Suiteonem Prime, Grail Beach, Suiteonem V, 20137

  Ryshellance, The Pursuer of her nation, her culture, her world, her people.

  Her class and role had isolated her to an extent.

  But now?

  Now she was truly alone.

  Oh, she had other syarumen with her, but they were not like her.

  All from different worlds, cultures and nations.

  The Universal Translation System allowed her to communicate, but it drove in the fact that she was alone.

  One small solace was provide by their tails, as funny as that sounded.

  There were gaps and differences in the tail signs, but they could communicate in a fairly fluent way.

  Convergent evolution.

  She recognized that their tail anatomy meant that the most efficient and subtle movements were the same across their species.

  Why stop!

  The white-tipped tail in her face flicked and lashed with barely restrained rage.

  She didn’t know their names.

  They didn’t know hers and, possibly, each others.

  They had been thrown together by their conquerors.

  She focused on her breaths. Deep and slow. Rage wouldn’t serve her. Not against the God of Rage.

  It was difficult when memories of the decade of torture always simmered just below the turbulent waters in her mind. Physical, mental, spiritual. The golden-eyed, hairless filth had done everything to break her. They had forced her to battle against other conquered people in their arenas. Forced her to shed blood for their entertainment.

  Line changed, she flicked back dismissively.

  “Arrggh! Just speak! The hairless can’t hear us!” An older syaruman with black hair gone mostly white and thinning all over his body hooted, beat his armored chest and bared his canines as he charged her.

  A mock charge.

  She read it in the lines through the metaphysical treetops in her mind.

  They all converged on the one thing left for her to pursue.

  This old man wasn’t going to be the end of her.

  She didn’t shift a centimeter from her crouched thinking position as the white hair brought his charge up short with plenty of room to spare.

  Age brought wisdom.

  He didn’t want to get within her reach.

  After all, she had already beaten down half the men and women with her in the cage battles for their captor’s entertainment while they had waited for this farce to begin.

  As for the other half?

  She had slapped them all with her revealed aura to establish dominance once let loose in the city.

  There was no true threat from any of them.

  “Hrrmm,” she growled. “Truth. You want truth? Lines changed. Retribution moves away from those weak children. Waste of blood.”

  She thought of the two men who fell and hated herself for not caring.

  They were the youngest and weakest.

  In the better past she would’ve done her best to nurture their growth for they were the future.

  Why should she care when there was no more future?

  “True retribution is on new lines. You want small revenge? Go kill children. I give any who wants it permission. You want blood from God? You stay with me on my pursuit.”

  No one left.

  “Good. Now, be quiet. Rest. Recover stamina and mana. I study the lines for our next moves.”

  Ryshellance pursued anything and everything.

  Tangible and intangible goals.

  She could chase them all down.

  The Skill took her away from her physical reality.

  The small, damp room with its leaking pipes and random bursts of steam dissolved.

  Her fellow women and men became vague presences just beyond her ability to perceive them.

  The trees of her home jungle appeared. They stood sharper with vivid vibrancy that they had lacked in reality. It was almost painful to look at. The edges of the branches, leaves and flowers seemed like they could cut her if she brushed against them.

  Where is my people’s— my retribution?

  Multiple lines spread out from her.

  Golden.

  They hadn’t always been the one color.

  The thought brought the simmering rage closer to a boil, but she cooled it down with her breaths.

  She split her consciousness into five to follow five different lines.

  Ryshellance ran, jumped and swung herself through the too-vivid treetops.

  Lines wavered, growing ethereal before disappearing, forcing her to pursue others.

  Conceptual dangers appeared, taking the nebulous forms from her subconscious.

  Sharp, fast fangs and crushing coils.

  Talons at the end of a rush of feathers.

  Claws and teeth flashing out of dense green.

  Instinctive fears burned into her species from the collective experiences of their ancestors.

  So many lines to pursue.

  So many lines ending in failure. Sudden and violent or the long sigh of surrendering to despair.

  One line suddenly shifted colors.

  From gold to all of them.

  Not a mix, but a… rainbow?

  It weaved through the tangled branches and sharp-edge leaves.

  Stinging pain bled her hair-covered limbs.

  The line twisted and turned until it weaved back into one of the older lines.

  The one that had led her to this prison-residence of the hairless natives and the demigod children of the ultimate target of her final pursuit.

  The line seemed to stretch out beyond the infinite. Past the end of her Skill’s jungle world.

  Three things flashed across her vision for an instant like a spellblast.

  A maternity chamber built high up in the branches. Away from ground dangers. Shielded from the hot sun by green shade. Cooled by the breeze. Children cried. Golden children. A hundred of them. Slowly, they vanished one by one—

  A blank space. Emptier than even the black void only the spaceriders dared to fly. Nothingness—

  A tree larger than the world—

  It made her feel hopeful for the first time in over a decade. But it was so distant that it squeezed her heart.

  Years.

  How many more did she had to endure to fulfill her promise to her people?

  And did it matter to her if she survived to see it?

  Reality shivered.

  The silent jungle suddenly burst into a cacophony of bird sound and wind rustling through the foliage.

  No—

  That was wrong.

  Reality returned.

  The sounds were from the pipes rattling and the steam hissing.

  “Black things hunt this place,” she murmured, trying to hold on to the pieces she had just seen.

  The black things needed to die by her hand or at least by the hands of those she commanded.

  It was a small piece of the start that solidified the lines that seemed to lead toward retribution on Suiteonem.

  She opened her eyes and bared her canines in an instinctive reaction against the threats she knew were lurking around her, but couldn’t sense.

  “You pursue demigods.” She singled out half her remaining troop.

  The five lowest leveled.

  Fighter-types and one spellcaster.

  “Try kill. Will fail, probably. But will bleed them. You might die.”

  “Then why send us!” the old man snarled as the other four she had picked hooted in tones ranging from uncertain to rage.

  “Retribution. And you want.”

  “You’re not sacrificing them, are you? Because that is what the hairless ones do. We are better. Must be better.” The white-tipped tail of the blademaster curled around the hilt of one of her blades.

  “Then, is choice. You want blood from children? Go hunt it. You want blood of God? Follow.”

  The older man hooted, bared his fangs, slapped the cold, damp floor and left.

  Only two of the ones she had picked joined the old man without any words of voice or body as they departed the dank room.

  “What is our plan now, troop leader?” her most powerful magic-user said from where he hung upside down by his tail from one of the sturdier pipes.

  The gouts of steam said the pipe was hot, yet he merely continued to meditate in order to recover mana.

  “We hunt too. Except we hunt black ones and maybe a rainbow. Be silent now. I must recover.”

  When the strong, yet feminine, voice crackled over the voice sender unit somewhere in the ceiling, Ryshellance saw the words flash in every color. Just like a rainbow.

  Dark clouds vanished when the storm passed.

  For the first time in years she thought she could see the end.

  …

  Sixty-eight hated the guns in Grail Beach soooo much.

  They were ugly with their plain iron and wood. They stank with their combustion-based powder propellant. They were loud for the same reason. They had recoil that felt wrong when she was used to practically none. Not that she was a weak baby that couldn’t handle the weak recoil. It was just the principle of the matter.

  Civilized people didn’t use crude chemical-based propellants.

  She growled at the short gun in her hand.

  The only sense it didn’t offend was her taste and she wasn’t about to try it.

  Her lochos delved deeper into Ivy Oaks.

  Boots echoed through the cold, gray hallways.

  Doors in the walls sealed shut against them as if they were monsters or invaders.

  Both might’ve been accurate, but she gave the thought a mental shrug.

  Her God’s blood simmered underneath the surface, taking away her capacity for idle introspection.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  That magistrate’s warning repeated every few minutes over the sporadic voice boxes in the ceiling.

  Eighty was the vanguard.

  Seven just behind the big girl’s wall-like bulk.

  He held up a fist, bringing them to a halt.

  One of those wheel-like intersections lay ahead.

  “Fifteen, please scout,” he whispered.

  The girl who wished she could be a mage more than just a mage swallowed the lump in her throat.

  Or perhaps it was her bile?

  “Fine!”

  She brought fingers over her eyes, miming glasses.

  Whispered words brought a golden glow to her eyes.

  Then golden eyes began to float out through her circled fingers.

  Three pairs.

  Sixty-eight was silently impressed.

  Fifteen had done the mage eyes spell three times already in the last hour. Undeniable improvement.

  The eyes floated at the speed of a brisk walk down to the intersection, spreading their faint glow across the dimly lit hallway as they split up to scout the other hallways.

  She kept one eye back the way they had come.

  Thirty-two had the rear guard, but she didn’t trust him. Not when he was still moaning softly like a ghost in a kid’s show about his burns and was armed with basic weaponry and modified toys.

  Her other eye was on Fifteen, whose face took on a sickly shade of green, which was saying a lot considering dark brown skin didn’t usually show different colors well.

  The mage girl’s red-gold eyes glowed as they swiveled wildly. Left and right were no longer in sync as they flitted in independent directions. Her throat worked and Sixty-eight decided to step to her back.

  “That’s so weird,” Eighty whispered.

  Seven shushed her.

  “If there’s nothing, you can stop the spell.”

  Fifteen gasped as the glow faded from her eyes.

  She gagged, struggling to keep it quiet for what felt like way too long until she managed to hammer the bile back where it belonged.

  It took her a few more deep breaths and a full crinkly bottle of water, half of which she spat on the floor, before she could speak.

  “Next time I’m only doing one, Seven! You hear me! One!”

  “You shouldn’t be at your limit, yet.”

  “I have plenty of magic left. That’s not the issue. My issue is trying to look through six eyes at the same time!”

  “Proficiency issue.”

  Before Eighty’s smirk could start an argument, Seven cut her off.

  “Okay, Fifteen. You know yourself best. So, was it clear?”

  Fifteen sneered up at Eighty.

  “Yes. All three hallways were clear. Except…” she hesitated. “You’re going to want to investigate!” she huffed like a petulant baby that was cranky because she was tired and didn’t want to go to sleep. “Fine! Whatever! I saw two of these terrible houses broken into.” She stabbed a finger at the nearest door.

  Sixty-eight definitely didn’t think about the last prison-like house she had been inside.

  The sounds of screams, of a wet thud and the crack of bone still lingered in her ears like Thirty-two’s stupid moaning.

  She glared daggers at the boy that towered over her.

  Sure, he was all burnt with his raw, cracked skin, but it wasn’t like she didn’t have wet bandages around her arm, which was going to be a pain to peel off, especially if she got more rage to heal. The damn thing was going to get partially healed over. More pain. Yay.

  Oh, and she had been set on fire too.

  “Stupid monkey men,” she muttered.

  Thirty-two nodded down at her.

  “Gonna, gonna… kill…” he slurred.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  Wait?

  Was he okay?

  Before she could ponder the question, Seven clicked his tongue like some kind of stupid bird.

  “Which hallway?”

  “See!” Fifteen sighed.

  “Broken doors means it might be the syarumen.”

  “Rightmost one. First is three doors down to the left. Second is five after the first on the right,” she grumbled. “Why don’t we go straight to our back up plan and then go back to this stupid game? I really could use some healing waters.”

  Seven took her question seriously and took a long moment to study each member of the lochos.

  “It’s a long way to the lake and we don’t have perfect confidence in the maps we studied. And we don’t know if the nymphs will allow us in. You were the most vociferous on that point, remember?” He glanced down the dark hallway. “We have to escape this residential prison building and we have to keep going that way. I’d rather head into a fight than have one catch us from behind.”

  “Oh? And how well did that work out the first time?”

  “We thank you for your crucial scouting efforts, Fifteen. We investigate.”

  Fifteen grumbled, but fell silent as they proceeded forward.

  …

  “This wasn’t the work of the syarumen.”

  Seven crouched down over the body of a small child.

  The boy was face down in a spreading pool of crimson.

  His threadbare, long sleep shirt had a very red hole in the middle of his back.

  “Projectile… er… bullet,” Seven nodded to Sixty-eight, “hit his heart. Hence the heart’s blood.”

  She shrugged.

  Took him long enough to use the proper term.

  Coming from a less civilized world was no excuse for his ignorance.

  Fifteen snorted.

  “You can’t tell the difference between heart’s blood and regular blood. You know why? Because it’s all the same blood.”

  Eighty growled as she came out of one of the prison cell-lke rooms. She eyed Sixty-eight before shutting the door behind her.

  “Dead in there too. Girl, our age, probably. Filth shot her in face after—”

  “After what?” Seven said.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  They had found the two adults also shot to death on the other side of the broken door.

  The man stared up with sightless eyes and a crimson stain on his chest.

  He still had a knife clutched in his hand.

  The woman was like her son. Face down with holes in her back.

  Sixty-eight tried not to comprehend the possible reasons for why the woman’s sleep shirt was bunched up above her waist and why the underclothes had been torn off.

  The next broken into house held the same grisly, desperate scene.

  “Definitely not the syarumen.” Seven’s face was a grim mask. “It’s one of those killing teams you mentioned, Fifteen.”

  The normally smug girl… wasn’t.

  Her eyes were fixed on the dead people and their ripped clothes, remembering the same things the rest of them were trying not to.

  “This is the typical outcome when the lesser are in the way of their betters. History across all the spires worlds are filled with examples. It is as it will be. Let’s move on.”

  “Fuck that!” Eighty snarled. “Buncha rapers! Let’s kill them!” she thudded a big fist into a palm.

  “As much as I would enjoy that. Engaging a third enemy force when there is already one hunting us isn’t sound tactics.”

  “… kill…” Thirty-two mumbled.

  Seven was silent, deep in thought.

  “No! Seven? Really?” Fifteen stomped her foot like a spoiled princess that just found out that her pony present was of a slightly lesser breed than the best. “This is an unnecessary risk at best. At worst? Our deaths!”

  “We’re already heading in their direction.” Sixty-eight shrugged, surprising herself.

  It took effort, but she kept her pot on a simmer.

  She moved away from the argument. Deeper into the small house.

  Like the first one, this one had drawings fixed to the wall with some kind of adhesive.

  Pencils and charcoal.

  Or whatever equivalent these people used.

  Her lessons included the need to broaden her mind.

  The eidolons and teachers stressed the importance of moving away from the thinking that there was only one world. As a demigod she would be called upon to act across many worlds in her God’s name. She needed to be able to adapt to the differences quickly. To make the new the same as the old. Not special.

  The drawings ranged in quality.

  Child’s scrawl.

  A malformed family.

  Practiced lines.

  A perfectly captured family.

  They all smiled despite the tired lines on their faces.

  She had to remember her parents’ lessons.

  Just because one was poor or lived a low life didn’t mean they couldn’t find moments of joy.

  One the artist perfectly captured in the drawing.

  She wondered which murdered person had drawn it.

  There was a name writing in flowing lines in the bottom right corner.

  Too hard to read.

  Perhaps, she could investigate the rooms? Though, Eighty had already done so.

  The much bigger girl’s scowl had deepened as she shut each door with an angry shake of her head.

  “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!”

  Speaking of whom, Eighty chanted in the tiny living room, pulling Sixty-eight back.

  “Conflict is unavoidable, Fifteen. We are going in the same direction,” Seven said.

  “Then, we double back and take a different hallway.”

  “We risk showing this killing team our backs.”

  “Fine! I can tell I don’t have the numbers. But, if we die because the syarumen fall on us while we’re in a battle, I shall haunt all of you into the Eternal Fields with my most hateful malice… most!”

  …

  Plan set.

  They moved quickly with purpose, catching up to the killing team near another wheel-like intersection.

  The black-masked and armored team hammered at a door with a hand-held battering ram.

  Sixty-eight thought of the dead families behind her. The crimson pools. The stained and torn clothing. The tear-streaked faces with empty eyes. The drawings.

  They were close enough to touch with just the short gun in her hand.

  Aim. Breathe. Squeeze.

  The bang jolted the killing team for the task as one dropped like a sack of vegetables fallen off a cart with an extra hole in his face.

  “Cloth masks only. Not enchanted.”

  She broke the short barrel open, extracted the spent casing and popped another round in.

  It took her less than a second.

  Thunder barked down the cold gray tunnel.

  Tight confines made lining up her shots even easier.

  A second black mask dropped.

  Eighty roared, charging down behind a steel shield looted from that general purpose store.

  The killing team replied with bright orange flashes and the roaring of their own crappy guns.

  “Behind me!” Fifteen stepped in front of Sixty-eight, casting a gold-covered magic shield.

  Perhaps, not entirely necessary since Eighty took up a lot of space.

  The sounds of the bullets striking her shield echoed, then were drowned out by the evil men’s screams as she plowed into them like an angry quadhorn.

  She was big, but that didn’t mean she was slow.

  A moron’s common misconception.

  Sixty-eight dropped prone and shot another black mask in the knee.

  Skills and magic flared around Eighty’s thunderous rampage, but the battle’s conclusion had already been written in the killing team’s blood.

  “I estimate them to be between Level 20 and 30. Weak, but I suppose their targets are even weaker. I wonder if in addition to the economic purpose you indicated, Fifteen, the local lords are using this as an opportunity to level up their personal armies?” Seven mused.

  “You said this place wasn’t feudal,” Fifteen said.

  “Yes. They use a vaguely democratic system of voting. Although, one has more votes based on a variety of factors. Wealth, status, inheritance, levels and so on.”

  “Who cares?” Sixty-eight aimed at a downed black mask with one leg bent the wrong direction.

  The man squealed like swine as she shot him in the butt. Right down the middle.

  “How’s our back looking?” Seven said.

  “My stupid toys are in place,” Thirty-two wheezed. “They’ll shriek if anyone comes close.”

  “Good. Thank you. Let’s loot the bodies and move on. I believe they’ll have better weapons, right, Sixty-eight?” Seven beckoned.

  “Probably not.”

  “What? You’re not excited? But you have an irrational obsession with those inelegant things,” Fifteen said.

  Sixty-eight shrugged.

  A better single shooter was still just a single shooter.

  Why would that excite her?

  She still saw the rifle her parents had gifted her in her dreams.

  …

  “Wait! You can’t do this! We’re the law!”

  The black mask whined as Eighty picked him up and brought him down on her knee.

  The crack echoed down the hallway, followed by his sobs.

  “I’m a constable! Please… please…”

  “Don’t see any insignias,” Eighty growled.

  Seven’s jaw worked.

  The muscles in his neck writhed like angry serpents beneath his skin.

  “Nondescript clothing. Cloth masks. Not a single piece of identification on you. Clearly, you aren’t carrying out your proper duties. Answer my questions truthfully and you shall live. Do you understand?”

  The constable wet his black pants.

  Though Sixty-eight figured the broken back might’ve born the brunt of that responsibility.

  The ugly man sobbed, but managed to nod vigorously, spraying his snot and tears all over his black armor.

  He turned out to be mostly useless.

  Didn’t know how many killing teams had been deployed, nor did he know their deployment pattern. Didn’t know if they had established a perimeter around the building.

  Seven cracked the constable with a light slap.

  “Reinforcements?”

  “I don’t know!” the constable wailed and wet his pants more.

  Fifteen finished her magical scan.

  “They are not carrying a single magical item. We wasted our time.”

  “Weapons aren’t any better than what we got in the shop either.” Eighty grunted.

  “Well, they don’t want to be identified.” Seven shrugged. He grasped the constable by the quivering jowls. “I suspect these aren’t their best men.”

  “No kidding. Half of them are fat and not the strong kind of fat.” Eighty prodded one of the bodies with her boot.

  “Just put him out of his misery.” Fifteen waved her hand with the air of telling a servant to dispose of a bird that had flown into her mansion’s window. “I doubt he can afford a healing for a broken back anyways.”

  The constable squealed like a pig being dragged into a slaughterhouse.

  “Last chance.” Seven leaned in with red-gold eyes glowing as he grasped the man’s neck. “Where is the closest way to get into your underground? Specifically, where should we go if we want to get to Grail Lake?”

  “I— I— I don’t know! Please—”

  Seven squeezed and twisted.

  The loud crack brought silence.

  “Fifteen, please dispose of the bodies. I don’t want their authorities to discover our actions here.”

  “No. I need to conserve my energies.”

  “But, we’ve left evidence—”

  “I can melt them all with acid, but then I’ll be without my spellcasting for, perhaps, the next hour. I’m already pushing my limits as it is.”

  Seven chewed on the choice for a moment before signaling it was time to move on.

  Eighty tossed a pack she had taken from one of the constables to Sixty-eight.

  “I grabbed more bullet things.”

  “Thanks.”

  It was heavy and jingled with the sounds of metal hitting metal, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

  A sound rang out suddenly from the way they had come.

  “My alarms,” Thirty-two wheezed.

  “Faster then,” Seven urged them on down the hallway.