“Drop those bags! Unless you want to dance with the Pale Devils in the moonlight!”

  It appeared to Sixty-eight that gangers were the same everywhere.

  These ones had pale faces. Paler than the other Grail Beach citizens she had observed throughout the day. Almost as pale as the silvery moon’s light.

  Face paint?

  Her God’s moon wasn’t in the sky this night, which made her feel simultaneously better and worse.

  Emotionally for the former and physically for the latter.

  “You kids didn’t pay the tax to work in our territory. So, you got to pay in other ways.”

  “We’ll take titties, too! Don’t worry we’ll give her back in a few hours. You’ll have fun! Trust me.”

  Fifteen’s eyes narrowed, glowing red-gold.

  Eighty already had her huge axe in one hand.

  Sixty-eight had missed the much huger girl drawing it from the bag of holding.

  “Can we kill them?” Eighty grunted.

  Seven regarded the pale-faced gangers.

  All had horns poking out of their heads or foreheads.

  Only a few looked natural.

  A product of magic or a Skill?

  Sixty-eight didn’t really care.

  They were making her angry with their sneers, leers and lip licking.

  “They’ve seen our faces. Will letting them live to talk about us draw more attention than a dozen dead bodies?” Seven mused

  “Hey! You kids listening or what? Drop the bags of holding. And hand over the girl with the big tits. Unless you want to volunteer your asshole, pretty boy! Cause we don’t mind either way. You fuck around in Pale Devil territory without the proper respect and you get fucked!”

  Thirty-two raised a hand from behind the muscled wall that was Eighty.

  “Um… I vote for killing.”

  “Yes, that seems the best option out of bad ones.” Seven sighed. “Fight to kill.”

  It was quick.

  The gangers had Skills, spells and cheap weapons, but were too weak.

  Sixty—eight wiped her warm, sticky fingers on a ganger’s black cloak.

  “Eighty, please take a few of them and put them inside,” Seven said. “It won’t stand up to basic scrutiny, but we can hope that the local authorities will just see this as a robbery and territory struggle between rival gangers.”

  The red-gold haze faded from their vision as they headed off into the night.

  “We can use their base!” Thirty-two said.

  Seven shook his head as Fifteen laughed.

  “That’s the first place the authorities will check. The plan remains the same. We shall utilize one of those dubious rental houses.”

  …

  The dubiosity of the small, connected houses made sense to Sixty-eight on two main points.

  Cost and location.

  The oily, fat man took a rather small amount of the colored tokens that passed for currency they had stolen from the general purpose shop and the gangers to buzz them in through the heavy iron gate.

  Surprisingly, he barely glanced at Fifteen, but focused in on Sixty-eight until Eighty cut the line of sight with her muscled bulk and a growl forcing the fat man to be oily elsewhere.

  The courtyard was small and dirty, surrounded on three sides by what appeared to be two levels of the small homes.

  “It smells,” Fifteen sniffed.

  Eighty’s grunt was one of agreement.

  “We can jump to the roof if we need a quick escape. Plus, the walls look cheep. I bet I can just poke through them.”

  “Should I send my… toys… out for surveillance, Seven?” Thirty-two grimaced at the word. He hadn’t been happy about being forced to use literal children’s toys to convert into his specialties.

  “Just a few. Outside, watching the approaches.”

  They followed Seven to their rental home.

  The door and the lock were weak and flimsy.

  Sixty-eight could’ve forced it open just as easily as Eighty.

  “Eugh!” Fifteen gagged. “How is it worse inside? I’m fairly certain every human fluid has been spilled in here and hasn’t been cleaned properly! What sort of establishment is this negligent?”

  The price of divinely-enhanced senses.

  Sixty-eight pinched her nose with one hand while digging through one of her bags of holding with the other for something to plug it with.

  “This is not a house, Seven!” Fifteen snapped. “It’s just a room! There’s barely a window! There are only two beds!” she cast a spell over them and gagged again. “I’m not sleeping on that!”

  Sixty-eight caught a glimpse of many glowing stains on the beds and a few moving things that were probably insects.

  She elbowed Thirty-two in the ribs.

  “What were those stains?”

  “I don’t know and I think we don’t want to know.” Thirty-two shuddered.

  “People fluids,” Eighty nodded sagely.

  Seven ran a hand through his perfect hair.

  “We are in hostile territory, Fifteen. Did you think that warriors, soldiers and adventurers got to sleep in clean, comfortable beds while on a Quest or a campaign?”

  “Whatever… I need to use the cleaning facilities. I have dried blood under my fingernails.” Fifteen flounced to the back of the tiny house.

  Eighty gestured at the flimsy door.

  “Don’t trust that fat man. I’ll take night watch. Just give me an hour in the morning to nap and I’ll be ready for the hunt.”

  Thirty-two nodded.

  “Or you can trust my, ugh, toys to sound the alarm.”

  “Live eyes are necessary, but I’ll switch off with you after one. That should give us both at least three hours of sleep,” Seven said.

  A scream erupted from the cleaning facilities. Followed by a flash, a thump and an acrid scent.

  A large, charred ball flew out of the door before it slammed shut again.

  Eighty picked up the smoking creature and shrugged.

  “Looks like a rodent-type. Big though.”

  Seven sighed.

  “Here.”

  He caught it and opened the door just enough to toss it out into the courtyard.

  “Girls share that bed,” Seven pointed. “Thirty-two and I get that one.”

  Sixty-eight looked up at him dubiously.

  “What? That’s the only way. You’re small and thin. Fifteen’s slim. And Eighty’s only going to be sleeping for half the night.”

  “Yeah. I’m not sleeping on the floor. If the beds are disgusting I don’t even want to think about what the floor is like,” Thirty-two said.

  Eighty shrugged.

  “I don’t care. I can sleep on the floor.”

  Much like the stories of campaigning, questing or adventuring that Sixty-eight had heard from her parents and her household guard, things tended to not go according to plan just as much as they did.

  Thus, she shouldn’t have been surprised when the entire front of their tiny rental home exploded in the middle of the night in the hour when only devils and witches frolicked.

  Suiteonem Prime, Sonombera, Idiyas, 213918

  Tagge thrust a furred finger at the projection.

  “Wait! I think I remember that one!”

  The empyreal guardswoman was covered in dark green fur.

  “No. She’s a she and she looks about three times as small are the one in Aasin Bay. Plus, he was more hairy than furry.”

  “Both appear rather more bestial than the average drylanders,” Gossamare said. “unless I am mistaken and I don’t discount the possibility for I don’t have much experience with drylanders outside of the… um...” she flicked a glance at Ragay, “recent event.”

  “Quiet!” Justavi hissed. “They’re about to battle.”

  …

  Five emypreal guard fanned out on the cliffs looming above the rocky shoreline.

  Miss Karagatan stood like an unmoving statue despite the waves crashing against her back.

  She was so much smaller than even the smallest empyreal guard.

  She held out her hand, letting the ocean swirl into a coral fisher’s spear with the swirling Heart of Sinaya at the base where the shaft met the tines.

  “You are playthings for your God.” She rose upon a raging pillar of ocean until she loomed above the empyreal guard. “There is nothing here for you but death. Life lays there,” she thrust her spear toward the iridescent spire in the distance, “in the infinite world’s where your God cannot reach.”

  An empyreal guardswoman with a strange mask over her mouth like a spiked cage for a deadly beast stepped forward.

  “Fear is unbecoming of a Karagatan. This is your fate as laid down by the contract unbroken since the beginning of your kind.” Her voice echoed hollowly, like a machine’s. “Don’t disappoint your God. Let our battle begin!”

  She opened the cage over her mouth, allowing a beam of red light to lance out and slice across Miss Karagatan’s pillar of water.

  Another guardswoman snapped bones out from her back. Skeletal wings. The space between filled by a visible distortion in the air. She shrieked, launching herself on the attack like a swooping falcon.

  The air between them shivered.

  Miss Karagatan allowed herself to fall into the column of ocean water even as the guardswoman vibrated it into steam.

  The leader snapped something out in her hollow voice lost over the noise of boiling water.

  The winged guardswoman veered away, narrowly avoiding the spears of hard water shooting from the steam.

  Battle orders were quick and concise.

  An empyreal guardsman, smaller and slighter than the women, raised his hands.

  The steam swirled as the wind blew and Ragay thought he could see a pair of giant, invisible hands shaped by the void in the steam catch and break Miss Karagatan’s hard water spears.

  The last guardswoman pulled the steam and spray to her, condensing all the moisture quickly until she disappeared inside a snow elemental many times her size.

  The flier zipped past flying hard water spears, twisting and turning, a finger-length from disaster. She circled back, picking up the green-furred bestial guardswoman even as invisible hands blocked falling water spears and red beams continuously pulsed into the steam cloud, searching, but not finding the target.

  Ragay felt it strange to watch a fierce battle, yet not feel the same distress in his gut as he did during Aasin Bay.

  The sights and sounds were the same, if smaller and muted.

  He figured it out a moment later.

  There were no scents.

  The acrid, stinging tang from the spells and guns.

  The iron that he would never think of the same way again. He had never realized that people bled just like animals.

  And the pungent odor from the piss and shit. He couldn’t forget that part.

  “Why didn’t she bring us?” Sings Too Loud’s voice was pitched even higher than usual. “Five on one is unfair!”

  The other potential nodded, except for Abygale.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “Unfair for them,” she said. “This fight is over. Miss Karagatan is just testing them to see if they have more.”

  “Why bother?” Gossamare said.

  “Because each emypreal guard that have attacked her have been stronger than the last. She’s probably trying to see what this group’s upper limits are so that she can be ready for the next.”

  That sounded plausible to Ragay.

  He hadn’t given it as much thought.

  A failure on his part.

  The snow elemental shook the ground with each lumbering step as she thundered into the steam with wide, sweeping arcs of her tree-sized arms.

  Glittering circular saw blades erupted out of nowhere in an instant.

  Deep blue, like the ocean depths, they sheared through four snow limbs, turning the fearsome giant into a melting mound.

  Miss Karagatan appeared for a moment, flying into the mound with her fisher’s spear thrust forward.

  When she emerged, the barbed tines were wet with a darker color.

  The leader roared a red beam, cracking the deep blue bubble that suddenly sprang up around Miss Karagatan.

  The flash of impact momentarily blinded Ragay and the others.

  When their vision cleared Miss Karagatan held the bone-winged guardswoman and the green-furred one aloft as the remaining two failed to breach the massive wall of deep blue ocean she had willed into existence between them.

  Abygale grinned like she just snatched the last piece of tuna off the plate.

  “See, I told you!”

  “Miss Karagatan is truly the strongest… er… next to our God,” Keisho said.

  The winged guardswoman’s armor was lighter, which meant the fisher’s spear went right through her heart.

  The green-furred guardswoman strained and struggled with what must’ve have been bestial strength against the chains of hard water around her wrists and ankles.

  Her strength wasn’t enough as Miss Karagatan ripped her apart with a simple gesture.

  Two remained.

  Miss Karagatan shook the dead guardswoman off her spear before sweeping it toward them.

  The steam suddenly condensed into water.

  Briney droplets that hung suspended in the air around and above the empyreal guards for only a moment.

  Each suddenly burst into a hair-thin needle.

  Most broke on the guards’ armor, but even if only a fraction found the gaps to strike flesh, that still meant thousands of needle-thin hard water constructs found a home.

  Red beams and giant invisible hands availed the empyreal guards not.

  Gold shined in the sun until it was drenched in crimson.

  Miss Karagatan vanished into the ocean as the projection winked out.

  A cheer erupted in the dining room, but Ragay wondered what would happen if Miss Karagatan ran out of empyreal guards to defeat.

  He wasn’t clear on how the power structure between them, eidolons and demigods worked.

  There was one logical end to this current Miss Karagatan had been forced into.

  Hopefully, Suiteonem saw her strength as worthy.

  Suiteonem Prime, Unnamed City, March 2058

  Senior Inquisitor Barak d’Marea sat on his automaton horse observing a city that shouldn’t have been there through the far sight enchantment in his helmet.

  He had ridden out alone, following Mother di’Buratti’s holy commands.

  It had been a dubious thing to set forth only with her vague directions, but as soon as he departed the City of the Sun it became apparent that their God’s hand guided them.

  Barak followed the road, left the road, venturing into wilderness yet no monsters attacked. Not once had he gotten lost or turned around.

  Three days riding, eating and sleeping on the automaton. Only stopping long enough to take care of bodily functions.

  How could he do otherwise when he felt the hand of his God guiding him with whispers?

  He observed the walled city.

  “It’s a fortress.”

  The hill he stood on gave him a good line of sight down over the tall walls.

  The thick trees and bushes provided cover or so he hoped.

  He was a city inquisitor through and through with limited experience out in the wild.

  Which explained why he didn’t notice something was wrong when the birds and bugs fell silent until a cold blade pressed against his throat.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” a man’s voice hissed in his ear.

  “Two Golden Spears, Purging.”

  They coalesced into existence, hovering above the man and a second person farther behind Barak.

  “Well… let him go. One may steal the automaton and the armor, but one cannot fake that,” a woman said.

  The cold blade vanished as did the man’s weight on the back of the automaton.

  “Brother inquisitor, I greet you.”

  Barak turned to a cloaked woman on foot.

  Unlike him, she wore plain clothing with no obvious signs of the office she claimed.

  “You have me at a disadvantage.”

  “Yes, I would show you my badge, but I left it at home. It didn’t seem wise to carry my identity with me on a secretive surveillance Quest.”

  The implied rebuke stung his pride.

  She was older than him.

  Her face appeared younger, if not for the scars. Though her hair was mostly gray with a few stubborn strands clinging to their black.

  “Will this suffice? Three Golden Spears, Purging.”

  They coalesced over his head.

  “I greet you, sister. I am Senior Inquisitor Barak d’Marea.”

  He dismissed his spears a beat after she dismissed hers.

  “I was about to say no names.” She grimaced. “Not that I can blame you too much. Recent events have placed us in unfamiliar positions. Let us not speak of anything beyond what we are both here for.” She walked over with her empty hands displayed at her sides. “A city not on any maps. What a mystery.”

  “Walled and defended like our greatest fortresses,” he agreed. “How long have you been observing it?”

  “We beat you by a day.”

  “And?”

  “We’ve observed two noteworthy things.” She raised a finger. “Aside from the soldiers and sundry sorts found in any settlement, the majority of the population of this mysterious city is comprised of pregnant women and women with young children under the age three.”

  “That is noteworthy.”

  Something told Barak that what his sister inquisitor said was truth.

  He didn’t know what that meant and his God didn’t provide guidance in the moment despite his silent prayer.

  “And the second?”

  She spat like a soldier or an adventurer rather than an inquisitor.

  “It’s why we’re sitting out here and not in there.” She gestured rudely at the walled city. “I’m not the best spellcaster, but I’ve got some levels and a lot of experience. And between me and my partner’s Skills we figured there’s some kind of dangerous spirit watching over the whole place. We don’t know the details, but if one isn’t supposed to be there, one will no longer be there fairly quickly.”

  Barak digested that for a long while as he continued to observe through the enchantment in his helmet.

  “Is this enough for us to go to the Triarchy for an official right of inspection?”

  “I would think so, but I also think that a whole city three days ride from the City of the Sun is something that the emperor knows about, let alone the Triarchy.” She regarded him with a veteran’s gaze. “Don’t forget recent events, brother. Not wise to be out anywhere alone. Don’t mention our meeting here. I won’t mention it.”

  With that, she turned and disappeared into the undergrowth after her bladesman.

  …

  Suiteonem Prime, Lakeside Town, March 2058

  Garvrun regretted picking up the dragonbone mace.

  “And how many foes have you vanquished with my generosity?”

  The undead dragon loomed over him, poking him in the chest with a claw.

  It was so cold around the dragon that even a person of the mountainholds found himself shivering and struggling to keep his teeth from chattering as he desperately counted in his head.

  He stammered out a number and left it in the hands of the Gods.

  “Hrrmm… you are small, weak, low level. I’d slay you in previous eras with an errant flick of my tail, but I suppose you are adequate for this one.” The undead dragon lowered his bony, desiccated body to the snow, settling in like a frost cat.

  Garvrun struggled to keep his footing as the frozen ground rumbled underneath his boots.

  “Listen carefully to tales of my greatest feats, tiny man-thing. For you may glean the wisdom of battle with which you may better serve my weapon and bring it continued greatness.”

  The undead dragon poked him again with the clawed hand missing a small bone in one of the fingers.

  Hours passed.

  The undead dragon hadn’t stopped speaking for a single instant.

  Garvrun’s heating gems had long ago been drained by the undead dragon’s mere presence.

  He realized that he was in actual danger from the frozen toll.

  The stars had come out.

  The Golden Moon was visible, while the others were hidden by the clouds or the horizons.

  He supposed one could keep speaking forever if one had no need to breathe and judging by the lack of lungs visible through the skeletal rib cage, the undead dragon had long ago left that particular weakness behind.

  The undead dragon’s voice and Garvrun’s chattering teeth were so loud that the latter didn’t catch the crunching on the snow-covered ground.

  “Ah! Slave-thing!” the undead dragon growled with glee and condescension, if Garvrun was a judge of dragon tones and what not.

  “Poor excuse for a dragon. On my world your kind are wise, honored ancestors that guide all peoples.”

  The revenant looked to Garvrun as if a lizard and a human had been crossed into an abomination that shouldn’t have been.

  Naturally, not being a complete moron, he kept that thought to himself.

  “There are weak-willed, soft-scaled representatives of all our kinds across the infinite worlds of the spires. Such is the deplorable nature of infinity.”

  “Says the half-dead thing made slave for many millennia.”

  “Better to exist than face oblivion for I get to fulfill my desires.”

  The revenant’s blunt snout twisted. Her tail lashed the snow.

  “Fortunate one then, you are, Bellicosiaxtramondagron. Battle awaits. Falliana requires your presence. The attack on Mine Number Three commences.”

  The undead dragon snorted.

  Somehow air billowed out of his desiccated, bony nostrils.

  Powerful enough to knock Garvrun several meters into the soft powder.

  The revenant remained unmoved.

  “A mine? Filled with weak forces, just like this place, no doubt. The Lord Cross promised me great battles. That lindwurm was barely passable.”

  “Perhaps it is time for you to betray him, belligerent one?” the revenant’s grin was all sharp teeth.

  “Poisonous words, slave-thing. I’ve lived and died ages. Your child tricks will not avail you. I said I wished to face great battles. Not be destroyed as if I was you.”

  With that the undead dragon roused himself, sending an avalanche of snow down on the revenant and Garvrun before shooting into the night sky like a rocket.

  Garvrun thought he was to die buried in the cold, but it seemed that the revenant had other ideas.

  The warmth of the sun melted the snow and dried his wet clothing and armor.

  She barely came up to his belt, but she loomed over him all the same.

  “Apologies, Garvrun. And thank you.”

  “Thanks? For?”

  “For serving admirably as a sacrificial princess. It was the best way to keep him occupied and out of our scales while we made ready, short of involving Lord Cross.”

  Garvrun would’ve preferred that to standing in the elements for hours, but he feared the steaming hot revenant too much to say so.

  “You’re welcome?”

  The revenant chuckled, eyeing the dragonbone mace at his belt.

  “I had been, on occasion, tasked by the empress to hide such weapons for the living to find. If there was one thing for me to take solace in it was the fact that that foul dragon’s very body parts have been used to do great good across the centuries.” She sighed. “Sadly, they have also been used to do great evil. Such ways things go when left to random fate.”

  “Um… why?”

  “Many reasons. The empress sought to create challenges to alleviate boredom for us revenants and perhaps herself. She also sought to create higher level candidates suitable for revenancy. If she were still around, she’d certainly be watching your progress. There are likely other reasons unknown to me and I am thankful that they shall remain so forever.”

  “Oh… okay…”

  “Go, young one. Find warmth. Rest. Tomorrow we go in search of levels.”

  …

  Cal sat in a tavern, sipping warm mead and snacking on some kind of deep fried root vegetable that vaguely reminded him of a potato, but with a natural sour flavor, as if it came with its own malt vinegar.

  He thought many thoughts.

  He watched many things.

  The Rime Pits were an issue he’d have to go deal with soon-ish.

  The revenants and undead assets he had sent were struggling against the centipede people and the revenants that had, predictably, gone rogue despite his generous offers. Granted he had marked some of those revenants for destruction, regardless. Too evil. It was a shame that they hadn’t done him the favor of dying again to the centipede people.

  Did he feel bad about leaving Garvrun out there with Bellicosiaxtramondagron?

  Not at all.

  The young man had been getting cocky about his dragonbone mace. It was good to remind him of what the weapon was and why wielding it was a grave responsibility.

  Plus, it gave Sslamako a chance to boss the undead dragon around, which made her happy.

  The tavern staff of empire humans were nervous at their boisterous clientele of giant, blue-skinned humans.

  Cal was pleased to note that the Blues were respectful of the Imperials despite the natural enmity.

  Ironically, the latter were the safest they had ever been in the their frontier fortified town.

  Two towns next to enormous lakes captured.

  All that were left on his side of the mountains to the north were a few mining towns.

  Once those were done.

  They’d have to move on the massive fortress blocking the only pass large enough to fit an undead horde.

  He could’ve had them tunnel under the mountains.

  Could’ve tunneled himself at a fraction of the time.

  But, he’d rather not accidentally draw in any of the underground peoples into this farce of an apocalypse.

  He thought many thoughts.

  Zinna was with the army mobilized to reinforce the fortress.

  Rail travel meant they covered the vast distance quickly.

  They were already at the mountains, climbing the long road on their automaton drawn carriages and wagons.

  Of course, the empire had automaton-less carriages and wagons, but they were new things, which meant they were reserved for the wealthy and powerful back in their cities on the shores of the Inner Sea.

  It was ironic that the empire had access to magic to power their vehicular advancements, yet they were still drawing up plans to exploit oil deposits under the ocean floor for cheaper mass production.

  He supposed the oil served a convenient cassus belli to move against Sinaya’s people.

  Never mind the fact that Imperials couldn’t live in the water.

  They still wanted to ruin it for the only people that could.

  The inquisitors and nobility were running around like headless chickens after he had cut many of their heads off.

  The emperor had closed ranks, worrying about his own safety.

  The man was safe for now, though his time was ticking.

  Cal would reward the emperor for his evil.

  He would reward them all.

  “Um, excuse me?” a young waitress approached.

  Her eyes shifted, looking everywhere but at him.

  He sighed.

  There were always victims wherever he went or looked.

  It was overwhelming.

  “Yeah, miss?”

  “Would you like more to drink? Or eat?” She jolted, then froze like a rabbit at a loud bang and laughter.

  “They’re just telling a funny story.” He smiled. “Nothing to worry about. You’re safe here.”

  She believed him and instantly the strain went out of her muscles.

  “I think I’d like another mead and another order of these things. It’s all quite good. Please tell the chef and the brewer that I said so.”

  Quietly, he slipped a magic ring into her apron pocket.

  It contained a powerful protection enchantment.

  An all purpose, automatic sort that would make her safe in all conceivable situations she might find herself in.

  He had been giving out small gifts in secret everywhere he went.

  The empress, the nobles, the inquisition and every wealthy evil shit he had killed owned many things. So much loot to redistribute to their victims.

  He was conducting, perhaps, the greatest mass redistribution of wealth and power this world had ever experienced.

  Suiteonem had no idea and he would only understand in his very last moment of existence.