Prince Nagoya Hitogi looked upon the leveled plain of desolation he’d carved into the earth.

What had once been a dense patch of the jungle had been reduced to smoking cinders, the trees whittled away to dark skeletons of their former selves, not even a hint of vegetation remaining on their broken boughs. His snake-eyes picked out no movement within the remains of the jungle. Not even a worm could have survived their last barrage.

The smell of expended Hakka filled the air—a scent that Nagoya inhaled with as much pleasure as a Chameleous taking a hit off its Oshu pipe.

“Cease bombardment and commence first sweep at 0600,” he told his gunners. “Retire now, and tell your brothers they are to receive double rations tonight. Tomorrow shall herald the end of this little chase.”

The gunners bowed fervently in the Yokun style—one fist clenched behind their backs, the other hand straight, palm-up, affixed to the chest. To look upon them was to look upon a disciplined set of men who had been hatched for war, their cold blood warmed in the hearth of conflict.

The Prince took this time of respite to survey the camp fortifications. Even in the midst of their numerous engagements, his banners still stood proud atop the walls. He looked upon the sigil of his Clan—the scaled fist coated in flame—and felt his chest puff with pride. The needle-like spines of hastily constructed wooden battlements these banners were fixed to still held firm, and the palisades had not balked even under the weight of the Hakka carts. The weapons themselves were still in pristine condition—each cart carrying approximately sixty ‘rockets’, the odd cylindrical tubes propelled at their rear-ends by the Holy flames of Akira—that could deliver a deluge of unspeakable agony unto the enemy in an open field. Against fortifications, of course, they were less than useless. But in dealing with a ramshackle band of rebels, they had proven aptly useful.

Even if they were led by the Pale Matriarch and her Elder conspirator.

The Prince ceased his nightly checks and was ready to retire when he suddenly heard a general shout come from the barracks at the rear camp gate. It seemed that more crates of Hakka powder had been delivered just in time.

“Courtesy of Prince Yaresh,” the officer in charge of the delivery told Nagoya.

“Indeed?” the Prince replied, noting the White-Lotus symbol carved into the officer’s iron hauberk—the sigil of his Brother’s Clan. “How fares my Brother?”

“His campaign in the Northern Plateau does great honor to the House of Blades,” the Officer replied. “Marxon’s navy will fall, and their weak men shall not even be worthy enough to enslave!”

“Marxon’s men may be weak, but they are numerous and relentless,” Nagoya pointed out. “See to it that my Brother does not allow his overconfidence to be his downfall. You may quote me.”

The Officer saluted the Prince before barking at his slaves to roll the barrels of powder over to the Hakku carriages stationed at the Eastern Palisade.

“Safe journey home, cousin,” Nagoya told the Officer.

But as the Prince made to turn away and finally retire to his command tent, he noted how the young Yokun stiffened slightly before he left. It was as though something was keeping the Officer rooted to the spot in that moment. Nagoya tried smiling—he had been through this before. The peasantry were often chilled by the sight of one of their Princes, and this Officer was clearly not of noble blood. Indeed, even in the deep darkness of the Arasaka forest, Nagoya could pick out the imprint of a number on the lizardman’s neck. There could be no clearer indication of his previous status in the Yokun hierarchy.

“I… I would just like to say that Prince Yaresh is fortunate to have you securing our Clan’s Southern flank, sire. These rebels and their precious Matriarchs do not stand a chance against you. No living Prince of the House of Blades commands more respect on the battlefield.”

Prince Nagoya simply nodded once at these words, sighing inwardly as he turned away to get some much-needed sleep.

“That will be all, Officer.”

…

Marcus woke up feeling more refreshed than he’d felt in his entire life.

The candles had long since burnt out, and he was surprised to find that the relentless vibrations that had thundered through the night had ceased. In a way, however, they’d shaken things up quite nicely for him and Mari as they ‘reminisced’ down here. He’d have to thank the enemy General when he got the chance…

“Well, well, look who’s up…”

He rolled over to see Mari looking down at him, her hair a wild mess in the wake of their nocturnal activities. Still sweating, she bent down and planted a sopping kiss on his lips. He was loath to have her pull away.

“Okay, so,” she said. “Last night—amazing. Better than I remember, if I’m being quite honest. So I gotta ask: my man didn’t have a cheeky ratgirl consort on the go down there, did he?”

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Marcus threw his head back in a laugh so genuine it actually surprised him. He’d almost forgotten he could laugh at all.

“Mari,” he said. “No matter what Twitter threads you’ve read about us, no man is that desperate.”

“Some ratmen then?” she teased, tickling his chin. “Considering how you couldn’t keep away from my ass last night, maybe they’re the real source of your newfound talents. Some… experimentation, eh?”

He grabbed her playfully by her cheeks and forced her into a kiss that was interrupted by bouts of her girlish giggles. In the next second, she had her arms around him, locked so tightly he thought she meant to stay that way.

“Alright,” she said. “Now that we’ve got… things taken care of, it’s business time, don’t’cha think?”

“You aren’t kidding,” Marcus replied, leaning across the bed to fetch his glasses from the bamboo table beside them.

“Ok, ok,” she stammered as she sat up. “You wanna know: what in the ever-loving-fuck is your girl doing up here with a bunch of freed slaves, on the run from an army of lizardmen?”

“Yeah…” Marcus said. “Yeah that… that’s pretty much just the first basic question.”

“Well,” she said with a nod, wrapping him up in the linen cover and donning his glasses before he could complain. “Let me give you some psychology buzzwords, young man, and then you can tell me if they sound familiar. Word number one: Summoned. Word number two: Chosen one.”

Marcus nodded grimly in the face of her playfulness. “That—yeah—that’s familiar, alright.”

She drew away from him then, leaving the bedsheet where it lay, her naked body stark against the darkness of the room. It was true—she was thinner than he’d remembered. Much thinner.

“Marc,” she said. “How much do you know? How do you know I’m the Pale-Matriarch?”

He told her exactly how little he knew—and he told her, too, where he’d gotten the information from.

“Yeeva,” Mari nodded after he was done. “So, she’s dead?”

Marcus nodded solemnly, and before he could even explain she looked away and silenced him with a chilling statement:

“It doesn’t matter.”

He blinked up at her.

“Doesn’t matter?” he asked. “Mari, I… I killed one of your own people. One of those you’d sent to find me.”

She came to sit at the edge of the bed, her back to him.

“Those of the House of Whispers aren’t my people,” she said. “None of those Yokun are. Yeeva was nothing but a hatchling born to kill and to obey orders. She couldn’t even understand what it means to think for herself, Marc. She didn’t have the capacity. None of them did. Because that’s exactly what those butcher Patriarchs and Matriarchs want. Unthinking machines bound up in scaled flesh and cold blood.”

Marcus tried to follow her words, remembering the raw, almost mechanical determination that had been burned into Yeeva’s eyes even before she died. Getting her to give up just the two words she did had taken everything out of old Deekius.

And at the thought of the deceased ratman’s name, Marcus felt his hand blaze with power again.

“Ngh!”

Mari turned to see him grappling with the green discharge pulsing in his palm.

“Marc,” she whispered. “You’re…”

“It’s… this is new for me,” he explained. “It was given to me by someone before he could tell me how to… use it. I can’t… I can’t control it.”

Mari cupped her hand over his before he could stop her, and slowly his twitching fingers closed around hers, the green flame dying away.

“Ratman magic,” she said. “If I remember they call it—Gloomraav? A dirty kind of spellcasting, that one, meant for a dirty people.”

Marcus’s eyes met hers. “There were… some good ones,” he murmured. “But enough about me—what about you? How do you know all this about magic?”

“It’s not hard when you’re summoned to be the newest member of a religious sect,” she said with an ironic smirk. “Pale Matriarch. They really knew how to make a girl feel welcome.”

Marcus listened intently, all the while feeling the energy in his hand begin to pulse with greater ferocity every time he heard a detail that infuriated him.

“They told me I had the soul of a snake within me,” Mari continued. “Said I was sent from the ‘Place Beyond’ to Shepard them towards victory in this war they’ve been waging for decades against the human Empire of this world. Thea. Their world. They told me to forget about my past life. Gods didn’t need memories of what had come before their ‘ascension.’”

He could hear the utter disgust in her voice at the mission statement she’d been given. Although they clearly shared similarities in being ‘chosen’ to lead a specific species to victory on this world, their focus had evidently been different. Mari, she went on, was to be the human- face of the religious branch of the Yokun hierarchy – what was termed the ‘House of Souls’ – and expected to become the Prophet-militant of their military industrial complex.

“They told me I’d have everything I ever wanted, Marc,” she said. “The acolytes would serve my every physical whim. The people would dance to the tune of my words. The soldiers would protect me and bring me the heads of my foes. But I knew their game. They knew that having a human Matriarch would sow confusion in Emperor Marxon’s ranks. For a time, we even saw an upsurge in human converts. Of course, they weren’t allowed entry into the conscripted forces of each Prince-commander. They served the Triumverate as slaves. Nothing more.”

“The Triumverate?”

“That’s the power structure they live under,” Mari explained, pointing at a thin sheet of paper on her wall with three distinct symbols etched into its surface – one sword, one mouth, and one heart. “The House of Blades, House of Whispers, and House of Souls. Three Houses, One People. The Triumverate. God, did I get sick of saying that. Each House has a Patriarch and a Matriarch that rule it. Beneath them are the Princes who each control a fief in the name of their sovereigns. And beneath them…well…that’s everyone else.”

Marcus watched as her back began to sag, and he noted the hatred that flared in her eyes as she spoke of the Triumverate and its adherent branches. He’d seen that kind of hate before. It seemed like this world bred it…

“Mari…” he said. “If you’d rather not talk about this…”

She met his eyes then, hate burning away to determination.

“No,” she said. “I’m going to tell you everything. But first, we have to take care of that hand. Because whether you know it or not, Marc, that glow in your hand is the key to the one thing I – we – everyone here is looking for.”

Marcus met her stare blankly, nodding, but still not understanding.

“What do you want?” he asked her. “What are all these people here looking for?”

The answer should have been so plainly obvious. Yet, when he heard her say it, it felt no less powerful:

“Freedom.”

***

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