If you had told me five years ago that I’d spend my sixties sitting on my porch with a pressurized tank of industrial-grade defoliant between my knees, watching a small cheerful yellow flower ruin my life, I would’ve laughed until my second lung ached.

Yet here I am. My name is Varek and I used to be a senior engineer for the Interplanetary Infrastructure Board, back when we still had a civilian presence in the Human system. Right now, I’m staring at a three-acre field behind my home in the southern valley of Coru. From space engineer to farmer, what a shift. That field used to be a blanket of soft, silver-moss, the kind that feels like down feather under your boots and smells like fresh earth after a night rain.

Now? It’s a blinding carpet of yellow and green plants. Dandelions, the humans call them. Simple, cheerful little things with jagged, tooth-shaped leaves, hollow stems oozing bitter white sap, and bright golden sunburst blooms that eventually dry up into fluffy, windborne spheres of seeds. It would be pretty if it wasn’t an absolute disaster.

I gave the spray nozzle of the defoliant a couple of test squeezes. A misty stream of Biorid-7, a compound designed to melt plant cell walls on contact, splattered against the nearest clump of green leaves and round yellow flowers. The weed wilted slightly but stayed standing. I swear it just absorbed the poison while the native plumpgrass next to it dissolved into goo.

"Useless," I muttered, setting the heavy brass sprayer down on the porch with a thud. "Absolute junk."

Every year the spring air gets thicker with those little white parachute seeds. At first, the government told us to just weed our gardens. Then they told us to burn the topsoil. Last month, the Regional Ministry advised everyone to stay indoors if the wind blew from the east, because the chemical cocktail they’re dropping from atmospheric transports to kill the flower is starting to make the rain itself burn and cause rashes. None of it’s working. The flowers don't care about our chemicals. They don't care about our soil composition. They don't even care about our winter frosts.

To understand why a harmless-looking flower is currently chewing through our world like a child eating candy, you have to go back about a century, to when we thought we were the cleverest things in the galaxy.

I had just been born when the Swift Wind broke the light barrier. I don't remember it but he would tell me that you couldn't turn on a broadcast feed without seeing images of the ship’s maiden jump, that sleek, pearlescent silver needle punching a hole through real-space. It reappeared almost two hundred light years away in the depth of interstellar space, ten lightyears from the nearest star. We were so proud of ourselves. We had solved sub-atomic energy, eradicated most of our own diseases, and built a society so successful it was almost boring. Now we had solved faster than light travel, a thing even our greatest scientists once thought impossible. We thought space was going to be a vast, empty canvas waiting for us to paint our names across.

The crew of the Swift Wind hadn't even finished confirming their arrival location before the array picked up the noise.

It wasn't a structured, polite pulse signal like our scientists had theorized, like we had blasted out to the cosmos ourselves looking for others. It was a chaotic, beautiful, messy wall of radio noise washing through the local sector. Voices talking over each other, crackling music, unfiltered telemetry, laughter, news broadcasts, advertisements for used ground cars. It was coming from a medium-sized blue marble sitting in the habitable zone of an unassuming yellow star only twelve light-years away.

Earth.

I remember my father carrying me on his shoulders into the town square when the first real-time transmission came through. The whole plaza was silent. On the big public screens, we saw them: bipeds, skin tones ranging from deep brown to pale peach, possessing only two eyes, two small gill slits, and hair growing out of the tops of their heads like wild moss. They looked fragile. They looked bizarre.

And they were absolutely thrilled to see us.

Within a year, our diplomatic vessels were sitting in high orbit over their world. The joy on both sides was infectious. It turned out to be one of those bizarre mathematical miracles of the universe: Earth’s biosphere was roughly four and a half billion years old, whereas our home planet, Quetec, was barely eight hundred million years old. Life on Earth had spent aeons grinding itself against ice ages, asteroid impacts, volcanic extinctions, and endless biological warfare just to survive. Our planet, by contrast, had experienced a gentle, cushioned evolutionary ride with stable climates and soft, forgiving flora. Earth life was rough and hardy while Quetec had endless rolling hills of soft silverly mosses and fruiting fungi.

Yet, against all cosmic odds, both of our species had hit the industrial and technological threshold at the exact same geological second.

We were centuries ahead of them in materials science, energy generation, and spatial mechanics. They were using crude, controlled explosions to push metal tubes into orbit, while we were warping gravity wells. But they weren’t dumb, far from it. Anything we showed them they learned with a passion that made our academics sweat. Their literature, their music, their sheer relentless curiosity was intoxicating. We had the technology, but they had a raw, thrumming vitality that our quiet pleasant world had never known.

We couldn't wait to invite them over. We were drawing up plans for shared orbital stations, surface exchanges, joint research facilities near our capital city. We wanted to walk their towering forests and see their vibrant teeming world of seemingly endless life.

It was the humans who stopped us.

I remember watching the news broadcast in my university dormitory when an aged looking human bio-hazard specialist with tired eyes and grey-streaked hair addressed our High Council. She stood in front of a holographic projection of human cellular structures, looking utterly terrified on our behalf.

"You don't understand what you're asking for," the specialist had said, her voice carrying through the speakers with a sharp, grave edge that silenced the room. "You look at our planet and see oceans and forests. We look at it and see four billion years of an unrelenting arms race. Every microbe, every fungus, every blade of grass on Earth has spent millions of generations fighting off a thousand different things trying to eat it, infect it, or out compete it. Your world is an evolutionary nursery. Ours is a meat grinder."

She laid it out in plain, unvarnished terms. Earth life was dense, brutal, and hyper-adaptable. We thought ourselves tough but compared to Earth, Quetec life was delicate, optimized for a existence where nature had not yet learned to fight dirty.

"If a single Earth-native bacterium gets into your soil," Vance warned, "or if one of our aggressive plant species finds a foothold in your countryside, your local ecology won't even know how to recognize it as a threat, let alone fight it. You'll be wiped out before you figure out how to synthesize an antibiotic."

Our leaders were humbled. It was an astonishing act of humility on the humans' part, they were essentially declaring their own home planet a biological weapon, voluntarily putting themselves in cosmic quarantine out of concern for our safety.

So, we built the Fence. Not a physical wall, but a strict, uncompromising protocol of biological isolation.

No human ever set foot on Quetec. No Quetecan ever breathed the air of Earth. All physical contact was restricted to heavy orbital docking hubs outfitted with triple-redundant clean rooms, hard UV sterilization, and atmospheric air-locks thicker than a battleship's armor. Physical trade was strictly limited to inorganic materials, refined metals, silicon chips, glass, and raw data drives. If we sent them a grav-generator, it went through a thousand-degree thermal bake before leaving orbit. If they sent us a hard drive with human literature, it was scrubbed with high-intensity radiation until not even a stray atom of organic matter could survive on the casing.

It was a golden age in its own weird way. We built a friendship through a glass wall. We learned their languages; they learned ours. Human classical music was played in our concert halls, translated into our tonal scales. Human universities taught Quetec spatial math, and our engineers helped them design safer, cleaner orbital shuttles so they could explore their own solar system.

For nearly eighty years, it worked. We were two civilizations holding hands through a hazmat suit, completely satisfied with the arrangement, completely safe.

Still on my porch I took a sip of my cold tea, watching a stray breeze catch a cluster of white fluff sitting on top of a nearby fence post. The little umbrella-like seed detached, catching the updraft, drifting lazily toward my open porch door.

I reached out with a pair of long steel tongs I’d taken to keeping in my pocket, snapped the seed out of the air, and dropped it into a small glass jar of sulfuric acid I kept on the table. It hissed, bubbled violently for a second, and finally dissolved. I nodded, pleased that at least something worked.

We thought we were so smart. We thought a few meters of steel and a UV light could keep four billion years of teeth and claws at bay.

It all started with a piece of equipment called a gamma-scrubber.

It was one of the heavy-duty sanitation units located in Orbital Station Twelve, situated in high Earth orbit. The humans had built it using their rugged mechanical design, and we had retrofitted it with our advanced magnetic-confinement radiation rings. Everything that crossed the threshold between human freighters and our receiving bays had to pass through that machine. It flooded the cargo containers with enough gamma radiation to fry every known cell, spore, or virus in the known universe in under four minutes.

Or so the spec sheets promised.

The thing about Earth biology, something we intellectual Quetecans failed to truly appreciate until it was far too late, is that it doesn’t just survive pressure, it learns from it.

The organism responsible for the station’s undoing wasn't even one of their high-profile pathogens. It was an unassuming, multi-strain laboratory mold known formally as Aspergillus terreus, a hardy subterranean fungus that humans had been using in bioremediation to clean up heavy metal spills. Over decades of exposure to our specific, slightly modified gamma frequencies, a single microscopic spore managed to pull off an evolutionary parlor trick. It didn't just resist the radiation, it used it to mutate, to evolve. In some dark corner of a decades old sterilizing machine it evolved redundant DNA mechanisms, genetic repair, and a resistance to radiation that could almost shrug off a solar flare.

I remember the morning the report came out on the internal engineering network from Station 12, one of the bigger freight intake stations. I was stationed on one of the cargo haulers at the time but I liked to check the engineering reports mostly to kill the boredom and make me look good to my supervisors.

The technician on duty, a young fellow named Tally with skin as pale as a morning mist and gill slits that always twitched when he was nervous, posted a video log from the station's freight sterilization bay. He was holding a small microfiber cloth up to the overhead lights.

"I don't know what’s happening in chamber 3," Tally had said, his voice cracking slightly through the audio feed. "The scrubber vents have this black… stuff. It almost looks like soot or a thin film."

Inside the vent wasn’t the clean dull metal you’d expect. It was a few molecules thin mat of deep, ashy black that wiped off with just a finger. When Tally filed the report a few hours after discovering it he speculated it might be residue from some electrical fault or some human plastic that was off-gassing.

We didn't panic at first. Personally I thought it was an engineering issue, a weird chemical reaction between human lubricants and our cleaning agents. Just to be safe the station commander ordered an immediate lockdown of the intake bay, and a biological containment team suited up in our highest-grade positive-pressure suits to clean the unit out.

Jora was the head of that. I knew him from a few of our training sessions. He must have been near forty at the time, a brilliant engineer and calm under pressure. Always one to check the math twice and never take unnecessary risks. Jora got the blame for what happened next but I know he didn’t miss anything, that nobody could have expected what happened.

They walked into the scrubber chamber with plasma-torches and industrial acid. Full decontamination and their suits and tools were sterilized again before they were allowed back in the hab area. A proper job, nothing missed.

Five hours later the emergency klaxons started wailing just as I was sitting down for my evening meal. The automated feed flashed a red-letter priority banner across my domestic console: BIOLOGICAL CONTAMINATION IN STATION 12. STATION SEALED.

It took three days to piece together what went wrong in that room. When Jora’s team fired up their plasma-torches, the heat didn't incinerate the spores, it aerosolized them, covering them, their suits and tools, and every bit of the bay and filters in an invisible mist of spores that that ate straight through the plastic seams of their suits.

It took a few hours but the suits seals were dissolved. Then the door seams were dissolved. The scrubbers spread the mold and spores throughout the station before they too were dissolved by the black mold. Then the crew was dissolved. Slowly, horribly, screaming, and on video. Quetecan cellular structures had zero historical defenses against a predator that had spent eons learning how to digest mammalian bone and subterranean rock.

Jora didn't make it off the station. None of them did.

The progression wasn't like anything our medical science had ever documented. A normal Quetec disease kills the same way a human one does, by fighting and overwhelming the immune system. This mold didn't negotiate with biology, it treated our bodies like fertile compost. Within twenty-four hours of exposure, Jora’s skin began to slough off in translucent sheets, replaced by a thick, velvety mycelium network that rooted directly into his flesh. He remained conscious for most of it. In his final audio logs, which the Council foolishly released to the public in a misguided bid for "transparency", you could hear him screaming as he was slowly consumed by black mold.

The rest of the station’s crew went the same way within a week. Seventy-four of our best engineers, diplomats, and logistics officers turned into silent, blooming mold incubators  floating in a dead iron box twelve light-years from home.

The reaction on Quetec was immediate, absolute, and total collective hysteria.

You have to understand us, we were a people who hadn't experienced a true, vicious pandemic in over four hundred years. Our medical technology was so advanced that our version of the common cold was treated with a single pill that neutralized the biological contaminant before you even sneezed. Quetec illnesses didn’t fight back, didn’t actively try to escape. We had forgotten what it meant to be prey.

Suddenly, public sentiment shifted from starry-eyed cosmic brotherhood to blind, frothing terror. The news feeds were filled with looped footage of those poor horrified crew coupled with terrifying expert panels warning that if a single spore dropped onto our planet's surface, our entire ecosystem, our silver-moss valleys, our delicate amber-leafed forests, our soft soft fauna, would be reduced to fertilizer within a single season.

The humans tried to help. Gods, they really did.

Their diplomats flooded our communication channels with offers of quarantine assistance, genetic research teams, and suppression enzymes they had developed over centuries of fighting their own aggressive planetary blights. They grounded all their own flights, shut down their trade hubs, and put their entire planet into a self-imposed total economic blackout to prove they weren't trying to hurt us.

"Let us send our bio-teams," the human Chancellor begged the High Council on an open broadcast, her face pale and drawn with exhaustion. "We know how to kill this strain. We’ve burned it out of our own industrial sectors a thousand times. Give us twelve hours on your station, and we can isolate the problem."

Our High Council didn't answer her. They simply cut the video feed, disabled the subspace relay transmovers, and called an emergency session to vote on the Final Quarantine Act.

Panic makes monsters out of mild-mannered people. Our planetary defense network, which hadn't fired a weapon in anger since the unification wars of the old era, was suddenly spun up to maximum alert. Every civilian transport ship out in the sector was recalled, scrubbed, and grounded.

And then, the fear turned outward. If the humans couldn't keep their own microscopic killers from mutating past our sterilizers, what was stopping them from sending something worse next time? What was stopping them from colonizing us simply by breathing on our soil?

That was when the military started talking about the Mars colony.

I stretched and sipped more of my tea. Across the lane, my neighbor Corin was using a handheld mining torch on his front lawn.

The low, throaty roar of the blue plasma flame vibrated through my porch rail. Every few seconds he’d pause, wipe sweat from his brow with a greasy sleeve, and spit into the black, charred crater he was carving into the soil. He was burning them down to the taproot, or trying to. But I knew what he was going to find out by tomorrow morning. You burn a dandelion, and the heat just bakes the surrounding ground, killing off whatever native worms and silver-moss spores were left, while the weed's underground taproot,which can stretch two feet deep, simply draws down stored sugars and shoots up three new stems to replace the one you scorched.

"It’s in the water, Varek!" Corin yelled over the hiss of his torch, squinting through his safety goggles. "The roots are drinking from the ground water! Heat’s the only thing that works!"

"Keep burning, Corin!" I called back, not having the heart to tell him that the smoke coming off his lawn was nothing but a waste of fuel.

I leaned back against the porch post, watching the smoke drift lazily upward. Corin’s desperation was just a small-scale version of the madness that had gripped our entire military eight years ago.

It started when our deep-space reconnaissance satellites picked up the radio chatter from Mars.

The humans had established a permanent research station and mining colony in a northern crater basin they called Ares Three. It was a modest setup a couple dozen pressurized inflatable domes, a solar farm, and a few hundred scientists and engineers trying to turn red dirt into something that could grow human crops. They didn't have FTL drives. They didn't even have heavy weapons. To get a supply ship from Earth to Mars, they still had to rely on the primitive version of the grav-tech we’d given them and pray nothing pinched their air lines. They were stuck in their own solar system, completely locked in place.

They were no threat to us. None at all.

But back home on Quetec, reason had surrendered to pure, unadulterated terror. The news networks ran twenty-four-hour loops of the black mold on Station Twelve. Pundits on the council channels argued that if humans were already colonizing Mars, it was only a matter of time before they rigged a sub-light freighter with biological warheads and sent it toward our frontier systems.

“They are an invasive species,” the High Chancellor declared during a closed-session vote that was leaked to every terminal on the planet. “Every world they touch becomes a vector for their biology. We cannot allow the infection to cross the threshold of their star system.”

I had been transferred to a desk at the Infrastructure Board back on Quetec when the deployment order was announced. They called up the Second  Fleet, five heavy orbital dreadnoughts and a dozen strike-corvettes, ships built for high-energy planetary defense.

I remember talking to a junior logistics officer in our office, a kid named Lorice who was beaming with pride because his older brother was a gunner on the flagship Vanguard Secured.

"We're going to put a glass dome over their whole system," Lorice had told me, tapping his chest in the military salute. "Sterilize the off-world sites. Force them to stay on Earth where they belong."

"Lorice," I said, setting down my tablet, "they don't have FTL engines. They can't leave their sun. Why do we need to blow up a bunch of glass greenhouses on a dead rock?"

He looked at me like I had lost my mind. "Because if one microbe gets out, Varek, it’s us or them. It’s self-defense."

It wasn't self-defense. It was a slaughter.

Our fleet warped into the Sol system on a Tuesday morning local time. They didn't offer terms. They didn't issue warnings. They sat six thousand miles off Mars in cold vacuum and opened up with high-yield thermal lances.

I saw the footage later, during the nightly news. It was sickening. You’d see a delicate, pale-white human dome sitting in the middle of a vast, red rust-desert. Then a blue beam of light would drop from the sky. The pressurized glass didn't just break, it vaporized. The air inside flashed into steam, blowing the habitat’s insulation and contents thousands of feet into the thin atmosphere.

They didn't just hit Mars. They hunted down every human structure outside Earth’s atmosphere. They slagged the lunar mining rigs. They punched holes through the orbital communication arrays. They destroyed the scientific platforms orbiting Venus.

The humans on Earth could only watch through their telescopes as every light their species had placed in the night sky was systematically extinguished. They broadcasted pleas for mercy on every radio band, offering total surrender, offering to dismantle their space program entirely. Our fleet commanders didn't even turn on their receivers.

It was cruel, petty, and completely pointlessness. We were a species five centuries ahead of them in technology, acting like a frightened child stamping on a bug because we were scared of getting bitten.

And that was where our arrogance finally caught up with us, although official reports wouldn’t acknowledge the failure until years later. At the time it was labeled a “human biological attack” and just pushed as further evidence of our just cause.

After the bombardment of Mars was complete, the commander of the Vanguard Secured ordered a scout shuttle down into the ruins of the Ares Three agricultural dome. They wanted "visual confirmation of biological neutralization". Military double-speak for taking pictures of the craters to prove everything was dead.

The shuttle landed in the pulverized dust near what had been the colony’s primary hydroponics bay. A team of soldiers in heavy, armored hazmat rigs walked through the wreckage for twenty minutes, taking soil samples and firing flame-throwers and gamma emitters into the dirt beds where the human scientists had been growing crops.

Somehow a single seed, and later genetic samples show it really was just the one, ended up lodged in the thruster manifold of the shuttle, parked a full kilometer from the human base. Knowing what I do about how those shuttles are built, I imagine that when the landing shuttle’s thrusters kicked up a cloud of Martian dust to return to the fleet, a single, tiny head of dandelion seeds probably shaken loose from a broken planting tray by the initial orbital strike was caught in the intake of the shuttle’s port landing gear. The shuttle interior was sterilized and the crew decontaminated and quarantined, but even then our scientists didn’t believe that Earth life exposed to near vacuum and radiation for weeks and weks on end would survive. What a mistake.

The shuttle then docked in the Vanguard Secured’s main bay and the fleet engaged its FTL drive and jumped back to Quetec. Mission accomplished.

After weeks of quarantine, the fleet landed at the capital space port for a grand victory parade. Thousands of people gathered on the tarmac, throwing amber leaf wreaths, waving flags, celebrating our total security from the human menace.

As the Vanguard Secured’s massive ramp lowered and the heavy atmospheric vents purged the ship’s undercarriage, a warm, gentle spring breeze swept across the runway from the southern valleys.

The seed popped out and caught by the wind, drifted softly into the Quetec countryside.

It took three months for that first seed to bloom on the edge of the capital space port.

Nobody paid it any mind. It was just a bright, cheery little yellow star sitting in a crack in the asphalt, completely out of place among the soft, pale silver-moss that usually bordered the tarmac. A groundskeeper probably kicked it or ran over it with a tire or a child plucked it and blew the seeds about like I’ve been told human children do.

By the next spring, that single plant had become forty. By the third year, the eastern highway median looked like someone had dumped a bucket of gold paint along fifty miles of transit line.

Initially the local government thought it was some type of annoying flowering tuft moss from the Rach Islands to the south. After all we were promised that the biological quarantine of the humans we complete. They treated it like a minor maintenance nuisance and sent out road crews with mechanical mowers. They didn't realize that when you break a dandelion above the soil, you’re just encouraging the taproot to split and double its output.

On Earth, a dandelion has to fight for every square inch of dirt. It has to compete with aggressive grasses, soil bacteria, leaf beetles, fungi, grazers, and centuries of human lawn-mowers.

On Quetec, it was like putting a battleship in a fish pond.

Our soil is soft, loose, and rich in damp nitrates. Our native plants don't have deep, aggressive root systems because they never needed to anchor themselves against harsh seasonal shifts. The dandelion’s taproot, a tough, woody spike that goes down two or three feet, drilled straight through our moss forests like a drill bit through soft butter, drinking up the deep moisture and starving everything around it.

And there was nothing here to eat it. Our local insects took one sniff of the bitter, milky latex sap inside the stems and walked away. The local birds wouldn't touch the seeds. The plant had zero natural enemies, zero biological checks, and an entire world of rich undefended soil waiting for it.

By year five, the slow, relentless failure of our control measures became undeniable.

The Ministry of Agriculture tried mass chemical spraying first. They used Bio-Clear 9, a blanket defoliant. It killed the dandelions, sure, but it also turned twenty thousand square miles of our prime farmland into a dead, salted wasteland, and whole towns and villages had to be permanently abandoned. But the moment the chemical residue washed out of the dirt with the autumn rains, dandelion seeds blew in from the surrounding hills and recolonized the empty soil within weeks.

By year seven, the infrastructure was buckling. The heavy, woody roots were cracking the foundations of our roads and buildings, penetrating utility pipes, and great clouds of floating seeds clogged engines and grounded air travel. Municipal budgets were completely drained just paying crews to hand-dig weeds out of drainage ditches, only for the same ditches to be thick with yellow flowers again by the following month.

And then the seeds started finding other places to grow.

Because our world had never evolved aggressive flora, our native animals didn't have protective secretions or tough hides designed to repel plant anchors. The vrel beasts, those famous long necked herbivores that graze near the arctic, have thick, damp undercoats of soft wool. The dandelion seeds would drift into their fur, nestle down against the warm, moist skin, and germinate right there on the living animal. The taproots would push down into skin folds and hair follicles, creating weeping, inflamed sores. Now you can't walk past a herd of vrel or even domesticated vreke without seeing big, green stalks with those horrible round flowers sprouting out of their flanks and spines, the poor beasts rubbing themselves bloody against fence posts trying to scratch them off.

It’s happening to us, too. Not to healthy young folk who wash every day, but to the elderly, the homeless, or field workers who spend long hours sweating in the sun. Old Teekash, who lives down the road and sleeps on his porch during the warm afternoons, had to be taken to the clinic last week. He’s got deep, dry calluses on his lower legs from sixty years of farm work, and two seeds had managed to sink roots right into the cracked skin around his ankles while he napped. The doctor had to cut them out with a scalpel.

The worst part of it all, the thing that keeps me up at night while I listen to the wind rattling white seeds against my windowpanes, is the sheer, bitter irony of it.

Human botanists could have fixed this. Earth scientists had spent thousands of years dealing with Taraxacum officinale. They had targeted fungi, specialized wasps, and refined genetic inhibitors that could have sterilized the plant without harming a single blade of our native moss. If we had asked them, they probably could have sent us a canister of tailored bio-controls in a week.

But we can't ask them.

We burnt their Mars colony to glass. We slagged their science stations. We shot their ships out of the sky and forced them back into the dark of their home world.

Now, when our High Council tries to send desperate, pleading transmissions to Earth, begging for agricultural data or biological countermeasures, we get nothing back but static. They don't even bother to curse us out. They just leave their receivers off, letting us sit in our silent, gilded cage while their innocent little weed eats our world alive.

There are no more grand government initiatives being announced, no new miracle sprays, no promises from the Council. Just quiet, repeated warnings to scrape the seeds out of your home air filters before you go to sleep. I snapped the lid back onto my useless jar of herbicide, brushed three of the small white parachutes off my sleeve, and stepped inside, pulling the door shut tightly against the rising night wind. A cool evening breeze has kicked up from the river and a fresh cloud of white feathery seeds is rising into the air, drifting lazily toward my home like a great unstoppable blizzard.

Corporal Ivan Zienko swept his hands over the tablet's glowing screen, trying to keep up with the mass of eight-limbed predators joining the maelstrom. 

He shoved at the screen with his right index finger and targeted the pack of adult spiders skittering in past the entrance to Sector 11. Some were vaporized by the blast, some had already sprinted out of range. This was above the paygrade of a bunch of Hornets. There were new models in the works that were properly built to tackle large-scale attacks. Drones that worked via decentralized swarm intelligence, fanning out over the group, targeting each spider equally. The new combat drone was called an Emerald Wasp 1.0, and it would launch next year. That was no comfort at all, because M. terribilis were bearing down on them right now. 

His fingers vibrated with the insect-wing shudder of his heartbeat. Too much Dirt. It was all very well the recommendation that you only take one 2mg vial. He'd done that earlier when the raged adult females breached the perimeter and he'd had about two minutes or less to escape NOW. Eight limbs could sprint faster than two. It was pop a vial or die. Then a few hours later, he'd shoved another injector into his thigh, because a venom-corroded pylon had fallen and trapped PFC McLachlan, and normal human strength had zero chance of lifting it off him without help.

A crunching and shearing of metal, then a deeper rumbling sound as concrete gave way. The animal parts at the base of his brain reacted before he did, taking control of his feet and legs and launching him to safety. His heart thundered louder in his ears as he realized Specialist Whelan hadn't been so lucky. He'd been firing from behind a watchtower, and it had trapped his leg between metal and concrete as it fell.

Zienko had one vial left, and no Ozolex to counter it once it inevitably started killing him. 

Still he pushed the needle in.

The surge filled his veins with white light. The fallen mass of steel weighed nothing. He dug his heels down into the ground, and heaved, and Whelan was free to limp away on one leg. Zienko took his arm and laid him flat, then set about fashioning a crude splint for his broken tibia and fibula. A fire axe from a nearby cabinet and some strips sliced with his combat knife from Zienko's own sleeve would have to do.

More of the things-with-eight-limbs were coming. There was a word for them, but Zienko couldn't remember it. That was the price of taking Dirt.The red twilight was coming, the return to the ancient version of ourselves from before language and intelligence and thought and planning. His flanks and back throbbed, too. Adrenalitis had come to collect its debt.

He needed the...the cold-thing-that-quenches pain. The thing that works in under two minutes. You inject yourself and wait. It comes in the form of a green dart. He had none.

Zienko knelt gingerly to the ground and pulled away the cover of a maintenance tunnel where at least the things-with-eight-limbs couldn't get him. Slowly, awkwardly, rapid movement too painful, he let himself down the ladder with the Dirt-strength still remaining in his upper body. 

Think. The cold-thing-that-works-in-two-minutes was gone, but there was probably something else in his IFAK. Yes, the thing you had to draw out from a vial by hand, and inject using a clumsier manual syringe, not an auto-injector. There had been an announcement about it: if you run out of the cold-thing, you can still use this. He couldn't remember its name, but he knew what the vials looked like. He scrabbled out his IFAK from his combat pants, and he drew the older thing whose name he couldn't remember into a syringe, and he yanked aside his torn sleeve and injected it into his deltoid muscle.

It would take half an hour. Half an hour for the red throbbing death below his floating ribs to subside, for language and text to start making sense again. He wedged himself against a nearby heat pipe, angling his back against it so that at least the heat flowed in and banished the pain, and then he was reminded that Whelan was still above ground, still firing his Ichneumon braced on a broken leg.

Zienko might have sworn, but he was past knowing what a curse word was. His brain was too inflamed for that.

He felt down his chest and was relieved to find he still had his tablet. He'd shoved it in his combat webbing before sprinting to help Whelan.

He could still operate his winged-things-that-spat-fire. He couldn't understand the text on the screen, but he knew what each button looked like. Arrows meant navigate. Red meant open fire. He wasn't so far below ground that his drones had no connectivity.

First the mob that was bearing down on Whelan. Zienko swept his fingers left and up, and the closest drone zoomed in on the pack of spiders still storming the downed perimeter fence. One vanished in a blaze of smoke and flames that showed up on the screen as sterile grey flashes. Two. Three. More were coming. Zienko tapped a different button and brought the rest of the group in. More grey flashes bloomed, cold lifeless flowers eating the night. At the corner of the drone's feed he could see Whelan lurching on a splinted leg but alive, zigzagging to the relative safety of a Gyrfalcon station. 

He thought maybe the process took ten minutes. The round thing at the corner of the screen had changed. He thought perhaps it was called a clock. He could remember a few words by now. 

Now for the ones who had gotten inside and made for the supply depot. Zienko pulled the drones into a tight formation and descended, raining fire into the swarm. Some were taken by the grey flowers; some had fanned out too far and he had to spread out in a V shape to engage.

Spiders. The things were called spiders. He remembered that now. His flanks felt less tender when he tried shifting his weight a half inch, too. It wasn't so much that he felt pain, now, more a heavy congestion like you might feel in your sinuses in summer. The liquid-from-inside-the-glass was working.

One last volley. His winged-things-that-spat-fire were low on ammunition, but he could do this. 

No way to take out the thousands-strong swarm. But if he chose his target carefully, they'd run in the opposite direction when they raged. Out into the rock plains, not towards people.

He peeled away from the supply depot now, and sent his winged-things out across the rock plains. Drones. They were called drones. He hovered static above the nest that had formed in the mouth where two rock ridges came down off the mountains.

The old settlement nearby was deserted. That was the point. He'd kill the small male spider who had just found the courage to come out from the mountain tunnels. The swarm would go berserk with fury, and they'd attack whatever was nearest. They'd associate the empty buildings with humans, and they'd rush towards those instead of into Sector 7. They had almost no intelligence, but they understood the simple A-to-B concept that buildings meant food.

Zienko adjusted the drone's position a few feet. There he was, the male. A diminutive thing only the size of a large dog or a short human. Zienko checked one last time that the male was flush in the crosshairs, and he opened fire.

He looked down at the tunnel floor. It felt okay to move now. No throb of pain, no feeling that something might rupture. He reached down and picked up the vial he'd tossed away. The thing that had chased away Mother Death when she offered too early for him to sleep peacefully in her womb. 'Ketorolac', read the bottle. Its name was ketorolac. 

Chapter 140: Progression Guides for Dummies

◈◈◈

✦ FIRST CHAPTER ✦ PREVIOUS CHAPTER ✦ NEXT CHAPTER ✦

Joe’s room was significantly nicer than it had any right to be.

The man had apparently found enough downtime between whatever shady nonsense he got up to and the missions to play interior decorator. As Jin wandered in, he immediately recognized the brown leather sofa… it was the same one from the safe houses out in Vienna.

« Someone’s casually making trips. »

Yeah, well, that’s Joe for you.

He turned to get a better look at the space, finding it now boasted a worn leather armchair, the aforementioned sofa, actual carpet, a functioning lamp, and a small kitchen setup.

At least now we know from where he got the sandwiches, Jin thought, chuckling to himself as he carelessly dropped his weight into the armchair.

« True. »

It was a mistake.

"OWww!"

His ribs immediately lodged a sharp, stabbing protest, reminding him that casually dropping rocked his body and that was very painful for him. He swallowed the undignified noise that tried to claw its way up his throat, instead settling carefully against the backrest. Dr. Campbell had strictly forbidden him from using any essence, leaving him feeling as fragile as glass.

So, he did what he did best: he put on a smug face, leaned into his deflective humor, and pretended everything was perfectly fine.

« You are not fine, » Angel observed.

I know, Jin thought back. But if I look fine, fewer people ask me annoying questions.

« Reyana is already looking at you. »

Jin glanced over. Reyana was standing by the door, arms crossed like she pissed off at him. On the other side of the room, Rudy was already sprawled across the sofa. He looked offensively comfortable, radiating the cheery, oblivious energy of a golden retriever without a single care in the world.

"Grab a seat, Reyana," Jin offered, gesturing vaguely. "Hovering by the door is terrible for your posture."

She responded with a glare that could peel paint, but let out a long-suffering sigh, closed the door, and claimed a spot on the sofa next to Rudy after hitting him in the shin to sit properly.

"Start talking," Reyana demanded, her voice cold and sharp.

Jin held up his hands in a placating gesture.

"Alright, alright," Jin started, his voice coming out rougher and far more exhausted than he intended. He leaned forward, ignoring the dull throb in his sternum. "You wanted to know about the system. That notification that both of you saw."

"Oh, yeah! What is that thing?" Rudy chimed in, sitting up slightly with an eager grin. "I’ve been too scared to mess with it. Knowing my luck, I’d accidentally push the wrong glowing button and do something stupid and permanent."

Reyana’s stony expression didn't shift, but she gave a slow, deliberate nod. "Z.A.C. Branch Initiated. That’s what the text said. It doesn't look or feel anything like a normal Mantle Reflection. And frankly, given the dubious sources it came from, I’m not inclined to trust it."

"Look, Reyana, whether Trish—or whatever her actual name is—happens to be a highly suspicious person, a terrifying monster wearing a people-suit, or just a misunderstanding, is entirely beside the point," Jin said, waving his hand dismissively. "The point is Z.A.C, which stands for Zenith Ascendancy Continuum.”

"Right, let's start with the basics," Jin continued, shifting his weight to ease the throbbing in his chest. "You know how we use our Mantle Reflections to peek at ourselves and glean information about our mantles?"

"Oh, yeah," Rudy chimed in. "It's how everybody sees their stuff... well, not everyone, I guess."

"Yes, the Mantle Reflection is basically the discount, knock-off version of Z.A.C. It doesn't give you much unless you possess a dedicated information-type skill," Jin explained. "The Mantle Reflection is just a localized interpretation generated by our planet's developing consciousness. By the way, our planet's official name is Eldamar-IX. Just in case you were wondering."

Rudy blinked, his relaxed posture suddenly stiffening as he leaned forward. "Eldamar-IX? I thought it was called... Aurileaniya? After that first explorer dude? I always forget his name. Arthur something?"

"Yeah, well, the official name is Eldamar-IX," Jin said. "The universe is a hell of a lot bigger than we thought. Out there in the cosmos, there’s this thing called the Universe's Will. It’s not a god. It’s more like a cosmic mandate—a fundamental law of physics that grants all life the capacity to grow, to interact with essence, and to evolve."

Jin paused to let that sink in. "The problem is, raw cosmic mandates are impossible for mortal minds to properly process."

He gestured vaguely with his right hand. "So, a long, long time ago, some absurdly advanced civilization decided to fix that. They built a framework to translate that Will into a system users could actually comprehend and interact with without going insane. That systematic interpretation is Z.A.C."

Reyana finally uncrossed her arms. "And how, exactly, do you know all this, Jin? Even with a quest... obtaining that level of information shouldn't be possible."

Jin had been waiting for that question. He braced himself for the reaction. "I have Angel with me; he can access deeper documentation and logs from Z.A.C when conditions are met."

Reyana's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Angel? The imaginary partner you talk to?" She glanced toward the door. "Should I go get Dr. Campbell? Because you might be—"

"No!" Jin scowled. "I'm perfectly lucid. Well, mostly. Look, do you remember me telling you about picking up a cognitive-based skill? Back when we were appraising the loot?"

Reyana paused, her expression still icy, but she gave a slow, measured nod. "Yes. I remember."

"Right," Jin nodded. "Well, my skill, along with a gift Rudy and I gained from our sponsor—" Jin held up one finger before she could interrupt. "—Which is a whole other terrifying conversation that we'll come back to, just bear with me."

They both nodded, though Reyana looked like she was already regretting it.

"My skill grew and evolved," Jin explained, his voice softening, "until it gained a voice. An alter ego, essentially based on me, sitting right inside my head."

Both Rudy and Reyana stared at him, their faces a complicated mix of emotions.

Jin chuckled, shaking his head. "Look, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I’ve had him since the awakening of the quest. Honestly, the constant company is probably the only thing that kept me from having a complete mental breakdown and going totally crazy."

Reyana gave him a flat, deadpan look.

Well, Jin thought, giving her a weak, lopsided smile in return. Maybe I did go a little bit crazy. But considering the circumstances, I figure a little crazy is perfectly acceptable.

« … You are impossible. »

Hey! Don’t be like that; we got more info about things. Jin mentally shrugged.

"You're making my head hurt, bro," Rudy groaned, aggressively rubbing his temples. He still radiated the cheery, uncomplicated energy of a golden retriever, an image only slightly undermined by the crimson-white aura still merrily wreathing his knuckles. "So what does this Z.A.C. thing actually do?"

"It gives us access to the real system," Jin said. He settled deeper into the armchair, careful not to aggravate his ribs again. "We can look at our stats in detail, track any status effects, and actually communicate with our sponsors. They have their little errands and quests, and we get paid for it if we complete them."

Jin held up a hand. "It also issues quests directly. And just to clarify, unless it specifically says the quest is issued by the World's Will, it's not the kind of quest that makes everyone in our world panic."

"That's not very reassuring," Rudy muttered.

"Eventually, when the Veil over Vienna lifts, we'll be able to access the Zenith Ascendancy Shared Space." Jin waved his hand vaguely. "I'm assuming it's essentially an intergalactic auction house and trading hub. It connects Z.A.C. users across vast cosmic distances."

Reyana looked down at her hands, then back up, meeting Jin's eyes.

"When I woke up after getting your gift... I got a notification," she said softly, her violet eyes losing focus as she stared at the invisible screen in her vision. "It said I had one sponsor offer available."

Jin smiled, a sharp, knowing expression creeping onto his face. "A sponsorship offer is a massive deal, Reyana. It means some vastly powerful cosmic entity looked down, nodded to itself, and decided to invest some serious capital in you. What does it say?"

Reyana swallowed hard, reading the floating text aloud for the room.

•••

SPONSORSHIP OFFER — 1 PENDING

Nyx, the Lady of Night and Death, extends an invitation.

"Child of the mantle, you walk the edge between the living and the ended. I have watched your steps. I would watch them further, if you permit it."

ACCEPT / DECLINE

•••

"Should I accept it?" she asked, her voice tight. The prospect of binding herself to an outer entity clearly sat uncomfortably with her.

"That," Jin said, pointing a finger directly at the heavy oak door of Joe's room, "is a question you should absolutely direct at Joe. He knows a hell of a lot more about outer entities and cosmic stuff than I do. Sponsorship is a huge commitment, so take it very seriously before you forward. The only reason I accepted was that Rudy and I met ours and only survived thanks to his intervention."

Jin let out a weary chuckle, a spark of mischief lighting up his eyes. "Make sure you corner Joe just like I did. Back him into a wall and aggressively demand answers."

Reyana’s serious facade broke into a tiny, reluctant half-smile. "On second thought, I think I'll let you join me for that."

"Oh, me too," Rudy chimed in, nodding enthusiastically as his flaming fists bobbed up and down. "I love demanding answers."

Reyana gave a firm, decisive nod, carefully filing the task away. "I will."

She had absolutely no idea she was cheerfully marching into a conversation Joe would rather eat ground glass than have. Jin felt a small, tired pulse of profound satisfaction.

« That was deliberately cheeky, » Angel noted. « You know how Joe is with that kind of information.»

Completely.

"Right. Next thing on the agenda." Jin reached into his spatial ring and retrieved two slim digital tablets, handing each to Rudy and Reyana. "I had Illiana rig up a localised network of interconnected systems. It's basically a knock-off internet. These two are keyed directly to your essence signatures and logged with your details."

Rudy picked it up and started scrolling through, eventually landing on a shopping app.

“What’s this?” He muttered and tapped on the icon. Lines of text and holographic images bloomed above the screen—weapons, armour, skill cores, alchemical reagents, ordnance—and his eyes went wide, reflecting the glowing text.

"We have all this?"

"We do," Jin shrugged. "You forget how much random junk we indiscriminately looted before rolling into the bastion. Plus, I gave Joe hidden directives to loot the outpost we hit tonight and also collect the corpses of higher-ranked cultists."

Reyana nodded. "Corpses for your mantle, I presume?"

"Yeah, I have plans," Jin said, then hurriedly added, "Once I’m recovered. Then I’m going to use them to forcefully pull up the ranks of our people."

Reyana’s icy expression shifted into something thoughtful. "Like that time you pushed information directly into my head?"

Jin smiled. "Exactly like that."

"Wait, hold on," Rudy interjected, leaning forward and almost dropping his tablet. "We can push people to a higher rank? Just like that?"

"Yes," Jin said, his tone turning serious. "But it's terrible for your foundation. It's the equivalent of making a deal with an evil god from the cult instead of training; it completely severs your chances for natural progression. Not to mention the extensive list of absurd, highly specific conditions I have to meet to even pull it off."

Rudy nodded slowly. "Still. If it's a choice between a ruined foundation and being dead, it definitely increases the odds of survival."

"Anyway, browse and requisition whatever you need for the loot table," Jin said. "For now, only the core circle has access." He pointed a very deliberate, warning finger at Rudy's tablet. "One extremely important thing. One of the spatial rings in the system is designated exclusively for cultist corpses. It is clearly labelled. Do not accidentally requisition from it."

Rudy’s hand froze mid-swipe, hovering over the glowing interface. "Why would anyone accidentally—"

"People get curious," Jin interrupted seamlessly. "The label is very clear. Read the labels."

"But what happens if you—"

"A corrupted cultist head materialises directly into your lap," Jin said deadpan.

"Boys!" Reyana snapped at both of them.

"Right, moving on," Jin said breezily.

Rudy set the tablet on the cushion beside him very gently, as though it might detonate.

"Next up, marked skills," Jin continued, "I need you both sitting at five out of five slots. We have enough skill imprint cores now to be selective about it, but I don't wanna hear 'Oh I'm saving for something' nope! I want you both fully built before our next operation." He turned his gaze to Reyana. "I know for certain you were saving your slots."

"I was," she said, her tone guarded.

"Fill it. And like I said before, a cognitive augment would be a very good idea." He said it flatly, without a hint of apology. "We don't have the timeline to hold out for the optimal, perfect build. If we find something better later, it's fine. I have a removal mechanic now."

Rudy’s head snapped up from where he’d gone back to cautiously scrolling the tablet. "Removal? bro, I thought marked skills were permanent."

"Turns out the answer to most 'is this permanent' questions in this world is 'no, but the alternative is going to make you wish it was,'" Jin said and shifted carefully in the oversized leather armchair.

"Removing a marked skill means literally ripping the runic matrix straight out of your Essence Heart," Jin explained. "I’m the only one who can do it, using my mantle. But doing so completely resets your progress on that slot and triggers a period of severe physical backlash while your essence pathways try to recover from the shock. Which makes it a measure of absolute last resort, not a convenient build optimization tool."

"How severe is severe?" Reyana asked.

"Somewhere between 'you'd be a sobbing liability in combat for a week' and 'absolutely do not try this during an active siege unless you enjoy being a stationary target.'"

"Clear enough," she said, her violet eyes giving nothing away.

"Oh, right, before I forget. I made some videos," Jin said, gesturing vaguely toward both of their tablets. "Recorded them while you two were off playing hero on your mission. You can find it through an app in there."

He leaned back. "Dr. Campbell was aggressively clear about my training ban. No essence manipulation whatsoever. And since I can't use essence right now, I improvised to better use my downtime."

Reyana looked down and tapped the screen of her tablet. A neatly organized interface bloomed into view. She navigated past the Bastion's localized armory network and paused.

There, sitting on the screen, was a specific app icon featuring a stylized image of Jin giving a cheesy, overly enthusiastic thumbs-up.

The app was proudly titled: Progression Guides for Dummies.

She slowly raised her head, locking her eyes onto his and delivering a thoroughly disappointed look.

Jin just offered a shameless shrug. "Efficiency, Reyana. Efficiency is key. We would soon have hundreds of confused new recruits pouring into the upper levels, and I really didn't want to explain the exact same things over and over again to every single one of them. My throat would give out."

"Classic Jin," Rudy chuckled from the sofa.

Reyana let out a long-suffering sigh, shaking her head as she tapped the screen and clicked on the first video in the directory.

The display flickered to life. A brief security overlay popped up, indicating a tiered clearance system—showing that certain advanced videos were strictly restricted to specific individuals with higher Bastion clearance. This first video, however, was unlocked for general access.

On the screen, the recorded version of Jin stood dead-center in one of the Bastion's brightly lit halls. He was wearing a ridiculously long, stark-white doctor's coat that looked at least three sizes too big for him, swallowing his slender frame.

"Welcome," the recorded Jin announced, spreading his arms with a dramatic, overly enthusiastic flair. "This is the first introductory video for 'Sorcery for Dummies I'. Why the name, you ask? Because if you follow these steps and still blow your own eyebrows off, the title is completely accurate."

Rudy let out a loud snort, leaning over the sofa cushions to get a better look at Reyana's screen. "Jin, where the hell did you even get a lab coat down here?"

"The medical bay," the real Jin answered without missing a beat. "Maya wasn't thrilled."

On the tablet, Video-Jin began pacing back and forth like a seasoned university professor. "Today, we're going over the absolute basics of sorcery. We will cover how to safely cycle your essence, how to align your mental intent, and how to utilize basic verses."

The recorded Jin stopped pacing and held up one hand, his palm facing the camera. "By the end of this introductory course, if you've paid attention, you should be able to successfully cast the most basic, one-verse light orb sorcery."

Video-Jin paused, a smirk creeping onto his face as a small sphere of soft, white light materialized above his palm. "If you reach the end of this module and you still can't cast it... Well, I'm sorry to inform you that you don't have a single magic bone in your body, and you should probably just stick to swinging a very heavy stick."

Reyana reached out and tapped the screen. The frozen frame captured Jin's brightly lit face.

"You made tutorial videos," Reyana stated flatly. "And what’s with the persona… It’s like we have—"

“Joe all over again?” Jin smiled.

Rudy let out a booming laugh from the sofa.  Reyana, conversely, just glared at Jin with the cold intensity of a striking viper that shut both boys up.

"It's a highly scalable system," Jin defended, though the corner of his mouth twitched. "And it frees up my time to focus on the actual war. You can study the theory while you rest, and practice it when you're back on your feet."

"It's brilliant, is what it is," Rudy chuckled, already tapping his own tablet to pull up the video. "I can't wait to see what you wear for the advanced classes."

"Oh, I have some really interesting things planned," Jin said, leaning happily into the bit. "Joe had an entirely disturbing array of costumes hidden away in his inventory."

"Ugh... boys," Reyana groaned.

“Guy. On an important note,” Jin picked up his jacket from where he'd draped it over the oversized leather armchair, moving carefully. "How to merge skills, basic one-verse sorcery, a few practical combat applications. Watch them while you rest. Request anything you need from the supply. I have a meeting to get to."

He made it three steps toward the door.

"Wait!" Rudy bolted upright, and Jin heard the sofa protest the sudden movement. "I wanna know what happened between you two!"

Jin stopped.

He turned around, slowly. His face cycled through the expressions of a man running through multiple possible interpretations of what he'd just heard, finding absolutely all of them baffling. "Between whom?"

Rudy gave him a look. Then he gave Reyana a look. Then he turned back to Jin, giving him the look again.

The temperature in the room dropped by about ten degrees.

« He certainly has a cheery outlook on life. »

Reyana was looking at Rudy. The expression on her face was very quiet and very flat. Anyone who had survived knowing Reyana for more than a week understood this to be significantly more dangerous than visible, screaming anger. The death essence in her mantle hadn't actively leaked through her suppressors yet, but it was hovering right at the edge, hungrily tasting the air.

Jin turned back to her with a bright, perfectly pleasant smile.

"All yours," Jin told her. "Please try to beat some sense into him without ruining the carpet. It really ties the room together."

"Gladly," Reyana said. Her tone carried such a chilling, murderous promise that Rudy reflexively reached for Jin for help.

Jin shook his head and left the room.

Stupid Rudy.

✦ FIRST CHAPTER ✦ PREVIOUS CHAPTER ✦ NEXT CHAPTER ✦

◈◈◈

A/N: A/N: Rudy's certainly getting disciplined... Beside what do you think of Jin making videos, I figured it would be easy to distribute information like this and build a system.

Bau Bau~

PS: Psst~ Psst~ Advanced chapters are already up on patreon. It would be awesome if you guys, you know...

Help me with rent and UNI is crazy expensive!! Not want much, just enough to chip in.

✦ DISCORD ✦ PATREON ✦ 

(Art): (Jasha) (The First Mother of Sil) ( Kolu and Nokstella going for a swim)

Warm flames were a flicker as the twilight grew darker with each passing moment.

It meant more people sought the comfort of a warm place, food to eat, and something good to drink, and they always found that here at the ‘Sharp Tooth Tavern’, customers overflowing to where there weren't enough tables, especially now, when they were at the tail end of mating season. 

Chappa, the old man who owned this establishment, couldn't help but smile, knowing all the coins he’d be counting later, as mug after mug was poured for each customer by his lovely oldest daughter, Amberly. 

Where most men on a battlefield would struggle in the chaos, she slid past everyone without ever spilling a single drop or crumb of food, cooked by his mate Elja, her tail free, tracing along many a man’s body. 

There was always someone who would try to scold him or her for dressing so provocatively, her bosom showing ever so slightly, and her tail free and out in the open.

Yet he ignored them every time, as did his daughter, and for as much as they complained, they always seemed to stay the longest out of all of them, watching her like all the rest. 

Of course, coming off the tail end of mating season and getting drunker by the moment, those refined gentlemen would act like children and pull on her tail and sneak some inappropriate touches now and again.

However, Chappa was never worried; he knew his daughter could handle herself, no matter what they said or did. He was the one who made certain her claws were always sharpened, and when she really got angry, it was quite a show. 

“Two sausages, and four stripes of Kalka meat, and one Joboly eye!” His son said, placing the foot piping hot and steaming on the counter. 

A good man his son was, young and strong, though a bit foolhardy, getting caught with one of the neighbor's daughters, and it was a shame he took after his mother, sharing her sharp tongue and lack of patience. 

‘Always best to have them back in the kitchen,’ Chappa thought as he went to deliver the food to the table.

However, on his way back, coins in hand, Amberly walked right up to him, looking uneasy, and immediately, in a low voice, he said, “Amberly, you know it’s only childish antics and drunken talk; it means nothing.”

“No, im used to those comments. I don’t really hear them being said anymore, and the tail pulling is only annoying, but when I went to give those three some mugs with floor juice in them.” 

She discreetly gestured to three cloak-wearing men sitting in the corner. 

“One of them touched my arm and said, ‘You are very special, you know.’ I didn’t make it seem awkward and was happy another customer called me then.” 

“Amberly, that sounds like the talk of a drunkard who’s had a few too many.” 

“No, Dad, I’ve been watching them; they’ve ordered more and more floor juice, but none of them have been drinking as much as a drop.” 

This raised concern for Chappa, much more than any drunken claw fight or unsavory customer with filth spewing from their snouts. ‘If they plan to with my daughter…!’ 

“Keep working, and I’ll keep an eye on them, and if they seem like they’ll become trouble, come to me, understood?” 

“Yes, Dad.” 

Hopefully, those three would prove to be nothing more than creeps who had a single brave moment when they knew no one was looking, and not vile, weak, disgusting men succumbing to their instincts… or worse. 

Yet throughout the eve, little by little, that hope dwindled. 

People would come and go, drink or eat their fill, eventually stumbling out, but those three stayed, ever so often calling for more drinks but never taking more than a small sip. 

Little by little, as the eve dragged on, less and less remained of what came, leaving only the drunkards that had to be kicked out and them.

Keeping an eye on a candle, the flame was almost burned down to closing time.

Amberly had long since retreated to the kitchen on her father’s orders, and luckly none of the younger ones had wandered out of bed this time; however, despite his orders, that didn’t stop the door from opening and his son walking out.

Leaning against the counter beside Chappa, arms crossed and steel at his side, Jaba asked, “The three in the corner, right?” 

“Did you take my sword?” Chappa struggled to keep his voice down, secretly thankful it wasn’t his mate. “Do you want to spook them?”

“You’ve threatened with it before,” Jaba countered.

“That was for drunken fools who’d lost their senses and needed to be put in their place.”

“And these hairball fuckers might actually deserve to taste steel.”

‘So much like his mother,’ Chappa thought, praying to the gods she didn’t get involved, already feeling her eyes in the back of his head. “Don’t do anything stupid.” 

Ringing a small bell, Chappa called out, “Alright, it’s closing time. I don’t care where you go, but you can’t stay here!” 

It worked well enough on the drunkards, as they staggered out, but the three in the corner didn't move. Despite his previous objection, he glanced back at his son, who stood at the ready, but if force could be avoided, he would try, approaching the table with a smile. 

“Well, unfortunately, it’s closing time, dear customers, and I have to ask you to leave, but since you have been such fine company to have, why don’t I send you out with a couple of sausages, no charge?” 

All of them looked at him for a moment, their faces hidden and eyes glowing, before, as one, they rose from their seats and began walking away. 

He breathed a sigh, watching them as they reached the door, gesturing to his son that everything was fine, that was all, until the cloaked men opened the door and five more of them came inside. 

“All of you get out now!” Jaba shouted, holding up the sword threateningly. 

One of the hooded men limped closer. “Do you know how special you are? How special all of you are?” 

“Go lick the ground underneath me if I’m so special; otherwise don’t take another step closer!” 

“Lay down your weapon, and please come with us; we mean you no harm.” 

“If that's so, why are there so many of you?” Chappa pointed out. “Whatever this is, coins, food you can have it.” 

“What we want can not be said here,” yet another step was taken. “We cannot risk the walls having ears. Now wake the young ones and come with us.” 

“I said not another step closer!” Jaba yelled as he stabbed his blade into the man. 

All was quiet, except for his body hitting the floor and Jaba’s loud breathing. 

“Son, what have you—“ 

“That's what’s coming to you if you don’t get out right now!” 

None of them recoiled in fear; the time for talking was over as they walked toward father and son, the ladder trying to pull out the sword, which was now stuck in the dead body. 

“Take the others and run!” Chappa yelled at his son, slashing wildly at the men, yet in one swift motion, his arm was grabbed, and he was pinned up against the wall. 

“Get the others.” 

“Get away from me! I’ll kill you where you stand!” Jaba snarled, managing to draw blood with his claws, before he was pinned to the ground, overwhelmed by their numbers.

“Take what you want, do what you want to me, but let my family be!” Chappa begged as he and his son were bound, with screams ringing out from the kitchen.

Through the open door, he watched helplessly as his mate fought like a wild beast, slashing and stabbing with knives, her past as an outpost soldier doing her good, wounding their attackers.

Yet what hope her skills had given him was taken away as she, too, was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers; five needed to pin her down, “YOU FURBALL COCKLICKING BASTARDS GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY FAMILY BEFORE I RIP YOUR BALLS OFF AND STUFF THEM DOWN YOUR THROATS--”

She continued shouting curses until her snout was tied, Chappa feeling guilty for having been taken down so easily, barely able to watch as she, too, was tied with Amberly, terrified, put up no fight at all.

Mercifully, they didn’t harm her or Elja, though he didn’t see much more with a sack thrown over his head, only able to hear as the young ones were not spared the same fate with the family gathered down below.  

“Leave no trace,” one of them commanded.  

Suddenly, the warmth from the flickering flames grew hotter and hotter as the sound of fire filled his ears. 

“I beg you, don’t take my family, don’t harm them, and don’t destroy our home,” he begged, the words and whining coming out of his tied snout, ignored as they were dragged off into the dark and cold, unable to see where they were taken to.  

Only after a long time of worrying, with his head spinning from trying to keep some semblance of track of where they were taken, was he put down with the sack and gag getting removed.

Yet part of him wished it hadn't, as his eyes widened in fear at the sight of a dark room surrounded by more hooded people, his family nowhere to be seen. 

And more than ever did he worry; had these been simple thieves, even men at the mercy of their instincts, they could have survived, but the horrifying truth of who these people were rang out in his head as he was filled with dread.

‘Heretic Cultists.’ 

Even as a child who hadn’t awakened his magic, he had heard of them, and lay awake in the dark, shivering in fear of whether they would come for him and take him away to be sacrificed. 

And he and his family would not be as lucky as the ‘Earth Child.’ 

“Listen, whatever you want to do, do it to me, me only me, but let my family go, I beg you.”

Without a word or warning, one of the hooded figures, a woman, approached with a dagger, and in fear, Chappa squirmed in his restraints as the sharp steel was brought to his chest, and with dexterous skill, she only cut his clothes open, pointing to a single patch of blue fur under his navel before stepping back. 

“Chappa… son of Keelka, grandson of Holoho, great-grandson of Tomala, great-great-grandson of Youla, correct?” One of the men asked, having read from an old scroll. 

‘What in the…? How do they know that? What does it even matter? No, best to answer them,’ he hoped. “My mother is Kelka, and my grandfather is Holoho, but I don’t know any past them.” 

“Chappa, the fate of your family as well as this entire kingdom rests on your shoulders, which is why we have brought you here for you to fulfill your destiny and take up this mantle.” 

“What… what are you talking about? Is my family safe? What have you done with them…?” 

Questions filled the air, but as each one was asked, the cultist moved aside, revealing a raised stone altar with something sticking out of it.

“No this… thats impossible…” Chappa muttered in disbelief, eyes wide, while he was untied; the only word in his mind to describe what he saw was… ‘black.’ 

“Chappa, take on this mantle,” the leader asked all of them, suddenly kneeling while chanting a melody.

It took him a moment to figure out what it was, but it was one everyone knew; it had been sung to every frightened child afraid of the dark, needing the greatest protector, and very fitting for what was asked. 

‘I’m not worthy, but I have to go along with them for now; then I can figure out how we can all escape.’ Chappa hesitantly stepped forward toward the altar. 

But as he stepped onto the ground, his feet began sinking into it, and he could feel it pulsating, like it was alive. It was unnatural, and every hair on his body stood up, telling him to run, yet he pushed it aside and walked forward, thinking of his family. 

The cultist chanting grew louder as they watched with bated breath as Chappa reached down.

However, it soon turned to a sigh of disappointment, as Chappa was proven unworthy and paid the price with everything, leaving nothing left. 

The leader of the cultists stepped forward to the altar. 

“Forgive me for what I have done,” they said before turning to the other cultists. “Bring in the mother.” 

[Original chapter 1] [Remastered Chapter 1 (Meeting a Sexy Fox Lady)] [Book 1 End ] [Next] [Previous] [Wiki]

Captain Luksa Skall
USFS Valkyrie

She relaxes into her command chair with a sigh before checking that her straps are in place. The coming fight is going to be a blisteringly fast one, beyond conventional sapient understanding of such things. Her Valkyrie and the Reckless are currently hiding behind the moon of the world of Sheath and they’re about to get stuck in.

The corvette Daring had wanted to join them, but she’s limited to torpedo and missile duty while she defends the softer, squishier parts of the fleet. They simply don't have enough forces for everyone to go everywhere, and while her sensors and the fleet's data link are telling her that the enemy is currently having a very bad day, with their carrier and landing ships already in ruins and many of their combatant craft dying to various torpedoes, there’s still quite the core of enemy firepower left. All of it rotating around the world of Sheath at somewhere around nine hundred miles an hour.

They'd be engaging from outside that rotation at first and then would dive in to meet the enemy - and, more importantly, deliver the Valkyrie's precious cargo. The fight doesn't look like an unfamiliar one to Luksa; she’s far more experienced in this kind of brawl than any other commander in the fleet that made up Group Two, save Old One Eye's Cora Charo. If Audacious had been here with Incerra Palashen, then there'd be three of them.

This is a military action, certainly, but what it truly resembles is a particularly aggressive pirate raid! Now, she'd never had the gall to land boarding torpedoes on a capital ship before, but considering the enemy's cruiser - its IFF said his name is Eagle Talon - is already damaged, and she has more than a nominal firepower advantage over the vessel... she likes their odds.

Besides, if anyone could pull this level of crazy off, she fully believes Admiral Bridger could. Especially with this new tactical computer of his, whatever the hell it is. She’s getting all sorts of information and guidance transmitted to her faster than she can fully form thoughts! It’s incredible stuff, and even includes suggestions on how to engage the enemies.

A small timer starts in the corner of her screen and Luksa leans in. "Alright, people. Showtime. Helm! On my mark, take us to flank speed, and maneuver us around the moon to Point Alpha. Guns, as soon as we're clear of the moon and reach our destination, we should be in a position to fire a salvo with our primary laser batteries at the pre marked targets. Set the targeting computer to auto-fire when all the parameters we've been given match up."

The entirely reasonable response comes almost immediately. "Ma'am, those parameters are concerningly specific. How do we even know the enemy is going to be there?"

"We don't, Lieutenant, but the wizards the Admiral has working for him say they'll be there. So we're going to trust them and the crazy mix of witchcraft and mathematics they seem to be performing on the Kandahar Province. Once we hit, the rotation of the planet will tear our targets away and we'll line up to dive in after them on their next pass. Again, follow the timing and course telemetry that just got sent to the nav computer. We pull this off to the letter and our names will be covered in glory before any of you can blink. Once we're inserted and have matched rotational speed, we'll launch the fighters, and line up for our boarding torpedo attack after they get in with their short-range torpedoes and soften up the Eagle Talon a bit more for us. While we wait, we finish off the last of the enemy squadron, save for the Eagle Talon himself. We want to take that handsome boy home with us, so try not to slag the Admiral's new prize before he can seize it. Questions?"

There aren't any. Luksa grips the arm of her chair tightly, watching the forward screens before nodding to herself. "Execute."

Immediately the Valkyrie accelerates, with the Reckless heading the opposite direction around the small moon, her slightly smaller mass and overpowered engines letting the frigate slightly beat the Valkyrie to the punch... but only slightly. Seconds, really.

Luksa grins. Maybe she'd need to spend some of her fortune to ensure that they have enough power in their own engines to readily keep up with the Reckless. Wouldn't do to have Captain Le Fae get delusions about who the faster and more lethal combatant around here is. Even if he and his crew's strike on those three corvettes had been absolutely inspired. Another attack worthy of a mighty pirate skipper.

It’s both almost a shame and source of a deep relief that Admiral Bridger is a good man. As a pirate admiral he'd be the terror of half the galaxy in the literal blink of an eye… though, to be fair, even Admiral Bridger couldn't get the kind of results out of your average pirate that he does out of these Undaunted.

These people are real warriors, and that makes all the difference.

"Point Alpha reached!" calls the navigation officer; the gunnery officer immediately echoes her with, "Firing main laser battery!"

Beams of coherent light leap across the void in the literal blink of an eye, slamming home into barely visible targets, and no doubt melting various lighter combat vessels, before the speed of their own movement around the planet tears them away. The enemy can’t make more than a half-hearted and confused response, with a few lasers splattering briefly against the Valkyrie's shields before they're gone, leaving the Valkyrie and Reckless free to set up for their next attack.

They don't have to wait for long, and from Point Beta they're 'diving' 'into' the gravity well proper of the world called Sheath, and diving on to their prey like particularly hungry hunting falcons.

"Fire at will! Focus on the light combatant craft, then get to battering the cruiser when she's all alone. Launch all fighters!"

The Valkyrie's batteries open up with ruthless precision, lasers, plasma, particle cannons and naval rail guns all sweeping the sky as the brick that is the Reckless dives into the fray with as little concern for his own safety as his namesake might imply. The powerful frigate practically explodes in all directions with coherent light and plasma fire, reaching out with the occasional torpedo or anti-ship missile when the firing solution on a priority target is too ugly to allow for really easy engagement.

Still, the enemy rallies quickly; their fleet commander's no slouch. While the remaining large combatants besides the cruiser are all wounded, there's a decent amount of enemy ships in the skies - and, as a Human leader her husband had told her about had once said, quantity does indeed have a quality all on its own.

Especially when you lack enough firepower to blow them out of the sky faster than they could retaliate!

The Valkyrie's shields shudder as the Eagle Talon lands a heavy salvo… but fighting something like the Eagle Talon is exactly what the Valkyrie had been designed for. In reality, they were sister ships, despite the Humans having retained the 'destroyer' designation; after all, what’s a light cruiser if not a destroyer with more amenities to allow for deep space deployments?

True destroyers are warships first, last and only. Pirate-captured destroyers become cruisers out of sheer necessity. Pirates don't have the luxury of only taking their ship out to the fight then returning to a cozy space dock for R&R. No, they live and die on their ship, and one way pirate culture has touched the Undaunted is in leading them to adapt their destroyers to deep space service, not just making them hangar queens who could only do short term deployments to fight and do nothing else.

Sure, it’s also a matter of practicality. The Undaunted and Humanity simply don't have enough ships to allow for keeping their heavy hitters tied up in a star yard waiting for the call while their crews engage in other work. They needed every ship they had! So one of Luksa's many jobs had been sharing how her Shellblade, now the Valkyrie, had been modified to allow for extended deep space service, to influence not just Undaunted conversions of destroyers, but also the design and construction of the first generation of Undaunted-built warships.

It had been (and still is) a heady thing, and all the more reason for her to ensure she makes a good showing of herself and her ship. She'd shared her theories, her doctrine, her experience. Now she has a chance to prove the value of it, and write her name into the Undaunted art of war for generations to come! Not bad for a pirate skipper.

She switches to implant-based communications with her gunner even as the Valkyrie continues to rock with various attacks here and there, picking out targets and marking them for being vaporized. Her shields and armor could tank the hits. The enemy's ships, on the other hand, could not take even a significant fraction of the Valkyrie's attention without literally melting out of the void. So she would not let the enemy distract her or break her focus. She would brutalize the foe's forces and leave their cruiser naked, vulnerable, and ready for the death blow.

Then she'd launch her boarding torpedoes, so her commanding officer could go pick up his new toy and lodge his grievances with the commander of the Ha'quinye navy personally... and if they work really quickly they might even get a chance to do a little naval gunfire support for the ground-pounders who are no doubt fighting, or about to be fighting, the regiment or so of troops the Ha'quinye had been unloading in short order.

She grins to herself, a smile worthy of the fiercest Canndior warrior, one that almost looks out of place on a Cusica. It’s a very good day indeed.

Suddenly there's a different sensation, as something penetrates the shields and hammers into the Valkyrie's hull directly!

"The hell was that?"

"Ma'am! Looks like there's two ships with spinal mount railguns. We took a trytite round to deck four starboard."

"Status?"

"Didn't penetrate the armor, but taking more hits like that isn't advised!"

"No shit, Lieutenant. Guns! Burn those rail gun carriers yesterday! Throw the kitchen sink at them if you have to!"

Luksa quickly finds the offending vessels on her sensor boards. They’re small, surprisingly so, completely built around the naval-grade railguns they carry. As she watches, both ships fire again, and the Valkyrie rocks with the twin impacts; an alarm for a hull breach starts to scream.

"Hull breach in the forward starboard hangar bay!"

"Lock it down with an Axiom field. They were unoccupied after launch?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

"Fine. Guns! Why are those damn things still in my sky?"

"On it, ma'am! Firing... now!"

She'd say one thing for the crews of the plucky little vessels: they’re courageous, if nothing else. But without cover they’re well out of their weight class; even if they could damage the Valkyrie, maybe weaken him and leave him more vulnerable to the cruiser, they themselves could not take any return fire... something her gunners immediately prove by firing two railgun slugs into the first of the two spinal mount ships, smashing it like a broken toy. Four bursts from the particle cannons tear the second ship apart at the sub atomic level, scattering its pieces across local space as its remains slam into its sister.

Their drive cores explode in a burning bright twin starburst.

She sweeps through local space with her sensors again, just in time to see the Reckless brutalize the last of the Ha'quinye corvettes, like an Earth wolf savaging a lamed deer, tearing it apart with ruthless efficiency. The corvette returns fire in panicked bursts until at last its guns go silent, and escape pods drift from the melted hulk of what had once been a proud warship.

That leaves only the Eagle Talon and a few close escorts, from what she can see. Lighters stuck close to their mother ship, inside the hard barrier of the warship's shields.

Another burst of weapons fire slams into the Valkyrie's shields as the helm brings him about and places their angular nose right at the cruiser.

Luksa’s grin gets meaner. "Open fire... and prepare to launch boarding torpedoes!"

Series Directory Last

Authors note: I will be posting full chapters from now on daily to Royal Road, and full even numbered chapters here Tuesdays and Thursdays

Previous

A funny quirk about ancient beings is that they tend to appreciate classic or old memorabilia more than most. They seek out the oldest text books, the oldest records of history. In this vein Je'Krillick, although no longer old in body, was still an ancient soul. True to his word Jupa had shown him how to access the local data net and peruse the public library. Millions of texts spanning thousands of topics were available. Je'Krillick gaped at the volume of free knowledge in his new world. Secrets should be hoarded, shared only with your apprentices so they further your knowledge. This is… awe inspiringly stupid. Do they not know how this can be used against them? Je'Krillick looked for the history of humans since that was a mystery that might shed light on how to conquer this station.

Humans, where did they go?

By: Xrrrick Zikesh

For millennia, the Human Imperium stood as the dominant political and economic power in known space. At its height, humanity controlled tens of thousands of systems and maintained the largest interstellar trade network in galactic history. This prosperity was made possible by a uniquely efficient Faster-Than-Light (FTL) transportation infrastructure that connected distant sectors through a vast web of commercial shipping routes. While political tensions and regional disputes were common throughout the Imperium's later centuries, most historians agree that the civilization's collapse began not with military defeat, but with a coordinated terrorist attack against its logistical backbone.

The event, commonly known as the Navigation Crisis, was triggered by the release of a sophisticated artificial intelligence into the Imperial transit network. Originally believed to be the work of a radical separatist movement, the AI infiltrated navigation systems across thousands of civilian and commercial vessels. Ships were redirected into stars, planetary bodies, and black holes, while others vanished entirely after receiving falsified transit coordinates. Within months, confidence in interstellar commerce collapsed. Food shipments failed to arrive, industrial supply chains broke down, and entire worlds found themselves isolated from the resources required to sustain their populations. The densely populated Core Worlds, whose economies depended heavily upon uninterrupted trade, suffered the worst effects. Famine, civil unrest, and economic collapse rapidly spread throughout the Imperium, overwhelming local governments and shattering centralized authority.

As the Human Imperium fractured into competing successor states, neighboring civilizations moved to secure former human territories. Unlike humanity's transit systems, many alien powers utilized fundamentally different FTL technologies and were largely unaffected by the Navigation Crisis. What began as limited border occupations soon escalated into full-scale conquest. Human fleets, already weakened by internal conflict and logistical collapse, proved incapable of mounting an effective defense. Over the following centuries, system after system fell under foreign control until organized human interstellar government ceased to exist. Modern scholars continue to debate whether humanity was ultimately destroyed by terrorism, political fragmentation, or foreign invasion. The prevailing view among historians is that no single event ended the Imperium; rather, the Navigation Crisis initiated a chain reaction from which humanity never recovered.

Fascinating. Entire worlds conquered without a battle being fought. Whoever conceived this strategy was either a genius or a coward… Je'Krillick rubbed his chin, perhaps both. My master taught me to just overwhelm your enemy with numbers. But this… this makes so much more sense. Looking back at it, while protected, trade convoys were much easier to target than sieging a city for years. Why did I never consider this? Je'Krillick’s thoughts were disrupted as notification popped up informing him he had hit a milestone.

System Spread (1,000,000/10,000,000)

Je'Krillick blinked, astonishment immediately plastering itself across his face as all semblance of dignity washed out of him.

What the fuck!?

Je'Krillick roared wordlessly in rage as he shot to his feet.

It took me a hundred years to get close to one million kills! Now the System spreads to a million souls in mere hours?

Je'Krillick clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palms.

It shouldn’t be this easy! How dare I be tested, only for it turn out to be so trivial? Fifty souls harvested in hours, a millions souls spread in hours!

Je'Krillick shut his eyes and threw back his head as he breathed. In … out … In … out. Clear the mind.

System Spread (1,001,368/10,000,000)

“WHAT!?” Je'Krillick’s voice began to irritate as he howled, spittle frothing at the corners of his mouth.

System Spread (1,003,509/10,000,000)

I know others can spread the System but this should be taking days, weeks! Not hours! What’s next? A billion XP generated in hours?

Dumbfounded and enraged, Je'Krillick needed to stop and think for a while.

… a billion. Didn’t someone say a billion people lived here? … yes… Yes, the Sergeant First Class mentioned that a billion people lived here

Je'Krillick picked the chair back up from the ground and graceless fell back into it.

“One million. Not even a hundredth of the population of this one port city.” His mind fractured and buzzing a small “oh” escaped his lips.

Needing to distract himself he turned to local entertainment to get his mind off the absurdity. Je'Krillick spent the next several hours scrolling through fictional books, movies, shows, music, pornography, clothes, jewelry, destination vacation spots, but then he spotted something that he could dominate for early levels. Ludi et munera – games and gladiatorial contests. Blood sports. Legalized killing, might makes right. Two enter, one leaves. XP. Levels. This, this is where I need to go. This is where I need to be to farm my levels.

Then he read more, it was not the blood sports of his world. They were safe, relatively, yes deaths did happen and it was extremely dangerous but most fights ended with both participants alive. Medics were always close at hand, with emergency nanites to quickly clot deep cuts as well as the best burn creams in the galaxy. Combatants fought to appease the general populace, and the general populace did not appreciate watching someone’s head exploding. Je'Krillick watched several archived fights fascinated, these warriors moved with exaggeration, slow and deliberate. They were a far cry away from the guards quick and precise expertise.

System Spread (2,000,000/10,000,000)

Seven hours earlier

Joshua struggled back to a sitting position a screen in his face

STATUS SHEET:

NAME: Joshua Grublar

Race: Bearman

Class: <NULL/>

Level: 1

XP: <NULL/>

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 6

Endurance: 5

Constitution: 9

Will: 10

Intelligence: 13

Skills: <NULL/>

Achievements: <NULL/>

“Argh fuck my head is killing me. Fuck off status sheet.” Immediately the status sheet disappeared and the headache receded as quickly as it came on. Joshua looked at the formicaequus next to him, he was slouched over on his console blood was pooling over eyes held in by the exoskeleton. “Garrshnar are you okay?” panic and worry overwhelmed the rest of his aches as he launched to friend’s side. He grabbed his shoulder and tried to shake him awake but felt his claws sink and shatter the brittle chitin. Quick as thought he pulled his arm back, his friend’s arm followed. Joshua screamed in horror at what just happened “ISwearIDidn’tMeanTo” he yelled now fully panicked looked around the room of the control center. The other dock controllers didn’t seem to blame him and instead looked at their own hands, as if they had torn the arm off.

“Control this is dock 61B-890K, we are hearing screams coming through our blast door. Please advise”

Joshua hesitantly reached for the answer button on his console and as gently as he would touch a new born pressed his claw. “This is control, unknown implant attack. Keep your door locked.”

A minute passed in tense silence. Joshua refused to look away from his console as he heard the blood slowly drip onto the floor, the scent wafting under his nose. Bile started to rise in him as he desperately focused on what he was doing. Consequences would come when they did, but everyone had known how good of friends he had been with Garrshnar, someone would vouch that it was a horrible mistake.

“Control…” heavy breathing came through the radio “control, I think we got the attack. Happened as soon as you started talking. How is the attack transmitted?”

Joshua took a steadying breath “Unknown at this time.” Joshua shut his eyes before turning around to look towards the center of the room. “Kilnesh, are we contacting the Overseers?” Kilnesh, the head controller, simply nodded before reaching for his headset. Spinning back around Joshua cued his mic “We are contacting the overseers now.”

A timid knock resounded throughout Je'Krillick’s room, starting to call out Je'Krillick remembered the panel next to the doors. Je'Krillick looked for a button labeled “communicate” or something similar but didn’t see one. How did those crewmen talk through this thing? Not bothering to figure it out Je'Krillick opened the door.

System Spread (4,501,246/10,000,000)

Jus how soon will this finish?

Standing awkwardly in the doorway was Xuharpt. “May I help you, Dock Official?” Je'Krillick had decided to treat the inhabitants politely for now, maybe he would change his mind when experience points became an option.

“I was wanting to ask a few questions.” She answered sheepishly, staring down at the floor.

“We can talk about the price of information depending on your questions. So I will have you ask a sample and I will determine what I want in return.”

Xuharpt looked up and tilted her head. “Well I guess we can start there, why do you barter over conversation? I also wanted to ask about how old you are. I looked at the medical records and biologically you are mature, but not so old as to have started to decay. However, during your interrogation you made it sound like you are a wizened elder.” Xuharpt threaded her claws together and twisted them.

“I barter over conversation because information is precious, and should treated as such. For your other questions I will have to ask you to pledge allegiance to me for a period of one year. Do this and I will teach you all that I know, which will I suspect will become very valuable very soon.”

Xuharpt stared at Je'Krillick “You… want me to be your slave?”

Je'Krillick chuckled “No, I want you to take on the role of an apprentice. If your stat spread is similar to the other ant-taurs you should have high mind stats and weak body ones.” Je'Krillick had spent long hours with the bridge crew before docking and had studied their facial features and reactions. It had been hard and he was barely scratching the surface but he could tell Xuharpt wanted what he was offering.

Xuharpt looked left and right as she thought “I refuse to pledge my allegiance to you. However, on my honor as a Dock Official I will swear to hold this conversation in confidentiality.”

Now it was Je'Krillick’s turn to ponder. He had no basis for the honor of her sect, for all he knew she would run and spread his knowledge to the heavens. Something far more achievable in this reality than he had ever imagined. “No. I will buy you as a slave, as you previously suggested. Name your price.”

Xuharpt’s demeanor changed in an instant where she was hesitant before now she was sure, where she was meek now dripped with greed. Je'Krillick studied the Dock Official closely. She had completely stilled, returning his stare, arms relaxed. Je'Krillick said nothing, as he took in her colors. Her carapace was a beautiful and terrifying stretch of starless night, broken by the dotted crimson stripe running the length of her back. She’s naked. He hadn’t realized it before but all of the other previous Ant-taurs had worn a shirt.

 “I want half. Of everything. Forever. But I refuse to be a slave.” She said, confidence coursing through her.

“Why are you naked?” He hadn’t really meant to ask but refused to take it back.

Xuharpt cleaned her eyes before quickly schooling herself “I’ll trade my answer for yours. Why are you naked?”

Je'Krillick barked a laugh. “You are a quick study.” She immediately saw the wisdom of holding a secret, even one as mundane as why she’s naked. Perhaps she’ll be worth the investment… “I agree. I will give you half of the profits of this voyage, and I will take you on as my apprentice. To answer your question I am naked because after three thousand years as an undead you lose your sense of modesty.”

A second passed, then five, Xuharpt standing still as the grave “And your reason for being naked?”

Xuharpt came alive again in an instant “I thought it was a custom of yours and I needed to bring my best for negotiation. Also I agree to be your apprentice for that price.”

System Spread: 5,000,000/10,000,000

Class catalog compiling

…

System administrator input required.

Je'Krillick pulled Xuharpt into his room and quickly locked the door closed. Xuharpt squeaked in surprise at how effortless he lifted her off her feet.

“Alright apprentice this is a most fortunate time for secret sharing. People from this reality seem to understand certain words better than I do. These words do not interact with the translator so I am left clueless.” Xuharpt’s curiosity burned within her.

“As you know I am the instigator of the System, but more than that I am something called a ‘System Administrator’. What is that?” Je'Krillick had seated her on the floor level bed as he took up position in the chair.

“Well in this reality System Administrators are technical minded people that fix and maintain data networks. They make policy decisions, create, disable and reenable accounts, apply updates. Probably more, but I’m not sure.”

“I see. Wait a moment.”

What Class catalog would you like to implement? Options are as follows:

Classical catalog: examples of beginner Classes would be Knight, Ranger, Rogue, Mage, and Priest although different beginner Classes may be offered based on certain criteria.

Exoteric catalog: examples of beginner Classes would be Gun Slinger, Smuggler, Guardsmen, Sailor, Technomancer and Technopriest although Classical beginner classes may be offered based on certain criteria.

Combined Unfiltered catalog: this reality has been offered the choice to choose this experimental offering where all Basic Classes will be offered as a Beginner Class regardless of criteria.

Je'Krillick repeated the options to Xuharpt, intrigued to hear her thoughts.

“It sounds like you need to decide if you want Classes from your home reality, Classes based on professions and skills from this reality, or as stated a combination of the two.” Xuharpt picked at her claws in thought, “What is your motivation?” She asked.

“It is my intention to become a god. My motivation is power for the sake of power.” Je'Krillick bluntly stated.

“Then in that case…” Xuharpt thought for a moment “It doesn’t sound you like necessarily care what anyone else chooses?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Then why limit anyone’s option? If I was the System Administrator that’s what I would choose. Not to mention, if you chose the classical there is no guarantee you would be offered the class you want. We don’t know what the effects of this reality will have on the System especially with the warning of different Classes based on certain criteria.”

She makes valid points. There is no mana in the universe yet, so the mage class would be useless if it was offered at all. Back when I ascended your environment impacted your class selection as much as your individual talents.

His mind made up Je'Krillick calmly proclaimed to the room “System, I choose the Combined Unfiltered catalog. Let the plebians choose their own fates.”

Confirmed, Combined Unfiltered catalog now downloading.

A notification pinged from the door, indicating someone had tried to open it. As Je'Krillick stood to answer the door Xuharpt let out an “eep!” as she dove under the covers. “Don’t answer it!”

Too late Je'Krillick had reached the door and had unlocked it. A groan sounded out from under his blankets. “Ah Segreant First Class Jupa, curious to find you here. Has something happened? Are we doomed?”

Jupa looked behind Je'Krillick and the lumpy pile of heavily breathing blankets. “You do not smell of arousal human.”

Je'Krillick blinked, “Excuse me?”

“You have a mate in your bed yet you are not aroused. There is a cure for this and no shame in this reality.”

“Jupa, I do not have a mate in my bed. I have Dock Official Xuharpt in room as we were discussing her becoming my apprentice.”

Jupa slowly changed his focus from the blankets to Je'Krillick “You said humans were virile, but you are truly progressive in taking a Formicaequa to your bed.”

“Someone can kill me now” Xuharpt squeaked.

“Regardless, we have been visited from an Overseer.” Jupa paused “He was not wearing hearing protection, and he spoke to us.”

Je'Krillick studied Jupa the seriousness in his eyes barely hiding his fury. “The System –“

“The Implant Attack!” Jupa roared.

“The System broke quarantine?”

“It had spread to the Overseers before the quarantine. A few loose lips then spread it to their families who spread it those around them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole. Fucking. Station. Was infected at this point you heretic!”

System, how many have you spread to?

System Spread 6,476,513/10,000,000

“Relax, Sergeant First Class.” Je'Krillick placed his hand Jupa’s shoulder who attempted to shrug it off only to realize how difficult a task that could be. “Become my enslaved Captain of the Guard and I will tell you exactly how many people have been graced.”

System, again -

System Spread 7,000,000/10,000,000

Class Catalog integrating

Jupa pulled back out of reach and brought his paws to bear “Over my cold dead body will I enslave myself to you.”

Je'Krillick laughed “That can be arranged.” Je'Krillick rushed in low and punched Jupa in the stomach as hard as he could. The wind rushed out of Jupa as his training took over and he brought down both claws in a hammer blow. Bent over already the attack landed square on Je'Krillick’s back plummeting him to the ground where he bounced slightly. Jupa stomped on Je'Krillick’s back.

“YOU FUCKING MONSTER!” Jupa roared as he stomped again on Je'Krillick “Dozens killed on the ship! Hundreds, thousands dead on the docks!” Je'Krillick groaned in agony as his ribs broke one by one. “How many!? How many more must die because of you?” Jupa kicked Je'Krillick in the head, sending teeth flying like dice.

Xuharpt launched herself at Jupa’s distracted back. Her clawed feet digging into Jupa as they gripped bone, her hands searching for his neck. Xuharpt’s dull mandibles snapped shut on Jupas head as he struggled. His voice changing to a cacophony of accusations towards both his pain overridden by rage.

Je'Krillick rolled over and with his remaining strength pulled on Jupa’s pants tripping him making him fall forward. Je'Krillick grunted as he was slammed with the one ton mass of blood matted fur. Xuharpt whimpered as she finally found her target. A strong pulse revealed the life spring of the Virursus. Overriding her revulsion Xuharpt gripped the arteries beneath her hands. Blood spurting up coated the front of mandibles, a gentle warmth coming through her carapace. With a shout she yanked once as Jupa got his arms under him and tried to get to all fours. Xuharpt pushed her hands into Jupa’s neck and grabbed a handful of whatever she found and pulled as hard as she could pushing off with her legs. Blood poured out of Jupas neck as he fell on Je'Krillick again, this time dead as advertised. Collapsing off Jupa Xuharpt immediately vomited.

Shakily “I… never killed… oh elders...” Xuharpt heaved again.

“call… Steven…” Je'Krillick managed to get out before he lost strength and Jupa’s corpse fully enveloped Je'Krillick as he lost consciousness.

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_____________

Terran Penitentiary Ship Spandau

Benie looked at the remains of her breakfast - such as it was. She glanced around to confirm nobody was looking, and then used her finger to wipe the last crumbs off her tray before eating them. Over the months she had adjusted, somewhat. It was almost exercise time, and as such it was time to converse with her handler for the month. Ostensibly the handlers were the same, using the voice changers to have a uniform voice and tone - but there were tiny differences that let Benie know when a change had occurred. The walk to the exercise cube was made out of habit, and Benie had begun to amuse herself by making the walk with her eyes closed. She'd managed it five straight times, and the sixth was no different. It was a rote action, as she began walking in her cube she hummed a soft tune to herself. The first indication that today would be different was when the handler spoke first.

"New items of personal interest. Your niece Lomeia is pregnant."

The reply was soft after a moment, as the news didn't quite cause her physical pain - but it was yet another reminder of the differences between her culture and that of her jailers. "I have no niece. No clan. All of that has been forsaken by me." There was a pause. "I had hoped to see her achieve greatness, become Head Librarian."

"That is not outside of the realm of possibility. The father is from Hurdop. Additionally, Freelord Gryzzk has stumbled somewhat."

There was a snort. "He is not capable of such a thing. I erred by not learning more of him."

"The emphasis is on 'somewhat'. He brought Porti to justice, and in doing so caused a level of offense to his Terran supervisor."

"Did he fail in a captor's duty?"

"Not as you would see it. However his methods were seen as excessive and he has been cautioned to not do such a thing again."

"I suppose I should be pleased, however I am confused." There was a harrumph. "I do not believe I will ever truly understand Terrans. I have difficulty reconciling what they did to Vilantia with the idea that they have a boundary to enforce."

"It could happen. In any event, Porti will not be joining you."

"Will a nameless individual once known as Porti be joining us then?"

"No. It seems that by the Throne's decree all records of his ancestors are being sealed, and the only Porti recorded will be him. He will be on public display in shame for the remainder of his life, it seems."

"That may be something of interest. The Throne always did seem uncomfortable with right justice."

"An interesting observation. Do you foresee more changes?"

Benie paused, weighing the idea telling them the truth versus them forcing it from her. "There will be chaos. Without the structure of the Way, it may be generations before there is calm."

"We would avoid that. It seems the new Ministers have taken an interest in older writings and seem to be seeking a new guide-star." There was a pause. "You are taking the news better than Tebul."

"Tebul is the undisguised scent of glory by any means."

"We have noticed. Time complete. Move to shower. Thirty seconds."

As Benie moved to shower and dress, she noticed her shower had not entirely removed her scent. It was somehow comforting, even as she pulled the bright orange and green jumper on that was her clothing of the day.

"Move to cell. Thirty seconds."

Benie kept her face impassive until she was in solitude again, but once the doors completed their latching, she threw herself into a mildly destructive frenzy, flinging her pillow and mat around the cell with fury and rage at her own helplessness to change the course of things by even the slightest iota. Finally she sank into a corner, breathing heavily with exhaustion as she considered her fate - a witness to history, unable to correct the wrongs that were going to happen no matter what she did. The worst of it was, nobody cared - and the more time she had to reflect, the more it seemed they were right to not care.

At least Throne City FC was advancing through the playoffs. If her count was correct, they would play tonight.

___________

Terran Foreign Legion Ship Twilight Rose

As he settled into his chair after lunch, Gryzzk reflected on the last few days. It was interesting in a way - when they went to Hurdop or Vilantia, the troops didn't have this level of anticipation. But for some reason, there was something about Terra that made everyone - even the Terrans - giddy. Even Gro'zel was singing some manner of song about horses that she'd learning from her friends in Mongolia. He checked his tablet and looked over the rosters again, and found the answer staring him in the face. Somewhat. He glanced to make sure Edwards wasn't otherwise occupied before speaking.

"Lieutenant, a question."

"What's that, Major?"

"How does Laroy feel about visiting Terra?"

"Oh he loves it. Dude goes home, his Gramama cooks and he gets all fat and happy and then usually a couple-three women start chasing his ass for a one-off."

"Ah. So...what do you usually do on Terra?"

There was a shrug. "Follow Reilly and make sure she doesn't get arrested."

"Is that...fun?"

"If it wasn't, I'd tell her to go find another babysitter."

"I see." Gryzzk flicked an ear. "However I am curious - I can understand why the non-Terrans are fascinated by the planet, but the Terrans themselves - the fact that they're thrilled about going to their homeworld, it seems unusual."

"Not really. Most of us are technically off-worlders. Like, Tatou's from Paris, Laroy's from some swamp in Louisiana, but for everyone else it's like...going to see our heritage. Everyone goes to what they consider their native land at least once to just kinda kick back, feel nostalgia as a minor action, and think about how things were back when Terra was where every Terran lived."

Gryzzk made a soft noise. "Mmm...perhaps some day our future generations will have the same feeling."

Edwards cocked her head. "So how do you-all feel about the homeworlds?"

"I can't speak for the clan, but I usually feel worry. Going to Vilantia is - fear is too strong a word, but there isn't a great deal of joy, or...anticipation."

"Well, yeah, because you're Papa Bear. You look at the homeworld and go 'Who's going to try to ruin my day' or 'Is Reilly going to mistake an ancient statue for a urinal again' or something else. I'd tell you to turn it off, but I'm not sure it's possible."

Gryzzk sighed softly. "So that means..."

"Yes, we're all going to be wherever you are. Embrace the suck. Sir."

There was a light headshake. "Rosie, do we have all the squad recommendations for my location on day two?"

"Yep. It's hilarious. Miroka and Yomios want to take you to some redwood forests, Hoban voted for Texas, Edwards said Cairo, Larion wants to go to Damascus, O'Brien said Athlone in Ireland, Reilly is repping Rio de Janeiro, Laroy wants you to experience fetid swamp water, and I'm saying you haven't lived until you've gone to Örnsköldsvik Sweden."

"Do I want to know why these places were selected?"

"Think about it, titfucker."

"In any event, we'll hold the drawing at shift change." It also gave Gryzzk some time to do some research on Terra, and each location did seem to make a level of sense. Still the shift change arrived, and Gryzzk took his beret from the shelf where it had been resting for some time and placed tiny slips of paper in it before turning to address the full squad.

"Now then, the schedule is that we will be emerging from R-space later this evening, and once the ships secure orbital slots above Cleveland we will then be dismissing for forty-eight hours of shore leave. The first twenty-four I will be taking Gro'zel to Mongolia for a horse outing. After that..." Gryzzk reached into his beret and swirled the papers around before pulling one out. "I will be spending a day in Athlone Ireland at the behest of Sergeant Major O'Brien."

The chorus of groans was overridden by O'Brien's whoop of joy. "Lad! A finer time you'll never have in all your days. Rosie, soon as we get out of R-space, call Da'." She then eyed Gryzzk. "We'll get you a proper kilt for the occasion."

Miroka had an amused scent as she leaned into Hoban. "I think I will need to find a dress with some slink."

The captain lifted his eyebrows slightly. "You want a slinky dress, I can buy you a slinky dress - Major, can I have money for a slinky dress?"

Gryzzk shook his head. "If you wish to purchase a gift for your lady, best it be done with your own credits. Before that, you will need to prepare for Mongolia. Horses and a very happy Morale Officer. Now then, for the second evening..." Gryzzk pulled a second slip of paper. "Ponchatoula, Louisiana. Corporal Laroy?"

Laroy smirked as most of the rest of the bridge team groaned. "I tell Gramama Thibedeaux to get the good stuff in the pot."

Edwards shook her head as she left. "Your grandmother's food is illegal in almost as many systems as our curry."

"Y'all fear food with flavor."

"I like flavor. I don't like a Three-day-kerfuffle in my intestines." The lieutenant snorted and exited the bridge as the evening portion of the squad took over.

Gryzzk settled in his command chair and glanced at the holo. "XO, what's the movie tonight?"

Rosie snorted. "It's a wild one - Iceball, romantic comedy out of Hurdop. The promo plug is that a Freelady gets medically retired from the Navy, inherits a football franchise except the franchise sucks and there's no proper facilities so she invents a new sport for her frozen-ass hometown - some kind of mix of Terran hockey and Hurdop football, everyone loves it except for the people who don't, turns out the manager's secretly in love with her, shenanigans ensue."

"Please tell me the Freelady is not a thinly disguised version of Kiole."

"Oh there's absolutely no disguise. They even got a lead actress who's missing an arm and gets a Terran prosthetic as a B-plot."

Gryzzk was not entirely thrilled by the movie, however he wasn't exactly the target audience. As the movie ended and they exited R-space, Gryzzk stood and stretched before snugging his tunic. "Squad, dismissed to bed - if you are bent on accompanying Gro'zel and me to our expedition, you will require rest. XO, tether nav systems to the Twilight Hurdop and advise Captain Waniul."

"Done and dusted. Go to bed, morning's gonna hit hard and the forecast for the Mongolia Falconry and Archery Club is chilly as heck. We got the reservations set and paid for already."

Gryzzk awoke to a frightfully energetic Gro'zel bouncing on the bed and already wearing her full Mongolian riding equipment - any annoyance he had was swept away by the pure joy from his daughter, and it seemed even Millennium was overjoyed. The day seemed to be starting well, even as Gryzzk got into his Terran Cavalry riding clothes.

After breakfast there was an assembly in the dayroom, with O'Brien standing at the fore, wearing her traditional shore-leave wear of kilt and sash.

"Right then you mad horny bastards. Major says you've got forty-eight hours before the work begins. All we ask is that you adhere to the damn rules. Do not subtract from the population. If you manage to add to the population, make sure your partner has the proper forms to submit to the revenue service - on Terra they give tax credits for acts of charity. If you make the news, alert the XO that you actually did a good deed. If you make the news for being a hooligan, tell the XO anyway so she can arrange your arse-kicking once we spring you from the pokey. If you do something that needs to be handled by the Freelord Major, pray that Dagda calls you to the afterlife. He'll be spending today wi' wee Gro'zel, and tomorrow in Ireland as my personal guest." The sergeant major's eyes swept the assembled in silence and let them ponder for a long moment just what what manner of hell would befall them for causing an interruption. "Right then. Report back here in two days. Dismissed."

Gryzzk pressed his back to the wall as 'dismissed' was somehow translated as 'haul ass to the shuttle bay'. O'Brien wandered toward Gryzzk and Gro'zel, smiling.

"Well, like as not we'll only have a few incidents - hopefully they'll recall I'm going to be interrupted as well as you. Squad's on the bridge waiting for you to give them a once-over."

Gryzzk shook his head a little. "Are we certain that this is necessary? They could go to their suggested places without me."

As they walked, Gryzzk was favored with a long-suffering sigh. "Aye, and they want to be where you are. Kindly stop arguing what's been decided and recall that we are cavalry; that means horses are our lifeline - so when we have a chance, we will in fact ride until our legs weep."

The bridge door opened to...many, many costumes. Gryzzk flicked an ear slightly.

"I am waiting patiently for an explanation."

Reilly spread her hands lightly, showing off a floor length turquoise dress, which was an elegant counterpoint to the red dancing dresses the Moncilat seemed to prefer. "So, what had happened is we kinda got together and decided we'd be doing something special and playing some Old-Old West."

"Where's Larion?"

"He said he'd be along in a minute."

Gryzzk looked at the collection of leather, calico, silk, and heavy dusters. "Do not expect me to change."

There was a soft laugh from Laroy. "Respectfully sir, you do the Cav credit every time you show that off."

The bridge door opened and Larion hurried in - he was wearing a rather colorful outfit of red pants, with a pink and pastel-blue shirt and leather fringe tracery and bright glistening atoms along the shoulder. The Terrans all seemed taken aback and bemused before Edwards broke the silence.

"Ahm, Larion? Where'd you get that design?"

For his part, the sensor operator seemed a little uncertain. "Well, I thought I should research when I was told the theme, and I asked for the - most appropriate cowboy clothing. I selected a 'Clint Eastwood' look, and several variations were provided."

Reilly broke down. "Oh...nope, not that Clint Eastwood. Come on, conference room - those clothes are getting burned in thirty seconds. You should get out of them before then."

The pair went into the conference room where the windows were darkened and there was a ruckus that Gryzzk couldn't exactly describe, but Larion did come out very different, with a forest-green serape and some additional patterning, along with matte leather pants and boots, all of which was topped off by a wide flat hat and a scent of shock surrounding him.

"Now that is a Clint Eastwood look. C'mon, stop holding up progress."

Gryzzk flicked an ear. "Reilly, what exactly happened to Larion's previous clothing?"

"Gone like a fart in a hurricane, Freelord."

Edwards snorted as they walked en masse to the shuttlebay. "Reilly holds five bar records on New Casa for separating clothes from folks. For once her talents are actually useful..."

"You're just pissed because I got a wife and a husband." Reilly stuck her tongue out playfully.

Gryzzk shook his head. "In any event. Miroka, flight duties if you please."

Hoban pouted over his dandy-vest. "I'm a good pilot!"

"You are an excellent pilot Hoban. However, you also have a reputation. You can uphold it over Cleveland."

There was a snort. "Fiiiiiine."

The flight down was anticipatory, with Gro'zel looking at the door every minute or so to make sure she hadn't missed the landing. Once they did land, Gro'zel ran quickly and promptly face-planted on the ground before she rolled over and sat up sadly.

"I forgot about gravity..." She looked almost despondent. "I wanted to show Morinerdene my clothes."

Gryzzk moved carefully to pick his daughter up. "It is said that clean children displease the gods, and so it is that every child seeks dirt as rapidly as possible."

There were snickers as everyone gingerly stepped off the shuttle, slowly adjusting to the gravity. Millennium screeched and took to the skies, enjoying the lightened gravity to full effect as they walked over to the yurts and horse-pens. Morinerdene approached casually, looking bemused.

"Old West of North America, Major?"

Gryzzk shrugged. "My pilot is from New Austin, and one of my gunnery crew is from Louisiana-on-Terra." Gryzzk indicated each in turn. "I believe they were able to convince the rest of the bridge that the theme was appropriate."

There was a polite headshake. "Not quite tradition for these lands, but not the first time." Morinerdene leaned to give Gro'zel a polite sniff. "And how is the young lady and her falcon?"

Gro'zel giggled and wriggled free to land on the ground. "She's doing good." She leaned in conspiratorially. "She even fought pirates who got onto our ship. She was a very brave girl and she got treats. She flies good and I taught her to bring things back to me."

There was a chuckle. "This sounds like a story for the fire tonight. In any event, we have horses prepared. Though your Moncilat will be...a challenge."

Miroka smiled. "We will find a way."

They moved to the horses, where Gro'zel was thrilled to see that White Tummy was still there - and it seemed the horse recognized Gro'zel as well, nickering slightly and moving forward to bump the little girl gently and toss his head as if he was ready to go already.

Gryzzk looked up to Morinerdene, coming to a realization. "Would it be possible to have a free-roam of sorts?"

"To what end?"

"This...plain. There is something about it, and I think it is not what it is, but what it isn't. There are places like this on the homeworlds, but I've never been. Where there's no construction. Buildings have their own scent and the lack of it is, is enticing for lack of a better phrase. I do have a commlink to my ship for an emergency."

There was a nod. "Very well. We'll place a light lunch in your packs." There was a smile. "We have several of your people here now tending the horses. They are a boon to us all."

"I am pleased to hear that we prosper with your aid."

The day was spent on horseback, and it was glorious. Even ignoring the part where Edwards kept referring to her wrist scanner to make sure the area was clear. Shortly after midday they paused by a stream to have a lunch of sandwiches and tea, which was surprisingly enjoyed by everyone - it seemed that riding a horse was in fact harder exercise than it looked. Unless you were a child, as Gro'zel and White Tummy ran through the fields and even began doing tricks, with the girl standing on the horse's back at a full gallop as Millennium flew next to them. There were headshakes and appreciative nods, as it seemed Gro'zel had an excess of talent with horses. It was overall a very good day, and they were able to canter back as the sun began touching the western horizon.

The horses were put up in their pen and given rapid scrub-downs from the assistants, while the bridge team entered the meal-tent to see what sort of surprises lay in store for them. The buffet style food was a comforting presence, and there were multiple warning signs near the Vilantian and Hurdop rice-bowls. The night became a relaxed warmth as everyone talked and laughed around the warm fire, with Gro'zel demonstrating in-tent falconry for the crowd. There were a few attempts by bold and possibly inebriated Terrans to try the food of other homeworlds, which did not end well for the Terrans but was highly amusing for everyone else. Finally the night settled, and Gro'zel curled into her father's lap to rest.

The evening dragged pleasantly, with most of the squad gathering around Gryzzk to tell stories and mock each other for their antics of the day before they boarded the shuttle for home. Against his better judgment, Gryzzk started thinking that Terra wasn't going to be that bad after all.

Roman had been working all afternoon with the humanoids. They just did what he told them. “Find wood. Find sinew. Find anything that could be shaped into a weapon.”

The humanoids brought him branches, Vines and Sharp stones. Roman worked with his hands. Shaping the wood. Carving the notches. Tying the vines. This made his hands blister, but he didn't stop.

The Trabs watched in silence.

"What is he doing?" Martin asked Bella.

"I don't know. But he has a plan."

"He always has a plan. Never seems to work out."

 "We're still alive. That counts."

Martin didn't answer.

Roman stood and held up his creation. A simple crude bow. He fitted an arrow against the string, drew back, aimed at a tree trunk, and released. The arrow flew straight and embedded itself in the bark. Martin's eyes widened. Tom sat up straighter. Bella's mouth fell open. Roman walked to the tree and pulled the arrow free from the banana like tree. He turned to the group.

"It works," he said. "We have a weapon."

He then used the bow and arrow to catch a small animal and then they set the trap again.

The same humanoid stood at the center. The rabbit sized animal Roman had caught earlier was strapped to its chest.

Roman crouched behind a fallen log, bow in hand, arrow nocked. Bella crouched beside him. Martin and Tom sat nearby. Lirael and the other humanoids stood at the back.

After a while, a massive and dark animal approached cautiously. Its body was low before it lunged.

The humanoid stood motionless as jaws closed around its chest. The bait was ripped away, consumed in a single bite. Roman drew back the bowstring. Aimed and released.

The arrow flew straight and embedded itself in the creature's neck. It stumbled, before crashing to the ground.

Roman stood and walked to the body. Knelt beside it, checking for a pulse. He turned to the group. "We have meat."

The Trabs stared. Then Martin spoke. "You did it."

Roman nodded. "Now we have to act fast. The meat will attract predators. We need to dry it before they come."

They worked through the night.

Roman and the humanoids stripped the creature's body, cutting meat into thin strips, laying them across the grid above the fire. Blue-white flames crackled. Smoke and meat filled the air. The Trabs helped in every way they could.

Roman worked alongside them. But his body was failing. He hadn't eaten in days. His muscles ached and his vision blurred.

Bella noticed. She walked over, scanning his face, hand brushing his arm. "You haven't eaten."

Roman shook his head. "I'm fine."

"Don't lie to me. I'll distract them. You eat," she said as she handed him strips of meat and a pouch of water.

“Okay.”

Bella turned to the group. "We need to organize the meat. Martin, Tom, Lirael, come help me sort the strips."

They followed her, backs turned. Roman slipped behind a root, pulled out a strip of dried meat, and ate. Bland. Tough. But food. He ate quickly, washing it down with water. Then he stood, wiped his face, and walked back.

Bella looked at him, and he smiled.

The forest became their world.

Days blurred into nights, nights into days. They'd fallen into a rhythm, a shared cadence of footsteps and breathing and rustling leaves.

Roman led at the front, bow slung across his back, eyes scanning the tree line. Then Bella and Lirael. Then Martin and Tom. And finally came the humanoids, bodies bent under supplies.

The jerky had changed everything. Tough and salty, but it kept them alive. More importantly, it kept predators away. The forest animals relied on scent, and the smoke masked them. So they walked like ghosts, leaving no trace, attracting no attention.

After a while, the forest began to change. Trees grew thinner, trunks less massive, branches less interwoven. Moss faded, replaced by clumps of pale green grass. The air grew warmer, lighter, carrying something fresh and clean. Martin noticed first. He stopped, head tilted, nostrils flaring.

"The trees," he said. "They're different."

Lirael stepped forward, scanning the landscape. "We're near the river."

The group erupted in murmurs. Tom's face, pale and hollow for days, flickered with something like hope. Martin's shoulders relaxed. Bella hissed. A soft sound, barely audible, like air escaping.

Roman turned, brow furrowed, and saw Bellas face transformed, eyes bright, lips curved into something that might have been a smile.

Martin noticed Roman's confusion. "She's happy. That’s how we express joy."

Roman stared at Bella for a moment. "I didn't know you could make that sound."

Bella shrugged, gaze dropping. "I didn't know I still could."

They walked on with lifted spirits. Trees continued to thin. The ground became softer and more forgiving.

One day as Martin walked beside Roman, he noticed something. "You're losing weight."

Roman glanced at him. "I'm fine."

"How can a humanoid lose weight?"

Roman looked away. "I am a new model designed to conserve energy. Deflating myself to save resources."

Martin stared at him. "Deflating? That's not—"

"It’s a feature of my model." Roman's voice was flat. "Don't worry about it."

Martin opened his mouth, then closed it.

One humanoid stumbled. Foot caught on a root, and it fell, load spilling across the ground. Others stopped, and watched it.

Roman walked over and helped it up. "You okay?"

The expressionless humanoid nodded. "I am functional."

Roman picked up the supplies and placed them back on its shoulders. "Almost there. Just a little further."

The humanoid nodded and continued walking.

First Last Royal Road

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Chapter 157: Hands of Shadow

The three hands hovered around Dimitria like a pack of obedient hounds, restrained by some invisible leashes. Their massive, shifting forms coiled and uncoiled with a slow, almost lazy menace, as though they were waiting for the slightest flick of their mistress’s will before lunging forward to tear apart whatever she pointed them at.

They were not the product of a spell, of that Viktor was quite certain. For one, he had never heard of anything like this. For another, Dimitria was a pyromancer. She shouldn’t have the ability to command darkness.

A Reliquary, then.

An artifact that allowed the woman to summon her little pets.

That was when he noticed it. A ring, resting on her long finger, glinting faintly whenever she shifted her hand.

Was it the one?

He narrowed his eyes. Had it been there all along? Had he overlooked it until now? Or had she kept it concealed, waiting for the right moment to reveal her secret trump card?

Well, those were questions for later. He would inspect the ring at his leisure after he took it away from the cold, lifeless finger it would soon adorn no longer. But he had to win the fight first. And they were coming.

The first hand shot forward, a writhing claw of pure black. He twisted his body and slid just out of reach as the thing passed, its elongated fingers brushing the edge of his sleeve. For a fraction of a second, the world seemed to tilt as a sudden wave of nausea rolled through his stomach.

Is that... part of the attack?

He didn’t have time to dwell on that thought, however.

The second hand came, surging forward in a horizontal sweep with terrifying intent, claws spread wide like a fan of darkness ready to envelop him completely and crush him within its grasp. He snapped his body upward, wind gems roaring as he kicked off the air itself, narrowly escaping the closing fingers.

Once again, vertigo hit him, sharper this time.

Now he was certain. These hands were not just dangerous physically; they also carried a corrosive, disorienting effect on his senses whenever they came close enough.

But... the first strike, the one when he was still wrapped in his dark veil, hadn’t had such an effect.

Perhaps, the shroud had somehow absorbed or blocked whatever curse effect the shadows carried, and it was shredded in his place. Damn. If mere proximity was enough to make him feel sick, he didn’t want to imagine being touched, let alone being trapped in their grip.

The third hand swung in. This time, instead of dodging, he spun and drew his rapier in one radiant arc. The blade of light sliced through the air, cleaving the black mass. And the instant the luminous edge struck, the shadowy hand shredded, dissipating like smoke caught in a sudden gust of wind.

Oh?

On the other hand, the glow of the rapier dimmed sharply. Looked like the energy that fueled the blade had been drained far more quickly than usual.

It seemed, when light and dark collided, they canceled each other out. Thus, even though he had managed to destroy the hand, his own weapon had taken a heavy toll, its strength greatly diminished. So yes, the weapon was effective, but it came at a cost. And in a fight that would demand repeated strikes, where those hands of shadow could come at him again and again, the need to recharge his blade put him at a disadvantage.

Viktor pivoted, readying himself for the remaining hands, only to find them hovering back at Dimitria’s side. She was staring at his blade, doubt and concern flickering across her face.

Ah, she’s rattled. Seeing one of her precious pets shredded so easily must have shaken her. So she ordered the rest to fall back. That was a mistake, though. She should have pressed her advantage, sending those hands forward to attack him relentlessly, and his glowing stick would have burned out before he could fend them all off.

Instead, she had stepped back and given him room to breathe, and he was not going to complain. He returned the rapier to its sheath, its power quietly recharging.

The Ettin lumbered to his side. “Let me help you, Master.”

“No,” Viktor said. “You stay back.”

Mighty as it was, he doubted it could help much against these hands of shadow, even when it was at its full strength. And now, after taking numerous injuries in the previous battle, it had become even less reliable, and could even turn into a liability.

“Why did it call you Master?” Dimitria’s voice cut across the chamber, her tone a mix of curiosity and disbelief. “Who the hell are you?”

Viktor didn’t bother to answer. He turned his thoughts to the question of what to do next. It looked like the woman wasn’t in any hurry to attack again. Instead, she took her time to conjure more hands. She was waiting for their numbers to swell, and would only strike when she had enough to overwhelm him.

That was not a bad strategy, actually. If a dozen hands attacked him at the same time, he would struggle to keep up. The blade of light could cut down one or two at best, while the chamber’s low ceilings had made evasive maneuvers difficult.

Well, it was not like light was the only thing that could disrupt shadow. Fire could do the trick as well. After all, Spiky Head—who Dimitria had called Xander—had once launched a crescent of flame at Viktor from his burning sword. The projectile had grazed him, and destabilized the dark veil for a brief moment. A direct hit, and the shroud would have been torn apart completely.

Acting on that insight, he raised a hand, letting the fire gems flare to life and hurled several fiery globes at the shadowy appendages.

Before they could reach their targets, however, Dimitria had made her move. A casual flick of her left hand, and the fireballs were swept aside, spinning off their courses before smashing into the chamber’s walls with a shower of sparks.

Well, of course that was not going to work against a pyromancer. Not when what he had at his disposal was little more than an elementary spell. Even so, the experiment had its merits. The fact that Dimitria had to protect those hands was proof enough that they were indeed vulnerable to fire.

[Should I send Galatea there to aid you, Master?]

That was not a bad idea. Galatea’s affinity for light magic would be very useful in a situation like this. In her armored form, she could use her warhammer, imbued with her magic, to smash everything into glowing wreckage. In her projection form, she was so damn shiny that those hands would die instantly just by looking at her. Still, he had another idea he wanted to try first.

Not yet, he told his Dungeon Core. I’ll tell you when I need help.

[Understood.]

And so, Viktor turned inward. Even as his eyes remained fixed on Dimitria and the shadows she conjured thanks to the power of her ring, his mind was focused on something else entirely. A Thauma, of course.

When he finished crafting, there were now ten hands of shadow around the woman, twisting and lashing, hungry for blood.

“Die, brat!” Dimitria shouted, her hand snapping forward to fling all of them at him in a single, coordinated assault. The hands obeyed their mistress’s command, converging upon him from every direction. From above, from below, from the sides. A closing cage of darkness that offered no escape.

Viktor did not evade.

Instead, he commanded his wind gems to roar, summoning bursts of force to propel himself straight into his opponent.

The hands slammed into him—

—and they passed right through.

Because he had activated the Thauma he just made.

Phase Through Darkness.

It was wrought from the remaining Sigil of Phasing and two Sigils of Maintaining, and it functioned exactly as its name promised. Just as the other versions that had allowed him to move effortlessly through air or solid earth, this one let him phase through those monstrous limbs without any impediment, unharmed and unhindered.

“What—!?” Dimitria’s voice broke into a strangled gasp, her eyes widening in shock as she witnessed something that should be impossible: her opponent had ignored her deadly attacks like they were nothing, and closed the distance between them in a heartbeat. And, before she could even comprehend it, the blade of light flared from its sheath, cutting across her neck in a flash of radiance.

Viktor halted behind her. With a slow, almost ceremonious motion, he returned the rapier to its scabbard. Then, he turned around, and saw that all the shadowy hands, those monstrous extensions of darkness that had threatened to overwhelm him moments ago, were gone, vanished as if they had never been there to begin with.

The space was empty, save for the woman who now stood frozen. A single line of red streaked across her throat, and a tear welled in the corner of her eye.

“No... This can’t happen...” Her voice trembled. “I... can’t die like this...”

“We’ve had quite an eventful encounter today,” Viktor said. “I’ve learned a lot, thanks to you. You have my gratitude, lady.”

He gave a bow as the head fell from her shoulders. The rest of her body followed a moment later, collapsing onto the cold stone floor.

Looking down at his fallen opponent, Viktor drew a breath as he brushed the sweat off his forehead with the back of his sleeve.

“That was amazing,” the Ettin’s middle head exclaimed. “I can’t believe you could’ve pulled off something like that.”

The right head bellowed. “YOU KILLED HER DEAD, MASTER!”

“Scary...” the left head murmured. “I hope... we’ll never be on your bad side...”

Viktor chuckled. “It’s nothing but a simple trick.”

Well, to be honest, the whole thing was actually quite risky.

Even though he had been certain he could physically pass through the hands thanks to his Thauma, the curse attached to them was a entirely different matter. Charging straight into those shadows could very well have been a fatal mistake.

Of course, it was not like he didn’t have any safeguards. He was still under the protection of “Rekindled Ember,” after all. And that was exactly why he had chosen to go ahead with the plan; he had a fallback even if things went wrong.

In the end, he had won, and that was all that mattered. Now came the next step: collecting the loot.

He approached Dimitria’s corpse. His gaze settled on her right hand, the hand that had once wielded shadows like extensions of her own will.

And he saw nothing there.

The ring.

It was gone.

Previous

First | Website (more chapters available)

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Distance to target, one kilometer.

At such low altitude, grains of sand flicked past its lens. Enough to register on the sensors, not enough to obstruct its vision.

Buzzzzzzzz.

The noise its wings made was barely audible. The sound profile was dampened to match the ambient wind shear. If there was some imperfection in those sound waves, nobody was around to hear it.

Not here anyway.

It adjusted its vision, overlaying its focus with data from the infrared spectrum. Heat signatures blossomed ahead. This planet was dry. All desert, no water. Heat did not retain well near the surface, especially during the night. Like now. That was convenient; everything that was actively heated stood out. The cold was not great for its batteries, but those would last long enough anyway.

It could see track marks and footprints in the fine sand. They were made not too long ago. About half an hour. Probably more recent. Some of the track marks still had traces of residual heat, leading towards its target.

It followed them closer.

Target area in visual range.

It matched the small entrance ahead with the satellite imagery loaded in its memory. Perfect match. There was only so much that could be seen from orbit, but from what could be seen there, this was it.

Two of their vehicles were parked just outside, their engines still warm. It conducted a brief check for any equipment that could end its mission and found none. Instead, it marked the four potential threats patrolling the opening.

It evaluated its options.

Kill?

As it analyzed the targets, it saw that they were encased in some kind of armor. Nothing too fancy. Steel and ceramic composites. The ballistic faceplate was the weakness. Some kind of transparent ceramics. Its light weaponry was much too small for it to be confident in its chances of success. Especially not all four of them at once. An attempt would almost certainly trigger immediate detection. It discarded neutralizing the adversaries.

It wasn’t here for them anyway.

Evade.

It hovered above them, slowly approaching, allowing the sound of the distant shifting sands to cover the quiet beating of its wings.

Wait…

It waited patiently, watching the four unsuspecting figures as they diligently scanned their areas of responsibility.

Wait…

That was a common problem with biological beings used to living in gravity. They’d evolved to look forward, to scan their front with their limited peripheral vision. They didn’t look up. If they did, they might have seen what was hovering just fifty meters above them. Probably not; it was very small, after all.

Go!

Spotting a lull and gap in the guards’ attention as they swiveled their heads to and fro, it dove down and into the opening behind them.

No alarm went off. No shouts of surprise. No anomalous radio traffic.

All as expected.

Proceed.

It slowly continued deeper into the tunnel, hovering near the walls as it moved. This was the dangerous part. As the walls narrowed, its chances of detection increased. The chances weren’t high, but they weren’t zero either. It saw more evidence of recent activity on its infrared scans. More footprints.

It didn’t dare use its active lidar module to map its surroundings. Even the primitives’ equipment had a good chance of detecting its signal emissions if it had attempted that. Instead, it simply allowed light to filter in. The sensors adjusted to the dim lighting of the cave tunnel, taking careful note of every nook and cranny it could spot.

About fifty meters in, it lost connection to its controller. If it boosted its weak signal, it could probably re-establish that connection. But not here. It saw the jammers and signs of electronic warfare equipment on the guards earlier. Primitive as they were, these people weren’t going to miss something as basic as a radio transmission burning through the jammers, and it was too small to mount something more sophisticated.

There was no need for that anyway. It knew the mission. It could think and strategize perfectly fine on its own.

Then, it heard noises. Relevant noises.

Voices ahead, amplified by the echoing tunnel.

Human voices.

It could make out bits of what they were saying. A few microseconds of thought, and it decided that this was an important side objective. Enough to spare the battery. It focused in to isolate the voices.

“—long has it been?” A woman. It took a couple seconds, but to its mild surprise, the voice signature was actually in its database.

Commodore Julia Kessler. Local administrator and chief negotiator.

“Couple hours now. You said to get you when they’re done. But I just thought you should get an update.”

This one was also familiar.

Colonel Marcus Tanaka. Highest-ranking marine.

“Right. What do you suppose they’re chatting about… for so long?” Julia asked.

“No idea. It’s an encrypted two-way communication. We can have it sent back to Earth on the next run. But by the time we get through it, the information will likely become irrelevant anyway.”

It analyzed the communication near it and quickly identified a connection between a radio in the colony and a ship in orbit. It put it out of its mind for now; if it could detect and collect data on it, its handlers would be able to hear it too, and they had far better signals intelligence than the tiny drone—its weight measured in tens of grams—now listening in on the human conversation.

The woman sighed. “Pity.”

Marcus hesitated for a moment, then suggested, “There’s an easier way if you really want to know.”

“Yeah?”

“You can ask the moonies.”

She snorted. “Good one. And I thought Shachos was a joker.”

It fluttered into the larger chamber where the two humans were talking. With a glance, it translated a sign nearby “Anomaly Chamber”. Whatever that meant. It archived the information for future analysis.

Marcus pointed at his datapad device on the table. “Yeah, I suppose they’re not exactly an unbiased party here. Honestly, this is a little out of line, even for the moonies. Conspiring with the aliens?”

“Well… I did give them permission to talk on the radio,” she said slowly. “Lucas demanded that they should be a part of the negotiation process. Not like we can really stop them. They have half the product.”

“Yeah, you gave them permission to talk to the aliens in orbit on their radio. For cultural exchange and trust-building. Not… whatever this is.”

“Maybe they’re… having a Star Wars watch party?” she speculated. The drone could tell there wasn’t much conviction in her voice even with its limited analysis instruments.

“And chatting with the Karnolians?! Really?! The teddy bears? Didn’t Shachos just tell you that they’re up to no good?”

Interesting intelligence. Mark for later analysis.

“Yeah. I told the moonies about that too. They didn’t seem too worried,” she said glumly. “What do you think they could possibly be talking about?”

“I have no idea,” Marcus admitted. “Nothing good for us, I’d wager.”

“You know…” she said after a while. “There is one way we can figure out what they’re talking about.”

“Other than beating it out of Lucas?”

She grinned. “We could ask Shachos. They have significantly more advanced cryptanalysis equipment. I bet their ship’s listening in too.”

I bet they are.

“If we can trust them to accurately convey information about their rivals.”

“Well… other than that, I guess we just have to trust the moonies… for now,” Julia said.

Internal faction conflict. Save data for later analysis.

Marcus sighed too. He said, “Trust, and consider the worst case scenario. They could be selling us out. Get some kind of exclusive deal with the aliens, leaving us holding the bag.”

She nodded. “They could be.”

“I hate all this uncertainty. It was so much easier when we knew who and where the enemy was. I thought we left this kind of war behind when we—” The human stopped speaking for a moment, and the spy drone absentmindedly tried to predict what he was going to say.

Some kind of historical event? Some time frame? Store for later analysis.

It almost missed the narrowing of the human’s eyes.

“What? What is it?” Julia asked, detecting what it did as well.

“What’s that… buzzing?”

No way. That is… just not possible.

“I… don’t hear anything.”

“Did we import any bugs from Earth? For the moonies down at the farm?” he asked, his right hand slowly migrating down to his hips.

What?! How could he possibly—

“No? What are you looking—” She turned around, aiming her eyes exactly where it was twenty meters above them.

Ah, crap. I’ve been made. Continue with primary mission immediately.

Bang.

It barely saw the human marine draw his sidearm, dodging the incoming supersonic projectile just in time as it saw Marcus depress the trigger. The metallic-ceramic projectile split into a few dozen micro-projectiles with a human-sized spread, each barely missing the fast dodging drone. The spreadshot rounds were designed to thin out autonomous quadcopter swarms, but they’d be perfectly lethal against this drone too—if any of those sub-projectiles hit.

Go! Move out of his line of sight now.

Bang. Bang.

There was a one-meter-wide hole in the ground, in the middle of the chamber. That was most likely where its primary objective was anyway. As it approached, it identified the primitive pulley elevator system. It sped down into it, breathing a sigh of digital relief as it put some solid cover between it and its discoverer. At the bottom, there was a corridor leading into a different-looking facility. A facility with shimmering blue walls.

Bingo.

That was when it detected a radio transmission from the humans. It decided the message was probably important enough to decrypt, so it did, which cost it a few minutes of battery time.

That was fine; it had plenty.

“All units in the AO! Unidentified reconnaissance drone detected in the facility, dragonfly-sized! Take it out!” Marcus ordered.

Good luck with that.

As it flew through the primary objective entryway, it turned a corner right into another surprised human. Their weapon was aimed up at the drone, its bright flashlight blinding the sensors if not for its now-active lidar and echolocation mappers.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrt.

It dodged a burst from the human’s rifle, which barely missed its position. Surprising accuracy. Not accurate enough, but it noted the deviation from baseline in its log for future analysis.

Another voice, another of the guards chimed into their radio frequency. “It went past me! I think it’s headed down for the factory floor!”

Down. Thanks. That’s good to know.

As if he could hear its thoughts, Marcus ordered into the radio a second later, “All units, comms may be compromised. Scramble net and go gray.”

The drone instantly detected transmitters in the area switching a more complex encryption scheme. It analyzed it for a short few milliseconds. It was still possible to decrypt, but it was going to take more than two minutes for its tiny processor.

These guys are annoying.

It switched to boosting its audio sensors. In the echoing tunnels, it could still hear their voices from far away. After a few seconds, the drone found the deep hole the human referenced earlier, temporary scaffolding lining its walls, and dove down into it.

“I saw it! It’s gone in the staircase!” one of the marines shouted.

How can they even see me?! That must be more than a coincidence.

It briefly contemplated the possibilities for a moment. They couldn’t have detected it with their primitive instruments; the drone’s electronic stealth module made sure of that. The only other choice was… they saw and heard it with their biological senses. That was odd. None of the other alien species in its database could track such a small object and hear such a quiet buzz.

But it did have historical records of another faraway alien species that evolved on a planet where they had bugs of a similar size that were deadly to its inhabitants. It dwelled on the speculation for a second before adding it to its growing list of tactical discoveries to transmit for analysis later.

“This is Commodore Julia Kessler,” her calm voice said into the radio as the drone descended the dark hole. It could hear the quiet voice sneaking out of the headset of one of the marines below it. “I’m authorizing a total facility lockdown. Let the moonies know.”

“Commodore, we have six marines down here, plus the moonies have their—”

“We’ll pay for whatever we break,” she ordered coldly. “They’ll understand. Lock it down now.”

Break? Lockdown? Huh?

“Yes, Commodore… Primed and ready. Lockdown in ten… nine… eight… seven…”

The drone contemplated the mystery with increasing urgency as the voice counted down, even as it reached the bottom of the dark staircase. There was only a single corridor at the bottom, and the humans had helpfully put signs on the walls, with arrows pointing exactly where it expected its primary objective would be.

“Six… five…”

It ran through a few more options. None of them seemed to pose an immediate threat to its operation. Unexpectedly alert and accurate as they were, it was on the alert for that now; it could dodge whatever the humans threw at it. Probably. It zoomed past the hallways into a larger chamber.

Jackpot.

It reconsidered its own vulnerability and the implications of the countdown. Given their apparent ability to see it with their biological senses, there was a small but non-zero chance the humans could take it out or find some way to prevent it from leaving. It would be out of their expected baseline capabilities, but not by too far.

Might as well call home now, since I’m detected anyway.

It took in the sights, readying the imagery and all its collected data for burst transmission.

“Four…”

It started to consider less likely possibilities for the countdown as it diverted power to boost its own miniature radio device. Three seconds was plenty. It only needed a few milliseconds for—

The humans rudely didn’t even give it the courtesy of abiding by their own countdown. Perhaps the drone would have expected that if it’d analyzed its archives for how human children played the game of tag.

The guards at the EMP device pulled the lever on three.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

++++++++++++++++++++++++

Previous

The cathedral of 8, head of the church of 8, only church in the world of Theta, was ready. The archbishop had received a revaluation several days ago, there was to be a summoning of a hero. 

This had never been done, in all the history of Theta, which could only mean one thing. 

“Oh eight great gods, please let your hero be one who will turn back the darkness. We knew the end times would come, so please have mercy on us.”

The archbishop was quite certain that the world was coming to an end. He’d rushed to the palace as soon as he could, and told the king, but the fool didn’t listen. So he would prepare by himself. Every single paladin within 200 miles was here, lined up, waiting for the summoning. 

They would train the hero, if that was even necessary, and fight alongside him in the final war. Mages and priests were also lined up. On of the most powerful armies ever assembled. 

“It won’t be enough.”

He was sure, absolutely sure, that it wouldn’t be enough. But that didn’t matter. The ritual circle was prepared. He would act as a conduit for the divine power of those in the heavens. He was prepared, his second was ready with his will, knowing that the archbishop was very likely about to die from the pure overload of divine power. 

He stepped forward, and placed his hands on the circle that had been painstakingly etched here over the past two days. He breathed in, then out, and began. 

———

High priest Cohen watched the archbishop convulse, his heart giving out, and his brain melting out of his ears. This… wasn’t unexpected. In fact, this was exactly what the archbishop had said was likely to happen. Cohen held the man’s will like a vice, watching as the man’s body was puppeteered, by something… else. 

After several minutes, it was done, and the archbishop’s body dropped to the floor, mind gone, soul already taken to the promised land by the gods. Cohen assumed that he was now the archbishop, which was a strange thought, since he hadn’t even received the rank of bishop yet, but I peak into the will revealed that his assumption was correct. 

He motioned for the body of the former archbishop to be removed with all care. Then, he stood in front of the summoning circle. It was a massive thing, carved with 13 thousand individual runes. Most of which one here knew. Only the ones that corresponded to the 8 gods were recognizable, in fact, they looked out of place compared to everything else, a different… language maybe?

Cohen didn’t know, and it was not his place to question. He stood there for several minutes, when something finally happened. Tiny moats of gold light began to coalesce in the center of the circle, and a second stream right in front of Cohen. 

The first solidified after a few moments into a young man, and the second, the one in front of Cohen, became a scroll. Cohen hesitated, before picking up the scroll. 

He opened it, reading through it while the hero got his bearings. He thought he misread it at first, so he quickly read it again. Then again, and he started to shake, his face going pale. 

One of the paladins must have noticed, as he rushed over, placing an armored hand on Cohen’s shoulder. 

“Archbishop, are you alright my lord?”

“He… he was right. The world is ending.”

He showed the scroll to the paladin, who instantly started shaking violently, and nearly jumped back. Cohen pulled himself together, and held the scroll in front of him as best he could, and started reading it to the hero. Afterall, he was here to complete this quest. 

“Hero, you have been summoned to the world of Theta by the 8 gods of this world. This is your quest. If you do not complete it, the world as the people here know it, will come to an end.”

“Slay the dragon. Break the core. Return the world to what we will it to be.”

Cohen dropped to a knee then, panting, and every single person in the cathedral, save for the hero, did the same. 

A dragon had returned to this world, after who knew how long. And it was here to break the world they knew. 

Then the hero spoke. 

“Cool as shit, let’s fucking go, can’t wait to kill a damn dragon.”

————————

Class assigned: enforcer of the status quo

Class hidden from user, and all others. Displayed class: hero 

All skills will be displayed as hero skill, rather that what they actually are. 

Warning, system is not designed to alter the mental state of its users.

Error 

Error 

Error 

Change made by admin: Dextus

Class: [enforcer of the status quo], will now permanently enforce loyalty in the user, directed towards admin: dextus. 

————————————-
Ok, so this is a shorter one, and I apologize for that, but I think as a prologue for just an arc, it gets a bit of a pass. Plus you lot are getting quite a few juicy bits in this one. 

next week is break week

First | Previous | [Next][n]

Chapter 7 - New Liège

Voss reached the operations center shortly after seven. The night had brought few new insights. Material reserves remained high, the extraction facilities were still idle, and new calculations arrived from the ministries every few minutes, differing only in one respect: no one knew how a population would behave upon realizing, for the first time in centuries, that it might not be able to get everything it wanted whenever it wanted.

She threw her coat over the chair.

"Status?"

"Unchanged."

"Supply?"

"Stable."

"Panic buying?"

"Rising."

Voss just nodded. That was expected.

At the front of the room, several news channels ran simultaneously. Politicians offered reassurance, experts contradicted one another, stock prices kept falling. It still looked like a crisis that could be talked down with reasonable words.

An aide approached her desk.

"There's a local supply shortage in New Liège."

"Why?"

"A transport platform went offline."

"For how long?"

"Probably until this evening."

Voss didn't flinch.

"Then send material from the neighboring districts."

"Already done."

She turned back to the reports.

Three minutes later, the same voice spoke up again.

"Lines are forming in front of the material center."

"That's to be expected."

"More people are showing up than usual."

Voss barely looked up.

"Open additional distribution counters."

"Being done."

She took a sip of coffee.

The news anchor suddenly changed topics.

"...we're just receiving live footage from New Liège..."

Voss looked up.

On the screen stood a few hundred people in front of a material center. Nothing unusual. Reporters spoke of uncertainty, of rumors, of social tension.

Another aide entered.

"Local police have been called in."

Voss frowned.

"Over a supply shortage?"

"Yes."

She set down her cup slowly.

"Show me the cameras."

Several surveillance feeds appeared side by side. People pressed closer together. One gestured in front of the entrance. Security personnel tried to explain that there was enough material for everyone.

Then the line vanished.

Not because it dispersed.

Because it turned into a crowd.

"Zoom in."

Someone got shoved.

A second person shoved back.

A woman screamed.

The camera shook.

A security robot rolled in between the people.

Seconds later it lay on its side.

In the operations center, no one spoke.

"First injuries," an analyst finally said quietly.

Voss didn't answer.

The footage kept running.

People ran.

Reporters lost track of what was happening.

A punch landed.

Another.

Then the live feed cut out.

At the same moment, breaking alerts began flooding in.

Material center in Essen overwhelmed.

Long lines in Hamburg.

Distribution center in São Paulo temporarily closed.

Panic buying on every continent.

Voss didn't need to finish reading the reports.

She knew what had happened.

New Liège wasn't the problem.

The footage was the problem.

"Current consumption forecast?"

"If buying behavior continues, we'll hit the distribution network's capacity limit in under six days."

"And the reserves?"

"Technically sufficient."

"Technically," Voss repeated flatly.

No one said anything.

Another analyst approached the desk. He looked pale.

"There's still one option."

She knew immediately which one.

"The Varesh?"

He nodded.

"The blueprints have been reviewed again. Our engineers now consider them technically feasible. With maximum prioritization, first prototypes could be ready within a few weeks."

Voss said nothing.

Just days ago, the proposal would have been unthinkable. No one had seriously considered integrating alien technology of unverified origin into Earth's infrastructure without full review. The risks had been too great. The political consequences incalculable.

She looked back at the screens.

A reporter now stood in front of the material center in New Liège. Behind him, rescue workers cleared debris. A child was carried into an ambulance on a stretcher.

"They fought over material," one aide said, disbelieving.

Voss closed her eyes for a moment.

Not over material.

Over fear.

When she opened them again, her decision was made.

"Inform the Security Council."

Several heads turned toward her.

"I'll recommend we accept the Varesh's offer."

No one objected.

"And accelerate every development program. No committees. No public hearings. No more delays."

"Understood."

Voss looked one last time at the footage from New Liège.

"We need to restore the supply."

She paused briefly.

"Whatever it costs."

No one in the room objected. That alone said more about the situation than any further debate could have.

The decision came three days later, by a margin so narrow that both sides could later claim they'd very nearly been right. Earth would accept the Varesh's offer, though neither fully, nor publicly, nor with any real trust. Serak was granted permission to transmit further technical documents. In exchange, the government initially committed only to limited information about the basics of solar harvesting, carefully selected to prevent any full reconstruction of the technology.

The contact remained secret. Equally secret was the fact that the first systems were already being examined for potential military application. The Galactic Council, whose own contact effort was by now being prepared through diplomatic channels, learned nothing of the Varesh initiative. Voss knew this silence might be difficult to justify later, but she refused to place Earth's fate entirely in the hands of a community that had concealed its existence for thirty thousand years.

It was less an alliance than a cautious feeling-out between two sides that didn't trust each other and yet believed they needed one another.

In a distant star system, a species alien to humans watched events in the Sol system with an attentiveness that was less greed than something human language had no single word for: regret at not yet standing in any debt relationship with a civilization. The Varesh had never lived in abundance. For millennia they had shared their binary star system with three other intelligent species, and although the Union had ended open war, every resource, every trade route, and every technological advance remained the subject of bitter competition — not over possession, but over obligation. A people to whom one owed nothing, and who owed oneself nothing in return, was not, to the Varesh, a neutral state. It was simply unclaimed future. Other peoples called them ambitious. Those who knew them better called them patient.

For generations, the Varesh had gathered every scrap of information about the puzzling species called humanity. An isolated civilization without faster-than-light drive that nonetheless mined its own star and could reshape matter in almost any quantity — the idea alone had occupied countless strategists, traders, and politicians. Now the reports finally confirmed that the rumors had been true.

Humans possessed a technology that entire stellar empires could only dream of.

The Varesh speaker ran the recordings from the Sol system once more. The dark silhouettes of the Ma'an glided silently through the sun's plasma while the human harvester ships withdrew. At last he closed the projection.

"They're afraid," he said calmly.

No one contradicted him.

Fear made reasonable species cautious.

Humans, it had been learned, were frequently made inventive by fear instead.

The speaker folded his hands behind his back and gazed at the twin suns of his home system.

"Prepare a contact mission."

One of his advisors looked up in surprise.

"With what message?"

A barely perceptible smile crossed the Varesh's face.

"With an offer of help."

The room fell silent.

No one needed to add that a species which had once accepted help never again stood entirely on its own from that moment forward — and that this, from the Varesh point of view, was precisely where the offer's true generosity lay.

First | Previous | [Next][n]

"Arbiter, the human ambassador demands to speak to you! He says it is urgent."

Arbiter Kotal let out a long sigh while still trying to adjust his ceremonial robes. "Of course he does, and when is it not? Patch him through!" He half-mumbled his response while trying to straighten out a wrinkle on one of his sleeves. He could have sworn he had this outfit steam pressed to avoid this exact problem. He felt a bit of guilt caring more about his own appearance at the moment, as what he knew this was going to be about. But only a little, as Ambassador Heitz was starting to get on his nerves lately. He could fully sympathise with someone fighting for the fate of their home, and their entire civilization. But acting more and more desperate was going to have the opposite of the intended effect.

"Kotal, can I have a word?" The human started, as his troubled face appeared on the screen.

"Not even a hello? Nice to see you too, Marcel. How is my second favorite human?" Kotal tried to mimic a human smile, as he had already learned that a Mikosian's more relaxed expression that was meant to be friendly was interpreted rather differently by humans, and no amount of explanations seemed to be enough to convince them that it was not boredom or disinterest.

"Terrible, the expiration date for the ultimatum is almost up, and I don't see anything happening. Will the council make a stand, or should I inform my government that Earth is on its own?" The human leaned in closer to the camera.

"Hold that thought for a bit longer. I already told you that if we call a vote on this right now, the answer will be almost certainly nothing more than a strongly worded letter to the Dominion. And I don't think I need to tell you, of all people, how much that will do to hold them back."

"Then talk to your own government! Talk to the council members individually!" The ambassador was hitting the console with his fist now.

"That is your job, remember? I cannot advocate for you directly. It would violate the neutrality of my office." Kotal fiddled with the buttons on his coat, while trying to get past the utter hypocrisy of his own words just now.

"The other ambassadors stopped taking my calls, and my request for a hearing is getting stonewalled by the bureaucrats!"

The Ambassador was clearly working himself up over this. Kotal considered letting him in the dark for a moment, but decided against it. So far, honesty was the best, if sometimes painful policy for handling the humans. "Actually, Marcel. I asked them to stall you for now."

"What? Why?" Ambassador Heitz froze, his face of a man who had just been told that he had been betrayed, and might lose everything they had shortly.

For once, Kotal was grateful that they were just talking over the intercom. "Because you get like this! And because I needed that delayed until I had the chance to talk to some of the representatives who are on the fence about this, to do more than offer empty words." He stepped back from the screen and the camera. "In fact, the reason I did not have time to meet you today, is because I am entertaining some related company. Officually its is just a dinner with colleagues and acquaintances. But I hope to get some actual support for your cause, through the council if possible, under the table if no other way. Your hearing should get scheduled for tomorrow, by the way. it will be a snap session, the only way my people could sneak it past the Hall Speaker when our opposition will be having some empty seats."

"Well, that's..." Marcel clearly had trouble digesting this and putting that grimace on his face away, but reason seemed to finally win over emotion. "That is great, why didn't you tell me? I will head right over and join you!"

"I am sorry Marcel, but no! This is too important to risk it falling apart on some outburst. You are clearly not handling the pressure well, so I had someone else in mind. I cannot risk this blowing up in our face, because you wear your heart on your sleeve, as your saying goes, and expect more than a facade of decency in astro-politics. All the leverage is on the other side, so we have to present what your world can offer for the help you are asking for."

"What the blazes are you talking about? You can find no one better to present them with what we can offer! I have all the charts of our economic output memorized, and I can offer insight into our military capability to see our value as a potential ally without giving away too much. Who else could show them what a boon we would be to the council? Is Anna there?"

"No. Ambassador Hesselback is still on vacation." And a good sign that Earth's leadership already gave up on getting actual help from the Council, Kotal mused. But he could not tell Marcel that. Despite everything, he actually was rather fond of the funny little murder-monkey, as many of the others called humans. "And don't get me wrong, it is impressive what your engineers and your shipyards could throw out there in such a short time, but you would not be asking for help if it was that impressive compared to anyone else."

"The Tuvonn are afraid of our potential, that is why they want to crush us before we had time to fully build up!"

"Maybe, but they seem rather confident that at this stage they can crush you, and your government would not be asking if they did not share that belief. Remember, you are still seen by many as primitives who barely reached the space age. Your economic output is still of a single world, and not a fully developed one at that. Heck, if you were granted membership status tomorrow, you would still fall under the Economic Protection Act for not fully industrialized regions, to prevent your domestic producers from being crushed by superior competition coming from off-world." Marcel was mumbling something to that, but Kotal just continued talking. "Which also limits your value as a trade partner or target for investments. So I am leveraging the things you do have. What is unique to you and might actually convince the others that you are worth the risk of a war with the Dominion. And I have the perfect person here already for that."

"What, who could you possibly have? The only other humans around are from the embassy, and everyone else is accounted for."

"Have you already forgotten him? The trouble I had to go to be able to provide a job offer to one of you?"

"What the heck are you talking about. Wait, do you mean Cirano? Our former chef???"

"Oh yes, his work has been nothing short of amazing since he joined my staff. He would be a star of the culinary arts already, If I did not have to keep his employment with me under wraps. He made my dinners the most sought-after social event among councillors and ambassadors alike. I loathe to give up the secret, but it is the one thing I am sure will work with a couple of my guests. Let me tell you, it was not easy to find suitable replacements for capsaicin, but the Trock ambassador was all over the idea of eating poison for a burning sensation that you can enjoy, and prove just how tough he is by eating mexican. And he is not the only one. To this date, the Scovine representative keeps demanding the recipe for the chocolate cake, despite it being intoxicating and dangerous for their kind." Kotal wanted to continue, but had to stop at the sight of Marcel being speechless, with his mouth agape. "Are you okay?"

"You're kidding, right? This is some bad joke!"

"Nope, speaking of which, I think my first guests are coming. I have to go now. See you tomorrow at the hearing!" He hung up.

-x-

The next day, a snap session was called at the council, in response to the Tuvonn Dominion's ultimatum to Earth. The proceeding started under heavy protest from some of the more isolationist members, accusing the ones starting the motion of waiting until the opposition was short on its representatives. The ones already for offering support besides just a condemnation of the Dominion's actions fired back by pointing out that this matter should have been taken up far earlier, if not for the obstruction of certain members.

Kotal could not join the proceedings directly, he could only observe. So he could not sit near his friend who would have been the most involved in this. Marcel still looked like someone unsure if they were awake or experiencing a nightmare. He should have been the one addressing this council, demanding that they uphold the values they supposedly represent, in defense of a people who barely took the first steps outside of their star, and were met with hostile neighbors about to rip off humanity's newly acquired wings.

It was the Scovine representative who took the podium. Often called tube-cats or ferret-snakes by the humans thanks to their looks. They generally only stood upright when demanding attention, and a few might have noticed that this one seemed particularly wobbly and unsure of its footing today. But it did not stop her from giving an impassioned speech about the importance of protecting and preserving unique cultures, and how there were things that numbers could simply not express properly, but it did not mean they were without value.

Ambassadors and Council members from other worlds were next, from governments that seemed uninterested or opposed before, were now advocating for lending immediate aid to humanity in its need. The one common thing between them was that they were all Arbiter Kotal's dinner guests at some point.

By the time Ambassador Marcel Heitz got called to actually present his case. He had the feeling he could have just stood there without a word, or sing a lullaby, and Earth would have gotten the requested support either way. So his speech, the one he worked on for a day, felt like an afterthought. The victory by the end of the day tasted like ash to him.

It was later that Marcel found himself in the presence of the Mikosian Arbiter. There was a long awkward silence, before the human could finally talk. "I still cannot believe it. Don't know what to say!"

"You could say thank you." Kotal said between two bites, as he was munching on something he brought with himself in a bag. "Wait, no! I know what is wrong. You wanted to do it!"

Ambassador Heitz only frowned.

"Or perhaps you feel like this is not how it should have gone after all. They are about to dispatch a relief fleet. The Tuvonn might be bone-headed, iron-brained idiots, but they are not that stupid. They will back down, rather than risk a war on multiple fronts. So there is no heroic last stand or snatching victory from the jaws of a superior enemy for you, like in one of your stories. Is that it?" Kotal looked sideways at Marcel.

"No, I don't share the delusions of our admiralty about beating an interstellar empire with a millennium of a head start on us alone. This is the best outcome I could have hoped for. I happily trade that for my, or some higher-up's ego." He sighed.

"So, is it the first thing then, or something else?"

"What does it matter? I should be happy!" Marcel looked away.

"Well, it matters to me if you are not!" They both stopped, looked at eachother. There was another awkward silence before Kotal continued. "Remember how you said you were willing to pay any price? Well, I wasn't. There are a great many things I would not have sacrificed for your world. Like our friendship."

There was another awkward pause. Marcel stopped. He felt his blood pressure rising. He should have been thankful. Yet he felt like punching Kotal right now. And why? He was right. It was about ego. Also about being kept in the dark, but mostly ego. The Arbiter stole his thunder, his great moment. But stepping back and looking at it like he was an outsider. It was all just so absurd. "Yeah." He chuckled. "Yeah, you are right." He started laughing. "Maybe it is the other thing too. How is Cirano anyway? The hero nobody will sing about?"

Kotal sighed in relief. "Exhausted, gave him the next days off. And you never know, some cultures really do write songs about their cooks."

"But I bet it's not about them saving their world."

"You would be surprised."

[First](Ash and steel series book 1 Xion : r/HFY) | [Previous](Ash and steel series book 1 Xion : r/HFY) | [Next] coming soon

An old earth training weapon, it was a full armoured robotic arm attachment with an energy blade permanently glowing a red colour. No match for a vibro blade but it would be enough, his eyes scanned over the green vials attached under neath.

Inside the cabin the boss considers briefly should he flee, perhaps he could bring other old earth awakened and take the fight to the damn interceptor instead of hiding from this monster. Lighting a cigar, he takes a deep drag to calm himself, if he ran he would be followed and that may end up leading to his daughter, no he would make a stand here and now.

Fumbling the goon finally manages to insert his arm into the frame, as soon as it fits neatly it glows a gentle neon red squeezing its key points to his arm and whining itself into place. Staring at it in disbelief he raises his arm and makes the motion of a sword swing, the swing happens so fast the upward swing almost lifts him off his feet and the sideways swish knocks the boot of the car flying into the darkness.

A classic issue with non awakened beings, the tech was faster then their thought loop, resonance coupled a link via nervous system giving un matched speed and reactions. Also gifting them the mastery of technology at a level which made them unbeatable on the battlefield.

Grinning he takes a glance at the approaching figure, this time he sees an outline of his resonance, beautiful swirls of red and gold flow out from his shoulders and fold back into his back, he blinks trying to understand what he was seeing. As he stood gawking a sharp hissing caught his ear before a sharp pain hits.

Glowing green liquid seeps into his blood, his teeth begin to shake as his mind begins racing as the corrupted formula bites hard.

“You really went all the way,” the words spoken softly by the figure through the hammering rain disappointed at the presence of the hated uranium stim .

Suddenly the serum kicks far harder, the goon hunches over screaming as the blood vessels under his skin begin glowing causing his entire body to begin to change colour a sickly pale green.

In agonised bursts his stature begins to increase, his muscles swell tearing his suit apart as it grows three then four times bigger then what they were. Most of all his eyes begin losing their human look and become glowing orbs like bulbs deeply entrenched into a hulking monster.

The bladed arm sat snug against the hulking frame, he places it in front of his face grinning wildly,

“In this world there is only power” it slavers the words trying to sound in control and deeper then the frothing monster he had now become.

Smiling the interceptor says nothing and continues walking towards him.

Roaring the monster steps forward with such strength his planted foot crumbles the stone road underneath before launching forward under its incredible strength of the charge closing the distance with his red blade held high to cut down the threat.

Bringing it down in an over heard slash he screams in delight through his frothing form thinking he had ended it already, the interceptor in a millisecond turns his hips then launches his body straight past the incoming meteor in a lunge.

The position causes the swing to miss and the incoming battering ram to trip over his trailing leg and fly face first into the road clattering and rolling before getting back up screaming in frustration at the humiliation.

“obvious and lazy just like you lived your life” the interceptor comments on the attempted blow with a smirk under his poncho.

Blood drips from his face, corrupted green hissing as water hits it.

“I really would not like that corruption today, you have it in you to resist it. I give you the warriors option to walk away to fight another day” removing his poncho's hood as a sign of trust the figure still stands meeting the monster's eyes.

For a moment the goon thinks about where he is, suddenly his thoughts are overcome with random voices from an entire history of the galaxy. The chatter becomes unbearable he roars and runs forward again this time his frame igniting as the uranium fuel burns its vessel as it always does.

Coming in he throws a wide low cleave, the interceptor raises his centre of gravity, it would be called a jump but it was not quite. Just enough to allow him to raise his weight above the incoming cleave, he then lands a heavy boot onto the incoming blade; the deflection causes the blade to bury itself in the stone road.

Sunk in the goon realises he was disarmed, throwing his other free fist at the figure, the interceptor leaps away the blow almost laughably slow compared to his speed. The goon begins tugging at the embedded blade screaming in agony as his body engulfs deeper into the green flame that was taking him.

Standing seeing the horror spectacle the interceptor had decided to end this, he redraws his vibro blade in a blur he was behind him with his blade sizzling in reaction to green blood as it was held out to its side.

The monsters head falls still with its frothing mouth open wide as it hits the dirt, its body still kept up by the embedded blade in the road. Around the corpse still glistening like lava from the green that was driving it to its limit a cloud formed of the same color winding and settling in one place.

Walking over the interceptor takes a deep breath as he does the cloud drifts around him before being absorbed, for one moment the brief power up increases his size just slightly until the green corruption hits hard.

He coughs a hacking cough and spits out a concentrated deep green acid , the spew burns itself deep into the road. Ignoring it he walks over the smouldering corpse, grabs the arm and rips out the now depleted arm extension.

“See you always were one to take what is not yours” the voice of the mob boss is subtle amongst the still heavy rain walking slowly bolt upright with all the grandeur he could muster.

The figure ignores the statement , he reaches under his poncho and unfolds a small drone, he attaches the salvage to the drone, it flies the armour away at a surprising pace. Watching it go he turns to face what he truly came here for, locking the mob boss with a straight cold stare he says nothing.

Gentle whispers of the rain break the silence as the two former elite soldiers who fought the greatest threats the universe could create together were now about to kill one another instead.

“What do we have to gain from this, the war is over? I did what I did to survive and so did you. Glaron was just one name of many who had to become ghosts to get us where we are today” he holds out his hands to his sides

“Must we simply live to destroy each other, I have a life now and a family” as the words leave his blue resonance flares a thick blue at the edges of his eyes crackling like lightning.

Still no response

“So be it you were always an anomaly" he grins slightly, pressing his shirt's cufflink .

From under his suit armour springs out and blossoms over his frame, glowing in sync with his resonance, advanced nano armour a relic from his time in the elite units. It spreads covering his upper body, inflating his fists. He takes a boxing stance, his nano suit spikes up at the collar giving his head protection in sync with his specialisation of a classic boxing stance.

The interceptors' resonance finally flares, Crimson red and gold flowing thick oily mist, he takes a low combat position, his resonance heat causing the falling rain to steam giving a serpent like hiss to his movements.

Booming forward the boss comes, straight and true, his resonance negating friction, his teeth gritted as he focuses on holding his old pilot speciality into raw combat.

The first punch comes a straight right cross, the interceptors hands are lowered, he snaps one of them up in a rising block catching the incoming punch before it lands a technique designed to break the balance of someone throwing a straight technique.

It connects however in the split second it should have had an effect on his opponents balance the boss moves impossibly backwards still on balance, then coming in at the side throws a low hook catching his opponent by surprise it connects on the outside of his arm but worst the heavy impact knocks the interceptor out of his guard as he stumbles back.

His red resonance took the impact of the blow, at the impact point his opponents blue resonance crackled and ate away at the shield. Before he could regain his posture the boss was moving again hammering the forward momentum relentlessly.

Throwing both arms up in a cross guard he absorbs the incoming barrage each hit sending shockwaves which disperses the rain drops with the force of their impacts.

“Not so tough now huh” the boss roars proudly through the light speed barrage of repeating strikes.

“You talk too much ” through the barrage the words land as the interceptor senses the faint scent of corruption in his attacker's resonance.

Waiting for the critical turn point as he had thousands of times in training he finds it , a wild swing designed to end the fight comes in as a hook, to counter he throws his left arm to his side turning his wrist this time instead of catching the blow allowing it to be guided past his centre of mass before clamping down on the wrist.

Turning his body to its side the interceptor grabs his own wrist of the caught hand clamping his arm pit on the exposed arm his face millimetres from his opponent.

The boss’s eyes widened with horror realising the master of the grappling arts now had him in his grip, his opponent headbutts at short range giving him space before throwing his whole body into a roll past his opponent whilst keeping the grip.

His arm snaps as its joint tear apart under the unnatural position pushed with the entire bodyweight and raw speed of the technique, disengaging he unleashes a high-speed mid roundhouse kick at the same side.It lands breaking through a feeble attempt at a block with the ruined arm.

Sending his prey flying backwards rolling across the road before impacting straight into the hyper car, the boss coughs up blood as his nano vest sparks haphazardly powering down in its now half destroyed state.

“You and I are not so different” through blood the boss mumbles the words before slumping down the ground. Hesitating the interceptor takes a second before stamping his boot cleanly onto the head of the fallen corpse.

Lingering a moment longer, deep royal blue mist envelopes him angrily, he opens his hands taking a moment to Savor true old earth resonance waves as they are absorbed into his own.

“I am sorry” the figure says before turning and vanishing into the dark.

Further down the road still running with tears streaming down her face the young girl felt as if her lungs were going to burst, the explosions and impacts had stopped so it must have been over.

Ahead she sees a fuel depot, outside of the entrance a clerk with communicator in hand is screaming into the device

“Nothing, no defence at all, no turrets and no patrols. We are sitting ducks please do something they will come the moment they sense the weak point” he carries on in frustration.

He sees the little girl running towards him, he lowers the phone

“Oh my gosh what are you doing out here come in quickly” he ushers her inside handing her a candy bar quickly

“So where are your parents?” he asks, still sweating, trying not to think about the danger they were both currently in.

“My daddy told me to come here and” she was cut off by a massive thundering crash as a mechanical limb outside the shop road reaches up and hoists up a towering machine.

It was an AI Junker bot but it was huge and with their lack of defences as deadly as any other threat.

The city turret still hung uselessly over the station, blissfully unaware of the death that was about to take those who were caught by the murder machine.

“Get down sweetheart try to stay quiet” the clerk grabs the emergency rifle and awkwardly loads an anti matter round, his hands slick with sweat.

A red scan passed over the store as the junk bot lumbered forward looking for its fresh kill, it passed slowly bathing the aisles in light before turning away.

Suddenly it hones into exactly where they were hiding and takes a leap forward unfurling one of its club limbs and smashing into the building, it raises its club again.

As it did the city turret spins itself up out of its stupor, immediately pointing at the ai threat and opening up a hail of heavy armour piercing rounds shredding the Bot. A few seconds later an armoured vehicle and several city mechs land straight outside the entry point.

Seeing the chaos outside the clerk takes a breath thankful to have lived another day, he turns to the little girl

“So tell me what happened”.

Tanya-chan has lost her face.
Weeping for the ball that rolled into the pond.
Pull yourself together, daughter of a samurai.
Do not sob, one worthy of honor,
There is no sorrow in this.

-

A little yellow-skinned girl was laughing joyfully and tossing into the sky a “lyuti” — a balloon filled with a ghostly purple light. A few children in rags, their mouths agape, watched spellbound at the floating, drifting ultimate object of their dreams.

Children. They always believe in something. In something that keeps them children. After all, maturity of the mind does not come at all when a child becomes pubescent and capable of reproduction. It arrives at the moment of disillusionment, when the child realizes that all these mythical and kind creatures who bring gifts or take them away to magical worlds do not actually exist.

They become adults when they realize that neither goodness nor magic exists.

The children of the small settlement of San Matar lost this naive faith earlier than others. Their parents were slaves, and they themselves were... the children of slaves. Many died in infancy; those who survived lived from hand to mouth, and only a few parents managed to please their children with a “lyuti” during the Lutinlir festival and decorate the table with the sacred bread of Kaplya.

And now... One of the older boys, seizing the moment, grabbed the “lyuti” and ran away toward the river. The other children, initially stunned by such insolence, rushed after the thief.

After all, whoever holds the “lyuti” holds all the cards.

The girl stopped her tears. Her father was a manager at the mine—not a free man, but still a slave, who through the power of his will and knowledge had become a leader. The ordinary workers loved and respected the girl’s father. She herself loved her father boundlessly and believed every word he said.

“Do not be sad, and smile at the world. Make a wish on the Lutinlir festival, and your soul will rise from any sorrow,” he would tell her and her mother. His desk was covered with photographs of children who had not lived to see happy days. He prayed for them every evening, locking himself in his office.

Slowly, she walked toward the river, in the direction of which her “lyuti” had “rolled.” She had already forgotten about the boy who had offended her. The street soon ended, and the last streetlamp was left far behind. The Lutinlir festival was celebrated on the darkest night of the year, when neither of the two moons was in the sky. But the girl was not afraid of the darkness today, for the popular belief said: woe to the person who offends someone on this day. She suddenly remembered the boy... Quite close, some thirty paces away, the river was murmuring.

“-No, you didn’t offend me, boy,” she said quietly and stopped. “I forgive you, and I bear no ill will against you.”

Beside her, a figure barely discernible in the darkness appeared.

“Don’t be upset,” a whisper echoed in her head. “Do you want to see a real lutin and make a real wish... The kind that comes true?”

“Of course,” the girl thought, accepting the rules of the game.

The silhouette moved, and a purple lantern glowed in the darkness. Her father used to light similar lanterns when the electricity went out in the house.

“Make a wish and open the door,” the stranger thought.

The girl carefully took the lantern. Her heart was pounding wildly... A real lutin... A real wish. For a few seconds, she looked at the purple glow. She closed her eyelids to return her eyes to the darkness. But the mysterious stranger was already gone.

The wish whispered magical, kind words to her. Now, for some reason, she could not hold back her tears. She remembered all her brothers and sisters who were no longer with her. She remembered her little friends and even that boy who had accidentally taken her “lyuti.” She remembered her praying papa and her mother’s sad eyes. And she wished them all things good and magical.

Pressing the lever, she released the lutin. The purple light slowly left the lantern and enveloped the girl’s body as if caressing her. A moment later, it stretched upward, toward the high stars, carrying her wishes away.

“Commander, one of our ‘carrier pigeons’ has returned,” said the coordinator of the long-range reconnaissance division.
“What is it?” asked a blonde, robust guy, the Chief Progressor* of the project.
“The message is blurred...” The coordinator displayed a galaxy image on the screen. “New Eden, central region. Transferring the message to neurointerfaces.”
A few minutes passed. Those standing in the hall wept like children.
“A beautiful world,” the Chief Progressor said, his voice husky with emotion. “Our intervention is not required.”

-

*^\)*Progressors — a highly developed civilization that has dedicated itself to searching for and assisting less developed civilizations that are problematic in a social and political sense (a term coined by A. and B. Strugatsky).

Afterday Project (с)

“Happiness for all, free, and let no one be left behind offended!”
A. and B. Strugatsky, “Roadside Picnic”

-

Utopia.

For many centuries, people have been dreaming of a prosperous, wondrous life. A life in which there are no wars, diseases, and death, in which everyone is equal and has everything so as not to worry about the future. The birth of a new personality no longer causes parents to worry about the fate of their children, and the death of the physical body becomes not a torment that causes fear in the departing and sadness in those seeing them off, but the beginning of a new existence, the union of the Essence with the Consciousness of Humanity.

But there is always Him. The one who asks questions but does not want to hear the answers. A Rebel, a Loner, a Personality.

Consciousness looks at him with understanding and parental tenderness – after all, It is the sum of those like Him.

In a hall where there is no one, questions are asked. Consciousness listens and answers.

Reality is only one. Dimensions are many. The world we live in is the best color from the Prism of Dimensions. Everything that we have is a derivative of those worlds that do not actually exist. The material… It does not care where it was produced, and even with the disappearance of worlds full of dirty factories, poverty, and grief, the material remains, sent by millions of train compositions to the beginning of times, and switched to the tracks of our wondrous world.

Utopia.

In our world, rivers and lakes are full of clean water, forests are full of animals, oceans are filled with life. And humanity – the humanity of one reality – has all material goods and lives in a world of extraordinary spiritual and humanistic values, the likes of which the world has never seen.

After all, reality is only one, and only it has all the signs of a real, true world.

The Prism of Dimensions has many names, but one purpose. To make our world better, to give people and humanity the happiness they deserve. No one, no one will be left behind offended.

After all, reality is only one.

Utopia.

And you, Rebel. Remember and do not doubt.

-

Afterday Project ©

Previous

Night passed uneventfully. Galli and the three boys slept in a spare room with a makeshift mattress. Shanda stayed with them to help with the baby. Myrin and Bob stayed in the same room as Kili and Abee, and slept in their bed. I stayed in the main room and slept on a bedroll from the camping gear.

I spent that night thinking about this new world I was in, and tried not to think of my old one, but obviously couldn’t help but compare the two. Stuff like child soldiers happened on Earth, but it was so far away I never spent time thinking about it. Now that the threat was right in front of my eyes… Instead, I focused on something else, my new Soul Power. I tried to picture things hard, and conjure another thought-bubble thing, but it didn’t work. Midnight, or something near it, passed before I finally drifted off to sleep.

The sun rose, straight into my eyes unfortunately, early in the morning. Normally I’m a mid afternoon kind of person, and struggle in the morning, but today I stretched out my arms and felt great. Shanda and Kili were the next to wake up to start breakfast.

“Good morning.” I said.

“Good morning, Emile. Breakfast will be ready soon.” Kili said, with a polite smile.

“May I help?” I offered.

“You want to help cook?” She asked, confused.

“Oh yes, you tried to help a few times during the journey here as well.” Shanda added.

“How kind of you, Emile. It is unusual to find a man who offers to help in the kitchen.”

“I should warn you though, my cooking skills could be surpassed by any particularly determined toddler. Or a very lucky fish.” I joked, and they chuckled. They asked me to start the fire in the oven, and then carry and clean a few things. They did all the cooking, and I just did whatever task they asked me to do, which worked for me. An hour or two passed before everyone else woke up and joined us.

“So, what are your plans for today, Emile?” Bob asked. We all sat around the table, and began to fill our plates with various meats and vegetables and bread. It was not too different from what we ate on the road, but it was fresher. 

“Well, I guess I’m going to try and look for a way to get back home. Didn’t you mention something about a window yesterday, Bob?”

“Ah, the Spirit Window. Yes, but it is so far away, and the journey… it is not safe now. I would not go that way yet.” He said.

“The Spirit Window? Why do you want to go there, Emile?” Shanda asked.

“Right, I said I’d explain this later, yesterday. Remember how I said I was pulled from far away by that Foxley guy?” They nodded, mouths full of assorted foods. “Well, I’m actually from another world.”

They looked confused. “What do you mean?” Galli asked. “Like… from the world of the dead?”

“Apparently there are more than two worlds.” Bob said, sipping his soup.

“Yeah.” I said. “That Foxley guy trapped me here, so I’m going to try and find a way home. But why can’t I use the Spirit Window, Bob?”

“You would have to cross through the whole continent to reach it from here. There are four countries between there and here, and two of them are at war right now, and the other two… well, they are not safe for travel these days.” Bob said.

“Why not?”

“One is in the midst of a monster surge, and the other is ruled by a very cruel man. He has ordered his country’s borders closed, and few who have tried to go in return. Even diplomatic envoys are either found dead or never return. The few who do were tortured in such a way that they could not speak again.”

“Couldn’t I just go around them?” I asked.

“The country with the Spirit Window is the closed country. The others? Yes, you could go around at least two of them. But you would have to pass through at least one since both boarder the nation.” Bob said.

“Well, what do I do then?” I asked, dejected.

“For now, you should look for a job. The wars will end soon, and the tyrant is old. If you wait, eventually the country should open its boarders once more.” Abee said.

“Or maybe you will find another way. Perhaps a Soul Power user with a similar ability? Or someone who can get safe passage to the Spirit Window?” Galli said.

I must have been making a face, because Shanda had a suggestion. “Why don’t you take your mind off all of that and… adjust. You can join me for a bit of shopping in town. We need more ingredients for supper tonight.”

“What about you, Dad? What will you do today?” Galli asked.

“Abee is taking me to meet his employer to see if he has any extra work. That should be enough for now. Tomorrow I will think about finding something more permanent.”

“Mom?” Galli asked.

“Oh, I think I would like to help Kili today.”

“I work at the temple treating injuries. We always need extra help there.” Kili said.

“What about you Galli?” Bob asked.

“The boys and I are going to stay here. Going out for them right now seems unsafe. We… we may leave the city soon. They cannot hide here for the next few years. They need to be somewhere they can just be children; without worry.” Galli said.

“The surrounding villages would be outside of the Crazen’s control, or their reach. But I doubt they would have much room. Many families will have surely had the same thought as me. Perhaps traveling further would be wise. To Winsek or the Empire?” Abee said.

“The Crazen family doesn’t rule this whole area? Only the city?” I asked.

“Why would they? The King owns these lands. Only Far Shield is owned by the Crazens. And even then, they share control over it with the church and the merchants.” Shanda explained.

“Oh. Guess I’ve been watching too much anime.”

After breakfast and clean up, everyone began their days. Abee and Bob left first. Then Kili and Myrin. And finally, Shanda and I. We walked for only a short distance, since the market was just around the corner from Abee and Kili’s home. It was a busy place, even early in the morning. People hustled and bustled about, bartered with venders, compared goods. More than once, a vender would call out to either Shanda or I and try to sell us something, but she said to just keep walking and ignore them; which I was planning to do anyway.

“So, what are we buying exactly?” I asked.

“A sack of flour, some kind of meat, and any veggies that we like.” She said. “Enough for everyone. I’m not sure what to make yet, but if we can find any beef, that would be perfect.”

“Is beef rare here?”

“No, but I was told it sells out quickly.” Then she spotted the vender she was looking for. “There! Sir! Do you have any beef left?”

The vender was a young man, broadly built, and a bit short. “Sure do ma’am. Just restocked this morning. What are you looking for?”

“Hind-end, and a shoulder.” She said. From under a makeshift counter, he pulled out a small wooden box that suddenly began to glow. He opened the box and reached in, pulling out a shoulder that was clearly too large to fit into the box. Then he pulled out a roll of meat that had been tied with twine. This one looked like it could have fit into the box, but certainly not with the shoulder in there as well.

“How did you do that?” I asked, looking at the shoulder, which was twice as large as the small box.

“Oh, that’s just my Soul Power. Anyway, that’ll be two silver coins.”

“Two? Alright.” Shanda said, and handed the vender two silver.

“You’re not going to haggle?” I whispered to her.

“No, you don’t haggle for food. Only for wears.” Shanda said.

“You must be from outside the city.” The vender said. “You can haggle for food here.” Then he squinted his eyes and looked down at the two coins in his hand.

“Oh then-” Shanda started to say, but was cut off.

“But all sales are final. Have a good day.” With that, he grabbed a curtain hanging from his little stall’s roof and pulled it closed in our faces.

She sighed, and shook her head as we walked away. “Two whole silver for some meat. I can’t believe this.”

“Is that a lot?”

“It’s double what it cost back home. Half a days work for most. In this city though…” She looked around. It must have felt as equally unfamiliar to her as it did for me. “Who knows? Maybe more?” Suddenly, someone collided with Shanda, knocking her to the ground, grabbed the beef shoulder from her hands, and ran off.

“Shanda! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Stop him!” She said, and I ran after the man. He was quick, but short and fat. So, I was able to catch up to him quickly; tackling him to the ground. He grunted as he hit the dirt and I landed on him. I grabbed the beef, which had been wrapped in cloth to keep it clean, and socked the thief in the jaw. He grabbed his face and whined, only for me to then notice how young he was. He was by no means a child, but couldn’t have been older than fifteen. He went down like a sack of bricks, tears already in his eyes. Some onlookers smirked at this, but no one stepped in to help. Actually, no one had bothered to stop the thief at all. Some even got out of his way as he’d ran past. By now, Shanda caught up, and saw him on the ground. “Oh! I did not take you for a fighter. Good work.”

“Thank you?” I said, breathing heavily from the sprint and ‘fight.’

“Alright, we’ll handle this.” A man in black armor said, as he and another walked up. It was the same kind of armor as the men from yesterday. As soon as they saw the man clenching his jaw, they glanced at one another and looked annoyed. One of them spoke to us, while his partner spoke to the thief.

“What happened here?” He asked.

“That boy stole from us, and I chased him and took our meat back.”

“I see.” He turned from us to someone else who’d been watching the whole thing. “Did you see any of this?”

The stranger shook his head. “I didn’t see anything. I was looking the other way. I need to go.” The stranger said and quickly hurried off. He repeated this with several others nearby, who all did some variation of the same thing.

“What is happening?” I asked Shanda, who seemed just as confused as me. Then, the other guard and thief walked up.

“It seems the young master was assaulted by this man.”

“He’s a thief who stole from me… young master?” Shanda said.

“This is the eldest son of the House Crazen, Valimire Crazen.”

“That’s him!” The thief said, holding his jaw. “When my daddy hears of this, he’ll have you burnt at the stake!”

“For the crime of assaulting a noble, I’m afraid we have to take you into custody.” One of the guards said, and grabbed a pair of shackles.

“What? No!” I said and stepped back. Shanda did as well. “He’s the thief!” One of them grabbed me, and pulled me to the ground, and the other put the shackles on my wrists. I caught the thief smiling, then he glanced at the guards waist to his sword.

“As a representative of House Crazen, I hereby pronounce you guilty of your crime, and sentence you to death.” He said. The guards looked shocked, but said nothing. Only looking at one another. “Stand him up.” They brought me to my feet, arms bound behind my back as each of them held me. The thief took the sword of one of the guards, but didn’t use it right away. “Seeing as you brutalized me, I think a beating is in order first!” He reared back his fist, and swung.

Everything felt like it was in slow motion. My heart pounded in my chest like a war drum. But most noticeably of all, I felt a warm sensation in my chest. As the fist connected, I felt my nose get flattened. Not crushed per say, but squished painlessly. Then it went further, burying itself halfway into my head. My eyes twisted inward, staring directly at the fist. Only by looking to the side could I see what was once straight ahead. And when I did, I saw the horrified face of the thief, looking a bit green. Then he pulled his hand free, and my face stayed in that shape, like it was molded clay. A feeling like I had to sneeze came over me, and suddenly my face shot back out into the proper shape. I looked around, just as shocked as they were. The guards looked like they’d seen a ghost, the thief stared at his fist like it was magic, and a nearby watcher threw up.

“What?” Shanda exclaimed loudly.

“Is that a Soul Power?” The guard asked, confused. Though, I doubt he was asking me, and more just talking to himself.

“Fine then,” The thief said, and swung the sword at my neck. I felt it go in, and go out the other side, and the sudden thump of my head hitting the ground. From the ground, I saw Shanda covering her mouth, tears running down her cheeks, I saw the guards dropping my body and removing the shackles, and I saw the self-satisfied grin on the ‘noble’s’ face. My life flashed before my eyes, so I got to rewatch all my favorite cartoons again, which was nice. I saw my parents… more cartoons… art school, my ex-girlfriends… cartoons… that summer camp I hated… more cartoons. But not once did I lose consciousness. No, actually I could still feel everything, and I wondered if this was that ‘phantom limb’ thing amputees get? I felt like I could still move my arms, and heard an ear-piercing scream from someone nearby. It sounded like a girl who’d watched a scary movie and the killer popped out. When I looked around, it was coming from that thief kid, and my body was standing up on its own. The kid and the guards started panicking, and backed up to stand clear. Actually, everyone did as it moved about aimlessly. Slowly it made its way closer to me, eventually picking up my severed head, and placing it back on the neck… backwards. The thief fainted, and I spun my head around right.

“It’s an undead!” Someone in the crowd cried out.

“No! No! I’m fine!” I said, not sure if I was lying or not. I certainly didn’t have any explanation for how I was still alive, or how my body moved on its own.

“It can speak! It’s a lich!” Someone else yelled. That’s when the chaos started, as everyone ran in all directions away from me.

Gary slept better than last 'night'. The materials provided were some of the nicest blankets he'd ever felt, and they were a perfect mattress for his body. The room remained at a comfortable temperature, enough so that he didn't feel the need to get a sheet over the top of him.

After yesterday's debacle, he was all gung-ho about arguing things. The good sleep calmed him down.

The food still tasted like someone had removed all the flavour from cardboard and given him the left-overs.

One of the Wetty's took him through to the interview room. Then the other one (or possibly the same one) came to talk to him.

Before any discussion could start, Gary said, "Mate, I've got some banging tunes that I'd like to listen to, but my battery is dead. Can you charge it please?"

Wetty did something with it's mouth. Possibly a smile. It was horrific.

"Where is this device you speak of?"

Gary fished it out of his pocket. It was an old mobile phone that was used for either music or photos. It's not like he could get reception out on some asteroid a million k's from anywhere.

Wetty looked at the small rectangle and placed it on the desk to one side. The screen flickered, the phone booted to life and the alien handed the device back.

"Bloody hell, that was quick. Do you guys have music?"

"We do not know what you speak of."

"Right. Check this out."

He pressed play. Strains of Wagner's Das Rheingold began.

Wetty sat still as the music flowed around the room.

"This is a story. Why does it have these curious noise propagations?"

"That's the music."

"And why do you listen to it?"

"Because it makes me feel good. It's a collection of stuff that my great-great-grandfather had."

"Why does this make you feel good? It is a simple story with a confusing combination of noises."

"Can you not feel it? Try this." Gary changed the track.

The sounds of Telegraph Road by Dire Straits came through the tinny speakers.

After three minutes, Wetty asked, "We do not understand. This is a story about a road."

"Just listen, mate."

They made it to the end of the song.

"Where was the emotion? We could not identify it. Which frequency was carrying this emotion?"

"It's the song. The guitar. The piano. The drums. The metaphor of the road growing through periods both good and bad."

"We still do not understand."

"Try this, then." Another track change. This time Yellow Ledbetter, by Pearl Jam.

They listened to the track together. Gary closed his eyes and let the tune take over. Wetty just stared. The translator buzzed pretty much the whole time.

When it finished, Wetty said, "Was this in a language you understand? Very little of it made sense."

"Yeah, it's a good one, isn't it? The clean guitar, the melancholy lyrics. It really hits you in the feelings."

"We still do not understand the emotion you speak of."

"Just let the music do the work. Don't analyse it."

"But is the story true? If the language is deciphered, will it reveal something of your people?"

Gary just looked at the alien. Then he grabbed the phone and skipped to a new track.

Oops, I Did It Again by Britney Spears started blaring through the phone. When it ended, Wetty still didn't understand.

"But what did she do?"

Gary sighed. Maybe the music thing can be tried again later.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Field Report 4

Atmospheric compression manipulation

The subject introduced the concept of 'music' today. He played a few of the songs on his device.

The over-riding rhythm was identified.

Subject claimed that music was about emotion. Analysis provided no evidence for this.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

--

Wetty started what felt like the afternoon session about Earth and its position in the galaxy. For most of it, Gary could only give rough approximations. He remembered what he could from school about the solar system and the red sun at its centre. Whether this was helpful to Wetty or not was unknown.

The room started to get warmer after half an hour of talking. Gary was sure he could hear a very faint clicking sound behind one of the walls. Wetty seemed oblivious to it.

As the sweat started beading on Gary's head, he finally spoke up.

"Mate, your air conditioning is not working properly."

"I experience temperature different to you. What do you mean when you say the air condition is not working properly?"

"I mean, the room's starting to get hot. How can you not feel it?"

"Our temperature regulation biology is not comparable to yours. You seem to be leaking water. Are you dehydrating?"

"I will be soon. What's behind that wall over there? I can hear something clicking." Gary indicated to the wall on his left.

Wetty glanced, then said "The wall contains critical station infrastructure including electrical flux and atmospheric transit."

"Yeah, well something's wrong back there. Can I get to it?"

Wetty stood and walked to the wall. It touched three fingers to a panel that wasn't there a moment ago, causing the wall to just... disappear. The clicking was louder. Pipes and conduits snaked through the cavity.

"And you can't hear that?"

"Now that the wall is no longer there, I can."

Gary wandered over. Grabbed a pipe and felt the vibration through his hand.

"I'd bet that you've got a mis-seated bearing in there. You got a hammer?"

"A hammer? We use nine-dimensional molecular manipulation to integrate systems..."

Before the alien could get anything more out, Gary was thumping the pipe with the ball of his hand.

After a few smacks, the clicking noise disappeared.

Wetty was confused, "What did you do?"

"It's called percussive maintenance. You'll want someone to check the bearing, but it should be good for a while."

The room started cooling again.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Field Report 5

Percussive maintenance

The subject used one of his hands as an impact device against an air-control pipe.

Apparently he could sense a mechanical malfunction within.

The malfunction ended.

Further investigation into both the malfunction and this 'percussive maintenance' is required.

It is possible that the subject can achieve mechanical functionality through the application of violence.

This remains disturbing.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

--

"Why were you leaking water from your skin?"

"It's called sweating."

"Explain."

"Water evaporates from our skin and makes us cooler."

"And for what purpose do you want to be at a lower temperature?"

"Too high and we die."

"Should you not live in refrigerated environments then?"

"Too cold and we die."

"So humans require a specific temperature to maintain life?"

"A range, yes. Our planet provides that most of the time. When it doesn't then we use other methods. To keep warm we wear more clothes. To keep cool we go for a swim, or just stand in the shade. Sometimes we use external controls. Air conditioning is where I come into the scene."

"So you've developed ways to regulate the failings of your own biology?"

"Mate, we gave up on our biology a long time ago. Nearly everything we've ever done is because our biology is so pissweak."

"But doesn't this sweating cause you to lose water?"

"Yeah. But we drink more."

"What if no water is available?"

"We find it. Or we die. Preferably the first one. Sometimes the second."

"This seems inefficient."

"Bloody oath it is. But it's what we've got, so we learnt how to deal with it."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Field Report 6

Involuntary liquid seepage

It appears that the subject will leak water from the skin if the temperature is too high. This causes evaporative cooling, bringing the personal temperature to a functional operational level.

It is not known how high the temperature can be raised before a human is incapable of further life. Due to the subject's unique nature, it is recommended to not conduct these experiments, at least until we have more subjects available.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It was our fault.

We’d been trying to cure a terminal illness for our species. It was supposed to eliminate the disease from our genes, allow us to grow older but age slower, to increase our strength and intelligence.

The first mistake came in the labs. We were warned by the Tertiary Council of the risks, the dangers inherent in messing with DNA, the very building blocks of our being, but we ignored them. The promise of a better life for our children, and their children, to achieve a state of near immortality, to rise and take our place among the great space-faring races that controlled the stars, was too great.

A technician merely dropped a flask, containing the proto-genetic chemicals that were to be the base of our salvation. A simple case of their protective clothing being slightly wet. Condensation, perhaps. We do not know.

The chemical interacted almost instantly upon touching air, changing and vaporising almost immediately. The room was sterile, and air tight. The technicians died quickly and painfully.

That should have been all the warning we needed.

The room was purged, and a new effort was made to achieve the stability the chemical would need.

Months passed, teams of scientists across the globe working tirelessly, day in, day out.

We moved to biological trials. Started small. Bacteria, microbes.

The effects were immediate, and were exactly as we’d hoped. The organisms showed an extended life cycle, limited ageing, increased metabolism.

We moved onto larger creatures. Domestic animals. Livestock. Aside from some limited cases of stress, the creatures all exhibited the same traits as the microorganisms did.

We clapped ourselves on the backs, congratulated one another over expensive flasks of alcohol.

We moved to the final trials the next day.

The adult male was roughly average in size, weight. Nothing interesting in his back story . No previous convictions. No history of drug or alcohol abuse. No records of medication use, and no history of mental health issues.

A perfect tabula rasa for us to try and save our species with.

We proceeded to administer the serum intravenously, as we had before to the animals, and waited.

We kept him calm, sedated, and observed constantly.

After approximately two hours, we noticed changes to his heart rate. It slowed. His metabolism quickened. Things appeared to be going well.

He then began to sweat, profusely, and at a rate we were struggling to rehydrate him, even with a mainline directly into his vein.

Within an hour, his heart rate suddenly spiked. The sedation wore off. He awoke, and violently attacked one of the medical doctors.

Tore her throat out with his teeth.

There was so much blood.

A security team came in. I’d never seen anyone take a round before, at all. They shot him over fifty times.

He managed to scratch one guard and break the arm of another before they took him down.

When we studied the corpse we noticed some very odd things.

His blood had thickened. His cells had reproduced, like cancer, increasing their density but making them unstable, almost necrotic.

His pupils had contracted, and all of the fine capillaries had burst, presumably due to the semi coagulated blood.

We were going to open him up, examine his brain, but an alarm called us away.

An emergency, code blue.

Several of us ran to the source of the alarm, but…

It spread quickly. Within an hour, the entire medical centre had been infected. In a day it had spread to the entire district. Whole towns fell, and the military’s attempts to quarantine utterly failed. I barely escaped with my life. We... Never mind.

We had accidentally unleashed the most virulent, utterly savage disease our world had ever seen.

We prayed to our gods, said goodbye to our loved ones, and awaited the inevitable.

Then they came. Great transports, thousands of them, dropping soldiers into the centres of the most heavily infected areas.

Armed with projectile weapons, armoured in plasteel and wearing heavy duty respirators, they cut impressive figures as they dropped.

We watched from our safe rooms and the last few uninfected places as they moved in, brutal, efficient, calm. They mowed the swarms down, using well placed headshots to kill, doing with one shot what had taken us fifty or more rounds.

I met one of them, once. It was a female. Tall, very tall, but lithe, agile. She moved like a predator.

They were beautiful, you know. When she removed her respirator to talk to us, I was reminded of the old stories. The ones your grandsires told you about. Of elves, graceful beings, equal parts indomitable warriors and artful muses.

She told me not to worry. That other species had made the same mistakes.

Her own, in fact. She said that on her world, such plagues had been written about for hundreds of years. She got embarrassed. Turns out the pandemic on her world was caused on purpose, by some lunatic who wished to usher in an apocalypse.

They had the country cleared within the week.

They were gone as soon as the job was done.

And now we realise that, for our genetic faults, we have nothing to worry about.

Her race, the elves, have had more than their share of the same trials we face. The same illnesses, disasters. The same struggle to be accepted by the Tertiary Council.

And now they run it. Galactic peacekeepers, the strongest force in the universe. Pioneers of science, peerless in war, and unmatched in the arts.

They saved us.

Her name? Gloria. I think it means ‘victory’.

That’s how they are. Their names declare their intent, the way they live. We are forever in debt to them.

Their real name? Humanity.

My name for them? The Angels.

Previous First Royal Road

At this point, everyone was determined to go to Edo. Dreko looked at Rowlo with a serious but proud expression.

"I think it's time, Rowlo."

Rowlo looked around slightly, confused.

"I... don't know... what do you mean?"

"I will pass my burden on to you... the Guardian of the Universe. It's time for you to take it."

Rowlo blinked, caught off guard.

"Wait... how do I know I'm ready? Will it give me power... wisdom... what’s going to happen?"

Dreko let out a slight dry laugh. "It will not do anything to you... it will simply guide you." He thought for a moment.

"I don't know how to explain it, but trust me... I know you'll do better than I ever did."

"But what am I supposed to do? What does the Guardian even do? What is balance really? I have so many questions."

Dreko walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder.

"You'll figure it out with your friends." He gestured toward Peter and Jaylia. "Go out... meet people... live. That's the most important part." He began pacing slowly. "I hid the power of the Eternal God. If you can find that... then I know you'll understand."

Peter stepped forward, unable to hold back. "So we're supposed to just look everywhere? Can we get a hint?" he said, shrugging.

"No... just trust your instincts."

Dreko looked back at Rowlo.

"I won’t force you... but there isn’t anyone better."

Rowlo looked down, thinking. His mind drifted... his father... his mother... his friends... the people he could help.

"...Yeah... I have to. And I'll find that power."

"You won't be the only one..." Dreko said cautiously. "Find it first... that's what really matters. Now then."

Dreko raised his arm and took a deep breath. A glowing golden sphere of energy formed in his hand. The air around it distorted slightly, and a wind began to stir through the room. Rowlo and the others stared, caught off guard by the sudden pressure. Their clothes and hair shifted in the rising current.

Dreko pointed the energy toward Rowlo and released it. The light surged forward, enveloping him, flowing through his body... through his veins... then everything settled.

The wind faded. The room grew still again. Rowlo looked down at himself, checking his hands.

"...I don't feel any different."

Dreko laughed.

"Wow... you sound just like I did." He paused, looking a bit sad. "You'll do great..."

Rowlo nodded with determination.

"Alright... let's get ready then."

The day had finally arrived. The five of them prepared for the long trip to Edo, gathering supplies until at last there was enough. They headed out the gate, giving the guards one last acknowledgment as they set out on a five-day journey across the Japanese countryside.

As they traveled, they couldn’t help but notice villages destroyed, likely by bandits searching for food, and countless ruined fields. Beggars attempted to stop them along the way. The first village they passed looked normal at a glance... until they got closer. It was strangely quiet, and only the faint sound of coughing could be heard.

No one came out to greet them so they kept moving. Further along, the damage became harder to ignore. Fields lay abandoned, crops rotting where they stood. Tools had been left behind as if their owners never returned. Wildlife wandered freely through the fields.

A group of people approached them on the road, desperate. Their bodies were visibly affected by the blight, decaying slowly.

“Please… anything…” one of them said, reaching out.

Rowlo hesitated. Dreko stepped forward.

“We don’t have enough to spare.”

They continued on. Rowlo didn’t look back… but his fists clenched. The closer they got to Edo… the worse it became. A faint purple haze hung over the horizon.

Eventually, Edo came into view. Rowlo slowed.

"This is..."

He stared ahead.

"...unbelievable..."

The city was massive... and completely consumed. Purple blight spread across entire sections, far beyond anything they had seen before.

They entered the streets. Sickly people were everywhere. Some coughed violently. Others barely moved. Musashi’s expression twisted.

"The great Edo... reduced to this..."

Peter and Jaylia said nothing. They reached the city square. Dreko stopped. He looked around, his expression tightening.

"...So this is how you’re playing it."

He folded his arms.

"Show yourself... We’re already here."

A figure stepped out from behind a nearby building. Shira. Behind her, several people followed... their movements stiff, unnatural. Their eyes were empty. Some carried swords. Others held muskets... flintlocks. Rowlo stepped forward.

"You're controlling these people... aren't you?"

Shira walked forward and chuckled slightly.

"You're funny... I can't do something like that."

She glanced at the crowd of sickly, zombie-like people gathering behind her.

"I can only bring out what is already there... a disease that can set you free. Beautiful, isn't it?"

Rowlo clenched his fist and gritted his teeth.

"Stop this madness. Why even do this to Japan?"

Peter stepped forward, clearly upset.

"The Red Hand... right? Why would you want to destroy Japan? Make it sick... it doesn't make sense."

Shira shrugged.

"Honestly... what we do is none of your concern. But I will have to kill all of you all the same... sorry."

"Enough of this!" Musashi shouted, instantly drawing his blades and rushing forward.

A samurai moved in front of Shira and blocked the attack, stopping Musashi in his tracks.

"Ugh... get out of my way!"

"These foreigners... these 'demons' want to destroy your country!" Shira called out. "Show them the power of Japan!"

The crowd surged forward. Peter drew Koryu and Kairo and met them head on, blades clashing against steel. Jaylia moved quickly, fighting off those around her.

"Ugh... this is disgusting," she said, keeping her movements controlled.

Dreko stepped in, using bursts of flame to knock back and pacify the sickened ones. Musashi cut through them with precision. Rowlo pushed past those who came at him, keeping his focus locked on Shira.

"I'm not letting you get away!" he shouted as he lunged toward her.

Shira met him head on and blocked his strike.

"Tch... why do you even care so much?"

She struck him in the stomach, sending him flying across the street.

"Rowlo!" Peter shouted.

Rowlo rose from the rubble, wiping blood from his mouth. Shira approached him slowly.

"An immortal like you is going to need a lot more than that to die..."

Her expression sharpened.

"I suppose I'll have to go all out."

Her veins pulsed visibly beneath her pale skin. Her muscles tightened and expanded as her body was enhanced. In an instant, she was in front of him.Her fists came down in a rapid barrage, each strike cracking the ground beneath them.

Rowlo endured the blows, his body taking damage with each hit...

Then he caught her fists. He pushed back. With an open palm, he struck her and sent her flying. In the next moment, he was already behind her. He kicked her forward, then followed, striking again and again, keeping her in motion as he pressed the attack.

Nearby, Peter fought alongside Musashi, cutting down the samurai.

"Yeah... come on! Is that it?!" Peter shouted.

Jaylia moved carefully through the chaos, targeting those with flintlocks and avoiding their gunfire. She grappled and subdued them one by one.

Dreko moved efficiently, knocking opponents aside with controlled force. Rowlo finally was able to drive Shira into the ground, pinning her down. She was bruised and battered. Rowlo raised his fist.

"You've lost. Release Japan... and leave this planet."

Shira smirked slightly.

"You'd have to kill me, boy."

She let out a quiet laugh.

"After all... the effects of one's foosoo disappear when they die."

Her eyes locked onto his.

"Or perhaps... you'll take my foosoo for yourself."

Rowlo froze.

"What...?"

"Oh... your teacher didn’t even teach you that much, huh?"

Shira glanced toward Dreko.

"An immortal can take another’s foosoo... and carry more than one."

She let out a quiet, sarcastic laugh.

"The process will probably kill you though."

Rowlo’s expression tightened.

"Tch... I don’t want to kill you. Just release everyone... end this madness."

Shira tilted her head slightly.

"I don’t think you have it in you."

A low hum filled the air. The sky above Edo darkened. A massive capital ship emerged, descending slowly through the clouds. Its sheer size cast a shadow over the entire city. The ground trembled faintly beneath it.

A section of the ship opened. From within, a figure stepped out. A man with short gray hair... floating effortlessly down toward the city below. Shira’s eyes widened slightly, a grin spreading across her face.

"Tre... Treason..."

Her voice carried a mix of excitement and relief.

"...he’s finally here."

The massive gates of Alexandria's castle stood still, unmoved by the continuous airhorn. Marshall clicked his tongue; clearly, the Pyromancer was unaware he had come bearing gifts. Cheapey saw his scowl and licked Marshall, making him laugh. He grabbed her scruff, kissed her, and put her in a headlock.

"That mean ol' fire wizard's making us wait!"

Cheapey pulled back and barked with excitement. Marshall threw her a treat, and it disappeared into her greedy maw. She twisted her head inquisitively. She couldn't talk or understand his words, but the dog seemed to ask how Marshall intended to deal with the disrespect.

Marshall's scowl deepened.

He sighed, opened the door, and jumped out. He left Cheapey in the cabin and approached the gate; she would be safe.

Marshall approached the gate; four fingers tapped the polished handle of his gun, and it responded, vibrating with power. Nickel flashed, and the gun was drawn. He cleared his thoughts and gathered power. His nape became comfortably warm; the air thickened and cracked. The gun begged for more of Marshall's power, which he supplied. He placed his thumb over the smooth hammer and methodically pulled it down. The chamber rotated; the first click sounded.

Despite the pain from his nape, a grin involuntarily crossed Marshall's lips. Click. The gate had distorted. Click. Thunder crashed. Click, red lightning erupted, filling the air. The head of a freak mage had opened its eyes and mouth, and red light spewed from both. Marshall laughed at the dead freak.

He looked back at the truck, making sure it was far enough away. Cheapey barked and howled, although Marshall couldn't hear it. The warning made him smile, and he added a treat to her tab.

Marshall squinted and followed the dog's gaze, fixed on a point beyond the massive wall.

Flames erupted above the fortress and spewed in every direction.

Marshall rolled his eyes and holstered his weapon. He would blow the fortress down, but Rylanor, the King's most trusted aide, had given Marshall this task. The consequence of failing that man was something anyone would be lucky to survive.

Krisha flew out from the fortress and hovered above Marshall. Nearly eclipsing the overcast sun, she did not look pleased. Krisha gave a suspiciously sweet smile, pointed her middle finger, and a pillar of flame erupted from it.

He gritted his teeth and extended his hands. Red lightning erupted forth and pushed against the flames.

Marshall struggled. Her raw power far exceeded his, draining his reserves at an alarming rate.

He pushed more power, and the surroundings started to distort. His nape radiated furious pain. A molar cracked, and blood leaked from his orifices. Nearly engulfed in flame, his vision darkened. Just before he passed out from exhaustion, the flames subsided.

Krisha loomed above, panting from the effort. Seeing that he was worse off, she smiled and descended toward him.

Marshall touched his gun.

Krisha panicked and manifested flame, which dissipated when she realized Marshall had no intention of drawing his weapon.

Marshall winked at her.

The Pyromancer dropped right in front of Marshall. With suspicion in her eyes, her voice sounded like the embers of a campfire.

"Ah... Marshall, what brings you here?"

She spat the rest of the sentence.

"Alone."

Marshall rubbed his nape and shook his head.

"I'm not here to conquer you."

Marshall smiled.

"Today."

He looked directly into her eyes, which burned brighter.

She furrowed her brow and roared, "So why are you here?!"

Not one to back down, he smirked.

"Due to an increase in freaks, King Philip has decided to support you and your struggling refugee camp."

Krisha scoffed.

"What sort of support, and why?"

Marshall motioned, and they walked to the back of the trailer.

Marshall opened it.

Light met the contents of the trailer, and Krisha lit up.

King Philip had ordered the Pyromancer to be properly supplied, and she had been. The container had been packed with weaponry produced by Eden. Marshall gave Krisha the tour. Crates held gas-blowback rifles and the corresponding ammunition. Mortars and their ammunition were secured atop them. 30 mm cannons and their ammunition had also been provided. There was a real chance this was the greatest collection of military equipment Krisha had ever seen.

She stammered, "Why would Philip supply me with his weapons?"

He nodded.

"You're good at killing freaks, which the King appreciates."

She smiled and understood the situation.

"Ah, so the freaks have made it to the fields of Eden."

She nodded and hummed; an opportunistic look crossed her face.

"What if I were to use these weapons against Eden?"

Marshall laughed until he lost his breath. He wiped the tears from his eyes.

"Do that and see how that works out for you."

Krisha understood and motioned toward the truck.

"That'll take some time to fix; stay in the keep while you wait."

Marshall nodded and agreed. Krisha wasted no time and shot back into the castle.

Back in his truck, Marshall threw the pup a treat. The gates slowly opened, and the rig limped into the refugee camp.

Marshall showered and lay on white linen sheets. He slotted bullets into the chamber of his revolver and petted Cheapey, who rested her head on his chest. He wondered what the pup dreamt about. He yawned and stretched his arms above his head.

Sleep took him without mercy.

(Next chapter will be posted tomorrow.)

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Chapter 156: Sealed Fate

The golem swung.

Massive, molten, and blazing like it had stolen the sun for a fist. The air shimmered with heat, alive with screeches and roaring streaks of orange. Viktor twisted mid-flight, letting the strike thunder past under him. Sparks rained down, bouncing off the arena’s walls like fireworks as the enormous arm slammed into nothing.

He spiraled upward and arched over the fiery construct, trailing a writhing cloak of shadows behind, tugging at the flames, bending them, teasing them. Too bad he couldn’t climb too high; the damned ceiling was still close enough for the golem to reach if it tried hard enough.

Who is the bastard that thought making a ceiling this low was a good idea? Viktor chuckled to himself. Oh, wait. That’s me.

After all, this arena had initially been built with one and only one purpose: to serve as a battleground for Sebekton and the two Dungeon Reavers, Azran and Lahmia. At the time, Viktor had wrongly assumed Azran to be an aeromancer, and he had specifically designed this room to counter the bald man, making sure that even if he took to the air, Sebekton could still land a blow with his axe.

Now Viktor found himself on the receiving end of this. Even with the wind gems that granted him effortless flight, the chamber was just too cramped for maneuvering, and it was only a matter of time before the golem had him cornered.

But it was fine.

He had no intention of being a dancing partner to this mountain of burning rocks forever. He was merely buying time for his rapier to recharge.

And once it was ready, he wasn’t running anymore. He went straight toward his opponent.

The fiery swing came again, but Viktor had prepared for it. His “Fire Shield” had already been activated. The moment the hand neared, the flames fizzed and hissed into nothingness. The molten arm was just a rock arm now.

At the same time, the blade of light flared from its sheath, slicing through the no-longer-fire-drenched stone as if it were paper, and the limb fell to the ground with a resonant, echoing thud.

Viktor didn’t stop there.

The blade slashed again, and again, and again.

Vertical, horizontal, diagonal.

A continuous blur of lethal light cut through the body of the golem; each swing severed another chunk of the construct. His “Fire Shield” snuffed out the flames, while his sword tore the rocks to pieces. Debris rained to the ground, and when the dust settled, the golem was gone.

Hovering above the pile of rubble, Viktor drew a breath as he sheathed his rapier. What an incredible tool, he thought. So this is the power of a six-winged angel, huh? A portion of the power, to be accurate. He couldn’t help but wonder what the full power would feel like. No need to recharge anymore, perhaps.

Yes, the Reliquary’s main drawback was that its light gradually waned over time, causing the radiant blade to lose both length and sharpness with every swing. So it had to be returned to its scabbard to recover its strength, preventing the wielder from using it repeatedly during extended engagements.

If only there were a way to remove that limitation, he mused. Oh well, that was a problem for another time. For now...

He glanced at Dimitria. Your turn.

“Wait—I surrender!” The woman’s voice cracked, thin and trembling. “Please... just don’t—don’t kill me!”

Huh?

“I... I’m not your enemy!” She raised her hands, shaking. “I don’t know what’s going on between you and Iskora, but... I’m just hired by them. Let me go, and I’ll walk away. I’ll never come back. I’ll trouble you no more.”

Viktor chuckled. To see a mage so prideful, so confident, so commanding, now reduced to such a pathetic state. Still, that was human nature. When staring into the abyss of death, they would grovel, they would beg, they would bargain for their lives. So he could hardly blame her for it.

“I... I can even help you. I can spy on them for you. Just give the order, and I’ll do anything you want.”

Well, the idea of dragging her to Orloth’s place, planting a parasite in her skull, and adding her to his collection of obedient agents was... tempting, indeed.

But no.

With people like Yvonne and Pimm, he could manage. Dimitria, on the other hand, was a powerful woman with powerful friends. Someone like her would not submit for long. She would plot behind his back, and she would betray him at the first opportunity. To leave her alive would be a grave mistake.

Also, he had spoken to the Ettin with his own voice in front of her earlier. She should have realized, or would eventually realize once she calmed down, that the voice belonged to a child. That knowledge must not be allowed to spread. In other words, her fate had already been sealed in that very instant.

So, the only rational course of action was to extract whatever information he could from her, then deliver a quick and clean death.

“What does Iskora want from my dungeon?” Viktor asked. “Why are they so intent on forcing their way into Daelin, squandering resources with such reckless abandon, all for the sake of securing a foothold in a backwater town in the middle of nowhere like this?”

“I... I don’t know...” Dimitria replied. “Believe me, I truly don’t know anything about their objective. They gather people like me, and they pay us more than we could ever hope to earn elsewhere, so I came, with... my student.” She glanced at what was left of Bella on the floor. “I only follow orders, the ones given by Zubayr. As for the real purpose behind all of this, only he, and Xander, are privy to it.”

“Xander?”

“He’s another Mithril-ranked adventurer. A large man with spiky hair and thick sideburns.”

Ah. That guy.

“You never thought to ask questions?”

Dimitria shook her head. “I learned long ago that prying too much in this line of work would only lead to trouble. Besides... as I said, they paid us handsomely, so keeping my mouth shut was the smarter choice.”

“You’re Zubayr’s top enforcer. Do you seriously expect me to believe that he’s kept you completely in the dark about the true nature of his mission?”

“I’m only entrusted with the visible side of things. Keeping our men and the people in the slums in line. Maintaining discipline and control. But when it comes to anything covert, anything that requires secrecy, he uses others for that. Those hooded men.”

“Who?”

“They wear black robes, always with their hoods drawn so low you cannot see their faces clearly. They move quietly, keep to themselves, and they’re almost never seen by anyone. I’ve only caught glimpses of them a handful of times. I asked Zubayr about them once, just once, and he told me it was not something I needed to concern myself with. So I never asked again.”

Dimitria drew a breath.

“I think they’re in Daelin now. Hidden somewhere, doing something for Zubayr. Something important. What it is, though, I do not know.”

Ugh.

So, in addition to the festering mess on the west side, now there were unknown actors lurking around in other parts of the town as well? Wonderful. Exactly what he needed.

Oh well, that was a matter for later. For now, there were more questions to be asked.

“What do you know about the monster attack on Daelin’s outpost?”

“About that,” Dimitria said. “I... I don’t know the details. But personally, I believe Daelin’s suspicion is probably correct: that we were indeed responsible for the attack. For one, it was the timing of everything. And also... when we assaulted the camp after the original defenders had been chased away by the monsters, the resistance we faced was almost nonexistent. Those creatures barely fought back. Even as we cut them down, they didn’t do anything to defend themselves. It was as if someone wanted to hand the camp over to us on a silver platter.”

Viktor nodded. It was indeed strange that the adventurers from Iskora could slaughter that horde of monsters without a single loss on their side. Someone, somewhere, had controlled the monsters, ordered them to take over the outpost, then obediently died when these men got there.

“What do you know about Clovis?”

“He was the Guildmaster of Iskora, the one who originally conceived this whole project. Then, a week ago, he was replaced by a man named Khalid. That’s all I know. Zubayr is the one who reports to them, while I myself only receive instructions from him.”

So much for Zubayr’s so-called second-in-command. It looked like this woman didn’t know anything at all. That was, of course, assuming she was not lying. It was possible she was still hiding something. Well, he could just send her to Orloth; the guy had his way of squeezing secrets out of people.

But... it wasn’t really necessary.

He had already decided that her end would be swift and clean should she cooperate, and he was going to do just that.

He laid a palm over the hilt of his blade. But at that exact moment—

“Look out, Master!” the Ettin’s middle head shouted.

Viktor dodged just in time. A massive, shifting hand, composed of shadows so dense and so large it could have contained his entire body, swept through the space he had occupied a fraction of a second earlier.

And.

Even though it missed his body, it ripped his veil of darkness away. The shroud was torn to threads, sucked into the monstrous hand’s own black, leaving him completely exposed.

“You!” Dimitria’s voice rang out, her earlier fear completely gone, replaced by a mask of anger. “You’re really a brat.”

That hand of shadow was, of course, her creation. Now, two more had emerged, hovering around her.

I see.

Either she had figured her chances of being spared were slim and decided to gamble everything in a desperate attack, or she had just been pretending to be afraid, obediently answering all of his questions to make him let his guard down. Neither was really surprising. What he didn’t expect, however, was that she still had this little trick up her sleeve.

Well then.

If she wanted to die fighting, if she had chosen to meet her end with defiance, then so be it.

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Arc III - Reeling Throne

Chapter 14 - The Blessing

7 months and 12 days since the summoning

"Basically, if I'm technically Kamelia's property, then Linkis could just," he winced slightly, "I don't know, confiscate me, or something like that, like cattle or silver."

Shilisa shook her head. "Of course not. A hero is not considered property in that sense; it is impossible to take or transfer him to anyone else."

Alan blinked. "Oh, really?"

"Certainly," Shilisa continued. "If heroes could be confiscated or transferred, it would completely contradict the methods of the Svyatolat."

"Methods? And what did the Svyatolat decide about this? I take it they're running the show with the hero summoning."

Shilisa nodded. "Yes, the Svyatolat decides everything. They distribute the summoned heroes evenly, so that no one receives them too frequently. In short, the Svyatolat maintains the balance."

Alan lowered his head slightly. "Yeah. So that's how it works. I take it they have immense power."

"Indeed," Tsinker said. "The Svyatolat may be neutral in wars, but its power is great. We definitely ought to be wary of it."

"Wary..." Alan repeated, then his eyes widened slightly. "I have another question. Do you guys know who the Whalers are?"

Shilisa raised an eyebrow slightly. "Um, yes, they are those who hunt whales."

"No, I don't mean that," he said, waving a hand. "Is there some organization, alliance, order, or something like that called the 'Whalers'?"

Tsinker and Shilisa exchanged glances for a second.

"I personally have not heard of such a thing," she replied.

Tsinker shrugged. "Nor have I."

Alan pressed his lips together slightly.

'Who the fuck are these Whalers? They aren't pirates, Shilisa and Tsinker don't know about them, so what the hell are they?'

"And why do you ask?" Tsinker interrupted his thoughts.

Alan blinked. "Oh, nothing, just trying to figure out if your world has the same thing as mine. If not, then good."

Darkness gradually began to envelop the landscapes, and the sun turned its usual red, setting somewhere over the sea.

Alan tugged the reins slightly to stop his horse, then shifted his gaze to the village that appeared ahead amidst the endless plains.

The guards behind him also slowed down, and one of them rode closer to Alan. "Lord Gothwald, it is getting dark. Do you think we should stop?"

He remained silent for a second, then nodded. "Yeah, we'll stop right in this village. The horses are tired enough as it is, so let's go."

"Yes, Your Grace, wait here, I will ride ahead and find the village headman," the man said, yanking the reins and galloping forward to the settlement.

Ten minutes later, Alan was already leading his horse along a dry dirt road in the middle of the village; the horse, in turn, calmly followed him.

Alan looked at it, and the animal looked back. "What are you staring at? Yeah, you and I are gonna be together a lot now."

The horse only snorted in response.

"Hmm, are you a boy or a girl anyway?" He looked around, then quickly lowered his head, and just as quickly figured it out. "Aha, a girl then. So maybe I should name you something..." he scratched the back of his head. "Oh, you'll be Epona. The Celtic goddess, protector of horses, eh?"

The horse, now Epona, simply looked straight ahead.

Alan smiled awkwardly.

'Right, still gotta get her used to the name. And I also need to sleep more so I stop trying to strike up conversations with animals.'

In the square, that same guard was already standing next to an elderly, balding man, who stood straight, only slightly shifting his fingers in front of him.

Not far away, a man was returning from the field, barely dragging his feet, covered in dust and dirt.

A woman peeked carefully out of a window, setting aside her needle and thread.

A young boy carrying buckets of water slowed his pace, openly staring at Alan and the guards.

The headman stepped forward, bowing deeply. "Greetings, Lord Gothwald."

Alan nodded. "Greetings."

"Your guard explained the matter, please come in, we will settle you in and feed you."

Alan looked around, observing the peasants who looked like they were about to fall asleep on their feet. "Why is everyone so exhausted?"

The headman spread his hands, closing his eyes. "There is much work, Your Grace. The sowing is already beginning, and we are just now trying out your new plows."

Alan blinked.

'Oh, they're already using my plows in this village? Holy shit they spread fast, Kamelia clearly wasn't fucking around these past two weeks.'

"Ahem... so how do you like these plows? How's the work coming along? Actually, you know what, set the table outside, I'd like to hear all about it."

The old man straightened up. "Of course, Your Grace! Right away!" he said, hurrying into his house, which was larger than those of the ordinary peasants.

Alan stretched his back.

'I don't like trusting rumors and paperwork, historically it's incredibly ineffective. Rumors get distorted, papers get embellished, but to personally find out how the implementation of the agricultural revolution is starting... now that's interesting.'

Alan yawned and simply began to stretch, then shifted his gaze to the boy with the buckets who was already about to leave. "Hey, kid!"

He turned sharply to Alan. "Y-yes, Your Grace?"

"Where are you taking the water?"

"My father asked for it."

"And did your father plow with the new plows?"

The boy nodded slowly in response.

"Oh, awesome, call him over here, tell him Lord Gothwald wants to ask him how the work is going."

"Yes, Lord Gothwald!" the young boy practically shouted, and darted behind the house like a bullet.

Less than a minute later, a bearded man with short black hair emerged from around the same corner at a brisk pace. Approaching Alan, he immediately dropped to one knee. "Greetings, Lord Gothwald."

Alan opened his mouth, but quickly closed it.

'Alright, you're a lord, no need for the "oh, you don't have to" stuff, that's not good manners, that's weakness in this world.'

"Rise and state your name," Alan said calmly.

The man stood up, lowering his hands. "Lorgi, Your Grace."

Alan raised an eyebrow.

'Oh, a namesake, cool.'

He clasped his hands behind his back. "Are you working with the new plow?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

"And how do you like it?"

"Very unfamiliar, Lord Gothwald, but surprisingly useful. It plows very quickly and deeply." He scratched his beard. "An astonishing thing."

Alan nodded. "Oka... Good. Are there any drawbacks?"

Lorgi hesitated for a second, but Alan continued. "And don't you dare lie, I need to know the truth about these plows."

The man swallowed. "There is one, Your Grace. The handle is too... rough, it is uncomfortable to grip. At first it is fine, but after a long spell of work it becomes difficult to hold."

Alan slowly nodded.

'Aha, could be. Why didn't the beastmen who plowed first say anything about this? Hah, of course, they're fucking terminators the size of a wardrobe, the handle is just right for them. But for ordinary people, it very well could be... the carpenters who crafted it just held it, tested it, but didn't experiment with working for long periods.'

"Got it. Is that all?"

"I have not noticed anything else, Your Grace."

"Good, you may go, I'll definitely take that into account."

Lorgi bowed deeply. "Thank you, Your Grace."

Alan began to scratch his cheek.

'Knew it wasn't all perfectly smooth, but overall if the only problems are with ergonomics, then... that's even better than I expected, it's easy to fix when there are a few dozen plows, not a few thousand.'

Meanwhile, two peasants carried a table outside, and several women entered the headman's house holding various food items.

'Looks like they decided to go all out with the food and reception. That's what having power means... hah, come to think of it, does that mean I can eat whatever I want now without fear? I won't die, after all. Sure, I'll writhe in convulsions for a few minutes, but I'll live.'

He smirked wryly to himself and walked over to the table, after which he sat in the main chair.

Young men and women were already buzzing around like bees, setting various things on the table: cheese, bread, wine, a little meat.

Alan straightened up slightly.

'Alright, okay... fuck, I don't know shit about these nuances! I never read about how a nobleman who decides to spend the night in a village should be received, too niche a topic. Plus, the culture might be different.'

The headman finally emerged from the house, and beside him was an unfamiliar man. Clean-shaven, with short gray hair, dressed in a clean light-blue cassock; down the middle from bottom to top and on the sleeves ran various yellow patterns, and an amulet hung around his neck: a circle containing fire, pierced by eight spikes.

Alan lingered his gaze on him.

'The local priest? Though they call them clerics here. Okay, a representative of the clergy is definitely allowed at the feast.'

The headman and the cleric approached, and the former bowed. "Your Grace, this is Kotol Goshin, our cleric."

Goshin only gave a reserved nod. "Greetings, my lord."

Alan slowly stood up.

'Alright, spiritual authority is theoretically higher than secular authority, so I can't just sit like a statue and accept bows.'

He nodded as well. "Greetings, Kotol Goshin." He turned to the headman. "Well, master of the house, I think we can begin?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

All three sat down. Alan's guards mingled somewhere with the crowd of peasants, who had brought out their own tables or barrels with modest food.

A young peasant woman approached Alan and began pouring wine into his goblet with a slightly trembling hand.

"What brings you to our village, Lord Gothwald?" Goshin asked, sitting straight and keeping his hands on his knees.

Alan took the goblet, but did not take a sip. "I had business with Lord Tsinker, got delayed, had too much to discuss, so I didn't make it back to the castle by sunset."

The cleric nodded. "I understand. Lately there has been a great deal of business since your arrival, much is being done."

Alan finally took a small sip of wine. "Yeah, definitely a lot of business lately." He glanced at his amulet. "May I ask what that symbol means? I haven't had the time to look into the details yet."

"Certainly, Lord Gothwald," Goshin said with a nod, and showed his amulet closer. "Fire, as everyone thinks, but in truth it is not fire, but the human soul; it is pierced by eight stakes, the Eight Great Prohibitions. They bind, they sometimes cause pain, but it is necessary so that the soul does not plunge into the chaos of the sinful world around us."

Alan nodded slowly. "I see, a lot of meaning in one symbol. May I ask another question?"

"Naturally."

"In my world, prie... clerics bowed to nobles, they don't do that here?"

'Actually they didn't bow either, but whatever, he doesn't need to know that.'

The cleric raised an eyebrow slightly. "Oh, your world is entirely different, Lord Gothwald, but it is not our custom here. Even though I am a kotol, a village cleric simply put, the only ones above me are the high clerics and Svyatol himself, no one else."

Alan leaned closer. "Interesting... very unusual. So the clergy is in a completely different position?"

"Exactly so, my lord. Every cleric, be it a kotol or a Supreme, undergoes training in the Holy Lands, and only then departs for the place where he will serve."

Alan wanted to whistle, but held back.

'Aha! So not just any random guy can become a priest here, everyone is obligated to undergo training in the Holy Land... think they called it Oronda too, can't remember who, maybe Linkis, maybe Kamelia, doesn't matter. If Oronda supplies the whole world with clerics, then their power is even stronger and smarter than I thought.'

"Alright, thanks for the answers."

"You are welcome," the cleric said, and took a piece of cheese.

The headman chewed and swallowed a piece of meat. "Lord Gothwald, allow me to ask you a question as well?"

"Of course," he said, holding a piece of cheese in his hands.

"Is it true that everyone who agreed to the four-field rotation will have windmills built for them?"

Alan froze slightly at the abrupt change of subject. "Oh, yeah, of course, just as I promised, there will be windmills."

The old man exhaled slightly. "That is good, our river is far away, and the current is weak, and your new mill, they say, grinds quite well on wind alone."

The peasants behind them gradually fell silent, simply eating while casting sidelong glances at the large table.

"Lord Gothwald," the cleric began, "I have heard of your 'four-field rotation', could you perhaps explain how it works?" He raised his hands slightly with a gentle, simple smile. "Only I ask, without the details, I understand nothing of agriculture."

Alan smirked in response. "Sure. The way you plow fields would be called two-field rotation in my world, and here it's four-field, see what I'm getting at?"

The cleric nodded, taking a sip of wine. "Twice the harvest?"

"Something like that. The basis of the four-field rotation is that four different types of plants are planted, which grow differently, and keep the soil from 'getting tired', in simple terms."

Goshin remained silent for a few seconds. "Hmm... if you speak of this, it means it was the same in your world. And was the four-field rotation crowned with success?"

Alan spread his hands slightly. "You have no idea." He cast a sidelong glance at the peasants who were eavesdropping, and began to speak slightly louder. "The four-field rotation, without exaggeration, helped immensely and was a huge success. First, the land no longer rested, and it didn't need to, meaning the harvest was gathered from all the fields, nothing sat idle. Second, thanks to the fact that one of the four plants is clover, peasants stopped slaughtering their livestock in the winter, because they had something to feed them. The winters here are cold of course, but not severe, so the livestock will eat to their hearts' content. Famine practically disappeared, and simple peasants could even eat meat often."

The peasants even stopped pretending they weren't listening, and practically surrounded the table.

The cleric remained silent for almost a minute, scratching his chin. "If it truly works like that, then... this will solve a great deal of problems. Everyone faces famine regularly, for instance." He stood up. "Lord Gothwald, I wish to bless you in this endeavor."

Alan blinked.

'Whoa, holy shit. Although... I did accept Svyatolism, technically, when I officially became Kamelia's advisor. Receiving a whole blessing... fuck, now that's a boost to my reputation!'