Staying sober in Gianthome is like going to Helhome and not being a brutal dictator.

* Ignatius

1 Day Later (Helhome Time) - Cyan - Safe Space 258

“Hold him!” yells the Tiger Sergeant.

An entire platoon of Tiger Elites struggle to pin down a brawny, pale, vampire. He’s a mighty specimen who has badly battered several platoons since his abduction this morning. He’d tear right through these elites if he could remember his magic powers. That said, he’s never going to remember them at this rate.

“Enough.” I slam his head with a heavy iron bar. It stuns him long enough for the platoon to pin him to the table. An illithid mind bender immediately clamps his horrid tentacles on the vamp's face. He gargles a few muffled screams then stops struggling. The Octo-kin brain thief pulls away and gives me a double thumbs up.

Darkstar’s back online.

My vampire general sits up, and wipes tentacle slobber off his face. “What happened? Did I find Tiger?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Dang it. Okay, what’d I miss.”

“You got your ass kicked by a gnome from Winter.”

“Did I? That’s different.” Darkstar nods thoughtfully, then winces. “He must have been tough, my head is still ringing.”

“He was a beast.” I agree.

We’re in Safe Space 258 with Battalion 42. They picked Darkstar off the street this morning. He was fighting all comers for no particular reason. I rushed over with Mindguy to get him back in the know.

Safe Space 258 is an skycar hanger halfway up Skyscraper 11,234. It’s overflow parking for a gay bar three floors down, but they think it’s overflow parking for a rival gay bar three floors up. Until the two owners reconcile, no one will suspect the Tiger Gang hides here when they need a moment to reevaluate between battles in Disputed Territory Sector G.

We used to name all our battalions and hideouts, but we’re a big group with high turnover and memory problems, so fun names ceded to numeric systems in our highly efficient retraining package.

I like Safe Space 258. It has pinball, bean bag chairs, and is convenient to two bars. It’s also high enough off street level that you don’t hear all the screaming.

“Hold him! Gah! Fuck, hold his jaw!”

Well, there’s always some screaming.

Mindguy does his thing again, and a moment later Bronze pops off the table.

“What happened?” asks Bronze. “Did I find what’s his name?”

“No.”

“Dang it.” He looks at Mindguy. “Why are you staring at me?”

“You bit me.” bitches Mindguy. “Why do you always bite me? Fucking vampire never bites me.”

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Bronze shrugs. “Can’t be helped. I’m a natural warrior.”

“You’re a bitey little bastard, is what you are. Next time I’m gonna shove a stick in your mouth.”

Bronze shrugs again, unfazed. “Do what you need to do.”

I sigh, and rub my head. My name’s Cyan. I’m the leader of Tiger Clan. Our sacred mission is to find the god named Tiger. Though, we don’t spend much time looking, and honestly have forgotten why we want to. Our more practical mission is to not get repeatedly murdered until we become mindless monsters.

It’s going okay. Not great.

I look down at the pitched battle that is taking place in the street below our hideout. A couple dozen monsters are really going at it. Look’s exhausting.

Helhome is filthy with mighty warriors, but there’s relatively few fighters who have the mental framework to make, say, a thought. An empty mind just lacks the necessary context to build plans with more than one step. There’s a lot of instinctive lashing out.

This leads to the outsized value of sacred texts. If you match the right sacred text, with the right useless monster, you can get a highly effective warrior. You can also run that equation the other way. If a highly effective warrior happens to be bothering you, just relieve him of his book and shank him. When he comes back, he’s much easier to handle.

Quite a few people are trying to make us easy to handle.

That’s cool. We’ll kill them until they change their minds. Then we can concentrate on finding Tiger. Whoever that is.

Anyway, gang warfare in Helhome is an information management problem. If you can keep your guys in the know, and the enemy fucking confused, eventually you win.

Mindguy our latest advance in rapid retraining. He's efficient, but there's some obvious downsides. Mostly tentacle slime and trust issues. We deal with that by having a buddy keep a copy of our sacred text. Then we can self-verify after a reboot that we haven’t been tampered with. Also moist towelettes.

“What happened? Did I find Tiger?” asks Ziva. “Also, who’s Tiger, and who are you guys?”

We all look at each other shiftily. Obviously, Ziva doesn’t have a buddy with our group, so she’ll never know she was tampered with.

We look at her vacant grin. It’s unnerving.

“I left out any memory that made her want to kill us.” Mindguy shrugs. “There wasn’t a lot left.”

“Can she fight?” I ask.

“Sure, probably. If not, we can always try again.”

I shake my head. Great.

I pass Darkstar and Bronze their sacred texts so they can verify their memories and beliefs. It’s a decent check on Mindguy’s work, until we suffer a total party kill, at which point we’re at the Octo-kin’s mercy. That’s not great, but may not be a problem. I kinda trust him. I think.

It’s not like we have much choice. With the amount of people gunning for us, we need every advantage we can get. Which brings us to today’s problem.

“Who the fuck are these Winter guys?”

My Chief Intelligence Officer, Captain Buzz, lands on my shoulder to make her report.

“Two known agents. A gnome named Presto, and an orc named Copycat. The gnome claims to be the High Priest of the Technicolor Leviathan. Apparently gonna purify Helhome with an army of skeletons and cosmic sea monsters. Has at least one skeleton with him. First recruit was a lynx-kin they picked up yesterday named Turbulent Waters. Made him their tactical commander. Since then they’ve recruited several hundred members from various gangs, all on the strength that they’d be spared from the impending frozen doom. Also, they’ve ransacked a dozen bars, burned 57 of our safe spaces, destroyed 13 of our battalions, and taught 800 monsters how to read.”

“Hmm. This is all very weird.” muses Darkstar. “Obviously they’re effective trans-realm saboteurs. They’ve certainly shown us the business. But why are they attacking us? Why hit so many bars? Why teach monsters how to read? Do they have their sacred texts? And why is Bubbles their war leader? What the hell are they up to?”

Bronze snaps his fingers. “I got it! Let’s go kill them.”

“Yeah, that sounds about right.” I agree. “Buzz, get their location. Bronze, mobilize 10 elite battalions. Darkstar, put on your lightning proof armor. Let’s get this done.”

An hour later, we batter a pair skybuses through the side of Safe Space 101. Mother fuckers are hiding in our own real estate.

A couple hundred of our best warriors storm out to waste whatever gang rejects and barely literate monsters this frozen ass high priest has drummed up. They slow in quiet panic as they realize the building is crammed full of Wreckworld mercenaries.

“Hey, Cyan.” says an elf wreathed in dark shadows. “Can you hear my friend?”