Commander Jaraphim’s flagship, a captured Guardian destroyer, bobbed in the acrid ocean waves, with Y’s shoreline past the dark horizon. It was about four in the morning locally, and Verim and Lechi were ready to set out for a City made dangerous enough just by many of its citizens, to say nothing of its saturating Guard presence, who policed and ruled over a slum metropolis without resistance.
The tender was small and slow, but camouflaged and ran quietly. Before it was lowered into the ocean and left the side of the destroyer, Jaraphim and his crew, all of them taller and older than the boy, offered the two an Angel salute. The commander, of course, had other places to be, but it hardly mattered as Verim and Lechi wouldn’t be in contact with anyone for at least the next sixteen hours, if not more. There could be no back up or rescue; it was up to them to get close, or get inside, and then retreat past the horizon again, all without being compromised.
The Angels were no stranger to espionage, and they had amassed a collection of captured or reproduced Guard uniforms in all shapes, sizes, and division colors. For Tillethy, Verim and Lechi had to adorn themselves in a drab burgundy color, complete with hats and coats. And despite a lack of experience with the kind of assignment, both were also well-versed in Guard customs and lexicon, and they felt confident.
Once they had been lowered into the ocean and released, they gently placed their covered falcon cages behind the driver and passenger seats, tried to settle in, double-checked the map, and made sure all of interior and exterior lights were off. The stars were out and the moon gave off just enough illumination to guide them. Verim started up the engine, pushed the throttle, and kept them on a straight course to Y.
As to not give away their location, the boat didn’t have a sun lamp of its own, so they both had a personal lamp secured at their sides. The cabin was airtight and protected, but the exterior was fully subjected to the poisonous, destructive water outside once the boat left the safety of the destroyer’s sun bubble; the hull might last one, maybe two days at most.
It would take them at least ninety minutes to reach the island, and other than a few exchanges and clarifications about their plans, they both kept as quiet as their birds for the first half of the trip.
Then Verim suddenly parted his coat, took something out of his right pocket, and handed it to Lechi. Her eyes adjusted to darkness, she was just able to make out the object—and she also recognized its weight.
“Is… this a demirriage scroll?” she asked.
“It’s Jeryn’s old scroll. I took it from the burrow before we left.”
“Verim… we weren’t supposed to… I mean, I get it, we may need to escape from a bad situation, but you still disobeyed an order.”
“I don’t care.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m committed to doing this and getting you back to the boat safely, but then I’m going to use this scroll and start a new life. I’ll go somewhere free from this war. I never should have stuck around this long in the first place. Really… what reason did I have?”
“I thought you considered us your family, or at least friends…”
“I do. And if this ends in our lifetime, maybe we can meet again.”
“And what am I supposed to tell the others?”
“For now… tell them I died—saving you, if you want.”
“Verim… You’re really serious about this.”
“I’ve killed enough people in this lifetime. Hit a quota. If my total ends up higher than Escellé’s… I’m not sure I could ever forgive myself, in any life, if I became more monstrous than her.”
“You think she’s a monster? You told me what she did, but… there’s no way you’d ever become as remorseless as she sounds.”
“But you understand, right? Can I trust you to keep this secret?”
She hesitated but nodded, replying, “You look miserable. I don’t want you to lose what’s still left of yourself, even if it means… we never get to see you again. I think you’ve done more than enough for us.”
Verim smiled weakly. “You know, Lechi, I never actually signed up for this war. I just… never stopped chasing Garder around. I shouldn’t have to pull a stunt like this to leave it all behind. But if I don’t…”
“They’ll just want to use your special talent over and over.”
“Yeah. Something like that. And I’m sorry if I’m being selfish, but everyone else will just have to find some other way, without me.”
Thankful that he could rely on Lechi, Verim was able to ease his mind and redouble his focus on his last mission for the Angels, genuinely wanting to succeed for the sake of his friends and how they’d remember him. Across the water, the dim lights of Y were approaching, and the moon cast a glow on the rock spire where they would be disembarking.
Shortly after they passed into the protective umbrella around Y, Verim pulled the boat up to the side of a rock, hopped out, and moored it. They released their falcons, and once they felt confident that the birds would stay latched onto their shoulder pads, they tossed the cages back into the boat and made their way to the side of a tall cliff. With water crashing against the rocks they hopped over, they looked up at the pulsating light at the top of a radio tower, towards the pre-dawn sky above.
“We don’t have much time,” Verim told his bird. “Please go up and make sure there aren’t any humans out and about.”
She clicked her beak and took to the air, flying in tight circles until she was above the top of the spire. While he waited, Verim released about half of his on-hand seeds and with some light watairre alchemagi, fed them some condensed water that had been purified of sea salt. They sprouted and grew rapidly, scaling the cliff side and giving the two something to climb.
The falcon returned, and speaking in its native tongue of clicks and chirps that Lechi and Verim could interpret, reported, “Top clear, no men.”
“So…” Verim sighed and gave his bird a treat, “if the intel is good, this weather monitoring station is manned at all times, and there’s no road access to it; meaning there should be a parked chariot up there.”
To help her climb the plant life, Lechi used a small portion of her iron block to create spiked grips, while Verim was strong and agile enough to leap up and grab each next segment of his vines. After sending out their falcons to keep watch, they worked their way up and arrived as the first sunlight began to radiate from the horizon.
The concrete weather station rested on a grassy mesa, with a small parking area just large enough to hold two chariots—a compact two-seater already taking up one space. Being careful not to alert the lone Guard-appointed worker inside, the intruders used their blades to cut every wire they could see on the exterior to keep them from calling in a stolen vehicle. Lechi formed a fake key to unlock the chariot, they whistled for their birds to return, and they slipped into the flying machine.
With their falcons digging their talons into the headrests behind them, Verim worked on getting the chariot’s engine going. It was a basic model and prone to Aurrian hot-wiring—a process that was trickier than successfully driving away with a stolen car on Earth.
“I haven’t done this in a long time…” Verim said as he fiddled with the electric terminals under the dashboard’s maintenance hatch.
“Can I help? Maybe make some kind of bypass shunt?”
“This looks tamper-proof in regards to using alchemagi. It’ll detect non-natural metals; gotta be like a genuine mechanic and use what’s already there. But, you used to be able to do that? Are you implying experience?”
Lechi shrugged. “I didn’t get booted down to N for no reason. In my past Aurrian life, I made a killing in the carriage theft business.”
Verim raised an eyebrow and looked at her. “Really?”
“Yeah.” She smiled cheekily. “I went a little bad that life. But it was the golden age of carriages. Back when they still raced ‘em, when there were actual hot rods? Now they’re just boring and we take them for granted.”
“Guess we all need a release of sorts eventually. You must’ve lived like a street queen for a while. At least before you got caught.”
“Hey, I almost ran out the clock. I was doing that from, I dunno, 1870 something to around 1910. I was old by the time they jailed me.”
The engine came to life, and Verim smiled and wistfully replied, “I wish I could’ve had more to add to all our talks about past lives on the Tenor. It’s just… been so long since my last one. Details get lost.”
“I get that, but still, not many get to spend time in Hold and cheat time like you have. Just by living so long, through eras… You must have a lot of unique stories of your own.” Once they were in the air and Verim was steering them towards the City, Lechi asked, “I’ve always wondered, since we really met you—how’d you stumble into the hidden kingdom, the first time? Escellé didn’t just come looking for you, right?”
The chariot’s complex engine was able to just barely use some basic watairre abilities at a rudimentary level, turning compressed gas into air alchemagi that gave the vehicle its ability to fly, similar to the enhanced air that circulated through Aurrian airship balloons which gave them extra lift.
As Verim took to the sky and headed towards the City, he noticed the fuel gauge and muttered, “Great. The owner didn’t gas her up recently. We might not have enough to make a return trip.”
“We’ll worry about that later.”
“Yeah…” He looked at Lechi, still waiting patiently for his story. He got into a legal air lane, then went ahead and shared something he had told very few people. “There was a time when I made a living off my gift.”
“I guess that isn’t very surprising.”
“It was usually hit jobs on Guardsmen who had done something to deserve it, so I feel less bad about it, but every now and then… I mean, I didn’t take all of the jobs that were offered, but I still had my share of things I shouldn’t have done. After a few years, I was set up. Got paid extra to make one of D’s nobles ‘disappear forever,’ by killing them on Earth, where he was permitted to conduct some manner of business.”
“And… believing that, you were ready to do it?”
He sighed. “By that point, I had almost stopped caring about any consequences, what I did to others. So, yeah, I agreed to it. Staked out the Stonehenge portal, waited for him to appear, and followed him through…”
“But he must’ve ended up killing you instead.”
“I deserved it. The moment I arrived in Stonehenge, where it was late at night, I saw him waiting for me—for just a split second, before he shot me dead with something powerful. I was the one that was supposed to disappear forever, for all the trouble that I had caused.”
“Then what happened?”
“Let me… focus on flying for now,” Verim said as they entered the City. “I’ll tell you the rest later. This place makes me nervous.”
Verim found another Guard chariot to stay behind at a safe distance, hoping that he would avoid suspicion or making a wrong turn into a no-fly area. Below, only a few carriages drove on the scraggly roads, as they were mostly filled with makeshift fire pits and burning drums, the people listlessly meandering between the spots of warmth.
“They must feel like it’s better being outside than inside…” Lechi commented, her eyes shifting across the ugly, matching concrete apartment blocks. “It’s just crazy, keeping an Aurrian City in this condition.”
Residences turned into work camps and derelict buildings, which transitioned into war factories, with long lines of citizens milling into the large buildings to start a shift as others left theirs, everyone dressed in gray and looking just as identical as their cold homes.
“Is this where they make weapons and war machines?” Lechi asked. “How much of this is slave labor…?”
“I think, nearly all of it,” Verim replied. “Y doesn’t have much of an actual commerce presence. If you want to eat, you work. And they’re probably working overtime because of the war.”
“Seeing all this, knowing we could spend multiple lifetimes here on the next run after all we’ve done… I don’t know, somehow it doesn’t deter me. It just makes me want to fight even harder. It’s still worth it.”
“I never said it wasn’t. But I don’t think I can do it anymore.”
“Verim, on our right!”
He shifted in his seat to look past Lechi, towards the giant looming shadow of a strange tower surrounded by scrap metal and tall fencing. After he flew past a few more street blocks, he made a sharp turn towards the tower, at this point not as concerned about making themselves noticeable.
He spotted a disused, crumbling garage among the buildings closest to the fence, which once served as the parking space for an office building. With the morning light giving way to full brightness, he just barely slid their aircraft into the fourth floor of the garage and into the shadows.
The chariot hovering a few inches over the concrete, Verim found a good place to land and shut everything down.
“And now…” he breathed a sigh of relief. “We wait.”
They spent the day observing the tower and its grounds, burning hours watching for any activity through binoculars. The falcons stayed by their side for the most part, as their human partners knew it was best not to risk sending them out while the sun was out.
It also became evident that they had arrived just in time, as the only work being performed at the site involved dismantling the cranes around the tower, meaning that it was finished or about to be. Verim and Lechi focused on the workers and their Guardsmen overseers, hoping to pick up any clues as to who they were serving. The tower itself was noticeably featureless, although the only aspect of the structure Verim could discern from outside did provide some insight on its secrecy.
As he made a platter of fruits and vegetables with seeds, he explained to Lechi, “It’s crude but functional. They used industrial synthids to create three cargo ship hulls, balanced them together into a pyramid shape, and then created and welded a shell between the ships. If they used existing blueprints to make the super-structure, then they probably avoided all the official construction channels in the Guard.”
“So… was the thing out there illegally built?”
“Not sure if ‘illegal’ really applies to a power that usually acts above the law already, but it must’ve been built in secret. Some officer in the Guard must have overseen the creation of it. I wonder about their intentions.”
“I hate to say this, but I don’t think we’re going to get enough intel about it without going inside. But our uniforms don’t match anything worn by the people we’ve seen so far. How are we supposed to blend in?”
“Let’s hope that this really is a Tillethian Guard project, and at some point, some of their soldiers come along. We have enough seeds for two days of food, we seem to be safe here… I think we have to go for it. Later tonight, we can at least send the birds out for a better look.”
The day continued on with little activity around the tower, and at dusk, Verim prepared a second meal with his seeds.
“Wish we had a pressure cooker…” he said as he chopped up some zucchini. “It’d be nice to warm these up, even just a little.”
“But we can’t risk putting out any smoke.”
“No, but…” he eyed the chariot, “we could try cooking this stuff on a hot engine. You know, if we were desperate.”
“Are you ever going to tell me the rest of your story?”
“Oh. I forgot about that. There isn’t much left to tell, though. Ah… Right, so the first surprise was that I had not, in fact, vanished from reality. I was in Hold, but alone. Behind me, in the distance, and the only thing at all in that void, was a small castle. I wandered up to it, was welcomed inside, and eventually met Escellé.”
“How’d you start working for her?”
“I didn’t have much of a choice. We weren’t aware of the connection we shared through Nish, but my options were to become one of her ‘princes’ and serve her, or stay there forever. For years, I stayed. I talked to people, and they helped me work through some of my anger and apathy. Everyone saw her as full of grace and wisdom, and I guess I figured that if someone like that believed I wasn’t beyond redemption, that I still had a chance to… do something other than just killing for a living.”
“But you served her for about two centuries and never suspected?”
“I’ve seen her lose her patience before, scold and punish others, but nothing a parental figure wouldn’t normally have to do sometimes. She never made me think that she had killed many, many more people than I ever have. And maybe… she really isn’t a monster anymore. I’m sure that she’s changed over time, and other than her excursion with Leovyn that resulted in the twins, I don’t think she left Hold since she first arrived, so it isn’t as if she was still out there and behind more massacres… except the one, I suppose. I don’t know what I’d say upon seeing her again.”
“Maybe you don’t have to. If you wanted to run away, just… do it, and then live in peace for however long you have left. I think that if I were around as long as you’ve been, I’d be ready to move onto another life, too.”
“I’ve thought about it many, many times. But I’ve never been ready to say goodbye to everyone, the friends I made. If we had one more day…”
“Verim…” Lechi finished the last of her meal and focused on the ambience of the night air. “Do you hear that?”
He did; it was the unmistakable rhythmic thumping of an army on the move. They rushed to the side of the parking garage and soon watched a regiment of several hundred Tillethian soldiers, following three vehicles moving slowly. Two mechanized infantry battalions were escorting an APC.
“I bet whoever’s in charge is in there,” Verim said, watching as the posted security guards rolled open the gates to the site. “We have to get down there, Lechi. Make sure your uniform looks proper.”
“O-okay…” she breathed out nervously and got moving.
“Girls,” Verim spoke to the falcons, both of them still chipping away at their cups of bird feed. “We have to go. Please find a way inside that big building. Look for a hole near the top where warm air is blowing out. We’ll try to meet you inside. Be safe, watch out for guns.”
They clacked their beaks and took off, disappearing into the night sky. Verim liked working with birds of prey, as they tended to be quite intelligent and usually took their orders well.
With the army below beginning to march past the fence, he fixed up his own uniform and went into the stairwell with Lechi.
Her flashlight the only source of illumination guiding them down the crumbling stairs, she told him, “I’m a bit scared about going in there.”
“I’m worried, too, but I have your back. Keep your uniform’s hat down and try not to stand out. It isn’t that uncommon for someone your age to be a new recruit. I’ll do the talking if we get stopped.”
“Okay… got it.”
They hit the bottom just in time, and seamlessly blended in with the soldiers at the very back, where they kept in lock step with their pace. After a few seconds of observation, Verim realized something.
“These soldiers are all older, more experienced,” he told Lechi via telepathy. “I can tell—most if not all are veterans, maybe handpicked for whatever this is. We have to hope no one tries to see you up close.”
Lechi looked up, towards the spotlights hitting the tower. For a brief moment, she saw the shadow of one of the falcons on the metal siding. Nearly every other soldier around her was taller and larger, so she felt very out of place and her confidence drained out of her. Instead of feeling like a team leader, she felt like the little kid that first set out with the Nollands and Jeryn seven years ago, and now looked to Verim for the guidance that the former-pretorian fire adept once gave the twins.
She noticed Verim’s oversized sword, partially hidden behind his uniform’s coat. His secondary, smaller blade was at his side, and looked enough like those the soldiers carried that it shouldn’t expose him—and given that every Guardsman was armed with a sword, bow, or a rifle, having their cover blown would put them in a perilous situation.
They made it past the gates, and were locked in once the security guards closed them. After they went past a field of scrap and broken up aircraft, the two got their first look at the interior upon approaching the thirty-foot tall doors to the tower, made out of hangar shutters built in sideways. The interior was no less crude than the outside, built purely for some manner of function over form. Metal grating was used to create four floors circling the main chamber, which was lit by hundreds of lamps and spanned the height of the cargo freighters used as supports.
There was no foundation, so the first level of the platform was held several inches above the exposed dirt. Before they could get a good look at the very top of the structure, Lechi and Verim were forced up some rickety stairs, all the way up to the fourth floor. Every available space below them had already been filled up with soldiers, some of them talking quietly, but none noticeably excited or anxious. The two observed that all the soldiers were gripping onto the solid metal railing running along the platforms—and as there wasn’t room enough to get behind anyone in the first place, they followed suit, and both had the same reaction to a sensation.
“The railing is… electrified,” Lechi whispered in Verim’s mind.
“Yeah, I feel it. The hell is this place…?”
They both used the time they had to get a better look around, with Verim turning to see the empty vertical cargo ship behind them, a few large central supports running from the bottom of the bilge to the platform. After her eyes followed one of their falcons as it flew around inside for a moment, Lechi leaned forward and looked up. Near the top of the tower was a large metal box, held in place by industrial hydraulic rods. Above it, at the very top, was a solid sphere with strange, yet vaguely familiar etchings. She knew she had seen something like it before, at some point in time.
“Tillethian soldiers!” a voice suddenly erupted from the tower’s numerous speakers. “I salute you on this momentous night!”
Lechi nudged Verim and pointed out the officer talking into a microphone below, his dozen escorts and lieutenants flanking him. He was a taller man, about Rivia’s age, with thinning brown hair and small glasses.
“Lechi…” Verim spoke telepathically, “That’s Fordein.”
“The Tillethian commander? What is this place?”
Fordein continued for a listening crowd, “The politicians in A expect us to patrol Tillethy’s seas, day in, day out, with the barest of aid as we follow every asinine order they give us. We all know we’ve been tossed aside, forced to sail upon breaking, ancient warships, patrolling islands, losing men to the acidic sea and skirmishes with Angel fleets… Until one day, undoubtedly, we will be sacrificed attempting a catastrophic invasion of City F. Unless… we are given a way to finally prove our worth.”
“Did we just stumble into some cult meeting for Tillethy’s upper echelons?” Lechi asked Verim. “What the hell is Fordein trying to do?”
“Today, we declare war on the Administration!” Fordein shouted.
The hundreds of soldiers and officers in the tower stomped their feet several times, calling out in a chant, “Down! Down! Down!”
“Ah, hell…” Verim sighed audibly.
Fordein continued to rile up his men, “Today, you are not disposable. I handpicked all of you, Tillethy’s finest warriors, to come with me and lay waste to the Administration capital. They had their chance to intervene and end this war! They could have stopped the uprising before it erupted into a global cataclysm, claiming ten million lives and counting! But, once again, those who live below only see us as beneath them. If they choose to abandon the people who actually enforce their rules and maintain order, then why should we continue to tolerate their existence?”
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“Wipe them out!” the men cheered in unison.
“We will! We will, my brave warriors. They won’t know what hit them. And when they’re gone, we’ll take full control of Aurra.”
“Divine providence!”
“Either they rehearsed this, or they’ve had a few of these meetings before,” Verim commented, speaking through his mind again.
“But they can’t attack the Administration. Right? Don’t they have providence over the Guard, just like they used to have over us?”
“Evidently, Fordein doesn’t think so…”
“Yes!” the commander shouted, now full of vim and rage. “We will attain the true divine providence that should have been given to the Guard thousands of years ago, and we will use it to end this war! Men, ensure that you are holding onto the railings tightly, unless you want to be left behind. We will be departing for City U in a few moments, and then, to arms!”
“Depart…?” Lechi murmured, looked up again at the large metal sphere, and finally realized its function. “Verim, that’s a demirriage engine!”
“That’s imposs…”
“Colt showed us the one inside the Mezik a few years back, and it looks just like that thing, only smaller. The tower can be transported!”
They looked at each other, and then around at the others, everyone gripping onto the durable metal railing tightly. Knowing they would have to as well—or risk being left behind and then falling several dozen feet, if the inward pressure wave didn’t kill them first—the two held on even more tightly. Above, the engine began to spin in place and give off an increasingly loud hum. The support beams, walkways, and walls of the tower all began to tremble, knocking loose some poorly-placed rivets.
With everything shaking around them, Verim locked eyes with one of the soldiers near them, who had been watching the two in his peripheral since their arrival. Already suspicious that they hadn’t joined in on the chants, the soldier’s eyes moved to Verim’s back, where his sword visibly extended out from his coat. If it weren’t for the fact that everyone now had to prepare to be flung through space, the soldier might have acted.
Fordein and his men left the ground floor and stepped onto a small platform attached to the tower, where a waiting technician unlocked the glass box on a pedestal that was protecting a glass orb. He and his escorts grabbed onto their own railings, and the commander placed his right hand on the orb. The engine stopped spinning at once, and all of its stored energy surged through the tower, flowing through the railings as it did so, very briefly and mostly harmlessly passing through everyone.
Outside, the visible space around the tower distorted as lightning bolted from the rod at the top of the structure to the ground. After just a second, the entirety of the metal pyramid all but vanished from reality. Air rushed in to fill the vacuum, creating a strong updraft. The two falcons, left behind in Y, were hit by a gust of wind but otherwise kept flying unscathed.
Somewhere on the outskirts of City U, which built and provided a launching point for many of the Guardian airships, a bolt of powerful electricity tore through the air. The wind howled and space bent outward, distorting the view of the stars above had there been anyone nearby to look up at them. With a mighty crack and burst of air, the tower appeared, creating a shock wave that blew away the surrounding debris.
Other than a slightly warmer temperature, nothing inside the structure changed except the ground, which had been replaced by a decrepit and cracked runway that must have belonged to an abandoned airfield. Most noticeably, under the very center of the chamber and painted in red on the runway was a large X. Fordein looked pleased upon seeing it.
“We’ve arrived,” he announced. “And now… we begin.”
He pulled a lever on the back wall, activating the machinery in and around the metal box just under the engine. The pneumatic rods extended, dropping down to form guide rails for the piece of equipment kept inside the storage container. Once the rods hit the ground, the box opened and a complex device was steadily brought down on the rails. Made of hundreds of moving parts, the equipment was a super-drill, a vertically oriented industrial apparatus similar to machines with many sets of grinding teeth used to chew through solid rock to make tunnels on Earth.
Several heavily insulated, large wires and tubes were attached to its back, meant to power the menacing device and pull away the rocks it would dig through and break apart. Upon its arrival below, it fully revved up and tore through the runway in seconds. The machine’s engine shook the tower, as the men inside both cheered and tried to keep their emotions in check. But they were angry, vindictive, and ready to destroy the Administration.
“Hey…” Lechi’s inner voice spoke to Verim. “We have to get out of here while they’re all focused on that thing. There has to be a way…”
Verim, staring at the digger as it worked into the ground inch by inch, told her, “They plan to punch straight through to the Admin capital below us… We have no idea how well defended they might be. These Guardsmen really could kill everyone down there.”
“I know! But this isn’t our fight. We don’t owe the Administration anything. If they weren’t going to help the Guard, they could have at least helped us. Then things might be different. But this…”
She then also noticed the nearby Guardsman who had been watching them, his interest away from the drill. Whether they would fight or run, they were almost out of time. For Verim, it was the most difficult decision of his life. He used what little mind alchemagi he knew how to use to accelerate his thoughts, scrambling to find the right choice.
“Lechi…” He said audibly. “Protect me.”
“W-what?”
He looked back at the digger, already halfway into the ground. In a few more seconds, it would disappear and continue its journey downward unabated. He breathed in, breathed out, and affirmed his choice.
“Protect me,” he repeated, and reached for his sword.
“V-Verim, we…” But he was acting regardless, meaning she had to act as well. “Damn it! This isn’t worth it!”
Nevertheless, she brought out three fingers and recited a spell. The soldier near them reacted by trying to grab her wrist, but it was too late—she managed to slam her palm onto the grating, sending a powerful resonating wave forward that caused instant metal fatigue failure. Some twenty feet of the platform broke apart, leaving the railings and support intact but sending a dozen men tumbling down onto the platform below. Several soldiers managed to hold onto the railing, but without any floor below them, they were in no position to counterattack.
Verim used the moment of confusion to hurl, with great strength and precision, his primary sword. The cudgel of a blade spun in the air, and everyone watched as it firmly lodged itself in some of the exposed hydraulic parts of the digger. Lines were cut, fluid spilled, sparks and smoke erupted from the impact point, and the machinery ground to a halt. Lechi, at the edge of the only staircase to the fourth floor, sent her alchemagi through the metal steps to bend them downward, effectively turning them into an impassable slide. On her other side, she grabbed onto the remaining grating from afar, bending it upwards and twisting it around to effectively block the gunfire from the remaining and cut-off Guardsmen on their floor.
“What the hell is going on up there?” Fordein shouted. “Intruders? Take them out! Now! Repair crew, tend to the machine immediately!”
After loading his seed gun with a pouch, Verim fired it at the drill. He then fired a second pouch, its seeds also exploding across the dig site. Upon seeing that Verim had to focus on growing his plant life, Lechi employed her iron slab to shield him. Liquid metal poured from under her coat, which merged with the railing. She shaped both sources and contorted them into sturdy metal bars around both of them, using what remained to block off the top of the makeshift slide. Able to concentrate within their protective prison, Verim rapidly grew his vines, using them to entangle the drill and further make a mess of things. Fordein grew enraged.
“Verim Grenwich!” he shouted. “How dare you interfere with us?! If there’s anything the Guard and you bastard Devils should agree upon, it’s that the Administration needs to die! All men, target that platform!”
“Lechi, I’m sorry I led you into this…” Verim panted as a jungle formed around the machinery, some of the vines now crushing its exterior.
Weapon fire filled the chamber, all of it directed to their position. Lechi concentrated on branching out her controlled metal into more complex shapes, hoping to fill the larger gaps between the bars. The grating below was absorbing ballistics for the moment, but she was also having to contend with several other iron alchemagists in the room, trying to wrestle away control of her manipulated material. She was quickly overwhelmed.
Three shots got past. One hit the side of the tower, right near her head. Another cut straight through Verim’s right leg—she couldn’t see where exactly—and the last bullet hit just below his collar bone.
“We can’t stay here,” Verim said, shrugging off the pain as his vines reached their maximum potential. He looked down, past the bottom of the stairs that had become a slide to see that a primary support beam was close by, wide enough to stand on. Better yet, one of the tower’s hanging flood lamps was hanging above it. “Lechi, that’s where we’re going.”
“But you’re hurt, and we’re surrounded…”
“This? This is nothing,” he breathed, and after getting some of his blood on his hand, wiped it across his face to look threatening.
Before Lechi could ask for more assurance, Verim leapt onto the slide with his backup sword out, keeping up and steady the whole way down. He jumped before hitting the bottom, taking the closest Guardsman by surprise. Unable to position his sword in time, Verim sliced straight through him with so much force that he disappeared nearly instantly.
Lechi watched for a moment more as Verim caught his first victim’s sword before it hit the floor, and then began dual-wielding both blades to cut through the following four Guardsmen, if not more that she couldn’t see, all of which were equipped with rifles or bows, rendering them unable to keep Verim back. They couldn’t maneuver easily on the platform, leaving them all but completely helpless against their attacker. If someone didn’t turn into orange smoke quickly enough, he simply shoved them off.
Lechi then looked below, through the grating. Other Guardsmen were moving in, working past the narrow catwalk along the deformed stairs. Verim’s focus was on those in front of him, and he wouldn’t see those about to rush in from behind until it was too late. Knowing she needed to help him, she dove down the slide, landed clumsily, flipped around, and while casting another high-level spell, planted her palms into the third floor’s grating. The metal floor ahead of her rippled and began to break apart like the platform above. But this time, she was countered.
The sentinel leading the charge around the stairs electrified his staff and slammed it into the floor. Sparks fired between the gaps in the grating as electricity surged through her palms, burning them and blasting her backward. She then hit the railing before landing, dislocating her shoulder.
“Lechi!” Verim shouted and turned to see her trying to get up.
His concern cost him; the next swordsman in line was able to get close and swing. Verim just barely reacted in time to knock back the blade, ending up with a light gash down his right arm. The tip of the sword hit the grating, and Lechi had fallen in just the wrong place; she suffered a light cut on her forehead. Uncertain of what had just happened, she wiped the area with her hand and then reeled at the sight of blood.
Seeing Lechi hurt enraged Verim even further. As the swordsman attempted to pull his weapon out of the grating where it had become stuck, the wild child firmly planted his borrowed Guardian sword into his chest, before following up with a powerful kick. Their attacker stumbled back and then tripped at the edge of the stairs down to the second level platform, sending all of the men trying to come up tumbling.
With the lightning adept Guardsman on the right side approaching carefully over the damage Lechi had done to the metal under their feet, the two had been bought a few needed seconds to get into a better position.
Verim helped Lechi up, tore off a piece of his uniform’s coat, and wrapped it around her head to keep the blood out of her eyes. She got her first good look at the tattered uniforms across the platform, at least a dozen sets. Their owners’ killer hadn’t fared well, either. He’d been cut by blades several times, and had broken off an arrow that hit his lower leg. He was in bad shape, with likely only his adrenaline helping with the pain.
Fordein shouted, “What is taking so long? Kill them already!”
“Lechi…” Verim panted. “Get on that support beam…”
She looked at the solid structure that connected the bottom of a ship to the platform, back at him, and then carefully stepped onto it, with nothing below to break a fall. Verim followed her, nearly stumbling off until he found his footing. As he walked backwards into the bilge, he raised three fingers with his trembling left hand and took control of the moisture in the air. Lechi watched as it condensed into a thin veil of mist in front of them. She realized he was trying to make a wall of water for his seeds.
“I can help…” she murmured and quickly contributed to his spell.
The opaque fog was compressed into a nearly solid sheet of water, about a millimeter thick. That was all Verim needed, and he fired his last seed pouch with his flare gun. They burst and spread across the water, which triggered their explosive growth. He had been careful to keep the hanging lamp they needed just outside of the water wall, and he guided several of the growing vines up to it, where they grabbed on and redirected the light so it filled the inner ship with barely sufficient illumination. Other vines began to latch onto the platform and ship sides, and he commanded the green barrier to quickly fill so it could absorb more projectiles.
Verim was expending so much alchemagi to force rapid growth that he suffered an energy burn in his palms. He didn’t notice that particular pain until it was quite strong, and he reacted by opening his hands, causing him to drop his remaining sword down into the vertical ship’s stern.
“Lechi…” he gasped for breath. “Demirriage…”
She saw the scroll at his side, grabbed it, and opened it across the beam. The transport began to form, but very slowly.
“One last blood frenzy…” Verim said as he watched the carriage of light develop. “Had to… fight to save you…”
“We’re both escaping,” Lechi asserted.
Before Verim could fully process if that may be true or not, a crossbow bolt pierced the lamp. The half-formed carriage disappeared instantly, and the two were left in near darkness.
“No, no no…” Lechi began to panic. “What do we do? Verim!”
He dropped to his knees and looked at his worn, burned, bloody hands, wondering just how many times he had used them to end a life.
“That’s enough…” he murmured tiredly.
“Verim? We… we have to find a way to light the scroll.”
He watched the men chopping through his growing vines, using their swords like machetes to clear a jungle. Then he turned himself around, calmly rolled up the scroll, and handed it to Lechi with a warm, soft grin.
“W-what…” she whispered.
Placing a hand on her shoulder, he asked, “You can travel through metal now, can’t you? I overheard you talking about it…”
She glanced at the bottom of the ship. “I… Y-yeah, but… If I had some time, I can bend it, and break it, and make an opening.”
He shook his head. “I’ll need to contain the explosion.”
“Explo… You can’t! You’ll be okay, I can get you to a hospital…”
“Lechi. I need to save the Administration, even if we know so little about them. I have to believe… that at some point, they may be our last line of defense against the Guard, or even Drides.”
“You’re… you’re not a monster. You can still live…”
He sighed. Then he directed two of the barrier’s vines to shoot back towards them. They picked up Lechi and pinned her to the side of the tower. She struggled to break free, and soon realized she never would; her only option was to travel through the centimeters of steel behind her.
“Thank you for saying that,” Verim said, then uncovered his one sharp tooth for the first time in a long while, and took out a black case. He gently placed a packet of seeds in her pocket. “For your injuries…”
“Verim, please don’t make me go back alone!”
“I did enjoy our adventures together, with Shin, and all of you…”
She began to struggle again as Verim took out a solid black pill from the case, sticking it between his teeth and holding it there.
“Verim!”
“Give her my best, okay?”
He bit down, cracking the pill, signaling to Lechi that it really was time for her to go. With tears in her eyes, she hesitated a moment longer before obeying the order. After burning his face into her mind, she turned her body into metal and passed through the ship within a split second. On the other side, she hugged the exterior tightly to slow her descent down the angled hull, making sure to keep a grip on the scroll as well.
Above, Verim turned back around, fell back onto his knees, and dropped his arms, releasing control of his plants to focus his alchemagi elsewhere. With blood dripping down his palms, he exhaled, relaxed, and swallowed the worst of the pills he was never supposed to use on Aurra.
Without his full support of the vines, the Guardsmen were able to cut through them in seconds. Several riflemen and archers took aim at him, saw that he was defenseless, and hesitated.
“Sir!” one of the men shouted. “He’s unarmed! Do we take him?”
“No!” was the distant response. “I told you, kill him at once!”
“I’m sorry,” Verim quietly apologized to the Guardsmen while they wasted time taking proper aim. “Shouldn’t have lasted this long…”
Several arrows and bullets tore into him, and he fell off the beam. But it was too late for everyone inside the tower; he was already glowing vibrantly before they had even opened fire. The alchemagi burn reaction taking place throughout his body likely elicited such a sudden, panicked response. As he fell, he thought of Escellé. And forgave her.
He asked her, “Think I’ll die… before I hit the bottom?”
Outside, Lechi rolled messily onto the ground and scrambled to get away from the tower. Seconds after she had made it off the side of the ship, there was a terrible explosion, so powerful that it blasted a gaping hole in the vessel and destabilized the rest of the tower. The structure groaned under great stress as smoke billowed from inside, and she knew she didn’t have time to wait in place for the nearby flood lights to power the carriage.
The weight of the tower began to crush the damaged ship, and steadily the entire monolith fell apart, threatening to land on Lechi. She fled the site, dodging falling debris as she did so. The earth trembled as the tower fell, demolishing the derelict aircraft under it. Shortly after she made it off the runway, it made full impact, sending out a shock wave full of fire, dust, shrapnel, and smoke. The top of the structure ended up only several dozen feet away, with the demirriage engine exposed, burning.
She watched for a moment, the sphere shedding material in a blaze as bright as ignited thermite, melting the surrounding broken steel. The light cut through the dust, and thinking more about her own survival than what just happened to Verim, she laid out the scroll. The transport took two seconds to form, after which she rolled up its source, pocketed it, got inside, and pressed the pedestal before any Guardsmen drew near.
The first place she thought of was a secluded park in City N, and it was where she went almost instantly. Escaping a night of smoke, fire, and death, she found herself surrounded by tall, pristine buildings, lit up by a setting sun. The park was green and vibrant with flower displays, and she had it to herself. Once she was able to gather her thoughts and bring down her heart rate, she sprouted Verim’s medicinal herbs, taking nectartart for the pain and aphridgine, applied directly, for her wounds.
She checked her pocket watch, remembered the schedule, and seeing that she would have to wait another two hours before she could go back to C, decided to take the time to rest and treat her injuries. Only after she hid herself in some bushes near a tall tree and felt safe, did she begin to really process what transpired. But she wouldn’t let herself cry, just to avoid attracting the attention of anyone that might pass through. N still had some Guardsmen, and though they had a truce with the military that kept the City neutral, they still very much had the authority to arrest war criminals.
She forced herself to stay awake and warded off the nectartart’s effects, checking her watch every few minutes, until the window to enter C finally opened. She got up, dragged her feet to a park lamp post, and waited until its dim light powered the carriage enough to take her to the manor.
Upon her arrival in the Faraday cage, she collapsed. C’s guards and the eraser twins, who had just arrived forty seconds earlier, rushed over to help. With her successful retrieval, the scouting mission came to an end.
Garder hadn’t said a word during Lechi’s retelling. Milla, at her bedside, had been quietly doing what she could to comfort her. Rivia, who had stood throughout the story, only listened and thought about the events.
“Lechi…” Milla murmured and helped her drink some water. “I am so sorry. If we had any idea that anything like that was taking place…”
“Damn it…” Rivia grumbled. “I… I really failed him.”
Garder, who began to twitch angrily as Lechi’s story came to a close, suddenly jolted up from his chair and glared at Rivia.
“You knew,” he accused the general. “You, or Pangs—you knew, you had some idea what was going on. That’s why you sent him, because you knew he’d try and save the Administration, because of his lineage.”
“Garder!” Milla exclaimed. “That doesn’t make any sense!”
“Think about what you’re saying,” Rivia replied. “Verim’s reasons would have been, what, having one as his former father? You know as well as we do that he had no admiration for them. He… He made the logical choice in his position, that’s all. He was right. If the Guard were to destroy them, or at least their ability to write and maintain Aurra’s laws…”
Lechi finished for him, mournfully, “The Guard could wield that power instead, and become invincible again… and probably much more.”
“I know you’re upset, Garder,” Milla continued. “Verim was my friend, too, and you both must have seen so much together out there…”
“All he wanted was a way out,” Garder muttered. “He told me every day what he wanted to do after the war, or instead of the war, but he… He suffered through it because he wanted to protect me, and Wendell and Xavier. That’s all that kept him in. That’s why…”
“This isn’t your fault, and you know it.”
“Don’t tell me how to feel or act, Milla. Not again. This is just like what happened to Jeryn and Kamsa. We couldn’t save another friend.”
“Garder!” she called out to him as he stormed out of the room.
He was surprised to be stopped by Shin, leaning against the wall just outside of the door, listening in for an unknown amount of time with her arms hugging her chest, and trying to keep from showing any emotion.
“I, um…” She tried to find the words and steady her breathing. “I heard something about them coming back, and figured I’d… say hi…”
“It’s too late for that.”
“I knew him a lot longer than you did, s-so… don’t act like you’re the only one broken up by it.”
“Rivia and Pangs did this to him and Lechi.”
In one of her rare acts of compassion, she grabbed onto his right arm tightly in an attempt to comfort him. “Garder… you can be angry, but you have to learn to grieve, as well. I’m saying this after multiple lives as a warrior—be as tough as you need to, but never close off your heart.”
He yanked himself free. “I’m tired of hearing crap like that, both here and on Earth. ‘Let people in.’ Yeah, sure. Then they hurt you, you hurt them, or one of you dies. And what do you care? You never liked me.”
She shook her head. “Unbelievable. Nothing’s changed… the worst of you just got worse over the years. I’d talk some sense into you, but it’d be time better spent with Lechi. You should get back in there, too.”
“There’s nothing I could say that would make any of this better.”
“Why? Why do you think like that? You’re the only person on this floor that spent the last seven years with him. You could… share a story…”
He genuinely saw no point, so Garder, or what was left of him, chose to instead leave Shin and the others in the cold, dark hospital.
“And with that, I’m afraid, we’ll have to move on from Verim for the time being,” Rivia said after the moment of silence in the war room the next morning, where the entire council was in attendance—and Lechi, too. “We can have a proper memorial at a later date, but I really must return to D at once. I only wished to briefly discuss what this event means for us.”
“Yes…” Pangs spoke up and looked at Lechi, her injuries still very apparent. “It’s likely that Nish provided Fordein with the demirriage engine, and that he and his… followers are not endemic of a Guard plot at large. I believe he was simply a… contingency plan for Nish’s intent.”
Yvell continued, “Intel is of course spotty for both U and Y, but what we do have suggests that there were several survivors. If Fordein was one of them, he’s kept off all the channels we can monitor.”
“But…” Viktor said after thinking for some time. “We need some clarity. Why were these Guardsmen ready to attack Administrators?”
Pangs answered, “My assumption is that the suppression that kept people from attacking Guardsmen was closely linked, maybe even inscribed on the same tablet that provided providence, with the laws that gave the Administration their own protection from the Guard.”
“So, we gave them that freedom, too…” Masayuki sighed.
“My ships are repositioning to U,” Jaraphim reported. “If we can get there before the Onasian division’s investigatory team departs the site, we may be able to still learn a few more things about the tower.”
Rivia returned to leading the discussion, “Regardless, we still have our own war to fight. We didn’t have any long-term campaign plans for Tillethy, but I’d like you all to use today to discuss new opportunities. Its division lost many dozens of high-ranking officers, and is likely in disarray.”
“Is that it, General?” Garder suddenly spoke up. “We give Verim his minute, and then get right back to making more plans for the people on the ground doing all the fighting? I mean, I get it—everything still has to go on. You do what you have to do, but personally, I’ve seen enough.”
“Garder,” Leovyn said in a stern tone. “Don’t.”
Tabi got in before anyone else could chide him, “I loved Verim. That’s why I want to help us… do the best we can with his sacrifice.”
Garder stood and looked Sasoire in the eye. “I really don’t belong here. Commander, I’m going to return to the Tenor and get back to what I’m good at. You all make the orders, and I’ll follow them farther down the chain. I can’t be around all the doubt and second-guessing anymore.”
“You’re too emotional…” Shin told him.
“Yeah. I know. Lechi, I’m sorry you had to go through all of that. Become a better leader for it… and watch out for your friends.”
With that, he left the room, with no intention of ever coming back. Eyes fell on Milla, who wasn’t sure if there was anything to really do.
“Are you just going to let him go back out there?” Lechi asked.
“He…” She took a deep breath. “He made his choice. We try to keep him safe, or we let him find his own way to work through everything.”
“He’s become too much of a soldier,” Leovyn reluctantly agreed. “He’ll have a home here from now on, and maybe in time he won’t feel as lost. Commander Sasoire, please keep an eye on him.”
She nodded, realized something, and let out the smallest laugh. “If he’s trying to get away from the general, though, well… The Tenor is going to be positioned over D for at least another week.”
“Perhaps I’ll find time to have a personal talk with him, then,” Rivia said and stood from his seat. “Everyone, these have been a productive last several days. I should be seeing most of you in G in a few weeks, for the Christmas Eve celebration. Do try to attend.”
Milla did wish she could leave the room with Rivia, just to share a few words with Garder while he was still in the building, even if nothing she said would help him. But there was far too much work to be done.
When Verim had first arrived in Hold, renewed and young again, he was in awe of the length of the line leading to Earth—but not surprised. Certainly, it had never been longer in this direction. Across the white void, hundreds of thousands were waiting to go and be reborn.
He also wasn’t surprised about the chaotic contention that wreaked havoc across the overgrown queue. It had long been expected that the war would extend to the neutral world, where all uniforms had been replaced by basic whites but did nothing to hide a face. There was no easy way to separate killed Angels from killed Guardsmen. They couldn’t be broken into two different lines, as doing so would only make the divisions even more obvious. Inevitably, two processions full of fighters—with civilians caught in the middle—would no longer be able to tolerate looking across at one another, and a bloodless, mass skirmish would break out. They couldn’t hurt each other, but there would no doubt be endless yelling, other physical contact, entrapment, and the two lines would become inseparable.
So, shortly after he became aware of walking forward, and recalled what ended his Aurrian life, he was curious more than anything about how the Hold staff was handling the ongoing situation. The answer came within minutes. As he merged with all the men whose lives he had just ended, they turned to him and went right into the screaming and curses.
“How dare you do this to us?” and “Z, Block 9, your entire next life,” were particularly common remarks, at least that he could discern.
He was surrounded by his victims, and this was easily noticeable by a young woman working in Hold, just one among thousands trying to keep the war’s postmortem populace in order. There had never been so very many workers on this side of the void. Verim thought it likely that more and more were being pulled out of the line and conscripted to assist.
“Angel?” was all she said to Verim after pushing her way through the enraged, deceased Guard officers. She then warned them, “Back off! Continue this behavior, and you’ll be sent to the back, again and again!”
This calmed down the aggressors enough, letting her pull Verim out. Hand in hand, she walked the boy past more Guardsmen, who showed him nothing but scorn. On and on he went, as did other staff helping other Angels. “Preferential treatment,” many of them accused. “Why do traitors get to advance in line?” Verim had to admit, they made a good point.
So many deaths, across all of Aurra. It truly was an incredible sight. At one point farther up, Verim thought he saw Connarth in the crowd, but his walking pace kept him from having time to take a second glance.
“Regardless of what side you fought on,” the woman told him, “everyone deserves to know peace here. That’s all we can attempt to provide. We’ve found the best way to do this is to divide both of you into repeating large groups, with a safe distance between.”
Right after she explained this, they left the swath of Guardsmen and entered a large gap, a DMZ of sorts. Perhaps about half a mile away was another mass of white clothes, the heads and arms poking out from them undulating like waves. This was where she had to leave him.
“That’s a group of Angels,” she told him. “Past them, civilians. Then Guardsmen again. Please, stay in your group.”
“I will,” he promised her. “I… appreciate your hard work to avoid tensions. I can’t imagine what this has been like for all of you.”
She thanked him, and then left him alone in his personal void so she could go and look for more Angels, and then do it all over again.
“Well…” Verim sighed and began walking. “I hope they have plenty to talk about.” He felt his new muscles, stretched his arms, and looked to the emptiness above. “Sorry, guys. But I had to be free.”
“Verim Grenwich?” a male voice suddenly interrupted his serenity.
In the middle of the gap, he stopped and turned around. Somehow, a tall man had snuck up on him. Even given his dulled senses in Hold, Verim knew that should never have happened. So, he figured that the only possible explanation was that this man had appeared out of nowhere.
“Y-yes?” Verim replied. “Did I do something wrong? Wait, are you… about to ask me to work the line? I can’t. I was in the Angels; I’d have a bias, and I’m assuming you can’t have that.”
The man kept his eyes on him, examining him as if he were some great oddity. All the while, he kept both arms behind his back.
Verim continued, “… If you don’t have a good reason to stop me, I’m going to get back in line. It’s looking like I’ll be here a few months at least, so… I better get started at, you know, waiting.”
“Do you still want to help your friends?” he asked.
“What? How? Look, even if there were some way to go back, I’m done with killing. I’ve sent enough people here.”
“No more killing. And we can’t give you back your life, but you can still help in other ways. There are some of us who actually insist upon it.”
“What do you mean… ‘us?’”
“I represent powers in Aurra that are aware of what you did in U.”
“Oh. Gnell Chi’velix did mention that Administrators work here.”
“You met him, did you? Hm. We’d like to hear about that, as well.”
“Look, I’m still not even sure if I really did make the right decision in helping your kind. And while I have no idea how I can help anyone from this side of Hold, I thought the Administration wasn’t taking sides.”
“I assure you, there has been great debate on that matter among our people. Not all of us feel the same way.”
“Are you having some sort of rebellion of your own?”
“Would you like to find out?”
Verim eyed the group of Angels ahead longingly. “I thought I had earned myself a long rest.”
“We can bring you to the front of this line, when you feel the time is right. It’s only a matter of how you want to spend your time here. I can show you a place in Hold, from where you can help your people. But you have to decide now, as I may not be able to come to you again.”
“I… I need a moment to think.”
“Of course.” The man looked at the Angels, and then at the bickering Guardsmen behind them. “And do consider this: even here, you can’t really escape these troubled times.”
