“Mags, report.”

“Our men are in position, sir.” The intent-looking young woman carefully watched a trio of monitors as her fingers danced across a display of lights revealing exotic symbols in a futuristic-looking command center shining with steel, chrome, and multiple mana orbs, now focusing on the monitor revealing the countenance of a wild-eyed goblin. Her lips pursed in a displeased frown. For all that she was dressed in a professional looking suit with a military cut, including the cadet-style cap on her head, she spun around in her support-seat to face the commander of their entire operation with a dancer’s consummate grace. She didn’t flinch at all before the Bronze commander powerful enough that lesser classers instinctively made way for him and mortals feared even to approach him. No matter how calm and friendly his demeanor at his favorite baristas.

“Sir! Snitch is ordering our squad to slaughter the entire band of refugees!”

This earned a scowl. “He did, did he?”

Mags solemnly nodded, eyes still bright with the fire of a recently graduated cadet who thought she could change the world. “Yes, Captain. A clear violation of the terms of our agreement.” She paled, receiving a warning beep from her leftmost monitor, holding a digitalized representation of the very document. “Shit!… sorry, sir.”

The man frowned. Not because his star recruit had used profanity… but that something as mundane as a document had caused her to do such.

“Mags?”

“The document, sir.” Her features paled, the purple tinge to her skin losing its healthy luster. “Sir… it changed. I swear it.”

“Our contract’s in a sealed vault in a Blue Corp facility, Mags.”

The girl trembled. “Sir, it… I Remember. My interface made it clear I just passed no less than three persuasion checks!”

These words like nothing else had the Captain darting by her side so fast that her cap flew right off her head with the breeze, revealing a dainty pair of silvery horns that sent Mags in paroxysms of ecstasy when touched just the right way.

As the captain knew all too well.

He gently squeezed her shoulder. Her cheek dipped to rest against his forearm before she stiffened, spine straight once more, even if it was only them in the command center.

“Show me.”

And she did.

He cursed furiously under his breath. “We never swore a soul-binding oath to obey those bastards in all things for the duration of our stay on Earth!”

Mags flinched at the venom in his oath.

“Master?”

He sighed. “Captain, Mags,” even as he gently flicked the love-collar she now wore about her neck underneath the high collar of her uniform. His gift to her.

Her cheeks flushed a pretty shade of dusk. “Yes, Captain… what do we do?”

The man grit his teeth, even as he felt cords of twisted fate bind around his soul. His eyes widened in outraged fury. “That those bastards would dare!”

“Master?”

Desperate eyes glared at the contract for long minutes, the captain using every iota of his Scholarship, Perception, and Willpower to parse the bullshit and learn what he needed to know.

His lips curled in a fierce smile. “Good.”

“Sir?”

“We might be soul-bound to those fuckers, for now. But even a Silver’s power has to have limits. The duration is only for a single night.” He chuckled without mirth. “This endless night, of course. The minute it ends, we’re free to do whatever the hell we choose.”

The two exchanged a look, hope and fury in both of their gazes. Unspoken was the understanding that they were bound now, but the instant it broke, the whole damned system would learn just how corrupt and twisted Goblin Contracts were. Even if the goblins would deny it, even if no barrister could, or would, reveal it, Moray’s word would be enough in the circles that mattered.

Goblin arts had clearly surpassed any and all checks and counters. They could alter anything you signed to have any meaning the wished and twist fate itself to retroactively make it so. When people realized just how hideous a trap it was… not a single mercenary worth his salt would ever deal with the goblin faction again.

And if Moray had his way, they’d be wiped out completely. He just needed a rich Silver-tier backer as outraged as he was to pay him and his men an absolute fortune to help make that a reality.

“But what should we do now, sir?”

The captain sighed, clapping the girl’s shoulder. “We’re soulbound, Mags. Unless we want to spend eternity screaming in the soul forges that we were all assured were vicious propaganda propagated by their enemies…”

The girl shuddered. “I’m scared, Moray. I feel like those fuckers’ claws are in my mind, even now!”

“Don’t be,” he said, arms wrapping protectively around the girl he had been a fool to seduce but his heart didn’t care. He glared at the screen revealing the contract and the one revealing the sneering countenance of the goblin planted on the top of Moray’s prized battle mech, a weapon of war which would invite the most extreme penalties on a newly ascending world on any night but this night… and the little shit was smirking at them through the monitor. As if he knew he had them by the balls. As if the shit was in on it.

The third monitor revealed the terrified countenances of everyone the goblins would have them slaughter. And Moray would force himself to watch.

“You will kill the humans, and you will do it now!” The little shit hissed, lips curling with a snarl. “Or you will pay the price, oh yes you will!”

“Captain! What the fuck do we do? These are civvies. Prisoners of war, right?” Crackled a voice suddenly on comms.

And before Moray could even think of a reply he could live with… their command center was filled with sudden panicked screams as the left and middle monitor displays began spinning wildly about, so violently that Mags looked away and groaned, clearly motion sick as Moray gazed in stunned dismay, his superhuman perception and scholarship forcing him to process and accept what he really didn’t want to.

His top tier squad of hand-picked men were now falling away from Terra’s surface at terminal velocity.

“Captain, we have an emergency!” Shrieked a panicked Glin, Moray’s go-to man who had even shaped his Bronze-tier class for Battlemech usage exclusively, showing a dedication and specialization that had earned him VIP treatment in their company.

“Glin! Antigrav stabilizers! Use them now!”

“No good captain!” An increasingly panicked Glin shrieked. “My Interface reads critical failure! Higher order magics are warping relativity constants! Grav and Antigrav now have only one direction!” The man sobbed hysterically. “This is so fucked up. The gods are angry! We were going to kill a bunch of… I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I didn’t want to! I didn’t want to!”

“Glin! Abort the mech! Abort the mech and assume maximum drag!”

Glin’s eyes widened. Of course he understood what the captain meant. They weren’t fragile mortals. They were Bronze tier with considerable damage resistance and thousands of health points. Even jumping out of a plane wouldn’t kill them, especially if they did it spread-eagled for maximum drag, even without a gliding suit. Hell, if they did it right, they’d suffer no more than bruises. Maybe.

It was the rest of his crew that Moray was worried about. Their powered armor wasn’t designed for instant removal. It was designed for maximum flexibility and utility. And if they couldn’t get it off… there would be very little air resistance. They’d hit the ground with devastating force, the very weight of their armor crushing them.

“Roger captain! It’s just…”

“The mecha’s lost!” The captain roared. “Get out now!” Comms became general, a part of him dismayed to see Terra growing ever fainter, his men’s altitude now thousands of feet up.

“All of you! Leave your suits! Assume maximum drag! Now! That’s a fucking order!”

Furious eyes turned to Mags who flinched before his gaze. “Are the orc shaman fuckers actually daring to betray us? How! Their antigrav spell can barely grab one of their own orcs! Maybe a handful of elves in full suits of enchanted steel plate. At maximum! This is over ten tons that those fuckers are sending airborne!”

The girl trembled for only a second before her fingers flickered across the holographic keyboard once more, revealing a scene that would have been almost comical in any other place or time as he spotted multiple batteries of 24-pounder cast-iron cannons that had been carted by mules, donkeys, slaves or, in some cases, orcs orcs, all of them secured in the most primitive of chassis.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Surprisingly, there were very few obvious classers. His understanding was that the majority were being reserved for the heavy resistance they still expected in both Boston and Philadelphia, just two of the human held cities that the humanoid alliance were determined to claim this endless night.

Not that the lack of human specialist classers prevented orc artillery from being a devastating force multiplier on any primitive battlefield, especially when their shamans were working in concert. At present, however, all he saw was a handful of shaman who were clearly from different tribes screaming and roaring at each other while their gunners stood respectfully to the side, happily picking their porcine proboscises before carefully examining the contents unearthed and nibbling the treats with obvious relish.

“Captain! Freefall has ended!”

His jaw tightened, but he merely nodded his head, and a part of him couldn’t help but look at the shrieking, panicked goblin who didn’t know the slightest thing about air resistance or drag and was level 30 at best. The impossibly arrogant little shit was now wide eyed with terror, still gripping the massive mecha that was falling back down to earth.

Moray’s eyes widened. “Fuck, Glen! why aren’t you separating? Mags, shift to the others!”

Mags whimpered, Moray’s eyes filled with fury and horror in equal measure as Glin and the others voices filled the comms. “We’re not slowing down, sir!” Screamed a female voice, raw with panic as they all fell to earth.

Fell far faster than Earth standard gravity and troposphere air resistance should allow.

Even worse was Glin’s frantic cry. “I can’t leave! The core won’t go offline, sir! A surge of spiritual energy spiked the electromana programs! It’s going to blow!”

“How?”

“I don’t know, sir. Baseline levels shouldn’t…” The specialist cursed, even as he faced absolute peril. “It’s the spell. This spell has Spiritual Energy baked in! Sir, that’s impossible! It’s totally outside System Parameters!”

“Not on newly ascending worlds,” Mags whispered. “The rules are more flexible here. Contenders can stretch causality. Alter the interactions between the forces and fields of reality. I studied this at the academy. It’s like the System itself is eager to see what Contenders can do!”

Moray froze, for the first time in years locked in momentary indecision before making the call.

“Blue Snake. Request immediate transport for First Flag.”

What chilled Moray the most was the instant reply. There was no delay. No distortion. Even if the voice was being pinged from multiple worlds away.

“You know the cost.”

Moray swallowed his parched throat as his shrieking men hurled to earth. Fast. Far too fast. And they were aiming right for his artillery unit. “Yes! Artillery as well—”

The screams abruptly stopped. Just a split second before all the screens flared, even the one holding the supposedly secure contract in a Blue Corp offworld depository.

“It’s done.”

Moray closed his eyes, sighing in relief. “Did you…”

“Only the Bronze Classers. Your White-tier auxiliaries perished.”

The captain swallowed. “Understood. Thank you.”

“I expect payment in full in ten cycles. Or an equivalent duration of service, led by you personally.”

Moray’s heart was pounding as a cold sweat prickled his back, his twin horns shivering with death in the air. “Yes, my lord. It will be so.”

He said the words, but the line was already dead.

“Sir! I found an anomaly!” cried an excited Mags.

Moray felt cold as ice. This mission was a catastrophic failure that was already going to put him in the hole by several Billion credits. With the lost of so many top tier assets and the debt he’d just incurred with a figure he had never planned on dealing with again… He’d be lucky to break even in the next decade. Yet his eyes couldn’t help but glance toward the screen Mags was pouring every ounce of class skill and technology at clarifying, Moray greeted with the odd sight of a young Terran darting across the battlefield far too fast for anyone below low-mid Bronze, let alone a white-tier classer or a mortal, to track.

Yet that was far from the only incongruity. The youth who looked younger than his paramour was wearing nothing but a pair of tattered pants. He was charging right for the closest orc cannoneers company who moved as slow as molasses in comparison. His hands were empty of anything. Yet when he struck a confused looking orc gunner...

Mags whistled. “That orc just exploded like he got hit by an artillery shell!”

Soft purple irises met the captain’s in wonder. “That’s no speed specialist. His arm would have shattered.”

The captain’s jaw clenched, seeing the boys’ hand smack one of the smooth bore long guns.. only for it and the chassis both to disappear. And in the time it took his lover to turn around and focus on the monitors once more, multiple cannons had vanished, the air filled with a crimson mist comprised of over a dozen orcs that had stood between the obvious Contender and his prizes, their shattered bodies cartwheeling through the air.

“Who the hell is he?”

Mags’ stunned disbelief lasted only seconds before cool professionalism took over, the farmost monitor now pulling up information on all the Contenders in this tiny corner of the hemisphere before freezing on what looked to be tabloid pictures from before Terra’s ascension.

“I think I found a match, sir.”

Several more cannons were claimed and a further handful of orc bodies sent flying, often in pieces, in the time it took the pair of them to read the briefing.

“Eric Silver. Nineteen years old. A reclusive Scion of the Silver clan pre-ascension who did little more than engage in martial exercises and games of… digitalized fantasy. And now…”

Mags looked up at her mentor. “Sir, he’s just… he’s just a White-tier Contender. Younger than my brother in the academy. There’s no way he could…”

And in the time they had spoken, he had just taken out an actual Artillery Classer, one of the few the mixed alliance was fielding.

The pair studied the anomaly for long moments as the boy continued pounding through the orcs with powerful punches and in a few case, far less coordinated kicks.

Mags furrowed her brow in disbelief. “Is that monster actually trying to hone his skills on the battlefield, using the orcs as… training pells?”

Yet in all cases the result was the same, squealing orc bodies sent cartwheeling through the air, often missing limbs, their skulls exploding like shrapnel grenades whenever the boy struck them.

And then, in what seemed just a handful of seconds, it was over, the young scion turning to face the handful of shamans now no longer fighting, but glaring at Eric with seething hate, while the thousands of other orcs and multiple humanoid tribes were peering Eric’s way with stupefaction and the slow reflexes of any poorly coordinated alliance. Because objectively speaking, less than twenty seconds had passed.

“You! Sworn enemy of our people!”

In a split second the shamans were surrounded by a crackling field.

“Time for you to die, human!”

Mags’ eyes widened. “Sir! I recognize the chant, because we were just testing against it. They’re going to try to levitate the…” Her words died off when the smiling Contender calmly pulled out a modified Tier-2 blaster rifle and took careful aim at the crackling force field.

“Ha! Stupid human! Do you really think you’re—”

The air flashed with plasma in controlled pulses as the trio of suddenly panicked shamans screamed and died.

Mags trembled. “He pierced a shaman ward with a high-tech plasma weapon. How?”

Moray flashed a cold smile. “That’s no longer a tech weapon. It’s been altered. Check your readings of the blast.”

The girl frowned before her back stiffened. “Sir, these readings… that’s impossible!”

But it didn’t matter, as the blaster disappeared as fast as it had come, the boy taking a moment to admire his handiwork before inhaling to roar with a sonorous voice that instantly blew out the speakers of their surveillance vehicle.

Then he was roaring words their interface speakers could no longer pick up.

Until suddenly they did.

The speakers were filled with hideous shrieks that crackled and distorted eerily. Mags’ cried out, holding tight to ears which began to bleed.

“Surge Centuria! Imperator Imperat Tibi!”

The pair exchanged looks. “What the fuck just happened?”

Yet the answer was obvious, as shattered bodies reduced to paste began to shake, as if some fool was trying to revive orcs long past any intervention. Yet in this case… it was working. To hideous effect, as goblets of flesh began to move of their own accord, shredded limbs and decapitated bodies began to slither about the ground, while intestines like rope came alive to pour into the shredded abdomens of countless slaughtered orcs.

Mags turned a delicate shade of green before the stuffy center was filled with the ripe stench of the girl’s vomit, heaving and sobbing as one orc corpse after another lurched upright like puppets dancing upon monstrous, alien strings.

The fallen porcine bodies had been restored, even if their flesh had been bubbling and boiling like a thousand maggots crawling under their skin that sowed itself back together after a squirming host of snakelike entrails slithered back where they belonged. And suddenly it was several dozen orcs covered in ancient bronze armaments with massive spears by their side, saluting the coolly smiling youth with armored gauntlets slamming against their breastplates.

“Ave Imperator Abedimus!”

Even Moray felt a wave of dizziness, eyes widening as the speakers placed throughout the vehicle began to drip viscous drops of oil that stank of blood as arts both forbidden and poisonous to his people filled the air. Which was absolute madness. They were in a sealed off bunker isolated from the battlefield. They were hearing nothing but tinny digitized renditions. So why the hell was his cadet curled up in a ball, moaning with blood pouring from her ears?

Moray shook his head.

Because none of that mattered.

All that mattered was that this Eric Silver was both a prime target and the source of all his troubles. Should he actually manage to capture the boy, radiating this much talent like a white-hot supernova…

Moray dared to smile. Perhaps this night wouldn’t be a complete loss after all.

“But that’s not why we’re really doing this, is it, Moray?” He said softly to himself as he began suiting up in his own suit of power armor.

He had been stuck at Level 35 Bronze for a very, very long time. Finding illumination in the crucible of battle facing a monster who made a mockery out of every chart and prediction that the System generally took as ironclad, on a world so saturated with overwhelming potential as this one, might just be his one final chance at bursting through his bottleneck with insights and revelations that might burn all past folly away.

He had no way of knowing for sure, of course, as he made his way to the airlock after checking the clamps on his suit one final time. The only way to know was to stand in the face of peril and potential, role the dice, and let them fall where they may.