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* The words beneath an animated billboard in Glasse, the capital of Glaniece.

The hum of the starship’s engines gorged on the psyches of the sentients gathered within its hull. There were more than the amount who answered the call, but not a soul felt joy over the circumstances. Dante’s crew sat on the hardened floor without a single seat in utter silence.

Claudius’s face wrinkled with fury as he spun around, kicking the side of the Heron’s Wing with his foot, denting in a portion of the steel. He felt something crack in his boot, but he didn’t care. The Tianshe didn’t even bother to apply the Lightsea to help rejuvenate his foot.

“Fuck! How fucking awful can a day possibly be!? This is... Rosa. Are we in contact with the higher-ups?” The Judge spoke to one of his equals, sitting atop the railing of the stairs that led to the main room from the hull.

The woman in question, a Tianshe, much like Claudius with dark gray skin and oscillating sclera, nodded dejectedly with an equally depressing admission, “Yeah. Here’s Horace’s communicator.” She then tossed a device to Claudius from her position, the object landing right in his palm with precision.

Claudius investigated the screen that blinked toward him haphazardly, warning of potential dangers in the area. Someone at Centurion Heron’s level obviously had more information at his disposal, and the Judge could only sigh as he saw the four other reported attacks in the nearby Sectors.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. There were five total Anacruxes on this side of the Wings that had suddenly appeared deep within ‘allied’ territory. The three Great Empires and all the other minor regimes incessantly fought amongst each other, but Dirge would bring them together with little infighting, hence why Heron could appear so quickly or why Claudius was in the region in the first place.

As he tightened his fist, the Judge heard cracks from the communicator in his hands. With a tense curse, he threw it back up to Rosa, “Send out another incident report. Tell them there was a fifth Anacrux. I’m sure Heron’s death is already known, his tracker deactivating,” Claudius sighed, his head arcing toward the steel floor. “But it seems this was the last one. Maybe. According to this, the others all happen a day apart? This one had an extra day in between. Perhaps our resistance mattered. A little.”

While Claudius grieved over the countless lives that were assuredly lost on Crislend and the other planets, much of the information hidden from the public, and even other Judges, Claudius also felt a bizarre sense of guilt. The human.

Dante Penance.

To the vast majority of those from the center of the galaxy, a dead human was the only good one, but Claudius was different. He saw Dante was a complicated individual, but the potential he held was real. Very real.

After being given a Qualae merely days prior, he manipulated the Lightsea to the level of a Judge-prospect. It was a genius-level potential above Claudius himself, who had countless sponsors because of his prospects. The Tianshe took nearly a year to reach Dante’s weight in combat from his first awakening.

While using a Stigmata so soon wasn’t as impressive, it still displayed more of his talent and how his companions were similarly valuable. Rejo and Sonna were two whom Claudius would have to look after, perhaps even recruit to join him.

Judges were allocated several positions beneath them to aid them in their investigations and battles, just as Heron had a whole dedicated unit. About six in total for the Centurion, each with auras that put Claudius on edge.

They weren’t likely equal to him in strength, but they weren’t far off, possibly preparing to become Judges themselves by skipping training and taking the awful exam. That was barring one. Rosa Heartwelt. The Judge remembered her from his own schooling, recalling her to be someone he often competed with.

Back in the day, they were evenly matched. For his own sake, he hoped he had outgrown her.

As he had asked, however, the woman went typing away while the other five with her glared at Claudius and those behind him. Especially the Martian. Lucius’ kind were not as hated as humans, but few enjoyed their presence.

Claudius brought a hand to vouch for them, stepping between the gazes before Lucius ceased his attempt and failure at consoling Archimedes. The Judge wasn’t taking an ounce of shit this day, having already watched a blooming friendship die and a potential ally left to die, “All of you. Cut it out. Centurion Heron is dead. These...”

He looked across the figures, inwardly furious at himself for not noticing Eight’s absence, “...five are not to be blamed.” Claudius, despite witnessing the five’s personalities and knowing that each was a criminal, quite fancied their abilities, even those without Qualae that had infected their souls.

The ‘doctor’ was far more than a simple surgeon, showcasing a ferocity that could pair tremendously with the right element and a suitable Stigmata. Adding to the slight insanity that she had demonstrated, she created a future fearsome warrior for the Judge.

Similarly, the engineer, young as he may be, was famous across this whole Sector for both his crimes and his genius. Claudius knew of Archimedes Pythagoras Isaac from both the news and this group. The right team could easily harness the boy’s potential and showcase it. In fact, Claudius wanted him to work on his own ship. A dedicated engineer who could guarantee a ship’s efficacy was beyond valuable.

Finally, the soldier was a bit of an odd case in Claudius’ eyes. Lucius had the strength, speed, and lethality of an Anarchy with all the techniques, skills, and wits of a seasoned veteran. Adding his expertise with a decent weapon, it was likely he matched Anachronisms in strength. Perhaps Lucius was even one of the strongest aboard this ship. If the Judge could convince the man to imbue a Qualae, he’d have an incredible weapon to join him.

Claudius’ mind swooned with ambition, his sights set on the lofty chairs within the rounded room of his dreams. Congress. His family’s enemies stole their riches, tarnished their name, and banished their sole survivor from nobility, citing his bastard-nature. If he wanted to regain his honor and that of his family, he would need to reach such a regaled position.

That was only part of what he wanted. Once there... he could help others. Those like his family, who had been cast aside, were left to rot and forced to scrounge up leftovers and trash to feed themselves.

The intensity in the Judge’s gaze bowed the hatred of those before him, pushing their eyes toward the ground, too. None dared to say a word in the silence left by Heron’s passing. They were no longer under the mighty man’s wings and, by extension, his protection.

Just as Claudius breathed normally, the enhanced starship preparing to make a leap toward the Clouds, a deeper section of the galaxy, a voice entered the air. It was that of Sonna, a tearful plea, “Wait! Don’t jump yet! What about Dante? Are we really just leaving him?”

Heads turned to the petite Weren as she scrambled to her feet, pointing at Rosa, who was the decider for the jump into the Lightsea. Claudius turned to Rosa as the vice-captain of the ship refused Sonna’s demand, “Yeah. We need to run. Now that Horace is dead, I might just retake the UBE. But if we waste any more time, we could get caught by that thing. Without Horace, we can’t dive as deeply since we don’t have someone powerful enough to protect us from the currents. His ship is good, with a powerful heart, but it isn’t unbreakable. Just stay quiet.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Sonna’s eyes turned to Claudius, but the Judge only shook his head, agreeing with Rosa. Escape was paramount. Sure, he might have failed his first initial mission to help clean up the Dirge in the Sector, but…

Survival was all that mattered.

Without the Judge’s aid, Sonna’s mood darkened. Still fatigued from her use of her Stigmata, the woman stumble-stomped toward Claudius, pointing a finger right in his face as she yelled, “Without Dante, you’d be dead! All of you! I don’t know what he did, but I know he stopped that... ‘thing’ from killing us all! Didn’t you see how it just looked at him? And spoke to him?”

Claudius’ lip swerved to the side as he contemplated her words. But she wasn’t the only one beyond emotional. Rejo stood too, hardly comprehensible in words, but the meaning was still clear as he agreed with Sonna, “Yeah! I ‘et ‘ll be ‘ead ‘ithout ‘im!”

Rosa brought her fingers to her pale brows, seething through her teeth with frustration, “Shut up! You two have no idea what that was! An Anacrux! A Caesar! Sure, he might have saved us. But who cares? He’s dead now. Move on with your lives. It was just one man. You’ll find another totem to worship.”

Lucius tensed at Rosa’s words, finding her callousness to be like those of the people he hated the most, the commanders that sent countless to die without a thought to their lives. The veteran once thought the human he had met was like that, but he was proven wrong.

Dante had shown that he wasn’t heartless, despite seeming so. It was more than that, however, Lucius didn’t want to stay with this Judge. The Martian felt the greed and ambition hidden beneath the mask when Claudius looked at him. At least Dante didn’t hide such a fact.

Plus, the human had Arch’s favor. Claudius had no such thing, and Lucius cared much about what the boy thought. He reminded Lucius too much of his own children.

As such, the Martian rose to his feet, shaking off the flakes of dried blood and stretching out his now-closed wounds from his magnified regeneration into reopening. While striding to the Judge, he paused with one step as Archimedes held onto his hand.

The peculiar boy stared up at Lucius with pleading eyes, asking without words for the man not to hurt himself, and as such, he sighed. But before the soldier could sit back down on the bloodied steel, an unlikely voice spoke up, “Y’know. He’s not dead yet. Or at least, I don’t think he is.”

Joan’s words cut through the tension, and heads turned to her as she held up a tiny blinking screen. Claudius held his hand out for proof of her claims, and the surgeon brought it to him, walking with a limp and saying, “I keep track of all my patients. He is the oldest living one. By ten years. Tracker goes out when he does.”

A pair of seasoned eyes bore into the device, flipping through the patients, each screen having statistics for the person’s condition, from BPM to blood pressure and general fitness. There were hundreds. Rosa stepped over just as Claudius opened up Dante’s page, with the man’s race easy to view.

An abrupt shift of his hand covered the section with respect for the man, and Claudius read it aloud with a question of his own, “Twenty-six. Six-foot-three. Two-twenty pounds. A-rating for physicals. Detected high amounts of drugs... Heart rate... at one-hundred-fifty beats per minute. This says nothing about him still being alive, Joan. The data could be old. What’s the deal here?”

The doctor pointed at a particular region of the device, drawing gasps of awe. Her finger hovered over a slim row of digits, “See this? This is his location. It is ten miles from where we left him. And this? He’s still breathing. His heart is beating. The Domain went away, and my tracker is still pinging off the… metals I left in his body.”

Claudius’ old classmate laughed noisily, cupping her mouth with a closed palm. She struggled to fathom why any of this mattered, “So what? He’s alive? Probably turned coat for those Dirge. Scum. Only the worst of the worst do such a thing.”

The woman strutted around the room, forcing everyone to listen to her as she levied her focus on every person who Dante had spoken to, “You all seem pretty gifted to survive such an attack. Take my advice. Forget about him. He is dead to you. Move on with your lives. Join an Academy. A few of you might even make Judge in a few years. Like you, girl. I sense you are an Arido, no? Mighty rare to control the devouring mist.”

Moods fell from Rosa’s wake-up call, but Rejo didn’t care. The Araki held up his palm, placing it on Sonna’s shoulder. While squeezing tightly, he fought verbally to get his point across for his only friend, “We... do... not... leave... Dante... behind. We... go... back... for... him.”

Sonna glanced up at Rejo with a smile. Neither of the two wanted to abandon Dante.

API piped up, too, speaking louder than he ever had before, “Yeah! Dante’s awesome! He’d never leave us! Or die! He’ll survive! I know it!” Lucius smiled softly after the few words, not disagreeing, as he knew just how rugged humans can be.

The last member of their crew, Joan, grew a devious grin, as she didn’t want to leave behind her earliest experiment. While sticking with Claudius might grant her some upward mobility, but she knew that the Penances never broke a deal. And she struck a deal with Dante to experiment on a Legate, not that they’d ever share that particular promise aloud.

Any other path would never end at such a height, and Joan was a woman who only aimed for the peak. She wanted all to know about her inventions, her Biotics. Joan wanted to be the best. Glaniece? Their methods of altering people’s genomes were lackluster in her eyes.

She wanted to change the world. Was it for the better? Who cared? She desired immortality through knowledge.

The point hung in the air. All five wished to find their captain despite never actually sailing with him as a crew.

A string of chuckles came from the row of Heron’s subordinates, with Rosa incredulous. She opened her mouth to say something rude, but Claudius stopped her, “Just leave them. We’ll drop ‘em off at the closest planet. If they have their minds set on dying, let them.”

The sudden change in Claudius’ outlook rubbed Lucius the wrong way, but he didn’t press the Judge for his shift in heart. One second, he was eyeing up the soldier like a gold fabricator, and the next, he was letting them off scot-free.

Rosa tsked her tongue before tapping away at the panel on her wrist. With a few movements, the aura surrounding the ship changed. Then, she shouted into the hull for all to hear, “All right, then! You heard the man! We’ll take a quick stop at Afton Repository and drop you all off. I recommend that you all grab something. This bad boy can take much further leaps than the ships y’all are used to.”

The lights flickered before vanishing, and then all the souls upon the ship felt a sudden upheaval as they dived into the Lightsea. The shields of the Heron’s Wing protected them from the winds and currents of the oceanic dimension, but that was on the condition that they never went too deep.

Technology at some levels could provide protection, yet the greatest guarantee was someone who could walk those depths on their own. Without Centurion Heron, however, the starship could only leap a tenth of its typical range. A ship made from the Ostaceans would be different, for their people specialized in such things, but Heron’s was not so grand.

Nevertheless, a minute later, there was a vomiting Archimedes and a ‘doctor’ far too eager to try out her anti-nausea drug. Lucius shooed her away while Rosa and Claudius cleared their landing with the planet’s government.

“Yes. This is Judge Claudius Vermillion. I am requesting an open Starport for an emergency landing. Yes. Yes. That is fine. We are only refueling and dropping off some passengers. No. Yes. Very well. See you soon, Baron,” Claudius sighed as he swiped away from the audio call with the planet’s protection agency, which turned into a video chat with the Baron of the planet. The Judge had long been utterly exhausted.

The Judge soon fell back onto a couch within the hull, placed there for relaxation before missions. His arms spread outward as his head bent to face the ceiling with the vertebrae against the cushions.

His mind swam as the starship landed itself, the automated guidance system working as planned. Centurion Heron’s men spread out while Claudius racked his mind to figure out what he was going to do.

He didn’t have a ship. His last one, while shitty and given as standard equipment, was wrecked or abandoned on Crislend. If he wanted another, he’d have to pay for it with Premium, the higher-value currency that shook hands between Judges, Centurions, Praetors, and their suppliers, Congress.

In order to get Premium, whether for a new ship or new techniques to learn, he’d have to complete missions. He’d probably even get some deducted for his failure. However, he wasn’t too sure based on the overall situation of the Wings falling apart.

Out here in the Wings, the easiest way to get paid was to hop onto a battlefield, not that they were all that common. Still, some anchors existed even all the way out here. More now did, given the five Anacruxes’ appearing.

The circumstances led him to choose not to press Dante’s crew to join him, for he, indeed, had little to offer them at the moment. Perhaps we would return to them at a later date, if they didn’t kill themselves first. With closed eyes, Claudius felt a weight join him on the couch, a leg wrapping over another a mere foot or two away.

“Rosa? What do you say we find a battlefield? I need some Premium credits for techniques, a ship, and resources. I’ll share their purchase power with you... say... eighty-twenty if you help. It could get you a technique or help you form a Contract,” Claudius dangled a potential future over Rosa, something he could genuinely offer since she, too, was a Citizen. The others were not qualified to receive such boons.

Rosa’s hand fell to her mouth as Claudius opened his eyes. They shared a second of solemness before she fired off a rebuttal, “Fifty-fifty.”

The Judge scoffed, waving off the offer instantly, “No way. I’m the designated Judge. Tide-Seer, remember? You are... what? A Designated Seafarer? Seventy-thirty. That’s my max.”

A giggle resounded before a hand appeared before Claudius, ready to take the deal. Shaking his head, Claudius sealed in his first subordinate. But he quickly grew to regret it.

“Y’know... I was just seeing if it’d work. I didn’t actually think you’d raise the bar. Fine with me, though, hahaha!” Rosa spoke as she stood from the couch and strode away, covering her vibrating mouth with her palm, leaving Claudius to sit with his thoughts.

The Judge’s eyes diverted themselves from his new partner to the ones that could be as the five sat in a circle.

Well, four, as Rejo slept in a heap on the ground. Joan and Sonna argued about the former constantly trying to inject them with things while Archimedes wept, wiping away spilled tears. Lucius’ eyes were closed in meditation, the soldier attempting to realign his focus, but the snores of the Araki were breaking his concentration. It was only a matter of time in Claudius’ eyes until Lucius hit Rejo in retaliation.

The Judge just couldn’t understand them.

How did Dante get them to work together? At all? It was only for a day, but still... they really rallied? Either that human needed the Psion Designation, or he could honestly control them with words alone. Perhaps it’s for the best if I leave them alone. They might be too much for me to handle. I need more practice leading.

Claudius removed himself from the couch and walked through the ship as it finished its landing process. The Tianshe found himself in an empty room and sat on the bed within. However, the instant his ass hit the covers, a voice rebounded off the walls, scaring the water out of Claudius.

“So, I overheard Rosa say that this ship is left in that Horace guy’s will to her. What say we sail straight to a party-planet? This one is a bit dull. Or should we go straight for the Centurion promotion exams?” Eight suggested as a blade of liquid water levied itself against the young man’s neck, his growing smile cutting a line of blood that dribbled down.

Claudius’ mood didn’t know how to move as he stared at Eight, whom the Judge wasn’t sure if he was alive or dead minutes prior. In the end, he simply lowered his weapon and slumped back into the bed.

“Go fuck yourself. And sleep. By the deeps do we need it.”