Now.

Eyes opened as Hive snapped from the world of dreams back to reality.

Curses! This strain is too much. He spread himself too far for his own good. He slipped back into dreams here and now because of this. While his bodies were mostly fine, his personality, his “self”, was under so much stress that he was forced to fall asleep from time to time to relieve the stress. Of course, in his current circumstances, this was not a big problem; he was supposed to act naturally. When his consciousness faded, his bodies revert to their natural state—all of them, except for a few advanced body types. It was doable, as annoying as it was to have to restore his carefully constructed “ecosystem” every time his bodies devoured each other without his control. But right now, losing control of his bodies was annoying. Advanced insectoids had enough intelligence to know what Hive would do to them if they went rogue. So they behaved, accepting Hive as some sort of leader of this living swarm. Hive disliked such attention from insects, but loyalty had to be rewarded, so he allowed a certain degree of freedom to them. He felt their thoughts within him, despite their primitive motivations. The advanced bodies grew concerned about losing the connection to the guiding intelligence. He calmed them, reaffirming his presence in their minds.

He had the opportunity to do Torturer in. Lord Steward sent Hive to the Living Lands to force the Outsider to overextend himself, to flex his muscles, so to speak. According to Lord Steward, it will attract the attention of Queen Bagenda herself, forcing her out of her slumber, or whatever this means. Lord Steward refused to elaborate, instead ordering Hive to do his best not to reveal himself if the Sapon Duchy rejected the deal. Hive was only allowed to go all out against the Outsider. The problems with the expansion of the Reclamation Army will simply disappear once the queen is awake.

Naturally, Hive refused to believe any of it. If this queen was so hot, how come he had never heard of her in all the centuries he had lived? But the chance to deal with the Outsider once and for all... That was a chance he did not want to miss, and besides, Lord Steward always had plans for every situation.

Torturer was a crafty pet bastard, but during the invasion of the Living Lands, he made one mistake after another. It was so unlike his usual modus operandi, but Hive liked it when his opponents made mistakes. The sadistic cur was currently torturing some prisoners in order to power himself up. That was nasty and would not stand. Hive had already sent the bodies to their places. It angered him, no; he hated to let others suffer when he had the power to save them, but he had to wait and let some of his bodies spy on the enemy. Torturer was busy engaging the Sapons. Hive made sure to use the same types of insects that he had used to harass the enemy forces lately. Hopefully, it will help him stay hidden for some time.

“Almost there,” Hive mused to himself, trailing Torturer in the bodies of his insects, as the man was busy moving around, killing and maiming enemies. Torturer had interesting power but also a flaw, as Hive learned from reports. A simple scratch, a simple cut, made his clone bodies disappear. Usually, Torturer would hide himself in some remote location, busy driving the life out of animals to fuel his power. Hive struggled to understand what made the sadist show up in person. It served no purpose, save to satiate his wicked urges. His bodies were prepared to jump, hidden in the chaos of battle raging between Sapon and the Torturer’s clones.

“Disappear for good this time, piece of trash!”

The living carpet gathered into a single point between two Torturers, who were busy peeling skin from a bound man. Three prisoners lay dead nearby, their bodies mutilated, limbs twisted, skin missing, parts of the organs extracted. The living carpet shot upward, turning into a single line before shooting in two lines in perfect unison into the Torturers’ backs. The enemies were stung simultaneously, deadly poison injected into their bodies. With a “puff” sound, they disappeared from the world without a trace. No luck. The true body wasn’t here.

His bodies sprang out of trees in a cloud of darkness, enveloping and annihilating the unsuspecting Torturer clones as they toyed with Sapon’s troops. The insects also attacked the knights of Sapon, though Hive was careful to orchestrate the situation so that the knights and their steeds had ample time to crush black bodies with heavy slaps or shake them off before a sting reached them. One more precaution to keep his presence secret.

The clones of his enemy began disappearing one after another, but still, he failed to find the original. Four enemy copies remained, reducing the black wave, assailing them to mush with the sharp hooks. Hive was tempted to go after them directly, but that would surely expose him. His enemy was no fool. Fortunately, it was unnecessary, as the Knights charged the remaining enemies. One of Torturer’s clones laughed as the spear struck him in the shoulder. The laughter turned to a howl of pain as he found himself unable to split to escape the damage, and blood splashed in the air.

“Used all of your reserves, huh, bastard?” Hive whispered. Other clones rushed the knights, no longer fooling around, killing the knights of Sapon in a desperate frenzy and buying time for the true Torturer to escape. Oh, how Hive wanted to get him—to fill his insides with moving critters and hollow him out. But Lord Steward’s orders were clear. Hive checked upon the host body to see if the creature within it was ready. No. Time was needed for it to mature enough.

“Live then. A day more, a day less, does not matter. Death will come for you.” Hive turned to the prisoners, forming a humanoid body out of habit.

Lord Steward would be furious, but eh. The President-elect was too far away to scold him, and he was sure that Un would have approved of Hive’s actions if the old man was still alive. The Oath did not stop Hive as he sent one of his advanced bodies, a six-legged insect with two long swords for hands. His creature stopped amidst the prisoners and, with a few swipes, sliced through their bonds. Someone named Eggy took on the role of group leader, helping the wounded to their feet. Hive let his bodies slide back into the forest, leaving a handful of advanced bodies to watch over the former prisoners. These bodies should be able to protect the former prisoners and secretly escort them to the nearest safe place—some hamlet, anything.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“ No one will believe them either way,” Hive calmed himself and his bodies heard a loud explosion from enemy ranks. Now he knew that the Sapon Duke was unleashing his power and all that, but at the same time, Hive’s bodies suddenly recoiled in fear.

“You!” Hive hissed with hatred, sensing the all-too-familiar presence on the battlefield.

***

Torturer cursed out loud, running away and holding a hand over the wound, still remembering how the sharp spear bounced off his bone. What just happened? Why did he run out of juice so soon? How could his temporal copies fail him?

None of it made sense. Dozens of his bodies disappeared at once, as if some unseen foe had attacked him. It sure as shit wasn’t the duke; Torturer studied him to get a basic idea of how the man’s power worked. In the back of his mind, something was bothering him. He knew who might be behind his problem. But he could not point a finger. Was it Yuria? Could that bitch know he was planning to get rid of her and promote a more amenable commander in her place? No, the cusack was too dumb. And even if not, she should be dead by now.

Speaking of dumb, why had he come into the open himself? Unlike other New Breeds, his body lacked the ability to heal itself at a faster rate than Normies. Sometimes it took him days to heal simple cuts. Medics will patch him up in minutes once he gets to them, but why had he changed his usual style? Why did he bother to torture people at all? Wait, why was he planning to kill a fellow soldier? What is going...

Everything is fine; you are merely tired.

Torturer stopped, unable to fully comprehend the growing concern in his brain. Ever he trusted his instincts, and they saw him living many more years than he would otherwise have. Why did he change his usual style? But before he could deduce what exactly was bothering him, a loud explosion near the crawlers snapped him out of his concentration.

***

Marcus looked through Absio’s eyes as the knight commander charged forward toward the crawlers. Enemy soldiers assembled a firing line. With a simple gesture, Marcus overheated their armors, cooking the man alive. Another tank charged forward, and Marcus opened a hole in the ground that swallowed the tin can. A snap of his fingers closed the hole, collapsing the vehicle.

His powers lay in his ability to control wind, fire, earth, fluids in an enemy’s body, and metal. His mother also had complete control over the water, but Marcus was always weaker than her. Nevertheless, he was strong enough to win. It pained him to leave the other troops without his support, but Ubion was right. They had to eliminate the enemy’s supply base. And that meant getting Absio close enough to the steel giants for Marcus to wield his power. Because of the Abnormal’s attack, Marcus was forced to focus all of his attention on protecting Absio’s life. When bullets or streams of fire from enemy vehicles came close, he blasted them away with torrents of wind. Enemy soldiers tried to use rockets, and Marcus exploded enemy weapons before they could even fire, scattering torn bodies.

His power had a range, and that range was shorter than usual when he was looking through someone else’s eyes. Still, when he was fully concentrated on a task, no one would be able to harm the duke’s ‘avatar’. A sniper tried to shoot his irritating kin from the trees. Marcus rammed a stone spike through the soldier’s jaw, noting the irony. How many times had he tried to have this oaf of a nephew assassinated? And now he had to keep him alive, abandoning the loyal Kaleria, the one who never questioned orders. Irony, the merciless bitch of this world, played her trick.

Absio drew closer to the behemoth. His hawgr has only three leaps left. His bodyguards have engaged the enemies, trying to close in from the rear; their ranks were far too few because of Torturer. Their deaths pained the duke, and the dearest Kaleria stayed behind, dueling the traitor without his assistance. That was a burden of status. No sacrifice was too great for the safety of the realm. He will ensure that all the fallen receive proper burials, and songs will be made of their deeds. No one will be forgotten; their legacy will forever be embedded in the proud history of the Sapon.

Absio came into range. Marcus smiled as he willed his power to melt the inner wall of the closest behemoth.

Time to pay, you ignorant rabble. He thought. But before he could ‘sense’ the presence of metal and mold it to his liking, a shimmering disk of pure light appeared in the air, growing large enough to hide the moving fortress from the Duke’s gaze. In anger, Marcus forced the ground before the disk to strike forward, and the stone shattered against the unnatural energy suspended in the air, failing to even bulge it. This wasn’t a force field or an energy generator. Neither hid the target completely from his view. Something else has happened.

“Circle around the disk!” Marcus used his power to write these words on the ground. Hopefully, Absio will understand this hint…

A black dot appeared on the perfectly shimmering surface of the disk, and a dark hand reached out and placed a palm on the shining surface. It pulled itself out, grew a set of armor, and landed on the ground with a dull thud. A tattered cloak unfurled from its shoulders and wrapped around the creature, and two white orbs lit up in the confines of the cowl. The hawgr tried to obey the rider’s command, and the figure moved in a blur, keeping pace with the steed, always in front of the rider and the disk. Even on his hawgr, Absio was head and shoulders below the newcomer. A steel gauntlet appeared from beneath the cloak, beckoning the rider to approach.

“Duke Marcus. I know you can see me. I wonder if you can also hear me? It is good to see that my theory was correct,” the figure said in a calm voice. Some unnatural dread emanated from the words, and Marcus fought the urge to look away. “You need a visible target to use your powers. I am Outsider, the leader of the invasion force of…”

Marcus did not let his enemy finish. He willed a storm of fire around the enemy, creating a tornado of flame large enough to instantly consume all the oxygen in the column of fire. Only his power kept the unnatural fire going. The ground melted, grass turned to dust, and sand transformed into glass as a pillar of white fire rose, surrounding the enemy leader. Marcus pushed his powers, turning the flames that surrounded the enemy figure into blue flames, intensifying the heat to the best of his abilities. More. One million Celsius, a fifteenth of the temperature of the sun’s core. Left unchecked, it would scar his land and reduce his nephew to ash. In his hand, it was a divine sword, a weapon to smite down the enemy, and the duke magnified the heat further.

Through the flame, Marcus saw how his enemy gestured. A ghostly hand made of white light appeared above the Outsider. The tall foe snapped with the clawed fingers of his gauntlet with a loud “snap,” and the ghostly hand repeated the gesture with a thunderous sound. The flames scattered away from the figure, their heat dying on a fly, sucked into the depths of the black cloak, and a shockwave tore at the ground, almost throwing his ‘avatar’ off the steed. Marcus tried to make the enemy bleed to death and was surprised to find that he could not “feel” any fluids in the enemy’s body. To him, the enemy looked like an utter void, a tear in reality.

“… Reclamation Army,” the figure continued as if nothing had happened, “and I have come to reclaim your kingdom for humanity.”

The figure stepped forth.