Branch Master Lahlee of the Goliath Guard outpost at Cliffwatch was having a bad day.

It had started well enough. There hadn’t been any domestic disturbances, the Kaiju Repellant Beacons in the region around Cliffwatch were holding steady. And everything was going swimmingly with the other business too.

But then her secretary, armed with a sheaf of papers, had burst into her office and announced, “We got word from Topwater! Anza Black is coming here! Today!”

“What?” Lahlee wracked her brains, trying to recall the name. After a moment of turning up nothing, she demanded, “Who’s that?”

“I don’t know either, sorry ma’am. But it matters because right before she left, she took a call from Dean Wujing at Cloudscraper. Apparently she’s a Cloudscraper alumni!”

That startled Lahlee. Cloudscraper Academy was the pride of the Goliath Guard, the world’s most prestigious combat school that leant over the edge of the Cloudfingers and served the secondary purpose of being the main bastion between the Kaiju Coast and the land of Guili. It was rare for someone from out here in the sticks to show enough talent that they were worthy of being sent to Cloudscraper, rarer still for them to come back. The ones that did always, without fail, became big names. How had this Anza Black gone under the radar? Unless she’d intentionally avoided making a name for herself. But the only reason to do that was if she was some kind of secret internal affairs investigator. And if that were true, then . . “Did that blue bag of bones figure out what we’re doing here?!” she gasped, leaping to her feet.

“I couldn’t say, ma’am, but if you’re asking for my humble opinion,” the secretary started.

“Bah! This Anza woman. What do we know about her?”

“I’ve got her dossier right here,” She snatched the papers from his hand and scanned them.

“Level fifty-one . . she’s cracked the second Schema Lock, but only recently. Amazonian Aegis armour, pugilist fighting style, specialises in melee. No political ambitions, actively avoids . . damnit, that means she won’t be bribed. Perhaps we could divert her . . no, no point, if she’s on her way here she already knows too much. Rally the guards, red alert. We need to prepare an ambush,”

“Ma’am, that’s a stopgap measure at best and you know it. If headquarters knows what we’ve been doing -“

“Yes, I know, I know,” Lahlee thought furiously. “Once we’ve silenced Anza Black, we’ll have to get ready to pull out. We’ll clean up or bury all the evidence and deny everything. The fact that Wujing sent an inspector, not a whole army, means he only suspects at most. We’ve got time, we can cover everything up. So long as no one does anything stupid,” Oh how she prayed that no one would do anything stupid.

“And, about Anza Black, ma’am?”

“I said we’d silence her! Spread the word; once she’s been dealt with, we never saw her. She got killed by a Kaiju on the way here. That’s hardly unbelievable, everyone knows about that Tier 12 Giant Roc flapping around Old Hedrang,” Lahlee made for the door. “Tell the watch captain to prepare an ambush. I’m going to prepare the special equipment our guests made me. Someone past the Second Schema Lock . . the Amber Sentinels won’t be able to stand up to her. I’ll need to be at full strength to make her submit,”

“Understood, ma’am,” the secretary saluted, and both rushed off in different directions.

<=====}—o

There was a glowing green vehicle cruising down the road that linked the town of Topwater to the village of Cliffwatch. Within it sat Anza Black, the trusted confidant of Dean Wujing who had been sent to investigate the disturbance at Astralia’s Spear.

Anza leant out through the side window, relishing the feeling of the air rushing by and beating at her hair as she went. It was like falling off a cliff, but without the nasty splat at the end.

It was a funny little thing with an odd name, this Pearl of Sports Car. The vehicle was a sleek and angular wedge that hugged the ground as it moved, with two powerful lanterns merged into the front that lit up the road at night. It had a transparent canopy that blended in with the chassis’ profile, so that she could sit low inside and watch the world fly by around her. The vehicle was carried by four powerful wheels, thick and strong and spinning quickly enough to be a blur.

All things considered, Anza loved it. She just couldn’t figure out where the ‘sports’ came into it. Not that she really cared. It had Wujing’s stamp of approval, that was what mattered.

Even at this speed, it had taken almost four days for her to travel between the two settlements. The main reason for this delay was that no less than half a dozen Kaijus had tried to ambush her on the way, and she’d considered it her duty to slaughter them before they tried again on a less prepared traveler. This, of course, had taken big chunks out of her mana and forced her to waste hours recovering after each encounter.

Just another day in the life of a Goliath Guardsman.

At long last, the vehicle slid to a halt outside the gates of Cliffwatch, then collapsed back into a cloud of green and gold glitter. Anza stood up from where there was no longer a seat to hold her, and reached for her Core Controller to remove its Core, preserving her limited number of slots.

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She looked up at Cliffwatch as she strode towards the gates. It was an unusual city, but then that was true of most of the cities in the Kaiju Coast. Every settlement had to be hidden or fortified in some way to safeguard it from the roaming monstrosities.

Cliffwatch had derived its name from being built into and beneath the side of a cliff. It was like a creeping vine of buildings that had crawled its way up the rock face and dug deep inside, pockmarked with windows and balconies. The largest building was, of course, the Goliath Guard hall, set into the very base of the cliff and sprawling outwards into a large and fortified ‘kill box’. It was the outer entrance to this kill box that she was now approaching, eschewing the civilian entrance near the watchtower at the top of the cliff.

After all, this was just a quick in and out stop. Cliffwatch didn’t have the best of reputations among the Goliath Guard branches, but then corruption was inevitable and accounted for. From what little gossip Anza had cared to retain, Branch Chief Lahlee didn’t have the worst of vices by a long shot, either. She and several of her fellows were treasure hunters. One of the fools who thought digging around in ancient ruins was more likely to save sapienity from the Kaijus than, well, killing Kaijus. Some people were foolish enough to believe that there were ancient weapons and secret powers buried beneath the earth, just waiting for the lucky and dedicated treasure hunters to uncover them. More were willing to profess that nonsense in the name of making a quick buck.

Treasure hunters were hardly the ideal members of the Goliath Guard, but they were a long way from the worst. Anza still remembered some of the reports she’d been forced to read during her studies at Cloudscraper. Stories about people using the Goliath Guard as a cover for illegal drug smuggling or, worse, slave trafficking. Not quite as bad but still worse than treasure hunters were those who abused their authority to get whatever they wanted, or even ran entire protection rackets. A couple of years ago, Anza had been part of an operation to break up a drug cartel. It had been the first time she’d seriously fought another Armour Core since graduating from Cloudscraper. She hadn’t enjoyed the experience, and hoped she’d never have to repeat it.

The point being that it wasn’t much of a leap of logic to conclude that the most likely culprit for whoever had been smart enough to crack the protections on Astralia’s Spear, was either Lahlee herself or someone in her employ. Even if that turned out to be untrue, Cliffwatch would be the first port of call for anyone looking to sell some pre-Collapse antiquities. Alerting Lahlee to the mission and enlisting her aid was the logical first step.

Anza paused in front of one of the two guards flanking the gate, who seemed to be dozing on his feet. While his partner was clad in the glowing yellow form of an Amber Sentinel Core, this man was not. “No Armour?”

“Wha - uh -“ The guard’s eyes visibly widened as he registered the badge pinned to Anza’s lapel. “Ma’am! I was, um -“

“I know exactly what you were doing. But I know how it gets on guard duty. I’ll let you off with a warning this time, just don’t do it again,”

“Thank you ma’am!” Yellow material was already wrapping itself around his body, and Anza recognised the standard-issue equipment of the Amber Sentinel, the blocky and angular armour that came with spear and shield built in. It was the bog-standard equipment of the Goliath Guard’s foot soldiers, made from cheap, mass-produced Amber Cores grown in farms under controlled conditions. No real warrior would ever use an Amber Core unless they were desperate; they were just too crappy. Amber was for toys, farming implements and the men who spent their careers standing at gates and hoping to never see the sort of real monster she killed on the daily.

“Anza Black, here to check in with the Branch Head before conducting a mission in the area. I trust that won’t be a problem?”

“I couldn’t stop you if I wanted to, ma’am,” the quailing guard admitted, and Anza’s opinion of him dropped even lower. She scoffed and walked in through the armoured door at the bottom of the wall which led to the guards’ quarters, not feeling the need to insist that the main gates be opened just for her. The gates to the kill box were made for Kaijus, after all.

The barracks were empty, which was unusual. She couldn’t quite stifle a scoff at how sloppily things were being run in this backwoods outpost. There should be a squad of guards ready to respond. What if a Kaiju charged the gates? Unless the two out the front were much more competent than their equipment and demeanour suggested, the gates were far too poorly defended.

Well, whatever. It wasn’t her problem, even if this would certainly be going into her report.

She skirted the edge of the kill box - force of habit - and made her way towards the large gatehouse set into the cliffside. Clearly whoever was keeping lookout had seen her and sent a message, as the doors started to inch open and paused when there was just enough space to admit her.

The layout hadn’t changed since the last time she’d been to Cliffwatch. The main doors led into a large, open hall that served as the ‘town square’ of this small settlement. There were stairwells and passageways on either side that led up into the buildings bolted to the side of the cliff, or down into the underground apartments and emergency shelter bunkers. The largest and most ostentatious hallway led to another pair of doors, beyond which, she knew, was the proper offices of the local Goliath Guard branch.

Given that this was supposed to be the centre of Cliffwatch, it was genuinely strange that this large chamber was also deserted. She would have expected to find stalls, off-duty soldiers amusing themselves, perhaps children playing.

Her gut was telling her that there was something going on here. The undermanned guard post she could have chalked up to mismanagement. But this? Either there’d been some catastrophe she hadn’t heard about that had wiped out most of Cliffwatch’s population, or something foul was afoot.

Just before she reached them, the doors to the Goliath Guard branch opened without any prompting from her. She recognised the person who appeared between them from the dossier she’d read; Branch Head Lahlee. A quartet of guards filed in behind her from where they’d been operating the door mechanism, lining up in honour guard formation behind her.

Lahlee was a tall and lanky human woman, but her height was dismissed by the way she hunched forward like the whole world was pressing down on her shoulders. She wore leather armour that seemed to have been customised for her; in this case, it had been cut to resemble a suit, with reinforced coattails and, strangely enough, what looked like a modified Core Controller set into her belt. There was partial armour wrapping around her right shoulder and reaching down to a metal gauntlet wrapped around her hand. Wait, no, Anza realised she’d been mistaken; the entire arm was a weaponised prosthetic. That explained why she had a Core Controller in her belt; her artificial arm couldn’t interact properly with the mana.

For a second Anza wondered how Lahlee had afforded a prosthetic that looked as expensive as that did, but then remembered the open secret that was her antiquities side hustle. She could probably afford all kinds of goodies.

Even though that was a perfectly reasonable explanation, she didn’t accept it. There was something weird going on in Cliffwatch, and she couldn’t take anything for granted.

Only one thing mattered right now, and that was what Lahlee had to say for herself.