The day was warm and comfortable, the breeze making the grass wave back and forth, the flowers that had managed to get sprinkled across the grass bobbing their heads in time with the slow easy gusts of breeze. The sun, yellowish-white, was warm and almost comforting in the azure sky. Clouds were spread about the sky, almost as if someone had placed them with an eye for how it would appear from the ground.

The house was small, off away from the other houses, in between the forest and the space port, in between the forest and the small town where the Lanaktallan lived their quiet lives beneath the warmth of the sun. It had a clay roof, clay and wood walls, wooden window frames around macroplast smartglass, and was painted soft pastel blue with white trim.

It was an unassuming house that housed the sole Tnvaru on the planet.

Matron Sangbre stared out the macroplast window at the day and wondered, again, how she had ended up where she was.

She had been a lot of things over her life, but what she had become since the Case Omaha had been declared was beyond her wildest dreams.

Her eyes, black warsteel, were warm and comfortable in her head, not at all like she had heard others of her people complain about. No feeling of coldness, no feeling of a foreign object embedded in her face, but natural feeling.

Many days she forgot that they were completely artificial, placed in her skull by the blood slicked fingers of, well, to be honest, witches. Women who's eyes had never seen the light of day, who's psychic abilities had been nutured and honed in the caverns beneath the surface of Rossaya, known as the Vodka Trog Empire to outsiders.

Captain Manners stood by the door, silent. He too had undergone his own changes. Sangbre wasn't privy to all of them, like many things in Rossaya, changes were often a private affair that were to be endured rather than lamented.

Sangbre sipped at her vodka and lime juice, real limes, not artificial flavor, and stared out the window, waiting.

The ship, when it landed, was unmistakable.

It looked like it had taken the brunt of a supernova and kept coming. The warsteel was pitted, cracked, warped in places. Massive engines, depowered, at the rear. Two huge six-barrel C+ cannons, one on either side, sticking from the hull.

Sangbre had been the owner of a trading consortium, had seen plenty of ships. Cargo ships, passenger ships, system defense ships, Unified Military Services ships.

None of them exuded the raw malevolence of the ship she saw settle on the tarmac of the spaceport.

"They're here," Captain Manners stated. "ETA, if they ride in a vehicle, is five minutes."

"They won't," Sangbre said. She didn't know how she knew, but like many things since Case Omaha, she knew. "They will walk. It will be just shy of an hour."

Captain Manners nodded.

Sangbre knew he was unhappy with the whole situation, but he had given his blood oath to serve her, an oath beyond what the Confederate Military had demanded, deep in the Caverns of the Soul.

The knock on the door came right when Sangbre knew it would just how she had known it would. Three heavy spaced knocks. She used her datalink to open the door, steeling herself for what was requesting entrance to the little house.

The first to enter was a slim man, his skin dark brown, his head shaved, his cheeks and chin clean shaven. His brown eyes were piercing, his face intent, and his body gave the impression of being hardened by decades of labor.

The next was a tall woman, clad in a black dress with long sleeves. She wore a hair net and a veil, covering her face. Her face beyond seemed pale and the veil was lit from the purple fire burning in her eye sockets. Sangbre could see that her throat was slashed open, revealing her windpipe, and black blood slowly coursed from the wound and into her dress.

The fourth was a woman of dark brown skin, her hair was black and tightly woven in such a manner that the thin braids looked almost plastic. Beads, microtransmitters, superconductor wire, and circuit strands were woven into the braids. Her body was slim but undeniably feminine, her eyes were old and wise, to Sangbre's warsteel eyes, the woman's eyes were kind. She wore a colorful dress of red and gold, sandals, and jewelry of gold and silver set with semi-precious stones.

The other three faded into the background as the third one entered. She knew who he was despite the fact he had changed so much from the description her daughter had gone into such detail about.

Gone was the heavy combat frame. No more was he a massive robotic figure of warsteel and black chrome, of thumping pistons and hissing valves, of the clattering of hidden servos and flatware motors.

Now, he stood slightly taller than the thin one, even taller than Captain Manners, at a hair over two meters. He was wide, thick of body and muscle, with shoulder muscles that practically hid his neck. His face was clean shaven but he had close cropped black hair on top of his head. Tattoos in his face, including three chrome tears beneath the corner of one eye. His legs were covered in heavy black cloth, but a panel was opened in the leg of the pants to reveal what looked like, to Sangbre, a pop-open compartment.

"Daxin Freeborn," Sangbre said, rising from her seat and moving forward.

Only a few months ago she would have been afraid of the massive Terran. The malevolence and rage balanced on a razor's edge, the simmering explosive violence just under the surface, the hatred for a universe that had taught him to hate from a young age.

Now, her warsteel eyes saw further, saw past what was in front of her.

She saw a tired male who had given much to a universe that just devoured what it was given and demanded more.

"Matron Sangbre," Daxin rumbled. He touched fingertips with her and moved back slightly. "My siblings beneath the gaze of our Digital Father," he motioned at the slim man. "Dhruv, known as Vat Grown Luke," he pointed at the gray skinned woman. "Bellona, the Grave Bound Beauty, oldest of our Digital Father's daughters," he motioned at the brown woman who was smiling gently. "Our baby sister, Menhit the Singer."

Sangbre moved forward and touched fingertips with each of them, nodding. The thing man knelt down on one knee to stare her in the eyes, holding her gaze for a long moment.

Finally Sangbre moved over and sat down. "What do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" she asked carefully.

"I wished to see, with my own eyes, the mother of the woman who started all of this," Dhruv said. He moved over and sat down in a chair. "History may not remember that it was your daughter who's escape from a Mantid Precursor Autonomous War Machine set your people upon this course, but we will."

The woman, Menhit, laughed softly, her voice a tinkling musical thing. "You make it sound so ominous," she said.

"I see you, Matron Sangbre," the gray skinned veil clad woman said, her voice gurgling. "I have seen, now I understand, and can see more clearly the path before me."

Without a word the woman vanished, a puff of purplish black smoke erupting and then vanishing into itself.

The thick bodied man, Daxin, sighed. "She needed to see you so she could clearly see your daughter," he said, as if it explained everything.

To Sangbre, with her new knowledge, it did. Sangbre nodded slowly. "She seeks to escape our self-imposed imprisonment."

Daxin nodded. "Yes."

"And where is FIDO?" Sangbre asked.

"On board the ship. The cyborgs make him nervous," Daxin said, shrugging. "He's a goodboi though."

Sangbre nodded. She felt more than a little intimidated, she had to admit. She had just seen a woman so psychically powerful that her image still lingered in Sangbre's sight vanish in a cloud of purple energy, and was sitting in a room with three living legends.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"It was nice meeting you, Matron," Daxin said. He turned and walked away, closing the door quietly behind him.

"You have to excuse our brother," Dhruv said, shaking his head with a smile. "He has never been one for social etiquette."

"He has never been the life of the party," Menhit smiled. She accepted a drink from Captain Manners then withdrew a pipe from her pocket, holding it up. "Do you mind?"

Sangbre shook her head. She noticed that the pipe was hand carved plant shell. Menhit smiled, using a match to light her pipe and puffing on it a moment to get a good draw.

"He's uncomfortable around people," Dhruv said.

Sangbre waved a hand. "I was not offended. I understand that despite his fearsome reputation, he is still a Terran male, still a person to be more precise, with a person's quirks and foibles."

Dhruv nodded. "Trust us, in a fight, there's nobody you want at your back more than Daxin Freeborn, even if you're about to fight a supernova or a black hole, but in a social setting, well..." he let it hang.

Menhit laughed again. "He would be perfectly happy if guests piled their coats on him and hid him from view."

Sangbre giggled, ignoring Captain Manner's slightly outraged look.

"Bellona is not exactly social gatherings personified," Menhit said, sipping at her drink before puffing at her pipe again. "But then, she is more the Master of the Black Fleet than the Grave Bound Beauty."

"Who named you?" Sangbre asked suddenly.

Dhruv heaved a sigh, looked at Menhit, then back at Sangbre once Menhit gave a slight nod. "Our Digital Father named each of us as he touched us."

"And you're eight thousand years old?" she asked.

"Not quite. It's the Eighth Millennium, but I'm a little over seventy-five hundred years old," Dhruv said. "It gets a little confusing for me."

"I care little for the passage of time," Menhit shrugged. "I watch the seasons closely, from my hut, as I tend my crops and cattle, but I care little beyond that."

Sangbre leaned forward slightly. "Do you live around others?" she asked.

Menhit nodded. "I live in a village, a small one, in Nubia. I have watched each generation grow and pass."

Sangbre reached up with her catching hand and touched beneath her eye, her vestigial claws resting on the reddish fur. "I have been touched, changed, and I worry that I can no longer live as I once did."

Menhit shook her head, smiling sadly. "No. The days of being a simple Matron are gone forever. Your eyes see more and less than the eyes of others. You will sought out by rulers, the wealthy, the powerful, the lost and forlorn. They will come, claiming to seek your wisdom, your advice."

"They just want you tell them what they want to hear," Dhruv sneered. "Or to do something for them they feel is too difficult for them to do themselves."

Menhit gave Dhruv a sly smile. "Like have you work in a Black Box?"

"That's different," Dhruv said, then shook his head and laughed. "Touche."

"So, living in this little house, isolating myself, is the best answer?" Sangbre asked. She heaved a sigh. "My sisters, the Daughters of Chrome Baba Yaga, they sequester themselves."

Dhruv nodded. "I eventually did. Removed myself, waited, left behind my old life, remade myself again and again in the hopes that humanity would forget me and let me live a halfway normal life."

"Like I have, retreating to my beloved village," Menhit sighed. "After the war, after our Digital Father's murder, I wanted only quiet and peace," she puffed on her pipe. "I walked the earth of my homeland, walked the paths of my ancestors, found ancient secret paths, until the world quieted again."

Sangbre sighed.

"You do not have that luxury, Matron," Dhruv said, crossing his legs then folding his hands over his knee. "Your people are in pain, they need guidance and your wisdom, the galaxy, the universe, seeks to take away everything they love."

Menhit puffed on her pipe and nodded. "The galaxy has turned, we, as people, as real beings, are nearly forgotten," she said. "We have the luxury of our small villages, our humble shops, our ships to sail the silent spaces of the universe," she exhaled a long stream of smoke. "More people say our names in anger or profanity or in vain than ask for our assistance."

Dhruv laughed. "Or called upon Daxin's wrath to spare them, to pass them by, to be lifted from them."

"Did they often call on you?" Sangbre asked.

Menhit nodded. "We heard their prayers, heard them call out to us. It took time for us to learn to push aside their pleas, or when they took our name in vain, or when it was not serious."

Dhruv gave a slow sad smile. "Then, eventually, we, or at least I, started to miss it."

Menhit exhaled more smoke. "The first of the Tnvaru Immortals," she said softly. She sipped at the wine as Sangbre stared at the Terran woman, who laughed. "Did you think it was merely eyes? That the Daughters of Baba Yaga were just some kind of mystical cyberware shop?"

She chuckled again. "Oh no, Matron Sangbre. It was much more than that."

Sangbre licked her lips, then wetted her nose, the only sign of agitation she would allow herself to show. "Immortal?" she asked.

Menhit nodded. "The Daughters are incredibly old. Not how you count it, not millions of years. The meaning is much different," she sighed. "You have to understand the Age of Paranoia to understand why Daxin was created by one project and the witches by another, each intended to offset one another, to provide their creators an advantage over the creators of the other."

Dhruv nodded. "They bestowed their gift upon you. Unlike Daxin, they pass their gift to those they deem worthy."

Menhit smiled, a sad thing. "Which means, eventually, there will be those who are jealous, who will become convinced you are withholding what they want. They will beg you for it at first."

"Then they'll try to take it," Dhruv said quietly.

"Can you hear them yet?" Menhit asked.

"Who?" Sangbre asked. She was hugging herself with her gripping arms, holding herself tight.

"Your people. Can you hear them yet?" Dhruv asked.

Sangbre shook her head. "No."

Menhit got up slowly, setting down the glass, making the pipe disappear in the same motions. She moved over to the door as Sangbre watched her. She opened the door, took a half step, and looked back.

"You will," she said quietly.

There was silence for a moment after the door closed.

Dhruv broke the silence with a sudden laugh.

"You get used to that, Matron Sangbre," he said, when he saw her stare.

Sangbre nodded slowly.

"Menhit is more mystical than I am," Dhruv said. "Just like Daxin's angrier than I am, Bellona is more psychic than me."

Sangbre sipped at her drink, refusing to show any more signs of agitation. She had become used to strangeness where the Terrans were concerned and it made her feel anxious that their strangeness had been passed to her. Not temporarily, but apparently much more permanently than she had known.

"Bellona wanted to see you, to track your daughter, possibly escape the Sol System. Daxin, well, he came here for reasons of his own," Dhruv shrugged. "Menhit to warn you, tell you what had happened to you."

"And you?" Sangbre asked, leaning back and sipping at her drink again.

"I came to watch," he said. He gave a slow chuckle. "I'm easily amused."

"Somehow I doubt that," Sangbre said. She took in the way he was sitting, his apparent relaxation.

The single bead of sweat that had dried on his neck.

"You were worried," Sangbre said. "Worried that I was created in Daxin's image, or perhaps Bellona's image."

Dhruv raised an eyebrow, the only hair on his body. "Very perceptive."

"And who's image do you see me made in?" Sangbre asked. She felt more comfortable, her anxiety easing.

Dhruv lifted his hands, spreading his arms slightly as he shrugged. "Yours, Matron?"

Sangbre chuckled, setting her empty glass on the table and ordering a new one to be created in front of her. She picked up the new drink, sipping at it.

"I will hear my people call out to me?" she asked. Dhruv nodded. "Will I have the power to answer?"

Dhruv shrugged. "Maybe. I could. It was... strange for me. I could hear them, reach out to them, create myself next to them."

"Did you do it a lot?" Sangbre asked.

"The ones I answered," he said slowly. "Beyond children, were not your typical Terrans."

Sangbre thought for a moment about the movies, the documentaries, she had watched about the Terran's history.

"Short bake clones," she said softly. "They would call out to you, as well as they were able, until you were no longer able to take it any longer. You set aside Vat Born Luke and became Legion."

"The Clone Worlds Rebellion," Dhruv nodded. "The Second Biological Artificial Sentient's War."

"So who sits in my parlor now, Dhruv?" Sangbre asked, "Or Legion?"

Dhruv smiled. "Guess."

Sangbre stared at him for a long moment. "Dhruv. Not Vat Grown Luke, not Legion, but Dhruv."

The Terran nodded. "Yes."

"To take my measure," Sangbre said. She let out a slow exhale. "To see me, to understand me, and ultimately, to make a decision."

Dhruv raised an eyebrow. "What decision is that, Matron?"

Sangbre smiled, exposing her residual meat tearing teeth that Lanaktallan gentling had almost wiped away.

"To decide if you had to kill me," Sangbre said. She held up her left catching hand toward Captain Manners, who had jerked upright and reached for his pistol. "Easy, Captain, easy." She smiled wider. "Bellona to counter any psychic power I might have, Daxin in case I was built more like him and to take on my hosts, Menhit for support in whatever manner she provides," she sipped at her drink. "And all of you, all of Legion, just in case you had to fight the Tuvan Warsteel Horde."

Dhruv nodded slowly. "Very good, Matron."

"With each of them leaving, it shows me that only the questions remain," she said.

Dhruv smiled. "Which questions are those?"

"If I am indeed an Immortal, then what task has been laid upon me?" she said. She made a non-committal motion with her gripping hands. "You wished to see me, decide for yourself."

Again, Dhruv went silent, just smiling. "And what, Matron Sangbre, do you think I have decided?"

Sangbre leaned back, sipping at her drink. "That time will tell."

Dhruv nodded, dialing up another drink for himself. "It's been a long time since any other Immortals were created. A long time."

"Has there been any created since the death of the Digital Omnimessiah?" Sangbre asked.

Dhruv shook his head. "No. The Age of Immortals ended with the Crusade of Wrath," he said. He gave a sharp, bitter laugh. "Thankfully, it was a short age."

"What will you do, Dhruv?" Sangbre asked. "I assume Menhit is going back to her village, Bellona will rage against her confinement, Daxin will go somewhere he will be left alone by others. WHat of you?"

Dhruv sipped at his drink and stared up at the ceiling for a long moment. "I thought about staying here, with you," he said quietly. "But I left something important behind when the Case Omaha happened."

"More important than keeping an eye out on your fellow Immortal?" she smiled.

Dhruv nodded. "No offense. Much more important."

Sangbre held out her catching hand. "Care to tell an old woman?"

Dhruv chuckled. "I cannot."

Sangbre nodded. "Very well," she motioned at her little house. "You are welcome here, brother. Stay as you will in the fields of Rossaya."

Dhruv smiled. "Thank you, little sister."