Aria fired the moment it stepped into the open. She rose over the tower parapet and put down a lance the length of a lamp post, aimed at the seam where its skull met its neck, and the whole square went white underneath it.
It stopped thirty meters out.
Then its four legs slid wide, its chest dropped low to the stones, and the thing that had not made one sound all day filled its throat and roared.
The sound had gears in it, a guttural grind so low it arrived through their boots before it reached their ears, and it did not stop.
Aria's lance broke apart in the air above its back. Moonlight shivered, lost its line, and blew out sideways across the rooftops in a hundred harmless pieces. The parapet cracked under Aria's hands from the wash of it.
"It scattered it." The pleasantness had gone out of her voice. "Kai, the sound scattered it."
Behind them, the barricade answered. Its seams lit violet.
