Changeling

(108): History in the making.

August the 13th, eight months after Nestra’s departure. Pacific Ocean.

Condensation stuck to Mazingwe’s armor. Rivulets fell off the golden armor into the hot air, mixing with other mana-rich emanations meant to mask the task force’s approach 160 nautical miles east of Threshold. The cloud had aroused suspicion, but it was fairly large and fully under the control of the Specter initiative, meaning enemy scouts had failed to find anyone. For all of the preparations they’d undergone, Mazingwe was feeling a height of trepidation that no B-class raids had managed to stir in his chest. Fear clawed it as well, not the fear of death but the fear of the abyss, of stepping into something that might have no bottom he could survive. His acute hearing picked up the report coming from Shinran’s datasheet, behind and slightly above him.

“Confirmed: Shinano and Kaga peeling off with their escorts.”

Shinran audibly breathed in relief. Things were bad but perhaps they were not yet critical. Half of the battle had been fought in meeting rooms and highly confidential calls. The war had been cold, and Threshold had played its cards well.

Until now.

“Line crossing in one minute.”

Even Lindstrom, ever cold, radiated worries. Mazingwe already knew the count. If a peaceful solution could have been achieved, it would already have. This was it. The line in the sand, arbitrarily drawn where T-COM had estimated Threshold’s ability to intercept incoming missiles would fall off. A series of dots on a map, meaning nothing to the uncaring waters under them, but everything to those waiting back home. The seconds passed. Someone below him was praying.

“Line confirmed crossed by six destroyers,” the operator soberly said.

Shinran flipped out a massive tightbeam phone. It beeped for half a second.“They have officially crossed the line,” Shinran laconically said.“I know,” a familiar voice replied.

That was Mayor Kim. Mazingwe had never heard it so flat. The veiled emotions conveyed more concern than any screamed curses. For a few seconds, nobody spoke.

Mazingwe’s feet dangled over the metaphorical rift, over unplumbed depths. Again, he knew that lines drawn must be defended, or they were no lines at all. Only the youngest, those who hadn’t fought alongside Riel, only those still clung to vain hopes.

“I have sent the Declaration of War. The embassy confirmed the reception.”

Shinran’s breath stopped in his chest. Ragnarok closed her eyes. Even Mayor Kim sighed, trying to exorcise the terror of what they’d just done. Mazingwe’s heart plunged in the cold waters just as his fingers tightened on the handle of his namesake.

“Shinran, proceed with the operation. And... good luck. All our thoughts and hopes rest with you,” Threshold’s highest civilian authority said.

“Kim out.”

Shinran closed the phone, then he tossed it to an aide. Mazingwe’s earplugs rang with his words, though he didn’t need them right now.

“Everyone, that’s it. Operation is a go. Move to phase 1. Good luck, and see you on the other side.”

The cloud all around them erupted with orders. Shinran moved forward with Ragnarok close behind. A mere flex of his mana carried Mazingwe downward. A brief check confirmed the three other members of his breach team followed, though he really didn’t need to check. The rest of his detachment was close behind. Slowly, they picked up speed, until the droplets of water were pushed by the wind alone. Now that the order had been given, most people were quiet. All that needed to be said had been said before. The only thing left were battle-hardened raiders descending in unison. Mazingwe’s breath hastened with adrenaline flooding his veins. It felt different, this time.

A minute later, the entire strike force exited their cover above their intended targets. The clouds parted, and the grey and deep blue ocean expanded, extending to every horizon in a fractured surface full of angry foam, reflecting nothing. Above that uncaring mass were dozens of ships arrayed in neat formation of slick gray hulls barded with weapons and radars. It was a spectacle like no other, a show of defiance against magic and all its rule-breaking. It was a vestige from another era pushed into this one through sheer will and overwhelming strength, ancient yet no less deadly for it. It was the might of a nation sent like a fist half a world away. Twenty thousand warriors, and the firepower to raze Threshold to the ground in a single night. It was also the task force’s target and Mazingwe felt a chill, like a knight facing a giant, because they were now committed to poking the Bear of Bears, the Sleeping Giant. The gods of the Pacific.

The United State’s Navy’s 7th fleet. 70 warships. 130 fighter jets, many of them already airborne.

“Dive! Now!”

The sky lit up. Three unfortunate patrols of American air gleams were killed instantly while the task force fell like a hammer. Alarms blared below. In less than five seconds, the heavens above the fleet were a hell of tracers, missiles, and explosions as the dozens of warships in immediate range of the task force spat everything they had in a hail of destruction, rage and the knowledge that it was already too late. A delirious wall of sound slapped Mazingwe just as he twisted to avoid a spray of incandescent dots buzzing like furious wasps, each bullet capable of tearing him apart B-class or not. But Mazingwe was one of the first who had stood shoulder to shoulder against the end of the world and now that violence was the only answer, everything faded. There was just the vertigo of the ocean and the humans killing and dying between them. Above him, the skies turned red.

Mazingwe fell like a meteor with the powerful breach team close behind. Right below was the heart of the fleet: four destroyers in close formation with shells over their deck designed to repulse boarding monsters, making them look like angry beetles. 150m long beetle armed to the teeth around the unassuming form of the amphibious command ship and behind, the hulking ‘flat top’, the heart of the beast: fleet carrier George Washington. They were still hundreds of meters out but the air all around was already saturated with lead and depleted uranium. Above, mana shockwaves of immense power showed where the A-class had entered the fray. He could do nothing about them as he’d delayed his ascension for too long. Down here though? Down here, he was Dawn Spear.

“May Allah forgive me for what I am about to do,” he whispered.

His namesake appeared, gorged with energy. Emergency shields were already ringing with spells below. In his ears, T-COM designated a victim. Lower left destroyer.

Mazingwe cast and for a moment, the golden light of a Somali summer eclipsed the gloom of the clouded sea and the angry radiance of the Oni above. His spell shattered the shield, blinding all those who were unprepared. Even the guns fell quiet as receptors adjusted to the light and heat he’d just unleashed. Fireballs, rocks and a rain of spells collapsed on the hull even as the ship fought like a cornered lion, shields reforming almost as soon as they broke to the sacrifice of its operators. Even as she died, her guns never stopped firing. Mazingwe had to dodge between vengeful streams to approach his target while her guardian’s hull broke in half.

“USS Merril, disabled,” the operator whispered.

There was a break in the fire coverage. The breach team used it to close the gap. Another team crashed into the water and as Mazingwe landed on the hull, a tidal wave rose from the depths, moved by dozens of guild gleams guiding it towards the far left destroyer. Other teams were approaching the carrier but Mazingwe wasn’t here for the heart.

He was here for the brain.

The command ship. The name on its flank read USS Saint Elias confirming this was the target. Mazingwe took all of this in an instant while he stopped. Hector Palladian didn’t. The solid ball of enchanted steel crashed through the reinforced shell as if it were water, enchantments denied. Gunfire immediately erupted inside while a point defense... something turned its red muzzle towards Mazingwe. A hail of bullets smashed against a raised rock shield, reducing it to dust but by the time it had done so, the rest of the breach team was inside.

Mazingwe entered what used to be a tight corridor. The entire surface had warped as if overheated: melted and smoothed by the mere presence of the Palladian House master. Defensive ceiling turrets and other measures had simply been warped to nothingness while the light failed, destroyed by a point blank EMP blast.

“Portside frontal defenses disabled,” the laconical metal gleam announced.

“”Starboard disabled,” his wife replied an instant later.

“Behind us!”

Claire Reed backed out of a tongue of burning plasma lashing out at her, the temperature so high it warped the very air. Mazingwe only hovered around his three companions while the ship’s defenders rushed them. The first to appear in the widening corridor was a tan woman with furious red eyes dressed in a magitech exoskeleton, B-class and a major according to the insignia on her pauldron. A metal gleam anglo followed close behind with a squad of magitech C-class shooting rifles with great caution. Claire pulled back into a large room, and they followed. Mazingwe didn’t intervene because he knew exactly what was happening. The two B-class were young and competent, but they were doing this thing where urgency and terror pushed them forward without consideration, because they knew the deathly danger their ship was in. The Palladians were using something called a ‘royal guard bait’, only on humans instead of portal creatures and it was so seamlessly executed that Mazingwe felt a pang of envy. Claire Reed pretended to be on the backfoot while her two teammates closed in from the side. The moment the two foreign gleams entered the room, it was already too late to back out. Electric spells lashed at them. Metal warped, the Major’s second losing the battle for control to a much more experienced raider. Dawn Spear cut off the C-class reinforcements before they could do anything though they were simply too slow. Claire turned and struck with a power that left the fire gleam vacillating. Ice closed on her plasma whips. Hector Palladian charged and demolished the metal gleam, leaving the Major exposed to an electricity blast that, in turn, gave an opening to Claire’s spear. They were soon overwhelmed. Mazingwe spared the lives of the C-class he faced simply because they were no threat to him and he would not take more lives than he strictly had to. Simple punches left them stunned and harmless.

“USS Milius, disabled,” the operator whispered in his ear.

That was another destroyer neutralized. The bleeding major sat up in the room, hand pressuring the bleeding gap in her torso.

“On our position!” she confirmed with a scream. “Yes! NOW!”

Mazingwe was already moving, closely followed by the three others as fire from another destroyer shredded the front of the ship. Claire casually blocked a parting fire tongue spell with a wall of thick stone. The Major was still casting after them with the rage of despair while they moved deeper in. There would be a need for a change of plan. The Milius being gone meant an entire side of the command ship was now uncovered.

“Bomb team, enter the hull from the north side,” Mazingwe ordered.

Hector created an entrance in the next instant. Without prompt too. Riel, it felt good to work with professionals. The next moment, Threshold army gleams entered carrying a very obvious bomb.

“Set it here,” He ordered, pointing at a mess hall.

Then he grabbed the real payload from the third team, and went to work.

***

“Sir?”

The Admiral’s fists rested on the edge of the holographic display showing a snowstorm of red dots moving over his formation, taking apart the third of his escort destroyers like a pack of piranhas. He had already given all the orders he could to try and salvage this disaster. Now, he could only wait and see what came first: the Thresholders sinking his carrier, or the boarders killing him. Unless his last ditch plan worked.

“Impact in five,” the squadron leader’s voice said.

All eyes turned to the screen showing the battlefield above the Saint Elias. The red titan that was Shinran mercilessly struck shapes no larger than flies compared to his own. Even the steel wolf appeared tiny compared to mankind’s most powerful living A-class. This was the admiral’s last card.

“Two, one.”

The titan moved. Several tiny explosions bloomed on the fires of his fist but two landed, one on his shoulder and the other on his flank. Like embers eating paper, blue lines expanded and the armor under it disappeared. Mana bled from the gap. The furious demon stopped, surprised. It disappeared soon after.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

It was working.

“He’s hit. He’s hit!”

The sky slowly returned to its normal color. Suddenly, the angry flight of red dots started pulling back. It felt... a little too easy. And it was.

The titan reappeared, still bleeding mana. That mana gathered in a ball of angry fire on his hand. He lifted it faster than the admiral could breathe. He launched it.

The ball arced through the air at a speed that defied comprehension, until it was larger than a house. Even as an aug himself, the admiral felt the pressure of the mana. It would miss his ship, but he knew what it meant. The monstrous spell landed squarely on the carrier’s stern and sank through shield and reinforced, enchanted metal in moments.

“Shit,” someone said.

The ship started to list immediately. The admiral gave a few perfunctory orders but the escort ships were already on their way at full speed.

“Sir, news about the boarders. They’re pulling back!”

What?

“But sir, Major Vasquez found something. Err, you’d better see this.”

A new feed appeared on one of the screens. It showed what was very obviously a massive bomb lodged in the middle of the officer mess hall. Part of the crew watched the explosive disposal team get to work with speed but the admiral sat back.

It didn’t make sense. No sense at all. He went through other feeds showing the Thresholders leaving. Against all odds, the USS George Washington was still floating. Onboard metal and water gleams were plugging what ought to have been a mortal wound with a speed that defied his understanding of magic. They were clear as well. The Thresholders really were in full retreat.

It still made no sense. They had won.

“Why plant a bomb? Just their first team could have sunk us.”

They had torn through an elite unit in moments, going so far as to spare their lives. Their stone user had raised a barrier at the last minute to protect their C-classes from the Major’s very courageous yet dumb as hell order to fire on her own position in a vain effort to stop them. Those were the actions of people so in control, they could afford mercy. They really didn’t need the bomb. Unless it was much, much more powerful than he expected.

“I need an assessment on the bomb’s yield.”

“It will take the ship down,” one of the specialists replied.

“Just our ship?” he insisted.

“Yessir?” the bomb guy replied although he obviously considered this serious enough.

“It’s a conventional payload, sir,” one of the smarter ones interrupted. “Threshold-made Poseidon warhead, sir. We already scrambled the activation frequency and spoofed the hold-on signal.”

If the bomb wasn’t a surprise, then what? A distraction?”

“Vasquez, get your people to search the ship for something else. I’m missing a piece of the puzzle.”

Damage reports lined up in his eye implants. Support ships were hard at work extinguishing fires and recovering sailors from the sinking destroyers. Vasquez called him, interrupting his next order.

“Sir, we found something.”

He moved to the display. The bomb had been safely disarmed now, its disposal replaced by a strange nest of molten metal peeled off by Vasquez’ second to reveal a strange, blinking object.

“Another bomb?” he asked, heart sinking.

“No, sir. It’s strange, very strange, but as far as we can tell this is some sort of beacon.”

“A beacon?” he asked to confirm.

“Yessir. A mana beacon operating on a frequency we’re not fully understanding. It’s too, ah, too low for humans to perceive.”

Too low for... his blood froze in his veins.

“Are the submarines still tracking that kaiju north of us?”

“I, uh,”

“Check now.”

“Sir!” another voice said. “We have confirmed movement!”

He didn’t need to be told.

“I need a timer for the kaiju’s arrival,” he said, silencing the entire bridge.

“Hmm. Err. Twenty-seven... six. Twenty-six minutes at the current speed.”

He used his aug to open a channel to the woman he was looking for.

“Briggs here.”

“Clarice, I know you’re very busy but I need to know if you can move your ship within the next twenty-minutes.”

“No. That fireball took out our propulsors, sir.”

The admiral made a very quick calculation. It didn’t take long, nor was it very hard. What was hard was giving the order without his voice wavering.

“Abandon ship. Immediately.”

***

Mazingwe watched the fleet disappearing behind the cover of the clouds. Shinran looked like shit but at least he was no longer bleeding after the doctor had purged the curse in those missiles. The legendary American damage control was already at work saving their carrier. Or it would have, but Threshold had once again opened Pandora’s box.

Kaiju manipulation. A new class of weapons, if one could call it that. The creature would destroy the carrier with more certainty than any gleam or missile in Threshold’s arsenal. All it had taken was a beacon imitating the signature of a tampered leyline. At least, most of the crew ought to have time to evacuate. The Americans also had deployed half of the Vanquisher, their best guild. The leader Cyrrhus had refused to participate in an extremely unpopular conflict, but it might change now, because Shinran had killed the Mangler.

It was the first A-class death since Allfather, and the first American one. So far, the public opinion had been split on the issue of the Bridge World. It would change now that Threshold had committed the unforgivable: they’d touched the boats, including one named after a rather important person. And they’d killed an A-class.

The war was now hot.

***

Nestra grumpily watched the seventy odd Aszhii milling on the open plain under the sweltering heat of a blue sun. Overcast clouds masked the star at all times or Nestra suspected they would have been long since cooked. It just didn’t improve her mood.

She had gathered them for a quick training knowing full well it would be delicate. Azhii were worse than cats because at least cats were still cats together while she also had dogs, bats, fiches and a komodo dragon. That was how it had felt just trying to hold the group together to split them into three teams, and even then they’d lost two warriors. One of the males had been mortally offended when Nestra had stopped him dueling someone else to the death, apparently for using a void ice spell while inside his void fire aura. The other had wandered off and that one would regret it next time he tried to get any of the covens to do anything for him. No one fucked with the covens without paying the price. It was certainly what had kept the others in check.

Nestra had asked Karamahel to shadow her for a bit. The veteran soldier had been mostly amused by Nestra’s attempts at organizing her group. She had soon left to prepare for her trip to Earth but not before leaving Nestra a single critical piece of advice.

“Never defend,” she had said, leaning against a tree trunk. “Never slow down. You have seventy warriors against an entire civilization: millions of individuals. On paper, you do not stand a chance. We are only so strong because we cannot be pinned down, and because we can concentrate our strengths like few can. It is an overwhelming advantage but also one that remains easily forfeited. Remember what we are: raiders. Listen to your instincts. Use fear, if you can.”

“Ok.”

“And though I approve of your attempts to, ah, establish a plan, do not tarry.”

Three more days and she’d lose half of the group, consequences or not. Only Sereth’s solid presence at her side made her fully confident they could succeed. He was one of the few really helpful males around. The rest were not fully committed. She knew why and that it was a bit her fault, but still. She never thought the day would come that she would consider Thresholders as a disciplined and orderly group, if only by comparison. How low her standards had fallen! Even getting the three groups to raid the B-class portals she and the other females had found had barely slowed down restlessness and ennui. Truly, the Aszhii were not meant to work as a large group.

“Ok, gather in your respective groups,” she ordered.

The pack of assholes sullenly obeyed. A smaller, leaner group gathered behind Nestra as she would lead the Rescue Team, her portal making instincts being the best of the three. The Assault Team, which included Sereth, would follow Kitten who had the second best ability. Ita the Harpy would lead the third and largest group, the most eclectic one whose exact landing didn’t matter as much as their instructions were ‘just fuck shit up but try to spare civilians’. It was a decent plan. She just needed to get them going with the proper timing, and the proper incentives. Not the fact they could raid later now that she’d helped them get off the homeworld, but immediate, tangible motivation. Nestra gestured to the two other useful males. The first was Unchained Solstice, the one who’d broken free. He looked humanoid but seemingly made of wood, his thick muscles curving over bulbous limbs like heavy branches laden with sap. The upper part of his skull spit into various growths that were both hair, tentacles, and horns. His native species was partially green with bioluminescent dots across their bodies, but he was as gray as the rest of the Aszhii. Solstice’s features were both focused and full of sorrow at the same time.

She closed her eyes to try and center herself. Last task and she could go back to Earth where things had hopefully settled enough for her to make a return so she could forge the most vital diplomatic alliance in Earth’s history. She just had to do this and then she could return home. Except that wasn’t the right way to look at it, and she knew it. She was also slightly scared of what she would see going with her current plan, of the reminder that she had been incredibly and unjustly lucky being born a Palladian. She also knew she would carry out the mission no matter what, because this wasn’t the sort of horror that would go away now that she was aware of it. Nobody would swoop down to solve this for Nestra. Nothing would excise the knowledge of enslaved Aszhii from her brain, and a part of her knew the Aszhii were a species of deceivers so, in a way, they deserved bad things. But not this. Not this. Not the damn kids.

She turned to the last of the three males around her. He was a strange being from a sea world, but where Blinky was closer to a jellyfish, he was closer to a squid. Gingerly, the male extended a tentacle towards Nestra. He was waiting for her final permission. Solstice had already taken the other. Her fingers brushed the alien limb. It was cold, wet, and cartilaginous. Hooked spines glistened at its end. She shivered. It was nothing compared to what was happening to the kids. Nestra firmly planted the limb at the bottom of her neck. A cold sensation spread throughout her upper body as the poisonous anesthetic was allowed to do its job. A mind poked Nestra’s. It could not grab her unless she let it. Letting go had always been difficult, but she did it anyway.

***

It was dark and cold. As far as he remembered, it had always been dark and cold. Sometimes he saw a square of sky stuck between four ratty walls. The warmest wall had a crack and a tiny plant growing through it. That was the only example he’d ever seen of the ‘nature’ his teaching tablets spoke of. It was the only real sunlight he felt on his skin. The rest came from a feeding lamp which was paraded out when they did well. If they did well. They were special, the master said, his stern and always distant face ever placid. They were meant for great service. They would be the sword of the Great One. It was their duty. They had been born for it, bred for it. There was to be nothing else. The collars made sure there would be nothing else. It chafed, but he couldn’t remove his own even when he washed himself. Sometimes it was used to punish but he didn’t hate it. Punishing meant that the master cared with his slow voice carefully enunciating every syllable. He was terrified of the master no longer caring. It wasn’t even about those who didn’t do their best, those who got hurt too bad and disappeared. It was because it was the only interaction he had ever known. He loved the master. He drank every compliment like a dying creature drank sweet water. He needed it. So the master was loved and so the master could do nothing wrong. Every time he grew, he happily told the master and the master would add one link to the collar so the collar could grow with him. The pain of training and discipline were welcome. If they trained him, it meant they cared and he was important. Desired. He threw himself into training with abandon, he told the master that it was like the last month of their calendar and the master had punished him for it. The master didn’t like useless idea associations, or words without purpose. It had hurt him. It had also hurt him when the master had placed another collar on his true form. The collar was not needed. One collar was enough. Still, he didn’t complain out loud but the seeds of something different were planted.

By the time he was strong enough to raid alone, only a couple of guards accompanied him to the portals in and out of the city, and into the wastes. The wastes were all around. It was told that other Great Ones had fields of lush green, and beautiful sunlight all year round. When he and his siblings grew strong enough, they would help conquer those better spaces for the city’s lord.

One day while his guards stopped at a barrack to split the prizes he had collected, a disruption occured. The guards argued that they were not being left with a fair share of his work. While no one looked, a woman slipped near. She had eyes full of an emotion he had never seen before. She pushed something in his hand.

It was a leaf. A nourish leaf from the market. She made a hush move with her hand. The nourish leaf’s envelope had been peeled off. His eyes went to the guards. He really wanted the nourish leaf after all that raiding, to fill his body with the invigorating sap so it could glow a pleasant green. He had been ordered not to disturb them, but if he didn’t tell them now, the leaf would wither. And then he would be left with just brown crumbs that could be anything, really, and who would believe him if he said a completely unknown woman had given him this gift? So he ate the leaf. And he didn’t tell anybody.

He carried that memory and that guilt with him for days. Any time the tip tap of the master’s feet echoed down the corridor outside his room, he expected the door to burst open and for the master to furiously drag him out for lying by omission. But the days went by, and no one cared his skin was just a little too green and his face just a little too anxious. Or they didn’t notice. The master came less often now, because he had other children to educate.

The next raid, the woman returned. This time, she gave him a crumbled piece of biscuit with caramelized sap inside. He had never tasted anything that sweet in his entire life. He wondered if the others like him had ever tasted something so nice, but the master preferred to keep them separate. The woman returned week after week. Every time, she left him with something different, every time with a smile and a sign to keep quiet.

One day, in the last month of the year, the woman didn’t return. It made him inexplicably sad. It also made him terribly curious about what had happened to her, an obviously stupid wish in retrospect. The answer came in the form of a summon to that little square of light that was a reward for good behavior. The master was here, as was the woman. The woman’s hair tendrils were cracked. Someone had ripped half of the chlorophyll clusters off her arm. It had to hurt abominably but she only smiled when she saw him. It was a sad kind of smile, much harder on his heart because it was so genuine. Some smiles conveyed pleasure, or pride, or simple happiness. This one conveyed apologies. The woman was sorry for what was going to happen.

“How long have you been talking to your mother?” the master asked with barely restrained fury.

He blinked, surprised beyond thought. His bafflement came out in the next words.

“My... mother?”

He had known, of course, that he must have a mother. Everyone had a mother down to the most menial slaves but it didn’t matter to a slave because they were not free people. Only free people had families in the City of the Great One. Slaves had other slaves. Hearing that the kind woman was his mother was such a shocking concept that he simply had to stop. It was too sudden, too strange. He didn’t have room in his brain for the idea of a loving mother for himself. A mother who had risked her life just to give him sweets and a smile every week. He couldn’t process that. So he didn’t react when the master asked follow-up questions. The master had to ask them several times which meant he would be punished later, but the shock seemed to satisfy him, somehow, his stern visage returning to a normal level of cold detachment. He didn’t even react when the master stepped behind the strange woman — mother — and cut her head off. He didn’t react when a satisfied master told him he had passed the test. He didn’t react when he was brought back to his room, nor later when he was taken outside of the city walls for yet another raid. Only when the bored guards sat down and told him to ‘go on then’ did he act.

He stepped out of the mask without its collar.

It had been so easy. Natural. He could have done it perhaps not the first day, but certainly much sooner, but he had not because by then, the collar was worn on the mind. The master no longer needed a collar to control him beyond the symbol it represented. He decided to remove the collar because he no longer wanted it. And when he did, he had to pause again when the wind of the wastes touched the skin, finally exposed, like a ring of cold around his neck.

He took the name of Unchained Solstice.

He killed both guards. He did try to return to the city with a new appearance to see if others might be freed, like him. He realized he couldn’t hope to face the third ring guards protecting the inner city while he himself was merely a first ring. He had wandered the wastes with mercenaries, hiding under new guises every so often. Once, he had even tried to free one of his brethren while the brethren raided. That brother had fought him off, angry that he had broken the system, angrier that Solstice was trying to ruin him too.

Solstice could not kill him. His instincts prevented it. The brother agreed to keep silent for they would both be harshly interrogated if it were found out. Solstice had wandered more, wondering if anyone would help him but no one even entertained the thought. Society was layered. It had been layered for hundreds of years by now, an order forged in rigid blocks stacked on top of one another. Nothing could topple it. No one could make it vacillate from inside while every brick conspired to protect its own fate. There was always the starving outlaws and the merciless nature to remind them of the cost of transgression. Solstice was alone and desperate. And then he reached the third circle.

***

Nestra surfaced from the memories, gasping as if from a prolonged dive in some sunless ocean. She surfaced, but Solstice didn't. He was present in the real world, physically at least, yet behind the face he was still in that square of light with four ratty walls, that crack with the growing weed, and the splash of old blood. The abyssal eyes saw her but they didn’t feel anything because if he felt anything right now, if he opened his mind to hope, he would simply fall apart. So Solstice had boxed everything in and gone through the motions. He was doing so even now, not daring to believe anything beyond what he could see in front of him.

Nestra understood, of course. It would have been different if, say, Agathon, had agreed to walk like the ancient monster he was to break every wall and topple any fortress in his path. What Solstice had gotten was a mouthy female and seventy bored cunts. She’d be suspicious too. But he didn’t get it. She did. The Aszhii didn’t go to war when everyone formed grumbling teams; that would be insanely difficult. They went to war when the covens called. Right now, Nestra was the covens.

So she started to sing.

She packed her outrage and her fury into the eerie song, all the righteous anger her childhood as a nepo baby allowed her to bring forth because she had known love and care and it had been the most natural thing ever, then she added the Aszhii belief that they couldn’t be caged. Ita immediately followed in a sibylline duet, then Kitten’s predatory growl provided a clawed bass. The wrathsong hit the despondent males like a cold wave. Their posture changed. Then distracted expressions on their many faces turned to absolute focus. The team formed with diabolical precision around each of the females, and they were still there vibrating with anticipation when Nestra carved her first portal with Solstice by her side and the memory of that square of skylight fresh in her mind, the imprint so powerful she followed it like a bloodhound. The other two females were not far behind. Nestra demanded the twisted space open a path for her, and it did. The portal predictably opened onto that poorly lit square in the middle of the slave compound. Nestra stepped through, approached the nearby shocked guard, then cut him in half. She was still singing. The city was blissfully unaware it was already doomed, and it was when the gray males streamed around her in a cascade of colorless death, when the skies darkened, and the ground shook with Sereth’s distant steps, that she finally understood why Shinran’s training fortress had named their species ‘monochrome reavers’.