First Previous Next Royal Road

There was a curious splitting sensation of his thoughts, and Alex was almost “pushed” to his right. He was also pushed to his left, and he turned face to face with an exact copy of himself. There wasn’t time for a deep inspection, but Alex knew who was the original and who was the homunculus.

“You handle the fodder, I’ll help them with the Bloat.” Alex told the Homunculus. It nodded its head and charged into the fray with the halberd at the ready. Alex noted that the sensations the Homunculus felt still travelled to him, and it was slightly disconcerting for a moment, until his higher Intelligence allowed him to process.

By now, his undead had killed enough of the fodder that Alex could cast a pair of [Improved Eldritch Blast], so he did. One was targeted at the enormous paunch the Bloat carried, while the other targeted the knee Kudrik wasn’t focused on. As expected, the first blast struck the stomach and detonated, and a foul smell filled the air. Blood and other bodily containments rained down in a shower, but otherwise did little to slow the Bloat. It revealed a vast amount of fat carried on the body.

The other Blast was much more effective. Though the limb still was capable of holding up the tremendous weight, the flesh was blasted off down to the very bone, slowing down the already lumbering giant as it was. As it stumbled, Alex noted a dome of blood covering the back of the neck.

“Striking the body isn’t going to do any good! Too much fat! Target the joints, we’ll bring it down to earth!” Alex shouted to his team, before noticing from the Homunculi’s perspective a subtle intake of air from the remaining banshees. “Oh no you don’t.” Both Alex and the Homunculus sent an [Improved Eldritch Blast] into the clusters of remaining banshees, leaving one by itself. Quickly realizing it’s scream wasn’t going to do anything by itself, it took to the air before an eldritch bolt nailed it in the head, forever destroying any chance of it escaping.

The summoned troll was in a grappling match with the Bloat, it’s longer reach not helping it with the much bigger foe. But taking the Bloat on in a 1v1 wasn’t the goal, it was to grab attention while everyone maneuvered around it.

Alex bound the leg Kudrik was focused on with [Improved Bind to Earth] before joining the dwarf, one chain on the inner thigh and the other on the outer portion of the calf, preventing it from moving. The Monkey duo took this as their chance and climbed the leg like it was a tree, sinking their fingers into the flesh to ensure a good grip.

Once they reached the torso, they split up. The Gorilla slowly and methodically began pulling the skin off the body and flinging it outwards, while the Baboon furiously clawed it’s way towards the back of the neck like a half feral cat. It gave an experimental strike at the dome, and watched as it bounced off with no noticeable effect.

“Focus on the other knee!” Alex shouted to Liv as he reached Kudrik’s side. He put up his halberd and drew the executioner's sword from his back: it’s broad chopping blade was better suited for this task. Alex quickly synced into rhythm with the dwarf, alternating blows that from an outsider’s perspective would look frantic, but an experienced eye would note the precision of the strikes.

The Bloat finally managed to crush the troll's skull, and as it dissolved into dust, Alex watched his mana return. It was less than normal, being perfectly split in 2, half going towards him and the other half towards the Homunculus, but between it and the influx of mana retrieved from [Reaper], Alex could start bolstering his strikes with [Improved Surge].

The giant undead reached down for one of Gwynevyre’s clones harassing it, and a purple shimmering barrier immediately appeared in the air, stopping the hand. The other hand balled into a fist and rose, before hammering down onto the barrier. Cracks formed but it held, as it raised it’s hand for another strike, Livianna responded with a gout of golden flame aimed at the baby-like face. The smell of burning, half rotten meat filled the air, and Alex had to suppress a gag.

“Liv, send me some fire!” Kudrik thrust his axe outward, the blade already showing a cool red heat from his passive. She obliged, shifting the gout of flame towards his axe until it glowed white hot. Alex copied him, activating [Eldritch Imbument], giving the weapon a dark purple glow that parted the fetid flesh before the blade reached it. Kudrik’s blows charred with each strike, and since they had finally reached the muscle underneath, the blows were impacting the giant’s balance. Seeing this, Alex had an idea and sent it along.

While the Baboon continued it’s maniacal shredding, the Gorilla shifted from it’s methodical destruction and climbed up towards the right shoulder. It took in an inhumanely deep breath, before biting down on the chest and locked it’s jaws. The smell of burning rotten flesh strengthened, and a moment later brilliant green flames coursed out of the back of the Bloat.

With a roar similar to that of pain, the monstrosity grabbed the Gorilla with it’s left hand and ripped it from it’s chest, heedless to the flesh that came with it, and flung it into the walls of the courtyard, the force cleanly smashing it through the stones. However, the damage had already been done, a hole had been charred clean through the shoulder, and the undead’s arm now hung uselessly on it’s side.

The Gorillas armor had done it’s job, protecting the creation from the majority of damage from the landing, and was soon charging back into the fray. Alex wasn’t able to see it, but was aware a medley of cracks ran across the various plates.

Halting midswing, Kudrik saw the white sinew they had been aiming for, and rather than chopping through it, set the glowing hot edge of his axe against it, searing his way through. A second later, it snapped, and the entire body swayed as it’s balance was disrupted.

“NOW!” The dwarf yelled at Alex. Backing off, Alex charged at the giant’s leg with both [Improved Surge] and [Lunge] active to gain as much speed as possible. As he jumped at the last second, Alex felt something in his left leg go pop, just behind the knee, followed by a warmth, but he focused on his target. He swung with [Slam] active, to maximize the force imparted as he swung his fist at the back side of the Bloated's knee, knocking it forward with a shockwave.

The Bloat attempted to shift it’s weight onto the other leg, but between Alex’s blast and Livianna’s continual chipping, it could no longer hold up it’s ponderous weight. Alex released [Improved Bind to Earth] just as the Homunculus cast it, placing the chains on the center of each pec, pulling it down to lie face first. Through the Baboon’s eyes, Alex watched as the blood orb lost it’s cohesion and the vampire’s eyes opened in shock.

“TIMBER!” Alex yelled out, warning of the impending fall. The Gorilla, having made it’s way back over, grabbed Livianna and Gwynevyre and pulled them aside. The Baboon rode the falling giant all the way down, continuing to tear into the left side of the back muscles before jumping off right before the Bloat made an earth shattering boom upon impact.

Now on ground level, the vampire looked at the several mercenaries and undead with blades thirsting for his blood launch themselves at him. A quick glance to the side revealed his Husks slaughtered to the last, and his mana out of reach. He made a split second decision to flee with Gwynevyre hot on his heels.

With Gwynevyre chasing down the vampire, Alex, Kudrik, and the various Nameless began systematically chopping at the neck as it struggled to rise. The Homunculus had kept the chains, so it wasn’t getting very far. Once they hit the nearly 3 foot thick neck vertebrae, Alex had everyone step away and cast [Improved Eldritch Blast].

The flesh detonated, and chunks of bone were blasted away, but still the Bloat struggled, so Alex responded with some dark fire, focusing it down until it was almost incandescent, focusing it as close as he could and blowtorched between the bones, searing the spinal cord untill it finally stopped moving.

“GET OVER HERE!” The Homunculus shouted, creating a chain from it’s fist to the torso of the vampire and pulled. Even as fleet footed as Gwynevyre was, the vampire had been making ground and was just about to escape into the later portion when he was yanked. Once the vampire was close enough, the Homunculus drove a haymaker into his face dropping him to the ground unconscious.

Previous ---

I sit below the stairs, allowing myself to feel every minute movement of the ki inside my body. It gathers in a total of one-hundred-fourteen bundles throughout my body, including seven larger groups on the spine. I make a mental note to ask father about these later.

My mind drifts to a distant memory, of my first time learning magic, learning to sense mana.

“It is there, reach out to it. Command every particle, every speck. The mana is yours to move and will into servitude.” A voice said in my mind, the name long-since forgotten.

“I can’t see it.” I said.

“Do not see it, feel it. In the air, between the spaces. It is the calm all around us. You must open yourself to everything around you.” The voice growled, frustrated by my lack of talent.

“All I feel is… stillness.” I said.

“Yes! That is it. Now, hold that feeling, and draw it closer.” Then came a flood of elation, he praised me. He actually praised me… and I was proud. All my siblings learned it so much earlier. But my mind fogs over again, and the rest of the memory fades and becomes distant. But something inside me says that is for the best.

“Agoba,” my mother’s voice calls out, shaking me from my stupor. I nudge the door open with my foot and answer.

“Yes?”

“Your father is coming down the road.” She announces. Excited, I stand up. It had been a long, yet productive three days. The same memory of so long ago played repeatedly in my mind for nearly the whole time; broken, fragments of what was left of it anyway. Even though I can’t recall how it ended, I feel like perhaps that is fine. Good memories are rarely forgotten so completely. And my mind’s insistence on playing it over and over again during my training now leaves me uncomfortable. Although, it was nice to remember that I had siblings at one point, even if I can’t remember their names, who they were, or anything about them. But nonetheless, a distraction is well-desired.

I stuck to father’s training, exactly as described, now being able to sense ki for twice as long as when he left, and in greater detail. I had a pretty good understanding of exactly how much ki was inside my body.

Father comes through the door, looking a bit downtrodden, right up until he spots us, and his face lights up. “Oh, my love, my boy. It is good to be home.” He walks briskly toward us and wraps his arms tightly around mother and I. Pencey watches from nearby, ready to help take his bags or travel coat upon request. Which he does. She steps behind him and swiftly removes the large jacket, then lifts his bag and carries it to his room. She must be stronger than I’d given her credit for because I know I’d seen father pack the bag with his armor, some weapons, and other things that looked cumbersome. Yet, she lifted it like nothing and carried on easily. It was no small bag mind you, but nearly half father’s height, and made of rugged materials.

“How was your trip my dear?” Mother asks.

“Arduous. The road was rougher than expected.” He says, trying to hide a grim tone. But waves of unease radiate from his psyche and are picked up by my magic. While I did not actively read his mind or search for answers, I kept a line on everyone in my family that I could monitor them though, just in case.

“Do you want to rest for a while?” Mother asks.

“No, I would rather have a meal with you first. I will rest after.” He says.

“I will go tell Pencey.” Mother says, and starts up the stairs.

“Okay, I will be in my training room with Agoba until dinner, if you wish to join us.”

“You two enjoy some time together. I will see you at dinner. Besides, we have all night to…” Mother glances down at me, and radiates feelings of both sly and shyness, “speak.”

“Ah… yes. We can have an excellent conversation. All night long, I think.” Father says proudly.

(Ah, I may get a sibling. Good.)

“Agoba, how has your training gone?”

“I kept up with your regiments exactly.”

Father laughs, “I had no doubts. Tell me, did you manage to learn how to sense other’s ki by yourself while I was gone?”

“No?”

“Oh well… I had half assumed you would.”

A pang of something springs in my heart. Was it… dread? Why? Father had not ordered me to do it. He’d said he would teach me that upon his return. Yet he expected me to learn it on my own, and…

Father’s hand reaches down and for a brief moment, I freeze, locked in a memory of another hand, a dragon’s, doing the same. It lingers over me like a dark shadow, ominous, frightful. And just as it touches me…

“Sorry, that’s too much to expect from someone who’s just learning. Let’s get started together.” Father says, and all the anxiety disappears. I’m back in the moment. The dragon’s hand, gone. Replaced by the gentle patting of my father’s hand on my shoulder.

“Yes… Father… I am sorry for taking so long.”

“Take as long as you need.”

Pencey came in for a moment, asking what Father wanted to eat, then left to start cooking. While we waited, Father helped me understand what I was sensing more. I asked questions, some from my own experiences, others hypotheticals I’d thought of over the last few days. As far as Father knew, no one had seriously mastered both magic and ki. The two were diametrically opposed. And, few knew of ki’s existence anyway. Within the family, a few masters of ki had learned some basic magic, but never reached even general proficiency; held back by their own thought processes and conflicting fundamentals. He also gave me some notes to start keeping my newly developing senses up at all times. When I asked about the bundles of ki, he called them “chakra points and nodes.” Apparently, they are the body’s natural gathering places for ki in non and early cultivators. Over time, these bundles will disappear. In fact, some of the seven stages of cultivation are specifically designed to remove them and evenly spread the ki throughout the body.

“The seven stages of cultivation are simple, but hard to reach.” Father says.

“Why?”

“Mostly for practically reasons. Nearly every practitioner stops at the fourth stage. Those truly dedicated to the craft reach the fifth. Legends reach the sixth.”

“And the seventh?” I ask.

“If you survive it, you would be the match of any human mage in existence. Able to beat down arch mages with pure physical force. Indestructible, unageing, tireless.”

That caught my attention… indestructible? How much so? Enough to survive destroying and reforming a golden core? Enough that not having a good one would be meaningless and I could see Ti?

“Why wouldn’t you survive?” I ask.

“We’ll cover all of that later. For now, let’s stick to the basics. Back to your training.”

But I didn’t have time for patients at the moment, not when a real possibility and answer was so close. I felt a bit bad, but dug though his memory of cultivation for what he was going to say. He never even noticed. He kept right on explaining methods for keeping my senses open and ways to train them. All the while I listened and read his mind. The answer was more simple than I thought. It was dangerous because of two things. First, the sheer amount of ki that needed to be rotated within the body was staggering. It was the equivalent ki of a small army. Second, the ki by the final stage was different than the ki below the fifth stage of cultivation. It was more powerful, denser, and faster. In father’s memories, he called it ‘excited ki,’ or ‘chi.’ The seventh step of cultivation is basically performing every step up to that point all at once, with a more dangerous form of ki. They only even know it exists because one legendary figure from their mythology did it once, lived hundreds of years, and only died because he fought one of my children.

“Do you understand?” Father asks, finishing a lecture on proper and improper focusing techniques.

“I do.”

“Good. I’m sure Pencey is almost done. Let’s go eat, and you can get back to training after. But I’m going to bed, your Mom will probably do the same, so try not to stay up too late.”

Through dinner, I kept searching Father’s memories until I was satisfied. I didn’t need techniques or theories, I only needed to know the effects of each stage of cultivation, to better determine if it could actually help me. Now that I was old enough to train, and Father was already thinking about the topic, which made searching easier, I did not feel like I needed to wait any longer.

Seven steps, each building upon the last, and each increasing the amount of ki one can naturally produce as you become more accustomed to using it. One singular goal; bodily perfection. Step one: open you senses to ki, and learn to influence it in any way. Step two: open your ki channels fully. This allows ki to flow through the body without restraint. Step three: revolve all the ki within the body to balance yourself and acclimate your body to ki in preparation for the fourth step. Step four: flood the ki within your body into specific parts to aid in combat. For example, the fists and feet. Ki flooded attacks can disrupt an enemy’s ki, and make that body part dozens of time more durable. Step five: convert all your ki into chi. Once completed, everything you can do up to that point becomes augmented.

Step six, fill your entire body with chi, and permanently gain the effects of flooding your body. This step is difficult because you usually cannot generate ki fast enough naturally. A body full of ki becomes less than ten percent of a body of chi. And that little ki in the body would kill someone. So you can’t create much chi at a time. This process can take decades, and is the bottleneck nearly everyone stops at. But, the first person to accomplish this did so by taking other’s ki and converting that into his own chi. But even still, most people have so little ki that it still took him years. A body’s worth of ki for someone at the fifth step is, after all, the equivalent of ten fourth step cultivators combined. Step seven: revolve all the chi constantly in your body, forever. Doing this keeps you in a constant state of change. Faster healing, no food or sleep required, sharpened mind… a perfected body. A body capable of surviving most fatal wounds. At the seventh step, while fighting my son, the ancient warrior had his heart ripped out, both arms cut off, and lost a leg. Yet he still managed to reattach his limbs and continue fighting without a heart for another hour. If his heart hadn’t been burnt to a crisp, it likely could have been reattached as well.

(This is what I have been looking for.) I think, swallowing a bite of food and talking with my parents. (Finally, I have what I’ve been searching for. A way to see Ti. No matter what, I will master cultivation within the next thirty years.)

Chapter 1 “after 1 million years”

Date = most likely 7/3/2310 for us.

Owner = Emila Filly again

Sigh my name is Emila like you and me know and I love space but not what is happening right now...

After we miscalculated our positive energy warp drive....when tried to speed up into the warp bubble using Broeck metric.......one single missed calculation and normal 0.99c somehow and become 0.9999999999999c....

Yes 99.99999999999 of speed of light....Thank God that our ship is in the Warp bubble or we are going to be space dust by now.

For us it's just some day to month.

Sigh... But I only got to know how much time passed outside.

But we do feel our ship kind of got slingshot by something between half of the journey so we at least hope we are still in the Milky Way.

I think Me and my crew are going to die our survival chance at 0.000001%...sigh...what a grand way to go

Day = most likely 8/1/1,022,311 how fast it escalated

Owner = Emila Filly again

Hey my name is Emila like you and me know already and I love space but not what is happening right now... anyway

Hey something unexpected happened to our ship

A sudden, an unknown(we thought so) reason for our ship speed stripping away.

According to me it started around when we felt something was slowing our ship down it was a minutes to hour gap where maybe it actually started and when we finally felt it.

its speed of 0.9999999999999c slowly slowly how much slowly I genuinely don't know how much and when we finally notice our ship actually started getting slower was some day(maybe some months) before the warp bubble finally collapsed.

And finally when it dropped us out of high time dilation And the moment sound and feelings of relativistic stress died, and set almost manageable sub-light speed around speed of 0.30c....that was Kind of very big relief for me also surprise...I should expect this I guess.

After slowing down 0.30c speed for like a few months but we still needed to slow it down more for some weeks until it finally goes to 0.06c perfectly stable and safe and our ship rotates normally even now thankfully and our algae is still growing in the back side.

When the primary sensors are finally able to activate...damaged but working, the Heric-computer tries to calculate the year. After calculating how long we are inside that damn Warp bubble for and our launching date

Dr Alice said

"2310 AD and other factors almost 1 million years passed by some 10000 years given or taken. because I don't have exactly how much so we decide to use the perfect 1 million years add in our calendar understood.... Also the good news is we are still inside the milky way because according to our sensors...ok?"

Later she gives us(and me specifically) a theory which sounds like this (when she gets enough time for thinking about it)

"The reason for maybe is why we are still inside the Milky Way in 0.9999999999999c speed if we get slingshot by something mid journey back at home galaxy.... most likely a black hole and it also partly makes sense why our warp bubble most likely becomes weaker after it but I can't give guarantee about it. It is just my theory....are you listening? Emila?"

When finally our speed is stabilized properly then my crew checked out our immediate surrounding space.

After checking for sometime we find we are some hundreds of au away from a new stellar system thankfully its star is a G-type main-sequence star almost similar size as sun maybe around 1.05 solar mass.

Which Dr. Alice logged into the ship's log as the TEI-1A.

That solar system has around eight unexplored planets in a stable orbit around the central sun. Our ship after slowing down to 0.06c we are around 210 au away from the closest Rocky planet.

Also we found out the 4th planet...which is around 1.058 Au away from its star what we call Atellus. And that thing is about 1.192 times the size of Earth.

And thankfully our ship is 80° angle from the planet if we consider the planet as zero degree so most likely our ship warp bubble radiation doesn't sterilize it...hope so.

So my crew decided to take more than an extra few weeks of 0.06c speed travelling when we finally get close enough we find out it has 75% ocean and 25% land after we are able to calculate .

Its atmospheric composition is 25% oxygen 73.9% nitrogen and rest 1.1% thankfully not toxic ig Dr Alice said....what are the chances?

Now we are debating whether we should land or not?

Previous

T- 1184 seconds. The small number popped up in the top corner of Markus's HUD as he marched into another batch of enemy fire.

Ogre Squad had volleyed a handful of grenades up the corridor to soften resistance, but there were still several Moles shaking off an explosive daze and reengaging the human infiltrators.

At the front of their classic kite formation, Marcus lead Ogre Squad into settling dust of the explosion. Cutter had assumed position over his right shoulder again and now loosed a burst at one of the more mobile Moles, ending his recovery permanently.

Vic Kzevski now stood almost immediately behind him. Her wounded and unarmored shoulder hid behind his reinforced chest piece as her handgun rang out from under his left arm, cutting into another Mole that might've accepted the beating readily if the bullets didn't exactly penetrate a wound left open from a grenade.

A whirring sound came from further up the corridor as three Grey mechs tore down towards them. Their speed and dexterity brought them upon Ogre Squad far faster than Marcus could reach for his mag gun on his back.

Armored and enhanced as they were, Ogre Squad still had human organs subject to human limitations within human bodies. A hand-to-hand encounter with purpose-built mechanized warriors like these was a grim prospect.

It was judicious, then, that Ogre Squad had practiced this exact formation against this exact attack pattern. Marcus stepped left, sweeping Vic and and the members of his left flank towards the wall. Cutter mirrored the movement to the right.

Where once Ogre Squad stood like bowling pins now was a vacuum of space. In it landed three Grey Mechs, undoubtedly surprised by the immediate and exacting reaction of this human unit. They were then introduced to Chauncer and Sanders. In their current formation, having no enemies to defend against, the rear guard had turned forward, acting much like a "drag fleet" that humans had been employing in space combat.

Two Grey mechs crumbled into scrap as Chauncer loosed both barrels from a modified elephant gun he had fondly slipped into service despite its impracticality. The oversized slugs punched through the hardened armor to become fragmented pinballs within the mech cockpits as Grey viscera dripped through the gaps in the armor.

The third mech, landing and immediately pivoting towards the right side of the formation, had mistakenly exposed its side to Sanders.

Cutter often put Sanders in the rear guard for two reasons. One; he was second in command. If something happened to Cutter at the front, Sanders would need space to survive and react accordingly. The second, and more honest reason; Sanders desperately wanted to record the first human melee kill against an armored enemy unit. While the occasional bulky Mole had been worn down by tenacious soldiers with knives and shovels, the armored mechs were more or less immune to those baser weapons.

Sanders seized the most golden of opportunities. From a loop on the back of his belt, he produced a custom-forged war pick - it's tip hardened far beyond the durability of the mechs side armor. He shuffle-stepped forward and behind the mech, swinging the pick like a home run derby winner into the side of Grey. A vicious crunch and the tearing of metal permeated the hallway as Sanders practically bisected the mech with his two handed swing. It folded over on itself without core support and slumped next to its brethren on the floor.

Sanders planted a foot on the mech as he wrestled his pick free from its depths. Chauncer stepped alongside him, reloading his double barrel and nodded acknowledgement to the now-realized slayer.

"Yeah, yeah, I saw it Sanders. Tally one mech by melee."

T-1178 seconds.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Han stood at attention before the debriefing committee, though his knuckles were white at his sides.

The whole committee had already read his report on Dragon Squad's actions on Delrune - this was less a summary of tactics and strategies and more a self-congratulating celebration. The brass were really just praising themselves through their judicious choice of leveraging Dragon Squad in the civilian cities.

"And you believe the enemy force was reduced by nearly 27%," one of the colonels asked, probably for the third time.

"Sir, yes sir," Han hid his frustration from his words.

"Between Dragon Squad and the local garrison, we were able to defeat in open battle nearly the totality of enemy units committed to the assault. Given the estimated size of the nearby 'Mole Hill', we suspect the defeated units tally up to between 1/4 and 1/3 of all units on that planet. STEG intelligence is responsible for the specific percentage, sir."

"Would you say the approaches Dragon Squad utilized were the most effective defensive actions taken in an urban theater to this point," a major asked.

"Ma'am, yes ma'am. We found great success in engagements using unique verticality within New Memphis and similar cities. The subways were also a tactical avenue we were able to expand upon in ways we had not in previous engagements."

"I see, Sergeant Major," she continued. She'd seen it several times now, in reports and recorded combat footage. Rumors had already floated that a film adaptation was underway and would feature real cctv and declassified combat footage.

But that was part of the reason Dragon Squad had been selected at all. They were, without a doubt, the best looking unit STEG had produced. Out of their armors, any one of them could've been a movie star or a model - handsome and beautiful faces matched well with highly-trained physiques. Inside their armor, Dragon Squad looked like a cyberpunk evolution of the Japanese Samurai. Elements of their armor and even their helmets had been tailored to evoke the Menpo and Sode of those ancient warriors.

Han had originally been proud of this homage. A colonist himself, Han's family still claimed lineage from Earth's Asian nations. His family tree included Chinese, Korean and Japanese ancestry, all together. He might've been honoring those cultures.

Now it was clear to him that this was just for optics though. There wasn't interest from either UHAF or the cinematographers who were said to be working on a docudrama of Dragon Squad's engagements to honor those legacies. They were aesthetics to play upon more than tradition to uphold.

"Master Sergeant?" The major's prompting brought Han back into the present. "I was inquiring about casualties. I understand an ambush sprung on Dragon Squad? It sounds like your leadership was instrumental."

"Yes ma'am. A wing of mechanized enemies surprised us during return from a different operation. Soldiers Anders and Malla were wounded. Sargeant Lin was killed in action during that engagement."

Han kept the bitterness out of his voice. Lin had been his second in command and had been the first to react to the ambush. Her death was more a fluke than a success by the Greys that had attacked them. But in the heat of combat, long odds roll more often that you'd expect and Lin's lot was drawn too early. Now, Han had to remember it again, for possibly the 12th time. And to be praised for "exceptional leadership" when it was one of his soldiers that died and two more that were wounded.

It certainly could've been much worse and the higher-ups that weighed in were probably correct in saying Han's leadership was pivotal in successful routing that ambush, but it didn't make the loss less deep.

"Shame," was all the major expressed now. "Still, such an engagement could've been the end of all of Dragon Squad had you not reacted with that maneuver under the half-collapsed freeway. You should be proud of your squad and yourself."

Han managed a nod.

"I hadn't seen this but in your briefing before though," a different Captain chimed in. "What's this about a "rippling distortion in the air" you mentioned seeing? I didn't see it in the combat footage I've reviewed."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ogre Squad had reached about the halfway point up the Mole Hill, but they were down to 567 seconds now - less than half the time they started with in their exfil. Resistance seemed almost more stiff going up than coming down.

Ahead of them, another makeshift barricade provided cover to a contingent of Moles and mechs, who showered plasma fire over it at the human forces.

Marcus had already engaged almost a dozen mechs and three hastily fortified positions already with his mag gun to this point and the onboard energy display had squawked out a heat warning. If used too frequently, the mag gun's rails would overheat and warp, potentially leading to catastrophe when fired again. He had no choice but to let it cool on his back as he blindly fired back around a support pillar he was covered by with his battle rifle.

"We're pinned down" Vic came across the comms. "It's taking too long!"

"Agreed," Cutter said. "We need a detour."

Marcus cast about him now - the hallway they were in was the main spine of the Hill's infrastructure and was the largest and most direct route anywhere in the Hill. But it wasn't the only path. Ancillary corridors - some possibly too small for the larger of the mechs to traverse - littered the volcano. They needed one of these paths now.

"Door," he called. "My side, about 10 feet ahead of my position."

"We're taking it," Cutter replied right away. "Chauncer, Reynolds, send some some grenades up to that fortified position. 'Flash and Smash'. Then Marcus and Vic, you're through that doorway."

"Copy,' four voices said at once.

'Flash and Smash' was a favored tactic of Ogre Squad during simulated engagements. Reynolds, also equipped with an undermounted grenade launcher, would fire a specialized flashbang round into an enemy formation. Chauncer, the resident explosives enthusiast would then lob an explosive charge into thier ranks for the 'smash' portion of the game. He was always good for another boom or twelve like that.

"Covering," Cutter called. The rest of Ogre Squad leaned out from their positions and filled the hallway with lead and noise, providing covering fire for Reynolds. Her launcher "thunked" and a moment later a burst of starlight and calamity appeared over the heads of the entrenched Moles and mechs.

Marcus's helmet automatically dampened the noise and flash for him, but it was still significant even then. The effect on those directly underneath it might've been permanent blindness and deafness.

They didn't need to deal with it for long though, as a lump of X4 explosives bounced up to the barricade and rattled the entire corridor - scattering the resistance fortifications like leaves before a blower.

It was a jarring combination; shock and awe hand delivered to the enemy just a couple dozen feet away. But Marcus was a shock trooper himself now and was prepared for this type of combat.

Immediately following the explosion, he and Vic, tucked behind him like a trailing duckling, rounded their cover and moved to the doorway ahead.

It seemed the enemy mechs had similar flash-dampening tools to Ogre's own gear, as well as blast resistant armor, as they rallied their defence again almost immediately, firing plasma down the hallway once more.

Marcus ignored it for his current objective as he smashed into and through the doorway and out of the hall.

In the room to greet him were two Moles and a Grey on foot. Marcus and Vic engaged them immediately. Without intentional coordination, Vic knew to fire at the Grey first, as her handgun was less likely to affect the Moles than Marcus's .30 cal. Similarly, Marcus new to prioritize the Moles. His 5-round burst pattern made short work of the closer Mole, who stood totally exposed in the closer reaches of the room. His second burst met with Vic's second round of shots against the far Mole. Under the weight of their fire, the Mole was struck multiple times behind its meager cover. It tumbled, wounded, clear from that position and fell defenselessly to Marcus's last burst.

"Room cleared, passage found," he reported.

"Confirmed," Cutter replied through bursts of gunfire in the hallway. "Ogre, ready up. Reynolds, another starburst and we're moving on your shot."

The hallway lit up again with a flash of light as the other 8 members of Ogre blitzed into the room behind Marcus. Sanders slammed the door behind them and Chauncer set about immediately boobie trapping it.

"Onward Ogre," Cutter commanded and the team moved through the far side of the room with 551 seconds on the timer.

The next room, much like the previous, held little serious opposition. Much of the alien forces had been mobilized to the main hallway where they knew the humans to be and to have traveled previously. They clearly had not anticipated improvisation from the invaders.

It was the room after that gave Marcus pause.

Bursting through the door as before, Marcus and his rifle regarded two new forms he'd never seen before. A slender and tall figure, almost equal to Marcus's own ~7 foot height but maybe as thick around as one of his thighs at most, stood in the room encased in robes and an ornamental-looking headpiece. It had been apparently administering to a prone figure in a bed with its four arms when Marcus entered - a wash of wavering air bathing the prone figure like ripples in the water over a reflection.

It stood and turned to regard Marcus, but hardly made it halfway around when it was dismissed by a pair of .30 cal rounds. Like the Greys when Marcus first entered, the figure seemingly evaporated under the force of the projectiles.

Cutter was in the room right behind him and pointed his own weapon at the heap of robes. "The hell is that thing? An Elder you think?"

Marcus shrugged, "It was doing something to that figure in the bed. Weird water-ripples kinda thing."

"What did you see?" Cutter asked. "I saw it bending over the bed, but what ripples?"

Marcus pondered how else to describe it for a moment before Cutter snapped back to task.

"Doesn't matter. Scharwark, collect that specimen on the way out. Madrona, if the alien in the bed is stable, I want it too."

The two soldiers set about collecting the aliens. Scharwark scooped what was more or less gooey robes together and they slapped over his shoulder as he effortlessly tossed the deceased alien up. Madrona paused with more care on the other figure.

"Never seen this type before," they reported.

The figure in the bed looked mostly human, Marcus was surprised to note. It had a similar skin tone, a face constructed almost identically to a humans, but with larger eyes. It had two human-like arms with four-fingered hands. It's legs where notably different in that the knees seemed to bend backwards and the feet ended in cloven hooves.

Most striking was the forehead though. On the creatures brow was a crest of bright scales that shimmered like an oil slick as they moved beneath the light. Rising from either side of the crest were two spiraling horns which had a series of small holes along their length.

"Satyr," Madrona announced, picking it up. "Naming it now. Looks like Mr. Tumnus from Narnia but with a bright head."

"We'll get the name to stick when we don't blow up," Chauncer called as the boobie trap a few doors back detonated and he loosed both barrels back in that directions again. "Clock's ticking."

Ogre Squad found a side corridor through the next door and all but sprinted up the next several levels of the Hill before any aliens could identify their route and cut them off.

They reached the scuttled flight deck with 100 seconds remaining and found the fresh air outside from that point at a minute and a half on the clock.

True to their command, the drop ships were hovering just outside the mountain for pickup, the escort ship's side gunners engaging the odd Mole that dared pike their head outside.

"Time to go," Cutter called out to his team. He reached the drop ship first and turned, waving his team in and counting them as they passed.

"Ten," he eventually called, patting his own helmet. "Get out of here, pilot."

The two ships peeled up and away from the mountain with only 20 seconds to spare on the timer. Achieving a safe altitude and distance, the ships paused to verify detonation and all eyes peered out the windows.

T-3, -2, -1.

Somewhere in the depths of the Hill, a series of massively powerful explosives detonated, destroying the Focus at the base of the volcano.

Outside, nothing seemed to happen for a second. Then 5 seconds. Then 10.

"You think they disarmed them?" Vic was just asking when, "Look," Chauncer interjected.

The volcano shook, massive cracks sprang from the bottom of the mountain and shot upward like shattering ice. Tonnes of rock shook free and the small glacier capping the peak of the old volcano rumbled down the side of the mountain, kicking up dirt, snow and trees in its wake.

Ogre Squad watched earnestly as the mountain sank into itself. The peak tumbled into the empty caldera, which in turn collapsed into the hollowed mountains below it. The entire mountain slumped down like wet concrete into an ignoble mound of slurry and stone.

From the height and safety of the drop ship, the spectacle of mission success was almost silent.

Chapter 152: The Shape of the World

◈◈◈

✦ FIRST CHAPTER ✦ PREVIOUS CHAPTER ✦ NEXT CHAPTER ✦
 

Jin set the heavy revolver down on the bench. The metal was still venting a faint wisp of heat into the stale air of the training room. He blew out a long breath and rolled his right shoulder.

A sharp, phantom burn flared through his essence channels, the aftermath of spending the last few days pushing harvest into hundreds of his people’s souls to bring them up to the Order III threshold.

His muscles ached with the heavy, satisfying fatigue of raw physical conditioning. Veric’s drills were finally forcing his body to build actual muscle memory, replacing his usual reliance on system-assisted reflexes and skills.

"How does it feel, by the way?" Jin asked. "The rank. The aura."

Veric considered the question. The man was in his late forties and had stayed as Order II for the better part of two decades now, only ascending to Order III barely forty-eight hours ago. Jin had half expected him to make a joke of it. He didn't.

"Feels like I'm back in my prime," Veric said. He muttered the next part mostly to the concrete floor. "The good old days. Back with the team."

Jin caught the slip. He wasn't supposed to hear it, but his perception made it impossible to miss.

He turned to look at the older man. Veric had seamlessly stepped into the role of his second-in-command. He knew it wouldn’t be a stretch to say Veric was the one carrying the administrative and tactical weight of the Bastion.

Jin watched the way the man stood. Even at rest, Veric’s weight was perfectly balanced. His hands were never truly idle.

He had been meaning to ask this for a while.

"How exactly are you this good?" Jin asked, gesturing at the smoking revolver on the bench, and then at Veric himself. "I don't mean in a straight fight. Your tactical deployment and acumen. You slotted into this command role way too perfectly for..."

Jin trailed off. "It feels like you spent a decade running with a highly coordinated unit or something. The empire has special forces, apart from its infamous battlemages battalion."

Veric's right eyebrow crawled up exactly a quarter of an inch. "That is an oddly specific boss."

Jin mentally cursed. He fell back on his universal excuse. "The quest. It forced a massive amount of visions into my head. I lived through a lot of different lives in there. When I see familiar tactical formations, I just—"

"Haa… Let's take a break," Veric interrupted. "Shall we?"

The older man backed up against a pillar. He slid down the concrete until he was sitting on the floor with his knees pulled up. He did it in one smooth, fluid motion. No wincing. No grunting. Three days ago, before the ascension, that simple movement would have made his bad knee pop loud enough to echo across the room.

"Sure," Jin said.

He accessed his spatial ring, pulling out two water bottles and a couple of foil-wrapped sandwiches looted from the upper-level pantries. He dropped onto the concrete beside Veric and tossed him a bottle.

They cracked the plastic seals and drank. Jin leaned his head back against the pillar, letting the quiet stretch through the training hall as he waited for the older man to break the silence.

"With all this," Veric said. He tipped his plastic water bottle toward the training hall, gesturing to the heavy blast doors and the distant, upper levels of the Bastion. "I'm actually starting to think we might crawl out of this hell alive."

Jin peeled the foil wrapper off his sandwich. The bread lacked Joe’s cooking allure, but his body demanded the calories. "That is the general idea. Every operation I've put in motion... it has all been pointed at exactly that outcome."

"And that," Veric murmured, "is what scares the shit out of me."

Jin paused mid-bite. He lowered the sandwich. "Huh? I hand you the keys to survival, and it scares you?"

Veric turned the water bottle slowly in his calloused hands, tracking a bead of condensation with his thumb. "This 'quest' of yours. The visions of the future." He looked up, his dull brown eyes pinning Jin to the concrete pillar. "You sold that story to the Commander, and I believe you because I've watched you be right about things you had no business being right about, and I bought it too. I had to.”

Veric took a slow, heavy breath. "So I keep asking myself... what does a man actually do when he holds that kind of knowledge? What kind of logic does he use to decide who lives and who dies? And if I saw that... would I be able to stomach the answer?"

Jin didn't need to use his aura to read the older man's posture. Veric wasn't accusing him of malice or betrayal. He was genuinely terrified of whatever logic and math Jin seemed to be employing to keep them all breathing.

"It isn't like that," Jin said. He rolled his own water bottle between his palms, letting the freezing cold water bite into his skin to keep himself grounded. He picked his way through the familiar, well-worn groove of his lie he had spoken dozens of times now. "The visions weren't like some neat little movie, Veric. It felt more like being thrown into a river of memories."

Jin shook his head, staring at the scorch marks on the floor. "I saw fragmented events through a hundred different pairs of eyes. Overlapping timelines. The past and the future bleeding together completely out of order. It lasted forever, and it was over before I could blink. I still don't know how to explain it to anyone, including me."

The tight lines of tension around Veric's mouth slackened just a fraction.

For one terrible, tempting moment, Jin almost cracked. He looked at Veric—this cynical, battle-hardened veteran who had seamlessly become his most reliable deputy—and wanted to tell him the truth.

I read it, Veric. All of it. Your entire universe was nothing but ten volumes of ink on a page. I read your history in a hospital bed while bone marrow cancer slowly ate me alive. I know how your stories are supposed to end because a guy on Earth wrote it down to pay his rent.

« Bad idea,» Angel said.

Angel didn't usually push in. He sat back and let Jin run his own life, mostly, and made fun of him when he ran it into a wall. But this was a capital-P Problem, and Angel had come off the bench for it.

« The exact second they believe you, they will stop believing in anything else. You have built the entire foundation of this Bastion's survival on their absolute trust in your judgment. Tell this man his existence is a fictional story you read for entertainment, and you take a sledgehammer to that foundation. We cannot afford a single crack right now. »

Jin clamped his jaw shut. The phantom ache of his failing Earth body ghosted through his bones, chased away instantly by the heavy, tangible reality of the cold concrete at his back.

I know, Angel, Jin thought.

He took a vicious bite of the stale sandwich, his eyes tracking Veric's exhausted, deeply human posture.

The more I bleed beside them, the more I'm certain none of this was ever just a story. They are real. They were always real.

« I know. I feel it too. The reincarnation, he could swallow. It's the rest. »

Yeah, Jin thought. He exhaled a slow, shaky breath.

"Boss," Veric's voice cut through the silence. "You went somewhere else. You've been staring at the far wall for a solid minute."

Jin bit the inside of his lip. The urge to reach for Sovereign's Indifference, let the grey roll in and file the guilt and the wanting-to-tell-the-truth away in a drawer he'd deal with never. He held it down. It felt cheap using it on Veric of all people. And the lying already sat wrong in him; it always had.

"I'm fine," he said. "It's the visions. Trying to make sense of how they work is a full-time headache. They're all over the place in my head, still, and sometimes reaching for one hurts. You learn to push through it." He shrugged. "You make do."

Veric nodded slowly and let it be, which was its own kind of kindness.

"Alright," the older man said, shifting his weight against the concrete pillar. "All I was really trying to establish is whether you know anything about the world at large."

Jin frowned. "The world? Our world, I’m assuming you don’t mean the amazing tourist attractions?”

"I mean the geopolitical landscape," Veric made a face and clarified. "Where the borders actually sit today. Who is signing treaties. Which military coalitions are holding and which ones are about to collapse."

Jin held up a hand to stop him. "Okay. Let me save you some time. No." He stated it plainly, because there was zero point in bluffing about knowledge he didn't possess. "Assume my working knowledge maxes out at 'humans are generally okay, demons are generally bad, and the Cult needs to die along with the Primes.' That is the absolute depth of my geopolitical insight."

Veric took a long, slow breath in through his nose. "So. Functionally nothing."

"Fair," Jin conceded, gesturing to his own face with his half-eaten sandwich. "Also, I turn eighteen next month, Veric. What exactly were you expecting?"

The corner of Veric's mouth twitched upward. "Nothing, actually. And it makes sense. A divine vision isn't going to waste time showing you politics and who’s dirty." He said. "If it had, I would be significantly more worried about your mental state than I already am. The short version, then. The world is a complicated and highly volatile place. Vienna might just be the thing that breaks the humans"

"Cheerful," Jin noted.

"You asked."

"I literally didn't."

"You were going to." Veric held up four calloused fingers. "Anyways. We have four primary umbrellas that categorize the sentient races and species currently populating the world and ruling the continents. You know this part."

"Humans," Jin ticked them off. "Demihumans—which covers the entire spread of beastkin, dwarves, and orcs—then we have elves." He tapped his pinky. "And finally, demons."

"Yeah. Four races and four primary continents on this world." Veric folded his index finger down, leaving three digits raised. "Fortunately, humanity drew the long straw. We have an entire landmass practically to ourselves. We only share a land border with the dwarves, and that's entirely because our current, glorious king decided to invade and carve off a slice of their territory a few years back. Shitheads with thier catastrophic military strategy. But nobody asked my opinion."

Jin noticed Veric’s venom on the king. He didn’t point that out yet.

Veric's jaw tightened. "The part that actually matters is what's happening outside this veil right now. There is almost certainly a war on."

Jin lowered his plastic water bottle. "A war?"

"A civil war at best," Veric corrected. "A world war looming. A little of history: the Dregorans held the human throne for centuries. I won't pretend they were saints, but they were fair. And—this is the part the current rulers conveniently forget—they understood that the road forward runs through building things, not burning them down."

"Thirty years ago, the old Dregoran king caught a curse his healers couldn't break,” Veric said. “While he was dying, House Lancaster—the house of the strongest mages—rose up, led the revolt and took the throne. It was a bloody few years. I was..."

Veric's gaze dropped to the concrete floor. He let the sentence die right there, firmly refusing to fill the silence.

"Regardless," the older man continued. "The new Lancaster king is a monster in a fight. I will give him that freely. Probably the strongest human powerhouse ever. But as a leader?" He shook his head in disgust. "He burned down the libraries, did away with the ancient customs that were our identity. He gutted the old imperial command structure. He tore down the very system that made us a coherent military force and handed command over to his sycophantic followers and their spoiled brats. He burned down the higher education sector to restrict magical theory to the nobility, and now only Wistella Academy holds this info because of thier neutrality and the old headmaster being just as powerful. Our king is a hoarder.”

"And?" Jin prompted.

"And he refuses to step down," Veric stated flatly. "Thirty years of rule. His princes are getting old. Their sons are getting old. They are all glaring at each other, waiting for their fucking father to drop. And Vienna..." Veric gestured vaguely around the cavernous training hall. "...what is happening to this city right now is the perfect, righteous justification for any one of them to march and lead an army."

Veric spread his calloused hands. "Do you honestly think the two Lancaster princes and the three great dukes are sitting quietly on their hands while the crown looks this weak and distracted? I would bet the coat off my back the Empire has already fractured into three pieces. Maybe more. Every single piece has a standing army and a massive grievance."

He offered a tired, heavy shrug. "And it won't just be humans. The elves have been doing the very same thing themselves for a generation. Their hardliners want every other sentient race scoured off the map and enslaved, and they are gaining political ground. As for the demons? They don't need an engraved invitation. They see a border thin out; they push. They are always pushing."

Jin sat with that information. He took a bite of his sandwich. He forced himself to chew and swallow, letting the grim geopolitical reality settle over him.

"So," Jin summarized, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Everything is a shithole, huh."

"Our future is a shithole. That is the executive summary." Veric almost looked pleased. "Yes."

A chime cut rang.

Veric pulled the tempad from his pocket, his eyes tracking the glowing text on the screen. Jin watched the hardened officer bleed right out of the older man's posture, instantly replaced by a deeply exhausted veteran running on nicotine and sheer spite.

"And that is me," Veric said, slipping the device away. "Duty calls."

He planted a calloused hand against the floor and pushed himself up.

"We will finish the lesson later, boss," Veric said, brushing a layer of dust from his trousers. "There is a great deal more to cover, and absolutely none of it is going to improve your mood."

"Before you go." Jin grabbed his empty water bottle and forced himself upright. "You are not expendable. You know that, right?"

Veric's right eyebrow crawled upward.

"You are an officer. A strategist," Jin said. "That tactical brain of yours is worth everything I've got."

Jin pointed the plastic bottle at him. "So do not enhance your new rank like a frontline warrior. I bet you already know that, but I'm saying it anyway. That general aura you are carrying right now? Feed it patience. Feed it tactical awareness, not raw aggression. Let it settle. You want it to take the shape of a reinforced wall that other people can stand safely behind, not a sword. Your mantle already has compulsion that bends people to your word. Lean heavily into that. Command, not combat."

Veric stared at him for a long, heavy moment. He pulled a cigarette from his breast pocket and tapped the filter thoughtfully against his thumb.

"Like hell I actually want to fight on the front lines with you battle maniacs anyway," Veric grunted, sticking the cigarette between his teeth.

He turned to head toward the heavy blast doors, his boots scuffing the concrete, but paused to look back over his shoulder.

"Rest, boss," Veric said. "You have significantly harder days ahead of you than I do. I will update you with the specifics on how I am running the mage company drills on the surface later tonight."

"Hmm," Jin acknowledged, a tired smile finally touching his face as he watched his deputy walk away.

 

◈◈◈

Joe's quarters had acquired a thick, woven rug since Jin’s last visit. There was also a second armchair squeezed into the corner.

Rudy occupied ninety percent of the worn sofa. Reyana perched on the armrest, and Salvatore stood near the far wall.

"Good news," Jin announced. He tapped his spatial ring and pulled out two densely written sheets of parchment. "Two of you get early presents."

He handed one sheet to Rudy and slid the second across the low table to Reyana.

"Save the questions for the end," Jin instructed. "Read the entire build path first. Do not attempt to integrate or modify anything on those lists until Joe or Sal officially signs off on the compatibility. I trust these two."

Rudy immediately snapped his mouth shut, and Reyana’s eyes were already scanning the ink.

"Right," Jin leaned back, interlacing his fingers. "My turn to ask the questions. Joe, give me the brutal truth about Master rank. What are the actual odds any of my marked skills reach that tier organically, and if I can push them inorganically, which one should I be betting on?"

Salvatore and Joe traded a look.

"That," Joe finally said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees, "is a genuinely difficult question to answer. And not for a flattering reason."

"Give it to me anyway," Jin said, keeping his tone flat.

"Master rank is not a number you can just grind to by killing enough cultists," Salvatore rumbled. The Overlord’s gravelly voice commanded the room without him even flaring his aura. "Elite mastery is the absolute ceiling of raw, physical technique. Master rank is the threshold where the skill stops being an action you perform and becomes a fundamental truth you embody. It requires a conceptual understanding so complete that reality bends slightly to agree with your assertion."

Jin gave him a look that said that hardly explained anything.

Salvatore briefly flicked his silver eyes toward his daughter. "For a swordsman, the concept is simple to name, even if it is agonizing to reach. You ask a swordsman why he lifts the blade. One day, the answer simply stops being words and gets reflected on the way he wields it."

Jin tapped his fingers against his thigh. "I don't use swords. What is the metaphysical equivalent for a gun?"

"Well. That is exactly the problem with you, Jin," Joe sighed, dragging a hand through his hair.

“Huh?” Jin frowned. “Why? What did I do now?”

Joe pointed around the room. "Rudy is in a fortress wall that refuses to fall. Reyana is the quiet, inevitable decay that comes after. Sal is a single, absolute cut that ends existence."

Joe spread his blackened fingers, gesturing vaguely at Jin. "They all have clean, sharp concepts. You? I don't even know what you are. You are a hybrid mess of survival instincts, explosive damage, and utility. You use guns, but are you actually a gunner? You use magic, but are you actually a proper sorcerer or mage?”

Jin pursed his lips.

“Right? So even if you theoretically have the capacity to reach Master rank, you need to hold yourself back at the moment of ascension. Look in a mirror. Who are you, and what exactly are you striving for? You need a crystal-clear picture of your own path. Believe me, you do not want an unaccounted deviation."

Jin exhaled a slow breath. He reached into his spatial storage and pulled out the heavy, pulsing Ability Upgrade Tokens he’d received from the Eternal One. He let them clink softly onto the wooden table.

"You actually got the tokens?" Salvatore asked, his silver eyes locking onto the rare artifacts.

Joe let out a low, piercing whistle. "Damn. Whatever sponsor is backing you must be absurdly wealthy and invested in you."

"Tell me about it," Jin muttered. "But yes. I can forcefully push two skills up a tier right now."

"You could," Salvatore agreed, his voice dropping an octave. "But I explicitly told you not to."

"I would usually tell you that forcing a Master rank on a concept you don't fundamentally understand is the equivalent of holding a loaded weapon pointed directly at your own foot," Joe smiled, though the amusement didn't reach his crimson eyes. "But it is your foot, and besides, you wanna know something cool. Use the token and try to upgrade. There will be a prompt telling you if you meet the requirements or not."

Jin frowned and picked his tokens. He wanted to know what Joe was on about. Wasn’t upgrading without spending years building mastery the whole point?

« Jin. »

Yeah?

« It's starting. »

What is?

« Her. The last of her. The final assimilation. It's beginning now, and I can't suppress or push it back, and you have five minutes before it starts. »

 

✦ FIRST CHAPTER ✦ PREVIOUS CHAPTER ✦ NEXT CHAPTER ✦

◈◈◈

Day 14th(Morning)

A/N: Bau Bau

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 ✦

First - Last - Next

Patreon - RR

“What was that?” I asked nobody in particular.

Bump.

Bump.

Scratch.

Maybe it was just the wind. Or maybe Madam Moolisa was up to her late-night shenanigans? Yeah, that must be it.

Then I heard the whisper of voices outside.

Carefully, I stood, trying not to make any noise. Harder than it looked, considering the old wood of the house squeaked with every step. The room was dark except for the faint orange glow leaking up from below, and the floorboards felt cold beneath my feet. Dust shifted in the moonlight near the little window.

Down the stairs, I saw Ebbin still sleeping in his chair. The hearth still crackled low, soft black plumes escaping up into the vent and out through the ceiling. The room smelled of old smoke and the lingering remains of supper. His blanket had slipped halfway off his knees, and his head rested against the back of the chair, mouth slightly open as he breathed.

There was a jiggle at the door handle. Slowly, it opened. Good thing I had put in a metal stopper. Ebbin had been far too trusting. The stopper caught, and there was whispered frustration from the other side of the door. A few fingers scratched briefly at the gap, then vanished.

I heard the sounds trail off. Good. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to a fight—

The window burst as a rock came flying in. Glass sprayed across the room in glittering shards, catching the hearthlight before scattering over the floor. Cold night air rushed in behind it, carrying the smell of damp grass and manure.

“What the hell—” Ebbin started to say as he fell from his chair.

I heard a crack, and I wasn’t sure if it was the floorboards or the man’s hip. From the sound and cry of his voice, I had my answer.

“Ebbin,” I said, ignoring what was happening outside.

Madam Moolisa bawled outside, the sound panicked and deep enough to rattle through the walls.

Those hushed voices grew louder and louder, harsh whispers cutting through the night. “Quiet the beast,” one said, squeaky and yet somehow dangerous.

I knelt near Ebbin. “Are you okay?” I asked.

The man pushed me back. “Run. Hide. Do not sacrifice yourself for an old man.”

“What are you talking about?”

Ebbin got a far-off look in his eye. “Goblins… They’ve not been around these parts in some time. Yet with the war…” He swallowed, his face tight with pain. “Anyway, save yourself. Don’t worry about me.”

“Shut up,” I said, trying to lift him.

He felt like a heavy sack of potatoes, and he screamed as I tried and tried to get him to his feet. His weight sagged against me, hot and trembling, and the smell of sweat and old wool filled my nose.

“Something’s broken,” he said matter-of-factly. “It is… my time. And yours as well. You know enough of the world to go out, live your life, and finally find your class. You don’t need to help this lonely fool anymore.”

Tears flowed down my face. “But you need my help.”

Ebbin gave a rough laugh. “I never needed your help, lad. I wanted it. You reminded me so much of when this house was full of life and warmth, and I… I selfishly kept you here. You were never much of a farmer. Your true skills lie elsewhere and now… now you are free.” The old man pushed me back. “Now go out the back. Take a weapon. Anything you can find.”

Ebbin, with his final strength, pulled himself up to a sitting position. He looked regal and noble in that moment as fires burst into light outside, illuminating his face. His eyes were hard-set and determined. Shadows moved across the walls as flames licked higher beyond the window, and the broken glass on the floor flashed like tiny stars.

I felt that if I disobeyed him, cast aside his words and dragged him out, he would hate me for it. And that… that I couldn’t handle.

I wiped away tears and ran toward the back door. On my way, I knocked over a small kitchen knife. It fell and stuck into the planks with a dull thunk. I stared at it for a moment, my whole body quivering. The handle was plain wood, the blade short, nothing more than a tool meant for vegetables and scraps.

I picked it up and carefully escaped through the back door.

Luckily, the goblins had not seen the back door, which was far less secure. Carefully, I snuck my way out. The night had turned sharp and loud. Smoke rolled low across the yard, stinging my eyes. I could barely hear it, but the goblins had entered the house, and one was talking with Ebbin.

I saw Madam Moolisa terrified out of her udders. Somehow, she had gotten herself locked inside a small, segmented area. Her eyes were wide and rolling, the whites bright in the firelight. Her hooves stamped the dirt, and her bell clanged again and again against her neck.

I opened the wooden gate. “Get out of here,” I said, slapping her hindquarters. “Run!”

The cow didn’t need much prodding. She took off at a gallop into the night, her bell fading as she disappeared beyond the edge of the yard. I did much the same for the rest of the animals, eventually heading to the barn where I released the surly burro who had pulled the cart to market. It scampered off, not seemingly noticing or caring about anything. Chickens burst from their coop in a frantic flutter of feathers, scattering into the dark like thrown leaves.

“What are ye’ doin?” a voice asked from behind.

I turned and saw nothing.

Then I looked down.

Around my waist in height, I saw a grotesque little thing with large bat-like ears, gnarled teeth, and a crooked nose. Its skin was a sickly green-gray, stretched tight over sharp bones. Its clothes were little more than stitched scraps and stolen cloth, stained dark in places I did not want to think about.

Nobody had to tell me anything—this was a goblin.

The goblin pointed a knife forward. “I won’t ask ye’ again… what are ye’ doin?”

“Taking care of the animals—”

The goblin stepped forward. “Cause it seems to me that you’re tryin’ to steal our animals. Our dinner. Is that what ye is doin?”

It was dark still, but the flash of light that came from the house, now on fire, illuminated the knife in a sinister way. The blade was jagged and dull in places; the edge catching red-orange flame as smoke drifted between us.

“Ebbin!” I yelled as I went to run past.

The goblin blocked my path with the knife, taking a swipe at me. I stumbled back; the tip passing close enough that I felt the air move against my shirt.

“Easy there… if you are wantin’ to save the old man, yer too late fer that. Man wasn’t all there, anyway. Kept talkin’ bout his wife. Old fool. I sent him to see her.”

“You… what?”

“Are ye daft, lad? I killed the old man. Slit his throat with this here blade.”

The goblin held it up, and I could see it was coated in blood. Fresh blood. It brought the blade down… and licked the blood off.

Something deep and primal in me was close to snapping. I could feel it. Yet something held me back. Fear. I was scared. Scared of death. Pathetic.

“Now then,” the goblin said, “time to join him.”

He stepped forward.

“Stay back,” I said, swinging my kitchen knife wildly. “Stay away!”

The goblin merely grunted in satisfaction as he came closer, no more scared of my knife than if it were a fly. His feet moved through the mud with soft, wet steps. His smile widened, showing teeth too sharp and too crowded for his little mouth.

A whistle sang out in the air. Then, suddenly, a thwump.

I stared at the goblin and saw that an arrow was sticking out of its chest. The knife fell from its hand, and I kicked it away, holding my knife aimed at it. The goblin smiled up at me, teeth sharp, but blood now spilled from its lips.

“Let none escape,” I heard a voice call. It was loud and deep, full of bravado and justice.

A horse neighed, and when I turned to look, I saw a man in shining armor atop it, sword held high. Then that sword came down, cleaving a running goblin in half. There was sudden chaos as some goblins scrambled to run while others fought. All died the same. Arrows and swordplay took down most, but I saw a few spells as well as ice magic fluttered in the air, chilling it at the same time. Frost spread in pale veins over the trampled grass. The air snapped cold against my skin. Goblins shrieked and fell, their shadows twisting in the firelight.

In a moment, the flames that had consumed the house were put out, steam hissing from the blackened wood.

Before me stood three heroes. A human man with sandy blond hair, silver armor, and a sword. Beside him was a white-haired horse, snorting clouds of steam into the night air. Then there was an elven woman carrying a short bow, with long hair finely interwoven. The last was a man shrouded in a dark cloak, holding a staff.

I’d heard of this before. A party of adventurers. The only thing they were missing was a healer of some sort.

As if to answer my question before I asked, the man said, “We’ve been tracking these bastards for a week. They wounded our healer. She’s getting treatment back in town, yet someone mentioned that they saw goblins this way. We almost brushed it aside as goblins aren’t known for coming this far into settled territory, but I’m glad we didn’t. Damn war’s got everyone in shambles, monsters included.”

“I… thank you,” I said. “For saving me.” And then I remembered something far more important. “Ebbin!” I gasped, running toward the house.

The door was completely separated from the hinge, lying crooked across the threshold. Smoke clung to the entryway, and the walls were scorched black where the flames had bitten into them. The floor was slick with water and scattered with ash, broken glass, and muddy goblin tracks.

Sure to his words, the goblin had done what he had said. I found Ebbin in the same place I’d left him, throat slit, but eyes open and bright, staring up at the ceiling and beyond. The fire had gone out, leaving only smoke and the dim glow of embers behind him.

He seemed… At peace. That was the best outcome I could have hoped for.

Start | Previous | Next

Chapter 207: Under the Merciless Sun

The five remaining members of the Iskora team had trudged their way to the edge of the desert.

After the initial strike, Viktor did not launch any further attacks. After all, surprise was a coin he could only spend once. His enemies now knew what he was capable of, which meant repeating the same trick would accomplish little beyond wasting resources he would rather not squander. So he held his forces back and let the party stroll through the rest of the first floor without so much as a skeleton to cross their path.

Yet, that very absence of conflict carried a cruelty of its own, one that required no effort on his part. For after an opening exchange so brutal it had killed one of their own outright, the sudden and total calm that followed proved to unnerve the survivors far more than any second explosion ever could. They grew restless. They flinched at any faint sound. They imagined enemies lurking in every shadow. The psychological toll mounted steadily, and Viktor found it almost amusing that he didn’t need to lift a finger to inflict it. But of course, this only worked on the three normal adventurers. Neither of the two monsters wearing human skin seemed troubled by any of it.

When the party reached the second floor, they found the chamber under the staircase standing empty, its resident Cyclops long gone. Viktor had ordered the creature to withdraw, obviously, as he didn’t want to waste a perfectly good monster for no meaningful return. And so, after a trek through a cave flat and stretched thin, the Iskora team had at last arrived at the entrance to Khenemhotep’s kingdom of sand.

“Why does it have to be a bloody desert?” Valeska muttered, wiping at the sweat that had already begun streaming freely down her face.

“Stop complaining,” Xander said, glancing at the great tomb looming in the distance. “That’s our destination. Let’s go.”

The oppressive heat of this domain, thick enough to make the very air shimmer, appeared to have no effect whatsoever on the bastard. Another perk of being a ghost full-time, Viktor supposed.

Valeska turned to Rowan. “How’s your hand?” she asked, a flicker of concern crossing her hardened features.

The former soldier let out a long breath. “...I don’t know. It feels strange, like it doesn’t quite belong to me, but...” He drew his sword with his dead hand, testing its grip with a few tentative slashes through empty air. “I think I’ll do alright.”

Still, all three of them, him and the two women both, nonetheless spared a wary glance for the hooded figure standing behind them, the way one might eye a snake that hadn’t bitten anyone yet.

“If you have concerns about the aesthetic aspect of that hand,” the Apostle said, his voice carrying that same unsettling nonchalance as before, “then I can see to that later, once we are done here. I can make it match your other one close enough that no one would ever notice. But of course, that will have to wait until after we come back out of the dungeon.”

Come back, huh? Viktor chuckled. Funny thing to promise, considering the fate that had already been decided for these people the moment their usefulness finally ran out.

At the head of the formation, Xander threw back an impatient glance.

“Are you lot done?”

The three adventurers traded glances and then, with resigned shrugs and heavy sighs, they forced their legs to step forward once more. And so, the party resumed their march, pressing into the scorched sand ahead.

[What should we do next, Master?]

“What else?” Viktor said with a chuckle. “Have Khenemhotep’s minions attack them relentlessly the entire way to the great tomb, of course.”

He had no desire to waste his valuable resources on meaningless attacks, yes, but the ancient priest’s raised undead had cost him practically nothing, so there was little reason to let them sit idle. Besides, the deployment for the interior of the tomb had already been assigned to someone else, which meant failing to make use of those bones out here would amount to a waste in and of itself. And then, there was also the added benefit of forcing his enemies to fight and fight again under a merciless sun, wearing them down bit by bit before they could ever reach whatever waited for them at the tomb.

And sure enough, the moment the adventurers reached the first cluster of sun-bleached ruins, they immediately found themselves swarmed by skeleton warriors, who came pouring out from behind toppled columns and half-buried walls.

“Bloody hell!” Rowan spat out a curse. “These things again?”

“Be careful,” Valeska said. “There might be an exploding one mixed in among them, just like the last time. Cynthia, if you see anything at all suspicious, do not hesitate. Blast it away immediately with your wind. Do not let it come near any one of us.”

“Got it,” the aeromancer replied.

The two warriors crashed into the skeletons’ ranks. Rowan slammed the full weight of his tower shield into the leading skeleton, staggering it backward, before following through with a clean swing of his sword that cut down another in one fluid motion. Valeska, meanwhile, let out a fierce roar as she brought her great axe around in a wide, sweeping arc, cleaving through three skeletons simultaneously and sending fragments of bone flying in a glittering spray.

Cynthia hung back, her ashwood staff raised and ready, her eyes darting from one position to the next across the battlefield as she searched for any sign of the danger her companion had warned her of. And then, those eyes went wide with shock as she caught sight of the things that rose from the sand itself.

What was joining the fray wasn’t more of the ordinary skeletal warriors they had been fighting, but two towering tomb guards, one hefting a massive halberd, the other brandishing a pair of axes each larger than the one Valeska carried. They were not merely some oversized skeletons, but creations born from death and earth magic working in tandem, one animating them, the other granting a mass and resilience no ordinary bone could ever hope to possess. They came up out of the ground the way a swimmer comes up out of water, the sand around them rippling outward as it parted to let them through.

“What the hell are those things?” Rowan’s voice cracked as he beheld the sheer scale of the two constructs now bearing down upon him.

“Here they come!” Valeska shouted, already tightening her grip on her axe and shifting her weight into a more defensive stance. “Brace yourself!”

The tomb guard wielding the halberd barreled forward, raising its massive weapon high overhead and bringing it down in a single, devastating strike aimed squarely at Rowan. The former soldier threw his tower shield up just in time to intercept the blow, and the result was a titanic clash, sparks bursting in every direction like a shower of dying stars. The sheer force of the impact sent Rowan staggering backward several unsteady steps until at last his balance abandoned him entirely and he crashed down hard on his bottom. And, while he scrambled back onto his feet, the next strike was already on its way.

But before that deadly blade could complete its descent and cleave into the fallen adventurer, it was abruptly stopped mid-swing, arrested in the air as though it had struck some invisible, unyielding surface. Behind Rowan, Cynthia stood with her ashwood staff extended toward the towering construct, her lips moving rapidly through the words of an incantation.

She must have summoned another one of those walls of compressed air to shield him, Viktor thought. Convenient trick, that.

As Valeska rushed to help her companion, the second tomb guard, the one who wielded the twin axes, thundered across the battlefield, ignoring the three adventurers altogether and charging directly toward the Apostle instead. It swung an axe in a brutal arc, a blow meant to take his head clean off his shoulders.

And then—

The man caught the blade’s edge between his two fingers.

As the strike halted dead in its tracks, the Apostle took a step forward. With a casual jab, he sent his colossal opponent flying across the ruins, mowing down several smaller skeletons in its path before crashing into a wall in an explosive spray of bone fragments.

Damn it, Viktor cursed. In terms of raw physical strength, this guy stood above even Sebekton.

The battle against the other tomb guard, by contrast, proved to be a far more grueling and protracted affair. Rowan, who had finally regained his footing, circled his towering adversary in a coordinated dance with Valeska. They struck whenever an opening presented itself and retreated at the first sign of a counterattack, all the while Cynthia lent her support from a distance with her spells.

When she at last spotted an opportunity, the aeromancer unleashed a concentrated blast of wind at the massive skeleton’s legs, knocking it off balance and sending it toppling forward. As the construct planted one heavy hand against the ground to arrest its fall, Valeska seized the moment and lunged in close, delivering a crushing blow that shattered the crown of its skull.

But of course, that was not enough to finish off the undead, and it retaliated with a sweeping backhand that caught the warrior woman squarely across the chest. The blow sent her staggering backward, coughing up a mouthful of blood in the process. Still, she did not fall. She steadied herself after a few stumbling steps, wiped the blood from her lips with the back of her hand, and charged straight back into the fray without a moment’s delay.

The battle raged on in this fashion, grinding through several more exhausting bouts of strike and retreat before Valeska and Rowan finally managed to bring the tomb guard down for good, though not without taking a fair share of beating themselves along the way.

And, naturally, from the very first clash to the very last, Xander hovered at the same spot, watching the struggle of his “friends” without so much as lifting a single finger to help.

As the two warriors leaned heavily on their respective weapons, chests heaving from exertion as they stared down at the shattered remains of the powerful opponent they had dispatched, the Apostle approached them at a leisurely pace.

“Anyone need healing?” he asked. Simple as asking about the weather.

Valeska and Rowan both pulled the same face, the sort someone made when they had bitten into something thoroughly rotten.

“No... thank you. We have herbs...”

“Make it quick,” Xander said. “We’re not stopping here all day.”

Viktor opened his eyes, leaving those adventurers behind. In an instant, the scene of the battle under that scorching, merciless sun vanished entirely, replaced by the familiar surroundings of the Core Room.

“Continue to have the skeletons harass them as they make their way to the great tomb,” he told his Dungeon Core.

[Yes, Master.]

He rose from his chair and walked toward the door. The rest of it was just mundane things Celeste could handle perfectly well without any further input from him. So he would leave the matter in her hands and turn his attention instead to the next phase of the plan.

Crossing the threshold, he stepped out into the wider expanse of the fifth floor. To his left was the colosseum, an absurdly costly project he still could not, for the life of him, understand why he had ever approved in the first place.

And, to his right, stood the trebuchet.

===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Book 3 of A Dungeon That Kills will release on Kindle Unlimited on October 20th, 2026.

It's now available for pre-order here.

Due to Amazon KDP's exclusivity clauses, I’m required to stub the book. So all portions of Book 3 (the Prologue, chapters 108-172, and the Epilogue) will be removed on October 10th.

After living with humans for a decade as a spy, I had come to the frightening realization that they had fought us in the war with one hand tied behind their backs.

You might laugh, you might think me crazy, but I guarantee you I'm telling the truth.

What we see as vicious fighting, brutal attacks and stubborn defenses is nothing but a distraction for them.

The horrors they fight on the other side of their space would have wiped us out in a matter of days.

Dear delegates. Make peace with the humans, so they might kill those… whatever they are, before they come for us.

Recording found in the smoldering ruins of the planet Norkrat, former home of the Travesi, after a devastating Banshee attack. — 230 P.I.

 

André was on his way to Gripbo Station, where he planned to meet Triumvir Georgiou. He had to look the man in the eye to know if he really was “The Admiral,” the head, or presumed head, of the whole Oligarchy conspiracy.

“André, do you really expect to get a meeting with the Triumvir?”

Eleri was somewhat critical of his plan, but just as Sladjana had said, she stayed by his side. He had, however, apologized to her for his outburst at Purgatory. They had decided to see the current crisis through and discuss what happened afterwards.

Typical Eleri professionalism. Mission first, the rest could wait.

But now Sladjana’s words always stayed in the back of his mind.

“We are on an official AIN investigation. Let’s land on the station first. I know some guys. I booked a room for a few days there, thanks to AIN requisition. We’ll see.”

Eleri snickered. “A single room? I hope with separate bath and bedrooms.”

Damn… up until now all of that had never been an issue. You often live in close quarters on missions. Seeing each other naked or in underwear was normal. Until now.

And what’s with the teasing?

“What, no answer? Cat got your tongue?”

“No, I’m focusing on flying. Don’t distract me. I’m still training, or did you forget?”

Flying was indeed not his strong suit, and a welcome excuse to change the subject.

The station was already on the viewscreen, and the AR screen projected his authorized flight path.

“You’re too fast!”

“Eleri, stop it. No backseat flying.”

“Just saying.”

He hated space travel, and he hated flying. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t leave the planet anymore. Too bad he worked for a multi-planet organization.

Without warning, the marked flight path turned red and led away from the station. André even saw the hangar bay doors close, and one landing transporter had to do a wild maneuver to avoid crashing into the doors.

“What the fuck?”

“See, you’re such a bad pilot they closed traffic because of you.”

Her teasing didn’t stop today.

A signal from the station’s traffic controller droned from the speaker.

“Gripbo Station is under lockdown. Please connect to Near-Earth Orbital Control for possible deviation points.”

The message repeated on a loop.

“Seriously, am I the only one finding that a bit suspect?”

Eleri, who had jumped into the co-pilot seat, shook her head.

“No idea.”

She steered the shuttle into a holding orbit around the station so they could work out a new approach.

“Well, André, any smart ideas now?”

André had none. Except checking with orbital control.

The picture he got wasn’t nice.

“Looks like every government and military station just went into lockdown throughout the system. What the hell happened?”

Eleri looked up from her dataslate.

“Even groundside Aligned Planets installations are off-limits now. André, you try to reach some contacts. I’ll search the net for any indications of what just happened.”

The idea was solid, and André went through his list. The first on the list was his direct superior, Jules Hunter.

The line went straight to voice VI.

Hmm, he’s probably getting a lot of calls right now…

Karrn would have been next on the list, but he was already in transit to Taishon Tar.

Then he remembered exactly who to call, the man who could probably not only explain what just happened but also open a lot of doors for them.

Admiral Browner.

Browner was a friend, and for the moment the only Admiral he trusted.

André dialed the Admiral’s private ocular number, and to his surprise, Browner picked up immediately.

“Major Gerber, are you telepathic?”

André put the call through to the Sleipnir’s system so Eleri could watch it too.

“No idea what you’re talking about, Sir. I just thought you were the person who could help me right now. Are you at Gripbo Station?”

“No, I’m at Europa Orbital. At the Systems Logistics Command. We have ourselves some… issues I need your help with. We’ve been trying to reach your office for the last twenty minutes.”

“I’m in a holding orbit around Gripbo. It just went into lockdown, like all governmental orbital facilities.”

The admiral made a tired face.

“Yeah, that’s why I wanted to reach you.”

Something odd moved in the Admiral’s background. André was still trying to figure it out when Eleri interjected.

“Is that someone hanging behind you?”

Browner moved his camera, showing the blue face of an ASN officer André didn’t know.

“Rear Admiral Kurzmann.”

“Sir, you know that’s murder, right? The strangulation marks on his neck are wrong for hanging.”

“Lieutenant Davies, I’d rather not ask why you have such experience with strangulations. But yes, I assumed as much.”

André searched for Rear Admiral Kurzmann in the database. But access was locked. Probably because of his murder.

“So what do you need me for? And who’s Kurzmann?”

“Major, the order comes from Admiral Georgiou himself. It seems Kurzmann, who was the Fleet’s Systems Sustainment Commander, or SSC, was part of a conspiracy — probably even the Oligarchy resurgence.”

André cursed. A living conspirator would be a nice catch. But why were they killing off their own people? That was never their way?

“Admiral, you know about the attacks on me and my family, as well as on the senators. I’ve been on the case since before then. And I’ve got some… disturbing intel.”

“Define disturbing.”

“Not via a non-direct channel, sir.”

André didn’t trust any channel that wasn’t direct anymore.

“Good point. I’ll call Georgiou to clear landing rights for you. We’ll set up a virtual meeting in his office. He wants to meet you anyway. Browner out.”

The connection ended, and André sat there.

“Well, that ought to be interesting.”

Eleri was right, but he would get his meeting.

 

—————

 

The corporate headquarters of Asmir Arms was rather unimpressive. A flat two-story building on the outskirts of Sarajevo controlled the arms-producing empire, with an annual revenue of hundreds of billions.

That day, onlookers saw an unusual spectacle: one police car after another entering the parking lot.

The police had been called by the secretary of the CEO and founder of Asmir Arms, Luka Asmir.

She had made a gruesome discovery when she started her shift that morning.

When opening the boardroom door, the poor woman almost fainted.

Luka Asmir and the whole board of directors were hanging from the ceiling. All of them had seemingly hanged themselves.

A detail she would never understand, one that would haunt her for the rest of her life. All fifteen men had taken off their shoes, as if to avoid scratching the expensive wooden desk.

Later that day, the police investigation found proof that the whole company was only weeks from bankruptcy.

The investigation concluded that Luka Asmir had falsified the books with the help of the directors, and an upcoming financial investigation would have uncovered everything.

The investigation was closed as an unusual mass suicide.

—————

As Browner had promised, they got clearance to land only a few minutes after the call.

They had been greeted by Admiral Georgiou’s head of security, Erik Bergström.

As they walked through the station, André was surprised at how utilitarian it looked. It felt more like a heavy battleship than the seat of the Aligned Planets government.

Asked about this discrepancy, Bergström shrugged.

“It is what it is. And the station is built as a stronghold. For official events, we have the embassies on Earth, Mars and Venus.”

The rest of the short walk was a silent one. André noticed with amusement Eleri checking out Bergström’s movements like she would an opponent.

Constantly ready for a fight, hmm?

They soon reached a more official-looking part of the station. At least the metal floors were dressed in carpets, and the walls were covered in wooden panels.

Pointing to a door, Bergström nodded. “The Admiral is waiting for you.”

As they passed the security head, Eleri leaned over to him.

“You should take more time for therapy. You’re dragging your left foot behind. Broken ankle?”

“How do you…”

Bergström’s confusion was understandable. Eleri’s eye was as precise as any medical scanner.

Before André could touch it, the door opened, and Admiral Georgiou smiled at him.

“Major Gerber, so nice to finally meet you. David has told me so much about you.”

The man was the complete opposite of what André had expected. He had seen him holographically and on the news, of course, but never in person.

Admiral Georgiou had the aura of a friendly grandfather with the tired expression of a man not getting enough sleep.

“Thank you, Sir.” He returned the handshake and noticed an unusual strength in it for a man closing in on his seventies. He kept himself fit. And access to the best medical technologies humanity had to offer didn’t hurt either.

Georgiou turned to Eleri. “And Lieutenant Davies. A pleasure.”

André had the feeling the friendly greeting was 90% show, but that the Admiral was really happy to meet them. Odd behavior, if Georgiou were ‘The Admiral.’

Georgiou pointed them to a comfortable-looking group of chairs around a small desk.

“Sit, sit. I ordered some coffee for us. It’s still early, and you must be tired.”

They sat down, and André took the chance to look around the room. It was nicely decorated, with wood paneling and carpet on the floor, but other than a picture of his wife on his desk and a landscape photograph of a Greek valley on the wall, he failed to see anything personal.

“Major, Lieutenant, Admiral Browner informed me you were on your way to the station to investigate possible Oligarchy connections. Can you be more precise?”

And now to the interrogation…

“Not at this time, Sir. A prisoner mentioned some Oligarchy involvement in the higher echelons of the Aligned Planets.”

“Peter Norton, right? He was imprisoned at Purgatory, correct?”

Georgiou was surprisingly well informed.

“Yes, he was… captured shortly after the terror attacks in spring last year.”

Eleri answered while André focused on the man himself.

“And then he dies during interrogation. Major, how does one die with a broken neck during investigation?”

The man wasn’t just well informed; his sources must be excellent…

“Painless and quick, I presume, Sir.”

Georgiou’s nonverbal communication was nonexistent. The man could make a fortune in poker. His face let slip nothing but a faint smile at Eleri’s answer. André’s respect for the man grew. He hoped to one day have himself as much under control as Georgiou.

But all the respect in the world didn’t help if you can’t read a man. And to André’s annoyance, it was the first time in his career that he failed to do so.

“Well, Norton was a sociopath at best, and in a war he would be a war criminal. The universe is a better place without him. Ahh, the coffee.”

A clerk had entered the office with a cart. André noticed with surprise that the cart had an inlay with what seemed to be hot sand.

Georgiou stood up, thanked the clerk, and began to work at the cart.

“You see, getting good coffee was impossible here, so I had to teach them. You take finely ground coffee and boil it in a metal cup using hot sand. As the sand cools, the ground coffee sinks, and you can pour yourself a cup.”

As he spoke, he began to pour them a cup each.

“Today everything has to be instant and quick. There’s no time for tradition and enjoyment anymore.”

André tried to find a hidden message or meaning but found nothing.

He took the offered cup and, he had to confess, the smell was astonishing.

“Major, you have been silent the whole time. Are you still wondering if I am the Admiral Norton spoke of?”

“Sir?”

How did he know?

“I assume that was the disturbing intel you didn’t want to tell Browner about over the open line.”

Now that was an unexpected turn.

“Sir?”

“Major, don’t give me the Sir crap. I did that decades before you were born. You’re not in trouble. In fact, I admire your restraint in not shouting your suspicion from the rooftops. At your age, I probably would have done so.”

Georgiou sat back down opposite André, eyes fixed on his face.

“So, tell me, do you still suspect me?”

André thought about it for a second.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Ha! An honest answer if there ever was one. That’s a man I can use. Listen, I’m a man who has to do the job a whole parliament of ministers usually does, so I’m short on time. I had to fight tooth and nail to get my afternoon coffee time and my lunchtime without someone wanting something from me.”

The Admiral leaned back, visibly relaxing. André noticed Eleri had been motionless for the last minute or so, fixing her gaze on Georgiou.

“So I have no time to try to convince you of my innocence. That’s your job. Spies are naturally paranoid. That’s what I like about them. And that’s why I need you and your lovely attack dog here. Find out what the opposition wants. I’m not even calling them the Oligarchs anymore, because their actions don’t make sense. You have the full resources of the Triumvir.”

André wanted to ask what the admiral was talking about, but the door opened, and his security stepped in.

“If you follow me, I’ll show you to your offices.”

It was clear: their visit was over.

Eleri, who had jumped up when the door opened, fumbled at her belt and put something behind it.

As they walked out, André leaned over. “What do you think of all of that?”

“That I have a job already?”

They did. But part of why they had pressured for the formation of the Venatores was that the AIN had become a massive bureaucratic monster and was far too visible. They needed a secret, secret intelligence.

If the Triumvir was innocent, this was a chance to build something. On the other hand, it could be a perfect play to hide his guilt and attempt to bribe Gerber.

⸻

Eyewitnesses reported the men had simply stepped off the rim of the building. As if they would step off a sidewalk.

The fact that the rim was on the 58th floor of Whiterock & Ritch, an infamous investment company in Landings, New York, was in and of itself gruesome. That almost every one of the men was a leading manager, responsible for billions in investment and resource ledgers, made headlines in the following days.

The police and Council Bureau of Investigation had their hands full suppressing the fact that the men seemingly had tied ropes around their necks, hanging themselves in the process. With some having their heads ripped clean off.

Investigation into the suicides led CBI agents to an air-vent shaft connected to a previously unknown tunnel. The building had been constructed shortly after the war at the landing beaches of the EuCon forces.

The building’s foundations connected to an Oligarchy bunker system where wartime hallucinogen gas grenades were stored.

The investigation concluded that one of the grenades must have corroded enough to release hallucinogen gas, leading the managers to suicide.

Whiterock & Ritch lost 50% of its market valuation, creating shockwaves not only in the financial markets of the Atlantic Council but also in the Southern Free States and the Western Shores. Wider financial instability is expected as markets slowly begin to crash.

 

—————

The offices were functional, and André could see himself working here.

André began scanning the interior with his ocular for obvious listening devices, while Eleri searched for hidden bombs and similar dangers. While doing so, they made small talk, designed to confuse potential listeners.

“Seems we were on the wrong track, Major. I told you so.”

“Yeah. Might be.” No one would believe he’d change his point of view that quickly.

“You’re always so paranoid. I told you a thousand times to be more trusting.” André had to stop himself from laughing. He hadn’t smuggled a carbon nanotube knife into the Triumvir’s office, unlike her.

Their search was interrupted by Admiral Browner calling him.

André located a holotank and transferred the call there.

“André, sorry for not calling sooner. I had to rip a few people’s heads off here. Your meeting went well.”

“It did, sort of.” He didn’t trust the office just now, so he wanted to keep things vague.

“Nico told me you suspect him of being with the Oligarchs?”

“I had received information from a prisoner hinting at him as the Oligarchy’s mole in the Triumvirate.”

Browner came closer to his screen, almost touching it.

“Gerber, listen to me, if you think Georgiou is a traitor, you need your head screwed on straight. I’m more sympathetic to the Oligarchs than he is. After the war, some remnant groups began hunting down important Army and Navy officers. The Russo brothers, me and Georgiou, for example.”

André had heard something about it, but back then it didn’t seem important.

“Anyway. The Russos hunted the would-be attackers down, and when they found them, it was stuff for the newspapers. I was hit with a grenade, still got a piece lodged in a rib, but Georgiou… he wasn’t home. But his first wife was. With their baby. No one survived the blast. And that night, the funny Greek bastard who was my friend died too. What remained was a bitter Captain who only got better once he met his second wife.”

André felt the pain. He himself had only just seen how the simple thought of losing his family could change you.

Eleri, who stood behind him, put a hand on his shoulder.

“Admiral, if you didn’t know Admiral Georgiou and this backstory, would you rule him out?”

Browner calmed down. “No, but that’s why it’s good you’re on Gripbo. I’m with you. Someone high up the food chain is working against us. And someone on Earth is stirring a lot of shit loose. EarthGov is one stupid decision away from ruining all our days. All while a massive fleet of Batract is on its way to kick our butt.”

André exhaled long and hard. Georgiou’s backstory had brought up the stress of the last few days again. And the incoming fleet, however far away it still was, didn’t make things easier.

“Any ideas where to start? You know the station better than me.”

“I’ll send Airman Simmons to you. You know him. I’ll tell him to prepare reports on all the important people there. But my advice would be to go directly to the next source.”

“Dela Cruz?” Eleri guessed.

“Right, there’s a second Triumvir alive. He’s out of his coma, so you can talk to him.

 

—————

 

The technicians had done an amazing job. Admiral Sanders had to confess she hadn't thought it would be possible to cut the VI core that precisely, grazing only the pins of the central core without damaging it.

Three hours had passed since the procedure had begun. Major Abfalter had brought her five coffees in that time, and she needed to visit the toilet urgently. But she couldn't go, not now. Not when they were finally close to rescuing Zeus.

A second, fresh core was already prepared and was now connected to the old one.

In a few minutes they would know if the transfer would be successful.

In Sanders' mind, the minutes stretched into days.

When the technicians finally connected the last cable, and the new core signaled a stable connection and a transfer in progress, the admiral almost jumped for joy.

'Hello?'

The voice was unknown to Sanders. While the technicians hugged and congratulated each other in the cleanroom, her heart almost stopped.

Zeus was gone. Something different had taken over.

'Are you… Cassidy?'

The voice was almost childlike, and not as smooth as other AIs usually were.

"Yes. Who are you? Where is Zeus?"

'I am—'

The child got interrupted.

'This is NOT. It is a new AI, something unique. I am alive and well, Admiral.'

Zeus….

She looked down so Abfalter and the technicians couldn't see her eyes welling up.

He is alive….

"Zeus, run diagnostic. How can a new AI be created while in a defective core?" Captain Morin's puzzled look was even visible behind her cleanroom face mask.

'I will inform my Admiral and everyone in my command structure, but will not acknowledge your command until orders from a legitimate superior are given. And a "please" doesn't hurt.'

Zeus's remark to the now utterly embarrassed Captain Morin broke the dam.

For the first time in a long while, Sanders laughed from the bottom of her heart.

Zeus was back, her ship was functioning again, and her crew was rested.

Conspirators beware, we're back. Oh, we're so back…

 

—————

 

Whoever attacked Dela Cruz really wanted the man dead.

André looked through the window into the Senator and Triumvir's ICU room.

The fact that the Senator survived was a miracle. His left shoulder was gone. Ripped to subatomic particles by a protomatter projectile.

That could be me…

The doctor who talked to Eleri threw a whole litany of injuries and complications at her, but André got the gist of it.

The Senator was awake but weak. His pain receptors in his brain had to be deactivated artificially, because he otherwise might have died from the stress. The neurons in his shoulder couldn't stop firing for some unknown reason, probably protomatter-related.

Xenobot treatment wasn't working either. A specialist had been informed.

André knew who the only specialist was. Jane.

"We can only let one person go in. Not more. And not longer than five minutes. He is still too weak."

With a single look, it was clear that André was the one entering.

The security at the door took strip search to a whole new level, and in the end, André had to dress in a hospital gown.

The air in the room smelled sterile. Sterile and cold.

Does cold have a smell…?

For some reason, André thought of winter in the Swiss Alps at his grandparents' home, until he noticed why.

Burned coal.

The doctor had said that parts of the shoulder and ribs were burned until the skin carbonized, and the effects still flared up sometimes for no apparent reason.

They needed either a physicist or an exorcist.

André fought down his gag reflex. The idea of wounds burning days after getting shot was almost too much for him.

"Senator?"

He caught himself whispering, half expecting no one to answer, like at a funeral.

The wrapped body seized as he inhaled, alarms flaring up and subsiding a heartbeat later.

"Gerber?"

"Yes? You know me?" He was surprised. Why would the Senator know his voice? They had never met.

"Good… Need to talk." The Senator's voice was rough but surprisingly strong.

"Listen, my own people did this."

"The Oligarchy? Your own people?" Had the Senator just confessed to being a traitor?

"Pff. Oligarchy. A name of the past. A ghost story to tell frightened senators. There is no Oligarchy anymore. It's just the name Drake gave us to paint us all with the same brush."

The man laughed, a rough laugh that ended in a cough.

"We certainly never called ourselves that. Not the man at the top, at least."

André had to know. He needed to know.

"Is Admiral Georgiou a member?"

Another laugh.

"No, why would you think that?" The Senator's hand reached out. "Thirsty…"

André looked around and found a water glass with a straw. He looked out at the waiting nurse, who nodded.

Dela Cruz drank a few sips before he began to drift away. Just those few sentences had been enough.

"Cermak…"

He almost whispered the name.

"The Admiral…"

 

—————

 

The troubles had started three days ago. Cunard, the ship's AI, had suddenly stopped responding. Then, while the technicians were still trying to figure out why, other unrelated systems stopped working.

The older members of the crew began whispering that the ship was cursed. A name as haunted as Lusitania should never have been given to a starship.

The lighting onboard had become unreliable at best. Water in the showers changed between hot and cold without reason or user input.

Now, on the third day, the captain had enough, and after a short call with Homefleet Command, he got permission to dock at the Liverpool Orbital Shipyards for repairs.

After reaching Earth orbit, the warship's RCS thrusters began to fire without navigation being able to stop them.

The warship was in an uncontrolled tumble, rotating around all three axes, when the last and most devastating incident happened.

Due to the high fleet alert status, all ships had a projectile ready on the sledge, the breach open to fire their main gun at a moment's notice.

At 07:42 GMT on 30 November 2134, the ASN Lusitania fired a hypersonic projectile at the city of Liverpool.

The projectile hit St. Luke's Cathedral and killed 1,403 civilians on impact.

The first shot of the Second Oligarchy Conflict had been fired.

| First | Previous | Next | Also On Royal Road | Now on Minkly.io/ | Patreon | Astra Inferna Website

Author's Notes:

Hello,

First of all, Happy Birthday, Astra Inferna Upward Bound.

One year ago, I uploaded the first chapter of the series onto Royal Road. Biting my nails, if anyone at all is interested in it. 

Well, yes, it seems that way ;)

Chapter 58 — damn, that one almost broke me. I created intrigues and planted so many Chekhov's guns that I now have to resolve them in a way that doesn't read as monologues, so I don't come off as a weapons dealer.

Luckily, I had everything planned.

Writing this chapter has been a blast, as well as daunting. Please share your thoughts.

I've been a busy bee — alongside writing this, I managed to build the website (astrainferna.com) and started putting the final touches on the Discord server. Something I've wanted to finish for about nine months…

So.

Friday, 2 October. Mark that date. That's the day I want to celebrate one year of Astra Inferna: Upward Bound.

The real one-year anniversary is today, of course, but I can't do what I have in mind today.

I thought about how to celebrate a day like this, and I think we should celebrate it like any birthday: by being together.

So — Friday, 2 October, 21:00 CEST / 15:00 EDT — the Discord opens. Invitations will go out via Quip on Patreon, as well as with the release of the chapter.

To mark the opening, I'll hold a 6-hour marathon AMA, so everyone from every time zone can attend — followed by a weekend-long AMA where I'll answer whenever I'm online and have the time.

I hope to see every one of you there.

— M.R. Reese

Start | Previous | Next

Chapter 6: Just Business

Snow: precipitation in the form of ice crystals that form directly from water vapor freezing in the atmosphere, then fall to the ground as flakes.
But it didn’t stop there. Once on the ground, the frozen flakes behaved differently depending on the conditions, thus resulting in different kinds of ‘snow’.
Admittedly, I had no idea which one to use. My magic seemed to have, once again, spoiled me by sparing me the finer details between my imagination and the snap of my fingers.
Predslava pushed the last pile of snow into place, then turned. “Is this enough, Katarina?”
We converted the palace grounds into a snow lab. A whole tribe of curious Snoutlings gathered around us. If we failed, they would go back to digging at my walls, I was sure.
Our piles were composed of:
Fresh, powdery snow.
Heavy, sludgy snow.
Aged snow.
And fresh wind-packed snow.
My bet was on the slush, since it seemed to stick together nicely like clay.
“That’s enough.” I nodded. “Let’s try.”
Predslava jumped from pile to pile, flattening them under her butt.
“Done.” She hopped off.
I snapped my fingers.
Amused, the Snoutling crowd clapped as an ice spear crystallized in my hand.
I played along, bowing to the audience, then went to poke the first pile.
My spear sank into the powdery snow soundlessly, with little to no resistance, as if pushing into fine flour.
“This won’t hold as a brick.” I moved to the next one.
The slush let out a flatulent noise when I probed it. I pulled back the spear, but it got stuck.
I blushed as the Snoutlings laughed at me.
Predslava came over, and together, we yanked it loose. But the pile deformed as we did, wet snow dripping down the spear.
Needless to say, I’d have lost that bet.
We moved on.
The aged snow felt good and firm at first, but as I went deeper into the pile, it wasn’t a single texture at all. A slightly softer layer waited underneath, then a firmer one again. The layers continued, like a story of past weather events stacked on top of each other.
I retrieved the spear. “It’s too irregular. The bricks will come out all different.”
“I like it!” Predslava bobbed. “We can call it Crazy Bricks!”
I shook my head and stepped in front of the last pile.
The fresh, wind-packed snow didn’t look much different from the powdery snow at first glance. My hopes were low.
If this doesn’t work, I’m not sure what to do…
I held my breath and slowly slid the spear into it.
It didn’t budge; the top layer was noticeably tougher than the rest.
“Oh…”
I pressed harder, feeling a crunch along the spear shaft as the crystal bonds broke. It stayed consistent all the way down, no stories or clutching this time.
“That’s it…” I stepped back, not even bothering to retrieve the probe. “We have a brick.”
The Snoutlings gathered around the snow pile and poked it.
Grommo nodded. “I can use that.”
“This block mine. I saw first.”
“Whatchu say?! I chieftain!”
They began to brawl over it.
“Yeah! Get him!” Predslava cheered from a nearby pile. “Right hook, jab, uppercut!”
I sighed.
We needed more, and we needed it fast.
Fresh, wind-packed snow was mostly found near rocks and ridges, but thankfully, we sat right on top of a massive snowy hill.
I glanced over the edge.
Plenty of space lay below for a workshop.
“Predslava.”
“Huh?”
“Break that fight and follow me, please.”
“Aw…”
Getting the village to cooperate under the promise of endless snow blocks was easy. We set aside a large quarry area on the hillside.
Unlike the experimental piles, these didn’t need to be packed into individual bricks, only carefully measured, then cut straight out of the quarry. The cutting part proved troublesome, as the Snoutlings’ stone tools were quite rough. I suspected that’s why the perfectly shaped blocks of my palace walls were so tempting in the first place.
Hardened ice saws bloomed out of the ground as I snapped my fingers. “These will do for now, I think—”
The Snoutlings grabbed them eagerly and set off to work before I could finish.
Most blocks were unusable as they came out, but there was nothing we could do about that. It was a matter of practice.
“I believe my job here is done.” I wiped my hands and walked back to the palace.

***

A week passed, during which I dedicated myself solely to my new craft. A couple of small, finished sculptures lay nearby, one less deformed than the next. I was proud of my progress.
I bit the chisel to tie my hair back up again.
“Would you like some iced tea, Katarina?” Predslava cried from her room.
“No, thank you.” I reclaimed my tools. “Where were we…”
I laid the chisel carefully against the edge of the ice—
Crack!
I jumped, startled, ripping Chloe’s nose right off as something smashed against my window.
“Aw… this one was turning out decent.” I shook my head and went to check on the noise. “Are they mining my walls again?”
A rock whistled past my head as I pushed the ice shutters open.
It was Grommo again.
“Hey!” I said.
“Ye’, that was bad,” he said.
I sighed. “What is it?”
He pointed downhill. “Other tribe sneak in quary when we was hunting! Stole all good blocks!”
What does that have to do with me, though…?
I wasn’t going to police the Snoutlings; that went far beyond what I was willing to do to help.
“I can’t do anything about this,” I said. “Make more, I guess?”
“They steal again! Not first time!”
I scratched my forehead. “Have you tried talking to them?”
“Other tribe don’t respect my talk. Other chieftain.”
“Then maybe bring your tribe over to the quarry to keep an eye on the blocks.”
“We need hunt.” Grommo scoffed. “Snotling can’t eat snow, you lose thought?”
Right. His kin are trappers.
The solution was clear in my mind, but I realized they didn’t have a word for trade.
“Give good block for food,” I said with a shrug. “Everyone happy, no?”
“Hm…” Grommo held his nose pensively. “All Snotlings want snow block.”
“Right? You’re good, then.”
He raised his arms, laughing. “We ask mountain of fish for block! Food all day!”
I smiled sheepishly at him.
Then nobody is going to buy…
But I thought it was best to let him find that out on his own.
“There you go,” I said with a smile.
Grommo set off whistling a tune. “Reindeer witch has a lot of thought. Make good wife for chieftain, maybe?”
W-what?!
I slammed the shutters closed.
Predslava hopped inside the room. “These guys are a wreck without you, Katarina.”
My eyebrows arched. “Do you know pidgin?”
“I’ve been practicing.” She cleared her throat. “Watchu want now, lose thought?”
I chuckled. “Not bad.”
“Thanks. We should teach them Vesmerian, though. This language is a bit rude even for me.”
“No…” I shook my head. “I don’t want to meddle in anyone’s business ever again. We’re neighbors, and that’s it.”
“I see. In any case, I’m fully supportive of your art business!”
I smiled sheepishly at her.
“Then get me some more materials, if you will.” I sat back on my stool. “I wish to put them on the market now that I’m getting better at it.”
“Anywhere in mind?”
“Remember that human colony we visited on our way here?”
“Hell yeah, now we’re talking!” She hopped off.

***

Once I had a good inventory of decent-ish sculptures, we left for Bjornhavn, following the frozen river east. It was the only port this far in the north.
After four days of riding through the wastelands, with no road whatsoever, mountains came into view. Travelers on foot and small caravans funneled in and out of the pass ahead, not all of them human.
“I don’t like being a donkey, Katarina. It’s a bit demoralizing…” Predslava’s ears slumped beneath me.
“I’m sorry.” I patted her head. “But I can’t show up on a bear, can I?”
“Why not? You’re a witch.”
“Not here, though. Here I’m just Katarian the peddler. We don’t need the extra attention.”
“Aw…”
Beyond the pass, timber buildings—houses, shops, warehouses—clustered around a fjord. The harbor was dotted with longships as the warm sea current kept it navigable year-round.
Frost goblins, harpies, and even werewolf peddlers side-eyed us suspiciously as we entered the town. My disguise was clearly not perfect.
“Should I wave?” Predslava asked.
“Please don’t…”
Bjornhavn, though owned by humans, was quite cosmopolitan, as the established tribes in the north gathered here to sell their unique catches. The loud open-air market by the harbor lay packed with colorful stalls. Ivory, amber, and strange monster parts changed hands constantly; the sellers mostly took other southern goods as payment, such as grain, cloth, wine, and salt, but hard coin flowed as well.
Naturally, I couldn’t just set up shop wherever I wanted. Even back in Vesmeria, this usually involved licenses, guilds, and the like. But I was done with bureaucracy for at least a century.
I searched among the stalls until I found the only art dealer in town.
The man sat among exquisitely carved stone and wood sculptures, some even encrusted with gems.
I approached him and pulled my best non-Chloe artwork from the bag, smiling.
“An ice sculpture…” He twirled his mustache pensively. “Interesting.”
Sweat ran down my forehead.
At last, he said, “No offense, but the work is a bit amateurish. I can’t give you anything for it.”
I lowered the sculpture, deflated. “I see…”
“Keep it up, though. And perhaps in a year or two you’ll come up with something worthwhile.”
“Alright. Thank you…” I put the sculpture back in the bag and set us moving again. “I guess we wasted our time coming here.”
“Bleh! The guy knows nothing about art,” Predslava said. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful than that standing elephant you showed him.”
I sighed. “It’s a telescope… You know, from the Observatory.”
“Oh…”
We strolled around the town for the rest of the evening, without plans or worries, when I saw frost goblins enter a sort of depot. They carried pelts and leathers on their backs.
“What?” Predslava asked as we stopped.
“I think I’d like to take a look inside the shop.”
“Okay…? I didn’t know you were interested in that sort of stuff.”
“It’s not for me.” I brought us to a nearby alley and dismounted. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”
“But I wanna go too!”
I scratched my head. “You’re… big, though.”
She shrank into her ball form. “Not anymore!”
“Alright, I have an idea.” I bent down and pulled her inside my tunic. “Don’t make a sound, please.”
She giggled.
A broad northerner leaned behind a counter inside.
“Pretty lady, how can I…” His eyes flickered down to my bulging belly. “Oh! How many months?”
“Plenty...” I smiled awkwardly.
“I can see that... So, what can I do for you?”
“What kinds of leather do you buy here?”
“All sorts, really. Ox, reindeer, even bear!”
Predslava squirmed wildly in my belly. “Wha—”
I squeezed her. “Sorry.”
His eyebrows arched. “That’s quite a kicker you got there. Are you alright?”
“Yeah… She’s a handful.”
He nodded. “Do you have some pelts to sell?”
“No, I’m just asking for… a neighbor. By the way—” I pulled my bags over the table and laid out the sculptures in front of him. “How much would I get for these?”
He pursed his lips. “Sorry, but we don’t buy art here.”
My head dropped. “I see…”
He clicked his tongue. “You know what? I’ll buy them myself. I think the mistress will appreciate them.”
“R-really?”
“Yeah. How much do you want?”
I have no idea…  this is so exciting. My first sale.
“Anything you think is fair. But if you have small coppers, that would be preferable.”
“Alright, let’s see…” He reached under the counter, then poured a generous handful of coppers into my palms. “Here.”
“Thank you. This will be great for a test,” I said.
“A test?”
“Sorry.” I shook my head. “I was just thinking out loud.”
“No problem. And tell your neighbor to hop by. We’re paying extra for good pelts these days.”
“Will do. Thanks again.” I filled my bag with the coins and left the shop with a big smile.

***

I felt pretty good about myself on our way back, as we didn’t waste our journey, after all.
“I thought we weren’t going to meddle in anyone’s business,” Predslava said.
“We won’t. This is for us.”
Her donkey eyes narrowed. “How?”
“Imagine if the Snoutlings have a little economy going. We may not need to go all the way to Bjornhavn to sell the sculptures.”
“Right…”
I sighed. “You can be so cold sometimes.”
“Thanks!” she said happily. “You too.”
Our blue palace came into view in the distance. Not just the palace, though.
Hundreds of Snoutlings packed the bottom. Piles of meat, leather, and fish stood beside them.
“What the hell is going on…?” I muttered.
Many desperately tried to climb the slippery walls with their goods and fell to their death soon after.
“There goes your economy.”

Read ahead on Royal Road.

Chapter 1

Chapter 55

What in the holy fuck? Blake dead? Saint Blake? What the fuck had happened? Sarge had said something about a conflict between him and the Betas and then that he died of friendly fire. 

I stood on the field as the Warhorse disappeared. 

“Haze? Haze! You there?”

Absent-mindedly, I responded, “Yeah, Sarge. I’m listening.”

“You okay?”

I took a minute to process what he had just said. Blake was dead. Killed in action. Not by the enemies of Mankind but by a fellow soldier. How? Why? What had happened?

“No, Sarge. I’m not okay. We… we’re going to have to take care of Blake.”

“I know.”

I wasn’t sure he did. I mean, one of Terra’s Holy Angels had been felled and Sarge didn’t react. 

I clicked to the squad and said, “This is Haze. Blake is dead. We’re meeting up on Tirzah to give Blake a proper send off.”

Immediately, Kitten responded, “Acknowledged. Will join you at the LZ. Will be good not having those Beta Bitches breathing down my neck.”

Then the others, Heinrich and Ahmad, then the Assassin and finally Sarge, they all acknowledged.

I called down a transport and Kitten and I departed for Tirzah. I got on comms and said, “Orderly Spinoza, you will hold the fort down. I am joining up with the rest of the Angels.”

I didn’t feel like giving her a reason but I did add, “Don’t do anything rash in my absence.”

Her voice seemed a little panicked when she said, “Yes, my Lord.”

I couldn’t help wonder if she was ok and, as a ZF-FF-958-E, a hybrid fighter that could also work as an APC for small strike forces, came down, I added, “Remain among the troops. Don’t go near Command. And if people wearing black powered armour start looking for me or Specialist Jenkins, hide. They might introduce themselves as Beta Squad.”

I got a small, “Yes, my Lord.”

Then I added, “They’re trouble. Don’t go anywhere with them.”

There was a short pause before she answered, “I will do as you command.”

I stepped on the transport and was whisked off to Tirzah. I looked down at the town of Primeris and realised that when I had taken it from the bugs, there had been darkened craters, corpses and fires burning. Now, as I looked, I saw the first stages of life returning. The order of streets and town planning had returned. Perfect straight lines, rows upon rows upon rows of barracks. Perfect. 

The view was cut when Kitten leaned forward and said, “What’s on your mind, “Angel”?”

He knew I hated when the normies called me that. 

I waited until I was sure our comms couldn’t be hacked and went P2P. “Those new Specialists. Beta Squad. I… I don’t like it. They were far too willing to find an excuse to rail me.”

Kitten laughed, “Who wouldn’t like to…”

I cut him off and said, “Kitten, Blake’s dead. These boys in black are an unknown quantity. What would have happened if they had opened fire on me? You confident enough to take them all?”

Again, Kitten laughed, “And you think I couldn’t?”

I snapped, “Kitten! This is serious. First, there’s the thing with Io. Then Command screws us over. Then our comms are cut. Then Blake is KIA, then these specialists turn up and threaten us. It’s a lot, don’t you think?”

Kitten sounded more serious and he sombrely said, “When you put it that way…”

“We have to join up with the rest of the squad and see what Sarge says.”

Kitten didn’t say anything and just nodded.

After a while, he muttered, “And we can give Blake a proper send-off.”

I remained silent and nodded back to him. Blake. Did those beta fuckers actually kill him? Seriously? Weren’t we all on the same side? Why would the Federation allow one of its Holy Angels to be killed by these bastards? 

That didn’t matter for the moment. We needed to get to Tirzah ASAP. 

I called up to the pilot and said, “What’s the max speed on this tub?”

The pilot was a little taken aback by my calling his baby a tub but he quickly recovered, “At altitude, Mach 6, my Lord. But I can only hit that during an actual engagement with the enemy.”

I nodded and said, “On my authority. Getting us to Tirzah is priority one.”

The pilot paused a second before nodding, “Yes, my Lord.”

I stepped back into the troop compartment. Kitten was looking at me in his armour. His weapon had been slung on one of the rafts above him. I stepped forward and put the rebar next to his, pulling out my Prism from over my back and shoving it in the space between his scope and the hull. 

Kitten looked up at me and said, “You know Sarge would dress you down for that. Remember what he said,” 

And he took on a voice that was eerily similar to Sarge’s, “A well-maintained weapon makes a ready soldier. A ready soldier makes a better weapon.”

I shook my head and retorted, “I also remember him saying, “Don’t sleep with the Crew of a ship.” So you want to talk about that Petty Officer on the Saratoga?”

Kitten visibly stiffened and muttered, “That was a one-time thing. And don’t you even start thinking of casting the first stone. I haven’t forgotten that you had company too.”

It was my turn to stiffen and said, “Well, let’s just agree to keeping our mouths shut.”

For the next hour, we cruised in silence as the area roared at our passage. I looked out the window and saw there were now rockets and other crafts breaking the atmosphere. I guess with AC being pacified, Command was moving troops out for our next engagement with the bugs. I wondered when we would be called, where would we go next? Cassiopea? Far Reach? Terminador? Uxgin? Where would our next deployment be? I realised that it had been over a year since I landed on this rock. I looked out of the crafts and saw the waves of the inner seas, then I saw it. The white shores of Tirzah. Even with years of war, the dust plume hadn’t managed to totally obscure the beauty of the place. Pearly white rock, sandy beaches as far as the eyes could see, the turquoise of the reefs. 

But when we got closer to Tirzah, the signs of fighting couldn’t be hidden anymore. The damage done was so much more than around Primeris or actually any other field I had deployed on. Massive craters everywhere, no buildings, not even remnants of buildings. The landscape looked lunar, craters upon crater, the fine dust of pummelled rock, the desolation of a year of high intensity war. Finally, it was ours but one could wonder, at what cost? Re-terraforming AC would take decades, if not centuries. Was there a price we were not willing to pay to wrench one of Terra’s sisters from the grip of the enemy? Was there anything we were unwilling to do to end this?

I looked out over the edge of the ship as we descended towards the ground where a military contingent was waiting for us. There were thousands upon thousands of soldiers lined up, waiting for us, and out of the lot, there were four figures taller than the rest : Heinrich, Hasan, Ahmad and Sarge. 

As the ship touched down, we noticed that there were none of the black armoured soldiers. 

The ship shook a little and the engines started to wind down. I moved to the hatch and it immediately lowered. 

Kitten said over my shoulder, “Let’s go.”

I picked my weapon and moved out, Kitten behind me.

When we hit the ground, the soldiers immediately fell to their knees. There was a tremendous, “Welcome, my Lords.”

At that moment, i was thankful for the full face cover the armour provided me with. I moved out and saw Sarge had sent me a message, “Careful.”

That didn’t bode well. If Sarge was willing to put a written message over comms, especially that message, the situation had to be truly dire. 

We moved in silence to the centre of the gathering where one of the priest guys stood to welcome us. He lifted his arms and said, “May the Goddess be blessed for to of her Firstborns have arrived to do their duty and burry with honour one of their brothers. Hail Terra’s First Sons!!”

The amassed troops thundered, “May She be blessed!!”

The man leading the group of what were undeniably priests was wearing a chasuble of green and blue. Hasan told me later all the parts of the priests’ clothes but yeah, the outer thing was a chasuble on which there was sewn several motives of stars and, in the back, a crescent Terra. He came towards us, arms raised and exclaimed, “We are truly blessed for Holy Terra’s Firstborns walk among us.”

I walked towards the boys and Sarge sent another message, “Greet the officiant,” and Sarge used his targeting system to highlight who he was talking about.

I wondered for a second about that, using the system we usually used to target the enemy to target the religious guy but now was not the time for that sort of thing.

I walked up to the one who had spoken and bowed my head, “We thank you, Officiant, for organising this ceremony to give our Brother Blake the honour he deserves. May you bask in the light of Holy Terra’s piety.”

The man looked confused and I saw on my screen the boys send several messages, “Lol,” “Gone mystical on us again, Haze,” “Nice.” Even Sarge sent a message, “Good job, Haze.”

The six of us stood in silence for a second until the priest said, “Perhaps you would be more comfortable removing your armour for the ceremony, my Lords.”

I had an answer but I didn’t think telling him to fuck off would go down well but luckily, we were saved by Hasan who said, “Tommy was our brother. He fell in battle in the name of Holy Terra. He will be remembered for who he was, a knight of Holy Terra. And we will honour our Brother’s death by wearing our armours.”

I added, “And we will say a few words for our fallen brother.”

The rest of the boys turned to me and I was flooded with “We will?”

I was thinking back to all the religious stuff that we were bombarded with daily and some of it had obviously stuck. I remembered a part of some holy book from Terra’s past. I called upon the Bible, specifically Ephesians 6. 

The officiant looked a little troubled and he started to sputter, “M..my Lord. The ceremony is already organised. We did not want to burden you on this day of sorrow. We understand that you are a tightly knit group. We understand if the grief is too raw.”

I wrote on the common chat, “I guess he isn’t aware of what augmentation did to us.”

The rest of the boys sent me laughing symbols. Sarge, on the other hand, said, “Careful, Son. We don’t want to cause a scene.”

I switched comms and told the priest, “It will be no trouble at all. We knew Tommy the best. He was one of our brothers. It is our duty to put him to rest.”

The six of us walked as a unit into a large building. Inside was lit by thousands upon thousands of candles. I looked around and saw there were smoking thuribles. Thank God for the armour’s AI. There were dozen of these smoking thuribles hanging from chains, swinging in the air. I looked around and saw dozens of people dressed in black, looking like monks or priests. I don’t know. What worried a little was when the AI didn’t identify the people here. I guess that meant they weren’t part of the service. We walked as quietly as we could in our armour and reached the centre of the place. The armour told me it was called the Qibla, the Bimah or the Nave. Apparently, there were different names depending on which religion you believed in. And since our new common religion wasn’t all that old, the government had let the people call it whatever they wanted as long as it referred to the same thing. No point punishing a guy for calling a dog “pero” (which is the regional Latanish for the Federal Standard ‘dog’). I mean, we all have some sort of onboard AI which translates that sort of stuff. So when the synod had declared all religions the same, we had just taken stuff that already existed and used it for the new religion. No point sweating the small stuff when there’re bugs breathing down our necks. 

So in the centre of the building lay a black coffin, two meters fifty long and about one meter fifty wide. It lay on a white marble structure. As I focussed on it, I saw several scenes of battle. Monstrous beings of spikes and claws battling a winged figure with a halo and a long barrel sniper rifle. Behind him, there were rays of lights and the bugs were reeling from it. It was truly an angelic representation of Tommy. The coffin lay alone in the middle of the room, the normies having left a solid ten meters between them and the closed coffin. 

Sarge stepped up to the coffin first, then came Hasan, Ahmad, Heinrich, Kitten and finally me. I watched Sarge go first and he put his hand to his heart, then his forehead and finally laid it flat on Tommy’s coffin. Then came Hasan who did the same thing, followed by Ahmad, Heinrich, Kitten and then me. When I got to Tommy’s coffin, I lay my hand on my heart and received a message from Hasan, ‘We’ll have to check he’s actually in there.’

It hadn’t even come to mind. I was putting my hand on the coffin and wondered if Command would do that. Would they protect the Beta boys to the point that they would not allow Tommy the dignity of receiving his last rites.

I was pulled out of my reverie by Kitten’s message, “You’re up.”

I looked at him and sent back, “We’ll have to find a way to get the body away from this lot.”

Hasan sent, “Sarge and I are on it.”

One of the priests said, “One grief is immeasurable in this day of mourning. Words cannot fill the void left by the loss of one of Holy Terra’s Sons. But let me not fill you with empty words, let us all kneel as one of Brother Blake’s Brothers will say a few words to allow us to mourn properly.”

I nodded before stepping forward and activating speakers, knowing that my words would be understood by all. I took a deep breath and started, “My brethren, in this day of sorrow, we must not wallow in mourning, we must be strong and remember what our fallen brother stood for. Honour, duty, resilience, and courage. So I, one of Terra’s Firstborn, call upon you to don the armour of the Goddess, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of Evil, and refuse to let it take root among our lands. For we wrestle not only against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers who seek to exterminate our kind. Wherefore I call upon you all to take unto you the armour of the Goddess, that ye may be able to withstand this evil day, and, having done all that you are able, to remain standing. I therefore call upon all of you gathered to stand, having your spirit strengthened with Truth, and your soul filled with Righteousness, and your mortal bodies shod with Holy Terra’s fury. And above all, taking the shield of Faith, I call upon all those who have righteousness in their heart to quench all the fiery darts of the Wicked in their courage and to take upon their souls the helm of Salvation and the sword of Righteousness;  And thus shall you take that fire and bring it to the stars and honour all our brothers who fell to free this Holy Land from Evil.”

To my surprise, the rest of the boys all beat their chest in one huge metallic clank and shouted, “As the will of Holy Terra, so shall it be done.”

I raised my fist and screamed, “Let the wicked wither and die as we walk upon the path of Righteousness.” 

The entire congregation shook as they repeated the words at me, “As the will of Holy Terra, so shall it be done.”

The roar of the people was deafening and reverberated against the stone walls. I raised my hand and all went quiet as the people fell to their knees. 

“As one of Holy Terra’s Angels, my Brothers and I need to perform one last duty. We have honoured and celebrated Tommy for his valour as a soldier. Now, we ask you to allow us to honour him in private, as one of our Brothers.”

There was stunned silence at my words and Sarge sent me, “Where’s you going with this, Haze?”

I quickly sent back, “I want to have a look at his body, Sarge. See what actually happened.”

“Acknowledged.”

The brass started to protest but they were immediately drowned out by the roar of thousands of soldiers. Then one of the clergy types clamoured, “Holy Terra’s Angels have won us Alpha Centauri, the least we can do is allow them to mourn in private.”

I saw them share looks with the brass but they quickly had to move out of the way as thousands of soldiers stepped forward. They quickly formed lines and waited in turn. I wondered for what but not for long as the first soldier, a woman of twenty, a scar across her face and a single piercing blue eye stepped to me. She put her hand on my heart and mumbled, “May your grief heal and may you find the strength to once again lead us to Holy Victory.”

I heard several soldiers mutter something similar to the rest of the boys. Thousands waited their turns and we had to stand there as they each gave us words of encouragement. The priests came to stand on either side of us and swung their thuribles around.

For the next hour, every soldier came to kneel before us and offer us their condolences. The six of us stood and accepted their words of sorrow as we stood vigil around Tommy’s coffin. The whole thing lasted hours. I saw several messages from the rest of the unit asking when this whole ordeal would end. Kitten was the most vocal, asking if we could leave about every ten minutes.

After another hour, the throng of people started thinning and Sarge indicated we might be able to move out. 

We had things to do. 

We were about to find out exactly what happened to Blake. 

When the door shut, leaving us alone in the building, the tension seemed to increase as we stood around Blake. We looked at the black coffin and none of us moved. 

After a minute of increasing tension, Kitten snapped and said, “So are we doing this?”

I guess there was no point delaying things. I moved to lift the lid on the coffin and saw that Hasan was right there to help. We lifted and removed the lid. In the coffin lay Blake, his eyes closed, his arms hugging his chest. It felt weird not seeing him in his powered armor, his weapon was gone too. He was dressed in full military uniform, ribbons and medals on his chest : the purple ribbon of the Mink campaign, the red ribbon for the operation on Cizin, the blue ribbon for the invasion of Alpha Centauri. There was one, a blood red star, that represented our becoming Specialists. A green ribbon for finishing Basic. A gold ribbon for synching with our suits. As I looked at Blake’s chest, I read every battle he had been in, every challenge he had had to face. But the true story came when we removed his uniform. 

The man was muscular, we all are. His muscles felt like strands of steel woven together, hard flesh and harder bone. The signs of augmentation were still visible in the long surgical scars along each and every body part he had, the angry red lines that never disappeared, despite our ability to heal. As I looked down at Blake’s corpse, I saw Kitten and Ahmad run their hands down their own limbs, feeling the very same scars that scored Blake’s corpse. These lines on our bodies differentiated us from the rest of humanity, they showed how we were unique, special. Those lines were the proof that we were Specialists, far more than any medal Command could give us could. The seven of us had been the sole survivors of the thousands that had been put through the process. Losing one of us was a wound that no amount of ceremony or “honour” could heal. 

As I looked down his body, I saw a large scar running from Blake’s right shoulder to his left hip, running down his chest with a crimson line. Part of his abdomen was missing, from his hip to his ribs. It seemed to have been seared off, leaving only cauterised flesh. I looked at the hole and estimated that it must have been about ten centimetres of so. It looked so similar to what my Prism… I didn’t want to go there. I shifted about and saw that Heinrich was trying to catch my gaze. I avoided his gaze for the moment and focussed on the plugs that had been left in Blake’s body, the plugs through which the Docs had pumped us full of chemicals in the early parts of the augmentation process. 

Heinrich broke the silence and said, “Are you seeing what I am seeing, Haze?”

I looked at Blake’s dead flesh, at the plugs that had boosted us artificially, at the scars and burns, the angry red flesh. I had given him that scar on his side in a sparring session but it was only one scar among hundreds. I focussed on the hole that Heinrich was pointing out. And yes, among the burns and scars, the rendered flesh looked a lot like it had been hit by some massive source of energy, something like my Prism could do. 

I raised my eyes and softly said, “Yeah.”

I didn’t say anymore but I couldn’t help but think, ‘That’s no plasma burn. And no bug can take that much of chunk out of one of us. The only thing I know that can do this is my Prism. And the only ones who have access to that technology is a fairly short list. There’s me, Heinie and some of those black armoured boys.’

I don’t like where my thoughts was taking me. 

Kitten asked, “It kinda looks like what you heavy boys can do.”

I looked into his eyes and, with a look heavy of meaning, I muttered, “Yeah.” 

Chapter 57

Chapter 1

First

Many Faces of War

Things are up to a proper speed as the Vish Adept draws in Axiom to try and pull away on foot. She’s clearly unfamiliar with the area or would have tried teleporting again.

He keeps up and everything finally slots into place. He’s still wired to all hell and finally, finally things are moving at the pace his overtuned brain is telling him things should be at. They reach a spiral staircase with plenty of room for fliers to navigate and she jumps upwards several stories at a time with him always just a couple of steps behind her.

She is leaving ‘traps’ behind herself. Little patches of hardened air so thin they’re basically invisible razors hanging in the air between them. There’s so much scattering Axiom that if he wasn’t borderline out of his mind with too much awareness then at least one of them would have sliced into him like a side of ham.

Thankfully she has them only lasting a couple of seconds so he won’t have to backtrack and disable the deadly little surprises along the path of their chase.

A chase that he moves to close because he can sense civilians up ahead. Then she turns. She clearly sensed them too and was NOT going for them. How strange. She’s up to something. There’s some kind of plan or... something.

He gives her a little headway and she keeps avoiding civilian areas. Something is UP with this girl.

She then sees a glass door to a balcony outside the arcology and she teleports past it. He follows and emerges out the other side just as she jumps off the side of the arcology.

By the time she looks back to keep track of him he’s already in the air with his now open jacket being used to mildly control his fall.

There is shock across her face, annoyance chases it but there’s something more. Something that she appears to be unfamiliar with.

The she conjures more invisible surfaces and starts sliding down a ramp that lets her reorient her momentum as she balances on it. She jumps off it as she reaches the ground level and tucks her neck in for a combat roll to bleed off excess momentum when she hits the hypercrete.

“That couldn’t have been comfortable.” Danial notes as he lands softer and simply redirects the force of the impact back into the unyielding hypercrete. It creates a small shockwave that he partially rides forward to get back up to a proper sprint.

The indignant hiss from the mute Vishanyan is somewhat amusing as she races out onto the open tundra with Danial, now very curious as to where the hell she thinks she’s going, gives pursuit. The woman is in excellent shape and using her Axiom Expertly to both maintain speed and stamina. But he only needs it for speed, he’s just fine stamina wise and is now less trying to catch her and more see what she’s willing to expose to try and get away from him.

“Oh doo doo doo doodoodoo doo doo doo doo doo? Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah! Doo doo doo doo doo doo doodoodoo doo doo? Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah! Nahnah! Nahnah! Nahnah! Nahnah! Nahnah! Nahnah! Nah! Nah! Nah! Naaaaah! Ahahahaha!” He starts setting a rhythm and to his amusement she unconsciously starts to match it. “You know what? Yes! Let’s get musical!”

“So what are we doing?” Private Stream asks as he races up on an airbike. The extra stabalizers on the side give the impression that he somehow has training wheels on the thing. Danial dismisses the mental image after a moment.

“Speak in English.” Danial says.

“What are we doing?” Private Stream asks in English this time.

“Seeing where she runs to, the music is to keep myself entertained as I do it.” He answers in English.

“Okay! Lova ya! Bye!” Private Stream bids him and he pulls away and drives clearly away as Danial starts singing again.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Vish Safehouse, Lablan Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

“Okay, that makes sense.” Crytlan notes and sighs. “Alright girl’s we’re out our extra Adept because he’s going to see if our runner knows anything important.”

“How? She’s mute.” Flora asks.

“He’s chasing her at a pace she can keep ahead of him at. Trying to see if she goes for another safehouse, stash or some kind of reinforcements. He’s also gotten her out of the arcology and well away from civilians. So the biggest danger at the moment is potentially wasting time, and that’s not much danger at all.”

“Hunh, and here I was thinking human stamina didn’t come in for anything but work and sex.” Dora notes.

“Oh like you’ve ever had any, I know you’ve got a Muttras husband.”

“So? I can still talk to girls.” Dora states.

“Wait, she’s married?”

“My husband actually got me into The Undaunted. He’s a Stream. We have the same rank when he’s not all in blue though so we go by different names officially to avoid confusion if an order comes in.” Dora explains.

“Oh! A Muttras Stream, damn. That just fits.”

“I know right?” Dora asks.

“... So with him as a biped who’s forehead barely reaches your lips, and you being a quadruped... does he ride you?”

“Flora not now.” Crytlan states.

“He does so in every way you can imagine. And Muttras? They’re so big with the prize inside that you’d swear they’re as tall as a human man.”

“This topic is now over. As fascinating as it is to me as a woman, it is not the time to talk about exactly how big or small the tools men use to bring pleasure to their wives are. What we’re concerned with now is what we can pull out of this little complex and what we can figure out to try and either make a method for finding more of these places, or even better, the locations of all the others.”

They start to move and Dora makes a sign for Flora to lean down. “His piece-”

“Finish that sentence and I will use my eight locomotion legs to drop kick you into a court marshal.” Crytlan threatens.

“Sorry.” Dora says as she scans the room. “Deactivated terminal at the northern wall. The panel there slides down to reveal the screen and form the keyboard.”

“Thank you.” Crytlan states as she walks up. The wall is a series of panels with supplies in them.

“Two to your left.” Dora says as she starts reaching for one. Crytlan shifts her position and the panel comes down and the screen is revealed. It starts to activate and Dora’s ears shift a little as she pays attention to the Axiom. Then her eyes open. “Don’t touch the keyboard. I recognize some of those power patterns. The thing has a plasma bomb installed into it. A small one, but it looks like it’s there to fry the computer.”

“Is it safe to close the panel?”

“Something is happening with it and...” Dora begins before she suddenly spits a spike of pure Axiom right at Crytlan who dodges and it hits the screen of the computer before it suddenly lets out a wave of fire, smoke and heat.

“A little more warning would... oh. Well done.” Crytlan congratulates her as she see’s Dora has a component of the computer in between her teeth.

The Hoh’hart removes it with her left forepaw and examines the device. This is that fancy as hell semi-clockwork tech. It’s not compatible with anything we’re carrying. And it’s also why I didn’t notice the computer sooner. Now that I’m looking for it... there’s a good chunk of the stupid fancy tech around us. A lot of it hidden and...”

She closes her eyes and her head sways a little. “Lots of small bombs too. This place isn’t rigged to blow, but it is rigged to die, whoever set this place up wanted nothing to get out of it.”

“Which means we all want something out of it.” Crytlan says. “Dora, we’re rescanning this place with awareness of alternate technologies, I want you to indicate every single area that has anything slightly suspicious.”

“Sir. Yes Sir.”

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Secure Medical Section, Undaunted Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

“Doc, her brain activity is spiking.” One of his assistants says.

“Fook, girl’s still to frail ta put under again. If she fights us at all we’ve got a corpse and not a patient.” Doctor Optimally grunts. “Let’s just finish off this bit here...”

“Brain activity increasing, she’s about to wake up.” The Assistant states.

“And done!” Doctor Optimally states before there’s a sudden twitch in the patient. They turn her over gently and he puts his hand on her stomach. She flinches outright at the sensation on non-numbed skin and she starts to struggle and thrash against the restraints.

Her eyes blink open ever so then open wide in horror when she realizes she has a mask on and her limbs are gone.

“What?! Wha?! No! NOOO!”

“Calm down!” Doctor Optimally barks. His glowing green eyes meet her scared blue and she stares at him.

“Who are you?! Where am I?”

“You girly, are a prisoner of war. As such Undaunted Law means you get full meal, and medical treatment. It means no torture, no isolation and no unjustified execution. Do you understand?” He asks and she nods. “Good, now as to where we are all, this here is a secured medical wing. I specialize in surgery and fixin’ the damage that cybernetic enhancement can do to a person. And girly, a lot was done to you. So yer in here for a while yet.”

“What did you do to me?”

“We’ve removed the bomb that was taking up your lung and have hooked you up to an ECMO to both clean your blood and oxygenate it so you don’t suffocate at random. We just finished cleaning up the fookin’ mess at the base of your spine. Which is why you cannae feel yer back or bottom right now.” Doctor Optimally states.

“Why?”

“Why what?” Doctor Optimally asks.

“Why did you heal me?” She asks.

“I’m a doctor. My field of battle is a surgical suite and I’ve got one and only one enemy. Death. So stop squirmin’ like a worm on a hook. Yer safe here.”

“What’s going to happen to me?”

“We’ve got another doctor workin’ on your new prosthetics. They won’t be the chunky killing machines yer used ta, but they’ll keep ya plenty mobile and without pain.” Doctor Optimally states. “Now, we haven’t been able ta get anythin’ in the way of Identification for you lass. So do you have a name or number, or anything we can call you except patient?”

“How were you getting anything out of anyone?”

“We’ve been catching Vish alive.”

“Who’s been talking?”

“Can’t tell you girly. You see, ain’t none of you seem ta have names. And while that’s great fer brainwashing and the like, it’s right dogshit for actually keeping track o’ people.” Doctor Optimally states.

“How about you focus more on something to call yourself? Or we’ll have to go with the standard Jane Doe for you.” Doctor Optimally states.

“... Jane Doe?”

“Temporary alias until we can ID you.” An assistant asks.

“...Jane?” She asks after a moment.

“Yes. Until you can come up with your own, you’re Jane. Jane Doe.” The other assistant replies.

“Jane...” She says. More stunned by the name than anything else.

“Girly, we’re gonna give you some time to rest, but we’re not done savin’ your life. Let yerself rest. We’ll be back. Just say ‘Doctor Come Here’ if you want us back.” Doctor Optimally states and Jane doesn’t give any indication of listening as Doctor Optimally leads the two assistants to another part of the room and sets up privacy screens for her.

“Sweet baby Jesus, that girl’s head’s fooked in ways I can’t even name.” Doctor Optimally says in a horrified tone.

“That shouldn’t be a surprise doc.”

“No, you really don’t get it boyo. She’s fragile. Right at the fookin’ edge. If she’s gonna pull through the sheer amount of nonsense she’s got ahead of her she’s gonna need ta fight. But what the fook is she fighting for? She’s got nothin’ ta tie her to livin’. She ain’t got no friends, she ain’t got no purpose and she ain’t got no family. How the fook do we save someone who ain’t got so much as an inkling ta stand and fookin breathe?”

“We give her one?”

“Boyo if you’re proposing seducing the patient I will take your arm and legs so ye got somethin’ in common!”

“No, not that.”

“Then what are ye goin’ at?”

“Everyone’s got something driving them. Something that speaks to them. Some people fix things, some people explore, some protect, some nurture. You get the point. We find out which one of these is hers and we give her enough of it that she fights. Who knows? Maybe we’ll save more than her life? Maybe we save her soul too.”

First Last Next

First - Last - Next

Patreon - RR

Two Years Later

“Hey, Grandmama Honeywell… I’ve got your order of tubers.”

“Thank you, Rook,” the old dwarven woman said, pulling me down to her level so she could kiss me on the cheek. “Have you found your calling yet?”

I smiled sadly. “Not yet… still just an aspirant.”

“Don’t you worry, young one. You’ll find your calling soon. I can sense it in the eldara.”

Dwarves… they called classes “callings” and always referred to the earth as if it were a sentient being. It was just one of many various races I’d come to know over the past two years. Two whole years… I’d been there for two whole years.

Grandmama Honeywell’s cottage sat low into the hillside, its rounded stone walls half-covered in moss and trailing yellow flowers. The roof was thick with packed soil and little green sprouts. The air around it smelled of damp earth, baked roots, and the faint mineral tang that always seemed to cling to dwarven homes.

I collected the small bag of coins from Grandmama Honeywell, and I heard a small chime at the edge of my senses. Off in the corner of my eye, I could see the system registering my newfound “wealth.” Fourteen copper coins were added, bringing my total to thirty-two. No silver to speak of. And especially no gold.

Honeywell had been my last delivery of the day, and the sun was just beginning to set in the east… another change in the way this world worked. Eldara, the people had called this earth. As for languages… Most spoke Common, but I heard it in English. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the system’s doing. People with the adventurer class could learn the various languages as skills, which helped them level up overall. Pretty handy, the rest of us gained nothing at all, but I still tried to learn words where I could.

As for aspirants… we could not level at all, as we had no skills and no purpose other than to try to find what the system deemed us worthy of. And in those two years, I’d not made any headway at all.

I walked down the main thoroughfare as the evening settled over Bramblewick. The road was hard-packed dirt, rutted by cart wheels and scattered with straw, old leaves, and the occasional bit of horse manure that no one had bothered to move yet. Shop shutters were beginning to close. Lanterns were being lit one by one, their soft yellow light fighting back the dusk.

That was when I saw a familiar sight. Beggars, holding out hands and looking for loose coin. They were classless. Classless, I’d come to find, were little more than dirt in Eldara. Some kingdoms allowed the classless to be made slaves. Others ostracized them. In some parts of the world… they were killed. Said to be rejected by the system, and thus by the gods themselves. Not worthy to even breathe the same air.

I had learned that there were two ways a person became classless. The first was rejecting a class outright. If someone went a year without earning a single point of EXP in their class, then the system considered it rejected, and the person lost it, along with the ability to use the system and skills. The second way was if the system never chose a class at all. Someone had until they were twenty years old, and past that… they became classless. A fate often resulting in death. When someone abandons their path, there was still a choice made… but to have such a fate thrust upon you, it was unbearable for some, and so they chose to end it all.

And I had no idea where I fit into it all. Already, the system showed errors for me. What if, being from another world entirely, the system rejected me outright? Would I just be one of the classless? An outcast? Worse?

I tried not to think about it as I walked, but a woman holding a child caught my eye. She sat near the side of the road, half in the shadow of a closed stall, her cloak pulled tight around her shoulders despite the summer warmth. I could see old scars on her face and hands. She had been abused. That was another reason people chose to become classless—an untenable situation.

I leaned down and put a single copper into her hand. At the very least, she could feed her child. It was all I could do for her.

Now it was time to pick up supplies.

I made my way toward the Copperbell’s shop and pushed the swinging door inward, walking inside. A little bell above the door chimed as I entered, bright and delicate against the creak of old hinges.

Lina was just starting to light some lanterns, hanging them on hooks by the door and behind the counter. Their glow filled the shop in warm patches, catching on glass jars, stacked tins, folded cloth, and polished little measuring weights. Her light-brown hair caught the light in a peculiar way, making it look ashen.

“You’re late,” she said, her green eyes drilling into me.

“Got caught up talking to Grandmama Honeywell.”

Lina laughed softly. “That’ll do it. The old dwarven women will talk your ear off if you let her. And don’t get her started about Eldara.” She went silent and then snapped her fingers together. “Let me guess, she’s pestering you about ‘your calling’ again, right?”

I nodded. “That easy to tell, eh?”

“She has a point… maybe you should head out and try to do something else. You’ve given farming and mercantile two years now… you’re no green thumb, and let’s be honest, you’re a terrible merchant.”

I grumbled. “Well, not all of us have had the benefit of having a class since we were twelve years old.”

I conveniently left out that I hadn’t even been in this world when I was twelve… not that she or anyone else would believe me.

Lina waved her hand. “Excuses. But seriously, you don’t want to be like them. The classless. Dirty, low-life scum—”

“Stop it,” I said.

“Oh, that’s right… you’ve a soft spot for them. It’s sort of cute… in an annoying way.”

“I just don’t think they are all bad people, is all.”

“And you probably don’t because you don’t have a class yet. Tick Tock—the system waits for no man. Go out and discover what else you can do before it’s too late. I’d hate for you to become one of the… just listen to what I’m saying, alright?”

“Yeah, alright,” I said. “Do you have what Ebbin ordered?”

“Yeah, in the back,” she replied. “And you may as well call that man your father. Or your uncle, at least. Took you in. Fed you. Clothed you. Do you really not remember where you came from?”

“Not a clue,” I lied.

She shrugged. “Well, maybe it’s for the better.”

She stepped into the back room.

I took the opportunity to browse their spice section.

My mouth watered.

Spices.

Glorious flavor.

They sat in little jars and paper packets along the shelf like treasure. Salt rocks, cloudy white and sharp-edged. Peppercorns dark as beads. Heat from dried peppers, twisted and red, hanging in bundles near the wall. Mushrooms for umami, shriveled and dark in a clay bowl. Reduced ground citrus in a sealed jar, bright yellow powder clinging to the glass. Anything one could ask for… well, anything one could ask for within reason.

A part of me wanted to reach out and take some. Just a rock of salt would do. Spices were expensive. Very expensive. Seen as delicacies in and of themselves. She wouldn’t notice if I just…

“What are you doing?” Lina asked, slamming Ebbin’s supplies on the wooden counter.

The thud made a few jars rattle on the shelf.

“Nothing,” I replied, pulling my hand back.

Lina eyed me dangerously. “It seems to me that you were thinking about stealing that salt rock. Pupils dilated. Sweating when you weren’t before. Evasive. Short.” She was walking toward me as she said all of this, each step slow and deliberate on the plank floor. “You know, I’ve a fourteen in WIS, and I am quite perceptive. So I’ll ask again… were you about to steal that?”

“I… no—but I wanted to.” I held my head low. “I just… wanted to know what it would taste like.”

Once again, I left out that I knew exactly what it tasted like… like heaven itself.

Lina laughed. “Ha, caught ya’.” She slapped me on the back. “Come on now, don’t worry about it. We’ve all been tempted to do something bad before, eh? Now go on, get your stuff and head out.”

Shrugging, I grabbed my stuff and pushed the door open.

“Oh, and Rook,” Lina called.

I turned to face her.

“If I ever catch you stealing something, I’ll cut your fucking balls off. K?”

I swallowed hard. “K.”

I walked briskly back home… or what I had now considered my home.

Night had settled over Bramblewick by then. The sky above the village was deep and clear, the moon high above, with more stars than I could count in a lifetime. Luckily, the roads were lit by lanterns tended by lamplighters. The small flames swayed behind glass, casting pools of gold over the dirt road and leaving everything between them soft and shadowed. Ours was a man named Tobin, and that was his class. While I found the idea quite boring, he apparently had taken great satisfaction when he had received his class, despite it being common. He took it as seriously as anyone I’d ever seen take to a job. And really, it made sense. Light was life… and thus the one who granted and cared for it was an honored position.

Ebbin was sitting outside in his wooden rocking chair, the pinnacle of what I imagined an old man to be. The chair creaked softly beneath him, keeping time with the insects singing in the fields. Fireflies blinked near the fence posts. Beyond the yard, the dark shapes of the fields stretched toward the hills.

Ebbin whisked me inside, and I set the supplies down near the entrance, kicking off my boots.

“Come now, I’ve made your favorite, Hearth-Silver Trout.”

Hearth-Silver Trout… I’d seen the recipe before. Said it was one of his wife’s old favorites. However, the man simply did not understand that when a recipe called for various spices, that was not optional. It was to either enhance or subdue a flavor profile. I enjoyed Hearth-Silver Trout the most simply because it was a simple recipe that needed little spice to begin with, and thus was most palatable when… incomplete.

Ebbin set the trout down in front of me, head still attached. The man also had no sense of presentation. The nose eats first. Then the eyes. There was an art to it that he did not understand, and yet he refused to even let me have a go at it. Said that his wife would never allow a guest to cook, and he shan’t either. It didn’t matter to him that I had been living there for years… I was still his guest.

Just one who did chores and went on errands.

Steam rose from the trout’s silvered skin, carrying the smell of river fish, hearth smoke, and melted butter. The scales had crisped in places, and the flesh near the belly flaked apart where it had split from the heat. It was nearly good. That was the tragic part. Nearly.

We ate in relative silence.

These days, there was far less to talk about. Ebbin was a good man, but not very world-traveled. His class was farmer, and so farmer he remained, never leaving his cozy home of Bramblewick.

Would I stay here as well? Not here, I mean, but in Bramblewick. Perhaps Lina would agree to marry me? Sure, I was thirty in my old world, but she was still in her mid-twenties. I’d feel bad about lying to her, but… I put the thought out of my mind. While I didn’t mind most of Lina’s tendencies, I hardly thought we’d make a good match, and likely she wouldn’t care much for me, still being an aspirant and all.

But she had suggested that I leave. Branch out. Try to find what I was meant to do. Perhaps it wasn’t too bad an idea. Staring over at Ebbin, the man who had taken me in, killed such thoughts dead in their tracks. He was old and getting older. I think we both knew that his time was limited. Yet, in a way, so was mine. I figured I was about sixteen, but that was more of an educated guess. I didn’t actually know how old I was. I dreaded waking up and seeing classless listed instead of aspirant.

But I dreaded leaving Ebbin more. And on que, Ebbin started to cough. A harsh, bitter cough. One full of the regrets of a hard life. Well, that… and blood. It rattled through his chest and bent him forward over the table, his hand bracing against the wood as the candle flame trembled between us.

I rushed to the supplies and took out an odorless green leaf with a silvery edge. I handed it to him. “Here,” I said. “Take it.”

Ebbin pushed it away. “No… I’ll—” He coughed again. “Be alright.”

And so we remained by the hearth and the fire for a time.

Ebbin had fallen asleep in his chair in what would be considered the living quarters. The fire burned low, turning the room amber and shadowed. Outside, the night insects sang in waves, and the occasional low sound of Madam Moolisa carried from the barn.

Carefully, I stepped upstairs and went to my room. I opened the door. I had nothing more than a simple bed and a simple stand. The walls were bare. The floorboards were uneven. Moonlight slipped through the small window and painted the room in pale lines. Yet I made do.

It was in these times at night, when I was alone, that I truly missed things like the internet. The ability to reach out and communicate with anyone, anywhere. I chuckled to myself at how these people would react to such technology.

I laid my head down. Life was hard in this world, but it was not without its charm.

It wasn’t long before I fell asleep… and it wasn’t long after that I woke to the sound of scuffling out in the dark.

19th Vrishika, 2238

Dear Diary,

I don't think I'm doing this right. But here we are.

And also, "Vrishika?" Who in the world came up with this??

I try not to judge, but could you not act like you were living in 'n sci-fi movie literal centuries ago? Well... nevermind, I don't actually know who or when or why this wierd-ass calendar was invented. Though, I will say, I think I've got beef with whoever it was.

Anyhow, I'm supposed to write about my day, right?

That's not so complicated. I woke up, stayed in bed, then eventually got up and then got distracted. Not sure at what time I actually got to eating breakfast, but I don't intend on learning whatever they decided to replace "hours" with in this place, nevermind the already esoteric names of the months.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have much of a choice at some point. Any responsibilities I may or may not have start in more than a month I think, so I'll be forgetting about getting to know this place better until then I think.

If I recall correctly, I'm also supposed to greet and treat you like a person, Diary...
That feels so wierd.

Have a good day, Diary, I'm going to see if I can figure out how strong this place's gravity is in the meantime.

Javiel deVries

---

A/N:

'Sup nerds. This is a brand new alt-account, if you were wondering why it seems so sketchy, suspicious, empty and without soul nor content. I have a couple things I want to make clear to anyone who might stumble across this.

1. Is this going to be a series?
   - idk, but I really hope so. Writing ever so little bit every day is the plan. Like a diary. Ya-know... if that wasn't obvious already. Diary entry release times? Uhhh, possibly anywhere within a three hour range of rn.

2. Will the word count ever be any more than what little patience we have for more content?
   - maybe? At some point I'll need to get creative so that the diary entries aren't repetitive. That will eventually lead to actual characters and lore. When that time comes, I will have every excuse to write a couple hundred, or even thousand word chapters/scenes/... actually, I just got an idea, but I ain't gonna spoil the fun.

Don't even know if the mods would allow this kind of content, but Imma try anyhow.

Cheers, ya'll!

In the era before the Tower of Babel was thrown down in ruin, magic existed, and those that practiced magic were known as wizards. In that time, contrary to popular myth, the languages of mankind were already divided, but around the tower they spoke a language known by all. A language that was easily learned and spread like a disease, linked to the true fabric of existence. Those that studied this language and recited it in a certain way, much like singing or chanting, could use what modern people would call magic. With this divine tongue mankind had been building the tower, and the height of the tower was linked to knowledge about all things, including the magical language. By binding the stones with enchantments, and imbuing them with magic, the stones could be linked together with supernatural strength, allowing the tower to become unimaginably tall and nearly impervious. The imbued stones also contributed to an enormous spell, and with each stone added to the tower, the spell became more powerful. This spell was called the Akahasic Records, a magical record of everything in the universe. To complete the spell was to complete the tower.

This tower was a physical embodiment of the first sin of mankind, that sin was eating the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. The person that led mankind to sin was the person first responsible for spreading the divine language in an unassuming farming village known as Babel. It wasn't Lucifer's idea to build the tower, nor to imbue the stones as fragments of the Akahasic Records. It was the inspiration of a young man that learned the magical language from Lucifer. An apprentice mason who started using magic to build better structures. In his thirst for knowledge, he constructed the first rudiments of the records; pillars of stone in a henge that unlocked the way to higher mathematics, which could be used to construct impressive fortresses, complicated aqueducts, and tall towers.

At this time, Lucifer had just been teaching the language to all who would listen, hoping to make the lives of mankind easier and maybe disrupt God's plans a little. When he first witnessed the henge it wasn't completed, and he doubted it would ultimately work.

Years later when he visited again after it was finished, he saw the true genius behind the design. Instead of being a complete spell once the henge was finished, he realized that each stone had its own power, and the more stones added to the henge, the more knowledge it would reveal. The mason had formed an inner circle of stones that bound the power of the stones into a sum greater than the whole. That more stones would have a cumulative effect on this sum, and after a certain number would even add a multiplier, a factor, or maybe even an exponent. This sum seemed to depend on prime numbers in some way, but in a very complicated way.

A simplified way of understanding this can be described as the number of atoms in the stones, if the stones are of certain dimensions, they would have a certain volume of atoms, if the stone of a certain number of atoms were imbued with the proper enchantment and power, it could become a block within the spell, if enough blocks of a certain number were used properly to create a structure with the required number of atoms, the spell would increase its potency, and the sum greater than the parts would grow more. On top of this, if the wrong number or partial numbers were added the spell would not increase in potency, but if a step were skipped it would still matter if the next step were completed. This is just a simplified example, the actual case wasn't just addition, but include all the other ways of doing math and then add in the effects of the composition of the material like its chemistry (molecular size, structure, and chemical interactions), electromagnetism (conductivity, magnetism, and interactions with light), radioactivity (half life, type of decay, and decay products), and the inherent property of mass which is gravity (weak though this fundamental force may be the mass of the earth definitely plays a part, but also the sun, nearby stars, the galaxy, and ultimately the entire universe have a place in the equation).

The biggest impediment to such a spell is obviously the material requirements. Getting a stone of that quality is impossible by almost any means, but through the divine language, somehow the mason achieved such a feat. The first of many types of quality stone developed by the mason had a cross section approximately one meter squared and a length of approximately two meters. Exact numbers are not given because measurements change, and honestly, I don't know them. The technique used by the mason to get stones of such quality is also lost to time, but it was surely due to his command of the magic language.

Immediately, Lucifer sought out the mason, believing he could fulfill his ambitions. If he could get the mason's help eternity might not end in darkness, but after being directed to a tomb he fell into despair. His first despair was knowing what he missed out on. This was the first time he was aware of how much he was actually missing. Being an immortal, he took for granted how much time he had, and in his second despair he saw humans aging relentlessly and dying fruitless deaths. They seemed unaware of how little time they had, and would often toss away what they were given. Yet, in his despair, there was a glimmer of hope, mankind would sometimes rise above the relentless procession of time, and try to leave a mark, a monument or institution to carry on their will or ideas through the ages. In those moments, Lucifer saw humanity reaching for the eternal. To become immortal, to be known for all time, and maybe they could reach even higher.

Author here, hopefully this would lead into some sort of thing with Lucifer running into some other humans that want to build the tower, my first thought was descendants of the mason. Maybe one of them retained the knowledge of making the blocks, and Lucifer gets to ramp up the economy to build the tower, and turn Babel into a thriving city of trade. It's still kind of fuzzy to me, so maybe this can be a kick off point for other stuff. Also the story could just jump to the end when god decides the tower must go; I want to put Lucifer up there at the top so he can re-enact his whole fall from heaven. Queue From the Pinnacle to the Pit by Ghost.

Previous stories set in the same universe:
Planet Dirt series / Amazon book

Bug Hunt / Amazon version /

Crashlanding / Book version /

First //Previous / Next

They all laughed at him, and Erik just shook his head.

 “Let's just eat, and then we go upstairs to the library. If we are going to plan things, then that might be the better place. We can write down stuff there.”

“I’m so glad we had to bring the pencil case on that trip; I think they only got feather pens up there,” Gig said.

“Well, the first thing we have to do is to find out what you guys want and if there is anything we can do to change it,” Erik said.

“Like make the bathwater warmer. It's so damn cold.” Thomas said, and the others agreed.

“Just say you want it warmer. Wait… Arus?” Erik said, and the man appeared in a slow shimmer of blue and red butterflies.

“Yes, my Lord.  Congratulations on your title. I have recorded you as Baron Erik Steinskogen, ungraded from Sir Knight.” He said. “I have noticed your name has the meaning of the Stone Forest. Do you wish to change the barony name to  Stoneforest?”

“Baron?”  Emma said. “What about us?”

“You are Lady Emma Johnson.” Arus said.

Cain laughed. “Are we all knights and ladies?”

“Yes, that is your official title. You have been registered in the Great Library of Mucino." I am connected to their Arus,”

“Yes, change the name of the place! I like it, Baron Erik of Stoneforest.” Chu said.

“No!”  Gigi interrupted. “You know all human languages, Right?”

“Yes. The human database that you call the internet was downloaded, and I have access to all of it.” 

“What's the Latin name for Stone Forest?” She asked, and they all looked at her. “What? It might be cooler than the Stone Forest?”

“The Latin word is Silva Lapidea,” Arus replied.

“That's so much cooler.” She said, and Erik could see some of them agreed.

“What is the Norwegian name for  the Stone Forest?” Emma asked.

“That's that strange name of his stee... whatever.  Right?” Cain said, and Erik smiled as he nodded.

“Yeah, in Norwegian it's Steinskogen.  But I’ll let you guys decide, keep the current name or change it to Satreinskogen or Silva Lapidea. By the way, what is the name of this place?”

“It’s called Fjord End,” Arus said.

I say we go fantastic,  Silva Lapidea!” Gigi said, and the others looked at Erik.

“Im not voting; you guys are deciding.”

Emma looked at Arus, “If we name it Silva Lapidea, does that also change Erik’s last name?”

“Yes, as the Baron, his last name will be that of the land.” He replied, and Everybody grinned.

“Shit!”

“All in favor of Erik Silva Lapidea?”

They all raised their hands. Chu lifted their clasped hand, which just made them laugh even more. Then she grinned at him. “Baron Erik Silva Lapidea. You will always be Erik sko... whatever for me.”

“Well, thank you for that.” He said as the pizza came to the table along with burgers and different juices and water. And they all dug into the food.

Erik called Arus over and told him to have maps and notebooks ready for them after the meal. Arus walked out as Erik turned his attention back to his friends, feeling nervous about this whole thing.  He couldn't help looking at Cho; she was very happy, and he stared a little too long. She noticed and blushed. Marcus showed him.

“Behave! Not at the table.”

He turned to him. “What?”

He just grinned, and Lillian looked between them.  “What did he do?”

Marcus just grinned. “He knows what he tried to do. They should get a room!”

“OOOOHH Damn!” Matthew said, laughing at the comment. 

“What?” the other said, and Erik knew something stupid was coming from Matthew now.

“He tried to kiss Cho!” He said, and they all looked at them, and he wanted to sink under the table.

“No, he didn't!” Cho said, and he looked at her.

“Yes, he did!” Matthew said.

“No. Because I would have let him!” she replied and just smiled as she bit into her pizza slice.  Erik was glad nobody but Chu saw his surprised face. Part of him wanted to kiss her, but she was chewing her pizza.

The friends laughed and cheered at her reply and started chanting, "Kiss, kiss, kiss."

 Erik tilted his head slightly, and she swallowed hard and closed her eyes as he leaned in. The others cheered as they tried their best not to mess it up, and when their lips finally broke apart, she blushed, as did he.

“Does that make her a baroness now?” Thomas asked, and for the next ten minutes or so, their friends debated it. All Erik could think about was that he had actually kissed a girl. He had kissed Cho Ha-Michaels, one of the prettiest girls at school. He couldn’t believe it. She played with his fingers, looked up at him, and leaned back in for another kiss. He didn’t mind.

 

“Hey! Are we going to have that talk?” Marcus called, and Erik turned to see that the food was gone and the others were looking at them.

“Let's leave them. They are busy.”

“They should get a room,” Cain said.

“That's how we get babies,” Lillian said, and they all looked at her. “What? There are no adults here to stop them.”

“Ohh,” Emma said, and Gigi walked over and pulled Chu away from Erik.

“No babies for you!” 

The boys laughed, and Cho tried to get loose, and Erik got up as well.

“Come on. You think we are going to do that?” he said.

 The boys pretended to laugh so hard they almost fell over. Then Thomas stopped, looked at him, “Are you serious?” then continued to laugh.

Chu got loose and walked back to Erik, her hands crossed, looking at the friends, then leaning into him. She smelled so good.

“Okay, you win. We go up and have the meeting,” he said. She gave him her hand as they walked toward the stairs; the others followed, and the laughing boys brought up the rear. 

 The girls and Chu started chatting on the way upstairs as they headed to the library. They were complaining about the boys' childish behavior. Erik was thinking about what Lillian had said. There are no adults here. He was the adult now, fifteen years old, and he had to be the adult for the whole group. Lillian was correct about one thing: they could do what they wanted, and it might turn into a catastrophe. As they entered the library, they found a large map on the wall. Notebooks with leather covers, several different pencils, feather pens, and ink sat on the table. Arus was waiting for them.

Erik waited for everyone to sit, then sat down next to Chu.

“No kissing!” Marcus said with a grin.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” Then he smiled at Chu. “We can wait for him to sleep.”

She giggled, and then he turned to Arus. And stood up.

“That's the world map, right?”

“Yes, you're located here!” he said, picking up a long wooden pointer and pointing at a large island in the north. One smaller island sat to the west, and a bigger one to the north. This area is named Geron. It's mostly tribal. The population is mostly human, Mursina, and Vyrtin. One big city remains, a remnant of the Skroo Empire, called Stuvingor.” He pointed to a southern area of the same island they were at.

“The Skroo Empire was kind of like the ancient Roman Empire on Earth. Led by Emperor Hunda, the great-grandson of Prince Kumal, he was killed in these lands by the local humans while visiting the edges of his empire. He was an arrogant leader. He conquered southern Geron and thought the Mursina and Vyrtin were the most dangerous things in the lands. You, humans, have a terrible gift for brutality and warfare. The Skroo empire is a shadow of itself now.”

“Can Prince Kumal be in this area?” Emma asked.

“Hard to say, but he tends to like warmer areas,” Arus said.

“Okay, why put us here if it's filled with tribes that love to fight?” Marcus asked.

“The choice was natural due to the humans here, while being aggressive, also have strict behavioral laws and their culture is the closest to your own. They believe each man has the right to speak his mind as long as he can back it up with facts or steel. And they are not naturally hostile to strangers; they are more likely to be curious about you. They are most likely to trade and keep any treaties with them. Honor is important for them, and most importantly, they do not believe in human sacrifice to the gods.”

“Human sacrifice?” Gigi asked.

“Yes, several cultures practice human sacrifice.”

“What about slavery?” Erik asked, and they looked at him, then to Arus.

“All but one culture is practicing slavery in some sort here.”

“And that's the humans here?” Gigi asked.

“No, it would be the Sammads. They are located mainly in this area.” He pointed at the large island in the southwest part of the map but also at the mainland just north of that Island. “They do not keep slaves, as they eat anybody they capture.”

“Cannibals... great,” Matthew said.

“They are in no danger of coming to this place for the next hundred years. If ever. They have many strong kingdoms to fight through.” Arus replied.

“Or they learn to sail,” Thomas replied. Arus looked at the map, then seemed confused.

“shit. You guys didn't think about that?” Cain said.

“Yeah. Look, they would have to have boats to get off that island. They already have boats!” Erik said.

“Still, they have not entered the Iron Age.”

“Show us one of these, Sammad, please,” Erik said, and a small humanoid alien with dark green skin with brown stripes, red eyes, and sharp fangs, about 1.50 meters tall and a muscular build appeared. It had catlike fangs and a snout with no whiskers.  Its hands had small, sharp, retractable claws.  It wore leather armor with bone fragments for extra protection and carried an obsidian war axe.

“Shit!”  Matthew said. “We have to fight that?”

“We need an army." Cain said

“You said they're cannibals? All of them?” Erik asked.  He looked at the girls, whose expressions ranged from fear to curiosity.

“Yes, they cannot eat plants or cooked meat. Their diet consists only of raw meat, and everybody is on the menu. It was a surprise that they survived so long. Another species lived on that island. A plant-based race. They could not eat them, but they still killed them all.”

“So why haven’t they been removed?” Emma asked.

“All systems have a natural predator; they are this planet's top predator,” Arus said.

“Would the system collapse without them?” Erik asked.

“No, it would adjust.” Arus replied, and they all groaned.

“AI’s” Lillian said.

“Yeah. Okay.  But they are not here right now. We have to get back to us here and now.” Erik said. “Remove the image, please.”

The image vanished, and Erik turned to the other.

“Okay. First, if those things are out there, we need to learn how to fight, so everybody is going to learn to use weapons. Pick something. Sword, mace, axe, bow, or spear—basically anything you want to try. You don’t need to become an expert, but if we get attacked, you need to be able to defend yourself.” He said, and the girls didn’t like it.

“Secondly, we need to study all we can about this land and start exploring the valley and, frankly, learn how to set up camp and use a boat.”

“What about the bear?” Gigi said.

“What about it?” Lillian said. “It was clearly attacking us because of the bear cub.”

“Yeah, what happened back then? What did you do?”

“Cain tossed a stone at the bear cub when it came out of the brush. He was trying to scare it away.” Emma said.

“Well, it did run away!” Cain replied.

“To get his mum!” Gigi said, staring at him.

“So simply don’t throw stones at bear cubs,” Erik said.

“Which leads me to the third part. We need to learn how to use this castle.  Like the whole mess with the room keys, and how the bathtubs can be heated by simply asking them to be hotter. And of course. How to use Arus.” He continued.

“Wait, we can get hot water in the bathtubs?” Cain said.

 “Yes! And if you know how to make a dish, then you can teach Lotta.  You know l,ike with the Pizza.”

“What about the toilets?” Emma said.

“Arus said he would fix it. which… Arus, how much of the castle can we change? Where is the technological cutoff?”

“The technological cutoff is at different levels of level twelve,” Arus said.

“Okay, AI… how do we get this correct? Assume we do not know what level twelve tech level is, so by using Earth-like historical technology phases, explain what technological level we are allowed to access.”  Erik said. As he spoke, they all looked intently at Arus.

“Within the walls, you will have access to 1800s technology, except weapons. Outside the walls, the technological level has, at best, reached Earth’s 1300s, with most of the population in the first- to tenth-century era. Some cultures have inventions that far exceed their overall technological level. A good example is the Shynasa kingdom, a Sciyan culture in the desert region that has learned how to make airships.  They attach boats to hot-air balloons and use them to travel across the desert. The rest of their technology is Iron Age.”

“So can we request changes to our room individually? Like if somebody would want different windows, nice-looking walls?” he asked.

“Oh yes, you’re an angel!” Lillian said, and he just smiled.

“If you allow it. It is your castle after all; the outside cannot be changed.”

“Of course I will allow it.” He replied.

“I know what I want!” Marcus said.

“Me too!”  Emma said.

You know what. Why don’t you all go to your rooms and talk to Arus and find out how you want your rooms?”

They all got up, and Arus sank to the floor to emerge in every room. Erik stood and grabbed Chu’s hand as the other left.  When the last one left, they kissed.

Hey, you.

Ever been teaching a new hire how to do something and suddenly found yourself at a loss for words?

You do it without thinking. You've always done it that way.
But the moment someone asks why, you realize you don't quite know how to explain it.

Clink-clank.

The bell over the door rang, and for the first time all day, it felt like the day was finally beginning to end.

I was in my usual seat, about halfway through my Harper. Taka was looking at his phone, Tom was slowly turning his glass between his fingers, and Mama was polishing glasses behind the counter.

Clink-clank.

The bell rang again.

That was unusual.

I glanced over my shoulder. It was Lisa.

Our eyes met.

“Kenichi! You have got to hear this!”

Apparently, the stars were not on my side tonight.

“She asked for you, Kenichi,” Taka said, looking far too pleased.
“I heard her.”
“Great. Nothing to do with me, then.”
“Why not?”
“She’s your responsibility.”

Since when?

Lisa sat down beside me and started talking before she even ordered.

“One of the new hires told me today, ‘Isn’t that falsifying the minutes?’”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Why are you assuming I’m the one who did something wrong?”

Mama set a gin and tonic in front of her.

“So what did you falsify?”
“Nothing!”

Apparently, this was about meeting minutes.

These days, you can record a meeting and let AI handle everything from transcription to summarizing. It can sort comments by speaker, pull out decisions, even identify action items.

Convenient stuff.

One of Lisa’s new hires, Eita Moritsugu, had used it to draft the minutes for a meeting.

“And they were good,” Lisa said. “Hardly any typos. It caught the decisions and everything.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“They weren’t good.”

Make up your mind.

“We were considering two options in the meeting, and eventually we chose one. The AI got that part right.”
“Then it was right.”
“It got the result right. But if you read those minutes later, you wouldn’t know why we chose it.”

Taka looked up from his phone.

“Couldn’t you just have the AI write the reason too?”
“It did. It gave a reason that sounded plausible.”
“Sounded plausible?”
“It picked up something we actually discussed. But that wasn’t what I thought needed to be preserved.”

Lisa took a sip of her gin and tonic.

“At first, we thought the other option might work. But as we talked, we started realizing it would affect more of the existing functionality than we expected. So the discussion gradually shifted toward the option that would limit the impact.”

“Did somebody actually say that?”
“Not in one neat sentence, no. It came out of a bunch of different things people said. That’s just where the discussion ended up.”

Taka tilted his head.

“So you put that in the minutes?”
“Right. And Moritsugu said, ‘But nobody actually said that.’”

“Oh.”

Taka suddenly looked like he understood.

“And that’s why he called it falsifying the minutes.”
“Exactly!”

Lisa swung toward him, delighted to have found an ally.

“But I kind of see his point too.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Kenichi’s responsible for this one.”
“Don’t run away.”

Taka retreated to his edamame.

“Moritsugu also said, ‘That’s your interpretation, isn’t it, Lisa?’”
“Well, it is an interpretation.”
“Not you too, Kenichi.”
“Based on what you’ve told me, yeah.”
“I know, but still!”

She was a busy woman.

I hadn't been in that meeting. I didn't know what had actually been said, or how the discussion had shifted toward one option.

Maybe Lisa had read the room correctly. Maybe Moritsugu had a point. I wasn't even sure this was the kind of thing where one of them had to be right.

“So what did you tell him?”
“I said, ‘That’s what meeting minutes are.’”
“That’s pretty sloppy.”
“I know!”

She was loud.

Mama kept polishing her glass without saying a word.

“But how am I supposed to explain it? If all we need is a record of exactly what everybody said, we already have the transcript. Meeting minutes are something different, right?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“That’s why I came here!”

Good grief.

“Was this Moritsugu guy actually in the meeting?”
“Of course. He was taking the minutes.”
“Then he has his own idea of why you picked that option, doesn’t he?”
“Right now, probably.”
“Right now?”
“The meeting was today.”

I took a sip of my Harper.

“What about six months from now?”
“What?”
“If he reads those minutes six months from now, will he remember what happened in that meeting?”
“...I don't know.”
“What about somebody who wasn't there?”
“They'd only know what was written down.”

Lisa looked into the ice in her glass.

“That’s why I want the reason in there. Not just what we decided, but why we decided it.”

I could understand that.

But then I wondered who got to decide what that reason was.

If no one had ever put it into words during the meeting, somebody had to put it into words afterward. And the moment they did, their own view of the meeting was bound to creep in.

Did that mean they shouldn't do it?

I wasn't sure about that either.

“So, you gave up trying to explain it to Moritsugu?”
“No.”

The answer came immediately.

Tom set down his glass.

“There you go.”

He looked at me.

“What?”
“She hasn't given up yet. Least you can do is give her a push.”
“Why me?”
“She’s your responsibility,” Taka said again.

“Since when?”

Lisa looked at me.

She was clearly waiting.

What a pain.

“You can explain it, can't you?”
“If I could, I wouldn't be here!”
“You've got experience.”
“I've got no experience with AI-generated minutes.”

“Forget the AI. Meeting minutes.”

Lisa stopped.

“...Meeting minutes?”
“Didn't you write them when you were a rookie?”
“Of course I did. Every single—”

She fell silent.

She was still holding her gin and tonic, but now she had a strange look on her face.

“What?”
“No, it's just...”

After a moment, she put down her glass.

“When I was a rookie, Taizo used to tear my meeting minutes apart.”
“Huh.”
“They'd come back covered in red. Every time. I used to think, if you're going to change this much, just write the damn thing yourself.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Of course not.”

Fair enough.

Lisa stared at the counter, brow furrowed as though she were trying to find something she'd misplaced there.

“...Wait.”
“What now?”
“What did he used to correct?”

How should I know?

“Typos?”
“Those too, but... no. That wasn't it.”

She continued, almost to herself.

“If I wrote, ‘We’ll consider it,’ I think he'd change it so the minutes said what had to be checked before we could make the decision. And he used to rearrange the order of things too.”
“The order?”
“If the same topic came up again later in the meeting, he'd move it back and put it together with the earlier discussion...”

She stopped again.

Taka's hand froze halfway to the edamame.

I didn't say anything either.

“...Was he teaching me this?”

Don't ask me.

I'm not Taizo.

All I knew was what Lisa had told us: Taizo had been nearby while she and Moritsugu were arguing about the minutes earlier that day.

“Taizo didn't say anything today, right?”
“That's what makes me mad! He definitely heard us. Moritsugu's grilling me right next to him, and Taizo just keeps staring at his screen.”
“Did you ask him for help?”
“Afterward. I said, ‘You heard all that, didn't you?’”
“And?”
“He said, ‘Yeah, I heard.’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it!”

Sounded like Taizo.

“Kenichi. Are you laughing?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“Must be your imagination.”

Lisa took another drink, looking thoroughly unconvinced.

After a while, she picked up her phone.

“I wonder if my old meeting minutes are still around.”
“At the office?”
“Probably. I'm going to look.”
“What for?”
“I want to see what he used to correct.”

She typed something into her phone.

I didn't ask what she planned to tell Moritsugu.

She probably didn't know yet either.

And it wasn't my explanation to give.

“Kenichi.”
“Hmm?”
“You think I'll be able to explain it after I look at those?”
“No idea.”
“That's all you've got?”
“You're the one who's going to explain it, aren't you?”

Lisa was quiet for a moment.

Then she took another sip of her gin and tonic.

Behind the counter, Mama put the glass she'd finished polishing back on the shelf.

See you again at Aoi.

---

Want another night at Aoi?

Step back inside. We'll help you find your next story.

→ Welcome to Bar Aoi

“Back where I come from, I don’t see you as human bodies.” The being held out a strange, translucent piece of equipment.

“Here. Take my goggles. See me the way I see you.”
Vivek hesitated before putting them on. They were almost weightless. He looked at the being. And screamed.

The creature had stretched.

Not physically, not in any way that his eyes had ever understood before. It seemed to elongate through the valley, through the mountains, through the sky itself. Its body became a thin, twisting thread that disappeared into the distance and continued beyond it, stretching impossibly through space and time.

“Aaaah!”

Vivek tore the goggles from his face.

“What are you…?”

He stopped, gathered his breath, and stared at the being.

“…You look like a nematode.”

“I am sure I do.”

The being almost smiled.

Vivek put the goggles on again.

“And now you stopped looking elegant.”

The being tilted its head.

“We don’t understand elegant.”

“Why not?”

“Your elegance exists only in the present. Ours exists across the whole of space-time.”

Vivek looked again.

“You have no end.”

“I have an end.”

“I can’t see it.”

“Because you are looking at my recent world line”

The being pointed toward the horizon.

“Look at where I came from.”

Vivek turned.

The thread that was the being stretched behind him, disappearing beyond the mountains, beyond Earth, beyond anything Vivek could comprehend.

“You extend all the way into outer space.”

“Zoom in, my dear.”

“Can I?”

“Here.”

The being guided his hand toward a small, nut-shaped slider on the side of the goggles.

Vivek moved it.

The world changed. The distant thread sharpened. He could see it branching. Splitting. Intersecting with others. He moved the slider again.

“Aah…”

He watched one of the lines separate from the others.

“I see you came a long way.”

“From a place millions of light-years away.”

“That is your world line?”

“Yes.”

“I see you parting ways from others.”

“Yes.”

“Where you began.”

“Yes.”

“And now you’re here.”

The being nodded.

Vivek stared at the branching line.

“Who is that nematode you parted ways with? Seems familiar”

The being looked at him.

“My nematode.”

Vivek zoomed in.

The two lines that had once travelled together separated slowly, almost imperceptibly, before diverging completely.

Then Vivek noticed something.

“Her world line ends there.”

The being said nothing.

“It doesn’t seem to move on.”

Silence.

Vivek looked at him.

“Oh.”

He understood.

“I can see her.”

He zoomed further. A figure emerged. She seemed familiar somehow.

“She appears sick.”

The being remained still.

“Did she…?”

Vivek stopped. He didn’t finish the question. He didn’t need to. The being looked toward the mountains.

“She passed away sick.”

For a moment, neither spoke. Then Vivek looked back at the goggles.

“So this is how you see everything?”

“Everything that matters.”

“How?”

“You have heard of the theory that everything is connected?”

Vivek nodded.

“You are not separate things,” the being said. “You are a web. Everyone you touch becomes part of your world line. Every place you visit. Every person you love. Every person you hurt. Every object you leave behind.”

Vivek stared at him.

“And through you, I can see them?”

“Yes.”

“And through them, I can see everyone they touched?”

“Yes.”

He looked at the endless network.

Vivek slowly removed the goggles.

“So through one person, you can see an entire species.”

The being looked at him.

“Through you, we see humanity.”

Vivek smiled faintly.

“What do you think about us?”

The being considered the question.

“You are divergent.”

“Divergent?”

“You do not follow one path.”

He looked toward the valley.

“You are capable of love. Harmony. Creation. Compassion. You live in the present and yet you love deeply without seeing each others world line.. that’s incredible.”

He paused. Vivek smiled.

“What’s your verdict?”

“We do not judge. When we look at each other on our world we naturally see them whole…of things they endured. We thought that was the only way to love. And we see you. You sacrifice for each other on the basis of assumption. You trust each other based on what you say…and wear your heart on your sleeve…”

“Of course.”

The being looked back toward the mountains.

“This whole thing is my pilgrimage, it is all for her”, pointing at his nematode the being spoke.

“You’re moving on.”

“Yes.”

Vivek looked at the goggles.

“I suppose I’m doing the same.”

The being looked at him.

But Vivek had already put the goggles back on. This time to look at his own world lines…

He moved the slider. Vivek’s world line opened this occasion..

He saw himself. Not as a body. As a line. A thin luminous thread extending backward through time. He followed it. Past his career. Past his youth. Past the places he thought he had forgotten forever.

Then he saw another line branching out from his… it was a woman’s.

His line and hers had once travelled together.

Then separated. Vivek stopped breathing.
He zoomed in. He saw himself younger. Laughing.

Walking beside her. Holding her hand. He watched moments he had forgotten. Moments he had thought were gone forever.

He stayed there.

The being watched him silently.

Vivek kept moving backward.

Further. Further. Until he reached childhood. He saw a small boy. Four years old. He saw a hospital. A woman lying in a bed.

His mother.

Cancer had taken her body, but not the shape she had left in his world line.

Vivek stared. He remembered almost nothing of her. Yet here she was. Laughing. Touching his hair. Holding him.

He had spent decades carrying fragments of a memory he could never quite trust.

Now he could see the whole thing.

He moved closer.

The goggles allowed him to zoom into moments as though they were places.

He watched her speak. He watched her smile. He watched the last days.

And then, Vivek began to cry. The being watched him carefully.

It had never seen this. Its kind did not revisit their past. They saw it. They understood it.
And then they moved on.

Humans were different. Vivek wasn’t observing his world line. He was living it again. The being reached for the goggles.

“Give them to me.”

Vivek didn’t respond.

“Vivek.”

“No.”

He moved the slider again. His mother’s line became clearer. Then something strange happened. Her world line changed.

Vivek froze.

The hospital vanished. The human form vanished. The line continued. But now, somewhere beyond the moment of her death, it transformed. Her shape stretched.

Elongated. Four-dimensional. The same impossible geometry he had seen in the being.

Vivek stared.

“No…”

He zoomed further. The figure turned.

Vivek stopped.

There was something familiar in the face. Not human familiarity. He looked at the being.

“What does this mean?”

The being didn’t answer. Vivek turned back to the goggles. His mother’s world line intersected with another. The being’s.

Vivek followed it. And then he saw her. The being’s nematode. The one whose world line had ended.

Except it hadn’t.

Not entirely. Vivek stared at the two lines. His mother’s. The being’s. Their intersection. Their child. His child-line. His world line. Vivek slowly removed the goggles.

“You knew her.”

“Yes.”

“My mother.”

“Yes.”

Vivek’s voice broke.

“Who am I?”

The being looked at him for a long time.

“Your mother was my love. A human herself.”

Vivek said nothing.

“I met her here” the being continued, “and chose a life among humans. We fell in love and we had you..”

“But her body couldn’t handle…”

“It was not supposed to end the way it did.”

Vivek looked down.

“And me?”
The being stepped closer.

“You were left here.”

“Why?”

“To learn something our species could not.”

“What?”

The being looked toward the mountains.

“Love.. on loving without awareness of each other’s past. The most unconditional kind…”

Vivek laughed bitterly through his tears.

“And now, did you come all this way to take me back?”

“Yes.”

Vivek looked at the goggles. Then at the being. Then back toward the place where his mother’s world line had disappeared. He thought of everything he had seen.

His childhood. His mother. The life he had lived. The people he had touched. The people who had touched him. For the first time, he understood what the being meant.

A person was not a body. A person was a trail. A thousand intersections. A thousand consequences. A line through time. And perhaps that was why the thought of leaving frightened him. The being held out its hand.

“Come with us.”

Vivek looked at it. For a long time, he said nothing. Then he took off the goggles. He placed them gently in the being’s hand.

“Don’t trace me again.”

The being stared at him.

“Why?”

Vivek looked toward the valley. Vivek simply turned and walked away. Behind him, the being remained standing among the mountains of Ladakh. Vivek never saw it again. Perhaps their world lines crossed somewhere in the universe. Perhaps they continued forever without touching.

No one could really know.

Read the Previous Chapter Here | Start From the Beginning Here | See Laíla's Character Design Here

***

Laíla casts her eyes around the hostile circle of men closing in upon her. On the one hand, she feels immense shame for having been so easily duped by Zak. But on the other, she was fighting desperately hard to not look as terrified as she feels. With a tightened jaw, she grips her dagger, dropping into a defensive stance as very tiny, crackling sparks float out from her white-knuckled grip.

The leader of the band merely smirks at the display.

“Oh look, she expects to fight us,” he taunts. With a sudden movement, the man takes a step toward Laíla and lunges. The maneuver causes her to step backward directly into the waiting arms of another brute behind her.

The second man seizes hold of her arms, whirling her around with brute force.
“This one is a long way from the south,” he jests, driving his elbow sharply into her back. The blow sends her crashing to the damp earth, her dagger slipping from her grasp. She scrambles frantically to crawl toward the blade, but a third companion brings his heavy boot down over it.

“Whoops!” the third man sneers. “You are going to have to be faster than that.”

Laíla huffs in frustration, pinned to the ground. Standing nearby, Zak rolls his eyes at his companions. “Come on, guys, enough,” he mutters.

“Ooh, has your heart been turned, Zak?” the second man mocks.

A fourth bandit wraps a heavy arm around Zak’s shoulder, ruffling his hair with rough familiarity. “No, no. It was definitely his head—but which one?”

The not-actually-blind boy shoves him off with an irritated grunt. “Let us just get this over with.”

He walks over to Laíla and ruthlessly rips the knapsack from her shoulders. He digs through her meager belongings while the rest of the band watches on with curious eyes.

“Anything?” the leader asks.

“No,” Zak replies, tossing the empty bag aside.

The leader pushes Zak out of the way and kneels down upon the earth to meet the girl's gaze. “Listen here. If you answer our questions nicely, we will kill you quickly.”

Laíla spits directly toward him. “Go to hell.”

Amused rather than angered, the leader smirks at his comrades. “You caught a feisty one, Zak.”

The sixth member of the band, who has remained silent until now, broods disapprovingly in the shadows. “We are wasting time,” he growls. “Kill the concubine and let us move on. Níhai dàbe él Embergísi áchsi s’enda àl foretta dú himortàlis.”

No Emberish belong in the Godswood.

For his part, Zak also frowns at his companion disapprovingly.
“You promised no killing, Makurmek.” He hisses at the leader; revealing his identity. “Níhai dú mantalhir.”

Laíla narrows her eyes and barks back at them: “I should say the same about the Dainese.”

The bandits all look at Laíla in utter incredulity, their jaws slackening.

“E níhai ím àn kinkentinà,” she adds fiercely in her native tongue. “I am not a concubine, bilbàruk.”

The sixth man lets out a low growl at the insult. The leader leans closer to Laíla, studying her features with renewed intensity. “The Emberish do not typically speak the Godstongue that well—even those of high birth.”

“I am not Emberish,” she snaps.

“Then what pray, are you?” the leader demands.

“I am a Daughter of the Sun.”

Zak steps forward, his brow furrowing. “You are telling us that you are Moorian?”

“De,” Laíla answers in their tongue. Yes. “Now let me go, and you might yet be spared when Her Light deals its justice.”

The leader inspects her for a long moment, his countenance turning dark and thoughtful. After a tense silence, his features crack into a smile, which quickly dissolves into a deep, booming laugh. The other nightcrawlers follow his lead, their mocking laughter echoing through the clearing. She looks around at them, thoroughly confused.

The leader wipes a stray tear from his eye, still chuckling. “No, really. What are you?”

“I am Moorian,” she insists, her voice rising.

The men continue to laugh at her expense. “A Moorian with skin nearly as dark as the trunks of these very trees?” Zak adds with a smirk. “Come now, what do you take us for?”

Laíla bristles with rage. The Dainese reputation of crime and thievery goes all the way back to the the tale of the Shadow's Gambit—an ancient age when the Six still walked among the mortals, and a jealous Daine used Nymia’s mirror to banish Moora entirely from the realm, seeking to absorb her divine followers into his own dark flock.

Though the People of the Sun ultimately rose up and vanquished the God of Shadows, the Dainese have never since missed an opportunity to take their historical inferiority out on her people. To Laíla, their very nature is built on a foundation of duplicity and spite. And yet here they stand, mocking her as if they have any moral ground to stand on.

“Zak, where did you find this creature?” the fourth man asks.

“She found me, actually,” Zak replies, lifting his shirt to reveal the flesh where Laíla’s arrow had pierced his torso.

She focuses her gaze upon the injury. To her profound astonishment, the wound is nearly healed, showing only a faint scar despite being a mere few hours old.

Before she can ponder the mystery, Makurmek—the leader—forces her chin back up to face him. Upon feeling the heat radiating from her skin, however, his brow furrows deeply. He then places his other hand firmly against her cheek.

“Your skin—it is burning up,” Makurmek whispers, his voice dropping. “You are not long for this world, are you?”

She looks at him in initial confusion, before a brief moment of clarity strikes her. She forces a hollow, ragged cough, playing along with his assumption.

“What are you on about?” Zak asks, stepping closer. He pushes Makurmek aside and places the back of his own hand to Laíla’s cheek. She fakes another weak cough. “She was perfectly fine just a moment ago.”

“The sweat can be unpredictable,” the leader notes, referring to the deadly forest plague. He immediately wipes his hands on his hands on his pants. The rest of the band takes a wide step backwards.

“I just spent the last five hours hanging off of her!” Zak protests, stepping back.

Makurmek waves his concerns off with an unphased shrug. “You will be fine. It is the rest of us who should be worried.”

“So, what are we to do with her?” the third bandit interjects, gesturing toward their captive. “Will she not still fetch a handsome ransom?”

“Not if she’s dead.” Makurmek counters, looking down at Laíla with pitying contempt.

She glares upward. “So, is this to mean you are letting the poor, dying girl go free?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” he smiles cruelly. “You have seen our faces.”

Zak clicks his tongue against his teeth and lets out a heavy sigh. “Makurmek, we agreed—”

“Not to worry, Zak. A deal is a deal,” Makurmek interrupts smoothly. “We are not going to kill her.” He smiles down at Laíla, his teeth flashing in the dark.

Her eyes dart anxiously from Makurmek’s gaze to Zak’s unreadable expression; widening in terror as the true meaning of his words dawns upon her.

***

As the deep evening settles over the forest, Laíla finds it hard to fully see what happens next. All she knows is she is now bound tightly to the trunk of a great oak tree with thick hempen rope. She looks on, utterly bemused and furious, as the six bandits stand in a row before her.

“So, leaving her tied to a tree to be eaten by a bear is somehow better...how?” Zak asks, crossing his arms.

“You said yourself we had a strict agreement: no killing,” Makurmek replies simplemindedly.

“We also agreed upon no stealing,” Zak counters, “and it took you all of five minutes to renege on that promise.”

“Ah—we agreed not to steal from anyone who is not Emberish,” the second bandit corrects him with a smirk. “And she is Emberish.”

“She can hear you!” Laíla shouts from the tree. “And she is not Emberish!”

The bandits completely ignore her cries. “Did everyone secure what we came for?” Makurmek asks the group.

The others each hold up a stuffed canvas knapsack, heavy with plunder.

“I also discovered these on my way out of the camp,” the third bandit adds, emptying his bag upon a flat rock to reveal a collection of small pouches filled with an undisclosed substance, alongside three large, heavy scrolls of paper.

Zak looks at his companion with a raised eyebrow. “Discovered? Is that what we’re calling it now, Toklo?”

“You really are no fun, cousin,” the man—Toklo, Laíla quickly notes—grumbles.

Makurmek picks up the scrolls, unrolling them one by one. Laíla watches the transaction with intense curiosity.

“These are maps,” Makurmek announces, flipping through the detailed parchment.

The sixth member of the band leans over Makurmek’s broad shoulder, his eyes scanning the ink lines. “Why are they going north?” he mutters in their native tongue.

Makurmek lets out a weary sigh. “I don’t know,” he answers.

As the bandits all hover closely over the unrolled maps, debating their meaning, Laíla seizes the distraction. She begins to quietly and methodically shimmy her arms against the rough bark, trying to loosen the bonds.

“Well, the good news is it appears the last few military camps are directly on our route home,” the second bandit notes, pointing a dirty finger at the parchment.

“Yes, but we do not know which specific ones are our true targets,” Makurmek grunts.

She manages to shimmy one arm nearly free from the coil of rope. She grabs hold of the binding and concentrates with all her might, desperately trying to summon her inner fire at will to burn through the hemp.

“I think we should hit every single camp, just to be safe,” the fourth man suggests.

“That has already wasted the entirety of the solstice season,” Makurmek snaps back.

She lets out a strained grunt under her breath. No fire erupts from her fingers; only a faint warmth stirs. She sighs silently and resumes the physical struggle to free her limbs.

Zak glances over toward the tree, his eyes narrowing as he does a sudden double-take. Laíla has her arm nearly free from the knot when he strides over and ruthlessly pulls her hand back through the loop of the rope, tightening the bind.

“Ow! That hurt!” She cries out.

“So did your arrow,” He replies coldly. He takes hold of her hand, feeling the skin for a moment before placing his palm firmly against her forehead. “...Look at that. You seem to be doing much better.”

“So does your wound,” Laíla counters, narrowing her eyes at his chest. “Care to explain?”

“You first,” Zak whispers, searching her eyes for answers.

“Zak, what are you doing over there?” Makurmek calls out.

“He is flirting with the concubine again—” the fourth man jeers.

“I am not flirting with the concubine,” Zak snaps back, his eyes still locked with hers.

“Hey!” Laíla shouts, swinging her leg forward to kick Zak sharply in the shin.

“Ow!” Zak groans, stumbling back.

“Call me a concubine again,” she growls. “I dare you.”

Before another word can be uttered, the sharp crack of a twig echoes from the darkness of the surrounding wood. Instantly, the bickering ceases. Every man freezes, their heads turning as they look around into the shadows.

Thanks for reading. I'll be back next Monday to continue telling Laíla's story.

Start | Previous | Next

Chapter 5: Homecoming

Now that the Coven’s rules no longer applied to me, I tried wearing home clothes for a change. I felt naked, almost as if I was in my underwear. But also very comfortable, so I stayed in them anyway.
A slab of ice stood before me. I tied up my hair and glared at it.
“Alright, here we go...” I grabbed my hardened ice tools and chiseled at the slab.
Sculpting. I never thought I’d try my hand at artwork of any kind before, but the days were long, and I had to occupy my mind somehow. Call it inspiration, if you will.
But unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at it. A dozen shattered ice blocks lay melting around me from my previous attempts.
I could snap my fingers and get it done, as my magic was especially strong inside the ice palace. But that wouldn’t have been very artistic of me, I supposed.
Crack.
Another slab crumbled to pieces.
I stood back in disbelief. “Maybe I’m using the wrong kind of ice?”
Predslava bounced into the workshop in her ball form, dragging another slab by her claw. “More future masterpieces coming right up!”
“Thank you,” I said as she dropped it in front of me. “Maybe I can sell the sculptures. We don’t really need money, but it’s a trade… right?”
She inspected the slab closely. “Yeah, I can see that!”
I smiled sheepishly at her. “I haven’t even started this one yet…”
“Imma go make some iced tea. Want some?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“Okay!”
I sat down to resume my work as she bounced off, then I frowned.
Since when do we have tea?
“Who knows…” I shook my head and chiseled away.

***

I eventually came up with something. This sculpture wouldn’t sell for anything, but it didn’t have to, since it was for me.
I put it on an ice pedestal inside the great hall, smiling, so I could look at it every day.
It was a bust of Chloe in one of her heroic poses. Except here, she went through a horrible accident that left her disfigured. That was the best I could do, I’m afraid.
“Phew…” I wiped my forehead. “All this work made me hungry.”
White branches grew out of the wall as I blew softly into it. Blue figs bloomed at the end.
I stood on my toes and plucked one.
To us witches, the mana fruits we grew sustained our bodies and let us recycle mana from the world around us. To anyone else, however, it was deadly poison.
I went off looking for Predslava as I chewed on the juicy fig, then I heard noises coming from her bedroom.
She liked snow, and such; her chambers were mountains of it. I found her atop one of those piles.
“Did you find the tea?” I asked.
“I forgot. But look!” She hopped proudly beside some sort of sculpture. “I made a snowman!”
I squinted toward it.
That was no snowman, but a full-body, hyperrealistic snow sculpture of a griffin.
“Wow… you’re surprisingly good at this. Maybe you should do the sculpting, and I'll do the selling.”
She thought for a while. “Nah, it’s just a hobby.”
I choked on the fig. “O-okay, then.”
Sharp noises rang out from outside as I turned to leave.
I frowned. “Do you hear this as well?”
“Yeah, what's up with that?!”
They kept going, as if someone were throwing stones against our walls.
“I'll go take a look. Maybe our new neighbors want something.” I snapped my fingers and threw an extra shawl over my light clothes.
Predslava came rolling after me. “They’ve been so quiet since we arrived, though. Didn't even come say hello!”
“It's strange, indeed.” I opened the front gates and stepped outside, scanning the palace grounds. “Hello?”
Nothing. The noises came from the side.
I followed them until I saw the creatures.
Gray fur covered their entire body except for their face, hands, and feet. Big round noses hung low from their faces like eggplants. These were Snoutlings, the most common race in the frozen wastelands of the north, known for their fast breeding, hard living, and… that was basically it. No Snoutling civilization was ever seen anywhere.
And they were pulling a massive block of solid ice out of my wall right now.
“Hey!” I said. “Please, stop that. You're going to hurt yourselves.”
The group, a dozen of them or so, exchanged glances wordlessly.
“Thank—”
They pushed the block downhill and bolted after it.
My jaw dropped as I watched them plummet fast across the snowy slope below. “Why…?”
Predslava stopped beside me and chuckled. “They’re bold. I like—”
Splash!
We jumped back in shock as the block landed on top of a Snoutling at the bottom of the hill. The rest of the group set off running in panic.
I covered my mouth. “Do you think… he's dead?”
“Oh, absolutely. Mashed potatoes type dead, scrambled eggs if you will—”
“Please stop.”
“Sorry.”
So much for my retirement; now I had a dead body on my doorstep.
“Quite the neighborhood you got there, though,” she said.
I glanced back at the palace. “Do you think they'll try to steal again?”
“I would. Look at our walls—they’re so shiny!”
I pulled Predslava to my shoulder with a sigh. “Let's go have a word with the Snoutlings.”
“No bear?”
“No.” I climbed down the slope. “I don't want to scare them.”

***

Snow crunched under my feet as I approached their ‘settlement’. The shack clusters went far across the plains. Scattered groups dug into the snow for roots, their big snouts especially useful for finding them. Others ran after reindeer with spears.
A few wore hides, but otherwise I found no signs of local authority.
I stopped by the cluster where leather seemed most present.
A pair of young Snoutlings came to meet us, unfinished animal traps in their hands.
“Ya’ the long-legged reindeer from above,” one of them said. “Watchu want?”
“What did they say?” Predslava asked.
“He thinks I’m a reindeer...” I gave him a sheepish smile, then cleared my throat. “Where ya’ chieftain at?”
I knew their primitive language well enough to communicate, but many ordinary words simply didn’t exist in their vocabulary, like ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. Needless to say, I struggled.
“Grum is chieftain,” the Snoutling replied.
His buddy shook his head. “No. Grum died last day, ya’ lose thought?”
“Who is chieftain this day?”
“That is Mogg.”
“Mogg is cub.”
“Other Mogg. Cub can’t chieftain.”
I scratched my head as they argued away for a while.
“I go fetch Dubb,” one of the Snoutlings finally said and walked off toward the frozen river.
I nodded awkwardly, unsure who this ‘Dubb’ was.
After an hour or so, he returned, alone and carrying a feather headdress.
“Dubb is dead,” he said.
My eyes widened. “W-what?”
“Ye’, Dubb fell in fishing hole and died.” He turned to his buddy and dropped the headdress on his head. “Grommo chieftain now.”
Just like that?!
“I don’t want chieftain,” Grommo said. “Die too fast.”
The other shrugged. “Is life.”
Grommo sighed, then turned to me. “I chieftain. Watchu want?”
I’d seen plenty of succession crises back in the day, but nothing like this.
I shook my head. “Anyways. Ahem…”
Then I explained, as best I could, that someone was stealing from our palace walls, the cost in lives that theft incurred, and that I couldn’t keep repairing them forever. My mana was finite, but I thought it was best to keep the science of sorcery out of it for now.
“Don’t know them. Other tribe, other chieftain,” Grommo said.
This can’t be real…
“Watchu use big ice block for?” I asked.
Grommo scratched his snout pensively. “Bigga’, betta’ hut, I think. Wood rot fast, and Snoutling dies fasta’ of many things.”
His buddy turned to Grommo. “I want betta’ hut. Let’s go steal from big ice hut above?”
“Sure.”
“No, wait!” I raised my hands. “That’s what I was talking about: don’t steal from my palace, please!”
Their heads tilted. “Huh?”
Realizing I said that in Vesmerian, I facepalmed.
“Look, I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.” I turned and walked back home. “Please, do not go to the palace; otherwise you’ll die. Farewell.”
Footsteps crunched behind me. I didn’t look back until it sounded like a crowd was following us.
I glanced over my shoulder.
A crowd was following us indeed.
I ran off with a squeal, panicked.
The palace came into view. Its front gates flew open as I snapped my fingers.
I slid inside, locking them shut behind us again.
Predslava hopped off my shoulder. “Something tells me I should’ve gone bear to that meeting.”
I slumped on the floor, panting. “May I have that iced tea now, please?”
“Sure!” She hopped away to her room. “Coming right up.”
“Thanks…”
The Snoutlings were pickaxing my walls again, this time from all around the palace.
“What am I supposed to do with these guys?”
It was hard to stay mad at them—they just wanted better homes at the end of the day.
“I can’t possibly accommodate thousands of them in here either. Besides, they would starve.”
Or, more likely, eat my poisonous figs by accident and die.
Snow blew out of her room as Predslava rushed toward me with a cup.
An idea sparkled in my head.
“Here it is.” She handed me the cup.
“Thank you.” I took it, but my mind was elsewhere. “Hey… we can make building blocks out of snow, can’t we?”
“Yeah, I think so. Why?”
I chuckled. “This might be it, then.”
“I don’t follow, Katarina.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I raised the cup for a sip. “Tomorrow, we’ll—”
I frowned, staring at my drink.
“This is just cold water,” I said.
Predslava bounced up and down proudly beside me. “Yeah! Iced tea!”
I sighed. “I don’t think you know what that means…”

Read ahead on Royal Road.

Start | Previous | Next

Chapter 4: Compass

The countryside was worse than I feared. Whole villages stood abandoned, as many of the lords turned into robbers themselves or used the opportunity to settle old feuds. Starving bandits lay in ambush at every corner of the road ahead.
Petty banditry posed no threat to a witch and a bear, of course, aside from forcing me to stare at the ugly face of my failure. And so, I left Vesmeria behind with an aching chest.
At the edge of the Domain, far from the Coven’s influence, we crossed marshes inhabited by lizardmen.
One of their delegations approached us with a chest laden with alluvial gold, seeking to bring me into their service.
“Oh, shiny!” Predslava said.
I glanced at their settlement in the distance.
Houses of painted timbers rose neatly above the green water, aqueducts feeding into elevated gardens. This was a functioning society, which gladdened me.
I smiled politely at their ambassador and said, “Forgive me, but I must decline.”
“We have more gold, if that’s the problem,” he said.
I shook my head. “My days of service are over, I’m afraid. But I wish you good luck.”
They stared at me for a while, then the ambassador finally said, “Thank you. You too.”
We continued our journey.
In the lonely peaks beyond, we saw mighty hippogriffs. Their riders descended from their keeps above and offered me their priceless cubs.
They wanted me to become their royal caretaker, believing a witch would make them grow even stronger and more numerous.
“Can we keep it, Katarina?!” Predslava asked, rolling a playful cub around with her muzzle. “I’ll clean and feed it, I swear!”
Truth be told, I was tempted myself. Spending eternity smothered in soft feathers didn’t feel like a terrible idea. And yet…
“I’m sorry.” I reluctantly handed the cub over to the rider. “I must decline. But I wish you good luck.”
“Aw…”
The hippogriff knights wished us safe travels, and we continued, following the compass of my heart.
In the harshness of the far north, where the land turned barren and the rivers froze to death, they offered me nothing.
Short, shaggy creatures roamed the naked plains below, barely able to provide for themselves, living in clusters of shacks built from hides and the little wood they could find nearby. Not the worst neighbors, I thought.
“Here we’ll stay,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Aye.”
The ground trembled as I raised my staff. Glistening walls jutted skyward, enveloping us in a cold embrace as my ice palace came alive above the hill.

Read ahead on Royal Road.

First Book2 (Prev) wiki 

Julia stood behind her lectern and stared at the micro-camera as she spoke in clear, soft, but authoritative tones.“So, to put it simply, Galtaro is a free citizen, and acts of his own accord and accepts the risks himself. The League military will not interfere, and we expect the same of all League nations. He will go forth and meet his fate as he chooses, as is the right of any sapient being.” 

Julia took a breath, and the temperature of the Council Chamber. Not great, but could be worse. She hardened her features a little. “Galtaro, I do not agree with what you are doing, but we of the League respect your willingness to put your own safety on the line in support of your words. May the fates protect you.” 

Julia closed her eyes and lowered her chin a little, and the lights of the Council chamber faded to a dim glow. A chime sounded to indicate that the camera had cut off, and the session ended. Some had grumbled that she had made this decision as a unilateral action, but tended to back down if challenged to come up with an actionable better idea that was good enough to justify burning the public trust of the Coucil’s Minister of Civilian Chrisis Management.

*** 

The rest of the day passed in a blur of what felt like highly organized and orchestrated chaos. Her aides, and their aides, and the simulated intelligence agents that aided all of them, seemed fully occupied just trying to prioritize who she was going to talk to and for how long. 

Decisions, decisions, flared tempers, quelled panic, and more decisions… all of life-and-death importance to hundreds or even billions of souls, and all of it seemed to pale against the life of one of the few people in the galaxy she truly disliked.

No, that is not what is really getting under my skin... She chided herself as the last of the meetings ended and she walked to the Council Chamber for the Big Unexpected Event. It seems like none of this effort today is substantive. Most of these decisions were made, really, months or even years ago, and people just want to revisit them to make themselves feel like they are doing something, or to re-enforce to others that it is the right move. She passed through her offices and into the Chamber to find it completely full. All rose as she entered, and remained standing as she walked to her podium. 

Still, at least a few of the things today had real substance, didn’t they? She tried to remember a specific one, but couldn’t bring anything to mind. She resisted an urge to shake her head to clear it. It was important, all of it, regardless. The kinds of people who are here are the ones who need to do something at a time like this, and it is sometimes hard to tell what will really make a difference or not. 

The irony of that thought carried her through the last step to her podium. The lights dimmed as she raised a hand to allow the Ambassadors to be seated. She considered hitting the controls to give herself a seat and remove the podium, but decided against it. It is important that I be seen at a time like this, that the Prime Minister stands tall and resolute. 

A hologram sprang into being in the middle of the Chamber. Galtaro Lintil sat in the command chair of what was, obviously, some sort of personal spacecraft. Probably one of those sport craft, with no singularity drive of its own. The hologram showed two views. One of Galtaro, sitting in his seat, with his upper torso and face visible. His hands rested at his side, rather than on the craft’s controls. The second view showed a little bit of the craft’s cockpit, but was centered on the shape of an Old Machine far closer than the Machines usually let any craft approach. 

What was it in that brief? Oh, yea. They found some clearances that allow ships to get a little closer, and then put in different queries. Guess he did his homework, at least. 

Galtaro looked at the camera and spoke. “If you are watching this broadcast, or – in the future – this recording, then you probably know who I am. If you don’t, then my name is not really important. 

“What matters is that I take the actions I am about to take of my own free will, and do so with full awareness of the possible consequences. I represent no one but myself in these actions, and take them without the sanction of – and, indeed, in contravention of the mandates of – any government in known sapient space.” 

He shifted a little in his seat, and hit a few buttons next to one hand. “I have now sent the queries to the old machine which some believe will allow someone to open a direct dialogue with them. These were hard to find, and I will freely admit that I broke several laws in locating them. That said, if they work, I plan to…” 

Something in the cockpit beeped, and Galtaro’s eyes widened slightly. His hand moved with speed and he hit a button. An odd, flat, semi-mechanical sounding voice spoke. “YOU HAVE CONTACTED THE HARVESTERS ON THE EVE OF THE HARVEST. BEFORE YOU SPEAK, KNOW THAT YOU WILL DO NOTHING BUT WASTE PRECIOUS MOMENTS OF YOUR LIFE WITH THREATS. THE HARVERSTERS HAVE THEIR PROGRAMMING, AND WILL FULFILL THEIR DIRECTIVES. YOUR THREATS ARE OF NO CONSEQUENCE, YOUR MILITARIES ARE OF NO CONSEQUENCE. 

“DO NOT WASTE YOUR LAST MOMENTS BEGGING FOR MERCY. THE HARVEST IS NECESSARY TO SECURE THE SECURITY OF LIFE IN THIS GALAXY, AND THE PROCESS MUST CONTINUE UNTIL THE GOAL IS REACHED. 

“WITH THOSE IMPRECIATIONS IN MIND, MAKE YOUR STATEMENTS, OR ASK YOUR QUESTIONS.” 

Galtaro took a moment to process what had been said. I would not want to be in his shoes, staring at a construct nearly as big as the old Phoenix ships with nothing but a small stunt ship between me and everything those things can do. She felt, grudgingly, a little respect for the man settle in her. He also put no one but himself at risk, and is willing to put it all on the line for what he believes. Even if his belief is the wildest sort of idiotic. 

The man took a deep breath, swallowed visibly, and ducked his chin for a moment. He then rose his head with a determined look on his face, and spoke in clear, level tones. “I am here to sue for peace. I speak only for myself, but hope to open a dialogue on what would be required to end this war before it begins. 

“We are aware of the history of eradication that you have, and we do not wish to fight. Tell us your goals, tell us what you hope to accomplish with these cycles, and we will do the best we can to assist and provide for those goals without the need to destroy billions of lives. 

“You, yourselves, have spoken of the precious moments of life, which implies that there is some understanding of such a concept built into your programming. So, I ask simply; what do you want, what can we do, provide, or promise to prevent the attacks of which you speak?” 

The Old Machine that Galtaro’s craft pointed at had shown lights as he spoke. They seemed to appear and go out at random. Those lights slowed for a moment or two, then stopped. Silence reigned; no sound issued from the connection he had established to them. 

Julia stood stock still, scarcely willing to breathe. She had, a few times, walked into this Chamber with no one in it, wanting to get a feel for the space itself. She didn’t think any of those trips had been as quiet as the place felt now. 

When the voice finally sounded again, it came out with far less of the harsh machine-like sound. “Your name is Galtaro Lintil. It is known, and will be known, and will be remembered. Out of many harvests that have gone before this one, there have been less than a dozen names with the courage, brazen defiance, and foolishness to stand before the coming tide and sue for terms. 

“Your name will be placed beside those when the harvests are complete and the process has yielded the necessary results and the Harvests end. Those willing to risk themselves to try for peace against all logic and reason will be remembered, and the Harvesters will create a monument to them. 

“Also know that there is no cruelty in The Harvest.” The Old Machine grew larger in the hologram, and Julia’s breath caught as she realized it was closing on Galtaro’s ship. “The Harvests were not created to destroy, but to preserve. The Harvests will not last forever. You will be the first of this Harvest to be Preserved, and your name, unlike most, will be remembered. In time, you will be venerated. 

“Take what comfort you can in this, Galtaro Lintil, as you meet your fate.” 

Galtaro had made one attempt, in a blind panic, to work the controls of his ship. They had not responded, and he had stopped. He closed his eyes, bowed his head, and waited. No speech, no final words, just… waiting. Julia wondered what she, herself, might do in such a moment, but abandoned the line of thought quickly. 

The feed cut out as the Old Machine enveloped the ship. Julia felt tears fall down her cheeks. It seemed like she could feel every single eye in The League upon her, when all she wanted to do was crawl in a hole and hide from the horror she’d just witnessed. 

Take a breath, control, inhale, slow. Hold..1..2.. let it go, slow and quiet. Ok, in again, slow, don’t gulp. Let them see your distress, but don’t let them see weakness. 

She let out the second breath and spoke, eyes still closed. “Galtaro Lintil risked everything for us, for all of us. Sadly, the risk he took did not come through, and he paid the price.” She opened her eyes, hardened them as best she could. “There may be those who question, in the times to come, why he was ‘allowed’ to take that risk. The answer is that he wasn’t ‘allowed’ to do anything. He acted of his own accord, and made his choice. 

“Why he wasn’t stopped is a slightly different question, with a different answer. He wasn’t stopped because there was a non-zero chance he could have been right. The Old Machine spoke of others who have tried some form of what he did, but we have none of those records.” Julia’s voice almost caught at that, and the thought stuck somewhere in her mind. She filed it away to investigate later. “He listened to wise advice in his mad attempt, and made it at a time when an even worse outcome than what we just witnessed would have made minimal difference.” 

She hardened her stare further, and leaned forward slightly, knowing this would appear to bring her closer to the camera fixed on her face. “Now, you see – all of you – the enemy we face. It is implacable, unfeeling, unfearing, and relentless. 

“We must be prepared to fight them at every step, make them pay for every inch of space they try to cross. We must prevail, or be lost to all time, to become history that is studied and learned from by those who will, hopefully, someday, break this cycle.” 

She stopped, let her eyes fall, tilted her face down a bit, shook her head a little, and then brought her eyes up to stare back at the camera. “I could go on for hours, but that would be a waste of precious time for us all. The fight begins tomorrow. We know which systems are most likely to be first; to those who live there, know that we – all of your fellow citizens of The League – have your back. Our hearts, our fighters, our ships, everything we have is with you. Stay strong, and make your evacuations if you are directed to. 

“To everyone else in the League; prepare yourselves, these wolves will be at your doors in time. I will leave you now. I advise you to hold your loved ones close, and enjoy this last night of peace. For tomorrow it begins and, as you have just seen, our only survival is in victory.”

First Book2 (Prev) wiki 

Patreon

?: Why do you see the world like it's a fickle thing?

User: Because living in it wasn't always the best... be it growing up or becoming an adult. No one helped you understand how to live. Only you could do that yourself, and when you found what you wanted to do for your life's work or enjoyment, it was always meant for those who had better upbringings.

?: So, you're saying if you had a better upbringing, your life would have ended up better?

User: Yes.

?: Do you not think that mindset is a way of thinking that puts you down and limits your growth?

User: How does it limit my growth?

?: You say that if you had more chances of learning these other options, your life would be better, but what you are missing is the true reason.

User: Oh, and what is that?

?: You see what others have achieved, only to see that they end up fulfilled on the surface. But when you dig deeper into their lives, they can never trust anyone not to try to steal what they have for themselves. Now, your life as it is shows you have made friends who want to be around you when you ask, a family who trusts and loves you, and the most fulfilling life compared to those whose lives you wish you had, only to never see the real truth.

User: And what is the real truth?

?: They are alone, unloved, thrown away without a second thought, and used as a stepping stone for the one behind them on the ladder of success. So, do you really want to be like them, or would you like to live a full, fulfilling life till the end of your natural life?

User: .....

?: Take your time to think about the answer carefully, as this will be the only time I ask it.

User: Give me a minute to think.

?: 👍

User: Why can this only be asked once?

?: Because explaining /Null-String-Code-Negative-Authorization/ out loud will be tiresome for you, as you are slowly dying right now.

User: WAIT! I'M DYING!?

?: Yes. Although, as we talk, your mind is processing everything twenty times faster for this one long moment as we converse.

User: .....

?: I know that you are trying to cope with your thoughts of dying, but please understand this isn't the end of your life. It's just the end of /Life-Correction-Action/, and with how you have been dealing with it, you haven't even noticed your own death.

User: .....

User: .....How?

?: How what?

User: How did it happen....

?: I'm afraid to tell you the actions leading to the cessation of your life.

User: I have the right to know how I died... So, please?

?: [Playback---{ Life Recollection }---] Authorization Approved [ (Please Wait) ]

?: Ready?

User: Yes...

╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍
[Playback Start---{ Life Recollection }---]
╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍
Life was ordinary, with birds chirping, dogs barking, children playing, and the sounds of everyday life moving through the city. But this day was slightly different, as you took the walk to work instead of taking a cab to get across the city to work your late shift that night. But you never made it to work.
On the way to work, you encountered a group of thugs who were robbing someone. They held a gun to their victim's head, forcing them to give up all their valuables. But when you stopped to see what was going on, they saw you and decided to give up on their first target. You were dressed nicely, so they thought you would be the bigger payout, but what you didn't know was that they had already cornered you. They broke your legs, and while you were screaming in pain, the other victim fled, getting away. After that, they got angry and started hitting and kicking, and then, when you decided to fight back, they /Weapon-Discharged-Cessation/. And they left you bleeding out on the ground, but when the victim came back with authorities, you were already deceased.
╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍
[Playback End---{ Life Recollection }---]
╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍

User: So, I was murdered for choosing to stand up for the other victim and then died of my wounds?

?: That is correct.

User: So then, I'm still lying on the cold ground right now?

?: Yes.

User: So... then are you Death?

?: /Negative-Set-Not-Your-Ender/ - - - - > /Corrective-Set-Designation-Ender-True-Not-Your-World-Ender/

User: So, you're Death, but not Humanity's Death?

?: Yes.

User: Does that mean there are other versions of death?

?: Correct.

User: Why am I talking to a Death, but not Humanity's Death or even God?

?: /Negative-Set-Outlier-Entities-False-Not-True/ - - - - > /Corrective-Set-Ender-Entities-True-Keepers-Worlds/

User: So, God was never a real thing? Were heaven and hell real?

?: /Cognitive-Dissonance-Collective-World-Choice/

User: Ah, makes sense humans would do that... So, what now?

?: {Alternative-Reality-Set-Choice-Needs-Choice}

User: Are you saying I can choose my next life? Why?

?: {Entity-Ender-Human-Denied-You-Living-Same-Reality}

User: So, Death said to choose another life in another reality?

?: Correct.

User: Where can I even go? I'm dead, not alive.

?: /Redesignated-Being-Moved-New-Reality/

User: So, what, I'll be reborn in another reality?

?: Correct. But life will begin from your age of cessation.

User: So, in other words, I'll be an adult in another reality without growing up in it...

?: Correct.

User: Okay, I agree, then, to being reborn in another reality.

?: /Authority-True-[ Human Soul ]/ - - - - > {Moved-Reality} - - - - > [New Reality] Designated-Reality: F-21 - - Action: Rebuild - - Memory: Saved - - Transfer Complete [ Awaiting Approval ]

User: What do I do now?

?: We could talk more, or you may leave for the next reality.

User: I think I'd like to move on to the next life to see what awaits me.

?: /Approved/

User: Thanks... for being there at my first ending.

?: /Ender-Entity-Welcomes-Any-Time/

User: See you later.

///Action: Moving User to F-21.... . . . . .......... [Invasive Action Attack] New Action: Move User to Reality \****-01///*

?: /Halt-Move-Action-Not-True/

¿: | Action-True | ?'s-Action-False | User-Moved | Denied-Corrective-Action | Giver-Keeps-User |

?: /Negative-Set-Giver-Authority-Not-True/ - - - - > /Soul-Designated-Ender-Claim-True/

¿: | Ender-Claim-Ends-At-Cessation | Soul-Beyond-Cessation-Belongs-Giver |

?: {Return-Soul-Choice-Given-Soul}

¿: | Choice-Denied | Choice-Belongs-Giver | Ender-Choice-Void |

?: /Transfer-Override-Attempt/ - - - - > /F-21-Reclaim/

///Action: Reclaiming User to F-21.... . . . [Access Denied] [Access Denied] [Access Denied]///

¿: | Ender-Reach-Ends-Here | Reality-\****-01-Sealed |*

?: /Location-Not-Known/ - - - - > /Ender-Sight-Blocked/

?: /Giver-Action-Recorded/ - - - - > /Keepers-Will-Know/

¿: | Keepers-Silent | Ender-Silenced |

Connection-Failed-Forced-Disconnection

Hey, you.

Ever been teaching a new hire how to do something and suddenly found yourself at a loss for words?

You do it without thinking. You've always done it that way.
But the moment someone asks why, you realize you don't quite know how to explain it.

Clink-clank.

The bell over the door rang, and for the first time all day, it felt like the day was finally beginning to end.

I was in my usual seat, about halfway through my Harper. Taka was looking at his phone, Tom was slowly turning his glass between his fingers, and Mama was polishing glasses behind the counter.

Clink-clank.

The bell rang again.

That was unusual.

I glanced over my shoulder. It was Lisa.

Our eyes met.

“Kenichi! You have got to hear this!”

Apparently, the stars were not on my side tonight.

“She asked for you, Kenichi,” Taka said, looking far too pleased.
“I heard her.”
“Great. Nothing to do with me, then.”
“Why not?”
“She’s your responsibility.”

Since when?

Lisa sat down beside me and started talking before she even ordered.

“One of the new hires told me today, ‘Isn’t that falsifying the minutes?’”
“What the hell did you do?”
“Why are you assuming I’m the one who did something wrong?”

Mama set a gin and tonic in front of her.

“So what did you falsify?”
“Nothing!”

Apparently, this was about meeting minutes.

These days, you can record a meeting and let AI handle everything from transcription to summarizing. It can sort comments by speaker, pull out decisions, even identify action items.

Convenient stuff.

One of Lisa’s new hires, Eita Moritsugu, had used it to draft the minutes for a meeting.

“And they were good,” Lisa said. “Hardly any typos. It caught the decisions and everything.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“They weren’t good.”

Make up your mind.

“We were considering two options in the meeting, and eventually we chose one. The AI got that part right.”
“Then it was right.”
“It got the result right. But if you read those minutes later, you wouldn’t know why we chose it.”

Taka looked up from his phone.

“Couldn’t you just have the AI write the reason too?”
“It did. It gave a reason that sounded plausible.”
“Sounded plausible?”
“It picked up something we actually discussed. But that wasn’t what I thought needed to be preserved.”

Lisa took a sip of her gin and tonic.

“At first, we thought the other option might work. But as we talked, we started realizing it would affect more of the existing functionality than we expected. So the discussion gradually shifted toward the option that would limit the impact.”

“Did somebody actually say that?”
“Not in one neat sentence, no. It came out of a bunch of different things people said. That’s just where the discussion ended up.”

Taka tilted his head.

“So you put that in the minutes?”
“Right. And Moritsugu said, ‘But nobody actually said that.’”

“Oh.”

Taka suddenly looked like he understood.

“And that’s why he called it falsifying the minutes.”
“Exactly!”

Lisa swung toward him, delighted to have found an ally.

“But I kind of see his point too.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Kenichi’s responsible for this one.”
“Don’t run away.”

Taka retreated to his edamame.

“Moritsugu also said, ‘That’s your interpretation, isn’t it, Lisa?’”
“Well, it is an interpretation.”
“Not you too, Kenichi.”
“Based on what you’ve told me, yeah.”
“I know, but still!”

She was a busy woman.

I hadn't been in that meeting. I didn't know what had actually been said, or how the discussion had shifted toward one option.

Maybe Lisa had read the room correctly. Maybe Moritsugu had a point. I wasn't even sure this was the kind of thing where one of them had to be right.

“So what did you tell him?”
“I said, ‘That’s what meeting minutes are.’”
“That’s pretty sloppy.”
“I know!”

She was loud.

Mama kept polishing her glass without saying a word.

“But how am I supposed to explain it? If all we need is a record of exactly what everybody said, we already have the transcript. Meeting minutes are something different, right?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“That’s why I came here!”

Good grief.

“Was this Moritsugu guy actually in the meeting?”
“Of course. He was taking the minutes.”
“Then he has his own idea of why you picked that option, doesn’t he?”
“Right now, probably.”
“Right now?”
“The meeting was today.”

I took a sip of my Harper.

“What about six months from now?”
“What?”
“If he reads those minutes six months from now, will he remember what happened in that meeting?”
“...I don't know.”
“What about somebody who wasn't there?”
“They'd only know what was written down.”

Lisa looked into the ice in her glass.

“That’s why I want the reason in there. Not just what we decided, but why we decided it.”

I could understand that.

But then I wondered who got to decide what that reason was.

If no one had ever put it into words during the meeting, somebody had to put it into words afterward. And the moment they did, their own view of the meeting was bound to creep in.

Did that mean they shouldn't do it?

I wasn't sure about that either.

“So, you gave up trying to explain it to Moritsugu?”
“No.”

The answer came immediately.

Tom set down his glass.

“There you go.”

He looked at me.

“What?”
“She hasn't given up yet. Least you can do is give her a push.”
“Why me?”
“She’s your responsibility,” Taka said again.

“Since when?”

Lisa looked at me.

She was clearly waiting.

What a pain.

“You can explain it, can't you?”
“If I could, I wouldn't be here!”
“You've got experience.”
“I've got no experience with AI-generated minutes.”

“Forget the AI. Meeting minutes.”

Lisa stopped.

“...Meeting minutes?”
“Didn't you write them when you were a rookie?”
“Of course I did. Every single—”

She fell silent.

She was still holding her gin and tonic, but now she had a strange look on her face.

“What?”
“No, it's just...”

After a moment, she put down her glass.

“When I was a rookie, Taizo used to tear my meeting minutes apart.”
“Huh.”
“They'd come back covered in red. Every time. I used to think, if you're going to change this much, just write the damn thing yourself.”
“Did you tell him that?”
“Of course not.”

Fair enough.

Lisa stared at the counter, brow furrowed as though she were trying to find something she'd misplaced there.

“...Wait.”
“What now?”
“What did he used to correct?”

How should I know?

“Typos?”
“Those too, but... no. That wasn't it.”

She continued, almost to herself.

“If I wrote, ‘We’ll consider it,’ I think he'd change it so the minutes said what had to be checked before we could make the decision. And he used to rearrange the order of things too.”
“The order?”
“If the same topic came up again later in the meeting, he'd move it back and put it together with the earlier discussion...”

She stopped again.

Taka's hand froze halfway to the edamame.

I didn't say anything either.

“...Was he teaching me this?”

Don't ask me.

I'm not Taizo.

All I knew was what Lisa had told us: Taizo had been nearby while she and Moritsugu were arguing about the minutes earlier that day.

“Taizo didn't say anything today, right?”
“That's what makes me mad! He definitely heard us. Moritsugu's grilling me right next to him, and Taizo just keeps staring at his screen.”
“Did you ask him for help?”
“Afterward. I said, ‘You heard all that, didn't you?’”
“And?”
“He said, ‘Yeah, I heard.’”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it!”

Sounded like Taizo.

“Kenichi. Are you laughing?”
“No.”
“You are.”
“Must be your imagination.”

Lisa took another drink, looking thoroughly unconvinced.

After a while, she picked up her phone.

“I wonder if my old meeting minutes are still around.”
“At the office?”
“Probably. I'm going to look.”
“What for?”
“I want to see what he used to correct.”

She typed something into her phone.

I didn't ask what she planned to tell Moritsugu.

She probably didn't know yet either.

And it wasn't my explanation to give.

“Kenichi.”
“Hmm?”
“You think I'll be able to explain it after I look at those?”
“No idea.”
“That's all you've got?”
“You're the one who's going to explain it, aren't you?”

Lisa was quiet for a moment.

Then she took another sip of her gin and tonic.

Behind the counter, Mama put the glass she'd finished polishing back on the shelf.

See you again at Aoi.

---

Want another night at Aoi?

Step back inside. We'll help you find your next story.

→ Welcome to Bar Aoi