Six years earlier…
"To defeat the enemy," said Rupert Grave, jabbing his finger into the paper map before him. "You burn out his heart. That's basic strategy."
The rebel leader had fiery red hair, like the mane of a magma lion, but the look in his eyes was ice itself. He was a man who could do whatever it took to ensure victory -- and he'd done it many, many times before, as the collection of scars on his face promised.
If there was a man who could give Mirios its freedom, it was him.
The three of them -- Rupert Grave, Oleg and Ruth -- were gathered in the command tent of the Mirios resistance, Grave relaying his latest plan to oust the Admiral. A printout of Robin Barridad's face had been thrown onto the table, next to a map of the Barridad estate.
Oleg nodded, grunting in agreement. "Barridad's a fool to give us such an easy target."
Ruth looked up at the two adults nervously, hands clutching her arms. She was loath to question the opinions of two adults, but this whole thing gave her a bad gut feeling. "Could be a trap," she muttered. "Doesn't feel right."
"It's almost certainly a trap," Grave said, leaning over the wooden table. "But that's irrelevant. All we have to do is be strong enough that the trap can't stop us. That's what it means to be supreme."
Oleg shifted uncomfortably at that.
Rupert Grave opposed the Admiral, but that didn't necessarily mean he opposed the Supremacy. From his perspective, this whole conflict between the resistance and the Admiral was the Supremacy's philosophies at their purest. The one with the strength to hold Mirios would triumph in the end.
Ruth didn't know what she believed, nor did she find it especially relevant. She would fight and kill as she was directed. She wasn't fit for anything else.
She'd never had the luxury of opinion -- first, growing up in a Mirios orphanage, making a nuisance of herself had been a sure way to incur a beating. Then, when Grave had liberated her village and burnt it to the ground, she'd been too busy ingratiating herself with the resistance to even consider disagreeing with them.
Do as you're told, she always had to remind herself. That's how you end up happy
Grave traced a line across the map with his finger. "Robin Barridad herself lives in a separate residence from her father," he said. "Still on the same estate, but there's some distance between them. He only calls her over for private tutoring -- we'll be able to grab her on the way back. You and Ruth'll make the snatch."
"Then what?" Ruth asked.
"We hold her hostage. Make demands of the Admiral in exchange for her life. It's a little cliche, but the classics work."
Oleg shook his head. "He won't go for it. For a guy like Barridad, a daughter is a prop. You don't risk yourself over a prop."
But Grave wasn't deterred in the slightest. "Even that is useful," he said, turning the picture of Robin Barridad over in his fingers. "Him being willing to risk her gives us a better understanding of him. Him being unwilling to risk her gives us what we want. There's no losing scenario."
Oleg raised an eyebrow. "How about they shoot us and we die?"
"That's the risk that's always present, Oleg. If you can't accept that possibility, you're in the wrong place."
Even if Grave said that, there was no way he believed that Oleg would actually leave. Oleg was a man shaped by this conflict -- he'd lost his sons to it, lost his mind to it. He couldn't abandon it any more than he could put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.
When you define yourself by struggle, you need that struggle to go on forever. Anything less was unacceptable.
"That's enough talk," Grave said, cutting the discussion off before it could go any further. He rolled up the map. "You two need to start moving if you want to be on the route in time." He glanced towards Ruth. "The next time I see you, I want to see that you have Robin Barridad."
Ruth nodded.
"Yes, sir."
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"Move, and I kill you," Ruth promised, the tips of her blood-stained claws pressed against Robin Barridad's throat. "Don't you dare think I won't."
Despite Oleg's misgivings, the plan had gone off without a hitch. Once he'd disabled the engine of the truck that was carrying Robin, the few guards assigned to her had been little match for Ruth's armour. Body parts now littered the clearing, and Ruth held Robin down on the muddy ground.
Still, the girl didn't look scared. There was something in her eyes -- not defiance, exactly -- but a kind of… of ascendance. Like this whole sequence of events was below her notice.
Despite Ruth's threat, Robin's lips moved to speak. "Do it," she said calmly.
Ruth furrowed her brow. Was this a trick? "What?"
"I said do it." Robin didn't falter. "Put those claws through my neck and finish this. I'll die here anyway, eventually. Either my father'll kill me, or you will. I think I'd prefer to be murdered by a stranger, wouldn't you?"
Was this girl insane? She was goading Ruth on to kill her like she was asking her to head to the store. Ruth wasn't the best at spotting those kinds of things, but she could see no trace of deception or malice in her eyes.
Still, she had a job to do.
"Get up," she growled, grabbing Robin by the collar. "You're coming with me!"
"What if I don't?" the girl asked quietly. "What'll you do?"
"Don't fuck with me."
"Will you kill me?" Robin smiled sadly, and Ruth could see that there were tears in her eyes. "If I stay here, I'll die. If I go with you, I'll die. You sort of wonder what the point is, don't you?"
Ruth's hand shook as she gripped Robin's collar. The point? There didn't have to be a point to anything, did there? You fought until you died. Anyone who didn't like that was just a whiner.
Still… the point… Ruth wondered what the point of one single thing was.
"W-When you arrived on Mirios," Ruth asked haltingly, the stutter an utter contrast to her growling tones. "You looked at me and you smiled at me. How come?"
It was Robin's turn to look confused. "You remember that?"
Ruth shook the girl roughly, turning red as her Aether as she saw Robin's smug smirk. "You obviously do, so just answer the damn question!"
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The smirk faded -- and despite the lethal danger she was in, Robin had the nerve to lift her arm and put a finger to her chin as she considered the question. "Hm… I suppose I must've thought you were a good person?"
Ruth laughed bitterly. "Well, you were wrong there, weren't ya?"
To that, Robin only smiled -- and it was that same damn smile that had stopped Ruth in her tracks before.
"I don't know," she said. "Was I?"
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Grave didn’t move behind his makeshift desk, but Ruth could feel his fury in that stillness. His hands, clasped together on the wooden surface in front of him, were held so tight that his knuckles had long ago turned to white. Every now and then, the straight line of his mouth would twitch in a way that suggested a narrowly suppressed shout. The wood creaked as his elbows dug down into it.
“I am extremely disappointed,” he whispered, nightmare quiet. Outside, even the jungle birds had gone silent. The only sounds were the whispering of the wind through the trees and the occasional brave click of an insect.
Ruth’s words felt heavy, clumsy in her mouth. “I’m sorry.”
Grave’s finger tapped against the wood -- once, twice -- each time like a gunshot. “You’re sorry?” he whispered, as vehemently as if she’d just insulted him to his face. “Okay, okay, I’m sure I must’ve heard you wrong. You’re sorry?”
What else could she say? Ruth nervously nodded like a bobblehead. “I’m sorry. S-She was too fast. She got away.”
The rise of Grave’s eyebrow was like a stab in the stomach. It was certainly sharp enough. “Robin Barridad,” he forced out through gritted teeth. “Has never fought a day in her life. Do you know how much time and effort we spent nurturing your Aether talent? You do realize people gave their lives to get the resources you needed to learn, don’t you?”
Shame drove her gaze down to the floor. “Yes, sir.”
“Do you care about that?”
The tiniest nod. “Yes, sir. Of course.”
“I don’t think you do,” Grave said, his old chair creaking as he stood up from it. “I think if you cared about what other people have done for you, you’d have put more effort in. Do you think that armour appeared out of thin air? Do you think you learnt how to fight all on your own?” As he spoke, he came closer, towering angrily over the young girl. “You owe everything you have to us -- and you’re not repaying in kind.”
Ruth looked up, fists clenched, mouth opening to voice some kind of protest --
-- only to be met with a harsh slap in the face, jerking her head to the left.
The pain was barely anything -- her Aether was always at least partially up, and Grave had been using only his base strength -- but that didn’t matter in the least. The pain wasn’t the point: it was the shame, the knowledge that she’d failed so completely that Grave had no choice but to treat her like a delinquent child. Any illusions she had that she was a warrior, a soldier, were shattered where hand met cheek.
Grave’s voice was forced into tranquility as he stuffed his hand into his pocket. “I want Robin Barridad here,” he said slowly. “And that will still happen -- with or without you. Do you want it to happen with you, or without you?” His entire demeanor had changed -- now he was like a schoolteacher lecturing an unruly student.
From what Ruth had been told, Rupert Grave had been some kind of teacher once. She couldn’t imagine his students liking him much.
“Ruth,” Grave barked, the volume of his voice jumping up, startling her. “With you, or without you?”
“W-With me,” Ruth muttered, head retreating between her shoulders as she did her best to make herself as small as possible.“Speak up.” Grave’s expression hardened -- and the hand he had slapped her with moved fractionally out of his pocket.
“With me!” Ruth cried, squeezing her eyes shut. Grave’s hand came down on her all the same -- but rather than slapping her in the face again, it clapped her twice on the shoulder in a reassuring gesture. As Ruth opened her eyes, she saw that Grave was kneeling down to look her in the eye.
“That’s right, Ruth,” he said quietly. “With you. With all of us. You understand? War is a team sport. It can’t be fought alone. We need you to keep your eyes on the ball. Can you do that? Can you do that for me?”
Slowly, blinking tears from her eyes, Ruth nodded.
Grave’s lips spread into a thin smile, and he ruffled her hair with his hand. “That’s my girl,” he said. “Be ready when I need you, yeah?”
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Ruth imagined the training dummy was Robin Barridad.
Her claws, sparking with angry red Aether, shredded the thing to pieces. Barridad’s imaginary stomach ended up spread across the floor, and her imaginary skull ended up smashed at Ruth’s feet. She imagined Barridad’s face -- so certain she’d get one over on Ruth -- and she pounded her fists into the wooden effigy, its integrity shattering under her blows. Each crack of the wood was the crack of Barridad’s bones.
If she had really been there, she’d have died within seconds -- that was how strong Ruth was. That was how supreme she was.
With another flare of red Aether, Ruth smashed her foot into the fallen head of the dummy -- and it went flying off into the woods, prompting the angry squeal of a far-off paleobeast. A few of the other militiamen, gathered around a nearby campfire, cheered and lifted their beers in celebration. They quietened down when Ruth shot them a glance and a bestial growl.
"Hang in there, girlie," the bravest among them went on, shaking his can of booze. "I'm pretty sure you got 'em!"
Ruth marched over to them -- her Aether-infused footsteps leaving indents in the ground. The jovial face of the cheeky man loosened slightly as he saw the feral girl coming closer.
"Now, hold on," he said, raising a placating hand. "I didn't mean nothing by it--"
Without a word, Ruth lashed out with one hand and snatched the beer from the man. With the other hand, she reached down and pulled out a flaming stick from the campfire. Then, without another word, she turned around and marched back to the wrecked training dummy.
She wasn't done with Robin Barridad yet. She wouldn't be satisfied until nothing was left of the brat but dust and ash.
The dummy burnt easily, the flaming booze igniting it in a second. Smoke drifted heavy up into the sky as the loose fabric clinging to the effigy curled and smoldered. If Ruth closed her eyes, she could almost imagine the scent of burning flesh.
She stared, eyes bloodshot, at the flaming ruin -- watching every second of its dissolution, even as the guard shifts changed and day became night. She didn't move even a muscle.
Soon enough, she thought, as the dummy slowly became nothing. Soon enough.
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Six years later...
Ruth went flying backwards as the campfire detonated, holding her hands over her face to protect them from the flames. She landed into a rolling position, Skeletal Set already fully manifested as she rose to her feet.
Bruno went flying too, a shattered forcefield shimmering around him in the air -- but when Ruth looked to see what had become of the Lily girl, she saw that she was now some distance away -- with one of her comrades tucked under her arm. Lily dropped him heavily to the floor and smoke rose from her twitching arms.
That didn't make sense, though. Lily had been closer to the campfire than even Ruth. Unless there was something she was keeping to herself, there was no way she could have escaped from the blast radius so quickly.
Ruth didn't have any time to speculate further, though -- as a rich, distinguished voice sounded out from the forest.
"My apologies!" The man's flamboyant voice echoed throughout the clearing. "I could see you were having a lovely meeting of the minds -- but unfortunately, it was my duty to interfere! Such are the whims of fate, alas!"
The owner of the voice stepped out of the forest, dusting his bright blue robes off as he went. It was an older man, with a finely curved grey moustache and slicked back hair. As he bowed theatrically, Ruth could see golden rings adorning each one of his fingers.
That wasn't what occupied the majority of Ruth's attention, though -- what managed that was what rolled in by his side.
At first, Ruth thought it was some kind of tire -- but when she got a closer look, she could see that it was definitely a living creature. It was curled up into a wheel shape, the flat bony segments that wrapped around it's dark red muscle allowing it to roll unimpeded on the ground.
Tiny flailing tendrils, each tipped with a bright spark of light, swayed throughout the inside of the wheel. The flames created by the explosion swayed in time with them, like the tendrils were conducting an infernal orchestra.
Right in the middle of the wheel, connected to the rest of the body through visible pale nerves, was what without a doubt a human skull. The shape was right, even if there were no eye sockets and the teeth were needle-sharp.
The older man looked up from his bow, lips spreading into an anticipatory smile.
"Now… shall we begin?"