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She had just returned from the human continent of Trammel. It was always a depressing event to return to her homeland after seeing the beauty that the world had to offer. They haunted her every nightmare, those sprawling forests, rushing rivers, magnificent mountains, laughing nobles gorging on limitless plates of exotic foods. Those nobles probably continued, even now, to gorge as she peered out her carriage window to see emaciated children rummage through spilt trash bins in search of even the smallest of morsels. The children were so malnourished that their stomachs distended with fluid build-up as if they were cannibalizing upon their own hopes and dreams to simply stave a day's starvation.

This whole continent was a malignant wretch, a drowning grey of infertile lands and dying cities. It was this atmosphere that forced so many to relocate through the Immersion and try their fate in the Dungeon of Ingress. They were that desperate for even the slightest chance to experience some of Trammel's resourceful splendour. Such was the state of the Mokoi Badlands, where blindly risking oneself in that dungeon where a human could pointlessly hunt you down at any instant was deemed a better life than remaining on this desolate rock.

This tragedy, an ever-present theatre in her mind, warred upon her conscience as harshly as the actual war did to her people. She could see it right now:

Her brethren massacred in the dungeon of Ingress,

Adventurers cheering a quest well done;

Children starving in the streets,

Humans tossing a bad cut of meat.

Her fist had clenched so tight she drew blood, crimson staining upon her velvet seat cushion, and the woman finally had enough. She pulled her long, blond hair out of her eyes and announced to the chaperone. "Stop the carriage for a moment, please." Her voice was soft as honey; it carried a near-hypnotic allure that enticed compliance.

Her lavishly adorned carriage stopped in the middle of the ruined street. Without momentum, the carriage sunk into the wet muck, the lands themselves hungry to taint any inkling of prosperity. Once the carriage had stabilized, she reached for a handful of the delicate confectionaries meant for the carriage's guests. After a fleeting moment's hesitation, she took more—until her arms were full, clutching the entire bin's worth. Her hands were too full to manage the door, so she deftly used her tail to swing it open.

A cold, angry wind whistled down, biting into her naked body; she shivered against the irritable weather. Her small pert nose shrivelled bitterly; rot was in the air. She certainly stood out in the dreary shanty, her soft, slender skin, full of colour and health, juxtaposed harshly against her surroundings.

Beyond her uncharacteristic life, what really made her stand out was her near perfectly human appearance. The only thing stopping the villagers from fearing they had been invaded by the damnable pests was her long-scaled pink tail that ended in a sharp barbed spike.

Many of the mokoi partaking in their daily routines stopped to stare at the oddly beautiful stranger. She had grown used to having many eyes bearing down on her, grown used to having stares eat away at her being, devour what she was.

The children in the trash, too, could not help but stop their fruitless tasks to study the detestably healthy creature that just exited the carriage. She turned to face the children, and a few reeled back, intimidated. It was rare for an adult to acknowledge their existence, let alone one so regal and stoic. The woman then cracked a blinding smile, squatted down, and revealed a bountiful harvest of delicious baked goods contained within her arms. "Children shouldn't have to go hungry."

The children could not even entertain their suspicion of the stranger as their stomachs guided them over. Once the first few arrived and scarfed down a couple treats without repercussions, the dam broke, and children were flooding out from any and every nook. An explosion of juvenile life was unveiled from the grunge and joined the enlarging crowd. A few children tripped over the poor rags they called clothes in their hurry; they ignored any scrapes or rashes they received from this and quickly joined the crowd to collect their share of food. For the first time since she returned home, the woman smiled.

After the children had taken all the food, the woman reentered the carriage and recommenced their journey. This was the key to her drive; this was what she fought for: against.

A few hours passed, but thankfully, this was the last day of her trek across the continent, and the carriage arrived at the end of the road, facing the vast ocean and a single bridge. It was a bridge that dared to tame the ocean. It was a leviathan thing, its road wide enough for a full caravan to march side by side, goliathan bone arches pierced out from the blackened sea to hold the bridge aloft like a monstrous rib cage that followed the bridge's length. Atop the bridge, a series of thick braided cables wound in an industrial silk, rose up high into the clouds above.

They couldn't be seen on a murky day like today, but somewhere up there, the cables latched onto towering balloons the size of mansions that were filled with air lighter than air. The bridge seemed to stretch forever, going beyond the horizon and disappearing into the fog. The only indicator that the bridge actually connected anywhere at all was the ominous glow of three titanic clocks piercing through the veil of smog in the distance.

The bridge did not, however, connect to the mainland. The last segment of the bridge, which should have connected bridge and land together, had been raised, detaching itself from the rabble. Two guard towers rose from the waters, protectively flanking their precious bastion. She could see the mokoi within, readying their arms suspiciously at the carriage's approach.

On the mainland, there was a small outpost, and as soon as the carriage got within view, a mokoi came out to await them. The woman needed not to say a word; the second the border man spotted her, his brows leapt off his face, and he hurriedly signalled the drawbridge down.

It was an arduous ride across the bridge. The bridge was tall enough to evade the crashing waves, but unimpeded by land, the howling winds nearly lifted the vehicle off its footing. The woman had long acclimatized to rocky rides and merely focused on the mammoth clockfaces in the distance consuming more and more of her field-of-view.

Eventually, they brokered the smog, and land revealed itself. They were heading toward an explosive metropolis. Buildings on top of buildings, lights of every colour, the clamour so great she could already hear it before even disembarking the bridge. The bustling Abyss was so energetic. It was like the city itself was a living creature.

As they finally entered the city, the sight outside her carriage window couldn't be any more different than the sad village just a few hours away. Like a pathetic facsimile of Trammel, plump, gaudily dressed mokoi waddled across wide brick-paved streets, exchanging glistening coins for unnecessary vanity. She thought it was a truly sickening thing, the fact that this place was only separated from those starving children by a single bridge. She felt no urge to stop here, and the carriage continued toward the guiding beacon of the clocktower and the castle that formed its base.

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The castle continued the Abyss's trend of exhaustive gravitas, but of course, as the central castle, it had to epitomize the style. It was an overwhelmingly monolithic structure of Gothic architecture, complete with manifold arches and sharp, menacing spires. As its centrepiece, the unfathomably ever present clock tower loomed. Three behemoth clocks adorned the tower, so massive and so tall that they could be read from anywhere in the city.

As unwieldy as the castle may have seemed, there were a few practical functions hidden in its design. Many of the jutting spikes erected from the castle were actually ramparts for avian-like mokoi. Some of the ornate architectural flourishes concealed hidden tunnels interconnecting many castle chambers within and without the complex. The woman already knew all of this and wasted no time gawking.

The superfluous contrast merely fueled the war playing in her mind,

children in trash receptacles,

castles with indoor pools.

She entered the building.

The building's main entrance was appropriately ginormous, grand enough to accommodate mokoi of any size. Each room in the castle followed the same design philosophy, every one of them ludicrous mammoth chambers. It wasn't merely a function of vainglory but also a consequence of compensating for the incredible variety of mokoi species.

She ignored most of it and headed straight for the stairwell.

The stairwell, too, like every other aspect of the opulent castle, was a bizarre conglomeration of different designs. The room formed a large cylinder as wide as a dining hall. A ladder fabricated of precisely cut holes formed the quickest route up or down, while another section of the wall was plated with extra rough ridges to provide traction for climbers.

The castle was not designed for low-class mokoi and was outright hostile to humans, both of whose anatomies tended toward the similar, so there was no staircase. For someone who could only walk upon their own two feet, there was a set of jutting iron rods arms-length apart, spiralling around the circumference of the stairwell.

The blond woman suppressed a sigh and stepped on the first iron rod, balancing on the thin support by the ball of her foot and pressing her hand on the wall for stability. She gazed out to the distant second step and hopped over, landing on her other foot, muscles rapidly tensing to maintain balance. Once she stopped wobbling, she craned her neck up to the throne room entrance, one hundred floors up.

She made her way up the stairwell without complaint; other travelling nobles would slow their rapid ascent, eyeing the little lady struggling on the disused steps.

She ignored them.

When she finally made it to the top floor and returned to even flat ground, she did not allow herself to soothe her aching feet or address her cramping abs. She held her stoic visage and maintained a perfect posture as she continued forth. When the palace guards spotted her, they immediately opened the ornate double doors to the throne room.

Within the throne room, A magnificent purple carpet led down the massive hall to a large stone throne whose back climbed up to the multiple-story high ceiling that this room contained. The backrest rose all the way up until its stone frame curved and widened as it melded into the roof, becoming the ceiling and draping over the chamber.

The woman walked down the hall, sharing no indication of her silent relief for the soft carpet cushioning her aching bare feet. She reached the center of the room and knelt before the throne and the creature that sat upon it.

She kept her head lowered, eyes fixed on the floor as she spoke. "Colonel Arete, of the Surrogate Platoon, reporting back on behalf of the Surrogate platoon as well as for the Primary Corps in the stead of General Zeal of the Primary Corps." The honey in her voice had made way for a sharp, formal cadence, each word precisely measured for protocol and discipline.

Though she spoke so beautifully so naturally before, in this moment, too, it seemed as if she had been born as a gruff military leader; this was her talent and was the key to her success.

Arete had always been a chameleon, able to adapt to any situation, any role. Her unparalleled ability to conform to anyone's wishes was her greatest strength... and her greatest weakness.

The silence that settled over the room was reply enough for her. She pressed on with her report. "The battle for Ark has concluded with a decisive victory for the Primary Corps. The Arena of Yu's Director had posed some initial complications, but after diplomatic negotiations, she chose to remain neutral, and the city was easily secured from the humans afterward. With such, the mokoi army has a solid foothold within the Sodality of Rain.

Efforts to procure reinforcements from the Pleurothallidinae continue to be fruitless as they are adamant about not taking part in the war. They have, however, initiated some limited skirmishes with the Sodality of Rain for control of several Islands in the Pulchritudinous Lake, drawing some human forces away from our main campaign.

As for proceeding plans, It has been decided that the Fifth Ground Division and Second Aerial Division will be sent to assist in the Heirisson Theatre, while the remainder of the Primary Corps will redirect attention toward Proselyte."

She paused briefly to moisten her tired throat and organize the tangled threads of information in her mind. She had rehearsed this report countless times before herself in a mirror. Every muscle movement carefully practiced, each word purposeful, detailed but not too informative. This little caution was a requirement when dealing with the creature that sat atop the throne. She continued,

"Important developments within the human forces include the involvement of a freelance group of human adventurers known as, The Saviors, who have joined the conflict in the Heirisson theatre. They have proven to be a significant obstacle, disrupting our operations at every position they've occupied. Hence, the Primary Corps sending reinforcements.

Additionally, the Murugan Squad had successfully subjugated that bandit duo which had been so conveniently distracting the human forces in the Heirisson theatre. The bandit known as Sapphic has gone missing in action and is presumed dead, while Schlemiel, the other bandit of the duo, has been recruited into the ranks of the Murugan Squad. We believe that the loss of the powerful duo's harassments, along with Schlemiel's integration into the enemy forces, will have a dramatic impact on the theatre's dynamics. Outside of these developments, the overall progress of the war remains favourable."

She paused once more to catch her breath. Perhaps her audience had no need to hear the last part of the report, but an irresistible urge to continue her dialogue subsumed her. It felt as if sharp needles stabbed into her mind, threading through her thoughts to weave the narrative into a tapestry she felt compelled to present, a brilliant cloth of grey matter dreams for her audience to admire. "The Surrogate platoon has successfully integrated into Parapet Island, and we anticipate completing a comprehensive framework of the Pangean Entente's inner workings within two years. The Tabulate Syndicate continues to be cooperative, though their communications have dwindled considerably. As a result, we are currently reassessing their commitment to our alliance.

Additionally, we have verified the Whittler's claims: it is confirmed that the Masks have not received any new masks in the past twenty years, which lines up with when he was asked to end communications before the war started. However, the Masks have refused to cooperate in any capacity regarding tactical espionage."

The words spilled out of her mouth like she had just wretched her dinner. A cacophony of details and specificities spoken to a degree she wished not have shared. Her greatest weapon, her key, was wrenched from her hold and forced against her. Her throat, pulled and played with, abused, turned sore from the endless soliloquy.

Since entering the room, she had been the sole speaker. The being before her never interjected nor asked questions. Even now, with her report completed, it remained silent—motionless, offering no response. That creature's unshakable composure always grated on her, its arrogance as unyielding as its calm. This creature could read others with unnerving precision, yet even she—who prided herself on her skill in observation and manipulation—could not discern the slightest hint of what it was thinking. Uncertain of what was expected of her, she finally lifted her gaze to the creature on the throne.