Suiteonem Prime, Sonombera, Apolakan, 213917

  “What happens when tons of earth slide into the ocean?”

  Ragay half-listened. The other half of his thoughts chewed on the knowledge that it had been almost a year since he had last seen the people he cared about in person.

  Miss Karagatan carried them all inside her bubble.

  They flew through the water like a missile.

  The really fast kinds that the Empyreals sometimes used to punish lands that displeased them.

  Never the lands that belonged to Sinaya for even the God of the golden eyes had to be wary of her might.

  Ragay had concerns.

  Miss Karagatan gave away nothing with her usual cold expression and flat tone.

  But, all the potentials were in the bubble and that had never happened before in the year they had been training together.

  He still didn’t know their names, nor had he spoken to any of them.

  The most interaction he had with them were looks from which all sorts of meanings and understandings could be reached. Often times the wrong ones.

  One raised her hand.

  She was an oceanborn from one of the deep trenches judging by her soft, translucent body.

  In fact she was clad in a landsuit, which told Ragay that Miss Karagatan was going to take them out of the water.

  “Yes.”

  “Tsunami.”

  The girl’s voice was distorted by the heavily armored suit or rather by the ocean water flowing within.

  “Correct. Another question for a different potential. How does one stop a tsunami?”

  Ragay raised his hand, but was a beat slower than a small boy.

  This one was a landborn with green-ish scales and armor-like ridges down his back all the way to the tip of his thick, paddle-like tail.

  Conical teeth clicked in his slightly protruding mouth as he spoke in a deep, gravelly voice.

  “Can’t stop a tsunami. You can only swim into deeper waters or get to higher ground. You can mitigate damage with shields and strong attacks, but it’s not worth the cost. Better to evacuate and rebuild. Last thing you want is to use your best stuff and have nothing left for the monsters coming after looking to pick up some free meat.”

  “Correct. In most cases.” Her eyes darted to Ragay like the quick little harlequin fish to its anemone home fleeing a needletooth.

  “Anything can be stopped with enough power or the right power.”

  “Technically correct, but too broad. I want specifics.”

  Hands shot up.

  “Harden the leading edge into a high wall.”

  “Turn the water into ice at random locations to disperse the wave.”

  “No. Turn it to steam.”

  “Pray to Sinaya for guidance.”

  Miss Karagatan raised a fist for silence.

  “Think on what you would attempt to stop a tsunami. For that is what we journey for. We head to the Sea of Shattered Teeth.”

  Ragay had studied the map of the world, especially Sinaya’s many domains.

  The sea filled with jagged little islands was located to the south and east of Suiteonem’s Sanctuary. It could be reached on the surface through a narrow pass that widened greatly into the sea itself.

  “A massive earthslide on the southern cliffs of contested territory between three city-states has created a tsunami with an estimated height of twenty to thirty meters. All islands are under threat, but none more than the Island of the Laughing Tongue. We go to protect Sinaya’s people. And perhaps cast judgment and punishment.”

  A webbed, gray-skinned hand with thick, rubber-like texture shot up.

  “Yes?”

  “Will we get there in time? Or should we prepare our thoughts for rescue and recovery?”

  The oceanborn potential spoke with a high-pitched voice, but he was the physically strongest of them all.

  He appeared fat and he did have a thick layer of it beneath his thick, gray skin, but he had thicker muscles and stout bones beneath.

  “We shall. Though time will be precious. Sinaya has warned the islands, but many have no ground high enough to escape the waves. Your quest will be to save lives and take them if Sinaya’s judgment deems it necessary.”

  The chime in their ears and the flashing text in their vision hammered the seriousness of the situation.

  The spires thought their task challenging enough to be rewarded.

  Ragay’s arm and leg fins opened and closed on their own.

  His thoughts flashed back to the Merquani ship and the drylander’s faces as he killed them.

  He sent a silent prayer to Sinaya that today’s Quest would only be the former.

  …

  Miss Karagatan dropped them off on the northern most point of Laughing Tongue Island. On rocky land that stood approximately thirty meters above the crashing waves.

  Ragay didn’t quite get the name.

  He supposed that from directly above the small island looked like a drylander tongue in profile.

  Why laughing though?

  “The wave will arrive in a little less than thirty minutes. You have more time than I had estimated.”

  Miss Karagatan dived into the ocean to protect the other thousands of islands.

  “Ideas?” the oceanborn potential in her bulky, crustacean-like landsuit said.

  “We can create wave breaks, like reefs,” the green-scaled and tailed landborn grumbled.

  The big, gray oceanborn spoke in his voice that sounded like whistling.

  “Not large enough. Even if we combine our efforts. The island and the tsunami are both too big.”

  “It is roughly fifteen kilometers from east to west. Average elevation is at sea level. Except for this area, which is too small to contain all of the island’s inhabitants,” the landsuited oceanborn said.

  “How do you know that?” the green-scaled and tailed landborn said.

  She tapped her helmet.

  “This can measure things and from my studies. I have memorized populations numbers for all of our people’s lands. Accurate to the last census.”

  “That’s not fair that you get an advanced landsuit.” A slim landborn vaguely resembling the brown-furred shell crackers said.

  “She’s deep trenchborn,” the green-scaled and tailed one growled. “She needs the suit to be out of the water. It’s not a privilege.”

  Ragay agreed.

  “It is the definition of fair. Do you not get to wear an oceansuit when Miss Karagatan takes you into the deep waters you can’t reach on your own?”

  He didn’t want an argument to break out when they were supposed to work together to help the people on the island.

  The brown-furred girl gave him a sharp grin.

  “Well-spoken. I apologize for my poorly-thought words.”

  “Accepted.” The oceanborn in the suit nodded. “We must come up with a plan. The deep light darkens.”

  Ragay had an idea.

  “What is the most important goal?”

  “The Quest gives rewards for lives saved. And a great one for saving all lives,” the landborn boy that resembled the drylanders living closest to the planet’s equatorial line with the exception of gills running from behind his ears down to his neck and webbed fingers and toes said.

  “I suggest we take the people underwater. To the island’s south and deep enough that we will barely feel the wave’s passing.”

  “Most will already do that. Perhaps they can shelter in the homes of those that live in the water?” the dark-skinned landborn said.

  The oceanborn in the landsuit shook her head.

  “All on this island live on the ground. Its reefs are meager and small. The ocean floor surrounding it is wide open with a steep drop into deep waters to the north, west and east.”

  So, not safe.

  Ragay pictured the kinds of terrible sea monsters and animals that could live in those depths and would likely be drawn to a sudden influx of potential prey. They would already be drawn by the tsunami. For such an event always filled the waters with the dead and they dying. It made for easy feeding.

  “It will be brief,” he said. “We help protect them long enough for the wave to pass.”

  “Their homes?” the landsuited oceanborn said.

  “If they live they can build again.”

  The green-scaled and tailed landborn turned to the landsuited oceanborn.

  “Do you know if there are any drylanders here?”

  “None in the census and I believe that there are none currently. The drylander nations on the Sea of Shattered Teeth take from Sinaya without regard for her balance. There is violent conflict over fishing vessels and coastal fisheries. Then there is the usual evils the drylanders perform on our people.”

  Time was running out.

  Ragay wanted to act rather than discuss.

  “Are we all agreed? We shall take our people into deeper waters and protect them.”

  Agreement was swift with the gestures of their particular cultures.

  …

  The tsunami passed overhead, barely noticeable if not for the agitated ocean life.

  Ragay and the rest of the potentials battled alongside the few warriors of the island to protect the people from the larger predators and monsters.

  The waters turned dark with blood and oils.

  Chunks polluted the once clear blue.

  Still, only a handful of islanders were lost to tooth and tentacle.

  It helped that the ocean life fought the monsters when the latter began to appear in greater numbers.

  Sinaya would always protect her people when under threat from the unnatural.

  ***

  Ragay sat on a white sand beach, dressing his wounds.

  The oceanborn in a landsuit crafted to resemble a crustacean approached.

  “The tsunami passed just in time, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. Did you see it too?”

  As the battle chummed the waters something huge and dark had begun to climb out of the distant deep trench.

  “I did. My heart still swims to think of whatever that was reaching us.” She eyed her hooked staff with its dangling lure of Sinaya’s water. “We wouldn’t have been enough.”

  Ragay thought he could see a little bit of her blue bioluminescence flashing through her faceplate.

  He rose.

  “The islanders?”

  “Alive and joyous despite Sinaya claiming their homes and most of their belongings.”

  Ragay shrugged.

  Sinaya’s people didn’t have much in the way of personal objects.

  It was said that to hoard more than what you can carry on your body with just a few bags and one bag of holding was to be a greedy drylander.

  “The others are helping cut stone and trees to make new homes.”

  “Then I shall help.”

  It had been less than an hour since they had returned from the ocean.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  There was nothing else to do while waiting for Miss Karagatan to return from saving all the other islands.

  It took two hours for her to appear.

  “Come. We pass judgment.”

  She gathered them without further explanation and carried them beneath the waves at many times the speed of the tsunami.

  He really wanted to ask her how she had saved every other island by herself.

  …

  She took them out of the water near a white-sided cliff.

  Ragay recognized the massive gouge immediately.

  He lacked a landsuit that could do the precise calculation for him, but the missing rock and earth looked to be the right amount of mass to generate a twenty-five meter tall tsunami.

  A lone drylander stood atop the cliff.

  Miss Karagatan released them from her bubble then she rose out of the water, carried aloft by her coral spear, the orb of dark water set where the blade and shaft met swirling violently.

  “Witness Sinaya’s judgment. Do not interfere. You are responsible for your safety.

  Ragay could only watch and think on how exactly he was to do that.

  “Karagatan!” the drylander’s voice sounded like he chewed rocks.

  Fitting for his craggy, dark gray skin resembled a rock quarry.

  “I had begun to think you possessed a soft belly and a softer spine.”

  “Why, guardsman? That was an act of genocide. Forbidden by the accords between Sinaya and your God.”

  The rock-like man shrugged boulder-sized shoulders.

  It was hard for Ragay to judge the scale between the two due to their relative distance to each other, but he estimated that Miss Karagatan would appear like a small child had she stood in front of the guardsman.

  “Is he an empyreal guardsman? But, the accords—”

  “Quiet!”

  The potentials fell silent once more.

  The guardsman’s laughter rumbled out like many rocks tumbling down a mountainside.

  “I do as commanded by my God, may his rage grant me strength. I don’t ask for explanations. I’ve failed my first duty, but I shall not the second. Die well, Karagatan.”

  He stomped on the earth.

  A chunk as large as a deep singer crumbled off the cliff side.

  Except, instead of falling into the ocean it shot up like a missile at Miss Karagatan.

  A deep blue net of hardened water larger than the chunk appeared in front of her in a blink of the eye.

  What came out the other side was a fine mist that washed over her harmlessly.

  The battle moved too fast for Ragay to follow beyond a few instances like a series of thousands of pictures where he was only allowed to briefly look at every few dozen.

  The empyreal guardsman fought with earth-breaking strength and the earth itself.

  Miss Karagatan fought with Sinaya herself.

  There could only have ever been one winner.

  Bound by chains of the deep depths, the guardsman’s much cracked and torn stone began to freeze.

  “Judgment for the attempted genocide of the people of the Sea of Shattered Teeth.” Miss Karagatan’s face was a blank mask.

  “There is only one God whose judgment I accept. Not your false one!” the guardsman spat.

  She turned his water into a hard spike to drive into his one remaining eye.

  He cursed and laughed.

  “I shall live a life beyond this one in the Golden Battlefield of the Infinite!” He spat again. “This is just the beginning. Fight well, Karagatan. I’ll see you soon. You and all those that came before you will serve me.”

  “Death.”

  She cut him apart with hard water blades and whirring saws until the only thing that remained was a scattered smear of pink and crimson dotted with dark gray pebbles.

  Suiteonem Prime, Frozen Eternity Fortress City, December, 2057

  Cal stayed out of the eidolon’s head.

  Even the lightest of touches could leave traces to be detected.

  He didn’t know with certainty how skilled and powerful the Empyreals were, so he took no chances.

  Instead, he simply puppeted the frozen corpse in the exquisite mask of super special magic ice and robes.

  Rime coated every surface in the departed Empress of the Frozen Eternities’ public throne room.

  There was ice on ice to eternity.

  The eidolon appeared as a young woman.

  She was considerably older.

  It was a struggle for her to keep herself from freezing.

  Had the empress been truly present then the eidolon would’ve been doomed.

  The ancient lich had spoken rarely, if at all.

  Her undead needed no words to carry out her will.

  She refused to converse with lesser beings, which was essentially everyone.

  Suiteonem and his representatives she deigned to speak in terse words. And she pronounced, rather than truly conversed.

  The magic in the puppet empress seated on her frozen throne turned his words into hers with the voice like ancient glaciers grinding the soil with inevitable doom. To sell the show, he added a bit of his psychic trickery to make the eidolon see, hear and feel what he wanted her to.

  “I have begun the Calamity,” the empress said.

  “Yes. Two years before the time decreed by our God.”

  “Time is irrelevant to those of us who are eternal.”

  The eidolon appeared torn between outrage and terror.

  She must’ve have drawn the short stick.

  It was telling that she had come alone.

  The loss of one was easier to absorb than the loss of many.

  “The demigods are not ready.”

  He let silence reign for many minutes until the eidolon’s impatience outweighed her terror.

  “This Calamity is supposed to serve as a test for some of them. One lochos fighting on each side.”

  “I do not require demigods. I shall bring the Empire of Man an eternity of perfection frozen in my hands.”

  “That’s— can you stop and wait? Just two short years. This is nothing to an immortal like you, great empress. It shall pass like the life of a mortal.”

  “The march of ice is inexorable and unstoppable.”

  “We do not wish to disturb our God with this matter.”

  Suiteonem didn’t much care about the early start.

  Cal knew the man could view things like a pervert voyeur through his many towers scattered across the planet in places and near peoples or things he though might be entertaining to watch.

  If there was truly an issue the fake god of angry noises and tantrums would come to the empress himself, which would’ve been disastrous since it was too early for direct conflict.

  “Agreed. My hordes will remain small, weak and slow for two years.”

  The eidolon’s jaw clenched.

  “I shall speak no longer, messenger. My word has been given. Let the God come if it is not sufficient.”

  He used the magic in the puppet to blast the eidolon out of the throne room with a gust of freezing wind.

  The revenants would see her out of the frozen fortress city.

  That should rattle the Empyreals and eidolons.

  Arrogant Suiteonem wouldn’t care. He’d relish the chaos and uncertainty. His arrogance led him to believe that he could always destroy the empress if she became more of a headache and less entertaining.

  …

  Cal watched.

  The hordes came down from the mountains.

  Mostly basic undead and the revenants needed to keep them moving in the right direction.

  The Blues had joined in their warbands. In lesser numbers than in previous calamities.

  The empress had always emptied the mountainholds of all but a handful of breeding stock to repopulate. She had turned them into undead or used their living as her disposable vanguard on the march through the frozen valley and over the mountains to the north where the Pass of the Undead held the way down into the grassy plains and the rest of the continent.

  Rivers fed the five great lakes, which lay scattered across the massive valley where dense boreal forests with some trees the height of skyscrapers grew like thick, green fur on a massive beast’s back when viewed from above. Thick mist rose like steam from the sleeping beast as it slumbered, waiting to rise again for its next hunt, its next meal.

  The hordes were hungry.

  In this, did he thank the spires for the existence of monsters.

  Unlike normal animals most monsters attacked rather than hid or run.

  Zombies and skeletons were destroyed in the thousands, but revenants raised even more from monster flesh and bone.

  Encounter challenges and spawn zones lay everywhere.

  He allowed the Blue warbands to chase levels and rewards as promised.

  Days turned into weeks before they reached the southern shores of the greatest lake and the Empire of Man’s southernmost frontier town a hundred kilometers across the ice on the northern shores.

  The hordes halted.

  They would wait, building levels and numbers using the monsters while the people in the town watched and feared.

  It was a hard trek back north, especially in the winter.

  The dangers were too great and numerous for them to make it alone or in small groups.

  They had to travel like an army under siege for the elements were bad enough without the hungry monsters.

  The gentle siege wouldn’t begin until the Empire of Man began mobilization.

  The delay should mollify the watchers.

  …

  Suiteonem Prime, City of the Sun, December, 2057

  A young woman beheld a strange dream.

  She sat in a chair in a blank room.

  It wasn’t white or unpainted. Bare wood or concrete.

  It was just… nothingness.

  A man sat across from her, but try as she might she could fix an image of his face, nor his voice.

  At times it seemed like she recognized him, but those moments were fleeting. At times he had no face, just a voice. Or was it no voice and just a face? Even if she could see his words… no, that was wrong, one heard words, didn’t they?

  “You’re a good shot, not great. What do you want?”

  “I want to kill the lord that ruined my family.”

  The words blurted out before she realized it.

  “That’s not what you truly want.”

  Did she dare say it?

  The hope that died years ago?

  “I want my mother and little brother back. I want us to live happily in a quiet place where the nobles or the rich can’t ever hurt us again.”

  God of Anger! Did she sound like a little girl?

  “There are no gods. Just powerful beings pretending. I suppose one could argue it’s all semantics. Okay.”

  “Okay? What?”

  “I can give you what you want.”

  She froze in this strangest of dreams.

  The stories told tales of such things.

  Of trickery and weighted bargains with demons and eldritch things.

  “I reject you!” she snapped.

  “I’m not a demon, nor an eldritch thing. I’ve fought and killed some though.”

  She felt unfamiliar warmth.

  No!

  Not entirely unfamiliar.

  Just something she hadn’t felt in years.

  Not since that lord had noticed her family.

  “You haven’t been able to share that terrible story under the pain of imprisonment and worse. That’s not fair, is it? Would you like to share it with me before we begin negotiations?”

  Suiteonem Prime, World Tree, Fou’s Fallen Folly, Suiteonem IX, 20136

  The ants— the Scarlet Reapers scattered in every direction.

  Sixty-eight had what her trainers called a target rich environment.

  A lot of them were kids, not much older than her.

  Skinnier and smaller in the way that showed a lack of sufficient food.

  She let those go for the garrison to capture.

  The older ones, the adults she shot.

  Disable, but not kill… but don’t worry about it if she accidentally killed a few.

  Scourge had told her that.

  It sounded like a trick for her to fail the test.

  The Quest did give her more for the number of disabling shots and nothing for kills.

  Thus, she aimed low.

  Through the meat of the calf.

  That dropped reaper gangers.

  One every few seconds.

  She could’ve done one every second or less, but the stupid, ancient rifle could only shoot one bullet at a time and she had to break it open each time to reload, which cost her even more time getting properly sighted again.

  She left gangers trying to limp or crawl away.

  None had weapons that could reach her on her rooftop.

  A sudden explosion blew out a top level wall of the reaper base.

  Fifteen floated out, firing golden magic missiles over her shoulder.

  Twin lines of red light streaked after her, burning through the side of her neck.

  Sixty-eight could see the fear and anger warring in Fifteen’s wide, red-gold eyes.

  Jack of Death leapt out after Fifteen with a leaping Skill judging by how he shot out of the shadows like an an arrow from a warbow.

  Sixty-eight snapped her rifle around, aimed and shot in a split-second.

  Her bullet sparked off his metal lower jaw.

  She had been aiming a bit higher, but at least she had thrown him off his arc.

  Jack of Death hit the ground rolling.

  Laser eyes lashed up at Fifteen as she blocked with a golden magic shield in one hand while firing magic missiles from the other.

  The Scarlet Reaper had steel armor stolen from the garrison, which stood up to the week missiles.

  What he lacked was armor around his legs.

  Sixty-eight put two bullets through.

  One for each calf.

  Fifteen handled the rest.

  Just like that the lochos had disabled one of the Suits of Death.

  Inside the building she watched Eighty underneath a pile of reapers punching, kicking and stabbing.

  Her half-sister punched the floor, breaking it and sending the entire pile to the next floor.

  Seven fought the Queen of Death.

  The cloth of his arms and his face were covered with many cuts leaking crimson with bits of gold.

  A shot opened up, so Sixty-eight took it.

  The Queen of Death spun around her left shoulder.

  The quick cutter fought barely armored.

  Seven pounced into the opening, punching the reaper until she stopped slashing with her knives.

  He stood after placing her in restraints and waved as he pulled throwing knives out of his body.

  There were fewer reapers in the building, at least in the rooms she could see into.

  She shot who she could.

  A dark blur moved across her sights.

  She caught a flash of fire.

  Scourge fought the Ace of Death.

  They vanished deeper into the building and out of her sights.

  …

  Scourge walked out with a broken heap in black cloth underneath one arm.

  The empyreal guard’s armor and clothing was dented and torn, her skull-like mask was broken. The eye revealed was red in the way they got when it took a big hit.

  Garrison soldiers ran about the reaper base collecting the gangers to place them in the cages with the ones Sixty-eight had left bleeding in the streets.

  “The king got away,” Scourge growled. “Here.” She dumped the restrained Ace of Death in front of a pair of soldiers. “They’re not going to be a problem. I broke every bone in their arms and legs, plus half their ribs. Probably punctured a lung and a few other bits in there. Every ability they’ve got is going to keeping them alive. Nothing left for them to threaten you with. Hold off on healing until I get back.” She regarded the lochos. “Not bad. You, Sixty-eight, right? Good shooting. The rest of you were adequate.” She eyed Thirty-two. “Except you, I didn’t see you do anything.”

  “He watched my back so I could concentrate on shooting.”

  Scourge shrugged.

  “Don’t care either way.” She glanced at the tower in the distance watching with golden eyes. “If I have to write up a report and I better not have to. I’ll give you all a passing grade. It doesn’t matter if one of you didn’t do much. The team succeeds or fails together and at least you passed the Quest. Now, excuse me, I’ve got a king to hunt down. Fucker isn’t getting away this time.”

  With that she leapt away.

  “How strong is she?” Eighty said.

  The big girl’s face was a mass of bruises and her knuckles were bloody, though most of it wasn’t hers.

  All in all she looked pleased like a cat that had caught a dozen mice.

  “She’s not one of the numbered Empyreal Guard,” Fifteen said. “The greatest are called the Ten.”

  “Ten tons,” Seven said. “It’s an estimate. I’m basing on how loud her punches sounded and how far she just jumped.”

  Sixty-eight shrugged.

  Who cared about stuff like that?

  She just hoped that they’d get time to explore the city.

  Her escape plan returned to the forefront of her thoughts.