As it turned out, they could take a nuke in an enclosed space.

  Less damage than we thought.

  Nila sent him a mental harrumph.

  I told you so. We should’ve gone for overkill instead of relying on estimated projections.

  You did, but it was reasonable. I had information straight from that demigod’s memories and he actually knew this lich from when he was on this world.

  Sure, but that was a thousand years ago.

  In my defense Ms. Teacher knows her liches, so her projections should’ve been close.

  Should I worry about her device not working?

  Well, you have backup plans. If none of those work I can always throw her into space.

  A mental conversation in fractions of second before they had to get back to it.

  The undead dragon burst out of the fireball.

  Unlike the revenants, he was clearly undead.

  His head was half skull and half dry, desiccated scales. His massive wings were riddled with holes and tattered edges, while more dark bones peeked through. His rib cage was mostly exposed revealing missing internal organs and a few shriveled up remains. Except for his dark heart, which pulsed with the mimicry of life.

  Near it the Empress of the Frozen Eternities sat on a smaller version of her ice throne like a pilot.

  She was like her revenants in appearance.

  Alive at first look.

  A true ageless beauty that would set any man’s or woman’s loins aflame with desire.

  If one lacked the abilities to notice that her eyes stared straight ahead, she didn’t blink, nor did her ample chest rise and fall.

  Unnaturally still, like a sculpture.

  Until she raised an exquisite hand to cast a spell.

  Clear blue and filled with black coiling serpents with humanoid skulls for heads.

  The beam ate everything in its path, killing everything from massive ruins of her special magic ice to the debris cloud to Cal’s many telekinetic shields.

  He dropped like a stone with Nila behind him.

  That was in the memories. Stronger now, though.

  It’s been a thousand years!

  They flew, dodging the empress’ spells and the undead dragon’s freezing breath as they zipped in and out of the ruins and disappeared and reappeared out of the floor like a flying fish.

  All the while, he opened a path through ice, stone and metal to their more important target.

  Done! Ready? I’m going to drop you off. Path’s clear. I’ll take care of the traps as you approach them. I’ll keep her here when she realizes what we’re doing, but be quick.

  We’ve run this simulation a hundred times. We’ve got this. Love you.

  Love you too.

  He dropped his wife in a hole. A frozen tunnel to slide her past much of the empress’ defenses around the true inner sanctum where the ancient lich’s greatest possession and only true vulnerability lay.

  One eye on his wife.

  One eye on the lich and her undead dragon.

  Hundreds of eyes on everything else around them.

  “You’re alone in here with me. No revenants, no hordes,” he whispered. “Just imagine. You’ve owned them for so long and yet they’ll outlast you. So, how about it, Bellicosiaxtramondagron, what do you want? Freedom?”

  Nila sprinted down tight tunnels as fast as a car. She barely slowed to take the tight, twisting turns, allowing her armor to take the impacts on the walls like she was a bumper car.

  The undead dragon laughed, a wheezing sound, airy and lighter than one would expect from a being the size of a passenger jetliner.

  “I just want to fight.”

  “For her?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Cal dismantled traps while dodging spells and freezing breath.

  Bellicosiaxtramondagron maneuvered like a bird.

  He wrapped them up in a huge, dense ball of debris to distract the empress from Nila’s run.

  Then he began hitting her thoughts with the psychic equivalent of missiles and bombs.

  She had psychic defensive spells to weather the storm, but what he wanted and got was the distraction.

  Spells blasted them free from their temporary prison and chased him.

  Cold from the undead dragon.

  Death and rime from the lich.

  A swirling tornado filled with jagged ice shards froze everything it touched even the very air.

  Icy undead flying things in the tens of thousands burst into existence at a graceful gesture of an exquisite hand.

  Nila approached the last trap.

  Twelve undead archmages, not revenants, lesser, fused at the end of chains of ice and metal of a corridor the length of several football fields and thrice as wide with an arched ceiling tall enough to contain a skyscraper.

  He had done the work, worming his way into the links between them and the empress the moment he had entered her fortress city within a city.

  It had taken subjective hours in an objective minute.

  Thus, the twelve turned their magic on each other, ignoring the tiny superhuman woman in plain gray armor sprinting across the frozen expanse.

  The Empress of the Frozen Eternities’ impassive mask never slipped even as Cal listened to the rising fear in the whispers of her thoughts leaking through the infinitesimal holes he had drilled through her psychic shielding magic.

  Minutes of sheer devastation filled her sanctum city as he went on the attack.

  Sonic booms buffeted the empress and her undead dragon.

  Hypersonic chunks of her very city crashed against their combined magic shielding.

  Cal sent thousands, from as small as his fingernail to as large as Bellicosiaxtramondagron himself.

  At the same time he attacked their minds with piercing darts carrying the poison of their worst nightmares.

  For even powerful ancients had started weak and small.

  They may have forgotten those days, but he had no problem reminding them.

  A titanic hydra of deep blue and black erupted around the empress, throwing the undead dragon aside like trash.

  Ten thousand skull-faced heads of sheer magic snapped and devoured Cal’s hypersonic missiles.

  The undead dragon hardened himself in a shell of ice then broke through three walls of air. A streaking missile the size of a jetliner crashed through Cal’s telekinetic shield and the him.

  Or not.

  Eyes, even highly magical ones couldn’t be trusted when a Psionic Prime had already hooked his psychic tendrils into the mind.

  Countless Cals appeared all over the frozen city.

  The empress’ hydra heads struck like vipers despite being as large as buildings while she cast just as many seeking spells from within the ethereal shell.

  Many Cals vanished in her manifold vision only to be replaced instantaneously.

  She spoke for the first time.

  A voice as heavy and implacable as the glaciers and ice sheets that surrounded her domain.

  “Words of Power: No Life Shall Exist In My Presence.”

  The words washed across the space at the speed of, well, a voice.

  Once again, Cal owed Suiteonemiades, though he’d never admit it.

  Saving his life was not nearly close to equally taking Alin’s.

  Still, forewarned was forearmed.

  In this case, with pricey defensive gems made by Ms. Teacher herself.

  The empress’ spell burned them out in an instant, but kept him alive.

  Instead of death, he simply spat blood into his faceplate and leaked it from his orifices. All of them.

  The spell had decided that the quickest way to end his existence was by rupturing his blood vessels.

  He let the healing gel shoulder the bulk of the repair so he could focus his mental powers on dismantling the sound waves of the empress’ voice before they could reach Nila.

  Because only his wife mattered now, as always.

  The cavern shook and rumbled as countless voices of stolen souls wailed out in agony, then relief.

  “Oops, we broke it,” he whispered. “Tell me, what’s a lich without a phylactery?”

  She answered with more words that ruptured even more of his cells.

  He had to hold himself together with his power as she tried to escape.

  Teleportation spell.

  At her level and strength, instantaneous.

  At the speed of thought.

  Her only problem was that in the chaos and stress of the destruction of her phylactery she slipped on her psychic defense.

  She had only thought she had cast the spell.

  “Fancy yourself a spider back in your younger, living days?” Cal gestured at the empty mindscape around them. He had found that nothingness was the best way to throw an enemy off-balance. “Well, welcome to my web. Since you’re already dead, I’m not going to tell you it’s time to die. Let’s just call it non-existence. Without that phylactery your soul can go on to her just rewards. It might take tens of thousands of years, but no one is truly immortal. Nor can they escape justice.”

  Cal shredded the Empress of the Frozen Eternities in mind and body until nothing, not even molecules, remained.

  As for the soul?

  He couldn’t really affect that, could he?

  Suiteonem Prime, Suiteonem’s Sanctuary, Suiteonem III, 20136

  A demigod child ate sand.

  Another demigod child, though older and bigger than her, had kicked her in the back and now ground her face through the thin layer of sand and into the harder layer of dirt and crushed rock.

  A bit more and she’d find out what hard stone tasted like.

  The pressure eased suddenly and she sprang up with red and gold in her vision. The iron tang on her tongue and flowing down the back of her throat.

  Rage or die!

  The voice in the back of her head was insistent and laughing.

  She found her assailant on his back fending off wild blows from another demigod child.

  The mage from her convoy.

  Face of a child, but with the body of a woman, as the disgusting adventurers and mercenaries had said to each other while they leered.

  Not quite so angelic or magical as she started to dig her thumbs into the boy’s eyes while slamming his head into the sand.

  Chaos all around her.

  Half-brothers and half-sisters fought each other as if they hadn’t been standing peacefully in neat rows a moment ago.

  A frothing boy, larger than her, but then again everyone in the pit was larger than her, roared with a leaping punch that crushed her nose.

  Before he could follow up, a different girl, just as big and brawny as the boy leapt in with at two-footed kick to the side of his head.

  Sand and dust flew as the two began grappling, hitting and biting each other like two wet cats in a wetter sack.

  A rolling ball of demigod children, all swinging arms and kicking legs, thundered past her.

  A sudden spike of fear filled her.

  She turned frantically, head on a swivel, operating more on animal instinct than rational thought.

  The biggest boy caught her eye.

  Or did she catch his?

  The mouse in front of the cat.

  He was built almost like a man, youth belied by the softness of his round and clean face.

  Veins popped and bulged along with his muscles as it looked like he fought something that she couldn’t see.

  He grit his teeth as he approached with wide, goldshot eyes.

  “Girl, I’m trying— I’m going to knock you—” his head twitched from side to side as if a bee was stinging the inside of his ears. “Out!” he snarled. “Stay— down!”

  He raised an arm that cast a shadow across her face.

  She reacted like that cornered mouse.

  Lessons from her parents.

  Lessons from their houseguards.

  She whipped her foot up as hard as she could.

  Her much bigger half-brother wheezed as the air escaped his lungs.

  Though, what lungs had to do with the area between his legs, she didn’t know.

  Perhaps it was one of those things that made boys and girls different.

  Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

  Other siblings sensed sudden weakness and fell on her most merciful sibling.

  One leapt on his back, choking and pulling at his long, sun-colored hair.

  Another grabbed a muscular leg and began worrying at his thigh like a dog on a bone.

  Two grabbed and arm each and laid punches into his sides.

  “Rraarrgh!” the demigod child said as she launched herself and bit his nose.

  He shoved her away a moment later.

  She scrambled to latch on again when she remembered something.

  A vague recollection.

  A man and woman.

  Faces scratched out.

  Words like gibberish.

  But the feeling, the emotions, came clearer.

  “Breathe,” they seemed to say in calm, soothing voices. “Deep breaths. In and out. Feel the air, guide it into your mouth and down to your lungs. Guide it back out. Again.”

  Vague memories.

  Distant, except they were less than a month old.

  A man and woman on either side of her as together they greeted the rising sun.

  The feel of the soft mat under her feet and hands.

  The scent of the soothing herbs burning in the bowl nearby.

  The tinkling of the water dripping into the babbling stream.

  The chirping of the birds and buzzing of the insects as they, too, greeted the dawn in their own ways.

  The stretch and strain of her muscles as she contorted her body in mimicry of the man and the woman.

  She had always been an angry child.

  One of her earliest memories was biting the General for some inane, childish reason.

  Fortunately, the retired warcat was a gentle and patient soul.

  He had simply sat on her gently until the rage had disappeared alongside her consciousness.

  She remembered more.

  Mother and father had always worked hard with her and consulted experts across many disciplines to teach her to control and manage her anger.

  “Breathe, our precious daughter. It is in you, but it does not have to be you.”

  Their voices penetrated the haze of red-gold rage.

  Not gone.

  Not even close to gone, but her thoughts were no longer that of an animal only desiring to lash out and hurt.

  She crouched low, moving slowly and steadily out of the line of sight of any of her half-siblings not currently engaged in a rage ball.

  The dust clouds helped.

  She grabbed handfuls of sand as she tried to think tactically, like her parents and their retainers had taught her.

  What had that old, wrinkly eidolon said?

  Something, something, Grand Brawl?

  It was hard to remember.

  The destruction of her precious rifle had filled her to overflowing with rage and hatred at the God on his throne.

  No, she decided that he would never be her father.

  She already had one and he loved her and she loved him.

  He was better than any God.

  Right.

  It was a test.

  Everything since they had taken her from her home had been some kind of test or another.

  Could it be something so simple as being the last one standing?

  She watched as one by one, felled half-brothers and half-sisters vanished in a flash of gold light.

  One lay motionless on the sand while another landed repeated stomps on his ruined face until he suddenly vanished causing the stomper to slip and fall, which allowed another to jump on her back and begin slamming her face into the sand using her long, black hair as a steady grip.

  She counted ten face slams before her half-sister vanished.

  Her temporarily victorious half-brother roared and sprayed gold-flecked spittle as he turned frantically in search of another target.

  She scampered away before he noticed her.

  Tactics were all well and good, but it really sucked that she was ten year’s old and everyone else was at least three, four and even seven years older than her.

  The divine blood in her veins meant that she was as strong as a grown man with the potential to be even stronger in spurts when her rage boiled over.

  Her problem was that her half-siblings had the same blood, making them still stronger than her.

  Case in point.

  She failed to skirt the notice of her busty half-sister.

  Less a calm, cool, imperious mage now than a frothing berserker.

  She took a face full of chest as she was tackled to the sand.

  Gross!

  The fleshy mounds threatened to suffocate her as her half-sister scratched and clawed at her face like the General would never do.

  She place her boots on her half-sister’s hips and pushed out to create space for a kick.

  Right between the legs.

  Girls didn’t have the dangly bits that boys had, but that didn’t mean getting cracked there didn’t hurt the same.

  Her half-sister’s beautiful gold eyes widened.

  The clawing ceased, allowing her to slip out from beneath.

  She went on the attack.

  The rage couldn’t be contained.

  It had to be controlled or directed if the former wasn’t possible.

  She grabbed her half-sister’s head and kneed her right in the nose.

  The crunch was satisfying, but she reined the feeling in and disengaged.

  “Let them fight,” her mother had said whenever the retired warcats turned their paws and teeth on each other. “They’re old. They’ll tire quickly.” Worn down teeth and missing claws made such affairs louder than they were dangerous to the participants.

  She ran, leaving her half-sister to get drawn into another bloody brawl.

  The sands ran red with flecks and streams of gold.

  Thus, she spent her time.

  Engaging only when forced by another or her rage overflowing, but just as quickly disengaging.

  Brutal violence in spurts was more manageable for her child body, demigod or not, to handle.

  She watched as others pushed past their physical limits, tearing muscles and ligaments in their rage to inflict pain on anyone in range.

  Her luck ran out when one like her finally noticed what she was doing.

  An older boy, perhaps fifteen or sixteen. Lean and lithe, prowled toward her like the General in his prime.

  He was average in terms of height and size, but his face and clothing exhibited less signs of battle, though his hands were stained red and gold with split knuckles and peeking ivory.

  He gave her a gap-toothed smile.

  “Found you!”

  She tried to run, but he caught her by the scruff of her neck and lifted her up to face him like she was an unruly kitten.

  “A fellow practitioner of the Thirty-six Forms? Or maybe something similar with slight differences? However the forms are practiced on your homeworld. I can tell by the way your breathing or rather, trying to. Some of us try to control it through sheer will or by clenching their muscles up as tight as possible until they have no choice but to unleash it. The forms teach that all must be in unity. Although, the breathing is the biggest key. Well done, sister! I’d allow you to remain on the field, but the longer you stay the greater the danger. I don’t trust their ability to remove us before permanent damage or death. And the risk grows when all that remains are the most dangerous ones.” He spun her around and wrapped his arm around her neck, squeezing on both sides. “From what I’ve observed unconsciousness should trigger removal.”

  She scratched at his arm, but his muscles were like steel cables.

  She kicked back at his shins and knees, but his legs were like steel poles.

  …

  A demigod child awoke in darkness.

  A towering God loomed over her.

  She took in his face, his expressions, his body language like her lessons had taught her.

  She forgot everything immediately.

  “Do you know me, child?”

  “Suiteonem.”

  “God of?”

  “Many things. Anger and rage. In arrogance and rash violence.”

  “Many things indeed.” He smirked. “And who are you.”

  “My name is—.”

  “No. That is a mortal name, yet you are not a fully mortal.” He regarded her with blazing gold eyes. “I see my legacy rising. More control than most. Especially at such an early age.” He leaned closer.

  It felt like her insides were on the verge of boiling over the pot.

  Until it left her like the air from a leaking tire.

  Suiteonem pulled it from her.

  “Worth noticing, but you haven’t earned the right to attack me, my child.”

  She bit back an angry protest.

  She already had a father.

  He raised a brow.

  She remembered that her father was under the God’s power.

  A single word could end a good father in an instant.

  She was a child, but she wasn’t ignorant in how the worlds worked.

  Power did as it willed.

  The more overwhelming the less constrained it was and was there another more powerful than the God looming over her?

  Only other Gods and would they war with this one for a handful of mortals?

  “Who are you?”

  She struggled to keep her face expressionless and to keep the tears from forming as she performed what she considered a deep betrayal.

  “Your daughter.”

  “No.”

  She scowled.

  Despite lessons and practice, children couldn’t help but be more honest than adults.

  “You have no name. You are no daughter of mine.” He sneered down at her. “Not until you earn it. Until that day, you are just a number. Sixty-eight.”

  With that pronouncement she fall asleep in an instant, waking up back in the arena in the next.

  Puddles of crimson streaked and flecked with gold dotted the torn up sand and dirt.

  Sixty-eight? she thought.

  Thirty-one had fallen before her?

  Her head spun a bit and math, never her best subject, danced like her parents’ guards when in their cups.

  She looked around at the rest of her half-siblings to count.

  It was a struggle, but the old, wrinkly eidolon was talking, so she had time.

  A hundred had entered the arena.

  A hundred remained.

  Their injuries had been healed.

  Not even a bruise had been left.

  One of the biggest boys caught her eye and tapped the tip of his nose.

  Intact when she seemed to remember that she had accidentally swallowed a tiny bit when she had bitten it off.

  He smiled at her.

  Was that a good thing? Or a dangerous thing?

  She couldn’t tell, but she resolved to keep her eyes and ears on alert for his revenge.

  It would be good to do the same for the others she had taken flesh from.

  Hopefully most wouldn’t remember the specifics.

  Memory retention wasn’t the greatest when enraged.

  “And so you have passed your first true test. Look around you. All of you remain,” wrinkly eidolon intoned. “Your future tests will not be as kind. Do not shame your God.”

  Suiteonem Prime, Sinaya’s Gift, Apolakan, 213916

  Another day on the reef.

  Today was a day off, so Ragay spent it as he did most of the hottest season. In the ocean.

  Today was a surfing day!

  Talima somehow managed to rope him into sharing a long longboard for two when he had been planning to surf the waves on his much shorter and sleeker board. He eyed the joyful sea brothers and sea sisters with their fins cutting the surface and their sleek, dark gray bodies just beneath the surface alongside those on their shortboards.

  “You look like I stole your pineapple ice,” Talima said.

  “You did. I remember. It was just this morning.”

  “Sure, sure, but I didn’t actually mean that. Am I that unfun to spend time with?”

  “No. It’s just that they don’t like swimming around long longboarders.” He pointed at the sea brothers and sea sisters leaping out of the water, whistling and clicking with joy.

  “You’re going to be out on the break all day. I only have a few hours before I have to go to class.” Talima huffed.

  “Fair. So, shouldn’t we be paddling for a wave. We’ve let, like, seven go by.”

  In lieu of an answer, she leaned back, laying her head uncomfortably close in the gap between his legs straddling the board.

  Dragonflies buzzed, doing loops somewhere down in his stomach or perhaps lower.

  It was fortunate that his ocean shorts were tight and supportive to minimize the swelling.

  He took a moment to look anywhere but down into Talima’s smiling eyes and recited the periodic table in his head or as much as he could remember until the swelling subsided somewhat.

  Talima grinned sharp teeth.

  “Do you want to hear something fun?”

  He swallowed the lump down.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone. I don’t want to burn my source.”

  “Ha! So, he or she is singular. You slipped up, Tali! Score one for me!”

  “Sources!” she snapped out quickly.

  “Too late!”

  “Whatever,” she huffed. “That doesn’t matter anyways. I have many sources. So, I heard your school is going to be having a very special guest soon with, maybe, a very special reward for a chosen few.”

  He thought about it for a long moment.

  “Which school?”

  He had a handful of schools he attended.

  There was basic information school, oceanball school, ocean and coastal land survival school and the most important one, reef defender school.

  “Ummm… my sources were unclear. Maybe all of them?” She shrugged.

  “Not your journalism school? Or homekeeping school?”

  She whistled in derision.

  “I dropped homekeeping last year. Did you forget?”

  He had, indeed forgotten.

  Not that he would admit it.

  Experience had taught him that look on her face with the slightest narrowing of her eyes and focusing of her gaze, which made her look very much like a reef snapper lining up a cowfish for lunch, was a sign to tread carefully and retreat at all haste.

  “No.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Yes, I remember that you were doing so good in journalism school that you tricked your carers into agreeing to let you drop homekeeping if you won that pen thing.”

  The predatory gaze softened and she was back to smiling sunshine once more.

  Girls could be so like the sudden storms over the deep oceans that came and went as they pleased.

  Why?

  “The Golden Pen is a prestigious award for the most promising young journalists. Only ten win it each year across all the islands of Sinaya’s Gift.” She smiled with the smug that only she could get away with. At least with him.

  It was strange how that worked.

  She seemed to be able to get away with anything with him.

  He may have been not as sharp of mind as her, but he wasn’t completely oblivious like the diskfloater.

  The huge fish was slow, blind and dumb, seeming to serve solely as a meal for other ocean dwellers.

  He had enough self-awareness to notice that about their dynamic.

  “Yes. I was very happy for you when you told me. Especially, since you hated homekeeping so much.”

  “Aww! Thanks, Raggy!” She patted his bare knee and gave it a long squeeze.

  The blazing sun was hot, but his skin and scales were great protection.

  Nope.

  The flash of heat he felt came from within.

  Pretty Talima spread her arms and legs, splashing the gently rising and falling water with her colorful arm and leg fins opening.

  “Wait! Tali! Stop! You’re spinning us the wrong way!”

  And he had felt a really good wave coming too.

  Not nearly as cool as the huge, tunnel forming ones on the other side of the reef to their right.

  Nope.

  Their section of the reef produced barely chest high waves, but they were uniform and they ran a long distance since the ocean shelf beneath the waves had been turned into a uniformly flat expanse just for that reason.

  Talima laughed.

  “It’s fine if we miss a few waves. That way the olds will feel ashamed for giving us the stinky eyes.”

  He glanced at the older surfers.

  To be fair to them, they hadn’t actually been giving him and Talima the stinky eyes.

  They were all locals.

  And only those with the worst displays of wave-sharing etiquette got the stinky eyes.

  Neither age, status, nor class mattered.

  All were equal on the waves.

  He sighed.

  The actual surfing to wave ratio for the outing was not going to be good.

  Talima sat up suddenly.

  He got excited cause he thought it meant they were going to catch finally catch a wave.

  “Oh, yeah! I almost forgot. You’re going to the cookout tonight. It’s after your last class.”

  She pulled her thin, transparent crystal disk from the pouch tied around her shapely, bare thigh. She poked and swiped, then held it up to him, showing him the messages in her group talk.

  “You’d know if you didn’t keep ‘forgetting’ to stay in the group. Everyone’s going to be there, see.”

  He vaguely recognized most of the names.

  People from her journalism class.

  He saw Naujon’s name and felt a scowl forming.

  The face must be mastered above all things for it could reveal more than even words.

  Aunty Bilaya had told him that many times.

  His favorite carer had been an oceanball and duelist star in her youth until a devastating injury had forced retirement. She could have still been one of the best in one of the lower level leagues, but once she had tasted the black waters of the deepest trench the lighter waters closer to the surface would always be bitter. She had then entered some kind of combat profession, which she had spoken of not at all.

  He owed his proficiency in the combat arts to her tutelage.

  Perhaps, more than that he owed her for standing against his other carers when they had wanted to steer him toward safer passions.

  Talima gave him a prim smile and turned around.

  “So, you’ll be there!”

  It took him many seconds to answer as his attention was captivated by the sight of her very firm and very round backside. Like two large oceanmelons next to each other separated by a thin string that disappeared into a shadowed crevice.

  He almost followed the string down to—

  No!

  One didn’t look without permission.

  His carers had taught him that.

  “Paddle!” Talima dug powerful strokes into the clear water.

  It took him a long moment to do the same.

  The way her slim muscles flexed, the way her body undulated, the way her backside—

  He put his head down.

  There was no danger of looking at more than he should have so long as he stared at the dark brown surface of the board.