BEFORE

The beastly island planet of the Ides, a gem corrupted by wandering eyes, held high above in the sky. It was a future that we wanted, a utopia in our mind, a new beginning for our lives. And yet upon the foundations built, a spurious future laid in wait. The beast and monsters came in the night and in the day to rip and rend and consume. And yet it wasn’t monsters from the deep it was children and pets and mothers and fathers and women and men and people who came for that paradise world. The world itself corrupted them, changed them. Those who sought to change the world to fit their ways found that the world was not content to be changed and changed them instead. It made those colonists into creatures that would best fit in that world, changing blood and bone, mind and heart. There was no escape, because the glit and glitter of a new world was also putrescent and poison.

In the mind of those who became one with the world they saw the world and those who would come, not as friends, but as something to be conquered. There was a new way to see, a new way to be, and new way to fight, a new way to dream.

These gentle humans did not conquer the world with their bulldozers and skyscrapers, instead the planet turned those that would consume into its greatest defenders.

But, upon these changes, the world was made off limits, and put to study by scientist and military alike. Some application could come from this, they were certain. Some way of using what had changed for the betterment of all. Surely something as beautiful as glit could make an opulent future for all kind.

In a distant star, far away, out of sight and out of mind to most, a new battle was being waged, but not a fight for land or kingship. It was a fight for resource. The human empire had reached its limits, finding species who controlled regions of space outside. The human empire was not satisfied with its light years of space and diadem of habitable worlds. The gem, had been denied them, and so a new gem would be found. A planet already claimed, a home to others, a new conquest laid in wait. But for the claws of progress to make a foothold, they would have to tear a wound.

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And so, there upon the former jewel of the human empire a scientist tooled with human and animal and discovered how to regulate the glit prescient in all things in the Ides.

As with all things, well meaning science becomes the weapon of the military mind and this discovery was now the trimmings of a new world. A new brutality was on the horizon. A workforce was needed to run the gamut and so they started to make a deal. Send your weak and your weary, your poor and you dreary into the cusp of the Ides and there let them become born anew. Released from debt, unburdened with choice, and freed from prison these new lives would be given a new lease.

Like the turn of a gear in a fluvial engine people went into the Ides some version of human and came out some version of monster.

LATER

Isla Mariposa

Fourth Planet in the Ides System

June

The ship dropped the prison crew off in the morning just before dawn. By the time the sun set the next day, half of them were gone. The man held his stolen gun in one hand and watched as the Gestalt HUD calculated the score left behind by his kills.

Already he was at tier two. The first tier had gone fast as he had slaughtered countless other prisoners. They had said to form up and make teams, but They didn’t know him. They didn’t know how much he despised working for or under others. They didn’t know how much the will of others was so disgusting to him. No. Let the others perish here. If there was to be a prize at the end of this gauntlet then it was all his and no one else's.

*Congratulations* the G.HUD said in his head. *You have acquired the Brutal badge and accrued two skill points. Fifteen coin has been added to your wallet. Please allocate up to two skill points at this time.*

In the G.HUD he selected night vision and a speed boost. He gripped his gun and gritted his teeth, waiting for the transformation to begin. It was thrilling, terrifyingly beautiful. The first transformation had given him enhanced smell and taste and sharp claws that could retract. The physical feel of drawing blood from skin was more the thing he wanted.

He screamed as the Glit roared through his body and began its vicious transformation and in the distance the call of an avian beast the size of a train car echoed out over the trees.