Mistress Of The Ages (In Her Name, Book 9) by Michael R. Hicks Page A

thin flexible armor covering the Ka’i-Nur’s neck, severing his spine.
    With a convulsive jerk, the brute collapsed to the ground. Ka’i-Lohr and Dara-Kol caught the priest and lowered him gently to the ground. He opened his mouth to speak, but then his eyes rolled back into his head as his spirit left him.
    “ Behind you! ”
    Tara-Khan whirled at the warning. Two Ka’i-Nur warriors emerged from the raging melee, training their weapons on Tara-Khan and his companions.
    In the blink of an eye, the high priestess of the Ima’il-Kush, Sian-Al’ai, who had shouted the warning, was upon the enemy warriors. Dancing up the back of one’s legs, she sunk the talons of one hand into the gap of his shoulder plates, then reached out and speared the other warrior through the throat.  
    With a whoosh , all three disappeared.  
    A brief moment later, Sian-Al’ai returned, alone.
    “What happened to them?” Tara-Khan asked, amazed. He had never thought those of the priesthoods might use their teleportation ability as a weapon.
    Sian-Al’ai pointed upward toward the cloud shrouded heavens and said, “They have a wondrous view of the Homeworld, for as long as their air might last.”
    For a precious moment, they were in the eye of the storm of battle. The air was blistering hot, both from the Ka’i-Nur weapons and from some of the powers brought to bear by the priesthoods, and the sound was like nothing Tara-Khan had ever before heard. The deep rumble of the airships’ engines lay under the roars and screams, the clash of metal against metal and metal against flesh. Terribly outnumbered, the priests and priestesses, having recovered from the initial shock of the deaths of their brothers and sisters, fought with unrestrained bloodlust. He watched as flames shot from the hands of a priestess, wreathing one of the immense enemy warriors. It had no effect at all upon his armor and he raised his weapon toward her. But with a gentle twist of her hands, the flames contracted around him, then seemed to sink through the metal like water passing through a fine sieve. The warrior began to dance and twist. Throwing down his weapon, he wrenched his helmet off, and Tara-Khan recoiled at the sight of the pillar of flame that burst from his armor, consuming the warrior’s head. In a few more heartbeats, the Ka’i-Nur crumpled to the ground, the plates of his armor falling apart. Nothing was left of his body but ash.
    The priestess paused, as if taking an exhausted breath, and in that moment the beams of four Ka’i-Nur weapons found her before she could teleport.
    “Our powers are not without limit,” Sian-Al’ai explained, following Tara-Khan’s gaze as they huddled near the base of one of the destroyed dormitories not far from the Kal'ai-Il. She herself was breathing hard and her hands shook. “To use them to their fullest is more taxing than you can imagine.”
    “We are losing.”  
    Sian-Al’ai turned to find Dara-Kol beside her, also trying to recover her breath after she, Ka’i-Lohr, and Drakh-Nur had finished off another of the enemy warriors. Dara-Kol had wrapped herself around the giant’s weapon arm while Ka’i-Lohr stabbed him through the gap between the plates around his ankle with his sword. Momentarily immobilized, Drakh-Nur had swung his huge war hammer onto their quarry’s head. The blow had barely dented the helmet, but the impact had shattered the skull and vertebrae beneath.  
    “Yes,” Sian-Al’ai admitted. More airships sailed overhead, disgorging enemy warriors. “Although we can take some comfort that the enemy no longer fires those hateful globes at us.”
    “The Ka’i-Nur warriors are too valuable for Syr-Nagath to waste,” Dara-Kol observed. “The priests and priestesses with you cannot be all of your number. Can you not summon more?”
    “I could, but I will not,” she said, shaking her head slowly. “This is but a taste of what is to come, and the priesthoods are now effectively at war