"There's still time to change your mind, you know." Elise is standing just behind me and to my right, speaking quietly. We're standing in the antechamber which serves as my 'throne room', something which Bradley eventually convinced me to make in order to have something like a seat of governance if I'm going to be in charge of people. Mostly because I am in charge whether I want to be or not. The locals just sort of unanimously decided for me.
"No, we're committed to this now. Trust me." Kuri is sitting to my left on the steps leading up to my seat, casually leaning her elbow on one knee. In the middle of the hall a large conference table has been set up and laid out to serve meals. A few of the locals working in the castle for us thanks to Sammy are bringing out drinks for the group as we're waiting for Ren to finish escorting them to the hall from outside.
Heh. He really has settled into the role of a local ruler, no matter how he denies, it, hasn't he? At least he's starting to get comfortable with it.
Yellow - Nemesis - isn't glowing. His ring is on a chain around his neck, though. Within easy reach but complying with the rules at large. Looking at him now, he seems almost hawkish, putting me in mind of Grand Moff Tarkin. That feels like a good fit somehow. His appearance has been shaped somehow by his use of the ring and how he thinks, his features severe, almost brutish. His armor is silver plate with lines of gold forming his sigil, a different suit than what he wore before. He also has an actual cape. It ought to be ridiculous but somehow, it isn't.
As much of an asshole that he is, I have to admit, he's got
style.
Mina is barely dressed and I'm not sure if what she's counting counts as dressed. She has her ring on a string clipped to her collar, almost like a bell. The choker is the most opaque part of the outfit and the rest leaves nothing to the imagination. The outfit as a whole puts me in mind of a belly dancer but the veil covering most of her, despite being transparent, makes me think 'desert-dweller'.
Well, the lady isn't
subtle, that's for sure. Goes with the Orange Light, I suppose.
The third one is clearly the red light user and she's glowing, her ring still on. Fists clenched, she's glowering at us, wearing adventurers leathers and a thick cloak, all dyed in red and black. Her sigil glows at her chest and her body language screams impatience.
Ah, so the red ring does have the same condition of binding itself to the wearer's body, I see. No easy removal for her.
"I am Lady Vara." When she speaks it's curt, almost grudging. She isn't looking at us, examining the chamber and table instead. "I cannot remove the ring. I once tried and the pain was overwhelming. Debilitating. It's tied to me. Fucking deal with it or don't."
"My ring is capable of turning off my ability to feel pain. Is yours incapable of doing the same?"
"My ring is fucking stupid. It only sort of does what I want it to. You gonna blab at me all day or we gonna sit down and talk?"
I suspect the only response from it when she asks it something is an angry growl. Entirely appropriate for the red AI.
I take a deep breath, looking down at the table for a moment as Kuri returns with several others holding platters. "Since we're not in a rush, I figured we could sit down together and have an informal conversation before we start getting serious. None of us know each other. Mina gave the impression that you want to work with us for some reason and we'll get to that, but there's hard feelings." I glare at Nemesis. "However, from what I understand the genkits have a long history of dealing diplomatically with factions they were merrily killing a week or two before and it was suggested to me that learning a bit about each other before the negotiations would help smooth things along."
Forgive, but never forget, eh? A sensible methodology.
"I got this ring because of him." She points at Nemesis, who shrugs elaborately. "I'm here with Ainsley because he's proven his worth as a person. We give loyalty to those who deserve it. Who better to align ourselves with than a man who works to better others?" Elise shrugs too. "With nowhere to go, he was the first to extend a hand in friendship. Our destinies are intertwined, now. Ainsley has risked his life for us, not many humans ever did that."
"Ooh, that sounds like a story." Mina leans forward on her elbows, resting her chin on her knuckles. "Wanna tell it to me later?"
I see Mina's got her eye on more than
one catch, as expected. Though I find how the Genkits forge friendships very interesting.
"Do you wish to be free of it?"
It's just after dinner and we're taking a few minutes before re-convening and getting down to business. Vara has made her way out to the garden balcony, looking out over the valley in the same spot I tend to sit while meditating or thinking. She turns her head to glance over her shoulder at me, framing her features against the lights in the garden for a moment.
Good to see she's not forced to be a frothing rage-beast all day every day.
"Yes. The red light encourages you to think in certain ways. The first time I took a body part as a trophy Nemesis - that wasn't his name at the time - was revolted. Entirely put off by it. Since he was changed it's less of a problem but his reaction put into perspective just how much my outlook on things has been forcibly changed."
"Does this have to do with this threat he's been dangling over us?"
So she's not happy about the mental side effects of the edges of the spectrum. I have to wonder if Ainsley's has been having any effect on him...
"I don't like anyone. I tolerate people to degrees. Some, like you, are easier than others, like him. I found him after he arrived, before he was re-aligned to his ring. Pathetic excuse of a man, really. A coward. Ruled by his own fears. Barely tolerable now, the cowardice was replaced by a sort of malevolent humor. Probably always under the surface, just too deep to see." She hmphs. "If you manage to kill him, I might even thank you for it."
I shake my head. "Not really my style and if this is as important as he says, training somebody new with his ring would take time."
And there's no guarantee whoever took it up wouldn't end up as much of an asshole... Though if he's covering his fear with a veneer f jerkishness, that's understandable.
"Orange can make rings easily. Not good ones, but functional. She has one like that. We killed the original orange."
"Why?"
"Crazy, stupid, not useful. Too hedonistic, too selfish. Too dangerous. Their ability to forcibly turn people into constructs was too much to just ignore him and let him be. So we killed him."
I figured Mina wasn't the first. Presumably she's not like that because she's more in touch with her desires, so the ring doesn't have to force her as much...
I sigh a little and follow a moment later. Inside, Elise is watching Nemesis try and fail to hit on Mina, who's barely paying attention to him at all. When Vara and I re-enter he gets up, arms spread. "Aaah, our illustrious host returns. I trust we're ready to get down to business, then?"
"I suppose so. So, Nemmy, why are we all here?"
He nods, pacing back and forth across the room as he speaks. "Vara was the first of us. We didn't clue into the central batteries for awhile, not until I'd come along and established myself and Engel entered the picture. We discovered them through him. It was also he who found the seal."
Well, that's
never a good sign. Interesting that Mina's not interested in Nemesis, though. I guess she can see through the facade into the rotten structure inside.
"What's on the other side of the seal?"
"Beats us." He shrugs. "Who knows? Gods, monsters, demons, Spongebob Squarepants, who can guess?" What-bob... pants? What? "Frankly, for all we know, it'll blip the entire world out like waveforms canceling each other out."
Which Black ultimately
wants to do to White, in most cases. All that noisy life getting up in death's business, and all that...
"What if there's an army on the other side of that seal? Some massive enemy we can't beat? You can't deny these rings are powerful. They're too powerful. Why are they here? Why are we here? The presumption is that we need that kind of power to face whatever is trying to make its way through here, but we're not relying solely on the rings. We have other plans in motion."
"And you want us to give you free reign."
So many questions, so few answers. I can almost
hear the frustration.
"Then why the FUCK did you attack us?" Elise is staring at him, eyes narrowed.
"It was the most direct way to assess whether or not you were trying to master the rings, or simply getting by with them. If you'd been lousy or tried to run away, we'd have come after you to relieve you of the blue ring until we found somebody suitable for it. This isn't a game, kids. This is the end of the world we might be talking about."
A rational explanation, but hardly a comforting one.
"You think that this makes us friends?" Elise sounds thoughtful. "Because it doesn't. Let me tell you something about my people, Goldilocks. Our time hanging around hasn't been that long, the first of us were made 'bout a century ago. In that time we've -" She starts ticking off her fingers. "-survived a genocide, established a fully enclosed city as an offworld colony experiment, established ties with every nation who fought against us and crushed the rest. Do you remember what I said about us fighting to the last that day?"
"Oh, yes. I found your resistance both surprising and delightful. When you took the green ring and simply let Engel die, mm." He kisses the tips of his fingers. "The ruthlessness of it. Beautiful. You impressed me that day, Elise."
I suspect his compliments make her skin crawl...
He nods. "Yes, that reminds me. What happened to that guard?"
"He lived."
Well, that's good, at least. Not that torturing him half to death was any better.
"Shut up, Goldilocks. You've said your bit. Ainsley?"
I take a moment to think before answering. "I think it would be a good idea to examine this all for ourselves before we agree to anything. Vara?"
"I'm not taking you. I have better things to do than babysit you. Mina can do it."
Elise frowns at that but Mina lights up like a lamp. "Ooh, I totally will. We're gonna have a blast!"
Something tells me I'm going to regret this.
Hold on to that feeling, Ainsley, I have the suspicion you'll be feeling it often around her.
They arrived in the middle of a sandstorm.
When Emil made it through the gate he was immediately thankful for the closed environmental seal of his suit. Combat doctrine in the last fifty years had emphasized adaptability and mobility in the expectation that eventually, the Zerosi Mobile Infantry would be operating in pretty much any environment. The armor itself was effectively a fortified, idiot-proof spacesuit he could live in for a couple of months if necessary. Although they didn't have any kind of energy shield small enough to fit on an individual the suits armor plates could build a charge as both a means of discouraging close quarters combat and to form a weak repelling field, which was going to be handy very, very soon it would seem.
They sure don't do things by half, do they? I guess they've needed it to survive, though.
Nobody was talking but that changed once the mech pilots began to arrive. The mechs themselves were hexapods, the pilots inside sitting comfortably in the middle of the 'body'. Vaguely resembling large mechanical spiders the two front legs could double as actionable manipulators so that the mechs could have 'hands'. Their pilots weren't part of the ZMI, an associate service outside of his chain of command under normal circumstances but who now belonged to him and his unit.
An interesting design, and a lot more logical than the usual 'humanoid knight' style most people imagine.
Emil flicked his eyes to the left for half a second, then up, opening his comm and setting it to the open channel. "About as good as we can expect when we're talking, Champ. Try not to spam up the comms too much, please."
"Gotcha, General. Ruthless, quit spamming the comms."
"Fuck you, Champ." She was laughing as she said it, though.
Love the byplay. Goes to show the difference between the forces. And I bet the General's reputation is what earned him their service...
They slept, but restlessly, the wind howling around them the whole night. No breakfast but the ration bars today, not without setting up camp. Not a practical option, it would seem. They were picking up the locator beacons from the vehicles that came through on the initial expedition.
Nearly three hundred miles to the south, on the other side of a distant mountain range. Inconvenient, but workable.
Given their equipment, hardly a
significant distance, even with the mountains.
That wasn't to say the desert itself didn't have its appeals. Sealed away from the heat, exposed only when eating - and only then when they wanted solid food, the suits nutrient mix would keep them ticking just fine in a pinch - they didn't suffer for the journey and had time to admire the various desert plants they found and catalogued, the small life forms they ran into. On the second day they crossed an oasis where many different inhabitants of the desert were gathered or drifting through, taking the time to test and purify the water, refill their stores and take notes of the species they found there before moving on.
And I've no doubt those who saw them will be spreading stories of them as they travel on... Bit hard to be discreet with giant mechanical bugs, after all...
Once they were all in position, the mechs flung themselves forwards into the open air and all of the ZMI activated their boot skids at once, pointed down as they clung to the sides of the mechs. Collectively the repelling force allowed the mechs to glide, a controlled fall like sliding forward in the air. The six legs of the units were acting as stabilizers as they soared downward at a speed only an idiot could love.
As they did it, his people were laughing and whooping and Emil couldn't help but smile.
Okay, even with a fear of
falling, that sounds like fun...
Flying with Mina is really distracting. I'm trying to keep my head in the game here but she keeps flying ahead of me and with that outfit I can see everything. I'm trying not to look at her because getting involved with her would cause more problems than it would solve but I can't help but find her attractive and it's not like I'm drowning in women, really. I really like Elise but she's not flipping the same kind of switches in my hindbrain. Mina looks very human.
Especially when she's so unabashedly open about showing it off. I can understand his distraction...
Instead I'm trying to focus on the scans I'm taking of the area we're passing over. She's led me north, far into the desert. It's pretty quiet out here but there's signs of life all around and a network of organically shaped tunnels crisscross the bedrock underneath the sand. Something relatively big and diggy lives out here, hiding from the fierce sun. I wondered why this area was a desert at first but then I realized the mountain ranges to the south must be creating a rain barrier and this desert spans the equator across this part of the continent.
...What's the likelihood that they flew right past the General's party without noticing? Then again, a few dozen kilometers' difference and they might not have seen a thing.
"Ooooh, throw me a feather?"
"What?"
"Oh. Sorry." She titters, giggling. "It's a Tovari thing. Pan birds would shake their wings and vocalize at you when they were upset, so 'throw me a feather' is an idiom meaning 'tell me what you're thinking'."
An interesting look at the difference in cultures...
"It can be. In some ways. I'm far more animated than most of us, the ring forces me to revel in the emotions so I'm not surprised you mistook me for one of our hillbilly cousins to the west."
"No? So this city of yours, it's in Eastern Tovalon."
Now, how much did the city shape her, or she shaped the city, I wonder.
Following her in I come to land beside her where she's hovering just above the sand. As soon as my feet touch the surface, two guards burst out of the sand in front of us, blocking the temple door. They're both insectoid, resembling huge pillbugs, shaking the sand off. A short shriek and they shuffle a little, watching us before diving back down under the sand.
"Fuck was that?"
"The guards. We don't know much about them, they span the whole desert. When we talk to them, they don't answer, despite the translations but it's clear they're intelligent and consider anybody with a ring authorized to be here. If you scan around you'll find there's bone fragments all over this area from people who they decided didn't belong here."
Interesting. At least the temple isn't unprotected.
"I think you know what."
"You mean how I look?" She turns her head to look over her shoulder at me. "You're cute, single and kind. I wear an orange ring. Why are you surprised I think you might make a good potential mate?"
You'll have to negotiate with Elise on that front, methinks.
"Oh, that rarely matters with boys. Almost none object to a random fling now and then." She turns to look at me, smirking. "It's just us here, you know. No one around to report on anything we might do." She's meandering closer to me, stepping into my personal space. "So what do you want to do?"
I lean in close, my nose almost touching hers, lowering my voice. "I want to see this temple and go home." When I step around her, walking past.
She gives me an incredulous look as I do it. "Really? You know I can feel how much you desire me, right?"
Yeah, no, I think Ainsley's smart enough to understand 'Don't stick it in crazy.'
"What I want and what I can get aren't the same thing. I don't know you well enough to calculate the implications of doing you. For all I know you think it's marriage and I'll never be rid of you. I like you okay Mina, you've been honest with us. But I don't love you and I barely know you. I'd be an idiot to just go for the first pair of boobs I see, no matter how nice they look or how much you like showing them off."
She's giving me a look which is almost... approving? "Mmm. Cute and you have a brain. Okay." She nods. "I'm not even offended, that's pretty sound reasoning. So, you're saying there's a chance?"
Take it up with Elise. And
maybe Kuri, too.
Oh. Okay, thank you ring. An icosahedron formed with metal bars set into a base of black stone. The inside of the 'gate' is filled with a strangely chromatic white light which seems to shift and change color without changing color at the same time, like some kind of optical illusion. It's like when you stare at a single spot too long and your brain tries to fill in the blanks around your vision, only I'm looking right at it and the shifts seem to change the hue of white somehow. It's bizarre.
Trippy.
I nod at her. "It's like they said, the red, yellow and orange batteries were there. So was this 'seal'."
"Well, that's something. A new problem has popped up while you were gone, though."
I glance at Nemesis and Vara, but Elise shakes her head. "Well, don't keep me in suspense. What is it?"
Always somethign to keep him busy...
She takes a deep breath, collecting herself. "A large group of genkits has followed us here from Zero -"
"That's great news!"
"-and reported that they've spotted a large army to the west of us, headed our way."
...That's bad...
"How large?"
"They couldn't say. It was too large."
Well.
Shit.
...
You said it.
I'm at the gates of Durjak with Elise. Ren, Mason and (somewhat unexpectedly) Zack are hanging out just outside the gates to deal with the majority of the new arrivals while Elise and I talk with her father. Seems he's done well for himself, mostly due to Bradley hinting around that he was the one who convinced me to help out Durjak in the first place. None of them really thought I'd go quite this far but seeing how it worked out he's gotten a lot of rep points out of it and folk take him far more seriously for it. He's risen to be Mason and Ren's right-hand man in dealing with the townspeople and the role is fitting him like a measured suit.
Heh. Never know how some people are going to take to
changes. Sounds like Bradley's one of the good ones.
"Lieutenant Luther." He pulls his helmet off, ruffling the fur around his head a little and then one ear as he talks. "Why are you out of uniform? And glowing green?"
Elise remains stoic for all of about five seconds before she makes a trilling aaaaa noise and bounces over to hug him, almost knocking him over on the spot. I can't help but smile, no matter how serious the situation is. "I'M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU DAD!"
"Shh, shh." He's laughing too, hugging Elise. "Inside voice, Elise. This is supposed to be serious."
Ah, family reunions. Boy, has she got a
lot to tell him...
"I know, I'm just... really glad to see you." She takes a deep breath, then exhales slowly. "A lot has happened. This ring is why I'm glowing." She turns to gesture to me. "I want to introduce to you to Lord Ainsley, the blue ring bearer. He'll tell you he's not a lord, but then you'll actually meet the other humans in town and they'll all tell you he's full of shit."
...A
hell of a lot.
"No, dad." Elise shakes her head. "But the rings can... they can do a lot of things. That'll take a full debriefing, preferably with some cannabis involved so you don't fall out of your chair."
He makes a casual phew noise. "That bad, huh? Worse than Somalia?"
"Way worse than Somalia. With a bit of that bullshit in Japan mixed in."
...Wow, that does not sound
fun. And a solid reminder that Elise is older than she looks...
Elise grabs both our arms, walking between us as he turns and sticks two fingers into his mouth, making a sharp whistle at his troops. They begin breaking up their formations, the mechs lumbering to face outwards from the walls as genkits begin filtering into the town. Then he turns to walk with us, answering the question as he hugs Elise to his side. "They're a mix of all kinds of species we've never seen before, but I'd say about two thirds of them were humans. Didn't see any high technology but there was a lot of pikes, spears, shields, that sort of thing. Probably close-range weapons as well, but.. no guns, not even muskets. They flew banners with a red sword, its blade held by a white fist on a black standard."
Yeah, those colours just
scream 'evil overlord', don't they? I wonder what the troops involved think of it?
Elise nods. "Medieval armies mostly had short, violent battles in close quarters combat and they weren't always armored the way you'd see in movies and stories. Different combat roles had different levels of protection and archers played a big role in how effective infantry could operate. Magic adds a new dimension to that problem too. Wards will mean that their military formations will be different than what we might predict based on medieval human wars."
Luther nods. "Magic? Seriously?"
"Seriously."
A fun consideration in fantasy worlds. What happens when large-scale protective barriers are a thing, after all? Or squads of people who can fling explosions with a few words, a pinch of sulphur and some guano...
"Okay, look, I know pranking the old man can be funny but -"
Elise is hovering in front of him and suddenly the ferret has his tongue. She makes a construct hammer, then a rifle, then a suit of armor, then a rocket construct six times our size hovering in the air above the roofs. Luther is giving her the most intense look of concern I've ever seen on a ferrets face, though in fairness, Elise is the only one I know.
"That's... what else can you do?"
...I'm guessing their world doesn't have a DC universe, then, or it's faded into obscurity. I'd laugh if some retro comics fanboy amongst the ranks recognised 'green Lantern shit'...
I nod to him. "Yes. Everything she can do. Perhaps more. The different colors seem to have various unique properties and refer to the emotion the ring itself runs on."
"Empathic weapons?"
"No, tools. A utility survival knife is still a potential weapon, isn't it?"
So is a shovel. Though I doubt the General needs to give Ainsley '
the speech'. Elise can take care of herself in that regard...
"Me? I'm hope. Elise is strength of will. Fear, Rage and Avarice were who we were negotiating with."
"Are there others?"
"Yes and no. Other colors, but not other users, yet. Another story to be explained."
Quite a concerning one. I can tell the General is going to have more than a few new worry lines before the day is out...
He nods. "Elise likes you. She treats you like one of us. How'd that come to be, I wonder? Hm?" He's giving me a curious look as we approach the inn and I shrug, holding the door open for him. "Hope.. spreads, General. Durjak was a pretty sleepy town when I first arrived."
Living the old maxim: In times of crisis, fools build barriers, but the wise build bridges.
"Why didn't you build a second gate on this side, Elise? What happened?"
"An attack. Happens a lot with new arrivals here. We drove them off with minimal losses but the opening spread hit us with their version of artillery. It wrecked one of the thunkers completely and partially ruined another. We fixed a third and forth up from the wrecks."
And of course the General would recognise that the one carrying the needed gate parts was the unlucky one...
"I have a hard time saying its name, we just call them flockas. Kind of like a chicken but with twice the attitude and three times the size."
"Sounds good, thank you." Bradley nods to him and heads off to the back, leaving Luther looking thoughtful.
Sounds like quite the meal. I'll bet their handlers are missing a finger or two each.
"This is the first time I've come to a human-run establishment and nobody reacted strangely. It's different, in a good way." He looks at Elise. "I can see why your group chose to stay here. None of them are Purists at all?"
"Not a one in the city." Elise reaches over to pour her and Luther some beer while I begin rolling smokes for us as she talks. "Let's start with our first time meeting Ainsley, since that's where it all really began..."
I suppose he's still finding it hard to sink in that this is a whole different world...
Still, four hundred soldiers isn't enough. Maybe if I can convince Mina... maybe. I'm not sure if Elise and I can do it by ourselves.
But I'm sure we'll be okay in the end.
Right?
Never lose hope, Ainsley, it's your strength...
I never said it was the temple of white light, just light. Malvolio aside, whats on the other side of the seal - and what else the seal might be doing - will be important later.
