Saskia’s eyes flicked between the shotgun levelled at her head, and the grizzled old lady holding it. At her side, Ruhildi tensed, preparing, no doubt, to do something drastic. Both she and her friend were naked, having just teleported here in a burst of not-so-metaphorical tentacles.
“Do you want to put that thing down?” Saskia was surprised at how even her voice sounded, given how much her heart was racing. If that gun went off, there’d be no regenerating an exploded brain. “We didn’t mean to intrude. I don’t know why we’re here, exactly…”
“Aliens,” muttered the woman, swiveling the gun between the two naked intruders. “I knew they was real. On the telly, some people called it a hoax, but I knew.”
“We…come in peace?” said Saskia. Then she winced. She really wasn’t helping her case, here.
“Speak for yourself, Sashki,” said Ruhildi. “If this lady tries to harm you, I’ll not be peaceful.”
“You’re not helping, either,” murmured Saskia. To the woman, she said, “We’ll be out of your hair in a moment if you just lower your weapon and let us past.”
“Oh, you’re not going no-where, lizard-freaks!” said the woman.
Saskia scratched her nose. “Lizard? Where’d you get that? Squid or octopus, I could understand, but lizard?”
The old lady didn’t reply, because she was lifting a mobile phone off the couch, while holding the shotgun in the crook of her elbow, still pointed at Saskia; finger still on the trigger. Driving one-handed while messing with one’s phone was bad enough, but this? The woman’s neck made a loud popping sound as she tilted her head and wedged the phone between her ear and shoulder. “Yeah, it’s me,” she growled into the phone. “Get over here, pronto. We got ourselves a pair of live ones.”
Oh, this was bad. Instead of calling the cops, as any sane person would, she was calling her hillbilly friend? They’d would show up packing their own heat. If there was one thing worse than having a shotgun aimed at her head, it was having two shotguns aimed at her head. She needed to do something, before this got even more out of hand.
Calling upon her oracle sight, Saskia dove into the head of the man on the other end of the phone. She could tell he was a man, because he was sitting on the toilet, looking down at his hairy chest and…yeah. Under ordinary circumstances, Saskia would have noped right on out of there. But at this moment, one of her lives was at stake, so she endured the horrors she was witnessing, and tried to focus on learning something that might help get her out of this predicament with minimal bloodshed.
“I’ll be there in five, Joyce,” said the man. He glanced down again. “Better make it ten.”
“Goddammit, Bartholomew, this is important!” said the woman, whose name, apparently, was Joyce. “Stop being such a lazy arse and get your arse over here!” She tossed the phone back on the couch.
“Trust me, Joyce, you wouldn’t want him coming over here until he’s freshened up a bit,” said Saskia.
“How’d you know my…? Get out of my head, alien!” The woman twitched the muzzle of the shotgun at her. At least she was holding it in both hands again.
“I’m not in your head,” said Saskia. “I’m in his head.”
It was at this moment that Ruhildi, who had been slowly circling around the woman, finally made her move.
Moving with astonishing speed for one of her advanced years, Joyce pivoted, and pulled the trigger. A deafening boom set china rattling on the nearby shelves. Black blood and gore splashed across the furniture. Ruhildi slammed into the woman, and they both went tumbling onto the floor. She snatched the shotgun out of Joyce’s hand and tossed it to Saskia. Then she looked down at the gaping hole in her side, and muttered, “Och, what a mess.”
Wasting no time, Saskia helped her friend to her feet, and they both dashed for the door. Someone would report the sound of the gunshot, then the cops would be on their way. They needed to be far, far away from here.
Joyce’s bewildered stare followed them out. “Zombie aliens,” she muttered.
They emerged on a sunlit street, in what appeared to be a mid-sized town. Realising she was still holding the shotgun, Saskia tossed it into the bushes. Best not to be seen with that. Then again, they were both naked, and Ruhildi’s guts were hanging out. Neither of those things were conducive to keeping a low profile.
Dashing to Joyce’s clothesline, Saskia shucked on a dress about three sizes too big for her, while Ruhildi wadded strips of cloth into the hole in her side, tied a bunch more around her midsection to hold everything in place, then threw on loose-fitting garments to hide the evidence. Being undead, Ruhildi wasn’t as liquid on the inside as a living person. She didn’t bleed as much. So the dark stain would take a while to spread to her outer garments, if it ever did.
They hurried across town as fast as they could go without looking overly suspicious. Several times, she heard police sirens in the distance. Should they steal a car and make a faster getaway? No, she decided. She didn’t know how to hotwire a vehicle, and most modern vehicles weren’t hotwireable in any case. Besides, it had been years since she’d driven a car. She’d probably just crash into a pole.
Aside from making themselves scarce, the other order of business was to find out where in hell they were. This could be Anytown, USA. Any town with old ladies who kept shotguns by the couch.
Then a thought occurred to her. She now had access to a web browser in her head. That meant she didn’t need to rely on her relatively close-range minimap. She could load up a map of the whole planet, search for a few street names, and…
“Huh,” she said aloud. “This isn’t the US, after all. So much for stereotypical gun-toting Americans. This town is in Alberta, Canada. I thought it would be colder…”
“I don’t ken why we’d end up so far away,” said Ruhildi, who must have been reading Saskia’s mind to get a sense of the geography.
“I don’t know, either. The undermind might have decided that where I wanted to go was too dangerous, and sent us…to the lady with the shotgun. Wait, that makes no sense.”
“Mayhap ’tweren’t for caring where we went—only where we didn’t go.”
“Maybe. Anyhow, let’s get out of town, ASAP. We can camp out in the wilderness. Canada is a big place. No-one will find us out there. We can hunt for food, and I’m sure you could out take a bear if it tried to eat us. The animals of this world are real lightweights compared to Arbor Mundi. It’s the humans we have to watch out for.”
They hiked for several kilometres over open farmland, before ducking into a spruce forest. She’d always wanted to visit Canada. Visiting it as a fugitive eldritch abomination in human skin had never been high on her agenda, but she’d take what she could get. The Rocky Mountains loomed on the western horizon; a breathtaking sight. After all the things she’d seen, she’d almost lost the capacity to feel awed by any of Earth’s geographical features, but this was one of the exceptions.
While they walked, Saskia contacted her mum and her friends, back in the hexapod, just to tell them what had happened, and that she and Ruhildi were okay, and that it would be a while before they could teleport back. She had a new batch of memories from Arbor Mundi to sift through too, but that could wait.
“Canada, eh?” said Ivan, after her mum repeated what she’d just said. “Now I’m feeling a little jealous. Russia is fine and all, but…”
As the only one in the group who wasn’t her vassal, he alone couldn’t hear Saskia’s voice directly. She could hear his voice through her vassals’ ears.
“They’re both frigid shitholes, as far as I’m concerned,” said Dave. “Why couldn’t we go to Mexico or Australia or something?”
“I wonder if I could join her over there?” wondered Ivan aloud. “If I could just get this teleportation thing to work on demand…”
“Uh, how about no,” said Dave. “If you end up in Antarctica, or the centre of the Earth, or somewhere out in space, don’t expect us to come rescue you.”
Saskia was pretty sure it didn’t work like that, or none of her kind would have survived past their initial few jumps. Still, it had only been a few weeks since his first teleport. Wouldn’t want to risk bringing on a seizure or something. And emerging in the wrong location halfway across the planet remained a very real possibility, as she’d just demonstrated.
“If you have time to do Internet research, see if you can find anything out of the ordinary happening in Canada right now,” she said.
“Other than Tentacle Girl appearing out of nowhere?” said Fergus.
“Other than that, yeah.” Saskia was kinda over feeling annoyed at the nickname he’d given her. “I feel like we’re here for a reason.”
“Now don’t get all spiritual on us,” said Raji.
“Hello? I have a cult of followers who worship me as their goddess. I’ve seen with my own eyes—well okay, my doppelgänger’s eyes—that there are multiple worlds, and life after death, and other things out there way beyond human understanding. I am one of those things. If anyone’s allowed to spout spiritual mumbo-jumbo, it’s me.”
“That’s nice, dear,” said her mum. “Now don’t go forgetting you’re human, too, and as long as you’re in this world, you eat and poop and cry—and bleed—just like the rest of us.”
“I like your mam,” said Ruhildi.
Saskia gave her a crooked smile. It was good to reminded of her humanity from time to time. Just as long as her mum didn’t bust out the baby photos.
“Speaking of which, this human’s gotta find some food,” said Saskia. “You all be safe.”
“We’ll be fine, Sass,” her mum assured her. “Just don’t get yourself caught or killed, okay?”
“Ruhildi is here with me, Mum,” said Saskia. “She literally took a bullet for me today—or a whole heap of shotgun pellets. She won’t let anything bad happen to me.”
“It’s nice to have the Terminatrix on our side,” said Fergus.
“The Night Queen,” said Raji.
“Eh, I’m gonna go with Lich Queen,” said Fergus. “The Night King died like a chump. Arthas could have beaten him with his pinkie.”
Saskia left them to their debate over which fictional villain best represented her friend, and went looking for something to eat. She had no idea what plants might be edible here, but her oracle interface might help with that.
Turned out not to be necessary. A few minutes later, Ruhildi skewered a squirrel with a spike of stone, and handed it to Saskia. Inspecting the morsel sceptically, Saskia shrugged, then tore into it with her teeth. A campfire would attract too much attention, so she might have to get used to eating raw meat again.
“Haven’t seen any bears yet,” said Saskia. There were a few red dots on her minimap, but most were quite far off.
“I spied a creature like a smaller grawmalkin, but it ran away the moment I turned to look at it,” said Ruhildi.
“Aw, I missed it,” said Saskia. “If it were a cougar, it would have showed up on my map. Bobcat, maybe, or just a housecat.”
Ruhildi gave a dwarven shrug, which looked all kinds of wrong coming from Padhra’s body.
Saskia stretched. “Are we gonna keep moving, or stay here a while? This place is nice, but…” She trailed off, as another inexplicable feeling swept over her. “West. We need to head west.”
She looked at her minimap. Nothing stood out. Just more forest. Some old roads. A couple of houses…
Yes, that house. That was where they should go.
Ruhildi looked at her, and shrugged again.
They hiked westward, through sparse, dew-covered underbrush, across an icy mountain-fed stream, and up over a hill. On the other side of the hill was a half-overgrown dirt road. Tire tracks told her it had been used recently. At the end of the road was a large house with a satellite dish on its roof. Several vehicles were parked outside.
There were people inside; twelve of them. She could see them on her minimap. Their map markers indicated that they were neither hostile, nor friendly.
Saskia closed her eyes, and tried to calm her breathing. She needed to go inside that house. She had no idea why, but she needed to meet those people.
“Sashki…” said Ruhildi.
“I know what you’re going to say,” said Saskia. “It’s a really dumb idea. I know. But I have to. You should wait here.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Och no,” said Ruhildi. “I need to stay close, if I’m to pull your arse out of the fire again.”
“What makes you think you’ll need to?”
Ruhildi cocked an eyebrow.
“Fine. But…try not to kill anyone.”
“I make no promises,” said Ruhildi.
Saskia stepped up to the door, hesitated for a moment, then knocked. Nearly half a minute passed before someone came to the door: a young woman with silver hair. She stood with the door ajar, silently, staring intently at her phone.
Saskia swallowed. “I…don’t know why I’m here,” she said lamely.
“Password,” said the girl.
“What?”
“Say the password, or get outta here.” Without glancing up from her phone, she made a shooing motion with her hand.
Crap. She should just—
“Veritas.”
The word left her lips before she realised what was happening. Why had she just said that?
The silver-haired girl pulled open the door the rest of the way. “Welcome to the meetup. Beer’s that way.” She pointed behind her. “Bathroom’s…” Her eyes finally settled on Saskia, and the look of recognition in them was immediate and profound. “…the fuck?”
Saskia, who had already stepped in the door with Ruhildi, held out her hand to the startled girl. “Saskia Wendle. Pleased to meet you.”
The girl lifted her phone. Saskia batted it away. “No cameras, please.”
A loud crash down the hall made them both flinch. A guy had dropped a glass, shattering it, and spilling its dark, frothy contents across the hardwood floor. He too was staring at Saskia with a look of awe.
Behind him, another guy swore. “Liz, you moron. You just let them in?”
“She…she knew the password,” stammered the silver-haired girl.
“Oh god, they’ve come to kill us,” said the glass-dropper.
Saskia groaned inwardly. She shouldn’t have listened to her oracle senses, or undermind, or whatever had steered her here. “No, we’re not here to hurt you.”
“Unless you try to hurt us, human,” said Ruhildi.
“Then why are you here?” asked Liz.
“I…I’ll get back to you on that,” said Saskia. “First, tell me who you are.”
“Liz,” said Liz. “He’s John, and he’s Vincent.”
“Dude, I’m totally…whoa,” came a drunk-sounding voice down the hall. “Am I tripping, or is that Tentacle Girl?”
“And she’s Shillelagh,” said Liz, who despite her obvious fright, managed to roll her eyes at the other girl.
“No, I mean, as a group,” said Saskia. “Are you like…a hiking club or something?”
Liz stared at her. “Seriously? You don’t know?”
“Would I be asking if I did?”
“Oh shit,” breathed Liz. “Would you believe me if I told you we’re just a bunch of friends hanging out?”
“No,” said Saskia, seeing the red aura of a lie surrounding the girl as she spoke.
Liz sighed. “Fuck. Okay. Let’s go somewhere more comfortable, then we’ll talk.” She eyed Saskia up and down. “You’re not at all what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting? Tentacles?”
“Well yeah, honestly. And blood. Screaming. All that freaky shit. And what is that you’re wearing? That dress looks like something my grandma would wear.”
“It came from an old lady, yeah.”
“I’m…not gonna ask how you got it.”
They seated themselves at the kitchen table. Saskia felt too many eyes boring into her. A silence lingered.
Ah my old friend, the awkward silence, thought Saskia, settling back into her seat. How have you been?
“Can I getcha anything to drink?” chirped Shillelagh, breaking the silence. “Beer? Tea? Coffee? Beer? Wine? Beer?”
“Girl, she’s an alien,” said Vincent. “She probably drinks…liquid nitrogen or something.”
“A coffee would be great, thanks,” said Saskia.
Ruhildi tilted her head to the side. “I don’t drink.”
“That’s cool,” said Shillelagh. “We have non-alcoholic…”
“No, you misunderstand,” said Saskia. “She doesn’t drink anything.”
“Oh. Oh.” Giving Ruhildi a nervous, drunken glance, Shillelagh stumbled off to make her drink. Saskia was pretty sure the girl wouldn’t try to poison her, but she wasn’t holding high hopes that the coffee would be just coffee.
Another group was chatting and laughing around a patio in the back yard. It wasn’t long before one of them came over to check out the new guests. The girl let out a strangled squawk, and soon everyone was coming inside for a look-see. Sighing inwardly, Saskia did her best to reassure them, and answer a few of their questions. It was a minor miracle no-one had attacked her yet. She sipped at the coffee Shillelagh handed her, and tried not to grimace. Definitely the wrong kind of bitter.
“Now, back to my original question?” said Saskia, looking expectantly at Liz.
“Yeah, okay, well we are a club, of sorts,” said Liz. “An unofficial one. We have a shared interest, hang out together. All that fun stuff. This is our annual meetup.”
“And your interest…?” prompted Saskia, feeling she already knew the answer.
Liz hesitated, before answering. “You. Aliens like you, I mean. But you are the most visible example of your species, so…yeah.”
Saskia looked at Ruhildi. “That explains why it brought us here. It wanted me to meet my fan club.”
“It?” said Vincent.
“It’s complicated,” said Saskia.
“I don’t think fan is the right word,” said Liz. “We want to…”
John slammed his fist on the table, making several of them jump. “Stop pussy-footing around, Liz.” He looked at Saskia. “Our goal is to expose your kind. You’ve been skulking around in the shadows throughout human history, and we’re sick of it.”
In that moment, it suddenly occurred to Saskia who these people really were. She felt her glare coming on. “You’re the Unveilers.”
Shillelagh clapped her hands. “You do know of us!”
Saskia’s glare intensified. “Were you the ones who sent those guys to kill me?”
John blinked. “What? No. We want to expose you, not kill you. And we had nothing to do with the…incident that brought you to the world’s attention. We found out about you on TV and the Internet, like everybody else.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty,” said Saskia. “But just so you know, I’m only 24 years old, and I’ve been ‘skulking in the shadows,’ as you put it, for less than a year. Until recently, I thought I was completely human. I still don’t really know what I am.”
“We could…help you find out,” said Liz. “If you help us uncover others like you.”
“What would you do with those you uncover?” asked Saskia.
“Post their faces all over the Internet. Learn everything about them. About you. About what makes you tick.”
“Dissection?”
“No! Nothing like that! It’s just…there are freaky, godlike aliens walking among us. We don’t know what they want, or what they can do. The world needs to know!”
“I can relate to that,” said Saskia. “I don’t know their agenda, either. Not even my own da—” She caught herself too late. So now they knew her father was like her. Whoops. “All I know is that someone wants to kill me, and I think it’s one of my kind. Have you heard of The Ram?”
“I’ve heard the name,” said Vincent. “So you can confirm he’s like you?”
“Not like me, but one of my species. I think he’s the one who’s after me.”
“Help us, and we’ll help you track him down,” said Liz.
“No offence, but I don’t know what you can do to help,” said Saskia. “These people or…things; they have unimaginable power and resources, acquired over centuries across multiple worlds.”
“Multiple worlds!” said Vincent. “I knew it!”
John frowned. “We have resources. It’s not just us. There are people like us all over the world.”
“None of them are as cool as we are, though,” said Shillelagh.
Saskia looked between them, seeing a whole gamut of expressions—resolute, suspicious, starstruck and…well, drunk. She couldn’t deny it would be useful to have another network of eyes and ears to call upon, outside of Viktor Storozhenko’s contacts. She still didn’t entirely trust that guy.
“I’ll think about it,” she said. “First, let’s go over what we do know…”
Before they could get far with that, a car pulled up outside, followed by a knock at the door.
“I’ll get it,” said Liz, rising to her feet.
“This time, how about you check who it is before letting them in,” said John.
She gave him the middle finger on her way out. Saskia could hear her voice as she answered the door. “Password.”
“Fuck off, Liz, you know me.” A shiver rippled down Saskia’s spine. She recognised that voice.
“I suppose I can make an exception, just this once,” said Liz. “Why’d you bring grandma?”
“Joyce has something to tell you,” said the man. “Let’s talk inside.”
Joyce. Oh crap. And speaking of crap, the man at the door was the guy she’d spied on the toilet. Bartholomew, Joyce had called him.
Both Saskia and Ruhildi leapt to their feet, and positioned themselves by the door, ignoring the Unveilers’ questioning stares. The moment the pair entered, Ruhildi had the guy pinned on the floor, while Saskia grabbed Joyce from behind. Her grip was firm, but not so tight as to break fragile old bones. Padhra had trained her to do this, but she’d never imagined she’d be putting her training to use against an elderly woman. Joyce had no shotgun this time. Nor any weapons concealed under her clothes.
“Let go of me, you dang lizard-freak!” said Joyce, squirming against her grip.
“Don’t just stand there!” said Bartholomew, glaring up at Liz. “Get them off of us!”
Liz looked at Saskia with an exasperated expression. The others gathered nearby, watching the drama unfold with nervous eyes.
“Joyce shot at us earlier,” explained Saskia. “So forgive me if I don’t trust her not to have another go, if she gets the chance.”
“Didn’t just shoot at them,” said Joyce. “Blew a hole right out of zombie-freak, and she just kept coming.”
“Grandma!” hissed Liz.
“Don’t you ‘grandma’ me, missy! What you doing just standing by while this here alien rough-handles your poor old gran? Should be pumping it full of lead, and asking questions later!”
Liz heaved a huge sigh, and rolled her eyes. “If Saskia wanted to hurt you—or us—she would have. Just calm down for a second, and let me do the talking.” She looked at Saskia. “Would you please let my grandma go? I promise she won’t try to shoot you again. Because if she does, I’ll…have her cremated!”
Joyce went suddenly still in Saskia’s arms. “You wouldn’t dare!”
“Oh yes I would, grandma! You want your patch under the maple tree by grandpa’s side? You leave them be!”
Saskia was about to release her captive when she heard the distant rumbling of another vehicle coming up the road. One glance at her minimap turned her blood cold.
“Did you come alone?” she asked Joyce.
Joyce gave a little cackle. “Naw. You better believe the whole dang army is coming to get you. Just you wait.”
She was lying, but that didn’t make Saskia feel any better. Through her second sight she was seeing a pair of armoured vans, driven by men in black tactical gear.
“We’ve got company,” she said. She pulled a protesting Joyce into a back room. “Everyone get inside, away from doors and windows, and stay low. I don’t think these are cops or military. If I’m right, they won’t care who they catch in the crossfire.” She looked at the Unveilers. “Do you have any weapons?”
They stared blankly at her.
“What?” said John. “What the hell is going on? No, we don’t have weapons.”
“Let me go to the car, and I’ll show you a weapon or ten,” said Joyce.
The vans had parked a few hundred metres down the road, and the men—and at least one woman—were heading into the forest on both sides of the road. They were going to surround the house, and attack from cover.
Rummaging through Bartholomew’s pocket, Saskia pulled out his keys. She and Ruhildi dashed outside, keeping low. Sure enough, in the boot of the car were two shotguns, and an assortment of rifles and handguns. Yeesh, did they carry these everywhere they went?
Saskia and Ruhildi handed some of the guns to the startled Unveilers. “Any of you know how to use these?”
“I do,” said Liz.
“No!” said John. “Unlike Liz’s family, we’re not all a bunch of gun nuts.”
“Okay, the rest of you, just hold onto these, for now,” said Saskia. “If they try to storm the house, feel free to arm Joyce and Bartholomew. Just…not yet. I don’t want a bullet in the back, thank you.”
With that, she and Ruhildi were out the door again, and ducking into the forest. Saskia carried a rifle in hand, but she didn’t plan on using it. For now, she had stealth on her side, but that would change the moment she fired off a round.
“Can you take them out quietly?” whispered Saskia, pointing at the two nearest snipers, who were getting into position atop a small rise on the side of the hill.
“Aye, Sashki, just let me get a wee bit closer…”
A breeze kicked up around her friend, and suddenly, the two men were just…gone. They’d been swallowed up by the ground in an eyeblink, without even a chance to cry out. Now, Saskia could sense them struggling violently against their earthy prison—and then going very, very still.
Two corpses crawled from the earth, and stood, covered in mud and sticks. Blood ran from their faces, which had been pierced by spears of stone.
She and Ruhildi and their undead entourage moved to the next group; a squad of four, approaching close to the house. They had to hurry. There were more on the other side, and it was going to get—
A staccato burst of gunshots rang out in the still air. Saskia cursed inwardly.
Moments later, the four on their side of the house had met the same fate as the snipers up the hill. But they weren’t the ones who had fired the shots.
She could see on her minimap that some of the attackers had kicked in the front door. More gunfire. Several map markers winked out—one attacker and one other.
They dashed around the house. Saskia dropped to her knee, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. A man fell, twitching; the top of his head spilled out across the driveway.
A bullet whizzed past her ear. Saskia turned and fired again—this time at a sniper lying in the underbrush, a couple of hundred metres away. She couldn’t see him at all, but her oracle aiming helper let her silence him in a single shot. His companion followed a moment later.
Ruhildi, meanwhile, had turned her deaders loose on the squad attempting to storm the house, though she herself remained outside. Shouts and screams sounded from within. Then silence. A line of corpses stepped out the door—and fell limply across the driveway.
It was over. The entire battle had lasted just seconds, but it had seemed like an eternity.
Ruhildi went into the house ahead of her. No gunfire followed, so Saskia stepped through the door—and was greeted by the sound of soft weeping, and a moan of pain.
Shillelagh sat in the hallway, clutching a bullet wound in her leg; not fatal, if Saskia’s medical interface was to be believed. Bartholomew lay face-down in a pool of blood, hand still gripping the pistol that had taken out a black-clad attacker. Joyce stood over him with shotgun in hand. She scowled at Saskia, but at least the crotchety old woman wasn’t trying to blow her head off any more.
An Unveiler whose name she didn’t know lay slumped behind the kitchen counter. A stray bullet had come through the window and struck him in the throat. Another had died beneath the table.
John and Liz were holding each other tightly; the latter still had a gun in hand.
“They weren’t here to kill you,” whispered Liz. “They came for us.”
Saskia stared at the bloody photos on the floor, lifted from one of the dead attackers. Liz’s face, and John’s and Vincent’s, and several others.
Now she knew why she was here. Not just to forge an alliance with the Unveilers, or to extract information from them. She’d been sent here to save them.