Pung took careful aim.

His fellow students had called him paranoid for carrying a deadly weapon in his school satchel every day. He was taking a workshop for optics technology because he loved holograph recordings and he wanted to learn more about how they got made. Yet even though Pung attended classes on a leafy, sunny campus—even though he lived in a friendly neighborhood with housemates who treated him like a brother—he carried a blaster glove everywhere.

One did not survive as a smuggler in a Torth-ruled city without being ultra paranoid.

Or perhaps his paranoia came from his travels? Unlike most of the free population, Pung remembered when the Bringer of Hope had been far from invincible. He had seen Ariock crucified. He had seen Thomas blindfolded and kept in a dungeon pit. Sure, those two had become powerful enough to establish a happy little empire, but power could come and go.

Ummins used to be powerful, eons ago.

Mind readers used to be peasants, eons ago.

Those were lessons which Pung remembered. And so he took nothing for granted.

When Torth invaded the campus? Pung had not joined the throngs of panicked students. Who knew whether the supposedly trustworthy penitents would simply stroll outside and join their brethren? Instead, Pung dove under a desk. He gambled that the invaders would not investigate every single empty classroom.

He had been right. Torth invaders passed him by, honing in on wherever they believed Thomas to be.

Pung listened to his newsfeed. He learned that the Bringer of Hope was “in trouble”—that was vague—and that Jinishta, Evenjos, Garrett, and even Weptolyso were unreachable. A miracle seemed unlikely. Zenzaldal, the premier who was in charge of defending Freedomland in their absence, was leading a siege on the Academy. She told noncombatants to stay home or in bomb shelters, and to bar their doors.

That was common sense. But it really wasn’t enough information. Approximately how many Torth were in the city? More importantly: What made the Torth brave enough to risk confronting Thomas up close? That hadn’t gone well for them, last time. Anyone could guess that the Torth must have showed up with new weapons or tactics.

Pung wanted to know if Kessa was all right.

So after a while, he got tired of hiding, and he began to take chances.

He sneaked out of the classroom. He tiptoed down the corridor, his eyes and ears on high alert for anything out of the ordinary.

He did not rush out of the doorway, of course. He went to a window and peeked outside…

And he recoiled at the sight of body parts and blood everywhere. The grassy courtyard was a slaughter yard.

Pung forced his throat to close up. Silence meant survival.

Torth strolled around, murdering people with leisurely aim. Several Torth in armor stood a distance away. They wore heavy-duty blaster gloves. Whenever a terrified person sneaked out of a doorway or a window, they blasted that person to pieces.

Pung didn’t understand why people were stumbling out into daylight. Did they fail to see the Torth? Weren’t all the corpses a rather obvious warning sign?

Pung skittered away, towards another exit.

But the next exit was just as bad as the first. Pung hesitated at the doorway, staring at slaughtered students. Maybe he ought to go back inside and cower under a desk?

He caught sight of a black-armored shani warrior.

There were two—no, three—warriors, their armor blending in with the shadows behind colonnades. The warriors held spears ready to throw. As they crept closer to the unsuspecting Torth, Pung silently cheered them on.

It was enough to inspire him to ready his own blaster glove. He was nowhere near close enough to take a shot, but perhaps he would station himself behind this door? If one of the armored Torth happened to bolt towards him….

…(Hiding) it’s an ummin (he has a glove)…

Pung looked around, unnerved by the flurry of whispers that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

Not just whispers. For a moment, Pung glimpsed a hallucinatory vision of himself. It was as if he was outside his own body, peering through that bush over there.

Someone was inside the bush. Pung saw another ummin peering through the leaves at him.

As he tried to reason out what was happening, another flurry of whispers surrounded him, stronger. Impossible to ignore. Insistent in an alien sort of way.

There.

 Just ummins.

  (So many ummins in this place.)

   (Idiots) Think they can hide?

    Kill them.

Whatever these whispers were, they were not friendly.

Pung whirled around, blaster glove ready. He only saw the harmless, bland stone wall.

His sense of imminent danger was tingling.

If this was a Torth-ruled city, he would have tried to blend in with a crowd, pretending that he was innocent and harmless. If this was the slave village of Duin, he would have faked panic. But where were the Torth?

His body thrummed with a feeling which humans called “adrenalin.”

On impulse, he threw himself to one side and rolled down the stone ramp, onto flagstones.

A blast exploded where his body had been an instant ago. Rocks rained down.

Pung scrambled to his feet. He needed to flee … but he was shocked to discover that nothing looked right.

The buildings were gone.

Or were they just in the wrong places?

Pung ran, but was he running towards the next building? Or back the way he had come? Was he about to crash into that wall? Was he even on the flagstone path?

I can’t do this anymore (all is lost).

That morose vibe seemed to come from one of the black-clad warriors. The warrior (Haz) stood behind a column. Although Haz was hidden from sight, Pung somehow knew that he was there.

And that he had just heard awful news.

According to the supercom network, Orla and Jinishta were both dead. It was word-of-mouth, but it was likely true. Haz was devastated.

Pung knew all of this even though Haz had not spoken a word or even looked at him. Concepts seemed to float, disembodied, in the air.

Stupid slave.

A Torth with a stiff crop of hair leaned against a wall, watching Pung with empty eyes. He casually aimed his blaster glove.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

It was strange. Until now, Pung had never met a Servant of All with a personality. This one had the typical blank eyes and slack facial expression … yet somehow, Pung knew that he was facing (the Morph Mopper) a smugly superior attitude. The Morph Mopper believed that he (Pung) was a useless moron.

A dead useless moron.

Pung felt the aim of that weapon. He felt as if he was peering through the Morph Mopper’s eyes, tracking himself as a hapless, doomed target.

He was going to die.

…!!!

…BLAM!

Pung jumped, certain that his spirit was detached from his body and that he was now dead. He must be. How else could he see so many points of view? He couldn’t be inside a body anymore.

A pile of body parts lay where the Morph Mopper had been, beneath a bloody blast pattern on the wall. The Morph Mopper was dead. A friendly soldier—an ummin (Eerkhet)?—had shot the threat from behind.

“Run,” Eerkhet advised.

Pung felt the advice in the depths of his soul. The word seemed to resound, as if he had known what Eerkhet would say even before he spoke. With that one word, Eerkhet conveyed that more Torth were rushing towards them.

Pung ran.

But running was no simple matter. He was seeing double. His feet were only partially connected to his body. They were also someone else’s feet.

He managed a few hasty, stumbling steps.

Then reality seemed to fall apart completely.

Pung was running on nonsense, towards a blue sky. He could not even tell whether up was down.

A nussian soldier thundered past him. Pung felt the breeze from her passage.

“Torth are trying to confuse you, ummin.” Her voice rumbled in her wake, seemingly imbued with extra meaning, as if the words resounded in his heart as well as his ears. “Follow the arrows.”

Pung began to complain. There were no arrows. He had no idea what was…

A picture of Kessa floated in midair, attached to an arrow.

Pung stared.

What was holding that sign up? And why did the rippling arrow look as if it was cut from cloth—the exact same woven fabric that his mother used to wear?

The arrow rippled towards that crazy blue sky area. It pointed, slightly off-kilter. Pung wondered if he would fall off the edge of the world if he dared to follow the appealing beacon.

A familiar voice spoke next to his left ear flap. “Pung.” It was Thomas. “I’m projecting an auditory hallucination for you. Can’t keep it up. Directing too many people. Plus I am far away, relying on the telepathy gas zone to convey my words to you.”

Telepathy gas?

The arrow remained in front of Pung, beckoning, like a friendly helper.

Pung took a step in that direction.

It seemed like he was walking upwards, into the sky, yet he felt grass under his toes. He was walking on what felt like solid ground.

Weird.

Pung sped up. As the ground remained solid beneath his feet, he gained confidence. He began to jog.

The sky illusion vanished and suddenly, Pung was back in a semblance of the recognizable courtyard. His perceptions were still a sickening jumble. A confusion of whispers filled his mind. He hoped to hear Thomas again, but there were no clear voices. Only intrusive double vision. Another Kessa arrow pointed towards the right.

Pung followed it.

He became aware of other arrows floating in midair. Each arrow had a different theme, and people seemed to use them as guides. One govki vanished into a doorway which had been nonexistent a second ago. Other people dove behind flowering bushes or columns.

Every person who sprinted past Pung emitted their own nausea-inducing panoply of thoughts and emotions and perceptions. Pung could hardly keep track of his own limbs. He used to wish he could read minds, but if it was anything like this … well. How could Torth stand to be Torth?

He might have given up and fallen over, if not for the friendly arrow rippling ahead.

There was a blast next to him. An armored Torth appeared out of thin air and fell over. That Torth had been invisible just moments before. Pung would have run straight past her, within grabbing distance, but now he was able to swerve around her body. Someone had shot her.

Wildfire flared.

Pung skidded to a halt and backpedaled. There was a (die, albino minion of the Conqueror!) Rosy Rank battling (evil rekveh!) a determined shani warrior, right in the middle of the corpse-strewn courtyard.

The albino gathered an electric ball of energy in her armored hand. It glowed like an orb light, reflecting on her black armor. The warriors had really honed their powers. She had fine control of the orb as she drew her hand back, ready to hurl the makeshift weapon.

The hulking Rosy Rank suddenly blinked out of sight.

There was no smell of ozone, yet Pung wondered if the Rosy had teleported away.

A cluster of ivory-white bone arrows appeared. The arrows twisted and clacked against each other, all pointing out an invisible moving target.

The armored warrior let out a primal scream of rage and hurled her orb towards the targeted outline.

It smashed into something solid.

The Rosy Rank materialized out of thin air, doubled over in pain and emitting (!!!) shock. The warrior drew three spears from her quiver and shot them all, bullet-fast.

That ended the Rosy Rank. He fell over, his armor pierced, blood leaking from his wounds.

!!!

 Kill

  Kill

   KILL!

The ground trembled as three more Torth rushed towards the shani warrior. They wore metallic red armor, yet Pung sensed their hidden powers as clearly as if they had advertised it. These were Rosy Ranks.

He needed to get out of harm’s way.

His personalized Kessa arrow appeared, showing him where to go.

Pung ran in that direction, and never mind his questions about how the arrow-maker (Thomas!) knew where he was or how to direct him. He would ask questions once he survived.

The flagstones beneath Pung’s feet became treacherous holes. He nearly tripped on one.

Yet the Kessa arrow never wavered. Pung firmed up his beak and kept running. When he accidentally stepped on one of the holes to infinity, it felt normal and solid beneath his foot. That was proof enough. The holes were an evil illusion. The arrow was his friend.

A hedgerow appeared. Pung followed his personalized arrow and flung himself behind the shrubbery. It might not be a place of safety—was any place safe in a war zone where everyone could overhear each other’s thoughts?—but he needed to catch his breath.

He peeked out at chaos and death.

Illusions crawled and blinked all over the courtyard. It was worse than a Torth city. Free people sniped at armored Torth and vice versa.

It should have been an easy victory for the Torth. They had every advantage, with their powers and their heavy duty blaster gloves. They had come to this fight prepared. Some of the free people lacked armor. They had to dodge around the corpses of students and friends. Clearly, the Torth had been winning not long ago.

Yet now the battle seemed evenly matched.

Flow charts and moving hallucinations guided the free people, showing them where to hide, what to avoid, and where to shoot. An ummin blasted a Rosy Rank in the back even as Pung watched. The mind reader had apparently failed to anticipate the threat.

Wow.

“Oof!” The shani warrior landed near Pung with bone-jarring violence. Her fear and her rage were as unavoidable as colors and scents. Her pain was monstrous. This warrior (Nulshta) was badly injured. Pung sensed her broken ribs and her blinded eye as easily as he sensed his own health.

He wanted to tug Nulshta to safety. But there was nowhere to go. Three Torth stalked towards him and the injured warrior.

Pung tried to steady his gloved hand. He was a decent marksman. He had learned how to shoot from Thomas himself, on another world, in what seemed like a different era. But if a veteran Yeresunsa war hero couldn’t defeat these Rosy Ranks, what chance did a slightly overweight ummin have?

Arrows appeared. They glowed and flowed in a sparkly way, with animated urgency. The arrows remained even though the three Rosy Ranks blurred into dark shadows and dissipated.

Ugh. Another (ummin) slave.

 Right. Well, don’t underestimate it.

The invisible Torth communicated in abstractions rather than words. How strange. Yet Pung understood their silent conceptual conversation.

She (the Death Architect) should have armed Us with insanity gas as well as telepathy gas emitters.

 Agreed.

  Well, be fair. She did not expect the Conqueror to actually join a battle.

Well, She should have (since She’s allegedly the smartest super-genius).

 Do Her tactics seem (insufficient) cowardly to you (also)?

  Kind of.

   Yes.

Nothing We can do about it. We’re just pawns to the Death Architect (the Conqueror) (super-geniuses).

 Ugh. The Majority ceded way too much authority to their ilk. Super-geniuses were never meant to conquer their own illnesses or invent weapons. We (champions) ought to kill the Death Architect once She takes Her final victory (destroys the Conqueror).

  Agreed.

   Yes. (In fact) I would argue that the Death Architect is actually worse than the Conqueror.

    Oh, come on! (That’s ridiculous.)

     You exaggerate.

      Clarification: I only meant in terms of personal honor. The Conqueror is definitely awful, but at least he is brave enough to stand with his minions (troops). Meanwhile, Our commanding mastermind (the Death Architect) hides on Her asteroid, shielded by battlebeasts and dreadnoughts and whatever else She wants. She—

Pung sensed one of the Torth targeting him. He triggered his blaster glove.

An armored body thumped to the ground.

The artificial shadows lifted, and Pung thumbed his trigger again, targeting another Torth. He missed. Or rather, the Rosy Rank shielded herself with an icy blast of air.

*!!!* Surprised gratitude emanated from Nulshta. She had not expected an ummin to heroically defend her.

She threw her iron spears and the ice-master Rosy Rank fell. Pung had given Nulshta enough time to use her weapons.

Pung felt some chagrin as he sensed how Nulshta felt. Disposable. Vulnerable. She was hurt and scared.

That wasn’t right. Everybody knew that warriors were the primary guardians of freedom. They were here, striving to protect the campus and everyone trapped inside. They were here even though Ariock was not. They were here even though many of their best (Jinishta) (Orla) (Dishra) (so many healers) had died today. They were ready to defend Thomas and Kessa.

Yet no one befriended warriors. They kept to their own neighborhoods and enclaves.

Perhaps they deserved more than the disdainful distance which Pung and other free people showed them?

“Come on.” Pung tugged Nulshta’s hand, helping her to stand. “Let’s make sure you’re safe.”

She leaned on his shoulder, her emotions tinged with gratitude.

The third Rosy Rank turned to flee.

Together, Pung and Nulshta took aim. Pung triggered his glove, and the Torth’s head exploded.