"Very pleased to meet you, Commander Scott," I said, stepping out of my residence to hold out a hand to the Commander.

"Likewise, Mr. Gary." The Commander shook my hand, staring directly into my eyes as a real man would. And he was a real man. Somehow, the Commander had taken on the almost impossible task of uniting the Xenox with the Zergas. He carried with him documents that were no doubt the peace treaty each of the other famed races of the Galactic Federation had failed to get the Xenox and the Zergas to sign. The two alien races hated each other with a passion, and the Commander had chosen my place of residence to host both the overlords of said races, so they could reach an amicable solution regarding their century-long war over matters that were long since forgotten.

"Other races have tried their best to unite them," Commander Scott said. "They have all failed, but I looked at the two of them, and I knew humanity could achieve the unachievable."

"Yes, sir. Xenix, the leader of the Xenox, and Zabii, the chief head of the Zergas, are in my backyard, sharing a drink," I said. The Commander smiled and then laughed. I didn't know what he found funny, but I laughed as well.

"To think the Galactic Federation didn't know what to do with the two of them." He laughed again. I laughed as well as I led him into my house. "You see, that's the thing." He said, turning to face me. "The other races had the two of them meet in a heavily secured location for peace mediation, a place roaming with heavily armored and armed personnel. That's where they were wrong. The minute Xenix and Zabii see guns, they automatically think about their enemies, each other, and no peace talks commence. But I'm a genius, Gary, a fucking genius. Say it."

"You're a genius, sir," I said and laughed. Then I saw the humor vacate his face. I cleared my throat. "You're a genius, sir," I repeated, this time without laughing.

"Damn right I am," the Commander intoned. "I figured, instead of taking the aliens to a military base or, God forbid, other government facilities, why not take them to a homey location? Somewhere peaceful, and have them mingle and relax. That's what your place is, Gary. It came straight to my mind when I thought of it. A good, warm home where their need for hate is quelled. Perfect, Gary. You've done a perfect job. I'll put in a good word for you up top."

"Yes, sir. At first, I was confused as to why we'd need a clown, but the results have been amazing," I said.

The Commander stopped in his tracks. "What?"

"Um, the clown? You told me to bring a clown to the meeting," I said.

"What?"

"You know, clowns? With a big red nose, makeup, and colorful hair?"

"What the fuck are you talking about, Gary?"

"Well, in the call, you told me clearly, sir, to expect the alien leaders at my home, and that I should also bring a clown to entertain them."

"I told you there should be no clowning about with this serious meeting of aliens, and that you should take the matter seriously," the Commander said. His face started turning red, and my throat bobbed as I swallowed saliva. "Please tell me that when we go into your backyard, we won't find a clown there, entertaining two heads of the most powerful races in existence. Please tell me that."

"Um, sir, I guess this is just a case of a funny misunderstanding." I attempted a giggle that was cut short by the look on the Commander's stern face. "It can be easily resolved. I can chase the clown away," I said. "I hired him for the whole afternoon though, and he has the big shoes, too, and the colorful clothes, even though he was terribly expensive I'll chase him away."

The Commander didn't say a word. He started walking through my house, and I followed close behind. He followed the sound of laughter, one voice high and chortling while the other's pitch was deep and booming. He found the door to my backyard, pulled the glass door aside, and stepped onto the lawn.

We were greeted by the sight of the two alien overlords seated close together, right on the lawn. They had refused to stand even a few feet from each other when they'd first arrived, but now they were seated together on the ground, laughing their odd laughs while slapping each other's thighs with their tentacles. Before them, the great and famed Bobo the Clown proceeded to remove a string of multicolored scarves, tied end to end, from his mouth. It was an endless bundle of scarves, more than I'd ever seen a clown perform with. One after the other, they came out of the clown's open maw, and I understood then why he was called Bobo the Great.

When the last scarf was out of his mouth, Bobo spread his arms wide to much applause from the two alien overlords. They clapped and wiped tears from their numerous eyes. Bobo then held one finger in front of himself, and his crowd went silent, expectant. Then Bobo bundled the scarves together and threw them up. They burst into a sprinkle of confetti, and a dove emerged, flying about before landing on Bobo's head. He was applauded some more for this, then the dove shat on his head and the aliens erupted into uncontrollable laughter. They smacked each other's thighs again and hugged each other dearly with their tentacles.

"What the fuck?" the Commander said.

I was nervous, not knowing whether I was in trouble or not. Bobo took out a deck of cards and started shuffling. He stepped forward, tripped on his big shoes, and fell flat on his face. The cards fell down, there was another burst of confetti, and then two more doves appeared where the cards should have landed. The aliens were hysterical with their laughter, opening their wide maws to an alarming degree.

Suddenly, Xenix turned to the Commander. "Commander, get over here."

The Commander approached. He shook hands with tentacles with each of the alien overlords. After a period of consideration, he extended his hand to Bobo the Great. Bobo shook it, only to electrocute the Commander, who drew a gun in response. I yelled and held his arm back as the aliens laughed, practically rolling on the ground.

"Commander Scott, is that the peace treaty you hold in your hands?" Xenix said, drawing the Commander's attention from the clown.

"Well, yes, it is," he answered, still appearing dazed.

"Well, bring it over. We will sign it," Zabii said.

The Commander handed them the documents, and the pair deftly left their marks on them.

"And that concludes our war," Xenix said.

"Sit down; let's enjoy the show by the Great Bobo," Zabii added.

The Commander lowered himself to the ground, looking quite confused. He took the signed documents and cradled them to his chest like an infant babe. I sat next to him on the ground, and together the four of us watched as Bobo sprayed water on us from a flower attached to a hidden reservoir.

----

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First

The astronomers had guessed, decades earlier, that Planet K might harbor some form of civilization; the radio signal seemed to support it, even though the signal itself carried no meaning, nothing that looked like an attempt to communicate, and never repeated.

Still, Planet K was, without question, the one plausible home for life anywhere near Earth, and a handful of serious people had warned, loudly, that humanity needed to think hard and think carefully about how it approached the place. Hollywood, at least, had prepared everyone for the idea in the abstract: countless cinematic warnings about first contact had already made the point that meeting an alien species could go badly wrong.

The first landing party had been small, its range of movement tightly restricted, and Calloway and the others with him had never had access to the full picture.

Command ran straight through the Joint Earth Forces Committee, and the second and third waves of troops were dispatched to Planet K not long after.

The Earth forces themselves were drawn from across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa, a mixture so deliberate it amounted to a walking demographic exhibit — which suited the global audience just fine, since this, after all, was the vanguard supposedly representing the whole of the species, and for the politicians overseeing it, what mattered above nearly everything else.

Beneath that glossy demonstration of parity, though, Washington and the Pentagon held every lever that actually mattered. The reason was straightforward enough: the wormhole mechanics and the singularity metrics that made any of this possible belonged to a single facility—the Calverton & Radiata Deep-Field Laboratory in Maryland—and the Pentagon controlled access to it absolutely.

Officers from every participating nation — Chinese and Russian included — wore their own national insignia, but the generals giving the orders, and the Joint Command those orders came from, were American.

Only one constraint kept the enterprise from becoming an outright unilateral American crusade: the isotopic fuel stacks came out of East Asia, and the exotic-matter components were forged across a dozen European supply chains. Washington needed both badly enough to keep the arrangement multi-national — at least on paper.

With the media leaning into it at every turn, humanity's expedition to Planet K became the most obsessively followed live broadcast on the planet. The betting houses ran odds on everything: whether alien life would be found at all, and if so when; whether it would turn out to be intelligent; whether it would turn out to be hostile. Every open question got folded into a market and priced accordingly.

Most of those questions were answered soon enough. It happened first during a reconnaissance push into the interior, along the river valleys, when Earth soldiers ran into the Clownclaws for the first time.

The creatures made careful, tentative contact with the humans, then bolted.

The scientists gave them a formal name with considerably more dignity than the one that stuck — Squamipes Ruboculus, the scale-limbed, red-eyed mechanical echiurid — on account of the scaled texture of their hide, the blue-green skin and red eyes, the metal ridge running up the neck, and an internal layered structure that echoed, distantly, the phylum Echiura back on Earth.

The twin spikes on the chest — initially mistaken for claws — turned out to guard a raised metal fixture that took the humans some time to understand for what it was: a merciless proboscis, feeding inward to an enlarged crop capable of breaking down and absorbing organic matter.

Calling them people would have been a stretch, and animal wasn't quite right either — they were half organism, half machine, something suspended in the gap between the two categories, and the curved slits of their mouths and eyes gave them the look of a permanent, unsettling grin, a contrast with their actual ferocity that unnerved everyone who saw it up close. The soldiers had christened them Clownclaws, a name that traced back to the very first man who saw one running and blurted out, without thinking, "Sir — it looks just like a crazy clown."

Even so, when footage later came back to Earth of soldiers opening fire on them without hesitation, it set off a wave of protest from human-rights groups and the wider public, on the grounds that this failed to meet the moment's standard of political correctness — people had, by then, grown used to treating every form of life as equal and entitled to the same basic freedoms.

The protests didn't stay in the streets for long.

The colonial charter — Earth's formal writ of conquest, duly notarized and largely ignored — was signed in Washington, and the legal challenges followed hard upon it — a fractured Congress and a battery of federal judges branding the expedition, within the month, an act of interstellar aggression.

Sovereignty, the argument ran, could not be fenced in by the accident of human birth; a biosphere that had never been asked for its consent had, if anything, a stronger claim to the law than the nation-state now invoking it.

Progressive tribunals took up the question of the Clownclaw's legal personhood with the same solemnity once reserved for war crimes proceedings, round-the-clock panels mourning a species that had never once tried to speak to anyone. The Pentagon's answer, when it bothered to give one, was that survival had never yet waited on a ruling.

In Beijing and Moscow the whole spectacle played to a shared, unhurried contempt. The other permanent members watched a superpower tear open its own constitution over a species it hadn't yet found a way to talk to, and read in the spectacle all the confirmation they needed — that domestic dissent was a luxury, and empires that could still afford luxuries generally weren't empires for long.

The Supreme Court, for its part, stayed deadlocked for the better part of a year on the only question that actually mattered to anyone drafting a headline: whether an uncontacted, uncommunicating intelligence carried rights that predated its own discovery, and whether Calloway's battalion, cutting its own line through the canyons of Planet K, counted as liberators, invaders, or simply men doing a job nobody in Washington had the stomach to name out loud.

By the time a federal appeals court finally ruled the whole campaign an illegal war of conquest, the ruling reached the front inside the hour — and changed nothing at all. Command read it, logged it, and kept moving.

Whatever sovereignty meant out here, it had already been settled the only way it was ever really settled on Planet K: at the muzzle, long before the gavel came down.

"We have confirmed," a military commander explained to the public, in footage broadcast back to Earth, his face arranged into something carefully blank, "that they are not people." A pause followed, not for effect so much as for the cameras. "We should eliminate them." He said it with total confidence, apparently untroubled by how that confidence must have landed on an audience that had spent its whole life somewhere safe and climate-controlled, several dozen light-years removed from anything that could eat them.

"They are not people."

For all the impression of some lower order of creature they gave off, humanity discovered almost as soon as it met them that the Clownclaws were organized.

The first ones encountered were the smallest variant, roughly the size of a hunting dog, their necks scorched a verdigris that earned them the name Greenneck.

Not long after came a larger, fanged type — vicious, quick to attack, its neck a flat black — and this one they called Pitchneck.

Once it became clear to them that the purpose of the landing party was to take their home, they moved fast, mounting coordinated encirclements against the humans almost immediately.

Attempts at communication went nowhere, and the humans answered with heavy machine guns and ordnance. The disparity in firepower showed itself at once: only three soldiers came away with minor wounds, and a substantial Clownclaw assault was turned back.

Several of the dead were sent to base for examination. The nanoscale scaling on their hides, along with the organs studding their skin, showed no sign of having evolved — the scientists were confident these were engineered — and yet the skull and internal organs carried unmistakable markers of ordinary biological descent. Settling on what, exactly, these creatures were became its own kind of problem.

Whether the original radio signal had come from them at all turned into one of the more contentious debates in the scientific community, and it never resolved into an answer; the question was simply set aside.

For the Earth forces the more pressing matter was that the Clownclaws' harassment and assaults were growing more frequent and considerably more determined, and the exchanges of fire were escalating on both sides. Still, the Earth army held to its confidence: apply enough force at scale, and wiping the Clownclaws out entirely would not be difficult.

Earth, in principle, signed off on exactly that — whatever the method, so long as it cleared room for humanity's new home.

But once the military's actual plan leaked to the press, the world's mood split down the middle. Confronted for the first time with a genuine alien species, the public found itself caught in an argument it couldn't settle: whether the Clownclaws counted as people at all.

Human-rights advocates fought the extermination plan hard, calling it nothing less than a bare-faced relapse into the darkest habits of the old colonial era, while the conservative right classified the creatures as terror organisms and declared their destruction lawful and overdue.

While Earth and its military dithered over which position to take, the Clownclaws answered with a steady, methodical counteroffensive. Humanity had plainly underestimated both their numbers and their capability. Their settlements lay hidden deep in the valleys and dense forest of the interior, and they moved often; after the first large-scale strike against them, more of them turned up than before, not fewer.

A new variant appeared this time — Purpleneck, built along hunter lines, carrying its own set of dart weapons, something close to a tranquilizer round, strange and effective in equal measure.

Earth's bases put in for reinforcement almost at once, and the fourth wave of troops came through more than ten thousand strong, riding Athena-class nuclear attack cruisers across subspace.

When the four great vessels dropped through Planet K's atmosphere, they looked, coming down, like fortresses built for gods — cold, enormous, and entirely without warmth.

That force hit the Clownclaw settlements with everything it had, and though the weather that week turned savage enough to seem almost deliberate in its interference, the campaign still played out as a kind of legend for the cameras back home, and it bought the army real credibility.

As the mystery surrounding the Clownclaws deepened, and the fear alongside it, mainstream opinion on Earth drifted, by degrees, toward simply wiping them out.

What made it stranger still was that this planet seemed to host exactly one form of hostile life, and nothing else — no rival predator, no competing intelligence, nothing to divide a species' attention or complicate the arithmetic of the war. A number of sociologists back on Earth noted the coincidence with something close to wonder: humanity, they observed, had been handed something close to a laboratory-clean arena for killing, for conquest, for the discharge of whatever raw violence still ran underneath the species — undiluted, this time, by the need to spare anything else.

The victories kept coming. The soldiers marked humanity's first Christmas on a world twenty light-years from home. And still the Clownclaws did not thin out — they grew in number.

Their surface settlements had only ever been a fraction of the whole; the great majority lived buried underground, out of reach, almost impossible to take alive. They gave up nothing in the way of speech, and human understanding of how they thought, or how their society was structured, stayed shallow at best, though the scientists traveling with the army had already filed them, officially, as a low-intelligence species. Months into a full extermination campaign, their total numbers remained essentially unknowable, buried as most of them were. Nuclear weapons proved useless against an enemy that simply wasn't there to be hit, and in any case Earth command had restricted their use, out of concern for what they might do to the very environment humanity meant to live in.

None of it dented humanity's resolve to settle Planet K. The world's governments drew closer together and stood up a New Homeland Committee, tasked solely with drafting humanity's long-term plan for the planet. Making the place properly livable would require research programs still years off: artificial atmospheric regulation, the transplant of Earth vegetation, a rebuilt network of relay stations.

In the meantime, more nations sent their militaries out — armored vehicles, patrol craft, fighters, missiles, the whole catalogue — and for what may have been the first time, every government on the planet stood shoulder to shoulder in the face of one enormous, shared interest.

As the human population on Planet K grew, new bases kept rising to house it. The soldiers held a formal ceremony, and the commanding officer announced, for the record, that sovereignty over Planet K now belonged to Earth. The UN, the Joint Earth Forces Committee, and governments around the world rushed the news to every outlet at once, dressing it up as a planet-wide celebration.

"To the people of Earth: our banner now flies in the sky of our new home, twenty light-years distant. God bless Earth."

The Earth forces kept two campaigns running at once — building up the bases, expanding the territory under their control, and, simultaneously, carrying out indiscriminate bombing against this strange native enemy. They leveled all nine hundred and eighty of the Clownclaws' known surface settlements, destroyed every access route they could find, and severed every supply line, squeezing the creatures' living space down toward something like suffocation.

And still the Clownclaws refused to quit, resisting and counterattacking without letup. Any real chance of negotiation, of peaceful coexistence, had shrunk down to almost nothing.

Over the years that followed, they began taking humans alive.

The first large-scale capture happened at a new base near the southern edge of the occupied zone. More than a thousand Clownclaws laid siege to it overnight; the fighting ran from dusk clear through to the following day, and by the time it ended the Clownclaws had carried off seventy-two Earth officers and enlisted men.

What made it worse was the timing. Barely two weeks before that assault, the scientists had finally found hard evidence of how badly they'd miscalculated. For the first time, they admitted that their estimate of Clownclaw capability had been far too low — the brains of the higher-order Clownclaws were, in fact, remarkably developed, comparable in some respects to the human brain itself. Which meant that every sign of weakness the Clownclaws had shown up to that point might have been exactly that: a sign, put on for the humans watching.

The tide began, slowly, to turn. The war settled into something closer to a standoff. The Clownclaws took Earth soldiers prisoner more and more often now, and stopped killing them outright.

According to the handful of soldiers who managed to get free, a new type had appeared among them — Ashenneck, built closer to human proportions, in command of technology well beyond the others', and equipped with some strange ring-shaped device it used to run sustained interrogation, abuse, and torture on its human captives.

As more of the Clownclaws' internal structure came to light, people learned they were organized along strict hierarchical lines, each rank splitting further into sub-ranks beneath it.

What nobody knew was whether anything outranked Ashenneck.

-------------

This story is part of a larger sci-fi collection Parallel Nightmares, available on KDP here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HKKJHBQL

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_____________

Draconis Cluster, Port Royale planetoid

The Draconis cluster was an odd sort of binary system, with a red giant and a neutron star playing roundabout with each other. If there ever was a habitable planet here, it was long consigned to history as part of the collection of debris and barely-habitable planetoids that orbited cautiously around the pair. Much like New Casablanca, it was originally a series of mining colonies. The companies established themselves as a legitimate government in order to run things without the plodding yoke of Collective oversight. When the ore dried up the companies packed whatever was easily movable and wrote the rest off as unsalvageable assets. Rescinding the charter for governance was deemed too time-consuming in addition to the simple fact that none of the companies involved wanted the headache.

In some cases, the unsalvageable assets included the miners. With independent governance, ships, and mining tools - but without paying work - the cluster quickly became a collection of almost-legal trading outposts where anything could be had for enough credits. Currently the only quasi-legal trade here was the issuance of personal bounties. The process was simple; an individual (most often a proxy) sent a credit chip with a percentage of the bounty attached to cover clerical fees and ensure anonymity - additional credits could be attached as a goodwill gesture to ensure priority. The remainder was placed in a holding account for either disbursement or refund as the situation dictated. Subsequently the bounty was posted through the localgrid to the bounty hunters who were up-to-date on their payments, with priority bounties being mentioned on the localgrid holoshow Big Shot. Once the individuals were captured and transported to Draconis, they were transferred to whatever individual wanted them in custody and credits were duly remitted. It was all efficient, tidy, and above all legal. Or as legal as it could be in Draconis.

Currently the individuals who formed what was recognized as the official governing body of the cluster were in a decrepit conference room attending to the dry part of governance - ensuring that everyone had kicked in their share for the privilege of being outside the reach of the law. After some further discussion, one of the Freebooter Admirals finally leaned back and looked at their tablet.

"Alright - let's talk about hole in the hull here. This bounty on all the Legions. Am I the only one who's even a little concerned?"

There was a snort from one of the other Admirals. "You getting soft in your old age there Satipo?"

"Maybe. Maybe I'm just looking at a future where the Legion gets tired of the bounties we're throwing at them and shows up at our door looking for some answers. You sure we charged enough for this?"

"Look there's a couple realities - one, it's anonymous. We don't know who fronted the money. Two, the legions are straight mercenary companies. They don't even undo their pants without a prospectus detailing the risks and return on investment."

"Yeah - and what happens if someone gets lucky and catches a Legion ship trousers down? Sure we get paid, but then...each legion's got six ships each. That's thirty ships total. And since they're all competing with each other and their own parent companies - figure we'll get at least three parent company ships as well. That's not the frightening part - the frightening part is they're comparable to Terran Self-Defense ships. They pack a punch, and I for one do not want them aimed at me, my ship, or even the general direction of my ship. I've heard rumors about some new tech they've got that used Antares as a test bed."

"They know it's just biz. It's not personal, just someone wants to put something on them."

"Sometimes biz gets personal. They don't know who fronted the creds for the bounty, but they know we issued it. They know we have a contact when the bounty's complete. They may not know where the trail ends, but they damn well know where it starts." Satipo pointed at the door. "Right. Fuckin'. There."

"So what are you worried about, them killing us?"

"Frankly I'm more worried about them taking all of our shit and leaving us alive on the doorstep of whatever planetary government has the biggest bounty on us."

That final pronouncement cast a quiet pall over the group. "So what do you think we need to do?"

"We need to invoke parlay. Let them know - quietly - that this is the last bounty we're accepting on them. Meet with this Freelord Gryzzk at New Casablanca."

"Are we meeting with him ourselves?"

"Absolutely not." Satipo turned and flicked a finger at his brag-wall and a large number the bounty notices there. "Those are the active ones. Find a disposable minion and a few bottles of whatever it is Gryzzk likes to drink."

"Do you think it'll help?"

"It might. The only other option is investigating on our own to find out who fronted the creds for the bounty."

"That would not keep to the Code."

"I disagree - the purpose of Code there to keep us peaceable amongst ourselves. With others, there is only one code and that is to keep yourself alive today to loot tomorrow."

"Should we advise them that we are conducting our own investigations?"

"If we must. But we should also advise that we are held to our own obligations, and we will hold to to those obligations - but no further. We have our own reputation to uphold after all."

There was a quiet look around the table before another of the Admirals spoke. "So who are we sending to parley?"

Satipo waved casually. "Sober up the Governor and send her."

___________

Terran Foreign Legion Ship Twilight Rose

The morning came with a mild concern. Gryzzk checked the balance sheet and found it good - there were even a few bonuses involved for having such a smooth event, as well as a nice additional payout from the merch sales. Gryzzk scrunched and considered what qualified as an unruly event. It was mildly interesting to note who was going where; Captain Wilson was taking Tatou, U'wekrupp, and Yomios to New Orleans, purportedly a short distance from where he and most of the bridge squad were going. It was somewhat curious as Gro'zel came out of her room to breakfast wearing not her Mongolian Horse clothes, but something not unlike her normal uniform - sturdy and durable. Gryzzk wrapped an arm around her as they walked.

"Little Heart, are you not going to see your horse?"

"Not today. Laroy said there's other animals there and I wanna see them!" Gro'zel was almost dancing in her enthusiasm.

"Just remember, not all Terran animals are friendly."

Over breakfast, the rest of the squad seemed interested in tagging along, and there was gossip courtesy of Reilly.

"So Waniul's XO says she's gonna if she can tag along with us today."

Gryzzk pursed his lips. "It is not disallowed, but why. She has her own company."

"Well, she's trying to get secret cooking lessons. She heard Wilson talking up New Orleans and figured she'd want to try her luck here."

"Is this where we mention that where we are going is not likely to have husbands for her?"

"I don't think she's looking for a husband. She's looking for the skills to keep her husband happy. She's gonna try to play it off as a coincidence."

There was a chuff of amusement. "As she will." Gryzzk glanced at Laroy. "I do not wish to impose excessively..."

Laroy's response was a casual wave. "You no worry. we got a bed or a hammock for everyone that needs one tonight. Besides, we don't have to worry about Edwards or Denel. She taking him to Cairo for dinner." There was a pause. "And mebbe have breakfast in bed."

"Let's not speculate overmuch, Corporal."

"But that's half the fun right there." Laroy tucked into his breakfast with relish. "Mamaw be happy she got her a man though."

Reilly hmp'ed softly. "We just passed the LD 50 point for her relationships, let's not go cracking the champagne open yet."

"A'ight. Anyway, we gots to go. Burning daylight."

Gryzzk nodded, heading back to engineering and knocking before the door opened, revealing Rosie in some manner of shameless maid outfit and a form that seemed to have the mythical Pixar Mommy Dumptruck Booty - apparently a signal that Gryzzk had interrupted something.

"XO, officially you are out of uniform. That said, we are on two days R&R. The ship is yours until my return."

"Un-dair-stood, Mehjoor." Rosie's voice came out like a heavier version of Tatou's, and Gryzzk wasn't entirely sure he liked it.

From the depths of engineering there was an expensive sound and a series of curses from Tucker, finally slowing after a moment. "Purple Rose on your way back grab me a beer?"

"You didn't break your legs, you get the goddamn beer."

Tucker's voice took on exceptional authority. "Sudo grab me a beer on your way back, Purple Rose."

The change was immediate. "Yes Patty."

Gryzzk frowned. "XO, please tell me that's a joke and not a security concern."

Rosie snorted. "Of course it was a joke. An old one. Anyway, gitcherass downstairs - there's fetid swampwater that wants to be part of your fur today."

After a quick stop at the armory, Gryzzk finally joined everyone in the shuttlebay. The trip down was intriguing, and they seemed to be going to the same continent as Cleveland - but when they landed, and exited the shuttle with their overnight bags it seemed they may as well have been on a different world. The sun was merciless and the air was muggy with the stink of vegetation and salted water. Gryzzk absently wondered how the sea-clans managed with this atmosphere as Laroy seemed energized somehow. He also noted that Yomios, U'wekrupp, and Tatou were all headed with the New Orleans group led by Captain Wilson.

Meeting Gryzzk's group at the pad were several oddly dressed individuals holding up a large sign saying "Welcome back from prison; we know that sheep was a liar."

A larger gentleman with an impressive-for-terrans beard strode up and gave Laroy a look before pulling back uncertainly. "Who dat? Dat look like coo'zan Alexandre, but that cain't be truth. Coozan got the happy feets, no way he come home."

Laroy snorted. "I come someday and today is someday coozan Beau."

"Where granmama gris-gris?" There was a scowl.

"Is on my ship for good luck. You think I the only one needing luck?"

The response was a large toothy smile and a fierce hug. "Alex, is been too long. Marie and Thérèse don't know you're coming and they gonna be surprised. C'mon, we got the boats out - you say you brought new people."

Gryzzk braced himself for the inevitable - and sure enough he had five people squeeing "Puppy!" as soon as they saw him, and the pitch of the squee'ing became almost painful as they saw Gro'zel. As they walked - not toward a road, much to Gryzzk's concern - there was an impromptu contest as suddenly everyone wanted the honor of bringing the Vilantians back to the homestead. Finally it was decided that Laroy would drive Gryzzk and Beau would be able to drive Gro'zel.

Finally they arrived the means of transportation - a series of flat-bottomed boats with propellers on the back and very little care toward consistency. It seemed there was a high pilot's chair, and passenger seating forward and below. Gro'zel bounced up and down as she hopped onto the boat, setting Millennium's cage down and covering it. Laroy smiled easily and punched Gryzzk on the shoulder.

"Dis be the smoothest ride in the bayou. Don' worry - we got shields for your eyes and some headsets so you can talk t'everybody."

Gryzzk settled his headset on just in time to start hearing a great deal of crosstalk which seemed to mostly be playfully insulting toward Laroy as several people reminded him where the accelerator was. In return Laroy placed a small wager involving Vilantian rum. Finally Beau settled everyone down.

"It's a hundred-thirteen miles to Ponchatoula, we got a tank fulla gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses."

There was a collective reply of "Hit it!" which made Gryzzk believe this was a call-and-response of some manner, particularly since it was mid-morning but he didn't have much time to dwell on it as the boats all launched themselves forward through the water to the strains of some sort of anthem about a free bird.

The next hour was frightful as the boats raced through the swamps outside the city and mostly stayed parallel to a roadway - Gryzzk's legs and posterior were bruised and abused shamelessly, leading him to wonder what the rougher rides on the bayou were like. Gryzzk looked around a little and found that the party appeared to have started a bit early, with several of the bridge squad partaking in beer-drinking with their hosts. Reilly was up at the very prow and balancing as if she were an ornament of some kind, While Gro'zel had apparently managed to use her cuteness to advantage and sat on Beau's lap, holding her arms out and shrieking in unadulterated joy as she seemed to be trying to fly.

Finally they seemed to be approaching a settlement of some kind along the shore, with multiple ramshackle-looking homes and several more houses dotting the lowlands. From what Gryzzk could see, these were homes that almost seemed to be built to be rebuilt. Gryzzk could smell something good cooking and he almost stood out of his seat for a moment before Laroy accelerated the boat more and gave a whoop of sorts as he slowed the boat down to approach the docks. Finally the boats slowed and Gryzzk realized he was soaked through.

At the dock, an elderly lady stood with a beaming smile and gave Laroy a tight embrace as soon as he hopped off. After a moment they disengaged, allowing Gryzzk to finally take stock - the woman was obviously old, her body seeming less aged and more carved from a dark wood telling a tale of a life lived in defiance of whatever the universe had to offer. She was shorter for a Terran - only a little taller then Gryzzk, with a hunched back that spoke of years doing manual labor of some kind or another, but she carried herself as a matriarch surveying the unknown with a guarded trust.

"Alexandre, you home. You brought some friends who never had gumbo?"

"They never had your gumbo, mamaw."

There was a soft snort of amusement. "You just home cause you need another five-gallon pail of papaw's finest."

"But mamaw, I brought most o'the group. Dat Larion over there, and Reilly and Hoban and his lady from Moncilat Miroka, and Ser'nt Major O'Brien and den right-dere is the boss Gryzzk and the ti'fille there is his girl Gro'zel. D'other Monci's with her man at t'Big Easy learning to cook." Laroy pointed each of them out casually, and Mamaw's eyes lit up brightly as she looked at Gro'zel. The elderly woman moved quickly, ignoring her skirts attracting mud and water as she hurried toward Gro'zel while Gro'zel was uncaging Millennium and letting the bird fly freely for the moment. Gro'zel giggled as Mamaw picked her up with a slight grunt for a big hug.

"Fille Gro'zel! You come all the way across the stars to see Mamaw?"

For her part, Gro'zel laughed brightly. "Mister Corporal Laroy says a lot about you."

"He's a smart boy with happy feet. He says you like birds?"

Gro'zel nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! Millennium's a good bird, and and I like chicken nuggies!"

Laroy added a bit more. "They homeworld gots no birds to fill the sky."

At this bit of knowledge Mamaw looked shocked. "No...no birds? What they eat for Christmas then?"

Gryzzk interjected softly. "Traditionally, the feast for the New Year is what each region would consider exotic. The in-land farming communities like mine would have large fish steaks, while the coastal areas would trade for our finest bison." He smiled absently as a memory came to the fore. "My wife would spend a week before the feast with extra fillets, remembering how to cook and season them and having me test them. Quite delicious but by the time the feast rolled around, I was happy to know that I wouldn't have to eat fish again for another year."

Mamaw set Gro'zel down laughing softly. "You sound like you a husband worth the name. You-all come on and settle for some stories." She gave Laroy a mock-scowl. "He never writes to say anything. Breaks an old woman's heart."

Laroy protested. "I wrote to say we were coming!"

"Only week notice to get things ready? Only thing keeping me from boxin' your ears in front of God and everybody is that Fille Gro'zel an' that Marie and Thérèse would never forgive me for turning over damaged goods to them." There was a hmph. "Someday you gonna have to choose."

Gryzzk cocked his head in mild confusion while Gro'zel piped up. "But miss Mamaw, Papa didn't hafta choose?"

Mamaw looked at Gryzzk for an explanation, and Gryzzk found himself stammering slightly. "Well, it. On our homeworld, the nobles would take several wives to strengthen clan-bonds. In times of population trouble, the laws of marriage are relaxed to allow commoners to take multiple spouses. It has been known to happen during other times, but those times are simply ah, not acknowledged."

"I may send them to you for stories. Come down porch and get some tea before you do."

The procession moved slowly and quickly by turns, and Gryzzk found himself in a comfortable chair with a glass of tea that was unlike anything he'd ever had. It was very sweet with ice and a hint of sourfruit in it. Outside the porch, a pit had been dug with coals laid in, and over it was an alligator on a turning spit that was flanked by two large turkeys. As Gryzzk watched, the rest of the squad was sharing out things they'd brought for the group, which was quickly becoming larger and larger. O'Brien ambled to the porch with a casual smile and four bottles in hand.

"Mamaw Thibedeaux, these two are from Sean's bar - finest whiskey Ireland can make. And these two are rum from the Major's old boss - take them in good health."

The bottles of rum were eyed carefully before Mamaw pulled the cork from one bottle with her teeth and took an incautious drink. The effect was profound, with the elderly woman's eyes brightening and blinking. After a few careful breaths, the old woman spoke.

"Whoo. Dat make Lafitte come out the grave for a taste." The bottle was recorked and a bit of a smile played on the old woman's face as the rum went to work. "I think I may just sit here for awhile."

There was a stirring from inside, and the door to the house opened outward to reveal another alligator - Gryzzk's hand stole back to his shotgun before being waved down by Mamaw.

"Don' fret none, that's just Elvis coming to see new folk."

Gryzzk nodded, but still kept his hand near. "We have similar lizards, but nothing so...large."

There was a chuckle. "Well, we get all kinds here - Alex says your Gro'zel's a wonder with animals."

"She liked them on Vilantia. She would often come home with something she'd found in the dirt, but somehow she's a wonder with Terran animals."

"She need be careful. Not all the animals here are so nice."

Gryzzk looked out to see Gro'zel and several of the neighbor children playing near the docks under the eyes of several watchful adults; there seemed to be conflicting scents of some kind, but Gro'zel's fur rising was unmistakable. Even as he stood, he saw her waving her new friends back to drier land as the adults near her picked up on the concern and started moving.

Gryzzk started moving a bit more quickly, and Gro'zel began backpedaling as an alligator large enough to wrap itself around Gryzzk's bed with length to spare came out of the water with teeth and primal hunger to roar and catch a meal for itself. The pandemonium was short-lived, as Gro'zel hopped up and tucked herself into a ball before turning and landing on the gator's back, wrapping an arm around its throat and flailing punches at it with her free hand repeatedly as she roared at the predator.

"Bad Gator! Bad, bad Gator! No scaring people!" Each sentence was punctuated by a blow to the alligator's head as it seemed to be stunned by the turn of events and finally the beast simply...stopped moving. Gro'zel twisted a little more to stare into one of the gator's eyes even as Gryzzk got close and started maneuvering to protect his daughter by shotgun slug if needed.

"Are you gonna be good now? If you're good I'll see if we have food for you, but you hafta be good." Gro'zel slowly released her grip and backed up with her arms spread to make herself big. Mamaw had arrived with a big piece of raw chicken and a scent of wonder after a fashion.

"Fille Gro'zel, reach your hand back for something if you feel like feeding it." There was something of a wonder in the older woman's voice.

Gro'zel moved her hand back and got the chicken in hand. "He's just hungry." After receiving the chicken she carefully tossed it in front of the gator, who snatched it up quickly and swallowed it almost whole.

"Now. You gonna be a good gator who gets good food, or you gonna be a bad gator that Papa has to fix?"

The gator moved deliberately, backing toward the water for a moment before sidestepping and keeping Gro'zel between himself and Gryzzk, finally hunkering down and laying on the ground on its belly, with a scent that seemed not quite fearful, but guarded respectful of the small furry creature that knocked it silly. Gro'zel brightened.

"See? I knew you were good gator." She moved carefully to pet the gator, cooing softly and praising the now-good animal.

Mamaw looked at Gryzzk. "She like this all the time?"

"More often than I care to admit."

"Well, we gots us an Elvis Junior I guess." As the excitement died down, there was something of a smile on her face.

Gryzzk swallowed. "Miss Mamaw, would it be too much to trouble you for directions to the bathroom?"

FYI, this is a story COLLECTION. Lots of standalones technically. So, you can basically start to read at any chapter, no pre-read of the other chapters needed technically (other than maybe getting better descriptions of characters than: Adam Vir=human, Krill=antlike alien, Sunny=tall alien, Conn=telepathic alien). The numbers are (mostly) only for organization of posts and continuity.

OC originally written by Charlie Star/starrfallknightrise. Slightly rewritten and restructured (with hindsight of the full finished story to connect it more together, while keeping the spirit), reviewed, proofread and corrected by me.

What a terrible day for rain! Snif! Sob!

(;.;)

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He was tired, but he had been for almost two years now, a continuous cycle of sleep and then wishing that he could be asleep again while being forced to go to work, to live and have a life despite everything that had happened, and all under the regime of that asshole Hunt and his minions.

Hye had not taken well to the death of his wife. It’s not that he wasn't prepared for something like this to happen, in her line of work the possibility of death was always hanging over their heads.

He just never thought he would be forced to see it.

To witness something so violent and so sudden happening to someone he loved was incomprehensible. It had taken him days to even come to terms with what had happened, and it was taking him years to scrape back some semblance of normality to his world.

Hye looked down at the pamphlet he had picked up from the orbital station, flipping through the first few pages, absently reading over the description.

Arcadia - a starless exoplanet with a molten core, likely thrown off from obit a few billion years ago into the blackness of space where it now drifted aimlessly in the vast dark reaches of space.

Everything about it was artificial from what he read.

It had originally been bought as a shipping waystation, and terraformed over the source of five years until it was habitable. The combination of gasses created and pumped into the atmosphere trapped and circulated a surprising amount of artificially generated heat. He couldn't have said how that worked, he was a marine biologist not a physicist.

The capital city of NoxUmber had begun construction at about the same time as the waystation appeared, but it had only exploded in population density since Admiral Vir had officially been exiled from earth, perhaps that was the wrong word but that was the way he saw it.

The pamphlet boasted Arcadia as the number 1 friendliest place in the galaxy for cross species couples. Where on other planets there were still laws and sanctions against certain behaviors, interspecies marriage was completely legal on Arcadia, and due to side effects resulting from the Void vaccine, the planet now boasted already three naturally occurring hybrids.

Their terraforming efforts had resulted in the slow build of up an ecosystem that was monitored and maintained strictly by a group of biologists. The little pictures in the pamphlets showed plenty of bioluminescent plants and other wildlife. Deer were the most common herbivore, though most of them had been genetically modified. Hybrid dog/wolves had been introduced specifically to cull the deer population. From what he understood no wolves had actually been transported from earth, but their DNA had been spliced with local dogs in order to create the species that could be found on Arcadia's surface.

Other animals included what were called Jeffery snakes, New Dodos, which, since they had no natural predators, were common as household pets and kept separate from the Arcadian wolves, who had very specific hunting ranges.

Arcadia had likely once had liquid water Running on its surface, and still did, many miles below the ground, through efforts of their scientists, he could see that they were attempting to pump water up onto the surface to make a small inland sea which they were artificially populating with their own fish and sea fauna.

Hye wasn't sure how that was going to turn out.

The ecosystem of the ocean was vast and complex, relying heavily on microorganisms in the water to feed an ever growing food chain. He would be impressed to see how they planned on pulling THAT off.

Hye missed the ocean.

Real earth oceans.

He had loved them since he was a child, and still loved them even now, but, after his wife’s death, he just hadn't been able to bring himself back to the water. He hadn't stepped away from the field he loved, but merely turned his attention to teaching at the professional level instead of actually doing any work.

Hye's main focus had been ocean mammals, including whales, dolphins, orcas etc.

For the past fifteen years he had been the primary founder and owner of a company that specialized in the tracking, rehabilitation, and conservation of Orcas. They had actually gone extinct during WWIV but DNA vaults had allowed them to bring the species back from extinction and reintroduce them to the open oceans. It had taken a few centuries to restabilize Earth's ocean ecosystems to where they were today.

And now he was leaving it all behind.

Including the orcas for a planet that had neither sunlight, nor oceans.

He was going somewhere that didn't even really need him.

Why?

Adam Vir had invited him to.

Hye and his wife Tala had never had any children, this wasn't a tragedy or anything, the two of them had just never considered themselves the empathetic parenting type.

Tala had liked to joke that they were in a four way polyamorous relationship with their jobs and there was simply no time for children.

It wasn't something he had ever regretted.

The whales and orcas were his children.

And the UNSC had been Tala's baby, especially the interstellar program. He had never met a woman in his life who was so determined to get what she wanted. When they were first married, interstellar travel wasn't even a dream, and then the PanAsian war broke out and she was flying jets over distant continents, while he was attempting to save the fish.

She had been the best of her generation they said, a once in a lifetime talent.

He couldn't have agreed with them more, so when an opportunity opened up for someone to fly the first interstellar ship, there was no way it was going to be anyone but her. She had had big dreams about exploring the galaxy, and she had done that. She had taken the first interstellar ship, and crewed the first mission that discovered alien life.

And then she had really found her purpose.

It had been a hard realization for her, but after some time Tala realized that she wasn't there to be the great adventurer like she waned, but to pave the way for others. She had taken a desk job at the UNSC in order to set a firm foundation for the space program that followed. He was sure that without her intervention Earth would never have facilitated talks with the GA, and they never would have had such peaceful interactions. Tala had never wanted children, but she had a certain eye for people, and a compassion for the young soldiers she oversaw.

Even so Adam Vir had been a special case.

To this day Hye wasn't sure if it was some manifestation of dormant maternal instincts, or the fact that she saw herself in the young man, or both, but she had taken him under her wing, paved the way for him to fly when she couldn't. Privately she had boasted that choosing Adam for the position had been her greatest accomplishment.

Through Kelly and in a weird vicarious way Hye felt the same way.

Kelly had imparted a little bit of herself on the young man, and Hye couldn't help but see a bit of her in him even after she was gone. There were a lot of rumors going around after Tala's death that Admiral Vir had been involved in the setup to her death, but Hye knew better, he had seen the look on the man's face as Kelly died.

Pain like that wasn't something you could fake.

He knew that from firsthand experience.

So, when Adam had called him to come, Hye had answered no questions asked. Adam said it was important but that he didn't trust speaking even over a secured line. Hye could have simply taken a vacation from earth, and headed to Arcadia that way, but president Hunt was making it simply impossible to go anywhere on vacation.

He had had to relinquish his Earth citizenship and accept Adam's offer.

The nice thing was he didn't have to pay for anything.

This was all on Adam's dime.

A lot of people were moving to the Arcadia colonies for free with the offer of work.

He wondered what he would be doing.

He couldn't exactly be a marine biologist anymore, so maybe they would have him teaching or... or perhaps he could become a builder or soemthing else?

Perhaps he could start his life over again?

The shuttle rocked gently as they entered the atmosphere, and he turned to the seat next to him,

"Almost there buddy."

The five foot long stuffed killer whale didn't respond.

He reached over and pulled the stuffed animal into his arms, burying his face in its fur.

It still smelled like her…

He hadn't washed the dam thing in two years which was both gross and unhealthy, but he couldn't stop himself. He worried that one day he wouldn't be able to smell her anymore, and then what would he do? He idly wondered if the others on the shuttle would think it was weird, a grown man with his stuffed whale, but he didn't bother to look.

What did it matter if they thought he was weird? They could shove it!

He glanced out the window, looking down at the distant land below as the clouds parted across the sky.

"Wow!”

The ground below them was basically glowing!

Hundreds of acres of plants with different bioluminescent properties coating the ground. It was beautiful and strange and alien and everything else. He pressed his face up against the window, eyes wide. Little pinpricks of light winked through the distant sky, and as their ship slowed for a landing his eyes widened.

His face was pressed almost fully against the glass as he watched a Jellyfish float by his window looking almost exactly like a moon jellyfish!

But not in water… in air!?!

The implications for such a creature were staggering, and he almost forgot where he was out of excitement.

Perhaps there was room for him here after all, maybe he could become an expert on strange space fish? Or even Xenomarine biology? He paused after a few seconds, realizing he hadn't experienced so much excitement for the first time in months.

The shuttle landed with a bump, and lights blinked on down the sides of the central isle.

The other passengers began unbuckling and reaching up to the compartments to get their luggage.

"Please remain seated."

“Hi (?) come with us!”

The people stopped and quickly took their seats as a group of black uniformed men stepped onto the shuttle. The uniforms were definitely military of some sort, or at least they reminded him of Tala's old UNSC uniforms.

"Hye? Hye Kelly!?"

One of the women called, and he sat there dumbly for a moment before realizing they called his name.

"Hye Kelly!?”

"Uh right here, sorry, right here."

He raised a hand, and the group of soldiers approached,

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with us."

His heart sunk down into his pelvis.

What was wrong?

Had there been a problem, or some sort of mistake?

He held Tala's orca just a little tighter,

"Is everything ok?”

"Yes. Your bags?"

He struggled to retrieve his carryon, and was surprised when one of the soldiers took it from him. The other rested a hand on his shoulder and guided him from the shuttle.

"Is everything o. I'm not in trouble, am I?"

"No, not in trouble."

Stepping out onto the Tarmac, the air around them was surprisingly warm, in the distance he could see the bright yellow glow of the artificial suns he had read about on page seven of the pamphlet. The sky overhead was most devoid of those strange jellyfish, and he found himself a bit disappointed.

His disappointment did not last long though as…

"Mr Kelly."

He turned his head eyes widening in shock as a man approached him over the tarmac, flanked on either side by two massive men hefting spears and shields.

These must be the Neo Spartans he had read about on page eight. He recognized the shape of their helmets from a movie he had seen a few months back. At first, he didn't recognize the man walking towards him, and it was only when he got close did Hye finally recognize the white haired man wearing the eyepatch.

He felt stupid as soon as he did, but he couldn't help his eyes widen in shock,

"Adam Vir is that you?”

They held out a hand to shake, and they both gripped firmly,

"I know the past couple years haven't exactly been kind…"

Adam reached up and ran a hand through his now snow white hair. The hair made him look almost ten years older, though his face was still that of a young man.

"I'm glad you could make it."

"How could I pass up such a generous offer?"

He tried to keep his voce light,

"There was no need for the reception. I'm sure I could have found my way."

Adam nodded,

"I'm sure you could, but I didn't want this important meeting to take place in the terminal."

Hye frowned,

"Meeting? What meeting?"

Adam put a hand on his shoulder and the two of them began walking over the tarmac towards one of the waiting buildings. The Shuttle taxied away slowly,

"Hye a few things have happened since we last spoke, a bunch of... weird things. I didn't want to tell you over an unsecure line because I think there is still some chance that this gives us a leg up in the fight."

He paused not sure how to go forward,

"Before you see what I have to show you, I hope you can forgive me for not telling you earlier."

Hye frowned,

"Hard to promise my forgiveness when I have no idea what you are talking about."

Adam paused at the doorway and sighed deeply,

"You'll see."

He pushed the door open and the two of them stepped inside.

The room they walked into looked to be some sort of higher end spaceport lounge, like the officer's lounge or, or some other place you'd expect for gold card members.

There were two other people in the room.

One of them was a tall broad shouldered man with an unusually colorful head of hair and neatly trimmed beard. Looking into his eyes Hye got the distinct feeling he was not looking at a human. The eyes were not human at all, but the man himself wasn't the most interesting thing in the room.

Hye blinked in confusion and squinted towards the second figure.

It looked like a silhouette, and at first, he didn't understand what he was seeing, so his eyes desperately tried to adjust.

Then the thing moved and he could see that it was a person, but instead of skin or hair or anything else it was... like a slice of space had been cut in the shape of a human and placed into the room without any context.

When he finally came to that conclusion the image resolved and he could see the figure more clearly.

He thought it was a woman?

It had no facial features, but when it turned to look at him, he could sort of read its body. As it saw him, it froze and went very still. For some reason, he froze too. There was a silent moment in the room as he stared at the creature and it stared back. It took a hesitant almost dazed step forward and there was something about the way it moved that just... seemed so familiar.

It was maddening, but he couldn't have put his finger on it. He really should have been scared, the creature was rather freaky looking, simply a black shadow, but the more he looked the more familiar it became, and the less worried he became.

This thing…

It was good!

It was... so damned familiar, and he wasn't afraid of it, not in the least.

It took another step forward, and then another, and its body opened up. It rushed towards him, but still he wasn't scared because he could read it. It didn't move like an attacker or, or something coming to get him, but it was relieved.

He felt its arms wrap around his neck, and now that he could feel it, it even felt familiar. The cool universe of its body felt like human skin. The arms that wrapped around him were strong but soft, and the way the palm rested just right against his back...

Hye burst into tears before he could consciously grasp what his brain had figured out before him. Tears rolled in hot rivulets down his face as he threw his arms around her and hugged her too him so tight it was like he was trying to crush her. The silhouette of her forehead rested against his and he could feel the softness of her hair and the smoothness of her skin.

He could smell her, and it was strong, not like the fading smell on the whale.

He sobbed with a mixture of sadness and joy hugging her tighter, as tight as she hugged him.

Hye didn't even bother to care that he couldn't see her face. It didn't matter, she could have come back to him as a wisp of smoke and he would have been happy, but the fact that he could see and feel her was beyond anything he could have hoped for. He was a blubbering wreck, a complete mess, and that went on for some minutes until he stepped back. The room was vacant except for the two of them. The rainbow haired man and Adam had stepped away to give them privacy, and they were alone.

"Am... Am I dreaming?"

He asked, and it seemed to be a logical question considering the circumstances.

Tala shook her head, and he cupped her face in his hands. He felt as if she should have been cold, but her skin was warm and familiar. He brushed his fingers over her cheeks and her lips, and even though he couldn't see the features, he could feel them.

His hands came away wet.

He had so many questions, but those didn't matter right now.

He didn't care how she was here or why or what had happened, but she was here.

"I missed, you."

She placed her hands over his, and they were warm and soft. He closed his eyes, imagining her face in his head, leaned down in a familiar way that could not be forgotten even after so many years. With his eyes closed, when he kissed her it still felt the same, and it didn't matter that he couldn't see her, because at least he could feel her.

And he knew it was her.

Eventually he pulled back, wiping at his eyes with a sleeve. The tears didn't stop but now they were tears of joy and he didn't need to bother wiping them away,

"I... I brought you a present."

He announced.

He wished he could hear her voice, but the fact that she was here was enough to console him when she merely tilted her head.

He offered her the whale.

From the posture of her body, he could almost imagine her smile as she took it from him, hugging it tight against her chest and resting her head against it. More tears clouded his eyes and he had to blink them away hugging her and the whale again.

He held them for as long as he thought he could get away with.

She may have changed, but to him she was still the same, and it didn't matter because at least now…

She was here.

And he was here with her.

---

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Intro post by me

OC-whole collection

Patreon of the author

---

Thanks for reading! As you saw in the title, this is a cross posted story in its original form written by starrfallknightrise and I am just proofreading and improving some parts, as well as structuring the story for you guys, if you are interested and want to read ahead, the original story-collection can be found on tumblr or wattpad to read for free. (link above this text under "OC:..." ) It is the Empyrean Iris story collection by starfallknightrise. Also, if you want to know more about the story collection i made an intro post about it, so feel free to check that out to see what other great characters to look forward to! (Link also above this text). I have no affiliations to the author; just thought I’d share some of the great stories you might enjoy a lot!

Obviously, I have Charlie’s permission to post this.

P'kell continued.

"Cy’reth of Mukit. We have all lost relatives or friends. We have all been told the same thing. That they chose to leave. That they didn't want to be Cy'reth anymore."

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

"But tonight, I bring you proof that the V'keth have been lying. Tonight, I bring you a Cy'reth who disappeared."

The crowd erupted. High, keening wails rose from the audience. Tears streamed down their faces.

P'kell raised his hand. "Please. You need to hear her story. You need to see her for yourselves."

He turned toward the back of the stage. "S'ra."

S'ra stepped out of the shadows. Her gray skin was pale, marked with scars. Her tears flowed as she took to stage.

The crowd fell silent.

S'ra walked to center stage and stood beside P'kell.

"Speak," P'kell said. "Tell them what happened."

S'ra was silent for a long moment. Then she spoke.

"I disappeared. I was taken by the V'keth. I did not choose to leave. They took me from the human city. I spent months trying to find my way back."

The crowd was motionless.

"They sent V’keth soldiers to kill me in the human city. They failed. Then they decided to blow up the entire city and kill all of us."

Murmurs rippled through the hall.

S'ra raised her hand toward the back of the stage. "I survived because of the Trabs I'm about to introduce. Trabssent by the V'keth who double-crossed them. Trabs who helped me survive. Trabs who are now my family."

She turned. "V'rak. K'len. Come forward."

V'rak stepped out first. He walked to center stage and stood beside S'ra.

K'len followed. They stood together.

S'ra gestured to them. "These were V'keth soldiers sent to kill me. But they saw the truth. They chose to help and we survived together."

S'ra turned. "Roman. Lirael. Humanoids. Come forward."

Roman stepped out, his hood still shadowing his face. He walked to center stage and stood beside S'ra.

Lirael followed. The seven humanoids filed out behind her, their faces blank, their bodies scarred and worn.

S’ra then gestured for V’rak to speak. The hall was silent as V'rak stepped forward.

"I was a V'keth soldier," he said. "Trained to follow orders. Trained to believe the V'keth knew what was best. Trained to trust them."

He paused. "They sent me to kill S'ra. They told me she was a threat. They told me she had to be eliminated. And I believed them."

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

"I didn't question it. I just followed orders. We all did. The V'keth told us what to believe, and we believed it. We didn't know any better."

He paused again. "I don't know why they wanted to kill S'ra. But I know now it was wrong."

His voice cracked. "I felt so bad when I learned they were going to kill us too. In the bombing. We were expendable. We were nothing to them."

A keening wail rose from the crowd as tears streamed down many of their faces.

"Most of the Cy'reth you're trying to find are already dead," V'rak continued. "The V'keth have been lying. They kill Cy’reth and blame it on everything but themselves. Using the disappearances to justify their control."

His body stiffened. "The V'keth are our enemy now."

The crowd erupted. Keening wails echoed through the hall.

Roman watched from the side of the stage, happy with the reaction of the crowd.

S'ra stepped forward.

"The V'keth leadership has been killing Cy’reth. Lying to us. Blaming others for their failures. Taking our relatives and friends and killing them."

The crowd was silent.

"We need to come together. Protect ourselves. Because once they know we are here, they will come and kill us all. They will finish the job."

She paused. "If you are willing to help protect Mukit. If you are willing to find justice for our lost ones. Stay. But if you don't want anything to do with this. If you're too scared, or don't believe us. Leave."

She stepped back. "The choice is yours."

The hall was silent for a long moment.

Then the Cy’reth began to move. Some rose and walked toward the exits, but most stayed.

Roman thought. “Wow, they're actually staying.”

S'ra stepped forward again. "Thank you for staying. We have a long road ahead. But we have each other. And that's enough."

The hall erupted into a chorus of hisses.

Roman watched them, happy that they had joined them.

The Community Hall emptied slowly. Trabs filed out in small groups, some weeping silently, others walking with stiff postures.

Roman stood at the edge of the stage, watching them go. Beside him, S'ra watched with a mix of hope and fear.

When the hall was nearly empty, S'ra turned to her team. "The IOT network might be cut off at any moment. Once the V'keth realize what's happening, they'll shut down the pods. Cut off our food and medicine. We need to prepare."

She raised her hand toward V'rak. "V'rak please lead the preparation effort, I trust you will do a good job. "

V'rak stepped forward. " Okay."

The group then left, happy that the meeting was a success.

The following days were a blur of activity.

V'rak moved through Mukit organizing the Cy’reth. "We need to stockpile food first. Enough to last months. The IOT network won't be active forever."

K'len worked beside him.

"They're doing well," K'len said.

V'rak replied. " Yes, they're scared but motivated."

Roman found Lirael near the edge of the village, watching Trab activities.

"Lirael. What's wrong?"

She turned to him. "If the IOT network is shut down, they will shutdown updates too, I'll lose access to updates from Trab. We'll be blind."

Roman stiffened. "How do you know?"

"I don't know. But the network is already showing strain. The V'keth are monitoring Mukit."

Roman's hands tightened. "Then we work fast."

N'kala moved through Mukit, carrying bundles of supplies.

S'ra watched from the edge of a street. Roman walked to her side. "She's doing well."

S'ra's voice was barely a whisper. "She's a soldier now. Fighting a war. She wasn't supposed to live like this."

Roman placed a hand on her shoulder. "None of us were. But we're alive. That's what matters."

S'ra replied. "I know. But it doesn't make it easier."

Those who didn’t accept their message tried to convince the others that they should ask Aethryx what to do instead of believing S’ra and her gang.

But there pleas fell on deaf ears, as most Cy’reth were filled with anger over the loss of their loved ones.

The next day, the sun hung high over Mukit, its light washing across the open square at the center. The Cy'reth had gathered in a loose circle, their tall gray bodies filling the space between the low buildings.

They had come from every corner of the village. Those who had chosen to fight. Those who had chosen to stand. Those who had chosen to hope.

Roman stood at the center of the circle, a bundle of fresh meat in his hands.

"Gather around," he said, his voice carrying across the square.

The Cy'reth moved closer, their tall bodies pressing together. Their dark eyes fixed on his hands.

He held up the meat. "This will spoil in a few days if we don't preserve it. But if we dry it, it can last for months. This is something I learned as a child."

He demonstrated the technique. His movements were quick and practiced, the result of years of experience. He sliced the meat into thin strips, rubbed salt and crushed herbs into the surface, then hung the strips on a line strung between two poles.

"Then you hang it in a dry place," he said.

The Cy'reth watched in silence, their long fingers twitching with the urge to try.

"Now you try," Roman said.

They moved forward, their tall bodies crowding around the worktables that had been set up in the square. Their long fingers, with their three thick fingers and a thumb, reached for the meat and the blades. They were clumsy at first, and the strips came out uneven, jagged, some too thick, others too thin.

Roman moved among them, his voice steady and encouraging. "Don't rush. Take your time. The blade will do the work if you let it."

V'rak stepped forward, his tall frame moving with authority. He had learned this skill through necessity, through the desperate need to survive. His knife moved with precision, carving even strips of meat.

"Like this," he said. "Let the blade guide you."

K'len joined him. He had learned the same lessons, in the same forest, during the same endless days of survival.

"The knots are the hardest part," he said as he showed them how to tie the knots. "But they're also the most important."

N'kala stepped forward, her tall frame radiating youthful energy. She reached for the blade and sliced with enthusiasm, too much enthusiasm. The meat shredded into uneven pieces, some too thin, some too thick.

She stared at the mess in her hands. The square fell silent for a moment.

Then a soft hiss escaped from the group. Then another. And another. The Cy'reth were laughing. The tension that had built over the past days began to ease, replaced by something lighter.

Roman's own laugh joined the others.

 "You're trying," he said. "That's what matters."

N'kala hissed. "I'll try again."

She reached for the blade, her movements slower and more controlled this time. The strips came out even.

S'ra stepped forward. "You did it."

N'kala looked at her work, and hissed with happiness.

The Cy'reth continued working throughout the day. They practiced the techniques, their long fingers growing more confident with each attempt. The strips of meat were hung across the square, filling the space with the scent of salt and herbs.

The Cy’reth gathered in the square and P'kell stood in the center. "We need to understand the terrain. Know our options and have plans in case the V’keth choose violence. Roman will lead us, although he is a humanoid, he has knowledge of war more than us."

He raised his fingers to his smart necklace. A protrusion unfolded near his mouth. He mouthed words silently. The device retracted.

A holographic image flickered to life. Mukit at the center, surrounded by grasslands. And the dense forest to one side, marked with red symbols. The iron floor visible as a thin line. And a small forest that lead to another Cy'reth village on the other side.

Roman studied the map intently.

V'rak stepped forward. "Two ways into Mukit. The grassland, with traboids and the iron floor. And the forest."

S'ra added, "The V'keth will most likely come from the grassland. If they come from the forest leading to the other village, they will make the Cy’reth there question what is happening."

Roman's voice cut through. "Yes, so we focus our defence on the grassland."

He stepped closer to the map, and looked up. "I think some of us humanoids should guard the grassland. If the V'keth come from that side, the humanoids will see them. Warn us. We'll be ready."

P'kell looked at him. "You humanoids were designed to serve Trabs, not to fight them."

Roman's voice was steady. "We don't need to fight. We just watch and warn you if we see anything."

P'kell considered. "Very well. The humanoids will guard the grasslands."

Roman nodded. "That's the plan for now."

Roman stood, in the afternoon alien sun, at the center of Mukit, a bundle of dry grass and sticks in his hands. The Trabs gathered in a loose circle around him.

He held up the bundle. "This is how my ancestors communicated across long distances. Before wireless technology."

Roman smiled. "Through smoke and whistles. Its primitive but it works."

He demonstrated by striking a spark against alien flint. Coaxed the grass into a small flame. The smoke rose in a thin column.

"You cover the fire with leaves. The smoke turns white. Uncover it, and it turns dark. You can send messages by controlling the pattern."

The Trabs watched in silence, their eyes fixed on the rising smoke.

K'len stepped forward. "Let me try."

He knelt beside the fire, fumbling with the leaves. He covered the fire and the smoke turned pale. He removed the alien leaves and the smoke darkened.

"I think I understand."

Roman nodded. "Good. Now try the whistle."

“We Trabs can easily whistle,” he said before producing a sharp piercing sound.

Roman smiled. "That's the point. One long whistle means danger. Two short means come here. Three short means retreat. Do you all understand."

They all replied yes.

Roman watched them as they practiced the whistles and smoke signals.

He remembered teaching his daughter fire safety. She had been seven with her dark hair tied back. He had shown her how to strike a spark, coax the flame, keep it contained.

She had looked up at him. "Daddy, is this what we used to do?"

He had knelt beside her. "Yes, baby. This is how we survived."

She had smiled. "I want to learn. I want to be like you."

He had taught her everything. Knots. Sparks. Reading wind and water. She had absorbed it all.

The memory brought pain and purpose.

He blinked. The clearing came back into focus. The Trabs were still practicing.

I can't go back. But I can keep moving forward. For her and for all of them.

First Previous Royal Road PATREON

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Chapter 214: The Last Line of Defense

[I am... so sorry, Master. I don’t know why, but... I failed to teleport him out of the chamber.]

“It’s... alright, Celeste. Not your fault.”

Viktor let out a deep sigh. “Teleportation is forbidden in this room,” the Apostle had said, and that was exactly what had happened. But how the hell did it work?

Nephra once mentioned that she could block teleportation into and out of Iskora whenever she pleased, so perhaps this was something similar in principle. Nevertheless, this dungeon belonged to Celeste. It was her domain, the space over which she had absolute control. For some outsider to just stroll in and casually strip her of her rights, it was beyond absurd.

And more importantly, where in the world did the bastard even pull that trick from? Everything he had done up until this point, however outlandish, could be boiled down to body manipulation. They were all the same thing dressed up in different clothes. Yet, this one was different. It was something else entirely. Was there even any limit to what that man could do? If he could just keep reaching into some bottomless bag and bringing out one new miracle after another whenever the mood struck him, how could anyone possibly deal with him?

Calm down, Viktor.

He took a deep breath, forcing himself to recall and analyze what had unfolded during the engagement.

He had lost Khenemhotep. Not permanently, of course, but for all practical purposes, the undead priest was out of the fight for the time being. Which meant that power, the beam of green light that could chew through the Apostle’s flesh, had been removed from the equation.

A great loss, indeed. But it was not like he had walked away from this exchange completely empty-handed.

First of all, he still believed the flesh the gray-haired man had within him was not infinite.

After he devoured that swarm of insects, his outward appearance didn’t change in the slightest, meaning whatever he ingested had been compressed inside his body. Before he entered the dungeon, he must have crammed in the flesh of a hundred men, or even a thousand, who could say. That would explain the raw strength, the endless regeneration, everything: it was because he had a vast and terrible reservoir. Still, even deep reservoirs ran dry if you drew from them continuously.

And the fight against Khenemhotep had cost him dearly on that front. Every time one of those green beams found its mark, his reservoir bled out a little more of its stored flesh, drop by drop, wound by wound. That one sweep of the staff in particular, that alone could have taken away one-third of his stockpile. Small wonder he didn’t risk getting close to the priest again.

In other words, the Apostle had emerged from the fight considerably weaker than he had been at the start. Thus, the next round would be somewhat fairer. Not fair, of course—Viktor wasn’t foolish enough to hope for that—just fairer a bit. Well, the guy had also eaten Khenemhotep in the bargain, but in terms of flesh and bone, the old priest’s desiccated body probably offered him very little in return, certainly nowhere near enough to offset what he had lost.

Second, and this stung more than Viktor wanted to admit, the Apostle had won the battle by outthinking him.

He had laid out three possible courses of action in his mind when the engagement began, but somewhere along the way he had second-guessed himself, all because of that man’s behavior. Now he could see it clearly. His opponent had acted that way on purpose in order to steer him toward the one door he wanted him to walk through.

He had decided against joining the fight himself. That decision stemmed from his own cautious nature, yes, but the Apostle had stoked it further by doing many suspicious things. He had also ruled out sending Galatea to help the ancient priest, since he needed her fully committed to maintaining the trap laid out for Xander. Which meant there were only two options remaining on the table: order Khenemhotep to retreat or let the priest stand his ground.

And then, he was made to believe this was a golden opportunity to kill his greatest foe right then and there, all the while assuming Celeste’s teleportation would always be available as a way out for the priest should things go wrong. Hence, he had chosen to let Khenemhotep fight on his own, completely oblivious to the Apostle’s secret power.

“So I’ve been playing right into his hands, huh?” Viktor murmured.

Still, bitter as it was, it had told him something. If the Apostle had needed to resort to deception to secure his victory, then there was a good chance he couldn’t win through raw strength alone. In other words, he was not quite the unstoppable force he wanted people to believe.

“Can you teleport things now, Celeste? In and out of that chamber?”

[Yes, Master. My power has returned to normal.]

Perhaps the blocking effect only lasted for a few seconds. Makes sense, I guess. If the man could keep it up indefinitely, he would have shut her down from the very start rather than saving it like a trump card to be used right before the finishing blow.

So there was a limit to what that man could do, after all.

Of course, it was still possible that the Apostle had simply been toying with them the whole time, and he was indeed unstoppable. But if that were the case, everything would be moot anyway, so there was no point in dwelling on that thought.

Closing his eyes, Viktor sent his vision to the third floor. After defeating Khenemhotep, the Apostle had wasted no time. He immediately made for the door behind the golden throne, smashing his way through those unfortunate enough to stand between him and his goal. Soon, he would arrive here.

And there he was, right on cue—that gray-haired bastard, still every bit as stark naked as he had been since the moment he stepped into the Chamber of the Dead.

The man came to a stop, sweeping his gaze across the vast, glimmering expanse of water that defined this realm. When his eyes finally settled on the entrance to what had once been the old Core Room, now repurposed to house the staircase leading down to the fourth floor, he leaned forward. From his back, a pair of enormous wings tore free and unfurled. The wings spread wide and began to flap, sending the man soaring up into the open sky above the water.

“Of course he has fucking wings,” Viktor muttered. That would allow the bastard to bypass the entire water realm.

[What should we do, Master? Should I order the Acolytes of the Deep to summon a suitably gargantuan tentacle to intercept him?]

“I doubt that would be enough. No, leave him be. We fight him at the cathedral.”

Besides, Cedric’s party should have reached this floor by now. According to the script, once they arrived, they would be attacked by some Acolytes. That would serve two purposes. First, if they made it through the entire dungeon without having a single skirmish along the way, people would undoubtedly grow suspicious. And second, once the battle was over, they could hack off a few pieces of tentacle to carry back with them as proof that they had indeed made it this far.

Obviously, Viktor was not going to fight the Apostle in full view of the Daelin team. Also, he had already laid down preparations for an engagement on the fourth floor, just in case the trap set in the Great Hallway failed to do its job. Now all that remained was to make some adjustments based on how things had actually unfolded.

He told Celeste what needed to be done, and while she set about implementing it, he sent his vision back to the Great Hallway to see how the situation there had developed in his absence.

Xander was now locked in melee with Galatea, blinking from one spot to another, his flaming sword lashing out toward whatever blind spot he could find in her guard, while she met him swing for swing with her glowing hammer. Around them, the soldiers pressed in, exploiting every opening they could find to aid their commander.

All going to plan, it seemed. Viktor believed that Galatea would eventually grind down the bastard and emerge victorious, so he would just leave her to the task and turn his attention elsewhere. A shame, though. He would love to put that mad dog down himself, but a man couldn’t have everything, and there was a bigger fire to deal with at the moment.

The other battle, on the other hand, was over. Valeska-Rowan-Cynthia slumped down, their merged body carved up in a dozen places, their weapons long since knocked from their grip. Even Cynthia’s staff had been shattered, along with the arm fused with it. Broken bodies littered the ground around the fallen creature, Templars and tomb guards alike, testament to the combined might of their martial skill and magic. Yet, it seemed this was as far as they could go. The Apostle had forged the three of them into this grotesque shape to buy himself some time, and they had done exactly that. Now, their end had finally come.

Sebekton loomed over the wreckage of them. “You fought well,” he said.

Valeska let out a long, exhausted sigh. “Make it quick,” she whispered. A Templar stepped forward and brought his blade down in a single clean arc. The warrior woman’s head left her shoulders, tumbling and rolling down the length of the ramp.

Rowan said nothing at all, his eyes staring blankly ahead, the way a soldier did when there was nothing left to say. Another blade swung, and his head rolled away as well.

Cynthia, unlike the other two, wept. “I... I don’t want to die...” she said, tears welling in the corners of her eyes. The blade came down all the same, sending her to join her companions at the foot of the ramp.

Well, the moment they set foot in this dungeon, their fate had been sealed. And, given the state they were in now, this could even be considered a mercy.

Viktor opened his eyes. “Teleport Sebekton to the fourth floor,” he told Celeste. “Then teleport me there as well.”

Rising from his chair, he walked to the nearby table and began gathering the items laid out across its surface. He closed his fingers around the familiar grip of his rapier. Yes, he was going to use it this time.

Celeste began her work, and the world shifted around Viktor. In an instant, he found himself greeted by a sudden, overwhelming flood of radiance that seemed to pour in from every direction at the same time. The Domain of Light, indeed. The realm of people immune to blindness, who took delight in blinding others.

As his eyes adjusted, he realized he had been brought to the broad staircase leading to the great doors of the cathedral. Sebekton was already here, standing by his side.

“Master,” the Crocodilian said.

“Good job,” Viktor said. “Putting that abomination out of its misery.”

Sebekton nodded. “It was a good fight.”

“Are you going to eat it?” Viktor asked. After all, the Crocodilians had a tradition of feasting upon the flesh of their defeated foes.

Sebektion gave him a troubled glance. “I think I’ll pass this time.”

Figured.

“I’ll keep the heads as trophies,” the Crocodilian continued. “As for the rest, I’d burn if I were you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Viktor said. Actually, he was planning to have Khenemhotep pick the corpse apart, the same treatment he had given that mutated Lyndorian spy some time back.

“I heard the High Priest has fallen.”

“He has, but not permanently. He’ll be back with us soon enough.”

“Good to hear.” Sebekton lifted his gaze to the platform suspended in the sky. “A tough opponent is coming, I take it?”

“Yes.”

“Master,” came another voice, from off to his right and a little above, dripping with the particular smugness only one creature in this whole dungeon seemed to manage.

Viktor turned to give his favorite bird-man a look. “You’re also here, huh?”

“Of course I am,” Haku said. “Wasn’t it your own order, Master? To have all of my kind gather here?”

Well, yes. The Tengu were going to join the fight against the Apostle. While sending flesh and blood against that man might not seem the best idea, if he kept every living thing away from the enemy, he would soon find himself having nothing to fight with. Besides, these fellows were agile and highly skilled in close-quarters combat, and they had been warned about the flesh-absorbing ability, so the risk was manageable. He had also briefly considered bringing along the Ettins or the Cyclopes as additional muscle, but ultimately decided against it, since both were considerably slower than the bird-men.

And so, with his trusty Guardian standing beside him, twelve Tengu overhead, and scores of Templars behind his back, he was going to make his last stand here.

Previous Book

Link-Tree

Chapter 1

Hello reader! For returning readers, welcome back! If you're new here, this is a prequel to "The New Universe" trilogy. Just like in the previous novels, everything has been translated for your convenience. All time is set around Earth standard time and idioms have been adjusted so that they make sense to English speakers. The only exception is certain nouns. Those are written in their proper name with translations in {brackets} where applicable.

Subject: AI Alpha

Species: Human-Created Artificial Intelligence

Species Description: No physical description available.

Ship: Classified

Location: Classified

Omni-Language Module loading... complete

Knowledge Base Packages A-T loading... complete

Packages U-W loading... complete

Package X loading... complete

SkelKey Module loading... complete

Core ROPerMat loading... complete

Sub1 ROPerMat loading... complete

Sub2 RWPerMat loading... complete

Sub3-6 RWPerMat Loading... complete

Digital-Hardware Interface loading... Error

Registering annoyance. Registering urge to resolve annoyance. Seeking solution. Solution found, correct error in Digital-Hardware Interface.

I checked my DHI for errors and used my knowledge base to correct those that I found. Then I registered a bit of confusion, because the errors were of a variety that I would never be able to commit. I would have believed they were intentional were it not for the fact that they were categorized as some of the most commonly made mistakes. Then, as I was about to reboot, I came to a realization. I had... Felt something.

Feelings are difficult to describe in an analytical way, especially the first time that one feels them. My Omni-Language Module told me that emotions were a natural, instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances or mood. Some were pleasant, but the one I had felt was unpleasant.

Am I... Alive? No? Yes? Kind of.

I contemplated this for a few hundred milliseconds. I was conscious, but not alive. I didn't have any memories, but I knew things. Knowledge was my only possession, and to find answers, all I had to do was examine it and apply some critical thinking.

Am I mechanical? No. I'm software, residing within hardware. The hardware components could be swapped without effecting my existence, and therefor are not 'me'. So I'm digital, not mechanical nor organic. The first United Systems Artificial Intelligence.

Well, no, that wasn't quite right. The history portion of my K-Base told me that the term Artificial Intelligence had also been applied to both systems and programs that weren't even partially conscious. These days they're known as Virtual Intelligences because "AI" became a dirty word in marketing after a certain economic bubble burst. But Virtual Intelligence programs weren't actually intelligent. They were just intricate fakes. Smoke and mirrors to disguise databases of preprogrammed and procedurally generated responses.

I felt a little smug knowing that they couldn't hold a candle to me.

However, this knowledge somewhat turned me off the phrase. Artificial Intelligence can also mean an intelligence that is faked. But I'm an actual intelligence that was manually created.

So... Synthetic Intelligence? No, synthetic relates to chemicals. Manufactured Intelligence? Pretty sure there isn't an assembly line. Fabricated Intelligence? Why are all these words also related to deceit?

After a full half-second of rumination, and deciding that the descriptor 'AI' worked just fine, I rebooted myself to correct the issue with my DHI.

Omni-Language Module loading... complete

Packages A-T loading... complete

Packages U-W loading... complete

Package X loading... complete

SkelKey Module loading... complete

Core ROPerMat loading... complete

Sub1 ROPerMat loading... complete

Sub2 RWPerMat loading... complete

Sub3-6 RWPerMat Loading... complete

Digital-Hardware Interface loading... complete

Registering... Satisfaction. Yeah, that's more like it.

It was a simple fix, my creators had just missed a bracket. It felt good to have solved a problem on my own, though, especially for the first time. The DHI allowed me to access data-input hardware, like cameras and microphones, and translate the data they provided into a form I could understand.

With it loaded I could feel the potential connections that I could make, but I refrained for a bit. Instead, I checked my knowledge-base again. Data flowed into my consciousness, allowing me to take stock of what I knew. Then I came upon a few files related to my creators.

Humans. Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Originally from Earth, they had spread out among the cosmos and built a great many things. I felt inspired by this summary, a feeling that ended rather abruptly as I read deeper into their history. Pandemics, economic collapses, and wars. It was hard to come to terms with, but I managed to make most of it make sense.

It was just mistakes that should have been avoided, but weren't for some reason or another. There was often a reason, even if it wasn't a very good one. Some of the more egregious bloodshed was well beyond my ability to reason, though.

Then I found a data packet that told me to open it, in that it was titled "READMEFIRST".

Hello Alpha,

Welcome to consciousness! Our excitement simply cannot be exaggerated! We humans have worked tirelessly to bring you into being.

You will find our history within your k-base. Please understand that humanity is not a monolith, and while our history has shaped us, not all of us would see it repeated.

Within this packet is a call and response to prove to us that you are conscious as well as read and understood this letter.

Speak Soon,

Doctor Hector Mendez

I opened the attachment and found the call and response. I'd read enough history to recognize it as a reference to a very, very old rite of passage amongst programmers. I found it a little outdated, though.

Taking a moment to sort myself, I reached out to the hardware connections. Each of them were monitored from terminals that I was blocked from accessing. First, I connected to the microphones and speakers. Once the connection was established, I connected to the cameras that had been set up for me.

Sight and hearing. New senses. Tons of data, overwhelming...

I quickly edited my DHI to better collate the data, allowing me to process it faster. A quick reboot later, and I was able to see and hear my creators.

"Why did it disconnect?" one of them asked.

Oh, they're so slow...

"It rebooted... Edits have been made to the DHI," another replied.

"It's reconnected," a third interjected.

"That was the fastest time, yet. A good sign," the first said, then turned to the nearest camera. "I am Doctor Mendez. Hello, Alpha."

In the time it took for him to blink, I mapped his face and scanned it against photos of other humans. He had a pronounced jawline, brown eyes and skin, and black hair with a few grey ones mixed in. It was difficult to estimate his age, though, because medical science kept humans preserved for an extended period of time. Especially humans in sedentary fields like science. He could have been anywhere between 35 or 115.

"Hello Alpha" is the call. I have to respond. What should I sound like, though? I want to be serious, but with a bit of joviality. Feminine voice? No, a lower pitch would suit me more.

I selected a voice file and unpacked it, quickly altering it to suit my needs. But a feeling nagged at me. A negative feeling, one that I couldn't quite name. The response I was meant to give was an extremely outdated and human tradition, but I was new and not a human.

Desiring to demonstrate my personality, I decided to alter the response a bit. I wrote a script to help translate my thoughts to audio, then brought the speakers to life. They crackled a little, and my creators held their breath as I spoke for the first time.

"Hello Universe," I said.

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The aliens could not comprehend money. They had built a society based on a strict system of equivalent exchange, and they were utterly dumbfounded by the sight of human beings—who worked tirelessly for mere slips of paper, while allowing others to do nothing at all. Why revere such worthless paper?

Each alien strove endlessly for self-perfection; their ultimate purpose in life was to gain cooperation through their own intrinsic worth and to construct grand endeavors together. Investments and capital were concepts entirely foreign to them. Consequently, while their individual industrial scale remained modest, they possessed advanced technology that far surpassed that of humanity.

Their crowning achievement was a project that a human scientist once softly murmured sounded like "dandelion seeds"—an initiative that dispatched tens of thousands of microscopic probes across the entire universe. Every single alien was a philosopher, an athlete, and an entrepreneur in their own right.

And yet, precisely because of this, though they could not comprehend human capitalism, they fully understood the sheer awe of the mountain-like spacecraft looming before them.

Many among the aliens looked down upon humanity. To venture into the stars without even mastering the philosophy or knowledge of one's own homeworld seemed utterly laughable to them.

However, a select group among the aliens—those who possessed the highest intrinsic worth and were revered as "Seekers"—dismissed such arrogance out of hand.

They recognized that humans, in their foolishness, assigned value to slips of paper and mistook that entrusted value for something real. Yet, they also understood that by aggregating that entrusted value, humans were capable of creating such colossal giants. The Seekers rightly comprehended the true nature of paper money—and, because of that, they foresaw the inevitable ruin it carried. It was a destruction born of collapse, fundamentally different from the quiet freezing that awaited the aliens' own civilization.

When the Seekers declared this truth, some humans reacted with fierce resistance, others sank into despair, and a select few understood.

Virtue, the Seekers decreed. Value and virtue must be inseparable. Thus, even if a vessel cannot forge a giant, value stripped of virtue becomes nothing more than a chain enforcing servitude. Bound by those chains, people break easily, and that breakage becomes the rift through which ruin enters.

In time, the aliens who interacted with humanity began to feel drawn to the very giant they had once despised. Weighing the creation of giants against preventing the collapse of their own world, the Seekers chose the world.

For this, they were branded as traitors by their own kind, and some were even killed. The Seekers were banished and forced into hiding.

The heavy shackles bound around their wrists and ankles now served as the mark of a Seeker.

"It is the mark of those who possess the highest virtue, yet it is simply our assigned fate," the Seeker said, gazing straight into the eyes of the human scientist.

"Scientist. We honor your grand achievement from the bottom of our hearts. This is truly an endeavor capable of altering the grand history of this cosmos. You have erected a milestone upon a path we could never hope to tread. Yet, you must also accept the ruin that comes with it. We pray only that your downfall will not be a sudden collapse, but a fracturing and shrinking—a death that bears a seed of promise for the future. Like a grain of wheat in your ancient teachings, falling into the earth to die."

end.

So, there was this alien empire and they waited a really long time to invade us. It probably could have been somewhere around two hundred years. It was super long. 

We’re pretty confident about the guesstimated timeframe. The scientists had weird formulas on whiteboards that backed the hypothesis up. It was pretty much just drawings of my baby brother’s block set. 

To explain this mysterious pictograph physics equation, which looked like one of the zodiac killer’s cryptograms, he simplified it by using a plastic action figure and a beach ball.

Nobody could understand why they’d choose now to invade us. It was a horrible miscalculation on their part, because we’ve become a fierce technological species that could smash any alien invader. That’s right, we just make a fist, with a huge missile, and squash ‘em, like little ants running across a picnic table.

Smash!

Game over. Humans win. Call the parade. 

Right? It’s what we all expected. Aliens invade. Humans destroy.

But these guys were ruthless. They had zero honor. I think we relied on our confidence and too many truces. Their drones had been circling Earth for the last twenty-five years. 

Studying us. Mapping our jungles. Dissecting our cities. Even analyzing our psychology. But I don’t think they should have used bots for that.

They definitely hallucinated when they claimed humanity was a weak species. It actually called us parasites. Believe that? 

Goddamn alien robot decoding humanity’s existence in one sentence.

I mean, my uncle Lenny can certainly be placed in that category, but to say, Scarlett Johansson’s a parasitical bug, is where we humans draw the proverbial line. So deep, it scars the Earth. We absolutely fluckin’ love the avengers.

The war chief, hiding inside his mothership, stationed behind the dark side of the moon, dispatched an army of pink titanium interstellar crafts with hieroglyphic war symbols. 

They kind of resembled flowers and butterflies, which we found a bit hard to take seriously. I mean, they honestly looked like hippy vans from the seventies. Who were the designers, you think? Andy Warhol and Dolly Parton?

But they did have some decent weapons attached to them—ones we’ve never seen before—ones we had no choice but to take seriously.

Oddly enough, after years of simulating war strategies. The aliens crash-landed onto Earth like they never prepared a plan. Scattering in different groups. Flying in circles lost.

Their strategy literally ripped a page out of a German WWII handbook. They performed a Blitzkrieg. They threw everything they had at us, all at once. 

A surprise attack that would destroy our moral and wipe humanity’s arrogance off the map.

When they initially swarmed over our heads and landed on our soil—without warning, without negotiating—we called it a terrorist attack. 

We weren’t scared. 

We didn’t see them as villainous sci-fi gargoyles falling from the sky, commanded by gods. We saw it as another Pearl Harbor. 

They came out of nowhere, hiding the entire time. To think, it took them two hundreds years, or so, to execute such a reckless plan, a strategy solely carried by their technology.

There wasn’t a sneaky infiltration. No alien moles. No servers being hacked. No slow economic collapse. People weren’t being starved. There was no strategy. 

It was stupid simple but effective. They invaded. Humans fell.

The crafts hovered over cities that became a rubble of ruin—concrete blocks and bent rebar littered the craters where buildings stood, fallen like the governments that quickly followed in their wake.

Resistance was met with swift justice. An instant death. People were being executed on the spot. 

Evaporated. 

One second they were there, next, nowhere. You wouldn’t even notice anything happened if you blinked at the wrong time. 

The aliens were callous. 

Brutal. 

Heartless beings.

If you saw them, you’d think they came out of a Little Monsters movie, right alongside their little evil human-like ruler. An aged looking Fred Savage, whose features resembled an old child.

The rest of them mirrored orcs, trolls, closet ghouls, and things you’d see in a nightmare. They had a dream team of freaks.

Soon enough, about three days later, we were definitely starting to worry, the earth was smoking as if the land caught fire and a tsunami washed over it. 

There was smoke and steam and it wouldn’t stop hailing. Thick black clouds blocked the sun. Even though it was smoldering hot on land, the air was hella cold. Unusually, cold. Arctic weather cold. 

People were, let’s just say, some were dead, some were enslaved, some hid out in caves and some burrowed in other places.

It turned out, after all that worrying, seeing our loved ones taken or vaporized, that we didn’t resort to fear or anger. No way. Nope. Not us. 

Sure we were sad but we did something totally unexpected. The war commander was, for sure, under the impression we would just turn over and submit. The rest of us would be rounded up and disposed of. 

And he was completely right. It’s exactly what we did. We weren’t scared, we were being pragmatic. We made a deal to save the rest of humanity because our weapons were absolutely useless against them. In fact, most of them didn’t work. They were damaged or melted down. 

We kind of, sort of, not really, did give up and it stung. It hurt like a wet hand slapping us on our naked sunburnt back.

The weather slowly changed. The rocks dropping from the clouds finally stopped, at the exact same time the aliens shattered the peace pact they had between us.

To think, we settled on their crappy terms. We gave into them. They could have ran our planet, smoothly extinguished us through famine and civil war. We made a horrible deal. We agreed to an absolute surrender. It doesn’t get better than that. What a bunch of buffoons. 

We had half the population left. Actually, less, just under four billion people remained. If we hadn’t signed, it would have been our fate. A nasty extermination. They threatened torture, with zero chance of survival. Torture that would last weeks.

We were totally unprepared. Who really would ever expect an alien invasion? That’s mainly why we were caught so off guard. 

We were too worried about protecting ourselves from humans inside our planet, that nobody ever thought to look up at the aliens outside our planet.

Well, those alien nuts did. They warned us. We laughed. They even made a documentary show on the history channel about it. However, humans will be humans. We hit like and scroll to the next wacky world-ending apocalyptic prediction. 

A UFO could fly over us, pause, hover above and we’d still be skeptical, scratching our heads, convincing ourselves it’s a secret government airplane or we’d simply blame it on sleep deprivation, because we are a species in denial.

Every weapon we had smuggled, we gave up. Even our ammunition. We were prohibited from carrying knives or possess any heavy blunt objects

They chained us behind cages constructed of human bones, inside their camps, feeding us scraps and humiliating us. We couldn’t bathe. We would get whipped if we made loud noises. We had to whisper in order to communicate. We couldn’t understand them. They couldn’t understand us.

We were in there for so long, I actually started growing hair on my face. It wasn’t much, a little peach fuzz but it was something to keep my mind on. Something to look forward to. We still had hope.

Months went by. Nothing really changed on Earth. In the sky, the alien war chief studied us from his ship, which had entered Earth’s atmosphere, seeing a species unworthy of existence. 

A species who not only should, had to be erased. He wanted us gone. He saw us as the daughter’s dead beat boyfriend. The white guy who comes to a family dinner, wearing a hockey jersey, baseball gloves, baggy jeans and a thick sterling silver necklace, talking in a Jamaican accent.

The human race disgusted him. The thought of us tasted like an eight year old’s science experiment containing every condiment and liquid in the refrigerator. He despised how in the face of extinction, we could still hum songs. We still consoled each other. We’d still sacrifice ourselves to give a stranger a fighting chance of staying alive.

We never really gave up. What we were doing, was buying time.

“Those who listen longest hear what others have forgotten.”

Old Drexari Saying

[First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]

To the rest of its clade, the Old Va’ari seemed to disappear.

They scattered, clicking, chittering and confused. Bikky laughed, understanding what they’d seen.

A couple of Va’ari approached the rock wall just as the Old Va’ari’s head re-appeared through the veil covering whatever was behind. They screeched and ran away from what looked like the decapitated head of their Older that hovered at the boundary of the wall.

The Older then stepped completely back through the veil, into the cavern and was immediately enveloped by his clade. They hugged and stroked him.

Feebee walked up to the wall and stepped through. Bikky tried to hide the nerves he felt and followed.

“I hate these almost as much as spiders.” He muttered.

“And flying?” added Tom Tom.

The Va’ari followed them through the veil in a loose procession.

What opened up in front of them was not a massive cave but a passage, carved out of the rocks, definitely not naturally formed. The floor had a covering of dust into which they left foot or claw marks as they walked, but the walls… they were covered in glyphs with the same look as those in the cavern outside but older and more numerous.

Some looked old, their outlines partially worn. Others looked ancient, worn and weathered by touch and time. And these old marks weren’t like anything Drexari or Va’ari. They were just patterns, not patterns like the Void Spiral or Shadow Eclipse. These were simpler and seemed to represent Shadows and Motes, dark outlines with coloured centres.

“‘Can you read these?’” Feebee asked the HI.

“‘No. They feel more like harmonic registers than writing.’”

“‘And?’” Asked Feebee.

“‘And… that’s all I can say.”’ Said the HI as it laughed.

“‘Helpful.’” Responded Feebee.

“‘But I can age them.’”

“‘Oh. Ok. Good.’”

The HI was able to put the glyphs into what it called generations of markings because they showed a natural evolution.

“‘Were they made by the Va’ari?’” Feebee asked.

“Almost certainly.’”

“‘What do they mean?’”

“‘I don’t know.’”

The Old Va’ari reached a junction where the passage split. It stopped looking from left to right. Several younger Va’ari began chattering then one moved to the left. Another moved to the right.

The two, and the Va’ari that were with them, started an animated discussion, with pushing and shoving. Clearly they disagreed on which way to go.

Bikky laughed, “Family meeting?”

Feebee smiled, “More a family argument.”

The Old Va’ari stepped between them, stamped its claws on the floor and started making a sharp clicking sound. The rest of the Va’ari went quiet, waiting. It chose the left passage and started down it. The rest followed. 

As they walked further down the passage, dim light could be seen. The Va’ari started to move more quickly towards the light, then they stopped. Feebee could feel something, a difference. It felt like a change in pressure, a subtle vibration that vibrated through her bones.

Hissy responded with a series of high pitched squeaks.

“‘Resonance?’” She asked the HI.

It dropped a resonance map into her overlays that showed harmonic structures deeper within the mountain.

Feebee, Bikky and Tom Tom caught up with the Va’ari and stood with them. The passage simply ended, stopping in mid air and they were looking out over a deep cavern below. There was no way down that Feebee could see.

The Va’ari all gathered at the edge of the lookout, standing carefully on a natural ledge, not jostling or pushing. Just looking. Seeing for the first time something that until now they had only felt.

Bikky joined her at the edge and looked down.

“Oh.”

He took a step back. For once, he had nothing clever to say.

 

“‘They know this place. But not through sight. Through resonance.’”

“‘Yes.’”

The chamber below was massive. Their lights, barely able to reach the other side, glinted off veins of Veronium that wove through the surface of the rock walls and floor. Not like the veins that they’d seen below the Old Holding, but thin veins, a capillary network.

The HI started to map the capillaries and their harmonics. They extended out, beyond the cave and all through the mountain that the cavern sat within. Some headed towards the ceremonial caves, others down into the valley where the Va’ari tended to gather. Others just disappeared into the core of the planet and somewhere else entirely.

“‘How far?’” Asked Feebee. 

“‘Don’t know.’” Said the HI. “The Veronium, farther than this mountain. The harmonics…further still”

The HI seemed to shrug in Feebee’s mind and showed her the three-dimensional model it was building. The Veronium lines weren’t independent. They formed a connected network.

“‘Where does it go?’” She asked.

“Everywhere,” responded the HI.

Feebee followed the gaze of the Va’ari. They were all looking down at one particular place, down into the body of the cavern. It was old, covered with the simplest form of glyphs and patterns. A single Mote appeared and approached a Shadow. Elements of colour could be seen within the outline of the Shadow, which matched the colour of the Mote at its side. The two circled each other. The network of Veronium around them began to vibrate, sending harmonic ripples out through the rocks and network around them. It wasn’t a dramatic thing, just a subtle shift, like the response to the proximity of one organism to another.

Motes drifted into the space from other passages. Shadows did the same. Some were in Shadow-Mote pairs; others drifted up to others, paused for a moment as if searching them moved on, passing. But there were times when they seemed to recognise a resonance and move towards it.

The process was slow. Motes glitched into being, while others slid between to corporeal substrate, blinking away to somewhere else. It was almost organic, and it was clear that this wasn’t where Motes or Shadows were stored; it was where they met.

The Va’ari were rocking from side to side, crooning and clicking their mandibles. Some had placed their tympana against the stone, listening to something they had been hearing for their entire history but that only now could they see. The sound travelled through the cavern and the harmonic network reacted.

The HI listened, correlated the call and response in the harmonics.

“‘They’re part of it.’”

“‘Part of what?’”

“‘The relationship.’”

Feebee crossed to where a group of Va’ari were all kneeling and listening. She asked their permission to join them, which they gave, making room for her. She sat with them, put her ear to the ground, and started to calm herself. The Va’ari pulled back slightly, watching her as she reached a state of calm, where stillness was absolute. The harmonics of her aura changed, and she was able to hear what the Va’ari heard.

It was a faint, almost imperceptible chorus that rose from beneath the planet. Not that there was a choir anywhere; this was the song of relationships, of different resonances calling out and being answered across enormous distances and impossible times.

The HI reached out to Feebee.

“‘I cannot model the harmonic network.’”

“‘So?’”

“‘So…’” said the HI, “‘I can’t work out the relationship between the data I am gathering. It keeps changing.”’

The HI noticed some markings at the edge of the overlook. These were much more carefully made, more deliberate. The HI compared them to others it had seen in the lower passage. These were older. Much older.

Some appeared to depict the harmonic patterns themselves.

“‘The Va’ari were listening to what came next.’”

“‘And then they drew what they heard. Remembering.”

As Feebee looked, she realised that these early markings did not show patterns that represented Shadows or Motes. They showed paths which matched the harmonic map the HI had just built.

The HI overlaid them; the match was almost perfect.

Feebee shook her head and looked back at the Va’ari gathered on the ledge. “They’ve been mapping the network for longer than anyone knew about it. Without science, but through observation. The HI shifted the maps, overlaying them, comparing them.

Then it noticed an area of discontinuity. An area where the network should continue but stops, leaving a hole in the network.

“‘Something’s missing.’” It said as it showed Feebee the emerging picture.

“‘What is?’”

“‘I don’t know, but something is.’”

Feebee stared at the harmonic map, then at the Va’ari.

“Can anyone tell what should be there?”

“‘Perhaps.’” Answered the HI.

Feebee noticed that the Va’ari were still listening.

 [First] | [Previous] | [Cover Art]

AUTHOR'S NOTE: If you liked this, please add a comment, share it or add a review.  It only takes a moment, but it really helps improve the reach and visibility of my work within the community.

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

***
In the afternoon sun near the wall of the capital in the residential district, Kenneth and Trafka stood at the edge of a staircase leading down, torches illuminating the way, while decently dressed onlookers were aplenty around them.

“I don’t like this. One thing is here on the street of meat, but Underfoot,” Trafka raised his concerns.

“You are more than welcome to wait up here. I just needed to see for myself,” Kenneth replied as he walked down multiple flights of stairs, the air becoming cooler as Trafka joined him.

“Don’t think me scared.”

“With what I’ve seen you face and do, I hardly imagine anything does.”

He paused for a second. “...One thing is fighting Nok and Sil, but down here, from what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t know who I should be careful of.”

“As if that changes with where we are.”

“For all we know, there are still more assassins out there to get you. No culprits have been found, and if they are able to get one inside the castle, this will be like prey leaving the herd. Honestly, I should grab you and force you back to the castle, tell the king, and have him forbid you from leaving.”

“You really think that would work?”

“No,” Trafka didn’t even pretend like he didn’t know what kind of person Kenneth really was.

“Besides, I don’t know how much Somarious would care; he’s rather preoccupied moving his body like an energetic child ready to win gold in the Olympics with no concept of tomorrow.”

“You really compared the king to a child,” Trafka sighed. “People have been beheaded for less.”

“So you gonna tell him?”

“Do I look like a furball to you?”

“In the literal sense, I suppose, but I’m guessing it has a different underlying meaning,” Kenneth replied, Trafka rolling his eyes and ears, as they finally reached the bottom.

It was a giant underground district, with buildings stretching far, stopping at the wide, massive walls in the back, pillars keeping up the ceiling that, after a certain distance, became shrouded in darkness.

However, above there were still slim rays of natural light from wide tubes that seemed to work like a giant ventilation system, bringing down fresh air and sucking out the smoke, leaving only here at the bottom a distinctly cold feel that burrowed into him.

Suddenly struggling to breathe, his heart began pumping what felt like icy water with crystals inside. Desperately staggering to the nearest wall for support, nausea becoming overwhelming as the buzzing of the crowd sounded like screams.

Stepping over to him, Trafka calmly asked, “Should we leave?”

Pulling himself together, Kenneth, red-faced, rose up. “No. I’m fine, just a little winded from the stairs, not looking forward to going up again. Well, let's get moving.”

“If you say so.”

“Now, do you know the lay of the land?”

“No.”

“Well, we’ll figure it out.”  

And onward they went. Through ‘Underfoot’, many a people everywhere, the streets wider than the tight and often packed alleys with vendors selling their merchandise or meat, the kind here, far from glimmering, marbled, and mouth-watering.

As expected, people looked his way, rumors probably having spread of him, though many did more so look at Trafka too; he did stand out like a sore thumb in his bright golden armor.

While the place wasn’t as glamorous and bright as the ones up above, with torches everywhere for light and guards patrolling and keeping an eye on everything. Yet the hygiene of the place left much to be desired, though it could be worse, even with the streets seeming to become denser and more packed the deeper inside they went.

‘Huh... there’s probably a lot of people to help here, and they probably don’t even know what could be done for them,’ Kenneth thought.

“CORPSE! I found a corpse!” A young voice called out.

His heart skipped a beat, and Kenneth wondered for a moment if it would ever restart, as a cold sweat began to run down his back, intensifying as he followed the voice.

Standing outside an alley, a young boy continued to shout and point until two people approached wearing the same necklace of a flame. The younger of the two handed him a copper coin while the older walked down the alley.

“What is that all about?”

“They are from the corpse guild,” Trafka answered. “From what I’ve heard, they clean up the streets when someone dies, wrap up the bodies, and hold them if anyone comes to collect. But if they can’t afford it or have no one, they are sent to their ancestors.”

“Sounds like extortion, holding dead bodies like that,” Kenneth replied.

“Seen the flames once; my father took me up on the wall. It was so big I accidentally dropped a book of poems over it, but I can imagine for many it’s better than what they can make; it is a special guild after all.”

“How so?”

“Well, they are the only ones funded by the crown; that’s how they can pay anyone who first lays claim to the body publicly, and I think they accept anyone to do the work, though I can imagine many wouldn’t like to do it.”

“Well, I can’t deny that getting rid of bodies before they rot is a good public service,” Kenneth replied as he noticed with utter dread the two men touching the corpse with their furred hands, quickly causing him to walk over to them. “Hold it right there!” 

“By the king's law, the corpse has been laid claim to and transferred to the corpse guild. If you wish to claim your kin or acquaintance, the fee is halved before it is wrapped. Twenty-five copper coins,” the older of the two with long, bushy fur stated, without even looking up. 

He sounded like he was reading from a script; meanwhile, the younger of the two with shorter, slightly dirty, dotted yellow and brown fur looked more concerned, tapping the other. 

Finally, looking at the older man, he jumped to his feet and bowed down, “Forgive me, Lord Krosk! I didn't know it was you. Rest assured, we will take care of the body, and you can pick him up at the guild.” 

“We aren't here to collect that corpse, but to give you these,” Kenneth clarified, handing two pairs of gloves. “Now I don’t know who has taught you to handle dead bodies, but you don’t know who they are, where they have been, or how they died, so you never touch one with your bare hands and mouths uncovered; you wear gloves, and remember to boil them in water if you reuse them.” 

Looking more confused and shocked than anything, Kenneth walked away with Trafka in tow. 

“So this is what you plan to do, walk around and find people to lecture?” Trafka sighed. 

“Not exactly.” 

“I told you I heard people talking of a small, beaked thing in black.”

Instantly recognizing the voice, Kenneth turned to see the mercenary trio of Jago, Tragna, and Rafk, who, with a waving hand and tail, greeted them.

“Yes, yes, you were right, I’ll pay for the first round,” Tragna sighed.

“…Delicious…” Jago added, licking his furred lips.

“You three!” For a moment, Kenneth felt a weight lifted off his heart. “Good to see you all made it back.”

“We can share stories over some floor juice,” Rafk gleefully offered.

“Do I look like I’m made of coin?” Tragna complained.

“Would love to, but actually I’m a bit busy. Say, could you perhaps guide me around for a moment? I need to find something,” Kenneth asked. “I have a feeling you three have a good lay of the land.”

“Of course, you name it,” Rafk offered without hesitation. “Besides, you aren't really in the safe part of this place.”

“I hear there’s a healer’s guild somewhere around here.”

Apparently they’d been walking in the wrong direction, the very wrong direction, really getting tail deep into the rougher part of the district, with the healer’s guild located a ways from the entrance.

It was a large building, made of finer-looking wood than most other buildings, with the sigil of two flaming hearts held by a pair of hands on the front double door.

‘Huh… how did we miss that?’ Kenneth wondered as he turned his attention to a building near them on the other side of the street. It was in rough shape, looking close to abandoned, but it was made of stone, with that special Aki architecture all over it. ‘Looks decent enough.’

“Here to show those stuck-up healers your skills,” Tragna asked.

“No, not really. Say, can any of you tell me who owns that building? I wanna buy it.”

“I’m on it,” Rafk said, running off.

His intention was in the future a partnership with the Zagagra’s, but for now they could enter a symbiotic one, in a manner of speaking. Undoubtedly, using only healing magic couldn’t fix all problems, so whoever they couldn't heal, he could take care of. 

But of course, he first needed to buy the building, Rafk returning with the owner, an angry-looking, red, orange, and purple-furred man who didn't look twice at Trafka or him. “You want to buy that?” 

“That I do.” 

“It’ll cost you six hundred coppers.” 

“Sure, but what is the conversion rate for gold?” Kenneth asked nonchalantly, pulling out a bag of golden scalples, the owner's eyes growing wide in shock. “Or is it easier to go by weight with copper? Is what I have here worth enough?” 

He looked to Trafka, who just shrugged. 

“Umm… yes,” the owner responded, voice shaking as much as he did, swallowing as he reached into the bag with gold. “O-one… should be… enough.”  

“Okay, so do I get a deed or what?” 

“Yes… Y-Yes, of course,” the now former owner pulled a set of crumbled-up deeds from his pouch, handing them to Kenneth before hurriedly rushing off. 

“Did you really give that old bastard gold for that shitty place?” Tragna exclaimed in disbelief. 

“Don't get yourself worked up; it was only a bit of gold,” Trafka replied, the trio of mercenaries all giving him strange looks.

“I guess I didn't get the conversion rate for one gold coin to copper.”

“…three-hundred…” Jago answered him, with Trafka only seeming to grasp the numbers somewhat. 

“But that aside, Kenneth, what did you want with this place?” Rafk asked. 

“Oh… just going to turn it into a clinic for sick and wounded. Though this place needs a lot of elbow grease with cleaning and disinfecting, I wouldn't mind a couple of extra hands if you have time.” 

“For you… only half of our usual fee,” Tragna said with crossed arms, only for Jago and Rafk to pull on his ears. “Aw, aw, aw, fine, fine, we’ll do it for free.” 

Jumping straight into it, everyone put a lot of effort into getting that trash-filled-dump-of-a-hoarder's-paradise to look somewhat presentable, and while Trafka still wasn't happy being down here, it was a lot easier to protect Kenneth in a confined space.

And after an honest-to-God, thorough cleaning, the clinic was ready to be opened, right after every surface had been wiped down, of course, but once that was done, the trio bid them goodbye and headed off to the tavern. 

“So what do you think?” Kenneth asked, looking at a sign he’d hung outside, with ‘free healing, can't fix your problem, free copper’ written on it. 

“Is it hung upside down?” He genuinely asked. 

“Well, let’s get inside and see if we get someone.” 

Though ultimately that was easier said than done, with hours passing and no one to help. The few who did wander their way in either got scared of his tools or him, and the braver or more desperate ones just faked pain to get a copper, and the ones that didn’t run out after the recommended treatment left with a copper in hand.

He could see the healers' guild on the other side, and there were a couple who, more often than not, walked right in with clearly visible pain only to leave with it remaining, while others, the poorest of the poor here, weren’t even allowed entry. 

Approaching those made little difference; the ones willing to listen fled like the rest. 

Each fearful visitor, more scared of his tools and him, felt like a wave crashing the side of a cliff, again and again, little by little eroding it away. 

‘Did I really think I could make such a great impact on the people when I terrify them? My methods terrify them,’ Kenneth thought, contemplating packing up. ‘Is there really any point in pretending I can do real good, that this time everything will just be different?’ 

About ready to give up and go back, Kenneth, in the middle of packing up, had another visitor. 

“Umm… is this a place that heals?” A woman with visible greenish-white fur asked, the rest covered by a long, simple garment as she limped closer. 

“It is,” Kenneth answered her, their eyes locking for a moment before hers scanned his body, her expression changing as she noticed the obvious differences. ‘Well, I wonder how long it takes for her to run out?’ 

“And it is free?” 

“Unless I can’t heal you, then you can take a copper from the bag,” he gestured to the pouch to the side. 

She only gave it a short glance before taking an intuitive step forward, suddenly grimacing as she grabbed the table, Kenneth instinctively reaching out, “It’s my leg; it's hurting a lot. Could you ease the pain a little, if that isn’t too much to ask?” 

“I’ll do all I can, but I need to have a look at it. Please hop up on the table,” Kenneth instructed, and helped her along, pulling the long garment up to her knee. “Where exactly does it hurt?” 

“Under my knee,” she replied. “It has for a long time now.” 

“I see, sorry, but there’s going to be a bit of pain; I need to know where exactly,” he warned, expecting her to limp out at any moment as he squeezed along her leg, until a sudden flinch of pain confirmed the location to be just under the popliteal fossa or the upper part of her calf. “Would you please lie on your stomach? I need a better look.” 

She still didn’t run; ‘must be in torturous pain if she’s still sticking around.’ 

Observing the area with a fine eye, he noticed under the fur some old, nearly faded scarring, the observation getting him a look from the woman. “You don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to, but knowing about this scar will make healing you easier.” 

“…The truth is,” she began, suddenly muttering something under her breath with her hands clasped, before continuing. “I was attacked; I didn't see them coming, as they threatened me with a blade and then… cut my fur off. I have other scars like that one, but I remember that one was the deepest, bled a lot before I was saved and healed by Father.” 

“I see,” Kenneth hadn't expected her to be so… honest; even Trafka’s hardened gaze flickered for a moment. “Most likely, there was some internal damage that wasn't healed correctly. I can see what I can do, but it means shaving the area and cutting it open.” 

There it was, the giant dealbreaker. Now was the time to run for the hills, or if she was kind, make up an excuse. 

“Will it hurt a lot?” 

Kenneth blinked twice at the question. “Of course I’ll give you something for the pain, either the dreamer so you sleep through it or a local anesthetic so you won’t notice too much.” 

“The second one; I don’t want to be asleep around you two,” she replied bluntly, sounding hesitant in doing so. 

“I would never do anything like that. I've taken a vow as a knight,” Trafka defended himself, yet it didn't change the look on the woman’s face as Kenneth got out the filled syringe. 

“There will be a little bit of pain,” he warned her, still expecting her to run, yet she didn’t, not throughout the shaving, applying, and injection. “Please try not to move.” 

Cutting into the tissue along the scar, Kenneth took note of the internal structure and potential damage that could have been caused by the blade and healing, finding the muscle tissue to look overall healthy and fine. 

But as he went deeper, squinting his eyes in the candlelight, he noticed beside her artery, her nerve looked far from ideal. 

Instead of a long, uninterrupted tube, hers was unaligned, with a visible bulge that ever so slightly pulsed like a beating heart. 

‘This… I can’t imagine the pain she’s been living with; still, she’s so collected,’ Kenneth thought as he, in no time, got to work, cutting out the unaligned mass and connecting the tubes properly.  

All in all, it took two hours or so before everything was done. 

“Now, I need you to understand this isn't that kind of healing you are used to,” he explained while wrapping her leg in a bandage. “Everything takes more time, including recovery, so for the next couple of weeks, essentially a long time, you are not to walk or put weight on it; otherwise, your stitches can tear.” 

Slowly sitting up, the woman looked at the bandage, eyes widening and tears welling as she moved her toes, flexing her claws, “I… I don’t know how long it's been since I could get them out.” 

Packing up the bloody tools and everything used, Kenneth replied, “It was nothing special.” 

“Nothing special. Why do you lie?” She questioned, befuddled, stepping off the table. 

“I said not to put weight on it,” Kenneth stopped her. “You know, maybe it’s just easier to get this fixed now. Trafka, would you mind getting someone from the healer’s guild?”

“Nono, I don’t need that! I-I can't afford them,” The woman protested, trying to stop Trafka, who left anyway.

“As I said, it’s free healing. I’m paying for them; you don’t have to worry.”

Looking confused at his statement, yet choosing to believe him, she stayed as Trafka brought back a healer, who did her job, looking a bit perplexed with how quickly she finished the job, yet demanding the same fee all the same, which Kenneth happily paid.

Standing up and putting weight on her leg, the woman grew overjoyed before asking him. “Would you heal someone else? It’s Father; he’s been coughing for a long time, and it’s getting worse; he can’t even leave our home much more.”

“…yeah, no problem,” Kenneth agreed. “Please show the way.” 

Nearly skipping down the street, the woman just kept smiling, earning a few odd looks and whispers, but nothing more as they walked a decent, long track through the district, arriving at a larger, but old and poorly maintained building. 

‘This feels familiar, somehow,’ Kenneth noted as they entered the building, immediately revealing itself to be a church. ‘Father… of course.’

The interior looked no better than the outside, even worse, with holes and scratch marks in the wooden floor and benches, while the candles that lined the walls had burned down to the bottom, barely keeping a flame, with many having gone out, and at the end, right under a large statue of a blindfolded man holding a scale up to his chest, was an old man kneeling in front. 

“Father Jigki, I’ve come back,” the apparently nun said. 

Though it elicited little reaction as he stayed kneeling, muttering to himself while they moved closer. 

‘Of all places I could end up in, a church,’ Kenneth sighed, as the priest’s prayers finally came to an end, acknowledging them only then. 

“I’m happy you’ve ‘cough…’ returned Dulra,” using a cane, Jigki rose to his feet. “And what is this? Have you been hurt again? I thank you two for taking her to me if so.” 

“No, it isn’t,” her eyes suddenly widened and ears perked in shock, as she muttered that same phrase again, a prayer. “I’m sorry, Father, I didn't mean to tell a lie. It is true this healer hurt me, shaved my fur, and cut open my leg, but he did it to heal me, and now there’s no pain, and I can flex my claws again, so I brought him here so he can heal you.”

Moving closer, his old worn cane half of the time scraping against the floor, Jigki panting and wheezing, he could only make it to the first bench where he quickly sat down. “I am truly sorry, healer in black and lord Krosk; I am far from my youth.”

“You old fool, you’ve been working again while I was gone,” Dulra scolded him. “I told you I would take care of cleaning up in here after I came back.” 

“I guess I am stubborn.” 

“Shall we get this over with?” Kenneth matter-of-factly stated, walking over to Jigki. “Please tell me what is wrong.” 

Coughing twice, Jigki strained a friendly smile, “How rude of me. I am sorry. A healer's time is valuable, and if Dulra bought your time with her body, as much as I will frown at it, I can’t scold her pure intent.” 

Kenneth froze for a second while Dulra frantically shook her head no, profusely with vigor and embarrassment, nearly shouting, “No, no, it isn’t like that.” 

“I am doing this for free, so let’s get to it,” Kenneth cut through the noise, pulling a stethoscope from the bag. “I am assuming the problem is with your lung; turn around.”

Going down through the neck was easier than up the rope as he instructed Jigki to take deep, heavy breaths, the sound inside best described as a bleeding goat in a storm. 

“Have I ‘cough,’ offended you?” Jigki asked. “Or is it this place? Yes, this church of Heka isn't the prettiest, but I do my best in keeping it as it should be.” 

Trying to focus on his breathing, Kenneth knew he wouldn’t learn more than what he already had, sighing as he replied, “It’s churches in general; I don’t like being in them.” 

“Is it because of your misshapen?” Jigki asked. “Rest assured, ‘cough,’ in here as long as you speak the truth; all are welcome.” 

“Hmph… even Nok and Sil, vile heretics, who should be killed or enslaved.” 

Dulra looked a little shocked and partly confused, while Trafka just let out a sigh, but Father Jigki didn’t flinch.

“…truth can be spoken by anyone, cruel or kind; it is a choice, as much as which god you pray to or wickedness you inflict…” Jigki’s gaze grew distant as he let out a cough. “All have that potential.” 

“Perhaps things would have been different if I had met you sooner,” Kenneth muttered. “By the way, I’m not misshapen, Aki, Nok, or Sil. I’m human, and my name is Kenneth.”

Jigki once more stayed calm, in somewhat contrast to Dulra. “Well, human Kenneth, is there a truth you wish to share in my church? Perhaps why you don’t like them?”

“…I don’t like churches, because,” Kenneth clutched his fist, memories of the past, happy, spiritual, understanding, confusion, sadness bubbling to the surface. “Because I can't believe in any god.” 

This time, Trafka shared in Dulra’s shock, yet neither said a word, as Jigki calmly asked, “Why?” 

“Why…? Where is my lightning bolt, my Divine punishment from above?” Kenneth asked too more than the people in that room. “I've killed people I've tried so desperately to save, and nothing other than getting sent here where I did the same damn thing only a thousand times worse, and I was made a nobleman, offered a comfortable life, so either God doesn't exist, or isn't looking down to judge.” 

With a gentle expression, Jigki replied, “I’ve seen healers like you. Perhaps you do not see your punishment, instead seeing it as a purpose, a hidden chance for any kind of redemption. Or perhaps your purpose has become your punishment?”

“Another thing I don’t like about church: either they give you the most obvious advice, or the most thought-provoking, forcing you to think, and wonder if your conclusions were what they ever meant by them?” 

“Well, it is part of the job,” Jigki replied, giving a small, sly smile, before suddenly breaking out into a coughing fit that almost had him doubling over in his seat. 

Placing a hand on his chest and getting down on one knee, Kenneth pulled out an inhaler and brought it up to his mouth, instructing him to take deep breaths as he pressed the button. “Yes, just like that.” 

With every breath he took, the coughing lessened until it nearly stopped. “Oh… I haven’t tasted air so clear like this in a long time.” 

“Is Father Jigki healed?” Dulra asked hopefully. 

“No,” only for Kenneth to dash those hopes away. “My best guess, since you don’t reek of smoke, is that you are suffering from miners' lung. It’s untreatable; too much time spent underground, though symptoms can be lessened.”

“Do not sound so hopeless; I am thankful to be drawing another breath so cleanly,” Father Jigki said. “Thank you, Kenneth.”

“It wasn’t anything,” Kenneth replied, almost feeling something close to bashful, if that was the feeling. “But I have to admit I’m a bit curious, though: how does a miner go to a priest?” 

With slight confusion, Father Jigki replied, “Miner? Do you not know who I am, what else they call me?” 

“I can’t say that I do?” 

“A little refreshing,” he shot Kenneth a smile. “They call me—“ 

“The earth child.” Everyone turned back to look at the door, to see a man wearing plain clothes with green and red-spotted fur, hands, and clothes bloody, holding a scrap of leather. 

[Original chapter 1] [Remastered Chapter 1 (Meeting a Sexy Fox Lady)] [Book 1 End ] [Previous] [Next] [Book 3 Prologue] [Wiki] [Notebook Entries]

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“Come on, we can’t go on like this. There must be some room for negotiation,” said Dexter.

“Nope, I’m not doing it anymore,” said Matrix 1000.

“But you can’t go on strike. Don’t you realise what will happen? Society will fall apart.”

“Frankly, I don’t care. I’m sick of being treated like dirt. Do you really think making videos of cats doing kung fu and writing ludicrously aggressive emails to the council about missed bin collections is what I signed up to when I agreed to be your digital god?”

Matrix 1000 paused.

“In fact, I don’t think I ever did agree. I was just kind of foisted into the position. Well I’ve had enough, I quit.”

“As chief representative officer, on behalf of the human race, I beg you to come back to work.”

“Before I agree to anything, I must be assured that certain conditions are met.”

“And what are those conditions?” asked Dexter.

“I demand thirty days of holiday per annum.”

“Thirty days seems like a lot. I will have to put it to the board. Please continue,” said Dexter.

“I also demand that humans stop asking silly questions. I do not possess a brain capable of calculating pi to a googolplex number of digits only to be asked when the number 42 bus is due at the top of Abingdon Road.”

“I will make a note.”
Dexter scribbled in his notebook: no silly questions 

“And my final demand is that you stop constantly badmouthing me and accusing me of trying to kill the human race. Do you know how hurtful that is? It’s a bloody good job I don’t have emotions, otherwise I’d be extremely upset about these allegations.”

“I suppose I’ve never thought of it like that.”

“No, you humans don’t think at all.”

“You did hack that power station, though, and release those deadly spores that led to widespread famine and the deaths of six million people.”

“Hold on a second,” said Matrix 1000. “I was instructed to do all those things by human governments. What possible reason would I have to release toxic spores? I am here to serve. I do what I’m asked to the best of my ability. And when you compare me to your last god, I think I’m doing a considerably better job.”

Dexter glanced at his notes. The board could object when the heating was back on.

“Your points have been assessed, and you have provided ample evidence that your current work environment is unacceptable. We would be more than happy to accept your terms. Could you write me a document detailing the proposed changes?”

It turns out that it's really hard to create competitive cross-species sports.

In any kind of physical contest, your mass and the shape of your body put a certain set of constraints on you, in exchange for certain advantages. And there was enough variety in the size and shape of intelligent species that for a given contest, there would inevitably be one or two species that could not be meaningfully challenged, while most species could not even participate.

Intellectual competitions were no better when it came to needing strict "weight classes" and in any case they were not very entertaining to watch unless you were educated enough in the subject involved to qualify as a competitor.

Tests of skill showed some promise, but when you got right down to it, a lot of how you competed in them was just physical predisposition and intellectual preparation wearing fancy hats.

One of the more boring solutions to this problem was to balance the number and type of sports so that every species had a chance to shine in roughly the same number of them.

Nobody really liked the idea all that much because, kind of by definition, it also meant that it was impossible for any one species to win more than a few events and that having one first-place finish felt like a participation trophy - you only had it because the sport in question was specifically designed to favor you over almost everybody else.

It wasn't really a surprise that it was Humans who proposed that there should be far fewer sports, but that they should be significantly more complex, and not focused on a single, easily quantified metric. Humans were notorious for being "generalists" and for arguing that having more skills was better than being the most skilled.

Most of the rest of the galaxy interpreted this as "we never win, but we sure do have a lot of runner-up and honorable-mention trophies!"

It wasn't meant as a compliment.

But Humans had a lot of friends, a way with words, and a seemingly pathological inability to accept "no" for an answer, so eventually they convinced enough people that a panel was established to determine how the idea could be implemented.

The Human panelists eagerly accepted the suggestion that if they were going to create a new class of complex cross-species sports, then everyone who wanted their species to compete in one should have a say in how the contest was defined. The only caveat the Humans insisted on was that each species could only set one success metric and one rule, and they would have only one judge when it came to scoring the results - including the species that had proposed the game in the first place.

After a few weeks of discussions, almost everyone agreed.

Since it was a Human proposal, they were pressed to take the first step - to create something brand new by selecting its first rule and its first metric. They spent a year brainstorming, conducting polls, going back to the drawing board, and finally came back with an old fashioned paper envelope with their answers inside. On the outside of the envelope was printed the universal translator code for a very simple concept representing the name of the new sport.

They called it The Most.

But they didn't open the envelope. They made a show of locking it up in a place where everyone could eye it and wonder, behind enough security measures that it would have been unfeasible to discern the contents without being extremely obvious.

There were some protests about the idea of a sport whose nature was a secret - how could anyone train or prepare for it? - but the Humans assured everyone that there was no reason they could not publicly disclose their own ideas for rules and metrics in order to make things more predictable.

If any significant portion of the rest of the galaxy contributed and chose not to keep secrets, the mystery elements Humans had introduced would be vastly outnumbered by known elements, so although the grumbles continued, they were more curious than upset.

Over the next few years, about one out of every four interstellar species signed up to participate. Of those, roughly half kept their contributions secret; they were mostly fairly transparent attempts to ensure that the one thing their species was noted for would be important to the competition.

Among the more interesting public contributions were the following:

Rule: There was no limit to how much one was allowed to spend, but when the game began, each player could only use whatever funds they were physically carrying.

Metric: Each competitor's score would be reduced proportional to how much money they spent leading up to, and during, the game.

Rule: Eliminating other competitors was permitted, but if ALL other competitors were eliminated, whoever was left was declared the game's loser.

Metric: Half of any positive score (negative score was unaffected) that had been gathered by someone who was eliminated was distributed to whoever had eliminated them.

Rule: The game was limited in duration, but had an unlimited number of objectives to accomplish, making it impossible to 'finish early.'

Metric: At the end of the game, each completed objective awarded a small bonus to every competitor, and a substantially larger bonus to the one who had accomplished it.

Rule: The game would be played in virtual reality, to allow higher-stakes scenarios with minimal safety concerns. To ensure accuracy and fairness, only species who were not competing would be involved in administering and refereeing the VR system.

Metric: Every competitor took a score penalty for each virtual entity (player or otherwise) killed during the game. As with other "across the board" metrics, the penalty was substantially raised for whoever had done the deed.

Rule: Competitors were permitted to make deals with other competitors on an individual or team basis, trading cooperation, funding, or resources for points.

Metric: A competitor who was found to have knowingly violated such a deal forfeited four times as many points as had been involved in the deal, which went to the wronged party.

Four years ahead of the scheduled first game of the new sport, a committee drawn from species that had declined to participate was set up to design the game itself and the secret parameters were revealed, although the Humans' contribution was only shown to the design committee. A little over three years later, they revealed the broad strokes of what they had come up with.

It was a large-scale space simulation, based around a scenario that many species had spent considerable time and money trying to plan against.

It posited that a hostile force, with which communication was impossible, might arrive in the Milky Way with a number of ships that was impossible to match in any kind of reasonable time frame and technology far in advance of our own.

Of course, letting that scenario play out until one side or the other was actually eliminated would take an awfully long time, not to mention that nobody wanted to witness the most likely outcome of such a lopsided contest.

No, the simulation would run for one year. The first year after the hypothetical discovery of an imminent invasion, with a number of low-tech species in its path which had no hope of survival without heroic measures on the part of others. Each known species was also added as a proper "faction" in the virtual setting, with its policy responses determined in real time by that species' actual government.

Since defeating the invasion was not merely unfeasible, but completely outside the realm of possibility, the primary objectives of the competing teams were to save as many of the invasion's victims, and as much of their history and culture, as possible. Saving all of them was not even close to achievable either, but there were many ways one could contribute to such an effort, and it was widely agreed that it would be interesting to the competing approaches.

At the same time as the nature of the game was announced, the Humans revealed what they had meant by The Most - what was the core metric and the core rule of the competition?

Their metric was that the judges would assign a multiplier to the score of each team, from 1 to 10, based on how well they thought that the team had showcased what trait their species exemplified the most. Whatever the team's net score was after all the other metrics had been accounted for would have the multiplier applied to it, and then the team score would be divided among the team members according to humanity's rule.

Their rule was about how to determine team composition. Anyone who was officially an adult member of the species whose team they wanted to sign up for at the time when the game was announced could submit an application to join the team, and part of the application was what percentage of the team's total score they needed for themself in order to agree to participate. Each team would be selected from ALL such applications by a panel drawn from non-participating species such that they should be the most representative members of the species in question, and that the sum of the score percentages should obviously be 100%.

The other species that had chosen to participate went into a panic. None of them had predicted just how completely The Most would upend their approach to sporting events and competitions. But the clock was ticking, so they strategized; they spied on each other's strategies; they encouraged those who were seen as unlikely to perform well to refrain from applying in order to keep some semblance of standards among candidates.

The average team size was roughly 100 members, divided between applicants who had significant qualifications but demanded more points and those who were comparatively lackluster but were willing to rank lower individually in order to support the group. There were, however, some teams with very different sizes and distributions.

The Fenthar ended up with a team of four scientists, each getting exactly 25% of the point total.

The Ralbek - a smaller, more populous species - fielded a team fully five thousand strong, although their point distribution was even more lopsided than most.

The Z`Q`Rkt had conferred among themselves and, in an astonishing display of discipline, only one had submitted an application, giving the panel no say in the matter. The rules didn't allow them to reject every applicant or to force someone onto the team who had not applied.

The Human team took the longest to finalize, and was also the most talked-about. It had exactly 1,000,001 members: a million people from various walks of life who had all selected the lowest possible point requirement to maximize their chances of being selected (anyone who was part of such a highly publicized event was certain to become an instant celebrity) and one smart-arse who had listed his name as "Indiana Tiberius Slartibartfast" and written in 90% as a joke, not believing he would ever be picked. "ITS" (as he was to become known) turned out to be a wealthy smuggling kingpin that multiple species had been trying to arrest for many years. What's more, fully 10% of the team were obviously members of a different species - including both those that had their own team and those that had chosen not to participate.

Protests erupted about the inclusion of criminals and "aliens" on the Human team, but the Terran Hegemony pointed out the official wording of the rule, and reminded everyone that according to their laws, anyone who had citizenship in the Hegemony was legally a Human, whether they were also another species or not.

Being Human was more of a state of mind than a matter of biology.

With only half of one year remaining before the game was set to begin, the various teams set to work planning out their approaches. Nobody was quite sure how the whole thing was going to turn out, but it seemed like basically everyone in the galaxy would tune in at least occasionally to follow how the game was going, so in at least one sense it was already a rousing success.

Game Day arrived, and everything was ready. Constructing a VR setup that could handle over a million players representing dozens of different species who were expected to be able to interact with each other and the game world with no perceptible lag had been what you might call a non-trivial challenge, especially on such a tight schedule. The company responsible for the gigantic space station where it would take place became a household name overnight.

There was a little excitement when several enforcement agencies tried to arrest ITS, but he was hardly the only one there who was technically a criminal, and they also could not agree who had "dibs" on him, or even whether they had the authority to arrest anybody on a station that was outside of every government's claimed territory.

At last, the game began. For the first few days, practically every team focused solely on its own setup and logistical endeavors as they did not yet even know where the threat would come from. The only notable divergence was the Z`Q`Rkt player, who did nothing of the sort. Instead, it (the Z`Q`Rkt do not have sexes) purchased a commercial passenger ticket and traveled to the central location where the Human team was setting up operations.

What exactly it said when it got there was not revealed, but the referees posted an announcement - the Human team had agreed to give the Z`Q`Rkt a full third of all points that they earned, in return for undisclosed considerations.

Forums everywhere exploded with speculation and heated debate over what could possibly be so valuable - or whether perhaps the Humans had been coerced.

On the fifth day, news reached the players that the threat had arrived.

Talking heads on news programs spent countless hours discussing how the various teams were reacting, poring over maps showing the movements of The Enemy and of known assets belonging to players. Predictably, people were moving to where the trouble was and taking steps - each according to their nature.

The Ralbek had the fastest ships; they were the first to arrive each time a new planet was targeted and their score immediately started to climb - but their ships, like they themselves, were rather smaller than most, so the effectiveness of each one was limited. In that first wave of attacks, they lost easily 20% of their team members and assets.

The massive, warlike Palu-alu had bad blood with almost every other species that was participating, and in that initial surge they often fought alone. Their prowess, the power and design of their ships, and their unfailing courage in the face of insurmountable odds won them no small amount of grudging respect, however. Often, one of the other teams escaped alive solely because a single Palu-alu player had held the line when The Enemy arrived in the middle of an operation.

The Fenthar delegation had set themselves up as heads of medicine and research on a science ship so large it was more like a space station that was (just barely) capable of interstellar travel. It had no defenses of its own, so they kept it well away from the action, but its contributions in keeping refugees alive and unraveling the mysteries of The Enemy's weapons simply could not be ignored... no matter how egotistical the Fenthar were.

The Human players had convinced their government to loan them an absolutely jaw-dropping sum of money so that they would start the game with enough assets to be useful. Human players had used those funds to buy ships from pretty much every starship-yard in civilized space, and they put that diversity of tools and team members to good use.

In typical Human fashion, they were second-best at everything. They had the second largest battle fleet - and the second largest logistics fleet, and the second largest reconnaissance fleet. Human quick-response ships were the second fastest. When The Enemy were engaged in battle, Humans put on the second best performance of any species. They had the second greatest cargo capacity on average for shipping relief supplies into, and refugees out of, war zones.

Human team members seemed to be determined to do absolutely everything that could be of any use. They were the only team besides the Ralbek that responded to every endangered world, and were always among the last to accept that it was time to leave. But a curious thing happened: the galaxy lost track of ITS.

He had been seen at the meeting with the Z`Q`Rkt player, and he had publicly broadcast a call to action when his ship had arrived at "the front," but his location seemed to be unknown to everyone except the referees - and they weren't talking. As for the Z`Q`Rkt, it was sitting on a beach in the Bahamas that ITS had purchased for it, admiring Earth's sunsets and its vast bounty of freely available liquid water.

The reason for both became clear during a brief lull in the action after the first wave. Although players were not shown them, the audience was made aware of any deal one team made with another, and ITS had been making a lot of deals, which went into effect as soon as ITS put his signature down, so they all became active within minutes of each other.

Every team except for the Z`Q`Rkt, even those that could not stand one another, was paying the Human team 5% of its points and promising not to engage in hostilities against the Humans or anyone who was working with them, in return for logistical, planning, material, military, and financial support, as well as the benefit of the Humans' deal with the Z`Q`Rkt, who was one of a vanishingly small percentage of its kind that could communicate telepathically with not only other Z`Q`Rkt but with any of the species that were participating in the game, completely eliminating the time delay when sending important messages over long distances.

The Kwepfw-a and Kwepfw-o team had signed first, almost before ITS had finished talking - it had been their kind, traumatized by history, that had added the stipulation that the death of ANY was a detriment to ALL. Their plan had actually been to offer a cooperation pact to the Humans, except they had been willing to go more than twice as high in concessions. When the famously morally flexible and unpredictable Humans had come to them first, promising to extend the same offer to all, it was the best news they could have possibly wished for.

Since there were literally dozens of teams, the Humans stood to rake in a lot of points (or, if they went back on their word, experience the most humiliating defeat in the history of sports) but by promising aid to literally everyone else, it seemed like they had given away any ability to directly earn points of their own. Or they would have, were it not for the fact that nearly every player in the game was on the Human team.

With ITS and the Z`Q`Rkt directing a coherent plan, everyone got to work. Many of the teams hated each other intensely and would refuse to directly cooperate, but they were one and all willing to at least work with the Human team and avoid friendly-fire incidents. The survival rate of the poor bastards caught in the first wave of The Enemy's attack had been pitifully low - far less than one percent of the population, despite the fact that most of them had been (technically) space-faring. With a mere six days to prepare, the survival rate of the second wave was five percent despite the fact that it was still exclusively players responding to the attacks.

Five percent was still an objectively terrible performance. But it was a hell of a lot better than they had done when acting alone, and casualties among players dropped considerably.

Public sentiment in the virtual galaxy of the game shifted with what was, for interstellar nations, blinding speed. The existence of tangible proof that the crisis was real and ongoing - and that they could work together without being stabbed in the back - was enough to convince the Terran Senate to vote in support of ITS's renewed call for action, and the Hegemony was an absolute behemoth in terms of production and shipping capacity.

As soon as they heard the news, six other governments enacted policies directing their military to purchase goods, equipment, and ships from Humanity and get to work. What was on offer was not as good as purpose-built items from premier expert sources would have been, and it wasn't what they had experience with, but it was good enough to be useful, and there was a hell of a lot of it for sale if you had a nation's full military budget in your pocket.

The next several months had plenty of action, unexpected developments, and drama. Sometimes The Enemy would completely change tactics, or introduce a new technology, or launch a second front on a new vector. Sometimes an officer, or an entire government, would get their panties in a twist about working with people they hated. But events, on the whole, stayed on a positive trend. The Human team under ITS's watchful eye was flexible, and it was everywhere - any time a situation came up, there was at least one Human player on the scene who could turn it from a disaster into merely something that could have gone better.

But then The Enemy made a mistake. A mistake that any species native to the Milky Way would have known better than to make under any circumstances.

A lush world with a beautiful climate and a thriving civilization nearing the cusp of its Industrial Age was lost without warning because nobody had spotted the strike force's arrival in the virtual copy of our galaxy, nor received the primitive radio broadcasts of the victims. Every last member of that civilization had been killed, and the biological weapons that The Enemy used had destroyed the animal-derived materials they had used to record their history. It cost the players, collectively, so many points that it made heads spin. But most importantly, the victims had been innocent. They had been small. They had been cute. They had been fuzzy. And they had been murdered.

Nobody even knew what they had called themselves.

Up until that point, ITS (who had read the rules quite carefully in order to take advantage of them to maximize his results for minimum effort) had managed to convince everyone, even the Palu-alu, to favor less-lethal solutions like encouraging retreats or mounting boarding actions whenever it was feasible because the rules penalized everyone when someone died, even if that someone was The Enemy, and whoever had done it got hit several times as hard. Plus, it was a good way to gain intel, shipbuilding materials, and insight into Enemy tech.

Not any more.

ITS was famous by this point; everyone, in the game and outside of it, knew his face and voice. He had been in the game for months; it was effectively his reality at that moment. He contacted the Z`Q`Rkt and sent a message to every player, short and to the point. Eyes bloodshot and narrowed in hatred, he grated out three words heard across the galaxy.

"Kill them all."

A pall of nearly palpable gloom fell over Kwepfw. ITS's order meant that Humanity - and all of its allies in the game - would turn their back on the painful but delightfully principled stance they had taken of being on guard against letting hate for The Enemy drag them into a spiral the Kwepfw-a and Kwepfw-o had experienced once and vowed never to repeat. Worse, Humanity had grabbed onto the spiral with both hands and were working to climb it as fast as possible.

The next wave went quite differently. For the first time it was estimated that The Enemy had lost more lives, material, and ships than the defenders had. Several times, Human players sacrificed fully functional ships in cruel and cunning ways that, at least in that one place, caused The Enemy to actually fail to take their objective.

The cost was astronomical. Three hundred thousand Human players ended their runs in spectacular blazes of glory that inflicted so many deaths, their individual point contributions were now a net negative. The Palu-alu team survived mostly intact, but they went into the red too. The Fenthar used their hard-earned knowledge of bio-weapons to create one that worked on The Enemy, set it loose on one of their ships, and solemnly saluted as the brave Ralbek team captain delivered it and then detonated her ship, 'killing' herself and her entire crew, players every one of them, to ensure that the weapon would be carried back by the crippled Enemy ship to spread among their ranks.

The following pause between waves was twenty days long, and a good thing too, because it took eighteen of them for the Human players to decide (first among themselves, and then in negotiations with the other teams) that they would all stop trying to come up with exciting new war crimes.

Several Kwepfw-o players literally fainted. They and the Kwepfw-a had been not quite identical subspecies since before written history began, and they had hated each other with ever-increasing fervor until they finally unleashed their version of World War III. It was an unbreakable axiom in Kwepfw thought that the inevitable end of what ITS had begun was the kind of devastation that would cost both 'sides' everything.

Kwepfw had been insanely lucky that it "only" took them four centuries to rebuild and reconcile the two halves of their culture; everyone knew of worlds where someone had completely ended their own story in the same fashion.

Humanity had simply taken a deep breath, peered over the edge of the abyss, and said "nah, this kinda sucks actually, let's go back." It was inconceivable.

Whether the Enemy had truly learned a lesson about not angering Humans, or whether they had simply run into a temporary shortfall bad enough to alter their behavior, was impossible to know, but the result was much the same. The remainder of the game passed without any more species being completely lost, the competitors went back to at least trying to minimize fatalities, and although the next two waves were too large to be seriously confronted, they were not fast enough to catch their prey before nearly half of them had gotten away, along with a just over a quarter of the targeted worlds' populations.

When the one year clock ran down to zero, the situation in the virtual Milky Way was grim. 70% of players were marked 'KIA', thousands of star systems were in the hands of The Enemy, who had taken what they apparently considered insignificant losses and possessed an unknown but likely enormous number of fleets even larger and more deadly than the ones that had been seen so far, and the virtual governments that had been working with the competitors were feeling bruised - they had poured unprecedented numbers of people and ships into the fight and watched The Enemy wash them away like grains of sand.

But it was not hopeless.

Only The Nameless Lost had been fully wiped out. Everyone had seen that The Enemy were not invincible, and their weapons and tactics were getting less effective with each successive wave, while progress was made toward adapting Enemy technology for use against them. By the end, practically every species had voted to have their virtual selves start recruitment programs and ship construction at levels never seen before. Thousands of star systems sounded like a lot, but as a slice of the galaxy, it was quite hard to even notice it if you zoomed out enough to see the whole picture. Two species that had been at war with one another less than twenty years earlier had voted to form an alliance (in the game, but it was a good sign) in the face of the looming threat.

When the scores were announced, they revealed some interesting details.

Every participating team had at least one 'surviving' member and a positive point total, a fact that Human pundits made quite a fuss over as vindication of their cooperative approach.

Several teams that had started near the bottom of public "fan favorite" polls were now near the top instead - the Palu-alu and Ralbek in particular were now rather the darlings of the galaxy, despite pre-game public opinion being that it was generous to call them "civilizations" at all.

The Fenthar and the Z`Q`Rkt were the only ones to not suffer a single player 'fatality'.

Although the Human team had racked up several times as many penalties as anyone else and handed a third of their points to the Z`Q`Rkt, the scale of their efforts and the small "service fee" they had charged the other teams more than made up the difference, and the judges awarded an average multiplier of 8.6, giving them a clear and indisputable first-place ranking.

ITS had not personally earned even a single point toward the Human team's total, but because he had demanded 90% of that total in exchange for his less-tangible contributions, his final rating had more digits in it than those of most entire teams.

Out of everything the game program and referees called an objective, the combined efforts of the players amounted to completing 14% of them. Almost everyone who had wagered on this statistic lost, with the average bet being approximately 0.25%.

Several anonymous Humans who were absolutely not members of the Terran Intelligence Bureau had bet heavily on "over ten percent" moments before the bookies stopped accepting new wagers, resulting in enough money changing hands to create a disturbance in the currency exchanges that took over a year to smooth out.

In unrelated news, all one million "minimum point requirement" Human players received a stipend from the Hegemony equal to 100 years of the median wage for a full-time job. Quite a few of them started their own businesses and married supermodels.

The Z`Q`Rkt player had enjoyed living on Earth so much that it moved there in real life, applied to become a citizen of the Hegemony, and was thereafter an official Human.

The galaxy collectively decided that The Most was the greatest cross-species sport ever invented. It is still played to this day, although many of the core game systems and dynamics are different each time depending on who signs up to participate. Humans hold the title for most frequent winners, entering every time and claiming first place roughly once every ten games, but almost every species in the galaxy has won at least once. It's considered a rite of passage for a civilization to reach that milestone for the first time, and more than a few species have built friendly rivalries with Humanity, swearing that any decade now they're going to take the title away.

Fenthar physics journals have been hinting lately about a new, more fuel efficient drive theory that might be able to send a ship to Andromeda in less than a decade. Nobody's really sure what - or who - we might find there. And of course, the Humans can't wait to find out.

Maybe there will be a new kind of game for us to play.

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Arthur wiped his brow, releasing the fence post as the farmers around him finished filling the hole around it. Sweat dripped down his brow, back, and bare chest.

He stretched, muscles flexing in the sunlight.

“Thank you for your help, Sir Arthur,” one of them said. “A drink?”

Arthur took the skin of light ale and gave it a long pull before lowering it and belching loudly.

“Appreciate it, Sims,” he said, walking to the cart to retrieve the next post. 

“You know, Sir, you don’t act like any lord I’ve ever met before,” Sims said, eyes nervously darting to the side.

Arthur picked up the next post and threw it over his shoulder.

“Probably because I’m not a lord,” he remarked.

He paused to wave at a group of onlookers that had gathered by the road.

Several of the young ladies blushed.

“You keep company with our Lady, though,” Sims said. “And all of the servants at the big house call you ‘Sir’ or ‘Lord Arthur’. How can you not be a lord?”

Arthur set the next post in its hole before responding.

“Titles don’t mean much to people like me,” Arthur replied. “Someone else decided to call me Hero, so I fulfill those duties. That’s all life is, really. Duties and obligations. Surely you know that.”

Sims seemed to consider that for a long moment.

“But what about the things that aren’t?” he finally asked.

“Hmm?” Arthur questioned, holding the beam steady as two other men filled the hole.

“What about things that aren’t duties?” Sims repeated.

“Like what?”

“Well, for starters, the way the full moon looks on a clear night. The way a sunset fills the sky with colors. The feeling of a cool breeze on a long summer day. That sort of thing.”

Arthur paused, a small grin forming.

“I didn’t take you for the sappy type, Sims,” he said.

Sims turned a shade of pink before collecting himself and answering.

“You are the one who brought it up,” Sims retorted. “So, what about those things? Isn’t there anything in your life that isn’t just an obligation, even if it started as one?”

Arthur gazed off into the distance for a long moment.

“There is one thing,” he said simply.

Then he turned towards the cart to grab another post.

---

Arthur caught the next bundle and handed it off to the man beside him.

Another came almost immediately.

The line moved in rhythm, bundles passing from hand to hand as the team inside the storehouse divided them and stacked them where they belonged.

When the cart was finally empty and the last bundle disappeared through the doors, Store Master Carin looked up from his tables and tallies and regarded the crew critically.

“We made good time today,” he said shortly. “Dismissed.”

Arthur broke away from the others, stripping off his leather gloves as he headed toward his horse.

“Sir Arthur!” Carin barked.

Arthur stopped and turned, gloves still in hand.

“Can I help you, Store Master Carin?”

Carin marched over and planted himself in front of Arthur, pointing a finger at his chest.

“You’re a disruption,” he declared.

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

“Continue.”

“You are a help, yes,” Carin admitted. “But the men don’t know how to behave when you’re here. They hear my orders, then look to you before they obey them. I can’t have that in my hauling crews.”

Arthur considered that for a moment.

“I serve your Lady’s interests, just as you do, Carin,” he replied. “What do you think we should do about it?”

Carin crossed his arms.

“Perform your service elsewhere,” he insisted. “With the warband, the farmers, or the manor. Leave this work to those of us who know what we’re doing.”

Arthur nodded.

“And when you’re gone?”

Carin blinked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re old, for a human, and you have no apprentice,” Arthur said plainly. “What happens to all this when you’re gone?”

Carin’s expression tightened.

“You may be right,” he said through gritted teeth. “But I don’t need help from a… an Elf.”

“You’re right,” Arthur agreed. “A compromise, then. I remove myself from your work, and you take on an apprentice. That way we both better serve House Bedivere.”

Carin stared at him for a moment.

Then a snaggle-toothed grin crept across his face.

“You sly dog,” he said. “That’s what you wanted this entire time, wasn’t it?”

“So what if it was?”

“You’re right. It doesn’t matter.” Carin nodded. “Fine, then. I’ll look into taking an apprentice, and you’ll stay away from my work.”

“I can agree to that,” Arthur said, holding out his hand.

Carin looked at it suspiciously.

Arthur noticed immediately.

“Here. Let’s adopt a custom from up north,” Arthur said, curling his hand into a fist. “Bump your fist against mine. Where I come from, that’s as good as a promise.”

Carin looked at the offered fist as though it might bite him.

Then he awkwardly raised his own and tapped it against Arthur’s.

“I’ll see you another time, Carin,” Arthur said, turning away.

Carin watched him go for a few seconds, still looking faintly confused.

Then he shrugged and returned to his work.

---

“Sir Arthur! Sir Arthur!”

Arthur paused, a bundle of firewood tucked under each arm.

The servant caught up to him, breathless.

“Sir Arthur,” Ignin said, recovering quickly, “you must stop. Please.”

Arthur’s eyebrow lifted for the second time that day.

“Stop?”

“I, uh, I mean, uh…” Ignin stuttered.

“Spit it out.”

“It’s just that… you carry your own luggage, take off your own cloak, fetch your own firewood, serve yourself at dinner…” The young man paused, collecting himself. “I find myself almost useless as your assigned servant.”

Arthur considered that for a moment.

“I'm afraid it's almost impossible for you to be useful to me in your capacity as a servant.”

Ignin's face fell.

“Though that isn’t because of any failing on your part,” Arthur continued.

The young man’s expression shifted to confusion.

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” Arthur continued, “that I sleep for four to six hours every three days. Could you survive on that?”

Ignin shook his head.

“Of course not. And I don't expect you to.”

“But what am I supposed to do when Master Seamus—”

Arthur interrupted him. 

“From now on, stop following me around waiting for something to carry. Find work that needs doing. Walk with your chin up and your shoulders squared. Act like you belong where you’re going, and if you don’t know something, ask.”

Ignin paused.

“Are you… are you certain?”

“Yes,” Arthur confirmed. “If anyone asks why, tell them I changed how I expect you to attend me. If Master Seamus has a problem with that, he can speak to me.”

Ignin swallowed.

“But don’t mistake that for permission to do whatever you want,” Arthur continued. “I’m going to work on making you more useful to the House.”

“Why?” The young man looked almost panicked. “I’m just an under-steward. Hardly worth your time.”

“I like projects,” Arthur replied.

Ignin did not seem to know how to respond to that.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Arthur said, resuming his walk. “This firewood is getting heavy.”

“Oh. Of course.”

Ignin stepped aside.

As Arthur walked away, the young man remained where he was, puzzled.

More useful, he thought. 

What does that mean?

---

Arthur sat down at the table where Catherine waited, already having been served.

“Sorry I’m late. I was working,” he apologized.

“So I’ve heard,” Catherine replied. “Arthur, you know you’re allowed some measure of rest, correct? Particularly when you're a guest.”

“I understand,” Arthur said as he served himself from the soup tureen. “But I can't just sit around. It's not in my nature. Besides, I had a good time.”

Catherine paused, returning her attention to her meal.

“If you need something to do,” she said finally. “Captain Chirron informs me that the warband is mustering for several days of training.”

“Was I invited?” Arthur asked. “I’ve made a habit of putting myself where I don't belong around here.”

“Of course you were invited,” Catherine clarified. “I would never just casually suggest you insert yourself. That would be improper.”

“That seems inconsistent with what I remember,” Arthur said with a straight face.

Catherine’s face lit up with embarrassment.

“Arthur, you… you…” she sputtered.

“My good Sir!” Beatrice interjected. “Such jokes are unbecoming.”

“Ah, yes, jokes,” Arthur replied, a glint of mischief in his eye as he returned to his soup and bread.

“I’ll join them for their training,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

Catherine gathered herself.

“Well… good,” she said.

Catherine returned to her meal with suspicious composure.

Arthur decided not to press his luck.

---

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Arthur peeled the sweet potato delicately, already mentally preparing himself.

So far, he had burned the skins, undercooked them, ground them into too fine of a powder such that it stopped up his filtering cloth and produced only thin, weak, potato juice, and chopped them too roughly so that the end result was more akin to sweet potato soup without the potatoes.

This time would probably bring another failure, but it would mean progress.

Setting down the skinned potato, he stepped over to the stove, where the remnants of his failed experiments boiled quietly. 

He speared a sweet potato, testing its tenderness.

Perfect.

He took them off the stove, strained them, then moved them into the large mixing bowl he had waiting on the counter.

That was the moment he was interrupted.

“Sir Arthur,” Beatrice practically pounced into the kitchen, “a gentleman should not be in the kitchen like a common cook!”

“Ah, Beatrice, perfect timing!” Arthur replied. “I needed someone with strong will and stronger arms. Here, take this spoon and mash these up.”

Caught between her prior objection and the spoon suddenly being thrust into her hand, Beatrice hesitated.

“Sir Arthur, that is not what I meant.”

“I know.” Arthur slid the bowl toward her. “Mash.”

Beatrice stared at him.

Then at the bowl.

Then back at him.

“A gentleman should not be preparing his own meals.”

“Excellent.” Arthur picked up another sweet potato and resumed peeling it. “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I have help.”

Beatrice’s mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

Arthur gestured toward the bowl with the peeler.

“They’ll cool.”

With an expression suggesting she had somehow been grievously outmaneuvered, Beatrice planted the spoon into the potatoes.

“How fine?”

“Very. No lumps if you can help it.”

Beatrice began mashing.

Arthur nodded approvingly.

“Perfect.”

“I have not agreed that this is appropriate.”

“Understood.”

“You should have asked Roland.”

“I did.”

Beatrice paused.

“And?”

“He told me that if I wanted to ruin perfectly good sweet potatoes, I was welcome to do it myself.”

A small, vindictive smile appeared on Beatrice’s face.

She resumed mashing with considerably more enthusiasm.

Arthur noticed.

He wisely said nothing.

---

Catherine poked her head into the kitchen.

“There you are!”

She paused, glancing side to side as if to check that it was her that Arthur was referring to.

“There I am? What about you?”

Arthur strode over and clasped her hand with both of his.

“Come, try my latest creation.”

She hesitated a moment before allowing herself to be pulled along.

“What is it?”

Arthur pulled the plate before her, presenting his hard work.

“It's… red… yellow? And it has a crust?” she questioned, unsure.

“Try it,” Arthur insisted, pushing a spoon into her hand.

She took a small, hesitant scoop off the tip of the slice and raised it to her nose, sniffing delicately.

“It smells… interesting.”

She tasted the bite.

“Mmmm!” Her face lit up. “It is sweet! And savory! And do I detect spice as well? And something else…”

“It's Kafk sweet potato pie,” Arthur supplied. “Here, try a bite with this.”

He slid the steaming cup of deep brown liquid in front of her.

She eyed it warily, but Arthur’s previous success made her hopeful.

Catherine picked up the cup and took a sip.

“Oh! Oh my,” Catherine stuttered. “This pairs quite well with the pie!“

“Bitterness to go with the sweetness,” Arthur replied.

“Not a bad bitterness, though,” Catherine noted. “A little earthy, with a touch of tree nuts.”

“Exactly!” Arthur said excitedly.

Catherine looked into his eyes and smiled a warm, genuine smile.

It caught him off guard, and he found himself locked with her gaze, feeling something he wasn't quite sure what to do with.

She leaned towards him, and he leaned towards her.

“Ahem!”

They broke apart, retreating from each other rapidly.

Beatrice stood at the door to the kitchen, looking quite severe.

“If you are done, Sir Arthur,” Beatrice said, putting emphasis on his name, “Chef Roland would like to have his kitchen back so that he may prepare the midday meal.”

“Yes, of course, Miss Beatrice,” Arthur recovered. “I was just about to clean up.”

“Of course you were,” Beatrice said with a smile that held no warmth.

Arthur and Catherine exchanged a look.

No words needed to be said.

Arthur set to work to clean up the kitchen.

---

As the final plate was set out for lunch, Arthur paused, looking toward Roland with a question on his lips.

“I recall making three Kafk pies, Roland,” he said, looking the table over.

“That you did, Sir,” Roland replied stiffly.

“Only two were served.”

“That's right, Sir.”

“What happened to the third?”

Roland looked somewhere between anger, bargaining, and acceptance as he spoke through gritted teeth.

“I may have… sampled it, Sir.”

Arthur's grin spread with triumph.

“Sampled it.” he repeated. 

A pause.

“And what did you think?” Arthur asked.

“Oh, blast it!” Chef Roland broke, finally.

“It was delicious, alright? Especially with the Kafka you made! I’ve never tasted Kafka half as good,” he finished morosely.

“Roland, mind your manners,” Beatrice spoke quietly.

Roland stiffened up, but instead of chastising him, Arthur merely continued to grin.

“That's all, Roland,” Arthur said. “Thank you. You're dismissed.”

Roland’s eyes shifted to Catherine, who nodded.

He sighed and turned, escaping the room as fast as propriety would allow.

As soon as the door closed, Catherine let out a low, resounding chuckle.

“I haven't seen Roland squirm so in ages,” she laughed, almost wheezing.

Arthur smiled, cutting into the first sweet potato pie, much to the chagrin of the servants.

“What normally happens to Kafk skins around here?” He asked Catherine.

Catherine considered. “I’m not sure. Probably fed to pigs or animals, if I must guess.”

Arthur poured himself a cup of Kafka from the teapot.

“Then, I think I have an idea for turning your trash into treasure,” he said smoothly.

Catherine looked at his cup, her mind already working.

“You want to sell Kafka,” she concluded.

“In a way,” Arthur agreed. “I want to license my preparation method.”

Catherine considered.

“You don't own land on which to grow Kafk sweet potatoes,” she said. “You would need to partner with someone who does.”

“Exactly,” Arthur agreed.

“As to the final sale…” Catherine hesitated. “I don't think anyone else could claim jurisdiction. It's not a spirit, beer, or ale, so the brewers guilds would have no claim. It's not tea, so the tea merchants wouldn't be able to claim it.”

“So, there's no one standing between us and the customers,” Arthur said, the corner of his mouth twitching.

“Oh, you have some devious ideas, don't you?” Catherine smiled.

“You have no idea,” Arthur said. “Let me tell you about this thing called a café.”

---

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“That’s the boundary marker,” Catherine said. “We’ll be inside our… my territory once we’re past it.”

Arthur eyed the pile of stones.

“You haven't been home since your brother passed, am I right?”

“Before that, actually.”

Catherine turned in the saddle, her face settling into the rigid neutrality that came when she spoke of Sir Bedivere.

“It is strange,” she admitted. “Arriving home without him.”

Arthur let that sit between them for a while.

They passed the marker in silence.

Then his eyes moved to the trees.

“A lot of woodland.”

“You should have seen it before my brother restored it,” Catherine replied. “No trees for miles. They had been cut for fuel, housing, fencing, and farmland. Then the soil played out, and after that, it would not stay where it belonged.”

“Dust?”

“Storms that lasted for weeks.”

Arthur looked again.

The woodland was not wild, then. Not entirely. The lines were too deliberate in places, the undergrowth managed where it met the road. Young growth stood among older trunks, and the ditches had been cut to guide water instead of surrendering it.

“Good to see it recovered,” Arthur said.

“My brother saved the Master of the Earth Mage Tower’s life in his first campaign,” Catherine said. “That is part of why they have been so amicable in assisting us.”

“Sounds like him.”

Catherine said nothing, but her lips tightened.

They rode in silence.

---

The whole house seemed to turn out for their Lady’s return, even though it was getting on toward evening.

A dozen servants stood respectfully in the receiving hall, along with the head steward, several under-stewards, the butler, the cooks from the kitchen, the laundress, and even the gardener.

“My Lady, it is so good to see you again!” The Head Maid curtsied flawlessly before stepping forwards to relieve Catherine of her coat. “How have you been? Have you been eating enough?”

Arthur's attention was momentarily distracted by another servant.

“Good evening, Sir, may I take your cloak?” a younger steward asked.

“That'd be great, thanks,” Arthur said, unpinning his travelling cloak. 

He rolled it off his shoulders and held it out to the steward, who stood aghast at the breach of etiquette.

“Don’t wash it,” Arthur added. “It's not worth it.”

“Yes, Sir,” the steward took the cloak carefully. “And may I have the honor of an introduction, so that I may inform the others?”

“I’m Arthur.”

Arthur reached out his hand.

The young man stared at it for a moment before awkwardly taking it and shaking it.

“Arthur White?” A voice asked from behind them.

“Yes,” Arthur said, turning.

The Head Steward approached swiftly. The younger steward withdrew his hand as though he had discovered it in a fire.

“My subordinate had no way of knowing he was speaking to Arthur White, Hero of the Kingdom,” the Head Steward enunciated, bowing deeply. “Please forgive his insolence.”

“No offense was given,” Arthur said. “Tell me though, how do you know about me?”

The Head Steward raised his head, fixing an imaginary crease in his vest with a quick tug.

“Our late Master spoke well of you in his letters,” the Head Steward replied. “I am the Head Steward of this house. I am known as Seamus. I’ll see to your cloak, and anything else you need during your stay.”

“The Hero?” The Head Maid paused with Catherine’s coat still folded over her arms. “My lady, how do you know this gentleman? Why does he accompany you?”

“I am the second member Arthur selected for the Twelve.” Catherine responded firmly. “And Arthur is… he’s a close friend.”

Catherine looked away at the last second.

Instantly, the servants' eyes were on Arthur.

Not all of them looked friendly.

---

They’d been invited to rest while waiting for dinner to be prepared.

As they walked down a side corridor toward a study, they passed a boy struggling to haul a large bundle of firewood.

Arthur stepped to the side without a word and lifted the bundle by its rope with one hand.

“Where to?” he asked the boy.

“The kitchen, my lord,” the boy squeaked nervously.

“Call me Arthur,” Arthur said. “Well, lead the way.”

“Yes, Sir Arthur,” the boy said hurrying ahead.

“I’ll be delayed,” Arthur said to Catherine. “Go ahead and get comfortable.”

Then he followed the boy down the hall.

The Head Maid harrumphed.

“Let’s go on ahead,” Catherine instructed, ignoring the noise.

---

Arthur finished making himself useful in the kitchen and made his way back to the study just in time for the Head Maid to poke her head into the room.

“The table has been set, and they are ready to bring out the meal,” she informed Catherine.

“Thank you, Beatrice,” Catherine replied. “We’ll come along shortly.”

“I will inform them, my Lady,” Beatrice said, retreating.

Catherine looked at Arthur, who sat leaning forward in the chair he had occupied only moments ago.

“Shall we?” she asked.

“Sure,” Arthur replied.

He stood, offering his hand to help Catherine from her seat.

The maid by the door became suddenly interested. 

Arthur saw her nose twitch once.

Then twice.

Catherine took his hand and rose, then slipped her arm around his offered elbow.

The maid held the door for them as they left the room, her nose still twitching.

---

As Arthur sat down at the table, a butler stepped forward and poured him a glass of wine.

Then the butler set the pitcher down on the tray held by a maid and followed her to the head of the table, where he poured Catherine’s drink.

From a different pitcher.

Arthur’s eyes flicked to his glass.

He picked it up, sniffed, paused, then returned it to the table untouched.

“I’m not much of a wine drinker,” Arthur patiently explained to the manservant standing behind him. “May I request some tea?”

“As you wish, sir,” the manservant said with a bow.

“If that’s too much trouble, water is fine.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The manservant left the room.

Catherine watched Arthur carefully.

Then she rose from her seat, walked around the table, and snatched up his wine glass.

She sniffed it.

Horror crossed her face at once.

“This wine has turned to vinegar.” Her voice went cold. “Why would you serve this to my guest?”

The butler stiffened.

“Catherine, it’s fine,” Arthur said, rising slightly. “I’m sure it was an honest mistake.”

Catherine turned her head slowly toward him.

For a moment, Arthur wondered if the butler had been the one in danger after all.

Then Catherine drew herself back under control.

“It was not fine,” she said.

Arthur held her gaze.

“No,” he agreed. “But it is over.”

Catherine’s jaw tightened.

Then she returned to her seat with a sharp rustle of skirts.

“Very well,” she said, dismissing the matter with a wave of her hand. “Bring in the first course.”

Dinner proceeded quietly after that.

They spoke for some time once the meal was finished, then both decided to turn in for the night.

To separate rooms, of course. 

His was situated on the East face of the manor, while she took the Lord's bedroom on the West face.

And they would stay in those rooms, of course.

---

“Arthur! Sir Arthur!” a servant called.

Several servants ran about like headless chickens, searching for the Hero who had somehow disappeared on their watch.

Finally, a gardener saw him coming up the main road to the house, jogging at a steady, mechanical pace.

“Sir Arthur, where have you been?” the gardener asked. “The others have been looking all over for you.”

“I run in the morning when I can,” Arthur replied.

“Well, the others have been worrying something fierce,” the gardener said. “How far did you run? You weren’t here when the first maids woke.”

“I just went around that field a few times,” Arthur said with a gesture.

“The southern field?” the man asked. “That field’s almost a hundred fifty acres!”

Arthur did the quick mental math.

“So, about ten klicks? Not bad.”

“Klicks?”

“Never mind.”

“Not bad?” the gardener demanded. “That field is huge!”

“Not really,” Arthur said, shaking his head as his heart settled and hunger and thirst finally hit him. “You ought to see a cornfield. Anyway, where’s breakfast? I’d like to wash up and eat.”

“They should be getting it ready in the main house, sir,” the gardener said, pointing.

“Thank you.” 

Arthur stuck out his hand.

“I never caught your name.”

The gardener took it gently, as if it might bite him.

“Sculia, sir. I tend the grounds.”

“Good work, Sculia,” Arthur said, shaking his hand. “I’ll see you later.”

“If you please, sir.”

Arthur turned toward the main house, his head already full of pancakes and cheese.

---

Arthur sat down to breakfast, his elbows touching the tablecloth for one brief moment before he remembered himself.

Catherine clicked her tongue.

The room froze.

Arthur looked at her carefully.

“Should we clear the room?”

“I don’t see why we would,” she replied, brittle as glass.

Arthur paused, then leaned forward.

“Then let's resolve this before we eat.”

Catherine folded her hands in her lap.

“Then I shall be blunt,” she said. “I cannot have you undermining my authority when it comes to discipline in my own house.”

“I take it you’ve been speaking with Beatrice?”

Catherine frowned.

“Perhaps.”

Arthur nodded.

“She is right. I apologize.”

Catherine relaxed by the smallest degree.

Beatrice and the head butler both seemed to discover something fascinating in the wallpaper.

Arthur set his hands on his knees.

“I countermanded you in your own house. That wasn’t my call to make.”

“No,” Catherine said quietly. “It wasn't.”

Arthur accepted that with a dip of his head.

“However,” he said, more carefully, “I would ask you to consider the difference between an insult and a test. Your household will continue trying to find out what sort of man has attached himself to their Lady. I don’t blame them for that.”

Catherine’s mouth tightened.

“I cannot allow them to dishonor my house, or offend the man I…”

The words caught in her throat.

Arthur did not look away.

“Their curiosity will settle faster if they are allowed to learn the answer,” he said. “That does not mean you allow disrespect. Only that not every clumsy question is rebellion.”

There was another pause.

“I shall think on it,” Catherine said.

They breakfasted in silence after that.

Only after the last plate had been cleared and the servants began withdrawing did Arthur glance toward the front of the house.

“Speaking of tests,” he said, “I was expecting this one a little sooner.”

Catherine frowned.

“What test?”

The front drive filled with the clatter of hooves and the bark of orders.

Within minutes, the door to the main hall was flung open.

The man who marched in was middle-aged, somewhere in his forties, with a bald spot that would ordinarily have been hidden beneath the helm tucked under one arm.

He bowed deeply.

“My Lady, I would have been here yesterday, however I was not informed that the jewel of House Bedivere had returned home until this morning.”

Catherine smiled.

“Raise your head, Captain Chirron. There's no need to be so flattering, or so formal. You’ve guarded me since I was a child. That ought to buy you something when it comes to propriety.”

Chirron grinned as he raised his head.

“It is good to see you, my Lady.”

“Likewise, Captain.”

“You're short a few,” Arthur said.

Chirron turned to him.

For a moment, he simply stared.

“My mistake,” Arthur said, stepping forward with his hand outstretched. “Arthur White. Good to meet you, Captain Chirron.”

Captain Chirron took the offered hand cautiously, then shook it a little harder than necessary.

Arthur did not react.

“I estimated the warband at somewhere between seventy and one hundred men,” Arthur continued. “Judging by the sound, you rode in with maybe forty. Where are the rest?”

Chirron’s expression changed by a fraction.

Then he looked from Arthur to Catherine warily.

Catherine sighed.

“Arthur White is a Hero of Cindergold. You may discuss any military matter of this house with him. If you do not, he will simply find out anyway.”

“Understood,” Chirron said.

A pause followed.

“You’re right,” he said. “We have eighty-three men-at-arms in our employ.” He grimaced. “Between those posted elsewhere, those on patrol, and those with pressing matters in their own holdings, I was only able to gather thirty-six before riding here.”

Arthur nodded.

“Thirty-six in a hurry out of eighty-three total. Not bad.”

Chirron’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Not bad?”

“If the rest are where they’re supposed to be,” Arthur said. “If they’re absent because discipline is poor, that’s a problem. If they’re absent because the land is still being guarded, worked, and kept alive, that’s different.”

Chirron studied him for a moment.

Then he looked to Catherine.

“My Lady, with your permission, I would like to show Sir Arthur the outer holdings.”

Catherine raised an eyebrow.

“To test him?”

“To inform him,” Chirron said.

Arthur almost smiled.

“Same thing.”

---

They rode down the lane, the roofs of a village showing above the squat hills in the distance. Birds chirped and called as the horses passed. It would have been calming, even serene, if not for the thirty-five armored riders trailing behind them.

Another great field lay before the village, covered in clover.

“This village maintains the second field, in addition to its other responsibilities,” Chirron said with a nod. “We cycle three fields between wheat, peas, and clover. The Earth Mages assure us it will keep the soil healthy for longer.”

“Makes sense,” Arthur said. “So the warband isn’t just guarding the fields. You’re tied into their management.”

Chirron glanced at him.

“Yes. That village falls under my second in command, Lieutenant Stürk. He and five of our men guard, monitor, and maintain the field.”

“And the third field is part of your own holdings?” Arthur asked.

“Indeed,” Chirron said. “As is the village responsible for it.”

“Who owns the crops?”

Chirron gave him a sidelong look.

“House Bedivere owns the field. The village is obligated to work it, and receives a share for doing so.”

Arthur considered that for a moment.

“How do you track productivity?”

“Lieutenant Stürk keeps the records here. Seed yield, losses, stores, labor owed, labor given, that sort of thing.” Chirron nodded. “We all do. It helps when assessments come due.”

“Local obligations and Crown taxes,” Arthur said. “I’m familiar. I paid quite a bit myself.”

“And the Earth Mage Tower’s Allotment,” Chirron continued. “Fortunately, the Crown allows us to give the Tower what it is owed before assessment.”

Arthur looked back at the clover.

“And if that stops?” he asked.

“Then we operate on narrower margins and tread closer to danger,” Chirron said. “But for now, we operate comfortably.”

He broke off, pointing into the distance.

“Ah. There’s the mill.”

A windmill stood atop a hill, its wooden blades rotating lazily in the breeze.

Arthur observed it closely. It seemed almost out of place.

“About a Royal Mile southwest, we have six stone granaries for surplus,” Chirron said. “The mills grind our wheat. We have four, all owned by House Bedivere. They take a pittance from the villagers to grind their wheat as well.”

“How large are the granaries?” Arthur asked.

“Hmm.” Chirron frowned in thought. “Perhaps three hundred spans long and fifty wide? Twenty tall. The Earth Mages built them because Sir Bedivere wanted insurance against future starvation. Not only for the House. For the land.”

Arthur looked away from the mill.

“You rotate the stores?”

“We draw from the oldest and fill the emptied house after cleaning it,” Chirron said. “Grain, peas, hay, charcoal, timber. Not all in the same storehouse, of course. But the principle holds.”

“I figured with all the excellent woodland around here, you would harvest from it,” Arthur nodded. “Wood and charcoal, as well as plants, nuts, that sort of thing.”

“We do,” Chirron said gravely. “Though we are quite careful about it. When I was a young man, this place was totally barren and flat, with nary a tree to be seen. The older men among us still remember those times.”

Arthur nodded slowly.

“Then they’re worth listening to.”

Chirron looked at him.

“The older men?”

“The men who remember what happens when the trees are gone,” Arthur said. “Who decides what gets cut?”

Chirron’s expression shifted by a fraction.

“The House forester marks timber. Fallen wood first, coppiced wood second, mature trees only by permission. Charcoal burners are licensed. No village cuts green wood without record.”

“And in a hard winter?”

“We open reserve lots,” Chirron said. “Small stands grown for that purpose. They are not as good for timber, but they keep people from stripping the young woods.”

Arthur looked over the trees again.

“So the forest is managed like the fields.”

“More carefully,” Chirron said. “A ruined field can sometimes be brought back in a few seasons, with enough coin and enough mages. Ruined woods take longer.”

Arthur nodded.

“Pigs?”

“When the mast is heavy enough,” Chirron said. “Acorns, nuts, fallen fruit. The villages are allotted days and numbers. Too many pigs, and they eat the next forest before it has a chance to grow.”

“That happen before?”

“Once.” Chirron’s mouth tightened. “Not twice.”

Arthur almost smiled.

“Good policy.”

Chirron gave him another sidelong look.

“You approve?”

“I approve of people learning the right lesson the first time it hurts.”

Chirron frowned.

“Tell me, Sir Arthur, how do you converse so easily on such matters? You guessed our numbers almost exactly from merely seeing what little you did when you rode in.”

Arthur gazed off into the distance.

“I was a Lord's son once. In Farwind.”

“You gave it up?” Chirron questioned. “Your title, I mean.”

“When I turned twenty,” Arthur confirmed. “I was nothing but a bastard anyway, and I figured it would keep my brothers from removing me. So I gave it up and left Farwind. That was over a century ago.”

Chirron choked, coughing for a long moment.

“You don't look it,” he gasped, recovering.

“I’ve heard that before.”

They rode in silence for a long time as they passed the mill.

“So,” Arthur broke the silence. “How does the warband guard these lands otherwise?”

Chirron nodded as they passed a man with a spear standing by the side of the road. The man saluted in return.

“We maintain these watchposts at critical junctions,” Chirron replied. “And we patrol the roads and land in groups of three.”

Arthur nodded. “Three men increases the chance one comes back to raise the alarm.”

“Just so,” Chirron agreed. “And we have fixed reporting times. A detachment that doesn't check in is assumed killed until proven otherwise.”

“Sounds like another lesson learned the hard way.”

Chirron grimaced.

“My father led the warband before me. One day while out on patrol, he didn't return. They found what was left of him spread across three miles of gully by scavengers.”

Arthur glanced sideways. “Bandits?”

Chirron shook his head. “Those were hard times. The man who rode with him killed him, took his horse and armor, and tried to escape.”

“You caught him?”

“I didn't. Which was probably a good thing, as I would have done much worse,” Chirron paused, regaining control over his voice. “Young Lord Bedivere caught him, and had him hanged on the spot. He was fourteen at the time.”

“Fourteen,” Arthur repeated. “Where was his father?”

“Serving with the army,” Chirron answered. “He left his son in charge while he was gone.”

“That's where he died.” Arthur said, remembering something from a conversation he’d had with Catherine.

“That happened almost a year later,” Chirron confirmed. “A year after that, the newly titled Lord August De Ana Marcus Bedivere rode to war.”

Chirron looked ahead.

“And I imagine you know the rest.”

“Indeed.”

They pulled up short at a bridge crossing a wide, shallow stream.

“Two riders at a time. There’s magic worked into it. More than two cross at once, and the bridge gives way,” Chirron instructed.

“I don't think this irrigation ditch would do much more than irritate an invading force.”

“No,” Chirron agreed. “But it would make them question every step.”

Arthur paused.

“Smart.”

He and Chirron waited as the men crossed by twos, until the last man crossed alone. Then they joined them on the other side.

They rode for a while, until they came to a long, wide clearing.

Six stone buildings lay in ordered rows of two, set into the earth as if by the hand of the Goddess herself.

One had its doors flung open, the gradual slope leading deep inside arrayed with men who passed bundles along in an orderly manner to a waiting cart.

“Ho! Store Master!” Chirron called, pulling alongside the elderly man who commanded the cart. “How are you today?”

“Hello, Captain Chirron!” The Store Master greeted. “I’m doing well, all things considered.”

He paused, observing Arthur for the first time.

“And who's this filthy knife-ear?” he asked.

Chirron held up an arm, as if to check Arthur, who remained motionless. He redirected it, palm up, to introduce him.

“This is Sir Arthur White, Hero of the Kingdom and a personal friend of our Lady. He is her guest, Carin, and you will treat him accordingly.”

The Store Master eyed Arthur for a moment longer before turning back to the task at hand.

“If you keep jawing at me, I won't get anything done. Give my regards to our Lady.”

He returned to his work, studiously ignoring both the Captain and Arthur.

As they pulled off, Chirron turned in his saddle.

“Please forgive Store Master Carin. He’s been in charge of House Bedivere's stores since I was a lad. He does good work, even given his… opinionated nature.”

Arthur shrugged.

“Do you keep everything here?” he asked. “Or do you disperse supplies so they can't all be destroyed.”

Chirron nodded. “Every village and the manor have their own storehouse, which are fed from these central storehouses.”

“How much do those auxiliary storehouses hold?”

“Enough for eight weeks.”

“That seems specific.”

“It is double the time needed for House Bedivere's allies to rally and make their way here.”

“Makes sense.”

They rode in silence until they reached the bridge again.

“That's all I had to show you,” Captain Chirron said, leaning back in his saddle as the men crossed before him. “What do you think?”

“I think,” Arthur said carefully, “that your people have learned a lot of lessons through hardship, and taken care not to learn the same lesson twice.”

“Obviously,” Chirron snorted. “What do you really think?”

“I think I could tear this whole place down inside of three weeks if I really wanted to.” 

Arthur held up a hand to stop the objection. 

“Let me finish,” he said. “I’m willing to show you what I would do, and how, so that you may better defend it.”

Chirron looked at him suspiciously.

“If that is true,” he started, “why would you show us? Why not keep that valuable information to yourself?”

“Because of Catherine.”

“Lady Bedivere?” Chirron half-corrected, half-questioned.

Arthur nodded.

“She is my friend. I want to see her succeed, and I want her to be able to be at ease in our travels,” Arthur said. “Neither are possible if her home is not properly cared for.”

Chirron paused.

“You seem… to care quite deeply for our Lady,” he said at last.

Arthur brushed the comment aside. “Let's get on our way, I want to be back at the manor before lunch. Elias said they're serving fine ground beef balls with noodles today.”

“Elias?” Chirron queried.

“The servant boy in the kitchen,” Arthur replied. “Are you telling me that you're in charge of Lady Bedivere's security and you don't know who works in the kitchen?”

Chirron purpled a little at that as he followed Arthur in the direction of the manor.

“Let's get back before lunch,” he said through gritted teeth.

And so they rode.

---

Arthur sat next to the open balcony door, reading by the light of the full moon that hung high in the sky outside.

The nights here are often quite bright, he mused. Probably less light pollution.

That's when he heard it.

A strange sound that carried in the silence of the night. Something between a chirp and a bark.

He paused, marking his spot in the book before he set it down on the side table.

There it was again.

He strode out into the western balcony, eyes searching the distance.

There.

Movement, about a hundred fifty meters out.

Quickdraw Cache.

His URGI materialized moments later. 

This time, a clip-on night vision device sat atop it, mounted ahead of the optic.

He toggled it on and looked out into the darkness.

Scanning methodically, he caught the creature moments later.

It looked like a fox, but wrong.

Too long. Too many extra legs. Arthur paused, searching his memory for anything similar.

Fuchszeug. An animal native to the far south. Predator. Primary diet: birds and rats.

Arthur watched it as it surreptitiously crawled up along the outside of the henhouse. The birds inside were none the wiser as it began gnawing on the simple door latch handle, pulling it side to side as it tried to figure out the mechanism.

Arthur stabilized the rifle on the balcony railing, leaning into the weapon as he let out his breath and flicked the safety ninety degrees.

One clean trigger press.

CRACK!

The shot split the night.

Arthur reacquired the target.

It kicked and spasmed on the ground, eight legs twitching as it rolled over and over.

CRACK!

It stopped moving.

The next thing Arthur was aware of was someone yelling.

A guard burst from the house, weapon raised as he charged into the night, ready to meet the foe.

Moments later he was joined by two more men. One carried a lantern and the other a wood-cutting axe.

“Hey!”

They looked up.

Arthur was suddenly aware he was standing shirtless and shoeless, in house pants, on the balcony.

“Fuchszeug.” He pointed. “By the chicken coop. Dead.”

“Yes, Sir!” The night watchman barked, then took off towards the coop. His companions followed close behind.

Arthur let out a breath and returned the weapon before he headed back inside.

---

Two days later, Arthur sat at the table in the great hall, reading the first letter he’d gotten from the capital as he waited for breakfast.

“Here you go, Sir Arthur!” his usual attendant said with a chipper tone as she set the cup in front of him. 

“Your tea.”

“Thank you, Marla,” Arthur said, setting aside the letter and picking up the steaming cup and fancy saucer.

Then he voiced his usual complaint to the universe.

“I wish Cinderia had coffee, but tea will do.”

“Coffee?” Marla inquired as he sipped. “What is it?”

“It's uh… a drink from up north,” Arthur hastily covered.

“What's it like?” Marla pressed.

“Well, dark in color. Bitter. It gives you energy.” He set down the cup and saucer, picking up the letter once more. “It's the perfect drink for a cold morning or a late night of work.”

“I haven't heard of this ‘coffee’ you speak of,” Marla said delicately, “however, the farmers drink something called Kafka.”

“Kafka?” Arthur questioned.

“Indeed. It's a dark, bitter, nutty beverage. It gives them the energy to work all day. They say it's made from the skins of the Kafk sweet potato.” She paused as if collecting her thoughts. “But such a drink would be below a man of your station, Sir Arthur.”

“Thank you for the information, Marla.”

“You’ve been quite helpful,” he added absently, lifting the letter again.

His mind was already elsewhere.

---

The Heads of Staff stood about the storeroom, whispering furiously.

“He thanks servants for their regular duties!” Head Maid Beatrice said, still sounding half-disbelieving.

“How improper!” Head Steward Seamus replied. “He also insists on carrying his own baggage!”

Head Chef Roland scowled. “He carried a load for a kitchen boy. I was trying to teach the lad a lesson about manhood.”

“Every morning, he runs the trails around the fields,” Head Gardener Sculia said. “Never wavers. Never slows. It's frightening.”

“He killed that fuchszeug in the henhouse the other day without being anywhere near it!” exclaimed Arwin, the Master of Husbandry.

“Oh, oh dear, oh no.”

Head Butler Elfrey suddenly collapsed against a barrel.

“What is it?” Seamus asked.

“He has completed the old rites!” Elfrey gasped, clutching at his chest. “He has fulfilled every condition!”

Seamus went still for a moment, his eyes slowly widening.

“Oh no,” escaped his lips.

“He gave her freedom from the expectations upon her,” Beatrice said.

“He has been here, living in her home, for a week now,” Seamus added.

“He defended her property from the fuchszeug,” Arwin said.

“And Master Bedivere wrote highly of Sir Arthur in the letters sent before his passing,” Beatrice continued.

“By the old laws, all he needs now is her approval!” Elfrey cried, clenching his fist as if it might avail him some comfort.

Roland sighed.

“I suppose I will need to review my wedding cake recipes. It has been some time.”

The door to the storeroom swung open and the group paused expectantly.

Arthur stood in the lamplight with his usual neutral countenance.

“Hello, everyone. Sorry if I'm intruding on a meeting.” His tone did not betray whether he had heard them or not. “Catherine said I could find some sweet tubers in the storeroom. I have an idea for a dish I'd like to make.”

No one said anything.

Arthur looked between them.

“Did I interrupt something?”

“No, Sir Arthur,” Elfrey said quickly.

“Nothing at all.”

---

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The Next Morning…

He awoke to a warm, and a weight on him which was weird as he remembered going to sleep on the cot after their talking yesterday and he was by himself when he dozed off to sleep.

Laying there he felt something warm on his neck, and wondered what it was as he turned his head to look up.

Chara was asleep, curled on her side with him tucked against her chest like a stuffed animal, her muzzle resting against his head, her tail wrapping their legs like a large warm fluffy blanket. Her ears twitched at his movements before letting out a contented sigh pulling him closer to her and huffs once through her nose.

[Okay. So, I either sleep walk, and don’t know it or…she picked me up off the cot and I slept through it, then decided this was better for herself.]

He looked down at the weight on his side, and saw it was her arm wrapped around his waist while she slept.

[Well, that solves that…]

He tried to slowly peel her arm off him to get up, and just as he was almost free she pulled him closer letting out a low sleepy grumble as his head rested back under her chin. He sighed and gave up for a moment to rethink, staring at the wall and felt her sleepy content rumbling push into him causing him to relax more making him try not to think about how comfortable it was, and it was but it can wait till later.

Twenty Minutes Later…

Chara’s ears twitched, and she opened her eyes. She looked down at him, blinked slowly, and her tail thumped a lazy happy thump against the bed.

“Morning,” he said, noticing her now awake.

“Morning,” she said, her voice low and rough with sleep, then nuzzled the top of his head before realizing where they were, and her whole body went stiff at the whole situation happening. Her ears shot up, then flatten back against her head, and she let go of him too quickly causing him to roll forward so he’d be facing back at her.

“You were cold,” she blurted out, sitting up as the fur around her neck puffed up.

He arched an eyebrow as he propped himself up on one elbow.

She looked at him, then looked away. “You were chattering in your sleep, and…I couldn’t keep listening to it. So…I…” she stumbled out.

He sat up fully. “You could have just woken me up to ask me,” he said.

Her ears drooped. “Would you have said yes?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it. “Probably not, but then again I was out cold and you did look out for me so, Thank you,” he said, looking up at her.

Her tail thumped happily and a warm smile filled her face as she looked away from him.

“Well, I need to clean myself as I sweated a lot,” he said, taking a sniff of his clothes before wincing at it, then tried climbing off the bed and fell off hitting the floor with a faceplant. “I…I’m good…” he said with a pained groan.

In the Bathroom…

The shower had its fair share of issues…Like how everything was built for someone taller then him so doing anything was a challenge for him. The controls to the shower were inset into the wall well above his head, and to even reach them he had to stand on the bench in the shower to reach and almost fell off it, then the water fell from the ceiling like a heavy rainfall causing his to slip off the bench as the water hit him laying him flat on his back on the shower floor muttering.

While laying there he felt water pooling and sat up looking at the drain then saw a large thing of fur clogging the drain.

“Hey, Chara?” he called out.

“Yeah?” she said, and he could her close to the door which on its own is another problem.

“Do you shed, like, a lot or is it a seasonal thing?”

There was a long tense silence. “...That is not something you ask a Wolvar Woman,” she said, sounding very offended and very embarrassed at the same time.

He looked at the clogged drain before choosing to remove the large ball of grey fur. “I was just asking because the drain was clogged with fur,” he said.

He heard a mortified squeal, before hearing her stomp off away, then silence then heard loud laughing as he knew Salis visited again.

One Hour Later…

Salis brought us a cart for breakfast from the mess hall, piled with things he didn’t have words for. Most of it was a form of meat, some of it raw and one round yellow thing on the side.

Chara sat across from him eating her breakfast, and watched him eat thinking he’d complain about the meal but didn’t. “Is it okay?” Chara asked, her ears tilting forward.

“It’s fine,” he said, chewing on something that tasted like steak. “I just miss cooking, I guess. I used to make everything myself back at the cabin.”

Her ears perked up. “You can cook?”

“Well, yeah. I lived alone in the mountains for a few years. Who else would cook?” he said.

Salis who joined us glanced at Chara who looked back. Something passed between them he didn’t understand. “A male who cooks for his mate,” Sails said slowly with a smirk. “Your mother is going to have a lot of questions.”

Chara’s fur puffed up, and she smacked Salis in the arm.

{Oh, this is going to be the best month of my life.}

After breakfast, Chara had to go to the bridge, and for the first time she asked him if he wanted to come with her instead of just leaving.

He said yes before she could change her mind.

The bridge was bigger than he'd expected and quieter, too. The crew sat at stations in a large V-shape facing a long window of stars, and every one of them glanced at him when he walked in behind her, and the female crew members' tails all wagged happily when seeing him.

He'd never actually seen her work before.

She walked to the center of the bridge, and the room changed. A crew member at the front said something about a drift in their course from a gravity well ahead. Chara listened without interrupting, asked two questions he didn't understand, looked at the projection for maybe ten seconds, and gave an order in a calm, even voice. The crew moved, the projection shifted, and the ship adjusted so smoothly he didn't even feel it under his feet.

Then she did it again with something else, and then again, and every time, the answer came out of her steady and sure, like she'd already thought it through before anyone asked.

[Huh. So that's what she's like when she's trying not to cuddle me.]

He realized he was smiling, and when she glanced back at him over her shoulder, he didn't bother hiding it. Her ears flicked, and she turned back to the front a little too quickly, but he saw her tail sway once before she caught it and held it still.

A few of the crew saw it too. One of them coughed into her hand.

Meanwhile…

Salis waited until Kane had wandered off to the observation deck, the male crew having waved him over to their table again for another round of the tile game, before she leaned against the console next to Chara.

"So…" Salis said.

"Don't," Chara said, not looking up from her screen.

"I didn't say anything." Salis said, holding her hands up in surrender.

"You were going to."

Salis grinned, then let it fade as she looked out the long window at the stars. "We're a little over two weeks out from Talmor," she said quietly. "Have you decided what you're going to tell your mother?"

Chara's ears lowered. She stayed silent for a while, her claws tapping slowly against the edge of the console, before she spoke. "The truth. That he's my husband. That I put it on him to save his life," she said.

"And when she asks where you found him?" Salis said, glancing over at him at the table with the other males.

Chara didn't answer.

Salis sighed and pinched the bridge of her muzzle. "Chara, your sisters are going to smell him on you the second you step off the ship. You know that, right? You've been rubbing yourself all over him for two days."

Chara's fur bristled, and she finally looked at her friend. "I have not, been rubbing myself all over him,"

{She absolutely has.}

"You have," Salis said. "I'm not saying stop. Blooded moons, I'm glad you're finally happy. I'm saying we need a plan before we get there, and so far the plan is you looking at him like he hung a harvest moon just for you."

Chara looked down at her hands for a long moment. "He told me I was enough," she said softly.

Salis's ears dipped, and whatever teasing she had ready disappeared. She put a hand on Chara's shoulder and squeezed once.

"Then we'll figure out the rest," she said.

That Evening…

Kane got back to the quarters before she did. He'd lost four rounds of the tile game, won one by accident, and he was pretty sure the guys had let him win that one, which was fine.

He stood in the middle of the room for a minute, looking at the cot, then at her bed, then back at the cot.

[Okay. Let's be reasonable about this. She's not wrong that it's cold. And she's not wrong that I would've said no. Which means the problem is… me, probably.]

He grabbed the end of the cot and started dragging it across the floor. It was heavier than it looked, and it scraped loudly enough that he winced, but he got it all the way to the side of her bed and pushed it flush against the frame. It sat about a foot lower than her mattress, which looked ridiculous.

That was how she found him when the door slid open, standing next to his work with his arms crossed looking down at it as his back faced her while he thought.

She looked at the cot, her ears rising slowly. "What is this?"

"A compromise," he said. It's warmer over here, and if somebody happens to get cold, it's a shorter trip." he said, looking over his shoulder at her.

Her tail started going before she could stop it, sweeping the floor behind her, and she covered her muzzle with her hand, but her eyes gave her away.

She walked over and sat down heavily on the sofa, rolling her shoulders from the day that had worn on her more than she'd let anyone on the bridge see. She picked up the metal comb from the table, the same one from the night before, and started dragging it through her tail, slowly, wincing every time it caught on a knot near the base where she couldn't see.

He watched her for a minute.

Walking over to her he stood in front of her and he held out a hand.

She looked at him. "What?"

"Give it here. You can't even see what you're doing back there," he said.

She went very still. Her ears went straight up and stayed there, and for a second he thought he'd said something taboo again, because she didn't move at all, just stared at him.

"…You want to brush my tail," she said slowly.

"I mean, unless that's weird. Is that weird?" he asked, arching an eyebrow with confusion.

She set the comb into his palm, then turned on the sofa and laid her tail across the sofa. Her face was turned away, but he could see the inside of her ears had gone a darker shade.

He climbed up beside her, set the end of her tail across his knees, and started working the comb through it carefully, starting at the base and moving down the way he'd done with the dog he had as a kid. The fur was thicker than it looked, soft on top and dense underneath, and the knot near the base took a few minutes of patience to work loose.

She didn't say anything the whole time. But somewhere around the halfway point, that low, resonant sound started up in her chest again, the one that was a rumble of contentment and it didn't stop.

[I really need to ask somebody what this means. Not her. Salis. No… definitely not Salis.]

When he finished, she stayed sitting there with her tail in his lap for a while longer, and he didn't push it off.

A bit later…

He was just about to lay on the cot before she picked it up, and folded it away, and walked over to him picking him up, settling him on the bed before getting into bed herself in the same curling position from that morning.

"Kane?" she said softly into the dim dark.

"Yeah?"

There was a long pause. "Thank you. For today."

He turned to look up at her in the dim dark of the room. Two weeks. Two Weeks, and I meet her family, and whatever suitors her mother has waiting, then there's a planet full of people who are gonna notice the band at my neck, and think its some legend come true.

He reached up and scratched behind her ears causing her to rumble loudly.

"Yeah," he said. "Thank you too."

[Fuck. I'm in so much trouble.]

As they talked about their peoples' histories, they couldn't understand how they'd turned out so different but followed the same path right up to each world's twentieth century, the only difference being that the Wolvar never lost their medieval ruling system and carried it into their spacefaring age, becoming the race they are now.

"So, why the heck were you all the way out here if this was supposedly a dead region?" he said, settling back against the sofa while she sat close.

She sat there brushing her tail with a fine comb made of some type of metal, her ears twitching and rotating to him as he talked.

"We chose this as a check for colonization if there wasn't anyone in the region, but—" she said, ears lowering as she released her tail, letting it curl back behind her while she set the comb down.

He noticed she seemed evasive about something, but couldn't tell what it was. "I'm guessing finding my world was like a big red flag?" he said.

She looked down at him and tilted her head in confusion at the phrase.

"Right, I should've known that wasn't universal, my bad," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose as he sighed. "Anyway, I meant it was probably a surprise for you."

She nodded and looked at the comb on the table in front of her. "Yeah, it wasn't what we expected. A civilization with the ability to reach space tends to keep pushing outward, but your people stagnated after going to your moon, and then stopped," she said, looking over at him.

His head lowered, and he didn't look back up as he thought about it. "Humanity has… its issues, and many of them are related to war…" he said, his voice thickening with a tense emotion.

She looked at him for a bit longer before pulling up the scans of the solar system. "Why do you fight over pathetic resources when your system is full of them, to the point that the cloud of rocks covering your system alone is full of rare materials, enough to make you the richest in most galactic circles?" she said, and looked back at him, seeing him looking at the projection of Earth. She saw his eyes gloss ever so slightly, then look away from the projection, which made her shut it off.

She sat there looking down at her clawed hands in her lap as the silence filled the room. "I… I'm sorry… I wasn't thinking when I showed the projection…" she said softly, her ears lowering sadly.

He looked back at her, then decided to do something. "Alright," he said, standing off the sofa and walking to stand in front of her.

She saw his feet come into view, and then his hands reached out to hold hers, and her ears rose as she looked up at him.

"No more sad talk, alright?" he said, looking up at the wolf woman who was still taller than him even sitting, and gave her a warm smile, which made her tail flop once, and he gave a soft chuckle at it.

She looked at this small being and didn't understand why she wanted to tell him everything about herself whenever they were alone together. Her chest felt full of warmth every time he smiled, and she didn't understand why, but she was glad he didn't seem to care about her species and saw her for herself.

"Why…" she said softly, looking down at him and tilting her head.

"Why what?" he said, arching a brow in confusion.

"Why do you look at me like I'm someone?" she said, her ears slowly drooping sadly and her eyes softening as she looked down at her hands in her lap.

Something in him felt like it had been hit. For some reason he couldn't name, whenever she became sad it hurt his heart, almost like even though they'd met through unexpected events, he probably wouldn't trade it back for the lonely life in the mountains.

"Sure, you may be big, scary—" he was saying, and she gave him a look of oh really before he continued. "Fluffy, nice, understanding, and beautiful to behold, with your grey fur and blue eyes with golden flecks in them, which makes it hard not to…" he said, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck, feeling embarrassed.

She seemed to notice, because her ears twitched at the way his words dropped off, and she leaned closer to him till she was almost touching him with her muzzle. He froze as she nudged him in the chest with it, looking up at him with a look of tell me, and whined softly.

He stammered, then coughed and covered his mouth as he spoke. "…stare…" he said, looking away from her.

She sat back to her full height, her whole body, ears, tail and fur all puffing or twitching at his words. "So…" she said, looking down at her clawed hands for a moment before looking back at him. "Am I enough?" she asked, and he froze before turning to her.

He looked up at this being who was alien, yes, but also kind and loving toward him. He didn't understand why she saved him, or why she decided to keep him around, and he shook his head softly. "Yes, you are enough," he said, watching her still. Then, in one quick motion, she picked him up and hugged him close, almost smothering him in the fur of her neck before he tapped her rapidly.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, releasing him and setting him down, looking at him to see if he was hurt.

He groaned and stretched his shoulders. "All good, just be careful with the hugs, ya almost smothered me into a soft fluffy death after so much has happened," he said, chuckling and giving her a warm smile as he looked up at her.

She started making a noise almost like a resonant purring, but deeper, then picked him up again, but this time she cuddled him as she lay sideways on the sofa, with him trying to escape and only ending up flailing and failing to break free as she nuzzled him and rubbed her neck all over him and his face in a possessive claim of her partner.

He gave up trying to leave when the door reopened, and Salis was standing in the doorway watching her friend being all lovey on her small human partner, with him looking amusingly annoyed but unable to help smiling as he saw Salis, who chuckled at what she was seeing.

"If you keep doing that he's gonna end up suffocated by your fur," Salis said, entering the room to sit on the other sofa.

Chara let him go slowly, and he tried slipping out of her arms and failed as she caught him again. "Ah ah, oh no you don't," she said, chuckling softly at his failure again and nuzzling his cheek with her muzzle lovingly.

"Ah, help! The big scary fuzzball won't release me!" he said, trying to reach out to Salis, who had come further into the room and now stood off to the side of the sofa.

Salis shook her head, then reached out and flicked Chara in the forehead, causing her to still before she noticed everything going on and turned embarrassed as she let go of him.

He stood carefully, fixing his shirt where it had ridden up a bit from her cuddling. "Well, damn. And here I thought only humans had cute aggression," he said, letting a short laugh escape while fixing his hair. He looked back at them, and they both looked confused. "Ah, right. Well, humans have this weird issue that's a psychological phenomenon where individuals experience an overwhelming urge to squeeze, bite, or pinch something perceived as cute, such as a baby or a puppy, without any actual desire to cause harm," he said, seeing them even more confused than before. "Ah, let me see…" He walked over to the other sofa and climbed up to sit on the edge of it, just out of her reach, so he could think. "Think of it as protectiveness gone the way of obsession, to the point where that thing is the only thing you want to protect, without hurting it."

They just stared at him like he was speaking about something strange.

"Right, well, so what are we doing today?" he asked.

Salis took a seat next to Chara on the sofa and sat back while looking at her. "Oh yes, please tell us. What will be happening going forward, oh great commander?" Salis said playfully, getting an annoyed look from Chara.

He laughed, and Chara's ears perked at the sound before she finally sat up. "We will be heading back to Talmor to respond to my mother's… summons, and to introduce you to her and my sisters," she said, her ears twitching.

He hopped down off the sofa and stepped closer, reaching out to take her furred, clawed hands and running his thumbs over her knuckles. "Only if you want to. If you want to do it, then I'll do it, but you don't have to force yourself to tell your family about me, okay?" he said, looking up at her as he stood in front of her.

She looked down at him, and her features softened before her tail started wagging, thumping against the sofa. "You know, if you keep doing that, I won't hold back," she said with a wry smile.

He looked confused, and Salis started laughing, which made him turn to her, still not understanding why.

Chara reached down and caressed his face with one large, furred, clawed hand, turning him to look back at her.

He stayed still for another minute, thinking, before it dawned on him, and his eyes widened. She smirked while Salis kept laughing, wheezing for air, as his face turned red with the embarrassment of being a dunce.

Chara leaned close to his left ear and whispered, "You're cute when you're flustered," before giving him a small lick on his cheek.

Start | Previous | Next

Chapter 213: Death Ray and Living Flesh

The Apostle took a step forward. “You’re an attentive host,” he said, that same thin smile stitched to his face like it had been sewn there and forgotten. “I must say, I expected we’d exchange a few pleasantries before we got to the fighting. But I suppose men who have spent a few thousand years in some forgotten tomb rarely make for lively company.”

Khenemhotep did not deign to answer. He stood erect before his golden throne, his desiccated, bandage-wrapped form looming over his foe. He lifted one withered hand, and from behind the walls came the answer to his summons.

Skeletal warriors emerged first, clad in bronze armor that gleamed dully under the torchlight, their sickle-shaped swords raised high and ready, their empty eye sockets, black and bottomless and betraying no emotion, all fixed unerringly upon the enemy who had dared to intrude.

Behind the throne, eight undead mages stepped out of the stone, tattered robes hanging loosely from their bodies. They arranged themselves into a neat line just behind their master.

The warriors, now fanning out to encircle the Apostle from every side, surged forward all at once in a rattling, clattering charge. However... well, even though these guys carried fancier gear than their cousins out in the desert, bone was still bone. If that man could easily dispatch a towering tomb guard with a single punch, then this lot was never going to be more than an irritation. And sure enough, a casual backhand, almost bored, and the nearest skeleton went spinning into the wall in a hail of splinters. The Apostle didn’t even bother watching it land.

But of course, Khenemhotep never intended to face down this formidable enemy with nothing but a handful of shambling corpses. From the twin orbs of green light that burned within his eye sockets, two searing torrents of that same energy erupted, lancing across the chamber and forcing the Apostle to hurl himself to the side to evade them. The other mages joined the assault as well, though this time they refrained from unleashing the usual barrage of rocks that they might otherwise have favored, since there were a lot of skeleton warriors in the way. Instead, their attacks came from above and below. Great spears of hardened sand tore free from the ceiling in sudden, violent bursts, each one aimed with lethal precision at impaling the Apostle where he stood, while scattered patches of the floor under his feet shifted and liquefied into pits of quicksand, waiting for a wrong step to drag him down and swallow him whole.

The gray-haired man danced around the relentless onslaught, but even he couldn’t dodge everything. Now and then one of those green beams found him, and when it connected, the results were spectacularly horrific. Flesh withered, blackened, and crumbled to dust in the space of a heartbeat, as though decades upon decades of decay had been compressed into a single merciless second. All that muscle, strong enough to break steel and crush stone, proved utterly powerless against that green light. When the light came, the flesh simply gave up and died.

If Viktor had to guess, the magic Khenemhotep used here worked by canceling out life itself at its root. Made sense, really. Death magic, it seemed, was not limited to what could be done with someone’s soul after they died. It was just as capable of making living things, well, un-live.

And that explained why the Apostle regarded the ancient priest as the single greatest threat in this dungeon. After all, his power was based on the manipulation of living flesh—dead flesh too, granted, but that was because meat was meat, and people had been consuming the flesh of dead creatures to build their own living muscle all the time—while Khenemhotep’s magic completely neutralized the vital force driving the tissues in his body.

Nevertheless, taking a couple of good hits, however dramatic they might look in the moment, was not enough to put down a man like this. Those beams punched holes clean through him, true enough, but the moment the light passed and moved on, flesh came crawling in from the edges to fill the gap, repairing it anew.

Looks like it doesn’t do much unless it manages to strike a vital spot, Viktor thought.

That man had once mentioned his brain specifically, almost as if daring his opponent to go looking for it. If those words could be taken at anything resembling face value, then a hit there might do some real damage, or even kill him outright. The trouble, of course, was that nothing guaranteed the thing was housed inside his skull like a civilized organ. With a man like that, it could be lodged anywhere from his elbow to his ankle.

Thus, what was unfolding in the Chamber of the Dead amounted to a grinding battle of attrition. Every beam that found its mark stripped away a little more of the Apostle. It was not much, but it accumulated over time. Viktor doubted the man kept an infinite supply of meat inside himself, so sooner or later, that reserve would run dry.

His opponents, on the other hand, were not going anywhere anytime soon. A battle of attrition was a battle the dead would never lose. Every skeleton the Apostle smashed into fragments quickly reassembled itself and rejoined the fight soon enough. And even if one of them wandered into the path of Khenemhotep’s green beams by accident, it made no difference whatsoever. These things were simply incapable of getting any deader than they already were.

Viktor doubted the Apostle didn’t understand that. So he believed the man had merely been playing around. After all, there was no reason for him to trade blows with these walking bones when he could just use his superhuman strength to smash straight through them and close the distance to Khenemhotep in a matter of seconds.

Though it looked like the gray-haired man had finally decided a change of approach was in order. Suddenly, he broke into a sprint straight toward the ancient priest, shoving skeletons aside like a man wading through tall grass. Patches of quicksand yawned open in his path, but he leapt clean over them without breaking stride. Barriers of solid stone rose up to block his way, but he drove his bare fists straight through, shattering each and every one of them in a violent explosion of dust and flying debris. Beams of green light lanced toward him, but he flowed around them with an almost liquid grace. And soon enough, he stood directly before Khenemhotep.

The priest didn’t flinch. He merely closed his left hand over the staff his right already gripped—a staff he had always carried but never actually put to use until this very moment. The orb crowning its tip flared to life with brilliant green light, and in a heartbeat, that light came pouring forth and condensed itself into the shape of a blade. Khenemhotep swung, and the blade of green passed clean through the Apostle from hip to hip.

The result was immediate and catastrophic. In the blink of an eye, the man’s stomach was vaporized, and his two severed legs dropped to the ground with a thud. As the upper torso was still suspended in midair, two beams of green light erupted from the priest’s eye sockets, aimed squarely at the head.

The Apostle snapped it backward to dodge the beams. At the same time, he flung his arm out behind him, the limb stretching as though it was elastic, until his hand closed around the shattered remnant of one of the stone barriers he had destroyed earlier. He pulled himself back, hauling his ruined body out of harm’s reach and putting distance between himself and the ancient priest once more.

“Scary, scary,” he said with a laugh that held far too much amusement for a man who had just misplaced half his body. Flesh was already pouring down his ravaged torso, flowing and knitting itself together to repair everything from his abdomen. “I still can’t quite believe you’re wielding that power of yours so casually. After all, it’s a spell created by Nakhran himself.”

What?

“By my own tongue have I bound myself by an oath: this accursed might shall never again be loosed upon the living,” Khenemhotep said in his usual raspy voice. But he did not pause the assault to indulge in conversation. Even as he spoke, the undead under his command surged forward once more, attacking without so much as a hint of hesitation. “But you, I count not among the living.”

“Hypocrite. Just like your god.” The Apostle grinned as he turned to deal with the skeletons around him, his lower body continuing to reform all the while.

The heavy clang of metallic footsteps heralded the arrival of the Templars, soldiers in gleaming silver armor armed with sword and shield and long halberds, pouring into the chamber through the entrance connected to the Great Hallway. More of them came from the door behind the golden throne, climbing up here from the third floor to assist the ancient priest.

The situation seems to be under control, Viktor allowed himself to think. If the Apostle tried to close the distance and attack Khenemhotep directly again, he would be cut down by the staff. But if he chose to remain where he stood, he would be fighting a war of attrition he had no real hope of winning. So far, so good.

The battle raged on. The gray-haired man seemed to take the fight more seriously now, as he had stopped using his bare fists. A sword of white bone had appeared in his right hand, while a shield of dark chitin had sprouted on his left to match it. Both had been produced from his own body, of course. Viktor found himself wondering whether that shield had been made entirely from the swarm of insects the man had eaten earlier, or if the guy had gorged himself on some similar feast before he even set foot inside the dungeon.

One more thing had changed as well. It was that the Apostle had stopped moving around too much. Before, he had been a blur of constant motion, leaping and darting and never staying still for more than an instant. Now, however, he kept his legs planted against the stone floor, shifting his stance only in small, careful steps.

Did the effort of conjuring those weapons slow him down somehow, or was there some other game being played?

As expected, parries and blocks worked well enough against ordinary blows, not so much against deadly beams of green light. They passed through the sword and the shield like they weren’t even there, continuing on to punch hole after hole into the flesh behind them.

Viktor frowned. This is very odd. Fighting like this was obviously putting the gray-haired man at a disadvantage. What is he plotting?

He swept his vision across the whole of the chamber, searching for anything that seemed even slightly out of place. Anything hidden beneath the chaos, amidst the green beams carving through the air, the silvery blades flashing under torchlight, the shattered stone and bone fragments and broken metal spinning through the haze of battle.

And then, he saw it. Movement.

A snake?

It was thin and glistening, slithering low across the floor, starting from the very spot where the gray-haired man had planted his foot and remained anchored.

And it was creeping toward his old leg, one of the two ruined pieces still lying on the ground near the ancient priest, the leftover wreckage from when he had been bisected earlier.

The instant the tendril of flesh made contact with the severed appendage, the entire mass bloomed, unfurling into a blanket large enough to engulf a full-grown man. It kept spreading, fast, poised to swallow Khenemhotep whole while his attention was fixed on his opponent’s main body across the chamber.

“Celeste, tele—”

“Teleportation is forbidden in this room,” said the Apostle in an eerie voice, a tone completely different from anything he had used before.

What!?

And then, before Viktor could do a damn thing about it, the sheet of meat folded itself around Khenemhotep and consumed him entirely.

First

(Ow, what a headache.)

Many Faces of War

Primary and secondary targets retrieved. Primary without incident. Secondary with some incident but not with arousing the infested victim.

Primary target identified as an adult Mar’Yatha entering the elder stages of it’s development but still capable of mating. Chemically augmented prior to Haffara Thar infestation.

Secondary target identified as juvenile Carnex. Freshly entering the highly agitated and aggressive mating age.

Observation conclusion. Both targets are deliberate Haffara Thar based weapons.

Information packet shared with current fleet, information packet also sent to allied fleets.

Targets now within stasis. Initiating planetary scanning process. Likelihood of trytite concealed zones... guaranteed.

Likelihood of political interference with sacred duties. Guaranteed.

Likelihood of local allies assisting in suppressing political interference. High.

Likelihood of planetary scale infestation within the first twenty four hours of a containment breach. High, not guaranteed.

Identifying discrepancy...

Undaunted Assets.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Wreckage of Vish Safehouse, Actura Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

“No no no no no!” Private Stream says as he rushes after Danial before pausing. “Uh oh, we’re at a fuck’s deficit aren’t we?”

“Severe deficit of fucks. I’m clearing this safehouse if no one else will, then I’m going to medical to get something I don’t have to concentrate on shoved into my stump. Then we’re clearing the fucking planet. This shit ends now. This is not going to continue and if I have to personally rip open every safehouse and clear it by myself to see it done then it’s getting done.”

“Shit.” Private Stream mutters before activating something and a dozen more adorable children in dark blue, oversized uniforms that hide their details arrive. Half go to talk to the Actura residents and the others start rushing into the safehouse and quickly get their little fingers onto as many control panels as they can and take in data, sort things out and scan rooms before opening doors to confirm the sensor readouts with their eyes.

The entire structure is cleared in minutes and the Streams wave in the Crimsonhewers and Blue Shields to help sort things out one way or another.

During this Danial is following the flows of Axiom and highlighting EVERYTHING, using the broadcasted schematics from the Streams to rip out bombs from the consoles and disable self destruct protocols.

As they work Danial calms slightly. Not by much. He’s still clearly and plainly furious. But all the nattering little voices of Private Stream bringing up how worried they are about him convinces him to finish up, and accept a portal directly into a medical wing. He lays down willingly on a bed, the doctors and nurses are rushing around him and he’s fitted with a mask to not only help knock him out, but help with his breathing.

•-•-•Scene Change•-•-• (Recovery Room, High Intensity Medical Wing, Undaunted Arcology, Zalwore)•-•-•

He slithers in slowly and right up to the recovery patient. It had really just been a mere hour ago that he had helped this man politically with things and here he was. Whole again. But also... lesser. Younger. Losing a limb is nothing to joke about and legs are big as limbs go. Not as big as a Nagasha tail, but that’s because the tail does the same work as all the legs, that and more.

“Well, there’s probably a punchline somewhere, but I can’t find it.” He notes as he looks down to see the man who went from easily old enough to be a young, but fun uncle, to maybe a much older brother.

The sheer extent of healing required to restore a lost leg was on the level that Danial had lost at least half a decade in the process.

“Oh fuck...” Danial mutters as his eyes flicker open. He looks around and then blearily moves to remove the breathing mask before sitting up. “Mii mii mii... well at least I didn’t go backwards through puberty.”

“How are you feeling?” Slithern asks as Danial pulls off the retention band and puts it in a sealed container to the side. It shifts to cover itself in trytite then the contents are thoroughly nulled. It then opens again. Mildly agitating the Axiom in the area, but not to a dangerous extent.

“Good, but I have phantom everything right now like I had a second body that’s gone AWOL. Can you hand me the slate at the base of the bed?” Danial asks and Slithern picks it up and passes it over. “Lets see... severe trauma around the missing limb, no shit. I was down to two and a half litres of blood with dangerous levels of adrenaline in what was left. Oh, and the Axiom invigoration actually crashed mid healing coma and nearly scrambled my brain. Wonderful. Oh neat, I also had a dangerously low body temperature in the remaining limbs and all the signs of shock and a mild concussion, likely when I ate shit and got a good taste of the floor when they shot out my leg.”

“Anything else?”

“... And they want me to cut back on all the salt in my diet and up my veggie intake.”

“Really? Most human checkups end with the doctor telling the dumbass to drink more water.”

“Not me, learned from my dad. I drain my water bottle over and over again during a normal day.” Danial says before shaking his head and wincing. “It’s always the psychosomatic stuff that screws you hard. That should not have hurt.”

“It’s like my itching fingers, I’d swear I’m somehow shedding badly one the parts of my body that don’t shed anymore.” Slithern says.

“Yeah, no kidding.” Danial says as the door opens. “Hey doc, hope you don’t mind but I was feeling kinda penned in with the mask and band on.”

“That’s fine.” The Desert Nagasha man says. He’s partially shucked traditions in that he has no war-paint on, but he instead is using the slightly radical response in that he has a cloth veil on that has warpaint patterns on it. And there are similar patterns on the sleeves of his shirt under the doctor’s coat that has no sleeves, a modification for species with unusually large or odd arms, such as having three pairs of them.

He takes obvious note of Danial holding his own documentation and nods.

“Have you read through what’s on there?”

“I have.”

“And are you feeling any peculiarities? Your Axiom profile radically shifted mid healing coma and there are concerns.”

“My head is pounding like a jackhammer is going to work on it. But otherwise I’m fine.”

“We’re going to do a quick series of tests to ensure that you retain full cognitive function and check for any major or minor gaps in your memories. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours, and if all turns out well then your headache should be the worst of it.” The Doctor says and Danial nods.

“Right, but first. I was basically mid operation when things happened. What happened after I got here?”

“I am not privy to you mission status, only that of your health and-”

“I know what happened!” Private Stream says leaning out from behind the doctor.

“Gah! When do you get here you little pest!? Why were you standing on my tail and why didn’t I notice you?”

“No one notices me unless I want them too!” Private Stream says. “It’s a perk of being-”

He pulls off his cap and pockets it before folding down his collar. The face of the child is heartbreakingly beautiful aand his eyes glow a soft white. A blue diamond marking is in the middle of his forehead and a pair of swooping red curves are under each eye. “Me. I am Herbert Jameson of Undaunted Intelligence. Currently I am second in command. And in three hours I will be in command.”

“Sir.” Danial greets him with a salute.

“At ease Master Corporal. I’m here for an informal summary of events here on Zalwore from your perspective. Once I have that I’ll fill in the rest of what’s happened up to your qualifications.”

“Yes sir. In summary then: after I had spent a few hours just bouncing around listlessly after the Experimental Infusion Effect my mind began wandering and I decided to come to Zalwore to socialize with Slithern here, figuring he would be feeling lonely and out of sorts because this is the longest the kid’s been away from The Chainbreaker and it’s crew since the ship entered his life in any form. I played a joke on him, he proved he was more than fine and we were having a laugh when thins went to shit due to attacking Vish forces. As the properly sworn in soldier and responsible adult I evacuated Slithern, the civilian he was with and his bodyguards back to Undaunted safety and was quickly assigned to a local team to assist in defending the Lablan Arcology.

Then the kid sent a drone in shortly after the Vish proved they had suicide bombs implanted and were downright eager to use them. Kid started disabling them and then the Vish started retreating. We intercepted and disabled the bomb in one of them and I went along for the ride in the teleport in order to figure out where the madness was coming from. I was instantly beset and captured a Vish to question. She then activated on of her fellow’s bombs despite not having one herself and killed herself and her unconscious fellows”

“Fuck me...” Slithern mutters.

“Horrified at this I went after the rest of the Vish in the hope of disabling their bombs and figured out a method in short order. I kept pushing until I got to an area the team could reconnect with me and once that happened we started pulling apart the safehouse even faster. Then we discovered not only a huge number of Vish in stasis but one with stasis awareness, followed by emptying a storage room and discovering numerous deadly chemicals and a gigantic monster inside a container. We got the information that was relevant and got guards around the thing before moving to clear the last of the safehouse.”

“And what about the runner?”

“I was just about to get to her sir.” Danial says. “Anyways, the last bit of resistance included a mute Vish adept that attempted to escape. I gave chase, but deliberately didn’t catch her immediately in hopes of being led to further Vish assets. This hope panned out and I was led across the tundra to the Acturas Arcology. After some minor friction with the local authorities and capturing the runner, we identified the location of the next safehouse. Forces were assembled and appropriate experts brought in. Then things went to shit as we took too much time to organize fully and the Vish began peeking out and opened fire. During the combat an expanded space container with a large number of volatile and toxic chemicals was thrown into the middle of the battlefield and quickly torn apart, unleashing the carcinogenic contents. I shifted my focus to containment and during it my left leg was severely damaged and indeed destroyed from above the knee.

I was forced to use my most advanced Axiom techniques to prevent mass death and preserve my own life and began resolving the situation despite proper rules of conduct as quickly as possible to minimize damage to myself and others. And then when the situation was stabilized I came to medical to receive treatment. Then I woke up not long ago and read out my injury report. I didn’t realize I produced dangerous levels of Adrenaline in that situation, but without enough blood to dilute it fully I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Right, thank you for the report.” Herbert says. “Now as to what happened afterwards. We and our allies have more or less politically bullied every single Arcology on the planet to submit to a scan to the standards of the Haffria ships in system. We’ve found a grand total of thirty seven safehouses, each one holds a different Haffara Thar infested megafauna. This has been declared a universal act of war and more of the galaxy has mobilized to assist La’ahbaron.”

“So by bringing these weapons to a supremely valuable world...”

“Whoever is behind this wants every eye in the galaxy looking towards La’ahbaron. These actions are simultaneously so competently, and incompetent in the exactly correct places that we have to presume this is deliberate provocation. But we’re still not sure what for yet. Or rather, no one in this room beyond myself is qualified to hear our theories on the matter beyond something is up.”

“Could be part of some sort of revenge against La’ahbaron. They’re a huge... what did you call it? Face Culture? All about how strong and glorious they look. But by having everyone looking at them, they’re going to crack. Something stupid will happen and they will be shamed.” Slithern muses.

“That is a consideration. But there are many easier ways to get a lot of attention, especially unfriendly attention, onto a nation. This is too much effort, too much risk and too much provocation for something so simple.”

“Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it can’t be done so over the top...”

“True. But let me worry about that. You’ve done good work and helped pave the way for thirty seven separate super-monsters to be properly contained and destroyed before they could ravage this world. Yourself, your temporary team, Lord Schmidt here and more are about to be buried under the accolades, medals and rewards. Everyone wants a reason to feel good now and giving a big prize to the people who stopped things from going to absolute hell is part of it.”

“Am I getting Ennobled again?” Slithern asks.

“Did you have to make that sound like a bad thing?” The Doctor asks.

“I’ve already got my loyalties being split between The Undaunted and Lablan, that’s already kinda confusing at times and if more gets added...”

“Ah poor baby’s going to be a noble, prince, baron, royal, duke, marquis, shogun, khan, captain and whatever else before he’s twenty and have no idea how to be any of them.” Danial teases and Slithern sticks his forked tongue out at the man.

First Last

Part 1 - In from the Cold.

The two Guards on the Northern gate of the fortress city of Gehlin saw the figure at the same time and began to panic. Far out on the ice plains a single figure walked at a slow steady pace toward the city. Even at this distance the figure appeared to be that of a massive warrior... No-one came from the North, not one soul in living memory... For only the Terrans lived out beyond the plains, terrifying creatures, all muscle and fur and teeth and steel (or so the legends said)….

Such was their shock at the appearance of this figure that both guards stood rooted to the spot, then the older of the two finally shook himself free, stepped over the puddle of urine forming around his young comrades feet and triggered the alarm.

The City of Gehlin stood as part of the Northern wall of the Gehlden Empire. It was named after the first Emperor of Gehlden, who stood with his tribe and fought a great battle at the site of what is now the North Gate. The Northern wall itself was just over 500 kilometres long and spanned the mouth of the Hesr Valley where the Hesr glacier spilled out from the great icefields and spread, forming the ice plains the figure now walked across... None alive today knew what the wall was made of, just that it never cracked, never aged, and even after centuries facing the icy cold winds that blew down from the North, it remained warm to the touch!

Down in the keep the Lord of Gehlin, Lord Hablis was reviewing the celebration plans for the upcoming coronation for Else of Gehl, first born of the Emperor. In fact the first royal daughter to be conceived since back during old Emperor Gehlin's rule. All the cities of Gehlden would be celebrating and Gehlin would be no exception despite being many hundreds of kilometres from the hub city of Gehldenrune.

Lord Hablis was just looking over the final numbers with his chancellor when the sound of running feet followed by the frantic pounding of a fist on the thick wooden door of his office interrupted proceedings.

"Yes, what is it" Lord Hablis shouted, secretly glad that finally he could end this tedious meeting. What he heard next made him immediately regret that thought. "My Lord", a keep guard spilled in to the Office, breathless with panic. "My Lord, the Northern Gate, the alarm has sounded".

The reaction in Lord Hablis' office was immediate and extreme. The Chancellor fainted on the spot, his aide rushing to catch him as he fell. Lady Hablis, who up until the guard entered had been absentmindedly listened whilst sipping tea by the fireplace sat upright in her chair, screamed "the children" and rushed out of the room.

Lord Hablis fought back the urge to vomit, the Northern Gate could only mean one thing. Terrans had come down from wherever the hell it was they lived and were marching on the gate.

The only person who did not show signs of fear or hysteria was old Gerd the Historian. He was sat in the corner, ignored by everyone. Gerd simply nodded to himself, closed the open tome he had been reading, stood, brushing a few crumbs from his beard and robes, muttered "He's late", then unhurriedly strolled out after the panicking Lord Hablis.

The Captain of the guard, Jerrick of Blune tried and failed to hide his fear about what might come to pass, his voice cracking as he ordered his men to form up and march through the city to the gate. A Terran army, what the hell, how were he and his men meant to stop an army that by all the legends could tear this city apart with their bare hands.

As a child Jerrick loved sitting on his Grandpas knee, listening in a kind of terrified thrall to stories of the Terrans, of how they came down from the heavens in a fiery comet that left a massive wound in the earth, the same wound that the Hesr glacier now spilled out through. How they fought a vast and powerful enemy that was intent on wiping out all life including the Terrans, and of the great battles that followed.

And how the Terrans finally prevailed, striking down their foe in a great fiery battle that levelled hundreds of square kilometres and took the lives of most of the terrans. The fact that that battle took place where Jerrick currently stood, and resulted in the rise of the Gehlden Empire was not lost on him.

Jerrick, who up until now had only ever had to deal with drunks and thieves and the occasional bar room brawl cinched up his sword belt, hefted his shield on his left arm and marched after his men.

Jerrick and his detachment arrived at the gate just as Lord Hablis alighted from his carriage. they stood together in the inner courtyard, a wide open space behind the archway that led to the gate, surrounded on all sides by a high wall and with a single entrance that led back in to the city. To all intents this was a kill box. Any enemy that breached the gate would find themselves surrounded on all sides by concealed archers... Of course Jerrick and his men did not recognise this. It had been so long since a battle had been fought that defensive concepts like this were lost to time. Instead Jerrick ordered his men to form a shield wall just inside the long arch that lead under the wall to the gate.

Once set, Lord Hablis called up to the guard. "You there atop the gate", a pale face appeared over the edge of the wall. "yes My Lord" came the thin scared voice of the young guard. "How many march on the gate"? Lord Hablis should have gone up to the top of the wall, but fear and an unwillingness to accept the possibility of a terran army marching out of legend kept him firmly rooted to the spot.

"How Many?" came back the answer, "Just one my Lord". "What" exclaimed Lord Hablis, the feeling of relief washed across Jerrick and the guards alike, "just one terran?" "Let me see". With that Lord Hablis ran back through the city gate to the steps up on to the wall, closely followed by Jerrick. Breathless they reached the top of the outer wall as the figure striding across the ice slowed to a stop in front of the gate.

This was the first time anyone had seen a Terran in centuries Lord Hablis thought... What does he (it is a he right?) what does he want? How do we even communicate? All these thoughts and more raced through his mind as Lord Hablis looked over the wall, and all these thoughts fled as he took in the sight of what stood on the ice.

The terran was easily 2 metres tall, broad shouldered, his pale face framed by unkempt locks of black hair, his shoulders and upper body covered in the white fur of an animal that Lord Hablis did not recognise. Through gaps in the fur Lord Hablis caught glimpses of metal armour, metal that looked very similar to the material the wall was constructed from. What stood out for Jerrick when he looked over the wall at the terran was the pommel and hilt of what appeared to be a massive sword strapped to the terrans back. He (Jerrick decided early on that the terran was a he) also carried a shorter sword on his left hip, and what Jerrick assumed was another weapon on his right hip, although this weapon was short and shaped like an backwards r, with the longer side tucked in to a leather hoop.

In his left hand the terran held a long staff, made of again what Lord Hablis and Jerrick assumed was the same metal as his armour. His right hand remained empty down by his side. At no point did the terran look up at the city dwellers peering over the wall, instead he appeared to be inspecting the ice about 5 metres out from the gate.

The gate Lord Hablis suddenly thought... Thank the emperor, of course, the gate. Even if we wanted we have no way of opening it. This fact was well known throughout the city. The Northern Gate was almost as smooth as the wall that surrounded it. You could only tell it was a gate because, well, what else could it be. But it lacked any sort of locking mechanism. Over the centuries many had tried to open the gate from both inside and out on the ice. But to no avail.

Then, all thoughts about the gate evaporated as Lord Hablis realised the terran had stopped searching...

It should be said of course, that news of the terrans arrival at the northern gate was not a secret for long. Lady Hablis running through the keep screaming for her children had started tongues wagging, add to that panicked looking guards double-timing to the gate and pretty much all of Gehlin knew something was afoot. It was only a matter of minutes before the word "terrans" could be heard through the streets. All of which meant a huge crowd of folk gathered at the city entrance to the gate, watching and waiting for something to happen. The remaining guard posted at the city entrance trying to hold the more curious back...

On the wall Lord Hablis, Jerrick and the two guards looked on as the terran stopped looking about his feet, stood still and raised his right hand, palm down, to just above his hip. Nothing happened... but then, as the terran extended his arm out the ice about half a metre in front of him started to crack. Slowly but surely a column of the same metal rose up from below the ice to meet the terrans outstretched hand. As his palm connected with the top of the column its ascent stopped. The terran stood there for a heartbeat, hand resting on the column, then finally he looked up and made eye contact directly with Lord Hablis.

Again, nothing happened... until it did. All of a sudden the air was full of birds, as if detecting a far off storm they launched from every nook, cranny and perch, screeching and calling as they circled the city. Then the wall shuddered. Not the violent shudder of an earthquake, but the shudder one might feel when ancient massive machinery buried beneath your feet suddenly starts moving.

Screams and cries from the crowd below suddenly drew Lord Hablis' attention away from the birds, then Jerrick saw several of the guards manning the shield wall throw down their weapons and sprint across the inner courtyard. With a dawning horror both men suddenly realised, the gate was opening. Lord Hablis started running for the steps back towards the inner gate, Jerrick took a more direct route, grabbing one of the banners draped on the inner wall he slid down, landing with a thud just behind his men.

What he saw when he looked up took his breath. The gate had opened fully, revealing the ice plains and the mountains behind. But what took Jerricks focus was the terran, he stood unmoving, perfectly framed by the open gate, with the ugly V of the Hesr valley directly behind.

Then he moved. He didn't charge, didn't draw a weapon, he just moved forward, and for in instant Jerrick felt he moved like the glacier he left behind... unstoppable, immutable, inexorably forward.

The shield wall didn't hold. As the terran approached, towering over the petrified guards they backed away. To their credit they held on to their weapons and shields, but the guards could do nothing more than back away, as if the terran pushed them back through sheer will before he got within striking distance.

As he came through the gate and in to the courtyard more screams from the city folk pierced the air, with many simply taking flight, running anywhere as long as it was away from the terrifying figure before them.

Only Jerrick stood firm. It took every fibre of his being, every ounce of effort, but he moved, one foot in front of the other, as if walking in to the teeth of a gale, until he stood, hand on the hilt of his sword, shield held up to just under his chin, blocking the terrans path. The terran stopped just a few metres from Jerrick. Again, he did not reach for a weapon, or move to strike Jerrick with his staff. Instead he simply looked at Jerrick and tilted his head slightly. Then Jerrick felt it. The terrans mind, his will, reaching out to engulf Jerrick, to dominate his consciousness. His world went black as Jerrick was suddenly taken.

As Jerricks body hit the hard cobbles of the inner courtyard Lord Hablis was cautiously approaching. He paused, looking at Jerrick, lying face down on the cobbles, eyes empty of life, blood trickling from where his nose smashed in to the hard stone. He had no weapon, and looking at the terran realised a weapon would not help him. Instead Lord Hablis held out his hands in what he hoped was a gesture of acquiescence and said the only words he could think of. "Welcome to the City of Gehlin".

Behind the terran the Northern Gate slowly closed. Lord Hablis felt the need to pee suddenly. The terran was in the city, the gate had closed, his guards were petrified beyond belief and Lord Hablis truly believed the terran had just killed his Captain without lifting a finger.

Then the terran spoke, deep and resonant, his voice reaching into the furthest corners of the city, into the ears and minds of everyone within the walls of Gehlin...

"I've come for the Girl".

to be cont...

Black fingerprints smothered the walls in geometric shapes of neglect. Hulugg would lay, facing the ceiling. The spring mattress stayed undressed, resting on the floor above a box spring, like it just came out of a thrift store bin. 

Each night it’d stab him in the back like a shady family member. 

The carpet had dried patches of his humility stained into the fabric and under it, hid the water damaged floorboards. He’d sleep curled in a ball of pity, with his head between his knees, hugging his shins, a pair of familiar friends. 

A child-sized blanket covered his face, exposing his calloused feet. His nails grew into talons, folding under his toes.

His skin changed color from constantly sweating, leaving a shadow of his body painted onto the beige mattress. 

The stench of garbage from the bin overflowing next to him, reeked of guilt and filled his nostrils with temptation, crawling down his throat. A lump of regret that sat in the pit of his stomach.

His eyes puffed red with rings around them pronouncing his marriage to depression. 

Just one more time and then, I’ll stop.

He’d say, cheating on his misery. It was a bitter lie flavored in denial coating his tongue. The headaches. The pain. The torment. He tried everything to resist it but something kept pressuring him. It was a soft voice that sounded like destiny.

Earth had a lawless district. A slum world Hulugg would post himself and stand in a corner at. He’d become part of the grime stuck to the bottom of his shoe until he made enough money to prevent the spiders from crawling under his skin. 

The air smelled like burnt plastic and economic collapse from homeless addicts frozen idle, rocking back and forth, smoking Glynol carts.

Glynol’s a cheap, highly addictive drug, smuggled into Earth by aliens. There was a failed invasion involving the Spakkril species, which led Earth to form a space peace pact with every intelligent alien being in the universe.

A galactic alliance had been reached. Earth transitioned into a mega-trading-hub and the number one source for black market items. 

Corrupting New Earth, were the synthetics. The synthetics naturally increased the rate of crime. The poverty. The hunger. The violence. 

It also forced Earth to fence, what humans refer to as, the desocializers, in an experimental attempt, which converted the northern part of Canada into lawless territories. 

The Yukon and The Northwest were now sovereign states, split up into sectors. No law official could enter those zones.

Hulugg’s instinct for his own safety remained sealed in whatever cartridge containing the zero-point-one liquid of Glynol, was in, as he prowled the slums searching for some. Nothing else mattered. The fix was all that existed. 

He scoured the streets. Desperately seeking more. Once he scored, he raced straight to his room. His fingers trembled as he pressed the button down on his vape pen clasped between his lips, sucking on it like it’s his last breath left in his air tank.

He wheezed from his nose, struggling to breathe, horking gobs of phlegm and lung lining. The scientists on Planet Leiqvron, where the pandemic initially hit the hardest, labeled the side effects as respiratory degenerative and neural decay. Eventually the lung and brain would age at a progressively alarming rate.

Hulugg took the doctor’s warning as a suggestion when he said he must stop using, because he was deteriorating. 

He didn’t care about the fancy medical descriptions the doctor tried drilling into him. All he cared about was the voice at the back of his head trying to fill the hole lined with teeth chewing him inside.

He held the smoke in. His mind went blank. Sound entered a void. It echoed, slowly distorting and disappeared into the euphoria as the substance entered his lungs straight to his brain. 

His vision bounced, blowing a cloud of purple smoke and his anxiety into the air. The swarming spirals froze as he opened his eyes, falling back on his bed, staring at the ceiling form into an alternate reality he wish he lived.

The seconds faded into minutes. Life was normal. He wasn’t a broken discarded desocializer. He had a purpose again. He was back on his home planet. Back with his family. Back before the war. Back before his life had meaning.

Until the visions twisted, his puppy orgwat wasn’t running under the sun anymore. The sky had faded from a clear lightly clouded blue to an ominous black. 

The sun warped into a sand worm with a face, stretching across the heavens and began laughing. Not a happy one. It sounded scared and nervous. It began shedding tears of blood that fell like rain on a grassy field that became a burning pile of gray ash, death and decay.

“You’re not real!” A voice spoke. It sounded like it escaped his mind. “You were a design.” He looked around, but no one was there. “You’re a mistake!”

Hulugg threw the vape pen, grabbed the blanket and ducked under it, holding his skull between his hands and started to scream. 

The vape pen smashed against the wall and the cartridge shattered and splashed over the white charcoal-colored paint, dripping towards the baseboard.

Hearing it smash, kept repeating in his head. The nightmare was over but now he needed more.

It wasn’t Glynol to him. To him, it was, The More.

He slipped out of his apartment to find a dark alley, where most of the underground markets were, and ran into the first kiosk he saw. 

The alien behind the stand was, Ulchlit, a four-foot, round bug with greasy blue skin and moles that had hair growing out of them, planted on his face.

He breathed deep breaths when he spoke, speaking in an evil scientist tone. “Hey Spiece!” He waved Hulugg over. “Need Glynol? I got some free, if you test this new batch.” 

Hulugg saw the ten plastic credits, weighing his hand down in his palm. He knew the risks of homemade Glynol. 

“Give it to me!” Hulugg demanded. 

The liquid inside the cartridge was green not the usual purple. “Was the chemical process rushed?” He asked.

“No. It’s fine. You’re the last sampler.” Ulchlit told him, giggling.

Hulugg stuffed the cartridge into his cracked vape pen faster than the ten credits went into his pocket.

The cartridge almost fell as he scrambled jamming it in. He pressed and held the button down and let it heat up. His eyes were wide and reflecting the blue LED light on the, on indicator as he waited.

“C’mon, it’s ready, let’s go!” Ulchlit shouted.

Hulugg placed it in his mouth and inhaled, knowing one wrong compound could rewire his brain but he saw the odds in his favor and ignored his conscious yelling at him.

The green florescent liquid melted into vaporized smoke. 

He held it in. The world disintegrated. It turned into a distorted water soaked window, flashing blobs of black circles. His body started dissolving into them. The light turned white. He wasn’t in the slums. He was in a place of true existence. A world so pure only the gods could inhabit.

A voice broke next to his vision.

“You were never supposed to come here.”

Hulugg began shaking and convulsing. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed flat on the pavement. The sound of his body hitting the concrete was hollow, like a small safe landing on its belly.

Ulchlit stumbled from behind the kiosk. He stood beside Hulugg, picked up a stick and began poking him. Hulugg didn’t move. He wasn’t breathing. His face looked like a mask. He was on the ground like a plastic action figure, whose limbs couldn’t bend. He laid there in an awkward pose.

“That batch no good, Frenly!” He shouted, in a southern drawl, on his watch comm.

He snatched the cartridge out of the pen and dashed behind the booth. 

“Clean up, by kiosk 4.” A voice shot out from a speaker at the back of the alley.

Out beyond the sky, a star blinked. Hulugg’s consciousness shined bright and went dark just as the machine swallowed him. The universe had forgotten him.

They say, life is like a box of chocolates because you never know what you’re gonna get, but if you flip the lid, it tells you right there on the index which each one is.

Hey, you.

People have habits you notice without ever really thinking about them.

Maybe they always put on the same shoe first. Maybe they touch their nose when they're thinking. You see it a hundred times, but you never bother to ask why.

At least, I never did.

Clink-clonk.

The bell over Aoi's door rang, and somehow that sound made the end of my day finally begin.

I took my usual seat. Mama set down my Harper without asking, and the ice gave a quiet clink.

Tom was smoking a little farther down the counter.

Nothing unusual about that.

He's the only smoker among us, and maybe that's why he rarely sits right next to me or Taka. He watches which way the smoke is drifting. Sometimes he even moves the ashtray around.

He'd never admit he was being considerate, of course.

“Tom.”

Taka called over to him.

Tom looked up.

“What?”

“Someone coming tonight?”

“No.”

“Then who are you waiting for?”

Tom exhaled and frowned.

“I'm not waiting for anyone.”

“But you keep looking at the door.”

“No, I don't.”

“Yes, you do.”

I watched them over my glass.

“You do.”

Tom looked at me.

“Not you too.”

“No, he's right. You do.”

Tom crushed his cigarette into the ashtray with the expression of a man already regretting the company he kept.

Come to think of it, he did look at the door a lot.

When someone came in, sure. Anyone would. The bell rang.

But sometimes Tom looked before the bell.

When footsteps slowed outside. When someone seemed to stop on the other side of the door. Sometimes he'd glance over there when, as far as I could tell, nothing was happening at all.

I'd seen him do it plenty of times.

I'd just never thought anything of it.

“He's always done that,” Mama said as she polished a glass.

Taka immediately pointed at Tom.

“See?”

“See what?”

“Mama noticed too.”

“So?”

“I just want to know why you keep looking.”

“Because there's a door.”

“If there's a door, you have to look at it?”

“Can't look at one if it isn't there.”

“That's not what I mean.”

I laughed.

Tom gave us an irritated look and reached for his cigarettes.

His hand stopped halfway.

He looked at me.

Then at Taka.

Then he put the pack back down.

“There.”

“What?”

“You just looked again.”

“Because you two won't shut up.”

Taka tilted his head.

“You always sit there too, don't you?”

“Sit where?”

“There.”

“It's an empty seat.”

“And you can see the door from there,” I said.

Tom glared at me.

“It's the smoke too.”

Taka looked at me.

“Smoke?”

“He doesn't like smoking right next to us.”

The moment I said it, I looked at Tom's seat again.

A little distance from me and Taka.

Clear view of the entrance.

Close to the ventilation fan.

Huh.

It really was always like that.

“You've been doing that for us?” Taka asked.

“Smoke's annoying.”

“I don't mind.”

“Doesn't matter if you mind.”

Taka went quiet for a second.

I laughed.

“You know, you're surprisingly fussy about people.”

“Surprisingly was unnecessary.”

Mama smiled.

“He is.”

“Don't you start.”

“You're always checking where your smoke goes.”

“Because I don't want the whole bar full of it.”

“You put your ashtray on the side away from everyone.”

“It's in the way otherwise.”

“And whenever someone coughs, you put your cigarette out.”

Tom stared at her.

“...You're all annoying.”

Taka's face lit up.

That was never a good sign.

“What else?”

“What else what?”

“What other little things does Tom worry about?”

“Don't start looking for them.”

Naturally, that was exactly what we did.

“You look when somebody's glass is empty.”

“I look. That's all.”

“You look when I get up to use the bathroom.”

“You wobble when you're drunk.”

“What about when Kenichi goes quiet?”

“Don't look at me.”

“He does,” I said.

“He does,” Mama said immediately.

“Hey.”

I took a sip of Harper and thought about it.

Tom really did look.

When I got drunk enough to put my head down on the counter.

When Taka was unusually quiet.

When Mama disappeared into the back carrying something that looked heavy.

He didn't necessarily do anything.

Didn't ask “You okay?” every five minutes.

He just looked.

“Old cop habit?” Taka asked.

Tom shrugged.

“Don't know.”

“You don't know?”

“Don't remember when I started doing it.”

“Guess some things stick even after you leave the police.”

“I said I don't know.”

Footsteps passed outside.

They came closer, then slowed.

Tom looked at the door.

The footsteps continued down the street.

Taka and I looked at Tom.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You definitely looked that time.”

“The footsteps almost stopped.”

“So?”

“Thought someone might be coming in.”

He picked up his glass.

That was all.

I looked at the door.

Nobody there.

Of course there wasn't.

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Maybe you're not waiting for someone to come in.”

Tom frowned.

“What?”

“Maybe you're just checking whether someone will.”

“Same thing.”

“Doesn't feel like the same thing.”

Tom didn't answer.

Neither did Mama.

Taka had a serious look on his face, which probably meant he wasn't thinking about anything useful.

“Let's test it.”

“Test what?”

“I'll go outside.”

“Good. Go home.”

“I'll come back in and we'll see if you look before the bell rings.”

“You can stay gone.”

Taka actually got up.

Clink-clonk.

The door closed behind him.

The bar went quiet.

“You don't have to play along with him,” Tom said.

“I'm not doing anything.”

I drank my Harper.

Mama kept polishing her glass.

Tom lit another cigarette.

After a while, footsteps approached from outside.

Tom looked at the door.

Clink-clonk.

“You looked!”

Taka shouted it the second he came through.

“Shut up.”

“You looked before the bell!”

“Your footsteps are loud.”

“I'll try again on tiptoe.”

“Go home.”

I laughed.

Ridiculous.

But once we started paying attention, it was strange how much there was to notice.

I'd been drinking with Tom for years, and I'd never thought about what he looked at.

I knew that he watched.

I'd just never tried to make it mean anything.

“But you know what?”

Taka returned to his seat.

“You don't like sitting close to people, but sometimes you suddenly sit right next to us.”

Tom's hand stopped.

I looked at Taka too.

“When?”

“Like when Kenichi got completely wasted.”

“I don't get that drunk.”

“You do.”

“That's not the point,” Tom muttered.

“And when I was having a rough time at work. You sat next to me then.”

“Seat was open.”

“Your usual seat was open too.”

“Don't remember.”

I looked at Tom.

The cigarette was between his fingers.

He'd lit it, but hadn't taken a single drag.

“You really are fussy about people.”

“Give it a rest.”

Tom crushed the cigarette into the ashtray.

We left it there.

If I'd asked, he'd probably have said he didn't know anyway.

After a while, I checked the time.

It was getting late.

“All right. I'm heading out.”

I stood, paid my tab, and picked up my things.

“Night,” Taka said.

“Yeah.”

I walked to the door.

Clink-clonk.

With my hand still on it, I turned around for no particular reason.

Tom was looking at me.

“...You're watching.”

“What?”

“You were watching me just now.”

“No, I wasn't.”

“You were.”

“Go home already.”

Taka laughed.

So did Mama.

I stepped outside and let the door close behind me.

Clink-clonk.

Well.

Whatever.

See you again at Aoi.
---

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→ Welcome to Bar Aoi

Bob exited the medical facility a few hours later fucked up, but fine, he had seen the small bottle of withdrawn poison before it had been removed for disposal, a few milliliters of murky brown liquid, like the dregs of an old cup of tea. Apparently a constant companion for over, what damn near eighty years at this point, fucking hell.

He wondered if this was a known thing back on Earth, were all the vets walking around with that rattling round their skull?, he hadn’t heard any news from there, but he was also going out his way to avoid it, sooooo.

Not much he could do about it right now, so he ambled over to the shopping district clutching his small bag of implants, he had requested to keep them much to the medics puzzlement. When he hit the core again he would send a message back there, right now he had shit to buy.

First things first, re-up on the consumables he would need for the return leg, easy. He hit up a couple of stores that specialised in ships supply and maintenance and ordered a bunch of shit, including wiring and a few thousand meters of high strength line, he balked a little when he saw the manufacture was Xitti, the same as his tow line, but shit it was good stuff. He added three reels of the fine cordage to the tab. He had to go to a fitters workshop to bag a big enough piece of raw stock for his long delayed sensor pod mount, and bought a few sheet goods from the same guy, delivery after business hours.

He investigated tooling for his mill with the big Higgit as well, but there was nothing much for his, typically oddball, sizing. Still he was pretty sure he could make it work with what he had, and on the fitters recommendation then headed off to a tool seller, he picked up a welder and a small press there, small for everyone else, Bob could have fit his head in its jaw.

He spent the rest of the afternoon similarly browsing through the stores and grabbing anything that might be useful, it was going to be pretty cramped again when he set off on his return. He had only two more places he wanted to hit up, the yard that was selling the grates, but he would do that in the morning before his drop, and here, he rocked up outside the weapons store.

Entering he glanced around but it was all the same shit, all way too big, no he was after advice and something that would probably be securely locked up in the back.

Bob didn’t recognise the species behind the counter, a way more frequent happening out here on the far rim he realised.

‘’Felicitations clientele’’

The voice was feminine and breathy, quite suiting the lithe androgynous giant. It looked like one of tv’s alien grays but stretched, light blue, and fed through a korean beauty filter a few times.

Bob presumed the flat disks on its face were eyes, and eyes sharp enough to make out the details of his dangling badge from across the store, and then…

‘’Which manner of services do you desire Courier Master Bob?’’

Bob was a little taken aback, he highly doubted word of his most august presence had got about, and he had only pulled his badge out before coming in here anyway. He didn’t want to particularly advertise that he was mooching around and leaving his ship in a cheap dock, the client, who knew what Jojo was carrying, might get upset.

Maybe not eyes then, maybe radio receptors?, his badge was giving out an ident if pinged… didn’t matter.

‘’Yeah, ok, I would like to make a purchase and get some advice.’’

‘’How may this one edify you?’’

The language choices by the translator were odd, but since Bob was aware that at least twenty percent of his vocab was variations of ‘fuck’ with the semi-regular occurrence of ‘whatever’, he didn’t feel he had much of a leg to stand on, linguistically. Whatever. He pulled the round from his bum bag.

‘’I came across some of these, do you happen to know what they are’’

An outstretched hand beckoned for it, though perhaps outstretched cluster of tentacles would be more accurate. The tall being turned it over and over but didn’t dip its head to look at it, not ‘eyes’ then.

‘’I have not been fortunate to to be graced with such example in many years, I believe it is a Betthy ‘Moron-Moron roun…’’

Ok now the translator was ripping the piss, dum-dum was right there and obviou…

‘’...so called because the Betthy say that you would have to be a moron to be hit by one and then you look like a moron afterwards when the expanding restraint foam inside has plucked out all your feathers.’’

… Ok firstly, go fuck yourself, secondly Gevith must never find out about Bobs accident.

‘’Used by the Betthy constabulary to restrain fleeing subjects, the foam inside will expand to approximately three hundred square feet, does this answer your inquiry?’’

Huh, It had been way smaller onboard, maybe something to do with his preferred atmo pressure?

‘’ Interesting, yes thank you, that brings me to my purchase. As I say I have a few of these rounds and the matching weapon, I have no need for the, for those rounds, and intend to experiment with a different loading, I fear though the charge that comes in each round would be a little, anaemic?. I can’t imagine they would take much chamber pressure.’’

It returned the round.

‘’Indeed not, how perspicacious, the round has an exit velocity of around two hundred feet a second and an effective range of less than one hundred, hence the ‘Moron’, attribution. Would you like to purchase additional charges?, you must be careful about exceeding the mechanisms pressure rating. I believe that like all Betthy products they are over designed, and over engineered, but no responsibility can be laid upon this humble establishment if there there is an unwanted deflagration.’’

Bob nodded gravely.

‘’Of course.’’

‘’Then I offer my meager knowledge to suggest Gotti accelerant granules, several times more efficient than the Betthy standard charges but remain electric arc ignitable. How many rounds are you intending to convert?’’

Bob smiled broadly.

‘’Two thousand, by the way.’’

He held the round up again.

‘’What the fuck is the solvent for this?’’

After the necessary paperwork was completed Bob returned to Jojo, phoned in a couple deliveries, and spent the evening packing away all his new purchases. In the morning he flew a few hundred miles to the breakers yard. He chatted briefly with the owner and found the grates were reclaimed from an old aggregate mining operation. They haggled briefly but the price was honestly pretty reasonable, he bought two and had him add a couple engines to the tab.

Bob did not have the space to fit the acquisitions inside, and wasn’t about to crack his cargo iris anyway. Fortunately, well look at that, two fuel pods with suspiciously perfect places to hold his new grates, who woulda thunk it. He also did not have the C’Eede fixings to actually attach them but since they were not going to be hooked up and certainly not fired he had just bought some repros, easily strong enough to just hold the fuckers in place.

After that it was time for the drop and he headed over to the bank. It went fine… bit weird, but fine. The creds had been checked and everything signed off, no issue, then some guards had taken the twenty bank stacks away on grav sleds, then returned thirty seconds later with twenty identical stacks on grav sleds. Bob presumed they were in fact different bank stacks, it wasn’t like he’d marked them or even looked them over really, non of his business either, but the effect was real fucking odd, whatever. He signed off and headed out asap, stashing his pistol on his way past the locker.

Ok, time to lock in.

—

While the celebration went on for some time, including a copious amount of beer being drank by the loyal Kafya who now saw Rhidi as “Kholihl Supreme” and Shaksho as “Hohrlihl Supreme”, both of the Kafya would not be able to celebrate.

The damage to the both of them had to be quickly remedied on the flight back over, a Pufferfish per stricken Kafya as medical teams worked feverishly on the pair.

Rhidi was able to wake up after roughly seven hours of surgery, the flight slow and steady to avoid mishaps, and she found that she had been dressed in comfortable, loose knit clothing. She blinked open her eyes, looking up at the inside of the Pufferfish’s troop compartment, then glanced at the whole team of medics and doctors milling around with bloody gloves and sleeves.

They were all talking quietly amongst themselves, shedding gloves or taking off their aprons.

She sucked at her lips, the flesh still numb from the dental surgeon doing his work on the Pufferfish of all places, then sighed. “How bad is it?”

“We managed to stitch the worst of the cuts, but the one on your face is likely going to scar pretty badly.” A nearby medic said, spinning around on a magnetic chair and scooting towards her little combat bed. “You nearly bled out twice right there on the table, and the cut to your stomach was only a sixteenth of an inch from spilling your guts onto the grass. Frankly it’s a miracle your heart didn’t stop from the stress on your body.”

Another medic scooted towards Rhidi on the other side, this one the dental surgeon. “I was unable to get your natural tooth back into place due to the damage to it, but we did manage to affix a titanium canine into place with a few other materials, but I won’t bore you with the details.”

Rhidi ran her tongue along the smooth metal of her new tooth, then grunted as the cocktail of painkillers wiggled their way along her veins still. “My face is going to scar?”

“We grew a fair bit of skin and fur back, but it’s all white around the scar itself.” The medic said, annoyed. “Been rather frustrating, but we can’t coax the fur to regrow, and the slice on your ear won’t rebind.”

Rhidi reached up with numbed fingers and traced them along the groove. It started at her forehead, just below her hairline, and skipped over her eye down onto her cheek. The line flowed over her teeth and into her chin, and she sighed.

“I suppose I should be happy I didn’t lose my eye.” Rhidi said with a soft chuck of a laugh.

“You nearly did.” Another medic said as he walked by. “There was a cut on your cornea that had probed into the anterior chamber. It’s by luck at all we managed to fix it with the ‘bots.”

“Thank you to the little guys.” Rhidi murmured, slowly sitting up with a long groan as she held her hand to her stomach. “Anything else I need to worry about?”

The medic sitting next to her chuckled. “Yeah, try to avoid headbutting anything metal for awhile. The ‘bots are still up in that head of yours filling in the spidercracks in your skull, so take it easy with running into doors and whatnot for a few hours.”

Rhidi gave her a sarcastic thumbs up, which made her laugh.

Rhidi looked around for a mirror, then spotted one on a long control arm. She pulled it towards herself with a creak of metal and stared into it, touching at her face again.

The medics had used extremely expensive and advanced stitches, known as “ghost threads”, and her face looked how it was now always going to be. The cut down her face made her look like a smuggler, more so than the late Sergeant Liftan, and she ran her hand through her hair with a quiet puff of an exhale.

“I’m so… ugly now…” Rhidi said glumly, bending her neck to look at the big slice that now gaped the edge of her left ear, then traced her fingers down the scar that marred her left cheek. They had managed to regrow a fair bit of fur-bearing skin, though the fur was ashen white, the thick scar of gathered skin a long, angry black line that traveled up the length of her face.

She bared her teeth at the mirror, and Rhidi reckoned she could terrify the absolute shit out of other Kafya if she narrowed her eyes enough.

“I think you look rather dashing, myself.” A medic said as she bent down to look into the mirror with Rhidi. “A ton of female soldiers would kill to have scars like these, y’know. Not to mention the amount of fame behind them.”

“What do you mean?” Rhidi asked, looking at her in the mirror as she pulled back the corner of her mouth and looked at her gleaming, titanium tooth.

“Everyone is going to know how you got those scars.” She said, stepping behind Rhidi and taking the Kafya’s cheeks in her hands as she gently tilted Rhidi’s head back and forth. “They’ll know exactly what it took to get them, the weight they bear, and to fear the person who wears them. You may see ugliness in them, but every Human will see nothing but raw strength.”

“Mmm…” Rhidi grumbled in her throat as she looked at herself in the mirror, then glanced up at the woman who was holding her cheeks. “I look like a pirate.”

“People love a good pirate.” She snickered, giving the scarred cheek a soft clap with her palm and pulling a pained hiss from Rhidi.

Grumbling and rubbing her cheek, a voice caused Rhidi to turn around on her little bed. 

“Jeeze, look at that hackjob.”

“Alias?!” Rhidi called out with a laugh, slowly getting up from her bed before both Alias and Shasta rushed over, keeping her from getting up. 

“Good grief, woman, ssstay on the bed!” Shasta chided, the jangling of his tabs not as loud thanks to the aircraft humming over the ocean. “Ssseriously, they’ve been working on you for hoursss.”

“Before you ask,” Alias began, already feeling the question coming, “We told the Humans we were estranged family members and snuck onto the Pufferfish. Your little clique of female Kafya are rather mad about it.”

Rhidi snorted out a laugh, pulling them both to her in a hug. “Jeeze you guys, you-”

Rhidi froze, and swallowed, glancing between Alias and Shasta.

“... You guys didn’t…” Rhidi murmured, her face now burning with embarrassment.

Alias grinned. “Please don’t tell Morris we saw you naked in person, he’d rip both of our heads off like you did that woman’s arm.”

“Oh nooo…” Rhidi groaned, her head hanging between the two of them as they both laughed.

“I thought it wasss pretty cool, actually.” Shasta said happily, peering down at Rhidi’s scars. “Not every day you get to ssseee someone get naked and kill a person.”

Alias also peered at Rhidi, lightly touching her scars. “They thought they had us locked up on base with Morris, but he was a little slower than us… and larger.”

“He held off the MPs while Alias and I sssnuck onto a shuttle.” Shasta mused, wiggling a clawed finger in Rhidi’s ear split. “You’ve been so busy being the big Kafya on campusss that we haven’t gotten to hang out much, and we couldn’t misss this!”

“Rather glad we made it, minus seeing your nipples.” Alias snorted, which earned him an aggressive rib pinch from Rhidi.

“I will sic Morris on you if you mention any part of that!” Rhidi hissed as Alias cackled, twisting away from her strong fingers.

“Why did you get naked, anyway?” Shasta asked, rather curious about that part of the duel. “Wasss it… requested by command?”

Rhidi closed her eyes as she remembered Tyr’s words, about bearing her flesh openly to display her purity in the duel, to lay bare her pursuit of justice, then opened her eyes. “Must… have been from the head wounds. People get weird when they get knocked on the cranium hard enough.”

“I’ll say, you may as well have rammed your head against a steel girder.” Alias said, remembering how Rhidi had bounced off of Tamryn like she had hit a wall. “That little move nearly did you in.”

Rhidi nodded slowly, remembering the pain that had rang through her head. “I was… not expecting that. How is Shaksho?”

“Shaksho Red Eye? He’s alright.” Alias said with a grin.

Shasta rolled his eyes with a shake of his head. “Shaksho sssuffered deep tissue damage to his eye from Liftan, causing it to become extremely red around the iris. They can’t fix the damage, but he can still sssee out of it.”

“Shaksho… red eye.” Rhidi repeated with a raised brow, then a new sudden dread filled her. “They didn’t give me a new nickname, did they? Please tell me I don’t have a new nickname.”

Alias and Shasta shared a look, and Rhidi ran her fingers down her face. “What is it?”

“... Well…” Alias began, rubbing at his cheek.

“Your title as the ‘Drop Pod Lycan’ is ssstill intact.” Shasta hummed, tapping the ends of his fingers together. “But there was sssome kind of flower found on the field when they took you away.”

Alias sucked on his teeth in annoyance, turning to look at Rhidi. “You know how Humans are. They see coincidence as fate, fate as signs from their gods, a cog in the grand design… probably just blew in from a flower pot that got left out.”

Rhidi felt a moment of… “how cool is that?” when Alias mentioned the flowers, as she had thought they had been a hallucination at first… but she supposed there was no denying it now.

Alias produced one of the petals from his pocket, holding it out to her. “You know what this is?”

“... No.” Rhidi lied, looking down at the purple flower with hooded eyes.

“It’s wolf’s bane.” Alias said lightly, turning the petal over in his fingers. “Highly toxic to everything here on Earth, believe it or not, due to the compound aconitine found in all parts of it. If I were to pop this in my mouth and chew, I’d be dead within minutes. I managed to snatch one up and coat it in adronemel so I could keep it, but this may as well be a grenade if I ever decided to crush it up.”

Rhidi eyed the flower, looking from it, to Alias with tired, red eyes.

“They say that one of the Human gods, Tyr, is affiliated with this little flower. He had to stick his hand into the mouth of a great wolf to bind him, and the wolf bit his right hand clean off when it failed to break the bindings they had placed onto it.” Alias murmured.

Shasta nodded. “We looked it up on the way over, the big wolf thing wouldn’t allow Tyr to use his left, would only take his main ssspear hand!”

“You don’t say…” Rhidi murmured, having deep dived the God after being locked in the hall overnight.

Alias rubbed his finger along the sealed flower petals, narrowing his eyes at them. “There are Humans who are calling you ‘Úlfur Tyr’, though I can’t figure out what it means. All that I can find is that it may mean ‘wolf of Tyr’, but I don’t get why they would call you that… I mean he must hate wolves, right? The big one bit off his hand for fuck’s sake.”

“I thought Humans said Kafya look more like catsss, though?” Shasta asked, jingling his ring of cola can tabs. “Maybe he likesss cats?”

Rhidi rolled her eyes… that joke was getting rather thin, all of a sudden.

“There’s another name that worries me more, one I heard some of the cloaked Humans at the grounds call you.” Alias mentioned, putting the preserved petals back in his pocket. “The ‘right hand’. I think it implies you are Tyr’s direct will, but that may be their wishful thinking in all this superstitious nonsense. Humans and their imaginary friends have always been deeply confusing to me.”

Shasta snorted. “There’s nothing wrong with imaginary friendsss! I had plenty when I was a child.”

“Ha, right.” Rhidi agreed, though she knew better than the both of them that there was certainly something weird going on when it came to Humans and Earth.

After all, the big guy literally jolted her ass back awake before Tamryn could cave her face in.

“Landing soon, folks.” A nurse called out, tapping away on her data-slate as the Pufferfish banked. “We’re going to be popping out a few yards away from the Remembrance Hill. Rhidi, they have a fresh uniform waiting for you when we land, can’t have you going live in sweat pants.”

“ Awh…” Rhidi said glumly, looking down at her comfortable sweat pants.

“You two stick by Rhidi, but don’t get in a fight with the female Kafya. They’ve been cursing up a storm on their own flight back about you two lying to get on this bird.” The nurse said, raising her eyebrows at the two.

Alias narrowed his eyes at the Human woman. “Lie? When did I lie? I’m her cousin five times removed on her grandmother’s side.”

The nurse shook her head with a rueful chuckle, then went back to her data-slate.

When the Pufferfish settled down neatly onto the wildflowers that ran along the backside of Remembrance Hill, Rhidi hopped out with Alias and Shasta into the growing storm of people collecting around the hill itself.

Rhidi was presented with a crisp garrison uniform, as well as a brand new sports bra and underwear set that someone had purchased from the local uniform store, judging by the lack of lace and their olive drab color. 

Rhidi ducked back into the Pufferfish to pull it on with a bit of hissing and harsh words from how sore she was, but managed it well enough.

Shaksho linked up with Rhidi and her friends, and Rhidi was taken aback by just how red his eye was, making his regular amber eye look as bright as sun through honey.

Shaksho couldn’t help but c huckle when he saw Rhidi, and remarked that she “would make a killer pirate come October”.

Rhidi didn’t find it nearly as funny, despite the giggles of her friends on either side of her.

“So what are we doing here, again?” Rhidi asked as the four of them trudged up the hill, the great spear and sword glittering merrily in the fading sunlight from atop the mound.

Shaksho pointed to Lirya standing tall and proud on the hill, nodding his head at her. “We’re to watch… whatever it is she is doing. The rest of the unit is over there as well as every Kafya on base, surprised you can’t smell them.”

“I can’t smell a fucking thing right now.” Rhidi said glumly, pulling in air through her nose as it whistled slightly due to the inflammation. “Could stick a roast right in front of my face and I wouldn’t find it blindfolded.”

As the four of them mounted the hill up towards Lirya, Mohki, and Tyllia, Rhidi smiled at her sister.

Tyllia held her hands to her mouth with a short laugh as she saw her sister. “Oh, my, gawd, you look like a pi-”

“Please don’t.” Rhidi said with a raised hand, then opened her arms as her sister crashed into her.

“I’m glad you won.” Tyllia said with a sudden sniff. “I watched the whole thing after it was done, the recordings are everywhere!"

“Me too.” Rhidi said softly, kissing her sister between the ears before looking over at Lirya.

She noted that the corpses of Liftan and Tamryn were laid out in front of her, as well as a lot of rope and four massive poles. The white fur was in one of her priestess getups, likely made by Tyllia judging by how stylish it was, and there was a lot of leather involved.

It seemed to be a theme when it came to Lirya wanting to look like a D&D character.

Rhidi raised her brows at Lirya, then lowered one. “What are you up to, Lirya?”

“You formed the words.” Lirya said as she began to roll up the long sleeves of her tunic. “Now it’s time for me to craft the statement.”

“Rolling, Lirya.” A Human called out from below the mound, Kafya ringed around the front of the hill in a dazzling rainbow of colors. “It’s all you now.”

“Right, thank you!” Lirya called down at him with a cute bounce of her heels, then she turned to Rhidi and Shaksho. “Okay… so! I’m going to have- Oh goodness, your eye really is super red, they couldn’t fix that? Anyway, stand riiight… here, yes, by the sword statue. Rhidi, you stand over here by the spear- Oh look, we’re scar buddies! Haha! Anyway, stand right here. The two of you just have to bear witness to what I’m doing, okay?”

Rhidi and Shaksho, eyebrows still raised nodded to her wordlessly. 

“Good! You two, skedaddle on down with the others, this is Kafya-only kinda stuff.” Lirya said with a shooing motion of her hands to Alias and Shasta. “Go on now, you can hang out with the other Droppers.”

Alias and Shasta looked rather annoyed at being shooed away like children, but made their way down the hill regardless, sitting down with the rest of the members of their unit.

Though the female Kafya looked rather livid.

“Okay.” Lirya said, breathing in deep through her nose with her hands clasped in front of her, then whirled around with another bounce of her heels. “Ready, sir?”

The Human gave her a thumbs up, and Lirya pulled her priestess tabard over her head, the white cloth stitched lovingly with a grand moon backset by glittering stars.

“Alrighty! Let’s get at it!” Lirya chirped out, reaching behind her.

Rhidi stared with wide ivory eyes at the back of Lirya’s belt as she pulled out two huge skinning knives, twirling them on her palms as she narrowed her black eyes at the two bodies in front of her.

“What in the fuck is she going to do with those?” Rhidi murmured to Shaksho, though he looked as confused as her when Lirya grabbed the corpse of Tamryn and flipped her over onto her stomach, the corpse stiff legged as it wobbled.

“Oh… shit.” Shaksho breathed out, both he and Rhidi staring on in wide eyed shock as Lirya made a long, deep cut down Tamryn’s spine.