Marcus sat in his tent, poring over a small etching of the Clan Naga plantation done by a few of his Oshu scouts. Luckily, the Overseers and guards didn’t watch the horizon closely enough to pick out their camouflaged forms. This, Marcus thought with no small level of excitement, could be the beginning of a genuine scout regiment that would work in this environment. He wouldn’t be caught with his pants down ever again, thanks to these sneaky lizards.

Thinking of his failure and hopes of a new scout team under his control brought back memories he had tried to push aside—ever since the old Yokun Matriarch had brought the shadows of his past back to life with far more clarity than he’d ever wanted.

“Ix…” he whispered to himself. “I wish I could have told you how sorry I was. Make no mistake, no one could replace you.”

His thoughts turned sullenly to the world that was now beneath his feet—the world he had left behind. He could only hope the Kobolds left alive in the Underkingdom weren’t suffering retributions for what had happened at Grindlefecht. But judging by what Skeever had done to him… and under the orders of King Shrykul… the chances didn’t look good.

Then there was Silas, the one chaotic element in the whole damn mess. His biggest fan, apparently.

Bullshit.

Jin’an—what had she said again? That I’d always be someone’s pawn?

He gripped the sides of the chopped tree stump that functioned as his personal war table in here. His right hand buzzed with the evil, green power at its core.

“I’ll come back,” he said aloud. “And this time, it’ll be with a real army. And you’d better be ready for me, Shrykul. And Silas? You’d better keep your promise.”

“Now that’s the man I fell in love with.”

He hadn’t even noticed Mari waltz into his tent. How that was possible, he’d never know. That girl was always a stealthy kind… she could be a damn scout leader herself if it weren’t for her pale skin.

“I’m—I’m just thinking.”

“And that’s both your blessing and your curse,” she said, coming to grip his hands and smooth out the wrinkles of anger spread across their backs. “Marc, you can do this.”

He bit his lip. “The scouts’ info is good. They’re our best advantage.”

“Don’t forget the Hakka carts.”

He nodded. “Sure… but I can’t fire them on the plantation itself. Harming the slaves won’t do any good, and the possibility of a general charge is just gonna tear us to shreds. They’ve cut down most of the jungle around the perimeter walls. We don’t have enough cover.”

“So we need to get people inside,” Mari said.

“Well, yeah,” Marcus laughed. “But I’m assuming you don’t have tunnels this far south, right? We could use the Oshu, but even with their virtual invisibility, the illusion won’t hold once they get to the walls proper. Besides, we only have 100 of them. Not exactly numbers to spare.”

Marcus looked over the scrawling of the plantation with sudden and stark realization.

“Mari… we only have 300 actual combatants. Some of them still wounded from the last assaults. We barely have enough men to spare as it is…”

He found himself sinking under the weight of the situation. Logically, he wanted to say that it would be a far better option to simply abandon the whole notion of attack altogether. Even with the element of surprise, he doubted he had the manpower or resources to win anything but a Pyrrhic victory.

And he wasn’t about to sink to that low again. Not now. Not when he just got Mar ba—

“Marc.”

He felt the softness of her palms cover his cheeks. Even out here, under the blazing sun of Thea’s surface, her skin had the tingle of coldness about it. She’d always been referred to as an ice queen. And Marcus had been the only man who needed her to cool him down.

She brought his face up to hers.

“Marc,” she said. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

He double-blinked like a child. He felt like he was looking at her across from the McDonald’s table where they’d had their shitty first date as debt-ridden students.

“You’re not in this alone anymore,” she said. “We’ve got each other’s backs now, right? Just like old times.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He knew that, in that moment, she was speaking for both of them.

“So, tell me what you’re thinking,” she repeated. “If we’re really in this together, you’re gonna have to leave your own head.”

“I… I don’t think we can do this with the men we’ve got, Mari,” he admitted. “We can’t get inside with force.”

To his surprise, she actually smiled back at him.

And for a moment, he genuinely thought the smile looked like that of an adder hungrily licking its lips as it thought about a nest of rodents waiting to be consumed.

“Then we won’t use force,” she said.

Marcus watched her rise, walk to the edge of the camp, and take a quick peek outside as though she was afraid some enemy might be nearby.

Either that, or she was making sure none of her own people were around to hear what she had to say next.

“Marc,” she whispered, kneeling close to him and staring into his eyes with a fierceness that gave him pause. “You’ve got Jin’an’s power now. I know your control over it might not be as sophisticated as hers was… but that power was the reason both of us managed to get this far. But she was growing old and getting tired, Marc. She wasn’t the same at the end. She knew you were the one we were all waiting for.”

She found her hand suddenly gripping his again.

“Marc… what if I told you there’s a way to cause so much chaos in that plantation that those guards on the walls won’t even be a problem for us?”

His eyes widened, but he kept his cool. She was the most effective one-on-one communicator he’d ever met in his life, and right now he could tell that she was desperate for him to concede and try out whatever she was suggesting.

If he wanted to keep this army strong, did he really have a choice here?

Sure, they could turn away. But the logical part of his brain was suddenly overturned by his military curiosity. If the gift the Yokun Matriarch had given him could be used to avoid casualties in the battle to come, he needed to know how.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, then,” he smiled ironically. “If not force, what do we use?”

“Soft power, Marc,” she replied without hesitation. “Sometimes a strong voice is all a rebellion needs.”

…

Within the Southern Kaita Plantation, something was happening.

The Overseers began to receive reports from their underlings—Yokun who normally wouldn’t ever have trouble wrangling up some unruly slaves. The Overseers prided themselves on discipline enforced through regular imprisonment and waterlogging—the Keji-Sai inability to withstand large quantities of water was always a good joke for the guards.

But this afternoon, things were different.

The Overseers received reports of slaves massing and charging workhouses en masse. They ran at the guards as one, breaking the barricades that kept the food stores intact and even climbing above the bodies of their beaten and slain comrades who got the lash. The situation was becoming so untenable that the Overseers sent a delegation to Warden Yakuma, interrupting his mid-afternoon nap by sounding a general alarm.

“What’s the meaning of this!?” the Warden croaked, about ready to bring his prized chain-whip (a gift from Prince Yaresh himself) down upon his unruly inferiors. Only when they brought him to his balcony outside and showed him the madness that had befallen the slaves did he see for himself something that he’d only heard about in the addled dreams of his compatriots—the other Wardens who had suffered under the campaigns of that vicious Keji-Sai Pale Lady.

But the Pale One was currently being hunted down by Prince Nagoya of Hitogi, was she not? Last Yakuma had heard, they had her on the run for her life…

“What do we do, Lord Yakuma?” one of the Overseers asked as a storehouse was suddenly blown apart by a discharge of Hakka set off from within—the only store of the sacred explosives they had in the open.

Yakuma grunted and pushed past his men, opening the cabinet within his quarters and throwing a matchlock musket to each of them.

“We quell this little revolt one infidel at a time,” he said. “The Sakriesh Plantation’s never had a general alarm since the time of my grandfather. It will not fall on my watch.”

Their spirits renewed, the Overseer delegation followed their Lord outside, loading their rifles and steadying them at the sea of slaves that were quickly converging on the main office.

“Ready!” Yakuma ordered, eyes locked on the waiting tide of Keji-Sai. “Aim!”

His men obeyed but did not hear Yakuma’s next command.

Instead, their vision blurred. Their eyes watered. The world before them dipped into and out of existence. Thoughts became intangible—their consciousness started to slip away in an odd, weightless feeling that spread throughout their suddenly very weary bodies.

Then, in an explosion of light and vibrant colors, they saw a vision that shook them to their cores.

Prince Nagoya, his form beaten and bruised, stared up at them in chains, with a group of vile Keji-Sai of all descriptions smiling over him as they held his head back, mocking his princely form with their presence.

Yakuma could barely breathe as he beheld the sight. He couldn’t even be sure if he spoke the words that came out of his trembling mouth next:

“What… what is this heresy…”

And, like a quiescent monster watching him in the darkness of his own fading mind, a cold voice answered back:

People of Thea! Witness the princely form of one of the Masters—bound, shackled, and trod upon just as you are. Witness the end of his reign, and the end of an era. Your Pale Matriarch comes with the Shai-Alud of the depths, ready to strike down the false Masters and break the chains that bind your spirits. We are the dream of your children, and the nightmare of your overlords. Let them know our strength. Let them taste our blades. Let them know that none of them are safe! Let us kill them in their homes, kill them in their fields, and kill them on the very soil we have toiled over for generations!

Slaves of Thea, your time is now. We ask you: will you rise with us?

When the vision of the captured Prince faded away to nothing but a distant echo, Warden Yakuma felt the sting of his slaves' answer.

***

Support the story on Patreon to read + 10 advanced chapters for $9.50. Patrons are charged when they join, never by the month, so it's as perfect a time as any to join up and get some sweet extra chaps.

Discord