.

You'd think you wouldn't have to remind a bunch of Medeans how to converge.

But sometimes, when your blood is pounding and your vision full of Nethren crawling through a rift, you can forget that you're there as more than an operator.

Those converged devices had to be maintained, and sometimes they even had to be repaired.

Liria's main purpose as a security chief was to maintain the pit barrier with her cacher skill and her skill as a converger.

The latter was what she'd been scouted for.

In short, she had to know when to operate the cacher and when to operate on the cacher.

So, yes, Liria thought it was a good idea to have the convergence motto on the wall before them.

From above and below.

In other words, true power only comes from harnessing both sources and merging them in the middle.

Convergence was also called the Middle Way for this very reason.

Lose sight of that, and you stop being a Medean.

Well, you wouldn't sprout wings like an Aethari or grow metal bones like a Nethren, but you might lose your ability to converge.

And no Medean could live like that. Convergence was life to us.

“Well done, Chief!” Officer Dellan saluted her, but it was a friendly, casual salute.

They were a close-knit team, more like a family—something Liria was proud of.

That kind of kinship only came from working well together for a long time.

And wasn't the goal of every chief to have a successful team?

She had fostered this camaraderie in addition to leading with a firm but fair hand, and now she reaped the reward. They all did.

“Thank you, but we need to get back to monitoring the barrier. We have to keep it strong while the Aethari finish . . .” Liria trailed off as she looked to the right, at the second screen.

It was the new guy. Liria hadn't learned his name, and she didn't want to.

He was too handsome. Period. As terrifying as that Nethren had been, this man was even more of a threat to Liria.

When a man was too handsome, she forgot her worth around him.

She became susceptible to his influence.

Vulnerable to his words and whims. Especially where sex was concerned. And that was just the beginning.

Over the years, Liria had learned to look away.

Not go there. Keep to herself. When she interacted with men as handsome as the new Aethari, Liria got abrasive.

It was a protection mechanism. Self-defense.

She insulted them if she had to. Anything to keep them away and uninterested.

The lessons of the past had been learned well and carved deep into her.

These days, the men Liria dated were attractive but not enough to make a woman lose her mind.

She liked to think of them as the middle way of men.

Just as it was with magic and tech, she chose the average.

It was safer. Average men tended to treat women better anyway.

A gorgeous guy often came equipped with what Liria liked to call a predator ego—self-confidence and vanity so great that everyone else's confidence got trampled.

Good-looking men also tended to be lazy in bed.

They didn't have to try to please a woman.

They figured that their presence was enough.

So, no, Liria hadn't learned the new guy's name.

But it was difficult to look away from him when he was taking up several squares on her screen, flying from one to another.

This was the private's first breach, but he showed no wariness or hesitation.

Fearless. Absolutely fearless. And then he landed.

“Oh, shit, we got a bird on the ground,” someone said.

But the Aethari soldier hadn't fallen. He had landed on purpose.

Liria swallowed past the dryness in her throat as she watched the new guy kill the final two Nethren—not with his pulser, as he was supposed to do, but with his sword.

That was a last-resort weapon. Aethari may not be able to create pulsers themselves since they couldn't converge, but they could still use them.

There was no reason for that man to land on the barren ground and behead those Nethren. Both of them. Within seconds.

Liria flinched as the Aethari lifted his head abruptly and looked at the camera.

He knew he was being watched. Every soldier was watched when they were in the pit.

So, they often looked at the cameras when they were done with a battle.

It was as if they wanted the Medeans to acknowledge their win.

Arrogant but not uncommon at all. No, it wasn't the fact that the new guy looked at the camera that bothered Liria.

It was the way he did it—steady, even though he was covered in blood.

Nethren are part machine, but that machine is fueled by their blood instead of magic.

So, they bleed. If you behead one, they bleed a lot.

The spray from two Nethren necks had coated the Aethari man so completely that his eyes glowed green amid a wash of crimson.

Complimentary colors—red and green. It was almost a pretty image.

It was also chilling. As frightening as the cold gray stare of that monster. Speaking of which . . .

Liria searched the feeds for a lock of blond hair.

She looked at every corpse. There was one corpse with blond hair, but it wasn't the right shade, and the Nethren didn't have horns on his helmet.

Shit. That terrifying motherfucker had gotten away.

But how? If he'd been their leader, he shouldn't have left.

Nethren fight till the death. So, why had he fled?

Suddenly, Corporal Branseri landed beside the bloody Aethari.

As the team leader, Corporal Branseri was not pleased with his new soldier snubbing his training.

He shoved the new guy, then gestured upward.

Yeah, that kind of show-off shit wouldn't be tolerated in a fortress, much less in a pit.

It was common, though. Aethari often rebelled when they served at a fortress, usually in minor ways like this one had—pushing things a little too far.

Most of them didn't want to be on the surface, much less fighting Nethren.

They served only because they were required to.

It was their law. Unlike the Medeans, who willingly signed up for this crap.

The new guy glanced at the camera once more, and a shiver ran down Liria's spine.

Just as it had with the Nethren. And just like that cold gray stare, this bright green one seemed to reach through the wires, cogs, and magical connections to see Liria where she sat.

Complete crap, of course. Maybe the Nethren could pull it off, but not an Aethari.

Liria shook her head. The guy knew he was being watched while he was being berated.

That was all it was. He didn't like having a witness, so he was trying to bully whoever was watching into looking away.

Yup, that was it. So why was Liria still unsettled?

Suddenly, the new Aethari launched himself into the air, his midnight feathered wings catching the light and shimmering. Liria went still. There was something about him—him and that Nethren.

“Guess it's over,” someone said, breaking her trance.

Liria didn't know which officer on her ten-person team had spoken. She was still staring at the screen, trying to get her heartbeat back to normal. “Fuck,” she whispered. Yup, she needed to stay far away from that one.