By virtue of being a citizen of Sinaya’s Gift, Ragay naturally had to be the one to convince the people to flee back into the city under bombardment.

  They didn’t heed the words of a fellow child of Sinaya.

  They did listen to another thing.

  “Ghost wolves!” Justavi roared.

  “What is a ‘wolves’” Gossamare blinked at Ragay.

  “I don’t know.”

  They came through the hotel’s walls and windows, obviously bypassing the magic shields minutes away from going down under the iron hail.

  Ghostly animals that reminded him of the tiny jungle dogs that were endemic to his island.

  Except covered in thick fur and larger than him.

  “Into the water!” Sings Too Loud whistled at the perfect volume to get the people moving.

  Warriors charged forward with Justavi and Tagge to meet the ghost wolves.

  Teeth snapped through armor to pierce flesh and scales.

  Only the hard water constructs kept them at bay.

  Magic and Skills flashed, shedding ghostly blood.

  A pack of ghost wolves rushed a group of slow children.

  Abygale popped a spiked wall of hard water into existence for the ghost wolves to impale themselves on.

  She ran, scooping up kids under her arms.

  “Hurry up, stupid kids!”

  Sings Too Loud disrupted another pack with his high-pitched song long enough for wounded warriors to destroy them.

  Keisho called out, waving from the other end of the hotel’s welcome floor.

  “Gossamare, I’ll help Keisho with the drylanders. You and the others protect my people.”

  Ragay leapt over the chaos, gagging at the stench of battle.

  Intellectually, he knew to expect it from the tales of the old warriors brought in to his school, from his trainers in junior reef defenders, and, most importantly, from Aunty Bilaya.

  Despite all of that he was unprepared to experience it firsthand.

  Keisho guarded twenty drylanders.

  Dark-skinned like him, minus the gills, obviously.

  “Where are the air breathers?”

  Ragay noted an alarming lack of the masks necessary for a drylander to swim in the water tunnels.

  “They used up the ones they had to get here. As for the ones here…” Keisho pointed at the destroyed air breather stands near the tunnel access pools.

  He glanced at the drylanders.

  They all looked the same to him, but the wide, darting eyes, dilated pupils, flared nose holes and rapidly rising and falling chest were universal signs of the terror he himself was only barely keeping from bursting out of him like a water spout.

  Keisho lowered his voice.

  “When the shields go down this place won’t be far behind.”

  “The rear exit. Head north into the jungle. If I remember it right there is a trail into the mountains that leads to a fortification for emergencies like this.”

  “Yes, but that is hours away and they have no weapons, nor supplies. Then there is the matter of monsters. We cannot protect them from those, let alone from the Merquani, if they pursue.”

  “Back into the city? Under bombardment? With the Merquani filth hunting us? The closest place that might have air breathers is a tunnel station, but that’s at least twenty minutes away on foot and it’s in the wrong direction.”

  “If only we could shape a bubble to fit the tunnels.” Keisho sighed. “I’ll lead them to the station. Just give me directions.”

  Ragay was only vaguely familiar with the city’s layout.

  He could figure it out when he was on the street, but he couldn’t give directions with any accuracy.

  “I have to go with you.” He turned to the drylanders. “We move fast. Stay close and don’t fall behind.”

  “I’ll be the rearguard,” Keisho said.

  Ragay led them at a run, sparing one last look at the battle with the ghost wolves and the falling chunks of wood and coral.

  …

  Thunder boomed the skies, but the iron rain fell on the doomed hotel rather than on the group of drylanders he led through the twisting streets.

  Adults screaming and children crying blended in with the ringing in his ears.

  He roared, willing a wall of hard water to hold up a short building long enough for everyone to run past before it collapsed on them.

  “Keisho! Take the lead! Head straight down until the intersection then turn right! Follow the blue arrows!”

  There were signs where one street crossed another and on walls at these intersections unless the bombardment destroyed them.

  “Fishes! Fire!”

  The air cracked, punching him in the back and cracking his coral armor.

  He threw himself forward, releasing his focus on his wall.

  Without its support the building finally collapsed, filling the street with its skin and bones.

  His back stung, but there was no time to check.

  He wasn’t choking on blood, which was a good sign that the Merquani balls hadn’t penetrated his armor.

  Ragay caught up to the drylanders.

  Terror gave their legs wings, but their muscles were weaker than his by far.

  They rounded a corner.

  “Volley Fire!”

  Ragay had tired of hearing that awhile back.

  Keisho willed a wall into existence.

  The dark blue shimmered amidst the smoke as dozens of iron balls peppered it.

  Ragay struggled to read the obscured street signs looking for an alternate route.

  “Keisho! I’m taking the lead again!” He hoped the other potential heard. “Follow me, drylanders! And run faster!”

  Left instead of right.

  He followed the blue arrows when he could see them and prayed to Sinaya that he was going the right way when he couldn’t.

  A shop front to his left exploded.

  Iron balls cracked his armor and pierced drylander flesh.

  “They’re drylanders like you!” He roared, firing hard water spears into the orange flowers blooming in the shadowed darkness.

  Merquani marines charged, raising their curved swords and wicked pirate’s axes.

  Ragay tried to wall them away from the drylanders.

  “Keep running! Follow the blue arrows!”

  “Kill the fish! Kill the species traitors!” the commander cut through Ragay’s wall with a Skill and raised a small gun, aiming at a young drylander.

  The father— or so Ragay assumed— pulled the young man back and leapt at the Merquani commander like a desperate mother swimming into the jaws of a blue death in front of her calf.

  A loud bang shattered a family.

  Ragay saw it in slow motion.

  The father’s head snapping back, fountaining crimson, while the son and mother cried out, reaching as if they could keep his soul from leaving them.

  The Merquani guns only held a single shot as all guns were required to by the God’s law.

  Thus, the commander raised his curved sword with an ugly sneer.

  Ragay didn’t understand.

  They were all drylanders.

  Why kill another one of his kind?

  Sure the drylanders of Aasin Bay had darker skin, while the Merquani were lighter, though tanned by weeks sailing through the Grand River and the Inner Sea, but that was a mere cosmetic difference that held no true meaning.

  “Wind Cutter.”

  The Merquani commander flicked his sword arm as if he were killing a fly and not two of his own kind.

  Ragay was too slow, but he wasn’t the only potential.

  A huge paw-like hand the color of the deep ocean swept out of the smoke, catching the blade of wind.

  “Rrraaarrr!”

  A second hand swept the commander into the side of a building, crushing him against the wood and coral.

  Tagge leapt in front of the drylander mother and son, snarling at the Merquani marines.

  They shot and cut, but she held her ground behind a pair hard water hands, giant copies of her own.

  It seemed that the fierce battle had led her to a breakthrough.

  “Come! Follow me!” Ragay urged the drylanders, but they didn’t want to leave their dead and dying. Or perhaps the battle shock had sapped them of their rational minds.

  To stay was to die.

  The only chance at life was to run.

  Silent Justavi crept low out of the smoke behind the marines like the huge reptiles that swam just beneath the surface as they stalked unaware prey down at the river’s edge for a drink.

  He sprang on them just as quick, stabbing with crude blades of hard water and whipping his muscular tail.

  The marines were strong and skilled, their weapons and armor were well-made steel, some enchanted.

  Justavi’s surprise didn’t last long.

  They cut, stabbed and shot him from all sides.

  He bled through both his coral armor and his natural hide from a dozen places.

  Justavi fled to the only place he could, back into the ruined shop.

  A handful of marines gave chase before Ragay could block the rest with a hard water wall.

  Had he just sealed his fellow potential to doom?

  The thought gave him strength.

  Imagination fueled will.

  Will fueled Sinaya’s Heart.

  He tightened his grip on his hooked staff.

  His wall fired spears into the marines trying to hack it down.

  A handful fell pierced through even their armor.

  One snarled in his direction.

  “I’ve got steelskin, fish filth!” the marine raised a pirate’s axe. “Perfect Throw.”

  The axe took Ragay right in the forehead, shattering coral and turning out his lights.

  …

  He woke to a hand slapping his face.

  Tagge loomed over him.

  “Can you think?”

  It took him a moment.

  “Yes… I think?”

  “Better than nothing.”

  She pulled him up by his chest armor.

  “What happened?”

  The marine that had nearly killed him lay face up a short distance away.

  Well… his body was face down, but someone had twisted his ugly head all the way around so that his eyes stared into the smoke-filled sky.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Ten seconds at most.” She indicated the drylanders. “Keisho’s healing what he can and trying to convince them to keep running, but…” She shrugged.

  “My helmet?”

  He felt at his forehead.

  It was cool and there was a bandage.

  “Don’t mess with that. The axe split your helmet and your flesh and cracked your skull. Whether your brain’s alright is in Sinaya’s hands now. Well, her and the healing bandage. Oh, that was my last one. I gave what I had left to Keisho for the drylanders. Took yours too. So… we’re out of healing.”

  “Justavi!” He remembered.

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  “Fine.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how he can take so much damage and keep fighting. He’s gone ahead to ‘scout’. Probably going to take all the kills,” she grumbled.

  Ragay was happy to leave that to the green-scaled potential.

  Keisho approached.

  “Ragay, Tagge, help me move the bodies into that building.” He indicated some kind of bookstore that had remained untouched by the battle.

  “Why?” Tagge frowned.

  “Yes. We don’t have time. If they are ready to move we must go now.”

  As if to punctuate his words a whistling sound filled the sky followed by a crack of thunder at ground level.

  Keisho’s eyes blazed.

  “Then help! They won’t leave their loved ones laying in the street.”

  “Fine. Whatever.” Tagge stalked away and began picking up the dead like they were sacks of fruit.

  She ignored the wails of the drylanders.

  Ragay followed suit, but did it with as much respect as he could.

  Then they ran.

  …

  Justavi cut a Merquani marine down with a looted pirate’s axe.

  “Trihorn Tackle.” A huge marine crashed into him, sending three sprays of blood from the green-scaled potential as if pierced by three horns before the two of them vanished through a building’s front window.

  “Almost there! Straight ahead!” Ragay called from the rearguard.

  He had one drylander child under his arm while willing a shield behind them to block Merquani iron fire.

  At least the child wasn’t crying or wriggling.

  Tagge snarled, leaping ahead into a knot of marines.

  Her huge construct hands sent them flying like disk sparklers, spinning crimson instead of light.

  Marines fired. Ragged, disjointed, unlike their synchronized volleys.

  Her armor and brown fur let loose little puffs of crimson as she staggered out of the line of fire.

  They charged in, wielding their long guns like spears with the long, stabbing blade fixed to the ends.

  “Unstoppable Bayonet Charge!”

  Keisho leapt in with a hard water wall, bracing against the marines with the drylanders huddled behind him.

  The wall fell and the blades found flesh.

  But, Keisho was half landborn and a halfblood still had the same strength as a fullblood.

  The dark-skinned potential lifted three marines by the same long guns they had stabbed him with and flung them into the rest before they could reach the huddled drylanders.

  Ragay closed enough to rain hard water spears down on the marines at the cost of dropping his shield and taking a few shots in the back.

  The tunnel station was so close.

  “Keep running! You’re almost there!” he urged. “Keisho!”

  “I’m alright, Ragay.” He didn’t sound alright, but he hadn’t fallen despite the leaking holes in his armor. “We sons of Sinaya are tougher. Her heart,” he picked up his hooked staff, “fills me with strength. I won’t fall for as long as she needs me.” So said he willed a shield to block the chasing marines’ fire.

  “Hurry up, stupid drylanders!” Tagge waved from the entrance to the tunnel station.

  Ragay followed them into safety.

  Once they entered the water tunnels the Merquani wouldn’t be able to follow.

  Suiteonem Prime, Lakeside Town, February 2058

  “For your crimes the sentence is death.”

  “What right have you to judge me?”

  “The right of my class and my strength, for is that not the same rights you use to claim ownership of another human?”

  “I am a lord of the Empire of Man! I deserve a ransom! It is my God-given right!”

  “You deserve justice. The justice of a noose or a blade or combat. I grant you the choice.”

  They gathered on the barrack’s training field.

  Falliana’s justice had been swift with Cal’s help.

  He read their minds, found their evils and had them tried under truth spells.

  It was simple.

  Questions asked and answered.

  Truth separated from lies by all to see.

  The people of the mountainholds and the people of the empire.

  Soldiers, mercenaries and adventurers were imprisoned, awaiting ransom like the Emperor’s Champion.

  None dared challenge their warden.

  Sslamako was beyond all of them combined, especially without their enchanted gear, artifacts and the rare relic.

  It helped that Cal filled their thoughts with the acceptance of their situation.

  The lord of the town was the last to face judgment.

  “Combat? What chance do I have? What choice do I have?” he whispered.

  The thoughts of his rightful dominance to take what he wanted from everyone beneath him had fled in the night.

  His last victim, the serving girl promised a lie, stood in the crowd, feeling nothing but security. She knew that standing amongst the blue-skinned giants was the safest she had ever been in her short life. As if a secret guardian stood beside her. One strong enough to protect her from every depraved lord in the empire.

  “Choose, filth!” Falliana intoned. “Or I shall choose for you.”

  “Then I choose combat, though it is most unfair.”

  “It is as fair as your empire’s ways. Where a lord may do as he pleases to those supposedly beneath him.”

  “It is the natural order!”

  “Choose your weapon.”

  Falliana stood as the epitome of martial strength.

  Her armor had hidden her physical form, but she had removed it for the execution.

  She stood tall and strong clad only in a light shirt and trousers. Power revealed in broad shoulders and well-defined muscles. Enough to be the envy of bodybuilding men back on Earth.

  The lord, naked as the day he was born, took a sword from the weapons rack.

  A long rapier.

  A duelist’s weapon.

  Expert skill and Skills.

  A victor of many duels.

  Cal saw it all.

  The history of an evil man playing in an instant.

  It wasn’t always true that one’s life flashed before they eyes as they died.

  It did for the lord.

  He died hard as Falliana broke him slowly with her bare hands over the course of an hour.

  Cal watched the girl beside him and decided to let her see and remember the judgment and execution in full.

  It wasn’t the same for everyone, but for her it was a good start to the healing process.

  …

  Zinna opened her eyes.

  She stood in a snow-covered street.

  Always in the same spot.

  The night sky was a dark blanket, comforting now when she had always feared the night for the monster it had brought to her family’s home that one time.

  Magelights flickered, mimicking torches, painting the cozy home’s front door with a warm orange glow.

  Zinna opened her eyes.

  She sat at a well-made wooden table.

  A woman sat across from her.

  Smiling.

  She felt her lips twist.

  The feeling was strange.

  It took a moment for her to realize that she had mirrored the older woman.

  Like looking into a mirror into the future.

  Did the other woman think she was looking into the past?

  “Hello, Zinna! My beloved daughter!”

  When the woman’s smile was brightest her eyes closed.

  It was radiant.

  At least to Zinna.

  The first rays of the spring sun after a decade of the darkest winter.

  It was a dream.

  It was real.

  “Mother,” she hunched over like a child. Not out of fear, but out of uncertainty. The dream was real, but even that could be taken away at any moment. She had first learned that long ago on the worst night of her life. “You look well.”

  “I am! Tell me about your day.”

  “It was well.”

  Zinna was used to silence, not the sound of her own voice.

  “Today was a qualification test, right?” her mother prodded, but let the silence linger patiently.

  The home was… homely.

  Zinna took it all in.

  There were more personal touches in the decorations than before.

  The first time she had visited it had been empty, sterile.

  “Yes, mother. I kept my markswoman classification.”

  “That’s good. I’m proud of you!”

  Her mother reached across the table to lay a warm hand over hers.

  It took effort not to recoil instinctively.

  She tried to smile.

  “I know this is in a dream, but it feels real.”

  “It is real to me, my daughter. Though I wish to hold you in the waking world.”

  “Me too, mother. One day, soon.”

  “That could be tomorrow or is that today? Lord Cross said—”

  Zinna shook her head.

  She couldn’t allow her mother to voice those words because she wasn’t sure if her resolve could hold against such an easy way to get what she had prayed fruitlessly to so many gods in the first years after that filth lord had torn her family apart.

  “I know, mother. But, I swore an oath and without my word there is nothing. He gave me my only wish, so I must repay him. That’s not the only reason. I have to keep leveling. Have to get stronger to protect you and Tinno.”

  She looked to the dark hallway leading into the rooms hopefully.

  Her mother caught the glance.

  “Your brother had a bad day.”

  Zinna nodded, keeping the anger from her face.

  His good days and bad days hinged on a coin toss.

  Her only regret about Lord Malum’s hanging, shitting death was that it had only been once.

  “His doing his best with the thought healer and his keeping busy being too helpful around the house.” Her mother smiled like the sun. “He doesn’t remember it, but it’s just like when he was a boy. Always underfoot when I was busy with housework. Do you remember our first home?”

  Zinna did.

  “I’m glad for that! I wish Tinno hadn’t been too young to remember our happy days.”

  “You two can make new ones in this place.”

  “That’s my main goal for now. For me, that will be how I heal.” Her mother wiped watery eyes. “I hope to have you here with us sooner than later.”

  “I promise, mother.”

  They talked for what felt like hours.

  Her mother wanted to know all about Zinna, but it was a struggle for both of them because there hadn’t been much that Zinna wished to share.

  It was the same for her mother, whose pain and suffering had been total until the drugs she was forced to take had all but destroyed her mind, leaving her in a hazy, nightmare existence.

  Thus, Zinna focused on her success in the soldiering, while her mother spoke of the new, happy things she had been experiencing daily in her distant, secret home.

  Zinna opened her eyes.

  Dawn’s light shined through the curtain-less windows.

  The barracks didn’t allow sleeping in.

  The other soldiers groaned and grumbled.

  One passed gas loudly to the laughing curses of the others.

  She felt lighter than ever.

  Another morning where she didn’t wake up disappointed that some nightmare monster hadn’t killed her in her sleep.

  Suiteonem Prime, World Tree, Suiteonem IV, 20137

  Sixty-eight watched Seven’s mouth open and close.

  Thirty-two hovered around fiddling with a strange device aimed at Seven’s face.

  It almost looked like an old camera from her world except made of mostly several layers of thin and thick glass panes in different colors all held within a skeletal frame and lattice of gold, brass and a few other metals she didn’t know.

  Speech without sound.

  “My spell still fails to notice anything different.” Fifteen huffed as she took her fingers away from her eyes, dismissing the glowing circles contained inside her thumb and forefinger.

  “Why are we still doing this?” Eighty said between huge bites of some kind of battered and fried large bird’s leg.

  A drumstick, but much larger than anything Sixty-eight was familiar with.

  Sixty-eight glumly shoveled steak bites and fried potato sticks into her mouth.

  Trainers’ orders.

  A growing girl, even a demigod, needed sustenance.

  More sustenance than three grown warriors.

  Then double that to account for how hard she was being pushed.

  “Want more herb butter.”

  Eighty said rather than asked as she pushed the large bowl she had been dipping her giant bird’s leg into closer to Sixty-eight.

  “You need more fats.”

  Eighty had taken it upon herself to badger the rest of the lochos to keep up with the stricter nutritional demands of their second year.

  Sixty-eight reluctantly ladled the hot herb butter over her food pile.

  “I am at the limit of my confidence to solve this project.” Thirty-two threw his arms up.

  “Okay, then if there are no objections I’m calling an end to it,” Seven said.

  Fifteen crossed her arms under her breasts.

  “Why can’t we keep trying? We just devote less resources and time to it. Is it not important to share what we experienced with our father?”

  “You just want another chance to brag and make yourself look better than us,” Eighty grumbled.

  “Not at all.” Fifteen sniffed. “More information can only help us. Individually and as a lochos.”

  Sixty-eight chewed silently.

  They had tried repeatedly to share the tale of their times with their father, but had failed every time.

  The thoughts and words in her head worked fine.

  She remembered her meeting with her father.

  It was in the speaking about it that the problem occurred.

  No words came out.

  Not even a sound.

  However, all of the methods Thirty-two tried with his devices and Fifteen with her spells to even diagnose an issue came up with nothing.

  They hadn’t even detected that there was an issue.

  “You two can keep working on it, but only when you have absolutely nothing else to do,” Seven said. “Our focus as a lochos will shift to the upcoming test.” He walked over to the board and picked up a piece of chalk. “On my world we wrote with magic,” he sighed.

  “That’s cause you were rich,” Eighty grunted.

  Sixty-eight kept her mouth too full to speak.

  She, too, remembered magic artifacts in her estate used for her lessons.

  Although, there was an ancient white board that used a strange smelling pen of many colors that her father had liked to use when he had taught her.

  It had been in his family for literal ages.

  “Yes,” Seven agreed. “Regardless, I do find the tactile sensation pleasing.”

  “I don’t,” Fifteen pouted. “It gets my fingers dusty and it smells weird.”

  “I believe it is made out of ground up animal bones and poo,” Thirty-two said.

  “That’s not true.” Fifteen rolled her eyes. “Read the box.”

  “Guys, focus, please.” Seven continued writing a few points on the green board. “What do we know so far about the test? Number one? Anyone?”

  What they knew was mostly guesswork from the hints dropped by their teachers and trainers.

  Gaining intel was an important part of the test.

  There had even been suggestions pointing toward the necessity of spy craft.

  Naturally, sneaking into teacher and trainer offices wasn’t without risk.

  Many of the other lochoi had been caught and publicly punished.

  Seven had held them back from such attempts so that they could learn from the others.

  Eighty raised her mostly devoured bird leg.

  “Free for all combat.”

  Seven wrote that down.

  “I suspect that it will be held outside the tree,” Fifteen said.

  He wrote that down too.

  Sixty-eight’s heart skipped a beat.

  That seemed likely when she put it together with her father’s warning about what could happen to her parents and everyone she cared about if she tried to escape.

  Not that she was going to share that with her lochos, even if whatever magic her father used to make her unable to share the contents of their talk.

  “I think there will be less restrictions. My artificer classes have been focusing on combat applications,” Thirty-two said.

  “Good stuff!” Seven pointed the white stick in her direction. “Sixty-eight?”

  She chewed for awhile then shrugged.

  The stuff on the board was about what she had picked up on her own.

  “Do we start spying? My automatons are ready,” Thirty-two said.

  “Yes. I, too, have learned and practiced spying spells,” Fifteen said.

  “Teachers got protections,” Eighty said around a mouthful, spraying flecks in Fifteen’s direction.

  The look on Fifteen’s face was withering, if the much bigger girl noticed such things, which she didn’t.

  “I’ll do better, obviously.”

  Seven pondered the board for a long moment.

  “Okay. Try, but start small and low. The punishments appear to be proportional to rank and potential value of the information, which makes sense. Trying to spy on a king nets you greater information than spying on a servant, but at a greater risk. I believe that is part of the lesson they’re trying to teach.”

  Sixty-eight ate throughout the entire planning session only occasionally contributing when she noticed Seven was starting to get annoyed with her silent chewing.

  It wasn’t like she really cared about it anyways.

  New tests would become old tests.

  The pattern had been set by her first year.

  She was like a rodent trapped in a cage with only a spinning wheel to provide the illusion of being able to move.

  Her God father’s words had killed what little hope she had of having anything else.