[Archive] The Way of the Blue [Lantern OC][Story Only]

[AverusBlack]

Elise's favorite spot was the large hall of the castle. Essentially a huge library space, without the books to line the shelves yet the acoustics in that room made sound ring and echo in a wonderful way and she liked to listen to music while working so it ended up being her new favorite spot to hang out any time she had forms to fill or time to kill in general.

Which is how she found herself there when the yellow man showed up.

She was humming to herself when she turned the corner into the door and stopped up. He was standing in the middle of the room with one of the genkit guards held by the collar in one hand, having plainly dragged the guard into the room casually while looking around. Aforementioned guard was slumped but she wasn't wearing any of her kit so no way to tell except a visual inspection what happened and the guard was either knocked out, which was bad because that definitely meant a concussion at best, or they were dead, which was really bad.

She noticed him the same time he noticed her, turning and letting go of the guard to let them drop to the floor. "Ah, excellent. A staff member. I hope you're more helpful than this fellow was."

"What did you do to him?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" He almost purred it at her, looking at Elise with eyes half closed, the picture of relaxation. "Oh, don't you fret your little ears. He's not dead. Yet. Probably. Give him..." He looked thoughtful. "An hour? Maybe two? Before the internal bleeding gets him. But enough about him! Let's talk about you."

Taking a step back she hesitated, unsure of herself suddenly. The way he looked... Where Ainsley looked like a farm boy turned into something halfway between a cleric and a monk, this man looked grittier somehow, but similar. Humans tended to kind of look same-ish to her so it might have been that but there was something...

And then he's directly in front of her inside her personal space in a flicker of yellow and she's stepping back only to find her legs hitting something, causing her to fall into the construct seat he's created behind her, the manacles locking her wrists and ankles and pulling them into place. Not painful but Elise couldn't help but to breath hard, feeling trapped. Trapped wasn't something she could deal with well.

He patted her on the head. "Oh, relax. You know, it was a nice surprise to find you people have computers? Not very good ones, but still, they're rare enough that it's nice to have things be simple for once, you know?" He sat down across from her in his own construct chair, crossing his legs at the knee. "So, tell me, Elise. Where is your good friend Ainsley? Oh and if you see him before I do, tell him I like the title. Lightsmith." He waved his hand, miming a banner. "Brilliant, no pun intended." Then his charming and warm manner is gone all at once and he's staring at her in the sort of way she remembers Purists staring at her when she was a child. "Tell me where he is."

"Fuck you."

"Oh, is that what he's been doing?" He took a moment to look her over, then stole her clothes. That storage thing Ainsley does. He shrugged a little. "Not bad looking I suppose, if you can get past the fur. Bit of an oddity, but who am I to judge, really? Being here at all rather changes our perspective on things, I find."

"You fucking asshole, give me my clothes back! I'm not a fucking display object!"

"Fascinating, a human would be nervous or feeling vulnerable but you're just angry about it." A wave of his hand and she was dressed again, glaring at him. "Answer the fucking question Elise, or I'm going to stop fucking with you and start hurting you. I assure you I can do that for quite awhile before I begin actually damaging you."

"I don't know where he went. He doesn't give me a flight plan or anything. Who the fuck are you and why are you threatening us?"

"I'm Nemesis. I have a name, but I don't really tell it to people I expect to actually live. Or don't trust to keep it to themselves. Since you'll be surviving this encounter and you're not fucking me I think I'll refrain from letting you know."

"Attacking us was stupid. If he dies or I die then nothing is going to stop us from hunting you, goldilocks. Genkits fight to the last man, woman and child. You ever seen a kid pick up a rifle and shoot somebody? I fucking have. That's the people you're fucking with here, so consider yourself very carefully."

"I love this whole forced bravado thing you're doing, I really do. It's admirable. Most people sort of cower when dealing with me and I make a point of slapping around the ones who soil themselves after cleaning them up but you're handling this remarkably well."

"It's not the first time I've been tied down by some fuckhead who won't stop monologuing."

"Ah well, in that case I clearly have standards to live up to! Can't go and have you thinking that this whole thing was a brush off, now can I?" He stood up in front of her, leaning over to come face to face with her. "Because if there's one thing wielding this ring has taught me, it's that reputation matters. I have a certain kind of reputation to maintain."

He said more, but she was having trouble focusing by then and the screaming drowned it out anyways.

 

[AverusBlack]

"Fascinatin'. I ne'er thought I'd see the mine this way. Sure is a step faster'n going down the scenic route, eh?"

Helgar is standing on a construct platform next to me as we lower down the primary mining shaft about a mile south of the city under the mountain. The route down here was easy enough, nice wide stairs with an easy slope that just sort of seemed to go on forever with a rail going up one side. A construct cart brought us down to the bottom where the actual mineshaft begins.

Turns out the dwarven version of a mineshaft is actually a huge, vertical tunnel about a kilometer deep. They're still cutting stone down at the bottom, mineshafts spreading out from the central tunnel like cracks. Rather than riding a second cart track, which winds back and forth along the main shaft over and over to bleed off momentum, we're simply flying down vertically.

"So what exactly is so important about these metals, besides the enchantment affinity?"

"Awright. Now, I ain't no warchief so don' go takin' this like some heavy wisdom, but yeh ever considered what magic means for warfare?"

"I can't imagine many serious wars considering how young this world apparently is."

He's giving me a funny look. "An how long yeh suppose that is, eh?"

I frown a little. "When I visited the Tovalon region, I was told that they appeared there only two winters ago. A couple years."

"Oh sure, whoever yeh asked probably did. But three years ago that land was nice 'n empty and we've been gettin' random Tovari popping up out there for decades. Sometimes a whole place pops in the way people do but it comes slow-like, there's signs of somethin' about t'pass through the veil if yeh know what t'look for, to scry for. And scryin's a real big problem."

"Scrying?"

"Heh, bit fresh aren't yeh? Aye, scryin', detection spells. Findin' things or people. Get good enough with 'em and yeh can do all kinds o' stuff. Aimed curses and the like. And that's why mithral and orichalcum are so feckin' important. Yeh can't scry through it. It's why we're here, here specifically instead of some other part o' the range. All the ore in the rock around us makes it bloody impossible to scry in here. No teleportin' into our city, thank yeh very much."

Ring, scan the city.

Unable to scan past the top of the mineshaft. Something is jamming the scan.

Well fuck. How much else is underground in places I can't see?

"Yeh okay, lad? Lookin' a bit perturbed there."

"Yeah, just... I tried to scan for the city above and couldn't do it. Now I'm wondering how much I'm actually missing."

"Probably a lot. Shit's all over the place in this region, we just liked the concentrations here. An' a couple leylines intersect here, it's a free power point if yeh wanna do a lot of arcane metalsmithing. No need t'use yerself up if you can just shape the magic flowing around yeh instead." He hops off the platform as we reach the bottom. There's a work team going up and down one of three shafts spreading out from here but it's not the one Helgar is pointing to. "Down there."

"So what's down there?"

"Feck if I know. Couple o' our boys go missing, we don' stick around pokin' things, we leave. That's what professionals are for. Like you." He pats my shoulder, making me stumble. "Good luck, chum. I'll be here havin' a sip when yeh get back, or four hours passes, whichever happens first."

"Your confidence in me is infinitely reassuring." He gives me a thumbs up, then sits down on a crate and pulls out a flask. Charming.

Well, nothing for it then, I suppose. Ring, continuous scan. Might not get much but if anything pops up I wanna know about it.

Affirmative.

Rising off the ground I hover and glide down, letting the ring navigate for me. This far down it's actually pretty warm and the environmental shield is about the only thing keeping me from sweating. Ring, how fresh is the air here?

Fifteen percent oxygen, five percent carbon dioxide, seventy percent nitrogen, ten percent mixed particulates and other gases. The air is not particularly fresh.

I wonder if the reason they have those big, bushy beards is to help filter some of that out when they breath it in?

Data not found.

You're a lousy conversation partner, ring.

This is likely due to the fact I am a ring, not a person.

Great, my jewelry is sassing me now. As I come up to the end of the first shaft it breaks out into a cavern space, the minecart track heading out across a wooden bridge which has been set on fire at some point and left to burn. The tracks are still intact but there's no way anyone sane would try to cross them and the space is too large to jump, but neither of those are an issue for me so I just glide across it.

That looks suspiciously like somebody trying to block access to the rest of this cave. Interesting.

When I land on the other side I simply walk, mostly for want of the sensation of actually doing something. The tunnel slopes downward and curves a little, forcing me to follow an uneven spiral before it breaks into a much larger section of cave.

This is sort of a tunnel too, but I can't see the end of it. There's light but it's coming from bioluminescent moss or lichen -

Plant matter is a form of fungus.

- or fungus, apparently, which glows a pale red. The dim light is just enough to trace out parts of the cave and what's on the other side of it from the space I'm standing. Which appears to be a large building, shaped out of the rock around it but this architectural style is far different to the dwarves. It's almost bony, the corners sharpened.

Maybe they'll be nice?

 

[AverusBlack]

I suppose it was a bit much to ask, really.

It turns out the 'large building' is actually the side-gate to what seemed like an endless maze of corridors until I came out into a massive open space. The ring mapping my path as I go along is the only thing keeping me from getting lost and the enhancement to my low light vision is helping, but if it came down to it I'm sure the ring would come up with something to replace my eyes. The cavern I'm standing in is large enough I can actually scan its internal dimensions. From what I can tell it's half a kilometer wide and the bottom of it is mostly filled with water.

I've come upon an underground lake with a city built into the walls around it.

It doesn't look to be in good shape, though. The buildings are intact but I can clearly see things are a mess. There's debris and crap strewn along the bridges and ledges serving as the 'roads'. I'm seeing bodies too. Looks like some kind of civilized mantid-spider combination of several various types but there's humanoids with black skin as well. None of them have any hair anywhere.

Ring, what killed these people?

A combination of blunt force trauma, acid damage and consumption.

Con-? They were eaten?

Affirmative.

Right, that's not ominous at all. Not seeing any movement right now though. Any hopes around?

My eyes flare blue as the ring shows me the wisps of hopes in the area overlaying the brightened ones of still-living people. There's pockets of them around. But only pockets.

Time to see what's going on here, I think. I snap forward out over the water and have the ring navigate my way to the first one, deciding I can fix any damage later and opting for forming a sphere around myself, shrinking it down and using it to disintegrate my way through the walls towards my target. When I burst through into the corridor I'm confronted by more of the mantids but they're covered in some kind of crystal which is glowing faintly with a yellowish-green light. It's almost sickly-looking.

Which probably explains why they're all focusing on me and clambering to reach me and why the walls of this chamber have so many scratch marks on them. Ring, are they alive?

I pull backwards as they spill out of the room into the hole I've made -

Subjects are being compromised by a silicon based filament system spread throughout their body.

- and back out into the main thoroughfare.

Can we remove it without killing them?

Large sections of their brains have been consumed and replaced by silicon matrices.

Fuck. Living zombies. The worst kind.

If I don't have scans of living, baseline members of their species I can't restore their brains but even if I did there's so much of them being autopiloted now that they're basically a husk. Whatever this crystal is, it's spreading filaments through them like-

Like Cordyceps. Ugh and now I'm remembering those ants.

I generate a construct cable and then another dozen after it, threading them through and splitting the cable off at each one into the next, and the next, and the next...

Free them from the prison.

The cables twist, expanding and burning the insectoids apart as they swarm me. I follow in the wake and let the ash be pushed aside by my environmental shield, then burn through the final wall into the next room.

There's more of the mantids and a couple of the humanoids. The largest of the mantids is wearing robes different from the rest. None of them are moving, just sort of staring at me.

"Hello there, anyone call for a rescue?"

"Many have prayed. How is it we understand each other?"

"Explanations later, salvation first. There's other's still alive down here and I intend to collect them as well."

"The crystal infects. It digs into you with physical contact. Makes more of itself out of you."

"Yeah I saw the end stages of that a moment ago. My environmental shield should protect you but if you could...?"

I get a nod and that's all the signal I need to tag them each with a thread of blue light, transitioning us back out to the water, then to the other side of the dwarven bridge.

"I need you to stay here while I collect the others. Don't go down the tunnel until I come back, there's others down there I need to talk to before you come back with us."

"We must retake the city."

"Yeah, look, that's probably not going to happen. Not with little flakes of that stuff all over the place. I'm going to get your people out, then recommend they collapse this tunnel and then maybe brick it up a few times."

"What do you want in return?"

"Be reasonable. We'll work that out later, but right now what I want is co-operation and a willingness to play nice. Now sit tight."

"I do not unders-"

I'm already transitioning back into the city and heading for the next pocket of them. There's no hesitation this time but some of these looks relatively recent. They're not quite so crystallized.

Subjects brain stem is intact. Muscular systems compromised. Nervous system partially compromised.

Can you remove the silicon lattice without killing them?

Yes. Baselines provided by the previous subjects allow for body repairs.

The ring threads out, picking them up and hovering them behind me as I head down the corridor towards the broken bridge, on the other side of which a small bastion of the survivors is waiting for me.

I'm going to have to work something out with the dwarves because there's no way they're going to want to come down here, mithril or not. Shit, that means I'm probably going to have to spend time actually doing manual labor for these people to get them to agree to help the bugs and whoever those humanoids are.

Maybe I can get Elise to organize cultural interviews or something?

 

[AverusBlack]

I'm sitting on a small ledge just outside the dwarven city while the humanoids - actual humans as it turns out, altered by magic to be able to see down there - are blinking in the bright light. I needed a break, negotiating with the dwarves is proving a bit tiresome. It's like dealing with a salesman, only it's all of them. Having spent half the day underground I decided I needed to get out of there for a bit.

The mantids are being... well, not exactly excited or anything, but for a culture who just experienced what is essentially a genocide they're handling it pretty well. This is the closest they've been to the surface in a long time and it's making some of them a little twitchy but once the dwarves agreed to lend them a hall and they were allowed to turn out most of the torches they were happy enough. Right now the eldest of them is inside working out trade skills with the dwarves. Something about weaving.

I can't say I've honestly been paying attention because once they started negotiating directly with each other, I stopped. There's only so much I can do and eventually the best I can manage is to put the pieces together in a reasonable assortment and hope it all works out. Besides, I needed to eat dinner at some point today and the meerkats in the city actually have a variety of stuff from across Skal so I'm munching on a salad of some kind. I could probably find out what's in it but once the ring told me it was okay to eat I decided I'd ask after it's gone so I don't gross myself out accidentally.

Pretty good, actu-

Alert. Fear detected.

Hm? WheARGHBELGHEBLGHE!

I'm flying off the ledge! Correcting my trajectory I spin in midair. Ring, target lock. The yellow lightsmith is hovering just above where I was, holding...

He's got Elise. Ring, is she okay?

Subject is physically whole. However, endorphins and hormone levels suggest she is extremely worn out and she is currently unconscious.

Tearing through the air towards him I form construct armor and melee weapons, swinging an axe at him as I charge! He simply leans out of it, dodging it and forming a gun, prompting me to put up a shield between us. When he fires it the shield collapses - ow - and the shot knocks me flying backwards.

"Well, at least you're willing to fight back. Not that you're any good at it."

I'm sent flying into the ground as soon as I correct my tumble in midair, landing hard - ow again - and having the ring fix me up but he's already on top of me, pinning me in place with some kind of giant, construct insectoid. I can see him above the construct, still holding Elise.

No. This needs to be gone.

The destructive pulse tears through the construct, making the yellow guy raise his eyebrows. "That was almost good. Not quite enough to actually reach me, but you get points for trying."

And then I'm surrounded by a column of yellow light.

The pressure forces me to kneel, struggling to hold myself upright before I'm kicked out of the column and sent flying into the gates of the city, impacting a wall hard enough that I sort of stick into it. Growling to myself I pull my arms out-

And then he's in front of me, construct gun pointed at my face.

"Mmm, no. This has been amusing but beating the shit out of you only helps me so far. Stop fighting or I stop ignoring your little friend here."

"What did you do to her?" For a second my anger gets the better of me, my ring flickering.

"Ah ah ah. Letting your anger get the best of you? Tch, if I wanted to kill you, you'd already be dead. Pathetic. Pull yourself out of that fucking hole, you're coming with me."

"What makes you think I won't just attack you again to get Elise back?"

"Oh, probably the charge I have strapped to her back. I knew you wouldn't listen without an incentive. Now, are you going to stop pontificating so we can get on with this, or do I have to tear off your arm and take your ring before you'll listen?"

I'm going to kill this fucking guy.

"Good. I can see you're coming to your senses. Far faster than the green one did, in any case. Now come along, boy." A construct clamp grabs me and... I... can't break it. Ugh.

Torn out of the wall he transitions us up into orbit above the planet, then again to the 4th planet out. When we reappear again we're in front of a asteroid in a stable orbit around the planet and it's opening up. The rock is folding inward somehow as an aperture appears and I'm tossed through it with him flying in after me. The room we end up in is large, spartan and gray.

"What's the meaning of all this, who the fuck are you?"

"Now now, don't be impatient. I know you tend to favor immediate solutions but in this case, you're going to have to wait. Here, you can play with your little friend while I make preparations." He drops Elise, prompting me to make a construct bed for her to land on so he doesn't break anything. "Now sit tight. We'll talk when I'm done making sure we won't be interrupted."

He vanishes in a transition. Hm, there's a faint yellow line for half a second after he does that. Getting up I move over to Elise and subspace the charge on her back, grimacing. It dug hooks into her skin so I repair the damage and tap her cheek. "Elise, wake up. C'mon."

She slowly comes around, opening her eyes and now I have a ferret enveloping me. "Ainsley! OhthankthegodsI'msogladtoseeyou."

I help her up but she's really clinging to me and we're not going anywhere so I sort of let her hug me and extend my environmental shield around her. "You're okay. What's going on?"

"I don't know! He just... showed up back at Durjak and... he..." She shudders, making her fur ripple. "He m-made me relive things. Stuff I'd tried to forget. I think he just wanted me to be afraid."

"It makes his constructs stronger."

"He's evil, Ainsley. Where are we?"

"His home base, I think."

"Shit. You didn't...?" I shake my head. "Get us out of here, please please get us out of here."

"While I probably could, he seems to have gone after you just to get my attention. If we bust out of here, he might go for Durjak next. I need to deal with this now. I want to take you -"

"No I... I get it." She nods. "You're right. The good of the whole is more important than the good of the individual. Can you make me some armor or something? I feel naked."

I quickly fabricate a copy of her usual combat outfit and she goes about checking herself over, falling into routine to comport herself.

Whoever this guy is, he's on my shitlist now.

 

[AverusBlack]

Ring, scan this room.

Unable to comply.

Why?

Although this room appears to be made of mundane metals, scans do not extend past them. Probable arcane interference.

Ugh. Of course he made the room out of arcane metal. It's exactly the kind of thing I might do if I wanted to stick somebody where I wanted to keep them.

Which raises an interesting question. "Elise?"

She looks up from where she was checking over her boot skids. "Hm?"

"Does this guy remind you of me?"

She frowns. "He kind of does? But when I thought that I just chalked it up to all humans kind of looking the same to me sometimes. I can tell the difference between like, somebody from Africa as opposed to someone from the American Empire or the United States of Europe but unless I know the person really well..." She shakes her head.

"You'd have trouble picking me apart from someone else?"

"No, you glow blue. But if you didn't have the ring on? Um, maybe. He kind of reminds me of you if you were totally heartless and really wanted us to be afraid of you."

"I got that impression too. Like... a reflection?"

"Heh. 'For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.'"

"What's that from?"

"Christian bible, Corinthians 13:12. Jesus not a thing on your world?"

"Fuck if I know."

"Heh, lucky." She's quiet for a moment, which is fine with me. "What do you think he wants with us?"

"Well, if he wanted me dead, I think I probably would be. He's clearly had his ring longer. He's better with it, frankly. I'm having trouble coming up with reasons why he'd want us alive myself."

"Hm." She's looking thoughtful, pacing slowly. "Let's assume he's listening to everything we say. It wouldn't be smart to discuss any plan against him in that case. We'll have to wing it. Can you fabricate me a weapon?"

"Yeah, but its not going to help against him."

"It's not for him. Something small?"

It doesn't take long. A quick ring-fabrication later and she's got a knife and a grenade. "Good, this is perfect. Think you can keep his attention?"

"I don't think I have a choice. You got something in mind?"

Elise just smiles, putting both weapons away. "Maybe. I'm just a helpless little ferret, remember? Let's not do anything to convince him otherwise."

I nod slowly and then turn as something clicks and hisses, a part of the wall opening where there was no seam before. Elise turns to look with me but no sign of yellow. "Hmm."

"Hmm indeed."

"Let's go have a look."

I pick us both up, floating us through the opening into a corridor lined with pipes and cables. A utility corridor, then. "Hey Ainsley, put me down?"

"Okay?"

"I want to split up." I give her a what-the-hell look. "No, seriously. I want you to go make a nuisance of yourself. Not enough to really piss him off but enough to make him focus on you."

"Okay. He mentioned a 'green one' earlier, before you woke up. Keep an eye out, would you?"

"Gotcha." She hugs me suddenly, making me blink in surprise before she takes off down the corridor ahead of me.

Hmm. Where to go? A four way split just up ahead and Elise turned left, so... right it is, I guess. I head down that way, having the ring scan everything around me as I go. Anything interesting?

Runic markings detected. Unknown function. Exotic matter detected.

Exotic matter?

Most likely probability is that this facility is powered with esoteric technology.

Hm. I suppose that would make sense if he's been around longer and had time to scan more examples of technology than me. Any computer systems?

Confirmed.

I stop cold. Can you scan them?

Confirmed.

And now I know the layout of the entire base. Oh shit, the ring was right. It's some kind of generator at the center of the asteroid. I have no idea what the hell the Bleed is but whatever it is, it's doing a great job of powering this place. A three petawatt reactor isn't anything to laugh at. It could power Durjak for years.

What the fuck does he need that much power for?

Ring, contact Elise and send her this information.

Affirmative.

Good. Now, lets go make a nuisance of ourselves.

Following the map I head to the 'bottom' of the facility, following the utility tunnels. If planetside is down, anyways. Directions are a bit subjective in space. It seems like the most heavily industrialized area so maybe I'll find something interesting down there.

When I exit the utility corridor I find myself in a white corridor curving 'round, making me unable to see the ends of the hallway. That's fine, though. Picking myself up I head left, let's see what-

The wall unfolds in front of me, flipping as a turret appears! A single construct barrier fell pretty hard to Yellow, so lets try ablative barriers instead. A series of them appear in front of me as the turret opens fire with some kind of -

Turret is using a positron beam.

-okay, that. It knocks out the first two barriers while the ring scans it, then I creative a plasma gun construct around the side of the barriers and fire. The turret takes a few hits, a small shield rippling around it before that collapses and it's reduced to smoking slag.

Great, this asshole has static defenses. Can we compromise them?

Negative. Defense systems are not routed to the main computer and appear to be running independently.

Damnit. That makes my job a little more difficult. I hope Elise will be alright but I need to do my part so she can do whatever it is she has in mind, so. Ring, fuck up the computer.

Commencing upfuckary.

The lights flicker, then go out, leaving me in the dark for a few seconds before the emergencies kick in and a dull red glow fills the corridor. That should do the job nicely. If yellow doesn't know we're out yet, he does now.

Let's go see how much of a mischief I can make of myself before he comes looking for me.

 

[AverusBlack]

So many tunnels and so easy to get lost. The only reason she wasn't already was her suits HUD mapping her progress as she went, until Ainsley somehow updated it. Now her map was blue but it had been a dull green before and she sort of liked the change.

Following the utility tunnels was the easy part. When she popped out into a hallway she almost immediately came under weapons fire and had to duck back into them again. She desperately wished she'd asked Ainsley to fabricate her a ranged weapon earlier, but the silly dope went and gave her melee-range stuff instead. She strongly suspected it was because the world they'd found themselves in was a bit like a fantasy novel and he was doing the very human thing of getting stuck on preconceptions. Something to talk to him about later when they're not in enemy territory.

Since nothing was chasing her in the tunnels she stopped for a moment to consult the map, flipping through it and checking what was where. She could probably make problems if she went to the main reactor, but Ainsley had asked her to 'keep an eye out' for a green ring user and since she didn't have any objectives beyond that and 'make trouble for the asshole', she might as well see what she could dig up.

Following the map she looked up when the lights flickered and her suits night vision kicked in. The view turned from dim to a greenish-blue, like seawater. Probably Ainsley again, doing what he can to make life interesting.

Turn, turn, straight, turn, follow the slope down, turn. It wasn't long before she found herself underneath the room she wanted. Thumping her boots she charged upwards, crossing her arms and smashing the grate above out as she came up through the floor, then landed next to the maintenance vent. Knife out, look around -

Nothing. No threats. Lucky her, really. It seemed the defenses were limited to the hallways so that nobody could use them to immediately murder the crew while they worked. Someone went and cut corners. It offended her sense of professionalism despite the fact it benefited her right now.

The room she found herself in appeared to be a round chamber, some kind of laboratory. At one end of it was the most sophisticated, hack-and-slash improv engineering job she'd ever seen. It looked like a russian and a mad scientist had a very angry baby and turned it into a platform, wires running throughout the room like vines to every kind of port she could possibly think of. She couldn't even begin to make heads or tails of it, especially considering what it was doing.

In the middle of it, suspended in the air was a man. He appeared to be in the middle of a full-body charge to throw a punch, his clothes tattered and a portion of his midsection simply missing. It appeared to be a desperate last charge, frozen like an insect in a drop of amber.

On his hand was a green ring.

The field surrounding the man was a faint red but she was fairly sure it wasn't the emergency lights because her HUD wouldn't have bothered including the color difference if the computer system could make any sense of it. Radiation appeared the same way, like TV static in her helmet. This wasn't radiation. It was something else.

Looking around she began going over the terminals but they seemed to be offline along with whatever powered most of the stations systems. She turned to look at the platform. If the reactor was offline, that wouldn't be on, so there was clearly power going somewhere. What...? Ah. Ainsley didn't cut the power, he ruined whatever computer system was controlling power distribution and the platform must be connected directly to the reactor. Running that on an independent control system would ensure the platform never ran out of power unless the reactor was destroyed and whatever this bullshit was, it clearly needed a lot of power.

Be a real shame if somebody were to ruin that.

Following the cables to the ends of the room she found they were hooked into the wall by fasteners which forced her to undo a clip before being able to unscrew them. Simple enough and would work well to keep them stuck to the wall, but easy to undo if you have three seconds. She began circling the room and unhooking cables, ears swiveling around as she listened for noises.

The faint hum of the platform began to die out and by the third cable the field was beginning to flicker. On the fifth it visibly dimmed and on the eighth it cut out entirely and the remaining four cable sparked violently, began to smoke and then went dead. The field cut out and the man surged forward with Elise scrambling to catch him before he hit the ground.

She managed to slide under him just in time for him to land on her, catching him as dead weight. Sitting up with him he seemed barely coherent and looking closely at him... yes, but no. Not like Ainsley but similar, like a less idealized version of her friend. She brought out her scanner and began to look him over.

"Oh, that's not good." The man was dying. Fast. Suspended animation? A slice of time held still? No way to guess but whatever it was that had been keeping this guy alive clearly wasn't anymore.

When he spoke his voice was weakened. "Who are you?"

"My name is Elise. I was brought here by the yellow ring user with my friend, who has a blue ring."

"Blue appeared. Fuck." He brought up his hand, the ring-hand. "Take it."

"What?"

"Take. It. Take the ring. Can't... do it alone. Too strong. But together..." He exhaled slowly. "Ring, go to her. You're hers now."

"I understand, Engel. I will remember."

The ring flew up from his hand as he closed his eyes and gave it up. She bowed her head, punching the floor next to her. She HATED not being able to help, not even to do first aid, something. Then she snapped her hand up and grabbed the ring from midair, jamming it on her finger. The next second she brought her hand up to her head as the ring slammed her mind with information, triggering an instant headache, like a dentists pick but in her brain.

And she knew what she had to do.

 

[AverusBlack]

Yeah, okay, I suppose I should have seen this coming after the static defenses. If this guy is some kind of other version of me when I should have known I wouldn't be satisfied with a defense system that passive. The turrets are dangerous, no doubt. But they're not that difficult to beat if you're mindful and taking your time because you're not in a rush.

Which is probably why I'm fighting a seemingly endless stream of drones.

I've found myself in some kind of recreational hall. I think I've finally breached the part of the facility where this guy actually lives because we've gone from utilitarian, spartan design to wood and stone and simulated sunlight. I honestly almost feel bad about ruining the place during this fight because as easy as it is to make something with a ring I'm having a minor guilt pang over just straight up wrecking somebodies home, no matter who it is.

Only a minor one. I jink to the left as a drone fires some kind of iridescent beam through the space I was just occupying, a construct blade swinging through it as another fires from the right, forcing me to bring up a shield and then drop down through the air hard and slam into the floor in a three-point superhero landing, buckling the wooden finishing as a third drone fires and catches the drone I was shielding against in the crossfire, allowing me to launch myself off the floor and swing a construct sword upwards through it, then forming four more and turning myself into a blender for a moment as I take out another three drones and miss two more as another six pour into the room.

A construct mech forms around me and I start opening fire with machine gun turrets, firing at the choke point the door represents. I'm definitely tearing them up but I'm not really making any headway, just holding them. Then the drones suddenly stop and I pull myself hard across the room out of the space I was just occupying, not because there's a present threat but simply because I'd been standing in place for more than three seconds and there's the reprisal as a massive construct sandworm mouth tears through the floor where I was to try and swallow me.

Oh good, looks like I have his attention, finally.

Ring, what's our remaining charge?

Current charge level is 43%.

Well, okay. I don't have time to stop and recharge though, there's too much pressure right now. Whatever Elise is doing I hope she does it soon because I can't keep this up forever, all I'm really doing is being a distraction. I dive down chasing the construct, pointing my fist down and hoping as hard as I can that I can punch through that construct and anything else until I've made a proper hole through this fucking station.

The blue beam that fires from my ring is strong enough to stop my descent and level me out, the flash of blue bright enough that my ring has to compensate for it and correct my vision for a couple seconds. The construct sandworm buckles, collapsing inwards and then crumpling in on itself as the beam exits out the side of the asteroid and air begins to tear its way out of the station. Debris is whipped up around us, lots of loose crap and drone parts mostly. Instead of bracing against it I go down with the flow of stuff, using it as camouflage as Yellow comes flying out of the vertical tunnel my beam created in construct armor.

He orients on me immediately and forms guns to begin firing at me, forcing me to create ablative shield layers above myself before I can form my own guns to fire back on him. He's bearing down on me while doing it too, increasing his rate of fire while I'm making barriers behind my barriers and pushing forward the breaking layers while moving backwards outside of the station, giving myself a little more room to move.

Then he's on top of me, tearing through the shields himself and breaking them down! I'm forced to move to the side and create a tower shield as he reorients his guns, swinging midair to the side and strafing him without facing away to fuck with his firing solutions as I form my own positron cannon and fire back -

Alert! Thirty percent charge remaining.

- and fuckfuckfuck I need to get this guy the fuck off me -

And then he's off me, a massive green hand grabbing him and swinging him so hard into the side of the asteroid that I can see the surface buckle and form a small crater. Ouch.

Elise comes flying out of the asteroid, glowing green. Yes! YES! She did it! Now we're getting somewhere!

Synergy detected. Synchronizing.

"Synchronization successful." / "Synchronization successful."

My ring begins to glow furiously and my environmental shield brightens as I feel the surge of hope and determination that I see in Elise as she begins to burn with green light, matching my own incandescent blue light. I feel my mind sharpening, my focus narrowing as the rest of the universe drops away and Yellow becomes the only thing that matters. The rest is just details.

I don't have to ask Elise what to do, she just knows. The pressure she's bringing to bear down on Yellow is a thing to behold as she tries to turn Yellow's crater into an even bigger crater. Apparently she feels he could be a little more enthusiastically fucked up but it's the break I need to recharge.

I quickly pull out my lantern, holding my ring up.

"In darkest day, with dauntless might
Face down despair, continue to fight
Stand tall against the blackest night
You will not fall, for hope burns bright!"

The surge of blue light from the lantern to my ring is blinding for half a second, then it's back into my subspace pocket and it's fuckin' go time. Yellow -

Subject's given name is "Nemesis".

- it tearing through the side of the asteroid next to Elise Crater, trying to flank her but I'm already there, forming barriers and taking defense while Elise takes offense. Each time he tries to attack us with constructs, she focuses on them directly while I work on severing the filaments and cables of light he's using to control them. His fear doesn't touch us and Elise's guns sing as Nemesis is pushed back, forced back, his offense turning into a controlled retreat as he begins trying to use the terrain of the asteroid to tank shots and dodge better.

Not acceptable.

The two of us surge forward as he catches a shot and is knocked spinning for a second, bearing down on him hard and forcing him to burrow down into his own facility and cause even more damage to get inside it and hide from us. Elise surges to follow and I'm forced to interpose myself between her and Nemesis for a moment, arms spread. Because I know what's on the other side of this part of the rock.

She slams into me and I form the hardest construct bubble around us that I can, reinforcing it with transmuted layers of diamond and sand before the damage he's done to his own reactor and secondary power systems goes critical. It's not even the reactor itself that does it - it's the magnetically contained antimatter used for scuttling charges. Which he's just detonated.

The ring compensates for us so we don't get disoriented but the construct barrier itself cracks instantly, the transmuted material between us and the blast scoured away and taking the worst of it. We're launched out into space away from the rock at a speed I can only describe as terrifying, the bubble flaking away as we slow down to admire the cloud of debris that used to be yellows home.

I look over at Elise, who's grinning manically at me, holding up her hand. I can't help but laugh and give her a high five.

"Durjak one, asshole zero. Don't fuck with genkits."

 

[AverusBlack]

Drifting complacently through the darkness,
Covered and blinded by a blanket of little lives.
False security has lulled the madness of this world into a slumber.
Wake up! An eye is upon you,
Staring straight down and keenly through.
Seeing all that you are and everything that you can never be.
Yes, an eye is upon you. An eye ready to blink...

It passes through his mind almost without thought, like reciting a poem or stanza you practiced a hundred thousand times for four weeks in school as a child and still recall perfectly as an adult decades later. Almost automatic. He knows it's associated with music somehow, despite not being a song unto itself. Or perhaps he lost the tune, or never knew it at all, for some reason.

Nonetheless he keeps thinking it over and over as he watches the blue light wielder and his new green friend. It surprised him how quickly they managed to pass his test once they got an opening. The last time he did this, the green user went and got himself fatally shot like a stupid asshole, forcing him to work fast and slap together a set up to preserve him. Most of the facility had been dedicated to that and studying the green light itself. With Engel incapacitated he believed he had the time, but now...

Now, he needed to accelerate his plans.

His suits stealth system began beeping at him and he turned away, towards the planet below. Passing down through Psyche's atmosphere his suits beeping got a bit frantic before the stealth system finally cut out and shut down to cool off, vents on his back and sides opening up as a plume of heat passes in a wake behind him as he approaches the deck in free fall. Turning at the last moment he slams into the ground, using the ring to protect himself but not the rock he impacts, his construct-reinforced armor taking the brunt of the impact and reflecting the kinetic energy back outward, causing the stone to shatter and the force of it to radiate outwards. Houses miles away would feel the tremor and investigate. The evidence of his mere arriving would stay with the area for years to come and help cement his reputation.

Rising back up out of the small crater he's made he takes a moment to look out across the area he's landed in, not far from the seat of his ally. Though he could easily be a main player himself, doing so would have forced him to assume direct control of things. If one is to emulate a successful fear-based personality, he could do worse than Darth Sidious. Indirect control through manipulation and psychology afforded him far more freedom of movement and operation than would be possible should he assume direct political power in any organized structure. Even worse, the new blue guy seemed to have taken a page out of his book, like a light-side reflection of himself.

The rings fear meditation had changed him, he knew that. Looking back on the person he'd been when he arrived made him feel a certain level of revulsion at how fearful and weak he'd been. Of all the reflections of himself he'd met so far, only he and Red had enough of themselves left to really have any knowledge of themselves or where they'd come from, like something had split the person they'd once been and only emotionally tied memories were preserved. Whoever they'd been that person had been angry and fearful, or perhaps had caused fear. Something about it had tied into many parts of their life.

Dealing with Red had been difficult at first but got a lot easier after the ring had done its best to... re-align him. Red didn't do things in half measures and preferred permanent solutions but was far more rational than he'd ever expected the woman to be. Her rage had a calculating sort of edge. A cold, surgical anger and hatred applied with laser precision and nuclear force. Long term planning and intelligence operations were most decidedly not her strong point, which is how he'd become the point-man for deciding on how to proceed with operations for their little group. Red mostly preferred to stay in situations where things were fine, life was good and there was no reason to be angry at all. She saved that for when he had someone to point her at.

As he approached the city the sun dipped below the horizon behind him, passing below the curve of the planet and bathing the city in reddish orange light. Sprawled across the tops of cliffs broken by deep ravines with running water, the dark red and purple leaves of the trees gave the area a grim sort of look, something unquestionably played up by the architecture. The Sanrome had built their structures with elaborate curves and flourishes, gargoyles and stone faces with lolling tongues, laughing devils and saints in repentance. Serious, dour and very inactive during the day time, it was a city of the dead. Not inhabited by the dead, but for the dead. The city below him specialized in the internment, disposal, funeral rites, mummification and cremation of the dead of all the cultures of this continent. A city of priests and clergy and clerics, a city of gods and monsters.

Sometimes they even managed to be civilized, it was kind of nice.

Approaching the palace overlooking the city he doesn't bother coming in by the ground, approaching a single window overlooking the cliffs below and stepping into it lightly, standing on the sill and looking inside. The vast sprawling hallway was lit with fire light flickering and dancing like the people within, a live band playing symphonic music as gentlemen and ladies - nobles in the truest sense of the word, both in terms of social class and ethical direction - danced with prim precision. He gracefully relieved a young woman with a tray of drinks of one of them, giving a nod to her and receiving one in turn as he approached the edge of the hall, leaning against a pillar lazily and watching the dancers.

"Did your experiment fare well, Lord Fear?"

The young lady, now bereft of her tray. The dark blue-gray skin used to put him off but now he can't help but find it endearing. For a Sanrome she was almost pretty, small metal bands with chains along her ears, framing the point of the tip with a fine chain running from one ear to the ring in her nose. The black scelera of her eyes only framed the bright green of the iris and he tilted his head as he realized he'd been staring a little and not answering her question.

"Yes and no. It got a bit out of hand I'm afraid and I've lost my laboratory completely."

"Oh no! That's awful."

"A sub-optimal result, but the overall test was successful, I think. Is the Highlord here?"

"He is, Lord Fear. He's presently in another room consulting with Lady Vara but I'm sure he'll return in short order."

"No, no. Don't trouble him, let them have their time together." He waved it off lazily, sipping his wine. "Please let him know I'll likely require some time to set up a new facility. Someplace out of the way this time, I think. I chose the location poorly the first time."

"I will do that right away." She gave a slight bow, turning and heading back into the crowd as the dancers flourished and bowed together, the waltz hitting a crescendo.

When the others began to clap, he joined in too. They were running out of time now, it was true. With Blue in play it might not be long before Indigo appeared and the sealed weakened a little further. He needed to find a way to whip the others into shape before then, establish contact with Green and Blue, find the other five central batteries... So much to do.

But for now, wine and dance and pretty gothic elfen girls.

There was always tomorrow.

 

[AverusBlack]

"Yes, just like that. See? A gun is relatively simple, but ultimately you're limited to small caliber bullets. What kind of gun were you using?"

I thought Ren was big. I hadn't met all of the genkits personally but Magnus is the biggest one I've seen yet, standing shoulder to shoulder with Ren herself. He looks like somebody took the biggest bodybuilder they could find, pumped him up on steroids, fed him testosterone, glory and the spiritual essence of Terry Crews, then turned him into a giant bull-man. His hand is roughly the size of my head. It's genuinely impressive.

I had a 'stop, hold up' moment when Elise brought a bunch of her friends and squad mates to our practice sparring match. Ring combat practice with her is surprisingly helpful and when she pulled the ring off and began sharing it among her squadmates I couldn't help but be surprised. The idea of not having them be familiar with its use was as alien to her and them as the idea of casually handing my ring to somebody else was to me, but it's working out. Magnus is their weapons quartersmith, so he's been giving me a brief lecture on weapons crafting with the ring making a record of his knowledge as he goes over it in his mind.

His knowledge and experience, staying in the ring, becomes Elise's. Shared among her peers she's building a skills database in a way I never considered doing. Teaching lessons to the ring wasn't something I would've thought up in a million years.

"Same kind of rifle your infantry carries, but larger. It wasn't complicated."

"Naw, see, that's the stuff we use when we probably have to shoot at you but don't really want to kill you to death. I mean, anything you shoot at is gonna get holes poked in it and that's bad but it's not depleted uranium, grenades or light speed weapons. You don't see us firing electron unbonding rifles. But it's a possibility you should consider against certain classes of enemy you might run up against out here."

I nod, folding my arms behind my back. "Do you want to try again?"

He shakes his head and pulls the ring off, flicking it back to Elise. "Naw man, I wanna hit the mess. When you two synchronize again, read the files on railguns and laser-based weapons. Especially that last one, since it goes through constructs." I get a light pat on the shoulder and then Magnus is ambling away as Elise meanders over to me.

"So, what did you think? Get anything useful out of it?"

"Yeah, I think so." I nod to her. "I didn't know much about weapons but I'm getting there."

"Honestly? I'm finding it harder to form complicated devices with my ring than you seem to find doing it with yours. If I don't visualize the device in my mind it doesn't work and holding that while doing other things... It takes practice."

"Ah. That's why you wanted to do these?"

"Yeah, partially. Also because I'm not an expert in combat but I have people who are. Our strength has always been in our drive to co-operate with each other. It's why I'm comfortable letting them wear the ring, I know it'll come back to me."

"You think I should do the same?"

"If you trust us enough to, yes. Do you?"

"Oh, I don't know. See, I did only just meet y- haha!" She's just punched me in the arm lightly. "Okay, okay. Yes, I trust you guys."

"Then you should let others train with the blue ring. If anything happens to you, someone else can pick it up and in the short term, your ring can probably learn things from them."

"Speaking of... What's your rings database like?"

"Ring, give me a display version of your database I can scroll through, standard genkit computer interface."

"Okay, here you go. What are you looking for?"

"Huh, your ring is kinda talkative."

"You develop a bit when you're the only conversational partner of a person trapped in a time dilation field for about a two years."

That makes me blink. "Are you alive?"

"Not in the sense of being a creative, independently thinking entity, no. However I can extrapolate probable responses based on my interactions with Engel and by mapping his personality I can reasonably provide a simulacrum which sounds and seems a lot like a person."

"So you're his personality?"

"No."

I wait to see if there's anything else but nope, nothing. Elise shrugs, then so do I. "Hey ring, how about you?"

"This ring does not have a baseline personality simulation to map probable responses with."

"Yah, you told me that before. So how do I change your default settings?"

"Hope that this ring can become like that personality."

I hit my own face with my palm and sigh, letting it slide down my face. "Of course. I shouldn't have asked."

Elise is paging through data entries. "This is interesting. He has a bit of data on Psyche, that other planet we were above. Have you been down there yet?"

I float over to her, landing next to her and leaning in a bit to read her HUD. "No, I put off landing down there until I could upgrade myself a little. What's in store for me?"

"Looks like sandworms, fungal forests and a techno-magic based society using necromancy as a foundation for pretty much everything they do. This ring only has data on a small subsection of one continent, though. Looks like this guy went on a little tour around the area to see what's up and then got sidetracked."

"Still useful to know, though. Anything really relevant to us?"

"Dunno. Ring, what were Engel's most pressing priorities when he got stuck there?"

"Obtaining the yellow ring. Finding the green central battery. Scanning technology."

"Excuse me, what the hell is a central battery?"

"The central battery is the primary nexus for emotional light capacitor charging and serves as the main anchor point in the physical universe for the purest manifestation of emotional light. It is the draw point for the personal batteries tied to rings."

"Does this rings battery draw from a central battery?"

"Affirmative."

"Where is it?"

A location appears in my mind, a thread stretching far up out of the atmosphere, away into space. I look upwards.

"Hey Elise, feel like going for a walk?"

 

[AverusBlack]

It's amazing how fast flying can become mundane. Thrilling and amazing at first, it quickly becomes just another way to get around. As useful as transitioning is, when I asked about what happens when it's blocked I suddenly found a much less pressing desire to use it constantly. I like all my atoms remaining in place here instead of the Plane of Hope.

Flying out towards the signal my ring has been giving me for the 'central battery' quickly took us off-world, approaching the outer edges of the solar system. Although I couldn't physically see anything but stars around me the ring is giving me a good sense of where we are. The vast tracts of time where we're just flying doesn't bother me so much because I can woolgather like this in an environment where we're far less likely to be interrupted or attacked and Elise has been happily flying in a sitting position, browsing through her rings database on exotic technologies.

It does raise the question of what happens if we try to leave this system, though. I can't see anything stopping us but every time I try to scan past the Oort cloud the ring gets a little fucky and starts giving me 'unable to scan' returns. Something to investigate while we're out here probably but in the short term, eyes on the prize. Getting distracted seems to be a chronic problem for me, but not for Elise. The green ring seems to be helping her focus somehow, or perhaps that was always something she was good at. When we synchronize I get some of that too and the charge reserve boost is great. Having a 200% power pool while working together means both of us can fight harder without having to worry as much about holding back due to power constraints.

I glance over at Elise, flying in a laying position on my back with my hands behind my head. She's all focused on her reading, which is fine. Before she got that ring I liked her, it's true. Intelligent and focus-oriented towards whatever her goals are. She'd have made a good fit for my own ring color, I think. One of my long term goals here is to forge a second blue ring as part of my journey towards mastering the blue light and originally, I was going to give it to her, but with the green ring in play it may end up going to Samazurasha or Kurishalia instead. Which is fine.

But I never expected to really have a partner in this, not for a long time. Someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with me and do the same kind of things I can do. It's relieving to have her doing this with me but at the same time I'm not sure how to feel about the fact she seems to be becoming... a little attached? I guess I can't blame her since I sort of pulled a rescue operation for her and she ended up getting that out of it, from her perspective I probably seem like - pardon the pun, self - a knight in shining armor. Construct armor shines, right? Right. So it counts.

But I don't know how to handle it. I'm not sure I'd know how to handle it if it was a human girl flirting with me, but Elise is both my friend and a demihuman. I don't hold that against her, not really, but at the same time I don't look at naked genkits and get excited about it either. I'm not sure if that's the lack of a nudity taboo among them or if I'm just not attracted to them at all. I didn't have the same problem with Saxali. Point of fact, Noah's wife is hot. But she has the benefit of looking mostly human, save for the ears, tail and the way her eyes look. Close enough to count without quite straying into uncanny valley, just sort of overlooking it.

So what am I going to do if she decides she's falling in love with me or something?

I look away from her. I don't want to hurt her and I do like Elise, I like being around her. She's a great personality. I'm just not sure if I'm a bigot for not being into her physically or if she's just far enough outside my norm that learning to would take a little work. But frankly what the fuck is normal for me, anyways? I'm a glowing blue man who can change shape at will, fly, fight monsters. Normal fucked off down south a long time ago and is sending me 'wish you were here' postcards in the mail. Maybe I should just try to let go of any considerations for what normal is and just go with whatever happens?

"We're not far now. Any better idea of where the signal is coming from?"

I glance over at her, breaking my train of thought. "Neptune, I think. Or what would've been Neptune for me. I can just about remember all the planet names but this solar system is different from my home one."

"Really? How?"

"Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and then Pluto and all the stuff out in the Oort Cloud."

"Interesting. You don't consider Pluto to be a planet?"

"Don't... don't start. That argument had been going on for awhile when I found myself here, I'm pretty sure."

"Hah, okay. Well, when we get there, how do you want to proceed?"

"With style and aplomb." That gets me a look. "No seriously, I don't know. I'm just winging it, you think I have a plan? Haha! I don't have any plans! This is all improv, all the time."

She dismisses the HUD she'd been using to browse and rests her hands in her lap. "Ainsley, I know that. Ren literally gave me orders to be your tactical brain. So we're gonna figure out how to get to this thing safely, or we're not going in at all, because frankly you're too valuable to lose."

"Okay, okay." Neptune is almost visible now, a faint blue dot far in the distance. "We'll have to see what we find there before we can make any real plans, though."

"Perfectly acceptable. But since it's my job to browbeat you -"

"Just don't use a newspaper."

"Oh please, paper is way too valuable for now. I'd use a stick."

"That's not any better!"

"It is for me?"

 

[AverusBlack]

"Like the phoenix, I'll rise again.
To protect my family and defend my friends.
Let all who stand against us fall,
With this light I'll lift us all."

The green personal battery - which looks a lot like two cones merging into a spherical core with a handle on top - vanishes back into Elise's subspace pocket and I drop the construct box around her protecting her from space as she recharged. Since I did my ring first I'm content to take a moment to let her acclimate as I study what's below us.

Above Neptune, situated directly in a band between its rings is... not a ship, exactly, nor an asteroid. The closest equivalent I can come up with is a castle. Floating in space. No explanation, just 'fuck you, this is what's happening to day, deal with it'. I'm sure there's a point where I'll eventually get used to that sort of thing but today isn't it.

"Okay, this is what we do. Since its your ring leading you here, you go in but I follow you at a minor distance behind. You take point and I'll cover your back and try to make sure nothing can properly trap you from the inside. Hey, did you scan any of yellows drones?"

"Yuh huh. Haven't built any of my own yet though."

"Sucks. Would've been helpful to have here. Welp, lets go plunder the space castle. Ahoy, matey!"

I follow her down as we approach it, having the ring run continuous scans. The structure itself is spinning slowly as it drifts and as we fly in there's a ripple of blue as a shield forms around the structure. I stop and turn as Elise bounces off it, looking surprised.

"You can't pass through?"

"No, but you can, obviously. Whoever built this clearly didn't want it to be easy for another color to get inside."

"So much for the plan. I'm going to go ahead."

"Wait! Ring, synchronize."

"I can't initiate contact with the blue ring while it's inside."

I drift up and exit the shield, looking at Elise. "Ring, synchronize."

"Synchronizing."/ "Synchronizing."

I pass back through the shield and pull Elise with me. There's resistance now where there wasn't any before and it takes effort to push through it with her, but after a moment we're through to the other side and I let go of her. We fly down towards the structure together and in front of us she creates a green ablative shield, puzzling me for a moment. We lower down towards what looks like an entrance and she extends it out and around us in a shell of hexagonal panels.

"What are you doing that for?"

"The moment you walk into a structure is usually the same moment ambushes happen or defenses kick in."

I nod and drift inside with her. "I don't think we'll need that. Don't ask me how, I just... don't."

The antechamber is a dark gray stone with blue lines passing through and over every surface like circuit board etchings. Leaning in I examine one of the walls, then reach up and touch -

The biggest hunting range! The success of my clan, of my family! We'll always come out on top, no matter how many try to contest us. Not in a thousand years!

- a line, tilting my head slightly as I lower it. It wasn't just like channeling the blue light with the ring, I could feel the emotion as it ran through me like my body completing an electrical circuit. Startling and a little overwhelming.

"Don't touch the lines."

"Are you alright?"

"Yes, it's just intense. This entire place is being powered by the hopes of those three planets, I think. Somehow."

I drift upwards, rising into the air and following the flow of the lines, Elise following me at a distance. Drifting upwards towards the ceiling, the domed sealing -

- with a blue light sigil carved in stone at the center of it.

I press my hand against it, frowning. Nothing happens and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. I don't know how to just make blue light, I need a focus...

Oh. I'm dumb.

"Elise, I'm going to try something and if it doesn't work something might happen but I don't know what."

"Gotcha." She turns to face the race of the chamber and I reach out with threads of blue light, touching the lines around me.

Guh.

I think I'm panting, it's so overwhelming. I'm experiencing the emotions like it was my own and it's as overwhelming as deep grief or blinding rage, I can't... focus...

Then it stops and blue light flows out from the sigil, out from the center of the dome above us. We have just enough time to marvel at it before a pillar of blue light slams us both into the floor!

I can't move. Too much pressure, it's suffocating. Then it's suddenly gone and I can't help but gasp, rolling onto my side. I can hear Elise doing something similar, pushing herself up.

"I haven't been pushed into the floor that hard since I got back together with my ex. The fuck was that?"

"Ow."

"Yes, ow. Hey, look."

I push myself up off the floor and look behind me at the center of the room. There's a two story tall personal battery much like the one my ring has, the core glowing in a way I'm finding hard to look directly at. 'Central' battery indeed, holy shit.

"This is where your rings power comes from? Why's it so large?"

"Beats me."

"It kinda just did."

"Smartass."

She doesn't get time for a retort because the facility glows brightly and then begins to vibrate, the blue lines around us pulsing. It sounds like something beating on the walls around us.

"Oh great, now what the hell is going on?" I form construct armor and produce a pair of railgun constructs, augmenting my armor suit as Elise does the same.

She braces as glowing orange enemies begin charging into the room!

 

[AverusBlack]

Both of us brace but there's little point as they split off from the door, surrounding us. Some of them are recognizable. Skal are among them and I can see a Tovari but most of them are species I don't recognize.

They're lining up around us, hovering above the floor. One of them strays a bit too close to a wall and the second it touches one of the blue lines it spazzes out and flicks out of existence as though disrupted. Elise is on edge, tail puffed up behind her and I can't say I disagree very much.

When the girl walks in, it's obvious who their master is. Mocha skin, black hair, bright yellow eyes, black tail and ears. Tovari. Or looks like one, at least. I'm not sure if I should assume every ring user is a reflection the way yellow was, considering how Elise got her ring. When she strides into the room it's with an imperious, demanding air about her. Looking around the room as though we ought to be bowing or something, looking down at us as she tilts her head back. Her tail lashes once, then she looks up at the central battery behind us.

"Mmm. I suppose I win that bet. Lord Fear thought you would attack the constructs the moment you saw them. Vara figured you'd wait and attack me." She smiles humorlessly. "Hiiiiii."

"Who are you and why are you here if you're not here to attack us?"

"Oh, just an interested party. I'm not here to steal that or anything. Point of fact, here you're rather powerful. It's why we're having this conversation here instead of that quaint little town of yours. It's nice there, you know. I rather liked the food."

"You went to Durjak?"

"Mmhmm. I'm Mina. You think of Nemesis - Lord Fear, I mean - as your enemy, yes?"

"That's how it tends to go when somebody attacks you the way he did, then drags you off."

"Well, I'm not. I was but we came to terms." She circles her finger, pointing it at the floor. "Took some time, though. Him and Red..." She shakes her head. "Insufferable. I'm not very interested in playing their games or participating in their schemes but we're on diplomatic terms and I'm being compensated for having this conversation with you."

"I'm not hearing the 'why you're here' part of this."

"Yes, yes. About that." She gestures up at the constructs. "Do you like them? They're the reason that I'm not part of their little group. You see, when you destroy one of my construct-lanterns, it respawns from the ring. It uses a little power, it's true, but it's negligible. What happened with Nemesis was his version of a test."

"A test?" I look over at Elise as her environmental shield cuts out for a second, leaving only her suit to protect her. I make a gesture at her and I can see her visibly try to reign herself in. "He thinks of that as a test? Well I hope he fucking liked it because he lost his whole testing area."

Mina actually smiles at that. "Yes, he did. Excellent job. The reason he did it is because we have... Mmm, larger problems besides the local color. But having some sense of how fucked up he is, he knows he couldn't come talk to you about this directly, so he sent me. I approached you here because frankly, I'm a one-girl army and this is the least likely place for you to want to start with a fight."

"Yes. Probably." I fold my arms behind my back, watching her. "Why. The fuck. Are you. Here."

She sighs. "Because he actually wants to work with you and wanted to make sure you wouldn't be dead weight the way Engel was. He tried working with Engel but Engel had other ideas on how we should be going about this and wasn't much interested in the big picture. Nemesis threw him through the same gauntlet he tossed you into, gave him the same escape opportunity and Engel let himself get shot. The whole thing was a big miscalculation on his part."

"So he decided to do it all over again?"

"You have to understand - and you would, being who you are - that while he's very clever at times he can be exceedingly absentminded and stupid in other ways."

"No. No, I don't."

"Well then that's on you. But what it comes down to is this. He wants to talk to you, both of you, in a sort of conference. Red, orange, yellow, green and blue all in one place having a nice chat, with me being the neutral party."

"So what's your color for, then?"

"You could just ask your ring."

"He asked you."

"True enough. My ring is powered by avarice. I need to want things, so... I want to be here, having this conversation and I want that conference to happen. You may bring whomever you wish to feel self-assured, but it's not going to be a fight and it concerns a matter for all of us."

"Well, that sounds like you should give me the short summary here and now."

"And ruin the surprise? Oh honey, you really need to teach this boy about foreplay."

"It's a work in progress."

"Fair enough. Four days. Where would you like to hold this?"

"Giving us the option of choosing the venue?"

"Of course. Aside from the fact you likely feel wronged by him, despite the fact you gained another ring in doing so, he doesn't actually have any animosity towards you. That's just how he works, how he thinks."

"The castle above Durjak will suit us nicely." Elise gives me a look but I can't tell what it is behind her helmet. "There's enough space there for what he has in mind and there's nothing stopping them from attacking us there anyways, Elise."

That gets me a silent nod from her and I look over to Mina. "Rings off."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"When we hold the meeting, all of us will remove the rings and place them on the table. We'll hold the meeting unpowered so that nobody can do anything... unfortunate."

She clicks her tongue. "And you're making this a condition of your accepting the proposal?"

"Yes. We will only agree to meet if they approach and immediately disarm themselves. My oath that they'll be granted safety while there."

"They won't like it but I'll make them come around to that. You're far more reasonable than they ever were, it's kind of nice." She smiles winsomely at me. "Maybe I'll stick around after, you seem kind of sweet."

That gets a low growl from Elise, making me wince internally. Mina just shrugs and smiles. "Or maybe not." She snaps her fingers and the construct lanterns flow into her ring. "Do try to behave in the meantime. Oh, and this?" She gestures at the battery. "Don't try to move it. It's less accessible out here and I was only able to breach the shield because when you pulled green glitter here through, you weakened it. You'll understand why it's so important at the meeting. Ta-ta."

With that she turns and zooms back out of the building, leaving us to it.

"Trap?"

"Probably."

"Sounds like a party."

"I'll bring the little hats."

"What about this?"

I look back at the central battery. "We should move this structure. Or... I should, I guess."

"That's fine. I'm reluctant to leave you on your own, though, in case she comes back."

"Eager to guard my innocence, eh?"

"Pfft. Okay, fine. I'll go talk to Ren and calm her down when she finds out the guy who attacked us is coming back for a chat."

"Will she be a problem?"

"Not if we don't put them in the same room. I'll work it out." She waves and then zooms out, leaving me with the central battery.

Now, where to stash this so Mina won't find it again?

 

[AverusBlack]

Emil Tychorus Luther was is not happy.

Standing in the middle of a vast warehouse space, the other infantry around him are lined up in rows, standing relaxed, talking to their teammates. So long as they don't break formation or act disruptively to operations there's no reason to treat them like drones, so they don't. Friends are making cracks at each other, reassurances given, promises made. The few who are theologically inclined among them say quiet prayers but religion isn't something the Zerosi ever really picked up readily and tended to be a good indicator of who had immigrated to Zero instead of being born there.

Not that it mattered. Not to him, anyways. He watched as techs did last minute quadruple-checks to make sure everything was in place and ready, pallets of supplies being lined up, the new mechsuits lined up in front of those with their chests splayed open so the pilots can relax while they wait. It was a much larger force than they'd originally been planning to send but they'd had some indication that this might be necessary and the preparations had been underway long before the first group went though.

He thought of Elise and bowed his head. Of all the things he'd done in his life, the people he'd killed or hurt in combat, the injuries he'd taken, he'd always faced the pain with a kind of stoic inevitability. It didn't matter how much he screamed or panted, it always hurt the same anyways, so there was rarely any point in bitching about it or getting worked up. It only stressed him out more. But emotional pain wasn't something he'd ever really learned to deal with, he'd never gotten the opportunity. From one fight to another he'd been a soldier, privateer, then officer.

Even having Elise, the moment he knew of her, the decision to be involved in her life had never been a decision at all. If Senya had fought him over it, he'd have dragged her through legal hell until he had access to his daughter. That hadn't been necessary and it'd been the main reason he'd agreed to come back to Zero at all, a path which had only led here. If he'd known back then that it would lead to Elise joining the ZMI in his footsteps he probably would have rethought the decision.

"Sir?"

He turned his head, looking at his aide. Charles nodded to him. "It'd just about ready, sir."

"Thank you, Charles."

"I wish I was going with you, sir."

"No you don't."

"No, I don't."

He smiled, turning to face the boy. "I was once married too, lad. I know what it's like. When you're in love, all things in the world seem to turn on its axis. I wouldn't drag you away from that but I appreciate the sentiment all the same,"

"Was, sir?"

"She died three years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear it, sir."

Patting Charles on the shoulder, he gently turned the red panda towards the stairs and stepped around him, a non-verbal invitation to walk together. "It's fine, Charles. I imagine it goes some way to explaining why I fought so hard to go through with this myself."

"I know you'll find her, Emil. I used to regret it didn't work out with her. Until..." Emil nodded. "She's resourceful and intelligent, she'll be okay. She might be a huge goofball but that's just the Senya in her. She's half you, too." He chuckles. "You're gonna get there and find her ruling a small country or something."

Emil smiled a little. "Knowing her? Either that, or we'll find a giant crater. Do me a favor, Charles?"

"Sir?"

"Senya has a memorial down in the hall of the dead. If we don't return, I'd appreciate it if you saw to making sure it was well taken care of."

"Of course. Fortune go with you, Emil." They shook hands, hard. "It's been an honor to know you."

"Take care of that wife of yours, boy. We're ageless, but not immortal." Charles nods and steps back, allowing Emil to turn and head towards the gate.

"Alright, listen up!" The conversations die out and every person in the room focuses on him. Backs straighten, formations tighten up and the mech pilots sit up and get into position. "This will probably be a one way trip. You knew that coming down here, you've been told time and again. But this is it! This is the last chance! If you're gonna back out, say so now because the moment that gate turns on our lives here are over. Whatever's on the other side of that gate is gonna be it for us. If you want out, say so now."

Nobody says a word to him as his eyes sweep the room. He smacks his tail on the deck behind him and nods. "Good. Button up, get ready." Behind him the gate is beginning to hum, a sound steadily increasing as he's been talking. "It's time to go get our fucking people back."

"HA!"

The sound is accompanied by the left boot of every soldier on the deck and two of the mech's stomping at the same time, an agreement that shakes the room. At the same moment the gate behind him activates, the space inside it curving out and away in a way which hurts to look at for too long.

Reaching behind his collar he pulls his helmet on, ears flattening under it. Picking up his rifle he flicks the safety, checks the magazine and turns towards the aperture as the first squad of infantry line up behind him.

"Let's move, people!"

He didn't know where his daughter was and that made Emil very, very unhappy.

He hadn't spoken to her in nearly two months.

He'd fought, begged, bribed, pulled favors, leaned on old guilts and burned every bridge he'd had to in order to be here himself, leading this effort. He'd alienated old allies, pissed off old friends who couldn't talk him out of it. His life in Zero was as over as if he'd died. But it didn't matter.

He was going to get his daughter back.

And if there are gods, they'd better prioritize helping anybody in his way because they'll need it.

 

[AverusBlack]

I'm sitting on one of the ledges of my keep, overlooking the valley below. It's a nice evening and with three more days of waiting to do I figured I'd take the time to relax. This particular ledge is a favorite of mine since it overlooks the garden below and has the balcony leading to my living space behind me. I let Sammy go a bit crazy with ideas and he came up with a large outdoor cooking space and dining area with plants lining it. I've gotta admit, the little guy has a knack for this kind of thing. It was mostly me and Elise doing the actual building but the ideas were all his and it got him obsessed with learning woodworking so that's keeping him busy now that the interior rooms are done.

Kuri on the other hand has seemingly decided to move in, something which endlessly amuses me. She seems to think it's her role to make sure we're all fed properly and taken care of. I asked Sammy about it and apparently she's always been like this and had to cut back on it when she became a shaman, mostly due to how seriously everybody at home takes shamans. Here, she's getting to be casual with us in a way she can't back home with other Skal and seems to be running it to the hilt. Personally I think she's just having fun coming up with new recipes.

I glance down at the new road leading into Durjak and the people traveling it. Trade has returned to the town and with the addition of the castle, a sort of local tourism. It would seem the locals are interested in using the castle as a fallback position in the case of an attack, which seems reasonable and is sort of what they're for, really. But that means additions to the castle itself, extra structures for emergency housing, stores, armories... Which means there's now jobs locally and that's drawing people here too.

Overall, Durjak is doing pretty well, I'd say.

Standing up I turn to walk into my quarters, walking around the large round dining table set up under the outdoor roof covering it. The firepit still smells like wood smoke, a low-key pleasant smell which follows me inside as I leave the doors open, mixing with the minty scent of the flowers that were planted in here. Kuri is sitting in the middle of the living room floor, brushing her own tail as it's pulled across her lap.

"Not traveling the countryside today?"

I shake my head, walking over to her and sitting down to join her, leaning on some cushions. "Nope, taking the day off. Doctors orders."

"What is a doctor?"

"A healer based in science rather than herbalism or magic. There's different levels of medical care, doctors are at the top. They examine people and decide what the problem is while medics and nurses apply the treatments the doctors recommend. The genkits have one doctor and a bunch of them are trained as medics. They know humans too, so..." I shrug. "Elise apparently has a degree in psychology and told me to relax today so I can focus better when I need to, so that's what I'm doing."

"You're not worried about being inactive?"

"No." I shake my head. "I want to save people, uplift people. But I'm still just one person. Even with Elise's help I can only do so much and if I lose sight of that, I'll wear myself out or destroy myself expecting more than I can reasonably do, then be crushed by my own inability to do everything."

Kuri looks thoughtful, then nods slowly. "I suppose that makes sense."

"Which is why I want to train you with the blue ring."

That stops her up, making her blink. "What?"

I pull my ring off, holding it up. "You, ring, blue, glowy. It was pointed out to me recently that if anything happens to me and somebody else needs to pick up the ring and continue my work, nobody else knows how to use it. I'm still discovering that myself, but days like today where I'm not flittering about the countryside putting fires out? I want to train you in the ring."

"Why me?"

"You genuinely want to help people and take care of them. You've been trying to help me and frankly, I value having you and your brother here. I value all of you. Do you know why the bottom of the castle has that large space dug out?"

"I assumed you planned to build inside it."

"Well, yes. The ring didn't have much on its memory when I got it. One of the things it did have was instructions on how to build another ring. It takes a long time and I need to be focusing my hopes very intensely to do it, which means meditation on the blue light while I work. But overall I plan to create another blue ring in time and training you before it's finished will save quite a lot of work after it's done."

She looks gobsmacked. "I... Yes, I accept. How do we begin?"

"One of the things I've found is that if I'm hoping really intensely, the ring responds to it. I can call it that way, I did it before when I first spoke to the shamans. You have to be feeling hopeful to use the ring, so try focusing on all the good you can do while you have it, the lives you can s-"

The ring flicks from my hand to hers, the blue glow surrounding her and causing her to gasp.

"-ave and... yes. Excellent." I grins at her. "How does it feel?"

"Like I can do anything, save anybody. How do you create objects?"

"Hold the image of it in your mind while focusing on how sure you are it'll appear for you."

She considers for a moment, then raises her hand in a gesture of habit, but the ring already has ideas of its own, it seems. It begins forming constructs of other Skal but I can't tell who they are because they all look kind of same-y to me.

"Kurishalia. We are so proud of you. This path is yours and you can do far more good here than back home with the clan. Reach high."

She looks awestruck, then nods and... hugs the construct Skal. I'm a little confused, it's the first time I've seen the ring do this and I'm not sure what's going on.

"I will, mother."

 

[AverusBlack]

I jink to the left as Kuri fires a crossbow at me that fires like a machine gun. She's never seen a submachine gun or automatic rifle at work before having met us but she and her brother learn so quickly that we're beginning to wonder of the Skal are a race of short-lived savants. The larger the star, the shorter its lifespan, that kind of thing. It's amazing and the first thing I did when I got back with the green ring was scan her but we still haven't worked out what part of her brain is letting her learn like this. The lack of a genetics lab or any kind of AI-driven mainframe network makes it impossible to do a full genome analysis except with the ring but I have no idea how to deal with the results and our geeks aren't quite skilled enough to exploit it.

Yet.

A short transition forward and I'm underneath and inside of Kuri's personal space, firing myself upward through her guns dead zone in a tackle. I don't want to attack her, not really. This is about learning mindfulness and defense. Her railguns are dissipating as she reacts far faster then I expected her to, flipping forward as I come up at her and impacting my shoulders with her hands. My upwards momentum becomes her rolling momentum as she flips past me downward while I go upward, a maneuver which takes a bare half a second. I couldn't have done it. Wow.

She hits the ground as I'm turning in midair and forms a railgun almost four times her own body size, forcing me to snap my way out of position wildly and fly hard to avoid getting slugged by her BFG. I can't help but laugh wildly, spinning in midair and doing spirals to throw off her aim. The little shit isn't worried about defense, she's forcing me to dodge! Ainsley could learn a thing or two from this girl, she definitely has the right mindset for combat.

I spin downward and hug the deck, flying as close to the ground as I can and forming my own gun to fire at her construct, then following up by tearing my own construct apart and forming it into several cables of green light that attack from multiple directions! She's forced to form a dome around herself, then pushes it outwards as she learns from our last spar and begins creating ablative shield layers beneath the already cracking barrier. Good girl.

I'm forced to abandon my offense as her outer shield layer pulls in on itself, the layers underneath taking my attack while she uses the failing layer as an attack vector against me, firing her own blue beam under and through my constructs at me! I have just enough time to pull back and form a barrier in front of myself, shifting the bottom back a little and turning it into a slant, the backward force of her attack both shattering my construct barrier and forcing me backwards and upwards at the same time. I push the movement and sail in an arc above her while she's blinded by her own attack, then land hard behind her and create construct armor as I impact her barrier directly from behind. With her focus forward it takes her just a little too long to notice I'm not getting blown halfway across the planet in front of her, allowing me to break down her construct shield layers and reach out to flick her left ear.

Gotcha.

Immediately we both drop the constructs, the grin on my face matching my tail, which won't stop. "I win, woohoo!"

There's clapping from behind me where Ainsley has been watching us, sitting on a rock. "That lasted way longer than the first time. They weren't joking about you learning fast, Kuri."

"Thank you. Should we continue?"

"Nah, it's getting kind of late. That was really fun though. Ainsley, you've got to try fighting her."

"How am I going to do that?"

"By using the green ring, of course." I grin at him, pinning my ears back. "C'mon, you don't wanna try being forceful for once?"

"Not usually my style." He chuckles. "I suppose it's not a bad idea in the long run, though. Kuri?"

"Of course." She pulls the blue ring off, letting it fly through the air towards Ainsley as he calls it to himself. I shake my head a little. I still haven't quite figured out how to do that trick and it comes to both of them easily. Pretty sure the green ring is just on hard mode, but that kind of thing gets far easier when we synchronize.

"So, what do you think of this upcoming meeting, Kuri?" I sit down in the grass next to her, rolling my shoulders.

"I'm not sure inviting your enemies into your own bastion is wise, but your people are far more advanced than mine." She shrugs. "It may be that I'm just not seeing it. Why entertain the idea at all? You owe them nothing."

Ainsley hm's. "I think I agreed to it mostly for two reasons. One, it gives me an idea of their personalities. I didn't banter with yellow much and I get the impression looking back on it he was kind of hamming it up. I don't know red at all and all I know of orange is a five minute conversation. It's not enough and knowledge is power." He shrugs. "Besides, there's three of them and two of us and they're clearly better with their rings within the bounds of their use. More practice. I'm not ready for a direct confrontation and saying no might have caused one."

I shake my head. "I don't really like it." Especially Mina. Inviting yourself to hang out after showing up making implicit threats? That's not friendly behavior. Carrying a weapon to defend yourself is one thing but having a bunch of minions follow you around is another. I can't tell what Ainsley is thinking but he better not be going along with this because she's humanish and has a set of perky tits. I'll smack him if that's it, I really will.

"I know. But if there's a bigger problem than just them we need to know about it and there's too much we don't know, too many questions they might be able to answer. Which is why we should have a backup plan for when this inevitably goes sideways and we have to fight all of them at the same time."

I phew internally in relief at hearing him say that. At least he's trying.

He might not be a genkit, but he's really trying. I've never really known a human so readily willing to change their entire way of thinking the way he does at the drop of a hat. I just need to get him to stop worrying so much about physical attraction. Pfft, humans.

Maybe we can find him a nice human girl or boy to bridge the gap? Oh well.

Existential threats first, homebuilding second.

 

[AverusBlack]

"There's still time to change your mind, you know." Elise is standing just behind me and to my right, speaking quietly. We're standing in the antechamber which serves as my 'throne room', something which Bradley eventually convinced me to make in order to have something like a seat of governance if I'm going to be in charge of people. Mostly because I am in charge whether I want to be or not. The locals just sort of unanimously decided for me.

"No, we're committed to this now. Trust me." Kuri is sitting to my left on the steps leading up to my seat, casually leaning her elbow on one knee. In the middle of the hall a large conference table has been set up and laid out to serve meals. A few of the locals working in the castle for us thanks to Sammy are bringing out drinks for the group as we're waiting for Ren to finish escorting them to the hall from outside.

"I do trust you. But this stinks of a set up and I don't like the whole disarming ourselves bit of this. It's stupid."

"Who said anything about disarming ourselves?"

I glance at Elise at the same time she glances at me and tilts her head, but there's no time for further discussion on the subject. Ren strides into the room in a full set of newly re-fabricated armor, stepping to the side and revealing our three 'delegates'.

Yellow - Nemesis - isn't glowing. His ring is on a chain around his neck, though. Within easy reach but complying with the rules at large. Looking at him now, he seems almost hawkish, putting me in mind of Grand Moff Tarkin. That feels like a good fit somehow. His appearance has been shaped somehow by his use of the ring and how he thinks, his features severe, almost brutish. His armor is silver plate with lines of gold forming his sigil, a different suit than what he wore before. He also has an actual cape. It ought to be ridiculous but somehow, it isn't.

Mina is barely dressed and I'm not sure if what she's counting counts as dressed. She has her ring on a string clipped to her collar, almost like a bell. The choker is the most opaque part of the outfit and the rest leaves nothing to the imagination. The outfit as a whole puts me in mind of a belly dancer but the veil covering most of her, despite being transparent, makes me think 'desert-dweller'.

Heh, it's a good thing the ring can help control my body language. I'm pretty sure she's doing that to distract me.

The third one is clearly the red light user and she's glowing, her ring still on. Fists clenched, she's glowering at us, wearing adventurers leathers and a thick cloak, all dyed in red and black. Her sigil glows at her chest and her body language screams impatience.

"Ah, and so I my return has come at last. Hi there, Elise." Nemesis smiles winsomely up at us. "And with a spread, no less. Let it not be said that the blue light is attuned to the inhospitable."

"Old habits die hard, goldilocks." Elise nods at the red girl. "We haven't met yet. What do you call yourself?"

"I am Lady Vara." When she speaks it's curt, almost grudging. She isn't looking at us, examining the chamber and table instead. "I cannot remove the ring. I once tried and the pain was overwhelming. Debilitating. It's tied to me. Fucking deal with it or don't."

"My ring is capable of turning off my ability to feel pain. Is yours incapable of doing the same?"

"My ring is fucking stupid. It only sort of does what I want it to. You gonna blab at me all day or we gonna sit down and talk?"

"Yes, take a seat." I turn to look at Kuri but she's already gone, disappeared into the kitchens. Ah. Turning to look at Elise I find her staring at Mina, frowning a bit. "Come on, they won't bite."

I walk down the steps to join the other side of the table with Elise as Mina speaks up. "Not disarming yourselves, then?"

"No."

"So how come Nemesis and I are?"

"Because we don't trust him, while you two ladies are unknown variables. And if Lady Vara can't remove her ring..."

Mina nods, which makes the rest of her- looking up at her face now. "I get it. Gotta sweet-talk you into trusting me, no problem."

I take a deep breath, looking down at the table for a moment as Kuri returns with several others holding platters. "Since we're not in a rush, I figured we could sit down together and have an informal conversation before we start getting serious. None of us know each other. Mina gave the impression that you want to work with us for some reason and we'll get to that, but there's hard feelings." I glare at Nemesis. "However, from what I understand the genkits have a long history of dealing diplomatically with factions they were merrily killing a week or two before and it was suggested to me that learning a bit about each other before the negotiations would help smooth things along."

"That... makes a surprising degree of sense." Vara sounds mildly confused. "I don't know anything about you two and I barely know Mina at all."

"Thank you." That seems to please Mina more than it ought to.

"Okay." I nod slowly. "I'll start us off then. I chose the name Ainsley, don't know much about who I was and mostly I've been acting to improve this particular town so that I can help these people and tie trade together. Get better access to technologies, magic, knowledge."

"And green over there? Not gonna speak up?"

"I got this ring because of him." She points at Nemesis, who shrugs elaborately. "I'm here with Ainsley because he's proven his worth as a person. We give loyalty to those who deserve it. Who better to align ourselves with than a man who works to better others?" Elise shrugs too. "With nowhere to go, he was the first to extend a hand in friendship. Our destinies are intertwined, now. Ainsley has risked his life for us, not many humans ever did that."

"Ooh, that sounds like a story." Mina leans forward on her elbows, resting her chin on her knuckles. "Wanna tell it to me later?"

Elise isn't sure how to take that, looking confused. "Moving on." I interject before anything else can happen. "What's your story, Mina?"

"Ohhh, you know. A girl goes and gets a super-ring, travels the world, collects some toys, some boys, some girls, has a few whirls. These days I'm building up a nice, semi-modern little city on the coast of one of the other continents here. 's great, really. Mostly steam-powered and basic electricity but they're doing cool stuff with magic."

"We might be open to trade with your people at some point."

"Hah! Maybe, depends on what you got. I'm preeeetty expensive." She grins, ears folded out to the sides as she shows teeth.

"And you, Nemesis?"

"Hard pass. And if you ask Vara you're only going to piss her off because she knows answering will piss me off and make problems, so piss off."

I sigh. "Yes, I can see that dinner with you will be a delight."

"I aim to please, Ainsley me boy."

 

[AverusBlack]

"Do you wish to be free of it?"

It's just after dinner and we're taking a few minutes before re-convening and getting down to business. Vara has made her way out to the garden balcony, looking out over the valley in the same spot I tend to sit while meditating or thinking. She turns her head to glance over her shoulder at me, framing her features against the lights in the garden for a moment.

"Of what? The ring?"

I nod, standing next to her and looking out where she's been looking. "Yes. You could be free of it. I could help."

"Why would you do that?"

"I'm hope. It's what I do."

She doesn't answer immediately, hooking her thumbs in her belt. "A year ago I would've said yes. Now I'm not sure. I used to be horrified by it, really."

"Used to be?"

"Yes. The red light encourages you to think in certain ways. The first time I took a body part as a trophy Nemesis - that wasn't his name at the time - was revolted. Entirely put off by it. Since he was changed it's less of a problem but his reaction put into perspective just how much my outlook on things has been forcibly changed."

"Does this have to do with this threat he's been dangling over us?"

"Yes. Mostly." She hangs her head slightly, letting black hair fall across one eye. "When this is all said and done, if we both yet live, I might say yes. I'm so fucking tired of all this, really. I just want to be left alone. Why does nobody ever leave me alone?" She sighs in frustration.

I nod. "Why are you involved with him anyways? You clearly don't like him."

"I don't like anyone. I tolerate people to degrees. Some, like you, are easier than others, like him. I found him after he arrived, before he was re-aligned to his ring. Pathetic excuse of a man, really. A coward. Ruled by his own fears. Barely tolerable now, the cowardice was replaced by a sort of malevolent humor. Probably always under the surface, just too deep to see." She hmphs. "If you manage to kill him, I might even thank you for it."

I shake my head. "Not really my style and if this is as important as he says, training somebody new with his ring would take time."

"True. Part of why I tolerate him, barely."

"And Mina?"

"A non-concern. She's got her little toys and that's all she cares about. I barely pay attention to her or her city."

"Is she a threat?"

"Probably. She's not the only orange."

That stops me up, turning my head to look at her. "What?"

"Orange can make rings easily. Not good ones, but functional. She has one like that. We killed the original orange."

"Why?"

"Crazy, stupid, not useful. Too hedonistic, too selfish. Too dangerous. Their ability to forcibly turn people into constructs was too much to just ignore him and let him be. So we killed him."

I find that rather disquieting. "I hope you're not planning something like that here."

"No. You're potentially useful and so is your girlfriend, far more than Engel was."

"She's not my girlfriend."

"Yeah, let me know when you figure out how wrong you are." She snickers and turns, heading back inside and leaving me behind.

I sigh a little and follow a moment later. Inside, Elise is watching Nemesis try and fail to hit on Mina, who's barely paying attention to him at all. When Vara and I re-enter he gets up, arms spread. "Aaah, our illustrious host returns. I trust we're ready to get down to business, then?"

"I suppose so. So, Nemmy, why are we all here?"

He nods, pacing back and forth across the room as he speaks. "Vara was the first of us. We didn't clue into the central batteries for awhile, not until I'd come along and established myself and Engel entered the picture. We discovered them through him. It was also he who found the seal."

"What seal?"

"Vara?" She provides a construct of what appears to be a temple situated into a cliff face. "This is the temple of the light. That's only what we call it because the rings don't translate what's inside. We have no idea what it actually is. The seal itself appears to be free-standing arch in a large chamber roughly half the size of this castles grounds. At the moment, the red, orange and yellow central batteries are in this chamber, bolstering the seals integrity. Which is slowly falling."

"Why is it falling?" Elise folds her arms under her breasts, frowning.

"It's something to do with the rings appearing. Did you know time passes more slowly here?"

I shake my head. "No, we didn't. Compared to what?"

"There are other worlds than these, Ainsley." He sounds grim. "We've made brief contact with one or two, like your friends homeworld. Time passes more quickly in other worlds than here. Our running hypothesis is that the rings were sent here together but are appearing piecemeal due to the dilation. Every time a new one appears that seal gets just a little bit weaker and it takes more power to bolster it."

"What's on the other side of the seal?"

"Beats us." He shrugs. "Who knows? Gods, monsters, demons, Spongebob Squarepants, who can guess?" What-bob... pants? What? "Frankly, for all we know, it'll blip the entire world out like waveforms canceling each other out."

"So what does this have to do with us? Me and Elise?"

"Well, it's simple, really. We want you to move your central batteries into the temple and agree not to fuck with the others. In return, we mostly leave you alone. When Indigo shows up they become your problem because we've got our hands full."

"Oh?" Elise pipes up. "With what, exactly?"

"What if there's an army on the other side of that seal? Some massive enemy we can't beat? You can't deny these rings are powerful. They're too powerful. Why are they here? Why are we here? The presumption is that we need that kind of power to face whatever is trying to make its way through here, but we're not relying solely on the rings. We have other plans in motion."

"And you want us to give you free reign."

"Yes, essentially."

"Then why the FUCK did you attack us?" Elise is staring at him, eyes narrowed.

"It was the most direct way to assess whether or not you were trying to master the rings, or simply getting by with them. If you'd been lousy or tried to run away, we'd have come after you to relieve you of the blue ring until we found somebody suitable for it. This isn't a game, kids. This is the end of the world we might be talking about."

"You think that this makes us friends?" Elise sounds thoughtful. "Because it doesn't. Let me tell you something about my people, Goldilocks. Our time hanging around hasn't been that long, the first of us were made 'bout a century ago. In that time we've -" She starts ticking off her fingers. "-survived a genocide, established a fully enclosed city as an offworld colony experiment, established ties with every nation who fought against us and crushed the rest. Do you remember what I said about us fighting to the last that day?"

"Oh, yes. I found your resistance both surprising and delightful. When you took the green ring and simply let Engel die, mm." He kisses the tips of his fingers. "The ruthlessness of it. Beautiful. You impressed me that day, Elise."

She looks mildly revolted. "When you pick a fight with one of us, you pick a fight with all of us. Humans have attacked us only to find children shooting back. All of us, do you understand? When you threaten us, threaten our homes, our lives, don't ever expect it to be easy. Even if you win in the short term, your time occupying us would be so fraught with resistance you'll wish you never bothered. Keep that in mind, Goldilocks. External threats take precedence but we're not going to forget what you did."

He nods. "Yes, that reminds me. What happened to that guard?"

"He lived."

"Oh, good. I-"

"Shut up, Goldilocks. You've said your bit. Ainsley?"

I take a moment to think before answering. "I think it would be a good idea to examine this all for ourselves before we agree to anything. Vara?"

"I'm not taking you. I have better things to do than babysit you. Mina can do it."

Elise frowns at that but Mina lights up like a lamp. "Ooh, I totally will. We're gonna have a blast!"

Something tells me I'm going to regret this.

 

[AverusBlack]

They arrived in the middle of a sandstorm.

When Emil made it through the gate he was immediately thankful for the closed environmental seal of his suit. Combat doctrine in the last fifty years had emphasized adaptability and mobility in the expectation that eventually, the Zerosi Mobile Infantry would be operating in pretty much any environment. The armor itself was effectively a fortified, idiot-proof spacesuit he could live in for a couple of months if necessary. Although they didn't have any kind of energy shield small enough to fit on an individual the suits armor plates could build a charge as both a means of discouraging close quarters combat and to form a weak repelling field, which was going to be handy very, very soon it would seem.

As he arrived he kept walking, signals from his people lighting up all around him as they arrive. They fan out, each lit up on each others HUD despite the lack of visibility. It wasn't hindering their ability to track each other or where they were very much. Optical vision only gets you so far and they had other kinds of eyes.

Nobody was talking but that changed once the mech pilots began to arrive. The mechs themselves were hexapods, the pilots inside sitting comfortably in the middle of the 'body'. Vaguely resembling large mechanical spiders the two front legs could double as actionable manipulators so that the mechs could have 'hands'. Their pilots weren't part of the ZMI, an associate service outside of his chain of command under normal circumstances but who now belonged to him and his unit.

"Ha-ha, look at that, Ruthless."

"Can't see shit, cap'n."

"You're goddamned right we can't. Good to see you boys made it through with us, how's life down on the ground?"

Emil flicked his eyes to the left for half a second, then up, opening his comm and setting it to the open channel. "About as good as we can expect when we're talking, Champ. Try not to spam up the comms too much, please."

"Gotcha, General. Ruthless, quit spamming the comms."

"Fuck you, Champ." She was laughing as she said it, though.

He could see the last of his people appear on his HUD. Good. "Listen up folks, we've come out in the middle of a haboob so we're gonna sit tight. Keep your plating repelling so that you don't get buried too much and don't stay in one spot for too long. Champ, bring your lunkers around and sit down in a box around us, please. You're going to serve as our windbreaks until this passes."

"What if it don't pass, General?"

"Don't worry too much about it, Ruthless. Worst case scenario we follow you ugly lugs while you take point and we start looking for signals. Ain't gonna find shit in this blow but that doesn't mean we can't try."

As he and the others grouped together the mechs moved to drop down around them, forming a wall against the wind and taking the brunt of it for them. With nothing shooting at them and no reason to worry about traveling in the short term they sat down and got comfortable, leaning against or sitting on the mechs themselves, killing time.

The storm lasted most of the day and into the night, clearing just before dawn.

They slept, but restlessly, the wind howling around them the whole night. No breakfast but the ration bars today, not without setting up camp. Not a practical option, it would seem. They were picking up the locator beacons from the vehicles that came through on the initial expedition.

Nearly three hundred miles to the south, on the other side of a distant mountain range. Inconvenient, but workable.

After spending an entire day lounging around, most of them were eager to get moving. Emil obliged. At full speed the mechs could top nearly 100kph but doing so would cause repair issues for them, forcing them to stop later and check over for wear and tear or subtle damage. Since the infantry could keep up easily with the skids in their boots, skating just above the sand, they leisurely took their time crossing the desert as the mountains ahead grew larger day by day.

That wasn't to say the desert itself didn't have its appeals. Sealed away from the heat, exposed only when eating - and only then when they wanted solid food, the suits nutrient mix would keep them ticking just fine in a pinch - they didn't suffer for the journey and had time to admire the various desert plants they found and catalogued, the small life forms they ran into. On the second day they crossed an oasis where many different inhabitants of the desert were gathered or drifting through, taking the time to test and purify the water, refill their stores and take notes of the species they found there before moving on.

As they got closer to the mountains the desert began to give way to a dry, overly determined shrub land that seemed to exist purely to spite the desert. None of the plants looked green, all of them desiccated and with the consistency of wax paper. They didn't pay much attention to it as they passed through.

As the land began to slope up and broken ridges became sheer rock faces, the mechs began using a mix of grappling lines and climbing ability to scale rock faces, occasionally hauled vertically by the ZMI and then anchored manually to ensure a good fixture. Getting up high would be a boon in the long run.

By the fifth day they were nearly 7000ft above sea level, the green countryside of the south laid out before them.

Here, the mechs earned their keep. The ZMI climbed aboard the mechs in lines, holding positions against their hull and adding to their overall weight but surrounding the mechs on all sides. The skids in their boots weren't antigravity, exactly. Producing a gravity plate in the bottom of ones shoe simply acted as a singular weak repulsor, allowing the soldier to carry both themselves and a couple hundred pounds of weight just above any surface so long as the suits had power. That wasn't a problem since they could charge off the mechs.

Once they were all in position, the mechs flung themselves forwards into the open air and all of the ZMI activated their boot skids at once, pointed down as they clung to the sides of the mechs. Collectively the repelling force allowed the mechs to glide, a controlled fall like sliding forward in the air. The six legs of the units were acting as stabilizers as they soared downward at a speed only an idiot could love.

As they did it, his people were laughing and whooping and Emil couldn't help but smile.

The landing wasn't soft. Above the treeline they let go, allowing the mechs to fall and kicking off them, separating themselves. The ZMI circled the area, gliding down to join the mechs on the ground. Still seventy-six miles away - they were too far to the west - but now they were on the right side of the mountains and he still had everybody. Plus, that was a pretty fun maneuver that none of them had over gotten to try before.

As they began to make their way east, Emil began to get impatient.

Soon.

 

[AverusBlack]

Flying with Mina is really distracting. I'm trying to keep my head in the game here but she keeps flying ahead of me and with that outfit I can see everything. I'm trying not to look at her because getting involved with her would cause more problems than it would solve but I can't help but find her attractive and it's not like I'm drowning in women, really. I really like Elise but she's not flipping the same kind of switches in my hindbrain. Mina looks very human.

Instead I'm trying to focus on the scans I'm taking of the area we're passing over. She's led me north, far into the desert. It's pretty quiet out here but there's signs of life all around and a network of organically shaped tunnels crisscross the bedrock underneath the sand. Something relatively big and diggy lives out here, hiding from the fierce sun. I wondered why this area was a desert at first but then I realized the mountain ranges to the south must be creating a rain barrier and this desert spans the equator across this part of the continent.

It's not all barren, though. The sand is a very fine white, broken by red-brown rocks and occasionally some ruins. Nothing like a town, just broken slabs of stone in vaguely square or rectangular structures, hinting at buildings that once were. No way to tell who lived there, when or why, not just passing over anyways. It does leave me wondering if the subsurface dwellers are dangerous though. A pattern of new arrivals appearing and then being attacked by the locals is beginning to form and I want to put a stop to that but it'll be some time before my political and reputation influences allow for that.

"We're not too far now. Hey, you look distracted." I look over to Mina as she calls back to me, using the ring to keep my eyes locked on her face.

"I'm alright, don't worry. I was just thinking."

"Ooooh, throw me a feather?"

"What?"

"Oh. Sorry." She titters, giggling. "It's a Tovari thing. Pan birds would shake their wings and vocalize at you when they were upset, so 'throw me a feather' is an idiom meaning 'tell me what you're thinking'."

I nod at her. "So you are Tovari."

"Yep! I'm from the east. Ooh, you look surprised."

"I've heard the east was dangerous, violent."

"It can be. In some ways. I'm far more animated than most of us, the ring forces me to revel in the emotions so I'm not surprised you mistook me for one of our hillbilly cousins to the west."

"No? So this city of yours, it's in Eastern Tovalon."

"Oh, yes." She says it absentmindedly, slowing down as I come to a stop next to her. She's pointing down at the surface. "There it is."

It would be easy to overlook it. The cut surface of the temple into the cliff face is in an oddly shaped fold in the rock, almost like a dimple. Unless you saw it head-on from ground level it would be easy to miss with the overhang hiding it from the air.

"Did you reshape the rock?"

"No. Guarding the temple isn't a problem." I give her a curious look but she just smiles saucily at me and then zooms down towards the entrance.

Well. Okay.

Following her in I come to land beside her where she's hovering just above the sand. As soon as my feet touch the surface, two guards burst out of the sand in front of us, blocking the temple door. They're both insectoid, resembling huge pillbugs, shaking the sand off. A short shriek and they shuffle a little, watching us before diving back down under the sand.

"Fuck was that?"

"The guards. We don't know much about them, they span the whole desert. When we talk to them, they don't answer, despite the translations but it's clear they're intelligent and consider anybody with a ring authorized to be here. If you scan around you'll find there's bone fragments all over this area from people who they decided didn't belong here."

I nod slowly, then follow her as she slips inside, swaying her hips and making her tail curl in an S shape behind her. When I look up her ears are pinned backwards to hear me better.

"Are you doing that on purpose?"

"Doing what on purpose?" She managed to make it sound sultry.

"I think you know what."

"You mean how I look?" She turns her head to look over her shoulder at me. "You're cute, single and kind. I wear an orange ring. Why are you surprised I think you might make a good potential mate?"

"Other than how I feel about it?"

"Oh, that rarely matters with boys. Almost none object to a random fling now and then." She turns to look at me, smirking. "It's just us here, you know. No one around to report on anything we might do." She's meandering closer to me, stepping into my personal space. "So what do you want to do?"

I lean in close, my nose almost touching hers, lowering my voice. "I want to see this temple and go home." When I step around her, walking past.

She gives me an incredulous look as I do it. "Really? You know I can feel how much you desire me, right?"

"What I want and what I can get aren't the same thing. I don't know you well enough to calculate the implications of doing you. For all I know you think it's marriage and I'll never be rid of you. I like you okay Mina, you've been honest with us. But I don't love you and I barely know you. I'd be an idiot to just go for the first pair of boobs I see, no matter how nice they look or how much you like showing them off."

She's giving me a look which is almost... approving? "Mmm. Cute and you have a brain. Okay." She nods. "I'm not even offended, that's pretty sound reasoning. So, you're saying there's a chance?"

I exhale sharply through my nose, bowing my head and smiling a little. "Are you always like this?"

"I'm a girl who knows what she wants." She slips past me and - cheeky little shit, she just smacked my ass - heads into the doorway we're approaching into the temple. Then I follow her in.

The main chamber is round and domed. The red, orange and yellow batteries are in placements around what is... calling it an arch is a simplification. I'm not sure what the shape is-

It is an icosahedron.

Oh. Okay, thank you ring. An icosahedron formed with metal bars set into a base of black stone. The inside of the 'gate' is filled with a strangely chromatic white light which seems to shift and change color without changing color at the same time, like some kind of optical illusion. It's like when you stare at a single spot too long and your brain tries to fill in the blanks around your vision, only I'm looking right at it and the shifts seem to change the hue of white somehow. It's bizarre.

"This is it? No other guards besides the bugs?"

"And the desert. There's nothing out here, after all. Just getting here without flying would be incredibly hazardous."

"I suppose so."

"Is this proof enough for you? Enough to convince you to move the blue core here?"

I nod slowly. "Yes. Though I think I'll do something about added guards if I can."

"Good! Can we transition back now? This dry air sucks."

I nod, turning to head back outside with her, then rising into the air. She slips close to me and wraps herself around my arm, pressing her chest against me before I transition us back to the mountains just outside Durjak and politely untangle myself from her, leaving her smirking as I head down to the castle proper and land on the balcony outside the residence.

Elise looks relieved to see me. "So?"

I nod at her. "It's like they said, the red, yellow and orange batteries were there. So was this 'seal'."

"Well, that's something. A new problem has popped up while you were gone, though."

I glance at Nemesis and Vara, but Elise shakes her head. "Well, don't keep me in suspense. What is it?"

She takes a deep breath, collecting herself. "A large group of genkits has followed us here from Zero -"

"That's great news!"

"-and reported that they've spotted a large army to the west of us, headed our way."

"How large?"

"They couldn't say. It was too large."

Well.

Shit.

 

[AverusBlack]

I'm at the gates of Durjak with Elise. Ren, Mason and (somewhat unexpectedly) Zack are hanging out just outside the gates to deal with the majority of the new arrivals while Elise and I talk with her father. Seems he's done well for himself, mostly due to Bradley hinting around that he was the one who convinced me to help out Durjak in the first place. None of them really thought I'd go quite this far but seeing how it worked out he's gotten a lot of rep points out of it and folk take him far more seriously for it. He's risen to be Mason and Ren's right-hand man in dealing with the townspeople and the role is fitting him like a measured suit.

When Elise's father marches up to the gates I can see her environmental shield intensify as she forces herself to suppress the urge to rush over to him. When he approaches us the genkit force outside the city lines up neatly though informally, keeping formation but being relaxed enough to joke around and loosen up a bit while the adults are talking.

"General Luther."

"Lieutenant Luther." He pulls his helmet off, ruffling the fur around his head a little and then one ear as he talks. "Why are you out of uniform? And glowing green?"

Elise remains stoic for all of about five seconds before she makes a trilling aaaaa noise and bounces over to hug him, almost knocking him over on the spot. I can't help but smile, no matter how serious the situation is. "I'M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU DAD!"

"Shh, shh." He's laughing too, hugging Elise. "Inside voice, Elise. This is supposed to be serious."

"I know, I'm just... really glad to see you." She takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly. "A lot has happened. This ring is why I'm glowing." She turns to gesture to me. "I want to introduce to you to Lord Ainsley, the blue ring bearer. He'll tell you he's not a lord, but then you'll actually meet the other humans in town and they'll all tell you he's full of shit."

General Luther steps up to me, offering the hand that isn't carrying his weapon. "My pleasure to meet you, Ainsley."

I shake his hand firmly and grin. "Likewise, General. If your folks are anything like the genkits I've met so far, they'll be a welcome addition to this city."

"You have the housing to billet us?"

"No, dad." Elise shakes her head. "But the rings can... they can do a lot of things. That'll take a full debriefing, preferably with some cannabis involved so you don't fall out of your chair."

He makes a casual phew noise. "That bad, huh? Worse than Somalia?"

"Way worse than Somalia. With a bit of that bullshit in Japan mixed in."

That makes him look concerned. "You're right, that sounds like it'll take some doing to listen to. You both know about the message we sent ahead?"

I nod. "This army, what can you tell us?"

Elise grabs both our arms, walking between us as he turns and sticks two fingers into his mouth, making a sharp whistle at his troops. They begin breaking up their formations, the mechs lumbering to face outwards from the walls as genkits begin filtering into the town. Then he turns to walk with us, answering the question as he hugs Elise to his side. "They're a mix of all kinds of species we've never seen before, but I'd say about two thirds of them were humans. Didn't see any high technology but there was a lot of pikes, spears, shields, that sort of thing. Probably close-range weapons as well, but.. no guns, not even muskets. They flew banners with a red sword, its blade held by a white fist on a black standard."

Elise nods. "Medieval armies mostly had short, violent battles in close quarters combat and they weren't always armored the way you'd see in movies and stories. Different combat roles had different levels of protection and archers played a big role in how effective infantry could operate. Magic adds a new dimension to that problem too. Wards will mean that their military formations will be different than what we might predict based on medieval human wars."

Luther nods. "Magic? Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"Okay, look, I know pranking the old man can be funny but -"

Elise is hovering in front of him and suddenly the ferret has his tongue. She makes a construct hammer, then a rifle, then a suit of armor, then a rocket construct six times our size hovering in the air above the roofs. Luther is giving her the most intense look of concern I've ever seen on a ferrets face, though in fairness, Elise is the only one I know.

"That's... what else can you do?"

"Full debriefing, dad. C'mon." She lands and dismisses the construct as she goes ahead of us towards the inn.

Luther turns his head to look at me. "You can do this too?"

I nod to him. "Yes. Everything she can do. Perhaps more. The different colors seem to have various unique properties and refer to the emotion the ring itself runs on."

"Empathic weapons?"

"No, tools. A utility survival knife is still a potential weapon, isn't it?"

"I suppose you have a point. Where did you find them?"

"I'll let Elise tell the story of hers but mine? I have only guesses. We were entertaining three guests of other colors working out an agreement when your people arrived."

"So... what emotions then?"

"Me? I'm hope. Elise is strength of will. Fear, Rage and Avarice were who we were negotiating with."

"Are there others?"

"Yes and no. Other colors, but not other users, yet. Another story to be explained."

He nods. "Elise likes you. She treats you like one of us. How'd that come to be, I wonder? Hm?" He's giving me a curious look as we approach the inn and I shrug, holding the door open for him. "Hope.. spreads, General. Durjak was a pretty sleepy town when I first arrived."

Elise is already sitting in one of the booths and chatting with Bradley, grinning like a loon. Looks like she's already ahead of us in placing orders, good show. Luther heads over to join her in the booth, nodding politely to Bradley, who nods back and heads off to get the drinks.

"Why didn't you build a second gate on this side, Elise? What happened?"

"An attack. Happens a lot with new arrivals here. We drove them off with minimal losses but the opening spread hit us with their version of artillery. It wrecked one of the thunkers completely and partially ruined another. We fixed a third and forth up from the wrecks."

Bradley heads over to us with a pitcher of beer and a smoking tray. "I'll be back in about twenty minutes with some food." He points at Luther. "We don't have steaks, you okay with bird meat?"

"What kind of bird?"

"I have a hard time saying its name, we just call them flockas. Kind of like a chicken but with twice the attitude and three times the size."

"Sounds good, thank you." Bradley nods to him and heads off to the back, leaving Luther looking thoughtful.

"What's on your mind, General?"

"This is the first time I've come to a human-run establishment and nobody reacted strangely. It's different, in a good way." He looks at Elise. "I can see why your group chose to stay here. None of them are Purists at all?"

"Not a one in the city." Elise reaches over to pour her and Luther some beer while I begin rolling smokes for us as she talks. "Let's start with our first time meeting Ainsley, since that's where it all really began..."

Huge army bearing down on the city. I'd guess we have maybe four hundred genkits in total to fight, if they all want to fight. From what I've seen so far, I'm pretty sure it'll be harder to get them not to, now that they're self-identifying with the town. This place has become their place and they won't give it up without giving somebody a bloody nose.

Still, four hundred soldiers isn't enough. Maybe if I can convince Mina... maybe. I'm not sure if Elise and I can do it by ourselves.

But I'm sure we'll be okay in the end.

Right?

 

[AverusBlack]

Hovering with Elise, we're carrying Mason, Ren, Zack, Kuri and Emil with our rings. We're about thirty miles west of Durjak in the sky above the approaching army, which has staked camp in the open plains where the treeline breaks. Campfires, tents and makeshift workspaces dot the plains as far as we can see, which is considerable since we're about a hundred meters up in the air. Elise was right, this is too much.

Ring, can you get an estimated head count?

Scans are inconclusive due to an unknown form of interference. Most likely possibilities are arcane warding or metametals. Estimation based on optical scans puts the count at roughly 1.2 million individuals.

And the only way to find out how far back this stretches is to fly around their whole army and parade ourselves. Fuck.

"How did we miss this?" It's Zack asking the question, staring down in the same direction the rest of us are. "I thought you guys flew around the whole continent?"

"No, it was mostly just me and I wasn't touring so much as flitting from one problem into another for a little bit. They've got something to muddle with my ring scans and it's pretty widespread, so probably magic of some kind. You're right though." I shake my head, disappointed in myself. "I should have made more of an effort."

"They don't have cavalry." Ren is pointing. "Look. They have stables for mounts, but look at their mounts. Legs out to the side like that suggest they're cold-blooded. That means they can be fast but only in short bursts, not like mammals who always have the engine running. They won't be the cavalry mounts, those need stamina. They have something else."

Mason nods. "I agree. They have archers everywhere too, you can see the fletching tents, look at the racks of quivers. They rely on archery, maybe enhanced into artillary somehow?"

"Magically enhanced arrows?" Zack frowns. "Seriously?"

"If casting magic tires you out it would sidestep that, maybe. We don't know enough to guess properly."

"If they don't have artillery they would want to have something like it and we know magic can serve that role. It's how we got hit so hard in the first place." Ren folds her arms. "What do you think their intentions are?"

My eyes glow as I look down, look into them. I don't need to, but I raise my hand to show the others I'm doing something. Ring, show me their hope.

The blue glow my visual cortex is interpreting as an image isn't literally there, I don't think. At least, the others aren't reacting to it and neither is anyone below. But the glow has a depth to it I can't describe properly either, like noise but... not. Conflicting hopes, individual hopes, things changing as they interact with each other or learn new things or time passes, all of it a mosaic that's always shifting, like a face that's always turning into another face without ever being a single solid image.

This isn't what I'd hoped to see, though. I take a deep breath, stilling my mind and focusing on my breathing for a moment, closing my eyes. The blue glow is more muted now but still there in my minds eye. This was far easier with small groups.

When I open my eyes again my focus isn't in any one spot, my eyes relaxed, my mind the same. Easier to get a more general sense of things this way. Not encouraging, though.

"They're conquerors who see themselves as liberators, trying to do what I'm doing, but through force majeure. A general sense of hoping their campaign can end, going home, that sort of thing. Hoping the next battle won't be too difficult because they know there's one coming up." I can't help but sigh. "Meaning us."

"Well that's pretty fucking unfortunate for them." Elise said it but Ren is laughing, cackling. Mason, Zack and I all turn to look at her but Elise and Emil seem to be taking it in stride.

"This is great! I haven't had a proper battle in decades, at least. Endless fucking soldiers as far as the eye can see, maybe some bastard down there can survive more than fifteen seconds of me beating on their ass." She actually cracks her knuckles, grinning. I think that's a grin, anyways. It seems to involve a lot of teeth.

"We should try to talk to them at least once, Ren." Emil shakes his head.

"But Emil -"

"I'm still the ranking officer, colonel. Don't abuse my informal nature and start thinking it means you get to argue with me or I will put you on your ass."

He says it casually, offhandedly but I can see Ren straighten up like she actually thinks he can do it. Shit, maybe he can, what do I know about these people. "Gotcha, sir. Just an excessive enthusiasm for putting shitheads in their place. Sir."

"Time and place, Ren. You'll get your chance, I'm thinking." Emil sighs. "Still, it's policy to at least try first. With Elise and Ainsley we don't even have to risk anybody. You two think you can pull us out if we go down there and they're not keen on chatting?"

Elise snorts. "Oh, yeah. We're powerful in our own right but when we synchronize, we get even stronger. Maybe we won't win a standing battle but we don't have to, a retreat action will do just fine."

"I'd also prefer to talk to them first, I think. The Ren Strategy can be our backup plan. We also need to find out what these people are like, I don't agree with what method they're using but if their overall plan is to form an established government, I need to find out what kind of government they're trying to establish. If they're genuinely improving the living conditions of the places they annex, do we want to stop them?"

"Uh, yes?" Zack is giving me an incredulous look. "Obviously? Ainsley, we like being self-determined. Not having to pay taxes? It's great. We get to keep the fruits of our labor, sometimes literally when the harvest comes in. We don't need some fucking lord telling us what to do - we have you."

"I have a suggestion." Kuri raises a hand and we all turn to look at her. "Let's work with that idea. Ainsley and Elise claim lordship over this area with Mason, Ren and Luther as the military council. We already have an established reputation east of here. Thanks to me all of Skal knows about us now and thanks to Ainsley, Tovalon does too. Let's use that. We're not going to talk to them as representatives of a town, we're going to talk to them representing an independent duchy. No ones given Ainsley any kind of rank so we'll name him a Duke. It's one step down from royalty, isn't it?"

I chuckle. "Where'd you learn that?"

"Durjak may not have a library, but it does have books."

"Kuri, you can't read."

"I can now. Durjak has readers who dream, too."

"We'll... talk about the implications of that later, I think. For now, let's go find out what these people want."

 

[AverusBlack]

After a quick lecture by Ren on why giving your enemy intelligence is a stupid thing to do we collectively decided to hold off on flashing the rings too much when approaching these guys, which is why Elise, Kuri, Zack and I are crammed into the back of one of the souped up rovers the genkits call 'thunkers'. I can tell why, now. Spartan and simple but reinforced in every way possible, it's like riding on air when I thought it would be something like riding in a tin can. The 'roads' are usually crap, unpaved and muddy on wet days, full of potholes and ruts on dry ones. This car ride is making it difficult to feel any of them very hard and it's giving me time to run scans and think as we approach their lines.

As we approach their lines I spot scouts sitting in out of the way spots. They don't appear to be moving to try and get back to their forces to report on us so I can only guess they have some kind of communication method. Ring, are we picking up anything that looks like a comm device?

Not from any of the scouts. However, instances of isolated high technology exist on random persons within their forces, consistent with the level of technological spread seen in other examples of cultures encountered.

So some of them come from places with fancy things, but it's mostly just what people had on their person when they got stuck on Terra?

Affirmative.

Anything I should know about or be planning for?

Affirmative.

Ah, fuck. Somebody has what the ring thinks is a nanite infection. When I think of nanites all I can think of is Replicators and I'm suddenly very thankful I haven't actually run into a stargate so far because that's not a can of worms I want to fuck with at all. Nanites are dangerous though, in about a million different ways. I glance at the others and quietly scan them for a baseline comparison to use after the meeting to make sure nobody is carrying any unwanted new friends.

Their defensive lines are reinforced with ad-hoc ramparts made of rough cut stone smeared with dirt. It looks like they used magic or something to tear up parts of the bedrock and force it to the surface. Elise pulls the rover up and brings it to a stop, the suicide doors opening the back cabin. We step out together and their soldiers don't do much more than watch us.

Interesting, seeing their gear up close. It's not standardized but they're all wearing red. Not the whole outfit but each of them has something which is red. A shirt, a sash, a bandolier, part of their armor perhaps, but something. Each of their weapons has a red strip tied just under the sharp bits. They're just watching us with professional disinterest since it's clear we're not here to pick a fight with a force this small.

I look at the others only to find they're looking at me. Oh, right, I'm in charge, aren't I?

Affirmative.

Thanks, ring. Not sure what I'd do without you, really.

You would probably be dead by now.

I need to stop lending you to Kuri. You're getting sassy.

Walking towards their ramparts, I hold my arms wide. "I'd like to have a conversation with your leaders, if you could take me to them."

"Aye, we could. Why would we do that?"

"Because I asked nicely?"

The man I'm speaking to shrugs, fingers hooked in his belt. "Makes little difference, really. You'll be part of the empire soon enough either way. You're not the first to come trying to negotiate, it's always the same you know. They'll just tell you to surrender or fuck off and you'll either surrender or fuck off, then we'll beat you and you'll end up under our rule anyways. Only we'll be pissed at you now. Why don't you just save yourself the trouble, mate?"

I can hear Elise growl quietly next to me, so I put a hand on her shoulder. She looks at me and stops, forcing herself to relax. I look up at the man. "I won't insult your intelligence by asking the same thing again, because you got the message the first time. I have no intention of taking your advice and wish to carry on anyways. Now, why don't you be a good lad and go find some adults for me to talk to?"

The man stares at me for a moment before jumping down off the rampart and walking towards us aggressively, spinning his pike and pointing it at me as he approaches at a march. I sigh both outwardly and inwardly. Okay, I guess we're doing it like this, then.

He doesn't get the chance though, as Elise unholsters her weapon and shoots him in the chest, the man seizing up and dropping to the ground as I hear the clickclickclick of a taser. She retracts the lines and I can hear the weapon whirring as it prepares to deploy again, the fight gone out of the man. She walks over and casually kicks his pike away, then walks back to stand just behind my right shoulder.

None of his buddies have moved to help, continuing to just sort of watch. One of them nods and heads off while the others chuckle at their comrades fate. The guy on the ground is picking himself up again so I speak up enough for him to hear. "Elise, I didn't know you could taze somebody through leather armor."

"Usually. you don't. That wasn't a taser."

"What was it?"

"Weapon for frying automated weapon platforms. Hunter-killer androids. You shoot them until their armor is wrecked and then hit them with that to fry the computers. It only sort of works as a taser. If he wasn't wearing the armor, he'd probably need surgery to get the barbs out. Still might."

The man in question is trying to stagger to his feet, only to fall over backwards again, his buddies chuckling at him. What a lovely bunch.

"Were you trying to give him a heart attack?"

"No, pretty much got what I was going for, here."

"Good show. Hopefully we don't have to do that again."

The one who vanished behind the ramparts returned, gesturing at us. As we approach the gap in the wall we pass the guy who charged us, who's giving Elise a confused, angry look. She gives him the middle finger without actually looking at him before we vanish behind the wall.

The man who gestured at us is waiting. "One of the commanders is coming from the back of the line here to speak to you. You will wait here."

We're getting looks. No, Kuri and Elise are getting looks. I'm not sure how to parse it. Interest or controlled hostility?

I don't think I like this.

 

[AverusBlack]

When Aetius woke, the room was filled with light. Somebody had lit incense in the room to wake him, letting the scent pull him out of sleep rather than anything so barbaric as to shake him or yell at him. The smoke had filled the air, turning the sunlight into god rays splayed across his wardrobe and bookshelves, glimmering with every color as the glass in his window split the light up in funny ways.

Pulling himself out of the bed he wandered naked over to the washbin, recently filled with heated water by the same servant who'd lit the incense. The flowers in the water gave it a pleasant scent and he dunked his head into it, washing behind his ears and flicking them, then running his hands over his face in a way that had always felt natural to him. He did this every morning and had for as long as he could remember. When Father reminisced, he spoke of how he'd insisted on trying to heat the water himself if they argued and had done so since the day he arrived. By now they were used to the habit and he no longer had to ask, but it had been ten years so that wasn't very surprising.

Standing up he took a deep breath, then dropped to the floor, beginning his morning exercises. The movements and exertion were automatic, something he'd internalized through repetition, leaving him free to think. Today was the day.

Since he'd arrived he'd been training for this, working for this. It was considered a great honor to bond with the black armor but the trial was said to be dangerous, so dangerous that only one out of a thousand survived it. The uninitiated weren't told what it was, exactly. The whole thing took place up in the shrine where the armor was kept when it wasn't bonded to somebody.

But when it was...! He's heard the stories, seen the etchings in the temple of history. The bonding was rare, only happening every few centuries, the potential bearers training and striving to be worthy of bearing it and carrying the black flag of the red fist. Today would be his brothers chance and should Lucien fall, it would be down to him.

Their mother had tried to convince them otherwise. Begged them, really. But being so different from the others, he and Lucien had been forced their entire lives to prove themselves. To their peers, to their family and later, to the Elite. In a way they'd always be outsiders but if one of them actually managed it, they'd be beyond all question. But she felt they were throwing their lives away recklessly. It hardened his heart to think of the look on her face when he was resolved to try anyways.

He stopped and stood up, swaying on the spot for a moment as that memory held sway over him. Then he shook it off and went to prepare for the day. Half an hour later he was dressed, hating the feel of the cloth messing his fur up but by now he was resigned to it. Making his way through the castle he passed some of the servants, though he pretended not to notice them. It was easier for both parties.

When he arrived at the gates Lucien was already there, sitting atop a Pan with a second one nearby waiting for him. "Took you long enough, Aetius. Are you sufficiently convinced you're pretty enough to do this, now?"

He kicked off the ground, mounting the bird and making it squawk and turn its head to side-eye him indignantly. It shook itself out a little - to mess with him back, he suspected - and then turned to follow along with Lucien's mount as they began their trot towards the shrine. "I'm always pretty enough, Lucien. None of my morning ritual is about vanity, it's about the routine."

"Is that why you smell like a girl?"

"You're the only one who gets annoyed by it, Lucien. The others, they don't smell things like we do. To them it's just mildly pleasant."

"You smell like a girl who wallowed in girly smoke."

"You're just mad I have a sense of style and you're wearing leathers."

"Leathers made from things I've hunted, yes. Every single part of my armor was earned, brother. That's why I'm going to get the armor."

Aetius shook his head, chuckling.

When they arrived at the shrine they dismounted, walking up the steps together, finding the doors open already. They were expected. Two of the initiated were waiting for them, wearing bright centurion armor and bearing gleaming spears, carrying shields with the standard of the red fist. They were led deep into the shrine, passing closed doors with guards like the ones leading them who sort of loomed with the unspoken message that should they try to pass into any part of the shrine not open to them that they would dearly regret it.

In the back of his mind he wondered if they did that for the humans who tried this as well.

When they reached the chamber they didn't find the trial of strength or battle they were expecting. A dozen of the centurions were scattered around the room and in the middle of it hung the armor in midair, suspended by some force they weren't able to see directly. They weren't the only ones there to attempt it either, a human boy in a blank mask stood with them. No mask would hide him or Lucien, so they clearly had simply skipped that part of it.

The centurions took the human boy to try first. As he approached the armor the plates seem to melt and slide back, leaving it open. The boy looked around at the guards but nobody was giving an explanation so he turned around, stepping back into the armor and letting it flow around his chest. It extended halfway down his legs when it began to slow and then stop, leaving him looking uncertain before he made a wet gurgling noise and exploded.

The gore only extended out a few feet from the armor, leaving him shocked and surprised by unmolested by it. It burnt away a few seconds later, ashes flickering around the armor before those vanished slowly as well. For the first time, one of the monks spoke up.

"Ah, a shame. We had high hopes for that one."

They collectively turned to look at Lucien and suddenly Lucien didn't look so sure about this.

"It is time, young prince. You cannot turn back now."

The armor slid open again in front of them, tempting and promising but not promising anything particularly good. Lucien was making a clear effort to rally himself before stepping forward, looking uncertain as he stepped into the armor and let it enclose around him. It got halfway down his chest before it slid open again suddenly and Lucien was ejected forward violently, hitting the ground and sliding into a wall. Two of the centurions went to tend to him.

"Ah, that went better than the last one did, at least. They don't usually survive a rejection."

And then everyone was looking at him.

Years of paying strict attention to his body language so he couldn't get things wrong. Years of schooling his emotions so they couldn't be weaponized against him. Years of self-control and discipline are all that kept him from showing the terror he was feeling. He walked forward slowly, methodically, stepping into the armor and clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. He wouldn't show weakness here. He couldn't.

He could feel it flowing around his chest, down his wait. Down his legs. His heart was thumping in his chest as he expected the rejection, the moment when he knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. It never came. The feeling closed his feet and hands, then flowed up over his head and he took a deep breath instinctively, closing his eyes. There never came a feeling like he was underwater, though.

After a few seconds he opened his eyes again and found the room around him visible but slightly disfigured by the lines of the helmet, as though he were seeing through clear, shaped glass. He knew that wouldn't be the case. Looking down at his hands he could see the gauntlets.

I did it.

"Send a message to the king." The monk was pointing at one of the guards. "Go, at once."

"No." Aetius raised his head, looking at the monk. Then the smoke began to flow from the armor, forming green wings that expanded outward, forming a spear in the same way.

"I'll tell him myself."

 

[AverusBlack]

"You don't have to do this." Lucien said it quietly to him, now that they were out of the audience chamber and away from listening guards. "There's got to be another way."

"There isn't." Aetius sounded so, so tired. Heart weary. "So long as I'm in the armor, I have no choice. I'm compelled to obey."

"But this is insane, you can't just -"

"Do you think I want to be in this position? If I could take it off I would." He laughed wanly. "All that time we spent thinking it was the greatest honor in the world, wanting to be big heroes. What a joke."

"It's not very funny."

"No. No, it isn't." He bowed his head. "There's nothing I can do, here. I thought I was going to cover myself in glory. Instead I'm just an enforcer with delusions of grandeur." He sounded disgusted with himself.

"What are we going to do? This is insane, we can't do this. He's talking about a crusade."

"We don't do anything." He looked over at Lucien. "You need to escape. To get out, while there's still a chance. I'm trapped but you could still get away before this insanity burns all of us together. I don't have a choice, I have to lead this campaign. What I want doesn't factor into it." He shakes his head. "But I don't want to see the day he orders me to kill you and I'm forced to do it. It's horrible doing it to people I don't even know."

"How can you do it, Aetius? How? Can you not resist at all?"

"Resist?" Aetius looks at him sideways. "There's nothing to resist. My will isn't my own. It just overwrites parts of me until it's carried out. The idea of not doing it isn't something I can think about. I'm a windmill trapped in a gust, resistance has nothing to do with it."

"I can't just leave you here. I can't. Even after everything... We've only just started to rebuild things."

"I don't blame you for being upset about the armor, Lucien. You didn't know what it was like."

"I'm still a fucking ass for everything I did, though. I can't just walk away now."

"It could be your death warrant, Lucien."

"I know."

---

"Aetius. You disappoint me."

Kneeling, head bowed, he was barely keeping himself upright. His arms were shaking with the effort of holding his own body up. The fight had been long for melee combat, lengthened by the wards and the skills of the warriors he'd slain. The effort to fight his way through the guard to make it to this room had been titanic. Nearly an hour of nonstop fighting as he made his way through the palace guards to get here, it get Lucien back.

All to get here and be suborned by the fucking armor. He wasn't supposed to be here!

"Your brother is a traitor. Why do you try to save him?"

"He's... still... my brother."

"Hardly a compelling reason when it comes to treachery. It's interesting that it took this long to finally figure out what it would take to make you raise your hand against me. I should have threatened Lucien ages ago."

The Black King sounded thoughtful to Aetius. Planned, it had all been planned. All to corner him, take away room to maneuver. To take away Lucien, his most valuable support. To neuter him. Make him a tool. He wanted to get up and attack, screamed at his body to move, but it wouldn't.

He felt betrayed by himself.

"Well, I certainly can't just let you two get away with it. What kind of example would that set? No, no." He shakes his head, the leather creaking slightly. "Aetius, stand."

And then he was on his feet. Lucien was on the floor not thirty feet from him and he couldn't make himself move to help. The inability was driving him mad, making him shake as he warred with the compulsion to obey.

"You're still just a man." Lucien sounded like he was in pain and Aetius made a little sound as something inside him died. "All you had to do was not be evil and we'd have followed you forever. Why? Why do this?"

"Idiots. Children. You're not even two decades old and think you know everything. I am centuries old! You mewling, pathetic children would be nothing without me. You were nothing without me! Scattered villages and refugees. I made you strong, I made you stand together and this is how you repay me? With betrayel?"

"You're orchestrating a genocide!"

"I'm cleaning house. This world is going to be whatever we make it, Lucien. Do you want a world of chaos and confusion, or order and law? Building societies takes blood, time and effort, child. You'll never understand."

"You used us." Aetius growled the words out, forcing the issue. His 'father' turned in surprise at his ability to say anything at all. "Because we were different. Non-human."

"Yes. Yes, I did."

"You enslave non humans and expected us to follow you?"

"Mmmm, no. I expected you to rebel just like you're doing, so I set it up to crush your spirit when you finally broke and tried it."

"WHY?"

"Humans are inherently superior, obviously. Why else would we be dominant in so many different realities? I never expected either of you to don the armor but I was surprised and dismayed when one of you managed it. It was nice to have the Black Knight back, but at the same time, it was a demihuman. So I either had to break your will or change your beliefs and since I had no way to do the latter, I opted for the former."

"I'll never break. I'll find a way to get free of this, of you."

"No, you won't." He scoffed. "Better men than you have tried. Now, kill your brother. I have a lunch to attend and I intend to have you there at my side."

Aetius felt his body move, saw through his own eyes, felt his own hands as Lucien fought back against him. Not that it mattered.

But his mind went away, went inside, unable to deal with what he was being made to do.

He was never the same afterwards.

 

[AverusBlack]

I'm starting to get a sense of these people as we wait. They feel rough, the way prison inmates might feel rough. None of them will talk to us, which is making getting information difficult, but that isn't stopping us. I touch Elise's hand with two fingers under the guise of turning to look at her.

I don't think this is a volunteer army. Look at the way they go about their jobs, talk to each other.

Yes. No sense of cohesion. Not like us.

I nod slightly, turning as Elise points behind me. A figure flying overhead, I can see a wingspread above them which tucks as they dive towards the ground. The soldiers scatter as they bomb in, spreading the wings at the last second and creating a backdraft around us as they arrest themselves midair.

It's a person in black armor carrying another person, a human smaller than them. Can't make out much of the armored guy. The outfit is covering his entire body but he stands up straight and the wings - which were green - dissipate like smoke. I glance at Elise to find her looking at me and both of us are thinking the same thing.

Like her ring, almost.

The black knight doesn't say anything but the commander stands up and adjusts his uniform a little. An older man with a grizzled face, he has a couple days of stubble on his cheeks and a goatee. His uniform is black and red, almost science fiction like, not plate armor but molded armor sections around his body. He looks us over, dismisses Elise, Kuri and Ren and turns to face me and Zack.

"Well, what do you want?"

Yes, I can tell this is going to be a treat. "I want you to leave. Durjak isn't yours to take."

"I don't see how you're planning to stop us."

"No. You wouldn't, would you? That would make us stupid." Ren speaks up, enunciating slowly for the man as though he were an idiot.

His face twitches. "Not difficult when it comes to demihumans." I can feel the entire demeanor of Elise and Ren change instantly. Kuri looks a little offended but those two tighten fists, readjust their balance. I don't think they even know they're doing it.

I nod slowly. "Yes, I thought you might say that. And my friend is right, we're not going to tell you how. We are perfectly capable of making this far, far more painful than you ever anticipated. Why did you say that just now?"

"Say what?"

"Are you human supremacists?" Elise sounds controlled. Pushing her anger down.

The man sighs. "Look, if you can't shut your pets up-"

And then he's flying.

Oh shit. I think I've somewhat underestimated just how much these genkits hate 'purists'.

Chaos blooms around us like a wave. The black knight takes to the air going after his commander as the soldiers around us begins grabbing weapons and charging. Ren screams something incoherent and joyous as fighting breaks out, grabbing the nearest soldier by the face and using him like a living club as she swings him around violently and knocks over four others. So much for that guys neck, I guess. Zack and Kuri aren't armed but he quickly grabs a dropped pike and takes position next to her. For her part, Kuri doesn't look that concerned. Almost resigned to it, really.

So much for keeping the rings secret, I suppose. I create a circular barrier around us as Elise creates a construct gatling gun, unloading on the soldiers charging the barrier. They're getting mowed down but they're also swarming us, piling over their dead friends to hit the barrier with everything from arrows to pikes.

Arrows drop in around us and I close the barrier into a dome, dropping to one knee with a grunt as they impact and explode like artillery shells, cracks forming in the barrier. I focus on how much I hope we're getting out of this unscathed and reknit the barrier together, a wave of blue coursing up the cable of light I have maintaining it. Then more arrows start hitting.

"As much fun as this is, we can't stay here forever. Elise, we need to pull out now."

She opens her mouth to reply when my barrier is shattered, pain lancing up my arm. The arrows have stopped and so have the soldiers but it's because the black knight is back, smashing into the barrier from above and coming down next to me as the feedback hits me. It's Ren and Zack who react first, the latter doing a legsweep as Ren turns to smash the black knights face with her fist, sending him flying sideways in a ragdoll which he swiftly recovers from with a handstand and a flip to his feet.

The black knight holds his hand out and green smoke forms a pike, only for Elise to shoot him in the chest, forcing him to make the pike into a tower shield. Yes, very much like constructs. He charges us with the shield as Elise fires at him and we split at the last second, letting him fly past us, only for one of my filaments to reach out and form a construct spring underneath him.

When he's sent barreling upwards instead of just forwards Elise takes the opportunity to form a proper railgun, orienting it on him and firing. The round hits him in the head, ragdolling him again and sending him flying into a stables, the animals panicking as he tears through the feeble wooden structure. A second later he flies up out of the building, landing hard in a three-point superhero stance about twenty feet in front of us. There's a piece of his helmet missing where the round hit him but somehow the guy is intact underneath.

"Oh, shit." Elise says it softly next to me and when I look at her, she looks shocked. "What the fuck?" / "What the fuck?"

She and Ren say it at the same time in almost the same tone and I take a harder look at the black knight, who appears to be panting and taking our hesitation as a sign to rest a moment. The hole in his helmet -

"I don't understand."

"Ainsley, he's a genkit."

 

[AverusBlack]

"Time to go, I think." Creating an ablative shield wall in front of us, Elise opens fire to stop their forces from zerg rushing us as Zack, Ren and Kuri make for the rover. Kuri doesn't even try to keep up, she just jumps on Ren and climbs her to ride her like a backpack as Ren books it. Both Ren and Zack are firing back, at some point Ren seems to have given him her backup handgun and the totally-not-a-taser.

When the black knight charges us again Elise focus fires on him while I begin firing the damaged 'plates' of the shield forward, creating new ones behind to replace them as I use them like mobile battering rams to knock their forces back and create obstructions while we make for the rover. When he charges us again Elise meets him head-on in full construct armor, the impact sending everyone but our group flying as the shield I'm making takes the brunt of the pressure wave. While they're scrambling to their feet the others are getting into the rover and Ren is getting ready to tear ass out of here so I focus on defense and synchronize.

"Synchronization complete." / "Synchronization complete."

Elise slams the black knight with a rover construct used as a fist, sending him flying backwards and forcing the black knight to drive his weapon into the ground to stop his backward momentum. He just keeps coming though, bracing against Elise's offense and slowly making headway, but we're not interested in holding a standing position. With the rover on the move, both of us pull back and he moves to give chase.

We've kicked over a hornets nest. Getting a little height I can see their forces spread out in front of us and they're moving like a wave of pissed off infantry. Elise forms a plasma cannon construct next to me while I start sniping their artillery arrows out of the air and opens fire.

"Alert! High energy drain. Charge is falling rapidly."

The ring dims my vision from the blinding arc of light that the cannon creates and whole sections of their army vanish in suns fire as she makes a sweeping wave across the front of their forces chasing us, literally setting them on fire and igniting the grass, clothes and just about anything else it can. It's a nasty thing, turning an anti-vehicle weapon on a crowd but I can question their combat experience after we're not being chased by a murderous army wailing for our blood.

It has the effect she seemed to want though, the wave behind the now-immolated infantry most definitely hesitates to charge into and through the barbecue their 'friends' are having. That leaves us free to deal with the black knight, whose got his wings back and simply flies above it, firing a bow and arrows he's picked up someplace. My suspicions are confirmed a moment later when we let one sail past us and it explodes violently at hitting the ground.

Fuck.

"Elise, what the fuck is this guys deal?!"

"I don't know! Ring says he carries genkit genetic markers but it's not like he's stopping to have a chat!"

"Do we want to change that?"

"Yes! They'll think twice about charging the town immediately after that plasma blast and I want to know how the fuck a genkit ends up fighting for purists, goddammit!"

Doable. The black knight is swinging sideways in a wide arc around us, firing those stupid damned arrows and I've had just about enough of that. Elise and I take off from near the rover together, charging him and forcing him to abandon the bow in favor of recreating his melee weapons as we rapidly close range.

Ring, I want to know everything about that suit you can tell me.

This fighter appears to be the source of the detected nanotech infection, however the nanites seem to be limited to the armor and his body. Physiological scans run through the hole in his armor suggest a high probability match for being a genkit with a 0.002% genetic divergence from the group currently staying in Durjak.

How the hell do we even fight this guy?

An electromagnetic pulse will interfere with the nanites ability to network commands long enough for this ring to take control.

A wh-? "Elise, do you know how to make an electromagnetic pulse? I don't!"

"Yeah, keep him busy!"

Easier said than done. Ring, take control of my reflexes. I'm a support who's being forced to tank a DPS, help me out here.

You may yet wish to reconsider Mason's offer to teach you, then.

It does as I ask though, a shield and spear construct forming as the black knight charges me. It's a feint though. As he bears the distance down he throws his weapon at me and I transition, the ring forming a railgun and firing at him from above, sending him flying into the ground. I slam down on top of him a second later to pin him in place as Elise fires.

The effect it has on him is immediate. The armor screams, making a noise like metal sheets smashing and rubbing against each other as it comes apart in tendrils and waves, undulating around him as he screams right along with it. The man underneath it is a feline - a tiger, I think - and the armor shifting apart reveals what looks like an artificial ribcage surrounding his lower abdomen and chest.

Ring, get it.

Cables of blue light hit the cage underneath and the ring gets to work corrupting the nanites control protocols. Fascinatingly complicated, I can't even begin to try to understand. I get a full scan though and after a few seconds of screaming insanity Elise turns it off, the armor reforming around him as the ring pulls back.

The man isn't moving but that's hardly surprising. It looked like it was agonizing and that probably took any fight left in him right out. With the rover making distance behind us and their army a mess in front of us, Elise picks up the mysterious man and turns back towards Durjak.

I follow a moment later, wondering what the hell we're going to do about the rest of the malevolent human ocean on the horizon.

 

[AverusBlack]

Elise was right about them hesitating to swarm us after her stunt with the plasma beam. I half expected them to roll the city immediately but they didn't. Instead, they seem to be changing formations, moving people around, repositioning.

Doing that takes time though, so I'm with Elise in the makeshift medical clinic the genkits have set up. With so few of them medically trained compared to the size of the group they've got humans and one notably (confusingly) handsome elf boy helping out as nurses while the genkits train them in on-the-job experience. They don't know enough to really deal with this tiger in the black armor so they're hanging well back trying to look like they're not staring as they pretend to be keeping busy.

The two genkit doctors are standing around the prisoner, one of them wearing Elise's ring to make medical equipment constructs that they simply lack here. I'm keeping off to the side as they examine him.

"Where do you think he came from?"

"I really have no idea. Our government back home keeps very good records of genkits around the world, even the ones who don't have citizenship. We're the foremost experts on our own physiology and gene structures so all the doctors for genkits are genkits, and more than a few humans come to us, too. He could be an undeclared birth or something but... I just can't explain it."

"He's not quite the same as your group, is he? The ring said he has a mild variance. Not exact."

"You think he's from some other parallel that has genkits?"

"Why not? We've seen examples of that. How many different kinds of elves have we seen now? Or humans? Skal versus genkit."

"Skal are much shorter than us and still have digitigrade legs. The only reason they can walk upright is their tails."

"Sure but how much difference is that going to make to a human who doesn't know you? Or the elves or dwarves or whatever? Furry people are furry people. So we've seen a bunch of different species and different examples of those species, stuff we've never seen before at all. When this is over it might be a good idea to take a short vacation on one of the other worlds to see what fun surprises await us out there, just in case."

"What about him? In the short term?"

"Well, I couldn't get that thing out of him. Not safely, anyways. It felt almost like a computer but not quite? The ring started corrupting things in the nanites collective memory and it started some kind of cascading process, that's why he isn't responding. They're resetting or something."

The medics nod to her and the one wearing the green ring takes it off, Elise calling it over to herself and slipping it back on. "I want to talk to him."

"I figured you would." I head over towards the black knight, circling him a little and looking him over. "Ring, wake this guy up but keep him immobile."

"Understood."

A blue filament finds its way into his armor, touching his neck and stimulating his brain directly. Then it blocks the signal down his spine as he snaps awake, taking a deep breath and looking around wildly.

"Where am I?"

I step into his field of view. "Hello again. You're in Durjak."

He blinks, then squints at me. "I... remember you. There was another, a green girl, wasn't there?"

"Behind you, yes."

"Why aren't I dead?"

"Not really in the business of arbitrary killing."

"No offense, but I'm pretty sure you vaporized several thousand people at least with that wide beam of yours. While impressive, you're not really convincing me that you're just that good, so why not try again?"

"We want information from you and answers to why you're like me despite the fact you're working for purist scum. We also want to know how to stop that army from rolling over us and fully expect you to co-operate."

He nods. "Yeah, that sounds a little more like it. Okay, so why am I not trying to kill you right now?"

I shake my head. "What are you talking about?"

"I can't move and frankly, fighting you isn't something I really care about. If you can capture me - thank you for that, by the way - and not kill me, then immobilize me enough for us to have a nice little conversation with everything but a cup of tea, then you probably know more than you're letting on about this fucking armor I'm wearing. It compelled me to attack you back there and I don't feel a burning need to do that now, so why."

Elise is looking thoughtful, out of his line of sight. I hmm quietly at him, then nod. "I destroyed the software controlling your nanites."

"You what the what my what?"

"Your armor isn't a solid object. That's why it heals, reshapes itself. It's made up of billions of little machines we call nanites. Nanites can be programmed, given instructions, made intelligent enough to think, even. If there's enough of them. These ones are all throughout your body and in your brain, messing with you in ways we don't fully understand. I couldn't remove them so I destroyed their ability to propogate commands. The ring couldn't just completely own the system so it settled for blocking any commands that get sent. The controlling software - the programming - can't do anything, it's just stuck in a permanent loop of eating its own tail forever."

"I'm... free?"

"You weren't before?"

"No! This armor has been a prison since I put it on! The black king -"

"Who?"

"My adopted father. He leads the human army from the home city using magic like the kind that makes my armor."

"Did he make your armor? It uses techniques vaguely like what our rings can do."

"I've seen other artifacts do things like what you can do, but nothing like what you can do. They're all... lesser. A staff that heals, this armor, a sword made of blood that strengthens you... I know of a few like this. But we've never encountered fighters like you. I think you took us by surprise but it's... fuzzy. I wasn't entirely in control."

"If we let you move, will you work with us?"

"For getting my own free will back? Yes. You're the first example of people I've seen who have anything like a chance at stopping them." He gets a serious look on his face, then takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. "My name is Aetius."

"That isn't a genkit name."

"No. It was given to me by my father. He calls himself Caeser."

 

[AverusBlack]

"-Here, and here. They're amassing that way to bring the archers just behind their infantry." I'm standing just in the gates if town at the guard tower that gives access to the upper walls with Mason, Aetius and Zack. With Elise patrolling around to gather intel, it's on us to formulate a strategy. "See these guys? They're magic users, conscripts from places they've rolled over. They'll have all kinds of tricks I won't know about, I think they're trying to use the archers to keep them protected while they do things long-range."

Mason grumbles. "So what's keeping them from doing that now?"

"Logistics. How much do you know about magic?"

"Enough to know it's dangerous."

"If you got the spells, you need the power. Most mages use their own spirit well or whatever you wanna call it. But if you need something big and don't have a hundred mages to power it and lack a certain level of principles, you can kill something and use its death to fuel the spell. Something big? Kill lots of things." Aetius looks grim. "They'll get ready, set things up, drag prisoners from around the army there and then ritually murder them to attack you."

"Why the fuck were you ever involved in people like this?" Zack sounds incredulous. "Why would you help us now?"

Aetius hangs his head and sighs. "I'm different. I was an oddity at first, one of the first non-humans they ever met. They found me when I was very young and Caeser's eldest daughter took a liking to me, calling me and..." He trails off. "She called me little brother. Growing up, it was just how things were, but looking back I can see they just kept me around to indulge her."

"Why did you trail off?" Mason's giving him an odd look.

"I used to have a brother." He says it quietly. "Please don't ask any more for now."

Mason nods at him slowly and I tap the table. "I hope you'll understand if we don't brief you on everything we can do."

Aetius shakes his head slowly. "No, I get it. Look, I know you don't know me. It's fine. I was put in this position because people I trusted manipulated me, thinking to use me once I put this on." He taps his chest with a clinking noise. "They thought I'd be rejected, see? Then I wasn't, so Caeser decided he wanted to make sure of me. You got me out of that. I was going to spend the rest of my life being used like a tool. Short of a suicide mission, I'm all in. You do what you need to to decide I mean it." He folds his arms across his chest.

I look at him. "Aetius?" Show me his depth.

"Yeah? Whoa, your eyes are glowing symbols."

I blink. That's new to me. "I think you do mean it. So for now, I'd like you to stay. You'll be with Elise and I when we stand on the walls and have your chance then to prove just how willing to fight you are."

He nods. "That's fair. Thank you."

I turn to look at Mason. "With the genkits mechs we can form an artillery line. Once we're done here I'll start fabricating kinetic ammunition for them but apparently their energy weapons are good for most of a day on their own before they need to spend some time in the sun to rebuild battery power. We want to avoid that so they'll be using a mix and shifting fire any time something starts resisting one type over another. Aetius, do you know how they're doing that thing with the arrows?"

"Sygaldry. They have fletchers and mages who bind magic directly to ribbons wound around the arrows. Bound spells."

"You know any of that?"

"No, my education was... different." He shakes his head.

I give him a look but I can tell from his body language he's uncomfortable. "Okay. If it was up to you, how would you stop this?"

"Entirely up to me? Kill the entire command structure, kill the overseers, destroy every control crystal you can find. The problem is that they're spread out across all of that, not in a single place. There's no way to just get them together and wipe them all out at once."

"Control crystals?" Zack tilts his head at that.

"Yeah. The slaves collars are bound the same way as the arrows and they inscribe the spells into crystals that can be worn as jewelry. Your personal slave gets bound by their collar and has to do what you say, can't run off, that kind of thing. I was told it was a 'mark of service' as a child." He looks like he just ate something repugnant. "I was in my mid-teens when I figured it out because one of the servant girls wanted to 'break me in' before someone unwilling was told to do it."

I take a deep breath and exhale slowly. "So what's the best way to make them stop in the short term?"

"You already know. The same thing you did to make them hesitate to attack you right away. Kill them." He emphasizes it, lashing his tail side to side. "You don't want to kill the slaves and conscripts, I can tell. That's fine. I actually admire your restraint, but I want you to really listen to me when I tell you that they'll murder every man, woman and child in this town if you let them whether they want to or not. The unwilling ones don't get to say no."

"Why force it so hard, though?" I shake my head. "I don't get it. Why try to conquer the continent at all?"

"Caeser named himself for some great human hero who conquered lands and founded a great empire. He sees himself as the reincarnation of the original, that its his destiny to rule the world. Anyone who disagrees gets forced so hard because he figures in a few generations, no one will be left who really remembers anything but his rule. He's lived a long time and thinks he's immortal."

"Oh we'll be putting that to the test, me fine cully." Mason smiles in a vicious kind of way. "I bet he'll sing a fine song with his head on the walls."

"Down, boy." I wave gently at Mason and he grunts, looking amused. "Ideally, I don't want to kill thousands of people to stop this."

"Yeah, well, you're going to have to get over that, Ainsley." Aetius shakes his head. "Because you're not getting out of this without a lot of blood being spilled one way or the other. Look, being pacifist and diplomatic is good. It's great." He nods. "It gets you far. Sometimes though, people just don't fucking care. They talk or act a certain way and then it turns out to all be a mask and you never knew them at all." He looks almost haunted, but his focus is on me. "Fighting isn't something you do when you're in the mood. Fighting happens when someone else is in the mood."

"You're going to be killing people you know out there." Zack is looking him over as he says it.

"I don't have any friends out there anymore."

 

[AverusBlack]

Sitting up on the top of a ridge with a widened slope down into the valley below and the mountain hanging behind it, Durjak is in a pretty good position for defense from the ground. I'm floating just above the wall where Elise is sitting and Aetius is standing next to Zack, who's gotten himself a suit of genkit style armor. It would seem somebody has been playing with the new guys toys while I've been out and about keeping busy and Ren didn't seem to have a problem with outfitting him in their stuff, which a few of the genkits seemed surprised by.

"It'll begin soon." Aetius speaks up, looking out at the tiny sea of lights going out in front of us. "Dimming the lanterns, putting out torches, killing fires. They're going to try launching it tonight. If we're going to stop it, we need to act now."

"I don't like this." I sigh. "Killing isn't something I ever imagined myself doing like this."

"You haven't seen the things I've seen."

"Talking about it isn't going to get us anywhere. Ainsley, Aetius, you two stay with me. Ainsley and I work best together."

"And if I go rogue you also have the best chance at stopping me together." Aetius manages to sound amused. "Makes sense."

"Zack, you're going to co-ordinate with our people on the ground. You have the vantage point up here so if you see anyone in trouble, you're going to arrange for their relief."

"I can do that. You got those things Ren talked about?"

"Yes. The case is a little further down the wall. You ever used a grenade before?"

"No. Yes. Ren showed me."

"It's pretty simple. Keep moving, keep dropping them. Lets go."

Aetius manifests his wings and takes off as Elise and I head up into the air. "We're going to strike at these mages first?"

"No. I mean, we could, but you want to save the conscripts so we should target their commanders instead. Most of those mages are drafted. If we can kill their overseer and destroy his control crystal, we can free the whole group at once and bring most of them over to our side."

"And the ones who aren't?"

"Just do your glowy-eye thing, you'll work it out."

As we approach their lines the clouds above us suddenly part, pushed away from a center point above their army. Moonlight blocked by the cloud cover appears and suddenly their force is arrayed in silver below us, spread out down the entire ridge, moonlight glinting off metal where it's not dinged enough to dim the shine. With the rings lighting us up we make perfect targets and I have just enough time to realize they can shoot at us when their front line explodes.

The blast is a glimmer of light passing across them like a wave from one of the genkit mechs, followed by violent explosions a microsecond later, tearing their vanguard apart. The mechs begin to move in and the archers come into play but the explosive arrows are shrugged off by the mechs, the kinetic force effecting them and damaging the armor but not really stopping them. Not enough to stop them from opening with another salvo and removing the archers within firing range from existence.

I hate this.

Aetius swoops and we follow him, down towards the back of their lines where concentric circles of defenses have been set up. As we approach, Elise is knocked from the air, slamming down into the ground as gravity suddenly increases for her and her alone, somebody on the ground targeting her. She dips before she rises again, using the ring to compensate and following Aetius down. Where Aetius swoops and slashes, Elise opts for simply slamming into the ground with a wave of green pressure exploding outwards and sending the mages flying. While Aetius charges through their lines looking for the overseer I start to heal the fallen mages, pulling them from the air where Elise is sending them flying, breaking their ability to concentrate by doing short transitions and ping-ponging around the crowd much like I did with the first group I met here on Terra. Aaah, the memories.

As I catch the mages I paralyze them, heal them and then start stacking them on the ground behind us as I go while at the same time manifesting construct walls and barriers around us to stop the defensive forces arrayed around this part of the line from turning around and attacking inwards to stop our disruption. I can see moments of hesitation where they try to stop themselves, then jerk as they're pushed ahead or Elise gets to them or they're cut down by Aetius and I'm forced to concentrate on putting them back together before it becomes terminal.

Aetius rises from the back of the line and comes slamming down next to me holding a fat little man with no shirt, no teeth and no apparent appreciation for the finer points of personal hygiene. He's squirming in a way that reminds me of a maggot as Aetius holds him down and tears a necklace off him, tossing it towards me. Ring, scan.

Got it. Some of the symbols match spell components used by Navra in our first combat encounter.

Interesting. Maybe she encountered these guys at some point.

I pick the necklace up and have the ring tear it apart, the control spells breaking violently. When the crystal shatters, it does so in a way that probably would have left me with a face full of glassy shards if not for my environmental shield. As it stands they ping off me harmlessly and every mage around us drops bonelessly to the ground as the attacks on my outer barriers suddenly increase from 'steady' to 'frantic'.

"I've heard it said that paybacks bitch, you disgusting excuse for a sentient. I guess she's in heat tonight, because fuck you."

And then he rips the overseers throat out. If not for the ring, I'm pretty sure I'd feel sick. I do feel sick, but it's entirely emotional, not physical.

I think I'm going to need to have a talk with this boy.

The forces outside concentrate fire on one of my barriers, turning everything against it and shattering it. When I replace the barrier they start alternating between some kind of reality distorting cutting effect and pure kinetic force. I think something is punching the barrier, actually.

It appears to be a female human working in conjunction with an arcane effect being cast by the human girls combat partner.

Right, that's... not what we're here to deal with. "Elise!"

She appears in front of me in a green flicker, waves of green light oscillating over her like sunlight glimmering through a body of water to clear off the blood. She immediately begins collecting the mages with me while Aetius flicks his hand at the ground, making a disgusted noise as he drops the carcass to the ground. "This will trigger some kind of counter attack. They may try swarming the city outright, or sending their elites to deal with us personally."

"Then we'll deal with them next. For now, lets get out of here. How many of their mages is this?"

"Not nearly all of them, but this should be everybody who has a magic style that isn't from Red Sword territory."

"Then lets get the fuck out of here and get ready for their next step."

 

[AverusBlack]

"The left flank is being overrun!" We're up on the southern wall facing the slope leading down to the bottom of the ridge. They've funneled up the slope and have the town surrounded on the only accessible ground route, which would be a problem if some of us couldn't fly. We've been parrying attacks for nearly an hour as they try to scale the wall, forcing us to split up over and over to bolster Durjak's defenders. I've run out of charge once already healing people.

After we lost the second mech we pulled back, moving the others up the ridge with the rings and placing them at the foot of the mountain itself. Their legs make it possible to cling to the uneven sloped surfaces and they've been working as artillery ever since. The second mech wasn't completely destroyed but once it was critically disabled they set it to self-destruct and bugged out, barely making it close enough to me to pull them out of the attackers swarming them.

Unfortunately, the exploding mech also put a hole in the wall. Above which is where we are now with Elise turning them into meat paste while I hastily enact repairs.

Alert! 15% charge remaining.

"Elise, I need a moment but the walls done. Go handle the left." She doesn't wait to acknowledge me, just vanishes in a flicker of green as the humans wielding genkit rifles swarm up to defend the section of wall she was covering. A couple of them give sloppy salutes or nods to me as they pass by.

Dropping down into the town I pull the battery out of subspace, holding my ring up to it.

"In darkest day, with dauntless might.
Face down despair, continue to fight.
Stand tall against the blackest night,
You will not fall for hope burns bright!"

Ring charge at 100%.

That's what I like to hear. Once I pocket the battery again I take off from the ground just in time for Elise's head to appear above my ring.

"Ainsley, they've g-UGH!"

The transmission cuts out and I steel myself mentally as I have the ring plot a course towards her position and go. I arc up over the wall, disabling my flight aura and turning midair as I drop down towards the attackers, then suddenly kick it back in and have the ring fling me across the battlefield at mach 1. The ensuing sonic boom directly above their heads...

That was probably nasty but after almost six hours of this fucking shit I have lost the capacity to give a fuck. I just want them gone.

Hitting the ground I let myself slide sideways like a surfer towards Elise, who's trying to shield herself from the hammer blows of a girl with a mace almost as large as she is. She's swinging it like it weighs nothing at all, which it might not, because it's glowing red. Not a normal mace, in other words. She's hammering on Elise like it's a rolled up newspaper but it's clearly hitting her shield as though it weighs half a ton and no. I don't think so.

When I slam into the girl she goes flying sideways, strikes the ground with her hammer and springs back at me like the momentum went on vacation or something. Expecting her to keep going it catches me off guard and forces me to dart upwards, the girl passing below me and the hammer passing through the space I was just in. As I tilt my head back I hope to catch a glimpse as I look 'down' at her while I flip over. At the epogee of the flip time seems to slow down and I can see her clearly. It's a human girl with bloodshot eyes and a maniacal look to her, unhinged. She looks furious, the aura around the mace looking like it's burning in the few seconds that I'm looking at her. Then time speeds up against suddenly and she's flying past me, leaving me landing lightly on my feet with one hand pointed at her.

When she charges me again the wall construct I smash into her is shattered, leaving me backpedaling and kiting her while she chases me down, swinging the hammer wildly at me. It's forcing me to jink and dodge frantically and when I look to Elise for relief I find she's being swarmed with attackers and this girl is all over me and fuckfuckfuckfuck.

Oh. Fuck.

For a half second my environmental shield cuts out and the hammer girl smashes my legs out from under me. There isn't any pain, not at first, the injury is too traumatic for my body to really register it immediately. The shape of me is suddenly just wrong and I'm falling forward in a way I shouldn't be as the environmental shield kicks in and the ring immediately begins repairing me, the hard static tingling of massive pain being masked by the ring covering most of my lower body as she takes another swing at me and I'm forced to create a shield dome around myself which cracks immediately.

I'm trying to control it but I can feel the first stirrings of panic, which is something because it's been hours and I never began to feel overwhelmed like this. The shield is cracking more and I'm trying to reknit it with blue light but the strikes are so fast all I'm doing is forestalling the inevitable here. They just keep fucking coming! Everytime we wipe them out there's just more, like trying to climb out of an antlion pit.

There's a pause between strikes and I quickly reknit the shield just in time for a strike harder than any of the others to hit it, breaking the shield instantly and sending pain bolting up my arm from the feedback. The hammer girl is panting, bleeding from her nose and...

Is looking upwards?

I chance it and look in the direction she's looking, only to see three pinpoints of colored light. No, no way. They left.

Alert. Rage detected. Fear detected. Avarice detected.

I have just enough time to turn to look at hammer girl before blarghbeghblehgblefuck. I'm sent flying from the hammer strike towards Elise, who catches me midair as the ring heals me back up. Hammer girl is charging me again but she's intercepted by a wave of liquid red light and begins to scream as it melts through her, leaving her staggering and twitching violently as it dissolves her alive. Vara lowers down next to her and picks the hammer up, looking it over.

"Hmph. This is using red light, like a proto-ring."

"You can play with your new toy later, Vara." Nemesis has his arms folded as he lands next to me and Elise. "Hello again. Surprised to see us?"

I nods. "Just a little. Not that I'm unappreciative, but...?"

"You're an investment." Mina shrugs. She's changed outfits, wearing loose black robes with orange highlights now. "Be stupid to let you just get overrun."

"That and I sort of owe you one." Nemesis shrugs. "After this, we're even. Now, if you'll excuse me." He turns to face the attackers who look unsure of what to do about us now that hammer girl was... dealt with. They seem a bit reluctant. "Savvy, boys and girls. You know full well you can't hurt me. But I can hurt you." The yellow constructs lunge out and begin grabbing attackers as Nemesis casually strolls towards them, the constructs...

I can just about ignore the frantic screaming and wet tearing noises, but only with the ring helping me.

Turning to Elise I begin healing her up as Mina and Vara look over the hammer. "How many more are like this in this group?"

"We don't know. Aetius might. He said he'd seen weapons like this before."

"Who's Aetius?"