Martin strode down the hall of the capitol building with a worried smile on his face. He was a bit greyer now but he still oozed charm and confidence. Time had been kind to him.
The city had become a booming metropolis in the ten years since Paul returned, after his year and a half of being missing. Martin knew something had happened because one day a bunch of massive flying ships had come from nowhere and obliterated the ships that had been harassing the city non-stop for over six months. They had quickly taken care of Lord Vik’t and his remaining forces, the man managing to flee back to his homeworld before the Guild caught him.
When Paul had returned, he had returned a quiet man. You could see the loss in his eyes. But the man pushed on and his businesses flourished, producing the Earth’s mightiest warships and most advanced runic items. Then five years after Paul returned, he took a fleet of ten of his capital ships and vanished for another year.
When he returned again, the ships were scarred and patched but Paul never did say where he had gone. Martin eventually got Paul’s second in command Em’ah to tell him what happened.
She would only say they made good on a promise and the world was a better place for it. Martin decided to leave it well enough alone. He had other stuff to deal with at the time.
Then another five years passed and Paul’s agreement with the Guild was complete. Martin’s son had just turned ten a month or so ago and the entire gang was there to celebrate. Ska and his mate Nalam along with their new litter were there. Martin didn’t really trust the Narmani female but it seemed like Ska had her well in hand. It was easier now that Ska had retired from being the city's guard captain.
It had been a shock for Martin to learn that Grimalkin only lived about forty-five years. With Ska now being in his late twenties which equated to mid-sixties on a human.
The party was a joyous time with Fiona gifting their son his first weapon. Martin would have preferred his son not to need to defend himself but he wasn’t a fool to deny his kid some protection. Ska agreed to train Jacob in hand-to-hand combat, something Martin was more than open to for his son. Then Paul came in and gave Jacob a full set of runic armor that was designed to grow stronger and resize automatically with Jacob as he aged. It had seriously been too much but Paul just shrugged it off like it was perfectly normal.
So when Martin heard that Paul had left again, he was rightfully concerned. Because his friend had not taken any ships this time. He simply vanished through some complex runic machine he had built without telling anyone. The other engineers couldn’t make heads or tails of what it did or where it sent him. Only that the man had been working on it off and on for over two years.
“Em’ah, please tell me you have some good news?” Martin asked Paul’s second in command.
“I have news, whether it is good or bad, I can’t say.”
Maritn sighed and motioned for her to continue.
“Well, whatever this machine is, it didn’t vaporize him.”
Martin choked, “What! I didn’t even think of that as an option.”
She just shrugged, “I guess that means you have a limited imagination,” she added wryly.
“For fucks sake, Em’ah, this is serious, Paul is missing and nobody seems to know where he is or what he is up to. You know the man better than almost anyone, where do you think he went?”
“Well, this isn’t a teleporter, or at least not a normal teleporter. Any blind fool can see that since they are everywhere nowadays.”
***
I had spent years researching my target. My conclusions? The Guild representative had been right, trying to fight the voidlings – in their home turf – was a measure in futility. A planet as large as our pre-system sun that was made entirely of water. There were a few aquatic species that might be able to brave the upper layers of a planet like that but to get where the voidlings made their homes was impossible.
So I dropped that idea.
Then I got the news that the Pirate King was on the move again. While I may have stopped putting myself on the line for personal glory, it didn’t mean I had cut myself off from the world. Using my new power as a Guild member, I slowly absorbed the remnants of the Stygian Order. In the grand scheme of the new world, they were a tiny organization. But they were well versed in uncovering information for me. So I put them to work on the real problems and not this little stuff they had focused on for the first two years.
With their information, I gathered my fleet along with Em’ah and went to retrieve King Barcos for a bit of well-deserved revenge. He absolutely hated being King and it made me smile. Since I considered Barcos still part of my crew, he fell into the protective envelope of the Guild along with everything he controlled.
This forced the Pirate King to recall all of his forces from the Protectorate. Unfortunately, I couldn’t claim the same about the Jerboan Federation. They became the Pirate King's new target but he found stiffer resistance than he expected fighting them and was forced to pull back and return to his old ways of striking out at lone ships. I made sure he never sought greener pastures elsewhere on Earth by eliminating any scout ships he sent out over the decade.
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So when I finally decided to engage his main fleet, it was only a little surprising that the Pirate King tried to flee. In a retribution class ship no less. I don’t know where he purchased it from but it didn’t matter, it was a civilian design now and not nearly up to par with even the smallest strike craft of my current designs.
My ships had long surpassed the ships that the Shipbuilders allowed outsiders to buy. It was funny because if the Shipbuilders had given the Pirate King the same ships that they used, he may have been able to take over a sizable chunk of the planet. It’s a good thing those guys were paranoid about their creations being used against them. I chuckled at the irony.
When we finished decimating his fleet of over three hundred ships. Capturing the pirate and his surviving flunkies was easy. I simply sent a signal to the retribution class ship, freezing all of its functions. It was immensely gratifying to watch the elf that had caused so much bloodshed and mayhem swing from a rope. His second in command didn’t go down quite as quietly and Barcos gave me the honor of crushing him.
Years of personal tutoring by one of the best fighters I had ever met saw me through the short conflict. See, unlike Barcos, I didn’t care for an honorable fight. I used every advantage I had and all the enchanted gear I had crafted to tear the Lionoide to pieces, figuratively. When I was done with him, he was broken but alive. At least until we strung him up next to his boss.
I didn’t stop there, however. After saying my goodbyes to Barcos, I had Em’ah infiltrate the Syleen nation on what had once been mainland China. See, the Syleen had fallen on hard times in recent years as I mass-produced the device that counteracted their collars. Since they had problems in their homeworld, they had mostly abandoned this outpost empire. I used that to stage an “anonymous” attack on their capital city while Em’ah used a stealth ship to litter thousands of collar deactivation devices over the countryside.
Of course, the Syleen knew it was me that was doing this but they couldn’t prove it. That’s how things worked in the Guild. Outright attacking another member was frowned upon but that didn’t stop groups from jostling for position by attacking other groups anonymously. This was just payback for the Syleen trying to attack Saint June and Khikall Island shortly after I returned. They quickly found out that using slave soldiers against the man that created the means to free them was a real shit idea.
It worked out for me though, I now had enough freed slaves to fill my entire fleet of ships. And these were the most loyal people you could imagine.
After I returned from that campaign, I set about working on my next project. The one that would see my revenge complete. It had taken five years and over a dozen failed projects before I succeeded at building the device but it was now ready.
I double-checked the two target beacons I had to create for this to work. See, I had learned a fascinating bit of info a few years prior. Skills had a unique resonance to the person they came from. So I built a device that could track the source of my resonance. It located three unique signals. The bastards had each kept at least one of my skills. I smiled when I learned that.
Then came the device. I planned on giving those two squid pricks exactly what they wanted but that meant I needed to join them. I was ok with sacrificing myself to see my vengeance complete, but if I didn’t have to that would be better.
The device wasn’t simple. It essentially mimicked what the Reclaim skill did, that had been stripped from me so long ago. Except, it didn’t just pull the skill into the void, it pulled the resonance in and anyone unfortunate enough to be attached to that resonance.
Finding information on the void was not easy but I did learn that magic simply didn’t function there. Which worked in my favor.
As I was prepping the device, I looked over at Em’ah. We had surprisingly become close friends over the years. And she was smart enough to know I was up to something shady, so she was keeping an eye on me. I felt bad for lying to her about this but it had to be done this way.
She must have seen me glance over and realized I was about to do something. She got up and yelled something, she ran over to try and stop me but I flipped the switch a moment before she could reach me.
There was no moment of transition as I appeared in endless darkness with my armor fixing itself into place through a complicated series of mechanical motions. Next, a force bubble, that I had purchased, appeared around me to keep the caustic void from damaging my armor while I worked.
Humanity had managed to create some fantastical magical and technological marvels over the last decade and the armor and bubble were purely technical in nature.
I tossed the first device through the field and it stopped a dozen feet away before it flashed with power. A moment later a smallish blue squid flailed about in confusion.
***
Ulq had been enjoying the embrace of his lover when he felt an unfamiliar pull. When his eyes adjusted he found himself floating in nothing as he flailed about to try and right himself. But his tentacles couldn’t catch on anything. In his flailing, his eyes landed on a human. The human smiled cruelly through a transparent helmet before tossing a ball through a glowing shield.
***
Xiph was hunting in the deep when he was pulled from his world. He felt the alien sensation and even tried to counteract it with some of his own magic but it had failed to prevent it from pulling him in.
Unlike his flailing colleague, he was calm as he allowed himself to float and rotate slowly within the new environment. Soon, he too saw the human.
“So… you have found a way to get to us?” he sent mentally. Xiph remembered the human.
***
“I’m only giving you what your people seem to seek. Do you know where we are?” I waved about, using the cold gas jets of my suit to keep me stable.
I watched the larger one look around before his eyes grew big. “This is beyond cruel, you have condemned us all to the void as retaliation for what we did? We saved you! Void skills are dangerous and addictive, even for our species. A war that almost brought the universe to its end early on was caused by one outsider as he tried to gather more void skills.”
I shook my head, “I don’t care about the ancient past or even the void skills that you stole from me. You attacked me, and this is payback for that. You love the void so much, well, here you are…enjoy it for the rest of eternity.” I looked at my chronometer. Since time didn’t pass in the void, I had had to come up with a solution to that problem before attempting this madness.
“You should have left me alone,” I said a moment before I vanished, leaving the two voidlings to their dark fate.
When I appeared back in my lab, it was in the middle of Em’ah and Martin having a shouting match. They both stopped and looked at me.
“What?” I asked.