The stars clawed their way back behind the blue-sky’s shadow as the sun began its rise. Once again, a new day dawned upon the Central Continent, as it had done the day before and the day before the day before. The sky brightened as morning’s twilight faded, dusty fog enveloping the warm yet cool land below.

Once again, like the month before and the month before the month before, a new month dawned upon…the once grand city of Coastfield, which laid in scorched ashen ruins.

What was supposed to be a single night of mid-year festives, celebrating endurance and seasonal change, and to bring glory to the Goddess of Summer’s name, had instead witnessed a truly cynical and vile play of tactical maneuvering and strategy—one that no realm of these lands would ever dare to do, lest they incurred the wrath of the divinity to whom such a day belonged.

An arrival masked by the festive distractions and celebratory naivety, a presence obscured by the darkest of moonless nights, a fleet of alien warships, heavy monitors, and rocketeers had taken advantage of the reality that most realms of this continent would leave themselves in the most vulnerable of states during such divinely special days, and the simple fact that the county’s forces had already been distracted by other on-going affairs.

Skies having been freed of watchful griffons to make way for such spectacular show, the grand spectacle of fireworks had been used to mask the initial volley, taking advantage of the mass congregation of rejoicing people to maximize the impact of the point being so demonstrated.

Coastfield had been bombarded. The grand port district and dockyards which defined this city, buildings and sites as old as this land itself, everything and anything of both importance or irrelevance burned in explosive fury and hellfire. The outskirts were left torn and tattered…yet it at least had survived; the heart and core beyond the inner-walls, however, were devoured by a ‘fire-tide’…reduced to a toxic deadland of putrid ash and dust.

The Count’s once grand palace laid in crumbling ashen ruins. The Count himself—who had been holding his own dynastical celebratory congregation—did not survive; his immediate family, legitimate heirs, and direct relatives…all of them, in fact…were dead; the county’s government left utterly shattered.

The only independent claimant to the now former Count’s titles and the now vacant sovereign court…was a maid’s bastard daughter belonging to the Count’s half-brother…and who was living in hiding somewhere someplace else as a commoner—barely valid and hardly legitimate.

Coastfield’s existence as a small yet—now formerly—affluent and prosperous sovereign realm was one that was always tenuous; its strategically relevant location on the tips of the north-western coastal regions made it a lucrative locality…surrounded by greater and more powerful realms. Its sovereignty had only been secured by generations of clever politicking and inter-marriages with the sovereigns and feudals of the neighboring realms, securing agreements and concordances sealed with blood-relations.

However, with the death of the Count and all other recognized claimants, these very realms were suddenly thrusted with…opportunities and validity to make claims to the entire county, along with its connection to the coast and rather convenient positioning.

Pretenders and puppets immediately arose to press their claims the instant the news of Coastfield’s befalling had spread to the many realms around, all seeking to contest each other’s claims and especially that of the validity to feudal inheritance of some barely-of-age bastard girl whose very existence was kept as a guarded…yet open…secret.

The Dutchy of Oceanfield, the Grand County of Warmful Smile, the Petty Half-Kingdom of Sealight, the Oned Baronies of Boundless Sea, and especially the regional power that was the Kingdom of Sunflower, all circled over Coastfield’s burnt and butchered corpse like ravenous vultures with eyes of opportunistic gluttony.

Yet…it was none of such realms who got to the corpse first and whose heraldic banners were dropped over its ruins, for vultures could only ever scavenge what was always left behind by greater predators. Instead, flying and waving over the towers of the outer-walls of this ruined city…was the aquatic-blue seven-striped flag of the United Central Trade Company.

Their facilities and assets having been chiefly targeted, the United Central Trade Company had responded the fastest once word reached; fearing the permanent loss of such a lucrative strategic position and commercial port of access, the Company swiftly took direct control over the city well before any of the so-called ‘natives’ could have possibly mobilized…a move which caused many of the noble houses who provided the county’s knights to desert, taking swathes of the Count’s own personal retinues along.

Whatever remained of Coastfield’s own shattered forces were immediately disarmed and demilitarized; plume-helmeted plate-armored guards replaced by tricorn-hatted infantry of the line; patrolling griffons and their knights supplanted by vigilant Company balloons; all the while Company warships of both sail and nascently engineered arcane smoke patrolled the waters around…in order deter any more stupid ideas.

Trenches were dug, batteries and howitzers placed and readied, fortifications underway, the Company entrenched their position around the immediate periphery of the ruined city; the minor outlying villages and communities once affixed to Coastfield’s domain…were left as scraps to be scavenged and plucked by those circling vultures.

The dreadful silence of night was replaced with the dreadful turbulence of day as the many displaced residents and survivors, both within the city proper and the many…many…improvised camps and provided encampments which now surrounded the city, all awoke to do their many…many doings.

Noises and sounds…of lamenting sorrow, ferocious coughs of dying ashen lungs, and screams of those receiving…state of the art…modern treatment, all vibrated the air around. Yet…all those who had survived and continued to survive…made it another month. Although Coastfield laid in despoiled ruins…some of it still existed; in time…it will rebuild anew.

Though, everything that which had been lost…was lost for all time; erased in history’s choir. Things will never be the same again…in this world falling astray, in this world that had truly stopped…making any sense; the winds of change…only blew ever-faster day by day…forsaking all those left behind from its dragging pull…doomed to be eaten by ever-hungry giants.

Whatever future Coastfield once had, whatever hopes and dreams this realm had awoken to upon this new year’s dawn, had all been reduced to ash. Replaced and usurped by absolute uncertainty.

Yet from these ashes, from this state of nothing, could arise…something new, something different; something better…or something worse. None truly knew; thus, optimism and pessimism…hope and dread…mixed as one.

Cyanic ignited eyes, slowly but surely, sprung open…finally. Eyes ignited in that sigil of uplifition; the sigil of essence and its defined alignment; the sigil which separated they from them, them from it; the sigil which separated supposed ‘deception’ from supposed ‘truth’. Yet, unlike the ‘caster-eyes’ of most who enacted commands upon essence, their eyes were always active and ignited; a fact that was, somehow, visibly tellable.

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Indeed, so many encoded automated protocols and commands were being enacted at all times; always, so many things operated in the background of their existence. Yet…such protocols were rather…adaptive, prone to change, and interacted…with the environmental influences and inputs around. Never truly static…even if trapped in eternal stagnation.

Their mask-obscured ignited eyes stared up at the tent covering above. They had that dream again, one of many dreams which they preferred not to have…but which still intruded anyway. One month. It had been one month…since that bombardment of hellfire had unfolded…or at least…they thought it had been one month…for time was still something they tended to become lost in…though, not as much, for they were…adapting.

Fallen and immobile…exhausted and suffocated; it was almost over for them…yet instead, they were rescued by some unknown denizen of sorts whom their mind could not even…comprehend nor perceive too well. Had that shadowy blob of incomprehension not come to their aid, they would have certainly suffocated to death in that air or would have perhaps even…been trampled by all those fleeing others.

Truly, such would have been…an undignified way to end their eternal service.

Though…to think they had fallen and passed-out in such a way…being out cold for the majority of that inferno…unable to further mitigate and contribute to its alleviation…saving more lives.

Instead, they had found themself abruptly awakening after the events had concluded…all alone in a tent of some improvised camp just outside the city…with, oddly enough, their bland butterfly masquerade half-mask being donned on their face…and with a fresh pair of folded cloths for them to wear being seated upon a chair—generic commoner lady dress clothing, of course.

For indeed…right, ‘they’ were in fact a ‘she’…or at least for the purposes of her presence here in this place.

It was not as though such referential identifiers had any true abstracted significances and meanings to her besides being blunt humiform differentiations in the local language, which did not even have any true grammatical dimorphism and associated agreements–unlike her primary dominant language, which did not even, at least technically, have exact equivalents to such third-person personal referentials–unlike her secondary dominant language…which did have such equivalents.

Though in that language, usually only one word was ever used for living things and another for inanimate objects. Indeed, getting into the habit of consistently referring to specialist humiforms as ‘he’ and generic humiforms as ‘she’, while resisting the temptation of simply defaulting to using one word for all, had turned out to have been more of a struggle when initially learning to speak proper local tongue than it ought to have been.

Though, such was neither present nor relevant at all.

Regardless, she sighed as she sat herself up. Ugh…truly, how she longed for the comforts of her bed. This improvised ‘bed’ of animal fur, hide, and hay…while certainly sufficient, was by no means comparable to a true…decently adequate bed.

She evaluated the space around, her brain still somewhat ‘booting up’, so to speak. It was the interior of a tent, one she had been granted to use for such napping affairs; small, basic, and with hardly anything to be found.

Sitting herself up more, she shifted her mask-obscured eyes to…what the locals called a ‘water-skin’—a liquid container of sorts made from the thick hide of some animal species…yuck.

Nevertheless, she swiftly picked it up; popping it open, she proceeded to—despite only intending to have a small meagre sip—gulp it down almost in its entirety, water dripping from her mouth onto her being. She exhaled a strange breath of satisfied relief after finishing.

Indeed, as it had turned out—and as she had so found out—she had been, slowly but surely, dehydrating this entire time…and most certainly for quite the some time.

Certainly, she—unlike most in these lands—did not need to drink water…often. However, ultimately, she was still a living organism, she was still human, and therefore she still needed water.

Water was merely recycled in her system, as part of her essence’s automated encoded maintenance processes which worked alongside a few other minor…fancy alterations…to her internal physiology, with generated waste and other associated products and compounds being converted into…other stuff or—more specifically—simply synthesized by her own essence into its aura to be used for its many encoded doings.

Yet water was still used by her body and its system; gradual loss and attrition due to repeated usage still accumulated, leading to depletion over time. As such this automated water recycling only extended and stretched out her need for water over a rather…longer period of time but did not eliminate it completely.

Indeed, even for the standards of this ‘Remnant’ of hers, she was always…rather neglectful of her own operational needs; such had been the case well before her deployment to these lands and place. However, her sudden…incapacitation in the middle of a bombardment and crisis…was, truly, an absolute and utter…embarrassment—one which she did not want to happen again.

As a direct consequence—and this certainly was not the first time such had happened to her—she has been…more adequately attending to these water needs, gradually replenishing her water surplus. However, she had to be careful not to drink too much water and too quickly…since a sudden overflow could result in her essence and body simply…expunging the excess—which was perhaps an even worse embarrassing fate for those like her.

Nevertheless, ever since she began to drink water more often throughout the past month or so, she has observed a rather stark…improvement in her overall functionalities, having become more optimal and closer to their usual. Her reflexes, her energy and stamina, her attention and focus, her cognitions and cogitations, all such relevant things…were feeling so much more attuned, potent, and sharp…albeit perhaps not fully so.

Indeed, such only highlighted how her own neglect of her needs had been…eroding so much of her abilities…and there still existed one other need which…she ought to start attending to—yet that need was not nearly as simple.

She sighed in a yawn as she finally stood herself up in a stumble, stretching her limbs before swiping at her attire, patting and evening it out. She was wearing that same generic commoner dresswear she had been so seemingly…provided—by whom she did not remotely know. It was largely orange and amber in color, with white in the sleeves and collar—though it was becoming rather dusty and…groggy as of late.

She inspected her left arm following this, straightening out an armband of sorts which she was wearing.

Seven stripes—four being of some kind of blue-green ‘aquatic’ color and three being white—with a sort of emblem or ‘coat of arms’ stitched. A shield sort of shape with a gold colored filling…in the center of which was…a standing ‘deer’ of sorts, colored in red. Next to the shield…standing bipedally on both ends with forelimbs grabbing on was a yellow and rather…suspiciously suspect…fluffy and large feline of sorts on one end, and on other end was a shiny-white and feather-winged equine of sorts. On top of this center piece was a smaller-sized winged reptilian…thing of sorts…with its tongue sticking out.

Indeed, this design was the same as the ‘flag’ of that ‘United Central Trade Company’ but in armband form…and not exactly as detailed. Such was a necessary thing needing to be donned as part of her present ‘civilian volunteer service’ to the Company’s cleanup and relief efforts.

She yawned as she stretched her arms yet again; ugh, truly…such an annoying impulse, but one to which maybe she was…perhaps…becoming more accustomed.

Well, at any rate, her little nap break was over; it was time for her to get back to work…and there was, no doubt, going to be…quite a lot of work needing to be done.

Without any more delay, she stepped out back into the world beyond, a world to which…she has been paying more…attention as of late. Indeed, as had been made so very abundantly clear the month prior, this world of local affairs moved on its own accord and was more than willing to drag her…and everyone else…into its squabbles, regardless of whether or not she was paying any proper attention. For indeed…

The world around turns on its own indifferent wheel

Without any regard to the play being made

Though, I can only ponder

If this world cares little for this play

Then this play ought to care little for the world

Although, all the world is our stage…

Thus both are, ultimately, one and the same…