CHAPTER 1

RINA ELAVENA

“Congratulations! You’ve died!”

I looked at the business suit-wearing man with a look of incredulousness. I knew that I had fricking died. I was there when the dragon bit off my head… or rather when the bloody thing swallowed me whole. I couldn’t believe I had wasted ten years of my life as a top tier adventurer only to fall at the last minute.

“Thank you?” I replied since it looked like the man wouldn’t continue unless I said something.

“You’re welcome. Now,” the man pulled a stack of papers from nothingness, “there are two ways to do this. Random or let our patented system chose for you.” I blinked and the stack had doubled with both being about the same on either side of the table which had also appeared out of nowhere.

“Isn’t that you guys choosing either way? And choosing what exactly?” The man only smiled and gestured at the stack of papers with open palms. “Fine! Random.”

“Excellent choice! I’m sure you’ll enjoy your new life as a…” he snapped his fingers and a sheet of paper appeared in his hand. He read it over for a second. “Vortex administrator on the planet Terearth. A wonderful location.”

“Yay?”

I barely finished saying the word, when I found myself falling toward a large black cloud. Strange creatures were fighting each other inside the cloud sending strange magic at one another. As I got closer, I realized that they were made of metal. Golems, perhaps?

My descent only grew faster until I slammed into the cloud. There was a boom as the couple hundred-meter cloud grew larger. I felt my body as I’d come to know change as my mind seemed to widen to encompass everywhere there was cloud. The strange creatures were still fighting, but now they were inside me. I thought about getting a closer look at the one doing the chasing, it was painted black and rubbed me the wrong way compared to the other one.

Maybe to distract myself from my current predicament, my senses wrapped around the creature, I got a glimpse at the inner workings on the thing. I realized that my guess of a golem was closer to the mark than I’d expected. I was in the middle of looking at it when a stone at the center of the mechanism that was moving the golem reacted to me and exploded in an extremely violent manner.

I felt the life form inside and attempted to save them, but as I tried to grab them, I failed miserably. I had nothing to grab them with after all. I watched as life fled the body while it fell to the desert floor below. With regret that I had caused death as soon as I arrived, I resolved to be better.

“Now then,” I mumbled as I turned toward the other golem. It had already left my influence and was heading back to a much larger golem or was it a city, that I could see in the distance. It was moving slowly as if it was hungry. “That thing is massive.”

I looked around to see if there was anything else, but desert was all that met my eye for as far as I could see. No greenery, no mountains, no flowers, nothing. As an elf that just wouldn’t do, or whatever I am now. I just hope there weren’t any dragons.

ASHER RIVET

I looked around the beaten-up hangar. The people of Fortitude had done their best, but the lack of supplies continued to make matters worse. The only source of materials being the Vortexes, but those were guarded by the largest of the crawlers. If it weren’t for cloud harvesting, they wouldn’t even have water.

“Asher! We need you over here!”

I rushed over to the lead mechanic. We had managed to maintain three fighters, but it was like trying to keep a person that wanted to die alive. We fought tooth and nail to make sure they stayed running. “What you need, boss?”

“I can’t get to the component.” I looked and saw the broken link. I grabbed the instant sealant and reached in. With deft movements, I sealed the break. Sadly, the entire thing needed to be replaced rather than patched.

“Much more and the only thing holding this thing together will be spit,” I said pulling my arm back out.

“You’re telling me, lad. If it wasn’t for your mother, this crawler would have likely already been swallowed by one of the larger fleets.”

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“Maybe that’s what we should do instead of trying to stick it out alone.”

Jeff, another of the mechanics laughed harshly. “You’ve been here your whole life, but the fleets aren’t nice to the lower levels of society. You and your mother might receive a decent treatment as she is a damn fine Diva, but the rest of us would be lucky to get some gruel to eat. I can’t thank your mother enough for sticking with us.”

The boss nodded along with Jeff’s speech. “If you ever visit another crawler you would understand. Trust me, this place is a paradise compared to some.”

I still wasn’t sure I believed them, but they had both been to several crawlers in the past. To be honest, my mother had told me the same thing, but hearing it from others made it sink in a bit more. The boss and I got back to work on the aircraft, though I couldn’t help it as my thoughts wandered.

My mother was a Diva, a pilot of the Aserite powered aircraft. Along with a Principle, a gunner, they not only protected our skies but made cloud runs. With the unpredictability of the lightning that came off the storms, your skill as a Diva was always tested.

Then there was Vortex diving. A squad of Divas and Principles would fly into a vortex that was said to be like another world. Not only was it the place that Aserite was gathered, but all sorts of other materials could be gained from inside its cloud walls.

The stories I heard made the people that ventured inside sound like heroes and I looked up to them. It was my dream to be a Principle when I was older. Though that seemed like a long time off with the state of the Fortitude. There were days it could only limp along using the atmospheric Aserite to power. It had been more than ten years since the Engine had been at full strength.

In the middle of a daydream, the sound of an alarm blaring pulled me back to the present. I hopped down from the aircraft and rushed over to the boss. It was the cloud alarm, which meant it was time for cloud harvesting! The Divas and Principles rushed into the hanger less than a minute later as if they had sensed something in the air and were ready.

My mom gave me a grin before she boarded her craft with practice movements that only came from doing them thousands or even hundreds of thousands of times. The plane was a two-seater, as were all the planes on the Fortitude. The boss had told me stories of planes that held dozens of people ranging from Principles to Specialists and Menders who would repair the plane and heal people respectively. What Fortitude really needed was a Faker, but they weren’t very effective on Pirates.

“Asher! Get up to the observation deck and help out!”

“On it, Boss!” I shouted as I ran to the ladder.

Climbing through Fortitude was something every kid did over their childhood. There just wasn’t much else to do for entertainment. Generally, by the time you turned seven, you were a pro at moving through the crawler. I reached the observation tower in record time and found Ava already up there.

She stuck her tongue out at me. “You’re losing your touch.”

“Shut up! How’s it look?”

“They just fired the Burst.” Punctuating her words, a loud thunderclap rang out as a large storm cloud started to form over the desert. I watched as the crew let out their tarps to capture the rain. Just a single pass would let Fortitude operate for a month. I couldn’t remember the last time I had drunk my fill.

The crew managed to make three passes, and it looked like they were about to make a fourth. “Shit!” Ava shouted and slammed a hand on the alarm button next to the window. The alarm ripped through the crawler would let the radio keeper warn the crew about approaching danger.

“What is it!?” I shouted.

“Pirates, three of them.” She pointed. I had to squint to make out the enemy. That was just how much better her eyes were than mine.

“Damn it!” I pounded my fist on the railing. The rusted piece of metal couldn’t take it and broke clattering to the ground a few dozen meters below us. The crew was in the middle of the clouds, and we couldn’t make them out from here. That is until a bright explosion lit up part of the storm.

I managed to make out that my mother’s craft had managed to pull its shoot back in. I just hoped that would allow them to get back before they were taken out as well. Rather than fleeing, my mother, did an upwards loop, just as she reached the top of the arc, she flipped her plane. Her Principle didn’t miss the chance and sent a hail of gunfire into the closest pirate.

“Hell yeah!” I couldn’t help but shout as the pirate’s airplane’s engine exploded into scrap.

The other two pirates banked hard to each side. They must have written off the other plane with the crew as it banked, shoot and all, and sent their own gunfire into the left banking pirate. They only managed to score a shallow hit, but it did get the pirate to focus on them instead of both on mom’s craft.

The next few minutes were some of the most tension-filled I had ever experienced. The four crafts weaved and rolled as they each tried to outdo the other. Finally, mom managed to score another kill. Unfortunately, so did the pirates. If we had more Aserite, we could fuel more of the planes’ systems, but sadly, they were running on fumes.

Mother’s plane was already limping from the dogfight with the other pirate and she turned to try and make it back to the safety of the Crawler. We might be low on just about everything, but we had enough bullets to send that lone pirate to an early grave. It turned into a chase, as the pirate would send bursts of gunfire towards mother’s plane. Thankfully, only a few scored a hit and it didn’t seem like any permanent damage happened.

“What the hell is that!?” Ava shouted filling me with all new dread. Had reinforcements arrived?

“What is it?!”

“Something… just appeared out of nowhere and fell… into the storm cloud.”

A second later, there was a wave of pure Aserite. Systems that had been dead for the last decade sprung to life around us. A panel I didn’t even release was a screen popped to life with a large crack across its front. Two words that I never expected to read were written in bold red letters.

VORTEX WARNING!