Panzer Paladin Instant

"For what?"

Ariane smiled. "Worth it."

She threw Malachar into the burning wreckage of his own command platform and turned the Panzer Paladin toward the rising sun. The suit’s joints seized. Its visor flickered. Step by grinding step, it walked until it could walk no more. Panzer Paladin

"I don’t need interesting. I need an opening to Malachar."

Ariane unlatched the cockpit hatch and climbed out onto the Paladin’s shoulder pauldron. The air smelled of smoke, ozone, and something fragile—grass. "For what

"Plenty of time," Ariane lied.

"Save your strength."

The core ejected in a spray of white-hot plasma, blinding the Phalanx’s optical sensors. In that moment of artificial eclipse, Ariane drove the Panzer Paladin forward like a lance. She discarded the Gloom Lance. She discarded defense. She used the suit’s own massive weight and the last shred of its emergency thrusters to turn the Paladin into a seventy-ton projectile.

"Flint?"

"Rending Edge," Ariane whispered, and the Paladin lunged.

"Durability 12%," Flint noted calmly. "Drop it or lose it." Its visor flickered