Suiteonem Prime, Empire of Man, The Imperial Shield, May, 2058

  Falliana, Dawn’s Light, Revenant Paladin of the Western Reach had adjudicated many disputes in her living days.

  From goat disputes between farmers, to inheritance power struggles between would be emperors and empresses.

  At all levels of the Western Reach Empire from the lowest of the low to the highest of the high.

  None had been quite so ridiculous as what had been placed before her.

  Two revenants stood across from each other only separated by a strange piece of furniture.

  It resembled a wooden podium or a pulpit, but at waist height and topped by some kind of padded leather surface.

  The Lord Cross had explained the rules when he had asked if she had wanted to preside over the duel.

  Naturally, she had accepted immediately.

  It was refreshing to be asked rather than commanded and all his previous requests had been reasonable and in no way infringed upon her ethics and morals.

  She supposed this farce didn’t either on account that she agreed that the two duelists deserved mockery for deciding to pursue a personal grievance in the middle of the siege.

  “Arsenalian, do you understand the rules?”

  “Yes, Honored Dawn’s Light?”

  The handsome revenant had tied his longer hair back, which made his bemusement easy to see.

  “Krybhats, do you understand the rules?”

  “I do, paladin.”

  The goblin revenant stood on a wide, stable platform to put him on height with the much taller human.

  His dark hair was also tied with a knot pulling it up like a horn on top of his round head.

  It was noteworthy to Falliana because she was unfamiliar with the style. Save for the top of his head, the goblin kept the sides and back shaved bald.

  “Any questions?”

  “Er…” Arsenalian ventured.

  “Out with it then!” she snapped at the foolish, vainglorious child.

  She would’ve consigned him to the Frozen Valley to slay monsters until he died for the last time or perhaps sit watch over those demigod children. Foolish, vainglorious children belonged together. Out of the way where they could do minimal harm to that which truly mattered.

  “This is how the Lord Cross, er, indicated… that is…”

  She fixed him a flat stare.

  The kind that had made emperors and empresses reconsider and reflect on their actions.

  “I withdraw my complaint, Honored Dawn’s Light.”

  Krybhats scowled.

  “This is a strange way to duel. I’ve never known of its kind. If the Lord Cross wills it then— forgive me, paladin, but does this not seem, respectfully, stupid.”

  Yes.

  It was one of the stupidest things she had ever been subjected to.

  It called into question the quality level of the culture Lord Cross came from, unless he was merely taking it from another, very stupid culture.

  Yes.

  That had to be the case.

  It was unlikely that such a wise and powerful man could have arisen from a culture of dregs.

  She fixed each a long gaze in turn.

  “Then perhaps the both of you need to reflect on your decision to pursue personal grievances in the middle of an active siege campaign. I would hope that it is not necessary for me or General Stormpyre to waste even a minute of our time explaining why that is the height of foolishness. Indeed, you are lucky that the Lord Cross was too busy to deal with you himself. So, there will be no backing away. You will live up to your boastful words and satisfy your ‘honor’.” She pulled an ancient coin from her pocket. “One side, the first emperor of the Western Reach. The other, his childhood farmhouse. Krybhats, as the higher level, you may pick one. Or you may defer the choice to Arsenalian.”

  “I select the home.”

  She flicked the coin, snatching it viper quick and slamming it down on the podium.

  “The first emperor. Arsenalian, your choice.”

  “I shall go first.”

  And thus did the slap duel begin.

  …

  “Ha!”

  Cal laughed as the two revenants took turns slapping themselves like morons.

  It was okay to laugh.

  They weren’t giving themselves chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

  Their brain trauma was temporary.

  He felt a dad’s disappointment.

  Arsenalian had been doing good at curbing his worse tendencies. He really had been consciously working to be a better person.

  Krybhats hadn’t needed to work on a lot aside from his rigid adherence to his code of honor that left no room for flexibility in compassion and general empathy, which was important.

  He sighed at how silly it all seemed.

  There he was playing at being the father to revenants that were, at least chronologically, decades, if not centuries older than him.

  The empress had been mostly quiet in the last fifty years. Not a lot of revenants created in that time frame.

  Well, at least the other revenants were getting some entertainment from the slap fight.

  The silliness would be good for them.

  Such a thing never took place under the empress.

  Nope.

  It had been all violence, torture and atrocities all the time.

  That which they inflicted on others including themselves.

  He made a mental note to take a quick trip down into the Rime Pits and the revenants with little to no capacity of rehabilitation. The moral choice would have been to grant them their true deaths. The ethical choice, as he saw it, was to use them to better ends before that end. There were risks of course. There always were.

  Whatever those were, he’d take responsibility for the consequences.

  Krybhats wobbled Arsenalian with a resounding slap to the cheers of the crowd.

  Cal shifted his focus to actually important events.

  The Empire of Man’s fortress-city.

  An unending siege.

  The first two walls taken.

  The ground between turned into a blasted landscape that reminded him of the crater-marked moon.

  Underneath lay deep tunnels carved by undead monstrosities like bone worms that chewed through frozen ground like it was a ripe apple or acid spewing flesh abominations that worked even faster.

  He kept them from trying to penetrate past the Third Wall.

  Those defenses were stronger and watched with more alert eyes.

  Not yet.

  There was still a lot of work to do with getting as many of the conscripts out as possible.

  His thoughts carried him through the many fort-towns within the massive fortress-city. The individual cells that stretched out the kilometers from one side of the mountain pass to the other.

  Zinna’s fort-cell occupied a constant portion of his mind.

  Not much longer until she could be reunited with her family and leave behind the violence.

  Perhaps a few weeks to a month, two at most.

  A few more nudges to get the emperor’s champions to take the field.

  Their regular army had already mobilized and were ready to take up the defense. It was only their official doctrine that stayed their hand and kept them in the massive fortress-city in the center of the Imperial Shield.

  There were still too many conscripts alive for them.

  Once that changed the real siege would begin.

  The events of the siege necessitated constant silent, invisible intervention.

  It was easy since he didn’t have to worry about detection.

  Those golden eyes in the sky and towers were nothing for him to evade.

  That would change if Suiteonem’s agents, like the eidolons, empyreals and empyreal guards, to take the field.

  If one only considered the Empire of Man, then there were only a handful of individuals with the power and skill to pose a detection threat and they weren’t likely to leave the imperial core until the undead hordes had crossed the half way point to the Inner Sea. And that wasn’t on his schedule for at least six months, maybe a year.

  Back in one of the barracks inside the walls of a fort, a group of ugly-souled men cornered a handful of their fellow conscripts.

  Children.

  Literal children.

  Ages twelve to fourteen.

  Boys and girls.

  The younger ones were small and light-footed. Used to run deliveries or messages when the traditional communication methods were disrupted or taken down by counter magic or Skills.

  The men laughed as they forced the crying children to choke down throat-burning alcohol. They had prepared well for the party. They only had a limited amount of hours until their next shift and they made sure that not a single minute was wasted.

  “I got the lard!” one said as he barged into the barracks holding a tin aloft like it was prize.

  “Fucking finally. I’m gonna get it at least five times. Any later and you’d ruined it.”

  “Toss it over and—”

  The muscle-bound man suddenly slipped on the cold stone floor, toppling back like a tree and cracking his skull with a loud thwack.

  An observant person would’ve noted that there had been nothing on the floor for him to slip on and that he had actually accelerated as he fell.

  These were not observant people.

  One by one, they slipped and cracked their heads on the floor, the walls, the flimsy iron posts of the cots and the corners of footlockers. One even fell on another.

  As for the children?

  No one and nothing, not even the empire’s detection devices, mechanical and magical, saw them float out of the barracks asleep and over the walls to disappear in the thick forests of the Frozen Valley.

  “Bannegurd,” he thought.

  “Your command, Lord?”

  “Prepare to welcome guests. They are children so take extra care to avoid scaring them more than they already are.”

  “I obey, Lord…”

  “What is it?”

  “Will they not be asleep?”

  “They are, but they will wake up before you get to Lakeside.”

  Then to one of the mountainholds.

  Probably, King Kymely’s for the younger ones.

  He trusted her mountainhold the most when it came to the quality of the stay.

  The others were rougher.

  Not in a dangerous way. He had revenants in every hold keeping an eye on things and he was in total control of the mountainholds leadership. But more in the way a backpacking trip was rougher than a luxury summer camp with hot showers and air-conditioned cabins.

  “Understood, Lord.”

  “Thank you. I’ll have more guests for you in a bit. Stick to the schedule, but I’ll let you know when it’s okay for you to leave.”

  Small groups to make them harder to spot. Easier to defend. Less attention from the random wandering monster.

  He watched closely, ready to intervene if necessary as specialized skeletons slipped in with the rest of the more standard ones.

  Frost skeletons partially-armored in ice swarmed into one of the gatehouses and up inside the wall like bony mice looking for cheese.

  Most of the conscripts weren’t scum like the rapists back in the barracks.

  It was heartening to learn that, like back home, most people on this world weren’t evil.

  The evil ones died to the skeletons.

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  The rest fell with a few bruises, maybe a light cut or two and a lot of terror.

  It sucked for them but it sold the farce.

  The specialized skeletons fell upon these screaming, crying conscripts and opened up to embrace them. They turned into exoskeletons that promptly ran out of the wall and into one of the many tunnels leading out of the fortress-city.

  Naturally, Cal put the poor people to sleep by that point.

  The empress had used these skeletons to procure living subjects for her experiments.

  It was important for him to balance the scales as it were. To use evil tools to do as much good as possible before he destroyed them completely.

  Why save the conscripts?

  Many of the revenants and the people of the mountainholds thought this.

  A Calamity massively depopulated the people Suiteonem inflicted them upon.

  He would then bring in replacements from his other worlds to begin the cycle anew.

  All for the false god’s sole entertainment.

  Not this time.

  He watched a huge but quick war machine take on multiple flesh abominations in the shadow of a wall as artillery fell from both sides.

  He almost destroyed its brain.

  The babies—

  He forced himself to stop and think with the rational portions of his mind.

  It was too early in the schedule.

  The watchers wouldn’t notice conscripts dying and going missing. After all, the empress had always taken living subjects or her undead hordes simply ate the bodies or incorporated them into their own.

  They would notice one of their precious walking war machines suddenly, inexplicably dying. There would be investigations and the empyreals would notice his psychic fingerprints if they looked too closely.

  He was years away from dealing with those foul things.

  Thus, he left the war machine alone and thought of his son.

  He allowed himself the luxury even in the middle of a siege.

  Less than a second in real time turned into an hour in his mind.

  A random memory lived as if for the first time, but never for he always could tell what it was in truth.

  His son, his Boy.

  Time snapped back.

  No disorientation, not like when he had first discovered that ability. No disassociation.

  “Snikter.”

  “Lord Cross. A target for me?”

  “Yes. A young nobleman. At this location. Kill him, but make it look like a standard undead did it.”

  “The usual.”

  The goblin assassin revenant—

  He sighed.

  It wasn’t the first time he wondered if the empress had started out as some kind of grimdark edgelord

  Snikter used the shadows to stalk the young nobleman.

  Cal slipped inside his thoughts, scanning his memories in an instant to make sure.

  The fourth son of a city lord was a violent sort of rapist.

  Not a single maid in his mansion had escaped his attacks.

  Took after his father and all but one of his older brothers.

  Only the second one was worth letting live.

  That one abhorred the treatment of the family’s servants. However, he was an elitist at his core and believed in a noble’s obligation to rule the lesser. He would have a chance to adapt to an egalitarian outlook. Or not. The outcome would be in his hands.

  Thousands of actions, big and small dangled at the end of his fingertips as it had the entire siege.

  It was only the first phase of his Calamity and it was drawing to a close.

  “Cal? You busy?”

  “No, love. Is everything okay?”

  Never too busy for Nila.

  He did a quick check through her and found nothing imminently concerning.

  “It looks like those cave people are starting to scout outside of their caves.”

  Troglodytes.

  Literal cave people.

  He was offended on their behalf at the spires for making that their official name when they weren’t that much different from him.

  Just another type of human.

  He had given them a quick scan when Falliana and the other revenants had cleared the more dangerous and powerful monsters from the mountains and the caves in that area.

  The people living in the deeper caverns had finally made their way to the surface fleeing worse people and things.

  “Any concerns?”

  “Nope, love. The plan looks good. Their worst, most violent people will lead the attack. We’ll defeat them and level. Then I’ll takeout out their leader and we bring the rest into Haven and begin integrating them.”

  “Is Carlot okay with fighting other sapients?”

  “Yeah. She’s— she doesn’t like a certain type of violent men. I think, I think she was hurt in more ways than being turned into a living power armor. But, I’ll keep checking with her. It’s hard, but she’s becoming more open with me and I don’t want to mess it up and send her back into her shell. Just have my backup ready.”

  “Sslamako should be almost done with her babysitting. I’ll send her up to you right away. Might even be able to do it by mid-morning tomorrow. It looks like there won’t be a lot of clouds between here and there. She’ll be able to ride the sun light without too many stops.”

  “Oh, good! The kids love her. Anyways, I don’t think there’s a big rush. We’re watching the cave people and they’re being very cautious. I’ll let you get back to your work, love you. Stay safe.”

  “You too, love.”

  Nila didn’t ask for a memory or a dream, whether or not that was because she knew he was busy didn’t matter to him.

  He’d take it either way.

  They both knew the trap in being able to re-live times with their Boy as easy as turning on a television.

  In fact, he had fallen to it a few hours ago.

  As explosions filled the black sky with color to a symphony of booms and screams he worked through the night until dawn when he ordered his undead horde to fall back and let the imperials rest.

  The poor conscripts had been run ragged, but rest was only a few weeks away.

  It would soon be the professional armies turn and he would have less mercy for them.

  They were going to pay for the rewards they had reaped.

  …

  Two weeks.

  Two weeks Zinna had been waiting for the imperial army to take her squad’s place.

  The rumor network had stated in no uncertain terms that there were already twenty-thousand actual soldiers in the Emperor’s Bastion, which loomed in the center of the massive fortress-city like one of the mountains surrounding the entire valley. Even more soldiers were said to be arriving daily.

  So, why was she still fighting atop Third Wall?

  The sun began to set in the west.

  It had already grown freezing despite all the different heating options she had. From the gem in her padded shirt to the gems in the wall.

  The problem was that not all the gems in the wall worked.

  She couldn’t blame them too much on account that they had been damaged.

  What with the missing chunks of stone and metal everywhere she looked.

  It occurred to her that there were less spots to shoot from safely on account of the missing wall parts and yet there were no empty shooting spots.

  She could still do math and it told her that there were a lot less of her fellow conscripts than there had been when they had started.

  “Meatshields,” she muttered. “That’s all we are to them. Are you there, not-demon? It’s me, Zinna. Two shots. I didn’t forget. Please—”

  “Zinna…” Dansy’s teeth chattered.

  All their breaths came out like white puffs from a train engine.

  “M—m—m—”

  “Gem died?”

  Dansy nodded like a squirrel that got into the coffee bean bag.

  Zinna dug hers out and handed it over.

  Shit!

  She should’ve noticed the girl was having trouble.

  Her senses were dulled.

  Not great when exposed on the wall.

  At least it was relatively quiet aside from the occasional thumping boom of artillery fired from her side.

  The undead hordes weren’t doing anything other than marching basic skeletons and zombies up the road and into the ruined gatehouses of First and Second Wall.

  They had planted death pillars in the grounds between the walls, but for some reason had stopped defending them since the morning.

  Concentrated fire from the artillery and her and her fellow conscripts had done in most of those evil things.

  The sun finally dipped below the horizon turning gloom into night.

  Mist in the valley below thickened, darkening like the clouds above. Both moved toward the Imperial Shield. Quickly. Too quickly.

  “Oh shit…”

  Zinna wasn’t an expert on weather phenomena, but she had seen enough clouds and mist during the siege that she knew they shouldn’t move that fast.

  The alarms rang out as snow began to fall.

  “Oh no,” Bilmyth whispered. “Is it death snow again?”

  If it was then there was nothing for them to do but trust in the defensive enchantments.

  Death snow wouldn’t kill them in any case. Just empower the undead, which would be the ones doing the killing.

  The mist rolled over the ruins of First Wall, then Second Wall like the tide.

  “Fire at will!” a sergeant roared.

  Zinna was surprised.

  She didn’t know that they had gotten a new sergeant.

  Granted she had been daydreaming when that new lordling had come around to take control after whatever had happened to the last one.

  She had lost track of her battalion’s commanders. Lost track of how much of her battalion was left, for that matter.

  The mist was too dark to penetrate even with her vision Skills.

  Meant that it wasn’t normal mist.

  Which it helpfully confirmed for her when the leading edge turned into screaming spirits that looked vaguely like wild-haired women with glowing green eyes.

  They screamed up at the defenders on top of the wall with a wave of physical force that also made Zinna re-live the worst moments of her life.

  “Fuck you, d’Montiano! You fat fuck! You died shitting yourself! You can’t hurt me!” She ranted as the happy image of the dead lord swinging from a noose off his mansion’s balcony with shit dripping down his legs warred with the arrogant sneer as he murdered her father and ruined her family.

  The happy image won out and she snapped back to the edge of the wall to take a shot at the wailing spirits.

  Predictably, her bullet did nothing.

  The mist climbed.

  The spirits wailed and grasped.

  Zinna watched as a spirit reached her new sergeant to drain the life out of him until his brawny body was a desiccated husk.

  More men fell to the snow-covered stone as dry husks.

  A spirit reached for Dansy, but Benali yanked the girl back while swinging his rifle at the spirit.

  Benali fell back.

  The spirit’s glowing green eyes flashed as she grasped for him.

  “Begone, foul spirit!”

  Bright magic flashed.

  The spirit, all of them wailed as they dispersed in the dark mist.

  Lady Sela di’Seta stood atop the rear parapet.

  Her luscious black hair billowed in the wind.

  Slim arms covered in silk ribbons thrust out. Magic symbols on the ribbons glowed with power that Zinna could feel buzzing through the freezing air.

  “Brave soldiers, retreat to the fort. This wall is lost to us.”

  The conscripts didn’t need additional prodding.

  They rushed to the emergency escape tubes.

  Zinna leaned over and saw that the entire wall was emptying out into the grounds and running to the fort in the distance.

  It was about two thousand meters away, but in the dark and with the encroaching mist and falling undead it looked like two thousand kilometers.

  The dark mist suddenly surged up over the parapet like waves crashing against the sea wall.

  A huge undead monstrosity emerged. A dreadful thing of bone, flesh and ice with a maw large enough to consume the Zinna, her squad, the lady and more.

  It screeched a foul miasma over them.

  Zinna gagged.

  It struck with a clawed hand wider than a man was tall.

  A large flat circle of glowing green magic symbols eerily similar to the undead eyes blocked the blow before it could end them all.

  “Hurry along, children.” Lady Sela di’Seta smiled down at them. “Your courage is yet needed this night.”

  The undead monstrosity belched out more undead.

  Not basic skeletons and zombies, but muscular ghouls that dwarfed Zinna and most of the conscripts.

  Their eyes glowed glittering blue with the empress’ eternal malice.

  “Well…” the lady mused. “Enough of this.”

  So said, she waved a hand of twisting fingers.

  Zinna left her stomach on top of the wall as she and every conscripts were suddenly thrown off.

  The landing was a little rough, but better a bruise or two than whatever those huge ghouls were going to do to them.

  “Run!”

  She gathered her squad and cursed at them as they rushed up to the fort with all the other conscripts.

  Artillery fell around them.

  Ice and bone spheres breaking open like eggs to birth undead monsters.

  Ghouls that ripped and tore and ate.

  Shadowy things that killed with a touch, yet left a pristine corpse to rise up as blue-eyed zombies to turn on their fellow conscripts.

  Zinna shot on the run.

  It wasn’t her usual, but luck guided her aim and she blew the brains out of a ghoul about to pounce on Ettyre.

  The big young man swung his rifle, breaking it on the face of another ghoul before it could rip Bilmyth’s face open.

  Zinna slowed as she struggled to reload on the run.

  A fatal mistake.

  The hairs on the back of her neck rose.

  A shadow fell on her with a touch that brought death then undeath.

  Bright light flashed.

  The shadowy things all around the conscripts wailed as they vanished into nothingness.

  The lady again.

  She floated above them, firing spells as her violet robes glowed with the same magic symbols on the ribbons concealing her graceful arms.

  A ball of ice and bone screamed down at them.

  The lady blew it apart with an almost contemptuous wave of her hand.

  “Zinna Orologiaio. I have glimpsed the skeins of tomorrow. I believe you and your squad will be needed tonight to perform a great, unlikely act, lest disaster befall us all and with our fall, so falls the empire.” She flicked her wrist, casting a small, glowing green butterfly in front of Zinna. “Follow and wait for me.”

  She did what the lady said because why the fuck wouldn’t she after the lady had saved them all at least thrice in the last minutes.

  Plus, it didn’t take a tactical genius to figure having a powerful mage on her side was the best way for them to get out of the nightmare alive.

  The butterfly took them on alternate path through the alleys between buildings away from the main road leading up to the fortress’ main entrance.

  “Where’s it taking us, Zinna?” Ettyre said between heaving gasps.

  “Side entrance?”

  How the fuck was she supposed to know?

  She turned a corner and almost ran into a black puddle on the ground.

  It oozed and shined in the gem lights, spreading quickly, as if hungry for her living fresh.

  “Go around!”

  It cut them off.

  “Zinna…” Dansy tugged on her sleeve.

  “What?”

  She glanced back.

  A second puddle and third puddle had cut them off completely.

  “The window!”

  She pointed to the building on their right.

  Before her squad could move the black puddle bubbled and erupted.

  An undead climbed out.

  It was something between a pig and a woman.

  Giant-sized.

  Zinna’s eye line was just about even with the lowest pair of leaking teats.

  “Childrennnnn… hungryyyyy… drinkkkkk…” It grunted and made snout snuffling noises as it reached clawed hands toward them.

  The other two puddles began to bubble.

  “Shoot!”

  Zinna fired, taking an eye.

  The others hit the pink, fleshy mass, popping pustules and warts, but doing nothing to stop or even slow it.

  “Help?” Zinna whispered.

  An answer flashed down on buzzing wings.

  The undead pig woman toppled back into the black puddle, headless.

  She vanished, followed by the puddle.

  Their savior gazed over their heads.

  An armored man with a red cloak that split in four parts to be his wings like those on a dragonfly.

  He flicked his straight sword, splattering the wall with foul undead ichor.

  “Soldiers. You have been saved. There is no more need to fear for the emperor’s champions have taken the field. Now, run along and leave these foul undead to me.”

  Zinna saluted and took off after the green butterfly.

  Strange that the emperor’s champion hadn’t noticed it.

  Whatever.

  She was happy to leave whatever undead that came out of those puddles to him.

  “Come on, guys! Faster!” she urged. “I bet the Silk Mothers has a way out for us!”

  She didn’t trust the nobles, but she needed to say something to give her squad hope.

  Despair wrapped iron shackles around ankles.

  Hope gave them wings.

  Or something like that.

  If she remembered what her old trainer had said.

  Then again the old woman had been a bitter alcoholic.

  Maybe those words of wisdom weren’t actually wise?