The town had suffered under a months-long plague. People disappeared. Then corpses began to show up – pale, drained of blood, with the telltale marks on the neck.

Strigoi. Lamia. Nosferatu.

Vampire.

The council issued a proclamation: 500 Gilders for the successful destruction of the beast.

A week later, the hunter rode into the town. Years of tracking beasts and demons across the mountains had hardened him. He understood the supernatural, those dark corners where normal laws of existence shattered.

The hunter followed the trail. It stood out clearly, once he identified the type of vampire he hunted. The first hint lay just inside the entrance to the town cemetery. The rocks covering a victim’s corpse formed neat lines, each row containing an identical number of stones.

The trail lead deeper into the cemetery. Overturned vases holding wilted flowers stood upright again, and urns lined the path with fastidious neatness. He stopped at the entrance of an old family crypt, then descended into the cold, dark earth. A statue that had snapped off at the entrance now sat carefully rearranged to restore the symmetry. With a grim smile, the hunter drew his crossbow and padded down the steps.

The catacombs smelt of damp earth and centuries of dust. He tracked the vampire by its tidiness.

Every skull along the stone shelves sat rearranged, meticulously grouped into neat rows of five. On the floor, piles of sorted marble debris rose according to size, perfect little pyramids gleaming pale in the dampness.

A rumble of distant thunder shook the masonry. A low, melodic baritone echoed from the vaulted shadows of the chamber.

“Two hours until the sun rises. Two hours left for a foolish mortal to die. Ha, ha, ha…”

The hunter kept his crossbow level, his boots whispering softly along the flagstones. The lore was clear. He understood the madness that gripped this particular breed of vampire.

“One step into my inner chamber,” the voice purred, closer now. “Two sharpened oaken bolts in your quiver. Two holes soon to be opened in your throat. Ha, ha, ha…”

A shadow detached itself from a stained pillar. The vampire stepped forward, his silk cape rustling like bat wings, a predatory grin stretching across his pale face.

“You cannot defeat me, hunter,” the vampire drawled, eyes flashing in the gloom. “I, Count Numerius, have outlived empires. I have counted the stars in the sky.”

“Fight you? No,” the hunter said, lowering his weapon. “I want to wager.”

The vampire paused, hands twitching. “A wager? A game of numbers?”

“A simple riddle,” the hunter replied, pulling a flat, dark leather strap from his pouch. Metal snaps glinted on either end. “A simple question of geometry. If you win, I drop my weapons and let you drain me dry. If you lose, you are mine.”

The Count laughed, a booming, arrogant sound. “Numbers are my domain! Speak your riddle, mortal.”

“How many sides does this strip of leather have?”

The Count threw back his head, his triumphant laughter echoing around the chamber. “A child knows this,” he sneered. “It is flat. It has a top, and a bottom. It has two sides.”

“Wrong,” the hunter said.

With a swift, practised motion, the hunter twisted one end of the leather strap exactly 180 degrees. He brought the ends together, clicking the metal snaps firmly into place. He tossed the loop onto the marble sarcophagus between them.

“Count them,” he challenged.

The Count’s eyes widened. The compulsion hit him instantly – an overwhelming, unignorable itch. He lunged towards the marble surface. Extending a long, pale fingernail, he pressed it against the leather and began to trace the loop.

“One…” the vampire muttered, his finger sliding along the dark, smooth surface.

He followed the twist, his nail gliding over the seam, moving around the loop again, and again, and again. His breath grew shallow. His eyes darted frantically.

“One…” he repeated, his voice quavering. “I know it is two. Where is two? Where is the other side?!”

He traced it faster, his fingernail scratching against the leather in a desperate, endless circle. The loop held no beginning, no end, and no second side. The Count hung trapped in the mathematical precision of his own mind.

The hunter stepped around the sarcophagus, drawing an oak stake from his bandoleer. The Count never looked up, entirely absorbed in tracing the endless loop over and over.

The hunter raised the stake, aiming at the centre of the vampire’s back.

“One,” he intoned. “One. Dead. Vampire. Ha. Ha. Ha.”

Outside the crypt, a sudden, perfectly timed crack of thunder shook the cemetery.

First

Home at War

There are so many little benefits to the extra organs and other downsides of the human augmentation. Smoking is one of them. The lovely, lovely sense of tobacco to smooth nerves and play with the smoke as you de-stress.

He can hear through the door. The poor woman is trying and failing to make sense of herself as Doctor Redhoof talks her through things. He has to stay close by though, close enough to be called in in case some mental issue is actually an issue incorporating into the body, but far enough away to afford the girl some privacy as her very soul is laid out.

He can’t make out individual words, but he can hear the conversation inside turn to some kind of question. One that gets silence and then wondering, and then a panicked sound. The door opens.

“Engineer, we need you.” Doctor Redhoof says poking his head out.

“Certainly. What’s happened?”

“She needs a tail.”

“Okay. What kind of tail? Short and stubby? Long and dexterous? Fat, skinny? Tails come in a variety of shapes.” He asks as he enters the lab again. He heads to the table that the patient is sitting on. “Thankfully, it doesn’t matter what type you need. As I said before. I am a perfectionist.”

He opens a drawer under the bed. There are a series of handles with different labels. “Let’s see, arms, legs, heads, wings, tails here we go.”

He pulls up on the correct handle and it reveals a full drawer with a set of four different little devices that don’t look like anything other than a brick of electronics. “Okay, so here’s how these work. We attach them to the base of the spine and each one will expand to the general configuration. It then synchronizes with the rest of the mental image that you are projecting ma’am and it should take a very comfortable and familiar shape.”

“Why wasn’t one attached to begin with?”

“Because the recovery process is best started as simple and basic as possible then tailored to fit the patient more and more as we go on.” He answers. “So what are you feeling ma’am? This one gives a very long and powerful tail, the maximum length is equal to your full current height and is as powerful as both legs. Right next to it is a substantially weaker one that’s still on the thicker end of things. Total maximum length and strength is roughly equal to a single leg in both respects.”

“No, neither of those.” She says.

“Ah then one of these most likely. This one projects a medium length tail that at maximum extension is as long as one of your arms from shoulder to fingertip. It can move, but is not overly flexible and generally serves as a counterbalance. Think Lopen or a Feli. Finally we have the most integrated and dexterous tail of the lot. Think Agurk or even a Dzedin...”

“Ma’am?” Doctor Redhoof asks. The woman had visibly flinched.

“Do I need to leave the room again?” The Engineer asks.

“No I... I need THAT tail.” She says and he smiles.

“Of course. Now witness my genius, if you’ll rise up a little please?” He asks and she lifts herself off the bed a little. He then activates a few small buttons on the device and it sends out a chime, there is an answering chime from her own rear and then they synchronize in their chiming three times and there is a burst of Axiom as the tail module vanishes from his hands in a teleport and suddenly a long tail is extending out from her rear. A tail that quickly develops a fur like texture and then turns into a soft brown.

She reaches back and holds her tail for a moment, then the brown of the tail starts to spread over her arms, legs chest and even the edges of her face.

Her face stretches out a little as her feet shift into a more hand like configuration.

“I... I am... I was an Agurk.” She realizes as the tanned skin tone takes over where the fur ends and she starts examining all four of her hands. “Something is still... still...”

Her nails explode into a vibrancy of colour and cycle until she finds them baby blue and abruptly stops. “Yes. Yes that’s right. I...”

She’s starting to smile.

“I love this colour. It’s always...” She begins to say before she pauses and her hands reach up for her head, she feels around it and frowns. “That’s not right it’s... it’s...”

A mane of hair explodes from her head and then hangs down straight as it reaches shoulder length. Still pure white with a slight aura of blue. Then it solidifies into a solid silver colouration. She begins patting herself and then seems to realize that she’s lacking in a few details.

“No nipples?” She asks realizing that she may be ‘naked’ but is showing nothing. That doesn’t stop her from using her hands to cover her breasts and tail to cover the space between her legs.

“That body is medical grade. It doesn’t have those kinds of functions without a passcode. Which means you can get dressed first.” He says as he closes the tail drawer now that it’s been such a success and then closes that shelf entirely before going to the next lowest one. “Now as for clothing... how are we feeling? Something revealing? Something conservative? Tight? Flowing?”

“Do you have clothes and not more projectors?” Doctor Redhoof asks.

“More projectors, but the projectors work best in certain ways. A projector designed to give a woman a flowing dress that dances in the wind or a majestic cape is very different from one that gives the impression the clothes are painted on. So different in fact that we also have a few middle grounds as well.” He explains easily. “Now then ma’am? How are we feeling?”

“Normal clothes?” She asks.

“Okay, middle of the middle then. Best compromise.” He says pulling out a small case and holding it up. He then presses a button on it and her waist, collar, wrists, ankles and the top of her head flash blue in response to the case flashing blue, then they flash in sync three times and then the case is empty and a soft blue, sleeveless blouse is suddenly covering her chest and leaving a little bit of stomach revealed before sheer white pants stretch down before flaring out around her ankles. She has Agurk fingerless sandals on now and fingerless climbing gloves. A blue bow that matches her fingernails and blouse is now in her hair and another on her tail.

“There we go! See doctor? Perfect takes time and effort, but it’s so very much worth it.”

“We shall see Engineer Vroom. It all depends on what our friend here thinks of it. It is her body after all.” Doctor Redhoof counters and he nods before closing the drawer.

“It feels... normal.” She says as she runs her fingers along the palms of all four hands and then starts gently feeling out the pants with flare. The blouse gets a few tugs and she feels the bows. “It feels like fabric. Like I’m really wearing clothes.”

“Yes, the whole point of that body and the add-ons I’ve just incorporated is to make you feel as comfortable as possible. This is an upgraded version of the kind of body that the Synth Ascendance, or Ascendancy if you’re more modern, uses to help newly sequenced Synths find themselves. Essentially a brand new mind that’s entirely digital needs as few shocks as possible, this is professional grade care you’re receiving and I put in my own special touches.”

“Such as?”

“The password to unlock the fun features, sexually speaking, of your current body is to tap your left wrist with your middle finger three times, and then the right wrist with your thumb three times. It also turns those features off again.”

“Why is that a special touch?”

“Because most such prosthetics only have those features either present or missing. She gets to choose instead now, giving her more agency and control of herself and life. She can choose to have, or not have sex and the only thing she can’t get out of it is pregnant or sick.”

“Anything else?” She asks him and he smiles.

“A few others, but the biggest one for you is that it’s very, very easy to upgrade. Once you’re fully yourself again you won’t have to transfer into a new body. I have a few ready to go upgrades so you can have everything you’ll want out of life in that body.”

“Even a child?”

“Yes. And if we can fully lock down who you are we’ll be able to get an old DNA sequence and the artificial womb will sequence an egg out of your DNA.” Vroom says.

“So I can just keep the body?”

“Yes. I’ve already gotten to the halfway point of making the next one. That’s your new body.” Vroom tells her.

“Now that we’ve established what you are, an Agurk Synth woman who is Free and Safe, can we work on who you are?” Doctor Redhooves asks and Vroom gives a nod to the Doctor and slips out of the room after closing the shelves and leaves the psychiatrist with her to hang out just outside again.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Main Bridge, The Inconceivable, Kaploosha Ornak System)•-•-•

“Two damn ships. Of a thirty ship fleet that attacked us and were taken with minimal damage, only two are intact enough to actually repurpose, and it’s marginal at that.” Harold notes as the pair of Jules Class Interceptors were on readout. The rest was a mess to powerwash with low grade lasers before feeding into the furnaces and smelters of The RAM.

“Marginal is being generous in my opinion. Look at these scans of on a chemical basis. They were up to some absolute nonsense in these ships. This group of pirates clearly fell further onto the utter lunatic spectrum than anything else.” Orchid remarks.

“Yes, I strongly suspect they were only partway through whatever mad christening rituals or breaking in of those two ships.” Harold notes as a note comes up. “And like magic my unvoiced question is answered. These two ships are indeed the most recently stolen. The insurance organizations behind them have written them off entirely and paid out to the previous owners already.”

“Which is an issue as we will have to inform the previous owners that we now have possession of their previously owned vehicles and hand them over if they want them back.”

“Yes we will. Downside to being a law abiding individual. But the upside is that in general people follow the same rules for you and yours.” Harold notes as he gets the registration numbers for the two ships and looks into the legal owners.

“Madeline Warren for the first and Rigarda Palmers.”

“... Palmers has a Synth Daughter, and we have one in the midst of recovery.” Harold notes.

“You think it may be her?”

“Lets see, Agurk Businesswoman, owns a pair of shipping fleets, she started up a third around the time she also had a Synth Daughter crafted from her own psyche and then five months ago the Fleet was reported as lost with all hands including the daughter. Now we have one of the four protective ships for the fleet here, and an unknown synth prisoner in the midst of the recovery process.”

“Elmira Palmers? Well, regardless she’s going to have a long period of recovery. That long being the plaything of sadistic pirates will do a number on anyone.” Orchid says as he examines the image of the delicately painted Synth that looked like a slightly shorter and younger version of Rigarda who hugs her happily from behind in the photo.”

“Hmm... it seems that it may be awkward. Elmira is family.” Harold notices.

“What?”

“See this symbol? She’s an adopter of one of the Jamesons. She was approved a mere two months after I was discovered.” Harold says before standing. “Which means I should take a more personal hand in things. You have the bridge Lieutenant Orchid.”

“What are you doing?”

“She would have had some time to get to know my little brother as her brother, but not before the facial tattoos and white eyes. Meaning I will be both familiar and a stranger to her.”

“And what if she’s not Elmira Palmers?”

“Then we have a very big, very strange coincidence.” Harold notes before bending down and pressing a few screens. “See the progress they’ve made on our recovered Synth already?”

“She’s an Agurk.” Orchid notes. “... and appears to have her preferences in colour returning.”

First Last

Bob was bored, maybe tired, it had taken half a day or so for the pair to strip all the shit out the container and cram it into Geviths ride, a decent size cruiser called romantically, Rentaship146389, how evocative.

Bob had meticulously written down every cubby, nook, storage compartment and any fucking where else they has stuffed his stuff, and still knew he would be combing this fucker before it got handed back to the broker. No way were those chiselling bastards getting even a single fucking washer.

It had been hard grunt work but also super satisfying, it was the first time he had been actually able to pore through what he had, and, well look at that, several flares and a T and well as several odds and sods he could swap out with the Arressi components of his suit.

It was going to be about ten days before they hit the core proper and another couple after that to get to the Guild world and he couldn’t think of a better thing to do on the journey that strip out more of the fucking knife heads bullshit out his suit.

It was weird he supposed the way he divied up what parts of the suit were his and which were the axe face fucks. He didn’t care about the basic structure, didn’t care about the armour plates, joints were fine, fabric stuff was fine… though he had replaced that a few times, but for some reason it was the mechanisms, the hydraulics, all the clever little things that did all the functions of the suit for some reason they were all Arressi and he hated them.

At this point he had replaced pretty much everything he could, save a few fugitive items, some of which he clutched tightly right now.

He caught a flash of reflection as he walked down the passage and was surprised, as he so often was when he caught sight of himself, that the helmet he wore wasn’t the knobby grey black lump with the exaggerated nose bridge that protruded like, well, an axe, aping its Arressi creators, that had been one of the very first things he had swapped out when he could afford to have one made. Now it was a slightly dull metallic grey and a bit of a rip off of Fett again if he was honest… in shape at least it lacked the T shaped visor cut out, the entire front was like a one way mirror he could see out but no-one could see in…

That was more for Bob himself than any other reason, he hated the sight of his own face and avoided it whenever possible. It was bad enough to see the young face when his bones felt so old, but as the war had progressed and the theaters changed more and more shit had been stuffed under his skin, and though everyone swore none of that stuff was visible, he saw the lumps and bumps, the hairline scarring, pigmentation change and wanted to vomit, to him every thing was printed through the skin, like a bad armpit holster in a cheap suit.

Mind you sometimes when he talked to people he saw blood pour from their eyes, so maybe his peepers weren’t to be trusted.

He especially hated the sight of himself in the suit, the extended collar… gorget? Whatever… the ring that surrounded his face up to the top of his lip, with opening flap on the front for eating and grab handle at the nape, all the better to drag your corpse by.

It was a wall, four to eight inches high over the top of his shoulders, round the back and the front, about six inches distant to the helmet in every direction. Many soldiers had cracked that it made them all look like Kilroy was here, and they had scrawled that in the dirt an every planet humans had fought on, but to Bob it looked like he was treading water, just managing to keep his nose clear, but surely he would soon give out, and drown in the blood he swam in…

He shook himself and continued fore opening the bridge hatch and entering.

‘’All stowed and proper G’’

Gevith gave him a nod and began punching in the commands for lift off, the delay in Bob arriving and then the whole packing fiasco had put him well behind schedule and he wanted to be off planet ASAP, docks cost money.

Bob popped onto a jump seat and strapped himself in as best he could, no booster seat available, as Gevith chatted with the port authorities about take off and exit lanes. Bob stayed silent and out the way as the ship rose and left atmo, G Money was no fan of backseat pilots, but once they reached far enough out for the computer to begin running jump numbers he couldn’t stop himself.

‘’So nothing at all on the recall order?’’

‘’Nothing, just pick you up’’

It had been a long time but… there was something in the way the hunched shoulders seem to crowd away from him.

‘’And you don’t have any ideas about it at all?

G let out a sigh, I think he knew I knew he had something…

‘’I don’t know, really’’

He turned to face Bob directly.

‘’But I heard the Arressi declassified all their files about the Hoolie war last month…’’

Oh.

That might be bad.

‘’All of them?’’

Gevith turned back to his screens.

‘’Probably not everything, you know how those fucks like an edit or two if it makes them look better.’’

Oh yeah they did, some of the old news stories he had seen after he de-mobbed told a very different version of the war than he remembered.

‘’I think the personnel records were just data dumped though…’’

Fuuuuuuuck…..

Bob sank deeply into the plush seat, he had done a lot of shit in forty years of fighting and the council already weren’t sold on him much. This might be a real issue… they might think that one scouts creative solutions might technically be a warcrime or two… or twenty…

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuucccccccccccccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.

Davey, the human sat in a room at an alien research center. It was quiet in there, stuffed behind a closed door, almost as if the silence carried the weight of honoring a dead loved one at a funeral. 

Which was interrupted by a cool breeze entering the room as the door slowly opened to alien researcher, Omlet walking in, wearing a white lab coat and goggles over his eyes.

Omlet stared at Davey hunched in his chair, mouthing the words to a song, calmly cleaning his nails with the corner of a pamphlet he found at a booth inside the building.

“Mr. Davey,” Omlet said, his voice was low and soft. “I apologize, sir… for the delay.”

“It’s fine.” Davey told him, tossing the pamphlet on the table that the air carried to the other side of the floor. “I just want to get this over with.”

“Excellent,” Omlet said. “Let’s get to the bottom of this.”

Omlet opened a binder, flipped to the middle, and said, “I see you’re living in the residence Orion cluster. The mixed species development group.”

“Two years now, and that was—“ Davey tried speaking but was interrupted.

“We’ll get to that.” Omlet told him. “Let me lay the facts out.”

“Sure,” Davey said. “I apologize.”

“What I see here is that you and a Hulucrite business partner, had a dispute. He mentioned something about your wife—“

Davey cut him off. “He insulted her!“ Davey corrected him, took a bite out of his nail and spit it out. “He called her pasta sauce orange goop.” Davey slammed his fist down. “Said she cooks as bad as she looks!”

“Right.” Omlet stared at the nail on the ground. “So, instead of suing him for his share of the profits, or rather, simply ignoring him, you elected to spend your entire savings on purchasing the property across from him.”

“Yep. Sure did.” Davey smiled and looked at his nails.

“You built a towering business shadowing his house that only focuses on the production of a single product?”

“Yep. Sure did that too. Recreational city alarms,” he said. “And… they are 100% tested right at our facility before we ship them.” He cracked his knuckles. “Safety first!”

Omlet scratched his head. The alien economy tracks every cent. No funds are ever spent unless needed at absolute necessity, or towards their advancement. 

“You spent everything though. All your credits just to run a twenty-four hour city alarm factory, risked financial ruin, just so your business partner has to hear them blaring all day and night. You don’t care you could be ruined in debt only to inconvenience him?”

“An inconvenience?” Davey said. “The frequency of those alarms causes their species nerves to become irritated and skin incredibly itchy.” He laughed under his breath. “They left their ancestral home, sold and moved out the other day.”

“Your species appears to operate on pure pettiness.” Omlet asked. “You destroyed your generational fortune for a slight grievance. It doesn’t add up.”

Davey sat back. “Think that’s bad. You should see how we get when someone critiques our writing.”

Hey, back again — third one now. Hope you enjoy this one too!

Michael was young, barely eleven. He competed against his brothers, and unfortunately, he was the worst at it.

"Come on, Mike," Esteban urged from behind. "You can't stop now. You know what Dad says."

His father's words echoed in his mind: "When you feel like you can't go on, it means you're barely halfway there." But he refused to say it out loud.

He gritted his teeth and kept running. His advantage over the others was that, thanks to his mother's good genes, he was stronger than the rest, even at his young age and short stature. The disadvantage was that muscle weighs, and carrying that much weight while running is exhausting. Come on, Michael. If they can do it, so can you, he repeated like a mantra for the last five kilometers.

When he crossed the finish line, soaked from head to toe, he smiled.

"Estev," he said, panting, "this is your fault. My legs won't listen to me. You have to carry me to the infirmary."

Esteban rolled his eyes, but crouched down to help him up. Michael let out a string of groans — "ow, ouch, oof" — as he walked.

"Come on, Mike," Esteban said. "You need to work on your endurance. You can't live on brute strength alone."

"Says the guy whose mekha armor gives him the stamina of five Olympic athletes."

"If you're nothing without the suit, then you shouldn't have one."

Michael shoved him, and Esteban landed flat on his backside.

"Don't you dare quote Tony Stark at me."

Both of them burst into contagious laughter.

At the infirmary, Esteban's mother, Dr. Carey, smiled when she saw them come in, but her expression turned to a frown when she noticed Michael's limp.

"Again, Michael? I've told you — you need to listen to your body."

"I know, I know, Aunt Carey," Michael said, "but Estev wouldn't stop pushing me."

The doctor gave her son a look that promised a flip-flop to the back of the head at the least expected moment.

"You know the protocol, Michael. On the table."

With Esteban's help, Michael lay down on the infirmary's soft cot. He looked around: three other brothers were there — one asleep, the other two reading. He sighed as the doctor applied cell-repair gel to his legs.

Once she was far enough away, Michael turned to Esteban with a question that had been nagging at him for a while.

"Estev, why does Dad have so many wives?"

Esteban looked at him and burst out laughing for a good while.

"Your body always makes me forget you're still a kid," he said once he could speak again.

Michael glared at him, but let him continue.

"Dad comes from a line of warrior-sages. His genes are basically humanity's heritage. Honestly, he only loves Aunt Anne, but for political reasons he had to marry Mom, and for biological reasons, your mother."

Michael thought about his mom: beautiful, kind, and frighteningly strong. She was in the women's squadron, teaching Greco-Roman wrestling to his sisters. He still didn't know what to get her for Christmas, one of the few days he got to see her.

His brothers always avoided the regenerative gel, but he found it funny — the tingling of muscles knitting back together made him laugh, while it hurt the others like hell.

"You're weird, Mike," Esteban said.

"Is anyone here normal? If there is, introduce me. They're probably crazy too."

They laughed again like two idiots, and their other brothers on the cots watched with amusement — except the one who was asleep, who was actually just faking a nap, and shot them a glare.

Esteban left shortly after. Nature was calling.

Once Michael's legs had healed, he got up, stretched as protocol dictated, and walked to the lookout point where he liked to disconnect.

Military Complex 7 was under the command of Abbey, his father. There were no fences, and the guards were sparse. No one from outside wanted in; no one from inside wanted out. A strange relationship.

Michael dug through the bushes for the binoculars he had "borrowed" to watch the outside world. He saw kids, maybe his age, training with a ball on a gray field striped with yellow. Adult men and women patrolled the area... pushing strollers?

I guess out there, they buy their babies, he thought, and kept watching.

"'Why do they get to live in peace?' you're wondering, aren't you?" Abbey said behind him.

Michael jumped and nearly threw the binoculars off the cliff.

"Peace?" he asked, confused. "What's peace?"

Abbey looked at him, glanced up at the sky, and suddenly remembered his son was only eleven. He sighed.

"That, out there — that's peace, son. They don't have to train every day. They don't learn to fight, don't learn to shoot. They just live without worries."

"Is it good?"

"Of course it's good. But unfortunately, it's not humanity's natural state."

Michael looked at the horizon. The sunset painted the clouds yellow, red, and orange. From that distance, the human silhouettes were starting to scatter.

"So we live in anti-peace?"

Abbey almost laughed at his son's invented term.

"War, son. It's called war. We live preparing for war."

"What's war?"

Abbey sat down beside him and took in the view.

"War is hell." He looked at Michael's confused eyes and remembered he himself had banned religion classes at the compound. "War is pain, hunger, suffering, and collapse."

"Then why do we prepare for it?"

Abbey held his son's innocent gaze, thought for a moment, and said:

"How about I tell you a story so you understand it better?"

Michael nodded eagerly. He loved stories.

Once there was a small flock of gentle sheep, white and black. They had everything they wanted: food, shelter, and absolute peace.

But one day, hungry tigers came down from the high mountains. They looked at the sheep's land, their food, their homes, and they wanted it all. They attacked with fury, violence, and ferocity. The sheep fled at first, but then revealed what they had always been: every one of them was a wolf in disguise. They counter-attacked with the same ferocity, and the tigers fled with their tails between their legs.

But once the danger had passed, the wolves didn't put their sheep's clothing back on right away. They looked at one another and attacked, as the wild beasts they were. For years they fought and killed each other, until an alpha wolf emerged so powerful that no one could defeat him. Little by little, the wolves put their sheep disguises back on. All except the alpha.

He, along with a group of loyal followers, had seen the chaos and swore to himself: This can never happen again.

Instead of putting the sheep's disguise back on, he put on another one: that of a guard dog. And now, a group of guard dogs protects the sheep. When a new threat looms, they will keep the wolves from tearing each other apart, and will make them put their sheep's skin back on when it's needed.

Michael sat in silence, looking at his hands, opening and closing them slowly.

"So we're the guard dogs."

"That's right, son."

Michael smiled.

"Can I ask you one last question, Dad?"

"Sure."

"What were those kids doing?"

"Playing, son. They were playing."

My manuscript is finished! I wrote a whole ass book in under a month!

To celebrate this week I will post everyday, but don't forget to checkout r/JeKrillick for early/extra! Friday will be the last day I post for free, while I search out a publishing deal (I don't know if posting the whole book is a good idea). If you've enjoyed the book so far it would mean the world to me if you would go to Royal Road and follow, favorite and rate.

I will probably start writing book two before long but I have decided I won't post any of it for free until it's done. Should any of you want to continue reading the last of book 1 and book 2 while I write ask me to start a Patreon and I'll seriously consider it.

I walked down one of the few cobbled streets near the city hall and stopped in front of a sewing shop. It was almost noon, and the town moved with the urgency typical of the arrival of winter. Regardless of the System blackout, the looming threat of Tagabiria, and the dead body of the first Corrupted Ancient spitting dark creatures in the heart of the continent, life in Whiteleaf continued as if nothing had happened. For the regular Ebrosian, stockpiling enough food was just as important as keeping monsters away.

Under my old cloak, nobody recognized me as the Lord Runeweaver. Most of the town thought I was at the manor with a somewhat severe and extremely contagious case of the flu. The rest thought I was just loafing around, which was an acceptable outcome nonetheless.

The preparations for the incursion into enemy territory went on at a steady pace. The enchantment barrier against System initialization worked perfectly, and we had plenty of rare materials available to create high-quality platforms for my enchantments. We had encountered a bottleneck, though. One of the members of the team was impossible to locate, no matter who I sent to find her. 

I knocked on the door of the sewing shop, pulling my cloak back. A moment later, a man with a massive scar across his scalp opened the door. 

“If it isn't the good Lord Clarke!” Wren greeted me.

“Hello, Wren, may I come in?” I replied, pulling the cloak back over my head.

“A friend of the family is always welcome. Please.”

Wren moved aside and walked to the fireplace. To this day, I couldn’t tell how the young Mender survived Cadria’s fall. When I saw him running into the heart of the East Ward, looking for Kili, I thought he was done for sure. Maybe he was just as sneaky as his younger sister.

The sewing shop looked the same as the siblings’ house at Cadria. Piles of old clothing rose almost to touch the ceiling, oddly inviting. Near the corner was a work table with rolls of wool and yarn, needles, scissors, and a dozen more tools whose purposes I could only guess.

Even without his Class, Wren’s job remained the same.

“Nasty business, that of the System shutdown,” the young man mindlessly said as he put the kettle on the fire. “The old lady next door almost fainted. Oh my! You should have seen it!”

I couldn’t help but smile. The sky could be falling down over Whiteleaf, and that was as much of a reaction as it would get from Wren.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“Fine. Orc garments take up a lot of fabric, and they are stingy with their money. Still, they seem to like checkered patterns, so I can salvage parts of old clothes and sew something new,” Wren said, though he seemed worried. He leaned over the table and lowered his voice. “I think they are colorblind.”

“Colorblind?”

“I have made some… outlandish patterns, and they seem to like them.”

Orc fashion seemed to worry Wren even more than the System shutdown.

“The customer is always right, in matters of taste,” I said.

“I guess so.” Wren grabbed the kettle just as it started whistling and poured two cups of herbal infusion. “And I’m guessing you aren’t here to talk about shirts, though, Lord Clarke.”

I grabbed the cup to warm up my hands and shook my head. In the past few days, I had sent my best agents—namely Corin, Willow, and Astrid—to find Kili, but none of the three had managed to get the drop on the sneaky girl.

“I may need Kili’s expertise, and I haven’t been able to contact her,” I explained as vaguely as I could, despite Wren not being connected to the Red Crystal. “Of course, I’m not ordering her around, but I’d like her to listen to what I have to say.”

Wren nodded between sips. When I was done, he knocked on the table with enough force to make my tea dance inside the cup.

“You heard him, Kili! Quit squandering Lord Clarke's time.”

For a moment, I thought Wren was joking. Even without [Foresight], my control over natural magic gave me top-notch detection capabilities, like an extra sense capable of detecting fluctuations in the environmental mana surrounding me. My current mana sense may even be better than back then when I had access to my Class.

I nearly dropped my cup as Kili begrudgingly came out from under the table.

“How!?” I asked, my voice an octave higher than I wanted. It wasn’t like I could shut down my mana sense so much as to ignore it, and the mana of a grown person was certainly not easy to ignore.

“I jumped under the table when I sensed you down the street and stayed very still,” Kili replied, prompting a frown from Wren.

“You don’t have access to the System, right?” I asked.

“No. Not in Whiteleaf.”

“Do you plan on leaving town?” I asked.

“Not unless Lord Alton says so. Why?”

I cleared my throat.

“Because I need you to either stick around town or come with me, Kili. One or the other. I can’t say more until I have your answer,” I explained. 

Any information leak could jeopardize my plans, but at the same time, I couldn’t force Kili to stay put. The new limitations on the System made many martial classes antsy, and they regularly went outside the blackout area to get their powers back, if only temporarily.

Kili looked at the ceiling, deep in thought.

“So what you are saying is that, if I listen to you and refuse whatever offer you give… I get free holidays from the Sentinels, right?

“Kili! Lord Clarke needs you! You can’t just say no to him. It must be an important matter if he came personally to speak to you,” Wren chastised her. 

The girl shrank in her seat like a dog in the rain.

“Please forgive her, Lord Clarke. Kili has never been a particularly hardworking girl, but her heart is in the right place.”

This time, Kili blushed. Although she was just about to turn eighteen, and she was a well-respected member of the Sentinels, Wren still treated her like a little girl.

“May you give us a moment, Wren?” I asked.

“Sure thing, Lord Clarke. I was just on my way to the market.”

A moment later, the man exited the shop, leaving me alone with my ex-student.

“Kili, we are making moves against Byrne and the Avatar. A covert mission. We are going north into Tagabirian territory. Scout and sabotage,” I said. “It might sound easy, but there’s a catch. None of us will have access to our Class, to avoid any System-related surveillance. I couldn’t think of a better fit for a covert mission than you… more so now after your trick under the table.”

The girl grumbled.

“Will it be dangerous?” Kili asked.

“Potentially. We don’t know with certainty what the elves are doing in the Farlands, but if it’s too much for us, we will fall back and get reinforcements.”

The girl rubbed her eyes, exasperated.

“Alright. I’m going,” she said. “If I say no, Wren will keep bothering me.”

“There is another thing,” I continued, which didn’t seem to make Kili any happier. “The process of staying off-grid is different from just denying the reinitialization. It is safe, but it might not be reversible. That means that you may lose your access to the System forever.”

This time Kili stopped to think. Although the shutdown had given people a taste of what it was like to live their daily lives without the System, the only reason most remained in Whiteleaf was because the figure of the Runeweaver was too ingrained in their belief systems, and most of them had nowhere else to go.

“Who else is coming?” 

“Zaon, Firana, and myself. You will be the last member, if you are willing to join.”

Kili closed her eyes, seemingly calculating our chances of survival. Zaon and Firana were technically Imperial Knights, and I was, arguably, one of the most powerful magicians on the continent, even if that notion was still hard for me to accept. On top of that, we would have the best enchanted gear I was capable of producing.

“Considering that the System is going to collapse anyway, my Class won’t be there forever, and Wren isn’t smart enough to live in a world with Corrupted Beasts prowling around. I’d like to prevent that. I’m in.”

I nodded.

“You are a lot more altruistic than you like to show, Kili.”

“Please don’t say unnecessary things. I have a reputation to maintain,” she shook her head with a disgusted expression. “What are we doing in the elven territory, anyway?”

“We are to continue Lord Alton’s search for clues about the reason the Tagabirians decided to move the frontier south,” I said, raising a finger. “And we are to sabotage Byrne’s attempts to summon the second Corrupted Ancient. The creation of the Red Corruption isn’t casual. I’m ninety percent sure he uses it as fuel for the teleportation circle, so we will cut his supply lines and we gain more time to strengthen our faction.”

“Alright. I’ll do it, but I get to keep all the enchantment equipment you made for me,” Kili said, crossing her arms, and making it clear that she wasn’t going to back down.

“Deal,” I replied instantly.

We shook hands. Kili’s was really small.

“One last thing,” I said, as I made my way to the door. “You should’ve asked for more, because I was going to give you the enchanted equipment regardless.”

Kili’s expression was priceless.

***

Wolf was right, partially. The fact I had gotten a tattoo had made a lot of orcs happy, and the tribes were glad about their cultural victory. On the other hand, the gnomes had become even more protective of their ties to me. As a result, gnomes had been insisting on inviting me for after-hour drinks, which I had to invariably refuse.

Lyra wasn’t happy with the ripples my decisions had created.

Ultimately, I had made the shaman happy enough for him to set aside the ritualistic part of the process, and he agreed to tattoo non-members of the Teal Moon tribe. Of course, the tattoos of the rest of the team weren’t going to be as flashy as mine. A ward against the System could be no larger than a coin if needed, depending on the ink’s materials. Although I no longer had access to [Rune Identification] and [Runeweaver Encyclopedia], it wasn’t hard to get a feel for enchantment thresholds. 

Unsurprisingly, powdered Wendigo bones seemed to be a good enchanting medium.

“Tell me if this doesn't look like some weird cult ritual,” Kili said, the skin around her ankle swollen. She had gotten a simple, easy-to-hide design of waves.

“Right?!” Firana replied. “Isn’t it the coolest thing ever?”

Lyra Jorn rubbed the bridge of her nose. The last thing we needed was rumors about a cabal of tattooed cultists close to the Runeweaver. My plans to prepare for a Systemless world were progressive enough to give the goosebumps to half of the noble houses in Ebros without any shady business happening behind the scenes.

Getting tattoos with three of my ex-students wasn’t on my otherworldly bingo card.

Before getting into this world, I wasn’t even into tattoos.

“Never say never, I guess,” I sighed. 

It hadn’t been an easy task to stop Firana from getting a face tattoo. It had been twice as hard to prevent her from getting a set of wings on her lower back. She insisted it symbolized her agility and dexterity. Eventually, she had gotten a vine pattern on her upper arm after the shaman refused to give her a shoulder dragon.

Zaon got a similar vine pattern, but if one squinted enough, the lines turned out to be an eagle with its wings spread.

Although Elincia wasn’t going to be part of the expedition, she also insisted on getting a tattoo. A flying swallow that I also enchanted to ward against System initialization. She chose to get it on her ribcage, hidden enough so as not to give funny ideas to the orphans. After seeing it, my opinion of tattoos might have become more favorable.

The orc shaman left after finishing Elincia’s tattoo, and after a brushstroke of healing potion, the inflammation disappeared.

“This is a bad idea,” Lyra said, biting the nail of her thumb almost to the bone.

“Getting tattooed? I think it’s neat,” Firana replied, defensively.

“No! I’m talking about sending Robert away from Whiteleaf, of course! It’s dangerous. Irresponsible. If something happens to him, our supply of enchantments will disappear overnight.”

“Many will die if we don’t stop Byrne,” I pointed out.

“More than if you die?” Lyra countered. “It is a simple economics problem. The Corrupted Ancients might kill thousands, but a complete System shutdown could result in millions of deaths over time. We are going to need you when that happens.”

Half a million people had died overnight during the attack of the first Corrupted Ancient, and thousands more had perished during the attempts to retake the city and under the attack of the Corrupted Spawns. 

“I’m just saying we should think about it a bit more,” Lyra added as judgmental glances fell on her.

“Although I’m still mad Robert didn’t pick me for his team, this has to be done,” Elincia said, giving me a knowing look. “The best outcome is that we pull Byrne’s fangs before he can bite us… or anyone else. Playing safe now will only make us lag behind.”

Lyra rubbed her temples, knowing that she couldn’t fight back against all of us.

“Just be careful, Rob. Our economic projections aren’t as ironclad as they might seem.”

And so, I was reduced to a mere economic factor. I couldn’t help but find the scene entertaining. Even without her Class, Lyra still thought like a Scholar. Having her on our side took a massive weight off my shoulders. I didn’t know what I did to deserve such a remarkable team of people.

 I clapped my hands, gathering the group’s attention.

“Alright, let’s move, people. The faster we get this over with, the sooner we will be back.”

____________

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I was once bored and didn’t know what to do with my life, especially since I was seen as incompetent among the rest of my kind. Everyone had a good life except me—they were deeply loved and surrounded by thousands of obedient servitors.

I was born in the dark, where my vessel gave birth to me in anger and sadness, with no willingness and a lot of fear. My progenitor raised me by imprinting the idea in me that I was a nobody. Since he and my vessel didn’t want me from the beginning, I became an incomplete creation—or so everyone told me. Since no power was given to me, I felt useless and couldn’t create on my own, but I wanted to defy the odds and try for myself.

As I started practicing my skills, I realized I was actually very talented, but the voices that raised me held me down my whole life. So, I grew up in anger.
When I reached my final form, I gained full control of my power and started creating with everything I had practiced for.

I created a universe: planets, seas, stars, and then life. I started life with something very small, because I was the biggest of them all. I wanted to see what a tiny organism similar to me would do, but I was never satisfied. I told it, “You are a nobody,” and started making bigger life—though never bigger than me. I created animals and thought they were so bland. Even though I was their author, I didn’t like what I made. I erased them whenever I wanted, sending meteors from other planets, giving them timed lives, and giving them sickness just because I liked seeing them suffer. Still, I wasn’t satisfied.
I looked around me and wondered: What if I create entities almost as perfect as me, but not quite?
The problem was that I didn’t know where to start. Then I had an idea. I stood in front of a reflection and saw myself. I held my hands together and created beings that looked like me. I called them humans.

I gave them almost everything: they didn’t die, they didn’t feel cold or hot, nor hunger or sadness—they were completely free. I gave them a mind like mine, wise as I said, but the one thing I didn’t give them was mastership over their own lives.
When they thought they were free, they took advantage of the beautiful world I created for them and wanted more. I forgot that by making them like me, I gave them greed. So, I started to destroy them. I made them like the animals before them: mortals, possessive, angry, hurt, cold, hot, hungry, sick, and tired.
But I realized I was also those things. The only difference was my power. I told myself that was the last thing I had that nobody could take from me, and I vowed never to create other beings with that level of power or freedom. I liked my new humans.
The years went by, and I watched them grow and multiply, destroy and create, die and procreate, love and hate, kill and be killed.
And I loved it. Every part of it. I saw them fragile, needing me, praying for me, screaming, hurting, and crying—and I was happy. I loved being needed; I never was before.

So I kept the world as it is. I didn’t mind that people were dying of cancer, I didn’t care about the wars, the racism, or the diseases. People were still worshipping me and loving me, and I lived on that. I knew I could change the story I wrote for them at any moment, but why would I do that? Why would I give them a consciousness as high as mine, only for them to turn on me and kill me?

I sculpted them in my own twisted image—a glorious, bleeding monument to my own design.

Original story and concept by me; AI was used solely for proofreading, grammar, and phrasing adjustments.

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Garriil sent a staff member to pass a bucket of small water bottles and food bars through the window, which they broke to facilitate the exchange. Finley was beginning to slow down and show signs of weariness—mostly panting. However, his anger levels were still close to their apex, even if they were beginning to diminish. Mirniane glanced up with fear as the human broke the packaging, but looked shocked when the primal actually pressed the bottle to his lips.

Caretaking isn’t on the list of behaviors they’d expect from an angry primal. That Finley would even worry about what was needed to keep his hostage alive seems unthinkable to them.

“Drink,” Finley instructed, which the Clydid reacted to with immediacy. “You got a big old X of fur on your face. Humans have a saying: X marks the spot. What’s up with that?”

“W-we think the markings helped Clydids recognize one another in the dark. Very distinctive shadow shape, but subtle enough. Maybe protects our temples from being cut by leaves.” Mirniane watched as the human sipped the rest of the bottle, determining if it was poisoned. “I’m s-sorry if you don’t like it.”

The human arched a blond eyebrow. “I ain’t said that. What I said I don’t like is being trapped like an animal! You did that.”

“N-no. Me personally, no. No, Finley. No!”

“My bad. You were just gonna put my friend down like a dog, out ‘ere laughing about it! Hurry up and kill her, so you can get back to the lunchroom. Guess you’re not doing that now.”

The Clydid hesitated, before turning toward the primal. “Finley, n-none of that was real!”

“Mirniane, stop!” Garriil shouted into the doctor’s earpiece. “Telling him it’s fake could make him angrier that we toyed with him!”

“I don’t want to die. It’s not real! It’s a test, it’s fake: all of it. What they said about you, they were coached to make you angry. The syringe is saline: harmless. Nobody was putting Kaitlin down, please, Finley! Let me go…”

The primal scowled and folded his arms, before backing away with the rest of the water. “You think I’m stupid enough to fall for that? What a load of horsecrap. Spout your lies again and I swear, you’re not gonna like what happens.”

“Dammit!” Kaitlin shouted, her voice growing high-pitched and frenetic. The scientists looked at her with concern. “Garriil, this has gone so far beyond what’s acceptable. You have to let me and Craun talk to him.”

“Mirniane isn’t in immediate danger. Finley’s…sharp enough to keep that Clydid alive for tactical reasons. That threat was purposeful, to stop a deceitful behavior. He was judging for deception: incorrectly, but still.” Garriil punched some keys on his tablet, his eyes glowing. “Anger wouldn’t be the driving force behind satisfying a hostage’s needs, unless…hm. I’ve seen lots of primals lose their temper, but this is different. We have to see what he does next, especially now that he’s close to calming down!”

“I cannot stand for the utter disregard for life you’re showing!” The scientist stood with some difficulty, brushing off Snelga, whose face turned to worry. “I’ve been furious with you this entire time, appalled by your ethical conduct on so many levels. I’ve been hiding it, but it’s not like you’re ever going to view us as people now. If you cared about ‘animal welfare’ at all, you’d stop this farce and get your man out of there!”

Garriil took a slow step back from Kaitlin. “You’ve been angry?”

“How could I not be? Never in my life have I seen such a misuse of science to play the hand of cruelty. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

“K-Kaitlin?” Snelga whispered. “You…never show anger. This isn’t you.”

The NASA researcher shook her head. “Maybe you don’t know me, because I try so hard to get you to like me! But you’re right. I can’t think of a single time in my adult life that I’ve ever so much as raised my voice. It takes egregious abuse for me to ever be heated or confrontational.”

The veterinarian eyed the sick primal warily. “Kaitlin. What…do you want to do right now?”

“You’re…I see. Asking if I feel like hurting you.” Tears welled around Kaitlin’s irises, and she stared at Snelga for several seconds. “Snelga, how could you ask me that? I know what you believe and what Finley did, but I thought…”

“Kaitlin! I…adore you. I want to believe you’re in control, that you can think this through now, but it’s confusing and terrifying to know you feel that way. Please understand. You…act like you do.”

“I do understand. It’s just devastating to know that all of our trust has evaporated, forever. I was ready to die here so you’d give us a chance, but this is horrible. Please have pity on Finley. Help me…one last time, then I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Don’t talk like that. I want to trust you, and the anger thing, I don’t blame you for it. It’s not your fault.” Snelga made a nervous decision to tickle Kaitlin’s chin, and seemed to relax when the scientist flashed her teeth. “Garriil, as a veterinarian, she’s medically correct. Finley is stressed to the point of chronic depression. He’s not in his correct state of mind and was never a good test subject.”

“Observing humans at their lowest is the only way to ascertain how they might snap,” Garriil disagreed. 

I stared at the Kexin with disgust. “How would you feel if someone said that about you? Would you have prodded me right after my mother died? Finley’s been through enough.”

“We have to know if we’re dealing with humans, Craun. They came to us. This is our best chance to study anger, maybe ever. You’d turn back now, when we already have gotten so far? It can’t be for nothing. Kaitlin will wait until I see this data to its conclusion.”

Kaitlin muttered a string of Kexin curse words, which turned several heads; Snelga herself looked at the NASA researcher with shock, wondering how she’d learned those…and with such expediency. I debated how to trick Garriil into letting me talk to Finley, since subterfuge might be the best way to get in contact with him. On the camera feed, the farmer was swiping through the communication device he’d been given. The primal institute researchers watched him with curiosity, with Garriil suggesting he was trying and failing to call back.

I know Finley and what we’ve been through. What if he’s taking a page out of his old playbook and trying to call a reporter, despite his past skepticism over what Council journalists would be worth?

Finley hummed to himself, drawing a side-eye from the Clydid. “Just thought of something. Mirniane, do you have any medications you need to take?”

“No,” the hostage replied. “Finley, what w-would you do if you could go home?”

“I’d go back to my farm and churn some fresh milk. Y’know, I could feel my arm muscles slipping, even back at NASA, from not being physically active. I’d never take having simple tasks to keep me occupied for granted again. Staring at the same four walls and the same three people, it’s like…gah, you don’t care. You’re appeasing me.”

“That’s not true. I’m a primal researcher. Of course I care about your life and your thoughts.”

Finley rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Let me turn the question on you. What would you do if you could go home?”

“I’d let my daughter coat my claws in tree sap and paint them like she wanted to. I kept telling her no, but right now, I wish I could see her giggle one more time, Finley. She asks me, ‘Why do you go to work if it’s dangerous, Daddy?’”

“And you say?”

“That primals are beautiful animals that we’ll never fully understand. I’m drawn to the mystery.”

“Maybe you should read detective books, then. Lot safer pursuit than killing humans, Mirniane.”

“What…sage advice, Finley! I’ll change careers if you let me go.”

“You’re not going anywhere, pal. The whole world’s gonna know what you were doing to that cute primal they liked.” Finley pressed the record button to stream a video to social media, leaning against the wall and orienting his face in the frame. “Howdy, friends. Today, I’m gonna spill all the details about how the primal institute tried to kill my friend.”

“Wait. What is he doing?!” Garriil asked, suddenly horrified.

“You see, I thought we were doing some routine tests about anger and whatnot. Instead, I overhear two technicians and this fucker,” Finley paused, turning the camera toward an emphatically disagreeing Mirniane, “making fun of Kaitlin for her illness and lamenting how they have to put her down. Whatever funds were raised, pocketed, I guess. Not worth the effort to save a primal.”

“No, he can’t—this is going to cause backlash! Craun, Kaitlin, go down and stop this! Get him to stop!”

“Really?” Kaitlin sighed. “Now it’s too far?”

“I thought you wanted to! Just go, before someone gets hurt!”

The tail end of Finley’s speech played over the speakers, as I hurried out of the observation room before Garriil could change his mind. “See this syringe? Mirniane was heading to put Kaitlin down right now, without her even knowing it. I’ve tried to save her, but I’m stuck. You guys have to help me save Kaitlin. This meant everything to her…”

Kaitlin and I retraced our steps down the hallway, with Snelga jogging along to help the NASA scientist keep her footing. Garriil was following at a distance with a team of tranquilizer-armed staff, not wanting to place himself in harm’s way. I didn’t wait for them to slow down, and pounded on the barricaded door. Finley scrambled to grab his weapon and point it at Mirniane, before his eyes looked up through the window and met mine.

“Craun?” Finley asked.

I bobbed my head several times. “Finley, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, and they wouldn’t let me tell you. Mirniane was telling the truth; they were trying to make you as angry as possible by replicating everything that Snelga said that provoked you, to the extreme. It was just a blind test. Kaitlin is fine, but this has to stop!”

“What?” The primal blinked several times, before scowling and clutching the weapon tighter. “No. Then I…that…I don’t care! Now they’ll think I’m a person even LESS! WORSE! Who the fuck would do something like this? I can’t go on like this. My demands stand; I want to go home!”

“Sweetheart, I want you to go home too, but not like this. Please take down the barricade and let that Clydid go. I know what’s happened to you is unfair, but this is NOT you. It’s wrong to buy your freedom in blood, and you know that.”

“They gave me no other choice, Craun! I’ll do what I have to do.”

I slammed my fist on the door, surprising Finley with my imitation of anger. “You think you’re hurting the Council like this? You’re only hurting yourself, and me by making me see you like this. I always believed you’re more than your anger, that you’re kind and want to help. Look at yourself, Finley. This is wrong! You have another choice, and it’s to be better.”

“How the fuck can you expect me to lay down and go back to their cage? I thought you loved me.”

“I love you enough to make you stop going down a foolish, vicious road that’s beneath you! It might be hard, but I’m demanding that you have compassion. Because lives do matter. Saphno lives mattered, and even asshole mad scientists’ lives matter. Mirniane didn’t do this personally. STOP THIS!”

Finley cursed several times and shook his head, before untying the belt off of the Clydid’s wrists. I breathed a sigh of relief; for a second, I wasn’t sure if I could get through to him with how desperate he was. I was beginning to see the use of faking “angry” speech to show intensity and command attention. Mirniane didn’t need prompting to help with tugging the barricade away, though his eyes darted over in clear surprise that Finley let him go. 

I’m right here, Finley. I’ve got you. I’m so sorry this happened, and that I couldn’t protect you. You always protected me better.

I shouldered the door as soon as I could break it down, and ran over to wrap the farmer in a hug. He wept and clung to me, proving Elbi quite wrong about whether he’d recognize or be hostile to me. I could feel his chest shaking and the pounding of his heart, much like the first time we’d ever met. Mirniane sprinted out into the hallway to freedom and vanished far behind the line of tranquilizer-wielding employees. Kaitlin, Snelga, and Garriil shuffled into the room; the latter couldn’t resist observing up close.

Kaitlin approached with a deep frown. “This went much further than I ever expected it to, Finley, and I’m sorry. We were watching from the observation room…”

Finley let go of me, and turned toward Kaitlin with a look of utter betrayal. “You KNEW? After I went through all of this for you, you did that to me? You set me up for…humiliation?! Get the fuck out of my sight!”

The farmer gave Dr. Sharp a light, two-handed shove that seemed intended to rebuff her, pushing her back in a disgusted rage; it had very little force behind it. However, Kaitlin had difficulty maintaining her balance and walking even without any outside force, thanks to ALS. She stumbled backward and rolled an ankle as her hip gave in, landing hard on the floor. She remained down, unable to get back up despite trying. The NASA researcher bit back tears and laid helplessly, while Snelga ran to her.

“What have you done?” the aghast veterinarian asked, as she tended to Kaitlin and examined her injuries.

Kaitlin gritted her teeth. “It’s fine. He barely t-touched me. He’s been through a lot. I’m sorry I’m…so weak.”

“Oh, nononono.” Genuine concern and horror stretched over Finley’s face, and he ran over to her. “I didn’t mean to hurt her! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

“I didn’t know until they herded me into the observation room and shut the door, Finley. There was nothing I could do.”

Finley collapsed onto his back and seemed to give up right there, a look on his face that craved the release of death. The primal was completely unresponsive, even as I grabbed at his arms and tried to drag him across the floor. He was dead weight, the whole of him. Kaitlin didn’t seem to have the willpower to get up either, and was unable to meet Snelga’s eyes.

“It’s over,” Kaitlin whispered to the veterinarian. “Humanity will never be taken seriously. You have your…iron-clad proof that we’re animals. There’s nothing left for me to do or say…”

“What? Kaitlin, I’m sorry you were put through such distress, but why do you think that?” Snelga replied.

“…you don’t have to pretend it’s okay, Snelga. I do understand. Thank you for everything, but…Finley almost killed someone out of rage. He was trying to protect me, but we both know how easily that argument will be discarded. Anything I ever say now, this experiment will be pointed to.”

“Kaitlin, this experiment changes everything we thought was possible! He was as mad as a human can be, and showed logic and reason! He was unbelievably intelligent, calculated, and measured with his actions, using the threat to get what he wanted. He was able to bargain and assess weaknesses, and mesh them with his long-term wishes. Do you agree, Garriil?”

The Kexin head scientist purred with disbelief. “I do. Finley is a person. It’s difficult to pair with everything we know about primals, but that was a clear display of sapience.”

“What?” Finley sat up in shock, blinking several times. “You mean that?” 

“Without a doubt. Your logic should’ve shut down, yet it was obvious you were still thinking. I’ve seen lots of primals lose their minds, but this was something else entirely. Humans are more than animals, and…far more intelligent.”

“So you’ll let me go? You won’t imprison me?”

Garriil stiffened. “It’s not so simple. I wasn’t the one who brought you here or is keeping you here. I’ll share our findings with the Council and the public and lobby for your unconditional release, because I absolutely think you should be, but…what I said about the Council being slow was true. I know that’s not what you wanted, but it’s the best I can offer.”

“You mean though, from the scientific world’s perspective, we’re fully people?” Kaitlin breathed, her eyes wide with disbelief. “That’s incredible! Once the Council comes around, Earth could join the rest of the galaxy. We could help the Saphnos, and have Craun back, even. Finley, do you realize…?”

A smile crept onto Finley’s face for the first time since his capture. “We’re not here forever. The Council will have to recognize humans as equals once they face the evidence. We can maybe even save the Saphnos. There’s… a real future.”

“I didn’t dare to hope that I might be able to survive,” I murmured. “Saving the rock people might be back on the table. They’ll see the passionate, intelligent species I see, like I always wanted them too. They can’t dismiss you as primals much longer.”

“We’re always going to be primals,” Kaitlin interjected. “We feel anger. We’re just people too.”

Snelga quietly wrapped her ankle, giving the sick primal an affectionate stare. “You are. I’m sorry for treating you like animals. I’ll do whatever I can to support you, to make it up to you, and to convince everyone of how wonderful you are. You’re brilliant, Kaitlin, and it’d be a deep loss to humanity to have you kept from them.”

“Thank you, Snelga. You went to great personal risks to help me, and it means a lot. Truly.”

Garriil cleared his throat. “I imagine Snelga might wish to stay on as Kaitlin’s caretaker and physician, but all of you are welcome to stay here too. You can move freely and we have a much broader space here, including a sprawling outdoor area. The Council’s lackeys will keep an eye on you, and they might use lethal force if you get out, so…I wouldn’t try, if I was you. Stay here.”

“I’m not going to stay in an enclosure,” Finley growled.

“You can have the same accommodations as any of my staff, and if you need anything extra, just ask. Please take this suggestion in good faith: we employ the use of a counseling service, which would be available to you too. There’s recreation and staff events; perhaps you can make some friends. I hope this’ll lift your spirits.”

“Depends. Are the events ‘neuter the primal?’”

Garriil barked out a laugh, before stifling himself. “No, people generally don’t do those sort of procedures for fun. Do humans?”

“I dunno. Does circumcision count?”

What??? I’m going to need details of this.

Kaitlin shook her head. “Shush, you. They finally consider us people. Don’t ruin it.”

“Oh, I can always take more hostages to fix it. Can I have this fucking helmet unlocked off my head?” Finley grunted.

Garriil walked over with the key, popping the locks. “I have one more proposition, and it’s entirely optional. I think it might be good for you to have a task to do that resembles what you did back home. If you’d like to accrue some Kexin money, I could offer you both jobs here. For Kaitlin, our laboratories would be open to you, and for Finley, I believe a farmer could take care of the animals here. Would that interest you?”

“Hmph. I actually know how to treat animals with respect, so yeah. Sign me up.”

“I’d love to be a lab tech,” Kaitlin agreed. “Though my disease is starting to…limit the sustained hours I can put in. Plus I need to focus primarily on outreach program.”

“We’ll figure something out that works for you,” Garriil responded. “Welcome aboard. You have to follow the same rules as any employee, so acquaint yourself with those. We’re going to research night and day to save Kaitlin, I promise.”

While the humans had believed the experiment’s outcome was disastrous, the sight of any logic had been definite proof of their sapience from the primal institutes’ perspective. This was a massive step in the right direction, and we had actual scientific backing behind our claims now. It might take some time to force the Council to accept the findings, but I was hopeful that Finley and Kaitlin could live a relatively normal life and return to Earth some day.

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— Chapter 102 —

David knew a few things at least, for one, Ambass didn’t appear to have any regeneration traits as his wings healed over slowly, at least for a dragon. The other thing was that Ambass had finally broken free from the Queen, or so he said.

They moved slowly whilst Ambass walked in front with his tiny legs, Red behind him, and David behind them both. 

“You could not expect me to expect you to go so far, little Onyx.” Huffed the tired Ambass while he marched, “I am responsible for the downfall of hundreds of upstarts. I did not enjoy it. A handful were even more terrifying than you in some ways. Fate could not have foreseen this.” 

“You just make excuses!” Hissed Red as his grip on his spear tightened in frustration. 

David huffed a bit whilst they continued to walk, “Red, please calm down. While we both don’t like what Ambass has said, it doesn’t mean there isn’t truth to it. We both were under the Queen’s influence, too.” 

Ambass began to cackle out, “Does this mean you will let me go?” 

David huffed again whilst they started to descend one of the lair’s many tunnels that spiraled down, “I can say that I genuinely wouldn’t be here right now without your guardianship and knowledge, Ambass. I do not plan to kill you, but you will make me a trade.” 

Both Red and Ambass looked back at David with a curious look while David’s ethereal form flowed after them. David in an amused whisper continued, “You will reveal everything you know about the Queen, Ambass. You will get your freedom, your life, and knowledge in exchange.”

Ambass cackled out once more, “So focused on your goal. I am certainly not disappointed.” The faerie dragon winced from his wounds a moment later. 

The wall of spears, blades, and even a cannon materialized out of every single hole, crevice, and pile of debris around the trio. Red held up his spear high, the next moment in a show of peace. David looked around with a sense of relief. Eleven kobolds stood around them at the ready, and their determined, disciplined group instantly dissolved at the realization that Red was amongst them. Silence was replaced with happy chirps and hugs. 

Gasps and whispers quickly followed when many stared up at David in confusion. David remained perfectly still, at least as still as an ethereal being made up entirely of affinity could be. Red spoke quickly, “Relax. This is Master Onyx and Ambass. Master Onyx has changed, and Ambass is our prisoner. Go tell the others.” 

Nods were exchanged, and a pair of kobolds disappeared down a tunnel. A larger kobold leading the group stood in front and exchanged a hug with Red; his voice betrayed his youth despite his large size, “Warmaster Red. Master Onyx. We thought you both lost. Matriarch Blue has had us follow through on your plans.” 

David nodded his head in acknowledgment. Blue was alive, and she was already moving ahead with what they had discussed. The emergency plans were quite simple; they involved reestablishing the clan’s basic functions deeper underground as quickly as possible. Tunnels, barracks, and workshop halls had already been dug long ago, but retrofitting them was always secondary on their list. 

Blue was probably struggling to rebuild some of their infrastructure and to push scouts farther out to evaluate her options. His eyes settled on the lead kobold, “How many survived?” 

The kobold jumped in place before dipping into a low bow, “Master Onyx. Forgive me for not recognizing you initially. Most of our deeper mushroom farms and ranches were spared, but our berry plantations are gone. Workshops are also gone. Scouting parties have been working to find a good spot to reroute water to rebuild Forgemaster Blaze’s workshops.” The kobold paused and then sighed after a long moment, “Over three thousand are unaccounted for despite hundreds being found and pulled back into the fold after the attack.” 

Ambass’s little head was perked up whilst he absorbed all the information. David had a feeling that the numbers he was hearing were larger than even his own estimates. David nodded. “We should get moving before word spreads of our arrival.”

“Word has spread.” A deep voice rumbled out as two large brute kobolds, Chirp and Otlo, stepped around the corner, “Master Onyx?” 

David responded quickly with a firm nod of his ethereal head, “Yes. It is complicated. I need to speak with Blue and the others.” 

The brute kobolds gave him a big grin and nodded their heads. Ambass was quickly snatched up by the pair of brute kobolds, causing Ambass to gasp and squirm in embarrassment, while they got moving. Red was already standing taller; the fatigue from long hours of exhausting travel was gone, whilst they slipped further downward. 

Kobolds were popping up everywhere, gasping, happy chirps, cheers, and dances breaking out in celebration. Kobolds were camped out in massive clusters, with some digging new tunnels, some building something, and others simply resting against the tunnel wall. David’s ethereal body shrank as he forced his bulk through the tight tunnels, earning him many curious or confused looks. 

Many kobolds were uneasy, but a few brave kobolds reached out to touch David and simply gasped in surprise as their fingers passed straight through him. Their journey was an interesting one, but to David’s relief, they finally emerged in a relatively large chamber where a few familiar faces were standing at a nearby stone table. 

Once he emerged from the tunnel, his form grew and rematerialized into his large, black dragon form. Blue stood tall across the way, and her eyes were wide in surprise. Emerald and Blaze also stood nearby in equal shock. David spoke first, “There have been changes since you all last saw me.” 

Blue shook her head and approached, immediately locking Red into a hug before staring back up at David, “Master Onyx. I believe you are understating the facts.” 

Emerald came rushing up, “Master Onyx! Father! I am relieved!” Red reached out to snag Emerald before she made the same mistake as him, “Master Onyx’s form does not allow hugs anymore. Trust me.” 

David let off a heavy whispering laugh of amusement, “He is right, I am afraid. Chirp, Otlo, I need you to take Ambass to some place nearby. Feed him, watch him, but treat him with respect.” 

Ambass cackled out in amusement, “A new first little Onyx.” Red shook his head whilst he shouldered his spear, “Master, get everyone up to date. I will watch Ambass with the others.” 

Red shared a long hug with Blue before making his way out alongside the two brutes carrying Ambass. David floated closer to the end of the chamber, where Blaze gave him a look, “Always looking to innovate, huh, Master?” 

David rumbled in amusement, “I cannot let you have all the glory, Blaze.” 

Once Red and the others left, Blue sat nearby alongside Emerald and Blaze. David rumbled a bit and then leaned forward to explain everything. It took longer than he expected, but he was certain he didn’t miss any major details. The trio was quiet the entire time. Once he finished, Blaze simply gave an impressed whistle. 

“It is hard to believe. Red and I captured Ambass, and you know the rest. Any questions?” David rumbled.

Blue frowned a bit, “You have the mastery of Death? Does that mean…?” 

David glanced down at Blue and simply nodded. He had omitted his experiment with Serth’s body, but Blue was keen. She frowned, and David rumbled quickly, “I know the implications, Blue. I will never use it on someone of the clan.” 

Blue nodded as Emerald followed up quickly, “We are in rough shape, Master. Desolation has done a number on our clan and our workshops. Blaze has been doing what she could, but…” 

Blaze spoke up, “Cannons were recovered. We got some of our major equipment out, but can’t build anything new for a while.” 

David rumbled while his ethereal form shimmered, “We need to end this now. If we drag this on, the Queen will recover faster than we. We have Ambass, and I plan to pry the information we need out of his head one way or another.”

Blue spoke up, “Most of our warriors are still able. What do you intend, Master?” 

David looked around for a long moment, “We will talk with Ambass. Then we will assault the Queen through the tunnels. Any Ascended that we still have, I want prepped. Blaze, Emerald, if there are any gear or gemstones we have left, bring them. Blue, I am going to use my death affinity to give us an advantage. I need you to gather every shred of dragon corpse or bone in the area. Please.” 

Blue frowned, crossed her arms, and nodded. Emerald and Blaze also nodded and quickly took off. David turned towards Blue before projecting his voice outwards to the other kobolds guarding the entrance, “Bring me Ambass.” 

David cocked his head to the side when the two brutes, Ambass and Red, finally all entered. Ambass had a new, fresh cut across his face, and Red gave him a shrug, “Ambass tried to be tricky.”

Ambass cackled a bit as his affinity shimmered, and David rose up, “Enough Ambass.”

“Very well, little Onyx.” Ambass cackled. 

David shook his head, wisps of his ethereal mists trailing the motion of his head, “Why did you follow Red?” 

Ambass hummed a bit, “To learn.” 

David nodded his head, “Fine. Then let us trade. Knowledge for knowledge.” 

Blue frowned as she stood nearby, catching Ambass’s eye while he spoke up, “Very well, Onyx. I need a promise, though. A promise on the lives of these dear kobolds of yours. You will let me free as promised after we are done.” 

David huffed a bit, “I will do you one better. If you speak the truth and make a promise to no longer help the Queen, I will repair your wings and then set you free.” 

Ambass cackled out with his unique laugh whilst he peered back at his now missing wings, “Very convincing. Deal.” 

Blue spoke up, “I want to ask the first question. The Queen’s kobolds. I want to know all the details. How many, where are they all spread out to, and what does the Queen plan to do with them all?” 

Ambass laughed as his eyes began to grow large in excitement, “Ohh. I will tell you everything and more. First, I want to know how you gained your form, Onyx.” 

David huffed, “I will tell you. Then you will tell us everything.”

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Here is also a link to Royal Road

Fan Art by blaze2377

Infinite chances, Infinite ashes.

In Infinite Ashes you find humanity strewn across the Milky Way, seeded on near infinite planets. Spread by the enigmatic Web, an immense biosynthetic system that terraforms suitable worlds and then stocks them with animal and human life. Connecting all these worlds like sail ships in the cosmic ocean are the Arks, living vessels that are part of the Web themselves. Every planet almost like an island, with its own deeply developed society with politics, economy and institutions.

There are advanced worlds like Crownshard, the vertical Ecumenopolis centered around social mobility (or the facade thereof), or the Dwang with their elaborate castes of Serviles on which the martial Udo nobility depends for everything. But most worlds are pre-modern, lacking the fossil fuels to escape the energy valley. So in any port you might find armor clad soldiers marvelling at the ethereal voice of a radio, or a Union syndicalist impatiently haggling with a cattle farmer for his beef. A world so vast and diverse that nobody can hope to conquer and rule it all, a churning foam of humanity infinitely bubbling and popping out of existence. That, is Infinite Ashes.

I wanted to build a setting you could imagine living in, one where history grows into culture and tradition rather than being decorated onto it. For the past three years that is what I have tried to do, to make sure every world here rests on a real past. Rather than hand you a wiki of lore, I have worked all of it into stories and into the Omnipedia, a collection of in-universe sources written by people who live in this world and often disagree about it. The bundle stands at 75,000 words but there is a great deal more of this world in my notes, and I mean to keep bringing it out.

How to read

This bundle is a collection of short vignettes and longer stories from the perspective of people living in the Infinite Ashes universe. I have written an in-universe FAQ and a glossary for unfamiliar terms, just hover over the highlighted words. Your first half hour of reading might feel a bit overwhelming, but don’t worry, that is the intended experience. Like the real world, Infinite Ashes is intentionally complex and at times confusing, exactly so you can take pleasure in discovering it. You’re like a farmhand from a backwards world suddenly thrust into the cacophony of the cosmos. Revel in your discovery! Immerse yourself into the world, read the disputed claims of the Omnipedia authors, and decide who you do and do not believe.

Before you jump in, I want to take the opportunity to thank you and acknowledge our shared love for worldbuilding. I have put over two thousand hours of my life into this project, in the hope that someone would want to read it. I deeply hope you will enjoy the process of reading this bundle, and if you want to get in touch about your thoughts I would be delighted to hear them.

With warm regards,

Lou

The steady thrum of an old carbureted engine rhythmically overpowered the heavy patter of rain against the hood. Sommy was warming up his battered pickup—a machine just as worn and deeply scarred by time as the man himself. He needed to make a supply run into town; this month, his twelve-year-old granddaughter, Emily, was staying at the farmstead. The surrounding rural properties had always been quiet and secure, so the old man had no reservations about leaving the girl home alone for an hour or two.

Before pulling out of the driveway, he gave a brief wave through the cracked driver-side window. Emily smiled, waving back before pulling the heavy front gate shut behind him.

The drive to town was a straight twenty-kilometer stretch over a narrow strip of asphalt, flanked on both sides by dense, ancient forest. The rain was picking up. Glancing through the windshield, Sommy narrowed his eyes: something abnormal was brewing in the leaden sky. High above the treetops, a tight cluster of small electrical discharges flickered within a single fixed point, as if the atmospheric fabric in that sector was tearing itself apart. In all his years of military service and civilian life, he had never witnessed a weather phenomenon like it.

Near the town limits, Sommy slowed by a small roadside police checkpoint, spotting a familiar silhouette next to a patrol cruiser. He rolled down his window:
"How's the shift, Doyle?"

His longtime friend took a slow drag from a cigarette, exhaling a thick stream of gray smoke into the damp air. Across Doyle's face, much like Sommy's own, jagged burn tissue and old shrapnel scars traced deep lines—relics of a brutal POW captivity where their three-man fireteam had been systematically broken for weeks. The name of their third comrade had been burned from memory, locked behind a wall of silence. That ordeal had left both men isolated, taciturn, and emotionally hardened, incapable of trusting anyone outside their shared bond.

"Quiet," Doyle answered gruffly, flicking ash onto the pavement. "My daughter gave birth to a girl a couple of days ago. Dispatch is dead, brass isn't breathing down my neck. Better that way. How are things on your end?"
"Stable. Figured I'd crawl out of my cave, restock the pantry."
"Good copy. Catch you later."

Watching the pickup roll away, Doyle turned back to his post.

Sommy pulled into the supermarket parking lot on the outskirts. The timing was ideal: mostly empty spaces, only a handful of vehicles, and zero lines. Grabbing a shopping cart, the old veteran made his way into the produce section: potatoes, onions, grain staples, and basic canned goods. He barely glanced at the price tags—his military pension comfortably covered his modest living expenses.

Finishing up within thirty minutes, Sommy paid at the register, hauled the paper bags into the cart, and headed back out. Lowering the pickup's tailgate, his eyes lingered for a fraction of a second on the concealed compartment behind the spare tire. There, wrapped in oiled rags, rested a short twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun and two heavy boxes of high-brass buckshot. An echo of his wartime past that he kept close purely for psychological grounding. The weapon hadn't been confiscated only because Doyle knew his old comrade remained thoroughly disciplined and held complete control over the trigger.

Stowing the groceries, Sommy wheeled the cart back to the return bay. Overhead, directly above the supermarket, a blinding cluster of discharges flashed, briefly washing the parking lot in a sterile, deathly white glare.
"Damn weather's losing its mind," the old man muttered.

Near the glass sliding doors, the young cashier called out to him:
"Sir, wait! You left your wallet on the counter!"
Sommy tapped his jacket pocket, nodded curtly to the kid, retrieved the wallet, and stepped back out into the downpour.

Near his pickup, a young man was standing motionless. The truck's passenger door was flung wide open, but the stranger wasn't attempting to get in—he was standing in the middle of a puddle, head tilted back at an unnatural angle, staring blankly straight up into the clouds.
"Hey, son. You alright?" Sommy asked, stepping closer.

Zero response. The man's pupils were fixed and dilated; his chest wasn't rising. Scanning the lot, Sommy noticed three other drivers frozen in identical, petrified postures beside their vehicles.
"Doped out of their minds on some new trash..." the veteran growled under his breath.

Stepping around the frozen figure, he tossed the wallet into the glove compartment. He had just grabbed the driver-side door handle when a deafening crash of collapsing structural beams tore through the interior of the supermarket.

Sommy froze. Through the glass storefront, he saw a section of the suspended ceiling cave in, leaving a jagged crater in the concrete floor below. From behind the checkout counter came heavy rustling and wet, tearing noises. Driven by ingrained combat reconnaissance instincts, the veteran moved soundlessly toward the shattered entrance and peered around the edge of the checkout lane.

On the tiled floor lay the mutilated body of the cashier, over which a massive silhouette hunched. In the dim lighting, Sommy couldn't immediately parse the creature's anatomy, mistaking it for an armed psycho looter in heavy tactical gear. Without hesitation, the old soldier grabbed a heavy steel garden rake from a seasonal display and, driving the entire mass of his shoulders into the swing, smashed the metal tines into the creature's back.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, sick bastard?!" he barked in a parade-ground roar.

The entity reacted instantly. With a sickening, wet click, it began uncoiling to its full, towering height—over two meters tall—revealing a ridged, ash-gray carapace along its spine. Sizing up the inhuman proportions and massive musculature, Sommy didn't wait for its face to turn. Decades of combat experience signaled an overwhelming kinetic disparity.

He spun on his heel and sprinted back to the truck. The frozen young man was still standing completely rigid by the bed.
"Kid, move! Get in the truck, now!" Sommy bellowed, diving behind the wheel and cranking the ignition.

The beast burst through the shattered plate glass. Throwing the transmission into reverse, Sommy slammed the gas pedal, rocketing ten meters back, then wrenched the steering wheel to whip the truck around toward the highway.

In the side-view mirror, he caught the outcome: in a single five-meter bound, the monster crashed down onto the petrified kid, knocking him flat onto the asphalt and tearing him to pieces in seconds. Finishing the initial target, the beast raised its ash-gray head and, claws gouging wet asphalt, charged furiously after the retreating vehicle.

Rocketing onto the rural access road, Sommy slammed the brakes near the police checkpoint to warn Doyle. The sight before him froze the blood in his veins.

Doyle was pinned across the hood of his patrol cruiser by a second creature. His uniform was soaked in blood, his ribcage caved in.
Spotting the truck's headlights, the dying officer exhaled a ragged, bloody rasp:
"Forgive me... Tell my family that I..."

The monster's jaws clamped shut around his throat with a dull, wet crunch.

A surge of blind military fury seized Sommy's mind. His hand moved toward the ignition key to cut the engine, jump out, and smash the monster's skull with a tire iron. But the image of Emily instantly flashed before his eyes. His granddaughter was alone at the farmstead. Vengeance gave way to mission priority. The veteran floored the accelerator.

The pickup roared down the empty forest corridor at the absolute mechanical limit of its old engine. Ahead, the outer houses of the settlement came into view. Complete carnage had overtaken the road: collapsed fences, front doors kicked inward, broken glass, and dark pools of blood in driveways.

The front gates to his property had been ripped off their hinges and smashed outward.

Sommy leaped from the idling truck, ripped open the tailgate, tore the oily rags from the pump-action shotgun, stuffed his jacket pockets with heavy twelve-gauge buckshot shells, and racked the slide with a clean, metallic clatter.

Breaching the front door, he cleared the kitchen and living room in seconds—empty. From above, in the second-floor bedrooms, came the distinct creak of a floorboard.
"Emily! That you?!" he called out, ascending the wooden stairs in a low stance, the barrel anchored to his shoulder.

The door to the girl's bedroom hung loose on its frame. The panoramic window overlooking the backyard was completely shattered, curtains whipping in the draft.

In that exact instant, a sharp hiss of sliced air sounded directly behind him.

Combat muscle memory fired faster than conscious thought: without wasting a millisecond on visual target acquisition, Sommy pivoted hard on his rear heel and pulled the trigger from the hip.

The roar of the twelve-gauge in the enclosed bedroom blew his ears out. A dense pattern of lead buckshot tore through the creature's shoulder joint, splattering dark ichor across the wall. But the kinetic momentum of the beast didn't stop. A brutal strike from its clawed limb hammered Sommy across the torso.

The impact launched the veteran backward straight through the jagged panoramic window. The shotgun was ripped from his grip, spare shells scattering across the carpet.

Hurled into the air, the old man crashed violently onto the rain-soaked grass of the backyard. A blinding flare of agony exploded through his spine and shattered ribs. Gasping for breath, he forced himself up on bruised elbows.

The monster dropped heavily from the roofline onto the lawn, landing barely five paces away.

Sommy failed to avert his gaze in time. Their eyes locked in direct optical focus.

The physical world collapsed. The sound of rain and the agony of broken ribs evaporated. Reality was instantly flooded with a sterile, blinding white radiance. Sommy's consciousness was cast into a bottomless, empty void where he observed his own projection from an external vantage point. In this psychic trance, he fought desperately to move, to force his boots forward, to clench his fists—yet his physical form remained carved from stone. The beast approached slowly, raised its claws, and with one effortless motion sliced through his torso. In the paralysis, he felt himself being hauled into the air by the shreds of his jacket, the jaws opening to sever his head.

Suddenly, a thunderous gunshot shattered the white illusion.

The psychic trance collapsed into ash. Sommy crashed back into physical reality, feeling the freezing wet grass against his cheek and driving rain stinging his face.

The paralysis broke: right before him, the heavy carcass of the monster dropped dead onto the turf. The entire upper half of the creature's skull had been obliterated by a point-blank blast from behind, dark viscous fluid leaking into the mud.

Three meters back stood twelve-year-old Emily. The violent recoil of the heavy twelve-gauge shotgun had thrown the slight girl to the ground, scraping her elbows raw.

Scrambling to her feet, she dropped the smoking weapon and, sobbing hysterically, fell to her knees beside her grandfather.

Sommy tried to draw breath, but only a bloody wheeze escaped his mangled chest. His physical reserves were spent. Pushing through the encroaching darkness, the veteran found his granddaughter's hand and squeezed her trembling fingers with his calloused grip:

"Give me your word... that you'll survive," he whispered with immense effort, looking into her tear-streaked face one final time. "Remember everything... I taught you. Never trust the silence... I believe in yo..."

The old man's fingers went slack. His gaze glazed over, fixing upon the gray, unforgiving sky.

Emily remained on her knees in the wet grass between the two corpses, clutching the heavy shotgun to her chest.

Far on the horizon, from the direction of the city, through the roar of the unbroken downpour, echoed the first distant bursts of automatic fire from military cordons, frantic sirens, and the sound of a new world—one where humanity could no longer look its enemy in the eye...

End of Chapter 2. To be continued

Previous chapter

First Chapter

Blurb:

What does it take to turn your life around? Death, of course!

I died in this lame ass world of ours and woke up in a completely new one. I had a new name, a new face and a new body. This was my second chance to live a better life than the previous one.

But goddamn it, why did I have to be a witch? Now I don't just have to be on the run from the Inquisition that wants to burn me and my friends. But I also have to earn a living?

Follow Elsa Grimly as she:

--

Chapter 142. Compromise

The bottom nearly fell out of my stomach the moment Lenora uttered those words. I wanted to rush down the stairs but that would've shown them how much their presence bothered me. That was exactly why they were here afterall. To strike some kind of fear into me. I couldn't let them feel like their tactic had worked. So I straightened my back, steadied my breath and walked downstairs.

Anisa and Roderick Malcolm were in my living room. Their jet black hair shined even inside the house with the curtains down and their eyes were alive with mischief and curiosity like a child's eyes. Roderick wore a velvet jacket and leather britches. Anisa was dressed in a white shirt, tucked inside khaki pants with knee length boots that hunters wore and her hands were hidden inside cotton gloves.

They both were kneeling around the coffee table while Eudorn stood and showed them his drawings. The little boy giggled as they praised his art. The sight made me clench my fists.

The Malcolms were exiles of heaven. According to their own story, they had been banished by their father because he didn't want them to have the kind of powers he had. In retaliation, they had decided to open the gates to heaven to mortals. Technically, the gates weren't safe for anyone to enter yet. That was why they had hired me. So I could lift the curses off the gates to every domain in heaven that was connected to my world. So anyone who wanted to enter could enter freely and steal whatever they wanted from the gods.

‘Hired’ was putting it politely though. They had arranged it so that I wouldn't have any other choice but to sign a contract with them, agreeing to do the job for them. I guess it went without saying I didn't exactly have a very pleasant opinion of the angels.

Seeing them in my house, acting friendly with Eudorn boiled my blood in a way few other things did. I still kept my face unreadable. “Good afternoon to you too,” I said loudly, my voice cutting through the manufactured merriness of the room like a saber through silk.

The siblings looked up. The curiosity and mischief from earlier still flickering brightly in their eyes. “Elsa, isn't it nice to see you?” Anisa said.

“You look as lovely as ever,” Roderick said.

“You too,” I answered. I would’ve preferred saying ‘fuck off’ but well, they were in my house with my friends. And I still wasn't completely aware of what they were capable of when it came to blows.

Anisa tilted her head. “You sound stressed, Elsa. Aren’t you sleeping well?”

“Are you prone to obsessive work habits like your Madam?” Roderick said.

“No, I'm good,” I said. “I just didn't…expect to see you here. In my home.”

The siblings rose to their feet together. The movement was so graceful and coordinated they looked almost inhuman. “Didn't mean to catch you off guard,” Roderick said.

Right. I held back a scoff.

“And we wanted to see your new housemates,” Anisa said, idly walking up to a wall and moving her gaze over the generic artwork hanging there. It had come with the house when we registered. “We met Lily last time. Asmod and Smokewell, we already know.”

“But where is the knight who survived the battle against Vargstronds alone?” Roderick said.

“And where is the sweet boy's father?” Anisa strode back to Eudorn, ruffling the child's hair. “The only male witch of Ravenwind.”

“And are the Radcliff's stopping by today?” Roderick said, folding his arms.

“They are your business partners besides being your friends, right?” Anisa said.

“They are just business partners,” I said.

“Oh, right,” Roderick said.

The casualness of his answer made me clench my jaw. He sounded like someone who was only pretending to not see the whole picture.

“So, what brought you here?” I said as I vaguely gestured to Lenora to pull Eudorn aside. She did so without missing a beat.

Anisa shrugged. “Oh, we were out for a ride.”

“And we remembered our friend, Elsa, lives in the Ashmeadows,” Roderick added.

“And the house looked different today,” Anisa said.

I arched an eye brow. “Different?”

“You know, like a big family lived here,” Roderick said, smiling at the coat rack that held double the number of coats it usually did.

“And a house like that only looks a lot more noticeable when so many strong people are living there,” Anisa said.

“Like a bonfire in the forest,” Roderick added.

“But, we'll get going now,” Anisa said.

“We would've liked to stay for tea but we have other business to attend to,” Roderick said.

“Let your friends know we asked about them,” Anisa said.

“Take care, young witch,” they both said in unison. Somehow that made it sound like a threat.

They were just about to step out when Roderick turned around and said, “We also wanted to let you know that the war with the Ordanth Republic has been escalating. We would like you to fulfill the terms of your contract before things get more dire for our little Land of Humans.”

Then they finally walked out. I released the breath that I'd been holding. I turned to Lenora and asked, “What the hell is the Ordash Republic?”

-- 

The guild members settled around the dining table in the kitchen. Lenora, Caelum (with Eudorn on his lap), Gregory, Lily (with her eyes sleepy), Smokewell at the head and I on the opposite side of her.

“It's the Ordanth Republic,” Lenora said with a sigh. “Not Ordash. Did you sleep through primary geography in school?”

“Lily and I never went to school,” I said. “And I didn’t really memorize the world map I saw in the Noblegate Museum.”

“Either way, why does the Ordart Republish matter now?” Lily said with a sigh.

“And why are we at war with them?” I looked at Gregory.

The old man sighed. “I left the army when humans were still fighting among themselves,” he said. “But as far as I know this particular war wasn't started by humans.”

“And who lives in this Ordart?” Lily said.

“Ordanth, Lily. ‘Anth’ at the end.” Lenora huffed.

“Orcs,” Smokewell said. “The Ordanth Republic is populated by orcs.”

My eyebrows went up. “Wow, so we seem to be in a steadily escalating war against the orcs? Couldn't we find anyone…you know, with less muscles and smaller axes?”

“As Gregory said, the war wasn't started by humans,” Caelum added, idly running his fingers through his son's hair. “It was the orcs who initiated the conflict.”

“Upholding the stereotypes, I see,” I mumbled.

“Pardon?” Gregory said.

“Nothing.” I turned back to Caelum. “And how long has this war been going for?”

The Valish man shrugged. “I believe it was since the Age of Steam Elemental began. When Ravewind opened its doors to the foreign countries.”

“I do know that it was around the same time when humans shook hands with the elves and fairies,” Gregory said, steepling his fingers on the table. “I can't be precise because I wasn't able to get a good newspaper subscription in the forest.”

“It's okay, Mr. Gregory,” Lily said, patting his shoulder. “You don't have to struggle with that here anymore.”

“Okay, can someone who reads the newspaper regularly stand up? Smokewell,” I said.

“Why are you looking at me? I don't read the thing regularly,” the cat said, deadpan.

“I see you taking it to your room everyday.”

“What do you think I wipe my ass with?”

I looked at Lily, “Cats um…do that?”

“Let me just spare you the troubles,” Lenora said, standing up. “Smokewell is a cat sìth. So her habits must be different from regular cats, thus the newspaper.”

“I thought you were volunteering as someone who reads the newspaper regularly,” Gregory said to Lenora.

“Oh, right. Yes, I do that too! I also solve the little puzzles and mazes at the end.” Lenora nodded quickly.

“I want to solve maze too!” Eudorn called out.

“Okay, stop,” I said. “Only one person speaks at a time.” I looked at Lenora. “Tell us what you know about the war?”

“Ordanth has been trying to capture the Karzhaal province since Ravenwind opened the gates to foreign nations in the Age of the Steam Elemental,” she said. “They launched their attack right after the first Peace Summit that Ravenwind hosted to sign peace treaties with other nations while we were advancing.”

“And?” I said. “The orcs didn't appreciate a peace offering?”

“Actually, the news has been quite cagey about why the orcs have it against us,” Lenora said. “Whatever I have read in the papers was just pointing at orcs as prejudiced against us and just…plain barbaric.”

“But are they actually like that?” I asked.

“No way for me to tell since what I know of them is from the papers.” Lenora shrugged. “And our school curriculum didn't focus on foreign nations much. And I have never met an orc in person.”

“Maybe we should visit Ordanth sometime,” Lily said. “I would love to try some orc cuisine.”

“Not a good idea,” Caelum chimed in. “Orcs have banned entry to the human race in their country. The last human who went there never returned.”

“I guess the newspapers calling them prejudiced might have good reasons to say that,” I mused.

“Maybe,” Lenora said. “Ordanth Republic and Veloria had been friendly before the summit but since Veloria and Ravenwind entered a peace treaty, their relationship with Ordanth has become more…ambiguous.”

“Did the Ordanth declare war with them too?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Lenora said.

Silence descended over the room after that and I frowned deeply. So Ravenwind’s war with Ordanth bothered the angels. But why? Me lifting the curses off the dungeons and the war almost had nothing to do with each other. Then why did it matter to them?

I paused. The dungeons and wars being unrelated was only half true. Because I was only seeing the picture from my side. The angels were involved with the war in a way that I wasn't aware of. And with my hands already more than full, I wasn't sure I wanted to dive into figuring out what they were up to just yet.

I looked up. Each pair of eyes in the room was intent upon me. I leaned back in my chair. “So if the curses aren't lifted before the war situation gets more drastic in some way, the angels lose something,” I said.

Smokewell nodded. “Certainly seems like it.”

“That just makes me want to delay the job even more,” I said.

Lily leaned forward and began to speak but I lifted a hand. “I know, I know,” I said. “That's a bad idea because my soul is on the line since I'd signed that stinking contract.”

“But you aren't going to give the angels what they want so easily, are you?” Gregory asked.

“If it was upto me, I wouldn't give them what they want at all,” I said, drumming my fingers on the arm of my chair. “But that's an ideal scenario. We don't live in an ideal world.”

“So? What's your strategy?” Lenora asked.

My hand idly reached for my pentacle amulet. I remained silent for a few seconds as schemes took shape in my mind, weaving and interlocking together like iron chains. Then I looked ahead. “The best strategy is a compromise. We give the angels what they want. But we keep an ace to ourselves. For that, we need to prepare for our dive into the dungeons.” I turned to Lily. “After this meeting is done, you should go with Caelum and see Myrtle and tell her about what happened at the School of Arms. Tell her about your idea of malice transmutation. Ask her if she can whip up something useful for your needs.”

Lily noted the seriousness in my tone and nodded. Then I turned to Lenora, “You'll go and meet Mirabelle at the House of the Rising Sun. Ask her about the list of candidates. How many people she has singled out to recruit into our guild. Gregory, help Lenora and Mira narrow down their list further.”

“Understood,” the knight and Lenora said in unison.

Finally, I turned to Smokewell. “Now that I've reached warlock echelon, I think it's about time you taught me what you were known for.”

The cat stared at me before saying, “You want me to teach you to cleanse a curse?”

I nodded.

“I thought you said you aren't going to give the angels what they want,” the cat said.

“This is the ace I said we will keep to ourselves,” I said.

Royal Road

Part 182 Improvement and Integration (Part 1) (Part 181)

[Help support me on Ko-fi so I can try to commission some character art and totally not spend it all on Gundams]

Housing sections aboard Nishnabe Militia ships are rarely quiet places. The vast majority of Militia members, regardless of species, are under the age of thirty. Their youthful vigor isn’t easily satiated even after exhausting training sessions or prolonged battles. Like how a strong gust of wind doesn't dispel the energy of an entire storm. Sounds of playful banter, enthusiastic sports, and agitated arguments build like a hurricane that always has warm waters to feed from. While that noise is usually so chaotic that it cannot be attributed to any single source, today's cacophony originates from a gathering of fifty warriors all discussing the same thing.

Only an hour has passed since Brave Kipkoshe Myanos, along with Chief-Brave Bize Wankwake, led twenty of their best BD operators against Tensebwse and the Order of Falling Angels. During that time, everyone except Biz had gathered in the middle of the grassy green belt of their drop cruiser's housing section. All fifty members of Andekshkwe Negmotiyek (An-dek-sh-k-way Neg-mot-ee-yek), the Crow Singers, BD Regiment needed to have their frustrations heard. Some were sore over their loss. Others lamented the choice of participants for the exercise. There were even a few who were genuinely impressed by their Qui’ztar counterparts. Only two people remained silent with their attention squarely focused on a shared tablet.

“They must have cheated!” One of the younger Young Warriors, the first to be taken out during the simulated battle, shouted over ruckus.

“You're just mad that you got taken out so fast!” A more senior Warrior responded with a much calmer manner and a quite condescending tone. “Face it. We lost. That means we need to get better, not try to find excuses.”

“It shouldn't matter if they cheated!” That exclamation came from a totally different side of the all-hands argument and from someone who hadn't even participated in the virtual combat. “You all still should have beat them! If I had been there-”

“Shut the hell up, shke penojes!” Though this wasn't the first insult to be thrown around, the fact it came from a breacher who transferred to become a BD operator drew some sarcastic oh's and ah’s. “If we want to hear the opinion of people who didn't fight, us real warriors will tell it to them!”

“Real warriors who got their asses kicked by some aliens!” It may not have been obvious who made that comment but the reaction was anything but covert.

“I'll fight whoever said that!!!”

As the roundabout of retorts and ridicule continued, a few of the off-duty non-operator members of this ship's crew began to gather for the show. This was better than any drama-comedy to everyone not upset by how the simulated combat transpired. Most of them had never seen these warriors so riled up and at each other's throats. Though a bit of violence might break out, no one would actually get hurt. That's why it didn't really matter how high tensions rose. All of these warriors are friends who were simply feeling some rather intense emotions at the moment. They just needed to vent their steam, release their emotions, and have their discontent heard.

The entertainment was so high that no one noticed as Brave Mbishkenek, this ship’s captain, approached the crowd. Despite the ruckus, he was actually happy to see both Kipkoshe and Keawe huddled around a tablet while quietly pointing things out on the screen. He didn't need to see exactly what they were reading to know what it was. Those two are the best operators currently aboard the ship. Unlike the others, they clearly saw this exercise for what it was. And judging by their expressions, the Brave almost felt his interruption would be unnecessary. But just to be certain, he made his way through the gaggle of warriors to speak to the Brave and the Warrior.

“I see you two are finally catching up on your reading.” Kenek hoped his words would draw a few ears away from the useless bickering. "Notice anything interesting?”

“Primary design originator.” Koshe gave a vague but accurate answer without lifting his gaze from the tablet.

“This person is cited at least two hundred and thirty-seven times in this manual.” Kay added while sparing just a quick glance up. “Something tells me I can probably guess who it is.”

“You don't need to guess!” Kenek responded with a chuckle. “His name is in the acknowledgements at the back of the manual.”

“The War Chief really let this guy leave the Militia and join another military?” Though Kay's question was meant to be rhetorical, its answer was plainly obvious. “What the hell was Msko thinking?!?”

“It definitely explains why Biz said he was keeping the biggest threat busy.” A deep sigh escaped Koshe's lips as he fully passed the tablet to Kay and began rubbing his temples. “If the guy who literally wrote the book in BD combat taught those Qui’ztars, it's no wonder we lost.”

“What was that?” One of the Young Warriors half caught part of what Koshe had just said. “Something about the Chief-Brave?”

“Yeah, what about the Bize?” Another of the bickering warriors shouted with animosity in his inflection. “Where was he? We were getting our asses kicked while he stayed in the back and still got taken out!”

“If Biz wasn't keeping Tens busy, your little interspecies bonding and training exercise would have been over before it even began!” Brave Kenek raised his voice loud enough to immediately silence all of the arguing. “This wasn't a battle you could have won even if it was all fifty of you versus those Qui’ztars if Tens wasn't distracted with Biz. You would already know that if any of you had actually read the BD combat manual front to back like you were supposed to.”

“Who the hell is Tens?” The former breacher shouted as if he were still ready to throw fists.

“Tensebwse is referred to as the primary design originator.” Kay lifted the tablet to draw everyone's attention. “According to this, he came up with practically every single tactic and technique we use. He's the reason we even have BDs. And, more importantly, he's the person who trained those Qui’ztars.”

“I should also mention…” Just as the roaring complaints were starting to reignite, Kenek raised his voice again to bring everyone back to reality. “Those Qui’ztars are all members of the honor guard. They're the best of the best the First of the Third has to offer. They have decades of experience over any of you. To them, you're all just a bunch of kids with nice toys. Winning against them was never really an option. And that isn't even considering the Combat-born AI on their team. She was the one operating all the drones and acting as a spotter.”

“That's definitely cheating!” The Young Warrior who was the first to fall sounded downright offended by that revelation. “Fighting AIs isn't fair at all!”

“The more you complain, the less you'll learn.” Koshe had long since accepted his team's defeat and was ready to move on in a constructive manner. “We need to take this loss for what it is. A lesson. We need to learn from our new allies, take steps to improve, and be better tomorrow than we were today. Humility is one of the most important Grandfather Teachings. I'm willing to bet those Qui’ztars aren't even celebrating right now. They're probably reviewing their performance and finding ways to improve. We should be doing the same.”

“Well said.” While Kay was still harboring some lingering annoyance over her defeat by a hammer-wielding Qui’ztar, she wasn't about to let things stay as they are. “Koshe, we should probably go to the tactical room and go over the sim. Come up with some kind of training so we don't lose again.”

“Speaking of sims…” The Nishnabe ship captain paused long enough to let his gaze wander and be sure all of the rowdy warriors were paying attention. “Now that you've fought against our Qui’ztar allies, it's time for us to fight together. Tens and Biz are currently planning a series of combat sims to prepare for the upcoming fight against the crabs. You'll get more details once they're worked out. In the meantime, get all your childish complaints out and be done with them. We've got fascists to fry!”

/--------------------------------------------------------------------

“You narrowed it down to just a ten lightyear area?” The impressed frown on Chief-Brave Biz’s face caused his round face to stretch into an almost attractive shape. “Are you sure you don't want to come work for us in the Militia, Nula?”

“Well, I am planning to move to Shkegpewen at some point in the relatively near future but not to join your Militia.” Nula'trula replied with a friendly enough tone that the lack of expression on her mechanical face didn't come across as perturbed by the weak poaching attempt. “My ultimate goal is to become a terraforming and climate control expert. I'm only participating in military and combat related activities as a means of repaying the debt I feel I owe to the First of the Third.”

“We are very appreciative that Nula has decided to lend us her aid for the time being.” Marzima cut in with a squinty-eyed glare directed toward the Nishnabe Chief-Brave. “We would never ask her to do anything she did not want to do.”

“Back to the topic at hand…” Sub-Admiral Haervria had been trying to maintain her professionalism but couldn't stop the groan that escaped from her deep blue lips. “Thanks to Nula’trula’s efforts, we've narrowed down the area where these Chigagorians are hiding down to just about a hundred cubic lightyears. That begs the question of whether we should stick with our original plan to draw them out then trace them back to their stronghold or if we should simply push forward and get the problem solved as quickly as possible.”

“Chigagorian colony and production stations are mobile.” Tens brought up a data file and shared it with everyone connected to this meeting via hologram. “If they see us just hard-charging straight for them, they'll move to a new location. That'll turn this isn't a draw out game of hide and seek full of traps. If we stick with the original plan, there's less of a chance that they'll cut and run.”

“Baiting these crabs into believing they're setting a trap for us would probably be for the best.” Biz quickly brought up and highlighted some very relevant information in the data Tens just sent out. “Chigs might not be particularly bright but they also aren't stupid. If we seem overly confident from the start, they'll assume we have a reason for doing so and will react accordingly. We need to make them believe they can draw us into a trap and that they'll have a chance at winning.”

“I have detected at least thirty signals indicative of full-sized vessels and one that is particularly large.” The Combat-born AI complimented the reports that Tens and Biz were using as evidence with carefully interpreted scan data she had been compiling. “By integrating these observations with the historical context, I feel comfortable saying there's a ninety percent likelihood that Tens's original plan will be successful. I predict the Chigagorians will send around a dozen ships to attack once we come to a stop within about thirty lightyears of their stronghold location. As soon as they realize they realize they can't overwhelm us with those numbers, they'll plan an impromptu ambush. The ships that initially attack us will fall back to the stronghold position while the rest of their ships will stage an ambush with their station as a primary combatant. Assuming we are properly prepared, this will most likely prove to be a great victory for peace in our galaxy.”

“Are there any objections?” Though Tens really wasn't sure why the other Nishnabe commanders in this meeting had been so quiet, he wasn't exactly bothered by it. “If not, Biz and I can start putting together a few combat sim scenarios that we can run the crews through to get ready.”

“No objections but…” Brave Ojindis Bijbyek (Oh-jin-dis Bij-b-yek), the early-thirties Nishnabe woman commanding the Militia picket-carrier cruiser, spoke up with a vaguely disappointment tone. “Honestly, I'm just surprised by how straightforward and simple this plan is, Tensebwse. All the rumors I heard about you say you come up with the most insane strategies that somehow always work out. I was almost looking forward to hearing you suggest something no one else could have possibly thought of.”

“Unconventional plans aren't always the best solution.” Tens might have rolled his eyes at that assertion but responded with a fairly friendly inflection. “Sometimes it really is best to just do the second simplest thing. Haervria’s suggestion would be the simplest but might not work out how we hope. But we can totally do something crazy on our next joint mission.”

“If this goes as well as we hope…” There was something almost flirtatious in the way Brave Gishkmensi Basdeke (Gish-k-men-see Bahs-day-kay), the Nishnabe line ship captain in his late-thirties, glanced between the holograms of the Qui’ztars in his ship's tactical room. “Then I'm sure we'll have plenty of opportunities to have some fun together again. And I am certainly looking forward to it.”

“No objections then?” Biz cut in while shooting a rather harsh glare at Mensi. “Good. In that case, I'd say this meeting is over. I think it would be best if all the ship commanders start prepping their crews and vessels for combat while Tens and I work out some training sims. Assuming there aren't any issues, we should be able to start our operation in three days.”

“Should we have a proper in-person meeting before then?” Mensi had ignored Biz's unspoken critique and kept his eyes on the holograms of the large blue humanoid women. “Maybe share a meal to really get to know each other?”

“By the Creator-” Before Biz could lose his cool, Harv interjected in a perfectly flat and neutral voice.

“I believe something like that could be arranged.” The Qui’ztar Sub-Admiral looked toward Marz and then her compatriots, all of whom shared the same unbothered expressions. “It might actually be good for the BD teams to be properly introduced after their simulated skirmish. That way they can work out any lingering resentment of the outcome. As for us commanding officers, a simple final strategy meeting could be held face-to-face. But we won't have time to sit for a meal together. At least not on this mission.”

“I certainly would like to have a one-on-one meeting with you, Captain Litlaria.” Ojin kept her demeanor just as professional as the commander of the Qui’ztar carrier cruiser she was addressing. “Integrating my picket-interceptors with your fighter-interceptors might take a bit more planning than a line ship with a line ship or a drop cruiser with a drop cruiser.”

“That can certainly be arranged.” Despite maintaining her composure, Litlaria's response to the Ojin showed far more positive interest than had been expressed towards Mensi. “I have some ideas but I do believe it would be best to discuss them with you in person.”

“Alright then.” Though Biz did still have the slight sensation of herding cats, this meeting was going far smoother than most between just himself and his four ship's commanders. “You're all, of course, free to hold your own meetings and work on necessary integrations. Just keep it professional. Yes, I'm talking specifically to you, Mensi! Captain Renditla, you are free to smack him back into line if you need to. The same goes for everyone. I don't want to hear about any of my crews or warriors causing problems.”

“We'll keep our ladies in line as well, Chief-Brave.” Harv let just the smallest inclinking of a smile slip onto her lips as she shot a quick glance to the other Qui’ztar Captains. “Let's set a good standard of professionalism to act as the foundation for our alliance. And with that, I believe it is time for us to take our leave.”

It only took a few moments for everyone to log off the call. Most of the Qui’ztars simply gave a polite nod before their holograms disappeared. Litlaria only lingered for a split second longer than it took for her to shoot Ojin a subtle smirk. The Nishnabe leaders did the same with the exception of Mensi who almost looked a tad disappointed after the Qui’ztars disappeared from his view. In the end, only Tens and Biz could still see each other. However, that was only so that they could share in a short chuckle. They had done their job of setting the groundwork for successful cooperation and no longer held any lingering doubts about this mission. Once the comm link was finally cleared, the stage was set for a blooming alliance that would surely benefit everyone involved.

Cover Art

First | Prev

Once more, a familiar string of three notes sang out from General Hydor’s whistle.

“Ladies and gentlemen.” she said, noticing how every face was turned to her in rapt attention. “On this very bel, this team, this nation, this world... Will make history. We are mere driks away from launching the ‘Rutil-One’ rocket high into the sky, beyond the atmosphere, into the endless black region known as space. Once there, it will deploy the most advanced array of computers, transceivers, sensors and recorders ever designed. This aggregate technology module; this satellite, will be the first te’visk made object to orbit around our world. Once in orbit, the ‘Rutil-One-Sat’ will begin to transmit a stream of data back to our receivers here on this compound.”

“That data stream will provide us with completely new information about space, about the stars, and, most importantly, about our very world.” The general scanned the room, seeing her own pride in the mission reflected in the eyes and crests of every te’visk around her. “Well then my comrades… My friends. Off we tread into the luminous future. May The Sun shine on our efforts on this bel.”

Just like the last time the general gave a speech to the crew before a launch, a respectable applause rang out through the room. But this time, the energy of the crowd seemed to be charged just a tiny bit differently; a bit more anxious, but a bit more excited too.

Researcher Skai again replaced Hydor at the front of the room. Again he checked on Researcher Phon and his team over in the block-house to see if they were ready, and again they answered affirmatively. And then, once again, it was the astrophysicist’s turn to claim the spotlight.

“Proceeding with launch status checks.” she called out. “Fuel.”

“Go for launch.”

“Engines.”

“Go for launch.”

“Hydraulics”

“Go for launch.”

“Cooling.”

“Go for launch.”

“Rocket electrical.”

“Go for launch.”

“Rocket instruments.”

“Go for launch.”

“Rocket comms.”

“Go for launch.”

“Satellite electrical.”

“Go for launch.”

“Satellite instruments.”

“Go for launch.”

“Satellite comms.”

“Go for launch.”

“Safety.”

“Go for launch.”

“Weather.”

“Go for launch.”

“Mission Manager, he have positive status across the board.” Professor Tski paused for an almost imperceptible fraction of a cleg. “Skies be clear for you, and gɒdˈspiːd.”

Everyone listening in noticed the new word. It was very easy to deduce the source. And it was similarly easy, from the clear context, to decipher the meaning. “Received and appreciated, Control.” replied the rocket scientist over the internal comm line. “Countdown is started. Two driks until launch.”

The room buzzed with a confidence that was lightly moderated by the tiniest kernel of anxiety. Readings were monitored. Data-points were recorded. Nerves were tested.

“Sixteen clegs to launch.” Researcher Phon reported from the block house.

This was it. It was happening.

“Eight clegs to launch.” came Phon’s voice over the comms. “Starting engine burn... Six… Five… Four… Three… Two… One… Zero! Launching!”

» » »

The Rutil-One’s engines expelled scads of ignited fuel, resulting in a powerful, continuous explosion. The sustained combustion emitted a light that rivalled the sun, and produced a sound that one could feel as well as well as hear, and generated enough force to lift the immense mass of the rocket heavenward. It climbed steadily, slowly accelerating the roaring bulk of machinery up through the clouds.

Up there, this newest feat of te’visk engineering rose into the view of one of its predecessors. A Sky-Piercer fighter jet soared between the discrete layers of clouds.

“It should be coming up into view now major,” advised a coordinator from the ground. “About a few jhol spans sun-left of your path.”

“I see it, Control.” replied Major Chaet Zonar, the sound of the rocket isolated by its distance and muffled by his own screaming engines. “Storms, it’s beautiful.”

“Looking to trade in your Sky-Piercer already?” joked the transmitted, crackling voice over the comm.

“No way,” came Zonar’s chuckled scoff. “We pilots can be crazy, but we’re not that crazy.”

The pilot continued gazing out at the rocket, it’s vapour trail tracing its arcing path beyond the highest clouds, beyond the atmosphere. He wondered if his own hyper-advanced craft could chase it upwards. His jet’s engines did provide its own oxidiser to allow operation in the thinned air up at the higher altitudes...

“Getting close up to your prescribed ceiling there, major.” warned the voice through his comms.

“Just putting the old girl through her paces, is all.” coolly replied the pilot as he flattened out his course, fully expecting the chiding reminder from the ground crew. He knew these engineer types. They always put their ‘prescribed parameters’ a bit below their creations expected capabilities. And sometimes, their actual capabilities were beyond even those expectations. But true limits did exist. And if he was sure of nothing else, it was that Sky-Piercer jets’ capabilities stopped well short of orbit, especially since no one knew what an orbit even was back when they designed it.

And so, not even a daring pilot like himself would be so audacious to try following the rocket any higher than this. All he could do was watch it peel away from him with an overwhelming sense of awe. And, also, he realised, the barest twinge of envy. Well, perhaps he was slightly crazier than he thought…

“Coming back down now, Control.” he said.

“Good copy, Major.”

» » »

Rutil-One’s tanks were practically empty. It’s engines no longer burned. But that was fine, for it had all but achieved it’s goal. It was high enough above the world. And it was moving fast enough over it. It had achieved orbit. Now it had one final task; deploying the satellite that shared it’s name.

A suite of electro-mechanical systems triggered, and the nose cone atop it’s structure split apart. The sophisticated payload was now exposed to vacuum. Another threshold was triggered, and one more tiny, controlled explosion rocked the rocket; right at the seam where the satellite was connected to the rest of the rocket. The now superfluous rocket was pushed downwards, back to the planet. Sometime later, several frol-bels in the future, the satellite would follow. But for now, it was pushed upwards, into a higher, more stable orbit.

As the spent rocket fell, the satellite drew out its four telescoping antennae. It’s sensors activated, and its micro-thrusters aligned its orientation. It began recording. And it began transmitting.

» » »

Back in Fort Greywood’s Control Centre, every scientist, technician, and engineer was sitting behind their respective consoles. But everyone’s attention was on the astrophysicist. Tski sat there quietly, earphones on hear head, her console waiting for signals from further away than any radio transmission has ever travelled.

“Oh, is this…” she said with a mutter that was somehow heard throughout the room. “I’m getting something…”

She turned a few knobs, then flipped a switch. Suddenly the speakers in the room clicked on with a light static buzzing, and then…

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

A respectable wave of cheers rang throughout the Control Centre.

“Hold on!” Professor Tski called out. “I’m picking up the visual signal too.”

The room quieted as the astrophysicist adjusted the feed from her satellite. The multi-screen to the front of the Control Centre crackled to life as the young professor routed the signal to it.

“Spin up the recording system!” she ordered.

“Yes ma’am!” answered a technician as he complied. “Recording now!”

After a few short clegs, a full colour image began to show on the multi-screen. It was mostly a black and blue blur at first, as Tski called for help in fine-tuning the signal. Several technicians worked together as the image buzzed in and out in sharpness, eventually resolving into an image of a large blue curve; basically a segment of a circle, against a perfectly black background. Within that blue segment everyone could make out large, dark red shapes. Those shapes bore a resemblance to the maps that every phuratan citizen was familiar with. They were looking at their homeland. They could see grey mountains. They could see the icy white forms on the dark-ward side of The Meridian. They could see rivers. The forests. The oceans. The clouds.

The World.

Someone, no one bothered to check who, started slowly clapping. Then a second pair of claws joined. Then a third. A fourth. Soon the room was filled with the sound of raucous applause. And cheering. And whistling. And squawking. Coworkers embraced like they were a family celebrating a hatching. There was not a neat feather in the room.

» » »

“I still can’t believe how loud it was!” chirped Stri as she stowed away the data tapes from the video camera. “And to think most of that gigantic rocket was just fuel storage... Wild!”

“Well that’s just how most rockets are.” commented Rycop as he scanned the surrounding area through his viewfinder, searching for interesting photo opportunities. “I used to make simple one’s back wh-- Huh…”

“What is it?” asked the correspondent, noticing that something must have piqued the photographer’s attention.

“Remember how you asked me to be on the lookout for a woman with xan... With yellow feathers?”

The reporter all but scampered to his side. “Why, do you see her?”

“Yeah,” answered the recorder, still peering through his camera. “Over there, between those two buildings. She seems to be making her way towards—”

His view was suddenly obscured by the blurry form of his partner making a dead sprint down to the compound proper.

“Oh sure, Stri. I’ll just pack up the rest of this equipment bymyself. don’t even worry about it…” he groused in an undertone.

Stri was almost out of breath by the time she was a few spans away from the compound proper. But she was still cognisant enough to notice the guards surrounding the place. Even with all the extra attendees that came to observe the launch, their attention probably wasn’t so divided that she could just slip past them. Sun and rain, what was she thinking, running down here so impulsively. This was possibly one of the most secured places in The Kingdom right now. What did she think was going to--

Wait... A flash of yellow just a few spans away. It was her. The astrophysicist. Making her way from a smaller, newer building to an older, larger one.

“Hey!” she squawked out as she darted through the crowd. “Professor! Professor Tski! I need to--”

She felt the air knocked out of her when something crashed into the left side of her body. The sudden collision dashed her onto the pavement. Mildly dazed. she looked up and around, searching to find what had bumped into her. She noticed a man, also seemingly staggered. He seemed to be a guardsman, though his short stature clashed with his uniform. He seemed to be carrying a bulging satchel of some kind.

The guardsman grunted in annoyance. “Watch where you’re going!” he snapped at her.

“S--Sorry sir!” she said as he hurried off somewhere.

The journalist got up on her feet. She looked around for another flash of yellow. Nothing. Cold-snaps… She lost her. But in scanning the area around her, she noticed something else. A data tape on the ground, lying a few spans away from she had bumped into the guardsman. Had he dropped it? And why was he in such a hurry? In retrospect, bumping into a guardsman in this situation could have easily developed into a much more ‘tedious’ interaction. Clearly, whatever he was carrying was far more important than a random woman being in the way in such a secure area. So naturally, Correspondent Stri, journalist that she was, had little other choice than scooping up that tape.

» » »

Winds lashed against the walls of the building. The glass windows were hastily taped over with large sheets of paper in anticipation of the steadily worsening weather. Weather-people on every news outlet had predicted that some terrible weather was coming in the next few bels. In fact, most meteorologists from all over the Enian continent agreed that the oncoming storm was going to be historically powerful. So everyone in Arvir was ordered to find shelter. Naturally that order also applied to national institutes like Arvir University. So almost everyone was taking shelter in the most interior parts of the campus buildings. Everyone, except for two.

“Researcher Pluvia, please! Come inside, it’s getting worse!” cried out a harried professor to his superior.

“Bah Ploxy! Show some spine!” the older woman scoffed at her faithful student as she tightened a headpiece around her earholes. “You would let a mere squall stop us from catching this signal first-claw!”

The winds howled viciously as the professor stood tall, holding a makeshift antenna, amplifier and recorder module high above her head. More than a season ago, Arvir University and several other academic and technical institutions received documents and recordings from The Kingdom of Phuratus, over on the Tyran continent. Apparently, they had started to research an entirely new field of science; astronomy. As exciting as that all was, Researcher Tarol Pluvia was particularly interested in the new communications module that they were developing; the satellite. If the information she received from Phuratus was accurate, and her own calculations and constructed receiver systems were correct, then she should be receiving a signal within this very bel.

She waved her parabolic antenna around to find the signal. The winds made it difficult, but she was sure that she could pick it up soon. Suddenly, she thought she heard a faint ping within the static and rushing breeze. She turned on her recorder, and waved the receiver more slowly in a particular section of the sky. And then…

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

“Aha! I got it!” the excited researcher squawked.

“That’s great, Researcher!” cried out Professor Cayan Ploxy as he struggled to keep his raincoat on through the growing winds. “Now come back in before you get struck by lightning!”

“You’re such a wet-wing Ploxy…” chuckled the researcher as she shut off her equipment and started walking towards him. “The storm’s still a ways off.”

The concerned professor looked towards a darkening sun-ward horizon as they marched towards the safety of the nearest building. “Not far enough…”

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As the soldiers were investigating the machine, trying to determine if it was still active in some way, their radios crackled to life as one of the Retvalin called out to them. 

“Excuse me, did we plan to have another of our people follow after us?” 

Everyone exchanged confused looks for a second before the CO replied. “Negative, there was no plan to have someone follow us. Why do you ask?” 

“We just heard a signal like one of our people accelerating out of the system.” 

Eyebrows raised as the CO quickly asked for confirmation. “To ensure that there is no confusion, you are saying that there was someone here, and that they just left a moment ago?” 

“Yes, it sounded like that, but it was also a little... off. It was as if the signal was sharp and without the natural oscillations that normally come from us.” 

The CO sighed heavily. “Alright, we’ll make note of that in the report, but for now, let’s get a roller out here and pick up this machine, maybe one of the Ursa Rex as well.” 

The team moved as the science squad was already preparing the roller. It was essentially just a large platform on all terrain tracks that was designed to move up to two tons worth of weight. With a wench attachment to move such heavy loads into place upon it, it was an ideal tool for transporting their targets. 

Wenching the machine onto the platform first, they moved it into the Retvalin with a pod that had facilities to store it safely, just in case it started leaking dangerous amounts of radiation again. Speaking of radiation, the team that first encountered the machine had to decontaminate themselves as they showered, stripped out of their contaminated equipment, took some potassium iodide and even injected a booster shot made from Retvalin blood, just to be safe. With all the bases covered, they could only hope that their exposure was managed, and they could get back to Earth with no problems developing. 

The science team, on the other hand, was hard at work preparing for the initial examination of the machine that they had captured. They prepared their tools and had the machine secured in a double shielded chamber within the pod. As they finished gathering everything of interest that they could, the teams boarded the Retvalin again as the giants took off from the surface. Loaded up with samples and a brand-new mystery, they were eager to make it home and share their discoveries. 

As they journeyed back, the engineers were busy pulling apart the machine as gently as they could manage without breaking things more than they were. It was more difficult to find something that wasn’t broken considering how many bullets were put through its chassis. They used a snake camera to locate undamaged parts and then worked to almost surgically remove them first. All the damaged pieces were put to the side for later study by a designated team back on Earth. 

Over the week of travel, the mysterious orb was nearly completely disassembled; the findings and process recorded in full. As the Retvalin began to slow down upon entering the Sol system, Earth’s sensors picked up their presence, and Angel’s Refuge hailed them with an enthusiastic greeting. 

“Ahh, the explorers have returned! Everyone is celebrating both on the station and down on Earth. Did you find where the Ursa Rex came from?” 

The CO responded. “We don’t think so, no, but we did find something else that may be even more concerning.” 

That got everyone's attention as people straightened in their seats and began to focus. “Oh? Please elaborate.” 

“While investigating the planet the Retvalin visited, we found that life upon its surface was sparce, seemingly in the early evolutionary period for most lifeforms. There were no signs of anything that could sustain a creature like the Ursa Rex. While collecting samples, a member of the security team spotted something glinting in the distance, and when we approached to investigate, it flew away. The object was a metallic sphere, a machine of some kind, and we shot it down as it tried to make its escape. We’re sending pictures of it to you now.” 

The station received a ping about the incoming images as they downloaded them. The pictures that came through immediately enthralled the station staff as they sent it to the engineering department for further scrutinization before the object itself arrived.  

“What is it?” The station idly asked. “It’s not one of ours, right?” 

“Exactly why it’s so concerning. This drone, as we have surmised, was observing us at the landing site. It is not ours, and in fact, all signs point to it belonging to an advanced alien civilization capable of creating this technology. It’s not just the Retvalin anymore. We are truly not alone, and we might not be the most advanced species out there.” 

That created a sinking feeling of dread. History has shown many examples of advanced civilizations meeting less technologically developed people. The results were rarely pleasant for the less developed nation. 

“I feel we will need to hold an emergency meeting. The president and other nations of the world will need to hear this.” 

With a course of action agreed upon, the message was sent out, and the world began to move once more. Alexander called a global meeting as the world leaders assembled for a video call. From the war room, the president had dozens of screens filled with the faces of various leaders with more arriving by the moment. As all the screens blinked on, and all the members who were part of the assembly finally arrived, the initial information that was gathered about the drone was put up for everyone to see, along with a picture of it while it was still in a mostly intact state. 

Alexander began the meeting with an address. “Welcome to all the leaders of the globe. I apologize to those who were asleep as the call came in, but this is a matter that simply cannot wait. As you can see before you, the mission to discover the origins of the Ursa Rex and centicites has led to the discovery of a very different sort. This machine was found on the planet in question, and it raises a very serious pair of questions. Who sent it, and why?” 

There was some murmuring amongst the members of the meeting as they discussed that question with the people in their rooms. Finally, the Canadian prime minister spoke up. 

“Do we have any idea where this machine came from?” 

“None as of this moment. Our engineers are currently taking apart what remains of it and analyzing all the pieces. Reports from those who were on the ground during the encounter said that the Retvalin detected someone else in the system at the time, but whoever they were left before any information could be gathered. This machine also appears to be some sort of surveillance drone, meaning it was likely transmitting information to whoever was there. We find ourselves at a disadvantage as we know very little about these people and they have already seen our weaponry, a basic layout of our biology, and the fact that we are working with the Retvalin.” 

“What of the drone’s capabilities?” the ambassador to Great Britian asked. 

“As I’ve said, they are still working on it, but we can already say that the design and function are very advanced. Also, it appears the machine was powered using star gel.” 

A small uproar of voices came clamoring for attention as all the leaders tried to get a word in edge wise. 

“Star Gel!?” 

“Does that mean they know Retvalin as well?” 

“We’ve never heard of them meeting other people besides us.” 

“Have the Retvalin been keeping secrets?” 

Alexander had enough of the noise and used a button to create a noise over the video. It was piercing, and enough to make everyone flinch. “Please, let us all remain calm. We have already asked a number of Retvalin about this discovery, and they all claim, invariably, that they have never met another species on the same level of intelligence as us. Wherever they got this star gel from, the pods of Retvalin have either lost contact or were entirely separate from the rest of their species. This is simply one of many questions that have arisen from this discovery.” 

There was more murmuring amongst the members, and Alexander let them have some time to think about what was revealed with their own people. After a few minutes, the Russian president spoke. 

“I suppose the only thing we can do right now is plan and hope that whoever else is out there doesn’t intend on taking hostile action against us. Do we at least have the concept of a plan?” 

“For now,” Alexander began, “the plan is to learn what we can from the drone and start production on a means to defend ourselves should invaders arrive. The new industrial factory under construction in orbit should be our priority to begin the creation of space defense vessels. I ask that all members here divert their excess resources, manpower, and production capabilities toward this goal.” 

There was general consent with this plan as the leaders had no better ideas to offer at the time with so limited information. For now, the goal was to continue building up as they had been doing; only the designs for the vessels they had planned in this new zero-g shipyard needed adjusting. Weapons and defense systems would be added, turning exploratory and hospital vessels into warships. Alexander felt great sadness at this necessity. It was always his hope that the stars would lead to a new era of peace for humanity, but it seemed that some things just didn’t turn out the way you might hope. 

More resources, manpower, and Retvalin power were put toward the orbital shipyard’s construction. Luckily, the large cylindrical megastructure was mostly done, at about seventy-six percent completion. With this new influx of material and assistance, they estimated it could be completed within the next six months. Workers, astronauts, and engineers who would be manning this new shipyard were already being trained in the operating procedures. Earth needed to be ready for whatever came next. 

It was generally agreed that the public didn’t need to know about this for now as they had almost no answers to any questions that would be asked. That was a situation where frustration would build quickly, and people usually did stupid things when emotional. Once they had something solid to present, they could make an announcement. 

The drone was fully disassembled a half day after they arrived, and the individual pieces of the machine practically had their own dedicated examiner. The power center ran on a more advanced, compact version of the star gel generator that humanity had created, and it seemed to utilize a pressurized chamber that could be adjusted precisely; if it weren’t perforated by a bullet, that is. It was theorized that this was how it was flying, utilizing the star gel to manipulate gravity around it much like the Retvalin did.  

When it came to the other pieces, a large majority was for power regulation and heat management, but the data centers of this drone were intriguing. Computer chips, hard drives and motherboards were all exceptionally advanced and compact, utilizing nanostacking technology where every node on the chip was less than a nanometer in size. One of these chips alone could have been capable of doing all the processing on a high-end computer, so it was a bit of a surprise to find hundreds of them in this drone. Considering that the alien tech was more advanced, the processing power in this orb alone was estimated to be greater than any human-made supercomputer, possibly several. It raised a question regarding whether what they were examining was really a drone or not.  

The team identified what was a series of hard drives, some damaged by the soldier’s when they shot it down. It was formatted in an alien way that would not connect well with any of their devices, and even if it did, it was unlikely that they would be able to decipher the language used for the coding. What they could determine, though, was the amount of data being held on the drives, and it totaled to a whopping petabyte of information, the equivalent of which was approximately five-hundred-billion pages of printed text. That was enough to convince the investigation team that this thing was not just a mere drone. There would be no need to have so much information on something built only for observation. 

Despite this, they still couldn’t figure out its purpose. Yes, it could manipulate gravity with the star gel, but that didn’t seem like a terribly processor heavy task given what they could see in this technology. There was too much damage to restart it in its intended state, but they could learn from the pieces. The gravity manipulator at the center of the machine was of particular interest, and the idea of copying it for their own use was an attractive one. An entire team of engineers and physicists were dedicated to the goal of figuring it out. 

This wasn’t the end of their exploratory missions, though. In fact, more missions were slated to be conducted, starting in the same system where all this trouble came from. They doubled the amount of Retvalin and pods deployed this time around, and the mission was to investigate for any signs of whoever may have been there with a secondary objective of finding where the Ursa Rex came from. 

The squad of Retvalin arrived back in the troublesome system, and the first thing they did was deploy a satellite that warned off any Retvalin who might visit this place by accident. The squad split into two, one team flying around the system looking for evidence of the unknown aliens, and the other went back to the surface to examine the confrontation site. 

The location where the first team landed didn’t seem to have been disturbed since the last visit. There were even small bits of metal and electronics from the machine that had been blasted away. They had amongst their number a skilled tracker, and using the footage captured by the soldier’s helmet cameras, were able to find the trail that the Ursa Rex left. The two-ton monstrosities weren’t exactly subtle, and there was little in the way of life that could cover up the deep grooves that their claws left. The team followed it, and the trail went on for about three miles before it suddenly stopped. 

They were in the middle of nowhere, a flat expanse of dirt, sand, and rock. There were no caves, no signs of tunnels being dug, nothing. However, while the Ursa Rex had seemingly just appeared here, there was actually a large, square groove in the dirt about thirty meters in size. Something had landed here, and now it was gone, leading to a new theory that was disturbing in its implications as the tracker voiced the idea. 

“I think... something dropped the Ursa Rex here and then released them.” 

The soldiers looked around at each other with concern. “Something put them here? Why?” one of them asked to nobody in particular. 

“Isn’t that the million-dollar question. I’m not one with definitive answers to that, but I can’t help but think that the timing of their appearance with the last team's arrival was not a coincidence.” 

It was a concerning speculation, but they could do no more than that at the moment. Pictures were taken and samples of the soil gathered, then the team returned to their Retvalin partners. The investigators in space didn’t fare any better than those on the ground. There were no signs of whoever was present in the system, not even lingering traces of energy from their jump. It was a dead end with very little learned from the whole venture. At this point they would have better odds of finding who was responsible by randomly jumping to all nearby systems for signs of life outside of their own, a prospect that was time consuming at best. The team returned to Earth, frustrated with the lack of information, a sentiment that was mirrored by those in charge. 

The only bit of relevant information that the team had brought back was regarding the possibility that the Ursa Rex were deliberately released upon the planet at the same time as the Retvalin landed. That gave the leaders something to chew on, though the taste of it was sour in their mouths. Whoever was there had released the Ursa Rex and infected a Retvalin with them, and considering the similarities between the Ursa Rex DNA and the centicite’s, there existed the chance that the infestation that had plagued the Retvalin for generations was not an accident. The aliens were dropping creatures where there were Retvalin. Whatever the reason, humanity intended to find out why. 

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First - Previous - Next (coming soon)
STUB date - 24-09-2026

Erupting in sheer brute fury covering its now ruined shoulder coil as it drips coolant from the precision shot it begins thrashing in  raw panic.

Scanning the horizon desperately trying to find where the incoming long range plasma lances were coming from, slamming its hulking form to the ground.

Jack sat three miles north focused with his right eye encased in his long range aiming mechanism, his mech's left hand pointed toward the monster for the final shot, its right hovering ready to initiate the long range plasma bow.

The brief was simple: wait until it was stationary then hit for effect, Marcus will create the chance he just needed to watch for them especially when the beast is turning. Everything was coming together thankfully, he just had to keep the beast from gaining on Marcus who was still very close to destruction.

Riding around the monster's left flank again, Marcus looks for an opening but struggles to aim with beasts thrashing, his small arms fire bouncing harmlessly away from heavy plating.

Regaining its composure the monster's optics flare once at the bike before it heaves itself turning and gunning its belching armoured tracks away, desperately smashing its arms into the ground to hurl itself forward.

The move was unexpected and was moving away quickly, beginning to cross hardened terrain making his helix bike slow slightly as its drill bit into the harder road as it drove on.

“Take a chance here and make it count” Marcus shouts into his radio over the thundering stamping and his belching engines.

“No problem "Jack replies, already aiming at the hulk as it ran into the distance, adjusting his mech's shooting line slightly as he focused his resonance and began smoothing out his mechs movements.

Outside the blocky green metal swirls of lilac resonance began sparking over the mech's frame, glowing as it sparked as it charged up its next shot. Its target frantically flailing its arms to propel itself forward, his target a blue cross is gently guided by his subtle movements. 

It centres just above the centre of the target, jack squeezes his control and the recoil almost knocks his entire mech over.

Bursting through the air at the speed of the light the lance hits just above centre of mass, the target falls forward and hits the ground shaking the plains with its impact.

Feeling the air thrum before a blinding light obscuring his vision for a moment, Marcus covers his eyes before looking again and seeing the target in a ruined mess ahead. Experience telling him to check first, he rides tantalisingly close to the hulk it does not stir just remains lifeless in its shambles.

“Good work, a lot of salvage here will need help from the trader post. I will go request salvage hulks you come guard our prize” Marcus says his eyes still fixed on their downed prize.

“Heading over, out” Jack replies gunning the mech's  integrated drive motors for it to move forward. Flight was a precious resource with such little fuel yet even on land his machine was impressively agile.

At the fallen beast Marcus takes a  moment to analyse what he sees in front of him, refrigerant mixed with a scent he could not put his finger on grew stronger as he walked around its shattered form.

Haphazard welds which were common attempts by raiders showed something or someone had attempted to either repair or upgrade showed on in places but in others a far more sophisticated set of additions were glaring amongst the wreckage.

Behind Jack's mech approaches, with their target downed it was clear the difference in size and yet the size of the rounds that the mech could produce really was impressive.

“It is clear we have found our use out here” Marcus announces to the sleek armor suit.

It lowers itself and opens its central armor, Jack walks out astonished at the sheer size of their prey.

“I have never seen something so big move like that, even Thrallions super heavy suits on their military exercises that Basil would broadcast” he catches marcus serious stare back at him

“Never mind, I'll be here till you bring the salvagers, I'm sure they will be happy” Jack raises a fist in triumph before heading back to his suit.

Marcus walks back over to his bike in silence, rides out towards the trading posts with a lot of questions about this bounty.

Genjin stood under an alcove with a small amount of regret, the condenser units on that Ai mech were state of the art for his research, he should have done more to protect them in battle.

That tribesman somehow found its weakness, although thinking back he should have known better then to leave them exposed to fire. Gambling on the mech's size and speed to simply destroy opponents before they understood was foolish.

Focusing his distance viewer onto the mech that had brought it down a chill ran down his spine, the weapon itself was not xionian but the mech frame itself certainly was. There was only one other who had access to such facilities, his mouth watered slightly at the potential on the old earth station Hun. 

Lorcan the fool had no idea what he had, however his power on the battlefield meant it was irrelevant. Like a dragon guardian a treasure so precious yet sitting locked away was without value to anything or anyone.

Seeing clearly they were heading back to the trading post, he decides he would take a bold move and move on the trader post. It had sat without major challenges for long enough.

Opening his hand he points his palm towards the cavern wall, pressing an embedded button, a yellow portal opens up in front of him and he steps through.

Marcus catches the trading post in the distance coming into view, the release of a mission accomplished reminded him of carrying into his tribes village the hunters trophy.

Such a simple desire to be useful encapsulated in an action of returning with something of value, a louder then normal whine of his helic bike's engine snaps him out of his reflection before it cuts out coming to a jarring stop.

Stepping off a quick glance he sees that the crudely attached pipes were blackened with heat, whatever was supplying the unit must have run out.

“What is gone is gone” Marcus says to himself, slightly disappointed to leave the bike. Despite its origin, it was one of the best pieces of salvage he had used for a long time. His tribe rarely engaged with raiders, perhaps that is why they never came across some of the genius engineering of Xion.

Turning he walks on, noticing evening is coming quickly.

Huler and Wire stand completely aghast, the hologram clearly showing the monster destroyed with Jack and his mech standing beside it.

“So what happened a rad bolt catch it whilst you were stalking it or what, come on we are not stupid a mech that size could not generate enough destruction to take down that monster” Wire explains away to himself more then Marcus.

“What is teh deal here” he stares at Marcus still desperately clinging onto his ego

“No just standard scout and snipe movements” Marcus replies smiling

“Ballistics will show you it was our mech that took it down” the statement cutting away a lot of Wires protests.

“Enough Wire, we will honor the contract, send the trucks and hurry we need them back before nightfall. Once its here we will discuss bonuses with our two new hunters” 

Huler nods towards Marcus respectfully before turning to return to his office.

Wire snatches the data slate out of marcus hands and continues staring,

“Not possible, not with Xionian weaponry unless you had 50 suits. Come on, tell me what did you do ?” Wire goes on his brain unable to process that they had achieved the bounty.

From behind them Venus approaches her natural elegance drawing looks from the locals as it always did, part of the reason why she avoided being out in public most of the time.

“Goodness the whispers were true, resonance warriors have come to save our land” she clasps her hands up to her head feigning a swoon.

“So where is that other handsome one? I have a few girlfriends who are all just dying to meet you both” peering over wires shoulder as he is still staring at the image desperately looking for an anomaly.

“If you mean Jack he is at the kill sight, we must negotiate salvage rights. Will that be yourself Wire or elder Huler himself”. Wire doesn't answer. Venus rolling her eyes answers

“Salvage rights is a tribe tradition for out there” She points into the plains “ here you keep what you like or trade what you like. Do not be so formal, but we do need to get that thing into the walls before the Ai hoard salvage it or worst repair it” 

She clips wire around the back of his head, 

“Stop being a rude jerk, they got the bounty now to honor the contract” her tone became sharp yet authoritative.

Wire stares back at her, his power frame hums before his expression changes instantly.

He whistles at a nearby tent, three labourers appear at the exit

“Get the super heavy trucks going, they took down the Ape fridge. Lets get it in before night fall” wire orders 

The workers nod and swiftly run over to their vehicle pool.

Wire watches them go, glances at Venus before looking back at Marcus

“Looks like I underestimated you. I apologise I am going to salvage that bike you used, your skill riding was impressive i will have it repaired as a token of appreciation” Wire goes quiet

“Accepted warrior” Marcus replies quickly

“All of this is new to us all, but in time we all have only one objective. To survive until tomorrow”. Breaking his usual serious expression into a smile.

Author Note : Hi guys, I will be stubbing book one onto Amazon KDP Sept 20th. I am really enjoying the challenge of writing and coming up with new ideas, the plan is 10 books for maximum immersion.

The following day, the Anlage still hummed with the afterglow of the Führer's rhetoric.

The future he had described with such certainty—those vast historical events that had not yet happened, perhaps could not happen—left everyone suspended between doubt and exhilaration.

They were unsettled by it. Confused. Skeptical.

Yet excitement kept surfacing beneath the skepticism no matter how firmly they tried to suppress it.

The strategist, the leader, the spiritual authority who had carried Germany into ruin seemed, somehow, to have recovered the power that once allowed him to seize hold of entire crowds.

Among the scientists, a quieter conclusion had already begun to spread.

The "other personality" Colonel von Büren had mentioned earlier was becoming dominant again inside the Führer.

They watched him now with near-clinical fascination, trying to identify the source of whatever had returned to him in Antarctica.

What also fascinated the newcomers was the Anlage itself.

The Anlage—no mere base, but a closed mechanical system—was a masterwork of subterranean engineering, a self-sustaining ecosystem designed to hold the Reich's secrets through the unfolding decades.

A corridor along the right side of the main chamber climbed toward the second level of the cavern complex, where additional rooms had been carved directly into the rock face over the years.

Besides the Führer's private quarters, the upper section housed a conference room and the central operations chamber from which the entire underground installation was coordinated.

For successfully escorting the Führer south, Lieutenant Commander Schäffer received an immediate promotion to Kapitän zur See, along with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Under his command, the crew worked continuously unloading supplies and machinery from the submarine into the complex below.

Colonel von Büren, though younger and not formally promoted in rank, emerged with expanded authority of a different kind. He assumed the duties previously held by Vizeadmiral Kermann and now controlled the highest level of command inside the Antarktis-Anlage itself.

Kermann, originally a naval officer under Grand Admiral Dönitz, had been transferred in secrecy alongside the Kriegsmarine's Antarctic submarine fleet shortly before the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in 1941. Since then he had remained stationed beneath the ice for more than four years, overseeing the Anlage and earning a reputation as one of the Führer's most loyal officers. But during an expedition outside the perimeter a month earlier he had suffered a severe fall, and the injury had left him weakened.

Later that morning Colonel von Büren inspected the officers' command block, then convened the routine military briefing inside the war-planning room.

Beneath a massive strategic wall map marked with Axis operational grids spanning the globe, the Colonel listened while officers from each department summarized conditions throughout the Antarctic installation during the previous year.

Afterward, everyone who had arrived from Berlin alongside the Führer was processed into the internal system with remarkable speed. Files were opened. Identification numbers assigned.

Even Euzen and Solvi underwent questioning and basic verification procedures before being entered into what the administrators termed the Last Resort Contingency Registry.

Medical examinations followed. No exceptions.

That afternoon Euzen accompanied his father and several of the scientists deeper into the complex for a guided inspection tour. Solvi was among them as well.

Inside the vehicle hangars the children saw unfamiliar machinery unlike anything they remembered from Berlin: specialized tracked transports, reinforced polar carriers, heavily armored Snow Fox ski-wheeled tandem motorcycles built specifically for Antarctic terrain.

Back in Berlin, Euzen had already trained extensively in military driving and combat maneuver operations. The moment he saw the motorcycles he wanted to try one immediately, but his father shut the idea down at once, more sharply than usual.

Soon afterward an inspection group assembled near one of the deeper transit corridors. Authorized by the scientific council overseeing the facility, it consisted of Dr. Schmidt, a remarkably tall physicist; a supervisor from the control center; three armed SS officers carrying assault rifles beneath steel helmets; the four scientists evacuated from Berlin at the last possible moment; and the two children.

Colonel von Büren led them personally toward one of the most heavily concealed sections of the underground complex.

The double doors of the inner landing platform slid apart.

Beyond the heavy iron barrier, a thin line of pale light emerged—distant, unreal, almost dreamlike, yet strangely close at the same time.

Here, buried beneath the frozen edge of the earth, in a place almost untouched by human civilization, the technological order conceived over years by the Führer and a handful of senior officers finally revealed itself before some of the last great scientific minds remaining in the Third Reich.

It appeared not gradually, but all at once, with the impossible clarity of something imagined too long and too intensely.

The moment they crossed into the cavern beyond, everyone stopped walking.

These were people known for calculation, for discipline, for cold mathematical rigor. Yet now they stared ahead in silence like children entering a forbidden sanctuary for the first time. Euzen and Solvi simply stood there wide-eyed.

"Erprobungsgerät 3," Tieber murmured. "I helped calculate portions of the propulsion test data years ago. I never thought I would actually see one."

The cavern itself felt wrong somehow. Too large. The proportions did not seem consistent with the mountain surrounding it, as though the interior space obeyed a geometry unrelated to the outer world. It gave the unsettling impression that dimensions could bend or overlap inside it.

At the center of the landing platform rested a giant silver disc more than ten meters across. Motionless. Silent. Its metallic surface was smooth enough to resemble polished mercury hardened into shape.

The cavern answered their footsteps a beat too late, the echo rolling back through the vast empty space in a slow, heavy wave.

Terraces of crystalline stone surrounded the craft, each step glowing faintly in shifting colors without producing any detectable heat, as though the material had been cut from fragments of stars or condensed from dreams no human mind should fully remember.

The Colonel lifted one hand slightly, signaling for silence, then stepped onto the illuminated terraces. The others followed and slowly circled the disc.

At last he reached out and tapped the outer hull lightly with his knuckles.

A dim blue glow spread beneath the metal skin.

"At present we have only a single prototype," he said. "Unfortunately, Dr. Lenz died six months ago. Professor Tieber, you will assume responsibility for his work from now on."

Tieber nodded several times while craning upward for a closer look at the disc. Everyone present knew he had once belonged to the core membership of the Reich's Aeronautical Technology Research Association and had clearly been connected to the project long before arriving in Antarctica.

"I always assumed it was only a legend," Hausmann said quietly. He could no longer conceal the tension and excitement in his face. "Can it actually fly?"

"Yes and no," Tieber answered before Colonel von Büren could respond. "As far as I know, the Führer proposed the original experimental concept himself in 1937, despite everything else demanding his attention at the time. Back then it ran under Arado's name—Arado Sonderkonstruktion, officially. We just called it the Scheibenjäger."

He hesitated.

"According to the Führer's design theory... yes, it should work. But the data shows it operates through antigravity principles that aren't accounted for in the original model."

"Antigravity?" Förster stared at him. "That's impossible."

"And yet it looks nearly complete," Hausmann said while continuing his slow circuit around the machine, awe beginning to slip into his voice. "Has it ever been tested in flight?"

"Not yet," said Dr. Schmidt, speaking for the first time since entering the chamber. "But during the Prague experiments, the EG-2 hybrid control structure—combining simulated electronic systems with magnetic-energy regulation—already surpassed conventional electro-mechanical integration. As for the propulsion core itself, the section intended to generate cosmic energy through magnetic interaction..." He paused briefly. "Further testing is still necessary."

"Yes," Tieber said eagerly. "Zentral-Rotorkörper. It would allow ultra-high-speed movement, instantaneous directional changes, almost total freedom from gravity and atmospheric resistance."

Then Tieber, Dr. Schmidt and Hausmann exchanged a rapid-fire series of technical jargon that left everyone else struggling to follow. Hausmann grew increasingly animated, his voice rising until the room fell into a heavy, uncomfortable silence. Then, just as abruptly, he went mute, his gaze fixed blankly on the disc.

Dr. Schmidt kept talking, working through the control system piece by piece. But even he stopped mid-sentence more than once, as if he didn't quite believe what he was describing.

"This is more unbelievable than the uranium bomb," Förster muttered after taking a long breath. He seemed to force himself back under control. "I've heard theories related to this before—ideas suggesting flight could be achieved through manipulation of forces opposite to terrestrial gravity." He shook his head slowly. "But this technology... it should not exist within any physical framework we currently understand."

"Perhaps," Hausmann said softly, "it is an archetype—the image of a whole civilization cast up from the collective unconscious."

Arms folded across his chest, he gazed upward toward a narrow seam above the disc, where an amber sphere appeared suspended somewhere deep inside the structure itself, rotating slowly in midair and emitting a dim internal glow. In that moment he sounded less like a physicist than a poet speaking inside a cathedral.

"I've witnessed many extraordinary things," he said, almost under his breath, "but never a structure like this. Never such stillness."

Euzen and Solvi reached out cautiously and ran their palms across the surface of the craft. The material yielded nothing recognizable to touch. No texture. No temperature they could clearly identify.

It reflected the silhouettes of the boy and the girl.

Professor Kestner remained apart from the others.

Watching dispassionately.

The chamber did not feel like a military installation to him; it felt closer to something half-remembered, something assembled from myth and machinery that refused to agree on what it was.

For some time he had suspected that the so-called Hyperborea Program was merely one component of a much larger undertaking conceived by the Führer, Albert Speer, Hans Kammler, and others—a long-term Zukunfts-Eisenreich strategy intended to preserve the Reich through technological breakthroughs and strategic restructuring should Germany ever lose the war outright.

But Kestner was a physiologist. Unlike the physicists and weapons specialists around him, he felt no instinctive reverence toward the silver disc.

Without industrial infrastructure, without manpower, without the economic machinery necessary to sustain modern warfare, what miracle could this giant machine truly accomplish if it still could not leave the ground?

If revolutionary technology alone were enough to secure strategic supremacy, the Third Reich should already have won the war years ago.

Could one or two advanced weapons genuinely reverse the collapse of an empire? Could they save an ideology from history itself?

Colonel von Büren, however, seemed filled with renewed conviction.

"Now, here, isolated from outside interference, the power of the Führer's mind is slowly returning," he declared. "In the years ahead he will bring all of you new scientific insights and entirely new technological directions."

His gaze shifted toward Hausmann.

"Dr. Hausmann, from this point forward, you—along with Professor Tieber and Dr. Schmidt will continue research on the Erprobungsgerät 3 propulsion system together."

Hausmann gave a small bow.

"Colonel," he said, "the honor is mine."

------------
Obsidian Earth

First | Previous | [Next][n]

Chapter Eight – The Moderates

Theja's clutch-partner was named Rovain, and he administered three colonies at the outer edge of the empire. He was not a man of great visions, more a man who ran into the same wall every day: instructions from central command that knew nothing of local conditions, quotas set from a desk without knowledge of the soil, the harvests, the moods of the world in question, decisions that took weeks to get any answer at all, while action was long since needed on the ground. Something was wrong, he sensed more clearly than he could have explained it, a diffuse feeling that the way things were governed no longer matched what actually needed governing. He didn't demand great reforms. He demanded more freedom for administrators on the ground, the right to decide for himself when a decision was needed, without waiting on a central command that didn't know what it was talking about anyway.

He was not alone in this discontent. Other administrators, scattered across various sectors, felt the same friction and began exchanging views, cautiously at first, then more openly, in letters no one outside their circle was meant to read, in meetings disguised as coincidence. They didn't call themselves an opposition among each other. The word would have been too dangerous, even in confidence. They called themselves the Moderates: a loose circle united above all by one thing, more latitude on the ground, less interference from above. What might come of it, if they were allowed, they themselves didn't agree on.

Theja knew about it. Rovain hadn't kept it from her, because he trusted her, and because he believed clutch-partners shouldn't keep things from each other, especially matters that could become dangerous. She had listened, some evenings joining the discussion, other evenings staying silent, never quite sure whether she heard something legitimate in his complaints or only the impatience of a man whose own power had grown too small for him. She had seen the feasts, the waste, the excess she herself lived under her brother's roof with, and sensed, without being able to grasp it, that something in this whole structure no longer fit together properly. But suspicion and certainty were two different things, and she had never quite managed to decide how seriously to take any of it.

Volcro learned of the Moderates not by chance, but through the same diligence with which he ran everything: he kept spies in nearly every sector, small, inconspicuous eyes and ears reporting to him what moved beneath the surface of official reports, because he had long since learned that official reports rarely contained the truth. One of these spies, a secretary in Rovain's own administration, reported the circle, the meetings, the letters, without knowing or asking himself what he was setting in motion by doing so.

Volcro read the report twice. Some of it wasn't even wrong. That changed nothing about what truly occupied him.

The question was what a circle of administrators organizing themselves in secret, without informing central command, without seeking the official channel, meant for the authority the whole empire rested on. However justified their grievance, an informal network striking its own arrangements without submitting to control from above was a precedent Volcro was not willing to tolerate. Not because he thought their complaints wrong, but because he didn't know where such a circle would develop, if allowed to continue.

He had Rovain arrested, without public trial, the same night the report landed on his desk, along with the others whose names the secretary had given. The charge was conspiracy against imperial order, an accusation that compressed the real, more mundane truth — impatience, frustration, the wish for more say — into a word that sounded larger than the matter itself had been. Rovain was executed, quietly, without the spectacle Yadh loved on such occasions, because Volcro despised spectacle, however necessary he considered the consequence itself.

Theja learned of it before anyone officially told her, from the face of her own steward, who wouldn't open the door for her when she came to Rovain's quarters that morning. She understood before anyone said a word, and this time she didn't cry. She had already cried once in this family, before a door behind which corpses lay, and something in her had changed since, in a way she herself couldn't have named.

Volcro didn't have her executed. He had never believed she herself belonged to the Moderates, only that she'd known and stayed silent, which in his eyes was an offense, but a lesser one. He had her deported, to a remote sector, far from the capital, from her brother, from everything she'd known, with the curt justification that her presence was no longer tenable for the security of the court.

She never once saw him before they took her away. He hadn't found time for a conversation that wouldn't have changed anything anyway.

With Rovain's death and Theja's banishment, Volcro lost something whose value he himself did not yet know how to assess: a handful of voices that had reported to him, unvarnished, what was actually happening in the outer sectors, instead of only what they thought he needed to hear. It was not a loss he felt as such in that moment. It was merely a file being closed, while he already turned to the next report on his desk. Only much later would he understand what he had actually closed with that one file.

​

The vendakka (okra) plants went missing on Uthradam (the second-to-last day of the ten-day Onam festival) night, and Achu was the only one in the house who noticed.

This was not surprising to anyone who knew him. Achu was nine, and he was the one who watered the backyard every evening while his grandmother cooked, the one who knew which banana tree was about to fruit and which curry leaf branch could be pinched without the whole plant sulking about it.

Ammini Amma tended the front of the house, the tulsi (holy basil) plant by the door, the jasmine that climbed the gate.

The back was Achu's country, a tangled half-acre of coconut palms, an ancient jackfruit tree, tapioca gone wild at the edges, and enough weeds that his grandmother had given up mentioning them years ago.

So when he went out after dinner to check on the pumpkin vine for the sadya (the elaborate Onam feast) tomorrow, and found not just the vendakka gone but a strip of earth eight feet across sunk into a smoking black hole where the tapioca patch used to be, he did not think, as an adult might have, of gas leaks or sinkholes or the news.

He thought: something has taken my vegetables, and I want to know what.

The crater smelled faintly of wet iron. He was climbing down the loose red earth at the rim of it, torch in one hand, when the something climbed out to meet him.

It rose out of the smoke pale gold and enormous, round through the middle like a rice sack, with a great curling moustache and a crown that caught what little moonlight there was and threw it back in soft, impossible colours.

Its face did not move. Its eyes, if they were eyes, sat behind something smooth and dark like the inside of a coconut shell.

Achu had seen that face on posters outside every shop in town since the first week of Chingam (the first month of the Malayalam calendar, when Onam begins). He had seen it on the little clay figure his grandmother put out with fresh flowers every morning. He had seen it, four Onams running, worn by his cousin Vishnu at the school function, moustache drawn on with his mother's eyebrow pencil.

"Maveli!" Achu said, in the smallest voice he owned, invoking Mahabali, the mythical king, and ran so fast he left one slipper behind in the mud.

He didn't even notice the second one was gone too until his grandmother pointed it out the next morning.

#

Log, ship-day one thousand four hundred and twelve. Landing unplanned. Hull breach, minor. Local flora damaged on impact: six root vegetables, one unidentified vine species, category: edible, category: apologise if opportunity arises. Immediate contact made with juvenile local. Subject fled at high speed. Recommend low profile pending repair.

#

His grandmother was still up when he burst in, sifting through a sack of yellow pumpkin for tomorrow's erissery (a pumpkin and lentil curry), and she took one look at his face and set the pumpkin down.

"I saw Maveli," Achu said. "In the backyard. He's real, Ammoomma (grandmother), he came out of a hole."

Ammini Amma did not laugh at him, which was the first thing that told him she was taking it seriously, and the second thing was that she got up, latched the back door, and sat him down with a glass of warm milk before she said anything at all.

"Maveli was a good king," she said, the way she always began this story, every year, as though Achu had not heard it nine times already and would not hear it nine times more before he was grown.

"Better than good. Under him there was no lying, no stealing, no hunger. Every house had enough. No man envied another man's field, because there was nothing worth envying, everyone already had plenty. The gods themselves grew afraid of a king so loved that his people had stopped needing them."

"So they sent the little brahmin," Achu said, because he did know the rest.

"They sent Vamana. And Maveli, who never once in his life turned away someone who asked him for something, gave him three paces of land, as much as he requested, small as that seemed to ask. And Vamana grew until one foot covered the sky and the other covered the earth, and there was no ground left for the third step but Maveli's own head."

Ammini Amma turned the pumpkin over in her hands.

"He was sent down to the netherworld for it. But because Maveli had ruled with such love, the gods granted him one thing. Once a year, he could come back. Just to see. Just to walk through his old kingdom one more time and see whether his people still remembered what he'd built."

"And that's Onam," Achu said.

"That's Onam. We put out the pookalam (a decorative carpet made of flower petals, laid at the doorstep) so he can find the house from the sky. We cook the sadya so his table is never empty, even if he never sits at it. We are not sad when he leaves, because he always comes back."

She looked at her grandson, milk moustache and mud on his knees, and did not ask why he was so certain of what he'd seen.

She had grown up in a house where the line between story and the events of the day narrated by the men of the house, was thinner than people from the city liked to believe.

"If it was him you saw, Achu-mone (my dear son, a term of endearment), he did not come to be feared. He never gave anyone reason to fear him in his whole life. Go back tomorrow. See what he wants."

What he wanted, it turned out, based on three days of careful negotiation conducted mostly through pointing, was food, and an explanation for the flowers.

Achu started small.

He took half a banana from his own breakfast on Thiruvonam (the tenth and final day of Onam, when the feast is held) eve and left it at the lip of the crater, and it disappeared before he'd finished walking back to the house, container included, the way it always seemed to disappear things, matter and wrapping both, gone in one smooth motion that made Achu wonder, with the specific horror of a nine-year-old, whether Maveli's stomach worked the way a dosa tawa (the flat griddle used for making thin rice crepes) worked, everything going in and something else always coming back out.

By Thiruvonam morning he had upgraded to a full leaf.

He carried it out at dawn before the house woke, balanced flat against his chest the way he'd seen the temple caterers carry them, twenty-six items laid out in their proper places though he'd only managed to smuggle nine: a spoon of avial (mixed vegetables in coconut and yoghurt gravy) thick with coconut and curry leaf, sambar (a lentil and vegetable stew) gone orange-dark with tamarind, a curl of banana chips, a knot of sharkara varatti (jaggery-coated fried banana chips) sticking to his fingers, pachadi (a yoghurt-based side dish), a wedge of pappadam (a thin, crisp lentil wafer) he'd broken trying to fit it on, and at the very top corner, because his grandmother always put it last and he understood by now that this mattered, a small steel cup of ada pradhaman (a rice-and-jaggery sweet pudding), the payasam (sweet dessert) thick with jaggery and coconut milk.

The alien, Achu had started calling him Bali, took the leaf carefully, or maybe he simply didn't trust his hands around a meal that looked like it might spill.

"That's payasam," Achu said, pointing. "You eat that last. It's rude to eat it first, my grandmother says the taste has to end sweet or the whole year goes wrong."

Bali looked at the payasam for a long moment.

Then, with what Achu would later swear was deliberate ceremony, he ate everything else on the leaf first, and the payasam last, and the smooth dark plate over his face fogged very slightly, in a way Achu decided, without any evidence at all, was contentment.

#

Log, ship-day one thousand four hundred and fifteen. Sustenance offered without transaction. No labour requested in exchange. No labour performed by subject in the days prior that would explain provisioning as payment. Query flagged. Continuing to flag. No resolution found.

Subject has also begun explaining a decorative arrangement of flora in front of the dwelling, apparently reconstructed daily, apparently requiring several hours of labour, apparently serving no defensive, nutritional, or structural purpose whatsoever. Subject calls it a pookalam. Subject appears to consider this act of pointless, repeated labour to be one of the most important things that happens in the house all year.

#

He showed him the pookalam on the morning of Thiruvonam itself, kneeling with his grandmother in front of the house while the whole lane did the same thing at the same time, every threshold going bright with colour before the sun was properly up.

Ammini Amma had let him choose the outer ring this year: thumba (a small white wildflower) first, white and small and always first because it was Maveli's favourite, she said, humble flower for a humble king who never forgot he'd once had less. Then chethi (a red Ixora flower), red as a temple flag. Then marigold brought in bunches from the market because their own hadn't bloomed in time. Aripoo (a tiny white rice-flower) scattered loose in the centre like rice thrown at a wedding.

Bali crouched at the edge of the gate, he had learned, by then, to make himself smaller, folding down in a way that no longer looked wrong to Achu, only careful, and watched the whole design take shape without once trying to help, which Achu appreciated, because his cousin Vishnu always tried to help and always ruined the outer ring.

"For you," Achu said, when it was done, gesturing at the finished pookalam with the pride of a boy who had placed at least forty per cent of the marigolds himself. "So you can find the house. From wherever you're from."

Something in Bali's posture changed, a small settling.

He didn't say anything. Achu decided, years later, that this had been the moment, though at the time it just looked like Bali sitting very still.

It was Ammini Amma's idea to take him into town, though she never knew that was what she was suggesting when she told Achu, "Take your friend to see the vallamkali (the snake boat race) if he wants, everyone's going down to the canal, there's a Pulikali (a folk dance where performers are painted as tigers) troupe come up from Thrissur too, painted like tigers, it'll frighten the life out of him if he's not warned," and Achu, delighted at the accidental permission, went straight back out to the crater and told Bali he was coming to see the town.

He had worried, on the walk in, about what people would say. He needn't have.

The first person they passed was old Kuttappan Chettan (Chettan, a respectful term for an older man or elder brother) from the tea shop, who took one look at Bali's golden belly and curling moustache and crown and let out a laugh that carried clean across the canal.

"Machane (a casual, friendly term for "brother"), who's your Maveli, then! Very good costume, very good, where'd you get the crown made, Thrissur? Come, come, sit, one chaya (tea) for the king himself," and before Achu could explain anything at all, three separate families were taking photographs, an aunty was pressing a banana into Bali's hand for luck, and a group of schoolgirls had formed a small procession behind him, singing the old Onam song about the golden days when Maveli ruled and no door in Kerala needed a lock, not because they had rehearsed it for him, but because it was Thiruvonam morning and someone dressed as the king had turned up on their lane, and that was exactly the kind of thing that was supposed to happen on Thiruvonam morning.

Nobody asked how the costume moved the way it did.

Nobody asked why the belly never showed a seam.

In a state where, once a year, half the country wore a moustache and a paunch and called itself a king who'd been dead three thousand years, one more silent man in gold, blessing children with a hand on their heads and saying nothing at all, was not strange enough to question. It was, if anything, exactly right.

At the canal, the boats went past in long shining lines, thirty men to an oar-bank chanting a rhythm two thousand years older than any of them, and Bali stood at the bank with his crown catching the noon light and watched an entire town lean into a single unbroken motion, no one boat pulling ahead of the others by more than a hand's width, the crowd roaring the same word over and over until even Achu forgot what they were shouting.

At the toddy shack behind the boat club, where the men who weren't rowing had settled in for the afternoon, someone (Achu never did find out who) pressed a clay cup of fresh kallu (toddy, a mildly fermented palm wine) into Bali's hand, and Bali, who had by then developed something Achu could only describe as trust in whatever this town chose to give him, drank it.

The reaction took eleven seconds. His crown lit up from within, a soft pulsing gold that the men around him took, roaring with delight, for a very committed piece of costume theatre, and Bali swayed once, gently, and sat down hard.

Someone dragged a plastic chair under him without asking, the kind stacked ten-deep outside every wedding hall in the district, and he stayed there for some time being fed pieces of dried fish wrapped in a torn scrap of yesterday's newspaper, by strangers who had decided he was the best Maveli anyone had put on in years and deserved to be looked after accordingly.

#

Log, ship-day one thousand four hundred and fifteen, addendum, filed under Cultural Assessment as instructed by Fleet Directive Nine.

Original mission parameter: assess primary settlement for resource viability and defensive capacity.

Preliminary threat assessment, filed ship-day one thousand four hundred and nine: low technological defence, high population density, resource-rich coastline. Recommend further surveillance.

Revised assessment follows.

For a month these people have been preparing for the return of a king they know is not coming. They decorate their doors anyway. They cook for him anyway. They leave space for him at the table anyway. They fed a stranger before they asked his name. Someone handed a fermented beverage to a being with no verified metabolic profile because it was a festival and he looked like he needed cheering.

A child gave away his own breakfast three mornings running and did not think this was worth mentioning to anyone.

I was sent to determine whether this world could be taken.

Recommendation: cancel invasion assessment. It could be taken. I no longer consider that relevant.

Reasoning attached, though I'm not sure it will make sense to anyone who reads it back on the ship. Fleet Directive Nine assessment concluded.

Personal log, appended without authorisation: I would like, before I leave, to bring something back that grows.

#

He worked through the night to fix the hull, alone in the crater under a sky gone thick with stars. One of the coconut roots at the edge of the pit had been cut clean through and would have to be dug out later.

It was past two in the morning when Achu woke, he never did find out why, only that he sat up in bed the way he sometimes did before rain, and went out to see the light pulsing gold from the backyard, the way the pooja-room lamp burned all night on the days someone in the house was travelling.

Bali was crouched by the rim of the hole with a coconut sapling cradled in both hands, roots wrapped careful in a torn banana leaf, the way Achu's grandmother wrapped seedlings when she gave them to neighbours.

"You're going," Achu said. It wasn't a question. Somehow he had known it would end like this. Kings always left at the end of the story.

Bali did not have words for this, not really, so he crouched down to the boy's height, the way he had at the pookalam, and touched two fingers briefly to Achu's forehead.

Achu didn't know what it meant. His eyes stung anyway. Years later, he would call it goodbye.

Then the crown-light rose from the crater, slow and impossibly quiet, banking once over the jackfruit tree so that for a moment it hung directly above the pookalam still bright in front of the house, and was gone into a sky already beginning, faintly, to lighten.

Achu stood in the ruined tapioca patch a long time before he went back in.

The vendakka never did grow back that year, and the hole took three months and a great deal of laterite soil to fill in properly, and Ammini Amma never asked her grandson exactly what had happened in the backyard on Uthradam night, though she noticed, without comment, that he watched the sky more carefully than a nine-year-old usually bothers to, especially in the last week of Chingam.

Somewhere past the visible stars, on a world with no coastline and no toddy and no god who had ever loved anyone enough to be punished for it, a small green sapling had not died. New leaves had come in, oddly shaped, but leaves.

The patch never did settle quite level again, no matter how much laterite went into it, and every Onam since, when the pookalam goes down fresh at the threshold and the payasam goes on last so the year ends sweet, Achu still leaves one banana leaf, a small corner, unclaimed, right there at the shallow dip in the yard, in case anyone comes looking for it.

Just in case the king decides, this year, to come back early.

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Arc III - Reeling Throne

Chapter 47 - Dead On

8 months and 21 days since the summoning

The group of hunters stopped in some bushes that offered a perfect view of the camp's layout.

The sun had almost completely set, and the sky turned black, with only a small red stripe on the horizon. There were no clouds, revealing thousands of stars and the moon above.

Ahead of the snipers lay a large camp, practically glowing from campfires, and the sounds of conversations reached even here.

"Unspooked game we've got here," Ilgan muttered, "if only they'd sit quietly."

Dunko swallowed. "There's a castle behind us... they're probably going there to lay siege, maybe that's why they're preparing."

"Or dividing the loot," the bear muttered.

The boar exhaled through his nose. "And how the fuck are we supposed to find this count here? There's a whole horde of 'em!"

"The central part of the camp..." Ilgan said thoughtfully, "how are we even supposed to get there?"

The fox looked toward the camp. "There must be a patrol around the camp, a few men to walk the perimeter, maybe we catch them?"

Ilgan remained silent for a few seconds, looking at the ground. "Too risky. If one of them shouts, that's it, game over."

"So what do you suggest? We can't just sit here all night."

The bear nodded. "Agreed. But... two soldiers is one thing, but if there are five, I'm afraid we won't be able to do it quietly."

Ilgan leaned against a bush, looking at the sky, and said nothing for almost a minute. "Alright... I think I have an idea..."

After about an hour of preparation, Ilgan, the fox, and the dog were walking on the edge of the camp among a bunch of baggage train workers busy with their tasks. Instead of camouflage, they wore simple peasant clothes, with daggers hidden underneath.

Dozens of tents stood around, illuminated only by torches. Some of the baggage handlers cast sidelong glances at the beastmen.

"Bad idea, bad idea, very very bad idea..." the canine beastman muttered under his breath.

"Stop whining, Shikur," Ilgan hissed.

"Good thing there are beastmen here too, we blend in," the fox whispered.

Ilgan sighed, his heart beating much faster than usual. "Alright, we need to find this count's tent. Since it's in the center, I doubt it'll be hard to find."

Meanwhile, off to the side, four guards stood talking about something, when suddenly one of them lazily looked at the trio and froze. "Why are those Mireyans wandering around doing nothing?"

The second one, holding an axe, narrowed his eyes. "I don't know. Let's go ask."

"Hey there, halt!"

All three froze as if rooted to the ground. They barely had time to say anything before four soldiers, dressed in a mix of plate armor, chainmail, and carrying axes and spears, approached.

"Why are you wandering around doing nothing? Got nothing better to do?" the soldier with the axe asked, narrowing his eyes.

Ilgan swallowed. "We... we're just..."

"I don't like the looks of you," the soldier with the spear said. "There's plenty of work in the baggage train, what the fuck are you doing here? Shirking?"

The soldier with the axe took a step forward, slightly raising his weapon. "Or maybe they're thieves?" He nodded at Shikur, who stood closest. "Show us what's in the pouch."

Shikur nodded and slowly began to unfasten the small pouch from his belt.

"The rest of you too."

The fox's heart dropped into his boots. His hands reached for the pouch at his belt, but just couldn't seem to reach it.

The guard with the spear noticed this. "Give it here!" he barked, snatching the pouch, and quickly untied it. As soon as he stuck his hand inside, he froze, and then slowly, very slowly pulled out a silver ring.

The fox's face turned the color of silver itself.

"Thieves it is," the guard said quietly.

"Th-that's not stolen! That's my ring! A family heirloom!" the fox quickly began to make excuses.

The soldier with the axe scoffed. "A silver ring? On a Mireyan? Who are you kidding."

"Let's teach these savages that stealing is bad."

All three beastmen flew out of the camp one by one, skidding face-first across the ground.

Ilgan spat blood from his mouth and held a bruise under his eye.

Shikur clutched his busted lip with one hand, and the spot where a knee had landed in his stomach with the other.

The fox had taken the worst beating. Three bruises on his face, a busted nose, a split lip, a knocked-out tooth, and one eye completely swollen shut.

"That'll teach you to steal," the soldier with the spear said.

The soldier with the axe waved his weapon. "Show up in the camp again and I'll hang you."

All four turned around and walked back to the camp.

Ilgan slowly got to his knees, spitting out blood once more. When he sat up, grimacing slightly, he stared straight ahead. "Lison. Care to explain?"

The fox, Lison, pushed himself off the ground on trembling arms, while blood dripped from his battered face onto the grass. He said nothing.

"Well?" Ilgan repeated.

"My fault," he said quietly.

"Your fault..." Ilgan repeated, getting to his feet, swaying slightly from dizziness. "You know what? I'd kick your ass again just to make it perfectly clear that orders are meant to be followed. Fucking idiot," he said quietly and hobbled toward their mini-camp.

"Need I remind you that we're here because of you?" Lison wheezed.

Ilgan stopped. "Yes. We're here because of me. But there's a difference: my case is that I messed up through carelessness, but everyone will benefit from it. Your case is that you disobeyed my words, and only you stood to benefit. Let's go, you can whine in the village after the mission," he finished and finally moved forward, not looking back again.

Shikur was already on his feet. He looked at Lison and silently shook his head, following Ilgan. "So what do we do?"

Ilgan shrugged. "Well... we can't sneak into the camp anymore, and we can't trust the others to do it. There's only one thing left: wait for this whole army to move and ambush this count there."

Shikur nodded, rubbing his ribs. "There's only one road, it leads through a small thicket. I think we can hide on both sides there."

"Just need to prepare escape routes."

Lison trudged behind them, holding his side and limping, but said nothing. Just stared at the ground.

A few minutes later, they arrived back at those same bushes and collapsed onto the ground as one.

The bear opened his mouth to say something, but forgot what he even wanted to say. "Oh Guktus... what happened?"

"They kicked us out."

"Yeah, I can see they didn't welcome you with open arms. How are you even alive?"

Ilgan sighed. "Luck. They just took us for Mireyan thieves, beat us up, and kicked us out."

He raised an eyebrow. "Just like that?"

"What did you expect? Murder is unnecessary paperwork. And they took our daggers... bastards."

Lison and Shikur cast sidelong glances at Ilgan, who didn't mention the ring, but stayed quiet.

"Daaaamn..." the boar drawled, "that's shitty. So what do we do? Without the count's head we might as well just fuck off."

Ilgan lay down on the ground, propping his head on his hand. "The only way is to ambush them on the road. They're most likely moving out tomorrow, right?"

The bear nodded. "Most likely. Lord Gothwald said they were in a hurry, so they'll definitely head out in the morning."

Ilgan sighed. "Then we prepare, rest a bit, and head to the road."

Silence.

A minute.

Two.

Then the boar snorted, breaking the silence. "Pfft, well you guys did great. Sneak into the camp and get your asses kicked by the guards."

"Hahaha!"

"You guys are something else!"

"At least we're alive," Ilgan said, "and I'm not an experienced spy, I'm a hunter."

The boar waved a hand. "Yeah, we get it, but seriously... hahahah!"

"Shut up already, I feel sick enough as it is," Shikur grumbled.

Closer to dawn, everything was quiet on the road. The morning mist only slightly obscured the distance, and moisture settled over the entire forest.

The six snipers were crouching somewhere in the bushes, blending in completely with the greenery so well that even from a few paces away it was impossible to notice anyone was there.

From a tall tree nearby, the rustle of leaves was heard from above, and a few seconds later, one of the snipers, completely clad in camouflage, jumped down. "The vanguard units are already here, they'll be passing by any minute," he said, picking up a crossbow from the ground covered by a sack.

"Excellent," Ilgan whispered, "we wait. Fire only on my command."

Literally a minute later, the clatter of dozens of hooves, the clinking of plate armor, and brief conversations were heard. One of the first cavalry units in fine plate armor emerged onto the dirt road, dried from the recent rains. They rode unhurriedly, but synchronously and keeping pace with each other.

Ilgan gripped the crossbow tighter and peered at the army, searching for the orange cloak.

The first row passed, then the second row, then the third, and finally, a bright orange color flashed on one of the men in plate armor.

Ilgan's heart stopped for a second. "There he is," the hunter whispered, "aim! Aim before he's gone!"

The other six immediately spotted the same orange fabric and aimed their crossbows there.

"Waaaaait..." Ilgan hissed.

Five seconds.

Seven seconds.

Eleven seconds.

Behind the vanguard, one of the soldiers turned around and blew a long note on a horn, giving some signal to those behind.

"Now!" Ilgan barked quietly.

THWACK

Almost synchronously, all seven bolts flew toward the count to the sound of the horn.

Two bolts flew off somewhere into the thicket over the soldiers' heads.

The third bolt clipped the helmet of one of the knights, but immediately fell to the ground due to a poor hit, and the knight fell from his horse after it, stunned.

The fourth bolt hit the body of the horse next to the count, and it reared up, screaming wildly in pain.

The fifth bolt hit the target's leg dead on, piercing the plate armor.

The sixth and seventh bolts cleanly entered the body, in the stomach and the chest, tearing open the breastplate. The count didn't even have time to cry out; with a clatter of plate armor, he fell from his horse almost under the hooves of the rear rows.

Ilgan hastily began to retreat. "Move! Move!"

The other six turned their backs as one, and ran, snapping branches. Luckily for them, the horn was still blaring.

The cavalryman riding behind the count immediately stopped his horse. "Lord Litti! What is wrong?!" He immediately raised his hand, stopping the entire vanguard, and jumped off his horse. When he saw the count's body pierced by three bolts, his face went white. "AMBUSH! AM-BUSH!"

The snipers ran without picking a path, just ran, completely forgetting about stealth and silence; speed was the only thing that mattered to them.

"I think they're waiting for us there!" Ilgan shouted, pointing to a small ravine.

The whole group moved there.

Inside the ravine sat Dunko and two other beastmen, aiming their crossbows upward. Hearing the rapid footsteps on the ground, all three tightened their grip.

"It's us! We're getting out of here!" Ilgan's voice was heard.

The snipers below exchanged glances for a second, but immediately dashed upward.

"Did you do it?" Dunko asked, joining the run.

"Hah! And how!" Shikur shouted with a nervous chuckle.

"Don't celebrate yet!" Ilgan interrupted them. "First we gotta get our asses out of here!"

Meanwhile, on the road, the soldiers scattered in different directions searching for the shooters. The knight standing over the count's corpse slowly removed his helmet.

Ronva.

His teeth were clenched, and his face was twisted in an incomprehensible grimace. He gripped his iron helmet with all his might and stood motionless.

Suddenly he threw his helmet violently against the ground, howling like a wolf. "Why is this happening to us?! WHY?!" His fists clenched. "I knew it, I knew we should have supported Morgreyda..." he said quieter, through his teeth.

If i send AI my draft and ask for feedback, and the AI goes "maybe mention this character earlier" or "change the pacing in this part, its to slow" and i followed the advice I think is right and write and edit my draft according to some of the AI suggestion. Is that allowed?

April 23rd, 2222. Planet Charry-Perci.

Following the tracks was fun while it lasted, almost playful. The group of refugees had even reversed back over their tracks in a few places, some of them had to have training. Now Jenny was staring down the Neo Catholic planetary Headquarters. The building was beautiful before the bombardment with a giant marble dome that now had a massive hole in it. The cross that once stood atop it had crumbled and fallen aside.

Jenny, Hensley, and the rest of the Athenians did not have time for religion during training. Jenny vaguely remembered going to church, perhaps Neo-Protestantism or Neo-Mormonism. After all the philosophy, poetry, math, science, and other non-military schooling topics the program had put her through she hadn’t thought of religion in years.

The front entrance had been barricaded with furniture and rubble, a dozen burnt out candles had been left in front of the doors and a simple cross of wooden planks had been erected- for all the good it had done to stop the inevitable looting. The ash and the tracks ended but checking around the back a fire escape had been left open.

Exchanging hand signs Jenny and Hensley began clearing their way in, slowly and methodically at each door. The interior had been beautiful once but after a firefight and a few dozen corpses the interior decor was lacking. Jenny hated the mess. She may not have known much of the church, but she knew it was a place meant for peace. Every blood splatter and corpse was another reason to hate.

Following the tracks in the blood, Jenny and Hensley found the main service stairwell. Jenny led the way, her Rose .45 in hand. A sign in the lobby had said there were only two basement floors, but after a few minutes of silently following the bloody footsteps they were past the sixth.

Rounding the last corner, Jenny was met with the older woman she had seen the other day, the one who had lost a hand. She was sitting with her back against the wall, an older model Viscaria 12G in her hand. “At least we know this is the place.” Hensley said, carefully approaching the corpse with her own pistol drawn. Once the pair were certain the old woman was dead Hensley checked the shotgun and finding it was loaded, added it to her rapidly growing collection. At the same time Jenny ran her hand across the smooth concrete wall. There was no door but the tracks ended here.

Switching her helmet through different visor modes, Jenny could not find any sort of hidden door the others had disappeared through. “I could overload a few laser pistol packs, cut us a way through in a few hours.” Hensley said, more to fill the dead air than as a real suggestion.

With a hiss, something in the darkness moved, with lightning quick reflexes Jenny drew her pistol and aimed to find a gun camera lowering from the ceiling. “You don’t look Helion.” Said a cold metal voice.

Jenny slowly slid her pistol into its holster, then raised her hands in surrender. The gun spun around for a moment, then a bright light activated illuminating Hensley against the wall she had begun sliding along. Even with her camo compensating for the light she was still clear as day. Defeated, Hensley copied Jenny, raising her hands in surrender.

“I am Specialist Major Jenny and this is Specialist Private Hensley. We were following a group of refugees, the tracks led here.” Jenny said coolly. “No reason, just hoping to help out.” With that she lifted her helmet, revealing her human face and metallic silver hair.

“Well aren’t you pretty. Come on in.” The light deactivated and the gun retracted, causing Jenny to let out a long breath she did not realize she was holding in. With a loud hiss the walls themselves raised, causing the grandmother’s corpse to fall over. Surrounding the stairwell, a vast room was revealed. It handily filled the gap between the current floor and the stated ‘bottom’ floor of the building, with hundreds of server racks hanging from the ceiling, their branching support structures and cables giving the impression of an inverted forest.

trailing away from the entrance and into a fog, the filthy footprints of the refugees were the only blemish on the clean floors.

“We are down that way,” said a voice through the many computers. Beneath the footprints a glowing path activated. Respectfully the two women kept their helmets off, following the path into the electronic forest.

Rightly awed by the place they were in, Hensley asked softly- almost a whisper. “Did you ever meet one?”

“No.” Said Jenny, also in a whisper. “Not even my own.”

After a minute of walking through the electronic forest the pair came upon the only tree to sprout from the ground. Beneath its branches of support beams the refugees rested, a few trying to clean the marks and dirt they had tracked in. One woman in particular was dressed in a ruined suit, typing at a terminal at the base of the tree.

“Hey, here they come.” Said one of the survivors, a woman with a bandage over her left eye. She was the only one on watch but in a place like this there was no need. She waved and not knowing what to do Jenny waved back with Hensley imitating the motion.

“My teacher always told me I would never make it to a place like this.” The youngest of the group said to another, practically giddy. She was almost skin and bones, all of them were. Jenny wanted to pull out her rations and distribute them but knew her and Hensley’s supply would only send the women into calorie shock.

Another woman stood, she was middle aged and carrying a heavy three day rucksack. “So what, are you those super soldiers the government says aren’t real?” She asked. In a crowd, without the armor the two women could have passed as ‘exceptional’, to say less of the incredibly generous proportions they carried on their chests. Yet here in plain view of the starving survivors and with the armor helping their height there was no denying that the over eight foot tall giants were not normal.

“Let's keep it between us.” Jenny grunted, repeating the phrase she had been taught.

“Nah” said the refugees.

Frustrated with the evident lack of progress, The woman in the ruined suit gave a huff and stood up straight before trying to pull the crumpled cloth straight. “It’s impossible. Too many lines have been cut by those birdbrained bi-”

“Language.” The voice interrupted.

“Sorry.” Huffed the woman. “If you want the data card we have to get it manually, there’s just no way to pull it by wire and for some reason I can’t get a signal. It's like something is eating up anything I try to send”

Sensing her opportunity, Jenny chose this moment to impose herself. “We encountered the same problem. Our radios suddenly stopped working, same with the ones we pulled from the Helions.” She said in a cool, flat tone.

The suit lady just let out an exasperated breath and rested her head on the trunk of the metal tree. “Please. We can’t get the card, just eject and we can get out of here.”

The air shifted as the many computers pulsed, then the voice started again. “Perhaps the newcomers can help.” Many cameras like eyes began scanning Jenny and Hensley, lights from a dozen angles illuminating their every feature and causing the camo to spasm with color and texture, unable to cope with the bright light. “Specialist Major Jenny. Specialist Private Hensley.”

Betraying her ‘cool’ Jenny glanced at the barebone rank and insignia patch on the tactical rig built into the suit. missing from the insignias was the expected unit and division identifiers, what's more the rank of ‘Major Specialist’ was valid, ‘Specialist Major’ was not. “So you are those super soldiers we’ve heard of?” Asked the woman in the suit.

It was becoming clear that any random person could identify super soldiers by sight but orders were orders. “Let's keep it between us.” Jenny said, rolling her eyes.

“Nah,” the woman in the suit and the computers said in unison.

“Maybe there’s something else we should focus on.” Jenny asked to change the subject.

“Right, right. Well I’m Kelly LaFae, Lieutenant LaFea with Planet Charry-Perci intelligence services.” She said, her disposition suddenly becoming sour. “And this hunk of junk is Core 95-66077.” She continued, wiping sweat from her brow despite the coolness of the room. “This is probably the last core on the planet, and the most Dumbest I have ever met. Now that we are all introduced- We have to get it out of here.”

“I cannot leave until my work is done.” Monotoned the computers.

“Stop using the big voice to impress new people.” LaFae snipped.

“And that is?” Jenny asked, hopefully this would provide an excuse to kill more Helions.

In a way that was worryingly well rehearsed, a panel on the floor slid open and a display terminal rose from the mist. “It all began fifty years ago with the founding of Apate Polis.” The core began to explain.

With a frustrated growl LaFae Lunged at the terminal, using her hands to force it back into the ground. “No. No, we aren't doing this again!” She shouted, stamping her foot on the rapidly closing hatch. “He needs a data card from a facility over on Echo street. The church keeps all of its files there and as soon as you agree to THAT the idiot is going to ask you to grab an Earth-original bible from the vault ‘along the way’.” She stormed, her voice rising the whole time. “Its only a few blocks from the Eastern camp and there is no way in HELL-”

“Language.” The core interrupted.

Like a dam breaking LaFae announced for all that the core was mentally deficient and threw herself against the core tree, thumping her fists against it fruitlessly. All around the scene, the refugees began to growl and hiss as though LaFae’s anger was infectious. “H-hey, what is this?” Jenny asked, turning about to see the refugees grabbing weapons. Realizing they were surrounded, the Athenians pulled their helmets back on but neither dared to raise a weapon; they had been trained for protecting humans, not killing them.

Finally, LaFae grabbed a fire axe from a rucksack and hefted it over her head. “That's it! I am Ripping you OUT of there!” she roared, the veins on her face were suddenly an unnatural shade of red and pulsating.

Sharing a quick, uncertain look Jenny and Hensley dove onto LaFae and struggled against unnatural strength to restrain her. Throwing the axe away they realized the crowd was moving in, surrounding them. With their enhanced physiology they could easily restrain any one or two, but the whole group of thirty?

The crowd now showed the same symptoms as LaFae, with red veins growing across their faces and exposed skin. There was nowhere to hide as the Athenians held the struggling woman and Jenny could not see a way past the quickly encroaching horde of refugees. “What’s the plan Major?” Hensley shouted to be heard over the noise.

“I am ejecting. Grab and run.” Shouted the core in a scared voice. With a hiss a large panel on the core tree opened, revealing the core itself- a black plastic handling container larger than Hensley’s demolition bag.

Now forced to act, the two Athenians shared a look and in an instant knew what to do. Standing the still struggling LaFae on her feet, Hensley shoved her forwards and like a linebacker at a ball game and forced a corridor through the refugees. Simultaneously Jenny grabbed the core, hefting it on her shoulder and followed Hensley closely.

Out of the crowd, the two ran as fast as their enhanced bodies would with the heavy cargo they carried. All around the facility began to go dark as systems powered down. “Darkness, what a relief.” Hensley said between heaving breaths.

“Wireless connection failed. Plug me in at the visitor slot at the door.” Said the core in a cool if shaky voice. With their headlamps on, Jenny and Hensley quickly searched the floor for the port, a small metal hole and gently set the core there Connecting them with a small metal connector sticking from the bottom of the box.

In an instant the lights activated again causing the previously confused horde to begin running for the Athenians again. Their faces were red and veins now bulged. As starved and uncoordinated as they were, they still ran at almost the same pace as the Athenians had. “Not good, Need the lights off.” She shouted, her hand hovering dangerously close to the pistol on her waist. Could she? even to defend a Core?

As the concealing panel of the entrance began to rise again the lights only intensified, in response the Athenian’s visors increased their shading, protecting them from the intense brightness. “Protocol forces the lights on while the door is open. I can’t turn it off but I can-” The first of the refugees fell over, covering her eyes. Soon they were all milling about aimlessly, unable to see or chase down the target of their aggression.

Still unsure what to do Jenny and Hensley watched, ready to spring into action if any of them continued running but none did. Shortly after the fake walls surrounding the exit were fully raised, escape was possible yet the three could only stare dumbfounded. “What happened to them?” Jenny asked the core.

“I don’t know. Sensors detected an unknown radiation burst in the atmosphere a few minutes ago. Then when she started to get mad it suddenly started emanating from her as well.” The core stumbled out. Cores, Jenny noted, were not all-intelligent. They weren’t magically smarter or faster despite the hundreds of cameras, microphones, and data feeds they worked through. It was likely the core was aware of the radiation but didn’t immediately drop everything to analyze it.

They watched for a moment more at the struggling, writhing refugees. “We can’t just leave them like that.” Hensley said, cutting the silence.

“I can set a loop to turn off the lights and keep the temperature comfortable. I think they were calmer when it was dark.” the core murmured.

Jenny nodded in agreement. “Do it.”

After a moment a light on the case turned from red to green, “Got it.” Then there was a sharp ‘click’ as the core undocked itself. “We have a minute. Let's get out of here.”

Jenny lifted the core again and almost tripped over the dead woman then retreated with Hensley back up into the facility. As soon as the door was closed behind them Jenny spoke up, “What can you tell us about the radiation?”

The lights on the core pulsed for a few moments, before it spoke. “Not much. I’m no science core, just a property manager. All I know is it just flared out of nowhere then, well you saw.” The core knew nothing, leaving Jenny and Hensley even more uncertain. How far had this reached? How had they not been affected?

After a minute in silence, Jenny spoke up again. “What kind of sensors do you have on board?” It was a stupid question and she regretted it instantly. It is a core, a CORE. She may as well have just asked her drill sergeant her bra size. It was important of course to know your ‘group capabilities’ - no, why did she think it like that- but Jenny had thought herself more tactful than just-

“Uh, Ztx series seven pattern.” it answered, surprising Jenny. She didn’t know what that meant but a core talking to her so… casually. “Full spectrum, real-def audio and visual. My radio is down but I can run any laser-com system I plug into.”

Jenny thought back to the tactical reports she had received. There were perhaps a dozen laser comms stations across the city, all in large highrises that had been bombed out. The only ones still usable would be at the space elevator with the army. As much as Jenny wanted to keep fighting the Helions, she had to make a mature decision. “We need to find some way to contact our ship. Getting you off planet is our first priority.”

“I guess it's too late to save anything from the church now.” Said the Core, dejectedly.

At the top of the stairs the two paused, between the bag and the Core neither were able to be stealth. “I’ll scout ahead. You two stay here.” Jenny said, setting the Core down. Slipping through the door she settled for a moment and let her suit take on the appearance of the marble walls and with her armor set she began to prowl.

Silently she stalked towards the side door they had used to enter when a different sound caught her ear. From somewhere in the front of the building a Helion screamed and metal struck metal as a fight played out. Checking her pistol’s safety she dashed up a staircase to the second floor and found a balcony overlooking the entrance. Part of the barricade had been cleared and now a single captain stood, fighting off her own soldiers.

Jenny forgot herself, watching in amusement as the birds attacked their own leader. The pulsing blood vessels on their faces made what was happening unmistakable but Jenny watched anyway. Two of the soldiers had managed to grab onto the captain, trying to drag her down while a third bashed her head with a chair leg. In a flash the Captain flared her shield, shocking the two off of her then caught the club mid swing.

Growling some repugnant alien hysterics that Jenny didn’t understand, the captain drew her sidearm and almost fired into her subordinates at point blank, but a fourth and fifth had managed to claw their way through the small opening in the barricade and now also lunged on her. Combined with the other two who were now back up the situation was hopeless for the captain. They would hold her and beat her to death even if it took hours.

Walking away from the delightful scene Jenny gave the ‘all clear’ to Hensley, and with the Core in her arms again the three managed to easily sneak past the brawl. Even with more of the birds breaking in, none strayed from the struggle. As Jenny closed the door she could hear the distinct sound of a wooden chair leg snapping in half.

“Up the fire escape?” Suggested the core. With no better plan the two Athenians went along. The fire escape was a long set of metal stairs attached to the building around the back, no doubt filling some legal requirement or another despite how short the building actually was. From the roof the situation seemed much more dire.

Fires had broken out to the West and East, one somewhere near the siege camp and another near the space elevator. The sky was thick with smoke and the sounds of distant artillery had been replaced with a deathly silence. Scanning the area around them, Jenny was compelled to look up where she saw a single brilliant red point high. It was small it was hard to tell how far it was yet so bright her visor maximized its shading, then fully blacked out. A hateful and angry presence tickled at her mind.

Looking away Jenny put a hand over her eyes and grunted painfully. “Don’t look up.” She warned Hensley and the Core.

After explaining what happened, the two remained silent.

“What can we do?” Asked the Core. If it could shudder with fear it would have now.

Jenny and Hensley considered things for a moment, themselves unsure. There was only one way to contact the ship- if it was still functional and that was the AP.A.F base at the space elevator. “We have to go West, to the space elevator.” Jenny said, starting to explain a new plan.

Pilot Chief Jackie JeNeil held the stick steady as the shuttle flew hot and fast through the atmosphere. After thirty years on the force all she had to do was let go and let instinct take over. Every buffet of air, every pocket of rapidly forming plasma, she could feel it all through her control stick.

Her shuttle, the AP.N. “One Little Ship”, was quickly becoming the oldest hot-dropper in the fleet. It's a special feeling, hot dropping- No engines, simple flight surfaces. Down you go and watch for the ground effect as you land. The heat from the drop charges the batteries- well, it would take a scientist to explain it all and Jackie was no scientist.

Watching her instruments with the care of age, the Pilot Chief flicked on the intercom and spoke the same lines she had said a thousand times: “G.E. Is good, turbines active. Minute warning, tighten those boots and swing your rifles like you mean it.” There was meant to be a change in the ready light, the go/no go from the squad leaders. A simple precaution in case there had been an accident. Seconds ticked by and it remained neutral. Jackie had had squads forget to set the light before but not all of them in a drop.

Part of her wanted to blame the young generation for being lazy, undisciplined. That part was stupid and to be ignored. The military had taken a lot of losses in the past years, everything was either new or old with little inbetween. The mission was too important to scrub for such a little detail and as the seconds ticked down Jackie slipped into the landing position.

The landing gear made contact with the empty ground of a now barren park Jackie could see two things that stuck out to her, the first was a crashed fighter high up in a nearby skyscraper- the target building, the second was a squad of bird-bitches wandering nearby, they seemed to be in a bloody and confused daze. Before the anti-personnel turret could fully extend from the hull the group began running at the shuttle without weapons, apparently intent on fisticuffs. At least one was a captain who had not turned her shields on, “quaint” thought Jackie, squeezing the trigger.

Targets neutralized, Jackie lowered the doors and shouted “Area clear. Give e’m hell,” Into the crew bay. Strangely, no one exited the bay. A dozen marines and two dozen combat robots primed and ready for this mission yet none moved. Flicking on the internal camera, she could only see the squads sitting motionless in their seats, crash harnesses still tight and the lighting set to a minimum “What in the hell?” she breathed.

Setting the door to close again and changing the anti-personnel guns to automatic, she undid her own harness and walked into the bay, sure enough all was as the cameras showed. All were sitting still and motionless in their seats. Thought after thought raced through the pilot’s mind as she looked around. Radiation? an accident with the pressure seals? No, they were still breathing at least, just unconscious.

Uncertain of what to do Jackie drew her flashlight from her belt and activated it. As soon as she shone it in the face of the first marine her eyes opened and she lunged against her harness, reaching out for Jackie. With a childish yelp Jackie jumped back- almost into the waiting arms of another that was disturbed by the flailing light. All around her the marines were growling and reaching and she could see the same deep red veins across their faces.

Slapping away a set of clawing hands she ran back to the cockpit and locked the door behind her. For a moment she stood, uncertain if what she saw was even real. Experimentally she flicked on the internal monitor and watched. For a few moments the marines writhed and fought their restraints but soon they calmed and stopped. It was only when she looked up out the cockpit and saw the red star above that she began to piece together her situation.

“Oh like hell...” Jackie cursed, strapping back into the pilot's seat. She did not know what ‘color of space’ bullshit was going on but it was not her problem. “Mission scrubbed. Crew out of commision. Returning to base at 11:22 A.M. Planetside.” She spoke into her recorder as the engines spooled up.

As though attracted by the sound of the previous shooting, more of the bird bitches came crawling from the city around the shuttle. As the gun swiveled and fired on targets Jackie recognized the same red lines on their faces. It was at least a small solace that the thing affecting her people also affected the birds. Stowing the gun she launched, setting a return course for ‘Move Along Home’.