Though the scream consumed most of my mind, enough was free to notice the splatter of blood and brains and know that that it could be me next.

Despite what I might have hoped, that knowledge did not give me the strength to pull my mind together and concentrate enough to resist it.

Whatever shields Daniel and his parents put in and maintained in my mind weren’t helping either. They were designed to prevent someone from breaking in. The orange man’s scream was more of a psychic electrocution.

Most poeple I could see weren’t doing much better.

Wizards didn’t apparently do much work preparing for psychic screams and neither did their servants. Wizard Zoli wasn’t the only one whose head exploded. Two of their guards died in an instant, one the same way as Zoli. Another died when a Cabal soldier punched through his chest.

The eyes of the Cabal soldier who’d killed Zoli darted around for his next target. They met mine, but moved on toward Jaclyn who stumbled forward to face him.

Through the pain, I managed to find some fear for her life, but I could barely think of anything more than that.

Then Amy’s Bloodspear crossed my view, hitting the nearest Cabal soldier in the chest. He grabbed it and tried to pull it out, but when he grabbed the dull, pitted metal, the writing on the sides glowed a brighter red. 

I couldn’t be sure from this distance, but I thought I saw spikes extend into his hands. At any rate, his hands bled, even if none of it reached the marble floor.

I would have been stuck watching until one of the Cabal soldiers took my head off except that Amy wasn’t the only person unaffected.

Amid the pain of the scream, I felt Daniel’s mind through our connection. While his shield didn’t keep the scream entirely out, it dampened it to the point that he felt it only as background noise.

I would have wished that I could do the same, but I wasn’t even to that point.

I did feel that Daniel was gathering power and then felt him release it, followed by exhilaration and a moment of exhaustion.

That exhaustion might have been disastrous if he’d missed, but he hadn’t. 

He’d summoned as much telekinetic force as he could muster and aimed it at the orange giant, throwing him out one of the windows. With any luck there would be a cliff on that side.

Either way, when the orange man began to tumble through the air, he must have lost his own concentration on his psychic attack.

It stopped and I could think again.

Taking a moment to check around me, I decided to figure out what I could do.

The first thing that caught my eye was that one of the Cabal soldiers who seemed to have been heading toward the soldier being absorbed by the Bloodspear.

He’d changed direction, bounding toward Daniel. I wasn’t going to be able to do much to one of those guys with a punch, but held up both arms aiming my sonic weapons at the soldier’s head, hoping to break an eardrum. I’d had success at that before.

If it didn’t work, I’d at least have an ultrasound that might interest his dentist.

Except… It did work. A gush of blood dripped down his ear. That was more than I’d expected. Those guys were practically invulnerable. I’d learned something even if it were only about this specific Cabal soldier.

In fact, I realized as he turned, I’d been successful beyond my wildest dreams, he’d stopped trying to target Daniel until he dealt with me.

In short, maybe I ought to target my own head with the sonics. Assuming I survived, whatever surgeon got me might need the picture for reconstructive surgery.

Even before I’d first targeted the soldier, I’d started the stealth suit on an additional command—assemble my laser!

The stealth suit contained enough parts to make a small one next to the sonics on my right hand. It came online as the soldier turned toward me.

For the record, I didn’t just stand there. I fired at his eyes, missing, and jumped sideways about 20 feet. 

That put me toward the side of the room and away from the main group—which would have been great if I’d been into self-sacrifice, but that wasn’t the plan.

If it had been, I’d have been performing perfectly because even the laser “miss” had only been a miss in the sense of doing no real damage. The burning beam had scored his cheek, the pain confirming in his mind, I guess, that I was a major threat.

He wasn’t going to let me go. He jumped after me, landing only three feet away, well within arm’s reach.

He didn’t just reach either, he punched, arm blurring as the fist flew at me.

I tried to bend away, but I wasn’t moving fast enough except… Something heavy hit me in the side. He missed. I felt the air as his fist passed my head.