Nila stared at the three items encased in that special magic ice behind a seven-layered defense consisting of shields and spells that would do everything from disintegrate to polymorph to mind blank, permanently, thieves and unauthorized interlopers.

  Naturally, Cal had disabled all of those.

  The empress had many armories and treasure chambers scattered throughout the Frozen Eternities.

  This one was roughly the size of an Earth basketball arena with the three items suspended in their pillars of ice at center court and at both baselines where the hoops would be.

  “Do I really have to switch my armor?”

  “They’ve never left their prisons for a reason. Any one would put you firmly in the top tier of this world.” He pointed left to right. “The one wearing that one almost got the empress. Took out ninety percent of her entire undead horde and sixty percent of her Ten-thousand Fingers. That one lost to Suiteonem. And that one, also Suiteonem. He came after them personally because they proved worthy by killing and destroying a lot of his eidolons and elites.”

  “I get why the first one is here, but the other two?”

  “Gifts from Suiteonem. For the potential entertainment value.”

  “I don’t like that they’re alive. It’s creepy having a voice in my head.”

  “Are they truly alive? Or is it more a copy of the sacrificed child’s consciousness?”

  “That is horrible and not a selling point. I’m not going to use a poor baby as a weapon. Give them to someone else or do something better, like, I don’t know… free them!”

  “They can’t just be worn by anyone. No classes allowed and a minimum level of superhuman physicals required. Those on this world that meet the pre-reqs are firmly in Suiteonem’s Empyeal Guard. It won’t be that much different to the V.I.’s in our armors, except with a personality.”

  She gave him an unimpressed look.

  The flat stare, the arched brows, the slightly open mouth like she wanted to call him a moron but was too polite.

  Their son had picked it up from her.

  A hand dug sharp claws into his heart.

  “A child’s? That’s very different.”

  “They will keep you safe and allow you to take care of things if I’m not around. Why not? We’ve already talked about this. I thought you were okay with it. I mean not okay, but at least willing to stomach it for as long as we’re on this world.”

  “They’re children. It doesn’t matter if they’re copies. You should free them. Not use them.”

  “We don’t even know if they want that. I can’t find out unless I wear them. And if I do that I seal the bond and you can’t wear them until I die or I stop wearing them for around fifty years.”

  He didn’t add that he knew that if he did wear one and asked the consciousness what they wanted, he’d do it. And he was a coward that didn’t want to be faced with that potential decision. There was more than enough hypocrisy awaiting him.

  “What if the one I choose wants to die. I mean for real? Can you do it?”

  He shook his head.

  “I can take them apart at the molecular level. It’ll take time and I’m guessing it’ll be painful. The quickest way will be to throw them into the sun. It’s a long trip, but less pain at the end. Except…”

  “What?”

  “There’s the bond. The feedback will probably kill you or shatter your mind.”

  “So, I wear one and I’m stuck with using a child’s consciousness as a weapon for a minimum of fifty years.” She raised a finger. “Yes, I know we discussed this. And I don’t care if you think they enjoy fighting on some level. Whether that was put into them by the bastards that turned them into a weapon or not. It doesn’t make difference to me.”

  “You can wear them to fight only monsters or the worst of the worst. You need one to keep the Empyreals from using their psychic powers on you anyways. I put walls around your mind, but they degrade over time. Once you’ve bonded to one of them you won’t even have to wear them. Proximity is enough to shield you. That’s part of the reason they managed to force Suiteonem to come out and deal with them himself.”

  “It’s the using them to fight at all that’s the problem.” She took a deep breath, her voice softened. “And I don’t want a child.”

  He let silence linger though he already knew what he wanted to say.

  “This isn’t about anything other than what we’re here to do.”

  Nila reached out to squeeze his real hand.

  “I know. I just don’t want to do this and I’m dragging my feet. So, which one do you think I should ask to help us?”

  He went left to right again.

  “That one’s called Carlot’s Lamentation. Then the Ashen Phoenix. And War God. Suiteonemiades researched each extensively despite his father’s attempts to destroy or make that information inaccessible.”

  “Please tell me the first one is good enough?”

  “Why?”

  “The people that made these sacrificed a child, right?”

  “No one knows. They all originated from different humanoid peoples on different worlds. Convergent development, not divergent, from what the information said.”

  “Well, the only way I can stomach this is if can tell myself that the people who did it to the child didn’t want to and carried the guilt until they died.”

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

  “Rape choke!”

  A hungry voice.

  An iron grip.

  Sixty-eight found herself grabbed by the throat and thrust back inside her cell and on to her bed before she could blink the moment she stepped into the hall.

  “Hey, Dono! Got one! I think it’s that little girlie from the convoy. Get over here and watch my back. Then we’ll switch.”

  An ugly, scarred face leered, dripping spit on her face and filling her nose with the stench of the demon’s liquid.

  Her senses had begun to heighten minutes after the Grand Brawl.

  Unwashed hands pulled at her thin, lightweight sleeping trousers.

  Dirty fingers scratched her skin as they roughly jerked.

  “No grass on the field, but that’s how I like them! Ain’t that right, Dono! We get older, but they keep getting younger!”

  Laughter from the doorway.

  Hungry, mocking, cruel.

  “Gods she got Meven! Oh well, he was always too stupid to think before rushing in. No matter how many times I tried to warn the poor bastard.”

  The man that must’ve been Dono was just a silhouette in the doorway with the dim light crystals in the hallway at his back.

  “Hurry it up, Trum! I’m wasting fucking time standing here. And don’t do her too rough. I don’t want a loose pussy.”

  “Fuck off! I’ll do her however you want. ‘Sides, she’s got two other holes.”

  The dirty hand tightened, but too late, for she had taken in a deep breath and she could hold her breath almost as long as a sea dog.

  Her parents had trained her for countless scenarios including this one.

  She spat in Trum’s eye.

  “Feisty little slut.”

  He stopped ripping at her underclothes to slap her.

  Or rather, he tried.

  She twisted and bit the falling hand like a vicious weasel.

  Stronger than a man three times her size, but Trum was some kind of warrior class, which made him still stronger.

  Then again, that bite force concentrated in a smaller mouth with smaller teeth?

  An iron tang hit her taste buds on the way down her throat.

  She gagged, but had the focus to use Trum’s natural instinct to pull away from pain.

  It was only for a split-second, but she had divine blood in her.

  Fingers loosened around her throat.

  She grabbed one and ripped it backwards.

  A loud crack and snap and pop.

  Trum grunted as he recoiled.

  Space created.

  Foot thrust into his flopping dirty weapon.

  Another sound.

  Like that of smashed grapes when making wine.

  Dim lighting, but she could see his eyes water.

  She leapt and tore out the rapist’s throat with her teeth.

  The pot had boiled over.

  Her vision became a red haze tinged with flecks and streaks of gold.

  “Gonna do you even worse for that you little slut.”

  She could see a Skill taking shape in the aura around Dono’s scarred, battered fist.

  She kicked the dying Trum at the other rapist.

  No Skills to save his life.

  The thought made the rational girl inside the enraged demigod smile.

  For the first time the two sides of her were in accord.

  No guilt in killing rapists.

  Never!

  She leapt.

  Stars flashed.

  She was on her desk, scattered books, papers and writing tools everywhere.

  “Tough little slut. You might be able to take one knockout punch, but can you take two?”

  Muscular arms snaked around Dono’s thick neck and squeezed.

  The big warrior instantly threw elbows into his assailant’s ribs with one arm while ripping at the hand controlling his head.

  The eyes of one of her half-brothers glowed red-gold.

  His mouth was frozen in a snarl.

  “Weasel!”

  It was hard to think while in the haze.

  Instinct.

  Muscle Memory.

  That was all she had.

  It was like riding an angry quadhorn.

  She grabbed a pen and buried it into Dono’s right eye before she registered her action.

  Her half-brother roared as he tightened his chokehold.

  Dono kicked her off as she found his brain with her pen.

  He elbowed and kicked for a what felt like a long time as his warrior body delayed death.

  Whether he had a Skill or not, she was barely coherent enough to care.

  She found another pen and added it to his remaining eye.

  Her half-brother left as quickly as he had arrived.

  Dono died, emptying his bowels shortly after just like Trum and the first rapist she had killed.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  She stomped between his legs until the only thing left in his trousers was a bloody smear of ground up meat.

  She wanted more.

  The divine rage needed more.

  The girl found a way to force the demigod to pick up her pointy stick before heading out into the chaos.

  The stench of human waste filled the air, mixing with that of spells and Skills.

  A fireball streaked past her, turning her keen vision blindingly white for a few seconds.

  She heard an impact, then the explosion, then flesh slapping against stone.

  One of her half-sisters rose on fire and screeched as she charged the fireball-slinging mage.

  Two hits.

  That’s all it took for her burning half-sister to break the back of the rapist’s head against the floor like it was just an egg.

  Crimson flowed across stark white.

  Not that she could see colors when everything was covered in the red-gold haze.

  “I’ll kill all of you!” One of her larger half-brothers took blurring punches to his stomach while he squeezed the rapist’s head between his hands. “I’ll kill you all!”

  He roared.

  The rapist roared.

  “Rapid Strikes! Rapid Strikes! Rapid Strikes!”

  Desperation ended with loud cracks followed by a wet, squelching sound.

  Sixty-eight was assaulted from all directions by crying and pleading.

  Except this time, she was dimly aware that none were in the voices of children.

  Her half-sister with a woman’s body ran past her half naked with only her underpants.

  The blood and guts covering her lacked any gold flecks and streaks.

  “Thunder’s Rush!”

  A rapist met her half-sister’s charge, pummeling her in the face as he blasted her into the wall with a deafening crack.

  “Spin her around and chain her up, Vanc!” he snapped at the rapist rushing up to join him. “Let’s teach this slut a lesson!”

  “Are you God’s fucking crazy, Jaid? Look around! We have to get out of here!”

  “Do you see any doors? Windows? They ported us in. Face it, we got tricked. This ain’t no treasure chest, it’s a God’s fucked dire mimic!”

  “Then we need to regroup, find a defensible position while we figure out how to portal out of here.”

  “I’m not dying without wetting my dick at least once. Not going to waste this opportunity. Ain’t gonna tell the boys in Sesre’s Field that I got killed by a bunch of demigod kids before I took one for a ride.”

  “Fine.” Vanc waved a hand. “Chains of Lustron.”

  Spectral chains spread her half-sisters arms and legs to their limit.

  Jaid fumbled with his belt.

  The idiots hadn’t noticed Sixty-eight.

  Sure she was small and in a shadow of a pillar.

  But that was no excuse.

  Regret went out of Vanc’s mouth like her crimson-tipped stick.

  The chains vanished with the caster’s life.

  Jaid turned.

  Her half-sister bore him to the floor and smashed his face into the stone until it was so much ground meat.

  Sixty-eight sought another target for her rage.

  A thin beam of light pierced right through her shoulder. There was no force to knock her back or spin her around.

  The mage screamed as three of her half-siblings smashed him into the floor like a flatcake.

  The rage roared at them.

  It was mine! the demigod thought.

  A hand grabbed the back of her neck before she could attack them all.

  “Sixty-eight, that one’s dead.”

  She tried to turn and swing, but her half-brother held her off the floor.

  His golden eyes only had a little red to them.

  He looked vaguely familiar.

  Not that she recognized his face, but more that she vaguely remembered the Grand Brawl where he was the only one speaking in complete sentences and not frothing at the mouth.

  “Let’s help out with that one.”

  A hulking greenskin, bigger and broader than the humans, stood like a quadhorn mobbed by nipping sarchuses.

  He threw demigod kids off by the handful, but more just kept pilling on.

  They pulled at his braided hair, hooked fingers into his mouth, stretching, tearing the flesh of his cheeks.

  One eye hung loose, swinging like a pendulum.

  “Okay, you get behind him and stick that spear up his hole. It’s a fitting punishment. I’ll smash him with this.” Her half-brother brandished a severed arm.

  The shoulder bone glistened white in a sea of pink and red.

  She did what he asked.

  It didn’t take a lot of rational brain power.

  Rage-filled instinct took to the maneuver like a fish to water.

  The greenskin roared and spun, throwing children off.

  He raised a fist bigger than her head.

  But the blow never fell.

  A loud thud reverberated through the hallway.

  His eyes unfocused.

  Her half-brother struck him with the severed arm club several times until the greenskin fell to the floor twitching.

  “Please carry on my brothers and sisters.”

  He strolled away.

  Sixty-eight followed.

  She sniffed more opportunities.

  Her half-naked half-sister seemed to come to the same conclusion.

  The rapists weren’t all human and one greenskin.

  They came across a reptileman gnawing on a sibling’s neck.

  They turned the reptileman into a wet pile.

  Sixty-eight’s coherent half-brother regarded the gurgling boy for a long moment.

  She waited, but could feel the pull to join the rest of the carnage in front of them.

  “It doesn’t seem fair that your out of the competition on the first night.” He shrugged. “At least you’ll owe me a life debt.” He kneeled to put pressure on the leaking holes in the boy’s neck.

  Her half-sister snatched her half-brother’s club and dashed off to brain a fur-covered, dog-faced man trying to mount one of their half-brothers.

  “Hey! Get your own arm club!”

  She ignored him as she rushed deeper into the fray.

  The pot had boiled over and no one was turning down the heat.

  Red-gold haze.

  A man with his trousers around his ankles being stomped in the head and back by a pair of demigod children?

  Stick in the hole.

  The rage could fixate when out of control.

  The next man she reached still had his trousers on properly, so she stabbed him in the side of his neck.

  Shit on the jagged edge meant an infection.

  Not that he’d live long enough to worry about it.

  The wound gushed crimson as he fell to his knees.

  Another demigod child kicked him in the face.

  Sixty-eight took the time to poke a few more holes in him before moving on.

  “Ironskin!”

  A slim man with a dirty beard had his back to the wall, punching at the demigod kids ripping fingernails off and breaking hands on his pale-colored flesh.

  His shirtless torso was awash with read and covered with gouges deep enough that she saw glistening white ribs peeking out through the pink.

  She roared, charging through the press to break her pointy stick on his gut.

  His mouth opened.

  She jammed what was left of her stick down his throat, making him gag.

  The rest left her behind as her half-siblings roughly pushed her aside to get their kilogram of flesh as the man’s Skill faded with his life.

  “Inferno Dance!”

  Another rapist danced a firestorm in the hallway.

  Demigod children burned.

  The biggest boy, nearly a man, charge through and caught the dancer off-guard.

  Steps faltered, flame sputtered.

  The boy flattened the rapist against a pillar.

  Flesh and bone yielded against stone.

  If the rapist had ironskin like the other one he might’ve survived a few of those.

  The red-gold haze filled the dormitory.

  A trap.

  A test.

  Somewhere at the upper reaches of the World Tree a God smiled as he watched the carnage.

  …

  Suiteonem called for the next woman to be sent to his breeding suite.

  While he waited, he idly listened to his eidolons going over his children’s first true test.

  “No deaths. Truly a blessing from our God.”

  “Twenty-six were sullied.”

  “Those twenty-six killed their attackers and several more in retribution, reclaiming their honor.”

  “Am I to authorize restoration for them?”

  Silence.

  It took a moment for him to realize they had looked to him.

  “Restoration for all of them. Not a single one failed to at least claim two kills.”

  “Thought healers, my God? The traumatic—”

  “Will build strength. They will keep their anger close lest they get caught unawares a second time.”

  “Then we move on to the next item on the agenda. Have you decided on where the Calamity will take place? And the participants?”

  “I see no reason to deviate from the schedule. The Frozen Eternities shall sweep northward and consume the Empire of Man in an eternal winter.”

  Well, not an eternal one.

  That was boring.

  At least a few centuries.

  That was what he usually allowed.

  “I shall leave the rest to you, my servants.”

  His next breeder was ready.

  This was the way to do a vacation properly.

  Watching entertaining fighting and fucking high quality women.

  It was so nice not to have to deal with his family’s constant squabbling.

  Suiteonem Prime, Sinaya’s Gift, Lakapatian, 213916

  “Miss Karagatan, I need to say— goodbye.”

  Aunty Bilaya, Talima, his house, his friends.

  Their faces flashed in his thoughts.

  Their voices in his ears.

  He could see and hear despite the blood rushing to his head like a river.

  So fast, so loud.

  His heart thumped like the foot of an angry sphere-tailed thumper.

  “They will be informed of your honor.”

  She carried them in a bubble through the dark depths of Sinaya’s ocean.

  He watched the ocean itself swirl across the portions of her scales and skin not covered by her skintight suit of glittering scales.

  So, her arms and face.

  He dared a look at the latter.

  And regretted it.

  She looked so sad.

  He didn’t like seeing the hero and champion of his people as less than the god-like being in his thoughts.

  “But—”

  “Silence, if all you plan to do is whine like a child. Are you not a junior reef defender?”

  “Yes, Miss Karagatan.”

  Her voice softened a bit.

  “We don’t question Sinaya’s Will. She has chosen you. One among a few. It is the greatest honor one of our people can receive.”

  Her melancholic tone suggested differently.

  Aunty Bilaya had always said that he shouldn’t get attached to his favorite oceanball stars.

  They were flawed people just like any other.

  No better, nor worse.

  Just people.

  He had thought that didn’t apply to the Karagatan, who was, literally, better than any other.

  “How long do I, uh, how long will I…”

  “Now that is an appropriate question. Sadly, I don’t know.”

  “But you went through this, didn’t you? To become the Karagatan?

  Her voice grew heavy with the weight of the kilometers of ocean pressing in from all directions.

  “I only know this life. I opened my eyes in service to Sinaya and her people. The person I was, everything she did or knew vanished completely. I found no records of that person’s existence. No true family, nor true friends came to me.”

  “True?”

  “Many false ones did. Seeking fame, power or desperate aid.”

  He kept sneaking peeks at her out of the corners of his eyes.

  “May I refuse?”

  He saw Talima’s pretty face, her firm curves.

  That magical night at the cove.

  Frantic hands, mouths and other things.

  Was that their first and last time?

  Others would move in like hermit crabs.

  It wasn’t fair.

  He had dreamed of this, but now that it had seized him off the reef he knew only regret.

  The thought filled him with a desperate urge to swim out of the bubble.

  But, they were moving so fast through the black depths.

  What if they were too deep for him to survive?

  What would suddenly slowing do to him?

  At this speed he could easily imagine the water tearing him apart. Or it could be like slamming into the side of a stone wall.

  “You may not. This is Sinaya’s Will.”

  “But, I don’t believe I’m capable.”

  “The Ocean Mother chose you.”

  “If I may send a message to my Aunty Bilaya and Talima, my…”

  His what exactly?

  Friend was no longer sufficient.

  They hadn’t settled on anything after that night.

  They thought they had all the time in the world.

  “Not at this time. My orders were clear. There may be an opportunity later? Though I cannot promise you anything.”

  Miss Karagatan kept her black eyes fixed straight ahead.

  He suddenly got a sense that as hard as it was for him to look at her directly, perhaps it was just as hard for her to look at him.

  The oath that had been singing in his head for weeks had grown deafening as their swim continued.

  How long they traveled or how far?

  He didn’t know and he was too scared to ask.

  The black ocean depths left nothing for his eyes to use as marks and the Karagatan’s bubble meant he couldn’t use echolocation.

  He saw an immense shape ahead.

  The Karagatan slowed.

  “My home.”

  He saw an immense thing.

  A craft or a city?

  Its outer surface resembled the rough, rock-like texture of a deep ocean singer, complete with millions of growths.

  Small ocean creatures dotted the surface, spitting out tiny streams of water as they fed on the microscopic life drifting past.

  He couldn’t help his jaw dropping, nor the excitement welling up to submerge his anxiety and fear.

  For that brief moment thoughts of Talima sank just a little deeper.

  “I suppose it’s your home now.”

  “What comes next?”

  A door opened like the opening of an ocean singer’s massive eye.

  “I truly don’t know. If I remembered I would share. I shall advocate for you and the others, but all must go according to Sinaya’s Will. All of us must obey, whether it upsets or makes us sad. Trust in our sacrifices, for they will make things better for all our people.”

  “I will try.”

  “That’s all I can ask of you, Ragay. In truth, I wish you lacked the potential. I wish everyone lacked the potential.” She brought them through the thick layer separating the outside ocean and the inner waterlock chamber. “Welcome to Sonombera.”