I realize that most likely nobody here can fly that piece of technology that is so out of place in what used to be the apparent time period of this fantasy world. But since this is faux fantasy with the stereotypical lost-civilization theme, I guess not even that battle station is out of place.
Let alone the fact that this is the far future of my very own world, too.
Even though I could easily take everybody up in my jet form, I don't want to let a person whose powers are unclear ride inside me. I'm virtually indestructible by normal means, but the bard is still an unknown factor. I won't get exploded from the inside again.
But luckily, I find that the pilot is still sitting in the shuttle, having missed the entire commotion outside because she was listening to music on her headphones with her eyes closed. Like the armored guards, she wears a black outfit, though this one is made of cloth. Judging by the lack of a weapon, she isn't combat personnel.
"Hey." I call out to her futilely. If she could miss my physical exchange with Oinos and all the explosions, simply calling out to her won't do the trick. Thus, I pull off her headphones and repeat myself a few times louder than before. "HEY!"
"Woah?!" She flinches hard and falls off her cockpit chair. "What did you do that for?!"
Her expression of indignation turns into one of confusion when she sees me. Then her jaw drops when she notices the people that followed me inside. Kamii, Hestia, Aurelia, and Tokomaha have squeezed into the small cockpit one after the other as if refusing to leave my side. Even the usually dignified golden queen is vying for my attention so blatantly, and it's incredibly cute.
"Who are you?" Pointing in our general direction, the unexpectedly beautiful pilot - or maybe not that unexpected, when considering Alverost's preferences - asks with all the dignity somebody who fell on their ass from shock can muster.
"You're going to fly us up to that battle station of yours." I point one of the guns I collected from the dead goons outside at her and state in a matter of fact tone.
"I refuse." She replies in a poor attempt at appearing steadfast; her whole body is shaking, and her eyes are crossed to stare at the barrel pointing between them.
Wordlessly, I lower the gun and fire a laser pellet into the ground, leaving behind a small sizzling crater just millimeters away from her crotch. Then the barrel trains on her face again, and I nod at her.
"Yes, sir. Right away, sir." The woman jumps up from the floor with an overeager salute, plops down on her seat, and begins pressing buttons and pulling levers. She's an obvious small fry who doesn't think about the consequences of aiding who's most definitely an enemy, just to save her own hide. Luckily for her, there won't be any because her employer might be dead already.
Turning around, I see that Rolan and his party have taken their seats in the passenger area. The massive minotaur, red Mohawk-toting boar demon, and the rabbit, as well as an unknown masked woman in flowing robes - all members of Kamii's party, it seems - are there as well, though I don't remember inviting them.
"Those are Zancrax, Terog, Ireyo, and Sazi." The little dark elf points her cursed arm at them one after the other for a quick introduction. "They helped me get here."
"Thank you." I bow my head in gratefulness. They must have been protecting her from harm as well, though I'm sure she's grown a lot since we last saw each other. Not physically but mentally.
"Are you not the new Queen of the Dominion?" The masked woman named Sazi asks me. Her alluring voice has an otherworldly reverb that makes me wonder what lies underneath her cover. I'm interested in various ways.
"I have yet to be crowned." Replying while waving off her concern that a queen would lower herself before her subjects - at least I assume they are - I shrug. Since my duel with Chandra, the Kingmaker was interrupted, and I haven't physically sat on the throne even once, I'm not officially the queen yet. When my current project is done, I'll return for a proper coronation though, not just for myself but also for the sake of the masses.
"But you are Chaos, right?" Zancrax, the minotaur taking up three seats on the bench, asks while holding a cloth to his bleeding head.
"Yes, I am." I gesture in his direction and imagine light magic at a distance. This is the first time I'm trying such a feat, and I'm still operating within the limits of the magic system put in place by the Old Humans, but his wound closes and the bleeding stops. He blinks his eyes in surprise when he takes away the blood-soaked cloth to see that he has been completely healed.
"So you finally returned." The boar demon - though more like the typical interpretation of an orc in modern Japanese fantasy, which also happens to be entirely unlike their original appearances in literature - Terog is staring at me with a tearful expression.
I already knew that with the death of my mother, demonkind was plunged into despair. And I already saw how the masses cheered when I announced my return. But seeing an individual whom I've never even met before react like this is something special.
"What took you so long?" The bipedal rabbit asks with a voice that sounds like it would normally be pleasant and motherly. But there's clear accusation in her tone.
"Yeah, what took you so long?" Repeating the question, Kamii puts her left hand on her hip. She comes across as sassy enough even without her right doing the same, and I muse what she would look like with both hands on her hips. Her gaze leaves no room for speculation regarding what she thinks I was doing all this time, when she glances at Aurelia, Tokomaha, and Vitalis.
"I was preoccupied with learning the truth about this world." I lie. For most of the past year, I've been taking time off from the world. It wouldn't be wrong to say I was depressed after my mother died, even if I didn't show it on the outside. Being gone from all worldly matters, fishing and hunting with the villagers, spending time with my lost twin children and generally enjoying life. I was able to take my mind off fighting gods to the death by fighting Tahiri, the God of Storm, to the death every day. "But now I'm back."
I stretch out my arms in a theatrical gesture, only to simultaneously receive four skeptical looks. Except for Vitalis, everybody else is suspecting that I was wasting my time doing nothing of importance for a long time. Luckily, none of them were there at the time, and the one person who could incriminate me is the one I initially came here to find.
As we rise into the air and the shuttle's nose turns around, I remember that with this, I still have no clue where Tahiri and Aratio went after we shared that hot night together. After all, Shelnir's prophecy was to lure me here so I could witness Kamii dying. She most likely learned that the two left and deemed it the perfect timing to mislead me.
"What happened here?" Our pilot asks while flying toward one of the many hangar openings in the equatorial trench of the battle station. She's looking at the giant trees that sprouted out of nowhere and are propping up the listing sphere. The interior of the hangar is turned almost ninety degrees. "I can't land here."
"Just crash it near a door or something." I put my hand on her shoulder and command, and she flinches hard.
"Y-yes, sir. Anything you say, sir." She replies and snaps up her hand for a salute - hitting herself in the forehead.
"What's your name?" I ask her as she rubs the spot above her right eye in pain.
"2H-31-Near, sir." Quickly returning her hand to the steering stick, she replies with her call sign.
"I'll call you Near then." Shrugging, I point toward one of the hangar doors that look like they lead deeper into the structure, for her to fly toward. "Do you know a Luna Sigint?"
"I do not, sir. But there's a central databank with all the personnel files." Giving up piece after piece of information without even trying to hide anything, Near replies immediately.
"You know that you're a bad goon, right?" I frown at her, but she scratches her cheek in embarrassment. "That wasn't a compliment."
"Oh." She looks genuinely down because of my rebuttal, and I turn away. Doesn't she realize her situation? Alverost most likely only kept her around for her looks, which I have to admit are pretty good. But to make somebody this inept their personal pilot must hold some deeper meaning. Maybe she's an incredibly powerful Chosen Knight in disguise.
"Ahh, we're gonna die!" Near scrapes the wing on the wall while setting down the slowly hovering shuttle. The sound of metal scratching against metal makes it seem worse than it actually is, and at the velocity we're going, nobody is even going to get a concussion.
Finally, it sets down and wedges itself into the door I wanted us to use.
"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" I slap Near across the back of the head, and she yelps in surprise.
"No, sir. I'm so sorry, sir!" She straightens her back and apologizes toward the air before her.
"Get out." I pull her up by her collar and drag her out of the cockpit. The others are already disembarking and looking around in wonder. Aside from the bard, none of the others have ever witnessed architecture like this before, let alone technology this advanced. There were no windows in the shuttle so nobody could tell we were flying, but Zancrax makes his way to the open hangar to look outside.
"Woah, we're really inside that sphere!" He peeks out and immediately jumps back in fear. This is a height people of this world normally don't look down from, especially not without any ground directly below.
"Come here and help us move this strange ship." Terog calls out to the minotaur and points at the nose and hull of the shuttle covering up our entry point.
"No need." I lift a hand and gesture at the two demons, motioning to destroy it.
"No need." Aurelia walks forward and turns the entire shuttle into gold with a single touch before making it float out of our way. Carelessly dropping it onto the pile of other aircraft that have formed due to the sphere listing on its side, she turns around to me with a deadpan expression on her face.
"Thank you." I reply with the same and glance at Near. It seems her bad landing was an attempt to slow us down, as she blinks at the golden shuttle and then the nearly vertical shaft that lies open before us with her jaw hanging open.
Without further ado, I grab the pilot around the waist and float down into the corridor. My girls follow me one by one, each having their own way of descending. I didn't consider that several can't fly because I got used to being with my children and Tahiri, but even Kamii is jumping from foothold to foothold nimbly.
Leaving behind the human party and the demons that came with Kamii, we make our way through the crashed battle station. Near, being held under my arm, has dropped all attempts of stalling us and is diligently leading the way - although the path is pretty obvious for now.
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The ever so slightly curving corridor seems to describe the entire equator of the sphere. We soon reach a stretch that has a steep slope, but no longer requires those who can't fly to climb. Along the way, we passed several other hangars in which we could have landed, and whenever we do, I bop Near on the head for it. She flinches and profusely apologizes each time.
At one point, Rolan and the others catch up to us since we slowed down to take in our surroundings. I don't know how they got down, but he's determined to meet his girlfriend again - maybe even getting ahead of me to have a heartfelt reunion before I pass judgment on them. But I'm no monster; I'll give them at least that much.
We reach a blast door, where Near inputs a code on a panel in the wall now turned floor. The masked woman named Sazi comments how wondrous all this is, and judging by the looks of Zancrax and Terog, I can tell that they're overwhelmed by the level of technology as well. But from Ireyo's deadpan silence, I glean that she has seen something similar before - or I'm just bad at interpreting a rabbit's facial expressions.
"Oh, it seems I don't have the necessary clearance." Our guide says while demonstratively pointing at the beeping red screen of the panel.
Without saying a word, I jam my fingers into the tiny gap between the two sliding parts of the door. With the creaking sound of metal, I pull them apart effortlessly and bend the frame in the process. Well, saying it was effortless would be a lie; it did require a lot of strength, and I'm sure nobody else here would have been able to do the same. But compared to Korenga or Oinos, this was nothing.
Beyond the door is a small room with many screens on the walls. An office chair is stuck in one of them, most likely from the battle station crashing.
"No more games, Near." I pick up the woman by her collar and float down into the room with her. "Find Luna Sigint now."
"Yes, sir!" She replies and moves her arm, but before she can finish her salute, I drop her. Tumbling across the slanted floor, she slides under the table housing the console. "W-why did you do that? That hurt!"
"Now." Ignoring her complaints, I point at the keyboard. Near jumps up and immediately gets to work without saying any more.
"Was she always such a demon?" Gram asks Terog, but the latter shrugs.
"This is the first time I've ever met her." He replies. "And she's every bit as charismatic and confident as I imagined her to be."
I initially wanted to turn around and call the big man out for his lame pun, but hearing that somebody who met me for the first time is respecting me this much makes it too awkward. Acting as if I didn't overhear their conversation, I peek over Near's shoulder.
"I found her. She's in the superlaser control block as the... huh?" She announces while looking at the lines of code displayed across multiple screens repeatedly. I can't read it at all, so I have to rely on her telling the truth.
"What is it?" Asking impatiently, I put my hand on her shoulder once again.
"I-it's better if you see it for yourself." Near backs away from the console and points at the doors. "Umm, can you carry me again?"
Picking her up by the waist, we leave the databank room behind. As we make our way toward a lift, various scenarios run through my head regarding what could be going on with Luna. Her role in the control block of the superlaser could be anything, but knowing the sick bastard Alverost, she's being used as a living battery. Not like that would be necessary with the Imagination Engine, but he could be doing it to fulfill some kind of nerdy scenario of his.
The lift is almost horizontal, and it doesn't fit everybody at once, least of all somebody of the size of Zancrax. But before I know it, Kamii, Rolan, the bard, Ireyo, and Aurelia are already riding it when Gram steps in and activates the excess weight alarm.
"What is that noise?" He looks around in surprise and asks, but doesn't move from his spot at the door.
"That means you need to lose some weight." I push him out, but he complains.
"Hey, it's all muscle alright?" Flexing his exposed arms, he tries to hide the fact that his body fat has increased visibly. He stayed at Chandra's fortress ever since my mother's death where he didn't get as much action as he used to as an adventurer.
"Stay here; we'll be back." I ignore him and tell the others that have to remain. Hestia looks at me with the eyes of an abandoned puppy, but I mouth to her that it's going to be alright. Tokomaha has far less fear of separation and waves naturally as the door closes.
Usually, the journey in a lift would be up or down, but with the listing of the battle station, we're going sideways. It's a strange sensation, but luckily it doesn't take very long for us to reach our stop. When the door opens, a corridor similar to the one we were in just now opens before us.
But judging by its curvature, we're no longer near the equator. Even though it's a sphere, the interior is constructed like a regular building with floors. The tilt of the corridor is still the same as the one we just came from, and it makes traversing it difficult. Luckily, everybody seems to have either evacuated or gathered in one place, so we don't run into soldiers that may try to bar our way.
"Behind this." Pressing a button, Near opens a large blast shutter, and heat hits me like a wave. There's a corridor in front of me, strangely aligned with the direction of gravity rather than the rigid structure of the battle station. It seems that gravity is being manipulated here in one way or another. The walls of the corridor are filled with rods which cause the air around them to waver. "The security system is online, and nobody can get through here. It can only be switched off from the other side."
"It's just some heat." My clothes, made from my skin, melt back into my body and turn into dragon armor. I most likely don't even need to use this though.
"Wait, it's like a microwave in there!" The pilot grabs my arm and stops me.
"Huh, you care about an enemy's life?" Amused, I turn around to look into her eyes.
"Y-yes of course, sir!" Thinking it's a test, she responds with the exact opposite of what she must be thinking. "All life is sacred, sir!"
"How did you get into the employ of Alverost?" I mutter to myself. She's not only a little slow in the head but also too honest and unexpectedly kind to be working under a mad scientist who doesn't care about the lives he takes. I continue, speaking louder for her to hear. "Don't worry about me."
With these words, I step inside the hallway and immediately feel the microwaves shaking me down to my very core. I may have been underestimating the effects of them a little too much there because I certainly won't be fine going through this as long as I have a body that obeys the laws of physics.
"C-c-cover your e-e-eyes." I stutter due to the microwaves causing my body to exhibit macrowaves. Yes, I know that's not a real thing.
Not waiting for anybody to follow my order - or rather advice - I burst out into my real form. Standing a head taller than I usually do, my body is made of countless tentacles twisting and writhing in place like pulsing veins. At once, the microwaves hitting me seem to lose their effects completely. According to Senka, I'm a Cosmic Horror, and space is full of deadly radiation that my kind should be able to survive. It would be ironic if it couldn't with that kind of a name.
But I still don't waste any time going forward and begin to sprint. Maybe flying at Mach speeds could have worked as well, but there's another door at the end of the deadly hallway, and I'll have to stop there to push the release button anyway - or physically tear the thick shutter open, which takes about as much time.
I hear a high-pitched scream behind me and assume it's Near or Ireyo. All the others have seen my real appearance already and should at least be able to swallow their fear. Without turning around, I finish the trek and push the same button on the panel next to the door that our guide did when opening the door to this place.
And as I hoped, the shutters in front of me open - only to reveal another corridor just like the one I passed through. Luckily, I'm impervious to the microwaves, or I wouldn't be able to survive this.
Finally, after the third door, I come upon a wide open space. There's a giant hole up above - the one caused by Areteniha's angry outburst at her son. The central structure is a tower with a spiral staircase, at the top of which a naked person is strapped to a metal frame.
"Why am I not surprised." I recognize her blonde hair and modest chest; it's Luna. The fact that she was put here to act as a battery was kind of obvious judging by Near's reaction when she saw the personnel file of the half-elf.
"Runa?!" I hear Rolan's voice behind me and turn around. He stares at his sweetheart bound at the apex of the tower for a moment, before rushing past me and onto the bridge leading across the deep chasm that separates our position from the base of the spiral staircase.
It seems that with me making it through, the microwave corridor was shut down. Everybody else makes their way toward us, and I see that the person who screamed earlier was Near after all. She's leaning onto the bard, still delirious even from just witnessing the back of my real form.
"Is that her?" Aurelia asks with her arms crossed.
"Yes, she is the last person mentioned in Shelnir's prophecy to Rolan." The bard replies to the golden queen's question.
"Then Shelnir's plan is coming together?" Kamii asks with a concerned glance at Ireyo. The latter is sniffing the air as if to detect danger, but I can't feel any life forms besides the ones I see here.
"Don't worry. I'm here." I cross my arms and keep my senses trained on our surroundings while floating up into the air and approaching Luna. Rolan is running up the stairs while the group moves across the bridge after him, but I reach the bound half-elf first.
She's unconscious, with her arms and legs shackled to a rack, but there are no signs of any external wounds. It doesn't look like she's being drained of her energy or whatever else may have been going on with her before Areteniha shut this whole thing down with a single shot.
"Runa!" Rolan reaches the top and desperately calls out his lover's name while trying to catch his breath. He touches her face with his one remaining hand, then tries to rattle on the restraints. "I'm getting you out of there right now. Don't worry."
When he reaches for his belt, he notices that he doesn't have a sword on him. Nobody was allowed to bring weapons at the bloody ceremony that Alverost interrupted in such a grandiose way, so he's unarmed in more ways than one.
I look at the console right next to her, where a big red button screams at me to press it. The fact that 'emergency stop' is written on it in English in all caps leads me to believe that it shuts down whatever system she's part of right now.
"Here goes nothing." I push it, and the whirring sound that permeated the air until now stops. If not for this, I wouldn't even have noticed that sound, but in comparison, the silence now seems deafening. Luna stirs, and her eyes flap open. Looking around with a disoriented gaze, she soon regains her bearings and sees her lover.
"Rolan? What are you doing here?" There's surprise but also a hint of joy in her voice, but it's soon replaced by confusion when she notices that she's restrained and naked. "W-what is this? Why am I bound like this?"
"Isn't this your job?" I ask her sarcastically while the former party leader tries to break the shackles that are clearly made of some kind of metal with his one bare hand.
"No, I am the caster of the Divine Retribution." She replies with an angry look in my direction while trying to break free but realizes who I am. Her eyes widen, and her motions freeze. "Chloe?"
"You thought you would never see me again, huh?" Crossing my arms, I look down on the half-elf. Acting all high and mighty right now is a waste of time, but I do it anyway. Learning what she means by saying that she's the caster of Divine Retribution is more important, but I have a pretty good idea what it may be. "Are you the person firing that superlaser?"
"Superlaser... that is what Lord Alverost called it." Muttering to herself, Luna stares at me in disbelief. "How do you know that name?"
"Let's just say I know a lot of things." Replying mysteriously, I glance at Rolan, who has given up trying to do the impossible and is now listening to our conversation. "But with this, you're all back together. Aren't you glad, leader?"
"W-what do you intend to do?" The half-elf asks in mounting fear as she tries to free herself without me noticing. She's obviously failing at it. "Where is Lord Alverost?"
"He's dead." Near's voice suddenly announces in a spiteful tone. She reached the top of the tower with the others at one point and is now looking in my direction with a hate-filled gaze. "That monster killed him!"
The airheaded and strangely cheerful pilot seems almost possessed. I didn't expect that she was capable of directing so much hatred at somebody. But maybe she somehow learned about what happened in the city and to Alverost's escape pod somewhere along the way from outside the microwave corridor to here.
"I wish that were true." I shrug at the false accusation and return my gaze to Luna. "Let me get you out of there; then you can have a reunion with the big man as well."
I leave the sentence open on purpose, implying that I'll pass judgment on them together. Next to the big red button is a small and inconspicuous one with a label reading 'release mechanism', which will most likely undo Luna's restraints.
"No, don't do that!" Near runs forward and tries to stop me, but it's already too late, and my finger comes down on the button. Is it because Luna is powering the entire ship and it's still somewhat hovering? Trees holding up something that is most definitely heavier than a few million tons was suspicious to me from the start. Or was that the actual self-destruct button of this whole place?
But when the half-elf begins to convulse and scream, I find that there's a third possibility.