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roiled above them across the rooftops.
    Julieth put her arrow back in her quiver and slung her bow over her back. “Where are the mines?” she asked. A compartment on his cybernetic arm clicked open and she looked at ten mines that were being held there. “You can keep them,” she said, realizing that to have them on her could prove just as dangerous as Riad keeping them. The compartment closed again, without being touched. This man could break free of my restraint, she realized. With the tap of her finger to the tube of the restraint, the chain of light retracted. She took the tube and placed it back in her quiver’s pocket.
    “We are needed in the fight,” Ivanus said as another blast shook the ground beneath them.
    Julieth looked back at Bayne. “Head back!” she called to him. “Stay in the shadows! We will meet up when the enemy either retreats or is defeated!”
    Bayne hesitated for a moment and then went to Ivanus’s discarded shield, hefting it before him as protection. “Be safe!” Bayne called out. “I lost my mother! I cannot lose you!”
    Julieth watched as he disappeared down an alleyway behind them. “You will need to lead us,” she told Ivanus, “because you can see what we cannot.”
    “Most of the enemy is in the city’s center,” Ivanus said. “And we could use the streets, but we will probably be discovered.”
    “You sound as if you have something else in mind,” Julieth said.
    “Yes, did you know of the underground passages beneath Kaskal?”
    “I vaguely remember being there once as a youth,” Juieth told him. “Are you saying those passages can help us now?”
    “They are not being used, and there is an entrance to them not far off. Will you be able to travel in a more confined space without damaging your wings?”
    Julieth thought of how fast her wing healed after taking the blast from Riad’s weapon. “It seems that I will need to.”
    She quickly followed Ivanus, with Riad beside her, careful to keep a close eye on the borg. He was still a threat and she didn’t know what she would do about him once the conflict ended, but she had made the decision to trust him now, and she could not change her mind. They reached an older storefront with a sagging roof and the trio ducked in its entranceway.
    “Over here.” Ivanus motioned to them as he kneeled on timeworn planks of wood. Wooden floors were scarce, because for so long trees and other vegetation had been gone from the planet. Portions of the wood floor were worn away and clay earth had replaced where they had been. But where Ivanus pointed, Julieth saw metal where pieces of plank were missing.
    “A door?” Julieth asked.
    “A passageway.” Ivanus propped his large gun on the floor and gripped a metallic latch that rose up from the wood. He strained, but could not open the latch.
    “Use the weapon,” Julieth said, while backing away from the passageway.
    Riad did not move.
    Ivanus braced the gun in both hands and backed away. Light exploded in the room as a blast erupted, disintegrating the door as metallic smoke swept over them, lingering in the air.
    As smoke dissipated from the blast, Julieth peered into the passageway’s darkness. “How do we see?” she asked.
    “I can see in the dark,” Riad said as his cybernetic eye adjusted, taking on an eerie glow. “And I can help with your sight as well.” Crevices over his cybernetic arm and leg lit with blue light. The borg reached over, touching the gun, and it also vibrantly lit with blue. “We will need to extinguish the light before we reemerge, but it should work well.”
    “Agreed.” Julieth took the restraint tube from her quiver’s pack and touched it to her wrist. The light chain swept around it, providing its faint glow.
    They descended carefully into the darkness of the tunnel, rusted lamps lining its walls and the skeletons of long-dead animals littering the floor. The light of Riad’s cybernetics and of the gun Ivanus held gave off an eerie