The air is thick with the scent of blood, gore, and fresh-cut grass. Gravel is scattered throughout the organic slush that covers the deck, while I hop over the bodies still mostly whole. There are many still standing on deck with me but they hardly seem living at all for the hopeless despair that consumes them.

The enemy leaves us as we are but for what reason I can’t understand. Do they think that we’re going to completely give in because they leave us waiting? Are they delaying the killing stroke for when reinforcements come to see us finished?

My heart pounds painfully in my chest demanding my attention. An idea comes to mind, an awful, terrible idea.

Has our distraction failed?

No.

No, they’re not rushing to the glass egg. There are a few ships taken by other rebel groups that are being swarmed and sunk as we speak. It seems the pilots are under order to destroy the teleportation enchantments the moment anyone seems like they might take the ship.

As such no one has left with any of these vessels. They must be under different orders to what the ordinary pilots and ships function under. In my experience, two ships before today were teleported to a wild world just as they were taken over, but these ships are ready to destroy their enchantments to prevent the same happening here.

My feet sink into the wet slush, it seeps into my boots and soaks into my socks. It’s uncomfortably warm.

I step across a corpse that is worryingly human, I can’t place the person, but I’m almost certain that they’re from Earth. Now they’re part of the wider universe, all to fertilize foreign soil.

There’s a cost to resisting enemies greater than you. How could there not be?

Arduelle could have saved us from this… but it would be a risk. Something that she’s unwilling to do. I can only trust myself in the end. I can only rely on power that’s in my own hands, and when it’s not enough…

Then I need more.

I draw power from the corpses around me, summoning deep and powerful magics and storing them into my bones for when this peace dies. All the while I condense mana into my soul as tight and dense as it’ll fit.

On the verge of crystallisation, the raging currents that would ordinarily struggle out of my control feel natural and at home. My raging heart guides the flow so much more easily than ever before. The storm lashes only inwards as I consume more of the energy left scattered by the dead.

It forms spiralling crystals through the cells which I’ve adapted to ready myself. Yet the spirals vibrate with the condensed energies, ready to shatter apart and let loose the storm buried within. The force of creation yet bent toward pure destruction.

It’s who I am.

I destroy that which stands in my way, that which threatens me and mine.

It feels like I’m loading bullets into a magazine instead of building up my magical form, as this process ought to be. I’m prepared to spend my own flesh as ammunition in this coming war. Others have already sacrificed as much and more.

While I wait for the enemy to make their next move, and my rebels slowly repair themselves in the small silence offered to them, I turn my gaze towards Red’s team of infiltrators, flying up to steal the grand ship from the sky beneath the world trees branches.

My own body, my despaired soldiers, and the army that we’re set to face, they all fade from my awareness as I watch my friends work through their own challenges.

“There are enchantments everywhere,” Ria whispers, her crystal wings moving alongside her nervous humming. “As far as I can tell, they’re tuned to trap invaders, not kill them, for reasons that should be obvious.”

“Is there any fast way to break them all?” Vii asks, buzzing about in the air, stirred up and ready for a fight. “Like isn’t there some lynchpin, or domino effect, or some fancy enchanter thing we could do to make them all break? Let us rush through this?”

“I… I don’t think so,” Ria says, her song lilting in confusion as she looks Vii up and down before disregarding her suggestion.

“I’m not an infiltrator,” Ria says. “I’m working with Skills that I don’t fully understand to try and do this much as it is.”

Her hands work carefully to redraw the inscribed enchantments to clear a path for our team deeper into the ship. They’re barely through the first corridors and at their current speed, they’ll take days to get anywhere important.

“We can pass through here now, but there are more up ahead.”

“We don’t have time for this,” Adler says, her nails cutting into her hands as her tail works side to side in an uneasy rhythm. “Kyra is….”

“If you can think of a way to speed this up, we’re all ready to hear it,” Red suggests.

“I’m… Am I still a welfare officer?” She asks, “In the traps, with how they’re made, would they still recognise me?”

“It… I don’t know,” Ria answers.

“Then we test it,” Adler says. “You said that it’s nonlethal, right?”

“Non-lethal, but alarmed,” Ria says. “If they go off…”

“This turns from a stroll through a minefield, to a stroll through a mine-strewn battlefield,” Red says.

“We can’t continue as we have,” Adler says. “It’s too time-consuming.”

“Try it,” Red says, her tone making it an order. “See if the traps work on you, worst case I can lead the assault and carve through the enchantments alarms be damned.”

Adler nods slowly, while Red steps aside to let her pass. The stone halls here are clear, clean and white, there’s no sign of the beautiful crystal that makes the body of the vessel. There are no corners or edges, each curved gently instead, and the only markings to be seen are the enchantments themselves.

Step by slow step Adler steps up to the enchanted stone, waiting for it to activate and set off whatever nasty surprises are kept here for intruders.

As she stands right before the untouched traps, she hesitates for only a moment before shaking her head firmly.

“They’re dying down there…” she whispers, rushing into the traps.

One step, then two. She continues along the hall but, for all the build-up, nothing happens.

“I think… I think this will work,” Adler says.

“What about the rest of us?” Vii asks, floating close by.

“Is there some way to give you permission?” Adler asks thoughtfully. “I know that in some of the facilities I’ve worked in before there was such a thing. It was how we moved collared beasts around without all the traps going off, you know.”

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

Vii floats close by moving with unbound energy as she looks for some way to resolve this situation. Her eyes are red with tears for some reason.

For half a moment she slips, stressed and weary, she lets herself fall from the air and stumbles on the ground to catch herself. Magical enchantments come to life in less than a moment, and Ria fumbles to try and break them, but it’s too much too fast.

Adler steps in, catching Vii by the side just before the magic can take her. The enchantments burn bright for a moment before dying away with a flashing light. Some defence to ensure that the enchantments aren’t used against welfare officers?

Red stands guard over the rear with the rest of the team as they prepare for the shit to hit the fan.

“What’s happening down there?” A voice carries through the wall, bursting out through enchantments that I can’t make sense of.

Red looks at Adler nodding up at the sound.

“Who is it?” Adler asks, standing tall with feigned calm as soon as Vii has rediscovered her footing. “I wasn’t aware someone was observing us.”

“Who am I? Who are you? And why are there beasts with you?”

“I’m an officer,” Adler says, looking up at the sound. “I’m a welfare officer tasked to oversee people in this world, I’m here on special assignment.”

“And the beasts with you…? Ah! They’re soldiers? Without clearance? I should have known. I’ll come down and fix that for you, wait there for just a minute.”

The voice turns silent as the speaker signs off. I don’t quite know the logic behind their conversation just now, but it seems as though security is coming down to meet them.

It could be good.

It could be terrible.

I think we’re due for something good to happen for once.

Red is ready to make the best out of this situation, quietly preparing a good handful of silver collars for her team before the target arrives. If they’re not an officer, then we could collar them and have them turn to our favour.

I think I see another good reason for why the officers are collared, it’s to keep us from applying our own collars to them and turning them to our side. Shame I have the skills to do just that anyway.

As they wait, preparing for a fight, a small critter crawls down through a small vent in the ceiling that pops open with a small stone door. The small tunnel is completely invisible when closed, not even the edges were visible before it was opened.

He slides down the wall and comes to a stop before Adler. The young man’s large fluffy ears sit atop his tiny head where huge eyes take in the world and my small infiltration team. His ears twitch around, but he doesn’t seem overly on edge.

“Now, I don’t understand what you’re doing here and why you’re here with soldiers that aren’t properly tuned into our systems, but I know how this goes.”

He grumbles to himself as he rubs at his head, walking between the different members of the group, looking at their weapons and this and that.

“You’re not going to tell me anything, just give me that distant stare as you ask yourself whether or not doubting you is worth adding more beastly points to my totally-not-real list. Then I’m going to have to assume what you want, and I’ll just get everyone on your team added to our system without you even telling me why…”

He grunts to himself, slicking back his ears as he looks over the odd group.

“You know all this secrecy and the weird silent attitude is a genuine security threat, right? Well, of course you know, you just don’t care…” He grumbles using some sort of enchanted stone to mark each of the warriors on the team. Ria peeks at the device in curiosity but doesn’t say anything to ruin this miraculous assistance.

“There you are, everything is done. Is there anything else you need?”

“Directions,” Adler says drawing his attention to her while Red gets close behind him. Before he can even notice it, the silver collar is sinking into his fur, but it doesn’t properly absorb into him. He guards against it, stumbling back as it slides down through his fur.

Red isn’t about to let him get away. She stabs his shoulder with a glowing dagger and jams the silver collar into the wound while he’s still squealing.

“Damnit! Damnit! Was it the sass? It was the damn sass, wasn’t it? How many points was it costing me? 1 point? 2? I swear I’ve been saying this shit forever and… shit!”

“Do no violence to us, do not call for assistance, and do not use your traps against us,” Adler says, twitching slightly as she heals his wound. She doesn’t completely repair the injury, as she can’t waste the energy, but it’s enough to stop the bleeding. “Lastly, obey us completely.”

“Wha…? What?” The little critter squeaks out. “That’s not… that’s… who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter right now,” Adler says. “Can you take control over the enchanted defences on this ship?”

“I…”

“Answer my questions.”

“Perhaps,” he answers, pressing himself up as the words vomit from his mouth. “I share control over the systems with others. I might be able to force them into submission, or I might not.”

“Where are they? Could you safely guide some of our warriors to them and have them subdued?”

“Yes,” he answers nodding quickly. “So you… you aren’t… Am I going to die?”

“You’ll live. You’re safe with us,” Adler says. “I’ll explain it to you when we have the time. Right now there are countless people suffering and dying on the surface, and the more time we let waste, the more people die.”

“Understood,” The rat stands up tall and gives her a solute, or a rough version of one, something that he wasn’t required to do. Is he perhaps eager for this chance to betray his former masters? Seeing as much as he might’ve from this station, I’m sure I can theorize how he’d come to such a position.

The helpful little security expert leads them through the halls without any of the traps activating. When they reach the security centre Red and the others spread out to ‘recruit’ the rest of the staff.

It goes so dreadfully easily compared to my own war, and when the last of them is collared, they march on to the control room of the vessel. Without any blood spilled, they stand victorious.

Without any distraction needed…

The few soldiers left on board are already caught in the traps that they are meant to tend to. The security teams are carefully subduing their guards, some more willingly than others, but that’s what collars are for.

While armies of foes gather in the air around us, I see a glimpse of peace. A future where we might make it through this with no more violence, and no more death.

Vii, Adler, Red, and the rest of their team charge into the control room, collaring and subduing the pilots and staff, but there is one officer among them. One monster that stands firm against their offensive strike

“Beasts… here?” The tall woman asks, more a machine with how little of her mind is really her own.

“Yep, right here before you,” Red says, smirking as she raises glowing red daggers as if ready to fight.

The officer charges her, stepping over traps that she’s safely tread across hundreds of times before. This time is different.

Before they can even cross weapons, the ship itself summons powerful magic from the floor, ephemeral limbs of force wrap around the officer, pulling her to the ground.

Red isn’t ready to test how effective the enchantments are, stepping in and thrusting her daggers into the officer over and over again. Even restrained the officer puts up a fight, directing her mana into defensive shields, that are slowly cut away.

As her blood is spread around the room, every pilot is collared and every threat quieted.

Yet it’s not over.

The first of the enemy squads make their way up to the glass egg. Only a small fraction of the forces here to harry us, but if a message has gotten out…

The rest of the army is moving, floating into the space between us and the glass egg. We have only a small opening, and even that will only be found with bloody violence.

“Ready for war, we fight again!” I shout, getting a dazed reply from the crew that are still standing.

Exhausted, bloody and untrained. Most are but distractions for the soldiers that come for us, and are only able to act as such because of the enemy’s rituals.

They can’t do this.

We won’t make it.

We must make it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 60,163 / 60,892 units

Current mana volume: 29,908 / 30,271 shards

Mana volume at crystallisation density (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Functional)

-Mana surge movement (Functional)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Functional)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)