Sixty-eight frowned.

  She either did that or scowled as far as facial expressions went when not fighting.

  It was important to her not to give them any hint into her thoughts.

  A change in demeanor would lead to suspicion.

  Why, for example, was she excited to be venturing into the World Tree for the first time in the better part of the year since she had arrived?

  Dormitory to school grounds and back via portal was her schedule.

  As far as she knew the former was located somewhere inside the Tree based on the lack of windows.

  The only thing she knew of the latter’s location was that it was on a massive platform sticking out of the trunk like a flat, disc-shaped mushroom or maybe an especially gargantuan branch based on it being exposed to the outside. Unless they somehow faked the sun and the sky.

  She didn’t know much about the tree.

  A few lessons had given her a brief overview of the many settlements and peoples living in and on the tree.

  The former ranged in size from villages in the hundreds to cities in the millions while the latter numbered in the dozens of unique species and subspecies drawn from across Suiteonem’s many worlds.

  She had known of the tree prior to laying eyes on it and living in it from her lessons back home. It had sounded like something out of myth. A tree sitting astride a mountain range with roots comparable in size to said mountains. With natural arteries and voids large enough to contain entire ecosystems. Forests, lakes and lifeforms inside a tree!

  It was so fantastical, so filled with magic!

  If only she could’ve enjoyed the impossibility made possible.

  The thought pulled her back.

  An excursion gave her an opportunity to scout her surroundings, to look for opportunities to push her go home plan forward.

  She remembered the spire she had arrived through.

  Something about the tree’s inherent magical nature pushed spires away faraway from its sphere.

  That meant she needed transit.

  They had taken a slow convoy, but she expected that there were faster ways. Better vehicles, perhaps? Portals seemed likely. She remembered seeing a raised road a short distance from the regular road. Rail? And airships had to be present. Her homeworld had them and if this world was Suiteonem’s prime world then it had to have airships or even better, faster things. Her world wasn’t even one of the highest ranked ones in his empire.

  “Next!”

  The portal keeper bellowed.

  Sixty-eight followed the rest of her lochos through the glowing opening.

  She was doing the rearguard. Definitely not putting as many bodies between her and potential ambush on the other side.

  Fou’s Fallen Folly.

  A few details about the settlement popped up in her vision.

  About two-hundred fifty thousand people in a variety of species.

  So, a large town or a small city depending on one’s perspective.

  For her it was a medium-sized city.

  “Named after one of our father’s defeated,” Seven said.

  Thirty-two cleared his throat.

  “Naming conventions of their settlements tend to descriptive of location or commemoration of our father’s conquests.”

  A smiling person with skin tone like old blood and three twisting horns coming out of her head like a crown greeted them.

  Seven and Fifteen vied to speak for the group.

  Sixty-eight didn’t care.

  She had more important things to pay attention to.

  The portal room was less a room than an arch in the middle of a kill zone.

  Magical defenses tickled her senses.

  When she had arrived on Suiteonem Prime she had been blind and deaf to such things.

  Things had changed in less than a year.

  The fruits of time and hard practice.

  Armed guards focused on her lochos.

  Hands tightened.

  Beads of sweat glistened on their foreheads, dripping wet tracks down like waterfalls, yet not a single guard took their hands off their weapons and their eyes off her and the others to wipe.

  The air was cool thanks to a light, but constant breeze.

  How did an enclosed city have a breeze?

  Her thoughts defaulted to magic or Skills.

  The sun shined down.

  She squinted.

  False sun, but she wouldn’t bet a single coin on her assessment, which was really more of a guess.

  Eighty grunted.

  Thirty-two shrugged.

  “It feels and looks just like the sun, but it can’t be since Fou’s Fallen Folly is inside a branch. Near the junction to the trunk on the northeast side, if I remember correctly.”

  Eighty snorted.

  “You know you did. Show some courage in your strength.”

  Thirty-two fell silent allowing the conversation between the smiling guide and Seven and Fifteen to filter its way to Sixty-eight.

  Boots thudded on the hard, gray street.

  She eyed it briefly, deciding that she couldn’t tell the difference between the street inside and outside.

  Single level structures lined both sides, but they were dark, empty.

  Other than the guide and guards there were no other people around them.

  Sixty-eight followed on autopilot while she soaked in her surroundings.

  Wood and greenery were everywhere, dominating the space.

  Fruit-bearing trees and bushes outnumbered the structures, most of which appeared to have been grown out of the ground, which she had to remind herself was just a surface of the World Tree.

  “Where is everybody?” Eighty said.

  Thirty-two sighed.

  “They are minimizing exposure, obviously. The real question is whose exposure?”

  The brisk walk ended outside the largest structure in the area.

  Five levels occupied two street block.

  A gleaming outer shell armored it in metal. Enchanted, if she trusted her divine senses.

  Weapons emplacements, some visible, some not, covered all conceivable lines of fire.

  Inside was like an ant hive ready to start a war march.

  More guards and civilian staff uniformed in gold and red. Most were armed and armored.

  The guide led them through.

  Just like at the portal, Sixty-eight noticed hands going to weapons.

  Eighty bristled like a spine-backed catclops, but kept her pot from boiling over.

  Guards opened double doors.

  Sixty-eight met her first member of her fath— God’s Empyreal Guard.

  He somehow loomed over another man despite being a head shorter and half as broad.

  “Commander Kichatrix. Since when did you turn this place into a carer home?”

  “Since our God said so.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about a carer mission.”

  The commander sighed.

  “And how often do you speak to our God or even an eidolon?”

  “I’ve been busy setting up the destruction of the Scarlet Reapers.”

  “Too late for complaints, mighty guardsman.” The commander nodded at her and the others respectfully. “I welcome you to Fou’s Fallen Folly on behalf of the garrison. It is our great honor to serve, demigods.”

  The empyreal guard grimaced and repeated the greeting with less enthusiasm, but some sincerity.

  Suiteonem Prime, Sonombera, Mapulondas, 213916

  Ragay needed to talk to someone.

  Aunty Bilaya?

  Talima?

  By the dry hell desert for the punishment of sinners he’d settle for Chamba.

  He needed to speak of the Merquani he had personally killed.

  The first thinking beings he had killed.

  As a junior reef defender the possibility had been at the forefront of his mind.

  The teachings had prepared him. Or so he had thought.

  Reality disabused him.

  The sounds of his hard water constructs piercing soft flesh— the cries for mothers, fathers, children— the scents of a once-living body relinquishing its grip on life—

  They hadn’t left him even after months.

  His only solace was that Miss Karagatan had said that it wasn’t likely that he would have to lay judgment upon those that violated Sinaya’s sacred laws until after he had passed the trial period.

  The slight hum of the recording device pulled him back to his reality.

  Its blinking light seemed to him to lay a judgment of its own upon his actions on that ship.

  “Ahh! Cursed drylanders!”

  He had allowed his thoughts to go on a swim while his body remained in the chair.

  Another aborted message deleted.

  Miss Karagatan hadn’t said anything about secrecy.

  Therefore, he should’ve been okay to share his story with Aunty Bilaya and Talima.

  But, what if that, too, was a test?

  The creeping question scratching at his edges and growing more insistent as time passed whispered.

  Is it a bad thing if I failed?

  Another potential had stopped showing up to the group lessons a few weeks ago.

  Is she back home?

  Surrounded by those she cared about and cared about her?

  Or did failure mean something more… final?

  Rationally, he couldn’t take the risk.

  Continued living meant a chance to see his loved ones again.

  He started recording for the fifth time.

  “Aunty Bilaya. I killed people. Fifteen or seventeen. I can’t remember. I tried the memory techniques you taught me, but I continue to fail. That makes it worse, doesn’t it? That I can’t even remember them all. They were drylanders, Merquani, but you taught me that it doesn’t matter if we’re different. That we are all thinking beings. That we all, want and deserve to live. They were violating a sacred agreement with Sinaya, so the judgment was just and right. If that’s indisputable, then why does it still stick like a fish bone in my gums? I… I want to… not forget… not exactly… I just want to sleep without them in my dreams. I want to close my eyes without seeing the fear and hate on their faces. I want to listen to the sounds of Sonombera without hearing their death cries. I—” His desk rattled. It took him a moment to realized that it had been his fist landing like a hammer. “Damn. I can’t send that. It’d only worry her more.”

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  He scrapped it again and since he was out of time went to sleep instead.

  Dreams and nightmares.

  Same as always.

  Death and dying at his hands.

  …

  Ragay’s control wavered. The fish construct wobbled like a smoker that had been breathing the happy smoke all afternoon before dispersing into cold water.

  Because they were in one of the underwater training chambers they used a device that placed a tiny gem in their ear and one on the side of their jaw.

  Subvocalization translated the movement of their mouth into audible words.

  Miss Karagatan’s face revealed nothing of her thoughts as always.

  The same couldn’t be said of the rest of the potentials.

  He imagined they could say the same thing about him.

  At least he wasn’t the only one having trouble concentrating.

  “There is always an event where one learns what type of warrior they are.” Miss Karagatan’s mouth didn’t move as far as he could see.

  They felt a lecture coming on so each potential powered down their hooked staffs and assumed the rest position that each found most comfortable.

  For Ragay it was to simply stand floating in the cold comfort of Sinaya’s waters, to let it soothe him as it always did with the gentle undulations of its currents.

  “There are warriors that become ill on the eve of battle, yet once the bloodshed begins their stomachs settle and when it finishes they sleep soundly like a child in their carer’s arms. There are warriors that smile and laugh with childish excitement in anticipation of the fight, yet become sick in the aftermath. There are those that are ill throughout or those whose excitement and joy never wavers. Then there are those that feel nothing. Theses turn Sinaya’s waters crimson as though it was any other mundane task. To them killing another thinking being is no different than clearing a home of vermin.”

  She let silence flow through the gentle currents swirling inside the training chamber for a time so that the potentials could ponder.

  Ragay thought her meaning clear.

  All warriors were different and he suspected that she expected him to accept and handle it according to what kind he was.

  He supposed from that perspective he should be thankful for his inner struggle of the last months.

  A warrior that felt joy at bloodshed or worse, felt nothing, wasn’t the kind of person he wanted to be.

  That person wasn’t worthy of Aunty Bilaya’s teachings, nor of Talima’s attention.

  “But what all warriors in Sinaya’s service must have is the will to serve at their best at all times despite every other concern they may have. To do less is to waste potential and to waste potential might lead to greater pain for all peoples of Sinaya in the future. I am nothing beyond my service.” Miss Karagatan’s voice rose uncharacteristically. “Sinaya calls and I answer ‘yes’. There is no deed beyond my reach. No sacrifice too painful to embrace.” The masked slipped, but she put it back on so fast that Ragay doubted his eyes had seen it. “We shall cease training for today. The rest is yours to do with as you will. I recommend you reflect on my words and find yourselves. You can do no less for our Mother.”

  Was she telling then it was alright to quit?

  Suiteonem Prime, Mountainholds, December, 2057

  Cal watched the king of Snow Bear Hold pensively watching the action from his invasion projected on a white stone wall by her shamans’ totems while her staff moved around her like frantic ants.

  He touched her thoughts just enough to keep the rising tide of panic from drowning her.

  King Kymely hadn’t even wanted to be the king. Younger her had only acceded to her mother’s pressure. She wasn’t actually supposed to win. Her opponents had been just the worse people. Even that wouldn’t have doomed her had they not split the vote, leaving her the winner by default.

  “Think calm thoughts,” she muttered.

  The war room was on one of the upper floors of the King’s Tower from which most governance was done. Not at the very top and its specific location was a deeply guarded secret known only to a few at any one time. Mind spells helped protect the secrecy as even she would have that information erased whenever she’d finally lose an election.

  The next one, hopefully.

  Then again she always, hopefully, thought that ever since she had won the first one.

  Fifteen years and counting.

  “Tikla, a draugr?”

  She turned from the wall of projections to her Supreme Shaman.

  The middle-aged woman’s muscular arms bulged as she sat cross-legged in front of her main totem, a child-sized carving from the Ice Eternal of a snow bear in peaceful repose.

  “Tikla?”

  “Busy here, your kingsome-ness.”

  Under normal circumstances she’d curse out her older cousin with good-natured vulgarity.

  It had been their dynamic since their childhood.

  “The hold is supposed to be safe from spirit-type undead,” she ground out.

  “And it has been.” Tikla out-grounded out her.

  “Yes, since…” she thought quickly, desperate. “The gheist lord thirty years ago.” It took truly powerful undead spirits to force through the shamans’ totems of protection. “Are we in danger? The safeholds.” Her children were in the best one not far beneath her tower.

  “It’s too late to do anything but trust in the shamans protecting them.” Tikla grunted.

  “Let us do more. Perhaps I should switch to a different Skill?”

  “Sure, you could empower every weapon in the hold to be able to harm spirit-types, but then your warriors will run screaming from the fear and terror effects the stronger undead are generating.”

  War Leader Hayvarthrun caught the king’s eye with a subtle gesture.

  She knew the old warrior itched to fight in the shield walls with the other warriors, but he had given three-fourths of his limbs over the course of a lifetime of doing just that. He had the finest replacement limbs courtesy of Snow Bear Hold’s best craftsmen and enchanters, but they wouldn’t last long in sustained combat, which would leave him with three dead, heavy limbs.

  “My king… our warriors will not run. They do not know fear.”

  Tikla chuckled despite the strain evident in her clenched muscles and waterfall of sweat darkening the light-colored stone beneath her in a way that Kymely would’ve turned into a joke about wetting oneself had the situation not been so dire.

  The war leader bristled.

  She forestalled his retort with a gesture.

  “It’s magic!” Tikla said. “Baseline bravery doesn’t mean much to magical fear. Only the truly exceptional can withstand that without a Skill or magic of their own. You switch your Skill and we have a rout. I don’t need to elaborate what comes after, do I, war leader?”

  “Agreed.” She regarded the handful of draugr’s breaking shield walls in different tunnels. “War Leader, fall back to the next lines of defense across the entire hold.”

  …

  Garvrun fell on his ass and rolled back just in time for the draugr’s huge, club-like bone arm the size of a small tree to break the spot he had just been standing in.

  Hard stone spider-webbed like when one steps on thin ice.

  The arm rose and fell, swerving at the last second to crush a warrior to his left instead of him.

  It was strange, he thought while he watched frozen in place like a white hare in the presence of a rime wolf.

  The draugr seemed rather… particular about the warriors it smashed like overripe fruit.

  Its club-like arms would fall on a warrior, then swerve away at the last possible moment to kill a different warrior or smash the floor.

  Garvrun scrambled, shield and spear long forgotten.

  Iron scent mingled with piss and shit.

  His fingers touched wetness as he crawled over bodies.

  “Retreat!”

  Yes! he thought. Get up! Run!

  The main problem was he couldn’t tell which direction.

  There were only two choices, but one meant running into the rest of the undead.

  Smoke from spells and Skills choked the large tunnel.

  He clawed toward where he hoped the gatehouse lay.

  Fingernails tore in his desperation.

  The stone was cold as always.

  He touched something even colder.

  Hard and smooth.

  Take it or die! Get up! Swing!

  He obeyed the words in his head.

  The ivory club in his hands glowed with white-blue symbols. Runes, but unlike anything he knew or recognized.

  The weapon hummed.

  He met the draugr’s club-like arm.

  It was like hitting a tree trunk with a stick.

  Except, it was the former than shattered into a hundred shards.

  Garvrun swung his weapon again.

  The draugr shattered against the side of the tunnel a few dozen meters away.

  Rally your people! Hold the line!

  Really?

  His thoughts didn’t sound like him.

  Not in the least.

  But it was that or death.

  …

  Silver Streams Hold’s main entrance lay behind a large city as non-hold settlements went.

  The Empire of Man called it a quaint town whenever the rare diplomatic or merchant team visited to secure trade for the things that made the mountainhold the richest among the seven.

  Ores.

  From iron to the eponymous silver to the extremely rare and much coveted mythril.

  The latter was rarely, if ever traded away. It was a strategic-level resource that was only used in the direst of situations.

  An undead assault wasn’t necessarily one of those.

  The outside city’s walls and defenses had been sufficient for as long as their recorded history.

  Not once had they been completely breached.

  The defenders realized quickly that their confidence had been erroneously placed.

  An undead dragon had destroyed a huge section of their stone wall.

  Five times the height of their tallest man. Coated with an alloy stronger than steel. Layered with enchantments. Bolstered by further magic and Skills.

  None of that mattered to the dragon’s icy breath.

  One pass had shattered a trust earned over centuries.

  Worse was the sinking feeling that the empress had taken it easy on them in every one of her previous assaults since the calamity three hundred years ago.

  The undead hordes might have been the same strength level, but the revenants were certainly not.

  “Bannegurd!” the war leader barked. “Deploy, now! Hunt the revenants and remove them from the board. Start with that one.” She pointed at a large square projected against the white stone wall of the central war room.

  Unlike the order mountainholds, Silver Streams defense doctrine favored the outside city as the most important part.

  Thus, they conducted war from the city rather than from deep inside the hold.

  The hulking warrior regarded the tiny dot of red light from the war leader’s finger to the square where a revenant armored in red and white wielding a long, straight sword in one hand and magic from the other led zombies and skeletons deeply into the city.

  Oddly enough the revenant had picked up the sword from one of the fallen defenders rather than use the curved one sheathed on his hip.

  A one-handed blade in a blue hand became a two-handed one in a much smaller, fairer hand.

  Still, the revenant didn’t appear to be having issues changing grips constantly from two to one for those spells of his.

  “Spellsword,” Bannegurd grunted.

  As he sought calm to reach the peaceful mind he stopped speaking.

  To hold his peace while battling required every ounce of focus he had.

  His body changed as he walked to the window.

  From the biggest, hairiest exemplar of his people to no larger than a child approaching manhood. Smooth-faced and almost completely hairless besides the wild shock of snowy hair.

  The calmer Bannegurd got, the smaller and stronger he became.

  What was he up to now?

  Five hundred?

  More.

  Not a thousand, yet.

  It had started at ten.

  Strong as ten men. Skin like iron. The endurance to run down a white deer in deep snow.

  Now he was fast enough to catch a deer given a head start.

  The mage responsible for the magic shield over the window dropped it.

  Bannegurd leapt lightly, cognizant of the leaving cracks in the war room floor.

  He almost covered the distance to the revenant spellsword.

  Skeletons and zombies surged toward him.

  The former clacking, the latter shambling.

  Well… no… they ran.

  That was different, but he didn’t have time to ponder the change.

  He charged through them, letting them break on his bare muscles.

  All but the best weapons and armor in his mountainhold’s armories were useless to him.

  No armor was stronger than his flesh.

  No weapon could survive long in his hands.

  Even enchanted steel broke in as little as one strike.

  Mythril he would have wielded had his leaders authorized, but they only had a handful of those and they would always use them to safeguard themselves before letting them leave the hold.

  “He’s on the field,” the revenant spellsword said.

  Bannegurd covered the distance in a single bound faster than an arrow.

  The revenant was quicker, ducking the punch with a rolling slash to the inside of his thigh.

  Cloth parted, blue flesh remained unmarred.

  “I’d cut your life’s blood, mortal, had I my true blade.” The revenant bathed him in magic fire as dark as his tainted soul.

  If he still had one.

  Bannegurd leapt again, quicker this time.

  The revenant was too slow.

  He grabbed the revenant by one ankle and began beating the undead abomination into the stone like a dusty carpet.

  …

  A revenant assassin robed in shadows… well… black cloth as soft and diaphanous as silk, yet as strong and protective as steel plate even without the layered enchantments sat in one of the upper corners of the war room.

  The ruling elite of this mountainhold were a corrupt bunch of deviants.

  Barely a handful were worth keeping alive.

  Undead spirits were currently wreaking a terrible toll as their faith and trust in their protections died with them.

  She appeared like any humanoid child by her size and body shape, but she was an adult long before she had foolishly taken the Quest to assassinate a certain Empress of the Frozen Eternities.

  Imagine her shock and dismay when she had awoken a few hundred years later.

  Not that things changed that much for the Nameless One— one needed a good gimmick— though not many would’ve gone to the extent of actually getting a deep woods witch to curse her and remove her name at the conceptual level.

  Some might call her insane for that one act.

  They were correct.

  She supposed that those would consider her fortunate that the empress had removed the curse.

  She ran her tongue over her sharp teeth as she gazed down with twin, red pinpricks at her upside down targets.

  The king was a man in the prime of his life and very fond of using the ancient first night rite regardless of consent.

  The once nameless one didn’t really care about any of that.

  What she really wanted was the chance to use her true class in its fullness.

  Assassin of Nobility.

  Not in the sense that she was noble.

  Far from it.

  She was the least noble person she knew and that said a lot when the people she mingled with in the last thousand years were literal undead monsters.

  It was time.

  How she knew that?

  No idea.

  She just did.

  Tiny darts the length of her fingers flew softer than a lover’s whisper across the air.

  Her best Skill, one she kept on all the time, rendered every noble’s defensive efforts useless.

  It felt like an insect bite at first.

  Before the poison flared into agonizing flames burning through their blood vessels.

  She sat upside down at the ceiling corner and let the dying king and nobles catch a glimpse of her.

  Only her eyes were exposed by the cloth she wore to mask the rest of her.

  Crimson pinpricks in a strip of dark green.